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On Videogame Characters And The Poochy Effect
Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial discussing videogame characters/settings that excessively ape popular culture. The writer summarizes: "A new evil is spreading throughout the industry to stifle gameplay and original game characters, the need to set games in 'cool' or 'hip' settings that meet with mainstream approval", and points to Ubisoft's Beyond Good & Evil, which he says underwent a "...last minute change in the main character to make her more Gen X compatible." He continues: "For Jak II, developer Naughty Dog seems to have wanted to incorporate every possible 'hot thing' in gaming, from a goateed main character to dark themes." But he concludes by lauding some "breakout successes" in terms of original characters, including Halo's Master Chief and Viewtiful Joe.
..in gaming, from a goateed main character to dark themes..
Hands up who thought this meant something else when you first read it?
-- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
I did. I think Slashdot is effecting my brain.
Warning! This post may contain a pun!
This is just another stupid marketing fad that will eventually fizzle out like all the rest. If the game is good, buy it. If not, don't buy it. That's how you tell them how you feel. It's the only thing they understand.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm wondering. There must be a reason the industry does this. If you want to make a lot of money you have to appeal to the large majority. So apparently the large majority likes the games that we, as /.-ers think are way too 'overproduced'. This proves that we are but a small, insignificant community. Sad but true.
-- Cheers!
The Master Chief is an original character? Since when? He's a man in a suit of armour - that character goes back to the Middle Ages. Or you might get excited that it's powered armour, which dates back to the '60s at the very very latest. Soldier held in hibernation until he's needed? That's Joe Haldeman's Forever War, at the very very latest, which is the '60s again. He's not an original character at all. He's a good character, but he's not original.
I'm sorry, but this article is so all-over-the-place I can't begin to really understand it.
First, can anyone tell me what they did to Good And Evil to make it more Gen X? I haven't played it, and he helpfully fails to provide any examples.
Second, since when is a goatee Gen X? If I remember, goatees went out of style like 4 or 5 years ago.
Third, how does Viewtiful Joe not meet these criteria of evil that he describes? It's based on an amalgam of movie and TV characters, and the author of the article himself says in his Viewtiful Joe review that "Joe, the star of the game is a Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit's singer) look alike".
affecting!
~poochie
....for jive-ass 'cool' culture to be seen for what it is.
Young people have a need to rebel against something. The important thing is to get through the damn-fool years without taking it too far.
Commercial games that latch on and make 'cool' seem not so cool help nudge people into a reaility. It helps keep people from going too far. Though sometimes the feeling that they way you've been acting is jive-ass nonsense can drive people further.
It's all fun, kids. Have yours, but try not to permanently damage the tissue.
A Good Intro to NetBS
First of all, comparing FMV gaming to making stylish games is like comparing a nuclear blast to a firecracker. FMV gaming, as a mechanic, had no redeeming qualities. It removed control from the player, limiting gameplay to a choose-your-own adventure game with extremely few options. Adding pop cultural references to a game, however, simply risks diluting the original vision. Many games have been both hip and great, but no games have been both FMV and great (Dragon's Lair fans... Watch a video).
To support this assertion, the reviewer points to Jax and Dexter 2 and THPS. Jax and Dexter 2 is generally viewed as one of the year's best games... Adding liberal cultural references hasn't hurt the gameplay one bit. And Tony Hawk wasn't cool or hip until it was so embraced that it defined culture. Even so, gameplay has not been hindered one bit, and the series continues a surprising streak of great games.
Second, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil's original incarnation was hardly a socially ackward girl. Pictures of the original Jade are available here. As you can see, she went from a trendy, hip early 20 something wearing a t-shirt and jeans (look at that off-kilter waist bag), to a trendy, late 20 something dressed like an undercover reporter. She had large breasts, a visible buttline, a waistline like a carrot, and a midriff. The only non-stereotypical aspects of her character are the short hair and short body. Her second incarnation has the same pants, a lower-cut shirt, a green jacket, and a green headband. The last time I went to a club, headbands were not trendy. Though a little desexualization wouldn't hurt, the character is hardly a cash-in.
Licensed games are largely ignored by gamers in-the-know, and are hardly a new scourge. ET on the 2600? Simpsons on the NES? Lethal Weapon for the SNES? Anything THQ touched before the Playstation? If anything, the proportion of licensed drivel on consoles has gone DOWN, if for no other reason than the expense of developing 3d games has reduced the cash-in opportunity.
Breakout characters, and characterizations, are a rarity based more around great games than great design. The Master Chief as the pinnical of character design? One or two new games destined for legend come out every year... And as such we get one or two new characters in our vocabulary. That's not a weakness of the industry so much as a reality of shared experiences. Otherwise we would have Bubsy 3D 11 shoved down our throats. Characters are born, they live, and they die. It is one of the few motivations to create original content.
And as a final note, XIII wouldn't be anywhere near as engrossing an experience if designers had kept the comic book people away. The Final Fantasy series wouldn't be great if they had kept the movie people away. Embrace the artistic qualities and abilities of other forms of communication. Don't use them in inappropriate places, just as they wouldn't put footage from a House of the Dead game into a movie. But don't push them away. We are all entertainment brothers and sisters.
The ______ Agenda
I don't even want to know what you're typing with if your hands are where I think they are.
it's the marines he fights with. They have a fairly large and amusing script. From the hushed, "It's a Mark V" down to their pithy one-liners when you, or they, kill vacuume sucking alien bastards. For the most part they do a good job, as opposed to getting in the way as is the norm for their ilk. They help set the tone, and string the narrative between cut scenes. The simple play control leading to a rich varied play experience with a setting so completely drawn it's frequently mistaken for characterisation makes for a good game. More developers should stumble on to such wisdom.
I don't know about anyone else, but at a glance I always seem to read "Master Chief" as "Master Chef" - which would be a whole different game...
"Information wants to be paid"
Yeah, Viewtiful Joe's not hip. In fact he's just plain out-of-style. He looks more like a circa 1998 Fred Durst. It's still the greatest game ever.
It's hard to make new characters that players will take a serious interest in, back-story or no. One of Nintendo's strengths (especially as seen in a game like Smash Bros) is a roster of characters that gamers are more likely to find a bit more interesting just because they've 'grown up with them'.
As for the originality of Master Chief...eh, maybe, but probably not. Actually, a lot like the Marine from DOOM, come to think of it...and with voice acting that reminded me a bit of Duke Nuke 'Em / Bruce Campbell. Still, (despite its Marathon roots) at least Halo was definately not a sequel, just an excellent genre game.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
This is why when I first saw Jak and Daxter (or however you spell their names) on a magazine cover I just cringed. They were obviously designed to appeal to as many focus groups as possible. I think the Poochie comparison is a good one because they must've drawn them up with 10 people all saying what they wanted in the characters, creating a bizarre amalgamation that doesn't look very good in the end.
I guess there's a lot of pressure to create franchise characters these days. There's lots of money in creating the next Mario, but somehow I don't think you'll get there if you just combine all the current popular characters into one frankenstein character.
... Letting them frankenstein a character so we end up with the goof that is the Jak n Daxter character (I'm referring to the humanoid, not the smart-mouthed little weasel thingy) or letting the game developers do it and end up with yet another big titted hooker with guns?
A new evil is spreading throughout the industry
New? This has been going on since at least the Genesis/SNES era. Remember Sega's slogan? We do what Nintendon't? (translated: we're cool, they're not.) It got really bad after games went mainstream during the Playstation 1 era, and has only gotten worse in the latest generation. Remember the ads for things like Medieval? It's goofy, but cool! DigiMon: like Pokemon, but cool!
Even stupid kids' games like Zapper are advertised as 'edgy.' He's a grasshopper, but with attitude.
I've always found it to be stupid. I find it amusing that the reviewer thinks that it's a new thing.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Haha, that's very true, this happens to female characters as well. I'm sure we haven't seen the last sexy-yet-smart warrior chick with a heart of gold.
Characters don't make the games, but they certainly can make money. Not only are good characters a boon for fanboys, but if the mainstream really likes the character, there are marketing opportunities. For instance, take venerable Sonic the Hedgehog. There have been five cartoons, three comic book series, and countless products other than the video games. Result: lots of dollars (and especially yen).
Relevant article
But there are plenty of other games to pick on here with Ratchet & Clank getting a similar "darker" makeover in its sequel.
Am I missing something here? What in Rachet & Clank was "dark?" It seemed like the same tone as the previous game.
Of course most of these games are now story driven with plenty of cutscenes and dialogue that most gamers could care less about. How do I know they don't care? Most folks still claim they skip the cutscenes on a regular basis whether they're good or not.
Most folks? Who are these folks? I never skip cutscenes (unless they are just really poorly done). Some of them are almost movie quality (the animation in Jak and Daxter is amazing). I think of them as a reward for making progress in the game. Plus they usually only last about minute. I think I can control the ADD for that long.
As with everything else, pop culture does sometimes turn out crap. I enjoyed the Enter the Matrix game, but I really wished I'd rented it -- nothing new, hardly much plot, finished it in 3 hours. Most people do seem to enjoy cutscenes.
I see two main problems. One -- too much money involved. A game should not cost $50. Let me reiterate: A game should not cost $50. Especially not if there's going to be a sequel in a year.
Two, often the technology involved sucks. Look at Jak & Daxter (I and II) to see it done right. When you turn the game on, within 5 seconds of the disk being booted, the logo is onscreen, and it takes about another 10 seconds or so for the game world to appear. After that, the only time you actually have to wait for something to load (and even then, the wait is about 5-10 seconds) is when you load a savegame in a remote place or go through a warp gate. The warp gate business could arguably be fixed, but I'm not complaining.
Compare that to Enter the Matrix -- loading sequences every level that take 15 seconds at least, sometimes very close together, with nothing but hypnotic Matrix code -- not even a progress bar. And you have to wait through them every time you start an area -- if you die, you have to wait for it to reload the entire level.
Also, I agree about movie licensed games -- the LOTR games sucked, mostly. I only played the Two Towers, and the gameplay was reasonable, but it was too hard, played like a SNES game (mashing and more mashing until my thumbs hurt), and although it had some decent graphics, I hardly noticed those -- most of the graphics sucked. Just plain and simple. Example -- the hair on the characters didn't even have a hint of animation, and we're talking about some pretty long-haired characters. Arigorn just doesn't look right wearing a clay wig.
I agree that there are good games, but there are so many bad ones, and even the good ones could be so much better without a lot of effort.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Burger Time. Not that was a game.
In the wonderfully schlocky Biozombie.o vie/biozombi e.html
http://www.dimfuture.net/elsewhere/bm
At one point they even have "character bio" screens done up for the actors. And it's got the best use of game footage in a movie ever - just watch for the flashback.
we need more work put into villans. Anyone remember Natla from TombRaider1? By the end of the game we knew nothing more about Lara (she's english, and archeologist and has big breasts) but we knew a great deal about Natla, and she was pretty damn cool as villans go. The subsequent (bad)games etc have all been about Lara and she's just not very interesting.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
So basically...it can't be a Good Game if it's designed to appeal to the audience it's being made for?.
The only Good Game is one that no one else wants to play, because then you can feel like a Real Gamer?
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