Am I just experiencing some strong selection bias, or are games holding our hands way too much lately?
I got my hands on a copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider recently, and while playing I noticed that Lara would "helpfully" try to push me toward the correct solution to a puzzle, often while I was simply looking around to make sure I wasn't leaving any loot behind. Worse still, it could be literally every 10-20 seconds or so that she would repeat the same hint. It got infuriating after a while, and I was horrified (okay, I'm exaggerating, but whatever) to find that there wasn't a setting available to get her to shut the hell up.
I loved Tomb Raider games because you had to solve the puzzles yourself. Having the game hold your hand the entire way kind of defeats the point of that. It was really disappointing knowing that I couldn't play the game without either having a puzzle spoiled for me or having the obvious repeatedly pointed out to me. It was like having Navi from Ocarina of Time nagging me all over again, but worse, because at least I could ignore Navi and just deal with the occasional "Hey, listen!".
This sort of hand-holding seems to be getting increasingly more common, at least in my experience. The form often differs--e.g. in Skyrim you have quest markers that not only guide you all the way to a dungeon, but all the way through it--but it's there. I feel like the worst of it is that gamers don't get to actually play the game autonomously or at their own pace, and that this sort of thing violates a basic principle of "show, don't tell".
Am I just really unfortunate with the games I've been playing lately, or is this really as common as it seems? What examples of hand-holding have you run into that you found disappointing?
Are they really holding our hands too much or are we just so old that we remember when games were pretty much universally poorly designed (no UI standards, no control standards, no tutorials or guides, etc), were much less complex mechanically (so no need to manage 40 quests/sidequest at once, no need to account for multiple control schemes, etc) and we were younger then so had a higher tolerance for frustration and grinding out understanding of the game?
Don't get me wrong, I get where you are coming from and I think you're right that hand holding may have gone a bit too far in regards to modern AAA games... but these days, with my limited time to play games and limited tolerance for frustration while learning the game, I kind of appreciate the certain level of hand-holding that has become standard. And thankfully, due to the size of the Indie games market now, when I actually am in the mood for something difficult to play/learn with zero hand holding I can usually still find something new like that to play (I play Dwarf Fortress after all, 'nuff said ;).
However, I still remember when I first bought Sim-Ant 27 years ago and when I went to install it, realized my computer couldn't support it (despite already being a high-end machine) so had to upgrade it further (which was not an easy process back then). Then when I finally did upgrade it took almost 2 days to install the damn game from all the floppies it came on. After that, before I could even play I also had to first figure out how to write a custom himem.sys and autoexec.bat so I could run it with my sound card. Then once it was running having no idea how to really play it, even after reading the manual and having no place online to look for help, so spent hundred of hours just failing over and over again before it finally "clicked" what I was supposed to do. I do not miss those days.
Sure they are different, but both are modern conveniences; One on the systems end, the other in the games themselves, and I think they have developed hand in hand. I do agree a balance is preferred though when it comes to hand holding game mechanics. Being able to disable them is always nice... which is why with Skyrim I always play with minimalist UI mods.
Holy fucking shit what you made me remember.
The afternoons spent playing Raptor, Commander Keen and Cool Spot...
Raptor was an awesome game; I'm still surprised that there's no clones of it for android/iphone.
Command Keen as well; so tough it took me years to finish one of them because of the giant fish underwater that follows you and the oil/desert levels. YEARS between installs and when I finally did it; they really did a great job on that game!
Selection bias. There are plenty of games that don't hold hands at all. AAA games tend to hold your hand because they are going for mass appeal but there are plenty of niche games that don't hold your hand at all.
For example, The Witness has no explicit tutorial and much of the gameplay is basically trying to figure out the manual. However, it's also not trying to make the game hard - it's just showing that you can learn without being spoken to directly.
The Witness is an amazing exception in a sea of games moving the opposite direction. It's almost a game about how hand-holding and cheap reward-mills hinders the sense of personal discovery a good game can provide. It's also one of my favorite games for that very reason.
It all depends on the game you're playing. I avoid most AAA games so that issue isn't as apparent to me.
I think what you just said is the main cause. Plus more QA means they see where people get stuck and can try to fix it.
It's an old video now, but wholly relevant to this topic nonetheless: I highly recommend watching Egoraptor's Sequelitis video where he compares Mega Man and Mega Man X. His whole premise is that compared to games these days that present new types of gameplay to an audience, Mega Man X teaches players by doing, not by tutorials or messy button layout pages. It really is a wonderful video that just barely touches the surface on what makes good game design.
While I do see your point and I have seen my fair share of hand-holdy games coming out more, I do also think that it may not be as overwhelming a trend as it may seem, considering that there are also other recent big games have come out that have tried to offer a different gaming experience. Monster Hunter: World was designed with the intention of bringing in new people to the audience for the series, and so the game was initially designed to be considerably easier than past games. New content and monsters are still being slowly added to the game that’s been contributing nicely to the overall experience, but it basically followed the same method of giving the player a beginner’s tutorial and then setting them free to just kill things and explore the world as they please. Breath of the Wild followed a similar outline, and even seemed to give people more of a challenge in the dungeons than Skyward Sword did while making the entire story completely optional.
I could go on, but personally I think the definition of hand-holding in video games may have also changed a bit since the initial boom of the video game market through the 80s and 90s. Back then, there was a degree of hand-holding because a lot of companies were trying to market an entirely new technology for the sake of entertainment and today we consider the hints and tutorials from back then to be more or less remedial. Today it’s either some games focusing primarily on storytelling, or other games focusing on trying new things in game design, or some games just want to sell cheap entertainment.
I think it just depends on the game. A big budget, mass appeal title like tomb raider is much different than an indie game.
I just started getting into the new
battlefieldBATTLETECH! game and had to watch like 30 minutes of YouTube videos to really understand how to play.I love this short parody video which (coincidentally?) is also about one of the new Tomb Raiders… Yea, that's definitely a problem with many games today but I'm hesitant to call it a new trend (it goes back a while, it just becomes more obvious in contrast because the animations got better). It's about a misunderstanding of gamedesign as simulating an experience visually rather than by focusing on the interactions that make it relevant (which is usually more abstract because game inputs are more abstract). "I climbed a mountain in that videogame!" works as a shallow experience, even if you just saw an autoplaying animation while pushing the joystick up for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, something like GIRP, in all its irony, might be a more relevant representation of what climbing is as a game, despite not looking realistic. For a game studio, simulating the visual aspects of some scene is easier to control than actually simulating interactions, which are messy and hard to debug/balance. That's why we get games that essentially play themselves.
While I completely agree with the overuse of hand-holding in games today, it is unfortunately a necessary thing. As a 38 year old gamer (and currently a game designer for Blizzard), I know first hand how incredibly important it is to make customers understand your game quickly, while still injecting the depth and complexity that almost all gamers enjoy. I think there is a happy-medium to be found here (in OP's example, maybe allowing a toggle to turn off hints in the options), but a lot of developers choose the safe way.
I think the root cause for this change-over-time is that the newer generations of gamers are bombarded with options (trending towards free-to-play), which means they honestly don't need to invest anything into a game to play it and if it doesn't immediately make sense or hook them, they will move to the next. On top of that, with the rise of the internet, an answer to every question ever asked can be found. I often reminisce about being 7 years old and banging my head against Zelda for hours every day. Growing up with games that I had to solve myself led to a large sense of accomplishment and pride that I feel like younger gamers will mostly miss out on. Maybe that's okay - but even if it's not, I don't think there is any way to go back.