We all want to think when we find something that we like that it is ours. that its a part of our unique ans special selves.. and when it changes to something we dont like as much, we feel hurt about it.
So we slap a "this is dumbed down" tag on it for doing so. This allows us to keep pur fond memeories of the former itteration in tact without having to come to terms with the fact that we are indeed a part of "the masses" from the start.
This is why i dont get all upset about franchises changing directions.. I started out on an intellivion for a console and DOS text adventures on PC, going to what we have now.. every facet of gaming has changed and will continue to.
you must change with the times to stay afloat. a new direction doesnt have to be seen as bad, unless you make it personal.
For every abuse of the phrase "dumbed down" I see, there's someone scoffing at its use at all in order to reject anything that criticizes their preferred game. It goes both way, and arguing the term doesn't get anywhere. That a "mainstream" exists is relatively undeniable, though it's not a clearly defined, concrete group anyone can separate out from the rest. It's just the blurry notion of what's popular, which companies will reach for in order to sell more. No one is arguing that the industry hasn't changed constantly from the start, and of course every new direction isn't bad. It's not about all change being bad. It's about the inevitability of it; one person's preferences are not likely to change dramatically, but the direction of games will always be changing, chasing around that popular ideal. Eventually the later games in a series will be fundamentally different from the "type" of game they were to start. Not just dumbed down or evolved or whatever other buzzwords people will apply, but just plain different. Because people are always going to have their own preferences between two different things, it is also inevitable that eventually, you are going to like what the games changed into less than you liked what they were before. This is especially the case for your earliest games, since it's the factors that first drew people into gaming in the first place, now being compared to things that have moved away from whatever those factors were.
Since this process is gradual over the course of years, it's not like people can just alternate which sequels they like. Instead, they view it as a gradual decline over years, as games move further and further from what they first liked about games. In its way, "appealing to the masses" does eventually "ruin" every game series, because that gameplay is static and the elusive mainstream will inevitably drift away from it. It's not about a fear of change or clinging to nostalgia (it is for some more than others, of course), but that's just the way it is. People aren't wrong to complain about it, because what's a more basic thing to complain over than something you like being taken away? That's life for you. A group of people will be screwed over by changing times, they'll gripe about it, the next group will give them a hard time for living in the past, and then they will gripe when the mainstream high leaves
them behind.
» Sun May 29, 2011 2:37 am 
And the return of Donut :rofl: 
