I'm afraid I was quite serious (though I can understand how you came to misinterpret me). :)

Realism in games is kind of tricky and rarely too much fun. I once got kicked with a round house -ish kick, and it took me 3 hours to get up after that, longer than that to be able to walk again. I'd imagine getting shot is worse than that, so realism would make for some really boring gameplay. The newer health systems aren't really any better in terms of realism, actually I'm fairly certain they're using the same integer health value system but just don't show it to the player, so it's more about preferences.

Though, I guess realism has many meanings nowadays and with games it's a stylistic school or something, so in that regard it's definitely more realistic with the screen turning red and all that.

unfortunately this doesn't surprise me look at Assassin's Creed 2? or was it Brotherhood? either way were basically there. For clarification purposes I'm talking about the need to be online all the time. still reading the article thanks for the post!

I think he makes some good points (I've been basically touting points 5 and 4 for years). But crying that PC gaming is dead is over the top. As others have said, if the big AAA game makers are stuck in creative ruts due to the high costs of development, there are always going to be smaller outfits that will create games I want to play. Indie developers are the future for PC gaming, as far as I'm concerned.

that is why I love GOG

Enormous gun models that fill most of the screen are mockable and often take away from the experience. I like a nice clean crosshair most of the time. Sometimes the gunsight is nice for immersion, like in Dark Corners of the Earth.

Most of the other arguments in the article were legitimate, although calling them the death of PC gaming is a stretch. I've passed on buying a bunch of top games because of the latest login requirements.

That was really completely brilliant, thanks for the link.

The last point is something I have talked about often. What is a "gamer?" People act like I'm stupid for not having a console because I am a gamer, and gamers should want to play more games. Does that apply to my wife though, who just plays Peggle and Lumines or phone games? Is she a "gamer" who thus should be playing Fallout and Duke Nukem?

The term "gamer" is waaaayyyy to broad, and I think the industry suffers from trying to cram everyone who has touched a video game into the same target market. There was just a quote the other day from Bioware about making Mass Effect more appealing to casual gamers and all that stuff... those people do not want to play Mass Effect and it has nothing to do with the controls. It's so frustrating to see them beat themselves up over trying to appeal to people with nuances when those people don't want the core product. Meanwhile they're just pissing off their customer base.

I like singleplayer PC RPGs, shooters and adventure games. I might stretch out a bit for a racing, strategy or hack n' slash game here and there, but that's it. Am I a "gamer" in general? Is my wife? Where does the line get drawn? How hard are you going to try and get me to pay for a multiplayer game when I have been staunchly singleplayer for 20+ years? How hard are you going to try and get my wife to play Mass Effect when she has absolutely no interest in doing so?

Gamer is someone who participates in the game related subcultures. It's the definition I use.

You play a few games. Whatever. You play a few games, then go to a website dedicated to those games to discuss them, then you're a gamer.

I think the term "gamer" doesn't mean a lot. Just like I would be called a "reader" because I read books.

Thanks for the link. It was interesting.

Obviously, the watering down of gameplay (both in complexity and difficulty) and the advance of semi-interactive services like Kenect, Wii, and PSMove is a trend that has been happening for a while. More disconcerting to me is the rise of highly restrictive DRM, manipulative ways of discouraging resale value, and the rise of the legal theft that is at-lauch DLC. Right now, I can see games becoming 60 dollar shells for which one buys 5-10 dollar add-ons that were, in fact, developed parallel to the actual games during development, or, as the author of the article suggests, all games becoming pay-to-play.

As a gamer who values ingenuity and complexity in concept and gameplay, and a powerful, challenging single-player experience, I'm concerned. You can still find this (more or less) in some mainstream RPGs and adventure games (although less and less in shooters). The writing's been on the wall for some time. Having said that, digital distribution in tandem with small-scale and indie developers will likely still be producing games for people like us: that increasing minority of people who are not just "gamers" but, let's say, traditional game enthusiasts (because "hardcore" reeks of dorm room chest-thumping and marketing-speak).

Other than that, well, we really ought to be reading more anyway. (Oh yes, and thank mighty Thor for GOG)

I understand the rest of your post with regards to watered down gameplay, DRM, and DLC, but I take issue with how you put Wii-like interfaces in the same sentence and paragraph. Such interfaces wouldn't be appropriate for every game, including many of the games we on GOG are likely interested in, but I wouldn't say they're a cause or symptom of poor game quality.*

Echoing Velvet's post about modern games trying to appeal to too many audiences, the problem I see is that there're two mutually hostile extremes in how to approach games. There's the marketing department perspective that Velvet described which wants to sell a game to everyone, even to those who don't want it no matter how casual it is. You get Mass Effect 3 getting Kinect support even though it probably wouldn't make sense either for people who like Mass Effect 3 or for people who like Kinect games (that use Kinect well). Then there's the elitist forum troll perspective which acts extremely offended by games that are not ultra-hard shooters or complex RPGs, where people with such a perspective seems to believe that all games must cater to themselves to the exclusion of everyone else. You get people wishing the violent deaths of companies who produce smartphones, the violent deaths of companies who produce smartphone games, and sometimes the violent deaths of people who play on smartphones.

It's been very hard for me to find anyone who's comfortable with multiple gaming markets and audiences existing.

* Yes, the Wii's motion controls were probably underused by Nintendo's third party developers, but it's not like it's the fault of the control paradigm itself.

Games have a 40 years history. It's important to look at that history before making all encompassing statements about the industry.

Your issue is fair. Motion gaming is not nearly as bad a problem as the other issues which I mention. In theory, I have no problem with motion control. My problem is that the execution, thus far, has tended to be gimmicky and clunky in the vast majority of titles, at least in my opinion. Red Steel II and The Conduit's controls are good, for instance, but they still do not reach the zenith of keyboard/mouse and gamepad control schemes. My experience with these sorts of controls is that novelty often trumps solid gameplay in the consideration of those who are putting together games that use these assets. Part of this is that developers just aren't used to the motion control paradigm and how to design games with those controls in mind. Until motion controls can become consistently solid and hold their own against traditional schemes, I still call them a drag on the quality of current gaming (although I realize they bring about new sorts of gaming which do not fit my own, more traditional model of gaming, and that they do, in fact, have potential).

Perhaps I ought to be more forgiving, but I'm sure we can agree to disagree.

I would also like to add that I agree wholeheartedly the assertion of yourself and Stinging Velvet that the angst being experienced by gamers today is a direct result of the current polarity of the gaming market place between the new casual games (exemplified by mobile apps, Facebook games, and motion minigame collections) and traditional games. The problem is that the marketing view you describe is the one with all the power (read: money) in the industry and is the one calling the shots for AAA titles which need huge piles of cash to develop.

These two poles can and should exist in the industry, but they ought to be more or less independent. What we are seeing, currently, and what is causing so much of a stir is a hedging of bets by publishers and developers to find a centre which really isn't there, a route which leads to failure. Take Dragon Age 2, which was simplified to appeal to a greater portion of the gaming market (viewed as homogeneous body by the industry) resulting in a dramatic decrease in quality (also the result of a short dev cycle, but I still say the problems were there based on the "streamlining" which was planned from the start). The end result is that it has failed miserably in long-term sales after an initial surge at launch, a surge based on the reputation of the unabashedly traditional Dragon Age: Origins.

It has been disappointing for the Wii that no one but Nintendo seemed to have been able to make great use of the motion controls. A lot of it was that many devs made the false assumption that motion controls can be applied to anything. They also failed to come up with enough new types of games where motion controls would fit. The Wiimote would make little sense for a traditional shooter just as much as a mouse+keyboard setup would make little sense for Wii Sports.

The Wii has generally suffered from people trying to pigeonhole it into the same concepts and standards held by other platforms. It was meant to be a mass market family console, at least in theory, but both devs and gamers kept holding it to the same standards as the XBox, PS3, and PC. And then rant when the Wii fell short of those standards.

Seriously, why was Call of Duty ever ported to the Wii? That would be like someone making a version of FarmVille that's PC exclusive and has The Witcher 2-level graphics.