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Forums - Nintendo - New Malstrom article - Secret to the “Casual”

celine on 07 July 2008
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. 



 “In the entertainment business, there are only heaven and hell, and nothing in between and as soon as our customers bore of our products, we will crash.”  Hiroshi Yamauchi

TAG:  Like a Yamauchi pimp slap delivered by Il Maelstrom; serving it up with style.

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BengaBenga on 07 July 2008
FeArLeSs said:
Yadda Yadda! the Hardcore having a cry at a Malstorm article!.. what ever! Wii still rules! and completely pwning the HD consoles.

His intelligence is way too much for most of ya to grasp.. and he already put his points as simple as he could. how sad!

 

Welcome here: point of attention: the rudeness  towards others in your post is not allowed here. 



BengaBenga on 07 July 2008
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.

 

 



celine on 07 July 2008
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



 “In the entertainment business, there are only heaven and hell, and nothing in between and as soon as our customers bore of our products, we will crash.”  Hiroshi Yamauchi

TAG:  Like a Yamauchi pimp slap delivered by Il Maelstrom; serving it up with style.

DMeisterJ on 07 July 2008
RolStoppable said:

The problem is that Malstrom wasn't very clear in this article. About the tutorials he is talking about forced ones, like in Final Fantasy XII which I described in my previous post. TP doesn't force something like that on the player, the tutorial is integrated in the game so that the player learns how to play the game AND proceeds in the game, meaning that completing the early tasks in Ordon feel like accomplishments and worthwile.

You don't get everything thrown at you at once or are explained how to push the analog stick like in FFXII, you are free to explore the first section of the game at your own will. You are learning how to play the game while you are already having fun.

So a tutorial is okay if you're doing other things while in a tutorial?

A tutorial is a tutorial.  He didn't explain himself, he said "Tutorial = Broken".  Now we could try to figure out what he meant, etc, but if he didn't feel the need to make sense of that dumb-ass comment, why should I give him the benefit of the doubt?  Zelda: TP has a tutorial, so therefore, according to Malstrom, the game is broken.  It's not my fault that he decided to not be clear when making the article.  Which brings me back to my first point, which is the article is very well written.  He spends 24 paragraphs contradicting himself (Casuals are not stupid, to, simiplify your game until you don't need a tutorial) and not enough time explaining what he means.  His writing in this article is very poor, and he goes on and on about nothing the whole article, and manages to hurl insults at even Nintendo-developed games.  Thus making his point moot.  I mean, he even got the comment "Next Gen doesn't start until we say so" wrong.  Mark Reindidn't say that, it was Kaz Hirai!  How are you going to quote someone but not get it right?  Then he used GTA IV's 100 million dollar budget to call Rockstar "egomaniacs", when the hundred million was spent on making a huge and detailed environment.

It's a good read if you're sipping the juice, but his whole article, is opinion.



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DMeisterJ on 07 July 2008
RolStoppable said:

Let's take another look:

Does it have a tutorial? If yes, then your game is broken. The best games don't have tutorials. ‘Super Mario Brothers' and ‘Legend of Zelda' had no tutorial and no tutorial 'stage'. Mega Man did not have a ‘tutorial' until a tutorial stage appearing in Mega Man 7 (and they wonder why the series went downhill). Tetris had no tutorial. People want to play the game, not be forced to act out a manual. If your game *has* to have a tutorial because it is too complicated, then your game is the problem. Simplify it until you don't need a tutorial. Wii Sports doesn't even have a tutorial. It will simply give a ‘reminder' of how to do stuff only if you mess up.

Are you forced to act out a manual in TP? Or is Final Fantasy XII a much better fit for this description? Remember, that game forces you to do everything step by step with other control functions blocked while acting out the tutorial.

A game being too complicated doesn't mean that the user is stupid. It means that the user doesn't want to spend 20-30 minutes before he is finally able to play the game. Consider that a lot of people only play an hour or less per day. If you were one of these people, would you bother to waste half or more of your playtime on a tutorial or would you rather just play a different game instead?

He got the quote wrong, yes. But the Rockstar guys are definitely egomaniacs. Remember what one of the Rockstar guys said after GTA IV failed to move systems in large number? "F*** casual gaming" - that's a clear sign that he is pissed that his awesome product didn't live up to what it was supposed to do. Instead of asking "What is wrong with our game?" he blamed the consumers and that's exactly the mindset that Malstrom is describing in his article:

The secret to the "Casual" is a change of mindset from being "look how awesome I am" to "look how awesome the new customer is". Thinking that these new customers are ‘retards', that they are ‘beneath you', is really thinking that ‘I am so awesome'.

Also, you can find lots of quotes from Epic that show that they are egomaniacs as well. Whenever they talk about the Wii you can notice a negative attitude and comments like "Gears of War 2 is going to be bigger, better and more badass." are also signs that Cliffy Bleszinski thinks that he is awesome.

Meh, I'm done the whole "tutorial" thing, because while FFXII does match more what he means, he doesn't say that.  That has to do with him and his slip-shod writing, not me taking this exactly how he writes them.

I didn't say that Epic, Mark Rein, CliffyB, or R* are not egomaniacs.  I was just stating the fact that this guy can't even get his facts straight, which had to do with this being an opinion piece, rather than a piece that actually had to do with the task at hand.  His whole article, aside fromt he Iwata dialog, is opinion, and contradictory:  Developers who want you to watch long cutscenes are egomaniacs, but all we're doing for twenty minutes is reading your opinion on what the "Secret to the 'casual'" is.  But you yourself are not an egomaniac, you just chose to not put any fact in your post, get quotes wrong, and make every sentence your own opinion.

Irony much?



ksv on 07 July 2008
DMeisterJ said:
RolStoppable said:

The problem is that Malstrom wasn't very clear in this article. About the tutorials he is talking about forced ones, like in Final Fantasy XII which I described in my previous post. TP doesn't force something like that on the player, the tutorial is integrated in the game so that the player learns how to play the game AND proceeds in the game, meaning that completing the early tasks in Ordon feel like accomplishments and worthwile.

You don't get everything thrown at you at once or are explained how to push the analog stick like in FFXII, you are free to explore the first section of the game at your own will. You are learning how to play the game while you are already having fun.

So a tutorial is okay if you're doing other things while in a tutorial?

A tutorial is a tutorial.  He didn't explain himself, he said "Tutorial = Broken".  Now we could try to figure out what he meant, etc, but if he didn't feel the need to make sense of that dumb-ass comment, why should I give him the benefit of the doubt?  Zelda: TP has a tutorial, so therefore, according to Malstrom, the game is broken.  It's not my fault that he decided to not be clear when making the article.  Which brings me back to my first point, which is the article is very well written.  He spends 24 paragraphs contradicting himself (Casuals are not stupid, to, simiplify your game until you don't need a tutorial) and not enough time explaining what he means.  His writing in this article is very poor, and he goes on and on about nothing the whole article, and manages to hurl insults at even Nintendo-developed games.  Thus making his point moot.  I mean, he even got the comment "Next Gen doesn't start until we say so" wrong.  Mark Reindidn't say that, it was Kaz Hirai!  How are you going to quote someone but not get it right?  Then he used GTA IV's 100 million dollar budget to call Rockstar "egomaniacs", when the hundred million was spent on making a huge and detailed environment.

It's a good read if you're sipping the juice, but his whole article, is opinion.

 Why are you so upset? If you can't see the difference between a tutorial and what Zelda:TP does, I can't help you.

There is no contradiction between catering to the intelligent and make your game simple to learn. It's the gameplay itself that should be the challenge, not learning which buttons do what. Simple does not equal stupid. If you can do same thing in two different ways, I would say it's stupid to do it the complicated way.

Your game can still be "hardcore" and not "broken". Nintendo and Blizzard aren't the only ones who get it right. You don't need one button/buttoncombination to jump, one to kick, one to climb, one to dodge, etc, etc, when you are not going to them at the same time or in the same situation. A simple example; look at how Resident Evil 4 uses context-sensitive commands; that's part of how you make good gameplay.



Shameless on 07 July 2008

He can't even spell Maelstrom correctly.



DMeisterJ on 07 July 2008
RolStoppable said:
DMeisterJ said:

Meh, I'm done the whole "tutorial" thing, because while FFXII does match more what he means, he doesn't say that. That has to do with him and his slip-shod writing, not me taking this exactly how he writes them.

I didn't say that Epic, Mark Rein, CliffyB, or R* are not egomaniacs. I was just stating the fact that this guy can't even get his facts straight, which had to do with this being an opinion piece, rather than a piece that actually had to do with the task at hand. His whole article, aside fromt he Iwata dialog, is opinion, and contradictory: Developers who want you to watch long cutscenes are egomaniacs, but all we're doing for twenty minutes is reading your opinion on what the "Secret to the 'casual'" is. But you yourself are not an egomaniac, you just chose to not put any fact in your post, get quotes wrong, and make every sentence your own opinion.

Irony much?

I really don't know what to make of your post. It doesn't seem like you have an argument.

I don't have an argument.

I'm just trying to say that he doesn't have his facts straight, and contradicts himself.

That is all

 



LG[Infinite] on 07 July 2008

I'm with Rol and the others on this one. When your game is so complicated to play that you have to have the instruction booklet in your lap just to survive, you know you've done something wrong.

And with regards to academic writing, whenever you write always remember who you are writing for and why. A lot of academics fall into the trap of writing in an overly complex manner simply because they can. An excellent example of a science writer who is extremely well qualified but writes very cogently is Gould (on evolution). Compared to many in his field, his writing is like a shining beacon of intelligibility unfettered by useless and pointless conventions.