very good article. there is a general sense of not bothering. however i dont think games are the cause, rather they adjust for what is happening. a lot of games i play nowadays are much easier than same genre games used to be 10 years ago. i dont consider myself hardcore gamer, or skileld one for that matter, but i started to stop feeling a challenge in games like deadspace or stalker whne i remmeber how much fun i did trying to beat mafia with 0 health loss or far cry 1. not to mention settlers series that went from "seriuos strategy" to "for 8 years old and less".
Too Much Success
- Thread starter Nathaniel Edwards
- Start date
Games weren't hard though because they wanted to challenge us. they were hard cause most of them were of that arcade mold where there were lives and coins to push into a machine. Some games were artificially made harder just for this reason (battle toads is actually easier in it's Japanese release) and we mustn't forget that mario brothers 2 was switched out with another game just because it was more of the same but harder (although the other game it switched with was no walk in the park either).
For me personally though I think games need a sort of balance. When games like to be difficult they usually aren't fun unless you are good at them which isn't really a selling point if your like me who wants to enter the RTS field only to find the field is wretched and mean. It's also a matter of aesthetic. If the game your playing has a really nice look to it. You get to do cool things like fly around and destroy stuff with ease. Or you can just plain skip parts that are just a little too hard. that would make it easier to slip difficulty in games cause I have to be honest. Young players just aren't good at playing games. All this talk about games being too easy and I haven't seen a single kid alive who can ace an lego game level.
Hell the players on little big planet seem absolutely deficient.
Easy and hard are just so vague a term when fun doesn't equate to either of them.
For me personally though I think games need a sort of balance. When games like to be difficult they usually aren't fun unless you are good at them which isn't really a selling point if your like me who wants to enter the RTS field only to find the field is wretched and mean. It's also a matter of aesthetic. If the game your playing has a really nice look to it. You get to do cool things like fly around and destroy stuff with ease. Or you can just plain skip parts that are just a little too hard. that would make it easier to slip difficulty in games cause I have to be honest. Young players just aren't good at playing games. All this talk about games being too easy and I haven't seen a single kid alive who can ace an lego game level.
Hell the players on little big planet seem absolutely deficient.
Easy and hard are just so vague a term when fun doesn't equate to either of them.
In my time games used to frustrate! They used to challenge! They used to be good, not like this modern, newfangled "games for everyone" nonsense! They don't make games like they used to, no sir. Oh, those were the days, when you could spend days trying to get past a stage, and if you died you had to do it all over again from start.
It's games like Mass Effect and Portal are ruining our youth with their easy-peasy challenges and their save points and their achievements and... Bah! Get off my lawn you casuals! And don't come back until you've played a REAL game!
/sarcasm
Now, to add my 2 cents to the academic issue: This is a bunch of nonsense. Or, to put it more politely, it's classic generation-gap misunderstanding leading to one side saying nasty things about the other (in this case that today's youth is apparently too lazy and complacent, and too pansy to have their ego challenged to boot).
I'm willing to admit games are not quite as punishing as they were before, but since when has that been a bad thing? Games have been growing steadily more popular and more widespread in popular culture, so games becoming less punishing certainly hasn't crippled their development, their sales or even their cultural influence.
And the challenging games are still out there. Super Meat Boy, Spelunker, Demon's Souls too many multiplayer games to mention. And they still get a fair bit of attention and sales. They may not be the big games in the yard anymore, but there's clearly still an audience there, and developers willing to carter to it.
Difficult games are not for everyone. This was true back then, and is still true now. The hardcore challenge seekers have always been a niche, a vocal and influential nice, but still just that. Niche. NOT THE MAJORITY. There is a small group of bikers that are hardcore and ride 5 miles every day, but nobody is saying that every biker should be hardcore, that every bike rider needs to put in as much effort in their sport/transport as the hardcore crowd. So why should the games industry carter to this small market?
Oh, and children being bored in class is, quite frankly, not a new phenomenon. Trust me on that one.
Sort version: Difficult games are a niche, not the golden standard of gaming. And this new generation won't be any better or any worse than the one before. Deal with it.
It's games like Mass Effect and Portal are ruining our youth with their easy-peasy challenges and their save points and their achievements and... Bah! Get off my lawn you casuals! And don't come back until you've played a REAL game!
/sarcasm
Now, to add my 2 cents to the academic issue: This is a bunch of nonsense. Or, to put it more politely, it's classic generation-gap misunderstanding leading to one side saying nasty things about the other (in this case that today's youth is apparently too lazy and complacent, and too pansy to have their ego challenged to boot).
I'm willing to admit games are not quite as punishing as they were before, but since when has that been a bad thing? Games have been growing steadily more popular and more widespread in popular culture, so games becoming less punishing certainly hasn't crippled their development, their sales or even their cultural influence.
And the challenging games are still out there. Super Meat Boy, Spelunker, Demon's Souls too many multiplayer games to mention. And they still get a fair bit of attention and sales. They may not be the big games in the yard anymore, but there's clearly still an audience there, and developers willing to carter to it.
Difficult games are not for everyone. This was true back then, and is still true now. The hardcore challenge seekers have always been a niche, a vocal and influential nice, but still just that. Niche. NOT THE MAJORITY. There is a small group of bikers that are hardcore and ride 5 miles every day, but nobody is saying that every biker should be hardcore, that every bike rider needs to put in as much effort in their sport/transport as the hardcore crowd. So why should the games industry carter to this small market?
Oh, and children being bored in class is, quite frankly, not a new phenomenon. Trust me on that one.
Sort version: Difficult games are a niche, not the golden standard of gaming. And this new generation won't be any better or any worse than the one before. Deal with it.
Nice to see this traditional puritan model for motivation is managing to worm its way into the gaming community; it brings me no end of pleasure to know that we will always have people telling us that the only way to be successful is to be frustrated and miserable.
Hmm This rings with something I read a few years ago in a danish newspaper.
A little background: The danish system of teaching to some degree attempts to make learning a game. This would show in different ways but the one I remember best was "Reading Weeks" (weeks might be wrong... could be month) which basically work in the way that you got a score. Every book you read earned you a points and there was a sort of leader board (no reward if I remember correctly at least not beyond winning) with different "leagues" based on the difficulty of the books. The system was also set heavily in favour of getting everyone to the same level of education. There was some advanced placement courses (which just meant you were offered more lessons) for smarter students. So everyone would get a good basic education. And the system works. For the most part. And this is where the article comes in.
It spoke of a boy who was a trouble kid. He was disruptive in class and had a hard time sitting still and concentrating. Teachers and school nurses suspected he had ADD or some similar condition. So he was tested and indeed he had many of the symptoms for ADD but not to such an extent that a clear diagnosis could be reached. On the advice of a specialist they also tested his intelligence. The boy was thought to be average, maybe even a bit bellow. It turned out he was not. He was highly intelligent. Not enough to warrant extra classes but close. It turned out that his bad behaviour had not come from frustration but from boredom. The normal classes were not enough to challenge him. On an impulse they also tested the mother of the kid and lo and behold she showed the same gifts. She also remembered have had similar problems as the kid in school and as him had been branded a problem child.
So how does this pertain to this matter? Well for this connection I have to move onto myself. I remember having similar problems in school. Most of my school time (at least in "Folkeskolen" - the first 10 years of a childes education in Denmark) was spent looking out the window (or at least a lot of the time). Anything and everything I was presented with came easy to me. Nothing really challenged me. So I grew lazy and complacent. This all continued all the way up till the time I went to university. Here I suddenly meet challenges for real... and I crashed and burned completely. I had not developed the determination and grit necessary to soldier through. So me with my towering intellect was left in the dust while my friends went on to get their bachelors and masters degrees (one was even encouraged to try for Phd. He didn't though).
I see the danger of this happening to others as an effect of easy games but also because of the drive towards gamification. We are walking on unexplored ground here and I fear there may be sink holes.
A little background: The danish system of teaching to some degree attempts to make learning a game. This would show in different ways but the one I remember best was "Reading Weeks" (weeks might be wrong... could be month) which basically work in the way that you got a score. Every book you read earned you a points and there was a sort of leader board (no reward if I remember correctly at least not beyond winning) with different "leagues" based on the difficulty of the books. The system was also set heavily in favour of getting everyone to the same level of education. There was some advanced placement courses (which just meant you were offered more lessons) for smarter students. So everyone would get a good basic education. And the system works. For the most part. And this is where the article comes in.
It spoke of a boy who was a trouble kid. He was disruptive in class and had a hard time sitting still and concentrating. Teachers and school nurses suspected he had ADD or some similar condition. So he was tested and indeed he had many of the symptoms for ADD but not to such an extent that a clear diagnosis could be reached. On the advice of a specialist they also tested his intelligence. The boy was thought to be average, maybe even a bit bellow. It turned out he was not. He was highly intelligent. Not enough to warrant extra classes but close. It turned out that his bad behaviour had not come from frustration but from boredom. The normal classes were not enough to challenge him. On an impulse they also tested the mother of the kid and lo and behold she showed the same gifts. She also remembered have had similar problems as the kid in school and as him had been branded a problem child.
So how does this pertain to this matter? Well for this connection I have to move onto myself. I remember having similar problems in school. Most of my school time (at least in "Folkeskolen" - the first 10 years of a childes education in Denmark) was spent looking out the window (or at least a lot of the time). Anything and everything I was presented with came easy to me. Nothing really challenged me. So I grew lazy and complacent. This all continued all the way up till the time I went to university. Here I suddenly meet challenges for real... and I crashed and burned completely. I had not developed the determination and grit necessary to soldier through. So me with my towering intellect was left in the dust while my friends went on to get their bachelors and masters degrees (one was even encouraged to try for Phd. He didn't though).
I see the danger of this happening to others as an effect of easy games but also because of the drive towards gamification. We are walking on unexplored ground here and I fear there may be sink holes.
Somewhat on topic I came back to WoW post cataclysm after not playing since Burning Crusade. My gawd did they "streamline" the early game. This isnt a bad thing but they also took 100% of the challenge out of the instances.
They appear to be diablo like zerg fests where you just mash your buttons and you win if you have good enough gear.
I'm going to miss the strategic CC and tanking where one uncontrolled mob caused a wipe and aggro management actually mattered.
In my opinion flattening the learning curve is a good thing, but not to the point where there isn't a noticeable difference between an expert and a novice. Instead there should be a gentle, skippable ramp up to a high degree of difficulty.
Making learning not boring is one reason Portal is such a good game.
They appear to be diablo like zerg fests where you just mash your buttons and you win if you have good enough gear.
I'm going to miss the strategic CC and tanking where one uncontrolled mob caused a wipe and aggro management actually mattered.
In my opinion flattening the learning curve is a good thing, but not to the point where there isn't a noticeable difference between an expert and a novice. Instead there should be a gentle, skippable ramp up to a high degree of difficulty.
Making learning not boring is one reason Portal is such a good game.
I agree that both kinds of games have a right to exist, and a world without those exceptionally challenging games would be a duller one. But as I said before, hardcore gamers are a niche. A relatively small group. Not the majority.Llil said:
What do you want? That the developers focus most of their efforts on a small group while ignoring larger and more profitable markets? Sorry, not going to happen. In a way, I recognize this is unfair, I happen to enjoy bizarre and original games and there's certainly not a big market there. But that doesn't entitle me to say all games should be bizarre and original and carter to my tastes (as wonderful as that would be to me on a personal level).
I purchased Kirby: Epic Yarn this Sunday because I love playing Kirby games. I don't care if this game is easy, all that matters to me is how the game is. Difficult or not. That's how I am with all my games.
On an individual level, I agree with you. Fact is, each person has a "reward threshold"--an amount of praise they're just fine with. Coincidentally, they also have an "effort threshold"--a maximum amount of effort they're comfortable (important word) putting out. How these two interact are what determine a person's motivation.Nathaniel Edwards said:
For instance, it doesn't matter how high a reward you offer, most people aren't going to bother trying to lift a building by hand. Too much effort, so they know they're not going to get the reward anyway. You've exceeded their effort threshold.
Now, trying to lift and carry something very large? Yeah, it's more effort than I'm comfortable with, so I'm not going to do it for some pat-on-the-back reward. If you offer me a larger reward, I might consider it. But let's say you offer me a reward of $100 to lift this heavy thing... but I know that I can get $60 for lifting a much lighter thing. Well, for minimal effort I can get $60, and maybe that's okay by me. I've met my "reward threshold," so there's no need to put in the extra effort.
When we over-praise, that's what we're doing. We're reaching the reward threshold before we get to a place where we can push that person's effort threshold. (This is also why we tend to pay people after the job is done, in a sense. They'll be less likely to do minimal work if they feel it could diminish their pay.) This happens a lot in schools.
Little Johnny has a problem hitting people. His parents won't do anything to get him to stop, citing they "just don't know what to do." In desperation, the school offers an incentive--every week Johnny doesn't hit anyone, he gets a candy bar. Prior to this, school was about learning and gaining skills, so that you can maybe succeed in life... but that's too much effort, and we've just distracted Johnny with a more immediate reward. So now, school is about "not hitting anyone." And one day, we stop the candy bars and he continues his "not hitting people," right?
Why? It's better for him to keep this reward structure in place by struggling just enough that you can't end it. You've permanently handicapped his motivation by over-praising. (The other thing we tend to do in schools is reward effort, instead of rewarding achievement. We should always try to praise effort, but we should only reward achievement.)
____
Now that I've gone too long on that, it's time to talk about the flip side. On the other extreme, our society bases too much on competition. We act as though it should be a universal motivator, appealing to the competitive spirit in all of us. Except not all of us have it, and those that do not to the same degree. Again, think back to school. Did you ever have spelling bees in class, maybe in 4th/5th grade? I did.
And everyone learned real quick who the handful of folks were that would be winners. Everyone else? They were just putting off the inevitable. As long as Kid A was just 1% better than Kid B, Kid A was going to win. After awhile, Kid B learns this and doesn't take much interest in the competition.
See, competition only motivates the top 10% of any given group. That's because competition produces one winner and many, many losers. Furthermore, not being "the winner" essentially invalidates all the effort and achievement that went into competing--you lost, whether you lost by one point or one-hundred.
What's the point of all this garbage? What does any of that have to do with the article or thread? It's a bit abstract, I know, but I feel that sometimes we confuse "Person not motivated by competition" with "Person who wants to be rewarded for nothing." These are two extremes, and (as usual) the truth lies somewhere in between.
Video games are going through a sort of "adolescence." We're swinging from one extreme (hardcore, competitive focus) to the other (gentle, rewarding effort). While I agree that the issue you're talking about is problematic, I would caution against over-compensating by swinging to the other extreme.
After all, one of the defining features of most extreme positions is that the think of themselves as "the middle."
Difficulty settings would solve all of those problems, yet too few developers seem to have the patience to add that. It really doesn't take too much, just make the AI damage more or something; seems to work for Minecraft.
Many indie games seem to keep the traditional difficulty, though, so there's that.
Many indie games seem to keep the traditional difficulty, though, so there's that.
Well I certainly think it's not good to pander to the public's obsession with maintaining self-esteem. Not only will they not even try difficult tasks at all, but those that do and fail will have their fragile self-worth shattered and will refuse to ever touch it again. So if their self-esteem is low, they don't try; and if it's high, they run through without trying, fail, and then give up.
This is not the kind of attitude we should be encouraging. Yes, the old games were hard, but when you punish bad behavior, lo and behold, the players stop doing that bad behavior. What a surprise!
Same thing with the school system. How about instead of adhering to this asinine "No child left behind" policy and mentality, why don't we just make it possible for the brats to fail. If you don't complete your work and pass your tests, you don't get to move on to the next grade! You know, what we were doing decades ago!
This is not the kind of attitude we should be encouraging. Yes, the old games were hard, but when you punish bad behavior, lo and behold, the players stop doing that bad behavior. What a surprise!
Same thing with the school system. How about instead of adhering to this asinine "No child left behind" policy and mentality, why don't we just make it possible for the brats to fail. If you don't complete your work and pass your tests, you don't get to move on to the next grade! You know, what we were doing decades ago!
I agree. People shouldn't be afraid of challenges. The easy road is not going to be the optimal one. The bigger the challenge, the better you feel about yourself when you finally beat it.
I played IWBTG, and it doesn't lower my self-esteem when I fail at it (and I do, a lot). It just makes me laugh, honestly, because the game is so ridiculous.
The new raid tier in WoW? Yeah if you thought Cataclysm was kicking your ass, Firelands is going to do so extra hard. And I'm okay with that, because I'll feel great when we finally down those bosses. Let no one say that they aren't challenging.
I played IWBTG, and it doesn't lower my self-esteem when I fail at it (and I do, a lot). It just makes me laugh, honestly, because the game is so ridiculous.
The new raid tier in WoW? Yeah if you thought Cataclysm was kicking your ass, Firelands is going to do so extra hard. And I'm okay with that, because I'll feel great when we finally down those bosses. Let no one say that they aren't challenging.
Kirby's Epic Yarn is an okay game, but I don't understand why it's so "good". It's nice for a little burst of fun when the wife feels like playing a game, but aside from that, for someone like myself who has been playing games for decades, it's really just boring.
Contrast that with the current poster child for "hard" games Demon's Souls. Yes, it's hard, but not in an insurmountable way. It just takes more patience, thought and resource management than most games, where you can just run at enemies and hack and slash until they are dead. Demon's Souls doesn't let you do that, so it's been branded as "hard".
I see room for both styles of gaming, but in the end Kirby does not offer a skill challenge. The only challenge it offers is whether or not you are willing to take the time to play through the whole game for the sake of it. Demon's Souls, on the other hand, offers a skill challenge that, apparently, a lot of players are unprepared to understand or deal with.
Contrast that with the current poster child for "hard" games Demon's Souls. Yes, it's hard, but not in an insurmountable way. It just takes more patience, thought and resource management than most games, where you can just run at enemies and hack and slash until they are dead. Demon's Souls doesn't let you do that, so it's been branded as "hard".
I see room for both styles of gaming, but in the end Kirby does not offer a skill challenge. The only challenge it offers is whether or not you are willing to take the time to play through the whole game for the sake of it. Demon's Souls, on the other hand, offers a skill challenge that, apparently, a lot of players are unprepared to understand or deal with.
I can see this trend in games and I am still seen as slightly crazy among my friends for beating Ninja Gaiden black on master ninja mode. I worked until the combos we a part of me and bosses patterns were well known. I was working on master ninja in all the challenge modes when my xbox killed itself... 
While I will not say all games need to be a challenge it is nice to find a game that is fun and kicks my ass. That way when I win it feels a hell of a lot better than winning an easy game. That and I get bored in easy games unless they can offer some other form of fun like Starwars Battlefront II.
One of these days I will go unlock all the difficulties and beat master ninja mode again. I may be slight hesitant since last time I unlocked master ninja mode my 360 killed itself.
While I will not say all games need to be a challenge it is nice to find a game that is fun and kicks my ass. That way when I win it feels a hell of a lot better than winning an easy game. That and I get bored in easy games unless they can offer some other form of fun like Starwars Battlefront II.
One of these days I will go unlock all the difficulties and beat master ninja mode again. I may be slight hesitant since last time I unlocked master ninja mode my 360 killed itself.
Reason I stopped laddering in Starcraft 2 was because the losses weren't displayed. Motivation to play for me was keeping wins ahead of losses. Once losses were removed after about twenty games I just stopped playing as it dawned on me what is the point if winning means nothing.Hammeroj said: