Gaming Lazy Gaming?

[kenshinsbabe]

[B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="2"][COLOR="DarkGreen"]I'm sure most people here are veteran gamers who've suffered through the horrible frustration of the hardest levels and challenges in every game they play. So how does this make you feel?

[URL="http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/innovative-nintendo-game-help-system-to-debut-this-year/1326709"]Click Me![/URL]

I already commented on this in the comments under the story, so I'll just repost what I put there. That pretty much sums up my feelings about it.

I think this seems incredibly lazy.

The difference between people who call themselves gamers and people who play games is that gamers face all the challenges. They go through the hardest, most frustrating levels in the games themselves and, yes, oftentimes fight the urge to throw something across the room. But it makes the experience of reaching the end of the game that much more rewarding.It's like a marathon runner making it to the Olympics, but letting other people run parts of his race. Yeah, maybe he'll win, but the medal won't feel as good around his neck as if he had won it himself.

But I suppose you won't be required to use the technology. It's just there as an option. I still feel like it will cheapen the game experience though.

So what do you think?[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B]

[Horendithas]

[FONT="Arial"][COLOR="Indigo"][quote name='kenshinsbabe][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="2"][COLOR="DarkGreen"]But I suppose you won't be required to use the technology. It's just there as an option.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/QUOTE]Bingo, so it's not like you actually have to use it.[QUOTE=kenshinsbabe][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="2"][COLOR="DarkGreen"] I still feel like it will cheapen the game experience though.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT'][/B][/quote]How? The only one who can possibly [I]cheapen[/I] it is the person who uses it and even then, not everyone is going to agree. I can easily see something like this making gaming more accessible to say people with physical handicaps like arthritis. Since I know some who avoid a huge percentage of games since those [I]difficult moments[/I] often are beyond them physically. And I do mean that quite literally. As my aunt who has Rheumatoid arthritis puts it, it's too damn painful and takes the fun out of the game.

So you could say it cheapens it, but I'm more inclined to think it's a smart move that opens up the playing field to even more people who enjoy games but got sick of either getting stuck, or being unable to do it.

Bottom line, I could care less if they include it. Won't affect my game playing at all.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[Gavin]

[SIZE="1"]Guess VGCats Aeris is going to have an aneurysm when she hears about this, if the last strip was anything to go by.[/SIZE]

[quote name='Indi'][FONT="Arial"][COLOR="Indigo"]Bottom line, I could care less if they include it. Won't affect my game playing at all.[/COLOR][/FONT][/QUOTE]

[SIZE="1"]QFT.[/SIZE]

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"]From a business standpoint, it's a smart move to see if you can lure in more customers with features that would appeal to them. It doesn't cheapen the game or experience when you can decide for yourself if you'll use it or not.[COLOR="Indigo"] Indi[/COLOR] already pointed out how there is a target group that such a feature would appeal to.[quote name='Indi][FONT="Arial"][COLOR="Indigo"]Bottom line, I could care less if they include it. Won't affect my game playing at all.[/COLOR'][/FONT][/quote]This. I can use it, or I can simply ignore it. How I play a game is up to me and that's how it really should be. If I don't want excessively difficult parts, that's ultimately my choice, not other gamers who think it should only be the other way. That's about as narrow minded as thinking there should only be action or only rpg styled games. The more choices the better in my opinion. [/FONT]

[Korey]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]The Nintendo Wii wasn't enough of an indicator for the shift to more casual gaming?[/FONT]

[kenshinsbabe]

[FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="2"][COLOR="DarkGreen"][B]What I meant with my schpeal is yeah, maybe you don't have to use it, but those that do will be cheapening the game experience for themselves. I feel like letting the game play the hard parts for you will rob people of the sense of accomplishment you get when you finally make it to the end of a game.

I'm guessing a more casual gamer wouldn't feel as strongly about it as I would simply because they've never made it past those hard parts. I've had to return and return and return to the same part of a game and I felt that rush you get when you finally make it through. But I guess if someone would use that technology, they would have just put down the controller and left it at that part of the game anyway.[/B][/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[Nony]

Ultimately, games are about having fun. If the game is so hard that people aren't having fun anymore, well... yeah, kinda pointless.
Therefore, I don't see anything wrong with this option. If it gets people to have fun with the game again, I'm all for it.

[Rachmaninoff]

I think it's a great idea actually. No one is going to force the gamers to use it. So there's no reason why those who would, should be denied the option just because others think it's cheap.

[The Spectacular Professor]

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]This isn't fair. I've spent the last ten years of my life gathering rings, dealing with 2-hit limits, slaying the dragon and in general working my back off to achieve 100% completion and now Nintendo lets me skip it all? PEOPLE MUST SUFFER AS I HAVE.

Actually, no. That is Naruto logic and I will shoot myself before adhering to it.

Real opinion: Sure, why not. It's none of my business if people want to skip the challenge and go straight to the reward. For me, the fun is in the journey, but some people just want to see the ending, and I'm fine with that. All it means is I'll have another option I don't plan to use on most games.

Though this does gain one possible benefit for less casual gamers. You know how there's always that one level that absolutely no one likes or that one cave that's absolutely full of Zubats or whatever?

Yeah, skipping that after the first playthrough is pretty much something I've always wanted to do.[/FONT]

[Rachmaninoff]

[QUOTE=Ace][FONT="Comic Sans MS"]Though this does gain one possible benefit for less casual gamers. You know how there's always that one level that absolutely no one likes or that one cave that's absolutely full of Zubats or whatever?

Yeah, skipping that after the first playthrough is pretty much something I've always wanted to do.[/FONT][/QUOTE]Haha, agreed. Most of the time I prefer to do it myself, but I know I'd be tempted to skip certain spots on a replay.

[silpheedpilot]

[quote name='Miss Anonymous']Ultimately, games are about having fun. If the game is so hard that people aren't having fun anymore, well... yeah, kinda pointless.
Therefore, I don't see anything wrong with this option. If it gets people to have fun with the game again, I'm all for it.[/QUOTE]

[SIZE="1"][COLOR="SlateGray"]This.

While 'gamers', as much as I hate that label, will dislike that feature and look down on those who use it, I feel it's a great idea. It's an amazing marketing tool and it'll make videogames more accessible than ever.

I have a friend who constantly plays games on easy so he doesn't have to struggle through the game, therefore he has more fun.

I'll admit, I dislike struggling. If there were certain parts that I could just watch myself through, I'd do it too.

How about sneaking sections, for all you 'gamers'?

Sometimes videogames aren't about the highest score, the fastest time, who beat it on the hardest difficulty, who has gone prestige the most, or anything like that. It's completely alright just to have fun.[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[John]

It's just a weird idea, and I think it could lead to not just lazy gamers, but lazy developers too. If a game is too difficult, a player should find one that fits their skill level. If there's simply a difficulty spike in one area of a game that's otherwise not so bad, then that's bad game design and we [I]shouldn't be encouraging it with Cop-Out Mode[/I].

I don't buy the "you don't have to use it if you don't want to" argument either. If an overpowered or otherwise broken feature is included in a game, people will use it anyway because we have an instinct to use what the developers give us, it just flat-out feels wrong if we don't (more wrong than if we do use it, that is), and we feel we shouldn't have to bear the burden of playing the game the way the developers [I]should[/I] have made it. A case in point is that a friend of mine plays Oblivion and Fallout 3. He hates the fast travel feature of the games, and says it sucks the life out of the exploration. He could just walk everywhere and ignore the fast travel, but that sparks a conflict between the part of him that wants to take the logical, efficient path to his destination and the part of him that yearns for the game to [I]make[/I] him walk, to [I]make[/I] him do something that he knows he'll be rewarded for in the end (they call that concept a "challenge", kids).

This new "demo mode" thing is similar to the fast travel in that example. It's not as heavily encouraged, but the fact that it's there is an insult to good game design. And even though I know I probably wouldn't have much of a problem ignoring it, the fact that it's available is the sort of thing that nags at the back of your mind--it's the solution to a challenge, but it's not the solution you want, so you have to ignore it and [I]pretend[/I] you're being challenged when you know there's an easier, crappier way past.

It isn't helping more casual players either, because it encourages them to either play games out of their league or skip sections that are out of their league. And all of the gameplay--all of the [I]challenge[/I]--that's getting skipped isn't replaced by anything. It's just less game, and I guarantee you a less fulfilling experience.

Some sort of dynamic difficulty level would be a much more fitting solution to this "problem" of difficulty; something that senses when a player is doing poorly or too well and adjusts the game variables in response. But even that's not a really good idea because it would take difficulty control (very significant to game enjoyment) out of the hands of the developers. The best thing is to simply encourage good game design so problems like this don't come up in the first place.

EDIT: Silpheed talked about difficulty while I was posting. Just to be clear, I think it's totally cool for games to include and players to use different difficulty levels in a game. I usually play on a game's Normal mode myself. That stuff requires developers to think about a player's needs according to their skills and adjust the gameplay accordingly. It isn't the same as making the player trim all the fat that the devs weren't competent enough to fix themselves.

[Korey]

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"]Well, I would have thought that difficulty settings on games would have been enough to cater to gamers of all skill types. But, to be honest, people are going to play games as they wish. I like playing specific types of games. But I like playing against other humans in them. I like failure in video games. It inspires me to be better.

Funny anecdote warning:

I have a Ninja Turtles game for the Original Game Boy. I had never beat the game in my life, because I thought it was the hardest thing on the planet. For some reason, I could never get past a certain point and if I did, it was a fluke and I wouldn't ever get there again. I came back to the game after years and years of not playing it and I beat it in one attempt, only dying twice. So it's funny how a game can seem difficult to you at first and then you come back to it and you wonder how in the world you thought this game was hard.[/FONT]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]I think a lot of people who argue against this feature are missing one key point that tends to get skimmed over or, as in the case of the article linked in the first post, completely ignored. Unless things have changed from the [url=http://kotaku.com/5127251/nintendo-kind-code-patent-reveals-potential-paradigm-shift-in-design][u]original patent[/u][/url] that Nintendo filed, [b]you won't be able to save your progress if you let the game play past an area for you.[/b] So you can see how something is done and you can play parts after where you're stuck, but unless you do it yourself you still won't be able to progress on your own save file. Because of that, it's not all that different from looking up a walkthrough online.

Personally, I find the argument that using such a feature cheapens the experience of the game and that it shouldn't exist to be a bit elitist. It's basically the same as saying easy difficulty levels shouldn't exist, or that people shouldn't be allowed to look up any help in walkthroughs, because it's not a challenge.

I do agree with John that this shouldn't be used as a substitute for proper difficulty balancing, though. This feature should be something to help out people at the low end of the skill level, not an excuse to make stupidly difficult and frustrating areas.[/color]

[chibi-master]

[quote name='Ace'][FONT="Comic Sans MS"]This isn't fair. I've spent the last ten years of my life gathering rings, dealing with 2-hit limits, slaying the dragon and in general working my back off to achieve 100% completion and now Nintendo lets me skip it all? PEOPLE MUST SUFFER AS I HAVE.[/FONT][/QUOTE]

Actually, these are my feelings, more or less. But that's mostly because I'm a b****.

[Nathan]

[FONT="Arial"]So based on what Desbreko just said, it sounds like a more interactive version of a walk through instead of a real bypass. Either way, if it makes the game experience more fun and accessible to people, I'm all for it. And I would say that even if it really did let you skip it and save the file. Because if a game's not fun anymore, you just put it down and don't bother to play it again anyway.[/FONT]

[John]

Reading articles is for squares, the cool kids all write uninformed posts. :bdance:

[SunfallE]

[FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][COLOR="RoyalBlue"]John, start reading the articles then cause you're cool enough as it is. =P

Anyway, I'm not even sure why people are objecting. I don't see the harm in something like this. And since most of what I would have said, has been, I'll leave it at that.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[HopscotchEyelid]

The idea has no personal effect on me, but I can see parents and young children loving it. That's never a bad thing, the only thing is, like technology has done since it was first thought of, it makes people more dependent on it, and less dependent on their own mind. That sounds bad but the same is true with the body, whenever anybody wants to workout or train or whatever, the first thing they think of is, fitness program, or, bowflex. Even kids argue about who can bench press more.

I'm not opposed to the idea of this new technolgy for other people, but I will never even consider it. It's good for people who play games as a way of just enjoying a little spare time or whatever. It's a rather important part of my life.

Even though I'm not a big fan of technology and industrialization, or business life, without it, I wouldn't have the intense, heavy music, the awesome anime, the video games, or any other key part of my life. But I would rather be killed than let a machine do everything for me. I don't even like humans doing things for me.

[Nerdsy]

[quote name='kenshinsbabe'][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="2"][COLOR="DarkGreen"]The difference between people who call themselves gamers and people who play games is that gamers face all the challenges. They go through the hardest, most frustrating levels in the games themselves and, yes, oftentimes fight the urge to throw something across the room. But it makes the experience of reaching the end of the game that much more rewarding.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/QUOTE]

[color=deeppink]This is incredibly snobby.

I'll provide a couple counter example: Gabrial of Penny Arcade. It would take an enormous stretch of the imagination for someone to say that he isn't a gamer, right? Well, he hates games that beat him over the head with their difficulty.

[url]http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/12/03/[/url]


Another counter example: Metroid Prime 2. I loved Metroid Prime. I should have loved Metroid Prime 2, right?

I didn't. I was massively dissapointed, mainly due to the fact that they severely nerfed the help system, which I found to be extremely handy. As a result, I spent a great deal of that game lost, blindly wandering from room to room without the slightest idea where I should be going.

This, more than anything, is what cheapened that experience for me. When I finally beat the game, I didn't feel any great sense of reward for succesfully navigating that labyrinth; all I felt was relief for not having to do it anymore. It just wasn't enjoyable.

I've got plenty of examples were ridiculous difficulty ruined a game for me.[/color]


[quote name='Indi']How? The only one who can possibly cheapen it is the person who uses it and even then, not everyone is going to agree. [/quote]

[color=deeppink]Ehh. Develepers could very easily cheapen a game by putting in sub-par features. Of course, I'm not arguing subjectivity of it, but players should not be held solely responsible for such a thing.[/color]

[Horendithas]

[FONT="Arial"][COLOR="Indigo"][quote name='Nerdsy][color=deeppink']Ehh. Develepers could very easily cheapen a game by putting in sub-par features. Of course, I'm not arguing subjectivity of it, but players should not be held solely responsible for such a thing.[/color][/quote]Of course, I'm certainly not trying to imply that only the players can be responsible. Obviously it has to go both ways, though I don't really see anything cheap about someone choosing to use a feature like that anyway.

I would see it as cheap if the developers used it as an excuse to make stupidly hard games though. But that's been covered in here already.[/COLOR][/FONT]