Where were the Gamecube's must-have titles this Christmas? Metroid Prime 2 was pretty much the only even vaguely significant name. The PS2 had San Andreas and it's usual hordes of 3rd-party games, the X-Box had Halo 2 and KOTOR 2. The Gamecube had a sequel to a game whose first incarnation, despite critical praise, had received distinctly divided opinion from customers. With fewer and fewer third party and cross-platform titles, epic waits between increasingly formulaic first-party titles (cf. Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart Double Dash) and still no online services worth mentioning, you have to wonder whether Nintendo actually want to stay competative in the "desktop" console market.
Yes, Nintendo is still profitable for the moment, but I'm starting to doubt whether they really have the drive they'll need to stay that way, in a world of ever-increasing development costs and customer expectations.
Oh well, I guess I'm about to lose yet more karma to the usual slashdot Nintendo-fanboy horde. Let them go on modding down the truth until the day the facts finally hit home.
Not true at all. The Sun is a long way from being "genuinely" right wing in its ideology. It's frequently xenophobic and it has a harsh attitude on law and order issues, but this is not inherantly right wing.
On many issues, the Sun is quite far-left. It tends to play with anti-Americanism and anti-corporatism on a regular basis. This basically reflects the confused and self-destructive nature of much of the UK's mainstream population. There's a hankering for the far-left economic policies which brought the UK to its knees by the end of the 70s, tied up with a longing for harsh social values. This could be equated with Communism perhaps more easily than Facism.
The Daily Mail is a more traditional low-brow right-wing newspaper. It has the well-known stance on law-and-order, as well as its obsession with asylum seekers, but again, these are not necessarily exclusive to the right wing. However, the Mail *does* have a right-wing attitude towards economic issues. It's anti-trade-unions, anti-social-security and obsessed with house prices. This reflects the fact that the Mail is traditionally the newspaper of (in British terms), the poorly-educated but economically self-sufficient lower middle classes.
But please, don't equate "nasty" with "right wing". Both left and right contribute their fare share of nutters, rabid ideologues, hatemongers and genuinely dangerous individuals.
I'm going to go against the grain of the comments being posted here and confess that I am actually surprised by this.
The Sun is a low-brow "red top" British tabloid, as other posters have pointed out. However, contrary to what has been stated above, it doesn't have any traditional political affiliation, unlike the broadsheets, such as the Guardian (left wing) and the Telegraph (right wing). In the 1992 election, it famously supported the Conservatives ("It was the Sun what won it") and then in 1997 and 2002 supported Labour. Its stories have a heavy preponderance towards sports-personalities, soap operas and sex. On a political scale, it's tempting to see the Sun as an important opinion former, due to its vast readership, but I don't think this is really true; what the Sun is good at is reflecting and reinforcing existing public opinion. The Sun's readership like to be told what they already know, rather than having their views challenged.
This is all leading up to why this particular episode surprises me. Contrary to what you may think and contrary to my own view of the paper, Sun journalists are among the cleverest in the business. They routinely have to compress major news stories into one or two paragraphs (where a broadsheet would take multiple pages) to give the pertinent facts to an audience who would rather be looking at the pictures. A lot of senior officials and businessmen actually insist on having clippings from the Sun included in their morning press summary because it's so good at encapsulating a story like this. This is an art-form in itself. Moreover, they have to deal with the usually-sordid matter of what the British public is really thinking... without actually crossing any legal boundaries. Compared to the other tabloid's in the UK, they actually seem to be immensely successful in this, which makes today's lapse (which presumably opens the door for Disney to bring an iron-clad case against them) all the more shocking.
The thinking behind it is quite clear: the intellectually challenged portion of the British population doesn't trust computer games. Nor do they trust big corporations like Disney, particularly when these corporations market straight to their children. A story that panders to fears about both of these is obviously going to go down well. It's just surprising that they didn't do the usual legal waterproofing.
Except Burnout 3 is also on the PS2. Unless Nintendo are willing to go to the lengths that MS and Sony will to encourage 3rd party development, they *will* lose... and hard.
This is clearly going to go down like a lead balloon on slashdot, where kissing Nintendo's ass is second only to MS bashing as a past-time. I imagine there are already dozens of furious and/or smug fanboys dashing off "OMG, NINTENDO R TEH ONLY INTEVATORS" rants in response to this.
However, it doesn't change the fact that the central thrust of the argument is true. Particularly the assertion that Nintendo's position in the console market these days is to be largely ignored. This might not be apparent to the average slashdot reader, given the high prominence that Nintendo-based stories get in here, but the wider world doesn't really care about the Gamecube any more, for good reason.
It's very, very true that Nintendo haven't innovated in their game designs for a long time. The point about most Cube games (and I say this as a Cube owner) being rehashed versions of N64 games is the real problem here. Even Metroid Prime, which the article singles out as an exception to this, is only a standard console fps with a bad control system. Sure, it's a good enough fps and it deservedly did well, but it's not innovative. Nintendo's idea of innovation these days is to make a tacky new controller, charge a fortune for it and hope the fanboys buy enough that it breaks even.
Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart 64 and Zelda Wind Walker were all good games. However, they all fundamentally appeal to the same audience. No, not kids; I don't fall for the argument that Nintendo games are aimed at kids. Let's face it, today's kids would rather be playing GTA: San Andreas or Halo 2. Rather, Nintendo's games are pitched at the same people who were buying their consoles as kids in the early 80s. These guys are older now, they don't really play games much, but they like to keep a console around for nostalgia value and, as many of them are part of the slashdot horde, they like feeling "alternative" by owning a console that isn't all nasty and corporate like the X-Box and PS2. This isn't a tremendously huge market and it's not likely to grow much.
So, how does Nintendo break out of this? The article talks at length about 3rd party support. This is pretty much essential, but it's only part of the solution. The GC has very little in the way of must-have exclusive games at the moment, for somebody who's not into Mario. Eternal Darkness is one of the very few that springs to mind. And, as the article says, there are so many games missing from the lineup that you can get on other systems. If I only owned a Cube (fortunately I have a PS2 and X-Box as well), I'd be pretty damned annoyed at not being able to play Burnout 3 on it. Of course, there's a bit of a vicious cycle here; 3rd party developers don't make games for the Cube because they don't sell, so people don't buy Cubes, so Cube games don't sell. It's going to take a lot of money to solve that.
However, Nintendo are also going to need to get up to speed on other developments in gaming... and fast. The classic example here is online gaming. This has been huge on the PC for years, X-Box Live is a pretty incredible achievement and even the PS2 has a respectable range of online games now. Meanwhile... I can count the Cube's online offerings on the fingers of one hand. In fact, I could do so even if I had a couple of fingers missing. And to cap it all of, we have some Nintendo exec telling us that online play isn't what gamers want. Henry Ford said that drivers could have their car any colour they wanted, so long as it was black... remember how well that worked out for him?
Oh, and while I'm ranting, how about European coverage. Europe is a huge market and it's growing fast. However, Europe gets consistently shafted by Nintendo. Major titles come out many months late, or not at all. We don't even get the extra features, by way of compensation, that we get in games by, for example, Square-Enix when they come out late in Europe (eg. FFX has a number of features in the European version missing from the US version and the original Japanese release). This isn't even a ca
I've seen stores ask for ID, and refuse to sell games to kids in the UK, albeit on an erratic basis. Certainly, if you're under-age and want to buy an 18-certificate game in the UK, your best bet is to go to a town-centre store on a Saturday afternoon, when the crowds are at their thickest and the queues at their longest. I've never seen somebody IDed when the store is heaving and the staff run off their feet. However, I've seen staff ask for ID and refuse to sell games quite a few times, when the shop hasn't been so busy. I've also seen staff speak up in cases where it's obvious that a clueless parent has been trying to buy a game for their child that might not be suitable (I've seen this twice with GTA: San Andreas). They don't refuse to sell the game in these cases... they just warn the parent. Most of the time, the parent puts the game back on the shelf.
I don't have any particular problem with this. Moreover, I can't really see why this is categorised as "your rights online". In no way does this infringe on the right of adults to spend their money as they choose. If parents think their kids should be able to play any game, then fine, the parents can buy the game. If parents think some games are unsuitable, they can have confidence that stores won't undermine them.
Ever since the Carmageddon fiasco (for which we must all be eternally grateful), the BBFC hasn't been able to get up the nerve to ban any game outright in the UK. When I look at the situation elsewhere in Europe, particularly Germany, I feel very, very glad that I live here. The USA seems to be similarly fortunate. I think that having some age controls on games is a very small price to pay for this.
The original post may have been whinging in tone, but I can see the point and if I were in the same situation, I'd be annoyed. One of the real thrills in any MMORPG is to be at the "top" of your server.
This isn't just a prestige/ego thing, although that's no small part of it. In the first few months of a MMORPG, those who are at the "top" get to engage in the greatest share of genuine discovery, in terms of quests, abilities, areas to explore and so on. Once you fall behind the pack, the rest of the game is comprehensively "spoiled" for you and due to the very nature of the game, it's almost impossible to avoid this.
On the contrary, Doom 3 had that hideous, hideous form of copy-protection whereby the game refuses to run if it detects CD-emulation software (or indeed random other bits of software the publishers don't approve of) installed.
Personally, if there has to be copy protection, I'd rather see the HL2 model, or the Halo 2 model than that used on Doom 3. The reasoning behind this is simple; steam (Valve's DRM client thingy, through which you have to play HL2), for all its many flaws, actually functions and allows other things to function. Once the game gets "switched on" (and yes, I resent having to wait for this), I can at least play it while continuing to use my computer normally. It doesn't stop me doing anything unrelated to the game.
Halo 2's copy protection means that I can't do certain things with my X-Box. However, my X-Box is just a gaming machine. I use it to play games and I tend to buy my games in my local high-street retailer. I can play Halo 2 while doing anything I would reasonably expect to be able to do with my X-Box.
However, in the case of the system used by Doom 3 (and a number of other games), I can't actually play the game while I have a good number of other useful utilities installed on my home PC, which is *not* just a games machine. Sure, it gets gaming use, but I use my desktop for a lot of other things. Daemon Tools is an incredibly useful little program and I used it to speed up my use of a large number of programs which I legally owned. For a game to arbitrarily decide that it won't run if I have this installed is just not right. Fortunately, Doom 3's copy protection doesn't detect the excellent Alcohol 120%, which has similar functionality. However, it can only be so long before this loophole is closed.
I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but the parent is complete, ignorant rubbish.
I've worked in two HR roles in the past (although I'm not there in the moment), one private sector, the other public. This is exactly the kind of ignorant, mindless bigotry that I had to deal with on a day to day basis. It's true that HR is not there as a wonderful, fuzzy, personal support mechanism for you. If you want that, go pay for a counsellor. However, as any competent HR person (which is most of them, in my experience) will tell you, HR needs, among other things, to maintain the peace between employees and employer. This entails saying "no" to management as often as it does to the workers in the line. Moreover, everywhere I've worked, management will respect this; that's why they have HR in the first place and why so many organisations these days put the HR director on the board (which in the past was often unthinkable). Of course, the average employee doesn't get to see this, as HR also knows that getting into *public* confrontation with management won't help, so the employee assumes that HR is out to get him. Believe me, if the board has just decided to do a big round of redundancies, HR will be trying to work out how to keep the number to a minimum. They'll argue for this to the board on grounds of morale (which may or may nor count for much, depending on the particular board) and cost (which will count for a lot). Getting rid of people is expensive and redundancies are generally a horrible solution to short-term cash-flow problems. All your average employee sees is HR dictation who stays and who has to go. HR is a convenient fall guy for this.
One thing I've particularly noticed is that a lot of IT people seem to feel particularly victimised by HR. They complain that HR never looks out for them and that they're disadvantaged within the organisation in terms of pay, promotion and benefits. In 99% of the cases where I've seen this, it's been a case of the individual disadvantaging themselves. HR will help you get along, if, and only if, you help yourself as well. In particular, a lot of the younger IT people approach their jobs as if they're still at school. They expect that, at the end of the day, all of their work is marked by the teacher and if they've done a good job, they'll get a pat on the head and a gold star. The average large business or public sector organisation doesn't and can't work like this. If you want people to know you're good, you not only have to do a good job (although this is a necessary start), but you have to let people know about it. This means working on your personal communications skills, working on how you make an impact and networking effectively. That means the kind of networking you do without the cables. You need to stop ranting about management every five minutes and try to look more constructive. Most importantly of all, you need to stop pretending you're the BOFH. Trust me on this, guys, but although Simon Travaglia is a funny guy, what he writes is both *fiction* and *humour*. Do not, as I've seen so many people do, try to adopt his attitude in the workplace. In real life, BOFHs get sacked.
In short, do not assume that just because you're a specialist, you are exempt from the hoops that "ordinary" staff, such as administrative or policy staff need to jump through to get along. HR can be your friend, but only if you make the effort to bring this around. HR, and indeed management, will be a lot more receptive to complaints about your hours if you can argue convincingly and promote a reasonable solution. Unionisation is one way people argue, but it can be combatative and I've seen it work well in some cases and very, very badly in others. In my experience if you're unhappy, it's often more effective to work within the system to get this across.
Finally, I do actually agree that EA's HR Department probably isn't very good. This should have picked up and resolved much earlier, even if the employees weren't being effective in helping to resolve it. There are still bad HR departments out there.
I was in the tech-test for WoW a while ago and I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed when it finally appears. Don't get me wrong, it's by no means bad, but it isn't anything special. I found the combat rather flat and uninteresting compared to other MMORPGs I've played (especially FFXI), the economy rather dull and the interface a long way from perfect (although I don't think any MMORPG has managed a really good interface yet).
More damningly, the game has now had so much fanboy-generated hype that it's never going to live up to the expectations of most of the people waiting to play it. I'm sure it will be moderately successful... probably on a par with Galaxies in terms of player numbers, but to dismiss EQ2 out of hand, or write off FFXI (with its current absolutely enormous player base) on the grounds that WoW will be out soon is folly.
It's a real pity this article isn't better. There's certainly room for a good article on the history of the series; the gamespot article was by no means definitive.
But this article was so bad as to be painful at times. First of all, if you're going to produce something of this length, PLEASE get somebody intelligent and literate to proof-read it before you post it. I'm not just referring to some of the obvious spelling and grammar errors in there, but also to the fact that it read like it was written by a bunch of 14 year old fanboys. Yes, I love the series as well, but you don't have to write every section of the article as though it's an advert for the game in question. Tone down the gushing a bit and turn up the actual content. You're not actually trying to make a profit off sales of the games, so you don't need to come over like an official advert.
But please, please, don't then go and spoil the plot to pretty much every game in the series. Final Fantasy games live or die by their plots and giving away the whole thing isn't going to convince anybody to go out and play it. By all means sketch out the background to it, giving a bit of detail about the world, the protagonists and the villains. What we don't need is a breakdown of who does what to who and when. If we want to know that, we'll go play the game.
Also, if you're going to write an article like this, try to actually include some content that the audience isn't likely to already know. Most Final Fantasy fans, even very casual ones, will know the main features of each game in the series. If you want us to read though something that long, you need to do a bit of research and tell us something we might not know. Maybe talk a bit about the public and critical receptions that each game received, compare the numbers of copies they sold with their main competitors or talk a bit about the inspirations for and motifs within each of the games. This information is all out there; if you want us to read and enjoy your article, go find it. Moreover, as a number of other comments have already pointed out, for the love of god, make sure you get your facts right and keep fact separate from opinion.
Finally, where was all the missing stuff? No mention of Final Fantasy Tactics, Crystal Chronicles or Kingdom Hearts? It's a bit hard to see how you can do a complete history of the series withot touching on these. Sure, none of them appeal to quite the same audience as the "numbered" Final Fantasy games, but Square has a habit of using them to test ideas that later appear in the main series.
This game should have been awesome... best in it's field. As it is, after playing the stress-test, I can't help but feel it's confined to second place in the "traditional MMORPG" market.
Don't get me wrong, it's very good. The graphics are great... very stylised, very "Warcraft". It's nice to see a game that doesn't go for the realistic look and isn't afraid to look a bit different. The world seems pretty huge and it's nice not to have any load times at zones. Spell effects and whatnot all look excellent. On balance, I'd rate it higher than Everquest, Anarchy Online, Dark Ages of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies. Indeed, it's better than virtually any other MMORPG I've played.
With one exception.
Final Fantasy XI leaves this game choking in the dust. The notable thing about Square's first venture into the MMORPG market was how little attention they'd paid to the predecessors. As a result of this, they came up with some gameplay innovations that future MMORPGs ignore at their extreme peril. After experiencing FFXI's unique and flexible jobs/subjobs system, I can't find the words to express just how contraining it felt to be limited to a single class for my character, with creating a whole new character being my only way of trying annything different. The party combat felt very flat and uninspired... everybody felt much more of a generalist than in FFXI. With no unlockable classes, the incentive for experimenting later in the game is much diminished. The game-world may be faster moving and faster loading, but it suffers from a serious lack of depth. In the week I played, I found few cities to rival the size of even the small towns in FFXI and nothing at all to compare with the larger cities.
Ultimately, if you've never played FFXI, you'll probably love this. If you played FFXI, but the lack of serious PvP was too much of a put-off for you, you'll love this. Otherwise, Square's title is far more rewarding.
All of a sudden, I feel slightly better disposed towards Doom 3 multiplayer.
The CPL taking an interest in a game is usually the kiss of death for it in terms of its potential to develop a friendly, mature online community. I used to run a big EU based Counter-Strike league, with no prizes worth a damn and where most of the competitors were in it for fun, and the change that came over the game after the CPL decided they wanted to push it were incredibly depressing. Teams I'd known for years, who'd always been good sports, always treated the game as fun and weren't, to be frank, very good suddenly thought they were going to be the next CPL champions and that they'd make a living out of professional gaming.
Sportsmanship and fair-play went out the window. Suddenly, it was all about "practicing for the CPL" and "getting sponsorship to go to the CPL". The former meant refusing to play any maps or game-modes not supported by the CPL. The latter meant contesting any defeat to the last breath, on the grounds that just accepting a loss would put potential sponsors off. Bear in mind that I'm not just talking about top-end teams here. I'm talking about teams that I, an indifferent player at the best of times (I was always stronger on the organisational side) could beat single-handedly.
The CPL themselves, when they deigned to talk to us mere mortals, came across as arrogant, dictatorial, fickle and often highly irrational. They're intensely sensitive of criticism and think nothing of throwing their weight around. Fortunately, my direct dealings with them have been very limited, but I've heard frequent horror stories from players, sponsors and even those who won their competitions.
"Professional" gaming remains a myth. Even the very top players can barely afford to live off their prize money. You know all those big figures you see quoted for the prizes? Those all get split 5 ways. With only the CPL and WCG having decent prize-money, a team would need to win both in a single year to manage a reasonable income. This is for a "job" which takes pretty much constant play in order to maintain your edge. Sponsorship helps a little, but it normally only just covers travel expenses etc, rather than providing an actual income.
Oh well... here's hoping people will wake up and smell the coffee eventually.
In a weird way, I'd love to see both sides lose this.
In the red corner, we have Vivendi. The faceless media giant that sums up everything that we're constantly being told is wrong with the games industry. A soul-less money-making machine, with no interest in the quality or artistic merits of the products they put out, determined to grind the poor suffering developers into abject poverty.
In the blue corner, we have Valve. The developer which seems to be trying to set itself up as a rival to 3d Realms in the contest for the title of "biggest running joke of the gaming industry." They had one excellent hit over half a decade ago, which has been shamelessly miked since then through a series of mediocre expansion packs and "gold" editions. Their latest project is to force everybody who wants to play their games to use a creaking, occasionally-works (kind of) DRM client to run them. The service is erratic, the client is buggy and the only real benefit is for Valve's bank balance.
Sorry if the above sounds overly negative, but I do think that regardless of how good the end product turns out to be, the entire process of its development does little to cast anybody at all in the industry in a good light.
Another 1 line forum post? Perhaps I'm just getting cynical in my old age, but I'm hardly going to treat this as the gospel truth. As far as I'm concerned, I'll believe Valve's statements on release dates the day I have the game in my hand (or my steam cache... I'm open minded on these things).
Valve may have some great talents on their staff. Half-Life was a shockingly good game and Half-Life 2 may well continue the tradition. But by god do they need some decent project managers and PR people. Since the announcement of HL2 last year, they've managed to make themselves objects of anger, frustration and sometimes plain ridicule for much of the gaming world. I'm sure a lot of this is unjustified morally, after all, nobody has a "right" to have HL2 by any given date (except possibly the people who got vouchers for it with their graphics cards *cough*), but that's not to say that any sane company should have behaved in the way that Valve have. If HL2 wasn't ready for release before the leak last year, and I don't think anybody now believes that it was, then Valve should have made this clear and been relatively open about the progress of the game all along.
Hell... even an ID-style "when it's done" would have been better than this endless succession of missed release dates.
Final Fantasy XI is also cross-platform. What's more, users on the supported platforms play on the same servers and there seems to be a fairly even split between the platforms these days.
Don't go looking for a Mac client, though. The two platforms it supports are PC and PS2. Given Square's history of support even for the Windows-PC is erratic at best, I wouldn't go expecting it to appear on Mac or Linux any time soon.
Since when was it a good idea to let the fans write the plot? What should it matter how the fans thought FFVII should have ended? Movies or games produced by focus group rarely have any redeeming features. One of the things I respect about Square is their willingness to make unpopular decisions with regards to the Final Fantasy franchise. Pretty much every game is iconoclastic and messes around with the establishe formula, using sending the fanboys who wanted a clone of the previous game into hysterical fits. The battle system changes pretty much every game, often in completely unexpected ways (witness the sphere-grid in FFX) while the game-world usually has at least one unique factor that makes you go "what the fuck". I'd say that the only time Square *didn't* do this with a recent game (FFIX), they delivered the most disappointing product.
To sum up, I don't want the content of my Final Fantasy games/movies dictated by the turgid outpourings of the fanfic authors. Advent Children may turn out to be just a blatant cash-in, but past experience leads me to suspect it will be something a bit riskier.
I just don't see the Phantom being able to break into the console market right now. This is not an easy market to be competative in. There are currently three big players... this is actually 1 more than the market has traditionally supported during past cycles and there are those who feel that one of the current big 3 will eventually fall by the wayside.
Look at how the big three got these: they either built their following decades ago and are still trading on the licenses (Nintendo), sunk vast amounts of money to ensure their break-in (Microsoft) or capitalised on a huge brand-name in consumer electronics and a truly inspired range of 3rd party developers (Sony). Infinium don't have any of these and I don't think they have it in their power to obtain any of them either. Nor do they have any kind of equivalent draw. Gamers are already wary of the online-content thing, after the well-publicised cock-ups surrounding steam and I can't actually name a single Phantom exclusive game, if indeed such a thing exists. If there's a future for the Phantom, it's as an extension of the kind of mini-games I can currently play through my Sky Television digibox, rather than as a dedicated games console.
Bush won't affect me too much, as I live in the UK. And don't assume that everybody outside the UK hates him; I think he's done a pretty good job.
Metroid Prime is the game on my list that I'm least enthused about. I played 2 hours or so and the control system seemed hideous. The Gamecube controller, with its stunted right analogue stick, just doesn't work for fpses.
I know this situation all too well. I think it's connected with the fact I started work just over a year ago. Since then, I've had a cash-flow I could only dream of during my student days, but a pronounced lack of free time. My "to play" pile includes Full Spectrum Warrior (beyond the first 2 missions), Forbidden Siren, Soulcalibur II and Metroid Prime. I think the fact that I now play Final Fantasy XI also doesn't help; MMORPGs tend to edge out other games quite brutally.
Franchised MMORPGs are a risky venture. Get it right, and you can draw on an audience for your game which goes beyond the normal MMORPG-playing market, circumventing the argument that there are too many developers competing for too few customers. Get it wrong and you have an expensive mess on your hands which you then have to support for the next few years, while it damages the reputation of your franchise in the meantime.
Success or failure depends on a large number of factors. Obviously, the biggest of these is how good the game mechanics are. A MMORPG lives or dies by these; players spend a lot of time in a MMORPG and a crummy interface, boring combat or a crippled economy will have them leaving in droves. However, the mechanics of a good MMORPG are a discussion for another comments thread. How a franchise can help a MMORPG succeed or fail is what's relevant here.
To a large extent, I think the nature of the franchise is important. In particular, being tied too closely to a specific book or film is dangerous. I'll illustrate this by pointing out two recent franchised MMORPGs and how the franchises have hindered them.
Final Fantasy XI (if you've read my posts elsewhere, you'll already know I love this game) has exactly the right kind of franchise. "Final Fantasy" is difficult to pin down; each of the games has its own characters, worlds, plot and game mechanics. The only commonalities between the games are a few core gameplay concepts, the names of a couple of characters and a few world-elements, such as airships and chocobos. Within those very, very few constraints, the developers were free to create whatever world they wanted. The result was a world which looked and felt like a Final Fantasy world, but which had been carefully balanced to work as a MMORPG. Sure, a lot of newbies wanted to be a summoner, because summons have been one of the cooler things about recent FF games, but there's no fundamental requirement of the game universe that Summoners be uber-characters (in fact, unless the player is willing to put a *lot* of time and effort into developing it, the Summoner's generally felt to be a weak class in most areas). For the most part, people accept this.
By contrast, Star Wars Galaxies had a more unsuitable franchise and used it in a way that added further constraints. By setting the game during the time of the movies, when the Jedi were apparently nearly extinct and forced into hiding, the developers allowed the universe to constrain the game in a lot of ways. Let's face it, most of the players who tried out Galaxies wanted to be a Jedi. In the films, Jedi are uber-warriors, capable of all kinds of neat tricks. This already gave the devs a major problem, in that allowing a class like that, particularly in a game with PvP, is just not feasible in a MMORPG. So, the devs were forced to put Jedi in the world (upsetting those die-hard fans who dislike any deviation from the cannonical universe), make it extremely hard to become a Jedi (which upsets a lot of those who wanted to become a Jedi), and ensuring that the class wasn't actually all that powerful (upsetting those who put the time and effort into unlocking it). The result is pretty much the worst possible scenario. I think it would have been more sensible to set the game in an era more removed from the movies, as they did with KOTOR, to allow for a little more creative control, although it still wouldn't have solved some of the underlying problems.
The Star Wars license also accentuated what was missing from the game when it released. Space combat is such a huge part of the Star Wars universe that it's understandable that people were so upset it wasn't there from release. Had the airships been missing from Final Fantasy XI when it was released, it wouldn't have been anything like such a big deal.
Ultimately, Galaxies hasn't failed miserably and still has a respectable player-base. However, the damage that has been done to the franchise's reputation is not trivial and will be hard to undo.
There's a semi-valid point here, but I think it misses some of the "point" of FFXI. First of all, playing the game because you played every other Final Fantasy game, while no doubt a motivation for a lot of people, isn't really the right mindset to go into this with. It's a totally different style of game and you're going to get very different things out of it. Chances are, players who are playing it purely for the "Final Fantasy" factor won't last past a couple of days anyway.
The problems of getting into decent parties are hugely overstated, in my experience. Newbies often find it harder to get invites because there are certain ways in which they inadvertently flag themselves as newbies. Failure to set up a search comment and failure to have at least rank 3 (which you want to get as soon as you get to level 24 or 25) are the most obvious ways. FFXI's job system means that you're always going to get lots of experienced players ploughing through the lower levels and they'll need parties to do so. Look even vaguely competent and you will get invites. It's only since I got above level 50 that things have gotten a bit slower, as the majority of English-speaking players haven't penetrated to these levels yet. It'll improve over time.
Oh, and I'm playing from the UK, where the game isn't even released yet (I imported a copy from the states) and even though I only play in the evenings here, time zone issues have never hindered me.
The level grind is always a difficult issue in RPGs and particularly in MMORPGs. It does put a lot of people off and, yes, even I, a fairly avid MMORPG player, get pretty sick of it sometimes.
The problem is that all things considered, it's probably the "least bad" way of handling character advancement in a MMORPG. Ultimately, a sense of advancement is one of the best ways of keeping players interested in a game. If you could max out a character after a couple of days, you'd probably lose interest in the game pretty quickly. No matter how wonderful the quests and other content might be, you're going to start thinking "but why should I bother"? Moreover, given that it takes the developers a considerable amount of time to design quest-related content, you're never going to be able to get enough quests to allow them to replace the level-grind as a long-term option. The challenge for developers is to make the level grind as painless and even enjoyable as possible.
My MMORPG of choice is Final Fantasy XI. I think I can maybe shed some light on what I mean by pointing at some of the things it does right and wrong with regards to the level grind. First of all, the jobs system is a huge plus; being able to change to one job without losing my work in another is a huge plus and means that if I need a break from the level grind on my main job and there aren't any job specific quests I can go and do with it, I can switch to another job for a while and do some of the quests for that. I don't "do" crafting myself, but the skill system there seems fairly sensible; you gain skill in it by actually practicing making stuff, but there's a cap placed on your skill by your character's level, so advancing tradeskills requires a mix of practicing crafting and level grinding. The weapon skill system is similar; a level 50 character who's never used an axe before will be no better at using an axe than a level 1 character, although due to his high level, he'll learn more quickly if he tries. The requirement to form parties is also a big plus, in my opinion. Only one of the jobs in the game (Beastmaster) is capable of levelling up past about level 20 without being in a party. Personally, I don't get why people would play a MMORPG and then spend most of their time solo; if I wanted to do that, I'd be playing Morrowind. Interaction with party memebers is one of the best ways to take the sting out of the level grind, even if it can become time-consuming to put parties together at the higher levels (50+).
That's the good stuff. Now for the areas where I think there's room for improvement. By far my biggest gripe is the fact that you'll never be fighting anything other than the same few types of enemies on the level grind. There's a huge bestiary in the game, with some really great monsters, but as most players are so risk-averse, they'll happily go from levels 1-60 fighting nothing but bats, worms, crabs and beetles. Just to point out how stupid this gets; a level 60 beetle has the exact same abilities as its level 1 cousin. The only difference is that it gets higher stats. It would be nice if the game would force you to fight more exotic and difficult creatures as you got more advanced and if... shock horror... fights actually started to need more skill at the higher levels. As it is, the only times I get to fight the more challenging creatures are when I'm on a quest. Also, I'd like to see smaller penalties for dying. It's not so bad at the lower levels; a death there might set you back about 5 minutes worth of levelling. But a death above level 50 can set you back an hour or more of work. This contributes to players being so risk-averse. I understand the need for some kind of penalty for dying, but I think that being over harsh takes a lot of the fun out of things.
Anyway, to wrap up, the level grind is here to stay, but developers have a duty to do whatever they can to make it as fun as possible.
Yes, I own a Gamecube, as well as a PS2 and an X-Box. I don't think fpses in general work well on consoles, but compared to games on consoles whose controllers have a proper right analogue stick you can use for looking around, Metroid Prime feels like wading through treacle. Why they couldn't have put on another proper analogue stick is beyond me, although in fairness, the left analogue stick on the GC controller doesn't feel that much better. The Z button is an atrocity and I find it hard to hit the X or Y buttons without bashing the big green monster in the middle. The only thing the GC controller has going for it are the nice shoulder buttons.
Oh, and what's with the cable length for the GC controller? With the other consoles, I can lie on my bed and play games, but with the Gamecube, I have to be sat right on the edge of the bed, or else I risk pulling the whole thing onto the floor.
Slashdot Mirror
Where were the Gamecube's must-have titles this Christmas? Metroid Prime 2 was pretty much the only even vaguely significant name. The PS2 had San Andreas and it's usual hordes of 3rd-party games, the X-Box had Halo 2 and KOTOR 2. The Gamecube had a sequel to a game whose first incarnation, despite critical praise, had received distinctly divided opinion from customers. With fewer and fewer third party and cross-platform titles, epic waits between increasingly formulaic first-party titles (cf. Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart Double Dash) and still no online services worth mentioning, you have to wonder whether Nintendo actually want to stay competative in the "desktop" console market.
Yes, Nintendo is still profitable for the moment, but I'm starting to doubt whether they really have the drive they'll need to stay that way, in a world of ever-increasing development costs and customer expectations.
Oh well, I guess I'm about to lose yet more karma to the usual slashdot Nintendo-fanboy horde. Let them go on modding down the truth until the day the facts finally hit home.
Not true at all. The Sun is a long way from being "genuinely" right wing in its ideology. It's frequently xenophobic and it has a harsh attitude on law and order issues, but this is not inherantly right wing.
On many issues, the Sun is quite far-left. It tends to play with anti-Americanism and anti-corporatism on a regular basis. This basically reflects the confused and self-destructive nature of much of the UK's mainstream population. There's a hankering for the far-left economic policies which brought the UK to its knees by the end of the 70s, tied up with a longing for harsh social values. This could be equated with Communism perhaps more easily than Facism.
The Daily Mail is a more traditional low-brow right-wing newspaper. It has the well-known stance on law-and-order, as well as its obsession with asylum seekers, but again, these are not necessarily exclusive to the right wing. However, the Mail *does* have a right-wing attitude towards economic issues. It's anti-trade-unions, anti-social-security and obsessed with house prices. This reflects the fact that the Mail is traditionally the newspaper of (in British terms), the poorly-educated but economically self-sufficient lower middle classes.
But please, don't equate "nasty" with "right wing". Both left and right contribute their fare share of nutters, rabid ideologues, hatemongers and genuinely dangerous individuals.
I'm going to go against the grain of the comments being posted here and confess that I am actually surprised by this.
The Sun is a low-brow "red top" British tabloid, as other posters have pointed out. However, contrary to what has been stated above, it doesn't have any traditional political affiliation, unlike the broadsheets, such as the Guardian (left wing) and the Telegraph (right wing). In the 1992 election, it famously supported the Conservatives ("It was the Sun what won it") and then in 1997 and 2002 supported Labour. Its stories have a heavy preponderance towards sports-personalities, soap operas and sex. On a political scale, it's tempting to see the Sun as an important opinion former, due to its vast readership, but I don't think this is really true; what the Sun is good at is reflecting and reinforcing existing public opinion. The Sun's readership like to be told what they already know, rather than having their views challenged.
This is all leading up to why this particular episode surprises me. Contrary to what you may think and contrary to my own view of the paper, Sun journalists are among the cleverest in the business. They routinely have to compress major news stories into one or two paragraphs (where a broadsheet would take multiple pages) to give the pertinent facts to an audience who would rather be looking at the pictures. A lot of senior officials and businessmen actually insist on having clippings from the Sun included in their morning press summary because it's so good at encapsulating a story like this. This is an art-form in itself. Moreover, they have to deal with the usually-sordid matter of what the British public is really thinking... without actually crossing any legal boundaries. Compared to the other tabloid's in the UK, they actually seem to be immensely successful in this, which makes today's lapse (which presumably opens the door for Disney to bring an iron-clad case against them) all the more shocking.
The thinking behind it is quite clear: the intellectually challenged portion of the British population doesn't trust computer games. Nor do they trust big corporations like Disney, particularly when these corporations market straight to their children. A story that panders to fears about both of these is obviously going to go down well. It's just surprising that they didn't do the usual legal waterproofing.
Except Burnout 3 is also on the PS2. Unless Nintendo are willing to go to the lengths that MS and Sony will to encourage 3rd party development, they *will* lose... and hard.
This is clearly going to go down like a lead balloon on slashdot, where kissing Nintendo's ass is second only to MS bashing as a past-time. I imagine there are already dozens of furious and/or smug fanboys dashing off "OMG, NINTENDO R TEH ONLY INTEVATORS" rants in response to this.
However, it doesn't change the fact that the central thrust of the argument is true. Particularly the assertion that Nintendo's position in the console market these days is to be largely ignored. This might not be apparent to the average slashdot reader, given the high prominence that Nintendo-based stories get in here, but the wider world doesn't really care about the Gamecube any more, for good reason.
It's very, very true that Nintendo haven't innovated in their game designs for a long time. The point about most Cube games (and I say this as a Cube owner) being rehashed versions of N64 games is the real problem here. Even Metroid Prime, which the article singles out as an exception to this, is only a standard console fps with a bad control system. Sure, it's a good enough fps and it deservedly did well, but it's not innovative. Nintendo's idea of innovation these days is to make a tacky new controller, charge a fortune for it and hope the fanboys buy enough that it breaks even.
Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart 64 and Zelda Wind Walker were all good games. However, they all fundamentally appeal to the same audience. No, not kids; I don't fall for the argument that Nintendo games are aimed at kids. Let's face it, today's kids would rather be playing GTA: San Andreas or Halo 2. Rather, Nintendo's games are pitched at the same people who were buying their consoles as kids in the early 80s. These guys are older now, they don't really play games much, but they like to keep a console around for nostalgia value and, as many of them are part of the slashdot horde, they like feeling "alternative" by owning a console that isn't all nasty and corporate like the X-Box and PS2. This isn't a tremendously huge market and it's not likely to grow much.
So, how does Nintendo break out of this? The article talks at length about 3rd party support. This is pretty much essential, but it's only part of the solution. The GC has very little in the way of must-have exclusive games at the moment, for somebody who's not into Mario. Eternal Darkness is one of the very few that springs to mind. And, as the article says, there are so many games missing from the lineup that you can get on other systems. If I only owned a Cube (fortunately I have a PS2 and X-Box as well), I'd be pretty damned annoyed at not being able to play Burnout 3 on it. Of course, there's a bit of a vicious cycle here; 3rd party developers don't make games for the Cube because they don't sell, so people don't buy Cubes, so Cube games don't sell. It's going to take a lot of money to solve that.
However, Nintendo are also going to need to get up to speed on other developments in gaming... and fast. The classic example here is online gaming. This has been huge on the PC for years, X-Box Live is a pretty incredible achievement and even the PS2 has a respectable range of online games now. Meanwhile... I can count the Cube's online offerings on the fingers of one hand. In fact, I could do so even if I had a couple of fingers missing. And to cap it all of, we have some Nintendo exec telling us that online play isn't what gamers want. Henry Ford said that drivers could have their car any colour they wanted, so long as it was black... remember how well that worked out for him?
Oh, and while I'm ranting, how about European coverage. Europe is a huge market and it's growing fast. However, Europe gets consistently shafted by Nintendo. Major titles come out many months late, or not at all. We don't even get the extra features, by way of compensation, that we get in games by, for example, Square-Enix when they come out late in Europe (eg. FFX has a number of features in the European version missing from the US version and the original Japanese release). This isn't even a ca
I've seen stores ask for ID, and refuse to sell games to kids in the UK, albeit on an erratic basis. Certainly, if you're under-age and want to buy an 18-certificate game in the UK, your best bet is to go to a town-centre store on a Saturday afternoon, when the crowds are at their thickest and the queues at their longest. I've never seen somebody IDed when the store is heaving and the staff run off their feet. However, I've seen staff ask for ID and refuse to sell games quite a few times, when the shop hasn't been so busy. I've also seen staff speak up in cases where it's obvious that a clueless parent has been trying to buy a game for their child that might not be suitable (I've seen this twice with GTA: San Andreas). They don't refuse to sell the game in these cases... they just warn the parent. Most of the time, the parent puts the game back on the shelf.
I don't have any particular problem with this. Moreover, I can't really see why this is categorised as "your rights online". In no way does this infringe on the right of adults to spend their money as they choose. If parents think their kids should be able to play any game, then fine, the parents can buy the game. If parents think some games are unsuitable, they can have confidence that stores won't undermine them.
Ever since the Carmageddon fiasco (for which we must all be eternally grateful), the BBFC hasn't been able to get up the nerve to ban any game outright in the UK. When I look at the situation elsewhere in Europe, particularly Germany, I feel very, very glad that I live here. The USA seems to be similarly fortunate. I think that having some age controls on games is a very small price to pay for this.
The original post may have been whinging in tone, but I can see the point and if I were in the same situation, I'd be annoyed. One of the real thrills in any MMORPG is to be at the "top" of your server.
This isn't just a prestige/ego thing, although that's no small part of it. In the first few months of a MMORPG, those who are at the "top" get to engage in the greatest share of genuine discovery, in terms of quests, abilities, areas to explore and so on. Once you fall behind the pack, the rest of the game is comprehensively "spoiled" for you and due to the very nature of the game, it's almost impossible to avoid this.
On the contrary, Doom 3 had that hideous, hideous form of copy-protection whereby the game refuses to run if it detects CD-emulation software (or indeed random other bits of software the publishers don't approve of) installed.
Personally, if there has to be copy protection, I'd rather see the HL2 model, or the Halo 2 model than that used on Doom 3. The reasoning behind this is simple; steam (Valve's DRM client thingy, through which you have to play HL2), for all its many flaws, actually functions and allows other things to function. Once the game gets "switched on" (and yes, I resent having to wait for this), I can at least play it while continuing to use my computer normally. It doesn't stop me doing anything unrelated to the game.
Halo 2's copy protection means that I can't do certain things with my X-Box. However, my X-Box is just a gaming machine. I use it to play games and I tend to buy my games in my local high-street retailer. I can play Halo 2 while doing anything I would reasonably expect to be able to do with my X-Box.
However, in the case of the system used by Doom 3 (and a number of other games), I can't actually play the game while I have a good number of other useful utilities installed on my home PC, which is *not* just a games machine. Sure, it gets gaming use, but I use my desktop for a lot of other things. Daemon Tools is an incredibly useful little program and I used it to speed up my use of a large number of programs which I legally owned. For a game to arbitrarily decide that it won't run if I have this installed is just not right. Fortunately, Doom 3's copy protection doesn't detect the excellent Alcohol 120%, which has similar functionality. However, it can only be so long before this loophole is closed.
I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but the parent is complete, ignorant rubbish.
I've worked in two HR roles in the past (although I'm not there in the moment), one private sector, the other public. This is exactly the kind of ignorant, mindless bigotry that I had to deal with on a day to day basis. It's true that HR is not there as a wonderful, fuzzy, personal support mechanism for you. If you want that, go pay for a counsellor. However, as any competent HR person (which is most of them, in my experience) will tell you, HR needs, among other things, to maintain the peace between employees and employer. This entails saying "no" to management as often as it does to the workers in the line. Moreover, everywhere I've worked, management will respect this; that's why they have HR in the first place and why so many organisations these days put the HR director on the board (which in the past was often unthinkable). Of course, the average employee doesn't get to see this, as HR also knows that getting into *public* confrontation with management won't help, so the employee assumes that HR is out to get him. Believe me, if the board has just decided to do a big round of redundancies, HR will be trying to work out how to keep the number to a minimum. They'll argue for this to the board on grounds of morale (which may or may nor count for much, depending on the particular board) and cost (which will count for a lot). Getting rid of people is expensive and redundancies are generally a horrible solution to short-term cash-flow problems. All your average employee sees is HR dictation who stays and who has to go. HR is a convenient fall guy for this.
One thing I've particularly noticed is that a lot of IT people seem to feel particularly victimised by HR. They complain that HR never looks out for them and that they're disadvantaged within the organisation in terms of pay, promotion and benefits. In 99% of the cases where I've seen this, it's been a case of the individual disadvantaging themselves. HR will help you get along, if, and only if, you help yourself as well. In particular, a lot of the younger IT people approach their jobs as if they're still at school. They expect that, at the end of the day, all of their work is marked by the teacher and if they've done a good job, they'll get a pat on the head and a gold star. The average large business or public sector organisation doesn't and can't work like this. If you want people to know you're good, you not only have to do a good job (although this is a necessary start), but you have to let people know about it. This means working on your personal communications skills, working on how you make an impact and networking effectively. That means the kind of networking you do without the cables. You need to stop ranting about management every five minutes and try to look more constructive. Most importantly of all, you need to stop pretending you're the BOFH. Trust me on this, guys, but although Simon Travaglia is a funny guy, what he writes is both *fiction* and *humour*. Do not, as I've seen so many people do, try to adopt his attitude in the workplace. In real life, BOFHs get sacked.
In short, do not assume that just because you're a specialist, you are exempt from the hoops that "ordinary" staff, such as administrative or policy staff need to jump through to get along. HR can be your friend, but only if you make the effort to bring this around. HR, and indeed management, will be a lot more receptive to complaints about your hours if you can argue convincingly and promote a reasonable solution. Unionisation is one way people argue, but it can be combatative and I've seen it work well in some cases and very, very badly in others. In my experience if you're unhappy, it's often more effective to work within the system to get this across.
Finally, I do actually agree that EA's HR Department probably isn't very good. This should have picked up and resolved much earlier, even if the employees weren't being effective in helping to resolve it. There are still bad HR departments out there.
I was in the tech-test for WoW a while ago and I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed when it finally appears. Don't get me wrong, it's by no means bad, but it isn't anything special. I found the combat rather flat and uninteresting compared to other MMORPGs I've played (especially FFXI), the economy rather dull and the interface a long way from perfect (although I don't think any MMORPG has managed a really good interface yet).
More damningly, the game has now had so much fanboy-generated hype that it's never going to live up to the expectations of most of the people waiting to play it. I'm sure it will be moderately successful... probably on a par with Galaxies in terms of player numbers, but to dismiss EQ2 out of hand, or write off FFXI (with its current absolutely enormous player base) on the grounds that WoW will be out soon is folly.
It's a real pity this article isn't better. There's certainly room for a good article on the history of the series; the gamespot article was by no means definitive.
But this article was so bad as to be painful at times. First of all, if you're going to produce something of this length, PLEASE get somebody intelligent and literate to proof-read it before you post it. I'm not just referring to some of the obvious spelling and grammar errors in there, but also to the fact that it read like it was written by a bunch of 14 year old fanboys. Yes, I love the series as well, but you don't have to write every section of the article as though it's an advert for the game in question. Tone down the gushing a bit and turn up the actual content. You're not actually trying to make a profit off sales of the games, so you don't need to come over like an official advert.
But please, please, don't then go and spoil the plot to pretty much every game in the series. Final Fantasy games live or die by their plots and giving away the whole thing isn't going to convince anybody to go out and play it. By all means sketch out the background to it, giving a bit of detail about the world, the protagonists and the villains. What we don't need is a breakdown of who does what to who and when. If we want to know that, we'll go play the game.
Also, if you're going to write an article like this, try to actually include some content that the audience isn't likely to already know. Most Final Fantasy fans, even very casual ones, will know the main features of each game in the series. If you want us to read though something that long, you need to do a bit of research and tell us something we might not know. Maybe talk a bit about the public and critical receptions that each game received, compare the numbers of copies they sold with their main competitors or talk a bit about the inspirations for and motifs within each of the games. This information is all out there; if you want us to read and enjoy your article, go find it. Moreover, as a number of other comments have already pointed out, for the love of god, make sure you get your facts right and keep fact separate from opinion.
Finally, where was all the missing stuff? No mention of Final Fantasy Tactics, Crystal Chronicles or Kingdom Hearts? It's a bit hard to see how you can do a complete history of the series withot touching on these. Sure, none of them appeal to quite the same audience as the "numbered" Final Fantasy games, but Square has a habit of using them to test ideas that later appear in the main series.
This game should have been awesome... best in it's field. As it is, after playing the stress-test, I can't help but feel it's confined to second place in the "traditional MMORPG" market. Don't get me wrong, it's very good. The graphics are great... very stylised, very "Warcraft". It's nice to see a game that doesn't go for the realistic look and isn't afraid to look a bit different. The world seems pretty huge and it's nice not to have any load times at zones. Spell effects and whatnot all look excellent. On balance, I'd rate it higher than Everquest, Anarchy Online, Dark Ages of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies. Indeed, it's better than virtually any other MMORPG I've played. With one exception. Final Fantasy XI leaves this game choking in the dust. The notable thing about Square's first venture into the MMORPG market was how little attention they'd paid to the predecessors. As a result of this, they came up with some gameplay innovations that future MMORPGs ignore at their extreme peril. After experiencing FFXI's unique and flexible jobs/subjobs system, I can't find the words to express just how contraining it felt to be limited to a single class for my character, with creating a whole new character being my only way of trying annything different. The party combat felt very flat and uninspired... everybody felt much more of a generalist than in FFXI. With no unlockable classes, the incentive for experimenting later in the game is much diminished. The game-world may be faster moving and faster loading, but it suffers from a serious lack of depth. In the week I played, I found few cities to rival the size of even the small towns in FFXI and nothing at all to compare with the larger cities. Ultimately, if you've never played FFXI, you'll probably love this. If you played FFXI, but the lack of serious PvP was too much of a put-off for you, you'll love this. Otherwise, Square's title is far more rewarding.
All of a sudden, I feel slightly better disposed towards Doom 3 multiplayer.
The CPL taking an interest in a game is usually the kiss of death for it in terms of its potential to develop a friendly, mature online community. I used to run a big EU based Counter-Strike league, with no prizes worth a damn and where most of the competitors were in it for fun, and the change that came over the game after the CPL decided they wanted to push it were incredibly depressing. Teams I'd known for years, who'd always been good sports, always treated the game as fun and weren't, to be frank, very good suddenly thought they were going to be the next CPL champions and that they'd make a living out of professional gaming.
Sportsmanship and fair-play went out the window. Suddenly, it was all about "practicing for the CPL" and "getting sponsorship to go to the CPL". The former meant refusing to play any maps or game-modes not supported by the CPL. The latter meant contesting any defeat to the last breath, on the grounds that just accepting a loss would put potential sponsors off. Bear in mind that I'm not just talking about top-end teams here. I'm talking about teams that I, an indifferent player at the best of times (I was always stronger on the organisational side) could beat single-handedly.
The CPL themselves, when they deigned to talk to us mere mortals, came across as arrogant, dictatorial, fickle and often highly irrational. They're intensely sensitive of criticism and think nothing of throwing their weight around. Fortunately, my direct dealings with them have been very limited, but I've heard frequent horror stories from players, sponsors and even those who won their competitions.
"Professional" gaming remains a myth. Even the very top players can barely afford to live off their prize money. You know all those big figures you see quoted for the prizes? Those all get split 5 ways. With only the CPL and WCG having decent prize-money, a team would need to win both in a single year to manage a reasonable income. This is for a "job" which takes pretty much constant play in order to maintain your edge. Sponsorship helps a little, but it normally only just covers travel expenses etc, rather than providing an actual income.
Oh well... here's hoping people will wake up and smell the coffee eventually.
In a weird way, I'd love to see both sides lose this.
In the red corner, we have Vivendi. The faceless media giant that sums up everything that we're constantly being told is wrong with the games industry. A soul-less money-making machine, with no interest in the quality or artistic merits of the products they put out, determined to grind the poor suffering developers into abject poverty.
In the blue corner, we have Valve. The developer which seems to be trying to set itself up as a rival to 3d Realms in the contest for the title of "biggest running joke of the gaming industry." They had one excellent hit over half a decade ago, which has been shamelessly miked since then through a series of mediocre expansion packs and "gold" editions. Their latest project is to force everybody who wants to play their games to use a creaking, occasionally-works (kind of) DRM client to run them. The service is erratic, the client is buggy and the only real benefit is for Valve's bank balance.
Sorry if the above sounds overly negative, but I do think that regardless of how good the end product turns out to be, the entire process of its development does little to cast anybody at all in the industry in a good light.
So my copies of Disgaea and Guilty Gear X-2 must be imaginary.
Thanks for letting me know.
Another 1 line forum post? Perhaps I'm just getting cynical in my old age, but I'm hardly going to treat this as the gospel truth. As far as I'm concerned, I'll believe Valve's statements on release dates the day I have the game in my hand (or my steam cache... I'm open minded on these things).
Valve may have some great talents on their staff. Half-Life was a shockingly good game and Half-Life 2 may well continue the tradition. But by god do they need some decent project managers and PR people. Since the announcement of HL2 last year, they've managed to make themselves objects of anger, frustration and sometimes plain ridicule for much of the gaming world. I'm sure a lot of this is unjustified morally, after all, nobody has a "right" to have HL2 by any given date (except possibly the people who got vouchers for it with their graphics cards *cough*), but that's not to say that any sane company should have behaved in the way that Valve have. If HL2 wasn't ready for release before the leak last year, and I don't think anybody now believes that it was, then Valve should have made this clear and been relatively open about the progress of the game all along.
Hell... even an ID-style "when it's done" would have been better than this endless succession of missed release dates.
Final Fantasy XI is also cross-platform. What's more, users on the supported platforms play on the same servers and there seems to be a fairly even split between the platforms these days.
Don't go looking for a Mac client, though. The two platforms it supports are PC and PS2. Given Square's history of support even for the Windows-PC is erratic at best, I wouldn't go expecting it to appear on Mac or Linux any time soon.
This might seem an obvious question, but...
Since when was it a good idea to let the fans write the plot? What should it matter how the fans thought FFVII should have ended? Movies or games produced by focus group rarely have any redeeming features. One of the things I respect about Square is their willingness to make unpopular decisions with regards to the Final Fantasy franchise. Pretty much every game is iconoclastic and messes around with the establishe formula, using sending the fanboys who wanted a clone of the previous game into hysterical fits. The battle system changes pretty much every game, often in completely unexpected ways (witness the sphere-grid in FFX) while the game-world usually has at least one unique factor that makes you go "what the fuck". I'd say that the only time Square *didn't* do this with a recent game (FFIX), they delivered the most disappointing product.
To sum up, I don't want the content of my Final Fantasy games/movies dictated by the turgid outpourings of the fanfic authors. Advent Children may turn out to be just a blatant cash-in, but past experience leads me to suspect it will be something a bit riskier.
I just don't see the Phantom being able to break into the console market right now. This is not an easy market to be competative in. There are currently three big players... this is actually 1 more than the market has traditionally supported during past cycles and there are those who feel that one of the current big 3 will eventually fall by the wayside.
Look at how the big three got these: they either built their following decades ago and are still trading on the licenses (Nintendo), sunk vast amounts of money to ensure their break-in (Microsoft) or capitalised on a huge brand-name in consumer electronics and a truly inspired range of 3rd party developers (Sony). Infinium don't have any of these and I don't think they have it in their power to obtain any of them either. Nor do they have any kind of equivalent draw. Gamers are already wary of the online-content thing, after the well-publicised cock-ups surrounding steam and I can't actually name a single Phantom exclusive game, if indeed such a thing exists. If there's a future for the Phantom, it's as an extension of the kind of mini-games I can currently play through my Sky Television digibox, rather than as a dedicated games console.
Bush won't affect me too much, as I live in the UK. And don't assume that everybody outside the UK hates him; I think he's done a pretty good job.
Metroid Prime is the game on my list that I'm least enthused about. I played 2 hours or so and the control system seemed hideous. The Gamecube controller, with its stunted right analogue stick, just doesn't work for fpses.
I know this situation all too well. I think it's connected with the fact I started work just over a year ago. Since then, I've had a cash-flow I could only dream of during my student days, but a pronounced lack of free time. My "to play" pile includes Full Spectrum Warrior (beyond the first 2 missions), Forbidden Siren, Soulcalibur II and Metroid Prime. I think the fact that I now play Final Fantasy XI also doesn't help; MMORPGs tend to edge out other games quite brutally.
Franchised MMORPGs are a risky venture. Get it right, and you can draw on an audience for your game which goes beyond the normal MMORPG-playing market, circumventing the argument that there are too many developers competing for too few customers. Get it wrong and you have an expensive mess on your hands which you then have to support for the next few years, while it damages the reputation of your franchise in the meantime.
Success or failure depends on a large number of factors. Obviously, the biggest of these is how good the game mechanics are. A MMORPG lives or dies by these; players spend a lot of time in a MMORPG and a crummy interface, boring combat or a crippled economy will have them leaving in droves. However, the mechanics of a good MMORPG are a discussion for another comments thread. How a franchise can help a MMORPG succeed or fail is what's relevant here.
To a large extent, I think the nature of the franchise is important. In particular, being tied too closely to a specific book or film is dangerous. I'll illustrate this by pointing out two recent franchised MMORPGs and how the franchises have hindered them.
Final Fantasy XI (if you've read my posts elsewhere, you'll already know I love this game) has exactly the right kind of franchise. "Final Fantasy" is difficult to pin down; each of the games has its own characters, worlds, plot and game mechanics. The only commonalities between the games are a few core gameplay concepts, the names of a couple of characters and a few world-elements, such as airships and chocobos. Within those very, very few constraints, the developers were free to create whatever world they wanted. The result was a world which looked and felt like a Final Fantasy world, but which had been carefully balanced to work as a MMORPG. Sure, a lot of newbies wanted to be a summoner, because summons have been one of the cooler things about recent FF games, but there's no fundamental requirement of the game universe that Summoners be uber-characters (in fact, unless the player is willing to put a *lot* of time and effort into developing it, the Summoner's generally felt to be a weak class in most areas). For the most part, people accept this.
By contrast, Star Wars Galaxies had a more unsuitable franchise and used it in a way that added further constraints. By setting the game during the time of the movies, when the Jedi were apparently nearly extinct and forced into hiding, the developers allowed the universe to constrain the game in a lot of ways. Let's face it, most of the players who tried out Galaxies wanted to be a Jedi. In the films, Jedi are uber-warriors, capable of all kinds of neat tricks. This already gave the devs a major problem, in that allowing a class like that, particularly in a game with PvP, is just not feasible in a MMORPG. So, the devs were forced to put Jedi in the world (upsetting those die-hard fans who dislike any deviation from the cannonical universe), make it extremely hard to become a Jedi (which upsets a lot of those who wanted to become a Jedi), and ensuring that the class wasn't actually all that powerful (upsetting those who put the time and effort into unlocking it). The result is pretty much the worst possible scenario. I think it would have been more sensible to set the game in an era more removed from the movies, as they did with KOTOR, to allow for a little more creative control, although it still wouldn't have solved some of the underlying problems.
The Star Wars license also accentuated what was missing from the game when it released. Space combat is such a huge part of the Star Wars universe that it's understandable that people were so upset it wasn't there from release. Had the airships been missing from Final Fantasy XI when it was released, it wouldn't have been anything like such a big deal.
Ultimately, Galaxies hasn't failed miserably and still has a respectable player-base. However, the damage that has been done to the franchise's reputation is not trivial and will be hard to undo.
There's a semi-valid point here, but I think it misses some of the "point" of FFXI. First of all, playing the game because you played every other Final Fantasy game, while no doubt a motivation for a lot of people, isn't really the right mindset to go into this with. It's a totally different style of game and you're going to get very different things out of it. Chances are, players who are playing it purely for the "Final Fantasy" factor won't last past a couple of days anyway.
The problems of getting into decent parties are hugely overstated, in my experience. Newbies often find it harder to get invites because there are certain ways in which they inadvertently flag themselves as newbies. Failure to set up a search comment and failure to have at least rank 3 (which you want to get as soon as you get to level 24 or 25) are the most obvious ways. FFXI's job system means that you're always going to get lots of experienced players ploughing through the lower levels and they'll need parties to do so. Look even vaguely competent and you will get invites. It's only since I got above level 50 that things have gotten a bit slower, as the majority of English-speaking players haven't penetrated to these levels yet. It'll improve over time.
Oh, and I'm playing from the UK, where the game isn't even released yet (I imported a copy from the states) and even though I only play in the evenings here, time zone issues have never hindered me.
The level grind is always a difficult issue in RPGs and particularly in MMORPGs. It does put a lot of people off and, yes, even I, a fairly avid MMORPG player, get pretty sick of it sometimes.
The problem is that all things considered, it's probably the "least bad" way of handling character advancement in a MMORPG. Ultimately, a sense of advancement is one of the best ways of keeping players interested in a game. If you could max out a character after a couple of days, you'd probably lose interest in the game pretty quickly. No matter how wonderful the quests and other content might be, you're going to start thinking "but why should I bother"? Moreover, given that it takes the developers a considerable amount of time to design quest-related content, you're never going to be able to get enough quests to allow them to replace the level-grind as a long-term option. The challenge for developers is to make the level grind as painless and even enjoyable as possible.
My MMORPG of choice is Final Fantasy XI. I think I can maybe shed some light on what I mean by pointing at some of the things it does right and wrong with regards to the level grind. First of all, the jobs system is a huge plus; being able to change to one job without losing my work in another is a huge plus and means that if I need a break from the level grind on my main job and there aren't any job specific quests I can go and do with it, I can switch to another job for a while and do some of the quests for that. I don't "do" crafting myself, but the skill system there seems fairly sensible; you gain skill in it by actually practicing making stuff, but there's a cap placed on your skill by your character's level, so advancing tradeskills requires a mix of practicing crafting and level grinding. The weapon skill system is similar; a level 50 character who's never used an axe before will be no better at using an axe than a level 1 character, although due to his high level, he'll learn more quickly if he tries. The requirement to form parties is also a big plus, in my opinion. Only one of the jobs in the game (Beastmaster) is capable of levelling up past about level 20 without being in a party. Personally, I don't get why people would play a MMORPG and then spend most of their time solo; if I wanted to do that, I'd be playing Morrowind. Interaction with party memebers is one of the best ways to take the sting out of the level grind, even if it can become time-consuming to put parties together at the higher levels (50+).
That's the good stuff. Now for the areas where I think there's room for improvement. By far my biggest gripe is the fact that you'll never be fighting anything other than the same few types of enemies on the level grind. There's a huge bestiary in the game, with some really great monsters, but as most players are so risk-averse, they'll happily go from levels 1-60 fighting nothing but bats, worms, crabs and beetles. Just to point out how stupid this gets; a level 60 beetle has the exact same abilities as its level 1 cousin. The only difference is that it gets higher stats. It would be nice if the game would force you to fight more exotic and difficult creatures as you got more advanced and if... shock horror... fights actually started to need more skill at the higher levels. As it is, the only times I get to fight the more challenging creatures are when I'm on a quest. Also, I'd like to see smaller penalties for dying. It's not so bad at the lower levels; a death there might set you back about 5 minutes worth of levelling. But a death above level 50 can set you back an hour or more of work. This contributes to players being so risk-averse. I understand the need for some kind of penalty for dying, but I think that being over harsh takes a lot of the fun out of things.
Anyway, to wrap up, the level grind is here to stay, but developers have a duty to do whatever they can to make it as fun as possible.
Yes, I own a Gamecube, as well as a PS2 and an X-Box. I don't think fpses in general work well on consoles, but compared to games on consoles whose controllers have a proper right analogue stick you can use for looking around, Metroid Prime feels like wading through treacle. Why they couldn't have put on another proper analogue stick is beyond me, although in fairness, the left analogue stick on the GC controller doesn't feel that much better. The Z button is an atrocity and I find it hard to hit the X or Y buttons without bashing the big green monster in the middle. The only thing the GC controller has going for it are the nice shoulder buttons.
Oh, and what's with the cable length for the GC controller? With the other consoles, I can lie on my bed and play games, but with the Gamecube, I have to be sat right on the edge of the bed, or else I risk pulling the whole thing onto the floor.