Get Your Art Out of My Hobby

Date: 08/26/2011

By: Nate

Gaming has been announced as an art, yadda yadda yadda – or “big friggin' deal”. I already said my piece about it. While it seems that gaming has magically gone from being hobby to an art form over night, , I need to ask, “At which point did it actually stop being a hobby?”

I mention this as sort of a counterpoint to Duke Nukem Forever, which I've recently just played and grudgingly had to put down because I'm working on not one, but two long games. Yes, it's crass. Yes, it is extremely offensive. However, it is not a one-string banjo like many of the games that are raised on a pedestal these days.

To be honest, I found it strange that Duke Nukem Forever's gameplay was considered archaic. Halo has relied on relatively similar gameplay since 2001, and Duke Nukem 3D is a throwback to that, perhaps. But it's also a hell of a leap. Can you name me five shooters that are as interactive as Duke Nukem Forever? I can, and most of them are Build games (13 – 15 years old), and the others are the Deus Ex titles. If interactivity and varied gameplay with tight controls are an issue, then I think there's a much greater problem with the review scene than reviewers' memories.

Sure, intense interactivity may be a throwback, but it's certainly not archaic. Why? Because it immerses you into the environment by making you part of it. Unfortunately, that big button on screen does kind of take away from it by taking you out of the experience, but at least that experience is there.

The point is, the magazines need to check something called integrity. Lambasting something for being archaic – when it's not – is a great example. As a matter of fact, I would say that most “modern” shooters are archaic simply because they're even simpler than their 2D and 2.5D (e.g. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, respectively) counterparts because they reduce gameplay to two components – completing an objective on a rail and slaughtering the bad guys.

Obviously, few titles use irreverence as a selling point. The last Serious Sam came out around the same time as Doom 3 – although Sam is much more innocent than The Duke.

However, going after the sense of humour because you're stuck on your morals (or political correctness – even worse) is also a cop-out; this is an M-rated game that, so far, is making Super Troopers look like a mature romantic comedy.

That said, we come to the point of satire as a humour vehicle, because, let's face it...Duke Nukem is a satire of “all that is man” - or hypermasculinity. Much like a Heavy Metal concert, Duke Nukem 3D is a piss-up of the core patriarchal values – debauchery, misogyny, bigotry, decadence and substance abuse. And Duke Nukem, like Judas Priest (the guys who started the hypermasculinity trend when singer, Rob Halford, sang onstage in his cruising attire) is just a caricature. And yet the Filthy Fifteen list did indeed exist (which also included Twisted Sister and Madonna).

So why the ambivalence? It's satire. It's a grand joke at the expense of something else. Satire is sometimes considered an artistic expression, and even moreso when delivered by way of humour. Someone isn't trying to put together a blacklist to protect their precious army shooters, are they? Either way, “Thou dost protesteth too much.”

Regardless, this creates a problem. These attitudes set a precedence, and an alarming one. You see, way back in the day, games like this would have been well received because they don't follow the norm, and they actually offer the gamer an experience beyond finding a key, hitting a switch and killing a room full of bad guys. Or, in today's shooters...just hitting a switch and killing a room full of bad guys.

Unfortunately, this attitude also shows politics in action, this time an attack on something being ridiculously politically incorrect for the sake of being just that. An important component of art is the freedom of expression, and while we are free to be critical of that expression...a little honesty goes a long way. Honesty rarely has any truck with politics. Unfortunately, it's also vice-versa. Unfortunately, there's something else that's being omitted...it's a game. Fictional characters and all.

Hell, I've read things far more crass and potentially incendiary than this (Virtual Freedom and Chocolate Jesus come to mind), and neither of these were panned when political correctness was still valued.

At the end of the day, we don't want politics in our reviews. We never did. We just want a clean, honest opinion as to whether or not a game is fun to play or not and why. We do not want mewling about how a game's sense of humour is odious because it violates social mores when you're clearly looking to pan it when you have nothing else to go on. I've actually played the game and I can honestly dispute all the crap that the alleged pros have spewed about the gameplay, as can anyone else who has actually played it. So it really only comes down to one thing: Pretense.

I can't stress this enough: It's a hobby. More importantly, it's a hobby with a culture, and that culture has its own feelings and opinions. Gaming started off as a hobby, and regardless of the monikers added to it, it will always be a hobby. It's now a recognised art form, but it's still a hobby. I'm not trying to denigrate it, quite the contrary. To be honest, while many hobbyists have their own pretenses, they're not nearly as douchy as the critics who claim to be an authority are.

Readers who actually pay for the dreck you people spew do not deserve this attitude. It doesn't make better games, it doesn't make publishers more ethical. What it does do is it alienates the majority of us who game because we do it as a hobby. Even worse, it alienates people who make those games. Most gamers aren't prancing art critics hell-bent on making sure the world follows their opinion (that would fall to the fanboys, an inane minority), and most devs work damned hard to put a quality title out.

If you want to bring some class to reviewing, how about changing your attitude to something more down to earth? Then maybe the rest of us can take you seriously - instead perceiving you as a grand satire of our own culture. We already get enough of that from soccer-moms, ignorant politicians and media-crazy lawyers.

Just give us honesty and integrity. Like Duke Nukem, they're old concepts that work great and, more importantly, still stand and deliver. I can't say the same for politics.

AAA Games Too Long My Ass

 

Date: 08/10/2011

By: Nate

Recently, a panel of five discussed the length of AAA games, and these people felt that AAA games were generally too long – at least where social and casual gaming are concerned. There was no talk of “hardcore” gaming, and being that most of the developers on this panel were independent casual game developers, I can understand this. What I can't understand is, with one of the developers behind Broken Sword on the panel, how can the view be so narrow?

Casual and social gaming is big, but Fallout New Vegas made $300 million in revenue – which I'm assuming means somewhere around $200 million in profit.

The panel consisted of these individuals:

Charles Cecil – Broken Sword

Adrian Hon – CEO of story developer Six To Start

Alexis Kennedy – CEO of Fail Better Games

Patrick O'Luanaigh – CEO of nDreams

David Varela – Writer

There's a touch of irony here, of course; people who make casual games are criticising hardcore games and saying how that doesn't fit into casual gaming. Really? No. Way.

Now, this discussion spurred quite a conversation, and I don't think many people had read the article in its entirety – admittedly, I'm in that boat, but I did read it again. And again. And again. Just to make sure that I had a grasp on its entirety.

That said, the discussion brings up a bone of contention that I'm having with AAA titles being passed off as a “hardcore” gaming experience. They're not. To be honest, I think most of the AAA grade stuff we're being sold is only made from A grade product.

I'll explain why. Length, depth and possibly girth. That's what she said.

But it's true. As far as AAA gaming goes, there are issues all over the place, but it doesn't mean that hardcore gaming should be abandoned, especially since it's what the gaming industry built its profits on. And a gaming magazine that has built their own empire on gaming of all stripes, is completely out of line by implying that hardcore gaming might be on its way out.

But there is an issue with the length of AAA games; yes, some are indeed too long, but most are too short. Games that are too long usually suffer from gameplay issues that make the experience go stale because they're used to artificially lengthen the game.

A great example is experience grinding in RPGs, where you need to be a certain level before you can progress, and to do that, you have to fight and kill a lot of things. As a consequence of that, you're stuck in one area doing just that. Maybe for several minutes, but come the end of the game, it can be for several hours. An overly convoluted story, like what is mentioned in the article I referred to, can also make a game too long, because you may get to a point where you start wondering why it all matters, but usually, it's a gameplay thing such as flawed mechanics or copied levels.

Games being too short, that's a different story. And when I say too short, I don't mean that 10 hours doesn't feel like enough. I'm talking about games that can be completed in an afternoon, which many blockbusters are. Sometimes, a game's shortness can actually breed replay. It was fun, it's over, I want some more. 007 Bloodstone was like that. But then you have the disappointments of Halo 2 and 3 and all of the Call of Duty games since Call of Duty 4, where the developers will promise longer campaigns when in fact, they're still 5 hours long, that's something else. Something shady.

AAA Games being too short is a combination of several design choices. One of them is a complete lack of exploration, and that's a given. Another is pressure from the publishers. Not so much to just get the game out of the gate as soon as possible, but to chop it up into sequels so that more can be sold. Or worse, chop it up so that DLC can be sold, so you're essentially buying back pieces of your game that the publisher didn't want you to initially have, like with what appeared to be the case with Dragon Age 2.

The problem is, this is the rule, not the exception, so gamers wind up getting shortchanged while EA, Activision and 2K wind up getting fat, lazy and greedy.

It's a pretty murky situation, and clearly some independent developers want to use a their own smear campaign to hammer the lid shut when this business wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the hardcore gamers. Unacceptable. Utterly, absolutely unacceptable.

Editorial: A Criticism on The Video Game Industry Ad War

Date: 07/12/2011

By: Nate

Ever since the dawn of gaming, there have been ad campaigns geared to sell games and systems; it's a necessary part of the sales process; whoever can create knowledge and exposure about a product will generate sales first.

In the North American games industry, these ad campaigns have seemingly turned into an ad war, selling the gamer things they “must” have instead of the games they really might actually want. This war is waged in many ways. Ads come in all shapes and sizes, including game previews and, possibly, reviews.

Why not? A review is a brilliant selling point. It's also a legitimate way to have your competition unfairly criticised. It doesn't mean that reviewers are bought – and in fact, it's more likely that they're coerced over all sorts of opinions; Kotaku, for example, has been blackballed by Sony, and one of the 2K Games' marketing tools recently blackballed the entire reviewing industry on Twitter.

This ad war, however, is so pervasive that we're starting to lose big titles from Japan again like we were between 1985 and 2001. It's a hell of a gulf, but the market also didn't exist back then. It does now. Unfortunately, the big North American players don't care. They want it all to themselves, so they are using all of their buying power to acquire as much adspace as they can to attempt to sell their product. A consequence of this is that their opponents can't sell theirs.

And they're really only selling a handful of ideas – namely first-person shooters and rehashed sports titles, although anything Microsoft, Sony, and Hollywood want sold will always find adspace.

First person shooting and sports games have always been a constant. I think part of it is because sports games are actually pretty dynamic, and there will always be fans. Especially of hockey, American football and baseball. FPS's, on the other hand, are a different kind of animal.

The reason for this is pretty simple: It's the easiest genre to get immersed in because you see it from the perspective of the character that you're playing.

Many of the best selling games are played in the first person; Call of Duty, Halo, Borderlands, The Elder Scrolls and even the rebooted Fallout franchise. Luckily, three of these five titles actually have very different things to offer, but the Halo and Call of Duty franchises are both tactical shooters. And they sell far more.

If it weren't for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo peddling their own wares as it were, I don't think we would have as much diversity as we do. However, Sony seems to have the only legitimate ideas at the moment as Microsoft is keen on selling mediocre games for its broken Kinect, and Nintendo would rather sell you garbage games from an external developer for your Wii than make a good title based off an existing intelletual property, or make a new one.

And Hollywood is all too happy to get Activision, Sega and EA to make rushed titles based off of half-baked super-hero movies.

Sports games, like the biggest sellers, don't evolve much either. And one franchise in particular, NFL, doesn't have to. Why? Because EA somehow got the right to run an oligopoly (which is illegal, in theory) on NFL games, thus almost completely shutting out their competition, 2K Sports. While 2K has other (and arguably more brilliant) avenues of earning income, to essentially lose professional licensing to exclusive contracts is shameful.

Even when the oligopoly didn't exist, the professional sports titles from these developers obscured more interesting alternative sports games like the overlooked Deathrow for the XBox. At least sports games are more dynamic, but you're essentially paying for little more than a new roster every year.

Roleplaying games are no different; as much as I may praise the Elder Scrolls, Borderlands and Fallout, there is little room for much else when one of these monsters gets released. That said, Final Fantasy 13's ad campaign was not nearly as extensive as either of these. In any case, because these blockbuster titles took up all the adspace, other games slipped through the cracks. A perfect example was the brilliant Sacred 2, which turns Diablo on its ear.

So why the ad war?

Reason one: Cut off the competition's ability to expose potential buyers to their product. If no one knows about it, no one cares. Reason 2: Create a virtual embargo on the competition. If you make it hard for them to sell their product, they'll take it to another market – usually one that is much leaner.

Realistically, it's most likely a case of “how gullible are you?” If you, the gamer, is willing to purchase incomplete games – and you know they are when the publishers are releasing day-one downloadable content, or DLC, or worse, putting it right on the disc making you pay for it if the game is used – and keep buying new iterations of these games, why should publishers stop foisting this crap on us? Ethics has nothing to do with it. It's all about money.

And there are two reasons for this: Budgets are skyrocketing (and they really are) and anything that sells well is a safe bet. Additionally, it paves the way for simple DLC at rediculous costs to bolster profits. Even if a few people download a map pack with 3 or so maps, it doesn't take very long to make those maps unless brand new game modes, weapons and gameplay options are added – which is rare.

At the same time, how much of the cost of the game is factored into marketing? Ten percent? Twenty? Fifty? I think this is equally important if publishers are going to piss and moan about astronomical budgets, because they could take another two or three million out of the marketing budget to make a better game, why won't they?

But FPS's aren't the only games that sell well. There are still platformers that do well – Mario is proof of this – and many first person action games do fairly well, especially open-world – aka “sandbox” - games.

So how come companies aren't making more clones of Super Mario Bros. or Grand Theft Auto? Because Super Mario Bros. isn't flashy enough and open world games require large virtual worlds to play in. In case you didn't notice, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo don't have the square mileage anywhere near the likes of Grand Theft Auto IV, Mercenaries 2 or Red Faction Guerilla. It takes a lot of time and bug testing to build worlds of that size and depth.

FPS's have the highest technical standards of any genre. They also tend to be among the most expensive to make, which is why few even try to develop anything like Far Cry 2 or Boiling Point. And a lot of people seem to think that the pizzazz that these games offer must translate to another genre entirely for the game to even be “good”. If companies are so concerned about the bottom line, why do so many push to make this kind of game when the risk is so high? Well, because Call of Duty: Black Ops has made over one billion dollars.

The thing is, the guys that have the best profit margins are the independent developers. And they make all sorts of games. While making money is still not guaranteed, development costs are significantly lower. Mind you, the end product isn't as flashy, but you don't need flash to make a great game. Rygar and Double Dragon III on the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom were proof of that. In fact, both of them, while being uglier than their arcade versions, are both far superior games because of their deeper gameplay and improved story elements.

There are far more games available that have both deeper gameplay and storylines than many of the blockbuster titles. These are overlooked for various reasons, although marketing and availability both play a huge role in their success or lack thereof.

And you'll learn about what studios not owned by Activision, Electronic Arts, Disney, Warner Bros., Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are doing.

If there's a shining ray of light, it's the independent developers.

Their games aren't like everything else, so these guys have something different to offer. While I have not played Angry Birds, a lot of people have. And they love it. A lot of people have played Call of Duty: Black Ops, too, but I highly doubt that Activision's profit margins are as good on most of their other games.

But they – along with Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts and Hollywood – have won the North American ad war; they seem to dominate whose ads run when and where. And they all release a lot of first-person, tv, movie and licensed sports games

The problem is, with so few genres dominating the industry – or at least the Western side of it – there seems to be less room for anything else.

I'm not going to suggest that this will lead to anything quite as radical as games being buried in the desert and an industry going into a coma for a year or so, but the fact that the biggest companies on this side of the ocean are taking the fewest risks – with every genre, not just shooters – is pretty sad.

Of course, there's no need to take risks when you've beaten your competition in the ad race, is there? And yet it's the independent developers that are either making money hand-over-fist on their little projects or incurring reasonable losses.

We need to remember that at one point in time, Nintendo was a little independent developer (at least on this side of the Pacific). Now, they're a big independent developer as well as a publisher.

While I doubt that we'll start to see an Eastern lock-out, we will lose out on awesome titles. It's already happening – think Xenoblade for the Wii. It's like the days before the Playstation 2 where a lot of titles were just not released because it was deemed a major loss to localise it for a different market. We gamers do not need another Sin and Punishment incident, where we have to wait until it's emulated to play it.

And we need the diversity. It keeps our hobby fresh. I realise that I (and everyone like me) am now the niche gamer, but there's still a lot of niche gamers who appreciate more than just shooters, streamlined adventure games and short-bus RPGs.

So, how do we fix this? Outside of behavorial modification, I honestly have no clue, but maybe this raises an important question about our culture: Do we really know what we like as individuals? It's a good question because it's taken me a long time to answer it as a gamer.

I think an inability to think critically about value versus desire is the problem here, and this problem affects more than just buying video games. It affects everything from the food that we eat to the officials that we elect.

There's a second and possibly more important question: What are the consequences if we don't fix the problem? Our need to fit in with perceived popular opinion may eventually hurt our options as far as our hobby goes – let alone our existence in the real world. We never think twice about anything unless there's definite proof that it will harm us. It doesn't matter if it's food, pharmaceuticals or elected officials.

So, to put it into perspective, many of the more unique games that cater to diverse palates come from either Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia. If they can't afford to localise because they're being economically locked out of a market, they won't. North America is less than half a billion potential buyers. What do they need us for? Plus they've already got a market to sell in. And importing isn't an option if you can't speak Polish, Japanese or Korean – let alone if region locking is imposed.

Diversity makes the world go round, whether real or virtual. It keeps things fresh. And due to the fact that we don't place an embargo on another culture's games like some other countries have been known to do, our market is one of the most diverse. The problem is, if this keeps up, it will produce an embargo – whether or not it's intentional.

This is something we need to change.

There are really only two key factors to deal with here, too: Their money and our ignorance. It's pretty easy to fix the latter point. Don't believe everything you read and hear and the hell with the hype. Do your own research. Assess the value of things based on how they relate to you, not your friends – or worse, their friends. You'd be absolutely amazed with the games that you'll find if you only look past the ad bombardments and challenges toward whether or not it makes you cool.

In short, buy for you.

Video Games As Art

Title: Video Games As Art

Date: May 19^th, 2011

By: Nate

As of the beginning of May, 2011, the U.S. government has officially recognised video games as an art form worthy of public funding from the National Endowment of the Arts.

To the outside world, this is fairly significant considering that gaming has often been more associated with long-haired basement dwelling male nerds and young children – despite the fact that as of now, most gamers are in their thirties, and there's a large female demographic, too.

It's also significant because the movie industry has been fighting against this for years, and why not? As of right now, gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry that keeps getting bigger. Hollywood would undoubtedly feel threatened by this, and we've seen this fear through the printed opinions of revered critics/pundits such as Roger Ebert. There are even people within the gaming industry who claim that video games are not and cannot be an art form.

Ironically, Kojima Hideo also feels this way . Kojima-san has worked on many series for Konami, including but not limited to the Metal Gear series – which in many ways tries to meet and exceed artistic merits. We see this with the carefully crafted storylines as well as the deep gameplay that many of the titles in this series provide.

It's not just visuals, music and storytelling that transforms a game into art. How you play the game – character abilities, interactivity with the virtual world, characters, enemies, weapons, sound effects and how the world itself is built are equally – if not more – important than how it looks. This is because a game is very different from a movie; it can contain the narrative of a novel, a museum's worth of art, a concert hall of music and on top of that, you have a measure of control as to how it all comes together at the end. It's a culmination of most of our art forms (excluding the culinary arts, at least for now) on top of technology.

I could say without any pangs of guilt that some of the programmers of a game have to be artists; they need to have a vision, and they need to be both fearless and, I think, a little eccentric.  They need to be able to think in both the practical and the abstract.  Furthermore, they need to understand the value of language; Programming languages are still languages. It takes an estimated 5 to 10 years to become a highly skilled programmer, and while the techniques are fairly similar from language to language, you also still have to a) learn the languages you will need to use - which can change from console to console, but rarely ever with PC's - and b) keep these skills up to date.  Especially when you start factoring in middleware – software engines that are independent of a core game engine, such as the Havok physics engine – and scripting languages that operate on top of a game engine to add more definition to objects within the world such as weight and density. (editied June 14th, 2011) And thus, programmers could be seen as poets.

I think a lot of opinionated gamers are champing at the bit about what should be included and what shouldn't, but being that what defines the true art of a game transcends most concepts of art, I really don't think that anything should be excluded.

From Tennis For Two to Space Wars! to Doom, there are many games that define genres, concepts and standards. It could be as groundbreaking as The Guardian Legend (NES), as mundane as Corridor 7 (DOS PC), as overlooked as Deathrow (XBox) or as horrible as Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (N64). It can define a genre or merely inhabit it for better or worse - and all genres are evolving.

This is a necessity for an artform, too. Architecture can't live on Baroque alone much like gaming can't be a smorgasbord of first-person shooting.

Regardless of merit, video games are an accepted art form. My intention is not to rub this in the faces of the nay-sayers. I really don't have to, the American government has already done a good enough job by showcasing 80 games at the Smithsonian that they deem to be the most important titles in the industry.

My fellow gamers, pat yourselves on the back.  Whether you know it are not, we're now art afficionados - whether we like it or not.

“Why It Matters” Columns – Do They Matter?

Date: May 6, 2011

By: Nate

A lot of gaming sites like to write columns about the different aspects of games and why they're important, be it story, music, visuals or some other concept that might be viewed as superficial. You read their arguments and you think “yeah, that makes sense”. Well, sometimes. But you have to wonder if it's being written a) to kill time; b) to appear sophisticated; or c) both.

So, what's the big deal? Well, there's a faction within the gaming community that believe that games are art – or at the least, can be. Far be it from me to say that they're wrong – especially since I agree that games can indeed be art. But what is it that makes games art?

As an art form, games are fairly unique because they don't just interact with you and elicit a response; you interact with them, too. That isn't to say that there aren't forms of conceptual art outside of the gaming world that you can't interact with. Unfortunately, I'm only drawing up dolls and action figures of meticulous design and detail. But even some automobiles are considered art; think of the aerodynamic forms of supercars. And I would definitely consider many buildings to be art; the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario is a perfect example of this, as is just about any museum.

And like these items, games can only be interacted with on a limited field – that which is defined by the designers. So, to compare a game with architecture and design is not a far-fetched notion. This is especially true since games often require a working knowledge of functional architecture; levels don't design themselves and the greatest levels are rarely a collection of random structures littered with random objects.

On the flipside of this argument, though, comes another question – and it's a very important one: Does all of this high-falutent BS make the best game? In a simple answer, no. There are games with brilliant design, amazing music, awesome graphics – the whole nine – that just fall flat. Usually because the gameplay – the ways in which you interact with the world – are not enjoyable enough. But it certainly makes a game “cooler”.

Case-in-point: XIII. XIII is a game that is, from an artistic perspective, frickin' awesome. It's based off of a very hard-to-get graphic novel (that's not in English, as far as I remember) about a guy who was framed for the assassination of the president of the United States. The game is presented with cel-shaded graphics and even has scripted panels that come up when you get a cool kill (usually a long-range headshot)

 

There are even some gameplay elements that I thought were pretty nifty, like the grappling hook. But all of this stuff had already been done, and all of the cool stuff was audio and visual. As much as I love the game, I know that the level design is mediocre and the multi-player does nothing more than any other shooter at that time. The game was received with mixed opinions because of this. However, due to the artistic elements of the game, it feels like you're in a graphic novel, and that definitely counts for something. Unfortunately, it feels more like a graphic novel than a game.

As far as I can tell, the Viewtiful Joe series for the Gamecube and PS2 did this much more effectively; the game was more or less a unanimous critical success with a fairly large cult following, so it was a commercial success, too.  Viewtiful Joe, released by Capcom, was simpler in its execution, and in fact it was more an experiment and training exercise in it's creation - at least it's how it started out.  It's a side-scrolling brawler, but it clearly was better designed and, as a final product was generally more enjoyable.

Another more artsy game that didn't really kick off commercially (at least in North America and Europe) was the Otogi series by From Software and released by Sega.  Like Viewtiful Joe, the games in the Otogi series are brawlers.  Unlike Viewtiful Joe, the Otogi games are 3D brawlers with as much focus on horizontal combat as vertical.  And destroying the environment is part and parcel with the Otogi series.  The Otogi games are not cell-shaded, but their visuals are very unique.  The soundtrack is mostly based off of Japanese classical music, and many of the art and concepts are taken from Japanese mythology.

 

 

Unlike XIII, while neither Otogi was a huge commercial success, both titles were very successful from a critical standpoint.

And there are plenty of other examples I could dive into; Capcom's Okami, Sega's No More Heroes series, as well as Capcom's Killer 7; they're all very unique games with unique visuals, design, audio and concepts, but many of them cater to niche audiences - even if the gameplay is stellar, too.

One has to ask, does it matter if a game is a work of art? I can't honestly answer that with a yes and keep a straight face.  Not by a longshot. All it takes is one bad design decision - usually in terms of gameplay - to take a game from "stellar" to "average".  Unless you value art over the whole packag - and I don't truly think that many people do - I honestly think that a game as a work of art is a moot point in terms of being able to actually enjoy it.  That isn't to say that most gamers don't have their pretenses, but I honestly believe that few would know artistic design if it painted an abstract world on their behinds.

So, do the technical arts matter when it comes to making a game?  To a certain extent, yes. While sound is not necessity to make a great game, it certainly enriches it. The visuals don't have to be stellar, either. But it does help that they're clean and colourful. 

Consider iD Software's groundbreaker, Doom.  Even in its time, Doom had good graphics and sound - but not amazing.  However, it had an awesome soundtrack, variable lightly and excellent level design that took advantage of this to, at the time, downright creep you, the player, right out.  Furthermore, the core gameplay is considered by many designers to be very sophisticated because of how well balanced everything is.  Doom has very large bestiary in comparison to other games of its kind - and the bestiary is, for the mostpart, unique.  The weapons are excellently balanced, and the multiplayer is extremely fast and frenetic, even wit h a limitation of only 4 players.  The gameplay has still has never been completely imitated in a modern capacity; the closest another game has ever come to duplicating Doom's gameplay is Raven Software's Heretic, which also uses the same game engine.  There is more, though; Doom does contain a great deal of "relevent" imagery such as gruesome corpses and tortured souls, and it's this art design that shapes an atmosphere that very well could have been non-existent.  But this atmosphere isn't what makes the game; the whole package is.  The sounds (even if the original Doom engine could only loop one sound at a time), the lighting, the weapon and player mechanics, the level design, the creature behaviour - this is what makes the game.  Not just the story, visuals and music and the pretentious past they may or may not be based off of (and in fact, Doom's soundtrack is mostly based off of heavy metal songs written by bands such as Metallica, Black Sabbath and Pantera).

So coming back to the original point, what really matters, then?  You don't need to make the best sound effects to make an awesome game, and you don't need to have the best graphics.  You do need to have an excellent concept of design in a practical sense and you need to make gameplay that people will want to come back to.  So, the high-minded BS doesn't really matter because it's superficial.  Then what really matters? 

I'll tell you what really matters: love of the game.  Playing them for the sake of playing.  Sharing them for the sake of sharing because, let's face it, everyone loves to play something.  It doesn't matter if it's

a shooter, a life sim or Trivial Pursuit (Canadian content, eh!).

At the end of the day, it's not only what matters - it's what keeps gaming culture alive and healthy.

PSN Pooched

Date: May 2nd, 2011

By: Nate

As of this morning, 11 days have passed since Sony's major security breach and the Playstation Network was taken down. On day one, they shut the network down and declared an investigation. It was shortly after this investigation that they declared a security breach, and I believe six days had passed before they disclosed that credit card numbers may have been compromised.

So far, the American and Canadian authorities have gotten involved to both figure out how to catch the hackers and possibly to put the screws to Sony.

And things have just gotten worse: Sony Online Entertainment has suffered the same fate as the Playstation Network, and Sony has stated that thousands of credit card numbers may be compromised.

Now, before I continue with this, I will tell you right now that I am not a corporate apologist. Quite the opposite, in fact. Aside from the facts or, what Jean Chretien would call “Da proof is da is da proof”, my analysis comes from IT experience.

So, what's to be said about all of this? First; Sony did the right thing: They pulled the plug on the first sign. Now, with the plug pulled, the users should have gotten a clue that something was wrong with the network.

Second, Sony released information after they knew what was going on and not before. In IT, this is all you can do. You don't want to speculate or assume, especially in the face of potential identity theft.

After Sony initially announced a security breach, users that have credit cards on their accounts should have taken the appropriate measures to protect themselves. They didn't. I'm not saying that the customer is wrong. However, we were all made aware that a security breach took place; we shouldn't sit idly by waiting for the worst to happen and we have a responsibility to be proactive when a service which contains our identification is broken into. Even when Anonymous broke in, we should have been alerting our banks and creditors.

And finally, the government agencies initially went after Sony instead of the organised criminals who broke in after Anonymous initially broke the system. I realise that this probably has something to do with a six-day wait for this information, but again, IT guys don't cry wolf. Unless they want million-dollar servers, then it's okay (no, it's not). Thankfully, this has turned around, but the knee-jerk reactions from the supposedly calm and collected individuals that are supposed to represent us was both premature and immature. As others have said, “stop blaming the victim(s)”.

This debacle is a right mess, but I'm glad that it is being handled, as slowly as that may be. Undoubtedly, Sony will compensate its users, and hopefully you guys who are aware of this breach have already contacted the financial folks that you need to.

Breaches happen, no matter how secure your network is. It doesn't matter if it's cheap wi-fi or a multi-billion-dollar fiber network, it can and will happen. All you can do is shut things down, assess and rebuild. Sony's got a huge network and they have to work around not only the size of their network, but any red tape imposed by Japan's most recent natural disaster. It can't be easy.

I hope that they can resolve this as quickly and painlessly as possible, and I hope you, the customer, remember to protect yourself from identity theft.

When it happens, all you can do is stem the tide.

Editorial: The Decline of the Brawler

The Decline of the Brawler

May 1st, 2011

By: Nate

I got thinking about Brawler titles and how generally underappreciated they were last night when I was writing about Dynasty Warriors 7. Poor example, I know – but I am going somewhere with this, and I hope someone at Tecmo-Koei reads this because it presents arguments that they can learn from.

The Brawler genre started in the late 1970's with a boxing game made by Sega called Heavyweight Champ.

This was a Vs. fighter – which the brawler ultimately spawned from – but like Wolfenstein 3D to Doom, this didn't really kickstart the genre. That didn't happen until Kung-Fu Master was released in 1984 by Data East, and from there, things started to evolve.

In 1987, Technos released Double Dragon and the rest is pretty much history. Right?



Golden Axe



Not exactly. Hot on Double Dragon's heels were Golden Axe, Ninja Gaiden and Final Fight. These all offered new takes on the genre; Golden Axe changed the scenery from urban to fantasy and incorporated attack animals, dynamic combos and a selection of characters. Ninja Gaiden included new ideas, such is using the environment (you could hang from stuff and kick at the baddies). And Final Fight...Actually, Final Fight did a lot less than it was given credit for. It stole a crapload of my quarters, though.



The original Ninja Gaiden





Final Fight



To be honest, I view Final Fight as point where the genre was starting to decline, as it has nothing on Streets of Rage (which actually borrows heavily from it). In retrospect, even the sacred X-Men cow wasn't much to sniff at – nor were most comic-based brawlers aside from perhaps The Punisher (which wouldn't be released until the 1990's).  But I didn't put this together to insult peoples' taste. The point is actually to demonstrate a cyclical effect. Final Fight streamlined the genre that Double Dragon had actually made so deep. This is mostly due to the fact that there are fewer moves per character. This would be rectified in the early 90's with Knights of the Round, which borrows a little from Golden Axe. There are a few other points, though. Most of these games have something in common – lack of perspective. No matter the scenario, it always felt flat and two-dimensional – graphics aside. While you could move up and down, there was rarely a variation in height. River City Ransom changed all of this and more, but it was such an odd duck because it included everything but the kitchen sink, so it didn't influence the genre at this time at all. Which is a shame.

X-Men Arcade 4-Player Cabinet

Streets of Rage - Sega Genesis



 





Knights of the Round





The Punisher - Arcade



River City Ransom - NES

As the 90's moved into the 2000's, the games became 3D, but before they did, they started to get a lot deeper. Jaleco released brawlers that incorporated multiple characters, unlockable characters and multiple mission paths. The Peacekeepers would be the culmination of the best ideas of their brawlers.  And sprite-based arcade brawlers would reach their pinnacle with Capcom's Dungeons and Dragons titles Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mystara which would incorporate multiple charactes, special abilities, multiple paths and even the ability to buy equipment.



The Peacekeepers - SNES



Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom - Arcade




Dungeons and Dragons: Shadow over Mystara - Arcade



Die Hard Arcade - Arcade



As the 90's came to a close, Die Hard Arcade hit with a vengeance just as arcades were getting hit with vacancies and Dynasty Warriors had hit the Playstation, although it was a fighting game in its infancy. Dynasty Warriors 2, however, was pretty much a very rough version of the Dynasty Warriors we all know and (sort of) love, and it incorporated a lot of ideas from River City Ransom – upgradeable characters, environments with varying degrees of height and perspective – and introduced tactical combat to the brawler genre. And this is just the cherry on the cake.





Dynasty Warriors 2



Devil May Cry - PS2



Devil May Cry came out in 2001, and brought the adventure element to the genre. In 2004, Ninja Gaiden was remade for the XBox. This is very significant because Ninja Gaiden incorporated the Dead or Alive 3 fighting engine with platforming, puzzle solving and combat that really made you think (it was hard as hell until you figured out when to attack). God of War was released for the PS2, although this really didn't add much new. It was very well received because of its intelligence, brutality and reduced linearity due to multiple possible endings.

However, things started going downhill from this point.



God of War - PS2



Ninja Gaiden - XBox





Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance - PS2 and XBox



Capcom started releasing redundant brawlers – first Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance which is as numb as its title, and then Final Fight: Streetwise. While the gameplay of each was competent, the games felt very two-dimensional and the story elements were questionable at best. And neither game was very polished. To make matters worse, Capcom licensed music for Final Fight: Streetwise in a pithy attempt to make you feel like you were in the “ghetto”.

Final Fight: Streetwise - PS2 and XBox



Samurai Warriors 2 - PS2 and XBox 360



Koei started expanding the Dynasty Warriors universe by first creating the Legends expansion (which added some more characters and missions) and then creating the Empires expansion. Expansions are nice, but when you start making them after each iteration (which was being released almost yearly), your habit gets expensive and you start questioning the point when the gameplay receives few upgrades. An exception is the Empires expansion because it adds some strategy elements (think Risk with battles in real time). Furthermore, Koei spun off from their strategy series Nobunaga's Ambition to create Samurai Warriors. The second title in the series actually makes it worthwhile, but it's a lot of the same. While I don't mind that, it does kind of halt progress. Just a little.

God of War never really changed, and neither did Devil May Cry, but both series maintained a great deal of polish.



The Warriors - PS2 and XBox



A movie-based title also came out during the PS2 and XBox Generation, The Warriors. This was made by Rockstar, and it's more in a similar vein as Final Fight Streetwise, except the 3D world actually felt three-dimensional.  The game's structure is mission-based, but I personally found the content to be uninteresting.

Ninja Gaiden 2 - XBox 360



Ninja Gaiden took a turn for the worse with its sequel. This is more because of lazy design, which I really think is the recurring theme here.  The reason for this is because after the level design keeps getting more and more two-dimensional as you progress through the game, and parts of it begin to feel as lackluster as Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance - which is quite a condemnation.  To compensate, the designers made the game much more violent and gruesome.



Bayonetta - PS3, XBox 360

Bayonetta, by SEGA, seems to have scratched this itch for many gamers and was well received not only as a great game, but a breath of fresh air. Since its release, developers seem to have gotten the message that the brawler genre needs as much TLC as any other.



Warriors Orochi - PS2, PSP and XBox 360



The first case in point is Dynasty Warriors. Dynasty Warriors actually became even more shallow after the fifth game. This is because the combat system was horribly simplified as a pathetic attempt to shut reviewers up. Then, Koei put out three spin-offs – Warriors Orochi, Dynasty Warriors: Strike Force and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam.



Dynasty Warriors: Gundam - PS2, PS3 and XBox 360

 

Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce - PSP, PS3 and XBox 360



And if that didn't make matters worse, everyone was trying to clone Dynasty Warriors after the fifth one despite the critical panning. So, you have 99 Nights and its sequel, Sangoku Basara and its sequels (Japan only), Dead Rising and its sequels and spinoffs, Onechanbara and its sequels and finally, Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders, Heroes and Circle of Doom.



99 Nights - PS3, XBox 360



Sangoku Basara 2 - PS2, Wii




Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes - XBox





Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders - XBox



Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom - XBox 360



Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad - XBox 360

Dead Rising - XBox 360



Dynasty Warriors 7 - PS3, XBox 360

Some of these titles are good while others not so much. The quality of them is not the point so much as the fact that the market is flooded with a specific subgenre, and has been for quite some time. So much so that even Dynasty Warriors is starting to change; for instance, you are now able - and often required to use siege weapons, and the characters are now much more customisable.



Spikeout: Battle Street - XBox



About time, too. There are more brawlers in the same vein as Dynasty Warriors than there are like Ninja Gaiden. Heck, I think even a return to something like Double Dragon might be welcome as it would pull the genre in a slightly different direction. I do remember liking Spikeout: Battlestreet very much; it was pretty much what Double Dragon might be like if it were in 3D.



Bladestorm: The Hundred Year's War - PS3, XBox 360

Unfortunately, Spikeout was critically panned.  Maybe the critics themselves are trying to say something; in the pretensious world of video games being perceived as art, 32 year old genres have to put more effort into being seen.  And it isn't to say that there's no versatility when it comes to brawlers, because that's a cop-out. You can have all sorts of characters, there's dozens of existing martial systems, all sorts of different melée weapons and plenty of time periods to choose from.  In fact, Koei tried this (another critical failure, however) and placed a game during the Hundred-Years War.  The sky's not the limit here.

But I think Koei had it right. I mean, maybe that's what the genre needs – a new historical or fictional shot and the arm. It could be the Volsung Saga or it could be a whole new fantasy altogether. Heck, it could be based off of A Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time or Krondor. It could be a sci-fi property (a little risky, there, with the guns and all), or it could just be an urban brawl.



A Song of Ice and Fire Book 1



Wheel of Time Book 10



Artistic representation of the Volsung Saga




Krondor Riftwar Series Book 1



And I think I can safely say that we're still waiting for a proper River City Ransom sequel.

So Tecmo-Koei, Sega, Konami and Capcom:  Show us what you've really got.  We're tired of your old franchises and older ideas.  And to Bethesda, iD, Activision and EA - get into the game!. Koei clearly got it when they finally redesigned Dynasty Warriors.  You guys need to read the reviews to learn your technical mistakes and listen to your fans to figure out what's cool.  Then maybe you can come up with titles that do this genre justice again.