Crash course indeed…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
So Valve have announced some DLC ‘fulfilling’ their ‘promise’ of post-release support for Left 4 Dead….. technically, that is. In terms of covering their asses this ranks right up there at the top. Let me quote from the press release to put this into perspective:
While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of “Crash” is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes, resulting in a streamlined version of the game’s
existing Versus campaigns.
So, and perhaps this is just badly worded, their ‘bridging campaign’ will be easily completed within 30 minutes? Talk about scraping something together….they already had a good idea (if not some parts of the levels themselves) of how it worked and flowed since they cut out the ‘joining’ bits between the campaigns before the original release.
It’s just lip service to make their bruised egos and consciences feel better. Now they can say, with absolute technical certainty, “We provided post-release support.”
Thoughts “round-up”…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
I haven’t been posting much recently but that doesn’t mean i haven’t been thinking…. er, about the site!
Mark Rein (of Epic Games fame) has officially stated that there is at least half of all current gen 360 owners playing on SDTV sets. This validates my point (which i ranted about in one of our podcasts 
) about developers supporting type faces that display properly on SDTV sets…. and which, in my opinion, are often still too small on HDTV sets anyway. Rare backtracked on their oversight and fixed the font sizes in Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts but there are lots of games out there for which the writing is just illegible and fuzzy on SDTVs.
It’s just pure laziness on the part of developers to not test this stuff and discrimination on the part of developers against people who have less and perfect eyesight. You shouldn’t have to wear glasses to play games when you don’t to watch TV or a DVD/Blu Ray disc on your HDTV. Looking at other HD content, you’ll notice that the writing in programming doesn’t have decreased screen real estate – so why does it in games?
Next up, the Wii sales decline…
Following on from the price increase of the Wii, Nintendo are still not considering re-lowering it. Despite decreasing sales and a competing product that undercuts it (the 360) Nintendo surprisingly aren’t considering the fact that now their product is over-priced (especially in its life-cycle)… no. Instead they’re blaming the dip in sales of console hardware on a lack of big titles on the Wii. I find this funny because Wii Sports Resort is out, now, meaning that the casual gamers (i.e. the majority of Wii owners) should be lapping this and the Motion Plus hardware up like the proverbial ‘hot cakes’ – which would drive word of mouth and thus sales of the Wii console…
Despite all this, i’m going to predict that the Wii will see a price reduction within the next 6 months. Why? Partially due to this sales decrease…. but mainly because they brought those extra production facilities online to account for the huge demand and those facilities are presumably still pumping out Wii components which will be piling up somewhere by now. Having lots of unmovable inventory is not good business (just ask the car manufacturers!) and to head off any complaints from share holders i believe that there’ll be a modest price cut within 6 months because i can’t see demand increasing to the levels it was at during this economy and at their level of installed base.
And you thought that the economic situation couldn’t get any worse…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
Word has reached us, from MCV, that prices on many console games are going up as of this year from a RRP of £40 to around £54.
Let me reiterate that for you, FIFTY FOUR POUNDS STERLING!!!11!!111!01010011011
I thought that the current economic climate, combined with the fact that we’ve always been gouged on price by the games and technology industries would perhaps lead to slightly decreased prices if not keeping them at the same level. Instead some companies have decided that they’re not getting enough from us and rather than increase the price on the very cheap US market (where they sell a hell of a lot more copies than in the UK) they want to gouge us even more. Their excuse (in quote form):
“Exchange rates between the Euro and the pound are making it very difficult for publishers to show an acceptable operating margin in the UK,” THQ’s EVP of worldwide publishing Ian Curran told MCV.
Now, i’m no mathematical genius or economic analyst but i call bullshit on this. Let me help you reach the same conclusion.
First off, i don’t think console prices have increased or decreased since the £5-10 increase upon the release of the Xbox 360 in December 2005 so we can make the comparison between the relative cost of purchasing a console game and the currency exchange rate between US dollars and pounds sterling…. found here. If we take the exchage rate through each year, starting in 2006, then we can plot the change:
Looking at the trend it is obvious where the crash occured in 2008, however, things are looking up and the pound is already improving. Now, this is the thing that gets me. In Jan 2006 you got $1.77 for every £1, in Jan 2009 you got $1.44 and this month (July) you got $1.63. That is NOT a big change…. of course it’s a massive change if you take into account where it had climbed to but if you’ve read any of the blurb surrounding the whole economic crash you’d know that the rate of increase that it had reached over the last few years was all based on lies and deception…. hollow promises and wishful thinking. It was a fantasy that eventually became grounded in reality…. and it affected pretty much everybody.
You see, if this was purely a UK thing then yes, i could understand the price hike…. but America lost a lot of worth in their currency as well so it’s all relative. Now, if they’re telling me that suddenly it costs more to make a current gen game 3 years after release when tech is locked down and code tricks are known on an iterated engine that has seen multiple releases this generation on the Xbox 360… i don’t believe them. If they’re telling me that they’ll suddenly get £10 less revenue on a sale than they would 3 years ago then i definitely don’t believe them (since the proof is up there in the graph) as they’re only making $0.14 less per pound revenue per copy than they were 3 years ago. The situation is also similar in the conversion from Euros to Pounds with a loss of €0.68 per £1 reveune.
Let’s say that off of every title that is £35 upon release they make £29 revenue from the shop sale (which isn’t that outlandish) they would have received $53.36 (€42.05 from £ and $53.40 from €) in July 2006 and $47.27 (€33.64 from £ and $47.10 from €) in July 2009 which is a discrepancy of $6.09 when converting from £->$ or $6.3 when converting from €->$. Maybe over such large volumes that $0.21 makes a huge difference but i’m not thinking that this is the cause (or at least a legitimate cause for such a huge price increase). The varying factor that i can’t investigate is haulage prices over the last few years – though i can make an approximate assumption based on crude oil prices.
Now, in 2006 there was a spike in prices (i forget the reasons but i remember the price hike here at the pumps in the UK) which put oil, per barrel at around $65-70…. in comparison the price of oil is now between $60-65 having been lower than this for half of the year – which should put haulage costs at around the same point, if not slightly cheaper. It’s possible, however, that they’re trying to claw back some of the money lost in that second half of 2008 where oil prices soared and the exchange rate “crashed”… but even with that assumption you would expect this to be a temporary price hike and also nowhere near the announced £15 which would yield revenue of approximately $78.24 per copy sold… which is just ludicrous.
I never understood the mentality that most corporations have of increased profits year on year… for every year ever. Economics doesn’t work like that and it’s a mathematical/economic impossibility… it’s IMPOSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE!! I really hope this ‘initiative’ and the bullshit corporate speak that goes along with it fails miserably. I’m tired of being stepped on – you’re not making as much money anymore? Well put the price up in ALL the countries that have suffered economic problems (”pro-tip”: that includes the US).
Not sure what the corporate side of the games industry believe the UK is like but i’m sure it includes the allegorical “streets paved with gold”…
Deniable undeniability…
Posted by eternalduoae | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
So it came to pass that PEGI was given the legal right to rate games for the UK as well as most of the rest of Europe. And lo, the games industry said it was good. – Sacred texts of Lament, vol 2., Ch. 7, Page 249
I’ve written elsewhere about my misgivings over the whole BBFC vs PEGI games ratings systems for us in the UK market, so i won’t go into the reasons, but now the game is over and PEGI are the victors. However, to my mind it all seems a bit pointless. One of my issues with PEGI is that it’s a system that is so widespread that it doesn’t cater to each individual country’s sensibilities or customs…. what could be offensive in, say, Germany, wouldn’t cause an eyelid to flutter in France. It turns out that the UK government agrees with me, at least on some level, because they’ve announced that, while PEGI is the de facto ratings body for the UK, the Video Standards Council (VSC) holds the ultimate veto on whether a game or game content is allowed.
Now, this seems very silly to me.
On the one hand you have the BBFC… who provide a more thorough ratings process, who have experience in dealing with content that may cause offense to our culture and sensibilities and also in enforcing those bans or that censorship and who constantly do it in regards to film (and in the past games). They also use the universally understood film ratings system for games.
On the other hand you have PEGI who’s ratings system is less thorough in that it leaves it up to the developers/publishers to effectively rate themselves, who have a lot of experience in dealing with ratings (though they constantly give out higher age ratings than the BBFC ever did for the same games) but have no real knowledge of the sensibilities or potential offence of content within games. To combat this lack of knowledge the VSC have been given overall control on whether games will be banned or censored within the UK (regardless of PEGI classification) despite having no prior role within the UK legislature with regards to rating or regulating the content of film or games. Conversely, the PEGI rating system is quite convoluted with not only age ratings but symbols depicting various ‘watch words’ for content such as drugs or swearing.
So which method of regulation would you choose? Personally, having them all in one body makes more sense to me while having two bodies having to cover the same ground seems like a patent waste of resources:
VSC will exercise this new power independently of the PEGI system, providing a ‘fail-safe’ for the UK – protecting children through PEGI and addressing UK-specific sensibilities by refusing classification of any game which falls foul of the Video Recordings Act. This decision is the right one for consumers in the UK.
Yeah…. really, the right decision for who? I’m not so sure. This way there is a loophole that allows more censorship, more legal proceedings against developers/publishers from the public and potentially lower sales for games sold at higher ratings under the PEGI system.
I’m just glad i’m well over the 18 age limit.
Further reading:
http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/media_releases/6215.aspx
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/vsc-given-tough-powers-for-non-compliance-of-pegi-system
Community support of games…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
I was a big fan of Titan Quest when it came out and played through the game pretty religiously for a month or two. Unfortunately, i’m not much of a min/max-er and i also tend to burn out on games if i play the same one too much… but conversely i ‘forget’ about or won’t be bothered to return to games if i leave them too long. I’m a bit ADD in that sense.
However, early on (from when the demo was available) i became a little involved with the fledgling community over at www.titanquest.net in trying to help sort out peoples’ problems with the game – of which there were a few before, at and after launch. It wasn’t an official outlet for the game or anything, it was just something that the fans had put together and as my interest in the game waned so did my presence there. However, i was subscribed to the newsletter and, out of general curiosity, never unsubscribed.
To describe what i have seen through that newsletter as heartwarming or inspiring would be an understatement. Though Iron Lore quickly went under after they released the expansion pack, Immortal Throne, the community lived on and not only played the game or talked about strategies but they improved the game… they fixed it by making use of the included editor. TitanQuest, fully patched up was at release 1.1, the community have pushed that to 1.17, trying to quash all the remaining bugs while keeping to what they see as ‘the developers’ vision’ for the game by adjusting things that may have been erroneously assigned when compared with similar things within the game. The last patch release was 1.17a which is specifically aimed at the digital downloaders out there (Steam, Direct2Drive etc) who may not have been able to play with those on the core fan patch or indeed to get the game working properly.
Outside of these fixes there are also complete, game-sized mods available within the forums… amazing feats of love and patience in my eyes considering the game was released in 2007, an aeon ago in terms of the game industry but relatively short in terms of producing content.
It just goes to show how releasing the tools to the community of a game can really add to the value and also the longevity of the title and it struck me especially considering the way Valve has so far handled the Left 4 Dead issue recently but also the tonnes of games that have been abandoned due to their fairly poor release state more than any other reason. Developers/publishers, give your fans a voice, a way to make the game live on and everything will be okay…. your game will continue to sell through time and people won’t resell.
(Please note that i’m still asking you to not release games with authentication DRM since none of what i’ve talked about would probably have been possible if it had been included in the game – thank you)
Left 4 Dead 2 or “How Valve dropped the ball”
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
Since the announcement of the sequel for L4D i’ve had a bitter taste in my mouth. On the one hand, Left 4 Dead was a good game – it still is, though the player base has fallen off of a cliff – on the other hand it was released in an unfinished state and only relatively recently patched up to include the two versus campaigns that were missing. Promises were also made as to the post-release support:
Eurogamer: In terms of updating post-release, do you have any firm plans for what you’re going to do?
Chet Faliszek: Yes. Stuff we haven’t announced but it’s really cool. It’s the coolest thing ever [grin]. There’ll be more scenarios, and those scenarios will introduce new elements.
…and these have pretty much failed to make it through, instead they’ve been moulded into a full-blown sequel. The problem is that my copy of Left 4 Dead is almost useless as it is – none of my ‘friends’ in the groups i’m with play it regularly anymore, they all play Team Fortress 2 – and the game can be broken if people play it in a certain way and so no one plays.
Unfortunately, what i think Valve should be doing seems to be what they’re doing for Left 4 Dead 2:
This could be the platform for zombie apocalypse games for a while.
No! No, no, no! You already HAVE the platform for zombie apocalypse games: Left 4 Dead – please use that. PC gamers don’t need a sequel, they need paid for DLC that slots into Left 4 Dead and which would allow any free maps or more paid-for maps, characters, AI improvements and fixes to be shunted into it.
By releasing the separate entity with a separate executable, front end and all that jazz you’re making the first game redundant. Who cares if user created maps will work on either game? No one’s going to be playing on “last years’ title” when they can play on the fixed and improved new game.
They could have made this into a really good user experience and an alternative to the free updates that people are used to on Team Fortress 2 (which they keep rolling out) but instead they’ve abandoned a game that was mal-nourished on and after release in favour of having another baby in the hopes that all will be made better. They’ve also made me wary of buying Valve games at full price upon release – games that are often more expensive from Steam than at retail here.
It’s a really inconsistant way of producing games…. you’ve got the Half Life series which is a self-contained experience that only requires bug-fixes and then the multiplayer games that require fixes, tweaks and new content to provide legs – otherwise they lose their value. Team Fortress 2 is being handled incredibly from the side of the consumer… they’re still getting more and more free content despite only paying for the game once (and often times at very cheap prices). Yet Left 4 Dead was barely supported; it had two campaigns missing in versus and only 4 on release… there was no SDK for community content and it was only recently when the survival pack was released that we got those two campaigns, the beta SDK and a new survival mode with one map. I feel cheated. Why is my money worth less to Valve for Left 4 Dead when someone else (who likes Team Fortress 2) is getting increased value for the money spent? Now, a further slap in the face is that my game is going to be obsolete whereas the equivalent minor updates to the engine and gameplay that are in Team Fortress 2 (compared to Left 4 Dead 2) are all ported into the existing game.
It boggles the mind.
Hardcore gamers not buying hardcore games?
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
While i do love and love to read Bill Harris, i think his take-home message from a recent post concerning the sales numbers of ‘hardcore games’ is incorrect. First off:
The installed base of the DS in the U.S. is 30 million units. The installed base of the Wii in the U.S. just crossed 20 million units.
It would be laughable to allege that only the “non-hardcore” are buying these systems. Almost everyone I know who plays games has a DS, and a good percentage of those people are in the “hardcore” category. To a lesser extent, that’s true of the Wii as well.
Even if only 5% of the people who buy a DS or Wii fall into the “hardcore” category, that still translates to 1.5 million DS owners and 1 million Wii owners. And I think that percentage is an incredibly low estimate, particularly for the DS.
So the story inside the story, at least to me, is that hardcore gamers who own the DS and the Wii aren’t buying the hardcore games.
The population of North America is 303-odd million (you can google that). That means that 10 percent of the population own a DS and 7 per cent own a Wii. I don’t believe that the hardcore gamer share of that population makes up even that much.
Of course these numbers are all just a prelude to reaching an unconnected conclusion in reality: not all people like the same things. There were around 11 million 360s in the USA in November 2008 and yet by August 2008 there had only been 4.7 million copies of GTA 4 sold even though 360 owners are more likely to be hardcore gamers who like hardcore games. That’s a ratio of 42%.
If we take it for granted that both the Wii and DS are owned by a majority of people who lie in the groups labelled as ‘casual’ and ‘under the age of 15′ then the number of hardcore gamers who own a DS and are capable of buying GTA game will likely to be fewer than the total number of gamers who could/’wanted to’ have done so on the 360.
Ultimately, people don’t buy the Wii and DS to play the same sorts of experiences that they could get elsewhere and the people that would and do will not all like or enjoy the same games. To me, it’s not surprising that these games sold badly – perhaps as badly as they did, yes that surprised me. Chinatown Wars was a harkening back to GTA 2 – a concept that hasn’t really been pushed in 8 or so years. The market that enjoys GTA doesn’t do it for the setting, they enjoy the 3D gameplay and translating that gameplay back into a 2D top-down will likely not garner the same success even if you applied the same marketing money and time to it (not that they did).
It’s the same with Madworld. It’s a niche game even on a hardcore system – why didn’t The Club sell well (for example) and would do even worse on a non-hardcore platform.
The ’story inside the story’ is that the Wii and DS are majorly owned by casual gamers. You need to market a hardcore game well (or adopt a certain aesthetic) for it to be successful in those target markets. You also need to realise that not every gamer is interested in the same types of games. Hence why you have aviation enthusiasts, train simulators etc…. those are hardcore games but they won’t sell to all hardcore players…. and they’ll sell even fewer if you change the traditional ‘playstyle’ and platform they were hosted on.
Therefore, i declare this doom and gloom scare to be over!
*By playstyle i mean 3D vs 2D…. FPS vs turn-based etc.
Game refunds… the BS and the beast.
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
The EU has been making noises about regulating game sales and it’s causing somewhat of a kerfuffle in the games industry from the game makers and publishers and consumers. (No, i don’t feel like linking in this preamble)
There’s two issues at stake here:
1. No written code is perfect and therefore many proposed systems are ripe for abuse.
2. Consumers need rights to protect them from being abused by providers who’s best interests is making the most profit and selling the next game, not supporting a current, buggy game.
The first issue is pretty easy to solve in my humble opinion: Have an industry elected group, possibly associated with the ratings body (PEGI/BBFC and BBFC etc.) which consumers can complain to. This body would regulate the industry (with the industry’s permission – after all, it’s in their best interests as it is with self age/content regulation), issuing ‘recalls’ or refund lists that will tell consumers and retailers which games are considered buggy enough to constitute a consumer problem.
Consumers would be able to report ‘bad’ games to the group in the same way you’d report bad service from your phone company to the telco regulator. These instances would be reported, monitored and then the ‘recall’ and authorised reimbursement would be issued.
This stops abuse by individual consumers (of which there are legion) but also helps build trust in the industry… it helps to increase overall quality by naming and shaming developers and publishers as well as hurting them where it hurts the most – in their pocket.
The second issue is simple at its heart. Publishers and developers, whether they want to or not, abuse their customers all the time. In fact, this is par for the course as every industry suffers from this problem. Ideally, a producer would receive money from consumers for nothing. In practice very few people are this stupid so it comes down to a process of reaping the highest rewards for effort. This system is, by definition, at odds with the very people it is supposed to be serving – the consumers (though you could argue that it’s supposed to be serving the board members and the investors in which case it works as intended) – and can result in the poorest quality product being released for the highest price possible if the people behind the product aren’t acting ethically. This is why in all industries there is regulation, whether that comes from a political background or through self preservation.
Somehow, until this moment in time, the game industry has managed to stay outside of this natural process of balancing out consumers’ with investors’ interests. Honestly, i think that the balance is too far in the investor’s interest:
Within recent years consumers are not able to return their products for a full refund unless unopened (even with console games), DRM schemes mean that you cannot resell your PC game or downloaded content. Digital downloads are essentially lost money when you hit the buy button with the exception of Stardock who will allow refunds on products (Steam does not allow refunds officially but will sometimes allow one in exceptional circumstances, though there is an unofficial limit on how many times this can be achieved per customer). Games were once commodities but now they’re ’services’ – as defined by the game companies but according to the companies themselves, the consumers are not to expect a good service or be able to get refunds – just like in every other service… oh, wait.
Consumers have no rights in the eyes of the publishers and developers and yet no dedicated way to address this. Something needs to be done before the creeping cement has set.
And so it ends…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
The news that 3D Realms were closing down shocked me to the core. Perhaps, from an outsider’s point of view, this is just another footnote in the balance of life and death in the games industry but to me 3D Realms were something more.
I grew up with Duke Nukem and was still anticipating Duke Nukem Forever after still being blown away by the E3 2001 Trailer. The graphics may look dated now but what you’re looking at is the equivalent of seeing a 2012-looking quality game in comparison with current graphical abilities. It looked impossibly awesome when first released. I spent a fair amount of time on the 3D Realms forums too after joining in 2004. I liked the community and many people i ‘befriended’ are still there posting regularly. Eventually i moved on to other places and people but i still have a place in my heart for the time i spent there (especially when i joint-called out the release of Prey and the thread evolved into a mad hunt for information).
To me, it wasn’t important if DNF was ever actually released, the mere hope of the idea was enough and finding it gone is like finding out that Father Christmas isn’t real. It crushes you, but you get over it, though a part of the magic in life dies with the knowledge. Maybe Duke Forever will be saved, more likely it won’t as George Broussard was always very protective of the franchise.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, i need to go cross off one more item on the list. I think the Easter Bunny (id) are the only real “90’s” dev house left standing. The Tooth Fairy (Epic) died a long time ago when they started primarily focusing on consoles.
Best wishes to everyone at 3D Realms…. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
Heather Chaplin’s GDC 09 rant….
Posted by James | Filed under Opinion
So, while I seemed to have missed any GDC news when it came out, a post on Rock, Paper, Shotgun highlighted the comments of Heather Chaplin during the “Rant Session” of the conference. While I have issues with some of the other rants mentioned at IGN I feel like adding my point of view onto her comments as I think they’re the most interesting. So what was it she said?
Chaplin wondered how it is that videogames remain so focused on violence and zombie gore. “The excuse is that the videogame industry is only thirty-five years old,” said Chaplin. “But after thirty-five years rock & roll had Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Clash. After thirty-five years film had Fritz Lang, film noire, and was a few years away from Citizen Kane.” Chaplin blamed the inability of the medium to move beyond male-centric power fantasies as a direct result of developer heterogeny and immaturity.
“It’s not that the medium is in its adolescence, it’s that you’re a bunch of ****ing adolescents,” she said. “It’s even worse because you’re technically supposed to be adults.” Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. She described game developers in terms of neoteny, an idea from developmental biology that describes adults of a species who have juvenile traits. This can be seen in mature Chihuahuas, which resemble infant and fetal wolves. Chaplin closed by challenging the audience, “What do you want to be, a Chihuahua or a wolf?”
While I think that the best response to her came from David Jaffe (a well thought-out and heat-felt piece) there are some things that I feel need to be addressed:
First off, I’ll point out the logical inconsistencies. ‘Thirty five years of rock and roll’ eh? That’s funny because the movement we call rock and roll took how many decades of evolution of music and culture (on top of centuries, even millennia of music heritage)? Or if you’re more apt to make the movie comparison Citizen Kane only came about in 1941, 74 years after the first moving picture machine was patented in the US (1867). To get to any point in any medium or cultural milestone it takes as long as it takes – you can’t compare one thing with another it’s a fallacy to do so and it speaks to a person’s naivety in how social structure evolves.
Secondly, I’d also argue that most of music is mindless pop (and I’m not saying that’s bad) but there is also place for the more complex, challenging and genre-breaking efforts out there but they’re by far in the minority. This is the same situation as we have in the games industry, we have thought-provoking and challenging pieces but lets face it, none of them are going to be financially successful like a summer blockbuster film.
Next i want to address the homogeneity of developer gender, yes it’s a male-dominated industry, yes women are becoming more prominent and will continue to affect the industry….. Do I think that power-fantasies are male-only? No, certainly not. I think this comment assumes women as purely “soft”, non-violent and intellectual beings incapable of acting in the same manner as their male counterparts. Modern psychology is (ironically in this instance due to the following rant by N’Gai Croal on ‘Hardcore’/‘casual’ depictions of gamers/games) much more capable of defining human nature and action than the broad strokes of the old, men are powerful hunter-gatherers and women the socialising home-makers and frankly, power fantasies are not only the remit of the immature or young of years (being careful to draw a distinction between those two). Humans desire to be powerful beings – it makes us feel safe – and power isn’t defined through purely violent means it can be expressed in any type of achievement or feeling of worth, especially in the eyes of others. Engaging in power fantasies (as long as we’re careful to not over-indulge) allows us to reaffirm ourselves and our self-worth and is pretty vital in being able to be moderately self-sufficient without having to rely on constant third-party affirmation (which in my opinion you would be mad to deny is an important aspect of the human psyche – we all need to feel validated throughout our lives).
Not only is it an out-dated view on what is male and female psychological behaviour but it also shows where her notion of what is adult and what is not stems from.
Responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. These are adult? Really? Actually I’d put the emergence of all of those four aspects squarely in my teens…. which also happen to be called my adolescence. During those ten years or so (whoever grows up, gives up growing*) I learned to be more responsible, to be introspective to be intellectually challenged and questioning…. I discovered more of myself and in most people’s adolescence they also start to test the boundaries of intimacy. Exploring these four aspects is inherently adolescent behaviour, exactly the opposite of what she’s ranting about… saying that men are frightened by these four core concepts, well…. old thinking again. It’s a terrible stereotype that “men are afraid of commitment”/responsibility/emotional intimacy or intellectual self-probing just as it would be to say that women are emotionally frail creatures who require special treatment and they’re just not true. We are, to an extent, what we are brought up to be, what society expects of us and as society has evolved man’s role within society has also evolved (as has woman’s)… people talk about the metrosexuals, the new age man etc. these, again are stereotypes but they address in broad strokes the emergence of the acceptance that men can be more than muscular hunters. We, the younger generations, subconsciously respond to that and make it a part of us, we are not constrained by the same social ties that bound our fathers or their antecedents and some day our offspring will be different as well.
As David Jaffe suggested: What is it to be a man then, if not the things that we do already? Where is this ideal man that Heather has in mind when saying these, frankly, derogatory statements?
Finally, I just want to address what I think of her missing core concepts. What is she asking for here?
Introspection is purely something that we partake in and of by ourselves. It can be initiated by an outside source but not everyone will be affected by that same trigger. Many games have made me think more about who I am and what I would do or be in a situation… some games have made me want to aspire to something more. However, I can guarantee that those same games, those same situations will have been sat through by many other people who thought nothing of the story or the implications given by the game that’s being played. This is an impossible thing to try and artificially insert into any medium… an artform either makes a connection with the consumer or it doesn’t.
How does she want responsibility to be included in games? Some characters in stories show that they are responsible or show growth to more responsible behaviour through their character arcs, whether that’s in a book, movie or a game. I don’t know how else this could be addressed that isn’t already present in the whole game of ‘action/consequence’ that tends to precede a character’s acceptance of increased responsibility.
Intimacy? Well, I’m all for including that in games but it’s almost impossible to put in a game without it falling foul of censors, politicians/parents because of society’s continued view that ‘games are for children’™. Any game with sexual intimacy in it will be effectively banned in the US by being given an AO rating (which cannot be sold on consoles due to platform holders and retailers) and will be demonised or banned in other countries. Emotional intimacy, again, is a subjective thing. I felt that there was palpable intimacy between Yorda and the horned boy in Ico, (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time etc) but I’m sure there will have been others who thought nothing of it. Either way, these games already exist… intimacy doesn’t need to be in every game for it to be already here. Emotional intimacy between two men or two women is unfortunately still fairly taboo and this is one area where I agree with Heather. I think that homophobic and more non-sexual intimacy could be placed within the right games quite unobtrusively but this is really a matter for good script writing and I don’t think that there is a conscious decision to make all characters in games emotionally vacant. In fact there is always talk from developers about how they want their characters to better resonate with their audiences so I don’t think this will be such an issue as game writing matures and is integrated more fully into the development process.
Intellectual discovery? I have to admit that I’m assuming she means self discovery here and I think this is a very difficult thing to artificially insert into the game. Mainly because we are playing either a mute character or a personality throughout a game experience and neither allow you to observe yourself/character from a third perspective which might give insight into a changed or more enlightened person like we would get in movies. Nor is there any overt inner dialogue/monologue, which would probably feel completely out of place in a game (I mean, telling the player directly how the character feels when the player is supposed to be the character would be a jarring experience), to guide the player in their knowledge of the inner workings of their character’s mind. Honestly, I’m not even sure what this term is pointing towards, certainly it’s not expansion of knowledge or interests.
I think it’s fair to say that these concepts are either already firmly present in the game industry or they’re deeply personal experiences that cannot be artificially constructed or expected to occur with certainty. I also think that bringing in neoteny is a mistake as it really should only apply to the adults and children of the same species. Talking about Chihuahuas exhibiting signs reminiscent of adolescent wolves shows a misunderstanding of the research I would imagine went into reporting this observation. If it where the wolves themselves that displayed adolescent behaviour then I’d have no problem with her bringing it up but seriously, drawing parallels between two different subspecies which have no interaction and do not have the same environmental stresses that would lead to social conditioning/development of habits that would be beneficial to the species’ survival makes no sense. We are not men-children and we are certainly not men-apes. If she wants these supposedly absent deeper ideas to be integrated more prominently into the game dictionary then why doesn’t she go out and do it herself? Where is her contribution? Will it be financially viable or will it be another fringe art house game project that gets critical acclaim but holds largely little interest to the mass market? Game making is as much a business as it is varied in its content production. It seems to me as if she’s focusing only on the blockbusters and blaming them because she’s ended up reading Terry Brooks rather than Jane Austen.
[That’s me btw and I think it’s a pretty cool quote if I do say so 
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