The Gamer’s Quagmire #52: Pets, Guns, and Magic Wands
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
If you ever want a truly enigmatic experience, at this point you just may need a video game vacation. It does sound quite cliché, but it does a great job at soothing the body, the mind, and the soul. The gaming aspect about such a trip is always interesting (otherwise, why are would you ever plan one?), but the best part is invariably a discussion about the gaming itself. If you have a good group of people who can philosophize about this for several hours, you have yourself a winner.Replaying the week in my head this morning while on the way to work (maybe daydreaming along with cell phones need to be outlawed in cars- can we do that?) forced me to link two concepts that I originally thought were completely unrelated. Think about the success of the current consoles and health of the PC gaming market. Nintendo struck a chord with the Wii that tons of people did not expect, and that is the way in which we interact with video games. No, I am not referring to smashing a controller against a wall when the CPU defeats you.
People like to point to the PC gaming market as the place where all the best cutting edge games go, but is that really true? If you think purely about graphical achievements then you would be right on because looking at the video arms race, even just with a small reference window of this past year, you will see a gigantic leap in video card power… processing power and power consumption (remember, puns are our friends). Perhaps we have gone too far with the 2 PCIe slot graphic cards that you can easily use to bludgeon someone to death. Aside from pure power, the last real innovation the PC gaming market brought to the table was the online RPG.
Consoles have been the stage for the biggest innovations within the last several years in gaming. Look at the success of the EyeToy, Wiimote, DS, and the DDR pad. The world’s most successful games have largely been the result of a combination of any of these innovations, and that is discounting the Guiter Hero guitar (I cannot think of a quick catchy name for it, hence its earlier omission). It is true that there are games that just work on their own steam, such as a blockbuster console release like Halo, but the way I see it the truth of the matter is that gamers are tired of the dual analog and the keyboard/mouse.
If you don’t believe that the interaction is the latest big idea in gaming then you are missing out on some important things. First you should look at the stock price of Nintendo over the last year. If you are one of those ‘numbers are boring’ people or just don’t feel like doing the research then all you need to know is that your investment would have tripled in the past year. This is far more than just Nintendo getting lucky at the race track.
I am in the camp of people that need some graphical innovation, so shiny things do easily distract me. Unfortunately, cost of development is a big barrier for many companies that want to make a lot of successful games. This was easy when the gaming industry was just getting started because all you had was one button, a joystick, and 8-bit graphics. Games like Tetris don’t succeed because of graphics- they succeed because they are easy to understand and play.
So what did Sony and Microsoft miss this time around? Multimedia and online play do have a market, so they have put very good systems together (minus alarming hardware issues). Video game consoles in the home was new to everyone in the 80’s, and when games have one button and a joystick everyone can get in on the action. Bring a controller with 10+ buttons in front of your parents now and many of them will be scared away. Did you really thought DDR and the Wii were successful because the games were good? Seriously?
This has been the argument from the Sony and Microsoft fanbots almost since the consoles were first announced and to an extent it still happens today. Look at the games that were coming out in the 80’s and honestly tell me how games with such a simple notion could ever succeed today. Adventure was a horribly cheesy game, but the technology was so new that people had a unique experience playing it. What is very strange is that the dragons guarding the keys in the game still scare me.
Fast forward to today. Look at the stylus and the DS. After two years of struggling, Nintendo has finally found the games that sell the system. What, did you think Nintendogs sold because it was a deep and interesting game? Part of the reason for the game’s success is because of the previous success of Tamagotchi, but it is also one of the first video game translations of it. DDR is a sweeping success because everyone understands dancing to music. Girls will generally run away screaming from complicated controllers (almost as though you are trying to solicit a date), but throw down a pad where you can dance to modern music and they’ll have fun all day long. Put a guitar in the hands of people who are not used to it and they will be entertained for hours on end. Put a light gun in someone’s hand and they will be happy to shoot at anything that pops onto the screen. Put a magic wand in front of someone and they will do whatever they can (including embedding it in the TV, but that isn’t recommended).
The next time you catch yourself defending your PC for gaming because your graphics are always better or your keyboard and mouse will never be beaten you need to ask yourself when you became a dinosaur. Gaming innovation is now in the hands of new controllers, and any developer that does not seriously take this into consideration is going to endanger themselves with possible extinction.
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February 26, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #41: How Sony Saved George Lucas
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Piling on- it’s one the things modern Americans do best. Find a popular line of thought and follow through on it to sound intelligent. Will Hunting would have a field day in most cities right now. I say this because lately picking on Sony, no matter what they do, is the thing to do. Last year it was George Lucas. The year before Microsoft was a good target. AOL probably had a couple recent rough years as well. Most of the time terrorizing them is more than justified.
Let me tell you a few things about what I think of Sony. Their televisions and most other electronics are quite good (I have yet to have a problem with any of mine). The PS1 and PS2 are phenomenal consoles. My original PS2 is still working like a champ. Despite this, right now the PS3 just is not cutting it for me. I am tired of the Dual Shock controller. This controller design has been very comfortable for a while, which means now it is time to give it the lame racehorse treatment. The online delivery system, even though this is Sony’s first incarnation of a full online service (the half-assed online system for the PS2 was a joke), is just not up to standards and inexcusable. What Xbox Live offers is not some big secret even though what the value of Achievement Points is.
Despite these two severe flaws, the value of the PS3 is an interesting debate. This is the first time that one of the biggest names in consoles has not come with a very affordable price. The reason, in case you have been on Mars hiding in a cave under a rock with a finger in your ears, hinges on what you think of the BluRay drive. Microsoft has kept the price of their console down by not offering their HD-DVD drive with the 360 (even though they said they would never release one and eventually did) and it makes me wonder something. For those people that did not want BluRay, would it have been a good decision to offer a PS3 that did not come with the new drive technology?
It took me a fair amount of time to admit this to myself, but it finally did happen. This is the first Sony console I can finally say these words about: I don’t care. This is the first PlayStation console that is simple not easily affordable. College students are always going to be your biggest target audience for gaming consoles, and when you price your console out of the reach of the typical college student you hamstring your sales. College students are always looking for excuses to forego studying (the smart ones, anyway) and consoles are always on the list for the male students. Yes, I realize that the console is being sold at a loss and that you cannot find a cheaper high-definition player anywhere (unless there is some insane rebate that I have missed). However, the fact remains that the next generation of gaming from Sony comes at a very high price. Despite what jokes you may heard, the price does not include your soul.
Sony wants their drive to be the one that becomes the standard. They are fighting Microsoft to the bitter end on this. The smart money is on the codec that is able to work with both HD-DVD and BluRay- you can mark my words on this right now. Sure, I said this a couple months ago, but you can call this my mortal lock statement of the week (you should trust me- in December I said Rex Grossman would prevent the Bears from winning the Super Bowl). High definition movies are part of the selling angle Sony is giving you. The PS3 is more than a gaming console, and for many people that is a conceivable problem. Some people just want to play games. DVD’s were not introduced into the market with the gaming console. The PS2 just took advantage of it to say “hey, we offer games and DVD’s at a cheap price.” That angle worked. Despite HD TV’s being around for a while and the prices are starting to plummet the price of jumping to high definition media viewing is still very high. You need a new television and you also need a new player for your movies. Oh, and the high definition movies are still quite expensive too.
Purchasing DVD’s was never an issue because their resolution worked with almost any television. Of course, LaserDiscs were too but they were massive. DVD’s are the same size as CD’s, and that made sense to a lot of people. LP’s went out the door a long time ago. More accurately, they were booted out the front door on their behind when CD’s came along. That’s why LaserDiscs never took- they were the college buddy of the LP looking for a place to crash for the night. Nobody likes that person.
However, people did like the DVD. The price of entering the DVD market was the price of a player. Now the cost of the next generation of media is a television, a player, and an additional $10 per movie. Sometimes the price of early adoption simply isn’t worth it. Even though I could go out and purchase all of this stuff I won’t because there are better places to spend my money right now. It was not until this year that I found a television I liked for a price of under $3000. I imagine it is going to be at least another year before the high definition players are going to appeal at all.
I’m betting people largely feel betrayed by Sony, not because the price is high, but because Sony has not done this with their console before. People loved picking on what Microsoft was doing with the Xbox. The overheating, the size, the lack of games, the monstrous controller and the idiotic black and white buttons all were part of the hit list for people looking to bash the Xbox. Sony took the bullet for Microsoft this time- just don’t expect them to apply for the Secret Service. If you look at everything the PS3 offers and then put together the equivalent kit for the 360 you wind up paying more. What’s funny is that people are okay with this because Live is an excellent online delivery service. These are probably the same people that pick on Howard Dean because he yelled too loudly during a speech but have no problem with Bush who keeps botching sentences every week.
I admit this was a pretty large leading point but it seemed quite relevant. I wanted to explain to you the internal battle I’ve been having about what Sony is doing with the PS3 before relaying the following news: Sony is working very hard to reduce the price of the console by ripping out the emotion engine hardware which, in turn, forces any hope of full backwards compatibility over to software. People have whined about the PS3 price and the overall failure of the PS2 emotion engine for a while.
It should therefore come as no surprise that when Sony announced this move people started complaining about that too (I have appendicitis, but don’t remove my appendix- just give me some codeine!). Let me tell you something about backwards compatibility. It was a major selling point for me when I got the PS2. I loved the fact that I could play any of my PS1 games on the PS2. It allowed me to sell my PS1 and free up some more room on my entertainment center. Despite my love of retro gaming do you want to know how often I have played PS1 games on the PS2? I think it might have happened twice since 2001. All of my old Nintendo games I have found a ROM and an emulator for on my PC and I play them whenever I want to. I play NES and SNES games on a flash drive for my DS. Is it really so difficult to believe that there will be an emulator for PS1 and PS2 games? I don’t care if the emulator comes from Sony or from some other place. I honestly don’t care if the emulator is on a PC or a PS3. Mark these words also: there is going to be a PS2 emulator somewhere before 2007 expires.
I can see why some people would be upset that the backwards compatibility is going to disappear from the PS3 hardware. It is not a completely useless feature. Still, is a sleeker form factor and cheaper cost of the PS3 really all bad? Okay, so you have to use an extra port on your $15 switch hooked up to your entertainment center. In time I may have to do the same thing. If an extra footprint near your television bothers you that much then you simply must remove the overwhelming knot in your underwear and get on with life. I refuse to sugarcoat this for you. Hostility is sometimes necessary. If this particular move to reduce the cost of the PS3 is really bothering you then you are either looking for an excuse to whine a little more or you’re just an idiot who doesn’t belong in the gaming world at all.
Please don’t be confused though- you are certainly welcome to not like the PS3. I may not hold the same disdain you do for what Sony is doing with the PS3. If you want to hate Sony because Sony BMG did some stupid DRM things with their CD’s (and you’ve been too stupid to see DRM causing a problem at all in the last 3 years) or because Lik Sang went out of business (even though they did break the law with PSP exports and been have sued by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) then go right ahead, but the relentless hostility of Sony has gone far beyond absurd. I have no urge to purchase the PS3 right now, I disagree with some of their design decisions, I think not giving an option of a replaceable media drive to reduce cost is a mistake, their development kit apparently being too convoluted causing developers to jump ship is not smart, their controller design is uninspiring, and their current and upcoming selection of games leaves a lot to be desired. You have every right to hate Sony for any or all of these reasons. There are probably a couple more good reasons too.
Still, if you feel the need to bellyache about Sony working on fixing these problems then it is time for you to pack up your hostility and search for a new hobby. We here in the gaming community know you are going to whine about something anyway- so we’d just as soon have you do it near somebody else.
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