Bad PR stunt is Best PR stunt?

A few days ago most gaming journalism websites were quick at reporting the news that LittleBigPlanet was going to be delayed because of the lyrics in one of the game's songs. Apparently it includes two quotes from the Qu'ran and doing so is offensive to those of Islamic faith.

This has lead Sony to retrieve all of the game's copies in order to replace them with "fixed" copies which don't feature said song. Not only that, it enraged most people who have preordered it, except muslim people, though.

While the corniest gaming websites were busy writing articles with titles like "Is LittleBigPlanet doomed?" gaming forums all over were flooded with threads where users started discussing religious matters. News websites and broadcasts have been mentioning this all around the globe.

Now, guys like Phil Harrison agree with Sony and say replacing the game was the best decision they could have made.

I have followed a few of those discussions and some of those were actually good. Though we might have been lead to believe it, not every gaming website is filled with hate-consumed tenage trolls.

What do I think about this? First of all I don't think recalling all of the game's copies is a good idea for several reasons. A patch that cut access to the song should suffice.

There are people who defend this is not enough and say that the people who don't have their consoles connected to the internet wouldn't "benefit from this correction to the game". Why would someone buy this game if they don't have their consoles connected to the internet? It is a major part of the game.

Well, even though I wish MediaMolecule the best of luck and believe their intentions are good, this sounds like too much luck to be just an innocent mistake. Because of this the game had a gigantic amount of free exposure and loads of people who didn't know this game was coming got to see bits of gameplay during primetime.


It seems like a trend like this could show up anytime:

1. Include something offensive in your game
2. Remove it due to pressure from the media
3. ????
4. Profit!

Spore: Is piracy justified?

As many I have been eagerly awaiting Will Wright's new game, "Spore". Since its unveiling at GDC 2005 the media has been buzzing all over each new bit of information about it. Curious, because the "unveiling" itself was 30 minutes long and it only seemed to scratch the ear of the beast.

It was, without a doubt, the most ambicious videogame I have ever heard of.

(I am considering those games I believe will be finished, not some newbie Wow-killers or anything ridiculous as that. Those don't usually leave a sheet of paper or a couple of text documents.)

Then, the Creator Creator demo came out and amazed a huge amount of people due to the weirdness of some characters, the likeness to other well-known ones or even the insane amout of Spore-made penis monsters. The term "Sporn" was coined around these few days. Maxis must be having a blast trying to stop those from populating the other players' galaxies.

Then I had the luck of being in the portuguese lauch of the game but I don't usually pay more than 30€ for a game so I didn't buy it. I'll save my speech on game prices for some other time. Anyway, I have been talking to some people who bought it and reading online reviews and checking Amazon and this was what I found:



I tried to understand why this was happening. While some people were raving about it, a whopping lot of people were giving it negative reviews.

Well, it seems the copy protection sistem included with the game is really, really agressive. You have to connect to the internet during instalation and you only have the permission to install it 3 times. 3. You paid full price for a game that will evaporate rather quickly.

Some people are defending that you should buy the game if you really want it and then download a copy without those protections and play it as you wish. Other people are saying they should simply boycott it and leave it in the shelves. The most otpimistic say you should buy the game, don't open it and then return it saying the reason is the horrible copy-protection system.

These measures are making me think twice about buying the game, even when it gets to the 30€ price tag which is a pity, I wanted this game to have the success I believe it deserves. Why couldn't this happen with the next WWII shooter?

These are sad times.

The people who atually buy the products still have the "YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR" ad thrown in their faces when they try to play their movies or go to the movies and gamers have measures that stop them from playing the games they bought or even slowly destroy theyr machines. Remember Starforce? Excuse me while I throw up, I shouldn't have thought of it after eating.

[edit:] These polls say a bit more about DRM than I did. If you want to know more about this subject, check this out.

Achievements

I was writing a post on how Achievements are just sand thrown in the eyes of the "hardcore gamers" but this image captures it in a way I wasn't being able to put it. Thanks internet!

Blizzard's Diablo 3

This was going to be a big rant but it was stripped to its bare essentials because I think it's not something to waste that much of your time reading. Simply put...


...whoever blindly supports the Diablo 3 petition probably likes this HL (something) 3 preview image.

OH GOD THE BLOOM

Frets on Fire

If you'd like to play something like Guitar Hero on the PC and for free take a look at Frets on Fire.

It's a Guitar Hero clone and the songs are created by the users (yes, you can find all the songs of the original Guitar Hero titles all over the place) and it's highly customizable. There are even MacOS X and Linux versions and a version you don't even need to install.

If you think it is not possible to enjoy the full awesomeness of Guitar Hero without having the guitar controller, then look at this!

I am hooked on this game yet again, though not being as geeky as it's supposed to be because you cannot hold a laptop's keyboard like that. It's really addictive because it's one of those games in which you know you can do it better than the last time and obviously you try again.

...and again.


....and then you notice it's 4:00 AM and you need to get up early on the next day.
(not that it happened to be of course!)

A future form of entertainment

Have you ever watched a movie and wanted to be there with them or even be the main character? Huge domestic screens and surround sound suggest people really want to be inside the movie. What about those who want to make decisions which affect the course of the story? The eternal "What if?" question.

I believe a new entertainment form rose from that question, mainly as its answer. It's not a totally new thing but it is being perfected to a point it's worth discussing. It is a mix between movies and videogames. I am not talking about those damn movie adaptations to games or games adapted to movies. Just forget those for a while.

This new form of entertainment is what can allow you to have a movie storyline being told while giving you just enough freedom to feel like you're playing a game. There are a few examples of movie-like scripts that spawned games instead of movies keeping the storyline, like "James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing" or "John Woo's Stranglehold".

It's not going to threaten movies or games, it's just a "new" form of entertainment that has possibilities. In my opinion the best "cinematic game"so far is "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater". Great storiy, great characters, great acting and great soundtrack. It's like playing a really good movie. In fact it's done in such a cinematic way that in the special edition of the game there's a whole disk with all the cutscenes and other parts captured in video so the player can watch it as if it were a movie.

Good Characters

After some years reading novels, watching anime, movies and playing videogames I noticed one of the things these things lack the most are good characters. They are what pulls me into whatever it is and it can create awesome dialogues in wich what the characters say is much more important than what they do say.

The best characters I found were mostly in a few fantasy books and in a few animes. On the books, Raistlin Majere of the Dragonlance series (hence the blogger nickname) and Drizzt Do'Urden from the Forgotten Realms. In the animes they shone brighter. What I felt about the characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion was nothing like what I felt about the characters in Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. I related to them, I felt at home and I loved them for the good parts and all the flaws. I miss those characters.

In most other places I find generic and one-dimensional characters which only fill the vacancies for "tough guy", "blonde/brunette/redhead bombshell", "nerdy teenager" or "evil mastermind" and nothing else. I watch the movies and half an hour later I can't even remember their names.

In videogames I count by the fingers of my hands the characters wich had that kind of impact. Just off the top of my head the best I remember is Guybrush Threepwood.

Hats off to Tim Shafer.

3D created graphic whores

This post is going to raise a few eyebrows.

As 3D came into the videogame world and became a standard because "it made things look more realistic", 2D was shoved to the corner of childish things. By the time of the Nintendo 64 and the Sony Playstation the standard was 3D. It was the future Sega Saturn had pointed years before.

By that time 3D was cool because it was new. Bad 3D was chosen over good 2D because a lot of people thought it was cooler. Ok, it gave people the chance to do new things because they could move the camera and all that. It represented technological breakthroughs in the hardware and programming side of things.

3D games were hot and 2D were not, or so it seemed. There were exceptions, of course. The interesting part is that some games were proud to be 2D and some of them were only fun because they were planned that way. Money was speaking high and there were conversions. Lots of conversions. Some of them were rubbish but a few pearls were created. Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid. New genres of gaming came from that time. The classic DOOM spawned thousands of clones and a few were good.

Where was 2D? Mainly in puzzle games and RPGs and mostly on the PC. I love good 2D graphics and by that time the best games kicked in. Awesome RPGs like Diablo, Baldur's Gate and Fallout showed up. Worms came out of nowhere and gathered a cult success by sheer fun and humor.

With these new generations of consoles and graphic cards the emphasis is on the graphics instead of the concept of the game, good characters or stories. I know people who can't enjoy a game if it's not running at full speed and full resolution and that actually makes me sad. They spend hundreds on pc parts to have the games running like that. They only play games and don't use it for anything else.

Nowadays people are divided in various sectors but the people who really enjoy games for what they are couldn't care less if the game is in 2D or 3D as long as it is good.

Realistic vs Stylized

When you consider the look and feel of a game and think of visual flaws, which games come to mind? Most likely the games you think of immediately are a couple of games that try to be realistic.

In my opinion this is their biggest flaw. They try to be so realistic that it becomes terribly hard to make. With that comes criticism. The game may look better, but the flaws are way more noticeable. They pop right out of the screen into the eyes of everyone in the room. Gamers and non-gamers alike get a little disappointed at it and if there are more, they may cease to take the game environment seriously. It breaks the suspension of disbelief.

With stylized or cartoon games we can live on with those flaws because they don't actually matter most of the time. You'll think "Ok, he's laying there like a board even with half his body off the set. Ok he just got up. It's Super Smash Bros, who cares? Now let me try this...(mumble mumble)". The whole environment is cartoon and we don't expect the same level of realism. It just draws you away from all the fun.

Some of these games try to be so accurate in their mechanics in order to achieve realism that it becomes rather hard to play even a simple game. Comparing racer titles, Burnout titles are fun and rewarding and GT games are visually pleasant but ultimately boring to me.

To resume, I think full realism is only useful for accurate simulations. If you want to shoot people and have the whole environment in Full HD, perfect physics and all that...try AirSoft. If you want a racer, try karting and if you want realistic football play it with friends, far away from the TV screen.