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General: Community Spotlight: What Does "Dumbing Down" Even Mean?
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
This week’s Community Spotlight focuses on the thread “Just what the hell does ‘dumbed down’ even mean anyway?” by Jimmy Scythe. The phrase is tossed around a lot, but what does it even mean? Jimmy’s take:
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"Seriously! Look at the phrase. LOOK AT IT!!!!
The implication being that at one time a particular game was "intelligent" but has undergone some unholy voodoo and been turned into a version of Chutes and Ladders or, even worse, Ludo. This term is normally used in reference to a multiplatform game that was made for consoles and PC at the same time.
What's so confusing is when the term is applied to a brand new franchise that plays exactly the same on all platforms. How can you "dumb down" something that didn't even exsist previously? You can claim that one control type is less efficient than another, but that isn't the same as watering down the core mechanics."
Read this week's full Community Spotlight here.
Comments
Mike, did you ever play SWG?
* I read most of what Jon Wood writes
* He needs more bullet points though
Dumbing down is what happens when a game aims for mass appeal, misses, and ends up pleasing nobody.
For all this talk about dumbing down MMOs, how many of those games have been successful?
it is like the people who have a facebook page would never be able to handcraft thier own website. They get lazy.
I am appaled at the dumbing down of society today. That's why I don't have cable tv. There is so much idiocy on it and even the smart channels like discovery channel are giving dumb people the spotlight like the duggars, jon and kate, and sarah palin will have her own show on there.
This is the crowd the game companies are trying to reel in and they are abandoning is real gamers. we are starved for good games.
I dont think any of it is "dumbing down". I played Asherons Call for my first MMORPG. My second was WoW. I enjoyed them both for diffrent reasons. For example on my days off of work when I had some free time I would more than likely play Asherons Call. During the workweek I was more likely to log into WoW. Why? Because after work I wanted to shut my brain off and just have some fun. WoW provided that at least till level 60 and raiding was involved. Even then I had to pay attention but not really think to terribly much. On my days off I wanted something fun but also made me think/pay attention and Asherons Call fit that bill.
If WoW is the big example some people will think of right now lets think about what they are doing. They are changing stats. Not what stats do but reducing the kind of stats you see on gear. People are whining that its "dumbing down" the game when in reality its not. The stats they are removing from gear are still there but the "base" stats will effect the "off" stats now. So it will be easier right? That all depends. Dont really have enough information yet but Blizzard has said that the choices will actually be tougher for the min/maxers than before.
"Dumbing Down" is all a matter of opinion. Nothing is really dumbed down just changed. Keep in mind most people are afraid of change be it good or bad.
COPIED FROM MY COMMENT
Words are symbols and therefore subjective, no way, this is new to me! The point of symbolism is so people can understand "generally" what they represent.
A nazi swat. represents a terrible implementation of national socialism and most people instantly refer to that when they think about it. But there are actually many different meanings to it. I could make up one right now if I wanted to.
You're thinking right now how this has anything to do with the arguement. Well, "dumbed down" seems to generally represent an idea to people.
What this represents to me is the "hand feeding" of tasks or content to people. It doesn't shock people to know that for some people to enjoy this genre they had to hand carry them to the finish line? Are we so shallow as a nation or species? It may be that I am in the minority, if that is the case I am glad. I would rather have the capability to do things for myself than to be hand fed everything in life, games included.
Im sorry to say but your a moron for posting this. If you were a MMORPG player you would know what we mean by dumbed down. Dumbing down a game is what happens when the company wants to make the game more open for littler kids. Just like World Of Warcraft did. They dumbed down there game over the years and now its not playable in my standpoint because its to easy. There are other games that do this as well, but I only came on here just to do a quick reply.
I could very well point at SWG that was a reall dumming down.
I could also point at lotro, they made the leveling process so easy that a 5 year old could hit 65 in under 3 weeks.
That is what I call dumming down. Taking a game and making it so easy, you got to scratch your head and go what the heck. There are other games that had the treatment.
It kind of like the same thing I see in our local school systems. I was in a class today at work and this kid who just got hired. He could not even read the paragraph on work place violence as he did not know half the words and he had a so called high school education. I was schocked as we are suposed to have a high school exit exam. Needless to say the dirrector had a talk with him later, sad to say he did not make it out of his probationary period.
it basically means making everything easy. time and effort use to mean something in MMOs progressing your character either through levels or skills or even gear progression, took time effort and even in some cases a bit of luck.
there also use to be a sense of danger especially in games with heavy death penalties, you had to play your best and pay attention to every encounter since you knew one wrong pull or one silly move could set you back hours or days.
now MMOs are all about feeding those who have A.D.D. with new shiney things as they watch TV, read a book, surf the web or god knows what else. MMOs have become the special olympics ... "oooo you showed up, you clicked a button? awww you win a prize!"
and yes i know thats fun for some, just like its fun for some to play through other types of genres with cheat codes. Playing through a super hard FPS with god mode, playing through a platformer with infinite lives, playing through the toughest setting of any RTS with infinite resources or money. And while yes you technically beat the game and saw the same ending I did, you took the whole "spirit" out of the game. in essence you "dumbed down" the game with your cheat so you could win.
and thats what many feel happened with MMOs, except not with cheat codes but with enough crying by the casual gamer, who didn't want or couldn't put the time and effort in and didn't want to suffer the death penalty if they did something stupid. over the years the developers themselves took out the whole spirit of the game.
thats what Dumbing down means
If you want an old school challenge MMO play Tibia. it is not dumbed down. there is no quest help unless you wiki for it, and the best part is n00bs get culled fast. It also take a long time to level. there are people who take years to get to lvl 100 and this game has no lvl cap I know of. there's this one guy who took 4 years to get to lvl 320! There is tons of enemies to kill, you loose exp and items when you die, you have to start at the temple and go out and get your items and backpack back, and you can get Pked and kill people. They have a no-tolerance policy for botters. Botters are instantly hunted on most servers.
they are dumbind down Football next year i heard
they are makind goals larger ,50 meters wide ,so everyone can hit goals now.
they will change ball to volleyball,so its not too heavy for new champions.
when you touch opponents back,they must give ball to you.
if you play MMOtoys you do understand,if you play games you dont understand.
Generation P
Basically "dumbing down" means making the game much easier than it was originally in order to try to get mass appeal. Offhand, I can't think of a time when it benefitted a game really.
SWG is a good example of dumbing down nearly killing a game. The good ol' NGE is still the subject of scorn, ridicule and jokes today.
Take a look at WoW, they been dumbing down for a while and their subscription numbers haven't gone up in 2 years. Now, if I ran a company and doing Plan A was not increasing my customer base I'd drop it and go to Plan B. For some odd reason though, Blizzard just doesn't seem to care and continues to dumb down a game that wasn't that hard in the first place.