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What's the alternative when a game's mechanics genuinely aren't discoverable, such as those of Tetrisphere where an A press will cost you one of your three lives unless the cursor is in the right place, and you are unlikely to be able to tell what the right place is unless you know the rules of the game? Not all games come with printed manuals, especially if purchased used.

Well, my brother is 3 years younger than me, and we liked the same games as kids, but I stopped caring at some point (around the early 2000's), while he kept going. It could've been the other way around, so I don't see why the older brother can't be more into games than the younger one.



True, but these were some of the things that drove me away from gaming, and AFAIK are still very common.


Sure, and those are usually the ones that can make me mildly interested in newer games, but not enough to justify the purchase of a modern console or gaming PC.

I also greatly dislike how everything is temporary these days... Consoles don't last, everything is a download and relies on companies providing the services you need in order to play the games you "own" (downloads, servers, DRM, etc.).

This year I had my first experience with Steam, because of Sonic Mania. Being the classic Sonic fan that I am, I couldn't miss the opportunity of playing the genuine sequel to Sonic & Knuckles, so I had to play by the modern rules. The game was cool and all, but the modern aspects of the experience really put me off, like not having a physical copy of the game (meaning I have to rely on Steam not closing down if I want to own the game forever) and those obnoxious achievements notifications.

I tend to not like games that have undiscoverable machanics to begin with, so I can't really think of any alternatives. I like games that teach you through actual gameplay, implicitly... If that's not possible, I probably won't like the game anyway.

With clever and thoughtful design you can usually communicate rules intuitively and non-verbally.

In your specific example of Tetrisphere, maybe have the first level not give the player any option - let there be only one place to put the piece. That would communicate what a correct placement of the piece looks like without the player risking failure. Then make the next level give the player two or three options, with one obviously correct. The player will then get to reinforce their intuition about what the rule is and feel a sense of accomplishment. Alternatively, they'll realize they didn't properly grasp the rule the first time around and try again; once they pick the correct spot, they'll (hopefully) see the pattern by comparison with the first level, and will then have the rule down pat.

Some good "reading": The Witness, The Design of Everyday Things, Anna Anthropy on SMB, Sequelitis on Mega Man X.

I don't mean to imply that tutorials can (or should) be avoided at all times. But lots of modern games are way too obtrusive about it. They should be a last resort, I think.

This is like, one of my favorite videos, ever.

Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon, but I still think a manual is the right place to communicate a lot of this stuff. Some games end up with really boring intro levels as they try to teach you the mechanics (either by tutorial, which is terrible, or really boring "learn by doing" levels), when it could be taught perfectly well with a few pages of manual text.

I realize there was a period of time when rentals were very popular, before the internet was popular, when it was common to end up with a game and no manual. But now we don't need to worry about it -- the internet is ubiquitous enough to assume that if you managed to get your hands on a game and a system to play it, you probably have a way to download a manual. Plus the manual gives you something fun to look at when you're not playing the game.

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I feel there's more variety in games than ever before, partly because there's so much happening at a lower budget scale right now.

For every "AAA" game spending tons of money and trying not to stick their neck out, there's about 1000 indie games trying something weird. Most of them will fail, but a few of them are really good! For the last several years I've been much more interested in this area of modern games than the big budget ones.

There's tons of games coming out now that don't have overt annoying tutorials, or cutscenes, or aren't about a violent premise etc. if that's what you want, and tons that do as well; there's a pretty wide spectrum here.

I feel like big budget games like I do about big budget movies. I just feel like every movie/game is getting shoved down my throat as "the most epic event of all time ever". In the end, I so don't care, and I resent the idea that I'm feeding some giant corporation by being lured into the hype. No thank you. We all know that the next movie/game will be followed up by something even more "epic", so what is even the point.



There are still plenty of games with unrealistic graphics, but I tend to be visually impaired by ones that are super realistic. There is too much detail to look at, it often makes it difficult to distinguish in-game objects from the level map. Suddenly, I get hit with some tiny bullet that I could barely see because the post-apocalyptic piles of rubble everywhere are so detailed, my eyes don't know where to focus.

Well if graphical detail gets in the way of gameplay it's a design fault, not that you aren't used to modern graphics.

I'm with Rainwarrior though, all kinds of games still exists, although some genres may have almost died out or are only represented in the form of minigames or cheap download-exclusive games due to their simple nature (e.g. maze games like Pacman or Heiankyou Alien, or text-based adventures etc). But because there's so much to choose between nowadays it's just so much harder to keep yourself up to date. Especially considering a lot of us now are full-time working adults and don't have as much time as we used to have as kids. If you don't keep up it's very easy to get blinded by the big AAA titles and other hyped stuff and think it's the only things out there nowadays.