The Importance of Ads?

Advertisements are a huge part of our lives. Every day we are bombarded by dozens if not hundreds of ads telling us to buy one product or another. Of course, video games are no exception. Over the last console generation, the amount of money a company is willing to spend to advertise a video game has gone through the roof. Activision with the Call of Duty franchise in particular has spent millions of dollars on them, even inserting ads into high-profile NBA and NFL games to sell their games to as many people as they can.

Call of Duty: Black Ops sold millions of copies on the first day of its release, making Activision over $300 million in one day. The game went on to make the company over $1 billion by the end of 2010. Today, it stands as the highest selling game of all time. Clearly, advertising worked out for them.

So why then didn’t they do the same with 2010’s Singularity? This FPS by Raven Software shared some similarities with Call of Duty games, mostly in the controls, but instead focused on a more intriguing and time-travel focused single player experience. It came out in the game-light month of June, months from the release of Black Ops. By targeting the same audience with ads, they might have roped a few gamers into a purchase, something to do during the doldrums of summer.

But they didn’t do this. In fact, advertising for Singularity was practically non-existent, aside from a few game trailers in the weeks up to its release. Anyone who wasn’t a game enthusiast most likely didn’t even notice it release and even some of them probably had it slip under their radar. Lack of word-of-mouth hurt the game’s sales; it barely broke 30,000 copies in its first month. It wasn’t necessarily because of the game’s quality either, as it boasts a respectable 76 on Metacritic (Xbox 360 version).

Why did this game tank so badly? Were all those reviewers wrong? Did the game’s summer release cripple its performance? Or was the lack of advertisement entirely to blame? As a video game enthusiast myself, I can’t always understand the importance of advertising, since I always know what is coming out and what I want to buy. Poor sales of games I enjoyed, like Singularity, always make me reevaluate the value of some commercials for a game’s well-being.

X-Men: Destiny is supposedly coming out tomorrow on each of the current consoles, published by Activision. I was surprised by this fact because I haven’t heard anything substantial about it for months, after being a bit excited when it was announced. A few trailers were released on the 23rd but they didn’t make much of a splash on the major video game news sites and surely haven’t gotten around to anyone who isn’t somewhat interested in the game. Sound familiar?

Is the situation with Singularity happening all over again? X-Men is certainly a brand name that is recognized by the average person but it seems like this game is being pushed out the door without a second thought. Early word of mouth seems shaky and developer Silicon Knights’ (makers of Too Human) pedigree doesn’t give me much confidence. All I know for now is I can’t wait to see the game sales numbers next month…

A Unique Form of DRM

Demon's Souls is a game known amongst gamers as one of the most brutal and unforgiving games from this generation. Developer From Software created a game with the unrelenting difficulty of games from the early days, games meant to suck the quarters from you as fast as they can.

Their next game Dark Souls hopes to do the same thing. The game is out in just a couple more weeks and as usual, some people have already gotten their hands on copies of it. Even with the vast array of anti-pirating options available nowadays, From Software decided to do something even better.

In Demon's Souls, you are always online. Other players can jump into your game at any time, if you are connected. These players are defined as "Black Phantoms" and can be several levels higher than you, taking you out in one strike.

To teach the pirating players a lesson, From Software is jumping into games with extremely overpowered characters, essentially griefing them as a way to get them to stop. You have to hand it the developer for not just sticking an online code into the box. Instead, they just kick your ass if you try to play early.

Why I Play Video Games

Like many game enthusiasts, I peruse dozens if not hundreds of news stories and forum posts a day. Anything that catches my eye or seems important in some manner gets read. The most important ones get bookmarked to go back and look at later. Every once in awhile, one of them makes me want to do a post of my own. Today, I read one of these posts.

It was a forum post on Giant Bomb and it discussed the repetitive nature of video games and the author’s complete inability (his words) to understand why we keep making and playing the same games over and over again. After I read it, I asked myself: why do you play games? I took a long, hard look at my reasons and this is what I came up with.

I like to play games with an interesting world. From the lush, sprawling expanse of Cyrodil to the desolate insanity of Pandora, game worlds can be a very different reality from our own. These worlds spring up entirely in the minds of their developers, writing out the history and designing every little nook and cranny for players to explore. Dystopian futures. Unbelievable fantasy worlds. A Japanese high school. These are worlds that I would never get to experience (at least, I certainly think not) but am at least able to get a glimpse of through video games.

When those worlds come with interesting storylines, I am even more pleased. Story in video games is admittedly still trying to find its way, trying to branch out from the standard “you’re an unstoppable badass who needs to save the world” mold. Giving players choices that actually have meaning in the story is a lot of work but I feel it is the next big step needed in storytelling. Even still, I have so much more investment in a story that I’ve taken a part in.

What good story would be complete without great characters? Video game characters are some of the most diverse and ludicrous characters I have ever seen. Where else would you get to meet characters like Mordin from Mass Effect 2, a singing alien who must come to terms with a nearly disgusting moral choice? An alien that also kicks ass and you get to fight alongside? Guiding a character to the destiny they have waiting for them, even if that destiny is defined outright by the developer, feels leaps and bounds better than simply watching them or reading them do it.

Another area where I feel video games shine is in their artistic merits. Movies and television shows can try to create a brand new world but the reality is always visible. There are literally no limits to what a world could look in a video game. Impossibly large insects or alien races that don’t look at all humanoid (as many in television and movies do) can be created with a bit of imagination and effort. Breathtaking landscapes can be crafted just for the purpose of making the player stop and appreciate it.

Also worth mentioning are the different art styles a game can incorporate, from the paint-brushed style of Street Fighter IV to the cel-shaded beauty of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Our reality is unchangeable; it will always look the way it does. As long as video game creators still have that spark of creativity in them, video games will always have the potential to look more interesting.

Music in video games has resonated with me more than music in any other medium. Whether it’s due to the emotional impact of the music paired with the particular moment in the game or the endless repetition of certain tracks burning them into my brain, some video game tracks are permanently locked away in some crevasse of my brain, ready to creep out at any moment. Just a few bars of particular songs bring back a rush of memories and a smile to my face.

How about the incentives? Leveling up, shiny new pieces of loot, or getting to the end of the game are all examples of incentives that video game developers use to make me endlessly addicted. I know I’m addicted but I don’t care; I just want the next piece of loot or one more level. Incentives in video games hit a pleasure zone in my brain unlike anything else. Leveling systems in particular are particularly tantalizing to me; when it’s done right, I’m right onboard.

Here it is. A few of the reasons I play games. Well, probably all of them. I hope this has been as interesting for you as it has been for me and I ask you to do what I did. Think about why you play games, especially if they’ve been getting you down lately (something I recently went through myself). Realizing why you play games can help you choose to give up and move to a medium without so much repetition (good luck). Me? I’m not stopping anytime soon.

Are Video Game Characters Perfect?

Alan Wake. Issac Clarke. Nathan Drake. What do these three characters have in common? They are ordinary guys that are thrust into crazy situations in their games, crazy situations that they just happen to luck through time and time again. They aren’t the only ones; dozens of video game characters, plenty of which are portrayed as average people who are thrown into a crazy predicament, people who seem to have a divine power watching over their every move. They can’t die, at least not permanently. They never fail to accomplish their goals. They always win (by the end of the game/series).

Games are rather unique entertainment in that they allow the person playing them to manipulate things as they choose. Unlike movies, television and books which have no interactivity, video games are entirely comprised of this interactivity. Because of this, games have a bit of a different agenda. They can’t just tell a story; they have to also be fun and challenging to play.

For a lot of games, part of this challenge comes from the risk of dying and losing some of your progress, a holdover from the days of arcades and developers wanting as many quarters out of you as they could possibly get. No matter how many times you die, at least in nearly every modern game, you get to come back within a few minutes of your death to try again. It doesn’t make sense but if the game were to just end when you died, no one would ever have fun with it. The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time excuse tends to work best, where the whole game is portrayed as someone recounting their story and saying “No, that isn’t how it went,” if the player happened die. This is the exception, not the rule. Most games just assume the player can suspend their disbelief and fill in the blanks themselves. True failure is something that is never allowed in video games.

L.A. Noire is a game that came along and tried to change some of that. Here was a game that allowed players to fail, at least in some aspects of the game, but still continue. Players can miss key evidence, lose suspects during a chase, and even arrest the wrong person for a crime, yet the game will still continue onward. Sure, the overall story of the game doesn’t change, just some small minutiae here and there, but it is a step in the right direction. The characters are that much more believable because the game will let them fail, just like real life detectives that probably make mistakes every day.

Failure in video games is a tricky beast, one I’m not quite convinced that can be solved. On one end of the spectrum we have games with Hardcore modes like Diablo II and Dead Space 2 that end your game with one death, as if the character was truly real. These modes tend to only be for masochists and achievement hunter. On the other, we have the 2008 Prince of Persia where any death through combat or a misstep is immediately corrected by Elika’s magic. This stripped the game of a lot of its momentum because there was never any penalty for making a mistake. Until an acceptable middle ground can be found, we will continue to have game protagonists that are essentially godlike super soldiers who can never die or make a mistake, forever making us feel like inept human beings in comparison.

A Different Look at Naoto

A few weeks ago, I happened to stumble upon a blog called The Border House, a site dedicated to looking at games with an objective, feminist eye. The post in question was “Did she just money-shot herself with his neck blood?” a title that I have to admit caught my eye with its striking title. I enjoyed the article thoroughly, a look at the new (at the time) Mortal Kombat DLC character, Skarlet. While I was finishing up the article, I noticed a word on the sidebar of the website that usually catches my eye – Atlus. The link was to a post entitled “It’s Time to Talk About It: Atlus, Naoto, and Transphobia” and it was this post that inspired me to write this post (link to it below).

In the article, author Mattie Brice looked into some of Atlus’ transgendered and gender-confused characters from their previous games, including Persona 3 and 4 and Catherine. The points on Persona 3 and Catherine were well-made and did nothing to raise my ire so we won’t bother talking about them. It was when I got to the part about Naoto that I started to think the author missed the point.

Naoto Shirogane is a female character from Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. However, the character is at first presented to the player as a boy, when he comes to town to investigate the ongoing murder case as a special helper on the police force. The theme of the Persona games tends to be coming to terms with things you can’t admit to yourself and Naoto isn’t any different. The player learns at a late point in the game that Naoto is in fact a girl and hides her gender from everyone. She does this because being a female does not line up with her perfect idea of a detective, something she wants to be more than anything. She hides her gender so that the police force will respect her more than they would if she was more forthright.

These are the points that the game clearly tells the player but Brice’s article about Naoto gives me the impression that she didn’t understand this at all. The first thing she brings up is that the character is immediately referred to as she and her, as if the other characters are immediately forcing her to come to terms with herself. While this may be true in some cases, most of the time the characters still refer to her as Naoto-kun, “kun” being a Japanese honorific primarily used for males, not females. Whether it’s from the other characters being slow to change their ways or doing what they think would be most comfortable for Naoto is never discussed but the tone of the game certainly suggests the latter, this being a game about teenagers coming to terms with themselves, even the parts they don’t like.

The next point that caught my attention was Brice pointing out Naoto being grouped with the females on several occasions, the game’s obvious attempt to push her in with that group instead of the one she feels more comfortable with. While this does happen in some occasions, it usually tends to be the ones where a girl would NEED to be grouped in with other girls, like taking a public bath or sleeping in the same room. If Atlus had grouped Naoto in with the guys on these scenes, she would have been far less comfortable and much more objectified in the eyes of the character and the player.

Most importantly, it seems like Brice missed the whole point of Naoto’s character. In my eyes (and several others, according to wikis and others I have asked about the matter), Naoto is a girl who wished to be in a male’s body simply for the ease of it. Being an ace detective is all she had ever aspired to be but that is a job that, especially in Japan, is hard to move forward in as a girl. Not only that but her lack of experience and young age made it extremely hard for the adults to accept her for what she was. She hid her gender to get at least a tiny foothold to fall back on; the adults couldn’t reject her help just because she was young.

Over the course of the game, Naoto (through her Social Link in particular) learns and admits that she doesn’t truly want to be a man. All she wants is respect from others for her talents and respect for herself. It is my belief that Atlus didn’t mean for Naoto to be this questionable character who didn’t really ever say what she truly wanted (we have Kanji for that!) but someone, like everyone else, who discovers their true self over the course of the game.

Now, I don't disagree with everything Brice said. As I said above, the points on Persona 3 and Catherine are pretty much spot on. Also, the views on the romantic side of Naoto’s Social Link are in line with my own, forcing the character to go down a road that she doesn’t really seem to want to go down. Things like the beauty pageant and the Christmas Eve scene with Naoto as your lover are a bit disgusting but don’t ruin the work that the rest of the Social Link does (at least not entirely). I even don’t mind the author’s (seeming?) uncertainty as to what the true gender of Naoto really is. As in most good stories, everyone can see different themes and messages in the work; I, like Brice, just wanted to show the side of Persona 4 that spoke the most to me.

> Here is a link to the article I reference throughout this post.
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=6088

A Different Look at Violence

Today, I want to talk about a particular game. This game is something I appreciated for its artistic and gameplay merits when I first played it and more recently have come to appreciate for the amazing themes that run throughout its length. The game I am talking about is Shadow of the Colossus, Team Ico’s second game for the Playstation 2 released in 2005. I don’t want to discuss the gameplay, or the visual style, or even the unfortunate technical problems. This post will focus entirely on the (what I feel it is, at least) main theme of the game.

In Shadow of the Colossus, you play as a character named Wander who has travelled to a forbidden land to revive his lover Mono, chasing a legend that proves to be entirely true. A powerful being named Dormin inhabits the temple that he arrives at in the beginning of the game, a being that tells Wander he can return the soul to the one he loves. Of course, nothing so against the laws of nature can be accomplished without a price and the being even warns the protagonist against performing the task this feat requires, not being specific but stressing the dangers nonetheless.

Like any other fool in love, Wander can’t help but immediately set out on the task: kill the sixteen Colossi that inhabit the strange land. Several of these beings are entirely harmless, not attacking the player unless attacked first. It is the player inhabiting Wander that is forced to initiate combat against these more passive Colossi, taking their lives to return another’s. The game makes sure to show the player the results of their choice, making these moments sad and heart-wrenching when they should be feeling uplifted by the victory.

As more and more Colossi fall to the player’s blade, Wander begins to change. It is subtle at first but by the halfway point of the game, his hair and face grow darker as his skin gets paler. By the end of the game, he becomes completely pale-skinned and sprouts two dark horns from the top of his head. It is also at this point that Dormin explains the true meaning of the task the player has just undertaken; each Colossi was a piece of himself and by killing them all, Wander had absorbed the power into himself. Dormin is now able to inhabit Wander’s body, transforming him into a malevolent force, the embodiment of all the violence he had just performed to save the one he loved.

No game (at least that I know of) treats violence in the way that this game does. There are no fodder enemies for the player to mow down on their way to the bosses; there is nothing but the bosses. Each kill in the game is immensely meaningful both to the story and to the player. In any other video game, killing something has become a completely meaningless task, just another point or one step closer to the next level. Shadow of the Colossus manages to put such emotion and importance into each of its sixteen kills that it gives me hope for a future where games invest in putting meaning into death instead of just trying to rack up the body count.

Post from the Past: Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story Impressions

> Time for another Post from the Past! I really wanted to write something up today but NOTHING has happened this weekend that I feel is really noteworthy. Therefore, I revisted my old posts today and found one of my favorites. It has to do with a game from Digital: A Love Story creator Christine Love and it blew me away so much, I immediately went and wrote something about it. Enjoy!

Don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story (yes, that’s what it’s called) isn’t exactly a game. It most closely resembles a text adventure from the infancy of gaming. It has two major differences from those games though; it uses visuals to help supplement the gameplay and it doesn’t actually have any form of input, other than checking your messages from time to time and clicking to advance the text boxes. Instead, Don’t take it personally chooses to focus entirely on its story, a very well crafted and meaningful look at privacy in our world today with the advent of social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook.

In the game, you play a new high school teacher who hasn’t had the best luck in life. Your hopes are to start a great new life here in this school and turn your life around. As part of the school, you are given complete access to the school’s built-in social network, the one all your students use. When I say complete access, I mean it. No message sent between students is hidden from your eyes and the game regularly makes you read every last one of them before you move on. The teacher must deal with these kids in class, secretly knowing all of the drama that happens outside of the classroom, and learn to deal with the friction that constantly erupts.

Along the way, you are treated to an amazing number of wall postings, private conversations, and forum posts from each one of your students. These are brilliantly written, feeling like they come from each character personally. As the game goes on and you learn more about these characters (mostly from the messages), each new message feels like it belongs and you never feel that the message doesn’t match the person. Each message feels like it came from a real person, the one who’s been writing them all along. Of course, the messages are also filled with typos, Internet slang, and memes that can really make you laugh if you know what they are. The author of this game clearly knew what Internet speak looked like and painstakingly recreated it in-game.

These posts aren’t all funny though. We’ve all been in high school and we know the drama that can create. During the course of the game, you see things like gay relationships unfolding, depression, and jealousy portrayed in a very realistic manner. The whole time, you as the teacher have to experience it all and still teach your class each and every day, even as your students cry out in pain online. Several times, your students come to you for advice and the teacher always finds himself in a tight spot. He always knows exactly why they are coming to him but never feels comfortable telling them that. Also, as time goes on, he feels more and more responsible for helping his students, no matter the pain it causes him. Even when the situation entails something he couldn’t possibly have advice on (for example, a lesbian relationship), he can’t help but feel guilty for not being able to help. It develops an interesting rapport between the teacher and his students and shows us something we may have never seen before.

The whole thing ties together in a truly shocking ending that reflects on the overall theme of privacy as a whole. It is an interesting look at the lack of privacy we have today and the game contemplates where it will go in the future (the game takes place about 15 years from now). Will we even know the meaning of the word when all of our messaging and posting shows up for all to see? Does giving a teacher the ability to oversee all of this really help students or would it just drive them insane seeing so many things they can’t help with? Kids today seem to post their deepest feelings online on a whim and don’t always think of the backlash they may receive. Is it the fault of the child though or of the others who post in response? This game looks at these points and many more like it over its length.

I downloaded Don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story on a whim today and played through the whole thing in one sitting. During its whole length, I was very engrossed in the story, absorbing every message and post, watching as the characters became more developed. The end of the game came at the perfect time and I was left thinking about the overall themes of the game. While a complete lack of gameplay (well, except for a few choices you get to make) may seem boring to some people, I still recommend it. Be prepared to sit there reading for a few hours before you reach the end but I promise that you will be thinking for a long time after finishing it. Look it up on Google if seems up your alley; it’s entirely free.

New Add-On for 3DS, Don't Panic

Yes, I know it's been awhile. Yes, I know the first post of this blog states I wouldn't take a leave of absence. Let's just move past that.

Today, news started to leak about a new add-on for the 3DS. Famitsu scans are all over the Internet, showing us what this add-on looks like. The device is essentially something that snaps onto the current 3DS, giving it a second analog stick and an additional trigger. The announcement was bundled with another announcement: a version of Monster Hunter is coming to the 3DS, big news for Japanese gamers. People have been discussing this like mad ever since it started to spread across the Internet.

So, why is this a big deal? Nintendo has done this before, several times. Things like the Rumble Pak (neat, I'll admit) and the Vitality Sensor (thank god that never came out...) have boggled gamers before and I'm sure they will do it again. The major clamor seems to be over people worrying that Nintendo will include the dongle as a system update down the line, forcing users to buy a new one, probably at a higher price (and allowing them to recoup some of their losses from the recent price drop).

While this may happen, I have two main reasons why it probably won't. The first? Nintendo has done this many times (as I've said) and VERY RARELY does it work. Most of their dongles (Power Pad, Wii Speak, and countless more) failed very hard, only selling to the rich or the curious, so Nintendo doesn't develop them anymore. It is entirely likely that that won't happen again but it is equally likely that it will. The second reason is the conversion rate. How many developers will make games that need the second slide pad if only 5% of users have one? None of them, that's how many. Unless this thing takes off in a big way, no one will bother to develop for it, except maybe Nintendo.

The announcement of Monster Hunter for the 3DS alongside this supports my claims. Nintendo knows of the popularity of the series in Japan and knows they can sell a ton of these things there. Will the same thing happen here? Probably not, seeing as how Monster Hunter doesn't even have a fraction of the popularity that it has overseas here in the U.S. It will release here (potentially) and have maybe two or three games that support it before falling to the wayside.

So, don't worry Internet users. Nintendo has tried this many times in the past and failed nearly every time. While the idea of a second joystick on a portable device sounds good, the DS made its name on games that didn't need that second joystick, something I think the 3DS can do as well.