Game On

I take  back my previous comment about not seeing much gaming in Australia.  I arrived in Brisbane yesterday and today was able to check out the Game On exhibition at the Brisbane library. 

Game On is intended to be an overview of the gaming industry and includes a number of different playable games , including a wall screen-projected Pong at the entranceway.  The exhibit was quite interesting, particularly insofar as it got an incredibly diverse group of people through its doors.  I saw a woman earnestly attempting to play Super Mario Bros. 3 amidst numerous pointers from her son; nothing that engages non-gamers effectively can be a bad thing.
Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year!

2008 turned out to be a much better year than I expected it to be as far as games went, which is what’s ultimately delaying my “Best of” list.  But what will 2009 bring us?

Right now, I can’t think of all that much, but 2008 originally looked similar.  Off the top of my head, here’s what I’m looking most forward to:

1. Resident Evil 5
2. God of War 3
3. Fallout 3 DLC
4. A new Rock Band?
5. A new Zelda?

I’m also keeping an eye on Killzone 2, as it’s getting better previews than I expected.  We’ll see, though.

What’s everyone else looking forward to?

Your body is a temple (of doom)

The media have been tossing around this story about a study that found a correlation between the idealized or hyperidealized bodies of videogame characters and body image in gamers. It’s one of those O RLY? conclusions that is the result of almost every social psychology experiment: Gamers who played games featuring hot-bodied characters of their own gender had poorer body self-esteem, even after a mere 15 minutes of gaming.

It’s not the conclusion, per se, I take issue with; like I said, the goal of social psych experiments is, in essence, to scientifically validate obviousness. What bothers me is the fact that this scientifically un-rigorous “study” was published in an actual journal (which has, if I may revert to 13 years old, the best name ever) and is getting press attention.
Read the rest of this entry »

Duly missed

Kotaku points out a post at thegamereviews.com that notes that this is the first year in a decade that didn’t see a new Zelda game released.  This is actually something that perhaps most people don’t really think about, instead only thinking about the “main” games in the series, but as it turns out, I’ve played to completion nearly every game on that list (I never played Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask, and have not completed Phantom Hourglass).

I knew there was something missing this year.

Hello From Oz

So not much video game playing in Australia that I’ve been able to see myself, although obviously the industry is pretty big here.  Of course, with so much to do, I’m not all that surprised.

In any case, thought I’d just drop a quick comment here then on this article.  The WSJ notes that hope appears to be fading for the PS3 as a “comeback player,” to which I would say, obviously.  I can’t think of a console that was lagging substantively several years into a generation that would be able to make the leap back into the lead.  That’s the nature of a console generation: support initially leads to additional developer and consumer support, and it becomes a self-sustaining cycle.  There’s definitely room in the early days for changes to occur, but it’s been over two years - when you consider that the average productive time for most consoles is around 5-7 years, the cycle makes it difficult to come back in a major way. 

That said, the fact that the PS3 isn’t as big a success as the PS2 is to be expected… the PS2 was an outlier in the landscape of most consumer electronics devices (in terms of overall success), and as such, you can’t expect blockbusters every time.  A modest success - or disappointment - now will at least set Sony up for a strong effort next time round.

The President should play videogames

Kotaku links to a Leno sketch which reveals a supposed portrait of George W Bush holding an XBox 360 controller (which is obviously fake).  While it’s sort of funny to think that perhaps all of our country’s problems are due to a President who just played videogames all the time, I wouldn’t mind if our President, and for that matter, any of our political leaders, actually played SOME video games.  There are a few reasons for this:

1. Videogames are becoming an increasingly bigger industry, estimated to exceed $57 Billion in revenue worldwide this year, a 35% increase from 2007 despite the worst financial crisis since the great depression hitting.  It seems like our political leaders should have some understanding of this increasingly important industry.
2. Relating to this, playing videogames is a relatively cheap form of entertainment which is easily done at home, something extremely relevant as people stay in their homes more often during the financial crisis.
3. The more our leaders understand video games, the less they’ll demonize them, and the less they’ll be used as a scapegoat rather than focusing on our real problems.

Barack Obama has mentioned before that his daughters have a Wii.  I realize that he is going to be the leader of the free world in a little under a month with far more important things to think about and work on, but I hope even then he has a little bit of time to play it with them sometimes.  Even Presidents need a break once in awhile and if he is able to use even just a tiny fraction of his extremely minimal free time to do something millions of people worldwide also do with their own free time every day, I’ll take it.

IGN gets its GOTY right, but its ratings wrong

IGN has released its console-specific GOTY awards and Fallout 3 has come out on top with the top honors for the XBox 360, which is something I can fully agree with.  What’s odd about it, however, is that Fallout 3 received a 9.6 from IGN just a couple months ago while GTA IV received a perfect 10 when it came out earlier this year.

Now, I’m sensitive to the fact that “better” games can come out later and receive worse scores than earlier, lesser games.  Certainly, game reviews are but a snapshot in time and the context of when something comes out is certainly going to color the rating.  This actually can happen all the time when “clones” of originally innovative games come out… they’re typically “better” than the original because the developer was able to build on top of what came before it, but will receive a lesser score simply because it’s no longer innovative.  There’s nothing particularly wrong with that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mainstreaming Piracy

I’m not a piracy absolutist.  There was a period in the early part of the millenium when I was actually starting to think that it was becoming mainstream enough that it would actually begin to hurt the music industry (I don’t think gaming is quite there yet).  And so I understand counter-piracy measures that don’t severely and adversely impact law-abiding gamers.

Apropos of this, Mark Methenitis of Joystiq’s Law of the Game proposes that the game industry consider a variant on the RIAA’s strategy of using ISPs as their deputized policemen.  But I’ll be honest, allowing your ISP to determine whether or not you’re a pirate (IP address enforcement being a fairly unreliable methodology) seems like a lousy idea that will hurt pretty much everyone without doing much to deter piracy.  As Methenitis notes, probably a bigger concern is international piracy trafficking in hard copies of software. 

I bring this up because it seems to me that the biggest danger of piracy is in the attitude of countries towards it.  On the average college campus, students know that piracy is “wrong” but for a variety of reasons do it anyway.  But when I was in China, my Chinese counterparts saw absolutely no problem with stopping into a shop for a bootleg movie or PS2 disc.  And perhaps because of this, at least to some extent, the black market is actually a viable competitor to the real gaming industry… not a simple annoyance.  When these attitudes let piracy flourish to this extent, I start thinking that there may be a real problem for companies in that environment.  Perhaps some of the enormous sums of money now devoted to anti-piracy efforts could start working on developing more long-term strategies for these countries, like concrete notions of property rights; they may ultimately have more impact on gaming’s viability.

The Point Of Combat

I’m skiing in Colorado so sorry for the light posting. 

Patrick Klepek of MTV Multiplayer makes an interesting point about combat in video games via Fallout 3.  He says that he doesn’t like the game as much now that he’s hit the level cap and combat is now boring (since it has no intrinsic reward).  It made me think a bit about the purpose of combat in gaming; I think I see three main types.

The first is where combat serves as an obstacle.  In an FPS like Half-Life, the enemies aren’t particularly difficult on an individual basis, but there are a ton of them and they serve as a barrier between the player and the end of the level (the goal).  Left 4 Dead is perhaps a prime example of this - your goal isn’t to kill zombies per se but to get around them to reach the safehouse.  As a result, the reward is related but mostly disconnected from the combat.

The second type is where the enemies are intended to be a means to an end, like in an RPG like WoW or Fallout.  The enemies are perhaps slightly harder than in the first example, but you’re mainly concerned with what they give you (experience or items usually) rather than the enemies themselves. 

Finally, there are games where the combat is intended to be inherently interesting.  This may be in the form of a complex puzzle like in Shadow of the Colossus, a boss pattern memorization such as Ikaruga, or in its purest form, a fighting game like Soul Calibur or Tekken.  These games are the ones where the most care is lavished on the enemy design and combat engine because it alone needs to hold player interest.

Since Fallout involves the second type, it makes sense that once Klepek finished obtaining those rewards he was no longer interested in fighting - people do what you reward them for.  But it seems interesting to me that in only one game is fighting really the point of the game; it suggests to me that even “violent” games may have much different lessons to teach than we might initially think.

Talking To Myself (Part II)

Part II involves Stephen Totilo’s responses to Chris Suellentrop’s questions.

1.  Is the PlayStation 3 now a system that a serious gamer really should own?

Totilo responds that a serious gamer should own every console.  Frankly, this strikes me as a very flip response to a question with many connotations.  First, what on earth is a “serious gamer”?  It sounds almost oxymoronic to me, and Totilo’s response implies that anyone who doesn’t own three consoles, two handhelds, and a PC is not “serious” about gaming.  More to the point, if a serious gamer is a professional gamer, complete with expense account and tax write-offs, perhaps owning every console is financially and temporally affordable.  For the vast majority of us, however, this isn’t a feasible option - we have to pick and choose.

I don’t own a PS3, and barring an unexpected price drop, I don’t plan to.  There are very few exclusives these days, and owning MGS4 and LBP doesn’t pass the bar for me to shell out $400 on a new PlayStation.  Does this mean I’ll miss some things?  Sure, but it won’t be all that much; I would hardly say that the PS3 is integral to the gaming landscape at the moment.  The question itself strikes me as important mainly for the connotations that it has (an implicit socioeconomic and professional skew) rather than the question itself.

2.  Is the Wii a commercial success but a critical flop?

The short answer is “yes,” since this is an empirical question.  But Totilo responds that it’s a “critical flop only to the critics who don’t like having fun with a group of people gathered around their TV. “  I have a Wii.  I played Rayman and really enjoyed it.  I’ve also played Okami, and Zelda, and Mario Galaxy was great.  But I haven’t played it much since… and so to me it fails the ultimate test, which is how much I actually use the thing.  I’ve noticed the same thing with a lot of friends who are casual about gaming at best.  They like to pull it out every so often, but it’s a toy, not a gaming device - like Catchphrase.  And they don’t buy new games for it, either.  To the extent that the critics are panning the Wii, I think it’s indicative of usage, not just a critical snobbery.

Critics these days are caught between two countervailing winds: on the one hand, they want to pine freely for ” game with the elegant gameplay and level design of Gears of War 2 but with the story of The Force Unleashed. But I want it told in a manner like Braid—or even You Have To Burn the Rope—meaning, a telling of the tale that is consistent with the promise and the mechanics of this Fourth Medium (or Eighth Art Form).”  On the other hand, they want to celebrate games’ reeform accessibility and multiple, unexplored uses (e.g., Wii Fit, or Braid) and to deride the hardcore gamer for his unyielding focus on FPS shooters and JRPGs.  I worry that they substitute at times one ghetto for another.