Attribution Error?

A common issue in business is to ascribe the success of a company directly to its executive team.  While I respect the arguments that Mitch Krpata is making with respect to Nintendo’s success, I think he may be making a mistake in attributing its Wii-related success purely to the brilliance of the company and its playbook.

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The Relevance of Gaming Media Mainstreaming

We spend a lot of time bashing gaming media, journalists, and ideas, and how disconnected they often seem from the realities of every day life.  But it’s worth thinking why the media are relevant to our broader society in the first place.  For example, I recently read an article on Pop Matters, a non-gaming site, by Rob Horning, arguing that those who play Guitar Hero are dilettantes who represent everything wrong with the country, et al.

The article rehashes a number of now-tediously familiar yet absurd arguments that I won’t bother to refute here (a simple Google search could do that relatively easily)*.  What I found so surprising about the piece was simply that it seemed to think it was coming up with a novel criticism of Guitar Hero.  It lacked almost any engagement whatsoever with a conversation that has been rehashed over and over and over within the gaming community, and advances arguments that are both logically specious and have been convincingly refuted many, many times in all sorts of places. 

This, to me, is why the gaming media are so important, and why it’s critical to connect with the broader mainstream.  Only so much of the internal gaming dialogue filters through to the larger community, and it’s impossible to have any real influence on that community’s thinking about video games if we are isolated in a sort of self-imposed exile.  Being viewed as an “other” group leads to the sort of overreactions that result in gaming bans or Hot Coffee panics.  I’m not sure if we could mitigate them entirely by more actively promoting ourselves to mainstream media outlets, but clearly a place at the table is simply a pre-requisite to real influence or thought leadership.

At worst, we’ll simply end the silly little diatribes like Horning’s.  But at best, we can have far more of an impact on how the community thinks of gamers and gaming.

Good deal

In a recent interview, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach mentioned that the current generation of console hardware will probably last longer than the last generation.  This is actually something I myself predicted not too long ago because of the financial crisis, but I think it actually makes a good deal of sense for other reasons as well.

1) The current crop of consoles debuted at higher prices than the previous gen, and therefore are still pretty expensive.  Certainly, they’ll come down in the next 2-3 years, but the cheapest PS3 is still a ways away from getting into the “mass-market” range, and even the cheapest, somewhat incomplete $200 360 is still not quite at “mass-market” pricing (and, of course, the Wii is still selling out all the time at it’s original launch price).

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Peer Pressure

What would possess an otherwise normal reviewer to give a game of the year nod to a game they didn’t like all that much?  This is an industry that takes perverse pleasure in hating things that other people like, after all, and you’d have to imagine that - when you’re not evem in a room with other people - the “pressure” you’re under is pretty much non-existent.

I can’t take a guy whose main complaint with the game is the marketing all that seriously to begin with, but to then blame other people for his problems takes a ot of chutzpah.  Offering this type of opinion up front would be of far greater use to the gaming community.

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.
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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.

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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.

Jeff’s most overrated games of 2008

Unfortunately, my list for Best game of the year is going to be a little delayed as I try and catch up on the vast quantity of games I can now get back to after completing (for now) Fallout 3 (I don’t want to give any potential contenders short-shrift).  So, to compensate, I’ll just list what I believe are the most overrated games of the year, as I think I can probably do that already.

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Video Game Theodicy

Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland asks why bad things happen to good companies, or more specifically, why EA’s strategy of diversifying into more creatively risky properties hasn’t paid off.  I’m as sorry as she is that EA may shy away from this strategy in light of damaging blows to its stock performance.  But let me suggest that EA (and possibly we) may be drawing the easier, but more likely incorrect, lessons from this scenario.

Let me begin by challenging the basic premise of Alexander’s post: “A kinder, more creative EA does not make money.”

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