Too Cool for Too Human

There are times when the gaming community kind of annoys me.  This is one of those times.

Look, I know that Too Human had a somewhat disastrous showing at E3 2006 which turned a lot of people off from the game.  No matter how the game turned out, this, unfortunately, would probably keep some people away from the game no matter what.  I’m also quite aware that some people didn’t like the demo that was released for the game.  Certainly, the game has its share of issues, which I’ve also acknowledged.  And if the sort of Diablo-esque loot and skill system doesn’t appeal to you, well, that’s fine too.  I get that the game is not for everyone.

But the game has inspired a sort of vitriol among the community that just saddens me.  It’s not because I love the game and just wish everyone would play it (since the full game doesn’t come out until tomorrow I haven’t even played the full version yet). I expect I’ll like the game despite its flaws, but I honestly don’t care if anyone else does or not (except that, perhaps, it do well enough for them to finish the trilogy if I like it).  The thing that saddens me is how the gaming community can fixate on something and just repeatedly keep whipping away at it for no other reason except that it had a bad showing once, and the developer has the audacity to try and promote its own game after that.  While Too Human has been a whipping post ever since 2006, with its imminent release, some of the criticism borders on ridiculous.

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Misguided Moralizing

So a lot of people are talking about Jonathan Blow’s recent speech on game design and how story can conflict with gameplay.  (Braid is coming out this week… and the artist is a guy I went to high school with.)  They’re generally very positive about the examples he uses, but to be honest with you, I think Blow is quite misguided in how he views the impact of such decisions - at least in practice.

Take, for example, his Bioshock discussion:

“[T]here’s a ‘Little Sister problem’ in altruism versus balance. Blow noted that there’s only a marginal difference in the rewards you receive, no matter whether you choose to rescue or kill the Little Sisters. The game mechanics are telling you that it doesn’t matter which way you choose.  ‘So effectively, the game says that the Little Sister doesn’t matter, while the plot says that it does matter.’ He suggested that ‘…this is disingenuous [and] robs the game of its emotional impact and potential.’”

I completely disagree. 

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Your Wish…

Commenter laesperanzapaz posts a link to this Variety article positing that gaming publishers exert too much control over the industry and requests some discussion.

The thesis of the article is that, unlike the movie business, which has varying power sources in studios, stars, networks, agencies, and presumably directors, the gaming industry buck stops only with the publisher.  Therefore, developers essentially see their value expropriated and their contributions marginalized.  In those rare instances where developers are able to break out of the mold (think Blizzard), they’re purchased by publishers eager to control them. 

My reaction: partially true. 

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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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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.

Attention Movie Studios

You want to know why your game movies suck?  Because your directors can’t tell the difference between a professional movie script and one created by random French pranksters.  What do you people expect???  Stop hiring Uwe Boll and start hiring better writers!!!

A Kinder, Saner Jack Thompson?

Jack Thompson isn’t exactly popular in the gaming community.  With his crazy, ridiculous rants about Bully’s non-existent “gay sex”, uninformed and callous blathering on how videogames caused the Virginia Tech shooting, and his baseless, frivolous lawsuits against anyone that may have criticized him, it’s really no mystery as to why he’s so reviled (and there’s really so much more than this too).  So it was a bit surprising to see that, rather than simply riding the idiotic and completely unresearched Mass Effect “sexbox” craze of the last few weeks, he actually defended the game, calling the controversy “contrived” (and we needn’t dwell on the irony here).

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Pay To Play

GameSetWatch brings up the interesting question of how to pay gaming journalists (I’ll forgo the use of “incent,” which is an abomination of the language).  The discussion is predicated on a recent Gawker memo, which informs writers that they will be paid in a combination of salary plus bonus based on the number of pageviews they receive. 

GSW rightly points out that this payment method might encourage sensationalization of news stories, although I’d also be concerned about the incentives to write stories aimed only at the largest gaming demographics (do we really want a site consisting of nothing but shooter posts?).  But that said, I’d actually suggest that this is probably the most reasonable compromise between editorial freedom and site revenue enhancement.  Salary-only payment schemes are all well and good, but I’m sure journalists would love the opportunity to make more money and site owners need traffic to survive.  Assuming that the base salary is reasonable, it seems eminently sensible to pay people for writing posts that others want to read.

 I don’t see much compromise to editorial freedom either.  If a journalist wants to write one mass-audience post for the additional income, there’s nothing preventing them from also writing another piece aimed at their personal niche interests.  If it fits the site’s profile, it will get published.  More to the point, it will also raise their eminence within the industry, encouraging people to further absorb their other writing and creating the kind of gaming journalist personalities that the industry largely seems to lack.

A Lesson In Irony, Via Morgan Webb

First, I’ll note the irony inherent in the fact that Kotaku has run a post on Morgan Webb - in classic “I’m so much more than just a pretty face!” style - alongside a photograph of Webb in a bikini.  (I can only assume that the room was quite chilly, adding bonus irony points to the total.)  Good job, guys.

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Amen To That Indeed

I’m not sure RPS actually understood Ken Levine’s remarks here - he seems less opposed to multiple endings than binary (or discrete) multiple endings - but I have to wholeheartedly agree with his last comment: “If the sales success of BioShock means anything, it means that we can trust our audience a little more”.