ArkhamHorror said:
Therumancer said:
I have to say I disagree with Jim here, by saying in response that just because something is popular does not mean that it isn't shit. He seems to be argueing that the popularity of "Angry Birds" equates to it being a good game.
This is the point at which I would have stopped you because you're a bit mistaken. The idea is that a game's popularity is not directly proportional to its quality in either direction. His opinion about its quality is just that--an opinion. I can't vouch for the game without having played it, but I wouldn't hesitate to give it a fair chance if I had the opportunity.
The reason why there is so much outcry by the so called "hardcore" crowd, and really I sort of mean your middle of the road gamers rather than the actual hardcore crowd (which I could write a huge essay on myself), is that the success of "Angry Birds" both encourages the casual market and more importantly the developers to cater to the casual market. After all, why should a company spend millions upon millions of dollars developing a really good game for serious gamers, when they can poop out a relatively cheap app and sell it to the casuals and make as much if not more money.
This is where things start to fall apart. I hear this argument all the time. Somehow casual and social games are a major threat to the 'hardcore' industry because of how much less effort is required to produce them than big budget mainstream titles. First of all I can't see any evidence that there has been any impact to begin with and thus far nobody has been willing to show me an example. Sure it makes sense to take the most profitable route, but casual games aren't what the hardcore industry has its eyes on. They're much more interested in Call of Duty's market.
The basic idea I'm getting at is that stagnant shooters are much more of a threat than causal games (true casual games, not the 'easy' games that inspires so much whining). I don't have the energy to keep this up, but it's a discussion I'd very much like to see.
Actually, the problem is that a lot of people, like you apparently, won't see or acknowlege the problem until it's too late. We haven't seen casual games destroy serious games yet because the companies making games are still in the process of adjusting themselves to the new models. If you read news about the industry, pretty much all the game developers talk about the changing landscape and wanting to go towards the casual games where the money is, it's just that the casual market developed fairly recently and multi-billion dollar industries can't turn on a dime.
We've seen this kind of thing before, at least to an extent. While there ARE differances this kind of "let's produce games for the casual crowd!" fueled the collapse of the video game industry in the 1980s with game developers simply deciding they didn't care about quality. Of course at that point you didn't have the lowest human denominator in the market to support that kind of development, right now we do. With the current attitudes going the way they are, we're looking at an industry that will gladly produce the equivilent of "ET" along with an audience that will buy it and probably tell you it's great and your simply a "hater" for criticizing it. Of course "Angry Birds" isn't "ET", it's more to the low-middle end of the spectrum than something that is worthy only of a landfill. The thing is people trying to make it out to be a good game, when it's not, it's simply a game for the casual players that was better than some truely terrible fare and thus benefitted from being in the right place at the right time (so to speak).
As far as shooter games being "Hardcore", well that's the thing... they aren't. Shooters are just another form of casual game, except designed for people who embrace violence in entertainment as opposed to shying away from it. Shooters are like "The Expendables" compared to your typical "Chick Flick" or morality drama, another side of the same basic coin, mindless popcorn fodder aimed at the lowest human denominator.
While RPGs are not the only thing that can be considered harcore, done correctly they generally tend to be hardcore games. The desire for casual dollars however is why you see companies like "Bioware" talking about shying away from RPGs and moving towards shooters and other games aimed for a more casual crowd. They figure they can bank on the storytelling because everyone can appreciate a story, even the casuals have at least paged through a "my little golden book" at some point, and really the current trend is to make the storytelling more like TV or movies, and shying away from the need to read at all because the casual players (no matter what they see themselves as) frequently complain about having to actually read things while playing games. RPGs are getting axed so hard because while profitable there are far more people who are interested in immediate gratification, than in indirect control, micromanagement, and similar things that actually define the genere. There really isn't a lot that can be done with the genere (which has nothing to do with storytelling) that is going to make it appealing to that crowd, as even the most basic "introductory level" RPG is going to be too complicated for your casual and also not provide the same kind of immediate gratification that they happen to desire.
Things like "Call Of Duty" are pretty much "Farmville" or "Angry Birds" for a differant face of the same, very large demographic, and while flashier, with better graphics, and violence, they tend to involve a similar level of intellectual sophistication. Move cursor, click down, and point gun pull trigger are on a pretty similar mental level, they just appeal to differant types of people.
There is no nice way to say this, but understand I see shooters as part of the problem overall, it's just that this isn't what we're talking about.
