The 'too confusing for new players' excuse is ruining games. Even multiplayer. I remember when hearthstone nerfed fiery war axe and i'm paraphrasing here but they essentially explained it like this: ''We had ideas to nerf fiery war axe and it still being useful but those could have been too confusing for new players so instead we are just increasing it's mana cost, rendering it completely useless and we know that but hey, at least people will understand what happened.''
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Opinion: Over Infantilization in AAA games is getting out of hand
- Thread starter Dynasty8
- Start date
ShadyAcshuns
Member
The softening of today's youth. Only gonna hurt them in the end...
Personally, for GoW/TR style puzzles its the high level of detail and visually complexity of the game that actually makes 'solving' the puzzle harder. Its getting more difficult to know exactly what you can and can't do based on game physics, picking out little things like rune shapes or whatever from the very busy background is harder, and since here are no longer physical maps, lore books, or whatever then all of the info I have for the puzzle has to come "in-game" and that makes it hard to balance a lore entry, something said by a character before I even get to the puzzle, or a persistent quip from my sidekick that's necessary because I stopped the game at the puzzle and am now coming back 3 months later and can't remember the clues.
Reizo Ryuu
Member
I don't mind that the character tips are in, they just shouldn't start solving the problem for you as soon as you enter the room, give me a moment and slowly ramp up the hints, but never really spoiling the whole thing.
Also make it adjustable, the latest life is strange does the same thing, so I went into the option to see if there was a way to turn it off, and there was, along side an option to minimise them instead if you still wanted some help; that's the way to do it.
But really how pissed off must all these designers be that they set up something fun/challenging and then some accessibility weirdo comes in and ruins the whole experience.
Also make it adjustable, the latest life is strange does the same thing, so I went into the option to see if there was a way to turn it off, and there was, along side an option to minimise them instead if you still wanted some help; that's the way to do it.
But really how pissed off must all these designers be that they set up something fun/challenging and then some accessibility weirdo comes in and ruins the whole experience.
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Don't forget all that yellow paint directing you where to go and in cases like re4R, which boxes and barrels are breakable. Im playing Mad Max 2015 right now and the yellow was still being used even all the way back then.
Shockingly, one of the things SW Outlaws got right was being able to turn all of that shit off.
Shockingly, one of the things SW Outlaws got right was being able to turn all of that shit off.
xVodevil
Member
Yep clearly, the industry have grown huge so the more the merrier regarding audience aka copies sold.
I suppose.. well best I remember it all started around Bioshock times when usable objects and stuff to pick up started to pop up glowing like mad absolutely out of place.
Wild to think of some of the older games today, when sometimes you were wandering around clueless for hours even just to try and figure out where to go/what to do next.. even went to sleep trying to dream the solution
But I will admit with so many games to play at times I'm not against it 100%, some of them are best to get trough asap. But definitely this should absolutely always be an option at least in gameplay settings.
As for the ideal solution... I guess custom difficulty when there are separate difficulty options for different elements of the gameplay, though this is rarely seen.
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Loomy
Thinks Microaggressions are Real
Absolute gems.
I started playing UC4 yesterday for no reason and was surprised at the lack of yellow ledges and ladders and crates. Especially coming from TLoU. It's still very noticaable what you can interact with, but it's a lot more subtle.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
100%.
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
Exactly.
Chuck Berry
Gold Member
Yeah it's like back in the mid to late teens devs weren't quite sure if they thought all players were retards so you'd get inconsistencies and stuff like that.
Fast forward to the 20's and we're now all confirmed idiots apparently.
Growing game budgets, expenses, tight development deadlines, all this forces them to target a larger audience, trying to make more money. Trying to please everyone, in the end you have to make all sorts of compromises, and the compromise usually consists in the fact that you have to design the game for the least experienced players. It's all one big hose that pumps one huge bubble, when it will burst is not clear, but sooner or later it must happen. Someone from the press writes that it is already bursting, but these are just isolated explosions for now. In the meantime, we live off of individual releases that still don't try to please everyone =)
The number of games in the collection that I have, for example, for PS3 - PS4 (I don't even want to go down to PS2, that's Sony's golden age), significantly exceeds what I currently have for PS5, and with the release of PS5, I buy fewer and fewer games every year, not because I don't like playing anymore, but because new releases make me upset
The number of games in the collection that I have, for example, for PS3 - PS4 (I don't even want to go down to PS2, that's Sony's golden age), significantly exceeds what I currently have for PS5, and with the release of PS5, I buy fewer and fewer games every year, not because I don't like playing anymore, but because new releases make me upset
StereoVsn
Gold Member
Yep, same with a lot of movies and shows now days.
semiconscious
Member
'accessibilty' was the industry's choice of a friendly-sounding word that was just waiting to be mutated into meaning anything anyone wanted it to...
you want 'accessibilty'? go watch some road runner cartoons. they're completely 'accessible'...
GermanZepp
Member
Santa Monica in gow series treat players like fresh lobotomy patients. Look this handle, look!! Is shining LOOOOK.
Cyberpunkd
Member
You ask people nowadays to read something like a manual and get ready to close shop.
Loomy
Thinks Microaggressions are Real
The gaming industry did not invent accessibility.
If we're talking tech/screens, guidelines started becoming more widespread in the late 90s early 2000s. Businesses realized that if they actually worked towards better inclusion, more people could use their product/service, and they stood to make more money. Win/Win.
As new forms of media and new ways of interacting with media gained traction, accessibility in gaming started getting consideration and wider adoption, to the point where it's now night and day comparing games made in the last 2 generations to games made during the 7th gen.
I'll say again, there's nothing with that. More people playing is a good thing. I do think they need to work on making those optional, have a scale for how much you want, or a system that knows when you're learning and automatically scales it back for you. All those are innovations they can make in this space, and you're likely to see it in the next few years.
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Games of Today
Member
I agree with you somewhat about the numbers but I see this similar argument being thrown around constantly especially on reddit, that for a game to attract a more casual audience it MUST look like X or have Y cosmetics because how else would they make money?
I simply disagree with that. A new CoD could launch tomorrow and only sell cosmetics that look like soldiers (no Nicki Minaj, nothing even close to that) and because the franchise has been around for 20 years, it would become one of the top selling CoD games.
No one who buys these games is buying them for the cosmetics that don't fit the main theme. And the people who don't care about the theme will always resort to using the most obnoxious skins they can.
ssringo
Member
Hey, just make it an app and people can read it on the toilet like we did back in the day.
Fbh
Member
I see it less as infantilization and more like "casualization".
It's trying to chase the widest audience possible by ensuring virtually everyone can play and enjoy your game even if they are very casual players or people with next to no gaming experience.
And yeah it sucks.
But are games designed to sell 20 million units actually selling those numbers?
Sure you've got your Spider Man 2s and Hogwarts Legacies which do massive numbers and are based on super popular media franchises, it makes sense to make those as accessible as possible.
But in other parts of the gaming landscape it doesn't seem as clear cut.
Like OP brings up FFXVI and I actually do think that's a game that was hurt by trying to be too accessible or casual friendly. It felt like they worried a lot about ensuring that literally anyone regardless of gaming experience can play the game, but in the process completely neglected the more experienced players that actually do want some extra challenge and do want deeper mechanics.
Meanwhile when you look at RPG's that have actually had a ton of success this gen you get stuff like Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk. It's not like none of them have accessibly options in mind, but they don't seem designed for the lowest common denominator. Hell even Zelda found more success than ever (at least in sales) by finally easing up on the insane hand holding of previous entries.
It's trying to chase the widest audience possible by ensuring virtually everyone can play and enjoy your game even if they are very casual players or people with next to no gaming experience.
And yeah it sucks.
But are games designed to sell 20 million units actually selling those numbers?
Sure you've got your Spider Man 2s and Hogwarts Legacies which do massive numbers and are based on super popular media franchises, it makes sense to make those as accessible as possible.
But in other parts of the gaming landscape it doesn't seem as clear cut.
Like OP brings up FFXVI and I actually do think that's a game that was hurt by trying to be too accessible or casual friendly. It felt like they worried a lot about ensuring that literally anyone regardless of gaming experience can play the game, but in the process completely neglected the more experienced players that actually do want some extra challenge and do want deeper mechanics.
Meanwhile when you look at RPG's that have actually had a ton of success this gen you get stuff like Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk. It's not like none of them have accessibly options in mind, but they don't seem designed for the lowest common denominator. Hell even Zelda found more success than ever (at least in sales) by finally easing up on the insane hand holding of previous entries.
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Jsisto
Member
Obviously not every game needs to have soulsborne level of difficulty, but every developer could learn a thing or two from them. A little respect for the players ability to figure out basic gameplay mechanics goes a long way. So many games nowadays treat us like were a 5 year old that was handed a controller for the first time.
Bridges
Member
This is what happens when something goes mainstream. It stops getting to appeal to people like you and instead wants to speak to as many people as possible.
While I agree with your point, some of your examples (like Nicki Minaj in CoD) are not infantilization. It's a pervasive trend for sure but it's not about treating you like a child (like your GoW example), it's about selling to whales.
While I agree with your point, some of your examples (like Nicki Minaj in CoD) are not infantilization. It's a pervasive trend for sure but it's not about treating you like a child (like your GoW example), it's about selling to whales.
ZehDon
Member
Yeah, it's getting a little silly, but it's the result of a combination of things and none of them are going anywhere any time soon.
As game budgets continue to balloon, they need to target wider audiences. Rather than designing better indirect ways to communicate with players or developing more intuitive puzzle mechanics, it's simpler, easier, and cheaper to just have a voice actor tell you what to do. Next, visual fidelity has dramatically outstripped interactivity. Sure, games like God of War and TLOUP2 look nice, but their environments are window dressing. Some objects can sometimes be interacted with, but the vast, vast, vast majority can't. Developers continue to barrel down worlds with such inconsistency between presentation and behaviour, meaning players have no idea what they can and cannot do just by looking at the environment. It's much simpler to cut away anything remotely new or interesting and just fall back on polishing what others devs already figured out because then players will understand it easily without you having to do much. Gears of War cover + RE4 third person shooting + highly polished animations. It's a formula that works and players understand. This doesn't leave much in the way for puzzle designers to actually use, so the rules of these puzzles are often bespoke - they exist for just that one area, or that one object. So, the devs have little choice but to just tell the player what to do, because there's no way most players would understand what's even possible. "Oh, I can move THAT box? Why couldn't I move the other box?", "Wait, I can break through that wall? Since when?". Lastly, there's players behaviour. A lot of players want to come home, throw on a cinematic game, turn their brain off, and let the game do all the hard work. And there's nothing wrong with that - there's a reason highly linear, low agency games became extremely popular. Devs get to pretend their making movies, players can pretend they're doing cool things, and everyone seems to be happy.
If you want different games that actually expect the player to pay attention and use their brain, you need to play games that can risk alienating players because of their ambitions. You won't find that in huge blockbuster AAA games headlining a State of Play. You'll find it in smaller games that don't need to sell 10 million copies to breakeven and sell consoles. And when you find it, it'll often have issues. Odd design choices, bugs and glitches, and technical problems. STALKER 2 fits the bill, and it has a lot of issues to iron out, because the developers are being extremely ambitious both in their scope and technology. But hey - you want something different, you gotta take the good with the bad.
As game budgets continue to balloon, they need to target wider audiences. Rather than designing better indirect ways to communicate with players or developing more intuitive puzzle mechanics, it's simpler, easier, and cheaper to just have a voice actor tell you what to do. Next, visual fidelity has dramatically outstripped interactivity. Sure, games like God of War and TLOUP2 look nice, but their environments are window dressing. Some objects can sometimes be interacted with, but the vast, vast, vast majority can't. Developers continue to barrel down worlds with such inconsistency between presentation and behaviour, meaning players have no idea what they can and cannot do just by looking at the environment. It's much simpler to cut away anything remotely new or interesting and just fall back on polishing what others devs already figured out because then players will understand it easily without you having to do much. Gears of War cover + RE4 third person shooting + highly polished animations. It's a formula that works and players understand. This doesn't leave much in the way for puzzle designers to actually use, so the rules of these puzzles are often bespoke - they exist for just that one area, or that one object. So, the devs have little choice but to just tell the player what to do, because there's no way most players would understand what's even possible. "Oh, I can move THAT box? Why couldn't I move the other box?", "Wait, I can break through that wall? Since when?". Lastly, there's players behaviour. A lot of players want to come home, throw on a cinematic game, turn their brain off, and let the game do all the hard work. And there's nothing wrong with that - there's a reason highly linear, low agency games became extremely popular. Devs get to pretend their making movies, players can pretend they're doing cool things, and everyone seems to be happy.
If you want different games that actually expect the player to pay attention and use their brain, you need to play games that can risk alienating players because of their ambitions. You won't find that in huge blockbuster AAA games headlining a State of Play. You'll find it in smaller games that don't need to sell 10 million copies to breakeven and sell consoles. And when you find it, it'll often have issues. Odd design choices, bugs and glitches, and technical problems. STALKER 2 fits the bill, and it has a lot of issues to iron out, because the developers are being extremely ambitious both in their scope and technology. But hey - you want something different, you gotta take the good with the bad.
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