Editorials

Here is where we weigh in on all of the important issues that effect today’s world. There are so many things to complain about: developers, publishers, retailers, other gamers, the market as a whole, gaming technology, gaming related technology, gaming politics, gaming court cases, Japan, trends, current events, past events, future events and bioterrorism. We won’t silence an opinion just because it’s “unpopular” or “poorly reasoned,” so you can be sure we will always present at least one side of an issue. Think of us as the Fox News of gaming.

Counting the Game Industry’s Gold

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Like most industries, the gaming industry is bound by the conventional economic wisdom that you must spend money to make money. Historically, that’s meant taking a loss on every game system sold (with the notable exception being most Nintendo consoles) in order to tap into selling game after game to console owners. This measure of success is known as the “attachment rate” or “tie ratio.” A somewhat (November 2008) dated Gamasutra chart shows that the Xbox was in the lead, with 6.6 games/system sold, followed by the Wii at 5.5 and the PS3 at 5.3.

This statistic has historically been a powerful metric for measuring market penetration and overall success for a console. After all, what’s the point of selling a console if you can’t sell game after game? But as with many things in today’s integrated media world, the lines have blurred and traditional metrics don’t necessarily tell the whole story.

This generation of consoles has produced systems that have significant secondary revenue streams contributing to the bottom lines of developers and console manufacturers alike. →  The Adventures of Cookie and Read

2008 in Review Part 4

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Games, I have always believed, would benefit from acceptance into mainstream culture: once the stigma that video games entertained only troglodytic nerds disappears, the scope of what games are allowed to be would increase. This has started to happen, as, despite the whining and hand wringing of those who want games to remain in their and only their basements, gaming has expanded over the past several years. Part of this has been in the form of non-gamers picking up controllers, but my bet is that most of it is ex-gamers picking them up again, or twenty-somethings not putting them down as they (we) age.

This expansion has meant that the collective entity known as “gamers” now has much broader tastes: broader in terms of theme and maturity as well as content. I am not writing to dole out credit (or blame, if you prefer) to the Wii and DS, or even PS2 for doing this, but rather I am writing because among all the dreck that this expansion has created, it has provided a platform and audience for a couple of real gems that do not contain the worst trappings of games (but do not belong in the silly and ill defined non-category “non-games”). →  Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Bore me and I sleep.

The next gen consoles then and now – Revisited

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I wrote this little ditty sometime last summer, analyzing all three consoles and how they had changed since launch. Since then the market has seen more major shifts, so I want to take yet another look at the Wii, 360 and PS3, and see what we might expect from them in 2009.

Microsoft
Then: I claimed before that Microsoft looked to be getting wishy washy, constantly tweaking the policies and features behind the 360, leaving early adopters in the cold and not focusing on the important issues that need fixing.

Now: Microsoft embarrassed my predictions through and through. The Red Rings of Death have waned, and whether or not it is a good thing, the community has mostly gotten used to dealing with them when they do occasionally pop up, much like we got used to replacing old PS2s. My worry about HDMI-less old model 360’s was hyperbole at best, after realizing that the games look good enough for me on a good HDTV via component cables. →  The review for ‘Shark Sandwich’ was merely a two word review which simply read ‘Read Sandwich.’

Digital Distribution in a Not so Ideal World

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I don’t like getting into personal anecdotes, so I’ll make this part quick. I was a strong supporter of digital distribution when it started popping up as a legitimate method of buying games. I was a Steam apologist when it was new and buggy, and I used Sam and Max as staunch proof that episodic content could work.

Digital Distribution has so many strengths that seems hard to argue against it. Quick access to games as soon as you want them, with no trips to the store and less physical hardware to strain. Plus, its digital nature should theoretically reduce prices and put more money into the right pockets. This last part is not happening, as theory is not becoming reality.

As easy as it is to make digital games cheaper, the technology can also be used to nickel and dime us. I find myself realizing that my past defense was based on an idealized situation, and that the current reality about digital distribution looks a lot grimmer from the consumer standpoint. →  In the beginning games created the heavens and the earth.

The Ever-Evolving State of Gaming, part 1 of 327

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Here it is, December 2008. I am setting here typing this up on a computer I rarely use for anything other than playing music and scouring the internet for unseen porn. If you would have told me ten years ago that Chinese Democracy would actually get released and that I would play console games more often than computer games, I would have laughed at you.

I just glanced over at my shelf and spied my little black DS Lite snuggled into its cute little sock carrying case; who would have thought that a fifth of Japan would come to embrace such a gaming device and that millions of them now occupy the United States as well? The old school Gameboy was popular…for little kids. Now men, women and kids play them. Speaking of women, they play games now! Jesus, my parents even play games now! What in the hell happened?!

Over the past year, this is something I have put a lot of (too much) thought into. →  Ask not what this post can do for you - ask what you can do for this post.

Tyson gives thanks… to video games!

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When I started writing for videolamer over a year ago, I was a slightly angry, jaded gamer. I was pissed with how the industry was going: the Playstation 3 was way too expensive; the 360 had some good games on it, but let’s all be real honest, most people got the system for Halo or Call of Duty; and the Wii was intriguingly underpowered but still kind of fun.

I felt a lot like Jack Black’s character from High Fidelity. I was a ticked off, elitist snob who firmly believed that the few people who felt like I did about gaming hung around this site and we were the last bastion of sense in a pixilated world gone mad. Today, I am still a cocky bastard to be sure but I am not nearly as angst filled as I was a handful of months ago. It is today that I proclaim to the world that, hands down, 2008 has been and will be one of the greatest years of all time for video games. →  Up to 6 billion readers.

The Small, White Elephant in the Room

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Every month I get game magazines with beautiful characters from HD games splashed across their covers. The latest EGM features the Watchmen, the newest Edge details Little Big Planet and Game Developer dives into downloadable XBLA game The Age of Booty. Roundtable discussions in these magazines with developers and producers invariably focus on HD games and the challenge of creating and bringing them to market.

If you don’t follow the monthly NPD report you probably would have no idea that Nintendo has a significant lead in the American market. While the old guard of gaming press has been slow to downright resistant in accepting the Wii, the blame for the lack of Wii game coverage rests almost entirely on publishers. EGM has a tough time doing a cover story on non-existent games, and, while Babiez Party may be better than Mass Effect, diapers don’t look good on front pages.

No one can accuse the team that created the Car Vault of a lack of effort.

 →  For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a gamer against their game.

No one who worked with Eidos should ever be taken seriously

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In a new Gamasutra editorial, Keith Boesky – “a long-standing game agent and attorney as well as former Eidos president” discusses the problems with game critics. Dismissing him immediately because he was in charge of Eidos would be unfair. I’m kidding, of course. The only reason he can’t be entirely ignored is because Gamasutra publishes his articles.

Boesky actually opens up with some insightful points. Contrasting the game industry’s critics to others, he observes that ours are nearly alone in frothing over huge budget, AAA material. We do not wait for art house games with bated breath, nor condemn anything that cost over 50 million dollars to make and is 90% spectacle.

His next idea is that people of my generation and older tend to mentally separate their passive and active media. I can’t speak with knowledge about children and the way they look at games versus TV, as Boesky does, but I have noticed that my girlfriend and friends who don’t game frequently have little or no patience when it comes to cut scenes and other passive sections in games. →  Read Theft Auto 4

Fighting off the pirates – DRM points to deeper problems

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With Spore’s flagrant copy protection causing a stir, DRM is once again the hot item of debate in the gaming world. I welcome any rigorous discussion of the topic, because while most of us will agree that DRM should not be used, it most certainly will be. The more we discuss it, the louder we sound to publishers, and the better the chances that we create fair solutions.

Yet rigorous discussion is something we still seem to be waiting for. Some of the best “independent” voices in the press see fit to bring up the same pedestrian talking points that we have heard constantly, while others that try to play devil’s advocate will be scorned by gamers. I think we need to look at the issues of DRM and piracy from the proper angles, which in turn will help us determine what can and cannot be changed.

For one, the Spore fiasco proves that, without a doubt, some sales are lost through the use of DRM. →  Sounds mildly entertaining, I guess.

Thoughts on filler

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While playing Professor Layton last Spring, I remember Jay asking me (before he had purchased the game himself) if it were true that the game was bad because 80% of the puzzles were simple, the kind of thing that you could solve in 30 seconds and with little thought. The answer was a yes and a no. Yes, a large percentage of the puzzles were essentially filler puzzles put in to extend the length of the game. No, I didn’t think this made it a bad game.

This lead me to think about the nature of filler in games and how we approach and accept it in different genres. For some reason, the idea of filler puzzles seemed to bother a lot of people in the online community. In some ways, I can understand this. Puzzles are fun because they’re challenging, and if you don’t have to think, they’re not nearly as enjoyable. On the other hand though, is this in any way unique to Professor Layton or the puzzle genre in general? →  Tony Hawk’s Pro Reader 3