If you only think of money,that's the best option. But you can see how this can make each individual game less fun.

If the only thing you want is to make the best game ever,that's the thing to do. But you can see how this can make it so you make less money.

Lots of good points. Every product needs an audience. And it is wise to choose your audience beforehand and target your audience. I can see how expanding your audience can reduce the quality of your product. Interesting concept.

So many people have so many opinions about how things should be done, so to please everyone is impossible. Yet, some games sell so well (bad or not) and others don't.

This makes it seem that it has to be a societal issue. If the majority of society prefers a certain type of game, it would be wise for game developers, if they are in the money making business, to appeal to them by the standards of society. This is already a compromise.

For instance, how many COD players know how to play chess nowadays? Who gets excited about chess tournaments? That was popular for a while nationwide at one point. Is chess a good game? Yes. Do people actually care to learn it today? Not really. The comments I get are, "It's too hard."

I think the "too hard" response is a result of this society. Then again, I am the type to rise to a challenge, not just dismiss it.

It not only makes consumers look lazy, but it makes game developers look lazy also. Perhaps it is too hard to make a good game when you crank out NBA Live 2010 and add one feature for NBA Live2011 and sell it at $59.99 for both games each year. Easy money, especially if you monopolize the market with legal licensing tactics.

Fortunately in the above example, 2K Sports was allowed to make a basketball game (unlike the football franchise) and now people play 2K because it is actually good and actually improves every year. 2K sports still makes money, but not because they are the only ones who can, but because their games are actually good. Coming from NBA live the controls of 2K were "too hard" at first because NBA live made it easy to dunk from the half court line. Once I got past the comfort of NBA live, I saw that 2K was a much better game.

Really? Personally, I don't want to have to figure out how to jump

I can think back to a bunch of games from the 90s when your character just appeared on the screen idling. You tap a button to see what it does and then you know what the button does. Of course, if a game is more complex then I would expect a little help. But when I am halfway through the game and you are still giving me clues on how to hang on a ledge....

Games shouldn't be anything. Different games satisfy different needs and wants. There is no thing that all games should be or strive for. I think a lot of this the-game-industry-is-dumbing-down is a response to this. Games on the NES didn't really have a choice, because they were so limited in capability, so in order to have any sort of complexity required a steeper challenge. Sometimes this was controls, sometimes this was based on mechanics.

The games industry isn't trying to simplify for simplicity's sake, it's doing so for money. I don't mean this in the all-corporations-are-evil way, but games like the new Tomb Raider cost a lot of money to make, and how can a company make that back? Sell more copies. That means it needs to be approachable for the non-hardcore gamers. If games weren't as expensive, they could take more risks, and maybe we'd all see more games that cater to our individual wants. The best place to get that, for some of us, is indie games, where developers generally have less money going into a game, and therefor don't need to sell 10-million copies or whatever the norm is nowadays.

Anyway, just my two cents.

I was looking at a lecture and I thought of this post again. Here is the lecture for anyone who might want to see it:

(at 35:44)

This seems to be a real problem with the industry, and it sorta makes me not want to venture further into it. I guess if I really like making games, I will make them for free even. But if I am in it for a profit (even a little profit) I am going to fall into the same sort of money thing.

Or perhaps I could ignore audiences and such, and make a game that I would like to play, and if other people want to play it, they can.