The rumors were true: Nintendo games can now play themselves!

[theRepublic]

noname2200 said:

brute said:
I guess it's good for the casuals, but people will attack this alot.

I'M attacking this! Unless a game's difficulty balance is ridiculously uneven (which happens more than it should, I admit), this feature's just hurting the player: you're not learning how to play the game, you're just plain giving up. So what are you going to do the next time you encounter a rough spot (or even rough-er spot)? You haven't improved since last time, so you pause the game and let it play again....and then you repeat this process in a few minutes....and yet again....until you blink and realize that the game's over, wasn't-that-fun?

And I know it's purely optional, which is why I'm not foaming at the mouth here or anything. I'll even admit that I can see some uses for this in co-op games and the like, where the players' skills are very unequal. But it seems to me that this is a mistake overall, for reasons I can't completely explain (I'll try though).

A large chunk of most games' fun comes from the challenge it offers, even if that challenge level is fairly low overall. After all, I don't think anyone has too much fun with a "press A to win" type of game. This feature removes that challenge almost entirely, and the worrying part is that the people who will use it the most are likely to be people who rarely play games (demonstrably, they already have the least interest in gaming). While this may initially seem like a plus (finally my girlfriend will play with me! And if things get tough, we'll just auto her out) I actually think it'll have a negative effect on gaming overall: I fear that people who use this feature will end up simply sitting and watching the game play itself more and more often (why not take the path of least resistance, especially when you're not all that dedicated to the hobby in the first place?). And when that happens, I think it'll be inevitable that increasing numbers of people will get bored of gaming and just walk away. The process may not be logical, but from what I've seen of human behavior I think it'll happen to lots of people, more than this feature helps draw in.

I concede that there's a problem, and that this is Nintendo's attempt to address it. But I really don't think this is the wisest way to go about things. I think Nintendo would be much better served if they took the time to fine-tune the balance on their games, in such a way that even novice players have a chance to test and improve their skills before encountering tougher challenges. I'd even toss in a video service of some sort, as a sort of hint system to show lost players how others do it. But doing it for them? I don't think that does anyone any favors.

Wouldn't this be a video system in effect?  People would watch the game do it, and then they would know what to do in the future.

@topic in general, I'm not sure how I feel about this yet.  Since it's optional, I really don't have a strong reaction either way.