How modern gaming has made us into wimpy gamers

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm really afraid it is a fad, partly because the wii and this casual market overall is relatively inexpensive, it's easier to get out of it. I honestly can't see this same trend continuing years down the road, maybe cell phone games as our technology catches up with Japan, but not in the console/handheld (ds/psp stuff) world. And when they do move on to the next thing, there's going to be a huge infrastructure with no one to sell to, it's not going to be pretty. "hardcore" gamers will be fine, because we have so much freeware and existing titles to catch up on, but it might take companies a little while to get back to making titles again.

Actually, a crash would be a great thing, because everything up to and including next gen consoles and games would be so cheap, we'd be able to build up our collections relatively inexpensively. Gamers of the world, unite!

You are much more optimistic about this than I am.

My only real problem with the idea of another industry crash is the realization that the gaming economy is not exactly stable as it is. We've seen some major third party companies enter into some mergers and buy outs in the last few years. Hell Square had to merge due to one bad movie at a time when it was king of the gaming industry so a total crash may see the end for alot of major developers. Not to mention that some developers are forsaking their fanbase in favor of the new super casual market *cough* Nintendo *cough* and so fan loyalty is not where it used to be.

If the industry crashed, I see a lot of third party developers being bought out by corporate powerhouses like Sony, Microsoft, and EA. We would also see some massive takeovers and mergers that makes the ones from a few years ago seem trivial. It may even take awhile for a stable business model to go into practice. The gaming crash happened in 83 but I feel most people would agree that gaming didn't really start to recover until the early 90's.

I might disagree with a few of you here, but that might be because we have a different view on gaming.

I usually play FF, TES or HP-games, and I play them to immense myself in the world and to enjoy a good story. Those are the main reasons I play games. I don't want them too difficult, simply because the challenge bit is not a major factor in why I play games.

So I guess this depends on at least two major factors - a) why you play games and b) what kind of games you play

I don't think its so much what games you play as much as the why. I actually play a large number of RPGs in comparison to other genres and I am all for increased difficulty. I do play the genre for story but I still recognize the genre as a game and I expect it to fulfill certain needs.

On the other hand, there are people like yourself who play the genre solely for story and the idea of making the game difficult may harm the flow of the plot. I personally cannot fathom this course of thinking (going back to my analogy of playing a sport with friends for company) but I feel that most would agree that a difficulty setting would allow us both to enjoy our games for our specific purposes.

I do feel that the shift to a strong narrative and storytelling aspects is a prime culprit in why gaming has become much easier in recent years but there are certain titles that fulfill both needs. MGS for instance offers an amazing story and some awesome challenges.