Posts Tagged ‘ Videogames ’

Opinion: Saving GameStop

Many are watching GameStop’s decline with anticipation of its demise, eager to see it go out of business once and for all. I personally don’t agree with that position and find it short sighted to do so. Most seem to want GameStop to collapse due to their own discontentment with the company’s policies and treatment of both customers and employees.

While this topic itself may see a lot disagreeing with me, rather than wanting to see GameStop burn to the ground, I’d prefer to see the company turn things around and be better. Better for the employees, better for customers, and better for the industry. The company’s new CEO, George Sherman, has reportedly set out a 3 point plan for the company’s turn around. Personally, I think there’s a lot more to do than just three steps, though some of my opinions might fall under Sherman’s three points of “GameStop Reboot”:

  • Address SG&A [Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses] that’s been allowed to deleverage
  • Execute on opportunities to optimize current business
  • Develop new revenues for future

A lot of this is well and good, and some of my suggestions will fall into these areas, but there are a lot of aspects missing that GameStop needs to work on.

Problem #1: Perception

GameStop’s biggest problem is their perception among gamers. In the past, one could argue that core gamers aren’t crucial compared to the casual gamers and family members that go to GameStop to pick up games as gifts or browse for something new. That is no longer the case. If GameStop wants to be the “local church” of gaming with E3 being the “Vatican”, they need to appeal to core gamers. They need YouTubers and social media talking about what they picked up at GameStop or what they did one afternoon at GameStop.

To accomplish that, GameStop has to do some soul searching because their current image is that of a soulless corporation that doesn’t care about their customers, their employees, or their product.

Proposed Solutions

Executive Level Company Image
Executive level management should take steps to gain back some goodwill with the gaming community, seek feedback, and gather input on what their core customer base is looking for. I would look for opportunities to have CEO Sherman himself be a guest and take face to face criticism from YouTubers and podcasts. During these appearances, there shouldn’t be a hard push to explain or defend policies so much as taking opportunities to take the public lashings and listen to feedback directly. Keep in mind Sherman is new to the position. He’s the top of the chain, so he’s the right guy to get first hand input from the community. Another opportunity for this would be to hold a Reddit “TMA” – Tell Me Anything rather than Ask Me Anything where users can simply vent to the top dog of GameStop.

After gathering feedback, executive management would need to genuinely evaluate the information and determine what actions can be taken to address the issues brought up. Compile a plan and present it in a Letter to the Gaming Community, published on GameStop’s website and in GameInformer (assuming it’s still being published).

Gamer (Consumer) Advocate
I would also create a new position within the executive team akin to what Howard Phillips was for Nintendo. This position would not be interested in the company’s assets and profits, stock performance, or shareholder concerns. This position’s entire purpose would be to advocate for gamers to the executive staff and help guide decisions on what games to pursue for in-store promotions.

This position would also be responsible for analyzing every promotional program at GameStop and competition to evaluate potential for abuse. Believe me, we gamers figure out how to abuse systems and go to multiple sources for our own benefit. To succeed, GameStop needs to have incentive to be a primary source for purchases and trades.

Policies in Action
All executive management should undergo “undercover boss” type training as an assistant manager in store every so often to understand how corporate policy translates to in-store application on a day to day basis.

2. Value Employees
Desperate times call for desperate measures and the first step that won’t make logical retail sense would be to abandon standard retail thinking. Drop the quotas for selling GameStop Pro cards, drop the pressure for reservations, drop the numeric requirements to push these things.

Instead, incentivize these things. Employees should have a bonus structure for selling Pro Memberships, not quota requirements. Don’t push reservations at all. They’re seen with a growing negativity and many describe it as dealing with a “used car salesman.” The only exceptions are Collector’s Editions that typically sell out – but make them cancellable/refundable/returnable with ease (when unopened) as others do.

Consolidate Stores
I know this seems counter intuitive when talking about doing right by employees, but it’s a necessary reality for GameStop’s position. They need to close more stores and consolidate into localized, larger, locations.

Staff these stores with employees from the closed stores who were Managers, Assistant Managers, and Team Leads and pay them all at the team lead or assistant manager level rather than decreasing their pay. Treat your store employees similar to office jobs with more hours and better vacation, offset by lower overall headcount across the company. Employees who feel valued are more productive.

This consolidation factors into a later detail in the “Store as an Experience.”

3. Value Customers

Pre Orders
Core gamers have developed a more negative view of pre-orders. They are seen as a cash grab for a product that may not be worth it. Employees shouldn’t be required to push pre-orders and the pre-orders themselves need to be revised in how they work.

There should be no down payment required for pre-ordering a game. Best Buy doesn’t require a down payment. Amazon doesn’t require a down payment. Gamestop.com does not require the $5 down payment. The stores should not be required to take one either. An exception could be made for Collector’s Editions, but the above sources don’t require one on those either. If a down payment is taken, a full refund should be available in store credit or by method of payment for cancellation at any time or for unopened pre-orders that are returned within a set time frame.

Truly, however, the pre-order process itself should be redesigned. The Kingdom Hearts III PS4 is an excellent example. Pre-orders should be announced with a set window as far in advance as the manufacturer can offer. Partners such as GameStop should then take pre orders within that window – say 90 days of pre-orders – and then report their numbers back to the manufacturer. The total quantity across all retail partners should then determine the manufacturer’s production run. This isn’t entirely on GameStop, obviously, but they and other retailers should be pushing for a redesign of the process with the manufacturers.

Trade Value
GameStop is perceived as having horrible trade value. Some of this is unwarranted, some of it is. Either way, GameStop should make an effort to improve customer perception of their trade values with more transparency on how those values are determined.

Customers should get better trade value for complete games – disc, manual, and case with art for disc games or box, manual, and cartridge for older games. Likewise, disc only or empty cases and manuals should be accepted for lower value and returned to the corporate warehouse to be paired with other loose parts for a complete game.

Improve value wherever possible. Small towns and entrepreneurs at conventions often offer 50% of sell value for trade in. However, many will only take select games. GameStop’s volume should at least allow them to offer more than they currently do outside of promotional deals. Arguably, a solid trade policy should make trade in promotions unnecessary.

Price Value
Current online selling trends should more quickly be reflected in GameStop’s prices. The database GameStop uses needs to become more agile to respond to shifting trends.

Condition should affect the price of games. Managers, and even some employees, should be authorized to adjust prices in their stores, offering discounts based on condition. This is big for retro games and would give an advantage over some retro-focused chain competition.

Price aggressively on retro games. Most collectors and even many core gamers, are now very aware they can check game price values on eBay with sites like Pricecharting and GameValueNow. GameStop should be targeting to undercut these averages by 10% off the shelf. From the buyer’s standpoint, this puts their price on even footing to eBay after sales tax and for GameStop is equal to what a seller would actually net through eBay.

Opened games should be treated as used, even if it was a display copy that never left the store. For every shipment of games, one copy should automatically be written down as a used copy and kept for in-store demos and allowing customers to try a game out and sold as the final copy at used price.

Offer more transparency on pricing and be more sensible about it. A game on clearance should not be $5 or $10 off the original full value price. Likewise, a used game should at least be $10 off even the week of release. Similarly, used prices should never be higher than new prices and if they are, the reason should be clearly understood, such as a publisher mandated reduction on new copies for a limited time.

4. Product Value
This is an area that GameStop is absolutely abhorrent and should not only take great strides to fix, but should also issue a statement and public apology for its undervaluing of its own product.

Retro games have been sorely undervalued by the company historically. Boxes and manuals should never be thrown away, but there are many former employees who report they regularly are for retro games, especially hand held games. This should change immediately. Some retro games have boxes and manuals that are worth more than the game itself and GameStop has thrown away profits in this regard.

An example I’ve seen was the NES game Metal Storm. During a B2G1 free sale, a customer purchased Metal Storm for around $100 and was elated to get it with the manual included. The manual averages $65 on Pricecharting at the time of this writing based on eBay sold auction averages. The box averages $100 by itself.

The website needs to be updated, along with the database, to reflect an improved value of the product. Stock should be identified into categories:

  • Disc/cartridge only
  • Disc with case/cart with box
  • Complete – Disc/cart with manual and box or case with artwork
  • Pricing adjustments should be made based on condition (damage to label/art/box/manual) and noted on the website’s listing.

Problem #2: Competition

Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are no longer simply suppliers, but are now direct competitors and GameStop has to pivot their thinking and perform a very careful dance. They cannot directly attack the big three, but they have to view them as competition that must be outperformed in order to draw customers back to the store for physical games as opposed to downloading from digital store fronts. In addition to these three, you’ve got standard retailers that have always been competition as well as the online behemoth of Amazon.

Value of Physical
GameStop’s lifeblood is physical games and the digital stores are competition. The market may continue to shrink and become more niche, but consolidated stores should offset that. As such, GameStop has to get better at emphasizing the value of physical media.

  • Physical games, even standard copies, will continue to be more likely to become collector’s items, such as has happened with Job Simulator on Playstation VR.
  • Physical discs allow more data to be installed to a console faster for those in areas with slower Internet.
  • Physical discs retain some value of being able to be sold or traded in while digital offers no such benefit (at least for now).

Retro Games
Retro games have an entire collectors market on their own, defying digital versions of old games despite being readily available. Retro gaming will likely maintain a market until approximately 5 years after a console generation goes fully digital as people will feel some nostalgia for the games they grew up with and the trend for retro collecting today will likely continue through console generations that had physical copies.

Physical Retro Games are sought after in local stores, retro focused chain stores, and pull in thousands of attendees at Retro Game Conventions. YouTube channels focus on retro games and content creators become small time YouTube celebrities by celebrating gaming history with these titles. Retro Gaming and physical media is a strong area for GameStop to shift focus as digital becomes bigger with new releases.

“New” Retro Games
In addition to this market of existing games, GameTrust offers GameStop an avenue of currently unexplored potential for “new” retro games. If GameStop can obtain a license for small print runs of games on NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis that were never released in the US, there may be a market for those. Thorough evaluation would be required to evaluate licensing costs, a localization department to translate the games, and the cost of manufacturing chips and cartridges to play on original hardware. However, it’s possible with GameStop’s size and the right spread of acquirements this could create a small, but profitable, market to get into.

Final Fantasy II, III, and V, for example, were never released in the US on their original systems. There are, however, fan translations that have been flashed onto carts and are sold at conventions. A legal, licensed, and official copy with Square Enix, especially with professional box, maps, and manuals, would likely have a market. If print-on-demand were possible, rather than large print runs, there may be more opportunities with lower risk here. Reproductions, basically bootleg versions, regularly sell for up to $60 for just a cartridge at conventions. Cartridges can be 3D printed, basic chip boards can be purchased online for around $4 whereas GameStop would likely be able to find a source for less in bulk and the same goes for chips themselves.

Limited Print Games
Companies such as Limited Run Games and Strictly Limited Games have sprung up in recent years and there are more out there now offering limited print runs of digital only games for PS4, PS Vita, and Nintendo Switch. It’s a major error that GameStop wasn’t the first to this market with GameTrust.

These limited print runs regularly sell out of 5000 copies within minutes. Utilizing the earlier proposed pre-order window resulting in determining a production run’s quantity removes much of the frustration and resentment gamers have towards these companies and the resulting eBay scalping that comes with them. GameStop could pursue their own division of partnering with smaller publishers to create physical runs on digital only releases or partner with existing companies similar to how Limited Run Games has done some limited partnerships with Best Buy.

Problem #3: Traffic to stores

Traffic to stores has decreased, largely attributable to the rise of digital gaming and online shopping. It’s easy to simply click a few buttons and download or order a game. GameStop has to look for ways to make it worthwhile to put in the effort to go to the local store.

Store Services
Hire staff that are capable of doing in-store refurbish and repairs on consoles, allowing customers to pay a down payment for the time to perform the analysis and diagnose the required repair. Once diagnosed, contact the customer with the quoted cost and let them decide to go ahead with the repair or pick up their console. If they choose to proceed, the down payment should go towards the cost of repair and they only owe the balance.

Invest is a high quality disc resurfacing machine and offer disc resurfacing for a reasonable price. 75 cents per disc would beat most other stores that offer the same.

Stores should be more focused on what they’re meant to be – Video Game Stores. Decrease emphasis on ThinkGeek products that aren’t related to video games. For example, Mario, God of War, Zelda t-shirts are a good fit for GameStop stores, as well as Overwatch statues or Sonic the Hedgehog figures. However, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers are not a good fit (unless Capcom announces Rescue Rangers Remastered), nor are anime statues. Board games may be a reasonable avenue to expand to, however.

If ThinkGeek and GameStop must remain more entertwined, the proposed larger store footprint should be divided up so customers know where to go for video games, where to go for anime related merchandise, and where to go for general geek related merchandise.

All of this builds towards a retail store as an experience, but GameStop should go a step further in making the stores an experience that cannot be replicated with online purchases.

A few ideas:

  • Every game in the store should be playable in a demo area much like kiosks used to be available in FuncoLand stores to try out games.
  • Have a classic arcade cabinet in the store. If a customer beats the previous high score, they get a discount on one item
  • Employees should be encouraged to speak their mind about games, but trained to do so without creating a negative experience. If a game is bad, it’s in the company’s best interest to inform customers. If a game simply isn’t the type of game a particular employee enjoys, they should be able to voice that while recommending another employee to speak to about that type of game.
  • Ideally a store would have a team with a variety of genre preferences – the MMO expert, the FPS expert, etc.
  • Stores in rural areas with slower residential Internet should set up LAN areas where Internet can be rented by the hour and allow customers to play online games

The final point I would make about the experience is in regards to competition. GameStop should absolutely evaluate the area for small local shops that offer retro games. If the area has a number of them, do not push retro games in that area’s stores. Retro games are a finite resource and they do get harder and harder to find with time. Don’t compete with local stores and don’t be seen as driving them out of business. In fact, let employees in those areas encourage customers to check out local small businesses. Meanwhile, bring GameStop’s retro game focus to areas with no other alternatives. It’s another decision that seems counter-intuitive to stock investor thinking, but in the long run, it will be better for all parties in the retro market.

PowerUp Rewards
I would suggest some changes to the PowerUp Rewards membership as well. The purpose of the card, from GameStop’s perspective, is to encourage customers to shop at GameStop while the customer’s perspective is to get the best deal.

In May it was announced that the Pro Membership would be changing from a 10% discount on used games to a $5 off coupon once a month, which has to be used in that month along with an increase to $20/year cost. The first thing I would recommend is GameStop freeze all memberships from expiring and announce a new complete rework of the program.

First, with the earlier suggested equipment in place, offer 5 free disc refurbishes a month. That’s ~$5 value per month on its own and costs the company next to nothing.

Evaluate Best Buy’s rewards points system. PowerUp already earns points per dollar spent. Allow those to accumulate for a $5 gift card ever x number of points (Best Buy’s is every 250 points). Customers can bank their points to keep saving up or use them as they are acquired. This ultimately means a customer can spend and bank points for years until they have enough to buy a brand new console on release day completely with points.  Letting customers earn points on used games to build up gift certs to use on new games ultimately means higher profits for GameStop and “free” new releases for customers.

I would also suggest categorizing games for a progressive membership discount. This would let members get larger discounts on some games and potentially help the company clear out older inventory that doesn’t sell. For the right price, many gamers are willing to pick up a random game to give it a try and this could help move slow selling games without going fully to clearance.

Conclusion

While none of these things are a magic answer to GameStop’s problems, some require analysis that can only be done from within the company, and some may prove cost prohibitive to implement, I do think a lot of these would contribute towards turning the company around.

I know a lot of people just want to see GameStop go under, but I truly believe they would simply turn their distaste for GameStop towards other retail locations, including local stores that have no choice but to utilize some of the policies GameStop uses. Many consumers don’t understand the business side of these companies and the realities of their expenses and costs that have to be taken on to keep the stores operating.

However, I do also believe that if GameStop truly put in the effort from the top down to improve itself, make itself the modern store gamers fondly (if sometimes inaccurately) remember FuncoLand to be, and genuinely work to be a better company for its employees, customers, and the industry itself, they would be embraced once again…..eventually.

The question is whether or not they, and the stockholders, are willing to invest the time and effort and if they can reach that point of being accepted by the gaming community again before it’s too late.

2019
09/03
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E3 Reaction Day 4

Nintendo

Nintendo did their usual E3 Nintendo Direct presentation online rather than the on stage presentation other companies go for. They kicked off their presentation with a rather stylistic looking mech game that, of course, reminded me of a Gundam influence called Daemon x Machina due out in 2019.

Next up, they had a trailer for a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 addition – Torna – The Golden Country. I assume it’s a DLC expansion and still haven’t played the Xeno series. One day…. One day.

Reggie Fils-Aime talked a little about Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Pokemon Let’s Go Evee. The Pokeball Plus was shown and announced that Mew would be included with each controller. Available November this year.

The next new reveal was a Mario Party for the Nintendo Switch called Super Mario Party. Two Switch systems can be set next to each other to create maps at different angles depending on how they touch. Available October of this year.

The next Fire Emblem game was presented, Fire Emblem Three Houses, which will be available Spring of 2019.

Fortnite was given a short trailer and available the same day on the Switch.

They moved to looking at some indie games being spotlighted for the Switch with Overcooked! 2. Fil-Aimes gave an overview as footage played. Killer Queen Black got the same style presentation. Hollow Knight was the third indie game spotlighted in this segment, available same day in the eshop.

Octopath Traveler, a Switch exclusive from Square Enix, got a brief mention with a new demo being available later in the month.

Starlink, Arena of Valor, Minecraft, Mario Rabbids Donkey Kong, Just Dance 2019, Splatoon 2, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, Crash N Sane Trilogy, Ninjala, FIFA, Ark, Wasteland 2, Paladins, Fallout Shelter, Dark Souls Remastered, Sing Heroines, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, Wolfenstein II, Mega Man 11, Mario Tennis Aces and a few more were presented in a montage trailer.

The centerpiece of Nintendo’s presentation was the full reveal of the Nintendo Switch’s Super Smash Bros. entry. The big reveal for the presentation was that every single character that has appeared in all the Smash Bros games of the past, from N64 to Wii U, would be included in the new installment. They did a video of all the characters, showing when they were introduced. Link was shown in his Breath of the Wild tunic and Mario’s Odyssey pal Cappy appears with Mario as well. They also spent some time looking at how some characters who haven’t been in the series in a while have changed or been updated. A GameCube style controller with Amiibo support was announced with Switch compatibility for the game’s release. A final reveal was that Ridley (not Ripley as I initially wrote. Watch your typos when you’re trying to get something out quick, though she’d be cool to see teamed up with Samus) from the Metroid series would be making his Super Smash Bros. debut. Rumor is there may be a few more new characters to reveal before launch. It definitely looks like a good entry in the series.

Overall, Nintendo didn’t do what I normally expect in showing me something I didn’t know I wanted, but they did give a decent line up. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a Pokemon gap-fill, Super Mario Party, and Super Smash Bros. all by end of this year maintains the momentum for Nintendo’s first party titles on Switch and their much more solid line up of third party games coming to the system suggest they’ll maintain their strong sales going forward.

Grade: B, but some might argue it’s a solid A with that Smash Bros. line up (and others might give if an F for lack of Waluigi).

Games I’m interested in: Starlink, Mega Man 11 (I’m planning to get the Mega Man and X Legacy collections along with this on Switch), Super Smash Bros.

2018
06/20
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E3 Day 3 Reaction

Square Enix

Square Enix didn’t have a large presentation, lasting only 30 minutes and mostly just showing some videos of games coming out.

Starting off with their closest release, they kicked off with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the third game in the rebooted Lara Croft’s origin trilogy. I was happy to see Jonah brought back for the third adventure, though I hope he pulls through the plane crash shown in the trailer. The gameplay footage looks great and Lara looks like she’s become seriously dangerous. No longer fighting for survival, she seems more like a predator in the jungle more than ever. I also really dig the muscular definition they’ve given her. The mud camoflage is a cool thing that gives me a Predator Schwarzenegger vibe. I still wish we’d get the dual pistols, though, and releasing right after Spider-Man is really painful.

The Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood patch trailer didn’t do much for me since I’m already playing Final Fantasy XIV and love it already! However, a Palico in FFXIV with a Monster Hunter World crossover? Heck yeah! I definitely want a Palico buddy in FFXIV! I still need to give Monster Hunter World a try as well.

Another look at The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit didn’t tell me much more than was previously shown, but I do like the idea of them treating the Life Is Strange world as an anthology setting allowing them to tell stories of completely different characters unrelated to one another’s stories. Kind of surprising that the game will be free.

Dragon Quest XI is another series I never got into (but will someday, right?). The trailer doesn’t look too bad, though the graphics style makes it feel a little dated. I think that’s just a matter of maintaining the aesthetic of the series, though, and I’m sure playing the game would settle into them not feeling off at all. Nothing particularly commanding interest, though.

The trailer for Babylon’s Fall told me absolutely nothing, but I want to know absolutely everything about the world’s lore based solely from the trailer. It looks really cool.

Nier Automata Definitive Edition on XBox One was already announced at Microsoft.

Octopath Traveler interests me, but I’m interested in the RPGs Square is developing for Switch as they feel very retro SNES era RPG. It was an extremely brief trailer.

Just Cause 4 isn’t a series I’ve played, but the fourth entry looks as over the top and crazy as the others. I’d love to try it someday.

I have no idea what The Quiet Man is from the teaser trailer.

Kingdom Hearts III, of course, got a little more shown, but mostly I felt like I’d already seen it from the previous trailer. I’m a little disappointed there is not one single glimpse of anything remotely Final Fantasy. Kingdom Hearts has become pretty much entirely a Disney property game and though the series has always been Disney worlds with Disney party members, I would have liked to see a few cameo teases from Final Fantasy cast members.

Overall, the biggest disappointment was not one single glimpse, tease, or hint about the progress on Final Fantasy 7 remake, which I’m starting to think will be shifted to Playstation 5 since there’s no way for 3 episodic entries to release prior to that console. It would, however, be interesting to see the game release on the exact day of the 25th Anniversary. I’m also personally disappointed we’ll never likely see a sequel to Sleeping Dogs.

Mostly, I didn’t feel like Square showed anything we hadn’t already seen, making for an unimpressive presentation, even if there are a few games I’m interested in.

Grade: D+

Games I’m interested in: Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Octopath Traveler, Kingdom Hearts III, more info for Babylon’s Fall.

Ubisoft

I liked kicking off with a slight jab at GameStop employee leaking Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with the keychain joke.

A lot of people likely didn’t care for the start of the presentation beginning with the dance routine outside, but I thought it was amusing. It was, up to that point, by far the most entertaining performance of all the presentations. With a mascot panda leading a marching band parade and dancers in colorful and weird costumes making their way from outside into the building and then down through the crowd to the stage, I couldn’t stop watching, all while thinking “wtf is even going on right now” before I finally realized it was their annual Just Dance performance. Major credit to the dancers, who apparently put the whole thing together last minute and are on the E3 floor dancing damn near nonstop all weekend. Sure, it wasn’t showing a game, but it was certainly more entertaining than Andrew WK’s performance for Bethesda. It also got much more of a positive crowd reaction as an opening act than Bethesda’s look of confusion from their crowd.

They went straight into one of their heavily anticipated titles with a long trailer for Beyond Good and Evil 2. No game play presented, but the trailer did give a look at the setting and first glimpse of the characters. A friend of mine who knows absolutely nothing about Beyond Good and Evil was intrigued and interested in the game just from half of the trailer, so they certainly accomplished their goal in that regard. I was rather surprised by the ending reveal of Jade. It definitely feels like an HD facelift for the original PS2/GameCube release would be nice to accompany the sequel (actually prequel). After a few words from the developers, they showed a look at pre-alpha footage with the two explaining a few details, such as solo and co-op play. The game looks to be massive.

An interesting addition is the Space Monkey program where fans can create ideas, music, artwork, and original content to be added to the game. Murals, street art, music, radio content, and more can be submitted to be used in the game through a partnership with Hit Record, founded by Joseph Gordan-Levitt. It’s really cool to see celebrities brought into E3 because their projects or companies are actually partnering with the developers rather than just being brought on stage as a celebrity for some stilted pre-scripted dialogue. The cynical will see it as a way to crowd source free assets, but it’s a cool collaborative project for fans to have their creations in game.

After they went off stage, their mics were still hot, and the excited “we nailed it!” back stage was the cutest part of the presentation. That’s genuine excitement.

Rainbow Six Siege holds no interest for me, but it clearly does for 35 million players. They talked about upcoming esports competition tournaments, but didn’t go too long. They gave a first look at a documentary titled “Another Mindset” about Rainbow Six Siege esports gamers. Normally I’d complain about this being a detraction from showing games, but I understand why they showed it when they did. It allowed them to set up the stage for their next presentation.

Coming into the theater in an Evel Knievel suit on a motorcycle sporting the game title for Trials, we had Antti Il Vessuo, creative director of Ubisoft Redlynx, come on stage to “accidentally” trip and crash through a podium with a TV on it, breaking the whole thing to pieces. Getting up with a simple “oops,” he explained: “Trials is all about crashing with style and getting up again.” He also claimed to be the Prime Minister of Finland before presenting the video for Trials Rising. It was brief, but it scored with the crowd. A camera pan showed people laughing at the crash and “oops” and the applause was there for it. I hadn’t heard of Trials, but it looks like an absolute insane and infinitely more hilarious version of a childhood favorite in Excitebike. This is absolutely not my type of game and I still think it looks like it would be fun to play. After the video, the crew was already on stage cleaning up the set up “crashed podium” and he gave a little aside “sorry about that” which scored another noticeable laugh with the audience before talking more about the game.

By this point I had noticed that Ubisoft was doing something the other presentations had not done – it was connecting with their audience in the theater. Jokes were landing, the little performances and shows were entertaining, and they weren’t overly long before showing and talking about the games they had to present.

I wasn’t impressed with The Division 2 footage from Microsoft, but Ubisoft’s presentation sold me on the plot for the sequel. As it gets closer to release, I’ll see what the gameplay additions are like and make a decision on it. I played the first one with friends and might be happy to do so again with a sequel. Ubisoft has a proven track record with Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs of the sequels having vast improvements over the first game, so I hope that’s the case for The Divison 2 and I just haven’t seen it yet with the first release of gameplay footage. The crowd certainly liked the idea of 8 man raids in the game. Frequent, major content updates were promised with 3 DLC episodes with new story, areas, and activities all free in the first year.

I still haven’t found time to play Mario + Rabbids, but the Donkey Kong + Rabbids was fun with live music played over the video.

Skull & Bones looks like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag without the Assassin’s Creed backdrop and polished and refined with better graphics. The gameplay looks like it was taken right out of Black Flag with ship combat and base captures. They’ve added a multiplayer component with other players joining together to take down ships and then potentially fighting each other over the loot as well. I loved Black Flag, one of my favorite in the series, so I’d be interested to see more details on this in the future.

Elijah Wood was brought out for Transference VR as his company is involved in working with Ubisoft on the game. I’m not too clear on the game, but it seems creepy as hell.

The next game, Starlink, did a complete 360 for me. The initial trailer interested me with its sci-fi setting and the ship combat looked interesting, though I wasn’t crazy about the character designs and art style. Then I saw it was a toys to life game and I quickly lost interest. I do think these are the best “toys to life” iteration to date, though. Where Skylanders and Amiibo were mostly just little statue figurines that had a chip in them, Starlink toys actually are space ships that can be changed with different pieces to alter them in game. That also makes them genuine toys for kids to play with after turning off the game. They can run around the house with their toys shooting down imaginary enemies and narrowly dodging enemy fire, recreating epic space battles in their imaginations.

After a brief bit of information on the game, however, it was revealed that the good guys in Starlink would need all the help they can get and the video started again. Pursued by five enemies and taking fire, the pilot says “could use a little help here” and the video cut to a ship console. Then I heard it….

At first, I thought “Tell me I didn’t just hear that.” Then I thought “Did Ubisoft leave placeholder sounds in their trailer!?” Then I saw the green eye, clearly surrounded by fur, and covered by a green lens and I thought “HOLY CRAP WTF WTF WTF!?”

Ubisoft had strengthened their partnership with Nintendo and Star Fox, or at least Fox McCloud, would be in Starlink Battle for Atlas. Multiple arwings were seen as Fox took off, so I’m assuming the full team may be present.

Just like that, they sold me on buying a copy. I’ve wanted a model Arwing to put on the shelf for years, but the only one I’ve ever seen is about $500, so a $75 bundle of a toy version with game included is close enough for me. Shigeru Miyamoto was even on hand and seated in the front row of the audience to see. They gave him a first prototype of the Arwing and Fox McCloud figure for the game. It looked pretty cool on the display stand they had mounted it on.

I was surprised to see the next game, For Honor Marching Fire, as from my understanding the first game hadn’t done that well. Apparently, however, it was enough to warrant a new addition. However, this goes to Ubisoft’s credit of maintaining majority control of their company and the benefit of games like Rainbow Six Siege and Assassin’s Creed being tentpole games that help finance smaller projects throughout the company. They’re not exclusively bound to focus purely on profit, profit, profit.

The Crew 2 got a presentation and open beta announcement before showing the video. I’m not too interested here either. Give me a Smokey and the Bandit game, instead, Ubi (I’m kidding….. or am I?).

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was the closing presentation and it definitely looks good. Based on the trailer and presentation, the game looks good and they’re moving even more in an RPG direction. I was surprised, perhaps a little disappointed, to see Assassin’s Creed return to an annual release as I was hoping Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs would start taking turns leapfrogging each other in every-other-year releases.

I have the Ezio statue from the Brotherhood Collector’s Edition and have thought the others were cool since then, even sometimes thinking they would have definitely looked cool with every one of them together on a shelf, but with multiple statues in the new one, I’m glad I didn’t go down that path (though they do look awesome). I’m still hoping Ubisoft goes back on their word and ventures to Japan with the series (as they did with Egypt), as well as back to China and into India, at some point.

I also liked their show conclusion bringing the entire team, both presenters and so many who were back stage, back on stage for a final curtain call. The final note of working more with you, the gamers which makes everything better was a great note to conclude Ubisoft’s E3 presentation.

Grade: A

Games I’m interested in: Beyond Good and Evil 2, Starlink, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, possibly The Division 2 and Skull & Bones once I read up on more information.

Sony

Sony had announced ahead of time that this year would not be announcing new games at E3, but focusing on four pillar games with deeper looks and more information.

They started off their presentation in a room that had been built to look like a church to resemble the one they had not yet seen in the upcoming trailer. I saw a number of people didn’t like the banjo performance to start the presentation, but I liked it. I immediately knew it was kicking off the show with The Last of Us 2 just based on the early bit of that performance, though I’m in agreement that the church replica was rather silly and completely unnecessary. It caused a weird intermission right at the start of their presentation and broke the flow of their games being shown.

The Last of Us 2, however, looked absolutely fantastic. The detail in the character models and motion capture, the footage shown for gameplay looked very smooth and even more cinematic than the first game did. The focus of the trailer was on the greater danger in any zombie post-apocalypse: other humans. That always seemed like the more dangerous part of the first game, so I like seeing that aspect as the spotlight in the sequel. Ellie laying down in foliage and sliding under cars adds expanded ways to use the environment than just ducking behind things as well. I also found it interesting that the enemies seem to be calling her “wolf” as if she’s earned a title, possibly from hunting their group in the past? I’m a little disappointed we don’t see Joel at all, only getting a hint of him mentioned.

During the intermission while the crowd moved from the first room to the main theater. It took 13 minutes while they talked about Last of Us part 2, Horizon, God of War, and Detroit: Become Human with Worldwide Studios. New Game + coming to God of War was brought up and confirmed as happening. Black Ops remastered maps were announced for Black Ops IIII. Black Ops III was also announced as a free game for PS+ members.

Tetris Effect for PSVR was shown. A short video for Days Gone. Twin Mirror. Ghost Giant for PSVR, Beat Saber for PSVR. Basically a compilation sizzle reel.

Destiny 2‘s new expansion got a featured trailer.

Finally going back to the main stage, Sony presented another musical performance with Cornelius Boots playing the shakuhachi (a Japanese flute instrument) in front of a screen showing hills of grass while dressed in Japanese clothing. Much like the Andrew WK performance, this would have been more interesting if they had some slow paced game footage to show behind him rather than just the grassy hills. Once he was done, we got our first look at Ghost of Tsushima.

This is one of my most anticipated games that was teased at E3 in 2017 and the new trailer did not disappoint me at all. I’m a sucker for samurai and ninja films, so a game set in this time period grabs my attention and an open world style game in this time period is a must have. I’m hoping, really hoping, the final game is playable with Japanese voice acting and English subtitles, though. I even saw a later comment imagining a black & white mode, which would be ridiculously hard to imagine them pulling off, but would definitely be interesting.

The combat looks interesting. It’s definitely not fast paced hack and slash. There are some very Akira Kurosawa moments with the face off and the sudden draw-strike of the katana killing the opponent before regular combat starts. It looks like it’s focused on reaction, blocks and dodges and counter attacks rather than mindless button mashing.

Between games, there would occasionally be weird things like a CG banana playing electric guitar. It was for Dreams, but that game was never really shown.

I have no idea what the game is about based on the trailer, but Control looks like you basically get to play as Jean Gray/Phoenix (but also with a gun), so that looks pretty cool.

Next up was the surprise trailer that almost managed to steal the show: Resident Evil 2 remake was presented from a rat’s eye view. I liked the added touch of an original Playstation controller next to the pizza near the beginning. As the camera moves around, a struggle is heard, the two people fighting knocking things over and eventually falling on our rodent for the camera to shift to a different view to show the killed rat before moving to a zombie biting the sheriff he was fighting before we get our first look at Leon Kennedy.

Expected to have been a remake much like the Resident Evil REmake on GameCube, the footage is above and beyond that in terms of what I expected graphically. The detail is amazing and the crowd loved it, especially when a Jan 2019 release was revealed.

Squanch Games presented Trover Save the Universe from the creator of Rick and Morty. I’ve never watched the show, but if the humor is like this trailer, I do not remotely see the appeal.

Another look at Kingdom Hearts III showed more gameplay and focused on the Pirates of the Caribbean world before showing a lot of what was seen in the previous presentations. The big addition was the reveal of a Kingdom Hearts III PS4 Pro Limited Edition as well as a 1.5/2.5/2.8/3 all-in-one package for PS4.

Death Stranding gave us a long look at the game and its gameplay while still managing to show almost nothing. We know Redus’ character is essentially a delivery courier, seeing a wide number of terrains being traversed while wearing ridiculously large backpacks. There appears to be acid rain causing burns, hence needing the suits they wear. One of the “packages” appears to be a dead body wrapped up or in a body bag. Others are large crates, sometimes with robots coming with them, other times just carrying everything. Scaling a mountain seemed reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. Though towards the end, we see a village and he pulls out a rifle, so there does seem like there will be combat. It seems like whatever the creatures we’ve seen hinted at have human hand shaped feet, leaving hand prints where they walk. Breathing seems to attract their attention. The woman that meets up with Redus’ character has a suit with FRAGILE on the back (possibly the company they work for). The time fold fast forwards whatever it touches, but the past can never let go. If one of the things eats Redus character, he’ll come back, but the area will be a crater. There are humanoid shapes floating in the air as black smoky clouds, tethered into the sky. They catch Reducs and pull him down into an oil puddle to end the trailer. Ultimately still no clue what the game is about… We probably won’t entirely have an idea when it releases.

Give me your hand in death
Give me your hand in flesh
Give me your hand in spirit

Nioh 2 got an announce trailer, marking the third samurai game for E3 this year!

Finally, Sony wrapped up with an extended look at Spider-Man. The game still looks fantastic visually. Previously, it seemed Mr. Negative was the primary focus of the game, but this kicks off with Electro breaking prisoners out of the Raft and webhead chasing him through fighting low tier super powered criminals in the prison while running into more notable Spider-Man villains Rhino, Scorpion, and Vulture. It’s clear the Sinister Six are featured villains here. The sixth, who masterminded the break out and brought the above five together confronts Spidey at the end, but we’re not shown who it is. Norman Osborn is known to be mayor in this setting, so it could definitely be Green Goblin leading the Sinister Six, but Doc Ock is just as possible. Of course, it could be a surprise rather than an obvious choice.

The game definitely looks amazing. Spectacular even. It even looks Web of. Wait, that last one doesn’t work.

Grade: Absolute A++ on the games themselves, but…. B- for the presentation. I’d even hear out arguments for a grade of C.

However, I feel Sony did what they said they were going to do: showed a closer look at the four big games they wanted to showcase with no muss or fuss. The long intermission was the only real problem I had with their conference. If they had kept everything in the main theater, the shakuhachi before Ghost of Tsushima would have been more of a palette cleanser between the two games rather than feeling like we were stretching on far too long without game footage at a game presentation.

Games I’m looking forward to: Last of Us 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, Resident Evil 2, Death Stranding, Ghost Giant, Beat Saber, possibly Control once I know more about it.

2018
06/17
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E3 Reaction – Day 1

EA

I had no real expectations from EA with nothing in their catalog being of particular interest to me. After just a trailer to tease Anthem, which they’d talk about later, they kicked off the show with Battlefield V, which is particularly a game I’m not interested in.  Credit to EA for keeping it simple, though. They showed some footage, had the developers talk about some details fans were wanting to know, and concluded in just 10 minutes.

They followed it up with FIFA current year, which I’m equally not interested. Not to say either of these being presented is bad – Battlefield and FIFA have absolutely huge followings who love the series. I was, however, a little confused why they spent the money getting Hans Zimmer to score the music….for the trailer. Just the trailer? After showing off their trophy, they talked about the Champions League. They talked about the importance of gameplay (saying “gameplay” 4 times) and how the bar for said gameplay was raised, but without showing any gameplay. They then talked about the trophy again, as well as the World Cup in their tournament. It was a dull presentation with nothing really shown and felt like a waste of time that offered nothing to FIFA fans.

They burned more time talking about gaming on phones and tablets via the cloud as well as their subscription service with Origin Access Premiere. Nothing of interest for gamers so much as for shareholders and investors. Next to no applause or enthusiasm from the audience here. Even the courtesy applause when he left the stage was muted.

20 minutes into the show and they had only shown a little bit of footage from Battlefield V when they did the very forced, and very awkward “just happen to find a Respawn developer Vince Zampella in the crowd” to announce Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Zampella said they didn’t have anything to show this year, but were ready to talk about it. All they actually did was give the title and when it takes place. The worst part here, for me, was Andrea Rene, the show’s host. After the title is revealed, Zampella awkwardly states, likely intended to be humorous, “that suggests you’ll be playing a Jedi” to which the Rene asks “does that mean I get to hold a lightsaber?” It was a dumb question and I don’t even know what EA was going for (I fully assume Rene’s questions and lines were mostly scripted through the whole presentation, so I don’t actually blame her for the awkwardness).

But that wasn’t the worst part. After Zampella notes that it takes place during “the dark times, when the Jedi are being hunted,” Rene asks “So for all the hardcore nerds out there who want to know like where in the timeline, between which episodes is it?”

“Hardcore Star Wars nerds” already know exactly where it takes place just based on saying it was during the dark times when the Jedi were being hunted! Stop having these forced, painfully awkward scripted dialogue at your presentations! It’s only 2 minutes and I’d forgive you if you were setting something up on stage, but it was just nothing with no purpose and a horrible back and forth.

Star Wars Battlefront II got next to no reaction. Dennis Brännvall was sent out to deliver EA’s official E3 mea culpa for the game, acknowledging the failure at launch and detailing the overhauls that were done after the launch as well as the recent hunt mode (which admittedly I think sounds hilariously great with the Ewoks hunting you). They showed gameplay while he talked about the new additions in their next update, but they had such a short clip it looped through twice and was starting its third round before he announced the addition of Clone Wars content (which did get a positive reaction from the fans).

25 minutes into the show was a surprise reveal for Unravel two. Personally, this was my favorite part of their presentation, with the crowd reaction and even a “Yar-ny, Yar-ny” chant from a couple guys in the audience. Martin Sahlin’s presence on the stage was so much more comfortable and confident this year than when he first introduced us to Yarny. Wasting no time, he talked about the new addition (a blue character) while video played showing Yarny finding said character. Footage played behind while he described the two character experience. The game was described as more friendly, but more challenging, but most of all, more playful. After this 3 minute intro, and showing us info, they jumped right into gameplay in single player approach with Michael, the team’s Producer, playing live on stage. After a bit of this, Sahlin joined him to demonstrate 2 player gameplay. Honestly, it was just well presented with introduction, live single player gameplay, and live 2 player gameplay. No awkward “gamer talk” just communication between them of what they would do/what the other should do. The laughing at close calls felt genuine because it was genuine.

The presentation was only about 7 minutes long from start to finish and gave more impression of the game than the big budget AAA presentations. The big surprise, however, was after thanking his team, the final trailer showed more of the game and turned out to be a launch trailer when it was announced that the game was available immediately. The reaction from the crowd was the most lively with that announcement.

Continuing the tradition of Unravel’s original reveal, another EA Originals title, Sea of Solitude, or S.O.S was shown next. The trailer looks interesting, but the developer talked about it for 5 minutes before showing anything. It would have arguably been better to show the trailer first and then talk about it. I don’t fault her for talking a little long as she seemed just as nervous as Sahlin was when Yarny was first introduced to the world.

I had no interest in EA Sports presenting NBA Live 18 and even less in bringing out two E-sports competitors for Madden. It was almost 10 minutes spent on sports, with a bulk of that being talking to an e-sports player. Even for Madden fans, there seemed very little shown for them to enjoy.

Next up was the return of Command & Conquer… as a mobile game. A simplified mobile game at that, which dragged on far too long with a “professional shoutcaster” over a live match. For 8 minutes, we saw Command & Conquer Rivals – a mobile game – played over uninteresting commentary before seeing a trailer for the game afterwards. After seeing the gameplay and how completely unexciting it was, the trailer just left you realizing how much the game didn’t match the trailer.

During the closing speaking segment, when they were talking about choice – players choosing what,when, where, and how they play. That they feel they’re treated fairly and no one is given an unfair advantage or disadvantage for how they play. That they are given value for their time investment and for games to be fun, for experiences to truly enhance lives. That they want to be better and make great games, but there is something greater. It was basically a lengthy “please forgive us” before they transitioned directly into their Play to Give charity program for social impact benefiting He For She, National Bullying Prevention Center, and Ditch the Label with 1 million dollars in the last Play to Give campaign. To me, it just felt awkward to go from doing better and giving gamers a choice straight to it’s more important to give money to these charities.

They concluded with Anthem and the Bioware team for about 20 minutes. Honestly, it feels like Iron Man suits (even the theme at the end sounds just a teensy bit like the Avengers theme) with Destiny or The Division style gameplay. Feb 22, 2019 will be the launch date for the game, but what was shown didn’t particularly interest me. They talked about the Bioware conversation choices being an element when you go to the base camps that are single player, but all their footage was the multiplayer combat, which was disappointing. I think that’s a bit of the problem with the game feeling like a Destiny clone. They need to focus more on what’s different rather than what looks the same.

Even the closing “are you guys ready to download some games” from Rene got little reaction and little applause to close their show.

Grade: D

Personal Interests: Unravel 2, Sea of Solitude

2018
06/14
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E3 Excitement and Anticipation

E3 kicks off this weekend with EA on Saturday, Microsoft and Bethesda on Sunday, Square Enix, Ubisoft, and Sony on Monday, and Nintendo on Tuesday. While some have begun to bemoan E3 as an unnecessary and antiquated thing no longer needed in the industry, I look forward to watching the presentations every year and would still like to go just once someday, same with SDCC, just for the one time experience.

Sony is always my main interest for E3 as I’ve been a Playstation gamer since the first console and as I’ve said in the past, I never really got into Xbox. Nintendo is the console of my childhood and I have each system they’ve released, but I’d be lying if I said it’s still my primary gaming device (though I wish I had more time to split between PS4, Switch, and MMO gaming).

Here’s what I’m looking forward to and my expectations for each presentation this year:

EA – Saturday, June 9, 11am Pacific Time

Anthem is probably the only thing I’m curious about from EA right now. Unlike some, I enjoyed The Division as a story play through with friends, but didn’t have the interest in grinding endgame. Anthem seems like it will be a similar game and I have one friend who’s very interested in it. If the final product looks to be like a better version of The Division + Destiny, I’ll probably use the same approach of playing through the main story and then leaving endgame behind. I only have time for one MMO at a time. Even with this in mind, Anthem is only a passing curiosity right now and less something I’m truly looking forward to.

 

Microsoft – Sunday, June 10, 1pm Pacific Time

I don’t have an Xbox One X and I’m admittedly not a PC gamer (at this time), so there’s not much I’m particularly interested in seeing from Microsoft. That said, as a Playstation fan, maybe even a mongrel hybrid of Sony Pony and Nintendrone, I still watch Microsoft’s presentation every year out of interest in what the competition is offering. While Microsoft still has yet to offer anything to make the Xbox One appealing, particularly with everything being on PC if I truly wanted to play it, I still give them the respect of paying attention to their efforts. Cuphead looked fantastic and was a game I would have bought on release day if I had the console. Ori and the Blind Forest as well as its sequel are games I’d buy without hesitation as well. All of these I can, and Ori I have, buy on PC, though. So I’ll be watching this to see what Microsoft has in the works to try and fight back as the underdog as this console generation enters the later rounds of the fight.

Bethesda – Sunday, June 10, 6:30 Pacific Time

Honestly, I’ll watch just to watch, but I really don’t care. Despite loving RPGs, I’ve never gotten into Fallout or Elder Scrolls. Fallout 76 and Rage 2 aren’t my areas of interest.

Square Enix – Monday, June 11, 10am Pacific Time

The first stand-alone press conference from Square since 2015, I’m definitely looking forward to this presentation. Of course, I’ll be at work, so I’ll just have to listen to it and sneak a peek at the stream when possible.

Kingdom Hearts III will likely get a release date. I haven’t played any of the Kingdom Hearts games, but a release date on the final entry will give me a time frame to finally play through them with the HD releases on PS4.

I’m also looking forward to Shadow of the Tomb Raider and hoping reboot Lara finally steps into her own. I’ve enjoyed the reboot with the first game being the formation of the character, Rise being about tying up loose ends of her past, and hopefully Shadow being where she finally starts setting a path for herself in her life. It’s time for reboot Lara to grow into the twin pistols of classic Lara. We already have pistols for her, there’s no reason to not get some bow is for stealth, twin pistols are for gun fights, rifles & shotguns are for situational selection design established now. With them teased in the first game, I honestly think the twin pistols are going to happen, but are being held possibly even to the finale of this game. The developers have said this is the final game of Lara’s “Tomb Raider origin” trilogy and I really expect the twin pistols are the equivalent of her graduation ceremony “Tomb Raider Diploma.” Once she has the twin pistols, she’ll fully have transitioned into the role of the bad ass globe-trotting adventurer everyone expects her to become.

I’m expecting to see a first tease of the Avengers game Square is working on and possibly a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII remake. While some rumors and supposed leaks suggest a demo for FFVII with a possible release date on the horizon, I don’t think that will happen. I think this year is largely going to be about Kingdom Hearts III. I also think Final Fantasy VII remake is going to wind up being a PS5 game simply because PS4 is indeed entering the later years of its life cycle and there’s no way Square Enix is going to get all three episodes out before PlayStation 5. Now, PS5 may be backwards compatible, so it won’t matter too much, but I really expect to wait a while longer for VII Remake, even if we get a new look at it.

Final Fantasy XIV will have a live letter during E3, but the only thing I expect to come from it will be a little more info about upcoming patches – things like the new Deep Dungeon – and likely the long awaited Final Fantasy XV crossover event.

I’d love to see a teaser announcing Final Fantasy XVI is in the works as well, but I don’t think that’s likely. Between Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy XV, and VII remake, I think their heavy hitters are tied up for the moment. That said, if XVI is in the works, I’d love to see them offer a more high fantasy sword & sorcery with just a touch of steam punk harkening back to IV, VI, and IX in style. I personally divide the Final Fantasy games into fantasy and sci-fi with recent installments of XII, XIII, XV all falling more in the sci-fi (or more appropriately science fantasy) side of things. Airships and advanced moon civilizations aside, the more modern and futuristic the technology, the less of the high fantasy that Final Fantasy built its kingdom on.

Ubisoft – Monday, June 11, 1pm Pacific Time

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has already been confirmed, which is a little disappointing for me. I was expecting the break that Origins saw to signal a shift for the series to a 2 year cycle with Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed leap frogging each other as alternating releases. After Watch Dogs 2, I was hoping that franchise would continue its trend with a new location and new characters each game with just some cameos from the previous games’ members. Especially with the notion of DedSec you could easily have Marcus Sitara, Wrench, and Josh consulting via video conferencing with DedSec members in another city.

I’m admittedly struggling through Assassin’s Creed: Origins. The games were always vast, but the shift to even more open world RPG design lost a little motivation for me in the story. I need to knuckle down and just commit to chasing the main story quests rather than get distracted with side quests, but I’m a habitual side quester. Once I finish Persona 5, I’ll try to finish off AC: Origins and see if my interest is renewed for Odyssey, but Rome/Greece isn’t particularly a setting that really interests me. I’d rather see China, Japan, and India entries in the series.

The Division 2 will be revealed, which does interest me. As I said, I liked the first one with my friends and I’m expecting we’ll hop in for the sequel together for the same style play through as well.

Skull and Bones is another one I have a passing curiosity for. The ship sailing in Assassin’s Creed III was a highlight for me and Black Flag is probably my favorite entry in the series, so Ubisoft has a solid foundation for ship based piracy. Depending on what else is in store for gamers with that title will determine just how interested I get. If it doesn’t offer enough new or interesting aspects, I could just replay Black Flag.

Sony – Monday, June 11, 6pm Pacific Time

Sony has stated there won’t be a lot of new games announced this year and instead they’ll be focusing on more information for what’s been announced and is now on the horizon. This is the conference with the most announcements I’m looking forward to. Before touching on anything I’m interested in game-wise, I really hope this is finally the year, after waiting so long, that Sony will finally, FINALLY, let users change their PSN name. I don’t even care if I have to pay for it, if there’s a time restriction on frequency, whatever. I don’t have an embarrassing PSN name and still I really want the option to change mine.

Death Stranding – As a huge Metal Gear Solid fan, I’m obviously interested to see what Hideo Kojima has planned with his first Konami-free game. As fans expect, everything about the game has been strange, confusing, and tell us almost nothing. This year is expected to be the first real look at the game, possibly with actual gameplay and some more cryptic clues as to just what it’s all about.

Spider-Man – I’ve already pre-ordered the collector’s edition, though I’m still on the fence about keeping that order in place. I’m just not a fan of the costume design, so a statue of said costume has me on the fence. It would be cool to have a statue of classic Spidey, MCU Homecoming Spidey, and PS4 Spidey all together, though. Decisions, decisions. Regardless of that, I’m looking forward to this game and with its launch only 3 months away, we’re sure to get a good final look at the gameplay here.

Ghost of Tsushima – Despite only an initial announcement trailer, this game is a bright, burning spot on my radar. An open world game set in feudal Japan with a samurai turned ninja? This is everything I want in a game. I’m hoping it’s surprisingly further into development than we might expect and we’ll see a full presentation with gameplay to give an idea just what sort of game it will be. Perhaps this will replace my desire for an Assassin’s Creed set in Japan.

The Last of Us, Part II – I loved the first game and I’m looking forward to the second, even though I’m a little on the fence about a new story with Joel and Ellie. I liked the world the first game established and was more interested in seeing The Last of Us becoming an anthology franchise with each game following different characters completely unrelated to the previous game.

Nintendo – Tuesday, June 12, 9am Pacific Time

I never have anything to really look forward to with Nintendo so much as tuning in to find out what I didn’t know I was be looking forward to. Nintendo seems to pull a few cards out that nobody knew were in the works such as last year’s Metroid Prime 4 announcement. This year, I’m hoping for a little of said Metroid Prime 4 information. I’d like to see some surprises from Square Enix on Nintendo Direct since they’ve established a division working on Switch games and I like the SNES era throwback RPGs like I Am Setsuna.

2018
06/09
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Best Buy Apparently Ends Gamers Club Unlocked

News broke today that Best Buy has suddenly, and without any warning, pulled the plug on the Gamers Club and Gamers Club Unlocked programs, causing a wave of disappointment on Twitter.

For those unaware, the program cost $30 for a two year membership and gave a 20% discount off any and all new games. So long as it was still sealed, you got 20% off. Games on clearance were 20% off. Collector’s Editions were 20% off and it even extended to amiibos and strategy guides.

By all measurements, the program was far superior to Amazon Games’ Prime discounts and many speculated it helped drive gamer traffic into stores where they’d also get points on purchases with Reward Zone memberships and could price match other items to Amazon. This theoretically could have contributed to the company’s strong fourth quarter performance that saw 14% increased sales with 7% increased sales for the year.

I understand there’s not a large margin on games and Best Buy may have been bleeding money with a program as aggressive as this was. But rather than eliminate the program entirely, I would have hoped to see it adjusted to better benefit the company while still offering incentive for gamers to shop in stores. 20% off pre-orders would match Amazon while extending just 4 weeks after release, and still including the offer on Collector’s Editions, would have kept the program well above Amazon. From my understanding, Prime’s discount only counts towards pre-orders now, so even a 2 week post-release period would keep the Gamers Club Unlocked program a clear winner.

Hopefully, Best Buy will reveal a new program, but for now current members have until their membership expires to take advantage of the discounts. At the time of this writing, membership for purchase can no longer be purchased on the website and cards in store are reportedly no longer functional if taken to the register. Discounts also no longer show on item pages on Bestbuy.com, but still appear in the cart at check out.

It was the best program for gamers while it lasted. Good night, sweet prince.

2018
05/19
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Retropalooza 2017

Despite a lack of updates here, I’ve been insanely busy the last few months 2017 and a great deal of that busyness has been due to three things. First, of course, was game hunting itself, but for the last six months of the year, I was working on converting my father’s vinyl collection to mp3 to give him for Christmas. That was about 200 albums in total, which required each one to be recorded on each side, then converted with meta data added in. In addition to this project was organizing another large quantity of items, but that’s where this story will eventually lead.

While I normally wouldn’t reach back and relate game hunts from months back, these sort of snowball into the biggest gaming find I’ve ever experienced, so it’s worth telling the whole story over the course of a few posts.

So get your Super Scope, put on your Captain N jacket, and strap in. We’re going on a game hunting story time adventure!

Retropalooza 2017

On October 7th and 8th, The Game Chasers held Retropalooza V in Arlington, Tx and despite the relatively close scheduling between it and Let’s Play Game Expo, of course I had to go. I had spent about half the money I set aside for Let’s Play at that convention, so I assumed I would spend about the same about, and the remainder of my game hunting cash, at Retropalooza.

In addition to that cash, I had a number of the sealed games from the Half Price Books gold mine for trade. As is becoming tradition, my first stop was at seeing the Nostalgic Nerds at their table to see what they had. Honestly, not too much caught my eye with the exception of Kickle Cubicle and Mega Man X3. That price tag on Mega Man X3 caught my eye as well, though. As expected, it was pricey. Around $250, though the quality of the label certainly demanded a high price tag for a rare game.

I wasn’t looking to wipe myself out immediately and wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that much on a game in general, so after we chatted a bit, I moved on to see what else was around. As always, Retropalooza had a ton of vendors and they all had great stuff. Prices weren’t outrageous, though some were higher than I was willing to pay and a few a little higher than I thought was reasonable. Of course, as with most conventions, you can usually negotiate if you buy a stack of things.

The first booth we came across that really caught my attention was a small one, a bit cramped with 3 tables in a “U” shape that only allowed a couple of people to stand in there at a time. My friend Phil looked over some of their hand held games while I waited to get in. Nothing much on top of the table really got my interest other than Winback Covert Ops for N64 at a fair price (finally) and Tiny Toon Adventures 2 on NES, but there were boxes and tubs under the table that weren’t open. Only one was and I wondered what might be down there.

The one box that was open had the Nintendo Power StarFox 64 promotional VHS, which was kind of interesting. I remember having it as a kid, so I pulled that out, but nothing much else in there besides Powerpuff Girls Relish Rampage (Pickled Edition) on GameCube, which was on my hunting list. A few more good games were there, but nothing else I was looking for from my list.

Moving over to the closed boxes, I opened one to take a peek and saw a pretty good stack of things. Namely NES game boxes. In great condition! I asked about Super Mario Bros 3 and he wanted $10. Star Tropics complete in box (with the letter) was about $10 as well. Lion King for SNES box, GBA Sonic collection, Sonic Advance box. An Akira figure of Kaneda with the motorcycle for a few bucks. Digimon World and Digimon World 3 were super cheap as well! Then, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on Playstation. It was a blank case, but the disc was in great shape and it had the manual. Normally $30 for just the disc, for $5, it was a steal!

Phil got a few things from them as well, but we combined it into a single purchase and started Retropalooza off taking a pretty big chunk out of my cash, but we got far more value than what we paid.

I stopped by The Gamer Chasers booth and caught Billy clearly up way too early for his liking. It was almost 10AM and he informed me it was closer to the time he normally went to sleep, not got up. They’re not kidding on the show when they say he’s not a morning person. I purchased a Caught ‘Em Slippin’ t-shirt and each season of the series on DVD, but left them with Billy to, over the course of the convention, get everyone to sign them. I managed to get Billy & Jay, Melvorn, AlphaOmegaSin, and Woods, but it would take a return on the second day to manage to get Dodongo’s signature.

A big goal of this convention was to finish off the last of my N64 targets. I had just gotten Winback Covert Ops, leaving Loderunner 3D and Goemon’s Great Adventure to be found. Towards the end of my winding through the booths set up, I finally found one with the last of my N64 targets, and for reasonable prices. Done and done. I was finally finished with my N64 collection. I didn’t go for a complete collection and don’t plan to, though I might start keeping more if they fall in my lap. For what I set out as my goal on the system, though, I had finished that set. Plus, a booth cut a price to almost half off to convince me to add StarCraft for N64 to my collection as well.

Finally found Crystal Castles and the Tron games for Atari 2600 and I picked up a few manuals as well.

As the day was winding down, I got Ar tonelico from YouTuber Scottsquatch and on my way out, I picked up Animal Crossing (with the memory card), Wild Arms 2, and Spawn on SNES.

Overall, a good day and certainly the bulk of my spending and game finds, but there were still some gems to pick up upon returning the next day!

Jpeg

Day 1 was not too shabby!

Day 2 – Return to Castle Retropaloozastein

 

The second day is usually either pretty light or extremely heavy, depending on your luck. Sometimes vendors want to go deep on discounts and clear as much as possible so they don’t have to load everything to take back. That wasn’t on my mind, though, with so little left in my wallet. Don’t let that deter you at a convention, though. I know someone that made a wild pitch of $10 for an entire box of games and walked away with them. Nothing great, all commons, but they traded into a local store and he got enough credit to get a high value game from said store for essentially the $10 he spent.

I hadn’t had any luck with trades the first day and the second proved lackluster in working any trade deals as well. Although I had some good titles, sealed games didn’t grab much attention since they’re hard to move and take longer to find a buyer.

I picked up an SNES Super Scope for $5, which was just a fun thing to have, even though I’ll never really use it. The big score out and about was a booth that I guess had opened a lot more of their crates and were trying to clear them out. Crate after crate of Atari 2600 games at $3 each or 3 for $5. I knocked out 9 Atari 2600 titles I’d been looking for and was more than happy to do so.

Wrapping up the day, I rounded back to Nostalgia Nerd’s booth and took a final look at what they had. I had a few things they were interested in taking as trade and so, with a combination of trades and the last of my cash, I got that Kickle Cubicle and, of course, that Mega Man X3, completing my SNES Mega Man X trilogy. And, as tends to be my luck, Mega Man X3 has steadily dropped in value since I bought it…. but I have a beautiful condition label and it’s a great game, so I can’t be too disappointed.

I didn’t quite end the day there, as I finally decided to add one final N64 game to my library that wasn’t on my original list. Since I had Goemon’s Great Adventure, I decided to sell some Texas Instruments game cartridges and used the money to pick up Mystical Ninja starring Goemon to have both Goemon N64 games.

Finally tapped out and rather tired of two days of convention walking, I headed home. Of course, an hour before the convention ended, I came back when I realized I had left my Super Scope with the Nostalgic Nerd guys so I wouldn’t have to carry it around. It was this final hour return run that let me get Dodongo’s signature on my Game Chasers DVDs as well.

Jpeg

Day 2 wasn’t as hefty, but Mega Man X3 was a huge addition.

And with that, finally, Retropalooza 2017 drew to a close for me. I thought my game hunting was pretty much done for the year. After all, October leads right into holiday shopping season and Christmas gifts would need to be bought, but of course….

2018
01/04
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I’d Rather Skip the “Skip Boss” Button

After my recent article, I didn’t expect to so quickly be writing another in response to a game site’s article, but here we are.

Rock Paper Shotgun spurred some Twitter attention this week when they published “Now Ubi’s opened the door, can we have our “Skip Boss Fight” button?” by John Walker. Walker wrote the article in relation to Ubisoft’s “Discovery Tour” mode for Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which will remove story, quests, combat, and challenges and allow players to simply wander and explore the game world.

Walker states it’s odd that this addition is a big deal because he feels it shouldn’t be, and that “games should be delighted to include modes that remove all their difficulty and challenge, and players should cheer when they hear about it.”

I find the Discovery Tour an interesting addition to Assassin’s Creed and I can see a lot of value in the idea for some games, maybe even a lot of them (hear me out, dear gamer). The Assassin’s Creed series are set in different historical time periods, where historical fact is blended (though often bent and altered) with fiction to create an alternative what-really-happened-behind-the-scenes version of history. Yet there’s always a kernel of actual history in the games, particularly with Animus entries. You wander past a historical landmark in-game and you can read about that historical landmark with the push of a button. You can learn about Notre Dame by walking up to it. You can learn about devices invented in that time period. Origins seems to be taking another step and including cultural practices in ancient Egypt as well.

The addition of a tourism mode allows players who are interested in history and ancient cultures and practices to simply wander around and learn about these things without being hassled by guards or worrying about getting into fights or walking somewhere they’re not welcome and causing all kinds of trouble. I can see some benefits to the concept.

People interested in history and learning about the time period can do so without having to learn a game. Counterpoint, of course, is they could, and probably should, read a book for a better look at history than any video game is going to provide. But if a game can intrigue a kid or teenager to explore the game world, then move to books and reading for a deeper understanding, there’s a net benefit there.

Stepping away from historical settings, this mode could be interesting in some games that build their own worlds as well. As the protagonist is typically in their teens at the earliest, they have some life experience in their world. Having a non-combat exploration mode allowing you to interact with NPCs and learn about history, culture, and details of the game world would let the player get a ground level knowledge base before the storyline’s initial trigger than sends the proverbial poo to the fan. A tutorial mode could be suggested instead, but those typically get added as a required intro to learn how the game’s combat works.  An exploration mode allows players to try it if they wish and players who want to hop straight to story and gameplay don’t have to bother with a tutorial at all.

So honestly, I’m on board with the “Discovery Tour” idea until we see how it plays out. I do think it’s something that should be more of a focus for studios working with VR right now – allowing players to explore historical and modern landscapes and locations for a virtual vacation get away. Visiting historical places, learning about cultures around the world all from the comfort of your own home. Combine this with Google Maps one day and our VR options for cheap “world” travel becomes quite expansive.

However…(you didn’t think this was all agreements & unicorns, did you?)

Stabby-The-Unicorn-Pink-clean_800x

Okay, maybe there is a unicorn for gamers…

I’m not so sure games and gamers should be delighted and cheering to include modes “that remove all their difficulty and challenge” either.

What is the point of a Mario game where you push the directional pad to the right and hold the button until you get to the end of the stage? After all, you’d have to remove all enemies and all pits. No jumping, just hold a button until Mario reaches the flag. What’s the point?

What is the point of playing a Metal Gear Solid game where you just walk through the corridors of the base without enemies to avoid, without having to employ stealth, and with no bosses? It’s just walking through hallways until you get a cut scene.

What is the point of Ninja Gaiden if you just run through a level with no enemies and no bosses?

What is the point of Call of Duty if you just walk through combat zones where there’s no combat?

What is a puzzle game if you remove all the puzzles?

What is the point of chess if every piece can move anywhere you feel like putting them on the board? Sure, you can do that, but then you’re not actually playing chess, are you?

Walker is taking what I think is a good idea to extremes of absurdity with this notion. Even Assassin’s Creed: Origins isn’t offering up the game itself with no combat. The Discovery Tour mode doesn’t allow you to play through the story or do the assassin’y stuff so much as let you explore the game world as the character might before the Assassin Order begins – before there’s a moment that spurs one to action.

The idea of the no-combat, discovery/exploration mode works fine for open world games, especially if there’s other things to do. I’ve been playing Watch Dogs 2 and before I go off on a crusade to bring down Big Brother, I could easily go around the city and spend time getting familiar with it by doing the Uber- oops, sorry, I mean Lyft- oops, sorry, I mean Driver SF quests. I could do racing on the E-Kart tracks. I could find Scout X locations and take pictures. I could do a number of things before focusing on the story.

It just doesn’t work as well in non-open world games. Instead, I think we’re already in a good place with most games offering different difficulty levels. I started Platinum Games’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan on easy, thinking I’d play through it on easy, then normal, then hard if I was still interested.  I’d use level ups and power ups from lower difficulty to be better equipped for harder difficulties. I wound up playing on easy for two levels and not realizing I was then on normal for the rest of the game (I forgot to change the difficulty on the level select screen after the first two).

I’m assuming because the Discovery Tour idea doesn’t work in non-open world games is why Walker suggests the “skip boss” addition instead, allowing people to play through the levels of normal combat without having to fight a boss. But since you can already play on easy mode in most games where bosses are toned down quite a bit, I’m not entirely clear why it’s necessary to skip them.

I might test this with my mother one day and see if she can get through a few levels of a game on easy mode. She’s never played a video game in her life to my knowledge. Except Spider Solitaire. Don’t challenge her in Spider Solitaire, sucka, she’ll stomp your high score.

Mr T

I pity the fool that challenge my mama to Spider Solitaire!

“Bring on the Riff-Raff!”

While he starts off talking about removing all challenge and difficulty and is suggesting a “skip boss” option, what Walker actually wants is for games to be more welcoming and inviting to more skill levels. To make games more accessible to more people. A noble idea and one that I can’t see how anyone can argue against on its own. It’s been Nintendo’s core value for decades. But more on this idea later.

He then notes his previous articles that argued players should be able to skip ahead in games just as with books or movies, combat should be skippable, and you shouldn’t need to be good to play video games.

What film critic actively suggests movie goers should skip 25% of a film? What book review says to skip every other chapter of a book? Why are only gaming journalists frequently and actively encouraging the product they write about to be ignored in part?

The Lord of the Rings has not been edited to 1/3 of its length with the language altered to be easily digested by a 6th grade reading level (Scholastic lists it at grade 9-12). Oscar winning films for Best Picture aren’t being reworked to appeal to the Michael Bay fan. And really, who spends $20 on a Blu-ray just to skip 25% of it on their first viewing?

The crux of the argument is that simplifying games and removing all challenge would invite a wider range of audience and would ultimately make games better. Or, as the article states, “welcoming the Outsider in is always how society broadens and blooms.” But does it apply to video games?

Pleasing All of the People All of the Time

World of Warcraft started out as an MMORPG, a niche genre growing from popular titles such as Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Final Fantasy XI, but WoW largely removed the grinding aspect from leveling. Some might say they made the MMO concept easier with quests and all classes being more capable of solo combat, but what they really removed was the need to group for every aspect of the game. It was more a shift of design than truly making the genre easier at launch. As WoW became a cultural phenomenon, it drew a much wider crowd. The nerds from high school who played MMORPGs were there, but now they were joined by the jocks that stuffed them in lockers and played Call of Duty or Halo in college. Even casual mobile gamers started playing as well..

As the population grew diverse, so did the demands. Players wanted more raid content on a regular basis. They wanted harder raid content. But also more accessible raid content. They wanted larger 40 man raids back. Only they also wanted small 10 man raids. They also wanted more 5 man dungeons. For that matter, there needed to be more world content outside of dungeons. And how about more mini games? While Blizzard responded in various ways, it’s hard to say the modern World of Warcraft resembles the game that launched, The Burning Crusade expansion, or even the launched Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Blizzard began to develop the game to cater to everyone simultaneously and the game, for better or worse I’ll leave to other debates, changed a great deal and diluted from the focus that made it the most popular MMO of all time.

If WoW vastly improved by drawing in Outsiders by the droves, it hasn’t been reflected in its subscription numbers. As these large changes were implemented and the focus started to shift, even adding in what is unquestionably a blatant Pokemon rip off in Pet Battles, subscription numbers dropped and have never returned to their peak levels for more than an immediate post-expansion launch. Blizzard no longer reports on subscription numbers at all. Granted, it’s not the bulk of their profit anymore and so it’s not as important, but if they were still worth bragging about, I’d wager they would be.

None of the major features in a World of Warcraft expansion that deviated from the original core have been high demands in other MMOs such as Final Fantasy XIV. It’s as though a genre has its core components and fans of that genre play the game for them. Bringing in Outsiders can actually dilute the game design as developers try to make people who are not interested in the genre happy, potentially at the alienation of their existing fan base.

Gaming Has Always Been Inclusive

“Gaming has always been inclusive. The idea that there was this Golden Age when all games were cripplingly hard, and only the Chosen were able to play, is bullshit. In fact, back in these imagined halcyon years was when games invariably came with cheat codes, god modes, all sorts of ways to subvert and play differently. And despite the outright terror that articles like this are harming their precious gaming, that the Outsiders are changing games to what the self-identifying Us perceive as “worse”, we’re currently experiencing a heyday for super-high-difficulty, super-challenging, extremely tough games, like we never have before.”

Wait… what was that first line? Gaming has always been what?  Inclusive, you say? Then aren’t we done here? Aren’t we good to go? Gaming’s always been inclusive, so why does gaming need to be changed to draw in a more inclusive range of players?  Checkmate, atheists!

Checkmate chicken

It was either this or a John Cena meme. Suck it.

Walker is right, though. There wasn’t a period where all games were cripplingly hard. The NES era had a lot of hard games, sure, but part of that was how new many of us were to the medium, just learning how to control these little people on the screen with our fingers on a controller. The other part was simply padding the game. Seriously, a lot of games on NES are extremely hard because:

  1. They’re directly taken from arcades which wanted you to die often to feed more quarters
  2. They want you to get more than 4 hours of play out of your $60 purchase. Otherwise, gamers (or more accurately their parents) would have been returning games for not being worth the cost and would stop buying new ones. The high difficulty was there to keep you playing.
  3. Nintendo was doing their part to combat childhood obesity by making kids frustrated enough to get sick of this BS and go outside and play. (Okay, I’m just making this one up…. or AM I?)
Tinfoil hat

#3 is totally true, I just know it! I swear! REALLY!

Walker is also right that there were cheat codes. Some of these were developer codes to test things that were then never taken out of the final product. Others were left intentionally as a reward to discover. And for the rest of the games, all the way up until PS2, there was Game Genie and Game Shark. However, it was always kind of a fringe aspect of gaming. You didn’t have Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power telling you why everyone should have a Game Genie or that Game Genie cheat codes should be included with every game purchased, which is essentially where we are now.

Frustrating Boss Fights

 

I understand Walker’s sentiment of frustration with difficult boss fights, but I can’t relate to a desire to have them completely removed. I’m actually more in his camp in the MMO realm of things. I’ve never been a cutting edge content raider, preferring to enjoy the time raiding with friends. So long as we have a good time and make some progress for the night, we can finish a raid weeks, or months, later with a buff to help. In FFXIV, we even tend to spend our raid time farming previous expansion raids for mounts more than work towards tackling the hardest of new raid content.

WoW has Mythic difficulty, normal difficulty, and LFR difficulty for their raids. Mythic is the hardest, normal is a challenge that can be overcome by a group working together with some practice, and LFR is…well, honestly it’s basically just an exercise in the simplest requirements and so long as you’re pushing attack buttons the group will probably win. It’s ridiculously easy and honestly takes all the fun out of raiding. Compared to Final Fantasy XIV‘s 24 man raids that still have some mechanics that can kill everyone, but are easy enough to accomplish with 23 strangers who aren’t in voice chat but mostly know what to do? There’s really no contest which is a more rewarding experience in my mind.

It’s this level of simplicity that I just can’t relate to nor understand. The desire for absolutely no challenge whatsoever, for no gameplay at all, no risk of any fail state. The desire to not even require the most minimal of effort and still be rewarded for it when playing a game. I can understand, and will fully support, multiple difficulties in games. I have no issue with Easy mode. If easy mode allows you to just hit attack a couple dozen times and you need to not get hit by one particular attack and the rest of the fight is negligible, that’s pretty straight forward. For me, easy mode can pretty much be “story mode” with no true challenge to the combat and everything tuned down somewhat akin to the cheat codes of yore. Just kick it to easy mode, kick back, and have a mindless night of fun.

I can certainly understand demands for bosses to be properly tuned. When a boss is “incongruous to the rest of the game” rather than a “comprehension test” of what you’ve learned and acquired, there’s reason to dislike the boss fight and push for, and expect, better design from developers.

But simply wanting a “skip boss” button?  That is the opposite path. That’s telling developers they don’t NEED to design games well. They don’t need to make interesting bosses. They don’t need to balance and fine tune them properly. Because if it’s broken, whatever, the player can skip it and they’ve got a deadline to meet.

It adds a new chorus to a very unfortunate song that’s developed in time:

If the game’s broken, whatever, we can patch it.
If the story’s incomplete, whatever, we can patch it (and charge money for the DLC later).
If the boss is poorly tuned and too hard, whatever, they can skip it.

Though, I suspect publishers (more than studios) will get the idea of an extra verse:
If the player wants to skip everything, whatever, we can charge them tons of money for it and mobile gaming proves that “pay to win” is a massively profitable business model.

I think that, more than anything, may be what gamers push back against, even if they don’t consciously realize it. They don’t want console/PC games to become even more bloated with microtransactions where pay to win is less of an option and more of an encouraged path. Games should not be designed to be so mind numbingly grindy that paying for item boosts becomes the only way to save your sanity.

Gamers, and particularly games journalists, should be holding developers’ feet to the fire for poor design and poor boss battles, not encouraging laziness via an option that tells both gamer and designer neither need really care about it.

Which brings us again to the point of journalists being good at games, and of gamers being good at games. My answer is: No, neither necessarily need to be. Just as there are gamers of all levels of skill, there can be journalists of varying levels of skill. But if a game is difficult, even on easy, that doesn’t mean the game is immediately bad and needs to remove ALL forms of difficulty to cater to every person in the world. It may just mean that game is designed for more skilled players and isn’t for you.

I mentioned in my previous article that I had replayed Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers on SNES recently and it’s pretty easy. If someone struggles with Battletoads, they might like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers instead. After that, they might like TMNT IV. I wouldn’t say that Battletoads should just have no boss battles. I would say someone should try a game more suited to their skill level and come back to the harder one when they’ve improved. With modern games and the multiple difficulties, it’s not even as necessary as it used to be to find another game.

Some games are designed for players who enjoy a serious challenge. It’s a niche and there’s nothing wrong with developers designing that game for that niche. It’s the demographic they’re making the game for and that’s who they want to play their game. That’s perfectly okay.

Games journalists are quick to lambast gamers for being upset over disappointment with games like the ending of Mass Effect 3. They’ll berate gamers for being “entitled” because the game didn’t cater to their wishes or that it wasn’t what they wanted. Yet here we are with games journalists insisting how developers should make their games.

It’s like demanding Hollywood to edit a film to only include what you want and edit out all the parts you don’t. It’s demanding an artist to remove birds from his paintings because you just don’t like birds. It’s telling Stephen King to change his books because the scary parts are too scary for your tastes. There’s always another option: watch a different genre of movie, find an artist you like, or read another book. Likewise, you can play another game that better fits your tastes and skill level.

It’s not as though that’s hard these days. There are more games than any gamer can ever complete (even though we delude ourselves into thinking one day we’ll conquer our backlogs). Even if the popular game is too challenging on easy difficulty, surely there are other games in the genre that are more to the desired skill level to be more enjoyable.

Game room

“I assure you, I’ll play through every one of them eventually!”

Oh No, Gamers, You’re Not Off The Hook Either

Maybe we as gamers, and myself in writing this, are being too literal in our reading of Walker’s words. About 1/5 into the article, he states “‘Skip Boss Fight’ is a totem for my larger point here, and it’s a title under which I’d include Ubi’s recent announcement (despite their rather awkwardly trying to wrap it all up as wanting to be Edumacational). It’s the spirit such an option captures, and it’s one that I think the industry would do well to breathe deeply into their souls.”

Stepping away from the specifics of Walker’s suggestions – skipping content, skipping boss fights, skipping combat, let’s take the spirit of the idea for a moment: Making games more approachable for a wider variety of play styles/skill levels and making a wider variety of playstyle games.

In this regards, I have to say to you, dear gamers, calm the h*ck down.

Calm down

That’s a h*ckin’ cute pupper, so you gotta listen.

There is a rather unnecessary streak of elitism in gaming that we each individually need to get a handle on within ourselves. I play Uncharted on normal. My friend plays on hard his first play through. After we’ve finished the game, we’ve never focused on the difference of difficulty. We usually talk about the story. Sometimes I’ll mention a particular fight that was just brutal for me and I can’t imagine what it was like for him. I acknowledge he’s taken on a greater challenge with these games. He doesn’t think I’m less of a gamer and I don’t see him as more of a gamer. We just like different difficulty levels with Uncharted.

I may play through a Platinum Games game on Easy, Normal, and Hard where he may play through on Normal and be done with the game, despite playing Uncharted on hard. I don’t gain more Gamer points to get better than him as a result.

I’m most exposed to this elitism in MMOs where hard mode raiders look down on anyone else and think anything the developers do that isn’t catered specifically to them is a waste of time and resources. Seriously, guys, let’s not be the elitist jerk raiders of the gaming community.

So if a game designer wants to reach as many potential customers as possible and they decide they want to include varying levels of difficulty, don’t fly off the handle about it. It’s their decision. It can actually be good for the game, and for the community around the game.

Final Fantasy XIV’s team has said they design their raids from the hard mode down. The easier version removes a mechanic and lowers the amount of damage some abilities do until they feel it’s more manageable for a lower, average, skill level of players to do collectively without voice chat and without the familiarity of playing together. The rewards are a bit better for the harder mode and the hard mode raiders do that and don’t need to do anything else. The normal mode players typically supplement their play time with other activities for rewards and remain a bit lower than the hard mode level. It’s two separate lanes on the same road, that’s all.

That’s not to say every game must have multiple difficulties, either. Again, it’s perfectly fine for a developer to design a game aimed at a niche audience. If they want to do so, they have every right to do so. No multiple difficulties, no concessions, no compromise. If that’s not your type of game, you don’t have to play it and nobody should be criticizing the development team for their design vision.

Ghosts & Goblins

“Dark Souls is the me of the modern generation, ya punk kids!”

But gamers then have no right to criticize development teams who choose to add them, or create completely different games, either. “Walking Simulators” have just as much right to exist if that’s what a developer wants to make. If we’re going to say developers should be free to make difficult games, or violent games, or games with sexy women, then developers must be equally free to make games like Gone Home and Her Story without coming under attack for it. Sure, we’re free to debate among ourselves if they qualify as games by definition and we can certainly voice disagreement with them deserving awards, but they have the right to exist if the developer wanted to make them.

Rather than attacking it, or anyone who enjoyed it, we have to take the same stance we demand of others: “This type of game isn’t for me, so I just won’t play it.”

Likewise, if a studio makes a game toned down and easier, that’s acceptable as well. How many Dark Souls fans wish more gamers experienced the game the way they do? What if there was a game similar to Dark Souls, but easier, that they could recommend to their friends? What if those friends beat the easier game and felt ready to step up to Dark Souls and managed to get through the game and love it? Haven’t you just brought a new gamer into the Dark Souls fold, albeit after a detour? Don’t you have someone new to swap stories with?

For that matter, if a friend beats a game on easy and you tell them how much crazier a fight is on normal, hard, or nightmare, isn’t that a fun story to share that they can still appreciate based on their experience and knowing how much is added to the fight in higher difficulty versus what they encountered? It might even make them curious to try harder content. It might make them decide to “git gud.”

A Difficult Conclusion (C wut I did thar?)

I disagree with the idea of adding the option to skip content, skip combat, or skip bosses. I just feel it’s too much of a request for the developers to design their games with the intention of players not playing their games and isn’t ultimately healthy for the industry or the games themselves.

Something about skipping content just doesn’t sit right with me. I know it has no bearing on my experience. I know if someone skips every boss, that won’t impact my experience playing a game. But I do worry about the message it can send to studios and publishers. I worry about people that may buy a game, enable invincibility and play through the easiest difficulty, then blast the game for being too short. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it happens pretty often in MMOs. We get access to flying, skip all combat, complete quests, and then complain there’s not enough to do.

There’s not enough to do because we actively skipped the gameplay that was designed to be experienced! Yet it doesn’t stop people from complaining about it. That carrot on the stick is a powerful tool and game developers often have some understanding of psychology and how to employ it to get players to try “just one more time.” Giving away the cow for free on easy mode will remove any motivation to try a harder difficulty afterwards. There’s simply no reward, so most people will consider the one play through enough and if it was too short, the game may be dismissed as a bad game. This has a very real impact on the developers.

We don’t have cheat codes, Game Genie, Game Shark, or anything like it, but it’s been a part of gaming for just about as long as there have been games. I don’t see anything inherently evil with them still existing (so long as they’re not bleeding into multiplayer as then you’re starting to impact other players’ experience). Most likely, though, I suspect the idea of invincible armor and instant-kill weapons could become more appealing to add as optional DLC. After all, you had to buy a Game Genie separately back in the day, right?

I much prefer the notion of games having multiple levels of difficulty, with easy mode being very approachable for just about anyone who can pick up a controller. I’m even okay with the idea of modernizing the old cheat codes with that DLC or simply a toggle option to be invincible and just play through the game that way if someone so chooses. Even if they’re storming through the game invincible and able to 1-hit kill every enemy, at least they’re exploring the levels, seeing the enemies, and even experiencing the bosses along with the story more than outright skipping it.

While I may disagree with John Walker on a “skip boss” button, I can certainly understand why multiple difficulties to welcome a larger variety of player skills is admirable. I love video games and I want more people to enjoy them and love them as well, even if they aren’t as good as I am when playing them. I don’t think the multiple difficulties or removal of challenge should be demanded or pressured, but if developers want to explore these options, they should be free to do so.

After all, they’re creating the games. So long as they’re creating them the way they want to, and not because they feel they have to, I’d want to see gamers support them in spirit, if not necessarily with their wallet. Let them make what they want and let everyone voice their opinions on what they’d like to see, but don’t expect all developers to implement all ideas.

Journalists, if a developer doesn’t have a more accessible easy mode or skip boss option, don’t attack them for it. No one has to buy it.

Gamers, if a developer does have a more accessible easy mode or even a skip boss option, don’t attack them for it. No one has to buy it.

Sorry this is such a long article, but there was just a lot to unpack on this topic. If you disagree with me, that’s perfectly fine as this is just my opinion. If you want me to hear your opinion, leave a comment and let’s discuss it!

2017
10/04
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Opinion
Video Games
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Dear Escapist: Know Why The “Gamers” Image Isn’t Dead?

This week, The Escapist published an article with a strange double headline. The page’s tab header reads “The “Gamers” Image is Dead and We Should Bury It” while the article headline itself reads “”Gamers” Are Still Dead Y’all.”

Taylor Hidalgo starts off saying that gaming is alive and well, but “the basement-dwelling Mountain Dew goblin teenager stereotype who screams at his mother for “interrupting” his boob-modded Call of Duty match to give him his pizza rolls image others have of gamers is still very troublesome. It’s an image we need to resist.” So is this image dead and we should bury it or is the image alive and we should resist it? Which is it?

And for that matter, an image we need to resist? It’s an image that games journalists have been pushing as the primary representation of gamers for the past 3 to 5 years, if not  longer. If the gaming community is supposed to present a better image, doesn’t that include the journalists who are supposed to have their fingers on the pulse of the gaming community? Countless gamers have voiced their stories of how gaming got them through depression, stopped them from committing suicide, helped them through the awkward period of being a social outcast in school, or how they became more sociable through socializing with their online friends while gaming.

Instead, they feature article after article about the worst they can find about gamers. They push a single side of gaming communities: the very one Hidalgo says is troublesome. Meanwhile, writers like Liana Kerzner are ignored, their voice unwelcome in publications. Liana is one of the few I find on Twitter who frequently speaks on the positives of gaming culture and the accepting attitude the community has offered her through the years.

There are countless critics of games and the gaming community, yet so few first and foremost describe themselves as video game historian and preservationist Patrick Scott Patterson does: as an advocate for video games. Rather than miring himself in the negatives, Patterson most often focuses on the positives or, more often, the facts of industry history.

Journalists refuse to cover these positive aspects of the gaming community. It runs contrary to the basement dwelling goblin they so frequently push as the de facto image of gamers. It also doesn’t earn outrage clicks and drive traffic like controversial articles do, which may explain why inflammatory headlines and accusatory articles are more commonly seen.

A Problem With Vocabulary

Mario's_Early_Years_Fun_With_Letters-title

I find it ironic that Hidalgo talks about a problem with vocabulary as part of the struggle when journalists, supposedly wordsmiths themselves, seem incapable of considering their audience when choosing their language for articles.

Just this week, Ubisoft announced there would be a mode in Assassin’s Creed: Origins that had no story and no combat. The purpose of this mode was to allow players to simply wander the game world and take tours of historical information to learn about ancient Egypt’s places, cultural traditions, beliefs, and practices. It’s essentially an interactive museum mode, which Assassin’s Creed has always had to some extent. Being able to read entries about various locations has always been in the series, this just removes interruptions for players to focus on that if they choose. It’s an optional mode and one I think could prove interesting after completing the story or, for some, to explore before the story or even separate from the story entirely.

However, articles are presenting it as if Ubisoft is exploring the idea of Assassin’s Creed being “fun without the murder,” as though the series may shift towards a model that removes combat entirely. Nothing I’ve seen from Ubisoft’s quotes or Ubisoft employee tweets suggests anything of the sort, yet journalists choose language that heavily leans that direction.

I have seen a lot of gamers give knee jerk reactions to these headlines, thinking the game is being dumbed down, everything that makes the series what it is (assassin’s gonna assassinate, after all) will be removed. I roll my eyes at these comments and point out it’s an optional mode that just removes the triggers for combat. It likely took no time to implement and alters nothing of the game’s basic premise. I suggest they consider it more of an add on mode rather than exploring a way to alter the series as a whole. I get far fewer responses still raging about Ubisoft ruining the game when discussing it as such.

I understand why gamers are on edge. The games media falls over itself to praise games like Gone Home, which gamers refer to as “walking simulators” since there’s no game play beyond wandering around and clicking on things. If you read a few articles, games journalists make it sound like these games are the future and should be replacing violent action games as a whole. The journalists will quickly turn around and say they never suggest games shouldn’t be made, but it’s simply not true. It’s been stated often and repeatedly that games not meeting with the approval of progressive politics should basically dwindle until they’re a footnote in gaming history. Again, ironic that journalists are so unaware of the language, tone, and vocabulary they use that they can’t understand defensive responses from the very audience they write for.

And if gamers are supposed to speak to others without using language that a non-gamer wouldn’t understand, why are journalists constantly writing articles with strings of academia phrases that only make sense to third year gender studies majors? Why use a five dollar word when a ten cent word will suffice? Telling a gamer to approach a game from the critical lens of feminist analysis in regards to cishet heteronormative standards with white colonial influences is just as fruitless as Hidalgo’s examples of “frame perfect links, expert jungling, getting mana screwed, pocket Mercy, No Mercy runs, TAS runs.”

The ignorance of the media in casting accusations while turning away from any mirror directed at themselves astounds me and only succeeds in these writers and their audience talking past each other rather than with one another. While we’re on the topic of using words wisely, why attack “Gamers” as an identity, group, or image when you want to challenge the “public stereotypes of Gamers” instead? That’s something everyone should be able to get behind; Gamers are collectively so much more than that.

Are Journalists Out of Touch? No, It’s the Culture That Is Wrong.

Out of touch

The next part of the struggle, Hidalgo says, is gaming culture itself.

“It’s hard to push into games from the outside because there is resistance to the concept of glossaries. More pertinently, those who need them.” Yet new players have entered Final Fantasy XIV with no knowledge of the series and/or no knowledge of MMOs in general and praise the welcoming community in the game. Forums frequently have beginner guides with, yes, glossaries for those who would need them, not just for MMOs, and there are all sorts of wikis online now generated by the communities.

With gaming growing into the largest entertainment industry, reaching across multiple age groups and a vast array of new players from every age, journalists are surprisingly blind to opportunities before them. If new players, young and old, are coming in unaware of the different cultures within gaming (and there is not actually one single “gaming culture” as RPG communities differ from FPS communities differ from MMO communities differ from fighting communities), why are the games sites not growing a subdivision for these new players? Articles written expressly for people who are picking up a controller or the mouse and keyboard for the first time, regardless of age?

Remember I mentioned Patrick Scott Patterson being an advocate for games? He’s written for a games publication you’ve probably never heard of: Little Player, a bi-monthly magazine for kids. This is a publication specifically for kids, reviewing games rated EC, E, and E10+. I’ve not seen the big sites mention this publication, nor have they emulated it.

Rather than demanding gamers accept that all games need to be designed for all skill levels, why not write for different skill levels? The recent Dean Takashi Cuphead kerfuffle made me realize that if my mother decided to try a video game, where could I tell her to go read about them that would make sense to her? Why are there not journalists specializing in articles aimed at children, aimed at adults, or even seniors who are interested in games for the first time? This idea hit me more profoundly just recently as a friend and I replayed Power Rangers for SNES. It’s not a hard game, but it felt like it was a beat ’em up aimed at kids and people who never played that type of game before. It was a perfect suggestion to play for someone new to the genre before they step up to Final Fight or Double Dragon and then on to Battletoads, for instance.

Now, granted, I do agree that modern games do better with their multiple difficulties than having entire games for different skill levels and I think gamers who despise these options are doing a disservice to their community. If someone isn’t good at video games, but enjoy playing on easy mode in the solitude of their own home, it’s not hurting anyone. If they play easy mode in a fighting game until they are completing entire play throughs perfectly, then start normal to do the same and work their way up to the hardest difficulty, how is that bad? If anything, it’s training to “git gud.” But where are the articles aimed at introducing the different difficulties and advising these new players on which is best for them? Not just commenting on them, in a review, but divisions of sites dedicated to new players diving into the differences of these games, their difficulty level, and introducing them to learning the ins and outs?

If the gaming community accepts different subforums for different aspects of their games, do journalists really think gamers wouldn’t accept a wider variety of skill levels being reported to if the reporting sites were divided into similar categories?

Hidalgo goes on to say that things “that widen games to audiences formerly in the outside of the culture read as some kind of betrayal. Those who feel passionately about games seem to want to keep them close, locked into a familiar shape with familiar communities.” Hidalgo doesn’t give specific examples, so it’s hard to say what gamers are resisting without wild speculation. However, Gamers frequently complain about retreading the same thing on an annual basis and go nuts for innovative new presentations of familiar ideas or fresh new IPs as a whole. Valiant Hearts has a 10/10 on Steam. Okami is still beloved 11 years after its release and the HD PS4 release has many gamers excited to revisit the artistic world. Journey was praised by gamers and press alike.

There’s Room Enough For Us All

The problem we run into is that journalists so frequently push these things that “widen games to audiences formerly in the outside” as replacements for games that are enjoyed rather than new additions to the landscape. You don’t see movie critics saying art films should outright replace the summer blockbuster. And much like Hollywood, the games industry needs their mindless blockbuster tentpoles as well.

If Ubisoft didn’t have revenue flowing in from the annual Assassin’s Creed or Tom Clancy SomethingOrOther blockbuster, would we have gotten Valiant Hearts or Child of Light from that same studio? Journalists don’t seem to acknowledge the concept and as such, I feel a lot of gamers overlook the same when they also complain about “yet another Call of Duty” or the like.

I keep repeating myself that there’s irony in this article and journalists refuse to look in the same mirror they want gamers to gaze upon. But once more, if journalists want gamers to settle down and let new arrivals to the community enjoy games that aren’t violent or take new approaches to gameplay, those same journalists must also allow some gamers to enjoy their boob modded Call of Duty games without accusing them of hating real women.

In-Groups and Out-Groups

Hidalgo goes further in critiquing the “culture that feels those already playing belong to the in-group, and out-groups trying to join either need to fold themselves quietly, or leave. That games don’t belong to anyone but those already in.” This is human nature and something you’re going to find within every community.

Should one expect to enter an Amish community and want them to start using smart phones to text you when the next community event is?
Should one expect to enter the reggae scene and want more heavy metal guitar riffs in the music?
Should one expect to join a romance novel book club and expect to focus on Japanese shonen light novels?
Should one expect to join a local Japanese Cultural Society and expect more focus on tribal cultures in the rain forests of South America?

No, to join any of these communities, the out-groups are expected to fold into the community, to understand the community before injecting new ideas. Why should gamers not expect newcomers to enter and integrate before raising questions and considering change?

And that strikes at the heart of a lot of the problems. Gamers are being told they’re toxic quite often by people who again and again indicate they have no understanding of the community they’re criticizing in the first place. This causes that community to push back, perhaps sometimes too harshly, which leads to accusations of aggressiveness.

Sexism in the Community

Hidalgo gets a little more specific with the problems in the gaming community, claiming women “have a hard time pushing into game communities without the expectation to just tolerate the sexism already present.” I’ve been playing video games since I was in kindergarten and I’ve never been exposed to sexism that women would have to accept. I started playing MMOs with EverQuest, joining a guild that was run by a woman. I played World of Warcraft for ten years where the guilds I was in had single women, married women (their partners often playing), with raids having a mix of men and women and some guilds and raids also run by a female guild leader. In college, my friends and I hung out with one of the biggest gaming nerds you’d ever meet and nobody thought her odd for it. I’ve been to gaming conventions and gaming meet ups where nobody ever said one word about women in a negative way. Most gamer guys want, more than anything, a partner that shares their love of the hobby, so why would they actively want women out of gaming?

I’m not going to claim there is absolutely no sexism in gaming and just because I’ve not seen it directed at the women I’ve played alongside doesn’t mean other women haven’t experienced it, or even the women I’ve played alongside haven’t. Women get hit on in games, sometimes far too aggressively, and are even attacked when they reject the person coming on to them. They can be treated as less capable just for being a woman, but again, I’ve not see it happen in all my years online.

Slut, bitch, and other slurs are hurled too often, I’ll agree, but I don’t think it’s fair to treat this as an exclusively gaming culture issue. This is a wider issue with anonymity and a lack of empathy in online interactions. You see it everywhere online, from debates over film to what toppings belong on pizza. Some subset of people take things too far and while the gaming community can take steps to be better than other online examples, it feels like they’re often treated as an outlier rather than an average example of an issue with society online as a whole.

There’s also the fact that people are unnecessarily cruel to men online as well. The same people who will be blatantly sexist towards women are the same types who will be blatantly cruel towards men for any perceived weakness and will attack what they think is most vulnerable, whether it be race, orientation, or masculinity. I’ll see gaming journalists on Twitter rant about toxic masculinity and men seeing women as sexual conquests turn around and insult men as being “virgin losers.” In doing so, they imply a lack of treating women as sexual conquests makes a man somehow inferior, which seems to feed into the very thing they claim to be against. It’s weird.

Fostering a Positive Community

As for how to address this situation? Attacking gamers as a whole isn’t going to solve anything. Instead, if journalists want to contribute to positive change, they need to be discussing ways developers have encouraged good behavior rather than complaining about bad behavior. This is where developers can take actual action in fostering more positive communities.

Take Final Fantasy XIV, for example. After 10 years of World of Warcraft, the community was often lamenting to being more and more toxic. This happened as the game became more and more anonymous. Queueing for dungeons with people from other servers you’ll never see again for the rest of your gaming life removed any concern for behavior where server reputation previously carried some weight. Players who were new to a dungeon often stayed silent and just hoped nobody noticed they had no idea what they were doing, even after Blizzard added a dungeon guide in the game. If you screwed up, you expected to be assailed with raging accusations of poor performance, being a “shit player” and the like.

Moving over to Final Fantasy XIV, the same cross-server anonymity exists, yet the behavior is largely praised by new players as a completely different experience. The FFXIV dev team have implemented positive reinforcement. When a player has never run content before, the group is notified someone is new to the dungeon. I most often see happy responses because running someone through their first time gives veteran players bonuses for completing it. Players are often more patient to explain fight mechanics as a result and I frequently see reassurances not to be too worried. I’ll even see players give tips to new players about roles the veteran is not currently playing, but have played at length otherwise. At the end of dungeons, players can give commendations to players who did well or were helpful.

Likewise, harassment is dealt with harshly in FFXIV, with cancelled and banned accounts being a real possibility for repeat offenders, but I personally think the various subtle positive reinforcements have more impact.

I’ve been in 8 man dungeons where my friends and I made up 5 of the 8 and thus had majority control. We had one new player, a healer who wasn’t new, and a DPS rounding out the group. The DPS was constantly bad mouthing the new player for mistakes. We tried to ease the tension by talking, but they remained aggressive, so as the majority we kicked them. The healer, who we didn’t know, immediately thanked the group for it, even though they weren’t the target of the abuse. We got a replacement, explained the situation and continued to try the fight. We got closer, but spent our entire 90 minutes attempting and failing to win. In the end, everyone was still happy with the progress and the new player was very grateful for the tips and for sticking with it. We disbanded thinking they had a solid understanding of the fight and would be able to clear it in the future. I’ve seen similar situations where I didn’t have the majority vote being with friends, but the player screwing up stayed and the player bad mouthing them was kicked out of the group.

You’d never believe this sort of behavior happened in any gaming community if you listened to the articles online.

I’m not personally familiar with it, but League of Legends implemented a “Player Reform” system and, while its success and methods can of course be debated, it’s an example of developers looking at how to foster improved experiences for the community rather than simply saying the community is bad. Blizzard has been evaluating what it can do with Overwatch to foster a more positive community as well.

Racism in the Community

Moving from a focus on women, Hidalgo notes that “Minorities who speak against the overwhelming lack of representation are just called racists themselves for failing to accept that whiteness is the default, and any deviation is somehow confrontationally political where overwhelming underrepresentation isn’t.” Once again, writers and readers speak past one another rather than with one another. Many gamers welcome minority characters and a wider diversity of protagonists, but the critics who propose such things so frequently do so by insisting existing characters should be erased, removed from future games, and replaced with the new minority.

Or worse, that the existing character is somehow bad because they’re white. Their tone indicates that simply being white is itself wrong. Any time a game doesn’t have a minority protagonist, it’s “problematic” and entire articles are dedicated to the grave injustice rather than simply noting potential ways a change in protagonist might affect story possibilities or would have fit the period better. The atmosphere has become so confrontational and so bullish that many gamers have become skeptical of attempts by developers as pandering for journalist approval rather than deeply developing these characters, which only makes things worse!

Gamers do have a point, though: there’s a difference between representation and token representation. I also have an issue with utilizing minority protagonists only for said protagonist to be supported by a bevvy of stereotypes, such as black characters being commonly joined with hip hop soundtracks or typical “gangsta” costume design and such. A young black man can’t be into heavy metal or classical music, or dress in comic book t-shirts rather than sports jerseys?

Yes, some people take their resistance to these characters too far and some are likely genuine racists themselves. You’ll find bad apples in every orchard, but that doesn’t mean they’re the standard. Again, journalists tend to focus and report exclusively on negativity and ignore any positivity from gamers.

Fantasization of Sexual Femininity and Toxic Masculinity

The last point, however: “Fantasization of sexual femininity and toxic masculinity is the expected normal, and any push for alternatives is seen as invasive and unwanted.” Without getting sidetracked again about vocabulary and how these phrases come across more like buzzwords now days, the problem, Mr. Hidalgo, is many gamers don’t accept the “toxic masculinity” academia that you’re claiming to be a negative in the first place. I’ve seen claims that a male character killing demons is violent power fantasy and thus toxic masculinity itself. But I’m not sure how would one prefer bloodthirsty demons hellbent on the ruination of all mankind be dealt with if not a bladed weapon to the horned skull.

As for fantasization of sexual femininity, well, that’s not present in every game on the market either. Some are overly exaggerated and ridiculous and even gamers laugh about the silliness of some of them. But they also don’t agree that it’s harmful to society and no studies have conclusively suggested they’re wrong. I won’t talk in depth about this aspect because it would probably take at least another 10,000 words as it first requires agreeing on what constitutes negative sexualization of femininity versus acceptable sexualization. Again, we dive into vocabulary that’s not exactly aimed at the average reader, so I’ll leave this to the previously mentioned Liana Kerzner’s upcoming Lady Bits video series (Disclosure: I backed the series on Kickstarter as I’m interested to see what comes from Kerzner’s approach to the subject topics).

Game Designers Can’t Be Open With The Community

I will agree when Hidalgo says “Honesty about design is read as manipulation, and developers are punished for getting out of line or designing games in “wrong” ways,” though. There are vocal people in the gaming community who have a hair trigger to attack developers and designers and while I find them foolish, I struggle to completely blow them off and blame them for being defensive when journalists and even some developers have actively bred a hostile environment against them. A lot of the time, what Hidalgo may see as aggressive punishment, I see as lashing out over being hurt. “Hurt people hurt people” as the saying goes.

The claims Hidalgo quotes from Charles Randall state that game developers would share everything gamers want to know about game design if not for the toxic community has a grain of truth with a smear of bullcrap. As Liana Kerzner has noted, developers have to be careful what they say because if they dare say something interesting, it becomes controversial, and PR reps are going to keep them gagged from talking whatsoever. The smallest statement can be dragged up years later to smear a developer to force them to make public apologies at what should be a great moment for them, their team, and their career. It’s not just the gamers that developers have to be careful around, it’s the press that’s eager to tear them apart for saying anything not deemed progressively correct.

The Games, They’re A Changin’

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Hidalgo that gamers insist games must continue to be the same as they have been for 40 years. The fact that games have grown and spread as much as they have, to a wide range of diverse types of games, proves this is simply inaccurate. What many gamers are opposed to is that the way games are, and have been, are inherently bad and that they, as people, are somehow inferior human beings and inherently bad for enjoying these games.

While many critics will claim “nobody wants to take away your games,” they turn around and write article after article about how these games are harmful and need to be forever abandoned. Journalists are not approaching gamers in good faith by simply covering new games with different ideas so much as detailing why games that are loved are “problematic” and need to be changed. If developers and journalists would come to the community from the stance that there’s room for both kinds of games, for all kinds of games, a lot of animosity would calm down with time. Then criticism of specifics can be addressed without the overall paranoia. Note, I say “with time.” It’s going to take some time for games press to rebuild a trusting relationship, even if they present an olive branch to the community and start working to build those bridges.

While I can fully agree we need to accept that the criticism about the sexuality built into games like Bayonetta or Lollypop Chainsaw is valid, I fully disagree that “No one is saying these games are inherently bad” because that’s precisely what the journalist-praised Feminist Frequency videos repeatedly stated, as well as explicitly stating there should be no games styled and developed in this way in current year. It doesn’t help that in criticizing games like Bayonetta, or Ivy from Soul Calibur, the critics demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what the game’s story and presentation is commenting on. Bayonetta and Ivy are equally decried as sexual objectifications by feminists while simultaneously praised as strong examples of empowerment flaunting female sexuality by….yes, feminists. If different schools of thought among feminists don’t agree, how can we expect gamers who aren’t steeped in feminist theory to accept that these characters are unquestionably “problematic?”

As for the “skimpy nuns, bikini-clad martial artists, exposed-breast ninjas, and The Witcher sex scenes” creating an image that the games community doesn’t resist, I ask why should the games community resist the image? The games community isn’t presenting this image as representative of them as a whole, YOU ARE. Journalists focus on specific games, or even single scenes in a single level of a game, and treat them as representative of every single game on the market. Not to mention the double standards of sex scenes with female companions being decried as “virtual porn” while sex scenes with male companions get articles gushing over which guy is the hottest.

You don’t see the entire film industry labeled as toxic because questionable pornography exists. You don’t even see the film industry condemned by a majority of publications as promoting toxic masculinity because summer action movies simply exist. Entertainment Weekly hasn’t labeled all of HBO’s programming toxic because of one scene from Game of Thrones. Instead, writers in that medium acknowledge there are a wide range of movies. Why can’t writers in the games media do the same?

A Look In the Mirror

magic mirror.png

Mirror, mirror, I’m not sexist. But can I prove it to a journalist?

One thing I can fully agree with Hidalgo on is “Dispelling the toxicity does mean taking a hard look in the mirror.” But that’s something the journalists who want to lay the entire blame squarely, and exclusively, on the gamers have refused to do for at least the last five years. Actively ignoring positive communities and gamers within them does nothing to help present the maturity within the community as a whole. As a result, I don’t see the gaming community as responding with aggressiveness, but defensiveness.

Games journalists’, and their sites’, hands are not clean and until you accept that you and yours are fostering a hostile atmosphere with the gaming community, there’s not going to be an end to the unproductive devisiveness. Journalists have to start coming to their articles with a mentality of discussion rather than one of aggression towards their readers. If you stop attacking them, they may stop counterattacking in defense of themselves and their hobby. Once these gamers feel they can stop looking over their shoulder, they can start to look in the mirror at themselves as well.

Let’s Bury The “Gamers” Stereotypes

 

Yes, the “worst aspects of the “gamer” image need to be universally examined and challenged,” but they need to be examined and challenged in good faith, not blanket statements and accusations stated as fact from on high. And while these “challenges need to be accepted as a part of the culture,” the press needs to report on valid criticism of the criticism as well, accepting that counter points to these challenges are just as valid as the challenge itself.

Where Taylor Hidalgo hits the nail squarely on the head is this:

“The parts of the gaming community that encourage furious dissent aren’t being evaluated enough, and that’s keeping communities at their most angry. This culture needs to start fighting an image it’s never fully earned but still has. That image is holding gaming to an image that has been in the deathbed for years, but needs to finally by buried.

Games have already changed, and will continue to change, and holding onto an aggression-centric culture isn’t helping.”

He’s totally right. The parts of the gaming community that encourage furious dissent aren’t being evaluated enough – because their arguments and their points of view aren’t evaluated at all. We’re at a point where criticism is viewed as the truth and any opposing view to that criticism is invalid. The idea that “the truth is somewhere in the middle” has become a phrase of derision, as if it’s somehow a vile concept to explore.

What’s most frustrating about this article’s conclusion is that this image of the angry white straight male gamer is INDEED an image it’s never fully earned but still has, and one that the gaming community has tried to fight for years. The problem is their most high ranking allies, the gaming press, turned against them and perpetuate that image as the only representation of gamers. How can gamers fight this image when the only exposure from the media is to twist everything into this image? How can this image die if it keeps being resurrected over every possible complaint?

Necro.jpg

Stop necro’ing the stereotype, guys!

If we’re going to finally bury the image of gamers as a “basement-dwelling Mountain Dew goblin teenager stereotype who screams at his mother for “interrupting” his boob-modded Call of Duty match to give him his pizza rolls,” then the gaming press has to stop making that the only image they claim exists. The gaming community has raised hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for various charities through the years. They go out of their way to help other games. They are contributing members of society. But if the gaming press continues to focus exclusively on negative stories, weaving negative narratives, and depicting gamers as hateful, nothing the community does is going to change that misconception.

The way gamers have been treated the past few years makes me think of a line from Zootopia: “If the world’s only going to see a fox as shifty and untrustworthy, there’s no point being anything else.” If the gaming press is only going to portray gamers as mean and vicious people, how many gamers have given up on trying to be anything else? The press has, in a way, engaged in psychological warfare against gamers and I’ve seen more than a few admit on Twitter that they’ve essentially given up on trying to prove they’re better.

zootopia

And that’s a pretty sad thought.

If the gaming press wants the community to be better, they’re going to have to accept that they truly are better than their worst. The gaming press has to stop judging gamers by the worst actions of some while judging themselves only by their own best intentions. Your readers aren’t evil. The majority are not sexist or racist or bigoted.

If you want them to show you their best, give them the chance to be their best. Spotlight them at their best. The more you call them monsters, the more you encourage them to give up and accept the role along with the title.

2017
09/30
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
GamerGate
Online Culture
Opinion
Video Games
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3 comments

Suggestion for New Ubisoft Game: Marvel’s Daredevil

I have to admit the Assassin’s Creed series is a guilty pleasure for me. I didn’t love the first one, but it was enjoyable and I could see potential to build on what it started. Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood were a fantastic improvement and Revelations was a satisfying conclusion to Ezio’s trilogy. Assassin’s Creed III offered a fun addition in ship combat, which took center stage with Black Flag. I didn’t play Rogue and I picked up Unity and Syndicate when they were cheap, but I didn’t get around to them for a long time.

The past few weeks, I finally started playing Unity. More than a year after release, the bugs are mostly smoothed out, so I had a fairly standard play through in that regard. Overall, I wasn’t as pulled into the story now that the meta narrative has been largely abandoned and we’re just loosely still concerned with modern day conflict. Arno didn’t grab my interest at first, either. Then, as I upgraded gear and started looking at color options I unlocked, something occurred to me.

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With the Prowler outfit dyed red, I’m basically playing Assassin’s Creed: Daredevil. I can be le diable de Paris, the devil of Paris, rather than Hell’s Kitchen. Oddly enough, this simple thing increased my interest in the game. Switching from a sword to a mace, a non-lethal weapon, completed the motif. I could have played the DLC and unlocked a cane club as well, which would have been better, but I wasn’t that committed to the idea.

Medieval mace

Don’t ask me how smashing this over someone’s skull is non-lethal, though.

 

The leather of the Prowler set is absolutely perfect in the red. In the light, it’s the bright red Daredevil is known for. In shadows, it’s a dark red and can almost look black at times. In some shading, it even looks a bit brown, like dried blood. It’s exactly what I imagine Daredevil’s costume is really meant to look like, the right shade of red and the right material to go from red to concealed in the shadow.

As I progressed through the game, Arno’s relationship and partnership with Elise even gave me a slight Matt / Elektra vibe with the two being close, then driven apart by differing loyalties, enemies due to those loyalties, then ultimately teaming up again.

Running across roof tops, parkouring around the city, leaping across streets with impossible bounds to grab onto a ledge and climb up to perch upon the gothic architecture of a Catholic church, even the series’ Eagle Vision akin to Matt’s sonar/radar ability; it all fit so well, I began to realize something…

The Assassin’s Creed engine, at its fundamental base, is perfect for a full fledged Daredevil open world game!

Daredevil

Recently, it’s no secret Disney/Marvel has begun to license out its properties to reliable studios to work on rather than making games in house. Square Enix is working on an Avengers game while Insomniac is developing a Spider-Man game.

The good news here is Insomniac is being allowed freedom to do their own world, or a more comic based world, for Spidey, so a Daredevil game could use a gamut of comic book villains and could stay more true rather than being limited to the more gritty and grounded Netflix MCU world.

If Ubisoft were to gain said license and make such a game, the Assassin’s Creed engine and gameplay would be near perfect for implementing the radar and horn-head’s method of traversing the city with just a few tweaks to allow for his grappling hook for the taller buildings and greater distance between city blocks. Combat would work better with a bit of Rocksteady’s Arkham series influencing it, giving Daredevil the ninja martial arts style and better fluidity of tackling a dozen enemies at a time.

I’d love to see a few opportunities woven into the story to delve into the Murdock side of Daredevil with court cases to be able to play through as well. Not all would dig this, so perhaps optional side missions to access.

The parkour of Assassin’s Creed, the Arkham-esque combat, with just a hint of both series’ crime solving, plus some of Spider-Man’s web swinging to translate into the briefer grappling for Daredevil. He doesn’t have the full web swinging of Spidey, nor the grapple and glide of Batman, so it would have to be adjusted to work for DD. The overall idea certainly intrigues me and I’d love to see Ubisoft tackle the project.

Anyone else think Assassin’s Creed has the right elements for the foundations of a Daredevil game?

 

2017
09/12
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Playstation
PS4
Video Games
XBox
XBox One
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