Gaming a fad?

[IamKazam]

Alright, there is a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately, and one that has been bothering me:
Do you think gaming has become a fad to a level of degree?

Here are my thoughts. I know I am very young, but it just seems to me that games have "lost their purity" so to speak. I mean, games now a days are just way to flashy in my opinion. The only things I ever hear people talking about are how amazing the graphics are in a particular game or how much blood and gore there is. I just find myself turned off by these newer games, but don't get me wrong, I am very excited for several games.

The main thing that really pisses me off is how people treat games now a days. Whenever a mention a great game to a person that they havent really played, or whenever I am talking about games in general, they always have to state "but the graphics are crappy", and then refuse to even acknowledge it. Also, I hate how people bash other people for the games they play. For example: I play nintendo games, i grew up with a lot of it. Now a lot of people always call me gay because the games are "kiddy" or "nerdy". And then they go on to say I am not a true gamer. WTF, seriously? Define "true gamer".

Another thing, what is with this so called "consle war". I dont why people find it neccessary to devote themselves to a single consle. Why cant people just play the games they like without worrying what platform it is on or who the company is.

So.......what are your opinions and thoughts on this?

Thus ends my rant.
(I apologize if it is long or if my thoughts seemed unorganized at all)

 

[Takaiki]

I think this belongs elsewhere...
I believe you are right.
So what if the game don't have the best graphics it is fun and entertaining unlike the newer ones that are Blah after 5 minutes of playing them.

 

[Sun And Steel]

The graphics thing has been going on for yonks, and probably won't stop anytime soon. I remember suffering from it back when I was playing PlayStation games when my friends played on PC and N64.
Graphics can be a good thing, a game that puts in effort and makes itself look appealing should be applauded, and perhaps taken into consideration. But the graphics shouldn't be the sole deciding factor of buying a game or the enjoyment gained from it if you ask me.

Also, I hate how people bash other people for the games they play. For example: I play nintendo games, i grew up with a lot of it. Now a lot of people always call me gay because the games are "kiddy" or "nerdy". And then they go on to say I am not a true gamer. WTF, seriously? Define "true gamer".

I find this to be the same as supporting a sports team. As more and more people grow up with games and begins to mean more and more to them ( much the same as say football/soccer does in some areas ) it seemed natural that the community surrounding it would become more and more group minded, and that they would be agressive to other groups who are not of the same mindset. This ties to your console war point.

My whole reason can be tied to what I said about more people growing up with games and becoming more prevelant in society. Computer games are progressing as a medium, it's no longer just the kids in bedrooms on a spectrum. As games progress and expand it is an inevitable fact that more elements will be tied to games and gamers; the so called casual gamers with their quick fix games ( I like playing Singstar, Brain Training and Guitar Hero, does that make me casual? ), the fanboy wars which are just another example of the tribal nature of people, and the eletists who turn their head at anything that doesn't conform to their pre-determined notion of what should be in a game.

That probably all seems rather jumbled, so: tl:dr; more people playing games, more examples of stupidity in gamers.

There will still be a place for people who simply enjoy games for their gameplay, story or whatever, you just have to accept the fact that as a growing medium there will be more and more other followers who don't necessarily treat games in the same manner.

 

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

Console wars don't bother me as long as the person doing has, owns (or has owned) both consoles, otherwise they're jumping on the bandwagon.

As for graphics, it's just the main phase of gaming at the moment, mainly because everything is going towards that way at the moment; HD Gaming, Sky HD, HD TV, HD Computers etc. If anything it'll only get worse when coming to graphics. Also, I've seen more and more games lately that are targeted to an older 18+ audience which shows that more adults are getting into gaming, especially due to the marketing industry.

But most people who have just got into gaming have never really played a bad game. Therefore, like you and I, we can say that we have so we know that graphics aren't everything opposed to that of younger gamers.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Bambi]

I pretty much agree with Wits (xD) although what really pecks my head is if Im playing an older FF - like Im playing VII atm, I get the boyfriend wittering on about how shit the graphics are. And Im like bog off and play your own......it's a good game, to which I get no it's not, look at the STATE of it :stare:

 

[Scrutator]

This was always going to happen since gaming became more mainstream, most of the people who have more recently gotten into gaming won't either be aware of what was available beforehand and more than likely won't care (which is fair enough). This isn't too bad unless they slate you for having a different opinion but you're always gonna get ignorant assholes in the form of fanboys etc who look at consoles as badges of honour and how they've got "the right one" and will stoop to any argument to make it like they're right.

The guys who give you the 'kiddie games' line are kinda the same, they just want to think they're cooler since their choice of game is ultra-realistic and has 10000 shades of grey and brown. But really I know what I like and I'll be damned to change that for anyone.

As for the graphics argument, with more power available every new generation then I'd expect some sort of leap in the quality of graphics from what was available beforehand. Sadly most discussions based on this topic degenerate into pissing contests which is kinda sad but meh. Again I know what I'd like and it's not something that'll stop me continuing to do so.

 

[Big Casino]

I pretty much agree with Wits (xD) although what really pecks my head is if Im playing an older FF - like Im playing VII atm, I get the boyfriend wittering on about how shit the graphics are. And Im like bog off and play your own......it's a good game, to which I get no it's not, look at the STATE of it :stare:

Thats so common, not many of my m8s are big on gaming but i can tell you now they would never ever pick up an old FF game ever. They would say the exact same thing ' check the state of the graphics ' its a shame that people cant see through some blurry pixels to what is an amazing game.

 

[Kandy-Sugar]

Ugh I had a friend who was like this with everything.

Even when I said I liked a particular song she'd be like, 'That song is old.'

I'm like, >_> 'Does that mean it's not any good? No. It just means it's old. 0_o.'

But yeah people are too picky when it comes to games.

I like Final Fantasy and want to play all of the games regardless if some of them don't have the best graphics.

It's hard to find games with a decent story these days, so you just need to shove the graphics and such aside.

 

[Abstract Debauchery]

While I personally don't find gaming a fad at all. I realize that a lot of people do. The more casual gamer is typically going to be the person that finds it to be a fad. For example:

"Who's a gamer, and who isn't? With games like Rockband, it's opening up what used to be a reclusive hobby to the light of the masses. Now it's trendy to like games, we're fucking marketable! However, with more people playing games doesn't that mean that we get more games to play?

NO.

Instead we're getting bastardized versions of what were once classic games. A perpetual easy mode filled with quicktime events and mini-games.

When was the last time you played a truly great game? Though so. They are very few, and way too far between. It's time for this bullshit to stop. This is a message to you auto aiming, Madden rostering, Wii Bowling asstards.

“Fuck you.”

We didn't spend years as a social outcast to watch you assholes fuck this up. We memorized the ultra combos, we wrote down pages of passwords. We defeated the robotmasters, knocked out Tyson, and saved the fucking princess.

I know what we are, and you're not: gamers. "

I think that about sums it up. It's taken from VGcats.com, and I couldn't agree with it more.

 

[SapphireStar]

My ex seen the graphics for the remake of Secret of Monkey Island on 360 arcade and sat there calling them. It upset me as it was my game, something from my childhood and he sat there and mocked it. But when I mock Halo, OMFG, Im the biggest bitch ever! People like that piss me right off. You dont like it? Fine, but dont go on at me cause I enjoy it and you dont. Piss off.

 

[West]

People have been going on about the importance of graphics since I can remember. And while I do think that pretty visuals can improve the quality of a gaming experience, it is by no means necessary. I can't remember the last time I couldn't play a game because its graphics were too terrible. Even so, with each generation, there is certainly a standard that new games are expected to meet, and if they don't, it is disappointing. That's nothing to say of the game's quality, though.

Anyway, I'm pretty okay with games opening up to a wider audience. It may mean that some of "our" games are becoming dumbed down (such as the aforementioned example of action games progressively turning into movies with quick-time events), but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't still fun as heck to play. For example, I'm not personally a big God of War fan (though I suppose I never really gave it a fair shot; I'm just not interested enough to try it), and I know that it is often criticized for all of its QTEs, but I bet that the gameplay is addictingly fun and entertaining.

But, really, what's wrong with gaming becoming more widely-accepted? Isn't that what we wanted back in the day? Are we just bitter that it didn't happen sooner? Most of the time, people who complain about "casual" gamers and the release of subpar games to attract them just sound like elitists to me. "I'm better at video games because I was here first and you have no business sticking your nose into my hobby." Great.

And I loves me some VGCats, but I feel the need to respond to the above quote:

"Who's a gamer, and who isn't?"
Gamers are people who play and enjoy video games. That wasn't so hard to swallow, right?

"Now it's trendy to like games, we're fucking marketable!"
We've always been marketable. We've been buying products that other people have been supplying. We buy the things that looked the best, so they've been trying to appeal to us since the beginning. I really don't see how this has changed, other than the expanded mediums through which they are capable of advertising.

"Instead we're getting bastardized versions of what were once classic games."
lol nostolgia. We weren't going to be stuck in the 8-bit era forever, folks.

"A perpetual easy mode filled with quicktime events and mini-games."
I didn't realize a game's difficulty was directly related to its entertainment value.

"When was the last time you played a truly great game?"
Not too long ago. Within this generation and off the top of my head, I've enjoyed games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Assassin's Creed games, the Ace Attorney series, Hotel Dusk, Mass Effect, Viva Pinata, etc.--OH! And all of these are original games, too (that is, they aren't remakes OR a "bastardization" of classics).

"This is a message to you auto aiming, Madden rostering, Wii Bowling asstards."
Madden has been around for years. God forbid anyone enjoy a sports game. The only football game I own is NFL2k1 for Dreamcast, I don't even know why I own it, but I still like popping it in every once in a while. Also, Wii Bowling is fun. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't played it. (jay-kay, you guys. But seriously, it's pretty great.)

"We didn't spend years as a social outcast to watch you assholes fuck this up."
Nice elitism.

"We memorized the ultra combos,..."
People still do this. Fighting games are still around.

"...we wrote down pages of passwords."
Because we weren't given an option to save. If you want to devolve gaming and use a primitive save system, be my guest. Most of us would prefer the convenience of modern save systems.

"We defeated the robotmasters, knocked out Tyson, and saved the fucking princess."
lol we were here b4 u

 

[Tmoo]

@west: those quotes you responded to were actually from a VGcats comic. the strip itself is funny, and even if it's elitist, it does highlight an issue with today's games; most of them are just too damn easy. there's also the growing number of shovelware, but that has happened with everything that became popular - television, cars, beer...et al.

 

[West]

@west: those quotes you responded to were actually from a VGcats comic.

I know, which is why I started with "I loves me some VGCats, but...". I didn't mean to make it sound like I thought the poster of the quote was the one who said it. If it came off that way, I apologize.

Anyway, some games are easy, but I wonder if that's not particularly the case. Perhaps we think they're easy because we feel like we're inherently given so much power and so many options with the increased complexity of each generation of video games.

For instance, the old Megaman games are tough as balls. Why? Because back then, you could move left and right, jump, and shoot. Later they added the ability to slide. You're already incredibly limited with what you're able to do, and on top of that, to make the games actually interesting and challenging, they designed obstacles created to stop you based on the few abilities you had. And since there were little to no alternatives or breathing room for you to progress the way you wanted instead of the game, you were forced to master those two or three skills at your disposal. Heck yes it was tough; you had to do it just right.

Now compare it to a more recent game, like Splinter Cell, or something. Is the game easier? Not particularly or necessarily. It's just that you can do a lot more than walk forward and backward, jump, and shoot. If you tried to progress through the game with those skills alone, I bet it'd be impossible. Unless you completely mastered those skills, as you were pretty much expected to do with games like Megaman. But now you've got more options available to you.

And take a look at games like the Devil May Cry series, or Ninja Gaiden. Those games are still really challenging and demanding. Also, just because a game has some QTEs doesn't mean the entire game is as easy as pressing a single button when you're prompted to. I prefer to look at QTEs not as a feature integrated into a battle system, but a feature integrated into cutscenes. Where years ago you'd just watch a nifty cutscene of your character pulling a super sweet move and finishing off the boss without any input on your end, you now interact with the cutscene, do that super sweet move yourself, and feel a deeper sense of accomplishment.

Anyways, I'm kind of ranting again now when I really didn't intend on it. Also, I could be very well be spewing nonsense. Perhaps today's generation of gaming really is that much easier, and I'm just trying to justify it. Take from this what you will.

 

[Rydia]

I think it's fine that video games are being open to a wider audience. Unfortunantly it means that there is going to be more crap out there. (For every good game I see on the shelf there are about ten Hanah Montana, high school musical, Deal or No Deal, or Davinci Code games to go along with it)

I think a lot of the popularity has to do with the Wii. There are so many people in my class that have not played a system since the original Nintendo since they have started playing the Wii. When they say that they play video games and they respond yes and that their favorite game is Wii sports or Wii fit and they have never even heard of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, ect and might have heard of Zelda or Halo... I wonder if I would call that a gamer. One of my friends won't even try a video game that is not Wii because she feels that it's not interactive or it doesn't take any thought. Um yeah...

If someone just got into video games now and they enjoy Halo, Call or Duty or other modern games, I see no problem with calling them a gamer. As long as you find video games a hobby then you can call yourself a gamer. (I don't know how Wii sports or Wii fit can really be considered a video game hobby and not just exercise) Ah so hard to explain!

But I agree that games have gotten easier. RPGs feel like they are made so everyone can enjoy the story and not so much the game play. Though that has been going on for awhile now. But they would have some hard guy that you could fight if you wanted the challange. I wouldn't rank any RPGs in the PS2 era in my top ten list. Don't get me wrong, many were enjoyable, but they didn't Wow me.

 

[Tmoo]

I know, which is why I started with "I loves me some VGCats, but...". I didn't mean to make it sound like I thought the poster of the quote was the one who said it. If it came off that way, I apologize.

Anyway, some games are easy, but I wonder if that's not particularly the case. Perhaps we think they're easy because we feel like we're inherently given so much power and so many options with the increased complexity of each generation of video games.

(...)

Anyways, I'm kind of ranting again now when I really didn't intend on it. Also, I could be very well be spewing nonsense. Perhaps today's generation of gaming really is that much easier, and I'm just trying to justify it. Take from this what you will.

Nah, no need to apologize, i just thought you might have mistook his quotes for his own words and i overlooked the blurb at the beginning of your post.

there are exceptions to every generation of games that comes out, such as Ninja Gaiden. as a whole, though, i feel gaming has gotten easier, perhaps due to the increased complexity of some games that allow many approaches to a resolution (as you said) or because it's tailored to a wider range of consumers. granted, i consider myself a hardcore, so my definition of easy is probably skewed.

 

[SimplySabra]

Gaming has become a fad. I think the most the people bashing at our older games that are awesome are the new generation of kids who grew up with the better graphics and crappier story lines. They don't get that graphics aren't very important because they haven't seen a proper story line game. And since there are so many people catching on to videogames with new graphics, kids and adults alike, they don't get the concept of what a decent game truly is. Graphics aren't EVERYTHING! But they, the general people, treat it like it is and then the game developers see them as the mainstream audience and they keep throwing us crappy games masked by good graphics! I hate it. I miss the games when they were actually a challenge with a good storyline. Good graphics are always a plus, but I don't need them and they are pointless in a dull game.

 

[West]

I'm going to continue to play Devil's Advocate here and argue in defense of modern gaming. (Because how much fun is an opinion thread when everyone agrees?) Particularly in this case when it comes to a game's story. Sabra's post inspired me, but I know it's been mentioned before.

I'm going to go ahead and say that the art of story-telling in games has not been lost. As a matter of fact, it hasn't been changed much at all. And if anything, it has been improved. I'll even go the extra mile and say that in certain cases it has been improved too much.

Think of some of the most classic and beloved gaming franchises from way back when. Games like Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog. These games have found their ways into the hearts of millions of gamers, and they've become so popular that their legacies continue to this day. But consider the original few games from each of those series. If you knew the story to them back when you played them the first time, it was likely due to one of the following three reasons:

1. You read the manual that came with the game.
2. You pieced together vague events that occurred within the game.
3. You read or heard about it from somewhere else, because the game sure didn't tell you.
​

These great games had little to no story. And the stories they did have were incredibly simplistic. An evil dinosaur captured the princess. A crazed lunatic is trying to take over the world with robots. Another crazed lunatic... well, Mega Man and Sonic had a pretty similar story, I guess.

Even the original Legend of Zelda (which I own but admittedly have never played through entirely, but I used to watch my sisters play it when I was little--I'm not a Zelda guy) really didn't spell much out for you. You just kind of had to make your way. When it comes right down to it, back in the day of the super classics, there wasn't much going on for gaming in terms of graphics OR story. It was all about gameplay.

But yeah, stories improved with the next generation. We got games like Link to the Past (which, again, I haven't played through but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt here that it had a pretty great story based on all the hubbub surrounding it). We got my favorite RPG ever, Earthbound. We got a lot of other peoples' favorite RPG ever, Chrono Trigger. But we also got more plot-ambiguous games like Super Mario World. Even Super Metroid--my favorite Metroid game thus far--(and even the entire Metroid series up to that point in time) really had bare bones in terms of story. But they were still fun.

Fast forward to today. We've got plenty of games with great plots. Beautiful stories like Shadow of the Colossus, immersive (yes, Firefox, immersive IS a word) narratives like Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic, and complete brain-strainers like Metal Gear Solid (I'm lookin' at you, here, Sons of Liberty). Even the classics of Mario, Mega Man, and Sonic have been refurbished and actually have some three-dimensional direction in terms of plot (rather than simply "go to a castle and save the princess, and if she's not there check another one"). I just don't really see how story telling has taken a turn for the worse.

But like I mentioned earlier, sometimes stories can ruin games. And by that I mean every Sonic game released after Sonic Adventure 2.

But yeah, it could be argued that I cherry-picked these examples. Maybe there were more games from the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit eras with stunning plots. There are probably plenty from current generations with terrible ones. But even so, there were at least some from back then that sucked, and at least some from now that rule.

 

[Tmoo]

personally, i love me some G-darius and Mega Man X. I miss games like those, G-darius especially. Arcade shooters and side-scrolling platformers have gone extinct*.

I see gaming heading to a merge point with cinema. I hope that, if and when this happens, games like the two i mentioned will make a comeback as a reaction to this merge - little to no story and all about the gameplay. Games like those have near-infinite replay value; in contrast, most RPG's and story-centric games don't.

*from consoles. I would really like to see an arcade shooter a la G-darius style take up on the new generation of graphics. PC shooters seem to be in tact.