Creatures Caves

This is going to sound extremely arrogant, but I've generally found that the average person just doesn't have the intellectual rigor to understand or enjoy the Creatures games. I'm not saying they're stupid. But what I am saying is that Creatures is the sort of thing that requires a certain intellectual bent to understand and hence enjoy. The same problem is true to a lesser extent with any sandbox type game. Most people are used to being given clear goals and a linear path, or at most a choice of multiple more or less linear paths, to accomplish it.

If there's some immediate reward, such as the high intensity mayhem possible in Grand Theft Auto for example, you can get the average person engaged in a more open-ended world, but even there you had a storyline you were ultimately expected to move forward in even if you could go about it at your own pace and in your own way. Whereas with Creatures there is no expected goal whatsoever. You have a world and you have many possible options for interacting with that world, and that's it. It's up to you from there. You put the average person in that situation and - like that reviewer - they get bored and frustrated, feeling like something is being expected of them and they can't figure out what it is.

The type of person who typically gets into and enjoys games like Creatures tends to be more willing to push through that initial "???" reaction and figure out what the game is all about, and that's usually the case because they're more interested in mental challenges to begin with than the average person.

Again, it's not intelligence versus stupidity I'm talking about; it's values, preferences, and personality traits. For a more athletic or otherwise differently-oriented individual - someone to whom purely mental or abstract challenges do not have an intrinsic potential to be either entertaining, fascinating enough to compel emotional involvement, or both - a game like Creatures won't be much fun to them, even if they are highly intelligent. People who do possess one or both of the aforementioned traits (finding entertainment and/or a high degree of fascination leading to emotional involvement in abstract puzzles/challenges/et cetera), on the other hand, will tend to be drawn to this kind of game even if they're not especially smart. (Leaving aside the question of what intelligence even is for another discussion. XD)

In short, since the average person doesn't find being mentally challenged particularly fun or compelling (or if they do, it's not a fun sort of compelling) so Creatures and games like it tend to frustrate, confuse, and ultimately get dismissed by them. There are always exceptions, of course, and I think some of the more unusual approaches to Creatures have probably been originated by those people from other demographics who managed to get into Creatures in spite of the factors that usually cause that sort of personality to lose interest quickly. But in general this is why Creatures never really had mass appeal and has always been sort of a niche game.

With that said, the rise of technology has lead to a greater degree of intellectualization on the part of younger people. I have observed the change within my own lifetime (I'm 31). As people get more used to being routinely faced with obscure or abstract challenges spawned by technology, and more used to the idea of something that's less of a game and more of a simulation - that is, as they get used to the idea in general of using computers for more than straight-up business or pure gaming/entertainment applications, instead using computers and higher technology more and more in their daily lives - I think programs like Creatures stand a better chance of getting more widespread comprehension. Especially as scientific literacy rises, and more people become familiar on a general level with the concept of genetics. I've encountered some shallow mobile games that use 'splicing genetics' as part of their gimmick. It's only a few steps from that sort of thing to getting into and enjoying something like Creatures.

While it's probably too late for the actual Creatures franchise, this social trend means that there is a lot of hope, IMO, for Grandroids. By the time it comes out, the mass market should be much more ready for this sort of thing.