Epic games design director points to drawbacks of accessibility
The current generation of games has focused its attention on widening their appeal at the expense of challenge and freedom, says Cliff Bleszinski.
Speaking to X360A, Epic's games design director highlighted the dangers of this attitude, and expressed his hopes to avoid these pitfalls in the upcoming Gears of War prequel.
“It feels like in this current console generation that we’ve taken a lot of steps to grow the audience and what I think’s happened is that the games have become more linear and easier, so it feels like a lot of quick-time-events,” said Bleszinski.
“The more I play games like that the more I turned off to them and just want to get back to systems interacting with systems, and get back to a game that, you know, when was the last time a game really challenged you and asked something of you, right?
"There’s a reason why Demon Souls and Dark Souls have taken off lately. It’s because they really require you actually try.”
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Bleszinski's comments come as the industry revs its engines for a run at pole position in the social and casual markets.
But his vision for Gears of War: Judgment is a return to the values that appeal to core gamers: challenge, and tactical freedom.
“Casual mode will still be casual, whatever, if you just want to see graphics and you don’t want to die, but every other mode will be hard in this game and you will die," said the designer.
“When I played this in 4-player co-op… I mean, I’ve been playing Gears since the beginning of the course and I really have to hunker down and focus, and if my buddies aren’t reviving me, and we aren’t working as a team, you’re going to die, and it’s okay to die a few times in a game to try some different strategies, the S3 respawn system provides unique challenges.”
To a player, tactical freedom turns a game into a unique experience.
“We then get some cool, ‘How did that combat scenario play out for you?’ ‘Oh, I used grenades against this one declassified challenge and then my buddy came in,’ which is interesting and cool, as opposed to, ‘I came around the same exact corner and saw the same exact plane crash, the same exact enemies, there’s nothing unique,’” said Bleszinski.
“If this game doesn’t make you sweat, we haven’t done our jobs.”
*highlighted, dangers, pole position, judgment (it's American). Pretty flawed article.
Either way, the Gears of War games are pretty easy as well, and the harder difficulties are just more frustrating, not pleasantly harder. The AI doesn't get better, they just get more health while you get less. Hell, Epic's published game Infinity Blade can be finished in 20 minutes.
But if I paid to see a movie and it stopped every ten minutes while I solved some devious puzzle, I doubt my enjoyment would be increased.
@Wolfos,
Infinity Blade is meant to be a continual progression of fighting, dying, and rebirths on your path to defeating the God King. You'll unlock additional areas and opponents as you level up.
In addition, Chair continued to add new content (opponents, weapons, armor, areas, and modes) to it long after its initial release, and have followed the same path with Infinity Blade II.
It is a bit of a slog after a while, and the difficulty ratchets up significantly once you defeat the perceived "enemy" at game's end.
He has played the games he's been making right? GoW are the exact sort of games he's making fun of.
I'm glad that cliffy has taken this stance within the games industry, you're right he is making fun of the games he has made in the past. But each title has it's own goals, it's own triumphs and failures. As a studio if they want to head down a more hardcore route then i think there is an audience who is willing to support them for that.
I never liked this guy, and now its pretty obvious why, hes a d-bag. While its funny he makes the games he himself seems to look down on.. and I can agree games these days are too short and non involved, its a matter of perspective on difficulty. For alot of people it adds nothing to the experience. If I fight a common orc thats as difficult as a dragon, its stupid. Make games smarter not harder, throwing globs of hp on mobs only makes things more tedious instead work on better AI and add more puzzle solving into gaming like you'd find in an adventure game.
Harder shouldnt mean you need better reflexes, thats just silly. Harder should mean you need to use your brain.
I'm turned off by ANY game that has a boss battle just for the sake of it which only has the goal of the character wearing down the boss's health and enduring until the point they hit '0'. This was in Mass Effect 3 and completely broke the enjoyment of the game for me and just became frustrating.
Cliffy is a d-bag. lol
Accessibility means catering for disabilities, which is very different to the content of this post. It is standard terminology used across all industries and in international conventions. If you ask for an accessible hotel room you will not be given one that is 'easy', you will be given one with a hand rail in the shower and enough room to turn a wheelchair.
Just google 'game accessibility' and see what comes up.
In the context of what Cliff Bleszinski is talking about, I don't think he's talking about accessibility in terms of catering to the differently abled, he's referring strictly to the watering-down of hardcore games to cater to a broader market/audience who are not hardcore gamers.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be complaining about 'quick-time-events', because those actually require quick hand-eye coordination and reflexes, but they're annoying as hell (at least, I think so).
There's nothing worse than dying/losing/having to re-watch the same cut-scene over and over again prior to the beginning of some annoying QTE, which is just a glorified game of 'Simon Says'. ;P
If I die in a game, I want it to be because I did something stupid and didn't have a sound strategy or good use of tactics, not because I failed to press A, B, X or Y when the game told me to. More to the point, I think it breaks the suspension of disbelief of the gamer and takes them out of the game entirely, because whereas usually while in the game, you are using the buttons/controls at your disposal as an extension of your avatar's body and abilities onscreen (or in the case of FPS, it's a literal first person POV so you have to see those controls as extensions of your _own_ body), being subjected to Q-T-Es suddenly remind you that you're just playing a game and pressing buttons on a controller.
In terms of greater accessibility for the differently abled, I think more games need to take such things to account. A prime example of what _not_ to do is something like Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer's Geth Hunter mode which makes the screen incredibly hard to see even for people who can see perfectly fine, but much worse for people with visual impairment. There are also a lot of games where the challenges facing the differently abled preclude their possibility of playing those games entirely, which is disappointing considering there are so many whose challenges often leave them unable to leave the house, and gaming may be one of their few outlets for social interaction.
