An open letter to the game industry

Halo 4 has been out for almost a month now, and the problems I've found with the game have not gone away. There a multitude of bugs, imbalances, and missing features that I just can't overlook. The game looks and feels amazing, but it falls just short of true greatness because of some very basic missing elements. Worse still, these missing elements are symptomatic of a greater trend within the gaming industry, something that has gotten worse over the last several years.

In their defense, 343i has been doing a good job of removing bugs from competitive multiplayer. Halo 4 gets an update every Monday, and since the launch many of the game breaking bugs (like hiding in the wall on Complex) have been fixed. Other bugs, however, are harder to deal with, as they are problems with the game's code, for example, the shrinking covenant glitch.

As adorable as that glitch is, it's also kind of game breaking, especially at higher difficulties. It doesn't affect their damage or health, only their tiny tiny hitbox. Now, I do have sympathy here, I'm a programmer too, bugs happen, it sucks, but why is this allowed to be launched? Which leads me to my main point:

Developers; stop using your fans as unpaid beta testers. Seriously. Stop it. This applies more to console games than to PC games, but it's relevant across all platforms. Ever since the start of this past console generation, the first generation to feature true online systems, way too many developers and publishers have been releasing buggy, broken, or flat out incomplete games, because they know they can just patch out the problems later, and if it's a series with a lot of weight behind it (like Halo) people will buy it up anyway.

It's really a worrying trend because it preys upon the stereotype that gamers are gullible, maybe because they are a younger demographic, or maybe because they have a stigma of being "immature". You would never see anything else like this in any other industry. You'll never go to a movie theater and find a film that is missing the last scene, or have audio that cuts out halfway through. They don't air TV episodes where part of the set falls down. Games like Bully for the Xbox 360, Orange Box for the PS3, and many many PS2 and Wii shovelware games come to mind, but those are just the extreme cases. Why should there ever be hardware problems or framerate stutter on a console? It's not like the developers don't know what they are developing for. Not only are every console's internal specs well known by now, but many developers are on their third or fourth game this generation.

Publishers are even more to blame for this phenomenon. Articles are posted all over the internet every day about how launches need to be moved up, and other horrors, all so games can be released by some arbitrary deadline. Then these same publishers are astounded when games that were created with loving care over years like Journey, Portal 2, and Bayonetta get rousing critical and commercial success, while consumers look at things like Madden and see "just another year of Madden".

The biggest factor, I think, is whether or not you consider games to be art. Games being art is a debate that has gone on for a long time. Movies are considered to be art, as is music, so why not video games? Nay-sayers will point to the fact that interactivity kills any artistic message a game could have, or any number of other factors, but it really comes down to one thing:

Anything can be art, if you want it to be.

Not everything everyone creates is art, if it were, almost all food would be art, the rivets used to hold steel beams together, anything man-made would be. But if you love something you create, and you put your true feelings into creating that thing, it is art, doesn't matter what it is. That's the difference, and unless you are on the development team for a game, it's not possible to know truly whether or not they love their projects, but when you look at the final products, it's pretty easy to tell.

I'm out of words

This week, I was going to write more about Halo 4, and the problems that stem from the multitude of the game's missing features, but then something caught my attention. A friend showed me this video, and I was convinced it was a hoax. I had to look it up online, and then ask a friend who owns the game before it sank in that this was real. Before I get to my point though, I should explain my feelings on Call of Duty.

Now, I have never been the biggest fan of Call of Duty, mostly because it represents the very worst elements of any entertainment industry. That's not a judgment of anyone who plays or enjoys Call of Duty, just a fact. The game is cheap, addictive, and easy to reproduce. If you find the Call of Duty series fun, that's fine, you may even love it for its campaign, or for the multiplayer, or maybe you just love zombies, but the fact is that Call of Duty doesn't add anything to the game industry, or to the video game medium as a whole. A good parallel for this is mindless action movies, like Transformers. Transformers isn't going to win any awards for storytelling, and in fifty years no one is going to look back at it and examine it for its artistic value, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun to watch in the moment. The Call of Duty series is the Transformers of the game industry, while fun to play or watch, the viewer/player isn't taking anything away from the experience.

What do I mean by "not taking anything away"? Let's compare Call of Duty, an arguably competitive multiplayer game, to another genre of games, let's say, fighting games. Most fighting games have a story mode, or arcade mode, designed to have the player test out different characters, learn their strengths and weaknesses, and practice. The objective is to learn the game better, and as a result, get better at the game. Conversely, the objective in Call of Duty is just to keep playing. All unlocks and items are unlocked simply by playing the game more, and player skill is never a factor. Sure, you'll learn the maps better, and probably develop better reflexes, but the fact remains that you could get everything in the game and still be totally awful at it, it doesn't push you to get better or improve, as long as you keep playing. Call of Duty is a game for people with lots of free time, and who get easily addicted to things, again, not a judgment, just a fact. However this philosophy of design makes pre-teens and teenagers a primary demographic for this series. Lots of adults play Call of Duty, sure, but Activision can't ignore the massive player-base of kids who are too young to technically even buy the game. This leads me perfectly back to the topic of this article, this video:

That there, is the ending cinematic for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It features the characters of the game at an Avenged Sevenfold concert, hanging out with the band (who are voiced by the actual band members, by the way), and playing their new single, which they supposedly wrote for the game, while scenes from the game flash on stage.

What. I have no words for this, I was literally rendered speechless when I first saw it. Is this a joke? Is it a cry for help from the developers, trying their best to feature something unique in the game? Is it a troll? Something Treyarch added at the last minute because they figured they could get away with it? Is Call of Duty finally embracing that it is a game for fourteen year olds and is embracing that in every way possible? And regardless of the reasons, why does it look so bad, and is so badly animated? I don't know, but according to the YouTube comments, the fans seem to love it.

I could accept that it was a legitimate part of the game that Treyarch thought would be cool, if it wasn't so badly done. Look at those animations, look at them. Why are the textures for that drum kit so bad? Why have the band members voice themselves if they are awful at voice acting and syncing up lines? Why is Hilary Clinton there, and rocking out so hard? Where are everyone's guitar straps!? 

I'm a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiizard!

Guitar Hero and Rock Band don't have guitar straps in their games for technical reasons, why are they missing here? Was this made for a PS2? Is it 2004? What happened, where am I?

This whole video just screams of a low effort attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator Call of Duty player. You know the guy, teenager, chugs monster energy drinks all the time, has an iPhone, an iPad, and whatever else he wants because his parents don't know how to tell him no, and most importantly loves mediocre metal like Avenged Sevenfold. It's possible that the whole thing is a joke, designed to make fun of those very people, but it's so badly put together that it's just embarrassing to watch. The only thing I can really say is why? Why was this made? Maybe I'm just too old to understand kids these days, and I'm going to get lots of comments telling me so in the most vulgar way possible. Can "Stay off my comments section!" be the new "get off my lawn!"?

A Halo 4 Review

I want to preface this review with a couple of things, because I have a feeling that after writing it, this piece will come off as overtly negative. Halo 4 is really fun to play, it just has some glaring problems that I feel keep it from truly achieving greatness. Also, fair warning on campaign spoilers, but I'm sure that if you have a love for the Halo story you already completed everything there is to do.

First of all, let me say that I love halo. I've played every game, I've read the books, even my Xbox is the limited edition Halo Reach one. I put hundreds, if not thousands of hours into every halo title, and while I did have some concerns before the game came out, I really wanted to love Halo 4.

Secondly, the game feels great, and is a lot of fun to play. The textures on everything are fantastic, with very little pop-in or frame-rate problems. Anyone who says that this is the best looking game on the Xbox is not kidding, Halo 4 sets a new bar for visual quality this console generation, although the visuals do cause some gameplay problems, which I'll get into later. The sounds of all of the weapons are spectacular, physically punching opponents, and the much touted assassinations feel visceral and solid. The campaign is paced well and features some unique set pieces to break up the action, and in multiplayer the action is fast, fun, and easy to adapt to. The game looks, sounds, and feels like one of the best games this console generation, but the devil is in the details I'm afraid.

Let's start with campaign. Halo 4 is the first game that, from the ground up, was designed and created by Halo's new development team, 343 Industries. While 343i does employ several ex-Bungie members, they clearly represent a new direction for the Halo franchise. Whether this new direction is caused by their creative inspirations, by Microsoft and financial pressure, or something else entirely, I'm not sure, but this new direction is here to stay, whether we like it or not. In the previous Halo trilogy, We as players got to experience humanity's war with the Covenant, and the triumphs and failures that led to peace between them. During this adventure, the Chief was our vessel, a nearly-silent suit of armor protagonist that we as players could project ourselves into during the adventure. Sure, he would occasionally spout one-liners, or bark out orders, but for the most part he was a blank slate, it's not his story, it's the story of a war.

Halo 4, and by extension the new trilogy it opens, takes this idea and flips it on it's head. The Chief is now a main character. He has desires, fears, and a mission to accomplish. In addition, we also get to see a psuedo-love story develop between him and Cortana. This is where things start to go off the rails. Master Chief is a walking suit of future-armor, that's it. Yes, his name is John, and that gets fleshed out more in the books, and yes, some characters refer to him by that name, but in the context of the original Halo trilogy he is just a weapon. Now, all of a sudden in Halo 4, (during which he is 47 years old by the way, and has been a spartan his entire life) he has some desire to save Cortana from her rampancy on a personal level. The Chief has always had a strong desire to save people, that's one of the things that makes him such a good spartan, but the narrative implies some deeper romantic relationship that was never there before. This makes the Chief into an entirely new character. Now, I understand that the Chief needed to be the main character of this game, because he's worth so much financially as a character. It would be like if they came out with a Zelda game without Link as the main character, but this change to give the Chief some humanity is so abrupt and jarring that it makes him harder to relate to since we as an audience are constantly questioning his motivations, when we never had to before.

As for the rest of the story, where do I even begin? Master Chief being the "chosen one" in classic anime style? The final boss being reduced to a quick time event? The Chief surviving a nuclear blast because of Cortana's love bubble? The game only lasting a criminally short 4 hours? The massive plot holes involving the Didact, the firing of the Halo rings, and his survival? The plot-necessary "magic immunity" for the Chief?

That is my actual campaign completion time on legendary.

I could really go on forever here, the plot of this game is so badly thrown together that I don't even care. Obviously 343i didn't care enough to make a coherent plot with a decent climax, and instead created a slapdash series of events to tie together the gameplay sections. This would be fine, of course, not every game plot has to be Shakespearean in complexity, except for the fact that they keep trying to imply deeper meanings to every single plot element. Flashbacks are set in dramatic stylized animations and feature an epic score, there are characters created specifically to create drama, like Captain Del Rio, who seemed to think it was wise to argue with a living weapon who saved humanity from annihilation on several occasions. Halo 4 likes to think that it's heavy and deep, it is not. The campaign is fun to play, but it will improve your experience greatly if you just skip every cutscene and enjoy the gameplay.

Another new element of the game is Spartan Ops, the new "co-op vs. AI" mode that replaces Firefight from Halo Reach. Spartan Ops is basically just Firefight, but instead of being able to customize your experience or edit your settings, everything is pre-set, and each mission has a little story intro. The story however, is entirely told through cutscene and voice over, rather than experienced in gameplay, so the pre-constructed missions don't feel as though they have anything to do with the over-arching plot. In addition, 343i clearly wanted this game mode to have a variety of maps and locations, so you'll travel from desert wastelands, to frozen mountains, to hidden forerunner bases in lush jungles with no transition or explanation. As a result Spartan Ops doesn't "feel" like it has a real story, which just makes me long for the old days of customization. It's very possible, however, that because of this game pushing the Xbox 360 to it's limits, that the game simply cannot support AI customization, because trying to spawn in too many enemies could crash the game, and so  Spartan Ops is really just a way to have firefight, but not be able to break it.

As for the multiplayer, things look significantly better, although there are a few glaring problems. One of the biggest problems I can see is the removal, downgrading, or otherwise ruining of most of the features of custom gametypes and forge maps. Why did the falcon need to be removed? Why is the race gametype gone? Why is assault called grifball now even though the two are functionally identical and neither is in matchmaking anyway? Why was the nudge feature removed from forge? Why are the forge item pallets nearly identical to Reach's with very few new objects? So many features of the multiplayer are so lackluster that it's hard to call it an improvement over Reach, even though the game itself is so fun to play. However while these problems may be fixed with updates and downloadable content, there are some other problems that are so deeply ingrained into the fabric of the game that there may be no way to fix them.

One problem that is pretty blatant is how quickly items despawn during gameplay. Halo 4 is amazing looking, and is clearly pushing the Xbox 360 to it's limits to get visual effects of that quality, but there are two sides to every coin. Because the graphical processor is outputting these high resolution textures, it can't keep very many objects on the map at any given time. As a result, items such as player corpses, destroyed vehicles, and dropped weapons have to be cycled out very quickly as new ones are created, normally this wouldn't be a problem, but it means that dropped power weapons can vanish very quickly, in a matter of seconds in fact. It is virtually impossible to die with, say, a rocket launcher, respawn, and sprint back to where you died in order to pick up that rocket launcher again, as dropped weapons tend to despawn within ten to twenty seconds. This is clearly a limit of the Xbox's processing power, and as a result will probably never get fixed.

There are a slew of other problems with game balance as well. such as the ability to earn an ordinance drop, commit suicide, choose a loadout that works perfectly with your ordinance weapon (say, active camouflage and bonus ammo for a sniper rifle), and then spawn the weapon in. There are also bugs abound on many of the maps, and significant problems with the spawning structure. The worst part of all of this, however, is the neutering of the custom game and forge options, so we, as players, cannot simply make custom games that fix these problems.

If I had to sum up my feelings on Halo 4 in one sentence, it would be "excellent in some areas, disappointing in others, but hopeful for the future." At time of writing, Halo 4 has been out for just over a week, and the 343i team has already begun updating playlists and fixing bugs. Hopefully the game's features and content are improved for the future, because at the end of the day this game is really fun to play.

Getting Things Started

Oh, hello.

I didn't see you there.

I'm your host, Lance, and welcome to The Wandering Gamer. Here on the digital plane we're going to be discussing certain elements of game design, the gaming industry, and my personal experiences as I travel the world to different events and conventions.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey you and I are about to take together. I promise that it will be a fascinating experience.