Are today's gamers, on average, dumber?

[HerbertTheHamster]

consoles print money. That is all.

 

[Mouse One]

Okay, having grown up with Doom, I'll second the earlier posters who point out that there were plenty of "stupid" games out there back in the "Good Old Days". But I will take exception to the word "stupid". C'mon, they were (and FPS games remain) fun. Nothing wrong with fun. And I seriously don't remember many equivalents to Portal (for example) back in the day.

But I will say that leaving aside the usual jabs at FPS games, OP does have sort of a point. There are more action based games then there were back in the early 90s. Why? Because they can make better action games now. Graphics and physics engines have improved dramatically, not to mention the improvements on the internet that allow for better multiplayer shoot 'em up experiences. Myst's popularity (to go waaaay back) was due to its existance in a world in which the only way you could do beautiful landscapes was to present them statically. It couldn't have had raging gun battles (heh), its gameplay pretty much had to be puzzle based for it to work.

 

[nothingspringstomind]

I find myself sorely missing the space shooter/tactis genre on console.
Never having enough money to get the pc required to play the pc only space games means most of my fix has been down to games like Colony Wars and Blast Radius. Christ, even Star Trek Invasion (Which was awesome and so should have just been a tv show.)

But nowadays, there's not a single one on consoles except for the odd psn or xbl game.

I just want Freespace 2 or Freelancer 2 on either console Dammit!

 

[Dyme]

If you don't want to play dumb games, consider playing PC games instead of console games.

Oh, and many games "back in the old days" weren't harder, you were dumber.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The point is in the old days we had a wide diversity of game genres. Tactical games, sim games, tycoons and clever hybrids of all of the above. It's hard to argue games of that complexity aren't being produced any more. Back in 1999 JA2 was in every way an AAA title. You might try, but you won't find any titles like that in the current AAA lineup.

Ah yes, the "old days", when everything was better, there was worldwide peace and the cars ran on the power of friendship. Those were the days, weren't they?

Lol, ah the good old days.
Sooner or later the OP is going to realise that those genres still exist.

Fortunately Bobby Kotick didn't go back in time to kill the developers of those games and they very much exist today.

However do those genres exist as AAA titles or anywhere in the mainstream?

That, my misguided friend, is the topic at hand. The answer is, if you're still uncertain, anywhere from "mostly no" to "not anymore". This thread is about answering the question "Why not?"

Here's another question to answer.
Why does it matter if the Sim, tactical and "intelligent" games are mainstream?

Those games weren't mainstream back then either.
You know what was mainstream in the '90?
Mario
Zelda
Goldeneye
Half-life
Tomb Raider

Mainstream is based on popularity.
Looking at the number of gamers we can clearly see that they shot through the roof.
This added a whole new type of gamer. The ones that just want to sit down, play for a hour and do something else.
This doesn't make them less intelligent.
Gaming it self has turned from a niche hobby, like model train building or stamp collecting, into a full blown entertainment sector.

The focus of popular games is Pick up & Play style. Like it has been in the past.
This coming from the guy who just ended his 5th day of Hot Seat, 2 player, Marathon Mode Civilization V session. And we're still just at Musket-men.
But I do like to just pop in Saints Row 2 in my Xbox and blow shit up for 50 minutes.

You do realize that every game you listed was a console exclusive, with the exception of Tomb Raider, which was bigger on consoles, and Half Life, which while action oriented, wasn't particularly un-intelligent, as action games go? (Not only was Half Life one of the first FPSs to be mainly story driven, but it ran on a modified version of the Quake engine, which meant that movement in multiplayer was incredibly complicated, unlike nearly any game on the market today. It also had a large arsenal of weapons, all of which could be carried simultaneously, as opposed to modern games which only allow two guns at once. This makes Half Life a poor example of how older games were supposedly less complex than modern games.)

Getting back on topic, Sim City, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Civilization, Xcom, Baldur's Gate and so on were all hugely popular in their day. Doom was bigger, but then Doom was a shareware game, and a full third of it was available for free to anyone with an internet connection. I've seen a lot of people in this thread arguing that sims, strategy games, and number crunching RPGs have always been niche genres, but in the world of PC games, that's just not the case.

OT: I'd say that yes, the average gamer is less intelligent than they were 20 years ago, but the simpler games are a symptom of that, not the cause. As others have noted, gaming has gone from a niche hobby which was almost the exclusive domain of nerds, to something with a very broad, mass market appeal. We aren't dumber so much as more representative of the general population.

[sub]Incidentally, does anyone else find humor in the large number of people saying that gamers are no dumber than they used to be, while having some pretty glaring spelling mistakes in their posts? For Pete's sake, guys, if you make a typo in a post about intelligence, edit it and fix the typo. Otherwise, your argument is weakened significantly.[/sub]

 

[Laser Priest]

Nope. Gaming has always had it share of idiots. Developers have just discovered that appealing to the lowest common denominator increases sales.

Then again, we had Doom and Duke Nukem before and - if anything - those are much "dumber" than most shooters today.

 

[dyre]

Nice strawman, dude. People don't just play FPS games these days, you know. And back then, brainless Nintendo games were pretty damn popular, so it's not like gamers were any smarter at the time. Hell, nowadays you have that game EVE where people run corporations...

Also, how is Jagged Alliance 2 a more intelligent game than any modern tactical game?

 

[Dissolve]

The most recent game to absolutely blow my mind with its hair-pulling difficulty is SpaceChem. I was 12 when I played Sim City 3000, balancing my budget, controlling pollution, and keeping my populace happy. Some time later, I was 15 when I mastered Civilization III. Yet even today, I struggle with the logic required to solve some SpaceChem problems (I've avoided all guides and walkthroughs). Difficulty is there, you may just have to look for it.

 

[Treblaine]

Nope. Gaming has always had it share of idiots. Developers have just discovered that appealing to the lowest common denominator increases sales.

Then again, we had Doom and Duke Nukem before and - if anything - those are much "dumber" than most shooters today.

Except Duke Nukem Forever to spite having relatively better graphics (and poop throwing mechanics) actually has less features and abilities than the original Duke Nukem 3D

-less weapon variety
-simplistic 2 weapon inventory
-no jetpack (entire dimension of movement gone)
-no health packs nor any health management, it recharges automatically

So yeah, one of the dumbest shooters of the 1990's was made even dumber for the 2010's

An extreme example, I know, but I think Illustrative.

 

[veloper]

Getting back on topic, Sim City, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Civilization, Xcom, Baldur's Gate and so on were all hugely popular in their day. Doom was bigger, but then Doom was a shareware game, and a full third of it was available for free to anyone with an internet connection. I've seen a lot of people in this thread arguing that sims, strategy games, and number crunching RPGs have always been niche genres, but in the world of PC games, that's just not the case.

Everyone listen to this guy.

It's not about the availability of more stupid fun games, rather it's about the decline of the smart genres we're talking about.

One of the reasons why old MOO2 and JA2 have never been surpassed in a decade as the best games of their respective genres, is because those games were made with what was then a large budget, which is still more than what your current indie developer can invest in game.

The odds of a talented garage dev ever surpassing those games is very small and the big publishers aren't interested.

 

[SpireOfFire]

yes, i is a dumb.