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Have Modern Gamers Lost the Patience For Puzzles?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 28, 2008 05:03 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."
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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
This thread has been eaten by a grue (Score:5, Funny)
...
"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.
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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
Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps one called Portal? I hear some people played them in 2007.
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.
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Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. That was a triumph!
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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
What's old is new (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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: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)
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