- YouTube
www.youtube.com
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

From the video description:

The Deepest Games are DUMB. How is it possible that this generation of game developers, who are clearly articulate and educated, be so obsessed with the idea of creating deep meaningful games, and yet consistently produce games that are shallow and automated? Also, why does it seem impossible for the depth of the games of the past to be re-created? There clearly isn’t any technological barrier, so what is the problem?

One of the major problems that I discuss in today’s video is the obsession modern developers have with making smart games and being perceived as these masters of human psychology and technology. Where this stems from is hard to know for sure, but there is clearly a trend of developers being able to find the areas of their game that contain the potential for depth, and then systematically eliminating them. Ironically a lot of these areas are labeled as “outdated” but what I think developers and reviewers really mean to say is dumb. No one would argue pixel art is outdated. No one would argue that Mario 3 and their favorite Super Nintendo games are outdated. What they mean is that these games are presenting the player true punishment and no smartly devised system to go around the punishment.

  • I Cast Fist
    3·
    2 days ago

    Kinda ok take, but with flaws, as comments on the video point out. Not every nerf or removal of checkmates is bad or reduces depth. Some fighting games had infinite combos, whether for every character or for specific ones (one commenter talks about Guilty Gear XX, I recall Marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2 had infinite combos). Losing a match because you got hit once is not fun, competitive or deep.
    Sierra adventure games of the 80s had invisible checkmates, situations where you’d miss something and only realize it was important much later, hardly something that’s missed by people

    Him complaining about the camera automatically following the player direction in God of War is a bit nitpicky. Automated quality of life, sure, but in PSX and PS2 era games, you’d just have to keep one button held down to achieve the same effect (lock-on like in Ocarina of Time or Mega Man Legends). I feel that he’d be the type to complain about the auto aim assist that console FPS games have had for decades, “Let players figure it out!”

    As for self playing games, they’ve been around for quite a while, just look at every korean MMORPG and any idle mobile game.

    I also want to bring attention to 2 comments from the video:

    extyr: I kinda get what you’re going for, but most people HATE speedrunning or playing competitively.
    Catering to this kind of extreme players can be its own poison. Overwatch showed it pretty clearly with it’s ever increasing focus on e-sport balance (at least before 2.0 came out, I dropped the game at that point).

    elseifgames19: Namely, the literal checkmate, creating points where the opposing players can do absolutely nothing, is frowned upon. Hell, in a lot of games the ability for players to directly interact is intentionally limited, each player spending most of their time looking at their own little board instead of primarily playing on a shared board.
    The reasoning I heard for this, though, was that board game designers realized that, for all the depth they try to put in their games, the experiences they make aren’t pure tests of skill. They are social events as well, a means of getting people sitting around a table and hanging out. Harsh checkmates and player elimination are obvious shows of skill, but they leave the table feeling shitty. It’s failed as a social experience.

    These come back to the point of infinite combos. Imagine if chess could be won on the opening move, as in, if you move like this and the opponent moves like that, it’s literally over right there and then. Would you bother playing it?