We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

It's frustrating to see the market for the sort of well-designed games I enjoy steadily shrink because there is more money in pandering to ignorant new gamers than teaching them. I want to say it's just bad design and that they don't know any better, but the more I see of it the more cynical it feels. If anyone is frustrated in playtesting there must be something wrong. Unless they are frustrated by handholding, then they must be crazy get them outta here.

Pretty much; if there were some happy medium between handholding and just stranding somebody that could be easily found, it’d be in like every game. Instead we have lots of failures to find it, when they’re even trying. A lot of people I know think Portal 2 (single player) went down a little too smooth, you know? It’s as if any time anyone got stuck on a playtest, they made some things too obvious where the next step was. And then you have plenty of difficulty setting things that sound good on paper but don’t really make a difference in practice (I hear that on max difficulty, the Norks in Crysis speak Korean instead of Engrish, and that it’s completely pointless—I’m not that big on shooters, I wouldn’t know).

On the subject of controls, I think one of the more brilliant moments from Halo CE’s gameplay is when they ask you to look in directions with the camera near the beginning—first to just move it, writing it off as “disorientation” from doing freezer time, but then you get to test between normal and inverted vertical controls. Not only does it signal that you’ve finally escaped cutscene mode, but you also don’t have to actually know what “inverted” controls means or read the fadey text indicators on the HUD to set your preference; you just confirm which one you think works, and that’s what they’ll use. I mean, too bad that there is a cutscene and all that, but it’s a good moment that follows from that rather nicely.

While I have not found a conclusive answer to the Mystery of Where the Right Stick Camera Convention Came From, Halo CE does seem to be an influential game in that regard (despite not originating the idea)—after all, it’s influential on all sorts of games inferior to it; that’s why I ever bothered looking at it in the first place.