[Cross-posted on Destructoid]

It’s hard to overcome the skepticism that should surround any expansion for an MMO. Presumably any additional content should be more of the same, aiming to prolong the experience. But Wrath of the Lich King is different. Wrath of the Lich King has a theme and it follows it to a point, and that theme seems to have inspired Blizzard to create something amazing. 

The original WoW content was rather tame. You were finding your place in the world, and the world was stable. The Alliance and the Horde were not at war. The idea was just to provide some neat fantasy surroundings. With Burning Crusade came a bit more instability; the Dark Portal was open again and it was apparent that Outland and its inhabitants had been ravaged. The demon-controlled Orcs had left scars and infuriated Draeni, the Blood Elves were subverting the land’s magic for their own addictions, and the world was being openly assaulted by the forces of evil. 

But in Wrath of the Lich King the situation has escalated. All throughout the continent of Northrend is a feeling of threat and immediacy. You’re coming across people who have lost their homes and families, entire races that have been displaced and are deciding how to save themselves — whether they should run or fight. The dragons, ancient protectors of the land, are embroiled in a war of attrition — the blue dragonflight feels the only way to stop the abuse of magic and save the world is to destroy all magic-possessing life, while the red dragonflight fights to preserve all life on Azeroth. Arthas and his undead armies are seeping into the world and disturbing the natural order. 

This content — quests, dungeons, writing — is above and beyond any previous content available in WoW. Northrend is such a tragic and hopeful place that it makes the ordeals of Outland and the old world seem rather juvenile. 

The dense and detailed environments come together with the quests to paint a picture of a doomed land that has chosen to stand and fight, because it has no other choice. And as evidenced in the new Death Knight quests, even the ‘bad guys’ have an understandable agenda. In several books that you have the option to read, the Lich Kel’Thuzad explains that the Scourge is not so much evil as it is the acknowledgement of sinful nature. The Scourge — at least the…upper management…are fighting for a different way of life, a life of inevitable death and undeath, and strength in the immoral. They allow the living to believe they are pure evil because they are sure that they cannot win against their sinful nature. 

If you had asked me about three years ago if WoW had a story worth listening to I would have said no. But with the advent of Wrath of the Lich King the tattered and brave world that I had gotten to know as a kid playing Warcraft II has finally exposed itself, and this new direction is wonderful. Blizzard didn’t pay me to say this, but…cheques or cash are fine.

[Cross-posted on Destructoid]

That’s a big claim, but Nintendo’s new Canadian “Build your brain” ads seem to support the equation.  In the ads a respectable looking adult can be seen playing a DS while an onlooker with a tiny head attempts to make small talk.  The person playing the DS either rolls their eyes or produces a forced smile — these people not playing games are idiots.

Now…game ads are usually at worst dumb and at best…well let’s just say that the best game commercials might not be up to par with your common toothpaste commercial.  But games represent an entire subculture — not only is a game commercial responsible for selling a product, it’s the only glimpse into what gamers are all about that most non-gamers will ever get.

And in the past I’ve been infuriated by commercials for games like Call of Duty: Big Red One, which was quite simply false advertising.  The commercial featured a completely pre-rendered battle scene that looked similar to the actual game in context (there’s your weapon, it’s in first person) but was completely…cooler than the actual game.  The advertisement conveniently forgot to mention, except for maybe in tiny fine print, that the footage does not represent the game whatsoever.  They might as well have just ran thirty seconds of Saving Private Ryan and told consumers “If you like World War 2, have we got a game for you!”.

But while the Big Red One ad tugged at my gamer sensibilities, these new Nintendo ads genuinely concern me.  Why?  Because this isn’t just a trick like a pr-erendered sequence, it’s an outright lie that flies in the face of scientific fact.

People used to think that crossword puzzles kept the mind fit and in working order as old age started to take its toll.  And quite literally it was just what people thought.  When it was put to the test it turned out that filling in the blanks in a crossword puzzle doesn’t magically repair your brain.  That’s because no matter what mental acrobatics you do, it won’t stop your brain from shrinking as you age.  When people age their hair dies, their muscle wears away, their skin loses its elasticity, their teeth get worn down, they get shorter as their bones shrink and their brain gets smaller.

Human beings have evolved to live short lives — our hunter-gatherer ancestors were extremely fit and died of natural trauma before they grew into old age.  As such, nature didn’t develop our bodies to live long lives.  When we developed agriculture we started to live in large groups with an abundance of food.  We started to live longer, albeit more sedentary lives.  Along the way we’ve developed technology to compensate for the new deficiencies we’ve created for ourselves, at a much faster rate than evolution.  In very early agricultural societies people subsided on grains; being high in sugar this unbalanced diet quickly rotted their teeth.  Thanks to modern dentistry and fluoride we don’t have that problem.  

But I can assure you, Brain Age is not the piece of technology that is going to slow or halt the shrinking of our brain.  Doing math does not create new brain tissue or generate new cells.  It does not keep the brain cells you currently have ‘fit’ and it does not prevent them from dying.

And this is concerning because when all of the non-gamers in my family see these ads, they will ask me about it.  They will be curious, because who doesn’t want to keep their brain fit?  And I will have to tell them “No, it’s not true at all”.  And my chance at showing them that videogames are just as valuable as other games and forms of entertainment will have been lost.

There are so many benefits to playing games already that it confuses me as to why Nintendo feels they need to lie in order to attract new gamers.  People have no problem with watching movies and playing sports, sinking hours and hours into them.  But videogames are still a passtime that non-gamers don’t understand.  

It’s not like they’ve seen what games have to offer and have decided it isn’t for them; we keep telling them that games are great but we never inform them.  I managed to get my mother to play Gears of War about a year ago and she had the same reaction she has while playing air hockey — once she got a hold of the controls (enough to move around and aim a bit) she was excited and loud and a bit afraid.  It’s been said that women have a hard time with high tension games, and this was apparent.  But she was having fun.  She had no problem with the setting, no problem that it wasn’t ‘directed at her demographic’.  Her big problem was not understanding.  It took her a while to grasp which character was hers, that other characters in the world possessed a different viewpoint from her own (the game world seemed one dimensional to her), and that the game had objectives.

The industry spends so much time smugly targeting groups of pretend users with stupid and deceitful advertisements that it doesn’t realize that everyone would be interested if they just knew the facts.  It’s easy to advertise toothpaste; everyone needs toothpaste and everyone knows what it is.  Imagine the first ads for toothpaste — nobody would know what it was or why they needed it.  

That’s the problem that videogame advertising faces today, and it’s the problem that no marketing team wants to solve.  They believe firmly in demographics and trendsetters and viral campaigns and market research, but I’m not sure they believe in people.

[Cross-posted on Destructoid]

While reading Luke Plunkett’s Love/Hate review of Far Cry 2 over at Kotaku, this paragraph caught my eye:

I Know That I Must Do What’s Right – While Resident Evil 5 probably wishes it had done things a little differently, Far Cry 2 does a surprisingly good job of tackling the continent responsibly, without ever resorting to heavy-handed clichés of social responsibility and morality. There are bad men, there are good men, there are lots of men (and women) in between. Same goes for your missions. You’re free to make your own morality in Far Cry 2, the game never forces it down your throat.

While Resident Evil 5 may have been insensitive in its advertising, it’s not a game that fits in the realm of responsibility.  It’s a game about the walking dead, and it just happens to be set in Africa — that’s not to say it can’t communicate anything, but at the end of the day it exists for scary head exploding fun.

But not Far Cry 2.  It’s set in what tries to display itself as a realistic African country in the midst of a civil war, and for this reason I believe it’s Far Cry that isn’t being responsible.  There are no women (or children) that I have seen — the game presents a world that I might have naively depicted in some school essay years ago.  It’s a world full of men fighting men, of friendship and betrayal — absolutely bereft of any social conflict, moral responsibility, or any of the realities of life.

Interestingly enough Kotaku had another post up where Angelina Jolie offered her stance on violence and her children:

Jolie tells Harper’s Bazaar “My kids play video games. I let them play with toy soldiers. We don’t take war and violence lightly, but we don’t hide it from anybody.”

And this is just what Far Cry 2 does; it hides the real violence and doesn’t even begin to grasp the seriousness of the situation.  In fact it’s almost a farce; the player finds blood diamonds in hidden briefcases and easily plays both sides of the conflict without repercussions.  As a portrayal of Africa in conflict, it’s a child’s cartoon.

The only tinges of moral responsibility in the game are player created — I’ll often find myself playing pretend inside of the game, as if the game cared about my actions at all, which it doesn’t.  For instance in a mission where I was charged with finding a corrupt police officer’s brother in order to dig up some dirt I squeezed off a submachinegun burst into his chest after he had given me the documents.  The game clearly expected me to complete my objective and move on, since he casually requests you now leave him and his family alone.  And instead of my character gaining a reputation as a merciless double dealer, or even seeing something akin to Fallout 3’s “karma lost”, I just go on with my mission.  And where was his family?  He was just sitting at a desk in the middle of a swamp fort guarded by mercenaries.  

In fact where does anyone live in the world of Far Cry 2?  It seems like only highwaymen exist; nobody else lives in the entire country.  No houses, no kids playing on the street, no women hanging their laundry out to dry, no civillians just driving or walking and minding their own business.  It’s a videogame world, through and through.

So as a bit of a thought experiment, take two pieces of media:  Far Cry 2 and The Last King of Scotland.  Give one of these to a man with a plane ticket to the Congo.  My guess is that after playing Far Cry 2 his opinion might not change, because it depicts an imaginary place.  But after watching the film the same man might fear for his safety and cancel the ticket.

And that’s because the game doesn’t even seem to consider morality, or the situation.  The game could be set in Kansas and nothing would change.  Nothing.  The game has no systems to deal with responsibility, so how can it be said that it gives the player free reign?  Rather it seems like it doesn’t have anything to do with the game, so they didn’t bother with it.

What Far Cry 2 does do is apply strict reductionism to a complex human situation.  It depicts a caricature of a war torn Africa, and I fail to see the responsibility in that.  What I see is an effort to avoid any meaningful commentary, to avoid any volatile tugging on human emotions, to avoid being relevant so as to not stir up any trouble with the censors or the media.  That’s quite understandable, but far from commendable.

[Cross posted on Destructoid]

While I was browsing the usual suspects for gaming news today I noticed something very ordinary that struck me as unusual – a thumbnail of what looked like an N64 era Hulk about to throw a car. It’s a mobile phone game. Business as usual; it’s a crappy cash in doomed to disuse and neglect. But it got me thinking about how far the industry has come, and it’s not the rosiest picture.

 There are so many developers out there making games that nobody wants to play, games that nobody cares about, not even the developers. Game developers can come to the end of their careers not having made a game they liked. It’s highly probable that nobody reading this will ever come across that Hulk game. So why is it even being made?

The most obvious answer is money; but it goes a bit deeper than that – why not make an honestly good game in order to make money? Because not everyone can afford to make a good game, but everyone wants in. Gaming is the hot new thing, and while it may inspire a group of geeks to work nonstop to put something they love onscreen, it also draws in businessmen who see an opening. There are companies that exist to make bad games, and are happy to survive off of high profit margins. Even big studios like EA produce cash crop games; games that only the most defiant developer could defend with a straight face. A producer from EA once told me that there was a reason EA was founded by Stanford graduates; by businessmen. They might as well be selling toilet seats, it doesn’t change anything.

All for money. And just now gamers are seeing some of EA’s money going towards new and quality titles. But surely it didn’t take Madden sales that long to fund a new game. So even when these small businesses evolve into giants like EA, it takes them a long time to change their ways. They invest the money they make so they can make more money. And with that money they find a way to make more money. The consumer doesn’t really fit into the picture, besides as the unwitting dope with money to spend.

And all the while they look on with wonder at Blizzard, Nintendo, at Valve, Bungie, id, Epic, and at Infinity Ward. How do they do it? They make the games that other game developers love more than their own projects. Yet there’s no secret – they make games for themselves. Nobody asked for Mario; the market didn’t seem right for Mario, nobody advised that Mario would make some money. Nintendo made it and told you to love it.

Just look at EA’s Facebreaker – made for everyone! Made for the casual and the hardcore! It sold just over fifty thousand copies. And instead of looking at the evidence and seeing the failure associated with pandering to demographics, you know that they’ll do? For starters they won’t publish Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend, because it’s too risky. It’s not for any demographic, so why should it sell? And when the game finds a publisher and outsells games like Facebreaker, they’ll be left wondering again. How did they do it?

Clearly they’re doing something these business oriented companies can’t – think clearly. People don’t know what they want, and trying to service demographics is a misguided use of statistics. Every developer is a human being, and chances are if they love what they’re making then other people will love it too. But if you don’t love the project you’re working on, why should anyone else? Does that invisible casual gamer exist? What exactly is a hardcore gamer, and are you sure there is just one type of hardcore gamer? Why do some Counter Strike players also love Warioware, and why do some casual gamers play Halo? It’s hard to classify what people want in their entertainment. No Country for Old Men wasn’t made for the cowboy murder fiction demographic. It was made for people.

And to be clear, a business oriented company is not just a company with a smart marketing team. Valve has great business people, but they exist to keep the company alive long enough for the creatives to deliver their game. A business oriented company is the exact opposite – their creatives make games in order to support the business.

There isn’t really a precedent to fall back on here, so who can say what direction the industry will go in; but one thing is clear – if money continues to drive the production of so many games then gamers can expect more Hulk games on their phones, and developers can expect to be working on them.

Some people will tell you to take something positive from everything, and make it a learning experience.  Well I’m going to start taking these people’s advice.  They’re being assholes, sure, but who else is going to tell you like it is to your face?

It just kind of hit me after that.  Really, I’m writing reviews?  I’m condensing games that take years to evolve into complex works of art into shiny, super-edited, under-500-word reviews.  That tells nobody anything, and makes me look like an ass.

So instead of regurgitating HOT or NOT facts about games in little shrink wrapped reviews, I’m going to try something a bit different.  It might be a combination of a lot of things, but it’s going to be different — and useful.

Uhh, that is all.

A little bit Monty Python, a little bit Mario.  That’s how I would describe Little Big Planet, even though I could have cared less about the game before seeing the incredibly charming intro cinematic.  You know, it’s just one of those games.  It’s not for me.  It’s for strange people who want to decorate a little puppet and slap stickers on things — I don’t see how that makes for a good time.  Oh, how foolish I was.

See, the game itself still doesn’t interest me — platformers will never keep me going for long (unless it’s very actiony, like Noitu Love).  But I think I’ve grown into something of a stage in life where I need some comfort.  I know, sounds all mushy.  But times are a little rough and you know what?  I don’t mind jumping around on platforms if it’s incubated by strange british wit, whimsical scenery and music, and an admittedly cute avatar.  It’s just nice to be around the game, it just makes people feel good — something that not too many games aim to do in the same way.  Even Mario has fallen out of my good graces; I was never good at the game but I admired the character and setting.  Now Mario just feels like a convenient Halloween costume for gamers and an empty frontman that children enjoy.

But I’ll be damned if this isn’t the new Mario for the next generation.  I can feel it; or rather I want it to be so bad that I’m shaking.  Because Mario doesn’t mean anything, it’s just ‘A-look at-a me!  I’m-a jumping!’.  But Little Big Planet has a theme, and a message to communicate that’s easy to understand and hard to disagree with.  Use your imagination.  Everyone should use it, and you should use it together.  It doesn’t even discriminate; it’s not saying ‘Everyone should paint a picture!’.  No, it doesn’t care if you’re a five year old or an accountant, just have some fun and use your brain, because it feels good.

I still manage to write a few reviews over at Evergeek, the latest of which you can find here.

First Rule:  Ignore the fact that there are better multiplayer shooters out there and set your multiplayer game up with a ranking and weapon unlock system that requires time and effort to get to the good stuff.

Second Rule:  Use red and green team colours instead of the faction colours, don’t use team icons, and make all the multiplayer player models look similar.

Third Rule:  Pretend that you didn’t just throw the multiplayer portion onto the rest of the game, thus wasting the incredible map editor that, while better than Halo’s Forge, nobody will be using.

Today Kotaku had an interesting link regarding EA’s supposed new forum ‘laws’:

“Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you’d actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly recommend people play nice and act mature.”

Perhaps upset with the same old self-justifying banning going on all over the internet, EA has decided that if you run your mouth on their forums, you don’t get to play the games you bought.  Playing the games you bought is a privilege, one that EA can taketh away as it likes.  

Err, does that sound right?

[Cross-posted on Destructoid]

Assassin’s Creed was built up to be a period piece, a historical thriller and a look inside the mind of ancient assassin.  Gamers were preparing to gear up and step into those medieval shoes.  With such a lack of actual information gamers were clinging to a premise.  And when that premise turned out to be a lie when they slid the disk into their machine, a crowd of spiteful gamers let everyone know that they thought the game was complete garbage.  Ubisoft had wasted their time and money on a failure of a game.

But you don’t really believe that, do you?  As someone who read about the leaked premise, I wasn’t surprised by the game taking a turn into sci-fi territory within the first five minutes.  What I witnessed was a simple but well executed action game, that in fact benefitted from its simple nature and leant itself to real free roaming.

Did the marketing team at Ubisoft fail catastrophically, or were gamers living in two different realities?  Well the game was in fact critically hailed (even Zero Punctuation liked it) and sold extremely well, so it should be safe to say that the game is not objectively as poor as some gamers made it out to be.  Prospective players had built their own idea of the experience over the game’s long road to release, and when they saw that the actual game ran counter to their previously held beliefs, they exploded.  Call it cognitive dissonance — they couldn’t accept that Assassin’s Creed was not the game they thought they would love, and so they just had to hate it.

And now it’s happening again with Dead Space.  Reviewers have been kind to it so far, and it has an 89 on Metacritic — so expect a sequel.  Yet the gaming audience is divided again.  Some people love it, and some people fervently hate it.  Some people find it scary, and some people don’t.  But how can that be?  Games are a relatively subjective medium, but there’s something fishy going on here.

Most of the complaints railed against the game are easily dismissible — it copies mechanics from other games, but what game doesn’t?  It isn’t scary, it’s just tense; but the same can be said about Resident Evil.  They seem more like invented dislikes than genuine flaws.  People have chosen to not enjoy Dead Space, perhaps before they have even laid hands on it — and maybe they never will.

And because I’m a professional unprofessional psychologist, I’m going to label this the ‘collective anticipation’.  People who see eye to eye have a tendency to congregate and bounce their beliefs off one another for affirmation.  ”Dead Space sucks because it’s derivative” says one gamer, and another answers back “Yeah, it’s shit”.  And so for those two gamers, Dead Space is going to be shit.  But it isn’t just two gamers who share the same opinion, it’s hundreds and thousands, maybe more.  Obviously it isn’t enough to negatively impact a game’s sales, but they are a loud minority.

So next time you’re yapping about a game, ask yourself if you’ve placed yourself in an echo chamber — because you might be missing out on a good time.