Reasons Why Younger Gamers Don't Get Older RPGs?.

[MLMarkland]

The Trial would like to have words with you.

"People don't read" is a myth*. When people like something they enjoy engaging with it, even if it has a lot of text. It was true for the Harry Potter books, it is true for Disco Elysium. So it's not really people not being "avid readers" that's the problem here.

* "People don't want to waste their already limited time on shit" is much closer to the truth. Of course, people avoiding reading shit is bad for book business and for shitty writers. But if your writing is interesting enough (for whatever reason) people will read it and it will become popular. The only exception here are books based on some known IP. Different rules apply here.

33% of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives and 42% of college grads never read another book after college.

It's not a myth, unfortunately.

Kafka is an exception not a rule

And I don’t particularly like Kafka nor Dostoyevsky

 

[Harthwain]

33% of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives and 42% of college grads never read another book after college.

It's not a myth, unfortunately.

Are you going to tell me that in the past numbers looked differently? Because I very much doubt so. The difference between then and now is that now we have statistics, and teach a lot more people how to read than we did before the mass education became a standard. 50% of people reading books out of 100% who can read beats 100% of people reading books out of 20% who can read. And just because people don't pick up a book doesn't mean they don't know how to read or that they won't like it when they find a book they find interesting.

 

[Goldschmidt]

Like some already mentioned in this thread, young people want to be part of a group.

They play fortnite and league of legends because the entire class plays it. Friends and girlfriends. Remembers me of my time back in high school, playing Tibia which had dog awful Ultima graphics but was hardcore and fun and every nerd in school was playing it because it went from mouth to mouth and we all wanted to socialize and compete against eachother.

Games that were being played were Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate, NWN, Max Payne, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, ... current games of that time, because someone in your niche group played it and made copies for the rest. As soon as you hit university, everyone went their own way and bought the games they really wanted.

Also parents buy iphones, ipads and console games for their children, not board games or books or outdoor stuff. The newer generations value other things than what the codex has grown up with. You need access to the older stuff to play it and that is not always easy.

That is the reason why old collections from elderly people never sell. These old train cars were popular when they were young but current generations are not interested in that crap. Also the reason why I will give my collection to some charity before some young family member gives it away for almost nothing.

 

[MLMarkland]

33% of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives and 42% of college grads never read another book after college.

It's not a myth, unfortunately.

Are you going to tell me that in the past numbers looked differently? Because I very much doubt so. The difference between then and now is that now we have statistics, and teach a lot more people how to read than we did before the mass education became a standard. 50% of people reading books out of 100% who can read beats 100% of people reading books out of 20% who can read. And just because people don't pick up a book doesn't mean they don't know how to read or that they won't like it when they find a book they find interesting.

What the hell am I reading?

 

[Harthwain]

What the hell am I reading?

Are you reading?

 

[EtcEtcEtc]

33% of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives and 42% of college grads never read another book after college.

It's not a myth, unfortunately.

Are you going to tell me that in the past numbers looked differently? Because I very much doubt so. The difference between then and now is that now we have statistics, and teach a lot more people how to read than we did before the mass education became a standard. 50% of people reading books out of 100% who can read beats 100% of people reading books out of 20% who can read. And just because people don't pick up a book doesn't mean they don't know how to read or that they won't like it when they find a book they find interesting.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/20... greater among,also women and older Americans.

You're just arguing against reality at this point.

 

[Harthwain]

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/20... greater among,also women and older Americans.

You're just arguing against reality at this point.

I guess you missed the "*" in my original post.

In short: you can get people to read if you make it interesting.

 

[MLMarkland]

33% of high school graduates never read another book the rest of their lives and 42% of college grads never read another book after college.

It's not a myth, unfortunately.

Are you going to tell me that in the past numbers looked differently? Because I very much doubt so. The difference between then and now is that now we have statistics, and teach a lot more people how to read than we did before the mass education became a standard. 50% of people reading books out of 100% who can read beats 100% of people reading books out of 20% who can read. And just because people don't pick up a book doesn't mean they don't know how to read or that they won't like it when they find a book they find interesting.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/03/21/reading-fewer-books/#:~:text=U.S. adults are reading roughly,did between 2001 and 2016.&text=The decline is greater among,also women and older Americans.

You're just arguing against reality at this point.

That this occurred mainly among college educated people of which a majority stayed home for an entire year in 2020-2021, is quite an indictment of college, college education & adhering to neoliberal consensus / nonsense.

Digging into the cross tabs, it would appear that college educated young Millennials and Boomer women account for the vast majority of the decline. Too much Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey will rot your brain.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It's an okay hipster adventure game with tacked on skill checks, but the pretentiousness and verbal diarrhea is sometimes just too much. It has nothing to do with cRPGs though. It had its moments, and I'd be lying if I said I did not enjoy it for the most part. But not an RPG.

And everybody loves Cuno.

I hate when people use this buzzword, "pretentious". Please give some examples where the game comes off as pretentious. Also found the game very easy to read and really lacking in the verbal diarrhea department as well. The dialogue trees have a lot of depth, but each specific section was usually quite concise. There is a lot of dialogue but that doesn't mean it's verbal diarrhea. Codex will sit and praise dogshit like ELEX and FO:NV, but shit on an excellent game like Disco Elysium. Mind blowing.

Discodisco being good or bad is irrelevant. People don't like the idea of a game without combat being considered a RPG because combat is a filter to keep casuals away.

 

[Akachi]

I guess you missed the "*" in my original post.

In short: you can get people to read if you make it interesting.

That is naïvely optimistic bullshit based on nothing. The decline in people who actually read is tied to the overall decline in reading ability and the ever rising rates of illiteracy and semiliteracy:

Functional illiteracy in North America is epidemic. There are 7 million illiterate Americans. Another 27 million are unable to read well enough to complete a job application, and 30 million can’t read a simple sentence.¹ There are some 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate—a figure that is growing by more than 2 million a year. A third of high-school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, and neither do 42 percent of college graduates. In 2007, 80 percent of the families in the United States did not buy or read a book.² And it is not much better beyond our borders. Canada has an illiterate and semiliterate population estimated at 42 percent of the whole, a proportion that mirrors that of the United States.³

References:
1. ABC News, Living in the Shadows: Illiteracy in America, Feb. 25, 2008.
2. Statistics were obtained from the following sources: National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau.
3. “Canada’s Shame,” The National, Canadian Broadcasting Company, May 24, 2006.

This trend is the same in all Western countries. It is part of the death of the West, where culture is replaced with meaningless mass culture and celebrity culture, advertising, personal dramas, and by television and its derivatives (such as streaming and Internet videos, because zoomers prefer to watch someone else play a video game than watch a soap opera). Millennials, Gen Z, and the even more cursed generations after them suffer from their youth being spent in an era where this long process has been completed—of course, past generations were exposed to this too, because it began a long time ago. It is perilous indeed to try to escape from this prison of great artifice, because society has been chained in Plato's cave and enslaved by the illusions of the flickering shadows on the cave wall. Like Tacitus wrote of similar people from another time, "this, from their inexperience, they called civilisation, whilst, in reality, it constituted part of their slavery." There is a reason that Plato feared the power of entertainment, the power of the senses to overthrow the mind, and the power of emotion to obliterate reason.

It should not be surprising, given the rising rates of illiteracy and decline in culture and education; given the active selection against intelligence, educational attainment, and brain size that has been documented by anthropologists studying gene-culture co-evolution; given that we are entering a strange new Dark Age if we haven't already; that people's taste in games has changed and do not get older RPGs. They were primitive and imperfect, and even the ones with the best writing cannot compare to the best of other mediums. But RPGs are very new and cRPGs even newer than the tabletop that they no longer attempt to mirror, making their immaturity unsurprising; in them there was a seed that could have germinated into something greater, and it seems we will not find out what that could have been anytime soon, if we ever do.

 

[Harthwain]

That is naïvely optimistic bullshit based on nothing.

There are plenty of movies made because some books became popular enough. For that to happen someone must've read them and create a fanbase big enough for it to sell. Eragon, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc. (to name some examples from 2000s). Disco Elysium merely proves that you can have text-heavy game and it can be successful, but it has to be interesting for that to happen. Otherwise you get Torment: Tides of Numenera (and more people saying it's because people can't read anymore).

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Old Man Shouts at Cloud: The Thread

 

[Akachi]

There are plenty of movies made because some books became popular enough. For that to happen someone must've read them and create a fanbase big enough for it to sell. Eragon, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc. (to name some examples from 2000s). Disco Elysium merely proves that you can have text-heavy game and it can be successful, but it has to be interesting for that to happen. Otherwise you get Torment: Tides of Numenera (and more people saying it's because people can't read anymore).

So at least a single person has to read a book for a movie to be made. That proves what, exactly? The fact that TV and film adaptations are always far more popular than the books they're based on says it all. Disco Elysium is trite like all your examples of literature, so no surprise it would have some chance of success compared to something that requires a moderately high reading level, but it's still not very popular and is a niche game compared to RPGs of the past that were mainstream for their time.

 

[MLMarkland]

There are plenty of movies made because some books became popular enough. For that to happen someone must've read them and create a fanbase big enough for it to sell. Eragon, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc. (to name some examples from 2000s). Disco Elysium merely proves that you can have text-heavy game and it can be successful, but it has to be interesting for that to happen. Otherwise you get Torment: Tides of Numenera (and more people saying it's because people can't read anymore).

So at least a single person has to read a book for a movie to be made. That proves what, exactly? The fact that TV and film adaptations are always far more popular than the books they're based on says it all. Disco Elysium is trite like all your examples of literature, so no surprise it would have some chance of success compared to something that requires a moderately high reading level, but it's still not very popular and is a niche game compared to RPGs of the past that were mainstream for their time.

Popularity is only a finance consideration. Plenty of people turn down popular things. I turned down the hunger games license because the first page of the book was idiotic, went and chose something that was more proven.

You never can tell really.

 

[Harthwain]

So at least a single person has to read a book for a movie to be made.

Yes, because movies aren't made on POPULAR* books...

* If you think it takes only a single person for someone to decide that making a movie would be profitable, then you're being fabulously optimistic here.

That proves what, exactly? The fact that TV and film adaptations are always far more popular than the books they're based on says it all.

If both literate and illiterate people can watch a movie, then obviously the audience for movies will be potentially bigger. Hell, people don't have to be illiterate, just not having the time or the desire to read a book without some encouragement. I know some cases when a movie (or a game) made people pick up a book it was based on. It doesn't change the fact that the usual trend is as follows: the book becomes popular -> somebody makes an adaptation of it. Look at Game of Thrones.

Disco Elysium is trite like all your examples of literature, so no surprise it would have some chance of success compared to something that requires a moderately high reading level, but it's still not very popular and is a niche game compared to RPGs of the past that were mainstream for their time.

Bullshit. By conventional reasoning Disco Elysium should've been a failure (even I thought it would be). It isn't. And it's EXTREMELY popular for what it is. Popular enough to get a TV adaptation. That's not something usual, especially if - as you claim - you consider it to be "not very popular" and "niche" product. By the way, compare sales of Disco Elysium to "mainstream RPGs of the past". I am really curious how will the numbers look.

Also, lul at "Disco Elysium is trite". It has original setting (not my cup of tea, but I can at least give credit where credit is due). It goes back to RPG roots when it comes to character-player dynamic. It is written well enough for a plenty of people to actually enjoy reading over a million words.

Popularity is only a finance consideration. Plenty of people turn down popular things.

Not plenty enough to not make it popular apparently. Because if it's popular, then it means it is "liked, admired, or enjoyed by many people". Enough to make the whole model sustainable.

 

[MLMarkland]

So at least a single person has to read a book for a movie to be made.

Yes, because movies aren't made on POPULAR* books...

* If you think it takes only a single person for someone to decide that making a movie would be profitable, then you're being fabulously optimistic here.

That proves what, exactly? The fact that TV and film adaptations are always far more popular than the books they're based on says it all.

If both literate and illiterate people can watch a movie, then obviously the audience for movies will be potentially bigger. Hell, people don't have to be illiterate, just not having the time or the desire to read a book without some encouragement. I know some cases when a movie (or a game) made people pick up a book it was based on. It doesn't change the fact that the usual trend is as follows: the book becomes popular -> somebody makes an adaptation of it. Look at Game of Thrones.

Disco Elysium is trite like all your examples of literature, so no surprise it would have some chance of success compared to something that requires a moderately high reading level, but it's still not very popular and is a niche game compared to RPGs of the past that were mainstream for their time.

Bullshit. By conventional reasoning Disco Elysium should've been a failure (even I thought it would be). It isn't. And it's EXTREMELY popular for what it is. Popular enough to get a TV adaptation. That's not something usual, especially if - as you claim - you consider it to be "not very popular" and "niche" product. By the way, compare sales of Disco Elysium to "mainstream RPGs of the past". I am really curious how will the numbers look.

Also, lul at "Disco Elysium is trite". It has original setting (not my cup of tea, but I can at least give credit where credit is due). It goes back to RPG roots when it comes to character-player dynamic. It is written well enough for a plenty of people to actually enjoy reading over a million words.

Popularity is only a finance consideration. Plenty of people turn down popular things.

Not plenty enough to not make it popular apparently. Because if it's popular, then it means it is "liked, admired, or enjoyed by many people". Enough to make the whole model sustainable.

“Turn down popular things”

I’m not disputing the popularity of a thing. I’m pointing out that popular things are often turned down by most of the market options and end up being very generic precisely because the people working on the adaptation were just the people who said yes.

 

[EtcEtcEtc]

That is naïvely optimistic bullshit based on nothing.

There are plenty of movies made because some books became popular enough. For that to happen someone must've read them and create a fanbase big enough for it to sell. Eragon, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc. (to name some examples from 2000s). Disco Elysium merely proves that you can have text-heavy game and it can be successful, but it has to be interesting for that to happen. Otherwise you get Torment: Tides of Numenera (and more people saying it's because people can't read anymore).

1. The fanbase doesn't have to be there for the movies to become huge. Look at the sales of comics vs the actual movie grosses. There are also movies that get made on books that haven't seen huge success, that go on to be huge. No Country for Old Men was a great book - it had no mass success, and in fact I think it still doesn't despite the success of the film.

2. Disco sold 2.1 mil on Steam give or take, lets toss in another million on GOG and Epic to be generous - so 3 mil. That's obviously succesful, but it is in no way indicative that there is a mass audience ready to consume 'literate' games. That's still a niche. A highly successful niche, yes, but still a niche.

3. You're also assuming that those sales of Disco are repeatable, and indicate that the market is there for another similar game. Look at sales falloff from Grimrock 1 to Grimrock 2 - or POE1 to POE2 (which POE2 is byfar the better game). Video games are especially susceptible to a mass hype for a certain type of game, people will read websites telling them how great a game from a bygone genre is (Grimrock, POE, etc) read the reviews that are all glowing, and that'll drive sales. Then they'll jump in to see what the hype was, play twenty minutes, and then realize "Oh I hate these types of games" and walk away. They will not buy the sequel. I'm sure people more up on the market can give other examples of this happening. Disco Elysium bears all the same hallmarks - niche game, hyped to the nth degree, big sales based on hype. I would not be surprised to see Disco 2, or some similar game released, and the audience not to show up - because they didn't actually like Disco they just bought it

Also as caveat I DID love Disco, so I'm not arguing against it out of distaste as many others are.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

it really saps my will to live, much less to play the game. Excuses.

Exactly my thoughts. I am playing Demons Winter and I get depressed always. Anyway it would be an interesting game.
When I played Wizardry 7, it was a magical thing.

 

[chongjasmine]

I think it is best not to generalise. Some younger gamers do play older games. It is more a matter of preference I think.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

I think it is best not to generalise. Some younger gamers do play older games. It is more a matter of preference I think.

Jesus Christ look at you trying to be all reasonable and shit. Sure you came to right website?

 

[chongjasmine]

I like to play nice. :Wink

 

[0sacred]

I think it is best not to generalise. Some younger gamers do play older games. It is more a matter of preference I think.

it's hardly a 50/50 split so f your relativism

 

[Harthwain]

1. The fanbase doesn't have to be there for the movies to become huge. Look at the sales of comics vs the actual movie grosses. There are also movies that get made on books that haven't seen huge success, that go on to be huge. No Country for Old Men was a great book - it had no mass success, and in fact I think it still doesn't despite the success of the film.

That's true, but doesn't change anything what I said about popular books turned into movies being a general trend.

2. Disco sold 2.1 mil on Steam give or take, lets toss in another million on GOG and Epic to be generous - so 3 mil. That's obviously succesful, but it is in no way indicative that there is a mass audience ready to consume 'literate' games. That's still a niche. A highly successful niche, yes, but still a niche.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "niche".

I would argue that since Disco Elysium managed to get this much interest it's not really niche. Yes, cRPGs - as a genre - are niche by comparison (and "literate" RPGs are even more niche than action RPGs), but Disco Elysium's success skyrocketed it to the very top of its genre, so it's not really a niche anymore in that sense. If you want an example of a [highly] successful niche RPG from an indie developer, then I'd say Battle Brothers is a good example of that. Disco Elysium, in terms of popularity/recognition, is closer to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt by comparison (again, relatively speaking).

And if 3 millions is not good enough to be considered a mass audience, then what is? Where do we draw the line? I think that if you can count your audience in millions, then you've reached the definition of "mass audience". Even if it's "only" 3 millions, not 30 millions.

3. You're also assuming that those sales of Disco are repeatable, and indicate that the market is there for another similar game.

Actually, I am no so sure how reapatable the success of Disco is. Partially because the "WOW" effect diminishes (as you yourself have noted) and - more importantly - because it's extremely difficult for good writing to be consistent. But if the writing manages to stay on point? Yes, I think Disco Elysium 2 could be repeatable. Series happen for a reason.

Look at sales falloff from Grimrock 1 to Grimrock 2 - or POE1 to POE2 (which POE2 is byfar the better game). Video games are especially susceptible to a mass hype for a certain type of game, people will read websites telling them how great a game from a bygone genre is (Grimrock, POE, etc) read the reviews that are all glowing, and that'll drive sales. Then they'll jump in to see what the hype was, play twenty minutes, and then realize "Oh I hate these types of games" and walk away. They will not buy the sequel.

POE is not a good example. POE1 was sold on Kickstarter hype. Sales of POE2 only verifed how false that hype was.

Disco Elysium bears all the same hallmarks - niche game, hyped to the nth degree, big sales based on hype. I would not be surprised to see Disco 2, or some similar game released, and the audience not to show up - because they didn't actually like Disco they just bought it

I disagree it's all hype. The reception of Disco Elysium is crushingly positive. Especially considering the controversive themes it broaches. If anything, people are more likely to buy it and end up disappointed if the writing fails to satisfy them. It will be less Grimrock 1 to Grimrock 2 or POE1 to POE2 and more Planescape: Torment to Planescape: Tides of Numenera.

Also as caveat I DID love Disco, so I'm not arguing against it out of distaste as many others are.

Yeah. "Many". More like "some". Because they are clearly the minority. Even on the Codex.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Old games are crap.
Demon's Winter
You have 17 Intelligence. You should learn some new skill.
Every skill has an INT cost.
Every fucking time you have to look your INT and in some walkthrough on the internet, your Monk has already Karate skill - costs 1 INT, KungFu costs 3 INT. So you have 17-1-3=14 free INT for a new skill.
Or you can go the college (long journey) and they will tell you: You has no enough INT. Thanks!
There is no info about this in the manual.
Stupid game does not show the free usable INT points.
So it is possible for some old autist this is a great feature.
But in reality it is only a f*cking chore.
Playing an excel table or the windows calculator is more interesting.

 

[Bad Sector]

Gold Box disagrees

It can disagree all it wants, but the Gold Box games' interface is an abysmal failure of UX with having to play piano with your keyboard just to do very basic stuff - e.g. in Pool of Radiance (which i was playing recently) you can't pool your money unless you go to a shop (not to mention the pointless idea of having 2938942 different types of coins - and it is pointless because as soon as you make a transaction the game automatically converts the points anyway). Or things like in combat you can use the direction keys to move or attack but if you are standing next to an enemy and you press the direction key to attack it wont register if you do not have any movement points left even though you are not trying to move but attack instead. And to "aim" you have to either cycle between all possible targets (which for some reason includes your allies without even bothering to at least sort between allies and enemies so you don't waste time skipping them) or use a "manual" option to move a square to target them. Would it be too hard to program a list of the possible targets instead? It would remove absolutely nothing from the gameplay and make it much easier.

In fact selecting stuff and lists in general in the game are done in an awful manner: who the hell had the idea to use Home and End to select items? Pretty much every computer at the time had arrow keys. In addition many games of the time used numbers for the list items to avoid having to move some cursor manually one by one and even F-keys for the characters, but there is no such a thing here - instead you not only have to manually do all selections but also use these weird keys they selected.

And this isn't just because the game is old, other games around that time had much more sane controls. Wasteland even had the ability to create keyboard macros which worked across the UI!

In 1990 DOS certainly felt like shit after having an amiga.

That's just how those games were (if you set it up to run in a large enough window, not fullscreen because of widescreen stretching).

I'm pretty sure the DOSBox issue ItsChon refers to isn't about the DOS interface itself or the games' own interface but the fact that DOSBox due to how it works adds considerable input lag, especially for mouse. Some people do not notice that but if you do, it can be very annoying. Some graphics backends can alleviate a bit of that but in general all emulators (DOSBox, 86box, etc) have that problem. You basically have to force yourself to get used to it.

Though there is also the problem that some games do not set the mouse "mickeys" correctly for graphics modes - mickeys is the number of "ticks" per pixel the mouse reports - and the default setting is for the text mode resolution which uses double the mickeys for vertical movement that in turn makes the mouse feel faster horizontally than vertically. In DOS times there were TSRs to work around that and some mouse drivers used 1:1, but AFAIK DOSBox uses the common 8:16 setting. VGA is also kinda weird in that it isn't square pixels but has a bit of vertical stretching so you need something like 16:14 to get good results but again unless you use some TSR or the game sets that correctly (most dont) mouse movement will feel off.