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Comment by okasaki | Hacker News Reader

I've done this analysis for games. My theory was that the correlation was falling because the ratings of old games were dominated by players playing old games now and then rating them, and they were more likely to play games for which there is already a consensus that they are good (old bad games are mostly just forgotten). Whereas for current games the games being played are more random.

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also consider the fact that you might have a 40 year old reviewing videogames when the target audience is like 4 years old. my kid and the typical video game reviewer probably have different opinions about the latest paw patrol game.

I sometimes hear this, but I disagree.

If you're 40 years old, you need to be able to consume any kind of media and then place yourself into the mindset of a younger person and judge it from that mindset - because you used to be that younger person.

Truly exceptional media is good enough to transcend the age barrier and is enjoyable for everyone, e.g., The Incredibles is enjoyable for young kids because it's a cartoon and it's flashy and exciting, it's enjoyable for young boys who want to be the "best" at a sport, it's enjoyable for girls transitioning to puberty because of Violet's storyline, it's enjoyable for men who have lost some of their steam and can relate to Mr. Incredible, and it's enjoyable for women because of the struggles Elastigirl has as a mother and a homemaker. Even Syndrome is shown as a sympathetic villain who is evil not because he is a bad person, but because he was dismissed and ignored by his idol. There are plenty of people who can relate to that.

Ghostbusters (1984) is another expertly crafted movie that is fun for kids, but well-written enough to be incredibly enjoyable for adults.

When my young cousins or my nephew corral me into playing a game with them, I'm not playing it from my 41-year old perspective, I'm playing it through their eyes.

If you can't do that, then don't review content. Content always has a specific audience. Really great content can weave together enough bits to at least satisfy every audience. Exceptional content manages to speak deeply to every audience. I still feel that's why The Incredibles is one of the best movies ever made. The struggles shown in that movie are relatable for every single person on the planet.

The funny thing is that games used to be FAR more punishing than they are today. Give an 8 year old (or hell, a 16 year old for that matter) Super Mario Bros. Watch their reaction when they get to World 1-3 or something and then lose all of their lives and realize that the game doesn't care, they have to start ALL the way from the beginning. Compare that to Elden Ring, which has difficult boss fights but otherwise isn't any harder than any level of one of those old games.

I recall as a small child ordering Castlevania from the Sears catalog and having to wait many weeks for it to arrive. It would certainly be many more weeks before I would get any other game to play and there were a few other distractions.

>Compare that to Elden Ring, which has difficult boss fights but otherwise isn't any harder than any level of one of those old games.

I haven't played Elden, but for comparison's sake, I haven't had any trouble picking up SMB3 blind nor did I find any of the levels individually more difficult than most high rank monsters in Monster Hunter Rise. SMB1 definitely isn't a difficult game either bar a few specific levels, 8-3 being the most notorious.

The biggest thing I see people struggle with is patient, reactive and/or predictive gameplay. Any game with counter mechanics relying on tight windows showcases this: most people either fail to utilize them or simply don't bother. Let alone emergent counterplay. The other part, you can't just statstick your game through most older non-RPGs, where newer games provide you with many more methods to allow more failure.

I don't think Super Mario Bros was ever considered particularly difficult or punishing at the time. It was just designed for an audience that had less access to videogames. They'd rather repeat the same levels with the prospect of seeing a new one than breeze through the game they paid $25 for ($60 in today's money) in 2 hours.

It wasn't punishing for the time. That's not my point. My point is that being able to save games so that you don't have to replay hard content when you fail has made it so easy for the current generation of gamers that there are a lot who bemoan games that really aren't that hard comparatively. In Elden Ring, you only have to beat each boss once, and you have a save point right nearby to fight the boss without fighting almost anything else beforehand, so if you die, you're right back into it. In SMB, If you struggle on level 7-3 and then die on level 8-3, you start back at 1-1 and have to master them both again (provided you don't warp).

Most early console games had a heritage from arcades, which made more money if it was difficult but teased the chance of progress. So higher difficulty was more profitable, then when ported to console or when the same game designer designed for console it inhereted some of that. It was also more niche to be a gamer then, and those who did leaned more hardcore.

Difficulty was also a way to make a game take long to finish without taking too much storage (and/or time to create levels and art assets).

Plus, considerations for things like, can my 4-year-old decipher the controls to achieve what is achievable in the game without excessive frustration? Is the story entertaining enough to keep a kid engaged commensurate with it's cost? Is the game age appropriate? Does the kid talk about the game after having played it? Does it provide food for thought or conversation at all? What are the chances my child will remember this game fondly as they grow?

All of these things and more are the kinds of things that a 40 year old should consider in their review of a game, especially considering that a 16-25 year old game reviewer might miss on them in favor of other aesthetics.

> Ghostbusters (1984) is another expertly crafted movie that is fun for kids, but well-written enough to be incredibly enjoyable for adults.

When you get right down to it, it’s a movie about exterminators—not exactly fun-for-kids fare. And yet…

Another part of that is that it seems like critics play a lot more games than the average consumer (or, at least, me) does and may get burnt out easier.

Most reviewers I watched heading into Horizon: Forbidden West said that it was just "more of the same". But I didn't play the most recent Far Cry or Assassin's Creed or whatever else they were comparing to. It was fresher for me playing though it than it was for them, constantly comparing.

I had a run of games a while back that were next to unplayable for the first 6 months while the bugs got ironed out and the patches got patched. Now I just wait 6 months or so (bonus - they're generally heavily discounted by then, haha) - if games critics are reviewing new releases but gamers reviews come in over the lifetime of the game, they're kind of reviewing two different products and it would make sense if critics' reviews were harsher.

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