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> the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to.

Their target consumer now is as high a percentage of the population as possible; they aim for the lowest common denominator being able to play and thrive in the game. Hence, needing insane levels of handholding and guidance in the game.

In the past, it was mostly just geeks/nerds playing video games, and so things didn't need to be dumbed down to that level.

This reeks of a superiority complex.

Plenty of my friends who were less than geniuses enjoyed these same games I did.

Games now just focus more on lower engagement players. It's easier than ever to get into a game but, easy come, easy go. Frustration just serves to get someone to move on rather than buckle down and persist. Previously, when gaming was less easy to get into, the population of gamers self selected to people who had already significantly invested in the hobby and were much more dedicated to it.

I think the ability to solve the obtuse puzzles and deal with unexplained mechanics had a lot more to do with lack of alternative options and the sunk cost fallacy rather than superior intellect.

I think this is more relevant. Like everything, most games today are optimized to maximize engagement and keep people with low attention spans hooked. There are plenty of intelligent people who could invest a bunch of time into solving a puzzle but just don't care to.

I remember playing Myst as a not-particularly-bright grade schooler and banging my head against puzzles for weeks without making any progress. It wasn't some great intellectual challenge -- I was just bored and didn't have any other games to play. I can't imagine I would have stuck with it if I could have watched YouTube or played Fortnite instead.

> In the past, it was mostly just geeks/nerds playing video games

This just isn't true. I was there in the 80s and 90s. To an approximation, everyone played video games. The limiting factor was wealth more so than nerdiness; games cost a lot more in real terms back then.

Some specific games, like CRPGs, tended to be aimed at nerds. But that was about fantasy RPGs more so than video games - it goes along with tabletop RPGs and Dragonlance books. But you also have people who went out and bought a new computer with a CD-ROM drive just so they could play Myst, because that game was legitimately a pop culture fad that summer.

And then in modern media we have some selective retelling because a lot of the history is being told by people who themselves are deep into geek culture and also have a case of main character syndrome.

> the reason modern AAA games hold your hand is because they have to.

This doesn’t touch on one key difference between games now vs. games then: there were some secrets in games that you just didn’t ever know about unless there was a (printed) walkthrough, or through the word of mouth of friends. The Legend of Zelda is a great example.

Nowadays, many games can be 100%’ed without even having to jump online or ask someone for help. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing.

I’m playing the Metroid Primer Remaster on the Switch 2 (originally for the GameCube), and even it can be 100%’ed without having to look much up or without even a manual.

A _great_ spin on this is Tunic, which has an in-game manual that you find pages of as you play, and is written in an in-game language so you kinda sorta need to work things out based on the diagrams and other notation.

At a base level, it tells you about abilities that you have from the beginning of the game but don't know the buttons to press to trigger them, but it goes much deeper.

Great game, 100% recommend.

> The Legend of Zelda is a great example.

Shoutout for the Chris Houlihan room.

Back in the day, I remember a Blizzard interview on pre-Wrath WoW raid design. They explained how they didn't like that they spent a ton of money and effort developing end-game content that less than 1% of their playerbase would ever see. And development costs have only risen since then.

Moreso than needing handholding due to game mechanics or "too much" anything, I've always felt that it stems from a developer need for players to experience what you made. Or even just convincing the accountants that each additional cost of development will directly impact the majority of players (aka they don't get stuck or give up halfway through.)

Exactly. It makes little sense to fund development that few players will ever see. A developer/publisher could instead cut that content and keep the money as profit.

That's why I think novelty and 'old AAA game' richness has a ceiling development_cost : unit_of_content ratio.

There are things that were feasible for Fallout 1 to do that accountants would lose their shit over today, precisely because they were relatively cheap then and astronomically expensive now.

... the real travesty is the corollary of that though: that gameplay/difficulty must ensure a maximum number of players see all the content.

Which has led to the 'impossible to fail' gimmicks that make modern AAA games feel less satisfying.

Honestly, it feels like Rockstar and Valve are the only ones making truly great AAA games these days...

(But mostly because they're on stable financial footing and willing to take as long as it takes)

> Because they're just too big: too many game mechanics, too many locations, too much story, This was my thinking exactly while playing the two most recent God of War games. So many more mechanics, endless weapon crafting/upgrade options, side quests and minigames. Maybe I just have rose-tinted glasses, but the originals seemed so much more focused.

Elden Ring not having a questlog is just dumb. I don't play everyday, I don't remember exactly where I went and did what, and coupled with bizzare questlines it results in poor experience.

So I wouldn't pull in questlog with rest of stuff. You need history if you have any sort of side quests.

Elden Ring is a game that I really wanted to like. I really tried to like. But it failed me, so I dropped it, never to return.

I enjoyed the exploration, the setting, the cryptic writing. Even some of the more obtuse game design decisions appealed to my tastes, such as the lack of a quest log and a map that is just a geographical representation of the world, with minimal markers. It forced me to pay more attention to the world, recognize the terrain, learn the paths to navigate, etc. It was a game where I really was ready to lose myself in.

But it ultimately failed to have minimal respect for my time, and for that I hated it.

First when I accidentally killed a boss that could be spared. I didn't want to kill him, I just happened to be too strong and failed to react mid combo when he surrendered. The game fucking auto saved and I had to start over from scratch.

Second time when I was in the middle of a conversation when I was interrupted by my wife. I couldn't load a game to watch the cutscene again. It fucking autosaved again. I had to read a transcript online to understand what was going on. Total immersion killer.

Lastly, I remember a boss that took me like 40 attempts to kill. I am okay with the challenge. I am not okay with having to go through a mostly boring gauntlet of enemies for each attempt. It offered no challenge, I just felt like I was filling a form before each attempt. A long, 10m long form.

After killing that boss I uninstalled.

Rant over.

Elden Ring doesn't really have side quests though

Maybe 4 things in that game are what I would describe as quests and mostly they don't matter if you do them or not

You can use pen and paper.

Elden Ring did exactly what you described and had great success. Not every game has to hold your hand.

hear me out: I think this is a function of distribution mechanisms to at least some extent. when I was a kid in the 90s you could make a game that deep because when I bought or rented it it was the only game that was both new and available to me, so I focused on it for weeks at a time. When you got bored you couldn't quickly switch to a new game, so you explored the game you have because the only alternative was switching back to a game that you've already beaten up for 200 hours. Why was tony hawk pro skater such a great franchise? Because it rewarded you for being good at the game mechanics by opening up new parts of each level as you got better at things, meaning exploration and skill development went hand in hand. Why do I know that soldiers in metal gear solid do a cute little booty wiggle if you point the gun at them long enough? because I played the game so often and for so long that I've done things like point a gun at a soldier for 10 minutes just to see what will happen. I don't actually think that modern games have to hold your hand because of their size. I think that players will explore a big open world left to their own devices. I think that there are games like minecraft and dorf fort that throw you into a complex world with no tutorial beyond trial and error and that players love them for it. I know these aren't technically AAA games but minecraft is the best selling game of all time so the broad appeal is there. I just think that the way we used to play video games followed a really high level loop of frustration->exploration->gratification loop but now every moment of frustration has to compete with the ability to get immediate satisfaction from a different game that can be downloaded and installed in 2 minutes.

I am, however, very with you when it comes to not paying attention to AAA games despite being the kind of person who plays games every day. I agree that no one is offering deep experiences anymore outside the Soulsborne genre, which just isn't fun for me, so I end up focusing on novelty more than anything. My favorite game of all time is a top down roguelite stealther called Heat Signature that I've put hundreds of hours into and done at least one thing that the developer believed to be impossible based on the tutorials (kidnapping someone using only a lethal weapon). The last game I was truly excited about was a quest 1 VR game that was called Help Yourself at the time. Its changed its name since, but the idea is still really cool: it's a puzzle game that involves shooting targets with a gun. It's a bit hard to explain but the tldr is that you have to orchestrate multiple copies of yourself across multiple runthroughs until you shoot all of the targets. A typical level might have to targets with a wall between them such that there is no place where a player has line of sight to both targets, but there is a gap between the wall and the ceiling. On the first runthrough, an instance of you shoots the target on the right, then throws the gun over the wall. On the second runthrough, an instance of you is recreating the action of shooting the target on the right and throwing the gun over the wall, and another instance of you that you're currently in control of walks over to where the gun will land, waits for it to be thrown, then picks it up and shoots the other target. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GENqINO7pXY has some gameplay footage. I haven't had my brain bent by something like this since Portal came out.