The lights are on
A silent, impending epidemic is looming on the horizon. Call me a reactionary conservative wanting to hold on too tightly to the past if you'd like, but I am noticing at an ever increasing rate of young, video game playing children quitting and moving on from one game to the next because they are stuck. They are stalled at a difficult point in the game and cannot progress any further through it.
I can't exactly blame them as I'd get rather frustrated when I was a little one as well. I have many memories of encountering difficult sequences in games like Donald Duck's Quackshot, Granada, and Sonic the Hedgehog. However, more often than not, I would see it through until I got beyond that seemingly impenetrable barrier to move on to the next level.
But why did I continue on, torturing my young soul with such challenge? The answer is quite simple: I had no other choice! I had to make the best of what little time I was permitted to leave my Sega on before I was required to take care of my responsibilities.
The young game playing audience has now what I don't have: Parents that would buy me games at request. Children have no incentive to finish their games because of the fact that their parents, by and large, do just what mine didn't do.
The side effect of kids having access to more and more games is that they don't bother to see a difficult level 3 through because they have another game waiting for them that they can progress through with little discretion or problem solving. Why bother with games that require a little bit of problem solving when you can get through many games now with blood, boobies, and BLOW IT ALL UP.
Kids with their endless entertainment options have been wounded with poor-attention spans. They don't know and most likely will never know the meaning of struggling all the way through in any case. They'll just move on to something easier.
Alternatively, how about we unplug their systems for a short while and make them go outside? Let them experience life before they're forced to go to school just so they can get a slot working for The Man under the guise of their parents wanting a "better life" for them.
I love this article Almo; well done : )
I remember getting so involved in my games as a youngin (and well, I still do). I'd say that 95% of the time I wouldn't move on to another game unless I was finished with the one I was playing. I basically had 1 game at a time too, so I think your point about less incentive these days because there's another game waiting is a great one. And I think its a parent's responsibility to make sure their kids follow through with the things they do, games included. It's not a matter of forcing your kid to finish a frustrating part in a game, but I definitely think there are lessons to be learned from the challenges gaming can provide and those lessons can definitely affect a kid's attention span in other parts of their life.
It's kinda ironic too considering that games tend to be easier nowadays than they were back in the day. I wouldn't blame a kid for giving up on a game who's difficulty rivals say Battletoads or The Terminator on the NES, those games are so ridiculously hard that to this day I've never beat them. That didn't stop me from spending many an afternoon of my childhood trying though.
However, it's pretty bad when some kids can't even muster up the perseverance to finish a classic Megaman or Megaman X game. Yeah, they're challenging at times but it makes it all the more rewarding when you finally beat it.
While I see your point of view, I myself quit many a NES game when I was just a wee little one. Not because they were too hard, but because I lacked the skills to complete them at that time and I knew it. So I moved on to other games and have found my knack ever since the SuperNES and Sega Genesis. I kept all those games though determined to be them eventually and I have all except for Maniac Mansion. Im just not feeling the plot of that one.
My point is that it will take some people time to get fully immersed into games. Some may just be doing some soul searching and need to find the right Genre.
I'm the same way. I like to take one game at a time and finish them before I move on to the next game. Usually I get a new game every two months so I really want to get as much as I can out of the games I currently have.
I will never forget my experience with God of War. It took me a long time, but eventually I beat the game on God mode and also beat Challenge of the Gods. I have never been so frustrated in a game and probably haven't said as much bad language as I did when playing through those two modes. However the satisfaction of beating them was well worth it.
Great blog post Almo! Still, to this day I pretty much play one game at a time. Well maybe two. I usually have a single player game going and then a multiplayer title to fall back to as well. I've never been able to play multiple games at once. Maybe it's the OCD in me. I'm afraid if I have three or four games going at once, that I'll never finish any of them or remember what was going on when I get back to it.
Awesome post.
I tend to beat a game to the most finite of accomplishment's, before i move on. Been that way ever since i was a kid. "oh wait..."
I couldn't get a new game till I finished the last game I bought. This included Battletoads and TMNT. Needless to say I was a very frustrated child.
This makes me sad, because lately I have realized that I have given up on a lot of games. :( My backlog is nearly a dozen at this point. I guess I am a part of the "when-the-going-gets-tough-give-up" generation...
I am working on it though, especially lately. Slowly but surely, the number will fall!
Also, I have to say that I do not just get games whenever I ask. Far from it! If I tried that with my parents, they would laugh in my face. The games I own are bought with my own money, or given as birthday/xmas gifts to me.
when i was a kid i used to jump around from game to game alot, it wasent till i got older that i started playing things all the way through
Great blog.
I usually beat my games but in most cases I quit not because I am stuck, but because I get bored with it.
The only game I got really frustrated with and quit for about a year was RE:4, the puzzle part. Then I went back and beat it with help. Man was I happy.
Great post. An obvious alternative to my own thoughts. I completely understand what you're saying, but at the same time, I think you are over generalizing. Is the reason I quit playing a game because I am stuck? No, I quit playing because after several attempts and increasing frustration I am no longer enjoying the game. It's an important detail since the point of video games is to entertain. Additionally, this may cause me to jump between games rather often, however, I can assure you, I buy most of my games (minus birthday and Christmas presents) with money I earn for myself. This has been a trend throughout my life as well. So, I don't think you can necessarily point the proverbial finger at parents either.
I used to keep my game on pause when I was kid if I tried to get past a level or whatever after trying a million times; and when I had to stop, I would get back to it and try again. The one game that stood out when I was a kid was Spyro the Dragon. It was the part where Spyro had to run on this speed ramp to make it across a higher ledge to get to this frozen dragon. I tried doing this for days, and after a while I just gave up. I did all the previous speed ramps with no problem, but that last one was the worst! I ended up quitting that game and went to another. But I did go back to it like 6 months later and finally beat it. One thing now as opposed to when I was a kid playing video games is that I try to accomplish all I can. An example to this was the first RPG I played, Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast. I beat the game with minimal skills and leveled up to maybe 50 if that. Three years later when Skies of Arcadia Legends came out on the Gamecube, all my characters have gotten all the skills, spells, etc. and leveled up to around 80. On my Christmas break, I played Tales of Vesperia and I've completed all but one sidequest (it was the Repede quest and I didn't care about that), and leveled up my characters to 100, something I totally didn't care about when I was a kid.
Anyway...good article, Almo. I've really enjoyed it. :)
I agree that kids are super wired these days. However, as far as games goes, difficulty has decreased dramatically these days. That being said, I know people in their 40s and 50s that give up on games and move to the next because of difficulty or being stuck--they call it being bored, though, which I can't really blame them for. It's not exactly fun being stuck in a game for days. And this goes for my childhood as well. I never beat a single Mario, Sonic, or Zelda game when they were released. However these days I am a completely different person (i.e., not a child). I've gone back and played some of those games. However my completionist tendencies are mostly affecting the current generations of games. Although, I find myself creeping back now and then to start and finish a game I never got around to when I had other things going on in my life, like growing up. I don't have a lot of that in my schedule these days, which I think is a major factor in deciding whether to complete a game. I also think to really want to complete a title as a child you must really have a lot of willpower or just really be sucked into a game. I never had such a strong interest back then. I also know today it is often the case I find myself trying to see all that a game has to offer, maybe to redeem itself or because I feel I would be ripping myself off. There aren't really a massive library of games that are really, genuinely worth playing through 100%, let alone beating once. Luckily there have been a few games I've played recently where I didn't feel like it was a chore to complete 100%.
So do you actually know a lot of little kids and their gaming habits or what? Because otherwise this is a perfect example of stereotyping.
And if I sound defensive, it's because I am part of the new generation, and I rarely stopped playing a game because of difficulty, and the fact that my parents would just by me another game. You must live in a very wealthy part of the world, because what you suggest does not actually happen in my experience. There was one game I didn't beat cuz I just had no clue what to do, but since then (Bloodrayne, FFXII, Psychonauts), I have just gotten bored on occasion. Sometimes I force myself to beat a game to just get it over with, but I love going back to my favorites and playing them again (I've played RE4/GOW 14x at least, GOWII 6x, Spider-Man on PS1 8x). Oh yeah, I never beat Rayman because it never really saved correctly, stupid codes. Also, I could not beat Altered Beast or Vectorman at age 8, so I guess I fall into your general category of crappy new age gamers.
I totally agree with the article. My younger nephew hardly plays games for the challenge anymore. He refuses to play any kind of game that requires strategy, even on the lowest difficulty because he is interested in another game that requires no skill to complete, almost like he is unwilling to even try. I suppose the one thing he has going is that he's trying to rack up as many Achievements as he can in a single game, so that's got to count for something, right?
Most awesome of postings Almo, as many of you have posted, i too have had this problem with a few of my little cousins and nephews where they never seem to go through an entire game because they have a brand new one waiting for them. During my childhood, the Game Boy Pocket years(not the huge disgusting one) i literally had to go through the entire game before getting a new one, which of course took some time due to the lenght of the game and well... money. But with this being said, when i have my children it will be mandatory they pass the game before going onto a new one (and yes i will make my children play games as well).
Spidey, I do know several game playing children. Directly observing their habits is what brought me to write this. So, it's not so much the teenagers I'm talking about. It's about the even younger set.
I live in a very modest part of the far east SF Bay Area where both parents of multiple children often find themselves each working full time, thus leading to childhoods experienced in day care and babysitters. Sadly, these parents try and fail to cram a full day of parenting into an hour or two. They buy their children lots of things as an attempt to compensate for their feelings of guilt. The issue is a lot deeper than just children having a shorter attention span.
Also, thanks for commenting, everyone, whether or not you enjoyed the post.
very good article. glad to see attention brought to serious problems.
My two cents (rant warning):
Kids are always inclined to leave unfinished tasks and rush off to the next shiny thing. Kids haven't changed; parents have. The vast majority of parents I meet don't seem to have any inclination to make their children work hard for things. My most memorable example of this was a woman who asked me what game she should get her kid.
The conversation:
Me: (thinking of Professor Layton): Well, what's his reading and comprehension level?
Her: Well, he's 9 (I get ready to reccommend Layton; 9 should be old enough, right?) so he's not really very good reader yet.
At this point I narrowly avoided staring at her blankly. It wasn't so much that the kid wasn't a good reader, which at age 9 is bad enough. It was that she was somehow under the impression that 9 is a young age at which to be a decent reader.
I am very slow to call people out if I don't have all the facts of their situation. Perhaps the child had mental issues, which would be extremely sad, and as I've worked with the mentally disabled I'd have had nothing but sympathy. But the woman never made this implication. It just seemed the kid couldn't read very well.
I never got the details (I was trying my damndest to be polite) but typically when a kid is of school age, mentally capable, and isn't good at such a basic skill, there's one reason: the kid doesn't want to read, so the parents don't want to make them.
This is just one facet of what appears to be a growing lack of interest in being tough on kids for their own good. I realize we live in a very different era than even my relatively recent childhood, and that respecting the opinions of kids and realizing they are smarter at a younger age is vital. But the fact remains that the vast majority of children do not know what is good for them. I didn't.
It is a parent's responsibility to make kids do tough things that will ultimately improve their lives...even if it just not giving up on a video game.
Rant warning has passed; the area is clear.