"Splinter Cell Conviction," the new stealth action title from Ubisoft, will be a hit. It's currently boasting a Metacritic score of 86 and, once the NPD Group's monthly video game sales charts hit in a few weeks, "Conviction"'s numbers should make it one of April's top-selling games.Most critics agree that it's a good (verging on great) game. But the reason SCC will be greeted warmly on hundreds of thousands of consoles isn't only due to the game's new mechanics like Mark & Execute and Last Known Position. Sam Fisher, the black ops agent who's been the star of the Tom Clancy-created stealth series, is getting reinvented as he's getting older.That balancing act is something the players buying Fisher's game are having to figure out, too. The average age of the first-wave hardcore gamer -- the ones who've made successive generations of video game hardware and software in a multi-billion dollar business -- falls somewhere in the early to mid-30s now. And their lives are changing. What "Splinter Cell" does in an uncanny subtextual fashion is mirror those changes in both plot and game design.In the game's opening levels, Sam's motivation is to track down the men responsible for his daughter's death, a narrative that resonates because lots of the hardcore players are hitting the age when they're starting to plan families, if they don't already have kids. The loss of a child gets used as a story beat often in adventure fiction, but a big chunk of the game's audience is reaching the point in their own lives where that may hit home a little harder.Then, as "Conviction" goes on, Sam uncovers a conspiracy to assassinate the Commander-In-Chief. It's a been-there plot device, but one that echoes effectively in these days where Tea Party antics grab headlines and Facebook has pages where people pray for the President to die. Where it would've remained the province of make-believe in past years, the meme of political dissatisfaction turning into open revolt cuts a little deeper nowadays.It's not just plot elements that ping the thirtysomething audience, either. Those game mechanics mentioned above make "Conviction" less rigorous than its "Splinter Cell" forebears. Mark & Execute lets you tag multiple bad guys and dispatch them quickly with the press of a button, while Last Known Position generates a virtual decoy for enemies to shoot at, letting you skulk around them.These features have generated a bit of disdain from some who say they make "Conviction" a too-easy installment in what was once a notoriously hard series. But, aside from being clever and well-implemented, they're just what a time-crunched new parent needs to balance the challenge of the game. The mechanics give players an older, warier Sam Fisher who's finding his footing in a new gameworld, just like the older, warier person controlling him may be navigating new financial or familial circumstances.The common theme here, for Fisher and gamer, is that we have to change how we play as we get older. For most first-wave hardcore gamers, gone are the days of Mountain Dew-fueled all-night sessions. That Japanese RPG with more than 60 hours of playtime? Just not an option anymore, with a wife and/or kids. Yet, in defiance of all that, the faithful still want to squeeze some button-mashing into their lives. The tweaks in "Splinter Cell" create a way to scratch that itch without necessarily having to play the same thing over and over in frustration.Still, Sam Fisher's lethal brand of play isn't one you can share with the wife and kids. For that, we still have Nintendo's iconic Mario.The Wii's become a console that families gather around, due to content and controls that puts the uninitiated at ease. But rolling strikes in "Wii Sports" bowling doesn't necessarily prepare you for the challenging and sometimes annoying jumps that you need to do in the average "Mario" game. In recognition of that, Nintendo's designers started rolling out a feature that does the heavy lifting for players. Last year, "New Super Mario Brothers Wii" introduced the Super Guide, a patented mechanic that takes over when players are having a tough time.In NSMB Wii, if you failed a level eight times while playing in single-player mode, you'd get a floating green box that replaced Mario with a computer-controlled Luigi. This avatar then made the jumps and bashed the enemies that were giving you trouble. The run-throughs were actually embedded recordings of human developers playing the game and players could take back control at any time. The feature got compared to those moments when you'd hand a controller over to a more skilled sibling or friend who'd be better at making it through the tough parts.Using Super Guide didn't reveal shortcuts, secrets or any other rewards. With Super Guide, Nintendo figured out a way to give hardcore players the difficulty they expect (which also allows designers to push themselves in creating intricately complex levels) yet still give their legions of newly acquired casual gamers a helping hand. In the upcoming "Super Mario Galaxy 2," the feature gets presented as the Cosmic Guide. It works similarly, taking control and breezing through the difficult bits. The difference in SMG2 is that your ranking for a level automatically gets downgraded to a bronze star instead of the more desirable gold one.Nintendo's Guide options wind up being far more assistive than anything you'll find in "Splinter Cell Conviction," but they seem to come from that similar mindset of having to change how we play as we get older. The concerns may be different -- Nintendo trying to put out a welcome mat for newbies and Ubisoft creating a streamlined "Splinter Cell" that's still tough enough -- but both instances serve to placate an important demographic that might otherwise walk away from video games as a pursuit.04302010_mariogalaxy2.jpgI'm not saying these design decisions were concocted by marketing types who pored over charts of psychographic data. Rather, the emergence of the sped-up stealth in the new "Splinter Cell" and the Cosmic Guide autopilot in recent "Mario" games point to a telepathy between game designers and game players. Both groups still want to have their fun, but are more mindful of what it pulls them away from: sleep, work and family.Fashioning -- and choosing to buy -- a game with a certain amount of scalable forgiveness coded into it actually feels like a mark of maturity for the video game business. Those actions mean that you can finish said game without having to call in sick to work because you were up all night trying to rescue Princess Peach. If you still do that anyway, well, then, that's not very grown-up of you. Just don't blame the game, okay?
bullocksmany games always offered varying levels of difficulty. This is hardly anything new. Nor is it specific to a generation of people.From Doom 1, you had the option to play on easy (I'm too young to die) to extremely difficult (Nightmare)to the latest ball buster, God of War 3 which offers the following scheme for players:Spartan (Easy)God (Medium)Titan (Hard)Chaos (Very Hard)If you're skills are going soft, choose easy and run through the game at a pace. Probably complete it on one life and return to the wifey and kids without breaking a sweat.If you got some vacation time or a more forgiving spouse...make the run on God or Titan.If you're 18, unemployed and living under your mother's roof....by all means...spend aeons of hours trying to best the bosses on Chaos.So it has been, so it will continue to be.
