Slashdot Log In
Have Modern Gamers Lost the Patience For Puzzles?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 28, 2008 04:03 PM
from the get-off-my-lawn dept.
from the get-off-my-lawn dept.
Brainy Gamer has an interesting reflection on old puzzle games and why their style of gameplay seems to be a dying art. According to the author modern gamers seem more interested in combat and seem to have lost the patience for difficult puzzles. "Despite my fondness for the adventure games of yore, it appears the days of puzzles in narrative games have come and gone. Puzzles - especially the serial unlocking variety found in the old LucasArts games - seem to have become a relic of a bygone era. Where they once provided a necessary ludic element to a—clever and often complex narrative - designed to add challenge and force the player to earn his progress through the story - few modern players have the patience for such challenges anymore."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Plug for the powder game (Score:5, Interesting)
http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/ [dan-ball.jp]
I don't know why
I have an odd fascination
with this little java game
There are no puzzles
there are no goals
it's not quite a painting program
but it's not quite a game either
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks t0qer
for the very interesting
poem about a java game
It was touching
and yet
left me confused
wanting more
Parent
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:5, Funny)
I have to say, I've never read such a honest and touching poem about the complex relationship between a man and his java game.
Parent
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:5, Funny)
Warning: tag requires name attribute.
Warning: tag requires name attribute.
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 288
at d.a(Unknown Source)
at d.a(Unknown Source)
at dust.a(Unknown Source)
at dust.init(Unknown Source)
at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(AppletPanel.java:419)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Java.
Write once,
run anywhere.
Yeah. Right.
Parent
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:5, Funny)
Gentoo eh? You must have compiled your JDK wrong! Try setting ARRAY_OUT_OF_BOUNDS_EXCEPTION=false before you do the build.
Parent
This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Funny)
...
Re:This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Funny)
What is a grue?
rj
Parent
Re:This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Funny)
Just turn off the light and wait.
Parent
Re:This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't know. I haven't seen one.
Parent
You are lost in a maze of twisty little threads, (Score:5, Funny)
all alike.
Actually, that is a pretty good description of slashdot.
Parent
"Modern gamers"... (Score:5, Funny)
...as opposed to ancient gamers? Preindustrial gamers? Renaissance gamers? Pre-war gamers?
Re:"Modern gamers"... (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh. The Renaissance gamers. Now those guys knew how to have fun. Games just haven't been the same since they replaced quill pens with graphite pencils.
Parent
I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)
Plenty of modern games are based around puzzles, they're simply more organic to the game environment and therefore not as noticeable. I don't think it's a matter of modern games not having enough patience, I think it's a matter of gaming evolving into a more immersive and holistic experience.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you - the puzzles are simply better integrated with the game, and are offered as a challenge to get more of the story/points/powers, rather than being roadblocks that must be passed. Think KOTOR, where the puzzles enhance the gameplay, vs something like Myst, where solving the puzzles enable futher gameplay.
I think it's also a reflection of the fact that most puzzles don't benefit from improved graphics or processor power, while fighting/shooting/action games see measurable benefits. So the puzzles still look and play very much the same way ("very well", in my opinion), but each year the action elements improve visually and kinetically.
Parent
Re:I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)
Puzzle games are less replayable. While not impossible, it's extremely difficult to come up with a system for dynamically generating puzzles so they're fresh each time.
And multi-player also suffers in puzzle games.
So in all, it takes a LOT more effort for a game company to make a puzzle game that has both multiplayer modes and is replayable, and those are large segments of the market. In short, it is easier to make an action game that will appeal to more people. Puzzle games are still great for once-through single-player, though (take Zelda games, for example).
Parent
Re:I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)
A well designed game will offer BOTH. In GTA IV there were a lot of missions that you could do complete a lot easier if you went through a certain way, and you were often clued into it by the mission description (i.e. you sneak in the back door, trigger the cops, and slip out while the baddies are fighting the cops vs. fighting through and killing everyone, then evading the cops). Of course, not every mission was like that so it often lead to disapointment if you wanted to play them all like that.
Parent
Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps one called Portal? I hear some people played them in 2007.
Re:Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:5, Funny)
Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any failure will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death.
Portal can be a pretty harsh puzzle game, too...
Parent
Re:Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. "Boom Blox" for Wii probably counts as a puzzle game, too. They're all over, if you know what to look for.
Parent
Re:Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
Gamers still love puzzles.
Game studios, hardware manufacturers, and especially game reviewers hate puzzles.
How do you compete with low-budget studios if the gameplay is king instead of the graphics and high-budget art and voice assets?
How do you sell a fancy new video card if the latest game doesn't require ripping through a fast changing scene at 100 FPS using the most realistic techniques currently available?
How do you review a steady stream of games if you can't experience 90% of it in two or three encounters with an enemy?
We've had game series after game series be wildly successful based on interactive puzzle style game play only to be ruined in sequels as more focus is put on the combat. Yet reviewer pan games based on the combat system without giving the puzzles any thought; even if the puzzles are the vast majority of the game!
If Portal weren't bundled as part of Orange Box, it probably would have received little critical attention.
Parent
The opposite for me (Score:5, Interesting)
perhaps they realize.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare "Portal" with, say, "Zork" or "The Bard's Tale". The puzzles involved were quite simple and mostly involved wandering around in the dark desperately drawing maps until you found the clue hidden in one corner of a dungeon just so you could answer the riddle one level up and in the far corner, but the level of player involvement is significantly higher.
You don't see players making detailed hand-drawn maps [brotherhood.de] of every level of Portal, complete with precise notes, just so they can solve the puzzles. Gamers today just don't have the patience for it. Even online RPGs, the last stronghold of the fanatical mappers and note-takers [eqatlas.com], have all given up and provided automatic mapping tools which even a brain-dead cat sleeping on the keyboard could use [worldofwarcraft.com].
As the article and its accompanying comments mention, the market for involved puzzle games didn't shrink, it just didn't grow with the rest of the industry. While there may still be a market for a few thousand people who like Monkey Island, there are also now millions of people who think that Halo is about as complicated as a game can get before their heads explode. Welcome to today's market.
Parent
Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the puzzle ideas and note takers of WoW have switched from the old mapping the world and figureing out where every little corner is, to the theory crafting of figuring out the exact game mechanics of each item to figure out things like DPS, threat, ability to tank or heal etc... While the basics are quite simple, to tune a character to top the charts will be quite complicated and are constantly disputed.
Parent
Uh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've confused PUZZLES with TEDIUM. Memorizing (or writing down) a map isn't puzzle solving. It's data storage.
Parent
Games I've played recently (Score:5, Informative)
God of war 1 and 2 were even balances of puzzles, timing battles, slaughtering minions, and bosses with predictable patterns. Aside from the minions, that could be considered 3 types of puzzles.
Portal mentioned twice is good, but additionally there were sorts of puzzles in half life 2.
Zac and Wiki, one of the best known hidden gems on the Wii is a point and click puzzle game.
Zelda and the Phantom hourglass certainly has it's share of very VERY innovative puzzles, making good use of the touch screen and even at parts the FOLDING of the DS (it says to touch a symbol on the top screen to a map, after about an hour of tapping everything in the dungeon I realized it was just you had to close, then open the DS, brilliant nintendo!) and I'm aware that the rest of the series relied on puzzles too.
Metroid prime 3 had quite a few puzzles and that's an FPS (although some who drink too much nintendo koolaid inist it's it's own "FPA" genre.)
Lego Star wars had many.
Halo 3 did not. Katamari didn't. Mario doesn't so much.
Furthermore, Tetris has been sold well on every system ever, Lumines is quite popular, Meteos did well...
In my limited experience, puzzles are still a staple of many, in fact I'd even say MOST games (aside from racing and strict FPS.) The author only mentioned two games to support his argument, and the fact that kids don't like puzzles. Well, kids don't like a lot of good stuff. When I was a kid, I thought macaroni and cheese was the greatest thing ever invented, so did my friends, yet you never saw any articles suggesting that fine dining is going extinct because MacDonalds does well and a lot of kids think steak is gross.
He's obviously picking a few games that don't have puzzles in them that he's played recently and jumped to the conclusion that developers and gamers all have ADD and don't want puzzles. He's wrong.
Parent
Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. That was a triumph!
Parent
You can't be serious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can't be serious... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
No, just modern game magazines (Score:5, Interesting)
Just look at the Wii.
But there are also is a strong culture of arrogant shooter gamers that think "If it doesn't have bleeding edge graphics and a ton of violence, then I don't call it a video game. No, I don't care that the Wii is outselling my personal favorite brand of gaming device. They must be sitting unused in closets. Stop telling me statistics. I'll cover my ears LA LA LA LA LA leave me alone and let me play my shoot-em up game and look down on all other gamers."
Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a lot of it has to do with the games that this generation is being brought up on. There's not much strategy or thinking needed for Halo, team fortress II, etc. These newer games through out puzzles and storyline and replace them with better graphics and bigger worlds. Even RPG's these days are less puzzle oriented, and more grind oriented. Thus, most gamers have a mentality that if they can't figure something out they probably just have to overpower whatever it is that is stopping them.
Compare that to the games that older generations were brought up on (Nethack, Mist, older rpgs) and it is pretty obvious to see why this newer generation doesn't endorse puzzles like some of the older peeps here do.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
That fine, but a lot of puzzle elements in games are just incredibly badly done. Having grown up on King's quest and before that text-based games, I have to say there's no excuse for:
1. Get key from wizard's corpse
2. Have level 12 enchantress bless it with swamp water from a Super Troll
3. Carry it in magical satchel for 4 hours, constantly typing "USE KEY" at every opportunity.
4. Give it to talking vulture who swallows it and poops out the real magic key, thus going back to the beginning of the game.
Its just arbitrary absurdist trial and error. People rebelled against this and moved to shooters for a reason. Typing in "USE KEY" 100x doesnt really compare to Doom. Now the shooters have become stale and we're going back to puzzles.
Of course in D&D its a different but scripted computer puzzles have serious limitations. Its not the genre's fault. Its the people and technology's fault.
Parent
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
What's old is new (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
And as the fifth (at least) person to bring up that single game, I'd say you've all done more to support the FP's point than refute it.
A good, popular puzzle-oriented game stands out enough that many of you thought to try using it as a counterexample.
A good, popular puzzle-oriented game.
Yeah, you can probably name a few more obscure ones, but that kinda demonstrates exactly the complaint expressed... For every puzzle game, you have a handful of MMOs and a few dozen fluffy eye-candy shooters. Not really a ratio that makes me say "wow, look at the thriving puzzle-oriented game market!"
Parent
Puzzles of Old (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it might be a reaction to the highly arbitrary puzzles in past adventure games. Remember FFX and the arbitrary puzzles it forced you into every once in a while, they were maddenly arbitrary and added nothing to the game. Many of the Sierra games had random arbitrary puzzles as well. This is par for the video game puzzles. They add nothing and simply provide a barrier for people. There were a few interesting puzzles but largely they were senseless and distracting. I don't really want to play the towers of Hanoi every 20 minutes so I can open a locker with ammo. I'd prefer not to have to figure out that I need to insert a spatula into a anti-matter reactor so I can power a jar opener to access a gob of acid to eat through a door. If you left it optional, then maybe; but stopping the story and game to play some ridiculous puzzle or some arbitrary item combination is not fun.
Re:Puzzles of Old (Score:5, Informative)
I think this [oldmanmurray.com] explains perfectly well why the "old-school" style of puzzle game, ala Sierra and Lucas Arts, have gone by the wayside and it'll be a while till they come back.
I say "think" because my proxy blocked the link. Basically, if it describes a puzzle in which you have to create a disguise by using cat hair and scotch tape to make a mustache in order to imitate a guy who doesn't have a mustache, then you're at the right place. :P
I think it was Kings Quest 6 that basically broke my brain for puzzle games. At least Space Quest made me chuckle while making me do random retarded things.
Parent
The internet killed the puzzler (Score:5, Insightful)
Having non-randomized puzzle elements in games made sense before the easy availability of Internet boards and hint sites.
Today, any such content is rapidly bypassed by most. To some degree that is a pity - games like Cruise for a Corpse were great experiences. But alas, the genre just requires too much self-command to be viable.
Of course, randomly-generated puzzlers are still with us - perhaps with increasing computer power, and more sophisticated AI, we will see a revival of randomized puzzle-like adventures?
I have always thought that the old Sid Meier title Covert Action is the best blueprint to follow to revive the puzzle-based action-adventure genre.
Strange comment (Score:5, Interesting)
GameFaqs made games easy for some, meaning game creators added some challenges that can ONLY be solved by zealots, which pissed off people, meaning most people use walkthrough for the puzzles. (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy, where you need NOT to get 4 crates to get the best weapon in the game)
Some challenges are absurd, or blocks the user and are required to continue to play, which means people tend to get to the Faqs again after a period of time.
Some "puzzle" games are all the same crap (I'm looking at you, website I need to change the address to continue by looking at the source code) ... meaning people get annoyed by these puzzles.
But frankly, I _love_ a good puzzle game, and I _love_ to solve challenges, when they can be really solved, like all the friends I know.
But you are right, I hate cheap-@$$ puzzles, I hate copycats of all the same style, and I hate looking at a game for a good hour and not being able to figure out what to do at that point. Up your game while creating your puzzle game and you will have people happy to figure out all the intricacies out of it.
Cheers!
Re:Strange comment (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a rule I use to distinguish good puzzles from bad puzzles: If the easiest method for solving the puzzle is a breadth-first search of the entire possible-solution space, it's a bad puzzle.
Parent
Stretching (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that people don't like puzzle games, it's the manner in which they've been used in games lately. In many games they're nothing more than an annoyance, with variants of the same puzzle appearing over and over again in a desperate attempt at stretching the game out and make it seem longer. I have no patience for this sort of thing at all and doubt many people do. If you want to make a puzzle game, or incorporate puzzles into your game, you'd better not make them annoying, mandatory, and long. That sounds like an honest job description; how could anyone not hate that?
I loved Portal by the way. All the puzzles were different, and the rewards for completion (the humorous voiceover and further interesting puzzles) were excellent.
Yea, let us lement the loss of bad puzzles (Score:5, Insightful)
But unfortunately IMHO many of the later games (including some later offerings from Infocom) copped out and instead of eloquent puzzles they offered painful trial-and-error puzzles or puzzles so obscure and obtuse that you really had to buy the hint books, call the 900 number, or otherwise "cheat" or you were not going to solve the problems. Far from wonderful puzzles, these are just crude hacks disguised as puzzles from writers who either can't or will not take the time to design graceful puzzles. To come up with an absurd series of idiotic steps that a player must somehow recreate to accomplish the goal, with no logic behind doing these either in the real world or in the game world other than that's what the author has decided you must do, is hardly a valid puzzle. It's just an ego trip for the author and the reason for the decline in supposed puzzle games. And as at least one commenter here pointed out, there are still some good puzzle games, such as last year's Portal.
Re:7th guest, 11th hour (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:7th guest, 11th hour (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the first chess puzzle in 11th hour was absolutely great. I remember drawing out the board and moving pennies around trying to figure out the solution... and then the click, when I finally realized that it is more or less a path with a fork in the road. Genius.
Parent
Re:Summary anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent