Are modern gamers getting worse at video games?

[Wraith]

To be absolutely fair, there has to be some kind of audience out there that plays CoD and little else, because most other publishers have been trying to chase after the CoD money after the Modern Warfare series inexplicably became a megahit, and all of them have failed miserably, especially Capcom, who jumped right in and broke their neck. Unfortunately, after the first Modern Warfare, the series' single-player campaigns went all-out with style over substance to the point where they're derided as being about as stagnant as the New Super Mario Bros. games. Fratboys are mainly one big guess at best.

 

Still, I won't disparage you for enjoying CoD, that's your preference. I'd still say there's far better shooters out there, though.

 

I think it just comes down to Call of Duty covering a far wider audience than most games. The multiplayer helps loads with that.

 

The thing about the Call of Duty popularity that publishers don't understand is that people don't need another Call of Duty when they already have a Call of Duty. One that tosses out a game every year to boot. 

[Nepenthe]

To be absolutely fair, there has to be some kind of audience out there that plays CoD and little else, because most other publishers have been trying to chase after the CoD money after the Modern Warfare series inexplicably became a megahit, and all of them have failed miserably, especially Capcom, who jumped right in and broke their neck. Unfortunately, after the first Modern Warfare, the series' single-player campaigns went all-out with style over substance to the point where they're derided as being about as stagnant as the New Super Mario Bros. games. Fratboys are mainly one big guess at best.

 

Still, I won't disparage you for enjoying CoD, that's your preference. I'd still say there's far better shooters out there, though.

 

Call of Duty being as successful as it is doesn't hinge on the majority of its players only playing it and literally nothing else. It hinges on a lot of people simply buying the game regardless of the full extent of their buying habits. Of course there's a contingent of people who probably only play the game, but I wager that's the case for plenty of other big-name franchises and, without hard numbers, ideally should not be used as a stick to beat people over the head who enjoy the franchise and stereotype them.

 

And to me, the biggest reason that other franchises that have tried to be "Call of Duty killers" (or Halo Killers or Mario Killers or what-have-you) have not been as successful is because they are inevitably comparing themselves to Call of Duty, which is always going to be a fruitless endeavor because only Call of Duty can be the best Call of Duty. It's an uphill battle to supplant a work that's fulfilling a niche just fine, especially if your big idea is to simply jump headfirst into the same genre and aesthetics. This is not to say that other games aren't good either. I enjoy other shooters. At the same time, I know which one currently gives me the most enjoyment, which in turn lessens my desire to buy all of the other ones. I only have so much money at the end of the day.

[Remy]

Modern day young gamers have a different skillset from us, a different mindset from us, and less tolerance for obtuse bullshit because "omg when i press button he moves!" isn't amazing enough to keep you playing through the bullshit anymore. Not worse, just different.

 

I don't think it's that they don't have tolerance for bullshit, I think it's more they don't have tolerance for anything isn't a mindless trek down a forward line filled with endless gratification and reward and minimal obstacles. And it's not their fault either, it's the developer's that tend to churn out these games year after year because that shit motherfucking sells.

 

What I'm trying to get at is that if gamers are worse at videogames and they're not, if the kids whipping my ass at Dota 2/Starcraft 2 are any indication, the skilled player lives on in multiplayer gaming.

 

BUT if single-player gamers are getting worse at games, the only reason is because games, aren't made to have the same breadth of challenge or depth they used to.

 

Mechanics are dumbed down, served to you on a platter and explained to you clearly without any room for player experimentation, you don't need to figure out how to attack an enemy because a screen tells you to. Any moves or abilities you have have all their uses explained clearly.

 

I don't blame developers for doing this, really. The market is saturated, fucking saturated with good ass games. People buy and play more games now than any other time in history and making a opaque interesting game that demands player skill is just asking for players, and the general gaming media to get super fucking frustrated when they don't understand your game instantly and move the fuck on to play something easier to grasp that's fun straight away instead of fun after you the frame timings and where to stand so the stupid dumbass tornado picks you up.

 

Why wouldn't you want to have fun straight away, anyway? Call of duty multiplayer is fun. You pick it up quickly, there's nothing weird and obtuse like bunny hopping, rocket jumping, or whack hitboxes like old school CSS/Quake/etc. You see the guy, you shoot him. I don't even get why Call Of Duty gets so much flak anyway. I mean I might understand a quake guy or something lamenting the loss of his genre but it's not like the reason someone isn't making another Ghouls and Ghosts is because of Call Of Duty, it's because that shit would probably flop because no one is interested in it. 

 

Even the "hard" games are fucking easy. Something like Dark Souls, allegedly the great challenging game of our time has 

 

It also completely ignores the success of a lot of the indie games on the market today: you know, those face-smashingly difficult puzzlers and platformers like Hexagon and Super Meat Boy that we all download and love on so much. It's difficult to explain the success of those games in an environment that I'm supposed to believe is just brimming with nothing but horrible gamers.

I think the reason these games do so well is because although they're hard, they're not complex. Both Meat Boy and Super Hexagon, though occasionally brutally hard have relatively easy to understand rules and mechanics, with the difficulty coming from how you apply said rules to your environment and challenges the game throws at you. They're easy to play but hard to beat ??

[Nepenthe]

True that, but said easy-to-play-hard-to-master games are the embodiment of the 70s-early 90s video games people are supposedly fawning over, right? I mean, it didn't take a genius to figure out how to control your character in Contra, for example. xP

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Even the "hard" games are fucking easy. Something like Dark Souls, allegedly the great challenging game of our time has

Has what?

[Remy]

True that, but said easy-to-play-hard-to-master games are the embodiment of the 70s-early 90s video games people are supposedly fawning over, right? I mean, it didn't take a genius to figure out how to control your character in Contra, for example. xP

Exactly! so basically anyone implying todays gamers are bad because they can't play some arbitrary platformer thrown on them is full of shit. Maybe. 

 

Has what?

Has had the end of it's paragraph cut off completely by a quote! What I was going to say is that it has extremely simple mechanics. You hit, block, dodge, and roll. Even the bosses all have clear strategies, patterns and techniques to beating them that require little more than patience and paying attention. There's no complicated moves, maneuvers or properties to most of your moves. They do what they do, you just have to do stuff at the right time. 

 

Will, apart from like the Capra Demon the fucking asshole, Ornstein and Fuckhead and the Four Shits. 

[Candescence]

Has had the end of it's paragraph cut off completely by a quote! What I was going to say is that it has extremely simple mechanics. You hit, block, dodge, and roll. Even the bosses all have clear strategies, patterns and techniques to beating them that require little more than patience and paying attention. There's no complicated moves, maneuvers or properties to most of your moves. They do what they do, you just have to do stuff at the right time. 

 

Will, apart from like the Capra Demon the fucking asshole, Ornstein and Fuckhead and the Four Shits. 

Don't forget the bridge wyvren! That one's a complete crapshoot. Funnily enough, I found the Four Kings to be pretty easy, I just ran up and wacked each of them in the face till they died while blocking their attacks.

 

To be fair, Dark Souls isn't Devil May Cry, and isn't trying to be. It's a very different kind of difficulty, and it utterly excels in what it does best.

[Jet Prower]

I'm sure some of this is nostalgia from the older games not liking the newer gamers. There are all sorts of things out there that explain why there is dislike for CoD, and shooters in general. One of them as mentioned is because of how shooter saturated the market is now. People are starting to get a bit tired I think of seeing, oh look another shooter, what else now? Its easy to understand that really. Look at how may shooters have suddenly popped up over the last few years. People often throw CoD under the bus mainly, because, it was the newest mega hit shooter. Halo doesn't get as much attention as it used to anymore, despite still being around, just because CoD is the hit now and everyone points their fingers at it for being why there is a shooter saturation now. All these developers then come out and say they can't make anything different than shooters because any other genre won't sell and only CoD sells and anything just like it sells, so people then naturally hate on CoD for making developers think like this.

 

The developers have become so cautious these days to not want to take risks because their games then need to sell millions upon millions of copies to even break even these days now as well. Some of us get tired of this and get rather aggravated that due to such high development costs that they can't even try much different, or the games won't sell. Even worst is when they change successful series into mindless shooters to be similar to CoD and wreck popular established series to try and get that CoD money as even they will say. I'm not sure all of this goes onto the gamers and that a lot of the blame goes onto the developers as well. At least that's how I see it.

[Remy]

True, but there's a point where you don't need to be told how to do things that only require one button to preform, or very basic things like fucking moving around with the left stick, yet modern gamers expect to be. Things that require more then one button/input to perform: at that point  I feel it needs to be taught blatantly in a tutorial. Because anything that only takes one button to preform, can just be found out through experimentation and the game subtly teaching you, ala Mega Man X. 

I wasn't targeting one specific kid, I was just saying in general how many stupid Miiverse posting are made in regards to Mega Man X by kids. I apologize if it came across that way.

Everyone looooooves to talk about Megaman X and how " omg it teaches you everything you need to know by just playing it !! " ...which I presume is because of Egoraptor and sequelitis. Yeah, the game does have a pretty great way of showing you basic mechanics but it also has some pretty obtuse shit in it.

 

Furthermore having the game teach you with hints and smart stage design is great, but when people have been babied by years of every single game they play spoonfeeding them tutorial text whenever something vaguely resembling a puzzle comes up, how do you expect them to know or look for these hints and cues? They've been trained to only do things when told to do so for as long as they've been playing games. 

[Blacklightning]

I started playing games when I was four years old. In S&K I never beat Flying Battery because of the wierd-ass miniboss and had trouble even getting that far - and as Knux I couldn't even beat Mushroom Hill. It's easy to belittle people who struggle with basic tasks we take for granted, but ultimately what even seperates them from what we were like at that age? You'd be hard pressed to say you didn't suck at videogames when you first started, and don't you fucking deny it.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

I started playing games when I was four years old. In S&K I never beat Flying Battery because of the wierd-ass miniboss and had trouble even getting that far - and as Knux I couldn't even beat Mushroom Hill. It's easy to belittle people who struggle with basic tasks we take for granted, but ultimately what even seperates them from what we were like at that age? You'd be hard pressed to say you didn't suck at videogames when you first started, and don't you fucking deny it.

I had a Level 50 Typhlosion and Level 30 for nearly everything else when I battled the E4 in Pokemon Crystal. Oh, and every pokemon had a HM move on them, and their moves were purely STAB. I lost every time I tried the E4.

 

So yeah, I sucked .

Edited October 29, 2013 by Wonder ED

[Jet Prower]

I started playing games when I was four years old. In S&K I never beat Flying Battery because of the wierd-ass miniboss and had trouble even getting that far - and as Knux I couldn't even beat Mushroom Hill. It's easy to belittle people who struggle with basic tasks we take for granted, but ultimately what even seperates them from what we were like at that age? You'd be hard pressed to say you didn't suck at videogames when you first started, and don't you fucking deny it.

 

I never would think of putting down people for their age. At least I would hope I would never do that. I think what a lot of the older gamers get upset at is hearing that these people cant seem to think for themselves and if things aren't all spoon fed to them, they have not the slightest clue what to do. There is a difference as I have always said in difficult and hard. Difficult just being you have to keep trying at it, and hard being where there is something  somewhat cheap making winning the game almost unfair. Having these people not be able to even figure out some basic things without it being just flat out told to them can tick some people off. You can understand little kids with this, but when you start getting young teens and teens acting like this, that then turn around and put down people who play older games, you can understand some lash back.

[Tara]

On the subject of CoD and FPS fanbase stereotypes as a whole, I've met plenty of annoying FPS-fantatic fratboys who act like total douches to those who enjoy any game that isn't specifically CoD, Halo, or FPS games like that.  I was even stalked by one in real life who refused to let me go if I didn't "admit" that Halo was the best game of all time.  Needless to say, his efforts did not pay off.

 

With that being said, is there any fanbase for video games or otherwise that isn't filled with people like that?

 

See, we can communicate civilly here largely thanks to the fact that we have restrictions and a moderating team that can either slap a contributor in the wrist or eject them from the conversation if they behave in such a disrespectful manner.  Real life doesn't have that.  Online games do not have that.  They are open doors for all sorts of obnoxious people.  You could argue that you've never met a fan of platformers that acts in such a way, but honestly... when most of the members here are avid platformer fans, that doesn't mean anything.  Of course you're going to meet less people who treat you like crap for enjoying something when you enjoy the same thing as they do.

 

TL:DR - People are arrogant jerks.  It has nothing to do with CoD, Halo, or whatever else they're interested in.  Rather or not FPS games just happen to be more popular, thereby increasing your chances of running into someone like that, is irrelevant as that's just a matter of scale, not a matter of quality.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Spooky Akita

[Candescence]

Furthermore having the game teach you with hints and smart stage design is great, but when people have been babied by years of every single game they play spoonfeeding them tutorial text whenever something vaguely resembling a puzzle comes up, how do you expect them to know or look for these hints and cues? They've been trained to only do things when told to do so for as long as they've been playing games. 

This has actually been brought up by the developers of Dishonored, who were more than a bit concerned when playtesters actually stopped in their tracks when a guard told them they couldn't pass, because they were so accustomed to just being told what to do that options that weren't explicitly stated were just alien to them. This is the result of games telling you everything, which trains people to expect to be spoon-fed, which results in a vicious cycle.

 

From a game design standpoint, there are possible ways to retrain players to accept that they can't be spoon-fed everything. The game should be explicit about its intention to let the player figure things out on their own, but also be intuitive enough to provide players the knowledge of how to use the 'tools' that they've been given.

 

• In cases where it would make sense for the main character to learn along with the player, have an introduction stage that teaches the player the mechanics, and provides them the knowledge of how to use all the tools they start with. After that, toss them out into the wider game world and leave them to their own devices, with perhaps a hint or two of how to get started. Dark Souls does this perfectly. By the time you leave the Undead Asylum, you've learned how to use nearly all of the mechanics, slain your first boss, and probably been subjected to a taste of the kind of difficulty that'll be present in the main game.
• If the main character would already have the knowledge and skills that you need to teach the player, split the tutorial into its own section in the main menu - maybe even make it the first option, to make things obvious that you should start there. Give the players the option to figure everything out themselves as well as explicit lessons. Make it clear that, outside of the tutorial, there won't be hand-holding.

Just a couple of ideas. Especially in a game where there are multiple methods of going about things, the availability of routes and options should be especially paramount.

[Jet Prower]

This has actually been brought up by the developers of Dishonored, who were more than a bit concerned when playtesters actually stopped in their tracks when a guard told them they couldn't pass, because they were so accustomed to just being told what to do that options that weren't explicitly stated were just alien to them. This is the result of games telling you everything, which trains people to expect to be spoon-fed, which results in a vicious cycle.

 

 

Wow. Hearing this just amazes me that people act like this. Can they seriously not think on their own unless everything is spoon fed to them? I'm both shocked at this and find it quite pitiful that people could be like this. I know I wasn't great when I was younger, but I still had that thing in me that told me, if that didn't work then look for another way to make it work. It takes awhile for that to form yes, but it does take some practice gaming to form these habits of course. I'm just shocked to hear that.

[Diogenes]

Is that necessarily a matter of players needing to be spoonfed? Or did they simply not expect the game to lie to them?

[Solkia]

I prefer in-game control prompts.

 

You know why?

 

 

Fuck you Sonic Team, I spent 10 years trying to figure this nonsensicle bullshit out.

 

If you're going to put stupid shit like this in your game, you better damn well explain how to use it. Would it have been so hard to add a dpad graphic with up and down arrows or something?

[Remy]

The barrel would be fine if jumping didn't also effect it's movement, I think. 

[Solkia]

That's exactly what makes it nonsensical. Getting pushed down by jumping tricks you into thinking it's a physics based obsticle rather than game logic based.

 

I'm not saying everything should be spelled out for the player, but there are some instances where it's necessary.

[Salamander]

Is there anything else in Sonic 3/K that arbitrarily ascends or descends based on button presses?  Because it doesn't seem like there's any reason why it should have obeyed that particular rule when everything else responds logically to movement - the Marble Garden spinners spin because you run on them, for instance, but crouching or looking up shouldn't physically move the barrels more than jumping on it should.  I think the barrel is more poor level/game design rather than poor tutorial, though, given that it doesn't seem to obey the rules of the rest of the game, that rest being fairly intuitive.

 

With that said, I'd have taken a partial approach and included up and down arrows in the background as neon art so that it wouldn't completely break the fourth wall.  And to get this away from the purely Sonic angle, I think that's how I'd do a lot of hints, in much the same way that quite a few games place their control tutorials on signs in the background or on things NPCs tell you rather than on arbitrary pop-up messages/images or hovering hint symbols.  I like at least the illusion of in-universe grounding for my tutorials.  ...Given the complexity of many games today, especially hidden complexity, I think even a very simple game can be excused a tutorial simply because you can't trust that it actually is that simple.

[StaticMania]

 
You see the thing with "the Barrel" is that there many barrel obstacles  beforehand and since jumping effects those certain barrels, the only viable mindset people would get is that they need to keep jumping. Since jumping pushes it down(Which past barrel you use the jump as rises up which increases jump height)you're never in the other barrel sections long enough to really know that it only goes down so much when you jump on it and because of that you never know that jumping won't work and Sonic team making the buttons "up" and "down" was just stupid design on their part because that's the only place in the entire game where you HAVE to use them.

 

Modern gamers: I wouldn't say that they're worse, I mean they play the games bad but the modern gamer just rushes into the games they play. They don't take the time to learn how do anything other than basic and that makes the game harder for them later on when they don't know what to do. Some gamers in this position will blame the game on this when its not really the game's fault and the player's fault for not really bothering to learn how the game works themselves, normally in an old-school that's what the 1st level is for and why you can never really fail at it. Games now include any type of tutorial because of the developers mindset that some gamers won't bother to learn how to play the game properly(and for newcomers)

[Diogenes]

Is there anything else in Sonic 3/K that arbitrarily ascends or descends based on button presses?

The closest I can think of is the Mushroom Hill pulleys, but unlike the barrel the feedback is very clear; nothing moves them besides pulling down on them, so a player isn't going to get fixated on using the wrong method, and its movement is very sharp and obvious, so it's easy to tell when you've successfully interacted with it.

[Solkia]

The closest I can think of is the Mushroom Hill pulleys, but unlike the barrel the feedback is very clear; nothing moves them besides pulling down on them, so a player isn't going to get fixated on using the wrong method, and its movement is very sharp and obvious, so it's easy to tell when you've successfully interacted with it.

 

As a kid I actually just kind of sat there trying to figure out what they were for, it never occured to me to press down in mid-air :V

[Tara]

I prefer in-game control prompts.

 

You know why?

 

 

Fuck you Sonic Team, I spent 10 years trying to figure this nonsensicle bullshit out.

 

If you're going to put stupid shit like this in your game, you better damn well explain how to use it. Would it have been so hard to add a dpad graphic with up and down arrows or something?

Vague and poor conveyance aside, the barrel is just a stupid and pointless obstacle that really didn't need to be added.  Does it prepare you for a future boss battle or later stage?  No.  Does it develop or make use of any of the skills you've learned previously?  No.  Does it introduce you to something that might be beneficial to know later?  No.  It might as well just be a brick wall that blemishes an otherwise okay stage.  There's no reason that there should have been any tutorial to instruct players on how to get passed the barrel because there was no reason it should ever have been implemented in the first place.

 

But I'm blindly too nostalgic and I enjoy its infamy far too much for me to say I despise its inclusion.

[Jet Prower]

I know I was locked up a bit with that barrel, but I did eventually figure it out. Now, I barely even notice it anymore, since I'm so used to it. Some of it likely is just because what these gamers are used to of course. There is such a shooter saturation of the market that many people only play and only have played shooters and nothing but shooters. I love platformers. My first games were all platformers, and still, I hunt for more platformers to play with all the time. It is the genre I consider my favorite and most preferred genre, thus I'm pretty good at them. Being what they are used to likely does have a lot to do with it, but then several of these people will then turn around and bash on the other game genre's because that they aren't shooters. That's where a lot of people that get upset at other types of gamers come from I'm betting yes?