AdumbroDeus said:
I could go on for a while but I think you get the point, these are all true gems of the gaming world, and some FAR surpass of the Jagged Alliance series. Of course some of them don't have the complexity, that's not the point, which is ok. Different genres can and will have different concentrations, and when an FPS has as much depth as a RTS for example, something is usually wrong.
Surpass in what? I'm talking about gameplay depth specifically, because that's what's most important for me in games.
FPSes can easily have more depth than RTSes. System Shock 2 or Deus Ex 1 are good examples.
As for the "Of course some of them don't have the complexity" - the problem is your use of the word "some". The more appropriate term would be "Absolutely none", I think. Unless you have specific examples, which I asked you to point out in my previous post.
Then quite frankly, your priorities are misplaced, and while Deus Ex has complex gameplay for an FPS, I can guarantee you (as somebody who has played it endless times), what gives it more depth and complexity then even most RTSs is not the gameplay, it's the vibrant living breathing world. Things like it's plot that accounts for almost every possible decision the player can make. Touches like that.
AdumbroDeus said:
The only thing you can say for certain is games are being made more approachable these days, which is a good thing unless depth is sacrificed for it. This isn't true of the games I mentioned and many more quality games out there.
TL;DR: There are plenty of interesting intelligent games out there, the fact that they're not similar styles to any of the games you mentioned does not give them less depth or intelligence then those games. It just means different genres are being developed.
No, you're wrong. Mostly.
Games are indeed being made more approachable and accessible. You are right there. You could be right on games being made interesting - I do find fewer games to be interesting personally - whatever tickles your fancy. But games aren't being made more intelligent or more demanding. Games are being made LESS intelligent and LESS demanding.
The examples I gave you are just the tip of an iceberg. You're wrong saying the games I pointed out are very specific - they aren't. They represented whole genres which are now dead in the mainstream as they were deemed too intelligent and deep for today's consumers.
You will always sacrifice depth for accessibility, there's no way around it. I like to use simplified models for purposes of discussion, so I'll give you an example, based on card games:
War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%28card_game%29)
Hold'em Poker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold%27em)
Contact Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_bridge)
Can you see how game depth is inversely proportional to the learning curve and accessibility?
The same is true of computer games.
Except there are a number of ways you can get around that, the fact that additional complexity will make the game less accessible generally.
Easy to learn but hard to master is a simple example, just make the game so the basic mechanics are very simple, but applicable to so many different ways in many different situations that a single easy to learn mechanic grants depth. Portal is probably the Ur example of this, in that the mechanic is incredibly simple in theory, but because of all the things you can do with it, you can create the most incredibly complex puzzles based on it.
The other example is to teach them, and that's where good tutorials come in. Even a game with the most complex mechanics, when properly introduced it will seem simple and eventually second nature to the players. Magicka is an awesome example because you are introduced to mechanics that are inherently difficult to understand while doing them, and in a way that covered all the basics and contained the stuff that made the actual game fun. Of course, it didn't teach you everything because experimenting with different combinations was half the fun of the game.
Frankly, I can name a number of games that would be much more accessible if a good tutorial was involved.
But overall your argument is not so much that games are worse, but that the particular type of games that you like to play are less prevalent. Why you try to qualify that as games with depth, you are limiting it to only gameplay AND drawing from the entire history of video games which in the end makes it a non-representative sample when compared to simply games from this console generation due to the differences in raw number of games. Furthermore, you're attempting to limit it to just triple A games, which again doesn't actually say much about the state of gaming as a whole. I guess if you wanna argue triple A games have gameplay mechanics with less intelligence and depth then they used to be.
But frankly, this wasn't what I said when you initially opposed me, I said overall quality. Even in your initial post you said "games are getting dumber". Granted, that a fight I will take, but my interest is in narrative primarily (and gameplay as an element of how that narritive is told). But, I won't let you attempt to make this into "System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and King's Quest 6 are better then the new Alone in the Dark", and then using that to "prove" old games are better then no games. Granted, I doubt those will be your exact words, but each time you're subtly changing your thesis so your point becomes more defenisible.
So yea, pick a generation (console generations make the best baseline because it's a lot more difficult to figure out when 1 OS ends due to continued use, and furthermore, you'll often get a lot longer, making it a lot more difficult to compare) and prove that the games that came out during that console generation are more intelligent then the games that came out this console generation in story and gameplay.
Stick with your thesis.
