The Gamer’s Quagmire: 14th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Gaming, humor, and insanity in harmony
Shortly after reading and writing about market reports from 2005 about the video game I started thinking about my recent gaming experiences. Normally this involves stewing over several games, writing down various comments from games and making sure they’re still in my collection or they’re nowhere to be found. Last year I was able to locate a piece of a broken disc behind the shelf where my collection resides. This immediately prompted some painful memories of Top Spin, perhaps the most infuriating sports game ever made aside from Apex.

So what did 2005 hold in store for me? It turned out not to be all that much. Everything was a sequel or remake with the exception of two online games and The Movies. Much like the movie industry I was disappointed that there were so few notable gaming experiences that made me glad I was a gamer. Games are supposed to be riveting to a certain extent. Either the story of a game should grasp you or there should be some notable multiplayer experiences that you come to cherish. I guess the lack of good role playing games contributed to an overall down year.

What are defining game experiences? I still remember seeing Final Fantasy III for the first time. I remember the 6 double K.O. match I had in Street Fighter II. I remember my record setting goal #241 in NHL96. I remember being mesmerized over Sephiroth’s transformation in Final Fantasy VII. I remember curling over laughing for 20 minutes during Resident Evil Zero when asked “will you accept the shaft?” I have no such memories like this over the past year other than fighting a 40-foot chicken in World of Warcraft named El Pollo Grande. Are gaming experiences that hard to find now or are my tastes changing that much?

The latter is probably the answer, because now I still hold unparalleled disdain for EA and refuse to buy anything under their name. As a teenage gamer I could not have cared less about who made what game- I only want to play. Being a gaming neophyte has plenty of advantages in that regard. What’s scary is that part of me is looking for excuses to complain about them. The current NFL labor issue has allowed me to become agitated on this issue again. I did feel much better once I saw that other people were discussing this also. It is always comforting when your insane thoughts are reflected by other people too.

Why bother mentioning this? I feel like too many people don’t seem to care about the problems that EA is bringing into the industry. I also an alarming sense of short attention spans. It is easy to bring up the problems that EA’s current NFLPA license has. This agreement was reached at the same year the NFL2K football game started to pick up a head of steam. Suddenly a $20 game was much more interesting that a $50 game. That year EA had to drop their price down to $30 to compete with that. The license killed any chance of any other football game to create a true NFL experience. For EA that was a calculated attempt to kill competition.

The apologists for this tell you that EA did this to protect their profit margins and that it is a sound business decision. This is quite true, but this is most definitely an anti-competitive maneuver that creates a monopoly on NFL football games- a highly illegal activity. EA vowed that the quality of their games wouldn’t go down and their price would be affected. Everyone to date that has avoided their Kool Aid knew that the price would go up, but nobody could have foreseen the egg laid with the 2006 NFL offering. This is even more true on the XBox 360 Madden game. I picked up a used copy of the game (to avoid giving any money to EA) and still see problems with the game that existed in 2001. This is what people are paying $50 again?

Still, I’m not the first person to make those complaints. This isn’t even the first time I’ve complained about it in this column. What prevents me from not mentioning this is that people still honestly believe that the exclusive license is fair play and that it’s just a tactic. Some people even think that this was done because Madden is clearly the best game. I will grant that Madden sells the best by a large margin. This is only the case because it is such a household name- if anybody even gives the NFL2K games a chance they will see the difference and throw their Madden game onto the trash heap.

What many people fail to realize is that EA tried to do this with their NBA game. I’m betting many people are glad this failed because NBA Live is almost universally hated compared to the NBA2K series this year. Both the football and basketball games still don’t have all the official league rules figured out. As a sports fan this is extraordinarily aggravating. When EA was smaller company and still had gamers shaping the direction of the company the gamers were leaps and bounds better than they are now. I don’t know why Nintendo is one of the few companies that have figured this out. Sure, Nintendo may only seem capable to make games under 4 different franchises (Mario, Link, Kirby, Metroid) but almost every one of them is entertaining.

The other fun argument is that the baseball games have an exclusive license. Did I miss something? Both Sony and Take Two released MLB games last year, so what exclusive license are we talking about? When did Sony and Take Two become the same company? If that were the case GTA would never be on a competing platform such as the XBox.

Look, I know that EA is far from being the only company that focuses on the marketing and business side of video games (UbiSoft comes to mind). They are certainly the most visible company to do this. When you have a company with such a large bottom line that can either use marketing to kill competition or absorb them it is like trying to attack a giant ooze in an RPG by throwing soldiers at it. It is this type of behavior that is damaging the gaming industry and why this current generation of gaming is not clear sailing. High definition gaming is definitely the future of the industry (even part of the present), but if the games are not any fun to play it is going to be a very rocky ride there.

Will 2006 a good string of games or will I have to constantly be wary of all the junk titles that will be coming out? I should not have these thoughts and I do not want these thoughts. Nowadays it is unfortunate that companies like EA force me to have them.

Post your comments in the Forum!