Difficulty Curve? Attention Spans changing?

[TheGregzilla]

I was reading over some reviews of retro games on Amazon today and realized something. Kids these days either suck at video games, or just don't have the attention span we had as kids.

Game after game I would find reviews (from admitted 'kids') talking about how great retro games graphics 'sucked' and saying things like 'this game is way too hard to even bother with' One game even remarked that the 'graphics suck so bad it makes it not as fun' This bothers me a great deal. Kids are being so spoiled with COD and Skyrim today that they actually think graphics make a game good. And I also notice the difficulty curve change. I feel like games back in the day were slightly more difficult as a general rule. It felt like a real accomplishment to beat a game. Todays games, the accomplishment is getting through the game since most of them aren't very difficult, they are just long and tedioius.


blah blah blah. Thoughts?

[Erik_Twice]

Back in the 80s people could afford few games so you had to involve yourself with the few games you had.

Nowadays anyone can buy more games than they can realistically play which means players do not get as involved with their games.

It's not a matter of difficulty but of involvement.

[TheGregzilla]

But, on most retro games (minus rpg's of course) There was the once you die, you die--beat the game in once sitting (or use passwords) system. Today players have no fear of 'losing' in games. You die, you take a (usually) very tiny penalty and go on as if nothing had happened. Older games took practice to beat. Newer games just seem to take perseverence. If you keep playing, you WILL beat the game, period. No more "I ran out of lives now I gotta start over"

[Erik_Twice]

Obviously games "now" are easier than they were during the 80s. I just don't think it's because "kids" playing Call of Duty don't have a normal attention span.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Gaming has changed. I do not really think that it is an attention span issue. what has happened is that games have become more broad to encompass a lot of different features and to cater to the largest number of people. Games like Call of Duty focus on certain features and attempt to do them well for their audience.

Graphics Whoring has always been around. don't believe me? Watch old video game commercials. Sega and its "BLAST PROCESSING," Nintendo and its "Super FX chip." Graphics have always been seen as important by the general audience because it does one thing incredibly well, catch your eye. Games fall into obscurity if they have poor graphics and great content.

On the difficulty level, I think that it ties into refinement of the game development. A lot of people are not willing to put the time and effort to master a game. They want to consume it, enjoy it and move on. It is hard to get the difficulty juuuuust right in order to be both challenging and entertaining... not to mention that the idea of difficulty is very relative. To some people a game can be impossible (for me RTS games) and for others it is the easiest experience.

Back in the day games were difficult out of necessity. People needed a game to last a long time so the difficult added to the lifespan. At that time games were also very new and fresh. Things have changed. Video Games have been out for longer and in larger quantities and there is a shift in focus.

What you are seeing is gaming being taken up by an incredibly large audience, much larger then when it first came out. This comes with the baggage of more voices expressing a more diverse number of opinions to a larger number of developers who place importance on different aspects of gaming. That's all.

[Gamerforlife]

Games today suck, the gaming culture today sucks. So you see it reflected in the kids. That's why I love this site and retrogaming and the retrogaming community

Or maybe I'm just grumpy and cynical

Get off my lawn you whipper snappers! And take your Call of Duties and Skyrims with ya!

[Menegrothx]

Not only are games easier, but they hold gamers hands and break immersion. For example shining objects that you can't miss, "PRESS X TO OPEN DOOR", quest arrows and things like that remind you constantly that you're playing a video game, and mean that players don't have to use their brains to figure out anything by themselves. For example older WRPGs are better than new WRPGs because of this. It feels more rewarding and natural to find out stuff by yourself, rather than by having the answer to all your problems handed to you on a platter. When I have to interact with the games systems (talk to NPCs, read things, use deductive thinking based on the information I've gathered etc) the game feels more rewarding and immersive and I get more involved with the product because of that.

Other problem is games moving to becoming more cinematic. Developers (of AAA games) forgot how to make the actual gameplay rewarding. The cutscenes are your reward for enduring through mediocre gameplay, rather than the gameplay being rewarding itself, like older games that made you learn the game by experimenting and throwing first small challenges at you, and then combining stuff you already knew to make a lot bigger challenges. Many modern games seem to have a problem with difficulty curve, they don't know how to create it. You'll go from too easy to too hard often, and usually the too hard-part is caused by bad design (let's throw a ton of enemies at the player once, or something with a really big healthbar, usually the end result is just more tedious rather than more challenging).

Games are more expensive to produce these days and all big budget games are designed with casual players in mind. I don't know if casual gamers really are that stupid and have that short attention spans, or if it's just the game developers (or more like the people who fund&market the game) who think so, and therefore eliminate all challenge (both intellectual and skill based challenges) from them.

[TheRev]

Sit your ass infront of Ninja Gaiden 1 2. or Razor's Edge on Hard. Then Tell me games aren't still hard/difficult.almost infuckingpossible from time to time.

[Menegrothx]

Pft, try I wanna be that guy. Or Super Meat Boy, it's more difficult than those too on later stages.

[TheRev]

I wanna be the Guy and Super Meat boy aren't hard. They're Sadism at it's finest.