Do you think that "games appealing to the masses" were a mistake by game developers?

[Lotus Victoria]

Hello champions, good to see you.

So, many of you are video-game veterans, that played Atari, NES, SNES, PS1 and so on. You all remember that, 20 years ago, games weren't always designed for the average dummy that didn't knew how to play a video-game. Either you conquered the game, or you didn't.

This doesn't mean that older games are more complex - but you can all agree that nowadays, most games aren't designed just for gamers. This is good, because everybody deserves to play games, but in some ways, games were dumbed down in the process, not respecting the intelligence of the average gamer. This means that everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING must be explained, controls must be simplified, and much more.

Do you think that "games appealing to the masses" were a mistake by game developers?

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

Yes. Everything made for the masses gets worse

[Toogoodman]

Hello champions, good to see you.

So, many of you are video-game veterans, that played Atari, NES, SNES, PS1 and so on. You all remember that, 20 years ago, games weren't always designed for the average dummy that didn't knew how to play a video-game. Either you conquered the game, or you didn't.

This doesn't mean that older games are more complex - but you can all agree that nowadays, most games aren't designed just for gamers. This is good, because everybody deserves to play games, but in some ways, games were dumbed down in the process, not respecting the intelligence of the average gamer. This means that everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING must be explained, controls must be simplified, and much more.

Do you think that "games appealing to the masses" were a mistake by game developers?

Games for the masses is a huge mistake, while they might get people to play them in the short run, their long-term audiences are dying. Most older hit games had populations that last 3+ years, now we see games dying out in a time frame of 6 months to a year, that's not coincidence, that's causation. When you dont cater a game to your more hardcore crowds, grinds, unique rewards, competitive game play, your game ends up with no one playing it because casual game crowds just move on to the next game, its a stupid design.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Yes. Everything made for the masses gets worse

Agreed but was it a mistake financially? The problem is the business model honestly. People HAVE to do this to meet their return quota. If every game was crowd funded the problem would be solved.

[Graeham]

From a business perspective? No.

From a gamer's perspective? Yes.

I feel like a lot of games are watered down far more than they should be just so they can appeal to the 'masses'. It's possible to strike a great balance between appealing to a large crowd whilst also appealing primary to one's primary target audience. Games such as The Witcher 3 and FFXIV are a great example of this - yet because more time, effort, money and careful decision making are required many developers and publishers simply push through a product that is designed for mass appeal and not depth.

[Akka]

From a business perspective? No.

From a gamer's perspective? Yes.

I feel like a lot of games are watered down far more than they should be just so they can appeal to the 'masses'. It's possible to strike a great balance between appealing to a large crowd whilst also appealing primary to one's primary target audience. Games such as The Witcher 3 and FFXIV are a great example of this - yet because more time, effort, money and careful decision making are required many developers and publishers simply push through a product that is designed for mass appeal and not depth.

Pretty much.

Though I'd add : even from a business perspective, we seem to be reaching some sort of Prisoner's Dilemma point, where market saturation with watered-down game is starting to take its toll. There is a large market, but with a lot of competition, low consumer loyalty and very expensive production values, while the long tail of the market is up for grab (but requires less formulaic, if much cheaper, design).

[Afrospinach]

No, what I do think is appalling is dumbing down franchises for said purposes. "pop music" styled marketing and products are just going to exist everywhere you need to deal with it. Candy crush should offend no one, really. Take it as it is.

What I don't think we need to deal with is something like syndicate, a really niche and somewhat unique game being turned into a me too deus ex ripoff. I do think we have a right to say "how dare you", or sim city etc.

Is having a niche, faithful, hardcore audience really such anathema? We know why it happens though and it is basically dick measuring within the industry. Look at LoL, well now we need to make a moba, look at the cash they make! And hey, lets use fucking command and conquer to do it.

All my examples are from EA. Purely coincidence I swear

[Deleted]

Very interesting and very complicated question.
I do think both @Graeham and @Akka are right, but at the same time, because the market has been made bigger with the appealing to the masses thing, i think there are some niche games that are possible, because now they attract their intended audience, and some people from masses territory, and those games are really good, i am not so sure they would be doing them if not for the current size of the market, that is a result of the appealing to the masses.
I am not sure, as i said i find this subject a very complicated one, too many factors to consider.

[Afrospinach]

i think there are some niche games that are possible,

You would think that this right here would be a question of production budget, but to paraphrase Jim Sterling who has a few decent thoughts on this very topic, investors think they need to lick the sky with every release because someone somewhere also did within the genre.

[frogger237]

How do you design videogames for gamers before gamers were even a thing?

[minteK917]

Only someone that has not actually been here for the NES, SNES, Era can have this kind of wrong idea about the past. Im sorry but back in those days buying a game for the SNES and having a 80% chance it was trash was a thing. Games got better from there, not worse. Just like Cinema is better now, not worse. People that praise the past usually have never been part of the past themselves. The evolution of a medias only gives more diversity and possibility. It just means not everything released now can be for the same audience and it shouldnt be, you arent the center of the world. Im saying that as someone that devoted part of my life to classic arena fps, a genre that does not exist anymore and glory is long gone. The world did not revolve around me either.

[Deleted]

What is this nonsense?

It's so annoying seeing gamers spouting this crap about how games back in the day were for REAL MEN and games today are sissy things made just for profits. Most of the games you guys are thinking of were either actually not hard at all, or were only hard because of nonsense like forcing you to beat it all in one sitting, no continues, "do it again, stupid" mechanics, or translation issues not letting you know what to do so it was nearly impossible without assistance (Simon's Quest lol).

There are plenty of games today that are legitimately challenging. Even moreso than most of those older games, in fact.

Nothing to do with games being more or less challenging, but niche, like trying to find a game without achievements, and with a certain complexity, and with hidden mechanics.
It gave some games a great feeling, while others, it is true, were just crap.
A game like Wizards&warriors, it is one kind of a game it is impossible to be found nowadays, not because it was uber challenging, but because it was uber-niche, and also buggy as hell.
That said there are many great games in development, and released as of today, so nothing wrong with nowadays games either, although there are also a lot of them that are crap, only more shiny.
Also, games have always been done with profits in mind.

- - - Updated - - -

Just like Cinema is better now, not worse.

This would lead to another discussion.

[Lotus Victoria]

What is this nonsense?

It's so annoying seeing gamers spouting this crap about how games back in the day were for REAL MEN and games today are sissy things made just for profits. Most of the games you guys are thinking of were either actually not hard at all, or were only hard because of nonsense like forcing you to beat it all in one sitting, no continues, "do it again, stupid" mechanics, or translation issues not letting you know what to do so it was nearly impossible without assistance (Simon's Quest lol).

There are plenty of games today that are legitimately challenging. Even moreso than most of those older games, in fact.

You're both right and wrong, in my opinion - I know that challenging games exist. The obvious Dark Souls, Doom 2016, Prey, etc, are all challenging games, but this topic isn't about difficulty in video-games. The game market is in an interesting position nowadays, but I feel that most games don't respect the intelligence and wits of a player - we get overexplained tutorials in some areas, stuff like LFR in others, and so on. One of the greatest things about Dark Souls is that the game explain just the basics - the rest is up for you to discover. Same with Minecraft (at least in the early years). We lost that sense of discovery because every pixel added to the game costs millions and millions of dollars to produce, and the player MUST SEE THAT PIXEL, otherwise they just threw money away.

It is a complicated question. That is why I asked it here. Coz i luv you folks and I love to discuss these kinds of stuff.

[Deleted]

the issue mostly I think is related to production costs.
Technology evolved and so did games, and gamers themselves, even the old timey ones got more and more esigent.

this: https://lh4.ggpht.com/d0NOhmnAp_vIWI...Ivzf8N8gk=h310
transformed into this: http://www.dsogaming.com/wp-content/..._38_41_492.jpg

We were ok with reading
Now we want voiceovers

When costs go up you can't simply sell the game to the same number of people you were before, cause then you go into losses or not as much profit.
However I don't think that's the core issue, but the fact that the industry is, for the most part, in this toxic circular relationship between publisher and developers, games cost so much that once you finished selling your game and you have given back the money the publisher poured into the project you simply *do not have enough* for a full second project and you just need to ask publishers money again.

This has caused homogenization of the games, not inherently because developers have lost touch, but because publishers decide what to fund or not and boy they do like to play safe, so if they are not sure that the return to the investment is good enough they simply won't allow developers to proceed, and even in the cases were they get the good to go, publishers still have a great deal of control upon content and presentation. I think that sometimes developers just do what they can with what they're allowed to, surely there are some that are plain dishonest cause they can't be all saints.

But as an example, remember when we were not seeing a survival horror in years? publishers decided that the genre wasn't good enough, so they stopped investing in those. Then amnesia came, it was small and self published. Was the game small in scope? yes, did it have great bleeding edge graphics? no, was the game great? apparently yes and it sold a lot.

At that point publishers decided that.. well it wasn't THAT bad. So the evil within and all those other survival horrors started appearing again and it is the same for every other genre, where the industry jump of the money wagon as soon as something is successful.

Even though I know that not all will agree with me I think that crowdfunding is the right way to heal this. While there have been a few bad apples, and some that we still don't know if they're just polished turd or diamonds lots of projects have been plenty successful and were great games. Perfect? no, but no fucking one is.

[minteK917]

This would lead to another discussion.

No its the same discussion as with everything in the history of mankind, the past was never at any point better for anything. You are seeing a more diverse market, meaning not everything it meant for the same audiences. Its the same for cinema, you can take 80s as an example, theres a bunch of 80s movies that i enjoy for many different reasons, but overall the quality was much lower. There are still movies now that hint and take aspect of this past lower quality cinema mostly focused on action, but now days the good ones can back it up with better story and visuals. There will always be bad products or products that simply arent made for you, the more an art grows, the more true this will get. Video game is not different. Its like music now compared to when the chruch controlled music. Music exploded without the control and not everything is supposed to be for everyone anymore. Theres some form of more mass market music and there is everything else in between.

[Thoughtcrime]

When you purposely aim for a mass audience you have to be really really lucky and create lightning in a bottle, (Star Wars, Ghostbusters) or shoot for the lowest common denominator (Transformers....Ghostbusters 2016) that's why things that happen to appeal to lots of people are usually the same shit over and over again. It's really hard to make something unique that everyone loves like the original Star Wars or Ghostbusters. It's really easy to identify the things that stupid people like and cynically repeat that over and over again for financial success (explosions, loud noises and CGI effects).

[zealo]

It is not economically feasible to produce games at modern AAA scope without having it being accessible in the range of selling millions of copies, and yes, that means "dumbing" it down sometimes.

Games that challenges people to actually use their brains still exist and are getting made, you just need to start looking at bit beyond the kind of stuff e.g Ubisoft makes with a staff of 1000+ people.

[Lochton]

Hello champions, good to see you.

So, many of you are video-game veterans, that played Atari, NES, SNES, PS1 and so on. You all remember that, 20 years ago, games weren't always designed for the average dummy that didn't knew how to play a video-game. Either you conquered the game, or you didn't.

This doesn't mean that older games are more complex - but you can all agree that nowadays, most games aren't designed just for gamers. This is good, because everybody deserves to play games, but in some ways, games were dumbed down in the process, not respecting the intelligence of the average gamer. This means that everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING must be explained, controls must be simplified, and much more.

Do you think that "games appealing to the masses" were a mistake by game developers?

At heart, yes. It was a mistake but I have to open the book and look at the numbers and what they wish to achieve, for it isn't a mistake if you wish to create a game to be a home for as many as possible. I find the bigger mistake is to listen too much to the fans whom has a wish of pulling the game down.

[Coombs]

In terms of success I would say that it was the correct decision to make. However, games are no longer made by people with vision and passion that existed in the 90's and early 2000's. Games make a fuck load of money and have been tailored as such. There are those that care but they are probably jaded as fuck, just like scientists these days.


You're right that the design was different, and I would even say better. Lets talk Everquest for a moment. Before anyone goes on their nostalgia fallacy, I have played thoroughly on project1999 and recently. The game was difficult, the mechanics were shit and that added to the difficulty. The UI is hot fucking garbage, the graphics are laughable, and raiding was nowhere near the quality of Vanilla Warcraft. But! The world was dangerous, exceptionally dangerous. You die, you lose experience. One time I spent a night running for 20 minutes zone to zone to grab a corpse only to die on the way back, many times, and I ended up losing nearly two levels. I've lost corpses and gear, waited hours for a priest to come rez me for 96% and paid heavily for them to do so. Walked from Freeport to Qeynos at the level 5 right clicking in the darkness, hugging the zone edge, not knowing my way. Maps didn't exist. I had to figure it out from a cloth map that came in the box.

Adventures suck, but the hardship is what makes them memorable. The danger and most importantly the consequence of making a mistake could change the course of the game. Dungeons were notoriously dangerous to go deep into, and many a wipe and a bad night came from them.

Games back then were certainly not perfect, but "quality of life" has gotten out of hand. The first thing I did when I played Witcher 3 was shut off most of the UI. The breadcrumb bullshit, the mini map, and it makes you look at the game and navigate the world instead of staring at a minimap 50% of the time.

Imagine Hearthstone if it was PC only. Holy shit that game would play and look different. But it wouldn't make the mountains of cash it does now. I'd certainly miss playing games while at the gym, but I think it would be a better game.

[Marrilaife]

Games for the masses is a huge mistake, while they might get people to play them in the short run, their long-term audiences are dying. Most older hit games had populations that last 3+ years, now we see games dying out in a time frame of 6 months to a year, that's not coincidence, that's causation.

I don't think it's because games are "dumbed down" it has more to do with main single player experience being doable in a couple of afternoons and majority of the game content being cut out and put into bazillion dlcs, also there are few games with replayability value (like for example Witcher 3 you have multiple solutions to many quests) but tons of them have little to none replayability so they end up being ditched. Most games with "replayability" in mind try to solve it with overt pvp focus and little to none single player campaign (from shooters to card games most of them are like that). In the end customers got used to buying tons of games in mega bundles or steam sales, play each a bit and quickly throw away.