Are games getting dumber?

[Geffs]

anyone who works in the game industry will know that these recent games just take the piss to make
I'm studying Games Dev in college and let me tell you the maths that goes into physics weapon spawns balancing weapons etc. takes the biscuit.
Games just take so much more time to make these days so many more hours and man power.
While having a couple of pixels jumping around a screen isn't that hard to make
Making a game function in a fully 3D rendered world while keeping the physics in check and making sure no errors occur is takes much more time.
Basically the bottom line is that because of the production time put into games companies cannot afford to take a risk with a controversial game. that might hurt there sales and potentially bankrupt there business it's just not a risk they can take in the quickest expanding form of media in the world.
I mean only the super rich studios like EA and MSGS can really take massive risks Mirrors Edge,Fable etc. we just need to wait still the game industry stops expanding and dev's can take risks without causing major damage to their company

Yes I know my grammar is atrocious

 

[Deschamps]

I have said it many times, but Braid really changed my perspective on gaming. It was what I needed to make me look at the games I was playing and really see that stuff like CoD4 was wasting my time. I only play intelligent games now.

Admittedly, this has been difficult, since intelligent games are hard to come by. I was about to buy Psychonauts, but my 360 is being repaired at the moment. And in another thread someone told me about Indigo Prophesy. I just downloaded the demo, but my PC broke. What's going on here?

What I've realized is that if you want to play a good game you have to look for it. You can't walk into a high school (how I hate high school!) and ask people what they're playing, because they're all playing Gears 2. Same goes for music and movies. The mainstream ones usually aren't as good as the gems that nobody's heard of.

 

[Raven28256]

First and foremost, I want to point out the fact that you have a very, VERY limited list to "prove" that games are getting dumber. You picked a war game, a glorified playable ad for the latest in graphics cards, what can best be described as a first person version of GTA in Africa, and a game designed to provide a unique team-based multiplayer experience, while ignoring everything else. This is like me pointing at Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Date Movie, then proclaiming that all movies are retarded junk catering only to immature fratboys who think that gay jokes are the highest point of comedic gold.

The fact of the matter is that yes, gaming does have a lot of mindless fun games that have terrible dialog and cliche-ridden plots, however, it is like this with ALL media. Lets face it: Most developers want to cater to the lowest common denominator. Unless you haven't noticed, gaming has moved past the point where one guy can make a game by himself in a few months. Games now require years of development, a team of hundreds individuals, and millions of dollars. Developers HAVE to make games as accessible as possible to turn a profit.

Sadly, intelligent, thought-provoking, well written, story driven games don't sell nearly as much as we would like them to. Oh sure, sometimes something like BioShock strikes up good sales figures, but then you stop to look at something: Call of Duty 4 sold some 4+ million copies worldwide. Shallow action titles sell far better than more "intelligent" games. Developers are merely following the trend.

This isn't to say that this is the complete norm either. There are still some more thought-provoking and intelligent games out there, it is just that they are fewer and further in between because most people rather stick with a tried and true formula than try something new and end up in the hole. Again, games are so expensive than the failure of a single game by a smaller company can be a disaster.

It isn't that games are getting dumber, it is that developers are catering to what is popular so they can maximize profits.

(I hope that made sense in some way...My head hurts right now)

 

[hazuka3377]

Yes, games have gotten dumber. Ever wonder why newer exit signs are pictograms?
Because there is a lot more money to be made pandering to the bottom two thirds of the bell curve.
Think about it, what do smart people do for fun? when the execs ask they probaly think sudoku or opera, not running around trying to solve puzzles!

 

[Halo Fanboy]

I don't understand what you're describing as an intelligent game, is it just a game that makes you think or a game with a good story. If you consider it the former then frankly you are playing the wrong genre. Tactical shooters will never be as "tactical" as real RTS games. Portal, which is NOT a shooter, is possibly one of the most easy and accesible puzzle games I've ever played, which is one reason it did so well with the shooter crowd. Bioshock is a watered down RPG/adventure game and Half-life isn't the story-line masterpiece its often claimed to be.
I blame the loss of adventure, RTS and real puzzle games for percievedly dumbing down the industry.
On the bright side even "dumb" games like Gears of War, WoW and Brawl have people who understand the game intelectually, and games with more freedom can be both accesible and more complex.

 

[WhitemageofDOOM]

I'm not saying all old games are brilliant, I'm simply mentioning the fact that older games tended to have a stronger focus on story and design, rather than gameplay.

Old games tended to focus far more on game play than modern games, simply be necessity the graphical power wasn't sufficient to elicit sympathy from humans.

Your equating story with intelligent entertainment, and yet they have nothing in common. It's like calling chess or mtg dumb, when either of which is going to be far more intellectually stimulating than any story can possibly be, since story telling is by definition an emotional experience and not an intellectual one. While not opposed concepts as some might think they are very much different ones with very different natures.

 

[TerraMGP]

I'm not saying all old games are brilliant, I'm simply mentioning the fact that older games tended to have a stronger focus on story and design, rather than gameplay.

Old games tended to focus far more on game play than modern games, simply be necessity the graphical power wasn't sufficient to elicit sympathy from humans.

Your equating story with intelligent entertainment, and yet they have nothing in common. It's like calling chess or mtg dumb, when either of which is going to be far more intellectually stimulating than any story can possibly be, since story telling is by definition an emotional experience and not an intellectual one. While not opposed concepts as some might think they are very much different ones with very different natures.

The problem is that modern games dont' focus as much on the particulars of Story or mechanics as often anymore. They focus on graphics and on making a game that often is only hard enough to provide a token challenge. This is what is meant by games getting 'dumb'. An intellectually stimulating game does not NEED to have a good story thats true, but I think that its rare to have an excuse not to and yet many games today look at story as an afterthought. This is even more true with mechanics. Instead of borrowing verbatim from Tabletop games or writing systems that have similar rule complexity we have to 'balance' everything so people don't cry about it and say something is not fair, and then we dumb down all of the other mechanics and lessen their impact until we have, well, WoW.

Yes Older games focused on story and mechanics because they had to, but that is far more important than graphics in the end. Graphics are whats wrong with the industry because they give developers even more ability to make a bad game with pretty pictures and pass it off as good. Graphics do not make an intellectual game, just a nice looking one.

 

[hellthins]

I'm not saying all old games are brilliant, I'm simply mentioning the fact that older games tended to have a stronger focus on story and design, rather than gameplay.

Old games tended to focus far more on game play than modern games, simply be necessity the graphical power wasn't sufficient to elicit sympathy from humans.

Your equating story with intelligent entertainment, and yet they have nothing in common. It's like calling chess or mtg dumb, when either of which is going to be far more intellectually stimulating than any story can possibly be, since story telling is by definition an emotional experience and not an intellectual one. While not opposed concepts as some might think they are very much different ones with very different natures.

Actually, good story telling is both emotional and intelligent. All the classic stories are classic because they make us think, be it about the nature of humanity or what kind of a road we're heading down. Would you call Brave New World purely emotional? No. It was intelligent and thought provoking. The Crucible? No, it was a wonderful metaphor for McArthyism that put it in the right light. Animal Farm? Now that thing was rather abstract and needed some thinking to put it in the right framework.

The problem is that modern games dont' focus as much on the particulars of Story or mechanics as often anymore. They focus on graphics and on making a game that often is only hard enough to provide a token challenge. This is what is meant by games getting 'dumb'. An intellectually stimulating game does not NEED to have a good story thats true, but I think that its rare to have an excuse not to and yet many games today look at story as an afterthought. This is even more true with mechanics. Instead of borrowing verbatim from Tabletop games or writing systems that have similar rule complexity we have to 'balance' everything so people don't cry about it and say something is not fair, and then we dumb down all of the other mechanics and lessen their impact until we have, well, WoW.

Yes Older games focused on story and mechanics because they had to, but that is far more important than graphics in the end. Graphics are whats wrong with the industry because they give developers even more ability to make a bad game with pretty pictures and pass it off as good. Graphics do not make an intellectual game, just a nice looking one.

As for if old games focus on story more than new games, honestly no. New games usually at least have a throw away storyline through out, how many games do you remember that only had story in their manuals? And old games loved them some graphics just as much. Has everyone forgotten blast processing and the FULL MOTION VIDEOS WITH REAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND HOLLYWOOD EFFECTS?!

Finally, games are not getting smarter or dumber, they're just being games. Most entertainment panders to the lowest common denominator to make money, and that's fine. I loved Sonic, but it didn't make me think in the slightest.

EDIT: HA HA, MONSTER ENTERTAINMENT, FOR MONSTERS, BY MONSTERS

 

[EzraPound]

or is the gaming industry going in a steep intelligence decline

Perhaps you should use proper grammar if you're going to complain about intellectual decline. Just a suggestion.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

In response to "if you want a great story, seriously, read a book"

I'm waiting for someone to do to video games what Orson Welles did to radio and film. It's not like developers can't make a good game, with brilliant story along with everything else we want - it's that, storywise, our expectations are low. We haven't been dazzled with anything that really raises the bar... yet. That's why companies can get away with games that make you want to skip every cut scene.

The BioShock is definitely a step in the right direction, so is Portal (along with Valve's other games), but these games - as good as they are - haven't raised our expectations.

The one thing I'll say: I appreciated BioShock's twist. It was clever, well implemented, and made me feel exactly what my character should have felt - it's not an original plot device, but it felt right.

 

[TerraMGP]

I'm not saying all old games are brilliant, I'm simply mentioning the fact that older games tended to have a stronger focus on story and design, rather than gameplay.

Old games tended to focus far more on game play than modern games, simply be necessity the graphical power wasn't sufficient to elicit sympathy from humans.

Your equating story with intelligent entertainment, and yet they have nothing in common. It's like calling chess or mtg dumb, when either of which is going to be far more intellectually stimulating than any story can possibly be, since story telling is by definition an emotional experience and not an intellectual one. While not opposed concepts as some might think they are very much different ones with very different natures.

Actually, good story telling is both emotional and intelligent. All the classic stories are classic because they make us think, be it about the nature of humanity or what kind of a road we're heading down. Would you call Brave New World purely emotional? No. It was intelligent and thought provoking. The Crucible? No, it was a wonderful metaphor for McArthyism that put it in the right light. Animal Farm? Now that thing was rather abstract and needed some thinking to put it in the right framework.

The problem is that modern games dont' focus as much on the particulars of Story or mechanics as often anymore. They focus on graphics and on making a game that often is only hard enough to provide a token challenge. This is what is meant by games getting 'dumb'. An intellectually stimulating game does not NEED to have a good story thats true, but I think that its rare to have an excuse not to and yet many games today look at story as an afterthought. This is even more true with mechanics. Instead of borrowing verbatim from Tabletop games or writing systems that have similar rule complexity we have to 'balance' everything so people don't cry about it and say something is not fair, and then we dumb down all of the other mechanics and lessen their impact until we have, well, WoW.

Yes Older games focused on story and mechanics because they had to, but that is far more important than graphics in the end. Graphics are whats wrong with the industry because they give developers even more ability to make a bad game with pretty pictures and pass it off as good. Graphics do not make an intellectual game, just a nice looking one.

As for if old games focus on story more than new games, honestly no. New games usually at least have a throw away storyline through out, how many games do you remember that only had story in their manuals? And old games loved them some graphics just as much. Has everyone forgotten blast processing and the FULL MOTION VIDEOS WITH REAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND HOLLYWOOD EFFECTS?!

Finally, games are not getting smarter or dumber, they're just being games. Most entertainment panders to the lowest common denominator to make money, and that's fine. I loved Sonic, but it didn't make me think in the slightest.

EDIT: HA HA, MONSTER ENTERTAINMENT, FOR MONSTERS, BY MONSTERS

Your missing out on a huge gap of game evolution between the NES and now. Your failing to look at all of the wonderful story driven games that came out with tough mechanics inspired by Tabletop games from before people obsessed over perfect balance and before the ESRB and other orginizations started to throw in their over/under obsessing. Yes there are some good story driven games still and many of them still have good mechanics but they are fewer and farther between because honestly you can make more with the bare minimum. I'm not saying that we have not had crap in every era of gaming bu rather that you can't look at the quality and ratio of good games from the Era of Westwood and Black Isle and such, and then look at games now, and tell me that the new markets demanding easy games that never stop the action has not influenced the market away from making more of those whitty, fun, intellectually stimulating book/games that were the reason many of us gamers purchased the games in the first place.

I'm not over-idealizing the past, I know that there has been some crap and that graphics have been used as a selling point before now but at this point its worse than it has been in a long while, and we are past the point where there is any excuse for it.

 

[hellthins]

Your missing out on a huge gap of game evolution between the NES and now. Your failing to look at all of the wonderful story driven games that came out with tough mechanics inspired by Tabletop games from before people obsessed over perfect balance and before the ESRB and other orginizations started to throw in their over/under obsessing. Yes there are some good story driven games still and many of them still have good mechanics but they are fewer and farther between because honestly you can make more with the bare minimum. I'm not saying that we have not had crap in every era of gaming bu rather that you can't look at the quality and ratio of good games from the Era of Westwood and Black Isle and such, and then look at games now, and tell me that the new markets demanding easy games that never stop the action has not influenced the market away from making more of those whitty, fun, intellectually stimulating book/games that were the reason many of us gamers purchased the games in the first place.

I'm not over-idealizing the past, I know that there has been some crap and that graphics have been used as a selling point before now but at this point its worse than it has been in a long while, and we are past the point where there is any excuse for it.

I assume you're referring to Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Red Alert, etc. etc. You're right, they had good stories. Neverwinter Nights also has a good story, and SC 2 is shaping up to promise a good story like the original SC is. Bloodlines had a good story, Oblivion had a serviceable story and its Shivering Isles expansion was much better. And while I may have not a big fan of GTA IV, its story was actually pretty good. The ending perhaps was a bit meh but everything else felt rather alive.

 

[TerraMGP]

Your missing out on a huge gap of game evolution between the NES and now. Your failing to look at all of the wonderful story driven games that came out with tough mechanics inspired by Tabletop games from before people obsessed over perfect balance and before the ESRB and other orginizations started to throw in their over/under obsessing. Yes there are some good story driven games still and many of them still have good mechanics but they are fewer and farther between because honestly you can make more with the bare minimum. I'm not saying that we have not had crap in every era of gaming bu rather that you can't look at the quality and ratio of good games from the Era of Westwood and Black Isle and such, and then look at games now, and tell me that the new markets demanding easy games that never stop the action has not influenced the market away from making more of those whitty, fun, intellectually stimulating book/games that were the reason many of us gamers purchased the games in the first place.

I'm not over-idealizing the past, I know that there has been some crap and that graphics have been used as a selling point before now but at this point its worse than it has been in a long while, and we are past the point where there is any excuse for it.

I assume you're referring to Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Red Alert, etc. etc. You're right, they had good stories. Neverwinter Nights also has a good story, and SC 2 is shaping up to promise a good story like the original SC is. Bloodlines had a good story, Oblivion had a serviceable story and its Shivering Isles expansion was much better. And while I may have not a big fan of GTA IV, its story was actually pretty good. The ending perhaps was a bit meh but everything else felt rather alive.

See I disagree, NWN didn't really do it for me story wise, it felt too flat. I also hated that they kept changing around so many of the mechanics for 'balance'. It was an OK attempt to do 3.5 D&D but honestly I think they could have done a bit better by including the actual rules and making class/race/ext editing easier for the masses so we could get user content as well as more accurate 3.5 content.

But I do recognize that while it may not be my kind of story and while I may have my knitpicks there are plenty of good games out there. I love Oblivion and Fallout 3 and alot of other games. What I am saying is that while there are still good games to be had the ratio is shrinking, and some of them seem to fall flat in places.

Also NWN does not have enough Elmisnter.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

My games are getting dumber. I tell them to get a job and go to game school, but development costs are too much, even with a scholarship award like "Game of the Year" or "Best game this generation."

 

[TerraMGP]

Exactly. Thats a key part of the problem. People want to see more put into the visual aspects of games and want the fine details which is fine but it costs alot more than making a really pathetic PoS that a mom will buy for their kid or a few fans of an anime series will buy to finish off their collection. Yes good games are still around but they are sadly less the norm each year. We can only hope that the next few coming years change that.

 

[hellthins]

See I disagree, NWN didn't really do it for me story wise, it felt too flat. I also hated that they kept changing around so many of the mechanics for 'balance'. It was an OK attempt to do 3.5 D&D but honestly I think they could have done a bit better by including the actual rules and making class/race/ext editing easier for the masses so we could get user content as well as more accurate 3.5 content.

But I do recognize that while it may not be my kind of story and while I may have my knitpicks there are plenty of good games out there. I love Oblivion and Fallout 3 and alot of other games. What I am saying is that while there are still good games to be had the ratio is shrinking, and some of them seem to fall flat in places.

Also NWN does not have enough Elmisnter.

Freaking Mary Sue character. He just wishes he could be Eldrad. As for the ratio, I feel it hasn't really changed because, sure, there's a ton of advertised games that suck, there was a whole deluge of terrible games. Especially when people realized they could put movies onto CDs. Oh the bad games that came from that realization.

I think the biggest issue is that advertising brings a lot of these bad games to light. Back in the day, advertising was mostly limited to gaming magazines. Yeah, sometimes TV ads but no where near the amount of time and effort that there is today.

 

[TerraMGP]

This is ture that back when we had to route though EGM and Nintendo power and such to learn about games ads seemed less relevant but even considering that I think the ratio is off. You pointed out why I feel it is though, because people keep realizing they can get away with more crap to sell more games. Its nothing drastic but it is a trend that the number of good games is shrinking even if its at a small pace.

 

[Sewblon]

The Civilization and Rise of Nations series are still going and consoles have Tactical RPGs like Disgaea. All of the games you listed are first person shooters, which only require thought if Warren Spector Designed them.

 

[Comic Sans]

The OP is inherently flawed, since he is giving us very slanted examples to prove his point.The FPS genre is typically not what one would turn to for an intelligent story. That's not to say they don't exist. Bioshock, Half-Life, and Deus Ex all showed what can be done with FPS presentation. However, typically the FPS is about action, and that's what they deliver. It's like watching 300 and complaining that they didn't spend enough time developing the soldiers into fleshed out characters. It's not the game's purpose. It's the equivalent of a popcorn action flick.

To say that story in games is regressing is absolutely ridiculous. With the advances in technology, presentation of story is only getting better. The complex plot of Xenosaga and it's many allusions to philosophy the religion held me through the sometimes tedious cutscenes. The ending of MGS3 was one of the most emotional things I've witnessed, making even my sister who never played the game almost cry. While not necessarily an amazing plot, some of the ethical choices in Mass Effect and how they played out were interesting. I'm sure many people here could pull out other examples, but the fact of the matter is that there are many such games out there that you are simply ignoring to make a flawed point. Again, I refer to my movie analogy. You are watching popcorn movies like 300 and complaining that movies have no plot while ignoring There Will Be Blood.

That is just intelligence in story elements. Games don't need story to be intelligent. Even run and gun shooters require brains to excel at, particularly in multiplayer. Take Left 4 Dead. Sure, going through the co-op can be fairly mindless. Versus, however, requires team work, tactics, and map knowledge, particularly as Infected. You must be able to judge the status of the survivors, their positions, the NPC Horde status, the environment, and your allies' positions in a matter of seconds, and then act on it in the proper manner.It's how you can tell the good players from your average pub player. Pokemon seems simplistic, but try getting into the metagame and you begin to see how much really goes into team-building, tactics, prediction, and game knowledge.

So yes, there are many "stupid" games by your standards. However, you are using a microscope when you need to be looking at the bigger picture. Try expanding your view and you'll see how much there is.

 

[WhitemageofDOOM]

be it about the nature of humanity or what kind of a road we're heading down.

The nature of humanity is a question for psychologists not artists. More often than not artists have gotten it wrong, true this is because we didn't know much about human nature at the time but then all the more reason we shouldn't be filling our stories with musings on it, The ignorant should not speak with authority.

The problem is that modern games dont' focus as much on the particulars of Story or mechanics as often anymore.

True.

Instead of borrowing verbatim from Tabletop games or writing systems that have similar rule complexity

Complexity is not a virtue, but a flaw.
Depth is a virtue, they are not the same.

we have to 'balance' everything so people don't cry about it and say something is not fair.

Chess, MtG, Poker. Two of those are balanced, one of those strives to be balanced. Balance creates depth, without balance one creates meaningless choices and newbie traps, both of which are bad game design.