Subtle as a kick in the crotch

Now here's a question for the modern gamer: Does subtlety have a place?

The appeal of games, as I can see it, is to go into a world spawned from someone else's imagination and solve one or more crises in various forms, shoot some dudes and basically muck around. Thus gamers appear to have this willingness to go along with anything that can be handed to them.
So what happens when the gamer designer tries to challenge an audience's perceptions by throwing in subtly? What happens when our actions are being challenged and gamers need to step back and look at things in a different light?

One thing I have noticed is that games involving blowing so many dudes away are successful - as are games that involved going into an open world and just abusing the freedom an open-world offers. This offers a degree of freedom and pleasure that normal life can't offer. Thus, if any restrictions are going to placed on the player, they won't be taken lightly.
Thus it seems to me that if a player is going to placed in a position to think about their actions, it would be frowned upon. Likewise, challenges of perception are going to be missed and, in some cases, greeted with confusion (no doubt quickly followed by anger).



One of my favorite games ever is ICO on the PS2. A great puzzle based game which succeeds through its use of subtlety, ambiance, emotion, lightening effects and by showing what happens when one decides to experiment with such powerful hardware. And why not? When one wants to try something new, what’s there to stop them? Sadly however, ICO was a poor seller and, despite universal acclaim from the critics, it never reaped the numbers it deserved. It raises the question whether the strengths of ICO has any home in gaming today. Indeed, ICO may have militant fans (like myself) but it is still game one has to ‘get’ – a tall order when the action genre appears to rule the roost. It maker me wonder if some gamers are so passionate about their tastes, that they will go out of their way to condemn anything that does things differently.

Personally, I champion any game that utilizes subtly: They are contributing to the evolution of gaming through challenging perceptions and doing things that would be unthinkable. They are building universes that ultimately challenge the idea of building a world for people to mess around in. They are doing things that defy convention without any concern of making a profit.
After all, fortune favors the brave.