Gamers want to worry less and less about strategy in video games

According to a new study, created by Quantic Foundrytoday’s gamers are always less interested to video games that include a deep level of strategy.

The data was collected over nine years via a tool called the “Gamer Motivation Profile” that tracks how interesting various aspects of video games are to gamers. The tool’s categories are destruction, excitement, competition, community, challenge, strategy, completion, power, fantasy, story, sense of discovery, and design.

Quantic Foundry analyzed the most popular items among players over the years and found that all categories remained relatively constant except one: strategy.

Through 1.7 million surveys, Quantic Foundry found that two-thirds of strategy enthusiasts worldwide (except in China, where gamers “have a very different profile”) have lost interest in this element of video games. “67% of today’s gamers care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing than the average gamer in June 2015,” the report reads.

“When we analyzed the long-term trends of the 12 motivations, we found that many motivations were stable or had undergone slight deviations over the past nine years” Quantic Foundry said. “Strategy has been the clear exception: It has declined substantially over the past nine years, and the magnitude of this change has been more than double that of the next change.”

There is no clear reason behind these changes

Quantic Foundry also states that it was unable to find a clear factor that led to this change: the change is the same for men and women and also in terms of geographical area (US or non-US). Regardless of the cause, Quantic Foundry stated that “it is clear that over the past nine years gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking,” which “implies that gamers are now more easily cognitively overloaded when playing and are more likely to avoid strategic complexity”.

Speaking instead of those who appreciate strategic components“Players who score high in this component enjoy games that require careful decision-making and planning,” the summary reads.

“By hand reflect on options and likely outcomes. These may be decisions related to balancing resources and objectives, managing foreign diplomacy, or seeking optimal long-term strategies. They tend to enjoy both tactical combat in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, as well as seeing their carefully conceived plans come to fruition in games like Civilization, Cities: Skylines or Europa Universalis.”