Once again, Leigh Alexander's post proves to be thought-provoking and interesting. A great read.
My view of all this war-gaming lines up with yours, I think. Specifically I agree about the emotional detachment, but I feel it's because games become abstract at a certain point. A 13-year old boy doesn't think about the knife he just threw into someone's face as actually killing someone, it's just more points and one less person who can kill him. I think it's caused by desensitization, where he's killed so many other players online that it ceases to matter, or he's seen his older brother kill other players, or some other person.
The thing with Kinect is that it's releasing for a system that is dominated by million-selling shooters. Hopefully once a piece of software that shows a bit of creativity is released everyone can quit worrying about their favorite gore-fest forcing them to lean forward to cut.
As to why all this shooting is so popular? I think it's teenage boys and people who tend to be aggressive. I know there are people who play for any number of reasons, but that's what I imagine both the target and the primary buying audience is. Do regular mild-mannered people become slur-spitting asses online? I don't think so. I think it's children who don't know better and people who tend to be asses to begin with. Maybe I have too much faith in people, thinking it's a minority of people but happens to be a majority of Xbox Live gamers, but I'm hopeful.
Speaking personally and only really tangentially related, in recent months I've had trouble getting excited about many upcoming games. It just felt like shooting more people and just killing. For a while I thought I was getting disillusioned with gaming as a whole, but I now realize it's just a majority of games center around stabbing and shooting folks. E3 helped show me that there are a handful of games out soon that won't be about my bullets vs. their bullets. Portal 2, Kirby, Patapon 3 to name a few.
Also, I just finished reading Jeremy Perish's blog post here ([www.gamespite.net] and deals with similar things, for whoever wants to read more. I think it's great that some people are taking notice of gaming being stuck in the phase where all it does is work out and think about the army.
Sorry this post is so long.
My view of all this war-gaming lines up with yours, I think. Specifically I agree about the emotional detachment, but I feel it's because games become abstract at a certain point. A 13-year old boy doesn't think about the knife he just threw into someone's face as actually killing someone, it's just more points and one less person who can kill him. I think it's caused by desensitization, where he's killed so many other players online that it ceases to matter, or he's seen his older brother kill other players, or some other person.
The thing with Kinect is that it's releasing for a system that is dominated by million-selling shooters. Hopefully once a piece of software that shows a bit of creativity is released everyone can quit worrying about their favorite gore-fest forcing them to lean forward to cut.
As to why all this shooting is so popular? I think it's teenage boys and people who tend to be aggressive. I know there are people who play for any number of reasons, but that's what I imagine both the target and the primary buying audience is. Do regular mild-mannered people become slur-spitting asses online? I don't think so. I think it's children who don't know better and people who tend to be asses to begin with. Maybe I have too much faith in people, thinking it's a minority of people but happens to be a majority of Xbox Live gamers, but I'm hopeful.
Speaking personally and only really tangentially related, in recent months I've had trouble getting excited about many upcoming games. It just felt like shooting more people and just killing. For a while I thought I was getting disillusioned with gaming as a whole, but I now realize it's just a majority of games center around stabbing and shooting folks. E3 helped show me that there are a handful of games out soon that won't be about my bullets vs. their bullets. Portal 2, Kirby, Patapon 3 to name a few.
Also, I just finished reading Jeremy Perish's blog post here ([www.gamespite.net] and deals with similar things, for whoever wants to read more. I think it's great that some people are taking notice of gaming being stuck in the phase where all it does is work out and think about the army.
Sorry this post is so long.
I'd opt for Yakuza because of how totally rad I've heard those games are, and how they're totally expensive now.
SotC/Ico because...well, it's Ico and SotC. Even though I already own them both on PS2, I'd probably buy them again.
Games like Yakuza and Ico could be given a second chance at being more successful than on they were on the PS2. Hopefully more than just a small percent of gamers would end up playing these great games. I feel that Ico is one of those games that everyone should at least try to play.
I they could be especially successful if Sony really got behind marketing them, since that seems to be at least part of the fault for their poor sales on PS2.
SotC/Ico because...well, it's Ico and SotC. Even though I already own them both on PS2, I'd probably buy them again.
Games like Yakuza and Ico could be given a second chance at being more successful than on they were on the PS2. Hopefully more than just a small percent of gamers would end up playing these great games. I feel that Ico is one of those games that everyone should at least try to play.
I they could be especially successful if Sony really got behind marketing them, since that seems to be at least part of the fault for their poor sales on PS2.
Valve, being the pranksters they are, probably just showed everyone the new weapons. A welding mask? A welding torch? Those are assets they created and put in the game this video, I've never seen Valve make something only to throw it away...well except like everything in the Meet the Spy video.
Then again it could be robot dogs with grenade launchers, but the grenades are really puppies, and the puppies are really teleporters.
Half Life. You can't be sick of something that is released in half-decade increments.
Activision just goes through talent like toilet paper, except they treat their toilet paper better. Because it's money.
I'm perfectly content with this scheme. If you rent the game from a service like Gamefly, and decide you enjoy it enough to buy it you're welcome to. You get all of the little booklets and DLC code cards, unused.
Now if this were on the disk and we, as buyers of the game, were forced to buy the maps? That is much more sinister. This is only semi-sinister. Sinister-lite, if you will.
The only reason I think Iron Man 2 will be miserable? It has "The Video Game" in the title and I can't think of a single game that has ever been more than "just OK" that had "The Video Game" as part of the title.
If Iron Man 2 The Video Game comes out and critics love it? I may give it a rent, but I've been burned half a dozen times by licensed games that were so bad they were unplayable.
@ReynaldoRiv: It was an accident :( sorry, accidentally logged in with my facebook account without noticing.
@Talleh: In reply to like...everyone who posted about my accidental click on "log in with facebook" and my not noticing until a split second before clicking post, I'm sorry.
Since it was with my facebook and not real account, I couldn't edit/delete it. Won't happen again!
I haven't watch anything on a TV consistently for good two years or so. Why? Not because I'm so occupied gaming that I can't pull myself away, but because of alternative means of seeing my favorite shows.
A combination of Netflix Instant Queue, various streaming sites, patience, and friends who've downloaded TV rips of the show all keep me from needing to ever change my TV's input to anything besides HDMI.
Really though, I'd just gotten sick of working my life around the programming and scheduling that someone else decided. When I want to play a game, I'll play a game. When I want to watch the latest episode of Heroes (which has gone down hill since season 2), I'll watch it.
No waiting for it to air, no fast forwarding through commercials, and most of all? No waiting a week for the next part. All I have to do is wait six months for it to hit DVDs, and then for those DVDs to arrive in a red envelope in my mailbox. With how fast netflix is I'm waiting at most two days between disks.
It's not a matter of gaming pulling me away, but the rest of the world changing to work around my schedule, while TV still expects me to work around it's schedule.
It's everything that I want in one convenient place. It's fun, interactive, enjoyable story/characters, emotional stimulation. Where a movie can get frustrating because of no control, a game will at least make me feel in control of the situation.
For the games that don't really have a story or characters, it's just plain fun and feels good. PixelJunk Shooter doesn't really have a story so far, but it's just enjoyable roaming around and playing with the physics.
Really, it's all about fun. I also read, watch movies and TV, and talk to people, because those are really swell too. Even things that make me sad, it's fun that something made me feel that way, it's fun that I've developed an emotional attachment to a character. Like most everything people do, it's because it feels good.
I'm not sure if any of these characters are in the game, but if they're just downloadable characters, it seems like a semi-shady way of extending the game. It's free I suppose, but if my Guinnes Book of Records for Gamers is true, just one or two games ago they had around 108 characters, the most in any fighting game.
Why weren't all of those characters in this one? Because they wanted to stretch out how long people would keep the game by just removing characters and later releasing them as DLC. People keep the game, don't trade it in, so fewer people buy it used. It's like what Eidos did with that Tomb Raider game, but less evil since it's free.
A sad, band-aid solution to their problem.
I'd like to picture Gamestop as a whole like a herd of buffalo heading for a cliff.
This strange "buy in store, download at home" thing is like putting up a picket fence to stop the stampede. #gamestop
Graphics technology has just reached the point where we can see how gross a twelve-foot ostrich-chicken really looks.
How long is it until physics rendering gets to be so realistic that 150lb swords become obsolete? What about how four inches of fabric over a nipple not being very good armor?
The future is fun!
Valve could simply patch the ability to turn gore off into other versions after release...right? As totally rad as the gore is, it's kinda tough on my PC.
To do a 180, I'm hoping someone finds a way to multiply the gore somehow, and see how well it runs on a PC that does Crysis on very high. Murder sim FTW! #left4dead2
So...they should slap a "no animals were harmed in the making of this game" sticker on it? Come on, PETA, the nonsense with Cooking Mama was just weird. Then again, it's PETA, we should be happy the developers haven't had their homes burned down. #peta
I dislike challenge rooms, and I have no idea why. I didn't like the tower of monsters in whichever Onimusha game, the equivalent in Devil May Cry 4, or in God of War 1/2.
Don't get me wrong, I love these games combat, but something about fighting wave after wave of enemies for nothing but a score, maybe an achievement, and at most single-player points/items feels...ancient. The same kind of thing that my recently returned Dynasty Warrior Gundam 2 did, it gives me a score, and treats itself like it's an arcade game. Some games that play like arcade games, Guitar Hero/Rock Band do have scoring, but it's a central part of the game. If I play a level and then at the end I'm given a score based on how well I did, what was the point? Making me want to replay it better and faster? That's artificial extension if I ever saw it.
Granted, there are leaderboards but I don't really care about those. Then again, I'm not one for multiplayer in general either.
When it's optional, I wont play it. But when it's a large portion of (or the entire) game, I'll probably ignore it. #godofwariii
That blurred man is from the future, coming back to warn us of soda-based space invaders.
One of these things is not like the other.
I can only wonder...how succesful would a Nintendo-brand R4 be? Of course they'd need to protect it, and then sell locked games on their website. Not even really an R4, just a DS game cart you can download to legally.
Like iTunes, but for DS games! Lock your account to your game cart, not your system. That way if your DS breaks, you're not out a dozen games (ie: exactly what happens with the Wii's VC and WiiWare).
It's nice to imagine that Nintendo could do something like this on the DSi, but I'm sure we'll keep getting 1/150th of WarioWare at a time instead.
Just picture the PSPGo's potential for impulse buying, the DS's penetration, and the ease-of-use of iTunes. Ah well...
