14 DAY TRIAL // Elite: Dangerous is a huge video game, a space sim that allows gamers to start off as a lowly pilot with a small ship and end up as a master pirate with enough firepower to take out fleets or as a master of business who can buy up the forces needed to stay safe, with a huge universe to explore in the meantime and plenty of impressive sights to experience.
But many of those playing the video game from Frontier Development have complained that it does not deliver enough info about its core mechanics and basically asks gamers to figure systems out on their own or by resorting to outside sources.
Most commenters are annoyed by this relative paucity of details, while a minority maintains that it’s a good thing for the game that the community has to explore the main features on its own and that gamers are sharing details in order to get a better understanding of the game.
Handholding and deep dives
As video games become bigger in the entertainment world, there’s a pressure to make them accessible so that even wider audiences can become interested, because more players tends to mean more revenue for the development teams and the publishers associated with each title.
After all, books or movies or TV series or comics to not ask those who want to engage to learn mechanics, some of which might be hard to understand and could affect long-term enjoyment.
There are other entertainment products that have a set of internal rules which sometime can be unclear, but video games are unique because they ask players to actively work to improve their performance, and that tends to increase the level of fun.
Elite: Dangerous is a good example, with players initially helpless and sometimes unable to even land their ships at stations right.
As they evolve, pick up skills, and improve the hardware they use, their enjoyment also increases as the game is mastered and its world is explored.
The empowerment that comes from the learning process can be very interesting and it’s the reason why some players are drawn to complex titles that often deliver little in the way of explanations.
Niche appeal and the mass market
At the same time, Elite is unlikely to ever reach the level of popularity of something like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which makes sure that players quickly understand its mechanics and basically uses the entire single-player campaign as a tutorial, with the real action reserved for competitive multiplayer.
Of course, there are games that define their audience early on and do not aim to get more, satisfied to offer something interesting for those who already love a genre.
But that approach can mean that some gamers never get to try a space sim because they have no reference point and lack the help they might need to simply download one and play it.
Developers who want to keep their games pure and ask gamers to learn by playing should continue to do so, but they need to also find a way of making sure that complete beginners can see what their experience has to offer and find the motivation to spend time and energy to discover the mechanics so that they can later enjoy them.
I want more players to try out Elite and maybe become long-term fans, but I cannot in good faith recommend the game to friends who only have a few hours to get their entertainment fix during one day and might experience more frustration than fun when it comes to this title.