I was watching some videos from E3, TGS, and GDC from last year, and I saw some things that made me worry about the state of games.
I was tipped off about this from an article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which you can read HERE, with a follow-up article HERE. It introduced me to the idea of the "un-game". And now I'm having a hard time not seeing this when I look at some upcoming titles.
The basic idea behind the un-game is that it's an experience that doesn't really have the player do much of anything. Just movement from setpiece to setpiece, cutscene to cutscene. Now, we're not talking about linear games or cinematic titles. Most of those still require the player to actually do something most of the time.
The RPS articles are referring specifically to the highly successful title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (MW3). A "game" in which the player is merely an observer and doesn't actually do anything of consequence, you merely follow and watch the NPCs you're with actually do the important things (read the RPS articles for specifics).
The problem is when I look at other titles and start to see some of the same things crop up. Not necessarily to the extent that MW3 does, but things that are bothersome in the idea that the game is essentially telling you how to play it, rather than having the player actually think for themselves. The two examples I'm going to mention are both highly popular (only one has been released to date), which will probably make my opinions of them unpopular. Gears of War 3 and the upcoming reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise.
I was watching a play demo of Gears of War 3 (GOW3) at, I think it was E3 last year. During the demo, a huge creature of some sort was attacking the ship that the player character and NPCs were on. Your character was instructed to lead the creature to a certain part of the ship where it could be more easily killed. I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember that, during the scene on the main deck, the game kept popping up on-screen tips as to what the player should do. When the creature began waving its tentacles around, the game told the player in no uncertain terms that they should "dodge the monster" until the next phase of the battle could begin, at which point the creature latched onto something, and the player was told to "dislodge the monster". Not in voiceover, but in on-screen tips.
Really? Dodge the monster? You know what would have happened in a game like this ten years ago? If you were too dumb to move out of the way of the twenty foot thick tentacles swinging in your direction? You fucking DIED, that's what happened. It was up to the player to decide they needed to dodge, the game didn't have to tell you to do it.
What scares me about this is that they probably figured this out in playtesting, that the testers became frustrated and called the game "too hard" because they couldn't figure out the basic premise of "don't stand in the fire". So the developers, no slouches themselves at how to make good games, ended up having to "dumb it down" so little Johnny wouldn't throw his controller out of the window.
The other example is the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot. On the one hand, the game looks very good, and could be a promising kick start to an otherwise aging franchise that isn't doing so well. On the other hand, it's also made for the "stupid gamer".
I was watching a demo of this one as well, and our stalwart heroine Lara Croft makes her way into a cavern. There's various mechanical contraptions, elevators and the like, and Lara has to figure out how to make use of them to get up to the exit from the cave.
Or rather, she doesn't have to figure it out.
On entering the cavern, the game actually highlights exactly where she needs to go and what to do when she gets there. Literally, it's a brightly glowing lever that's impossible for the player to miss. Just walk up, push the button to flip the lever, and the elevator activates, allowing Lara to jump up to the next level. Takes all of thirty seconds. They call this Lara's "survival sense".
Again, I have to hearken back to games from aeons ago. And not just any random adventure game, I mean this very franchise, the first Tomb Raider game, released for the original Playstation in 1996. I played this game myself, a lot, and I loved it. You'd walk into a cavern, maybe very similar to the one in this new game, and you'd spend half an hour trying to figure out how to get on that upper level, and you had to use your own damn wits to do it.
So which is better? That you have to figure it out for yourself, or that the game simply tells you what to do? The original Tomb Raider was, at its heart, a puzzle game built into the framework of an action/adventure title. There were huge sections of the game without enemies, just an environment that the player had to work their way through. And yes, it was challenging. Yes, it was sometimes frustrating. But dammit, when you hit the exit, you felt like you really accomplished something. You figured that shit out on your own and you felt good about it.
What happens when you don't have to figure it out anymore? What's the point? It's like reading a game guide or watching a YouTube video on exactly how to solve the next puzzle before you even attempt it yourself. Where's the sense of accomplishment? The satisfaction of having solved the puzzle, having beaten the developers who were trying to stop you.. that was something special. And it's completely gone from this new Tomb Raider game. Just... gone. When you're done with this, there won't be any satisfaction, no patting yourself on the back. Just... nothing.
Is this where we're headed? If this game does well, which it probably will thanks to the already aggressive marketing they're doing, then the developers will just continue to make games like this. And the games that require the player to actually think will fall by the wayside. Some people just can't seem to wrap their head around "thinking" games anymore. I remember reading a discussion a few years ago, after the first Portal game was released and made a huge splash in the game industry. One player in particular finished the game and said it was "boring" and "nothing special". When prompted, he had no problem admitting that he had used online guides for every single puzzle. Every. Single. One. He didn't solve a single room on his own. It's a puzzle game, for crying out loud.. if you don't actually solve the puzzles, then can you honestly say that you really played the game at all? And what happens when the game itself gives you the answer? Is it really even a game anymore?
Check out THIS VIDEO to see just how much things have changed, and not for the better.
