English Beat

Why does England get all the cool video game magazines? Retro Gamer, Games TM, X360, PowerStation... sure, they have American counterparts (Game Informer, Play, GamePro, Nintendo Power, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, Tips & Tricks), but have you even looked in an issue of Retro Gamer? BAM POW SLAM fan love e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. It harkens back to a day when homebrewers could release the next big, cool thing from a Tandy sitting in their mom's basement. There was no Madden franchise, or Tony Hawk re-hash, or Guitar Hero: Aly and AJ Edition. Gaming was pure, and the entire magazine makes me feel that the gaming landscape across the seas is so much more unpolluted than over here.

I'd buy a subscription, but it's £80.00 for a year. That's about $126, and I could subscribe to practically every U.S. game magazine for that price, even the ones that come with "free" demo discs. Bleh.

Part VII - What makes sports games so great?

Realism. Every new generation of sports games has an updated roster, better graphics, and a more realistic feel. Football coaches run simulated plays on Madden to see if they would work. Real hockey players can play as themselves on a TV on their tour bus. Even people who aren't professionals can now create themselves as a player in the games (of course, the most overpowered player in the league... why not?). Always wanted to be the star running back of the Minnesota Vikings? Now you can.

The realism boat took off with the first Madden game on the Sega Genesis. Madden (the man, not the game) insisted that both teams have to correct amount of players on the field. This changed the entire game. This changed the entire genre. There is now a demographic of gamers that buy no games other than sports games. They buy the latest version of Madden and NCAA and NBA Live, and little else. They may play the occasional Halo deathmatch, but they know what they like and they will not be swayed. They know all the stats of their favorite team and, for many gamers, this is as close as they will ever get to experiencing a Super Bowl as a key member of their fave team.

Now, if there are only a few members on a team (a la NBA Jam or NFL Blitz), the game is considered an arcade game. If there are the right number of people on each team, the game is a sports simulation. Like Gran Turismo, Madden is trying to be the Real Football Simulator. There have been many times when a person across the room would see a current-gen sports game on TV and confuse it with an actual, live broadcast. That's realism.

Unfortunately, with EA buying the exclusive rights to produce games for the NFL, other game developers have had to use creative methods of making money with football games. Going the arcade route is one way, or you can go the All-Pro Football route and use retired legends of the game who happen to not fall under the NFL's copyright, apparently. These games are all considered inferior to the "official" products, however, much like buying a third-party controller from Mad Catz instead of the real deal. Non-official games have had to use differing tactics than going head-to-head with Madden, such as excessive violence (Blitz: The League) or a roster of old-school fan favorites (All-Pro Football 2K8). Maybe someday there will be another contender for the throne like NFL 2K5, but, so far, it's not looking like it.

Gamers want the official, real deal. "Pure" sports games are all about the realism. That's why people play them. That's why people will continue to play them long into the future.

Free Crap! Yay!

Remember shareware? I think iD started it with Doom (at least, that's the earliest high profile game I can recall). You play the entire first episode for free, then you make copies for your friends. If you like it, you could buy the other two episodes. This was a potential marketing disaster, but it created so much buzz for the most violent game of its time that it went on to become a controversial legend.

Today, we get demos for free. We can play the first ten levels of N+, or the first mission of The Force Unleashed, or a few tracks on Guitar Hero. We can't play the first third of a whole, complete game. There are, of course, exceptions... and I think they can be an answer.

Yaris is free. Doritos: Dash of Destruction is free. Complete games. Downloadable, yes, but complete and free. See any similarities between the two games? Yeah, advertising. Many games already have piles of advertising packed into them. Madden's stadium walls are covered with ads. SSX is loaded with billboards. These ads really add nothing to the experience (except maybe some realism to liken the game world to our already ad-laden reality). The ads make more money for the developers. Why can't these savings be passed onto the gamers? Instead of charging $60 for the new iteration of Madden every year, why not charge $30 for an ad-supported version? Or $20? Or free? EA can make its money on downloadable content.

Even more, the ads can be dynamic, changing daily or weekly as long as you're connected to the internet. Maybe even a banner on the top of the screen that can annoy you continuously, reminding you constantly that you were too cheap to pay for the entire $60 ad-free version.

All right. This idea is lame. Sorry, games are expensive. And there's going to be ads in games no matter what. Why can't we get something out of it?

(Virtual) Reality Pt. 2

I play Wii Sports tennis, and it really makes me want to play real tennis, despite the fun I may be having playing fake tennis. I play Mirror's Edge, and it really makes me want to parkour, despite how weak I am and how much I suck at both running and jumping (I feel like I can do it... someday!). I play Half-Life 2, and it makes me want to cruise around in a go-kart. I play Guitar Hero, and it makes me want to learn to play the song on a real guitar (it also made me appreciate classic rock, a genre I had no interest in before I could fake rock out to it). Yet, when I play Madden, I don't want to play football. And NBA Live doesn't make me want to b-ball. And NHL Live doesn't make me want to play hockey. Do I just not like sports? Or teams? Or is the team sport experience on TV just so far different than actual sports than my mind can't make the link? Yeah, the rules are the same, but that's about it. No matter how realistic NFL 2K5's first person mode is, it's just not the same. Since the days of Madden's debut back on the Sega Genesis, there have been people who buy no games other than sports games, and they will buy the new version every year, no matter how miniscule the changes may be. Strangely enough, the people who buy new Madden's every year are the college football jocks. Maybe they have the mysterious brain link between real and fake sports that I seem to be missing. Maybe the link between real and fake life only exists for people who are actually good at the things they see on TV. This would explain why I play guitar but I don't play free safety. And, really, why I don't want to and never will. Hmmmmm...

(Virtual) Reality

Computer graphics are getting too good. Once, your onscreen representation was nothing more than a monochrome bar against a black, endless background in the Pong universe. Now, computerized ninjas look almost indistinguishable from real ninjas. Scratch that, we'll go with football players. If a person across the room sees his buddy playing Madden, he might easily confuse it for a real football game on TV. What happened to the days where games were easily separated from reality? Now that Call of Duty finally has the technological prowess to look just like Jarhead, the lines are blurred even further. In the original Super Mario Bros., you only controlled Mario - you weren't actually Mario. Now, when you play Mirror's Edge, you are Faith. You control her and look out of her eyes; you feel when she's hit and you die when she dies.

It makes the whole experience feel more immersive, and yet... I am not a young, supple Japanese girl. I'm a tall white guy with no real athletic ability. I am not Faith, and there's always going to be that distinction in the back of my mind. I can't relate to a free runner parkouring all across Tokyo rooftops. I can relate to Pac-man. In the words of D.B. Weiss, author of Lucky Wander Boy, "Pac-man is just a mouth. I have a mouth. You have a mouth. Everyone has a mouth." Mario is the everyman plumber type. Jesus was a carpenter. See the similarities?

Another recent trend in games like Metal Gear Solid 4, God of War II, and pretty much any FPS is the whole "ugly is the new pretty" motif. With the enhanced graphics on the PS3 and Xbox 360, you can see scars, stubble, and all sorts of imperfections on main characters' faces. Remember back in the day? Mike Tyson's Punch-Out - Little Mac was the pretty boy good guy facing off against the big ugly behemoths like King Hippo and Bald Bull. Very Ayn Rand-ian. The good guys are pure and beautiful; the bad guys are obviously immoral. It's a fun concept, but games are only recently coming to discover all the small nuances of what actually constitutes good and evil. It's not as clear-cut black and white as Saturday morning cartoons and The Fountainhead lead us to believe. Maybe that's why the ug-ifying of main character anti-hero types? To show that they are human too, that Solid Snake also lies on his taxes and leaves the toilet seat up? Maybe. Maybe people just want to do the bad things in games that they can't do in real life. Yet 9 out of 10 people still pick the good guy path in Fable. People don't know what they want.

New old games

Sometimes, game companies create new IPs. See: Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, any Tim Schafer game. Usually, though, they realize, "Hey, we're a game company." Then they let the purpose of a company (to make money) get in the way of the creative part of game creation. They see that Madden consistently sells millions upon millions of copies each year despite the fact that changes to the game from one season to the next are mostly superficial. They see that Psychonauts and Okami do not sell despite near-universal critical acclaim. Maybe it's the funny names. Maybe consumers just don't have as much money as they used to. Maybe Average Joe fears change. Barack is president now; maybe his inauguration can be the turning point for the game industry as well as the economy. Maybe people will start trying new things because the old things are boring. The old things don't work anymore. Change, as they say, is good.

Then why do game companies continue mining the past for ideas instead of looking to the future?

Space Invaders Extreme. Galaga Legions. Geometry Wars. (It's Asteroids in Technicolor. Zip it.) Halo Wars/Recon/ODST/4/5/6. DDR Super Max Ultimate Extreme Hyper Fighting II: The World War Road Warriors. Once-fresh ideas are now being re-hashed so continually and consistently that whole generations are now being robbed of the initial "wow" factor of a new game or a new technology. When GTA III was released and instantly popularized the sandbox world genre, people were amazed. They said things like, "Now I expect so much more from my games." Flash forward through Vice City and San Andreas and you have GTA IV - more polished, but basically the same game. Is it still fun? Most definitely, but not as exciting, fresh, or new.

Which brings me to my question: is the amount of fun you have with a game related to the amount of innovation in it? Are remakes (Prince of Persia, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden) fun because the source was so pure and undiluted? How long can you milk a concept or franchise before it becomes obsolete and unplayable? Square Enix has made each new Final Fantasy game a fresh take on the classic RPG formula to varying levels of success, while the Tony Hawk games started to stink so bad that they finally took a year off to regroup.

Madden will always be fun despite the lack of substantial updates. Mario will continue to charm gamers the world over with each new adventure. Game developers will continue mining the past as long as there's money to be made (*cough*Sega*cough*). Still, as long as there are people that are not content to merely rest on their grandad's NES laurels, the future still has a future. And maybe it all doesn't have to be in the past.