It's a broken system and it's starting to get ridiculous that there are still no solutions.
1. Groups are pointless because in order to get the most out of them you need to "friend-up" everyone in the group, which can be in the hundreds and thousands.
2. Notifications minimise some applications and non-steam games. Notifications also often spam themselves for one event when there's actually only one notification planned plus there's no way of turning them off whilst having your status as "online".
No. 2 isn't a problem for me but i know it is for other people. No. 1 is my main gripe..... and it's ridiculous that it hasn't been fixed. I don't want a thousand people on my friends list - that's completely unmanageable! What i want to be able to do is join a group and to have the steam game i'm playing automatically let me play with anyone in the group.
9 September 2009
6 September 2009
Bang, bang.... is sensationalism dead?
On the one hand, i like Leigh Alexander because she's like a female version of me.... a complainer and a dissector (and who doesn't like themselves? ;)). To people on the outside it appears as if we're never happy, though in actual fact we, or at least I (since i'm projecting and i have no idea whether Leigh is actually like myself), am. On the other hand, i get a bit fed up with how she puts across her thoughts. She's confrontational and never offers anything back when she takes something away.
Case in point, her latest piece over at Kotaku. Sure, it's good for grabbing headlines and perhaps that's why she's in the business of journalism... but this sort of sensationalism doesn't help matters and it's exactly what we decry when watching and reading content from the mainstream news outlets.
"Is creativity dead?", she asks.... and then completely fails to deliver or comment on this very question, instead side-railing onto the topic of inspiration. My main problem with the whole thing is that neither she or her interviewees makes any differentiation between story and mechanics and it's quite clear from the article that different people are talking about one or the other and never both at the same time.
Industry veteran and Zoonami CEO Martin Hollis, most recently creator of quirky Wii Ware title Bonsai Barber, agrees that the thematic range of games isn't very broad. "Pauline Kael famously criticized films as being only about violence and romance: ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang'," he says of the great film critic. "Games are virtually all about violence, or at least conquest and dominance. So we can say games are all ‘Bang Bang, Bang Bang.'"
In reality, the thematic range of games is very broad it's just that the majority of games made are similar in theme, tone, story or mechanics.... but not necessarily all of those! Just because 30 FPS were produced last year and only 15 major games were quirky non-violent affairs the majority does not negate the minority. The majority of books and films are action or love blockbusters.... they're thematically unchallenging but no one would accuse all authors or books of being devoid of creativity because the truly innovative and interesting ones are in the minority. It's misleading and a petty thing to do but it's this sort of sentiment that permeates the piece.
"There are some outliers, but we continuously make the same games about the same things," says Heir, who worked on this summer's Wolfenstein sequel. "The only things that change are our mechanics. We regularly have white male generic space marine characters as protagonists. Our NPCs are often cookie cutter and stereotypical. We use the same backdrops of post-nuclear apocalypse or colonizing Mars, or crazy fantasy worlds."
And yet these designers have learned nothing from all their years of work in the industry. How many times do we splurt out, "There are no new ideas, just rehashes." Or, looking at the more cerebral side of gaming, game theory and story writing you'll be confronted with people who say that the same stories, character archetypes and game interactions/fantasies permeate society at an almost subconscious level travelling from generation to generation from centuries, perhaps millennia, ago.
What are we expecting to happen? That just because we have invented a new medium we'll suddenly re-write these age-old staples that connect with us humans at the deepest of levels and in the most exciting way? Face it, it's not going to happen.... so where does that leave us? I'll tell you where it leaves us: right where we are and where we've always been. We're not in some dire uncreative rut, we're not about to become shallow morons who only play the same game over and over again because that's not who we've ever been. Humans don't sit down and stop socially evolving: we create, we iterate and we change.
Here's a fun fact: The majority of recreational books written in the 18th and 19th century are what we call period dramas. Can we distinguish one period drama from the next? Probably not.
/sarcasm
Tim Schafer's and Marianne Krawczyk's comments only help to confuse the matter as they make allusions to an incestuous gaming industry that takes no input from outside itself, which results in the stagnation of the inspirational DNA of the people playing and creating games.... as if all people are identical, have the same world views and desire the exact same end-result - even if they do enjoy the same things. Guess what? I play football, i watch those footballers on TV. My idea of playing football is different to those who do play and those i play with.... and that's with a system that *I* can't change the rules for.
Of course, in the next few paragraphs they manage to save some face by stating the obvious that, yes, people do in fact take inspiration from their personal lives, from art from everywhere including within games and also without. It makes you wonder why they even said all that incestuous bullshit in the first place. Well done, the problem is solved a third of the way through the article! It's now a non-issue..... so why is there another two thirds to read through?
Risk-taking is a key element – Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello called Brütal Legend a "significant creative risk" — just before the publisher announced it'd be the one to rescue the title from its post Acti-Blizzard limbo. Fervent gamers now look forward to its breath of fresh air.
So.... it's about risk now? Ah, i see... being creative is about taking risks; though actually, it doesn't have to be as we see in the second half of Leigh's blurb surrounding John Riccitiello's quote on how risky Brutal Legend is. Anyone looking at Brutal Legend who says it's creatively new or different from what's been before needs to go and take a shower. It's a third-person brawler set to a violent and rock/heavy metal backdrop shoved together with common mythology.... with elements of Pikmin/Overlord to boot. Yeah, a real creative risk there..... really fresh.
So, sarcasm aside, is the real question that Leigh should have been asking for this article, "What do you consider fresh?". More often than not it would appear that remixing or iteration is the name of the day and i have no problem with that. You can't improve on 'perfection'. If something works you don't change it but iterate it instead because those people who like that specific thing will probably like it in its new form.... and because it resonates in the deepest levels of our psyche/brain there will likely always be people who want to consume that thing.
And yet the pattern of the video game industry tells us otherwise. Derivative games sell, sequels are the watchword for the holidays, and the audience's appetite for war campaigns and space marines seems never to wane. What's wrong with more of the same, if that's what people seem to want?
And yet this is directly at odds with what her interviewees are saying.... this conclusion is Leigh's own placed over a carefully constructed article so that it doesn't sound idiotic. If this were the 70's and we're watching all those movies with that iconic style and form, Leigh would be saying the same thing... but here we are, 40 years later, watching movies with radically different forms.
The same games keep getting made largely because that's all the core audience is interested in. So maybe it's gamers, not game developers, who need to get a life.
The problem with any sort of analysis of gaming and gamers is that we are a minority of the market. No one looks at rap or hip hop and says that's all people buy because music is ubiquitous.... gaming, specifically video/computer gaming is not there yet. Leigh brings out the 11 million units of the Gears of War franchise sold as an illustrative point that gamers only buy one type of game (male power fantasies) whilst crying out for more meaningful things like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. What this fails to take into account is that 11 million is nothing. 11 million? The population of the US is somewhere around 300 million alone... assuming those 11m units sold are all in the US that's a penetration of 3.6%. It's nothing, negligible - a statistical blip on one data point. Now, when we have the same penetration that music, movies/TV and books do come back and make some meaningful interpretations on the likes of people as a whole. At the moment the core audience are driving the expansion of gaming (and it is expanding) so of course we are going to get the games we want.... but that's not to say that there isn't a market for more arty games or non-violent, male fantasy games.... there just aren't the people in the games market to support as many of them at the moment.
The take-home message of the article for any readers is probably that if you look at something on such a small scale and with such a narrow view then you will undoubtedly make the wrong assumptions and get the wrong answers.
Now, maybe it's just that all of these interviewee's comments have been taken out of context and placed in an article that's solely trying to push it's sensationalist agenda or maybe none of these industry veterans are seeing the bigger picture.... and that to me is far more worrying than any fear of stagnation.
Case in point, her latest piece over at Kotaku. Sure, it's good for grabbing headlines and perhaps that's why she's in the business of journalism... but this sort of sensationalism doesn't help matters and it's exactly what we decry when watching and reading content from the mainstream news outlets.
"Is creativity dead?", she asks.... and then completely fails to deliver or comment on this very question, instead side-railing onto the topic of inspiration. My main problem with the whole thing is that neither she or her interviewees makes any differentiation between story and mechanics and it's quite clear from the article that different people are talking about one or the other and never both at the same time.
Industry veteran and Zoonami CEO Martin Hollis, most recently creator of quirky Wii Ware title Bonsai Barber, agrees that the thematic range of games isn't very broad. "Pauline Kael famously criticized films as being only about violence and romance: ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang'," he says of the great film critic. "Games are virtually all about violence, or at least conquest and dominance. So we can say games are all ‘Bang Bang, Bang Bang.'"
In reality, the thematic range of games is very broad it's just that the majority of games made are similar in theme, tone, story or mechanics.... but not necessarily all of those! Just because 30 FPS were produced last year and only 15 major games were quirky non-violent affairs the majority does not negate the minority. The majority of books and films are action or love blockbusters.... they're thematically unchallenging but no one would accuse all authors or books of being devoid of creativity because the truly innovative and interesting ones are in the minority. It's misleading and a petty thing to do but it's this sort of sentiment that permeates the piece.
"There are some outliers, but we continuously make the same games about the same things," says Heir, who worked on this summer's Wolfenstein sequel. "The only things that change are our mechanics. We regularly have white male generic space marine characters as protagonists. Our NPCs are often cookie cutter and stereotypical. We use the same backdrops of post-nuclear apocalypse or colonizing Mars, or crazy fantasy worlds."
And yet these designers have learned nothing from all their years of work in the industry. How many times do we splurt out, "There are no new ideas, just rehashes." Or, looking at the more cerebral side of gaming, game theory and story writing you'll be confronted with people who say that the same stories, character archetypes and game interactions/fantasies permeate society at an almost subconscious level travelling from generation to generation from centuries, perhaps millennia, ago.
What are we expecting to happen? That just because we have invented a new medium we'll suddenly re-write these age-old staples that connect with us humans at the deepest of levels and in the most exciting way? Face it, it's not going to happen.... so where does that leave us? I'll tell you where it leaves us: right where we are and where we've always been. We're not in some dire uncreative rut, we're not about to become shallow morons who only play the same game over and over again because that's not who we've ever been. Humans don't sit down and stop socially evolving: we create, we iterate and we change.
Here's a fun fact: The majority of recreational books written in the 18th and 19th century are what we call period dramas. Can we distinguish one period drama from the next? Probably not.
/sarcasm
Tim Schafer's and Marianne Krawczyk's comments only help to confuse the matter as they make allusions to an incestuous gaming industry that takes no input from outside itself, which results in the stagnation of the inspirational DNA of the people playing and creating games.... as if all people are identical, have the same world views and desire the exact same end-result - even if they do enjoy the same things. Guess what? I play football, i watch those footballers on TV. My idea of playing football is different to those who do play and those i play with.... and that's with a system that *I* can't change the rules for.
Of course, in the next few paragraphs they manage to save some face by stating the obvious that, yes, people do in fact take inspiration from their personal lives, from art from everywhere including within games and also without. It makes you wonder why they even said all that incestuous bullshit in the first place. Well done, the problem is solved a third of the way through the article! It's now a non-issue..... so why is there another two thirds to read through?
Risk-taking is a key element – Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello called Brütal Legend a "significant creative risk" — just before the publisher announced it'd be the one to rescue the title from its post Acti-Blizzard limbo. Fervent gamers now look forward to its breath of fresh air.
So.... it's about risk now? Ah, i see... being creative is about taking risks; though actually, it doesn't have to be as we see in the second half of Leigh's blurb surrounding John Riccitiello's quote on how risky Brutal Legend is. Anyone looking at Brutal Legend who says it's creatively new or different from what's been before needs to go and take a shower. It's a third-person brawler set to a violent and rock/heavy metal backdrop shoved together with common mythology.... with elements of Pikmin/Overlord to boot. Yeah, a real creative risk there..... really fresh.
So, sarcasm aside, is the real question that Leigh should have been asking for this article, "What do you consider fresh?". More often than not it would appear that remixing or iteration is the name of the day and i have no problem with that. You can't improve on 'perfection'. If something works you don't change it but iterate it instead because those people who like that specific thing will probably like it in its new form.... and because it resonates in the deepest levels of our psyche/brain there will likely always be people who want to consume that thing.
And yet the pattern of the video game industry tells us otherwise. Derivative games sell, sequels are the watchword for the holidays, and the audience's appetite for war campaigns and space marines seems never to wane. What's wrong with more of the same, if that's what people seem to want?
And yet this is directly at odds with what her interviewees are saying.... this conclusion is Leigh's own placed over a carefully constructed article so that it doesn't sound idiotic. If this were the 70's and we're watching all those movies with that iconic style and form, Leigh would be saying the same thing... but here we are, 40 years later, watching movies with radically different forms.
The same games keep getting made largely because that's all the core audience is interested in. So maybe it's gamers, not game developers, who need to get a life.
The problem with any sort of analysis of gaming and gamers is that we are a minority of the market. No one looks at rap or hip hop and says that's all people buy because music is ubiquitous.... gaming, specifically video/computer gaming is not there yet. Leigh brings out the 11 million units of the Gears of War franchise sold as an illustrative point that gamers only buy one type of game (male power fantasies) whilst crying out for more meaningful things like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. What this fails to take into account is that 11 million is nothing. 11 million? The population of the US is somewhere around 300 million alone... assuming those 11m units sold are all in the US that's a penetration of 3.6%. It's nothing, negligible - a statistical blip on one data point. Now, when we have the same penetration that music, movies/TV and books do come back and make some meaningful interpretations on the likes of people as a whole. At the moment the core audience are driving the expansion of gaming (and it is expanding) so of course we are going to get the games we want.... but that's not to say that there isn't a market for more arty games or non-violent, male fantasy games.... there just aren't the people in the games market to support as many of them at the moment.
The take-home message of the article for any readers is probably that if you look at something on such a small scale and with such a narrow view then you will undoubtedly make the wrong assumptions and get the wrong answers.
Now, maybe it's just that all of these interviewee's comments have been taken out of context and placed in an article that's solely trying to push it's sensationalist agenda or maybe none of these industry veterans are seeing the bigger picture.... and that to me is far more worrying than any fear of stagnation.
4 September 2009
Predictions come true!
Also acceptable as a possible title for this post is: I am a god!
In 2008 i wrote up a prediction of what i thought the next Xbox console would look like. I have to admit that i was wrong on the timescale but i think that's because both Microsoft and Sony have gone the 'mid-cycle upgrade' route through firmware and new peripheral hardware rather than bringing out a new fully-fledged console.
So what did i predict that i got right?
- Not sure about a motion controller but you'd need at least 2 hi-res cameras with something to focus on (like motion capture reflective spots) to get accurate enough 3-D information without accelerometers - kinda like the sensor bar with a standard ratio between the two cameras.
- If they do include motion control it will be a side-project and not the main focus of the console like it is for the Wii. There will still be a main controller like the one we're used to but perhaps the motion controller will be something you can buy like the Eye-toy or a dance pad for specific (read: Family oriented) games.
I think i pretty much just nailed Project Natal:
- "-DVR, media center, cable set top box functionality" is a given.
- The console won't ship for more than around £299 and they will try and keep that cost as low as possible (including the manufacturing cost/selling price ratio)
I'm pretty happy with these predictions as well though they are more "safe" than the camera style controller prediction.
Anyway, i'm off to play a game :)
In 2008 i wrote up a prediction of what i thought the next Xbox console would look like. I have to admit that i was wrong on the timescale but i think that's because both Microsoft and Sony have gone the 'mid-cycle upgrade' route through firmware and new peripheral hardware rather than bringing out a new fully-fledged console.
So what did i predict that i got right?
- Not sure about a motion controller but you'd need at least 2 hi-res cameras with something to focus on (like motion capture reflective spots) to get accurate enough 3-D information without accelerometers - kinda like the sensor bar with a standard ratio between the two cameras.
- If they do include motion control it will be a side-project and not the main focus of the console like it is for the Wii. There will still be a main controller like the one we're used to but perhaps the motion controller will be something you can buy like the Eye-toy or a dance pad for specific (read: Family oriented) games.
I think i pretty much just nailed Project Natal:
- "-DVR, media center, cable set top box functionality" is a given.
- The console won't ship for more than around £299 and they will try and keep that cost as low as possible (including the manufacturing cost/selling price ratio)
I'm pretty happy with these predictions as well though they are more "safe" than the camera style controller prediction.
Anyway, i'm off to play a game :)
Perhaps it's just me?
I regularly visit a site called "gamerswithjobs" and while it's still a great site filled and visited by really nice (and generally intelligent) people i'm finding myself growing more and more distant to it. Maybe it's just me and where i am in my life at the moment that's making it worse but there's always been a large gap there and for most other gaming sites out there which are primarily US-orientated so there's that aspect that drives a stake between my interaction with the members there.
However, for a few months now i'm feeling a larger disconnect with the actual site itself. The content and podcast content. It's as if they've somehow transitioned from being a site run by geeks and nerds (of which cloth i am also cut) with content to match to slowly becoming a "lifestyle" site which tends to those who want to be included rather than those who are already practising 'the lifestyle'.
I know it's not a very good way of saying it and i'm still a bit confused over the whole thing but i don't get the same excitement from the podcast anymore and the front page articles are just.... well, bland. It's as if the site is slowly becoming a more broad version of gamerdad - and certainly some of the old contributors to their front page content were also cross-pollinating that site in its original form (gaming with children? When did that happen?). It doesn't speak to me in the same way and perhaps that's part of the site's growth...... but i'm beginning to find myself without a home on the internet once again as i did when i moved from the Anime Community Boards (before the pay per use) on IGN and then the boards over at 3D Realms.
Each place has a special hold on my heart and as Jim Rossignol states that special experience can never be rekindled no matter how hard you yearn for it. It's purely a product of who and where you are in life combined with who visits the site and where it is in its growth. I miss the ACB and the 3DR people and community i knew (and a certain other blog circle/support group i stumbled upon during the period between my activity on those two boards that i've since forgotten the name of)... some of them are still about but there's no ties between us. They don't know who i have become and vice versa.
My problem now is that i've reached a zenith in my board participation on gamerswithjobs and while i am thankful i was able to do so, where do i go from here? There, quite frankly, is no better place i've ever encountered and certainly no better and generally civil and intelligent people..... but i need something closer to home. Something British or European.... it doesn't exist. RockPaperShotgun? Good site but lousy forums (and unruly users too!). Eurogamer? Decent site but more aimed at the mass market review side of things and quite crappy forums/comments threads.
I tried to create my own little side universe in the Eggmen.co.uk (European Gaming Group) but we don't have any exposure and i need more third party involvement to get my ass in gear.... i'm pretty much resigned to the fact that it's a dead end for now - we don't have any big names or interviews and what-not. I'd love to continue to do a podcast but organising it and keeping the audio and subject quality high is a tough order.
So my search continues..... where will i settle next?
However, for a few months now i'm feeling a larger disconnect with the actual site itself. The content and podcast content. It's as if they've somehow transitioned from being a site run by geeks and nerds (of which cloth i am also cut) with content to match to slowly becoming a "lifestyle" site which tends to those who want to be included rather than those who are already practising 'the lifestyle'.
I know it's not a very good way of saying it and i'm still a bit confused over the whole thing but i don't get the same excitement from the podcast anymore and the front page articles are just.... well, bland. It's as if the site is slowly becoming a more broad version of gamerdad - and certainly some of the old contributors to their front page content were also cross-pollinating that site in its original form (gaming with children? When did that happen?). It doesn't speak to me in the same way and perhaps that's part of the site's growth...... but i'm beginning to find myself without a home on the internet once again as i did when i moved from the Anime Community Boards (before the pay per use) on IGN and then the boards over at 3D Realms.
Each place has a special hold on my heart and as Jim Rossignol states that special experience can never be rekindled no matter how hard you yearn for it. It's purely a product of who and where you are in life combined with who visits the site and where it is in its growth. I miss the ACB and the 3DR people and community i knew (and a certain other blog circle/support group i stumbled upon during the period between my activity on those two boards that i've since forgotten the name of)... some of them are still about but there's no ties between us. They don't know who i have become and vice versa.
My problem now is that i've reached a zenith in my board participation on gamerswithjobs and while i am thankful i was able to do so, where do i go from here? There, quite frankly, is no better place i've ever encountered and certainly no better and generally civil and intelligent people..... but i need something closer to home. Something British or European.... it doesn't exist. RockPaperShotgun? Good site but lousy forums (and unruly users too!). Eurogamer? Decent site but more aimed at the mass market review side of things and quite crappy forums/comments threads.
I tried to create my own little side universe in the Eggmen.co.uk (European Gaming Group) but we don't have any exposure and i need more third party involvement to get my ass in gear.... i'm pretty much resigned to the fact that it's a dead end for now - we don't have any big names or interviews and what-not. I'd love to continue to do a podcast but organising it and keeping the audio and subject quality high is a tough order.
So my search continues..... where will i settle next?
1 September 2009
So no updates?
Well, not true! I've been busy working on (and actually) submitting my doctoral thesis so that's why there's been so little on here and Eggmen.co.uk. One of the problems i've found with being unemployed over a long period of time is that you really struggle to motivate yourself as well as keeping your thoughts going. Conversely, when you're busy, you want to do more and you also think more and thus can have more ideas.
Hopefully, i'll get a job soon, if not, then hopefully i'll manage to keep my brain ticking over to bring you more insightful thoughts on the industry, games and game design.
Speak soon :)
Hopefully, i'll get a job soon, if not, then hopefully i'll manage to keep my brain ticking over to bring you more insightful thoughts on the industry, games and game design.
Speak soon :)