If you are a veteran player who has been playing games since the FC era, you will definitely be able to feel that with the continuous improvement of the game graphics, special effects and gameplay, the difficulty of the game is constantly regressing, and the current game is becoming more and more simplistic compared to the previous games. In the past, it was common to play game cards for several days, but now the game can be counted as long as you don't choose the highest difficulty, let alone card for several days, and 1 hour can be considered a long time.
Even if it's the most popular souls game known for its difficulty in recent years, in fact, as long as you play it seriously and don't give up, no matter how difficult the boss is, it only takes a few hours to overcome, which is nothing in front of the side-scrolling games that may not be able to break through a single level in the summer.
So could it be that the level of players is becoming more and more "vegetable", so the game is becoming more and more simple and fast-food? Actually, in my opinion, I can't say that, but the main reasons for what I want to say are the following three points.
In the past, the amount of content in the game was not enough, and it could only be made up by difficulty
In the past, because of the limitation of cartridge capacity or disc capacity, the game could not contain too much game content, such as some large-scale games on the computer side of the installation disc has to be several, the cost will be much higher.
The content of many old games is actually very little from the current point of view, especially some action games based on breaking through, there may be less than 10 levels in total, if the game difficulty is the same as the current game, then most players may be able to pass a level in an average of 10~20 minutes, and it may only take a few hours to clear the whole game.
Therefore, in order to prolong the player's game time, the game manufacturer will deliberately set the difficulty of the game very high, so that most players have to fail dozens or even hundreds of times in a level. Anyway, there weren't many games at that time, and the price of a game was enough for players to be reluctant to give up at will, no matter how frustrated they were, they could only play hard.
The content of the game is much richer than before, especially the open-world type of game, which is dozens or even hundreds of hours of game flow at every turn, and there is no need to rely on difficulty to keep players in the game. On the contrary, if the difficulty of such a large game is high, it will dissuade players, so simply reduce the difficulty so that players can focus on experiencing the game content, and do not have to worry about whether they can beat the boss.
Previous players were more willing to delve into the gameplay of the game
For old players, there are actually relatively few games that can be played back then, and there may be only a few games of interest that can be encountered throughout the year, so each game will be played very seriously and studied very deeply.
No matter how difficult it is, you have to force yourself to find a way to pass, otherwise you won't have any other games to play after you abandon the pit. I remember when I was a child playing FC games at a friend's house, I couldn't beat it and took turns, and I would even call several friends in one breath, each person took turns to play, and if I passed, I continued to play, and if I failed, I handed it over to the next person to play, and everyone took turns to figure out how to do it, and many games ended up being cleared by the strength of the collective.
And now there are too many games, there are many different kinds of games released almost every day, and even the 3A masterpiece has more than one every month for the past two years, and for most players, there is no situation where there is no game to play, but it is too late to play.
So now it's a situation where players pick a game, and if a game is too difficult, then I'm not happy to play it, so I won't play it, and just change the game to play. Therefore, in order to retain players, current game manufacturers can only make their game as difficult as possible to meet the level of most players, unless it is a souls game with difficulty as a selling point, or they dare not make their game too complicated.
In the past, the pace of life was slow, and there was enough time and energy to play games
In fact, if you really want to talk about the game level, the general game level of today's players is higher, but compared to before, what players lack is the time to calm down and play the game, take me as an example, I only play the game for two hours at most every night on weekdays, which is not enough time for me to calm down and study the depth of a game.
But in the past, the pace of life was much slower than now, and players had a lot of time to spend a whole day on the weekend to play a game, even if it was not like now that they could quickly find a guide, but there was a lot of time, and they could try to clear the game step by step by relying on their own research, and gain a huge sense of achievement.
And the pace of life of today's players is too fast, and they can't spare much time to play games in a week, so many people choose mobile games that can be played in fragmented time, and the remaining small number of players who insist on playing stand-alone games are unlikely to spend a lot of time to study the gameplay, and can only choose games that can be quickly cleared or easy to play first, so this is also the fundamental reason why today's games are becoming more and more fast-food.
Actually, for me, I really like games that are difficult and challenging, like souls games or the Monster Hunter series. But as an office worker, I also know I don't have a lot of time to play all these games.
Just like I spent 3 months just playing "Dark Souls 3" last year, it seems like a long time, but the total game time is about 115 hours, and the average is only more than 1 hour of game time per day, and many bosses have to be split into several days to fight, and the efficiency is actually very low.
I believe that there are actually a lot of people like me, so everyone prefers those fast food, simple and easy games are actually a helpless move, after all, with the current pace of life, it is already a very lucky thing to have time to play games, of course, you have to choose a game that can give you happiness for the first time.