The Decline in the Quality of Bestsellers

[digitig]

Everything from books, films, computer games to news reporting and investigative journalism is being dumbed-down these days, quite deliberately, because the companies that sell/publish these "content products" (horrible word, I know...) have discovered that it is much easier to make bucketloads of profit from targeting the large pool of "not-too-bright-ordinary-people" out there, than it is to make profit from trying to target and please the much-harder-to-impress minority of 130 - 180 IQ people with 2 - 3 university degrees under their belt.

Riiight... and the publishers of the 19th century "penny dreadfuls" hadn't realised that? I think you need to take a more careful historical perspective.

[Allan Paas]

I concur with Dryriver. It actually is like that, there are some smart publishers who do care about quality but they are smaller then the big ones and less prominent, plus they don't try to scam people with their faulty advertisements and whatnot.

For example I visit GameSpot every day, to keep up with gaming world. The ratings for some particular games there are... way too high. From there I also found a reference to an article about the harsh reality of these BIG game publishers, it was a good read. From there I got more proof that big companies (some are okay but the most prominent ones...) treat consumers as total idiots, all they care about is money. Unfortunately I don't remember the address to that article.
I occasionally visit IMDB, mostly to get some more information on a movie I intend to watch and again some are far too highly rated, for example a 7 if instead there is no way it could have gone past 5. Plus I've read some reviews there, so many are clearly paid for.
Then there is a book-review site I occasionally visited, even ordered a book based on the review and scoring there, turned out to be a very bad idea. I have yet to get rid of the book, will probably drop it off at a library. (Luckily there is another site which is very good and so far objective.)

People don't become smarter and more educated by reading low-quality products that are constantly shoveled in their face.

Pointless and brainless greed... wish it would end already.

[Lemex]

There are also cases of 'dumbing down' which I don't like. Even with things that are not actually that bad. Take Bioshock for example. It's a very good game, and the story is excellent, while also being a philosophical discussion. It's games like this that we need to prove that games are not just stupid time-sinks, but are a new and interesting artistic medium; but even this is a dumbed down version of System Shock 2.

[Dryriver]

There are also cases of 'dumbing down' which I don't like. Even with things that are not actually that bad. Take Bioshock for example. It's a very good game, and the story is excellent, while also being a philosophical discussion. It's games like this that we need to prove that games are not just stupid time-sinks, but are a new and interesting artistic medium; but even this is a dumbed down version of System Shock 2.

Here's, pretty much, what happened with computer games in the last 10 years:

1) As game graphics improved, the production cost of games increased to XX million dollars per major title.

2) As the production cost increased, publishers wanted to "take less financial risks". In particular, "new game ideas" were seen as "risky investments".

3) So publishers decided to make XX number of sequels of games that were successful in the past. To make and publish the same game all over basically, and re-use the existing codebase, just with some new 3D levels/environments and enemies thrown in.

4) As if this wasn't bad enough, someone came up with the disasterous idea that the "big profit" in games was to be made from "casual gamers" from now on. Casual gamers, per definition, do not like games that require any in-depth understanding or mastery of complex game mechanics, complex controls, puzzles et cetera that need to be solved. The games have to be simple to play (or "seriously dumbed-down"), with lots of funky graphical effects & action. Games should also be short (4 - 8 hours of gameplay max), as "Casual Gamers" game only an hour or two after work, or on weekends anyway.

5) As if all that wasn't bad enough, game publishers somehow convinced themselves that all PC gamers do is "pirate games off the internet for free", so game development now shifted focus to Game Consoles. This made for even simpler/more dumbed-down games, because Consoles have only a very simple game controller (no mouse & keyboard), and because Consoles gamers are much less technically-minded than PC users.

6) Result? Computer gaming has pretty much gone down the Dumb-Drain, with PC gaming in particular suffering horribly from releases that are almost all poorly ported Console-Game ports.

7) From a business standpoint, dumbing-down virtually all computer games that are made has been terrifically profitable. The industry makes such fat profits from dumbed-down "Casual Games" that it doesn't even care about the quality of individual games it publishes anymore.

8) If you are an old gamer with experience of the old 8bit/16bit days, and early PC Gaming (e.g. 1990s), you have witnessed first-hand how the big game publishers have ripped the soul out of complex, intelligent gaming and are producing only dumbed-down sequels of themselves dumbed-down sequels any more.

[Lemex]

All except for Valve. I love those guys.

[AmsterdamAssassin]

That may all be true for the production costs of games, but the production costs of books haven't risen all that much in comparison to previous decades. In fact, I can imagine they have gone down, especially since the coming of the e-book and the apparent ignorance by the masses of the production values of books.

[Lasers123]

I am one of the many that read a book due to a gripping plot. A plot makes a book and furthermore, writers have to remember that not everyone is as skilled in literature, as themselves, and that people just want to be entertained. Reading a book can be like watching a film - it needs to be the right length with a good plot. The bestseller these days are rightly there due to a strong plot and with a right overall balance; of description, speech, chapters etc.
People say books are boring. Wrong, only some are - those that lack mystery or drama - characteristics to take us away from everyday life. The plot is the main orchestra of that.

In my opinion, the best sellers in these times deserve their titles as they fulfil the criteria readers look for - to entertain. Most readers dont care about the wonderful use of literature, especially since they'll need a dictionary to navigate through every few lines.

[Metus]

All except for Valve. I love those guys.

And FROM software. FROM software has released Demon's Souls and Dark Souls as of late- both games take many hours to even survive in, and have oodles (yes, oodles) of hidden secrets, even locations that the average player will never see. The online modes, both co-op and competitive, also blend seemlessly to single player, and are very fun and innovative.

There's so much hidden content in Dark Souls that the game was at first estimated at about 1/2 the size of Skyrim. Now, vets of the game know it to be bigger than Skyrim, with more places, more unique (less recycled) things, more enemies, more gear, etc. Dark Souls is also brutally difficult and deep. The action based gameplay is better than Cod's, the rpg aspects of Dark Souls are far better than Skyrim's. The graphics are even pretty amazing for a console game- it's releasing on the pc in August, though. Dark Souls may be my favorite game EVAR.

[Kaymindless]

5) As if all that wasn't bad enough, game publishers somehow convinced themselves that all PC gamers do is "pirate games off the internet for free", so game development now shifted focus to Game Consoles. This made for even simpler/more dumbed-down games, because Consoles have only a very simple game controller (no mouse & keyboard), and because Consoles gamers are much less technically-minded than PC users.

Hey! Offense taking. I like playing on a console and many hard core gamers do because A) I don't have to replace parts of my console every six months to play the darn things. And yet I still don't like to dumbed down content coming out.

I will accept that a keyboard and mouse always broke me. But then again, that just may be because most of the ones I've tried have had horrible, horrible set up.

8) If you are an old gamer with experience of the old 8bit/16bit days, and early PC Gaming (e.g. 1990s), you have witnessed first-hand how the big game publishers have ripped the soul out of complex, intelligent gaming and are producing only dumbed-down sequels of themselves dumbed-down sequels any more.

... I only remember Lemmings from that time period.

[Lemex]

Screw it! Who remembers titles like Dark Seed and I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream? God I am a child of the 90s.

[James Berkley]

Well we all know it’s the story that is the important part. If the story appeals to people and they want to read it, then the quality of writing is not that important to them. There is also the issue of perspective hear, what is a great story to me, might just be a horrible one to you.

Also they get paid in the end so I really can’t find what to criticize about best sellers.

(Sort of amazed by the idea someone suggested in hear of playing more then two hours of video games after work)