Do some gamers want to exclude others from gaming?

[justnotcricket]

Long analogy incoming...

I see a lot of this kind of thing as basically boiling down to a selfish fear of change, or, as I have experienced it personally, the 'Lipstick problem'.

To take this trivial analogy (because videogames are no more essential to life than lipsticks are, people, no matter how much you or I love 'em): I used to love this one shade of Dior lipstick. It was perfect for me. It looked great, it made me feel great, and it went with *everything* I liked to wear.

And then you know what happened? Dior stopped making that shade. They started making a bunch of other random crap to please the Harajuku-wannabe kiddies who wouldn't know a tasteful and elegant shade of lipstick if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. I was mad. Why should Dior change that shade?! I LOVED that shade!? NONE of the new ones were in ANY way tailored as SPECIFICALLY to how I liked my lipstick to look. I FELT BETRAYED. I bitched about it.

And then I noticed that some of the new shades were actually kind of nice in their own way. I'd never thought that those shades would be something for me, but they actually looked cool. I just had to work them my own way. Sure, some of them were just terrible, and totally not aimed at me, but they were awesome for someone else, so fair call I guess. I never used to buy or like every shade anyway.

What's more, I started looking outside my favourite brand, and discovered that Estee Lauder and Lancome and Chanel and M.A.C. all had lipsticks in similar shades to the one I loved, but with a unique twist that made them refreshing and interesting. Suddenly there was a whole new world of lipsticks open to me, and brands were experimenting everywhere. Sure, there were hits and misses, and for some reason some shades just kept getting ground out over and over, but that must have been because *someone* was buying them. I could hardly fault Dior for wanting to make solid income...wouldn't that allow them to experiment with some riskier stuff sometimes?

And you know what? Not long ago, Dior released a bunch of 'Legacy' shades - remakes of the classic series that included the shade I loved so much, but with a nicer, moisturising formula. I could revel in an improved version of my old favourite, while still exploring all the other options that I had been afraid of for so long. A win-win, really.

TL, DR: Shame on you for missing my fabulous lipstick analogy, but in short: I thinnk people need to calm down and realise that growth and change in the industry is a good thing. Not always a good thing, mind, but essential for gaming as a medium to move forward. If there was only one kind of book and one kind of movie, we'd complain about that, so why do some people seem to want the games industry to make the same '90's RPG/RTS/puzzle game/whatever over and over again, with the result that gaming is still a closed, exclusive valley that can even more readily fall prey to unpleasant stereotypes?

 

[TelHybrid]

I dont think anyone should be excluded from gaming, however I do think people who play certain kinds of gamers shouldnt be considered Gamers. Zynga and the like, last time I checked people playing Monopoly and Chess werent considered Gamers.

They are. Unless Monopoly and Chess are somehow now no longer games as considered by the English language definition of it.

They arent. People whos lives revolve around Chess are called the Old and Chess Masters, the people whos lives revolve around Monopoly are called Greedy Capitalist Pigs... and children.

Isn't the term "Gamer" a bit dated these days?

You don't call someone who watches a lot of movies a "filmer". Considering how much of a mass market video games now has, it seems irrelevant.

 

[Savryc]

Meh, nerds be nerds. Doesn't matter what timesink they enjoy if you aren't part of the approved circle you're a "Scrub", "Casual" or whatever the fuck name gets spewed out next. In this case it's the hardcore (lol no) gamer's and the perceived unruly sheeple are the casuals.

It's just the same damn arguments rinsed, recycled, renewed and repeated from one generation to the next. Considering gaming has apparently been going down the shitter since Pong, if half of these sacks of venom, bile and anger issues are to be believed, I've never had a problem finding good games.

 

[Something Amyss]

Ya done with the hyperbole and sarcasm?

Ya done with the false pretenses?

You may not like to admit, but the goal of profit will always come before the goal of making fanboys/fangirls happy unless the two coincide.

Evidently not.

Look, it's one thing to say "It's not what I'm saying." It's another entirely to effectively go back to the same argument. Nothing I'm saying indicates that profit doesn't/shouldn't come first, but the examples presented by the poster you had quoted demonstrated that you could make money and provide a game for a specific base. You may not like to admit it, but being successful does not require homogenous media.

 

[Fearzone]

Huh, yeah. Some people like it easy, some people like it hard. Matter of taste. Some people like it hard with no option to play it easy which they see as watering down the experience, which is probably true and I can sympathize with. For every one Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy that comes out there are dozens of bland time sinks.

So each gamer has their own preference in gaming that they try to represent. While there may be an exclusive quality to hard games, keep in mind gaming is also cooler with the hard games, and presents gamers in a better light. People are better regarded who are good at chess, over checkers.

The way I've always thought to keep the best of both worlds is to keep the story mode pretty easy, put "normal" difficulty in the easy to moderate range beginning to end, and then have very hard side quests for the hard core players. Casual players can skip the hard parts, and hard core players can sleep through the story, and everybody gets something.

 

[Piorn]

I like reading. However, that doesn't mean I want to sit in a room with screaming 12-year-olds who claim their books are objectively good, nor do I want to make them stop reading.

 

[AnotherAvatar]

In other words: Fuck our fans, we want money!!!
A sentiment all too common from today's publishers and designers.

Heaven forbid that companies want to make a profit and be successful, right?

Sounds like you have a problem with capitalism, not gaming.

Can't it be both?

Success is such a touted feature in American society and it's always defined by how much money you have in your bank account.

I'd say just about everything in the world (in terms of experience, not possessions) is more important than money. I'd say creating an epic tale that lasts for ages is way more important than making millions of dollars on a minor update to last years biggest first person shooter that no one will remember in a decade.

Fuck Capitalism in it's greedy-gaping-goatsie-sized ass hole, it is in so many ways responsible for almost all of the worlds problems, anyone who can't see that is a blind fool.

Try existing as a business without profit. The only way for businesses to stay open without making a profit, and the only way to grow without profit to grow with, is government ownership. Government ownership is monopoly. I think you should analyze how much of what you need, how many of your comforts you can't live without, would either not exist or not be affordable without capitalism. Think to yourself how much of your own precious system is moving towards capitalism to save itself from drowning because it's trying to live in the first world with second world government.

Capitalism isn't the only system that allows for thriving businesses, there aren't just two options, it's not Capitalism vs. Communism. What makes Capitalism disgusting is how it treats the corporations as more important than the people they serve and who work at them. I'm a huge fan of democracy, but that's not something you can have with capitalism as capitalism eats, with it's massive piles of money and it's mind-set of greed for everyone, every other system you might place it with.

Plus, I'd rather have a bunch of honest, government run businesses (if we could trust the government, which would be a lot easier without lobbyists not seeping out of their every orifice) than three money-hungry multinationals owning fucking everything and continuously asking for more because they are REQUIRED TO NO MATTER HOW SUCCESSFUL THEY ALREADY ARE.

Wanting more than you need is a mental disorder, therefore capitalism very basic nature is FUCKING INSANE by definition. And if you don't see the problem with it then maybe you too need to have your head examined.


Also... "Think to yourself how much of your own precious system is moving towards capitalism to save itself from drowning because it's trying to live in the first world with second world government." The fuck does this mean? I'm American... I wallow in the hell that is Capitalism every fucking day man, that's why I speak out against it so strongly.

Interesting. I didn't know we had an ascetic in our midst. I respect a man who lives off the land, walks to work, and only owns what's necessary to survival. I also respect that you posted in this forum from a public library. I wonder, though, why you're posting on an entertainment site. You don't need entertainment, and you can always make your own.

That is the stupidest reductio ad absurdum I have ever heard. I hope I don't need to explain why your argument is invalid any further than saying that.

I really hope you're just trolling and don't genuinely think that we can't have all of the comforts we enjoy today without a totally out of control capitalist system running everything and raping every aspect of personal freedom for profit.

 

[DaHero]

I look at it this way: If you're on my turf, you're expected to keep up with me.

If you're going to call yourself a gamer, you've got to play more than multiplayer. If your gaming resume has nothing but call of duty or madden in it, don't bother even opening your mouth about games, it's an uninformed opinion.

Now, pickup a mega-buster, master sword, Masamune, Hellcat, Zanbato, staff, or anything NOT F2000/UMP45 related, and we'll talk. When you've got some gaming experience beyond farmville or Battlefield, when your game doesn't solely rely on other people, you've started real gaming. I'll show you Contra, Bionic Commando, Shinobi, Dungeon Fighter Online, Star Trek Online, STALKER, Final Fantasy, I will show you real games that require input, time, effort, and leave you a better gamer because of it.

If you don't want to, that's fine, just stop acting like you know how superior X is to Y in the gaming world. If you want to stay casual, that's cool too, that's your thing, DO IT.

Just don't log into my Tier 5 raid and expect it to be as easy as raising cattle.

Also, people love to rap on PC like it's on the decline...to even go there opens the "PC vs. Console" debate, so don't go there, join the other threads and try to revive the slim hope of topping PC modding, or the console's ability to easily transport for party play. They're both the best, at different things.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It does happen a lot and it's mostly over stuff like casual gamers becoming the bigger demographic and the developers "dumbing down" (i.e. altering) their products to cut them some slack. I get the logic behind this but I've never truly felt it actually taking place. It seems soi-disant gamers will rather place the fault of shoddy games on other gamers rather than on the producers themselves. I'm sure there is such a thing as "dumbing down" but in all honesty I'm having a hard time being affected by it. What exactly constitutes "dumbing down"? More health, infinite ammo, worse AI? Can we not just pop up the difficulty level? Or is this again about those "mindless" FPS games? Because if it is, we all know it's just one out of several genres, and there's a whole other world of them catering just for us.

 

[Bostur]

The wii thus becomes a straw man. Your point would be valid if gaming consoles weren't just as powerful as regular computers, if not more so. You really do need to upgrade a PC to make it better than consoles now, and I can't think of a game lately that doesn't have sensitivity tuning on consoles. I've noticed also, that everyone's measuring stick for this kind of thing is multiplayer. Multiplayer isn't all of gaming. Hotkeys are unnecessary in single player, and in shooters they're called face buttons. Tell me the ps3 graphics are bland. Prove to me that games need more than 16 buttons outside MMOs. As for power, have you even looked at ps3 specs? They haven't designed anything for it yet that even uses half its processing power. Some PC gamers never customize hotkeys. Sometimes sensitivity either barely matters, or if you're SPECIFICALLY playing an FPS, the difference is minor and unimportant since everyone is using a controller too. Please list me games from the past 3 years for the PC that not only haven't, but can't be done on console. MMOs are a clear exception, but don't let them be your only standing argument. FPSs, unless you're talking competitive multiplayer, don't need or utilize any of what you deem important.

I apologize for replying to such an old post, but it really does seem that you don't realize how much variety there used to be for PC games, or should I call it microcomputer games because the term PC is relatively new.

My intention simply is to show a few examples of what games can do, and also what games used to be able to do when the tech was less advanced.

Please list me games from the past 3 years for the PC that not only haven't, but can't be done on console.

Crusader Kings II comes to mind. A strategic/economic/political game about intrigue in medieval Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pclNfT8O5s

In a strategy game with big maps, and a lot of units and buttons I don't see how you could implement that on a console without using an extremely bulky UI. This is the case for most strategy games (by strategy games I don't mean RTS which is a different genre entirely)
XCOM was an example of a decent console strategy game, but it was arguably simplified to accomodate control limitations.

Incidentally CK2 reminds me of a game from 1993 called "Machiavelli - The Prince"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli_%28video_game%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3VDr9Ivi3U&list=PL8iUxcXSgjLMVSfCrlhOpeG3I64IJSOPt

Prove to me that games need more than 16 buttons outside MMOs.

Games as such don't need more than 16 buttons. But some game concepts will need it. Simulation games is a typical example. People often mention the Mechwarrior series where the many buttons are not only necessary for the gameplay, but an important immersive element as well. The same is often true for flight simulators.
One of my favorite games for many years was a simulation of modern submarine warfare called "Red Storm Rising". A game made by Microprose in 1988. Released on PC, Amiga and C64 among other platforms.
Not only did it use most of the keyboard, it had to use qualifier keys like ctrl-shift-alt to make room for all the keybindings. Some of these sims had keyboard overlays to make it easier for players to remember the shortcuts. Those key bindings wasn't bloat, they were necessary for the basic functionality of the game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising_%28video_game%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faUgY_HRGGg

Some people may argue that slow games about little dots are boring, and I understand that sentiment. But others find the lack of depth in many modern games boring. The streamlining culture in the AAA industry did result in much less game variety. Fortunately we are seeing some indy developers and kickstarter projects trying to bring back old ideas and also make new ones.

While streamlining does have some positive aspects, in practice it has also resulted in some lack of innovation and imagination in the established gaming industry. I bet if someone makes a remake of Red Storm Rising it won't be EA or Activision publishing it.