Weekly Column 7/24/08

Our new column is up here.  It talks about E3 and whether or not it’s actually “dead” as many want us to believe.

And just to point out, I actually wrote this before this news came out.

Nintendo either doesn’t care or doesn’t understand “core” gamers any more

Before E3, undoubtedly hearing complaints that they didn’t care about the core gamer any more, Nintendo said that core gamers would be happy with their E3 showing.  Well, most of the gaming press was pretty disappointed with their press conference, so Nintendo then claimed that Animal Crossing was a “hardcore” title, and then also reversed positions and claimed that actually, they weren’t targeting the core with E3.  Still not satisfied, enterprising journalists followed-up with them again where they reiterated that the hardcore market is “critically important” to them and pointed to Super Mario Sluggers and the as of yet unseen GTA DS as proof.  Realizing that the community was still clearly unsatisfied, in a somewhat amazing development, Nintendo’s President Iwata finally issued an apology for the weak press conference.  But in his apology, he also reveals that he may not really understand core gamers any more:

 ”If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it’s a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means. We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings, specifically for those who were expecting to see Nintendo show something about ‘Super Mario’ or ‘Legend of Zelda.’”

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Posted in Nintendo, Commentary, E3 | 11 Comments »

Not That I’m Complaining

Quick, what do the following headlines have in common?

“EA’s Latest Take-Two Offer Expires Today”

“GP on Joystiq: Requiem for a Heavyweight”

“Military Using Game Controllers to Pilot Drones, Disarm Bombs”

“Pachter: E3 Headed for Extinction”"EA Extends Deadline for Take-Two Shares; Zelnick Says T2 Has “Multiple” Would-be Acquirers”

If you said that they’re all unrelated to politics, you’d be right!  However, we’d also accept: “What is fully 1/3 of the current headlines on GamePolitics.com?”  (Admittedly, you could make an argument for the military one, but that’s at best a degree removed.)  They can publish whatever they want, but they might want to rethink the branding.

Do We Really Want An E3?

E3 went out with more of a whimper than a bang this year, and the consensus seems to be that it was largely unsuccessful - especially compared with the festivities of years past.  That said, do we really need the glitzy, booth-babed E3 of yesteryear?  I’d argue that we’re all better off with the party in its current state.

Previously, E3 served a few functions: it celebrated the past years’ winners and losers, it provided enormous quantities of new game and company information, it provided a glamorous spectacle for attendees, and it conveyed a sense of accomplishment - a monument to the idea that gaming was mainstream and important.  Yet most of these rationales are now at best passe and at worst counterproductive.

First, we have a multitude of ways to reward the successful and mock our failures.  Gaming awards are almost ubiquitous online and have a number of offline venues as well.  As a result, it’s no longer as important to have a single, unifying event to highlight such things… we have made reporting largely self-sustaining.  Second, E3 encouraged many companies to hold their news and important announcements for the festival itself.  But this wasn’t really very good for gamers; we had to wait for an artificial deadline to receive news that now trickles out on a near-constant basis.  If there were no bombshell announcements this year, it’s because those announcements have become much more evenly distributed.  Third, the spectacle itself benefited industry insiders and well-connected journalists, but was largely inaccessible to the rest of the gaming population (even if you were able to travel to California in the first place).  As interesting as E3 sounded, it wasn’t possible for most people to attend.  You’ll forgive me if I begrudge the luckier amongst us their sushi canapes and late-night parties… I understand why they’re missed, but I doubt the majority of gamers will be losing any sleep over it.  And the money can probably be better spent.  And finally, gaming has attained, if not mainstream acclaim, at least legitimacy.  We no longer need to proclaim our value to the world; gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that commands its own respect and marshals its own heroes and villains onto the global stage.  As a result, the need for such a spectacle as E3 has waned, becoming incorporated into the daily actions of hosts of marketing and PR professionals, gaming media, and interested bystanders. 

So will we lose anything with E3?  I continue to think that the ESA is an important organization, at least as far as its mission is concerned (if not the ESA in particular).  Gaming may have achieved a measure of respectability, but like all media it will remain a target of opportunistic politicians, unscrupulous journalists, and demagogues everywhere.  Having a group dedicated to fighting against those perceptions will, I think, remain as critical in the future as it does now.  And that’s why I’m concerned to read speculation about the ESA being further weakened by the poor E3 showing and its recent membership departures. 

I’d also suggest that E3 offers some value in unifying what is a highly fragmented market under the same roof - showing the connections between hardware and software platforms across the gaming spectrum.  But in general, the bad probably outweighs the good.

Stop Reflexively Bashing EA

EA takes a lot of flak from gamers and the gaming press, and some of it is undeserved.  For example, the idea that EA publishes nothing but me-too sequels: see Penny Arcade’s amazement that the company is publishing Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, two of the more anticipated games coming out of E3 this year.

But EA is also the company publishing Spore.  And Rock Band.  And Crysis, and the Sims, and a ton of other intriguing games that are or were - if not fully ahead of their time - at least doing their part to move the industry forward a little bit at a time.  Sure, they put out a ton of crap as well, and they, like any other large company, milk franchises long after they stop becoming interesting.  But the firm’s doing a decent job attempting to decentralize its management of the group’s developers, and it seems like it’s starting to pay off. 

There’s a tendency for gamers to put on blinders once they’ve categorized a company, and EA is no exception.  Viewing them as the Evil Empire is far too simplistic for what’s really going on there.  And it’s silly to be so shocked by outcomes like Dead Space, because anyone paying tatention to the industry can see that complexity.

Worst. Excuse. Ever.

So, Bungie’s new project was supposedly going to be unveiled this week and was called off at the last minute.  Why?

Bungie wasn’t really saying except that their “publisher” was responsible for it.  Said publisher turned out to be, unsurprisingly, Microsoft, as the LA Times discovered.  What was their excuse?

Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Xbox games business, said the company decided to pull Halo …

… to help trim its E3 presentation to under 90 minutes, from 2 1/2 hours, to accommodate attention-challenged reporters. “We had an embarrassment of riches,” Mattrick said. “We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event.”

This has to be one of the lamest excuses I’ve ever heard, and is not believable at all.  If this is true, then Microsoft is being ridiculously stupid here.  Bungie had been hyping a big reveal for weeks on their website, so the stage was already set for them to make a big splash.  And when you have an “embarrassment” of riches to show, you don’t hold back on your biggest franchise from your most successful developer at the biggest (or one of the biggest now) industry-specific events just because you think you already have so much great stuff to show (which something like “You’re in the Movies” would seem to disprove).

Some have theorized that they didn’t want to take away from their Final Fantasy XIII announcement, but that honestly doesn’t make much sense to me.  Do they really believe that people couldn’t get excited for more than one thing at a time? Instead of just “Wow, FFXIII coming out to the 360!” it’d be “Wow, FFXIII coming to the 360 AND this awesome new Halo game!  I’m sure happy to be a 360 gamer now!”  No, I’m sorry… if you have something good to show, you show it at what is arguably the most important trade show in the industry (or at least, it used to be).

Which brings up what may be the more likely reason it wasn’t shown yet: it wasn’t good, or, at least, it wasn’t ready.  Based on how one bad E3 experience can potentially (unfairly) shape the future of your game (ahem), maybe Microsoft just didn’t think the game was in a good enough state to show yet.  I don’t really have a problem with this, but it’s strange that they would give such a weird excuse rather than just tell the truth.  If Bungie ends up revealing their game in just a week or so and it looks amazing, I’ll admit I was wrong, but right now I don’t believe their excuse for a second.

We’ll Do it Live!

It seems the “in” thing to do in survival horror games now is to make accessing your inventory occur in real-time.  That is, when you access your inventory, the game is still “live” and you are open to take hits.  This was the case in the recently released Alone in the Dark game, it is apparently going to be the case in Resident Evil 5, and the Dead Space Producer is bragging that you can’t even pause his game (which I have to imagine, or at least hope he means that you handle your inventory “live”, and not that there’s literally not a pause function in the game, as that may be the one single feature that no publisher in their right mind would ever ship a game without).

I’ll keep this relatively short, but my question is, is this really a good thing?  I like keeping the action moving and having the ability to “quick swap” weapons as you’re now able to in RE5, but I do know that it was helpful in RE4 to sometimes take a look at what’s in your inventory (even in the middle of a fight) and consider what your options might be.  According to the Dead Space Producer, this is exactly what they want me to avoid now, though.  Certainly, this probably creates more tension, but does it also decrease the usability of the game at the same time?  Is the trade-off worth it?

Prince of Persia’s Stunning Trailer

I have to say that if the game is as good as this trailer is beautiful, Ubisoft has a big winner on its hands.  The inclusion of a Sigur Rós song for this trailer was a good choice, although their music always has such a powerful meloncholic affect on me.  I wonder if the game will actually evoke this same mood.  Hopefully, the trailer is not deceptive in this sense, but the artistic style is certainly appropriate for it.

You’ll love it, we swear

Note to Nintendo: when you show a new peripheral, in this case the WiiMotionPlus, make sure we understand what it’s good for and why we need it.  It looks like they demoed just Wii Sports Resort with it, but no other announcements with it or what it really allows developers to do with it.

Incidentally, Wii Sports Resort would be even better if they put the original Wii Sports on the disc as well, sort of creating a “platform” as Rock Band is doing.  They could even add in support for the “WiiMotionPlus” to make the original games even better (if it actually does anything, since they didn’t really make the advantages very clear).

As for Nintendo’s conference overall… it was a bit of a bore.  I didn’t expect it to compete with Microsoft’s because Nintendo and Microsoft are quite honestly playing different games at this point. But I was hoping to at least see an interesting new franchise (for the “core” gamers they supposedly still care about) or at least an update to one of their popular franchises (and Wii Music and Animal Crossing don’t really count).  I really thought we’d at least see a teaser for a new Zelda, or didn’t they announce or strongly hint at a new Kid Icarus game at some point? Instead it seemed to be mostly numbers with a few games that I didn’t really care for, and then telling me that I should “disrupt my thinking” and escape the Matrix so that I care.  As with seemingly everything they produce, though, I’m sure they’ll sell a trillion copies.

Intelligent Criticism

Insult Swordfighting asks whether people really want intelligent criticism (and highlights an interesting GSW feature in which various “intelligent” commentators are interviewed about their writing and experiences - unsurprisingly, we were not featured).  Many of these writers are also contributors to mainstream journalism sites or publications, and so hearing their views on why they run a blog is a fascinating endeavor.

The conclusion IS draws is that, although mainstream pieces draw far more traffic than the typical niche blog noted, readers are slowly and inexorably being drawn to more sophisticated critiques of gaming.  I don’t necessarily disagree - in fact, this site is predicated on that assumption - although I would note that many of the most insightful blogs are still written from the perspective of industry insiders: developers, professional journalists, and so on.  As a result, journalism that truly tackles gamer-specific issues is more nascent than might otherwise appear to be the case.

There is, of course, something to be said about a site where writers feel that they can truly share their musings.  At the same time, it’s worth contemplating that so many people spend their time writing in a voice they don’t think is truly theirs.