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The story
A thread titled “Why are games these days boring?” popped up on 5ch’s Livegalileo (general live-commentary) board. Rather than turning into a simple gripe session, it produced a lineup of competing theories: one camp argued that the pursuit of player-friendliness — helpful navigation that always points you to your next objective, freely selectable difficulty settings — has stripped games of the unreasonable difficulty and stress that once made beating them feel satisfying; another camp blamed the players themselves, now grown into adults who can no longer shut out spoilers and information. Opinions split over whether Dragon Quest’s difficulty-selection feature is a good thing or a bad thing, with some pushing back that it was players themselves who demanded these convenience features in the first place — turning the discussion into something more nuanced than a simple “the game industry has gone downhill” narrative.
What people said
If you're not an otaku, don't touch new releases at launch — buy it on sale.
Having to filter the information you take in all by yourself is kind of a lonely state of affairs, honestly. Well, can't be helped, since streamers these days are genuinely un-funny.
Exactly this. The Dragon Quest VII remake is a perfect example.
Yeah, I do feel like the design philosophy is pretty rigid these days. Even Relink, which I brought up as a fun example, is a hack-and-slash where the path to getting stronger is completely fixed. The action and the number-crunching feel good, sure, but what you're actually doing is walking a single straight line to the ending.
Well, users aren't a monolith either.
"It's just aging," "it's your sensitivity dulling" — that's all anyone ever says.
That's still true today, if anything — adults make up the overwhelming majority of gamers now.
Humans actually get more pleasure when there's a "moderate" amount of stress involved. In today's RPGs, for instance, you don't get the hassle (stress) of not knowing what to do next and having to go around talking to townspeople for clues — the game just hands you a hint telling you where to go and what to do. That comfort is exactly what's killing the fun and the sense of pleasure. Unreasonable difficulty and stress are actually a key ingredient of enjoyment.
I see. So basically what today's games need is some stupidly long loading screens.
It's not aging, it's total lifetime consumption. If you burn through thousands of games as a kid, you'll hit burnout before you're even an adult.
I wouldn't really say they have that much content, though.
Don't need that many, honestly.
I seriously hate difficulty settings where picking easy mode ends up benefiting you. I'm talking about Dragon Quest here.
The hype before you actually play is the peak — once you start playing, it's nothing but recycled elements borrowed from other games, and it kills your motivation.
Making a brand-new original game is basically a gamble in itself these days.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The theories raised in the thread broadly split into two camps. The first is the “comfort is to blame” theory — the argument that player-friendly design, such as systems that always tell you what to do next and freely selectable difficulty settings, has robbed games of the old sense of accomplishment that came bundled with stress and unreasonable difficulty (>>70). The second is the “the players have changed” theory, which points to the fact that players have grown into adults who can no longer block out information, and that it’s harder to recapture the fresh sense of wonder they felt as kids (>>13). As with Dragon Quest’s difficulty-selection feature, opinions were also split on whether convenience features themselves are a good thing at all (>>93, >>96), and some pointed to the industry’s current state, where talent drain among developers and the fact that greenlighting a brand-new title has become a “gamble” (>>107). At the same time, others noted that it was users themselves who relentlessly criticized inconvenient features until they got removed (>>41) — worth keeping in mind, since this isn’t a debate that a simple “things were better in the old days” generational narrative can settle.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Livegalileo board) thread “Why Are Recent Games Boring?“
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