Hacker News Reader

Comment by swarnie | Hacker News Reader

Video game consumers have always baffled me and this data just adds to it.

Who are the 7 million people going out to buy the 20th Persona game? What are you actually hoping to get from it that isn't just a slight variance on something you've already had multiple times before?

I have friends genuinely excited to go buy Mario Cart for the 17th time this year... Once you've made two objects move along an enclosed route at differing speeds and slapped Nintendo marketing on top hasn't the game play evolved as much as possible?

Could the money not be better spent coming up with new and interesting concepts rather than copy pasting the same stuff out every 12-18 months?

View on HN

You can apply that logic to anything: why bother returning to the same great restaurant? Why bother with sports matches? Why buy a new car? New mobile? New computer? New TV? Why install a new version of an OS or software?

It's because they change: They tell new stories. They look better. They play better. They introduce completely new mechanics.

Persona: we're up to 5 in 25 years (almost 30 now!), during which time we've seen a massive increase in compute on consoles. Having a new game every 5 years seems very reasonable.

Not to mention the entirely of art, music, literature. The concept of stories in general.

It’s such an absurdly bad take they can’t be serious.

Sadly I suspect they are. There’s an entire culture of denigrating anything fun by absurdly reducing it to its basic components. I’ve seen a lot of people denigrate football by calling it “kickball” and “just 20 men running around chasing a ball on a field.” I guess we could say our job is just hitting a keyboard thousands of times a day, no idea how anyone would enjoy that! /sarcasm

Sorry but I think your analogy is just wrong.

In football anybody in the world who has legs and can walk can perform the main goal of football which is to get a ball into a very large net. It doesnt take any skill to perform the feat whatsoever. The skill only comes with who you choose to play against. From that angle, it is just 20 people chasing a ball around, it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.

With programming, not everybody with fingers can achieve the end goal which is to write working software. It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.

The difference between the two is that football, and sport in general, creates enjoyment by intense moments of tension and excitement in a small space of time. Programming is an intellectual activity, where its payoff is in solving mathematical and logical puzzles to achieve a goal. Its not far fetched to see that people who get enjoyment from one type thing might not enjoy the other.

Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?

> it just depends on the skill level of the players as to whether that is interesting to you or not.

The people denigrating football are referring to the Premier League, La Liga, etc. It’s nothing to do with skill and everything to do with snobbery.

> It takes years of learning and practice to be able to make even the most basic piece of software, whereas my 2 year old child can reliably kick a ball into a net.

You’re starting to sound like those people.

> Why does everybody have to enjoy everything?

I didn’t say you did, all I said was that it’s a sad cultural behaviour that I’ve seen to denigrate things other people enjoy.

I don’t even watch football that much, I picked it because of its popularity.

That seems like an unfair comparison. It doesn't take years of learning to write the "kick a ball into a net" of programming; most everybody writes hello world on their first day. Programming and sports both have vastly different difficulties depending on whether you're approaching it as an amateur or a professional.

At some point though, kind of like bad movie sequels, you start to think that Corporate has run out of ideas.

Of course someone there is looking at the balance sheet and noticing that recycling is actually profitable so who can blame them if we want to keep repurchasing the shinier version of the thing we liked before?

Then I suppose we have ourselves to blame — or not.

I suspect the OP though is bemoaning the lack of new, original ideas that this kind of commerce workflow eschews. (Myself, I'm not into first person shooters and so essentially walked away from mainstream gaming decades ago.)

> You can apply that logic to anything: why bother returning to the same great restaurant?

> It's because they change

That's not true at all. I don't return to the same great restaurant because it's new and different. If I wanted that, I'd look for a different restaurant.

I go back to the same great restaurant because I'm hungry again.

And realistically the vast majority of Persona fans, certainly in the West, haven't played anything before Persona 3. By the numbers there might be an absolute majority that have just played 5, since it was such a jump in popularity and mainstream success.

You know, humans pick up hobbies like cycling or running which they do consistently for years, listen to specific music genres or even electronic music which is mostly just a beat, hang up a painting they like in the living room and look at it for years and years, go out to their favorite place to eat consistently or cook the same passed down family recipe, and in so many other aspects avoid sudden changes, and you're surprised that for video games we enjoy the same formula repeatedly?

If you walked in to my living room and saw 17 almost identical paintings where maybe one is styled to look like papercraft, one has a little dinosaur, one has a racoon tail ect you'd rightly think i was a bit mad even before i announced i'd paid $80 for each one.

Now if i had 17 unique paintings exploring a variety of motifs and styles, each one with a story to tell that would actually be worth talking about.

Actually, I would think the artist is mad for selling those paintings so cheap. Paintings usually command a much higher price tag.

Then I’d compliment your ability to create a flowing theme throughout the house.

The problem with your analogy here is that art for the home (or anywhere outside a museum or gallery) is generally bought to compliment the overall aesthetics of the building, rather than to be enjoyed in isolation.

> Now if i had 17 unique paintings exploring a variety of motifs and styles, each one with a story to tell that would actually be worth talking about.

That’s called “eclectic”, which is basically an artsy way of saying “mismatched”. Some people dig that style. Personally I don’t.

Likening a game to a painting is just a false premise. Games are a unique medium that can in themselves hold lots of different things which inherently makes them hard to compare wholesale to other mediums. They can be similar to Chess in the sense of requiring strategy or a physical sport in that they can be almost entirely composed of the skill expression of the players. They can even hold paintings or novels in their entirety, or do something entirely unique that just can't be done in other mediums (my favorite example of that is Outer Wilds).

Why are you so judgmental of what kinds of paintings people hang on their walls? Just hang the paintings on your walls that you like and leave everybody else alone.

Are you also surprised by popularity of sitcoms like Friends or HIMYM, or reality shows? They're even more repetitive rehashes of the same mundane thing, both episode to episode and within the genre.

Who are the millions of people who watch, for the 20th time in their life, how Character A does something unrealistically stupid, ends up in an awkward situation, and then spend the rest of the episode being continuously teased over it by other characters, because they're all written to be slightly stupid and low-key assholes.

This is not to criticize sitcoms and reality shows (and people watching them) here, but rather to point out that the same phenomenon you described also manifests with vastly more popular forms of entertainment, so there must be something to enjoying the experience beyond sheer originality.

I was going to make a point here about it being ok to occasionally churn out some uncomplicated slop because it helps fund more interesting projects, that was until i looked up the maker of Friends and found NBC pretty much only make that kind of stuff.

NBC and Nintendo, no evolution or original thought. Just copy paste it to the masses because its all the seem to want anyway based on this thread.

Maybe im wrong for demanding more....

Things can be challenging, easy, predictable, and trite and still be good. Garfield/Tetris/KFC is fine. There's not shame in enjoying it, and there's certainly no shame in working on it (or selling it).

Evolution and original stuff are amazing and we should want them to exist. To be disappointed because we also have stuff that isn't like that is to turn a blind eye to what makes up a lot of our life.

You’re not wrong for wanting it. But you are wrong for expecting that every studio should only ever release completely original content.

The reality is that there is room for studios to release original content AND sequels.

For every Star Wars and Marvel rehash there is a Big Hero 6, Elementals, and Zootopia.

And for every Nintendo there are a dozen indie games studios releasing creative new games.

The key to avoiding rehashes is literally just to avoid them. ;)

You’re not willing to pay for more though. You thought that the only way “good” things were funded was by “bad” things which people enjoy subsidising you.

Mario Kart World added some kind of extreme sports game style features which make it play quite a lot differently from older entries, and of course new content which takes advantage of that.

In some ways this is the optimal way for a video game company to innovate as they need ROI (people don't generally buy new IPs in high numbers even if they're really good and it often takes a couple of installments to build trust and sales!) so creating new gameplay out of trusted IPs is a good way of achieving that.

I could understand if the complaint was about a sports game. Most of them are released annually and are genuinely very similar to their previous versions.

However, every new Mario Kart game is genuinely distinct from its predecessor. You can show me any screenshot of any Mario Kart game, and I will immediately be able to identify what version it is.

The only series that release "every 12-18 months" are sports games and Call of Duty, and I can assure you that the overlap between that audience and the Persona one (which has five main-series entries of which barely anyone has played the first two) is extremely small.

Have you considered that you may just be very out of touch?

Same could be said about movies, tv-shows and books. Same plots over and over again.

Religion is really the worst offender. Same service with same text time after time, year after year. Like they do not even take effort to mix it up every couple years or rewrite it...

I really like if they would do shotgun Jesus riding a t-Rex that instead of being crucified is immersed in giant crucible showing thumbs up as he is consumed by molten hot metal because he knows he will be back.

In your replies you've shown yourself to be a professional hater. Either you're trolling or you really just have no understanding of humans. You must be baffled by practically everyone around you if your comment is your true belief.

Surely there is at least one thing that you enjoy in your life that is fairly similar across iterations.

Is this really limited to video games?

People are excited to buy new cloths, even though they're "just a slight variance on something you've already had multiple times before".

They love to try out the new hyped-up food stand, even though the hotdog will be just a slight variance on all the hotdogs they had before.

Clothes wear out though. I buy the same two maroon and gray button up shirts once a year because usually the ones I bought a few years ago have holes in them by then.

Video games don't wear out, you can still play the same software you bought in 2003 today.

Why do you assume that the millions of people who buy the new Persona or Mario Kart game are the same ones that bought the old one? It's very likely that they're fresh 12-20 somethings that were younger or otherwise just missed the old ones.

Not to mention, for Perosna in particular, each Perosna game tells a whole new story, so buying the fifth one is like going to see the fifth movie in a franchise: you know you like the style, and you want to experience a new story in this style. It's also not even a very long series - compare to Final Fantasy, for example, which will soon get its 17th main game (probably more like 25th or something if you included spinoffs).

> Video games don't wear out, you can still play the same software you bought in 2003 today.

The way you perceive them does, at least did back in 2023 (or 2013) and earlier.

You pick up, say, original Half Life or something from that time; story-wise it's the same game you remember, but in terms of experience, is nigh-unplayable in its original form now, because you already experienced how decades of progress in videogames look like. Not just in terms of graphics, though that is a big part, but also in terms of UI! Properly mapped controls and GUI behaviors are alone worth looking up/waiting for a remake. And/or, the Nth installment of a game in the same universe.

I often play games from the 90s from before I learned to read. IMO often they're better than modern games including their own remakes.

Every good game has odd control schemes, that doesn't mean it's worn out.

> you already experienced how decades of progress in videogames look like

IMO the quality of games has gone greatly downhill, and when I pick up something old like Doom 3, Half Life 2, or Portal, I am staggered by how good they are in comparison to most of the unity based slop which currently passes for games.

For many people, the 17th Mario Kart is the first one they buy. New people are made every day, and they won’t pay today’s prices for the first SNES version of Mario Kart

I think this is the correct answer, and also applies to other media: The 20th Star Wars or Disney reboot isn't for you - it's for your grandchildren.

Or we haven't played every game in the series. Like how most iPhone generations "are the same", but most people don't buy every year.

I last played Mario Kart on Nintendo Wii and enjoyed it. That's 17 years ago. I'll probably buy one of the newer versions at some point. And it will be very different from the game I played.

Why do people read books? They all arrange the same letters in a different order. Once you know the letters, you've seen all the books.

Great comment, have an upvote.

There a lots of gamers. Games like Baldur's Gate & Expedition 33, which satisfies your criteria, far surpassed those numbers already.

I know people who rewatch the same TV series every year and go to the same vacation every year.

Fear of change is deep.

Fear of change, or even just isles of stability, to help recuperate and reorient yourself whilst navigating the stormy seas of life.

Myself, I'm quite open to new forms of entertainment, as well as those previously unknown to me. Even within my favorite genres, I'm more than happy to explore - but I'm still gonna rewatch at least one Star Trek show each year.

It doesn't matter that I've seen most of those show 6-10 times each over the course of my life; it doesn't matter that I've watched some specific episodes 20+ times already. What matters to me is, each time I see those characters and those locations, it feels like coming home.

(And more so than actually coming home.)

People anchor to different things like this, not just TV shows. Sometimes it's a real place (or an event in that place - e.g. vacation), sometimes it's a club, sometimes it's a video game or an outdoor hobby.

Tell us what you think about professional football next

The British one? Bores me to tears

The American version? Same but with more advertisements for pharmaceuticals.

I think that's more an issue with the specific rules/players/fans though, I've not had a problem watching multiple matches of other sports in a day.

It's just the palate of the mass consumer who has such busy lives that they don't have the time to think about what other games can offer them.

And even if a "new and interesting concept" turns up, it's is too bothersome to learn for them. That's why once they find the fun in one thing, they tend to stick to it and be blind to others.

Because games get better and gameplay (i.e. mechanics) get changed.

Play Persona 5 Royal, then Persona 1. Tell us it's the same game and everybody would think you are crazy. Hell, even Persona 5 Royal is way better than Persona 5 in a lot of ways...

Maybe you are satisfied by only trying out completely new things—if they even exist—but most people don't.

Because they're fun and slight variances can have huge impacts in terms of emergence, among other things.

So many series I used to love that I wish did exactly this instead of reinventing themselves for a phantom new audience. I guess my health improved.

Wait till you hear how many chess games I've played!

That's fine, no one is stopping the development of new board games to re-releases chess every six months with maybe one new piece or higher definition.

We all get that you are not somebody who likes sequels/remakes etc for releasing similar and/or repetitive content. But some people really do, and this whole thread and the sales numbers it is based on are kind of evident of that.

Why do you have such a problem with other people enjoying that type of content?

Your take on this is downvoted because that’s quite arrogant to reduce all racing games to two objects moving.

Everything in life can be much more complicated and nuanced if you put an effort in it as reality has infinite amount of details. There is a lot of value in refining successful concepts.

Also a lot of “new and interesting concepts” turn out not to be that useful or that interesting like not that many people listening to experimental music or reading novels whose writers think they are smarter than everyone else.

Sometimes, we just don’t “get” the appeal of something. For me, one of those things is fishing.

For someone else, it might be reading Hacker News.

For you, it’s video games.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with differences of opinion, even to the point of bewilderment, but it doesn’t feel productive to question people’s interests and reduce them to, frankly, disingenuous levels of oversimplification.

I think one of the more beautiful parts of the internet is how we can be connected and talk about our differences and understand each other better. But it does not seem like you are truly attempting to understand, instead your posts read more like “looking down one’s nose,” which isn’t fruitful or productive for anyone.

Maybe I am mistaken! If so, I’d like to encourage you to try to reach understanding of others without depicting them as “mad” or financially wasteful or simple-minded.

Well there are indeed tastes that might be harmful for society and should be questioned. Sometimes it is wrong to enjoy certain things

I can understand how people like fishing [1] but... Fishing minigames? I like Japanese games a lot but not the finishing minigames. One of the many things I found tone deaf about Horizon Worlds was that the starter world asked you to pick a game genre you like and when I picked RPG it put me in.... a fishing minigame.

[1] though my favorite time doing it was catching smelt on the docks on the back side of the barrier island at Hampton Beach with my grandparents and bringing back enough to fill the freezer

Imho you are (1) trying to be original on HN (going against the grain) and (2) being dismissive of people’s genuine interests in an area - gonna lead to defensive downvotes.

I agree with the responders that this is a common fallacy (good insights / learnings for us all). Eg I like following baseball but if you were to ask me about it 10 years ago I’d be pretty reductive about. I agree with the responders that there’s beauty in the seemingly little things at first that build. That said not all of us take the time to appreciate certain areas of beauty because there’s a lot of beauty out there. And that’s ok but nature does seem to indicate repetition and variation are fine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com