So I guess this is impressive, especially if it's taken more as a contribution to the demoscene than to gaming. But what I think is far more impressive is that a game like Starflight which included hundreds of planets, dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay, an equal number of conversations and text and hundreds of objects, all fit into 2 5 1/4 disks (360K x 2). In 1986. And while exceptional, Starflight is merely representative of the amount of efficient coding that had to go into early game creation. Kkrieger, and more so older classics like Starflight, should serve as examples to modern developers who seem to be bloating their code.
This is nearing silly. If the gaming industry hasn't created the perfect WWII game by now, I'm not sure they ever will. Maybe they're aiming for quantity: you make 12 WWII games and one of them has to be the perfect WWII experience.
I think it's obvious that Band of Brothers (the HBO miniseries based on Ambrose's book) served as inspiration for Call to Duty and perhaps also for this title. There's a scene, about midway through the series, in which Captain Winters runs over a hill and is confronted by a young German solider, barely old enough to fill the uniform. Winters shoots, the shot echoes, and the young man collapses in the field. The scene haunts Winters throughout the entirity of the series, and he sees that soldier's face everywhere.
In these games, you see the soldier's face everywhere but that's only because it's a generic skin, not because of any emotional attachment created by the game. So what is the gaming equivalent of that? Would it be feasible for the player to be in a "slow moment" in the game, say transversing between two friendly checkpoints, and for a similar scene to be flashed back or replayed? I think games like Call to Duty demonstrate that developers obviously have the technicalities of a modern war game, so why aren't we seeing these games breach emotionally and attempt to connect to the player that way instead of merely logistically?
I think there's enough people around here that love Nintendo that I don't think we'll see the "Down With N!" fanboy blurts. I think it is interesting, though, that both Microsoft and Nintendo seem to be trimming their waistlines. As good as Silicon Knights are, I seem to remember seeing that their MGS remix didn't sell terribly well, and Eternal Darkness (which is fantastic) didn't perform either. So, as far as numbers go, it makes sense to cut the extra money involved in exclusivity.
What I think this trimming down means for us is that the next generation console is definitely going to be quite a battle. Even Nintendo has admitted that they stumbled around with this generation, and it took some time for Microsoft to get on their feet with the Xbox (cf. living room sized controllers). Basically, I think these developments in MS and N are representative of them rolling up their sleeves, pulling a Sly Stallone "Over The Top" move and turning the cap around.
With this next generation, I think it's going to be leaner, meaner, and inevitably bloody. Both Microsoft and Nintendo are much more efficient than they were at the start of this generation, and moves like this show they're obviously ridding themselves of whatever excess they think is holding them down in catching up to Sony.
Ultimately, good for us the consumers, and bad for whatever company gets the living daylights knocked out of them with this next generation.
Someone has already discussed ICO. So here's some other games Greg apparently didn't play.
Beyond Good & Evil: Not only is the main character strong, forceful, and not sexualized, there are several other characters in the game that are as active in the resistance movement as she is. I guess Greg was one of those people who didn't buy it.
Prince of Persia: So you save the Princess. But once you do (and she kind of saves you, the male), she's forthwright, mostly capable, and witty. And exhibits a remarkable ability to slide through cracks. Still, it's quite obvious as you play the game that your character, male character, is an obnoxious idiot, and that the Princess has been right all along.
KOTOR: Not only can your main character be a female, but one of the primary NPCs is also a Princess-Leia-esque female. Sure, you save her, but she doesn't really need it. Same goes for another female member of your party. They're both quite capable. Well, as long as you level them up. So I guess Greg was focusing on the stereotypical macho Mandalorin?
Deus Ex: IW: Again, main character can be female or male. One of the supporting female characters is diplomat of one of the paths you can take, and is quite forceful.
There's many others, but I'm getting bored of listing them for someone who probably doesn't care. Immediately I'm thinking of Anachronox, Panzeer Dragoon Orta, and then there's a large portion of the old Sierra adventure games. The King's Quest series, the Gabriel Knight series, Phantasmagoria series, and the Quest for Glory series were all developed by women. If I thought a little harder than Greg did in his article, I think I could conjure up some more.
So Greg might have a point: in the games he plays, which doesn't seem like many save the original Metroid and the first 2 hours of ICO, women are probably under-represented. For the rest of us, you know, the people that play games, I think it's fair to say that while it's not an equal representation yet, it's far better than it was even 5 years ago. And oh yeah Greg, you make mention of it, but apparently not enough to convince yourself. There are quite a few women in leadership positions in the game industry, who are approving these "embarassing" "malecentric" games. For example, the president of Activision is a women.
Hmm. Greg doesn't play games, and he doesn't know about the people that make them. Can I be executive editor too?
I'm surprised at how many slashdotters are so non-chalant towards Google's complete lack of respect for privacy. And let's get it straight: it is a lack of respect for privacy. Whether you're looking in someone's closet to find a skeleton or merely inventory the contents, you're still looking in someone's closet. Slashdot's general response to Gmail has been, "Well, they're being up front about it." We might be giving Google in the present permission to look in our closets now and be ok with it. But you're not only giving Present-Google permission, you're giving Future-Google permission with every email you send, and no one - even Present-Google - knows what kind of character Future-Google will have. You're not just giving one guy permission to look in your closet, you're giving him and all his descendents permission.
If this were Microsoft's brilliant idea, say Mmail, you'd be all over it like flies at a honey maker convention. So where are the flies?
Someone pipe and remind me what game this was, but there was one generic motorbike game about a year ago that let you play pong during the loading?
It was like Burnout for motorcyles I think.
Now that's a great idea.
Is there a free way to make first and second party games?
This is not unusual at all. Nintendo is probably the only one who doesn't, but Sony does this all the time. It's a good way to test the waters with a developer, as Sony has often contracted out games and then bought the studio. In fact, Sony did very much the same thing with Guerilla Studios to make their "Halo-Killer", and then just recently bought them out. I think EA did the same thing; hired out Blackbox for a game or two and then bought them out. Happens all the time. Suddenly it's weird because Microsoft is doing it?
Oh I agree wholy, and it's something I thought of while writing my post but was too lazy to include. Backwards compatibility is vital. But I think it's better to think of this new N-Gage as a revision. It's fairly drastic for what is normally a revision in a console world, which usually consists of a more efficient production process and cheaper but more reliable parts. But I think Nokia sees this more as a revision than necessarily an N-Gage _2_. I'd definitely say that oversaturation of "versions" is against the "rules" of the console market, but I think it's nevertheless an interesting development merely for its different approach. Maybe consoles would sell better if they were more revisionary. The Xbox saw more mainstream acceptance when it released a revision of its controller. Perhaps this would work better on a larger scale, ala the cell phone market.
And I think that this dependence on revisions means Nokia still doesn't understand that it's about the software stupid. Still, I don't think that will stop them from getting to an N-Gage 5 or 6, which might make other developers doubletake the N-Gage if the hardware is solid by that time.
I've laughed at the N-Gage as much as anyone, but I'll say this much for Nokia as opposed to Sony and Nintendo. Nokia, who's a phone maker, is pretty much used to releasing new models almost every year for their cell phone line. Why change this strategy for a video game console? Why wait 5 years for this beast we call the console lifespan cycle to come around to your side again of the gate so you can hop on for another 5?
If Nokia has anything going for it in the console/handheld industry, and I'll admit it doesn't have much at this point, it's that they can put out a new model every year. That's something Nintendo can't quite manage, and Sony keeps pushing their date back. Cellphone manufacturers, on the other hand, are perhaps the best equipped industry in the world to change models and revamp the factories every year for new designs. While I can't say that this design is anywhere near where Nokia needs to be, at least they're making progress incrementally. You can't sidetalk, and it looks like you put the cartridge in the bottom. By the time the PSP actually hits stateside, the N-Gage 4 or 5 or 6 might be something to look into.
What a conundrum: getting excited over Turok!
Anyway, would anyone care to bet how long until we see a "We received a notice from Microsoft's lawyers today" followed very quickly with a "This Project Discontinued" page on Caustik's site?
How does the game industry get away with crap like this? A better question is: how does the gaming press let the gaming industry get away with crap like this? I get as annoyed with the mainstream media as much as anyone (I'm an avid Daily Show fan, which I suppose is now as mainstream as anything but that's another post). But if, say, the film industry tried to pull a stunt like this, the mainstream media would've dogpiled on the company that did it.
So where's the gaming media? Ohhhh, they're too busy jacking off to screenshots . The gaming industry needs to grow some gonads, with the exception of that French guy who stood up and walked out, no doubt his massive balls dragging on the floor as he exited. I'm not asking for an over-reaction of politically-correct-ness. I want people to say controversial things. But this isn't controversial in content or idealogy. It's no less than someone pissing on the ruins of the WTC, but pissing on the ruins only because someone promised him $5 if he did it, not because he had anything to say about the WTC or had any idea of what it meant. Someone clueless about 9-11 and pissing on the WTC for $5, or having a press conference at Chernobyl to promote a game are the same thing.
Something like that might be actually worthy of attention, if the purpose was some form of punk anarchistic expression, or the thought behind it was something like, "I'm going to show how worthless this is." But this whole STALKER thing, and all the Vietnam and WWII games that have suddenly grown out of game developers' asses;
it's a bunch of morons sitting in an office thinking, "Hey, what can we do to make more money?' It's some boob for a PR rep who sat in his office and brainstormed on a white board on how to better sell the game. The meaning of these places and events have become lost to these people. Vietnam games, WWII games, promoting STALKER in Chernobyl; they're not controversial expressions, they're accidental Whiteboard Nihilism.
It's too early to make a pure comparison between Spector and Lucas, but it seems like Spector is moving in that direction. And this is coming from someone who loved Warren Spector so much that I would've had a "re-orientation" if Spector and I met in a bar. And he'd been gay, if he isn't already. Or something.
Now, I'm not so sure. I'm quite certain I would reject any advances, no matter how drunk either of us was. He sounded way too much like Lucas in his post-mortem defense of DE:IW, not at all unlike Lucas in his defense of the prequelogy; oblivious to the fans, tinged with arrogance, and with a sense of justification that what he did was right while everyone else knows it wasn't. It sounds like Spector has surrounded himself with yes people, a Denton Ranch if you will. I used to think Molyneux was like that, but at least Molyneux had the gonads to admit that Black and White wasn't the shiznit everyone thought it would be. Spector, I get the impression he thinks that it was us who was off base, not him.
I remember hearing the president of Lucasarts defend the abomination that was Force Commander with something along the lines of, "This is the future, but the gaming universe just wasn't ready for it." Which sounds a little like Spector now. For shame, for shame.
Or how about I just communicate that deconstruction is masturbation. Its a game. Its supposed to be fun.
I'll give you the deconstruction = masturbation. But your kneejerk reaction to my post merely proves that it's not just about fun. If it were just "a game", we'd still all be sitting around playing only Tetris, Pac-Man, or Pop Cap games. Or, Dice would have created a context-less game in which representations of people as square boxes went around capturing small yellow squares and "shooting" little white balls of nameless energy at each other. And, you wouldn't have given a damn about hippy crap in your games, because if it really is about the fun, then why bother with the war theme at all? If it's just fun, and just a game, why the hell do you care if you're a Nazi or a white blob? Why aren't we all sitting around playing an updated version of Nerf Arena Blast?
Because there's something inherently more fun about being a Nazi in Battlefield 1942 than there is about being just a kid with a Nerf gun, at least to most people. That's not to say necessarily that Battlefield succeds merely because you can be a Nazi, but it's certainly part of its success. It's partially why people are apparently buying stacks of these WWII games and not the generic scifi shooters that companies like Jowood and Dreamcatcher keep pumping out. Sure, part of it is that most of Jowood's games are horrible games anyway. But some of it has to be the context of war, otherwise it wouldn't matter at all whether it was a "historical" context of WWII or some fictional war with fictional countries. Dice and EA obviously felt that the benefit of contextualizing their game within the potential controversy of the Vietnam war was worth more risk than making up some fictional context.
What I'm addressing is not the "fun," but the symbology behind the fun. There's a reason why we have more fun being a Nazi or an American soldier in Vietnam than we do a little orange dot, and we ought to be asking ourselves why that is.
Great post, so I'll attach piggy back my post to your's.
The very nature of a game creates a protangist and and antagonist. Some good old deconstruction is in order here. The player, however morally neutral the game makers have crafted it, is still the "good guy," even if he's the bad guy, as in GTA. The player is still trying to reach an objective. Conversely, the "bad" guy is whomever is attempting to stop the player. What's more is that the game is always designed so that the player can theoritically win, or do better. In a game like BF:V this becomes more complicated in multiplayer, but the idea is the same. The more skill you exhibit, the more often you receive a reward. Therefore, even in attempts to neutral-ize the game, they are still placing bias, even if that bias is inherent in the nature of playing.
I suppose you could call these games the ultimate manifestion of post/anti-modernism. The moral attachment to these symbols, say of the Nazi party and the Holocaust, or of American soliders killing Vietnamese civilians, is drained completely because the when the player is a German in Battlefield 1942, it doesn't matter anymore that the team they are virtually fighting for committed vast atrocities. What matters is that they take hold the flag for 10 seconds longer and receive a point. I'm not sure what the cultural long lasting effects of these games will be, but I'm sure there'll be some.
What we need from game developers, I believe, is a moral awareness, a realization that when dealing with violence, particularly within the context of a war, that they ought to acknowledge that these symbols mean something more than merely scoring a point. Merely because the public is less sensitive about an issue doesn't necessarily mean that the human harm committed disappears, or even loses its importance. I remember the backlash to games that included Osama Bin Laden immediately following 9-11. Fundamentally, though the only difference between those games (exempting quality, of course) and Battlefield Vietnam is a timespan of 30 years.
We'd be outraged if Dice's next game was, say, one side trying to esacpe the WTC and another side trying to hit it with airplanes. And yet, in 30 years that may very well be a game. Why aren't we addressing this more in gaming? Why can films address this, for example, the Vietnam War so astutely immediately following it, but our games can't do the same with the WTC?
My feeling is that the gaming landscape is ripe for someone to truly integrate the moral reality of war into a video game. I suppose that the creators of Call to Duty somehow think they're doing that, and I suppose I could concede that they are making baby steps in that direction. Still, it's within the basic framework of a protangonist seeking a reward and hindered by an antagonist. Like you said, violence and war are far more complicated than this. What would impress me is if the Call to Duty game developers had borrowed more than just style from Band to Brothers and instead included a level where you are forced to shoot at point blank range a 13 year old German soldier who doesn't fit in the uniform. The challenging question becomes: how do you imply an emotional connection, and communicate that this collection of pixels represents a human being with brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers that you ended the life of?
The sports series, I understand. Oddworld made sense. Tork, of course. Ed Fries getting canned was a little mystifying, but the "high" knowledge that is company politik is not for us to speculate on.
But this. This? This sounds like someone at Microsoft accidently hit the delete button on their Projects Pending page. This was the one artistically creative title Microsoft had going for it, and now it's gone. I think that this represents the end of all that high talk of art and creation and a gaming revolution that floated around the launch of Xbox1 from Seamus and his colleagues.
What does Microsoft have now? Halo and Fable? Halo 2 will be Halo, but not as repetitive. Fable? Based on the hands-on previews that have been surfacing, it might be fun but really is, at heart, a traditional European adventure/RPG. Whoopie. Psychonauts was the one creative spark Microsoft seemed to have left in it, and that is now extinguished.
Well, I'm turning in my Microsoft fanboy card. In fact, I'm selling my video gaming fanboy card on ebay at a Buy It Now price of $10.36 so can I buy Hickee which, I'm told, is drawn by some of the Double Fine Team. This industry blows its official licensed and franchised chunks and it got all over my damn shirt. If games like REZ and ICO and Beyond Good and Evil and Prince of Persia don't sell, and games like Sam and Max and Psychonauts don't even see the light of day, consider me officialy disfranchised.
Screw this joint. I'm picking up books. Or gardening. I hear gardening is fun.
You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun. - Manuel Calavera, Grim Fandango
Hey, if you watch Buffy, please start watching "Angel," the critically acclaimed spin-off
Only if my Tivo records it for me. =)
I've tried to get into it, but it seems more difficult to jump into than Buffy. Which surprises me, because I'm a lite-Buffy fan and loved Firefly, but it just doesn't seem to translate over to Angel. Just me I guess.
For my wife, who generally used TV as a boredom reliever, TiVo did decrease the amount that she watched. Before TiVo, she thought that she always might be missing something decent to watch, so she'd channel flip. After TiVo, she knows she isn't missing anything. She watches TV, but she watches much more deliberately and not accidently.
I'm completely the opposite. I rarely watched TV before TiVo because I felt like nothing was ever on, so why should I have to flip through channels to find it? With TiVo, I rarely miss a Daily Show episode (that's at least 22 minutes more than I usually watched because I'd miss it somehow), and I've discovered at least half a dozen other shows that I didn't know I liked. I watch more TV now than I did before. When I am bored, the TiVo always has at least a dozen STTNG, Buffy, Simpsons, Futurama, or Family Guy episodes sitting around to peruse.
So I think it largely depends on your viewing habits pre-PVR. The only downside now, I guess, is that my wife feels out of the loop when people at work discuss funny commercials. Then she realizes that it was during a lameass reality TV show, and she feels better.
That is because they have the cash to enter a market and do very poorly but still survive. Any other company (pretty much) would not have time to adapt their product while losing money.
Well, to some degree yes. That is certainly true now. However, while I might be off on my MS history, I'm not so sure it was true back in the DOS/early windows era. I think you're defintely right, but I also think that it's as much a characteristic of Microsoft's corporate identity as much as it is money.
I think that this is representative of a couple of things.
First, it shows how much more like Nintendo Microsoft is moving for game development. Quality over quantity. I think initially, Microsoft was emulating Sony with its mere quantity, as if it were Microsoft's job to fill in the gaps in the lineup. Maybe it's because they finally have the third party support to start focusing on quality first party (and when I say first party I am also referring to second party) titles. For the first year or two after the launch, Microsoft seemed to releasing everything they possibly could. Over the past year they became much more focused, told the in house dev studios to get it done but take their time (Crimson Skies, for example) and canned other titles that weren't up to par.
Now, it seems they're getting even leaner.
Which brings me to my second point.
And this is the one that will draw the atypical slashdot trolls like flies to a honey factory. Say what you will about monopolistic practices or Microsoft always borrowing from other companies. It's true. But one of the things Microsoft excels at is adapting their products until they work. With regards to the Xbox, they've displayed much more willingless to change the xbox based on market movements than Sony, and especially Nintendo. Canning and revamping the sports lineup is just one of these macro-adaptations that will make them that much more formidable in Xbox2. Someone posted that the canning was because of Xbox2. I think that's true, but only indirectly. They're not going to be Azurik 2, Bloodwake 2, and Fusion Frenzy 2 with the Xbox2 just because they can. My guess is that it will 2-5 extremely strong titles.
I know I'm sounding like a fanboy here, but it might take an Xbox 3.11 to start to dominate the market, but they're moving towards that, and this is demonstrative of that movement.
That is a very funny PA strip. That's also why that same one is in included in story (second link).
Like, apparently, every one else, I am a huge fan of Penny Arcade. However, what scares me is that in 6 months here on games.slashdot, instead of actually writing succinct, witty posts as we, of course, all do now, our posts will consist merely of a series PA links.
I think what MS paid for, and to some degree all they got, was an evangelist-for-hire. In the initial days of the Xbox, the enthusiasm of Lorne Lanning, combined with that of Seamus Blackley and a few others, was a driving factor in rousing up the "home crowd." I think that what everyone was thinking when Oddworld came out, after after a full year of preaching, was, "And this is revolutionary because........???" It wasn't a bad game, it just a game, not the second (or first) coming of the messiah of video gaming.
So now, it's what, over 3 years later, and all these guys have to show for is some pre-rendered footage? His New Year's resolution is to get the game out? Riiight. What I saw on that Discovery channel documentary didn't look too promising anyway. Like Oddworld, but...and get this...WESTERN. It looked a lot like Munch; fun, but not worth keeping around. Apparently, that's how Microsoft felt about the company as well. Ok, to be fair, Bungie has yet to release another game. But, it was Halo, and not the expected Oddworld, that carried the Xbox on its back during the system launch. In fact, Oddworld could never have come out and the Xbox probably done just as well. Without Halo...well, that's another story all together isn't it?
So I wonder if Lorne Lanning is as enthuastic about the Xbox today as he was three years ago?
As already stated, it's pretty disappointing how poorly our obvioulsy dysfunctional gaming giants performed with the love story. It shouldn't have been a surprise though, because none of these guys have every really done anything emotionally compelling (save the scariness of Spector's System Shock). That's not to say they're gaming losers, it's just that I doubt anyone will be shedding a tear over Everquest, Simcity, or Deus Ex. Unless it's because lag made them lose some huge loot, their city is in white flight, or their inventory system is unmanagable.
I suppose one possible reason for game publisher's ineptitude in creating decent love stories, either on the fly at a conference or with years of development, is that their product's recepients (us) don't care much for love stories. I have a hard time believing that, although I suppose it might be true. I think a better reason is the one proposed by Miyamoto. Violence is the easy way to incite an emotional response. Love and sadness take far more work on a narrative level than simply coding something like Battlefield Vietnam, or even Deus Ex. It's riskier, because it's very easy for a game to come across as insincere. With technology, you're safe. It's either good because it works, or it's bad because it doesn't. Love, well now, that's far more subjective, isn't it?
With that in mind, I will say this. The copout by Spector that the technology isn't up to par is the preposterous. With that statement he made yet another step downwards from the person I was envisioned him as. Obviously, he's of the mindset I just mentioned. For him, and apparently the others, love is a technical implementation, not a narrative one. It's a coded system, not the way a character talks or walks or reacts in the game(cf. ICO).
Shame on them. The reliance of the love story on narrative is why these guys not only missed the point, but are running the complete opposite direction. The connection of the Game Design Showdown to Iron Chief is appropriate. And if that's the case, these boobs tried to build a house instead of culinating a dish.
With bony hands I hold my partner
On soulless feet we cross the floor
The music stops as if to answer
An empty knocking at the door
It seems his skin was sweet as mango
When last I held him to my breast
But now we dance this grim fandango
And will four years before we rest.
Following in ICO's steps are Wind Waker and Prince of Persia, which both borrow heavily from ICO. There were a few times in Zelda when I almost cried from parts of a very scaled down love story, but I admit they were fairly non-interactive. The snapy princess in PoP was very much Ubisoft Montreal's iteration of the girl in ICO.
I felt that the relationship between the gamer and Bastila in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic was perhaps the best conversational and interactive relationship I'd ever "played." Instead of sketching up complicated systems like Spector and Wright tried, Bioware just hit the player with the old standard of branching conversations, but did it over and over and over again. The characters change through conversation and time, and it's this transformation in their character that makes it so interesting, and ultimately, worthy of caring for.
However, I agree with you. ICO does it best. The final scene in ICO is ranks among the best in gaming, and is without question the best demonstration of a love story in video gaming.
Grim Fandango, though, makes a pretty damn close second. It's nowhere near as "serious" as ICO, but in the way that it exercises its love story, it does it very well.
Slashdot Mirror
So I guess this is impressive, especially if it's taken more as a contribution to the demoscene than to gaming. But what I think is far more impressive is that a game like Starflight which included hundreds of planets, dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay, an equal number of conversations and text and hundreds of objects, all fit into 2 5 1/4 disks (360K x 2). In 1986. And while exceptional, Starflight is merely representative of the amount of efficient coding that had to go into early game creation. Kkrieger, and more so older classics like Starflight, should serve as examples to modern developers who seem to be bloating their code.
This is nearing silly. If the gaming industry hasn't created the perfect WWII game by now, I'm not sure they ever will. Maybe they're aiming for quantity: you make 12 WWII games and one of them has to be the perfect WWII experience.
I think it's obvious that Band of Brothers (the HBO miniseries based on Ambrose's book) served as inspiration for Call to Duty and perhaps also for this title. There's a scene, about midway through the series, in which Captain Winters runs over a hill and is confronted by a young German solider, barely old enough to fill the uniform. Winters shoots, the shot echoes, and the young man collapses in the field. The scene haunts Winters throughout the entirity of the series, and he sees that soldier's face everywhere.
In these games, you see the soldier's face everywhere but that's only because it's a generic skin, not because of any emotional attachment created by the game. So what is the gaming equivalent of that? Would it be feasible for the player to be in a "slow moment" in the game, say transversing between two friendly checkpoints, and for a similar scene to be flashed back or replayed? I think games like Call to Duty demonstrate that developers obviously have the technicalities of a modern war game, so why aren't we seeing these games breach emotionally and attempt to connect to the player that way instead of merely logistically?
I think there's enough people around here that love Nintendo that I don't think we'll see the "Down With N!" fanboy blurts. I think it is interesting, though, that both Microsoft and Nintendo seem to be trimming their waistlines. As good as Silicon Knights are, I seem to remember seeing that their MGS remix didn't sell terribly well, and Eternal Darkness (which is fantastic) didn't perform either. So, as far as numbers go, it makes sense to cut the extra money involved in exclusivity.
What I think this trimming down means for us is that the next generation console is definitely going to be quite a battle. Even Nintendo has admitted that they stumbled around with this generation, and it took some time for Microsoft to get on their feet with the Xbox (cf. living room sized controllers). Basically, I think these developments in MS and N are representative of them rolling up their sleeves, pulling a Sly Stallone "Over The Top" move and turning the cap around.
With this next generation, I think it's going to be leaner, meaner, and inevitably bloody. Both Microsoft and Nintendo are much more efficient than they were at the start of this generation, and moves like this show they're obviously ridding themselves of whatever excess they think is holding them down in catching up to Sony.
Ultimately, good for us the consumers, and bad for whatever company gets the living daylights knocked out of them with this next generation.
Someone has already discussed ICO. So here's some other games Greg apparently didn't play.
Beyond Good & Evil: Not only is the main character strong, forceful, and not sexualized, there are several other characters in the game that are as active in the resistance movement as she is. I guess Greg was one of those people who didn't buy it.
Prince of Persia: So you save the Princess. But once you do (and she kind of saves you, the male), she's forthwright, mostly capable, and witty. And exhibits a remarkable ability to slide through cracks. Still, it's quite obvious as you play the game that your character, male character, is an obnoxious idiot, and that the Princess has been right all along.
KOTOR: Not only can your main character be a female, but one of the primary NPCs is also a Princess-Leia-esque female. Sure, you save her, but she doesn't really need it. Same goes for another female member of your party. They're both quite capable. Well, as long as you level them up. So I guess Greg was focusing on the stereotypical macho Mandalorin?
Deus Ex: IW: Again, main character can be female or male. One of the supporting female characters is diplomat of one of the paths you can take, and is quite forceful.
There's many others, but I'm getting bored of listing them for someone who probably doesn't care. Immediately I'm thinking of Anachronox, Panzeer Dragoon Orta, and then there's a large portion of the old Sierra adventure games. The King's Quest series, the Gabriel Knight series, Phantasmagoria series, and the Quest for Glory series were all developed by women. If I thought a little harder than Greg did in his article, I think I could conjure up some more.
So Greg might have a point: in the games he plays, which doesn't seem like many save the original Metroid and the first 2 hours of ICO, women are probably under-represented. For the rest of us, you know, the people that play games, I think it's fair to say that while it's not an equal representation yet, it's far better than it was even 5 years ago. And oh yeah Greg, you make mention of it, but apparently not enough to convince yourself. There are quite a few women in leadership positions in the game industry, who are approving these "embarassing" "malecentric" games. For example, the president of Activision is a women . Hmm. Greg doesn't play games, and he doesn't know about the people that make them. Can I be executive editor too?
I'm surprised at how many slashdotters are so non-chalant towards Google's complete lack of respect for privacy. And let's get it straight: it is a lack of respect for privacy. Whether you're looking in someone's closet to find a skeleton or merely inventory the contents, you're still looking in someone's closet. Slashdot's general response to Gmail has been, "Well, they're being up front about it." We might be giving Google in the present permission to look in our closets now and be ok with it. But you're not only giving Present-Google permission, you're giving Future-Google permission with every email you send, and no one - even Present-Google - knows what kind of character Future-Google will have. You're not just giving one guy permission to look in your closet, you're giving him and all his descendents permission.
If this were Microsoft's brilliant idea, say Mmail, you'd be all over it like flies at a honey maker convention. So where are the flies?
Someone pipe and remind me what game this was, but there was one generic motorbike game about a year ago that let you play pong during the loading? It was like Burnout for motorcyles I think. Now that's a great idea.
pay them to do it.
Is there a free way to make first and second party games?
This is not unusual at all. Nintendo is probably the only one who doesn't, but Sony does this all the time. It's a good way to test the waters with a developer, as Sony has often contracted out games and then bought the studio. In fact, Sony did very much the same thing with Guerilla Studios to make their "Halo-Killer", and then just recently bought them out. I think EA did the same thing; hired out Blackbox for a game or two and then bought them out. Happens all the time. Suddenly it's weird because Microsoft is doing it?
Oh I agree wholy, and it's something I thought of while writing my post but was too lazy to include. Backwards compatibility is vital. But I think it's better to think of this new N-Gage as a revision. It's fairly drastic for what is normally a revision in a console world, which usually consists of a more efficient production process and cheaper but more reliable parts. But I think Nokia sees this more as a revision than necessarily an N-Gage _2_. I'd definitely say that oversaturation of "versions" is against the "rules" of the console market, but I think it's nevertheless an interesting development merely for its different approach. Maybe consoles would sell better if they were more revisionary. The Xbox saw more mainstream acceptance when it released a revision of its controller. Perhaps this would work better on a larger scale, ala the cell phone market.
And I think that this dependence on revisions means Nokia still doesn't understand that it's about the software stupid. Still, I don't think that will stop them from getting to an N-Gage 5 or 6, which might make other developers doubletake the N-Gage if the hardware is solid by that time.
I've laughed at the N-Gage as much as anyone, but I'll say this much for Nokia as opposed to Sony and Nintendo. Nokia, who's a phone maker, is pretty much used to releasing new models almost every year for their cell phone line. Why change this strategy for a video game console? Why wait 5 years for this beast we call the console lifespan cycle to come around to your side again of the gate so you can hop on for another 5?
If Nokia has anything going for it in the console/handheld industry, and I'll admit it doesn't have much at this point, it's that they can put out a new model every year. That's something Nintendo can't quite manage, and Sony keeps pushing their date back. Cellphone manufacturers, on the other hand, are perhaps the best equipped industry in the world to change models and revamp the factories every year for new designs. While I can't say that this design is anywhere near where Nokia needs to be, at least they're making progress incrementally. You can't sidetalk, and it looks like you put the cartridge in the bottom. By the time the PSP actually hits stateside, the N-Gage 4 or 5 or 6 might be something to look into.
Maybe.
What a conundrum: getting excited over Turok! Anyway, would anyone care to bet how long until we see a "We received a notice from Microsoft's lawyers today" followed very quickly with a "This Project Discontinued" page on Caustik's site?
How does the game industry get away with crap like this? A better question is: how does the gaming press let the gaming industry get away with crap like this? I get as annoyed with the mainstream media as much as anyone (I'm an avid Daily Show fan, which I suppose is now as mainstream as anything but that's another post). But if, say, the film industry tried to pull a stunt like this, the mainstream media would've dogpiled on the company that did it.
So where's the gaming media? Ohhhh, they're too busy jacking off to screenshots . The gaming industry needs to grow some gonads, with the exception of that French guy who stood up and walked out, no doubt his massive balls dragging on the floor as he exited. I'm not asking for an over-reaction of politically-correct-ness. I want people to say controversial things. But this isn't controversial in content or idealogy. It's no less than someone pissing on the ruins of the WTC, but pissing on the ruins only because someone promised him $5 if he did it, not because he had anything to say about the WTC or had any idea of what it meant. Someone clueless about 9-11 and pissing on the WTC for $5, or having a press conference at Chernobyl to promote a game are the same thing.
Something like that might be actually worthy of attention, if the purpose was some form of punk anarchistic expression, or the thought behind it was something like, "I'm going to show how worthless this is." But this whole STALKER thing, and all the Vietnam and WWII games that have suddenly grown out of game developers' asses; it's a bunch of morons sitting in an office thinking, "Hey, what can we do to make more money?' It's some boob for a PR rep who sat in his office and brainstormed on a white board on how to better sell the game. The meaning of these places and events have become lost to these people. Vietnam games, WWII games, promoting STALKER in Chernobyl; they're not controversial expressions, they're accidental Whiteboard Nihilism.
It's too early to make a pure comparison between Spector and Lucas, but it seems like Spector is moving in that direction. And this is coming from someone who loved Warren Spector so much that I would've had a "re-orientation" if Spector and I met in a bar. And he'd been gay, if he isn't already. Or something.
Now, I'm not so sure. I'm quite certain I would reject any advances, no matter how drunk either of us was. He sounded way too much like Lucas in his post-mortem defense of DE:IW, not at all unlike Lucas in his defense of the prequelogy; oblivious to the fans, tinged with arrogance, and with a sense of justification that what he did was right while everyone else knows it wasn't. It sounds like Spector has surrounded himself with yes people, a Denton Ranch if you will. I used to think Molyneux was like that, but at least Molyneux had the gonads to admit that Black and White wasn't the shiznit everyone thought it would be. Spector, I get the impression he thinks that it was us who was off base, not him.
I remember hearing the president of Lucasarts defend the abomination that was Force Commander with something along the lines of, "This is the future, but the gaming universe just wasn't ready for it." Which sounds a little like Spector now. For shame, for shame.
Or how about I just communicate that deconstruction is masturbation. Its a game. Its supposed to be fun.
I'll give you the deconstruction = masturbation. But your kneejerk reaction to my post merely proves that it's not just about fun. If it were just "a game", we'd still all be sitting around playing only Tetris, Pac-Man, or Pop Cap games. Or, Dice would have created a context-less game in which representations of people as square boxes went around capturing small yellow squares and "shooting" little white balls of nameless energy at each other. And, you wouldn't have given a damn about hippy crap in your games, because if it really is about the fun, then why bother with the war theme at all? If it's just fun, and just a game, why the hell do you care if you're a Nazi or a white blob? Why aren't we all sitting around playing an updated version of Nerf Arena Blast?
Because there's something inherently more fun about being a Nazi in Battlefield 1942 than there is about being just a kid with a Nerf gun, at least to most people. That's not to say necessarily that Battlefield succeds merely because you can be a Nazi, but it's certainly part of its success. It's partially why people are apparently buying stacks of these WWII games and not the generic scifi shooters that companies like Jowood and Dreamcatcher keep pumping out. Sure, part of it is that most of Jowood's games are horrible games anyway. But some of it has to be the context of war, otherwise it wouldn't matter at all whether it was a "historical" context of WWII or some fictional war with fictional countries. Dice and EA obviously felt that the benefit of contextualizing their game within the potential controversy of the Vietnam war was worth more risk than making up some fictional context.
What I'm addressing is not the "fun," but the symbology behind the fun. There's a reason why we have more fun being a Nazi or an American soldier in Vietnam than we do a little orange dot, and we ought to be asking ourselves why that is.
Great post, so I'll attach piggy back my post to your's.
The very nature of a game creates a protangist and and antagonist. Some good old deconstruction is in order here. The player, however morally neutral the game makers have crafted it, is still the "good guy," even if he's the bad guy, as in GTA. The player is still trying to reach an objective. Conversely, the "bad" guy is whomever is attempting to stop the player. What's more is that the game is always designed so that the player can theoritically win, or do better. In a game like BF:V this becomes more complicated in multiplayer, but the idea is the same. The more skill you exhibit, the more often you receive a reward. Therefore, even in attempts to neutral-ize the game, they are still placing bias, even if that bias is inherent in the nature of playing.
I suppose you could call these games the ultimate manifestion of post/anti-modernism. The moral attachment to these symbols, say of the Nazi party and the Holocaust, or of American soliders killing Vietnamese civilians, is drained completely because the when the player is a German in Battlefield 1942, it doesn't matter anymore that the team they are virtually fighting for committed vast atrocities. What matters is that they take hold the flag for 10 seconds longer and receive a point. I'm not sure what the cultural long lasting effects of these games will be, but I'm sure there'll be some.
What we need from game developers, I believe, is a moral awareness, a realization that when dealing with violence, particularly within the context of a war, that they ought to acknowledge that these symbols mean something more than merely scoring a point. Merely because the public is less sensitive about an issue doesn't necessarily mean that the human harm committed disappears, or even loses its importance. I remember the backlash to games that included Osama Bin Laden immediately following 9-11. Fundamentally, though the only difference between those games (exempting quality, of course) and Battlefield Vietnam is a timespan of 30 years.
We'd be outraged if Dice's next game was, say, one side trying to esacpe the WTC and another side trying to hit it with airplanes. And yet, in 30 years that may very well be a game. Why aren't we addressing this more in gaming? Why can films address this, for example, the Vietnam War so astutely immediately following it, but our games can't do the same with the WTC?
My feeling is that the gaming landscape is ripe for someone to truly integrate the moral reality of war into a video game. I suppose that the creators of Call to Duty somehow think they're doing that, and I suppose I could concede that they are making baby steps in that direction. Still, it's within the basic framework of a protangonist seeking a reward and hindered by an antagonist. Like you said, violence and war are far more complicated than this. What would impress me is if the Call to Duty game developers had borrowed more than just style from Band to Brothers and instead included a level where you are forced to shoot at point blank range a 13 year old German soldier who doesn't fit in the uniform. The challenging question becomes: how do you imply an emotional connection, and communicate that this collection of pixels represents a human being with brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers that you ended the life of?
Anyone?
Is it a bad sign when the really good ideas are hoaxes?
Quake into Infocom is impressive, but easy enough. I'll be really impressed when I see Infocom on the Quake engine.
The sports series, I understand. Oddworld made sense. Tork, of course. Ed Fries getting canned was a little mystifying, but the "high" knowledge that is company politik is not for us to speculate on.
But this. This? This sounds like someone at Microsoft accidently hit the delete button on their Projects Pending page. This was the one artistically creative title Microsoft had going for it, and now it's gone. I think that this represents the end of all that high talk of art and creation and a gaming revolution that floated around the launch of Xbox1 from Seamus and his colleagues.
What does Microsoft have now? Halo and Fable? Halo 2 will be Halo, but not as repetitive. Fable? Based on the hands-on previews that have been surfacing, it might be fun but really is, at heart, a traditional European adventure/RPG. Whoopie. Psychonauts was the one creative spark Microsoft seemed to have left in it, and that is now extinguished.
Well, I'm turning in my Microsoft fanboy card. In fact, I'm selling my video gaming fanboy card on ebay at a Buy It Now price of $10.36 so can I buy Hickee which, I'm told, is drawn by some of the Double Fine Team. This industry blows its official licensed and franchised chunks and it got all over my damn shirt. If games like REZ and ICO and Beyond Good and Evil and Prince of Persia don't sell, and games like Sam and Max and Psychonauts don't even see the light of day, consider me officialy disfranchised.
Screw this joint. I'm picking up books. Or gardening. I hear gardening is fun.
You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun. - Manuel Calavera, Grim Fandango
Hey, if you watch Buffy, please start watching "Angel," the critically acclaimed spin-off
Only if my Tivo records it for me. =)
I've tried to get into it, but it seems more difficult to jump into than Buffy. Which surprises me, because I'm a lite-Buffy fan and loved Firefly, but it just doesn't seem to translate over to Angel. Just me I guess.
For my wife, who generally used TV as a boredom reliever, TiVo did decrease the amount that she watched. Before TiVo, she thought that she always might be missing something decent to watch, so she'd channel flip. After TiVo, she knows she isn't missing anything. She watches TV, but she watches much more deliberately and not accidently.
I'm completely the opposite. I rarely watched TV before TiVo because I felt like nothing was ever on, so why should I have to flip through channels to find it? With TiVo, I rarely miss a Daily Show episode (that's at least 22 minutes more than I usually watched because I'd miss it somehow), and I've discovered at least half a dozen other shows that I didn't know I liked. I watch more TV now than I did before. When I am bored, the TiVo always has at least a dozen STTNG, Buffy, Simpsons, Futurama, or Family Guy episodes sitting around to peruse.
So I think it largely depends on your viewing habits pre-PVR. The only downside now, I guess, is that my wife feels out of the loop when people at work discuss funny commercials. Then she realizes that it was during a lameass reality TV show, and she feels better.
That is because they have the cash to enter a market and do very poorly but still survive. Any other company (pretty much) would not have time to adapt their product while losing money.
Well, to some degree yes. That is certainly true now. However, while I might be off on my MS history, I'm not so sure it was true back in the DOS/early windows era. I think you're defintely right, but I also think that it's as much a characteristic of Microsoft's corporate identity as much as it is money.
I think that this is representative of a couple of things.
First, it shows how much more like Nintendo Microsoft is moving for game development. Quality over quantity. I think initially, Microsoft was emulating Sony with its mere quantity, as if it were Microsoft's job to fill in the gaps in the lineup. Maybe it's because they finally have the third party support to start focusing on quality first party (and when I say first party I am also referring to second party) titles. For the first year or two after the launch, Microsoft seemed to releasing everything they possibly could. Over the past year they became much more focused, told the in house dev studios to get it done but take their time (Crimson Skies, for example) and canned other titles that weren't up to par.
Now, it seems they're getting even leaner.
Which brings me to my second point.
And this is the one that will draw the atypical slashdot trolls like flies to a honey factory. Say what you will about monopolistic practices or Microsoft always borrowing from other companies. It's true. But one of the things Microsoft excels at is adapting their products until they work. With regards to the Xbox, they've displayed much more willingless to change the xbox based on market movements than Sony, and especially Nintendo. Canning and revamping the sports lineup is just one of these macro-adaptations that will make them that much more formidable in Xbox2. Someone posted that the canning was because of Xbox2. I think that's true, but only indirectly. They're not going to be Azurik 2, Bloodwake 2, and Fusion Frenzy 2 with the Xbox2 just because they can. My guess is that it will 2-5 extremely strong titles.
I know I'm sounding like a fanboy here, but it might take an Xbox 3.11 to start to dominate the market, but they're moving towards that, and this is demonstrative of that movement.
That is a very funny PA strip. That's also why that same one is in included in story (second link).
Like, apparently, every one else, I am a huge fan of Penny Arcade. However, what scares me is that in 6 months here on games.slashdot, instead of actually writing succinct, witty posts as we, of course, all do now, our posts will consist merely of a series PA links.
I think what MS paid for, and to some degree all they got, was an evangelist-for-hire. In the initial days of the Xbox, the enthusiasm of Lorne Lanning, combined with that of Seamus Blackley and a few others, was a driving factor in rousing up the "home crowd." I think that what everyone was thinking when Oddworld came out, after after a full year of preaching, was, "And this is revolutionary because........???" It wasn't a bad game, it just a game, not the second (or first) coming of the messiah of video gaming.
So now, it's what, over 3 years later, and all these guys have to show for is some pre-rendered footage? His New Year's resolution is to get the game out? Riiight. What I saw on that Discovery channel documentary didn't look too promising anyway. Like Oddworld, but...and get this...WESTERN. It looked a lot like Munch; fun, but not worth keeping around. Apparently, that's how Microsoft felt about the company as well. Ok, to be fair, Bungie has yet to release another game. But, it was Halo, and not the expected Oddworld, that carried the Xbox on its back during the system launch. In fact, Oddworld could never have come out and the Xbox probably done just as well. Without Halo...well, that's another story all together isn't it?
So I wonder if Lorne Lanning is as enthuastic about the Xbox today as he was three years ago?
As already stated, it's pretty disappointing how poorly our obvioulsy dysfunctional gaming giants performed with the love story. It shouldn't have been a surprise though, because none of these guys have every really done anything emotionally compelling (save the scariness of Spector's System Shock). That's not to say they're gaming losers, it's just that I doubt anyone will be shedding a tear over Everquest, Simcity, or Deus Ex. Unless it's because lag made them lose some huge loot, their city is in white flight, or their inventory system is unmanagable.
I suppose one possible reason for game publisher's ineptitude in creating decent love stories, either on the fly at a conference or with years of development, is that their product's recepients (us) don't care much for love stories. I have a hard time believing that, although I suppose it might be true. I think a better reason is the one proposed by Miyamoto. Violence is the easy way to incite an emotional response. Love and sadness take far more work on a narrative level than simply coding something like Battlefield Vietnam, or even Deus Ex. It's riskier, because it's very easy for a game to come across as insincere. With technology, you're safe. It's either good because it works, or it's bad because it doesn't. Love, well now, that's far more subjective, isn't it?
With that in mind, I will say this. The copout by Spector that the technology isn't up to par is the preposterous. With that statement he made yet another step downwards from the person I was envisioned him as. Obviously, he's of the mindset I just mentioned. For him, and apparently the others, love is a technical implementation, not a narrative one. It's a coded system, not the way a character talks or walks or reacts in the game(cf. ICO).
Shame on them. The reliance of the love story on narrative is why these guys not only missed the point, but are running the complete opposite direction. The connection of the Game Design Showdown to Iron Chief is appropriate. And if that's the case, these boobs tried to build a house instead of culinating a dish.
With bony hands I hold my partner
On soulless feet we cross the floor
The music stops as if to answer
An empty knocking at the door
It seems his skin was sweet as mango
When last I held him to my breast
But now we dance this grim fandango
And will four years before we rest.
Following in ICO's steps are Wind Waker and Prince of Persia, which both borrow heavily from ICO. There were a few times in Zelda when I almost cried from parts of a very scaled down love story, but I admit they were fairly non-interactive. The snapy princess in PoP was very much Ubisoft Montreal's iteration of the girl in ICO.
I felt that the relationship between the gamer and Bastila in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic was perhaps the best conversational and interactive relationship I'd ever "played." Instead of sketching up complicated systems like Spector and Wright tried, Bioware just hit the player with the old standard of branching conversations, but did it over and over and over again. The characters change through conversation and time, and it's this transformation in their character that makes it so interesting, and ultimately, worthy of caring for.
However, I agree with you. ICO does it best. The final scene in ICO is ranks among the best in gaming, and is without question the best demonstration of a love story in video gaming.
Grim Fandango, though, makes a pretty damn close second. It's nowhere near as "serious" as ICO, but in the way that it exercises its love story, it does it very well.