Evolving VS Selling out?

[NomNom The World]

With Skyrim just around the corner and New Vegas in the recent past I found myself re-visiting some old friends, namely fallout 1/2 and Morrowind (Bm/Tri). After a good session I got to thinking, even on hard FO3 and NV are cake when compared to FO and FO2. Why? Why am I finding a game from the 90's hard?

My question is this, in your opinion have games (general I know) evolved to be easier or sold out to be easier, if easier at all.

Let's not leverage on nostalgia if we can.

 

[Griffolion]

The issue you reference here is most likely one of accessibility rather than that of being dumbed down or made easier.

The games industry of now certainly isnt the games industry of the 90's. Many lessons learnt, many advances made, many conventions stripped or made new. Also remember that making games accessible is a necessity in today's world where gaming is as mainstream as it's ever been. Gaming in the 90's was still a relatively niche thing, especially in comparison to today. Therefore, games of earlier times may include certain things (or exclude certain things) that may have made them more appealing to their niche consumers while possibly alienating a more mainstream crowd.

As I mentioned before, I think the way in which developers make games interact with us has moved from a niche, narrow referential paradigm to that of a friendlier one that encourages users of all kinds. This is simply to move with the market, nothing else.

Some may call it 'dumbing it down' or 'making it easier' but, contrary to your last sentence there, it does actually have an element of nostalgia in there. It's roughly on a par with your mum or dad going "music today just can't compare with the 70's" or whatever their era was. It was when they were most impacted from that medium and thus the strongest evocations instilled.

tl;dr: No, they've simply evolved to respond to the changing needs of the market, which in recent years, has become more and more mainstream and less niche. Thus, requiring increased accessibility, which shouldn't be mistaken for being made easier.

 

[LordLundar]

Yeah, games were generally harder back then. It could be multiple things though. I'm sure selling out is one of them.

Not nearly as much as you think. Most of the Nintendo era games were ported from arcade machines whose sole purpose was to suck quarters and as such were made brutally difficult. The thing is the arcade game mentality is a bygone era and more and more players are getting into the hobby with much less time and/or dedication capability. It's much more profitable to make games that sell to millions of players that do not require studying a manual for a week just to do basic gameplay over selling to a couple of dozen thousand players that have such time.

 

[RadioactiveMicrobe]

Selling out is just slapping a name on something and hoping it sells. (I'm looking at you, Halo's future.)

Evolving at least enhances the experience.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If we take a look at Super Mario and compare the NES game to the latest Wii game, you can say there's been a great deal of evolution in certain areas. You can play the game with 4 players simultaneously now as opposed to 2 people taking turns back then. In other ways however, things are very much the same. If you're playing NSMBW, you're more than likely holding your wii-mote sideways, much like you would hold the NES controller (I don't remember if you can use the nunchuck for NSMBW...I would hope not) The controls, enemies and, sounds are almost entirely the same now as they were in the mid 80's. Then again, people have been saying that Mario's sold out since the 90's.

As for games on the whole, I'd say it would be a good idea to look at games on a case-by-case basis. Some games and systems generally evolved like the Nintendo consoles and Sony consoles. It can be argued that Sega sold out, especially if you consider the fact that the Genesis had two add-on consoles even though it was already somewhat stronger than the Super Nintendo.

These are old consoles though so I could be grossly mistaken.

 

[Naeo]

Evolution is changing to adapt to a situation or circumstance. Selling out is throwing aside all goals of artistic creation and shifting the focus entirely to "what will make the most money". In which case, the latter is an evolution of the games industry to fit the present economy and society. However, I'd say that on the whole, games haven't "sold out" but have just become an industry like any other product in history. So if they've sold out, so has the entire book industry, the automobile industry, and the goddamn plastic cups industry.

 

[Zaik]

If I like the changes, then it's evolution.

If I hate them, then they sold out.

 

[Rack]

With Skyrim just around the corner and New Vegas in the recent past I found myself re-visiting some old friends, namely fallout 1/2 and Morrowind (Bm/Tri). After a good session I got to thinking, even on hard FO3 and NV are cake when compared to FO and FO2. Why? Why am I finding a game from the 90's hard?

My question is this, in your opinion have games (general I know) evolved to be easier or sold out to be easier, if easier at all.

Let's not leverage on nostalgia if we can.

Are you playing the new games on Very Hard?

Anyway the answer is definitely evolving. It's not just arcade philosophy, at their roots games involved 1 screen, if you were to complete it on the first go that would be money fown the drain. As they got longer they didn't get easier though or certainly not in proportion. Add to that the only people who played them were kids and they'd be lucky to get 2 good games a year. Fast forward a few years and that difficulty often remained but had become largely vestigial. There was no need to die 400,000 times in Fallout to get your moneys worth, but you did because that's just how games were.

Eventually games shed this vestigial difficulty, nothing about selling out there just isn't much reason for a rational human being to want to design a game you can't complete by switching to "easy". Except, oddly enough, selling out as there are enough misanthropes who aren't satisfied by a challenge but actively want others to fail to make selling a game on the merits of not having difficulty settings viable.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well you need to understand the percentage of people who want challenging games at all is about 20%, the rest want pretty pictures to move while they hold down a button.

And the percentage of people who want ass raping hard games are about 5%, so the developers just don't take the time to offer that, hell most of the time you haveto be glad the games work at all.

 

[Eve Charm]

It's Evolving more then selling out. Like the very easy or easy modes that are just for story would be more for selling out, but putting a game now and a game from the 90's on the same difficulty, it's a lot easier because there are a lot more options now.

Taking fallout for example, you can easily level up and get your character stronger, find new better weapons more often, and just having the choice of being in first person real time as apposed to top down turned based helps you get the drop on everything. Just things being in 3D now makes things easier then side scrollers, being able to go around enemies instead of being forced to deal with them as you would if it was 2d. compare a game like metal gear solid that you can get through with dealing with about 5-10% of the enemies if you wanted to, to something like an old castlevaina where you need to kill everything and they will see you and try to hit you.

Also most games having some form of leveling up or upgrading now, something most games back then didn't have. now if your in trouble, you can just grind an hour or so and your fine.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Well, there's still multiplayer.
Nowadays, if people want to get raped, they come to me.

Oh wait. Err ...

 

[Griffolion]

tl;dr: No, they've simply evolved to respond to the changing needs of the market, which in recent years, has become more and more mainstream and less niche. Thus, requiring increased accessibility, which shouldn't be mistaken for being made easier.

This is complete NONSENSE. Increasing accessibility literally means making games easier. Think about what the hell you're writing.

Accessibility: approach-ability; the attribute of being easy to meet or deal with.

Easiness: freedom from difficulty or hardship or effort.

Taken from Google in case you want to look for yourself. As you can see, there's a clear difference between the two, they are not mutually exclusive.

Well, you see, games back then...

The issue you reference here is most likely one of accessibility rather than that of being dumbed down or made easier.

The games industry of now certainly isnt the games industry of the 90's. Many lessons learnt, many advances made, many conventions stripped or made new. Also remember that making games accessible is a necessity in today's world where gaming is as mainstream as it's ever been. Gaming in the 90's was still a relatively niche thing, especially in comparison to today. Therefore, games of earlier times may include certain things (or exclude certain things) that may have made them more appealing to their niche consumers while possibly alienating a more mainstream crowd.

As I mentioned before, I think the way in which developers make games interact with us has moved from a niche, narrow referential paradigm to that of a friendlier one that encourages users of all kinds. This is simply to move with the market, nothing else.

Some may call it 'dumbing it down' or 'making it easier' but, contrary to your last sentence there, it does actually have an element of nostalgia in there. It's roughly on a par with your mum or dad going "music today just can't compare with the 70's" or whatever their era was. It was when they were most impacted from that medium and thus the strongest evocations instilled.

tl;dr: No, they've simply evolved to respond to the changing needs of the market, which in recent years, has become more and more mainstream and less niche. Thus, requiring increased accessibility, which shouldn't be mistaken for being made easier.

... never mind, I couldn't have said it better myself at all.

Modern games are easier, sometimes perhaps a bit too easy, but that's to make it more accessible to a bigger crowd. Some people hate this, but you can never please those sorts of people. They are only pleased by the things they enjoyed in their heyday, and that's over and those things can't and won't come back. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy these newer, shinier games with more intuitive controls and menus and better-balanced challenge and more interesting stories and such.

Thank you, it's kinda funny that two posts down from you, someone called my argument complete nonsense. In capital letters, no less!

 

[Something Amyss]

With Skyrim just around the corner and New Vegas in the recent past I found myself re-visiting some old friends, namely fallout 1/2 and Morrowind (Bm/Tri). After a good session I got to thinking, even on hard FO3 and NV are cake when compared to FO and FO2. Why? Why am I finding a game from the 90's hard?

My question is this, in your opinion have games (general I know) evolved to be easier or sold out to be easier, if easier at all.

Let's not leverage on nostalgia if we can.

To be fair, older games were hard because they wanted you to plunk down more quarters. Even after the arcade started to die as the primary form of consumption, the idea didn't.

Fallout I think can be attributed to "selling out," as the marketing made it pretty clear they were pandering to a larger market. I'm not sure that's the case with all games, though. There's more emphasis on narrative (Well, there was....Last couple of years it's been more about multiplayer because who wants story when you can teabag noobs?), and in narrative, you want your story to be told. If people give up, your story never gets finished. An easier game increases the chances of the story being enjoyed by more people, without even necessarily expanding the fanbase.

I'd also point out that another thing which has made things easier is controls. In a lot of old games, controls are dodgy, sometimes outright broken. In modern games, you're more likely to have controls that are tight, mechanics that work, etc.

Oddly enough, I started noticing games getting easier in the 90s. They may be hard compared to modern games, but I found myself getting to the end of more and more titles.

I think you can do both casual and mainstream gamers, especially with multiple difficulty levels and optional challenges, but game companies probably don't want to spend the effort.

 

[The Geek Lord]

Depends on what game you're playing.

BlazBlue compared to 90s fighting games? Evolving to be easier. It has better game mechanics that generally work in a much tighter, much more accessible way. (Unless you're playing the game on hard or above and fighting unlimited mode characters. Unlimited Mu-12 with normal Hazama? I'd say "shoot me now" if Mu didn't already. Oh, I'm sorry, did I say she shot me? No, I meant to say she spammed these little things that WOULD'VE shot me if they weren't more fixated on flying up my ass every time I ALMOST land a hit. NJAMPGAGTAFLAJHGUOIAWNOTA.)

The newer Monster Hunters are also evolving. Take a look at Monster Hunter Tri, then look at the original. The original MH was insanely difficult due to crappy controls, broken game mechanics, a god-awful camera, and an absurd difficulty curve. Gather mushrooms, gather herbs, kill velociprey, HOLY SHIT A RATHALOS THAT CHASES YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE STEALING ITS CHILDREN FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Then by MHTri everything was fixed. The GS wasn't the only good weapon in the damn game (ignoring bowguns because bowguns are game breakers anyway. Seriously, explosive ammo spam, the fuck), multiplayer is still around (I believe), and even if it wasn't everything is at a point where you can easily solo everything and don't get one-hit killed by a random attack occurring from just off screen.

Ace Combat on the other hand... Yeah, I haven't even played the demo to the new one, but I've heard about it. Go play Ace Combat 5 then the demo of Assault Horizon and you tell me who's selling out what.

 

[Rack]

Gamers that actually have two brain cells to knock together are excluded, because they are yesterday's news. It's symptomatic of a disease that's spreading through everything in our society these days. Catering to the lowest common denomination. Being an apologist for it is disgusting.

If you have more than 2 brain cells to knock together though, that's something else. Then you can enjoy titles with real depth that don't have to cower behind obstructive interfaces. Games like Frozen Synapse, and Spectromancer exemplify this but there are lots more examples throughout most of gaming. Except shooters which (Human Revolution aside) seem to be getting dumber by the minute. But there's an absolute distinction between easy and accessible the design ideal being simple to play difficult to master. The whole point of which is making something accessible yet deep and difficult.