Last month, Nintendo's new "Demo Play" feature was announced. You know, the one where players can skip past a particularly challenging section of a game? A Nikkei newspaper story says the capability will be a part of future DS games also.
I can hear the rage in gaming dorks bubbling over all around the world. "NOOOO," they say, "NINTENDO IS RUINING GAMES BY MAKING THEM TOO EASY!!!! I AM TEH HARDCOREZ AND MY HOBBY SHOULD BE INACCESSIBLE TO THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE!!!" I understand your fear but hear me out for a second before you react.
Gaming is a business and, like any business, it needs to grow. Growth means that more people will need to find games appealing and, frankly, really difficult challenges are a turn-off for a lot of folks. The result in the past has been to make games easier to play so that the market can expand to encompass a greater number of consumers. With the concept of "Demo Play," developers have another option.
If players have the capability to simply skip past part of a game that they are struggling with, the objective of making games easier for the masses to complete is met. And it is done in such a way that developers are now freed from the issue of actually making the game itself simpler. Games can now be made more difficult without sacrificing the benefits of a larger consumer base and hardcore gamers can simply ignore the feature if they want to experience the full challenge.
That sounds like it could be a win-win situation to me.
Conrad Zimmerman is Destructoid's News Editor and home to the busiest mustache in the gaming press. An amateur historian and pop culture fanatic, Conrad possesses a nearly limitless wealth of videogame factoids and a passion for the power of games to teach, inspire and entertain. He enjoys reading, writing and turning things which should be fun into work.
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Contest:
1:40 PM on 07.07.2009
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I'm being sarcastic off course, I was really blown away by the reactions over this demo play feature, people where so pissed and it was hilarious, I see no issue with gaming being open to the masses, hell if I get way to frustrated in some area you bet your ass I'll use that feature, games are meant to be fun, not annoying.
And besides, are the games supposed to implement these guides and tutorials on their own? And in fact, many of them already do. The provide hints and such during early stages of the game.
I'm kind of confused. Guess will look forward to more info. Of course, no need to get panties all in a bunch... there's always the "off" option for non-n00bs.
@ diversionmary
do you mean like pokemon fire red?
yeah that was useful but when i hadnt played it in awhile the date of last play depressed me :(
i think a lot of people are tending to overlook the very obvious fact that this is Nintendo we're talking about.
The company who now sells balance boards to house wives.
Reeaall big threat to us hardcore gamers, huh?
Another part of me thinks that those kids are wimps, because the rest of us grew up playing games and slogging our way through them. We may have used warp zones in SMB1 or entered "Zelda" as our name in the first Legend of Zelda to see the second quest, but we didn't have the game give us a cookie and comfort us while it skips over the hard parts.
But again...it's optional, so who cares.
nintendo just hit a jackpot and now want to capture every women in their hands. nintendos been all about the bitches and not the actual gamer who wants a challenge. what's next? getting other people to play the game for you because you suck? or how about a game that you don't really play? oh wait, we do have those, they're called movies.
but.. the fact that it is going to be an option is sad. :(
sure says alot about nintendo's audience (had to feed the trolls, hehe)
You know, if you started telling people you're a ten year-old you wouldn't seem like a complete idiot all the time.
My only fear with this is that it could potentially just excuse bad design instead of foster difficulty. I figure some games will be made challenging and some will be made terrible but I do hope that designers get that not everyone will plan on using the feature.
Anyway, I just hope this feature can be turned off at the start of a new game, so I will never need to be bothered by it.
dont see the problem.
My contention is this: why not create an easy difficulty that completely changes the level structure and enemy placement, so people will learn how to play the game? Would it really cost that much more for Nintendo, who is making bankloads of money, to do this for such a cash and carry game like New Super Mario Brothers Wii?
Example:
Would we simply put our children on a motorized bike that drives for them, or hold their hand whilst they have a sturdy pair of training wheels to protect them? If the automated bike just does the pedaling and steering for them, they aren't learning anything, and will never move on to the next level, which is habitual game playing. Senior citizens and young children are the exact same way with video games. Sure, it's optional, but it's very poorly thought out in my opinion.
I feel like championing this poor system will only lead to gamers not actually playing video games, which ruins the entire point of the medium. Don't you want your posterity to be able to work up to your level of skill, so you can enjoy some of the harder games you play together? If they were able to play an incredibly easy rendition of a level rather than "no level at all", that would certainly be a reality.
I stand by my opinion that "easing" gamers in to your (the developer's) title is your responsibility. Think the game is going to be hard for n00bs? Incorporate an awesome tutorial mode in the early levels. New mechanic introduced mid-game? Once again, do an awesome tutorial mode. I think many JRPG's do this sort of thing... although often they cheap out and just dump the guide in to a block of text buried in a menu. Some of them pull it off well though, with voice overs, and animated menus that guide the player step by step, I always enjoy those.
As L0cky pointed it, demo mode almost feels like cheating. Why doesn't Nintendo just say they are bundling a game-shark with every new game?
All in all, I just hope the quality of games doesn't drop as a result of this. If it doesn't, I could care less about people using n00b mode.
we all know now that ten year old little kids are on your mind.
I'm hesitant to make a slippery slope argument and say: devs will all be lazy because of this, but my main point is that gamers will be.
I've seen 5 year olds that can work easy automatic mode in Devil May Cry. It's super simple, combos are done for you, health is given in abundance, and your statistics are incredibly juiced. If a "casual" gamer decided to get into this game, they could just hack away at any boss with little repercussion, but they would still be actively learning the strategies needed to defeat the foe on the normal setting.
With demo play, the child would just watch it (which essentially makes the game a Youtube strategy video with a bigger screen), and not learn what buttons to press or when to press them.
I'm all for making games easier, but some of the lazy methods Nintendo has taken lately (the first direct big Mario sequel in years, and the comments on how it will only be 70% or so different than Mario Galaxy 1, and have NO new costumes - also known as a cash in), this is another example of how to sell out and make yourselves look like you care.
Wow that was both stupid AND sexist, nice job.
Also I think people learn values and stuff doing things in real life, you know like the rest of us normal did, if you where raised on games well that would explain why you're such a retard.
@bobyoko
Speak for yourself.
Most nintendo games(or most games period) just aren't that difficult. Features such as regerating health, extra lives, and the endless continues system are in place in most games.with all this beating a game and still having fun while doing it is something any competent person with 2 funcioning thumbs can do. I can see the usefulness of this in games aimed at a younger audience, but anywhere else it seems pointless.
This just seems like something put there for people who just don't wanna try, and if you don't wanna try then tour probably not having fun playing said game, and if your not having fun.......... Why are you here in the first place?
If you just wanna see the ending, youtube is just a click away.
I'll give an example. Lets say that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will have this feature since it's quite possible. I loved the original Super Mario Galaxy and am really anticipating its sequel. If it has this feature and no way of proving you get every single star properly then I will just lose interest in it. A lot of you may well think I'm just saying this but it is true. I do play games for fun, but my fun is in the completion of things and then people knowing that I have completed them using no cheats. It's not even that I want people to admire me for completing the games, just people to know that I completed them. I can no longer say that I completed games with this system because people would be less likely to believe me. Sorry, I can't play any games with this feature. You can go ahead and do so if you want, but it just isn't fun for me whether it is an option or not.
Not that the original wording of my insult didn't fly completely over your head but you really are just acting like a child now. Your comeback to me is a pathetic attempt at a pedophile joke and then you tell Nanbu "If this wasn't the internet I'd beat you up"? Serious case of "Internet Tough Guy Syndrome" going on there.
Second reaction: Maybe I could use this like state save, like for practicing harder parts of the game w/o having to go through the other parts first.
Third reaction: Absolutely zero of the games that use this system will actually be hard enough to warrant it's inclusion.
Fourth reaction: When was the last time Nintendo even made a hard game? 1994?