Hey Sean,
I think I read a post of yours a while back that didn’t understand why the Hardcore love stories in their games so much. You and all of your dedicated readers know why DEVELOPERS love stories so much (fun to create and easy to implement) but you can’t understand why the HARDCORE love stories. Honestly, being a lover of stories myself, I had to ask myself the same question. Why do I love stories so much? What is it about games that make me obsess over the characters and their lives as opposed to the game in of itself?
Well, I’m pleased to say that I think I have an answer to this question.
First, another question. What is ‘Fan’ short for. It is short for ‘Fanatic’. Hardcore are ‘gaming’ fanatics. But by all logic, that means they should be obsessed with how well a game plays, right? Well yes, but we’re dismissing a crucial element about game play and content in general.
When done well, as was often done in the Old School games, Game Play was completely invisible and intangible. There were no gimmicks. There were no barriers between the player and the content in the classics. So what happened? The gameplay did it’s job. The player BECAME the protagonist of the games. The player WAS Mario as he or she bounced between platforms. The player WAS Link has they hacked and slashed through hordes of monsters. The player WAS Samus as they navigated the claustrophobic corridors on their mission to commit genocide against the Metroids.
They (the Hardcore) couldn’t see why they loved the games so much, the invisible values of content and the gameplay that serves it. So they attributed their fun to what they COULD see. They attributed it to story. They mistake content for story (that’s why Bowser has Koopa Troopers! It’s part of the story! That’s why Samus is capable of killing an entire species! She’s messed up in the head) and game play shifted in focus because of it. And when they did, they became ‘Fans’. They became obsessed with the worlds, and it’s biggest stars. In Mario, it’s Mario, Bowser and Peach. In Zelda it’s Link, Zelda and Gannondorf. In Metroid, it’s Samus, Ridley and the Metroids.
As they gradually played more and more games, they wanted more of what they thought they enjoyed. ‘I wanna know more about Samus!’ ‘I wanna know more about when Link and Zelda are going to get together!’ ‘What does cake MEAN exactly?’ They were obsessed, and obsessive people are OBSESSIVELY vocal about what they want. So the Industry and Nintendo in particular, see all of this outcry for ‘Story!’ amongst the hardcore and ‘Realism!’ and they are only to happy to oblige.
So here we are today. The Industry likes pumping out stories and ‘Franchises’ because they are ‘Fun’ to create and assure multiple installments of cash flow. The Hardcore are happy because they’re obsession is being fed.
Who DOESN’T profit?
The people who are more concerned with actual content. The people who like playing their game more than they like finding out ‘Hidden Feelings’ of the people they are constantly reminded they are playing AS not ARE. The people who don’t profit are the Old School gamers, who left when they weren’t getting what they wanted anymore. The grand, massive majority who prefer being able to play excellent games as opposed to sitting through an interactive movie.
So, concerning Nintendo’s three big titles, Mario, Zelda and Metroid, how did they get to become what they are today?
With Mario, Miyamoto HATES making traditional Mario (which isn’t that hard to bring to 3D, if you can think of it), so he makes what he wants to make. Creative gimmicks and collect-a-thons. He understands that story has no place in Mario, so we’re spared that. But we have no traditional Mario in 3D, and that’s a complete tragedy.
With Zelda, the build up to story started after Zelda 2. It was slow and gradual. People started getting bored with Zelda. But they couldn’t understand why, so they just said ‘I guess it’s just not my thing anymore’ and left, while the Obsessive Hardcore remained. These Obsessive Hardcore are starting to see the error of their ways. They can see SOMETHING is off, but they can’t tell what. They WANT to start off in the middle of no-where in a massive overworld with only a sword and shield, but they can’t imagine a Zelda without ‘Puzzles’ and ‘Story’.
With Metroid, it largely stayed true to it’s gaming roots (Metroid Prime 3 made me a Metroid fan, but the first one is the best), with story based (sort of) adventures being restricted to the Handhelds. And then…BAM! Other M hit’s the console as a massive departure from traditional Metroid. This was a series where Old School Gamers remained on board of the fandom. They remained on with the Hardcore. And when this game hit the shelves, you could here the fan base declaring civil war on itself from the top of Mount Everest (one of my friends who was ON Mt. Everest when the game hit the shelves thought he heard gun-shots coming from America). There was no subtle change over the years like with Zelda. The Old-School esque fans of Metroid recognized a complete derailment of one of the best game series of all time and they REJECTED IT. If the sales numbers are anything to go by, the Hardcore are still a minority.
In conclusion, the Hardcore are an extremely obsessive, vocal minority who are almost unable to understand why they loved games and gaming, or what it really is without being able to see the trappings of gameplay. Gimmicks are lauded as innovation and story is reveled in because they can SEE it, while invisible gameplay that only serves as the players acess point to the game world and story that tells itself through the WORLD and is unobtrusive is put down as simple and un-immersible. They love what they can see, unable to comprehend what they can’t.
…I don’t know, I might be over thinking this. What do you think?
You probably are overthinking this. But then again, so do I. Before this generation, anyone who thought oldschool games were better were just written off as nostalgia.
If I was ‘King of Gaming’, sat on a throne with a scepter and crown, and could issue an edict that would forever change gaming, it would be this:
Remove the belief that everyone is entitled to ‘finish’ the game.
I have tons of games that are over twenty years old that I have never finished. In fact, I will likely never finish them. Do I regret buying them? No. The purpose of a game is not to “finish” it. The purpose of a game is to have fun playing it.
You cannot ‘beat’ Pac-Man or Space Invaders. The game just got harder and harder until you died.
It was the 8-bit generation where the first time I recall where games could be ‘beaten’. What this meant was that the game had an actual end. This was novel at the time.
Beating the game gave one bragging points. But not too many people ‘beat’ Solomon’s Key for example. And how many people actually did beat Mega Man 1? Or Ghosts and Goblins? Or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Not too many people.
One thing Miyamoto said that was interesting was that around half of the people who bought Ocarina of Time did not finish it (which is why Wind Waker was so ridiculously easy). Yet, Ocarina of Time was the best selling Zelda (in part due to its vast 3d world. I think it had a sort of GTA3 effect then where people were just floored by this vast world). But Miyamoto began nerfing Zelda because many people didn’t finish the game. Why is that a problem? Ocarina’s sales are definitely not a problem. And if the game wasn’t challenging, it certainly wouldn’t have the fan base it has today.
Where is it written that the customer wants to finish the game?
Why do people stop playing a game? It is because they no longer are having fun with it. No one says, “This game is too hard! I refuse to play any longer.” What they are actually saying is, “This game is too frustrating! It is not fun! I do not wish to play anymore.”
Any old school gamer knows that you expect to purchase a game and expect to play it forever. You don’t necessarily think you’ll *beat* it. But you expect to keep coming back to it.
Why is multiplayer dominating gaming right now? Why is Call of Duty’s multiplayer dominating? Perhaps it is because you do not ‘beat’ the game?
Can you beat Wii Sports? I don’t think I’ve mastered some of the things like the golf. Maybe I will one day. Do I feel ripped off because I have not ‘beaten’ the game? No. The idea of ‘beating’ Wii Sports seems pretty silly to me.
In a game like Legend of Zelda, you didn’t really *beat* it. There was the Second Quest. I was actually wondering if there was a Third Quest in it as well when the game was out!
With the oldschool games, you would buy it, take it home, and expect to keep playing it forever. Of course, you did not only play that one game. During a game session, you would switch from game to game in your collection depending on your fancy. If you wanted to play Mario, you played some Mario. Then you might switch to Zelda. Or to Mega Man. Or to Contra. Or to Double Dragon. And you would keep coming back to a game. Even if you beat the game, you never said, “That’s it! I am not going to touch this game forever.” Once you beat a game like Super Mario Brothers 3, you would play it again eventually. Games like Mega Man 2 got played over and over and over.
(Hell, I just bought Super Mario All-Stars today. It is the same exact game that came out for the SNES. And the SNES game was just the NES Mario games with updated sprites. I’m still playing the same game over twenty years ago!)
I think the mark of quality on a game is how often we keep coming back to it. This would also be reflected in ‘evergreen’ sales.
The behavior of the new school gamer is very different. They seem to feel entitled to finish every game they buy. And when they play, the game sits in the console from the day they bought it to the day they have ‘finished’ it. Then the game exits the console and sits on the shelf with it rarely re-entering the game console.
Take Final Fantasy for example. I constantly replayed Final Fantasy I. Why not? I could have cool new combinations of characters. In one moment of craziness, I played with four White Mages. With modern Final Fantasy games, you do not have anything like that. Even with Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, which are extremely ‘story heavy’ back during their day, you could still play the game differently each time with different party configurations. Final Fantasy V and III of course had the JOB system which definitely made more playthroughs interesting.
But what reason is there to play through a modern Final Fantasy more than once?
Somewhere along the line came the thinking that games has a BEGINNING, a MIDDLE, and an END as if it was a sort of plot structure. But games do not have a beginning. And games do not have an end.
Does Tetris have an end? Does Tetris have a BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END?
One reason why I like Minecraft is because there is no end. And because there is no end, there is no middle. Everyone starts off the same but, from there, all similarities end.
The only reason why games ended was because levels could not go on forever. Donkey Kong had an ‘end’ but then the game repeated in an endless loop. It was only until the 8-bit generation that most games had ‘stages’ which were finite.
An interesting observation is how people react to the MMO games. Everyone knows you cannot ‘own’ a MMO game. Yet, why do people spend money on them? Do these people not know the game cannot be beaten? That the game cannot be won?
Of course.
An MMO somewhat gives that sense where a player would be able to continually play the same game without it ever ending. And with MMOs, I do not just mean the RPG variety. One of my favorite games was Virgin’s “Subspace” which was a large arena of Asteroids-physics space shooters duking it out. Incredibly addictive.
I just find it amusing that there are gamers out there (clearly the new school variety) who think the complaint that “You can never beat the MMO game!” is a complaint. Gamers who like those type of games see it as a plus.
Let us pretend the reader has overthrown Iwata and is now Supreme Dude of Nintendo. You are now the boss, and it is time for a new Zelda game. What do you tell Miyamoto to do?
What if you told Miyamoto to make a Zelda game that could not be finished? Now imagine how a Zelda game could be made like that. Imagine what game design would be necessary to make a Zelda game that could not be finished.
Oh, and you cannot use ‘frustrating difficulty’ to make the game unable to be finished.
So how would this Zelda game be? Well, for starters the Zelda could not revolve around a story because the stories, by definition, have a beginning, middle, and end. And the Zelda could not revolve around puzzles because puzzles have solutions which means an end.
When Super Mario Brothers came out, we thought the game had no end. Sure, you could ‘save’ the princess. But was there a World 9? And where did Negative World go? We were convinced Negative World was a passageway to another universe!
And when you played Metroid, you thought the game kept going and going and going. It felt like games had an endless horizon.
Did a game like Blaster Master go on and on and on? You know it didn’t. But when you first played it, it certainly felt like it.
Interestingly, when Ocarina of Time came out, many people felt that the game would go on and on, that the horizon would keep pushing forward. Even GTA 3 gave that sense. That feeling has to be a big reason why a phenomenon spread about the game.
Getting your ass handed to you is fun in a game. No one can beat Missile Command.
How many people finished Gauntlet? Not too many.
People point at the ‘game endings’ for old games like Ghosts and Goblins where you are required to beat the game again and then only get a screen of text. This was pretty common during this era. I’ve always wondered why this is considered ‘bad’. The point of playing a game is to play it. It is not to see some cutscene at the end. I was amazed when Final Fantasy VI decided to put in an ending that was like 30 minutes long. Appropriate for that type of game, but it is absurd for other games.
The commercial video game came to life as the arcade game. And every arcade game was designed never to be beaten (because it wanted more quarters). So why are games being made that are designed to be easily finished? All this is doing is encouraging people to sell their games back to the used game store.