Gameplay density

Why do so many modern games love to disrespect the player's time? Why can't we get straightforward games with constant, non-stop action? Video games don't need "breaks". If the player wants to take a break from the game, they can always just hit the pause button. The action doesn't need to be interrupted by long walking sections, elevator rides, "puzzles", or whatever other time-wasting bullshit out there. It pains me to know that this arcade philosophy is considered "dated" by modern developers. Modern games, even modern "action" games, have such terrible gameplay density.

Long gone are the days of shmups, beat 'em ups, and straightforward action games such as Ninja Gaiden 2.

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  1. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Yes, I too watched Mark's latest video. You don't need to come here and post on Ganker about it. You know the answer.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      It was a good video, Mark

      Thanks for watching!

  2. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    >Why can't we get straightforward games with constant, non-stop action?

    Same reason movies and TV shows aren't non-stop action; the audience would become desensitized to the action. Pacing and setting the mood is just as important for games as it is for shows and movies.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      movies and TV shows aren't games, if you want a break from a game press the pause button.

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        You're missing the point; it's to break up the action, because if a game is nothing BUT fast-paced action, it all starts to blend together. So the slower-paced stuff is there so add some variety so the player doesn't get burnt out.

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          >it all starts to blend together
          No it doesn't. What an insane thing to say. Games have numerous differentiating factors from aesthetic to audio to mechanical. People even describe parts of games as what you're doing in them mechanically. "the section where you're jumping over lava, the part where you're dodging boulders." Tell me how an ice level would blend in a players mind with a castle level? That's such an insane thing to imply. Games were doing fine before games like gears of war in 2006 introduced walkie talkie sections.

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            >what is pacing
            moron alert moron alert

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              More about variety and not walking simulator segments.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      Not comparable. Games don't progress at a pace determined by external factors (syndication, runtime limits, etc), they progress at the pace the player engages at them with. Since the player determines the pace and can, at any point just put the game down, the player should feel like he's getting full throttle experience when he does actually play the game instead of having his time wasted with artificial lulls that don't need to be there.

  3. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Did you copy this directly from the transcript of Underground's latest video?

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      He is the guy. He posts this same thread all the time.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      I love how much this picture triggers this board

      He does it to cause anons here to get upset because when he did it the first time, people got butthurt and still are with each subsequent thread

  4. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    It was a good video, Mark

  5. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Arcade games were the gatcha slop of their day. Imagine having to fork over money per-death.
    The arcade design philosophy was about extracting money from the player first, and making an enjoyable and fun game second.
    To believe otherwise is Stockholm syndrome

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      >The arcade design philosophy was about extracting money from the player first, and making an enjoyable and fun game second.
      Name a type of video game for which this doesn't apply

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        Any game that doesn't have microtransactions.

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          bullshit. Games are commercial products. Money is always the number one priority. "Fun" is only a factor that encourages you to buy more games from the same developer

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            A game that you only pay for once isn't trying to suck money out of you. You pay for the game, and it's yours to play as much as you want. It doesn't try to nickel and dime you like arcade games and gachashit

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              that doesn't mean money is any less of a priority. If anything it's more of one. If you already bought the game, they don't give a frick what kind of experience you had with it. They already got their money. A game that continually asks for your money has to at least be constantly providing something you like

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                >A game that continually asks for your money has to at least be constantly providing something you like

                No, it just has to get you addicted. Those types of games are designed to be psychologically manipulative. Oftentimes they are tedious grindfests that "conveniently" give you the "option" to pay to speed up or skip the grind entirely. Which really lays bare why the game was made so tedious in the first place. They don't want you to have fun with it, they want to frustrate/bore you into spending more money.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                That holds true for gachashit and games with mtx, I'll grant. Arcades are more about getting you hooked by being as flashy and intense as possible, they're the crack cocaine of video games

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                >they're the crack cocaine of video games
                Yet the demand for them is low?

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                That would be Candy Crush and other mindless drivel.
                Shmups fail to reward the player adequately like real crack cocaine games as well as take more concentration than those laid back games. The bare minimum for not dying is bragging to literal whos who don't give a shit you 1ccd and some stupid high score.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                >they're the crack cocaine of video games
                this is pretty accurate. I got into shmups recently and felt like this. they have a lot in common with phone games I noticed too. there is for sure some psychological homosexualry at play probably researched and focus grouped to get the most amount of quarters possible. still fun though

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              Arcade games end days lead to designs like Cave games, fighting games, lots of brilliant games like Super Monkey Ball. Pay up front model is leading to games chock full of filler like Stellar Blade and Dad of War, and Slot Machine game design like vampire Survivors and bad roguelikes. Now that Arcade Game design is dead, everything is getting worse fast.

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        But most non-arcade games don't interrupt and break up thier game play with constant niggling microtransactions like Arcade games do.
        A few years ago I saw an interview with a Japanese Arcade game dev that I wish I could remember the name of, I think he worked on Metal Slug or some other shmup. But he mentioned that they design the game around giving the player ideally 40 seconds of fun on average before trying to wrestle more money from them. I personally think that's insane. Games should aim to be fun the entire time without being designed to nickel and dime the player.
        People who complain about mobile gatcha games seem to look back on the past with nostalgiavision as if the Arcade games of old weren't pulling the exact same shit

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          Metal Slug 1 is one of the easiest arcade games to 1CC. I have and I’m not even a great player.

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          Look, no one's saying arcade games are perfect, but they (along with hardware limitations) did create a certain set of incentives for developers that made retro games as memorable as they were. You can see this even in western PC games like Deus Ex where the movement is very freeform, the OST is upbeat and energetic, and even though you can explore, the game is constantly pushing you forward with loads of points of no return

          >they're the crack cocaine of video games
          Yet the demand for them is low?

          That would be Candy Crush and other mindless drivel.
          Shmups fail to reward the player adequately like real crack cocaine games as well as take more concentration than those laid back games. The bare minimum for not dying is bragging to literal whos who don't give a shit you 1ccd and some stupid high score.

          I mean in terms of how they try to addict you rather than whatever you derive from it. Obviously the difficulty filter is what keeps the demand from being high

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      The savvy Japanese arcade gamer wanted a decent amount of time for their coin (hence the 1cc culture). The operator wants lots of money. Arcade game creators had to navigate this, making a shit game meant the player only dumped a single coin in most likely, and told other players it sucked. They had to be excellent, difficult, dense, exciting, and able to be pushed really hard or they BOMBED hard.

  6. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    It's not attractive for the modern gamer. Webm related is what they want

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      taking in the sights of the world you're in is fun.
      You must hate going on road trips when you're not constantly dodging gunfire.
      People like different kinds of fun.
      If anything, they could make the traversal more engaging.

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        >If anything, they could make the traversal more engaging
        Finally someone who understands the point of this webm
        2B felt like complete ass to control. But if she had faster and snappier movement options I wouldn't have been so angry at nier automata, at least on that front. The combat was still shallow and soulless

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          I haven't played any game whos combat scratched my itch as Ninja Gaiden series. Some of the others in the CUHRAzee genre are purdy good but no developers have implemented the concept of "The enemies are legit trying to kill you and not get killed."

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      It's funny, at the time I enjoyed it more than Breath of the Wild because even this was less of a waste of my time than that game was. You at least fricking got somewhere after 10 minutes of running.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      Pointless traversal like this is annoying as frick. Reminds of MGS5: TPP, where you're forced to ride your horse all over the empty open world map. Ground Zeroes was much better in that regard. Camp Omega was a pretty big level, but it was also tight and concise, making for a much better experience.

  7. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    The idea that pure action is the only desirable state of gameplay is itself a flawed one. It is not "disrespecting your time" for things to be happening that aren't pure tests of reflex and skill, because games aren't purely about reflex and skill. Even non-video games are more than a framework for some feat of intelligence or strength. The ultimate gameplay is a core part of the ultimate game, but not the only part.
    That said, devs really do fricking need to lay off the brakes for now. We have enough non-gameplay to last us another decade easily, now start focusing on gameplay again.

  8. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Most classic arcade games like bullet hell and rail shooters are barely even 30 minutes in length. The box should be like 95% smaller.

  9. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    The answer is that most people don't like arcade style action games all that much, and they like games with narratives, cinematics, exploration, etc. There are plenty of arcade style games out there to buy and play, if you want that; not everything has to be the same.

    Also stop making this thread, it sucks and you're a homo.

  10. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    I don’t think arcade games are crack cocaine, more like a runners high. Ultimately most people are lazy and will never reach the state of bliss.

  11. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Play indie games. Unironically the last real hope for games who don't mock the player

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      I saw this game's preview on steam, this looks at least a little better, but overall it's still extremely hard to tell what the frick is going on, like by the time I see the attacks the character has already dodged them. Unironically this one of the few games I really do think needs to slow the frick down

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah I agree. I hope dev takes the feedback and doesn't ignore it

  12. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Why is he so contrarian?

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      I found this guy's videos a while back and thought they were well done, but I'm already sick of him. I don't think he'll ever really hit mainstream appeal, and that's probably a good thing

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      He's not contrarian, he's autistic (literally told a story of how he missed meetings at work to play Es Pa Re De for 12 hours straight). He broke down what made the classics work and expects newer games to be consistent with those ideas and they're not and that's why we don't get classics anymore

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        I watched him stream re4 and he was talking about how it was clearly inspired by god hand lmao he doesn't really know wtf he's talking about

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          When he says things like that, he's talking about RE4's movement and positioning meta. In that respect, RE4 does play actually a lot like an arcade beat em up (as God Hand does) in which you're incentivized to group enemies together, as is the safest position to be in (in RE4 because your attacks can hit multiple enemies and sometimes have long recovery animations, in God Hand simply so you don't get hit by offscreen attacks)

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            No, I'm saying god hand was the director of RE4's next game so he doesn't know what the frick he's talking about in the world of video games.

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              eh, that's the kind of thing anyone can make a slipup about on stream. You get the general idea of what he was trying to say. I'd be a little more critical if there was a major flaw in his edited videos like that

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        He's contrarian
        He was being such an idiot when Devil Blade came out trying to start a controversy when there was nothing to be mad about

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          >Devil Blade
          Devil Blade fricking rules

  13. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    >shmuptard wants every game to be a slot machine like that shitty genre
    >this is worthy of multiple threads every single day

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      >shmup superplayer wants every game to be actually engaging
      >this is somehow a bad thing

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        >autoscroller slop
        >engaging
        Zero brain activity.

        How the frick is a shmup like a slot machine? The genre generally doesn’t even have much RNG…

        >How the frick is a shmup like a slot machine?
        Have you seen the "aesthetics" they have?

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          Name one genre more engaging than shmups.

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            DJ Hero

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Anything with actual levels design.
            Anything that isn't an autoscroller.

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              Shooters have more level design than your favorite games

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                The games I like don't consist of hallways where enemies fall down the screen at you so I'm going to have to disagree.

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Autism-rhythm games. See: Osu

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Paper Mario

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Frogger

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Max Payne 3

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Candy Crush

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Madden 06

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Dig Dug

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Beauty and the Beast for GBA

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Crisis 2 the most sophisticated FPS of all time.

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            South Park 64

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Madden 07

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Pokemon TCG

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Madden 14

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Final Fantasy VIII

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            light gunners
            fpses
            fightan brawlin slashin beatem ups
            jackie chan.

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        Maybe there is more the medium than generic reward structures and dopamine hits. No, routing in shmups doesn't make you Arisrotle.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      How the frick is a shmup like a slot machine? The genre generally doesn’t even have much RNG…

  14. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    how are puzzle or platformer sections not gameplay

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      Most of the time puzzles are braindead crap for babies that has nothing to do with the main gameplay. Most games aren't La Mulana

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        and so are most enemy waves in shmups, it's still gameplay

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          >and so are most enemy waves in shmups
          what?

          > it's still gameplay
          if the bare minimum is that "the player does a thing," then books could be said to have gameplay because they require the player to see and read the patterns and also to breathe. You can't process the information otherwise. But you and I both know shit like this is timewasting garbage that only serves as a distraction for what you're really there to do. I have similar thoughts about platforming in FPS games

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            >shit like this is timewasting garbage that only serves as a distraction for what you're really there to do
            Like enemy waves in a shmup. Not even level design.

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              Enemy formations are level design.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                >shmuptards genuinely believe this

                Your posts are incoherent at this point. If you're playing a shooting game, presumably you want to shoot the damn enemies, which necessitates enemy waves.

                >If you're playing a shooting game, presumably you want to shoot the damn enemies
                Levels in FPS games aren't just hallways with enemies in them. There could be actual levels but there aren't in shmups.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Needs more effort.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                >can't refute it
                >just seethes
                You don't even play these games. Can't blame you since the genre is shit.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Prevails.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                If you just wanted to argue this point, you could have just said so
                Anyway, shmups are literally never a hallway . Your ability to fly anywhere on the screen is only theoretical. Enemy bullets ensure safe spots are minimal and you've got to fight for every single bit of positioning you can muster.
                If you don't think this is level design, your definition of it level design is arbitrary. Obviously levels will be different in different genres of games.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Enemies being a hallway does not in any way change the fact it's a hallway. This is some truly deranged logic.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                What stops it from being a hallway is large parts of the "hallway" being blocked off by enemy fire so you can't actually move anywhere you want
                They're a hallway in the same sense that like the train level in Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow is a hallway.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Even if enemies spawn on the screen that does not change the fact that you are still just a floating sprite on an autoscrolling hallway. Extremely boring and samey gameplay.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Most of these games last for like 30 minutes and I can tell you've never played a bullet hell game. Trying to learn patterns already takes enough concentration without having to deal with other bullshit. Shmups did use to put static level obstructions in the player's way (see Gradius as an example), but this actually makes the gameplay more samey, because again, they're static. They just sit there and wait for you to crash into them instead of moving in response to the player like an enemy does

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Basically real developers like Konami used to make games in the genre and the quality of the games reflected that. Now it's all shitty hallways because the moronic spergs still playing this dogshit don't care.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                It was all shitty hallways in Gradius too, the difference is you can crash into fricking ceiling and as a result the enemies had to be pathetic to compensate for your movement being gimped
                That's why no one does that shit anymore

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                You've never played Gradius.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                I've beaten Gradius III. There's literally no contest between its enemy design and the enemy design of your average bullet hell.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                >I've beaten Gradius III
                At least try to make your lies believable.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                lmao shut the frick up poser moron. We see right through you.

              • 1 week ago
                Anonymous

                Grifter

            • 1 week ago
              Anonymous

              Your posts are incoherent at this point. If you're playing a shooting game, presumably you want to shoot the damn enemies, which necessitates enemy waves.

  15. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Normal games aren’t addictive enough

  16. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Mork will begin a new wave of prolonged assfricking for this board.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      Mork stated he's going full-time in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to that.

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        There's no way he's going to be able to support a family with the amount of viewership he gets lol

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          Well, at least he's got a Patreon

  17. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    gameplay is the worst part of games though

  18. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    I'm a student of Ninja Gaiden & Devil May Cry. That makes me the highest tier gamer in existence.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      I kneel. J-Action is truly the only vidya worth playing. Everyone ITT stuck in the kiddie pool.

  19. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    RE4 (2005) is the perfect middle ground between arcadey and modern. Gaming peaked there.

    • 1 week ago
      Anonymous

      RE4 is arcadey moron. TEW mogs anyways

      • 1 week ago
        Anonymous

        Metal Slug is arcadey, moron

        • 1 week ago
          Anonymous

          Metal Slug IS arcade. RE4 is arcadey. Stupid fricking zoomer moron

          • 1 week ago
            Anonymous

            Arcade isn't an adjective

  20. 1 week ago
    Anonymous

    Some games still have the density of gameplay with little of the fluff. Just gotta find them.

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