Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Apple Targets The Gaming Market
Last week there was an article in The New York Times about Apple's shadow looming large over the Tokyo Game Show. Today, I see that Apple has purchased a large amount of advertising space on IGN's home page. What does Apple's emergence as a player in the videogame market mean for the gaming industry and for us gamers?
For the gaming industry, its actually kind of a big deal, with the emergence of mobile gaming as a prime revenue source for these companies. For gamers, especially the hardcore kind, its really kind of joke - except this time we are the punchline. Apple has always been the butt end of jokes by PC gamers who for years have enjoyed their platform as the primary place to play the latest and most technologically advanced games. Sure there was always Myst or even World of Warcraft for Mac, all the biggest games eventually got ported over months or years later, but for the past two decades it was basically a joke if you owned a Mac and wanted to play the latest games.
The problem was simple: not enough people bought Macs, so game companies didnt bother developing for the platform. There was an aura of superiority around Mac users that somehow the machines were so perfectly designed and so god-like, that they couldnt possibly be purposed for such a heathen activity such as gaming. Macs were, and are to this day, an elitist product. You have to be rich to buy one, and in buying one you are basically saying to everyone else "Steve fucking Jobs designed my machine, so Im superior to you." And truth be told, Macs are amazingly designed and beautifully engineered machines.
In many ways and for many years (lets call them the SCSI years), Macs really were superior machines. But, not anymore. The PC wars between Microsoft and Apple have sort of ended, despite those Mac and PC guy ads you see on TV. Thats just the playful banter of two corporate behemoths who have willfully agreed to chop up the marketplace and share in the glory of complete market domination. Dont believe me? Then please tell me who is #3 in the world of personal computing. Linux doesnt count.
So what does all this history have to do with mobile gaming? Well for years, Apple was content to sit back and let Microsoft take the lead in that sphere, in fact Apple willfully resisted having its platform be used for game development. Not anymore. This move into gaming by Apple, which currently only applies to its mobile devices, signals a new era. They see the amount of money people spend on games, they see the technological possibilities of their mobile devices, and they have decided to shift their focus into fostering game development and actively promoting it. Mobile devices first for sure, but you have to wonder what they are planning for their next generation of desktops and laptops as well.
For software makers like Konami and Capcom, Apples decision to promote game development on their mobile platforms is sort of a mixed blessing. While on one hand they welcome the extra revenue such potential growth represents, on the other it represents a departure from their style of game making and a shift of resources away from more progressive game designs and ambitious, next generation projects. Why gamble spending $25M making a new intellectual property for a next generation console, when they can spend $1M on 25 different games based on existing IPs and current mobile platform technology, and have a guaranteed return on their investment?
As bad as that sounds, dont expect Halo 4 and Gears of War 3 to come out on the iPhone. There will still be AAA, high budget titles from the major development houses and big publishers. There just wont be as many new IPs, and they wont be as big or as ambitious. Console games simply cant be developed by small teams anymore. As game development costs soar into the tens of millions, developers and publishers are constantly searching for ways to cut costs and secure new revenue streams, and mobile gaming is just the next step in that evolution.
Hardcore gamers are now a rare breed. Its not that we are shrinking in numbers, its that gaming as an activity is exploding in popularity, so even though there are still millions of hardcore gamers, now we are decidedly outnumbered by weekend gamers and casual gamers, probably by 10-1. Game companies have picked up on this fact, and the next 3-5 years will reflect this trend. Dont expect to see major console releases ever 5 years, with AAA game development time and costs skyrocketing. Now we are on a 6-8 year cycle, and the cycles will only continue to increase in length. Filling those gaps in the cycle will be a glut of mobile, handheld, and casual downloadable games that are cheap or free to play, and Apple will be one of the companies leading the way and collecting all the profits.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Assassins Creed II: Visions of Venice
This trailer came out almost a month ago, and I didnt post it because a few things struck me as odd about it. First and most obviously, the music. OK, we all know Assassins Creed isnt all it appears to be in metaphysical terms, but do we have to have our romp in meticulously crafted ancient Venice set to a thumping techno soundtrack? Im not a musicologist, but Im thinking that maybe, just possibly, somebody during the Renaissance might have crafted some good music. Now, I dont know what the actual soundtrack to the game will sound like, but this trailer music - while bumpin and grindin and phat with its slap-bass track - just doesnt fit the atmosphere they are trying to create in the trailer.
Secondly, this is a game called Assassins Creed. Unsurprisingly, its a game about assassinating people. As in, murdering them in cold blood. But, look at the trailer. Wheres the blood? There is none. Now, maybe, possibly, this is just an accidental omission and the guy making the trailers for Ubisoft forgot to turn gore on in the menu options. I really hope so, because I was actually looking forward to playing this game and having it be that hugely immersive, amazing experience that the original game strove for but never quite attained. Killing people with no blood? Please, Ubi, dont insult me.
Im starting to become a bit skeptical that the people at Ubisoft actually know what they are doing with this franchise. They completely fucked up the telling of the story in the first game, it had more bugs in it than an entomologists laboratory, and the overall mission and world design seemed to have been crafted by highly trained chimpanzees or small children. The fact that despite these flaws it still managed to be a good game is a testament to the power of an open world in allowing the player to create their own game within the game. Just running from the guards across rooftops or hiding in crowds while stalking a target was a revelation we had never seen before in videogames.
But we are really expecting a lot more from this game. My expectations are extremely high, and my tolerance for poor design choices or a lack of immersion is extremely low this time around. In my book, Ubisoft (or any game company) gets a pass the first time around on a new franchise. Ubi made a fun game with Assassins Creed but it wasnt a great game by any means, and if you argued that it was horribly repetitive or broken by glitches, I couldnt really defend it in objective terms. But I would still recommend playing it, because I want game companies to take risks in making new games, I want to see new characters and new intellectual properties. Nobody is expecting perfection when you debut a new franchise full of new ideas.
But the second time around, Im going to be much less forgiving. Ubisoft needs to deliver a great game with Assassins Creed II - not a good one. It doesnt need to be perfect, but it needs to be damn close if they want me to hang around for a third installment.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
I Will Start Playing MMOs When...
The animation, combat, and bosses are on par with Ninja Gaiden.
They wont do it though, because a certain percentage of the MMO userbase would not be able to handle the difficulty of real time combat.
Anybody with a one eyeball, one finger, and a 14.4K modem can play World of Warcraft and just click on an enemy and watch their character walk over and start bashing them, and eventually reach the level cap.
Dont get me wrong, I understand that high level MMO play, especially on big Raids and PVP servers, requires skill to play properly. Sure its mostly logistical skill, managing all your items and powers, but there is an element of manual dexterity involved to pull off certain combos and spell chains. Sure. I get that.
But in Ninja Gaiden and God of War, the combat most closely resembles a fighting game - not an RPG, like most MMO combat.
How much damage you can do and how long you can survive in combat is not premised on how many months you have been playing or how many items or powerups you have collected, but rather on the skill of the player.
The reason we wont ever see an MMO that requires razor like reflexes to defeat the hardest enemies and bosses is simple: money. These companies make more money by having more people subscribed. If the limit on how quickly you can reach the apex of power in the game is player skill, rather than time invested (in months), people would be able to beat all of the content in the game within weeks of it coming out. A certain percentage would not even be able to beat the game at all without help from more skilled players.
Someone has to say it: the quests, combat, and leveling up system in World of Warcraft and most MMOs are designed to SLOW YOU DOWN. They are designed to hand you one tiny breadcrumb at a time, and keep that carrot dangling in front of you. You could be the best World of Warcraft player in the world, but when you start at level one, you suck. You cant do anything. You cant explore the whole world, you would die. You are boxed in by your low experience and lack of items. All of that talent you have isnt worth anything, because your character has a jock strap and a club that barely scratches the hide of the sewer rats that you need to need to kill to reach level 2.
Ive ranted enough, so lets not even talk about graphics, animation, enemy and boss design. God of War vs World of Warcraft? LOL.
MMOs are still in the 20th Century in all those regards.
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