I wouldn't say stupid, Shoe. I would say maybe console gaming has limited your tolerance for pointless bullshit. I mean, I'm sure stat sheets and endless micromanagement and hours of out-of-game research may be fun to some people, but those people are boring, and more to the point, do excessive complexity and dense mechanics make a game 'smart', or do they just make it dense and complex? One's ability and willingness to 'figure out' SINS doesn't make them smart or dumb, just the kind of nerd who nerds to that particular nerdsong.

Not that many console games aren't tweaked for the lazy, or take gamers by the hand instead of being well designed. But to that I say DEMON'S SOULS. Which is the answer for everything.

I'm with you, Shoe. I recently picked up Civ4, and it was like walking into an astrophysics final exam. My feeble mind needed its hand held.

I second your point about Demon's Souls, Brendon, but I'll also point out that under the hood, it's all stat sheets. But I also think that Demon's Souls is filled with intelligent level design and sports intuitive controls, which means you never really need to dive into the numbers.

Dan, hotkeys in Starcraft 2 are really easy once you switch to the grid layout, which rebinds all commands to the left side of the keyboard in a grid, with each key corresponding to its location in the command box in the bottom right corner of the screen. It's simple to understand once you see it, and you'll never need to memorize anything.

I understand where you're coming from, too. I've felt this way about modern game design for quite a while, which is why I mainly stick to PC games. I enjoy -- and sometimes need this to stay interested -- the challenge. I don't like playing games that just feel like going through the motions for some arbitrary end.

And I think developers' perception is misplaced -- just look at Starcraft 2, which is considered the hardcore of the hardcore, selling 1.5 million copies worldwide in 48 hours. Or even the success of Demon's Souls, which released in Europe within the last month or so and already sold out.

I get to a degree of what Shoe's talking about. The funny things about it all is in many cases than not when this particular issue seems seems to really creep up, a lot of those elements are purely optional. Most recently with Madden 11 with a lot of the GameFlo backlash. You can either put a lot of front-end effort to customized it to your own style of play or you can just turn the thing off altogether. Same mess came up New Super Mario Bros. Wii  when people starting needless panicking that "the game would play itself."

It's not all just bad game design. There is a quite a bit of it and there's also just quite a bit of these so called "hardcore gamers" proving how lazy they actually are. That if you put a shortcut option in front of them with a choice of never using it, they want to take the path of least resistence. If a gamer want to "ruin" their experience by their own choice, I frankly don't find it a developers job to save them from themselves when there's a bigger audience to be served.

Gerren, my only concern with "easy" options (not convenience) is that they usually compromise the game's design. Imagine if Demon's Souls offered such a mode; e.g., when you died, the game left you in body form, restarted you in front of the enemy that killed you, and did not respawn any enemies in the level.

How funny, in my Top Five RTS games not Starcraft post, I mentioned the same epic Sins of the Solar Empire poster. Hilarious!

"Sins of a Solar Empire (Ironclad Games)

Sins of a Solar Empire takes resource, research, and economic management to a place far, far away -- beyond previous RTS games -- into 3D space. The epic, two-sided resource tree poster gave GFW Radio (97.5 Brodeo) podcasters Jeff Green, Sean Molloy, and Ryan Scott a good laugh back in 2008. Later on, the poster would proudly hang in the 1UP/EGM men’s bathroom stall."

For the game that Demon's Souls was designed to be, you're absolutely right. I'm also don't get the impression that team ever envisioned making that game much easier than it was either. It wouldn't have been the same game.

But how many games are designed with DS's philosophy in mind? I don't know and I'm not sure anyone outside of many development studios really do. As such, I'm a little wary of projecting my ideals into design decision after the fact. I think a lot of people who complain of this problem make the assumption all game designers start out wanting to make a Mega Man-type punishing game and are pressured out of it. I've spoken with expotentially less developers than industry vets, but from my limited interviewing and conversations that in many (not all) cases they aren't interested in making an Operation Flashpoint difficult game. That harder doesn't necessarily mean better design decisions. I don't know how honest many developers might be on the subject after the fact,  but I get the impression from some that their design wasn't compromised but achieved. Which brings me back to a running theme in my writing and comments: when is something actually technically "bad" versus just not catered to our personal tastes? I'm often concerned people often jump to proclaiming the former being egocentric  in how we judge things. And I'm indicting myself before anyone else because I wrote off Demon's Souls initially with that faulty reasoning. 

I can't code two identical pixels next to each other so I'm probably not in a place to say what philosophy is better than another other than I'm for developers getting to make the game they initially envisioned. If you ended to make Demon's Souls go all out in that direction. It's not my type of game but I'm all for serving that audience. If your vision is Bioshock, by all means make Bioshock. If things can be done to accomodate wider bases, great. But I want devleopers to make the game they set out to make.

I'm convinced console games are why we don't have six-character parties anymore in RPGs. It's too complicated for the console RPG player. 

Brendon - your inane blanket categorization of anything that requires just a little bit of learning curve as "pointless bullshit" is one of the most depressing, revealing things I've ever seen written in the Bitmob forums.

THANK.
GOD.

that Sins of a Solar Empire has sold nearly 1 million copies on a budget of under 1 million dollars, and that Starcraft II sold 1.5 million copies in 2 days, just to reinforce my hopeful belief that there really are gamers without ADD in the world these days.

I agree with Shoe to an extent. I understand that not everyone can start a game on the hardest difficulty, but having the game basically tell you what to do is down right stupid. I remember playing PDZ and feeling like I was somewhat on a leash. True, the glowing arrows were most likely a cover for bad level design, but I still found myself waiting around for a bit when I couldn't figure out where to go. I felt a bit ashamed about it

BioShock may seem easy peasy but try playing that game with the freakin' vita-chambers off on the hard difficulty setting (which I did to get all of the trophies) and all of a sudden that game is far from easy.

Haven't played the other two so...couldn't comment on those.

I don't think it makes players stupid to have an arrow telling them where to go to fulfill the next main objective. I think not being able to turn that off could be bad. The Metroid Prime games used a helpful hint system that could be turned off if you wanted to be "hardcore." To me, though, some games should guage skill based on reflexes and strategy, not based on wandering aimlessly for 20 minutes until you happen to stumble upon where you're supposed to go.

The original Legend of Zelda doesn't run into this problem because its world is open-ended. There's no "correct" way to do things and that's that. You can go all over the place. You can enter the final dungeon within a matter of minutes if you know where it is. You will die very quickly and won't be able to get all of the way through, but still.

Now, a learning curve is way different than a pointer arrow. I've been playing an RPG this week (Epic Battle Fantasy 3, still in beta form, but possibly the single greatest flash game I have played to date) and the boss battles in it, even on the normal difficulty setting, are pretty challenging. You're expected to manage your equipment properly and be sure to upgrade equipment pieces and skill sets and strategize more than the average RPG because in the boss battles random enemies from the area you just traveled are constantly respawning. It's required a nbit of learning curve but it's manageable and rewarding.

Like Mega Man 9 and 10 - people complain that those games are needlessly hard, but they're not. Needlessly hard is the original NES Metroid and whenever you start a game you aren't at full health and need to grind to recover before you can do anything. In MM9 and 10 if you practice you can get through entire levels and bosses without a scratch (I've done it in half of the levels of MM9 but it definitely takes practice).

I PC games have a tendency of testing strategy and multitasking, with some FPS-flavored action, but quality console games test more general reflexes I suppose. Neither is "more stupid" than the other.

As for "dumbing" games down in general? You can't play the games for your own lack of patience.

I know it might sound crazy, but lots of people find many games that most of us here would find easy to be hard. Games in general HAD to loosen up a little to allow people besides uber nerds to be able to appreciate them. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't want every movie I watch to melt my brain and make me think deep thoughts. I don't want every game to melt my fingers off, either. There will always be some developers out there making games challenging simply for the sake of doing so. If those ever vanish it's our own fault for not supporting them.

I don';t when and how the gaming community (read: the hardcore gaming community which is a much smaller percentage of the populace than the internet embellishes) decided that hard meant good by default and easy meant bad. That's just masochistic and, to me, defeats the purpose of games: fun. Not work. I like games that are challenging but for Din's sake, not ALL of them please. I like my laid back games, too - they can provide meaningful experiences without crushing your brain. Flower, anyone?

Mark, my point is that complexity does not equate smart. The steep of a learning curve is an inaccurate measure of worth. At the end of the day, it's not a matter of 'smart' or 'stupid' gamers. It's a matter of taste. And none of it is the 'fault' of console games, anymore than console games caused that troubled boy to die of exposure because he couldn't play Modern Warfare.

If Shoe wanted to learn the game, he could have. He didn't. Can the game be blamed for not engaging him enough in the right ways? It makes more sense, to me, to say SINS failed him than it does to say Console Games Made Me Dumb. Maybe console games facilitated his desire to be dumb and SINS confirmed it. Most likely his tastes have just changed.

I think difficulty and assistance from in-game mechanics are being confused in this comment thread.

Many of the games thrown up as "needlessly difficult" aren't at all: You can complete the original Metroid in less than an hour, for example. It's not a hard game, but it does use exploration and experimentation as core gameplay mechanics, which means the game throws up obstacles to climb and puzzles to solve all on your own.

Metroid Prime's hint system, on the other hand, actually undermines one of those key tenets of the series's design -- exploration. And I'd argue that as a result, the overall game design is compromised. This is what I mean when I criticized games that offer an "easy" mode.

On a related note: Who are we kidding with difficulty levels, anyway? Think back to some of the most influential and accessible games of all time -- Nintendo titles like Mario, Metroid, and Zelda immediately come to mind. Do any of them have varying difficulty levels?

What we usually get with easy, normal, and hard modes is nothing more than a charade -- the game doesn't actually become easier or more difficult. Enemies are either more or less resilient and/or plentiful, but they're never smarter. Puzzles aren't any more difficult to solve. In actuality, difficulty levels will make a game either more of less tedious to see to the end.

The hand holding that Dan discusses in the article is quite different from that.

A game deciding when you need help seems pretty condescending, really; as if it's getting bored with your silly, inferior human brain processing.

I think having a sort of "easy button," like Arkham Asylum's detective mode showing you everything you can interact with, is reasonable, although some may argue that even that tells you too much. Perhaps a customizable version of it where you can add and remove different layers of information would be nice.

Maybe it's a sign of the times, but I still appreciate a lack of explanation occasionally.  There's something to be said about exploring the game world and discovering the mechanics for yourself. 

The perfect balance is a level of hand holding that allows casual players to make it through the main meat of the game and get their experience, but also a second less explained level where more engaged players can explore at their own pace.  In a lot of ways, that sense of exploration adds an element of ownership to the experience, instead of a more passive walk along the given path scenario that most console games are using.

While I doubt that console games made you stupid, I believe it was all the paste you ate as a child. In this day and age we have less time to figure out a confusing game and demand that they game provide us with a enough information, to understand what we need to do. Keeping a detailed spreadsheet to play a game just sounds ridiculous to me. 

@Jason: The last 4 party RPG I played was KOTOR. Would Mass Effect count as a 3 party light RPG?

You know, Dan, I shared your worries about Starcraft 2, moreso due in part to the fact that I don't play, and haven't played, RTS games.  Ever.  At all, really.  As it turns out, with a friend in a 2v2AI match set on easy for a few rounds, the game's actually very self-explanitory.  Within the first three games, I knew what I had to build to upgrade what units, what produced something else, and what each semi-elite units required what specific prerequisites.  I was "Terran'" it up (sorry) within a couple hours, and I'm now pretty comfortable playing against medium AI.  It's all very self-explanitory.  Once you learn where everything comes from, you start learning how to mine more junk to make more junk and try to keep your resources as busy as possible.

I'm sure an RTS vet like yourself might snicker at that, as I hear many people have zero issues with the hardest AI setting, but for two people who'd never touched the genre before, I feel like that's a pretty decent learning curve.  I wouldn't dare play online because I'm nowhere near stupid enough to think I could handle any half-decent tactics coming my way, but I bought it for the single-player campaign anyways.

Beating up hapless CPU opponents with a bud's just a benefit.

I say you're better off, Shoe. Hardcore PC strategy games look 100% unappealing to me.

So says the guy who's never played them!

I am right with Shoe on this one. I am sick and tired of how all the hint systems and mandatory tutorials have started treating the player like an idiot. When I start a new game these days my biggest fear is spending an hour in the tutorial before the real game get's started. When an old favorite franchise get's a new game now I'm not excited, but afraid that it will be chopped down and highlighted to make sure I never get stuck.

Games need to be accessible no doubt - the best games are the ones that are accessible and deep at the same time, but it seems that most developers just don't know how to do that. A good game should make it easy for players to figure things out, not yell everything into their faces. If you really do need a big flashing arrow or glowing path to figure out where you're supposed to go then the level design probably isn't that good.

Bioshock to me just felt like a casual version of System Shock 2. I'll admit that System Shock 2 is hard as hell, but I never got lost or forgot what I was supposed to do. The game map combined with the recordings and radio communications gave me just what I needed to figure things out but did it in the context of the game story. Bioshock does that too but ruins part of the atmosphere by putting "GOAL" signs and arrows all over the map. Not to mention the quest arrow, hints, flashing objects, and other things in that long-ass tutorial menu that I completely turned off. I don't think I ever used vita chambers while playing that game.

I'm not sure this is solely due to console games or even games as a whole. I think technology in general has shortened attention spans considerably in the last two decades. That's really half the battle when you're trying to commit to a time-consuming, detail-oriented game like the games of yore.

I for one can say that I put in upwards of 250 hours into Bethesda's Morrowind (one of my favorite games of all time by the way), and I've had Dragon Age Origins since launch and probably haven't reached the halfway point in the main story. I love Bioware and I bought Mass Effect 2 (also now one of my all-time favorites) a couple months later and finished it in a week or so. I've never been much of a PC gamer so I won't pretend I am, but games today should be visceral and engaging as well as deep and thought-provoking.

I still remember playing through Kotor the first time and being shocked when I was given math problems during one of the quests. I'd never seen that in a mainstream game, but it also had an entertaining combat system that kept me playing. I just realized that I've been talking about Bioware games the whole time, and I guess it's appropriate since they're dealing with their identity as a developer right now. I'd much rather them take their franchises in interesting directions like they did with Mass Effect than rehash old gameplay staples.

Duke Nukem Forever has such bad level design, I was hoping for some sort of waypoint, arrows, shit stains, anything!