@Reuwsaat: You went straight from being extremely condescending with "edge-lord" and "top fat-ass" to an "I'm not judging those" cover up. Nice try, but you're still being condescending towards video game hobbyists - a strange feat on a gaming site.
My brother and I both work full time and he is a PhD student on top of that, and if anything, it means that I want to stay away from this type of game design even more. Getting better at games is not an RPG where you level up with grinding, doing the same thing over and over, but it's about how you spend your time playing; are you actually paying attention to the game? -- or are you just doing the same thing over and over without learning everything and getting frustrated when it doesn't work? The latter players, which David Sirlin identifies as the "scrub" in his book on game design, Playing to Win, are less inclined to enjoy *any* video game; and for that matter, have less weight in their opinion on video games since they don't actually pay attention to how the games work.
This applies to many genres of games. I am amazed at the prevalence of this mindset and how people see even 1 credit complete shoot em up (shmup) replays and think "LOL YOU HAVE NO LIFE" when shmup players really typically spend about a half hour practicing and pay close attention.
On top of all of this, the other game developers that add randomness and luck to their games get rightfully criticized by their communities. Why is it ok for Nintendo to do this?
Nintendo takes the skill out of their games to make it so it is fun to people who don't like video games or the thought of actually practicing to get good at them.
Seriously, the only people who I have met who sing praises about games like these are people who don't play video games in general and only have the latest Nintendo console with the usual "party games". I suspect the same for this Bowman figure - he doesn't actually play video games.
Just the way this article closes says it all about what fighting game players have long identified as the "scrub" mentality. Adams writes that these game design aspects "give players of different skill levels a chance to compete--all of which place more emphasis on the "fun" and not the "win."" People who get stressed out at anything that requires any bit of effort will never have fun to begin with.
There's a very damn good reason that older fighting games, which had no comeback mechanics or a way to reward you for losing, are still played widely today. Games like Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Third Strike, and other old school SNK fighting games are the opposite of this luck trend and are still played by many even today. They just don't get front page articles on Gamespot.
Kojima kind of doesn't make sense here, because what he depicts in Metal Gear Solid is arguably more terrifying than Silent Hills: massive hyper-mobile war machines that house nuclear weapons; cyborg modified, bloodthirsty, once child soldiers, people who have had their lives consist of nothing but war, and much more. This is not bad; because his storytelling and the horror he depicts from war actually enhances the experience of his games and makes them more gut-wrenching when they are supposed to be, and that is part of what makes his games done so well. I think that he is totally capable of making another Guillermo del Toro for another game. This is just kind of a confused thing to say after making Metal Gear.
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