Are videogames deteriorating as a medium?
A good friend of mine posted on his livejournal concerning this issue.
There are several factors that amount to why gaming might feel different now than it did before back in the “good ol’ days.”
The gaming market has changed.
Let’s face it…as gaming became popular, publishers started catering to a newer generation of gamers, and since there’s more money involved, they’re afraid to take as many risks as they used to. This means less creativity, more graphics, more technology, more sequels. In other words, as an industry grows and cash begins to flow, people want “smart investments,” which shuns creativity in a medium that is meant to thrive on it. No longer is the videogame market free to “make mistakes,” even if those mistakes are what made the industry what it is today.
Even the gaming community has fallen into a comfortable, complacent position…just look at the droves of people who bitched about Killzone 2’s controls/gameplay when it was merely trying to set itself apart from just another camera-on-rollerskates style point-and-click shooter like Halo or Call of Duty 4. Not that those games don’t have any merits of their own, but who dictated that all FPS’s should be the same? Let the dutch developers at Guerilla Games create their own style of FPS for christ’s sake! Let the genre evolve!
How important is it to really cater to the masses?
We already know that videogames make bad movies (and vice versa), but videogames as an industry is finally being recognized as a serious competitor for the consumer’s money spent on entertainment. Now the industry is growing into something that appeals to the masses, just as movies are right now.
It’s true that movies can be enjoyed at different levels for people of all ages; all it takes is for them to sit through the entire movie. However, can this principle really apply to videogames?
What makes a game what it is?
It would be silly to directly compare movies and games simply because they are different forms of entertainment. This would be like comparing watching TV to acting in a play. They both have storylines, they both have a set beginning and end, yet one is passive in that you are merely absorbing through your eyes and ears, and the other is actively involving your entire body throughout the process. The reason why one can enjoy movies such as Spiderman just as any older or younger generation is because we all have eyes and ears, and unless we are blind and deaf, everyone can enjoy it. This is also precisely why it is silly to apply it to videogames since they require so much more than just sights and sounds (i.e., reaction time, hand-eye coordination, wits, logic, etc.).
The process (and unfortunately, the trend) of “casualizing” videogames to appeal to the masses is against what videogames are all about because it is trying to “melt down” all of those extra-sensory functions one needs to PLAY AND ENJOY videogames into one giant goop of just sights and sounds. This is the reason why “hardcore” gamers are lamenting the casualization of videogames in general, along with the advent of the Wii. It is as if publishers are sucking the interactivity, challenge, and essentially, the FUN of the game to make the game more about “watching and absorbing” rather than “actively participating,” all in the name of involving more people.
The latest relevant example of this would be the Prince of Persia game. While I applaud the artistic direction and the fact that they dared to eliminate the game-over screen with a seamless magical transition to your previous platform spot, but they really have created exactly what the casual crowd wants: a game that basically plays itself, with minimal effort. It has become pretty sights and sounds, and a mere shell of a game. In other words, it has reached the ultimate middle ground between movies and videogames; just barely enough button prompts to keep the “movie” going. This is why this game has lost its soul.
This brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum: the hardcore crowd.
How hardcore IS hardcore?
In order to determine this, we must first differentiate and dissect what makes a game challenging in the first place.
First and foremost, a hardcore/challenging game must be fair. There must not be any camera issues, controls should be tight, and there must be a way, at LEAST by trial and error, that there is a “correct” way to play the game. Basically, the tools for playing the game should be there from the get-go to aid the player, and every death/punishment the game deals to the player must be entirely due to the player’s faults or mistakes. Some examples of this would be:
-Final Fantasy Dissidia
The game really confused me at first, but the story/tutorial mode really helped me understand the system and timings of when to block, when to dodge, and when to counter. Since then, every defeat I suffered was due to my being impatient or just plain careless.
-God Hand
Once again, the tools are all there. You have control of the camera, you have your restricted movements, you even get to choose what skills you want to utilize in your combos… there’s no secrets here, since they tell you what each move does (guard break, auto-dodge upper attacks, uppercuts/floats enemy, etc.). It’s all in your hands, and this is what makes God Hand such an incredibly deep and satisfying game.
On the opposite side of this spectrum, we have the “cheap” games, ones that cheat and lie and excuse their faulty and broken gameplay by falsely advertising that their game is “tough.” Two examples of these are:
-Ninja Gaiden
I don’t care if you wear sunglasses or you’re owed billions of yen for sweet sweet digital booty, Mr. Itagaki; your camera is broken, and so are the bosses in your game. I have always felt frustrated with how people could label Ninja Gaiden as “THE definitive hardcore difficult game of all time” when it’s completely riddled with camera problems and gameplay that simply does not make any sense. Being attacked from a deliberately impossibly difficult camera angle is like being covered in a blanket and severely beaten in shrouded darkness. To call this a “challenge” is just delusional, if not masochistic.
-Prinny: Can I really be the hero?
This game was actually very promising. A throwback to old-school 2d platforming mixed with cute graphics and fun combat? I’m there!…or so I thought. Prinny’s main sin was that it did not follow the rule of allowing the player to have tight controls over Prinny’s jumping, whereas 90% of the game is based on well-timed jumps…oops? Of course, avid fans may argue that this is part of the “challenge” once again, but the fact that even the ORIGINAL MARIO game allowed you to control the direction of your jumps to a certain extent, it just doesn’t make sense for Prinny not to be able to do what gamers have been doing for 20+ years. This resulted in a game that was stiff, not tight.
Conclusion
It’s not wrong for something to become mainstream, nor is it wrong to try to appeal to the masses to promote even more growth in an industry that may have grown stale otherwise. I do admit that casual games have their uses; they’re good for when one is short on time, or are looking for a quick fix. Casual games may also have a role in easing someone into the digital realm, instead of giving them a disheartening crash course into the gaming world. In terms of changes and “new innovations,” consoles like the Wii provided us with creative tools to express and entertain ourselves in ways unimaginable. However, this does not mean that casual games are the wave of the future. Instead, we should use this opportunity to advance gaming as a medium, not try to melt away at the core of what the gaming experience is all about in order to conform it into something it’s not meant to be (i.e., movies).
