Have Modern Gamers Lost the Patience For Puzzles? 622
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."
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.
Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps one called Portal? I hear some people played them in 2007.
perhaps they realize.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't be serious... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:zulpez (Score:3, Insightful)
The Longest Journey was a wonderful adventure / puzzle game. The puzzles were ingenious and generally pretty logical (with one exception that I recall). And the story line was fantastic... easily the best story of any game I've played. Came out about 8 years ago but well worth buying and playing if you enjoy puzzles that fit nicely into the story.
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.
I like puzzles (Score:3, Insightful)
I loved Portal and I'd like to see more games like it. The key is a comprehensible and consistent set of rules. I don't mind trying to figure out a puzzle as long as it makes sense.
What I hate are those "puzzle" games that have you clicking on every goddamn thing on the screen and using every item on every other item to try to figure out what some designer decided should work based on some arbitrary reason or whim. Of course when you try some similar solution in another level, it won't work. That shit is just annoying. Give me more games like Portal!
Or how about Zack and Wiki (Score:1, Insightful)
Zack and Wiki is a great puzzle game for the Wii. It's even pirate themed for a little of that old Monkey Island feel ;) :)
It's not a real adventure though, because it's a sequence of levels where every level is one big puzzle where you have to get to the treasure chest.
And the puzzles are great, not easy and requiring creative thinking. I bought it based on the positive reviews, and I love it
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember games like "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Full Throttle" where if you didn't catch something 2 levels back you couldn't proceed. Some modern games have a nice mix (the Chrono-XX and Final Fantasy series for example) where you have to decipher clues and do things in the right order, but other games (pick any modern FPS like Prey, Half-Life 2, Metroid Prime, etc..) and the puzzles are just there to increase game-play time.
The point of the article isn't that puzzle games don't exist, they just aren't mainstream anymore. So many "gamers" of today need $4000 computers and 10 graphics cards to play their modern games. They don't care how fun or interesting or challenging the game is, as long as they get over 100f.p.s. and that it has online play.
Look at all these "professional" gamers coming out now. Are they challenging themselves with puzzle games? Do they try to finish Myst in the fastest time? No. They see who gets the most Frags in UT3.
Video games are just becoming another sport, in that sports aren't too mentally stimulating but are fun to watch/play. Nerds are now being split into two categories, high hand-eye coordination nerds cabaple of playing these FPS games online, and thinking nerds who are capable of playing and actually solving these Puzzle games. The jocks already have football, baseball, basketball, etc., etc.), now some of the jockier nerds are staking out their own claim.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, I don't think that's the stort of puzzle game that the parent was talking about. We're talking adventure puzzle games, not tap-happy puzzle arcade games. But I still think it's bullshit.
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.
Re:Strange comment (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:4, Insightful)
That little toy is java, but it points us in the right direction. A lot of this stuff has moved to the web. There are approximately 8 trillion little flash puzzle games. Some of them are very clever and fun. There's a lot of variety, and various levels of quality and polish. But either way, there's plenty to choose from.
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.
Ah, the 'good old days' (Score:3, Insightful)
This conversation often comes up when i'm talking about games with younger people. I remember playing the same game, the same phase in that game, for weeks, sometimes even months! Remember the Kings Quest series where you had to find numerous ingredients to make some crazy potion and had to go through all kinds of weird places to almost score with a chick in Leisure Suit Larry. The increasingly difficult and hugely entertaining puzzles in 7th Guest and 11th Hour, and not to mention the fun hours playing Day of the Tentacle.
I am a huge fan of ScummVM and play some of these games still every now and then. Some months ago my wife and i re-played The Dig, the game that was supposed to be a movie but due to budget became a video game.
Yeah ..
And Zelda for the NES is just nothing compared to the one for Wii, i'm sorry. Must be because i'm an old fart (damn, i'm only 31!) but these newer games lack the fun and playability (playing for weeks and still finding it amazingly funny and challenging) that the older games had. Sure there are exceptions, but games like KQ,LLL.MI,DOTT and the like are classics which no modern game can top.
Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
Kotor really seems to be one of the finest examples in the last years. You had the Diablo "level-up-addiction" combined with lots of story and many puzzles to solve. And since you were the one deciding how it all ends it was even fun to play twice. Whenever one element got boring the others made up for it. IMO that's the way to go with all the enhanced graphics and UI. The only problem is that the market for such games is quite small. But on the other hand it was just as small back in the old days, so you can't really talk about a decline. It's just that so many new genres have appeared and the industry itself is much bigger.
:)
On a side note: Would anyone buy a game today which had almost 1/3 covered with this menu:
GIVE PICKUP USE
OPEN LOOKAT PUSH
CLOSE TALK TO PULL
I thought so
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: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.
That's not the only problem (Score:1, Insightful)
The other problem is quality control. I just played NWN2 and the Mask of the Betrayer sequel. ... Oh, and the bugs were so plentiful that the walkthroughs had the script segements necessary to bypass the bugs.
I had to resort to the walkthroughs to convince myself that yes, the game had broken, yet again
I'd done all that was necessary to complete that particular quest and unless I wanted to hack past it I was going to have to restart.
One of the problems with the newer graphics/scripting engines is that more underlying complexity has brought more fragility. Complex annoying quests may irritate some players, but complex annoying BUGGY quests are a decent onto hell.
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.
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!"
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.
Re:No, just modern game magazines (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly, why don't you just let those people have their shooters while you enjoy your Wii. I completely don't understand why people need to evangelize for whatever game system they bought.
It's not evangelism, it's the brutal truth that the Wii Remote is a *better* input device than two thumb sticks. It's easily almost as good as mouse. *That's* why everyone wants to see more shooters on the Wii, the system is screaming for better games that utilize the controls.
Context is the key (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, we live in a day of MTV attention spans but keep in mind that we speak a different language as well.
From years of Sierra and Lucas Arts games, we learned that balloons and bread might combine hours down the road to scare off pigeons and that if you miss a clue now, you'll have to backtrack 2 weeks from now and find it.
Thank god, a few designers in the past decade looked at these little "skills" and using many words such as "arbitrary" and "tedious" decided to slowly change WHAT gamers pay attention to rather than HOW MUCH attention they play.
Think back to a few of those old games and you'll remember an element of tediousness. Even though it may not have dissuaded you back then, you had built up a careful repertoire of knowledge to insulate you from the worst of the events. You knew that something disjointed was probably important. You knew NOT to leave items behind no matter how frivolous. In short, you spoke the language of the game writers enough to pick up on the clues about which today's players would be...well...clueless.
Yes, today's fast paced games are frequently faster paced, but there are plenty of players that enjoy the slower aspects of games. The problem is that modern players no longer have the same context from which to play the older games.
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.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I also wonder if the demographic of "gamers" has evolved. You used to be a pure computer geek to play games. Nowadays everybody plays them: rappers, punks, jocks, business types, etc. So puzzle games may still appeal to the kind of people who enjoyed them 20 years ago, but their percentage of the "gamers" industry has been reduced by an influx of new gamers.
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).
Re:I don't buy that (Score:4, Insightful)
Lemmings was the single most sadistic twisted game to EVER be developed. I am certain that a pit into the fiery depths of hell was opened the day that code was written.
The dark world's magnum opus? Lemmings 2: Tribes
Re:I don't buy that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:7th guest, 11th hour (Score:3, Insightful)
I also think Myst qualified as a puzzle game. Although it wasn't puzzles in the traditional sense, it still had clues and things to solve.
I'm not sure I understand... Myst's "turn the knobs the right way and push the buttons in the right order to make the doohikey do its thing" style is pretty much what I consider the definition of traditional puzzles.
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.
Re:You are lost in a maze of twisty little threads (Score:4, Insightful)
ME: Pick up knife
Computer: I don't understand "knife"
ME: Pick up sword
Computer: I don't understand "sword"
ME: Pick up saber
Computer: I don't understand "pick up"
That's when I tended to eject the floppy and try to see how far I could toss it.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:4, Insightful)
The fun in most adventure games comes from getting an understanding of the world that surrounds you in the game. The fun in a puzzle isn't getting stuck on it, but gaining an understanding of the underlying mechanic and finding the solution or just in interacting with the world. The hard part of course is the balance between frustrating the player and actually giving him something he has to think about, which however can be worked around quite well by always having alternative puzzles the player can solve and by having a world that is actually interesting enough to explore.
The problem with todays games is that most games don't even try to create a good puzzle, either they are so easy that they are hardly noticeable or they are so stupid and non-integrated into the game that they just annoy ("Here is a locked door, go find the key"). The classic LucasArts adventure almost never had any puzzle of such blunt stupidity, instead you had to figure out how to dress a mummy to win a competition and other crazy fun stuff that integrated seamlessly into the story. There was no "play the game" or "watch a cutscene" separation, it was pretty much all the same thing.
Also the thing to realize is that puzzles are not only there to stop you from making progress, but also a means to explore the world, to touch it if you will. In an adventure game you can grab things, smell them, eat them, open them, talk to people and a lot of other stuff. In most mainstream games today on the other side you have the choice between shooting people in the head or blowing them up with a grenade, you have no way to talk to them and no way to use items in a meaningful way. Its all just run and gun without ever stopping and looking around and getting an idea what really is happening.
Now of course not every action game needs to be riddled with puzzles, but most of them really could need some calmer moments that departure from the standard run&gun.
That's a bunch of DS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, the DS is has tons of adventure games with a lot of hard non-linear puzzles. Try the Phoenix Wright series or Hotel Dusk. Those have the same kinds of puzzles and problem solving that you'll find in the old Monkey Islands, Mysts, and similar games. Then you have the more epic Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and Zelda games, that offer a combination of adventure puzzles with action elements.
As a fan of really puzzly adventure games, I really don't agree that puzzle games are disappearing. In fact, I think they're getting more involved and more difficult. Sure, the puzzles are becoming more integrated into the setting, but I think that's a really good thing.
Re:Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:2, Insightful)
So basically the guy enjoyed playing "guess the syntax" games, where you know WHAT you need to do but have to spend hours trying to guess how to tell the computer to make your character do it. Having to try 300 combinations to figure out how to unlock a door to discover that you had to type "put jade encrusted key into the keyhole, turn key and turn handle" or whatever isn't fun, the only challenge is how much boredom you can tolerate.
Re:7th guest, 11th hour (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
Total agreement. One word: Portal.
I love that game, and it is nothing but one big set of 3D puzzles woven masterfully into the story.
I've been playing video games pretty much since they became commercially available (the '70s), and I've always HATED the puzzles the article rhapsodizes. I think I feel about them the way I feel about musicals. You have a perfectly good story under way when everyone stops to sing a song. Or in this case solve an arbitrary puzzle.
A puzzle that wouldn't make sense in the real world doesn't make sense in a game world. When I want to get a Coke from the Coke machine I don't expect to have to solve a puzzle that has nothing to do with getting a Coke. I don't want to solve a puzzle in the shape of a Coke either. I just want a danged Coke.
What about ADVENTURE (puzzle) games? (Score:2, Insightful)
I miss the classic adventure games -- which were really puzzle games -- like King's Quest, Space Quest, and Monkey Island.
Those had great stories and lots of humor along with reasonable puzzles to be solved.
I think they'd do fine today but no-one seems to make anything quite like those.
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:3, Insightful)
Java.
Write once,
run anywhere.
Yeah. Right.
The promise of Java was never, "Write once, run correctly on any broken, incomplete Java clone that you inflict on yourself out of principle."
Enjoy your martyrdom while it lasts: fully free Java is right around the corner.
I have infinite patience for puzzles... (Score:4, Insightful)
What I DON'T have patience for is WALKING. It's one thing to have to figure out how to unlock some complicated door puzzle, it's another thing to have to spend 20 hours walking back and forth gathering bits and pieces to "solve" a puzzle.
The problem with puzzles in games is that the nature of the puzzles deteriorated over time to be moe time consuming and tedious and less clever.
Get rid of the extraneous travel time associated with the puzzles and a lot of people will suddenly have a lot more patience for them.
Oh, and that will have the added bonus of stopping developers from artifically increasing the playtime of their games via incredibly long travel times.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of it is also a lot of people (myself included) got extremely sick of the "guess what I'm thinking" style of puzzle.
Many King's Quest games had puzzles that were simple a stupid waste of time.
And honestly, the whole "move the box to hold down the button so the door stays open" Lego Star Wars/God of War style stuff goes back a long way, and still sucks.
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Strategy is mostly about managing resources (like ammos and health) in order to achieve a general goal (like killing ennemies). Puzzle is about finding one solution (not necessarily unique) to one particular problem.
What it means is that choosing a weapon instead of another depending on the resource you have and on the penalty for using a less adequate weapon is strategy. But using first a Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid to lure him in front of a security camera and then using the Security Bullseye Plasmid to kill him requires close to no resources. It also requires close to no action skills. The only thing it requires is finding one solution to a single problem. The difficulty is finding THAT solution. This is a puzzle kind of problem to me. The only difference with the classical adventure game where you have to search through you inventory to find out what object to use on the "problem" is the game don't tell you explicitly it is a puzzle and it doesn't block you if you don't find a good solution.