| Jaos said: Noname: I read your posts in this thread and have to say I disagree with you. I think your fallacy is the assumption that everyone plays for the same reasons. Not everyone enjoys the same things about games. You and I enjoy overcoming obstacles in games and developing skills to beat it. Now I don't know what else you enjoy about gaming, but I also enjoy the exploration, seeing new parts and things in the games. That's the reason why I don't much enjoy games that have a lot of repetition in them, even if they are challenging. I think that exploration is a fundamental reason why people play games. Not all people, but a lot. I think the third reason is escape. People want to leave their daily routine behind and explore fantastical worlds, participate in activities beyond their capabilities, or just relax and take their mind off of job matters. Just this weekend I met a friend who had been a hardcore gamer for all his childhood. It's this guy who's guilty of turning me into a Nintendo fanboy. Since he's got into work life, he doesn't have much time for playing anymore. Wii and DS kind of brought him back into gaming, but didn't fully achieve this. He played NSMB DS and really enjoyed it, but gave up have way through. The reason he gave for this was he didn't enjoy repeating tasks because he failed. He even said that he doesn't want to do anything a second time. On Wii it was similar, he played Galaxy, but couldn't even get to 60 stars. Because of this being an issue in most games he sold his Wii. You have to understand that he doesn't play anymore because he wants to overcome challenges, but more of escapism and exploration. NSMB Wii's new feature could achieve what all those already 'dumbed down' games didn't: Get him back into and keep him in the gaming hobby. I think because of our dedication to gaming and our skills we aren't the best to judge how to get noobs into gaming. At least with this guy, every attempt at making him overcome hard passages will only make him quit playing. Other people who, like him, don't want to play for the challenge but more for the other reasons won't keep playing if they have to repeat things to develop skills, because they don't think that's the fun part. The fun for them lies more in seeing new things and some jumping. You have to give up on thinking that you could ever get them to play the same way as you or I do, because they enjoy different things about gaming. |
Actually, speaking personally that's not true at all: what I enjoy from gaming isn't the challenge per se, it's getting the chance to see what comes next that I enjoy the most. The problem is that seeing the next part involves beating the current portion, and I know from long experience that beating the next next challenge is going to involve utilizing skills that I picked up earlier. And I don't see how things can be any other way: gameplay is what separates gaming from passive forms of digital entertainment, but if you don't mix the gameplay up (usually via harder challenges) it'll be too much of a chore to see what comes next, so I won't bother.
Your anecdote about your friend is a good one, and it does a perfect job of illustrating that the status quo isn't going to cut it for many people. But I don't think that this feature would have led your friend to a different result (if I thought it did, I'd be all for it). Sticking with Galaxy, imagine how he would have used this feature; after dying the first time, your friend would naturally activate this feature to get past that part. That's good so far as it goes: an obstacle to having fun has been removed. But what happens when he gets to the next star? Chances are he can't beat that part either, so he activates this feature again. Another obstacle to fun is gone, which is still good.
But the game's not going to get any easier as he moves along, so save for a star here and there your friend is now stuck in a cycle of die (likely earlier than before due to underdeveloped skills and harder challenges) and watch, die and watch, die and watch. I know for a fact that after a very short while I would not have be having much (any?) fun at all with this, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb by guessing that the majority of people wouldn't either (if you're just passively watching, why not stick to a movie, which does that type of entertainment much better?). So in the end your friend will find that gaming still wasn't much fun, and he's still leaving our hobby. The difference is that this cycle has also absorbed lots of people who are similar to your friend, but who would have been willing to retry some challenges a few times to learn the necessary skills, but who instead opted to use this feature to die and watch, die and watch, die and...
I know there's a problem here. I know my proposed solution is not only difficult to implement in practice, but that it won't work for everyone either. And I know that I definitely don't have all the answers, and that Nintendo's track record is much more impressive than my own. Nonetheless, I'm looking at what little we know about this feature and applying it to the hypothetical New/Lapsed Gamer, and I'm not liking the results. I think this is a great feature for people like ourselves who are already interested in/dedicated to gaming, don't get me wrong. But I think it will drive more new people away from gaming than it will draw in.
