The same old 'people are lazy, games aren't hard anymore' shite that gets trotted out on a yearly basis. I'm assuming that the folk that make these claims have completed a Halo on Legendary, all gold medaled a WipeOut or completed a Souks game right? Because otherwise, those complaints would be as easy as someone complaining about how shmups have become dumbed-down eye candy because they can finish the first loop of DDPR. I'll go into more detail when I'm not typing on a phone, but this is just more mainstream vs hardcore tripe to me.
And to add to that, if you go back and play a lot of big console releases from the past, I think you'll find them a lot easier to complete than you remember. If you want to talk about the dumbing down of gameplay, it starts with the transition from arcade to home during the NES era. And there's a pretty good argument that arcade game designers made hard games because they didn't expect that they'd be completed on a coin! So, maybe 'hardcore' arcade games were more of a happy accident than anything.
I *do* think that the bigger releases now tend so heavily towards being cinematic experiences and not just games that it does cost in terms of raw game design. You can see examples of this in the past with a game like Afterburner or Reflections/Psygnosis releases, but it's more common now. These are the games that will not age well.
And there's a pretty good argument that arcade game designers made hard games because they didn't expect that they'd be completed on a coin! So, maybe 'hardcore' arcade games were more of a happy accident than anything.
Nice thought but no. Grant Freeks Euro Manager of TAITO in the late 80s/early 90s used to test his latest shooters in my local Electrocoin arcade and back in 1989 he told me that all Japanese arcade developers were trying to work to the 4 minute per credit rule. The Capcom manager said the same. So the difficulty wasn't a happy accident.
You're right about some console ports being easier than the arcade originals. Gradius III on the SNES being the ultimate example.
And there's a pretty good argument that arcade game designers made hard games because they didn't expect that they'd be completed on a coin! So, maybe 'hardcore' arcade games were more of a happy accident than anything.
Nice thought but no. Grant Freeks Euro Manager of TAITO in the late 80s/early 90s used to test his latest shooters in my local Electrocoin arcade and back in 1989 he told me that all Japanese arcade developers were trying to work to the 4 minute per credit rule. The Capcom manager said the same. So the difficulty wasn't a happy accident.
No but that's exactly what I meant: The difficulty wasn't precisely balanced to make the player work for a 1CC, it was balanced for 3-4 minute plays-- the happy accident part is that a lot of arcade games have a great level of difficulty that enables them to be fair while putting up a good fight: They're great games to play at home as well as in the arcade. In not-quite-as-good arcade games, the credits will be gobbled no matter what (wasn't it Area 51 that ranks up until the player is automatically hit?)
My point was just that it's extremely difficult (or impossible) to pigeonhole Eastern and Western games into the "casual" or "hardcore" category by country of origin. For decades, there have been tons of hardcore/difficult Western games being produced, just as there have been tons upon tons of super-casual games being produced in Japan; there's just no demand for them to be exported so we don't often hear much about them. Think for a second about how huge visual novels and dating sims are in Japan; those are the epitome of casual gaming, and yet they're some of the most popular, and have been for a very long time.
EDIT: Just saw your posts that draw a connection between GAME going out of business and "mainstream easy-mode games." The video game industry is doing quite well, all in all. There is no indication of any sort of industry-wide ennui, which seems to be what you're implying (that everyone is getting fed up with easy games and so sales have dropped, causing retailers to go out of business).
This chart is obviously just for the US, but I'd be very surprised if the UK and Australia's charts looked significantly different than this.
And there's a pretty good argument that arcade game designers made hard games because they didn't expect that they'd be completed on a coin! So, maybe 'hardcore' arcade games were more of a happy accident than anything.
Nice thought but no. Grant Freeks Euro Manager of TAITO in the late 80s/early 90s used to test his latest shooters in my local Electrocoin arcade and back in 1989 he told me that all Japanese arcade developers were trying to work to the 4 minute per credit rule. The Capcom manager said the same. So the difficulty wasn't a happy accident.
No but that's exactly what I meant: The difficulty wasn't precisely balanced to make the player work for a 1CC, it was balanced for 3-4 minute plays-- the happy accident part is that a lot of arcade games have a great level of difficulty that enables them to be fair while putting up a good fight: They're great games to play at home as well as in the arcade. In not-quite-as-good arcade games, the credits will be gobbled no matter what (wasn't it Area 51 that ranks up until the player is automatically hit?)
That doesn't make any sense. A game that is designed to rob you of your lives in 3-4 minutes does not have a balanced difficulty level. How can it?
Final Fight is the prime example. Yes I know it can be done; and has been done. But to the average arcade-goer, without a guide or some such, it would simply empty your pocket, no matter how well you actually played. It's cheap, and it was designed that way, to make money. The fact that it's been 1'ccd (by very few, I'd wager) doesn't change that.
Marc wrote:Final Fight is the prime example. Yes I know it can be done; and has been done. But to the average arcade-goer, without a guide or some such, it would simply empty your pocket, no matter how well you actually played. It's cheap, and it was designed that way, to make money. The fact that it's been 1'ccd (by very few, I'd wager) doesn't change that.
Marc wrote:
That doesn't make any sense. A game that is designed to rob you of your lives in 3-4 minutes does not have a balanced difficulty level. How can it?
Final Fight is the prime example. Yes I know it can be done; and has been done. But to the average arcade-goer, without a guide or some such, it would simply empty your pocket, no matter how well you actually played. It's cheap, and it was designed that way, to make money. The fact that it's been 1'ccd (by very few, I'd wager) doesn't change that.
It does-- the trick is making sure that player deaths are actually the fault of the player and not either a random occurrence, timed occurrence, or something that requires an oversight in the programming to be exploited. It has to be designed in a way that the average player lasts 3-4 minutes-- I didn't mean that every player would last 3-4 minutes, because that is what I was referring to in badly-designed arcade games. Shmups are a perfect example of an arcade game being balanced for 3-4 minute play, but simultaneously being fair enough that they have lasting appeal. But I would even argue that the success of a lot of better players wasn't necessarily anticipated by the games' creators.
Beat 'em ups, on the other hand (and as you mentioned), are typically cheap eye-candy. I'd also consider a game like Mercs to be in the same boat: It can be beaten, but eventually they have you putting in a coin every time there's a one-hit death, which is a poor game balance.
Marc wrote:Final Fight is the prime example. Yes I know it can be done; and has been done. But to the average arcade-goer, without a guide or some such, it would simply empty your pocket, no matter how well you actually played. It's cheap, and it was designed that way, to make money. The fact that it's been 1'ccd (by very few, I'd wager) doesn't change that.
l2p DrTrouserMarc.
How droll. That doesn't escape the fact that the game was fucking designed to eat money and it makes me laugh to hear people ragging at gaming now while spouting about classic game X while totally ignoring that fact. They were designed to make money, and they died because fruit machines ended up taking more money per space, simple as.
Marc wrote:
That doesn't make any sense. A game that is designed to rob you of your lives in 3-4 minutes does not have a balanced difficulty level. How can it?
Final Fight is the prime example. Yes I know it can be done; and has been done. But to the average arcade-goer, without a guide or some such, it would simply empty your pocket, no matter how well you actually played. It's cheap, and it was designed that way, to make money. The fact that it's been 1'ccd (by very few, I'd wager) doesn't change that.
It does-- the trick is making sure that player deaths are actually the fault of the player and not either a random occurrence, timed occurrence, or something that requires an oversight in the programming to be exploited. It has to be designed in a way that the average player lasts 3-4 minutes-- I didn't mean that every player would last 3-4 minutes, because that is what I was referring to in badly-designed arcade games. Shmups are a perfect example of an arcade game being balanced for 3-4 minute play, but simultaneously being fair enough that they have lasting appeal. But I would even argue that the success of a lot of better players wasn't necessarily anticipated by the games' creators.
Beat 'em ups, on the other hand (and as you mentioned), are typically cheap eye-candy. I'd also consider a game like Mercs to be in the same boat: It can be beaten, but eventually they have you putting in a coin every time there's a one-hit death, which is a poor game balance.
And this my friend is the point of the day. The combo's in SF2 came about as a direct result of an oversight in programming - they weren't planned at all!
If the game was designed to actually eat your money, it'd be running on a timer. We're probably lucky we got it as good as we did. At least, they knew that they probably had to design the games so that it was at least theoretically possible - that somebody out there would finish them the "right way" on a credit - so that they didn't get slammed in the press and suffer the consequences.
The happy accident, for me, is the replayability years on that some of these games have. Of course, then burnout becomes the problem, but I think you have to choose what you want:
- a lot of content that's not well balanced (Rune)
- not as much content but it's well balanced
I suppose you might say that it's possible to design a big game around good, simple rules, but that's always easier said than done. Just look how many puzzle games Alexey Pajitnov designed after his one smash hit, Tetris. Does anybody remember Hatris? Or Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection (I have a rare copy of this, actually, but still haven't bothered to play any of it)? The Hexic games? Of course, out of deference to Mr. Pajitnov, there's certainly an advertising angle to this as well - flash sells more than good games (I'm not making the case for myself when I play Rune instead of something, anything, better).
It would be false to say that a team can't have both good artists or good designers; oftentimes people are good at tackling both kinds of problems. But to get it done on time and on budget is another thing, and the compartmentalized structure of game development arguably complicates things.
3D further (infinitely) complicates things. Now you have to make everything line up just so and worry about all kinds of new problems.
This is not really a problem of good or bad; it's just the nature of the beast. If you want a 3D game there are some new strictures to be respected; if you want a high-resolution game or a high-FPS, low latency game, there's other design considerations that can totally change the outcome. You can simply deny 3D (or any other specific design goal extraneous to "gameplay") is worthwhile but that doesn't solve the problem. Simplicity is good, but it's not everything. Gameplay is good, but it's actually not everything, either. In fact, it seems to me to somewhat degrade the ingenuity of people to say that if a game doesn't have "good gameplay" that it's worthless. People are inventive and can turn lines of text on a screen, or even passages in a book they read, into a narrative that's interesting and even useful. The technical aspects of game development put it out of a lot of our hands, but not everybody has to do it - people like Udderdude who make new games are filling a void. Ultimately we come back into the picture with our money, our skill, or just raw enthusiasm to help make gaming better. Within the boundaries we still find a lot of opportunities to make real differences, if not to "fix" mainstream gaming in one blow, but that was never realistic.
Last edited by Ed Oscuro on Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ed Oscuro wrote:If the game was designed to actually eat your money, it'd be running on a timer. We're probably lucky we got it as good as we did. At least, they knew that they probably had to design the games so that it was at least theoretically possible - that somebody out there would finish them the "right way" on a credit - so that they didn't get slammed in the press and suffer the consequences.
The happy accident, for me, is the replayability years on that some of these games have. Of course, then burnout becomes the problem, but I think you have to choose what you want:
- a lot of content that's not well balanced (Rune, holeeee shit)
- not a lot of content but it's well balanced
I suppose you might say that it's possible to design a big game around good, simple rules, but that's always easier said than done. Just look how many puzzle games Alexey Pajitnov designed after his one smash hit, Tetris. Does anybody remember Hatris? Or Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection (I have a rare copy of this, actually, but still haven't bothered to open it)?
But they were essentially running on timers. The average machine was supposed to kick folk off after three minutes. Early games were actually skill based, and shit like Golden Axe - and some Technos stuff where your life bar counted down whatever you did (Combatribes) - was almost the start of this pay to play shit that everyone is so quick to rage at now.
but this is just more mainstream vs hardcore tripe to me
Firstly, thanks for replying.
Secondly, yes to an extent you're right. But if you look at ver1.5 you'll see that 'mainstream' in the 90s used to be Japanese and therefore hardcore.
We seem to butt heads sometimes man but I assure you I'd buy you a beer and play some shmups with you. I think, like yourself, I'm just passionate about my hobby. I guess that all I really mean is that there's always been shite. Even in the SNES days (my favourite gen), you had shit like Bubsy, Rise Of The Robots, Time Cop, Robocop Vs Terminator etc... Dogshit all of them. Sometimes the prevailing attitude on this board seems to be modern gaming=wank, and I just feel that anyone that feels that way simply hasn't played enough games. I hate the word 'Hardcore'. What does it even mean anymore?
This tears it. I'm going to start scanning in 90s game mag articles with rave reviews of horrible games, ads of horrible games, and demonstrate how bad the good-to-shit ratio has been forever.
I think there's a point in our lives where we think everything is worse because it's not made in a style anymore that automatically connects with us. But when you look back, you realize you waded through crap then just like now. Maybe you were just less picky because everything was new and fresh to you.
You can definitely come up with rationale for why companies don't want to take risks anymore, and why anything new a developer comes up with has to be shoved into an existing IP, and how bad the end of retail for small-scale games is (which really really sucks). But I can also come up with equally good reasons why it's better than ever.
As an example, I still pretty much maintain that the 32-bit era was *the worst* gaming has ever been. Between the horrid underpowered graphics, half-baked camera controls, emphasis on dark and gritty and M ratings (much like now), the death to some degree of the independent game company (after shareware and before 'indie'), the forcing of every single thing to be 3d even if it didn't work well (3d was the "motion control" of the time), it was pretty bad. But, it was also prime time for shmups and arcade ports, and even *I* was able to find so much to play during that time period that I can't really complain (if I'd only known that some of it existed at the time!).
And I don't use this as an example to argue about whether that generation is good or not. The point is that I thought it was terrible, yet looking back, it actually wasn't too bad. We'll probably look back on this gen, recall all the games that were good, forget about the rest, and then lament how much the PS4 and XBox 720 sucks, forgetting that we're falling into the same pattern yet again.
Ed Oscuro wrote:If the game was designed to actually eat your money, it'd be running on a timer. We're probably lucky we got it as good as we did. At least, they knew that they probably had to design the games so that it was at least theoretically possible - that somebody out there would finish them the "right way" on a credit - so that they didn't get slammed in the press and suffer the consequences.
The happy accident, for me, is the replayability years on that some of these games have. Of course, then burnout becomes the problem, but I think you have to choose what you want:
- a lot of content that's not well balanced (Rune, holeeee shit)
- not a lot of content but it's well balanced
I suppose you might say that it's possible to design a big game around good, simple rules, but that's always easier said than done. Just look how many puzzle games Alexey Pajitnov designed after his one smash hit, Tetris. Does anybody remember Hatris? Or Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection (I have a rare copy of this, actually, but still haven't bothered to open it)?
But they were essentially running on timers. The average machine was supposed to kick folk off after three minutes. Early games were actually skill based, and shit like Golden Axe - and some Technos stuff where your life bar counted down whatever you did (Combatribes) - was almost the start of this pay to play shit that everyone is so quick to rage at now.
I guess that all I really mean is that there's always been shite.
Agreed of course. If you look back to my comments in ver1.0 & 1.01, I was making the disclaimer that several of the IGN games listed were highly rated and that the thread is not about quality, its about 'choice' on the modern game store shelves. So I'm not having a dig at bad games. I was just in a large media store again today and had a quick peek at the X360 shelf. Slightly more than 50% of the shelf seemed to be the same FPS game
Japan can be quite xenophobic when it comes to keeping certain cars and games to their domestic market only (Mitsubishi FTO and Guwange spring to mind). So with all this region locking and the resultant cap on their potential market, I would have to say that they may be partly to blame.
Marc wrote;
They were designed to make money, and they died because fruit machines ended up taking more money per space, simple as.
In the UK yes, very true. I destroyed a few of those too - Everything from the lines trick to Cash Attack, Monte Carlo & Miami Dice, Reno Reels . But in the USA - highly unlikely due to the fact that many States don't allow that kind of gambling.
louisg wrote;
This tears it. I'm going to start scanning in 90s game mag articles with rave reviews of horrible games, ads of horrible games, and demonstrate how bad the good-to-shit ratio has been forever.
I think there's a point in our lives where we think everything is worse because it's not made in a style anymore that automatically connects with us. But when you look back, you realize you waded through crap then just like now. Maybe you were just less picky because everything was new and fresh to you.
I don't think there was much more choice back then either. Remember how many god awful platformers were produced? There was a massive glut of the popular genres back then too, maybe just as bad or worse than now. If you look at the retail shelves, you're missing a lot of games that are released. An argument could be made that there is far more choice now because of the new delivery methods and the existence of compilation games.
I do think we dudes getting more picky (or just whiny) as time goes by is the problem here.
I'm not saying the gaming is worse now because I'm not a kid with a lot of time to spend playing them anymore. I do, however, miss something about games that used to be, if not exactly more common (really, in the original Contra the guys are modelled to look like Arnie and Sly), then at least more successful. Nintendo lost it in the N64 days (I still haven't cracked open Super Mario Galaxy because it's a Mario game, which almost guarantees the unwelcome N64 vibe) and there's no major dev carrying the burden left.
Until recently I knew only two (!) 3D platformers that wouldn't make me wince with their animations, dialogues and cutscenes at all, both non-Japanese actually. The other day, however, I played Super Monkey Ball and had a minor light bulb moment. Why did it not just play so well, but also look so good on top of that? Can those things be so difficult to build upon?
I don't want to play a soldier; I didn't become one for a reason. I don't want to play a cop either. Knights and samurai are fine with me because they are, well, screwed up from birth. It's just that... the characters, storylines and settings typical of games today don't glue with me. Like, the undead. Did zombies do something horrible to the mankind that even spaceships are not free of them these days? Are they the new Nazis or what? Actually "Nazis in space" sounds like a plan for another generation of consoles.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
. But in the USA - highly unlikely due to the fact that many States don't allow that kind of gambling.
