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Comment by ehmmm | Hacker News Reader

Those mechanics are way too subtle. Today, the player must be explicitly told how to overcome obstacles. Games have become mainstream and so did the target audience, this caused a push towards the lowest common denominator in game design.

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It could also be the case that game designers have gotten lazier, as the purpose of mainstream games shifts from challenging players to encouraging in-game purchases and DLC, and explicit tutorials take a lot less effort when all you really want to do is milk the casuals until they get bored and wander off to the next thing.

From the second paragraph:

"This analysis takes most of its material from the first playthrough of the game by my friend Rufus, which I had the pleasure of observing from beginning to end. Watching him, a complete newcomer to the genre, still find his way around Zebes in pretty much the same way I'd do, almost never once getting lost or stuck for any considerable amount of time, made me question how that could be. This analysis is my answer."

I presume this happened recently, with a gamer of "today".

Your logical fallacy is, drum roll... : Hasty generalization

Congratulations! You win nothing.

The popularity of the opaque and difficult Dark Souls/Bloodborne games proves that there is space for games that challenge the player.

What's different now than the era of Super Metroid is that there are vibrant communities where people can deeply discuss the mysteries of games and help fellow gamers discover how to move forward.

The key difference to this classic design style is that the Souls games don't really have the "invisible hand" guiding them in the right direction. It's almost the opposite.

Almost everyone who played Dark Souls probably has a story about heading in the wrong direction from the first hub world, and ending up in one of two locations that are almost impossible for a newbie (typically the skeletons) rather than the intended "slightly harder than the tutorial" area. The only thing that varies is how long they spent hopelessly beating their head against the wall before discovering the intended path.

In Bloodborne that's been replaced by half the players new to the series not realizing they can equip a weapon, and consequently spending hours trying to defeat the (rather tough) first enemy barehanded.

I absolutely adore the mental image of Dark Souls using its invisible hand to push players off of cliffs. :) It's a nifty demonstration of differing philosophies: Super Metroid wants to guide the player to minimize frustration, so that they get the satisfaction of non-linear exploration while avoiding the boredom that comes from fruitlessly trekking through the same place over and over and over and over again. Meanwhile, Dark Souls doesn't care a whit about frustration, and aims to give players a feeling of deserved triumph when they finally manage to surmount the previously insurmountable. I think there are room for games of both philosophies to exist, though they will surely appeal to different tastes.

People who want games like this have left that particular market. The players haven't changed, it the group that's willing to spend the most money that has.

I think one big difference is that we have the internet now, with wikis, Game FAQs, youtube walkthroughs, etc. I played Super Metroid using a walkthrough, and that completely breaks the illusion of exploration, because it's then clear to the player that the game is linear and there is always only one way you can go. (Metroid 1 holds up better in that situation, because it actually gives the player genuine choice about what order to do the different challenges).

The most popular game right now is probably Minecraft. Note how it exactly takes advantage of this environment: in order to have fun in it, you want to read tutorials about how to build various stuff.

there is such a wide variety of games available today that any sweeping statements like yours are by necessity untrue. but even if your thesis were correct, your conclusion is unsupported and honestly nothing more than insulting.

I don't necessarily agree with parent, but see Gran Turismo for a game that got a lot easier, with more content, as the series developed.

I'd love to see someone comparing the licence tests in each game.

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