They have gotten easier because they removed fake difficulty that came from weird controls, bad camera angles, nondescript graphics and trial and error gameplay.
Have games gotten easier or have we gotten better?
- Thread starter Flamb3Nobunaga
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While I might agree that gamers have gotten better, it's only marginally so. Send one of today's gamers after one of yesterday's games and you'll see how quickly he declares that the game is cheap and too hard. Simply put, people don't tolerate challenge anymore. Heck, I remember back when I had friends who worked at Gamestop and the first DMC came out (which was infamous for being really hard unless you played on easy), and they were talking about just droves of people were turning the game in for being too hard.
To be fair, though, it isn't all on gamers. Games are sick expensive to make today, and developers don't want to fund a $100-million-dollar project in which most gamers are only going to see the first few levels of the game. This is why it's so rare to see a game that doesn't walk you through a linear campaign; games like the recent Deus Ex and Skyrim being among the few examples that break that mold.
Not only are games more linear than before, because studios don't want to spend a lot of money to include something that a lot of people might miss, but games have a LOT of mechanics added into them so that it's easier to beat them. A big one is checkpoints. This didn't occur to me as much until I started to play AvP 2010's Nightmare mode, where there were no checkpoints outside of the start of a level. Death meant going all the way to the beginning. Suddenly I found myself having a hard time completing what should have been a short campaign because dying could mean up to 20 minutes of replaying every time I died, instead of just a few minutes max when there were checkpoints, to retry the area where I died. Sometimes more than 20 minutes to get back to that point when you consider that sometimes you die before that point. It could take me hours to beat a level that only had maybe 20 minutes of gameplay; checkpoints do just that much.
In short, I can start-up a modern game and be done with it before the weekend is over. Meanwhile if I start-up an older game, it could take me until the NEXT weekend before I finally beat it.
To be fair, though, it isn't all on gamers. Games are sick expensive to make today, and developers don't want to fund a $100-million-dollar project in which most gamers are only going to see the first few levels of the game. This is why it's so rare to see a game that doesn't walk you through a linear campaign; games like the recent Deus Ex and Skyrim being among the few examples that break that mold.
Not only are games more linear than before, because studios don't want to spend a lot of money to include something that a lot of people might miss, but games have a LOT of mechanics added into them so that it's easier to beat them. A big one is checkpoints. This didn't occur to me as much until I started to play AvP 2010's Nightmare mode, where there were no checkpoints outside of the start of a level. Death meant going all the way to the beginning. Suddenly I found myself having a hard time completing what should have been a short campaign because dying could mean up to 20 minutes of replaying every time I died, instead of just a few minutes max when there were checkpoints, to retry the area where I died. Sometimes more than 20 minutes to get back to that point when you consider that sometimes you die before that point. It could take me hours to beat a level that only had maybe 20 minutes of gameplay; checkpoints do just that much.
In short, I can start-up a modern game and be done with it before the weekend is over. Meanwhile if I start-up an older game, it could take me until the NEXT weekend before I finally beat it.
Games are far easier nowadays but that is more to do with the amount of options you are given to pass a certain challenge rather than a decision to make the game easier by the developers. Back in the day it was 1 or 2 options and nothing else. Nowadays there are lots and lots of ways to get past most challenges. Not very good at shooting? Try the melee option. Not very good at blocking? Try dodging. etc etc. In the race to have more features than the last best thing they end up making so many options that only the boss battles are actually difficult and then large groups of people moan that they are too hard because they have the 1 or 2 option route and nothing else.
Certainly i have got a shit load better over my gaming career but when i go back and revisit the classics i still find them just as hard as i did when i was 10 years old. I can't help but put some blame on the way games are financed though. Investors want money and easier games sell much better than harder ones...check out the big games of our time. Skyrim - piss easy. Assassins creed - piss easy. Call of duty - piss easy. The challenge isn't finishing them but finding something that makes you want to keep playing them.
Certainly i have got a shit load better over my gaming career but when i go back and revisit the classics i still find them just as hard as i did when i was 10 years old. I can't help but put some blame on the way games are financed though. Investors want money and easier games sell much better than harder ones...check out the big games of our time. Skyrim - piss easy. Assassins creed - piss easy. Call of duty - piss easy. The challenge isn't finishing them but finding something that makes you want to keep playing them.
It's a combination of both. Gamers probably have gotten better, and also, games are made easier. And when you think about it, it's for the better IMO. Back in the day, some games were REALLY short, but padded out with cruel difficulty and when the game almost cheats you. Now, more substance is actually put in, not just a game padded with AI cheating.
Flamb3Nobunaga said:
tippy2k2 said:
I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you guys don't watch a lot of replays on youtube. I would like to see the average my-first-gen Xbawks kid beat the original Castlevania or Contra games. Watching people (who haven't played anything from that era in very long or EVER) play those kinds of games now can be a hilarious thing. Where in you put in a game like Gears of War or Halo and you're guaranteed to beat it if you just keep playing.
If you want genuine proof, just pop in a recent Zelda game and beat it... Now go play the first two Zelda games from 20+ years ago!
Thread over XD
Games are way easier now. The reason is back then the game industry didn't give a single fuck if you finished the game. Now the developers are so worried that you will miss something they put in the make sure you get through the game and see all the hard work they put in to making it look pretty instead of working on solid gameplay. I also believe that this can be attributed to the lack of arcades (at least here in the United States) where the goal was to make the player die as often as possible so as to suck the change out of their pockets and that game developers want to attract the casual market. Keeping in mind that casual gamers don't want a challenge such as beating Battletoads or Demon's Souls they want to just have fun.
I'd say it's a bit of both. While I've been gaming all my life, my step father hasn't played nearly as much as I have. I mean, he's played the original NES when he was younger, as he told me, and when I met him he had a couple PC games that he played, but today whenever he plays a game on the PS3 I hear him cursing a storm on games that I've had literally no trouble with. They only game he seemed to be pretty exceptional at was Fallout 3, and that's because that's the only game he played for a month or so (I bought him the Game of the Year edition because I got him to play New Vegas once, and he loved it, but never got to play Fallout 3. With all that DLC, it's a long ass game...)
However, I've noticed that games that gave me such a hard time in the past, games on my Sega Genesis and N64, are much easier to me since I've been playing games longer. I can beat Ocarina of Time in a day if I wanted to, and I have. I think games have seemed to have become easier because it makes them more accessible to people who don't play them as often like my step father. My real father has issues too, but not nearly as bad, as he's the person that got me into gaming in the first place.
However, I've noticed that games that gave me such a hard time in the past, games on my Sega Genesis and N64, are much easier to me since I've been playing games longer. I can beat Ocarina of Time in a day if I wanted to, and I have. I think games have seemed to have become easier because it makes them more accessible to people who don't play them as often like my step father. My real father has issues too, but not nearly as bad, as he's the person that got me into gaming in the first place.
Games are definitely getting easier. I've gained a bit of skill since I was nine, but not so much since I was 20, and there's been a noticeable decline in game difficulty between last generation and this one. Metroid Prime was challenged when I played it on normal. I played Metroid Prime 3 on hard and I think I died one time during all of my boss battles, and wasn't even bothering to get all of the missle/health upgrades because I didn't need them.
What also annoys me is how many of them are becoming impossible to actually play skillfully, because they're designed for spectacle now. You can't avoid being hit during your 3-second attack animation, but it doesn't matter because the game is so forgiving. Devs don't bother giving you a reasonable chance at avoiding damage, they just give you enough health for it to not matter.
What also annoys me is how many of them are becoming impossible to actually play skillfully, because they're designed for spectacle now. You can't avoid being hit during your 3-second attack animation, but it doesn't matter because the game is so forgiving. Devs don't bother giving you a reasonable chance at avoiding damage, they just give you enough health for it to not matter.
Depends on how old you are.
Have games gotten easier in the last five years? No. If anything, we're seeing a resurgence of challenging games.
The last ten years? Marginally. The challenges seem about the same; but saves, lives, et cetera have become a lot more convenient.
The last twenty? YES. Battletoads will still rip your fingers off and laugh at your cries for mercy.
Have games gotten easier in the last five years? No. If anything, we're seeing a resurgence of challenging games.
The last ten years? Marginally. The challenges seem about the same; but saves, lives, et cetera have become a lot more convenient.
The last twenty? YES. Battletoads will still rip your fingers off and laugh at your cries for mercy.
Personally, I think the "games have gotten easier" feeling comes from three things.
1. Games have gotten easier, period. There is no really denying that games as a whole have gotten more easy, to open themselves to a broader market.
2. Gamers have gotten better, well, older games have at least.
3. And I think this is the biggest one, is that games have gotten easier because older games were limited by technology to such a point that developers had to create a ton of work around just to get even basic shit to work, and newer games don't have that problem.
the need to create as many work arounds, and proxy systems, and franken-mashups of different things just to get a basic idea to work, has largely been eliminated by technology, and because this limit doesn't exist, games are far more easier because things are more direct.
Its like text messaging, trying to send a text message on the first phones that supported it was kinda a *****, nowadays however, sending a text is so easy because phone technology has gotten to a point that it doesn't need to be as difficult as it was when texting first showed up.
Shit just gets easier the better technology gets, and I think this is the most important factor behind the "games are getting easier" trend we are seeing.
1. Games have gotten easier, period. There is no really denying that games as a whole have gotten more easy, to open themselves to a broader market.
2. Gamers have gotten better, well, older games have at least.
3. And I think this is the biggest one, is that games have gotten easier because older games were limited by technology to such a point that developers had to create a ton of work around just to get even basic shit to work, and newer games don't have that problem.
the need to create as many work arounds, and proxy systems, and franken-mashups of different things just to get a basic idea to work, has largely been eliminated by technology, and because this limit doesn't exist, games are far more easier because things are more direct.
Its like text messaging, trying to send a text message on the first phones that supported it was kinda a *****, nowadays however, sending a text is so easy because phone technology has gotten to a point that it doesn't need to be as difficult as it was when texting first showed up.
Shit just gets easier the better technology gets, and I think this is the most important factor behind the "games are getting easier" trend we are seeing.
Both. Games have become more properly tuned to our play styles as avid gamers. They've been designed to be beaten from the ground up. We have difficulty levels, and can ramp up the challenge if we desire, or bring it down to introduce newer players to the medium. We have grown so accustomed to controllers that it's very easy (or at least easier) to deliver a sense of conveyance, where your controller becomes an extension of your hands, and the developers have learned how to craft games in such a way that this is the best part of gaming.
But if you take an average gamer of today, put an NES controller in their hand and ask them to beat Battletoads, a game that was never really intended to be beaten without absolute mastery of the system, they'd be hard-pressed to, and even our "hard games" like Demons' Souls, we have far more margin for error then in those NES Hard games. Games in general are better designed. Some old NES games, even excusing those NES Hard classics, don't feel like they were even designed by people who'd ever played a game. The UI is impossible to understand, the controls (despite the lack of buttons) are ill designed or just plain weird, the difficulty is through the roof because of bugs or poor design choices (unlike Battletoads which was actually designed to be hard, at least in the states, to combat game rentals)
Games are a lot better at telling us what to do and how to do it (a detriment to some), or barring that, tend to be open enough for the player to figure it out on their own.
We have also gotten better though over time I think. Those of us who've been playing games for decades have a lot of past experience to help us figure things out, and kids, as always, are great at sorting these things out without years of experience, and tend to be the technically most proficient gamers, as their brains are a bit more fit then us old timers (although admittedly, I'm not even on the old spectrum when it comes to gaming, although I did own an NES before SNES was even a thing, so that can date me).
But if you take an average gamer of today, put an NES controller in their hand and ask them to beat Battletoads, a game that was never really intended to be beaten without absolute mastery of the system, they'd be hard-pressed to, and even our "hard games" like Demons' Souls, we have far more margin for error then in those NES Hard games. Games in general are better designed. Some old NES games, even excusing those NES Hard classics, don't feel like they were even designed by people who'd ever played a game. The UI is impossible to understand, the controls (despite the lack of buttons) are ill designed or just plain weird, the difficulty is through the roof because of bugs or poor design choices (unlike Battletoads which was actually designed to be hard, at least in the states, to combat game rentals)
Games are a lot better at telling us what to do and how to do it (a detriment to some), or barring that, tend to be open enough for the player to figure it out on their own.
We have also gotten better though over time I think. Those of us who've been playing games for decades have a lot of past experience to help us figure things out, and kids, as always, are great at sorting these things out without years of experience, and tend to be the technically most proficient gamers, as their brains are a bit more fit then us old timers (although admittedly, I'm not even on the old spectrum when it comes to gaming, although I did own an NES before SNES was even a thing, so that can date me).
Definitely getting easier. I remember myself and my dad playing MOHAA (the D-Day landing part) and it was replayed so many fucking times that eventually my dad would play and aim and time shots by rote. In COD now you just hide behind a corner, wait for the red screen to go away and carry on. In the old FPS's you had to be extra careful to not use up too many health packs or else you'd get killed 
Same could be said with many other old genres.
I think this also relevant, despite being a bit over the top
Same could be said with many other old genres.
I think this also relevant, despite being a bit over the top
Wait, wait, wait. I have to re-read that.tippy2k2 said:
Less complicated games? Dragon Age? Mass Effect?
Skyrim is more complicated? I... What? Have you not seen the amount of team management Dragon Age requires? Or the first Mass Effect game? You have to be joking when you say Skyrim is more complex, since it holds your hand the entire way.
OT: I personally believe games have just gotten easier. Since when I played older games, I find a much greater challenge than in today's video-games.
See the term Nintendo Hard [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard].
I'd say we've gotten better, and games have gotten more user friendly.
Now, I know that I'm better at games than I used to be. I know this because there are some games that I flat out could not play when I was younger, couldn't get past the first couple of levels. I came back to some of these in recent years, and these previously impassible barriers now seem like a breeze.
Some games HAVE opted to be easier than most, but for the most part, I honestly just think the way we think about interface and game design has advanced, leading to less random shot in the dark problem solving, or struggling with control systems that would later prove as evolutionary dead ends.
Now, I know that I'm better at games than I used to be. I know this because there are some games that I flat out could not play when I was younger, couldn't get past the first couple of levels. I came back to some of these in recent years, and these previously impassible barriers now seem like a breeze.
Some games HAVE opted to be easier than most, but for the most part, I honestly just think the way we think about interface and game design has advanced, leading to less random shot in the dark problem solving, or struggling with control systems that would later prove as evolutionary dead ends.
I think the average player has gotten WORSE, as the games are so much easier. No, not an influx of new players, I mean the old players. When the game gets easier, you don't have to keep your reaction times as up to snuff. Almost everyone I've talked to who isn't playing old SNES games feels like they were easier back in the day.
Admittedly this isn't the case for everyone, and hasn't affected every genre, but having games become easier has let the majority of gamers (ie. the ones you don't see here) relax a bit, and their skills have suffered.
Is this a good thing? Don't feel like getting into that, so don't treat this as a condemnation of more accessible games.
Admittedly this isn't the case for everyone, and hasn't affected every genre, but having games become easier has let the majority of gamers (ie. the ones you don't see here) relax a bit, and their skills have suffered.
Is this a good thing? Don't feel like getting into that, so don't treat this as a condemnation of more accessible games.
The other day this girl I work with told me her boyfriend made a bet with his room mates that if they could beat the Elephant Graveyard level of the the Lion King video game for Sega Genesis they would get $20. I laugh cause I beat that level when I was 8
Anyway, I think the point when games became easier was when they became 3D and the devs could fit more into them. People just don't acknowledge that these games for N64, PS1, PS2, ect were also part of their childhood for some odd reason. They only talk about hard games that came out like 20 years ago
Anyway, I think the point when games became easier was when they became 3D and the devs could fit more into them. People just don't acknowledge that these games for N64, PS1, PS2, ect were also part of their childhood for some odd reason. They only talk about hard games that came out like 20 years ago