I generally think Jonathan Blow is insufferable, but I do think he's got some worthwhile points in that video. Some of them, like the issue of genre lines vs. consumer expectations, aren't things I've heard a lot. I'm interested in hearing them articulated like this, and I think he does a good job with it. And I think he's right that there's been a sea change in indie development, whereby indie games are seen as actual legitimate projects and not just some dinky thing some guy threw together. I agree with him about handholding as well -- it's been one of my complaints about, as they show, the Zelda games starting with Ocarina of Time, but that's just one example. It isn't exclusively a Japanese trope, and he does say exactly that, but then he goes back and doubles down on trashing Japanese games specifically. In any case, arguments over handholding have been message board fodder for longer than Jonathan Blow has been making games, so I don't think that's terribly insightful. As caesarbear said, game companies want to expand the market, so maybe curmudgeons like us will be edged out of the hobby, and I think that's a shame. I've had too many experiences where I never felt like I got to play the game, because the game spent the whole time playing itself. It's the game equivalent of hover-parents, where the game has its tutorial segments and that's well and good if that's what they want, but then they continue far past the point where it's appropriate.
Well what genre are you into? Because the game companies I like in the genres I like have been going from strength to strength. There's an M&B2 on the way, expansions for CK2 are a historical inevitability and EVE seems to have recovered after the community pulled a riot and forced the devs to stop being so terrible at developing. I don't much care for the 4x anymore, but Civ5 already has an expansion announced and the initial version was very good (if weak with the AI). And DoW2:Retri (the third expansion for a popular game) is basically the best mp rts since the original Starcraft. Also that whole Skyrim thing happened. And GW2 is coming. And Stephen Peeler and Vic Davis are makin games like bosses. Fall of the Samurai is coming out and appears to have been custom built for me. But then again I like games in genres that are apparently considered like niche or something. What genre are you playing that it feels like you're gonna get booted from?
I would like to engrave this on a plaque. It goes beyond tutorials, too. "Players need to be led by the nose" seems to be an all-too common mantra in game development today.
Has somebody linked the youtube (over) analyzation of Megaman X? It's a bit lengthy, and a little bit ragey, but it does go into great detail on how to make a wordless tutorial.
I think you're misunderstanding me. Aeon, my comments aren't related to each other. Did you actually watch the video? My genre comment was about Blow's suggestion that we should consider defining game genres in terms of emotional expectation, instead of or in addition to doing so in terms of mechanics. It is not at all connected to anything about being edged out. That was a response to discussion upthread about whether old-school gamers are being left behind as game companies try to expand their audience.
The discovery aspect is something I noticed when I replayed the original Doom a couple months back. Despite FPSes of old being often referred to as dumb shooters, the games required a good amount of thinking to play - and not only for the on-the-fly combat decisions that needed to be made with the faster speed of the games compared to modern shooters. Be it for trying to create a "cinematic experience" or the aforementioned fear of losing the player, most modern shooters guide the player along with various indicators - a dot on the screen with the word "follow", an arrow pointing the player where to go, glowing and flashing doorknobs or switches, or a giant green "A" button popping up when you walk close to something. I find this all to be very immersion breaking and sucking any enjoyment out of the game. In Doom, however, they just plopped you into a level and let you figure it out. Nothing dragging you, nothing telling you what you must do to continue on - just you and the level. While not being a genius-level puzzle game, you still had to explore the area, making mental notes of the layout. Sometimes I'd get stuck trying to figure out where to go next, requiring me to backtrack and go over in my mind what I saw in the level. At some point, something would click in my head, and I'd go and try something... only for it to not work, and be back to square one, exploring the level, going over the layout again in my head. Eventually, the click would happen again, and this time it'd be right, and I progress further in the level. All of that, in this old, low-res, barebones-even-for-the-time game, I find immensely more satisfying than anything in a Modern Warfare or Gears of War.
The satisfaction in solving a puzzle is breaking it down, but Valve deny you that by breaking it down beforehand. Their puzzles aren't complex enough to need this, so no satisfaction remains in the resolution. Or, like in Portal, they just spend far too long introducing a mechanic.
Bah, my complaint with modern skimpy manuals is that in the old days, reading the manual was part of the experience. Sure, there are new ways to participate these days, but they aren't a "replacement" for manuals. The other value from (some) manuals was an increase in transparency of design. Sure, you can argue that it's trying to make up for lousy in-game transparency, but it isn't clear that all (most?) players want to be hit over the head with the underlying math. Same for tutorials, which are standard fare, but which often come across as perfunctory. Of course, even when done well, propagating best practices has the unfortunate side-effect of making things look homogenous, which is functionally good but creatively boring.
Fire up SNES9X and play the first level of Megaman X. It's the perfect tutorial level, and it never says "Do this. Did you know you can do this, too? Now press A." What it does is introduce one element at a time, and let you figure it out. Oh, I can run to the right. I can shoot. I can jump. I can jump and shoot. I need to jump over some enemy shots. Oh, I slide down walls. I can jump up walls. Holding the shoot button powers up a really big shot, that can damage some other enemies. Then the other guy shows up and has all sort of badass powers you don't. He says "Megaman, some day you'll be as badass as me!"... oh, so I get to obtain all those powers. Cool. Lesson over. Now, the entire rest of the game is based on those things the first level (which didn't feel at all like a tutorial but sure was) taught you. However, there's no hand-holding. You know all the lego blocks, it's up to you to put them together to solve the puzzles that follow. Perfect.
Not as much shoot it down as say that while he has a valid point, it could be made in one tenth of the time and with less swearing.
Please don't watch that video, ugh. Just play the first Mega Man for two minutes starting with Gutman's level if you want to see the only point that guy makes in twenty minutes. Overbearing video game tutorials are annoying, but overlong youtube videos made by people who think that screaming is roughly the same thing as humor are much worse.
Here's Blow again, talking about the Indie Fund with RPS, and that time I found him pretty interesting.
I'm tempted to do a video critique of video critiques, but only if someone promises to do a video critique of it.
