Are Games Becoming More Passive

Gareth Fouche, developer of indie RPG Scars of War, is starting to get a bit nervous about the direction of mainstream videogame releases, particularly the hype and the passive entertainment value.

Which leads nicely into the second thing that is causing my disatisfaction. There is a steady and inexorable drift in the mainstream away from active engagement in games toward passive engagement. I’m not sure I’m using the right terminology, but what I mean is the difference between an active form of entertainment which forces you to participate, learn and challenge yourself in order to enjoy it, such as soccer, and a passive form of entertainment, where all you have to do is pitch up to enjoy it, like watching a movie or reading a book.

Don’t get me wrong, I like both forms. But I used to engage with games far more actively. Like a player running onto the pitch in a soccer match, the rewards didn’t simply come to you for bothering to pitch up. You have to stretch your capabilities, engage with the game, learn the rules and experiment. The mountain wouldn’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed had to do some climbing.

It’s more work that reading a book, but the payoff is so much greater. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read, I’m a giant bookworm, and there is great satisfaction to be had from reading. But scoring that goal in a soccer match or winning a game of chess is a much more active challenge, it’s as much a test of your qualities and skills as it is entertainment. (yes, I know some intellectual book similarly test your ability to comprehend the themes. Work with me on this analogy, people.)

Jay Barnson, developer of indie RPG Frayed Knights, picked up on the topic and continues the discussion on passive games.

Maybe this is true. I’ve avoided most games that have the dreaded (Quick-Time Events) which I always thought were incredibly lazy game design way back in the day before they had a name when instead a game had you repeatedly mash a button as fast as you can or something inane like that to succeed. For me, that kind of thing does not make me feel like I’m now participating in what is effectively a cutscene. it further pulls me out of the game. It makes me feel like I’m the kid brother tagging along in the back seat of the car being given busy-work to keep me occupied while the big kids do their thing.

Barring that particularly annoying exception, though, I have to ask are games becoming more passive, or simply more focused? Are they dumbing games down, or simply stripping away the parts that are (less fun) to focus on the key aspects of the game? If the core of the game is supposed to be mowing down aliens emerging all around you, then is getting lost in a maze of buildings where the aliens have already been (cleared out) really add to the experience? In an open-world RPG, would I really prefer to be hunting for a needle in a haystack on some quests without having an indicator to show me where to hunt down a unique item? (My answer: No, but I also say that’s poor quest design for that kind of RPG, but that’s another story).

Thanks RPGCodex.