I think this phenomenon is somewhat blown out of proportion by the forum-going public, as it's something we've actually been hearing about for years - decades - in gaming, both console and PC. Only now, with the internet being such a prevalent and fast means of mass communication and it becoming a cultural phenomenon, there's a bit of a lemming effect surrounding memes. To explain...
Go back to the 80's/90's in gaming. Games were outright unforgiving. Many RPGs operated on save point systems which could leave you running veritable gauntlets to get from save spot to save spot, and anyone who used to play NES era platformers (PC platformers included) would remember how utterly torturous they were to get through. A tough boss in most games these days is one that takes you two tries or a half hour of leveling up to beat A tough boss in the old days was one where you went into the fight, lost, and expected it to be one of those story events where your party was supposed to die because it just seemed so insurmountable - but you quickly realized, yes, you're actually supposed to beat that boss. Games were just harder back then on average.
On average, games a while back were more complex and more unforgiving than games today. The thing is, it wasn't just PC games, it was console games too. With each successive generation, we've seen a slow slide to easier games that tend to be less complex on both PCs and consoles. People never really used to complain about it much, as I think they were just thankful to get away from the unforgiving games of the 80's. But from the early 80's to the early 2000's, I had never once heard someone comment about "consolization" or games becoming simpler. Baldur's Gate all but held your hand compared to, say, Shadows of Yserbius about six years before, or Eye of the Beholder or other such similar genre games. But here we have people saying "Oh, look at Baldur's Gate compared to Dragon Age II - CONSOLIZATION!" - in fact referencing a phenomenon that Baldur's Gate itself was a perfect example of, being so much less difficult than its fore bearers. So why this sudden wave of complaining?
As hinted above, the internet and how we communicate, and the incredible increase in dynamism and virulence of memes is probably more the root than an actual expansion of the simplifying - "consolizing" - phenomenon. If Baldur's Gate was a much easier/more simple game than Eye of the Beholder, where would you complain about it in the mid 90's? Nowhere of consequence - the messages boards/blogs/facebooks/etc didn't exist with even the tiniest fraction of their audiences these days. In the late 2000's, someone who fondly remember's Baldur's Gate being reasonably tough/complex is a few clicks away from an internationally connected forum/blog/twitter/facebook/whatever to start complaining about it - and rallying people to the cause. A term like "consolization" is coined and, probably beyond any actual escalation of a long-term process "consolization" represents which classically hasn't been limited to consoles at all, it becomes a focal point for generating fervour, not unlike the terms politicians drop during their campaigns to get people who have a latent feeling of X to jump up and down screaming X from the rafters. It's not necessarily that "consolization" is that much more real a force in today's gaming that makes the term such a big thing with so many people backing it - it's that an old phenomenon now has a new forum in which to be discussed. And here we are in the internet age where people who thought Saddam was an active member of al-Qaeda are given free reign to rally around this "consolization" phenomenon. Simply put, it's not entirely that this simplification/making easier phenomenon is worse than it was before, it's as much that people are so able to talk about it in this day and age. The long term phenomenon of simplification/making easier/"dumbing down," which was prevalent in the 90's that many of you remember as some sort of bastion of complexity and depth, is just now finding a medium for people to complain about it in. Dragon Age II was no Baldur's Gate and made for a dumbed down audience, is more accessible? Baldur's Gate became popular in part because it was an actual good game that was "dumbed down" from older RPGs enough to let more people get into it.
This is NOT to deny the fact that there have been changes in the gaming industry, but I think to dismiss it as "Oh, publishers just want to make dumb games to cash in on their dumb audience! And us smart gamers are SUFFERING!" is a gross oversimplification. Rather, the gaming industry is bigger and is actually larger than the 1st/2nd edition THAC0 loving D&D nerds that it started with. It's a more mature industry and recognizes that it has now tapped into a market that was always present, but it has only recently been interested in video games. The fact is though, that new massive audience isn't going to go gaga over games like the old Ninja Gaidens with their incredibly unforgiving difficulty, or Eye of the Beholder with its brain-bending stop-your-progress puzzles. The gaming industry which in the past could make things like that the average knows that ease of access is a goal and an improvement for a more general audience. A general audience which the old audience (let's call them THAC0 lovers - if you get it, you'll get it, if not, well...) is only a small part of. But this is a symptom of the maturing of the gaming industry, not just some simplified cash-grab to appeal to a "dumber audience." More accessible games - and that's not a dig - will make more people happy, and more people like gaming than in the past.
But with a growing audience, the production end of the gaming audience has grown too. People mention Dragon Age II being a dumbed down crapshoot, but do they mention Mass Effect I and II? In my eyes, Mass Effect I and II (II in particular) are potentially Bioware's best games to date, and bring as much to the table as any game. Where's our Simant, you say? Ever play Viva Pinata? Honestly, I find they fill a similar role, and the difficulty and complexity of a game like Viva Pinata pairs well against a game like Simant. Why are there no more punishing puzzle games like Lolo? Well, I count Braid as one of the best puzzle games ever released, and it's from this gen. The thing is where in the 80's and 90's Bioware only made Baldur's Gate, now they make a game like Mass Effect which hearkens back to their THAT0 loving roots and a game like Dragon Age II which aims a bit more at the Call of Duty crowd. The gaming industry has room for both, and both are present. If you're scanning the headlines looking for games that could have fit in in the 80's and 90's, you're usually looking in the wrong places - because games that appeal to the THAC0 lovers are still out there.
And yes, some developers have slipped - but new developers have sprung up. The number of new games coming out is *tremendous*, far more than we say in the 80's and 90's. Also, their variety is much greater - games meant to cater to the COD generation, ones meant to cater to the Baldur's Gate generation, and even ones made to cater to those of us who remember being eaten by a grue - us old THAC0 lovers.
As for Civ V? I think it's reception is partially the result of that meme run rampant. Civ V is more simple than Civ IV in some ways, but I think it also ups the complexity of the game in other ways - particularly combat. Pity that is currently hampered by the AI, but in multiplayer at the moment, there is *so* much more thought required to pull out a military win than in Civ IV. And what's more, Civ IV upon release was very much a watered down SMAC - but with no rampant meme of "consolization" for people to rally behind, people didn't really gather the forces to say "hey, why are we playing this consolized garbage - what's up Firaxis?" like they are now. But even as it stands, a good number did...
Ok, that's more than enough on this subject. Not proofread, will be a bit disjointed, but that's my blog/post on the subject.
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