SF Diplomat

Not a Gamer Anymore

The Escapist has just published my first piece for them about the experience of realising that you are no longer a gamer and the factors that contributed to this realisation.

Gerstmann and the state of videogame criticism

Over in the world of gaming they're currently dealing with a truly epic shitstorm revolving around the website Gamespot's decision to sack Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann over his "tone", including that used in the following video (which has since been removed from their website).

Now, anyone who has read the reviews I've published on this website and elsewhere will know that as far as negative reviews go, that's a mild one.  Gerstmann's criticisms are precise, clear, even handed and are almost apologetic as he stresses that there are still some good ideas buried in the game.  Indeed, if tone was an issue with Gerstmann's output then this particular review seems like a weird reason to get fired.

In fact, while the games sites were flapping around unsure as to what to say or even whether to cover the story, it fell to game-related comic strip Penny Arcade to fill in the blanks on why Gerstmann got canned.  PA claim that Kane and Lynch's producers Eidos spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying ad space on Gamespot and they were none too pleased when Gerstmann's review appeared and, as a result, they decided to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars of future advertising in response.  This massive loss of revenue is, according to PA, what cost Gerstmann his job.

Unsurprisingly, this has prompted many gamers and game-related journalists to re-examine the principles their industry is based upon.  Is it healthy for sites that should be objective to be supported entirely by sponsorship money from games companies?  is it acceptable that it took a comic strip to break the story while the massed ranks of professional game journalists stood around scratching their arses and waiting for press releases rather than hunting down sources.

Personally, I'm pessimistic that anything is going to change in the wake of such a high-profile sacking.  I'm pessimistic because we've known about this problem for years now and not only has nothing been done but gamers don't seem overly bothered by it.  In short, the problem is that gamers neither need nor want honest writers who aren't afraid to stand up to corporate sponsors, what they want is the kind of insipid blend of validation and purchasing suggestions that come only with the principles of lifestyle journalism.

The Horror! The Horror! : Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition

The estimable Dave Klecha of Midnight Highways has put up a link to a video detailing the online elements of the soon to be released 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons and, frankly, it's the most awful thing I have ever seen. 

The Escapist's Ben Croshaw - To Snark or Not To Snark?

One of the leitmotifs of my life in recent years has been my progressive disengagement from from the hobbies that once completely dominated my life.

Up until maybe five years ago, I was still a devoted console gamer and took an active interest in the tabletop roleplaying hobby.  I still game every week and I still play Football Manager and the odd console game now and again but I don't buy new console games and I don't really buy tabletop RPGs anymore either.  I just no longer have any serious interest in "the scene" or what's out there because, by and large, what is out there is not what I want to be out there and rather than wail and gnash my teeth and get banned (again) from forums devoted to my previous hobbies, I've decided to disengage from the hobbies but maintain an interest in an almost dispassionate manner.  Like a former punk turned corporate accountant occasionally creeping round the "Punk and Metal" sections of a record store, I like to know what's going on but I don't care enough to spend any money or time on the actual products of the hobby.  I have my tastes, those tastes are not shared by the majority of people in the hobby... so sod them.

In fact, you can see this very same thought process in my recent engagement with the fantasy community.  I like fantasy in principle but I hate most of the stuff that gets published in practice and so I end up insulting all the people who are actually quite happy with the state of modern fantasy.

I don't think I'm alone in these feelings, but I do think that some people are better at harnessing that gradual sense of growing disgust and frustration than I am, allowing them to use said harnessed goblins for good rather than evil.  Ben Croshaw is one such hobbit.

The RPG Industry : Think about Destruction

I've said before that I'm a long term table-top RPG gamer.  In fact, were it not for RPGs and those dreadful tie-in novels then chances are that I would probably not be the regular reader I am today.  In fact, up until the age of about 14 I don't think I had ever read a whole book for fun.  Similarly, I don't think that I would have studied philosophy at university were it not for White Wolf's game Mage.

I don't write about RPGs very often because I happily walked away from the online scene a while ago.  Too many arguments with too many stupid people left me feeling alienated from the gamer sub-culture.  However, I still game every week and occasionally look in on interesting RPG-related blogs.  Having some time to kill I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the RPG industry and the future of the hobby.

When will gaming come of age?

I received my May 2007 Issue of EDGE magazine in the post yesterday and, upon finally getting a chance to take a look at it, I found myself intrigued by a couple of articles. The issue contains a (bizarrely uncredited) piece about the future of gaming and a standard column by Tim Guest about an older gamer's love for the Wii.

Now, if taken at face value, neither of these pieces is particularly Earth-shattering. The Guest column in particular is little more than a human interest Wii puff piece about how the Wii's accessible interface and titles is bringing families together. The piece about the future of gaming trots out similar platitudes about how the future of gaming will feature lots of user-created content and so on. However, what interested me in both pieces is the idea of the gaming population getting older. Apparently... in 2006, 16% of gamers were aged 50 or over.

In 2006, 19% of gamers were aged 50 or over

While Guest, I think, draws precisely the wrong conclusions from the 70-year old gamer he writes about, he does mention that most older gamers aren't likely to be turned on by the same kinds of games as teenaged gamers. What is interesting about this nugget of truth is that while we tend to think of gamers aged 50+ as interlopers who have wandered into "our" hobby (that is a hobby overwhelmingly dominated by the under 35s and even the under 30s), this is increasingly not the case.

I am 30 and have, over the past few years found myself increasingly alienated by the bulk of console games. I have, along with most people, tended to think of this as a matter of my tastes changing but is this really the case?

When I go to the cinema, I go to see very different films to those I went to see when I was aged 15. In those days I remember being completely thrilled by Terminator 2 and could be fully expected at the cinema at the opening weekend of every big "event" movie. I adored action movies. Nowadays though, it's rare that I'll bother to go and see an action movie in the cinema at all. Even those that I do go and see, I tend to get something different out of than I did when I was a teenager. In short, my tastes have matured.

When I set up this blog, I fully intended to try and cover videogames because at the time I was playing quite a few and they were a huge part of my life. In fact, my first blog was nothing but game reviews. However, then the change-over to the next generation came and I found myself staring down the barrel of another generation that boasted all the same lame action and sports games as the previous generation but this time with you being expected to pay a premium for the graphics. Understandably, I switched off and still have no intention of buying a next gen console. Despite following the scene I've found that while there are plenty of games around that justify their cost once you have a console, there are surprisingly few that make you want to shell out the hundreds and hundreds of pounds necessary to buy into the next generation of hardware. Speaking with friends of a similar age I have found this to be a relatively common phenomenon and with uptake on both the XBox360 and the PS3 being less than expected, I suspect that this is a phenomenon with some universality.

What is different between now and the launch of the PS2? Time

The biggest demographic shift in gaming at the moment is the aging population of gamers. While new gamers are born every minute and kids nowadays are far more likely to have a console than I was when I was growing up, the fact is that that first generation of people to grow up with computer games in their own home are now in their 30's and 40's... and yet the variety of games on sale today completely fail to reflect this fact.

The variety of games on sale today completely fail to reflect this fact

TV and Film are able to allow for differences in appeal to different age groups. For example, Channel 4 has Big Brother and the yawning casm into hell that is T4 and both appeal to teenagers. However, they also have the Sopranos and ran The West Wing. Why is it that I, as a mature gamer, can happily buy The Wire on DVD and positively fizz as I marvel at how awesome it is, but when I want to play a game I'm forced to play a gangsta in GTA: San Andreas or a thuggish warrior in God of War. While both games are beautifully made with GTA: SA's opening section in San Andreas ranking among some of the best scripting ever seen in a game and God of War features some nice exploration of the broad themes of ancient greek myth. But for all the care and attention lavished upon them, both games ultimately revolve around breaking some things and killing others. At its best this kind of gaming is asymptotically close to being an interactive action movie.

But what if I don't like action movies?

Not all games are action movies, this is true. There are sports games, RPGs, platform games and, if you own a PC, god games and civilisation clones. This is just more running, jumping and fighting. In his last series of Screenwipe, Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker argued that the whole point of videogames is different from other mediums and as such, to expect complex emotions from a game is to be, in his words a "thicksickle". But why should this be the case? one could argue that it's because of the extent to which game design focuses on graphics, resulting in the quality of writing for games reflecting the lack of budget and care that you'd expect of something so low down a game designer's set of priorities. But this is to complain about the symptoms rather than the disease.

The question really should be why quality writing is such a low priority in the first place. The problem, somewhat ironically lies with older gamers such as Charlie Brooker who see the conservative nature of videogames as a problem with the medium, and therefore they will happily play the same kinds of games that they were playing on their old C64s at the age of 12.

The problem, in many ways, is similar to that of bad television. When I unplugged my aerial and decided to only watch DVDs and downloads, I found that lots of series I would happily watch because I happened to be in front of the television anyway suddenly stopped appealing once I had to wait for them to download or for them to find their way to my through DVD rental. I think that the same thing is happening with gaming and that a lot of older gamers who otherwise have sophisticated tastes, are happily buying games that are beneath them and that don't even sustain their attention spans long enough to get them to finish the games they buy before they get a new one. I think that this happens because people buy consoles and then buy games in order to make use of them. If they didn't have consoles then in all likelihood they wouldn't feel any sense of loss at all at the prospect of not getting to play that 15th update of Pro Evo Soccer or the latest knuckle-dragging variation on that universal theme of "fascist with huge gun kills things".

This is a pattern of consumption bordering on fetichism where the normal laws of cause and effect and supply and demand are thrown out the window as people don't buy consoles in order to play interesting games... they buy games in order to justify their ownership of consoles.

So, in the hope of convincing my fellow non-teenaged gamers to stop this insane pattern of consumption I've devised a list of things that really should influence your economic interaction with the games industry.

1. Do you regularly play your existing console?

If you don't then in all likelihood, you really shouldn't be looking to buy into the next generation. The previous generation has loads more games available for it than the current one has and if in all of those hundreds of titles there is nothing to sustain your interest, do you really think that better graphics or having to wave your arms about is going to change anything?

2. Do you own a PC?

The XBox360 and the PS3 are being sold on the basis of their multimedia and online capabilities. If you own a PC then you might well already have a machine (that you no doubt use more than your console) that either can or will, with some upgrading, be able to do everything that your new console would be able to do, and for less money. So are you really buying the next gen console because it allows you to beam music across the room or is that just what you're telling the girlfriend?

3. Does the console you want to buy have any games you'd be willing to spend more than £100 in order to play?

When you buy a console you're effectively shelling out hundreds of pounds not to play games but to have the possibility of playing games. So in effect, the way to look at it is that for each game you buy, you're not just buying the game at £50 a go, you're also buying a proportion of the possibility to play games. So if you buy 20 games over a console's lifespan you're effectively shelling out £50 and 5% of the value of the console. This is the real cost of console gaming... are the games worth this cost?

4. Are you buying that game because it interests you or because you want to play a game?

If you walk into a shop with the intention of buying a game and getting the most out of your console, chances are you'll find something to take home with you. But is that game a game that would have excited you enough to buy it in its own right? Is it worth the true price of console gaming? are you buying it for the right reasons?

It is imperative for older gamers to not allow themselves to be forced into following a market that is hostile to them. They must allow the laws of supply and demand to operate properly and the only way to do that is to not automatically buy a new console and, if you do, then certainly don't "make do" with the games on offer. You're a grown-up with sophisticated tastes, don't allow the games companies to lump you in with kids. Be demanding, be difficult, be grumpy, demand as much from your gaming as you do from your TV and cinema. That's the only way to help gaming come of age and stop appealing to priapic teenaged boys.

Are Sony and Yahoo Using Fictitious Talking Heads?

This was pointed out by the poster known as Slaaaaabs on the Cook'd and Bomb'd Chris Morris Forum.

Anyone who reads the press reaction to developments in the technology sector will recognise the desire to shout "Where did they FIND this guy" when some talking head (usually from an equity management firm) is wheeled out to say something incredibly bland about the latest gadget (usually that it's "a potential iPod killer").

However, it was brought to my attention this morning that something else might be going on.

Sony today announced that they are partly re-designing the PS3 for european launch. The details of this re-design is that the chips that run games from previous PlayStation generations, which are present in US and Japanese PS3's, are being removed for the European launch and replaced with the same software driven emulation system that the XBox uses. This means that a lot fewer PS2 games will work on European PS3's than on Japanese and American ones.

Obviously, this has not been a popular move with many fans who were interested in buying a PS3 because it would support their large collection of PS2 games.

Yahoo News Have the story HERE.

Now, what is particularly interesting about this story are the comments by Alex Kwiatowski at "British market research group Vertical Market Technologies".

Kwiatowski says "I'm as disappointed as the next game player about the reduced backward compatibility, but even the most nostalgic, misty-eyed gamers will have their steely hearts impressed by the new features that PS3 games provide".

Clearly the message is that actually, as a market research guy, he knows that we Europeans aren't too bothered about the reduced backwards compatibility and that the sheer quality of the PS3 will mean that European sales of the PS3 won't be affected by the re-design. So gamers shouldn't expect any additional impediments to the PS3 coming to dominate the market (and thereby getting the most shelf-space and the best game products) and retailers shouldn't worry about any decreased demand.

What is particularly interesting is that if you run "Vertical Market Technologies" through Google you get THIS. If this company exists, it doesn't have a website.

Run "Alex Kwiatowski" through Google and you'll get THIS. Unless Kwiatowski has gone from being a college athlete in Illinois to being a UK company spokesman in 18 months, he HAS no web-presence. So he's never been asked his opinion about anything before, he's never had his name on a market research report that's online and he's never worked for a company that listed him as an employee.

But wait... there's more. I ran "Vertical Market Technologies" through Companies House (the body with which all corporations and companies are registered in the UK) and found THIS. Apparently there IS no "Vertical Market Technologies" market research group in the UK.

So we have a man who has never shown up on the internet despite working for a tech company, which not only doesn't have a website but isn't even registered as a legal entity in the UK.

The only conclusions we can draw are : A) The Yahoo journalist is inventing talking heads and using them to support his opinions on things or B) Someone is managing perspectives of the PS3 re-design.

REVIEW - EA's The Godfather - 13/20

I was reading an article in yesterday's Guardian about why Albert Camus' L'Etranger is so popular with men and I was struck by some interesting similarities between that book and Electronic Art's latest blockbuster license.

For the record, I read The Outsider (as it is known in English... an interestingly loaded translation at that) when I was about 17 and it didn't mark me.  I thought it was funny.  I read Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang at around the same time and it had a far stronger impact upon me.  Both books are about people living in accordance with publish philosophical doctrines but whereas one book is about being a miserable outsider, the other's got gags about tossing off french lorry drivers (something I hadn't picked up on until my ex pointed it out to me because I'd told her to send it to her young nephew as a birthday present).

Anyway... this is my second stab at a review of the PS2 version of the game.  I'm currently on the road and I find that without a word processor capable of word-counting, I tend to waffle on.

When Electronic arts first decided to have a go at adapting the seminal 70's gangster epic The Godfather for home consoles the reaction was justifiably howls of laughter and derrision.  You see, EA don't have the best of records when it comes to intelligent game design or innovation.  They tend to make their money flogging you sequels to games you already own with just enough changes to convince you that you're not a worthless idiot.

I found the game to be surprisingly subtle.  More subtle perhaps than EA intended.  You play a junior member of the Corleone family and aside from taking part in many of the off-camera events of the film, you spend your time getting protection money out of New York businesses.  This is a canny move because one of the most welcome additions to GTA San Andreas was the section in which CJ fought other gangs for control of turf.  The game sees you softening up business owners either through force or negotiation and how well you do this is reflected in how much respect you gain.  Some businesses are fronts for criminal activities or are protected by rival families and this generally means that you have to kill a few enemy gangsters.

The game's subtlety comes from its three gages.  There is the vendetta level which measures how pissed off the other families are at you, the respect level which allows you to buy up skills and the wanted level that reflects how wanted you are by the police but can also be counter-balanced by giving bribes to local policemen.  The problem is that while the game does reward different types of play differently and it allows you a degree of freedom in how you build your gangster, it doesn't ever fully explain how any of these gages work so you're essentially left in the dark hoping for the best.  Despite playing the game for 15 hours I'm still in the dark as to whether the seemingly spirally presence of enemy gangsters is a response to my actions or not... am i actually making things worse by killing them or is the game this violent by design? - and violent it is, in a tasteless move there's a checklist of possible ways of killing a guy... a move that's less Francis Ford Coppola and more Rockstar's Manhunter.

The plot itself is also poorly designed.  Despite going up in rank and gradually integrating the family, the guys at EA show themselves to be little better than the guys at Rockstar as far as making you feel as if you're a "businessman" rather than a murderous thug who serves as muscle.  Strangely though, this alienation from your colleagues also spreads to your loved ones.  In one fantastically poor piece of design you go from being turned down for dinner by a girl to being her fiancee and moving in with her only for her to be promptly murdered once you get to know her.

So the game makes you feel alienated from your friends, family and lovers and leaves you adrift in a world where nothing makes sense and your existence seems devoid of meaning or purpose.  So you do a few things to try and find your own path but you inevitably find yourself killing other people just for the sake of it and when the inevitable consequences arrive and you're killed or arrested, all you feel is minor irritation... and if that isnt the point of Camus' L'Etranger then i don't know what is.

Truth escapes at Sony!

Since E3 last year, the world has been a-buzz over the prospect of a new Playstation Console being released. During E3, Sony showed what they initially claimed was in-game footage of Killzone on the PS3 but what they later admitted had been mocked up footage put together for the event.

Well, that mask has slipped a little bit more recently with the news that while the PS3 will have High Definition output, it probably won't be "true HD" but rather the kind of low-grade HD you can get on the Xbox360 (the same graphics which prompted many to point out the lack of difference between XBox360 games and the XBox versions of the same games).

In fact, Sony haven't just been boasting about the quality of the HD output of their future console but they've gone so far as to say "The HD Era only really starts when we are on the market" (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php?id=131210) and that theirs will be the only true HD console (http://www.ps3focus.com/archives/166).

Well "avec nous le HD" and "apres moi le deluge" are both Hubris and here is nemesis...

http://games.kikizo.com/news/200602/065_p1.asp

Apparently the PS3 will have the same kind of HD output as the XBox360. This means that the gap between PS3 and XBox360 won't be as big as Sony were making it out to be. It also suggests what I have long suspected to be the case... namely that there's no such thing as the PS3. There are a few devkits floating around but there are still discussions being had as to what its true capabilities will be. Meaning that they haven't even finished designing it yet!

So next time Sony scoffs at other people's consoles remember that those people at least HAVE actual consoles as opposed to a casing and a marketting brief.

They've also confirmed that the author of the lies mentionned above will be giving the Key Note lecture at the upcoming Game Developers Conference. So expect a load of lies from Phil Harrison about how the PS3 will be so totally sweet it'll make you kick your mother in the face (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=14798)

Also in recent news, Sony have announced that they're cutting back the production of their cripple-ware enabled format the UMD. Apparently they've been underperforming. But then so has the PSP. It turns out I was right... the UMD is another minidisc. (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=14792).

So... Sony are doing well then.

Manifesto Games

In all the broohaha surrounding the upcming war of the next generation consoles, something has occured to me.  I don't give a shit.  Microsoft and Sony try to gain valuable PR advantage over each other by throwing lists of technical details including obscure computing terms like "terraflop".  I don't know what a terraflop is but apparently one console's better than the other because it's got more of them.  Nintendo, meanwhile are trying to disappear up themselves in a puff of whimsical pink smoke.

To paraphrase Silent Bob, to think of all that raw, surging computing power makes me wonder why the hell I should care.

I've been a gamer since I was 6 and my father bought me a colecovision console.  Since then I've had at least one and usually two of every generation of home computer and console brought to market.  I have a cupboard at my mother's place FULL of old monitors and computer bumpf.

Well I've decided I want to get off.

I've decided I want to get off because I'm sick of the endless upward graphics spiral.  The new consoles will all be HD-TV compatible and will therefore require even better graphics, which means more manpower which means higher-prices.   I'm sorry, but as a denizen of the UK where at this point there ARE no HD-TV broadcasts, I'll be buggered before I buy a new TV just to play video-games on.  Whatever happened to hooking your console up to the tiny portable?  now we have to buy new TVs in order to make the most of Madden 2007?

I look at the videogames industry now and I see licenses, sequels and fewer and fewer genres.  When Katamari Damacy was released (well I say released, it didn't get released over here) people seemed to think it was the work of some insane genius.  I'm sorry but I remember games like Marble Madness and Squeek and Lemmings, KD is a welcome change of pace but it's hardly ground-breaking.  These types of games used to pop up all the time.  Instead what we get is a new FPS with better graphics and a few minor and frequently cosmetic changes to game play that are supposed to leave us gasping at the originality.  OH MY FUCKING GOD! YOU CAN USE TWO WEAPONS AT THE SAME TIME! 

Seemingly though, I am not alone in feeling this.

Greg Costikyan, a big gaming beast who started off in the table-top RPG universe made a presentation about how the current state of the videogame business is serving as a disincentive to innovation.

in the excellent gaming magazine The Escapist (well worth subscrining as it's free and fearsome clever), Greg has laid out his arguments for why the system needs to change

It starts here : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/3

and is continued here : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/9/4

On the basis of these arguments I have decided to opt out of the new generation of consoles.  I'm voting with my wallett and videogames aren't as fun as they used to be and they certainly aren't as fun as other activities.

It's now £40 for a video game that won't last you more than 10 hours.  For that you can get a series of The Shield which will last you longer and entertain you more.  So say YES to cutting-edge American drama and NO to cretinous American and Japanese videogames.

Costikyan, has put his money where his mouth is and set up a game company that's going to try and do things differently.  I recommend that we all support it.

http://www.manifestogames.com/