14 posts tagged “video games”
I wrote this on Kotaku:
So, I read another story on Kotaku about the near constant stream of racial and homophobic slurs on Xbox Live. The majority of the comments ended up being "just use the mute button on your headset, and that solves the problem". Which, as a couple people pointed out, is, not the problem.
What did Barack Obama learn from Nintendo?
He effectively used the "blue ocean strategy" that Nintendo used when they designed the Wii. Blue ocean means moving away from the traditional, where there is already blood in the water, thus, a blue ocean. Both Microsoft and Sony were upgrading hardware and promising to shove more technology into their next generation boxes. Nintendo, on the other hand, decided what they were doing new was that they were going to use motion control in their system rather than a normal controller. Professional skeptics said it was crazy, that Nintendo was aiming for a fickle casual audience that might not respond to the system.
History has proven the skeptics wrong. The Nintendo Wii is the most popular console, by far. the 360, plagued by hardware issues, and the PS3 plagued by a high price, have yet to catch up.
Barack Obama, bet his money on undecided and new voters in Iowa. Young voters, were the key, he said. Nevermind that for the Democrats in Iowa, a young voter is under 60. But. These too, were fickle voters. Better to steer your star by traditional, older voters, the skeptics in both parties said. You couldn't trust the kids. They were an unknown quantity. Undecideds couldn't make up their mind, or be trusted to vote your way. They usually made up their minds in the polling booth, for God's sake! It is a risk, and a huge one.
As you have probably heard, Obama won Iowa soundly, 8% away from his biggest competitor.
Sometimes I wonder if there is something to these videogames...
The way that games are designed, you can't have a replayable experience if the game forces you to be analytical. A fun, replayable game, is wild, absurd, and empty of any respectability. A novel-esque game is concerned with getting a point across. And you can't get a point across with a controller without it becoming a movie. The two inherently oppose one another.
Sure, there are games like Bioshock, which have novel-worthy stories ad pretty fun gameplay. But here, the issue of replayability comes across hard. How many people actually want to replay Bioshock? It was a great game the first time around, but why go back to it?
A game has two elements: a controller and a screen. To make the controller part relevant, you need something spontaneous that caters to our wild side. And the screen will have to project something that naturally follows that. So how do you make a novel out of spontaneity?
I saw this comment on Kotaku and now feel it's worth a longer response than no, you're wrong, multiplayer gives you the replay value, single player gets you the story.
But then again, there's games like Chrono Trigger or Oblivion, or any game where more story or space opens up after the main story is completed.
Bioshock is used as an example of a game that doesn't have replay value, but it's got a great story. Still, with Bioshock, there's two ways of going through the game, there's the "good" way and the "bad" way. (Ie: Don't kill 12 year old girls and killing 12 year old girls.) While the story doesn't change, the experience does, so we're led to believe. It might be a little bit harder, it might be a little bit easier, depending on what upgrades you get.
Chrono Cross (which people seem to loathe for reasons that don't hold water with me) is another great example of a game that has replay value even if the story sticks with you, even years afterwards. There are characters that when you go in one direction unlock, and by choosing that path, you lock up other characters. Also, with the new game+ feature, you can go back and see the different endings you can view at different points in the game.
You can't get a point across in a game without it being a movie.
Half-Life, the sequel, and the episodic content based on Half-Life 2 beg to differ. (Also Portal, so I hear.)
Haze, the new shooter from the people that made Time Splitters, has at least a good shot of putting together ideas without using cut scenes, though we'll see how if that works in practice.
I suppose I simply have trouble believing that because there aren't a lot of shining examples of narrative in gameplay means that it's impossible. To quote Henry Rollins, I just can't forget what I know.
My work has been elsewhere, and after a Heidegger induced hiatus about art and it's place and so on and so forth, I return with one of the most liberating exchanges I have ever witnessed.
It is between MTV's Gideon Yago and Cliffy B of Epic Games.
Mr. Yago says something to the effect of "well, if you put a kid behind a guitar, he looks cool. If you put a kid behind a turntable, he looks cool. But if you put a controller in that kid's hand, not so much."
Cliffy B's response? "Does it have to look cool"?
It is that spirit that I want to send to everyone in my social group, everyone in high school who plays video games and is ostracized for it. That fuck you spirit. We're going to do what we do regardless of how it looks.
It is part of a larger conversation, well, well worth your time below, at MTV's Overdrive.
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1532074&vid=87591
That last video is one of the things that speaks about the future of video games, and I can't (as David Jaffe would say) fucking wait to see it.
BioWare is doing a Sonic the Hedgehog RPG for the Nintendo DS. Seeing as this is a developer that knows the genre inside and out, this Sonic game might not suck.
I recently purchased the sunnO)))/BORIS collaboration on exquisite/bordering-on-decadant 3-disc vinyl with crazy artwork for $15. Truth is, the package is so amazing I'm afraid to listen to it. (Southern Lord, if you read this, could you hook me up with a review copy of the CD?) I also picked up the INTERNATIONAL NOISE CONSPIRACY'S Live at Oslo Jazz Festival, which is just as danceable as HEAD AUTOMATICA's Decadance, and has me shaking my posterior for weeks to come. Also, a quick purchase of AMERICAN FOOTBALL's EP rounded out the heist from the decaying corpse of the Virgin Megastore downtown. Because all you need in life is symphonic doom metal, ass shaking, jazz reinvisioned live cuts and a quick fix of sad bastard emo...
Blizzard announced Starcraft 2 on Saturday, which was, for me, tremendously important.
(And by now, if you don't know the storyline, then I really, really, really don't know what you're doing reading this blog.)
Aside from Starcraft being an amazing real-time strategy game (it's on most genre-best lists) with great art, its story, at the time I played it was eye-opening and character molding. It was a space opera. You had the tragedies, Kerrigan's assimilation by abandonment, Tassadar's sacrifice and your betrayal of Fenix, the steadfast and honorable Steward of the Templar.
It was also James Raynor and Preator Fenix that I looked up to and emulated. They were two fundatmentally good characters, and for that, Raynor watched, powerless as his love was left to die, and Fenix, killed.
Just completing the Fenix killing mission burned me out on the game. I honestly didn't have the spirit to finish the campaign after the mission where I had to kill him, and long since gave up trying.
Given all that background, yeah, you might say I'm excited for Starcraft 2...
With the wild success of World of Warcraft (rumors put it at the first billion dollar game), many other companies are trying their hands at MMOs. Recent IPs are Warhammer 40,000, which was really only a matter of time, given the scale and kind of game, and Lego.
Yes, Lego. That also makes sense, since it also works like Warhammer in that you buy more of the product, and you can use those newly purchased product along with the previously purchased product together with a lot of time put into it you can create quite a few cool things putting the new and old stuff together. It's a great time waster, certainly. Will that translate into subscriptions? Don't know.
Yes, this blog is incredibly far down on my list of priorities. It's below pastepunk, which itself is below my life outside the computer screen (though the two do overlap, and it's fun when it does). It's a nice outlet for my other ramblings that pastepunk isn't really the right venue for. Thanks for reading. This blog will grow like a potted plant: When you don't notice and slowly. Thanks for putting in the time to water it.
Edit: After having watched the interview, I agree with the guy in italics. Danny Ledonne is a total tool, and it was clear these answers had been prepared.
That said, what do you expect? With such a touchy issue, I'm glad Ledonne didn't shoot from the hip, but at the same time, I do feel like he's not that articulate of a spokesperson for videogames, and perhaps a bit of a self-important dick. Of course I'd rather see someone like Brian Crecente or Jerry Holkins speak on behalf of videogamers, but sadly, you can't always get what you want...
The Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (Yes, the exclamation point is supposed to be there...) garnered attention when it was first released on the internet, and continued to when it was booted from the finalists at an independent games festival. Many other games bowed out as well, crying censorship. G4, doing something right, decided to host the creator of the game and Brian Crecente from kotaku.com. G4 dutifully posted the interview on the internet, and kotaku ran the story. This comment was taken from kotaku:
Hmm. Anyone notice that Crecente didn't get to talk much? And Danny, even if you were doing this as a satire, its a game that puts you in the helms of Columbine shooters. This just isn't cool. First, you're making a bad name for gamers as a whole. This is a murder simulator, I don't care what you say. Columbine is a horrible thing to say, and you knew what you were doing. "Had to do this... it was a great thing" my ass. You did this for the shock value. We know that. Stop it, okay? This isn't cool. Many people are just getting over Columbine, and even people who weren't involved. I don't care if you had to do this. You said you didn't care if it was known to the public, then why was it publicized? This seriously pisses me off, as a human being and as a gamer. Why, man? Like, do you really have a good reason for this? Seriously? Next time you speak about this shit, speak the truth, not some prewritten shit you say just to convince people you're not a total dick.
So don't be a dick. You are what you eat.
Just don't blame middle America. Nothing EVER goes wrong there.
It's always nice knowing that whenever people say there's no good music these days they're simply uninformed or don't know where to find it...
I wonder when some MODERN LIFE IS WAR demos are going to leak. From what I've seen on YouTube, this thing is going to be ridiculous. I know the singer Jeff likes "Salvation", so it'll be interesting to see if he'll be buying Guitar Hero 2 when it comes out for the Xbox 360.
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