Story Time

Gather round folks its story time! This is the story of a little site called Polygon.com, who have, just today, released their impressions of the Xbox One, and accompanying games. Polygon has been releasing an episodic self-documentary about themselves for a little while now called "Press Reset", which it turns out they got a little help funding. From who? Microsoft. And how much you ask? $750,000. Here's that fact being confirmed on twitter by Arthur Gies, the head reviewer for Polygon:

So since Microsoft is literally funding their website, you'd think that they would give the Xbox One a glowing review right? Well that seems to have been the plan, what with the final review score being 8/10 (.5 better than their PS4 review), however looking at the review itself tells a different story. It's full of statements like this:

"The Xbox One is a hundred dollars more than its direct competition, and several third-party games run in lower resolution than they do on the PS4."

and

"A notable disappointment is the absence of real-name support at launch. One of the PS4's most enjoyable enhancements has been postponed for Xbox One until an unspecified future date. Microsoft has also dropped social-network integration, which seems like a short-sighted reaction to the lack of users of the Xbox 360 apps."

and

"It isn't perfect: Saying "Xbox" at certain times practically fills the screen with green-colored voice options, which can be distracting. Kinect demands full names of movies and games to start them, so you'd better get used to saying "Ryse: Son of Rome" instead of "Ryse." Cross talk was also an issue — when multiple people were speaking conversationally, commands often went unheard."

and

"Not all the changes are home runs, though. The new bumpers split opinions at Polygon — some editors feel they're more difficult to click than the 360's shoulder buttons. When compared to moving the "Black" and "White" buttons on the original Xbox controller to the shoulders on Xbox 360, this modification seems superfluous at best and a detriment at worst."

And it goes on. Despite all of these criticisms however, they still offered both a glowing final score and a notably higher score then their competition. Another note about the review is that it frequently cites features that have not been implemented yet as positives, as they will be positive when they launch. Why is the review so self-contradictory in this way? Especially when the same company slams the PS4 in their review with statements like:

"Sony's currently announced slate of platform exclusives is thin — shy of Infamous: Second Son, there's little to carry the PS4 through the spring and summer of 2014."

When the Xbox One review makes no mention of these shortcomings that both systems share. Why is it like this? If I were a more cynical man I would say that it's because Microsoft believes that people still undecided on which system to get are dumb enough to only look at the final score, rather than read an in depth review. If I were more cynical I'd think that part of Microsoft's deal with Polygon for the $750,000 was to have the Xbox One beat the PS4 in final score no matter what, and that the content of the review itself was never part of the deal. If I were more cynical I'd believe that right now Polygon is live streaming 12 hours with the Xbox One and instead of praising the system that their site declared the "superior machine", our hosts banter would be punctuated with quotes like "Why won't this just work?" (referring to voice controls) and "I hate this game." (referring to Dead Rising 3, a game they praised in their Xbox One review as a "truly next-gen experience" and gave a final score of 7.5/10).

Oh wait. That last one is real.

I Just Want To Smash Things

Let’s talk about Smash Bros. I know the PS4 came out last week, and the Xbone comes out Friday, but every news organization on the planet is covering those things, I’d rather talk about this:

For those not in the know, Project M has been an attempt four years in the making to improve Brawl’s gameplay and return it to the level of competitive combat that Melee offered. It has been a long time coming, and characters have been reintroduced a few at a time over the years, but now it looks like everything is ready. The technology behind the improvements this team has made to the game is nothing short of miraculous. When Brawl was first being modded, the limitations of the modding engine became very obvious very quickly. At the time, no one even though you could do full model importation or real mechanical tweaks. It wasn't until very recently that it was possible to actually add a new character without removing an old one.

This is a big step for competitive smash, as Project M tournaments have happened, but they ave never been the standard. The competitive Brawl scene is largely dead anyway, due to the nature of the game and the lack of a community consensus on a unified mod engine to play on. The other primary mod set that people use is Brawl+, which sticks closer to its Brawl roots, but still tightens up the gravity and other changes. Brawl+ has had the advantage of not needing the time it has taken Project M to really get up and running, since the changes are much more subtle. Project M, however, has shown a lot more promise as a balanced platform, and has a more dedicated team, so it will hopefully be supported with balance patches for a long time.

I’m very excited about this new version. I still have my Wii hooked up and everything solely for Smash Bros, and probably will for the foreseeable future. Smash Bros U is looking great so far, and everything Sakurai has said about it so far has been overwhelmingly positive and beneficial to the health of the game. It’s going to be at least a year before the release of the next Smash Bros, but I’m going to try to not be freaking out the whole time. The announcement trailer still gives me chills.

Maybe I'm Just Getting Slower

I realized today that I've been playing a lot of turn based and strategy games lately. Between Fire Emblem, Pokémon, the new Age of Empires 2 expansion, and the new XCOM expansion, it’s been nothing but strategy for me. I've played a few other games in the interim, like Batman: Arkham Origins and Wonderful 101 but I've just had a strategy bug to itch for the last few months. Part of it is that I have this weird thing where I have never been a fan of any real time games on handheld systems. With the sole exception of Mario Kart I basically only play turn based and tactics games on handhelds if possible. I guess it’s because I feel that whenever I’m playing a handheld game, I should be able to stop and put it down at any second, since I’m playing them on the go.

The new XCOM expansion is pretty excellent. It’s basically a sequel to Enemy Unknown, using the same core game and engine and adding a ton of new content. Enemy Within more than triples the number of gameplay maps available, and adds new options for unit upgrades, mission structure, and gameplay modes. Everything it adds breathes new life into the game, and fixes a number of issues many people had with the original version. I’m about to start playing it now, and I’ll post more impressions once I get some time with it, but the reviews have been almost universally positive.

Age of Empires 2 HD got a new expansion as well, which is surprising considering how old the original game is. It’s a pretty barebones expansion, only adding a few new civilizations and campaigns. The Forgotten also adds a couple of new features and improvements, like built in streaming with Twitch TV and built in spectating for online matches. For such an old game, getting any expansions at all is pretty impressive, and I don’t know what else they could do to improve the game that wouldn't ruin the nostalgia of being an HD remake of a 14 year old game. It isn't much, but I’ll take it.

Obviously Pokémon is still eating up most of my gaming time, and I’m approaching 200 hours. The amount of work Game Freak put in to rebalancing the scene for competitive play is fantastic, and it has rekindled my love for Pokémon battles. I’m almost sad that Pokémon Bank is coming out next month, and with it will come a flood of perfectly hacked Pokémon from the earlier generations. On the other hand I really want to use a Heatran on my new team, so win-some-lose-some.

Expectations? Ha!

A new Call of Duty game comes out today! This being a gaming blog and all, I should probably talk about it, but screw that! I'm running a new D&D campaign!

Dungeons and Dragons is really fun, if you've never played it. I know I'll get a lot of flack for this, but my favorite version is 4th edition, because it has the most interesting and balanced combat engine of all the RPGs I've played, and I prefer to play D&D like its Fire Emblem. If you like tactics games, D&D is basically a tactics game with a story you write yourselves, and act out through improv.

I usually fill the role of DM, or Dungeon Master, the person who runs the game, and controls all of the monsters and NPCs. The last time I DM'd a campaign was years ago, and it was awesome until it resulted in week after week of me trying to kill and overpowered adventuring party. See, there are two ways to run a campaign, as a storyweaver and friend, who just wants to share in cool experiences with his party, or as a malevolent force, hell-bent on slaying the party and putting them in mortal danger as frequently as possible. As you can probably imagine, the second one is super fun, and it results in this DM vs party situation where the DMs job is to hit the party hard enough to kill them, but not so hard that they claim it's unfair. Your primary goal is to make them wallow in despair, and accept their fates. Victory for a slayer DM comes not when the party is dead, but when the players accept their fate, and blame themselves for their failure, instead of your brutal campaign.

That ended up sounding significantly more evil than I intended, but the point is the same. If you are the kind of person who likes developing challenges, traps, and encounters, and then watching your friends try to navigate them, then DM is the job for you. I bring all this up because I have been coerced into running a short campaign by some friends, and I'm really getting into it. Here's the campaign background for the first encounter:

It is a time of great turmoil on the Material Plane. It has been 200 standard years since knowledge of the multiverse became widespread as the result of the time wizard Amser’s devious plans, and gave rise to what is now called The Convergence. With travel and communications between planes now a common occurrence, beings with wealth, power, and knowledge seek to plunder and control areas of the multiverse once inaccessible to them. Many of the old gods and other greater beings have retreated, as this rapidly changing world is causing disturbances not even they can predict, and the resulting power vacuum has given rise to numerous emperors, gang leaders, and false prophets who seek power for themselves.

 Your group, [group name] is a small organization in the business of conducting, less than scrupulous missions for being who are willing to pay your fees. Your services aren’t cheap, but you have a reputation for silence, discretion, and honor. [Group name] is based in the undercity of Polis Agora, an ancient city of magic and power that was founded long before the convergence. The native Agorans are a peaceful, spiritual people, who have had trouble dealing with the influx of technology and power that their city has faced, and very few still live in the city itself. Since the convergence, this once great trade city has been overrun with gangsters, thieves, and con men, who have been trying to overthrow the local government and install their own puppet politicians. Due to the cities ancient laws, the title of Duke of Polis Agora has been passed down through named successors, and each Duke has picked a native Agoran replacement, and for the last 200 years their office has been as resistant to change and corruption as possible.

 The current Duke, Duke Torlief, is known in the public eye for being aloof and likeable, but behind closed doors he is a strong negotiator and a powerful ruler, who refuses to yield to the ruffians who would steal his city. He is also a man of honor, and refuses to turn to illegal or unscrupulous means to shut down his opponents. The Duke’s cabinet, however, is not so valiant, and is willing to do anything to maintain native Agoran control of the government. One such cabinet member has even gone so far as to hire [group name] under an alias, to assassinate notorious gang boss Baron Darost.

Writer's Block

Blarrrrrrrrrrrg.


I have no idea what to write about this week. All I've been doing for the last week is playing Pokemon, and I already did like 3 posts about that. Batman came out, and my roommates seem to be in love with it, but I haven't really touched it yet. Microsoft continues to screw the pooch with the Xbone launch, but that isn't even news at this point. Mountain Dew Game Fuel is back, and super delicious, but that isn't exactly news either.

Nintendo announced that that sexy Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds 3DS XL is coming to North America, and that's pretty sweet, along with announcing some awesome new colors for this holiday season.

Delicious

Uhhhh...


I'm excited for the new XCOM DLC, but that isn't for another few weeks. Halloween is this week, but all of the festivities I'm going to be a part of aren't happening for another week or so, for scheduling reasons, and so I'm not really feeling the holiday spirit. Also the new Magic: The Gathering Commander decks come out Friday, and they look pretty sweet.


I guess that's about it. Back to breeding Pokeymans.

Pokemon: A Retrospective

I was going to do a review of Pokemon X and Y, but I realized that Pokemon games are enormously difficult to review. The contents of the review have to change dramatically depending on who the audience is, because many of the improvements from game to game, and most of my favorite new features, are only significant to hardcore or long time players. Even major updates to the game could be seen as revolutionary, or obvious, depending on an individual’s connection to the series. I can talk about how the graphics are now full 3D for the first time ever, and the camera and battle sequences take a cue from the Pokemon Stadium games, and that will sound amazing from one perspective, and trivial from another. Conversely, if I tell you that Destiny Knot can now pass down 5 IVs from parents, significantly improving the yield for IV breeding, half of you will give me blank stares while the other half jumps up and down with glee.

So that’s why I’m going to be writing sort of a retrospective of the Pokemon series, or the main games at least. Pokemon has always been a game that has offered a ton of hidden complexity, under a cute, kid friendly shell. Contrary to popular internet complaining, Pokemon has always had hidden stats and tedious training in one form or another, but it wasn't until comparatively recently that these factors have been well documented and critically considered. It’s these elements of simplicity and complexity that, when held in perfect balance, enthrall so many people and generate record breaking sales.

These elements of complexity and simplicity, combined with a “minute to learn, lifetime to master” mentality, are what make Pokemon so successful and long lasting, especially in the face of competitors. Since Pokemon’s explosive burst on to the scene in the 90s, a number of copycat, monster collecting series have come and gone, in an attempt to capitalize on the Pokemon frenzy. Nearly all of them, however, have fallen by the wayside, usually as a result of elements which made their unique universes too complex for their audience to handle. The two most famous Pokemon “knock offs” are Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon, and while they both survive in one form or another today, neither of them even come close to the sales or brand power of Pokemon. This is primarily because in an attempt to be ahead of the curve, both series resorted to creating a multitude of new mechanics and monsters much faster than their player base could keep up with, and as a result their players gave up out of frustration.

Pokemon is a paragon of self-control, in this sense, as they tend to make lots of little changes gradually, so no generation of games feels dramatically different from the previous one, and the core mechanics of the game barely change at all. A number of critics penalize the Pokemon franchise for “releasing the same game every year”, but unlike other series such as Call of Duty, where worthy competition comes out at the same rate and yet they do the bare minimum to get by and coast on their brand recognition, Pokemon was the original big “monster collection” game, and is still the most popular one today. Pokemon manages to outperform the competition every time, not only because of their brand name power, but also because of the level of quality that dwarfs every major competitor. Nintendo knows what they’re doing when it comes to handheld games, it’s sort of their thing.

Anyway, short version is: Pokemon is great, the new game is great, if you want a cute RPG where you can force your monsters into a pit fight with your friend’s monsters then go buy it!

Travelogue: New York Comic-Con 2013

This entry is a special one for me, because even though it hasn't been exactly one year since I started this blog, my experiences at NYCC 2012 were what drove me to start a blog in the first place, so this is technically my one year anniversary. Go me.

My feelings about NYCC haven’t changed much from last year, it’s still the next best thing to San Diego Comic-Con, and it still offers a wide variety of awesome things to do. Parking is still a nightmare, but you take what you can get in one of the biggest cities in the world. The crowds were immense, but there were plenty of staff to help out and keep lines moving, and everything went smoothly all in all. In addition to general con madness I got to play a number of games, which was fantastic, and got to see a couple of really cool panels.

I got to play Bayonetta 2, which is looking to be fantastic. It feels just like the first game, which is a good thing, but with an upgraded climax system and pretty new graphics. I’m not kidding when I say that this 5 minute demo rekindled my love for spectacle fighters.

Got to play Super Mario 3D World, which is shaping up to be the most evil game ever conceived. The NSMB series is already known for killing friendships with its unintentional head bounces and bubble death system, but SM3DW adds a communal life pool, the ability to troll power-ups even more, and levels that feature Mario Party style cooperative minigames. All of these elements combine into a game which will leave friend groups sweltering and tensions high. Deceptively pretty game, only purchase if you hate yourself and your friends.

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is basically just more DKCR, which is totally fine with me, since DKCR was great. There are a bunch of new enemies and obviously improved graphics, but I'm pretty sure that the 2014 delay was to ensure that it didn't have to compete with Mario rather than completion problems, since the game engine is literally the same. 

Finally A Link Between Worlds is something amazing. It totally captures the feel of old school Zelda games, and will be a welcome return to form for the Zelda series. I also saw the Eiji Aonuma panel, where he revealed lots of new information about the game, and also admitted that past games in the Zelda series have had a bad case of hand holding, and he hopes to fix that going forward. I love everything about than sentence.

Oh, also Pokemon came out. That happened. It didn't even take long to write this, but I'm already getting withdrawals, so I'm going to go back to playing. It's really really good. Not gonna lie, next weeks blog post is probably just gonna be me ranting about how awesome it is. Probably.

My 3DS XL Review

I finally upgraded to a 3DS XL last week. I've had my OG 3DS since launch day, and I've used it for just about everything you can imagine. The 3DS is a fantastic system that’s totally worth owning, but the original build had its share of issues. This is my first XL system, since I skipped the DSi XL, and the size is certainly something I’ll have to get used to. What really put me over the edge though was the release of the Pokemon X and Y editions, which are sexy as hell and totally worth it.

So Sexy.

For starters, to only real problem I ever had with my launch day 3DS was the battery life. The wireless features take a pretty massive toll on the battery, and even with less liberal use, the system could only handle 8 to 10 hours at a convention. I never had any problems with screen size or brightness, and I never fully filled my default 2 GB SD card. Even so, the battery life promises I heard about the XL were enough to get me interested, and I’m happy to report that those promises are easily kept. With semi-regular use my XL can last upwards of 50 hours before the low battery indicator even turns on.

The other improvement that I consider really valuable is the improvement of the quality and placement of the buttons. The regular 3DS could leave my hands frozen in raptor claw positions after extended gaming sessions, but the XL seems to have been designed for human hands. The Start, Select, and Home buttons are also real buttons now, instead of strange, plastic sheet covered depressions, and feel much more responsive. The circle pad is also improved, but it’s difficult to explain the change. Both the new and the old versions are coated in some sort of rubber/plastic hybrid that gives the pad its grip, but the new version seems to be slightly less porous, so it doesn't absorb skin oil as much and doesn't become dirty or slippery from use. This also causes it to have less grip, but they made the center “pit” deeper to compensate. It’s a small change, but a noticeable and welcome one, since the old circle pad tended to leave a ring on the upper screen when closed for a while.

As I mentioned before, this is my first XL, and I will say that the size is minimally problematic. While in its case it barely fits into standard jean pockets, but alone it doesn't have much trouble. This got me to thinking though, who exactly does Nintendo keep making XLs for? Every secondary model of Nintendo handhelds has been made to either cater to a different demographic, or to improve basic functionality of a system. The Game Boy Pocket was made to be a more portable version, and the Game Boy Color added Color. The Game Boy Advance SP added a hinge design and backlighting, and the Game Boy Advance Micro was made for Japanese businessmen to play on the go. The DSi added a camera and a real menu system, and the DSi XL was created to tap into the emerging demographic of older and elderly gamers with failing eyesight. The 3DS XL doesn't offer any of the features targeted at that demographic that the DSi XL had like the oversized stylus and the muted colors, but it was still designed to be that size. I would have honestly preferred a 3DS Lite, with all of the button and battery improvements but without the increased size. Regardless, the improvements are better than advertised and if the increased size doesn't bother you then the 3DS XL is a worthy purchase whether you are upgrading or getting a 3DS for the first time.

My Pokemon Is Fight

I have been participating in and running Pokémon tournaments for a long time. I played against neighborhood kids in grade school, built teams to face my friends in high school, and developed complex strategies in college. When I worked for Gamestop I started a tradition of having a Pokémon tournament before the launch of each new game in the series. At its peak my tournaments hosted over 120 players, and resulted in a number of angry complaints by mall security. Even though I’m no longer with the company, friends of mine are continuing the tradition and this Saturday will mark their second annual tournament without my help.

The biggest thing that gave our tournaments drive was our awesome district manager at the time who authorized us to offer prizes, including free copies of the new game to the winners. Runners up would win things like DS storage cases and Pokémon figurines, one year we even had a custom engraved trophy for the winner. So far every tournament winner has been a friend of mine, including our current reigning champion who is also a two time winner. That doesn't mean that you need to be college aged in order to win, in our second year we had an 8 year old boy in the quarterfinals, and last year a young girl whose team was her starter and five dragons made it to the semifinals. People of all ages come out to participate, from toddlers using their in game team to full adults who compete alongside their children.

For the years that I ran it, I didn't get to participate for obvious reasons, but I did get to face off against the tournament champion each year in an exhibition match. In those battles I was undefeated for three years running. Every year the matches would get closer and closer, including the famous frozen Togekiss moment, but I managed to pull off a win every time. Last year I entered at the last minute with my championship team basically as a gimmick to see how far I got, and got eliminated in round 3. This year I’m significantly more prepared, and I’m ready to reclaim my title.

If you've never played competitive Pokémon it’s a crazy beast. The best way to describe it is really really complex rock-paper-scissors. There are layers upon layers of strategy, team synergy, and countering options for you to consider when building a team, and then actually playing involves equal parts luck, skill, prediction, mind games, and tactics. There are over 600 Pokémon now, and hundreds of attacks, items, and abilities for them to use which leads to literally billions of possible teams, and on top of that every year or so a new game comes out which adds new moves, forms, or Pokémon to be considered for use. There is a massive Pokémon metagame that is maintained by websites and communities across the internet, and countless hours have gone into testing and perfecting certain strategies.

Just a little trip down memory lane I guess. I’m very excited for the upcoming tournament this Saturday (10/5) and I’ll be there with the 3^rd year champion and some other friends. It will be good to really get back into the swing of competitive battling, since I haven’t been seriously competing for a number of years. If you’re near the South Shore Plaza feel free to come by and see what all the fuss is about.

So How 'bout That Steam OS?

It looks like the long rumored Steambox may finally come to fruition with Valve’s announcement this week of a Steam OS. Apparently it’s going to be a full, Linux based operating system that’s optimized for game performance and media sharing. According to the official website, this operating system is being designed from the ground up to be a living room operating system with streaming options, developer support, and more. No hardware partnership has been announced yet, but this seems like a natural first step toward a first party Valve box.

The Steam OS is a somewhat unique product, as there isn't really any competition for “living room TV” computers. There are consoles, sure, but consoles are closed systems, designed to play specific games. You can’t just install the Xbox operating system on a PC and hook it up to your TV. There are also smart TVs, which offer video and music streaming options, but those are bare-bones systems that are basically just apps for your TV. The Steam OS is going to be a full operating system, which will presumable have all the features of base Linux available underneath the Steam shell, so the system will be as complex or customizable as you want it to be. That leaves room for a lot of flexibility and space for upgrades in the future.

It isn’t unheard of for people to have gaming computers hooked up to their TVs. Steam launched their Big Picture feature at Christmas time last year to target those people specifically. This OS could be a step in the right direction for those people, since presumable the entire OS could be controlled with a gamepad, similar to how Big Picture works, but it will be interesting to see how many people are willing to buy or build computers for that purpose when the OS launches. Luckily the OS will be 100% free, which eliminates the large cost of buying an operating system for a living room PC, but even with that benefit it seems unlikely that average consumers will be willing to build or buy their own living room PCs just for gaming.

I’m one of those people that has a living room PC, and thanks to a 30ft HDMI cable I can play all my Steam games on the glorious big screen. When Steam OS launches I’ll probably look into setting up a dual boot to at least try it out, but whether or not it becomes a permanent part of my setup will depend on how good the streaming capabilities are. If a Steam OS PC with minimal running hardware can act as a streaming box, and stream games in real time from my main PC I’ll buy one for every room in the house.

Versus!

Competitive gaming is an interesting subject. It has existed since the first days of head to head play and high score competition in arcades, but in the grand scheme of things that’s been a relatively short period of time, about 40 years or so. In that time competitive gaming has grown by leaps and bounds, and not just in a professional sense. Sure, there are gaming tournaments now that offer millions of dollars in prizes, and games that support millions of players in competitive environments, but video games as a medium of competition still have a long way to go.

Competition in numerous forms has existed longer than human society has. It can be used to settle conflicts, to entertain, or to communicate, but all forms of human competition have been bound by one thing; arbitrary rules. Rules are important, they are the only things that keep society from collapsing into roaming gangs of murderers, and by extension competition needs rules as well. These rules are generally a good thing, as they establish a fair and balanced metric for use in determining victory, but that does not mean that they aren’t still totally arbitrary. The only reason a quarterback doesn’t punch and kick his way through the defensive line is because there are rules against it, just like how the only thing stopping a particularly jealous ex-boyfriend from kidnapping his former girlfriend are the laws that call that act illegal and the police force who enforce those laws. These rules create important boundaries in both games and in life, for the safety and fairness of everyone.

As a result of these rules, human beings become very adjusted to limiting and controlling themselves on a daily basis. Learning what the rules of life are, why they are important, and how to avoid breaking them is one of the most important parts of becoming a member of a society. In a way, all of the bad things that happen in society are the result of someone breaking the rules. Unfortunately, this leads to a fundamental problem when it comes to competition in video games, because video games have their own rules, and don’t need the players to enforce them.

This is very weird if you aren't prepared for it. Even other games, like board or card games, have established rules that you can break if you know what you’re doing. You can’t cheat a computer program, it literally cannot do things it wasn't programmed to do. You can exploit glitches, sure, but those are things that are very specific, and achieve a specific result, in a way they are just as much a part of the program as the non-glitch parts are. This results in a whole lot of new rules and problems that don’t exist anywhere else. Because the physics of the universe are set in stone from a gameplay perspective, it’s up to balance testers and programmers to fix problems that arise in the rules. You’ll see that in online or ongoing games, where routine patches are commonplace. It takes a lot of creativity to create a network of rules that result in a balanced competitive environment. Imagine if the referees and officials could manipulate physics for the duration of sports games, and how much work would have to go in to maintaining a system like that.

Additionally, people are bound to find this type of game difficult, seeing as there has never been anything like it in human history. Video games exist in a world where all the rules of the game a built right in, and there are no "honor rules". Anything that isn't allowed by the rules of the game is simply impossible to do. This is why you get lots of cases of people enacting their own honor rules in video games. Things like no rushing in real time strategy games, or no spamming in fighting games. Humans are used to having to live by arbitrary rules, and the lack of them can be startling to some people.

Just a random thought I had.

Travelogue - Dragon-con

Dragon-con is a convention that takes place every year in Atlanta, GA, and claims to be the “The world's largest fantasy/Sci-fi convention”. The convention certainly seemed huge, but that was due largely to the fact that it takes place across six hotels instead of one large convention center like most other cons. This leads to a lot of walking, both indoors and outdoors, and very congested hallways, since people have to do a great deal more walking than they would if this were held in a convention center. I managed to completely wear out my shoes over the course of the weekend, but it was well worth it.

This convention is run by fans, for fans, which of course has both positive and negative elements. On the positive side it doesn’t feature any of the strict regulations that sometimes plague larger cons. The autograph area is simply a room, where you can walk around, see people, and line up for whoever you want to meet. The celebrities get to make their own schedules for when they want to be there, and you don’t have to line up hours in advance or get lucky in a ticket drawing in order to meet them. Security was also a lot more lax then at other big conventions, with several vendors selling live steel weaponry on site and several outfits that would be impossible at other conventions for one reason or another. Also there were bars, lots of bars. Literally at least two or three per hotel, and open all day and night, so the entire convention was one big drunken four day party.

The flip side of this of course was the lack of organization. It’s very apparent that Dragon Con doesn’t have any sort of singular event coordinator to make sure everything is running smoothly. Each event or panel basically has to govern itself when it comes to tech support and organization. This results in several events clearly being run by people who are not prepared to do so, and the show suffers as a result. The lack of organization also makes navigating a colossal pain. Because the convention takes place across multiple hotels, there are more than fifty different event rooms, floor names, and venues to navigate, and each hotel has their own method of naming and organizing them. Instead of a single unified map and room layout, patrons have to navigate from building to building using sky-bridges, which leads to clogged hallways and lost con-goers. It doesn’t help either that the hotel staff will know the names and locations of areas in their hotel only, so getting help is a pain. It took us two days to finally figure out the most efficient way to navigate the area.

If you like massive parties and exceptional costumes, Dragon Con is the con for you. The events run all night every night, so there no shortage of things to do. If you don’t like large crowds, complex navigation, or lots of walking however, this one may not be worth it. Even if you don’t attend the event proper, Dragon Con takes over several square blocks of downtown Atlanta, and even has a parade that’s open to the public, so if you’re in the area you can still come by and experience the festivities.

I’m back everybody. Next week my post will be about my new place and all the fun things it contains. After that I can go back to posting about how Microsoft has their collective heads so far up their collective asses they look like that inside out pig monster from Galaxy Quest

I forgot Alan Rickman was in this movie...

Is It Almost A Year Already!?

Welp, it’s time for me to be taking a little summer break. I’ve been writing this blog nonstop, every week since its launch almost a year ago, and I’m about to go through some big personal stuff soon. I’m moving in 2 weeks, and also going to DragonCon in Atlanta. I’ll be back with a Travelogue about that on September 10^th. DragonCon is one of the largest conventions on the east coast, so it should be a good time. I’ll be back in a few weeks, enjoy your summer till then!

This Week In: The Internet

Too many things were announced in the past week so I’m going to cover a bunch of them! Here we go~

Riot Games and American Express are teaming up to create a League of Legends debit card. They’re doing a full reveal of it tomorrow but it looks like they are going to be offering a lot of Riot Points to customers. 22,000 points by my count, for signing up, adding money and making ten transactions. That’s almost $150 in Riot Points, which is a pretty damn good deal. It isn't a credit card, so there’s no credit check and no chance of it stealing money from you in interest. I’m still waiting to see more details, but if the American Express website is to be believed other than ATM fees and the one time signup fee it doesn't cost a thing. If it’s really on the up and up I’ll totally get one for myself.

Mark Whitten confirmed in a Reddit AMA that the Xbox One no longer requires the Kinect to be plugged in to function. This is fantastic news, because even if you love the Kinect and would always have it plugged in, you have to admit that losing your Kinect or having it break also resulting in the effective bricking of your console would be extraordinarily annoying. Not to mention the fact that Microsoft had stated in the past that it is possible to disable the Kinect on the software side, but if you could disable it but not unplug it, it leads to some questions about how much you can actually disable.

Finally, Nintendo announced a new element for the new Pokemon games; Mega Pokemon. This has been a big controversial point among Pokemon fans, mostly because we don’t have enough information about how they work mechanically. I like the designs from a visual standpoint, and from what we've seen the forms are activated in battle through the use of a hold item, which seems pretty straightforward. Nintendo probably won’t give too many details about this until the game is closer to release, but I’ll keep my eyes open. Another advancement for the new games is a system to track and build EVsin game, which isn't a big deal if you don’t play the game competitively, but if you do play competitively it’s a huge freaking deal.

Honestly though Mega Pokemon, good or bad, are totally redeemed by one thing: L'oreal Ampharos.

Because you're worth it

Travelogue - Boston Comic-Con

Boston Comic-Con was this past weekend, and it was pretty entertaining. It’s held in the Seaport World Trade Center now, as opposed to the Hynes convention center in previous years. This is good news for everyone, since the Seaport is larger, better laid out, and doesn't have the traffic problems that come with being connected to the Prudential Center. Last year BCC was small, taking up only half of the Hynes and only featuring a vendor’s room and a small hallway, but this year the offerings increased significantly.

Having been to both San Diego and New York Comic-Cons has spoiled me somewhat I suppose. Between those and PAX I’m used to large, sprawling convention halls with multiple main rooms and lots to do. Not that BCC is anything underwhelming, but it pales in comparison to the larger conventions. This is improving of course, and in a few years it’s likely that BCC will be big enough to rival the bigger cons, but this year it was still small. The convention hall was crowded, and the lines out the door went on for nearly a mile, but the convention still felt small and intimate.

The convention’s size did not stop it from attracting numerous noteworthy guests, however. The most exciting for me was the chance to meet Billy West, the man of a thousand voices, before the end of the final season of Futurama. We also got to meet the actors who played Fili and Kili in The Hobbit, as well as some famous models and cosplayers. All in all it was a good time, and even if you don’t think this convention is worth the price of admission, keep an eye on it. I have a feeling that Boston Comic-Con is going to become a very noteworthy convention in the next couple of years.

In other news, Pikmin 3 is fantastic, and I've put almost ten hours into it already. It’s so good that I can’t stop playing it, even with my Steam backlog staring me in the face and Tales of Xilia coming out today. I'm trying to find a way to fit all these games in, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. It’s so tough being me sometimes.

Insert Fish Pun Here

As you may or may not have heard, Phil Fish has cancelled Fez II, and is giving up on making games. He says that this decision comes at the end of “a long, bloody campaign”, and it has been confirmed that he is totally serious. People have made a really big deal about this on both sides of the camp, with some people really upset that Fez isn't getting a sequel, and others glad that Phil Fish won’t be making any more money.

If you've seen Indie Game: The Movie, you probably know that Phil Fish is a bit of a weirdo. He reminds me of a game developer version of Edgar Allen Poe, kind of sad, misunderstood and a bit of a dick. Fez turned out to be a fantastic game, but only after years of development and multiple revisions. Regardless, I have a lot of respect for Phil Fish as a developer, the conditions and situations he had to face while developing Fez we’re terrible but despite that he managed to make a great game. If he wasn't so abrasive toward his fans and didn't respond to criticism with such hostility he could have become a well-known and beloved game designer.

Honestly, this isn't really news. Game companies form and collapse all the time, and Indie companies aren't any different. The only real difference is that this decision was made by one person while he was overly emotionally invested. Was it a sensible move to make? No, but it is his decision. If he really believes that random people on the internet have been working in tandem to offend him and get him to stop making games, then there’s nothing else to say. As anyone who does any job in the public eye knows, you need to be thick-skinned about most of the things people say. You’ll drive yourself insane if you try to rationalize and internalize everything anyone says about you.

In reality though, Phil Fish is just a guy who either never really cared about making games in the first place, either that or someone who takes internet insults really really badly. I wonder what he’s going to do now that he’s out of the game business. It’ll be interesting to see if he takes up another “public creativity” career like writing, and if he does how badly he reacts to being called a hack all over again.

It's Easier Than Ever To Be A Cheap Bastard

With the Steam Summer Sale over we can all go back to letting our wallets recover and actually play a few of those games we picked up. I think I did well this year, and picked up a lot of games for very cheap. Here’s my haul, for your viewing pleasure:

Games I bought:

BIT.TRIP Runner 2

Borderlands 2 Costume DLC

Dishonored + DLC

Far Cry: Bloor Dragon

FEZ

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

Left 4 Dead 2

Penny Arcade’s OTRSPOD Episode 4

Puddle

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3: Platinum

Strike Suit Infinity

System Shock 2

Tomb Raider

Games I got as gifts:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution + DLC

The Last Remnant

Rogue Legacy

Strike Suit Zero

The Witcher 2

Games I gave as gifts:

Bastion

Merto: Last Light

Sonic All Stars Racing: Transformed

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

And the grand total for all those games? A whopping $53.41. Less than the regular price of a single retail game. How did I manage this you ask? Through the magic of Steam Trading Cards of course!

Steam Trading Cards is a new system on steam that allows you to play games and earn cards. Certain games have cards, and you can earn up to half of that game’s cards by playing it, the rest you have to buy from other people or trade for. That “buy” is the key component here, because you can earn all the cards you can and just sell them through the community marketplace for Steam credit. When you collect all the cards you can use them to make badges, which earns you Steam XP and blah blah blah, what matters is that people are willing to pay money for these things, which is free money for the rest of us. I made close to $40 by selling steam cards.

It’s a brilliant move by Steam, since the badge earnings are totally cosmetic, it doesn't cost them anything in terms of lost revenue, and they take a lucrative 15% cut of all Steam marketplace transactions. They are profiting off this card thing hand over fist in a way that would make even Apple jealous, but we don’t hate them for it. We don’t hate them because even though it’s a system of superficial changes that serves to make them money, Valve isn't trying to pretend like they’re giving us some huge new service we should have to pay for. If you want to ignore the cards, you are more than welcome to do so, if you want to farm them and get money, go nuts, and if you want to actually craft badges to get wallpapers and emoticons you can do that too. It’s a totally no lose situation for us and a win win situation for them. For the low cost of building the system they can continue to support it and see profits on the level of TF2 hats with every game they support.

It’s amazing to watch other companies like Microsoft flounder with public relations while Valve continues to be everyone’s favorite gaming company. Part of it may be that Valve does comparatively little PR work of their own, and other than Gabe Newell getting up on stage and talking about how awesome everything is, most news about Steam spreads through independent news sites. Who would have thought that making business decisions that aren't anti-consumer and just generally being supportive and understanding towards your userbase could make a company successful?

Of Smashing and Brothers

It was a pretty big weekend for one of my favorite game franchises ever Super Smash Bros. After some drama from Nintendo, Smash was allowed to be streamed and EVO, the world fighting game championships, and went on to break the world record for largest fighting game live stream of all time. This combined with the official announcement of return of Olimar (my main from Brawl) in Smash 4 has led to it being a good weekend for Smash players. Of course, no online discussion of Smash Bros. would be complete without endless arguments on the definitions of “competitive” or “fighting game” so I suppose I should weigh in on this. For the record, I have been playing Smash Bros. since it came out for the N64, my friends and I have put literally thousands of hours into melee and brawl, and I have entered Smash tournaments in the past. I consider myself to be a fanboy of every aspect of Smash Bros. from 99 stock pokeball battles to 1v1 Final Destination showdowns, and everything in between.

First things first; play the game however you want. If you and your friends are having fun playing the game, then keep having fun, and don’t let anyone tell you that your way of playing is “wrong”, that’s not what I’m here to do. What I am here to say is that you can’t dismiss the complaints of the competitive community just because you don’t like to play the way they do. The community that plays Melee at a tournament level were the first people to put to paper many of the advance mechanics from that game, mechanics that people use at every level of play, so even if you only play 4 player coin matches, if you have ever spiked someone with a meteor, or learned to nail sweet spots with a character, you have them to thank. Also, regardless of what anyone says Smash Bros. is a competitive series. It is a game where multiple people are put into an arena on equal grounds, and the game ends when only one of them is remaining, or scores the most points, and the winner is given a victory screen. That is literally the definition of a competition. Any game that features players competing against each other, and results in one player or team winning is “competitive” (except Mario Party, screw Mario Party), even if you personally just enjoy the game and don’t care about winning. Without further ado, have a list of reasons why the game being “competitively viable” is important:

1. Game balance is way more important than competitive tier lists. Tier lists are really disingenuous, and only apply at the highest levels of play, proper game balance however, affects the gameplay experience at all levels. I’m sure there are a number of people at lower skill levels who became disenfranchised with Brawl because they had a friend who played Meta-Knight who they were never able to beat and couldn't figure out why.

2. Having solid control of your actions makes victory feel good. I’m not talking about items and stages here, the wackiness of having bomb fall on you is different, I’m talking about feeling like your actions have an effect on the outcome of the game. Even though it does happen, deaths from random stage hazards happen significantly less often than kills through attack from players. It’s not just about winning either, this is coming from someone who considers the Ganoncide to be the pinnacle form of player death.

3. More options is never a bad thing. If you are one of those people who think Smash should never see tournament play and people who do that are taking it “too seriously” then what do you have to lose by that option being available? Maybe you don’t like competitive Smash now, but you could grow to like it over time? The way I see it, if you are that intolerant of the way other people live their lives then you would never interact with those people anyway.

4. There’s no reason why the game can’t be both. Melee is an excellent party game and an excellent tournament game. Neither of those elements suffers for the other one being included. No one is arguing that Smash 4 should be “Street Fighter: Nintendo Edition”, so stop acting like us hoping that the next Smash is competitively viable is the same thing as us saying that they should remove items or have every stage be flat and boring.

I could really keep going here. There are an endless number of reasons for me to rattle off, but the biggest one is still: why do people care? If you don’t like tier lists and twitchy gameplay and internet whining, then just ignore it and go play some Smash. No one is forcing you to watch or play in tournaments, and if you run into someone in real life who won’t play by any rules other than his own call him the asshat that he is and move on. 

The Six Billion Dollar Machine

Just FYI, I no longer care about Xbox One VS. Playstation 4, as that battle has gotten pretty boring. I'm far more interested in watching Microsoft's gaming division crash and burn all on its own. For example, let's take a look at how much money they have invested into the system already, not even counting the cost of the system itself, months before launch:

$400 million on an exclusive NFL deal

$700 million billion in data center/cloud support

$1 billion in investments for development of first party/exclusives (this includes paying for timed exclusivity on Titanfall)

$3 billion for the partnership project with AMD

And a marketing campaign "significantly larger" than the Kinect campaign, so that's half a billion at least.

That's almost 6 billion dollars without even touching the manufacturing costs, packaging and shipping. That's fine and all, the invisible hand of free market capitalism strikes again and all that, but what exactly is their end goal here? To make a successful console obviously, but they must be redefining “successful” since in addition to their recent marketing and PR blunders there is no way the Xbox One can be a financial “success”. Let's look at some numbers, we’ll use $6 billion as a starting point as the amount of money this console needs to make in order to at least get into the black. $6 billion divided by $500 a console is 12 million units; I know the numbers aren't that simple but for the sake of argument let’s say they are.

Does Microsoft really expect to sell 12 million consoles right out of the gate? It took almost two full years to get those numbers out of the Xbox 360, and it had the advantages of beating their competition to the market by a full year and offering a number of unique games thanks to recent acquisitions like Rare.

The Xbox One on the other hand has to deal with the WiiU which has had a year to build up a user base and has a number of big titles scheduled for the holiday season, and it has to go head to head with the Playstation 4, which is not only $100 cheaper out of the box but also offers 90% of the same games at launch. What exactly is Microsoft’s plan if this thing doesn't hit that 12 million mark? What if it takes two or three years? Not even counting the additional expenses over that time, that is a massive financial hurdle to overcome for a console, especially one that has had so much trouble getting off the ground at all.

The next few months will be interesting to watch, to say the least.

Also, I’m really done talking about the Xbone this time, I swear (unless Microsoft comes out and does something monumentally stupid again).

I Would Watch That Movie

Enjoy your 4^th of July everybody, I sure will, especially with the news that Don Mattrick is moving on to become the new CEO of Zynga, and how truly poetic that is. Seriously, it’s like the end of a Disney movie.

“And then the internet banished the evil Mattrick to the Zynga planes forever, bringing peace back to the video game industry, and the consoles lived happily ever after.”

Brings a tear to my eye...

It Was Fun While It Lasted

Well, Microsoft really took the wind out of my sails. I was all set to do this whole big exposé on how they were burning bridges with developers and alienating customers to the point that they were set up to fail spectacularly this generation, but they went ahead and recalled most of their horrible policies. No more DRM making all games online versions, no more 24 hour check ins, and no more being unable to sell and trade your games.  Well, I guess that’s it, we win! Everyone take to the streets and rejoice!

The Xbox One is no longer a train wreck on a crash course with a hurricane, but rather just the “inferior” console right out of the gate with its competitor, the PlayStation 4. The PS4 is $100 cheaper, doesn't come bundled with the mandatory camera, and has stronger hardware right out of the box. It looks bad for Microsoft still, but it looked bad for Sony at the beginning of the last generation too, and they managed to come back in the last couple of years.

However on the other side of the fight you have people like this guy who is actually defending the old Xbone policies. Most of his claims are based on wild speculation of ideas and features that were never really confirmed by Microsoft. He claims that this digital marketplace would have led to way to Steam-like sales, despite the fact that Microsoft has had a digital only platform for years (Games for Windows Live) that doesn't have periodic “Steam style” sales, and that the current Xbox marketplace is still releasing games for full price three months after release when many retailers have already lowered the price on the physical version. He also claims that the family sharing feature would have been revolutionary, allowing friends to share games over the internet. In addition to the fact that I can already share my physical discs and cartridges with literally infinite people, not just ten, that feature was never really elaborated on by Microsoft, so we don’t know what it would have actually entailed. If he thinks that Microsoft would have just allowed one out of every ten people to buy a game with no downside he is sorely mistaken, especially considering all of the other policies that were going to be implemented revolved around limiting your ability to reduce new game sales in any way.

Sadly, I fear that all of this will go down in history alongside the likes of “giant enemy crab”, and the Wii Music drummer guy as something ridiculous a company did at E3, as opposed to the gigantic breach of trust and loyalty that it was. The biggest thing to remember here is that Microsoft did not change their policies because they felt bad, or because they were being nice, they changed their policies because the PS4 was beating the Xbone in pre-orders 8 to 1, and they couldn't afford to lost that much money. They talk about listening to the consumer complaints, but the only people they really listen to are their shareholders, and they would have gone right ahead with this if they could have gotten away with it financially. In the immortal words of an anonymous IGN commenter:

“Microsoft is the abusive boyfriend. Many Xbox consumers are the girlfriend.

Microsoft had been occasionally beating his girlfriend for a while. It started light (unnecessary fees, RROD, minimal exclusives, etc.), but has become gradually more frequent. The girlfriend knows it's wrong, but has become increasingly surrendered to it. Her self-esteem is broken; she feels trapped and that this is the best she can do or even what she deserves. She has even defended Microsoft in front of friends and family who have shown concern. "He only does it 'cause he loves me." "He knows what's best for us." "You don't understand him like I do."

One day, Microsoft came home and brutally assaulted his girlfriend for no apparent reason. It was far worse than it had ever been before (DRM, online authentication, resale fees, mandatory Kinect, no sharing, etc.) Finally, the girlfriend had had enough. She packed her bags and moved out. She thought, "This is too far! Why did I let it go on so long?"

Soon she began dating again. A man named Sony, realizing the abuse of her past, welcomed her with open arms. He respected her, honored her, introduced her to new friends and experiences, and she began to remember what it was like to be happy. But Microsoft found out about the relationship, and he was a very jealous man.

After returning home from work one afternoon, the girlfriend found Microsoft, kneeling at her door, with roses in hand. "Come on, baby. Gimme anotha' chance. I swear I can change! I'll be a new man! Don't hurt me like this, baby. Remember all the good times we had togetha'?" Unfortunately, he failed to mention his real reason for being there. He didn't regret his actions. He wasn't there to apologize. The only reasons he came back was because of how much he hated the integrity of the new man courting her and because his attempts to hook-up with a rich young girl he had his eyes on was met with rejection.

But the girlfriend finally knew better. She realized the insincerity behind Microsoft's words. His intentions were not noble, not in her best interest, but his desperate attempt to save what he (thought he) had before his selfishness and anger drove her away. It was damage control, not remorse. So the girlfriend stood at a crossroad between an honest man, and an abusive liar. Who should she choose?

Who will YOU choose?”

Motion Sickness

Motion controls will never work properly. There, I said it. They’re great for fun little minigames, or for really physical things like dancing or workouts, but it will never work for hardcore gamers. I like motion controls, I really do, things like hands free and voice controls were the product of science fiction not too long ago, but now we have technology like the Kinect where we can have our motions interpreted as actions. We, as a species, are getting closer and closer to helping me realize my dream of being Iron Man.

However, as Microsoft forces everyone to own and use the new Kinect, with the idea that if everyone is guaranteed to have it, developers will actually start using it, it’s becoming more and more obvious that motion controls are not going to work for any level of advanced or competitive gameplay. The technology is getting better and better, but we haven’t seen a game yet that can make use of motion controls in a way that is engaging, accurate, and fun. The developers of Ryse, one of the Xbox One exclusives, have said in interviews that they couldn't find a way to make the Kinect gameplay“fun”, so they implemented a controller control scheme as well. This really says a lot about motion controls in general, but why couldn't they make it fun? The new Kinect is accurate enough to detect emotions and levels of stress, but they can’t make fun gameplay out of it? It’s almost like the technology doesn't really matter, which leads us to startling realization as to why motion controls will never be used for advanced gameplay; it’s not that the sensors aren't accurate enough,

It’s that humans aren't accurate enough.

Let’s try an experiment. Hold your arm out straight, parallel to the ground, not resting it on anything, and see how long you can hold that pose. Within 30 seconds you’ll start to feel some discomfort, and your arm will waver slightly. As a matter of fact I doubt that anyone could hold any pose perfectly for more than about 10 seconds. In literally any game that requires any level of skill, however, you have sequences of inputs that need to be entered precisely each time, in order to produce the same result. Take Street Fighter for example, everyone knows how to do a hadouken on a controller, and those exact actions will produce a hadouken every time, but imagine if they made a Kinect Street Fighter, and you had to do the DBZ hand motion in order to fire one. Could you do the motion one hundred times and have the motion be nearly exact every time? How about a thousand times? A million? You can’t, no one can. Even on a controller it can be difficult to enter precise commands under pressure, and that just involves the use of your fingers.

I’m going to get a lot of flak for this, but the one game that I consider to be the best example of this phenomenon, and also the single best motion control game to date, is Zelda: Skyward Sword. Many people complained about the motion controls, but they work near perfectly if you know how to use them. It should be as simple as “pretend to swing a sword” but it isn’t. The system would misinterpret wind-ups as swings, and cause sword swings in the wrong direction, which depending on the enemy could cause you to be damaged or worse. That’s right, the game that I consider to be the best adaptation of motion controls to AAA games still requires you to learn how to manipulate the system in order to succeed. When it comes right down to it nothing short of actual, matrix style, full consciousness virtual reality will be able to make motion gaming feel real, and yet we keep seeing attempts being made. There’s nothing wrong with motion controls as they stand now, people seem to love dancing games, but there is no reason why it should be required for the console to function.

Please Don't Buy the Xbox One

I’m going to be doing blog posts about E3 for the next month, just so you know. This stuff is a really big deal to me, and to a lot of people, and the industry is changing in ways that we have never seen before. Next week I’m going to do a full rundown of all of the presentations, but for now, I present a little segment I like to call “Please, for the love of all things humane, do not buy an Xbox One”.

We've all heard the news about the Xbox One (hereafter referred to as the “Xbone”), about how it has to call home once every 24 hours, or it locks you out of your games, about how used games will be a thing of the past or at best price locked through “select retailers”, about how you can’t lend games to friends, since all transfers are one way and permanent, the list goes on. Obviously this thing is shaping up to be a hot pile of ass to actually use, but I still see people who are determined to buy one. I hear a number of arguments on this front, but I’m here to lay down some facts, and also to debunk several of the most commonly used defenses of the system. First, let me make my point crystal clear:

Please, please, as a consumer of products, as someone who supports a free market, as a member of a society interested in things that are beneficial to us all, do not buy the Xbox One.

This isn't about brand loyalty, this isn't about console wars, and this isn't about “winning”, this is about freedom. That’s right, freedom, freedom to play games and enjoy artistic talent without having a multinational corporation nickel and dime us every step of the way. These “features” in no way benefit the consumer; that is a fact. You can go on and on about how these restrictions don’t bother you, but that’s not the issue, the issue is that you are being asked to tolerate them for no reason. These restrictions offer no benefit to you, at all, and Microsoft is banking on the fact that the masses want to play Halo and Forza so badly that they will just eat it up anyway. They are hoping that people are literally willing to put an always on, always connected, webcam that can be mined for advertising data and recorded for the government in their living room, just to be able to play the new Halo. This is 1984 people, and if you buy into it all you are doing is proving to corporations that you will gladly hand over your rights, your privacy, and your money out of sheer, blind loyalty to an entertainment franchise.

If the Xbone doesn't fail, and I mean fail spectacularly, there is no reason why every company wouldn't start doing it. These policies make corporations money, that’s why they are implemented in the first place, and if Microsoft can get away with people not caring about these things, then Sony will do it next generation, and Nintendo the generation after that. Why wouldn't they? If a company can institute hilariously anti-consumer policies and still make just as much money, more money even thanks to those policies, why shouldn't they? This is a very slippery slope, we already have Apply tracking our movements with GPS and Google tracking our searches for advertising and Target tracking our shopping habits across the country, when does it end? When do we, as a society put our collective feet down and say enough is enough?

Please, I’m begging you, don’t support Microsoft in this madness. If you buy an Xbone, you are paying Microsoft to take your rights away, when you could just buy a PlayStation 4 and get a nearly identical experience without all of the hassle. Get informed about this stuff, and talk your friends out of it too if they are leaning towards the Xbone in November. Everyone needs to know how horrible this is, because as hilarious as it will be to see the backlash on Christmas day when Timmy takes his brand new Xbone over to Grandma’s house for dinner, but can’t play because she doesn't have internet, or when one smartass kid decides to log on to his friend’s Xbone and transfer all of his friend’s games to his own console, effectively stealing them, but when he is found out he can’t just give the games back, because the transfer is one way, those people still gave Microsoft their money, and no amount of bad press is going to take that money away. 

How to Respond to Xbone Arguments

I keep seeing people try to defend the Xbox One, and their hilariously anti-consumer policies, and it is adorable. Ignoring how ridiculous it is to defend a multinational corporation on a personal level, most of the defense points I commonly see are flat out wrong. More often than not, when I see someone defending the Xbone, they aren't actually pointing out any benefits, but rather trying to justify the problems. Here are some of the most common defenses of the Xbone, and why they don’t work the way you think they do:

- The new DRM is no worse than Steam, and everyone loves Steam!

First off, The Xbone DRM is demonstrably worse than Steam, since Steam doesn't require a constant connection. Steam has a full offline mode, and can play most games without an internet connection, any exception to that is the responsibility of the Publisher. The Xbone, however has the 24 hour check in at the system level, so Publishers/Developers can’t disable it if they want to. More importantly though is that Xbone and Steam are totally different, and can’t really be compared like that. Steam, when it was released was actually a very good thing despite the DRM. At the time, piracy of PC games actually was a really big deal, and publishers were coming up with their own versions of DRM to combat this, which actually made piracy worse because much of that DRM was intrusive and didn’t work properly. Then Steam comes along, and offers an easy, unified way of having DRM that wouldn’t break your games. Steam became a positive direction for PC gaming, which revived the platform, and led to the open marketplace we have today. Valve is kept honest by the fact that they can’t simply implement policies that make Steam inconvenient, because they could be replaced by Origin, or GOG, or any other of the dozens of PC game platforms. Microsoft on the other hand has no competition on their closed platform. No one can open up their own store on the Xbone, so their prices and their policies don’t answer to anyone but themselves.

- The new DRM will kill used games which cost publishers money, so now games will be cheaper/have sales

Used games costing publishers money is just the latest scapegoat thought up by big corporations who are hemorrhaging money to appease their angry shareholders. EA has been starting to financially tank for a while now, but instead of reevaluating their company policies, or attempting to expand with risky ventures, they cut their budgets to the bone year after year, and beg for more money by blaming boogeymen like piracy and used game sales for their failures. The truth is that modern AAA titles cost a small fortune to make, and no shortage of luck and skill to make well. They cost a lot of money, and in many cases lose money overall, but instead of trying something new or admitting defeat, it’s easier to blame something else. Why, in this environment, would those same companies then voluntarily make games less expensive? Even if these policies did save the company money, why would they lower prices that people are willing to pay? Again, a Steam comparison doesn’t work here, because those sales are the result of multiple retailers competing with each other, which won’t happen on a closed system.

- The Xbone has exclusive games I want!

It’s hard to argue with this one. If a game you want to play is exclusive to the Xbone, then it really comes down to how much money you are willing to pay, and how much abuse you are willing to take in order to play that game. The biggest (and only) games I see people clinging to are Halo and Forza. Forza is a driving game, a realistic driving game, and while I don’t claim to be a connoisseur of that genre, there seem to be many of them out there, what it does isn’t exactly unique.  As for Halo, let me make one thing clear: I have been playing Halo games for over a decade, I have nearly every achievement in every Halo game, my 360 is the Halo Reach special edition one, I still have the Halo Reach legendary edition statue on my desk, and I have put literally thousands of hours into this franchise. I love Halo, and I won’t be getting Halo 5 because I’m not willing to put up with Microsoft’s bullshit.

- I actually like the TV/Cable Box/Snap features, and would totally use them!

Anyone who wants those features should look at this. The Samsung smart TV does everything the Xbox One does except play Xbox games. It has voice and gesture controls, picture in picture, facial recognition, internet browsing, everything. It’s actually better than the Xbone, since you get access to Netflix, Hulu, etc without having to pay for Xbox Live Gold on top of the normal subscription cost, and it also doesn't spy on you for the government. Best part? The 32” version (same size as my TV) is less than the Xbone. 

- Well I have good internet and don’t sell my games, so this stuff doesn't really affect me!

In order to think that this is a reasonable thing to say you’d have to be some sort of high-functioning autistic that can’t recognize patterns. Xbox live has been down for weeks at a time in the past, as has PlayStation Network. Remember how badly Blizzard botched the launch of Diablo 3? Or EA with the new SimCity? These things happen sometimes, and there isn't anything you can do about it, but now you can’t play ANY game on your console if it happens, for literally no reason. You live in an area of the world with consistent internet and an ISP who will fix problems in a timely manner? Good for you, but you may not forever. You may have to move to a new home that doesn't have good internet service, or your ISP may go out of business and be replaced by one that doesn't give a rat’s ass about you. There are so many variables here it’s staggering, especially when you consider that the 24 hour check in is a totally arbitrary requirement in the first place. It does not offer any functions or security at all that could not be implemented in less obtrusive ways.

The biggest argument against the Xbox One is this: even if these things don’t bother you for some reason, why should you put up with them at all? They clearly offer no benefit to the consumer, and only stand to make Microsoft more money through advertising and fees, so why? If there was no competitor then maybe I could understand, but the PlayStation 4 has better hardware, 99% of the same features, doesn't have these ridiculous restrictions, and is $100 less. We all need to stop and think for a minute before blindly following any company down a road like this.

Three E's

This one isn't going to be super long, but I thought I’d give my predictions for this year’s E3.
Announcements are already starting to roll in. Harmonix announced that they are making a new music
game in Disney’s Fantasia universe. That could be really awesome, but it’s strange that they are insisting
that it is not a dance game, but the music shown so far has all been dance/club remixes of top 40 songs.
It’s also Xbox exclusive, but will be on both the 360 and the One. That whole project just confuses me,
but let’s move on to some predictions.


Nintendo:


Nintendo has already leaked a lot of what they are going to be announcing. We’re going to see Smash
Bros 4, new Zelda, new Mario Kart, a new 3D Mario, and more info on the Wind Waker HD remake
at least. There will probably be more information about titles that are coming out sooner as well, like
Pikmin 3, Bayonetta 2, and Pokemon X & Y. In lieu of a full presentation, Nintendo is doing an hour long
Nintendo Direct video that they will air on Tuesday morning. This has the benefit of being prerecorded,
so we won’t have to deal with any embarrassing stage-flailing that we tend to find at E3. I’m predicting
that Nintendo will have at least one out-of-left-field announcement, probably whatever Retro Studios
(the team that made Metroid: Prime) is working on. The thing that Nintendo needs to do however, is
give us concrete info on their new unified account system for the 3DS and WiiU. The WiiU’s biggest
weakness is its incomplete online system, and lack of account tracking.


Microsoft:


Microsoft is easily investing the most money into the event, and stand to lose the most after their
laughable Xbox One announcement. Their reps have been talking to the media, and calling the current
information about the Xbox One “Incorrect and Incomplete”. This seems to imply that their policies
may be changing, in lieu of the public outcry, but I doubt we’ll see too many of the “features” removed,
rather they’ll be rebranded. Microsoft is claiming that they won’t be talking about TV features in their
90 minute presentation, but let’s face it, they don’t have 90 minutes of games available to show without
some serious padding. I’m willing to bet that most of their exclusive game announcements are going to
be Kinect minigames and uninspired sequels, but I guarantee that they will use the hype wave caused
by the announcement of Halo 5 or whatever to slowly sneak in details about their awful DRM and
advertising plans.


Sony:


Sony has been a tough nut to crack this year. We haven’t really heard much from them since their
console announcement conference back in February. We know about a bunch of new features of the
console, and several exclusive games, but most of the details are missing. At E3 we’re definitely going
to get a full reveal of the console and its features. It’s possible that Sony is planning to implement DRM,
security, or worse in line with what Microsoft is doing, but has been keeping quiet about it. Sony’s
presentation is a whopping 2 hours long, and they’ll need something to fill that time, so new information
is going to be plentiful. A new, slim version of the Vita maybe?