First off, I wanna go on record that I feel that this, very well done video, is aimed at Nintendo fanboys, though it may not be the authors intent, I don’t know too many other kinds of gamers who would need to be told this:
I can’t comment on everything the guy says since it’s been a while since I watched it, but it really needs to be pointed out that too many gamers generalize games for the smallest things. Yes, someone could try to say, for instance, Sonic Boom, that people criticize without playing it, but many of us actually look at the content which is shown in the game because that’s what matters most, not just the gameplay, and many of us feel that the content sucks. It’s different from the average hardcore gamer, either Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft , where you get those(Nintendo boys) that talk about gameplay over content(and ESRB rating) but will only acknowledge Nintendo games when they do it, and when it comes to M rated games, most of the time, they claim them to not be fun or “not mature”, because for some reason, they think rated M is suppose to mean handling things rationally, when it reality, there isn’t too many games I can think of that do that, at all, being that the majority of them are based conflict to begin with, and your characters isn’t always your standard hero type. I have to say though, I doubt this will be a convincing argument when scenes like this come out of these “non-mature” games:
Then, you got a lot of these other cats who fill any E rated game or any with a good amount of, color, in it, are kiddy. Now, for the most part, I partially agree, since many E rated games these days aren’t even half as good or appealing as many in the past or most other games these days in general, especially back in the 16-bit era, where we had games like Toejam and Earl, Battletoads, and Earthworm Jim, however, if one were to actually pay attention to Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and Steam, you can find a good amount of E looking games without near kiddy content. The thing is with this bunch, we run into a problem when games that aren’t even kiddy at all are still criticized for some reason(I read about this happening to a specific game but I can’t find the TVTrope page I read this about).
Now, about games being fun, I think people tend to mix the context. For example, with Sonic games, I’ve seen many people say as an argument against taking Sonic seriously, that Sonic is about fun. Here’s the thing, video games in general are suppose to be fun in some way, shape, or form, and many of them can do it while having serious or even dark elements, and hell, I don’t see people complaining about Sonic CD being dark, yes it was more subtle, but the shiznit was there. In any case, I think people who say this are using the context that the game itself needs to be fun, I.E., like Sonic colors where the game tries it’s hardest to be funny, or just not being serious at all and putting on a smile through everything, or even basically being sugar-coated, the best way of summing this up is being light hearted. The problem is that this is kinda pushing the notion that the games need to be Fun/light hearted to actually be fun to play, or better yet, enjoyable, and that kinda sets you up to hating almost anything that doesn’t follow this notion, or outright ignoring many great titles even if they look “Fun”, and either way, shouldn’t be the only thing focused on all the time. People want more then just “fun” games, they want engaging games are at least one that appeals to them and accommodating features to make them enjoyable, which in itself, will make them fun to play, for example, GTA+Online=Fun. It’s funny though, as I played GTA3 a long time ago with a code book and made every pedestrian riot and gave them weapons. The streets were on fire, and it was funny as hell, and fun to play. Even then though, as I played Halo 4, the campaign itself was not “fun”, but the thing was, I played it for the engaging and epic storyline, which the experience in itself, is what made the game worth playing. However, it’s a different story online against other players, I can say it was fun, especially when I understood that it was better to find other weapons since most of them were better then your average loadout(not just the pistols, rifles and other energy weapons you unlocked as you played). Marvel Alliance 2, what makes it fun is getting all these cool super heroes together to serve beat downs, and it’s always fun playing as Deadpool, and both Luke Cage and Venom or also just as cool. Unreal Tournament(Get COD out my face), I can easily say this is actually fun to play, it’s fast paced and they have all these sci-fi weapons, but once notable match i got into was a team match in a small map with nothing but rocket launchers. Yeah, I got killed a lot, but everyone on the scoreboard walked away with over a hundred kills, and I came in late mind you, lol, so I still came out pretty good.
I think this is the real problem here, it’s not even focusing only on fun as I look at it now, because you can enjoy a game for different reasons, which makes it fun, but using “Fun” as a descriptive manner and placing strict guidelines to it, that is needing games to be their vision of fun, rather then being able to enjoy them for what the game itself offers. It’s dangerous within the Sonic fanbase since the term can easily be confused with the games themselves needing to be fun to play since Sonic suffered in gameplay(not to a degree that made the games bad, only in 06’s case since it wasn’t polished anyway), so it sorta puts them in the right to the average person unless you actually think about it, since many of us still had fun with the darker games. The other troubling part about this is when so many of these people will tell you, if you make the complaint, is that whether or not a game is too kiddy/light hearted shouldn’t matter, only that you enjoy the game, but outside of them placing strict guidelines on enjoying games, they will turn around and try to convince people that it’s wrong for Sonic to be dark and/or taken seriously. One would have to ask how is that so when being kiddy doesn’t matter, but it matters of it’s dark, unless of course they just don’t want to take Sonic seriously, period. First of all, it shows how much content actually matters, and it showed when Sega and Sonic took half the console market from Nintendo back in the day, and it shows when they try to convince you that Sonic Lost World is good when the gameplay sucks. One could say that since so many games are dark/M rated/not “fun”, that they are trying to hang onto what few “Fun” games they can find, but there’s 2 things to that:
1. Like I said before, if you pay attention to the digital market, or sometimes, the rest of the video game industry and not just focus on M rated games, you’ll find some good E rated games. It’s reinforced, as listed by TVTropes, ” in 2010 only 5% of video games released had an M rating. However, this small minority was the focus of more hype than the rest”.
2. Sonic was not made to be their vision of “fun”, I.E., light hearted. No matter how much they will try to use the classics to further their arguments, but most normal people can see that Sonic was a totally different beast from Mario, especially after Sonic FREAKIN’ 1, and AOSTH for that matter. Hell, taking notice to the fact that Sonic’s 2 fights with the final boss in 3&Knuckles was more epic then most non-cartoony games at the time(I’m talking Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Mortal kombat, etc), or even most other cartoony games(almost all), will tell you Sonic was definitely made to be edgy(The main reason he was not only the most popular character at the time, but why so many characters mimicked him). The ironic part though? What Sega has been doing to Sonic since Colors and what the Xer’s advocate is exactly why the majority of Sonic copies failed in the first place.(I really need to write something just about this).
Anyway, the whole argument about games needing to be “fun”/light hearted to be enjoyable is flawed, the bit about gameplay being the most important part of a game is flawed, and appeal is what it all comes down to for even picking up games and spending your money on them in the first place, and it’s proven on all side on the daily. Anyone trying to say different, the next time someone offers you something, just say no, you had too much of it. Peace.
Heat Seeker Zone 