Geek Bravado

The blown hard arrogance of Parallax Abstraction.

Category Archives: Business

On Nintendo

2 Comments Posted by on April 30, 2013

I’m a Nintendo fan. Now, don’t read that as me saying I’m a Nintendo fanboy. I like to think I’m not a fanboy of anything, though I proudly proclaim to be an anti-fanboy towards certain things. Like many, a lot of my gaming history and literacy was formed on Nintendo platforms. I didn’t start gaming on the NES but I owned one and loved it to death, as I did the Super Nintendo. Both of these systems are the subject of many a Retro Flashback. I skipped the N64, got back in on the GameCube which I quite liked and own a Wii and a Wii U which I also really enjoy. The company’s history is varied and fascinating, having began over 100 years ago as a playing card manufacturer before evolving into the household gaming name they are today. They have brought a ton of innovation to the industry and take risks where others fear to tread. It’s safe to say without hyperbole that a lot of what the game industry has evolved into today can be traced back and credited to Nintendo.

The last couple of years, all has not been rosy however. After attaining stratospheric levels of success with the Wii and the DS–the latter of which is the best selling dedicated gaming system of all time–they’ve been on a pretty rocky path. They just recently reported their first yearly loss ever (remember, they’re 100+ years old), their stock has dropped substantially (though they are still one of Japan’s biggest companies), 3DS sales have picked up nicely after a very poor launch but are below expectations and the Wii U is doing very badly at the moment. More than a few in the press and in the “professional” analyst field have been decrying the company’s failures, saying Nintendo doesn’t know how to compete in the modern games industry, that they can’t sustain a hardware business and just need to start making games for already oversaturated and teetering mobile platforms. This culminated in last week’s announcement that they are not going to be holding a press conference at E3, instead holding media specific events and running a number of their Nintendo Direct streams, most of which are aimed at core fans. Indeed, many say the end is nigh for this gaming juggernaut.

Certainly, their challenges are many but a lot of this can be tied into the press needing something to write about in the void between now and E3 and their insistence that there always be someone to hate. It used to be Sony. They certainly provided a lot of fodder for that during the early years of the PlayStation 3 but with that company seemingly firing on all cylinders these days, Nintendo has come under the hateful gaze of the “enthusiast” press. There’s certainly a lot of valid criticism and many lessons that Nintendo has yet to learn. However, I do think a lot of this sentiment–which has gotten downright vitriolic at times–is uninformed and misplaced.

There are many reasons for that and I’m going to outline them here, just to give you readers some perspective when you’re reading all the doom and gloom on this company.

The first is the kind of company Nintendo are in general. In a business world that has become transfixed in the next quarter at all costs, Nintendo has always taken a long view. They don’t do things just for the next quarter, they build things to succeed over years. Some of their systems have launched strong, others not so much but with the notable exception of the Virtual Boy, every game system they’ve released has made money and often, done so while not being the top dog. The N64 was a distant second to the PlayStation 1, the GameCube was a distant third place last generation, at least in North America. Yet both of these systems were profitable in the end, even when Nintendo themselves called their sales disappointing. That’s because they managed to get good games on them which generated momentum and drove a steady curve upwards. The modern business market doesn’t like this. They like companies that come roaring out of the gate and leap from hit to hit, until they miss once and then they drop them like a hot potato.

The market wants everyone to be like Apple (something even Apple themselves are starting to falter at) and that’s not realistic. While Sony and Microsoft lose buckets of money for years at a time on their hardware launches, Nintendo quietly sits back with their often underpowered machines, slowly letting them grow and grow and usually, turning a profit on day one. The Wii was a huge exception to this rule but it was a fluke, one even Nintendo themselves didn’t see coming. The DS started slow and nearly everyone (chief among them the press) called it a ridiculous gimmick that would never catch on. How did that turn out? Companies that take a slower and steadier approach don’t make for exciting market narratives but Nintendo has stuck to this methodology in spite of that because it works. It’s one of their greatest strengths, not a weakness.

The Wii U has been a big exception to a lot of what I wrote above. The system apparently doesn’t make money on the hardware but Reggie Fils-Aime has claimed that the royalties from one game sale put it in the black. I actually think the system launched with a decent line-up but most of the games were met with a tepid response and while there does appear to be some good stuff in the pipe, they’re being drip-fed and the lack of information (even with E3 coming soon) is a big misstep. People who bought them want games and those who didn’t buy them need a reason to. Every day without more games is another day they give Sony and Microsoft the chance to steal their thunder.

They also completely bungled the message for the system. Naming it anything but the Wii 2 was a huge flub and even company President Satoru Iwata stated that a lot of people think the Wii U is just an accessory for the original Wii, an error you can’t fault anyone for making. The thing is, they can still fix that with good games, primarily from their internal teams. Nintendo has some of the best game developers in the industry and on top of that, they’re led by management that is not only skilled but who actually like and play games. Yes, Nintendo does need to court and nurture both indie and big third-party developers alike but their in-house talent always make games that both sell and show off whatever hardware they’re put on.

The games will come and I think as always, the Wii U will find success. Wii level of success? DS level of success? Absolutely not. But I have no doubt that Nintendo is aware that those days are over. The 3DS has a similarly difficult launch and then as well, many in the press said the era of dedicated handhelds were over and that the public had “moved on” to mobile games wholesale. Similarly, the games came and now the 3DS is doing very well. Now those same press types who should be eating crow are instead shifting their doom and gloom to the Wii U. The cycle continues.

Then there’s Nintendo skipping their E3 press conference this year. Many are saying that’s an admission of defeat and that they are conceding that nothing they show will be able to get any attention versus the big new console announcements Sony and Microsoft have. That was my initial reaction too. Then I thought about it for a bit and realised that I think most people are looking at this the wrong way.

I don’t think Nintendo dropping their E3 press conference says as much about them as it says about E3 itself and how important it really is to them. I said before that the press needs to stop whining about E3′s relevance and to a degree, I still believe that. But think about this for a minute. Sony and Microsoft aren’t announcing their new consoles at E3. They will certainly have a lot to show and talk about but Sony announced the PS4 months ago and Microsoft is announcing the next Xbox in May. These guys aren’t announcing at E3 either, they’re doing targeted, focused events dedicated to that separate from the press conferences. And that’s exactly what Nintendo’s doing. Many people (press included strangely) are acting as if that by not holding a press conference, Nintendo is essentially bowing out of E3 and that couldn’t be further from the truth. They still have a booth, they’re still showing tons of stuff to the press and sure, their Nintendo Direct presentations are watched more by the core than by casual consumers but the core is who ultimately spreads the message for you.

Nintendo knows that them showing games for a system that’s already out won’t get covered on Good Morning America like new systems from Sony and Microsoft will. Press conferences are expensive and rather than spend a fortune on what is frankly, usually a cringe-worthy show anyway, they’re going to spend less and speak directly to the press and their most evangelical fans. They’ll probably get the same amount of exposure at worst but they get to control how much information gets out and they get to do it for a lot less money. I don’t know about you but that sounds pretty damn sensible to me. And lest we forget, Nintendo’s not the only big industry player backing off at E3 this year. I still think E3′s important but Nintendo not doing a press conference says far more about the show than it does about them.

My point with all this is simple in the end: There’s a reason the phrase “Never bet against Nintendo” was coined and I think it still applies to this day. Yes, they’re a company facing difficulties right now but they’ve faced plenty before. They have an extraordinary management team of actual enthusiast gamers, they have some of the most valuable IP and developer talent in the world, they know how to make hardware and despite the fact that they seem to not always pay attention to the industry around them, they are still a humble company that’s learning from their mistakes. I say all this as someone who beat them with a stick about Wii U Virtual Console pricing. They aren’t perfect but they have consistently demonstrated that they can find a way to survive and thrive. For all the companies that have come and gone in the hardware space, Nintendo has been there and personally, I think if this upcoming console generation is the last as many will predict, Nintendo will still find a way to survive in it, even when Microsoft and Sony have left the building. That their business strategy doesn’t jive with the way most of the market wants things to work these days is in my opinion, a failing of the market, not Nintendo. I think more companies should take a long view approach to things and that the current market’s obsession with pump and dump strategies will backfire one day soon.

I admit that I do sound like a bit of a fanboy with how strongly I seem to be defending the company here. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’ve made and continue to make a lot of mistakes and as someone who got a Wii U right near launch, I want games and I want them now. But in their burning desire to always have something to hate on, the press and the analysts who want little more then attention have set their sights on Nintendo, ignoring their history of overcoming virtually all challenges and being a driving force in the games industry, even as those who beat them in the short term crumble and fade away. Dumping hardware and jumping into the mobile gold rush bubble is modern business thinking but doing so would be a long term disaster for Nintendo and in a few years, the same people telling them to do that now would be back deriding them for it. I think this is a company that not only has a lot of lessons to teach about the video game industry but about how to run a business for the long term in general. They may be the target du jour but I think their wisdom is ignored at our own peril.

Don’t count Nintendo out until they’re out. They can still surprise us all.

Business, Coverage, Predictions, Video Games , , , , , ,

Dead Space as a metaphor for a flailing and directionless EA

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 25, 2013

The Dead Space series is a weird one for me. As I’ve said before, I am a total wimp who doesn’t like horror anything but for some reason, Dead Space interested me from the moment it was announced and I’ve always been a big fan of it. Maybe it’s because it takes place in a sci-fi setting, maybe it’s because the story is mature but not terribly serious, maybe it’s because it’s not really a psychological horror title, I have no idea. The first game was a very pleasant surprise for me, the second game wavered a little bit but was still generally excellent. I also thought Dead Space Extraction was really good, if quite a shift in direction. Then came Dead Space 3 which I just finished last week. While I am looking forward to doing a New Game+ run in co-op (yeah, it has that but more on that later), I was generally very disappointed with Dead Space 3 as an entry in the series. While still generally well put together as a game, so much of it didn’t feel coherent with the hallmarks of the previous two titles and it feels like many of the elements I didn’t enjoy were just bolted onto a franchise where they really had no place in an effort to broaden the audience. Capcom had a similar problem with Resident Evil 6 and if sales of both of these games are to be believed, not only was the audience not broadened but it actually shrank as those who were already invested felt that the series had moved away from what they liked.

The more I’ve thought about this, the more I see the Dead Space series as a metaphor for Electronic Arts as a whole. This is a company that’s had a very turbulent few years. They went from being hugely profitable to losing buckets of money. Now they’re treading water again but only by wildly flailing from trend to trend in the hopes of catching onto what’s cool but never really succeeding in the long run. This culminated with the recent “resignation” of CEO John Riccitiello after yet another financial misstep and a series of embarrassing flubs such as the SimCity launch and the epic failure of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yes, they were also voted Worst Company In America for the second year by The Consumerist readers but I’m not giving that any credit. Internet polls are dumb, The Consumerist is a site with an agenda and if you voted for EA over American banks and oil companies, you’re either ignorant or stupid. Nonetheless, this was also a black mark for them.

Everyone from gamers to critics to the handful of analysts that actually have a clue have one common theme among their reasons for EA’s troubles: They are a company that’s lost focus. There is certainly a lot of evidence to support that. They’ve been on an acquisition bender for several years now, buying up numerous companies in the casual, mobile and social game spaces for often hugely inflated prices just to secure them before competitors could. Most of these acquisitions have not worked out very well. PopCap has announced one new game and put out nothing new since they were purchased and EA seems to be rapidly exiting the social space as that bubble quickly pops, something the collapse of Zynga foreshadowed. Their mobile stuff is doing fairly well as far as I know but I suspect that may also change as that bubble begins to pop too. They are madly flailing their arms around in all directions, hoping that they smack their hand into a hit. I think this is no better demonstrated than with the Dead Space series.

The story goes that Dead Space was actually conceived as a skunkworks project inside EA. A bunch of developers were working on other stuff and had this idea for a AAA sci-fi horror game. They worked on a prototype for a while and when they thought it was ready, showed it to the top brass who decided to give it a shot, created the Visceral Games team and gave them the budget to build their title. This was right around when John Riccitiello joined EA as CEO, promising to change the company’s much maligned past ways with a big push into new IP and creative ideas. This seemed like a great idea and Dead Space was one of the first things released with this mindset.  The whole story behind is was great and sounded like the start of a great creative endeavour. It was generally considered a very good game, though some die hard horror fans thought it was a little light on the deep scares. Personally, it was the perfect blend of horror and unique action that was needed to peak my interest and get me to pick it up. It didn’t sell great but placed very respectably for a new IP in the horror genre and well enough for EA to green light a sequel.

Dead Space 2 was still very good (some actually consider it better) but there were signs that it was veering a little ways off the course set by the first game. The protagonist suddenly found the ability to speak and there was a lot more character interaction and direct exposition, rather than just more organic, environmental storytelling. Combat became a greater focus and the scares became more obvious and less frequent. One big improvement was made in that the environments varied a fair bit more but there were also more than a few clichés thrown in, such as having to make your way through a creepy, abandoned nursery where you are introduced to the Crawler enemy which is essentially a mutated baby. Perhaps most jarring of all, a competitive multiplayer mode that exactly no one asked for was added. It was janky, unbalanced, half-baked and generally just not very fun. Worst of all, it was hidden behind EA’s stupid Online Pass paywall. Needless to say, the community for it withered quickly.

A lot of these changes (in particular the multiplayer) felt a lot like EA needed to check a certain amount of bullet points in a list in order to make sure Dead Space 2 was getting to as big an audience as possible. This was a time where every big publisher thought every title had to have multiplayer as a means to prevent people from trading games back in. It took a while but some eventually realised this doesn’t work. It still happens occasionally today (Tomb Raider anyone?) but more publishers are realising the key to keeping single player games in consumer’s hands is compelling DLC, rather than multiplayer no one wants.

This year, we got Dead Space 3 and it couldn’t be more of a departure for the series. Eyebrows were immediately raised when EA Labels President Frank Gibeau (who I’m convinced actively dislikes his company’s customers) came out in the press and basically issued a threat, saying that it had to sell 5 million copies in order to justify itself. That’s more than the entire series sales to date combined according to some estimates and anyone with half a brain knew that was a ridiculous target, especially for the third entry in the series that was largely using the same engine and assets. Why EA set such an unrealistic target is unknown but it screamed that they were setting this title up for “broader appeal” which is corporate speak for “shoehorning in every feature we can think of.” Did they ever deliver on that.

Dead Space 3 takes most the series existing concepts and dumbs them down, while adding more elements no one wanted. Ammo became far more plentiful and was turned from weapon specific to universal. The levels were designed so you always knew exactly where enemies would pop out, removing any essence of fear or tension. A bunch of boring side missions were added, almost all of which used copy/pasted environments. The story went from cheesy sci-fi to face palmingly stupid, with an ending that seemed final (if completely batshit insane), only to be opened wide for another potential sequel in the DLC. Instead of competitive multiplayer, they added full campaign co-op, removing what few fear elements the game had left. This addition felt like it was made at the last minute as the story conceits to justify it make little sense and the character created to be played by second player has about as much depth as a teaspoon. Ironically, the story and environments are so lame that I actually think playing co-op would be more fun. Lastly and most contentiously, microtransactions were added to this full-price, $60 retail title. To be fair, they were not required to have a full experience and only served to benefit people who basically wanted to play overpowered but having a “Press Y for Downloadable Content” prompt appear on every single workbench in the game was immersion breaking to say the least.

In the end, all this added up to make Dead Space 3 a soulless shell of an entry in an otherwise great series. It was no longer scary, it was no longer unique, it was just another dudebro-friendly, cover-based, third-person action shooter. Nothing of what attracted me to Dead Space in the first place was here. What we got was a creative series that had all the sharp corners sanded down and which was asked to fill out a bunch of checkmarks on some executive’s feature list, whether they were appropriate or not because “broader appeal” is somehow what they thought would guarantee it 5 million sales. Instead, what always happens when executives apply this stupid and misguided strategy is what we got. They didn’t attract any new players and many of the original lovers of the series were turned off. So far, Dead Space 3 has sold worse than even the first game and is by all accounts, a commercial failure, even if you apply more realistic sales goals to it. Yet another once great franchise with loads of potential was ruined by EA’s meddling and their attempts at obtaining “broader appeal” having the exact opposite effect.

This isn’t the first time EA has done this and likely won’t be the last. But you can look at the evolution (or de-evolution as it were) of the Dead Space series as very much a parallel metaphor for this company as a whole. They start off with something good and instead of iterating on it with new instalments, trying new things but doing smaller iterations and experimentation with new design ideas (see Ubisoft with Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry for great examples of this or better yet, some of Take-Two’s recent efforts), they try to make radical changes to it that make no sense, not attracting the new players they want but also driving the devoted fans away. Then they set sales targets that anyone with a brain could see are unrealistic, then blame the developers and kill the series off when it doesn’t work out. This isn’t how you run either a creatively or financially sustainable business. Change is good, iteration is good but it has to be done in a way that fits the product you’re trying to make, complimenting and enhancing it, not mutating it with elements from everything else that worked somewhere else before. When you do that, you just get this blob of indistinct sludge with no soul to it. That’s what we got with Dead Space, it’s very nearly what we got with Mass Effect (though it could still happen with Mass Effect 4) and by all accounts, EA has learned nothing from this and it’s what they’re going to continue trying.

The companies that succeed the best over the long term are ones that understand their market, know what numbers something can realistically sell and cater to those markets with the best products possible, letting the creative people be just that. For all the deserved stick I give Apple, this is something they understand very well. EA is a company desperately trying to fill every niche in the hope that one will be so big that is will justify the investment in all the others. Rather than excelling in a few core areas, they’re doing at best mediocre in every area and that’s not how you create happy customers, which are ultimately what you need to create revenue for you. Given their years of losses and how they’re hanging onto profit with the skin of their teeth right now, you would think the undoubtedly large number of smart people at EA would realise this. Instead, we have a fired (sorry, “resigned”) CEO and if anything, EA doubling down on this failing strategy.

EA has a lot of talented developers who have demonstrated they are clearly capable of making great games. They need to pick a market, let their creative people make interesting things for that market and for the love of everything, stop trying to be all things to all people. No one can do that and trying to go after everyone ultimately leaves you with no one. When you let creativity rule the roost, money will often follow, though it may not be immediate. EA can and once did make the Dead Space that we the fans want. What we got was the furthest thing from that. If this is how they plan to treat everything going forward, they are not going to survive and I dare say, maybe they don’t deserve to.

Business, Culture, Reviews, Video Games , , , , ,

The EApocalypse

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 8, 2013

Man, it’s been a shit year for Electronic Arts so far hasn’t it? Rarely in the good graces of gamers at the best of times, the world’s second largest publisher (and once the largest by a country mile) has just been drowning in controversy in 2013. Between the microtransactions in Dead Space 3 to the continuing fustercluck that is the launch of SimCity with its always-on DRM, the company is just swimming in bad PR and furious customers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s reaping what it’s sown and it deserves all the ire that it’s getting. Never before have I seen a company so Hell bent on going to war with its own customers and expecting to come out the other side smelling of roses and money…alright, maybe Zynga.

The thing about this though is that is really doesn’t have to be this way. EA doesn’t have to be this way. What’s going on down in Redwood Shores?

I am generally not a fan of big business and the way it tends to treat its customers and this is the case in the video game industry as well. Big publishers love to push the bounds of unreasonableness to see just how much gamers are willing to take. It drives me nuts, as it does to constantly see the argument trotted out that businesses exist to make money and therefore whatever they do in the interests of that is OK because it’s what they’re supposed to do.  That’s bullshit. You know how businesses make money? By building a loyal base of customers, not driving them away. Without your customers, your business has no money. I mean, duh? If you are a CEO who thinks the needs of your short-sighted shareholders should trump the needs of the customers who actually generate value for those shareholders, you are doing it wrong.

At the same time, I do understand the plight of these companies and even sympathise with it to a degree. Like it or not, big publishers are important to a large segment of gaming. Those big, expensive AAA titles we all like so much? Big publishers need to exist and thrive for those to get made. A couple of bedroom programmers aren’t going to make Battlefield. Kickstarter isn’t going to fund the next Mass Effect. You can’t make a Dead Space experience for a few grand and sell it for 99 cents. Millions of people want these games and big companies are how they get produced. The games industry is a tremendously risky one, regardless of the level you’re trying to compete in and we live in a world where people want everything right now, they want it to be better than last time and they want it either free or as close to free as possible. It’s an almost untenable situation and is at odds with the very core of how some of the best interactive experiences have been created. As a whole, the industry doesn’t know how to handle it yet.

Some companies are handling it much better than others and they’ve done it by being focused on what they’re good at and catering to it while trying to push forward in their chosen space. For all of Ubisoft’s faults, I think they’re a great example of this. While they’ve dabbled into other facets of gaming such as mobile and social, their focus has remained hardcore AAA titles with another segment dedicated to family and casual games, almost all on consoles and PC. They’ve also managed to do this and continue experimenting and iterating on even their biggest money making franchises. They’re not necessarily raking it in but they’re weathering the current storm the game industry is in much better than most. I think THQ may have ended up in a similar position had they been able to hang on longer. I’ll talk more about Ubisoft’s philosophy in a future post but I use it here to demonstrate the stark contrast with EA.

For many years dating back to the 90s, EA was seen as the evil boogeyman of the game industry. They grew their fat wallets by releasing full priced updates to sports titles every year that were little more than roster updates and they were famous for buying studios that ran on creativity and running them, their people and their franchises into the ground. They frequently released games that were overpromised, buggy and often outright broken without supporting them properly. They drew near constant hate from gamers everywhere but always had their stable of sports franchises to tide them over. And time went on and game production costs rose, this formula waned and the EA money train began to slow.

Enter current CEO John Riccitiello. Fresh off of selling the powerhouse studio combo of BioWare/Pandemic to EA for a ginormous pile of money, he took charge of the company as a whole and came in with lofty ambitions to reverse their fortunes. His words were music to the ears of gamers. He said EA’s quality was poor, that there was no originality in their games and that a wave of new creativity and business models to go with it were necessary if EA and indeed the publishing industry as a whole were to survive and grow. He planned to completely reform not only EA but the entire idea of what a video game publisher was about and he was going to do it by trimming the fat and focusing on quality and new ideas. It all sounded great and for the most part, none of it’s come true. I won’t spend another 1,500 words detailing all the Riccitiello ambitions that haven’t come to fruition. I link to Jim Sterling’s Jimquisition series a lot but he often does a great job illustrating points I want to make better than I could. Check out his Why Do People Hate EA? episode to see just how badly EA has flubbed what sounded like a fantastic vision that John Riccitiello entered with.

The company has gone from one that wanted to embrace new ideas to trying to throw its seed into every pot available in the hope that something will take root. In the last few years, they’ve gone on another acquisition bender, buying up several prominent companies in the mobile, social and casual game spaces, all for ludicrously inflated prices. And almost none of them have panned out. They bought the companies when they were hot and just like the EA of the past, they were either left to stagnate or were interfered and meddled with to the point where their uniqueness and creative soul were drained from them and they didn’t bare the results desired. They did initially put a lot of effort into new IP and franchises but after a couple of these didn’t work out because not everything’s a sure bet, they got scared and retreated back to stagnant safety.

The only semi-new things we see from EA any more are their constant, desperate attempts to chase after what’s hot at the time. Not being able to make Battlefield a yearly series, they’ve been desperate to find something to compete with Call of Duty and that’s led to the largely dreadful attempts to reboot Medal of Honor, recently shelved after the piss poor latest title in that series. Hungry for a piece of the World of Warcraft pie, they poured an estimated $200 million into developing Star Wars: The Old Republic, an immensely ambitious effort to make the Star Wars MMO everyone wanted. Except they just made it exactly like WoW with a Star Wars skin and no one cared. The game was a flop and cost the company a fortune. Rather than understand that CoD and WoW are juggernaut outliers and that they should focus on building their own ideas rather than go head-to-head with those, they tried to latch on to their success and failed miserably. EA went from being a company with a bold desire to chart its own course to one wildly flailing its arms around, hoping that it would hit something, anything that would prove to be a cash cow as big as the two Activision tripped over.

When none of those things worked out, EA doubled down on mobile games and core console titles. Except rather than try to make unique and appealing experiences in those arenas, it just made all of its franchises an indistinct sludge with no single amazing thing you could point at them for, all in the interests of “broader appeal”. They took Dead Space, one of the only horror games I liked and turned it into an action series with multiplayer no one asked for in the second game and co-op no one asked for in the third one. They padded the third with a ton of boring side missions, bloating it to a ridiculous, unnecessary size. On top of all that, they stuffed Zynga-esque microtransactions in, shoving the option to artificially buy progress for real money into your face every time you opened a crafting bench. Never mind that the previous two games made money by selling less copies and having no microtransactions. Rather than look inward and figure out why their costs got so bloated and rein them in to keep the game focused and the sales requirements reasonable, they basically threatened fans by saying it had to sell an obscene number of copies to justify its existence. Let’s not also forget how what many consider critical story elements were cut out of Dead Space 3 as well as Mass Effect 3 to be sold later as DLC.

Then we have the new SimCity, a game that with its very name alone would have been a money press. Of course, that wasn’t good enough. They crammed it to the seams with always-on DRM, made the city size laughably small and piled on half-baked social features that were forced on players in order to drive engagement through overexposure (i.e. how most Facebook games work) and sell people DLC. No one asked for any of this, gamers weren’t cramming for smaller cities and forced social integration. We all just wanted a new SimCity but now we have an online-only game that as of this writing, doesn’t work.

To me, the new SimCity embodies a near perfect representation of the modern EA: A company who is desperately trying to be a jack of all gaming trades and is not just a master of none but not even competent at any of them. It treats its paying customer as adversaries and not allies, a relationship that’s poisonous to everyone. The company is acting completely contrary to the incredible vision that John Riccitiello came in with and I think that’s so sad. Reverting back to their old ways hasn’t helped either. They lost hundreds of millions over the last few years and are only just barely clinging to profit right now. Their financial future is far from certain, even with the stable of hits they do have.

Had he been able to execute his ideas the way he expressed them to fans, I think it could have been an amazing thing, a creative and business revolution in an industry that desperately needs both right now. Why has this vision rotted away so badly? Did Riccitiello just lose faith in his own ideas? Were EA’s shareholders just too clueless and short-sighted to give him the time necessary to do it? Given that he hasn’t yet been ousted from his position as CEO (though there have been rumbling of this before), they obviously mustn’t think he’s doing that bad a job. I really don’t want to hate EA. I don’t want to hate any publisher. I think competition is good and the more people that make games, the better we as gamers are. I also love the big AAA franchises and want to see more and better ones get produced but the way EA is doing things right now is not sustainable. They need focus and clarity, they need to pick an area of gaming and put all hands on it. They need to let creators create for a while and be willing to take some risks. And most of all, they need to stop treating customers as cash machines and start rewarding their loyalty and make them feel welcome. This all sounds so basic but it’s apparently too hard for the average shareholder to comprehend.

I don’t know how they’ll do it but EA needs to tell the market to sit down and shut up for a while because only happy customers who want to spend money with you will generate long-term growth. People are only willing to be fleeced for so long before they’ll move on and then you have nothing. SimCity could be the tipping point for a lot of people and the lessons it is giving are ones that should be burned into the minds of not only EA but their competitors who think that their model is the right one to follow. EA needs a revolution and if not that, a major correction. It’s time to let one of those happen.

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

When Popularity Trumps Principles

1 Comment Posted by on March 5, 2013

If you’re a reader of this blog or really just a savvy media consumer, you don’t need me to tell you that DRM sucks, it doesn’t work and it only serves to punish customers for a fight against piracy that is unwinnable. This doesn’t stop companies trying of course and a quick Google search will find you all the examples you need. In the gaming space, the most egregious and obnoxious form of DRM comes in the “always-on” variety, where you have to be constantly checking in with a publisher controlled server to make sure you aren’t stealing anything. Several companies have tried it and the gaming community has rightfully screamed from the rooftops about it pretty much every time. Like other DRM, it also hasn’t worked and it’s caused nightmares for the legit customers. Don’t get me wrong, pirates are thieves by my moral compass but creating headaches for the people who aren’t stealing from you isn’t how you solve the problem. My lifestyle puts me in a position where I do tend to have fast Internet that’s reliable and always available but that’s not the point. If I’m not playing a game online, there’s no need for me to be online and I don’t want a product I paid for being tied to a short term focused company’s infrastructure.

The problem the gaming community (and to a lesser degree the press) have is that when they take up a fight over principle, it only tends to last until it requires them to sacrifice something popular or that they really want. Oh sure, gamers will scream about boycotts and refusing to support the evil publishers trying to strip us of our rights to do with our purchases as we see fit but if it means turning down the new shiny, as a whole we’re frankly pathetic. Now, I don’t necessarily have a problem with this. Personally, I hate always-on DRM but I don’t judge you negatively if you choose to not take up arms against it and purchase titles that use it. I think the concept does damage to the gaming medium and I don’t think it should be supported but who am I to tell you how to spend your precious money and free time? If you support it, I think you lose the right to bitch about it for a while but that’s about as far as I take it.

This was perhaps no better demonstrated than with Diablo III. This is a game that can be 100% completed solo without interacting with another living soul. Many including myself prefer to play it this way, at least our first time through. Nonetheless, it requires an always-on Internet connection, even when you want to play by yourself. This was most certainly always-on DRM but it also served the dual purpose of also making sure Blizzard’s horribly balanced and broken Real Money Auction House was always shoved in front of you, tempting you to spend more money for a game you already paid full price for. On top of that, they made such a mess of it that the servers were unreliable for days after launch, rendering paying customers unable to access their games. Even to this day, Diablo III is still subject to lag issues. It didn’t need to require an always-on connection but it did and Blizzard did so with this game because they knew it had a rabid fanbase that would bitch and whine about it but line up to buy anyway. And they were right, it’s sold north of 12 million copies as of this writing.

Fast forward to now and we have a new hyper anticipated title about to launch, the reboot of SimCity. From what I’ve been reading, this looks to be a really neat, fresh take on the idea and people seem to be loving it but like Diablo III, it also requires the Internet to be up at all times to play it, even by yourself. Yes, there are a multitude of social features as well but none of these are required, yet the constant connection still is. Beyond that, these forced social features remove many of the things people previously loved about SimCity (such as being able to revert back to previous saves and have fun with the manually triggered disasters) and from what I’ve read, some of them aren’t even that well implemented and could stand to screw up people’s games due to factors they can’t control. In other words, it’s another game forcing online down people’s throats, even when it doesn’t make sense. Like Diablo III, EA carefully chose this title to try this new initiative because it’s a crazy popular series and they know people will line up for it. And once again, they appear to be right.

I was stupid and bought Diablo III. I shouldn’t have, I compromised my principles as a staunch opponent of always-on DRM but I was suckered in. I regret it to this day because beyond that issue alone, Diablo III is a poor entry in the series with dated visuals, dumbed down game play and frankly, it’s just not a very good game. Diablo I and II were better as are both Torchlight games. I refuse to be suckered into making the same mistake again with SimCity, at least not while it’s at full price. Disregarding that I don’t want social hooks shoved down my throat in every game, I also don’t trust EA to do right by their customers on this. For Blizzard’s faults, one can never accuse them of not supporting their games. The servers for the entire Diablo series (including the first entry released in the 90s) are still online and Diablo II was receiving patches mere months before Diablo III’s release, even though it was more than a decade old. I have no fear of the Diablo III servers going away any time soon.

EA on the other hand is a company that shuts off servers for two year old sports games in order to force people to buy newer versions that are basically just roster updates. They drop support for games at a frightening pace and have no regard for players that might want to keep playing them, not when there’s slight iterations to be sold again at full price. I have no confidence that they will do right by SimCity players in the long term. They have a history of not caring about their customers and treating them as adversaries more than allies. There’s a reason that EA is often considered the “most evil” publisher, even when they have Activision as their chief competitor.

Nonetheless, now that continuing the fight against always-on DRM means once again having to choose between principles and sacrificing the new shiny, many gamers and indeed reporters in the enthusiast press are not only glossing over the concerns but belittling and dismissing those who continue to have them. Once again, if you’re cool with purchasing titles that utilise this method, feel free, even if you were someone who derided the practice at one time before. People’s opinions can change, even if it is just to justify not having to sacrifice something popular. But exactly what gives you the right to wave off those who do have a problem with it and continue to state it?

The people who make snarky comments such as those linked above seem to think that just because the Internet is full of blowhard protests that rarely amount to much, that they never amount to anything and that’s just not true, even on this issue. Ubisoft, who were among the very first adopters of always-on DRM announced a few months back they were scrapping the practice, specifically because of feedback from consumers. People spoke with their mouths, keyboards and wallets and a big company listened. There’s other examples of this working elsewhere too. Yes, there’s a lot of meaningless whining on the Internet that doesn’t have any action backing it up. But that’s not representative of all Internet protests and when enough people speak up, companies do listen. The only way anything we don’t like changes is when people speak up in numbers and keep speaking up until change is realised. If you have a passionate dislike for something and don’t make noise about it, you can’t blame anyone but yourself when nothing changes.

Some of us are able to stick to our principles, even when it means turning away from something we want. I’m turning away from SimCity (at least for now) and I will also turn away from any future game console that requires a constant Internet connection and/or which blocks used games and rentals. I’m fully aware when I say such a thing that I caved on Diablo III. I regret that decision to this day and believe me, as someone who loves SimCity and really likes what I’ve seen of the new one, it pains me to say no to it but I will do so. If you don’t care, that’s your choice to make and I hope you enjoy the game for as long as EA permits you to play it. However, avoiding it is also my choice as well and if you have an issue with me both making it and openly saying why so that others can be better informed, feel free to get on the high horse you rode in on and piss off, be you forum poster or journalist.

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We’re Not Entitled to Backwards Compatibility…Sort Of

2 Comments Posted by on March 1, 2013

So as everyone on Earth knows by now, the initial reveal of the PlayStation 4 took place last week. It’s been discussed to death already and I don’t have a ton more to add except that a) I was stunned by how much Sony didn’t screw this presentation up as they so love to do and b) the complaints about them not showing the physical hardware are dumb because it’s just a black box you’ll put under your TV and never look at anyway. If you want to hear more, I appeared on an episode of my buddy Chris Cesarano’s Downloathable Content podcast and we had a great discussion about the whole thing. I went into the event kind of expecting Sony to bomb it and came out actually pretty excited for the PlayStation 4.

The one subject Sony dodged during the show and only got on record about after was whether the PS4 would be backwards compatible with the PS3. Since the two systems are so vastly different under the hood (they are less apples to oranges and more apples to dragonfruit), I didn’t expect the PS4 to be able to play PS3 retail games. With Sony’s acquisition of Gaikai and their extensive hyping of that technology during the show, I did expect that they might offer compatibility through online streaming as a viable option. Their responses to questions about that in several subsequent interviews has essentially been “We hope to do that one day but definitely not at launch and we’re not really talking more about it right now.”

This has created a bit of a firestorm among hardcore gamers, many of whom thinks Sony is making a big mistake by omitting backwards compatibility and that it actually owes this to their fans, both to reward historical loyalty but also to preserve the PlayStation legacy. Probably the best articulation of this argument I’ve seen is this video in MovieBob’s Game OverThinker series. Now, I like MovieBob and a lot of what he does and I frequently agree with him. When it comes to this subject though, I think he and those who share this viewpoint are acting both very spoiled and entitled and also just simply being unreasonable. However, I also don’t think we’re entirely wrong for demanding backwards compatibility, at least when it comes to digital purchases.

The whole notion of backwards compatibility is actually relatively new, only really becoming a thing since the PS2. Previous generation systems were largely not compatible with those that came before and the story goes that PS2′s case, it was a happy accident because Sony apparently put the PS1′s processor in the machine to act as an I/O controller and it was trivially easy to add in native PS1 playback support along with that. In the case of Nintendo with the Wii, GameCube and Wii U, those systems were able to be backwards compatible because they’re all essentially the same architecture underneath, each just being a slightly tweaked and faster version of what came before. Backwards compatibility was a nice value add for the hardcore and that’s all it was supposed to be. Sony continued this trend with the PS3 initially by putting the PS2′s Emotion processor in it, ensure 100% backwards compatibility. It was cool but here’s the thing: The PS3 was also “Five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars.” That was in large part because of two things: The crazy, insane, expensive Cell processor and putting the guts of a PS2 in it. Backwards compatibility was eventually downgraded to software emulation to cut costs and when maintaining that became too difficult, it was scrapped from the PS3 altogether, at least for PS2 games. A lot of people got upset then and a lot of people are getting upset about it not even making an appearance on PS4.

Here’s the thing though guys: You aren’t owed backwards compatibility. It was a nice novelty once before but we can’t have our cake and eat it too. In this economy and with the shifts happening in the game industry, no one’s going to buy a $500+ PS4, at least not enough to make it viable. Sony needs to be able to make this system powerful and also affordable. They can’t do that if they have to put an expensive Cell processor in the thing, in addition to everything else needed to support it. Given that the vast majority of people who say they want backwards compatibility rarely if ever actually use it (I have a launch PS3 and have probably played less than 3 hours of PS2 games on it), it simply doesn’t make business sense for Sony to incur the costs of that. Charging everyone more for a feature only a few want and will largely ignore is bad business. If we don’t want another “Five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars”, sacrifices have to be made and I think backwards compatibility should be at the front of things to cut. You have a PS3, you can play all your disc games already and like with the PS2, you’ll be able to buy PS3s for at least a couple of years to come. If you’re concerned that your PS3 may die soon, buy another one when they get cheaper. It’s as simple as that. If you aren’t prepared to pay for the feature and expect everyone else to also pay for it (including those that don’t want it), then you don’t get to have it. Sony has no responsibility to support old technology in perpetuity, not for your convenience or “gaming’s legacy.” If you’re not going to buy a PS4 because it won’t play PS3 games, your priorities are broken. You don’t buy new hardware to play old stuff.

Here’s the thing though: I’m fine with this argument for disc based games but digital games and content are a whole other story.

If I want to play any of the myriad PS3 games I have sitting on Blu-ray discs, I will always be able to do that. I have a PS3 and if PlayStation Network is ever taken down, I may not be able to play games online any more but I’ll still be able to put the disc in and access any parts of my physical library that I wish. This is not so with digital games. Any content I have purchased from PSN only survives as long as I can keep it downloaded on my system and even then, some of it likely requires a server to respond to it before allowing me to play. This is content I paid for but if PSN goes away, it disappears into the ether. That’s not right and it’s not fair. If I paid for a game, I believe I deserve to always have access to it in some way. Now, should Sony one day declare that PSN for PS3 is going away and gives me the option to download everything unlocked, that would be great but it’s unlikely they would do that or that all of their publishing partners would let them. This is not an issue with discs but with digital content, I have no control over my access to it.

For disc based content, I consider this a non-issue because I can just put it in the old system and have access to it. But if Sony cannot guarantee that PSN for PS3 will be up forever, I do believe they have a responsibility to paying customers to make those products available in the future, whether through native backwards compatibility or a streaming option I can get for free or a nominal upgrade fee. Microsoft and Nintendo owe us no less. I suspect in the future when Apple decides to bring iOS out of the Windows 3.1 interface era and makes a major upgrade to it, a similar problem will occur but will cause a much bigger mainstream outrage. This is a problem that’s been largely solved on the PC with services like Steam but of course, the PC is a much more open system and thus, it’s much easier to solve there. It’s not insurmountable for the console manufacturers though and it’s a problem finally being brought into the limelight for them.

Media companies want everyone to move to a new “digital age in the cloud” and the gaming industry is probably one of the biggest proponents of this. They are desperate to cut out retail and the poisonous leeching effect is has on the profit margins of an already razor-thin profit industry. However, it will only take a few missteps like what Sony is doing with PS3 digital purchases to sour the public at large on the concept. I’ll tell you what, I’m definitely going to think a lot longer and harder about what digital purchases I make on the next consoles if I know there’s a chance they may be temporary and become unavailable to me one day. Digital distribution is critical to the game industry’s future but it can’t be a one way street and they have to make it worth our while to buy our games online instead of going to a store and physically owning it, especially if they want to keep charging the same prices. Whether you’re making a game console or a closed mobile operating system, you have to start thinking about the future as well as the present if you’re going to deliver software electronically. People might be willing to lose a bunch of $1 apps in a few years, I doubt they’ll be so accommodating with $10, $15 and $60 games.

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Can we have some enthusiasm in the enthusiast press?

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 19, 2013

Does anyone remember the good old days when there was actually enthusiasm in the so called gaming “enthusiast press”? In truth, it probably wasn’t that long ago but it certainly feels that way. It’s where you went to see people who were super passionate about games talk about games passionately. You expected criticism and to see things that were bad called out but you also knew you were going to a place where people took gaming as seriously as you did. Somehow in the last year or two, the enthusiasm seems to have been sucked out and replaced with a dark bitterness that really is making me wonder why some of the people who still write about this entertainment sector continue to bother. I speak in general terms of course that don’t apply across the board but something’s amiss and I don’t get when doom and gloom became the hot topic to latch onto.

I say this as someone who is a cynical bastard. I’m happy when positive things happen but most of my life, I’ve taken the stance that if you assume the worst, you’ll be disappointed less often. Even as someone with that point of view, I find it amazing just how obsessed with negativity the enthusiast press is becoming and how they seem to take a short-term event and milk it with every ounce of dread they can. The most recent example of this is the poor sales month Nintendo had in January with the Wii U. Poor is putting it mildly, it was a number that would have been disastrous for one of the current 8 year old consoles to have, forget a machine that’s only a couple of months old. The Xbox 360 which came out in 2005 and is in all likelihood getting replaced this year outsold it by more than two to one. It’s bad, real bad, even for when trying to launch a new console in a world still deep in a recession, much as the media tries to deny it.

That should be reported as such but what most outlets immediately leaped to was a quote from everyone’s favourite unaccountable hack analyst, Michael Pachter. He is saying that the Wii U was a misfire and that he’s basically put Nintendo on death watch, saying he’s doubtful they can recover from the poor launch and that the 3DS can’t sustain them as a company. Now, I can talk for hours about this twit’s horrendous track record with predictions and how the press touts his few successes while ignoring his many failures but that’s not even the point here.

The Wii U launched with a lot of software but most of it was uninteresting. And as a Wii U owner clamoring for new games, how thin the release schedule is until later this year is a worry for me. However, while there’s no doubt that Nintendo’s in a tough spot right now and has a lot to prove, when did one bad month equal total and complete meltdown? Does no one remember that this is a company that is over 100 years old and which until recently, had never failed to turn a profit? Does anyone remember how the Gamecube is called a failure to this day, despite it actually selling quite well and making Nintendo money? Nintendo is one of the most resilient, continually successful companies in the history of the world and just come off the Wii and DS, two of the most successful, profitable consoles of all time but they’re doomed because of one bad month of Wii U sales. When Apple’s stock started to drop and they failed to meet expectations last quarter, criticism was dismissed at hate and the press said they would “innovate out of their stock slump.” Even by the objectively obvious double standard that Apple operates in, they seem to be the only ones able to do right these days.

Oh yeah, did I also mention that Pachter now sits on the board of a Skinner Box social gaming company that has a direct interest in seeing the console business fail? Yeah, just when I thought the man’s commentary couldn’t get less credible, that massive conflict of interest enters the fray. I’ve yet to see that pointed out anywhere else.

Sure, the short-sighted, largely clueless investors that hold Nintendo stock won’t be happy with the launch. A lot of them wouldn’t have been happy unless it sold better than the Wii, something that was impossible and Nintendo knew. But as is always the case with this company, a couple of good first party titles can easily turn the platform’s fortunes around. I’ll be the first to admit that they should have had more of those titles at launch and that some of them are much further in the future than they should be but they will come and they will likely move hardware. This isn’t the Vita, Nintendo has some of the strongest IPs in the world and those IPs sell machines. All of this is trivially easy to glean by looking at the history of the company, yet I’ve not seen a single article discussing this, not a single reporter raising these points. All I see are inflammatory headlines like “Pachter puts Wii U and Nintendo on death watch” and “Is Nintendo doomed?” Not only is the “enthusiast press” ignoring history for convenient headlines, they are damaging the very industry they are supposed to champion by writing stories like this that scare potential customers away from the Wii U. Hell, tomorrow we’re finally supposed to get the reveal of the PlayStation 4, the first glimpse of the next generation that people have been saying is years overdue. Yet even now, I’m seeing stories questioning whether this is too little, too late and if consoles even matter any more. What the Hell happened to the excitement, to the interest in seeing the good the future may hold? Controversy drives clicks and writing stories they know will start flame wars is part of it but it goes beyond that. When did the press become so damn emo?

Nintendo is a company facing many challenges right now, of that there can be no doubt. Gaming’s changing is ways that have never been seen before and were not predicted by anyone. Many of these are not good changes either but more on that in the future. I’m also the first to admit that the growing scandal over Aliens: Colonial Marines is enough to blacken the heart of even the most naive gaming enthusiast. But seriously guys, if you can no longer write about the industry that is the sole focus of your job as if you actually enjoy it, step aside and let someone in who can actually see the glass as half full one in a while. And for the love of everything, please stop using analyst quotes as the basis for your doom and gloom pieces. These people just want attention and they’re playing you like a two dollar banjo. When even a jaded cynic is thinking you’re being too cynical, you have a real problem somewhere. Gaming is supposed to be fun, let’s start talking about it as if it’s not a burden, at least once in a while.

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Is Aliens: Colonial Marines A Corporate Scandal?

1 Comment Posted by on February 13, 2013

I wish I could have come up with a wittier title for this post but I really can’t think of one.

So, Aliens: Colonial Marines came out this week and if you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard that it’s basically hot garbage. It’s funny, I almost pre-ordered this game with a discount on the PC but at the last minute, I had an urge to back off thinking I should wait until release and see how it was received. I’ve had this before with other games and almost every time, I’ve ended up being right and the game I almost pre-ordered turned out to be bad. I don’t know if that means I have some sixth sense for this stuff or if I’m just way too invested in this hobby. I’m inclined to think the latter.

My opinion on Gearbox Software (who was supposedly the primary developer on this game but more on that later) is mixed. Their Half-Life expansions were pretty good but I thought the first two Brothers In Arms games were good ideas that were very poorly executed. The most recent entry in that series was actually quite good and I really enjoyed both Borderlands games, despite the lazy Family Guy-esque writing. And oh yeah, there was Duke Nukem Forever but that I don’t really blame them for as it was a disaster they inherited from failhouse 3DRealms and it simply had to ship.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is something very different however. Not many people expected Duke Nukem Forever to be good and it certainly wasn’t hyped up to be substantially more than it became. That was very much the case with A:CM. In the game’s 6+ years of development (during which it was apparently cancelled/put on hiatus at least once), gamers were promised a rich, cinematic experience that did justice to the legacy of the property. Indeed, several very strong demos were given and it appears that they were near complete lies. What we got was a game that embodies all the traits of a half-assed, soulless movie cash-in, the exact kind of shovelware that doesn’t sell any more. It’s not what anyone expected from Gearbox and while SEGA’s put out their fair share of garbage over the years, they seemed to be behind this in a big way.

Make no mistake, we were lied to. When a game is demonstrated pre-release, the work in progress footage is supposed to improve in the final product, not get noticeably worse. That the latter happened clearly demonstrates that the demos were doctored to artificially hype up the game to a standard it was never intended to ship with. This is blatant deception and it’s a disgusting abuse of trust. Gamers and Aliens fans alike were taken advantage of.

The question now is, who is to blame for this mess?

There’s already been a lot of speculation thrown around. Gearbox is one of the increasingly rare successful independent AAA studios but they’ve always done that in spite of juggling multiple projects at once and enduring several cancellations. Originally, they were thought to be the sole developers of A:CM and mostly claimed that but in later trailers, logos for TimeGate Studios, Demiurge Studios and Nerve Software appeared. Demiurge is a general outsourcing studio that’s worked with Gearbox before so that wasn’t a surprise. TimeGate and Nerve have a lot of multiplayer experience and previous Gearbox titles have had multiplayer handled by outside companies so that wasn’t a shock either. Things got weird when a supposedly ex-Gearbox developer mentioned on a forum that the studio had actually only handled a minor amount of A:CM’s development centered around multiplayer when in fact TimeGate had done the majority of the campaign work. That’s very odd as while TimeGate’s not a very good studio as a whole, their few single player efforts have been frankly dreadful. If true though, it certainly explains a lot.

In the many years that A:CM has been in development, Gearbox has come into its own with respect to IP. They launched Borderlands which became a smash hit franchise and they also acquired Duke Nukem. While Duke Nukem Forever was an awful game, it sold well and reportedly made money. Doing outsourced development work for big publishers is how many independent studios make a living but Gearbox had broken the mould and was doing well on their own. Did they at one point decide that this contract job for SEGA was no longer worth their time and that they should direct their resources towards their owned IP which stood to make them a lot more money? Did they just rush this game out so they could get the contract off their books after being saddled with it for so long? Could be. Some have even speculated that they pulled a Silicon Knights and took SEGA’s money but devoted most of it to their own projects, only giving the minimum amount of required effort to A:CM in order to meet their legal obligations.

From what I’ve gathered, game developers don’t seem to be required by publishers to undergo audits to see how their development advances are being spent. As long as milestones are met, the publisher has no right to ask where the money’s going. That’s certainly what happened with Silicon Knights and if notorious cash-bears like Activision don’t demand to count every penny, what’s the likelihood that SEGA would? It’s possible that Gearbox pulled off an elaborate con, getting money from SEGA to develop a game they’d lost interest in, putting that money into Borderlands and buying Duke Nukem, two things that have so far paid off big for them. If so, they were not only deceptive to their partner but they spat in the faces of gamers, many of whom also bought Borderlands and Duke Nukem Forever, in the hopes that we’d forget about this before their next big release comes out. I don’t think Gearbox’s games have been universally good but even the ones I didn’t care for always felt like products that had their full effort behind them. A:CM feels like an outsourced hack job and worse of all, one that was largely intentional.

That said, I wouldn’t put it past SEGA to share some if not most of the blame in this situation either. This is a company that hasn’t managed to find its footing since well before they got out of the hardware business. They have put out some good games and have found successful niches with things like the Total War series but on the other hand, we have titles like Binary Domain and the endless flood of garbage Sonic games. Since Aliens is a property they licensed from Fox, it’s likely they had a certain minimum number of titles with the brand they had to release or risk getting severely penalised. Activision operates under similar terms with the Marvel and James Bond licenses. If they don’t put out a certain number of games in a certain time, they lose the license and a bunch of cash in the process. Given the development Hell A:CM has been in, SEGA perhaps didn’t care if the game was any good and didn’t give Gearbox & Co. enough money for it, they just decided to slap something vaguely complete together and crap it onto store shelves so they can tell Fox “There’s your Aliens game, get off our backs.” In a situation like this, there is little Gearbox or any developer can do. They have to work with the money they’re given and if that’s not enough to make a good game, you don’t get one. Someone at SEGA likely crunched numbers and knew that simply by having Aliens on the box, this game is likely to sell a certain minimum amount and that amount was enough to justify a meager budget so that they could still turn a profit or at least, limit their losses. It’s a gross reality and little comfort to the gamers who have been ripped off but it’s possible.

Truthfully, given how Gearbox themselves were hyping the game pre-release and how blatantly deceptive the marketing demos were, I find it hard to believe that aren’t at least somewhat culpable in this situation. Ultimately, we’ll probably never know the real truth behind this unless one of the parties gets angry enough to sue the other or a whistle blower from inside SEGA or Gearbox comes forward. There is little doubt in my mind that some real corporate deception and conning took place here. There are just too many fairly obvious signs to show that not all was well behind the scenes here.

In the end, only the gamers really suffer. Thankfully, reviews of this game were honest and didn’t try to gloss over its issues as they do with many others. The word is out and anyone who didn’t pre-order this game now has no excuse to claim they didn’t know what they were in for. Whatever political bullshit happened between Gearbox and SEGA is their problem but the gamers are the ones who pre-ordered a title that had established names on the box and which was blatantly sold to them on lies. And despite that, no one who cracked the plastic can return it for a refund. There is something deeply, fundamentally wrong there. This side of the games industry is in dire straits right now. Every day, we read another story questioning the viability of not only AAA development but even of consoles as a whole. Every major hyped title that comes out has to ooze quality and at least live up to if not surpass expectations. Disastrous releases like A:CM only push the AAA industry further into the grave and sends the message to gamers that $60 is no guarantee of quality and that maybe they should be more hesitant before opening their wallets. What has happened is nothing less than a slap in the face to gamers and everyone involved with this product should be hanging their heads in shame and offering apologies. I’m not holding my breath but rest assured Gearbox and SEGA, I and many others won’t forget this the next time we’re asked to pay full price for something with your names on it.

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Steam’s Flickering Greenlight

1 Comment Posted by on February 4, 2013

I’m a huge fan of both Valve and Steam. I think Gabe Newell and many of the other employees at the company are some of the smartest in gaming and that almost every segment of this industry (and many others for that matter) can learn some valuable lessons from how they do business. That said, like anyone, they aren’t perfect. I’ve taken the piss out of them for their hypocrisy towards Windows 8 but while that’s still very true and relevant, it’s minor in the grand scheme of things. What I’m going to take this piss out of this time around is their Greenlight system, a fantastic idea that I think Valve is messing up and eroding good will from with double standards and creating an uneven playing field.

For those unfamiliar, Valve operates as a company with no titles or staff hierarchy. Boiled down to basics, no one can force you to do one particular job there. The story goes that the team at the company who handles submissions and approvals for new games on Steam was a small group that was overwhelmed with demand from developers and publishers. They didn’t want to grow the team too large for fear of diluting the work they were doing so someone invented Greenlight. The idea was to democratise indie games submissions to the site. Developers and publishers with a track record and relationships with the company would still go through the normal approval process but others who didn’t have this means would submit their projects to Greenlight, each submission getting a place for videos, screenshots and discussion. Almost like a Kickstarter for Steam approval, members of the community would vote on the games they liked and the ones that achieved an undisclosed number of votes would get approved and gain entry into a batch of 10 titles per month admitted onto the service.

It all sounds pretty cool but in a very non-Valve like fashion, the service has had many problems since launch and its value to many players is starting to be questioned.

First, it launched with the ability to both vote for and against a game, except no one understood what the negative votes meant. It also launched with no fee for developers which makes sense on paper but which quickly led to a torrent of spam and scam projects. Both of these were quickly corrected, the downvote function was removed and a $100 submission fee (donated in full to Child’s Play) was instituted within days. What has not yet been addressed is why Valve can arbitrarily decide that existing Steam partners need to be pushed back down to Greenlight. Or why certain games which are clearly of inferior quality and value to consumers can sail right through the service’s internal approval process while better titles from established developers (some of which are already in release on other platforms) set in Greenlight limbo indefinitely. This isn’t good for Steam and it certainly isn’t good for gamers.

To demonstrate the first example, I offer up Wadjet Eye Games’ Promordia. Wadjet Eye publishes point and click adventure games made in a very old school, 16-bitish graphics style. A super tight niche but one they’ve thrived in. I’ve played several of their games and enjoyed them. They also had a publisher agreement for Steam and had a number of titles released through there already. When they submitted Primordia for approval, they were told by Valve that the title “seemed like a Greenlight project”. Why? No one appears to know as no explanation was provided. Wadjet Eye had a relationship with Valve, several titles on Steam and presumably had made a number of sales, thus making both themselves and Valve money. Yet, the Valve team decided to kick Primordia back down to Greenlight for some reason. Thankfully, Wadjet Eye’s community may be small but they are very devoted so when Dave Gilbert asked his fans to go vote for the game, they immediately showed up and got it the required number within a day. Some would say this shows that the system works but to me, it shows that its unbalanced and easily rigged. I think Wadjet Eye makes great games and think Primordia deserves a place on Steam but it should have gotten that without Greenlight. Since Valve made them go there, they easily utilised an existing fan base to grab a slot in a group of 10 that could have–should have–been given to another indie title from someone else. That’s not fair to anyone.

The greater threat to Greenlight’s relevance as a community measurement of game quality is also what titles Valve does let through their internal processes without forcing them to undergo a vote. For this, I offer up Revelations 2012 and The War Z. The reason I link to TotalBiscuit videos of them will become apparent after you watch a few minutes of both. These games are without question, scam products. They were made by developers who wanted to jump on a craze and grab a quick buck from gullible, ignorant gamers for the least amount of development investment possible. They’re broken, terribly designed, bad games in every respect and yet, both sailed right through Valve’s approval process and were allowed on Steam. Revelations 2012 actually used Valve’s Source which is even grosser because apparently paying to license their now dated engine gives you guaranteed access to a coveted Steam slot, regardless of whether the game is of good quality or not. After community outrage over The War Z (which released in an incomplete state), Valve pulled that title and offered refunds to any who wanted them. Revelations 2012 is still available for purchase however. Those are only two examples but there are many more games of similarly questionable quality on Steam, all given the stamp of approval by Valve’s team.

Make no mistake, these games being on Steam after having to undergo an approval is an endorsement from Valve that they meet a certain minimum standard of quality. Sure, taste is subjective and it’s not Valve’s job to determine that but both of these games are flat out broken in many respects and offering them for sale turns a blind eye to that. Would these games have made it through a Greenlight vote? It’s possible they would have but at least in that case, the community would have said they wanted them. By approving them without Greenlight, Valve indicated they thought the games measured up and that’s not right. Meanwhile, titles like The Pinball Arcade and Incredipede have languished in Greenlight limbo for months now and will likely never get approved. These are titles that are already on sale and doing well both critically and commercially in other places, yet they remain unavailable on Steam while Revelations 2012 and many other piles of hot garbage are still there for purchase. One could argue that there clearly isn’t enough community interest since neither game was greenlit. There’s merit to that but only if the playing field is level.

I love the idea of Greenlight. Giving the power to the people to determine what games they want to see is a great thing and something that few others but Valve could manage to make work at all. However, if Valve are going to let some titles through while others are forced into Greenlight without an explanation, the playing field is not level and that removes a substantial amount of the value to the community. There’s a fine line to balance here but in my opinion, it’s also not hard. If you have previously put out a game on Steam, released it in a good functional condition and supported it, I don’t think you should necessarily have to go through Greenlight for every future title you release. But I also don’t think you should be allowed to jump the line simply because you licensed Source or because you apparently knew the right people to call to make sure you could get immediate approval, even if your game is clearly unfinished. This can all be easily resolved with clear internal policies that lay out the criteria and apply it universally. Established indies like Wadjet Eye wouldn’t be forced to Greenlight certain future games and scam artists like Dark Artz Entertainment would be forced to justify their endeavours, regardless of their engine choice. Such strict policies are somewhat contrary to the way Valve’s flat corporate structure operates though and I’m not sure how you deal with that.

Greenlight is a great thing and has great potential to offer PC gamers but every new scam title that skips it and every established indie that gets stuck in it further diminishes the community’s view of it and thus, its relevance. After some initial tweaks, Valve has done little to change Greenlight’s policies, indicating to me that they’ve either lost interest or think all is tickety boo. It isn’t and some changes are needed soon if they want to keep momentum going. Make the rules clearer, make them universal and make sure everyone has an equal chance to complete. Until then, Greenlight is better as an idea than a practice.

Business, Video Games , , , ,

THQ’s Demise & Why There’s Plenty of Blame for Gamers Too

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 25, 2013

Yet another AAA publisher bit the dust today. After over 20 years in business but several of those spent struggling and a Hail Mary saving throw that a bankruptcy court ended up rejecting, THQ was officially carved up into pieces and sold off. Most of their successful studios and IP ended up at new homes (though many not at all where I expected) and a bunch of other beloved but dormant IPs like Red Faction and Homeworld will be auctioned off for much less at a later time. The auction raised only a fraction of what they needed to pay off their debts and even the biggest bids on many of these properties and teams were stunningly small, plus they have received no offers for the very talented Vigil Games studio or the Darksiders IP. Not that many years ago, all of this stuff would have been snatched up in a heartbeat and for a lot more money. Few stronger signs have ever been shown that the AAA industry doesn’t have much cash to spare these days.

I know and preach that businesses are not anyone’s friend and they are not something to get emotional over but I can’t help but feel sad at THQ’s demise. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this failure is squarely on their shoulders and in particular, those of Brian Farrell whose years of inept leadership got them here. Relying on licensed properties for too long, focusing on quantity over quality and worst of all, the uDraw, were all done under his watch and even when it was most important, he refused to step aside and let smarter people try to save the business. He deserves to never work in video games again, though he made so much money even as the ship sunk that I suspect he will just retire after this. Despite it all, they had gotten well under way to transforming themselves from a licensed shovelware peddler into a decent mid-tier core publisher that put out largely quality games and had a bunch more in the pipe. I think if the economy wasn’t so poor and they’d been given enough capital to see out Jason Rubin’s vision, they could have become a force again. Unfortunately, we’ll never know now. Through all the mistakes and stumbles, I was still really rooting for THQ as they seemed to understand a facet of game creation that the likes of EA and Activision had forgotten. For lack of a better term, THQ’s games had soul and you could feel the passion that went into them.

With each passing year, we have fewer and fewer companies making and releasing the kinds of AAA experiences that are still my favourite way to game. There’s only a few publishers left, most of them are making their stuff in-house and almost all of them are in the red. There are no new independent AAA developers starting and most of the ones left are dropping dead or switching focus at an alarming rate. There’s more doubt than ever before that the new generation of console hardware may not be enough to reinvigorate things and that this type of gaming is simply not a viable way to make money unless you have a name like Call of Duty on your package. Even then, a couple of wildly successful franchises cannot sustain an entire platform. The thought of the majority of gaming becoming based off the current concepts that are popular in the mobile and indie scenes makes my heart sink. I feel those arenas as they are now represent a huge evolutionary step backwards for gaming and many of the design tenants and especially the business practices are not what the medium needs to evolve.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for the state of AAA gaming right now. Corporate leadership that is in many ways clueless and in other ways incredibly greedy. Short-sighted investors that don’t understand what’s necessary for long term success in a creative medium. The platform holders clinging to hardware well past it best before date and trying to make consoles about everything except playing games. The “enthusiast press” which seems to relish tearing things down these days rather than you know, being enthusiasts. And to top it all off, we have a world economy that’s still in far worse health than politicians want people to believe and the industry’s about to ask people to spend hundreds on new consoles when many are still neck deep in Apple’s fashion trend. It’s a recipe for uncertainty and doubt and I have plenty of both but there’s one key group that deserves a lot of the blame but which is rarely talked about here: Us, the gamers.

When you boil everything right down, we as a group are some of the worst customers any industry can ask for. We bitch, complain and fight about everything. We are full of mysogninist, racist, homophobic children that pollute forums and online communities. We shun and denigrate anyone who dares to try to get into games and isn’t as good at them as we are. We demand better graphics, longer campaigns, more multiplayer modes and customisation options yet still expect AAA games to cost the same amount or less after inflation that they did 30 years ago. Assuming of course that we don’t just steal them out of some warped sense of entitlement. And worst of all for the industry that tries to accommodate us, we scream for things that are different and innovative and most of us just end up buying Madden and Call of Duty for the millionth time while fresh ideas like Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders and ZombiU are ignored, lose money and end up collecting dust. Meanwhile, a company can crank out another soulless mobile Skinner Box game and have a much better chance of at least not losing any money, if not making a tidy profit. If you were trying to plan the future of a video game company, which would look better to you as a businessperson?

I of course speak of gamers in very generalised terms. Obviously we’re not all like that and I’m not lost on the fact that I speak from a privileged position where I can and do spend a lot of money on games. I get that many don’t have that luxury (especially now) and have to choose where their gaming dollars go much more carefully. But consider that if even 10% of the people who bought Call of Duty 9 this year bought Darksiders II instead, THQ might still be hanging on. If 10% of the people who bought Madden this past year bought Sleeping Dogs instead, it would have been considered a success and not a failure. We don’t get to bemoan the massive consolidation and constriction of innovation happening in the AAA space right now while also feeling like we don’t have to do our part to keep it going. Games are an incredibly high risk industry and getting more so by the day. It’s a business and it needs to make money. If we aren’t going to do our part to support the types of games we all claim we want to see, we aren’t going to get them, that’s just reality. If you don’t want to just see the shelves full of Call of Duty derivatives, then stop buying only Call of Duty and give something else a chance to impress you with something new.

Industries need customers or they can’t survive and grow. There’s a lot of us out there who still love AAA gaming and don’t want to see everything slide into the mobile sinkhole. But it’s up to us to make AAA gaming attractive and to support the kinds of things we want to see whenever we can. If you’re one of the many people bemoaning the death of THQ today, think about how many of their games you bought in the last year when they needed you the most. If we’re not going to be part of the solution, then we are automatically part of the problem. Either we create the market for what we want or it will cease to be, it’s as simple as that.

Business, Culture, Predictions, Video Games , , , ,

My Bold Predictions for 2013

Leave a Comment Posted by on January 2, 2013

Happy New Year! Alrighty, now that I’ve judged myself on my Bold Predictions for 2012 (and done not so badly overall though always with room for improvement), it’s time to spit em’ out for 2013. I’m hung over, have a sore back, haven’t slept and oh yeah, have to head back to what will be an insane merger-induced grind tomorrow so I’m actually not in a blogging mood but dammit, predictions must flow! I’m going to try to put in everything I can think of before posting this but I do these kind of off-the-cuff and with no pre-planning so I am going to reserve the right to add to the post for up to 48 hours after publishing it in case I remember anything. These are also tech and gaming predictions. I have predictions in the economic and political arenas too but these will be long enough and frankly, I don’t have the time or the energy for political arguments.

And away we go!

Gaming

  • THQ’s new private equity owner will ensure all their games in the pipe come out but the company will be split up and sold off shortly after. This is honestly a shame because despite the absolute idiocy of that company’s management (Jason Rubin being very much an exception), they’ve managed to keep a lot of talent and put out some pretty good games. That said, the AAA industry is in a state of massive flux right now (more on that later) and even the big boys can’t figure out how to reliably succeed in it so I can’t see who would want to fund another go for THQ in that arena. There’s a lot of mystery around this eleventh hour deal but from what I’ve read, it looks like vultures who want to ring out whatever profits they can from the nearly finished games in the pipe and then sell the studios and IP for some additional profit. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I am.
  • Mobile gaming will continue to grow but the honeymoon is over. This is kind of an extension of a prediction from last year but I’m declaring it to have a bigger effect this year. I’ve banged on about how the meteoric growth of this industry (and the companies whose platforms it runs on) is a fashion trend, that the growth is unsustainable and that a big equalisation adjustment is coming as it already has in the social space. Mobile has quickly been usurped by big companies and the only games that are attaining mass scale success are from big companies with the occasional fluke like Angry Birds was. It’s a super hit driven industry just like AAA is and the press will no longer be able to ignore that as they’ve been doing for a while now. This type of gaming’s not going anywhere and that’s a good thing but this is the year reality hits and people realise it isn’t all milk, honey and guaranteed riches. Mobile will continue to exist and thrive but it’s not going to replace other ways of gaming any time soon if ever. To tie into this…
  • The general public will start to tire of free-to-play Skinner Box mechanics. This right here is why I can’t stand most mobile games. Everything’s filled with microtransactions, nags to spend money and a damn store front between every level, whether it makes design sense or not. It’s a terrible, exploitive way to design games, I hate it and I’ve already heard more than a few other people who are tired of it too. When people look at their credit card statements and realise those 5 $0.99 games they bought actually cost more like $25 in total in order to make them good and not just grind fests, they get frustrated and I think we’ll see more of that. This mechanic isn’t going away but I do think we’re going to start seeing mobile games that offer complete experiences for a higher price.
  • The WiiU will be a modest success. I’m sure Nintendo realises that much like mobile is now, the Wii’s growth was fashion driven and I’m sure they have no such expectations with the WiiU and have budgeted accordingly. I got one of these for Christmas and despite some dumb decisions they made (largely regarding patch structure, DRM and the GamePad’s battery, all of which can be fixed), this is an amazing platform that offers a lot of promise and uniqueness. This isn’t a Wii with a low-rent tablet attached and anyone who thinks so is either uninformed or more likely an Apple fanboy. I still don’t see Nintendo winning over third parties in a big way with this but as always, their own stunning developer talent will carry the WiiU to profitability.
  • The Vita will go from limping to crawling. Naming the Vita one of my disappointments of 2012 hurt because I love this thing so much. It’s incredible hardware and it’s a steal at $250 and it shows how you can do good portable gaming without compromise but no one’s making games for it. Even when they’re hurting bad though, Sony’s not one to throw in the towel and I don’t think they will here. They’ll keep pushing it and I do believe it will continue to sell small numbers and probably will never be a runaway success but I do think it will advance enough this year to keep owners like myself in some decent content. I also believe Sony’s next home system will give it a big push but more on that later.
  • Console shovelware is dead. It’s already happening and good bloody riddance! The Wii and DS were kind of the last bastions for the vulture publishers who make their living cranking out cheap, garbage games for $30-$40 in the hopes of catching suckers at Wal-Mart. The increased development costs of the new systems (which many believe to be 2-3x what they are now at a minimum) will make this slimy practice an impossible model. These publishers won’t simply move to mobile either because there’s already too much garbage in that space and because they were run by scummy businesspeople who didn’t really understand the industry as a whole, they won’t know how to adapt to the realities of the mobile market and will likely just up and die off. They deserve to rot.
  • The first major Kickstarter disaster will happen and will test people’s faith in the crowdfunding model. I think this model of funding games is brilliant and I spent way too much on Kickstarters this year. However, at least one of these projects is either not going to come out and zero out everybody’s “investment” or it will come out, be far below the majority’s expectations and people will feel ripped off. There have just been too many projects and a big portion of those are fuelled by rose-tinted nostalgic expectations. I know I’m probably going to hate at least a couple of the finished projects that I backed. No disrespect to Brian Fargo and I so hope Wasteland 2 is killer but inXile’s track record is not good. The Peter Molyneux and David Braben projects are also just gross and while perfectly legit, abuse the Kickstarter spirit in my opinion. The thing is, I fully knew what I was getting into when I backed them and the whole point of Kickstarter and that you roll the dice and take your chances. Most people don’t know that though or they say they do but don’t really mean it. When one of these games comes out to poor reviews or worse yet, doesn’t come out at all, a lot of people are going to feel burned and run away from crowdfunding. The people that do get it will continue to make it a viable means of indie development which is awesome but much like mobile, we’re still in the honeymoon phase.
  • The OUYA will come out and find niche success. I don’t really think the OUYA folks believe this is going to be the thing that overtakes Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo but I also think the fanboy press who largely hated on this thing not because of it’s ideas but because it’s Android and called it no less than a scam were dead wrong. None of them will do the right thing and eat crow of course but I didn’t expect it as such. Developer kits for this have already shipped whereas the press’ golden boy project I’ll talk about next is delayed until March, maybe. There seems to be a lot of developer hype for this and I think it’s a really cool idea. I actually backed it but had to reduce my pledge due to money issues but if this makes it to market, I’ll happily grab one to try it out.
  • The Oculus Rift will come out late and underwhelm. The same press outlets who have been dumping on OUYA have used such fashionable terms as “the future” to describe this thing. I think it’s very cool and if it does what it does well and gets game support, I’ll totally get one. However, all attempts at virtual reality have proven cumbersome and not generally worth the experience and I’ve seen nothing to indicate this will be otherwise. I do think this could find niche success but I think the press’ own hype of this will be to its detriment when normal consumers start getting their hands on it. I’ll be happy to be wrong about this.
  • Layoffs, studios closures and the viability of AAA development will be a bigger story than ever. This was one of the dominating themes of 2012 and as we go through yet another year waiting for new consoles, I think it’s only going to get worse. Sales are falling (no one’s 100% sure of why but many think it’s not just the normal end-of-cycle downturn), costs are set to skyrocket and anything that isn’t a sure fire hit is a recipe for financial catastrophe. Any studio that hasn’t consistently pumped out critical and commercial successes can’t get work anymore and we now have fewer publishers able to fund new AAA projects than ever before. I love AAA gaming and it pains me greatly to see it in such decline but unless people get bored of mobile games and come running back to it, I don’t see how they fix this going forward. My hope is that this is an adjustment and the industry will realign itself and come out stronger but that requires new players to enter the space and no one is.
  • Valve’s Steam box will not release this year but will enter the promised beta phase. My feeling is it will be a standardised PC design that runs customised Linux with Steam on it. And for that reason, I will probably not care because it will have a fraction of my library available to me and most of it is going to be indie stuff I don’t need to play on my TV or that I can play by running an HDMI cable from my laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a cool idea and from the way they’ve talked about it being able to run competing software, it might even be Valve’s own attempt at an OUYA-like thing which could be something special indeed.
  • Steam on Linux will remain niche at best. Despite the hypocrisy of Valve and others towards Windows 8, I do get where some of their concerns are rooted and I share them. However, to think Linux is going to ever gain mainstream adoption of any kind, especially gaming at this stage is a pipe dream. Even the versions of it that are designed to be “desktop friendly” are a nightmare to maintain, drivers are a mess and the community as a whole is still full of elitists who drive the mainstream away and like it that way. All that’s fine, I’ve got nothing against any of that if that’s the way you want a platform to be but all of those things mean it will never take over Windows. Kudos to Valve for making a concerted effort to make the platform viable for gaming and I do hope they can succeed in some way. But if they do, it won’t be for a long time to come.
  • Cross-media gaming will be attempted multiple times and never take off. Frank Gibeau from EA as well as babbling heads like Kevin Dent say that big gaming franchises have to have components everywhere. Beyond your console or PC game, there has to be a tie-in product on your phone, your tablet, your browser and anywhere else in order to keep you engaged at all times. I think this is a dumb idea and a waste of developer talent and resources. EA tried it with Mass Effect 3 and all the tie-in content sucked and no one really cared as far as I can tell. I won’t talk about this too much here because I have a future blog post about it planned.
  • There will be no new games announced or released from Valve this year (Dota 2 excepted). Forget Half-Life 2: Episode 3, we will get zilch from them in 2013. Between their new hardware experiment, Steam for Linux and whatever else, they aren’t going to be in a rush to put anything out. I excepted Dota 2 from this because it’s technically out to anyone who wants it already but it may exit beta.
  • DayZ standalone will launch late and be a buggy, hacker ridden mess like all Bohemia Interactive launches. Don’t get me wrong, I think the ideas of DayZ are absolutely fantastic, even if I burned out on the game after a month and I respect Bohemia as a developer a ton for finding a super tight niche and thriving in it. But the fact remains that their launch track record is abysmal and I don’t expect that to change with the standalone DayZ game. I hope they buck the trend this time because they might have the birth of a new genre on their hands and they’d be foolish to burn it right at the start.

Next-Gen Consoles

This gets its own section because there’s just too much to talk about regarding the next Xbox and PlayStation. There’s no doubt in my mind that these machines will be radically different from anything that’s come before. They have to be because making themselves stand out against phones and tablets (for better or worse) is a must.

  • Both the next Microsoft and Sony systems will be announced and shipped this year. Rumour is the next Xbox was supposed to come out in 2012 and got delayed for major retooling. The industry can’t wait any more, new hardware has to happen this year or there will be no one left to make stuff for it.
  • Both platforms will use far fewer specialised parts and be more like PCs than ever. It’s cheaper, most of the off-the-shelf parts are more powerful and most importantly, it’s much easier and faster to develop for. The days of Cell processors and weird memory allocation issues are over, they have to be. I’m guessing each system will have a minimum of 4GB RAM and hard drives will be standard but not SSDs.
  • Both platforms will offer every title in every tier for sale digitally on day one. Sony’s already trying this with select PS3 games. We’ve reached a tipping point where despite the telecartel’s best efforts, broadband is becoming a viable way to get large content and video game retail is losing its stranglehold on publishers and platform holders. By selling games digitally, the useless middleman who rips off the industry and consumers with used games gets cut out, pricing flexibility and sales are easy obtained and everyone makes more money. Retail is the only reason this wasn’t done before and Microsoft and Sony realise it’s time to throw caution to the wind and just do it. Whether I embrace this depends on whether they do DRM intelligently. They can look to Nintendo for how not to do it.
  • Free-to-play will become a big deal on consoles. Again, Sony tried this first with DUST 514 and Microsoft tried it with an XBLA title that wasn’t very good. However, they both know how much money there is to be made here, Sony especially since free-to-play is where Sony Online Entertainment makes most of its money now. The ability to handle microtransactions will exist at the system level and seamlessly integrate into both platform’s store front systems. For this to work though, another major change must happen and that is…
  • Console certification processes will continue to exist but will significantly lighten and be sped up. Free-to-play titles live and die on how quickly they can iterate. PlanetSide 2 has probably had a dozen or more patches since it left beta and it’s a better game for it. If each of those patches required weeks of sitting in certification limbo, it would have been disastrous. One of the big complaints from developers big and small over the last year has been how expensive and unnecessarily burdensome the console certification process is. Given that numerous games still ship completely broken or in some cases unfinished, it’s clearly not working as it is. Games shouldn’t have to wait weeks to make sure they prompt you to select your storage device and specifically tell you “Don’t turn off your console” when they’re saving data. I don’t know enough about the current processes to know how they will be streamlined but this must and will happen.
  • SmartGlass will be a big deal for Xbox and Vita integration will be big for PlayStation. Being able to have your console content interact with your phone or tablet is largely a dumb gimmick right now but Nintendo is showing how you can do it in unique and interesting ways. Microsoft will expand their SmartGlass platform to make this a much bigger (yet still optional) component of the gaming and media experience on Xbox. I believe Sony has plans to do something similar but on a more unique scale with the Vita due to the things it offers that phones and tablets can’t. I don’t know if tightly integrating the Vita into the home PlayStation experience can save the platform but I really hope it breathes new life into it.
  • Motion gaming is over. The Kinect was a fad and it’s largely dried up and almost no one’s making games for it any more, certainly nothing with a decent budget. Move died even quicker. The public’s got over motion gaming and I don’t think putting it in the box with the next systems is going to make it popular again. No matter how precise you make it, it’s still not the best way to play games. The next Xbox might support the current Kinect but I don’t think we’ll see another one.
  • Like PC, AAA games will be only a single segment of the gaming experiences available on consoles. This industry simply can’t afford to focus on AAA content exclusively, especially since costs and risks are only going to get more insane. But variety is good and despite some incredible gems coming out of console downloadable services (including half of my top 10 games of 2012), there’s really only the AAA stuff and the high-end downloadable stuff. I believe that free-to-play and a newly refocused effort on promoting and fostering smaller indie development, consoles are suddenly going to have the wide variety of game types, production values and price points that you could previously only get on PC and on mobile to a lesser extent. I think this is going to be the single biggest paradigm shift in the history of the console industry and it’s sorely overdue. This is what’s going to keep it relevant against up and coming platforms.
  • Sony will offer backwards compatibility via their Gaikai acquisition at some point but likely not at launch. They bought that company to probably eventually make PlayStation a platform that isn’t dependant on hardware but for now, I could see them using it this way since the rumoured radical hardware changes in the next console will likely make built-in backwards compatibility impossible. I don’t know if you’ll buy individual games or a subscription service or maybe some kind of hybrid tied into PlayStation Plus. Personally, I’d happy pay a few bucks a month to get access to a huge PS2 and PSP library. I do sincerely hope people who made PSN purchases on PS3 will get automatic Gaikai versions. I’m not counting on it though.
  • Microsoft will not offer retail game backwards compatibility but will offer it for certain XBLA titles like the 360 does with original Xbox games. I don’t think they want to risk pissing off people who will lose access to everything XBLA but they also aren’t going to go through the headache of making every game work. Most XBLA titles never pushed the 360′s processing power very hard so in theory, software backwards compatibility could be enough for most of those titles. I imagine they will also keep the 360 on sale and the Live system for that system up and running for a while.
  • PC gaming will keep getting bigger and challenge the notion of whether many hardcore gamers even need a console. Due to the PC-like architecture rumoured to be powering the new systems, making quality PC ports will be easier than ever and with that goes the reason many PC gamers had for also owning a console. If I could be assured that the majority of AAA PC ports were well done and more like they’ve been in the last year, I’d seriously consider only buying the next consoles when they were cheaper for exclusives.

Technology

  • The Apple fashion trend will finally begin to normalise but the press will ignore it. I’ll say it again before fanboys lose their minds: This does not mean I think Apple’s going away. They aren’t and despite being a mean-spirited, greedy company riding a choreographed public and press perception, it’s a very good thing that they’re around. However, between market saturation, maturing competition and people realising that a lot of their products are underpowered, overpriced and riding hype and form rather than function, their growth is going to start to go from bubble to something more realistic. This is what happens with bubbles. Their stock price has already slid 25% in 2012 but you know how many stories about it I’ve seen from the numerous tech sites I follow? Zero, even though many of these sites live blog their earnings calls. There’s a trend in modern media to build people or companies up high and then kick them back down but that’s never how it’s worked with Apple. They always get a huge free pass that others don’t and I think that’s going to continue. The market’s waking up though and whether fanboys like it or not, a lot of people still don’t use Apple products and many more realise their stuff isn’t necessarily the best at everything.
  • The Apple television is not coming. I made this prediction last year but the rumour won’t die so I’m reserving the right to make it again. Nearly everyone who is big in the TV business is bleeding to death right now. The HDTV market is saturated with people who see no compelling reason to upgrade. Paying 30-50% more for a screen with an Apple logo and the guts of a $99 Apple TV box (especially when many already have iPads you can plug into any TV) is simply not going to happen. Steve Jobs had one line in his biography where he said he’d figured out how to innovate in the TV space. Only for Apple does that one throwaway bit of information lead to an endless stream of speculation on how they’ll somehow revolutionise the TV space. It’s not going to happen.
  • The iPhone 5S will be the next model but in the Fall, not the Spring. Many think that after Apple burned their hardcore by announcing a newer iPad only six months after the previous one that the same thing would start happening with the iPhone too. Aside from the fact that iPhone sales are down because the 5 doesn’t offer anything worth upgrading for, the 6 month iPad debacle was I think just an experiment to see how far they can push people. I don’t think they’re going to keep doing that.
  • BlackBerry 10 will sustain RIM, not catapult them forward. By all accounts, it’s a fantastic operating system and their stock has been reflecting the buzz. The problem is that all 3 of the other major mobile platforms all tie into something bigger. iOS ties into Apple, Android ties into Google’s many services and Windows Phone ties into PCs. All RIM has is mobile and that’s going to make things tougher for them. I imagine that it’s extreme manageability, security features and flexibility will still make it the ideal corporate platform and most of their current corporate and government base will continue using them, as will a niche group of others. But their previous leadership was too short sighted to see the consumer battle approaching and they’ve lost it. I think they’ll refocus on what they have and serving that well.
  • PC sales will slide a bit as the industry normalises but the slide will not be huge and it will settle. While I think tablets are a horrible way to do anything but the lightest computing tasks, there’s a big segment of the population that only has to do the lightest tasks. Those people are buying tablets instead of PCs and with good reason. In addition, a weakening global economy means enterprise spending is slowing across the board and that’s where a lot of PC sales come from. The PC will be the dominant computing platform for the foreseeable future, anyone who says otherwise is clueless. But the industry has been red hot for too long and some cooling should happen. I hope this will thing out some of the garbage vendors and maybe stop the race to the bottom for a while.
  • Windows 8 will sell well below expectations. I think the hyperbolic hate for Windows 8 is way overblown but I get and share some of the big concerns about it. I’ve used it but not full-time and at some point soon, I will be upgrading my gaming rig to it so I can properly judge for myself. Depending on who you ask, it’s either selling OK or worse than Vista which was a dud as Windows sales go and for good reason, it was garbage. Some sales softness can be attributed to slowing PC sales but there has rightly or wrongly been some poison injected into the mainstream consciousness about Windows 8. Microsoft’s been desperate to chase the anti-choice, closed ecosystem model that Apple made popular and I think that’s stupid. They should be running the other way, embracing the opposite side and evangelising that. I believe that the poor sales of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets will cause them to re-evaluate what they’re doing with Windows and maybe back off or make optional some of what people hate about it.
  • Windows Phone 8 will rise to a respectable market share. I was wrong about this last year with Windows Phone 7 but my girlfriend is in love with WP8, as is everyone who buys a phone with it. There’s been lost of buzz slowly building about it and when the platform launched in China, it sold out everywhere in 2 hours, far outpacing the iPhone 5, even though it also set a record. Android is decimating all right now and that’s not going to change, nor are a sizable number of Apple faithful going to jump ship. But there’s still a big market out there of people who don’t own smartphones or who want to switch away from BlackBerry or older Android devices and I think there’s a big chance for Windows Phone there. After playing with my girlfriend’s Lumia 920, it makes my BlackBerry 9900 look last century and if I could afford a new phone tomorrow, it’s without question the one I would get.
  • The TV industry will make a new push from 3D TVs to 2K or 4K TVs. I said we would see no mention of 2K/4K TVs last year and I was right, as I was about 3D dying off. However, the Japanese TV manufacturers are bleeding out fast and they need something, anything to resuscitate their fortunes. I don’t think the market is ready for 2K/4K yet but damned if they aren’t going to try to make it ready.
  • Sharp will go bankrupt and Panasonic will have a massive restructuring. Whether Sharp goes the Japanese equivalent of Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 I don’t know but there’s no way for them to recover from the death spiral they’re in. Panasonic is already talking about shedding Sanyo and I think that’s only the tip of the iceberg for them. Sony is well underway with it’s restructuring now but Panasonic’s going to announce some kind of similar radical plan that will involve much deeper cuts due to them not being as diversified as Sony.
  • We will start to see more mainstream PCs come standard with SSDs or a combination of SSD and hard drive. SSDs have gotten so incredibly cheap that it’s becoming worth it for PC manufacturers to put them in medium-class models just to boast about how fast they are. There are even low-end SSDs that are so inexpensive, they could even make it into some of the cheap big box systems.

And after another epic length post, there’s all my predictions for 2013! There’s a lot of uncertainty in not only the tech and gaming industries but in the world in general. Still, I think there’s a lot to look forward to and I’m very curious to see what lies ahead. I hope your 2012 was good to you and yours and that your 2013 will be even better. I’m very stoked for a lot of things coming in my life this year and may only my good predictions be the right ones. Happy New Year once again!

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