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Nintendo Gives Us Demo Play, Makes Us Uncomfortable

Cue the bellyaching! Oh, wait. You say the bellyaching has begun? Good. This is the Internet, after all, and we will always need and have something to complain about. Take Nintendo, for instance. The company that practically revived videogames from the dead 25 years ago and then re-invigorated the medium to make it more appealing to newcomers just three years ago is once again taking flak, from its fan base, this time for its latest announcement.

Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed Nintendo’s plans to include a “demo play” feature in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and has hinted that this feature will likely be in future games from the company as well. The concept is simple: If gamers are having a hard time completing a particular level, they can go into a menu and choose to have the game finish the level for them while they, presumably, watch along to learn how it’s done. There’s a joke to be made here about Nintendo probably wanting to incidentally cut down on the number of Wii Remote-flinging incidents causing injury and/or property damage, but let’s try to approach this with a more serious mindset.

I’ve certainly had my share of frustration while playing videogames. Although I play them mostly to relax there’s no denying that sometimes games can get so difficult that they make it hard for me to want to go on. Games published by Nintendo are seldom a culprit of this but they’re not excluded, either. However a major part of what makes a videogame fun is the notion that the challenges presented within it are always solvable; it just takes the right approach to get past even the toughest of bosses and platform situations. Upon solving a problem in a game, players tend to feel a sense of accomplishment – in other words, a good feeling.

At the risk of trivializing the medium, it can be stated that the crux of most videogames is the player’s ability to recognize a pattern and then work within that pattern to solve a problem and then move on to the next one. This is easier to recognize in older, simpler games than it is today. But that root element is still present in modern games that have distinct objectives, and I don’t see this critical part of gaming architecture going away at any point.

With this in mind, let’s consider the Wii, what Nintendo has accomplished with it, and more specifically who is actually playing it. Today, there’s no stretch of the imagination required to picture those who we’d previously stereotyped as non-gamers holding Wii Remotes and having at it in a game of Wii Sports. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I remember being mocked by these kinds of people for playing my DS in the office lunchroom. There’s an unfortunate attitude prevalent in much of geek culture that would revel is such a turn of events and then take the opportunity to claim a higher level of geekdom over these plebs. One could certainly empathize with the reasoning, too. After all, we have been playing videogames our whole lives, and here these people new to gaming are getting games made just for them. “What about the games made for us,” we ask. “What about the hardcore?” It’s not uncommon to read off-handed remarks that hardcore gamers have Wiis that “collect dust” due to lack of use (though that would also imply they keep filthy households – a topic for perhaps another article).

But now let’s take a moment to realize that the terms “casual” and “hardcore” don’t necessarily mean what we’ve been led to believe over the past three years since the Wii’s introduction to the collective pop consciousness. There’s a distinct difference between the lingo of the marketing/games industry world and that of the English language. In this videogame world, we use the terms pretentiously. Casual is used to classify games that typically have streamlined controls that are easy to learn, pick up, and play. These games also have relatively simple concepts. On the other end of the scale, we have hardcore games. Hardcore (like casual) as a classification doesn’t actually tell us anything because the word is used incorrectly and thus loses its meaning. Instead, we dump games like first-person shooters, action-heavy titles, M-rated fare, and difficult games into the hardcore camp. This, like the casual/hardcore split, is clumsy, unnatural, and completely forced. But perhaps my biggest peeve with this forced separation is that it diminishes something like Donkey Kong to a casual game. Pac-Man becomes casual. Tetris also becomes casual. Games that people spend hours playing are reduced to what is arguably a derogatory label.

Does it not make sense that someone who spends their entire commute, every day, playing an Araknoid clone on his/her cell phone is a hardcore player of that game? Does it also not make sense that I can say that I play Halo casually, as I have no interest in the Halo series despite the occasional online scuffle with a friend? Moreover, have you seen King of Kong? Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell are the most hardcore Donkey Kong players we know of – yet under our false pretences we’ve already established that Donkey Kong is casual. Yet another problem with this kind of classification is that there are still games that would somehow not be considered for either.

In other words, casual and hardcore should not classify a game, but merely how that game is played on a per-individual basis. In turn, this classification is something that is more appropriately applied to people instead. Those that are not that into gaming but play them on occasion are casual gamers, and those that cannot go a day without a game fix are definitely hardcore. This exercise in semantics might seem like too much of a tangent, but it’s important to address before attempting to discuss Nintendo’s decision to include the demo play option in its future games. Now we can approach the talk with the realization that you are not the only person Nintendo is trying to make videogames for. With their new, expanded audience, it makes sense that they would want their much-loved longstanding franchises to be enjoyed by both novice and veteran gamers.

As far back as I can remember, Nintendo has offered game help to gamers via their hint line telephone service. While the introduction of demo play likely won’t change this, it will present a better way for the company to assist gamers in need. Rather than having to pick up a phone and dial a hotline (for which long distance charges will apply in most cases), the player can stay in the game, choose the option to have the computer play out the rest of the stage, and watch along. In this respect the demo play will not only cut down on the number of players who give up on a game altogether, but also cater to those who are easily sidetracked. How often have you opened up a game FAQ document only to end up elsewhere on the Internet in just a few clicks? Never mind the fact that most guides are a pain to navigate in the first place. This move is a great way for Nintendo to keep gamers in their games and away from competing forms of entertainment.

The argument that demo play will ruin the very point of the game is somewhat paranoid, and at worst a declaration for the sole purpose of inciting readers of game sites into unholy and unwarranted fits of rage. Gamers are a temperamental bunch with feelings of inadequacy about their preferred form of entertainment. We don’t like people trying to ruin our hobby or even speak ill of it, and this is why we speak out about media reports that seem to place blame for crimes solely on videogames. This is also why the idea of a game playing itself threatens our identities as gamers, and in a perverse way can make us question our existence. “If a game can play itself, what’s the point in playing it?”

The fact that demo play is available doesn’t mean we have to make use of it. At this point in time, and without a game in hand to try it out with, how it will be implemented is still open to speculation. There has already been some valid concern that newer entries into the ongoing Super Mario series have become increasingly easier over time, and this is likely due to Nintendo’s desire to not alienate newer gamers. With demo play, Nintendo has a good opportunity to re-introduce a more classically difficult learning curve in its games while still leaving a way for less experienced players to check out areas of the game they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

This of course raises the question of why Nintendo couldn’t have just introduced difficulty settings, but that’s a topic for another day.

Posted in Editorial, Wii |