4 ms·

I disagree strongly with the implication that there isn't already tremendous variety in games.

by psyc 10y ago

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.
- jerf 10y ago
  "Sure you'll find exceptions, but they're nowhere near the mainstream," It's important to be clear whether one is describing gaming as a whole, or "mainstream" gaming. Many criticisms of mainstream gaming don't apply to "gaming" as a whole, which includes things like a visual novel community, hidden object games, and the "walking simulators" that have almost no presence in the mainstream but definitely exist. They have almost no discoverability, being buried under games with advertising budgets an order of magnitude larger than what those games will make in revenue (let alone profit), but they exist. So when you say something like "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", it's easy for those who already have to perceive that as a bit of an insult. "We" may not be as encompassing as you or the original author think it is, and some people may resent being categorized into that "we".
- mynameishere 10y ago
  almost all centered around stuff like health and ammo I don't know about "almost all", but even if 90 percent of games indeed fit that description, the remaining 10 percent would take 100 lifetimes to consume. Really--if all you bought were the bi-weekly dollar bargains on humble bundle, you'd have all the gaming variety you could have time for. I suspect most of our complaining is for the sake of complaining.
- somestag 10y ago
  I certainly agree that we should be trying new things. Only good things can come of that. But I think it's very important to acknowledge that these "problems" with games are not born out of laziness, lack of creativity, or an inability to see outside the cultural in-group. Games boil everything down to easily countable abstractions, because games are, at their heart, nothing but systems of rules. Your health meter is an abstracted version of your physical well-being. Objectives are abstracted goal setting and cause-and-effect. Even if the game doesn't show you these numbers, it is still using them under the hood. What's the alternative? A deep, nuanced simulation? That'd be great, but it's well beyond the scope and means of the vast majority of developers. Why do so many games include death? Because it's the only universally accepted fail state. It is simply impossible for 99% of games to provide anything more meaningful than that, because doing so involves exponentially more complexity, storytelling, and asset development. The best most can do is just cover the death up with new coat of paint (a la Braid). Why have a fail state at all? Because the interactive nature of the medium loses a lot of its weight when your choices/actions don't seem to matter, and simulating anything other than simple failure is, once again, exponentially more difficult and expensive. It is tragic that there is a certain vocal group that rejects alternative types of games like Dear Esther. I won't apologize for them. However, the games that are "mainstream"—and the games that are not—are not selected by some game industry cabal. The easily consumed, easily understood games sell so much more than the niche stuff precisely because more people are interested in that kind of thing. Although the point of the article is that we need to think of different audiences (which is hard to disagree with), my main takeaway was that society is full of judgmental elitists who love to denigrate things they don't understand. In particular, the author's cousin seems like a very unpleasant person. Although the story of her encounter with Lydia is superficially touching, it's hardly a revelation, and we've all heard these stories before: friend/relative hates video games, finally plays one, is brought to emotional tears, yadda yadda. Finding a good game is roughly as difficult as finding a good book; the culture is not to blame for people's ignorance. (As an aside, the true tragedy is that the cousin's experience had a lot more to do with her ignorance than with Skyrim its. Avoiding video games for your entire life practically guarantees that you'll be blown away the first time you find one you like, because the game is still "magic" to you. The magic wears off very quickly, however, and after that the meaningful experiences are much more rare. If you continue playing games, you find yourself wanting more than just some scripted dialogue, and that's why games so frequently feature the challenges and spectacles that the author says turn the non-gamers away.)
talmand 10y ago
I agree with your disagreement. After playing games for roughly over thirty years, I can say without a doubt there are a greater variety of games available today than most of my years of my game playing combined. I would say the more likely issue is discovery.
- Vaskivo 10y ago
  What I don't understand is that the author IS a gamer. And a designer. She probably knows a lot about games. She can help her friends sift throught the sea of games and find some that appeal to them.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    I'm inclined to agree. The OP should have talked more with their friends to find out what kinds of experiences they wanted, before just blindly recommending their own favorite games. Of course, the piece also reads as an advertisement for their new gaming studio the OP is building, so I think that figured into the narrative as well.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
Take this for what you will, but one of the reasons I feel like I've become bored with games is that I've become bored of killing things. Yes, there are games that buck this trend, but I found myself struggling to justify buying a new console (or gaming PC) when this was predominant gameplay mechanic in most triple A titles. I only occasionally play games now, mostly Flash games.

I disagree strongly with the implication that there isn't already tremendous variety in games.

by psyc 10y ago

I disagree strongly with the implication that there isn't already tremendous variety in games.

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.

jerf 10y ago
"Sure you'll find exceptions, but they're nowhere near the mainstream," It's important to be clear whether one is describing gaming as a whole, or "mainstream" gaming. Many criticisms of mainstream gaming don't apply to "gaming" as a whole, which includes things like a visual novel community, hidden object games, and the "walking simulators" that have almost no presence in the mainstream but definitely exist. They have almost no discoverability, being buried under games with advertising budgets an order of magnitude larger than what those games will make in revenue (let alone profit), but they exist. So when you say something like "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", it's easy for those who already have to perceive that as a bit of an insult. "We" may not be as encompassing as you or the original author think it is, and some people may resent being categorized into that "we".
mynameishere 10y ago
almost all centered around stuff like health and ammo I don't know about "almost all", but even if 90 percent of games indeed fit that description, the remaining 10 percent would take 100 lifetimes to consume. Really--if all you bought were the bi-weekly dollar bargains on humble bundle, you'd have all the gaming variety you could have time for. I suspect most of our complaining is for the sake of complaining.
somestag 10y ago
I certainly agree that we should be trying new things. Only good things can come of that. But I think it's very important to acknowledge that these "problems" with games are not born out of laziness, lack of creativity, or an inability to see outside the cultural in-group. Games boil everything down to easily countable abstractions, because games are, at their heart, nothing but systems of rules. Your health meter is an abstracted version of your physical well-being. Objectives are abstracted goal setting and cause-and-effect. Even if the game doesn't show you these numbers, it is still using them under the hood. What's the alternative? A deep, nuanced simulation? That'd be great, but it's well beyond the scope and means of the vast majority of developers. Why do so many games include death? Because it's the only universally accepted fail state. It is simply impossible for 99% of games to provide anything more meaningful than that, because doing so involves exponentially more complexity, storytelling, and asset development. The best most can do is just cover the death up with new coat of paint (a la Braid). Why have a fail state at all? Because the interactive nature of the medium loses a lot of its weight when your choices/actions don't seem to matter, and simulating anything other than simple failure is, once again, exponentially more difficult and expensive. It is tragic that there is a certain vocal group that rejects alternative types of games like Dear Esther. I won't apologize for them. However, the games that are "mainstream"—and the games that are not—are not selected by some game industry cabal. The easily consumed, easily understood games sell so much more than the niche stuff precisely because more people are interested in that kind of thing. Although the point of the article is that we need to think of different audiences (which is hard to disagree with), my main takeaway was that society is full of judgmental elitists who love to denigrate things they don't understand. In particular, the author's cousin seems like a very unpleasant person. Although the story of her encounter with Lydia is superficially touching, it's hardly a revelation, and we've all heard these stories before: friend/relative hates video games, finally plays one, is brought to emotional tears, yadda yadda. Finding a good game is roughly as difficult as finding a good book; the culture is not to blame for people's ignorance. (As an aside, the true tragedy is that the cousin's experience had a lot more to do with her ignorance than with Skyrim its. Avoiding video games for your entire life practically guarantees that you'll be blown away the first time you find one you like, because the game is still "magic" to you. The magic wears off very quickly, however, and after that the meaningful experiences are much more rare. If you continue playing games, you find yourself wanting more than just some scripted dialogue, and that's why games so frequently feature the challenges and spectacles that the author says turn the non-gamers away.)

talmand 10y ago

I agree with your disagreement. After playing games for roughly over thirty years, I can say without a doubt there are a greater variety of games available today than most of my years of my game playing combined. I would say the more likely issue is discovery.

Vaskivo 10y ago
What I don't understand is that the author IS a gamer. And a designer. She probably knows a lot about games. She can help her friends sift throught the sea of games and find some that appeal to them.
- falcolas 10y ago
  I'm inclined to agree. The OP should have talked more with their friends to find out what kinds of experiences they wanted, before just blindly recommending their own favorite games. Of course, the piece also reads as an advertisement for their new gaming studio the OP is building, so I think that figured into the narrative as well.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

Take this for what you will, but one of the reasons I feel like I've become bored with games is that I've become bored of killing things. Yes, there are games that buck this trend, but I found myself struggling to justify buying a new console (or gaming PC) when this was predominant gameplay mechanic in most triple A titles. I only occasionally play games now, mostly Flash games.