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Video Games Are Boring

gamesindustry.biz

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Re: Video Games Are Boring

#71

Post by LeifCarrotson »

falcolas wrote: post #49
arkitaip wrote: post #8

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…

The sandbox style of game is your ticket to bliss then. Wandering through London in Assassin's Creed Unity. Climbing mountains in Skyrim. Traversing the landscape with a grapple/parachute in Just Cause. Plundering the high seas in Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Exploring Mordor in Shadows of Mordor. Driving through the city and countryside in Need for Speed. Flying the endless black in Elite Dangerous. There are freque…

This list is incomplete if you don't include Minecraft, the canonical sandbox game. Play in creative or in peaceful mode, and you don't have to do any fighting at all (though some resources are still best collected from mobs).

Other categories of nonviolent or non-FPS games would be puzzle games like Tetris or Candy Crush. Also, video games can reproduce or make single-player versions of the classic board, card, and dice games like chess or yahtzee.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#73

Post by mynameishere »

cooper12 wrote: post #25
psyc wrote: post #20

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

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 p…

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.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#74

Post by venomsnake »

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.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#75

Post by baldfat »

SixSigma wrote: post #4
baldfat wrote: post #2

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.

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…

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.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#76

Post by hood_syntax »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #43
arkitaip wrote: post #8

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…

Simple - don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles) because 99% of those is rehashed garbage and cliches Buy gamess from small studios, made by a few people or even one guy, usually a lot of them are in Steam Early Access (yes, it is risky, some of them get abandoned or just never improve much) For me this is like a reneissance in gaming. Have a look at Factorio, Starbound, Rimworld, Banished, Pillars of Etern…

> don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles)

Yep, that's a good rule to live by. There are a lot of great games out there if you put in the effort to look into them (and know where to look)

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#77

Post by Bartweiss »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #57
psyc wrote: post #20

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.

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.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#78

Post by dougmwne »

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.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#79

Post by jerf »

phpnode wrote: post #59
efvxcgci wrote: post #29

TLDR: The author has a cousin who doesn't like video game violence and white males ruin everything.

That's a grossly unfair mischaracterisation of the piece, did you actually read it?

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.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#80

Post by Vaskivo »

edem wrote: post #32
psyc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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.

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