Interlude From Africa

As you might have surmised, I’m on vacation (in Africa for several weeks).  My internet access is slow, periodic, and unreliable, but I did have a quick thought on the rebirth of EGM.  I guess I just don’t get how an online magazine solves the central problem that EGM had, which is that magazines are periodic by nature, whereas many sites (like Joystiq, which reported this) update continuously with new content as soon as it’s available.  I don’t see how any kind of periodical can compete unless it takes a dramatically different approach with its content - more editorial, less reporting-focused.

Ghostbusters Impressions

I have played Ghostbusters, and it is good.  Better, in fact, than I think the current Metacritic rating of 78 would portend. 

You can really tell how much attention to detail was lavished on this game.  The firehouse and levels from the movie are beautifully rendered, the voice acting and writing are top-notch, and the gameplay makes you feel like you actually are a ghostbuster.  In fact, after re-watching a (sponsored, natch) presentation of the movie recently, I was surprised to see just how many beloved locations and characters showed back up in the game. 

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Wii Are The Audience

I have a problem understanding how reviewers’ misunderstanding of the core Wii audience is relevant to games’ success, as Eurogamer reports that David Braben believes.

Reviews are either important to the large majority of Wii gamers or they’re not.  If the latter, then reviews aren’t important by definition.  If they are, then they read Metacritic or they don’t.  If the latter, then again, the reviews don’t matter.  If they do, then poor reviews are again, definitionally important to the main Wii audience. 

I tend to agree with Peter Moore in that core gamers pay attention to reviews, but the majority of the Wii gaming audience does not, and therefore that reviews are fairly irrelevant because of that.  But there’s no condition in which Metacritic scores will impact Wii game sales unless Metacritic-aggregated reviewers are also important to that audience.

Burnout

Mitch Krpata of Insult Swordfighting argues here that gamer burnout is a function of gamers getting too into a game, rather than not enough.  I would tend to agree that burnout is often a function of the length of playtime.  That said, I think that perhaps Krpata is confusing the technical definition of work with what we typically mean by the term in this context.

Undeniably, it takes a great deal of effort to get through many games, like Fallout 3 as is cited in the post.  That said, I got burned out by WoW in a way I never did by Fallout, because when I say that the former felt like “work” I meant that it became harder and harder for me to find the intrinsic value of my labor.

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Misanthropy

This is more of a thought than a post, but a Benjamin Quintero post on why he prefers single-player to multiplayer games struck a nerve given the comments on Left 4 Dead 2 earlier on this blog.  I loved L4D but played it a lot less than many other games in part because it was multiplayer, which meant that it was less convenient.  If I wanted to play with friends, which generally I find much preferable to strangers for a whole host of reasons (they won’t drop out of pique, I trust that they won’t spray the airwaves with racist profanity, and I know how good they are, among others). 

But given that it’s harder to to set up and play - you need to make sure friends are online, that they’re interested in playing, that they’re at the same level of proficiency in the game as you - which are all very difficult to ensure if you’re not as dedicated as they are to the game as they are, I much prefer a game I can pick up and play whenever I have a spare moment.  I appreciate the additional dimensions that a game like CoD4 and L4D can bring to a console game, but the busier I get, the more I value single player experiences.

Nothing To Apologize For

I find myself in the odd position of both wholeheartedly agreeing with Michael Pachter’s feelings and disagreeing with his walk-back of them.  I don’t often defend Pachter, whose profession I view as a modern analogue of the prehistoric entrail reader, but he was absolutely correct to voice his opinion publicly.  For those who don’t know, he ran afoul of Sony when he termed the new PSP Go a “rip-off” - a comment he based on the assumption that, if the PSP-3000 were profitable at $169/unit, the new PSP Go (which lacks some of the components) is overpriced at $250.

It’s certainly true that as a professional analyst, and not a gaming consumer, Pachter has the obligation to sever his private consumer-centric feelings from his objective view of the companies he covers.  That said, seen in context, the comments were clearly a professional opinion:

“On a recent episode of Bonus Round, Pachter matter of factly states, ‘$249 is too much. Period.’ He goes on to say that while the handheld is priced to compete with Apple’s $229 8GB iPod Touch, it doesn’t deliver the iTunes App Store or downloadable music from iTunes (as conveniently, at least, as the iPod Touch).”

Pachter is clearly voicing his opinion of how consumers will see the product and its impact on the marketplace, not his personal feelings about whether or not he would feel like purchasing it.  Since sales of the PSP Go are directly and obviously relevant to Morgan Wedbush’s customers, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Pachter would have a point of view on the subject, nor that he would express those views publicly. 

Obviously, Sony doesn’t want anybody of prominence badmouthing their new product, and so I understand their aggressive response.  But as far as I see things, Pachter’s got nothing to apologize for.

Zenonia

A review from Kotaku sums up my feelings.  Regardless of the difficult movement controls, which are never even close to as crisp as Zelda, it’s a pretty astonishing achievement for an iPhone game and I’d recommend it to iPhone or Touch owners.

Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing

I’m always struck by convention season, because it seems like a time in which we’re provided with enormous quantities of data but not much in the way of information.  E3 is a good time to reflect on this for me because it’s perhaps the oldest quintessential example.  We’ve been treated to days of end-to-end, wall-to-wall coverage of new games, ideas, and consoles.  And yet, all we’re really getting are glorified press releases - previews with some basic impressions and, if you’re lucky enough to be at the conference, a minute or two of hands-on experience. 

Perhaps just as significantly, we’re being shown the product of a great deal of effort rather than the creative process that generates that change.  In fact, it seems like the events that really move the industry are the small, incremental changes and concepts that occur throughout the year, while the release of a new game that sparks chatter online is rarely concentrated at the same time.  This is as much a function of the structure of E3 and related shows as anything else.  And yet, we’re pumped every time the latest show comes around.  Ironic.

Complaining About Human Nature?

Michael Abbott of Brainy Gamer is disappointed with E3 because he views it as a “retrenchment” of “male power fantasies” where a lone male hero is sent out to wreak retribution and/or vengeance.  The message he concludes this sends to gamers:

‘We’re bringing you bigger, edgier, and more visually arresting versions of the games we brought you last year, and the year before that. Sure, we’ve got casual games too, and a new slate of appalling games for girls; but we know you know where the action is.’

Abbott is always thoughtful, and I appreciate his sincere pursuit of storytelling exploration in gaming, but I worry he’s blaming the effect here rather than the cause.  Yes, it’s true that many of these games are sequels.  But the publishers aren’t dictating that people buy them because of some desire to impose their demands on gamers - they’re making these games because the first ones sold well.  In effect, gamers told them to do this.  The fact that the topics aren’t particularly imaginative is perhaps relevant but a certainly reflection of mass taste rather than publisher obduracy.

This isn’t particularly surprising - elite tastes have rarely comported with those of the masses in any medium.  But I would caution thoughtful gamers and commentators not to take this as a personal insult, but rather a reflection of reality.  The terrible economic climate is necessarily making companies more risk-averse, certainly, but it’s not changing their priorities.  Rather, it’s cutting off the long tails of their production schedules, in which the riskiest and most experimental games tend to reside.

Finally, let’s be careful about blaming the victim.  It’s definitely reasonable to lament the lack of a given attribute in gaming today.  Yet we should be cautious not to minimize the progress made so far, nor to cast stones at our fellow gamers because we simply don’t agree with them.

Value Capture

Can someone explain to me the value proposition to gamers behind downloadable games from Xbox Live?  The only - and I mean only - benefits I can see from this development are for console manufacturers, since most everyone else loses.

• Retailers no longer get to provide distribution or act as a middle man for the publishers, losing revenue and margin.
• Publishers presumably lose margin to the console manufacturers (and may get cut out of the loop entirely, since their distribution and packaging functions disappear).
• Developers find that their choice of console is ever more important to their existence and lose even more negotiating leverage.
• Gamers get to pay essentially the same amount of money for a significantly cheaper product, yet have to compress it onto fixed hard drive space, lose the tangible product of a CD/DVD, and potentially subject themselves to ever more intrusive DRM and support restrictions (and anything else companies seize on to further “monetize” their content).

Perhaps more worrisome, I don’t see this even being reported in the mainstream press… it’s like gamers have decided to collectively plug their ears with their fingers.  Hopefully this does not catch on.