Where did the fun go? - The Bear and Badger

Gremill

Been playing through Tomb Raider, which I'm enjoying quite a lot despite it's over-reliance on QTEs and firefights over adventuring and exploration. It's quite a beautiful looking game too, although that graphical gorgeousness is increasingly beig used to depict squalor and shit-splattered corpses.

When did games become quite so fucking grim and serious? Why does everything seem to have to feature torture, maiming, dismemberment and incredible amounts of death, all the time? I mean, I know violence is the pillar of 95% of all videogames, but I think it's taken this game to get me to the end of my tether.

Fond memories of games filled with desolate tombs, the main purpose of which was to pathfind my way to some treasure via a circuitous route of ledges and leaps has been replaced by an endless procession of murder, throat-slitting, headshots and genital mutilation. The countless falls down mountains, rivers, waterfalls, abysses that would have crippled even the toughest space marine (never mind a posh-bird on her first field trip abroad) are, conversely, stretching the credibility of the 'gritty' context which I'm slogging through.

Where did the fun go? Tomb Raider should be a game that I could sit down with my 8yr old son and play through, exploring jungles, valleys and tombs and scaling the heights of spectacular mountains just for the sake of it - not to have to save some expletetive-ridden Glasweigan from a sub-Lost blood cult with a classy line in raper-danger.

Grumble, grumble, getting old.

Yossarian

g.man

Couldn't agree more with you Grem.

here, here

g.man

Sasukekun

I mentioned a similar thing in the Last of Us thread. It's a lovely looking game, but it just isn't much fun.

Vela

It's a broader issue than that to be honest. The focus in a great deal of games seems to be about violence, but yeah - there is an element of more frequent use of visceral (sorry) violence.

However, that has been going on since Mortal Kombat at least.

I expect that it might just go in swings and roundabouts. Maybe in five years time there will be more games with blue skies and throwbacks to the 16 bit era.

Yossarian

Presumably, a lot of this is down to the fact that the core audience for videogames is getting older, so certainly console games end up aiming for a more mature audience. I posted the PvZ2 screenshot up there partially in jest, but in fact, if you look at most of the games for iOS, they do tend towards being much more fun in their presentation as that's where the casual audience has gone. So, where has the fun gone? To smartphones and tablets.

Brooks

Feel like the industry basically managed to back itself into a corner resource-wise this gen, as in the only people in the hiring pool are basically honed to fine, dorky point in a really narrow series of re-interpretations of very old shit without actually stopping to examine whether those would actually survive a radical upgrade in cosmetics. And then there's the cat'n'mouse between what the publishers think its audience is and wants and the audience under conditions of increasing commercial pressure, all to a backdrop of macroeconomic dread and risk aversion.

It's sort of funny how many of these games are wantonly post-apocalyptic. It's in the entrails you guys

Moto70

There are plenty of fun, non-gritty, games aren't there?

I thought the entire Nintendo catalogue is made up of fluffy isn't it? Choosing to play the very games being moaned about doesn't mean that that is all there is to play.

Brooks

Moto70 wrote:

There are plenty of fun, non-gritty, games aren't there?

There really are - I mean Angry Birds is like the best-selling title of all time now or fucking close - but there's a specific relationship between AAA behemoths and the press that will dominate the discourse until things get either more granular or literally bankrupt or both. That has an impact on informal spaces like the B&B because PR is gross, especially because it works.

Dark Soldier

Well I'm going through the violence happy wonderfest that is Borderlands 2 and by fuck is it fun. Fun is obv still out there.

Vela

If the social / casual gaming revolution does its job and attracts more diverse people to the industry, hopefully in five to ten years we will get some semblance of balance in terms of themes present in gaming.

Or we may just get Birds: The Real Catapult Simulator and Feathers of War: Retribution.

Brooks

I'm still not really convinced a lot of trad studios know how to employ/accommodate hirees who aren't white dudes.

Fentonizer

http://allgamesshouldbedarksouls.tumblr.com/post/56330425244/tomb-raider-is-not-dark-souls

...I’m ranting now because Tomb Raider really does boil my piss. It’s a 6 hour QTE stuffed, set piece based, cutscene driven, linear story, padded out with 10 hours of arbitrary, linear and downright dull collection quests solely to set off gamer’s Pavlovian reaction to Skinner boxes. This is all so that they can protect the idea that a modern game needs a 100 million dollar budget.

ShabbyMcCrabby

Sasukekun wrote:

I mentioned a similar thing in the Last of Us thread. It's a lovely looking game, but it just isn't much fun.

I think LoU gets a pass as the violence is in aid of the greater narrative whereas a lot of other games had just been adding the grit for the sake of it or to try to bump up visual fidelity.
I think for pure fun you need to look at indie games a lot more these days. Or Rayman.

Yossarian

I enjoyed Tomb Raider.

Sasukekun

Moto70 wrote:

There are plenty of fun, non-gritty, games aren't there? I thought the entire Nintendo catalogue is made up of fluffy isn't it? Choosing to play the very games being moaned about doesn't mean that that is all there is to play.

We can get gritty and fun though surely?
Or would that lean too close to the 'violence = fun' argument press like the Daily Mail love to hate so much?

Brooks

This is a thing I've struggled with for years though, wherein the medium's past is littered with titles that were both real heart-on-sleeve exercises in formal novelty and financed and technologised to the best of the Industry's ability and now you either get the bells/whistles or the risk-taking but rarely if ever both.

Which isn't to say XBL/PSN/Steam smaller-scope games look/feel 'shit' but there's always a gajillion-dollah thing out or about to come out to remind you how much sheer resource a single project can actually have shoved its way, and it's routinely fucking squandered.

But I mean what else is new, Hollywood etc.

Gremill

I'm not saying that violence is a bad thing in games - I don't believe it is - and I'm not saying that there aren't fun games out there that are also violent (BLands2 is a great example). I suppose what I'm getting at is that, using TR as an example, what Brooks is tangentially talking about - the need to re-sell/re-skin an established franchise, or even a new franchise come to that - with a grim layer of torture-porn leaning 'realism' in order to sell it to an audience entirely imagined by what marketing guys think will sell. It takes itself so stern-faced seriously that it sucks a lot of the fun out of it.

I don't believe that TR needs a heroine that has to kill literally hundreds of bad guys to establish her 'goodness' or character arc or whatever resolution they're building to. What's wrong with having the same incredible world-building tech and applying it to create a bunch of gorgeous spatial puzzles that don't require Lara to be bludgeoned, hung on a meathook, wade through faeces or set someone on fire?

FWIW, I'm going to continue playing TR - because I am enjoying the experience on some levels - I'm just personally disappointed that it had to be grimmed-up for very little benefit.

TheDJR

I was a little disappointed that Lara wasn't actually raped, however I haven't finished it yet so there's still hope.

Brooks

I'm not even sure the decision to make it grimdark is even A Decision so much as the studios literally have no fucking idea how else to present it now.

Like, what you're describing requires legit level-design talent for starters. Like fuck do most studios command that.

davyK

Fun died along with the Dreamcast and all it stood for.

Bollockoff

Thinking on my recent playthrough of Dishonoured and i'm finding it hard to pin down why exactly I love it so much despite it being a part of the grimdark violent club. Maybe because they created an original world in the plague-ridden rat infested streets of Dunwall that fits the overall atmosphere so well. And avoidance of fisticuffs is made as easy as combat.

Dark Soldier

I think its more we've been brought up on the wonder of MD/SNES/Early gaming, whereas now half those who'd buy such games have been bred on full on FPS/gore/oh shit, and as such violence is seen as a key thing to them. Full on triple A games ain't marketed to us no more, rather 18-21yo COD racist eejits.

I agree, I do but its the way of the land.

Yossarian

Brooks wrote:

grimdark

When I read this I think of a goth Primark.

Bollockoff

davyK wrote:

Fun died with the Dreamcast and all it stood for.

I still remember my surprise and joy at getting a free ChuChu Rocket in the post because I was within a certain first amount of people to sign up to Dreamarena or whatever.

Brooks

Dark Soldier wrote:

I think its more we've been brought up on the wonder of MD/SNES/Early gaming, whereas now half those who'd buy such games have been bred on full on FPS/gore/oh shit, and as such violence is seen as a key thing to them. Full on triple A games ain't marketed to us no more, rather 18-21yo COD racist eejits. I agree, I do but its the way of the land.

The plus side is we get to expend time on other activities with no fear on missing out, albeit that if everyone else in your social circle is banging on about a thing it can be tempting to check it out just to be able to join in the banter. I'm more of a casualty of that exact force than I'm comfy admitting.
Big publishers absolutely know and indeed survive thanks to the very same.

Yossarian

Everyone got a copy as Sega's apology for rolling the online side out to Europe so late.

Edit: @'Koff.

Dark Soldier

Brooks wrote:

I think its more we've been brought up on the wonder of MD/SNES/Early gaming, whereas now half those who'd buy such games have been bred on full on FPS/gore/oh shit, and as such violence is seen as a key thing to them. Full on triple A games ain't marketed to us no more, rather 18-21yo COD racist eejits. I agree, I do but its the way of the land.

The plus side is we get to expend time on activities with no fear on missing out, albeit that if everyone else in your social circle is banging on about a thing it can be tempting to check it out just to be able to join in the banter.

I just give it a cursory hour long go and then declare it shit if someone is banging on about a game I gotta give a go (WoW was a good example. I buckled, spent an hour completely bored then gave up). I'm near 30 now, sod that shit, I knows what I like/want.

Moto70

Dark Soldier wrote:

Well I'm going through the violence happy wonderfest that is Borderlands 2 and by fuck is it fun. Fun is obv still out there.

If I had to recast my vote for last year's B&B Game of the Year this would probably be top. It really is an absolutely cracking game and one of the standout games of this gen for me. There simply isn't anything it got wrong for me.

TheDJR

Save it for 'game of this gen'.

JonB

Brooks wrote:

I'm not even sure the decision to make it grimdark is even A Decision so much as the studios literally have no fucking idea how else to present it now. Like, what you're describing requires legit level-design talent for starters. Like fuck do most studios command that.

Pretty much. The number of times we've now heard that a sequel to a successful game will improve upon its predecessor by being 'darker' is now comically large. It's the goto theme for the short of inspiration. Just for once I'd like to see a dev claim it's new project it going to be darker this time and then literally just swap all the white characters for black ones.

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