Satire that's a bit too close to Truth?

[Gabriel]

The following article seems to have tricked a few game outlets into thinking it was a real story instead of satire. To tell the truth, I would have thought it was being honest as well.

 

http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of-gamers-today-cant-finish-level-1-in-super-mario-bros/

 

For reference purposes, when I first played Super Mario 1, it had no instructions. I didn't know you could run. I was used to tapping buttons instead of holding them down, so I just assumed the second button didn't do anything.

 

I played Super Mario 1 for a friend's amusement recently. And yes, I suck so bad that I died twice on the first Goomba. My friend was literally rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably at how horrible I was.

 

BTW, I can understand the idea that modern gamers wouldn't understand the idea of bottomless pits in the original Super Mario. In the intervening years platformers have started scolling in all different directions, and nearly all of them have numerous blind jumps to platforms below. So, it doesn't strike me as odd at all that a modern gamer wouldn't automatically see the open pits in Super Mario 1 as instant death traps.

[+Gemintronic]

I'd venture to say it's not a generational thing but a GENRE thing. Most kids are force fed first person shooters which require a whole different skill set to play well. Also, what is called hardcore RPGs now was Action/Adventure when I grew up. Same world - different labels.

[SoulBlazer]

I agree with both of you, and see it as both genre and generational. Kids today just are used to playing different games and have different skills then when I was growing up. Nothing wrong with that, it's just how things are. I love both classic and modern games, and I recognize there's a HUGE world of difference between them.

[Reaperman]

Most kids are force fed first person shooters which require a whole different skill set to play well.

In my experience, most of them aren't much good at those either.

[jaybird3rd]

That article may have been intended as satire, but it isn't very obvious. I would agree, though, that the video games many of us grew up with would be considered "too hard" by younger players. My nephew (age eight) always wants me to load cheat codes for him whenever he plays one of my old games, because he says the games are "impossible" without them. I try to explain that these games are fun because they are hard, and that practicing a game that seems too difficult at first will make him a better player, but those concepts seem to go right over his head at this point. I don't think it's an issue of age, either; I loved figuring out brutally hard games when I was eight.

 

Perhaps a part of it is laziness: it takes a lot of work to be really good at Defender or Robotron or Tetris (and when I say "good at Tetris", I mean this good at Tetris!), but I don't think it takes nearly as much work to become a mindless FPS roaster. You can learn to beat most FPS games with relatively little effort, and what you learn about one FPS can be transferred almost directly to another because they're all so much alike. If all you want is an enjoyable time twiddling buttons, that's as far as you're going to develop your skills, but that isn't enough to make you a truly good game player. If Super Mario Brothers is "too hard" for these people, I'd love to see how long they last in front of a Stargate coin-op.

[Reaperman]

Perhaps a part of it is laziness: it takes a lot of work to be really good at Defender or Robotron or Tetris (and when I say "good at Tetris", I mean this good at Tetris!), but I don't think it takes nearly as much work to become a mindless FPS roaster.

That's kind of how I see them. FPS games are supposedly some kind of grand 'hardcore' experience, when really I think it's more of a casual 'switch off the brain and win' type of experience. It's relaxing. I'm not calling myself some kind of FPS god or anything, but I think that the average gaming schmo our age could take out quite a few younger fps fans pretty easily. I haven't seen many kids that are actually good at fps games and these are supposed to be 'their games.'

 

An oddity that I've noticed is that younger gamers don't seem to care enough to even figure out how online FPS games are 'scored.' (and fps games are one of the few genres around that are always scored) That means that they must be terrible at pinball too...

Edited July 13, 2013 by Reaperman

[xg4bx]

Modern games kill classic gaming skills. I've learned this first hand when it took me a dozen tries to get past the first red gargoyle in Ghosts n Goblins.