The Gamer’s Quagmire #62: Rewards Systems as Mandated by Yoda
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Achieving something great in a game has been a fascination of mine for a long time. The first order of business, ironically, is having fun. It is difficult to pinpoint the transition period from enjoying games and excelling at games. I believe that this sentiment about excelling in gaming is the central ideal that makes a gamer a hardcore gamer, and stage 1 of a social disease that can escalate from Adventurer’s Perfectionist Disorder (commonly known as APD) all the way up to Elitist Gamer Syndrome.
Console video games were in their infancy when I started my gaming habit. Kids growing up today get to experience a much more polished medium which is just starting to become mainstream. No, the intent here is not to start the crotchety old man routine; not today at least. The goal here is to unite gamers by talking about what drives them to play games. If you understand why Final Fantasy VII isn’t complete before you have Knights of the Round or why Super Mario Galaxy isn’t done before you collect 120 stars you know motivation as I do.
For several generations of consoles the gamers that wanted to unlock everything in the game they could just go ahead and do it. Nobody needed to ask the Ocarina of Time fans to collect all of the hearts. Nobody taped Devil May Cry fans to chairs before getting an S rating on every stage. Nobody held a gun to my head to force me to complete Castlevania IV without dying. Gamers did these things because they wanted to.
Luckily we now have a world of gamers clamoring to prove that they can play all of these games better than anyone else. I realize that this drive isn’t new, but the ability to advertise these accomplishments across the world is. The advent of Achievements on Xbox Live is this semi-official place where gamers can prove who the better gamer is by completing more in-game feats than other people and posting high scores for the whole world to see.
In a matter of speaking the idea of achievements can be a good thing. Anybody who talks trash in message boards now can be more easily ignored (of course, if you ever listened to these people you are the central part of the problem) because without the proof that Achievement Points provides they have almost no way to back up their talk. Granted, there’s no law that tells you that you should listen to these people (and common sense tells you that you shouldn’t), but having extra ammo for someone who truly annoys you, such as an incompetent amphibious wingman, is never a bad thing.
I can’t say that the notion of Achievements is a bad thing, because sometimes gamers need extra motivation for doing certain things in games. Unfortunately, a lot of the 360 Achievements you see resemble the completion of an entirely fruitless endeavor. Crackdown, on top of one of the simplest and enjoyable games on the 360, has several achievements that make me question a few things. You get achievements for maxing out your stats, blowing up enough bad guys, taking down each crime syndicate, collecting all of the ability orbs, and even climbing to the top of your headquarters. Look closely at these items before continuing to the next paragraph.
My contention that there are three types of Achievements in existence: the wholly pointless, the painfully obvious, and the surprisingly noteworthy. If you do not believe me, let us walk through this together.
The first category, the wholly pointless, is obvious: climbing to the top of the HQ in Crackdown, while fun and entertaining, is pointless. I never would have thought to do it if it were not in the game, the developers wouldn’t have put it in had there been no Achievement system, and it serves no purpose whatsoever. There is a heightened sense of vertigo when climbing the tower that provides some entertainment, but the reality is that if it was never in the game I don’t think anybody would have cared considering the complete lack of any real reward other than finding another creative way to get gamers to jump to their untimely deaths.
The second category, the painfully obvious, is… what it is: taking down each crime syndicate, as a prime example, is already a requirement for completing the game. Why is this a noteworthy action? Is there a point in rewarding players for not being hopelessly moronic? It may make sense to promote idiots into management, but we are talking about video games here. At least in this scenario nothing gets taken off of the table.
Achievements that create a false sense of gameplay, thus taking something off the table, truly annoy me. In Mass Effect there is an Achievement for achieving Spectre status. In reality this is just like the previous Crackdown example, only it implies that it might be possible to somehow avoid achieving this goal (hint: it’s not). I had to change how my character reacted with others because I thought my dialog choices would screw up my chance to become an all-powerful Spectre. Maybe paranoia is to blame, but I steadfastly maintain that placing a sense of fear into gamers for the sole purpose of supporting the Achievement system is faulty. This situation becomes highly untenable when training to become a Jedi - Yoda would not be pleased.
(Subtle Star Wars joke - it’d been far too long since I used one)
The final category, the surprisingly noteworthy, comes along with items like collecting the ability orbs and maxing out all of your stats. Again, you are going to do these anyway for the same reasons you collect all 120 stars as Mario in Super Mario Galaxy. You hardly need to do this to complete the game, but you want to because it separates you from the pack. The attraction of others seeing that you did this does add a sense of accomplishment to the feat that is nice, albeit an inflated one. Rewarding this type of gaming behavior, unlike all other scenarios, is to be lauded.
The truth is that I am a fan of Achievements, but only when done properly. Game developers should not add Achievement points to a game just to support an artificial structure. If the points meant something then ranking players by those points would make sense. Instead we have reward points for people who fail a song 10 times in Guitar Hero and survive in open combat (you are an assassin!) for 10 minutes in Assassin’s Creed. These people should not be rewarded.
Mass Effect is, with small exception, a great example of how to use the system. It supports the Live Achievement system the way games should because most of the rewards unlock extra gameplay options for the player. Gamers like me who have APD know that if you give the player any reason at all to complete a task they would gladly do it. In an RPG the reward is almost always some form of loot or a new spell so that is easy, but if the reward is just a pat on the back for doing something insane I would just as soon grab that same arm and slam the would be back-patter to the ground.
One final point before today’s lecture is complete. I realize that the Mario example is not entirely pulling its weight here anymore because you do not need this to complete the game. What it does do is unlock playing the game as Luigi and offer a true sense of completion (imagine getting points for collecting 20% of the required stars). When your special rewards system recognizes achievements such as this then you have a system that has some meaning. Instead we have a system where you get into arguments revolving around your ability to complete tasks ranging from the deranged to idiotic, and I am tired of explaining that Live Achievement points have absolutely no value whatsoever. It is like winning a ton of tickets playing Skeeball in an amusement park without a ticket counter.
Then again, if you manage to satisfy your ego by completing utterly pointless tasks, then maybe the system already has an inherent sense of meaning to it.
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October 1, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #51: 2007 Gaming Sabbatical, Part II
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
You seriously didn’t think that I forgot about the Gaming Sabbatical Part I did you? Yes, it is true that basic grammatical errors and horrifying sentence fragments appear in my articles occasionally. While you may think this all points to a glaring lack of proofreading or that I paid someone I met in an online forum to use English to write some thoughts down instead of their standard Netspeak, it is all to keep you in anticipation of when I may actually finish putting together a coherent thought. This article just may be what you have been waiting for.
In the very near future, as in later this week, I will be making a trek out to Seattle once more for another epic week of gaming or some other form of non-productive activity. After putting together the base skeletal structure of our gaming activities I compared it to our past treks and noticed that Final Fantasy has once again forayed its way into the limelight. Gamers can be quite the creatures of habit, and it only logically follows that we follow an event that featured Final Fantasy VII with one that features Final Fantasy VIII. Life just seems to make sense this way.
In what has been to date a vain and futile attempt to recover some base knowledge of a game that I have played through close to 4 times I have been scouring through some saved games, looking for any notes written down about the game, and peeled through some guides on the Web. Perhaps I will have one of my special moments similar to recalling the activation code for the Blue Huge Materia in VII (which I still cannot explain remembering) and start down the right path to collecting all of the Triple Triad cards, Guardian Forces, and Limit Breaks. Maybe the subtle tricks in the Chocobo Forests will spring forth once more. I suppose it is equally likely that the Mets will call my cell phone and name me the new general manager, but those are bets not worth placing.
What bothered me, and for no real reason other than finding more holes in my memory, is that my memory of all those little details in Final Fantasy VIII are fading. It cannot be a realistic expectation to recall information on this level about games that haven’t been touched in over 5 years. This is what I tell myself. It does reinforce the notion that getting a good run through the game once more is going to require a team effort. Even the dreaded curse words that real gamers dare not mention (rhymes with ofladgety guide) were implied in conversation revolving around getting through the game one more time. I am confident that this will be unanimously shot down once the topic is discussed rationally, but until then I am left to wonder how much about the series I fell in love with when discovering Final Fantasy II on the SNES I’ll remember once the images are on the screen once more.
To no surprise finding a plethora of trivia questions online on several installments of Final Fantasy requires only a minimal effort. This is the crux of my thesis that the Google search engine has been the defining invention in the Information Age (Sour Patch Kids coming in at a close 2nd). After being crushed by several Final Fantasy VIII questions to which I could barely recall the topic in question I decided to go through VII, VI, and a couple other games I have played several times over. What really scared me was that my knowledge of VI, which I consider to be the best overall game of the franchise, despite what my massive Final Fantasy Review article indicates, was severely lacking. It is always fun attempting to answer questions to games you swear could also be referring to an authentic Greek pastry. That is the Web in a nutshell – a gigantic collection of information at your fingertips designed to show you how little you really know.
Despite failing to remember a decent amount of information on these games I do not let it phase me. It is never about the destination but about experiencing the journey (the games and I will not go our Separate Ways). Thinking about getting ready to experience this game once more has been remarkably enticing. Even if it may seem boring, perhaps the best way to remember why you love gaming in the first place is to fire up an old game that you cherish. This may even be the best cure for the current console war. Instead of everyone trying to convince themselves they made the right choice in their purchase or primary use of a console, or grinding an axe, or whatever else it can be called, gamers should just pick up a game they worship and play it once more. I find that playing a hallowed video game is much more enjoyable than arguing the merits of the current gaming mediums.
Then again, that’s just me.
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July 16, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #48: Console Track & Field Disaster
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Last week, in case you missed it, E3 was debuted in its new format. That is, it debuted in its new, trimmed town, invite-only, debut. For gamers this is like football fans needing the NFL giving them permission to purchase tickets to the Super Bowl. One of my must-do items in my life was, at one point, to take the trek over to the West Coast and attend this event. Getting knocked off of my feet with an overload of gaming was one of those things that just felt like it needed to be done. Some other form of gaming event is going to have to take place instead. To tie me over until I figure out what this may be, I decided to hunker down on my couch after a ton of meaningless housework (repairing some electrical wiring, doorbell repair, deck cleaning, weeding, etc.) and go back to Final Fantasy XII. This was never going to be a monumental event for me, but it has been making my skin crawl that I have not completed this game yet. So I spent the next day and half leveling all 6 of the characters in the game to almost level 60… and nothing else. Good times all around, right?
Unfortunately, E3 did force me to think about something during this gaming marathon. Watching all of the coverage from G4, including the commercial break in the middle of the new Halo 3 trailer on Day 1, I got some pretty big messages from each of the console developers. Being the person that I am, it wasn’t the message they were intending. Let me share with you my impressions of where each of the consoles is going over the next few months:
Xbox 360: If you ask me by now Microsoft should know exactly what is going on with their hardware difficulties. One of its hardware consultants even posted on his own web log (or perhaps it ran in a tech journal… who cares?) where the heat problem came into play with the console. Good news right? The Elite version that was announced recently is going to solve this problem? Okay, the timing was a little off. Fine. There is an announcement from Microsoft that makes us think they have a good idea what the problem though, right? Well, they did announce eating $1.5 billion in warranty costs. Luckily for us, who are still nervous about their console dying at any second, that there’s no end in sight.
If there was a way to transfer saves off my hard disk for when the new console comes in this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m not going to replay all of my old games so I can go after the bigger achievements, are you? Wait, they still have no meaning, so why even bother caring? Well, then perhaps that is one problem solved.
On the plus side their online services are still a major selling point and they do have several intriguing games coming around the corner. Mass Effect, the new BioWare RPG, looks especially mouthwatering. Granted, you may not have much to look forward too if shooters or RPG’s are not your thing, but game selection for a lot of people is not an issue. Still, it should bother everyone who pays attention to games that Microsoft is too (ignorant?) to see that if they solved their hardware problems then they would own the U.S. market and perhaps the European one as well. It’s tough to love a console that you are scared to death of will die any second.
PS3: We just started to get a glimmer of hope that Sony was going to start to turn their PR image around. The firmware updates have dramatically improved the functionality of the console, their price drop felt like an admission of guilt and a decent market correction, and even working on getting the rumble functionality back into the controller made many people feel good about what Sony has been doing since Katuragi left with his tail between his legs. People wanting to like the PS3 were just starting to feel good about themselves.
Fear not- the recent price drop has been a liquidation of what is now a hardware configuration that is no longer in production. It is now time to make room for the 80GB model because… well… um… the extra 20 GB is the next step in the console’s evolution? Did Sony forget how awesome it was that they allowed people to take out the hard drive of the PS3 and swap it in for any hard drive we wanted? Microsoft wants strict control over their hardware and doesn’t allow this (and they’re the ones who still have the hardware failures- neat, huh?). I can pop in a 400 GB hard drive at any time into my PS3. The manual that comes with the PS3 tells me how to do this.
Nobody should be buying a console for this reason, and while technical superiority should never be the top selling point of a console (games should always be #1, in case you are lost), it should at least be able to be a selling point. It is rather pathetic when you are unable to point to such a powerful piece of hardware and convince people that you know how to sell it. The price dropped by $100, and while it is not enough for everyone it was enough to get plenty of people jumping at the console. Now the price is back to $599. Does anyone at Sony with a brain have an MBA?
The positive news for the PS3 is that there are a good set of games coming out soon and a ton in development. The current PS3 library pales greatly in comparison to the 360, but it is not hard to see that the library is growing at a good pace. If the good games do not come out for it soon then it is very possible that the consoles will never start selling. You can’t ride the PS2 sales forever (which, remarkably, are still selling quite well).
Wii: This is the most difficult console to like because I was a huge Nintendo fan for a long time. Their new controller, while somewhat scary, looks like a phenomenal idea (ignore the extra wrist strain for now). The Wii has reached into a previously untapped gaming demographic and is easily the most intriguing selling point out of any this generation. Gamers should be thrilled, not only at the idea, but that because their older relatives would actually by the Wii for themselves that they are way more likely to be getting games for their gift-receiving holidays.
While the consoles are flying off the shelves for this reason, it also begs the question- will people who never cared about gaming for the Wii buy any new titles after they get the initial box? There are going to be a percentage of people that do not get anything else. Most will probably only be a select few party games for the system and call it a day. Honestly, Nintendo could simply walk away from the Wii right now and still point to a big profit and laugh and Sony and Microsoft. I wouldn’t blame them for this at all, because at least that would explain their upcoming list of games.
This the one console that I want to like but fail to see any games on the horizon worth playing. One or two I can sort of talk myself into renting to check out, but a console needs more than that. I’m not picking up a console just to play bowling or go fishing. I have way more fun doing the real thing. Something like Smash Brothers is worth getting people over at a house and getting drunk to play, but, again, a console needs more than that to survive. E3 should have been an announcement of all the cool games Nintendo was working on, and instead we get a steering wheel, mat, and gun peripheral (the latter of which I thought the base controller handled quite well).
Give a gambler a reason to gamble and they’ll thank you for it. Gamers are a similar breed, and each console is struggling to give me a reason, although honestly the PS3 is giving me the best reason… assuming that I can focus on the upcoming games list and not the business decisions. If Microsoft can solve their hardware issues and Nintendo can solve their software issues than we would finally have a good battle of games between all three consoles- something that Nintendo would probably win. Instead, we have three hurdlers knocking over several gates past the first turn in the race. In other words, things are hardly a pretty sight.
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January 22, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #37: 2007 Gaming Sabbatical - Part I
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Adventurer’s Perfectionist Disorder, it’s back! The 2007 year kicked off with one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life. Being a gamer at heart I know that if I had it my way I’d be out in California as a game tester and all of my money would go towards an apartment and my entertainment system. It’s an interesting experience to be at work year-round and then take almost two weeks of your life and just sit on a couch and play video games. It honestly feels like a vacation.Sure, you can travel, learn some history, go to an amusement park, visit relatives, go camping, live it up on beach, enjoy a cruise, or whatever suits your fancy. Any real vacation should only be about one thing- avoiding everything about your normal life and just doing something you want to do. I’m always amazed by people that bring laptops on trips and make sure they don’t fall out of the loop while they are away from the office. The last time I had the opportunity I forced someone to leave the laptop at home by convincing them it was in the car when it really was back at the apartment. I’m a good friend that way.
What does any of this have to do with APD? Allow me to bring you on that journey. The last two weeks of 2006 were a vacation from the office for World of Warcraft where I was making leaps and bounds leveling my new character. It’s rough being in a guild where the only way to keep up with the top players is to not have a job, but I still enjoy it immensely. After another week and a half my gaming sabbatical took place in Seattle, something which I hope turns into an annual tradition. During this sabbatical the perfect mix of gaming past and present took place.
Let me present to you my experience of the Playstation 3- it matches what the X-Box 360 brings to the table with the exception of the online play system. I realize that expecting Sony to match Live with their first go at an online delivery system is just insane so that’s okay, but there is a problem. Considering the cost of a fully loaded console with hi-def playback, the 360 is noticeably cheaper than the PS3. I have yet to characterize why. The cosmetic issue of the 360 requiring a peripheral for their HD-DVD drive pushes the aesthetics trophy over to the PS3, but that that can’t be everything can it? If the 360 could handle HD-DVD at launch then the 360’s look would be the best of any of the consoles. The PS3’s design is average at best, same for Nintendo.
Microsoft does not nearly get the beating they deserve for their HD-DVD peripheral. A console having an attachment is inexcusable, reprehensible, sacrilegious, nauseating, and unforgivable. In the age of hi-def entertainment this type of lunacy just shouldn’t happen. It’d be like serving ice cream in a bowl and then bringing along a cone 10 minutes later (you know, because that is what you really wanted and refuse to admit it). That’s not even why they deserve a flogging or two. They announced that the 360 was not about hi-def entertainment, that consoles don’t need it, and Sony was doing too much with their console which is why their launch was delayed so much. Hypocrisy is a major irritant, and this statement reeked of it.
Anyway, the pricing issue is the primary reason why the PS3 is getting crushed right now in the console wars. The 360 is established (for those of you keeping score at home, you need to now admit that the early launch was a good idea) and the Wii offers something that nobody else has. Of course the Wii’s success is based on a gimmick. Zelda is the only game with any good depth to it and the console will not survive on titles like Wii Sports, whose popularity will diminish quicker than the Macarena. Trust me when I tell you that unless a host of good games come out for Nintendo the console will crumble and fall. If the PS3 gets a couple good games out for it then people will eventually flock over to it once the inevitable price cut occurs.
What scares me about my gaming sabbatical was that despite playing good titles on the PS3 and 360 the highlight of the trip involved one of the old classics- Final Fantasy VII. Okay, perhaps it was destiny that picking to play through this game one more time after writing how that was the defining game of the PS2 era for me that VII would once again highlight a gaming weekend. For what was perhaps one last time, our small little group from Gettysburg which set out on the Final Fantasy VII voyage together took the vessel out for once last spin.
As you would expect, simply walking through the game would not be enough. Goals were to capture everything we possibly could before the final dungeon ending in the showdown with Sephiroth. We captured the Gold Chocobo during the final hours of the trip. This felt like the proper ending, but something was wholly unsatisfying about the achievement. Do not misunderstand my apprehension to call it a success. Three people obtaining Knights of the Round in 4 days while playing other games at the same time was a remarkable achievement. What bugs me was that due to a wireless controller issue North Corel was not saved from the train wreck. The blue Huge Materia was not rescued from the spaceship despite me somehow recalling that circle-square-x-x was the password (seriously, I entered the password and picked it up… it was weird). The scales required to put out the fires in the Wutai mountains were missed. Several key Enemy Skills were not uncovered. The Mime materia was not located. The Earth Harp remained a complete mystery. The Battle Square was not conquered.
I’ll be honest with you, as a gamer I was impressed that I remembered certain things about the game. Remembering the song for the piano in Tifa’s house and the spaceship combination was quite prolific (for whatever reason checking my mail every day is still something I forget to do). The fact that so many important items were missed along the journey may making one more last run through the game necessary despite still having my perfect save on a memory card that still remains in my possession. This is a direct effect of a severe case of APD. I should be able to let something like this go. The game has been defeated multiple times with precision, but because my previous run failed spectacularly, in my eyes, it warrants another potential run.
All of this ignores the fact that I still have not made my way through Final Fantasy XII, a game which I claim may be the new champion of the franchise. Vaan, it’s nothing personal. Cloud is a much more compelling hero. Sephiroth is the quintessential villain, something that Vayne cannot claim. It’s not that I think VII is a better game, it’s just that the story in the game is perhaps the best of them all and the Materia system has its place etched in gaming history. Also, not being able to cope with missing several key spells and abilities is eating away at my conscience. Not even Full Cure will ease the pain- only completing the game one more time will. If you have ever played through one game multiple times then you understand my pain. You also understand that there will be one more inevitable article about Final Fantasy VII.
After all, Aeris does deserve a proper burial.
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December 11, 2006
The Gamer’s Quagmire #36: The More (Gaming) You Know
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
In the time honored tradition of the year-in-review articles that are being tossed around (‘tis the season, etc etc, blah blah, bah hum bug) I began avoiding such articles in a vain attempt to stick with something fresh this week. Lo and behold there was a very fascinating report this year that proved to be one of the most interesting reads of the year. NIMF, or the National Instititute of the Media and Family, has effectively been the Yin to my Yang in that they almost always take the opposite side of the violence and video game coin.When they recently sent out their report about their observations of the gaming industry for 2006 I greeted it with the usual apathy and continued on with playing Final Fantasy (one of the few holiday traditions worth savoring along with sleeping in, drinking egg nog, trying to avoid arguments over dinner, and whining about presents). As you would expect something about the article caught my eye- otherwise why bother writing about it? There were hints of the gaming industry being given good grades and the family being given bad grades.
Did I wake up in some fairy tale dream world? I checked to see if Gran Turismo 4 had online play. I looked for interesting PSP games. I scoured my basement for my SNES Final Fantasy cartridges. Sadly all of these awful aspects of my gaming life hadn’t changed, so maybe one of my biggest complaints about how society looks at video games might actually be changing without requiring me to sign over some more of my organs. I read their report and walked away feeling relatively good about what people see in the gaming industry and what some of the real problems surrounding video games might be.
For me the problem always boils down to education. Idiocy is borne out of ignorance no matter what subject we are talking about. I feel this is especially true with video games because this is a novel concept to most people older than my generation. Even though I played Atari 2600 games with my parents for several years an industry driven purely by technology has greatly surpassed them. I never played a golf video game with my dad before but I have played many a round with him for a long time. The last video game I played with him was Street Fighter II, so imagine the surprise showing him Tiger Woods 2007 for the first time.
Without the willingness to learn more about subjects we lose touch with what is going on the world. This is not meant to blame or accuse, but to make you think about how tough it is for people to look at video games without being scared because of how quickly the industry is changing. We all can’t be experts on everything and that’s okay, but once you start imposing laws based on ignorance, well, you start to annoy me.
And so I write.
The major point I took away from last year’s report was that the video game industry was incredibly irresponsible and needed to make severe changes. In the wake of what was going on with GTA it was marginally understandable why people believed that, but ignorance to this day still makes people blame Rockstar for that catastrophe. I confess that I never did read the entire report from last year, so I cannot speak of how things are different this time around, but what I can tell you is that if parents pay any attention at all to this report then good things are on the horizon.
Even before the report dives into the specifics of what NIMF observed this year they talk about parents being far too ignorant when it comes to what their kids are playing and how often they play. I had rules on video games back in my school days too, even when it came to studying for subjects I was already getting straight A’s in. It seemed unfair then and it seems unfair now, but when you are asked to study your material, especially during the high school years, you should do it.
Finding the proper amount of time to play video game is always tricky. The best example is that you really can’t eat as much as you did in high school 15 years later and still expect to stay in shape, especially when you are no longer playing basketball or tennis 6 days a week. I hardly think video games are the main cause of health issues in America (visit a casino and get back to me) so it’s hard to talk about that aspect of the report. I’ll leave you to your own devices in deciding what to think about health and video games (I won’t condone DDR, but it is something to think about).
The report focuses on the one aspect of gaming I have felt for a long time has been largely overlooked by many people- how parents monitor their gaming children and what they know about video games in general. I’ve been praying for other people to figure this out for a long time. Television commercials are the biggest giveaway as to what’s going on in this country. It is very hard to avoid ads dealing with talking to kids about sex, smoking or drugs. To me this is scary- parents should not need reminders to talk to their children. Just taking into account the number of ads on television it makes me think parents are watching television instead of spending time with their kids. Is it so unreasonable to think that kids spend too much time in front of a television because their parents are doing the same exact thing?
Continuing with the knowledge side of gaming, what parents know about the games their kids play is also something that is severely lacking. It pains me to say this but I spend enough time in video game stores to overhear multiple conversations between parents, clerk, and kids about potential video game purchases. While it does not appear to happen nearly as often as in the past, clerks are still willing to skew the truths about games to parents in order to make a sale. Having never worked in retail I do not know this, but if video game store clerks work on commission this needs to stop immediately.
It pains me to say this even more, but video game clerks need a brush up on their education as well. No, I don’t expect Rhodes scholars to be working at my local EB store, but the situation needs to improve dramatically. Just yesterday a clerk actually had to ask a superior if Rainbow Six: Las Vegas had been released. If you don’t even know what you’re selling how can you honestly have a job? I feel there should have been some payment for the half hour I spent in the store due to the number of questions I wound up answering for people. I already felt that parental education needed to improve when it came to gaming, but now I’m also forced to believe that the retailers need more knowledge about their own business.
In case you have noticed a common thread in these ramblings, namely education, then you know mostly everything you need to know about what I read. I don’t want to bore anyone to death here about everything that’s written, but if you want to know more about what people see in the video game world rummaging through the whole report is time well spent. A lot of different surveys and observations all point to two major themes- parents need more education about gaming and so do the retailers. The gaming industry is doing what it can, but until its customers became more enlightened then the media will keep attacking the gaming industry whenever it can. It’s as I said earlier- idiocy is borne out of ignorance.
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