Is Gaming Becoming Too Easy?
By dkpatriarch;
© 2008 David Hilton
My furious roar could be heard all the way to China. Well that’s what my wife sourly said, and as I looked at my slightly frightened children (who usually associate such anger with something they’ve done wrong …) I realised that this game was turning me into a monster. I couldn’t remember being this frustrated since the old days of gaming when missing a jump meant certain death (even if the camera angle was at fault), or miss-timing pressing a button meant going back an hour of the game to do it over again and again…..
Ironically the game I was playing, Ubisoft’s Beowulf, was about monsters; it was a typical movie-to-game conversion (in other words, utter rubbish). The part I was having trouble with, leading to my contorted red-faced outburst, was when I had to save virgins from trolls, while at the same time save my pathetically dumb Thanes from seductresses and cannibal-like natives….and not die yourself.
While saving virgins and fighting seductresses seems attractive, the problem was that this was made nearly impossible; if you didn’t do everything just right, you got nowhere fast. Virgins were tossed down holes screaming, your Thanes perished (later on they re-appear as miffed ghosts blaming YOU for their incompetence…), or you die a grisly death …. and start again.
When I did finally pass this part (due more to luck than anything else) was I triumphant? Did I crow how great I was to have beaten the sodding game? No, I felt relieved and pissed off for having to waste over an hour on a game device designed to artificially extend gameplay.
Yet I hear often from ‘real hardcore’ gamers how today’s games have been dumbed down and do not pose a challenge like they used to. I remember the early years of gaming where the challenge was in repetition and memorisation. Like the Beowulf example above, they turned mini-me into an overly explosive volcano. The idea was that as a gamer you proved yourself worthy by passing bosses and difficult sections; look at games like the original Castlevania. My eyes would go red and watery trying to finish areas and interruption of any sort would end me.
I remember playing games on the Commodore 64, where if you died you’d have to wait something like 10 minutes for the game to load again. Time enough to calm down, perhaps, but when I think about the time I wasted on small sections of games, I wonder how I enjoyed it. David Braben, one of the creaters of the early game Elite, which was like an early pre-sandbox freeroming game and different to the hoards of linear games of the time, says in OAXM (Issue 22): “One of the things I found with games (back in the ’80s), was that if you got stuck, you were stuck, you couldn’t get any further. In Elite, you didn’t get that”.
However, in Issue 31 of 360 magazine, the anonymous “The Mouth” laments the way games are going today. He states: “Why should we, the people who like games to have some level of depth, be paying such a high price for people who can’t be arsed to read an instruction manual or check a training mode? How about the concept that games are not for everybody? How about the idea that games do not need to be dumbed down. You want to appeal to the non-gamer? Make a Wii game.” Later he says about Assassin’s Creed: “It’s not a videogame so much as it’s video entertainment”.
While I understand what “The Mouth” is saying, I do not have such a problem with where video gaming is going. Yes video games are including more save points and are generally easier than they used to be, but this in my opinion is a good thing for several reasons, besides the obvious financial gain there is for game-makers if games appeal to more people.
First, the idea of difficulty creating longevity is turned on its head and game producers have to come up with more varied gameplay, story, and environments to extend the game. Like Braben, I do not think that gamers should get stuck. They should be challenged, sure, and difficulty levels help enable both casual and hardcore gamers play at different levels, but in the end games should be for entertainment and enjoyment and not overly frustrating.
A lot of gamers of the past resorted to codes and these days resort to GameFaq’s to get them past areas. Maybe they should have tried harder, or thought more, but in the end these gamers choose to ‘cheat’ and this is because it isn’t fun being stuck. I can understand how many gamers find giving up on a challenge, where passing the challenge provides the greatest satisfaction, abhorrent.
Like achieving something difficult in sport, they feel among the elite because they can do something many cannot. But really does that given them more respect? “Hi, I’m a fireman, I save people”, “Hi, I do overseas aid”, and then “Hi, I completed Halo 3 on Legendary without ever dying”. Oh wow.
Second, today’s gamers are increasingly casual gamers who are time poor and game rich. Unlike the past where only a few games were available at a time, we have a growing market where (espcially around Christmas) there are many games. If a gamer gets stuck, they will move on to another game and probably tell their friends that the game they got stuck on was too hard or sucked.
In the past a typical gamer tended to be young and have a lot of free time, but today’s gamer is older and has social, work, and family responsibilities as well as many other entertainment mediums competing for his/her attention. They simply do not have the time to stuff around with too much challenge.
They may be like me, often interrupted by other needs and cannot necessarily keep going until the next save point happens to appear or want to redo something they spent an hour on later when they get back to it. Also it seems boredom sets in a lot sooner these days and patience is not a virtue if you can spend your time doing something else that captures your interest more. How many gamers finish all their games? How many gamers would punish and push themselves against their better judgement to finish even the poorest of games (as I did with Beowulf I’m proud to say …. can I have some respect now?).
Third, I do not agree with “The Mouth”‘s assertion that “games just are not for everbody”. Hardcore gamers cannot act like gaming is only their domain. Gaming is an entertainment medium like any other and now it is becoming more mainstream than ever before.
That is a good thing. No longer are we as gamers considered “geeks” as more and more types of people play games. The success of the Wii with the casual market shows that non-gamers will play games if they can without having to have a degree in game-playing or have a long history of game training from youth. Games like CSI: Hard Evidence may be poo-pooed by gamers, but if my wife, who loves the show, and others find that it is fun to play and spend time on, then gaming has won another convert.
If Stranglehold and Assassin’s Creed make previous button pressing function obsolete with more intuitive automatic game actions, then more people are going to be able to enjoy this simplicity. Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux has apparently said that in Fable 2 the 360′s X button is going to be for most actions like parry, block, and attack.
Complex controls aren’t what the game is about. He wants it to be accessibility combined with depth so that anyone can play. And this is where gaming is heading, much to the horror of traditionalist gamers. I don’t mind games becoming a mixture of traditional gaming and a more interactive video entertainment….as long as it is fun to play and keeps me playing. Gaming becoming mainstream may mean more simplification, but it also means more investment in games.
In the end it is about balance. Multiple difficulty levels allow gamers to play at their level and even perhaps improve. Having a lot of save points means not so much repetition if you die or are interrupted by real life demands.
Having different ways of doing a task or playing a game as with a game like Bioshock means that hardcore gamers can choose the challenging and rewarding route, while casual gamers can do something less taxing. And having more game choice means you can choose the game that best fits you, be you casual or hardcore, and enjoy yourself instead of becoming a monster.
© 2008 David Hilton
Filed under: Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Beowulf, Bioshock, CSI, difficulty, Gaming Events, too easy, Xbox 360 News1
This is from Destructoid’s review of Demon’s Souls (on PS3):
“You’re supposed to get up, dust yourself off, learn why you died there, and then come back in a soul form, doing your best not to die there again. In this soul form, you’ll have half the hit points you did as a living person, making it even easier to die again. Can the dead die again? Not really. But you can fail as many times as necessary, forcing you to start over from the level’s start each time. I did this many, many times, losing everything I gained for sometimes an hour or more, starting over from the very beginning each time. Frustrating is an understatement”
This game has a high Metacritic score because there are still those that love the challenge..some calling it the “anti-casual” game. But still they could have had different difficulty levels and let gamers CHOOSE if they should be tormented or not. Some will buy the game and never be able to finish it: the reviewer above hadn’t finished it by deadline. That sucks for them and anyone else who doesn’t have huge blocks of time to memorise what needs to be done to pass each section.
http://www.destructoid.com/non-review-why-i-couldn-t-finish-demon-s-souls-151008.phtml
Well said, Allegionary.
If a game gets too hard I simply don’t play it for awhile. I don’t have the time anymore to just try over and over and over and play to have fun, not to challenge myself. I have enough challenge in real life…I want to escape.
I do use GameFaqs if I get stuck for awhile too, and am not ashamed of it. I want to experience a game not gloat about beating it.
That picture of elite took me back to the old days, thank you!.
@ JustChris, nice to see you here and passing comments mate, the more the merrier . . . please drop back and feel free to drop us a line via the “Help Us Improve link if you have any ideas that you feel could help the site . . .
Personally I like a game that gives you multiple ways of getting through a section, and that rewards you for doing so at the same time. And for using puzzles especially multiple ones, to get through it as well . . . Timeshift is something similar . . where there’s usually different ways to get through one area, but unfortunately, there are bottlenecks where only one way will work.
IE: the balancing water pipe where you have to use your fast-forward or backwards abilities. It can sometimes get very frustrating, but for me, that’s also part of the experience of playing a game. If it was too easy, and way too straight forward, then there’d be no real challenge in it for me.
@ David – Yet another greatarticle mate that is being well received by the readers on other sites . . . you have a great way with words and it’s a refreshing sight to see the views of the site rise. The 2 Days 2 Vegas has just topped you in the top 5 posts viewed, but on average, your’s is coming in at number 1.
We had a 1000 views the other day, and 42% of those were for your article. Congrats . . . . . I think I should be rewarding the writers in here with something every now and then, I’ll put my thinking cap on around that.
Gears of War is also a good example because you can do both split screen and online co-op., which can help. However doing that final boss battle single player is HARD! Your computer-controlled friend is useless!
Games such as the Beowulf one which you described sound like it’s artificially limiting the way you approach a goal. With Half-Life 2 you had to get past an invisible wall at some point in the game, like blowing up a storage bin and going over a ramp to get over the wall.
This wasn’t the only logical solution but it was the only acceptable solution. If a game is to be designed like this, make it clear and don’t make the game more challenging this way.
You make a good point about giving the player multiple difficulties to select. Might I add, this could even help the game’s sales because it is accessible to more people. In Gears of War it is even more flexible because you can start a campaign in Casual and if you so choose, continue where you left off next time in Hardcore. Every time you go to the campaign screen, you can choose the difficulty of the next chapter.
Great read dkpatriarch, I couldn’t agree more.
There are more choices in games these days, and a large leap between easy and hardcore settings. This approach attracts a broader spectrum of gamers. I usualy have my difficulty setting about half way, (rarely ever easy ;p) and replay the (better) games on the more difficult settings.
With the Halo series I’ve always played them through on heroic first and then legendary.
I’ve tossed aside many games that had almost impossible boss levels to get through, a waste of my time and money.
I’ve wasted countless hours stuck in the loop “of try and try again”. It’s not a clever way to make a short game longer and I think the developers are realising this now. They have so much more options now, and I’m loving it.
Although … there’ve been some weird, triumphant dances in my household after getting through particularly frustrating levels.
I recall the time I managed to defeat the evil Nazi in Indiana Jones Temple of Doom, who was hell bent on trying to mow me down in his impressively sized rock driller, while I whipped, jumped, ran, jumped, side stepped, shot my way to the end … YES YES YES … I screamed, I wonder what the neighbours thought!
Alot of games these days are shorter yes, but I feel they seem to pack more into a shorter time frame. Games (or most games) have gotten easier, It is up to the developers to add different tiers of difficulty to keep us interested but challenged at the same time.
Good discussion what is the hardest game you have ever played?
Mine would have to be Faxanadu on the Nes, Sidescrolling RPG
Yes but were those older games that lasted 20 hours using techniques like repetition or difficult level design or perhaps constant spawning enemies or long boss fights? I consider those to be artificial means of extending a game if overly done. I agree games are shorter these days, but I don’t mind if they are value for money in the ‘interesting experience’ and ‘fun’ category. Remember in Halo the infamous repetition of the library design? Yawnage.
Patiarch, the older games were the same monsters fighting you over and over, i agree. The thing is, the scenario of teh fight always changes; there are more of them, they are supported by mini-bosses/stronger variations/better types of monster, there is different plaeces to fight, there is more of them. That is what makes it fun. Fighting the same monster over and over is boring, in the same enviroment. I like the slight variation which keeps me on my toes in the fights. At times, there are parts of the game which makes it annoying to try and get through, but keep pushing and eventually luck falls in your favour. For exanple, a game i am now playing, too human. It is actually 5 monsters you fight over and over, 2 of them mini-bosses (trolls and archer-arachnids) and the other three are just classics (goblins, elves and undead). I always am kept on my toes for every fight in the game, and i keep going back raring for more. this kinda disproves, in my opinion, your first and final comment.
Your second comment about boss fights is completely untrue, unless you count a boss esaping a death, and the campaign continues, or that they flee a lot and you have to chase them. That, I think , is true, they always seem to flee. That is a perfectly fine way of continuing a game, in my opinion, as it keeps open a lot of paths for variation.
Finally, the artifical use for extending a game – is completely true. There is too many under-built-up bosses in games. I could name a massive list, but for the purpose, 300 PSP has i think 8 bosses that are not in the film. Raimbow 6 Vegas has too many places and hidey-holes not to have a map or a radar, or even an arrow thingy to point the way for where to go. Also, games have gotten easier, but with more difficulty settings, which personally, i find this a half-artificial setting. Unless the game lasts me at least a full 24 hours, it is not worth having a difficulty tier, unless it is a FPS like CoD. The games I now play are the classics that are ridiculously addictive such as FIFA, CoD and Star wars battlefront, or anything from the FF series, such as crisis core, or FF11. Very long, good games, and the difficulty can be tuned to anything you want, as you can rush the storyline and just do that, or practice and train up to the point that you feel comfortable.
Finally, the hardest game i ever played is, don’t laugh, Sonic Heroes for PS2, i completed the easy storyline, last 2 levels on medium and hard, and on chaotic, i am something like 4 levels in out of 20.
Easiest is’nt neccessarily worst, and it proves this fact with Medal of Honour: Heroes for PSP, which i have now completed all the storylines, minus the loading and cutscenes in 34 minutes, on heroic (or legendary, i forget which is hardest, as i just go online).
Thanks for commenting. There’s no question that some gamers love the challenge and others play for the fun and gaming experience. I’m the sort who plays for fun and doesn’t want to be stuck in a boss fight trying to work out the pattern so I can go ahead.
Neither do I want to play against constantly spawning enemies (I’m looking at Eat Lead here for example).
To me length of a game being bad or good really depends on the game: if it feels like there is change and progression then I’m happy for longer but if the game gives me tons of fun in a shorter time I’m fine too.
Look at a game like MGS4: you can do so many different ways of playing it (stealth, using your invisible robot or not, or even like a shooter) and there are different environments and it keeps moving (despite some really way-too-long cinematic but overly indulgent and soapy cut scenes).
Then on the other hand you have Terminator Salvation which is both extremely short AND repetitive….both in gameplay and environment.
I somewhat agree, but i think my main issue with newer games is how they are now a lot shorter than older games, I remember it used to be standard for a game to last 12 – 20 hours, now its more like 6.
And if you try hard you can beat games like Halo in 1.5 hours. Well i guess that does make games more easy too!