I'll tell you why. I've been playing guitar for close to 15 years. I own an accoustic, two electrics, a couple of amps, a few effects pedals.
And yet, I still love Guitar Hero. Why?
It's the same reason I enjoyed Gran Turismo, despite the fact that I own a real car. I can do things in Guitar Hero that I can't do in real life. I can sit down and instantly start playing a song just like the original guitarist. I can crank up the difficulty if I want more of a challenge and to get more of a "I'm really playing a guitar" feel, or I can dial it back and jam with my wife who can't even play an E chord on a real guitar.
I can do it in front of an audience that roars its approval on a massive shredding solo, without the grueling practice, coordination, and drama of a real band.
And just like Gran Turismo encouraged me to drive my car a little faster than I should, Guitar Hero has encouraged me to sit down and learn to play some of the songs on my real guitars. But like all good video games, it's there when I want a quick, easy, enjoyable experience.
But you sold it. So obviously it wasn't money well spent, except as an investment that you were able to profit from.
I own Guitar Hero, bought a copy for a friend, and bought a second guitar controller for my wife, and we played it constantly for the first month, and still go back and play it at least once a week. I'd consider that money well spent.
I also own an accoustic guitar and two electrics, so I do play the real thing. And yes, the toy game version is still fun.
I don't really care that they're charging for this. If you think it's worth it, you buy it. If you don't, you don't buy it. Simple enough.
But I'm worried about the precedent it might be setting. What's to stop them from cutting out a lot of pieces of the game that would normally be included with the original purchase, in order to grab more money later? Want to do the thieves guild quests? That'll be another $10. Interested in the mages guild quests? $10!
It might be acceptable if the game overall was reduced in price. In fact, that would actually be pretty cool. Instead of paying $60 for the main story arc, the thieves guild, mages guild, assassination guild, and fighters guild, I could pay $30 for the main story, and $10 for each seperate quest series I was interested in. But that's not what's going to happen.
Another big concern of mine relates more to the PC version. The past Elder Scrolls were ripe for the modding with included tools. This was supported and encouraged by the devs. If they're planning on using addons as revenue though, in the future I could see them not including the tools for user created mods, and doing a 180 from encouraging their development to adding EULA provisons which PROHIBIT their creation and distribution. After all, free user mods would then cut into their profits.
I saw some of this with the Sims. You could create certain types of mods, like skins, but you couldn't add new items and gadgets. I wondered why, until I realized these new gadgets were the biggest motivation of people to buy the expansions.
So wait a minute, Microsoft needs to learn from Nintendo? What exactly makes this a success?
Yeah, it sold out, but they only delivered a third of what was initially expected. So shortages and hard to get consoles for most people are what Microsoft needs to do? Didn't they just do that?
Or maybe you're lauding them for their ability to polish an old product and resell it? DS Lite, all the random ports for the GBA.
I might be an anomoly, but I'd rather Nintendo start making some new games.
I met my wife before it was a stigma to meet and date someone online. As if meeting someone in a bar is somehow better? But anyway, I digress.
It was back on a MMORPG precursor -- a MUD -- and have been happily together for 8 or 9 years now.
We currently play WoW together, and are the leaders of a medium sized casual guild. We're not an oddity either. Unless we just attract married couples, we have 5 other husband/wifes that are in our guild. That's 12 people out of probably 35 folks that are married and game together. At least two of those other pairs met on an online game. We also have another pair that met in WoW and are currently dating.
I don't agree with the arguments that some others have posted that people don't act like themselves in games, and thus it's a bad way to meet people. Granted, there is use of the game as an escape mechnism, to get away from real life and do things you can't do or wouldn't do in person.
The thing is, you belong to a community. In smaller settings, such as smaller guilds, or a friendlist of people you commonly group with, the real you comes out. You talk about your day. You perform small acts of kindness, whether it's passing on the uber robes to your friend, or lending some gold, or helping with a quest. You tell jokes.
Yes, you can still be the sneaky deceitful rogue in groups with random strangers, or be a berserking, rampaging warrior screaming defiance as you wade through slashing up the fields of the opposing faction on the battlefield, but within the smaller setting of your guild, or your group, or your friends, you ARE yourself.
Yes, there is still the possibility of deceipt. You could act like something you're not in order to lure or attract the interest of someone else. But that exists in real life. You might modify your behavior in order to better fit in with the crowd, or wear a mask that makes you seem something you aren't, but that too exists in real life.
My point is that I think MMORPGs very closely mirror the way people act in real life. It all just varies with the context. You're a nice guy, sure, but when anonymous, I'm sure you've done not nice things. Safe with the anonymity of just another car in a busy traffic jam? You've probably flipped someone off or called them a dirty word, when you'd never do the same when your family or boss was with you.
You can pay $5 to rent it and have the same experience as the guy who bought it for $50.
And if everyone did that, how many more great games like God of War would come out? Sure, you save money, but the publisher and developers don't get a lot of money they would have if you had bought it. And then no more God of War.
Or, the alternative, companies start tacking on lengthening, but boring, intermissions, in order to artificially make the game longer. Examples are Metroid Prime and Zelda's Windwaker. Great pacing, a constant sense of acheivement and reward, and then you're smacked with this backtracking quest in Metroid where you had to revisit all the places you've already been and collect all this junk. Windwaker made you sail around in your boat and fish up junk from the floor of the sea.
To me, that's not ideal. Maybe the solution is to make those lengthening, boring time sinks required to progress in rental versions of a game, but give registered owners of the software a way to bypass it.
Where do people get these egos to think anyone really cares about what type of music you listen to, other than to try to sell you more songs?
I think this about nearly every single "privacy issue". Big deal!
It's a big world. No one cares about you, an individual. There's not going to be any article in the paper listing and ridiculing your preferences. Unless you're a celebrity, it's simply not news that anyone else cares about.
Actually, yes, it's a world event, but it's going to happen prior to the expansion's release (by 2-4 weeks, IIRC). Also, like the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event, even if players don't participate, they'll open on their own. Just not as fast. I guess NPC participation or some such.
Having said all that, though, I agree it won't be beyond the portal. For one, you have to be level ~55 to pass through the portal. And the assumption is the content beyond the portal would be geared for players of that level. Having a starting area there just wouldn't work, especially since they'd want to leverage existing content for new characters to level up in.
But there's nothing to say they can't just wedge in some lore explanation for the whole thing. "Remote island off the coast of Westfall discovered, populated solely by Draenei!"
This was a big point Microsoft harped on with the original Xbox, and it's clear they retain the same vision here. Despite the fact that the system has a lot in common with a PC, Microsoft has clearly wanted to differentiate the console from a (dumbed down) PC. That's why they released no keyboard, or mice, or web browsers, or email clients.
Despite the lack of some features, I actually agree with this strategy. It's a console whose main purpsoe is playing games. They also expanded it to do some other things you'd like to do with a system hooked up to your TV and surround sound receiver -- play movies, music, display pictures.
If they released a keyboard, an internet browser, a word processor, you'd end up with a PC that can also play Xbox games. Besides cutting into other markets that they probably don't want to overlap, it also adds clutter to the interface, and adds new potential points of failure and hassle.
I think they've made a good compromise between functionality and features, while retaining ease of use and simplicity.
it plays playstation 2 games. my kid has too many of those to even consider a switch in technology.
Yeah. It sucks how you have to throw away your PS2 when you buy an Xbox 360. I never understood why we aren't allowed to keep our old consoles so we can play our old games, while still having a new console to play new games on.
Dreamcast's launch lineup was much better. Virtua Fighter 3? Check. Soul Caliber? Check. A Sonic game?
Virtua Fighter 3 did not launch with the DC. About a month or so after launch, I believe. Soul Calibur was good. The Sonic game was mediocre at best. Too much of its focus seemed to involved going around, getting those eggs, and raising them on your memory unit. If I wanted a pocket pet thing, I would have bought one!
I'm not saying the Xbox 360 has the best launch lineup, as that's a very subjective matter. I just think a lot of people tend to get nostalgic for the games of the past, and over emphasize how good they really were.
I am 27, and have been playing games of some sort since I can remember. Growing up, being a gamer was almost a stigma. It had nerdy connotations. In the school setting, it wasn't something you very often talked about openly. Maybe with a close group of your friends in a private setting, but talking about games at the lunch tables in the cafeteria would likely get you pointed at and laughed at.
That has changed.
In just overheard conversations from some of the younger generation of gamers, playing games is no longer the stigma it used to be. Kids talk about games openly. They bring Gameboys to school and play them openly during breaks. And while there will always be the too-cool for that groups, it's no longer just the geeks wearing glasses.
Just look at the growth of the gaming industry. Geeks are everywhere, true, but there's not enough of us to support the huge market that exists now. Others are buying and playing games.
It's only going to grow as home internet connectivity is approaching ubiquious. While gaming with friends used to be limited to those in your neighborhood, or those whose parents could bring them over on occassions, now it can be done both in person, and online, and peer pressure and the "do what they're doing" adolescent mentality will cause it to grow further.
Tell a man there are billions of stars in the universe, and he will believe you. Tell him that a wall is coated with wet paint, and he has to touch it himself to make sure.
Take from that what you will. But if you get anything meaningful out of it, fill me in.
I definitely agree. The game market has inflated to such a degree, and maybe my attention span has shortened as I age, but I typically don't play the same game over and over and over anyway. I'd much prefer a very entertaining 5 hour game to one with 150 hours of content, when that 150 hours is mostly boring side missions that are not engaging.
I realize everyone has different expectations, but put it in prospective. Going to a movie costs anywhere from $8-$10 last I checked, for somewhere between 1.5-2.5 hours of entertainment.
That's close to the cost of a game that entertains you for 10 hours, and costs $50. Plus, the game has the benefit of being interactive, rather than something you just watch.
Or, you could buy the movie on DVD, for around $20. It's even more dollar per hour now. You do have the benefit of owning it, so you can rewatch it when you want, but that same arguement applies to games as well. You can replay it. And even the most linear games have the benefit of being somewhat different the second play through (IE, in Galaga, you'll probably not get blown up by the exact same insectoid ship at the exact point in time you did last time).
Combined with Gamespot's 8.7 score, that's an average of around an 8 for Kameo. That's not a bad score. Besides, instead of looking at the scores, I would encourage you to instead read all the reviews. Points that the reviewers might have docked from the game might not carry as much weight with you.
Really? So you've never played a console game that suffers from framerate slowdown?
Even if the monitor refreshes evenly, exactly 30 frames per second, if the console can't keep up, you're going to get the same exact frame refreshed several times while the console chugs away trying to catch up.
However, when I play a racing game I want to feel like I'm driving a car, not watching one on TV.
That's just you. Consider this: Although you may have driven a Viper at 150mph around a track, how many other people have? Compare that to how many have seen races on TV or in the movies.
So, even if they nailed the realism based on how it looks when doing it in reality, unless it's a common activity that most of the user base has experienced themselves, its reproduction won't match their expections based on what they have experienced (TV), and thus, they won't like it.
It's the same with other genres. Just about all football games have ESPN style presentation. The camera is overhead and third person, and you can control all of the players. There have been a few attempts at first person, behind the face mask style football games, and not many people liked it.
People don't play for reality. They play for fun, and want to be immersed in a familiar setting.
Definitely agreed, things do blur in the real world as well. I think a lot of it, though, depends on where your eyes are pointed. If your eyes are focused straight ahead, watching the road, the trees in your peripheral vision are blurred. But if you look at the trees, and try to focus on them, they're not so blurry. If you try to focus on an individual tree, ie, move your eyes at the same speed as its passing you by, you can usually see it a lot more clearly.
Good points, but books do not have support costs associated with them. Cars do, but after a relatively short period of time, the warranty expires and then the consumer pays for his support costs.
I'm sure it's not as big of a deal as the publishers would like to make it seem, but the nature of software is unique from the typically tangible things that First Sale applies to, and it doesn't seem fair to the publisher that places like EB are making a killing off of someone else's work while the publisher gets no piece of the pie.
I don't really care so much about the publishers, but when they lose money on an otherwise good game that I'd like to see a sequel to, I get concerned:)
You know, as much as I hate to agree with the evil publishers, they have a valid point.
Their marketing likely contributed to Joe Blow walking into the store looking for the game, yet they don't get to recoup that money through revenue if Joe buy's a used copy of the game. The support issue is also valid.
It wouldn't be as big of a deal if it were people selling their old games at yard sales, or even individuals clearing out their collection on eBay. But this is facilitated and organized by fairly large retail chains, so it's on a grander scale.
Having said all that, I don't think TFA's subject is the best solution. As many have pointed out, it'd screw over just about all of the legitimate consumers, and encourage people to resort to piracy, or boycott.
Can't the publishers just say "You know, if you're going to sell copies of our games used without cutting us in on the profit, we're not selling you any new games?". It'd hurt their bottom lines for a while, but if enough of them did it, the EB and GameStops would revise their policy or go out of business.
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I'll tell you why. I've been playing guitar for close to 15 years. I own an accoustic, two electrics, a couple of amps, a few effects pedals.
And yet, I still love Guitar Hero. Why?
It's the same reason I enjoyed Gran Turismo, despite the fact that I own a real car. I can do things in Guitar Hero that I can't do in real life. I can sit down and instantly start playing a song just like the original guitarist. I can crank up the difficulty if I want more of a challenge and to get more of a "I'm really playing a guitar" feel, or I can dial it back and jam with my wife who can't even play an E chord on a real guitar.
I can do it in front of an audience that roars its approval on a massive shredding solo, without the grueling practice, coordination, and drama of a real band.
And just like Gran Turismo encouraged me to drive my car a little faster than I should, Guitar Hero has encouraged me to sit down and learn to play some of the songs on my real guitars. But like all good video games, it's there when I want a quick, easy, enjoyable experience.
But you sold it. So obviously it wasn't money well spent, except as an investment that you were able to profit from.
I own Guitar Hero, bought a copy for a friend, and bought a second guitar controller for my wife, and we played it constantly for the first month, and still go back and play it at least once a week. I'd consider that money well spent.
I also own an accoustic guitar and two electrics, so I do play the real thing. And yes, the toy game version is still fun.
I don't really care that they're charging for this. If you think it's worth it, you buy it. If you don't, you don't buy it. Simple enough.
But I'm worried about the precedent it might be setting. What's to stop them from cutting out a lot of pieces of the game that would normally be included with the original purchase, in order to grab more money later? Want to do the thieves guild quests? That'll be another $10. Interested in the mages guild quests? $10!
It might be acceptable if the game overall was reduced in price. In fact, that would actually be pretty cool. Instead of paying $60 for the main story arc, the thieves guild, mages guild, assassination guild, and fighters guild, I could pay $30 for the main story, and $10 for each seperate quest series I was interested in. But that's not what's going to happen.
Another big concern of mine relates more to the PC version. The past Elder Scrolls were ripe for the modding with included tools. This was supported and encouraged by the devs. If they're planning on using addons as revenue though, in the future I could see them not including the tools for user created mods, and doing a 180 from encouraging their development to adding EULA provisons which PROHIBIT their creation and distribution. After all, free user mods would then cut into their profits.
I saw some of this with the Sims. You could create certain types of mods, like skins, but you couldn't add new items and gadgets. I wondered why, until I realized these new gadgets were the biggest motivation of people to buy the expansions.
So wait a minute, Microsoft needs to learn from Nintendo? What exactly makes this a success?
Yeah, it sold out, but they only delivered a third of what was initially expected. So shortages and hard to get consoles for most people are what Microsoft needs to do? Didn't they just do that?
Or maybe you're lauding them for their ability to polish an old product and resell it? DS Lite, all the random ports for the GBA.
I might be an anomoly, but I'd rather Nintendo start making some new games.
It was back on a MMORPG precursor -- a MUD -- and have been happily together for 8 or 9 years now.
We currently play WoW together, and are the leaders of a medium sized casual guild. We're not an oddity either. Unless we just attract married couples, we have 5 other husband/wifes that are in our guild. That's 12 people out of probably 35 folks that are married and game together. At least two of those other pairs met on an online game. We also have another pair that met in WoW and are currently dating.
I don't agree with the arguments that some others have posted that people don't act like themselves in games, and thus it's a bad way to meet people. Granted, there is use of the game as an escape mechnism, to get away from real life and do things you can't do or wouldn't do in person.
The thing is, you belong to a community. In smaller settings, such as smaller guilds, or a friendlist of people you commonly group with, the real you comes out. You talk about your day. You perform small acts of kindness, whether it's passing on the uber robes to your friend, or lending some gold, or helping with a quest. You tell jokes.
Yes, you can still be the sneaky deceitful rogue in groups with random strangers, or be a berserking, rampaging warrior screaming defiance as you wade through slashing up the fields of the opposing faction on the battlefield, but within the smaller setting of your guild, or your group, or your friends, you ARE yourself.
Yes, there is still the possibility of deceipt. You could act like something you're not in order to lure or attract the interest of someone else. But that exists in real life. You might modify your behavior in order to better fit in with the crowd, or wear a mask that makes you seem something you aren't, but that too exists in real life.
My point is that I think MMORPGs very closely mirror the way people act in real life. It all just varies with the context. You're a nice guy, sure, but when anonymous, I'm sure you've done not nice things. Safe with the anonymity of just another car in a busy traffic jam? You've probably flipped someone off or called them a dirty word, when you'd never do the same when your family or boss was with you.
You can pay $5 to rent it and have the same experience as the guy who bought it for $50.
And if everyone did that, how many more great games like God of War would come out? Sure, you save money, but the publisher and developers don't get a lot of money they would have if you had bought it. And then no more God of War.
Or, the alternative, companies start tacking on lengthening, but boring, intermissions, in order to artificially make the game longer. Examples are Metroid Prime and Zelda's Windwaker. Great pacing, a constant sense of acheivement and reward, and then you're smacked with this backtracking quest in Metroid where you had to revisit all the places you've already been and collect all this junk. Windwaker made you sail around in your boat and fish up junk from the floor of the sea.
To me, that's not ideal. Maybe the solution is to make those lengthening, boring time sinks required to progress in rental versions of a game, but give registered owners of the software a way to bypass it.
I think this about nearly every single "privacy issue". Big deal!
It's a big world. No one cares about you, an individual. There's not going to be any article in the paper listing and ridiculing your preferences. Unless you're a celebrity, it's simply not news that anyone else cares about.
So don't sweat it.
Having said all that, though, I agree it won't be beyond the portal. For one, you have to be level ~55 to pass through the portal. And the assumption is the content beyond the portal would be geared for players of that level. Having a starting area there just wouldn't work, especially since they'd want to leverage existing content for new characters to level up in.
But there's nothing to say they can't just wedge in some lore explanation for the whole thing. "Remote island off the coast of Westfall discovered, populated solely by Draenei!"
Does this mean we get another "WoW hits 5 million subscribers" news topic in a few weeks?
Despite the lack of some features, I actually agree with this strategy. It's a console whose main purpsoe is playing games. They also expanded it to do some other things you'd like to do with a system hooked up to your TV and surround sound receiver -- play movies, music, display pictures.
If they released a keyboard, an internet browser, a word processor, you'd end up with a PC that can also play Xbox games. Besides cutting into other markets that they probably don't want to overlap, it also adds clutter to the interface, and adds new potential points of failure and hassle.
I think they've made a good compromise between functionality and features, while retaining ease of use and simplicity.
Yeah. It sucks how you have to throw away your PS2 when you buy an Xbox 360. I never understood why we aren't allowed to keep our old consoles so we can play our old games, while still having a new console to play new games on.
Oh. Wait.
Virtua Fighter 3 did not launch with the DC. About a month or so after launch, I believe. Soul Calibur was good. The Sonic game was mediocre at best. Too much of its focus seemed to involved going around, getting those eggs, and raising them on your memory unit. If I wanted a pocket pet thing, I would have bought one!
I'm not saying the Xbox 360 has the best launch lineup, as that's a very subjective matter. I just think a lot of people tend to get nostalgic for the games of the past, and over emphasize how good they really were.
In all fairness, this is two guys vs. MIT. Cut them some slack, eh?
That has changed.
In just overheard conversations from some of the younger generation of gamers, playing games is no longer the stigma it used to be. Kids talk about games openly. They bring Gameboys to school and play them openly during breaks. And while there will always be the too-cool for that groups, it's no longer just the geeks wearing glasses.
Just look at the growth of the gaming industry. Geeks are everywhere, true, but there's not enough of us to support the huge market that exists now. Others are buying and playing games.
It's only going to grow as home internet connectivity is approaching ubiquious. While gaming with friends used to be limited to those in your neighborhood, or those whose parents could bring them over on occassions, now it can be done both in person, and online, and peer pressure and the "do what they're doing" adolescent mentality will cause it to grow further.
Take from that what you will. But if you get anything meaningful out of it, fill me in.
Hook the old Xbox up to another TV. If you only have one, buy a switchbox.
I realize everyone has different expectations, but put it in prospective. Going to a movie costs anywhere from $8-$10 last I checked, for somewhere between 1.5-2.5 hours of entertainment.
That's close to the cost of a game that entertains you for 10 hours, and costs $50. Plus, the game has the benefit of being interactive, rather than something you just watch.
Or, you could buy the movie on DVD, for around $20. It's even more dollar per hour now. You do have the benefit of owning it, so you can rewatch it when you want, but that same arguement applies to games as well. You can replay it. And even the most linear games have the benefit of being somewhat different the second play through (IE, in Galaga, you'll probably not get blown up by the exact same insectoid ship at the exact point in time you did last time).
What I did was I went next door to the grocery store and found what I wanted there.
Combined with Gamespot's 8.7 score, that's an average of around an 8 for Kameo. That's not a bad score. Besides, instead of looking at the scores, I would encourage you to instead read all the reviews. Points that the reviewers might have docked from the game might not carry as much weight with you.
Even if the monitor refreshes evenly, exactly 30 frames per second, if the console can't keep up, you're going to get the same exact frame refreshed several times while the console chugs away trying to catch up.
That's just you. Consider this: Although you may have driven a Viper at 150mph around a track, how many other people have? Compare that to how many have seen races on TV or in the movies.
So, even if they nailed the realism based on how it looks when doing it in reality, unless it's a common activity that most of the user base has experienced themselves, its reproduction won't match their expections based on what they have experienced (TV), and thus, they won't like it.
It's the same with other genres. Just about all football games have ESPN style presentation. The camera is overhead and third person, and you can control all of the players. There have been a few attempts at first person, behind the face mask style football games, and not many people liked it.
People don't play for reality. They play for fun, and want to be immersed in a familiar setting.
Weird.
I'm sure it's not as big of a deal as the publishers would like to make it seem, but the nature of software is unique from the typically tangible things that First Sale applies to, and it doesn't seem fair to the publisher that places like EB are making a killing off of someone else's work while the publisher gets no piece of the pie.
I don't really care so much about the publishers, but when they lose money on an otherwise good game that I'd like to see a sequel to, I get concerned :)
Their marketing likely contributed to Joe Blow walking into the store looking for the game, yet they don't get to recoup that money through revenue if Joe buy's a used copy of the game. The support issue is also valid.
It wouldn't be as big of a deal if it were people selling their old games at yard sales, or even individuals clearing out their collection on eBay. But this is facilitated and organized by fairly large retail chains, so it's on a grander scale.
Having said all that, I don't think TFA's subject is the best solution. As many have pointed out, it'd screw over just about all of the legitimate consumers, and encourage people to resort to piracy, or boycott.
Can't the publishers just say "You know, if you're going to sell copies of our games used without cutting us in on the profit, we're not selling you any new games?". It'd hurt their bottom lines for a while, but if enough of them did it, the EB and GameStops would revise their policy or go out of business.