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The primal instinct behind Bethesda's success

Razzoriel

Genos Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 3, 2016
Messages
104
10 year olds have no attention span for complex games, news at 11
False. My attention span at this D&D game when I was 10 was quite great.

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Self-Ejected

c2007

Self-Ejected
Joined
May 24, 2017
Messages
1,091
Location
404
I was playing text based games on an Apple ][+ at 10. Had to pay attention, even take notes.

"ADD" is variable. I have always had it, but computer games slowed that down for me.
 

Sneaky Seal

Aurum Dust
Developer
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
346
Location
Sealand-upon-Duck
They have no grand objective.
They don't really care how anything works.
They just want to march their units around the board exploring stuff.
Their first instinct upon meeting other Civs is to attack them.

Oh, boy, throw in some screwing - and this is pretty much the way I live my life.

The reasoning is simple: somewhere along the way videogames turned into toys. When people play videogames now, they expect something fun.
Man, what else should you expect from the videogames? Pain and suffering?
 

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
41,388
Location
Swedish Empire
Over the course of the last couple of years I've had a couple of nephews pass by my old gaming CDs, picking out games that might amuse them for an hour or two in between doing more regular family stuff.

It might surprise you, but there's not a lot of games that are ideal for 10 year olds in my collections of games, so I'll usually just put on something that has a lot to do that is fairly quick to get going but I also know they'll have no hope of ever beating in the short times of their visits...

... such as Civilisation 3.

In both instances when 2 different 10 year olds have sat down and taken their first moves in Civ3 their approach to the game has been the same:

They have no grand objective.
They don't really care how anything works.
They just want to march their units around the board exploring stuff.
Their first instinct upon meeting other Civs is to attack them.

And this is the primal instinct that Bethesda tuned into. A game where you have no grand objectives, no real need to know how anything works and you can just march around exploring stuff and attack things as you happen upon them if you feel like it.

They discovered a way to make pure exploration slightly more involved enough to be considered "a game".
Are you really surprised that 10 years olds don't have the attention span to learn game mechanics and think about economy and production and just want to explore and fight against something?

I played RPG's like Bard's Tale and might and Magic on C64/Amiga when i was 10.
 

Glop_dweller

Prophet
Joined
Sep 29, 2007
Messages
1,161
Man, what else should you expect from the videogames? Pain and suffering?
Something challenging, and worth one's time; something with the possibilities of failure, and of winning through considered choice of actions.

IE. not digital Whack-a-mole.
 
Self-Ejected

RNGsus

Self-Ejected
Joined
Apr 29, 2011
Messages
8,106
10 year olds have no attention span for complex games, news at 11
Not at all like modern adults, whose attention spans have ripened to a full minute and a half before they get existential...
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Dunno, but i had to learn the code to get them started, leanred to play them good enough and the keyboard layouts etc, since i do have handwritten notes from back then.

You probably also had plenty of time to figure stuff out.
 

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