» Fri Jul 13, 2012 2:29 pm -------------------------------------
Instant gratification is not a new thing, it's existed since human's have existed. All animals are biologically attuned to work and pleasure that comes with it the reward. Instant gratification in video games is not a new subject either, however, it is what is influencing the industry and a new environment of gamers. An example of a game that rewards instant gratification is a vastly popular game that everyone has heard of. Angry Birds, it's a game that you pick up and you can easily begin to get the reward without working towards the reward.
But I cannot just blame this problem on games alone. There is a new home environment as well. I grew up in a home, if something was hard I would spend hours trying to figure it out. If I played a game and it was hard I had to figure it out myself. My parents were not the type to say, "That's to hard, okay go do something else". Instead they would say, "That's to hard, I'm not giving you the answer, figure it out." It pushed me in my gaming and in my eductaion as well to figure things out. But I see a new breed of parenting style. I babysit, so I see some interesting things from time to time. One of the kids, J I'll call him for the story, I babysit cannot sit still for more than five minutes.
I remember one day coming over to spend time with J and his younger brother, let's call him M, his mother was getting ready to go to an important meeting. But it appeared that J was having some difficulty with a game, he was getting rather agitated and his mother was busying around the place. He finally tells his mom he cannot figure this out, he's desperate for answers, and she says, "Go do something else." Instead of allowing him to figure something out, she basically allowed him to give up. I also note that J prefers games like Angry Birds, which instantly give a reward.
For me, I take these new environments both industry built and one of an external model to what has happened to Skyrim. All though I do agree that Skyrim is the better of the RPGs out right now and I would much prefer to play Skyrim right now, I do also believe Skyrim is or had been influenced by this new environment. My first Elder Scrolls game was Oblivion and then Morrowind. My big brother had bought Morrowind, but I had only seen Oblivion on the television and I became mildly curious. I played it and fell in love. Now I'm not saying Oblivion was perfect, that isn't my argument. I am trying to say that Oblivion directly appealed to me because it was a game developed on working towards something in order to get a reward.
I have always enjoyed RPGs because they never appealed to the instant gratification. What people called, spreadsheets, dice roll, and to much work I called fun, and it made everything you did more satisfying in the end. The work was the struggle to figure out a puzzle or beat the difficult boss, and then you got the reward at the end of it. Skyrim, I think still has a little bit of this, but you can easily see the tipping point. That the next game could go either way. It could either slide back into a proportionate RPG or it can go further down the rabbit hole of these new industry.
But there is a problem with that. This new industry, this new environment of instant reward won't last. Angry Birds is a bit of a fad right now, but fads come and go. Not saying that they shouldn't built games for non gamers, but they shouldn't rely on the side of the spectrum as their main point of income. Have them in mind, and build a game that is balanced for all.
Even still the problem isn't simply instant gratification in gaming. It's the education as well of the players. I have seen this in the book industry, it's my dream to one day become a writer and an author. But I'm slowly beginning to the see industry I want to get into, becoming a pool of slosh. Again I can only speak from my experiences, I'm slowly beginning to realize that I have a better education than children do in this generation and age. When I was in fourth grade, while all the other children were on beginner novels, still with pictures, I began to read things like Goosebumps, I even discovered Homer and Edgar Allan Poe. Those were my influences to become a writer, especially a horror writer. I wanted to write educated books, intelligent, that made people think. And now I see things like Twilight and even Harry Potter [and I read both. Twilight was as bad of writing as you can get. Harry Potter was a guilty pleasure]. The level of books is beginning to lower and yet you still look at the statisitics and many children still cannot read well.
The lowering of our education standards means people won't understand complex ideas. We're not teaching people the fundamental tools they need. Critical thinking, anolytical thinking. We're not teaching people to understand, we're simply teaching them to test. And how can the video game industry make a higher educated game if half of their consumers are not at a higher education level? The answer is they can't. They can try. But if they want to survive, they have to lower themselves to the lowest common denominator.
I admire games like the Witcher 2 for going outside of the LCD. It was a rich, intelligent game. Well written story, it played like a classical RPG. Which is really hard to do in this new environment of gaming. Witcher 2 treats it's players as if they were mature advlts and that won't appeal to the twelve years and the thirteen years old. But I also feel that if the Witcher is going to continue doing well, it will have to lower it standards some point in order to make a living in this industry.
Now I want to make another comment, I'm not saying anyone is dumb nor am I instigating a fight here. I'm simply stating what I have observed over the years. Part of this is experience in the book industry, a lot of books are rejected because they don't appeal to the mainstream. And I know the two reasons behind it, one the publisher doesn't know me and doesn't know if a complicated book will do well in the market by a nobody in the author world. And two the lowering level of books. And my second experience comes from where I volunteer. I volunteer for a science education program, whom teach children the fundaments of science. Nearly half of the children where I am living are not getting proper education in science or even proper education in any subject. Art is dying. Sports is becoming successful. What a great disservice we are doing to this world by putting children in this kind of stupor, but I digress.
We need to start considering the way we want to go in the future of the gaming industry; in the future of the TES series.
