[Archael]

The video game industry has experienced a tremendous level of growth in the past few years. Video games and gaming related media are being marketed to and enjoyed by new segments of the population. And by new segments I mean people besides the stereotypical closet nerd with a computer science / art major and affinity to metal music and fantasy novels.

Everyone is a gamer now, even your mother.

As far as the industry is concerned, your little cousin playing Farmville is just as much of a gamer as you are. She is a new segment of gamer, as well as the hardcore gamer, and the people who play apps on their mobile phones to kill spare time are another. They are being intelligently targeted by companies and developers, though not with the same kind of game or gameplay. You might not agree that FarmVille is a real game, but business strategies like FarmVille and it's developer Zinga have undeniably helped the industry grow. They have helped gaming and the psychology behind it become a part of our culture.


To reach these new segments, game developers and marketers have used several tactics. One of the more obvious ones is the "dumbing down" of the skill curves required to play a game properly. Not everyone is a "hardcore gamer" willing to burn days in front of the computer, and the people responsible for creating games are aware of this. Hardcore gamers have fun with games that are very challenging, but if there's proportionately less games like that being produced,

What is a hardcore gamer to do? You add your own Challenge to the game! There's several ways to do this, but there's two specific ones we're going to be discussing here. The first one is altering the game yourself to make it more difficult and challenging. The second is to create rules for yourself that will make the game challenge you in new ways. This form of rule-bending is called a "Challenge", where you challenge yourself to complete the game under a new, player-made set of rules.

This concept is very popular in all genres of games, and there's several ways to do it:


Speed Run
An attempt to finish a game from start to finish in the fastest time possible, using any means necessary to speed things up.
There's entire communities and websites dedicated to documenting these and checking their validity, such as Speed Demos Archive:






Artificial Rules
Beating a game while also limiting the options available to the player, such as not using a set of abilities or never accessing a game-play feature.


A Priest Single Class Challenge in Final Fantasy Tactics.
Only the abilities of the "Priest" job are allowed in this challenge.
Screenshot added by Zaen




Modification (Mod)
Beating a game that has had it's game-play mechanics altered to be more challenging or to provide more complex game-play.


Median XL by BrotherLaz. A very successful Mod of Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction by Blizzard Entertainment.






Independent Games
Some independent, home-brew games are made to be exceedingly difficult.
Some of them are direct responses to the increasing number of easy to play games in the game market.



I Wanna Be The Guy, a VERY popular and VERY difficult Independent Game made by Kayin.
It is often criticized of being challenging in unfair ways.






Gaming challenges can help bring a certain feeling of accomplishment for those who are extremely passionate about games. They can also breathe new life into video games of the past, or games which have lore and writing you love but possess a less than desireable level of challenge. Gaming challenges let gamers take an active part in creating user experiences for themselves and the rest of the world.

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[FFTA]

Good article.

And yeah, I wish my mom was a gamer, lol.

[Archael]

She probably is!

Doesn't she have apps on her phone? Or on her Facebook?

[Efrate]

Since the market of "casual gamers" is so large, I feel that it will negatively affect the industry as a whole. With more AAA developers trying to make more money, they want to tap into that market, which leads to a overall dumbing down on games. I read somewhere that more people play farmville than play WOW, and thats saying something. We've come a long way as an industry since the 80s, but the overall trend has been to make gaming more accessible meaning to draw people in things become easier and easier.

I think we are at a time of great importance in gaming right now. With games being able to be recognized as art by US national Endowment for the Arts., means we have a golden opportunity for massive growth in varying directions right now. The ability for smaller developers to get up to 200k to help with making a game provided it is of benefit to the community gives a lot of smaller developers a great incentive to start there, get their feet under then, and then once they do so be able to branch out from there.

As more hardcore gamers though, we are a fairly niche market, and though series like SMT and such do cater towards us, its not often. Part of the problem I think lies with sales of games in which difficulty is a fairly central part, IE strategy. For all the non-starcraft strategy games out there, very little are popular enough to have big numbers, and these are the types of games IMO which most easily give one difficulty. Being forced to make decisions manage your resources, and other stuff is mostly secondary in other genres, but them being a key component of strategy games is one of the reasons you can find a lot of comaparitive difficulty.

Sadly, one of the golden avenues of that, the turn based strategy, pretty much died on the PSX. All the Civilizations and whatnot, are more about world building than difficulty. It is present in a fashion, but the turn based strategy genre seems more designed to take advantage of difficulty than most others. Maybe it just my inner fanboy talking, but those are my thoughts.

[Archael]

Yes Efrate, agreed on all counts

[Darkvalkyr]

My mom used to be a gamer with dad on the sega master system and NES. those were the days. <3

I'm glad gaming's getting closer to be modern culture instead of 'Blah Jack Thompson Blah GTA Blah Parents not watching kids blah".

A lot of games is a handy learning tool as well, contrary to what people think - developing skills that are highly applicable in real life. A story in a game can be just as much substance as a Shaksperean play depending on how the plot's made - you can read it as it is or analyze deeper into it - won't work for all games of course, but some have very intriguing lessons and hidden meanings, like any work of art. A game on the more technical side can teach management, leadership, and reflexes as well as far more things - it's not the same as real life to be fair, but it sets a nice base. Believe it or not, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 was a HARD, PAINFUL game to actually succeed - and it's fairly open too, you could actually inflict self pain on challenges and whatnot - or design scenarios for people to play through.

As far as the article's concerned - it is kinda concerning that Farmville's more wanted than WoW - but hey, many %-age based accounts of proportion are skewed because you don't know exact numbers. Just because more people want to play Farmville than WoW doesn't mean that those people playing Farmville would play WoW should Farmville magically vanish. Those people might not even be true gamers.

[Archael]

I think they'd move on to Zinga's competitors in a heartbeat

FarmVille isn't the only large scale game using Social Networks as a platform

In a way, Facebook is a console now

[Darkvalkyr]

Just used Farmville as an example to illustrate my point - probably should just replace all instances of 'Farmville' with Facebook Console Games.

I can't believe I just typed those three words in a sentence.

Brb, gonna stab self

[Archael]

pretty sad isn't it?

[Efrate]

I think my mom played duck hunt one with me...thats as far gaming as my dinosaur parents got into.

[Archael]

My mother plays tons of games on her smartphone, and some on FB too

[Efrate]

My mom doesn't even know how to turn on a PC let alone use the net. Oh well.

[AltimaMantoid]

My parents never understood gaming until my dad hooked up my brother's X-Box and started playing. He finally realized just how easy it is to lose track of time. My mother on the other hand, started playing Angry Birds. She still doesn't fully understand, though. But yes, the gaming industry has been producing easier and easier titles as time has gone on.

There is also the fact to consider that if you play a game enough, you get used to certain mechanics or you start expecting things in sequence, thus making the game easier with time. You can only play a game so many times before you come to learn the ins and outs of them and can begin manipulating things in said game to your advantage. It's why I speedrun Doom and started doing a ridiculous challenge run of the Mega Man series of no damage, Buster only, no miss.

Also, very well written article, Archael. You explain things so well.

[Archael]

Thanks

you should post your Speed Runs here