Video Games and Venture

My op/ed published in GameDaily

I had my op/ed "Gaming Needs A Real Sundance" published in GameDaily, the trade publication for the gaming industry.  I take the events and small publishers to task for not encouraging developers to submit complete games in competition to attract publishing in the same way the independent filmmakers take complete films to Sundance to sell to the studios.  (Well, their independent arms like Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics and whatnot.) 

I advocate for the creation of a standalone festival that is centered on business.  Take a gander.

Yet Another Post-E3 Post-Mortem

@ncroal E3: $MSFT: we're throwing shit at the wall. $NTDOY: we're shoveling the same shit. $SNE: the PS3 is no longer a piece of shit. 03:02 PM July 15, 2008
@sachinag Your analysis is the s--t! 05:36 Pm July 15, 2008

No, I don't really think the Penny Arcade guys stole my line.  I just like having a lot of positive reinforcement and showing off how smart I am.  (Why else would I have quoted N'Gai's reply?) 

It's pretty amazing at how uniformly terrible the feedback has been from E3.  For an industry that's never been bigger, never been healthier, never had the credibility that it does now (witness state after state fall all over itself offering tax incentives for game development), you'd think that people would take more risks, do more interesting things - you know, surprise us.

The only people who were surprised were the LucasArts people, who just totally had The Clone Wars Nerf'd - they should cancel/delay it for Wii Motion Plus, because they're going to make a ton of cash once they actually do have a user-friendly one-to-one lightsaber duel game.

But let me make a clarion call - please, publishers, get some guts.  (I'll give the developers a pass - and for good reason.)  All we've been getting are more of the same - more peripherals!  more sequels!  more crossovers! 

And let's not even get into the new "hotness" of turning video games into Mach 18 razors, where the $60 game is the razor and the overpriced DLC are the blades.  Razor and blade model is taught from day one in business school, but it should stay to razors and blades.  Episodic gaming is the just the bastard child of this mentality, as well. 

Make a good, full game and we'll happily pay full price for it.  I mean, did you see the sales numbers for New Super Mario Bros.?  Doesn't have to be 80 hours - it just has to be good.

Look, I know that you're supposed to make stuff that people want.  And the easy thing to do is to give people more of what they're buying now.  But just as we've learned from Friendster that scaling is important, learn something from your media bretheren - don't pull a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire move and kill the golden goose by shoveling our mouths full.  Take a tentpole and then give us new stuff.  Friends is a success?  Great, schedule something new at 8:30 (7:30 Central). 

And just to make the previous point really, really clear: this is the exact opposite of what Microsoft did with Crackdown - you're not supposed to take crap and get us to buy it so we can get into your beta.  You're supposed to take your Halo and be like: we like this too, it's different - try it out.

There are all sorts of developers who want to try new things - hell, it's why you lose your best people.  Bungie did not want to make Halo 4, and can you blame them?  I mean, Clover gave you Viewtiful Joe (link goes to my favorite in the series), and it was good enough to get a sequel (see - sequels can be good when they're good and a little different) and a port, and then you disband it after Okami?  For shame.

So let's not kill the golden goose - try new things.  There are easy ways to get new stuff that you believe in out there.  I've only outlined one - there are surely others.  It's good for you, it's good for your shareholders, and it's good for gamers.

Smash Bros reviews are sorely lacking

I got it yesterday and fought through Subspace Emissary - took me about ten hours to complete with 80-something completion.  As others have said, the controls are terrible for a platformer.  But the story is surprisingly good - so good, that I was angry when they had a single inconsistency on what the powers of the bad guys were in the Diddy Kong scene (I think that's obscure enough to not be a spoiler).

That said, I want to talk about the controls a little more.  In particular, I'd really have liked to see all the reviewers tell us what controls they were using.  The vast majority of people don't have Cube/Wavebird controllers - remember, there are lots of new people buying Wiis - and just saying "use a Cube controller" is patently unfair.  The game suffers demonstrably with any of the other options vis a vis the Cube controllers.  I ended up using the Wii remote turned like an NES controller option - using the left analog stick on the classic controller is hard, because it's clear the placement is secondary to the D pad used for NES and Super NES games.

I believe that most reviewers still had Cube controllers lying around, so they did what was easy - instead of being a proxy for the gamer.  Let me make my point clearly - reviewers have an obligation to review games under the conditions that their readers/viewers most likely will encounter the game under.  I'm not saying they have to use a 480i 19" CRT or whatever - we don't have the data for that - but in this situation, they missed the boat.  The manual assumes remote + nunchuck as the default, and I think reviewers should have used that as their playthrough method.

At least Kotaku, in their new love/hate roses/violets review did this.  But it's not a minor nitpick - it's a huge, major issue in the game.  The game could have remedied it in some way but allowing the D pad to be used for movement on the Classic Controller, but doesn't.  But it's clear that they said, as did others, we need to note the point, but not suffer through the game because of it.  It'd be like hacking Lair to not use the SIXAXIS controls.  The game's not Lair-unplayable, but the game is poorer than Melee because you have to use a controller that NINTENDO DOESN'T MANUFACTURE ANYMORE to get full enjoyment of the title.

 

All The Iwata Asks (I Can Find) In One Place

A good part of the long tail is older, archived material.  If it's cheap (or free) to store, why wouldn't you?  The argument is that the occasional sales you'll get will outweigh the storage and delivery costs.  I'm reminded of this as I tried to go back and revisit the "Iwata Asks" series on wii.com.  Right now, they are going through the series to get us ready for Wii Fit. [updated 4/4/08 to add Mario Kart Wii]

It's a great series, and there's an interesting balance between honesty and deference between staff (non-Miyamoto) and Iwata-san.  For everyone's reference, here's what I've found of the history:

• Link's Crossbow Training (and Wii Zapper)
• Mario Kart Wii
• Wii Fit
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• Super Mario Galaxy
• All Older Stuff
  • The Wii Hardware
  • Wii Remote
  • Wii Channels
  • Wii Project Extra!
  • Wii Sports
  • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
  • Wario Ware: Smooth Moves

Why aren't there any good fighting games on the Nintendo DS?

As most people know, I had the idea for Dawdle when I had a terrible experience selling my PSP online - eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon all failed me.  What most people don't know is that I bought my PSP to play one game - Street Fighter Alpha 3.  Technically, it's MAX on the PSP, because of the extra characters brought over from Capcom vs. SNK 2.

Over Christmas, I spent a fair amount of time at home, and that means hiding from my family playing my DS.  I got through and beat Phantom Hourglass, but then I had four more days at home.   So I decided to look for a Street Fighter game for my DS.  Turns out there isn't one.  Well, that's a shame, so I decided to see what fighting games were out there.  It's not pretty.

That's it.  Four real fighting games for a system that's three years old.  Sure, I could play the GBA version of Alpha 3, but I just can't get over the fact that there are six buttons for the game, and the GBA only supports four.  (Medium punches and kicks require you to press both punch and kick buttons, as appropriate.)

The Nintendo DS is a relatively powerful system and can handle 2D pretty well.  There's a D pad and six buttons.  It blows my mind that there isn't a single decent fighter on the machine (the Guilty Gear game is terrible).  I'd really have liked to play Alpha 3, or maybe 3rd Strike (a game I've only spent a scant amount of time on in the arcade).   Capcom's classic fighters would work perfectly on the DS.  Where are they?