The annoying side of liking Nintendo games

[lazu]

"Oh, you like Nintendo games? But aren't they for kids?"

"Alright, but they aren't really proper game games, you know?"

"But aren't games like Mario etc boring (because they're for kids)?"

"Why haven't you grown up and moved on yet?"

For the hundredth time, no, it's not just for kids.

For the thousandth time, yes, they are actual games with a lot of good design and are fun to play. 

I'm sure this applies to a lot of other game genres and series as well. It's so annoying when people stereotype certain games as "just for kids."

In the past this applied to all games, but there's so many "adult" games like, I don't know, LA Noir or Call of Duty that it's only stuff like Mario that gets this treatment. 

What do you think? (This has probably been discussed before somewhere on here, but I got an irl comment about it today, so...)

[Fabulously Olivier]

I don't actually see this a whole lot. Perhaps it's just that I tend to avoid the kind of mouthbreathing dude bros who play Call of Duty and Madden, but those I know generally tend to favor Nintendo alongside Sony. 

 

Nintendo tends to consistently make some of my favorite games, and I haven't really grown out of them, and have no desire to. Except for Pokemon. I haven't been able to enjoy Pokemon ever since Gen 4. I think it's that my natural RPG min-maxing tendencies tend to be highly aggravated by Pokemon's terrible leveling mechanics (EVs and IVs) and the lacking story/characters don't appeal to my love of story RPGs.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Etheus

[Dragoncat]

Ugh yes this is so annoying! Also Nintendo is throwing some innuendos in their games nowadays and I think that's great. Case in point:

Reyn is totally staring at Sharla's rack and going "omg BOOBS".

CoD and GTA have no storylines. Sure there's things like The Witcher and God of War, but many "adult" games don't tell you a story.

[Tryhard]

I barely see this. In fact, I see that sentiments that games like Call of Duty (commonly a stand in to describe shooters) and sports games are derivative and always bad far more often. As has already been expressed.

But that may be because I am not as big a fan of Nintendo as most on here.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Tryhard

[lazu]

18 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I don't actually see this a whole lot. Perhaps it's just that I tend to avoid the kind of mouthbreathing dude bros who play Call of Duty and Madden, but those I know generally tend to favor Nintendo alongside Sony. 

I try to avoid them too, but unfortunately, it's my whole class at high school.

To be fair, I have heard that Microsoft and their XBox do not have good opinions among those who play games.

@Dragoncat: Yep, there was that whole "Press A to Pound" thing in Pokemon too. Especially since the result was "Mmm, you made delicious white sauce!" It was so unsubtle, it was pretty hilarious.

Hm, I never actually noticed that before, probably because I don't play those games very often since I don't have a PS.... but yeah, that's true, actually.

@Tryhard: It probably depends on who you talk to, haha. Nintendo fans definitely do like to hate on Sony/Microsoft players more than they admit.

Edited December 17, 2018 by snowyglacier

[Dragoncat]

2 minutes ago, snowyglacier said:

Yep, there was that whole "Press A to Pound" thing in Pokemon too. Especially since the result was "Mmm, you made delicious white sauce!" It was so unsubtle, it was pretty hilarious.

I saw this once and laughed all day.

God of War and Witcher are supposed to have really indepth stories yeah.

[Zanarkin]

I used to see this a lot from most people, but nowadays it just comes from people who don't play any video games whatsoever but still for some reason care that other people do. Most people I know are fine with it either because they play a wide variety of games. I don't really have many friends [if any] who consider graphics and mature content as the end-all-be-all for video-games that adults can and should play. The friends and people I know who don't play video games tend to be quiet on the subject. The only one who really says anything (though not regularly) to me is my best friend, but that's because he considers video games a huge waste of time and that happens to be how I spend most of my free time. However I always answer with the fact that how one spends time is a matter of personal preference and that I don't particularly care to be productive [which he cares about a lot]. 

Also my one of my brothers thinks Nintendo games are garbage because they don't have super good graphics and aren't about shooting or whatever garbage he likes. But my brother is an idiot and I rarely bother taking his points seriously on pretty much anything any way.

TL;DR: most people I know are fine with all types of video games. The people who have negative opinions about them I have either agreed to disagree with them, or I just don't care about the points they raise.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

23 minutes ago, snowyglacier said:

I'm sure this applies to a lot of other game genres and series as well. It's so annoying when people stereotype certain games as "just for kids."

In the past this applied to all games, but there's so many "adult" games like, I don't know, LA Noir or Call of Duty that it's only stuff like Mario that gets this treatment. 

What do you think?

it mostly depends on the content of the videogame. that's why we have age ratings for games nowdays.

if it has blood, violence, etc, then usually it's a game for an adult audience.

anything else that's "family friendly" is considered for kids.

[Dayni]

25 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

CoD and GTA have no storylines.

I feel like you're wrong there.

I wouldn't say CoD's was anything special or much beyond dressing (as someone who only played 4 and MW2, don't ask me about the others), but GTA has had its moments. I'd have to play 5 to talk about it in better detail, but San Andreas in particular would be pretty good actually and while I wouldn't say that the others were all that great on it (4 tried but it didn't quite click and 3/Vice City are admittedly minimal) I wouldn't say there's no story progression at all.

I'm not saying that they're classics of their time for storytelling (definitely not in GTA4's case), but to say there's nothing is imo incorrect. And the thing about games focusing on their gameplay over their storyline is something shared across the industry: they're focusing on the core thing people are going to be dealing with.

[Ertrick36]

I'm lucky enough that most people I know either are Nintendo fans themselves or don't look down on others just for their tastes.  I have run into people on the internet that legitimately believe you're not mature if you prefer Nintendo games to stuff like CoD.  I figure it isn't my fault they have shit taste in games.  I'd rather just be jovial by playing a game like Mario Odyssey than rip out my ears from hearing 8 year-olds screeching out racial slurs in an online shooter and getting my ass sniped for the eighteenth time in a row by a spawn-camper.  Also, the innuendos that they put in these games are all more clever and entertaining than every single one of CoD's derivative stories.

I may have occasionally heard it from news pieces, politicians, and other such lovely sources, but these are the same people who likely think that Fortnite is the same as Pokemon Go and that Gangnam Style is still popular, so who the hell cares what these washed out old bastards think?

3 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

CoD and GTA have no storylines. Sure there's things like The Witcher and God of War, but many "adult" games don't tell you a story.

Have you ever played a GTA beyond the third game and GTA Online?

Of course whether you like the stories is subjective, but there's always a substantial story in them, particularly from San Andreas onward.  And I'd have to say in terms of good "mature" stories, the Fallout games developed by Interplay and Obsidian as well as the original Mass Effect trilogy could qualify as such.  Also Metal Gear, for all its convoluted plot points and bizarre moments, was good when Kojima was still making them.

1 minute ago, Fenreir said:

it mostly depends on the content of the videogame. that's why we have age ratings for games nowdays.

if it has blood, violence, etc, then usually it's a game for an adult audience.

anything else that's "family friendly" is considered for kids.

Well, but this is more about how people judge one's level of maturity based on their taste, which is honestly a pretty immature and shallow thing to do.

And "Target audience" doesn't mean "exclusively for these people".  In fact, you'll find that "family friendly" media and stuff rated PG are typically the biggest hits in the cinemas.  Why?  It's not because there's more children in the world than there are adults, or that more children are into media than adults; it's because both minors and adults can go to see them freely.  "Family friendly" means everyone can enjoy it.  And conversely, not every adult is going to enjoy "mature" games.

[Dragoncat]

@Dayni @Ertrick36

I legit thought CoD and GTA were like that because yeah, I didn't play them except for Black Ops on the wii, and even then I just did multiplayer. My mistake. Metal Gear and Resident Evil tell stories, yeah. My point wasn't that anything M rated doesn't tell a story, but that things the dude bros play are just blood and guts and naked women most of the time.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Dragoncat

[Rapier]

For me, it's the opposite. I'm not normally into Nintendo games (I do rather like Mario, Smash, Kirby and Pokémon), but I usually don't care about mainstream Nintendo titles. They're fun but dispensable imo. I'm forced to have Nintendo consoles because of non-mainstream Nintendo titles like Gunvolt, Ace Attorney, Xenoblade Chronicles, Fire Emblem and Octopath Traveler (and before that, Bravely Default/Second).

So, I'm way more inclined to agree with people who prefer mainstream Sony exclusive games than with people who prefer mainstream Nintendo games. I wish these weren't titles locked to Nintendo consoles (or worse yet, franchises, as in Fire Emblem's case).

 

[Ertrick36]

2 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

My point wasn't that anything M rated doesn't tell a story, but that things the dude bros play are just blood and guts and naked women most of the time.

Not pressing any particular points here, but that's legit what I thought GTA IV was when I was a kid because the only thing my classmates talked about with that game is how you could hire prostitutes and kill them to get back all your money from hiring them.  I've played that game (mostly because a friend got it for me, I did not like what I heard of it), and that's definitely not the funnest or most interesting thing about that game, even as someone who thinks the writing quality was at one of its weaker points in the series (not counting GTA 3 or any of the games before).

Though I do like games that revel in the fact that it's all they are.  Like Doom - it knows what it's all about, and it just want to have some fun with it.  Or the older Duke Nukem games that are meant to just be stupid and outlandish.  But I strongly dislike Call of Duty Ghosts and how it was pretending to be anything other than a shallow, derivative shooter that literally stole its scenes from previous Call of Duty games.  Or something like Postal 2 which was so pretentious with its irony and political parody that it became obnoxious (it's the type of game that devs had to constantly justify, and they never made any smart retorts to criticisms).

That all being said, I absolutely think that higher ratings does not indicate higher writing quality and that plenty of the more popular M-rated games are lacking in substance.  I laughed and almost cried playing a silly, childish game like Undertale, but playing through the story of Call of Duty Ghosts left me with an emotional void that was as empty as a ghost.

[DarthR0xas]

Never really got much of this. It's probably because my friends are either Nintendo nerds or not interested in video games at all, but no one really cares what you play (although my other nerds are pressuring me because I haven't gotten Ultimate yet). 

5 minutes ago, Rapier said:

I'm forced to have Nintendo consoles because of non-mainstream Nintendo titles like Gunvolt, Ace Attorney, Xenoblade Chronicles, Fire Emblem and Octopath Traveler (and before that, Bravely Default/Second).

You can get Gunvolt on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/388800/Azure_Striker_Gunvolt/) and you can get most of the Ace Attorney games on IOS/Android. Square Enix falls under the third party, Xenoblade is first party, FE is second party. While Square Enix limiting Octopath is kinda scummy, the same desires can be extended to the other two main companies. I wish that I could play any God of War game on a Nintendo console, or an Uncharted game, or a Persona game that isn't a spin-off of sorts (The two Q games are a weird case.) The same could be said for Xbox. To side with anyone in the matter of exclusives and locked titles is less a matter of one company being particularly bad on the issue, and more with the preference of franchise you would prefer to be elsewhere.

31 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

but that things the dude bros play are just blood and guts and naked women most of the time. Except that one of the major stereotypes of the Dude Bro is the fact that they play a ton of sport and racing games. There might be a bit of blood in them, I haven't played Madden in a while so I'll assume that, but none of the other things occur in them. Half of the time would be a more appropriate way to put it.

And what's wrong with liking games like those? What's the issue with these people playing games and enjoying them. If they have fun by shooting people in COD to unwind, more power to them. If we demonize them for liking a game just based on the general label of it that we have assigned, then we're no better than the people that claim all Nintendo games are for kids (just to use the example that this thread is about, again I really have yet to see this in action.)

[Dragoncat]

13 minutes ago, DarthR0xas said:

 

And what's wrong with liking games like those? What's the issue with these people playing games and enjoying them. If they have fun by shooting people in COD to unwind, more power to them. If we demonize them for liking a game just based on the general label of it that we have assigned, then we're no better than the people that claim all Nintendo games are for kids (just to use the example that this thread is about, again I really have yet to see this in action.)

No issue except when they do what the OP says.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I'm a guy who likes Nintendo games more than the dudebro games but let's be entirely honest we're the worse group of people between the two of them. More poorly adjusted on average at the very least.

[Tryhard]

2 hours ago, snowyglacier said:

@Tryhard: It probably depends on who you talk to, haha. Nintendo fans definitely do like to hate on Sony/Microsoft players more than they admit.

Well, no doubt you'd be running into people that say Nintendo's games are for children if you run into places where Sony, Xbox or PC fanboys live because it's the easy thing to say to rile people up. But I can't help but think that the only people that would genuinely think that are older people who don't play video games, where they equate Nintendo = Gaming and also that Gaming = for kids if at all, and are ignorant of the fact that most people play video games.

But to be fair, it's no secret that Nintendo are more kid-friendly oriented in their marketing than Sony and Microsoft generally. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and does not mean that there are no adult themed games on Nintendo consoles like Bayonetta, Madworld, Conker's Bad Fur Day and probably a lot more I'm unaware of.

1 hour ago, Ertrick36 said:

That all being said, I absolutely think that higher ratings does not indicate higher writing quality and that plenty of the more popular M-rated games are lacking in substance.  I laughed and almost cried playing a silly, childish game like Undertale, but playing through the story of Call of Duty Ghosts left me with an emotional void that was as empty as a ghost.

True, but playing the universally panned worst in the series and comparing a franchise that struggles for spark and then judging it against one indie game isn't exactly fair. It's the only Call of Duty that I would call actively bad.

Hell, I'd hate some long-running franchises including Fire Emblem if I judged it by my least favourite in the series.

55 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm a guy who likes Nintendo games more than the dudebro games but let's be entirely honest we're the worse group of people between the two of them. More poorly adjusted on average at the very least.

that's not going to go over well

Edited December 18, 2018 by Tryhard

[Eltosian Kadath]

I haven't seen this opinion around very much, but when you said you were in high school it made more sense that this might come up. I will now include a quote from C S Lewis here due to the relevancy to the discussion at hand :

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - C S Lewis

I think that you hear these things in high school because you are among adolescence who are concerned about how grown up they appear, and they want to validate their feelings, or (if benevolent) are concerned for your image if you do not join in this avoidance of things that seem childish. I hope you are not offended by the implication that you and your friends are not adults, but I think you will find that this opinion will tapper off as you enter college and the working world.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Eltosian Kadath
fixed typo

[Ertrick36]

55 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

True, but playing the universally panned worst in the series and then comparing a franchise that struggles for spark and then judging it against one indie game isn't exactly fair. It's the only Call of Duty that I would call actively bad.

That wasn't necessarily a case of comparing franchises.  I was mostly just talking about one M-rated game compared to a relatively family-friendly game.

Though Call of Duty's stories have never struck me as particularly impressive.  Merely serviceable.  Any moments I remember were due to the novelty, not because they were well written.

 

Also, @Eltosian Kadath put it fairly well.  Probably why I don't see it much in my surroundings; my company mostly consists of adults who act their age.  So they aren't concerned much about how "adult" they are.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Ertrick36

[Hawkwing]

Eh, I've never personally heard anyone call Nintendo games "kiddie". I've heard people say that they should get more creative with the stories of their franchises at times (such as Mario and Zelda), but that's more because of how generic and broad they can be rather than it being a complaint being "family-friendly". Besides, Nintendo is no stranger to having darker stories and elements in their games. Indeed,  how many times have people stated that some moments in Nintendo games scared the crap out of them as a kid, or even still as an adult? It's just that they've never made any M-rated game themselves (they've published a few, like Eternal Darkness and Bayonetta 2, but even then that's more of an exception than the norm).

Besides, if I enjoy a game, it will be on its own merits. I can enjoy Star Wars: Republic Commando and KOTOR 2 for being strong "War is Hell" games, just as I can enjoy Super Mario for being an excellent platformers. Maturity or lack thereof doesn't automatically make a game good or bad; It's how those elements are used that determines their final quality.

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - C S Lewis

An excellent quote that really should be shared more.

[Vince777]

Teen problems.

Nobody cares that as a grown adult, likely twice the age of many people here, I still play Pokémon and other such vgame series.

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Vince777

[Dandy Druid]

I thought it was the other way around? I thought most people written off Call of Duty as a game for little boys.

[indigoasis]

I haven't heard of many kids playing Wii Fit, but I may be wrong.

I don't hear that criticism often, if at all. I've overheard other kids say it a couple times on the school bus growing up, but those were probably the same kids playing CoD at 10 years old and whatnot.

Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess have some spooky stuff. TP's intro scene for the Blizzeta boss fight scared me to high hell as a kid. I also had my Wii in the basement, so that didn't help at all. Also, EarthBound's final boss is literal nightmare fuel, so these people saying Nintendo games are for kids need to play more Nintendo games.

You also can't ignore how influential Nintendo and it's games have been as a whole, even the games that are "just for kids." Wasn't it Nintendo that saved the video game industry or something like that?

[Dragoncat]

36 minutes ago, Dandy Druid said:

I thought it was the other way around? I thought most people written off Call of Duty as a game for little boys.

Because CoD is full of racist 12 year olds who call everyone gay.

 

22 minutes ago, indigoceans said:

Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess have some spooky stuff. TP's intro scene for the Blizzeta boss fight scared me to high hell as a kid. I also had my Wii in the basement, so that didn't help at all.

OoT Redeads scare the shit out of me, and I played it after TP! I HATE going into the Royal Family's Tomb...

[Johann]

Only once have I ever heard someone say "aren't those games for kids?" and it was a 9 year old kid. Realizing he's surrounded by adults of all ages and backgrounds, one of whom just shouted "HELL YEAH JUST CAUGHT A DRATINI, BITCHES", he conceded immediately