Guess all these social media (twitter / facebook) are a fad.
I don't think a 'fad' means what you think it means.
Apparently, fads have a longer lifespan than you are aware of; look up "PRIDE FC" (the Japanese organization that encompasses the golden years of MMA). Fads do have the capability to last for more than a few years.
Don't be surprised when Twitter and Facebook are recognized as ancient fossils.
The place we go to might as Twitter / FB gets replaced but the actual social media won't.
7 Years is more than half of MMO's life as we generally accept it (UO/EQ). Calling it a 'fad' when the majority of the time it has been true is factually wrong.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Amazing..... I never knew the hub of the gaming industry revolved around Auckland New Zealand. I think the one-upsmanship just took a large step into the land of the absurd.
You are again speaking for some large group of un-named people in an effort to bolster your position. In reality you are talking out of your hat and expecting the forum users to just accept it.
Actions speak louder than words and many people do take note of things the video game industry has done in the persuit of a dollar- Diablo 3's RMAH , Pay to win games, Midstream changes in a manifesto, etc. Its all a level of perspective, you can view it as free enterprise, but others may view it as game makers dismissing gamers as gullible. Seriously though express your opinion but dont think the rest of us are buying in to your attempt to be more than the one person you are. "They" speak for themselves.
Oh My! Lets dissect this post and see how far down the rabbit hole we can go!
I never knew that you have to live in SF / USA to talk about these things.
If you want proof that 'game makers don't think casual gamers are dumb' then the recent GDC / PAX panels had very notable people talk about it.
It is nice to be validated though since personal attacks are used if the poster doesn't know how to respond with the subject matter. Thanks!
D3 RMAH continues to rake in $$$ for Acti-Blizz. As a big believer in the free-market / capitalism, I'd say gamers are speaking quite loud and clear. Whether you approve it or not is irrelevent.
What people say and what they buy are two different things. This is marketing 101 stuff jeez.
It is really interesting that my post that rejects 'game makers think casual gamers are dumb' is twisted by you to say 'game makers think gamers are gullible'.
I called you out on your posts when you posted factually false posts. I get that you are upset, but trying to put words into someone's mouth to get back at them doesn't normally work. LOL.
I wouldn't call someone an idiot to their face while taking their money. I just think it instead.
Not saying that they do think they are dumb. But to assume any number, whether that be a majority or minority feels one way, and to state it as if it were fact is somewhat ignorant. Not to be rude, but I highly doubt you can speak with them as you probably don't know any of them on a truly personal level.
I wouldn't call someone an idiot to their face while taking their money. I just think it instead.
Not saying that they do think they are dumb. But to assume any number, whether that be a majority or minority feels one way, and to state it as if it were fact is somewhat ignorant. Not to be rude, but I highly doubt you can speak with them as you probably don't know any of them on a truly personal level.
In today's world, games such as Pong / Tetris / Pacman would be your 'casual' games.
How many people do you think played those and are now involved in the gaming industry? (hint: lots and lots).
It is like saying 'simple games are easy' which is just mind-blowingly false.
Chess / Tetris has simplistics game mechanics but I'd challenge anyone to say chess / tetris is easy.
We are kinda moving away from the original topic so I'll end my derail here and go back in topic.
MMOs are no longer 'worlds' cause there is little $$$ incentive to do so. Whether you like that fact or not is irrelevent.
Free-market is working as intended.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I spend from 4 to 16 hours every day programming open source RTS game engines. I could make more money making mobile games for the common sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb.
Actually i have quite a bit of admiration for you who would put your time and career on the line for this. Personallyl i wouldn't. When i was in high school, i did program some games on my Apple 2+. The programming was fun .. but the games weren't .. not because it is of a design i don't like, but because i know it in and out, and there is no surprise ... no element of awe .. everything was very much known.
At the same time, i find you condenscending to call a segment of the gamers "dumb". You really think you are better than them? Do you really think everyone wants to spend their intellectual in wasting time? How do you feel when other think you spend your career in making "time waster"?
Sure, playing a tower defense game on an iOS cost less time and focus than trying figure out D&D rules and optimize a character. But they are just entertainment. I really think that people here obsess too much and think that those who can raid or fight a battle in a mmorp GAME is a real achievement, and that they are better than those who want to waste 5 min on angry birds.
In this logic, are those who spend their free time reading Shakespeare and write essays about it better than MMORPG players who "just kill stuff in a make-belief world"? Are those who watch indie movies better than those who like super heroes ones?
If you start to get epleen by congradulating oneself about what games you play, where do you think MMORPGs fall in the grand totem pole of entertainment between appreciating fine arts, to watching survivors on tv?
I wouldn't call someone an idiot to their face while taking their money. I just think it instead.
Not saying that they do think they are dumb. But to assume any number, whether that be a majority or minority feels one way, and to state it as if it were fact is somewhat ignorant. Not to be rude, but I highly doubt you can speak with them as you probably don't know any of them on a truly personal level.
In today's world, games such as Pong / Tetris / Pacman would be your 'casual' games.
How many people do you think played those and are now involved in the gaming industry? (hint: lots and lots).
It is like saying 'simple games are easy' which is just mind-blowingly false.
Chess / Tetris has simplistics game mechanics but I'd challenge anyone to say chess / tetris is easy.
We are kinda moving away from the original topic so I'll end my derail here and go back in topic.
MMOs are no longer 'worlds' cause there is little $$$ incentive to do so. Whether you like that fact or not is irrelevent.
Free-market is working as intended.
I didn't say casual/simple games are easy. I'd also guess that most or the majority of developers now a days are around my age and thus grew up with the likes of nes and not pong. I can also think of a reason why developers would call casual gamers dumb, though idont support the argument really. That would be that they can keep making the same simple game over and over again in different skins and sell it. Look at all the match 3 games. One could start using that argument for some mmo gamers now a days too,and I feel only a select group are actually dumb.
I spend from 4 to 16 hours every day programming open source RTS game engines. I could make more money making mobile games for the common sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb.
Actually i have quite a bit of admiration for you who would put your time and career on the line for this. Personallyl i wouldn't. When i was in high school, i did program some games on my Apple 2+. The programming was fun .. but the games weren't .. not because it is of a design i don't like, but because i know it in and out, and there is no surprise ... no element of awe .. everything was very much known.
I made my own stuff too. I tried to copy the BBS game LORD. It was fun, but that element of discovering a new game was missing as I knew it in and out. Oh well
I spend from 4 to 16 hours every day programming open source RTS game engines. I could make more money making mobile games for the common sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb.
Actually i have quite a bit of admiration for you who would put your time and career on the line for this. Personallyl i wouldn't. When i was in high school, i did program some games on my Apple 2+. The programming was fun .. but the games weren't .. not because it is of a design i don't like, but because i know it in and out, and there is no surprise ... no element of awe .. everything was very much known.
At the same time, i find you condenscending to call a segment of the gamers "dumb". You really think you are better than them? Do you really think everyone wants to spend their intellectual in wasting time? How do you feel when other think you spend your career in making "time waster"?
Sure, playing a tower defense game on an iOS cost less time and focus than trying figure out D&D rules and optimize a character. But they are just entertainment. I really think that people here obsess too much and think that those who can raid or fight a battle in a mmorp GAME is a real achievement, and that they are better than those who want to waste 5 min on angry birds.
In this logic, are those who spend their free time reading Shakespeare and write essays about it better than MMORPG players who "just kill stuff in a make-belief world"? Are those who watch indie movies better than those who like super heroes ones?
If you start to get epleen by congradulating oneself about what games you play, where do you think MMORPGs fall in the grand totem pole of entertainment between appreciating fine arts, to watching survivors on tv?
the whole idea that smart people need intelectually challenging games suggest a lack of knowledge about people and the world in general. Not everyone seeks games for the same reason. I get challenged in my everyday life, i dont need to be challenged in games because i seek them for relaxation and sometimes even to go on autopilot mode( i cant tell you how many times in the trance i get into when playing some games i find solutions to problems i had a hard time dealing with in my stressed life).
I seriously think that some people take games too seriously, they are just entertainment.
To remain on topic though, i would like a world, the thing is though,would i have the time to play it? My life is so hectic and full of comitments i dont think i would have the time to dedicate to a world.
I actually think thats the real problem. The gaming generation has grown up and even the most hardcore players have had to turn casual because of real life responsibilities, leaving time to only pick up themepark games like guild wars, LoL and WoW.
Apparently some of you doesn't understand what a "world" in an MMORPG really mean.
To create an MMORPG world you need a collection of major key-elements that otherwise would turn your so-called "world" into a small-park or even wrose a Lobby-Based multiplayer game.
1. Eliminate or greatly reduce instant travels between points that are virtually too far from each other. Otherwise, you destroy the very basic of being in a world which is the realization of distance. If something is 1,000 miles away from you (virtually) but also one click-away from you at the same time; guess what? it's actually simply just one click-away from you that illusion of 1,000 miles is no longer applicable because thanks to instant-travel now the distance is completely destroyed.
2. Freedom. If you hand-hold/spoon-feed the "content" of your "world" to your player then why bother creating a world in the first place? the whole point of being in a world is exploration, mystery, freedom to travel. Stop hand-holding your players (directly or indirectly) and let them be. If you design your "content" where the player is always directed towards it with neon signs (whether through questing or by creating virtual zones designed for specific phase) then you're not in a "world" are you? you're simply a tourist in a tourist-attraction site.
3. Inconvenience. If everything is easy, trivial and convenient to the player then there's no point in creating a world. If death doesn't matter, for instance, then the whole concept of being in a world doesn't matter also.
4. Resources, factions, cities and landscapes of various properties. If everything in the world is a collection of monsters made conveniently for you to slaughter for X Experience Points then you're really not in a world but just in a game, like Mario. There needs to be places for Farming, Resource Gathering, Dungeons, Cities, Mansions, Outposts, Wilderness, Caves, Housing...etc. If the whole world is just for combat, for instance, you're in a game... not a world.
5. Lore, wthout lore you got no world. Without ruins, secrets, factions, languages, cities, population that make sense then you're really not in a world. Again, you're just in hack 'n' slash game where things don't really need to make sense. You need depth, you need Lore (not STORIES, but simply Lore) for the players to discover and learn about.
These are just 5 point of what I personally think makes a World. If you believe most of these MMORPGs recently released are "worlds" simply because you can travel in an area infested with creatures then I guess you don't quite understand what we mean.
Dunno, i always say that players blaming each other instead of the devs for a games flaw was the greatest achievment of wow.
As far as some poeple talking about devs here and how they are which generation and whatnot, i think the biggest problem in that area is that they KNOW what is entertaining, but they fail to understand WHY, they have grown up with entertaining games, enjoyed them, but never questioned themselves WHY, and you need that.
Because if you dont have it, you will end up as uncle Jay "lets shower players with yellows, that will be fun!" Wilson (and i DARE you to go there ).
Devs don't make the final decision, executives do.
Themeparks have their good points, but when you argue that less (world) is more I find it hard to understand where you are coming from. An open world takes a lot of work, it is much easier to code a tunnel. That brings us on to the tricky bit, how much would you be happy to loose in graphics quality for a bigger world?
Originally posted by CuathonATITD, EvE and Wurm are all like this. Although ATITD lacks combat.Its clearly possible for an individual or a small company to make a successful cooperation based MMO that makes a profit. So why can't a major company who has access to marketing, superior art assets and dozens of industry veterans?
Its not as profitable.
Not as profitable sure. But still profitable. It certainly wouldnt bomb as hard as SWTOR.
That is very debatable.
Games like ATiTD, Eve and Wurm don't require a higher intelligence, but they are probably going to attract people with a higher IQ. This is an assumption on my part, but I think it's valid. The higher the IQ of the people you are likely to attract, the smaller number of people you're likely to get*. If the available pool of people is smaller, you're going to get fewer people overall.
A likely scenario (to me) is that Wurm is profitable at the scale it has been written. Increase the scale by upping the budget for the game to fifty million dollars and it would no longer be profitable. The mass market, people with IQs from 100 to 115 aren't going to be attracted to the game play, even with the phenomenal boost to the graphical quality.
* If you divide people up into groups by intelligence, people with IQs below 85 are about 16% of the population, from 85 to 100 are 34%, from 100 to 115 are another 34% and people over an IQ of 115 are about 16% of the population. Your biggest audience is the "average" people between an IQ of 85 and 115.
I know what the IQ spread is. Remember that I said take one AAA MMO and make 5-6 niche games. Even with SWTOR as the budget reference that is more like 20-40 million dollars a pop. But then its actually less for some if not all of the reasons I listed.
ATITD doesn't really have a win condition, unless you all want to be the prophet or w/e its called. But EvE does require a high intelligence to dominate at. Unless you utilize the brains of other people who posted guides to the game.
Again as I said intelligent people are constantly screwing themselves out of an advantage.
I spend from 4 to 16 hours every day programming open source RTS game engines. I could make more money making mobile games for the common sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb.
You are the first person I know that are 'making games' and say 'casual gamers are dumb'.
Everyone I meet in the gaming industry say they played 'casual games' while growing up and it was a great experience.
I want to stress that most people working in the video game industry do not think 'casual gamers are dumb'.
Then again, I am the hidden son of Sultan of Brunai so whatever I guess. ROFL.
Bobby Kotick thinks that all gamers are dumb. He says it constantly. He is always talking about how easy it is to screw the gaming masses out of their money. But that's really another argument.
How many people do you know personally who make games? And how many of them are in games to make money and support their family? Said people tend to like casual games because they are cheap to make and have high returns compared to something like an RTS which is immensely difficult to make from scratch with a small team of people.
Just to put the whole "intelligence" thing into perspective (for me), I know at least one very intelligent person (160 IQ) who played Farmville for a very long time and enjoyed it. They weren't necessarily successful, but they didn't fail either. I also know, as I stated earlier, some fairly dumb people who are really good at RTS and MMOs. Whatever the standard of excellence is in each of those games, they've achieved it. I haven't had their IQs measured (because that would be weird), but they are, at best, average. I have an above average IQ (smarter than 99.6% or 99.8% of the entire planet if you want to work out my IQ for bonus points) and I've enjoyed Bejeweled and played it while waiting for things to happen in WoW, and have achieved mediocre success in every game I've played. I'm good, but not great.
Video games are just a bad indicator of intelligence. There's no correlation or causation between the games played, the level of success in those games and a person's intelligence. It's just a bunch of bunk.
The people who are successful at making games make games that a wide variety of people can play and a wide variety of people can excel at while having fun.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I spend from 4 to 16 hours every day programming open source RTS game engines. I could make more money making mobile games for the common sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb.
Actually i have quite a bit of admiration for you who would put your time and career on the line for this. Personallyl i wouldn't. When i was in high school, i did program some games on my Apple 2+. The programming was fun .. but the games weren't .. not because it is of a design i don't like, but because i know it in and out, and there is no surprise ... no element of awe .. everything was very much known.
At the same time, i find you condenscending to call a segment of the gamers "dumb". You really think you are better than them? Do you really think everyone wants to spend their intellectual in wasting time? How do you feel when other think you spend your career in making "time waster"?
Sure, playing a tower defense game on an iOS cost less time and focus than trying figure out D&D rules and optimize a character. But they are just entertainment. I really think that people here obsess too much and think that those who can raid or fight a battle in a mmorp GAME is a real achievement, and that they are better than those who want to waste 5 min on angry birds.
In this logic, are those who spend their free time reading Shakespeare and write essays about it better than MMORPG players who "just kill stuff in a make-belief world"? Are those who watch indie movies better than those who like super heroes ones?
If you start to get epleen by congradulating oneself about what games you play, where do you think MMORPGs fall in the grand totem pole of entertainment between appreciating fine arts, to watching survivors on tv?
What is this constant obsession with smartness being construed as superiority? I explained this already in a giant post and I'm not doing it again.
Being smarter doesn't make you better. It makes you smarter. And honestly people who are athletes and people who are attractive and people with certain socials kills have loudly proclaimed their superiorty to myself and many of the people I associate with so from a psychological standpoint it would make sense for me to assert my own superiority on the axis of comparison upon which I stand far above the vast majority of the population.
I do not in fact do so but it would be a totally normal strategy for coping with social abuse including but not limited to various kinds of bullying.
However I am merely being factual and I do not assert any objective superiority.
Its interesting to me that as a smart person/nerd and thus a social minority I would be held to a higher standard of behavior than the majority group which attempts to oppress me through physical and emotional violence. This suggests to me that the people from whom this sentiment originates, lately yourself and loktofeit, do not very nearly as far from the social norm and thus possess one form or other of social privilege which allows them to ignore this intense cognitive dissonance.
I note that in your comparison you selected comparisons which contain decisions which would be considered by a capitalist and thus production oriented society and frivolous and worthless. Its somewhat ironic that by a selecting from that set of examples that you asserted, intentionally or not, your own superiority over those people.
Whether someone uses their intellectual capacity to study Shakespeare or to be an engineer has no bearing on their intelligence but simply on their preference and we are talking about intelligence and productive capacity for society.
Is the outcome of football games really as valuable as the billions of dollars associated with it? Money which far outweighs the amount spent on not only the entirety of many city governments but also that of many states? Football and other sports have long been regarded as very important to society to the extent that many colleges care more about football than child sexual abuse and even the education purpose for which universities are supposedly created.
Most people care more about the lives of the Kardashians and whatever sports stars they are dating/married to than the scientist who cured polio. Nearly everyone in America knows the name Mark Cuban from when the Mavericks won the championship, and many of them like me havent watched a single basketball game in their lives, yet how many know the name of Jonas Salk?
If I were to assert that I was superior to the majority of humanity my argument would not be that I prefer ATITD and EvE instead of LoL and CoD. Therefore we can assume from now on that When I make an argument involving that comparison that I am not asserting my superiority as a human being and we can stop having the same boring off topic argument over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
And yes, each of those overs represents a real time where I had this argument. Because its the go to argument for people who have no actual response to what I was saying and are derailing hard to avoid having a meaningful conversation.
From this point forward I will avoid responding to any posts which put forth this inane and overused vector of defense because I am fucking tired of having the same argument over and over... You get the picture, no need to copy paste and over another 200 times. Can we please move on.
Just to put the whole "intelligence" thing into perspective (for me), I know at least one very intelligent person (160 IQ) who played Farmville for a very long time and enjoyed it. They weren't necessarily successful, but they didn't fail either. I also know, as I stated earlier, some fairly dumb people who are really good at RTS and MMOs. Whatever the standard of excellence is in each of those games, they've achieved it. I haven't had their IQs measured (because that would be weird), but they are, at best, average. I have an above average IQ (smarter than 99.6% or 99.8% of the entire planet if you want to work out my IQ for bonus points) and I've enjoyed Bejeweled and played it while waiting for things to happen in WoW, and have achieved mediocre success in every game I've played. I'm good, but not great.
Video games are just a bad indicator of intelligence. There's no correlation or causation between the games played, the level of success in those games and a person's intelligence. It's just a bunch of bunk.
The people who are successful at making games that a wide variety of people can play and a wide variety of people can excel at while having fun make games that a wide variety of people can play and a wide variety of people can excel at while having fun.
Funny how that rephrasing puts your quote into perspective. If the definition of being successful involves having a large userbase and making a lot of money, then sure what you said is right. But that kind of assumption is what makes your statement fatuous. If we defined successful as making indie art house games then your assertion would be wildly incorrect.
Again intelligence tends to correlate to the amount of time invested in a game. A smarter person will play a game like Bejelwed for less time than a dumber one. And furthermore playing a game specifically as a time waster, in this case you waiting for something to happen in WoW, is not the same thing as playing that game as your primary activity.
There are dozens of obfuscating factors in game performance and amount of time played just like in any hypothesis we would use science to answer, which is why we like to have giant pools of participants in a study, because conclusions can only be generalized on a single axis. If we have good models on a large number of relevant data sets and we know certain values for an individual, only then could we assess why a specific individual performs at this level or that level.
Your anecdotal evidence about your anonymous friends is so helpful in this discussion I assure you.
I don't know I think worlds are there if you look for them. Eve certainly fits the bill. Darkfall uw should do too. Then you've stuff like wuurm for those that don't want pvp. Even looking at themepark games, the likes of gw2 and ps2 this year are much more world games than your sit in cities queueing to go instances games like wow and swtor.
From this point forward I will avoid responding to any posts which put forth this inane and overused vector of defense because I am fucking tired of having the same argument over and over... You get the picture, no need to copy paste and over another 200 times. Can we please move on.
Lots of dribble .. and you totally gross over your very indefensible statement "sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb."
If as you say, it is not a matter of intelligence .. it is a matter of choice, how can you know that people who play casual games are dumb?
Are you saying there is no university professor who occasionally play angry birds to pass time?
And whether you claim superiority is irrelevant.
1) "Dumb" has a negative connotation in the English language. Don't tell me you don't know that? If so, you are dumb.
2) Even if the word has no negative connotation, your statement itself cannot be true. Are you claiming everyone who has played Angry Birds, or one of the hundred of thousands of iOS casual game has an IQ of below 100?
It might be more like 50 or 60 million. W/e. The point still stands.
ffs... Why don't you research the subject instead of throwing ridiculous numbers around? Remember CoD4:MW2? The one with a huge advertising campaign before launch? The best selling cross-platform game in its time (perhaps all time)? Yeah well, the development budget for that game was around $40 million. Guess what the marketing costs were? - $10 million.
You make no sense.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I spend from 4 to 16 hours every day programming open source RTS game engines. I could make more money making mobile games for the common sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb.
/snip
/snip
You get the picture, no need to copy paste and over another 200 times. Can we please move on.
Judging people by the games they play is to judge them by which movie they watch.
I love Star Wars Ep 4-6 and watched them many times. Considering the millions upon millions who watched them as well, I can't say 'people who watch them are dumb'. That's just not true.
So why do you assert 'people who play them are dumb' when it comes to video games?
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I go away for a few days and now have to read 5+ pages of people taking my original words out of context. Look please try to understand while I attempt to clarify again.
I called people willing idiots. This was not a reference to their intelligence. It was a reference to their willingness to buy into revolving doors games that are shallow, lack complexity, rely on gerbil wheel or treadmill advancement, and dumb down player interaction to instanced qeue based gameplay.
Who remembers Ultima Online? Don't reharsh the age old arguement that Ultima Online was this or that. Try to follow me here. Does anyone remember the experience of being in a digital world? You login and what was the first thing you thought? You look around, stroll around town for a bit, decide to yourself what you were going to do that day or who you were going to play with. You might go to the ocean and fish for a while, you might go mining or chopping wood. You might roleplay being a blacksmith and make weapons and armor for people strolling by. You might go hunting for leather. During all these things you always ran the risk of running into players or a player event and typically people stopped to interact with each other or take part in whatever antics were going on. People actually played the game to socialize and have fun together and random events, interactions, and immersion were common.
Contrast that to games today. Open up any game and you see the same thing. Players running around here and there following this quest or that. They all are too busy chasing the latest hot pink shiney cloak of whatever with +14 this and that stat. Social interaction is usually reduced to people complaining about kill stealing or mob camping. Immersion is more or less completely gone from MMO's entirely. Ultra competetive gaming clans have more or less replaced the casual gaming "communities" that used to populate most MMO's. It's a completely difference experience altogether. Random teamwork and helping has pretty much been replaced by instanced gameplay. Complexity and innovation has been replaced by predictability and rehashed formulaic gameplay in my opinion
I suppose you could draw a social parallel to our current society that is all busy busy busy go go go and all the old timers complain today about how much better it was when neighbors knew each other and communities helped each other.
I suppose I'm uselessly complaining much like the 70 somthing grandparents who used to rant to me not so long ago. I think along the development timeline to achieving the next big MMO, we have lost somthing that made the classics great. We still persue those things that made the first MMO's fantastic but developers always seem to fall slightly short of the goal and gamers are disappointed time and time again.
I'm not educated well enough to know if this is a sign of an overall shift in our society or perhaps it's simply an indicator that I've gotten older over the years and numb to the next great thing in MMO's. I am however, intelligent enough to know that somthing has indeed changed and even if I can't articulate it, I know I don't much like it.
We live in societies which are increasingly accomplished in both science and technology. I wish I could say the same for the average person. This film satirises where we seem to be heading and was rather good:
I called people willing idiots. This was not a reference to their intelligence. It was a reference to their willingness to buy into revolving doors games that are shallow, lack complexity, rely on gerbil wheel or treadmill advancement, and dumb down player interaction to instanced qeue based gameplay.
That is just putting people down to feel superior. So what if those games lack complexity .. if they are fun, and serve the purpose to kill some time.
Calling people names just because they play certain kind of games?
Originally posted by Cuathon Originally posted by lizardbones Just to put the whole "intelligence" thing into perspective (for me), I know at least one very intelligent person (160 IQ) who played Farmville for a very long time and enjoyed it. They weren't necessarily successful, but they didn't fail either. I also know, as I stated earlier, some fairly dumb people who are really good at RTS and MMOs. Whatever the standard of excellence is in each of those games, they've achieved it. I haven't had their IQs measured (because that would be weird), but they are, at best, average. I have an above average IQ (smarter than 99.6% or 99.8% of the entire planet if you want to work out my IQ for bonus points) and I've enjoyed Bejeweled and played it while waiting for things to happen in WoW, and have achieved mediocre success in every game I've played. I'm good, but not great. Video games are just a bad indicator of intelligence. There's no correlation or causation between the games played, the level of success in those games and a person's intelligence. It's just a bunch of bunk. The people who are successful at making games that a wide variety of people can play and a wide variety of people can excel at while having fun make games that a wide variety of people can play and a wide variety of people can excel at while having fun. Funny how that rephrasing puts your quote into perspective. If the definition of being successful involves having a large userbase and making a lot of money, then sure what you said is right. But that kind of assumption is what makes your statement fatuous. If we defined successful as making indie art house games then your assertion would be wildly incorrect.
Again intelligence tends to correlate to the amount of time invested in a game. A smarter person will play a game like Bejelwed for less time than a dumber one. And furthermore playing a game specifically as a time waster, in this case you waiting for something to happen in WoW, is not the same thing as playing that game as your primary activity.
There are dozens of obfuscating factors in game performance and amount of time played just like in any hypothesis we would use science to answer, which is why we like to have giant pools of participants in a study, because conclusions can only be generalized on a single axis. If we have good models on a large number of relevant data sets and we know certain values for an individual, only then could we assess why a specific individual performs at this level or that level.
Your anecdotal evidence about your anonymous friends is so helpful in this discussion I assure you.
I also fixed part of your post for you.
Why would you not apply the same measure of success for the people who make games as the measure of success for the people who play games?
In MMORPG, the person with the most stuff is the most successful. They have the largest territory, the most purple gear, or the largest corporation. In short, they have the most wealth. The same measure, applied to the people who make games means the people who sell the most games are the ones who are the most successful. They have the most wealth. Yes, of course you can change the rules to suit whatever it is you're trying to prove, but you should at least be consistent.
For instance, if making indie, art house games is a measure of success, then the measure of success for players needs to revolve around those indie, art house games. There aren't any indie, art house MMORPG, so I don't see how that's terribly relevant.
I have direct evidence that disproves the idea that IQ correlates to success in video games. I've seen intelligent people achieve only moderate success and people with average IQs achieve great success in video games, specifically MMORPGs. I've seen evidence that players need a certain minimum level of intelligence to play video games (there are actual studies done on this), but nothing that shows having a higher IQ makes a player more successful.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
We live in societies which are increasingly accomplished in both science and technology. I wish I could say the same for the average person. This film satirises where we seem to be heading and was rather good:
I love that film and the scary part is, I see the effects all around me. I don't claim to be the smartest guy around and if that is true then damn me but there are a lot of really stupid people!
Point being, while not 100% accurate, generally speaking dumbed down games will appeal to people who are dumb a lot more then games that are created with more complexity. It isn't a hard rule, but it a growing trend that as games are dumbed down (i.e. the mechanics are simplified) then a broader, and by definition, dumber audiance is attracted.
That doesn't mean if you play one of these dumbed down games you are dumb, but it might be worth asking the question...
I agree with the OP. I remember when I played Warcraft 3, there was a custom map called Titan's Land or whatever where one player was invincible and able to do an amazing amount of things to foster roleplay. I suspect that the first step to reaching the ideal MMORPG would be to increase focus on inter-player interactions.
Comments
The place we go to might as Twitter / FB gets replaced but the actual social media won't.
7 Years is more than half of MMO's life as we generally accept it (UO/EQ). Calling it a 'fad' when the majority of the time it has been true is factually wrong.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I wouldn't call someone an idiot to their face while taking their money. I just think it instead.
Not saying that they do think they are dumb. But to assume any number, whether that be a majority or minority feels one way, and to state it as if it were fact is somewhat ignorant. Not to be rude, but I highly doubt you can speak with them as you probably don't know any of them on a truly personal level.
In today's world, games such as Pong / Tetris / Pacman would be your 'casual' games.
How many people do you think played those and are now involved in the gaming industry? (hint: lots and lots).
It is like saying 'simple games are easy' which is just mind-blowingly false.
Chess / Tetris has simplistics game mechanics but I'd challenge anyone to say chess / tetris is easy.
We are kinda moving away from the original topic so I'll end my derail here and go back in topic.
MMOs are no longer 'worlds' cause there is little $$$ incentive to do so. Whether you like that fact or not is irrelevent.
Free-market is working as intended.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Actually i have quite a bit of admiration for you who would put your time and career on the line for this. Personallyl i wouldn't. When i was in high school, i did program some games on my Apple 2+. The programming was fun .. but the games weren't .. not because it is of a design i don't like, but because i know it in and out, and there is no surprise ... no element of awe .. everything was very much known.
At the same time, i find you condenscending to call a segment of the gamers "dumb". You really think you are better than them? Do you really think everyone wants to spend their intellectual in wasting time? How do you feel when other think you spend your career in making "time waster"?
Sure, playing a tower defense game on an iOS cost less time and focus than trying figure out D&D rules and optimize a character. But they are just entertainment. I really think that people here obsess too much and think that those who can raid or fight a battle in a mmorp GAME is a real achievement, and that they are better than those who want to waste 5 min on angry birds.
In this logic, are those who spend their free time reading Shakespeare and write essays about it better than MMORPG players who "just kill stuff in a make-belief world"? Are those who watch indie movies better than those who like super heroes ones?
If you start to get epleen by congradulating oneself about what games you play, where do you think MMORPGs fall in the grand totem pole of entertainment between appreciating fine arts, to watching survivors on tv?
I didn't say casual/simple games are easy. I'd also guess that most or the majority of developers now a days are around my age and thus grew up with the likes of nes and not pong. I can also think of a reason why developers would call casual gamers dumb, though idont support the argument really. That would be that they can keep making the same simple game over and over again in different skins and sell it. Look at all the match 3 games. One could start using that argument for some mmo gamers now a days too,and I feel only a select group are actually dumb.
I made my own stuff too. I tried to copy the BBS game LORD. It was fun, but that element of discovering a new game was missing as I knew it in and out. Oh well
the whole idea that smart people need intelectually challenging games suggest a lack of knowledge about people and the world in general. Not everyone seeks games for the same reason. I get challenged in my everyday life, i dont need to be challenged in games because i seek them for relaxation and sometimes even to go on autopilot mode( i cant tell you how many times in the trance i get into when playing some games i find solutions to problems i had a hard time dealing with in my stressed life).
I seriously think that some people take games too seriously, they are just entertainment.
To remain on topic though, i would like a world, the thing is though,would i have the time to play it? My life is so hectic and full of comitments i dont think i would have the time to dedicate to a world.
I actually think thats the real problem. The gaming generation has grown up and even the most hardcore players have had to turn casual because of real life responsibilities, leaving time to only pick up themepark games like guild wars, LoL and WoW.
Apparently some of you doesn't understand what a "world" in an MMORPG really mean.
To create an MMORPG world you need a collection of major key-elements that otherwise would turn your so-called "world" into a small-park or even wrose a Lobby-Based multiplayer game.
1. Eliminate or greatly reduce instant travels between points that are virtually too far from each other. Otherwise, you destroy the very basic of being in a world which is the realization of distance. If something is 1,000 miles away from you (virtually) but also one click-away from you at the same time; guess what? it's actually simply just one click-away from you that illusion of 1,000 miles is no longer applicable because thanks to instant-travel now the distance is completely destroyed.
2. Freedom. If you hand-hold/spoon-feed the "content" of your "world" to your player then why bother creating a world in the first place? the whole point of being in a world is exploration, mystery, freedom to travel. Stop hand-holding your players (directly or indirectly) and let them be. If you design your "content" where the player is always directed towards it with neon signs (whether through questing or by creating virtual zones designed for specific phase) then you're not in a "world" are you? you're simply a tourist in a tourist-attraction site.
3. Inconvenience. If everything is easy, trivial and convenient to the player then there's no point in creating a world. If death doesn't matter, for instance, then the whole concept of being in a world doesn't matter also.
4. Resources, factions, cities and landscapes of various properties. If everything in the world is a collection of monsters made conveniently for you to slaughter for X Experience Points then you're really not in a world but just in a game, like Mario. There needs to be places for Farming, Resource Gathering, Dungeons, Cities, Mansions, Outposts, Wilderness, Caves, Housing...etc. If the whole world is just for combat, for instance, you're in a game... not a world.
5. Lore, wthout lore you got no world. Without ruins, secrets, factions, languages, cities, population that make sense then you're really not in a world. Again, you're just in hack 'n' slash game where things don't really need to make sense. You need depth, you need Lore (not STORIES, but simply Lore) for the players to discover and learn about.
These are just 5 point of what I personally think makes a World. If you believe most of these MMORPGs recently released are "worlds" simply because you can travel in an area infested with creatures then I guess you don't quite understand what we mean.
Dunno, i always say that players blaming each other instead of the devs for a games flaw was the greatest achievment of wow.
As far as some poeple talking about devs here and how they are which generation and whatnot, i think the biggest problem in that area is that they KNOW what is entertaining, but they fail to understand WHY, they have grown up with entertaining games, enjoyed them, but never questioned themselves WHY, and you need that.
Because if you dont have it, you will end up as uncle Jay "lets shower players with yellows, that will be fun!" Wilson (and i DARE you to go there
).
Flame on!
Devs don't make the final decision, executives do.
Themeparks have their good points, but when you argue that less (world) is more I find it hard to understand where you are coming from. An open world takes a lot of work, it is much easier to code a tunnel. That brings us on to the tricky bit, how much would you be happy to loose in graphics quality for a bigger world?
I know what the IQ spread is. Remember that I said take one AAA MMO and make 5-6 niche games. Even with SWTOR as the budget reference that is more like 20-40 million dollars a pop. But then its actually less for some if not all of the reasons I listed.
ATITD doesn't really have a win condition, unless you all want to be the prophet or w/e its called. But EvE does require a high intelligence to dominate at. Unless you utilize the brains of other people who posted guides to the game.
Again as I said intelligent people are constantly screwing themselves out of an advantage.
Bobby Kotick thinks that all gamers are dumb. He says it constantly. He is always talking about how easy it is to screw the gaming masses out of their money. But that's really another argument.
How many people do you know personally who make games? And how many of them are in games to make money and support their family? Said people tend to like casual games because they are cheap to make and have high returns compared to something like an RTS which is immensely difficult to make from scratch with a small team of people.
Just to put the whole "intelligence" thing into perspective (for me), I know at least one very intelligent person (160 IQ) who played Farmville for a very long time and enjoyed it. They weren't necessarily successful, but they didn't fail either. I also know, as I stated earlier, some fairly dumb people who are really good at RTS and MMOs. Whatever the standard of excellence is in each of those games, they've achieved it. I haven't had their IQs measured (because that would be weird), but they are, at best, average. I have an above average IQ (smarter than 99.6% or 99.8% of the entire planet if you want to work out my IQ for bonus points) and I've enjoyed Bejeweled and played it while waiting for things to happen in WoW, and have achieved mediocre success in every game I've played. I'm good, but not great.
Video games are just a bad indicator of intelligence. There's no correlation or causation between the games played, the level of success in those games and a person's intelligence. It's just a bunch of bunk.
The people who are successful at making games make games that a wide variety of people can play and a wide variety of people can excel at while having fun.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
What is this constant obsession with smartness being construed as superiority? I explained this already in a giant post and I'm not doing it again.
Being smarter doesn't make you better. It makes you smarter. And honestly people who are athletes and people who are attractive and people with certain socials kills have loudly proclaimed their superiorty to myself and many of the people I associate with so from a psychological standpoint it would make sense for me to assert my own superiority on the axis of comparison upon which I stand far above the vast majority of the population.
I do not in fact do so but it would be a totally normal strategy for coping with social abuse including but not limited to various kinds of bullying.
However I am merely being factual and I do not assert any objective superiority.
Its interesting to me that as a smart person/nerd and thus a social minority I would be held to a higher standard of behavior than the majority group which attempts to oppress me through physical and emotional violence. This suggests to me that the people from whom this sentiment originates, lately yourself and loktofeit, do not very nearly as far from the social norm and thus possess one form or other of social privilege which allows them to ignore this intense cognitive dissonance.
I note that in your comparison you selected comparisons which contain decisions which would be considered by a capitalist and thus production oriented society and frivolous and worthless. Its somewhat ironic that by a selecting from that set of examples that you asserted, intentionally or not, your own superiority over those people.
Whether someone uses their intellectual capacity to study Shakespeare or to be an engineer has no bearing on their intelligence but simply on their preference and we are talking about intelligence and productive capacity for society.
Is the outcome of football games really as valuable as the billions of dollars associated with it? Money which far outweighs the amount spent on not only the entirety of many city governments but also that of many states? Football and other sports have long been regarded as very important to society to the extent that many colleges care more about football than child sexual abuse and even the education purpose for which universities are supposedly created.
Most people care more about the lives of the Kardashians and whatever sports stars they are dating/married to than the scientist who cured polio. Nearly everyone in America knows the name Mark Cuban from when the Mavericks won the championship, and many of them like me havent watched a single basketball game in their lives, yet how many know the name of Jonas Salk?
If I were to assert that I was superior to the majority of humanity my argument would not be that I prefer ATITD and EvE instead of LoL and CoD. Therefore we can assume from now on that When I make an argument involving that comparison that I am not asserting my superiority as a human being and we can stop having the same boring off topic argument over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
And yes, each of those overs represents a real time where I had this argument. Because its the go to argument for people who have no actual response to what I was saying and are derailing hard to avoid having a meaningful conversation.
From this point forward I will avoid responding to any posts which put forth this inane and overused vector of defense because I am fucking tired of having the same argument over and over... You get the picture, no need to copy paste and over another 200 times. Can we please move on.
Again intelligence tends to correlate to the amount of time invested in a game. A smarter person will play a game like Bejelwed for less time than a dumber one. And furthermore playing a game specifically as a time waster, in this case you waiting for something to happen in WoW, is not the same thing as playing that game as your primary activity.
There are dozens of obfuscating factors in game performance and amount of time played just like in any hypothesis we would use science to answer, which is why we like to have giant pools of participants in a study, because conclusions can only be generalized on a single axis. If we have good models on a large number of relevant data sets and we know certain values for an individual, only then could we assess why a specific individual performs at this level or that level.
Your anecdotal evidence about your anonymous friends is so helpful in this discussion I assure you.
I also fixed part of your post for you.
Lots of dribble .. and you totally gross over your very indefensible statement "sheep casual gamer but those games and the people who play them are dumb."
If as you say, it is not a matter of intelligence .. it is a matter of choice, how can you know that people who play casual games are dumb?
Are you saying there is no university professor who occasionally play angry birds to pass time?
And whether you claim superiority is irrelevant.
1) "Dumb" has a negative connotation in the English language. Don't tell me you don't know that? If so, you are dumb.
2) Even if the word has no negative connotation, your statement itself cannot be true. Are you claiming everyone who has played Angry Birds, or one of the hundred of thousands of iOS casual game has an IQ of below 100?
ffs... Why don't you research the subject instead of throwing ridiculous numbers around? Remember CoD4:MW2? The one with a huge advertising campaign before launch? The best selling cross-platform game in its time (perhaps all time)? Yeah well, the development budget for that game was around $40 million. Guess what the marketing costs were? - $10 million.
You make no sense.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Judging people by the games they play is to judge them by which movie they watch.
I love Star Wars Ep 4-6 and watched them many times. Considering the millions upon millions who watched them as well, I can't say 'people who watch them are dumb'. That's just not true.
So why do you assert 'people who play them are dumb' when it comes to video games?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Wow,
I go away for a few days and now have to read 5+ pages of people taking my original words out of context. Look please try to understand while I attempt to clarify again.
I called people willing idiots. This was not a reference to their intelligence. It was a reference to their willingness to buy into revolving doors games that are shallow, lack complexity, rely on gerbil wheel or treadmill advancement, and dumb down player interaction to instanced qeue based gameplay.
Who remembers Ultima Online? Don't reharsh the age old arguement that Ultima Online was this or that. Try to follow me here. Does anyone remember the experience of being in a digital world? You login and what was the first thing you thought? You look around, stroll around town for a bit, decide to yourself what you were going to do that day or who you were going to play with. You might go to the ocean and fish for a while, you might go mining or chopping wood. You might roleplay being a blacksmith and make weapons and armor for people strolling by. You might go hunting for leather. During all these things you always ran the risk of running into players or a player event and typically people stopped to interact with each other or take part in whatever antics were going on. People actually played the game to socialize and have fun together and random events, interactions, and immersion were common.
Contrast that to games today. Open up any game and you see the same thing. Players running around here and there following this quest or that. They all are too busy chasing the latest hot pink shiney cloak of whatever with +14 this and that stat. Social interaction is usually reduced to people complaining about kill stealing or mob camping. Immersion is more or less completely gone from MMO's entirely. Ultra competetive gaming clans have more or less replaced the casual gaming "communities" that used to populate most MMO's. It's a completely difference experience altogether. Random teamwork and helping has pretty much been replaced by instanced gameplay. Complexity and innovation has been replaced by predictability and rehashed formulaic gameplay in my opinion
I suppose you could draw a social parallel to our current society that is all busy busy busy go go go and all the old timers complain today about how much better it was when neighbors knew each other and communities helped each other.
I suppose I'm uselessly complaining much like the 70 somthing grandparents who used to rant to me not so long ago. I think along the development timeline to achieving the next big MMO, we have lost somthing that made the classics great. We still persue those things that made the first MMO's fantastic but developers always seem to fall slightly short of the goal and gamers are disappointed time and time again.
I'm not educated well enough to know if this is a sign of an overall shift in our society or perhaps it's simply an indicator that I've gotten older over the years and numb to the next great thing in MMO's. I am however, intelligent enough to know that somthing has indeed changed and even if I can't articulate it, I know I don't much like it.
We live in societies which are increasingly accomplished in both science and technology. I wish I could say the same for the average person. This film satirises where we seem to be heading and was rather good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
That is just putting people down to feel superior. So what if those games lack complexity .. if they are fun, and serve the purpose to kill some time.
Calling people names just because they play certain kind of games?
There are dozens of obfuscating factors in game performance and amount of time played just like in any hypothesis we would use science to answer, which is why we like to have giant pools of participants in a study, because conclusions can only be generalized on a single axis. If we have good models on a large number of relevant data sets and we know certain values for an individual, only then could we assess why a specific individual performs at this level or that level.
Your anecdotal evidence about your anonymous friends is so helpful in this discussion I assure you.
I also fixed part of your post for you.
Why would you not apply the same measure of success for the people who make games as the measure of success for the people who play games?
In MMORPG, the person with the most stuff is the most successful. They have the largest territory, the most purple gear, or the largest corporation. In short, they have the most wealth. The same measure, applied to the people who make games means the people who sell the most games are the ones who are the most successful. They have the most wealth. Yes, of course you can change the rules to suit whatever it is you're trying to prove, but you should at least be consistent.
For instance, if making indie, art house games is a measure of success, then the measure of success for players needs to revolve around those indie, art house games. There aren't any indie, art house MMORPG, so I don't see how that's terribly relevant.
I have direct evidence that disproves the idea that IQ correlates to success in video games. I've seen intelligent people achieve only moderate success and people with average IQs achieve great success in video games, specifically MMORPGs. I've seen evidence that players need a certain minimum level of intelligence to play video games (there are actual studies done on this), but nothing that shows having a higher IQ makes a player more successful.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I love that film and the scary part is, I see the effects all around me. I don't claim to be the smartest guy around and if that is true then damn me but there are a lot of really stupid people!
Point being, while not 100% accurate, generally speaking dumbed down games will appeal to people who are dumb a lot more then games that are created with more complexity. It isn't a hard rule, but it a growing trend that as games are dumbed down (i.e. the mechanics are simplified) then a broader, and by definition, dumber audiance is attracted.
That doesn't mean if you play one of these dumbed down games you are dumb, but it might be worth asking the question...
I agree with the OP. I remember when I played Warcraft 3, there was a custom map called Titan's Land or whatever where one player was invincible and able to do an amazing amount of things to foster roleplay. I suspect that the first step to reaching the ideal MMORPG would be to increase focus on inter-player interactions.