My Game Journal

You might have noticed the link marked game journal that I added to the right. It's a blog I started for note taking as I progress through games. For me, it is like an FAQ under construction, since I can throw down bits of information that might be useful later. It will also be useful when I want to reflect on a game and write a review.

Currently it's getting spammed like crazy with little bits of information on playing Pool of Radiance. JohnH is also putting down notes as he plays the new Windows version of Pirates. Bob has also considered posting quick posts there about the games he's playing. Even my brother has threatened to take me up on my offer to blog there. He'll be playing Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the first time soon, and I'm curious to see how it goes.

When I get to it later this week, I'll be taking notes on Resident Evil 4.

I don't suspect it will be interesting to most folks, but there it is. Data on games I've played will be there. Opinions will be here.

--jvm at 23:24

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What Resident Evil 4 has to fear

Since Saturday night I've had this copy of Resident Evil 4 sitting here, ready to go into ye olde PlayStation 2. I haven't even cracked the shrinkwrap. Why? Simply put, I'm still totally hooked on Pool of Radiance, the D&D RPG from 1988.

Believe it or not, I've chosen this:over this:
I promise I'll get to RE4 before the weekend, but it's just so blasted easy to drop into Pool of Radiance for half an hour of exploration.

--jvm at 23:11

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StarROMs closing

I just spotted a post at GameSetWatch saying that StarROMs is closing down. Here's the goodbye message. So ends their experiment in pay-to-download arcade ROMs.

I'm disheartened that it's ended this way. Now we're left with GameTap, which rents rather than sells games (on Windows only). For consoles, the emulation collection scene is hit-or-miss: Midway Arcade Treasures 3 is apparently poor but I can attest that Taito Legends and Capcom Classics Collection are both quite good. And for those who wish to partake, there is always MAME and illegally distributed ROMs.

You might recall I interviewed Frank Leibly way back when StarROMs started up. I asked how he expected to compete with the illegal ROM trade:

jvm: You're charging a couple dollars per game. How can you possibly compete with the "free" downloads of ROMs that any modestly skilled net surfer can track down?

Frank Leibly: This is really the same issue every copyright owner and media company has been dealing with for years. As a kid I bought blank tapes and copied records and tapes from my friends but when I got to the point when I could afford it I bought the CD's. And I still do. If you look at the demographic of who we're selling to, it's people in their 20's, 30's and 40's for the most part. Spending a few bucks is pocket change and it's worth it to know you're dealing with someone legitimate. I like to think the service we provide is worth something too.

In retrospect, this question missed half of the equation. Sure, in the visible marketplace StarROMs was competing with illegal ROM distribution. Behind the scenes, in the marketplace for redistribution rights, I'd venture that they were competing with Turner as they developed GameTap. Now they're also going to be competing with Xbox Live Arcade. In the near future, they'll also be competing with Nintendo's Revolution.

Owners to the rights of older games surely made the right choice in going with GameTap. Do you choose the huge media company offering ongoing income from rentals (i.e. GameTap), or the unknown startup offering an unprotected download of the game's ROM (i.e. StarROMs)? It's hardly a fair fight.

(Note: I'm making the assumption that the number of times a game is downloaded in GameTap is tied to the income that goes back to the owner of rights to that game.)

Anyway, I'm really disappointed that it's ended this way. Is the lesson really that outright sales (or licensing, whatever) of ROMs will not work? Are we doomed to renting from the likes of GameTap or buying from services like Xbox Live Arcade or Nintendo's Revolution? I guessed this would be the case five months ago, and this may be one step toward it coming true. Welcome to your downloaded, DRMed future.

--jvm at 00:39

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My PS2 history

Today I was pondering whether my launch-day PlayStation 2 will still be working when I get a PlayStation 3, and I wondered just how many of my games I've completed on this machine. Here goes a rough list:

• Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies
• Ape Escape 2
• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
  
• Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
• Champions of Norrath
• Devil May Cry
• Grand Theft Auto III
• Ico
  
• Katamari Damacy
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
  
• Rez
• Silent Hill 2
• SSX
• Twisted Metal Black

As for PSOne games:

• Ace Combat 2
• Ape Escape
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
• Diablo
  
• Driver
• Parappa the Rapper
• Rage Racer
• Twisted Metal 2

Some of those, I've played multiple times to completion (or what I consider completion). Some were completed partially on Bob's PlayStation 2 back when we lived in the same country. And this doesn't even begin to approach the total number of games I've played significant parts of, but never finished. For example, I played a lot of Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, but I've not finished it.

Not a bad little machine, this old PlayStation 2. I don't believe I've ever owned a single piece of gaming hardware that I've played so consistently for so long. I do hope it will last at least another 5+ years.

--jvm at 00:21

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Got RE4

While waiting for our table to become available last night, my date (i.e. my wife) and I stopped by a local shop and I picked up Resident Evil 4 for the PlayStation 2. I might have tried for Shadow of the Colossus, but there wasn't a copy to be had. Then we got back to the restaurant, had a great dinner, and took the dessert home to share with our boy.

I won't actually get around to playing RE4 until later this week, maybe Friday.

--jvm at 09:11

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Follow-up on in-game ads: KFC on a cow!

Just to follow up on the posts the other day (uno and dos) about advertisements in games, here's a sample ad that Double Fusion has up on their site, found via a post at Zen of Design. (Click for the full-sized image.)I'm tempted to call fowl, but I'll wait to see if the real ads are more subtle.

It's probably worth noting that Double Fusion just signed a multi-year, multi-game deal with Midway. Oh, and Midway will be involved with Lord of the Rings Online. I wonder if they'll be able to slip some adverts into that one.

--jvm at 22:33

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Going Shopping

Tomorrow night the wife and I have a night off from parenting, and after dinner we may have time to hit a videogame store. I've got some cash I've been saving up, and I thought I might get myself a new game, even though Pool of Radiance is still sucking up free time like mad. Here's my short list:

1. Resident Evil 4 (PS2)
2. Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
3. Prince of Persia: Revelations (PSP)
4. Exit (PSP)

Anyone want to toss out some other ideas? Ruffin keeps prodding me to get a Nintendo DS, but I'm thinking I should wait for the new model. I've also thought about getting Black (PS2), despite the middlin' reviews. I wouldn't mind a game where the main goal is to destroy by the ton, with dramatic flair.

--jvm at 22:14

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"Nintendo has always been the highest risk-taker of all the companies"

The claim that "Nintendo has always been the highest risk-taker of all the companies" was made by Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate affairs, Perrin Kaplan, in an interview published today at Next-Gen. This from the company that's published over 20 Pokemon games, 8 Mario Party games, and 5 Mario Kart games. For every risky game like Nintendogs or Warioware, Nintendo puts out 9 sequels and one remake of an old game on a new platform. If this qualifies as "highest-risk taker", then this whole videogames thing is doomed. Doomed!

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 09:49

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In-game adverts, conservative game content, then older gamers save the day

Eventually this is going to come up, so we need to start a discussion: Are we prepared for game content to be dictated by advertisers?

As I hinted at in my earlier post, the following three factors may well influence the future:

1. Game company profits on the decline
2. Next generation games cost more to develop
3. In-game advertising becomes viable

To offset the first two, publishers may well jump into bed with advertisers. That's Bad News.

In an industry already addicted to sequels, this will only make the developers more conservative. Games with limited appeal will not get funded by publishers, nor will they pick up advertiser revenue. Moreover, games may have to tone down the violent or sexual content, or lose the support of the ad company paying the rent. The result: blander games.

Now, there will still be a market for games that push the limits, which break out in new directions. The older gamer segment, in particular, will be interested in more than just another sequel. So what could evolve is a two-tiered system, like we have with broadcast TV and cable. It's the difference between an ABC made-for-TV action movie and something like Deadwood or The Sopranos on HBO. If you're willing to pony up, you can get the good stuff, and advertisers won't stand in the way.

--jvm at 22:25

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Developers: artists who love money (from in-game ads)

I've often ranted about how the videogame media frequently forfeit any semblance of impartiality. It appears that in-game advertisements may soon force game developers to grapple with their own professional standards. This interview with Ubisoft's head of publishing, Jay Cohen, makes that clear:

Yes [in-game advertisements are an emerging opportunity]. We are in that beginning, bubbling stage of chaos. But we fancy ourselves as entertainers, artists, and creators of entertainment. It's a much more consistent way of running the business than going the other way and looking for something that is heavily ad assisted.

We ask ourselves, 'What does that do to the integrity of the creation and the perception of the market?' We don't know the answer to that but we are definitely quite scared of what it might be so we stay on the side of caution and stay with the consumer and their needs rather than the advertisers running the content for us.

We want the freedom of creativity to guide the business. Having said that, we as a company cannot turn a blind eye to the opportunity.

Got that? Game makers want to be artists, but also want to be rich. This, in itself, isn't a revelation, but it does highlight that game developers are on the verge of exploiting their creations in a whole new way.

Combined with all the sour financial news these last two weeks, summarized in today's Washington Post, the publishers appear to be giving us a choice: buy our $60 games, or we start slapping up billboards in your first-person shooters. Heck, they'll even charge you top dollar for the game and sell your info to ESPN for friendly spam...er...promotions.

A few more bad quarters and these companies will be selling their artistic souls to advertisers to bail them out, and they'll lay the blame at the consumer's feet. If only you'd been willing to pay higher prices for the next generation of high quality (ahem) games!

It's clear the these guys want to run their products through the same Profit Maximization Machine that Ruffin says Microsoft's been using for years. This is just dripping with misplaced envy:

We get three to six months on the shelf and the then you're done and by the way the platform just died. Books or film or TV keep repackaging and redelivering and they're seeing a 30 to 50-year revenue stream and so do all the players - the actor, the composer, the publisher. For us there's none of that.

Permit me to call bull on that outrageous claim. Less than two years ago Nintendo repackaged several of their NES games and sold them on the GameBoy Advance for $20 each, several of them 20 years old at the time. That same year the PlayStation 2 got Atari Anthology with the arcade version of Asteroids which was 25 years old at the time. Someone is making money off of old games, and if you're not exploiting your old properties, then you've no one to blame but yourself.

And this bit about "all players" getting a cut is equally bogus. Are the programmers still getting a cut of games published even five years ago? Probably not. Maybe a head of publishing, like Cohen, is still getting residuals from all the games he's helped bring to market, but pardon me for being a tad skeptical of his interest in spreading the money around to every player in the business.

What kind of money are we talking about after all? This gives you an idea of what the industry is thinking:

So - holy cow - it starts to seem like we can earn more money potentially from ad revenue generation than from the price of the game. It really goes to that stratospheric level.

Oh? So if we accept advertisements in our games, we can just get the games for free, right? Just like broadcast TV! Except that the game makers have no incentive to give us the games, since we're already conditioned to buy the games for $50 (soon $60) a pop. So, what we'll get instead are games slathered with commercials that still sting when you lay down the cash.

I don't know about you, but that's a development I can do without.

Alongside this interview, Next-Gen also reported on Midway's new agreement with Double Fusion to incorporate in-game ads in several upcoming games. Steven Allison, chief marketing director, feeds us a line:

Our relationship with Double Fusion will not only add potential incremental revenue on top of our existing static ad placements, but allow us to work with a partner sensitive to game development and committed to making ad placements organic and credible.

Once you get past the marketspeak, you'll begin to wonder what he means by that highlighted bit. Incremental revenue on top of static ads? He probably means these games will be online-enabled and will periodically phone home for new advertisements to display. Nice.

It used to be that the worst we could expect from game companies was the occasionally buggy game and the frequently awful licensed games. Now they're taking a big step, cluttering our beautiful virtual worlds with the kind of craven advertising we've come to expect in the real world.

--jvm at 20:33

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Would you like some titillation with your news? (Also: Tecmo finances!)

I really didn't expect the upskirt panty-peek that you get when you head over to Next-Gen.biz to read about Tecmo's finances. (You've been warned.) From GameSpot or IGN, perhaps, but not Next-Gen. I guess I'll have to start filtering images again.

On the substance of the article, Tecmo comes across pretty poorly. Why were they down last quarter? Well, Dead or Alive 4 for Xbox 360 was delayed and Monster Rancher 5 for PlayStation 2 didn't do well either. Here's an idea: don't sell the same blooming game four or five times in a row. Try something new. This Tokobot might be good, but Tecmo made it for the system just ahead the N-Gage in sales, the sad little PSP.

Faced with these results, what will Tecmo do? Focus on mobile games, online games, and pachinko. You read that right: pachinko. Good luck, guys.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 12:37

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Prince of Persia becomes Tomb Raider in the worst way

After three games, it appears Prince of Persia, which influenced Tomb Raider, is becoming the tired, lazy series that Tomb Raider became. I was reading Adam LaMosca's comments on abandoning Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, and it is eerily like what I would say about Tomb Raider after it reached its third game. Like this:

"... But there's something missing.

It's in the level design. At about halfway through the game, I just got bored with the Prince's endless leaping and swinging through environments that lack the grandeur and complexity of the previous games. Though the streets, rooftops, and sewers of Babylon are interesting to a point, they simply don't offer the same breathtaking sense of scale. So far, there aren't any beautifully designed clockwork rooms or breathtaking water-drenched caverns or enchanted palaces to explore. Just too many mundane alleys, streets, and courtyards. It's lazy level design, and it's boring."

Replace Babylon with Venice or Area 51, and I could have (and probably have) made similar criticisms of Tomb Raider 2 or Tomb Raider III, respectively. It's just downright scary how familiar this all sounds.

Here's more:

The engine doesn't seem to have been improved or optimized in the slightest since the last game. ...

Three games in three years tends to wear out a character's welcome, in my opinion. ...

[T]hese back-to-back sequels that the industry generates are too often merely phoned-in updates to previous versions with only superficial refinements.

Unfortunately, milking popular franchises until they're dry seems to be the standard. I guess it's easy money.

Try five games in five years, with some modest engine refinements, only a few extra moves, and a serious decline in level design and storylines, and only then will you have reached the depth of Tomb Raider. I could also mention the needless focus on arming Lara with ever bigger guns. Not that I really want the Prince of Persia games to go there, but this isn't nearly as bad as it can get.

Great game franchises have been, are being, and will in the future be destroyed by greed and laziness.

That said, I'm giving Tomb Raider another try with the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legend. I'm still holding out hope that they finally grasp what was great about the original game and will give it a suitable update. Stay tuned.

--jvm at 06:13

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IGN ignorantly smears Atari Jaguar controller

There are some videogame controllers that are terrible, but contrary to IGN's so-called thoughts on the subject, the Atari Jaguar controller is not one of them. Nor is it the worst.

Maybe Atari was doomed even before the Jaguar was ever conceived, but their idea of a controller definitely didn't help. Not only did the company bring back the unnecessary phone keypad-with-overlays theme of the early 80s, Atari also created a three action button device in a world of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, a genre that the company was trying to woo over to its 64-bit system. On top of this, the company utilized a VGA plug for its controller ports, and the controller plugs simply fell out if a mouse farted somewhere in the house.

Atari was trying to woo Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat fans? That seems unlikely to me, given that the system had (off the top of my head) a grand two such fighting games, Ultra Vortek and Bruce Lee. You can get up to three if you count Primal Rage on the Jaguar CD.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a VGA plug, and the comment about whether they fell out is simply made up. As someone who played hours and hours on a Jaguar, and still does so happily once a year or so, I have never had a controller plug fall out. Moreover, my favorite Atari Jaguar controller had its plug stepped on and the plastic cuff broken, and despite that it still stays in just fine.

I'd also point out that a numeric keypad and overlays aren't awful ideas. You might not like them, that's fine, but they don't prevent you from using the controller. Moreover, the PlayStation version of Iron Solider 3 clearly demonstrated that a giant walking combat robot game just can't be done right with fewer than 15 buttons.

Look, I know it's fun to poke fun at the black sheep of the videogame industry. We all enjoy a good Virtual Boy or Phantom joke from time to time. But, to quote Homer Simpson, those jokes are funny because they're true. Just making crap up and hoping your audience is too ignorant to know better makes you look foolish.

--jvm at 09:24

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Copyright infringer takes out videogame magazine ads

Have you ever wondered what happened to copyright infringers, especially those who really anger Nintendo? Consider this: a full page ad taken out by Yonatan Cohen about his imprisonment and upcoming deportation. (Original source of image: here.)

This kind of restitution is listed in the plea agreement that he made, which you can read here (PDF). It explains this on page 5, as shown below (with my emphasis):

6. Extraordinary restitution. Pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 2319(d), victims of criminal copyright infringement are permitted to submit victim impact statements and are also entitled to restitution under Title 18, United States Code, Section 3663A. The victims in this case have agreed to permit Defendant to make restitution by agreeing to place advertisements in industry trade magazines and other publications identified by the victims describing the facts underlying Defendant's conviction; indicating that he has been convicted and his sentence; and emphasizing that copyright infringement is a criminal offense with serious consequences.

I'm all for Nintendo sticking it to the big fish. These guys should be pariahs in the game industry.

That said, I'd be interested in laws that distinguish between big-time infringers, like this dude, and average folks who just want to play the games they own on emulators.

--jvm at 12:18

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SOCOM 3 maps on USB drives -- why not game saves too?

According to this Next-Gen item, Sony will provide downloadable maps for the PlayStation 2 game SOCOM 3 onto compatible USB mass-storage devices. That's certainly a practical solution, given the smaller PlayStation 2 model with no hard drive expansion bay.

Now, here's the obvious question: Why can't we use USB drives instead of Sony memory cards? Simple, no?

Oh, sure, I understand that Sony wants to make money off memory cards. But memory cards are the biggest thorn in my side when it comes to PlayStation 2 games because they're so depressingly small and yet so insultingly expensive. I own five Sony cards (three PS2, two PSOne) and I get a little bile in mouth every time I have to shift saves around to play a game.

There are technical problems, sure, but they could have been (and could still be) solved in a newer revision of the PS2 hardware.

Sony, for the love of all that's good and wholesome, get rid of memory cards for the PlayStation 3 and let me use some reasonably-sized storage medium at a price that doesn't make me hate you.

--jvm at 11:33

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Weird stuff in Black trailer

Are game trailers just slapped together? Like filled with stupid misspelled words and backgrounds that don't make sense? I checked out EA's shooter Black, in particular Black Official Trailer 4 (30 January 2005) on this GameSpot page and I found some things that puzzled me.

The trailer contains lots of news clippings that are supposed to make us think ripped-from-the-headlines terrorism thoughts. At about 0:25 into the trailer a text flashes up. I've highlighted words of interest:

BERLIN, GERMANY. Reports from an unnamed militray source today reveal that weapons stored in the fromer Soviet Union may be at risk. A spokemans for the Central Intelligence Agency has suggested that they cerrtain soviet issue weaponry may have been involved with a series of recent terorist attacks. CIA Director Rodis denied today that covert military activities known as "Black Operations" are...

They speak English in What? That's at least five errors in two sentences for crying out loud. Is this some sort of diabolical watermarking to prevent some other game company from stealing their flimsy backstory?

Two newspapers are seen directly in the trailer: The New York Times and The Washington Post. The former actually has part of its front page shown in the trailer, with the ominous date Wednesday September 11, 2000. At least, I think it's the year 2000, since the year is never perfectly clear. The problem I have is that September 11 was a Monday in the year 2000. It was a Wednesday in 2002 and it won't be on a Wednesday again until 2013. See for yourself:At least they spelled everything correctly this time.

Additionally, some weird review of a children's play appears on the same page as the international terrorism stories. Here's a snippet from about 0:22 into the trailer:

This revelation is of little solace to Wuzzy who wails "I don't want to be a chicken. I want to be a T-Rex." That's a huge laugh line for 5-year-old boys.

To help convince Wuzzy that his mom still loves him, Valeri seeks advice from the audience. And there's lots of it. "We could sing him a song," offers one girl. Another boy...

It's not unusual to find this kind of cheap hack. In the movie Silence of the Lambs, Agent Starling is researching some old murders on microfiche and the story she's interested in is apparently surrounded by the same text pasted over and over again. That is, it's clearly a prop and we're not supposed to look too closely.

It is just a trailer, and I suppose it's too much to read something about the game itself in this hodgepodge of images, but it's certainly bizarre.

--jvm at 20:51

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Black: Making PlayStation 2 compete with Xbox 360

From this Next-Gen interview with Jeremy Chubb of Criterion on the "gun-porn" shooter, Black:

Black is identical on PS2 and Xbox.

At Criterion, we pride ourselves on our technology, particularly for PlayStation 2. While the Xbox version sports pretty much the same state-of-the-art audio, visuals, physics etc, the real challenge was in coaxing this performance out of PS2.

We're astonished how far we managed to push the system with Black. We realized early in development that our main competition in terms of a visual benchmark would be on Xbox 360, and we worked hard to beat the first titles you see on that system. Short of higher resolution, Black's the best-looking FPS we've seen.

This is probably just mugging for the cameras, so to speak, but I've heard nothing but good things about the visuals in Black. If it's true -- that they were competing with the Xbox 360 -- then perhaps thePlayStation 2 really is difficult to program, but flexible and powerful enough to do amazing things.

Will programmers ever push the GameCube and the original Xbox that hard? Maybe Twilight Princess on the Cube will come close, but I'm not sure that the Xbox was ever truly pushed as hard as the PlayStation 2 has been.

It'd be interesting to know why certain systems are successful and pushed to their limits and others aren't. Is it just market forces? The continuing interest in Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 hacking indicates otherwise, as interest in those systems has far outlived the original companies. It's not just the challenge of a difficult system either, or the Saturn would have lived past Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers. Nor is it the ease, or the Dreamcast would have lived longer. Then there are systems like the PSOne which were apparently easy to program for, but were also pushed very, very hard even within their commercial lifetimes.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 12:09

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In-game adverts: two questions

In-game advertising is all the rage (literally) now, so I figured I'd toss these two questions out:

1. Has a company started offering individuals an opportunity to advertise products in-game? Like having a Mountain Dew-themed Quake skin or talking about the benefits of Logitech wireless Xbox controllers over voice channels on Xbox Live games? I have no idea how you could verify that people were doing this, but someone could surely find a way.
   
   
2. Has any company sponsored targetted map development for online games? For example, couldn't a media company like ABC offer a Counter-strike map based on the TV show Lost? Or maybe a Rainbow Six map based on V for Vendetta to tie in with the upcoming movie?
   

These seem like obvious directions to take in-game advertising, but I don't follow that discussion closely enough to know if they're being tried yet.

--jvm at 22:54

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Orson Scott Card's 1983 videogame commentary still relevant

Other than using them to poke the world's biggest game company in the eye, I think Orson Scott Card's 1983 comments on how videogames were "growing up" are fascinatingly relevant to videogames today, over 22 years later. When you can write the same article two decades later and just change the names of the players, has anything really changed?

Let's take Card's requirements for a game one at a time:

A home computer game should not be designed to minimize playtime - it should not be designed to take away quarters by making the game impossible to beat.

At the time, Card saw an industry still dominated by the arcade. Some of the defining games of that year were Joust, Dig Dug, Moon Patrol, Mr. Do, Q*Bert, Robotron: 2084, Sinistar, Time Pilot, and Zaxxon. Not one of them had a story or an ending, yet they ate quarter after quarter. Later were ported to home systems, retaining intact those same quarter-eating mechanics. From our seat 20 years hence, it's easy to see that Card might wish for something more substantial, with a story and a resolution.

What I think is interesting is that today we struggle with this same question turned on its head. Today's games are often chastised for being too short and not providing enough entertainment to be considered replayable. Granted, this essentially compares Donkey Kong Junior to Ico, which isn't horribly apt, but there is an important shift: infinitely challenging games playable for small prices to finitely playable games playable for much larger prices.

It should use the full power of the computer - it should do things that only the computer can do well, and it should use all the appropriate resources the computer provides.

It's hard for me to guess precisely what Card had in mind as he looked at the home computers of the time -- those from Apple and Atari and Commodore -- but the videogame industry is still littered with half-fulfilled promises of unique technology. The i-Link (Firewire) and USB ports on the PlayStation 2 went practically unused by developers and the former was dropped from later hardware revisions. [Previous sentence corrected. Thanks, Doug.] The Xbox hard drive never lived up to its full potential. (Blinx doesn't count. No one played it.) Nintendo, interestingly, seems to make use of its gimmicks, like GameBoy-to-console links.

It should be an excellent game, not just excellent programming - the play itself should be exciting and not serve merely as an excuse to show off the programmer's expertise.

What Card said in 1983 we know today as graphics vs. gameplay. Take the Xbox 360 game Perfect Dark Zero: it's a beautiful looking game, but is it fun to play? Card appears to think that we were finally turning the corner over 20 years ago, and yet here we are still kvetching about the same problem. The hardware and the games have changed, but the issue still remains.

Above all, the game should be designed so the player controls and, to some degree, creates the game as he plays - I have little patience with games that play me, forcing me to follow only one possible track or learn one mechanical skill if I hope to win.

Of all the things Card said, I think I find this one the most interesting. While at one level he's saying "I want games deeper than Pac-Man", it goes deeper than that. Ruffin and others have talked about players as co-authors alongside the developers, creating the game as they play through it. In my rudimentary understanding, developing your World of Warcraft character, earning different endings in Silent Hill, or taking advantage of the various ways of developing Carl in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are some ways of co-authoring a game. I think this is at least close to what Card had in mind when he said "the player ... creates the game as he plays".

The final desire that Card has is for creativity, for new types of games:

The software firm Electronic Arts has added a fifth requirement for itself: The game must be truly original. No Donkey Kong or Pac-Man clones in this group, of games. Even though each of their games has roots in gaming traditions, the object has not been to recreate a favorite board game, or duplicate a sport, or translate an arcade game.

Even 20 years ago the commentators were complaining about the tendency of the industry to pump out rehashes of existing games. Whereas 1983 had Donkey Kong and Pac-Man clones and the late 1990s had fighting games, today we have first-person shooters (especially those with a World War II theme) and MMORPGs.

And while games back then had sequels, what we have today really does seem different and worse. We've got Virtua Fighter 5 coming out someday soon, along with the seventh iteration of Tony Hawk, and don't forget to pick up Final Fantasy XII when it finally hits store shelves. What we have today are not just companies copying each other, but companies tweaking their own games and releasing them as something new.

I think Card's hope that things were getting better in these specific areas was a tad too optimistic. Developers still struggle to make games whose depth justify the cost. Interesting hardware capabilities still go unused. A focus on graphics can still trump the development of a game. And we are overrun with clones and sequels.

But there have been advances in the past 20 years. Games like Silent Hill or World of Warcraft just couldn't have even been imagined back then, much less implemented. Except in the sense that WoW players pay every month, we're all the richer for having these advanced games. Now, if we could just work on some of those other issues...

--jvm at 00:03

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PSP ... Xbox 360 ... same thing

Finally got around to reading some Slashdot today and ran into an Xbox 360 owner saying this:

I own a 360. I like the console a lot. There's definitely a dearth of good games right now, but there are at least two that I really want coming out next week, and I did really enjoy some of the ones I got at launch.

Put "PSP" in the place of "360" and I think the statement is still true for a lot of people, myself included.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 21:41

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Orson Scott Card said *that* about *whom*?!

In today's market, I think this November 1983 quote from Orson Scott Card (of Ender's Game fame) is telling. See if you can guess the real name of Mystery Game Company:

The software firm [Mystery Game Company] has added a fifth [creativity] requirement for itself: The game must be truly original. No [...] clones in this group, of games. Even though each of their games has roots in gaming traditions, the object has not been to recreate a favorite board game, or duplicate a sport, or translate an arcade game.

Before getting around to the answer, here's what Card was saying about his requirements for videogames:

And I do ask for a lot [from new games]:

1. A home computer game should not be designed to minimize playtime - it should not be designed to take away quarters by making the game impossible to beat.
2. It should use the full power of the computer - it should do things that only the computer can do well, and it should use all the appropriate resources the computer provides.
3. It should be an excellent game, not just excellent programming - the play itself should be exciting and not serve merely as an excuse to show off the programmer's expertise.
4. Above all, the game should be designed so the player controls and, to some degree, creates the game as he plays - I have little patience with games that play me, forcing me to follow only one possible track or learn one mechanical skill if I hope to win.

If those requirements sound like what you want, too, I have good news for you: there are finally some software companies making a serious effort to create exactly this kind of game.

Ah, to be young and idealistic again!

According to Card, the Mystery Game Company had added a fifth requirement -- that the game be essentially original -- to these four of his own.

So, what game company was impressing the world with its dedication to innovation and originality? The same company that made M.U.L.E. and Archon and Mail Order Monsters and Racing Destruction Set and Wasteland...

You know -- Electronic Arts.

The full text of Orson Scott Card's article "Games Grow Up" is available online here. The modern relevance of Card's comments is discussed here.

--jvm at 19:51

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This is not an update

This has been an epic week at work. I haven't had time to think very long about anything I've read lately, and I surely haven't played anything. Well, I confess that I sneaked a couple minutes at a time for Heroes of Might and Magic II on the GameBoy Color once a day, but that's it.

If anyone needs me, I'll be playing Pool of Radiance.

--jvm at 18:06

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Will AIAS give Game of Year to GTA: London on national TV?

Kyle of VGM Watch points out that the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) is looking to televise its videogame awards ceremony next year. Just recently the AIAS bestowed its Game of the Year 2005 honor on the violent God of War. Will it be so brave next year?

For now, let's suppose that Grand Theft Auto: London arrives in 2006 on the PlayStation 3 and that it features more violence and sex, displayed more graphically, than any previous GTA. Further suppose that public sentiment clearly makes it everyone's favorite for Game of the Year. Will AIAS give it the award?

It seems to me that there would be immediate pressure from some quarters -- like NIMF and Jack Thompson and maybe even some Democratic Senators -- to denounce giving such lofty awards to a game which openly embraces violence and sex.

Yes, Hollywood gets away with the violence. After all, Platoon (1986), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Unforgiven (1992), Schindler's List (1993), Braveheart (1995), and Gladiator (2000) all have graphic violence and all have won the Oscar for Best Picture. It sometimes even gets away with sexual fantasies some find disturbing, like Best Picture winner American Beauty (1999) which had a middle-aged man disrobing and nearly seducing a high school girl.

Compared to the videogame industry, Hollywood is established and has earned the right in the eyes of Congress to regulate itself with its ratings system. The ESRB is still fighting for relevance.

So, it may not matter if this imagined Grand Theft Auto: London is a dramatic masterpiece that just happens to include graphic violence and sexual situations -- the industry and AIAS will be find itself in a profoundly weak position. A simultaneous attack from NIMF and its ilk, as well as Congressional meddlers, would make it nearly impossible to give the award to a deserving game.

--jvm at 19:54

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Next-Gen.biz: PS3 in September 2006, online service called PlayStation HUB

Next-Gen.biz has an exclusive scoop saying we can expect the PlayStation 3 in September 2006 both in the U.S. and Japan. They're also reporting that Sony will launch an online game service, modeled on Xbox Live and called PlayStation HUB. While the writer, Colin Campbell, doesn't make this clear, I'd guess that the two will launch together. While he says he has good sources, we might as well consider this a well-sourced rumor.

The article has no details on what matters commercially other than launch date: pricing of console, pricing of online service, and selection of games. I'm steeling myself for a shockingly high number for the first two and a shockingly low number for the third.

Labels: ps3, sony

--jvm at 08:56

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A (mostly) useless noun: gameplay

Ever notice how we all talk about gameplay as if it were obvious what we mean? Like the intro to the GameSpot review of Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure:

Getting Up builds a cohesive and entertaining world without sacrificing gameplay, resulting in a really great overall package.

The Good: Great storyline with interesting character development; quality dialogue and voice acting; amazing soundtrack; really strong gameplay; great-looking graffiti.

What exactly should I take away from the statement that gameplay hasn't been sacrificed and that it has really strong gameplay? For crying out loud, they even assign a number to gameplay in the ratings. Getting Up got an 8 for gameplay which means...?

Look, even I've used words like "great gameplay" right here on Curmudgeon Gamer. Here's the one instance of "great gameplay". I'm not going to begrudge someone saying that a game has great gameplay, but it strikes me as a word that falls far short of what it's trying to convey. When used to describe a driving game or a football game, it has meaning because most readers will have some context. But for a game like Getting Up or Castlevania or Katamari Damacy, what good is it to talk about the gameplay when many readers will not know a priori what that means?

If I tell you that Kuru Kuru Kururin has great gameplay that will keep you engrossed for hours, does that really tell you anything? I'd guess not. (For the curious: Kuru Kuru Kururin.)

Commenting on a game's gameplay in the abstract appears to convey about as much as "I enjoyed the input/output feedback loop". We've got to be able to say something more than that, and say it so that "normals" (as opposed to habitual videogame players) will actually be informed and perhaps even curious to learn more.

I guess this goes back to finding a different way to review games, or simply a better set of nouns, verbs, and adjectives for games. Heck, GamePolitics recently suggested an even bigger break with existing terminology. I know people were blogging recently about a new system for describing games, although I don't have the link, and even then I thought that was for analysis and not necessarily for consumption by the Common Man.

--jvm at 23:08

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Sony, Microsoft, Apple: Stop worrying and love the hackers

This is just getting silly. Sony's precious PSP can't stop getting its firmware hacked, from version 2.0 up through the latest version 2.6. Microsoft's claims of hackproofness haven't stopped at least two holes, one for memory cards and one for demo discs, in the Xbox 360. And Apple's latest version of OSX86 has reportedly been hacked.

With each hack comes another attempt to patch a hole. Then another hole. And another patch. And so on.

Obviously the companies want to protect their stuff, but it is always a losing battle. Even the DMCA hasn't helped as much as the companies had hoped, although it's certainly established a slippery slope. As my old man says, "prohibition has never worked". My advice is to try going the other way. That is, don't tell people what they can't do, and open doors to what they can.

I don't see why Sony can't allow the PSP to run in some limited mode that allows unsigned code to run from the memory card. How about special 32Mb PSP memory cards, direct from Sony, which can be used specifically for homebrew? When such a card is inserted, the UMD drive gets turned off and you only have access to the memory card. Such a card would give programmers plenty of room to play and but be far too small for pirated UMD images. If you offer an easy, official hacking option for the masses, they will follow. They might even pay extra for it. They won't settle for unstable hacks that require a specially malformed save game when they can get 90% of what they want -- emulation and Tetris clones -- cheaply and safely. They don't want to brick their $250 toy, after all.

Microsoft could offer some reduced form of its Xbox 360 development tools for homebrew authors and a run-from-memory-card option in much the same way. Disable the disc drive while it's running from the memory card, and you've got all you need for most emulation and homebrew fans.

As for Apple, I'm still waiting to see how this x86 OS X gambit pays off. Ruffin seems reservedly positive about it. For my part, I hope we'll eventually see reduced prices for OS X systems as well as a renewed game market. But why not sell people a self-install version of OS X for some low price and wish them luck? After all, this was essentially the state that RedHat Linux was in about 8 years ago. I remember getting Red Hat 5.1 and having it fail to run X Windows because my NVIDIA Viper V330 card wasn't supported. I was happy to have toyed around with it, and eventually bought other versions of RedHat once my hardware was supported.

So, let me say it again: If you offer an easy, official hacking option for the masses, they will follow. They might even pay extra for it.

Labels: apple, microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 14:28

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Xbox 360 still a dud, won't make stated sales goals

I know calling the Xbox 360 a dud gets me labeled a hater, but just check out the quotes from Wedbush Morgan Securities in this Next-Generation report.

• Xbox 360 will not be coming to the rescue of the industry any time soon.
• Supply to the U.S could be about 300,000 units a month, at best.
• We do not expect sales of next generation software offsetting the current generation software sales decline until the PS3 and Revolution are launched.

The gist appears to be that software sales for current systems (Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2) are down 30% (since last year, I presume) and that even with its current status as the newest console with the highest priced games, the Xbox 360 and its supply problems aren't helping to take up the slack as much as it could.

Although it doesn't come right out and say it, the details of the report also indicate Microsoft won't make the fiscal year sales goals it reaffirmed just three weeks ago.

• First, note that between 850,000 and 900,000 Xbox 360s were sold through January 2006 (using NPDs and Microsoft's estimates, respectively).
• Second, Wedbush Morgan estimates that Microsoft can sell at most 300,000 Xbox 360s per month in North America for the next few months.
• Add these up and Microsoft can hope to have sold at most 2.4 million Xbox 360s in North America by 30 June 2006.

And that's the magic date by which Microsoft just told everyone they'd sell between 4.5 and 5.5 million Xbox 360s. I suppose it's possible that they'll manage to sell the remaining 2.1 million systems in the other territories, but history doesn't support that prediction. Over its entire lifetime, the original Xbox historically sold a bit more in North America than in all other territories combined. Figure in the late Xbox 360 launches in Australia and South Asia, and I just don't see this 4.5 million goal happening, much less the upper limit of 5.5 million. Someone remind me in six months and I'll hold myself to account.

Regardless, with reports like the one from WMS and Activision recently pointing a finger of blame for its own reduced earnings, Microsoft isn't exactly optimizing the headstart it said was critical to taking the crown from Sony this generation. As Ruffin said recently, "[w]hen you consider how quickly hardware goes out of date, this seems like the largest of blunders."

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 20:12

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WoW PSP, LMNOP?

The local university now has a wireless network that engulfs most of downtown, barging into the off-campus coffeeshop where I am now. There are places nearby where I can pick up 8-10 WiFis, and recently squatted bytes at a Quinznos Sub, assumedly from a nearby apartment building. WiFi is quickly showing up everywhere there's urbanity (har), and that's not even considering Blackberrys, cell phones with digital features over the "voice" network, and whatever the heck that jive is that's supposed to replace 802.11(lmnop).

So how long before we have World of Warcraft on our PSPs? I was thinking I could likely walk for a square mile or so downtown playing if I could figure out how to carry my laptop (Typing of the Dead, anyone?) around with me.

So what's the closest we have to WoW on PSP now? McDonalds and Nintendo DS? How long before we have impressively multiuser online portable games? How long before reality space is commodified to the point it's nothing but a building block for our virtual travel?

--ruffin at 18:29

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Dragon's Lair for GameBoy Color

The GameBoy Color version of Dragon's Lair tries to recreate the original laserdisc game in 4 megabytes of ROM, and very nearly pulls it off. The graphics have been scaled down, much of the sound is missing, and several scenes have been truncated, but the heart of the gameplay -- timed joystick moves and button presses -- remains intact.

It has some problems: sometimes guessing is required to find the right set of moves, the timing can seem somewhat arbitrary, and the finite set of scenes gets old quickly. However, these are all problems with the original. The main GameBoy Color-specific gameplay issue is that jerky animations make the guessing game worse.

Despite these problems, I enjoyed it, primarily because I still hold a great deal of nostalgia for the original. I also enjoy seeing how games are translated to different systems, especially when the gap between the original hardware and the new hardware is so large.

Here's a comparison animation showing a frame from the original and a frame from the GameBoy Color version.

--jvm at 20:04

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Some Silent Hill Movie Spoilers

Over at the GameCritics forums, Jet Black just posted impressions from a 15-minute presentation on the upcoming Silent Hill movie. Two warnings: it is brutally violent and it is a spoiler. I'll discuss it without giving away details below. If you want to go read it, the full post is here.

Silent Hill has always been disturbing, both psychologically and physically, but far more of the former and only small bits of the latter. Just to give an example in the spirit of the games: there is a big difference between the appearance of a bloody wheelchair askew with a spinning, squeaking wheel and the appearance of a bloody, mangled body in the same wheelchair. The games are strong at evoking dread, precisely because things are left unspoken and obscured.

From what Jet Black says, the movie moves much further toward the physical horror. If the whole movie leans this way, I will be greatly disappointed. While I haven't seen it in a number of years, my recollection of Jacob's Ladder, from which the games draw heavily, is that is leaned on the psychological and only used physical horror sparingly.

Another thing the trailer shows is that the movie has, to some extent, abandoned the sense of isolation distinctive to the games. Those few other strangers you meet while playing Silent Hill only enhance the sense of alienation from reality. The movie, on the other hand, shows groups of people and scenes outside of the city of Silent Hill, and I'm dubious about that decision.

I'm sure that a certain segment of the horror movie population will eat it up, as will Silent Hill fans who've desired more unblinking violence in the videogames. After reading this little preview, I'm quite a bit less optimistic that I'll enjoy the screen adaptation. If the Silent Hill movie is a gore fest and is commercially successful, I just hope they won't try to import those features into the videogames.

--jvm at 09:28

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My Revolution Speculation: The Revolution Network

Speculative pieces on the Nintendo Revolution are a dime a dozen, but maybe you've some spare change in your pocket for this one. Think huge, open network access for everyone. Everyone with a Nintendo device, that is.

The Nintendo Revolution will not only be able to connect to your existing broadband network, but will itself act as a Nintendo-device-specific wireless access point for anyone with a Nintendo device. So if you own a Nintendo DS and happen to be near someone else's Revolution, whether you know them or not, that Revolution will act as a gateway for you to access the internet. That is, your DS would see the other person's internet-connected Revolution, negotiate a free connection for you, and from there you could get out to the larger network.

The effect would be to blanket the country with Nintendo access points for anyone with a Nintendo device. Sure, using McDonald's for access points was a good idea, but when there are a couple of open access points on your street, that's a whole different ballgame.

And I'm not just talking about a network that anyone can use: it's open only to Nintendo devices. Even then it can be used only for Nintendo services, not just web browsing to Curmudgeon Gamer. Imagine a Nintendo portal with demos, movies, email, instant messaging, and voice chat services. It would also act as a meeting place for people playing online games. And if the next GameBoy iteration has local storage, like flash cards, Nintendo could even offer full games for download. Nintendo just said today they were going to offer Nintendo DS demos as downloads from kiosks.

I also imagine neighbors finding each other locally, either through a handheld-to-Revolution connection or even Revolution-to-Revolution, if two machines exist near each other. I have no idea who owns a PlayStation 2 on my block, but I might socialize with them more if there were some way I could find out.

The upside for Nintendo? Other than just being a neat piece of hardware, the Revolution could act as the center around which people would buy other Nintendo gaming devices, like a GameBoy or Nintendo DS. Apple sure sold plenty of computers based on the success of the iPod (what I believe is called the Halo Effect) and existing Apple fans already appreciate that their devices all play well together. For once, Nintendo could seamlessly unify its handheld and console markets, instead of using kludges like link cables to connect markets with completely different strategies.

That's my Nintendo Revolution speculation. If nothing else, the little console seems to encourage imaginative predictions. So, what's your wild idea for Nintendo's future?

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 15:24

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