The "Dumbing Down" of Gaming

[Bob the Insane]

I think we should recognise the difference between "dumbing-down" and re-envisioning a game...

For Shadowrun for instance, it was not dumbed-down, it was built the way it was always going to be. CounterStrike in the Shadowrun world (or something like it)... I would say it was designed to be simplistic and easy to get into. Groups A and B for doc_bean... This is not Shadowrun dumbed-down, in many ways it is not Shadowrun at all. It is the Shadowrun world re-envisioned for a CS style game. It is a case of buyer beware, if you are a long time Shadowrun fan, this is not what you are expecting it to be...

In most cases dumbed-down requires an orginal version (or standard in the genre) to be suitably complex that it can be dumbed down. So, and no offense meant here, it would be pretty hard to dumb-down the FPS scene considering it's roots in Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM...

However we have the Wargame and the RPG... Orginating from complex desktop games and orginally moving to computers because they could easily handle the rules and the dice rolling for you. And it gave you a player to play against. It could be argued that these have been subject to "dumbing-down" ever since (think RTS and the presently defunct adenture game), every time a development team has tried to make them more appealing to the general public rather than the existiung Wargame and RPG fans.

I suppose when we most take offense is when a developer claims to be making version 2 of a "good" game and it is going to be all things to all people. Just as much fun for the fan base, but also more accessable (one the the scariest terms you can utter to a hardcore gamer, right along with "also released on a console") for the general market.

The hardcore fan sees very quickly which elements of the design have been dropped in favour of development resources being spent in flashy effects and such like.

One point I think is correct is that this is an ever changing situation. If the popularity of gaming continues to grow amoung adults then those niche markets will not be all that small anymore and that will encourage developers to address them individually rather then build games to appeal to the everyone.

But then again, I guess there is an agrument the game always appeals the lowest dominiator in the target audience. Even in a niche wargame, built for complete wargaming freaks (again no offense intended ) there will be decriers claiming something is not deep enough, accurate enough or some vital feature is missing. I guess the accusation of "dumbing-down" comes into play when the previous version had these features and the developer chasing a larger market has dropped this items as unnecessary baggage.

The the question then, should it be the responibility of the developer to make clear that they are not making any updated version of the orginal, but are in fact re-envisioning the game for a larger audience. Or should it be the responsibility of us, the paying consumer to make ourselves aware of what we are purchasing?

I suppose the question in this is marketing. Where does marketing stop and outright lying begin?