Hello Malstom
I’m not sure I really understand what you mean. Are you suggesting that old games used to be so hard because they were short? I disagree.
When a game is too easy it bores me and no amount of content can keep me playing if i’m not enjoying the process of consuming the content. I don’t even bother finishing the game before I sell it, sometimes I will watch the cutscenes on YouTube. The other kind of game I never finish are games which are too hard for me. That’s fine though, if the difficulty is fair I will keep coming back, replaying the same content, simply because I enjoy playing the game.
I always thought the reason why older games were harder is because it made them interesting. Why else would console games, where you don’t have to put in quarters, be difficult as well? Sid Meier once defined content as the amount of interesting choices a player gets to make. If a game is too easy your choices don’t really matter, you are more or less immortal. You end up just watching the game, which you might as well get from just watching it on YouTube. A challenging game on the other hand forces you to make decisions all the time, keeping you excited. Playing the same level over and over is interesting when you can tackle the challenge in different ways (e.g. stomp a goomba or jump above it). Each choice has to be equally good but result in a different outcome.
To give a recent example, there is this Indy game called Shank, it’s a sidescrolling brawler. I beat it on normal in about three hours, pretty nice. I really started having fun when I played on hard and all the checkpoints were removed. All of the sudden dying meant I would have to start the level from the beginning and it was way more interesting because now I had to be more careful. I have already seen all the levels, enemies and the story, yet I keep coming back.
I’m not trying to be some sort of Retro-Hardcore who looks down on anything new. In fact I thought the way games are made today to be the norm, and I always felt like something was wrong. It wasn’t until I started trying out older games that I was able to put my finger on the issue. I still do enjoy new games, as long as they are old-school, instead of handholding me, just to make sure I get to see all the “cool” stuff the developers have come up with.
As for the second part, I haven’t played any MMORPG but I have story that is related to level-grinding and dungeon-crawling.
I played Final Fantasy III and Dragon Quest IV on my DS. In DQ the final dungeon was not very hard, but the boss was statistically impossible to beat with my current level, since I didn’t have enough magic to cover the damage he could deal. So I had to find a place where I could walk back and forth, fighting the same type of monster over and over again. It was not fun, since those enemies never posed any challenge, I was just mashing the same buttons over and over again, slowly watching a counter rise. I never finished that game.
In FF the final Dungeon was much harder and it was really interesting to go in and see how far i could make it before I would have to return (there are no emergency exit items, so you had to have enough ressources to make it all the way back alive). The main difference is that one game required midlessly doing the same thing over and over just for the sake of padding out the game, while he other offered a genuine challenge. Maybe that’s why players prefer to roll a new chacter rather than go farming. That’s just me making assumptions, though.
You are talking about your perspective in the context of playing a game. I am referring to it in the context of paying for a game.
How do you get money from gamers?
While people get money from gamers by putting out new games, it is revealing what occurs when we look at software that isn’t ‘brand new game’. What do we find?
Arcades kept extracting more and more money from the same players in a single play session. How did they do this? “Put in another coin to continue.” To continue what? To continue progress. What is considered ‘progress’ in video games? It is the levels or stages. And what do we consider levels and stages to be? Content. It certainly isn’t gameplay or ‘graphics’ or ‘cutscenes’. Like in Gauntlet, you put in more coins in order to continue going through the floors of the dungeons. You wanted to see how far you could get.
Some of the later multiplayer arcade games like Street Fighter 2 relied more on multiplayer between other players, but even the single player version of the game relied on progress driven through ‘levels’. People put in more coins in hopes of battling Bison.
With expansion packs to computer games, what is included? There might be some slight gameplay additions, but most expansion packs are content based. They have new levels, new units, etc. I remember some enterprising gamers using the RTS map making editors to create hundreds of new maps and selling them in stores like Wal-Mart (before the RTS companies sued them). Still, they were able to sell based on ‘new levels’.
With MMORPGs, what are people paying with for their subscription? They are paying for more content that is added in patches for the most part.
Is there any example in gaming where gamers will give money for something that doesn’t offer anything in content?
Saying ‘gamers value content and will pay money for it’ is nothing new and is something every gaming company believes in. This is not the issue at hand. The crisis going on is how to meter this content out. With HD displays and all, content is becoming more and more expensive to create.
Once upon a time, the tools for game development were non-existent, and it was very difficult to create content. Many really old games had their stages just speed up faster and faster and faster for progression purposes. Apparently, the tools to create content began to get easier during the mid-eighties as games became to have a beginning and end with various stages. Making and animating sprites was very tedious work. I know this from personal experience. So it must be so much nicer with 3d how there isn’t any need for sprites. It became easier to create content at one point. But with HD and the increased standards for visuals, it is becoming increasingly more expensive and time intensive to make content.
‘Interesting choices’ might be what Sid Meir said, but if you look at how Civilization sold and its expansion packs, it revolves around new civilization factions, new technology, new units, in other words, more choices. And ‘more choices’ requires new art, new sound effects, etc. etc.
A game like Minecraft offers a huge amount of content. While there are many interesting choices available, its important to remember that the world literally goes on forever. Minecraft didn’t take off when the world was limited or due to ‘creative mode’. It took off when survival mode was introduced along with the endless world.
Video games require quality art and sound in order to sell. Hiring artists and musicians costs money. People play video games in large part due to the audio/visual responses it makes. Nolan Bushnell focused Atari heavily on sound production and discovered that games began to sell much more. Anyone from that era also remembers the incredible Atari cartridge art. While it had no part in the game, it definitely added to the experience.
On the WoW forums, someone complained about Daily Quests and a MVP poster asked, “Try posting something constructive. What would you suggest be done?” Bashiok, the Blizzard community manager posted snarkily, “Infinite content.”
But isn’t that what people expect? Infinite content flows from television. Infinite content flows from news. Infinite content flows from the Internet.
So why can’t infinite content flow from video games? Instead of trying to fight this, they should be embracing it. User-Generated Content is obviously not the answer (for reasons too numerous to discuss here). But then again, if people were fully satisfied with a video game, there would be no reason to buy another one.
The great classic video games always tried to deliver upon ‘Infinite Content’ (which appears to be like the Speed of Light. You can never achieve it, and no matter how close you get, you are still so far away). Games like Starflight or Civilization or Privateer or the Ultimas made serious attempts at getting to ‘Infinite Content’.
I’m becoming distressed that game companies today have abandoned this quest for content. Now the quest is, “How much content can we re-use or recycle until people catch on?” If you are able to do this well, you will become promoted to the team’s director!