4 ms·

The part about not being able to just jump into games really spoke to me. It had been a while since I picked up a new game, but my wife got a switch and over C

The part about not being able to just jump into games really spoke to me. It had been a while since I picked up a new game, but my wife got a switch and over Christmas I was playing some new games. I got super frustrated clicking through to get to the "good part" of actually playing. I just wanted to play! Maybe that was because my first games were all Atari games. But my kids felt the same way. They were 4 and 7 at the time, and they just wanted to play too and didn't want all the intro crap either.

magpi3 4y ago
Agreed. Contra is my go to when I think of this experience. Just dropped into a war zone and you start shooting. No explanation necessary.
princeb 4y ago
w.r.t the "good part", there is a difference between games as toys and games as a story. a lot of games today are "story games", even if there isn't a fixed story, there is some progression and different parts of the game open up at different times and result in different emergent gameplay. even something sandbox, toy-like like cities skyline and minecraft has a progression. i am reminded of gta V, which i thought had a really good story, where the game jumps you into a bank heist in the first scene of the game, it was a huge scenario with lots of set pieces, a lot of mechanics are introduced right away, it's pretty intense, and thwarts the RPG baby-crab-killing trope, thank goodness. games as toys, like pong i guess, where you begin the game immediately having access to every single feature of the game, still exist - apex legends, cs go, rocket league. but you still won't be able to jump into it at a decent competitive level right away. in most popular competitive FPS games, you will be rocked for a good first 20-50 hours of gameplay until you build understanding. w.r.t to what nolan means when he has to go through an hour of things before he can start playing the real game, sadly that's a historical era. games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away. a lot of games today need some amount of practice, whether 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 months.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  >games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away That's demonstrably false! Have you never picked up and played a game part-way through with a friend?
  - princeb 4y ago
    > Have you never picked up and played a game part-way through with a friend? never games that i'm not familiar with. it seems downright unfair to the person who is half-way through it. i have seen my friends who've mostly played J-RPGs try to jump into a coop Gears of War at a party and it wasn't good at all, in fact, it was extremely embarrassing.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    >That's demonstrably false! Can you demonstrate it? Games that are accessible to the average non-video-game-player to just jump in and play are the exception rather than the rule. Fall Guys, maybe Mario Kart? What else?
    - comex 4y ago
      Wii Sports (or now Nintendo Switch Sports) is a big one.
- jasonkester 4y ago
  I felt the opposite way about gta v. I wanted to jump right into exploring the city and driving cars around, but instead it threw you into this scene full of terrible characters and forced you to murder a bunch of people. There is literally no way to start playing the game until you prove you know the shooting mechanic by executing a dozen police officers. I’m normally fine with violent games, and I had a blast with Vice City and San Andreas, but this intro was so awful that I just put the game down and didn’t come back.
  - 4y ago
AussieWog93 4y ago
I'm the same. May be biased, as I sell retro games for a living, but I really miss the era where you could just chuck in the disc/cart and play. PlayStation and Xbox are even worse in this regard. Not only do you have the long intro, but a solid half-hour of installation and patching before you can even launch the game!
- dtagames 4y ago
  Indeed. The first experience of getting a new game on Xbox is always updating it. Sometimes it takes hours! Where is the fun in that? They need a better system for updates.
raldi 4y ago
On the flipside, my formative video game experiences involved reading the instruction booklet to a new NES game, cover to cover, while being driven home from Toys R Us. They were essential to knowing how to play and appreciating the storyline. The Atari 2600 was no different: You needed the manual to know what the weird symbols onscreen meant, or what the switch settings would do for that particular game. Of course, things were different in arcades.
panick21_ 4y ago
Depends on the game. If you pick up a strategy game you can just jump in just fine. If you want to play Counter-Strike, just start up, join server and start shooting.
kderbyma 4y ago
same. as I get older....I want story...but not at the beginning...and I don't want a tutorial. I want gameplay...with cutscenes like breaks...the cutscenes should be skippable and pausable. as for Multiplayer....Less loading screens, lobbies and loot crates.....and maybe just maybe there is hope.

magpi3 4y ago

Agreed. Contra is my go to when I think of this experience. Just dropped into a war zone and you start shooting. No explanation necessary.

princeb 4y ago

w.r.t the "good part", there is a difference between games as toys and games as a story. a lot of games today are "story games", even if there isn't a fixed story, there is some progression and different parts of the game open up at different times and result in different emergent gameplay. even something sandbox, toy-like like cities skyline and minecraft has a progression. i am reminded of gta V, which i thought had a really good story, where the game jumps you into a bank heist in the first scene of the game, it was a huge scenario with lots of set pieces, a lot of mechanics are introduced right away, it's pretty intense, and thwarts the RPG baby-crab-killing trope, thank goodness. games as toys, like pong i guess, where you begin the game immediately having access to every single feature of the game, still exist - apex legends, cs go, rocket league. but you still won't be able to jump into it at a decent competitive level right away. in most popular competitive FPS games, you will be rocked for a good first 20-50 hours of gameplay until you build understanding. w.r.t to what nolan means when he has to go through an hour of things before he can start playing the real game, sadly that's a historical era. games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away. a lot of games today need some amount of practice, whether 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 months.

AussieWog93 4y ago
>games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away That's demonstrably false! Have you never picked up and played a game part-way through with a friend?
- princeb 4y ago
  > Have you never picked up and played a game part-way through with a friend? never games that i'm not familiar with. it seems downright unfair to the person who is half-way through it. i have seen my friends who've mostly played J-RPGs try to jump into a coop Gears of War at a party and it wasn't good at all, in fact, it was extremely embarrassing.
- paulcole 4y ago
  >That's demonstrably false! Can you demonstrate it? Games that are accessible to the average non-video-game-player to just jump in and play are the exception rather than the rule. Fall Guys, maybe Mario Kart? What else?
  - comex 4y ago
    Wii Sports (or now Nintendo Switch Sports) is a big one.
jasonkester 4y ago
I felt the opposite way about gta v. I wanted to jump right into exploring the city and driving cars around, but instead it threw you into this scene full of terrible characters and forced you to murder a bunch of people. There is literally no way to start playing the game until you prove you know the shooting mechanic by executing a dozen police officers. I’m normally fine with violent games, and I had a blast with Vice City and San Andreas, but this intro was so awful that I just put the game down and didn’t come back.
- 4y ago

AussieWog93 4y ago

I'm the same. May be biased, as I sell retro games for a living, but I really miss the era where you could just chuck in the disc/cart and play. PlayStation and Xbox are even worse in this regard. Not only do you have the long intro, but a solid half-hour of installation and patching before you can even launch the game!

dtagames 4y ago
Indeed. The first experience of getting a new game on Xbox is always updating it. Sometimes it takes hours! Where is the fun in that? They need a better system for updates.

raldi 4y ago

On the flipside, my formative video game experiences involved reading the instruction booklet to a new NES game, cover to cover, while being driven home from Toys R Us. They were essential to knowing how to play and appreciating the storyline. The Atari 2600 was no different: You needed the manual to know what the weird symbols onscreen meant, or what the switch settings would do for that particular game. Of course, things were different in arcades.

panick21_ 4y ago

Depends on the game. If you pick up a strategy game you can just jump in just fine. If you want to play Counter-Strike, just start up, join server and start shooting.

kderbyma 4y ago

same. as I get older....I want story...but not at the beginning...and I don't want a tutorial. I want gameplay...with cutscenes like breaks...the cutscenes should be skippable and pausable. as for Multiplayer....Less loading screens, lobbies and loot crates.....and maybe just maybe there is hope.