For the sake of familiarity I’ll use the best two examples today: Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain.  Rest assured those that have not played the game – this article has no spoilers save the fact that the main and supporting cast can permanently die.  The reality that some gamers may have avoided this fact in both games for fear of the all too popular spoilers that seem to infect today’s enthusiast press is, for the first time, a disservice to the resulting unprepared gamer.  In Mass Effect, you are able to import the Commander Shepard you finished the first title with, which already creates a connection to your character.  Then you are given tasks throughout the game that involve assembling a team, including optional loyalty missions for any comrades that not only give back story but build or sever confidence within your team.  Regardless of the gameplay aspects and decisions within these missions, the fact that you learn so much about NPCs and the connection you could potentially have to your own protagonist creates a sort of bond with these characters.  The idea of losing any of them is a stronger disappointment for any gamer, whether it’s because your team weakens, you lose all the effort put in to recruiting and becoming loyal to the character or for those that actually feel sympathy for their passing.

This is a new dynamic that I hadn’t really experienced in a form of such permanence in a game before.  Additionally it all comes to a head in the “suicide mission” that can have outcomes ranging from everyone getting out alive to the antithesis.  The gamer in you always wants to get the whole team out alive because, after all, that is the perfect outcome isn’t it?  And since it’s the ideal gamer outcome I could see many players upset with the reality of losing a character along the way, even if the reasoning is based on decisions or aspects you decided way before embarking on the mission.  I know some killer players out there and it ate away at them that they lost a team member or two.  When they discover that a gamer like myself, who tends to get their ass handed to them by these guys, made it out with my team completely intact.  Sure, you can return to your pre-suicide mission save and redo it again and again until you get the ideal outcome, but then that’s not how the developers intended you to play the game, is it?  Well you can play the game as you see fit, but for me, I wanted to take it as it comes and whatever happens is permanent and will continue over to my Mass Effect 3 campaign.

The point is, no matter how good at games you are, just like specially trained soldiers and individuals in real life, there are curve balls in the real world that you can’t always prepare for.  Maybe you just didn’t get to know your team as well as you would have liked and missed the fact that your perception of a person wasn’t their reality.  Instead of beating yourself up over losing a teammate, take comfort in the fact that most of your team got out alive.  Most players keep track of the teammate NPCs they really like enough that they rarely lose any of them, so at least you still have your core group.  Take it from anyone who’s played a Pokemon game, you don’t have to collect them all.  What was truly dynamic, though, was the fact that every decision I made within the game had me thinking in the background, “is being careless at this moment going to affect the lives of either myself, my teammates, or both?” and that is something I previously only found myself considering in real life.

Then there’s Heavy Rain.  In this game you play as four main protagonists that all have the potential to die within the plot.  When a character dies, the game continues without them, which I was skeptical of at first, but when you see how the game comes together it works rather nicely.  In direct contrast to Mass Effect 2, I had probably one of the worst “gamer” endings of all time: everyone died.  That didn’t stop me from getting to the end of the game, mind you, nor did it make me feel like I had a poor ending – I was very satisfied.  It was just one of the various potential outcomes that Heavy Rain provides and in my case, it was Hamlet all over again.  This is an even deeper touch on reality because life is not scripted and at any moment a person can step outside and have their life stolen from them for no reason at all.  Just like Mass Effect, this game also filled me with that fear that any wrong move could make me lose a character but unlike Mass Effect every character that died was under my control.  The sense of loss was more personal because like it not, I had complete control over whether that character lived or died and in every case my actions or lack of skill were responsible for my character dying.

Dying in video games has begun to take a shape of its own.  There are some web based browser games that register your IP and once you die, you’re dead.  When you return to the game you can actually view your lifeless corpse and there’s no way to replay the game (save obvious registry hacks), just like in real life.  Most other games like to live under the false reality that when you die, it’s a mere mistake and you return to the previous checkpoint which will eventually result in a cumulative “perfect run” of the game.  The niche group, games like Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain, deal with death in a more realistic and permanent light, resulting into a change in how I play video games and perceive the decisions I make within a game.  You can poke holes in the logic as much as you like – there is a formula to Mass Effect 2′s success rate and only during certain chapters of Heavy Rain can a character meet his or her demise – but without breaking down the syntax of the game both BioWare and Quantic Dream have done a commendable job in emulating the realities of death.  Here’s hoping more games work like this.  I’m not too pleased with the idea that I couldn’t save a single life in Heavy Rain, but thankfully it’s not attached to a trilogy so replaying the game requires, tops, 10 additional hours of my time (and we’re all screaming for replay value, right?).  In Mass Effect 2, preparation and calculation are required to succeed and a misstep here or there may cost you a crew member but won’t end in total annihilation like my Heavy Rain ending.  I like this new direction some games are taking and if a player steps back and enjoys the experience instead of just trying to “beat” it like every other video game.  After all, isn’t that the overall goal?

Spydersvenom

CLICK TO LISTEN

This week it’s Spydersvenom, Heffe, and I to talk about our week in gaming. I take the opportunity to declare my love for Sonic All Stars Racing and then go on a bit about Retro Sega Genesis stuff. Here are the rest of the deets:

• Topic: GDC ‘10 and February NPDs as well as the business perspective from Heffe on Infinity Ward and Activision
• News in 10 mins: release dates, Dice declares war on Infinity Ward, 2K defends on the disc DLC, and more
• GunHaver is playing Sonic’s All-Star Racing…and loving it!
• Heffe and Fred play the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and discuss
• Fred’s impressions of the Blur beta
• Heavy Rain impressions (spoiler free)

Check it out!

LISTEN NOW

The Video Game Purists were kind enough to let me host on their podcast this week. Heffe couldn’t make it this time so it’s just Fred [Spydersvenom] and I. We are aware that the VGP Live feed for itunes is messed up but Fred is working on it. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s fixed. Hit the jump to see the show summary:

Discussion Topic: Wii’s upcoming “hardcore gamer” line-up and whether it’s got a future or not.

News: New PSP?, Kojima’s Test, Release dates, Micheal Pachter can’t get a break, and more.

• BioShock 2 final impressions
• Gunhaver breaks his MW2 cherry – and in a tournament no less!
• Chime initial impressions
• Indigo Prophesy
• Alien vs. Predator
• Yakuza 3 demo

Check it!

Going into 2010, console gaming has crossed a new barrier as the medium continues to mature – nudity in games has become more commonplace.  Not only that, but the occurrences don’t seem to be as immature as we’re used to in gaming.  Sure, Saboteur’s breasts are exploitative and serve little if no purpose in the actual game, but the inclusion seems to be more about creating a vivid world than showing off some digitized breasts.  Heavy Rain released today and was only banned in one country for its heavy sexual content and nudity – which begs the question: is it possible games have matured to appropriately include sex?

?…

Some of the first movies containing references to sex and nudity like Urban Cowboy and Bonnie and Clyde were attacked by various morality groups.  Games suffered the same fate with attacks on Mass Effect for content it didn’t even have (Fox news story) and Grand Theft Auto for poorly removed sex games (link contains small screen shot/no nudity).  Since games fall under that shroud of being seen as a toy by older generations, the concept of sex and sexuality in them is also viewed from an adolescent perspective rather than an adult one. Many developers are to blame in most of these cases for handling sex and nudity as a young adolescent would.The kind of stuff that gets you labeled a pervert if a random person were to walk in.  On the other hand, other developers are clearly trying to overcome the stereotypes of past exploits and create a gaming experience for adults that my be a little harder to achieve .

Shameful Beginnings

Sex in games started off as a comedic taboo that found itself only on the shelves of collectors .  Custer’s Revenge is an excellent example of early sexual gaming (link contains adult content and nudity on an Atari 2600).  It’s crude, involves concepts that resemble rape, and all in all is just in extremely bad taste.  I can’t see most gamers having the slightest interest in the title, save to get together in a room and destroy all aspects in a Mystery Science Theater style afternoon (1up already did this in a hard to find episode of Dead Pixels).  Later on, the Leisure Suit Larry series would do the same with low brow humor, but at least it was self-aware of its immature nature.  For a brief moment, the Sega CD saw some adult situations with Japanese ported titles like Snatcher and Rise of the Dragon, but it was still a cold, lifeless portrayal of sexuality in a grungy future-scape.  One of the first games to get attacked for sexuality was Night Trap for the infamous “rape scene” (no nudity, no sex), which I still feel was more because it was full video and not in-engine graphics since this doesn’t look like rape, especially in context.  Given that all major console manufacturers – Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and later Microsoft – all took a stance that strongly attacked any form of nudity or sexual content, it’s no wonder we didn’t start seeing any real sexual situations until late in the Playstation (PSX) era with Fear Effect.  Even then it seemed to pull from all the wrong circumstances because it took place in a cyberpunk reality, it had no time for intimacy and the sex scene was a lesbian experience.  While it may seem like games were breaking barriers with one of the first homosexual experiences in gaming, it was more for the taboo and titilation associated with lesbian acts.  With these kinds of examples, it’s no wonder senators and parental groups wanted to target sex in games because it lacked the tact to handle the subject.

Rockstar Turns Up the Heat

The next significant jump with sex in gaming came with the introduction of Grand Theft Auto III.  For all the great things Rockstar did for sandbox gaming, its cartoon parody of the world today struck fear in every parent who got their eyes on it.  Violence has always been more accepted in American culture than sex (you’ll notice Rockstar’s Manhunt got far less attention and is a much easier target), so of course the biggest issue in GTA was sex related.  While the news media felt that executing cops and pedestrians in alleyways was business as usual, they took major issue with the concept that your character could hire and have sex with a prostitute.  The scene would involve you driving with her in your car to a dark location and then the car would bounce around and you would hear sounds suggesting sex.  In addition, the news just couldn’t help but mention that after the deed was done, you could then beat the prostitute to death and steal her money.  While I must admit this is a fierce and cruel act on all counts, it seems to pale in comparison to the carnage you can create in any GTA title.  The reveal of the aforementioned “hot coffee” mod, which allowed gamers to jump through various hoops to unlock a sex minigame that looked like two Barbie dolls going at it, got GTA: San Andreas re-rated and pulled from shelves along with a hefty lawsuit in Rockstar’s direction.  At the end of the day one has to ask both gamers and protesters alike if it was worth it.  After all the lawsuits and protests, it’s still on shelves today with little of the hated content removed.  It’s almost as if Rockstar completed the parody on contemporary America by releasing such a violent title and the only thing parents chose to attack were the sex jokes.

Moving Forward

Rockstar was basically the end of the golden era “sex as a joke” atmosphere in gaming and since then sex has found its way into various games for various reasons.  Some games try to take themselves seriously and have the player working on relationships with an NPC while others still prefer to make sex and women a collectible, like a health pack or special item.  Either way, it seems that in most video games fall back on the commodity model of sex*.

First, the easy one, women as a collectible.  For as great and fun as it is, God of War is still one of those games that I can’t tell whether the nudity in it is appropriate or not.  It may have something to do with the fact that having sex with women in the sequel’s minigame substitutes a bonus round in other games.  Either way, this seems like the concept of a seventeen-year-old and not a mature adult who wants to bring style and immersion to the game.  Kratos has no relationship with these women, they’re basically faceless and may all be the same character model, and having sex with them just grants him perks for gameplay.  This suggests that when you’re on an epic quest and the chips are down that having sex with some nameless, faceless woman is the key to success.  As a result the women are objectified and the act is trivialised because it serves no greater purpose than opening one of those colored chests in the game.  To think that opening a chest and having sex are equal is an immature concept and proves that some games are straying in the wrong direction.  I’m not quite sure how to feel about Saboteur in this context since all of its nudity comes from women in a burlesque house and therefore are objectified by the location they are in.  Additionally, the protagonist talks to them and greets them with charming remarks, but in the end they serve the soul purpose of seeing naked breasts in a virtual strip show.  I guess it’s more like reality in that regard – you go to a specific place for a specific reason and everyone involved knows the score.

On the other hand, Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit for those in Europe), developed by Quantic Dream (who also made Heavy Rain), tackled love and intimacy and sex in a realistic fashion.  It was full of relationships beginning, ending, and trying to maintain, which in most adult lives also involves sex.  While there is a degree of sex and nudity in the game’s US release, a scene involving two characters making love was cut to prevent issues with American audiences.  You can see from the scene (warning: nudity and sex involved) that it is more mature than games that came before it, but it is done tastefully and with the same degree of care as the PG-13 sex scene in Titanic.  Not for nothing, but Indigo Prophecy was rated M for sexual situations so I don’t really understand why Quantic Dream pulled the scene.  I am willing to bet it had something to do with conversations from publishers or console manufacturers.  In this title sex is just another part of the story, some will find themselves going down that path and others will not, but there is no gaming benefit or hinderance to sex.  Quantic Dream’s titles appear to be alone in this type of maturity towards sex simply because they don’t really make games but rather interactive stories with gaming elements.  Most games still fall under that grey area that Mass Effect found itself in during all the Fox News controvery.

The aforementioned commodity of sex becomes a great issue in most games to date.  It may not be as blatant as it was in God of War, but there’s no question that having sex in most games comes with its own sense of prize.  It may be true that you are developing a long term relationship in Mass Effect and that the final step to this intimacy is sex, but it gets tarnished by the fact that an achievement unlocks.  Is sex supposed to be an achievement?  An even greater question would be to ask gamers if they are developing these relationships for the well being of their main character or for the sake of having sex as a final reward.  This holds as great a truth with young adults growing up in the real world as it does with fictional characters and NPCs in the gaming world.  I can’t think of many games since the whole achievement/trophy concept came about where you don’t get some unlock or bonus from having sex (unless it’s in Heavy Rain, which I have yet to complete).  It’s possible that perhaps we’re not ready for this just yet in gaming and that achievements for sex is the first step.  I will admit myself that I had sex in the second Mass Effect for the achievement (not to see the sex scene but to increase the gamer score) and I would have never kissed a boy in Bully had it not been for the points.

Aside from this concept of sex as a prize, there’s also the issue of how games portray human relationships.  While I must admit I can’t think of a better way myself, is getting the correct conversation trees in a BioWare game or giving your partner enough presents in Fable II really the way we want to reflect relationships?  Real people don’t interact that way and while I have a good idea of what to say to my wife to generate a specific response, there are all types of variables that can affect the outcome.  Maybe that pickup line she found so charming in the past isn’t so charming today because some random guy used it on her at the bank.  Games should include variables to calibrate for this reality otherwise a gamer may feel like a partner is a formula they need to discover or God forbid “beat”.  The Darkness had one of the best moments for true human interaction that I’ve ever seen when you simply sit there and hold your girlfriend while the two of you watch television, that’s reality.  The timing of sexual situations comes into question as well.  My Shepard in Mass Effect flirted for an obscene amount of time and chose the just before a major event to want to get hot and heavy.  Just before a critical mission may not be the best time or circumstance to deal with all these emotions and sexual feelings you’ve had bottled up.  In Metal Gear Solid 3 when Snake and Eva have sex it’s completely appropriate for the moment and helps to explain the relationship they’ve developed, as one could argue also happens in both major BioWare titles.  In Dante’s Inferno sex is used in a number of situations to enhance the concept of tarnished purity and even made me whince once or twice when I thought about the circumstance.

There will always be games that objectify women and are designed and programmed for that purpose.  Dead or Alive: Paradise is all about watching scantily clad women run around and doesn’t make any apologies for it.  I feel there’s just as valid a place for a game like this as there is for Heavy Rain provided that they all fall under the same guidelines.  Sex and nudity still need to develop within video games to prevent this concept of reward because sex should be a demonstration of intimacy rather than a prize to be won.  Thankfully the fear and controversy surrounding sex and nudity in video games seems to have tapered off despite the onslaught of sexual situations in recent titles.  In the meantime, try to be conciencious of some things when you come across a sex scene in a game – why did the developer choose to include it, does it make a reward out of sex, and is it portraying realistic intimacy?  Sex is a part of life and should not be disregarded by any mainstream medium, including video games.  At this point I’m just thankful that we’ve come a long way since Custer’s Revenge and that I can finally play a game like Heavy Rain without pretending that everyone in society is asexual.

*The concept of the commodity model of sex comes in part from a great article on Game Critic

Spydersvenom

Part 1: The Man Cave

The man cave is designed specifically to be a location without barriers for the hardcore male gamer. My man cave comes equipped with a 55″ Sony Bravia 1080p LCD TV (that does support 3D gaming and 24 frames per second for blu-rays), a Yamaha 5.1 surround sound system that supports Pro-Logic 2, Dolby Digital, and DTS, a 1080p upconversion DVD player, a Playstation 3 (60 GB fully backwards compatible model), and a Falcon chip Xbox 360 (the one with an HDMI port). Hardware aside, the carpets of my man cave can withstand the toughest stain-inducing food and drink (such as an IPA beer and lasagna dinner) as well as a sectional complete with ottoman and chaise end that comfortably seats at least four. To complete my collection I have added framed posters from the movie The Boondock Saints, the metal band Iron Maiden and even a framed oil print of the video game “American McGee’s Alice”.



Part 2: The Party Room



My living room is located on the main floor and not only does it do a good job of staying warm in the winter, but it is the most common place you will find my wife and friends when they visit. For this reason I have integrated a 42″ 1080p Insignia LCD television, a second PS3 (this model is the 120 gb slim model that is mostly used as a blu-ray player), and of course the faithful Wii. How many nights have I spent playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii with a group of friends over a roaring fire (see directly to the left of this setup).

Part 3: Bedroom

When everyone else has gone to sleep and you just don’t have the time or patience to start up a hefty current generation game, there’s always room for the bedroom setup. A simple Sanyo 32″ 720p LCD TV, upscale DVD player (complete with the entire run of the 80s animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the drawer below), a Panasonic 3DO (with an embarrassingly large library of games in its drawer), and a classic Frankenconsole (not pictured) consisting of the Sega Genesis, Sega CD, and Sega 32X and you have all the old school early 90s full motion video gaming you could possibly want. PS: my wife hates that these consoles are in the bedroom.

Part 4: The PC

I’m not a huge PC gamer myself, but I am a hardcore retro gamer. Therefore, my PC, while it may not seem like much, comes equipped with a MAME emulator, frontend GUI interface, a cascade of arcade titles, and tons of independent and free games, what more could you ask for? This PC is mostly for my writing projects and business transactions (as proof from the bills scattered around), but I always enjoy picking up my Street Fighter II fighting stick and rocking through the first few levels of Final Fight every now and again.

So that’s the type of gaming setups I have in my house (save for the odd PSP rig in my nightstand) and what I enjoy most of my titles on. If you see me online rocking away at Uncharted 2 or Modern Warfare 2, you can pretty much bet I’m doing it in the Man Cave with a space heater keeping me going. What about all of you? What is the one thing your gaming rig/man cave requires?

Spydersvenom

In the words of Say Anything‘s Max Bemis,

“Whatever ‘genre’ or music one loves needs a defense, because half the world is too ignorant to really understand something before they dismiss it.”

Bemis is the sort of mad genius that I can’t help but love, literally spending as much time in mental health treatment as he did touring his band’s first album. I imagine him to be the kind of person compelled to make real-world observations devoid of candy coated treatment [To get a taste of his uncanny ability to cut through the bullshit, I recommend giving the song "Admit It" a listen]. The singer was speaking about his experience as a musician in an indie rock band, but the revelation of his statement rings true for just about any art-form or endeavor.

I don’t often defend video gaming to people who shoehorn it into the same category as toys for children or mindless toil. But I see it no differently than great film or classic works of fiction in terms of it’s potential to move someone emotionally or to stimulate the mind. Are such creations of human expression a waste of time? Of course not. But honestly the debate is usually a waste of energy. Most people like that are too stuck in mental patterns of denialism, so set in their ways psychologically. Fear often prevents them from accepting ideas that are alien to how they have fostered their own view of the outside world. But occasionally I’ll run into something that makes an incredibly viable argument in favor of the medium, something really worth highlighting.

The other night I happened upon an article in WIRED magazine that took a strikingly positive stance for modern-day gaming. It was titled Game Changer MMX – How videogames trained a generation of pro athletes to play a whole different kind of football. It’s not the typical “Boy Goes on Killing Spree after Playing Call of Duty” type of headline that gets all the attention from the media these days. It’s good to see such coverage from a such a large publication, although the golden nugget was tucked away toward the end of the mag. I’m not into football or any sports games for that matter, but the piece transcends football. It’s really about how technology is changing the way people live and perform in the real world, making us better. I found it downright fascinating. The following is an excerpt from that article written by Chris Suellentrop:

It was only a matter of time before the generation that grew up playing Madden and games like it transformed the gridiron. For years, the sophisticated play of professional teams trickled down to their college and high school counterparts. Recently, that flow has been reversed. Now the way football is played in high school and college – a style dominated by the so-called spread offense, which involves a lot of passing and relies on quick reads by the quarterback to analyze the opposing team’s defense – is bubbling up to the NFL. The sport is being taken over by something you might call Maddenball – a sophisticated, high-scoring , pass-happy, youth-driven phenomenon.

“These games nowadays are just so technically sound that they’re a learning tool,” says Tim Grunhard, an All-Pro center for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1990s who now coaches high school football in the Kansas City area, where he encourages his players to use Madden to improve their knowledge of football strategy and tactics. “Back when I was playing football, we didn’t realize what a near or a far formation was, we didn’t really understand what trips meant, we didn’t understand what cover 2, cover 3, and cover zero meant,” Grunhard says, charging through jargon that’s comprehensible only to Madden players and football obsessives.

These days, Grunhard says, high school players have a much deeper understanding of offensive formations and defensive coverages, a development he attributes to their long hours on videogame consoles. “It just seemed to help out,” he says. “The kids understood where the counter play or power play was going to open up. Or the middle linebacker lining up for a blitz-where the gaps were going to open up.”

No wonder younger quarterbacks are finding more and more success at the college and professional levels. This season, a 19-year old freshman started for USC, a perennial Pac-10 power. In the NFL, rookie quarterbacks are entering the league and excelling immediately at an unprecedented rate (think of the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, the Falcons’ Matt Ryan, and Raven’s’ Joe Flacco). In decades past, young passers sat on the bench for a year or two while they mastered reading NFL defenses. Now, having learned to differentiate between zone and man-to-man coverage over the course of years on their Xboxes and Playstations, the rookies are less in need of such apprenticeship.

It’s one thing to suggest that videogames may be making us smarter. It’s another thing altogether to say they might be making us better athletes. But when you add it up, the evidence starts to look pretty overwhelming. At the Pop Warner Super Blow in 2006, the winning team had 30 offensive plays, which it had learned through Madden. (“I programmed our offense into Madden to help me memorize our plays,” one 11-year-old told Sports Illustrated. “It was easier than homework.”) Dezmon Briscoe, an all-conference wide receiver for the University of Kansas, credited Madden 2009 with teaching him how to read when defenses “roll their coverages” -move their defensive backs to disguise their strategy. Chuck Kyle, a high school coach who has won 10 state championships in football-mad Ohio, has programmed his team USA playbook into Madden and uses it to teach players their assignments. So have coaches at Colorado State, Penn State, and the University of Missouri, among other schools. An offensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers used the video game as a preparation tool for an entire season, scouting his opponents digitally. While even-more-sophisticated software is available for virtual sports training, coaches and players at all levels of football say that Madden’s off-the-shelf simulation is good enough.

Read the full article in the February issue of WIRED or catch it on their website HERE.

gunhaver

______________________________

Sega announced recently that they will be returning to the Sonic franchise yet again, but instead of creating such illustrious mechanics as the werehog, they will be opting for a return to form.  In short: Sonic is returning to the 2D side scrolling speed platformer it used to be.  This is just another in a long trend of bringing the past back to the present in modern day gaming.  While the business plan makes sense and you would think that those of us who grew up in the Nintendo generation would leap head over heels for the opportunity to re-create the glory days, the response seems pretty clear that retro is out.  If you own the Wii, the previous statement probably sounds to you like an absurd claim with the success of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and even last year’s download release of Mega Man 9, but after closer analysis it all comes to a head very fast.  There’s no denying the success and money made from these titles. But this formula is specific to the circumstances surrounding their release and therefore cannot be applied to all types of games.

What is Retro?

____________

Retro basically refers to any game from gaming’s past (I think these days all things 5 years old or more counts, but it may now refer to anything outside the current console cycle) and now occasionally refers to games that try to emulate the feel of previous titles.  Back then games had a different feel to them altogether.  Stories weren’t fleshed out through vivid cutscenes or endless dialogue you could listen to, it would come in the form of a single sentence or endless paragraphs of text.  Putting Dragon Quest together would be like reading a 200 page book and Ninja Gaiden could tell a dynamic story of love and betrayal in five meager lines delivered before each level.

These games were unforgiving, many of them you would never beat.  I feel that today’s gamers quickly pass on titles they know they probably can’t complete and developers these days calibrate difficulties to ensure that anyone who wants to can celebrate a game’s ending.  In the 8-bit and 16-bit era you may never know what that final line that Gannon spouts in Zelda 2 was.  If your buddy claimed to have beaten Castlevania last night around midnight (you always beat the tough ones late at night and alone), unless you had achieved the same and knew the details of the ending , you just had to trust them.  Lives were limited, health didn’t regenerate, and the world was filled with a cascade of endless pits that caused instant death.  There were no checkpoints and rarely was there even a save function, to beat the game required you to do it in a single playthrough without mistakes.  Imagine if the only way to beat Modern Warfare 2 was to burn through it in one life – on Hardened or Veteran – it would be impossible to get those that rocked through these campaigns to keep trying.  That was another thing that was different back in the day, you didn’t have many games to pick from.

On Christmas morning in 1991 I received A Nightmare on Elm Street for the NES and the only one to blame for that horrid mess was myself as I had requested it.  There was no way to demo or rent a game before you bought it.  I was constrained to simply judging based on the box which most times was a drastic difference to the actual functioning game.  This game was hard and it was bad, but I still cranked at least 10 hours into it because I had no other choice.  It was my new game and I could either keep playing it over and over again no matter how many times I lost or be forced to go downstairs and spend time with my family.  Even after finally beating the game and feeling like a god at the tender age of 9, the ending sucked and I had to come to the conclusion that maybe I need to start reading reviews in EGM before making next year’s Christmas list.

Modern Day Retro

These days there’s no lack of titles.  The library expands at an exponential rate over three competing consoles, a handful of portable options, and PCs to boot.  If for any reason you don’t want this week’s newest title you can go back and play the various gems you’ve missed out on over the years or even download classic and modern games for minimal prices.  I still have Nightmare in my collection and can boot it up any time, but when compared to my other options there’s honestly no way this title will be powered into my console when I have Mass Effect 2 or even Peggle to choose from.  As a result, while even the best of gaming’s past brings a familiar smile to the faces of nostalgic gamers, it’s all lost in the shuffle.  I remember watching the release list of games on the Wii each week and going crazy over some of the titles that have been brought back.  Without question I grabbed my credit card and proceeded to drop over $20 on classic greats like Blaster Master and Super Castlevania IV, setting aside an entire afternoon to relive the past.  Something had changed though.  The games were the same, I remember little quirks like glitches and codes even being intact, but it wasn’t quite the gaming bliss I had hoped for.  I started to wonder if my tolerance was lower.  Sure, I hate dying like everybody else, but I took on the brutal Mega Man 9, dying again and again to the point my wife had to ask if I was having any fun, and finally managed to overcome.  It was just that I had already played this game before and all the little flaws that have been overcome in modern day gaming seemed to reveal themselves much easier and command my attention.  I started craving a new experience and caught myself looking over at my Wii collection and considering finishing up House of the Dead Overkill or finally starting up Deadly Creatures.  This immediately gave way to me thinking about the fact I hadn’t started Resistance 2 and that I always did want to try Shadow Complex and before long I couldn’t concentrate on the sub par titles I had chosen from my past.

It’s not always about options, though, since a new retro experience can be found just about everywhere if you crave new content.  Additionally, I sometimes do want to escape the conventions of contemporary gaming and just get back to a good old fashioned 20 minute session with a round of “jump the pit” (which is my generic title for platformers).  For these urges I have games from the recent ReBirth series on WiiWare or a plethora of games like Retro Games Challenge or the pseudo classic Dark Void Zero on DSiWare (now starring Jimmy Fallon!).  Unfortunately when I do choose and load these games I am now faced with a new problem, they just don’t feel right.  With technology being what it is, games today can walk, talk and act like their counterparts of years passed but because these level designers aren’t used to the restrictions of classic gaming, it all falls apart.  This is the consistent criticism the open-minded have questioned in regard to Sonic 4.   Will the levels be able to hold up like the original in terms of where you go and what you do?  The biggest reason for Mega Man 9‘s success hangs largely in the fact that it not only looks like a Mega Man title but that the level designers that made levels in the previous games returned to create new levels.  On the flip side, Dark Void Zero looks like an NES title and even brings the control conventions and difficulty of a classic game, but the first level (the only one I’ve played) is minuscule and poorly designed.  This is the quickest way to tell that you’re playing a game from today’s developers that’s intended to trick you into thinking it’s a title from yesteryear.

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Shadow Complex - Metroidvania revivalism

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I must admit that not everyone is going to agree that replaying any game from the past is going to have that “I’ve already played this” feel and most people enjoy simply playing these games for face value.  Enter the software collection.  Over the years plenty of software developers and publishers have done this to attempt to make modern day money on retro gaming.  Today you can pick up Sega’s greatest hits on the cheap and there’s always random revivals that bring us classic games we haven’t seen on US shores.  Only Nintendo refuses to release large collections on a single game (Animal Crossing‘s 30 NES game library aside) so we always feel like we’ve gotten some incredible bonus when we see Super Mario Bros 2 or Pilotwings for only $5 or $8, but when compared to Sonic’s 49 game collection for $30 the game: price ratio is horrible.  So what’s better: a la cart or in a collection?

I was unable to find the sales figures for most of these games, probably because I don’t pay for a membership with the NPDs, and they have never made the top 10 in software sales so it never comes up on the free data.  This should prove my point from the get-go.  If you can’t even find yourself in the top 10, especially on months like February (release date of Sonic’s Collection)where it doesn’t take nearly as many sales to jump into the top 10, gamers are sending you a very clear message (review scores were very positive on the title).  My guess is that gamers don’t like the idea of such a large collection, even at the lower price of $30, and when you get so many games at once, figuring out what to play can be overwhelming.  As a result, you get the same issue I talked about before but solely with retro games: you can’t pick which one to play because you’re too tempted to play others.  You start up Streets of Rage 2 and while it looks and plays well, you can’t help but wonder if Sonic 3 is really what you should play or if you should finally try to conquer Dr. Robotnic’s Mean Bean Machine.  I had this same problem with last generation’s Mega Man Collection because I hadn’t played Mega Man 5 & 6 but couldn’t wait to re-tackle 2 & 3.  A la cart it is then.

The issue there is now these retro games are taking on modern games that have better and more thought out level design from independent and top publishers.  Can Gunstar Heroes go up against Braid and Shadow Complex at a similar price point and hope to get the higher sales?  What about on Wii where you can get Contra ReBirth for only two dollars more?  It just seems like the weaker of the pricing points.  In addition, Mega Man 9, the only game to really take on the retro theme and net some significant change was a ground up developmental undertaking.  Even MM9 only moved about 100,000-200,000 downloads, which is impressive from a DLC standpoint but wouldn’t even keep a publishing deal with Microsoft or Sony as a retail release.

Retro Woes: What will happen?

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Next month Capcom will release Mega Man 10, the follow-up to an amazing retro revival that received both critical and financial success.  I’m sure Capcom expects it to be huge for them and gamers on forums have already started blowing up the hype machine with both praise and malcontent for a game probably less than half of these posters will actually purchase.  It’s my belief that MM9 was a fluke because no one had seen a completely remade game that looks, plays and feels like a classic NES title all while keeping up with the important things like great level design and a license we all love.  The wind has now been taken out of the sails of that achievement and I don’t think MM10 will perform like 9, especially because many gamers picked up the previous title and never touched it due to the high difficulty or other gaming options.  As a retro gamer (I know this article may seem a little jaded) I want nothing more than for retro to succeed so I would love to see MM10 have the same or better success than MM9 and even hope to see Sonic 4 looking and playing wonderfully.  If MM10 doesn’t impress in the sales category, it just proves that as more games from the past become accessible, more people will ignore them – Game Room I’m looking at you.

Spydersvenom

For some of you out there, I need no introduction.  You know me either as Fred Rojas from the Video Game Purists podcast or as “spydersvenom”, the fun loving gamer that has blessed the communities of Video Game Outsiders, That Gaming Site, EZ Mode Unlocked, and various others.  As of late, I find myself getting more and more involved in the video game industry down to receiving review copies of games and writing paid reviews.  It’s for this reason that I need a location, a bat cave if you will, to spout all the clutter that occupies my brain while I’m trying to focus on the acute details of a video game worth mentioning in a review.  There were many places I was trying to scour on the Internet to call my open-minded home and while I was frantically trying to narrow it down, in swooped Gunhaver to invite me to write for his insightful blog, The Gun Control.  I couldn’t ask for a better home.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with me, I’m going to give this first post to a brief introduction followed by some photos and details of my multiple gaming rigs scattered throughout my house.  You can expect more thought-provoking and less meglomaniacal (pretty sure this is a word, regardless of spell check) entries in the very near future.

Continue for my Bio

My name is Fred Rojas and since the day I opened that big box under the Christmas tree at the age of seven to reveal a Nintendo Entertainment System, I’ve been in love with video games.  Throughout the years I found a focus in the realm of writing, but even then I felt that writing about video games would be a pipe dream that would fizzle.  After graduating from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, I set out to reach my ultimate goal of being a video game reviewer/journalist.  While I was on this journey, two funny things happened: my ideals of actually writing about games changed and I fell in love.  Thanks to these two events I now write about games from a more philosophic and intellectual level rather than attempting to write for publications and web sites that would require me to relocate from my current home of Kansas City.  Aside from personal politics, the fact that my wonderful wife has no interest in living on the west coast helps me feel content writing in the freelance world while also maintaining my ideal family life.

Note: The text below is very clickable! Links are used as backups for arguments and for hidden jokes. There are NO adds here! _____

With the somewhat recent conclusion of this year’s CES, or Consumer Electronics Show for the uninitiated, I have been confronted with arguments about the technical direction of modern gaming. What is the next big thing? How can the industry widen their audience and what will be the catalyst for the next wave of innovation? By and large, games have reached such a high level of visual fidelity that developers are looking to new tech to differentiate themselves from the crowd*. CES is for the unveiling of up and coming consumer electronics in general, but it has significant implications for the console gaming market in 2010. The major players have already placed their bets firmly on the gospel of motion control and the (much loftier) push for 3D. Motion control has certainly legitimized itself with the unrivaled success of Nintendo’s Wii. And in parallel fashion, Hollywood has convinced the mainstream to consider 3D again with the likes of James Cameron’s Avatar. So the games industry feels like it’s making a solid bet in a most serene future of motion control and 3D.

What is the next big thing?

But there are red flags. Since the start of development projects mainly by Microsoft and Sony (It’s safe to assume that these arriving technologies have been a year or two in the making), there has been a gradual turning of the tides in the console market. Recent signs of a growing resistance to all those “me too” companies scrounging to throw out products into the skyrocketing casual market have been surfacing. Embarrassing failures such as Tony Hawk Ride and DJ Hero, which just a couple years ago would have been shoe in successes, are re-confirmation that consumers aren’t as open for A. More accessories and B. Accurate physical motion control as they used to be. Large investment in the casual sphere is now proving itself to come with a good bit of risk. You see, the casual gamer is quite a fickle creature. Joe and Jane Casual game player were more than willing to entertain their curiosities about the Wii but recent economic realities found them cutting back such mere curiosities. According to Micheal Pachter, Entertainment market analyst turned stilted faux-celebrity, 2009 was the year that the music gamer and the casual gamer abandoned the industry. And as an aside, there is much more competition for the casual game player’s dollar today than there ever was in 2006 when the Wii was launched. Since then we’ve seen the arrival of the iphone and app store along with facebook evolving as its own casual gaming platform. Game publishing companies are facing a different retail landscape than that of a mere 2 years ago. Of course the core gamer saw through the shallow Casual bubble all along. They stayed true and purchased the titles they loved at the same steady pace they always have, regardless of economic booms and busts.

Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft can’t help but see the runaway success of a pop culture phenomenon like the Wii and salivate at the chance of taking a slice of the casual flavored pie. And who can really blame them? Nintendo hardware and software dominated the 2009 holiday season handily. It didn’t even break a sweat. They rode the continuing momentum of their recent price drop and released Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and New Super Mario Bros. Wii which, arguably, are hardly revolutionary but command their own respective legions of super fans. The Nintendo Wii and DS hanheld each outsold Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 more than 3 to 1 in that same span of time. It-prints-money memes aside, there are very sizable sums of cash to be generated in capturing the imagination of the casual gamer. We’re talking the equivalent of the GDP of Tanzania sums of money here**.

Moving on from the unsettled state of the games industry we have its darling saviors-to-be: Motion control and 3D. I paired these two gimmicks er… “technologies” together for a reason. I have a knee jerk eye-roll reaction whenever I hear either mentioned by companies concerning future products. I find myself rather irritated by the two ideas actually. For one, I know that they won’t make future games any more enjoyable and I will most likely seek to circumvent them. And secondly, I know that adding such features will potentially increase development costs and likelihood of delays (I have suspicions that the recent GT5 delay had something to do with 3D implementation). Mario Kart Wii, Animal Crossing, My Life as a King – All games (I own) that I could play with motion control but I choose not to. And that spiffy plastic wheel for racing games? Still sitting pretty in its original box. From my own personal experience, motion control and 3D have had very little impact on how I enjoy modern entertainment.

How can the industry widen their audience and what will be the catalyst for the next wave of innovation?

Looking at Microsoft specifically, we have Project Natal [Pictured here] which uses a clever camera to track  movements with (claimed) stunning precision to be displayed on screen. The technology was developed by an Israel firm (3DV Systems) which was allegedly rejected by Nintendo in late 2007 in favor of the more cost effective Wiimotes with Infrared tracking. But that was 2 years ago. Microsoft thinks it can bring the product to market at a lower cost to the consumer, knowing full well that nothing will kill Natal faster than a high cost of entry. They are so enthusiastic about the tech that it wouldn’t be surprising if they even took a slight loss on each unit. Due to these constraints, deep cuts have taken in design of the device in order to keep costs under control. For instance: the motion camera is not wireless. It plugs into the USB port of the 360 console. Also, the processor has been removed from the Natal device proper, so now it shares the 360′s processing power with the games that will use it. A lot of effort has gone into tweaking Natal to be as little of a CPU power drag as possible (Word on the street says they have it down to %15). Despite the feature strip down, there is a lot of promise from the development team. The system boasts voice/face recognition with the alleged ability to receive voice commands.

The concept of any motion tracking add-on gives off a bit of a mid-nineties Sega vibe. An incremental improvement on proven success as apposed to a full fledged new product upgrade has proven fruitless time and again in history. Such previous missteps include add-ons like the 32X and Sega CD attachments (Mega Drive/Mega CD in the UK) for the Sega Genesis. We all know how unsuccessful that was for them and their compartmentalized console gamers now lovingly refer to as the “Franken Console”***. There was also the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pack that suffered a similar but not as harsh fate. The problem that Sega faced back in its hardware days was the fragmentation of its market. Microsoft will be taking on a similar batch of challenges. You see, things like the 32X weren’t strongly supported by game developers because only a fraction of Genesis owners had a Genesis AND a 32X. Why cater to that fraction of Sega fans when you can sell your game to all base Genesis players? Now Microsoft intends to package Natal with all future 360 SKUs, a valiant attempt. But the fundamental problem, again, is that Xbox 360 hasn’t had the Natal attachment from day one. Therefore there is already an install base of millions of 360 owners without the attachment. These people will in turn have to be sold on the idea that they want to go out and acquire the Natal hardware for whatever they plan on charging for it. That has to be done with compelling software… software that will make less money than other 360 games. Not a very convincing argument for attracting top shelf video game development studios.

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Undeterred, Microsoft has managed to queue up a batch of titles for Natal to be unveiled hand in hand with its release. The flagship super-game will most certainly be Lionhead Studios’ Fable III, headed up by Peter Molyneux who is rather famous for his grand visions. He is also famous for falling spectacularly short in actual execution. There will be other genres as well. Will we see the obligatory get the kids off of the couch mini game compilations? Yes. Will we see the pseudo fitness and yoga regimens. Yes and yes. Could it serve as a watchful eye in the kitchen to scrutinize your Boeuf Bourguignon cooking skills? I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility. How about the retrofitting of motion control to previous game blockbusters and use in future core gaming releases? Heck no. Now I will admit that the notion of augmenting traditional control gameplay with real life gestures for such things as triggering your melee or grenade throwing actions or what have you. This seems more likely, but will (and must) remain entirely optional to the player. Taking the processing chip out of the Natal peripheral (yes it is a “peripheral” and not a new console which Microsoft would have you believe. Microsoft, I love you but you ain’t foolin’ nobody) will be its saving grace but could be an Achilles heal in the long run. Doing so handicaps the games that will integrate Natal in that they will be losing processing power. So the biggest releases like your Call of Dutys or Gears of War probably won’t be able to afford the CPU cuts to integrate it.  These games won’t have the graphical edge or push the limits of the console. Therefore, Natal games will more likely  be in a class or genre of their own potentially limiting the product’s appeal to the soccer mom and kids crowd and not its core 18 to 34 old male audience. But why would that soccer mom audience leave their Nintendo Wii that they are perfectly happy with? Why will they go out and conver to the Natal system for a very similar experience to what they already have? Oh the times we could have, future Natal Kitchen Pillsbury baking trainer.

By the way, here’s an anecdote: Remember the 360 Vision Cam? I bought it. I used it exactly once. That cell phone camera wired to my 360′s USB port was used to snap a low res shot of my face to put on my driver’s license in Burnout Paradise. Take from that what you will, I’m not going to draw any conclusions for you.

Sony hasn’t marketed its motion control scheme as aggressively as its rival. Other than giving the thing an official name, the Sony “Arc” controller, there’s not much to report since it’s unveiling at E3 last Summer. They seem to be laying low while the Xbox crowd is making all the noise. Sony is taking a more Nintendo approach in that it is planning an in-hand motion device with 1:1 motion tracking. It seems rather likely that they will pack in the Arc controller with whatever flagship software is sold for its debut a la Motion Plus adapter and Wii Sports Resort. Although, the exact method of tracking is a little fuzzy, incorporating in-hand controller movement mixed with Sony’s already existing “Eye Toy” camera seems a bit more engaging than Microsoft’s controllerless vision. Holding something with buttons is inherently more game-like. Along with the Arc name confirmation, Sony recently announced that they plan on releasing around 10 titles to coincide with the launch of their motion controlling device.

Need a refresher on the motion control E3 presentations?Cnet has a nice recap of the events with video highlights HERE. I recommend watching the Microsoft showing with the lethargic orange suited presenter sporting oversized women’s sunglasses. Even the Sony presentation is worth watching just to catch the ill prepared engineering team painfully stumble through their demo obviously thrown together late the night before.

Enough with motion control, let’s talk about that sweet sweet 3D! The notion of 3D is quite alluring. Going to a local Imax theater and experiencing a 3D film is pretty neat. The immersion of such a gargantuan visual production is enhanced by an increase in perceived depth, especially for something that has been designed as a 3D production from the get go. And now the entertainment industry is rolling out immersive 3-dimensional interaction for the living room! I don’t blame people for getting excited about this one. But when you get down to brass tacks, the 3D sales pitch gets a bit more messy. There is an array of fundamental problems inherent in 3D technology.

“It’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a whole lot of money spent shoving 3D down our throats and some of this other stuff whether it works or not.”

Issue number one is that applying a 3D effect to visual media universally degrades image quality (this is especially true for gaming which I’ll get to in a second). Scott Wilkinson (writer for ultimateavmag.com and hometheatermag.com) made this same observation in his recent Home Theater Geeks podcast live from CES to his dismay.  I don’t claim to be an expert on 3D display technology, but I am an unrestrained technology/gadget geek so I’ve picked up a fair amount of information entertaining my own curiosities. On a basic level, the 3D “effect” requires separation of the viewer’s eyes and presenting each one an image from a slightly different angle. This mimicks the way your eyes function in the real world. Your own two eyes relay separate viewing information to your brain and it perceives depth by comparing information from two sources.  This of course was discovered in the early 1900′s and is nothing new really. Ever see an antique stereoscope 3D viewer? Theoretically, you could just run a sheet of plywood from your face to the center of your high definition television set. This of course is highly impractical, so we are required to settle for using the next best thing. We are talking 3D glasses. The term “goggles” would also be appropriate in this context. You see, modern design of the face adorning contraptions is downright hideous and unwieldy. Their task is to ensure that each eye is seeing the right separate image at the right time. Whether using polarized lens technology (which MUST employ a tint to work properly) or some type of LCD shutter technology that quickly flips the lens open and closed for each eye (this requires a separate signal emitting device attached to your television which keeps the lenses of the glasses in-sinc with what’s happening on screen). Not only are these devices rather hideous looking and obtrusive, but they have quite a bit of heft due to the fact that they often require batteries and employ some sort of one-size-fits-none strategy. Inconvenience and cost are two giant hurdles to overcome when trying to sell anything. Especially to someone who is already content watching their favorite movies and games in HD. It’s a lot of effort for a relatively minor improvement.

I must make a distinction before carrying on by noting that Sony is actually the only console gaming manufacture 100% on board for 3D graphics implementation. In a Sony press release last November, they announced plans to release a 3D enabling firmware update within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011. Microsoft’s Xbox Director of Product Management, Aaron Greenberg, stated at CES that ““I think there’s a lot of questions, to be honest. 3D is great in the theater, but for the living room? I think we’re a long ways away from that.” He went on to say: “If the consumers want it? Fine… In the theater there’s nothing between you and the experience, but as you have other people in the room and other people walking by, well, it’s not the same experience.” And as far as Nintendo goes, they wouldn’t touch 3D with a ten foot pole. Nintendo’s big boss Man Iwata made even more condemning remarks saying, “I have doubts whether people will be wearing glasses to play games at home. How is that going to look to other people?”. Iwata went on further into the need to look into the “possible health effects” of playing games in 3D for prolonged periods of time (I guess “health effects” became a concern to the company about the time of the Virtual Boy release). Greenberg’s assessment cuts to the kwick of 3D’s shortcomings. To the “passersby” 3D images are nothing but a blur, only revealing their true quality to the glasses wearer. This creates a very isolating experience to the user and lacks the appeal to draw in interest from casual observers. This is the exact opposite of what gaming companies want.

Some of the most telling evidence concerning the modern state of 3D is in some of the comments of the Game Informer team that actually spent time on the CES show floor. Matt Bertz and Nick Ahrens share some of their observations in episode 13 of the Game Informer podcast (37 minute mark):

“It’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a whole lot of money spent shoving 3D down our throats and some of this other stuff whether it works or not. And really, the sentiment on the show floor was ‘eh… dunno.’ I don’t think I talked to one journalist or even another person working in a booth that was like, ‘Holy crap did you see that 3D stuff! It’s Amazing!’ We even talked to some PR from the companies that were even pitching this stuff and they weren’t all that excited about it and that’s not a good sign.”

-Game Informer podcast crew

From a gaming standpoint you’re asking the console to do twice the work, similar to split screen local multiplayer. So there is undoubtedly going to be a compromise in visual quality. Something’s got to give, whether it’s lower texture resolutions or lower framerates. Plus 3D does nothing to improve gameplay. Game developers do a fantastic job of implying depth and perspective in their games already. I never find myself messing up a grenade lob because I’m not getting an proper relation of distance between me and my target. Once you get the feel of how far your grenade or whatever goes, throwing objects becomes purely instinctual.  Adding 3D is mostly aesthetic with the greater goal of greater immersion.

On top of that, the effect just plain doesn’t work with some people. There will always be that segment of the population that gets nausea and headaches. 3D glasses are also notorious for not playing friendly with people who wear glasses. 3D glasses must be purchased for every person, not all material benefits from 3D, glasses tint, heavy-batteries, HDTVs, More accessories/peripherals! The list of goes on and on. But one could say that these issues only affect a rather small segment of consumers, which is true. But here is the real hurdle: cost. Estimates coming from CES last January say that 3D glasses will run at around $80 a pair! So for a family of 4, the barrier of just the glasses is an estimated $320! That is asking too much from a family to be able to watch SOME movies and games in 3D. Plus, even if your one pair of glasses short, everything goes back to 2D. This combined with not only educating the market, but convincing them that they want to go out and get it. Going to a movie theater to watch a 3D film actually is a much easier sell since the technology is taken care of by the theaters and glasses are given out to everyone, they don’t have worry about running out. Theater companies buy them in bulk and pay mere pennies per unit. Have you ever noticed how they keep them in those giant plastic racks? That’s so they can run all those glasses through industrial grade dish washers to get your forehead grease off.

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Adam Sessler makes some truly insightful observations about 3D and games in a recent Soapbox episode, constructing more profound arguments in 5 minutes than I’ve been able to make in 3000+ words. The most impactful being that currently technology (perhaps due ironically to its limitations) has been able to “take a backseat to creativity”. He doesn’t want to see games regress to old shortcomings as in the 90s where developers focused on graphics acceleration while players were left with stale gameplay and tired conventions wrapped in a colorful candy shell. I can attest to that sentiment, having played a lot of Cyberia 2: Ressurection (PC) as a kid in the mid 90s. So as consumers we shouldn’t burden developers by making them think they have to include 3D support to a game when they could be focusing their resources on the core experience and innovative gameplay ideas. I ran across a story quite recently about a harsh reality of video game development: A lot of great ideas don’t make it into the finished product. According to a piece put out by Irrational Games****, “For every feature that ends up in a game, 10 more are proposed and dumped during the pre-production phase, and another five on the road to final release.” On a developers list of important ideas, 3D (and motion control implementation for that matter) should not be on the top of that list.

So to wrap up the whole 3D subject I ask:  What does the 3D really bring to the table in general? Personally, I oftentimes find that when I watch something in 3D (for instance Pixar’s Up) the effect can be quite subtle. This of course is much preferred to the 80s conventions of explosive debris and big monster bugs popping out at you from the screen. Those are some straight up hokey tactics at this point. But in a lot of modern stuff, I watch for so long that I sometimes forget I’m looking at a 3 dimensional picture. The eyes really get used to the effect and tend to diminish the effect, sometimes to the point where you really forget that you are even watching something in 3D.  Your eyes can outsmart it if there isn’t something in the foreground to give your eyes some assistance in perceiving the depth of field. It can all of a sudden come screaming back to you in certain scenes but for a lot of material, that extra stretch in dimension doesn’t really add all that much to an average scene. Is it really worth all that glasses trouble? Coming at this from a gaming stance, can you imagine wearing your Xbox live headset with a hefty pair of 3D glasses thrown in the mix? Would you wrap the glasses around the headset or go glasses first then headset on top? I guess they could always create some headset/goggles combo to fully clamp on the front of your face, fully cutting you off from the real world. Combine that with Natal body tracking and things could get downright dangerous. You’ll get used to the extra weight attached to your face soon enough, just don’t lose your balance!

I agree with Sessler and others that “immersion” in a video game is more of an emotional state. That the game, no matter how outlandish the universe may be, has sold itself to you in a way that it seems feasible. Whether this is done through complex object physics, environmental interaction, or freedom of real, consequence inducing decisions. You can actually reach a state in your mind where you let go, suspend your disbelief just enough to where you take in the action on a more visceral level. In this state, you allow yourself to become attached to the characters and be driven by tension created in the gaming experience. I love a game where you truly feel like there is something at stake, ones that have flawed heroes (L4D, Uncharted, Fallout 3…).  My two cents. Innovation will be driven by feature sets, refinement, story telling via better voice overs, breakthroughs in physics engines, true choice and freedom. We’re already seeing this in games like Mass Effect 2 and Uncharted 2. Overall production values are going up and it would be a shame to sacrifice that in the name of adding gimmicks.

___________________gunhaver

Digg this article

* I discuss this topic in greater detail in the article It’s All in the Details

** The gross domestic product of Tanzania (According to the World Bank 2008) is roughly equal to the reported revenue Nintendo Co. Ltd generated in their 2009 fiscal year. (You can do the math: 1,838,620 million yen = 20.4917 billion US. dollars.)

*** And let’s not forget the frankenconsole that almost was. Flying in the face of all reason, five games were actually released for the “Sega CD 32X” requiring all 3 parts. The most notable of these was a new version of the infamous Night Trap with 32,768 on-screen colors instead of the 64 found on the regular Sega CD version.

****Irrational Games is becoming one of my favorite developers, probably just under VALVE. Oooh! Top 3 favorite development studios, GO! 1. VALVE 2. Irrational Games 3. Bethesda

Side note: I really got obsessed with the history of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy while doing research for this article. There is a great wiki about it HERE.

Also known as “Why in the hell do you want this terrible job so bad?!” You can catch a preview for PSN’s upcoming reality show HERE.

A few surprises:
1. It’s produced by the folks who brought you VH1′s Rock of Love.
2. As you’ll see from the above video, David Jaffe* is one of the judges.
3. Even videogame reality shows have skanky chicks: “No one’s really ever asked if I have a boyfriend, so I’ll kinda keep it on the DL and see how it goes,” says one contestant who is then shown cuddling up with another.
4. Another one of the judges is Ketherine De Leon – the producer of Playstation Home, a trainwreck in of itself.
5. If this preview is a accurate sampling of the show, there will be gratuitous overuse of the term “game over”.

Also, for those of you who question the idea that being a Playstation game tester is undesirable job see the recent Penny Arcade comic strip about it.

Awesome! So get excited… or terrified. Also be ready for massive gamer stereotyping.

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* According to David Jaffe, “I started as a Tester 15 years ago with Sony. And testing is still one of the best ways to break into the industry.” -via the official PSN site.

Interesting, but I don’s see any of these people becoming design leads on God of War 4… just sayin’.

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