Another Malstrom article, another time for FightyF, the self-proclaimed Casual Game Know-it-All, puts him back in his place...
With these hardcore games, the developers strut like peacocks as if they were rockstars or movie directors. Look at me! Look how cool our game is! A big red flag is when the designer attempts to make the game into art. Instead of making a fun product for the consumer, they are focused on making art which is another way of saying they want to display their brilliance.
Who are these developers?
If I look at the most vocal developers and designers, they all say "Look at how cool our game is!", and directly go into the game's gameplay features. They go into detail on what makes the game a "fun product" off the bat. We've heard a lot about Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Uncharted, so on and so forth from developers, and none of them ever claimed or even hinted at these games being products of art and thus is worthy of our attention. For Gears, Cliff went on about active reload, the use of cover, the blind fire, the melee combat, and the online Co-Op. All of these directly impact the GAMEPLAY of the game and nothing else.
I could go on and on about each title I've mentioned, and I didn't even mention titles that are considered art with a large amount of cutscenes (MGS4), or a game where a developer ran his mouth off at any opportunity (Too Human), and even in those cases we saw references being made to how each game PLAYS and how their ideas were implemented to make the game funner for users.
Does it have a tutorial? If yes, then your game is broken. The best games dont have tutorials. Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda had no tutorial and no tutorial stage. Mega Man did not have a tutorial until a tutorial stage appearing in Mega Man 7 (and they wonder why the series went downhill). Tetris had no tutorial. People want to play the game, not be forced to act out a manual. If your game *has* to have a tutorial because it is too complicated, then your game is the problem. Simplify it until you dont need a tutorial. Wii Sports doesnt even have a tutorial. It will simply give a reminder of how to do stuff only if you mess up.
Wrong. Wii Sports relies on the fact that users will teach each other how to play. Just like Super Mario Brothers, just like Zelda. There are many popular casual games on the PC that people have to learn how to play before playing it. Sure, some people will try the game and have enough patience to figure it out themselves, but claiming that a tutorial is a big hurdle is a incorrect assumption. I could not give an elderly person a Wii with Wii Sports and then expect them to have fun with it. I would show them how to operate the Wii, how to play the game, how the menu system works. There is ALWAYS some element of learning. The more experienced the user is, the less learning required. I can play pretty much ANY FPS game out there and figure out most of its mechanics in a few minutes. I can't expect an elderly gentleman who has never touched a computer keyboard or mouse before, to figure out how to play Bejeweled. I've had to train elderly people on how to use a mouse, over a decade ago. Any new format is going to require learning. A tutorial is never a bad thing.
Does it have long cinematics? If yes, then your game is likely broken. The problem with cinematics is that it takes control away from the player, and is just an excuse for the developer to show how awesome he/she is, how artistic, how creative, and how he really should be directing movies instead of making stupid video games. Cinematics are more about Lets strut our stuff than being about the game. But Malstrom! They add to the immersion! In the beginning, they were a fun novelty. Now, they are a nuisance. It is better to hold events rather than cinematics to advance a story. An event would be using the gameplay engine to show the changes.
Malstrom is forgetting the whole point of casual games, and videogames in general.
They are to
entertain the user. Whether in a passive form (movies) or an interactive form, if the end result is a user who is entertained, the end result is a smile on the user's face, then you have accomplished your goal.
Too much damn text. Video games are a visual medium. Even the wordy adventure game yielded to imagery. Role playing and adventure games get away with having text but not too much. Even they are primarily driven by images. So many games today have way too much damn text in them, especially at the beginning and is outside the already stupid tutorial and cinematic intro. If gamers want to read brilliance, they would read a book. What is interesting is that established writers, when asked to make a video game, rely much on interaction because they know that is the differentiating factor between gaming and books.
This isn't even a problem with today's games...has this guy even played games made within the last decade?
If your game isnt fun in one minute, it is broken.
No shit Sherlock, why do you think games often start out "in media res" with the lead characters in the middle of something exciting and with many capabilities?
If he's claiming that the industry doesn't realize this...I would ask if he realizes what sort of games there are out there, and whether or not he's played a game recently.
The user focused game is very different. Since the game doesnt attempt to be art, the industry snarls and calls them non-games.
Really? This guys seems to put a lot of words into the mouths of "hardcore gamers", "the industry", "journalists", etc. Look at sports games, they don't claim to be "art". The "industry" never call them "non-games".
This guy is painting a fantasy landscape where he assumes whatever he wants to make himself sleep better at night (for whatever reason).
The exceptions to the above are when games are the first to do it. When cinematics, huge intros, and all were brand new, games could get away with them because they were surprising. Most of these features are now included so the developer/publisher can show off.
There is absolutely no evidence for this assertion. He's simply making up stuff out of thin air, and writing it down, when most people would have the presence of mind to not waste their time by writing down any random assertion they may have came up with when sitting on the john.
Users dont demand these boring tutorials, but they are thrown in because publishers feel they are awesome if they do so, they feel like they ARE special. Again, it is creator-focused.
Completely wrong here. Users have demanded these tutorials. If users don't know how to play, they will not refer to a manual, we know this. In-game tutorials are catering to the user by offering a convenient way to learn how to play the game.
It is not that the user is king, it is the non-user who is really king. Malstrom is king. Other non-gamers and former-gamers are kings. The companies are the slaves.
Heh, I really have to question his intelligence here. How are users NOT the king? Secondly, where did this term 'non-user', come from? Anyone who USES a product is a USER.
He doesn't seem to realize that what Nintendo did that was so special was find a DIFFERENT user with a different set of standards.
The consumer is always king. It doesn't matter what sort of demographic the consumer belongs to, they are kings. To discount "gamers" as being a consumer, it's completely stupid.
Western game developers are notorious for thinking they are the king when their role is actually that of the slave. From Epics Mark Rein declaring Next Generation doesnt start until we say so, to the insane budget of Grand Theft Auto 4, western developers have become ego-maniacs.
Heh, has this Malstrom guy said ANYTHING that has been factually correct, besides his quotes from Nintendo bigwigs? Mark Rein didn't say that, Kaz Hirai did in reference to the Xbox 360 launch a year before the PS3. Kaz painted a picture that the PS3 would truly represent the "next generation" of consoles. Mark Rein, in response said, "Sony says the next generation starts when they say so - bullsh!t (or as the British might say, bollocks!)!" when they showed off Gears of War, and he was referring to how the game didn't look a generation behind any game on the PS3.
Secondly, the high cost of GTA4 came with making a very detailed and interactive world. Those costs have nothing to do with the developer's egos, but with creating an experience and a level of immersion that the user has never seen.
To claim that people are willing to invest a hundred million dollars simply to stroke their ego, is evidence that this Malstrom guy has no clue. He doesn't understand this industry...AT ALL.
Thinking that these new customers are retards, that they are beneath you, is really thinking that I am so awesome.
I don't want to get banned, so I'll keep my next comment as civil as possible.
This Malstrom gentlemen is acting really, really ridiculous. He makes stuff up, he puts words into people's mouths, and he is completely out of touch with today's games and the industry. I really have to question the intelligence of anyone who would take what he has to say seriously.
