Are Modern Games Being Dumbed Down?

What I want is some game developers from EA and Activision to sit in an open forum and answer these sorts of questions from an audience of people with various gaming preferences. These companies are the most guilty of streamlining/dumbing down games in my opinion. They are also the largest and seem to have the most corporate mentality. Having said that, just because they are large, and are in it for the money, does not necessarily mean they don't care. The gaming industry is huge, possibly larger than it has ever been, and with ever increasing investment in these companies, larger returns are necessary for the companies to stay viable. This does mean playing to the crowd to a degree. Unfortunately, the crowd can sometimes be kinda dumb.

I see a time in the near future where these companies are really going to have to rethink their business strategy and come up with a new model for development and marketing for their games. Tablets and digital downloads I feel is a bit of a tipping point on that. I don't know that I like the DLC model that has been growing for the last few years, but it shows they are thinking. Kickstarter is fantastic for those smaller companies playing to the smaller crowd, as long as they have loyal fans. Kingdom of Amalur should have used Kickstarter rather than taking out that huge loan. They might still be around if they had thought of it.   

Yes, games are more "dumbed down" especially when it comes to onscreen prompts. Games should have more interface options like Dishonored where you can turn off contextual prompts & waypoints. Do we still need an onscreen prompt telling us how to open a freaking door 5 hours into the game? Why do we always have to have an arrow telling us exactly where an quest/mission item is? Let us look around for it on our own. Batman Arkham City got very annoying with onscreen prompts, especially when countering.

what I want to see is more powerful systems so when we up the difficulty theirs more enemy's, unfortunately todays consoles are so old and archaic that's its just not possible to do. get rid of the old things, they have had there day.

what I want to see is more powerful systems so when we up the difficulty theirs more enemy's, unfortunately todays consoles are so old and archaic that's its just not possible to do. get rid of the filthy old things, they have had there day.

Do games require controllers? Wtf kind of question is this? YES. The overwhelming majority of all games in the past 15 years are completely brainless - difficulty due to bogus damage/health levels is not the same as difficulty due to incomprehensibility or complex puzzles.Dark/Demon Souls isn't hard due to complexity, it's hard due to damage and health amounts and due to the fact that the game literally drops you in and says, good luck not getting raped.

 i can't stand what difficult setting has turned into.  Now days all i see when i play all my games on the hardest is dieing more cheaply before u even has a chance, gotta get lucky or  just giving the AI insane health. 

What i want to see is more flanking, not  one line path ways, let us control where we go in areas more,  AI gets  smarter not  insane heath and cheap crap

Since this was a question, here is MY answer. Yes, games in general are being dumbed down for two reasons. First, there is this nostalgia these days for those old "platformers" from the old Atari, Nintendo and Saga days. Nostalgia is fine but look at what we had back then. It was not complicated because the devices these things ran on were not CAPABLE. PCs were not capable. That is not to say that there were not some great titles (at least for PC) back then. And for the capability of those early consoles, those were fine games. However, today's consoles and today PCs are much more capable of providing a deeper experience with MORE to that experience. But, developers are now thinking "quick buck" and WE do not get what we should.

Frankly, I am not buying into the "bring back Contra" type nostalgia crowd. I want new. I want challenging. Stop re-packaging what we have already passed by.

All we need is a way to configure our gaming experince.

A game control panel  with :

- auto balance world (on/off)

- class system (on/off you choose your points)

- savegames 1,2,3,4, unlimited , everytime or at control point

- human needs on/off /if on you need to drink , eat, sleep and so on )

- AND SO ON

Just examples .. if developers understand this..... there would be no discussions.

yep board of these easy stuff, loving steam sales on old game i get a challenging more fun game for a fraction of the price of the AAA games, but actually get the challenge i want, 

who really want to watch a 9-16 hour action film, sod that.  

Very messy work to my taste - was this a report, a discussion, a complaint? Where is the side of the companies who ARE dumbing down the industry? Even Cliff Belzinski, creator of a series that you could actually feel the dumbing down of title by title was representing the "core" party that "hates" modern easier games.And how exactly are core gamers, who are no longer the majority of the people these games are meant for, supposed to vote with their dollars? How can we possibly compete with parents, grandparents, children getting allowance, COD and BF junkies, and random people saying "hey I like Diablo once I must be a core gamer!"?The only way we can keep gaming the way we like is keep the Indie market alive and not "vote" at all for mainstream. You want SMB 2? support the developers and buy more of their titles, cause all the giants in the industry are bullies that make indie nearly impossible to be profitable.Honestly, as a consumer, I am happy with where things are. I can wait for a major title like "Bioshock" or "Dishonored" to come along where I put my big bucks in, and for games I truly enjoy like Trine and Super Meat Boy, I am not required to pay that large amount of money, so I could spread my money around, get more games for a price that seems fair to me, and every once and while make a big purchase with titles that genuinely seem worth it (XCOM comes to mind from recent days).  

Also, another way of looking at it is, years ago when gaming was niche, there was a certain number of hardcore games, there are still that same number of hardcore games (or even more), however the EXPANSION of the gaming industry has been into more dumbed down games. COD is a prime example - the biggest franchise on the planet, and yet it dumbed down to the max. Personally I welcome the demographic the Wii and iPhone have brought, I don't see it as detracting from gaming as a medium, but adding to it, albeit in a way that I don't want to play, I still get Bioshock, Dishonored, Max Payne, Skyrim, the Witcher, Demon Souls. And yes, I'm sure there's an argument for some dumbing down in each of them, but also they're damn good fun. My conclusion - the argument that gaming AS A WHOLE is dumbed down is utterly untrue, but the article is sparking a good debate.

gamers from this era.....love SKYRIM,people from previous era love dark souls

and games like half life,bioshock,fallout 2,diablo 1/2,vampire the masquerade bloodlines,legacy of kain,godhand,castlevania symphony of the night,comix zone,contra hard cops.....these all games have one common thing GAMEPLAY and people who play these games doesn't give a rat's ass about anything else but nowdays they are massively making new hardware and there is no implementation of it thus they make games just for selling the hardware they are making and people nowadays just love shiny shit and worst thing is they are happy about it like they are gonna install a game and compare with other friends that they got the best fps on crysis,cod(yes they exist)...shit like that.if there is any hope for pc gamers,it will be japan....the only people who make games for fans not only for money....pc industries are being purchased by publishers and there are very few good pc games companies.the only good thing which has come to pc nowadays are indie game makers..like kickstarter...the only company that is making some good games is ubisoft(although ac series sucks after the first,but farcry 3 looks awesome) there are others but they are facing many problems like budget...etc.for example S.T.A..L.K.E.R 2....sorry for my bad english

If we want good games for our dollar then let yourself be heard. I like difficult, easy, and in the middle difficult games. I do I agree every game in every genre is getting dumbed down, not just in difficulty but story as well. When we pay $60 or more for a video game we expect we are getting more for our dollar but it it the opposite. I'm more into the gameplay of a video game because what is the point of paying $60 for a video game and all you get is a half complete game and all your paying is the story and graphics and they sell the other half of the game as DLC's especially having to pay $10 for an online pass on the consoles store which is 100% bulls**t, I understand these companies need to make money but milking our wallets is one of the reasons we are being pushed away from DLC's, I understand paying $0.99 to $5.00 for an DLC on the PS Store EA/Bioware are still charging $39.99 for a 12hr DLC. I don't mean to get off track, I haven't bought many games for this generation of consoles is because they are broken, half complete, or stripped of all the stuff that made the previous game worth playing I understand trying something new but they need to quit stripping the fun/awesome stuff out. The stories in some of these games are just stupid beyond understandable when we play video games that got a story that is worth not skipping it has to make sense and not all other place like Saints Row: The Turd I'm sure everyone can understand where I'm going with this video games is just another way for a greedy little monkey to get rich by selling dumbed down games.

I think one of the absolute worst side-effects of dumbing down games is that gamers slowly lose their gameplaying skills over time because of this. I noticed this in myself as well. Last gen, with the og Xbox, I was playing loads of great triple A games. Then the the first Ninja Gaiden comes along to show me just how out of practice my skills had become. After realizing Ninja Gaiden was the path I was looking for to put my skills to the test, I was eventually able to kill and maim my way through the game with the artful precision necessary that only a skilled gamer could accomplish. 

My point is that we need, and want, games like Ninja Gaiden to put our skills to the test, to keep us primed for combat. Who knows whats around the next corner and if we'll be up to the challenge. Simple video games are more detrimental than just boring gameplay.

I know games (in the last ten years) have taken a more corporate style of development. What I mean by that is if your average pot head cant complete the game on the hardest difficulty then its to hard. I understand they want to make as much money as possible but, they are doing a dis-justice by dumb down the games. It really insults the real gamers, tbh all that the true gamer can hope for in this money driven world is that the game companies throw us a bone now and then and give us games like darksouls.

I feel like the option of making a game easier at points is better than just a straight difficulty without any deviation. I seriously cannot have a few beers and sit down to play dark souls because absolute concentration is needed and I end up wanting to throw my PC out the window. I'm not a casual gamer but there are times I use games to relax and get my mind off of school or work. It's a different story and time we are in then in the older days, where there was a single difficulty and single linear route on getting to the end. Even games like Super Mario were unforgiving, but that is imbued in the essence of how it was made and what you are trying to gain. Not all games pull this aura off successfully now.

Good games are the ones that make sure gamers are immersed in them and keep trying to reach the end, not the ones with low difficulty or the ones that are dumbed down...

Linear game design is the problem today. I doubt most gamers would care how hard or easy a game is as long as the game remains interesting and dynamic. Diablo 3 is the ideal example of how a spoon fed story, linear gameplay, and broken game difficulty can completely and utterly ruin a great game franchise.

People want fun innovative games which allow you to create or interpret your own experience.  Hidetaka Miyazaki articulated this brilliantly. 

My thoughts are that while there are more easy games out there, games themselves have not necessarily gotten "easier" in the simplest sense of the word. There are certainly more options for difficulty out there, as games rarely have a difficult (and DEFAULT) mode with no other options. Many games have a very easy "Normal" mode (which is likely called that because people find it emasculating to play on "easy", but those same games often have much more difficult modes as well.  The other important evolution is that the difficulty in games has often gotten more "fair" than it has been in the past. Games that have good difficult modes draw their difficulty from smart enemies and challenging situation- while many hard classic games are difficult because they either don't control very responsively, have very few checkpoints that are far apart, or limit the player's ability to experiment by giving you a limited number of lives/continues. Playing your first Halo game on legendary may be a bit of an exercise in trial and error, but no two encounters unfold exactly the same because of the dynamic AI, and you are never TOTALLY screwed by being barred from trying a segment again 

I hope GoW never dies

If I had been the person that I was three years ago, I would say "yes".

Now, I would say that this is up to the beholder, after having become wiser to know that everyone has a different, figurative cup of tea.

Anyone who says "yes" or "no" may want to consider whether they are being self-righteous, or just love having the opportunity to speak their opinions out loud and claim themselves as being "right" on the subject issue.

The short answer is: Yes.

Games today are being developed for a console, or at least a "console-like" experience, and at worst a "facebook-like" experience. Compare current X-Com vs. older versions. Compare Civ 5 vs. Civ 4. Skyrim vs. ES1 or 2.

Note to developers: Gamers that play PC games want a game scale suitable to a PC!!! Surprise!!! If we wanted a console scale game, we'll buy a console game. 

People aways say "Ah, Dark Souls is very hard!". No! It isn't, demon's souls was way more harder than dark souls (if one has not used mage as his class). I've done the first playthrough in less than 1 week. And even being easy there are a lot of noobs using bow backstab glitch (a hit kill glitch even with the worst bow of the game). Most of the people who say that dark souls is hard didn't even play the game.

You want a hard game? Go play The Elder Scrolls 1 or 2, it was so hard that ppl wasn't even able to finish the starting dungeon. 

The best solution I think is to be able to change dificulty. I remember the first time two dragons appeard in Skyrim. One was hard enough, but two? I tried a few times but it was imposible for my character at that moment, so I just went to the options menu, and lower the dificulty a little... a couple of tries more and they where dead. If I hadn't the posibility of changing the dificulty, I would probably stoped playing or something..

i wouldn't say they are dumbed down, just made less ridiculous for people with less time to spend on puzzle games....

at least the games Ive played never got hard enough with the exception of old Tomb-raider games (especially when u wanted to get all the secrets ). illd just never go for a puzzle game though, sometimes they just feel too boring...............and talking about boring, i think i have enough of it at work

I think Valve isn't dumbing down games. Diablo III was definitely watered down. Nintendo hasn't made a challenging videogame for a long long time, in fact I can't name any challenging videogames on the Wii at all! Fable III was another one that felt very dumbed down. That's not how I'd describe titles like Halo Reach or Battlefield 3. Although you're lead through all of the campaign and you never really have to think hard or master your skills to beat any given level in the campaigns, that's been consistent within both of those series. I would like to see developers hiding more secrets in their worlds though since the sense of discovery and reward of learning how to do something by yourself is highly gratifying.. If only there was a way to have both! haha

Dark Souls sold like 2m copies.  There is a market for hard games.

Games are definitely being dumbed down. Lazy devs, smartphones, and "addiction gamers" are to blame. Not very many companies make games for true gamers anymore.

??? ofcourse there dumbed down how is this a question? games were alot harder back in the day because they had to be. otherwise you could beat them in 5 minutes. you cant make a 10 - 11 hour game or games like MGS hard as hell or you it'd take you year to beat it and who the hell wants to do that.

The Witcher 2 was incredibly difficult on dark mode; and wasn't all that easy on default. The story also progressed in a way that really made both playthroughs different.

Honestly, games have been dumbing down for years.

Way before the wii even came out.

There is a difference between an entire game from the ground up being easy (that's called making an easy wide-demographic game) than a game that is supposed to be "hardcore" is actually really easy.

The wii is not to blame. Nintendo doesn't dumb down their "hardcore" games, they just make a lot of family games. Halo, however, implemented the regenerating health, but the game was still hard because of how far the checkpoints were in between.

Games now have soooo many checkpoints, regenerating health, and waaaay too many wannabe quick-time-events, that the game is like playing a an on the rails shooter that shoots for you and you don't have to aim.

Well, Diablo3 pissed me off because of the lame first difficulty level. As nightmare is pretty much the same game again with same powers, it loses any interest. Dark Souls was far too difficult and I wish I had not bought it. It is equally ridiculous to let a player go through lvl 1 50 times and not enjoying any change in gameplay or anything.