My Game is Better Than Your Game

It’s the bane if my existence as a gamer, the inevitable conclusion of whatever decent discussion that might have been, the soul sucking descent into childhood tactics and name calling; it goes by the name my game is better than your game. It’s everywhere, consoles v. pcs, Xbox v. PlayStation, Bioware v. ArenaNet; and it’s the one of the most irritating things that one has to deal with when trying to enjoy video games.

We like to root for things, we humans. We go to Football games and bring down stadiums, we riot after championship wins and losses, when it seems that every CEO is being indicted for malfeasance we say not our guy; it is a fact of humanity that we root for things that we believe in or enjoy. These days though were no longer content to merely root for our guy as it were, we must make it our mission to sink the other guys’ ships. If I go to read an article about Tera, people will be saying Guild Wars 2 is better. If I read an article about Dragon’s Dogma, people will be writing that Skyrim was so much better. If I read an article about the history of consoles they’ll talk about how PC games are dead

Someone once said that Man spends too much time measuring himself against each other, when the truth of the matter is that what raises one raises us all, and what fells one fells us all. Games are not made better by comparison rather by taking what has come before and building on it. What makes one game great is good for all games, as games are to life, and so on and so on.

Legislation in Video Games

Legislation is coming; it’s only a matter of time. While the Supreme Court has been reluctant to jump on the bandwagon, time and time again their reticence seem to have come down to one reason; bring us proof. While scientists aren’t necessarily on the take, their objectiveness has been called into question; primarily because somehow whoever foots the bill always seems to get the result they desired. And video games like rap music, rock music, comic books, etc. before them are ripe for the picking. It’s true that gamers are older but the fact of the matter is that games are already legislated in Germany and Australia to some extent; Great Britain is testing out the waters and other countries have varying degrees of censorship. What is good though is that the longer groups like the ESA can postpone the inevitable the better. Politicians rarely go against a vocal older constituency, but legislation is coming even if it only focuses on minors. So what do we do?

Well self-regulation helps wonders, support the ESA. It doesn’t mean that will stop the government but it will likely keep out the FCC. We might not like it, but the ESA is much more for us than the government ever will be. Pay attention to politics when it comes to gaming; don’t let those incompetent hacks in Washington mess with your games. Take it seriously. Yes I know, most of these laws are just to get local and national attention for a politician, but the Supreme Court is taking them seriously, so we’d better watch carefully. Lawsuits are great when they’re not frivolous and pointless. To have the legal community take us seriously we have to take ourselves seriously, so let’s stop with the nonsense lawsuits. Scientific studies come out all the time about the benefits of gaming in one form or another, write to your local newspapers, get the word out. People can be swayed. If we tell them games aren’t bad they’ll start questioning when someone tells them they are. Be proactive, play games and have fun.

The Next Big Thing

We’re all guilty of it, whether we admit it or not; the grass always looks greener on the other side. The last few days the talk of the town, so to speak, has been on Elder Scrolls Online. It’s the next big thing they say, the third great MMO of the decade after SWTOR and Guild Wars 2; what it really is, however, is one great big hype.

It’s amusing really, not a week ago they were singing the praises of Guild Wars 2 like it was mana from heaven, all the more amusing because most of them wouldn’t have given the first Guild Wars the time of day. And of course five months ago it was The Old Republic. Writers like gamers, can sometimes be caught up in the possibilities and be blinded by hope. I suppose it’s not a bad thing, Hope is one of the great things about Mankind; the hope for a brighter tomorrow. It’s funny though for all the good cheer about this announcement, even over the booing from those who feel Bethesda has bitten off more than it can chew, no one is asking the simple questions. How can a studio known for buggy launches, tepid combat, and weak tea story hope to make a good MMO? It’s not an easy question to ask, instinctively people want to believe that good things will happen but this is huge risk for a company that is fiercely independent. This game will likely be fairly good, but it is highly unlikely it will be what everyone wants it to be, for no such consensus exists.

In our rush to jump ship from one game to another, more realistic expectations could go a long way into softening the blow when a game doesn’t become exactly as we envisioned it, a dream it was never going to become anyways.

The Rise of the Gaming CEO

We’ve all heard it, the outrageous statement made that defies common sense and a firm grasp of reality. We used to just laugh, they were science nerds who had made it big, or inventors who didn’t have a good grasp of public relations; but in this new age we have a new breed of them, we call them the Gaming CEO. Bobby Kotick, Ray Muzyka, and others are now the heads of billion dollar companies; but there’s just one problem they still make statements that would be best left on the playground.

Recently the heads of the companies, who make two of the premier FPSs, or First Person Shooters, Call of Duty and Battlefield got into a screaming match. EA and Activision Blizzard are massive companies that compete on many areas of the gaming arena. Activision had a much published meltdown when it lost nearly the entirety of the studio that created its billion dollars a year Call of Duty franchise, Infinity Ward, and the creative heads left Activison and created a new studio under the EA umbrella. Activison came under fire for what was seen as a supreme lack of long term vision. It was the latest in a long line of high profile franchises that had been overproduced and fizzled into nothing. Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and even smaller franchises like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot had been laid to rest. Many people considered the latest debacle with Infinity Ward to be another series that would soon follow. And while the franchise appears to still be strong as ever, a lengthy court battle is still ongoing. EA had a much publicized PR nightmare of its own when horrendous working conditions at its major studios were critiqued by a spouse of one of its employees. Business tends to consider the bottom line and so in many ways much of this can be tossed off as business practices for better or worse are the usual way of doing business. However, what aren’t normal are the comments of these highly paid CEOs.

The Almighty Comment Section

I’ve been noticing it for a while and I feel it’s time to stare the elephant in the room eye to eye. The comment section in articles has devolved into fanboi-r-us. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, maybe it was over the course of years or decades but the internet seems to made us all rather over muscled. When I went to college we used to say that when a person had enough alcohol in themselves they thought they were invincible, they had drunk muscles. These days it seems the internet serves the same function. Which isn’t to say gamers are the only ones guilty of this breach of manners; but its self-evident to any that frequents gaming sites that discussions of any kind on a non-moderated forum is impossible. And I suppose that speaks about something of us as a race, possibly there is something good in all of that, but the hard cold reality is that hardcore gamers have turned to rather virulent speak to hammer whatever point they seek to champion these days. If that wasn’t enough it has become alarmingly obvious that gamers aren’t even thinking enough to bring forth their own opinions. Time and time again I’ve read comments that not only are erroneous but it’s quite obvious that the person writing them has cribbed them either in part of entirely from other sources; which is to say gamers aren’t even speaking for themselves.

A friend reminded me of the scene from Good Will Hunting when the facetious grad student is parroting straight from books he’s read or studied and Matt Damon’s character calls him out on it, in this at least the student is knowingly plagiarizing another person’s work as his own, often times gamers seem completely unaware of their own deeds. I was skimming through a discussion about Tera and Guild Wars 2, the discussion was pro-GW2 and as such was basically preaching to the choir as the forum was for Guild Wars 2 fans. While both games are seeking to change how we play MMOs, it’s clear to anyone who watches five minutes of combat that Tera is the clear winner. The person had to concede that if only as a token to the other side but at the same time tried to shunt the conversation away from that point through misinformation and obfuscation. What there was, however, was the air of familiarity in the arguments, things I had read before.

Story or Combat?

I just finished playing the open beta of Tera Online. Last week I played say ten hours of Witcher 2, and I am stumped. While I enjoyed my time in Witcher 2, I was struck by how strongly I disliked the combat. The story was all well and good but the combat was irritating at best, and downright annoying at worst. I suppose certainly after Mass Effect 3 and its rather impressive combat I should be expecting a bit of a letdown. But here’s the thing I just finished playing Tera Online as well. See now Tera has combat to die for. It’s quick and agile and standing around clicking tab bars is the fastest way to see a sign asking you to pull your head out of your… well at least something asking you where you want to resurrect your character. And I was bored to tears, the combat was excellent and I couldn’t quit fast enough; the combat was the best I’ve ever seen in a MMO but its story was like being warped back to vanilla WoW. And there’s the rub, on one game combat made me lose interest and yet on another game the lack of story brought me to tears. So I ask, what matters most; story or combat?

I played Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and I was struck by the fact that the combat no matter how sweet couldn’t hide the fact that the story bored me to tears. And people come on its not 1999, we can have fully voiced heroes; it’s not the end of the world. I like to read, I’ve said that before, but in a video game having the hero never speak is such a killjoy. There is something about having your hero, your avatar, speak that completely changes the game experience; it makes it great in a form that is unique to games.

The Value of the First Impression

It's a natural thing for humans, for all animals for that matter, to put a lot of stock in their first impressions. It's not entirely surprising; sometimes life and death is decided in only a few seconds. The deer decides whether to stay still or run from the wolf, as does the antelope from the cheetah, even humans have fight or flight responses; they all depend on the first impression.

In the month of April I played four games in particular after the excellence that was Mass Effect 3; The Old Republic, Witcher 2, Tera, and Diablo III. Every game came up wanting for one reason or another; Republics' story wasn't as deep, Witcher 2's combat was a tad wonky, Tera's story was non-existent, and Diablo III was just a shade weaker than expected. Those were all my first impressions. Then came Guild Wars 2, a game lauded for its combat, and I was unimpressed. I found it wanting versus the brilliance of Tera's combat and it made me pause. Earlier in the week I had been sure that I wasn't going to play Tera based on the fact that other than its combat I was bored, sure it doesn't do anything wrong but it didn't feel like it would be enough. When I went to play the Guild Wars 2 beta I realized that my first impression of the game, while not complimentary shouldn't be enough to stop me from playing some more, in this I realized that I had to give Tera more time to pass or fail. 

Still it made me think, so much of life based on our first impressions. With MMOs' we usually get five or ten years to go back and see if we were wrong, but games are different; so to is life. How many times have I not done something, or traveled down a road based on the first impression. It's something to ponder, time is precious to us its true and yet how much sweeter would life be if we took the time to take a second impression or a third.