For such a fast moving and competitive industry, video gaming sure is hung up on a lot of gameplay conventions from its past. Specifically, I’m talking about holdouts from its heritage in the arcades: Where gameplay was admitted as a limited use contract in exchange for your quarter.
The arcades differ greatly than the home console experience we are used to today. And yet the tricks and techniques which ensnared, ensured and “encouraged” repeated dips of your quarters into those arcade cabinets still remain in the modern home video game. And we’re going to take a look at a few that need to get the fuck out.
The Energy Bar
Why in the world is this still around? I think most developers nowadays know the energy bar’s full of shit. Most notably Bungie kicked off the new movement of replacing the energy bar with the “rechargeable shield” way back in 2001 in the original Halo for Xbox. As long as you can find cover, your energy bar will recharge. You are no longer troubled looking for limited med packs in some crappy ass dungeon. There is still the possibility of dying in the game, however, so we’re still not 100% out the clear just yet. But this is progress. And I’m happy to see it adapted by many games nowadays.
Lives
Why 3? Why are we usually afforded 3 lives unless we choose easy and then we get something like 5? Regardless, the number is arbitrary; lives are a benign concept in the modern day. May we remind you, developers: this is no longer the arcade. The idea is no longer to rope in our quarters. Snap out of it. We’ve already paid you our money, now allow us to play our game!
Continues
If there’s one hangup from the arcade days that has absolutely, undisputedly no right to exist on a home console it is the idea of the “Continue”. It usually goes like this: Die 3 times in a row, the game will ask you, “Do you want to continue?”…Do I want to continue? Didn’t I just spend $60 on you, you piece of shit game? You think I want to just give up and stop? The Continue deserves to be remanded to gaming’s past for eternity. It’s time to (gulp) continue onward…
Bosses
Motherfucking bosses…As a grown man in my 30’s, I don’t have time for bosses. You play a game for a bit, you take the time to learn the (more than likely convoluted) controls, you invest a bit of time — maybe even a couple of hours — and then BOOM: You get up to a boss. And then you die. And then you start back up after watching some shitty load screen and fight the boss again. And die again. You didn’t learn the pattern yet, dummy! So you repeat the cycle. It’s bullshit. And more than likely you’ll have to do this a few times during the course of the game as you will surely fight different bosses throughout the levels. If you’re REALLY lucky, some dumbass developer (usually Capcom) will even include a BOSS GAUNTLET where you have to re-fight every boss you’ve already beaten in the game back-to-back for no explicable reason but to pad a misleading sense of “value” to your $60 purchase.
I’ll admit it: Bosses were cool back in the day when you and five of your homies were fighting Mag-Fuckin-Neato on Konami’s 6-player arcade X-Men cabinet. But know when bosses aren’t cool? When you’re tired from working 8+ hours a day at your day job and you have to pick the kids up afterwards from school and take them to soccer practice and then you have to make dinner and then you finally have time to sit down and play some games at the end of the night and, oh? What? You’re stuck at a boss! And you feel no sense of progress because you can’t beat the damn level!
Know who’s that old and has similar kinds of responsibilities? Everyone that grew up playing arcade games! Figure it out!
Kill The Noise
Now if you look at these examples, what do they all have in common? What is the single thread these gameplay conventions all lead to?….DEATH. They are designed to facilitate your virtual DEATH in the game. Which made complete sense back in the arcade: You wanted the game player to keep pumping in those quarters. That’s how everyone from the developer of the game, to the hardware manufacturer on down to the arcade operator made their money. But you see, in modern times? Like right now? Not olden times like the arcade? We game players have already paid our money. A lot, arguably, in fact. Roughly $60 worth. That’s 240 plays at $.25 a pop. Maybe that’s a deal. Who knows.
Sort that one out in the blog’s comments. But my point is why are you trying to kill me?? It’s like punishment. I’ve already paid you, now you want to punish me and kill me every chance you get? 3 lives, energy bar, limited continues…
I’m all for making a game challenging, but I posit if we can shake off these old, outdated gameplay conventions, video games can progress forward and evolve.
So there you have it. I am and always will be a fan of the arcade game. And in fact some genres know they’re forever destined to be “arcade games” such as the Shmup genre. And that’s fine. But everyone else, pay heed: That shit’s dead.
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