Have games gotten easier or have we gotten better?

[King Aragorn]

It's a combination of both. Gamers probably have gotten better, and also, games are made easier. And when you think about it, it's for the better IMO. Back in the day, some games were REALLY short, but padded out with cruel difficulty and when the game almost cheats you. Now, more substance is actually put in, not just a game padded with AI cheating.

 

[xPixelatedx]

People (including me) say that games have been getting progressively easier in recent years. Everyone I know who say this are 20-somethings who have been gaming for most of their lives. Have they, really?

I believe it is the gamers who have gotten better.
Some gamers don't seem to understand that what's easy to us is not easy to someone who doesn't game. I have been gaming for...shit...about twenty years now.

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you guys don't watch a lot of replays on youtube. I would like to see the average my-first-gen Xbawks kid beat the original Castlevania or Contra games. Watching people (who haven't played anything from that era in very long or EVER) play those kinds of games now can be a hilarious thing. Where in you put in a game like Gears of War or Halo and you're guaranteed to beat it if you just keep playing.

If you want genuine proof, just pop in a recent Zelda game and beat it... Now go play the first two Zelda games from 20+ years ago!
Thread over XD

 

[Mrkillhappy]

Games are way easier now. The reason is back then the game industry didn't give a single fuck if you finished the game. Now the developers are so worried that you will miss something they put in the make sure you get through the game and see all the hard work they put in to making it look pretty instead of working on solid gameplay. I also believe that this can be attributed to the lack of arcades (at least here in the United States) where the goal was to make the player die as often as possible so as to suck the change out of their pockets and that game developers want to attract the casual market. Keeping in mind that casual gamers don't want a challenge such as beating Battletoads or Demon's Souls they want to just have fun.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

I'd say it's a bit of both. While I've been gaming all my life, my step father hasn't played nearly as much as I have. I mean, he's played the original NES when he was younger, as he told me, and when I met him he had a couple PC games that he played, but today whenever he plays a game on the PS3 I hear him cursing a storm on games that I've had literally no trouble with. They only game he seemed to be pretty exceptional at was Fallout 3, and that's because that's the only game he played for a month or so (I bought him the Game of the Year edition because I got him to play New Vegas once, and he loved it, but never got to play Fallout 3. With all that DLC, it's a long ass game...)

However, I've noticed that games that gave me such a hard time in the past, games on my Sega Genesis and N64, are much easier to me since I've been playing games longer. I can beat Ocarina of Time in a day if I wanted to, and I have. I think games have seemed to have become easier because it makes them more accessible to people who don't play them as often like my step father. My real father has issues too, but not nearly as bad, as he's the person that got me into gaming in the first place.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Games are definitely getting easier. I've gained a bit of skill since I was nine, but not so much since I was 20, and there's been a noticeable decline in game difficulty between last generation and this one. Metroid Prime was challenged when I played it on normal. I played Metroid Prime 3 on hard and I think I died one time during all of my boss battles, and wasn't even bothering to get all of the missle/health upgrades because I didn't need them.

What also annoys me is how many of them are becoming impossible to actually play skillfully, because they're designed for spectacle now. You can't avoid being hit during your 3-second attack animation, but it doesn't matter because the game is so forgiving. Devs don't bother giving you a reasonable chance at avoiding damage, they just give you enough health for it to not matter.

 

[loc978]

Depends on how old you are.

Have games gotten easier in the last five years? No. If anything, we're seeing a resurgence of challenging games.

The last ten years? Marginally. The challenges seem about the same; but saves, lives, et cetera have become a lot more convenient.

The last twenty? YES. Battletoads will still rip your fingers off and laugh at your cries for mercy.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Personally, I think the "games have gotten easier" feeling comes from three things.

1. Games have gotten easier, period. There is no really denying that games as a whole have gotten more easy, to open themselves to a broader market.

2. Gamers have gotten better, well, older games have at least.

3. And I think this is the biggest one, is that games have gotten easier because older games were limited by technology to such a point that developers had to create a ton of work around just to get even basic shit to work, and newer games don't have that problem.

the need to create as many work arounds, and proxy systems, and franken-mashups of different things just to get a basic idea to work, has largely been eliminated by technology, and because this limit doesn't exist, games are far more easier because things are more direct.

Its like text messaging, trying to send a text message on the first phones that supported it was kinda a *****, nowadays however, sending a text is so easy because phone technology has gotten to a point that it doesn't need to be as difficult as it was when texting first showed up.

Shit just gets easier the better technology gets, and I think this is the most important factor behind the "games are getting easier" trend we are seeing.

 

[Altorin]

Both. Games have become more properly tuned to our play styles as avid gamers. They've been designed to be beaten from the ground up. We have difficulty levels, and can ramp up the challenge if we desire, or bring it down to introduce newer players to the medium. We have grown so accustomed to controllers that it's very easy (or at least easier) to deliver a sense of conveyance, where your controller becomes an extension of your hands, and the developers have learned how to craft games in such a way that this is the best part of gaming.

But if you take an average gamer of today, put an NES controller in their hand and ask them to beat Battletoads, a game that was never really intended to be beaten without absolute mastery of the system, they'd be hard-pressed to, and even our "hard games" like Demons' Souls, we have far more margin for error then in those NES Hard games. Games in general are better designed. Some old NES games, even excusing those NES Hard classics, don't feel like they were even designed by people who'd ever played a game. The UI is impossible to understand, the controls (despite the lack of buttons) are ill designed or just plain weird, the difficulty is through the roof because of bugs or poor design choices (unlike Battletoads which was actually designed to be hard, at least in the states, to combat game rentals)

Games are a lot better at telling us what to do and how to do it (a detriment to some), or barring that, tend to be open enough for the player to figure it out on their own.

We have also gotten better though over time I think. Those of us who've been playing games for decades have a lot of past experience to help us figure things out, and kids, as always, are great at sorting these things out without years of experience, and tend to be the technically most proficient gamers, as their brains are a bit more fit then us old timers (although admittedly, I'm not even on the old spectrum when it comes to gaming, although I did own an NES before SNES was even a thing, so that can date me).

 

[southparkdudez]

We've gotten better as we age, I know because I sometimes get cocky and die in 5 seconds flat.

 

[DSK-]

Definitely getting easier. I remember myself and my dad playing MOHAA (the D-Day landing part) and it was replayed so many fucking times that eventually my dad would play and aim and time shots by rote. In COD now you just hide behind a corner, wait for the red screen to go away and carry on. In the old FPS's you had to be extra careful to not use up too many health packs or else you'd get killed

Same could be said with many other old genres.

I think this also relevant, despite being a bit over the top

 

[GameMaNiAC]

It's taking a while but I started him off with some less complicated games (Dragon Age/Mass Effect). I am slowly giving him more complicated games (Skyrim now) as I attempt to make a gamer out of him.

Wait, wait, wait. I have to re-read that.

Less complicated games? Dragon Age? Mass Effect?

Skyrim is more complicated? I... What? Have you not seen the amount of team management Dragon Age requires? Or the first Mass Effect game? You have to be joking when you say Skyrim is more complex, since it holds your hand the entire way.

OT: I personally believe games have just gotten easier. Since when I played older games, I find a much greater challenge than in today's video-games.

See the term Nintendo Hard [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard].

 

[Doclector]

I'd say we've gotten better, and games have gotten more user friendly.

Now, I know that I'm better at games than I used to be. I know this because there are some games that I flat out could not play when I was younger, couldn't get past the first couple of levels. I came back to some of these in recent years, and these previously impassible barriers now seem like a breeze.

Some games HAVE opted to be easier than most, but for the most part, I honestly just think the way we think about interface and game design has advanced, leading to less random shot in the dark problem solving, or struggling with control systems that would later prove as evolutionary dead ends.

 

[Braedan]

I think the average player has gotten WORSE, as the games are so much easier. No, not an influx of new players, I mean the old players. When the game gets easier, you don't have to keep your reaction times as up to snuff. Almost everyone I've talked to who isn't playing old SNES games feels like they were easier back in the day.

Admittedly this isn't the case for everyone, and hasn't affected every genre, but having games become easier has let the majority of gamers (ie. the ones you don't see here) relax a bit, and their skills have suffered.


Is this a good thing? Don't feel like getting into that, so don't treat this as a condemnation of more accessible games.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

The other day this girl I work with told me her boyfriend made a bet with his room mates that if they could beat the Elephant Graveyard level of the the Lion King video game for Sega Genesis they would get $20. I laugh cause I beat that level when I was 8

Anyway, I think the point when games became easier was when they became 3D and the devs could fit more into them. People just don't acknowledge that these games for N64, PS1, PS2, ect were also part of their childhood for some odd reason. They only talk about hard games that came out like 20 years ago

 

[sXeth]

The gamer nowadays is more trained then the gamer thenadays.
The games aren't designed to murder you in order to extract more quarters/artifically extend the playtime to compensate for how ludicrously little there actually was of the game.
Tutorials (ingame, or on youtube or whatever) exist now, as opposed to short (often poorly translated) manual blurbs.
Controls are more precise now, as is what you're seeing on screen. Theres also a wider set of controls, making complex maneuvers easier to orchestrate.
Conventions are far more present. (IE : Almost any shooter now uses a right trigger to fire. Back in the days your shoot/attack button was all over the place from game to game). This allows you to sort of train "generic FPS" skills, as opposed to only gaining proficiency in one game.
The fact that you can code a more advanced AI has created a fair amoutn of backlash against some of the more blatant AI cheating that used to go on to compensate for the inability to code up AI.
With the higher focus on franchises, theirs more incentive for the developer to let you get through, so you get hooked in for the next installment.

 

[Netrigan]

lemmie answer your question with another question:
"do you remember the days when you could actually fail a game and game over meant something?" because back in my day half the games i played i either couldn't finish or i only had a chance of finishing before i ran out of lives/time

Well, back in the day, you played the second level was exactly the same as the first level only faster and you kept doing that until you couldn't keep up.

Then they started created multiple levels and it would take quite a bit of skill to see all four levels of Ms. Pac-Man or Donkey Kong.

Then they started creating story-driven games with a fair amount of content and they figured out they could make a lot more money by letting players continue as many times as they wanted because players wanted to reach the end of the story, no matter how much they sucked at the game. A killed player could finish Double Dragon in half an hour on a single quarter, while novice players would blow $10 to get to the end of Double Dragon.

And then on the console side they figured out they could make a fairly short game seem so much longer by making it insanely hard and you get "Nintendo Hard". I don't think any game has ever beat Dragon Age for hiding 5 minutes worth of game behind hours and hours and hours of trial-and-error gameplay.

Then they start creating lots more content and putting in difficulty settings so even novice players can see it all, even if they have to resort to save scumming or cheat codes.

And then they start not bothering overly much with the difficulty settings and just set up a reasonable challenge, which will invariable start off a wave of complaints about the game being both too difficult and too easy by the people without average skills.

At every step of the way, the system was set up to get as much money from players as possible while giving them a sense of worth. And at every step of the way, they've had players complaining about the difficulty because it's impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

 

[tippy2k2]

Wait, wait, wait. I have to re-read that.

Less complicated games? Dragon Age? Mass Effect?

Skyrim is more complicated? I... What? Have you not seen the amount of team management Dragon Age requires? Or the first Mass Effect game? You have to be joking when you say Skyrim is more complex, since it holds your hand the entire way.

My Dad doesn't have the reactionary skills to play a quicker game. Dragon Age and Mass Effect both allow you to pause the game and handle your tactics without the threat of a Darkspawn/Geth stabbing/shooting you in the face while you do it. He's smart enough to play the game but can't handle a faster pace. He still has to look down at the controller to remember which button A is.

Skyrim does not let you do that. You can pause the game but everything you do for fighting is during the game. You also have to handle blocking and changing your weapons during the middle of a fight. You can also wander around and run into enemies that you just can't handle yet (something ME/DA stop you from doing with their linear nature).

Yes, there are aspects of ME/DA that are more complicated but generally you can do all that stuff at your own pace.

 

[Denamic]

I've played games for 20 years. I'm 27 years old. If I weren't better at games now than back when I was 7, there would be something seriously wrong with me.

 

[kommando367]

Yeah they've gotten way easier.

Most of the games in the last generation required some crazy reflexes.

Before that, you had a lot of games that whooped your ass in the early levels and forced perfection just to survive the later levels.

Nowadays, you only die in a game if you do something stupid like fly an aircraft into a small corridor or charge a shotgunner.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I would say both, but neither of those changes have been as drastic as some people would like to think. Of course us veterans to the hobby have undoubtedly gotten better ('Practice Makes Perfect') and mass market appeal has driven games to be less grueling than they once were, but those individual aspects have not created the reaction that many people have when it comes to this subject. Rather, those two elements in combination are why you can see people going on passionate tangents on why games should be harder or why people should stop complaining about wanting games to be harder.