"Illusions" That You Would Like Dispelled For the Good of Gaming

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

That survival and horror games are better if they have clunky controls. They say that the controls represent your guy not being a superhuman soldier like in Halo.

No! Don't gimp me and then expect me to thank you for it.

Yeah, making my character less functional than a real human doesn't make the game any scarier, just unnecessarily more frustrating than it should be.

 

[Evonisia]

The "real"

I know elitism is always going to exist, but it always irritates me beyond immediate relief to see a "that's not a real shooter" or "that's not proper survival horror" or "that's not a proper RPG" post.

Genres by their very nature are so maddeningly broad as to incorporate what the creator put in. Amnesia and Five Nights at Freddy's are just as much Survival Horror games as Silent Hill 3 or Resident Evil 2 are. Halo and Call of Duty are just as much Shooter games as Doom and Duke Nukem are.

Which leads into my second illusion:

Being given a title is an indicator of quality

I know most would say "no, it doesn't", but my previous illusion seems to contradict that. There's an aura of belonging and that you must be good enough to qualify. Why can't say Oblivion be considered an RPG? Because it's watered down compared to the likes of Baldur's Gate? So?

There's also the art issue. Things like claiming video games aren't/are art irritate me, mostly because when it comes to art I'm of a "it's all art or none of it is" mindset because it's a meaningless title. Of Mice and Men, Blurred Lines and The Amazing Spider-Man are pieces of art, that doesn't stop them from being shit. So why do we bend over backwards to point at games like The Last of Us and Spec Ops: The Line to go "see, video games are ART!".

 

[Angelblaze]

just that games that allow you to pick other options are more likely to be sung more praises.

Do you have any statistics to back this claim?

In addition, having a single person that happens to be a white male fighting against bad people is a bit of a played out idea just on its own - and the video game industry (Bioware and Telltale games aside) hates writers. Like, for no reason.


Also, why don't we start calling White Male Protagonists 'Wimps'?

White Male Protagonists

It would've been so perfect, just the right match for Yahztee's spunk gargle wee-wee.

You know, fighting [i/]sexism with sexism (and racism)[/i] isn't gonna solve any problem. Not to mention it's a bad acronym.

I'll add, all japanese games are the same
Besides plain ignorance it's just annoying, best example is Yahtzee's review of Valkyria Chronicles, people seem to think that if there's some anime tropes used then the game is cookie cutter japanese media.

The WIMP thing. It's a joke.

Good laudy.

But yeah, agreed, ignorance on part of japanese games is actually really harming to the industry - happened to anime as well.

 

[tippy2k2]

You know, the title would make a bit more sense if you just called this thread what it is:

Spoiler

We've had plenty of threads like this; no one will judge you for making another one.

Lol. It's totally not my intention mate. What I'm trying to do highlight elements of games which have become "must have" elements because of said illusions, when they're really not.

It's all good, I'm just giving you a hard time

Did you give it many goes? I was exactly the same on my first playthrough. I found it hard to get into and the lore-specific dialogue baffling at times, and I quit after the first chapter.

After giving it another go though, and watching through a few youtube vids about lore, I found it stunning. I've since played through it 10 times and find it better with each playthrough. It's kind of like classical music, a bit hard to get into a first, but layers of quality in depth.

Witcher 2, like all video games I play, gets one shot and one shot alone (usually a good dozen hours or so unless your game is REALLY bad). I have too many games that I want to get through to spend time on a game I didn't like to see if it connects with me later. One shot video games...make it count.

 

[the_dramatica]

Witcher 2 is a great game!
Witcher 2...what do we do with you? While the game is mainly on the positive side for many people, it seems to be a game that you absolutely hate or you absolutely love. I for one absolutely hated it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.403641-What-games-have-you-given-up-on-due-to-difficulty#16689584] and because it's my opinion, I'm right! Take that!

I think people approach the witcher 2 with the same tunnel vision they approach Skyrim. People say skyrim in entirety sucks because of how it presents a lot of it's narrative/it's level scaling/it's lackluster rpg elements and they disregard how well they tied in Jeremy Soule's (soundtrack) work with the game's tilesets. (how well it did freeroaming)

TW2 brings a lot of awesome stuff to the table, the first act in particular has a really healthy amount of interesting voice acting.

The idea that the hallmark of gaming enthusiasm is the dislike of video games. Online discussions are largely a bunch of people trying to "out-gamer" one another. Somehow people have got it into their heads that disliking a game that's generally liked shows them to have a more refined taste and therefore be on a higher level of "gamerness". But if you follow that to its logical conclusion then the true gamers are the people who don't like video games at all.

Well criticism is interesting discussion. Simple discussion is boring. It's not really a complex issue. I can have a more interesting video game discussion with myself than I can with my family(and so can you probably), so why go out of my way to seek out communities that such mundane discussions can take place in.

There are lots of circlejerk communities out there and they have a habit of putting people to sleep.

That being male and having nudity is the only way to sell a game by excluding and degrading your customer base with the undertone theme of if you want to play our games here's what we think you're good for.

I can't go fetch you a source but i'd put every penny I have down in a bet that white males are the primary demographic for console/pc games, so they are the target. When you have several hundred employees you want to pay at least 40 grand to annually you make your game appeal to the largest audience you can. There is a very large failure rate for video game developers and survival above all else is what's prized in the industry, especially after 2008.

 

[Scow2]

(And for the second time this thread, the difficulty is not why Dark Souls is good. It's the lore and story, told in a non-traditional environmental manner, and the grim, foreboding atmosphere of a dying world. The difficulty only serves to enhance the atmosphere.)

People give a damn about the lore and story? I thought it was liked because of the emphasis on exploration and discovery - exploring the world, exploring the controls, exploring the enemies. It gives you the game, gives you enough instruction to get the basics down... then leaves the rest to the player. The world is there to play as-is: no variables, no switcheroos, no Context-Sensitive Events (Quick Time or otherwise).

 

[ForumSafari]

"You can build a computer very cheaply and easily, you're an idiot if you buy a pre-built computer, even more so if you get a laptop"

I tried cobbling together epik ultra gaymin rigs for a few years, in the end I got sick of badly designed cases and components, went 'screw it' and switched to buying whatever the high-mid range Dell workstation was at the time and a £100 graphics card. Upgrade the card every 2-3 years, upgrade the computer whenever it runs out of slots, which I've not had to do yet.

"By showing sex you show these characters have a history, an emotional attachment."

Isn't that less an 'illusion about gaming' and more a 'thing one person said about one game that one time'?

 

[Lightspeaker]

I'd like to see the end of the "We need lots of STUFF to do in our game" thing that developers seem to have going.

By this I can just point to Ubisoft as the worst offender. Assassin's Creed games are full of "STUFF". Not side-quests. Not proper entertaining little things to do with a reason and everything. Just "STUFF". Collect X flags, open Y chests, tip over Z number of cows. Whatever. Far Cry 3 was full of "STUFF". Climb X radio towers, find Y artifacts, tickle the tails of Z tigers. Find random junk to upgrade your equipment because apparently you (as a middle-class urban dweller dumped onto an island full of dangers) know how to make a bag out of two pieces of shark skin and a snake's fang or whatever.

Side quests can be good if they actually have a reason and a story. But this? This is just putting random crap in with nothing to support it. Looking at the likes of Oblivion and Skyrim (which I know has been criticised here but whatever) you've consistently got REASONS to do most of the stuff in it with a bit of story either implied or otherwise. Why am I fighting these spiders? Because they've infested the mine and I need to clear it and to make it safe...not because I need five spider venom sacks for some undisclosed purpose. Why am I collecting flowers? Because that guy specifically needs them for a potion he's making. I remember something similar in Dragon Age Origins with certain special Dragonscale armours. I was going out for these items to make special types of armour. I had a reason for doing it other than "because it is there!", I had a character telling me things and a bit of backstory; which was great.

But all these "collect this, collect that" things just given to you through a menu? What purpose do they serve and precisely WHY do I need HUNDREDS of them? Who in the name of god needs fifty crocodile eyes and WHY AM I HELPING THEM TO ACHIEVE THIS WHEN THEY'RE CLEARLY INSANE TO WANT SUCH A THING?

So just stop. If you can't think of a good reason for a particular side activity to be in a game then take it the hell out and stop filling your worlds full of stuff that has no real point to it.

 

[white_wolf]

Witcher 2 is a great game!
Witcher 2...what do we do with you? While the game is mainly on the positive side for many people, it seems to be a game that you absolutely hate or you absolutely love. I for one absolutely hated it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.403641-What-games-have-you-given-up-on-due-to-difficulty#16689584] and because it's my opinion, I'm right! Take that!

I think people approach the witcher 2 with the same tunnel vision they approach Skyrim. People say skyrim in entirety sucks because of how it presents a lot of it's narrative/it's level scaling/it's lackluster rpg elements and they disregard how well they tied in Jeremy Soule's (soundtrack) work with the game's tilesets. (how well it did freeroaming)

TW2 brings a lot of awesome stuff to the table, the first act in particular has a really healthy amount of interesting voice acting.

The idea that the hallmark of gaming enthusiasm is the dislike of video games. Online discussions are largely a bunch of people trying to "out-gamer" one another. Somehow people have got it into their heads that disliking a game that's generally liked shows them to have a more refined taste and therefore be on a higher level of "gamerness". But if you follow that to its logical conclusion then the true gamers are the people who don't like video games at all.

Well criticism is interesting discussion. Simple discussion is boring. It's not really a complex issue. I can have a more interesting video game discussion with myself than I can with my family(and so can you probably), so why go out of my way to seek out communities that such mundane discussions can take place in.

There are lots of circlejerk communities out there and they have a habit of putting people to sleep.

That being male and having nudity is the only way to sell a game by excluding and degrading your customer base with the undertone theme of if you want to play our games here's what we think you're good for.

I can't go fetch you a source but i'd put every penny I have down in a bet that white males are the primary demographic for console/pc games, so they are the target. When you have several hundred employees you want to pay at least 40 grand to annually you make your game appeal to the largest audience you can. There is a very large failure rate for video game developers and survival above all else is what's prized in the industry, especially after 2008.

Blacks and hispanics are more of a demographic then whites I believe the study said they also logged more hours playtime as far as racial divides of players. Maybe if I can dig that study up I'll post it.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Because it doesn't clarify anything. The way you're describing it makes it sound like literally every game is skill based in one way or another. Even your examples of blocking vs dodging, head shots vs body shots, etc, dont disqualify the latter examples from still being skill based, just that one requires more skill than the other. But that fact doesn't somehow invalidate the skill needed to do the other thing.

I'd ask you again to define skill, perhaps in a more general context of the word.

(And for the second time this thread, the difficulty is not why Dark Souls is good. It's the lore and story, told in a non-traditional environmental manner, and the grim, foreboding atmosphere of a dying world. The difficulty only serves to enhance the atmosphere.)

In my blocking/dodging example I did kinda show how blocking isn't skill-based at all as you can start holding block before an attack, wait and block attack, then start attacking afterwards. That requires no skill or strategy. Yeah, you probably can't do that for every attack though. However, blocking has a lot more margin for error vs dodging since dodging does require much better reflexes. Of course, there's usually always some skill involved. But what kills you in Dark Souls is not paying attention or being cautious. For example, Sen's Fortress requires pretty much no skill to get through. There was a post in a previous thread about someone saying how hard it was and that they'd like to mindwipe Dark Souls from their brain to replay the dungeon for the 1st time. I played through the entirety of Sen's Fortress + Boss without getting hit by one trap or dying. All of the traps were so obvious if you just paid attention.

Dark Souls is one of the easiest combat focused games I've played because you only need one strategy and you don't need to come close to mastering the combat system at all. I just don't understand how anyone can call the Souls' games hard unless you're doing specific kinds of runs and gimping yourself. I haven't said Dark Souls is a bad game in this thread nor I wouldn't call it a bad due to it being easy (erroneously marketed definitely).

 

[Angelblaze]

"You can build a computer very cheaply and easily, you're an idiot if you buy a pre-built computer, even more so if you get a laptop"

I tried cobbling together epik ultra gaymin rigs for a few years, in the end I got sick of badly designed cases and components, went 'screw it' and switched to buying whatever the high-mid range Dell workstation was at the time and a £100 graphics card. Upgrade the card every 2-3 years, upgrade the computer whenever it runs out of slots, which I've not had to do yet.

"By showing sex you show these characters have a history, an emotional attachment."

Isn't that less an 'illusion about gaming' and more a 'thing one person said about one game that one time'?

While it isn't a direct quote, a lot of games show sex/nudity for...no reason what so ever...except maybe to tantalize the often presumed to be male audience. And I don't mean games clearly meant for sex like hentai vns, Hunnie Pop, etc etc. Those I'm okay with.

I mean like...Ride to Hell Retribution, Metro Last Light and the God of War series.

Perhaps its because I'm a straight/asexual woman and therefore lack the ability to be tantalized by nude pixels gyrating on other nude pixels.

 

[renegade7]

That it (and PC gaming particular) is prohibitively expensive and (while a bit less so these days) that everyone who can do it is a supergenius, usually of the kind who can fix your Wifi again.

A perfectly passable gaming machine can be assembled for roughly the cost of a current generation console. And, sure, that's not a trivial amount of money, but it's also not crippling. People who consistently have top of the line hardware do so by upgrading their PC as needed and affordable, they don't start out by sinking $5000 into their computer because anyone with enough knowledge and dedication to do so will be aware that PC hardware depreciates in value extremely quickly.

Second, assembling a PC is not hard these days. There are more clearly-written step-by-step guides online than I can even count. You don't have to pore through datasheets and learn to program (unless you're hardcore like me and you felt it was totally necessary to build a computer out of a Zilog Z80 and some EEPROM chips, but that's a whole other level of "nerd" and wouldn't be useful for gaming anyway), the relevant technical information is cleanly provided to you and the only sort of calculation/engineering work is figuring out which power supply you need.

 

[Methodia Chicken]

The "real"

I know elitism is always going to exist, but it always irritates me beyond immediate relief to see a "that's not a real shooter" or "that's not proper survival horror" or "that's not a proper RPG" post.

Genres by their very nature are so maddeningly broad as to incorporate what the creator put in. Amnesia and Five Nights at Freddy's are just as much Survival Horror games as Silent Hill 3 or Resident Evil 2 are. Halo and Call of Duty are just as much Shooter games as Doom and Duke Nukem are.

I Think this can be better paraphrased into

Genres in games are a useful definition in any way

Resident evil is just as much a shooter as halo is which is just as much a horror game as Silent hill is which is just as much a puzzle game as portal is which is just as much a shooter as team fortress is which is just as much a clothing simulator as kim kardashian's game which is just as much a role playing game as final fantasy tactics is which is just as much a strategy game as Warcraft3 is which is just as much a MOBA is as LOL is which is just as much an MMO as E.v.e online which is just as much a bureaucracy simulator as papers please which is just as much....

and using this information to decide what game I want to play or buy makes me more confused than considering where commas should go in that paragraph.

Genre's in games are based entirely on mechanics and not on themes or other criteria. which means that you get wildly different games like Dark souls and Pokemon in the same category, and it serves basically no-one as far as I can tell.

 

[SidheKnight]

Myth: Only gameplay matters. Story and graphics can go f*** themselves

Maybe for you, but this isn't a universal truth. Some of us are really into the interactive storytelling side of gaming. To the point that, for example, I'm willing to put up with a game's awfully subpar gameplay if the story is good enough and the experience is worth it (I'm looking at you, original System Shock).

Some people of course only care about gameplay, and that's fine too. Variety is not the enemy of gaming. There's enough developers to cater to all tastes (instead of trying to copy each other, resulting in lots of creatively-bankrupt clones).

As for graphics, I agree that they are secondary to gameplay, but they are still important. Really bad graphics can diminish an otherwise serviceable game.

 

[FC Groningen]

After reading that "open letter topic".

After purchasing a game, you're entitled to a play the game as you see fit, to have the game work as intended and receive the service promised with the game by the ones responsible. Other players however, do not owe you anything. Other players aren't there to play along with your rules, they aren't there for your entertainment, they aren't there to stick with your schedule, they aren't there to stick to your expectations and you can't force them to commit to you. Multiplayer focussed games would be a whole lot better if people would understand that.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

You know, the title would make a bit more sense if you just called this thread what it is:

Spoiler

We've had plenty of threads like this; no one will judge you for making another one.

Lol. It's totally not my intention mate. What I'm trying to do highlight elements of games which have become "must have" elements because of said illusions, when they're really not.

It's all good, I'm just giving you a hard time

Did you give it many goes? I was exactly the same on my first playthrough. I found it hard to get into and the lore-specific dialogue baffling at times, and I quit after the first chapter.

After giving it another go though, and watching through a few youtube vids about lore, I found it stunning. I've since played through it 10 times and find it better with each playthrough. It's kind of like classical music, a bit hard to get into a first, but layers of quality in depth.

Witcher 2, like all video games I play, gets one shot and one shot alone (usually a good dozen hours or so unless your game is REALLY bad). I have too many games that I want to get through to spend time on a game I didn't like to see if it connects with me later. One shot video games...make it count.

lol, sound mate

Fair play with TW2 and the other games you have.....but........I personally can't tell you how glad I am I gave it that second shot. For the 10-15 hours which i felt I'd wasted first time round I've now had hundreds of some of the finest RPG-ing ever.

Fair play if you've other stuff you want to try first, but I see TW2 as a date who doesn't even give you a kiss after the first night out, but who rides you into the ground the following years. If you're ever at a loose end for something to play, don't be afraid to dig it out and give it another go

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I'd like to see the end of the "We need lots of STUFF to do in our game" thing that developers seem to have going.

By this I can just point to Ubisoft as the worst offender. Assassin's Creed games are full of "STUFF". Not side-quests. Not proper entertaining little things to do with a reason and everything. Just "STUFF". Collect X flags, open Y chests, tip over Z number of cows. Whatever. Far Cry 3 was full of "STUFF". Climb X radio towers, find Y artifacts, tickle the tails of Z tigers. Find random junk to upgrade your equipment because apparently you (as a middle-class urban dweller dumped onto an island full of dangers) know how to make a bag out of two pieces of shark skin and a snake's fang or whatever.

Side quests can be good if they actually have a reason and a story. But this? This is just putting random crap in with nothing to support it. Looking at the likes of Oblivion and Skyrim (which I know has been criticised here but whatever) you've consistently got REASONS to do most of the stuff in it with a bit of story either implied or otherwise. Why am I fighting these spiders? Because they've infested the mine and I need to clear it and to make it safe...not because I need five spider venom sacks for some undisclosed purpose. Why am I collecting flowers? Because that guy specifically needs them for a potion he's making. I remember something similar in Dragon Age Origins with certain special Dragonscale armours. I was going out for these items to make special types of armour. I had a reason for doing it other than "because it is there!", I had a character telling me things and a bit of backstory; which was great.

But all these "collect this, collect that" things just given to you through a menu? What purpose do they serve and precisely WHY do I need HUNDREDS of them? Who in the name of god needs fifty crocodile eyes and WHY AM I HELPING THEM TO ACHIEVE THIS WHEN THEY'RE CLEARLY INSANE TO WANT SUCH A THING?

So just stop. If you can't think of a good reason for a particular side activity to be in a game then take it the hell out and stop filling your worlds full of stuff that has no real point to it.

Couldn't agree more. I often find it's to the detriment of the game that such things are included, and hate how obviously slap-dash and out of context they feel.

Even if I am to go errand running, say collecting say a bunch of herbs, at least add a bit of weight to that. At least let me find an illusive legendary herbalist who's been thought dead for years living in a shack overlooking the sea, having been searching for an elixir to cure his son of an ill, or isolating himself from society having created a poison by accident which, through his resulting guilt, has caused him to hide away until an antidote is found etc.

Not just "Hi, I'm Bob the herb seller, get me 10 flowers from over the road"

The lack of creativity and quality in modern games, and the resulting "filler", is shocking. It takes little effort to make a quest feel significant. You have to question how dumb some devs are not being able to do this.

 

[aozgolo]

People that play adult games featuring sex or nudity are sad little forever-alone boys with no life.

This REALLY sickens me when people do this. I find it deplorable that games featuring violence and gore are given a free pass from all but the harshest of critics (who usually don't even play games) but if you play a single game with a sex scene in it and actually enjoy it, you're locked into a closet with all the other deviant perverts of the world and laughed at by the gamer collective.

I think it speaks more as a cultural thing, people are brought up to hate their own bodies and view sex as "wrong" and "shameful" and for every person saying they should show more "mature" depictions of sex and relationships in games, there's 9 more people keeping it from being a legitimate avenue to explore in a game by labeling it as immature regardless of content.