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The Future of Gaming?

2009-05-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

If you've been paying attention at all these past couple years then you will have seen the change in the gaming industry. It seems to be changing at a quickening pace, and where it'll be at the end of all this change is still unknown. Ok, what I mean is, with every new generation of consoles, game development costs increase dramatically. The exception to this fact is handheld consoles and, well, Wii games. Added to the raising development costs is the fact that companies nowadays just aren't doing well in general. None of the economy is which means there's just that much more risk in producing a game. If this pattern continues, its sort of frightening to think where the industry might end up.

Yearly sequels with less risk being taken each year on big budget games. On the flip side to this "casual" games such as, well, anything Popcap produces or games coming out for xbla/psn or whatever are growing more popular within the gaming community. Game developers can either produce a casual game that appeals to an audience that has yet to be reached, making a big profit on a game that cost little resources (see Cooking Mama, Brain Train, etc). In addition, developers have many more options nowadays to create and experiment with original game ideas without much financial risk. So with these things in mind, where does that put us in five years?

There'll always be a demand for those big budget games, and i'm sure they'll keep coming out. But when the next generation of hardware is released I think there'll be a much bigger emphasis on low cost casual games. Microsoft and Sony are certainly going to be influenced by Nintendo's tremendous success this generation and try to tap into some of that audience. Aside from that, there's more to take into consideration when looking towards the next generation of consoles.

Despite how much Nintendo might argue otherwise, online gaming is certainly a huge part of gaming today. Not only do gamers expect a user friendly online experience out of the box, there has to be an evolution of the current xbla/psn/wiiware(it tries) format. I'm sure Nintendo has made quite a bit of money with re-releasing older games on virtual console, but I can't imagine them making you re-buy them yet again next generation. I think they should make the virtual console more robust and continue with it on the next console, giving us more recent games (given they've decided to give it a real hard drive).

This is an area where Microsoft is at a bit of a loss. Since they're so new to the console gaming industry there's not a whole lot they can do in regards to re-releasing the past library of games. They did release some Xbox games for download on the marketplace but I doubt thats a big money maker. Nintendo seems fairly gung-ho about producing content gear towards their new audience. Most gamers have seen that this generation and expect it for the next. Microsoft also has a niche of gamers to speak of. Not so much so as Nintendo, but when I think of an Xbox 360 game, I think of an FPS and annoying people online.

Thats why I think Sony is in the best position to learn from everything thats happened these last few years and work towards creating a really great experience for us next gen. As nice as that sounds though I don't really see it happening. They've already stated that they wanted the PS3 to last quite awhile. In any case, I really hope the next generation of hardware has a lot less waggle. Wishful thinking I'm sure but still...

DLC or should be free?

2009-03-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

With online communities becoming more integrated in consoles these days, its inevitable that more downloadable content will be released for games. With more DLC comes more controversy though. DLC is something that is fairly new to this generation of consoles. It's existed before, but not in the same capacity as it is now. It seems any big budget game that is released nowadays has some DLC ready at or right after launch.

You can look at most of the DLC from one of two point of views. Either you can see the content as an added bonus to a game you enjoy, and you don't mind paying the couple extra bucks to further enjoy said game. From another point of view you can see it as content that should have been included in the game already, especially if the content is already on the disc and your just paying to unlock it.

I personally think if your going to have DLC it should add new areas to the game, maybe a new class or something that adds a new mechanic to the game. DLC should be more like a chunk of an expansion. DLC done wrong can build friction between that developer and their consumer. Even if you make money on it, it isn't always a good idea. The new Resident Evil 5 DLC comes to mind. The DLC adds a new multiplayer mode to the game. Having gamers buy one new multiplayer mode doesn't seem right to me, and from what I've seen around on other sites, I'm not the only one that shares those sentiments.

I think Rockstar is on the right track with the GTA4 DLC. It adds a whole new story to the game that is totally different from the original story. The Fallout 3 and Fable 2 DLC also do a good job in my opinion of giving gamers a decent amount of added content for a small fee. Hopefully we see more companies taking after them and see less horse armor.

I give this article a 7 out of 10

2009-03-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

With the continued advancement and popularity of gaming sites, whether it be a blog, forum, or full site. I believe that we can see a change in the way that we as gamers play games. These sites in the past couple years have helped shape the industry into what it is today. Its apparent to anyone that the gaming industry is more widely recognized by a broader spectrum of people today then any other time in its history.

Has this advancement in social media had a negative effect on the way we play our games though? Back before we had these online media outlets I would buy either games that looked fun to me, or that I had played at a friends house and enjoyed. I also would play each new game I bought until I had beaten it a few times at least.

Nowadays it seems that people depend too much on review scores and about what the new hot thing is in gaming. Even I have done this (I'm looking at you gta4), where we buy whichever game is hyped up by the big sites. Sure most of the time they are decent games, but how many of us play through all of these games even once?

Does this mentality spread even to the types of games that are created today? Its no secret that game developers want a high metacritic score and good things said about their game on the blogs and podcasts. Not to say that it is a driving force when creating a game, but I believe developers may worry too much on how their game will fare in this online community more then they should.

I believe the gaming community is very unique when compared to other media such as movies or music. We seem to be more vocal and tight knit and I think developers should try to take more advantage of that in other ways. Instead of having some PR robot give some cheesy line about the game and releasing a few screen shots, they should try to connect more with their consumers. Involve the community early on in the development cycle and keep doing so until release.

Not only would this help promote the game, but it would also allow the developer to share with the community what they are working on and in turn receive feedback from the community that could help shape their game into a better product. We all see game reviews that say how this or that game is decent but it has these few small problems that could have made it a much better game if they were addressed. So if they receive these opinions from the community at an earlier time in the development of the game they can address these things and make a better overall game.

Also they would be able to form a better relationship with their fanbase by sharing and involving in a way the development process with the community. Most of the bigger developers like to be more secretive about the development process, especially with their bigger titles. But with platforms such as xbox arcade and even handheld games, I think there's opportunity for even the bigger more traditional companies to experiment with new ways of interacting with their community.

I must note that Gabe Newell has recently talked about doing such a thing with valve's games in the future. I'm excited to see how they handle it, and to see if other companies follow suit and try something similar.

RTS - PC = WTF

2009-02-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

With the upcoming release of Halo Wars, an RTS made exclusively for consoles. I have to wonder if RTS's have a solid future on consoles. Sure there have been some that did fairly well. But none as of yet has really taken off and formed a following. Nor has any of them managed to feel as solid to play as their PC counterpart.

As someone who greatly prefers playing games that traditionaly do well with a mouse and keyboard with said controls, if you told me ten years ago that FPS's would be big on consoles and have a strong following I'd tell you that your quite mad. But look where we are now, after Halo the FPS scene has grown significantly on consoles.

Does this mean that there is a chance for the RTS genre to do the same? I think its possible. The RTS genre right now is in a similar place to where the FPS genre was back before it hit big on consoles. First it was port overs, then original console FPS's. All the while developers were trying to figure out a control scheme that wasn't a chore to play with. So what was it that Halo did that allowed FPS's to have a respectable following on consoles?

I personally think the game itself wasn't that great. The controls though did work decently enough. I think it hit at the right time also, where a lot of younger gamers who didn't grow up playing counter strike and such on PC's got to experience an FPS for the first time on their xbox. What I think really made Halo work though was the online community it created. Gamers who didn't play PC games never experienced something like that before.

With the 360 the online community has only gotten stronger, and the quality of FPS's continues to as well. I think a well integrated online community like that is needed for RTS's, but it will take more then that. Its a given that FPS's play better on PC's, but the way a good RTS uses a mouse and keyboard makes it significantly harder to make a solid control scheme on a controller. Besides that hurdle, I've heard some talk about how the fundamentals of RTS's need to change to, for this transition to consoles. Specifically with the way a traditional RTS has you do the same formula of collect resources, build x y and z, etc.

If an RTS is stripped of things like resource collecting, I think something else has to be added to the gameplay then. From what I've heard so far, Halo Wars doesn't seem to be the RTS to help make this great following on consoles. But I guess we'll have to wait and see. There's a lot of Halo fans out there, and hey, you don't always need a stelar game if you have an addictive online community. Just look at Phantasy Star Online.

Where Wii are in 2009

2009-01-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but I can't remember the last time I played a game on my Wii. I think the last time I turned it on I just used the news channel for a bit. Nintendo seems focused on the casual market with the Wii and the current state of the console reflects that. Sure its still selling well and because of the outdated hardware they are making a profit on each sale. (Unlike some other systems.) But can they continue to neglect their core audience and cater to this new casual audience? This is the first time that a major video game company has taken this path, so the long term commitment with this new audience is still unproven.

For all we know, this casual audience might wise up to the fact that the majority of the software on the Wii is rubbish and go on to the next flavor of the year. Looking forward to the new year, is Nintendo going to push to satisfy their core audience like they said they would after the E3 debacle? Well, no Metroid/Mario/Zelda etc have been announced yet but they have said their working on them. I have no doubt these games will be great and will satisfy the core audience. But is it enough? Having a handful of good games amongst all these shovelware games on a limited console with frustrating at best online abilities just doesn't seem like enough to redeem the Wii to me.

Looking at a list of Q1 releases for the Wii, my faith in being excited for this console ever again is still wavering. The only games that seem even playable are the retro games they are bringing from the Gamecube library and slapping Wii controls on. I have to say repaying for the same games over and over is getting kind of old Nintendo. I think it would be more worthwhile to use those efforts to create a better online community on their system. Oh well, at least Mad World looks kind of fun. And the new Sonic game might be good... maybe? I know it sounds like I'm bashing Nintendo but I do still like them. I just don't like the direction they've gone with this console generation, and I'm hopeful they rethink where they are going with their next console.

When I was your age

2009-01-10T16:06:00.001-08:00

Well all remember games from our childhood, games that feel like classics to us. Games that we still hum the music to, and can still play and have a good time with. These games invoke a sense of nostalgia in us, and that is part of their lasting appeal on us. But is that it? Or is there something else they have that make them classics that we never tire of. These games, for me at least, are games from the nes/genesis/snes era. I remember the first time I played the original Sonic when it first came out, and I can't remember ever having more fun playing a video game. Is it because Sonic and Mario and such were so much better then everything else at the time?

I also wonder if its possible for games from the psx/64 and so on days to become classic games to people who grew up playing those games. To me it seems like the days of Sonic and Mario can't ever be recreated. Sure there are great games for every console era, but none seem as good for their time as the classics do. I think that's me just being naive though. A classic game defined I believe would be a game that an individual remembers playing as a child, and can always come back to over the years and have a great time. I guess I just don't ever want to see Halo called a classic.. *shudder*

Will work for Kash

2008-12-02T09:41:00.001-08:00

We all remember how much we loved the first couple Mortal Kombat games, but what is it that made them so awesome back then? Back when it first came out it was something completely different then what we had seen before. It was alot gorier then other fighting games of the time, and the fighting genre itself was still fairly fresh. The look of the game was also unique, setting it apart from the style of a game like Street Fighter 2. Add on top of that a solid control scheme and its easy to see why it was such a success.

With the news that Midway has been bought out for pennies on the dollar by investor Mark Thomas. It makes me wonder why the last couple Mortal Kombat games have been mediocre at best and they haven't seen the fanfare from the old genesis games. I think, rather simply, that all the things they did right at the beginning of the franchise they did wrong once they started making the 3-d adaptions.

The look of the games aren't very unique, it looks like a standard 3-d fighting game would. The control scheme feels a little awkward and not as responsive as I'd like in a fighting game. The gore, one of the things that made the game different from others in the early 90's has lost its flair, especially when you read about the fatalities in their newest game MK vs DC being censored.

I'm not the type of person that thinks every game needs to have some gimmick in it. But a standard 3-d fighting game with a little more gore then most just doesn't do it anymore. They need to do something different with the series. Maybe change the art style of it, or redo the control scheme to make it more user friendly.

I would love to see a new MK that looks unique and fitting to the series. Along with a throwback to the originals to make us feel more at home. Such as bring back all the characters from the first couple games, and some of the old levels totally redone. Add to that some new twist to the gameplay so it doesn't play exactly the same as the previous titles and I think that would sell well. In any case I hope this new buyout doesn't hamper the opportunity for Midway to redeem themselves.

Blizzard brings back the wow

2008-11-24T12:38:00.001-08:00

Its been awhile since I've updated and by the title I'm sure you can take a guess at what has been stealing all of my time lately. I managed to pick the game up on launch day and I have to say so far I'm very impressed with what Blizzard has done.

So far I've leveled my pally to 80 and have tried most of the 5 man instances and have done two of them on heroic difficulty. Now the new instances are really great looking and each one has a unique feel to them. They deviate from the one hallway to another especially in the nexus where your given multiple paths so you can easily go through the instance in any fashion you'd like.

The 5man instances are fairly short compared to earlier ones, which isn't a bad thing mind you. Its nice to get a group together and go knock out an instance and then try two more. Whereas in the past, especially if its a pug, you were lucky to get through one instance without people dropping out.

I do think however that the difficulty of these new instances is to easy. I know Blizzard wanted to make the content in this expansion more accessible to a broader audience. But when your able to walk into an instance for the first time and one-shot all the bosses by mostly just zerging them, its a problem. Half the fun of running a new instance is learning the strategy for the bosses and having everyone do their part. There are some unique boss fights in those 5mans but you don't have to pay much attention to them and I think they lose something from that.

I had the chance to try two of the instances on heroic though, one of those was fairly difficulty and we did have to learn exactly what the boss does and what we needed to do to beat them. It made the fights alot more fun, although frustrating sometimes. But it was alot more rewarding when we finally finished the instance, and was rewarded the achievement for it.

Until you get to level 80 your going to be spending most of your time doing quests and this is an area that Blizzard has stepped up and made some major improvements. The flow of quests is nice, you'll get a couple in the starting area and they will lead you to the next area and so on. There are ALOT of quests in Northrend so there are still the usual go here kill X amount of mobs for this shitty green quests. But they have added alot of really fun quests, from controlling giants to harpooning a dragon and fighting it in the air.

One thing that I've always personally missed from mmo's was the story involvement that you get in a traditional rpg. In the previous expansion, and classic wow, it was only in the end game instances that you started to feel like you were more a part of the story and even then it was limited. In Wrath there are a number of quest lines that put you right into the story and make you really feel like your existence in that world actually makes a difference. I especially loved a particular quest line, which I won't go into detail about but you are treated to an awesome cut scene, which is one thing I hope to see more of in the future.

It really looks like Blizzard is on the right track with this expansion, and they have already said that they have a few content patches already done for it. Now if they can do this good of a job on a game that's four years old, I can't wait to see how Diablo III turns out.

No Mario for you

2008-11-12T00:18:00.000-08:00

So with the coming of Little Big Planet it seemed to me that this may be the start of a new era of user made content actually being important on the console scene. I mean its no secret that there's already a huge amount of people creating user made content on the pc front. Alas first Guitar Hero 4 deleted some user made songs because they were Mario and Zelda tunes. Also there has been many levels deleted in LBP because they were copies of Mario or whichever game. Now, obviously this is for legal protection but I think limiting user made content so freely is going to make growing a community on the console side just that much more difficult.

I don't know if there's anything these companies can do to avoid deleting any content that may be a knock off, like having these sort of things hosted on user hosted servers or something. I've never seen any user made content deleting on pc's like the old dbz mod for half-life and the like. I would really like to see titles in the future to put more effort into providing console players the tools to make unique content, like Valve does for their pc games. If they can do that and somehow avoid banning anything that resembles Mario I think user made content can be successful and popular on consoles. Especially considering the amount of people playing on consoles these days, and the growing online communities on the 360 and ps3 (ok mostly just 360).

Deluge of Games

2008-11-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

Well, we knew it was coming but now we're in the midst of a huge deluge of games being dumped on us. How are we, the lowly gamer, with our (if your anything like me at least) already empty wallets supposed to choose which ones to pick up? Especially when we have highly anticipated titles such as Fable 2, Fallout 3, and WoTLK to pick from. It seems like every year I find myself saying something to the effect of, "This has to be one of the best years for gaming in some time."

I think most of us have already asked the question of why all of these developers are pushing their games out at the same time. I mean we all know that they like to push products out in that holiday season window, and its obvious that games sell like crazy during that time. But does it hurt them more then it helps? Does the extra holiday sales make up for all the sales that they lose because gamers which would otherwise pick up the game in a heartbeat, pass it over just because they already spent their money on other games?

I think it would be smarter to launch in a dryer time, like in august when gamers are usually clamoring for an at least half decent game to come out just to play something new. Especially if a similar game is coming out. How much sense does it make to spend years developing a game like Resistance 2, and then release it alongside Gears of War 2. In any case let me know what you guys think. I threw up a poll for this post also.