What constitutes "dumbing-down"?

Gameplay
#1

Yet another offshoot of the “Who came here for a console port?”-thread, because I feel kinda bad that we can’t just let them pat their backs and eat pie. So let’s make this thread about everything that makes us feel a game has been “dumbed-down”.

I write “dumbing down” in quotation marks because I feel it’s a little vague. I would distinguish between a “dumbing down” and a little inconvenience due to a fair compromise. Although I won’t deny we PC-players had our lush share of unfair compromises. “Dumbing down” is also quite a polemic term because it indirectly accuses console players of being dumb, which doesn’t help a civilized discussion, and as was already mentioned in the previous thread, consoles are not in general to blame for publishers catering to the mass market, although it often seems to go hand in hand since the PC is (falsely?) labeled as a niche market.
I could go on, but I want to keep this post rather short.

This thread is also a good place to post your experiences with “dumbed down” games. What was your biggest disappointment in this regard?

The game where I felt the most that it was “dumbed down” was Operation Flashpoint 2. Okay I knew before that Codemasters and Bohemia Interactive parted ways and that BI started the ARMA series, but I couldn’t believe that Codemasters betrayed nearly all that made OFP the milestone it is.
The maximum squad size was shrinked shrunk from 12 to 4, because controllers don’t have F-keys and the radio system was a stub because controllers don’t have number keys. There is no other explanation for those shortages. There was more, but I haven’t played it for a long time. I played coop with a buddy for like 3 weeks and then it ended on the shelf.

There is already a thread to discuss the advantages and shortcomings of the different input devices by the way, so you should maybe go there if you have to share some thoughts about that.

Rant on!

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Who came here for a console port?
#2

Sure why not, here’s another good example. The user interface in Borderlands 1. All menus were only designed for controller use despite having the aesthetic of normal PC interfaces. All scroll bars only functioned using the up down arrows on the GUI. Up, down, scrolling with the mouse and click dragging the bar did nothing. The entire interface experience outside of shooting things was like this. The mouse was not considered at all for speeding up how we maneuver around the interface. This is also the case to a lesser degree for Skyrim and Oblivion, which had their user interface problems solved by mods.

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#3

’shrunk’

Dumbed-down

ADJECTIVE

• informal
Simplified so as to be intellectually undemanding and accessible to a wide audience:
the dumbed-down nature of modern politics

This is what constitutes dumbing-down.

It’s a decision games developers make to streamline production of games and make them more economically viable. This thread is inciting a flame war instead of producing a discussion simply by the way you wrote it. If you wanted to have a discussion about poor game design then you could have just stated it as that instead of inferring that everything bad in a game is the result of console game development and porting.

#4

I understand what you mean, and though less contriversal than some topics flame wars between Consoles gamers and PC gamers happen all the time. I’m a pangamer (a word I concocted from the word pansexual) So I dance to and from between the two, though lean more towards the console side and prefer to play my PC games with a controller. So I try to buffer between the two sides often. I think this thread is relevant and I think “dumbing-down” is an apprpriate topic of conversation because it’s a term that’s widely understood. Also means what it says. When you are appealing to a wide audience for whatever reason that means you’re trying to reach the lowest common denominator. Basically making what everyone wants. You could do this with a refrigerator. Put in a microwave a toaster a dish washer a washing machine a dryer and a bottle opener. Now doing this would make a great refrigerator economically unrealistic in price. No one could afford one. So you try to make it as “cheaply” as possible so to do so you’ll use low quality parts and make it energy inefficient also wouldn’t be able to spend the money to make it look nice. So you get a less expensive product that many people buy that functions, but not as well as it could have.

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#5

…I bet someone is going to win a bet because I replied to this topic, if you check my history on this forum.

Anyways, on to the topic.

For me, the game that I felt was the most ‘dumbed down’ was Skyrim. The first Elder Scrolls game I played was Morrowind. (I know, not as far back as others, but it’s a respectable place to start.) And the differences between the two are substantial.

Morrowind has more depth. (More armor options, factions to join, more weapon options, people actually react to your reputation, a better plot, more skill options, actual spell making, unarmed combat, actual interesting characters, the list goes on.)

Skyrim, not so much. (Two armor options, generic factions, generic weapons, no one gives a sh*t who you are, generic plot, generic skills, no spell making, martial arts=bar fights, forgettable characters, and the list goes on.)

Anyways, the thing is, I and many other gamers, like a challenge. We like a game that pushes us into a world that forces us to use new knowledge that may not apply to real life to solve problems, a world that doesn’t insult our intelligence and takes us seriously just as much as it takes itself.

That’s my two cents on it.

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#6

To me i feel that something has been dumbed down, when it is made easier to succeed for no other reason than : Now its easier, everyone can do it, easily:

Puzzles my niece at 9 years can solve for example,
Compas in you forhead all the time, they could add a compas minecraft style, if they really want to.
Where i playing morrowind was so frustrated that i couldnt get my glass armor that i kept taunting an npc wearing it, so that in the end he would attack me so i could kill him legaly and get my just reward, just to figure out that i couldnt complete a certain questline because the guy i killed was needed in the quest. - - - AWESOME! frustrating but awesome!

#7

The game is being dumb gameplay wise. Not the players. And it is a good term because it is explaining what is happening. To play a FPS on console, the FPS is dumbed-down: mechanics are required to allow the players to enjoy the game, while using a device that is not adapted or designed for that type of game.

Consoles, like some PC, are dumb because they do not require of the user a solid knowledge base to operate. You just need to “plug and play”, without worrying of anything else.

As of examples of dumbed-down games, I can propose X: Rebirth along with all the Wii games. Also, to put things in perspectives: old RPG were very demanding of the player. You had to draw maps, take notes, use math for your character skills… Nowadays, with the games like Skyrim, you don’t need all that. All you have to do is bash monsters and run. We can say that Skyrim is a dumbed down version of morrowind, yet it is fun.

What I don’t like, is the scam like the recent Dungeon Keeper, which takes the consumer like stupid cows ready to get their money milked.

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#8

Dumbing down comes a many forms. It’s not just gameplay anymore. It’s art, anytime you see generic over-designed armor with big spikes and jewels on it. That’s a dumbed down design for people who can’t appreciate what realistic armor can look like. Anytime you see caricatures on screen, a dumbing down of characters so people can make easier judgments about them. It extends to market practice and consumer buying trends as well. Horse armor DLC and the people who bought that comes to mind.

Dumbing down implies that the people who enjoy those dumbed down games and practices are stupid. There’s really no point to sugarcoat it, as I think in general, there’s some truth to that. And I guess some people take offense to it due to ego reasons. However, I think a big factor is the market being saturated with those types of game such that there really aren’t any choices left, and also, games that aren’t “dumb” get dumbed down as time goes on, it’s really unavoidable. So people maybe shouldn’t feel that bad for enjoying Skyrim or Arma 3.

I do believe that consoles are more conducive to dumbing down than PC. Because of various limitations. Control wise, you can never pull off a simulation game or a decent strategy game on a console. Too many keys and functions are required. And the console itself is being touted as easy to maintain, no upgrades, updates, software management, etc, so by definition it fits the criteria.

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#9

I think you take this “dumbing down” term too literally.
It means just simplifying various aspects while deliberately ignoring certain potential.
For games this means tailoring games to the consoles and ignoring PC specific features just because it isn’t worth the effort (not my thinking of course). Dumbing down could also just mean to make games easier. For example, making riddles and puzzles very simple so even Simple Jack can have his sense of achievement.

Another example: they could make the story easy to follow, nothing convoluted or thought-provoking. God forbid, nobody would by this crap!

Dumbing down is also happening in movies, where stories have been mere uninspired or forgettable remakes or clones of other films for years. Principal thing: add more explosions and increase the body count. There have to be at least 50 explosions per minute …

Dumbing down is everywhere!
Profit, profit, profit and dollar signs in the eyes.
That’s all they care for!

dumb down
vb

  1. (tr) to make or become less intellectually demanding or sophisticated: attempts to dumb down news coverage.
#10

I’m sorry for my bad grammar, but I’m sure you can excuse that someone who doesn’t speak English as his mother tongue isn’t perfect in the use of irregular verbs. Thanks for the correction anyway, I appreciate it.

I’m trying to take off the heat from a thread that wasn’t opened for this topic but I’m not pretending that I’m neutral. I do think that consoles are harming the overall quality of video games or at least their evolution but I don’t think that it is as bad as some people say. And I’m not interested in talking about generally bad game-design, instead I’m curious about examples of games that have evidently been simplified to fit console restrictions.

#11

Now I’m curious: How has Arma3 been dumbed down? I don’t see any mayor difference to the other two installments or OFP. Okay I remember how hard it was to keep a plane in the air in OFP 1.0 but that was fixed with the first or second patch… so there is evidence for the dumbing-down of a game that is notorious for being hardcore.

#12

Dragon Age 2… Would have said TES games, but frankly the previous games aren’t harder, they’re just god damn broken.

#13

Ha I was waiting for someone raising Dragon Age 2. I’m guilty of loving this game, no matter what everyone else says. I can see why people say it’s dumbed down, but I find the overall experience to be too enjoyable to care about recycled environment or something. So what if I’ve seen this room before? I’ve been playing games since before a room actually looked like a room so I’ve got enough fantasy to make it work.

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#14

Ye it’s still a Bioware game, great characters, great choices, interesting quests. But they changed the combat way to much tho:/ It was more efficient to have 4 pure dps instead of a mixed team. But I did pull through just because I wanted to see where the story was going, and Varric made the whole game for me haha.

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#15

Dumbing down is context sensitive and subjective. Generally speaking however it’s when a mechanism or aspect of the game is eliminated or reduced in complexity because demographic A might not get it. In the context of PC-console dumbing down is multi-platforming a game that is compatible with the consoles. This is because they [consoles] will be the bottleneck.

An easy analogy is that you have three cars on their way to a party. One car is a racing car that can go 300/kmh. The other two are standard cars that can only go120/kmh. Even though the faster car will arrive at the party more than twice as fast it must wait on the other-two to catch up before the party can start. This is the bottleneck of performance. PC hardware is already x3 more powerful than the PS4/XB1 and that gap will only widen as time progresses.

Next are controls. The faster car has special non-slip tires installed which allow it take a winter road to the number 1 party destination. The other two cars however have standard tires which only allow them to travel on non-winter roads. So once again the faster car is bottlenecked as the controllers only have some 14 buttons compared to 100+ keys on a keyboard.

You can start to see the problem. A game can’t have the same visual quality or calculations because consoles can’t do it. A game can’t have as many player-actions because a console can’t do it. It’s almost instantly dumbing down.

#16

That argument could only be made for ports from consoles to PCs. So what’s the excuse for PC only games not fully taking advantage of the 300/kmh car with slip free tires. Even today we still see games produced using the X86 architecture even though the X64 provides a lot more power and freedom. They don’t take advantage of our new processors at all. Even if we put that aside the games made for the X86 (32-bit processor) aren’t maximized to their highest potential (with the exception of a few) the consoles aren’t bottle necking any of those. The fact is PCs are relatively expensive (I use relatively because everyone has different financial situations and expensive because the majority of those financial situations have difficulty getting that much money to put aside towards a PC as opposed to other needs) so most will not upgrade to the newer systems. Some people still use XP and Vista. Many people do not have more than 2 GB of ram. Even more don’t have anything, but a built in video card on their motherboard. So when you compare the horse powers of a high end gaming PC to the PS4 the difference is vast however it’s more than enough to compete with your average PC. Also one thing people for get is new improved hardware does provide major advantages to capabilities however hardware needs to be optimized. “The Last Of Us” was made using old hardware. It was pretty much the pinnacle of hardware optimization/utilization of the PS3. The PS4’s hardware is vastly superior to the PS3 so the starting point in much further than the high-highest point of PS3 Optimization/utilization. Therefore can provide an experience (when optimization becomes better through experience and research) equal to a moderately high end PC.

#17

fast paced linear repetitive QTE fest gameplay that prioritize ‘movie experience’ with tons of ‘over the top cutscenes’ over slower but deep tactical gameplay definitely constitutes dumbing down… and those are usually found on consoles.

#18

I wouldn’t exactly put that in the category of “dumbing down”. Though I agree. I simply think that’s bad game-design. Perhaps if you could provide some examples. Maybe I misunderstand you.

#19

the new tomb raider fit exactly those criteria, it may have open world aspect but there’s a massive dumbing down on the core experience… and most of consolites beloved AAA and exclusive like halo, gears of war, killzone, metal gear solid, heavy rain, last of us, infamous, ryse, the order 1866… all of them are just shitty massively over rated dumbed down games not even worth pirating, I once tried gears of war that ported to PC, couldn’t even stand it for 10 minutes.

I read it somewhere that the 1st ever dumbed down game was sadly deus ex invisible wars.

#20

But this keeping down the hardware requirements is not limited to PC/consoles, but is practiced whenever it is intended to address a broader market. This goes for PC-only titles as well, I wouldn’t say that it constitutes a dumbing down.

The only title that I know of, that ever really took it to the limit of what is possible on PC is Crysis. I remember that only very few people were able to run it on release and that it unleashed a wave of people upgrading their systems. It took 4 years for it to be released on consoles and when it did it was running on the latest cry-engine, had some shiny new graphics effects but was still scaled back in a lot of other affairs: Polygon count, locked at 30 fps, fewer objects, some reduced textures, fewer enemies and of course lower resolution. The german wiki article elaborates a lot more on this than the english. Here is a comparison of both versions. Honestly I prefer the dirty, less colorful PC version, I guess the bonbon-ification of the console version is symptomatic.

What is a good example of dumbing down is when you look at Crysis 2 and 3 in comparison to 1. I believe the original Crysis was a lot more open and that the latter two installments were more in the fashion of the shooter typical sleeve level design. Of course this was covered by them taking place in a city, rather than on a jungle island. Crysis 2 was far below the PCs possibilities and is even said to look worse that Crysis 1. Maybe it has something to do with it being released on all systems simultaneously? :wink:

€dit: Crysis wasn’t the only title ever to fully utilize the power of the PC, but the only one I remember in say the last 10 years.

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