Great games Shouldn't be bought?

"Chrome Hounds! aw man what a great game but don't buy it-they shut the servers down." These words will forever stab my brain unmercifully.  That was actually said to me by a dear friend.  Think about that and let it sink in "...What a great game but don't buy it..."  That makes no sense-actually my friend is right it makes perfect uh..."sense".  We're seeing a lot of focus and emphasis on multiplayer these days and hell why not?  Being fragged by 7 year olds who have the map and glitches memorized is (sadly) the cutting edge of gaming today.  But what happens when the lights go out?

What happens when a company decides "We cant (or don't want to) support the servers any more."?  Short answer: you enter the town of Fuck-a-Roo'd-Population: You and everyone else who bought the game.  Long Answer? this post.

My buddy was telling me that chrome hounds is awesome and yeah it sure looks like it-too bad it flew under my radar and I only found out about like a year ago.  I cannot experience that game to the fullest anymore.  There is something terribly wrong there.  Now again younger readers won't understand but I will try to explain. I can go to any retro store or ebay and buy a NES game and plop it into my top loader and it will play the entire full game no questions asked.  THAT is what I am used to.  This whole we can take 50% or more of the game away from you at any given time is what's the word here...I want to be eloquent...it's Bullshit.  Thats like one day that same game just cuts out at a certain point.  Yeah once you get to level 3 the game just stops it just ends.

Multiplayer is the focus of many games these days and single player campaigns are a second thought if a thought at all.  COD, BF, all those games that really target the online market are considered amazing games but why?  When those servers eventually close (and they will one day) people will re-visit them and find out "Single player sucks!"  A game isnt amazing by its ability to wow you for a year or two it is earns its amazing title by forever wowing you.

What's that?  The game is awesome so it'll never shut the servers?  Yeah ATLUS is laughing at you.  Demon's Souls is considered one of the best games for PS3 and it's been out for roughly 2 years.  The servers go bye bye this month.  I cannot play with my brother in Manhattan anymore...The thing about it is online play is a SELLING point that devs flaunt and shove in your face. YOU CAN PLAY WITH ANYONE IN THE WORLD BUY IT BUY IT! only to find that-that promise cannot be maintained forever-it just can't.  So games become sort of temporary and that is very sad friends.

That's like me pointing to my retro collection and saying "It works but we can't play it-devs weren't thinking about lasting power."  To me it is so foreign and in some ways wrong.  Maybe I am showing my age but I feel that it is a matter of common sense.  Hm? oh ok yeah go buy that extra map pack for an extra 20 bucks putting you at 80 bucks for a game. whats that you bought the "collector's edition" so with the maps you're at 100-120 bucks for one game...and those maps are only good online? so when they shut the servers down you're 100-120 into a game that is no longer whole?  you're right I don't have common sense.

Some of you less appreciative types might be saying I won't want to play a game when it gets old-who cares?  Do you own pokemon on GBA and N64?  If you do you are already embracing the nostalgia of games of yesteryear-you will not be able to do that here.  Multiplayer is great and all but I am of the mind that if it consists of nearly half of the game then it is a crappy game.  Oh no? "It's a great game but don't buy it."  Don't buy it is something you say about a bad game isn't it?  In my day a good game was indeed a good game and you better damned well buy it or else everyone you know will be playing Super Mario 3 and you won't be.

Gaming today seems to me very short sighted.  While there are plenty of single player games that are whole and solid I look at these mega titles and they often boast online play.  This is like being excited for the world's biggest ice cream sandwich on the hottest day ever.  sure it hits the spot for a while but before you can finish it's melted away.  Think about those poor bastards who bought demon's souls the day before they shut the servers down.

Marvel Capcom Super Dumb Time

The greed and stupidity seemingly never ends huh?  By now anyone reading this knows about Capcom and the MVC3 debacles.  Fate of two worlds comes out and it's alright but no MVC2.  MVC3 ultimate is announced and instead of doing it as DLC to add on to Fate of Two Worlds-they want hard copies.  I don't know why.  Wait yes I do-more money.

MVC3 ultimate was released on disc with ADDITIONAL dlc.  Here's the kicker.  After some poking around in the game's code some people found out that the "dlc" was already on the disc.  Yeah no shit-they didn't even TRY to conceal the fact that it was already done.  No sort of frantic rush or damage control.  Almost kinda like the boss catches you sitting on your hands and you're all like "Sup?"

Now we talk about DLC in my office quite a bit we come to the conclusion that anything in DLC is a true add on and not already done.  We also come to the conclusion that it should be free or as close to free as we can make it.  Paying 20% of the original game price for a few extra costumes or maps is just plain wrong.  Typically a game is 100% complete and 20% is intentionally removed before release and that is dlc.  But it isn't that is horse shit.  It's blatantly ripping off the people you depend on.  Here is your crown king Stupid.

So now the cat is out the bag and people will be cracking discs  even harder now that this happened.  This wont stop dlc rip offs but it will stop a smart yet greedy developer from including "yet to be released" material on the disc you buy.  There was an easy way around this.  Capcom could have just made the dlc unlockable through gameplay achievements.  Hell, they could have even LIED and said "Yeah it is unlockable through gameplay but it seems like it is broken-let's release a patch".  There was no "Oh crap! people found out! we have to save face."  No instead they admitted they were fucking their customers and then shrugging going "what?"

Whoever is in charge of PR or damage control over there sucks.  But it shows you just how entitled to your money that they feel they are.  "Shame on YOU! you unlocked something you bought from us before you bought it again!"  There is no shame or humility in their statements just a blatant and even further middle finger to those who supported them by buying the same game twice ALREADY, which only adds to the reason why some are calling them Capcops.

Now before some of you fan boys pull out your replica weapons let me tell you this.  Capcom blew me away as a kid and even into adulthood.  Megaman, Street Fighter, Resident Evil all bad ass and for the most part fairly solid in their franchises.  But there comes a time when we must be honest with ourselves and those we buy from.  If you put sneakers in a box and sell the box to your friend and then he opens the box and starts wearing the sneakers you can't really be pissed with him.  You sold him the sneakers with the box even if he didnt know the sneakers were in there.

Capcom should be performing damage control and throwing themselves on the mercy of their fans for such a blatant rape but they are seemingly above that.  Pride before the fall?  perhaps.  Greed and stupidity? you bet your ass.

Major Labels and Why They Want Sameness

I'm gonna keep saying this "When I was a kid" we had a plethora of different game ideas being hurled at us.  The reason being is that the developers didnt know what would be a hit and what wouldn't.  Literally anything could be made example here  http://www.honestgamers.com/reviews/9233.html yeah a guy made out of vegetables fighting other foods...yeah.  Why not?  Seemingly there was nothing too bizarre to be made. But there were more successes than failures in my library-not sure if I was savvy or if the devs had great ideas.  I suppose it doesnt matter since my point here is that back then we had options.

Let's not make any mistakes video games are a billion dollar industry.  The right one could make your studio go from eating out of a soup can to driving lamborghinis.  When Blizzard started up they couldnt afford to pay their employees and issued promissory notes in some cases.  Now they are worth quite a bit.  Zynga started out with investment capital of 24 million (nothing to sneeze at) but within 5 years is now worth over 10 billion.  Yeah the B word.  Zynga is a good example of what this post is about.  Sameness.

Farmville Cityville Frontierville Castleville hell there is enough sameness in those games where I dont consider them to be separate of each other.  But it made them a shitload of cash.  How?  Lots of people played them...they sold ad space...the end pretty much.  Draw something?  Well they bought that off some kid for 30 million so I dont count it as their own and Dream Heights well that was stolen http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tiny-tower/id422667065?mt=8  In a fair world Zynga would lose a testicle for this but we arent living in a fair world.

Now that picture is just for fun I do not hate Zynga.  I think that their business practices are deplorable and they are morally bankrupt but I do not hate them.  I simply make the point that they steal from small devs who dont have the legal muscle to go toe to toe with them.  They are unoriginal cowards but I do not hate them.  Anyway people line up to play the same game just re-skinned.  Tons of major labels do this.  I think the worst offenders are FPS games.  I grew up on Doom Quake and early COD.  Game mechanics are virtually the same.  It is basically the same game with different weapons and whatever loose story is roped in.
Or sometimes the story is overly complicated to the point where it doesnt even matter.

But people try and copy success and they are playing around in a field where there is a lot to be gained and a lot to be lost.  Major labels think copying and sameness will be safe.  To a degree they are right.  Sameness at best will grant you some stability but it will never grant you those huge sums you are chasing.  It is basically treading water.  The minute you go outside copying a game a large lead weight is tied around their ankles and they sink into the abyss...after some wonderful lay-offs.

As I said I have been around in games since the very beginning.  I have seen it's golden age.  What I am seeing now is greedy fools concerned with the profit margin rather than being inventive.  But it takes creativity and hard work to be new and fresh and any lazy fat idiot can copy something.  It is easy.  I am seeing a lot of major labels and devs concerned with easy money rather than givng the fans something new to cling to.

It's sad-I saw gaming go from fun and originality to "Who cares? people will buy it."  I promise you that we are working hard in my company to bring fun back to bring back how games SHOULD be...games...focus on fun and the money will happen-focus on money and the fun will never happen. 

Nintendo Swan songs

I never believed that I would think it was a possibility but we might need to prepare ourselves for a world without Nintendo as a major player.  As a kid I grew up on 8 bit goodness.  The NES blew me away.  You talk about exceeding expectations?  damn.  It far exceeded anything else at the time.  Sure Sega had the master out but no one really had it.  Nintendo was playing around with motion controllers even in those days a la the power glove and (I forget the name) but it was quite literally a black wii nunchuck and this was back in the early 80's.  Since it's dawn as a video game company Nintendo has been hell bent on motion controls.

So much so that they let contracts with Konami and Capcom expire in order to pour money into motion controllers.  Think if they still held the exclusive rights to Contra and Mega man? damn!  What we're seeing though is a little white box that relies on gimmicks and mario games (zelda too) in order to survive.  Anybody without a large object lodged in their brain will be able to tell you that is not a good business model.  Nintendo really thought the motion controllers would be what people wanted.  But what made them think this?

The power glove sucked ass like really sucked ass.  The U force worked better after I backed my honda over it-hey I was able to beat Mike Tyson with it...ok that part is a lie.  For a while the motion took a back seat but Nintendo just kept it under wraps.  God knows how much money was poured into that R&D.  What probably ended up happening was that they had poured so much into this thing that one (or more?) of the following happened.

1. It simply wasnt ready.  Perhaps they wanted processors and video cards on par with Sony and Microsoft but had to release it with under powered hardware just to stay current.

2.  They reached the absolute limit of how much money they were willing to invest in R&D and had to go ahead with what they had.

3.  They surpassed their budget by a hell of a lot and figured that a unique console would have no problem saving the day.

In other words I doubt that this was the console they intended to battle sony and microsoft with.

It's tough to think about how they screwed up so bad when in the past they had been spot on...or had they?  NES was the new standard in the 80's if you didnt have one you sucked and probably had no friends...no really I'm not trying to be funny.  Sure some games sucked it is unavoidable for a console but by and large most games blew you away and left you stunned.  SNES...my god it is probably the best console ever made period.  N64 yeah I know a lot of people have emotional attachment to this console but here is a good case where the shit started to really hit the fan.  Everyone was on disc at this point.  Nintendo maintained carts-why?  probably because the deal with sony for the cd add on for SNES went completely bullshit and the last thing they wanted to see was a disc...nah they feared piracy.  I remember partly shying away because they didnt have a disc format.  When discs first started coming out like Sega CD and 3DO people thought this technology was so cutting edge that only God himself could make these games...I was not alone in thinking this.  So in the end I kind saw Nintendo as falling behind and I believe that I was right.

The controller looked like a joke and the single analog was only so effective.  What pissed me off all to hell?  My playstation would play anything I put in it...the FULL game.  I put Perfect Dark in and suddenly I'm being told to buy an expansion pack....what is this shit?  The console isnt ready to play games as is?  fuck that!  So began Nintendo's mandatory add ons in order to fully enjoy games.  This was WAY different than what I was used to from nintendo.  Rumble packs, expansion packs, controller expansion packs memory cards, seriously by time I got my N64 READY for games I was out of spending cash I couldnt buy games for a while and I was very pissed off.  This was the old school version of DLC-and we all fell for it.  By time I got ready to grow the N64 game collection I found that I didnt really want to outside of surprise surprise Mario and Zelda games.

Gamecube came out and I could give less than a shit I was on my PS2 not looking back.  Wii is coming out and I got suckered.  I longed for the Nintendo fun days but sadly they wouldnt come in that white box-only disappointment and shame.  I got it for christmas and I thought I was a bad ass...I was about as bad ass as a high school kid riding a pink tricycle in front of the cheer leading squad.  Apart from the normal mario zelda stuff I struggled to find a more mature game that would be cool.  They didnt exist but if I wanted cooking mamma or a million other useless games I had the console for it.

So what next? WiiU...Does anybody care?  Does anyone really think that Nintendo is finally going to listen to its fans that it has ignored since the early 90's?  well it better if wants to survive in all honesty I think the WiiU was supposed to be the Wii.  I think it was rushed to production. I think the Wii was under powered junk that we got screwed over on.  Nintendo has acted with reckless abandon since the late 90's...ever since they tried to screw Sony...had they not it would have been the nintendo playstation my my what a mistake.

Now we have Miyamoto that steps down.  Now I want you to tell me who replaced him without looking it up.  You dont know-no one does.  Know why?  Nintendo wasnt grooming anyone for his position.  Where was his sidekick?  where was his apprentice?  he didnt have either.  Dumb.  Even "I" have an apprentice right now.  Nintendo thought the gravy train would last forever and so did Miyamoto.  The fact that no one knows who is replacing him means that it was sudden and unexpected...even Nintendo as a company wasn't keen or ready for it.  This isn't good folks.  We have a company hemorrhaging money with crap no one wants to buy and the captain no longer wants to be captain.  This is about as fucked up as it gets dudes.

I write this with no joy I love nintendo they raised me and without them I wouldnt have the job I do.  It makes me sad that more than likely they will be on their way out.  I predict about three years after the WiiU debuts they will no longer be in the console market.  They will more than likely go the way of Sega and be a major developer.  They will have to sell the ocntract for mario and zelda to either sony or microsoft or both.  They may be able to claw their way back in with a handheld in the future...that is if people still play them in the future and not their phones...