Me: remembering how many games were ruined by capitalism needing to make most of them too hard because “If they’re too hard to beat during a weekend rental then people will be forced to buy the full game!”
I’m still bitter about Ecco the Dolphin and Dynamite Headdy. So much wasted potential.
Fuck that fucking octopus. Fuckin asshole. Suck off me
I like this analysis but there are definitely some genres of games that it doesn’t apply to. Any games with blocks for example, such as Tetris, or any games with a strict time limit such as DDR or Guitar Hero where the length of a song is the length of a round and the only way to “lose” it is to fail to hit notes. All of this style of game essentially forces the player to practice and improve, there’s no shortcuts. Granted that DDR is made for arcade but I don’t think it specifically has much designed into it that differs from other variants in this style of game, let’s call them round-based action-puzzles.
I think this style continues to live on because it’s convenient. People like a game with a strict short time limit because you can pick it up, play 1 round and go back to something else. It fits into schedules well in a way story-driven or exploration games don’t.
The time limit is exactly a holdover from the golden period I’m describing i think, where Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater comes in. It’s not the most profitable of games though and will eventually die out to the more profitable ones or succumb to worse mechanics for better monetization, is my claim.
