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Video Games Are Boring

• baldfat 10y ago
  single player games are boring. EDIT: I am a competitive person. I rather play against a human being and see how I can improve then get stuck into a math/algorithm battle vs programmers. Solitaire is fine for a bit but all single player games feel like solitaire due to my desire to compete against others and myself.
  • SixSigma 10y ago
    I've played computer games since the 1980s, considerable hours as a single player. I hadn't realized I was bored that whole time. Just to add: I prefer single player games. Multiplayer is a commitment. And I've been there. I put thousands of hours into Everquest and I've also put over a thousand hours into Fallout: Las Vegas. I've completed Doom. I was Elite in Elite. Finished Gran Torismo, Burnout 1 & 2. The Getaway - all great single player experiences. More recently the F.E.A.R series back to back. You can't lump single player games into a single experience.
    • baldfat 10y ago
      I was also an Elite in Elite with the STUPID prism for copyright stupidity. I also made a few thousand dollars in RTS games in the 90s. Single player = figure out the math/winning algorithm Multiplayer = Competition. Playing against humans with the same rules. I am to old for basketball now my competition juices get to flow in less then 3 minutes. I jump into a game play for 5 to 60 minutes and then I can just walk away.
  • vinaybn 10y ago
    They're fine as long as they're short enough that the novelty does not wear off. On the other hand, I can play any realtime multiplayer game without ever getting bored of it.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • jylam 10y ago
    Multiplayer games are also boring. I just bought Battlefield 1, because I read there was a great solo campaign. I hope it will be fun, and I've no intention to multiplay that. I'm 36, and I really did like war games before they were that much multiplayer oriented. Call of Duty and Battlefield series had great solo campaigns, jadis. Then for a decade, there was this multiplayer trend. Being obliterated by teenagers, cursing your mom, being much greater than you. That was no fun at all. When I buy a game (especially a ~70€ worth game), I expect to have fun. I guess I'm not a great gamer, I can't spend 8 hours a day playing, so I suck at multiplayer shooting games. But I LOVE solo campaigns. I can quit, then rejoin 2 hours later, I can become better, finish a hard mission, and I'm happy with myself. I can't do this on multiplayer campaigns. Those kids are way better than me, so much better than I can't get fun. Single player games are great, also. I LOVED Metal Gear Solid V, even if it was not finished. I loved it because I could play alone, replay if I failed a mission, redo it better if I wanted to. I'm not a great player, but I still want to have fun. So multplayer games are not for me, and that's a shame.
    • cloverich 10y ago
      > I can't do this on multiplayer campaigns. Those kids are way better than me, so much better than I can't get fun This is failed design. I eventually gave up on Call of Duty because while the control and bite-sized (multiplayer) games were great, there were such fundamental flaws in skill matching and team-work that it was un-enjoyable once the novelty was gone. I compare this to Overwatch and hope games will continue in this direction. Matchmaking is much more balanced and team-work is far more important. It still has a long way to go, especially in rooting out toxic players and making it easier to spontaneously group with players you like -- but its an improvement and hopefully a trend that will continue.
    • josephkern 10y ago
      The question becomes what did MGS:V get correct? Even in an unfinished state I have been judging every game I've played since by comparison. I think it breaks down into a few categories; 1. Excellent controls. Probably the tightest and least obtrusive controls I've used in a long time. 2. Great characters. While the story itself isn't that great (because it's unfinished), the characters really drive the plot. 3. Amazing ambiance. I really felt that I was in Afghanistan and there were Russians I was trying to avoid. I eavesdrop on their conversations, hearing them yelling orders to each other, and even see them adapting to my tactics between missions. What makes this game a great single player campaign is ... Weight. Everything has consequences because you care about the characters. Most AAA games don't have characters anyone remembers or cares about.
  • scient 10y ago
    Multiplayer games sadly are much more time consuming, and the older you get, the harder it is to find a regular schedule and buddies to play with. Been there, done that. I even play WoW these days mostly solo - I love the game, but can't facilitate raiding into my schedule.
    • maccard 10y ago
      Thankfully most multiplayer games are coming with quick play/quick match. I can load the game, and in 2 clicks be matched with people who are roughly the same skill level as me. It's not perfect, but it's definitely more accessible than say raiding in WoW, or spending an hour playing a ranked game of League of Legends.
    • baldfat 10y ago
      > Multiplayer games sadly are much more time consuming, and the older you get, the harder it is to find a regular schedule and buddies to play with Battlerite = 5 minute games Paladin = 12 minutes at most The whole market is moving to shorter games for exactly the same reason.
• nippples 10y ago
  People who hate games should really go find other stuff to write about. Their articles are boring.
  • anonymfus 10y ago
    In this article author clearly states that they loves video games.
    • rokosbasilisk 10y ago
      that really doesnt mean much. Saying I love books or movies doesnt say much either, there are way too many types and genres. She does make it clear that she dislikes the AAA fps blockbuster,but I personally love them.
  • hobs 10y ago
    Are you kidding? I love games, and I was expecting another article bashing video games in their current state, and that isn't what was written here. The entire POV for the article is from a traditional video gamer (you know, people who like games) trying to understand her friends who are not appealed to by what she considers traditional video games, and how understanding your audience is key to unlocking the market. What if you could get everyone who isnt interested in traditional games to understand what they are all about, the entire Skyrim subplot in the article is a person who loves video games trying to share her love. I really hate to say this, but you clearly did not read the article.
    • hood_syntax 10y ago
      > I was expecting another article bashing video games in their current state, and that isn't what was written here > We want games that aren't gritty, toxic pseudo-realistic pseudo-masculine nonsense nor frustrating time wasters that leave you feeling dead inside. Right at the conclusion. And don't forget the necessary reference to games being made for white males by white males. I don't think she hates games like gp, otherwise she wouldn't have worked in the industry for so long, but clearly she isn't seeing the forest for the cheap, easy to market and produce rehash trees.
• arkitaip 10y ago
  This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit playing them after a few hours or even minutes. Too much stress and surface experiences has had me looking in the other direction. Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and hours of riding during rain or sunshine, dawn or dusk, in the city or the most remote mountains. It's beautiful and serene and made me realize that I don't really need dozens of hours of frantic gameplay. But as amazing as those experiences are, they aren't the core focus of GTA5 and that's a missed opportunity. I am ready for video games with these beautiful moments - and please keep them short! I don't want to spend hours and hours on a game anymore, at least not traditional ones - but I have no idea where to find them.
  • Datsundere 10y ago
    I don't like playing single player games at all because I can't get into the story. I'm always down for multiplayer games from MMOs to MOBAs to FPS probably because it's competitive and just more fun in general since I'm not competing against AI but real human beings.
    • the_af 10y ago
      Interesting. Note however there are storyless (or minimal story) single player games, and also single player games without an AI. No/minimal story: puzzle games, abstract games, board games, sandbox/exploration. No AI: adventures.
  • apozem 10y ago
    This is exactly how I felt about Red Dead Redemption. Years after beating the game, I couldn't tell you much about any individual mission. I do remember staring at the in-game sunset as it cast shadows across the open prairie and thinking, "Wow."
    • mercer 10y ago
      I was about to recommend RDR, because I feel the same way about it. I intentionally avoid taking the 'fast way' to places and ride my horse everywhere. I gather herbs, hunt, take on side-quests, or just enjoy the ride. It's very zen.
• edem 10y ago
  I've been playing games since Commodore 64. I've played through Amiga, early PC, Playstation, etc games. The problem is that gaming became an industry and the companies behind AAA games want you to spend as much time playing their game as possible. The 100% fun of Chaos Engine which took 4 hours became 150 hours of boring side-questing (I look at you Skyrim). The somach-wrenching action of Freespace 2 became endless leveling up, unlocking, achievement gathering in Battlefield or World of Tanks. This problem you describe is quite refreshing though but familiar if I think about it. I can only name a few games from recent years which have deep narrative (SOMA, Talos Principle for example) but most of them have some gameplay problems which you have to get used to. For example SOMA is unnerving, Talos Principle is full of hard puzzles. If you are not already a gamer you won't see what gaming can give you. This is a Catch 22 which is really hard to bypass. What I would really love to see is something like Dwarf Fortress which is __very__ deep but combersome in a neat package which can entertain me for a few hours (or weeks if I want). I also really like the direction Quantic Dream took with their games which are interactive movies with optional exploration. What I __REALLY__ miss though is well-written story and characters with real personality with the protagonist (the player) marching through a monumental and engaging storyline like we saw in Mass Effect. I really wish I could erase my memories of playing Mass Effect, System Shock 2, Undying, Half-Life and others so I can replay them and enjoy them again for the first time.
  • psyc 10y ago
    > What I would really love to see is something like Dwarf Fortress which is __very__ deep but combersome in a neat package Some Swede actually did this, and made a couple Billion.
    • edem 10y ago
      Yep Minecraft was a good one but it lacks narrative. I do play Minecraft anyway but I would like to put more emphasis on the simulation.
      • Vaskivo 10y ago
        Well, the minecraft I played had a chapter where a guy got overconfident and continued building during the night. He ended up having a creeper blow up and have a ton of skeletons invade his house. He had to escape, near death. It took him a week to take his house back. In the endhe mourned his dead pet pig, and erected a monument in his memory. :) Just because it doesn't have a "set in stone" story, that doen's mean that there isn't one. I've seen stories unfold in The Sims that would put to shame most books and movies.
• orloffm 10y ago
  Witcher and Bloodborne aren't boring. It's just that AAA gaming became something made inside Anglo Saxon corporations, and everyone is fed up with that lack of details and creativity. 20 years ago top-class games like Dungeon Keeper could've been made in a garage.
  • talmand 10y ago
    >> 20 years ago top-class games like Dungeon Keeper could've been made in a garage. Entry to market for garage devs with a quality title is far easier today than 20 years ago.
• GnarfGnarf 10y ago
  Yes! The emperor has no clothes. I think video games are laymen's attempt at capturing the magic of controlling a computer. Why waste your time with boring games when you can write computer programs? I'd rather program than play computer games. Programming is the ultimate game.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    That's not what the article says at all.
• psyc 10y ago
  I disagree strongly with the implication that there isn't already tremendous variety in games.
  • saint_fiasco 10y ago
    I don't think that was implied. The author named games like Papers please, This War is Mine and Neko Atsume, so she knows about the variety.
    • Bartweiss 10y ago
      I agree that the author knows about those games, but there was some weird equivocation in the article. The problem I saw as I read was that those games don't get publicized. Shooters and RPGs are a big public entry point, while great oddities like Papers Please are mostly advertised in-market. If you don't open Steam or read gaming sites or talk games with friends, you'll never hear about them. It's a real shame, because there are people who would love these games but can't get there through the traditional channels. The other claim, which was stated in the article, is that there's a shortage of these games. That the industry is uncreative and demographically challenged, and so it doesn't make these things. I'd love to see more of them, certainly, but it's hard to see how that will bring in non-gamers who aren't learning about what already exists. So I think it was not just implied but stated. It felt like an inconsistency at the heart of the piece, where we got two disjoint stories; one about making unusual games, and one about publicizing them.
  • cooper12 10y ago
    I think the author is saying that the mechanics of gaming are flawed though. They're almost all centered around stuff like health and ammo, completing objectives, taking damage and dying. That's what most games are. Sure you'll find exceptions, but they're nowhere near the mainstream, and even gamers will shun them for "not being games" like Dear Esther. Also, even the variety that is there might not be what these people are looking for as shown by her friends not liking Journey. The point of the article is that we need to step out of what we consider games and try to think of a different audience who wants a new kind of experience with attributes, such as depth or relatability.
• grosbisou 10y ago
  I stopped playing video games like 10 years ago for the same reason stated in this article: I couldn't finish any new game I started. But I recently started to play again after years of no touching one. I weirdly enough I love it again. I can play solo games, enjoy them and finish them. I can play online games and enjoy the competition. I think a lot has to do with how people cannot focus anymore on anything more than 10 minutes. I used to be like that. Checking phone notification, look at reddit every 5 minutes, etc. I worked on it for a long time. Stop running after the quick gratifications and enjoy the long term. And now I am back to being a gamer :)
  • Vaskivo 10y ago
    What game(s) brought you back?
    • grosbisou 10y ago
      I actually played Chrono Trigger out of nostalgia. I was actually sure I would give up along the way as before... And I didn't. I was really into it and I had a lot of fun. I then ordered a ps4 and I am catching up on everything I missed! ;)
  • neap24 10y ago
    It seems like relatively fewer kids today are getting immersed in the worlds of Zelda and long RPG games. I certainly agree that lack of attention span has something to do with it.
    • grosbisou 10y ago
      I think you're absolutely right. Lack of attention makes it impossible to immerse yourself into anything. Even something as fun and beautiful as video games.
  • mercer 10y ago
    Same here. There's a wealth of amazing games that I haven't played, considering that I stopped being an active gamer somewhere during the GameCube 'era'. But in the same way that I seek out 'old movies' carefully, I'm very selective in my gaming choices. Currently I'm working my way through Red Dead Redemption and the Avernum series, but a large amount of games from the Xbox 360 area don't appeal to me at all anymore, for example.
• daemonk 10y ago
  I really miss gameplay driven games rather than presentation/story driven games. I think both are great, but I really enjoy the technical intricacies of street fighter or mega-man games.
  • falcolas 10y ago
    They're still out there. Ori and the Blind Forest, BlazBlue, Dark/Demons Souls, Shadow Complex, Dust, and more indy games than I could shake a stick at. One of the tricks is to avoid the internet while trying to solve the games. It's amazing the difference a guide-free run makes.
    • roddux 10y ago
      I was waiting for somebody to mention Dark Souls! It has by far and away one of the best combat systems I've ever played. Amazing game.
  • mos_basik 10y ago
    I very much enjoy clean, simple platformers with interesting mechanics and a minimum of story. I spent hours playing N v1.4 in grade school, and the update, v2.0 is free online [0]. There is also a more reworked version, N++, on Steam that I can't vouch for but is probably good. There is also Dustforce [1], which has some very unique mechanics and is on Steam. Super Meat Boy [2] was inspired in part by N and got a lot of press. It has the same fundamental gameplay that N does (everything kills you, run and wall jump with physics) but not written with Flash and with some bells and whistles (I still like N and its physics better). Also in the bucket of skill-based, storyless games is Devil Daggers [3], though it is first person, not a platformer. Some people love it, some hate it. I found it very compelling. [0] http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/ http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/ [1] http://dustforce.com/videos http://dustforce.com/videos [2] http://supermeatboy.com/ http://supermeatboy.com/ [3] http://devildaggers.com/about http://devildaggers.com/about
• efvxcgci 10y ago
  TLDR: The author has a cousin who doesn't like video game violence and white males ruin everything.
  • phpnode 10y ago
    That's a grossly unfair mischaracterisation of the piece, did you actually read it?
    • efvxcgci 10y ago
      No it's not and yes I did, unfortunately.
    • jerf 10y ago
      Yes, and the self-loathing white male undercurrent runs throughout. The idea that gaming is a solely white male affair is itself a very parochial view. Calling it a male affair is probably reasonable based on the statistics, although that's still already a bit of an insult to some of the successful developers who sell female-dominated genres, but it's not white male; plenty of non-white males play games, and they're already playing different games than the author does. As a single for instance, the word "sports" doesn't seem to appear in that article at all. (Not that sport games are exclusive non-white male; from what I see, they're popular with almost everybody, except "gamers".) As another for instance, Japan has been making and playing video games for as long as the West, and as far as I know, they are not white; again, no trace of the immense and incredibly diverse Japanese industry appears in the article. You have to throw out a lot of evidence to come to the conclusion that video gaming is even remotely the exclusive domain of "white males". I'd submit that rather than building games based on your political conception of what other people might want, you'd be far better off bringing in the non-gamers into the design process directly. Or even just letting other groups of people build the types of games they like instead of taking it upon yourself to build the games that somebody else might like, which is already sort of, shall I say, culturally imperialistic? They're doing it already, after all. I know; I've played some of them, and enjoyed them, and they didn't need permission, help, or angst from the "white males" to do it. The problem may not be "the industry", so much as a game player who doesn't realize that even within the context of gaming as a whole, they are less widely-experienced than they think. If I were to try to entice my wife back into gaming, who plays Mario Kart with the family and a mean Dr. Mario, "Skyrim" would not even make my top 50 suggestions.
• 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  > She didn't like that there is a snake that can kill you. It's not that it is too hard, it's that she is deeply uninterested in being attacked in a game. I think this hints at a big part of the problem. When we frame something as a game, we tend to evoke the concepts of winning and losing. The most brutal and obvious (lazy?) way of implementing that is to turn it into "kill or be killed". And that brutal, obvious, violent metaphor underpins the vast majority of the mainstream game industry. That's why something like Undertale is seen as fresh and subversive. That's probably even a big part of why Tetris sold so many Game Boys. But too many of us can't or won't see it. The author is probably right: those of us who have been immersed in this culture for 20+ years are like fish who too easily forget that not everyone likes to get wet.
  • jplayer01 10y ago
    20 years of gaming here and honestly, the industry needs to get over its fetishization of violence and it's reliance on it as a crutch. Games can be so much more than mainstream gaming has allowed them to become.
    • qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      OTOH, until NLP is a thing, social mechanics will always feel lacking. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try: there are plenty of interesting mechanics left unexplored. Besides, sometimes you just want to shoot sombody with an absurd weapon.
    • __david__ 10y ago
      No, it really doesn't. Games sell like gangbusters as they are now. That doesn't mean there isn't room for non-violent games, and if you can come up with one that that's really fun to play you'll make a mint. Until then, don't decry an entire industry because you don't see the appeal.
  • mercer 10y ago
    Part of the problem is that it's easier to implement a competition/kill/survive mechanism than to add realistic interpersonal social dynamics. If you want to avoid competition or at least killing things, you'll have to be a lot more creative. It's (relatively) much easier to find an audience for a film or book that is focused on dialogue, social interactions, and whatnot, than it is to do so for a game. I applaud efforts in this area, but I can see how it's easier to go for kill/win/compete style games.
• matwood 10y ago
  I only enjoy two types of games now. Sports games because they are mostly boxed time and I find them fun, and mindlessly blow stuff up type games. Diablo and GTA fall into this category. I used to be into RPGs, but they just take too much time now. The things that give them depth for one player, makes them impossible for me to play in short 30 minute chunks.
• cooper12 10y ago
  By the way, I can't comment directly on the article's page, so if someone can please let the author know that her Harry Giles link duplicates the link before it. She likely meant to point it here: https://harrygiles.org/2016/04/24/shock-and-care/ https://harrygiles.org/2016/04/24/shock-and-care/.
• chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  Someone doesn't know about Killer Queen yet ;)
• COGlory 10y ago
  I mostly disagree with this article. There's very few nonviolent games I've played that I enjoy. I guess you could say I'm the average consumer, but there are certain trends in industries that are predominant, because that's what people want. I think all media generally has its worth defined by how it is a conduit of unrealistic experience. For instance, the biggest blockbuster movies usually contain unrealistic scenarios of violence and heroism. The biggest romance movies are usually unrealistic. The most popular music is usually describing a hypothetical situation that people feel drawn to. I think that's responsible for the trends we've seen in graphics, 3d, virtual reality. People willing to consume media are people that don't have or want the opportunity to be extraordinary in their lives. The more realistic graphics become, the more they feel that their experiences in media are real experiences. So my point is basically that games exist not just for the novelty of playing a game, but also to let people live their fantasies, and some fantasies are less realistic than others, and therefore will be better represented in games. Anyone can have a relationship with another person. You don't need Lydia in Skyrim for that, and likely if you try it in real life, it'll be much more rewarding than in a video game. If you try gutting someone with a sword in real life, you'll go to jail. This whole portrayal of video games (and other media) as "art" will never take off outside of technological hipster circles, for the same reason most people don't spend hours in art museums ever day. They're not interested in media for its own sake as artistic, they're interested in the proxy experiences that it offers, that people can't get elsewhere.
  • panglott 10y ago
    People have very different fantasy lives. Some people have fantasy lives that revolve around social relationships. Others have fantasy lives that revolve around power-tripping and murder-hoboing. But I suspect that the former are actually much more common than the latter. It's a fantasy life because it is not actually reality! I always wondered why people play Guitar Hero when they could just practice the guitar instead. But playing the guitar is hard and takes a lot of work, a huge investment of time. Social relationships are hard, too, and if you screw them up it can wreck your life. Establishing a social identity takes a lot of care. Who wouldn't want a fantasy social life to experiment with different identities and kinds of relationships? My point is that different people will enjoy different kinds of games, which is fine, and should be fun. This was an article about why the author's friends didn't enjoy many video games. And it's hard to use yourself as the yardstick of other people's preferences.
• panglott 10y ago
  Different people like different kinds of games and gameplay experiences. But most of the video games industry is oriented around violent, twitchy games and RPGs. I can sink hundreds of hours into Civilization, X-COM, or Minecraft—games of strategy and games of world-building—but for me computer RPGs are almost entirely inferior to tabletop RPGs, especially in the "open world" aspect. Shooters especially bore me: fast reflexes on a control pad are not something I particularly want to spend spend dozens or hundreds of hours developing. Then you see the YouTube comments of the people who deride everyone else for not sharing their commitment for some specific styles of twitchy games. Some gamers have developed a weird and toxic little cult around their lifestyle games. I think board games have grown so much because they have been able to attract people who are interested in different paradigms of play: cooperative games, for example, because it seems like so many people hate player conflict. Competition adds a whole layer of interest to most board games IMO, but the most important thing is just for people to have fun.
  • cableshaft 10y ago
    Board games have really exploded with how they experiment with different concepts and mechanics over the past fifteen years, and they've been rewarded with greater and greater success. Board game publishers actually encourage innovation from game designers (...to a certain extent. They also like safer bets when available too), much more so than video game publishers, and Kickstarter exists to fund the ideas that game publishers don't go for. Kickstarter exists for video games too, but board games are succeeding on Kickstarter at a much higher rate than video games lately, in no small part because video games are funding development, for a game that may take a lot longer to develop and be impossible to complete with those funds. Even the darling Shovel Knight burned through all of its Kickstarter money 5 months before release and they all went broke just to get the game out the door. But board games are usually funding production of a completed design that's already priced out so they know how much it's going to cost them. There are over a thousand new board games that came out this year at Essen alone, only one of several major board game trade shows. That's tons of opportunities for new mechanics and experiences. They're even getting deeper in their storytelling capabilities, as evidenced by the games Pandemic Legacy, Time Stories, and Above and Below. Board games are still defining new genres even (most recently the Legacy genre which is only 5 years old, and Deckbuilders which is only 8 years old), I can't think of any new genres in video games since Grand Theft Auto 3 came out and popularized sandbox games 15 years ago. That is, unless you count 'Free 2 Play, Pay 2 Win', which is a perversion of game design dictated by market forces, not a true genre. So I think part of the problem this designer is having is she's been too myopically limiting herself to only video games as an interactive form to draw inspiration from. Games exist in many forms. Board games in particular have a huge wealth of mechanics and ideas that video games have mostly left unexplored, and role playing/social games of late are no slouch either latel (just saw one that focuses on language and how it is formed and dies in an isolated community on Kickstarter, called Dialect). Shovel Knight source: http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-broke http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-...
• donatj 10y ago
  I feel like she just needs to find better less judgmental friends; they certainly don't sound like people I would want to associate with. They belittle her work, refuse to try things she enjoys and overall come off fairly unpleasant. New friends, real friends, are in order.
  • t0mbstone 10y ago
    Different people like different stuff. It sounds like her friend would be a lot happier playing The Sims.
• amyjess 10y ago
  Honestly, the games I find the most engaging are simple 2D platformers and beat-em-ups. Maybe fighting games too, though I'm only interested in the single-player mode. Playing around with some old games over the weekend and last weekend, I forgot how addictive they were. Yesterday, I told myself "I'll play a bit of Super Mario Bros. 3 and see how far I can get on one life"... and before I knew it, I was in World 2. The weekend before that, I played some Golden Axe, and I got a huge chunk of the way through the game before I had to turn it off to go do other things. It's my personal opinion that 1985-1995 was the single best era for gaming, as it was dominated by addictive fast-paced games that you could just pick up and play. One of the things that turns me off about modern games is that the "just pick up and play" mentality is gone... too many unskippable cutscenes, forced tutorial levels, etc.
  • zimpenfish 10y ago
    > things that turns me off about modern games [...] too many unskippable cutscenes, forced tutorial levels, etc. Perhaps in the AAA space but down in the more indie spaces, you don't get those. My current set of favourite games (Rocket League, Binding of Isaac, Risk Of Rain, Rogue Legacy, Delver) certainly don't have any of those.
    • amyjess 10y ago
      Well, now I have some names to Google... Thanks!
• Vaskivo 10y ago
  This article is weird. It sort of addresses the solution to it's problem while it's problem is also almost non-existant. 1 - not every medium is for everybody. Getting my friends to play videogames (or getting my few gamer friends to play niche/weird game I recommend) is something I already gave up. I don't dislike cinema, but most of the movies the are made simply don't appeal to me. There's nothing wrong with cinema. I'm just not that attracted to the medium. 2 - the author's friends' attitude to videogames. This shows lack of knowledge, lack of humility and elitism. Just because they don't know any games that "change you as a person" or cater to their "cultural preferences and interests" that doesn't mean that there isn't. People should be humble when judging other things. I don't like hip-hop. But I don't assume it is all bad or that I will dislike it all. Sturgeon's law applies both ways, and to everything. 3 - about the author's suggestions. I like the suggestions. I thought Skyrim would be a bit too heavy to a new gamer (specially to one who was really on the fence) but it worked! It showed the power transposing ourselves to a new world and live within it. And that Lidya story.. It was the best outcome it could happen. Sure, Kristina later abandoned the game. But the theme wasn't of her liking. But it showed her a glimpse of what is possible. 4 - I dislike the demonization of the bulk of the medium. Sure, there are a lot os FPSs and violence and twitch-reflex action games. We have Call of Duty as we have Katy Perry and Transformers[0]. And these get a lot of imitators and visibility and money because... there are a lot of people who like these things ans are willing to play for them. And this is OK. Niche stuff, out of the mainstream is always harder to find. Finally 5 - The author is there and clearly knows videogames. If a friend wants to try videogames you should, like the author said, ask what they like or expect to see and direct them to a game like that. Skyrim is a good choice. Papers please is also nice. Maybe a puzzle game. Or a walking simulator to someone who just wants to experience a story in his own pace. And maybe you could, I don't know, give them Call of Duty. They might enjoy it. And they might even dislike everything. Because, as I said, not every medium is for everybody. but The demonization os the mainstream simply shows a clear lack of understanding of the market and an extremely "hipseristic" attitude. [0] - I'm using these as an example of something low-brow, made for the masses. This is only my opinion and you are free to enjoy them and regard them in whatever way you want.
  • saint_fiasco 10y ago
    I think the author wants some validation and acknowledgement that a high-brow exists. Some of her friends thought the entire videogame industry is low-brow and the author says, quoting Tim Gunn, "this is a design failure and not a customer issue".
• jly 10y ago
  I don't play video games, but I also don't think they're boring. I was a big gamer during my younger years - teens through university. Unfortunately this means I know the kind of time they can demand and consume, as well as the cost. Now in my 30s, I have a family, a home, and many other hobbies. I make a conscious effort to stay away from video games because I just don't have that much time I want to spend. I have fond memories of many games but I really don't miss it all that much. These days, my infrequent gaming time doubles as friend/family time with a board game played around a table.
• kyriakos 10y ago
  some games have depth and a compelling enough story to keep you wanting for more. e.g. for me that is the Mass Effect series. The graphics you could say are not that great by 2016 standards but the amount of work that went into the story and universe building for that game kept me occupied. I spent hours probably reading the codex about different species and events in the Mass Effect universe, it was similar to reading a fantasy/scifi book like Dune. It wasn't the graphics, it wasn't the amazing gameplay, it was just a good entertaining story and great universe building that made the game.
• dahart 10y ago
  This is partly a story about getting older & wiser, and partly a story about consuming entertainment vs creating it. Games do get less fun as you grow older, and it happens a little faster if you're in the industry and start to see the big picture clearly. And consuming things is always less fun and engaging that making things. It's the same difference between buying software and writing your own. This article resonates with me because I have nearly the same story. I used to play a lot of games, and I worked in console game development for a decade on some reasonably big titles. The game design patterns are somewhat derivative, I witnessed the echo chamber myself. But FWIW, it's very hard to push the boundaries and end up with something people want to buy. The market likes familiar (derivative), with incremental changes. These days, I have enough other things to do that games aren't a priority and I can't get involved in most games. It even stresses me out to think about trying to finish a game. Enough of my goals and the people in my life want my time that adding a game to the list takes away from something else I care more about.
  • Declanomous 10y ago
    Have you played Dwarf Fortress at all? I'd be interested to know your thoughts on that.
    • dahart 10y ago
      No, I'm not sure I've ever heard of it, but I'll check it out. I played thousands upon thousands of hours of Quake 3 back in the day. Possibly my favorite game recently was FEZ. Journey, mentioned in the article, was beautiful. These days I'm as much a sucker for online Boggle or Sudoku as any console game.
      • MrZongle2 10y ago
        FYI, Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII-only roguelike, and the learning curve is as steep as the graphics are primitive. But the emergent gameplay is amazing. If the inconsistent UI or graphics give you pause, I'd suggest taking a look at Rimworld, currently in Early Access on Steam (or available directly from the developer's site). It has some of the deep qualities of DF but is a bit more forgiving.
• ysavir 10y ago
  Skyrim might be a poor choice for people of those interests, but what about games like the Sims? Is it true that the video game industry has not catered to audiences like the author's friends, or has it actually catered to them all along--but the the author didn't notice because she was too busy being involved in her own demographic (which, to be fair, has more than enough material to keep any person busy in such a way). I really appreciated the tone and themes of growth she expressed in the article. But she seems to currently have a state of mind of "if I can't think of an example, it must not exist", and not one of "if I can't think of an example, I must not have encountered one yet". In terms of understanding and perspective, you can tell she came a long way; but she still has a ways to go, too.
• 60654 10y ago
  Nice polemic piece. Only goes to show that people don't know what huge variety of game experiences there are out there. And also, we need to move away from the idea that some games or genres are objectively better or more interesting than others. It's all relative to the audience - some people have a stronger reaction to some experiences than to others, and will seek out different things. Nick Yee has been doing excellent, data driven research on the interaction between player preferences, game types, and personality types - there's some intro material from his gdc talk on their web site: http://quanticfoundry.com/gdc/ http://quanticfoundry.com/gdc/
• falcolas 10y ago
  It's worth calling out - the author is at least partially using this piece to highlight the value of their own new game development studio. This colors a lot of the piece in a very different light. > At my studio we are making games with people who don't like video games because we want to break out of established paradigms. There are a lot of games out there, more than enough to fill any niche you could possibly want to fill. The trick is that they aren't all made by Bethesda, Activision, or EA. If you really want to get your friends interested in videogames, listen to their interests (something that the OP didn't seem to do, for all that they're starting their own studio) and point them at games that cater to their interests, not your own.
  • qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Indeed: I wonder how many of those friends would have loved to play Fallen London, or Papers Please.
• venomsnake 10y ago
  I think that there X and Y chromosome games. With some subset of X liking Y and vice versa. For me - the greatest game ever is Serious Sam - give me a chaingun, enemies and bullets and I am happy as a worm in an apple. Obviously Katrina would not find the game interesting. She also would probably not enjoy a Thaddeus raid. Or ripping spine fatality. Testosterone loves adversarial, brutal, violent games. Estrogen - not so much. One interesting correlation is that women that like real metal (not bon jovi) and beer tend also to like the video games that serve mostly the male audience. So big part of the market is underserved. But I think that for that we must put inclusiveness on hold - nobody in the publishing industry expect sizable male audience for 50 shades, or sizable female for Brandon Sanderson.
• dougmwne 10y ago
  This does seem to be a real problem in the games industry, but I think there are plenty of bright spots that speak to more than just adolescent boys. I think the best example of all time is The Sims. I saw that game draw in non-gamers like nothing I've ever seen before or since, and draw them in with a passion and obsession only matched by hardcore gamers. That's all the evidence you need to prove that there's big money in something that doesn't have a "kill" button or a win state. Another bright spot: the entire Wii platform. I agree that the problem is probably due to a lack of diverse perspectives. The games industry disparages these experiences as "casual." Ouch.
• emodendroket 10y ago
  > Linear novels and films are less relevant now for reflecting our realities. Citation needed.
• elcapitan 10y ago
  So - can the games industry be saved, or does it need to get "disrupted"? From the outside it definitely looks like it has the same problem as the movie industry, that is lots of money going into large conservative projects, where change is perceived as pure risk and little upside. To be honest the article itself put me off first with the "white male" stuff, but I must admit that it sums up mostly what I feel about games today. While I really admire the graphics (Battlefield 1 for example), the kind of dead end gameplay makes me sad. I'm wondering what the necessary environment would be to incubate change there. It's still not the size of the movie industry (on a company level at least), so there should be room for development. On the other hand, from a technical perspective, with the tools we have today (Unity etc.) there is a very solid foundation for quality independent developments. So that's at least one positive outlook.
  • hood_syntax 10y ago
    As you hinted, independent studios are already taking the ball and rolling with it. It doesn't need to be disrupted, although that would be welcome. There is already a thriving community of consumers (less numerous but more discretionary and willing to shell out money for quality) that actively seek the newest developments in the gaming scene.
  • dvtv75 10y ago
    Let me turn this on its head. The industry is building games for what market research tells it is wanted by people who play their games. The claim is that part of the market is not being targeted, and this is a group of women who do not define themselves as gamers, nor are they interested in gaming. It is quite possible that there is no unserved market.
• tnones 10y ago
  There is nothing to support the author's typical feminist schtick of using diversity as a shorthand for blaming white men for the problems observed. Video games already have a diverse, demographically blind audience, that's why they're cheap mass entertainment. They're class and race-blind, and women do play them. Games can offer a free space to explore, play and excel, away from the judgement of real life, often with a completely arbitrary character. For the entire bottom half of society, that's very appealing, and it's not "pseudo-masculine nonsense". Relationship mechanics are popular with men too, with Mass Effect's crew of cameraderie and romance being a hugely popular AAA example. So popular, the lack of a respectful ending pissed off its fanbase, whose desire for meaning and depth then got spun into an accusation of entitlement and obsession. What we've seen the last 10 years is games have become more shallow, favoring gambling systems and skinner boxes over mechanics and systems. Ironically, it's mostly women playing these social and mobile games. In fact, it is hilarious that she talks of "rich, deep experiences" but then holds up "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" as an example in the very next sentence, which is literally a cash-grab celebrity reskin of an existing game. She complains that "we've stopped listening to each other", that the conversation is "evolving slowly" and that people don't think "women are human", but she pulls the same dehumanizing routine by painting the entire existing industry and its customers with the same tired old brush. Perhaps she should consider "that what [men] like is not less worthy nor boring nor wrong nor hard to understand". And if she wants "compassion and respect and fearlessness", she could start by practicing what she preaches.
  • dahart 10y ago
    Does this article scare you? You sound very defensive. I'm sorry to inform you that we do have a culture problem that is well documented, and you have identified yourself as part of the problem. > Video games already have a diverse, demographically blind audience Do you have some data to support your assertion there? That would mean that the same number of men and women play games. Because I've worked in games, and the publishers acknowledge that games are biased toward young white men. The publishers have been trying to create games for girls, and the girls frequently won't buy or play them because, according to their research, boys won't play games oriented toward girls at all, and the feeling that girl oriented games are less cool actually gets adopted by the girls. Meanwhile games specifically and intentionally oriented toward boys outsell other types and continue to be produced. I've never seen a survey anywhere that showed equal or greater numbers of women playing games, and most surveys are trying to boost the number of women by including games that most young men don't play. This is simply not "demographically blind". http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/29/11539102/gaming-stats-2016-esa-essential-facts http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/29/11539102/gaming-stats-2016-... "60 percent of those who buy games most often are men, while the remaining 40 percent are women." http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essenti... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographic... "according to a 2011 study showing that 58% of gamers are male and 42% female." http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/who-plays-video-games-and-identifies-as-a-gamer/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/who-plays-video-games-... "Young men in particular play games and identify as “gamers.” Fully 77% of men ages 18 to 29 play video games (more than any other demographic group), compared with 57% of young women – a 20-point difference."
• syphilis2 10y ago
  I believe it is an artistic mistake to target an audience in the way the author is intending with her studio. She mentions, "women aren't too unpredictable to study" and "what women like", as though what she learned from the "white male" centric industry is how to pander to a market for profit.
• abrown28 10y ago
  This article hijacks the history so that in one browser I have to double click the back button to get back to hacker news and in another browser I end up at facebook. It's very irritating.
• abrown28 10y ago
  Unlike the usual at least this one ended with the author stating they were going to work on the problem. These types of articles usually end by telling me why I am wrong and what I should be doing.
• joesmo 10y ago
  In the last few years, since the Walking Dead series came out, my sister has gotten into videogames for the first time really in her life and we play together. This was not the case when we were kids. It is not the case for most videogames. But games like that, games that are simple and playable by players with virtually no controller skill, games with depth, story, and character appeal to some non-gamers like my sister in ways that no game before has. They appeal to me more than any other type of game and I've been gaming for decades. The biggest factor, I'd say, is how frustrating a game is and how easy it is for someone who doesn't regularly play games to pick up. If a game requires a lot of hand-eye coordination, a lot of repetition, a lot of dying, it will not work. Period. I have no doubt you can do tons of studies to prove it. People like my sister are not interested in trying to find the skeleton key inside the blue ruby inside the giant book inside the treasure chest so that they can open some door to get a battery to operate an elevator so they can continue the game. The more nonsensical the gameplay, the less non gamers are interested in it. This pretty much eliminates 95-99% of videogames as frustrating garbage (and let's face it, for people without controller skills, they are nothing more than that). It's amazing to me to see how many games fit into that remaining 1-5% of games and how fun they can be. I'm not interested in being frustrated anymore either, so other than sports games, those are mostly the only games I play or have played in the last few years. Some companies are realizing this and making great games for a variety of people. Others are making the same old garbage that even videogame veterans like me are frankly sick and tired of. Then they wonder why people hate their videogames. Like with most things, the answer is obvious.
• forkLding 10y ago
  I'm a male individual and whats said here really resonates with me. I have never been that interested with fighting/action games, Fallout has always been my most favourite game and its less the combat but really the open-world adventure that appeals.
• alva 10y ago
  At least it is clear who will be the final boss in whatever game he makes. The most evil, oppressive, disgusting, disgraceful, exploiting, aggressive thing there is... Can you beat.. The White Western Male?? I am sick of all of this. There is gender parity in video gamers. There is huge amount of diversity in video game titles for whoever wants them. Think you have spotted a gap in the market? Great, make your billions, others will follow very, very quickly. "For years I've been bored of trying to prove to my colleagues that women are human, that women aren't too unpredictable to study, that what women like is not less worthy nor boring nor wrong nor hard to understand. That it's garbage to say that women don't need deep, rich experiences." The disdain for The White Male in this is ridiculous. "For years I've been bored of trying to prove to my colleagues that women are human" Does anyone reading this believe that his colleagues believe women are not human or worthy of respect? This person is aiming straight for bullseye of a niche, vocal man hating demographic in order to make money.
• rokosbasilisk 10y ago
  No they are not. There is so much variety right now for so many audiences its unbelievable. I would even say its the golden age of videogames, even kings quest like games are making it big again.
• Pica_soO 10y ago
  There are no planescape torments anymore..
• facepalm 10y ago
  The game industry urgently needs to find out how to satisfy the taste of art historians who like feminist art. Maybe a first person shooter where you play a vagina that shoots with tampons? That said, while I love game, only very few games are really fun to me these days. It seems only ever few year there is a game that captivates me. Discovery is another problem: maybe there are more good games, and I just don't hear about them.
• fbreduc 10y ago
  i don't game anymore because 1> games are very buggy 2> i need super computers to play them
• 5ilv3r 10y ago
  My wife loves portal and portal 2 because you get to explore and not get shot at without walking into it with early warning. For 90% of the game, you can just drop the controller, come back the next day, and everything will be just how you left it. No pressure.
  • notgood 10y ago
    Coincidentally that's the kind of games I usually dislike, life is dull by itself; I need rush and adrenaline because that's the kind of thing my real life is missing. But I liked portal 2, I actually finished it all in one single session, but it was because the story is thrilling, every puzzle different enough from the previous and makes me think, not because I could drop the controller and forget about it.
• qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  >We want games that aren't gritty, toxic pseudo-realistic pseudo-masculine nonsense nor frustrating time wasters that leave you feeling dead inside. We want games about how each of us could be in the future, how the world could be in the future. We want games built on compassion and respect and fearlessness. This is so much more interesting. Great. That's fantastic. We always need more games, and more types of games. Just about anything can be made into a game (for evidence, just look at Phoenix Wright. Being a lawyer was never so much fun). And frankly, I'd love to see different games from more perspectives. But. Sometimes I want what this article dubs, "gritty, toxic pseudo-realistic pseudo-masculine nonsense," or "frustrating time wasters that leave you feeling dead inside." I get home at night, and maybe it's just me, but I want to raid dungeons and slay dragons. I want to storm the tower and save the princess. I want to kill sentient mushrooms by jumping on their head. I want to battle a handful of strangers, armed with a Rocket Launcher, improbably large collection of other weapons, and my own wits and reflexes. And sometimes, I want to fit together blocks falling from the sky in a demented abstract russian nightmare. In short, I want your experimental art games, but I also want the kinds of games that we already have. And we already have a lot of good ones, so stop insulting them, please. ...Anyways, if any of you are interested in game design, and also in the idea of games as art, and that games can be more than just entertainment, can appeal to more than just gamers, I would reccomend checking out Extra Credits (they're on YouTube now). Plus, their channel also does a pretty cool history show.
  • gohrt 10y ago
    Hey no one dies in Super Mario Bros. The mushrooms get swished and bopped off-screen.
    • qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Yeah, and you never die in SMB. Your hands just go up, and your character bounces off screen. /s
• trynumber9 10y ago
  Good luck. You'll create another game that the next blogger will ignore when they write about video games being boring.
• stcredzero 10y ago
  As someone who has been a consultant for a software development environment, I've been inside a lot of companies, and I've been struck by how often they all seem to make the same mistakes. My former company had acquired 2 different implementations of the same language, and it was eerie how both former companies made the same mistakes -- down to even making the same corresponding in the same corresponding subsystems. I've also been observing video games since Pong was new, as well as other forms of media, such as music, books, and video/film. All forms of media seem to be following somewhat parallel paths. All media industry publishing seems to tend to make the same mistakes generally, and to tend to make the same mistakes in response to technological changes in distribution, like those brought about by internet downloads, streaming, and social media. (There are people who are thinking ahead and using forethought to navigate these changes as well.) There also seem to be parallel missteps in the invention of new forms of media. It took generations for the industry to get a handle on all of new tools, techniques, and vocabulary of cinema. It took generational change for the field to give up old forms adapted from the theater. One generation's daring and pioneering work would also become the next generation's stultifying, overused tropes. I find that many of the pretensions of art in games are well meaning but misapplied things learned in film school. Higher budgets seem to result in more production with less interactivity and less intelligence credited to the players. There are leanings away from intellectually engaging interactivity and towards sensation and addiction through variable schedule of reward. There are also some of the same unjustified pretensions to "art" or intellectualism, as well as a few justified ones. As always, the way forward is partly through the self honesty and self awareness required of art.
• tomdell 10y ago
  One of the main problems with single-player video games is that a lot of people work alone and don't want to spend their free time doing something that feels kind of like work, but doesn't seem to offer much in return. They'd rather spend their time socializing or doing something that will improve them in an obvious way. A personal anecdote - I loved single-player video games until I was 18, but I stopped cold at that age. 5 years later, I tried to get back into it. I played some games that I used to like. I don't feel the things I used to feel while playing. Leveling up in Diablo just feels like accomplishing a chore - it feels meaningless. This author seems to think that video games, in general, are definitely for everyone. I don't agree. Just like there are people who don't like reading or listening to music who manage to live whole, well-rounded lives, there are people who don't like playing video games.
  • AdrianB1 10y ago
    Maybe it's the games you play, not the single player mode. I play both and I have no preference for the type, but for specific games.
    • nrjames 10y ago
      I think this is a good point. I've felt that way about single player games for a while. When I recently played Firewatch, which has a story with some complex emotional layers, I realized that I now need more than "mechanics" for a single player game to appeal. Now, I try to find games with more emotional depth. There aren't many out there. We all change in different ways and I suspect you can find single player games that will appeal more to you now than ones similar to those you used to play.
      • mysterydip 10y ago
        Sounds like "This War of Mine" might appeal to you. Check it out if you haven't yet.
  • shanusmagnus 10y ago
    This is exactly how it is for me too. When I was younger I would feel so connected to the game world, and the wonders of exploring the game world were real wonders to me. Discovering some new village in Ultima 6 made me feel like a great adventurer. A finder of something. If it was important in the game world then it was important. These days it falls out just like you wrote: if I try to play a game, I mess around for a bit and then think: I could spend this time doing something creative. Making something, learning something. If I found some modern equivalent of a hidden city in a game, I'd think: so what? Who fucking cares? What does that get me? I still can't figure out if this means there's something really wrong with me, that I can't even enjoy meaningless pursuits; or maybe that my sense of 'meaning' is so restricted; or if it's the opposite, and my reticence to do those things is a sign that I'm spending time the right way, or at least, that I have the right objective function in how I evaluate my time? Of course, I'm a miserable bastard. That's probably an important data point. But I'm not sure how I could change even if I was sure that I should.
• rasz_pl 10y ago
  TLDR: Women author knows dont like actual gameplay part of games, they like narratives. She cant come up with narrative driven games therefore all 'Games Are Boring'. What about Telltale? Life is Strange?
• quickConclusion 10y ago
  Addiction. My main gripe with video games is that they're addictive. Boring or not, they push you to play another 5, 10, 60 minutes... before you know it, you ruined your evening, and wasted your time and the next day at work... Kudos to the artists, developers, psychologists who can build that. And probably I am weak. At the end of the day, they are very successful in making me addicted, that's why i am staying away, that's why I am not a gamer.
  • angrydev 10y ago
    I don't think you're weak at all. They do build the games to be super stimulating and addicting. They build reward models into the games that help you form the habit of playing every day for a small reward. Then eventually you're logging in every day to play for something you don't care at all about. Once you realize that, you're free.
  • jimjimjim 10y ago
    A simple idea is to remove their incentive to make it addictive: Never buy anything that has in-app-purchases where for $ money you get something and for $$ money you get more something. If you see a screen that has $1.99 for 5 gold/gems/points/cards and $4.99 for 20 gold/gems/points/card then RUN!
  • jdietrich 10y ago
    A good book has exactly the same effect; the primary difference is that all books are finite. As a child, I would read books under the bedcovers by torchlight. I'd stay up all night playing chess against my little Saitek. Is Fallout 4 or Hearthstone an objectively worse use of time?
• nitwit005 10y ago
  Those "white men" (I guess Asian gaming isn't a thing?) are apparently doing a pretty good job appealing to women as some studies have suggested they're roughly half of the game playing demographic: http://www.dailydot.com/parsec/adult-women-largest-gaming-demographic/ http://www.dailydot.com/parsec/adult-women-largest-gaming-de... It may be correct that women want something different than men, but I don't think its true in the way they imagine. A lot of women seem to have enjoyed "The Sims", but many of them appear to have spent their time in-game torturing their hapless sims.
  • overgard 10y ago
    Maybe I'm cynical, but I tend to be skeptical of art that's more about a cause rather than about the art itself. I'll give an example: christian rock. I have no problem with christianity, or with rock, or with rock that is about christian themes or ideas. But I think we all know there's also a subgenre called "christian rock", which is generally a tacky, pretentious and overbearing imitation of the above things in the interest of furthering an agenda or crassly pandering. The problem with "christian rock" is it tends to be more about being "christian" than about being good rock music. You can have good rock music that is christian, but "christian rock" is almost always tacky. You see something similar recently with "art games" that are trying so hard to be "art" that they're pretentious and overbearing. The only good "art" games are the ones that ended up being interesting works of art by exploring an idea, not because they set out to be art games. I hate to say this, but I kind of worry this could just be the same thing, but instead it'll be "serious adult" games or "feminist games" or pick whatever social movement you want here. But it won't really be about the game, it'll be about the movements values.
    • vlunkr 10y ago
      Couldn't agree more. Minecraft comes to mind. I haven't personally played it a lot, but obviously there is some magic in that game that kids can't get enough of. And although it was certainly experimental in nature, it wasn't "artsy"
    • gohrt 10y ago
      Your entire first paragraph reads just as well without the word "Christian". One-word proof: Nickelback. I'm not even Christian, and I found myself enjoying an evangelical Christian rock CD as just good music, until I listened close enough to realize that I didn't agree with many of the lyrics. Your second paragraph is simply the No True Scotsman fallacy, or the "all gay men are flamboyant" observational-bias fallacy. You are just saying that you don't like things you don't like, and you don't notice the intention behind things you like.
• soyiuz 10y ago
  Did anybody else find the font distracting? The little connecting thing between "st" is too ostentatious, particularly when the site does not respect other typographical conventions, like the difference between n- and m- dashes. (See, for example, the parenthetical statement in the second sentence. It should use the m- rather than the n- dash usually reserved for hyphenated words.) Edit: On second viewing, the issue with strange "st" font artifacts was fixed when I enabled java-script.
  • bazzargh 10y ago
    I was going to reply, you don't seem to be seeing the font that's on the page. The font they're using is a renamed copy of Baskerville eText, and it doesn't have an 'st' ligature. It does have 'ff' and 'fi', you can see a sample here: http://myfonts.us/td-JZwQMI http://myfonts.us/td-JZwQMI The css for the page enables ligatures however, and falls back to the browser's own serif; so you were probably seeing the ligatures from your own default font. I'm guessing Adobe Caslon Pro, because it's widely available and has a very distinct loop ligature for 'st'. http://myfonts.us/td-C4VrUX http://myfonts.us/td-C4VrUX
• jarjoura 10y ago
  The most engrossing game I've played is The Last of Us on the PlayStation. Wow, it was literally the only time in my life that I stayed up into the early hours to get as far I could. So much depth and nuance in every chapter to build out a universe that definitely showed it took Naughty Dog years to develop.
• BuckRogers 10y ago
  Interesting article, but games for me since the 90s ended have been huge letdowns. I started gaming in '86 on a Commodore and a bit before with an Atari 2600. The 90s were the peak of creativity. The 80s a bit limited technologically, though the arcades at their peak were a sight to behold. In the last 16 years, I only found a handful of games that really got me interested. Left 4 Dead and League of Legends (I did have TFT and tried DOTA but didn't play long enough to get hooked). But it seemed in the 90s, both PCs and consoles were putting out their best stuff. I still look at the old Sega Genesis games and early 90s PC titles as some of the best the industry ever put out. As a result, I just bought a new PC and decided to not even bother with a high end gaming machine. I'm using a Skull Canyon NUC, first time in 30 years I wasn't concerned with meeting current specs in the latest AAA games. We're going on two decades of rehashing 90s ideas and I'm done. I will be buying a Nintendo Switch though. The social gaming aspect of Mario Kart is still magic for me but there is no other entity out there with Nintendo's polish, charm or fun. I think it's an open secret that 3rd party publishers often run from Nintendo systems not due to API lock-in but because they simply cannot compete with Nintendo 1st party titles. Oh, and my username is actually a homage to the Buck Rogers Gold Box titles from the early 90s. I never got into the D&D stuff but played the heck out of the two Buck Rogers releases.
• shmerl 10y ago
  > The most important thing is that they think video games lack depth. They say things like, "Unlike books/films/podcasts, with video games I don't learn anything or change as a person". Which is somewhat surprising, since as with any art form, there are games which are masterpieces, and there is mass market junk. Why would people specifically not like games "because they lack depth", but have no problem reading books or watching films, while the vast majority of them are drowning in the sea of mediocrity as well? I suppose it comes from the general lack of perception about games as an art form. While established art exists for many years, computer games are relatively young art, and I suppose you can compare it to the negative view on cinema by some in its early days. > Skyrim has the depth, but not the taste. I wouldn't agree here. While Skyrim draws many with its exploration element, I'd say it lacks depth if you compare it to really good RPGs. It's not on par with Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Knights of the Old Republic, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines or the Witcher series. The story in later Bethesda games is pretty generic and outright boring. I'd say the last good game in the series was Morrowind. Going back to the art point above, it's the result of mass market appeal. Publishers don't want risky things which can become masterpieces. "Safe bet" of mass market mediocrity is more comfortable for them. Luckily, crowdfunding today helps with that to some degree.
  • dr_zoidberg 10y ago
    > I'd say the last good game in the series was Morrowind. Which why people still play it, and there was even work in bringing Morrowing to the Skyrim engine[0]. [0] https://tesrenewal.com/skywind-faq https://tesrenewal.com/skywind-faq
    • shmerl 10y ago
      I'm more interested in OpenMW personally: https://openmw.org https://openmw.org
    • leggomylibro 10y ago
      It also has an open-source re-implementation of the engine in the works which is currently playable, and a graphical enhancement program which adds distant land to the game along with some nice optional shader effects like sunrays, depth of field, better water, etc. Also, there's a mod similar to Skywind for the Oblivion version of the engine. Plus there are some enormous mods such as Tamriel Rebuilt, which aims to add the entire province of Vvardenfell, and Skyrim: Home of the Nords, which aims to depict Skyrim during the game's time period. The amount of content that has been made for that game, even beyond normal mods, is kind of staggering.
• jprzybyl 10y ago
  From the Tao of Programming: A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me," he said, "may I examine it?" The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. "I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard," said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human." "Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this mysterious setting?" The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened. I've played video games since before I could walk. Some games I connect with and can't stop playing - Undertale and Papers Please come to mind. Most don't anymore, not even an old favorite like Doom. I feel like there's something to this article, but I think it's larger than "I don't like Game of Thrones". There is room for games that really dig into humanity, rather than being meaningless mechanics. I mean, I like sports. But I like books, too.
  • shmerl 10y ago
    I didn't play Undertale yet, but soundtrack there sounds pretty good: https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/track/bonetrousle https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/track/bonetrousle
    • jprzybyl 10y ago
      It is indeed good! (I actually have the soundtrack on my phone.) But I suggest playing the game and letting the soundtrack surprise you. It really is worth a play.
      • shmerl 10y ago
        Yeah, I usually avoid listening to the soundtrack before playing some game, but I've heard Bonetrousle somewhere, and couldn't resist buying the whole OST on Bandcamp :) The game sounds somewhat controversial with some liking it a lot, while others quite disliking it. I might give it a try at one point.
• andrewclunn 10y ago
  You know, I might not think the same way that other white men do, so kindly take your sexist racism and shove it.
• TrevorJ 10y ago
  I agree with the general thesis of the article, but I don't buy the cop out that things are the way they are because the creatives in the industry are white men. That wouldn't be an acceptable thing to say about (insert any other gender/race combination here) so I don't think it's an acceptable excuse or reason here either. It's clear that the industry sorely needs some new thinking and new creative ideas, but I believe those new ideas can come from anyone, regardless of gender or race.
  • eridius 10y ago
    The fact that the video game industry is dominated by white men is a bad thing. But you're saying that pointing that out is bad, and that seems completely backwards to me. If you don't acknowledge the current reality, things will never get better.
    • hyperdunc 10y ago
      The culture of video games, particular the working environment, is largely influenced by the people who created the industry: white and Asian men. This isn't a problem because there is no discrimination against ideas coming from other demographics. Anyone who likes video games and wants to make it their career is free to do so, but shouldn't expect to be able to strong-arm others into their way of thinking.
• vlunkr 10y ago
  I disagree with the notion that because life is hard video games should be easy. I think lots of people vent frustrations through video games, and get a sense of accomplishment when they do hard things. It's one hard thing in life you can get really good at. And it doesn't mean the game has to attack you. The game Fez comes to mind. Nothing in the game can harm you, but there are tough puzzles.
• jdietrich 10y ago
  I think we need to distinguish between video games as "multimedia entertainment experiences" and video games as play. Minecraft is essentially computerised Lego. There are few higher accolades I could pay to any game, because Lego is a phenomenally deep plaything. The more semantic meaning that the designer of a Lego set provides, the worse the play experience becomes. A bag of plain bricks can become anything, but a dragon molded as a single piece can only ever be a dragon. Likewise with Minecraft - Story Mode is a brief, dreary and hollow experience compared to Survival or Creative. Each football match or chess game tells a unique story. The players create a spontaneous drama using the particular interplay of their skills and ideas. Infinite variety emerges from a leather ball and two sets of goalposts. A box of crayons and a piece of paper are in themselves meaningless, but create boundless meaning in the hands of an imaginative person. My gripe with most modern games is that they try too hard to tell a story. Designers in the AAA and indie space are often preoccupied with emulating the attributes of other media, rather than exploring the unique possibilities of video games. Any modern gamer is familiar with the "movie with quick-time events" trope, games that shoehorn meaningless interaction into linear storytelling. A game can (and perhaps should) be a blank canvas rather than a work of art. If you can't find meaning in a boxing match, if you can't grow and learn through playing Catan, if you take no joy from a lump of modelling clay, then the problem lies with you. We have many media that are infinitely better suited to depicting relatable characters and portraying the real world. The unique strength of games is play; games are at their best when they emphasise this core strength.
  • shmerl 10y ago
    > My gripe with most modern games is that they try too hard to tell a story. Designers in the AAA and indie space are often preoccupied with emulating the attributes of other media, rather than exploring the unique possibilities of video games. Any modern gamer is familiar with the "movie with quick-time events" trope, games that shoehorn meaningless interaction into linear storytelling. The common problem is not with "trying to tell the story", the problem is usually as you said with its linearity. Making a reactive story with meaningful consequences to choices is hard and time consuming. > A game can (and perhaps should) be a blank canvas rather than a work of art. It should be a work of art which allows player to participate in a meaningful way. Compare it to a form of art where actor plays a role, but the play isn't set in stone, and you are that actor. Roleplaying however is just one type of gaming activity. There can be other types of games, more focused on exploration for instance, puzzle solving or simulation and etc. While quite different categories, they all can be enjoyable computer games. Some tend to be more sport, than art.
• phs318u 10y ago
  This may not be a hugely valuable contribution to the discussion, nevertheless ... A. Game value is in the eye of the beholder. B. What takes my eye changes over long and short terms (as a function of spare time available, economic circumstance, hardware at hand, effort/reward ratio, but mostly the ever-intangible "what takes my fancy at this point in time" - a reflection of my personal psychology that also changes over time). C. At best you can please some of the people some of the time. I'll admit that I'm of an age where I lost the capacity to devote bunch-of-hours-per-day to gaming just as MUDs were becoming really popular. I think as a result I never really got into massively multi-player gaming. I've played Diablo III - but single player. My favourite games of all time include (in no particular order): - Moon Cresta (table-top) - The Hobbit (C64, cassette) - Nethack (VAX VMS) - Impossible Mission (C64) - Balance of Power (C64) - Bards Tale I (C64) - Dune (Amiga) - Elite (Amiga) - Nethack (PC) - Need for Speed: Most Wanted (original) (Mac, via Wine) - Diablo III (Mac) - Nethack (Mac) - Backgammon (iOS - at least 10K games played on this sucker! I had to delete it!) - Nethack (iOS) Lately, I've been really getting into Really Bad Chess (iOS). Was never a chess player but it's is a clever wrinkle on this (for me) very boring (i.e. too hard) game.
• terribly_mane 10y ago
  i really like this guys thoughts on looking at the fundamentals of video games and disectining what they really are. there are a lot of good points. but jesus christ this guy is so brainwashed with liberal politics i can barely read the damn thing. "Few women, for example, are going to play a video game with terrible portrayals of women. They say things like 'they insult me/my demographic.'" so oblivion was popular with mostly men because it depicted females terribly? show me one example. perfect dark was popular mostly among men because it depicted women terribly? skyrim didnt have enough strong nord women? morrowind was filled with female tropes? skinny dunmer in slutty g strings in every town? there is one strip club in vivec, yes. but i dont think women bought the game and then returned it because they found out about the strip club. yeah, there are some games like dead or alive or street fighter that have women who are well endowed. but you dont see people saying that women dont watch movies because every female actor in every movie ever is well endowed, and they are. or because most heroes are men. thats ridiculous. believe me, im more of a feminist than most people. well endowed women in movies and video games, posters and bill boards, are poison in our society. this focus and obsession with perfect looks and thin figures creates a very unhealthy environment for little girls growing up. comparing yourself and rating yourself all the time must have a terrible impact on girls. and there are numerous other ways in which society fucks over females. but while i am a feminist, i am also allergic to bullshit. perhaps the worst combination ever in this day and age. and people bringing down the whole video game industry and saying that women dont play games because of sexist representations of women is pretty much bullshit. its like anita sarkisian saying that hitman was a game about murdering women. its a topic that attracts a lot of bullshit. on an unrelated note: how could this female friend of his enjoy bonding with her female companion when she doesnt like swords or fighting or anything like that? what did she do? sit around clicking on the same conversation options over and over again? she must have, at some point, enjoyed going on quests with her and fighting with her. so if you take out the fighting, you just get a movie where you go along, discover more of the plot slowly and maybe talk to your companion about things. in other words a thinly veiled movie.
• exodust 10y ago
  For those who don't like typical games, you might enjoy theme park builders, city builders or simulators. They have gaming elements, but are mainly about designing and using your imagination and skill with the tools provided. I'm currently enjoying Planet Coaster. If I had kids I would be granting them more "screen time" if they played these applications rather than shooters. For younger kids, titles such as Minecraft fall into this category too. Having something to show after countless hours of playing is always better than not having anything to show. That said, who isn't guilty of sinking hundreds of hours into nothing more than thrills and rank in some action/sport game.