Hello adventurer! I am glad...
[SKIP]
We need you to save...
[SKIP]
Please proceed to...
[SKIP]
I am running to the marked location on the map. Kill and loot the marked enemies. Run back to the NPC that I was talking to earlier.
[FFS SKIP ALREADY]
[Quest Completed]
Ok, thanks! Next!
Does this sound familiar to you?
I am not trying to be nostalgic here, because I am no different.
But earlier, like... 20+ years ago, players tend to actually read quest and story texts. They read the mission description, because otherwise you would have no idea what to do or where to go.
Today, things have changed.
We can skip entire story lines without hesitation, because we know the game will take us by the hand and guide us to the exact spot we need to go to.
And if not?! No problem, we can check out hundreds of guides and walk throughs on the internet.
Back then, when I was playing my first games, I did not even have internet!
Two weeks ago I bought Elden Ring
Famous for two things: 1) A large exciting world and 2) dying
But neither of those was the feature where I figured out that something is different than in any other open world game I recently played.
The point is the absolute lack of guidence in this game. Contrary to any other similar game, you get kicked into the open world with a sword and nothing more than the knowledge how to move and how to swing your weapon.
No quest markers.
No questlog at all.
No explaination of anything.
Only a rough direction is shown where you might want to go next.
Correction: Where you might want to die next. Because you will not get told what level or what gear you should obtain first before you try to kick that huge bosses ass.
Did we got weak?
It exact this type of gameplay that made me think "Damn, I really need to figure things out myself!" (or look it up on the internet) ... but be honest: When did you really need to do this?
This iconic scene from "Call of Duty: Adavanced Warfare" prefectly describes the current mental requirements that games have to the player.
Go there, do this, here is an arrow that shows you the way:
That is how we got used to play games.
Sure, sometimes we want to sit back and just slay some enemies without the need to break our brains with riddles and challenges, but I have the feeling, games are taking more and more the reqirement of "figure it out on your own" out of the equation of gamplay and challange.
And this happens because...
The origin of games was in arcade halls and there one simply wanted your money, therefore make the game heavy, so that you throw in you coins more often. Beating the game was prestige, when at the end in the Highscore your name appeared.
Later these games were published for the home console or PC.Back then, games were also made hard, so that people simply played longer.
There was not much substance behind many games as we know it today in terms of map size or amount of quests or items, so make it hard, and you have at least twice as long of game time.In the past, games were not as popular in society as they are today, and of course you want to reach as many potential gamers as possible and not just the hardcore ones.
You make it easier, so that someone can play a quick round at night, and when work or family calls, you quickly save you progress and continue later.
This, of course, generates more sales for game developers which lead them to stick to making easier or at least more accessible games.
Is this now good or bad?
Yes...
Yes, it is good that more people can come together and enjoy simple games together
Yes, it is bad because "elitist gamers" might not feel challenged enough
There will always be games (or game modes) that will challange your skills, although I think that the trend will continue in making games less complicated, but more so, challeging games will shine.
I've heard some stories of play testers getting stuck because they didn't understand what they had to do and even though the game clearly explained what had to be done and how to do it, the testers still couldn't progress. This 'User Error' will be treated as a problem with the game and the solution is to make it easier to progress.
Most 'new' game entries live and die by reviews and if a buyer feels like they have wasted their time and money because they haven't progressed any then that may lead to a refund and a bad review for the game. There is also the aspect of an 'instant gratification' feeling for achieving the goal and feeling great that it was gained so easily.
So yes, games seem easier with obvious arrows pointing where to go and what to grab, there are often other elements that shaped the game to be that way.
Thank you for the post. It was an interesting read and brought up some good arguments about todays gaming experiences.
I don't skip dialogue! Sometimes that's the most important and endearing part of games, especially story-based ones. And I prefer games where there are no markers or you have the option to turn off the markers. I remember loving Morrowind because of that. I had to talk to people, read my journal, unravel the puzzle of where to go and what to do. It was engaging!
Now, MMO's are a completely different matter. I don't give a crap why I'm killing wolves for the hundredth time. It's irrelevant. I'm sure a lot of people work hard on creating interesting and amusing quest-giver dialogue in MMOs, but I don't care, it's nothing to do with the main story of the world, just a side-piece, and it doesn't matter. 😅 SKIP.
True that! Elder scrolls titles were something I could listen to.
Lost Ark on the other hand... Phew... Couldn't be skipping faster :D
yeah. first console i got came with one game. i never beat it, for years. only now that i got it on an emulator that i could cheat and give myself extra lives (because the game in question would give me a number of tries at the game, and then game over.
good old days. it felt so lame to beat this game in 1 hour on the emulator which made it easier.
anyway, to the point, i think we'll see games offer the option in the menu (or it would be nice they did) to select how guided we wanna be. no objective markers, no minimap, even x number of lives and then its game over. all these should be in games for the added bonus of actually feeling you achieved beating a game.
the trend is just to make you pass time.
with heavily story based games, idk. re-watching cutscenes if we have to start the game from the begining again - that should be something to take into consideration.
yes, games should cater to people that wanna actually have a hard time beating it. figuring it out. feeling they did something.
edit: i felt much more joy from finally beating sections of the game that were tough than actually from beating the game on the emulator.
I remember that I didn't pay much attention to the history of the games when I was little either, but it was mostly because I'm from Latam, most of the games were in English and very few were in Spanish, one of the first games that I started paying attention was MGS and Rayman, I also remember that I became obsessed with the lore of WarCraft3.
I was just checking a guide for Baldurs Gate 3, feeling attacked😁😁You are very right in what you say. Right now we don't really pay attention to the motivations of the characters in the games, the depth of the conversations, and what they want. We're just trying to get the most powerful sword, the most powerful weapon, and get the game over as soon as possible. We have become a consumer society and everything is moving very fast. It is possible to finish a game that should normally take 20 hours in 10 hours. But this time we say the game was not good. Well, you haven't played the story they want to tell? You wandered around aimlessly and something happened to you. 😁
Some games have so much immersion it is impossible to turn off and return to the real world. (Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate, Cyberpunk, Gris, Divinity, Assassin's Creed, Dying Light...)
But there are a lot of good games that do what you say, episodic games. For example, Life is Strange. It's excellent. I am still playing The Wolf Among Us, it started great. 👍👏
People have in one way or another grow tired of the same kind of stories full of tropes and heavy lifting engagement that is so utterly tiring and gives almost if no any reward at all to the player in terms of emotional investment, so the skip thing is becoming more and more common, because games have become more and more boring with their stories, but good stories sometimes do happen, for example people dint talk a lot about HADES with its focus on fatherhood, but if you look my latest post, its story was all about it, and it was Good if you ever had a toxic or non-functional relationship with your father, like I do...