mik_fox

Play hard, go pro. When you were hit with a brick that was Ninja Gaiden or Battletoads at an early age, you sucked at first. Then, after some time practicing, trying over and over, learning to overcome difficulties, growing up in some sense... you still sucked. And THEN you maybe got better and actually didn't suck anymore - until sequel came out, presenting new challenges (rather than rehashing content). Overall, challenging kids with difficult tasks instead of hand-holding them at all times proves to be beneficial, that way they learn to fight and find a way to win, not whine about game being too hard or, in later life, problem being impossible to deal with.

That's the way things used to be. Not anymore.

I think this situation in game industry is indicative of situation in society. Look at modern games, even M rated, or movies, or anything really. Everything is being dumbed down "for your convenience" and to comfort "wider audience" of people who would rather find a reason not to do something, than a way to do it, who would rather die than have to use their brains. Publishers don't want to support anything that isn't a sequel because consumers can't be bothered to learn about available products and gain a wide enough perspective to form their own tastes and instead rely on reviews and sales of previous title in a given franchise, even if the sequel in question is being developed by different people with absolutely different goals and values in mind. It is a lazy strategy for a publisher, but it generates huge profit (look at Diablo 3 for example), so it's totally justified when you look at it from a big corporation perspective. Games became more popular as a medium, audience became wider and now includes "casual players" who are large in numbers, easily satisfied with dumbed down and rehashed content and prove to be way more profitable.

So, in my opinion, it's not about kids, it's about society being way more tolerable to idiots common masses less concerned with personal development.

Sorry if I came off rude or edgy, had to let off some steam.

@wondergirl246: People like you don't let me become a misogynist after I read articles like this one. You worded it out really well, I only wish the article's author was as rational as you.

Being a journalist is a great power, journalists are the only people who can influence current situation. And as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility.

I understand and support women fighting for equal rights, but this has nothing to do with rights. There are plenty of women in the middle east and elsewhere who do in fact have miserable oppressed lives, but you don't hear them mentioned nearly as often as the petty first world non-issues that so-called 'feminists' like to rally over.

They're blatantly self-serving and nothing more, they don't actually care about anything beyond their own petty whinges. I'd even go as far as saying that they give women a bad name.

Unfortunately, pointing this out in reality only gets you accused of sexism.

I don't know who I am disgusted with more - self-serving women who use 'feminism' to disguise their egotism, or weak white-knighting men who can't even stand for themselves. In any case, thank you for your post. And no, that's not internalized misogyny you have there - you're just a normal human being, capable of understanding the nature of subcultures.

P.S: please disregard my grammar, English is my third language.

Is there a way I can downvote this article somehow? I'm genuinely disgusted and really feel the need to express my disgust via some sort of thumbs down button, that would certainly make me feel better (since I can't improve this horrible situation with white-knighting on the Internet and destructive feminism in the videogame industry in any way).

I could expect this from Kot.. eh, some other "quality video game journalism" site, but this place.. damn, this kinda ruined my day.

I'm really happy about how well indie games are doing recently.

Finally something good about this generation in gaming.

I'm having the same issue. Update frequency is the same as SpawnMan's - almost never updated for a year, then started updating erratically, now they aren't updating at all again (stopped right after New Year's).

Also, same issue with "private" (which in reality isn't private) account for xbox/gfwl.

@Napalm said:

I never gave a shit about achievements. My enjoyment is how much fun I get out of the game in my experiences.

Another person that didn't read the thread, saw the word "achievements" in subject and instantly got into defensive mode.

This thread is not about achievements at all, it's about majority of people abandoning even the (arguably) best games without even beating them.

Achievements are used as a way of tracking player's progress, but OP's talking about all games, even games without achievement system.

I wonder why some people suddenly got all defensive. The way I see it, OP didn't imply that people who don't complete their games are somehow "inferior". And I don't see him using "casual" as a derogatory word.

If achievements and/or being casual player are such touchy subjects for you, then just disregard the "achievement" part of the subject. OP just used achievements as an indicator of play-time (although, to be fair, it doesn't always work that way) I believe his actual question was: how come people (even people who are committed enough to register on gamer websites, I'm not using word "casual" here on purpose) get bored with their games so quickly, even when those are so-called "Top Tier" games. And not just some people, majority of them, it seems.

The games sell good nowadays, but how many buyers actually experience the product they buy to its full potential? Maybe marketing techniques make us buy games we don't really want to play? Or is there some other reason?

This is in no way a dick waving contest, we just want to hear your opinions on topic.

" @Bones8677: please, bethesda games are great sandbox sure...but buggy...lacking of story and drive.  Fallout 3 is a shadow of 1 and 2....(and I did like it, beat it 10 or so times)...but only if bethesda is doing it? lol...no fucking way would I trust bethesda to put out any kind of good MMO. "