21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men | Hacker News Reader

21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men

wired.com

54 pointsadamhowell33 comments

Video games are also affecting real life sports. Modern football players who have been weened on NFL Madden appear to be better at tactics and reading play formations.

Also, there was an instance where a NFL player executed a move from the video game.

But increasingly, according to Chris Suellentrop in this month’s Wired Magazine, the trend has reversed. A generation of actual NFL players, raised on games like Madden NFL, are bringing the influence of video games into their real play.

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/05/04

Let's just hope no soldiers attempt a rocket jump in the real world.

When you can't respawn, it's horrible hard to learn the technique where you get nearly no damage.

I thought last night's onside kick to start off the second half was a video game move

This just underscores the importance of social networking within gaming, especially for the older demographic. You want to play with your friends that are online at the time, not with a bunch of strangers (who are younger, better, and more immature). The recent revival of small-team coop is also along these lines (l4d, borderlands).

Even as an older teenager the 11 year olds were just so fucking annoying. I really wish Microsoft would allow for some sort of age, or at least maturity, certification thing where I could say, "No, I do not want to play with 11-13 year old racists who think that Nigger is the best and funniest word in the entire world."

I'm with you. Unfortunately, that applies to the whole world.

As an older gamer, I found that general fitness has a huge impact on reflexes. It's an ironic but effective motivation for making time for exercise.

There also seems to be a crying need for tiered online playing. Every other sport has them, often A, B, C etc level teams, to solve the same problem that it's not fun to be totally outclassed. The frustration level has to be challenging but attainable.

QuakeLive did a great job in automatically raking people according to skill. You can choose to play stronger competition if you want, or just play in your own skill level.

The Xbox 360 uses TrueSkill for matchmaking. Not perfect but better than nothing. I don't think the PS3 has anything similar.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/

"Time to play" is a big factor, certainly. I've been playing Bayonetta lately, a Devil May Cry-style fighter, and while I'm pretty sure I have the raw skills to master the game, I sure don't have the time. (Or, if I had the time, the desire. But I certainly don't have the time.) I'm not lost in the action on the screen or incapable of understanding what I should do or what's going on, I simply don't have the time to put that stuff in my cerebellum where it needs to be to play at the highest level. For example, in the "Hard" mode, there are sounds that when you hear them need to immediately trigger a particular button press (dodge), ideally with a high degree of accuracy as well. I can do it when I concentrate, but you need to be able to do it without concentrating because there's other stuff to concentrate on, too.

But I also observe that these are also exactly the games you hear about the younger folk being so dominating in, that is, the games you need to have the time to download reflexes into the lower brain.

Oh, I don't deny that you get worse as you get older, nice and slow so as you can pretend it's not happening, and in a hypothetical fair fight my 15-year-old self could presumably beat my 30-year-old self in reaction-based gaming. But I don't think that explains the utter domination, I think that explains only a small part of the difference. The utter domination comes from having the time to train reflexes.

Also, interesting counterpoint: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1399 , the part in the first blockquote.

The other thing I would observe is that the controllers I grew up on were terrible. Everything pre-Nintendo was mushy and introduced what I now consider readily-visible latency into the game control. In hindsight, the Genesis controls were pretty mushy too, and even the Nintendo I call out was noticably more mushy than the Super Nintendo controller, the oldest controller I can still use today without cursing at the latency. This robbed my generation of valuable years of high-feedback gaming. I've played some of these old games in emulation in the past few years, and they are distinctly easier than I remember them, and I think that's mostly because when I play them in emulation I'm using modern controllers. (In particular, I played Beamrider on the Atari 2600 with original controllers and on the GBA through the Atari collection cartridge, and on my first try on the GBA I got further in the game than I could back when I was 12 or so on the original controllers. (If you think that doesn't jive with my age, you're right; it was old even by then, but the device was still functional. Those 2600s were pretty robust.))

Part of the articles argument seems to be that growing up with fast paced shooters gives younger players more of an advantage. I have to wonder, though, if rewiring the brain for fast twitch reflexes through FPS games is actually good for the young, developing mind later in life.

Most of my on-line gaming has been console-based, so I can't compare to current PC gaming. The issues covered in the article are very familiar to me. Leaving aside the juvenile name-calling, the younger players do seem to have a different approach to the games, and possibly an advantage. In the case of MW2, GRAW, and other tactical shooters, it seems to me that the younger players prefer the "run & gun" modes that favor fast motor reflexes. The older players (including myself) gravitate toward the modes that favor better team coordination and a more methodical approach (at the cost of having to listen to complaints about "camping").

Players tend to fit within certain play styles. The most famous is the Bartle study which has four categories: Killer, Achiever, Explorer, Socializer. Your style of play falls into the Explorer category, which favours strategy. The people who are really fast at killing are Killers, obviously.

If you want your target market to include all four types you must provide something for all four types. The problem is that the Killer group is easiest to provide for so it's very easy for it to dominate.

http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2005/01/styles-of-pla...

I've submitted the link to HN so it has its own thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1111406

I've always fit into the "run & gun" category, but I don't know if it's just because I'm younger. I personally find the team cooperation games boring, so much sitting around doing nothing :)

Based on how I end up doing on Xbox Live, I consider myself better at these FPS's than a lot of kids that are younger than me, and I didn't really grow up with FPS's like most kids are these days.

It could have more to do with sport involvement and other reflex activities (I've been a musician since I was young).

As an aside, I think one of the ultimate run & gun gametypes I've played is Halo 2 or 3 SWAT. Now THAT is intense!

In my experience, console gaming takes the social experience of online gaming and turns it ass backwards. Instead of selecting servers from a list, which is essentially like picking what community you want to play with, you are thrown in with a bunch of anonymous strangers who in all likely hood are going to act like juvenile asshats.

I believe there is a social theory that relates to this, and I think PG wrote something on it, the whole "as groups get bigger they get less personal and more people are asshats" thing. Well, online console gaming has short circuited the process there...

Do you recall those stories about people who became life long friends or got married after they met in Everquest or WoW? I don't expect you'll hear many stories like that about xbox live or playstation online.

How is EQ or WoW different than "you are thrown in with a bunch of anonymous strangers"? It's not as if MMOs really allow you to choose servers anyways (yes, you can choose realms, but that's still tens of thousands of total strangers, not friends you play with constantly).

In fact, you will find these stories about WoW marriages and such come from guilds and other organized social groups within these games... these still exist in "random match" FPSes like Modern Warfare (in the form of clans, or just plain social gaming groups that play together). I suspect we will hear more about such relationships in the future, not less.

For me though, I still prefer picking my servers... it's good to know that there's an admin out there to swing the banhammer decisively and quickly when necessary. It's also nice to log onto the same server and see the same familiar faces (er, nicknames rather) without having to commit to joining a clan of some sort.

Perhaps you're thinking of this... ah, theory? http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Of all ways that Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection gets online gaming wrong, at least it's hard to be an asshat on there. No voice chat actually makes for a better experience in ranked play, in my opinion.

(Incidentally, you can get sorta get around the community issue by setting up games to be friends only, or setting up a dummy account that all your community members are friends of and using the friends of friends feature)

I witnessed this with my younger brother. The last game I played seriously online was Halo 2. I was 26 when it came out an my brother was 11. During the first year I made level 30 on Live. My brother couldn't touch me until he turned 15 and Halo 3 came out. He ended up playing it sooner and more and I just never was able to catch up.

But I believe it's pretty much hours played that makes the difference seem so large. The top pros are probably young because every bit of twitch reflex makes the different at that level, but I think you can still play at quite a high level when you're older (okay I'm only 31 now). PC games might be a good place because having the resources to run a game at max resolution on a very large monitor can make a big difference.

That's exactly how I felt when I played paintball a while ago.

It depends on the environment. I was an avid paintball player for about 7 years, as was my dad, and he always managed to outclass a lot of the people on the field. He wasn't the fastest guy with the ability to dump the most paint on the field, but he was tactical and could cooperate well. After the first or second game of the day, people were vying for him to be on their team, even if they'd shrugged him off as some old fart before.

I figure this is natural. I figure it would have been the same way in video games, if it wasn't for:

1: twitch reflexes are important

2: the cost of practice is zero- no risk, no $$$- so kids with lots of time can log massive playtime. Traditionally being older meant more experience, but now because of the growth rate of games, a young kid has more experience with modern fps's than an older player

3: there's no physical risk to the player. I feel this changes the landscape a lot; in the real world, say in the army for example, the chance of death changes everything.

Sounds like there is a new gaming market needing attention. Or maybe handicapping players.

I play games with friends or alone, never with strangers. Problem solved.

I have yet to play QuakeLive on anything other than practice mode.

And now you have a new problem : Scheduling games when all your friends can play.

That's pretty sad, cause in my experience QuakeLive caters for inexperienced players better than most FPSs.

I'm 44 and used to be pretty hot on games -- like in the dark ages 15 or 20 years ago. But I gave them up a long time ago. They got simply too addictive and time-consuming.

At Christmas my 14-year-old got me to play Halo 3 with him and his two brothers, 24 and 21. Not only was he killing me with ease, he was mauling his brothers easily as well. It got so bad that he would run up and stand still in front of me just so I could shoot him and get a kill.

I mostly felt like one of those little plastic ducks in the shooting gallery.

Dang kids. Wish they'd get off my lawn. :)

And that's why I still play HOMM3 and Disciples 2... or any turn-based RPG for that matter (mainly japanese ones).

Play games on the PC, where voice chat is usually opt-in.

And where the younger players like to use cheats and hacks...

Though personally, I'm still playing Modern Warfare 2 (since I never played the previous ones, the "flaws" that PC gamers are complaining about don't bother me) and even though I'#m told theres hacks and cheats out, I still seem to be holding up well enough, so I hope before it begins to bother me, I'll have got bored of the game.

And yeah, seems few people on the PC even bother with voice chat.

And that is why single player PC is more compelling to me. I could see left 4 dead being interesting to play with a few friends but us old guys don't have the time anymore. Sigh.

Yeah.. I agree. I generally prefer single player games too. I mean, I like the idea of playing with other people - but those same other people also turn me off because I can't enjoy the game environment, gameplay and experience without someone else imposing what they feel it should be on me, even if thats not how I want to play.

I play a few multiplayer games with friends sometimes and the experience is much better because we can agree how we want to play.

Having said that, occasionally I do play multiplayer games with people and have a lot of fun doing it - counter strike a few years ago, rainbow 6 vegas 2 last year and modern warfare 2 this year.

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