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Category Archives: Culture

Dead Space as a metaphor for a flailing and directionless EA

Leave a Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction 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 AAA games, Dead Space, EA, Electronic Arts, video game publishers, video games

Introducing Two Guys & A Game

Leave a Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction on April 9, 2013

So hey, remember that YouTube show I launched a little while ago? If you haven’t been watching it and spamming the Hell out of it to everyone you know, go rectify that right now before you become a truly bad person. But wait, how would you like even more video content? I knew you’d be stoked for that! Well, wish and you shall receive!

I’m pleased to announce that the first episode of Two Guys & A Game is now live! So what the Hell am I doing launching another YouTube show when I’ve barely got Retro Flashback right and what’s this new one all about? To answer your first question, because I’m stark raving mad. To answer your second question will take a few more sentences. My good friend Dan (known as StylezXP) and I have been trying to figure out some kind of project to do together for a while. We’ve wanted to collaborate on something and we both have busy lives (him especially since he and his wife recently had a kid) so we also wanted something that would give us a reason to get together more often.

Then one day, we were reminiscing about all the co-op games he and I have played together over the years. We both love the co-op experience but it was made further unique in our case because we often did a kind of Mystery Science Theater 3000-style snarky commentary along with the games we played. We enjoy the titles we play but some of them were not exactly pillars of narrative delivery and we enjoyed taking the piss out of them while we played them through. We had talked about how awesome it would have been if we could have recorded those experiences. And then it hit us: Let’s do this but on the Internet! And thus, Two Guys & A Game was born.

We know there’s a ton of YouTube game content out there and a lot of it is Let’s Plays. Neither of us are really big on those types of series and most of them are dreadful. We didn’t want to do that unless we could bring our own unique flair to it but our banter is what we think makes the difference. We plan to play a variety of different games from different eras on various platforms but we are starting with the latest release in the Army of Two series. These have been guilty pleasure games for StylezXP and I so we figured it was a great one to start off with. We hope to do episodes that are an average of an hour in length, though some may go longer or shorter. We hope to do these on a regular basis but given how busy both our lives are right now, we can’t guarantee they’ll be coming on an exact schedule. The best way to find new episodes is to subscribe to my channel and keep an eye on the official playlist. We will play whatever game we are currently working on to completion before moving on to the next one. We may also do special one-off episodes dedicated to things like spoiler discussion or talking about the history of a game series we both like. The co-op comedy is the meat of the series but we plan to roll with other things too.

Just like Retro Flashback, this series is an evolving thing and both of us are coming at this with minimal experience both in commentating and production. You’ll notice that the commentary audio is pretty bad in the first video. It took me literally an afternoon to get the dual headset recording working with my laptop and capture software and what we got is the best I could do and that was after a lot of post processing on Sound Forge Audio Studio. I’m hoping to improve it more as we go forward and should the show gain some traction, I will consider investing in a portable mixer and some more professional grade microphones. That’s not in the financial cards for me this month though so I hope you’ll bare with me. I’m still confident in saying that even this first attempt sounds better than a lot of Let’s Play content on YouTube. There’s also a bit of an issue mid-video that required a bit of a gap in our recording but I think I covered that in a way that will make you grin.

We really hope you guys enjoy this new series. If you do, please consider subscribing to the channel, giving a thumbs up to the videos and telling your friends. Even a mention on Twitter, a post on a message board or a link on Reddit goes a long way in helping us find an audience. We also welcome any feedback, positive or negative, just as long as you offer it in an intelligent manner. Please comment away if you have something to offer. We’re really excited to be doing this and I hope we can entertain a bunch of people with it. So, without further ado, check out the first episode below!

Coverage, Culture, Personal, Video Games Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Let's Play, video games, YouTube

Introducing Retro Flashback

1 Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction on March 24, 2013

After months of gestating in my head and exhaustive preparation, I’m super excited to announce my new YouTube project, Retro Flashback! I’ve been jonesing to get this out to the world for a while and the day of my final(?) live stream for Extra Life seemed like the perfect time to maximise synergies.

So, what’s this all about and why should you care?

After finally getting a turbulent few years of my life normalised last year, I got bit by the creativity bug. I wanted to make something that I could use to apply my kind of scarily large knowledge of video games to in a unique way. I also have some knowledge of video editing thanks to a freelance client of mine and while I’m certainly no expert, I know my way around the process well enough. The problem is, there is already a massive excess of video game related content on YouTube and good chunks of it that are very good and have large audiences as a result. Just throwing my voice into that chorus (especially when I’m to say the least unskilled in comparison) didn’t seem to be the best thing to do.

Then I noticed that aside from some game play footage and the occasional Let’s Play, there’s a serious dearth of retro game coverage on YouTube. I’m a huge retro gamer and I used to be a pretty serious collector at one point before I went too far down the rabbit hole and got myself into some pretty serious debt buying rarer stuff at inflated prices. I actually ended up selling that collection (mostly at a loss) both to help right my financial ship and also to teach myself a lesson about excess. Nonetheless, my knowledge of and enthusiasm for retro games is pretty substantial and I thought this would be a great opportunity to put that to use.

The show gets its primary inspiration from the likes of TotalBiscuit’s WTF Is… series and Giant Bomb’s quick looks. They idea is that the personalities do first impressions of usually new games. It’s a simple formula, just them talking over captured game play footage but they bring a lot of informative and unique discussion. Their videos are not Let’s Plays, which is generally just someone narrating themselves playing a game with no insight or in some cases, not talking at all. I don’t really care for that and I wanted to do something more interesting. That’s when Retro Flashback was born. The idea is that I will do a similar style of presentation to the shows I mentioned before but discussing not only what the retro titles are about but also what made them good (or bad), why people should (or shouldn’t) seek them out and how they can do so.

I was listening to a podcast a while back and in discussing some other topic, the hosts got off on a tangent about how gaming discussion is starting to change. For the first time in history, we have a generation of young people who didn’t grow up with some of the most iconic titles from the beginning of mainstream video game culture. Up until this point, everyone not only knew what Super Mario Bros. was, everyone had played it at least once. That’s not so much the case any more. Obviously, you don’t have to know everything about the history of video games to be able to appreciate them but I thought it would be really neat to do something where people who are deep into this hobby but never had the chance to experience its beginnings could see some of what it was like and hear someone who was there talk about the roles many of these older titles had in what we play today. The tag line for the show is “Showcasing gaming’s roots for a new generation” and that’s what I hope to accomplish with it. My hope is that I can encourage more people both young and old to go back and experience some of these iconic titles for themselves or at least learn something valuable about them.

Giant Bomb is actually kind of doing something like this with their Encyclopedia Bombastica series but that’s cool. I hope to do my show more regularly but even if not, there are a lot of older games out there so I think there’s room for lots of participants. Plus, the Giant Bomb guys are awesome. I have no restrictions on what types of games I will cover or what systems I will cover them on so expect to see a wide variety of things from both old consoles and computers. So far, I only have capture setups configured for NES and Super NES and it’s actually not as easy to do as each one has its own unique quirks but I’m confident I can get everything working with the tools I have at my disposal. You will notice that a lot of the videos will be in 480p. This is because most older games are in 480p (often 360p) and there is literally no benefit to encoding at the more demanding 720p. Trust me, I tested it. When I do captures of updates retro titles from consoles and the like, I will be encoding at 720p where it fits.

I do not take direct requests for what games to cover because I have no specific coverage plan and am going to talk about what I like at the time. However, I’m maintaining and ever-expanding list so I welcome people to submit ideas both here and in the comments on YouTube. I know what YouTube comments can be like and should the show get popular, I know I can’t avoid them turning into what YouTube comments often do but I’m going to hold myself to a policy of only dedicating a set amount of time to reading and answering comments and only responding to the intelligent ones. Some people like TotalBiscuit like to engage with the idiots but I have neither the time or energy to deal with those people. Your comment doesn’t have to be praise or agreement and I welcome all feedback so I can improve the show but if you can’t comment intelligently, don’t expect a response.

It’s also worth noting that I have no experience doing this. My editing skills are competent but minimal and I have no vocal training. Currently, I’m just using a Razer Carcharias headset mic which sounds OK but not great but I do have plans to upgrade to a Blue Nessie microphone once they go on sale. Just in practising for the series, I’ve improved my commentary skills a lot but I have a long way to go. I’m doing this series as much for the challenge as the fun so the journey’s going to be half the experience of it. If you find my commentary not to your liking, that’s cool. I encourage you to leave suggestions for how you think I can improve and then check back a few weeks later so see if things have maybe changed. I’ve been polishing this for a while but the one piece of advice every YouTube personality has offered is that you need to eventually just put your stuff out there and iterate. So that’s the plan!

I hope to do a couple of episodes of the show a week but that’s only my goal, not a guarantee. I’ve spent the last couple of months coming up with a streamlined production method that should allow me to crank them out quickly but I also have a day job, a side business, a girlfriend, two cats, a dog, and a desire to play a lot of newer games too so depending on my free time, it could be more or less. I also have terrible upload speeds at home which require me to take the videos into work to post them, though I hope that will change soon and with it, that I’ll also be able to do some live streaming stuff as well. My eventual hope is that I will be able to monetise these videos, either directly through YouTube (though I hear that’s really tough when you use captured footage) or by maybe securing partnership with a network at some point. Unlike TotalBiscuit and others, I have no desire to make a full-time career out of this. I think it would be cool but also incredibly risky and I’ve lived a risky career life for too long so I’m happy with the stability I have now. Making money from them is secondary though, for me this is about the challenge of doing it and also what it can hopefully bring to those who want to learn more about where gaming came from. It’s an important subject and I hope I can contribute to a greater understanding of it for some people.

So yeah, that’s my more in-depth explanation of Retro Flashback. I really hope you all enjoy the videos and again, I welcome any and all feedback, as long as it’s given intelligently. Below, you will find a shorter video version of the intro as well as the first episode which is of Code Name: Viper for the NES. Enjoy everyone, I can’t wait to show you more!

Coverage, Culture, Personal, Video Games Retro Flashback, retro video games, video games, YouTube

Video Mayhem: Amnesia Live Stream Date & My New YouTube Show Launches the Same Day

1 Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction on March 7, 2013

Hey, do you remember when I did that Extra Life thing a while back? Remember how I said if I hit $2,000 raised for the charity, that I would single session the scariest game ever made and that it would be hilarious to watch me suffer horribly? If you watched the show, you may even know that I hit $2,000 during that day because a bunch of amazing people (including a bunch I’d never met outside that Twitch chat) were incredibly generous/insane. You know how it’s been months and I still haven’t done the Amnesia show? Well, that changes this month! My single session playthrough of Amnesia: The Dark Descent will be broadcast live for everyone on Sunday, March 24th, 2013 starting at 3PM EST and going until I’m done!

I feel bad for keeping people in anticipation of my on-camera suffering for so long but life just got nuts. We underwent (and are kind of still undergoing) a merger at my day job which has been a crazy amount of work and between that, our amazing (but also time consuming) new puppy and a bunch of other stuff, I just haven’t had a lot of energy at the end of the day lately and well, this will require a lot of that. In addition, there were rumblings that my ISP would finally be able to start offering sufficient upload speeds that I could maybe do the show from home instead of the board room at work. Sadly, those speeds are coming but not until later this year so it will still be an office thing. Things are finally starting to normalise though and I’ve booked a week of vacation starting the day after the live stream so that I can get some rest and possibly check myself into an institution to recovery from the nervous breakdown playing this game will actually cause.

Even if you didn’t watch my other two live streams (which are archived on my Twitch channel if you want to see them), you won’t want to miss this one. For those not in the know, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a PC game released in 2010 that is considered by many to be the scariest video game ever produced. People who are big horror fans have a hard time finishing it. I detest all things horror and watching me play through the whole game (which can range from 7-10 hours in length) will be must see television. It’s going to be miserable for me and hilarious for all of you. I will archive this show as well but being able to see it live and mock me in the Twitch chat will be way cooler. It’s going to be a blast!

However, there is a dual purpose to this day and I hope that you will all indulge me and assist me in getting the word out. In the last year, I’ve been bitten by the bug to do something creative and I’m finally putting that into motion. During the live stream, I am going to be launching a brand new YouTube show called Retro Flashback! I won’t go into details here as I’ll save that for another post and for the live stream but it’s going to be a semi-regular YouTube program devoted to showing game play of retro video games with me providing commentary about the titles, their development, what made them good and how they created to the makeup of gaming history. I’ve never seen another show like this and since I have a frankly embarrassing amount of video game trivia in my head, I thought this would be a great way to showcase the great games of the past to a generation that maybe didn’t get a chance to experience them. More details will be forthcoming later so watch this blog for more!

What I’m hoping you all can help me with is getting the word out, both about the live stream and my new show. I’m going to be running a little contest the day of the stream to try to get some subscribers to my YouTube channel to get an audience going. I haven’t decided on the number yet but if people can get the word out and I can hit that many new subscribers during the show, I’m going to commit to doing yet another single session live stream of another highly regarded horror game, Condemned: Criminal Origins. I think this will be a good incentive to get people to spam their friends a bit and can help me get the foundation going to grow an audience.

I am super excited about this and would really appreciate everyone’s help. Please retweet this blog post and tell people to pack in for the show on the 24th. I think we’re all going to have a great time (even if it drives me mad) and I can’t wait to show you all Retro Flashback and hopefully get it out for more people to see. See you on Twitch!

Culture, Personal, Video Games Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Extra Life, live stream, Retro Flashback, video games, YouTube

We’re Not Entitled to Backwards Compatibility…Sort Of

2 Comments Posted by Parallax Abstraction 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.

Business, Coverage, Culture, Predictions, Video Games backwards compatibility, game consoles, PlayStation 4, Sony, video games

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

Leave a Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction 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 AAA gaming, game consoles, predictions, THQ, video games

My Top 10 Video Games of 2012 (And A Bunch of Other Stuff)

1 Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction on December 30, 2012

It’s that time of year again, when everyone in gaming starts banging out their lists of top titles for the year. I actually really like these lists, not just because they gives you insight into the tastes of the various people you follow but also because for some reason, I tend to see less of the Internet vitriol that plagues the gaming community with them. Not to say there is none but the arguments seem less heated over top lists, maybe because they’re multi-item things and not focused on just one game bar none. I’m not daft enough to think that my list really has any bearing on the tastes of anyone but I like making it because of the challenge it poses. I play a lot of games every year and like to think I have fairly wide reaching tastes so distilling it down to only 10 games and then ranking those 10 is something that really makes me exercise my brain, trying to organise my experiences and literacy of the industry from the year past. Hopefully some of you reading this will hear about some great games you hadn’t thought of and maybe I can lead you to some good experiences. I hope so.

With that out of the way, I’m first going to list my Honourable Mentions, games that are still very excellent but not quite enough to make the top 10. These are in no particular order and despite not being top contenders, I think they’re still great and people should check them out:

The Pinball Arcade – FarSight Studios is normally a budget developer and most of their catalogue can be considered shovelware with one exception, their pinball stuff. These guys not only clearly love pinball, they get it. The Pinball Arcade is their attempt to recreate a bunch of popular real tables from the past with an obsessive devotion to accuracy and boy do they do that. You can get this on almost every platform but it’s best played on a tablet, partially because of the ability to get proper vertical screen orientation and also because thanks to stupid console certification processes, non-mobile platforms are getting new table packs at a much slower pace. I do also own it on the Vita and it’s fantastic there as well if you can wait for the tables a bit longer. They’re still trying to get a PC version out so please go vote for it on Steam’s broken Greenlight system.

Borderlands 2 – It’s more Borderlands but tightened up and that’s really all I wanted. The story’s still dumb, the writing is still full of lazy Family Guy-style references instead of original jokes and Claptrap should be melted into scrap but this is still an absolute blast in co-op. Just like the first one, a friend and I would start playing it and not realise how much time had passed until we noticed that we should have gone to bed hours ago. Were the writing not so poor, this might have actually made the top 10.

Sine Mora – I love shmups despite being no good at them and this game, developed by two companies who had never done one before, is fantastic. Gorgeous art and music, unique mechanics, challenge that’s present but not unreasonable and a deep and very dark story make this a treat for fans of the genre. I now own this on 360, Vita/PS3 and PC and I don’t regret buying it in multiple places.

FTL: Faster Than Light – A Kickstarter success story and for good reason. It’s part starship command simulator, part rogue-like and a ton of fun. The only reason this doesn’t make the list is because the game flat out cheats with the last encounter and I think that’s a bad mechanic that should never be used. Strong challenge is fine but not when it’s done by exempting something from the rules. Even on easy mode, I’ll likely never finish this game but I don’t care because the rest of it is so good.

Hotline Miami – A one man project that somehow manages to make 8-bit pixel art that can be disturbing with how graphic it is. It’s tough but incredibly satisfying. This doesn’t make the list because it’s still a bug ridden mess. I still haven’t finished it due to collision detection and slowdown issues and it still has a notice on launch that Steamworks support is broken (despite it being approved for sale on Steam). We keep getting told fixes are coming but they never do, yet the creator has found time to port it to Mac and oh yeah, announce a sequel. The game is great but this isn’t how you treat your customers.

Hitman: Absolution – Potentially the most eyebrow raising of my choices. This game had polarised reviews but I think it was held to an unfair standard. It deviates in many ways from traditional Hitman games but I really like what it did. You can still make it brutally tough if you want, the grindhouse goofy story I thought was fun, and the mechanics make it feel like the old Splinter Cell stealth games. Unfortunately, that type of game play is considered obsolete by many but I still love it. The Contracts mode is also a brilliant way to do multiplayer without just having the usual deathmatch mode tacked on. If you’re a Hitman purist, this may seem like a step back to you but I thought it was a ton of fun and a great time value if you play it as intended.

Torchlight II – I only got to play a couple of hours of this in the last week with a friend but I can already tell this is the game Diablo III should have been. Light-hearted, fun and fast with mechanics and systems that are easy to learn but can be very deep if you choose to get obsessive with them. It’s also a lot cheaper than Diablo III and unlike that game, you get a complete experience for the initial buy-in price.

Asura’s Wrath – If you told me I would enjoy a game that’s almost entirely quick time events and based on a story that’s ridiculous and dumb even by anime standards, I’d laugh in your face but that’s exactly what Asura’s Wrath is and I loved it. It just keeps getting crazier and crazier and you’re compelled to push forward just to see how insane they can get. I rented this, “beat” it and then bought it later for cheap. In true Capcom fashion, they are trying to screw people with DLC by hiding the proper ending behind a paywall but since I got the game for $20, I can live with that. I haven’t played any of the DLC yet but I intend to. I don’t want to see a lot of these kinds of games come out but this one was just so nuts, it kept me smiling.

The Darkness II – The original Darkness was an underrated gem, not unlike most titles from Starbreeze Studios. When I heard a sequel was coming from Digital Extremes (who has a spotty record at best) I was nervous but I really loved what they did. It’s a very linear game but the action is incredibly violent, visceral and satisfying, the story is unique and tense and it has some of the best voice acting I’ve ever heard in video games. I fully intend to play this again and still want to try the co-op out. It’s criminal that this game by all accounts was a sales bomb and we’ll probably never get another one. It goes on sale on the PC constantly so pick it up and let’s play some co-op!

Tribes: Ascend – When I heard that the company behind the middling Global Agenda had bought the Tribes license and intended to make a free-to-play game out of it, I was bummed. I didn’t play much Tribes back in the day because I didn’t have a good enough PC then but I know how widely regarded it is. In the end though, Hi-Rez Studios made a fantastic Tribes game that kept everything great about the series and attached it to a free-to-play model that’s perhaps a bit imbalanced but not at all exploitive. I love this game, it’s just unfortunate that I haven’t been able to keep up with the community and have gone from being pretty decent at it to getting flattened almost constantly.

Next up are my Disappointments for the year. These are all games or concepts that I had high hopes for that just weren’t met. Not to say they’re all terrible experiences. Some were but others I still really enjoyed, they just didn’t meet the expectations I feel their pre-release hype created for me. Again, these are in no particular order:

Diablo III – As stated above, I think Torchlight II is what this should have been. I still haven’t finished my first normal difficulty playthrough of this and every time I think about it, I decide to play something else. I love this genre and played a ton of Diablo and Diablo II but this is a regression of what made the series great in every way. The systems have been dumbed down, everything has been engineered around monetising their broken and unbalanced real money auction house, it looks technically outdated and oh yeah, it has always-on DRM that prevented people from playing (even in single player) for several days after launch. Between this and purposefully splitting StarCraft II into three games, I honestly think I’m done with Blizzard for the foreseeable future. This makes me sad but they are running away from the values that made them what they are and way too much Activision thinking had penetrated their management.

Retro City Rampage – I was stoked for this game for months. A Grand Theft Auto style open world game in 8-bit style with music by Virt? Yes please! I grabbed it day one on my Vita but the more I play it, the more disappointed I get. The ideas are great but too many of the missions are horribly designed and even after a patch to substantially lower the difficulty on some, they’re still way too hard and often require sheer luck to get through. Again, I’m all for challenge but when it feels like it’s being brute forced on you, that’s no longer fun.

Mass Effect 3 – Alternatively titled The EA Effect. I love this series but the last game was ruined simply because of EA’s greed. Multiple critical story elements were held back as paid DLC. The ending was atrocious and rendered all of the choices you had to make in the series irrelevant (sorry but you are flat out wrong if you think otherwise). Rather than own that, BioWare caved to the whining fans and released an extended cut ending as DLC which was supposed to provide “clarification” but actually significantly retconned and altered critical elements of it. To their credit, the DLC was free but that’s still ridiculous. If they couldn’t do the ending right, at least they could have defended that position. Add to this a multiplayer mode that was actually good but was locked behind an online pass, had Skinner Box microtransactions and required you to play it in order to get the best ending to the campaign and that only makes things worse. This series deserved better than the treatment EA gave it with the finale.

Max Payne 3 – The game looked and ran great on PC and the action was as awesome as it was in the previous two Remedy-developed instalments but the story was a huge let down. These are supposed to be dark narratives and Max is supposed to be a torn, broken character but this whole story was about him voluntarily putting himself in horrible situations he didn’t have to and then endlessly whining about them like an emo teenager. In the other games, he had tragedy and conflict forced upon him. In this one he just runs head long into it and then bitches about how it’s everyone else’s fault. It ended up turning the game from a fun experience to one I wanted to finish just to get it over with. After a few cheater-filled multiplayer matches, I uninstalled it and will probably never touch it again. It sold badly so I don’t think we’ll see another one for a while if ever.

PlayStation Vita – This breaks my heart. I pre-ordered a Vita on the strong belief there was a market for it and I love the system to death. It’s a wonderful piece of kit and shows that Sony still gets quality hardware. The problem is, there haven’t been a lot of games for it. A lot of the releases have been stellar and I’ve bought more than $200 worth of stuff for it but the new releases have quickly dried up and even Sony’s barely talking about it. Two of the big tent pole releases for it this year were supposed to be new entries in the Resistance and Call of Duty franchises, both of which were hot garbage by hot garbage enthusiasts Nihilistic Software, who decided to rename and focus on mobile games after these. Good luck guys, a new name can’t change the fact that you’re bad at your jobs. The Vita’s in a horrible catch 22 where no one wants to buy it without games and no one wants to make games for it because no one’s bought it. With how much the mobile gold rush has taken off, I honestly wonder if the Vita can succeed and if there’s only enough room for one dedicated system to thrive, that being the 3DS. I so hope it can but as an early adopter, I’m disappointed even though I don’t regret my purchase and I can certainly see why any potential Vita buyer would be turned off right now.

Mobile Games As A Whole – Now before anyone starts spitting game names at me, yes there are a number of exceptions to this. I’ve played several mobile games I thought were very good but I’ve probably bought over $100 worth over the course of this year, mostly on recommendations and I’m sorry but most of them are garbage. Everything’s become about monetisation at the expense of good design. The majority of the games are boring, shallow, a regression in terms of systems design and every game has to have a bloody store front in between levels where they’re trying to get you to spend more money. These mechanics in free-to-play PC games are considered abhorrent but they’re somehow a revolution on mobile devices. To hear people call mobile gaming superior because the games are cheaper drives me nuts because it’s largely a lie and many of these games cost substantially more in the end. I’m happy to pay to get a complete, deep experience on a mobile device and there’s no doubt that the platforms are capable of those things and some even exist but the majority of what’s succeeding is Skinner Box garbage. It’s a de-evolution of the gaming medium and it’s turning a potentially amazing new way to get interactive experiences into a cesspool of the worst kinds of design ideas. That it’s popular doesn’t make it good. It can get better and it needs to get better. If this is where the majority of games end up, I’m going to have to find another hobby.

Next up is a quick list of Exclusions. These are games that very well could have made my top 10 based on my tastes but that I just couldn’t play enough to judge. Unfortunately, between work craziness and the new puppy we got a few months ago, my available gaming time has shrunk substantially and I just didn’t have time to get to everything I wanted:

Fez – Didn’t buy it at the time because I was busy, then the whole save corruption thing happened. I’m waiting for the PC version that’s been hinted at and if it doesn’t come, I might buy it on sale next year on Xbox 360.

Far Cry 3 – My car decided to be a bitchy pain in my arse this month and between it and Christmas, I got screwed for money and couldn’t afford this. Everyone says it’s awesome and I bet it is but I just wasn’t able to play it.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown – I pre-ordered this but have only had time to put about 2 hours into it. I’m liking it but I haven’t progressed enough to judge. From what I understand, it’s still extremely buggy and has largely gone unsupported so that may have kept it from the top 10 anyway.

Persona 4 Golden – I don’t like JRPGs at all but I’ve been told by many people that this is the game that transcends prejudices towards the genre. I intend to take a chance on it but again, money prevented me from buying in right now.

ZombiU – I wasn’t expecting to have a WiiU this month, then I got one for Christmas! This is a polarising game but the positive reviews have painted it in a way that could make me appreciate it, even if it might end up being a rare title I can’t finish. I managed to find the money to buy this on a Boxing Week sale but I won’t be able to put in enough time before the end of the year to render an opinion.

Assassin’s Creed III – I’m a huge fan of this series and pre-ordered this one but have only put in enough time to barely get past the abhorrently long and boring open. I hear the beginning and ending are poor but the middle is among the best offerings this series has made to date but I just haven’t gotten there yet.

And with all that, we finally come to the meat of this massive text wall, my top 10 video games of 2012. These are listed in order from lowest to my game of the year:

10. Spec Ops: The Line – This is a game you should experience not because it’s plays great but because it’s important. It’s a mediocre shooter developed by a studio whose only other known project was a B-grade flight shooter for the original Xbox. It plays OK but not as good as many other games and the multiplayer is laughably bad. However, the story is an absolutely incredible tale of a soldier’s descent into madness. It’s dark, it’s emotional and it’s very moving by the end. Nolan North gets made fun of for how many games he’s in but the man is one of the finest voice actors working today and I believe this role is his greatest achievement. If you have any interest in game narratives and want to see how a mature story can be done right, you should play it. It sold poorly and I get why but it shouldn’t have.

9. Tokyo Jungle – This is a game that sounds too crazy to exist but it does and it’s great. It takes place in a future version of Tokyo where all humans have disappeared, leaving the animals to ruck amok. I won’t spoil it but that concept actually gets fleshed out narratively. It’s developer had never made any games remotely like this before and it’s an experience I’ve never seen anything close to. It’s cheap on PSN and if you have any interest in the idea at all, you should check it out. It’s one of a kind.

8. Syndicate – It got all kinds of pre-release stick for having the name of the revered strategy game and instead being a first person shooter but it’s pretty damn good. Developed by the underrated Starbreeze Studios and covered in their unique style, it lets you play in a great dystopian cyberpunk future. The campaign is average yet still fun but the co-op is some of the most multiplayer fun I’ve had this year. It’s criminal this this game sold so badly, they even canned the DLC that was already near complete. It’s a co-op experience like no other and I still play it with some people on a regular basis to this day. They took the concepts created in the original strategy game and actually found out how to make them work well in a shooter. This deserved to succeed.

7. Sleeping Dogs – Another open-world crime game that seemed to be aiming to hit the middle of Grand Theft Auto’s seriousness and Saint’s Row’s insanity. And it did just that. It was in development forever by a studio who only had a kart racing game to their name, got dumped by Activision because it couldn’t be turned into a yearly treadmill and eventually came out through Square Enix of all people. It looks gorgeous on PC, the game play systems are deep yet arcadey and tight, the story is actually pretty decent and there’s a lot of great voice acting. I figured I’d enjoy this but not nearly as much as I did. After I finished it, I actually went back to keep working on side stuff which I never do in these games, I just wanted to keep playing in the world. The DLC has been a let down so far but the core game is great and any open-world fan should get it. This apparently also sold under expectations but I really hope it gets a sequel.

6. Dishonored – What’s that Frank Gibeau from EA? New IP this late in the console cycle can’t succeed? Yeah, shut up! And this one didn’t even need tacked on multiplayer or stupid cross-media stuff either like you also insist everything needs. I had high hopes for this game and they were largely met. The story is very good but sadly falls apart at the end and Bethesda’s obsession with celebrity voice actors again proves pointless. The game play and level design are incredible though. You can approach every level in this game in a myriad of different ways, all of which work. There are only has two endings but you can replay it half a dozen times or more to see every way it can be completed. Whether you like action or stealth, this is worth checking out. I’m very happy this sold beyond expectations and is becoming a series.

5. Dust: An Elysian Tail – Go watch some videos of this and prepare to have your mind blown. Ready? This whole game with the exception of the music and voice acting was made by one dude who only learned to program a few of years ago! I know right?! I still am amazed at that accomplishment but beyond that is also a fantastic game. A dark and moving story that also manages to be light and funny in places, super tight and fast combat, surprising length for a downloadable title and a gorgeous world with interesting characters. A not insignificant number of people avoided this because they apparently thought the art style was too “furry” like. If you’re one of those people, stop being an idiot and go buy this amazing game. Dean Dodrill deserves to succeed in a big way.

4. Mark of the Ninja – I love Klei’s style and I love stealth games, despite the genre largely dying away. Even though they never made a stealth game before, Klei managed to make one of the best ones of all time. It demands that you be stealthy but doesn’t outright require it. If you manage to alert someone, there are ways out of it but it’s tough. The systems take what is often a hard to learn concept and makes it accessible without having to hold your hand, something a lot of AAA designers never managed to figure out. It does stealth in a unique and fun way and with Klei’s amazing art throughout. This didn’t sell well on Xbox 360 because Microsoft doesn’t know how to market but it apparently did well on PC. I really hope we see more of these.

3. PlanetSide 2 – As I said above, free-to-play is maturing nicely this year and nowhere is that better demonstrated than Sony Online Entertainment’s incredibly ambitious MMOFPS. This isn’t an easy game to get into but when you figure it out and get in a good squad, it’s massive-scale mayhem like you can’t get anywhere else. I’ve had so many hours of fun in this already and every time I get into a groove with my squad, I have to tear myself away from it. And so far, I’ve only spent about $20 of real money and all of it on stuff I could have got without spending a cent if I had the time to put in. SOE is iterating constantly on the game and it’s getting better and better all the time. If you’re unsure if this is for you, it’s free so just go try it! I haven’t had this much multiplayer fun in years.

2. The Walking Dead – Mature, dark, deeply emotional storytelling in games has a new poster child. Many say this is better than not only the TV show but even the original graphic novel. I can’t speak to the latter but it’s definitely better than the show for me and I like the show. Barely a game at all and more of an interactive story, every episode ended with me in a depression flare-up but still very glad I had played it. All of the characters are interesting, have deep backstories that get fleshed out naturally and while not all perfectly executed, every episode was full of shocking moments, many of which I never saw coming. This was in a dead heat tie for first place but ultimately didn’t get it because despite of how good a game it is, it’s full of bugs on almost every platform and Telltale Games has not dealt with any of them. Combine that with the engine showing its extreme age and it doesn’t take the top spot. Nonetheless, this is a series everyone needs to play and given its massive success, I really hope Telltale has the resources to polish the second season properly and hopefully, go back and fix this one too.

1. Journey – I’ve always thought thatgamecompany’s stuff was neat in concept but that was about it. What footage I saw of Journey looked neat but I only had a passing interest in it. What I got in the end was one of the most beautiful, artistic and emotional experiences I’ve had in gaming. Not a word is spoken through the entire experience, yet volumes are conveyed to you. It has co-op that is integral to it but it’s only ever with one person that frequently changes, who you can’t communicate with beyond some chirping noises and whose identity is not revealed to you until after you finish it. I won’t spoil the story but never has a game had me on the edge of my seat pushing so hard on the controller that I had a bruise on my thumb afterwards. This can be held up as an unquestionable example of how games can be art. Until finishing this, The Longest Journey (which oddly has the same word in the name) was my favourite story based game of all time. It’s still amazing but this moved me in a way that couldn’t. Everyone who owns a PS3 needs to play this and if you don’t own one, find somebody who does and play it there. It’s one of the best games of its type ever made and without question my game of the year.

So there it is, over 4,500 words later according to my post editing tool. It took me a surprising amount of time to come up with these lists but I feel good having done it. I’ve done a lot of complaining on this blog throughout the year of the bad directions I feel parts of the gaming industry are going. I still have those worries but for all the thoughts I had about 2012 being the beginning of the end for the kind of games I enjoy, never have I had such a hard time picking only 10 games as the best ones I played this year. I’m a cynical guy and have never claimed otherwise but even as that person who feels the gaming business is going to a creatively dark place, this has been an incredible year for the gaming medium and for games that are based around design, narrative and experience rather than just the easiest paths to quick money. I really hope this side of it continues to grow, mature and most of all succeed in 2013 and the years ahead. Congratulations to everyone who won, you made amazing games and I hope you all get to keep doing so. Best of luck to the industry in 2013, I get the feeling they’ll need some of it.

Culture, Video Games Assassin's Creed III, Asura's Wrath, Borderlands 2, Diablo III, Dishonored, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Far Cry 3, Fez, FTL: Faster Than Light, Hitman: Absolution, Hotline Miami, Journey, Mark of the Ninja, Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3, mobile games, Persona 4 Golden, PlanetSide 2, PlayStation Vita, Retro City Rampage, Sine Mora, Sleeping Dogs, Spec Ops: The Line, Syndicate, The Darkness II, The Pinball Arcade, The Walking Dead, Tokyo Jungle, top 10, Torchlight II, Tribes: Ascend, video games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, ZombiU

The Humble Entitlement Bundle

Leave a Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction on December 4, 2012

In a move that was called a betrayal by many and lauded as marketing genius by others, last week Humble Bundle put up a new package by struggling publisher THQ. They put up a bunch of their relatively recent, largely high quality AAA PC titles under the traditional pay-what-you-want model of the Humble Bundle. This is an unprecedented move for a AAA publisher but given THQ’s massive problems, desperate times call for desperate measures. Given that most of these are older titles that aren’t selling well any more, a move like this gives them a small cash infusion and also drums up awareness of several franchises that have imminent sequels in development. Sales of these sequels are vital if THQ’s to have any chance of surviving more than a few months and a Humble Bundle where they get to raise some money while also supporting great charities seems like a fantastic idea to me. I already own every game in the bundle except Red Faction: Armageddon but already bought one to get that plus the soundtracks and another to gift to a friend. I will probably buy more.

Of course, this has not been without its huge share of controversy. A number of previous Humble Bundle community supporters as well as reporters Kyle Orland, high horse enthusiast Ben Kuchera and others have slammed this package saying it cheapens the Humble Bundle brand, is a betrayal of their values and many other stabs of hyperbole. Their complaints really boil down to the fact that this package doesn’t share many traits that previous Humble Bundles have. Among them are:

-These aren’t indie games, they’re all AAA releases from the same publisher.
-The money’s going to a heartless, evil publisher and not the developers.
-The games are not DRM free, they use Steam which is a mild form of DRM.
-They only run on Windows and not also on Mac and Linux as other Humble Bundle titles traditionally have.
-This is a cynical attempt from a dying company to milk a few extra dollars for their executives before they go under.

These are all perfectly valid reasons to not so much as pay a single cent to get the bundle as you indeed can but “betraying their principals?” Give me a damn break. A bunch of incredible games (a couple of which are barely a year old) are released for literally next to nothing and supporting charity at the same time but bunch of entitled prats still whine.

Let’s get this straight guys: Humble Bundle owes you nothing. They offer products that are sold with a certain pricing model. You pay a price, you get the products promised, that’s all. They has never made it part of their mission statement that all the games will be indies, DRM free or that they will run on platforms that are little more then AAA wastelands. There has been no ideological betrayal here, no principals mangled in the name of profits. It’s all in your arrogant little heads.

THQ is on the financial ropes. Did you honestly think they were going to endure the considerable work and cost to port older, high-end games to platforms that virtually no one plays high-end games on? Don’t you think they would have already done that if there was a market there? And so what if the developers aren’t directly getting the proceeds? Last I checked, THQ surviving means the studios who developed the games (all of which are still around) get to continue to exist and employ their teams as opposed to getting shut down or sold off for pennies on the dollar. If THQ does under before Metro Last Light comes out, what do you think is going to happen to 4A Games? Nothing good I can assure you. Yes, this is a desperation move and one they wouldn’t be doing if they weren’t in dire straights. However, as someone who loves AAA games and is frankly terrified at the pace of consolidation and shrinkage in that side of the industry, I say that if this allows THQ to survive and continue making games, it’s damn well worth it.

The values supposedly being betrayed aren’t Humble Bundle’s but ones the ones whining have superimposed on them. This kind of entitled whining toward an organisation all but giving away some of the best games in recent years is a shining example of the horribly named “first world problems” meme. It’s why the indie community has a reputation for being a bunch of whiny, self-righteous, pretentious douchebags. This is a reputation I think is largely unfounded but it becomes much harder to argue that point when I see things like this happen. Those who are saying they will boycott Humble Bundle in the future because of this “betrayal” are only hurting the future indie developers and charities the organisation supports, all in the name of making a pointless statement based on their own vicarious ego stroking. They and the reporters supporting them need to come down from their ivory towers. Humble Bundle helps charity, they aren’t one themselves and you never had a say in their ideals. If you think you can do this better than them, I implore you to go and start up your own organisation based on the nobler goals you seem to think you espouse.

As I write this, the bundle is currently sitting at $3.4 million raised from 606,473 contributors and there’s still almost 9 days to go. I believe this is already a record for Humble Bundle and if not, it surely will be by the time the campaign ends. The silent majority still seems to prefer to buy rather than bitch and I’m happy to see that. I was already hoping THQ would survive but if it does, I can now take extra satisfaction knowing it’s done so in spite of the entitled idiots who would rather see less good games made simply because an organisation betrayed principals they only wish it had. Get over yourselves people.

Business, Coverage, Culture, Video Games gaming press, Humble Bundle, THQ, video games

So That Was E3 2012

Leave a Comment Posted by Parallax Abstraction on June 11, 2012

This week went by super fast for me. Some of that was because work was a non-stop cascade of crazy but it was also because of E3. For as many faults as the show’s structure has, I love it. It’s loud, rambuncious, obnoxious and serves one singular purpose: To scream “VIDEO GAMES ARE AWESOME!” It’s funny because during the week of the big show, I get so caught up in consuming press conference streams, trailers, articles, podcasts and discussing everything at length on forums that it takes up all my free time and for that week, I never actually play any games. This year was no different, aside from a couple of tiny play sessions with my Vita during lunch. There’s always a lot of excitement and anticipation around E3 but this year had a very weird vibe both leading up to and during the show. There was the whining about the show’s relevance, but beyond that, there was a lot of uncertainty about what exactly we’d see. Vita aside, Sony and Microsoft are still flogging what is positively ancient hardware at this point and Nintendo was going to talk about the new WiiU and hopefully breathe some life into the 3DS but last year’s showing (filled with info that was subject to change) really had people confused on what to expect.

Now that the show’s over, I’ve been seeing a lot of really perplexing opinions from the enthusiast press. Many are complaining that the show was disappointing, nothing really impressive came out of it, that Nintendo disappointed really badly and the rest of the makers are pretty clearly just coasting until next year when they’ll presumably announce the next generation Xbox and PlayStation home systems. I’ll admit that this wasn’t my favourite E3 and there are past shows that have been better than this one but once again, the whining from the segment of the press who drives most of their traffic and hype from this show–who indeed should thank this show as a big reason for their field’s existence–really frustrates me. Also guys, what’s with the clapping at press conferences? When you’re there in a coverage capacity, you’re supposed to be journalists first and fans second. Applauding at what are really fancy sales pitches don’t do wonders for demonstrating your integrity. Stop it.

As a superfan of this medium and the AAA segment of it, I’d have done some morally questionable things to be able to attend that show and while I understand it’s bloody hard work for the press, seeing them pimp their coverage all week and then whine about how there wasn’t anything good to see drives me mad. Anyone who says there was nothing interesting at this year’s E3 either didn’t look hard enough or is outright blind. Several of the bigger publishers are certainly coasting on established brands while their front line teams crank away on next-gen hardware but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone and in spite of that, we’ve seen several new IPs this year and the unique re-imagining of others. The amount of originality on display was more than I was expecting and even though my expectations were low, that’s saying something.

Not everything was as encouraging however. Those that coasted this year really coasted and some of those who really needed to hit their messages out of the park botched the swings to the point where they ended up being little more than bunts. The “big five” press briefings are always a good way to form some top-down impressions of the show as a whole so let’s start there. There were shining highlights but they were almost universally disappointing for different reasons. I’ve heard it speculated on podcasts that a lot of this was because the briefings are being aired on TV to a wide audience and as a result, they’re more strictly crunched for time and are focusing them around more mainstream appeal than they did before. If this is true, then I say they need to stop being aired on TV because all that makes these shows interesting was largely sucked out this year.

Microsoft – This beats EA as the most disappointing, only because EA actually showed games. This year, Microsoft was almost entirely focused on media features and their briefing gave a strong vibe that games were basically an afterthought. We got no new game announcements, some new (but largely old) footage of games we already knew were coming, a smattering of Kinect lip service and from then on it was media, media media. One can only imaging the bazillions of dollars that Microsoft must have spent to secure some of the content deals they announced but as someone who doesn’t give a crap about sports and who doesn’t live in the US and thus, won’t be able to get many of these, I just don’t care. Their SmartGlass feature which will allow supplementary content to appear on your phone or tablet looks like cool tech but the main thing I took from that was “Oh great, yet another thing to distract me from watching the damn show.” They even released the video showcasing all their cool looking Summer of Arcade titles after the show, they didn’t even run it as a sizzle real which would have taken two minutes. Microsoft pretty clearly thinks they’ve already got the gamers locked in for the rest of this generation and now it’s time to broaden to non-gamers to try to keep moving hardware until next year when I’m sure they’ll laser focus on the games again for Xbox: The Next One. There’s probably numbers that indicate this makes sense in some way but as a hardcore gamer, I was pretty annoyed. Gamers are what made the Xbox 360 the success it is and we’ll be what drives adoption of the next system. To leave us out in the cold to showcase a bunch of media features that you can get on boxes that cost less and have no subscription I don’t think is necessarily a willing formula.

Sony – They had one of the more engaging presentations and it was book ended by awesome new IP (Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us, both of which I want in my eyeballs right now). Like Microsoft though, they also dropped the ball in key areas to focus more on mainstream stuff, though at least it was focused on games. As a Vita owner itching for new content, I was both stunned and frustrated at how little they talked about the system. Most press and Vita owners left that show thinking Sony has basically left what’s far and away the best portable system out to die. It was later revealed that they had something like 25 games at their booth and more announcements were made during the show itself. They also have a ton of really interesting downloadable indie titles in the works, which weren’t even hinted at. They also waited until later in the week to reveal an incredible list of free AAA and downloadable titles that were already available and will be rotated on a monthly basis for PlayStation Plus members, something which finally made me pull the trigger on it. This neglect was apparently in service of doing a nearly 20 minute embarrassing glitchy demo of an augmented reality storybook for kids and pimping their PlayStation Suite service for Android smartphones, which has been a complete flop so far and I think will continue to be. They even went as far as to apologise for not giving the Vita the attention it deserves. They also waited until after the show to reveal a massive list of free Sony as a company is bleeding badly right now and largely ignoring the device they need to get their investment back on quickly at their press briefing was nothing short of idiotic. As the show progressed however, I quickly realised that Sony platforms are getting a ton of compelling content this year and I’m excited for it now, including the Vita.

Nintendo – They without question had the most to prove this year. The Wii has flared out badly, the 3DS had a bad start and the WiiU is their big chance to shut up those who are saying Nintendo should get out of hardware and make iOS games. They had not one but 3 different briefings, a video one talking about WiiU’s online features on Sunday, their main WiiU briefing on Tuesday and a dedicated 3DS show the following day which I missed. From what I understand, there’s a lot to be excited about for 3DS this year and Nintendo seems to have finally found their stride with it (funny how all the gaming press who said the handheld market had “moved on” last year were silent on that issue this year). They did a decidedly worse pitch for the WiiU. I went into this show excited to get one pre-ordered and probably still will but came out the other side pretty deflated. There were far fewer games announced than people were expecting and some heavy hitters were missing. One big pleasant surprise was the announcement that 2 WiiU GamePad tablets controllers can now be used simultaneously. Up to now, the announced limit was 1 so this is nice to see, even if it comes with the caveat of cutting the frame rate on the GamePads by half if both are in use. Pikmin 3 looks cool (though I’ve never been a huge Pikmin guy) but there was no mention of Retro Studios’ new title, there’s yet another New. Super Mario Bros. game coming (I like the series but the formula is getting tired), Ubisoft has a couple of neat titles on the horizon with ZombieU and Rayman Legends but other than that, the big third-party title they spent many minutes on was Batman Arkham City Armoured Edition, an update to a game that has been out for almost a year with gimmicky WiiU map and inventory features tacked on. I fail to see how they expect to find a new audience for this title on the platform but they seem confident. Their big closer was NintendoLand, supposedly their answer to WiiSports. It’s yet another minigame collection centred around the core idea of a theme park and though it seemed neat, most press who played the games thought they were underwhelming. There simply weren’t enough game announcements. They needed to rapid fire them to show how committed both Nintendo and third parties are to the platform and they failed at that, to the point where Nintendo’s stock took a hit after the show was over. Some in the press have said that Nintendo has been focusing on very short PR cycles lately, not talking about games until much closer to release. Since the WiiU isn’t due to ship until the holiday season, they theorise that we’ll see many more announcements before then and that they were light on announcements at E3 because it simply comes too early. That may be true but to give such a paltry offering at the show where mainstream media is watching seems like a massive missed opportunity.

EA – After their briefing, one of their executives did some damage control and came out saying that EA has several new IPs in the works but that they were all for next-gen systems which is why they weren’t talked about here. That was slightly reassuring but it didn’t really detract from the slimy feeling one gets from watching this conference. At least for 2012, EA is showing itself to be a company that’s creatively bankrupt. Their entire hour plus briefing did not talk about a single new IP. Everything was sequels, add-ons, stapling mobile/social garbage onto every title whether they needed them or not and putting on a brave face while begging people to resubscribe from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Their announcement that it’s going to be free up until level 15 is cool and will get me to try it but I’m sure I won’t end up subscribing and I think it’s going to be fully free to play by the end of the year. They put a big bet on the subscription MMO segment and there’s just no success to be found there anymore. SimCity looks really cool and I love some of the new mechanics they’re introducing. But I don’t trust EA to do always-on DRM in a consumer friendly way (Blizzard does it best and they can’t even really do it right) and the inability to revert saves has killed the best part of the game, manually triggering crazy disasters on your established cities. I’ll probably end up skipping it. I do like the new Need for Speed meets Burnout idea that Criterion is taking with the new instalment in that series that’s inexplicably sharing the same name as the one that came out only 2 bloody years ago but it’s going to be yet another driving game I’ll probably get distracted from before I can finish it. The announcement later in the week that it’s getting a Vita release perked me up. Their attempts to force connectivity with other platforms into everything is gross and just seems like an attempt to hit marketing bullet points and trying to keep people always thinking about their games when they can’t be around to play them. I don’t have time to check stats and play pointless little side games for Battlefield 3 on my phone and those resources are best spent on making the core games better.

Ubisoft – Ghastly hosting choices aside (I couldn’t stand that YouTube flavour of the month but nothing is as bad as Mr. Caffeine), this was far and away the best show. When Yves Guillemot briefly came on stage to introduce the incredible looking new IP Watch Dogs, really all he should have done was yell “Triple A bitches!” and dropped his mic. Beyond some nods to casual franchises like Just Dance and an embarrassing, borderline sexist demonstration of ShootMania which did that game no favours, this was all about top-shelf, mirror shine polished titles for hardcore players like me. No unnecessary social and mobile connectivity, no Assassin’s Creed is one of my favourite series of this console generation so I was already sold on the new one coming this Fall but their demonstration just blew me away more, unnecessary animal killing aside. Rayman Legends on the WiiU was almost enough to sell me one of those systems and from what I’ve been hearing of ZombieU, that might seal the deal in spite of its dumb name. They closed off with Watch Dogs which looks like Assassin’s Creed meets Deus Ex and I couldn’t be more excited for it. It looks like the kind of game I’ve been dreaming of for years now. Ubisoft clearly believes there’s a future in AAA and is driving almost all their company in that direction which is a very refreshing change. This is a company that doesn’t always do right by their customers but in terms of new ideas, they are the ones to watch in 2013.

There’s so much more that happened during the week beyond these press briefings but if you combine the vibe they all gave off into one, you get an idea of the show as a whole. They (plus a number of other surprising new titles that were discussed throughout the week) to me indicates an industry that’s in a bit of a holding pattern while it waits for the next generation (even Nintendo, who should be in anything but that) and sees how emerging platforms continue to grow (or not as I think the next couple of years will show). Nonetheless, the industry still has some new and different ideas left in it that’s it’s working on them full steam ahead. Personally, this year has been a bit of a AAA drought for me so far (not that my pile of shame is complaining) but the second half of this year and in particular, the first half of next year is shaping up to be bonkers with a huge number of titles coming I think I’ll be really in to as well as a wide variety of people with different tastes and genre preferences. For all the questions of the show’s relevancy and whining that there was nothing interesting here, I’ve found tons to be excited about and if the future of all video games is dreck on iOS and Facebook, no one seems to have told the people at this show and they aren’t exactly stupid people who don’t know how to turn a profit.

With the economy still not improving and another recession possibly on the horizon, the stakes for the AAA industry have never been higher. There’s definitely some creative seizures taking place due to that but there’s still a market for new ideas and those trying them aren’t just dipping their foot in the water, they’re diving in deep and making substantial and in some cases, ballsy bets. For me, the biggest disappointment this year was in the coverage itself. I’ve been following E3 closely for years now and never before have I seen such a ho-hum, torpor response from the people who like to call themselves the enthusiast press. Maybe they know something they aren’t sharing with the rest of us but what I took from this show was that there’s few new ideas, the console companies don’t care about gamers anymore and that the new and shiny platforms like the Vita are apparently dead, even though there were 25 games at the Sony booth and I rarely read a story about any of them. I’m not sure how you can call a platform dead when it’s screaming at you for attention and you just ignore it.

I’m actually sympathetic to a degree in that I think the enthusiast press is hearing a lot of the same unfounded and frankly dumb rhetoric about how AAA gaming is dying and iOS and Facebook are taking over the world and is beginning to drink some of the Kool Aid. I can personally attest to how it definitely seems like no one’s backing what you like when that’s all you see everywhere. For the fault of this year’s E3 (and there were many), it’s the one time of year when the AAA industry can scream about all the incredible gaming experiences you can’t get anywhere else and they still came out swinging this year. It’s an industry that’s in a hard place right now but they’re nowhere near dead yet and even if that’s their ultimate fate, they are going down in one Hell of a blaze of glory. Point out the faults when you see them but this is an event that should be cherished, not admonished. If you’re in the enthusiast press but can’t find your enthusiasm even at this time of year, then maybe you need to start writing about something else.

I see a great year ahead for those of us who love AAA gaming and I can’t wait for what’s to come.

Business, Coverage, Culture, Video Games E3, EA, Electronic Arts, Electronic Entertainment Expo, gaming press, journalism, Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, video games

Some Ranty Thoughts On E3′s Relevance

2 Comments Posted by Parallax Abstraction on June 4, 2012

So the big show starts today. Nintendo’s going to announce a new home console and a bunch of games will get announced and have more shown of them. Yet for some reason, this year’s E3 seems to be getting a real negative spin in the enthusiast press, even before the show officially opens. While hyping their own coverage up as one would expect, many sites are now posting articles questioning the show’s relevance. Some of the bigger publishers have their own events before the show and throughout the year which are cannibalising some of the hype. In addition, lower console sales (which are in line with the end of a cycle that’s gone on longer than anyone planned) are making everyone suddenly question if there’s value in a big flashy glitzfest for AAA gaming. Many mobile developers are also coming out of the woodwork to say that the show no longer means anything and it’s just a bygone relic of an industry that’s dying, the void from which they are filling in.

My first reaction to this is one of confusion more than anything. The enthusiast gaming press lives for this time of year, it’s when they get all the juicy details of upcoming releases they need to feed their users for the rest of the year and I would wager it’s by far their busiest traffic period. Why they are actively questioning the existence of a show that’s the bread and butter of what they do baffles me. I remember a few years back when E3 tried an experiment of becoming a much more slimmed down, streamlined affair. The theory was that the show had become too noisy, too gaudy and too sensational and it was costing publishers a fortune so by slimming it down, it would let the games speak for themselves and make it easier to cover and talk about. The results were a disaster with everyone saying that E3 had lost its soul and was in danger of losing the cultural impact it represented. The old formula was restored for the following year and now the same people are saying that the spectacle they once demanded return is no longer important again. In the span of a single year, the show’s perception for many has gone from being the go-to gaming event to being representative of a segment that might as well roll over and die while iOS dreck takes over.

I think the opinion of mobile developers is about as pertinent to a discussion of E3 as a Greenpeace member’s on the Detroit International Auto Show. With a couple of exceptions this year, the mobile industry doesn’t participate in E3, not because they aren’t welcome but because they choose not to. So why is their view on it at all important? If their industry and the disruption they love to tout that it’s having on the “traditional” games industry is so significant (because remember that one thing can’t succeed without something else failing an equal or greater amount), where is the annual trade show dedicated to mobile games? Given the lacklustre promotion and support from the mobile platform holders, I would think such an event would be extremely beneficial for them. There’s certainly enough money going around that segment to make such a thing possible. So where is it? If E3′s no longer relevant, what does it say about their perceived dominance over gaming today that they don’t have their own spectacle? To give them and their largely well, irrelevant point of view such a loud voice in the enthusiast press strikes me as a cynical attempt by outlets to drive clicks through controversy. The enthusiast press loves to do this and that’s bad enough unto itself but to do it over something so important to what they do is just stupid.

The thing that the enthusiast press and many hardcore fans have continually failed to understand is that even though we’re the biggest consumers per head of the goods hocked at E3 every year, the show isn’t meant for any of us. While E3 and the publishers who attend it certainly welcome any enthusiast attention they get, their targets are the mainstream media. CNN, USA Today, Good Morning America et al., the places that ignore gaming as a whole for the remaining 51 weeks a year, unless it’s to trumpet some clueless researcher talking about how they make kids violent. While we hardcore gamers like to think we’re the reason this industry makes so much money, we aren’t what driving 15 million+ sales of Call of Duty on an annual basis. Those are the people who have one console and maybe buy 1 to 3 games for it a year. That audience is who the industry has their sights focused on with E3 and the way you get the attention of the mainstream media they pay attention to is with flashy, loud, bombastic spectacles, everything the show does better than few others anywhere. This is why even as AAA publishers and platform holders like Sony and Nintendo struggle, they continue to spend millions on booths and press conferences.

In spite of all the doom and gloom prophecies I’ve read this past week, every major gaming site has E3 logos plasters all over their front pages, they’re all live streaming the press conferences and every podcast I listened to discussed at length their travel and coverage plans and what they were hoping to see. For a show that’s apparently lost its relevancy, everyone sure seems to be talking about it a lot. Last I checked, that was still the point of the thing. People pay attention to E3 in enormous numbers and until they stop doing so, I think there’s no question of its relevance. Perhaps if the enthusiast press wants to see AAA gaming grow and thrive, they should continue to embrace that which fosters growth rather than say “It’s all over but please keep reading and watching us talk about it!” and giving attention-seeking mobile developers exactly what they want.

Me personally? I’ll be streaming all the press conferences on my second monitor at work and I have my Visa primed and ready to pre-order the WiiU as soon as its available. Bring on the insanity, I can’t wait!

Business, Coverage, Culture, Video Games E3, Electronic Entertainment Expo, gaming press, journalism, video games

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@mwdowns It's 737.11.11 in Ottawa. They've been using that jingle since the 80s. Very effective at burrowing into your head. 3 hours ago
Finished Crysis 3 just in time to head out. Meh. OK but Crysis 2 was better and that had issues of its own. Looks great but clearly rushed. 14 hours ago
@mattperrin I did but there wasn't anything after save an ad to download a digital magazine? 14 hours ago
And the song in the credits was co-written by Jerry Buckner. OF COURSE IT WAS! #soretroawesome 15 hours ago
So yeah, Wreck-It Ralph is damn awesome. I can't believe how incredibly well the theme worked. References kept me grinning ear to ear. 15 hours ago
@mudbunny74 @whatiswhatwas Flying back as we speak. Flight gets in around 10:30. Then Carp Farmer's Market and house hunting tomorrow! 15 hours ago
@ccesarano It bugs me that Disney has to have a sadness and redemption thing in every film. Don't know why it can't just be funny throughout 15 hours ago

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