Category Archives: Entertainment

Youtube Series’ Updates

Posted by Immersedgaming on

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I’d like this to just be short and sweet. I want to tell you all about all the upcoming updates to our youtube series’ that I’m trying to implement as fast as possible. I’ve managed to fix about 99% of all the setbacks and issues I’ve previously told you about, but there are still a few hiccups in the developmental process that need to be ironed out. Hopefully I’ll figure those out soon so nothing will be hampered anymore. However, now on to the good news!

Mini Games w/ Robert

The OMGPOP series is in full swing. I’ve recently purchased a brand new screen recording program that will fix ALL of the problems I’ve had with producing this series. So, after episode 4 that will come out next Sunday, all further OMGPOP videos will be perfect. This is probably my favorite series in terms of ease of production.

Let’s Play!

This series I’ve just recently had issues with. The first one I uploaded (which is a stand-alone video) went up well, but did not upload in 1080p. I had another series set and ready to be edited and uploaded, however something was wrong with the file and I had to delete it. As of writing this, I do not have anything recorded or ready to be edited for this Wednesday, so this series is on hold until I can find the time to record. I don’t foresee future problems.

Games With My Dad

I finally managed to get this series done and uploaded last week. I’m trying my hardest to have the next episode up for tomorrow. The problems with this production are many. I won’t get into full boring detail, but I had issues with the exporting of the video, so sadly, for the remainder of the Mafia II episodes, there will be a 2 second game audio lag. There isn’t really any way for me to fix this. Once the Mafia II episodes are complete, this series should be fine. However, despite this, I’m still happy I finally got this online. This is probably my favorite series content-wise.

Splitscreen

This series is marred with issues. The first issue is that its near impossible to get people to come over and record some footage. Whether they’re working, I’m working or at school, or they’re just being lazy, we just can’t record footage. I do have footage from one session that is ready to edit, but I just haven’t had time to sit there and do so. I’m trying my best, I swear.

Other Non-Titled Series

Sometimes there will just be random videos I upload that have no series name, or anything of that sort. I uploaded pretty much 99% of the Sony PS4 press conference live stream, and although the aspect ratio isn’t the best (although the quality is fantastic) and although other game news media were HANDED copies of the footage, I’m still proud of the amount of time and work I put into making this videos. I literally uploaded them all less than 30 minutes after the conference ended. They will remain up for that fact alone (unless I’m forced to remove them). Can’t win every battle, I suppose.

So that’s pretty much it folks. That’s all the updates I got for you. I’m working my hardest to try and have all these videos edited and uploaded on time. It will get better, I assure you. I’m working on buying another microphone for series’ that involve more than myself in one room. The production value will be getting better in this respect as well. If you want to know when the videos are released, check out our weekly release schedule. Thanks for reading!

The Perfect MMO – A Guide to Creating it

Posted by TheeImmortalPhoenix on
  (There are important elements to an MMO that current games studios are just ignoring. Will they ignore them forever?)

Is there such a thing as a perfect MMO? Aren’t people and gamers different themselves and don’t we all have different tastes? How can one game appeal to all of us? How can the MMO make a comeback especially after having so many failures these past couple years and having the successful ones slowly crumble?

Wishful thinking

So yes it may just be wishful thinking but after having played a number of MMOs I think there are features that would appeal to a mass audience that are simply being neglected right now. You see some of these features in games here and there but never all in one place.

Finally after much frustration I want to go through the main elements of an MMO that should come together to create a great gaming experience.

Land

Why are they playing this MMO? What is at the heart and the soul of an MMO? It’s persistence. Persistence is what makes MMOs stand out differently than any other game. An MMO is there to persist or continue living on, long after you log off. Things happen while you’re away and the game keeps your character ready whenever you want to come back to it.

Persistence is why having land is so important. Virtual land, the ability to battle for it, and the ability to have a map that shows who owns what and praises the guilds that own it, is at the heart of why people want to play and MMO.

After creating such a powerful character, you should use the character to some tangible end. Sure monsters and quests are fun and dandy but the end game has always been and will always be PVP. A way a game can address this so that non-PVPers are happy is they can have land where PVP is impossible and players not wanting to PVP can simply live there. Other players can venture forth and claim land for themselves. Having done so, they must defend it, or lose it.

Land, it’s the most valuable resource in our modern world yet it’s simply absent in most MMOS. There is high potential for land as a means to make money for the game and for the players to enjoy. Imagine building nice homes, collecting taxes, and coming home to a nice and warm cottage by the ocean; prime real estate other players would die for.

Games like Second Life show that people will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for virtual land. The demand is there. MMO makers NEED to fulfill this demand and create persistent maps that can be conquered and controlled. Powerful Diplomacy actions need to be present as well to emulate the real world, and alliance systems need to be put in place.

Land that you fight for and control needs to be in nearly every MMO. What guild doesn’t want their own guild hall taken after a successful war?

Economy

Every item should be up for sale at whatever a player wants to sell it for. Items should deteriorate and be repairable so as to stop items from being horded and incentivize players to keep getting the items they need to progress forward.

Scamming should be monitored by the Game and there should be a zero tolerance policy for such acts. The Economy needs to be fairly regulated so that scammers don’t take hold of it and ruin the game experience for others.

But beyond that it should be totally free and if a person doesn’t research the price of their item and sells it for too little, they should have no one to complain to but themselves.

A rich and diverse economy is what should be at the heart of every MMO as well, so that these virtual items can be properly traded and people who need them can get them by trading, currency, or working. This way a players time can become currency.

Exploration

New land should always be added to the map. This new land would cause tension and give the game a fresh taste as people venture out and try to claim it for their own. This new land should be both in easy to obtain areas and hard to obtain areas, this way the whole player base gets excited; not just the top players.

The best land should be inaccessible except by permission. This way players that may want to see a beautiful town or city may only be able to do so if they are part of a certain guild, have explicit permission,  or view that land on a test server. This would make that land even more valuable and exploration even more fun.

People should be both rewarded and punished for exploration. Those that are the strongest or the smartest can created groups where the costs are lowered and the benefits are easier to obtain.

Story

The story should be immersive. Currently the player base takes little part in the lore of the game.  Imagine that the Devs of the game make an event where a person of special interest is placed in a heavily guarded fort. They create the backstory of the game, create a beautiful world, narrative, and mythos, and then the PLAYERS drive the story forward with in game events.

A camera records this fortress and whoever successfully saves the person of interest becomes part of the games lore forever. The game is shaped by you, your guild, and your choices. In this way, you feel more immersed in the game, and your time seems better used as now you’ve been placed in the annals of history.

These events don’t have to be very often but even once a month or once every three months would be huge and they could be open to anyone in game willing to take up the challenge, helping to push the narrative of the game forward. Why can’t games have a narrative that keeps going, keeps being written? Currently wrestling does this by hiring Hollywood writers to create ongoing plots. Why not have the same writers create interactive plots in MMOs?

Creativity

Building and creativity is what made Minecraft, Sims, and other games so popular. MMOs don’t have to allow you to destroy the terrain, but they should allow you to make a house into a home, with various items, and various ways of crafting them.

In this way, you can make unique beds, customize the colors, or shrink their size as they see fit. See games like Sims 2 and Sims 3 to get an idea of the customization I’m talking about. This game should also allow you to craft weapons and items that aren’t spawned or gotten by destroying monsters.

Crafting would also label the crafter on the item and thereby raise recognition of the best creators in the land. Since items would degrade as well, crafting could be a job of its own, that one would need to train to fully perfect.

Creativity and the ability to express one’s self needs to be part of the MMO in some way.

No Developer or GM interference

If you work for the game, you can’t benefit from it in any way. Every game that has their Developers or Game masters openly playing it, and profiting from it, has lead to corruption. Every single game.

If you have a GM account, you only use it from 9-5 to fix issues in the game. When you get home, if you play the game, you play on another account.

The Devs and the creators play on separate accounts. The Business NEVER EVER conflicts with personal gaming lives. This leads to corruption, tyranny, and unbalanced characters because greed is a part of the human condition and humans should not constantly bombard themselves with greed.

Take yourself out of the equation, never mix the business with pleasure, and enjoy your game on a personal account. There are so many horror stories games could have avoided and so many tyrannical GM’s and Devs that simply would not exist if this ONE rule were followed.

Final Thoughts

So imagine your house in this game, imagine being rich beyond your wildest dreams, crafting the best weapons in the land, and leader of the most powerful and prestigious guild on the server.

That would be a sense of real accomplishment, to use your power for good or evil as you choose, and to enter the history and lore of the game by taking part in in-game events.

Land would be up for the taking, and you would always need to be vigilant to guard your home, hiring security when needed. As new land came in, your home may be exposed to new people, which would require you to build new trust with them or build new alliances. Possibly it may lead to wars.

An ever diverse game, with a strong economy, strong player base, and true immersion is the goal of every MMO. It’s time for MMOs to implement these changes, make their games more immersive/interactive, and give us the game we’ve always wanted.

 

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First Quarter VideoGame releases of 2013

Posted by TheeImmortalPhoenix on
(A great video showing all the games and their box art)

1. Jan 8 Anarchy Reigns
2. Jan 15. DMC New Devil May Cry
3. Jan 15. Sniper ghost Warrior 2
4. Jan 17. New Borderlands 2 DLC
5. Jan 22. Ni No Komi Wrath of the White Witch
6. Feb 5. Dead Space 3
7. Feb 5. Sly 4: Thieves in Time
8. Feb 5. Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2
9. Feb 12. Aliens: Colonial Marines
10.Feb 21. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
11.Feb 26. Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires
12.March 5. New Simcity
13.March 5. Tomb Raider – New installment
14.March 12. God of War Ascension
15.March 12. Starcraft 2: Heart of the Storm
16.March 19. Gears of War: Judgement
17.March 26. Bioshock Infinite
18.March 31. Star Trek
19.April 23. Dead Island Riptide
20.May 7. The Last of Us

Missed one:
* Feb 19 Crysis 3 arrives

Gaming Award Analysis – Categories, Selection, and Philosophy

Posted by TheeImmortalPhoenix on
(Which awards you give is as important as the selection process of giving awards. The Philosophy behind award categories is essential for Video Game Award committees to understand.)

 

The mission of this column has always been to analyze gaming culture and the gaming industry and a great topic around this time is end of the year awards for Games. There are a ton of questions that come to mind and forums filled with flame wars as to which games deserve which awards but there’s very little discussion on what categories there should be to begin with.

Are we missing any important categories? Do we have any now that are too general that need to be removed? Besides the issues of categories, can you have two games win the same award, or not give an award because no games earned it?

There are a lot of tough questions surrounding these end of the year gaming awards, and a lot of them that simply haven’t been addressed. It’s important to talk about what game is the game of the year, but it’s equally important to discuss whether any game should even win an award for a particular category.

So given all the questions we raised lets try to delve in and find some answers.

Gaming Categories

What should be the philosophy behind creating a category? What requirements need to be put in place before we create a new category or remove one? This is important to address because gaming is here to stay for as long as mankind thrives on this planet. During that time, categories need to be in flux or change because over time certain genres may not become as popular or may disappear altogether.

If we keep stale old categories, their age will start to show and people will wonder “Why do we even give awards for that genre?” It’s a question I asked myself and I continue to ask as gaming has progressed and the categories seem to be getting staler and showing their age. On the flip side, you may be ignoring important new categories by no reassessing the landscape and finding new genres that have emerged.

So, given all of that, what requirements should be put in place to create/sustain a category?

Sizable Market

By Sizable market, there are two different requirements that are being put forward. First there must be a large number of people that recognize and play this genre, so that it’s not a small niche of gamers, and secondly there should be a sizeable amount of games released in this category every year.
Philosophy behind it

If this requirement was not put in place, we would have two problems:

  • Games with small niche followings would ask for their own categories, for their own genre and would have every right to do so, creating too many awards and too many categories.
  • The second problem would entail making categories for genres that only release a few games per year. In this way, there is very little competition, and people know which game is going to get the award. Why make a category if few games are released and there is an obvious winner amongst the few?

So for the above reasons we should remove categories that shrink and lose their sizable market status and create new categories for emerging genres with large fan bases and multiple gaming releases.

Unique

There should be very little overlap between categories such that one game can’t easily be put into multiple categories. A good example to illustrate this point might be if we created a category for “Best game that uses controllers”. Most, if not nearly all games, use controllers and to make such a badly worded category would make it so that many different games could all be up for the same award.

There is one caveat that I’d like to mention, which is the “Game of the Year” award itself. Being that you want every single game considered, that needs to allow all games to compete, but outside of that specific category, you wouldn’t want to make another category that’s too general.



Philosophy behind it

If we ignored this rule and created categories that were too general, we would be left with this problem:

  • The award itself would have little meaning, as you’re not highlighting how this game is better than the rest. To give an award simply for having a controller or a genre that’s too broad to create distinction, dilutes the award itself. People would recognize that and not give it as much respect as games that won “Shooter of the year”, a title that’s often extremely competitive.
Relevant

This may be the most important factor of all because often categories are not reevaluated and become irrelevant. Time eats away at them, gaming progresses, and websites lazily keep awarding games based on a category that is 10 years old and no longer as popular.

Gaming sites need to know that there are consequences for giving awards that are simply, irrelevant.

Three problems come to mind:

  • Firstly as mentioned above people can feel the category is old and needs to be removed.
  •  We include categories that have little to do with gaming, are not genres, and may just be considered “cool”. More discussion will be given on these non-gaming genre categories later in this article. A quick example of a category like this would be Golden Joystiq’s “Youtube Gamer Award”.
  • We neglect new genres that have been created, because we don’t reevaluate our awards and recognize that gaming has changed, requiring new awards, for new types of games.

Given these three principles, most award committees should be able to make different awards, think outside the box, and keep their awards relevant to the current year.

*Keep in mind that giving awards outside of gaming genres is perfectly acceptable if the purpose of it is to recognize some hidden talent or outside effort on the part of the Gaming Industry or the fans. There are good and bad ways to go about this, and one bad way, “Youtube Gamer award” was listed above. A good example would be “Story of the Year” or “Best New Game Mechanic of the Year”.

Evaluating Awards

Just to show the current state of our awards I thought I’d evaluate two different Gaming award groups and analyze their categories given the three principles listed above. The two award groups I’ll be looking at are the Golden Joystiq awards which are arguably one of the oldest, if not the oldest gaming award committee, going since 1982 and Gamespot which is one of the generic big websites centered around Gaming.

First lets list the awards and discuss Golden Joystiq’s categories.

 
Golden Joystiq 2012

Best Action- Winner: Batman: Arkham City

Best DLC- Winner: Portal 2 (Perpetual Testing Initiative)

Best Downloadable- Winner: Minecraft (360)

Best Fighter- Winner: Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition

Best Free To Play- Winner: Slender

Best Handheld- Winner: Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Best MMO- Winner: World of Tanks

Best Mobile Tablet- Winner: Angry Birds Space

Best Racer- Winner: Forza 4

Best RPG- Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Best Shooter- Winner: Battlefield 3

Best Sports- Winner: FIFA 12

Best Strategy- Winner: Civilization V: Gods and Kings

Outstanding Contribution- FIFA (EA Sports)

One to Watch- Winner: Grand Theft Auto V

Top Gaming Moment- Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Throat of theWorld

Ultimate Game of the Year- Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Greatest YouTube Gamer Award- Winner: Yogscast

Analysis

So in total there are 18 awards. Just off the back, before we analyze the problems, lets look at the categories that are obviously acceptable and then list which are problematic given the principles we listed above.

Obviously acceptable:

Ultimate game of the year (Essentially Game of the year)

Best Strategy

Best Sports

Best Shooter

Best RPG

Best Mobile

Best Handheld

Best Free to Play

Best Fighter

Best DLC

Best MMO

So that’s 11 out of the 18 that can easily be understood, are large genres, or deserve recognition. Sadly that leaves 7 that are problematic; a fairly big number. Lets tackle them 1 by 1.

Best Action: Nearly every game has action and it’s not as easy a category to justify when applied to games. This category may have been added when looking at Movie award categories where an action movie is more about the visual destruction, violence, or intensity of a film. In the vast majority of games, you can’t avoid action.

This category clearly violates the Unique principle listed above, and what game studio would be happy to get this award instead of Best RPG or Best Strategy game. That puts you ahead of the pack. Best action is too generic and diluted a term for gaming.

Best Downloadable: Since they already have a DLC award, what is this category? DLC stands for Downloadable Content, so why would you make a separate category dedicated to downloadable. It seems from looking at the games they awarded, one category recognizes additions to games which they label DLC and the other category recognizes games that don’t come on discs and are downloaded.

There’s one problem with this, because of sites like Amazon and Steam, most games can be downloaded without a disc now. They can be bought before launch day and downloaded the hour it’s released; all blockbuster triple AAA titles. So this category breaks the principles of Relevancy.

Outstanding Contribution: What is this category? Contributed to what? It was even given to EA, a company that’s notorious for bad business practices with their consumers. This award reeks of an insider scam. This breaks the principle of common sense.

One to Watch: Awards for games that haven’t even come out, and are just being hyped up is never a good idea. Anyone remember L.A Noire? Rockstar is good at making games, but giving the game to GTA 5, without knowing if it’s good yet, is not what Gaming award committees should do. It doesn’t benefit the gamer, the companies, or help to distinguish the best games.

Best Racer: This is a great example of violating the Sizable Market principle and Relevancy principle. In 2010 the game was given to Forza, and in 2011 it was given to Gran Turismo and then in 2012 back to Forza again.

Racing games used to have a large niche, especially with the Need for speed franchise. But since then, amazing new original racing games, and the genre as a whole has been dying and shrinking.

We have to recognize this and let this category go. We can’t keep giving free awards to a few games, that dominate a small niche of the market

Top Gaming Moment: Since games on average are 5-8 hours long, this category is a near impossibility especially since you end up comparing apples to oranges. How do you compare shooter moments to RPG moments or great story arcs to great gameplay moments? This is such a daunting task it essentially violates the Unique principle defined above. There are too many moments in games, and different types of games, to justify a Top Gaming Moment.

Greatest YouTube Gamer Award: This award is more of a popularity contest award and probably there to make the award ceremony seem “hip, cool, and trendy”. Youtube is an amazing video website that lets you share all types of content across the world for free but gaming commentators are not games themselves. Although they may provide a lot of value and people may love to watch them, they are a secondary part of gaming.

It would be like giving a movie award to movie critics. You never see awards like that given at movie award ceremonies. It definitely relates to the topic at hand but it’s a secondary concern. Most likely, as mentioned above, this was added to make the ceremony seem more on the cutting edge, hip, and with the times. In reality, we shouldn’t be giving awards to people that play games and share them on youtube. Most true gamers would agree with that.

Gamespot 2012

Genre Awards

 

Fighting Game of the Year

Action/Adventure Game of the Year

Role-Playing Game of the Year

Shooter of the Year

Strategy Game of the Year

Racing Game of the Year

Sports Game

Platformer of the Year

Platform Awards

PC Game of the Year

PS3 Game of the Year

PSN Game of the Year

Xbox 360 Game of the Year

XBLA Game of the Year

Wii U Game of the Year

Handheld Game of the Year

Special Achievements

Game of the Year
There are 16 awards this time, not counting 12 random awards given under special achievements which will be discussed separately.

I enjoy how Gamespot separates the different awards into Genre, Platform, and finally in their special and Game of the year category. This really helps navigation and helps people understand where each award fits.

Of the 16 awards, not counting the special awards, there were 4 I take issue with which is a better ratio than the 7 out of 18 that were lacking in the Joystiq awards.
Action/Adventure: Just looking at the nominees shows how broad this category is. You have a Puzzle platformer of Darksiders 2 up against a more strategy/adventure/survivor like Lone survivor, and then you throw in a sneaking game like Dishonored into the mix. Just to add more variety they tout the open world game Sleeping dogs.

This category again violates the Unique principle and doesn’t allow games to be classified properly. A lot of games have action and adventure and to try to make one category with a jumbling of completely different games causes confusion, dilutes the award, and creates flame wars on forums.

 Racing: The same issues were raised above in the Joystiq awards. Also, wouldn’t you know it, but that they choose Forza. Quite a surprise right? This is a category that is just too old and needs to go as gaming has progressed passed it.

PSN/XBLA: A DLC category would have been better. Why does it matter if one game is better simply because it’s on Xbox live. Have the games go head to head and create a nice DLC category where only the best games, either on PSN, or on XBLA can go at it and survive.

By separating these categories, a better PSN game may get robbed of the crown of best DLC because it has to share the award with those in the XBLA category, EVEN if the PSN game is better. The same may happen to an Xbox live game.
Special Achievements: I like the idea and concept behind this because it gives awards for specific achievements and greatness that’s hard to put in a cookie cutter box. They gave awards I completely agree with, like one for Dear Esther, for its amazing storytelling and unique game mechanic. They did the same with Walking Dead because of its emotional storyline.

But there are also some in here that are just pathetic like “Persona 4 Golden” for “proving Persona 4 is still awesome”….. Really Gamespot? Really? There are some other bad ones like an award for FTL simply “for keeping its promise after getting funded”. I thought keeping promises is what every human is supposed to do? When did we start giving awards to people for not lying to us?

To give or not to give, that is the question

Another question about Gaming awards is whether to give them for a category or not. What if in the last year no games really reached a level or quality deserving of the title?

Does that level of quality even matter? Could it be the award is given to a game regardless of how bad the playing field was? Is it that these games are so competitive for sales that this is just a theoretical problem that won’t actual surface as game designers fight tooth and nail for quality?

A lot of unanswered questions. To sum it up it may be best to say it’s hard for a gaming committee to not award a game. In the history of gaming awards this has rarely if ever happened. Even if the year sucked and had very few high quality titles, the awards seem to still be there for the grabbing.

If I were on a committee would I vote to keep an award empty? If the year were bad enough, I just might. Being honest with ourselves here though, this seems a rare possibility, but given how weak 2012 was for gaming, we may have this issue come up in the future. So for now, gaming award committees should include this possibility but in all likelihood we probably will find at least one candidate worthy of a particular title.

With that, we’ll have to put our analysis to a rest and I hope this article raised some questions in your head and allowed you to look deeper at gaming than the everyday news or updates Kotaku spits at you.  :P

Thanks for sticking in there and see you all next week! :)

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Are Games Getting too Easy? Do Easy Games Sell Better?

Posted by TheeImmortalPhoenix on
(So yea, Gaming hasn’t improved, it has simply gotten simpler so we imbeciles can enjoy it. Right? Wrong!)

Commonly in Video Game culture there comes a discussion of how games today are just far too easy and they’ve developed this way to make it easier for the masses to play games. This idea perpetuates the notion that gaming has only gotten bigger because it has dumbed down so that non-gamers(Whoever they are) can get excited about playing games.

There are two main reasons why these types of ideas are just plain stupid. Firstly it’s actually offensive to gamers to say that more people play now because games have gotten “stupid” enough for the majority of “stupid” society to play along.

Believe it or not, Pokemon, Paperboy, and Super Street fighter were never hard games. It’s true that there are a number of series early on in gaming that were extremely challenging but looking at the “Golden” era of gaming shows a plethora of games you could consider laughably easy.

IF ANYTHING there are MORE challenging games on the market from 2000-2012, then there were from 1988-2000. As gamers grew up, game designers were forced to keep their audience and code for better and better games more centered toward growing audiences. This has lead to more challenge over time rather than more games like Asteroids.

So just to clarify my first point, there were tons of easy games back when Gaming was developing in the golden era which people seem to so greatly cling to. Ignoring them and saying we have too many easy games today is just ignorance about Gaming history.

Secondly, games have gotten more efficient over time and game designers have been working their butts off trying to makes games more approachable and easier to understand for decades. To ignore their hard work in how they seamlessly integrate tutorials into the game or provide subtle hints to push the player forward CAN lead to someone THINKING a game is more easy. In reality it’s Game designers who have become incredibly good at their jobs.

Games that used to stop and teach you a new game mechanic and then force you into the fire may have seemed harder than the current games which slowly ease you into a new game mechanic and only make it necessary once you’ve had time to master it.

This just means games are less frustrating and are fairer, rather than throwing you into the fire randomly or improperly setting up the game. Why would we want to go back to games that were badly designed?

Hard Games have always existed

Now pointing all this out isn’t to say that hard games didn’t exist, they definitely did and the hard ones in the 1990′s are probably harder than the hard ones we have today. But to say that we don’t have games that are difficult now, or to say that people only love gaming because it’s dumbed down is insulting to all gamers. We’re not imbeciles and society as a whole isn’t filled with droves of idiots that like to randomly mash buttons.

Button mashing games exist, as do correctly designed games like Pokemon. Pokemon, just given as an example, is a game that has depth, but can also be easily played by most children. The game design is supurb and explains why it has gone on to sell millions of copies.

Similarly, most current day games have learned the mistakes of the passed, become the wiser, and are more approachable and easier to  get into than games of the past. This doesn’t make them easier, only better built, and this increased efficiency of play is a boon that has lead to many millions more people getting addicted to the gaming bug.

Our Games are as great as they’ve always been, we should recognize that, praise the talents of game designers, and acknowledge that we’ve learned from the past’s mistakes. To simply throw that all away and say games are “easier” is essentially a slap in the face to all gamers; especially when you follow it up by saying gaming only has mass appeal if it’s dumbed down.

Don’t let their ignorance about Gaming’s history taint the hard work of countless game production studios, designers, programmers, and the community at large.

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[Editor's Note: The views and opinions supported in this article do not represent or express the views of Immersed Gaming, it's members,or its affiliates. The views in this article are that of the author alone.]