Microtransactions: The Inherent Failure Of Natal and Move, and More

April 6th, 2010

playstation-move

Why Natal and Playstation Move will Likely Fail?

I really ought to dedicate more writing space to this topic, but it’s actually a very simple argument.

The reason why the Wii and DS are so successful and why Natal and the Playstation Move will likely fail is entirely software related. Let’s use the Wii and DS as a case study. Technology alone does not sell hardware, software does, software which works in unity with hardware. If there is no good software to give meaning to the hardware, then people will think that the hardware is useless. If there was no Brain Age, Nintendogs, Elite Beat Agents or Zelda: Phantom Hourglass then people would still think that the DS is useless, as they originally did before software proved them wrong. The same is true of the Wii. (Although the Wii is still somewhat draped in cynicism because 3^rd parties haven’t stepped up to the plate as they have with the DS).

If it all comes down to the software then what really matters is who is developing games for these things. 1^st party-wise Sony’s Eyetoy studio and Microsoft’s weak internal studios (Rare, most likely will constitute the majority of 1^st party Natal games for Microsoft) can’t compare to Nintendo’s internal divisions. None of the software demonstrated so far has captured the press in the same way Wii Sports or Brain Training.

On the 3^rd party front, if the Wii has had this technology for some years and has a 60+ million install base and is still lacking quality 3^rd party games, then I doubt that many 3^rd party developers will jump to the technoligcally-similar Playstation Move or the unestablished interface of Natal with an initial install base of zero. The logic behind developing softwae for these system is absent. Furthermore, with a far smaller market to attack, the developers that do succeed will initially struggle to make significant gains. It will take several developers producing several killer applications for these accessories to gain sufficient momentum and remain relevant. Keep in mind that several of the major publishers backing Natal-developed games are already claiming that they’ll only be developing smaller, mass market titles, hardly the type of product which will sell on a system with a shooter-centric image.

Software aside, how do we know that the hardware itself will work? There are still doubts over the lag in Natal and processing power required to handle Natal games. The Playstation Move only allows for 2 player games. Will these peripherals be bundled with game system or games? The systems themselves are already more expensive than the Wii, add in an accessory and pack-in game and that price naturally increases. Above all else, assuming that Microsoft, Sony or their 3^rd parties produce fantastic games, the tech works fine and is affordable and retails support the devices, will they be able to market the peripherals effectively? This, is perhaps as challenging as the development of software. How to unlock an audience you’ve never been successful at capture?

It would be quite the monumental feat for either company to successfully meet these all these challenges, so I figure that their chances are pretty slim. The comparison to Nintendo’s phenomenal success is a bit harsh, true, yet similar levels of success, I’d wager, are needed to establish these devices in the market place and keep them going, particularly with competition from two other companies.

In the end I’m just explicating on what everyone already knows “these things will flop without software”.

Judging the Inherent Fun in Controllability

There’s a sort of mental litmus test which I use to evaluate the controllability in games. It’s very simple, and goes something like this: if all the player could do was control the protagonist in an empty space with no distractions, how long would they play for? That is, to what extent is controlling the character fun on its own?

It’s a bit tricky to judge ultimately, because some games feature much more complicated control systems than others, meaning that it’d take longer for someone to exploit one system to its fullest than others, which may in fact be more enjoyable.

For example, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros is obviously the superior title in terms of controllability, however, I could fiddle around with all of Solid Snake’s ability set for maybe up to a quarter of an hour.

In anycase, it’s worth considering this methodology, because I’ve personally found it quite useful.

Gamers Don’t Want Innovation

Gamers aren’t genuinely interested in innovation, I’d argue. Put simply, human nature says that we’re afraid/dismissive of truly new ideas. This is the reason why we all remain as slaves to capitalism whilst socialist ideology is cast-typed as extremist/fundamentalist. It’s the same reason why the Wii is still subordinated by the hardcore and the enthusiast, despite delivering innovation.

Innovation is only acceptable in small, familiar doses (subversion of the very definition of innovation), such as Borderlands, which recycles two very familiar forms of play. If games truly embraced innovation then the independent scene would reign over the mainstream.

GameFAQ Writers VS Bloggers: The Better Candidate for Criticism

This year I’ve found myself falling into this habit where on completing a game, I’ll snuff out a guide on GameFAQs to acquaint myself with the bonus material and unlocks that I’m probably missing out on. This habit has made me realise that FAQ writers, as expert players, are in the most advantageous position to effectively evaluate game design, leagues ahead of us bloggers.

Expert players, or at least competitive players seek to win, and win effectively. In order to win they must first fully understand the conditions of the ‘win’ state, ie. the operations of play, and then devise the most efficient means to reach these conditions. Seeing past the glossy veneer and interpreting the game as a series of rules is pivotal to their success. The more familiar they are to these rules, the easier it will be for them to reach the ‘win’ state. While ordinary players also go through these processes as well, it’s almost entirely subconscious (this is why we have difficulty in understanding and talking about games). The mind of a competitive player is always working to sharpen their understanding of the rules.

As a result of all this, when it comes to critiquing games, generally speaking, I think hardened players will be at an advantage. Of course, this is all generalities and what I’m really saying is that being competitive spurs people on to think hard about the operations of a game. This doesn’t mean that non-competitive players are bad evaluators. No. These players don’t need to be competitive in order to think hard about games, but rather, being competitive often helps people to really focus in on game design and that when it comes to general conversation about games, competitive players are likely to be the more interesting conversationalists.

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Tags: natal, playstation move

Microtransactions: ‘Non-Interactive Sequences, the Author and the Player’ and ‘Super Mario RPG and Alternative Dimensions’

November 2nd, 2009

Microtransactions:A randomised assortment of ideas too big for Twitter and too short for their own posts, neatly compiled into their own reoccuring segment.

NB: I’ve been working hard to continue the stream of Metroid Prime 3 articles, but as I round out my final few weeks of Uni I’ve had to fall back on banked material. I hope you don’t mind, I’ll be back with the program as soon as I can. Thanks.

Super Mario RPG and Alternative Dimensions

Gosh, what a peculiar game. As I said on Twitter sometime outside of recently “Playing Super Mario RPG (VC) is like opening the door to an alternative dimension.”. A couple of people misinterpreted my tweet though, so allow me to quickly elaborate as the remark has a few meanings:

Super Mario RPG was originally never released in PAL regions. In Australia, the most amount of information we’d ever received on the title prior to release was in a special RPG issue of Nintendo Magazine System (our equivalent of Nintendo Power). This issue was famously dubbed the “RPG issue” because of a massive feature spread over several pages previewing the now famous JRPG avalanche which hit the Super Nintendo late in its lifetime. (I think they also reviewed a handful of RPGs which were placed at the start of the review section to keep in theme, but I can’t quite recall now.) The magazine, unsurprisingly, featured Super Mario RPG on the cover. Ironically tough, most of the spotlighted games featured in the magazine wouldn’t see a PAL release until years later, a good majority of those on the PSone, GBA and DS—and not on the SNES—including Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.

As you can imagine the issue was something of a holy grail for RPG enthusiasts in Australia. Considering the popularity of the magazine and the rather dormant state of the internet, for many of us, this was likely our first real insight into these now iconic games. Unfortunately, for many of them, it ended up being a long tease. In the case of Paper Mario a tease that dragged on for 12 years, until it landed on the Wii’s Virtual Console service a year ago.

Therefore, as you can imagine: “Playing Super Mario RPG (VC) is like opening the door to an alternative dimension.”, stepping into the past and reclaiming what was once lost.

The second point of my tweet is simply to make the same remark players were making a decade ago, that is: the collaboration sure is an interesting one. The sad thing about this industry is that publisher’s rule the roost. Unlike in other media, it isn’t as easy for one developer to do their own interpretation of another developer’s property, even if the original developer permits. The whole process lies within the hands of the publishers who, in effect, legally internalize the creations of their developers.

Interpretations of other work therefore rarely happen, only in the rare instances where such interpretations and crossovers are managed internally or allowed by the owner of the intellectual property. Metroid: Other M is a great example, as is Capcom Vs SNK, SVC: Chaos and Namco X Capcom. Super Mario RPG is too a great example and was very much unprecedented for its time as it was one of the first interpretations of a franchise by someone other than the original creators (Wolfenstein 3D is another example, anyone have any more ideas?). For these reasons Super Mario RPG therefore felt unique, and playing it today still emits this alluring quality.

Non-Interactive Sequences, the Author and the Player

One of the core complaints leveled against Super Paper Mario and Metal Gear Solid 4 was the length of their non-interactive sequences. Super Paper Mario was too chatty and MGS4 can be considered as a game interwoven with a feature film. I know people have defended both games on the basis that the content in these sequences are actually quite good—and therefore doesn’t deserve the bad press—so I’d like to weigh in by agreeing with the assertion that so long as the content within these sequences actually serves a meaningful purpose, then they’re perfectly fine with me. (Meaningful purpose being a subjective term depending on the individual player). Of course, in saying this, MGS4 did have too much cyber babble and Super Paper Mario‘s dialogue did stretch the point at times. These are rather legitimate claims relative to other games on the market.

sunny-naomi-mgs4-cutscene

Games are a shared product between the designer and the player. The designer wants the player to experience certain things within their game, they want them to, to some degree, think in a certain way and act per se. The designer coerces the player’s actions by designing the nature of the world, but the designer isn’t the director, the player is. The player co-authors the experience. When the designer forces the player through a non-interactive sequence, the designer takes control from the player and pushes their own agenda. In this regard, I think that the designers and writers of MGS4 and Super Paper Mario became too invested in the messages they wanted to transmit during these sequences that they became overly directive of the experience and ultimately damaged the game(s).

I always go into a new game with the intent of being reasonable. Anything (side quests, narrative, sequences of gameplay, mechanics etc) that I feel as meaningless or damaging towards my experience, I won’t participate in. Although I read the majority of dialogue in Super Paper Mario, much of it I also skipped or skim-read simply because it dragged on and impeded on my experience. It’s the same reason why I’m disinterested in trophies for the Playstation 3, they just artificially lengthen the game. I personally don’t believe that the value proposition they’re offering me is worthy of committal—as we’ve discussed, this can feel like work. Not every player shares this view though, my work might be someone else’s challenge and so forth. It’s the subjective nature which makes designing games very tricky.

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Tags: metal gear solid 4, Super Mario RPG

Microtransactions: Machinima and Incompatibilities

July 26th, 2009

cannon-fodder

Cannon Foddering

My brother and I went through a bit of a Amiga phase about 10 years ago when one was handed down with mountains of floppy disks by family members who had all conspicuously owned an Amiga during it’s hey day. We never played terribly much of the Amiga aside from a few notable classics, I mean why would you when you had a Playstation right alongside it? One of the first consoles we’d actually possessed during its peak period.

One of those classics was Cannon Fodder; a neat strategy title with British sensibilities and humour. Unfortunately the old girl is having problems outputting to the TV – my brother tried to resuscitate her years ago – which means this part of our gaming history has been closed of, as such. Nevermind, emulation ought to do the trick, later down the track. In the meantime though my brother decided to buy a SNES copy of Cannon Fodder, which we snapped up for a reasonable price on eBay, about a week before it went up for $5 on Good Old Games. Frustrated at this poor twist of luck and the finicky SNES d-pad controls, we tried out the SNES mouse to see if the two worked together – common sense right? They don’t. >_<

This brings me to another compatibility issue which I’ve left dormant for too long. There’s an import games store in Adelaide which I sometimes buy games from (I rarely buy retail these days). A few years ago I was given Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops as a birthday present from my brother, fast forward a year and I was given Portable Ops + (the expansion). Portable Ops was bought from Myer in one of their we’re-so-out-of-touch-we-unknowingly-mark-down-prices-on-limited-release-games sales* and Portable Ops+ was bought at the import store. On testing Portable Ops+, it refused to sync up with my existing save data from MGS:PO because my two versions were of different origins, Portable Ops of PAL and Portable Ops+ NTSC. Kind of senseless really.

Machinima

I’m surprised how well I manage to suppress my anger on this blog, because I occasionally fit the angry-at-life persona rather tidily. Considering the already bothered tone of the post, I ought to proceed with a continued level of choler.

You might remember that last semester I studied a games course brimming with cliched topics, including one of which; machinima. As part of the course, I had to read and study machinima, which I’ve honestly never liked. While the course highlighted some of the finer inner workings of the craft, let’s face the fact, machinima is terrible. I mean honestly, the medium is inherently inexpressive, the use of pre-existing game assets kills any individuality, the voice acting is generally poor and the jokes are either in-jokes or pure trite, often juvenile at that. I support the ideology and artistry behind machinima (and all fan-made produce for that matter) it’s wonderfully progressive and these people should be applauded for their versatile creativity. Yet, I can rarely watch any machinima without tensing up into fits of frustration at the pure indulgence of it all. Anyone feel the same way?

*Same reason I got Valkyrie Profile Lenneth so cheap too. You know, I use to sell games and electronics at Myers.

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Tags: amiga, cannon fodder, metal gear

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