Our dysfunctional gaming culture

With E3 come and gone, I’ve been thinking (again) about problems with gaming journalism, the internet, and gamers, and how these three things come together to create a toxic brew when it comes to events like E3. Just to warn you, I don’t have any answers. I’m still trying to quantify the problem of why where’s so much negativity and downright meanness surrounding gaming on the internet.

Factor 1: There are many gaming news websites out there, and they all tend to have pretty much the same news. So what differentiates site A from site B is often who gets the scoop. So there’s a tremendous pressure on the bloggers and journos of these sites to get new release info first. If the PR department of a game developer won’t come clean, maybe some of the poor schlubs in the trenches will spill something. Leaks abound. Rumors profligate. By the time the actual event comes around, there’s a cloud of mis-information and unrealistic expectations just waiting to rain on everyone’s parade.

Factor 2: The gamers don’t just want word that a game is coming out. They demand gameplay. If a game is announced but the developer has no gameplay to show, the announcement is met with derision and scorn. In the meanwhile, the rumors have come to be accepted as fact in the weeks running up to the event. When they turn out not to be true (i.e. no Kid Icarus for the Nintendo Wii at this year’s E3), the gamers get disappointed and start bad mouthing the parent company.

Factor 3: The publishers end up between a rock and a hard place. If they make an announcement with no gameplay ready, the gamers jeer at them and talk about what a terrible showing the publisher had. If they make an announcement and show gameplay that is so early that it isn’t as good as it should be, the gamers immediately write the game off as “sucking” and that word of mouth spreads like mad. If the developers make no announcement at all, the gamers (and probably the shareholders!) get pissed because there’s nothing new on the way. Gamers won’t take in on faith that there are teams working hard on games that haven’t been announced.

So E3 begins in a whirlwind of hype and ends in disgruntlement. I’m reading on various sites now about what a disappointing E3 it was. And yet I watched G4’s coverage, and I’ve been reading a bunch of blogs, and downloading lots of footage, and there are a -ton- of great games coming our way. I know I’ll certainly have to make some hard decisions on which ones I buy and which ones I’ll have to pass on due to financial considerations. I won’t be able to afford all the games I’m interested in.

Like I said, I have no answers. I just think its a shame that gamers have such high expectations that they never seem to wind up happy after an event like this.

Secret of Wii’s success revealed

Engadget has a post of NPD numbers revealing that the Nintendo Wii has overtaken the XBox 360 in US sales (NPD: Wii usurps Xbox 360 as best selling US game console, pulling away )

From the report:

NPD Group reports more than 666,000 Wii consoles were sold in June compared to 405,500 PlayStation 3s and 219,800 Xbox 360s.

666,000 Wiis, eh? An interesting number, to be sure.

No reports on whether the Wiimote actually sucks out your soul.

Get Horrible while you can

So Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog has launched at http://www.drhorrible.com/

Thus far, 2 out of 3 parts are posted, with the third going live Saturday the 19th. They’ll only be online for free until the 20th, after which you’ll be able to buy them from iTunes or order a DVD (details to be released at Comiccon).

So far, absolutely hysterical. I’ll definitely be getting the DVD version.

Amazon and Sony in streaming media deal?

The New York Times has a piece on Amazon’s new TV & movie streaming service (to replace Amazon Unbox): Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows.

Of note is this quote: It has struck a deal with Sony Electronics to place its Internet video store on the Sony Bravia line of high-definition TVs..

So two days after Sony announces their TV & Movie download service for the Playstation 3, Amazon announces a partnership of sorts with Sony Consumer Electronics for a competing service.

Granted the audience for Bravia TVs is much broader than that of the PS3, but you can access the PSN store from a computer. Why not stream that content to a Bravia TV?

It just seems like Sony is working against itself yet again.

The Heartbreaking story of Seymour Papert

Well worth a read. Thanks to Wohali for sharing.

In search of a beautiful mind – The Boston Globe

Couple of quotes:

Seymour Papert is tinkering with a robotic,
computer-controlled turtle in The Learning Barn, the rustic,
light-filled laboratory where he developed and refined many of his
ideas…

Nineteen months ago he was struck by a motorbike in Hanoi and suffered
a brain injury so severe he was comatose for a month and couldn’t walk,
talk, or read. The man widely considered to be the most important
living thinker about the way children learn is struggling with an
unreliable memory and an uncertain grip on words.

E3 ’08: Round 3: Sony

The last of the Big 3 Conferences was, in my opinion, the best of the 3 for hardcore gamers, though some of my friends disagree and feel like Microsoft’s was the best. Jack Tretton took the stage and did his usual self-deprecating opening, talking about how nervous he was and how doing the press conferences takes about 2 years off his life. I actually like Tretton more than MS’s Mattrick or Nintendo’s Dunaway or Fils-Amie. He stumbles once in a while but at least he sounds a bit more natural. Mattrick in particular was so wooden and monotone it was like he was channeling Ben Stein or something.

Sony pushed Resistance 2 pretty hard, but we already knew about that. They talked up the PS2 and PSP as well as the PS3, of course. When it came time to talk facts and figures, instead of using the same old power point slides, they used a LittleBigPlanet level with Sackboy running through it, triggering bar graphs to grow from the ground and labels to descend from the sky. It was very entertaining and made me even more anxious to get my hands on the game (coming October of this year).

They oddly didn’t spend a lot of time on Home, showing one brief video of it. Announced a new PS2 Bundle, of all things, coming out this fall. PS2 is apparently the gateway drug to PS3, though we all know every kid in the world wants a Wii and/or DS so they can play Pokemon games.

Their video download service was announced and in fact went live later on in the day. You can buy or rent standard def movies and tv shows, and you can rent HD movies. You can move content from the PS3 to your PSP to take with you. A nice showing but wow, are they ever way behind MS and Apple in this area.

On the hardware front, they announced that the basic PS3 was getting a hard drive upgrade, to 80 gigs. It is still not clear to me if they’re going to eliminate the current 80 gig model (with its additional USB ports, media slots, and most importantly, backwards compatibility) or not. No price change for the doubling of the hard drive size, and so the 80 gig PS3 costs the same as the new 60 gig XBox 360 + XBox Live Gold membership for a year. A nice marketing bullet point anyway..

Beyond that, it was all about the games. 130 games are coming out for the PS2 this year! I guess they must still be selling. Twenty-three exclusive PS3 titles, with 10 on blu-ray and 13 on PSN. Newly announced games for the PSP were Resistance Retribution (3rd person shooter) and Valkyrie Chronicles (rpg). It isn’t clear if the latter is a port of the PS3 or a side-story or what.

New games revealed on the PS3 were Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty, a PSN game that will go for $15 and be out this summer. It looked as good as the blu-ray Ratchet & Clank, it’s just a smaller, shorter game. The PC MMO DC Universe will be coming to the PS3. The MMO space is one niche that Sony has a chance of owning if they put some effort into it. So now we have 3 MMOs headed to the PS3: DC Universe, The Agency and FreeRealms.

God of War III for the PS3 was made official and technically was a ‘new reveal’ but even Tretton kind of downplayed it since it was so obvious it was coming. The ‘blockbuster’ reveal was, apparently, Zipper Interactive’s MAG (Massive Action Game). Let’s hope that’s a placeholder name! 256-players in a modern combat shooter. Unfortunately, my DVR cut out before I could see any footage! Ah, the foibles of being on the outside looking in.

To me, Sony had the best press conference in terms of delivering info about new games to hardcore gamers. I’ll admit that ‘best’ is pretty subjective. MS’s poaching of FF XIII was bigger news than anything Sony had to tell us, for sure. And their Netflix thing was a big non-gaming announcement. But they didn’t show any new games.

I’ll back up my statement with the pretty superfluous observation that there was more applauding and crowd enthusiasm shown at the Sony press conference than there was at Nintendo and Microsoft conferences combined.

All that said, Sony did nothing to offset MS’s lead. I don’t think they’re going to be able to catch up, and if they continue with their “We don’t buy exclusives” party line, Microsoft will keep cherry picking IPs away from Sony.

E3 ’08: Round 2: Nintendo

Wow, I’m already falling so far behind! By the time I got home and watched all of yesterday’s press conference recordings (via G4), there was no time left to write posts!

Luckily Nintendo announced very little for hardcore gamers, so there’s not a whole lot to say. You can’t really blame Nintendo: they’re making money hand over fist with no sign of that ending. Why rock the boat? Cammie Dunaway, who replaced Perrin Kalpan, played up the ‘soccer mom’ schtick to a point of creepiness, with a pasted on smile that rivaled The Joker’s. She even declared that no one was going to remove that smile from her face.

Lots of number and figures, lots of emphasis on the DS and how Nintendo (and 3rd parties, honestly) is pushing it beyond gaming. I guess there’s a ball park in Seattle where you can use your DS to check scores of other games, data on the game you’re currently playing and so forth. They’re trying to extent that kind of PDA/internet tablet to airports and other places. Trying to get you to carry your DS everywhere.

On the games front, they had Shaun White demo (a bit, Dunaway actually played more than White did) Shaun White Snowboarding, which uses the Balance Board. They announced Animal Crossing Wii for this holiday season, complete with a microphone which sits on the Sensor Bar and picks up everyone in the room talking, so your room full of players can talk to other rooms full of players.

They announced Wii Music which uses the WiiMote, Nunchuk and Balance Board to let you play air guitar, as well as air drums, air saxaphone, air piano, etc, etc. It was really hard to get a sense of what was going on with this, but at first glance it didn’t look very compelling. But we’ve got a while before it gets into our hands yet, so we’ll see.

The MotionPlus attachment, revealed Monday, will come with (or without) a game pack-in. Wii Sports Resort brings all the fun of a day at the beach to the Wii. Stuff like playing frisbee with your dog, jet skiing and…uh, sword fighting. Sounds like a smart way to get us all to buy one, though. Who didn’t love Wii Sports?

The only big surprise for hardcore gamers was Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, for the Nintendo DS. No gameplay was shown, just a logo. Still, that one came out of nowhere, and was another blow for Sony, who no longer will have the only handheld with a GTA game on it.

All in all, Nintendo’s Press Conference felt like it was more for the bean counters and less for the gamers. But again, they’re selling hardware as fast as they can manufacture it. Why would they mess with that? Clearly hard core gamers aren’t a big concern of theirs.

XBox 360: Do you trust the hardware?

My friend at work came to me and said “Y’know, I was really disappointed that there were no hardware announcements yesterday [at the Microsoft E3 Press Conference]. I really hoped to hear something about the new 60 gig 360, that they’d ironed out the hardware problems or that they were using a smaller die or something.”

Just some background… a while back he had to send his 360 in for repairs. He got really hooked on GTA4 earlier this summer/spring, and was playing it like mad. Then he started to get lockups. 2 red lights. Now he’s afraid to play his 360 because he doesn’t want to totally break it and lose access to all his saved data.

He, like me, would be willing to go out and spend the $350 on a new XBox 360 if he had some sign that the new hardware was more reliable than what he has. He wants to keep his current system running until such time as he can get a new, reliable 360 so he can transfer data from one drive to the other (which he isn’t sure how to do).

But Microsoft has given no indication that the 60 gig 360 is anything more than the old crap-pile 360 hardware with a new, bigger, hard drive.

Hell, I’d buy an Elite if I knew it was going to be more reliable… Microsoft is winning this gaming generation but man, their hardware so far is just garbage. It gets to be a hassle (and expensive, if you’re not blessed with a RROD) sending these things back for repair all the time.

Harmonix can kiss my behind

A long while back I wrote a series of posts comparing Guitar Hero 3 to Rock Band as a newcomer to this style of game. I ended up coming down in favor of Rock Band.

Well now I’m kicking myself. You see, I purchased the games for the PS3 since, y’know, every other time I turn on my XBox 360 the stupid thing breaks. And now Harmonix is repaying my loyalty (and the loyalty of all PS3 owners) by having Rock Band 2 come out as a time-limited XBox 360 Exclusive. Talk about a kick in the teeth.

So now I’ll stop buying add-on songs, and start waiting for Guitar Hero World Tour. I’m pretty interested in its ‘create a song’ feature anyway.

I know its incredibly naive of me, but I always thought of Harmonix as being a company with higher moral values than this. But nope, Microsoft came with a money hat and Harmonix sold PS3 owners out without an apparent second thought.

E3 ’08: Round 1: Microsoft

Microsoft’s Press Conference didn’t have a lot of new announcements for hardcore gamers who spend much time surfing around, but what news they did break really busted Sony in the chops.

First, Fallout 3 will have “exclusive downloadable content” for the XBox 360 and Games For Windows version of the game. PS3 owners will have to do without, same as they’re going to have to do without when the GTA IV DLC comes along.

But the huge news was that Final Fantasy XIII, long assumed to be a PS3 exclusive and a major system seller, will come out for the XBox 360 on the same day as the PS3 version in English-speaking areas (the Japanese version remains a PS3 exclusive).

There are lots of other announcements made of course. Fable 2 is finished. Netflix’s “Watch Now” is coming to XBox Live (for Gold Members). Incredibly cheesy looking avatars are being added because, presumably, of Mii-envy. Lots of “We really want to get some of that casual market that Nintendo is printing cash from” announcements.

Sony needs to pull off a miracle with its press conference tomorrow. As it stands now, as amazing as Little Big Planet looks, I don’t think it, Resistance 2, and Killzone 2 are enough to keep momentum going. And the XBox 720 is only a couple years away.