Are FPS's dumbing down gamers?

[ethaninja]

Okay, I can not for the life of me imagine how one gets lost in the Normandy or in HL2's train yard. The Normandy is so damned tiny, and pretty much all of Half-Life 2 is designed in a way that makes you find the right path even when it gives you an illusion of multiple choices.

For Fallout 3 and Rivet City (oh, I remember wandering down the side of the river/coastline/whatever, exploring... good times), I don't see how anyone who actually observes his or her surroundings could miss the button to have that bridge extended. Not exactly the most puzzling part of the game.

I argue that most people play games to get away from strenuous thinking.

Exactly. Isn't that why they made Doom?

Doom? You mean that game with an overabundance of dark mazes, key hunting, and the occasional switch puzzle?

As much as the genre has evolved in the last 15 years, Doom really involved more thinking and justifiable difficulty than a lot of the current mainstream titles.

What is there to think about? Keep running until you find them and blast the shit out of anything in your way.

 

[Rock Beefchest]

I overthought Rivet City as well. Took awhile to find the button because before that point you never needed a button to enter any city.

 

[LordWalter]

This may be from my own personal experiences... but do you think that modern first person shooters are dumbing down gamers?
I have 3 examples of this.

The first example is my brother (aged 14) playing mass effect. i had told him to play it as he didnt know what game to play and i loved the game. i leave him to play it for 1 hour and come back to see him playing call of duty world at war. i ask him 'why did you stop?' he replied 'i got to the part where your on the spaceship and you have to tell the pilot to bring us into dock or something.. and i got lost on the ship so i gave up' this suprised me as the normandy isnt exactly the most complicated place to navigate through. He is an avid call of duty player and is usually used to being carried along on a leash through a level me thinks... and i was his age when i played mass effect, so it cant be the fact that its just a confusing game can it?

The second example is my friend who just started playing the orange box and i told him to start the half life games. (yes i know its an fps, but i like to think its the thinking mans fps)The next day I ask him how far he got.. and he said 'i dunno.. i got out of the train station place and was outside.. then i got lost.. so i gave up and went to play call of duty'. im not blaming call of duty at all.. its just a coincedence that thats what they went to play.

Third example (and my personal favourite) is when another of my friends was playing fallout 3... some time after he bought it and started it, he called me and asked 'ok.. ive been outside rivet city for 20 minutes and i havent a clue how to get onto the bleedin' thing!' This amused/disapointed to no end, so i hung up on him. Also a Call of Duty player.
Now im not sure if this is an actual problem, or my friends are just complete morons... but i couldnt help pin it on the obvious connection between them all.. first person shooters..
Discuss
PS: this is also my first ever thread post.. so.. eh.. be nice =P

lol Erm...I play COD quite a bit and I utterly adore Mass Effect, Half-Life, and Fallout 3. (actually to be fair I recently abandoned my sexy 1.9 KD on MW2 in order to play through Mass Effect and prepare my final save file for ME2 =D /endless excitement. One more level till 60, and then my final playthrough will be on Insanity. /TL;DR, you will not care. =p

Also, come now, that Rivet-City issue only took like 10 minutes of confusion before seeing the intercom. You exaggerate. Or maybe I just misremember it.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Well first of all, navigation is just a particular skill that not everyone has in equal measure. If it is easy to get lost in a game, then that's a flaw as is a lack of instant gratification (why would anyone want to wait to have fun?) Secondly a game will only have as much intelligence as you're willing to put into it. If you find a game mindless then you probably haven't thought about it enough.

And lastly, videogames have nothing to do with how intelligent you are. Your taste in entertainment doesn't make you smart, it's possible an award winning scientist only wants to sit down and play Wii Bowling.

 

[darkhawk918]

I agree that it is dumbing down gamers. For example, most FPS players won't be content with any game with any amount of stealth aspect or any game where you can't rush through and kill everything or enjoy any game that doesn't involve guns.

 

[AT God]

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savEcz__Dr4&feature=related

Spoiler link

 

[Jakkal]

At the OP, my brother and his friends are born and raised on CoD and Halo. On the other hand, I'm used to RTSs and MMOs and most of the games you'll find only on PCs. So to see how good consoles really made players, I decided to let my brother play Portal while I texted a friend. 15 minutes later I come back and there is no one in my chair. My bro had decided to go back into the basement and play CoD, citing "The game doesn't make any sense."

I'm sure many are going to disagree with this but most people who have played only console games and the likes are no more fit to play an RTS, RPG or other complex game that you'll find on PC than an Amish. (No offense intended to an Amish.)

 

[GonzoGamer]

Why is the topic in the present tense. Past tense: They HAVE dumbed down gamers.

Of course it's not the only factor. You also have to take into account, brand loyalty.
Loyal gamers get tunnelvision while getting screwed over. Gamers are the people who got Gamestop their Scrooge McDuck vault. Gamers are the ones who made a faulty piece of hardware a big success. Enough gamers buy movie licensed games that they still make them; that should've stopped after ET temporarily ruined the entire industry.

You guys are cool. But most gamers are about two brain cells short of a reptilian brain.
Try looking at other game forums that aren't on this site. Places like GiantBomb or Gamespot; you'll see what I mean.

 

[Fox242]

What? Seriously man? Your friends probably are naturally moronic. Video games, and FPS more specifically, do not dumb people down. That's just some stupid old wives tale. This is just like the idea that TV kills your brain. How did you arrive at this ridiculous conclusion?

 

[The AI]

FPSs aren't dumbing down gamers. Dumb gamers are dumbing down FPSs. They buy the same games year after year in a new box.

Call of Duty 1 and United Offensive were brilliant and intense and COD2 was excellent and even more intense. Things started looking down with COD3, which was a less compelling and dumbed down version of COD2. COD4 saved things a bit: it was mindblowingly amazing. However, WaW was exactly the same game as COD4 except in WWII, and MW2 was exactly the same thing as COD4 except... also... modern. It's mainly Activisions fault. They did the exact same thing with Guitar Hero.

But on the subject of gamers, it seems like nobody can appreciate a game anymore unless it holds your hand. Read some of the negative user reviews for Dragon Age on Gamespot. They're hilarious. A bunch of people are complaining about how the game isn't more like Fable or Oblivion and that it's too slow, hard, and complicated.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

Call of Duty doesn't make idiots, idiots play Call of Duty

And this, my friends, is the most valid point concerning CoD I have heard this year.

Your friends are used to a certain style of gameplay. They'll get used to exploration 'n' stuff, the more they play it.

 

[Nieroshai]

Every gamer heavily addicted to FPSs should be forced to play Mass Effect once. You know, to actually make them have to digest a plot. Then feed him a liberal dose of Fallout 3. The GOTY edition. Duct tape them to the chair and do not cut them loose until they beat Mass Effect and get all plot thread quests finished in Fallout 3. They will either reform, or commit suicide.



On a further note, shut up about the search bar, people! If he posted on an old thread you all would be complaining about him rezzing an old thread. The douchebaggery covers everything possibly doable on a forum, so stop it here!

 

[AfroShark70]

Call of Duty doesn't make idiots, idiots play Call of Duty


(To justify that previous statement; that's not to say that everybody who plays CoD is an idiot. But let's face it, it's got like 15,000,000,000,000 players. A lot of 'em are gonna be idiots)

Also, Half Life isn't *that* much of a thinking man's fps. You can play through it pretty mindlessly if you're so inclined.

Well, to be more precise at that I'm going to say, a little of column A, a little of column B. The story can be hard to follow especially since Valve didn't put in any cut scenes. (Thank God!)The only time I've ever gotten pissed off at Half Life is the parts were you have to going across a bridge or through pipes and they blow the shit up. Causing you to go to square one and restart from there.

 

[ElTigreSantiago]

Why does everyone on the Escapist react like this when people say that about Half Life? You can't honestly say to me that it's no smarter than games like Call of Duty and Halo where you just walk, point and shoot. Sure, the puzzles don't take a genius, but I have witnessed first-hand people who don't want to strain their brains and just go play Call of Duty.

Halo is a moron's game, low skill, low quality. CoD is alright, more intelligent one player than many others, but the multiplayer is just as brainless as (for example) hl2dm. In fact, hl2dm is a bit better because there are techniques you can use to improve your skill set beyond just aiming quicker. Half life is definitely better than those, but to call it 'the thinking man's shooter' would lodge it firmly up its own arse. That's why.

I am strictly talking about the good ol' single player Half Lifes. But whatever, you have a good point. There is no shooter for the thinking man if Half Life isn't, that's for sure.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

No.

 

[ElTigreSantiago]

Every gamer heavily addicted to FPSs should be forced to play Mass Effect once. You know, to actually make them have to digest a plot. Then feed him a liberal dose of Fallout 3. The GOTY edition. Duct tape them to the chair and do not cut them loose until they beat Mass Effect and get all plot thread quests finished in Fallout 3. They will either reform, or commit suicide.



On a further note, shut up about the search bar, people! If he posted on an old thread you all would be complaining about him rezzing an old thread. The douchebaggery covers everything possibly doable on a forum, so stop it here!

Excellent post, completely agree. Call of Duty and Halo are the disease, Mass Effect and Fallout 3 are the cure.

 

[majaman]

Yes your friends seem a little dense. Some fps games are fairly mindless and if that's all someone plays that's all they will know and therefor be completely incompetent at anything else.
I'm not saying fps' should require tons of thought but maybe a little less leash action and a little more strategy would be nice. Multiplayer fps' though cant really be changed that much sense they do have the option to do strategy modes like domination or capture the flag instead of the mindless run and gun.

In general though I just think most people are idiots...