The Gamer’s Quagmire #66: DLC: It’s Easy as 1-2-3
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less
by Jamison DeLorenzo
This week marked a first for me in gaming. It wasn’t anything as groundbreaking as my first perfect song for Guitar Hero on Expert, completing a Mario game without dying, or roasting the CPU in a regulation hockey game by over 200 goals (thank you, NHL ‘94). This week marked the first time I participated in obtaining game-related material via digital download. I should point out that this is much more commonly known as DLC thanks to overwhelming pressure to cram every important idea in society into a three letter acronym (TLA, sorry).
While visiting a friend this past week we talked about all the usual stuff – work, women, socio-economic disparities across the heartland, clubbing baby seals – and inevitably our latest technological gadgets. I got to show off my new camera and he got to show off a brand new subwoofer so powerful it could easily be mistaken for a herd of charging rhinocerii. The second game used to showcase the beast was a download from the Playstation Store – Super Stardust HD.
For my first exposure to the store this was not a bad start. This game is over a year old, and I must say I’m disappointed in not having tried it sooner. If you enjoyed the game Asteroids you would like this one too. In fact, if you took Asteroids and poured a six pack of triple espressos down its throat you would get something quite similar. For $10 there a bunch of games like this you can get for a PC or console. If you can remember what games made the original GameBoy so popular (not to date you or make you feel old) that is today’s current Indy gaming market.
I never really thought about it before, but the fact that there is a ton of entertaining arcade games all over the Internet at a dirt cheap price is a good thing. This is a great alternative to the $60 console games and provides to our current crop of young people the sustenance they need to become a lifelong gamer. I realize that I am late to the party on this one (the invitation must have been lost in the mail) and that this is not some groundbreaking discovery. We can’t do that every week here in the Quagmire – that’d be far too predictable.
The other half of the online delivery system that we are integrating into the gaming community comes in the form of obtaining additional content for already released games. As much as I relished downloading GT Prologue that is hardly going to happen often. The most popular notion of adding content onto games comes in the form of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. This is a very welcome addition to anyone who has pined for certain songs to be in the game.
I have to admit that although there have been several great songs in GH3 and Rock Band there have been plenty of songs that I have been dying to get my hands on to play. Imagine my joy when the Still Alive and the Boston pack was released recently for Rock Band. It may sound strange, but one of my current favorite gaming moments of the year now includes cranking my stereo and playing lead on More Than a Feeling. While realizing admitting this makes me look like an even bigger dork, I felt the need to share this because I feel that this is a revolutionary step for the rhythm gaming market.
The only thing that makes me more excited about what the future might hold for these games. In a perfect world there is going to be a way to point a game towards a digitized master of a song and have the game translate it into a song that you can play. Considering the number of fans of current rock monsters (U2, Radiohead, Dave Matthews) and past monsters (Van Halen, Led Zeppelin) you cannot tell me there isn’t a gigantic market for this feature. Whoever gets this working first without requiring the utter destruction of a gamer’s bank account is going to cement themselves in gaming legend.
Long story short – I’ve only gotten my feet wet in the world of digital downloads for gaming and I really love what I see. I’ll be taking more steps into it this weekend and hopefully go for a swim (whether a lifeguard is on duty or not). If the industry as a whole starts to get in on this then not only will obtaining games be a whole lot easier, but Valve will undoubtedly be seen as the pioneer in this area for the more expensive segment of the gaming market.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go locate some more songs to download and get another late night gaming jam session going.
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March 3, 2008
Off the Cuff: a beautiful collision
Sometimes life provides you with perfect intersections of your hobbies. And when that happens, life is good. Take, for instance, this video where Rock Band and Portal meet. You know you’re in for an awesome experience!
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January 15, 2008
The Gamer’s Quagmire #58: An Uncomfortable Good Time
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
As a person who tends to run screaming from social situations it’s hard to fathom how addicted I have become to social gaming. Okay, you’re not going to catch me looking for people to play High School Musical with. What I mean is that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have both worked their way into my main gaming rotation. Or, to be more accurate, they’ve moved in, taken over the living room, require regular meals, and demand constant attention.
All this talk about things moving in, taking over my life, and recovery this must sounds like a thinly veiled venting of moving past a bad breakup. This is uncomfortable- let’s just move on.
Despite the circling overtones of negativity the attention is well deserved. Any recovering online addict will tell you that a distraction is needed to remove the taint from your system until you’ve moved on. With World of Warcraft banished from my gaming realm I needed something to fill the sudden and uncomfortable void, and two games have done that for me. Rock Band et al has a dark power of allowing one to move past the always embarrassing air guitar or steering wheel drumset while providing soothing music to play along with (yes, there are days that transform classics from Iron Maiden into digital audio therapy). Sure, you’re still playing a fake instrument but now it is a popular video game so you have nothing to worry about.
I realize that I am very late to the party- not just for the aforementioned musical games but for getting into games that change how we interact with them. I never disliked the control ideas that drove the creation of the EyeToy, DS, or the Wii. The Dance Pad brings something to the table also, and while I would not be caught dead playing DDR, anything that brings hoards of females into gaming is not something I would initially call a bad thing.
For the record, any male gamer who claims not to have enjoyed watching women play DDR once in their life is a liar. Please understand that normally I would not feel the need to defend myself for being entertained by certain games. If this makes you think I’m nothing more than a juvenile pervert then go ahead and enjoy, but know that least I am the one being honest.
… let’s keeping moving on.
The real reason these games are compelling isn’t just because they provide a different way to play or because they let you think that you are a music superstar performing on stage. These games are a draw because you can hang out playing these games with friends and have a good time. It is true that not all songs in these games are gems (for example, anyone who feels the need to do a cover of Ballroom Blitz is inflicting unwanted and excruciating pain on society), but when you get multiple friends embarrassing themselves along with you playing these games it is strangely impossible not to have a good time.
The revelation for me isn’t that I enjoy this type of game or even that getting friends together to play these games is now an enjoyable experience. Normally what encourages me to spit out a few thoughts about a game or related idea is something I read online or in some gaming magazine that forces me to either cheer loudly because somebody else agrees with my point of view (which is admittedly rather uncommon) or to go on some long tirade about how insane something is. This time I felt the need to share this sudden love affair with you all. If you have been hesitant to give these games a try you need to find someone who has them and give it a go. I honestly believe you will not be disappointed.
Wait- I’ve gone from breaking up to being a pervert to admitting to an affair. I better call it a week before this goes any further.
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December 10, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #56: Rocks, Bricks, and a Vision
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Two big games have hit the shelves within the past months that have been riveting millions of gamers – Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. So-called “rhythm games” have been becoming very popular since the initial outbreak (yes, it has spread like a virus) of Dance Dance Revolution. Once this event came to pass it was only logical that instruments were the next great controller concept for these types of games. I’d like to say that bringing the guitar into the fold was a stroke of genius, but in reality it was the next logical move. Any fan of music at one point in their life is a stone cold liar if they claim they never played the air guitar.
With the release of Rock Band we now have a microphone and a drum set – the other two major components of any relevant air band. Harmonix has been central to getting these games to where they are today. They were behind Guitar Hero 1 and 2 and used MTV as a publisher to get Rock Band out the door. While these games, and all rhythm games suffer from this, make you look completely ridiculous when outside viewers happen to see you (including the government through their spy satellites, which is probably why they’re in existence in the first place), I do admit they are a lot of fun.
The concern with these games are two-fold: price and repair. It is usually quite simple to replace broken controllers for most games, but sending out a guitar or drum set for repair is by no means trivial or quick. Guitar Hero games are a little more expensive than most current console games, but Rock Band chimes it at $170. In other words, if you have any interest in the latter it is best to find a group of people that want to play the game and pool money for it.
My overall concern isn’t even with the games, however. Instead, I am concerned that companies besides EA are working hard to become the most hated company in the industry. I mention this because of the guitar compatibility with these games. Red Octane makes the guitars for both games- and an interesting side effect of this is that if you have one game your guitar should work with the other game.
Aaaah… note the keyword “should.” Once it became known that there were some problems with guitar compatibility in Rock Band for the PS3 the good people at Red Octane got to work on the problem, only Activision has decided to not move forward with the update yet. It has been noted by several people that Activision is the publisher for Guitar Hero 3 and bought Red Octane. MTV is the publisher for Rock Band. At this point you should not need a road map to see what’s going on. In short, everyone looking at playing both of these games now has an axe to grind.
(Double-puns are so hard to resist)
Given our current corporate culture it should not surprise anyone that Activision sees no reason to issue a patch for a competing product. Logically, why should they provide a service for a competing product? That is counter-productive to their business, but at the same time there is a huge conflict of interest. Red Octane does the hardware for both games, so my only question is why is this type of devious behavior allowed by companies? Clearly it was design intent that the guitars work for both games.
Rumors or not, it disturbs me that this type of behavior can happen. What’s more is that there is not much customers can do about it. I don’t expect corporate or even personal self-interest to disappear from our culture any time soon as a central focus. Companies need to work on their bottom line before anything else. What troubles me is that so many businesses, in and outside of the video game industry, almost seem to rely on self-interest as a business model instead of providing a product and great service for it. That type of thought process almost requires all companies to work from that standpoint, effectively draining goodwill out of industries as a whole.
Given my tendencies to be an alarmist you may want to take what I’ve written here with a grain of salt, but I urge you to at least look at how video game publishers respond to customer problems to get an idea of where the next great gaming experiences might come from. If Activision is acting in the way they appear to be in this case you may be waiting a long time before they provide something a gamer will really want to have.
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