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.
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?
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.
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:
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).
Enjoy your 4th 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.”
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?
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.
