In a recent article you commented that today, game players feel entitled to beat a game simply because they invested the time into it. The more I think about this the more it seems astound me, because it’ so absolutely right and I never realized it. This especially hit home when a friend was asking me if I thought Mega Man games were comfort games. I couldn’t say, because for me now, I’ve played them so much it’s like clockwork. But when I was a kid, that wasn’t the case. I remember it would take days if not weeks to beat any stage, and in fact, as much as I loved the games I never finished. I wouldn’t even try because I was convinced I couldn’t. No, I’ll tell you what I did. When I actually became skilled enough that I could beat the eight Robot Masters, I would simply pick a stage to go to (though not Wily’s fortress), and then have my own personal demonstration of all the weapons. That’s where Mega Man games ended for me. I didn’t really start trying to beat them until Mega Man 8 came out (and boy do I have embarrassing memories of making my mother watch the ending of that game and seeing how bored she was).
But what about the latest Mega Man games? It seems natural that any game you play enough will become a comfort game (another nomenclature of yours I love). But here we have some brand new Mega Man games, made in the image of old, and they still feel very much like comfort games. It’s not as though they weren’t challenging (and 9 was especially cheap at points), but I still cleared them both on the day they came out. I did feel a little of that old anxiety near the end, but still, it wasn’t such a trial. So I feel like I can’t gauge if they’re really comfort games. Does my familiarity with the Mega Man concept and game physics make Mega Man an eternal comfort game now? Or do you think Capcom could actually make another Mega Man game that would take months to finish, without making it horribly unfair and cheap?
The Japanese Game Industry reminds me of the American Newspaper Industry. The elder newspaper editors know their industry is swirling down the drain, and they have completely stopped caring. They are not fighting the decline. They have decided to just do whatever they want, to print whatever the hell they feel like.
My impression from the elder Japanese game makers is the same. They do not wish to allow young game makers to have the same opportunity they did. They do not wish to fight the decline. Instead, they will just do Whatever-The-Hell-They-Want. Mega Man 9 was made for that purpose.
Mega Man 9 was most definitely not made to make Mega Man popular again. It was not made to make Mega Man into a mainstream game series again. Think of the design for a moment. The game was based on Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2. Why Mega Man 1? The game wasn’t that successful in the market, not like Mega Man 2. And what about Mega Man 3? Apparently, the elder game maker didn’t like that game (for whatever reason).
When Star Trek: Enterprise ended with its final episode (the series was canceled after the fourth season), the show runners decided to make the last episode a holodeck in Enterprise D. This royally pissed off fans and the actors on the show. The reason why this was done is that The Next Generation was the show runners high point in their career, and they even picked the exact TNG episode where the Enterprise holoscene was supposed to appear for the two TNG characters as the precise tippy top of their career. The reason why they did this is for their own personal reasons, their own sentiment.
Mega Man 9 wasn’t made for any specific business reason, as far as I can tell. It was made precisely for the sentiment of the creator behind Mega Man. I suppose the old fart wanted to re-live his youth, re-live his glory days. There is absolutely no reason to have 8-bit graphics and make the game frustratingly cheap if not for this purpose.
Sven revealed on the Capcom forum that there was no business interest to make Mega Man 10 (due to how Mega Man 9 sold) but there was “creative interest”. What I think was going on was that the people on the team felt entitled to design their own robot master (just as every third grader does) which is why Mega Man 10 was made.
How many people did it take to make a NES Mega Man game? Say around 10. Today, a video game team can be as much as 200 people but more around 50-100? Most of these people are doing things not related to the content such as making sure the HD grass ‘flows’ in the wind or some other garbage. Game making budgets have ballooned to millions and millions of dollars. We also know that due to advances in computing, it is easier now that games are not sprite based.
Why not use some of that extra manpower and budget and re-direct it to the content? Where is it written that every Mega Man game must have 8 bosses? In Mega Man 1, it was only 6. In Mega Man 2, it was 8. In Mega Man 3, they added four additional stages between the robot masters and the Wily Castle. Up until then, more content was being added. Then it got ‘frozen’.
Why not make, say, a Mega Man game with 20 robot masters? That would certainly be tricky to balance out the weapons to each boss, but it is very doable. It would certainly keep you busy.
Part of the reason that you beat Mega Man 9 so fast is that you are older. But another big part of the reason is that it is the same exact formula used 20 years ago. Note that in Mega Man 2, the formula changed. It changed a little more in Mega Man 3. And then it stayed the same.
I like what Nintendo did with Mario 5. The single player is great, but more content was added by having the multiplayer. If there was no multiplayer, why not have 15 worlds in Mario 5?
I do not understand why game series from the NES are frozen in time in how their content is structured. Why must every Mega Man game have 8 robot masters? Why must every Mario game have 8 worlds? Why not have more? I miss the days when Japanese game makers were like Miyamoto when he first showed off Super Mario Brothers to Nintendo staff. At first, Miyamoto only showed off five worlds so they would agree. Once they did, he showed off the other three! For some reason, at that time everyone was interested in pushing the content frontier. Now, it seems like no one is interested.
I think another interesting example is New Super Mario Bros Wii. It is indeed challenging, and game reviewers compared its difficulty to Contra (which has become gamer-talk for “hard”), but I still beat it in a few days. However, I never owned Super Mario Bros 3, and I cannot go back and blow through that game. That game still kicks my ass when I arrive to world 2. That also goes for games like Ninja Gaiden, Blaster Master and Spy Hunter.
Mario 5 is tricky because it was designed also to incorporate four players at the same time. I thought it was impressive how the game was fun from single player to four players.
What I dislike in Mario 5 is how Nintendo used scavenger hunt coins to provide the ‘challenge’ instead of providing it in the fundamentals of the gameplay. The only real disappointment I had with Mario 5 was the final stage. Bowser’s caste is so huge yet his stage is so easy and small. This was made up with the final boss battle.
I’m not a fan of the coin collecting and find it a lazy design of a company scared of risk. They do this in all their games. The main game is simple to easy but there is a spot out there that should be called ‘hard zoo’ and you are put in a ‘trial’ through hard things. Like in Zelda, there is a little dungeon where you can go through rooms of increasing difficulty. There is no purpose to it except for something for players to do. I hate it. Why can’t this be in the main game? I also hate how in later Metroid games, they think they are providing the ‘challenge’ with ‘hard modes’ unlocked when the game is over. They aren’t. And it is damn lazy design.
Mario 3 had the right approach. The best thing to do is design difficult courses in the main game (not as a zoo) but give the player tons of options in how to approach the difficulty. In Mario 3, you had numerous power suits you could throw on. You even had easy-win power-wings. You could use a cloud to ‘skip’ the stage. You could take another path on the map which would bypass that troublesome stage.
It is not that difficult games are not fun. It is that difficult games, when the player has no options, are not fun. Any game with bad controls, for example, is not fun because the player has no options. With Zelda, the difficulty is tempered by the fact that the player can spend extra time getting some heart containers, getting upgrades for the sword and shield, and even buying potions.
When I would make games, I learned to start it very hard. Then, I would gradually make it easier. It is easier to make the game easier than it is to make an easy game harder (because you often put in things that are cheap).
Difficult games are always better than easy games. It is better for a player to feel FRUSTRATED than to feel BORED. But I think the solution is to give the player tools in how to tackle the difficulty. For example, Super Mario Brothers is actually a hard game especially if you play all the way through as small Mario. But there are things like power-ups to help you out. And there are pipes that cut off parts of a level. And there is the Warp Zone. All these things cut through the difficulty and were options for the player. I cannot think of another game at the time that had such options. It certainly helped catapult Super Mario Brothers to the stratosphere. Note how NES Zelda and NES Metroid were also extremely difficult but had ‘items’ which made the player overcome the sheer difficulty of the game (and made the player feel awesome for beating the game!). It is a shame that 3d Mario, puzzle Zelda, and Sakamoto Metroid no longer does this.
I can see why game publishers today would definitely like players to feel entitled to beat games with enough time investment. So long as the game can be beaten with a certain time investment, the faster they’ll move on to the next thing. Of course, this habit is what made the used games trade so profitable. And, wanting to have their cake and eat it too, publishers are going after used games…
The difficulty of early games had to have been something carried over from arcade gaming. In arcades, the games had to be hard so more coins would come through. As arcades died, it seemed like this addictive challenging gameplay has died with it.
I think the real answer is to have games that are more fun to play than to beat. Obviously, popular games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit don’t really have an end. Then there are games like Earth Defense Force (which I’m so happy you turned me on to) that have a story and ending and such, but I’m pleased to go back and play stages again and again. The same goes for those old Mega Man games.
Still, I do wonder if it’d ever be possible to have such a simple but challenging game that would take months of work again. I wonder if I could even have time for it!
The rub is that they don’t want to make games like that anymore. They want to make games like Metroid: Other M where it is about cutscenes and characters. And game makers wonder why game sales keep decreasing…
I encourage you to go ahead and try making such a game. Just start off small. It is very easy to ‘add on’ later. The biggest hurdle is making it to something in front of you that you can play. There is no reason why you cannot make the next Mega Man or Blaster Master. Then you can sell it and become rich. As you sit on your island full of naked babes, you think to yourself, “This was time so much better spent than arguing nonsense on the local gaming forum!”