New Malstrom article - Secret to the “Casual”

[celine]

BengaBenga said:

celine said:

BengaBenga said:
I really like his previous writings, but he went completely overboard on this one.
Calling games with a tutorial broken games is probably the most dissapointing phrase he ever wrote and it also completely destroys his credibility for me, cause because if this I have the feeling that no longer he uses facts, business principles and scientific theories to prove his point, but merely tries to over-value casual gaming principles.

Why you wonder?

There is a certain game, by the same man he hailes in every article, coincidentally often named as the best game ever that has quite an extensive tutorial.

Wonder what this game is?

It's #1 on both metacritic and gamerankings.

He was speaking from a lower tier user point of view. With the new trend arising games with tutorials, long and pretendious cinematics, wall of text and not "fun factor" will be "broken games".

Analize the most defining game of this new trend : WiiSports.

Tutorial ? No, if you know how swing a bat then you could start to play.

Cinematics ? No, because player doesn't have control during them ( cinemtics are foundamentally agaist the nature of interactive entertainment. VG != movie ).

Wall of text ? Nope, it only remember you to take a break after a while.

Immediatly fun to play ? You bet it

 

You could appreciate or not his writing style but you couldn't say that those points are wrong because in that case you must explains Wii Success ( based on that points, watch Scott Anthony video ).

The problem of this Malstrom article is that it is not that clear as should be. 

I understand who he's writing about, still it's oversimplification of the casuals he so well described in earlier articles. Seriously, of course WiiSports is a great title and a very, very accesible one. But that same audience doesn't see one type of movies and does't listen to a single type of music.

He clearly falls in his own trap here, by firstly saying that casuals are not retards and later saying that everything should be simple and accessible. That's just stupid. Do you think all that 5 million Twilight Princess owners have played Zelda before? Do you think they hated the tutorial and went right back to WiiSports? Or do you think at least some of them were caught up in the more cinematic experience and loved it.

If you think that all the new gamers only want quick, easy, motion controlled game experiences I think you simplify the market too much. Loads of people have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy, not the prime example of an accessible film.

 

 

It is not a trap. There could different genres liked by these "new" ( they aren't new in most case ) lower tier audience but the reason why they were dragged in gaming was that they like the new set of values introduced by Nintendo recently.

Some of those "new" audience will upstream but following the same set of value ( that will be enanched ).

Cinematic Trend is declining, Social/peripethal Trend is arising. I think that article is deeply tied with the "Theory of Cycles" so I suggest you to read it.

EDIT: Want to make clear that "Simple & Accesible" != "Dumbed Down". This is the principle motive why Nintendo is the most successful in the lower tier area because they use their best team to produce and market games like WiiFit.

The analogy "King/Slaves" is great