I will add, the rise of streaming has changed the meta quite a bit. Streamers like cozy games because of that social-aspect - it is easier for them to interact with chat or other streamers in a cozy game compared to a more serious game that demands your attention.
This concept actually came up in a discussion I was having with my partner a few weeks ago. We're long-distance, so one of the activities we do is play games together. Sometimes it's a co-op game, other times I stream a story-based game to her while she makes the decisions. She's never really played games and, like most people with little experience with this sort of media, she lumped all games together. Mario, GTA, World of Warcraft, she didn't know that these were different enough to appeal to completely separate groups of people. Given that I generally prefer deep RPGs and more intense co-op games and MMOs, I've exposed her to games such as Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate. Fast forward a bit, and she was telling me how she was talking with one of her co-workers, a self-described "gamer" like myself, about our set-up and asked if he knew games like Mass Effect or Final Fantasy XIV. He'd barely heard of them, which surprised her greatly. When she told me this, I asked if he played games like Fortnite or FIFA, to which she said yes and asked how I knew. I truly wasn't judging in this moment, I just suspected that he was more of a casual "hop on and play a few rounds with the boys" sort of gamer. Nothing wrong with that. So I started explaining how there's different types of games that satisfy different desires. I thought back to my brother who claims that he can't stand RPGs because he wants drop-in excitement from his games, then I thought of a couple guildmates from MMOs who play entirely for the social aspect of games or the extreme world-first races they compete in with new raid-tiers. In short, I appreciate you delving into this topic, it's helped broaden my understanding of something I've frequently contemplated.
I usually call those people casuals not "gamers" I've friends who only play COD, 2K, Fort. They always get on me for playing single players games or why I play games on PC or why do I play on older consoles. Even though I have a PS5 I just use it for exclusives/broke PC ports.
@@azurraa I agree. Good to recognize that we come in different categories and have different interests and playstyles, but anyone who cares about games is a gamer.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic. "Critical reviews" have been driving me crazy for the last couple of years. People are just throwing opinions at the audience as if they know exactly what a good game should be. And for the most part they don't. And the thing that bothers me the most is that games are seen as some set of qualities in those reviews. People are missing all the details and intricate touches that developers added to convey specific themes, feelings and emotions. It really hit me, when I was replaying Watch Dogs. Never liked it because of its junky mechanics and mediocrity amoung other similar games of that period. At least that's how it felt to me back then. But replaying it now was a completely different experience. As if I finally understood how cool Chicago looks. Blasting punk-rock soundtrack of many talanted artists, that I never payed attention to. Even mechanics finally clicked and were so much fun to experiment with. I think, I have just found the right reason and mood to play this game. And I wish more reviwers tried to expose these "hidden" parts of video games.
Also, Pokemon is a great example of this. Pokemon is a casual RPG and Gamefreak will always design it for a casual audience. But a lot of the criticisms towards it comes from older people who want it to be less casual. They are no longer the audience and struggle to accept that, but Gamefreak continues to be the juggernaut it is because they maintain focus on their target audience. Compared to Digimon, which was always more, less casual focused. Digimon World 1, 2, and 3 are fairly hardcore games with a lot of depth. Over time, their audience grew up and Digimon did not gain as many young people - their primary audience are older and more mature. So Digimon followed that and started making their games thematically more mature as well. Game devs need to learn their audience and how to appeal to them. Easily the most important lesson.
I like this point a lot because a ton of pokemon inspired games try to compete by making a better game mechanically but are missing the point by assuming they share the same audience.
@@RayOfTruth I'd argue the games have a lot of mechanical depth that *the games* don't use, and that upsets players. I'm moderately into the meta, but by no means an expert - I've already figured out and learned all sorts of strategies and tricks, but none of these are necessary in the game since you genuinely can win just using type coverage and STAB. Pokémon is a game that gave its users a system full of depth but never actually went anywhere with it. If a game wants to be casual, I've no problem with that... but I admit it does annoy me it's so casual when it has room for so much more.
There is a problem in this however. The split of their audience are not as separated as they’d think. And seeing as Pokémon has becomes something so many people just plain grow out of among a laundry list of issues that have increasingly made they synonymous with poor game quality, it’s not unreasonable to say that their games will fail with their reputation especially since the next generation will in part come from and by influenced by those frustrated with the franchise.
@@thecod2345 yes, pokemon sales have been the same since the 1990s, except the market is much larger now, and their catalogue is 50% remakes. it means older fans arent really playing new pokemon games nor buying it for their kids. they sold out a long time ago for merch and cross promotion the way we see star wars and lotr doing today, just a cynical shell of what it once was.
I think another reason for the crazy opinions people have for games is the crazy algorithms on social media nowadays. I’ve seen a lot of people surprised at bg3 winning goty bc they’ve “never heard of it” and I guess if your algorithm is heavily pushing stuff like spiderman onto your social media feeds you’re gonna assume that’s all people are talking about.
It really does depend on your identity as to which games you like I mean that makes sense. Everyone likes different games and yeah. For example I love Zelda games I’ve played just about every Zelda game. That’s my favorite thing. I love RPGs in general Earthbound, Mother 3, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy. I liked Spider-Man 2 it was fun. I watched a play through of Alan Wake 2 that game has an AMAZING story!! I tried BG3 I couldn’t exactly get into it. I’m playing through ToTK a second time because I love building things. There are different types of players. Also Mario Wonder was amazing for me this year too!! I didn’t play Alan Wake 2 I watched it because horror games are a bit scary for me lol. But the story for Alan Wake 2 was crazy good. A Hat in Time is amazing I loved that game!! I love certain RPGs I’m kinda picky with it. Undertale is amazing because obviously I’m an Earthbound and Mother 3 fan so yeah. But for me it’s like weird I don’t always agree with everyone on things. I don’t exactly play Elden Ring / souls games in general. I did try Elden Ring it was…definitely a game but it wasn’t for me. I hate all shooters, every single shooter I’ve ever played I just hate them. People love shooters but I’d rather do anything else…. Ocarina of Time is a very comfortable game for me Zelda games are super comfortable solving puzzles in Hyrule I just love that so much. I might even jump into Life is Strange because I’ve watched multiple play throughs and I love that story depth it’s so good. I also love music rhythm games Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Fortnite Festival (the next Rock Band), fighting games (Smash Bros, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken). Fighting games are really the only competitive games I love and I really do love these games! Great video!! Love the topic!! I really am glad you dove into why there are different games for different gamers love this topic!!
I would actually say bg3 is wider and insanely deeper than Spider-Man to me widths is stiff like scope and amount of content whereas depth is how much quality/complexity there is behind the content all Spider-Man has over Bg3 is fast paced action and traversal mechanics imo
I hate boreing games but i play them more. Picked up AC4 and State O Decay2 for cheap this holiday and played a lot of ac4 but was bored and listening to podcasts the whole time. State if decay2 was played on a hard mode and resisted playing it because the anxsiety and stress of surviving, while fun, is something i procrastinate on playing. The thought of booting it up gives me anxiety and id rather not so my characters can persist in the pergatory of a story unresolved. Would i be happier playing on easy and breeseing through the game? Do i only like horror games in theory?
tbh BG3 is pretty easy i bearly can call it hardcore after playing Pathfinder games on latest difficulties. That is a very deep-not-wide series, all Larian RPGs are very casual without modding after first chapter where it's maybe hard because you don't know what you're doing. Game that is kinda like Undetale combat but much much more in-depth and challenging is "The last command". It's kinda like Undetale + Furi - very few bossfights but they are very big with tons of phases and complex attack patterns.
Truly great game mechanics are mechanics that are easy to learn but hard to master, the notion that games can only be made for adults or kids is nonsensical, there's tons of great media that are made for both and that added touch really brings games to the next level you can enjoy the game just as much as you did as a kid as an adult thanks to it. Shallow games are a dime a dozen and I'm really tired of them dominating the market which is why I'm glad Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 exist
Where has this take come from that SM2 doesn't have deep combat? You can seriously search clips of people finding new stuff in the combat all the time. And the story was deep. Spiderman's biggest theme was the weight of responsibility. Peter almost cracked under the pressure and everybody else would have to if he couldn't pull it together with the help of Miles. I ain't saying SM2 is Shakesspeare or anything, but to say the story isn't layerd is ludicrous
3:10 wow this is so pretentious.. the combat isn't deep? The story isn't deep? Everything is very surface level? Dude there is so much subtext and depth in that story and the characters, if you weren't paying attention then that's on you. The gameplay is only shallow if you play on easy mode. You lost me here, sordy
Calling Baldurs Gate 3, the game where you can literally befriend, beguile, antagonize or kill just about any NPC, speak to just about any animal for meaningful information, speak to corpses, talk boss enemies into suicide, and modify the environment in a number of unprecedented ways ... "NARROW" doesn't really do it justice. At all. Have you even played it?
Spiderman 2 is an interactable movie and BG3 is an interactable book trilogy.
Well said.
I will add, the rise of streaming has changed the meta quite a bit. Streamers like cozy games because of that social-aspect - it is easier for them to interact with chat or other streamers in a cozy game compared to a more serious game that demands your attention.
This concept actually came up in a discussion I was having with my partner a few weeks ago. We're long-distance, so one of the activities we do is play games together. Sometimes it's a co-op game, other times I stream a story-based game to her while she makes the decisions.
She's never really played games and, like most people with little experience with this sort of media, she lumped all games together. Mario, GTA, World of Warcraft, she didn't know that these were different enough to appeal to completely separate groups of people. Given that I generally prefer deep RPGs and more intense co-op games and MMOs, I've exposed her to games such as Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate.
Fast forward a bit, and she was telling me how she was talking with one of her co-workers, a self-described "gamer" like myself, about our set-up and asked if he knew games like Mass Effect or Final Fantasy XIV. He'd barely heard of them, which surprised her greatly. When she told me this, I asked if he played games like Fortnite or FIFA, to which she said yes and asked how I knew. I truly wasn't judging in this moment, I just suspected that he was more of a casual "hop on and play a few rounds with the boys" sort of gamer. Nothing wrong with that. So I started explaining how there's different types of games that satisfy different desires. I thought back to my brother who claims that he can't stand RPGs because he wants drop-in excitement from his games, then I thought of a couple guildmates from MMOs who play entirely for the social aspect of games or the extreme world-first races they compete in with new raid-tiers.
In short, I appreciate you delving into this topic, it's helped broaden my understanding of something I've frequently contemplated.
I usually call those people casuals not "gamers" I've friends who only play COD, 2K, Fort. They always get on me for playing single players games or why I play games on PC or why do I play on older consoles. Even though I have a PS5 I just use it for exclusives/broke PC ports.
@@MalikATLit shouldn’t matter tho a gamer is someone who been playing for years or just started yesterday we are all the same we all game together
What sort of business are you two in together? Law firm? Real estate? Co-owners of a hardware store?
@@azurraa I agree. Good to recognize that we come in different categories and have different interests and playstyles, but anyone who cares about games is a gamer.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic. "Critical reviews" have been driving me crazy for the last couple of years. People are just throwing opinions at the audience as if they know exactly what a good game should be. And for the most part they don't.
And the thing that bothers me the most is that games are seen as some set of qualities in those reviews. People are missing all the details and intricate touches that developers added to convey specific themes, feelings and emotions.
It really hit me, when I was replaying Watch Dogs. Never liked it because of its junky mechanics and mediocrity amoung other similar games of that period. At least that's how it felt to me back then. But replaying it now was a completely different experience. As if I finally understood how cool Chicago looks. Blasting punk-rock soundtrack of many talanted artists, that I never payed attention to. Even mechanics finally clicked and were so much fun to experiment with. I think, I have just found the right reason and mood to play this game. And I wish more reviwers tried to expose these "hidden" parts of video games.
Also, Pokemon is a great example of this. Pokemon is a casual RPG and Gamefreak will always design it for a casual audience. But a lot of the criticisms towards it comes from older people who want it to be less casual. They are no longer the audience and struggle to accept that, but Gamefreak continues to be the juggernaut it is because they maintain focus on their target audience.
Compared to Digimon, which was always more, less casual focused. Digimon World 1, 2, and 3 are fairly hardcore games with a lot of depth. Over time, their audience grew up and Digimon did not gain as many young people - their primary audience are older and more mature. So Digimon followed that and started making their games thematically more mature as well.
Game devs need to learn their audience and how to appeal to them. Easily the most important lesson.
I like this point a lot because a ton of pokemon inspired games try to compete by making a better game mechanically but are missing the point by assuming they share the same audience.
Pokemon has a ton of mechanical depth even if most players don't use it.
Low skill floor, high skill ceiling.
@@RayOfTruth I'd argue the games have a lot of mechanical depth that *the games* don't use, and that upsets players. I'm moderately into the meta, but by no means an expert - I've already figured out and learned all sorts of strategies and tricks, but none of these are necessary in the game since you genuinely can win just using type coverage and STAB.
Pokémon is a game that gave its users a system full of depth but never actually went anywhere with it. If a game wants to be casual, I've no problem with that... but I admit it does annoy me it's so casual when it has room for so much more.
There is a problem in this however. The split of their audience are not as separated as they’d think. And seeing as Pokémon has becomes something so many people just plain grow out of among a laundry list of issues that have increasingly made they synonymous with poor game quality, it’s not unreasonable to say that their games will fail with their reputation especially since the next generation will in part come from and by influenced by those frustrated with the franchise.
@@thecod2345 yes, pokemon sales have been the same since the 1990s, except the market is much larger now, and their catalogue is 50% remakes. it means older fans arent really playing new pokemon games nor buying it for their kids. they sold out a long time ago for merch and cross promotion the way we see star wars and lotr doing today, just a cynical shell of what it once was.
Thank you for sharing that Gamer Motivation Module
I think another reason for the crazy opinions people have for games is the crazy algorithms on social media nowadays. I’ve seen a lot of people surprised at bg3 winning goty bc they’ve “never heard of it” and I guess if your algorithm is heavily pushing stuff like spiderman onto your social media feeds you’re gonna assume that’s all people are talking about.
this video is super well made and you're great at explaining and talking!
It really does depend on your identity as to which games you like I mean that makes sense. Everyone likes different games and yeah. For example I love Zelda games I’ve played just about every Zelda game. That’s my favorite thing. I love RPGs in general Earthbound, Mother 3, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy. I liked Spider-Man 2 it was fun. I watched a play through of Alan Wake 2 that game has an AMAZING story!! I tried BG3 I couldn’t exactly get into it. I’m playing through ToTK a second time because I love building things. There are different types of players.
Also Mario Wonder was amazing for me this year too!! I didn’t play Alan Wake 2 I watched it because horror games are a bit scary for me lol. But the story for Alan Wake 2 was crazy good.
A Hat in Time is amazing I loved that game!! I love certain RPGs I’m kinda picky with it. Undertale is amazing because obviously I’m an Earthbound and Mother 3 fan so yeah. But for me it’s like weird I don’t always agree with everyone on things. I don’t exactly play Elden Ring / souls games in general. I did try Elden Ring it was…definitely a game but it wasn’t for me.
I hate all shooters, every single shooter I’ve ever played I just hate them. People love shooters but I’d rather do anything else….
Ocarina of Time is a very comfortable game for me Zelda games are super comfortable solving puzzles in Hyrule I just love that so much.
I might even jump into Life is Strange because I’ve watched multiple play throughs and I love that story depth it’s so good. I also love music rhythm games Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Fortnite Festival (the next Rock Band), fighting games (Smash Bros, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken). Fighting games are really the only competitive games I love and I really do love these games!
Great video!! Love the topic!! I really am glad you dove into why there are different games for different gamers love this topic!!
I love spider man 2 and i really want to play baldur gate 3 but im broke
I would actually say bg3 is wider and insanely deeper than Spider-Man to me widths is stiff like scope and amount of content whereas depth is how much quality/complexity there is behind the content all Spider-Man has over Bg3 is fast paced action and traversal mechanics imo
I hate boreing games but i play them more. Picked up AC4 and State O Decay2 for cheap this holiday and played a lot of ac4 but was bored and listening to podcasts the whole time. State if decay2 was played on a hard mode and resisted playing it because the anxsiety and stress of surviving, while fun, is something i procrastinate on playing. The thought of booting it up gives me anxiety and id rather not so my characters can persist in the pergatory of a story unresolved.
Would i be happier playing on easy and breeseing through the game? Do i only like horror games in theory?
tbh BG3 is pretty easy i bearly can call it hardcore after playing Pathfinder games on latest difficulties. That is a very deep-not-wide series, all Larian RPGs are very casual without modding after first chapter where it's maybe hard because you don't know what you're doing.
Game that is kinda like Undetale combat but much much more in-depth and challenging is "The last command". It's kinda like Undetale + Furi - very few bossfights but they are very big with tons of phases and complex attack patterns.
Truly great game mechanics are mechanics that are easy to learn but hard to master, the notion that games can only be made for adults or kids is nonsensical, there's tons of great media that are made for both and that added touch really brings games to the next level you can enjoy the game just as much as you did as a kid as an adult thanks to it. Shallow games are a dime a dozen and I'm really tired of them dominating the market which is why I'm glad Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 exist
I just like good games. I enjoyed both of these games.
What’s the game that’s at 11:30? It looks amazing
Liking BG3 more doesn't mean you're a hardcore gamer, and liking SM2 more doesn't make you an action meathead. It just means you have a preference
Where has this take come from that SM2 doesn't have deep combat? You can seriously search clips of people finding new stuff in the combat all the time. And the story was deep. Spiderman's biggest theme was the weight of responsibility. Peter almost cracked under the pressure and everybody else would have to if he couldn't pull it together with the help of Miles. I ain't saying SM2 is Shakesspeare or anything, but to say the story isn't layerd is ludicrous
EA is great at this 😂
3:10 wow this is so pretentious.. the combat isn't deep? The story isn't deep? Everything is very surface level? Dude there is so much subtext and depth in that story and the characters, if you weren't paying attention then that's on you. The gameplay is only shallow if you play on easy mode. You lost me here, sordy
I completely agree
Calling Baldurs Gate 3, the game where you can literally befriend, beguile, antagonize or kill just about any NPC, speak to just about any animal for meaningful information, speak to corpses, talk boss enemies into suicide, and modify the environment in a number of unprecedented ways ... "NARROW" doesn't really do it justice. At all. Have you even played it?