Demon’s Souls an experiment in design over accessibility

Demon’s Souls, as you may have heard, is a difficult game.  There is no “Easy” mode that you can play to just make it through the game.  The tutorial is very brief and basic and actually doesn’t give you nearly enough information about the game before it literally ends in your death.  Unlike other unforgiving games like Ninja Gaiden that ask if you want to reduce the difficulty after you die, Demon’s Souls actually takes away half your maximum life and makes the game even harder (and getting back that half of your life is not an easy task).  And if that weren’t bad enough, every time you die you drop all of your experience/money (they are one and the same in the game), and can only recover them if you make it back to where you died the first time from the beginning of the level (the game auto-saves this, so no cheating your way out of death).  Oh, and there’s no “pause” function in the game.  Yes, really.

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Is Dante’s Inferno a step forward or backward?

Every time I read about Dante’s Inferno I have conflicting feelings about it. Having only read about it, there are aspects of it that I both admire and question.  In this way, I wonder whether Dante’s Inferno is actually a step forward or backward for the game industry as a whole.  Here are some points I’ve been considering:

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Wherein I join the ranks of the RRODed…

I suppose I was foolish to ever think that I had dodged a bullet with my XBox 360.  As countless other publications declared 100% failure rates with their XBox 360s, I thought that, perhaps, since I was not a “professional” game journalist that my well-ventilated 360 born circa April 2006 would just survive to tell its story to the next generation of consoles. How naive.

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BREAKING: Sellers set their own prices for their own products

In a stunning realization, gamers discovered that the people who develop and produce their beloved games are actually allowed to determine their own price for the products they make.  Tempers flared in the gaming community when it was announced that the PC version of publisher Activision Blizzard’s Modern Warfare 2 would cost $60, prompting a possible boycott.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said avid button-masher Joe McCrybaby.  “I always just figured that there was some law that dictated that games were $50, especially PC games.  When I found out that wasn’t the case, I was shocked.”

Infinity Ward, the developers of the game, noted that publishers have been able to set the prices of games for years.

“There is precedent for this, believe it or not,” said Infinity Ward’s Community Manager Robert Bowling. “In the past, publishers have been able to determine what they thought was a fair value for their game.  This would sometimes lead to bargain games like Serious Sam for $20.  On the other end of the spectrum, Warcraft III originally debuted at $60.  We believe that’s a fair price for our game as well.”

McCrybaby reacted to this explanation with anger.

“Sure, less than $50 is fine.  But anything more than that is crap.  Blizzard learned their lesson after trying to pull that crap with Warcraft III.”

When it is pointed out that Warcraft III actually set sales records when it came out, McCrybaby simply complained that it would’ve done a lot better if it had debuted at the $50 pricepoint.

“A lot of people boycotted that game then just like I’m going to boycott Modern Warfare 2 now.  I’ll have plenty of other things to play anyway like Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero, World of Warcraft and even Starcraft 2 is probably right around the corner!”

Activision Blizzard is the publisher of all of those games, as well as Modern Warfare 2.

*Note: This is satire.  None of the quotes above are real and no interviews took place.

Left 4 Braindead

Left 4 Dead was a successful game.  It reviewed well, sold a lot of copies on both Xbox 360 and PC and has built up a solid and dedicated community with its compelling co-op and versus modes, as well as some free updates released by Valve.  So naturally, Valve is making an (allegedly) improved sequel and announced it at E3.  So we have a successful game with a dedicated fanbase followed up with an obvious sequel.  Instant recipe for success, right?

Apparently not, as that dedicated fanbase for the game is apparently made up of whiny babies who aren’t satisfied with the dozens or likely even hundreds of hours of enjoyment they’ve already gotten for their $50-$60 game purchase.  A boycott?  Great… less whiny babies on chat for the sequel.  I admit that many of the new features that are being touted sound like they could be patched in or released as DLC for the current Left 4 Dead… but I’m sorry, I just don’t have that much sympathy for a group of alleged fans who not only have probably gotten well worth their purchase, but are probably the same kind of people that buy new Call of Duties, Maddens, Rock Bands and Guitar Heroes every year.

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Sony still doesn’t understand the price/value proposition

Sony just officially announced the PSP Go at E3 (which, as described by Kaz Hirai himself was not really a secret any more), which amounts to a slightly smaller PSP with no UMD drive and slide-out controller.  While I’m personally skeptical that a fully digital portable game device is something most consumers want, I could see how it could fill a particular niche in the market.  However, Sony appears intent on pricing the PSP Go out of consideration for, I’m guessing, the vast majority of their potential customers.  The PSP Go will retail for $250 when it debuts, compared to the retail price of $170 for the current PSP-3000 (the PSP-2000 can still be found and is even less than that).

So, let me see if I understand this.  I have a choice between a product with a larger screen, full backwards and forwards compatibility with games (UMD discs) that can be resold if necessary or another system that is slightly more portable (because its smaller), but doesn’t play UMD discs so cannot play virtually every game already released for the system and cannot be resold if you wanted.  I would think that the choice between those would be fairly obvious, and that’s before I even take into account any price.  Even so, the $80 difference would certainly be a big enough difference to seal my choice.  I’m sorry, the PSP Go basically adds no value to the PSP… in fact, it subtracts a tremendous value from it unless the only thing you care about is having something a little smaller.

Sony’s mistake here seems to be that they are pricing the PSP Go as an upgrade from the PSP 3000, rather than an alternative.  I haven’t seen anything to suggest that it is the former, so it seems very much the latter, and it should be priced to reflect that.

Fallujah, Art, and Ebert

I wanted to add some of my own thoughts in addition to Geoff’s excellent post on the game 6 Days in Fallujah.

I generally agree with what Geoff has to say, but I think the “controversy” arises from a feeling that maybe you shouldn’t be having “fun” with something that’s actually happening now (or in the past, I suppose), where people are actually dying. In the brief Joystiq impressions they mention the developers seemingly want to emphasize the “realism” and note that buildings are modeled down to the “brick” level, so that when they’re destroyed you can destroy them brick by brick.  At the same time, though, they mention that your teammates can seemingly absorb an infinite amount of bullets without flinching, and you will also magically regain your own health if you just wait a few seconds in cover (like most FPS games on the market now).  Do these “gamey” enhancements that ultimately make the experience more “fun” disrespect those actually fighting (or who have fought) in the war?  And if this doesn’t constitute disrespect, is there a point at which the “gamey enhancements” do?

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How to ruin the chance for people to take your game seriously in one easy step

1) Make a movie of it.

Perhaps that’s not exactly fair, but the track record really speaks for itself.  It is really depressing that Shadow of the Colossus, a game that was lauded for its serious and emotionally charged tone, is now going to be made into a movie that’s being written by the same guy who wrote “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” and produced by the guy who did “The Scorpion King”.  This really feels like it sets the whole “Games as art” argument back, as now instead of SOTC being a beautiful, emotional, and, yes, fun experience it is now just another franchise to be milked.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Gore Verbinski of “Pirates of the Carribean” fame is going to direct the Bioshock movie as well.  While the game didn’t pack quite the emotional punch that SOTC did, I doubt they’ll be able to, or even care about trying to produce the same level of intellectual discussion as the game did.  Just imagine how lame the “big twist” in the game would be as a passive 3rd-person rather than an interactive first-person experience.  I don’t think it’d be quite the mindf*ck that the game produced, which is really the reason why it’s a game in the first place, and not a movie.

If it sounds too good to be true?

A new company called “OnLive” has announced a service which will let you run high-end, 720p PC games at 60 FPS on any computer with a decent internet connection and web browser.  You could also buy a (theoretically) cheap “Micro-console” device from the company that would hook into your TV via HDMI that would also enable you to play all of these games in HD at 60FPS.

Assuming that the price for this service is reasonable, such a service would likely radically alter the gaming industry in a very short period of time.  High-end gaming PCs would be an absurd investment if even your $100 netbook could play the same games at ridiculously good graphical settings.  Powerful and pricey new consoles would look noisy and hot compared to a cheap, sleek, and quiet PSP-sized device that could play better looking games anyway.  Not only that, your device would never need to be upgraded to support the newest generation of games… your games would just keep looking better and better over time whether you’re using an old computer or an old “micro-console”.  All you’re responsible for paying for once you have a computer/microconsole is your internet connection and the subscription fee (and, of course, for the games, which would also be “rentable” since the problem of piracy goes out the window).

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DLC Shenanigans?

Resident Evil 5 has now been released, but as we’ve found out over the past few days there is already DLC in the works that will enable a “Versus Mode”, which gives non-cooperative ways to play the game multiplayer.  Unfortunately, unlike the free updates for Left 4 Dead and other Valve games, this DLC will cost $5.

While $5 is not the end of the world, this strikes me as a really poor idea, not just because it seems like a blatant attempt to quickly squeeze a bit more money out of customers for features that should’ve potentially been included with the game, but also because it strikes me as the kind of thing that will substantially reduce the number of people that can play it in this mode, thus possibly making the experience even worse for all of those who actually do purchase it (or at least reducing its longevity and therefore it’s long-term potential).

Separating out an entire multiplayer feature for DLC is much different than just selling new maps for a game.  At least if the game ships with the feature I’ll know that I’ll always be able to play with anyone else who bought the game, whether or not they bought the new maps.  What Capcom seems to be doing with RE5 seems more akin to if Bungie had decided to charge separately just to play Halo 3 multiplayer, and I think that probably would’ve been a pretty quick way to kill the Halo 3 community.  Granted, the demand for competitive RE5 modes is probably less than Halo 3’s, but that shouldn’t really matter.

Capcom may want to think clearly about their DLC strategy going forward.  There are certainly some people, many who have no problems paying for all kinds of DLC content, that are unhappy with the way they are treating their fans with their latest games.