GameTruth

While I do like to bring current events into the daily questions it is not often that I will directly take a question and post it here. However, I think this question is different because much like politics or religion, much of gaming is based on opinion.  So I am throwing down the gauntlet.

I say that the Nintendo 64 (N64) is the greatest console of all time. The N64 was the first console to have native 4 player support, something that is now standard across all consoles. The N64 was also Nintendo’s first 3D console and the last console to use cartridges. These two points are important because it being the first 3D console lead to some of the greatest games of all time and they were in cartridge form which meant that at the time they had much faster loading times than disc based systems.

When I said GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME, I meant it. Namely speaking of 007: Goldeneye and Legend of Zelda: Orcarina of time, these games are incredible.  Along with those two games came several that were brought to 3D for the first time and became games of legend: Starfox 64, Mario 64, and Mario Cart 64 just to name a few. The fact that Nintendo has not rereleased all of these games on the Wii as downloadables is a shame.

Now on to controller design, the N64 controller was good for any hand size and was the first controller to feature “trigger” and “shoulder” buttons. Also it had an expansion slot for memory cards or a rumble pack. I wish todays controllers had expansion slots and I think this feature may return as more and more games push the envelop for unique control schemes.  So it is not that the N64 controller is the greatest ever, but its impact on future controllers is quite visible.

So in conclusion the N64 is the greatest console of all time because it forever changed the path of both hardware (4 player native, 3D, cartridges) and software (Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, Starfox 64).  Also it came in a wide range of colors of both console and controller.

-Mark

The reason why there have been no questions for over a week is simple, Seth and I bought The Orange Box. First off, I think Portal is a great game, I will get more into the gory details in a game design question but I did really enjoy it. Having said that I think The Orange Box is the best move Valve has ever made.

Lumping a multiplayer game (Team Fortress 2) in with a very well done mod (portal) and the new episodic content and old content of Half Life 2 is awesome. This brings me to the question of the day: where is episodic content going?

I really like the way Valve has done the episodic content for Half Life 2 and I am also a big fan of Steam. On the consoles I think Xbox Live is great. For a long time I have been a proponent of episodic content, having shorter experiences with a lower price more often I think is what games really need. So why hasn’t it spread like wild fire? Unfortunately, I do not have a good answer to that question.

I think as more gamer shift to community tools (like Steam, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, etc, etc) we will see more games goto an episodic format.

-Mark

With the writer’s strike still going on the Golden Globes and a variety of other television programs have been suffering.  Luckily, Microsoft has created the Xbox Live Arcade Awards.  Normally I would find this stupid and a waste of time but I really like what Microsoft is trying to with Xbox Live.  They are creating a true community of developers, which I think will win the current battle for social site for gamers.  I think if Microsoft puts some effort in they could hold the winning social network ticket, as long as they continue to develop tools to allow hobbyists to make games for the Xbox 360 they will be ahead of the pack.

-Seth

The New York Times put out an article about the Electronic Software Association and their lobbying branch, PAC. The article is here. It is interesting that video games are finally joining all other forms of media (theater, film, music, and books) by offering donations to candidates that will not impose negative legislation on the industry. As I have said before, some candidates (like Hillary) have already said they would like the censor gaming. This is all not really interesting as a question, the more interesting part is the Video Game Voter’s Network.

The Video Game Voter’s Network, website here, is an interesting entity. I have been to a few conferences and even though I am not part of the gaming industry yet I have heard rumblings of unionizing. I only bring this up because the Video Game Voter’s Network would kind of work like that. According to the article there are 100,000 members and that is not a bad number and I am sure it will grow with publicity.

So now that I’m about done I will address the question. I do think lobbying is a good idea. Politics will collide with gaming and setting up a united front to battle unconstitutional legislation will be an asset for the industry.

-Mark

When they came with arena PvP for World of Warcraft I knew it would appeal to the very hardcore and that some of the best could even make an ok living off of playing. Then the finals for the first tournament were one Sunday afternoon televised. I watched for a bit and found it interesting. In the game design question about gore filters I also said that my mom actually liked watching someone play the original Turok. Finally, I present an article from the worldwide leader in sports, ESPN here.

The article is reporting on ESPN’s plans to show competitive gaming by televising Major League Gaming competitions. My first reaction is that it might be better than poker, an eating contest, or a spelling bee, but I am not sure if gaming is a spectator sport. Then I read the rest of the article and it seems that ESPN is going a little deeper in to the gaming end of the pool. They are adding gaming segments to their current shows and have planned a new show to talk about hot topics in gaming. This elaborate house of cards again boils down to todays question: is gaming a spectator sport?

I know I am not alone when I say that I have downloaded gameplay videos from YouTube or wherever that show extremely talented gamers push the envelop of their craft. From speed runs of old school games to PvP videos of naked players in WoW, I have been entertained by watching games before. I have also had to sit through people playing Guitar Hero and want to kill myself because looking at little colored circles come down the screen is all watching Guitar Hero amounts to.

Something is lost when a form of media that is defined by its interaction gets that stripped away in the name of entertainment. It is just not as fun. I think ESPN is in somewhat dangerous territory because TV and video games are competing forms of leisure activities as the article points out. The article states that 34% of 12-24 year old males have gaming as their favorite leisure activity and second is 14% with sports or physical activities. That means that below those two activities is watching TV, I bet watching others play games is much lower still.

Overall I think this is only bad news for ESPN as I think it will cost them some cash. This I am sure will be good for the industry all together as it will mean more exposure. I hope it works out but it could backfire and just be a marketing clusterfuck with kids wearing Mountain Dew hats and Nvidia shirts or something. I plan on DVRing some of this but the noob or woot I hear from some news anchor or reporter I am pulling the plug.

-Mark

The article that sparked this question is here. In it 10 rules for online gaming are outlined including “Noobs are Scum” and “If you are losing, it is because of lag”. While the article is riddled with humor this question is “serious business”. The main demographic for gaming is shifting, it is getting older. With this will come many players that want to play in an atmosphere where they do not have to deal with the normal Xbox Live or World of Warcraft 12 year olds. I think the solution could have two options: Feudally or Democratically.

By feudally I mean go the way of dedicated or private servers. With plentiful server administrators on private or dedicated servers there are lots of cops to deal with the robbers. The problem is that this is pretty impossible to do for MMOs like WoW, because no dedicated server game to my knowledge is considered massive. MMOs that have instanced dungeons or areas do this but what if it was risen to a new level. Say you could instance cities or certain other areas where the gameplay would not be heavily effected but it would work better than an ignore list. On the other end you could have a Mos Eisley Cantina or any other hive of scum and villainy that has a more “no holds barred” set of rules. I am sure it could be worked into the story of any MMO and it could add an interesting level of immersion to the game. Xbox live could use dedicated servers, that is all there is to it. I would pay an extra 20 bucks a year to run my own game servers and be able to kick the riffraff from rapping to me or telling me that I suck and then asking if I want some pancakes.

The democratic portion of the solution would be to have a rep system like Xbox Live has but raise it to a whole new level. Same with MMOs, have a rep level of some kind. The point of these would be that if you have good rep and are not a tool bag you can get access to invite only or premium servers. Doing this would not only raise a players e-peen status (if you are into that kind of thing) hopefully it would give enough of a punishment that it would drive the nubbishness down on normal servers and remove it completely from the invite only servers.

The decision maker for a feature like this is likely two-fold: can this get more revenue and how will this impact the community population? Personally I would pay a little extra for features like this, so anecdotal evidence says yes. I am sure a market study would say otherwise. I also think this would not impact the population of subscribers because it is not excluding anyone from playing, but again I am bias on my views of how I suffer fools.

So there it is, will we ever see maturity online? I hope so, but I am just a noob.

-Mark

This is the first question to be written in the Game Design Questions category. In this category we will focus on features of games as well as submit some design problems.  If you would like to submit a design question or problem on the right toolbar under Pages is a Submit button.

This question is pretty simple. I remember back on my Nintendo 64 playing the original Turok (great game). This was one of the only games that my mom would sit in the room and watch my brothers or I play. She said that the music was good and the environments were interesting to look at.  She was not a huge fan of the blood, of course being 14 at the time, I was.

Turok had an interesting feature to deal with the blood, something I will call a gore filter. On the pause/start menu of the game you could change the setting of the blood from the bad guys. It was defaulted to red, the other options being green blood and no blood. The reason I bring this up is that Turok came out in 1997.  Now a tiny bit over a decade later I am surprised that we do not see games still utilizing a feature like this.

Probably the game that could best use a gore filter (in recent memory) is Gears of War. In Gears of War upon chainsawing someone in the torso blood splatters all over the screen.  Would adding a gore filter to violent games like Gears of War possibly give some leeway in ratings or maybe placate parents better?  Is there some kind of sliding scale that could be used to tone down violence in games as well as gore?  Would implementing a feature like that be worth it?

It is something to think about as the industry progresses, the addtion of filters could lead to a larger base of users and be a good way to separate a game from the pack.

-Mark

I left the question specifically vague but I have a certain topic I want to cover: Star Wars. Now this holiday season saw the release of the third LEGO Star Wars game. While this game was nothing more than a compilation of the first two games with some new stuff mixed in I still ended up getting a copy. The reason is simple: LEGO Star Wars is fun. Not only that but my girlfriend likes it and is willing to play it with me in co-op mode. I like it because the RPG/collector gamer in me wants every gold brick and mini-kit and she likes it because it has friendly fire and she can kill me at will.

Now to continue I will bring up recent news that Vader and Yoda will be in Soul Calibur IV (PS3 and 360 respectively). As with LEGO Star Wars, I am a huge Soul Calibur fan and I loved that they had Spawn and Link and Soul Calibur III. However, stay away from Soul Calibur Legends on the Wii. The only thing it is good for is showing you what a Wii game should NOT be.

The last piece of evidence I will bring up goes back to the LEGO part of LEGO Star Wars. 2008 will see the release of both LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Batman, I will be surprised if do not end up owning both. These are getting released in conjunction with movies in both franchises and also LEGO sets as well. Normally I would be offended at such marketing but I am too busy drooling over the Indiana Jones Temple Escape set.

So now that its all on the table, whats up with franchise games? I am looking forward to all of these releases because I think this is how old IP should get mixed with new in the current industry of sequels and movie games. Take either a proven game mechanic (LEGO or Soul Calibur) and mix it with well known and liked IP (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Batman) and keep the fun and production quality high and you have everything I want in a game. While I would personally (on a artsy critic level of the industry) would like to see much more new IP, if you are going to remake or expand an established IP do it like LEGO and Soul Calibur.

I left out the upcoming sequel to Riddick which looks to be top notch as well.

-Mark

What are my predictions for 2008 in gaming and the gaming industry?

To start off this is an election year for the US and while video games are never a truly hot topic for politics I think it is worth mentioning that some candidates do have some pretty severe views of the gaming industry, stay tuned to the gamepolitics blog for more of that kind of information.

In the console world I think we will see a slip in Wii dominance, unless two things happen. One is that they make good on their promises to more closely link the DS and the Wii. Two is that they work on the online gaming portion of the Wii. In the world of the PS3 and 360 I think it will be more of the same, each has some big releases coming up and they are starting to embrace their communities more online, which is always a good thing. I think that we may see some life from Sony and the PS3 but if it can outshine the 360 is another question. Online services are where the war will be won and lost this year for all consoles.

PC gaming is a slower moving beast except in two areas: MMOs and casual games. World of Warcraft will see its second expansion in 2008 and also there is the possible release of StarCraft 2 from Blizzard. These are very big names for PC gamers and I think they will have much of the media attention. There are several interesting MMOs coming out as well (Conan for one) but to be honest I am not expecting much besides WoW this year out of the MMO sphere. Casual games are growing on all fronts.  As I said about consoles and online services, all consoles have in their online services the abilities to download smaller/cheaper games.  I think the surge of casual games will be seen mostly on the PC and then dipping into mobile games which have been mostly silenced recently but I think will see new life in 2008. Watch out for some media hype and attention to some casual games and casual gaming services in 2008.

This is about it for what I see in 2008, I may reply back after others have weighed in. On a final note I am looking forward to tons of games this year and here is a pretty long list but doesn’t include everything: LEGO Indiana Jones, WoW: Wrath of the Liche King, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, Star Wars: Force Unleashed, LEGO Batman, and Turok.

-Mark

Well 2008 is upon us and Seth and I are just coming off of vacation in California.  Seth is still on the west coast traveling for school but he should still be able to post until his return.

Daily questions will start up again next week but I posted one to think about over the weekend.

-Mark