Theory

[Molloy]

[This discussion has been spun off from here. --icy]


I hope this concept becomes the standard. Trying to tune a game's difficulty so it entertains seasoned players and complete novices is close to impossible. If they implement "auto play" they don't have to worry about balancing for the newbs.

[Marcus]

I love it when people say "exponentially easier" when they mean difficulty*0.

[icycalm]

I hope this concept becomes the standard. Trying to tune a game's difficulty so it entertains seasoned players and complete novices is close to impossible. If they implement "auto play" they don't have to worry about balancing for the newbs.

lol. What an insanely absurd spin you've got going there. It would never have occurred to me in a million years.

[Archonus]

Wouldn't the "newbs" still get their asses kicked if the game was made suitably challenging? Even more so if they skipped to its final parts?

[Molloy]

There are lots of people playing games who don't actually like games, or at least only have a very passing interest in them. When I was a kid I had friends (usually rich ones who I wanted to swap games with) who would give up on something when there was the slightest hint of difficulty. Their idea of a good time was to get the cheats out of a magazine and blast through to the end in an afternoon with the invincibility on.

Auto-play just seems the same as a cheat code to me. And if the vast majority of the buying public want no challenge, I say give it to them. Then the designers and publisher can rest easy that they won't miss out on all the casual sales, and will therefore be able to spend their time and money on pleasing the rest of us.

New Super Mario Bros. on the DS was ridiculously, horrifically easy and sold very well as a result. That's going to be the model for all games from now on unless some solution is found. I'd rather see all games have cheat codes, extra easy modes, auto-play or something for all those people. Because if most modern games aren't stupidly easy already, they make you trudge through tons of easy stuff before you can play the challenging stuff. Hell, I might get some use out of auto-play for entirely different reasons. Just think of it as a fast forward button for the boring parts.

What I find absurd is that if a game like Cave Story has a hardcore mode that looks quite enjoyable, I'm expected to grind through all the stuff I don't want to play to get to the part I do want to play, or muddle around the internet looking for a savestate to unlock it.

[JoshF]

That would make sense if the stages in this game didn't look like an 8-year-old's first Game Maker project.

When this game comes out I think I'm just going to put in SMB3 and pretend it's new.

[Beakman]

Molloy, I see your point, but using autoplay to appeal to gamers? (casual or whatever). Wouldn't a cheat code or such (as you said) be more suitable for skipping to a certain stage or whatever? If you find slogging through Cave Story in order to unlock hardcore mode boring, do you think you would have much more fun if you sat there and watched the game play itself?

I'd like to think that not even the most retarded gamers will find this feature enjoyable. I don't need to tell you that with auto play casual gamers won't find an easier game -- they simply won't find a game at all when they use this shit.

I mean, what the fuck Nintendo? It's like with each game they are testing their audience to see how retarded they are. If they buy it, they make something even more retarded.

If things keep going like this, Nintendo engineers will have a hard time designing a console that is easier to switch off than to "play" with.

[icycalm]

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/winners_always_use_drugs/

and I can't help but wonder whether the new generation will also end up reaching the same conclusions when it's God taunting them with the fruit instead of the snake.

Really great line.

[icycalm]

http://dsultimate.net/Board/upload/blog ... abb&b=1002

If I had the patience to respond at length I would have pointed out quite a few flagrant fallacies in his response, but there's really no point to doing that since he does not actually bother attacking Josh's main thesis. He attacks the details, and leaves the thesis entirely untouched. So I mean, I could easily defend the details (especially since many of his counter-facts are plain simply wrong) -- but who cares?

And besides, a person who thinks that "furtheration" is a word doesn't really deserve a response -- not even this one, actually.

[Gnarf]

http://kotaku.com/5374432/kind-code-dem ... auto+pilot

So it is officially called "Super Guide".

Nintendo is using this new help option to offer an unprecedented amount of in-game assistance, but it will only be available to players using the game's single-player mode who have failed at a level eight times. Nintendo's intent is to offer Super Guide as a helper for its less skilled customers and to allow its designers to make some of the game's levels devilishly difficult.

[Marcus]

Gamasutra interview with Miyamoto, dealing in part with the use of the Super Guide.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=25678

It's not obligatory to use it, of course, and Miyamoto said the presence of the help system actually serves as an additional motivator for players who like a challenge. "If you die eight times in one level the Super Guide block appears... but I find if that happens, I feel guilty that I let that happen."

"I've already done this bad -- now I definitely have to clear this level on my own," the designer laughed. "And people who clear every level without ever having a hint block appear will get a special something on the title screen after they've finished."

The Super Guide never shows the way to secrets, bonuses and collectibles, and players who gather all of those are rewarded, too. One highlight of the demonstration day yesterday was getting to see the special bonus videos users can unlock when they gather Star Coins.

Developed by the game's testers, they show feats of highly-skilled playthroughs, like making it through a whole level without ever touching the ground, or two buddies tandem-tossing a third player through the entirety of a level -- while still ensuring that third player collects all the level's rewards.

With such a feature, gameplay demonstration videos that the hardest-core players might have dismissed as hand-holding actually serve the purpose of tickling the imagination -- it's easy to imagine users creating and uploading their own gameplay feats via YouTube.

[icycalm]

Sounds a bit better now. But all of this is still irrelevant if the stage designs are inferior. Who are the people making this game? The same ones who made the DS game? If so, lol. If not, we'll see.

[JoshF]

All this new information may force me to write a follow-up. I'll rent the game when it comes out and see how deviously deviant the later levels are.

[El Chaos]

I'm not sure that using the Super Guide feature being made somewhat trickier changes its ultimate purpose and consequences.

Imagine for a moment that you credit-feed and fail to clear a given Ketsui stage eight times in a row, then a prompt shows up, you agree to it, and the game auto-plays itself and clears that stage right before your very eyes, only it doesn't go for "crazy scores".

Sure, going through the boring process of failing on purpose on an easy game so many times may discourage its abuse, but what about the hard ones Miyamoto keeps yapping on this "feature" will help the developers deliver? Does the way you get to use it actually change matters any?

[hyac]

Going well past merely piss-easy games, this development could very well bring us to the point where not including the ability to immediately shift to the A.I. "win button" could spell commercial suicide for a new title. This is when that new generation of gamers, the ones who will grow up, become designers themselves, and complete the downward spiral so that pop gaming will finally be analogous to pop music (if you think this is a compliment you are not thinking)

Josh, could you explain the comparison you make here (between pop gaming and pop music) for me? Maybe it's because I don't have a good understanding of pop music, but I can't figure it out.

[icycalm]

Pop means dumbed down. "Popular philosophy" or "popular science" for example, are either a bunch of BS or so dumbed down as to require no intellectuall exertion on the part of the reader.

It's the same with pop music. It'shHomegeneous garbage that requires no subtlety, no prior knowledge on the part of the listener, no exposure to a genre or music in general. It's just catchy trash.

It's the same with pop gaming.

You really should have been able to figure this out for yourself. Are you a child or something? Or from a third world country?