The Dumbification of Gaming

[Scars Unseen]

I don't like the word "dumbing down" as that assumes that everyone has just gotten stupider (I misspelled stupider when I typed it...), and I guess I have more faith in humanity than that. Most games are becoming more "simplified", and an unfortunate result of that can be "dumbing" or watering down the whole experience. I think developers just need to trust their audience more.

I think a prime example of "oversimplification" for me was the change between Mass Effect 1 and 2. The first one I thought was great, even if it did have some gameplay issues (and even if the Mako was bouncy as fuck). The second one, however, I think BioWare overreacted to the complaints and drastically simplified, though not quite watered down, the overall experience.

In Mass Effect 1, I never really noticed that I was unloading shot after shot, and it felt varied and epic in a sense. In Mass Effect 2 I noticed that all I was doing was unloading clip after clip after clip, and that's all I felt I was doing in fight after fight, with nothing to break up the monotony. That, I think, is oversimplification, and it's dangerous when a developer doesn't give their audience enough credit to assume that they can't manage a simple inventory or pilot a helicopter.

A couple of things:

1) I hope that the irony of using "stupider" in a post decrying the use of the phrase "dumbing down" is not lost on you.

2) If "dumbing down" implies that the audience is dumb, is it really any better to imply that the audience is simple? (hint: irrelevant since neither "dumbed down" nor "simplified" are describing the user)

 

[Ericb]

Feel this picture is appropriate:

Spoiler

Oh, it's more then appropriate, it's the perfect visual analogy.

Not sure what's sadder, the fact that FPS's have basically become hallways, or that I can run that DOOM map with my eyes closed...

The first one is sad, by far.

The second, not at all as it was and is a stimulating level design.

I don't dislike games being accessible for the masses, but I don't want innovative games that aren't super player-friendly to suffer for it.

This is very much my take on it and precisely why it is terrible that there so many self-titled "hardcore gamers" who immediately shun attempts to step out of the current game design box.

 

[Jumplion]

1) I hope that the irony of using "stupider" in a post decrying the use of the phrase "dumbing down" is not lost on you.

I misspelled "stupider" the first time around...

2) If "dumbing down" implies that the audience is dumb, is it really any better to imply that the audience is simple? (hint: irrelevant since neither "dumbed down" nor "simplified" are describing the user)

"Dumbing down" implies that the user is stupid or too dumb to know what to do.
"Simplifying", while it can be seen as the same thing, I think it's more streamlining and making the game approachable. You can still have a streamlined, approachable game that has depth and complexity to it, it's just pretty difficult.

 

[Callate]

All right, let's take System Shock 2 for a second. Because quite frankly, if there's one thing that pisses me off, it's the ongoing critical worship of that "great under-appreciated work of genius" that was SS2..

Great atmosphere? Sure. Intriguing and innovative blending of genres? Absolutely. Some nicely-conceived set-pieces? Definitely. Memorably fiendish nemeses? Certainly.

But it wasn't just "hard". It was home to some incredibly bad design decisions. Decisions that a better-constructed and playtested game would have sanded off. Decisions that made it both far worse and far less accessible than it needed to be.

A few examples:

Increasing the protaganist's agility caused your movement speed to increase; this increased movement speed meant you could hurt yourself running into a railing. Because nothing says "agile" like a hero who breaks his nose running into a wall.

If the protaganist is poisoned, they keep taking damage until you use an antidote or die. At least one segment of the game is happy to drop you into an area right on top of things that can poison you with a single hit.

Opening crates involves playing an incredibly dull little game (one which makes Bioshock's "Pipe Dream"-alike look like a thrill ride) that costs the player "money" on every attempt. There's no way to know if the contents of the box are worth that cost. The player plays this game about a thousand times.

Several of the game's missions require retracing one's steps. Those steps are populated by infinitely respawning enemies, many of which use firearms. Despite this, chances of getting either a usable weapon or a single bullet from any of these enemies is minuscule.

The "big bad" at one point reveals that she is capable of retracting the "experience points" she's been issuing to you. This never comes up again.

Both of your major enemies want you on their side. Actually joining forces with either is not an actual option, which makes the story segments spent on these notions something of a waste of time.

The instruction manual raves about how important it was to the designers that psionic powers not be "just another gun". Then they made ammunition and weapons so scarce that the player would often be slitting their own throat to use those powers any other way, especially given the skill points and resources they had to give up to acquire and use those powers.

...I could go on...

In summation, System Shock 2 is kind of like an intricately carved wooden marble maze that may give you splinters when you pick it up and has the occasional propensity to drop your marble into a crevice from which it can't be retrieved. Bioshock is like a simpler maze made out of smoothed glass- it will never cut you, it will never lose your marble, you can see the work that went into it from every angle but at the same time it's never going to be as difficult because the end is always in sight. They're different experiences, but I spit at the idea that SS2's is intrinsically superior.

To bring this back into the main thrust of discussion: I absolutely agree that we should continue to demand complex and fulfilling experiences from games, and "call out" designs that take beloved genres and franchises and make them simpleminded for the sake of making them accessible.

But we shouldn't automatically assume that every time a corner is rounded off, it's to a game's detriment. There have been some improvements made to the games we love as well. A modern FPS map may be a lot less obviously complex than one from Doom seventeen-plus years ago, but I don't think anyone is clamoring to return to maps that were, despite some trickery to seem otherwise, two dimensional. Games like Half-Life slowed the action down and showed that the genre didn't have to author nothing but simpleminded shoot-em-ups. The rebirth of the whole adventure genre has come along with some recognition that hunting for one pixel or selecting one of seven different kinds of screwdriver from a ridiculously huge inventory was never what attracted people to those games.

The fanboy's glass is always going to be half empty, and I say that fully aware that I have my own fanboy-ish blind spots. But of all people, game players at the bleeding edge of technology should have some perspective on how silly it can be to blindly cling to traditions.

 

[Scars Unseen]

1) I hope that the irony of using "stupider" in a post decrying the use of the phrase "dumbing down" is not lost on you.

I misspelled "stupider" the first time around...

Ah. I see that it is, then. Never mind.

2) If "dumbing down" implies that the audience is dumb, is it really any better to imply that the audience is simple? (hint: irrelevant since neither "dumbed down" nor "simplified" are describing the user)

"Dumbing down" implies that the user is stupid or too dumb to know what to do.
"Simplifying", while it can be seen as the same thing, I think it's more streamlining and making the game approachable. You can still have a streamlined, approachable game that has depth and complexity to it, it's just pretty difficult.

I really don't see how one term is better than the other. If you are looking for a word to describe the effect, either works. If you are trying to use the phrase to imply something about the audience, then they fail in equal measure. If you are wanting to invent a term that works for both, perhaps "mainstreaming" would be a better choice.

 

[Irridium]

LOL
that's awesome man (and yes very appropriate). Where is it from?

Found it while browsing Halolz.com.

Its what I do when I'm bored.

 

[panosbouk]

The argument about hard modes isn't valid at all. Games are mend to be played on normal mode. This is how they should be judged. Never talked about how the game works on easier mode but suddenly we came at a point saying if you want the full game play on hard.

I don't agree that games evolution made them easier. They became easier for the developers.

On FPS games health restore as mentioned as well on Extra Credits here on escapist, makes the designers to work freely on what they will put for your next encounter. They don't have to take in consideration factors as your health bar, armor bar etc, so they can put a balanced encounter on the next room.

On RPGs now I encountered the worse scenario. Still not a simplicity to the game "evolution" in general but a design choice. Dragon Age 2 gives you a total party of 4 to control. But you can only use the gear you find (chest, boot, gloves), on your main character. You can upgrade them from shops but they get a fixed upgrade for the specific char. I don't believe in that case even the more "casual" player find it appealing.

The simplicity that overcomes games now takes away the mechanics that made them the medium that is today. Instead going forward as an independent medium goes the wrong way and soon we will see nomination in the Oscars. And yes this is bad because games are not movies although they going that way.

I would like to close with this. I remember the game Sevenrace, an action RPG, that it's combat mechanic was dodge, block, and for attacks you combined keys to make the moves, now I press a single button and see stuff happens on my screen.For me that's not moving forward but even more backwards.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

games being easy will never make them less enjoyable to me. i go for the spectacle and story, not for the challenge

if i wanted a challenge i'd play starcraft in korea.

i want to have fun, and fun is not training myself with endless hours of videogames so that i can "enjoy" them when they're fucking ridiculously hard

 

[Irridium]

*Edit*

Actually, here is a video.

I really hope everything isn't highlighted in the final game. Otherwise it completely defeats the purpose of exploration.

You can't find your own way when you highlight everything.

 

[shaderkul]

Playing through DA2, I really am struck dumb by how much they hold your hand these days. They honestly don't let you figure out ANYTHING for yourself anymore, which is a shame.

The side quests, for example: you pick up a random item of no particular importance - other than the nifty little arrow next to the name, indicating it is a quest item. You've now got a journal entry that tells you exactly where to deliver said item. It's also on your map. And when you happen upon the target NPC, he or she will have a giant arrow over his/her head.

This isn't an MMO. The quests aren't supposed to be an annoying race against the clock, mere obstacles between me and a max level character ready to participate in the "real" game. The quests are supposed to comprise the desired experience.

TLDR version: Damn you, WoW.

Exactly. And the way they rate the loot you pick up left me gasping for air in disbelief! You gotta be kidding me...seriously?! " Ooooo...I just picked up two magic staffs and I don't know which one is better, I don't have time to look at the stats and decide, I just wanna kill stuff. Oh, ok. One has three stars and the other has four! Yay!

Seriously.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

The platform wars always muddy the issues. Are FPS games getting simpler? Well obviously because [insert platform here] gamers are drooling idiots who need the experience to be easier!

This is probably happening to make gaming more accessible to the newer generation but why they can't make hard mode hard baffles me. Have different sized maps for the different difficulties! Leave the accessibility factor at easy!

 

[Jumplion]

I really don't see how one term is better than the other. If you are looking for a word to describe the effect, either works. If you are trying to use the phrase to imply something about the audience, then they fail in equal measure. If you are wanting to invent a term that works for both, perhaps "mainstreaming" would be a better choice.

Eh, more semantics on my part. Mainstreaming is an interesting word aswell, could also apply to certain situations.

 

[The3rdEye]

"Old-school PC gamers are always willing to tell you about how shooters used to have management of multiple resources - armor, health, and ammunition for ten weapons. Now we have a single "life" gauge that fills up on its own, and three weapons. Combat used to take place on sprawling levels with branching paths and multiple routes. Now they have linear railroad paths. The old menagerie of monsters has been replaced with "solider with gun A" and "soldier with gun B."

Even among console fans, there is blame to be spread around. PS3 fans sneer at the frat-boy Halo demographic of Xbox players. Xbox owners laugh at the dumb jocks who bought a PlayStation and then buy the same Madden and Tiger Woods games, over and over, every year. Both sides are filled with burning contempt for the giggling, clueless, inept Wii players and their affinity for heaps of shovelware.

It's possible that within every lie is a kernel of truth but all the same why repeat this sort of thing? How do we move past it if you keep putting it in front of us? At the same time this is all coming from someone who apparently grown up with games, which in itself can be problematic. No matter how awesome a game is, no matter how great the experience is, it's never going to your first. You're not going to remember the crappy controls, the terrible art, the poor scripting, you just remember the first time X happened and blew your mind.

Games as a whole aren't getting "dumber", the industry is getting scared as hell and neurotic. There is a HUGE amount of momentum driving things forward; technology, the maturation of the 1st gen console gamers with their increased disposable income, the possibility of tackling subjects and stories once thought to be material solely for books and movies and of course the money. The prospect of taking a leap and either allowing themselves to be hard on the player or to present the player with something that they don't like and therefore losing a sale over it is terrifying to them as a business. To compound the problem, we the consumer further complicate things with our random acts of rage from fans and 'haters' alike and most of all we keep putting the blame on everyone but ourselves.

Quite complaining that X-com is not Enemy Unknown, that game has already been made and any attempt to reproduce it will inevitably fall short because if it's different, there will be some who "hates" it. Stop saying that a game is "bad" or "broken" simply because you didn't enjoy it. [footnote]I have seen titles for numerous DA2 threads, but have not read a single one because despite what others dislike about the game, and despite what I myself dislike about the game, I still enjoy it. I'm not going to call NFS:HP a "poorly designed game" because the actual Hot Pursuit events only comprised 1/4 of the content, and I won't say FM:E was "broken" because I never did get my pre-order content. I WILL call them "insanely fast-paced and cathartic after a day in rush hour traffic, although rather short in my favorite event" and "A nice way to tide me over until AC5", respectively.[/footnote]Instead of filling forums with vitriol and outbursts of "That's not canon!" and "What the hell!? Are you stupid?!", where are the words of encouragement? What reason does the industry have to relax and allow itself to be innovative when the people with the mic are saying things like this:

I'm going to continue to rail against trends that make the hobby less fun for me.

I think the best approach is for games to offer enough flexibility to appeal to people of different tastes

 

[King Toasty]

Games are getting dumber? No, I really don't think so. Perhaps a few big FPS titles are, but there is no way gaming in the whole is getting stupid.

 

[Something Amyss]

Experienced Points: The Dumbification of Gaming

Shamus wants us to stop fighting and get along.

Read Full Article

Them's Fightin' Words!

>.>

It's certainly interesting to think about how simplification can creep up on you. I only miss "hard" sometimes, though. "Nintendo Hard" was overrated, but it annoys me when I cakewalk through a game. Seems to be happening more and more often.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

bioshock was a worse game in almost every aspect than system shock 2, except for number of pixels on the screen

the gameplay was insipid, the reveal was uninspired, and the ending was obviously rushed
the pipe dream hacking minigame never should have made it past the drawing board

not having to manage the physical aspects (weight volume) of your inventory disconnects the player from the world built in the game

having the vita chambers put you back at no cost and a full "mana" bar make dying over and over again a viable strategy rather than a punishment

my complaint wasn't that bioshock was simpler than system shock, my complaint was that it was WORSE and yet it was lauded like the second coming

modern gamers really don't know the difference between "good story" and "has a story"

 

[Twilight_guy]

I think that there is a problem in assuming the general notion that popular == bad. That a very art snob approach to the whole thing and short sighted since popular things can be good. Games are plagued with elitists and and equivalent of art snobs, who frown on popular. The inaccessible art critics who look at a blue line on white canvas and call it brilliant while saying that a landscape is just too obvious, yeah that this argument in painting form. Its so frustrating to try and take everything with a sense that no side is "right" and try to see the evolution of the process rather then condemn what I hate about change while everyone is decrying the slightest thing. Games change they have been for a long time. Its perfectly fine to say what you don't like and say why bet there are far too many blanket hate statements made without thinking about the neutrality of change. Change is not bad or good its a result of the market stresses and popular culture. There seems to be so little separation of "I'm not having fun with this, lets discuss why and try to affect a change to rearrange the market" instead of "they changed it, now it sucks". I dunno maybe I'm just giving the world too much credit and trying to separate myself or maybe I'm too diplomatic but I can't bring myself to hate or despise any change. Its far more interesting to watch the hate and see from whence it bubbles.

Anyways, back to the point. Games change. The culture of gaming changes. Games used to be a niche group now everyone and there grandma plays games. You can't expect things to not shift dramatically. You also can't expect every game to please everyone. I'm sure they is at least one game that you'd like this year because I know there there are people who think like you somewhere that made that game because they though it was fun like you did. I am also sure that for every game you hated, someone though it was fun. In a diverse market such as gaming not every game will be one that you will like games are made for all sorts of peoples and reasons and they suited for a mosaic of groups and interests. Gamers seems to think far too often that every major game is meant to please them personally. It's not. Some might please you and others don't. Its hard to universally say "this was bad." If there is a market for a game, and a whole forum of people complaining constitutes a small market, someone will make the game. The masacore audience proves that. It's more a matter of finding who is making games for you and being happy with that. There are no blanket "games" statements. Anyone who says anything about the industry as a whole is sticking their foot in their mouth because its a market so huge that you can't know everything. If you say "games are getting dumber" it is inevitable really the statements "these games that I saw and remembered are getting dumber" There are other games that you never saw and evaluated and there are games that were fine and thus didn't make the impact that the games you disliked did. I dunno what the problem with gamers is that they must be so volatile and open to destruction rather then construction but I want to live to see the day where for every negative forum thread about hating something there is a counter thread about ways to improve the problem or minimize its impact. Ugh, whatever. For some reasons Shamus's stories always seems to be be spewing bile at someone. I gotta find something less intensively negative from him to change that mental image.

 

[JMeganSnow]

If you've ever read The Long Tail, it talks about the gradual reversal of this trend in some industries over the past few years. Games, however, are still in the apex stage of the Blockbuster model--except for "casual" games, which are starting to capitalize on the Long Tail.

But it's hardly a unique situation to games. When there's only the local grocery store to shop at, they stick with the blockbuster items like generic white flour because that's what the most people will buy. Their cost of entry is high, their scope is small, they have to go with what works.

AAA titles have enormous costs and not-so-enormous scopes. Que stagnation and going with what works.

 

[justnotcricket]

I played PoP [ The Cell-shaded ] one but I didn't feel it was casual at all.

I enjoyed the narrative/scenery/dialogue/characters so much, I was simply having fun doing it all. Experiencing connection with Elika since she is the only soul left.

You actually had fun with that game? Wow, I Didn't get past the second level. Doing nothing but acrobatics and fighting ONE GUY per level got boring very fast. Forgotten sands was pretty decent though. That was the biggest problem for me, the lack of combat, and the very rigid boring nature of that combat.

I would agree with Akalabeth that the combat in PoP (cell shaded flavour) was total arse, which made it a good thing that you didn't have to do it very often. I also agree with Straying Bullet, however, in that the the game was fun. For me it was just the sheer joy of swinging and flipping and parkour-ing my way around pretty levels. Admittedly, it was the first PoP game I had ever played, so perhaps I didn't have any preconceived expectations of how things should be, but at the same time I had no nostalgia bias, and so I can say that as someone new to the series (?) it genuinely stands up on its own if you like exploring a pretty world in flippy, swingy PoP style. As a veteran of Tomb Raider exploration, the feedom and fluidity of PoP was gloriously liberating. I guess you could say 'oh, well, she just didn't know any better' but at the end of the day, I had fun, and that's the point, right?

OT: I also agree that games have gotten 'easier'...although in some respects that's not necessarily a 'bad' thing. Now, don't get me wrong, I like my games to give me a challenge. However, I measure 'challenge' by more than one ruler, and I believe that there's a lot of fun to be had in 'easy' games if you use your imagination. for example: Pokemon. I like Pokemon, but it has to be admitted that the game (if you can remember 'rock-paper-scissors' and are prepared to do a little grinding) is easy as. However, if you like the game world and the play style, you can jazz things up for yourself by, say, only using water Pokemon, even though this gives you massive disadvantages, and if you play without trading, might mean that you go for a chunk of the game with only two Pokemon until you enter an area that has more. I know, you could still, technically, go for a massive grind-fest and hope to pull through by sheer weight of stats, but I think it's more fun to see how challenging the game becomes if you try to play 'normally' but with a difficulty-steepening 'rule'. Perhaps that's not the perfect example, but it's the one that sprang to mind first.

This is pretty much what's behind the grand tradition of timed runs/no medkit uses etc, right? My sister and I finished Tomb Raider 4, and then played it again with the the rule that we weren't allowed to use anything but pistols (except where the plot required it, like using the laser sight on the desert eagle to shoot targets to open a door), and couldn't use any medkits at all. The difficulty level steepened hugely, but it was so rewarding to figure out all the little tips and tricks to save health and pick away at powerful enemies.

I think the idea in Fallout New Vegas was nice (as others have mentioned here) where you could make things challenging for yourself in a strategic, interesting way, whereas someone who just wanted classic Fallout could also enjoy the game. I think it would be wonderful if more games made things harder by more complex methods than just loading up enemies' health bars and blunting all the players' swords. That way 'hard mode' isn't so much harder as it is 'Strategic mode', and I don't know about anyone else here, but sometimes I just want to go into a game and have button mashy, hack and slashy, superpowered (easy mode) fun. Other times I want to have to think, but sometimes gaming is escapism. ;-)