“Another potential hypothesis is that the increasing negativity, polarization, intrusiveness, and emotional manipulation in social media has created a persistent cognitive overload on the finite cognitive resources we have,” Quantic Foundry said. “Put simply, we may be too worn out by social media to think deeply about things.”
in other words, we’re burnt out and we just want some escapism …
It’s not just that. Many games these days are so detailed, it’s like having a second job that you don’t get paid to do, but instead pay them to be “allowed” to do. No thank you.
Not sure if this is true. Social media shows a very distorted view on polarization. Past research shows that the vast majority of polarising content (>95%) is generated by a vast minority of users (~6%). It is shown repeatedly that the polarization found in (online) media, differs drastically from every day felt polarization.
Literally “getting off the internet” seems like a valid strategy. I think it is more likely that .odern games hijack native reward systems more than “deep strategy games” do (whatever that means). In fact the gameplay mechanics in most games are still relatively the same, just prettier, faster running. Back in the day we couldn’t have a high FPS shooter with a lot of bang simple because the technology didn’t allow for it. Furthermore games were a niche back then as well. Now games are more mainstream and the relative group is smaller, than the mainstream group.
There’s plenty of games that require deep and extensive thought. I just wanna jump on turtles and fix this spaceship before I get tossed out of the airlock.
Are gamers getting older? It would be interesting to see how this breaks down by age.
I’m getting older. I have 3 kids and no time. 10 years ago I had no kids and 3 time. Now when I play, I just put it on the easiest setting and play it like an interactive movie.
Na, gaming is where I can realise great strategy I cant do in real life. I’ve never been at work going “just want to do this” before I go home and sleep
Yeah, I’ve played plenty of Civilization over the years, but I’m married now. I have a kid. I keep a note with what I’m doing because it might be a couple months before I play again. I could play more, but I want to spend time with my wife and my kid. Usually when I take time to play I want to play again the next night, but that’s often not feasible, and then it turns into weeks again.
I started playing Morrowind maybe 6 months back, got hours into the game and was having a good time. Then I didn’t get a chance to play for a month, now I haven’t gone back because I have no idea what I was doing since half the stuff doesn’t seem to be written in the journal, and when it is, it assumes I remember who the person is or where I was supposed to be going. So I just haven’t picked it up again.
To be fair, Morrowind is just that kind of game. It’s been many years since I’ve played it, but I remember it being one of the last truly open world experiences I got from playing games. The plot drops you off in the first city and kind of just let’s you go at it. I remember hours of just wandering until I ended up at the city of vivec, which is the mess of floating pyramid temple lookin jobbies out on a lake somewhere. I didn’t know shit about anything but it was awesome and that was enough for me. Elden Ring almost brings this feeling back sometimes.
It was great while I remembered what was happening! But sometimes your only reference to a quest is something that says “Go out the door, take the third left, and look for an orange door” and you just have no idea even what city you were in when you got that note 😆
During the couple of weeks I was playing it, I didn’t actually feel lost at all. But now trying to return to it just feels more like a chore than a good time. I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 now instead, I’m back in the era of quest markers!
You can add map markers with custom descriptions in Morrowind. I use them to leave little “what the fuck am I doing” notes for myself before leaving the game if I don’t know I’ll be back on within a couple days
For real though it can be a hard game to jump back into if you’ve had it on pause for a while. I usually just make a new character at that point see where the new adventure goes. There are so many factions and places to explore no one character can experience the game in full anyway
But across its 1.7 million surveys, Quantic Foundry found that two thirds of strategy fans worldwide (except China, where gamers “have a very different gaming motivation profile”) have lost interest in this element of video games.
The Quantic Foundry (QF) data comes (as usual) from the Gamer Motivation Profile, a 5-minute survey that allows gamers to get a personalized report of their gaming motivations, and see how they compare with other gamers. Over 350,000 gamers worldwide have taken this survey. The survey is in English and thus respondents are predominantly from North America and the Western EU.
The Niko Partners (NP) data comes from an online survey (in Simplified Chinese) of 2,000 representative digital gamers in China (from a survey panel provider), balanced across more than 40 cities in tiers 1 through 5.
The Gamer Motivation Profile is benchmarked against QF’s existing data set (based largely on gamers in the West). In the chart below, the 50th%-tile line indicates the perfect average of each motivation in QF’s full data set. This is why the US data (a large portion of QF’s data set) hews closely to the average. The error bars in the chart are based on 95% confidence intervals.
Let’s take the 75th%-tile that Chinese gamers score on Competition—the appeal of duels, arena matches, and leaderboard rankings. That 75th%-tile means that the average Chinese gamer is more interested in Competition than 75% of gamers in QF’s data. Given that the US data is so close to the average, this also essentially means that the average Chinese gamer cares more about Competition than 75% of US gamers.
Similarly, Chinese gamers are also more interested in Completion—the appeal of collecting points/stars/trophies, completing quests/achievements/tasks. Conversely, Chinese gamers score below average across the Immersion and Creativity motivations (the last 4 motivations in the chart). They are less interested in being immersed in a compelling game world (Fantasy), interacting with an elaborate story and large cast of NPCs (Story), exploration and experimentation (Discovery), and customizing their avatar/town/spaceship (Design) relative to US gamers.
The Competition finding may seem unintuitive because in the US cultural context, we tend to stereotype Asians as being compliant and striving for social harmony. But the data strongly suggests this stereotype doesn’t hold true among Chinese gamers, and the higher interest in Competition can help to partly explain the popularity of games like PUBG in China. After all, Battle Royale is probably the furthest away you can be from “social harmony”.
In previous blog posts (see here and here), we’ve shown how male gamers (in the West) tend to be more driven by Competition, Destruction, and Challenge, whereas female games tend to be more driven by Design, Fantasy, and Completion.
The data from China looks very different. Of the 12 motivations, only 3 cross the threshold for statistical significance (at p < .01)—male gamers in China care more about Destruction, Discovery, and Competition. Of these 3, the differences in Competition and Discovery are substantively small (about 5 percentile points apart). Overall, the only robust difference is that female gamers in China are less interested in guns, explosions, and mayhem than male gamers. In contrast, 9 of the motivations are at least 10 percentile points apart in the US data between male and female gamers.
In the US, there’s a lot of contention around the cause of observed gender proportions in different game titles and genres, specifically as to whether these differences reflect the historical marketing/cultural framing of games for boys or deeply-rooted biological differences between men and women. The data from China suggests that even very large gender differences in gaming motivations can be almost entirely explained by cultural/marketing factors without using gender as an explanatory factor.
Age Differences Are Also Much Smaller in China
In data we’ve previously shared using QF’s full data set, we’ve shown that the appeal of Competition declines dramatically with age, and it’s the motivation that changes the most with age. The appeal of Excitement also declines a lot with age in the US. The table below presents the correlation coefficients between age and each of the 12 motivations, broken down by country.
In China, the age differences are much smaller (similar to what we saw with gender differences). None of the correlations in the China data exceeds 0.10 (what is considered a small effect in psychology research), and only 4 of the coefficients are significant at p < .01. In contrast, 7 of the coefficients exceed 0.10 in the US data, with 2 coefficients exceeding 0.25.
So while the appeal of Competition and Excitement drop rapidly among US gamers as they get older, these effects are much more muted among Chinese gamers.
Motivation Homogeneity and Making Games
When gaming motivations vary a great deal in terms of gender and age (as they do in the US), it means game design and marketing have greater difficulty in being broadly appealing to different gamers, because they will often run into breakpoints in terms of gendered or age-based appeal.
On the other hand, the homogeneity of gaming motivations among Chinese gamers suggests a higher likelihood of cross-cutting appeal of game titles. Put another way, a game designer for the Chinese market likely has to worry less about satisfying orthogonal or opposing interests among different players because most Chinese gamers tend to care about the same things (high Completion and Competition, low Discovery).
Huh.
So, first of all, regarding the Strategy thing that the derived article was talking about, it’s not that Chinese gamers prefer Strategy more. Rather, they prefer it less. But they haven’t seen that decline, and they have both different and much more homogenous preferences.
Exactly! I absolutely love EU4 and am excited about the likely next installment. Unfortunately, I’m less excited about their other recent launches, because the depth of strategy just isn’t quite there.
But then I look around and can’t really find a comparable game. There’s Total War, but y strategy there is pretty weak and more about battlefield tactics than actual grand strategy. Civ exists, but it’s in a pretty different category (and not really my thing; I do like Civ IV though). I own a lot of strategy games, but most are kind of shallow. I love complex games with a lot of moving parts, which yields a lot of variation game to game, and that just isn’t all that common outside of PDX games.
Fill combat width, esp the front line, and ideally the back line (back line is essential in end game)
Keep up on tech, including your mercs - need to rehire every few decades
Choose good battles - terrain matters (e.g. don’t attack into the mountains), stack size matters; retreat if you’re caught in a bad battle
Get some buffs - morale is most important early game, discipline and combat ability starts to matter more by mid game; you should focus on one or two areas to specialize (so idea groups and policies should synergize with national ideas)
Have good leaders - should have high army tradition, so your leaders should all be 2-3 star generals
Usually by mid game, I’m steamrolling everyone and am the biggest great power, even if I started small. Consider watching some streamers/YouTubers, many do a good job explaining things as they go.
For navies:
Watch battles and retreat if you start seeing red on your side - naval battles have a domino effect, so if you’re seeing more red on their side, consider continuing, you might capture more than you lose
Morale is the most important factor here - if you’re outnumbered, check individual ships and leave the low morale and damaged ships in port
If you’re filling combat width, the easy strategy is to get a bunch of heavies - don’t worry about the inland sea malace (heavies are fine in inland sea, galleys suck in deep water), if you can out-gun them, you’ll probably win
Pick your naval doctrine carefully - if you get galley combat ability, consider going all galleys and go over force limit as needed - it’s cheaper to be over force limit with galleys than at force limit with heavies
Naval leaders don’t matter all that much, they can break a tie, but that’s about it; individual ship morale is king in navies
It takes a long time for AI to repair boats, so popping in and out of port can be a great way to whittle down their navy and eventually win - make sure to retreat as needed to not lose boats
If you have naval dominance, destroy their navy entirely (occupy provinces with their boats, engage, repeat until it’s dead)
Don’t fight with light ships, they’re a liability (see 2, they get morale hammered); transport ships are really hardy, so use them as a bullet sponge if you need to fill combat width
Enemy fleet size doesn’t matter at all. You can defeat 100+ ship fleets if you can beat the ships that engage (like 20-30), you just need to get it to start to domino. So commit to either galleys (with galley combat naval doctrine) or heavies, and if you start to lose, retreat, repair, and reengage.
By the mid game, it’s easy to absolutely dominate if you play the early game well. Your goal in the early game is to build a power base, which means:
expand your borders a bit by taking good land - centers of trade, defendable mountain passes, etc
reduce autonomy
get good synergies in your idea groups
border the countries you want to engage in the middle game
build the right buildings
So by mid game, you should be a regional, if not global, power, and your time will be spent gobbling up land and converting wrong religion land. I usually stop playing about 1650-1700 because I’ve usually already accomplished my goals. Late game, the game should be pretty easy, except the 2-3 big powers you’ve neglected all game.
Yeah, pick a big nation, ally another big nation, and only fight battles you know you can win. If you and your ally are big enough, you shouldn’t get attacked.
It’s a complex game, so consider lowering the difficulty if you’re having trouble as a big nation.
exactly what i was going to ask. Uh, when was the last good strategy game? Looking at my steam library…
I have 2000+ hours in factory games, Factorio, Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere… not really strategy but those are solid thought based games released <10 years ago
Then… Age of Empires 4? Civ 6? Both pale in comparison to their predecessors. Cities Skylines 1… but then there’s the whole thing about 2. Star Trek Infinite was a flop and from what I read was just a horrible bland game. Serious, what has come out by big studios in the last 5 years in terms of strategy? I see more flashy graphics than strategy in these recent games.
I really like Victoria 3, it has its issues but I don’t mind them that much. I find much of the criticism is from ppl. who played Victoria 2.
In terms of other new games there is humankind which is similar to the Civ series. It has some great new concepts but some weirdness that I for unknown reasons can’t move past.
Games with “deep strategy” are largely not very good.
I still play a bunch of Stellaris and I go back to Age of Wonders 4 pretty frequently. Against the Storm is also addictive as hell. These 3 games have a sense of adventure that keeps them interesting.
I like Solium Infernum - which is pretty new - quite a bit, but it doesn’t have the staying power that those do. On top of that you have misfires like Humankind, Old World, Vicky 3, and the like. “Deep” is one thing, but fiddly and unnecessarily complicated is another… as is being under-developed in important areas like the endgame.
I think gamers are becoming less interested in a genre that has become saturated with dime-a-dozen mediocre cruft.
MOO2 is still one of, if not the, best 4x space games and part of that is how clear cut it is. The systems play together well and it isn’t a bloated mess of complicated mechanics for the sake of being complicated. The depth is very emergent and not artificial feeling which gives it an incredible timelessness
Yeah, there hasn't been a lot of innovation in the genre and what we have is often a buggy mess - that definitely doesn't help the adoption of 'deep strategy'. I love games like what you mentioned but even I get sick of them when I start running into AI or optimization issues, where games devolve into snowballing or boring tedium after the first few hours, when the UI is a frustrating mess that makes me hate every second spent on trying to make it work the way I need it to work.
Or maybe I'm just spoiled by the amount of polish and thought that goes into games like factorio or against the storm.
Well there aren’t that many strategy games, let alone rts, that are that engaging for single players in the long run. I’m equally not interested in playing generic skirmishes over and over again as I enjoy playing strategy games competitively online.
On the other hand playing any game competitively online is basically only possible if you have lots of time since you just can’t compete significantly otherwise.
I don’t see the methodology in here, so any influence I could guess is pure speculation. The mentioned lack of strategy games is a possible culprit. This would also prevent people from discovering an interest, as new eyes wouldn’t be on the genre. I’m sure a lot of people discovered they like some RPGs via Baldur’s Gate 3. One I might suggest exploring is that as gaming expanded in audience to different types of people, the new members would proportionately be less interested in deep strategy skewing the average interest as a whole. As a guess, a lot of people who have gotten into gaming via their phone are more interested in things that can be done while focusing on something else or something with a shorter run time than the typical strategy game.
I think those craving strategy were some of the earliest adopters of gaming, especially once those games became increasing popular. It’s no surprise then that their numbers would be diluted over time, especially once you start including mobile gamers (who I think are different enough to not really warrant being compared to other gamers). As someone who played some strategy games in the 90s, it was a wild time:
real-time games like Dune, Command & Conquer, Homeworld, Age of Empires, Myth
turn-based stuff like Ogre Battle, Fire Emblem, X-Com, Jagged Alliance
the ungodly amount of grid-based civil war and cold war games and the beginnings of what could be called grand strategy, such as Panzer General, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Star Wars Rebellion, Europe Universalis (2000 but not really a stretch to include imo)
4X games like Civilization, Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion
stuff that doesn’t fit in anywhere else like The Guild, Majesty, Carrier Command, Battlezone… (might be misremembering release dates here)
We are still getting a lot of good strategy games even in recent years, like The Last Spell, They Are Billions, Beyond All Reason, half the stuff SplattercatGaming covers…
I imagine that there is a lot of cross-over between strategy, city-builder, logistics and sim players especially if you single out Germany lol. All those genres are “shrinking” if you are only looking at them as a percentage of total gamers, but actually they slowly grow all the time.
For me, it’s not such much not being interested in strategy, but because strategy games always seem to end up with a solved meta. There’s the obviously best thing to do, and then everything else is hard mode if you can be bothered with that.
Add comment