What does hurt gamers most? Well, lately I think it’s other gamers. To be more specific hardcore and real casual gamers are getting more or less screwed by the advent of, what I like to call, Sunday gamers. Let me explain all the gamer statuses to be clearer. This is all just something I made up, so feel free to correct me.
A hardcore gamer is someone that loves games, games that are his passion and he’s willing to sell some less important organs to buy them. A hardcore gamer knows what’s going on in the business and is interested in the nuances of gaming (technical terminology, gaming soundtracks, and knows why Chris Kramer is a minuscule twit). A Hardcore gamer usually wants to “bleed” his games from the content – get the unlockables, see the UFO ending in Silent Hill, enjoy the multiplayer and doesn’t stop changing his surround speakers position until he can hear the bird chirp in Oblivion from the 72 degree angle. A hardcore gamer doesn’t give a shit when someone makes fun of him for what he is, and even if he does, he will defend his passion with reasonable arguments (or bash the bastard over the head with a shovel).
These gamers are OK.
A casual gamer is a gaming enthusiast. He finishes most of his games, but rarely does more. Games are not his most important hobby, but he does, if only occasionally, read gaming news and reviews. He doesn’t care what parallax mapping is as long as it looks good.
He doesn’t try to get a new RGB cable for his Gamecube just because his friend told him the color definition on the one he’s using is slightly off. A casual gamer might feel embarrassed if cornered by an orthodox, catholic nun who claims games are the digital droppings of Satan.
He may not be l33t, but he doesn’t care (since he thinks he probably just been offended – which he was if you ask me).
These gamers are OK.
A Sunday gamer is someone who plays games on rare occasions. He doesn’t know what’s going on in the gaming world and doesn’t question Fox newscasters when they say Mass Effect is a porn game. It’s a kind of gamer that bought Wii for Christmas and only plays Wii Sports on it and believes the graphics are amazing. It’s the kind of gamer that plays simple flash games in between his favorite soap operas and when kicked in the head claims that it didn’t hurt and is telling the truth.
There gamers are so not OK.
On to the point. Gamers are getting stupid! I don’t mean personally, but as a community. The inflow of rookies and a more apparent presence of Sunday gamers hamper game development and harm the overall genre diversity. How, you ask?
Consider this. Video game business is a multi-billion dollar industry. Game costs are high and development long. How do you minimize all the risks involved? You make your game accessible to as many people as possible. And when making something for a large group you need to make is as dumb as the dumbest member of that group, and let’s be honest, people are generally not very bright. If you were wondering why half of the games made right now are first person shooters here’s your answer. No offense intended to any of the games I’m about to mention, but you don’t really need a lot of logical thinking in Gears of War, Halo or Resistance – even a goat could finish them. I don’t mind FPSes, but for God’s sake, why am I forced to play them exclusively. What’s more, the number of adventure games released drops every year and the action-adventure genre becomes pretty much action-is-all-you-get-bitch. Take Silent Hill 4 and Resident Evil 4 (now, I know that EXramp disagrees with me on that) – there are no real puzzles in those games anymore (no, finding two pieces of and emblem and inserting them into a recess in a wall is not a puzzle, it’s a gameplay extender). Both of those games are good, yes, but their previous iterations were much more complex. The classical adventure games are just zombies now and I’m pretty sure that in the upcoming years we won’t see titles that could reanimate the genre. Grim Fandango, Broken Sword, The Longest Journey – will we see games like that? Doubtful. We probably gonna get another Turok sooner (why God, why!).
Same thing happens to strategy games. They are more focused on fast reaction than tactical thinking. Same with RPGs – they need to have real-time combat otherwise they just don’t sell (cought, Fallout 3, cough). That’s why I think Lost Odyssey won’t sell well – the traditional turn-based combat will not appeal to “action-oriented” 360 owners, which is very unfortunate (not to mention large quantities of text that this game has).
Gamers are so spoiled by this tendency to make everything one-button-push-one-kill. I dread to read some forums these days because some posts make me want to eat a game-pad choking myself to death in the process. Examples?
Someone claims that Final Fantasy VII is a bad game because of the combat system, and if Square would ever to make a remake they should make that combat real-time. (Tell that to your therapist kid, I’m sure he’ll love it)
Someone else thinks that GTA4 would work better with a first person view. (Really?)
What’s more, the level of intelligence is seems to be rapidly dropping, especially when it comes to teenagers. Before you start to flame I should warn you, I know… I teach some of those bastards at school (part of my profession practices). You can’t take seriously a person who claims that eight lines is a “wall of text” and he can’t be bothered to read through it. He obviously didn’t hear about books.
All those people seem to be playing games now and developers, if they want it or not (they want it) have to make games that those half-witted morons can comprehend.
Some even get lost in miansreaming games making either a game that nobody can play (Viva Piñata – for the love of God, Rare, do you really think children can handle that game?) or a game that nobody should play, but every one apparently does (NFS Pro Street, the weakest of all NFS games with “family” control scheme where you don’t have to break, since the AI does it for you – make the drivers wear track suits, gold chains and compose the soundtrack entirely of rap music next time and choke on the money you make on it.).
You know how in the 90’s gamers were considered to be dimwits with no lives and ability to masturbate with a soldering gun? Well, then that opinion was unjustified. Now when gamers are considered relatively normal when they are not murdering anyone or Jack Thomson is on vacation our rank will actually get filled with dimwits who are not really gamers and we get the same thing that happened to music and movies. When watching Saw or listening to Britney Spears kids loose their brain cells so rapidly that you could be filling their skulls with pudding from a syringe and they wouldn’t know anything changed.
Wait, it gets worse. Imagine a developer releases a shooter that becomes fairly popular. Other developers think – “Let’s just drop all the ambitious projects we have and make a shooter, it’s easy money”. Now gamers have a choice to either buy that next shooter or stop playing altogether because nothing else comes out. Well, maybe Guitar Hero does. The developers say – “Since shooters are so popular let’s make more of them” and Carmack says – “I’ll make an engine that everyone will use and I’ll buy myself a new Ferrari, or six”. The circle is complete. Yes, it your fault Bungie!
I doubt that anything can be done with that, short of boycotting mind-degrading games, but that won’t happen.
Remember, an unused organ will atrophy – that goes for your brain as well.
By the way, IGN has a pretty good article about the state of adventure games that you can read here.
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