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Note: this was written mostly for my Facebook friends, so you'll have to pardon me explaining things that might seem blatantly obvious to gamers. Still, you may find it interesting, or at the very least some food for thought.
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Despite being a kid of the 90s, (otherwise known as the golden era of video games) I actually haven’t played that many. However, those that I have played, I have *really* gotten into. We never had an NES growing up, so being able to play Mario when I went to friend’s houses was a real treat. The Nintendo 64 was my first gaming system, and that began my ongoing journey of video games. Some might say it’s like a crack addiction. Perhaps, but that’s not the topic of today’s post.
As a kid, one of my dreams was to become a fighter pilot. I’m sure most boys who watched Top Gun shared this sentiment. I bought countless books on the F-14, I went through every single fighter jet book in our small local library, and I could easily point out game and movie errors when it came to my beloved jets.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gJVYJ.jpg)
I enjoyed the movie as a kid because it was freaking awesome. I enjoy it now because it's funny how unintentionally gay it is.
Some of you may know me as the StarCraft addict, (with the release of SC2 killing Brood War, I am now free from my addiction) but before all that, before I was a teenager, it was all about flight simulators. To be more precise, combat flight simulators. (Microsoft Flight was a nice game, but the best-modeled Learjet had nothing on just blowing stuff out of the sky with unlimited missiles)
To be exact, I sunk hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into a game called “Fighters Anthology”. Now, I spent a fair amount of time playing the game, but in hindsight, I may have actually spent more time *modifying* it. Fighters Anthology was one of the first games that, with the help of an external program, allowed you to modify the game extensively. You could do silly and pointless things like give your plane unlimited missiles, create new paint schemes for your jets, design new cockpits, create your own missions, change the music, and so many other things.
I wasn’t the type to be content with just tweaking a few things here and there, nor was I that big into realism. Each modder tries to achieve different things. To use First Person Shooters as an example, some mods cater to players that want the “80s action hero experience”, and crank up the lethality of player weapons and just have a blast destroying everything in sight, while enemies may as well be shooting BBs at you. Others try to create a different game atmosphere – for example, the Misery Mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat changes the game drastically, from a game that was admittedly already more difficult than the average FPS to something more closely resembling survival horror, where instead of having enough ammunition and stamina to go around hunting everything, you had to make decisions about whether or not to attack something, because you had limited ammo, took damage more easily, and couldn’t run for extended periods of time. You now had the incentive to sneak past enemies if you could do it, because you weren’t sure if it was worth the risk. Other modders just liked changing the looks of things, like changing the knife in CS to a trout. I know, it’s silly, but to each their own.
The “world” of Fighters Anthology is contemporary, i.e. not in space ala Wing Commander or Star Wars. Fighters Anthology (hereafter known as “FA”) was actually a combination of several games all into one. The first game in the series was US Navy Fighters, and you flew the F-14, F/A-18, A-7 and other fighters off a US Carrier Battle Group in Ukraine against the Russians. In the 90s, most designers weren’t particularly interested in realism or balance. In any era, any designer wants to create the ideal player experience (because that sells more games, of course) and what that looks like changes from era to era. Nowadays, you have a wide spectrum of “ideal”. Minigames have grown exponentially over the past few years, cute addictive stuff like Angry Birds or Bejeweled. You can also find games like DCS Black Shark and Falcon 4.0, where simply starting your jet engine, setting your communication to the correct setting, radioing the control tower for takeoff clearance, and getting into the air requires a manual in of itself. You have gamers that love the sense of accomplishment, through kill streaks or being rewarded with new portraits. Some players like playing and beating difficult games, like Fire Emblem, and they don’t care if they have to die many times before they complete it. For the most part though, people play games to be awesome, to be winners, and FA was no exception.
While the names of all the weapons and aircraft were generally accurate, it was blatantly obvious that the Russian weaponry was vastly inferior to U.S. weaponry, and examining the weapon data in the game editor confirmed this. Russian missiles were more likely to be thrown off by flares and other countermeasures, while U.S. missiles were more resistant, could be fired from longer range, and did more damage. This allowed the player to “win” fairly easily. (You could, technically, fly as the Russians, but it wasn’t as encouraged, as the game was ridiculously difficult that way) To be sure, there was a learning curve, but certainly not as steep as it is in a more realistic game like Falcon 4.0 where you can certainly outfly your enemies, but to do so takes hours of learning how well your plane turns at different speeds and altitudes, and understanding what the ideal conditions are for firing missiles (ex: in general, radar guided missiles are better fired at targets above you rather than below, because radar clutter from the ground makes it harder for older missiles to find their targets accurately).
As a kid, I was a huge Lego fan, and my brother and I designed countless fighters and bases. With the FA editor, I could try and turn fantasy into “virtual reality”. After all, we didn’t have enough Lego sets to actually build more than one of each fighter, or to actually have a proper Opposing Force. We could only imagine aircraft carriers, because we couldn’t build one in Lego. But we could do this in FA! Instead of flying the F-22, we could now fly the F-52 Ghost Hawk, complete with our own R-130 ALRAAM and R-76 Agile missiles (fictional). But in our make-believe stories, the enemy had to be formidable. It’s no fun otherwise. And that’s where the issue of game balance comes into play.
For those of you who don’t play video games (or only play minigames), there are two kinds of combat: Player versus Player (PvP), and Player versus Environment (PvE). You could also call PvE “Player versus Computer” in some situations, but Environment is a better fit. In short, PvP means player combat, ala multiplayer games, and PvE means fighting against the computer/AI. In general, PvP games (like StarCraft) tend to be more difficult to design and play, because your opponent has the same resources you do, and can strategize much like you can. In PvE, the computer can be competent, but it’s usually not very flexible. Another major difference is that in a PvP game, with each winner there must be a loser, so the game should be relatively “fair”, otherwise you’d have people ragequitting, because no one likes to lose all the time. But in PvE, there is a much larger incentive for the player to win.
In that sense, enemies (soldiers) in PvE aren’t people per se. They’re more like challenges a player must defeat to reach the finish line, but completely different from an active participant also trying to win and live. The enemy may be difficult to defeat or hard to play against, but not because it’s smarter than the player per se. In many games, a higher-level enemy AI may receive more starting resources than the player, or have better equipment, to make up for its predictability. But the way many games create a challenge for the player is simply by throwing many things at him/her – older shoot-em-ups are a good example of this. The computer has the advantage in numbers, but it is also easy to exploit due to limited tactical proficiency.
The type of player experience the designer wants to create is essentially an issue of perspective. For me, creating/modding a game so my fighter had unlimited missiles, had a ridiculous number of hit points, and could bat away enemies without breaking a sweat was dumb, and took the fun out of it. That’s how many games do it nowadays, of course – in Call of Duty 4, you can take more hits than the enemy, and you can easily achieve kill ratios in the dozens easily (speaking of single player, strictly). Dynasty Warriors is another prime example – your character is made to seem powerful because you are faced with hundreds and thousands of weak enemies and you wipe them out fairly easily. For some people, this is entertainment. For me, it’s utterly unbelievable and it breaks immersion.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/X0n5o.jpg)
Somehow, I'm not intimidated.
Now I know, I was modding the game to have flyable aircraft carriers, and adding lasers to fighter jets, but at the same time, the universe I was creating had to have some rules. Those of you who play RPGs (the kind with pencil and paper) are probably well aware of what I’m talking about here, especially those that have played as the gamemaster or dungeonmaster. You can throw challenges at the players, you are allowed a certain amount of flexibility, but you have to be consistent, or at least follow some form of logic – otherwise, once people call bullshit, the fun’s over. If magic is effective against one type of target, it had better be effective against other targets too unless you have a good explanation for it. “Because I said so” doesn’t really fly, unless if the game is intentionally silly, like Munchkin, in which case, carry on!
So I’m designing a single player game. The game should be enjoyable. To me, that means I can “win” fairly consistently, but that doesn’t mean “wins” should come easily. If a superhero is mowing down enemies easily, that’s not particularly heroic. It can even seem rather cruel, and there really isn’t any sense of accomplishment. To use a real life example, Germany boasted a number of fighter aces with *ridiculous* numbers of kills in World War II, but a lot of those came on the Eastern Front against relatively untrained Soviet pilots. It means almost nothing compared to getting 5 kills in the Vietnam War era, where both sides were fairly competent. A high kill count does not a fun game make.
This isn’t always easy to design in a game, though. In games (and most books, movies, and other forms of media) you follow a primary protagonist, and he/she has to be “blessed”, because if you die, the game ends. But the game has to have continuous action, otherwise it’s boring. (fans of slow-paced, thinking sniper games like Sniper Elite are a dying breed) So the easy solution here is to make enemies extremely weak, but easy to kill, so you can keep facing and defeating enemies without really dying yourself.
And so I ran into this problem after awhile – early versions of my game modification were heavily skewed towards the “good guys”, where your aircraft could carry 10 lethal missiles, backed up by a lot of machine gun ammo, and enemy countermeasures were ineffective, allowing your missiles to destroy them consistently. I had mission scenarios where 2 of my F-37 jets could defeat 30 MiG-21s 70-80% of the time. This gets boring quickly. And so I started creating stronger opponents, increased enemy accuracy, and started finding myself shot down more often. And then I decided to switch combat from being missile-based to gun-based, because with modern missiles, the player doesn’t really have any better chance than the computer, because they’re simply too hard to avoid. But in a guns dogfight, at least you have a chance.
Why’d I do this? Because you can only put the player in “heroic” situations so many times – defending their country against overwhelming odds, against huge bomber fleets that shot a lot at you but had bad aim – before you start to feel a lack of tension, because despite great odds, the enemy was utterly incompetent if it wasn’t actually winning most of the time, and all of a sudden the tension’s gone.
It’s like if you watched War of the Worlds and they tell you right at the beginning of the film that the invaders are going to spontaneously combust because they can’t handle Earth’s atmosphere. Sure, if you already read the books you know that already, but you still watch the movie because you want to see how it builds up there. It’s like in superhero movies – you know Spiderman’s gonna end up defeating the enemy, but the journey itself can still be interesting if it’s not too obvious how it occurs. Of course, superhero movies are an interesting case to examine, because if you looked at some older stuff, you’d notice that it was pretty much “feel-good” kicking ass and taking names, and there’s no doubt whatsoever that Superman’s invincible. But if you look at the new Batman movies, you sense vulnerability. Batman’s going to defeat the Joker eventually. But there might be a heavy cost involved, or the Joker may force Batman to sacrifice part of himself. It’s a huge difference in storytelling style.
Modern games like Call of Duty are very different from old-school shooters like Counter Strike. In the former, it’s relatively easy to “get lucky” and relatively new players can still do somewhat decently, especially if the action gets hectic enough (improved computer graphics allowing for more destruction effects affects this), but in the latter, a more skilled Counter Strike player will defeat a new player almost every single time, simply because the game requires you to understand your weapons, and rewards experienced players more heavily, not through power-ups or kill streaks or anything like that, but just because the game has a heavy focus on accuracy, positioning, and teamwork.
In another example, StarCraft 2 is arguably a lot easier for new players to get into than Brood War. I shy from calling the game itself “easier”, but the difference between great players and good players isn’t nearly as stark as it was in Brood War. To put things into perspective, I was able to achieve a “C” rank on the Brood War ladder, which meant that I could easily trash most of my friends I played with in real life, and breeze through the D and D+ ranks. Yet those D-ranked players would win most of the time against players that had only played single player, or only played in map modes with unlimited resources and money. However, I would lose to other C players 50-60% of the time, and rarely ever took a game off of a C+ player. Still, I could count myself in the top 90-95% percentile of all StarCraft players. And yet, I had absolutely no chance against B-ranked players. B-ranked players will be lucky if they can win a single game in a Bo7 series against an A-ranked player. Practice partners on professional Korean StarCraft teams rarely ever lost to A-ranked players, and these players weren’t even good enough to break the starting lineups of most pro teams. Among the elite StarCraft players, you could even divide them even further – the “A” class elite that were the cornerstone of a strong team lineup, the “S” class players that had that something extra that put them ahead of the “A” class (most obvious in extended BoX series), and anomalies like Lee Young Ho/Flash (known as “God”) who was regarded as nearly invincible at his peak. In StarCraft 2, you have players still in school taking games off of professionals. Granted, these part-time players are incredibly talented and gifted, and would do probably do even better playing full-time, but this would have been absolutely impossible in Brood War. No one had a chance against the Korean pros, that’s how good the game allowed them to be. The skill ceiling was extremely high, allowing for a wide range of skill disparity.
I used to complain about this all the time. Games are getting too easy. We’re rewarding mediocrity to allow people to “feel good”, and games are no longer as good as they used to be. Then I slowly came to realize that it’s really an issue of taste. I personally prefer games that give the enemy some credit. Say you’re in a shooter game holding a chokepoint. Enemies come pouring in, and you machine gun them down by the dozens. They keep charging, and you keep shooting, and it ends with a bunch of dead bodies piled up in front of you. Hey, you just defeated an entire enemy army. But who can believe that? In real life, the enemy might call in indirect fire (artillery), or air support, rather than keep suiciding into your defenses. And yet, if the goal of the game is to make the player feel powerful and invincible, the computer isn’t designed to *think*, it’s designed to die. And so they keep charging. The enemy isn’t “human”, in that sense. It doesn’t have a desire to live, it doesn’t think of better ways to do things, because its goal isn’t to survive or actually defeat you, its goal is to ultimately provide you with some eye candy before dying.
That’s why I enjoyed playing Brood War, despite losing more games than I won (it’s inevitable, given how good players are). That’s also why I tend to play more difficult single player games, like Resident Evil (before 4 changed everything, of course. Don’t get me wrong – 4 is actually wonderfully entertaining as well, but in a totally different way), Fire Emblem, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and flight simulators. A harder game is more rewarding to me. I like the feeling of improving, and breezing through areas that were once difficult not purely because my character has better stats and equipment, but because I’m a better player than I was before.
But after working full-time for the past half a year or so, I’ve come to see the appeal of “casual” games a bit more. My definition of “casual” may be a bit broad, as I include stuff like Call of Duty and Halo (I know Halo has a competitive scene, but you can’t argue that it’s as hardcore as Counter Strike). It’s why, despite the Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) flight sim looking absolutely amazing… it’s not going to be something I purchase anytime soon, because I don’t have time to go through hundreds of pages of a manual, learning how to adjust flap trim and memorize radio frequencies and the proper missile firing procedure. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the feeling of flying and blowing stuff up. It’s why I spend more time playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. than Operation Flashpoint. I just don’t have the time to really get into video games like I used to. I’m sure when and if I start my own family, I’ll have even less time to burn playing video games. And now understand why people can look at me in astonishment when I described my passion for Brood War. I don’t necessarily regret the time I spent there, but I now get where they’re coming from. And maybe that’s just a part of life. People enjoy different things at different times, and the choice is not always yours to make. You just have to make the most of what you can.
Perhaps that’s growing up.
So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play some Angry Birds.
(I don’t actually have Angry Birds)
 
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It's funny how as a child I absolutely hated how hard games were, and would often throw tantrums in frustration from trying all day to progress through levels. Now a days I immidiatly crank everything up to the hardest difficulty and I simply wont play a game unless I die atleast 10 times during the first level.
But yea, I think your mention of the issue of sc2's difficulty compared to BW is shared by a lot of people who played both games.
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Damn this makes me want to install flight simulator and go fly around in the leerjet.
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"casual gaming" is too broad. there are sometimes high skillcaps in "casual" games.
tetris is a good example.
my brother was good at wii tennis; if you didn't hit a perfect serve he will return ace you every time.
play dynasty warriors on chaos. those "thousands of weak enemies" become "don't get hit without musou or you die."
the older NES/arcade games would be viewed as casual games today. put gradius on a cellphone and voila, casual.
so with that said, the conclusion of
But after working full-time for the past half a year or so, I’ve come to see the appeal of “casual” games a bit more. My definition of “casual” may be a bit broad, as I include stuff like Call of Duty and Halo (I know Halo has a competitive scene, but you can’t argue that it’s as hardcore as Counter Strike).
doesn't work for me. regardless of whether you play 1.6 or Halo, you can still find ways to improve the way you play. and the line between hardcore and casual becomes blurry.
a game that can be viewed by one person as casual where you don't have to think about it could be a deep game viewed by another person. when i see tetris i'm thinking of concepts like 20g, rotation systems, downstacking, t-spinning, etc whereas a regular guy might be thinking "ooh let me make tetrises!"
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The opposite of casual should never be obnoxious. Sadly, sometimes it is.
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On June 15 2012 20:14 kainzero wrote:"casual gaming" is too broad. there are sometimes high skillcaps in "casual" games. tetris is a good example. my brother was good at wii tennis; if you didn't hit a perfect serve he will return ace you every time. play dynasty warriors on chaos. those "thousands of weak enemies" become "don't get hit without musou or you die." the older NES/arcade games would be viewed as casual games today. put gradius on a cellphone and voila, casual. so with that said, the conclusion of Show nested quote +But after working full-time for the past half a year or so, I’ve come to see the appeal of “casual” games a bit more. My definition of “casual” may be a bit broad, as I include stuff like Call of Duty and Halo (I know Halo has a competitive scene, but you can’t argue that it’s as hardcore as Counter Strike). doesn't work for me. regardless of whether you play 1.6 or Halo, you can still find ways to improve the way you play. and the line between hardcore and casual becomes blurry. a game that can be viewed by one person as casual where you don't have to think about it could be a deep game viewed by another person. when i see tetris i'm thinking of concepts like 20g, rotation systems, downstacking, t-spinning, etc whereas a regular guy might be thinking "ooh let me make tetrises!"
That's a good point. I did hesitate to put CoD there, but ended up doing so because in my mind, I was defining it as "in CS, you will get absolutely murdered if you jump into a random match, and so if you want to play, you either have to play with other newbie's or spend a lot of time getting better at the game. Conversely, while competitive CoD probably does have its nuances, it's much easier to just jump into occasionally on the weekends without going like 2-12, which is quite common in CS. So I guess my definition of Casual is that you can enjoy the game without being forced to put a lot of time and effort into it. (assuming you don't enjoy losing, of course)
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I think this represents the culture shift. People today feel entitled. They feel they should be given the win. Working hard for anything be it in a game or on a job seems to be something of the past. I feel old talking here but this is something I have observed and I am under 30.
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Playing broodwar at first was really demanding however I kept coming back to the game and I tried to improve my self.Every lost and every single win that I was able to pull out from the jaws of death was really sweet. Broodwar may require huge amount of time and energy to invest in to play it at a decent level however nothing feels much greater when you know you won over a skilled opponent because of your own doing . I think I have mention a lot in the past that this is the age of casual no longer do people want to spend time on over a past time hobby like gaming they just want to get in to the game get what they want and off they go to do their business .
So maybe that's why games are made much more easier for the casual crowds and not for the few customers who prefer their game challenging.
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On June 15 2012 21:22 StreetWise wrote:
I think this represents the culture shift. People today feel entitled. They feel they should be given the win. Working hard for anything be it in a game or on a job seems to be something of the past. I feel old talking here but this is something I have observed and I am under 30.
you and every generation before you since at least some ancient greek guy.
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On June 15 2012 21:22 StreetWise wrote:
I think this represents the culture shift. People today feel entitled. They feel they should be given the win. Working hard for anything be it in a game or on a job seems to be something of the past. I feel old talking here but this is something I have observed and I am under 30.
We'll culture shift right back to the good ol' days, you just wait. 10 years into the future, a dev for Call of Duty Black Ops 37 is going to pick up a copy of CS 1.6, play it and say "this is really fuckin' good! I'm going to make a game like this!"
And then people will (re)discover the wonder of actually getting a sense of accomplishment from killing a wave of enemies or finding a secret in the game.
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Great blog 5/5 !
Edit : whatever comes after this is the edit/
On June 15 2012 21:22 StreetWise wrote:
I think this represents the culture shift. People today feel entitled. They feel they should be given the win. Working hard for anything be it in a game or on a job seems to be something of the past. I feel old talking here but this is something I have observed and I am under 30.
Have you ever heard of EVE Online ? People literally pay ( to play ) so they can WORK ( mine ) in a ( video game ) virtual reality. Same story for WOW where many many people farm for hours and hours. I'm pretty sure the percentage of people who, in addition to paying the monthly fee of the game, buy extra gold and stuff is pretty small compared to the amount of people who don't.
Having said that it's pretty obvious to me that this society is going towards this idea of " looks over functionality" and video games toward casual games where any kid can pick up the game and get some kills easily. They often reward the players who play more, the more experienced players, by giving them achievements and letting them unlock things.
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Great blog 5/5 but in all honesty, Fire Emblem was not that hard. Yeah, you had to restart a few times but it really wasn't that difficult. It was tons of fun though.
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I think a lot of people confuse 'casual game' with 'easy to get into.'
I'm going to use the classic example of DotA vs LoL.
People say LoL is a casual game, citing how compared to DotA, there is no denying, easy escape mechanism, less punishment on death, etc when in reality these things are just mechanics of the game. This makes DotA harder to get into, as new players will get dominated in lane, and proceed to do worse and worse as the game progresses. LoL is more newb friendly, but once you get to a competitive level, the games both take high amounts of skill. There is a very similar amount of coordination needed in LoL compared to DotA at the top level. There are more objectives to take in LoL, so every death means that it is on the other team to punish your team for your death by taking one. Increasing the number of wards available only means warding and counterwarding, understanding how to get around wards, etc become more important.
Being able to jump in a game and feel like you are doing something is a sign of a good game. Being able to beat a pro semi consistently at a game is probably the sign that the game has either too much randomness, or just a lack of consistency to it.
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People try to design difficulty without being overly frustrating. Super Meat Boy is really difficult but not very frustrating. You get unlimited lives, and the action occurs in short segments. The game can then be jam packed with HOLY SHIT moments every single second of the game, whereas a game like Contra is just an endurance match with the game, hoping you don't blink, otherwise a random bullet will kill you and you lose your spread gun forever (off topic but I think Contra 1's difficulty is massively overrated).
Then you look at a game like Mega Man, which isn't even difficult by today's standards, but is frustrating because some random enemy decides to pop out of nowhere and knock you into the pit just because you haven't memorized every jump in the game. You then lose probably 3 minutes, only to lose it the next time a random enemy jumps into you knocking you into a pit, or you missed your jump by a pixel and landed on a stupid spike. Or... a boss becomes impossible to kill because you missed one shot (MM2 fans, you know what I'm talking about...)
I guess games on the whole are easier, but I like that the type of difficulty that exists is more like "whoa I'm in way over my head" instead of "DAMN I wanna @$%$@ SMASH THIS ^@$^$@ MONITOR."
RPGs, I feel different about. Weirdly, I like the "@#%#@%@ THIS!!!!" difficulty. I think newer games have easy main games, and pack the post-game with ridiculous bosses that require tons of grinding. That way, the more casual gamers can enjoy the game, and for the hardcore gamers, the real game starts after the final boss. The post-game is the part where its PACKED with "WTF this is hard" moments, whereas I enjoyed games like Dragon Quest 2, where every single battle in the entire game is a scare because they'll just surprise attack you, gang up on your healer and critical hit you X3 and you're just like "WTF how is this fair?" I enjoy the rush of just barely escaping a dungeon, knowing that any random battle could be my last. I tolerate, even love, fake difficulty in RPGs much more than in any other genre.
As for "easier to get into," games back then were way easier to get into. Your control pad moved your character, you had two buttons, it wasn't difficult to figure out what they did. Nowadays, you have to go through 15 hours of tutorials to even begin to play the game because 15 hours is about how long it takes to learn how to pick up a bow and equip it.
I haven't played too many new games, and I don't play FPS at all (though I could definitely benefit from casual ez mode in FPS, hah), so maybe my view is skewed and game difficulty IS trash nowadays
PS: Despite the bitching, I love the Mega Man series to death. In fact I love every single game I mentioned to death
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Thanks for the insightful responses, everyone! Some of you guys brought up some points I hadn't really considered before, and helped refine my thoughts a little. Thinking about it more, I do agree that the best games should be easy to get into, but difficult to master. Difficult for the sake of being difficult doesn't really have a point, and it just wastes time. Maybe that's why I don't see the appeal of grinding games, yet I can enjoy relatively tedious games like Megaman, where being good requires a lot of trial and error, and level memorization. YOU got better, not your character.
Now I'm wondering if what makes a (multiplayer) game difficult is the community. Single player games are fairly straightforward in difficulty. Enemies may have higher stats, level design may be unforgiving, your character can die easily, etc. But multiplayer... It's really about who you play i.e. the community. Strictly speaking, Starcraft really isn't that hard of a game to get into. The vast majority of all Starcraft players would never crack D+ on iCCup, yet they loved the game and had a blast playing UMS and BGH. If your CS LAN party is comprised entirely of newbie's, you don't have to good to enjoy it either. It's only when you play competitively that you have to be halfway decent to have fun. So in that sense, it's not that a game like BW is hard and that turns people away, it's that there aren't enough newbie's to join in and keep the game going.
In that sense, perhaps Blizzard is absolutely right in what it's doing with SC2. It's easier to get into, and even easier to compete in (relatively speaking). That makes the game frustrating for those of us spoiled by the level of play and professionalism in Korean BW, but it also allows for Baby Elephants, as hazelynut so wonderfully put it. Maybe that's a good thing, depending on what the spectators want. I know from participating in the CSL that sometimes it's not about the level of play. Objectively speaking, most games in the CSL were shit - most matches pitted D and C level players against each other. No amazing micro, no oohs and says at an impressive freshly macroed Zealot train, none of the stuff that drew us to watch Proleague at ungodly hours of the night. And yet, it was fucking fun. Last season's Michigan vs UCSD conference finals was the most fun i ever had watching BW, even more than watching Bisu take down Flash to win the Finals. And SC2 has that, it allows players to live the dream without having to sacrifice what BW players had to. And so, despite bitterness about the death of the OSL and Proleague, i understand the joy of SC2 players, though i am not one myself. I wholeheartedly wish everyone the best in this new game, because sometimes, it's just whatever makes you happy.
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On June 16 2012 06:20 Lagcraft wrote:
Great blog 5/5 but in all honesty, Fire Emblem was not that hard. Yeah, you had to restart a few times but it really wasn't that difficult. It was tons of fun though.
Well, compared to some other SRPGs. Also, the newer GBA games and the GC/Wii games were nowhere near as difficult as the older games. I still get nightmares of enemies spawning AFTER your move and totally wrecking your shit. That said, maniac mode in Radiant Dawn might be closest in difficulty to some of the old school FE games.
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It's true man. I've never casual game'd really.
Only time I play a casual game is when a friend comes round and wants to console or vice versa. I'm actually selling my PS3 to my only irl friend since it's not worthwile for me to keep it and I only play it with him.
I played mostly hmm runescape for most hours of the day from 2006-2010 (almost entirely pvp / for pvp) and now sc2 from release until now.
Other MMO inbetween/before and other RTS but I could never bee too competitive at them as a prebubescent but everyone I played more than casually... I guess I'm just naturally a competitive gamer in that sense.
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Agreed, the only game I play is SC2, and I play that for the mental challenge it presents (there's always someone better than you on ladder... always).
COD is boring to me because the majority of the "skill" is in developing reflexes by grinding games, not applied focus and discipline like improving your SC2 macro (as well as a ton of strategic thinking/problem solving etc.
Single player games are boring for me because you're competing with a machine. I like competition with good old people...
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
oh MY GOD, i spent TONS of hours playing fighters anthology as well.. holy shit
now.. lemme finish reading the rest of your blog 
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In terms of causal gaming I'd say I have developed to enjoy playing these games more than I used to, just like you.
However as a spectator = e-sport for watching purposes I find these utterly boring.
After watching SC2 for a few weeks the games became more of the same - there is lack of play style, the mediocre professionals can beat the top ones, which means no prevalent dominances(no S-class players really).
Furthermore I don't feel the comentators can tell me something I don't know or see on the screen and frankly making "wow" noises and "that was awesome" comments where there is no wow to be seen does not make me feel it more.
Now that the time BW stars come to play SC2, there maybe there is a chance we will see more action..
It's a shame though because more action could have otherwise been still in BW - take for example the last Pro-league finals which were just amazing and the ace-match Flash vs Bisu was a game that could not be compared to anygame in over 10-year Broodwar history, it was just that different and exciting at the same time.
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On June 17 2012 04:25 LastWish wrote:
In terms of causal gaming I'd say I have developed to enjoy playing these games more than I used to, just like you.
However as a spectator = e-sport for watching purposes I find these utterly boring.
After watching SC2 for a few weeks the games became more of the same - there is lack of play style, the mediocre professionals can beat the top ones, which means no prevalent dominances(no S-class players really).
Furthermore I don't feel the comentators can tell me something I don't know or see on the screen and frankly making "wow" noises and "that was awesome" comments where there is no wow to be seen does not make me feel it more.
Now that the time BW stars come to play SC2, there maybe there is a chance we will see more action..
It's a shame though because more action could have otherwise been still in BW - take for example the last Pro-league finals which were just amazing and the ace-match Flash vs Bisu was a game that could not be compared to anygame in over 10-year Broodwar history, it was just that different and exciting at the same time.
Hm. See, this is what I originally thought, and why I had such a hard time accepting the rise of SC2. It's pretty much a given (for BW vets, at least) that the level of play and entertainment in the highest levels of SC2 doesn't match that of BW yet. However, what I was trying to get at through my previous post regarding the CSL was that perhaps this isn't the only thing that factors into a spectator's entertainment.
The games in the CSL, objectively, weren't all that good. But they were ridiculously entertaining regardless. Similarly, SC2 might not be, objectively, as entertaining as BW for many veterans. However, SC2 progamers and spectators may find the game more playable, or enjoy being part of the proscene in a way that wasn't possible before in the era of (even more pronounced) Korean dominance. Ultimately, I believe the longevity of a game is determined by its player base. I have no doubt that Brood War was ridiculously popular due to the excellence of its proscene for sure, but also because in Korea everyone and their dog played and enjoyed the game, to a certain extent. (obviously an exaggeration, but I'm sure you get my point)
As such, it makes sense to expand on the "casual enjoyment" of SC2. Casual when compared to BW, but certainly hardcore to the point that there are definite distinctions in skill, where you have to put a lot of time and effort into being good, and talent will make a difference, but the odds are higher than it was in BW. Perhaps that will help SC2 last even longer than BW did, I don't know.
I guess this is all to say that I'm slowly understanding the appeal of "easier" games like SC2, and perhaps it's the right way to go if the goal is to create a long-lasting and entertaining game for the players. Perhaps everyone is entertained in different ways, and we BW diehards are just a dying breed. I know that I don't have time to ladder up to C anymore...
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EPT
