I’m still behind in my email. But for the time being, there is this:
hi… i have read your latest blog comment and well i don’t agree… lot of games aren’t skill based (most rpg are easy or for example pick animal crossing) yet are still fun to play,it’s more of a matter of content,is it new? is it interessing? there are quite a lots of classic that don’t require any sort of skill whatsoever yet they still count as classic… when i do stop playing it’s not because i think the game is too long but because i don’t think the ending is going to be all that interessing… i cleared both twilight princess and galaxy without problem simply because they were interessing game and i never thought once they were challenging yet i can still get bored by a link to the past because there are 8 dungeon but they all look,sound and play more or less the same…
Ignoring the Link to the Past comments (good thing I don’t have comments open or else people would flame you for that), let’s address what you are saying. Skills-based gaming produces a feeling of growth or, to be more precise, the feeling of growth gives the illusion of skills-based gaming. Miyamoto said that Zelda was designed to be around the feelings of growth. Obviously, the feeling of growth is what is behind games such as Sims, World of Warcraft, Animal Crossing, Civilization, and numerous RPGs (not saying they were or were not skills based. I am saying they created feelings of growth). The older RPGs weren’t easy, that is for sure. The hardest Final Fantasy is the first one and remakes of it has intentionally made it easier. The Ultima games were always a challenge. Do you know how many times we died with Iolo shooting us in the back with a triple crossbow? Oh, the memories.
One of the reasons why I tend to sound authoratative is not because I am saying my opinion is THE WAY AND THE TRUTH or by a runaway sense of arrogance. I’m not interested in opinions. Not mine, not yours, not really anyone’s. What I am interested in is behaviors. I want to observe what customers do, not what they say. Most people say one thing and do another. My personal opinion often tends to run contrary to my behavior at times. So it is right that personal opinion can and should conflict.
What I want to do is try to isolate the… uh… laws behind why something is that or why the market does that. “Why is this game still selling after decades?” is one of my favorite brain teasers. Others are, why did this game sell and that one didn’t, or why did that console sell and that console didn’t. Opinions will not attract investors for a business enterprise. However, isolating these ‘laws’ would become fruitful. For example, one ‘law’ of why certain consoles succeed where others do not is variety and large game library. Once we have an idea, we can test it out by applying it to each console and seeing if it matches its market success and apply it to the present. Since it appears to have no exceptions, we can safely use ‘library size and diversity’ as a determining factor in forecasting future consoles success or failure. (For those curious, Wii was unleashing more software than Sony and Microsoft at the early days even before publishers began switching to the Wii bandwagon. This is one of the big reasons why Wii has kept its insane momentum and why software sales keep rising.)
When people say, “Games are too long these days,” I do not accept that as truth, even if polled or focus grouped. We all witness how people, even ourselves, do tend to get sucked into a game, playing it over and over, even if our mouths said “Gaming is too long today!” We might say, “I play this game because it is interesting,” or “I play it because it is fun.” None of this is telling us WHY. People used to play games like Asteroids or Pac-Man like crack. Flash games today is drawing in significant eyeball length even though the users are ‘casual gamers’. Even though World of Warcraft was originally based on making MMORPGs more accessible to those with less time on their hands, we still find those ‘casual gamers’ end up becoming ‘hardcore raiders’ and we hear marriages ending, people dropping out of school, all because of World of Warcraft. But that example can be applied to many games. Wii Sports might not require much time yet people don’t stop playing it. (A voice from the back shouts: “I haven’t touched Wii Sports since the launch!” Hush, you hardcore gamer!)
The question isn’t why we think games end up doing this or that on the market. The question is a matter of observation of the market itself. Why does New Super Mario Brothers absolutely destroy Super Mario Galaxy in Japan (and to a lesser extent, elseware)? Does market prefer the 2d Mario? Did they hate the space gameplay of Galaxy? Or why is Mario Kart selling so much better now with the DS and Wii versions? We can come up with observations about the games, about how people act with them, which can signal to some sort of conclusion. The issue isn’t what we think in our opinions, but what is going on with people’s behavior and market reactions, which is independent of the field of opinion.
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