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 
]
The evolution of interaction…
Posted by James | Filed under Opinion
I used to read a lot when i was younger (well, relatively anyway) and while i still enjoy a good read i’ve found that i’m beginning to encounter some problems when doing so. It’s happening with film and TV, to a lesser extent, as well so i’m pretty sure that it’s not that i’m just going through a patch where i’m not too bothered to read.
During recent years i’ve had to put a few books down. I had to stop reading them for a day or two because i couldn’t stand what was happening in the story, not because it was stupid or annoying but because the story happened to visit places that i’d prefer to not travel to…. rape, forced marriage and lovers missing each other’s intentions and what-not (i’m not into romance novels though these examples clearly seem to indicate that they’re what i’m reading!).
At first i thought that this was because i’m adverse to these practices or perhaps emotionally tied to the characters who are missing each other’s interests but i’ve noticed a similar trend in my visual media consumption too. I turn off TV shows if the plot isn’t going where i like it to or if i feel that the plot devices are just too silly or stupid to make any kind of sense. This led me to believe that perhaps my attention span has been reduced by the constant “quick media” influx over the last two decades as is so often portrayed in the news media.
However, today i had a revelation. I don’t have a short attention span – i can play games or read books/watch movies for many hours at a time… i can have stimulating conversations or play complicated board games at length. My attention span isn’t short, it’s just that i have been taught to use my freedom to better choose what i consume or do. At the same time i think that playing games has also influenced my (and probably others’) perceptions of how i am allowed to consume various media. In games, *I* am the protagonist, i don’t always have a choice in what i do but at least i’m the one driving the interaction and progression. In games that give me a choice, i play a role (and since i’m the unimaginative sort i usually play the ideal role i’d like to live up to in real life) and that affects how i experience the game and it plays out. In films/TV and books i don’t have this interaction, i’m passive to the ongoings of the characters and i don’t know where the story is going. At the same time, these strengths to the traditional media are making me balk at interacting with them in the same way because i’m used to acting on the knowledge given to me in a way that is impossible in pre-determined media. I want to step in and stop that rape, create a character to do so perhaps since i have no agency in that world. I want to play matchmaker between two forlorn lovebirds, befriend them and make them happy. I’m sure that some people would prefer the opposite or different results from these scenarios but they are equally as unable to affect the world.
In playing games i have spoiled myself i have created a god-like complex that makes me think i’m entitled to edit, change and manipulate the worlds in my media…. i pick out ‘flaws’ that clash with my perceptions of what is right and wrong or what just doesn’t make sense and i want to change them to fit my beliefs and desires.
*I* am player character…. do as i wish.
While i’m now aware of this and i can perhaps temper my feeling when entering these situations a little, is this leading to something bigger?
At the moment the web is all ado about web 2.0: user-created content and involvement. In the past it was all about what was fed to us by outlets… but even then (and even more so now) the news industry has always had a symbiosis with the consumers. We supply news, we create it and we devour it from the carefully crafted reports given to us by the news companies. Is this a hint of what’s to come? We’ve all heard of ghost writers – people who help out or completely write a novel or story in the name of another person. David Perry (and Acclaim) started a game design for a project that was/is a collaboration between users and developers – they have a say in what happens and contribute to the development process as well.
Is the next big ‘media’ evolution co-existing with the current generation? In thirty years time will we be talking to authors, giving feedback and helping to write our own collaborative stories? Will our visual media be the same? It’s an intersting concept and a nightmare in the making (as i’m sure Perry found out during the early parts of making the Top Secret project) but it seems like a logical extension of where we are and what we desire in our media.
So, what do you think?
Game frustrations: Burnout Paradise
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
I was a big fan of Burnout 3 (the original) and although i have an Xbox 360 i’d been holding off getting Burnout Paradise, partly due to the fact that i believe it has a lot of value tied to the online content/modes and thus, being a silver account holder, i don’t benefit from this. I’d also heard that it wasn’t as much a Burnout title as the later two Burnout 3 titles had been. Having since bought it (really cheap) i have discovered that these people were wrong…. i think that it’s managed to keep the series’ feel quite nicely.
Anyway onto the point of this post. I like the game but it has two annoying facets:
- No race restarts
- Half the map is empty
Okay, i’ve seen number one mentioned many times in many forums and i was prepared for it. I don’t find it a problem because usually there’s another event near where i finish off (or not depending on where i rage quit the current event ). Number two, however, is incredibly annoying.
The left hand side of the map is pretty barren in terms of events (i’m not bothered by the petrol/junk/repair stations). This means that any and every event that shunts me off over there to the three possible destinations leaves me stranded in the middle of nowhere. I hate it, i hate it, i HATE it!
I played Test Drive Unlimited on the PC and it’s a very similar game except that it’s slightly less arcadey but has a larger island. I believe that it’s this aspect that made the developers include a ‘teleport’ option to places you’d already visited. I remember being impressed at the time and i wish that Paradise had this function….. not only that but i’ve been around Paradise city and i’m almost to an “A” licence and i’ve pretty much been everywhere. I got the game yesterday and after playing around 10 hours i’ve done a large amount of the events, discovered many of the shortcuts and destroyed around two-thirds of the billboards (i’m still really low on the special jumps)…. and i’m really thankful that i bought it cheap. Seriously, for all the ‘replayability’ of the title there aren’t many events (actually there are a large number of events 40 races and the other game modes but since many of them all go to one of 8 places it makes many of them very similar in route you can take) and in the single player it seems that the AI/car selection is limited to whatever car the player is driving so choosing a different car doesn’t really make much difference for offline modes.
So what does all this mean? The game is good but not worth a full price buy – but then at this point in its life cycle you’d be hard-pressed to find it for £35-40. I payed £15 to get it bundled with Trivial Pursuit and i would guess that it’s worth (to me) £9 from that purchase.
Least favourite game genres…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
I don’t know what it is about a person’s make-up but there are certain genres of games that i find impossible to play – not through limitations of understanding the gameplay but through either sheer incompatibility with one or more aspects of the games.
My gripe is looking at a relatively new genre in the games: Over-the-shoulder games. I have to make the point that these are not to be confused with 3rd person games, though they do share that similarity between the two and perhaps the OtS genre is a subset of the 3rd person genre.
So why do i dislike them and is there something that could be done to increase my enjoyment of them?
Firstly, i dislike having part of the screen blocked off by on-screen clutter. It’s bad when the UI gets in the way of gameplay, it’s bad when a gun takes up half the screen so why do so many people not care that in these OtS games your character sits almost fully along one half of the available screen space? It annoys me no end.
Secondly, the controls…. for some reason (which is perhaps attributed to Gears of War) all the controls are slow and unwieldly for me. I have to pan ‘around’ my character as if i was on a strut sticking out the side of their body when i wish to make a turn and my movement speed in any direction is pitifully slow. Contrary to this, my aiming reticule feels like it’s centred in the game screen (i.e. On the end of that strut) as it would be in any normal game which causes a disparity between my ability to move and shoot by them being controlled from a different base position. Also, directly attributable to Gears, is the use of the cover mechanic combined with a roll or other ‘quick’ manoeuvre, designed to cause the most hassle to players by managing to be pretty imprecise when executed or to switch from the quick manoeuvre to cover by accident when trying to get out of the way of something.
Sometimes, the controls of these games make you stick to the spot when attacking, further reduce your field of view or snap the camera controls into a weird anti-state when performing various actions. They’re just down-right infuriating for me in general.
Can they be fixed? Of course they can but not until every 3rd person perspective game designers get over the “Gears” effect. No, i do not want every game to be like Gears, or Quake or Unreal or Metroid…. but i would like them to at least improve on the obvious flaws of each design. The problem i have with OtS games is that they do nothing that couldn’t be done with a traditional, behind the character third person camera: e.g. Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain, Zak, Zelda and Ratchet series. What the OtS games do, though, is make me feel like i’m fighting the game for control of my character through a syrup or slow-setting glue whilst simultaneously blocking up as much screen space as possible.
Stupidly, i keep playing them – thinking that i might come across one that is different. I keep thinking that there must be something wrong with me because there are millions of people happily playing Gears of War, Bullet Witch, Resident Evil, Dark Sector and their ilk. There’s one game that i’m looking forward to in this genre and that’s Dark Void (the one with the jetpack vertical combat thingy?)… i hope that this will be the game to end my OtS misery but i’m not holding my breath.
So, i ask you all (the two people reading this) what are your despised genres and why? Is it FPS – because they make you motion sick? RTS because you can’t micromanage all the units, buildings and resources or maybe it’s platformers where you’re unable to judge the distance or timing of the required actions…. let us know in the comments!
Why games for the Wii don’t sell…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
There have been many dissenting opinions on why the Wii is or isn’t a great platform for gamers or for people making games whose names don’t rhyme with haciendo. I’m not going to link to them here because it’s currently 02:30 and i’m in a weird sleep-deprived-but-not-actually-tired state, however, i am going to give you my opinion on WHY i think the Wii isn’t the golden goose for either (core) gamers or publishers/developers.
Firstly, i’ll work up to my reasoning. The Wii is the out-and-out runaway success in terms of units sold to the public – shattering all previous games console sales figures. It has reached new audiences of gamers that were very underserved before through the traditional input and friendliness methods of console/PC gaming. Ergo, as some people would have it, due to this massive install base it should be easier to make a game and recoup the costs associated with making that game. The Wii has a lot of what i will refer to as “shovelware” (cheap and quickly produced software) which has previously been seen on the most popular console due to having the largest install base (see: Playstation 1&2). The Wii is NOT the Playstation 1, nor even the Playstation 2.
The Playstation brand was built on the credentials of being a gamer and it was only later on that they expanded this to include other types of gamers – those we now call casual: the people who buy Singstar and quiz games and who might occasionally buy a more traditional game but will not play that often. The Wii has the opposite, it has built its base from the outside-in. They targeted the non-gamers and the casual gamers and it has been these people who have bought into the idea of the Wii as a family entertainment system… the traditional gamers were an afterthought (i’m not complaining here) and as such their numbers are lower than when compared to the PS2 install base.
Now, core gamers will buy casual-targeted games and vice versa (though core gamers will traditionally buy more games per console owned as it tends to be their primary hobby). The mistake publishers and developers are making with respect to trying to sell software on the Wii is that they are still tending to target traditional gamer audiences in their game features and marketing but with only a fraction of the install base actually respondant to this type of focus – which makes these games unprofitable.
Let me explain. Marketing a traditional game to the Wii ownership is akin to the difference between placing a Heavy Metal Band (TM) advert in the TV listings paper instead of the new album by (Sir) Cliff Richards. The target demographics overlap but not necessarily in the ideal proportions for adequate sales of the product. On the other hand, you also CANNOT market Sir Cliff’s album in the same way that you would market a Heavy Metal Band’s. The way pop culture (or mass market media) is marketed to produce positive results has been refined to a simple formula over the years – beat the hell out of the minds of the intended audience… step 2 ?… step 3: profit! The idea is that you get the word out to enough people and then the product sticks in the public consciousness. Niche products are sought out by their target audiences… i read countless words on numerous websites about gaming each and every day. I jot down games i’m interested in YEARS before their projected release. I do not need to be marketed to in my every day life, i need to be reminded that the game is coming out but i don’t need to be informed of most games in the same way i do about a new car design or for the debut of a TV show.
Seriously now, Nintendo have recognised this and have it down 100%. How do they market the Wii? They had it on Dr. Phil, Ellen Degeneres, The One Show (or whatever its equivalent was), Richard and Judy…. they put adverts on TV showing young families having fun – inclusive fun and with elderly people as well… they marketed it as a lifestyle for everyone. Compare this with the Xbox and Playstation brands and you’ll see a stark comparison – they are dark and gritty, their adverts are surreal and mysterious and focus almost completely on the games and features themselves rather than the concept of having fun. In the smell industry, the Wii is Febreeze while the Xbox and PS are Calvin Klein and Ralph Loren and they are in completely different sectors of the audience’s mindshare as well as intended application.
Quite often in mass media, it’s not what product you have (as long as it’s not hugely offensive) it’s how you market it and frankly, i’ve not seen many non-Nintendo games that’ve been marketed in the same ‘fictional world’ that Nintendo have created to house their lifestyle improver, nevermind the fact that traditional game types will never sell as well on the Wii because of the lack of an interested install base.
Let’s compare this advert covering all the Nintendo bases (admittedly not a direct comparison) with this Wii Sports advert with this resident evil 4 advert. Can you spot the odd one out?
Actually, to be fair to Capcom they ALMOST got it…. until they had disgusting, creepy and scary zombies invading the living room and stealing the guy’s girlfriend. I tell ya, it worked for Dr Who, so why wouldn’t it work when trying to market to a family friendly console audience?
Here’s another one – Sonic and the Black Knight which unashamedly goes straight past the welcoming world of Nintendo (TM) into the goth, emo, loner gamer stereotype. Psst, Sega, wrong audience… Again, No More Heroes….
I don’t really know what else to say other than some companies get it….like for Cooking Mama. “Surprise hit”, says Shacknews…. not according to my targeted marketing senses.
Star Wars: The boring years
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
…and so my interest in the Star Wars MMO (The Old Republic) dwindles day by day. There’s been a dev blog post on how the storyline and character classes will interact and, lucky for the players, it boils down to another dichotomy – good versus evil. Let me just put this into perspective:
There were a few decisions we made early on. First of all, there would be two distinct factions. This was Star Wars™, not Star Neutral Guy’s Adventure. When there is a war that spans an entire galaxy, nobody can stand on the sidelines. Sure Han is unaffiliated for about six minutes of the movies, but that doesn’t last long, and even if he’s not with the good guys he sure doesn’t like the Empire. The war affects everyone, even if they’d rather it didn’t.
Second, no story content would ever cross factions. Star Wars is a story about good and evil — it simply doesn’t make sense to have Jedi and Sith doing the same quests, answering the same calls to adventure, etc. Creating one batch of content for all Players would have been half the cost, taken half the time and solved any number of organizational headaches but it was simply the wrong choice from a storytelling perspective.
Which leads me to the third decision we made: No class would exist in both factions – at least at first. Each class gets its own story; no story content exists on both sides. If we did Bounty Hunters on both sides of the fence we’d have to write two different Bounty Hunter stories at the expense of a different class that was more iconic to the Republic.
Now, i’m not a professional writer or games designer so maybe my take on this is wrong but in my opinion, having a class that spans both sides of the conflict is inherently more interesting than one that is set in stone – that isn’t more easy than making a single, straight line specific story for good and evil (as Daniel tries to suggest it is) in fact it’s much harder.
One of the reasons why people like “western” RPGs is that there is usually a certain amount of ambiguity in the characters, quests and stories. Even in Knights of the Old Republic games (KotoR 1&2) your character was never railroaded into a single action – with the exception of having to drive through the main quest and defeat whatever evil lay at the end. Choice makes games interesting and meaningful…. by making the character classes one-sided you essentially have what every other MMORPG has – two sides pitted against one another. What’s worse is that you’re also in the very black and white universe of Star Wars…. it’s “the Allies vs the Nazis” in space.
In my opinion and from real world history, when there’s a world war “no one stands in the sidelines” is a very narrow view to take on a complex situation. LOTS of people stood on the sidelines and some where active dissenters who opposed war. Even in the Star Wars films, the day to day lives of the people on the planets was not affected by the actions and reactions of the rebels and Empire. No one on Tatooine was stopped from their water collecting or scavenging…. trade was still flourishing from world to world. A general rule in my book is that the larger the conflict region, the fewer people there are directly involved. Most beings are civilian and non-combatants, as alluded to in the KotoR games even the Mandalorian’s were mostly civilians (who were all but wiped out in a full-on battle for their homeworld). They may dislike who’s in charge or whoever is opposing them but they don’t take active part in their ongoings. This is especially true for conflicts that have been taking place over extended periods of time.
A class like the Bounty Hunter is ideally suited to show how war is never simple and is not black and white. There could easily be a number of professions that sit in the middle, taking part in whatever conflicts or espionage actions that their players choose for either side… after all, they are not commited to a cause like a Jedi or Sith or their respective allies/armies. Instead we appear to be stuck with World of Warcraft in space…. a nice leisurely stroll through a predetermined story based on whether we made a binary choice a the beginning of the game.
Nintendo… i hate you….
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
After the recent news that Nintendo are increasing the price of the Wii to the UK retailers, it has come to light that Wii manufacturing costs may have decreased by as much as 45% since its release in 2006.
This is terrible. Not only were Nintendo making bucket loads of cash when the Wii released because they were always making a profit on each sale but even with the change in exchange rates they were still making loads and now with the price hike they’ll be making even more! It’s just greed, horrible, horrible greed.
Personally, i hope the consumers and retailers don’t take this lying down… i just don’t get why they’re ONLY targeting the UK – if they want to gouge everyone then do it, don’t just focus on a small portion of the market. I mean the dollar (US) has decreased in comparison to the Yen as well but there’s no price hike there. This is ricidulous.
Normal Service has resumed.
Posted by The Lord of Leisure | Filed under Site News
At long last, I’m proud to say that the long running issue with Eggmen has been brought to an end and the page once again renders as it should. It appears it was down to some random HTML code in one of the posts which basically cut off the rest of the posts underneath from being displayed in the same manner.
There should be celebrations of cake right now, but suffice to say you’re more likely to enjoy the fruits of James’s labour, talking about Operation “Get behind the darkies” in Resident Evil 5….err….
We’re in trouble aren’t we?
