Geek Bravado

Occasionally intelligible ramblings by Parallax Abstraction.

Apple’s (And Soon Microsoft’s) Big Threats to Choice

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 29, 2012

I make no secret of the fact that while there are many cool things Apple does, I am not a fan of many of the company’s practices nor the lazy, fanboy driven press that salivates and gives free PR to everything they do, usually free of criticism. The innovations made by Apple products in recent years are undeniable and they are finally pushing an otherwise stagnant tech industry forward with new ideas that involve more than just bumped specs. However, not all of these ideas are good ones and the success Apple is meeting with some are driving others like Microsoft towards similar models that while they are beneficial in some ways, also serve to greatly hurt consumers and the power we have to self-determine our experiences with technology. The biggest threat that Apple (and soon Microsoft) represent is the restriction and constriction of user choice.

I’ve said for a while now that Apple’s biggest failing as a company (from a consumer perspective, clearly not yet a financial one) is that their products are designed around limiting consumer options. You can only buy Mac and iOS hardware from one place, you have a very limited number of options for that hardware, it’s largely not upgradable (or in the case of iOS devices, not at all) and it’s purpose-designed to be a treadmill of forced obsolescence that requires users to upgrade their products on Apple’s desired schedule instead of theirs, creating huge amount of technological and monetary waste. With the App Store, they’ve taken this a step further by ensuring that all iOS devices only have one place where you can buy software for them. This is a place Apple controls in every way from approval of what software you can see to how add-ons for it can be purchased to how updates are delivered. They also get a 30% cut of every penny spent on this software, a fairly respectable number given how little they really offer developers beyond permission to list there.

Compare that to the PC landscape where you have dozens of vendors selling pre-built PCs with hundreds of options, you can custom build a system in just about any configuration you can fathom, you have multiple operating system choices and within those, hundreds of different ways to acquire both free and paid software. Many have criticised the PC as being the “wild west” and all the complexity and risks that come with that but I see that as its greatest trait. If you are a new user who needs to be guided by the hand, there are options for that. If you’re a power user like myself who likes to poke, prod and tweak every aspect of your computing experience, you can do that too. If your budget for a computer is $400 or $4,000, there’s options to suit what you want. This has never been the case with Apple and I find their furthering that to greater and greater extremes each year to be a dangerous precedent. For all of the failings of Windows (and there are many), it’s still my preferred OS because of the freedom it offers me while also giving me access to the widest array of software and tools available. When I use a Mac, I’m always feeling as if it’s trying to make me use it the way Apple feels is ideal as opposed to the way I feel is ideal which is how computing is supposed to be.

My biggest worry for the future of technology today is how Apple and now Microsoft with Windows 8 seem to be aggressively the vision of having stricter control over what you do with your computing devices. They are both heavily pushing native software stores that they control (and get a cut from), Apple is planning to make it much more frustrating to install non-App Store delivered content, Microsoft is pushing the new Metro app-driven Start Screen down people’s throats whether they want it or not, they tried to force PC manufacturers to lock out alternative operating systems (they backed off from that but only on the desktop side) and they’re restricting the free versions of development tools to Metro app development only. Much like iOS apps, Metro apps will only be deliverable through Microsoft’s proprietary store. To be fair, Microsoft isn’t trying to restrict or curtail traditional software development and delivery the way Apple seems to be but given the ability these two companies can have to get a piece of every piece of software sold for their respective systems, it stands to reason that they’ll continue to try to squeeze alternatives out more moving forward.

As someone who gets my free and paid software from a wide variety of different places (often depending on who is offering the best deal), this prospect terrifies me and it should terrify every other computer user as well. Both of these companies were already making a ton of money and will continue to without cornering the software delivery market. They are trying to change the value in what they offer us from being the platform on which a variety of things can run to create an experience ideal for each user to one where they are in charge of what we get to consume, how we get to consume it and all the while, taking their percentage from the software authors for the privilege of getting to play in their walled garden. This isn’t the way computers are supposed to be and there’s no need for it beyond enriching the platform holders at the expense of consumer interests.

They claim this is done under the guise of keeping things easy to use and secure but that’s frankly bollocks. Yes, there are a lot of stupid computer users out there and many security problems which largely result from that stupidity. Nonetheless, we’ve been managing fine up to this point and forcing us to get our software from your store where you can shove competition aside for any reason you choose and confine innovation only to that which doesn’t impeded your business interests is not going to improve that. Is iOS only easy to use and secure because the users don’t have access to third party app stores? To claim that position to me says that Apple doesn’t think very highly of their average user’s intelligence. And given that every iOS release gets jailbroken almost immediately, I would say the security claims have already been disproved repeatedly. But then, convincing people that Apple loves and respects its users while actively working against their interests has been among the company’s greatest achievements. I’ve embraced PCs and Windows, faults and all, because I never got the impression from Microsoft that they wanted things to act in a similar, at least not until now. They are a company that’s out to make money but they were already making lots and growing amounts of it and seemed fin with that. But now having seen Apple’s insane (and unsustainable) profits made on the backs of monopolising the software delivery business as well, they’ve realised there’s a huge slice of the pie they could be getting and want it no matter what.

This greedy mindset represents one of the biggest threats to innovation and consumer freedom when it comes to technology in my opinion. The greatest thing technology has permitted is larger democratization, making it easier for people to create and express both in terms of what they make and do with their tools and how they are able to tailor those tools to their needs. When the two biggest players start locking the doors to their kingdoms and start to limit who gets keys to it based not on the needs and desires of their customers but of their own business interests, technology moves away from a democratic model to a totalitarian one. What if an app offends their corporate standards of taste that may not line up with yours or what if an app does something better than one of theirs which they are trying to sell for more? There are many examples of software that was denied by Apple for both of these reasons. Call my position hyperbolic if you want but when Apple and Microsoft are allowed to decide what gets to be installed on what is supposed to be your computer,  your tablet and your phone, who really owns that device you paid for?

I don’t know what the best solution is to this problem. I’m not normally a fan of governments telling businesses how to run themselves but ultimately, consumer interests are greater and these companies enjoy positions that don’t simply give people the ability to just “speak with their wallets”. When the platform holders are already making record profits, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to tell them that they need to keep improving their products to entice people to keep buying them, not start sapping away secondary revenue sources and forcing people to use them so they can keep making money after they’ve already made their money. If the only way you can keep making money for your business is by sticking your nose into other people’s, then your leadership is failing and you need fresh thinking. Keeping technology open and free for choices and the innovation that comes from them should be paramount and this is a vision that Apple and Microsoft no longer share. Consumers need and deserve a better solution that what we’re proposing, I just wonder if we’re too blinded by the new shiny to demand it.

Technology, Business, Mobile Phones, Computers, Predictions, Tablets , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This Was a Surreal Friday

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 26, 2012

I’ve never yet posted anything about my personal life on this blog. It was always my intention to make it a bit of a personal blog as well as one that focused on tech, gaming and whatever else but that never materialised. I plan to change that over the coming months but for now, I thought I’d start by just sharing the rather surreal day I had. Some of what happened today had been planned for a long time but a lot of it happened out of the blue but it was all connected in a weird way and that it all came together today is amazing and kind of creepy.

I’ve been fighting off some kind of weird bug that I can only describe as “flu but not really” for most of the week. It’s largely passed now but I always end these things with major pain and discomfort in my neck which has chronic stiffness from a bike accident when I was young. I woke up with it basically seized and in agony so I told my boss I’d be working from home today and loaded up on Advil, Tylenol and coffee. This also worked out because today was my first of what will be many but infrequent appointments with a Psychologist and his office is much closer to here than where I work.

I’ll talk about this more at some future point but I’ve been dealing with many emotional challenges for some time now, not the least of which was what I had recently realised was a severe depression that lasted for several years and which I’ve only managed to start climbing out of on my own in the last year or so. Thanks to a realisation I needed some professional assistance to complete that journey and a positive change in my work’s benefits, I am able to see a Psychologist and actually afford it so I finally took that step. I won’t detail the session for obvious reasons but suffice it to say, I went into it nervous and unsure what to expect but it was very positive, productive and I came out knowing I’d made the right decision and that this will ultimately be a great thing for me.

So that was good but it’s the other stuff that happened around it which was weird.

I was thinking about a lot of elements of my past this morning in advance of this appointment because I knew that would have to be discussed. I also have several emotionally challenging things ahead of me these days, most involving former close friends that I’ve purposefully distanced myself from. While doing this, I also spent a lot of the day talking about and hotly debating the unfolding disaster that is the 38 Studios collapse on my desktop computer in between answering support tickets and talking to my boss over IM on my laptop. It’s a subject I’m passionate about both as an avid follow of gaming and the industry and as someone who has been repeatedly screwed by employers and gets emotionally invested in seeing that happen to others as it did in this case. It was probably not a head space I should have been hanging around in so close to seeing a shrink for the first time but I was there anyway. One of the aforementioned friends and I had recently talked and decided to meet up and have a frank conversation about what was going on with us and if it would be possible for us to mend fences and have a friendship again. We hadn’t set a hard time to do this yet. While I was just thinking about what happened between him and I in a way I could explain to the Psychologist, he e-mailed me and asked if we could do it tonight. I found that coincidence to be rather stunning but I’d seen such things before and we set it up. We also had that conversation and it went well but the gist of that is for some other post.

Then something really amazing happened. I have an ex-girlfriend from well over a decade ago that has me on IM but who I never talk to. She and I had a pretty bad breakup back in the day and though we have talked and seen each other on rare occasion since, we aren’t close and I assumed we were rather indifferent to each other. Out of the blue, knowing nothing of my current situation or the other two big emotional steps I was due to take today, she messaged me to ask how I was. We made some small talk and whatnot but then I had to go to my appointment so I said I’d talk to her later. When I returned, we got to chatting again and I eventually found out that she messaged me because she was in a reflective mood of her own and wanted to discuss some of the past baggage and emotional ambiguity that was still between us. She was someone who had an often very troubled life, both before and after she met me. What followed was a conversation that lasted a very long time and ended up with us discovering that a lot of the reasons we got mad at each other and eventually broke up were due to severe miscommunication and things that she needed my help with but couldn’t bring forward at the time because she didn’t know how I would react to them. She revealed those things to me and many of them were very shocking to hear. She told me that I was an emotional pillar to her at a time in his life that was otherwise book ended by sometimes horrible things and she felt that despite us agreeing that the past was the past, she needed to thank me for the support I gave her and tell me how much that meant and helped her live get to the relatively happy and stable place it is now.

That all of these events took place on the same day, completely unplanned and out of sheer coincidence is amazing to me and I still kind of shake my head in disbelief when I think about it. The last element detailed above is mind blowing to have happened today of all days. That relationship happened so long ago and we are both so far removed from having romantic feeling for each other that it wasn’t something I would have even brought up to my Psychologist as impacting my life now. Yet the discussion we had and the subsequent revelations were as big an emotional leap forward for me as anything else that happened today, and I wasn’t even really thinking about it. I don’t believe in god or fate and yet it’s hard to look at the circumstances of this day and not think even just a little bit that someone planned it to go like this. It makes me incredibly happy to know I had such a positive and meaningful long-term impact on someone’s life and finding that out the exact day I’ve finally decided to commit to fully righting my emotional ship made it have an even greater impact.

As the day ended, I was listening to the radio and heard the single from the new The Offspring album, a song called Days Go By. This is not a very good song and compared to what The Offspring used to be, it’s kind of a sign they’ve been turned into another crappy mainstream pop-rock act but the lyrics ended up fitting into my experiences today surprisingly well and as I wrote this, I ended up looping the song several times on Rdio. I’ll probably be happy to never hear it again after today but it’s weird and wonderful that a song I normally wouldn’t care for and would change the channel away from could have content within it that actually made me reflect more on the singular experiences I had today.

I’m sure this post looks really weird against anything else I’ve written but despite being exhausted and it now being 2:00am, I was compelled to put this out there. This was an incredibly surreal Friday.

“All your anger all your hurt
Doesn’t matter in the end
Those days go by
And we all start again.
What you had and what you lost
They’re all memories in the wind
Those days go by
And we all start again.”

Personal , , , , ,

Gamers Should Be Mad About 38 Studios’ Failure

1 Comment Posted by on May 24, 2012

This afternoon, 38 Studios officially laid off their entire staff of 380 people and is closing both their studios. This after running out of cash following a rather public scene with the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, a state agency which loaned them almost $75 million dollars to relocate there and to fund the development of their long cooking and until recently, never shown MMO Project Copernicus. Employees are due almost a month’s back pay that they likely won’t get, their health insurance lapsed two days ago and they reportedly only found out when a staffer’s pregnant wife was told by her doctor. The Rhode Island taxpayers are also now on the hook to absorb the cost of the loan which is going to end up being $100 million after interest.

38 Studios was started by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. When he retired from baseball, he wanted to take his love of video games and do something big with it so he started up a studio to make an MMO. He staffed it with top talent and brought on Todd McFarlane and R.A. Salvatore to help create the vast universe for it.  It was a big deal and got a lot of people excited include yours truly. A couple of years later, they bought Big Huge Games who were about to be shuttered by THQ. Big Huge Games was working on an RPG for PC and consoles and the idea was to take that game and retool it to be part of their new universe as a lead-in to the MMO. It was a big, grandiose plan and it was a breath of fresh air to see a new AAA studio start up with big ideas. In 5 years, nothing was seen of Project Copernicus but in January, Big Huge Games’ project was released as Kingdom’s of Amalur: Reckoning. I haven’t played it beyond the demo but it was well reviewed and sold nicely for a new IP, exceeding publisher EA’s expectations. Fast forward to now and the studio is collapsing, a lot of people are out of work and health insurance in a very small state that now has to absorb the cost of that, all we’ve seen of Project Copernicus is one rushed trailer that showed little and the Rhode Island government revealed that even though Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sold 1.2 million copies worldwide, it would have needed to do three times that just to break even.

Despite this very public and abject failure, some people are still trying to defend the company, Curt Schilling and his management. I admit that most of what we have to go on is accounts of the battle with the state in the press but we do know a fair amount of reliable information. I will also admit that I’ve been personally burnt by bad management who got away scott free before so I do have a bit of my own emotional influence in this situation. But even based on the sparse details we know so far, they all point to a company that was horribly managed and screwed a lot of people who can’t afford it while the top dogs basically walked away from the smouldering wreckage. That’s not defensible and it really burns me to see people try to defend it. Let’s break this down some.

To their credit, 38 Studios saved Big Huge Games from being closed by an at the time schizophrenic THQ who bought them just a year prior and was already trying to dump them, seemingly not confident in what they were working on. No one knows what that deal was worth but given that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning apparently needed to have blockbuster sales that are almost never seen be a new IP, chances are it and the continuing development costs were in the many millions. Still, they gave them the time they needed and a good game came out of it. Concurrently with this, they were developing a AAA MMO with the same new IP, at a time when the common MMO business model was still to charge people to buy the game plus a monthly subscription fee. In the years since, this model has been proven impossible for any MMO that isn’t World of Warcraft and many failures litter the genre as proof. Even Big Huge Games’ former owner THQ recently took their long in development MMO and made it not an MMO anymore. Still, 38 Studios continued to plug away at Project Copernicus, saying nothing about it, even as they were in a financial death spiral which they obviously knew about. I’m sure they spent this time trying to secure more funding but no one wants to invest in AAA MMOs right now. Instead of adjusting their business goals to something that may have a better chance, they continued pouring money down the sinkhole and now Project Copernicus will likely never see release. All the creative effort is for nothing and a lot of people now have to hope they don’t get sick while trying to find work in an industry that’s not very healthy in general right now. This will also likely dissuade Rhode Island from ever investing into the video game industry again and will shake general investor confidence in AAA game development even more. When a team of supposedly top talent backed by a multi-millionaire fails so spectacularly, what would you do if asked to bankroll a new AAA studio?

Meanwhile, what’s Curt Schilling lost? Not much really. He apparently has put a chunk of his own fortune into the company but used the Rhode Island loan to pay at least some of that back. He still has substantial wealth from his baseball career and while his employees bounce rent cheques, he will still be living very comfortably. There’s also the irony of Schilling being a huge proponent of small government but his politics don’t matter much here. Many Kingdoms of Amalur fans say that he was very passionate about the company and their games and regularly engaged with his community on forums and the like. I applaud him for that, it’s more than many developers do. But creative passion often distorts reality–something it certainly seems to have done for him–and passion doesn’t put roofs over your employees’ heads or food on their tables. And it certainly doesn’t magically complete an MMO that was started 5 years ago and yet not even announced or named yet.

It frustrates me to see people defend this train wreck. Sure, we don’t know all the facts but we know enough to see that many poor decisions were being made at 38 Studios and that they must have known for a long time now that they couldn’t survive to see Project Copernicus released. Yet they made no substantive changes to their scope and their employees and Rhode Island taxpayers were left in the dark until it was too late. Now they’re all screwed but the people at the top are walking away with very little lost beyond pride. I’m sorry, that’s wrong. When similar situations happen at Enron or the banks (yes, on a much larger scale), people are rightfully furious but when it happens to a place that put out a game some enjoyed, apparently we should sympathise with the company and to not do so is to take shots at at the people who made the game. No, that’s not how it works and it’s possible for rational people to separate the talent from the management and the latter is what failed catastrophically here.

Having been where the 38 Studios employees are right now, I feel horrible for them and all the hard work they have devoted to a creative project that will likely never see the light of day. Big Huge Games in particular has been through a roller coaster ride the last few years and has been one of the most under-appreciated developers in the industry. I hope that a competent company will pick them up and give them a stable home but with most of the big publishers terrified of risk and AAA development shrinking, I don’t see that happening. The Project Copernicus team are also now stuck in a state with virtually no other game development jobs and no shipped project to put on their CVs. Schilling and his failed management team will likely not be formally held to account for this and they don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy. What happened here may be common practice in modern business but that’s exactly the problem, especially at a company headed by people who are supposedly so passionate about what they were doing. The people at the top are supposed to have final accountability and should be the ones that absorb the brunt of the hits, not deflect them downwind to the rank and file. When my previous business failed, my partner and I had no other employees besides ourselves but we ran the place and ultimately, it was our failure and I will always see it as such. This is no different but where my business was barely a blip of an entity, 38 Studios was a large company and like all large things, fell hard.

This was a business disaster, one that’s done substantial damage to an already frail AAA industry and gamers who still want to see these kinds of games get made by independent studios should be mad about this. To treat Schilling and his management team as the victims here is disrespectful to those who just lost their livelihoods. I wouldn’t wish their circumstances on my worst enemy and it infuriates me to see people standing up for their failed leaders. There’s no doubt that game development of any kind is a risky business and I’m sure many of these employees had a good idea of the potential hurdles. That doesn’t make keeping them in the dark until a taxpayer-funded loan payment bounces any more excusable. If Schilling and the management didn’t want to be in the crosshairs for this loss, then they shouldn’t have been the management and Schilling shouldn’t have put his former jersey number in the logo and put himself out there as the face of the company. They let a lot of people down, they deserve to feel bad for it and we as devoted followers of this industry shouldn’t sympathise with their failure.

Video Games, Business , , , , , , , ,

You Should Go See Indie Game: The Movie

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 8, 2012

Some time ago, I was told by some gaming web site that this pair of first-time Canadian film makers were creating a documentary about making indie games and that they were looking for some Kickstarter help. I went and checked it out and it seemed pretty promising so I pitched in. They got funded and Indie Game: The Movie is now on a theatre tour with a home video release coming later. While I’m guaranteed a DVD (or hopefully Blu-ray) copy from my Kickstarter tier, I really wanted to see the finished product sooner and with a group of people who appreciated the type of stories being told. I was delighted to hear that they were doing a cross Canada showing of the film with a Q&A after so despite the high ticket price, I jumped in. Aside from losing about 15 minutes of the movie due to the incompetence of Bell TV (who was providing the delivery) and the Q&A not being nearly long enough, I was very entertained and was pleasantly surprised to see such high-calibre work from people who have never made a feature length documentary before.

Indie Game: The Movie chronicles tales from three well known indie game creators and their respective titles: Jonathan Blow with Braid, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes with Super Meat Boy and finally, Canadian developer and controversy enthusiast Phil Fish with the recently released Fez. The latter two are filmed during development of their projects (with Super Meat Boy releasing during the course of filming and Fez having come out just a couple of weeks ago) with Blow talking about Braid through more of a retrospective angle. The stories told are not ones of the technical or even really the design challenges of making these games but the emotional rollercoaster the developers are on as they deal with lack of sleep, money and strained personal and business relationships. We’re shown how the Team Meat pair are pushed to the brink of exhaustion trying to get their game done, only to find that Microsoft didn’t honour their launch day promotion commitments. We’re shown how Phil Fish had to deal with a former business partner whose Machiavellian delay tactics drive him to a near breakdown and how he risked being sued by showing Fez at Penny Arcade Expo without the partner’s permission. In the end, they all got their games out and they were all great successes but their struggles are epic and their unwillingness to be phased by them is touching and admirable.

Many documentaries that try to portray these kinds of emotional challenges often feel forced and even choreographed but everything in Indie Game: The Movie comes across as genuine. I never felt that creative liberties were taken in the editing process to create drama and emotion where there wasn’t any before. You are being told a story as it happened rather than as the film makers wish it had happened. I found myself leaning forward in my seat and tensing up when the characters were hurting and wanting to cheer when they finally achieved their well-fought victories. As someone who is not easily moved and can spot fake attempts at emotional conveyance a mile away, this speaks volumes to the quality of both the stories and the direction. This may be a movie themed around making video games but it’s three tales of human struggle and sacrifice at its core and shows just what people are willing to endure for creative expressions they believe in.

Whether or not you’re into indie games or video games at all, Indie Game: The Movie is something I think anyone with an interest in these kinds of documentaries should check out. It’s an emotional and inspiring ride that will keep you engaged and will seem to go by quickly. This is an incredible first effort from James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot and it’s great to see that it’s been a success for them. These two have a very bright future in film making and I’m happy I was able to contribute in a small way to getting this project made. I can’t wait for my home video copy and will no doubt end up watching it many times over. You can check their official web site for information on new screenings and eventually, information on the on-demand and home video releases for the general public. Anyone who is into documentaries or real stories of creative struggles will enjoy it and I highly recommend checking out a screening near you if you can.

Culture, Movies, Video Games , , , ,

On Gaming’s Future: AAA Reality Check

1 Comment Posted by on May 7, 2012

So yeah, this post going up by the end of the week of my last post obviously didn’t happen. Turned out to be a crazier month than I predicted (tons of new hires at work and they just announced we’re buying another company), plus I was getting ready to leave for what was an amazing week’s vacation in Iceland (which I’ll post about in the future). But enough excuses.

Last time I talked about the mobile gaming landscape and how despite what the iPress is claiming, the reality is that the mobile industry is not nearly as rosy as many think and is in many ways steaming head first into the challenges the rest of the industry has been struggling with for years. The biggest challenges of all–those impacting AAA development–are what I’m going to talk about this time.

I love big AAA productions with heavy story, characters, worlds and production values with deep, immersive gameplay. I have nothing against smaller indie titles and have enjoyed many of them but bigger scope titles are where my heart is and it’s where I go first with my gaming time and money. Most of what I’ve played in the supposedly revolutionary mobile space has underwhelmed me to say the least. Not to say there isn’t strong potential there but touch controls (which on the iPad at least I find very laggy in most games) limit how complex you can make a game and I’ve yet to see anything on the platform which has strong characters, narrative and storytelling. I’ve looked and not even the best examples I’ve been cited can hold a candle to something like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, unless they’re titles that originally began on a dedicated gaming system. Many are claiming that tablets will render all consoles obsolete in a few years and that they’re already as powerful as the current systems. That argument however is full of holes. Going into the boring technological reasons would be a post unto itself but suffice it to say that tablets are a long way from being able to play even current-gen AAA games in a meaningful technical way, forget what we’ll end up seeing next year when the new Xbox and PlayStation systems are out. Mass Effect, Skyrim, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Forza Motorsport, Gears of War, Uncharted; these simply can’t be done on a tablet right now and will not be possible for many years to come.

The CEO of respected AAA developer Remedy Entertainment recently stated that we’re very close to having AAA experiences on tablets (both technically and in design terms) but then he pulled out Infinity Blade II as what he called the “benchmark” for that argument. Having played Infinity Blade II, I can’t believe he said that seriously. It’s a very good looking game for the iPad (though only because it has super tiny levels and basically no AI, it’s all trickery) but is simply a treadmill of one-on-one timing based battles with a meaningless filler plot, it’s stuffed with immersion-breaking elements like random gold bags you have to tap on quickly during cutscenes and it’s primary hook is making you replay the same 15-20 minute section over and over again as you grind out higher levels, all while nagging you to post positive reviews and buy power through microtransactions. If this game was released for PC or consoles, it would have been ripped apart in reviews as being shallow, boring, criminally short and a sub-standard experience but for some reason, being in the mobile space seems to give many titles a pass for weak design with the depth of a spoon. And this is one of the biggest budget, highest production value titles I’ve seen on iOS. If this is what Remedy thinks AAA gaming is due to become, I guess I better take up knitting or something.

Despite the fact that the AAA industry pulls in more revenue that pretty much every other form of gaming combined, it’s an industry that has been in a profit struggle (many would say a death spiral) for years. Back in “the day”, selling 50,000 units of a title was considered a massive success. Today sales in the millions are often required to recoup development and marketing efforts and aside from a decreasing number of runaway hits, very few even cross a single million. There’s fewer publishers now than there used to be, several are struggling badly and even the big players are relying on a couple of key franchises to drive all their profits. The vast majority of AAA releases lose money and lots of it. No one is launching new AAA publishers today and I can’t remember the last time I heard of a new studio starting up in the sector either. Big publishers are required to bring AAA games to market but almost all of them are making games internally now, rarely relying on external partners and when they do, it’s with contractual terms that ensure the developers barely survive, even if they craft a hit. Many of these people from the industry who are forming mobile and social studios I think are doing so not just because they want to but because that’s the only place they have a chance of success, even if it’s not that much greater.

On top of that, year over year AAA software sales are in a free fall and the current generation of console hardware is also starting to see sales drop as they reach market saturation. Many believe that while the increasingly niche hardcore demographic is still buying stuff, many of the more casual players who would normally only buy a couple of games a year have shifted to mobile and social platforms, taking their money out of the AAA space entirely. For a long time, I said I was fine with the current consoles and was in no hurry to have new ones to worry about. Now I would say that with more and more people touting how tablets are taking over everything (whether they’re correct or not), it’s time for new consoles to grab and refresh people’s attention. However, Microsoft has told us to expect no console announcement from them any time soon and by all accounts, Sony will be focusing on Vita and late PS3 releases only at E3 this year. Even when they do put those systems out, higher technology means even higher costs which means even greater sales are needed to turn a profit. Nintendo has said that they plan to release the WiiU in 2012 but much like its predecessor, it will only sport current generation technology and will not be the step forward that AAA gamers are looking for and it’s unique tablet controller will require that developers devote additional resources to it.

While I don’t believe that iOS is completely destroying the dedicated handheld gaming market the way the iPress says it is, there’s no doubt that those systems are also struggling. Initial sales of the Vita were strong but have fallen off a cliff since and while 3DS sales still seem decent, neither system has a huge slate of software coming out and a lot of what releasing from third parties is not selling well. These systems desperately need top-tier titles from companies that aren’t the hardware vendors and the vendors need to back them in a big way. I think E3 will be the real tell for those platforms. Either there will be a ton of big announcements for them, signalling that third parties are on board or there won’t be which will indicate to me that they’ve basically been abandoned.

All of these factors point to a sector that’s in real danger. Mobile and social is currently in a fashion trend driven bubble of growth that is pulling a lot of funding and interest away from the AAA space. That bubble is going to burst eventually and that growth will normalise as a result but for right now, it’s clear there is less risk in that sector than AAA which is why no one wants to invest in those kind of games. As a result publishers are struggling, the industry is consolidating, new releases are becoming fewer and less original and in spite of it all, almost no one’s making any money. Regardless of how much I and millions of others love big AAA games, if they can’t figure out how to start making money soon, they won’t keep getting made. The AAA space is currently in a tail spin towards another 80s style video game crash and such an event in modern times would result in many more billions lost and many more thousands of creative people being out of work. If AAA doesn’t get its house in order, crappy iOS and Facebook games may be all hardcore gamers have left. I don’t want that and I doubt they do either. I sympathise with this plight but I also think that the way publishers are trying to mitigate it is ridiculous and that in their desperate struggle to compete, they’re actually driving customers away when they should be embracing them.

So what can they do about this? Is the trend reversible? I absolutely think it is but much like in the music, movie and TV industries, it’s going to require a lot of “old guard” people at the top to make major fundamental changes to how AAA games are made, marketed and thought of. These are people who are still very arrogant and think they know what’s best, even as their companies and investor cash evaporate around them. It’s likely that many of them will try to stick to the old ways and fail as a result. I don’t want to see even less competition but at the same time, those who can’t face the realities of change need to go away and clear a path for those who get it. As I’ve said many times before, I’m not a business guy and I don’t work in the industry and never have. However, I’ve been an avid follower of the industry’s content, people and companies for many years now and I’ve learned a lot in that time. I know what’s worked and hasn’t worked both for myself and my gamer friends and I like to think that our group represents a decent cross-section of gamers as a whole today. I definitely have more to say to the AAA industry that I do to the mobile industry. So here are my long-winded suggestions for how they can make mount a return to sustainable success.

Firstly–and this is obvious to literally everyone who isn’t one of the big publishers–all the anti-customer garbage needs to stop, all of it. DRM doesn’t work and every single person who lives in the real world knows it. There may be an infographic somewhere that shows that publishers actually sell more copies of their games by using DRM than it costs them to purchase the technology but that doesn’t take into account the massive amounts of good will they burn with fans for it. Pirates are scumbag thieves but publishers can’t ultimately stop those who are determined to steal their stuff and making life harder for the paying customers is not the answer. Budget projects assuming a certain amount of piracy will occur and at least some of the losses can be mitigated.

Next, they need to stop using online passes. Much like piracy, I can understand how the used games market is parasitic and leeching money out of the industry that it desperately needs while giving more profits to scummy companies like GameStop. Once again though, this isn’t a new problem and it’s been the case for years and it may not even be as bad as they think. Publishers need to learn to work within the constraints they have rather than pushing new ones on legitimate customers. The few times the publishers that use online passes have talked about their results, they’ve openly admitted that they aren’t seeing much additional revenue from them. That means that people are either still buying used games and just not buying the passes or they are skipping those games entirely. It’s cutting off their noses to spite the faces and it’s not working.

Then there’s on-disc DLC. I don’t have a problem with DLC per ce when it’s done tastefully but when you’re charging $60 for what is supposed to be a premium product, locking away content on the disc behind a paywall–content which had to be completed before the game shipped in order to make it on the disc–is money grubbing. I don’t buy the excuses about idle teams or technical compatibility reasons. Those are your issues, not your customer’s. If you can’t do DLC without putting it on the disc, then don’t do it. For a more detailed version of this argument, refer to this Jimquisition episode.

Second is that mainstream AAA gaming has become too complicated. When most people hear this, it’s usually accompanied by a story of someone trying to sit their Grandmother down with a 360 pad and them having no idea what to do. I don’t accept that argument. While it’s important for games to reach a large audience, AAA gaming is an enthusiast hobby and that’s what it should cater to. If someone really finds big AAA games interesting but doesn’t know how to play them, their interest in seeing more will end up with them sticking it out and learning. That’s how all of us who grew up with games learned and there’s nothing wrong with that. This idea that all games need to be fully understandable within 30 seconds to be enjoyable is ridiculous and symptomatic of a society that constantly demands instant gratification for minimal effort. This is the reason I find many mobile games so boring. On this front, I don’t think things should change. So what do I mean then?

Remember back before consoles were online and you could just put a game in, play it and generally have a good experience? Having to patch and use hack workarounds to get your games working as advertised was reserved for crazy PC people but not anymore. In an era where console games can be patched, many ship with numerous bugs and in some cases, completely broken. This requires console players with limited technical knowledge to go into forums and find weird solutions no one should have to use to get their games working properly or sit and wait for weeks for a patch, if one even comes. Between this and the frankly obscene processes many games make you go through just to get started these days, many casual players are getting turned off by the complexity. The worst I’ve seen with any mobile game I’ve started up is a couple of logos, that’s it. The whole point of a console is you put the game in and play. The more layers publishers put between the players and the content, the less fun they have. I don’t care what middleware you used and no one’s going to convince me that EULAs need to be as long-winded as they are.

Third is that there are too many games right now. Yes, you read that right. When AAA games are required to be multi-million sellers to turn a profit, it’s impossible for that to happen when every quarter is filled with more titles than even people like me with a lot of free time and disposable income could ever hope to play. Publishers are spreading themselves too thin among their customer base and the result is a whole pile of games that don’t sell enough rather than a smaller number that do. We need fewer releases but they all need to be high quality and for the love of everything, they need to come out over the course of the whole year, not just in the Christmas quarter. I would take 5 really good games over 15 mediocre ones any day and I think most gamers would too. Publishers no longer have the financial resources to dump out a whole bunch of titles at once and see what sticks, they need to focus on making fewer releases shine.

Fourth is that the AAA pricing model is broken and no one wants to try to fix it. If mobile, social and PC digital platforms have shown us anything, it’s that you can charge very little for a good product and still make a ton of money from it. $60 for a AAA console game is actually cheaper than it used to be when adjusted for inflation but it’s still really expensive, especially in this economy. Publishers have to work very hard at overcoming this ridiculous and outdated public stigma that a retail console game that sells for under this price point is somehow inferior and less worthy of purchase. We’re in an era of $1 mobile games that make millions and free-to-play shooters on PC that are pulling in massive returns by selling meaningless cosmetic items. What better a time is there to put out products on consoles that cost say $30 but are made with a budget of $10 million instead of $50 million? I think a few titles like that with good marketing campaigns behind them can break the misconceptions and usher in a new model where riskier ideas can be attempted without such huge financial stakes. I know that when selling games in brick and mortar stores, a lot of different entities have their hands in the pie and that can eat into profits but there’s no reason why some of these titles couldn’t be released exclusively on the console download services, something Microsoft, Sony and maybe even Nintendo plan to back in a big way in the next generation. Cheaper games can sell, they just have to be quality games as well.

Speaking of free-to-play, this is something the hardware vendors really need to start getting behind. This concept meeting with massive success in the PC space and at least for multiplayer games, I don’t see that changing. There’s no better price to draw people in than free and those who like your game will step up and spend money. I frankly love the model when it’s done properly and some of my favourite games right now are free-to-play. Sony is dabbling their feet in this arena with CCP’s Dust 514 but I think both companies need to make adopting this model a major part of their online strategies for next generation consoles. Aside from giving more of their customers a reason to put their consoles online, it forgoes brick and mortar stores entirely and gives every new title an immediate massive install base. If the hardware vendors take a reasonable cut, this can be a massive new market they can open up which compliments the traditional AAA space while taking little away from it. Allow free-to-play companies in (perhaps with some regulation to make sure they don’t rip players off too badly), give them an infrastructure to work with and watch the money roll in while laughing in GameStop’s face.

Fifth is marketing and the ridiculous excesses it has reached with AAA games. Every major publisher is guilty of this but some are more guilty of it than others. I understand marketing to large audiences is expensive and that there are so many things pulling at people’s time and money that the message often has to be bigger and better to convince them to spend some with you. But if you have a game that costs $50 million to make and it’s often costing two or three times that to market it, you’ve got a major problem somewhere. Does spending $100 million on marketing really bring in enough additional sales over spending $50 million on marketing? Did THQ sell enough additional copies of Homefront from that stupid stunt they pulled in San Francisco to justify its cost and the damage to their image? I have a really hard time believing that. And then there’s all the stuff EA does. The marketing agencies the publishers are working with need to be reigned in, have their budgets strictly controlled and be forced to sell more with less. The publishers need to look to indie games and how they market themselves as while they obviously aren’t reaching audiences in the millions, their techniques work and it’s why a successful indie can make a staggering profit ratio wise against a big publisher. There’s nothing wrong with making a big splash for a big game but the current ways simply cannot be generating enough sales to justify the splendour and when you spent twice as much marketing a game as making it, that’s now three times as many copies you need to sell to make a profit. The quality and uniqueness of a title are what needs to become the centre of AAA marketing, not simply screaming louder than the other guy.

Lastly is that the console manufacturers need to start embracing additional business models and adjust their operating practices to support them. I already talked about free-to-play but I’m also talking about things like small indie games, titles that are great small experiences that also come with a small price. Mobile platforms have this nailed and while there’s far more risk in mobile than many would have you believe, there are a lot of people making money there selling products for $5 or less in many cases. Microsoft and Sony have made experiments with this on both their platforms but they never received any kind of backing or promotion and as a result, both companies dismissed them as failures, driving those developers to mobile. That’s simply ridiculous and it needs to change. It costs so comparatively little to give small indie developers some promotion on both your systems and your web sites and can pay off in droves, particularly now when so much of the general public has learned than a $1 game can still be an amazing experience. Today’s $1 indie developers are the AAA powerhouses of tomorrow but they need to be given a vector into that space.

However, one major sticking point that’s constantly causing developers headaches and needs to change is the manufacturer certification process. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have these and developers bemoan them endlessly. Before you can release a game (or update it) on any of the current home consoles, it has to be submitted to the hardware manufacturer for certification, a process that can often take weeks or months and can cause huge delays over often ridiculous issues. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo say this process is necessary to ensure the games meet their quality standards but in reality, the process is built to ensure that the game says “Please don’t turn off your console.” when saving or to display the right error message when you pull the controller out by accident. The process has nothing to do with ensuring your game isn’t a buggy mess at launch, something that can be demonstrated by the countless releases that ship with major issues, which of course can take weeks to patch because of the same certification steps. The process is inefficient, wasteful and frankly unnecessary. So what if a game fails to say that the console shouldn’t be turned off when it’s saving? Most people know that and the ones that are dumb enough to do it will do so regardless of the warning. Indie developers can’t afford the hassle and cost of this useless process and by streamlining or removing it entirely, it also takes a big cost sink out of the equation for large releases as well. I simply refuse to believe that the process in its current form is necessary to ensure that our consoles don’t explode when we put games in them, especially since the biggest scandal of this generation was the result of Microsoft’s faulty and poorly tested hardware.

I really think there is still a bright future for AAA games, particularly as the audience continues to grow. Many people who are playing Angry Birds on phones and tablets today won’t go deeper into gaming than that but there is a section that will and a growing audience just means more potential for success. But the AAA publishers have become so blind to costs that they’re outspending the audience growth and that can only result in more consolidations and bankruptcies and as a result, less titles and originality.  At the rate the current publishers are going, there won’t be many left to make AAA games soon and if others can’t fill that void, the main benefit of consoles goes away and suddenly, Microsoft and Sony have no incentive to keep making them. A world of simplistic and shallow mobile and social games is not one I welcome but the current way of doing things can’t continue and both the publishers and the console makers need to wake up and adapt before it’s too late. There’s a trail of industry bodies that’s already showing what happens when content creators refuse to go with the times and being such a young industry, I hope this one can realise that and be more agile. I love AAA games and I don’t want to see them go away and I hope this crazy long manifesto can maybe give someone in the the industry who is smarter than me some ideas on how to turn things around. It’s time for these executives to step up and think outside the box before their companies run out of oxygen within it.

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On Gaming’s Future: Mobile Reality Check

1 Comment Posted by on April 4, 2012

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve had the launch of the iPad 3 and a slew of rumours about what we may see in the next-gen home consoles. As usual, the growing Apple-centric members of the enthusiast press were quick to chime in on how the iPad 3 is somehow revolutionising games yet again, how Apple are the only ones that get the future of games and how iPad specs are accelerating so rapidly that in a few years, it will not only have rendered dedicated handhelds obsolete but now home consoles as well.

Never mind the inherent dangers of Apple controlling the industry, this is where all gaming is going they say and somehow, a monopoly is now a good thing. I think the predictions as they lay them out are very much a result of the Apple reality distortion field that still permeates the press today. However, they’re not entirely off base and to say that the current AAA industry doesn’t have major problems that currently don’t have a clear path to being solved is also false. I think AAA games as they are today are in very real danger but I don’t think mobile games on your TV is where things are going either. As usual, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I think if we’re going to answer the question on where gaming is going to be in a few years, it’s important to have a reality check of both sides of this debate as both are overstating their benefits and understating their weaknesses. Each have a lot of challenges both now and going forward and many of these are more similar between them than either would like to admit. This post is going to focus on the mobile space and the next one in a couple of days will focus on the AAA space.

When we hear the enthusiast press and Apple crusaders talk about mobile gaming (which is largely dominated by iOS, this can’t really be disputed yet), the talk is how it’s ushering a return to a golden era when games were less complicated, cheaper to create, the developers and not publishers controlled the content and innovation was encouraged and praised. Indeed, these are all generally good things. Games on iOS right now are low risk and every week, we hear stories about a small team having their project make a killing which leads to massive riches. Every time there are layoffs or departures from AAA studios, there’s usually a story the next day about how those people have gone off and formed new teams in the mobile and social spaces. Games on iOS are cheap to make, cheaper to buy and come with a massive and growing install base right out of the gate. It seems like the sector is in a stratospheric rise that has no limit and which will mean great things for innovation and new gaming experiences in the future.

That’s the reality for right now but the sad truth becoming more evident all the time is that mobile game development is quickly becoming as risky as other parts of the industry and will only get worse as the technology improves. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of games alone on the iTunes App Store right now and hundreds more being added every week. The better part of 90% of these offerings are garbage and not worth a second glance but the sheer volume makes it impossible to determine what’s good and what isn’t. iTunes has user reviews but like most other places, they often aren’t trustworthy and are dependent on personal taste. Even with many games selling for as little as a buck, people are being choosy because those bucks add up fast with that much choice and poor quality content out there.

So how does the average consumer decide what to buy? Usually by looking at the top seller or staff picks list, which are almost always dominated with the same few titles and rarely change. Unless a new game becomes a viral hit, has publisher and PR backing or gets co-promotion from Apple through one of these lists or placement in a TV ad, the chances of it becoming a huge seller are almost lottery-win thin. Apple has always thought of gaming as a red-headed stepchild and the revolution many say they started was something they fell into by accident and which has been perpetuated largely with their indifference. Steve Jobs believed computers were tools and that gaming was a waste of their potential and that’s still very much part of Apple’s culture.

The reality is that while we may always hear the press talk about runaway hits like Angry Birds or Draw Something, they are actually flukes and do not at all represent the norm. The makers of both of those titles had a string of releases prior to their seminal hits, most of which were flops. In fact, the often unspoken truth is that a tiny group of developers make almost all of the revenue on iOS and many respected developers are now seeing the platform becoming just like the rest of the industry it’s supposedly revolutionising. In other words, in only a few short years iOS has become almost entirely hit driven and dominated by a few key players who are following the money and not focusing on innovation or new ideas.

The one major advantage iOS has over home consoles and to a lesser extent PC is that the cost of entry is very low. One of the great things it has done has allowed the “bedroom programmers” to sweep back in and have a strong creative voice again. An individual or small team that would never be able to develop on a console can make an iOS game in their spare time, put it out there and maybe get rich from it. While there’s certainly a chance of that, the hard truths above make it a rare chance at best. Mark Rein, Vice-President of Epic Games who have released the very successful (and co-promoted by Apple) Infinity Blade series said on a podcast earlier this year that the average iOS game grosses $700 over its lifetime. Granted, he just threw that out with no citation but I’m going to assume given his position that he knows what he’s talking about.

$700 is nothing and makes even a part-time development endeavour a big financial risk. Even if we assume Rein is low-balling and the average return is ten to twenty times that, it’s still not enough for even one person to make a living on, let alone a team of people working full-time. For a lot of hobbyist developers, the risk may be worth it and I say more power to them. Some of the biggest successes and innovations in the world came from people with only a shoestring and a dream. But as a supposed new revolution that will bring with it a whole new facet of the industry, the picture is not super rosy. The press has people believing that the cost to get into iOS games is super low and because of that, it’s virtually a guarantee that you’ll get your investment back if not make a sizeable profit. That’s simply not the case and while the low cost of entry may allow a newly funded team to survive a flop or two, they can’t do so indefinitely until they get lucky enough to find their golden goose. Most of these people who are fleeing AAA development to make mobile games are going to fail and don’t have much greater a chance of success as they do in AAA, though getting funding to try is certainly easier. As tablets and phones get more powerful, it will only get worse.

The press is talking about how powerful the iPad 3 is and how it can rival the power of an Xbox 360. That’s actually not true at all right now but as these tablets continue to increase in power, there’s a good chance that in a few years, they will have similar graphical and processing capabilities as even the next-gen consoles. At that time, you could put your tablet down on a wireless video dock, pick up a Bluetooth game pad and play a AAA experience on your TV with a console you can pick up and take with you. Sounds pretty good from a user experience point of view and honestly, I really like the idea.

The danger is that the technical arms race is what made AAA games so incredibly expensive and risky and with iOS being fairly risky already, it will get even more so as power increases. This will quickly lead to the small developers being marginalised and forced out and the larger ones to need bigger and bigger budgets (and by extension more marketing which means even more money) to ensure that their games succeed. See where this is going? Right to where AAA games are now. Long development times, huge budgets and teams and few creative risks being taken. $1-$5 games won’t be possible anymore when they go from costing thousands to millions and then tens of millions to make and market. As prices go up, so do the apprehensions of customers to try out a bunch of games in succession to find out what they like. The marketing for these larger games will also drown out indie developers and push them back from the mainstream to a low-profit niche for enthusiasts only. Different form factor, same problems. This isn’t good for developers or gamers.

The raw fact is this: Publishers are desperate for new sustainable revenue streams right now and with a couple of exceptions like Electronic Arts, none of them have gotten behind iOS gaming in a big way. Some might say they’re just dinosaurs stuck in old ways and not embracing new things but these are large companies that are run by smart people in one of the most dynamic, rapidly changing industries in the world. They know fortunes in gaming can change overnight and how to latch on to things that have big success potential. With their resources, it wouldn’t be hard for them to try a few iOS games out and see what happens. Yet they largely aren’t and most of them are tie-ins to other properties, not original titles. Why is that? Is that because they simply don’t see them as big enough for their league or could it be that perhaps they don’t see the long-term potential in the segment and that it stands to be more of a fad than the wave of the future? The AAA industry is hurting right now but it still makes far more money per year than iOS gaming and it’s foolish to discount their knowledge and decisions. If they are lining up to back the Wii U but aren’t paying much attention to iOS, I think that says something significant.

So what needs to happen to prevent this platform from burning out and becoming like the AAA industry it’s trying to avoid? I honestly have more thoughts on this from the AAA side, only because that industry has been around much longer and isn’t in such a state of flux. I think the first and biggest thing is that Apple needs to take some pages from the book of Steam. They need to stop thinking of gaming as an afterthought and start embracing it. Rather than just letting games exist on iOS and having Darwin rule the ecosystem, they need to start showcasing titles and really giving attention and promotion to indies. Don’t just let the best selling or viral titles get noticed, start showing off the unique and creative experiences offered on your platform and show why sometimes the smaller games can be just as good or better than the technical show pieces like Infinity Blade. Steam is its own platform and owned by a company that makes games too but Valve don’t shy away from promoting the work of others and giving great projects from all levels of development the spotlight. If they want iOS to take over living rooms and become the next great force in gaming, they need to show everything that makes the platform great and ensure that it doesn’t just become about flashy graphics and big marketing budgets.

Even Apple must realise that iOS’s current growth is a fashion trend and is going to slow in the next couple of years. The platform’s not going anywhere but sales of new devices will taper and their user base will begin to plateau. If they don’t step up and start selling the benefits of their hardware as a gaming platform for all kinds of different experiences, they risk handing the keys of gaming back to the console makers before iOS gaming truly has rubber hit road. The small developers are fuelling the growth of iOS gaming and they’re the reason the enthusiast press is so infatuated with it right now. If it simply becomes about flashy graphics and style over substance, it will lose its lustre and the renaissance will fade. There’s great opportunity for creativity to shine here, Apple needs to get off the sidelines and start backing that. Otherwise gaming may go roaring right past them.

By the end of the week, I’ll have my next post up which will tackle this same issue but from the AAA side.

Business, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Tablets, Technology, Video Games , , , , , ,

The Gaming Press Needs to Find Some Humility

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 26, 2012

A while back,  I wrote a post about the gaming enthusiast press’ continual crisis of confidence. Now I’d like to talk about the other side, that is when the enthusiast press gets overconfident and dismissive of outside criticism, some of which may be deserved. As many are aware, there’s a wee bit of a hubbub going on over the ending to Mass Effect 3. One of my next couple of blog posts is going to detail my experiences and opinion on it but the gist of the uproar is that many gamers don’t like the way the sci-fi trilogy ended and have been loudly voicing their displeasure, even demanding that BioWare change the ending to one they would prefer. True to form, the enthusiast press has stepped up to comment, sometimes with insightful and interest pieces and sometimes with facepalm inducing tripe that insults their audience.

That items such as the latter one linked above exist in quantity is distressing enough but perhaps moreso is the way some generally respected members of the enthusiast press respond to attempts at constructive criticism of what they do. Late this past week, a series of articles at Forbes which are nicely summarised with additional commentary here asked the question of whether or not the universally positive coverage of Mass Effect 3 (almost none of which talked about the ending so many dislike) demonstrates a credibility problem in the enthusiast press. Now I will admit that Forbes has a reputation for writing pieces designed to rile people up (this is the same site that predicted Apple will have a $1,650 stock price in 2015 backed up by hilariously flawed arguments) and it should be noted that one of the first published articles on gaming by the author that touched this all off is well…an unflattering diatribe. Regardless, the series raised a number of interesting questions as to whether many in the games press specifically have a problem separating the fans within them from the critics. Many well known gaming reporters did not take kindly to it and lashed out pretty strongly. I also witnessed some strongly worded responses from Alex Navarro of Giant Bomb and Ben Kuchera of the Penny Arcade report with Kuchera having gone so far as to publicly block people on Twitter who have written him mature yet unfavourable comments.

Frankly I’m appalled that this is how some are choosing to respond to the people they write their content for (and I should stress that this is only a few high profile people doing this), as if they are somehow above the criticism. As I’ve said before, the games press seems to have this constant need to defend and validate what they do, whether it’s to idiot commenters or now to people from other areas of the press. Clearly the article hit a nerve with some, something I might add it was likely written to do and it’s likely the responses it provoked have simply validated the author’s opinions.

I will say that I don’t agree with all the points made in the Forbes series. I think claiming that the enthusiast press should be faulted for being enthusiasts is as ridiculous as it is paradoxical. Obviously you have to be a fan of a creative medium to write or critique it in a meaningful way because otherwise, you can’t relate to the other fans you are writing for. This is true in all forms of media and that’s why there’s also a thriving enthusiast press for books, music, movies, TV etc. There are however, several endemic elements to the games press that aren’t often found in the othes and I believe these hurt its credibility. They can be overcome but with few exceptions, there doesn’t seem to be many attempts to do so. I don’t know if this is because many gaming sites are owned by large media conglomerates that target them to niche demographics or simply because they feel its necessary to appease the vocal minority audience rather than simply tune out.

The first of these does tie in to the point the Forbes series made on critics also being fans. It’s something I’ve seen happening for years and it’s why I only trust reviews from a handful of sources. That is what I call “honeymooning” with games. When a hotly anticipated title comes out (especially if it’s a sequel in a highly regarded series) many critics have an initial honeymoon phase with it when the title is new and they’re so happy to have it that they will tend to overstate their praises for it and often gloss over obvious flaws or downplay their significance. Almost all reviews are written in this honeymoon period, they have to be. It’s only a few weeks later (usually after the next hot title comes out) that the honeymoon period ends and the flaws are discussed, often to the point where many wonder why they weren’t brought up before since they appear to be such big deals.

The best recent example of this I can think of is Mass Effect 2, the last game in the series. It was undeniably a fantastic title and in my opinion was the best of the trilogy but it had several major gameplay and narrative problems that were commonly agreed upon. Most of these were not reflected in reviews or in podcasts I listened to at the time. The podcasts in particular were full of lavish praise, some going so far as to call it one of the best RPGs ever made. I heard the term “perfect game” used more than once. However, several weeks later if someone on one of these shows were to bring it up, the discussion would almost exclusively be focused on the faults and how major and damaging to the experience they were. None of these points were apparently important before and of course by the time they were discussed, most of the game’s sales had been made and all the glowing reviews were out there and it was too late to change them. I think the inability many in game critics have to disconnect themselves from their fandom is a big problem and I don’t see this as often in other media. You can be a fan of something and critique it but you need to train your brain to look at something with straight objectivity when you’re reviewing it, even if it’s something you were looking forward to. I’m not a professional critic but I had no problem doing this with Mass Effect 2 at the time or many other games since. I loved the game but could tell you right away what was wrong with it and how that dampened my experience. Not everyone has to agree with me but many did, just later on. As a reviewer, you are supposed to be writing buying advice. If you can’t play games and not have a “honeymoon” phase with them, I dare say that perhaps you’re not the best qualified to be reviewing them.

The second issue is the intertwined relationship the games press has with the companies they are supposed to be critical of. I won’t say this never happens in other media criticism but it’s definitely the exception as opposed to the rule as it is in video games. The primary form of advertising on almost any video game web site is…video games. On top of that, they’re usually new releases which are of course the focus of most of the coverage. I have no idea how the web advertising business works or why it’s seemingly so difficult for these sites to get ads from industries they don’t cover but it’s a major problem and there’s no sure way to gauge the influence it has on coverage beyond the press’ assurance that they can be trusted which they’ve proven they often can’t be. If it is so hard to get non-endemic advertising, I can sympathise because these companies need to make money but if other enthusiast media can at least partially avoid it, I don’t know why they can’t.

Beyond that, there are the large number of incentives that the enthusiast press is often given by big publishers. Getting early copies of games to review is standard in most media and that’s fine. If you’re writing buying advice, it’s important to have your review ready the day a title launches. Indeed, music and movie critics get to sample new products in advance too and it makes sense. However, for most movie critics, that means getting a free ticket to an advance showing at a local theatre. With large game publishers, the big means of press promotion the last few years have been “media and review events”. When a publisher has a slate of big titles in the pipeline or a new title coming out shortly and wants press coverage, they will hold a fancy event that they will invite the enthusiast press to. These are often in lavish hotels or resorts in fancy locations like Las Vegas or Hawaii, they’re fully catered, include a bunch of free swag and sometimes even special events for the press that are themed around the upcoming titles. Occasionally the reporters are even allowed to stay for an extra couple of days after the event as a mini vacation. This is all paid for by the publishers. In the case of review events, the reporters are all placed in a special area together where they have a limited amount of time to play the game to completion at a rushed pace and are surrounded with PR people the whole time. Review events such as these are usually saved for large franchises such as Gears of War or Call of Duty and are often the only way enthusiast outlets can review these titles before release.

The third issue is one of access. One of the criticisms levied against cable news networks now is how they are always afraid to offend those in power for fear of losing the access to key people and information they require in order to report effectively and quickly. The games press has this same issue. Piss off a major publisher with a negative review and you may not get review copies next time or get invited to press events or get interviews or screenshots. They may even give a time exclusive to another outlet that will steal your traffic. Less coverage means less traffic and less ad revenue. This is the single biggest reason in my opinion that so many sites really review on a “7 to 10 scale”, meaning that even though they claim to use the 10 point spectrum, anything under a 7 is only reserved for truly bad titles and even the mediocre ones can be expected to score between 7 and 10. I also believe it’s why bad games from larger publishers will often get higher scores than bad games with similar negative qualities from smaller publishers that don’t have bigger PR departments or large numbers of releases in a given year. A bad game from Activision or EA may get a 6 but a game with very similar problems from say SouthPeak or dtp Entertainment might get a 3 or 4. I don’t even know if this is done consciously a lot of the time but I’ve seen a definite score bias towards larger publishers over the years.

To say that factors such as these don’t have an undue influence on coverage is naive and ridiculous. You simply cannot have an industry that relies on advertising dollars, access and free events from the people they are supposed to be critical of to not have lapses in integrity. I don’t paint the entire enthusiast press with this brush but the problems are undeniable. So what can they do to fix this? I don’t know what they do about the advertising problem but when it comes to press events and access, the fix is simple: Say no. Activision won’t let you review Call of Duty prior to release without coming to their event? Then wait until release, buy a retail copy and make it clear to your readers why the review is late. Is EA hinting that you may not get preview assets for the new Medal of Honor game if you don’t lavish praise on Mass Effect 3? Then go without those assets and once again tell your readers why. If the publishers are playing dirty, there’s nothing wrong with saying so and if nothing else, we know that gamers are passionate people and will call them to account for that. All it would take is a couple of big sites to do this before the publishers would have to smarten up for fear of alienating big chunks of the hardcore fan base that evangelise the products they sell. The problem is, this all requires one or two outlets to be first and no one wants to be.

My point with this is that if the games press is going to operate with all these dubious ties to the industry they cover, they are going to have to live with the occasional accusation (be it in editorial or forum form) of foul play in their coverage. To see people like Alex Navarro, Jim Sterling, Justin McElroy and Ben Kuchera get all high and mighty because someone dared to point out the massive integrity issue that has hung over their entire industry for over a decade now is disingenuous and arrogant. The gist of most of their responses was “I’ve never personally done such a thing so how dare you say it’s a possibility for anyone to!” Sorry guys but your relationship to the industry you cover would be described in any other journalistic field as a massive conflict of interest. That the business model of your field is so flawed that it has to operate this way doesn’t excuse it and I think the concerns (and in some cases, criticisms backed up by real world examples and trends) are perfectly valid. You may be the pinnacle of integrity but many in your field are not and I don’t know if you noticed but the Forbes guy didn’t name names.

If you are so convinced that your work is proper journalism, who cares what some guy at Forbes thinks anyway? Once again, you feel the need to leap to the defence of your craft, almost as if you think it doesn’t have the means to stand on its own merits. Fox News doesn’t feel the need to complain about their critics because those aren’t the people they serve so why do you care? For a group that claims to have such a thick skin because of the often vile nature of their communities, the games press sure does seem to bruise easily.

That’s not to say there isn’t real journalism going on in games or that there are many sites out there that are trying to change the formula or are doing great work within it. There’s a lot out there but sadly, the really popular sites are the ones that rely and thrive off this dubious symbiotic relationship with publishers. It’s been like this for a long time and barring a major shift in how games are made and published (which could be coming in some form), I sadly don’t see it changing any time soon. Nonetheless, these problems exist and need to be brought to light. People of influence responding as some of them did only serve to further demonstrate how undeveloped and immature the games press is and why other press scoff at them. Want to be considered “real journalists”? Then earn it and when it’s questioned, prove the accusers wrong rather than just hurling insults. And for the love of everything, don’t write a response to an issue raised by a passionate section of your fans that basically calls them stupid. We’re not on the school yard here and no one even won an argument by taking the low ground.

Coverage, Video Games , , , ,

UPDATED: Mike Daisey Stretched the Truth But There’s Still A Problem In China

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 16, 2012

If you’ve been reading the Internet this afternoon you’re probably aware of this already but This American Life has retracted the story Mike Daisey about Apple factory conditions after further fact-checking revealed that some of the more dramatic portions of his story either stretched the truth or were outright lies. I did a post about this story and though I don’t claim to be any kind of journalist, it appears I now used a bad source and for that, I admit it and want my readers to know if you don’t already.

It’s always a shame when one of the few sources of real journalism left in the world has a misstep like this and I will give This American Life credit, they seem to be owning the mistake. They are planning to devote an entire one hour episode to coming clean, pointing out the errors that were made and asking those involved to clarify. You’d never see Fox News or CNN do that. I do think the timing of this is highly suspicious as this is iPad 3 launch day. While it’s easy to say that this shows they were bowing to pressure from a mega corporation and are doing this to appease them, I actually don’t think that’s true. I do think that they are intentionally making this announcement today in the hope it will get drowned out among the sea of other lazy outlets devoting “news” time to covering the lines at Apple stores, something that involves about as much journalism as the Apple advertisements that will likely follow. Honestly, I think that’s kind of a shady thing to do but This American Life of all people know that many are incredibly connected (especially those who would buy an iPad) and word of this is going to make it out regardless. Since their site is currently down due to overloading as I write this, I think it’s safe to say the word is out.

Regardless of the reasons for this retraction, my great fear is that this will give the iCult and those of it who have infiltrated the press like David Pogue cause to go “SEE! There’s no problem in China, it’s all just made up by Apple haters!” Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s true that I have many legitimate reasons to dislike Apple as a company but that doesn’t mean there is no problem. Around the same time as Daisey’s story, other detailed reports were made about conditions in Apple factories, reports that haven’t been called into question. And as I’ve said before, this isn’t just an Apple problem but one that involves nearly every major electronics manufacturer. That one guy misrepresented some things doesn’t suddenly mean there’s no issue and that companies like Apple and many others shouldn’t be doing a lot more than they are to make things better.

As for Mike Daisey, I think his attempt to justify what he did by saying “it wasn’t journalism, it was just theatre” is complete crap. He did what he did to get his story on the air and draw attention to his one-man show about it. By fabricating stuff as he did, he only served to damage the cause he was championing, a cause I believe in and which many more should. Now we have one of the most vocal and rabid fanbases in the world using this as a reason to deny the problem and one of the last bastions of truly great journalism has been shamed and perhaps damaged permanently for what many will say was slandering the world’s most powerful and admired company. Thanks Mike, a lot of good you’ve done. I really hope he’s smart enough to just fade away and not continue to try to defend himself or represent the cause for fair treatment of Chinese workers anymore. He screwed up, he got caught, now he needs to go away and leave the honest people to continue to press the issue. He should be disgraced.

If you’re one of the people who got an iPad 3 today (I almost was but am not going to be for now), please take a moment to think about where it came from and what the people who made it for you went through so you could have your shiny new toy. A lot of this stuff is made in not so nice ways and one guy’s exaggerated tale of those ways doesn’t mean that obscenely rich companies like Apple can’t and shouldn’t do more to address it. We as consumers are the ones with the ultimate power to make things better and there has never been a more important time to do so.

UPDATE: I finally got a chance to listen to the full Retraction episode yesterday. I now have even more respect for This American Life than I did before and even less for Mike Daisey. The show went far and above what was required of them to admit their mistake and it was clear from his tone of voice that Ira Glass is deeply embarrassed and upset. As for Daisey, he did apologise for submitting the episode to them as journalism but still refused to accept responsibility for his lies which he was caught red handed in. He continued to use the “it was just theatre” defense and it clearly demonstrated to me that he has no remorse for what he did, only for getting caught. As I said, the man’s a disgrace to his cause. I was also pleased to hear the third act devoted to talking to the New York Times report I mentioned and addressing the real problems that do exist in China which Daisey used as the stepping stone for his narrative. I am glad they didn’t try to ignore the issue but said “We know we screwed up but this problem is real.” I truly hope that those who listened paid attention to that.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen that much backlash from Apple’s defense force. Even some of those I expected to scream how they’ve somehow been vindicated have either remained quiet or have praised This American Life for doing the right thing. I’m glad for that as the show doesn’t deserve to have its reputation tarnished. If anything, this shows how committed they are to proper journalism. When I have the means, I will be donating money to the show and needless to say, I will keep listening. I hope their listener base doesn’t take much of a hit from this.

Technology, Business, Mobile Phones, Computers, Tablets , , , , , , , , ,

The Worries of An Apple Led Post-PC World

4 Comments Posted by on March 8, 2012

So the iPad 3 was announced yesterday (yes I know it’s just called the iPad but it’s the 3rd one so it’s the iPad 3) and as usual, the press tripped over themselves to give them free PR. The mainstream news media which wouldn’t give any other tech launch more than a cursory mention practically live blogged the event and well, the fanboy driven tech press did what it always does with Apple launches, gush like teen girls at a boy band concert, much like the legion of practically religious level Apple enthusiasts who clogged my Twitter feed during the reveal. It’s still gross and in the press’ case, the opposite of journalism but it’s also par for the course now and my getting mad about it is pointless. Truthfully, I was paying closer attention than I usually would because my girlfriend and I were strongly considering splitting the purchase of an iPad 3. She wants it to surf and do e-mail easily when she travels for work and I want it to see if it’s possible for iOS games to hook me in (which they haven’t to this point). Something unexpected happened after work that may result in us moving soon and thus delaying that money being spent for a while but we’ll see.

Among all the gushing comes the usual talking points about the “post-PC world” tablets are supposedly ushering in, points Apple themselves trumpet whenever they can. They are quick to point out that the term doesn’t mean the end of traditional computers (an area where they still make a lot of money) but it does mean a reversal of the current roles where the desktop or laptop is a person’s primary means of computing and the tablet complements that. Tablets don’t really fit in with how I do my day-to-day computing, mostly because I am usually either at home or the office, type at a blistering speed an on-screen keyboard simply can’t keep up with and I’m used to a heavy multitasking environment where I can do and monitor several things at once. You put two copies of myself on a couch with stuff to do and the version of me using my HP ProBook will leave the tablet version of me in the dust. However, I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which I use a computer now is not at all mainstream and this is most certainly a vision based around the mainstream. If my girlfriend and my Mom found themselves using a tablet first and foremost, that’s cool by me as long as I can still have my laptop and gaming desktop too.

Tablets require less material to make, can arguably be priced to be much more accessible than traditional computers (though Apple is trying their damndest to avoid this), can be carried around as easily as a pad of paper and can do most day-to-day computing tasks without even breaking a sweat. I’m not denying the benefits of the “post-PC” world and many elements of it I will welcome. What I do have many concerns with is Apple being the leaders of this world. The original iPad kind of came from nowhere and virtually everyone trying to compete with it has been stumbling over themselves to catch up, while also thinking they can charge similar prices for devices that are simply inferior. As tablets go the iPad is virtually unchallenged and barring some major missteps by Apple or a roaring comeback into the space from Microsoft (whose missteps with Windows 8 will be the subject of a future post), it stands to be that way for the foreseeable future. And this is not good for anyone.

Having a single dominant player in any market is a bad thing because it discourages innovation and leads to higher prices because of reduced competition. One need look no further than when Microsoft Windows was basically your only real choice for a desktop operating system. Poor performance, gaping security flaws, massive product delays, tiny incremental updates and bullying of OEMs were all the orders of the day back then. Apple is still a distant minority in the traditional computing space but they gain ground on Windows every day and the iPad led post-PC world could put the writing on the wall for Microsoft’s key rainmaker. When Apple put their feet to the fire, what we ended up with was Windows 7, arguably the most polished and solid version of Windows ever and a product which I happily use every day and firmly believe is superior to Mac OS. However, even when Microsoft Windows was at its flattest and most stationary, there were a number of key differences of PCs compared to Macs which Microsoft embraced and still does to this day. Apple does not share these values and should they become the dominant player in the market, their continued adherence to them doesn’t do good for the future advancement of computing. Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • Apple likes closed platforms: The original incarnation of iOS didn’t allow third party applications of any kind. This was the way Steve Jobs wanted it because he believed these external influences destabilised the user’s experience and he was right, they do. But after screaming demand from users (and Android right around the corner who embraced third party software), he relented and it was arguably the smartest thing Apple ever did. Apple nonetheless still holds the keys to the kingdom and while they’ll let anyone write apps for iOS, you have to get their permission to make it available and they can refuse you for any reason, including for things like making an app that’s better than one of their stock ones or making a game that raises awareness of their supplier’s factory conditions. The biggest innovations have come from people breaking the mould and disrupting trends with new things. You know, exactly like iOS did. On Windows, you could write any program you wanted and put it out there with permission from no one. In an Apple post-PC world, only one entity has control of what you get access to and they have an agenda that doesn’t always favour innovation. That only benefits them, not the innovators and not the users.
  • Apple hates user choice: Want an iPad? There’s three different memory sizes and you can have it with cellular capability or not. Want an iPhone? There’s 3 of them and they aren’t expandable. Want an iMac? There’s 4 of them. A MacBook? 8. Want a gaming system? Sorry, there isn’t one. Don’t care so much about having a lot of disk space but want a faster CPU? Can’t do that, you pick a template. Want a desktop PC but also use your own monitor setup? You can only do that with a Mac Pro that starts at $2,600. And since the Mac and iOS aren’t open platforms where you have different manufacturers offering different products and competing on price (someone tried to do this with Mac OS and Apple destroyed them for it), you either go with their options at their prices or stay out. For your average mainstream end user, this probably isn’t a big deal but the enthusiast and professional markets are massive and growing and Apple doesn’t care about those. With Windows PCs, you have all the choice you could ever want from a bare bones netbook to an $8,000 gaming rig that will dim the lights on your whole block. There’s something for everyone and it’s easy to find something that will do what you want for the price you’re willing to pay. Which brings me to the next point.
  • Apple products are purposefully overpriced: This is less of a problem than it used to be but it is simple fact that at least when it comes to desktop and laptop computers, Apple products cost substantially more relative to the technical capabilities you’re getting. You show me an iMac and I will show you a PC with similar specs that costs way less. Apple makes something like $200+ on every iPad sold from day one, an utterly obscene profit margin by modern tech industry standards. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a company charging what the market will pay and at least right now, Apple has managed to convince many people that paying hundreds more than a similarly speced competitor’s product makes economic sense. However, the only reason they’re able to do this is again because they have no competition in their space. Yes, we do still have Windows PCs that are fiercely competing on price but remember, we’re talking in the context of a post-PC world where tablets are the de facto standard. Right now, inferior Android tablets are going on sale for the same $500 price as the iPad because Apple has wrongly got it into the heads of the mainstream public that any tablet under that price isn’t worth considering. If we enter a post-PC world that Apple largely controls, the cost of computing will go up substantially, making it harder for less wealthy people to get into and thus, reducing the number of people using what is now a fundamental part of everyday life. Competition is key to lower prices, innovation and accessibility and with Apple running things, there would be no such competition.
  • Apple believes they still own the products you buy: If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod and want to load media or apps on it, you do it through iTunes. Period. A Mac App Store is already available and many believe software on Mac OS will eventually go the same way. On Android, there are multiple app stores that compete to offer the best products and prices and on Windows, you can get software in literally thousands of different ways to suit your preference. On iOS, there is no such thing unless you jailbreak your device (which of course voids the warranty and locks you out of future updates). Apple claims this is in the interest of making sure the user experience is always seamless and reliable but that’s a thin smokescreen. In reality, it’s structured this way to make sure anything you do with that device has to be approved by and more importantly, purchased through them. Apple takes a substantial cut of every single thing sold through iTunes and as with hardware, it’s not in their interest to let you shop elsewhere where they can’t control the experience and more importantly, their slice of the action. So after paying a minimum of $500 for your new iPad, Apple still believes they have the right to tell you how to use it and if you don’t agree, you don’t get to play in their sandbox. This is incredibly arrogant and despite what their carefully curated marketing tells you, this isn’t about ensuring a great experience for you but about how much they steer you into exclusively giving them more money, even after you’ve already given them a lot of it. In other words, they still believe they have a right to control your device, even after you’ve paid for it. As anyone who has used Windows 7 on a capable PC will say, you can have an open platform with choice and still have a rock solid, pleasing experience. You don’t have to wall it up for things to work well.
  • Apple is becoming a patent troll: There’s no denying that at least right now, Android based tablet competitors can’t hold a candle to the iPad. Frankly, Google and their partners need to get their act together and fast because every month they don’t bring out an iPad killer, more Android loyalists get fed up with waiting and go to the Apple camp. Windows 8 is also a long way off and we have no idea how that’s going to go. Beyond that though, there is another darker reason for this. Apple has been on a patent bender for the last several years, locking down everything they can and threatening Android partners with potentially bank-breaking lawsuits. They are already locked in many such fights across Europe. One of the main reasons Google bought Motorola Mobility for billions of dollars a while back was just to lock up their patent portfolio in order to use it to stare down Apple. Yes, lots of companies are doing this and yes, much of this is a result of an American patent system that’s broken to the point of absurdity. I don’t deny that but one also can’t deny that Apple is a company with $100 billion in cash with no end in sight, they don’t need the money and patents aren’t like trademarks, you don’t lose them if you just sit on them and don’t sue everyone. They’re doing this to bleed their competitors dry and trying to stop other, potentially better devices from entering the market alongside theirs. This isn’t an innovating marketplace of ideas, this is Apple trying to use their massive cash reserves to bully out anyone who can mount a threat to them. If they truly stand behind their products, then they should be able to stand on their own and if someone uses a slightly similar case design or the magnetic charging connector, they should have nothing to worry about if their stuff is still better. Using the courts to stop competition is manipulating the market and that doesn’t serve consumers.

You’ll notice one common theme in all those points: Choice or in Apple’s case, lack thereof. Everything Apple has built their impressive and continuing success on is based around restraining user choices which keeps prices high and ultimately, limits innovation only to their own and the ones they permit. So far this strategy seems to be working for them and probably will as long as they can string out the fashion trend that’s fuelling their current growth. But competition is what made the PC strong and it was a need to compete in new and creative ways that made Apple invent iOS and all its associated devices in the first place. Now that they are ruling the roost (at least as far as tablets go), their objective is about shrinking the scope of choice down and that’s something that only benefits them, not the customers and not the high-tech industry as a whole. Microsoft was accused, tried and heavily fined and regulated in Europe and almost in the US for doing far less nefarious things than that what I listed above. They were considered an evil predator but Apple does the same and in some cases worse and is considered a pioneering innovator.

Is a company who does all of what I’ve written and more the one you want having dominance of the post-PC world? I don’t know if I am. If you’re a hardcore Apple fan, you’ve likely blown off what I’ve written as me just being another hater who dislikes the top dog and that’s not what I am. Keep in mind, I almost bought an iPad 3 today and the only reason I didn’t was because of an unexpected event that should it not pan out, will have me considering the purchase again. I don’t want to see Apple fail, I just don’t want to see them being the only ones who have a say in the post-PC future.

Apple has done one thing exceedingly well: They took a very bloated, arrogant and stagnant high-tech industry and shoved a massive wad of humble pie in its face, almost overnight. That’s damn impressive and the shake up is exactly what the industry needed. I thank them for bringing about that change. However, I believe the tides have changed too quickly and even when they were almost down and out, Apple and their devoted fans were still incredibly arrogant. If they control the post-PC world, the same problems we faced before could be faced again, only with a different company at the top and no one in a position to challenge them. That’s bad for the industry, bad for consumers and bad for innovation. I truly hope that some of Apple’s competitors who are still scrambling to find their feet manage to do so and mount a proper fight. And I really hope that as consumers get more tech savvy, that they start to realise that Apple is supposed to work for them, not the other way around.

The post-PC world has the potential to be awesome and revolutionary but for it to realise its full potential, user choice must be at the forefront of it. In their current form, that’s not what Apple wants.

Business, Computers, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Tablets, Technology , , , , , ,

Why does there always have to be a loser?

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 26, 2012

As I read both coverage and discussions of many modern amenities but particularly the technology we use to entertain ourselves, I am constantly reminded of this new famous Louis CK rant:

Though I feel there’s nothing wrong with having a gripe when a product or service you purchased isn’t acting as advertised, he’s completely right. Entitlement culture drives me nuts. People have become addicted to being upset and angry and latching on to very minor negatives to fuel that addiction. Failure has almost become a drug to our society and culture.

This past week, the PlayStation Vita launched and I bought one. I’ve been using it every day and I’m loving it. It’s not without fault and like most Sony products, it has a few head-scratching design choices. Overall though, it’s an amazing piece of technology and frankly I think it was a steal at $250. I have a 3DS and like that too but this has hooked me much more and will definitely be my first handheld of choice. However, were you to check with many video game enthusiast podcasts or forums, you will see waves of people nitpicking minor issues with the system as proof that Sony still doesn’t “get it” and how it’s a sure sign the product will fail and how iOS is taking over the world:

“Why are there multiple ways to go back in screens?”
“Why does tapping an icon bring up a launcher? I don’t want to launch my games twice!”
“Why does the wi-fi turn off in certain games?”

This is a small selection of what I’ve read. As someone whose job often involves teaching technology-challenged people, I facepalmed quite hard at hearing the level of stink being made about these points. These are all things that have reasons behind them and which are trivially easy to deal with once you’ve experienced them once. They require absolutely no additional time or effort and ultimately cause no inconvenience. I could sit my Mother down with the Vita and show her how to use it as well as I can within moments. Yet, these are treated as game breaking points by many. Forget that every competing device has its own quirks and frustrations, the focus is on how these minor issues–all of which can and probably will be fixed in future software updates, one of the great benefits of modern technology–mean the Vita is doomed.

The following sentiment is the most choice of all:

“Oh in a month, we’ll all be talking about how they’re all just sitting on shelves because you’ve gone back to gaming on your iPhone.”

This is always said by someone who doesn’t own a Vita and probably never will. Rather than just abstain from a conversation about a product they aren’t interested in, they always have to duck their head in just long enough to take a dump on those who do believe in it. This is done solely out of a desire to validate their choice by demeaning someone else’s. The enthusiast press is as guilty of this as anyone else. The Vita can’t succeed, even at its very competitive price because “the handheld market has moved on.” This is said with no empirical evidence beyond the fashion trend based, unsustainable growth of mobile gaming. I bought into the Vita not just because I like it but because I believe there’s a market for its kind of device and it’s a market I want to be a part of.

As someone who takes gaming very seriously, I would love to see a world where every medium can thrive. PCs, consoles, dedicated handhelds, mobile phones, social media, more games in more places is a good thing for the industry and the players in my opinion. But there seems to be a large and increasing number of people who want less choice and want only the things they like to succeed. If you’re not into the Vita, I totally understand that but how does its failure improve your life or your hobby and why spend time and energy being a cheerleader of its demise?

I use the Vita as the most recent example relevant to me but this exists everywhere across all things in modern culture from technology to politics to celebrities. There’s a sick sense of pleasure many seem to get by watching things fail and I think it’s a disturbing trend. What has happened in society that has made us so constantly angry, so spoiled, so entitled and so disturbed that we crave for things and people to lose? I have no professional or academic knowledge of such things but I’m sure it in some way involves people feeling better about themselves by revelling in the failures of others. But as someone who was depressed for many years and fixated on negativity (something I will discuss in another lengthy post some day), that never really helped me. I wonder if that was just in my case or if people do in fact improve their emotional standing in this way.

I think one facet of an ideal world is a bevy of choice, having things that cater to everyone’s wants and desires and being able to partake in the things that make you happy and ignore the rest. If I’m into something you’re not and vice versa, that’s great because having both available means everybody’s happy. But that’s not good enough anymore. People can’t just do what they enjoy, they can only be truly happy if everyone else is also into “their” thing and if everything else fails as proof that it was the one “proper” thing. It sounds eerily religious and though I don’t care for religion in general, I think those tenants applied to things as ultimately trivial as entertainment products is even more disturbing.

It causes you no more harm as a person nor takes any more effort to just hope for the best and that everything has a chance to succeed, including the stuff you aren’t into. That’s not to say that legitimate faults shouldn’t be pointed out and discussed or that people shouldn’t state why they won’t partake in something. However, I think rather than being stated in the context of how every minor issue is a sign of failure to delight in, they should be stated as how improvements can be made. A fault shouldn’t spell immediate demise, it should be something that can be improved so everyone’s happy.

As much as this post sounds like I’m putting myself on a pedestal, I’m really not. I say these things as someone who used to be a prime example of revelling in failure and who even now when I’m actively trying to break the habit, makes mountains out of molehills on a semi-regular basis. I’ve tried to cut back the amount of trivial whining I do and it’s tough sometimes because old habits die hard. This isn’t a new phenomena and maybe I’m starting to notice it more elsewhere because I’m trying to eliminate it in myself. It saddens and worries me to see our society so focused not just on seeing people lose but latching onto trivial concerns and actively encouraging it so we have more things to feel superior to. Happiness is ultimately found in improving one’s own life, not in tearing down others.

People need to try saying “That’s too bad.” when something fails rather than “See, I told you so!” I think we’d all be happier in the end.

Coverage, Culture, Humanity, Video Games , , , , , , ,

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