Gaming Microsoft "dumbing down" games?

[ar81]

It looks Microsoft is departingfrom hardcore games, which means... Will games be dumbed down?
Microsoft christens motion-gaming "Kinect"

When I compare Wikipedia and the boring Encarta, when I compare Mechwarrior 2 and Microsoft Mechwarrior, I see they have a huge lag in gameplay and entertainment. I doubt they will succeed in the "dumbed down" market.

Dumbed down market is still quite competitive, and you need to excel at gameplay not just procedural computing.

What do you think?

 

[Moach]

*paranoid mode! -- ACTIVATE!*:shifty:

EA was already conspiring to do this for a while now... what they did to Spore is a clear example, and something that has no excuse for me... i hope they die horrid gruesome zombie deaths because of it :chainsaw:

M$, has since embarked on a crusade to "kill" hardcore PC gaming...
i assume because smarter gamers will yield poor critics for their intentionally weak games, which bring in more foul cash from stupider audiences... and mainly, to sell them XBOX'es rly::yarly!::suicide:



thankfully, there are still few hard-standing beacons of intelligent gaming like our dear Martin and his space-sim as well as some sparse others...:hail::bighug:


*paranoid mode -- disengage* fhweeeeeeehh.......

ahh... i feel much better now... just needed to vent this out :tiphat:

 

[AirSimming]

In my opinion Microsoft always made bad games. The only thing that got my focus of course was Flight Simulator. But they abandoned it to focus on stupid console games. So Microsoft has nothing to offer me anymore. Not even Windows. I have still a dual boot system because I just don't get used to Windows 7 (and never got to Vista as well). XP still is the greatest and the best for me personally. And since MSFS is dead and I am changing to X-Plane step by step, and Windows seems to change significantly in future in a way I don't like anymore, I think that I'll become a pure Linux user, maybe running XP for some time after support has been shut down, but that will be it (and I'm going to like Apple by the way). Games do not interest me at all anymore. The only one I occasionally play still is the non-Microsoft World of Warcraft. I guess the lack of interest depends on the age. I'm 31 meanwhile and I just get bored even thinking about games.

Oh, there is one thing that comes into my mind: I have an old MS game in my shelf - Deadly Tide. I bought in 1997 I think :lol: Also freaking boring. It's more like watching a bad movie than playing a game...

 

[Urwumpe]

Mechwarrior III was by Microprose!

And it was EPIC!

 

[Urwumpe]

Also, I think complaining about "dumbing" down is stupid already: How intelligent was PacMan? Was Pong offering many different strategies to win?

There had ALWAYS been games that had more or less complexity and at the same time very high popularity and good game-play. I remember how I switched directly on an afternoon from Duke Nukem 2 to History Line 1914-1918.

There is no reason to say you are badly entertained if the complexity got reduced... Civilization 4 was also a step back towards a more lean gameplay from Civilization III and Civilization 3000.

What you should complain about loudly, is the quality that is around here: It is mostly bananaware, that ripes at the customer - there are many bugs, the engine is made for suiting consoles and PCs, without paying attention to the different gaming habits of console and PC players, and more than often, you get poor graphics and poor sound, coupled with levels that had been made by somebody who never had to play the game.

 

[ar81]

Except for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Orbiter I have nothing else that runs fine on Windows 7. I do not like consoles. They seem way too old fashioned. Microsoft is turning PCs into "trucks" (very popular when our society) and "dinosaurs".

IBM PC became more attractive for many people because of games, back in the era of DOS. Today it seems PCs will become a "niche market". Too bad for Microsoft. Those who learned to use email for work really hate emails, those who learned to use email for chatter really love emails. Same could happen to PCs and basically to Microsoft products.

Steve Jobs: PCs May Go the Way of the Dinosaur
PCs are still going to be around." However, Jobs said, only "one out of x people will need them." He said "the transformation will make us uneasy because the PC has taken us a long way ... We like to talk about post-PC era but when it really starts to happen it's uncomfortable for a lot of people."

The iPad: Past, Present, Future
MR. MOSSBERG: Is the tablet going to eventually replace the laptop?
MR. JOBS: When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that's what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn't care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars.
PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people.

 

[cinder1992]

why hasn't Starsiege come up yet? it sold 40% more copies than mechwarrior III. Also, I think games are already too dumbed down, Zombies? WAKE UP, We need to focus on what to do with orbiter. I think a new edition of the ShuttleA needs to be made, after all it IS 6 years old (and guess who will make it).


I think I got a bit sidetracked there.

 

[dbeachy1]

O-F Staff note: Operating System debate posts moved to the PC Mega Thread. Let's please stay on-topic in this thread and keep the "Your OS is teh sux0rs!" posts in the PC Mega Thread. Thanks.

 

[Ghostrider]

"Your OS is teh sux0rs!"

Sounds cool. Where can I buy a copy of this "teh sux0rs" OS?

 

[Enjo]

Yore gonna get it someday

 

[Ghostrider]

Also, I think complaining about "dumbing" down is stupid already: How intelligent was PacMan?

Don't know about PacMan, but Ms PacMan's ghosts were pretty smart.

However you're spot on: there always have been all kind of games, some smart and some not so. That's OK because "smart" is not always the same as "entertaining" and sometimes it's good to put the skull filler on standby and play some GridWars. And that's true of all sorts of entertainment.

What really gets on my nerves is when an otherwise engaging franchise is watered in order to appeal to a wider audience. I understand it makes financial sense to have as many buyers as you can, but there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. How many people would have wanted to see the new Batman movies if they had given him a pink rocket-powered suit? Staying true to a franchise's themes pays off - in fact in Batman's case the darker and truer to its origins Caped Crusader is vastly more popular than Schumacher's glitzier and campier outings, which were meant to be more appealing than Burton's darker edge.

Same in games: one of my favourite series, Silent Hill, took a turn for the worse with part IV and went down(silent)hill from there when they decided to put more emphasis on combat (while SH was about trying to avoid combat), giant monsters (it used to be grotesque, human-looking monsters) and a generally action-oriented gameplay (anyone who ever got their hands on SH remember the bleak, disturbed atmosphere and sense of constant dread because of the expectation of having to meet something bad round the corner). In the end, they had to reboot the series with the original themes in (minus the bloodied-rusty Otherworld) and no combat at all. It happened that people loved the early titles because of the way they were, not the way someone thought player would have liked them to be.

Now, all of this rant goes to say that "dumbing down" is a dumb strategy, because it's the warped idea of some cool exec without a heart of steel of what "people" want based on what happens to be popular at the moment. However, as an ex of mine once said, in order to be cool you don't follow trends: you set them. Entertainment is often unintended education. You need to read in order to enjoy a book or a graphic novel, and you need to think in order to make sense of the plot. Same goes for movies (including the trashier Nightmare on Elm Street sequels). Some people can't get into their think skulls that if something is somehow hard and difficult, maybe we just like it the way it is.

After all, how many people would enjoy Romeo and Juliet if it went, like:

R: luv U
J: luv U 2
R: let's have sex then totally kill ourselves
J: kewl

...

BANG! BANG! (double suicide)

THE END


Now let's hope Michael Bay is not reading this thread.

 

[Sar]

If there's enough people that want HC games there's always someone who wants to take their cash and produces those and I don't think we're running out of gamers any time soon.

Personally I don't mind dumbed down games too much since I tend to jump around games quite a bit and I think it's nice to have something to play where you need to think (Orbiter) and something to shut down your brain (painkiller) The thing I want is good stories to play through which seems hard to find.

 

[ar81]

Don't know about PacMan, but Ms PacMan's ghosts were pretty smart.

Pacman ghosts may use a very simple path finding algorithm.
Imagine a Pacman board where every cell in the grid could be a destination, assign a number to every cell.

Make a table where rows indicates current call and columns indicate target cell. Data in that row and column would indicate what is the number of the next cell you need to reach in order to reach your destination.

It is some sort of "pre-rendered" pathfinding table. The trick to make the ghost workable would be to set ghost behaviors by setting destination cells and hunt/evade behaviors

Pacman is not a "dumbed down" game, since there is not a more complex version and it was not hardcore and it was not downgraded at all. When it was created it was very advanced and somehow hardcore for arcade gamers.

 

[Ghostrider]

Pacman ghosts may use a very simple path finding algorithm.
Imagine a Pacman board where every cell in the grid could be a destination, assign a number to every cell./QUOTE]

I know. I was stating that I don't know how smart Pac-Man (the character) is (answer: it's as smart as the player who controls it) but I know that Ms Pac-Man's ghosts did have a primitive (but good for the time) individual behaviour, reacting to the player being in line of sight and using randomized movements instead of following patterns like in the original. You could beat Pac-Man by simply memorizing the ghost search patterns, you couldn't do that with Ms Pac-Man.

Pac-Man was not dumbed down, but there is a more complex version, and that's Ms Pac-Man. Some ported versions were not that smart, however. The Atari 2600 version, for instance...

 

[Hielor]

It looks Microsoft is departingfrom hardcore games, which means... Will games be dumbed down?
Microsoft christens motion-gaming "Kinect"

When I compare Wikipedia and the boring Encarta, when I compare Mechwarrior 2 and Microsoft Mechwarrior, I see they have a huge lag in gameplay and entertainment. I doubt they will succeed in the "dumbed down" market.

Dumbed down market is still quite competitive, and you need to excel at gameplay not just procedural computing.

What do you think?

Apparently you missed the part of the E3 talk where they talked about Halo and Gears of War, which are just as "hardcore" as ever.

Just because a company announces that they're making a bigger push into the casual games market doesn't mean they're leaving the hardcore market. The Kinect is essentially Microsoft's answer to the Wii. The Wii was hugely popular among people who aren't the traditional sorts of gamers. Why is it a problem for Microsoft to also want to have a product in this market?

When a car company starts producing passenger vans, they don't stop producing sports cars, no matter how many people like you claim that the sky is falling.

M$, has since embarked on a crusade to "kill" hardcore PC gaming...
i assume because smarter gamers will yield poor critics for their intentionally weak games, which bring in more foul cash from stupider audiences... and mainly, to sell them XBOX'es

This is hardly Microsoft's "crusade," and Microsoft isn't the only company doing this. Most video game companies, with the exception of the MMORPG market, are moving to exclusively console games, or console games with the PC version published a few months later as a port of the console version. Why? The console version makes more money and is easier to develop and test (you don't have to worry about issues with it working on hundreds of different processors, graphics cards, etc). Look at the IL-2 games. For years this was a PC-exclusive sim title, and now their latest version is released first for the console and only as an afterthought for the PC.

Microsoft, like every other corporation out there, is trying to make money. PC games just don't make as much money as console games (piracy is something of an issue here), and they cost more to make. Microsoft didn't shut down the ACES studio and Flight Sim because they're on some kind of a "crusade" to "kill pc gaming." They did it because Flight Sim has a very niche market, and the studio was needing more and more resources at a time when Microsoft didn't have the resources to give.

Except for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Orbiter I have nothing else that runs fine on Windows 7. I do not like consoles. They seem way too old fashioned. Microsoft is turning PCs into "trucks" (very popular when our society) and "dinosaurs".

IBM PC became more attractive for many people because of games, back in the era of DOS. Today it seems PCs will become a "niche market". Too bad for Microsoft. Those who learned to use email for work really hate emails, those who learned to use email for chatter really love emails. Same could happen to PCs and basically to Microsoft products.

Steve Jobs: PCs May Go the Way of the Dinosaur
PCs are still going to be around." However, Jobs said, only "one out of x people will need them." He said "the transformation will make us uneasy because the PC has taken us a long way ... We like to talk about post-PC era but when it really starts to happen it's uncomfortable for a lot of people."

The iPad: Past, Present, Future
MR. MOSSBERG: Is the tablet going to eventually replace the laptop?
MR. JOBS: When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that's what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn't care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars.
PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people.

...

You know that Steve Jobs is Apple's CEO, right? He doesn't work for Microsoft.

 

[Ark]

What do you expect?

-More of the general public is getting into gaming.
-The general public knows nothing about computers.
-The general public has the attention span of mayflies.

Therefore, gaming companies will stop manufacturing complex games with learning curves and will instead hire people from Fisher-Price to design nice-looking games that any idiot could pick up and play.

 

[ar81]

During the era of PC games if you were a player you learned about computers and could grant you a job in the future.

During console games era, you play console games only, and unless you excel at it and you want to make a living in gaming championships, it grants you no future.

If Microsoft is reacting to Wii, then it lost the initiative...

 

[RisingFury]

I hope Deus Ex 3 is a good game. It's a good reason for me to get a new PC... I also hope it's a difficult as the first one. I really liked the detective work, the skills and augs, the ability to use different ways of going through the game,...

 

[Hielor]

During the era of PC games if you were a player you learned about computers and could grant you a job in the future.

What era are you referring to? The time when you could get a job just by knowing a lot about computers is long past. Any time in the last couple decades, any serious employer has wanted a college degree and/or several years of experience in the field.

Moreover, just *playing* games would never have gotten you a job by any stretch of the imagination. I highly doubt you could've walked into an interview any time in the 90s and said "oh yeah, I've spent a lot of time playing Zork and Hack" and had any chance of them doing anything but laughing at you.

During console games era, you play console games only, and unless you excel at it and you want to make a living in gaming championships, it grants you no future.

See above. Playing games has never had any chance of getting you any place. It's somewhat more difficult to get into the crafting aspect of thigns that can lead places with a console than a PC, but if someone's motivated the opportunity is still very much there.

If Microsoft is reacting to Wii, then it lost the initiative...

You're just now realizing this?

 

[Keatah]

Oh, there is one thing that comes into my mind: I have an old MS game in my shelf - Deadly Tide. I bought in 1997 I think :lol: Also freaking boring. It's more like watching a bad movie than playing a game...

YouTube- Deadly Tide Trailer

Yeh, its those stupid "Full Motion Video" & "multi-media" games. At first it looks impressive and awesome. Graphics like that on a virge or pro-motion or rendition videocard. Frakking incredible! then you very quickly learn, to the tune of 49.95 per title, that it is a pre-rendered clip you cannot interact with.

Most gamers follow fads and do what other gamers do. They generally don't do the things they themselves want to do.

Well either way, with the quality of freeware like orbiter and classic gaming emulation. There really isn't a need for the mass-marketed franchises. Those titles come and go on whim, at least to me.

---------- Post added at 06:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:43 PM ----------

During the era of PC games if you were a player you learned about computers and could grant you a job in the future.

True enough! I got a job while in high-school running backups and installing floppy drives in 286's. I also got to carry the computers back and forth between the front and rear of the store. So it is very true! I knew alot about computers and it got me a job!

My idiot gramma and daddy thought I was the next Einstein! Frakking idiots..

---------- Post added at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:06 PM ----------

Not only are games dumbed down. The ever upward spiraling cost of hardware needed to keep up with programming inefficiencies is also a big detriment.

I don't buy pc games these days because I would need new hardware to play them as there were meant to be played. Every year it's a frakking videocard, or processor, or something or other. That results in a cascade of upgrades because that something isn't compatible with what needs replacing.

I'm so fed up with "keeping up" I quite the pc gaming "scene" a long time ago.