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."
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
The opposite for me (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
Prince of Persia series (newer) (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not a fond of the old Prince of Persia game(s?), the side scrolling and difficulty I have controlling the dude bothers me - lol.
But, the series like Sands of Time, and the likes, I enjoyed quite a lot. The combat was mostly pointless, but, the puzzle aspect was entertaining.
Re:7th guest, 11th hour (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
DROD (Score:3, Interesting)
This game series [caravelgames.com] has kept me busy for nearly a year now.
No fancy graphics here; it's pure turn-based puzzle, kind of a mix of Nethack and Gauntlet. Everything from horde monster fights to door-lock puzzles to old classic riddles.
A kind review: http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_06_13_05.html [maa.org]
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.
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!
It's all Jane Jensen's fault... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nostalgia (Score:2, Interesting)
I for one never found near endless "maze" type puzzles fun. You know the kind where you enter a pitch black region on a map and have to go left right forward forward right right forward left left - to reach the end and escape the maze. One wrong turn and your dead, possibly erasing an hour of progress along with it. Ditto with having 10 levers that must be pulled and pushed in the exact right sequence to activate a door. I always found those types of things tedious and generally requiring a walkthrough to avoid stress and large bouts of game stopage.
On the otherhand, I was sadend by HL2: episode 1 and 2 which have absolutely no challenging puzzles in them and are pretty much just arcade style blasting your way through for most of the game. I guess what im saying is i'd like to see some puzzles that are somewhere inbetween mind numbingly tedious "myst" puzzles and an arcade game.
Actually thinking about it a bit more, Id have to say fallout 1 and 2 have just the right amount of puzzles in them. They dont really impede gameplay and while challenging, can be interestingly poignant and funny at the same time.
Re:"Modern gamers"... (Score:3, Interesting)
Define "modern players" (Score:2, Interesting)
I play computer games since ~1995. I liked the LucasArts adventures at this time most.
One thing I noted, the quality of games went down from time to time. Many game studios went bankruptcy or were bought by big game studios, which made bad sequels out of the games.
What I noted, especially in the last 2 years are two things:
- Games are often made to run on PC and consoles. That makes the developers design it for the most limited platform in terms of input devices. This is usually bad for the PC port of the game.
- Games are made in a way to maximize profit.
Maximizing profit means to appeal as many customers as possible. That often include people who want to play something like an "interactive movie", without any real challenges or parts where serious thinking is needed.
If this matches your definition of "modern players", I think they never had a patience for such puzzles.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think gamers have gotten tired of THE SAME puzzles served up with a thousand different faces on them. (I loved Weltris with a passion that still makes me giddy) Portal has proven that, and Bioshock to a lesser extent (sometimes old puzzles are fine if you're not spending hours on them) There's a huge following of puzzle games in the "in a window" gaming community. Games like Desktop Tower Defense, Spaced Penguin [bigideafun.com] (one of my favs), and most of the games at Homokaasu [homokaasu.org] are puzzle games that are different enough to get you hooked and hard.
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.
Re:Yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, some puzzles are okay in a tabletop, but number games should be easily solved with a quick Int check by a character with a Mathematics skill or not at all (because math isn't a common skill), so number games come down to a skill roll or player knowledge.
Speaking of Nethack, I recently played the latest Zelda: Twilight Princess, and the Sokoban-style puzzles in Z:TP were so easy that I didn't have any problem with them, and I'm normally not good at planning more than four steps ahead.
Instant Gratification Generation (Score:2, Interesting)
The title sais it all really. We have moved away from generation x, y or whatever and over to IGG. The best way to describe this new generation is with the fantastic notion from Leslie in The Big Bang Theory... Stick electrodes in a rats brain and give it a button that causes an orgasm every time it's pressed. The rat would keep pressing the button till it died of starvation. This is exactly what the new games are; orgasm buttons. Short bursts of good feeling with only one lasting effect. After 1 hour of gameplay; you are one hour older.
I guess I am just getting old.
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.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:4, Interesting)
-todd
Re:perhaps they realize.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, sure. In a world with GPS and Google Maps, why on earth would you want to fill up notebook paper with terrible maps when a computer could do the job so much better? It's sort of like when they took food acquisition and eating out of RPGs. It was simply a better gaming experience continuously working on your quest -- not having to figure out how much food you need to take or getting robbed on the way and having to make it back to town just to eat. Automatic mapmaking is great.
Now if I could copy/paste what the people said in Ultima 7 in Exult into gvim, I'd be set! :)
Cheers,
-l
My younger DND players have trouble (Score:4, Interesting)
My older D&D players love them or ignore them.
Some of my younger D&D players got very upset.
Talking to them later, they feel their self-image is threatened when they can't solve them and instead of wanting to push harder until they do solve them they get upset and stop. My response has been to be more careful about leading them into the riddles with game events or easy riddles leading to harder riddles and they are getting better. I was surprised at them being upset tho and I have to assume it has to do with the "no real winners and losers everyone has to feel happy" attitude in school these days. They can't handle losing very well. Instead of viewing it as a challenge, they view it as unfair.
To be fair, it is possible that my older players had similar issues when they were younger.
Re:It's all Jane Jensen's fault... (Score:3, Interesting)
.. as Old Man Murray points out [oldmanmurray.com]. Some puzzles may have been great, but I remember plenty of horrible ones, such as the Gabriel Knight one above, where you had to construct a false moustache using cat hair and syrup, in order to hire a moped.
Yes, and following the link to "the Gabriel Knight one" above, you would learn Jane Jensen had nothing to do with that particular puzzle.
Definitely too easy, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
One neat thing about the Portal puzzles is that some of them can be solved in multiple ways. Watching someone else defeat the turrets in the most unlikely way imaginable was highly entertaining.
Re:Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:2, Interesting)
RTFA.
The article mentions Portal, and still thinks it pales compared to some older games.
The Internet Killed Them... (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember the first Alone in the Dark.. I was addicted to that game and there really wasn't much of a community to walk you through it. You, and maybe the 3-4 other people you knew personally who owned it had to work through it and you didn't want to share too much because there is competition inside your social circle. When you can post an answer on a forum for strangers... and in turn anonymously get an answer from strangers on a forum... a large percentage of people will cave and look it up.
Re:Plug for the powder game (Score:0, Interesting)
Do you realize that an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException indicates a programmer error? It is the exception that you get if you try to extract the 10th element of a 5-element array, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with Java, unless you thought that Java was supposed to make it impossible for programmers to ever write buggy code.
Don't let that get in the way of your canned rant though.
Re:Ever heard of a little game called Bioshock? (Score:3, Interesting)
Puzzles aren't dead, "puzzle mode" is.
I've been working my way through Psychonauts on the XBox. It's one big puzzle game disguised as an arcade game. The difference is that the puzzle play is in-lined with the natural mechanics of the game, rather than having this big "YOU ARE NOW WORKING ON A PUZZLE" transition. This is better design, IMHO.
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Play BioShock on Hard, with Vita-Chambers and every other hand-holding disabled, and with no save, except for the automatic saves at the beginning of levels. The result is it will transform a light and very simple pastime into a heavy thinking game. For example, after some thinking you'll realize that the "useless" security bullseye plasmid is in fact one of the most powerful (I'll let you think about why).
While were on the subject of the old school... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone here remember those old "Choose your own adventure" books that was basically a printed form of a decision tree? (There used to be hundreds of the things throughout the 80's and 90's.)
Although the stories were a bit lacking, it did make reading as a kid much more enjoyable since it was interactive.
To be honest though, I'm amazed the genre never expanded to more adult readers. There's so much that could have been applied to the format to make them more interesting. For example, requiring the reader to solve complex puzzles to determine what their choices are, or remembering previous elements from the story to know what they need to do next. Span that over 1,000 pages, and you could have an adventure last several hours.
One interesting approach, a story involving a mystery requiring you to gather evidence and take statements from witnesses to build a case, then going to trial with it where the reader can choose to be either the prosecution or the defense.
Something like this could make for an interesting project for writers like Tom Clancy or John Grisham, who already write incredible linear stories like these. This would simply be an extension of their talents to make the reader far more involved in the story and the outcome.
Sam & Max (Score:2, Interesting)
All these posts and not one (moderated) person mentions the new episodic Sam & Max games! I bought them all and absolutely adore them.
The story is ridiculous and over-the-top, and they have stylish graphics that don't need the latest hardware to run.
They're not very hard as far as adventure games go, but if you find a segment challenging, in Season 2 you can turn on an in-game hint function. If you do that, Max will usually spit out something like, "I'm bored. Let's go back to the office," which generally doesn't automatically spoil the next part of the mission, but points you in the right direction. Much better than alt+tabbing for GameFAQs.
Re:I don't buy that (Score:4, Interesting)
This kind of thing is a big part of what killed adventure/puzzle games.
Not exactly - backtracking is acceptable and is known to be present in other games as well. For example, Quake 4 usually had ammo laying about the map - since you usually had maxed out ammo, you could leave it behind and come back later to collect it when you were running low.
The real killers are: