I could write a thesis on this, but you know, i’m lazy and time etc. What i can tell you is it is a modern thing, and by modern i mean after the 1990’s - early 2000’s. In particular it is related to the rise in prominence of mainstream console gaming; the PS one and two era (roughly) being the earliest signs in an industry wide change. Games started simple (Pong my personal earliest game experience) drifted to the complex and are now mostly moving back to simple, for a whole variety of reasons.
It is not 100% true all of the time, obviously, but a noticeable trend that has increased over the years to the point where, for example, i rarely have interest in a AAA PC game these days, as it will have been designed for console first and ported to PC after, and that in itself brings a lot of compromises to a games design, most of them i find impossible to look past in terms of what i’m looking for in my game ‘fun’.
‘Dumbing down’ more specifically includes streamlining, which is often a reduction in complexity over a wide range of possible things that make up a game, from in-game variables (like stats in a crpg) to the deeper interactions from game choices (e.g. where Moo3 was overly complex to the destruction of itself once it’s principle inventor was dropped vs SotS with a it’s streamlined approach perhaps (there are probably better examples!) - as way of better depicting the issue?), to on-rails design required due to the expense of AAA visuals. Or I-pad/mobile gaming vs PC gaming? A ‘reduction’ in complexity is the general theme behind ‘Dumbing down’. It is not always a bad thing, but when endemic to the levels of becoming the norm, the medium suffers in it’s ability to reach out and grasp it’s audience in that deeper level that can elevate it from being just a ‘hobby’ and of no real importance beyond killing a few hours of our time. That kind of stuff.
It is often (these days) a decision of economics, games with AAA graphics are horrendously expensive to make, very risky to fund, and by making games more simple (dumbed down) it gives you more profit margins vs the main meat of the dev budget, graphics and marketing. So it is the Accountants fault ;)
On the wider scale it is not just a game issue, but a societal issue, in that we can see ‘dumbing down’ in many aspects of life, mostly related to education and our widening inability to improve our minds and ourselves, or atleast the perception from the creators/funders being that, which results in ‘dumb’ entertainment for the masses. In that respect it is the fault of the Elite vs the ‘proles’. That fact we lap it up in ever increasing quantities may prove they are right in their judgement of the rest of us? But being all about the lowest common denominator hurts us all, drags us all down, which we should fight to liberate ourselves against perhaps?
I will stop there. It’s a big subject full of many specific things, many examples to be given, and many vague ‘instinctive’ interpretations. Many better educated and good writers have written great stuff in greater details than i ever could on much of this, Critical Distance often has the links for those. It’s a perspective that i suppose naturally will mostly be coming from the older gamers like myself, as it also has that ‘broad brush of history’ aspect, something that is hard to grasp fully unless you have lived it (i.e. simply playing old games out of their time will mostly just convince a new gamer that old games suck) through it’s natural time span. But it is a thing for sure, and has effects in the industry on many levels.
