@thebestestbear said:

My only reason is that I've seen developers rely on story telling so much that they neglect gameplay because they have a good story, and the reason is your blind praise.

When Bioware tried more and more to develop 'mature social stories' in their Mass Effect 3, they gave a terrible run-of-the-mill gameplay experience. When Irrational focused on giving a compelling story with memorable characters in Infinite, they created a laughable shooter with a tired formula whose only innovation was skylines.

The more you pat those people on the back and praise their mature goals while wearing your monocle, the more they replace challenging and exciting gameplay with characters and dialogue. Meanwhile the people who made Just Cause 2, Bulletstorm and Max Payne 3 (among others) get casual recognition with no awards or appreciation of their unique talent of making gameplay more than what it currently is. Making the impossible possible, making crazy awesome things come to life between your hands.

Don't worry, I'm not worried. The developers who still remember why games were created and what purpose they're supposed to give the player are still plenty and working hard on revolutionizing gameplay and technology.

No one is preventing games from "growing up."

You set those straw men up and knock 'em down like nobody's business, Pete!

Games very much need to grow up. Not all should, nor will all do so, so there is nothing to be worried about for people who like their issue-free entertainment.

But we're all getting older and either the medium changes with us or it'll lose us. You know how many forty five year olds play CoD? Some. But not very many.

Well that's just silly. ME2 focused on 'mature storytelling' as much as the third one and I consider them both incredibly fun to play. Have you dug into ME3 multiplayer? It's really good and %100 gameplay. And what about the first Bioshock? It had much more mature and arguably 'adult' narrative themes and was more fun to play.

Games can have different priorities. I love my high minded Bioshock's and sociopolitical minded Mass Effects. They're my favorites! But I also love the carefree pulp adventure of Uncharted and Devil May Cry. And my current OBSESSION is LUFTRAUSER on ps3/vita. It taps into my Geometry Wars 'must-do-better- instinct and is %100 gameply all the way!

But that doesn't mean we don't need things like Gone Home and Papers Please. Because we do.

I disagree that injecting social issues into a game makes it more mature, or a better storytelling experience, especially when it's heavy-handed. If it's subtle and optional, then sure, but if a chunk of the game insists upon itself and it's "high-minded" themes, then pfffffft. I don't need to spend 60 bucks on a game to tell me racism is bad. A game preaching a message doesn't become automatically better because of it. Also, Gone Home was among the most boring experiences I've had with a game in a long while. Not because there weren't explosions, as I'm sure some scat-muncher would assume, but because the story did nothing for me. I couldn't care less about Samantha, and since the whole game hinges on that, like I said before: pffffffffffft.

@bluefish said:

You may have a point but note how you commented on the ME3 multiplayer and the first Bioshock that came out 7 years ago, rather than the single player of the two latest games I mentioned. I'm talking about the new single player experiences of these games that neglect gameplay experimentation and play it safe.

The OP condemns the question [Why should anyone actively seek this 'Change' crap and leave the comfort/safety of their ability to "fit in"?], but my counter condmentation is of all these developers who hold on to the comfort and safety of similar gameplay designs, and only 'change' the maturity of their stories.

I also enjoy a good 'high minded' story, it's a nice change and they can be memorable and meaningful. Priorities make sense, but I'm still wary of developers dropping gameplay further down their priority list as time goes by because they know they'll get higher Metactiric scores and more praise than those who revolutionize how we play, all thanks to their good writing. This influences more developers to hire more writers and less talented and innovative designers. In my opinion this has been an alarming trend. Gameplay must remain the foundation of games, that's what they are, games, to be played.

P.S. I personally think 'must-do-better' games certainly are not 100% gameplay. Gameplay isn't about addicting repetition to 'do a little better every time,' that's as cheap as game design can get. I stopped playing Don't Starve 30 minutes in when I realized that the developer basically imprisoned me in this endless cycle. I refuse to be manipulated so cheaply, man! Where's the actual challenge that requires mastering mechanics and improving my skill? But that's just me, I'm glad you're enjoying your LUFTRAUSER experience.

@thebestestbear: Probably because your view of video games seems to be limited to big budget titles that were primarily meant for console releases. When you live, work, and play in a bubble you become a FOX News talking head wondering why everyone else is so messed up. Congrats.

@bluefish: Considering the average age is 35 for videogame consumers/ players I'd say quite a lot.

I don't think inclusion or exclusion of social issues makes or breaks the concept of maturity in the medium.

Besides, what does maturity applied to games actually mean? The best I can come up with is a serious product that respect it's consumer.

I have rewritten this posts so many times I lost my train of thought and had to downsize everything. I don't think anyone (other than perhaps the people with the money to support development and don't want to take chances on unproven ideas) is holding games back from "growing up" (whatever that means). I do however think some people get either way too defensive about the fact that some people simply don't want social issues in their entertainment, or they get way too defensive when other people do want social issues represented in their medium of choice.

Welp, I disagree with just about everything SingingMenstrual said about those games, particularly Mass Effect 3. ME3 was easily the most fun Mass Effect to play, but it couldn't hold a candle to Mass Effect 2 because it's characters and general storyline were ho-hum compared to what they'd done with the previous two games. Mass Effect 3 was a flop because of its story, not its gameplay. Combat in that game was excellent and the surprise success of the multiplayer is a testament to that.

inFamous: Second Son is a good example of why developers are probably afraid to try harder, though. Sucker Punch tried to deliver an inFamous game with a story that had some actual meat and substance to it and ended up making a much more convoluted, poorly paced (in terms of what happens and gets said in cutscenes, not the pace of the game itself) story than ever before. It's a shining example of a studio that creates amazing gameplay experiences but in their envy to be a Naughty Dog or Bioware they exposed their writing team more than a bit.

Mass Effect 3's gameplay was probably the best out of all three games. It balanced RPG mechanics with the whole third person shooting thing better than its predecessors. It didn't really do much with the gameplay and the story was kinda boring most of the time, but its gameplay was fine.

Also Max Payne 3 was made by Rockstar, and they get far more than "casual recognition".

As far as video game narratives improving, I'm all for it. However, I want video game narratives to improve in a way that movies and books can't capture. I want them to include a lot of great gameplay along with their great stories. When narrative becomes the driving force behind a game, it too often feels like the gameplay - you know, the reason I play games in the first place - falls to the wayside. It's not that games can't be relevant to social issues, it's that they have yet to figure out how to do that while remaining an engaging and interesting game.

I will put dollars to donuts that says the proportion of 40-49 year olds who play Call of Duty to 40-49 year olds who do not want to is actually higher than that relative proportion for 20-29 or 30-39. I speculate a 40-49 year old who plays games is more likely to play Call of Duty than younger age groups who play games.

I would also wager that the 'maturity level' desired in games has more to do with income and education than age. Whether or not you have a college degree is going to make much more of a difference in your game tastes than if you're 25 or 45. The change in games journalism over the last decade has more to do with a change in the education background of the journalists themselves. What you're seeing in the "let it be dumb" on one side and demands for greater etiquette on the other is not so much an age or sex issue as it is about class.

Your whole rant is half intelligent, valid points that never occured to me and half terrible exemples and supporting arguments. I really don't know what to make of it.

@believer258 said:

"It didn't really do much with the gameplay, but its gameplay was fine." Yes, that's what I said, they didn't do much with the gameplay, that was my issue. Nobody said the gameplay wasn't fine.

No, Rockstar didn't get shit for making MP3 and bringing that tight shooting and beautiful bullet time mechanic to the new decade. I specifically named the game so you wouldn't think I was talking about GTA and RDR. If anything, they got criticism and complaints about the story. Meanwhile, the game with one of the most irritating, basic and unimaginative rip-offs of the Gears of War shooting formula, The Line, got mad praise because the character arc is good.

Agreed, that's my point in my 2 previous posts.

And until they figure that out and start doing it, I'm sure you don't wanna see gameplay falling to the wayside time and time again, like you yourself phrased it.

I think you're overemphasizing the connection between the juvenility of game narratives and modern culture's general estrangement from games. The simplified storytelling is itself largely a reflection of society's distaste for nuance and introspection, which is why it's odd that people clinging to that kind of structure in the medium want to claim gaming as some sort of last bastion of consequence-free entertainment. Hell, even our news today could be called consequence-free entertainment, and that's a large part of why it's so easy for people who aren't invested in games to look down on them. They were told for years on years that it was affecting their children's learning capacity negatively, by figureheads whose job title indicates a certain necessity for trust (but whose job description no longer included accuracy in the reporting of facts), and they ate it up because no one who contradicted the default opinion had enough cultural clout to be heard.

That's why I can hardly fucking stand to hear an argument against deeper themes and emotional impact in gaming that includes appeals to effortlessness. Firstly, as you say, there will never be a danger of "dumb" video games losing a sustainable market share. Bioshock Infinite, scripted by one of the most lauded writers of the form, was pressured by external forces to dull its cover art in order to appeal to consumers who think of games only as time-wasters. Secondly, we're fucking nerds, aren't we? When did a group of individuals so defined by their devotion to factual minutiae and indifference toward normalcy become not only tolerant of, but utterly committed to the maintenance of ignorance?

I absolutely agree with this. The maturation of storytelling in games has progressed faster than the maturation of narrative game design, and too many games feel like they're having to compromise between the two. Even The Last of Us, the most confident and self-assured of all the recent attempts to tell a mature and meditative story while also delivering a solid gameplay experience, fell short in a number of key ways, feeling too game-y at times and too cumbersome at others. But part of the problem is that certain people in the games industry seem to be driving this trend by focusing too much on narrative and subject matter; the fact that Gone Home was so well received despite the fact that the design document might as well have been the same one used in Phantasmagoria is telling. The Walking Dead tried so hard to be unreasonably grim, at times it descended into the almost comical, and the less said about the action sequences the better.

I think we also have a very narrow definition of what a "mature" game is, and how a game narrative should be delivered. No one talks about Europa Universalis IV, and the fact that African slaves are literally a commodity for sale and trade if you colonise Africa, creating a moral dilemma that players can choose to engage with or not, because EUIV is a niche strategy game and doesn't force the fact down peoples' throats. Same goes with XCOM, which presents a brilliant synergy between narrative and gameplay, but doesn't get recognition because it doesn't have a structured narrative and pre-written characters. The popularity of highly interactive experiences like Minecraft, Skyrim, Day Z and such suggest that people are interested in a more personal narrative experience in which the player has greater agency as an alternative to interactive movies or text adventures, but a lot of games haven't worked out how to capitalise on this.

Crafting a very personal narrative experience means that the developers are creating an emotional experience that can be limited in terms of resonance, as not everybody will identify with their views and experiences, but a game that allows players the ability to craft their own narrative experiences means that they can be appreciated by pretty much anybody, provided that said systems are engaging to interact with.

@brodehouse: I agree with you that it has a lot more to do with class, and academic backgrounds, as opposed to the 'sjw's vs bigots' narrative that seems to be prevalent.

@brodehouse: Hell, I feel like we have the ultimate example of the divide you mentioned from the staff of this very website. Jeff is a dude who didn't give that much of a fuck about school, didn't go to college, had a family in the auto repair business that wanted him to have absolutely nothing to do with their line of work, and got into covering video games on a 9-dollar-an-hour lark. Patrick mostly grew up in suburbs, lived a fairly comfortable life, studied in University, and got to travel across the country from an incredibly young age knowing this was the career he wanted. The former is more likely to have a fairly simple "It's just fucking video games, man" attitude, while the latter is much more prone to navel-gazing.

As someone from a shitty class background in Appalachia, it frustrates me how often class is ignored in favor of much more shallow factors. (And this goes for much more complicated and important issues than just "why can't we have more serious video games.")

No one talks about class because of the ''class doesn't exist here, you can climb up to the highest highs if you work hard enough'' US myth and partly due to the fact that reducing someone's character to his or her socio-economical background is a shitty thing to do. Also, Jeff liked Gone Home so, yeah...

@pyrodactyl: Sure, but at the same time, taking someone's socio-economic status into account is probably a more effective way to glean information about them and work on solving social problems than "You're a woman, therefore" or "You're gay, therefore" or "You're black, therefore" or "You're old, therefore."

The problem is that there are so many people that act like those "fun" games are destroying the industry and making it only for 13 year olds. I can enjoy a good, serious story in a game if it's good, but I will never give up my fun games. The problem is that so many people attack these fun games because "SEXISM IS BAD" and "YOU'RE DESTROYING THE GAME INDUSTRY BECAUSE THIS HAS BOOBS". Whenever I'm allowed to enjoy Killer Is Dead, Senran Kagura, and Dragon's Crown without seeing this everywhere then you'll probably get more people fine with more serious games with real issues. The problem is that almost every game with these "real social issues" is praised to the heavans when it doesn't deserve it and the fun games that are just about fun are smashed into the ground for being a detriment to the industry and that's half or more of their reasoning on why the game is "bad".

"Games should grow up" is the new "are games art?" Would somebody please explain what mature means, in relation to games?

Focus groups, moneymaking.

@samsonbarabbas: Some people want games like brokeback mountain.

Designers do a whole lot of jaw flapping about this but I have yet to see much in the way of execution by any of them in any of the products they have put out to this point. You want to see better character depth and narrative complexity in games? Do it and show me. I don't want to hear or read a bunch of blather from triple A developers who don't do a goddamn thing about it in their actual finished games.

I honestly don't give a shit about "complex storytelling" in games. Game mechanics are, for me, the number one priority. If a game is fun to play, it will be a memorable experience whatever the window dressing may be.

In video games, the story should service the game. Not the other way around imo. Its partly the reason why I don't feel all that compelled to play Walking Dead Season 2(despite playing the first season). Telltale didn't seem all that interested to address their poor gameplay design. So, I'm not playing it.

I don't partake in video games(as a medium)for nuanced storytelling. There are, imo, superior mediums for that very purpose. Games have a unique experience that I can't get from those other mediums.

If a game has a strong story? Great. But if a game has a strong story and shitty game play mechanics? Its a piece of shit imo. However, if a game has a crappy story but strong gameplay mechanics? Its probably still going to be a great game for me.

I think a lot of taboo subjects need to start being approached, such as rape. No matter how clumsily they might be implemented, if nobody tries, we'll never get there.

I agree that putting mature subjects in a game does not make it necessarily mature, far from it. How it's presented matters a whole lot, but if it's never presented, we'll never get the chance to do it right.

Recently, there was a thread asking if Kojima went too far with some stuff in Ground Zeroes. While I thought it was relatively well done, some thought it wasn't. Yet I still commend Kojima for trying. Phantom Pain seems like it will also delve deeply into the issues of child soldiers, which we rarely see in games.

(Forewarning: I'm going to rely on my film studies knowledge here as I find it's far more transferable to game studies than any other critical medium)

I find it ironic that it is a Bioware employee preaching about this issue as I find most of their recent work (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Jade Empire) to be heavily reliant on reductive types than stereotypes, that are far more compatible with the binary morality systems that their games employ.

My stance on socio/sexual/gender/race/economic representations in modern games is that the moment you focus so heavily on it in games you are going to derail that narrative in your game. I admit the history of videogames are very white male middle class focus but is a extremely sensitive focus a great step up? When I play a game there should be different representations in games but I shouldn't say "My what a novelty, an accurate representation of this minority!" while twiddling my Dickensian mustache and marveling at the Steam engine. I should accept this character ignoring their race/gender/sexuality because they are written in a balanced and rounded manner. So what if this person is gay, it'll only matter if they wrote a line to active the romance subplot and a pass is made (either by player or npc) and I decline to partake because that is not where my character's interest lies, move on and still take an interest in the character as a person. The same applies to race and gender.

When developer's rely on singular representations I find that it's rare to see an accurate depiction because the specifics tend to rely on experience. This leads to a highly personal narrative or one that is somewhat warped because the experience is relayed through the secondary narrator of the writer.

I admit it can be considered a fairly laconic attitude, but I do worry that the if so much weight is put on the need for these representations that they won't necessarily be integrated into the narratives naturally that expectations and acceptances will be altered as is hoped.

Well it seemed to be attempted with Hotline Miami 2(even if it was only satirically). You saw how that went.

Dude gave practically the same speech last GDC. My guess is that he will give the same one next GDC. Its just "playing to the crowd" wankery.

@nodima: Sucker Punch exposed their writing props to be poor with the first and second games. People who expected a stellar story were high and drunk.

Why are we preventing games from growing up?

Because we haven't grown up as gamers. We still like and accept the same tired old concepts, and some of us still use games as escapism.

I'm not sure I'm a fan of how TV Shows and Movies have "grown up" over the last decade. If growing up means more games like HBO shows with more "adult content" no thanks. I liked how tv shows of the 90s were, much more fun but also clever at the same time, like Buffy and X-Files and other shows like that. It's the reason I'm enjoying Arrow so much, it feels like a show from the 90s. I loved Breaking Bad, but most mature shows just mean more depressing to me. Which was my biggest issue with The Last of Us, as I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the uncharted games purely because of the dark narrative. I really like the characters and vibe of inFamous Second Son, sue me!

I've been happy with the maturity of the medium since the beginning, but I have no intention of growing up either ha ha. I kinda thought that was the point of video games. All I want gone from the industry is the dude bro COD shooters really.

On the other hand if you mean more mature by actually having less violence, sex and mature themes and just writing good engaging narratives, that's fine by me. Games like Gone Home definitely have their place. Plus I'm a sucker for feel good endings.

@marokai: @pyrodactyl:

Wow,this is news to me. In terms of socio-economic class determining your view on these themes,can the two of you elaborate? I mainly ask because,for many people I know (not all,but many),this seems to be true.

In terms of my thoughts:

This thread....confuses me...

I can understand the point that some people bring up,but shouldn't a fair representation also be taken into account in a game?

Basically,a game might be...lacking in most (especially important areas) if it focuses heavily on one aspect,especially things like social themes,but at the same time those very same themes should be taken into account in my opinion. We don't have to perpetuate age/gender/sexuality/etc stereotypes in order to make a good game.

I am not even sure if I am on-topic

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

I'm getting pretty confused too by a lot of what people are saying. It doesn't seem like they have a real point or "side" in this argument. It's just either people who don't like heavy or deep story-driven games that focus more on that than the gameplay, and people who like both.

Can someone who has a problem with games like Gone Home or The Walking Dead please explain how this hurts their ability to buy and enjoy the video games they prefer? The only thing I can think of is that you might think that these games could have been good if they didn't think story was more important than gameplay so this new fad is literally turning games that you would have liked into games that you don't like. Is that the whole argument?

What?

Mass Effect 3's primary failing compared to the previous 2 games was it's story. In terms of gameplay, Mass Effect 3 is the best in the series without a doubt. It's a refinement on the solid core shooter action of Mass Effect 2 and leaned a bit more towards the RPG mechanics of Mass Effect 1 with it's deeper leveling system, greater weapon and armor variety, and the ability to mod your weapons with different effects. Also, the failings of the story had nothing to with it having any more "mature social stories" than the first 2 games but more of an issue with resolution, player choice, and pacing. Exactly what social issues to do think were crammed into ME3 that weren't in the previous 2 games?

Anyone is free to dislike Mass Effect 3, and most wouldn't argue it has its issues, but to say the gameplay is anything but an improvement over the previous 2 games is a lie.

The problem is that for the past few years, the games that have been lavished with praise have been in the spotlight because of their narratives and stories. Not all of them, of course, but games like Gone Home and The Walking Dead aren't really doing anything interesting in a game-y sense. The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, and Grand Theft Auto V have some pretty good gameplay moments but significant parts of each have issues, yet they get 9.5's and 10's across the board, while most games with interesting and new gameplay concepts either get far less attention or none at all.

Yes, some of it is a problem of "most people don't like what I like!", but it's also a problem of "is this where games are headed? Disregard brilliant gameplay and mechanics for stories that ape movies and books?" It sounds petty if you do place more importance on story than gameplay, but I enjoy games that place priority on gameplay. I don't think it's petty to complain about how so few of the games I really like don't get the kind of budgets they need to be all that they can be. I'd love to see an honest-to-God Metroidvania like Super Metroid or Metroid Prime get a full AAA budget and release. Instead we get things with "Metroidvania elements" like Arkham Asylum, where you do get gadgets but it's super linear, or Dark Souls, where areas interlock but you don't really get an ever-expanding collection of abilities.

Of course a focus on story isn't where all of gaming is headed. We've still got our Metroidvania's, our JRPG's, and even first person dungeon crawlers have popped up here and there, but none of those things are given much attention anymore. Dark Souls 2 is more of an exception than a rule here, but I don't think this medium will ever be lacking in games that have little more than an excuse plot in exchange for something that's a lot of fun to play.

Ultimately, I guess that people who come to games primarily for gameplay will just have to get used to ignoring most of the press surrounding their games.

As a side note, this thread has pretty much derailed from the original point - what's wrong with representing social issues in games? Well, as I said in my first post here, nothing, but I would really like to see developers try to balance gameplay and story instead of give concessions to one or the other. People get mad because it often feels like these social issues are shoved down our throats in a medium that we generally come to for entertainment. That is a bit of a problem, but it's largely a problem because games still lack subtlety. It's not inherent to the idea of representing real-world issues in a game.

I'm happy to see gaming diversify and the adoption of more mature themes in gaming, I may not play them like I have zero intention to play Cart Life or Papers Please, but I don't like the idea that there is something wrong with pure escapism and fun adventures in fantasy worlds that the industry needs to grow out of.

I do feel COD and GTAV kind of give the industry a bad name making gamers end up looking like murdering psychopaths and I would be happy to see that negative stigma overcome.

Haha, I wasn't expecting a stellar story at all, in fact I've constantly had this series' back with regards to its fiction. They're good at setting out to tell A story...it just rarely happens that they tell the story they actually think they're telling. Every time Reggie threatens a conduit with handcuffs, though...I'm laughing for all the wrong reasons, Sucker Punch.

I will say that I think the antagonistic nature of Delsin's relationship with everyone around him makes much more sense on Evil. I'm not shaking my head in disbelief nearly as often, anyway.

In the fantasy GDC in my head, Manveer Heir received a two-minute standing ovation for a speech exhorting developers to implement properly placed and spaced checkpoints.

I find it difficult to enjoy movies and television that promote political viewpoints. It brings you out of the story, it's rare that both sides are presented fairly, and people who make movies and television are overwhelmingly of one political persuasion. At one point in my life I watched TV every night and watched a fifty or more movies every year. Then everything I liked started to get shrilly political (You know what this RomCom needs? People of another political stripe should be reminded that they are jerks!) and I just quit. I only watch a few movies a year and follow maybe a show or two and that's it. Mostly I retreated into video games where my political beliefs weren't routinely distorted and then ridiculed.

And I get a little scared that video games will go down that same dark path. Will the villain of the next Bioware game be a thinly-veiled caricature of some guy I've voted for? Will a cut-scene turn into a recitation of the opposition's political talking points? Will the story center around how people who share my beliefs are all actually hypocritical jerks? These things all happened in movies and TV I watched, in films and shows I might have otherwise enjoyed. And they were just the tip of the iceberg.

There is a lot of space for games to address social issues smartly without going down these rabbit holes. But I can't say I don't worry about it occasionally.

I think game developers have been addressing "mature" subject matter in respectful ways for awhile now, but I don't think it will ever be as popular as the streamlined stories of the standard power fantasies that dominant the mainstream market. Most people aren't coming to gaming for deep, involved stories with well developed, complicated charcters. Which is fine. Really, games are one of the most difficult ways to tell those stories because there are so many ways the mechanics of the game can get in the way, or delegitimaze the story. As someone who does appreciate a deeper element to story telling in games, when it's done well, I think those games should be called out and respected by those who are looking for that experience, but we also need to recognize that the larger market will inevitably lean towards simpler experiences, and the gaming industry, as a business, will pander to that market. Confronting complicated, and possibly emotionally charged, material will most assuradly draw conflict.

Most in the education field already know this to be true, when you consider the number one determinant for a child's success in school to be his or her socio-economic status.

That said, the continued danger of over valuing this is inherency. "If you grew up poor, you will inherently like more base things" is a problematic statement to make, particularly when we place value those things differently. It is not even a matter of "high culture" or the like, as the topic at hand in this case as to do with social equality.

Also, one's gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion helped develop the varying levels of socio-economic status in the world, so to discount them in favor of what they have birthed would be a mistake.

This again? Whatever. People can make games about anything they like already, now more than ever.

There's no need to artificially encourage more of it, that will only make what we receive more hokey and unnatural.

That's very true, but I wouldn't want young kids playing any of those games and young kids have just as much right to game as I do. I don't think Mario should "grow up" e.g. (unless he eats a super mushroom I guess). While respectful depictions belong in every game, mature themes and sociopolitical subject matters don't.

Part of the problem I think is this "games need to grow up" language which is a pretty sloppy way to convey what most gamers probably really want and makes the problem worse by being needlessly confrontational with those who are happy with the games that are getting made today.

What most of us probably really want is something like "for the game industry to be a respectful professional creative environment for people of all backgrounds, for games to depict diverse people respectfully and for there to be far greater thematic variety in AAA games".

Afterall the game industry should be a supportive and tolerant work environment that should treat its' employees regardless of age, gender, race , orientation, religion, socioeconomic status etc right? Stereotypes aren't only lazy and insulting but they ultimately are bad for business by limiting the audience. And who doesn't want more game of more types? The success of indies shows there is unmet demand for all kinds of play, themes and stories not currently provided by the majors. It's just that the major pubs are very risk averse due to massive runaway AAA budgets and will only fund what they know more or less.

But that's not nearly as catchy to say as "games need to grow up". Or as hyperbolic.

So some of the people who are upset by the status quo say it the other way out of laziness or frustration, which implies something far other than what most actually mean by it when they say it which subsequently causes some violent hyperdefensive kneejerk reactions from people who feel attacked for liking games they have every right to like. Which leads to unproductive impasses in the conversation.

As soon as the old guard sees this want is meant to add to games not takeaway what they have now, I think you'll see most of the old guard holdouts happily welcome the change.

So it seems we're not as much disagreeing as talking about motivations. Which is cool.

I get what you're saying but I feel it would much more easily apply to things like Walking Dead, Gone Home and even stuff like SuperBrothers EP Sword and Sorcery. They're great stuff that put narrative/style in front of gameplay. And if they're not your thing, that's cool. If they worry you, that's up to you.

But to say something like Bioshock Infinite is prioritizing story above gameplay is just silly, just as leveling that claim at ME3. ME3 has a more ambitious combat environment then the first two games pretty significantly, even in single player. And Infinite spent years trying to come to grips with the ambition of it's gameplay goals. Watching pre-release stuff it's clear they were aiming for the friggin moon and just couldn't make it work.

So it sounds to me like you're putting the (relative) gameplay failures of those two games to a diversion of focus on behalf of the developers. I don't agree. I instead see it as these game not quite reaching their gameplay aims because making games is apparently really difficult. I don't think at any point they said to themselves that they narratives were really cool so they could ease up on the gameplay. If anything, most people complain about ME3 and Infinite having too much of a focus on combat. Nor do I think a team moves their focus onto a narrative, high minded or not, because it will track better on metacritic.

.

Separately. LUFTRAUSERS is all gameplay. Calling it cheap really suggests you have no idea what it is. Must-do-better is a personal motivation when it comes to skill based games, I don't mean it as a mechanic or hook. Luftrausers is an arcade shooter and it's gameplay is the only thing it has. And it's brilliant. Seriously, yall gotta play it! Nothin' like Don't Starve.

Now lets be friends and not argue!

The concept of "maturity" in anything is laughable. What the fuck does it mean to be mature? killing? violence? Social issues? sex? That is funny if you considered pretty much all the games you listed are immature as fuck compare to the children cartoon movie called "Up" but I guess to be fair, most "mature" movies are immature as fuck compare to Up.

I agree that Gone Home and The Walking Dead haven't done anything crazy in terms of gameplay, so yeah, everyone loves them because of their stories. You name The Last of Us, for example, as a game with gameplay issues, but gets really high scores because of the story. I think there's another element that goes above gameplay and story and I think that's just the overall experience. I'll use Gone Home as an example.

Obviously Gone Home didn't have great gameplay. It was literally just walking around, picking stuff up, and reading things. I actually also don't think it had some kind of deep or amazing story either. That's not why I think it's a great game. I thought it was great because of the experience I had when playing it. I'll cover this up in case anyone still wants to play it and doesn't want it spoiled.

Now, I wouldn't call that the "story" of the game and therefore praise it for its story, but I know it's not the gameplay, because like I said it was just walking around and looking at stuff and reading things. So I would say the reason the game got all that praise was not because of story or gameplay, but rather the experience you have when playing it.

Just like The Walking Dead, the gameplay is pretty dull, the story is kinda all over the place at times and whatever, but the actual experience of making tough decisions and forming relationships and really caring about the characters is what the people loved about it.

To address the main question though, I don't think worrying about gameplay or story getting more attention than the other during the development process of games is really the issue. The focus of making a game is creating an experience, and depending on what you want that experience to be, the creators have to find the right balance of story and gameplay. Some experiences are better created using very simple gameplay like Gone Home, and other experiences are better created with a huge focus on gameplay like Dark Souls. If there's a game out there that you wish had "better" gameplay then it would probably help to first ask what kind of experience were the creators going for and what the best way to create that experience would be.

If creators want to create an experience that involves raising questions about social issues, it just so happens that it's the kind of thing that is more much easily expressed through story and that's why games that aim to do that usually do it through their stories. Not all of them do though. If you've played Papers, Please you can see how, through gameplay, they were able to create a social commentary on the working class, struggling to provide for family, how you view other people when put in a position like that, etc. It's brilliant and also why a game like that got so much praise. So I really see it from both sides. I see games getting praised for gameplay like Dark Souls and Papers, Please, and I see games getting praised for their story like Gone Home and The Walking Dead, but ultimately I think everyone is praising the same thing and that's the experience they had, whether it was due to gameplay or story, as long as the experience was great, it's going to get praise and more games like them will come out. So I'm not sure I see how this can be interpreted as one taking away from the other.

@shinjin977 said:

When something is considered too much to handle for a child, we call it mature. It's just how we differentiate between something that's easy to digest for a younger person, and something that's a little too hard to swallow that would require a more experienced and developed adult mind.

It's not even the concepts that are the issue, but the presentation. You mention Up, which brings up the subject of loss and death. I saw it. It was actually pretty sad. However, in the context of something animated, with goofy characters, colorful art style, humor, 3D, subtlety, and a gentle delivery, it was done in a way that kids could handle. Obviously The Walking Dead also includes the subject of death and loss, but not in a way that is good for a child to experience. So as I said, it's not necessarily the subject that's mature (although some are just not for kids in any context), but the presentation of that subject that can be mature or acceptable for kids to experience.