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.

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.

Fallout Fall-out

I was very interested in Fallout 3 (the original is a long-time favorite), but now that I’ve veiwed the demo footage I’m very much underwhelmed.  They’ve taken a great deal of what made the franchise unique - a turn-based, tactical RPG - and turned it into a slightly modified FPS, a post-apocalyptic Oblivion.  It may be a fine RPG, but it’s not really Fallout.

An Lament To Paul W.S. Anderson

Look, I know that Anderson’s movies are almost uniformly terrible.  And I know that they’ve been almost uniformly treated as such, since he hasn’t had a commercial success since Mortal Kombat (and perhaps Resident Evil, which wasn’t a very big-budget film).  In fact, the only reason I assume studios let him direct is because they think gamers are idiots who will buy anything with a brand name on it.  So maybe this complaint is unhelpful.  But here goes nothing.  By what logic does it make sense to license a video game franchise, and then write a script for it that eliminates nearly every distinctive connection to that franchise?  This is not a rhetorical question. 

This isn’t good for gamers.  We don’t get the movie translation of the game we wanted, and so we’re less likely to be excited about the movie, less likely to see the movie, and less likely to talk it up to friends.

This isn’t good for studios.  A generic movie that’s unconnected to the franchise means that studios have shelled out a substantial licensing fee for no reason except to put the word Castlevania on it.  Since gamers who like the franchise are the only ones who care about that name, and you’re dragging it through the mud, the value of that word is nearly non-existent (or at worst negative if they take to the internet to complain). 

This isn’t good for theaters.  People who are at best indifferent to your movie, and at worst, openly antagonistic, aren’t paying $10.50 a pop to sit in an uncomfortable theater with loud children and overpriced food to see it.

This isn’t good for directors.  You’ve already stacked the deck against your future success.  Anderson may have more directorial lives than a Hindu cat, but his luck has to run out eventually.  No one’s going to pay for a director to make films that lose money.

This isn’t good for general audiences.  Another generic, vaguely vampire-themed movie with no discernable differences from any other?  Yawn.  That’ll stand out in a crowded market.

So who does this help?

Smoke In The Crystal Ball

Hal Halpin of the ECA takes a close look at some popular gaming predictions over at The Escapist.  Unsurprisingly, he views many of the futurist predictions as unlikely; when you consider that previous predictions in all sorts of industries have generally been wildly off-base, his skepticism isn’t really all that surprising.  People just aren’t very good at extrapolating across huge swaths of time - in part because technological change happens so quickly and unpredictably.

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Korearama

Hot on the heels of my own comments on Joystiq comes a GameSetWatch piece on Korea as well.  Worth reading, although it’s more from the perspective of a developer than a gamer per se.  I’ve seen a few links from related sites as well (Kotaku, Massively, etc.).

Guess Who We Won’t Have To Kick Around Any More

Judge recommends permanent disbarment for Jack Thompson.  Considering that Thompson has been more active (and considerably more effective) as a rabble-rouser than as a lawyer, I’m not sure if this will make a huge difference in his day-to-day activities, but ouch.

Men Are From Mars

Multiplayer Blog asks an interesting question: should female characters and male characters be treated differently, if those differences are reflected in real life?  For example, should men be stronger than women?  The responses are interesting but, largely because the readers fail to state the question they’re answering, inconclusive.

To me, this is really three different and related questions:

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