The PC is Dead. Long Live the Console!13
Matt posted in The Industry on April 20th, 2007

It’s interesting that several people are spelling the death of the console because consoles are becoming more and more like PCs. Recently, John Romero said, “My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and Xbox 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether. The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over Wi-Fi, even the video signal.”

John Romero’s lost some credibility since nothing he’s worked on since Id has turned out well, but Blizzard’s VP, Itzik Ben Bassat, said the following: “The PC is becoming an entertainment hub - you use it to watch videos and TV, play games, listen to music… With wireless, you can send your content from your PC to anywhere in the house, to your TV, something I already do. You can play PC on your TV because it’s an LCD screen. Consoles are becoming sophisticated PCs which sit in the living room. We’ll have to see how all this develops. Maybe in five years you won’t need a console because you’ll have one PC which delivers content all over your house.”

Finally, Paul Steed said in a recent interview that “The future of gaming is really mobile games and PC games. There’s more computers in the world, there’s more cell phones in the world than there are consoles and that’ll never change.”

They are right that consoles and PCs are starting to fill the same void. If you look at Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, there is very little difference between them and computers. They basically replace your PC for entertainment purposes. You can surf the web, watch movies, download TV shows, and play games on your big flat screen HDTV. Now, these developers are suggesting that the console will go away and the content will all come from the PC rather than the console basically transplanting the PC into the living room.

This is where I think they are wrong. These developers all come from a PC background, so they may have trouble imagining that the PC could be replaced. Firstly, I’m going to talk about why the desktop PC is becoming less and less important in homes. Then I will talk about why the console makes more sense in you living room than a PC (either located physically in that room or connected wirelessly). This should explain why I think the desktop PC at home will die and the console will emerge triumphant.

So, why is the desktop PC going to die? You’ll notice, I qualified that statement. The desktop PC at home will die. The desktop PC is always going to have a place at work, but at some point there, it may be replaced by thin clients. That’s another article for another time. In order to see why it’s going to die, we have to recognize what people use their desktop PCs for. Firstly, there is the communication aspect of it. This includes e-mail, messaging, surfing the web, etc. Then, there’s the entertainment aspect of it. This includes playing games, watching movies, TV, and browsing the internet. I’d say for at least 80% of PC users, that’s it. An astute reader will notice that consoles already do all the entertainment aspects of a home PC, and a cell phone does all the communication aspects of it. Presently, they might not do them as well, but that may change.

The real question is how are these devices going to replace the PC? I don’t think cell phones will replace the PC for all communication purposes immediately, but I think that over time, it will become the device of choice for communication. The main things it is lacking is a good text entry system (although the bluetooth projected keyboard is pretty awesome), and a big enough screen. The screens resolutions will increase over time, and perhaps they will come with a mini-HDMI port, connect to a TV/monitor wirelessly or have an internal projection system in the future. Communication is something important that people want to be able to do anywhere. Having all your e-mails with you wherever you go and being able to access and reply to them is a huge win. Often, someone e-mails me the time I’m supposed to meet them or location, and I completely forget, but I don’t have access to my home PC. E-mail is something that you really want to take with you wherever you go. Having all your contacts for e-mail, messenging and phoning all in one place is very convenient also.

The portable aspect of the phone is a big advantage of the mobile phone over the PC for communication purposes. But, the real question is why do I think the console will win over a PC in the living room? As all the quoted PC developers purport, the PC can live in the living room hooked up to the TV rather than a console. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the one that will win is the one that delivers a much better experience to the user. That is clearly the console. I’ll explain why.

Firstly, and most importantly is the price advantage. Console hardware is subsidized by the hardware manufacturers, which really make them more attractive to the budget minded consumer. The other main advantage is the plug and play aspect of them. You plug it into your TV, and boom! You can run everything you could possibly want. There is no installing software (besides the automatic updates), there’s no driver incompatibilities, games not running because of your system specs, and the applications are generally more stable because they only have to support very few hardware configurations. You don’t have to worry about virus protection on your console. There’s no defragmenting your hard disk.

Here’s a good example. When the very first Rainbow Six came out, I was excited about the game, so I downloaded the demo for PC. I installed the game, updated DirectX, got the latest drivers and all that, and was all set to go. I spent quite a while setting up all my attack routes, strategies, and weapon. Finally, as it was loading the actual level, and I anxiously awaiting the loading bar to finish, so I could enjoy my well laid plans, the game crashed. I was so fed up with it, I uninstalled the demo and never played again. Now, I program for a living. I’m not your average Joe consumer who doesn’t know what a driver is. If I don’t want to struggle to get a game to run on a PC, troubleshoot all the potential problems, then this platform is not ideal for the average Joe consumer. Console sales are increasing and gaining market share over PC games. Why would this trend miraculously reverse just because consoles share a lot of the same functionality? They share a lot of functionality, yes, but the consoles do it better and cheaper.

http://ps3.gamespy.com/playstation-3/unreal-tournament-2007/771700p1.html
What can PCs do better than consoles? The real advantage to PCs are the input devices – mice and keyboards. Besides tradition, there’s no reason they HAVE to be PC exclusive, and more and more console games will use them. Xbox 360 as well as Playstation 3 work with USB keyboards out of the box for all their text entry. Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus as I mentioned previously works with the keyboard and mouse for Playstation 2. Unreal Tournament 2007 for Playstation 3 will work with a  keyboard and mouse. I haven’t heard if the 360 version will support them or not, but they’d be silly not to. It would make sense for Shadowrun the first cross platform competitive game to include keyboard and mouse support on the 360 version, but I don’t think it does. Hopefully, they’ll patch it later to rectify this oversight.

Something that lends credence to my theory is that Apple, Microsoft and Sony are trying to get into these two new platforms for computing. Three huge companies, the two main competitors in the home PC platform and one of the biggest consumer electronic companies, and they are trying to get into these two spaces. I imagine this is because they see the writing on the wall and that these two areas is where the money will be in the future – not the desktop PC. Microsoft saw it before Apple since the Xbox and the PocketPC platform predate the iTV and the iPhone from Apple considerably. Sony may have had the vision of the entertainment PC first with the Playstation 2. The Xbox was apparently developed in reaction to the idea of this new Sony computing platform being in everyone’s home – without running Microsoft’s operating system on it. The PSP is trying to move into that area as well, but from the entertainment side of things. I think the communication mobile PC/phone device will be used for portable entertainment, but I would argue that’ll be the icing on the cake rather than the prime usage just because as Steed said, there are more phones in the world than gaming consoles. Certainly, the Playstation brand commands a larger market share than Sony Ericsson, so that makes sense for them.

I could reiterate my point in my typical fashion, but I think I’ve actually made my point without my usual verbosity. If you don’t believe me, numbers don’t lie. Here’s some graphs from the ESA:

More Wii-actions and Some P-Wii-dictions4
Matt posted in Games, The Industry, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii on April 6th, 2007

Although the Wii has been getting a crap ton of positive feedback, many people seem disillusioned with the system. Chris Hecker had a head-turning rant at Game Developer Conference about how “the Wii is a piece of shit.” His main complaints being that the console isn’t powerful in terms of CPU to do much interesting and that Nintendo doesn’t take games seriously as an art form.

Now, Chris has seemed to do a 180 on the issue and retracted his statements, which to many websites appeared that he was pressured by EA to mollify Nintendo and their fanatics. Whether that is true or not, he doesn’t seem to have much fondness for the system.

Also, the God of War 2 director, Cory Balrog, whose blog was linked on Kotaku, was not impressed with the Wii. His comments are as follows:

“Here are some pics of the sweet wii…though I must be honest it was not everything I had hoped it would be. It was fun…but the wow factor wore off fairly quick. The one game I wanted to play, Trauma Center, was definitely a bit of a let down. The wiimote was woefully inaccurate and sapped the fun of the game. The Wii sports golf and bowling was cool…the boxing is freaking terrible though. In the end I hope to see some cool games come out of it, though it has me worried that the whole “what new thing can you do with the controller” fad will wear off after awhile and I will have left is a much slimmer wireless gamecube. Though the gamecuvbe gave me some great gaming moments so I am not all that bummed. I am still happier playing Zelda on my Gamecube…maybe I am just a luddite like that. Who knows?”

Now, since Cory has posted a response to all the negative feedback he’s been getting. He basically clarified that he wasn’t writing off the Wii – just that he was disappointed with his initial play.

Joystiq recently posted a link about a Microsofter saying that no Wii game’s controls kicks ass. Although that might not seem so surprising, it was surprising to me to read that the Joystiq editor agreed. I thought that I was in the minority. More interestingly, Joystiq mentions Wii remote issues in cooking mama and extends them to the general case. These remote issues are largely what I’m going to talk about in this very long blog post. They also discuss one of the other problems I have with the Wii here: “It still looks like Nintendo won’t back up these amazing sales figures with some real, original Wii titles for quite some time. We’ll just have to enjoy this constant string of Gamecube ports and mini-game based Wii titles apparently.”

Now, I’m not going to say the Wii is a piece of shit. The hardware is not very impressive both from a CPU standpoint as Chris Hecker mentions as well as from a graphics perspective. I have an HDTV and standard definition just doesn’t look good anymore. But, graphics don’t make a game. I was just discussing with a co-worker how much I loved Nights: Into Dreams for the Sega Saturn and how much I love the Sega Saturn in general. Just because the graphics are bad doesn’t mean that the gameplay can’t be fantastic. Much to the chagrin of PSP developers like myself, the Nintendo DS is far outselling the PSP because it has a bunch of really appealing games even though the hardware pales in comparison. I strongly dislike the touchscreen, but I still am tempted to get a DS for games like New Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi’s Island 2. I don’t have very many games for the PSP and the only one I’m really passionate about is Loco Roco (although I do enjoy playing my own game, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, but I’m biased). The PSP is a tremendously power piece of hardware. Comparing to the PS2, games two years in the lifecycle of the PS2 don’t look nearly as good as Final Fantasy XII or God of War 2. Likewise, PSP graphics will be much more amazing in three or four years. DS graphics can get better, but since there’s a lot less hardware to work with, the jump won’t be as significant. But again, graphics aren’t consumer’s largest concern.

I’ve been playing Wii for quite a bit since launch trying to get into it, and so far, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve played a lot of Wii tennis because my girlfriend (a non-gamer) was really excited by it. I didn’t have a second controller, so we took turns playing – my girlfriend out of her love of tennis and me to defend my game playing honor. I couldn’t have her get a higher score, could I? We both ended up with scores in the 500s. Not terrific, but not terrible (Half way from newbie to pro). We both fancied ourselves as pretty decent Wii athletes. She was really pleased because she thought it felt like real tennis. I have played about three tennis games in my life, so needless to say, I’m a terrible tennis player outside the Wii. Even still, I am frustrated by the lack of feedback that is provided (as I blogged before). I don’t know what part of my swing is taken into account, how to get better because trial and error with no feedback is frustrating. There is no training mode in game to show me how to improve. Perhaps I need to hire a Wii Tennis instructor to educate me on improving my technique. Maybe that’s Nintendo’s plan. They want to start selling video game lessons, since good sport lessons are expensive. Perhaps Reggie can come to my house and coach me. If he’s busy kicking ass, and/or taking names, maybe those “Wii want to play” guys can show me how it’s done. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a training manual or an instruction manual that describes what input is taken into account and how to do a successful swing.

On top of that, the lower difficulties also seem to make the actual game play easier, not just the AI. When we took turns playing, we could return the ball most of the time (at difficulty 500). When we played each other, we swung and missed most of the shots. This to me is indicative of the swing timing changing based on your skill level. Although it is nice that they are trying to make it easier for people with less practice, it’s frustrating that doesn’t carry over to multiplayer. The problem with that is I can’t practice without my girlfriend to get extra skill in multiplayer unless I work up to whatever difficulty level multiplayer plays at. Probably the best solution would be to play the game at the skill level of the weaker player. That way the weaker player could stand a chance, but the stronger player would still have an advantage. Another option would be to take the average of both players and use that as the skill level. I could be way wrong about this skill level thing, but regardless of the cause, it didn’t “feel” right to either of us, and it’s up to the game developer to make that so.

Also, I strongly dislike the Wii’s screen positioning system (the thing it uses the IR sensor for). I want to be able to calibrate it like a light gun. I want where I’m pointing to be where it registers. That is what  is intuitive to me. For Sega Dreamcast, I actually taped a laser pointer on top of my light gun, then calibrated the impact point to where the laser pointer hit. I thought that was really cool. The light gun handled it perfectly, and I could aim exactly at the screen. The Wii is the opposite. I get a targeting reticle all the time, but it doesn’t match where I’m pointing the remote in screen space. Maybe I need to experimentally determine a better position for my IR sensor, but I’m really sick of “please point your cursor at the screen” messages. Isn’t Wii supposed to be easy and intuitive? The Wii does have a sensitivity option buried in the poorly designed settings menus, and I was able to decrease it’s sensitivity so there was less jitter, but I wasn’t able to calibrate it the way I’d like. I don’t find that easy to play with, and most if not all of the Wii sports doesn’t use it like that. So, maybe Nintendo’s most “accessible” and easy to play game omitted those controls for a reason.

The first time I played the air hockey game in Wii Play, I beat my friend who had more experience playing the game than I. Sure, I could attribute it to my great skill, but I think it was really that the he kept overshooting the sensor’s boundaries and missed all of the shots. Now, potentially, calibration is an “advanced” feature and maybe the casual gamers won’t understand, but if the first time you play with your Wii, you calibrate it, or maybe a per game calibration, it seems that it would help make the Wii easier to use.

Actually, the sensor boundaries did come in handy for WarioWare’s balancing games. I have horribly shaky hands (maybe that has something to do with why Wii doesn’t work as well for me), so the balancing game was be my bane, but when my cursor was not pointing at the screen, it just saved the last position which could be flat, and I kicked it’s ass.

As a game developer, I’m not impressed with the Wii for the same reason Chris Hecker states. There’s not much CPU to work with. I really like nice graphics, but the most important thing to me is to make a fun game. With extra CPU, I can do a lot of fun things. Perhaps this is because I’m a programmer, and what I want to do is constantly constrained by the limits of the hardware. If I want to have an object with good collision, I may not have the CPU resources to do so. Now, one might argue that fun games don’t hinge on good collision, but I think it helps a lot in many situations. For example, the camera is something that requires very complex collision. If you have more CPU time, you can come up with a  really good camera algorithm that is smooth and never blocked. Doing physics based gameplay or fluids is also very CPU intensive. Now, I’m not saying every game has to be physics based and you can’t have a fun game that has no physics at all, but being able to do some really neat physics tricks definitely can create a lot of fun gameplay. Good pathfinding can be processor intensive. All too often due to CPU constraints, the pathfinding in games ends up with situations that it cannot handle. That restricts design, which is frustrating as a game developer. Doing really advanced AI algorithms is also tricky. Sure, we can have little state machines for every enemy, and that goes pretty far, but what if you want to have an AI co-op player? We had one in the Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer, and it wasn’t very smart. Even the teammates in Gears of War aren’t very smart. Now, oftentimes, that is limited to schedule pressure and not CPU time, but if you want to do something that is processor intensive, like have your AI do a whole bunch of collision checks to discover things about its environment, you will rapidly exceed your budget and have to resort to cheating.

Now, here’s my p-wii-dictions. I think the Wii has a lot of steam right now, but before the end of the year, its sales will level out to around the Xbox 360 and PS3s sales. Why do I think that? Firstly, I think the line up for the immediate future is pretty weak. Minigames, minigames, and more minigames. Nothing is coming out that really delivers on the promise of new, deep gameplay experiences. On top of that, the new controller, while potentially liberating, has many frustrations that I as well as other gamers (at least the joystiq’ers) are enduring. It’s possible that over time, developers will get better at sensing motion, but it seems that some problems are inherent in the design (like not being able to judge the sensitivity bounds of the IR sensor). The heavy hitters for this year, Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3, are penciled in for the end of the year, but I’d say there’s a 50% chance that one of those titles gets pushed into next year. I don’t have any evidence to support that, but Nintendo’s big first party titles are known for frequently getting delayed. (Take Twilight Princess as an example) I think in 2008 and 2009 more people will own HDTVs and be craving content to display on them. Wii won’t deliver, and they’ll grow tired of the gimmicks and minigames and turn to Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Now, keep in mind that these predictions are for the United States only. I think Japan is nuts for the Wii and will stay that way, and I’ve heard that Europe doesn’t have much HDTV penetration (although strangely, PS3 has sold quite well).

One may wonder how with so much hype how can it fizzle out? That is an easy one. Tickle Me Elmo. Two Christmases different models of Tickle Me Elmos have been the “hot” toy and everyone HAD to have one. They were very difficult to find (similar to the Wii) and very hyped (also similar to the Wii). But, once the hype wore down, no one cared. I don’t hear very many people talking about how great their Tickle Me Elmo is. As long as supply is less than the demand, people will feel pressured to buy it if they can find it. Hell, I’ve bought some stuff I don’t really like because it was “limited edition”, and I’ve worried I couldn’t find it later. I didn’t care much for Steel Battalion, but when I found out the first run completely sold out and they were issuing a second, I figured I had to pick it up, just in case I ever wanted to play it. Now, I have played it, and I found it pretty frustrating especially when it deleted my saved game. I plan on playing it more now that I have a modded Xbox with the ability to back up my saved game. A worse purchase was the Omnimusha Katana controller, which is absolutely terrible, but it was a limited run and although I couldn’t find a description of what it does, I figured I’d better drop the $70 in case it was really awesome. It turned out to be much worse than I could have possibly imagined. It was a dual shock controller on the handle of a sword, and if you swung the sword, sometimes it would register as the circle button being pressed. Even with Xbox 360, when the Elite model was supposedly limited edition, myself and a friend decided we had to buy it right away! When we discovered it was a whole new SKU, we figured there’s no rush to upgrade to the HDMI capable model, so we are both thinking about holding off. Perhaps they’ll be a price drop or a larger hard disk bundled with HDMI later. So, my point is that the demand for a product is higher when it’s the “hot” thing and hard to find. It seems that the COO of GameStop seems to think that Nintendo is holding back units.  As joystiq reports, “Compared to the PS3’s fluid supply and the fact that the Wii is comprised of cheap, proven and occasionally duct-taped parts, this is not a story that many have found easy to buy. In fact, it’s about as easy to buy as a Wii, which to this day, still seems to be a retail phantom (much like the DS Lite). Managed scarcity is a good technique for keeping your product desirable, but it comes at the expense of leaving people with empty hands, tightly clenched in frustration.”
Now, I agree completely with Joystiq’s assessment. There is no reason that Wiis should be this difficult to find. They’ve been manufacturing GameCubes for over 5 years and duct tape is cheap. In all seriousness, the hardware of everything but the remote should be trivial to manufacture since it’s just a version of 5 year old technology. Honesstly, I’m amazed how fast Sony solved the Playstation 3 manufacturing problems since the cell is brand new technology and an enormous chip. There is no excuse Nintendo can possibly make for producing so few Wiis. Just like the Tickle Me Elmo craze, the manufactured scarcity makes it a “must buy”. For now. But just like Tickle Me Elmos, when that pressure is lifted, there’ll be a lot of disillusioned consumers and bored gamers, I think. The platform will start showing it’s age when consumers buy HDTVs, which prices are dropping quite rapidly. On top of this, the FCC is regulating that by February 17th, 2009, all broadcast television is in HD. Now, I’m not sure if the FCC can regulate cable and satellite television, but if all content providers are already mastering their shows in HD, then I imagine HD cable’s penetration will increase. The two things that are preventing people from upgrading are cost, which is always dropping and already beginning to be reasonable. (For example, Amazon.com has a pretty affordable 27″ LCD for $419.99.)

Now, I’m not the only one who thinks that the Wii is overhyped. Brian Hastings, (who is falsely listed as Insomniac’s CEO), thinks it’s just a fad. Now many people are quick to dismiss his opinion because Insomniac’s PS2 and PS3 outings have been published by Sony. Although I think it’s in his best interest for PS3 to succeed, I think that he would have some say as far as what games Insomniac develops. Many people forget that they are an independent studio. They can make games for whomever they like. It just so happens that they’ve aligned themselves with Sony, and that’s been a very good alliance in the past. If Brian Hastings genuinely thought the Wii was the future of gaming, then wouldn’t it make sense for him to align himself with Nintendo?

The author, Chris Kohler, argues that the Wii is for real. Even though he makes some convincing points, I still don’t agree. Firstly, he loses credibility points for getting the title of Brian Hastings incorrect when it was even presented correctly on the Neogaf post he linked to. Firstly, he compares the battle to the DS. I think that’s a very bad comparison. The DS’s main competitor at least initially was not the PSP but the GBA. Nintendo has been the ONLY one to maintain a profitable handheld game console. All the rivals have failed spectacularly except Sony, which is putting up a darn good fight. Secondly, Nintendo in the home console wars is coming off a loser. Playstation and to a much lesser extend have gobbled up a lot of mindshare, which is similar to the PSP fighting the DS. Nintendo has the portable game mindshare, and in the portable space, Sony is the under dog.

His second main point, I also think is a bad one. It hinges on “research” showing that consumers with HDTVs aren’t ordering High Def channels and are using DVD players with composite cables because “it looks fine”. Well, firstly, I’m skeptical of this “research” since it isn’t cited. There are many studies that are conducted in a very poor manner in order to provide convincing numbers to someone who would benefit a certain result from a study. Secondly, (even if that is true) I think this is a completely separate issue. As far as High Def channels, in my area it costs an extra $10 a month to get any High Def channel, and there aren’t many of them at all. Plus, many programs (such as the news) don’t really benefit from High Def. So, I think that’s the real reason they don’t upgrade their cable. I think people who DO have an HDTV are interested in HD content. If they weren’t, why would they buy an HDTV? Using composite cables is a symptom of that the HD revolution confusing the average consumer. A good example of this is try asking your parents or girlfriend if they should use S-video or composite to hook up their DVD player. They probably won’t know which is better. If you check behind their TV, they’ll probably be using composite because that’s what the player came with or what they have lying around. With HD formats, it has only introduced more wires, and to the non-geeks, it’s not clear which is better. For example, my parents bought an HDTV. They also bought a Blu-ray player. (I’m not clear why they bought Blu-ray over HD DVD, and upon asking, they claimed I told them to, which I didn’t because presently, I’m a bit more partial to HD DVD, but that’s a story for another article. Since I have both, I’m not really taking sides, so I may be partial to Blu-ray more later.) Anyway, The salesperson at Best Buy claimed they need a $100 HDMI cable to display the 1080p signal. They purchased it. Now, if they knew what HDMI was, they would know it’s ludicrous to spend $100 on a HDMI cable. Since it is a digital interface, as long as the cable can conduct a signal, the cost doesn’t matter because it’s binary. Either the signal is there or it isn’t. That’s the big advantage to digital over analog. Noise cannot be introduced. I have a $6 HDMI cable that works perfectly. Now, what was even more interesting was that their Blu-ray player INCLUDED an HDMI cable, so they ended up returning the insanely overpriced cable. Now, if you think my parents are dumb, you’d be wrong. My dad has a PhD in electrical engineering. It just so happens that he isn’t particularly interested in home theater equipment and is unfamiliar with HDMI, and they probably didn’t do much comparison shopping for HDMI cables either. Perhaps this was a bit long-winded. Although, I imagine if you are reading this, you are accustomed to my writing style, which is wordy to say the least. My point is just that people who buy HDTVs buy them for a reason. They are interested in HD content. I’m guessing they’ll be able to tell the difference. Maybe it’s not worth buying a next gen DVD player. Probably not. Progressive scan DVD players are better, but I imagine it’s not enough of a difference for the average viewer to notice. So, if HDTV owners want HD content, I think they’ll turn to video games. And Wii doesn’t deliver.

Similar to discrediting Brian Hasting’s opinion, one might speculate that since High Impact’s first game was published by Sony, I might be rooting for Sony. On reading my blog, it may seem that I prefer Xbox 360. If you looked into my bio, you might realize that I worked for Microsoft on the Xbox Software Services team as an intern. Maybe my loyalty stems from there? Maybe those two biases combine to a hatred of Nintendo? That’s funny to me because I never owned a Playstation 1, and was often accused of being a Nintendo fanboy in high school because of my love for SNES and Nintendo 64. So, you can suspect I’m biased towards whomever you like. It would seem by Occham’s Razor that the answer to this would be that I’m just being honest. I fancy myself as an honest person – perhaps to the point that it’s a weakness. I was let down by GameCube and as I am describing here,  I’m not fond of the Wii yet.

I’m not giving up on my Wii. I’ll continue to pick up games here and there and play them from time to time, but most of my gaming time in the immediate future will be dedictated to PS2 and Xbox 360 because there are a number of titles that I’m excited about playing. I will however pick up Super Paper Mario soon, although that’s essentially a GameCube game and probably rarely uses the Wii controls, which I suppose I can’t complain, except everyone who has a GameCube and not a Wii is pretty much out of luck. I’m also mortified of Nights for Wii. If you are unfamiliar with Nights, let me say that it’s not a horror game. It’s an amazing game for Saturn unlike anything else I’ve ever played that is getting a Wii sequel. Now the reason this has struck terror into my heart is that as much as I love Sega (and I most certainly do), their output recently seems to be eroding all my favorite Sega franchises. Sonic, their most beloved, has been destroyed. Who even thought that was possible? The EyeToy Nights minigame was completely unplayable. I’m also very nervous about the new Golden Axe Riders, in development by Secret Level. If they destroy those two franchises, all they have to do is ruin Panzer Dragoon and Samba de Amigo, and my very soul will be crushed.

Rest In Peace, Dan Johnson6
Matt posted in The Industry on December 16th, 2006

It is very unfortunate, but High Impact has lost one of our most outstanding employees, Dan Johnson. Dan was an amazing person, and he had a positive impact on everyone he worked with and knew. The games industry has lost one of the best character artists, and everyone at High Impact have lost more than just a co-worker - we’ve lost a friend, a mentor, a true virtuoso, a hilarious comedian and an all around wonderful person. At his memorial on Monday, many people spoke about what a great influence he was in their lives. Now I only knew him for a year and didn’t work that closely with him, but I’ll never forget him. Many people who knew him better have written some touching stuff, like Michael John and Jon Mayfield, which is definitely worth reading. Although it’s tragic that he has passed away, I’m sure he’s gone to a better place.

Now, if you are not familiar with Dan, I’m sure you’re familiar with his work. He worked on every Insomiac game except  Ratchet & Clank and Spyro. In fact, he is in many of those games in one form or another. In the Spyro games, the coins were textured with Dan’s face. In the original Ratchet & Clank, he’s on one of the monitors on Planet Orxon, a starfish on Pokitaru, and a mushroom on Eudora. There’s a Snow Dan that appeared in both Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. I’m sure there are plenty of Dan references that I’m missing, but he’s all over the Insomniac games, and Ted Price said at his memorial service that they will continue to put him in their games.

Gamers and game developers alike should mourn because we lost one of the industry’s brightest stars.

The Future of Trailers1
Matt posted in Games, The Industry, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 on December 10th, 2006

The big news this week was the Halo 3 trailer came out. Now, I don’t like FPSes on consoles (I find the controls frustrating), so I was never really into Halo. I played through about half of the single player campaign in the first game and got bored. After seeing the trailer, I was really excited about Halo 3. I started reading about the plot of the Halo saga and the Halo universe, and it actually seems quite interesting. I never thought I’d pick up Halo again, but now I’m tempted (although I probably won’t have time… I have a HUGE backlog of games). That seems like really effective advertising if it can get someone with no interest in a game more excited. Another example is the Gears of War trailer with the version of Mad World used in Donnie Darko that many people are talking about. I was already quite excited about Gears of War when it came out, but that was a really well done trailer. (David Fincher, director of Fight Club, was a consultant on the trailer. Many sites erroneously credit him with directing it, but that’s not the case.)

Now, if you are one of the few gamers who hasn’t seen either of these trailers, you definitely should check them out. The Halo 3 trailer is not in game footage. In fact, it’s not even done by Bungie. It’s done by FX shop Digital Domain, that worked on many movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow” and “X-Men”. Digital Domain is no stranger to commercials. They have quite a few commercials under their belt. When I was at University of Michigan, an employee from Digital Domain came to give a lecture and talked about what the visual effects industry was like. He said that the only reason they did features was to get the name out there and earn a reputation to get more commercials. So I guess if you are going into visual effects, commercials are where the money is at. At any rate, it starts with an apparently live action shot of two kids discussing the possibility of aliens. I say apparently live action because the shot was dark, and I watched it super low res. (I haven’t had a chance to download it off Xbox Live in 720p) Part of the trailer was live action according to Bungie, and this is the only candidate for live action section. Then, there’s a battle scene that was rendered using in game assets, that is really exciting. It didn’t explain anything. It just showed a quick glimpse of fast paced combat that really gets your adrenaline flowing. Well, why don’t you just watch it?

The Gears of War one is really cool because they are even showing it before movies in the theater. As I mentioned, it uses the version of Mad World featured in Donnie Darko (an amazing movie, in my opinion), and really builds on the theme of Destroyed Beauty. Marcus Phoenix, the protagonist of Gears of War, walks through a destroyed town on the planet Sera and looks down at a half destroyed statue in a puddle. One might even say a tear splashes down into the pool of water, but we all know Marcus is so badass he probably cut his own tear ducts out. Soon, Marcus ends up in a firefight with the locust only to find himself completely outnumbered. The end completely implies that if you want to find out what happens, play the game. If you would like to see the trailer for yourself, check it out. I recommend you do so.

Now, neither of these trailers show anything from inside the game. The Gears of War trailer was actually created in the game engine, but isn’t actual game play. Despite the Halo 3 trailer featuring some in game assets, I expect that it looks nicer than the actual game will (the particle count seems a bit high to me). Bungie never fails to push the performance of the hardware, so maybe we’ll actually see that level of visual fidelity, but I doubt it.

So, if these aren’t accurate depictions of the gameplay, are they worth releasing? Are they things gamers should get excited about? I’d say yes. One might say the trailers are dishonest because they are showing things that aren’t actually in the game. That is true, but I wouldn’t say they are dishonest. Although Halo 3 is not out yet, so I have no idea what the game will be like, I think the trailer for Gears of War was more effective at expressing the theme of “destroyed beauty” than any minute of gameplay would. The theme of Gears of War is subtle, but it’s prevalent throughout the game (or at least the sections I’ve played so far). It’s more about the ambiance of the world and the experience, so it’s hard to express that in a minute. Honestly, I think the theme of the game is one of the things that really makes it such a great experience. The beauty of the civilization is juxtaposed against the destruction and violence. That stark contrast really makes you hate the enemy all the more and want to fight them. This emotional investment adds to the immersiveness of the game world and is gripping.

Sometimes, trailers or sizzle reels for games are shown off and the game clearly doesn’t match the prerendered footage’s visual quality. Motorstorm is an example. The sizzle reel shows off the burnout style crashes combined with all the dirt and mud of off-road racing. The visual quality of the game, although good, doesn’t look nearly as good as the prerendered footage. There’s a larger disparity between that footage and the real game than between the Gears of War trailer and the game. (Perhaps Halo will suffer from the same thing) Does this seem dishonest about it? Maybe. It’s pretty sad when people are claiming either the PS3 or the Xbox 360 has more graphical horsepower based on a pre-rendered movie. They both can play video at 1080p (although Blu-ray has a lot more space for it), so that’s a bad comparison. Here’s the question – when a video simulates gameplay similar to Killzone 2 or Final Fantasy XIII, then it becomes more deceptive. It’s easier for game developers to recognize which the video is, but I imagine it can be confusing for people outside the industry. Another example is White Knight Story. A number of people are REALLY excited about it (including Jerry and Mike from Penny Arcade), and the trailer does indeed seem quite cool. Whether it’s indicative of the actual gameplay remains to be seen (in my opinion). It’s a very short trailer and could just be a mock up of what they are actually planning on doing. Yes, I’m definitely interested, and its refreshing to see something that resembles gameplay, but I’m not convinced that is actually a video of gameplay. This generation, it seems wise to remain skeptical of anything that isn’t playable. Hopefully the game will be as exciting as they plan, but I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.

I can imagine you are wondering what I’m getting at. Basically, I’m trying to say that showing a video that is not representative of actual gameplay is a double edged sword. On one hand, it can express things that gameplay clips can’t like the theme in Gears of War. On the other hand, it can set up unrealistic expectations about gameplay and visual fidelity. Regardless of whether showing off trailers that aren’t from the actual game is a good idea or not, I suspect we are going to see a lot more of them this generation. The target video or sizzle reel is an effective way to pitch a game to both publishers and the general audience. I heard the “theme” or the new idea that the Assassin’s Creed development team was trying to push was “crowds”. Now, when I heard that the game’s big feature is “crowds” I had trouble visualizing how that could be an entertaining premise for the game. In fact, it sounded kind of silly. But, on seeing the E3 trailer, I started to understand how that would work and the potential for a new style of stealth – blending into crowds.

Now, selling your games to audiences isn’t really important before you sit down and code the gameplay. Getting a game green-lit is very difficult especially with the cost of next gen games. If a pre-rendered movie or sizzle reel can help get a game funded, then it’s worth doing from a developer standpoint. Is it best off for the industry for publishers to expect them? That’s harder to say. As I mentioned, it can demonstrate to a publisher what a game is trying to be. A design document isn’t as effective at communicating the spirit of the game. A picture is worth a thousand words and at 30 pictures per second, a 2 minute sizzle reel has the value of an encyclopedia. Yes, sizzle reels take money and time away from actually developing the game. But, from the publisher’s side of things, they’d rather invest a bit up front to see if the product is something they think they can sell. My guess is that sizzle reels are here to stay.

Game Developer Ethics0
Matt posted in The Industry on December 1st, 2006

In the same edition of blogged out that I mentioned in my last post regarding reviews, there was also something interesting that I wanted to comment on:

“I’ll play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, and argue that game developers only have a responsibility to make games, no matter the value of the content of those games. What right have we to demand that they defend or explain their “artistic intent”?
Perhaps I’m on the wrong track – after all we do want games development to be more intelligent and less exploitative on sensation and controversy – but I feel that more accountability on the part of developers only ends up inhibiting inspiration. I’m not sure we can afford that trade-off.”

I disagree with his assertion that “game developers only have a responsibility to make games”. I am probably in the minority with my opinion, but I feel that as a game developer, I am personally responsible for the content in what I work on. If I spend thousands of hours working on a product, I want it to have a positive impact on the world. When I look back at the many hours I’ve spent slaving away in front of a computer screen, I want it to mean more than just a paycheck. I want to see myself as someone who leaves a positive impact on the world for all my hard work. I would much rather make a financially unsuccessful game that really touches the lives of gamers and improves them than the most successful game ever that has a negative impact on gamers in the long run, even if they enjoy it at the time.

The major problem with my ideal is that it is impossible to accurately assess the worldwide impact a game has. Let’s use the popular example of “Grand Theft Auto”. Although, I don’t play the game because I am disgusted by its content, it is a very popular game series that has brought countless hours of enjoyment to people all over the world. It is also the frequent target of finger pointing for increases in youth violence. Personally, I think the content in the game is pretty awful. Although it may be a fun game, it certainly allows you to do things that are just terrible, like pay money for a woman of ill repute’s accompaniment, and then if you are dissatisfied with her services, you are free to chainsaw her in order to acquire a refund. Now, I think the designers and the development team behind the game were very talented and clearly did a lot of things right in order to make such a hugely successful game. But is it necessary to have objectionable content in it? One of the major features it is praised for is the sandbox style gameplay. Could the same development team have made an equally fun game with less objectionable content? I’d say yes although I imagine many would argue no.

What makes Grand Theft Auto fun? Most people will tell you it’s not chainsawing prostitutes, but rather roaming an open world environment and enjoying the emergent gameplay. In college, I watched my housemates play many hours of GTA, and they enjoyed turning on the cheat codes and flying around with the tank. So, would the game be as fun without the assassinations, crime and all that? It’s difficult to determine because one of the things that people enjoy about the game is choice. People like to be able to make choices. A game is more immersive when you are presented in a world where you can play around and experiment rather than just do the things the game designers thought of. (This may explain the decline in adventure games in the past several years)

By removing questionable content, you remove the opportunity to do certain things. One game that handled choice better than Grand Theft Auto is Fable. Now,  most people wouldn’t say that Fable is a better than GTA. In fact, they would probably argue the contrary. But, rather than giving your character ONLY the opportunity to commit terrible crimes, your character can choose to be a hero. Fable had other problems, and I think a sandbox of a fantasy world is less appealing than the real world to the mass market, but  I’m very interested to see how Crackdown turns out. It’s similar to Grand Theft Auto in that it is a free roaming open world game and that it is also being developed by David Jones, the creator of GTA. Besides adding a comic book-y visual flair, in Crackdown, the player is a super hero rather than a criminal. Will this game be as fun as GTA without the objectionable content? I hope so. Although you lose choice in terms of objectionable actions (well, hopefully), you gain choices that you couldn’t do in Grand Theft Auto. You can gain Spiderman’s powers of scaling buildings. You can leap great distances. It seems like it’s a wish fulfillment game for everyone who’s ever read a comic book.

The next question is does the terrible content in Grand Theft Auto have an effect on people? Although it doesn’t really have an effect on adults, I would argue it does on children. Now, Grand Theft Auto is not a kids game. It is very clearly marked mature, and I think that rating is reasonable. The problem is as a recent NIMF report suggests parents aren’t doing their jobs when purchasing video games for their children. So, the fact that Grand Theft Auto gets in the hands of children is the fault of bad parenting, and perhaps irresponsible older siblings. Unfortunately, I cannot do anything to address that. I can’t force negligent or ignorant parents to shape up all over the world. What I do have control over is where I work and what I work on. Even if the responsibility lies with the parent, as I mentioned before, I don’t want to have a negative impact on the world. Sure, GTA provides entertainment, but I feel that Rockstar could have provided that same entertainment without the objectionable content like I mentioned above.

Many argue that it has no effect on kids. I played Mortal Kombat as a child. I even went as Scorpion for Halloween when I was pretty young. Now, I’m not a violent person at all. I’ve never torn someone’s heart out of their chest. I get terrified if an animal runs in front of my car because I don’t want to extinguish a furry critter’s spark of  life. But I think Mortal Kombat (at least the old ones. I haven’t played the later ones, so I can’t comment) is more akin to Tom and Jerry cartoons, which were actually fairly violent. Certainly, I could be wrong about this. Maybe Mortal Kombat has a similarly bad effect on children. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d work on a Mortal Kombat game. But, I KNOW I wouldn’t work on a GTA style game. I think GTA has a negative effect partially because of its realism. Now, although the game may not be photorealistic, it’s in a real world setting and pretty much glorifying a life of crime. The protagonists (if they can even be called that) in Grand Theft Auto are criminals. They do a lot of bad things and rarely have to deal with the consequences of their actions. If you kill a cop and steal his car, you can either escape with absolutely no punishment, or you get busted and rather than sitting out for a length of time in prison, you are able to get right back into the game. There have been numerous studies saying games are effective learning tools, but what lessons might young, impressionable minds learn from Grand Theft Auto? I can only think of negative things.

Now, if you think I am arguing FOR censorship, you are mistaken. Censorship is bad because giving governmental control over our forms of expression is a slippery slope that we should stay as far away from as possible. Rather, I feel like game developers should personally censor their work based on what they think will have a positive impact on the world. I have been asked if I would be willing to work on a game with questionable content. I honestly told my boss that I wouldn’t work on it. If High Impact Games next game were similar in content to GTA, I would quit.

Wii-actions and Wii-views3
Matt posted in Games, The Industry, Xbox 360, Wii on November 21st, 2006

I have had about an hour of time to play with my brand new Wii. In the limited time that I’ve played Wii Sports (about an hour), I’m not very impressed with that game. My overall impression is that the motion control doesn’t work as well as I would like, there’s a lot of randomness, and there’s no way to get feedback on how to improve your technique. I’ll break it down by sport.

Baseball – Baseball could have been cooler, but I think they dumbed it down to the point that it’s not very interesting to play. All the players do is pitch and bat. Pitching could have been more interesting if they tried to interpret your motion as an actual pitch, but instead if yo u want to throw a curve ball, you hold down a button combo. Batting just requires swinging. I think that it’s all about timing and how fast you swing (but again, I’m not sure because they don’t give you any feedback). Up and down motion doesn’t matter. The outfielders’ behavior seems random. Will they catch your pop fly? Not if you are lucky.

Bowling – I found this frustrating. I’m not exactly sure how it determines the direction the ball will curve from your motion. Your throws don’t always go straight and I’m not sure what I need to do physically to curve the ball. Also, in this game, the Mii’s gestures don’t match yours. Rather, to bowl properly, you have to match the on screen character’s motion. I found this frustrating also. I thought the whole point of the motion control was so that the in game avatar could match your motions, not the other way around. Rather than informing you that you have to match the character, it gives messages informing you that your timing is off, but doesn’t really explain you should look at the position of the Mii’s arm for an indication of the proper timing. Maybe I’m just slow to pick up these things, but if I, a video gamer for life, have trouble getting it right, won’t non-gamers? Maybe not. Maybe it’s naturally intuitive for non-gamers, and I am inhibited from approaching it in the same way because I’ve used traditional gaming interfaces, but I doubt it.

Boxing – I didn’t play this for very long, so maybe I’m a bad judge, but I had trouble getting the different moves working, so I decided to resort to my Mocap Boxing technique of flailing wildly, and I managed to best my friend who was trying to play for real.

Golf - This is probably the best of the bunch. I’m not huge into golf games, but I can see how actually swinging the club is more fun than stopping a moving bar at the right location. I still ran into a bit of frustration when trying to swing softly. I would swing slowly, and it wouldn’t pick up the motion. Then when I finished my swing, the character was holding the club in the wrong position relative to mine. Again, there isn’t much to this game as far as user control and all that. You can’t hook the ball. You just control the speed at which the ball is hit. The nice part about this game is that it seems clear that swing speed is all that matters.

Tennis – This suffered from similar problems as baseball in terms of what motions are taken into account. You don’t have to move your characters. They move automatically, which isn’t as annoying as outfielders that can cost you the game, but it seems like it always play doubles, and you can’t control which character swings if you are playing for both of them. Several times, I wanted the front character to dive for it, but instead the rear player swung, and there wasn’t time for the rear player to swing again when the ball was close to him. I suppose I could get used to the timing, but it was still a bit frustrating. The game seems like pong with gestures. Although pong was a great game for the time, if I have a sophisticated input device, I’d like to have more control of the game than when the character hits the ball (and maybe how hard).

So, all in all, I’m a bit disappointed with Wii Sports. The motion controls usually work more like gestures than actually having control of the object. Moving the Wii-mote is more fun than pressing a button, but these games don’t seem all that good regardless of input mechanism. Hopefully, more interesting titles will come out that use the wii-mote better. I’m interested in Trauma Center. I haven’t gotten a chance to play it, but I might enjoy that better.

I also got a chance to play Zelda for about an hour, and I’m surprised it’s getting such good reviews. It would have been good two years ago, but now it seems dated both graphically and gameplay-wise. The graphics don’t even seem that great for a GameCube game when compared to something like Resident Evil 4. That’s certainly excusable though. Graphics don’t make a game fun, but they do help create an immersive experience. The gameplay seems dated for many reasons. Firstly, there are no voice overs. I don’t think this is excusable. In order to have good graphics, it’s hard work because developers have to squeeze the maximum performance out of the system. Playing voice overs is not very difficult at all from a technical standpoint. Sure you have to get voice actors to record them, but it adds a lot to the game in my opinion.

Another main reason the gameplay feels dated is because there is only one solution to every problem. Hopefully, you won’t mind the small spoilers, but this example is hardly a plot point. When you go into the first city, there are two people with problems that obviously need fixing. One problem is the shop owner is missing her cat. The other problem is a woman is missing her baby cradle. I figured I’d try and get the shop owner her cat first because I wanted to actually get a weapon. (The store sells a slingshot) So, the cat ran away from me when I walked over, so I tried to herd it over to the shop. I did this for a while and almost got the cat where I wanted it to go, but it eventually got stuck under the bridge, so I figured that wasn’t the best way to go about it. I tried talking to the shop owner, but I had no choice to try and tell her where the cat is. I talked to her husband, and he didn’t mention the cat. Of course there is no dialog tree at all since Link is apparently mute. Okay fine. I figured I’d do the baby cradle thing. That got me the fishing pole. I caught a fish, and the cat followed me. I tried to walk into the store with the cat following me, but when I entered the store, Link was unable to communicate to the melancholy shopkeep that the cat was just outside. Her husband was outside, but he apparently isn’t interested in recovering his wife’s cat. He just said the same thing he said to me 5 minutes ago when I wanted to talk to him.

There’s no camera control, and the camera has a lot of collision problems. I can understand that implementing a camera with proper collision can be difficult on something with limited CPU time like the Nintendo 64, but the Wii has a lot more horsepower. A good camera can be done without taking too much of the CPU on the GameCube, so it definitely should be feasible on the Wii. Although The Incredibles, which I worked on, may not be the most enjoyable game, it had a darn good camera on all three previous gen SKUs (including GameCube). Not having camera control is really frustrating. It was always nice to line up the camera behind your character before attempting a jump to ensure that the character will make the jump distance. Unfortunately, this is not possible. In the limited time I’ve played the game, I’ve already missed a jump because I couldn’t line the camera up with the gap.

On top of all this, the game starts off slllllllllloooooooooooooooowwwwww. I’m not saying it won’t get better, its just that usually you want to grab the audience with some exciting stuff, so that they’ll want to play more. There was an interesting article in Game Developer Magazine about this (The Power of Pacing in the August 06 issue), although I disagree with some of the examples the author gives. (I loved the beginning of Psychonauts, which he criticizes) Upon watching me try to lure a cat to the shopkeep, one of my friends said that he was no longer interested in the game anymore. I’m going to bear the boring beginning in the hopes that it picks up soon, but I don’t know how many menial tasks I can stand.

Another flaw is that it’s Zelda. Although that may not seem like a flaw, I’m trying to say that it’s the same Zelda that you’ve been playing every iteration barring Zelda 2 and Majora’s Mask. Interestingly, the two titles where they changed the formula are the most hated of all the Zelda games (besides the CD-i atrocities). The Zelda formula never changes, and frankly, I’m getting sick of it. The Wii-mote is just an input mechanism to control exactly the same things that all the Zeldas have. I want innovation! I want gameplay advancements. Besides changing the way you do the actions in Zelda, it’s the same game as Ocarina of Time with an added wolf mode, and although I haven’t gotten the opportunity to play as the wolf, I’ve read that it’s nothing all that special. If I wanted to play as a wolf, a friend has mentioned that Okami has better lupine combat. Is Zelda a bad game? I haven’t played enough to judge. I doubt that it’s bad. But I can say that it is not worthy of the the A+ reviews it’s getting because many of the problems I have will persist throughout the game (especially the camera problems). Why is it getting such good reviews? Because it’s Zelda. Gamespot posted a review giving it an 8.8 and fans freaked out so much that one editor wrote the following:

“It’s the same damn game we’ve all been playing for the last 15-odd years. Hey, guess what? You get to go into dungeons…and find items…and put together pieces of heart to make new heart containers. I haven’t gotten very far into it, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Triforce is in the mix at some point. There’s a difference between tradition and ossification, and Nintendo’s been content to let this series stay the same for too damn long. What’s more, in a lot of ways it’s actually getting to be pretty annoying.”

Interestingly, the post has been pulled down, but kotaku posted a quote while it was up.

Gamasutra’s column Blogged Out, referenced a blog post by Stuart Roch from Treyarch that suggests that Gears of War’s 95% percent was undeserving. Now, I absolutely love Gears of War, but I have only played the first half an hour, so it’s quite possible I haven’t played enough for the issues he mentions to get on my nerves. (However, I managed to have some issues with Zelda that got on my nerves during that same duration). Now, assuming Gears of War was not deserving of its 95% review scores (which Stuart admitted he hadn’t played enough of the game to rule that), and I feel pretty safe in saying that Zelda doesn’t deserve a 96.5% on gamerankings.com, which it currently has. Why would it be that reviewers would rate them so highly?

Part of it is that the scale seems very skewed. A 70% is considered bad. If I don’t know anything else about the game other than the review, I don’t want to play a game that receives a 70%. If the scale ranges from 0-100%, you’d think that 50% would be average. I suppose the way it works is like the way we are graded (at least in the US), but with 50% being the norm, there would be more room for reviewers to point out inadequacies with an otherwise great game. Also, I think reviewers want to give ratings that the fans will agree with. Although this may go against journalistic integrity, fans don’t like reading reviews that they don’t agree with. 1up.com had some backlash with its review of Neverwinter Nights 2, and of course, as Stuart mentions, Eurogamer had backlash about its review of Gears of War, and Gamespot about its 8.8 favorable review of Zelda. I imagine some fans might want to turn to other news sources to find one more in line with their own preferences in gaming, so it may not be in site’s best interests to alienate the readers. 1up although they took down their review of Neverwinter Nights 2, they still gave it a relatively bad score in its re-review. So, what can we do? Who can we trust on reviews? I think all too often people forget that there is no way to objectively review a game, since whether a game is good or not is a matter of opinion. I really enjoyed Sudeki, but it only has a 73% on gamerankings.com. Does that mean it’s a bad game? Does that mean it’s an only okay game? Well, no. That just means reviewers didn’t like it as much as I did. Sudeki certainly didn’t have a lot of hype or fans following it, but it was similar to Zelda. Had Sudeki been released as a Zelda game, would it have gotten higher reviews? I’d say so because people would want it to live up to their expectations. Sure, Sudeki may have changed too much of the Zelda formula, (which I think is a good thing) so Zelda fans might have complained (like they did about Majora’s Mask and Zelda 2), but I guess Zelda fans don’t mind playing the same thing over and over again.

So, Sudeki would have gotten higher reviews if it were a Zelda game because of all the Zelda fans that would want it to be good. I know I wanted Sonic Heroes to be good since I really love Sonic, so I thought it was a pretty good game while playing it, but in hindsight, it wasn’t very good at all. What about Gears of War? It is a new IP. That’s very true, but it had a lot of expectations before it came out. Everyone I work with can tell you that I have been raving about Gears of War since I saw CliffyB’s demo at E3. Certainly there were a lot of expectations because of all the hype, and I’m sure people who were excited about it wanted it to be good. Now, I’m not trying to say that Gears of War wasn’t deserving of its high marks. When I play more, I can be a better judge of that. But, I think people who are excited about any title want it to turn out good and that includes the reviewers. It can skew the results. If you listen to the 1up yours podcast for 11/17, one journalist goes on at great length about how Twilight Princess is the best game ever, but another seems to have the same viewpoint as I. Could it be that the huge Zelda fan had a lot of expectations, and he wanted the game to live up to it? It’s hard to say, but I would say yes. I may be guilty of the same thing for Gears of War.

The Case Against Data Driven Design4
Matt posted in The Industry on September 14th, 2006

Data driven design is a hot topic among the industry. But what does it mean? I couldn’t find a good definition of it on the web, so I’ll give you my definition. Data driven design is where most or all the elements of design are out of the code and exposed to the designers. The main difference in my mind is the division of labor. Data driven design has programmers doing less and leaving it up to designers/artists to implement. Having programmed gameplay for games both with and without data driven systems, I would say that data driven design is actually a worse way to create games even though many people feel that it’s the “right” way. In looking for a good definition, I stumbled on other blog posts about data driven design. On Kyle Wilson’s Blog, he says that the game engine shouldn’t contain a single line of game code and should be completely data driven. On Dan Cook’s blog, I found an interesting post about data driven development. I’m not sure he has the same definition of data driven design as I do, but he asserts that it’s a good way to keep down costs, but you can’t have any real gameplay innovations because that would be too risky. I would argue that using data driven design, you could innovate gameplay by giving the designers more control over the behaviors of in game characters possibly by using a scripting language. But, let me explain why I think data driven design is a bad idea.

Problems with Data Driven Design
Data driven design is about exposing as many aspects of development to the designers (and to some extent, the artists) to lessen the burden on programmers and to reduce the back and forth collaboration between programmers and the rest of the team. Control can be exposed in many ways. It can be exposed through scripting languages. Common choices for scripting languages are Lua, Ruby, Python or a custom language. There are several problems with scripting languages. They can be slow since they are ordinarily interpreted. Custom hooks need to go into the engine to expose the functionality that should be scriptable. If the scripting language is compiled, a compiler has to be implemented, which isn’t that difficult for most software developers, and I’m sure there are many open source projects available for common scripting languages, but some form of a debugger needs to be implemented, which is going to be a lot more difficult to find if you are doing console development because it’s on a unique architecture and needs to be debugged remotely. If you don’t have a debugger, debugging assembly generated by a compiler is going to be very difficult, and there’s always a lot of gameplay bugs, so this slows down development considerably. So, I imagine most game developers that use scripting languages choose to interpret them. Interpreting solves some of these problems, but debugging an interpreted scripting language is also tricky if you don’t have a debugger for it. You can step through the interpretation engine, but it’s tricky to see what is going on since you are seeing the execution of the interpreter rather than the actual code. Some interpreters that are optimized are very difficult to debug. The worst problem is when there’s a bug in your compiler or interpreter.

On top of this, designers are coding. Designers usually don’t have a background in computer science, and although scripting languages are pretty easy, they aren’t trivial to learn, nor will a good designer necessarily be good at them. Imagine a situation where you hire someone and find out he is great at level designing, but can’t write scripts to save his life. Do you lay him off? Do you force one of your other level designers to do scripting? Maybe they aren’t very good at it either. Now you have someone who is very good at “design” at your studio, but is terrible at scripting, so it may be hard to find a position for them. Oftentimes, people who don’t have a lot of experience programming can make a lot of mistakes. Sure they’ll get better with more experience, but they might not be cut out for coding. On top of this, they usually aren’t equipped with either the tools or the know how to fix their own bugs, so the regular programmers are forced to do it, and the bugs can be a real pain for programmers to find as I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Many studios don’t give the designers scripting languages. They create an editor that is either using plug ins for a 3D modeling package or create their own stand alone application. The designers use this to create links between widgets that determine the behavior of the objects in game. They may have some widgets to do logical operations, counters, conditionals, etc in order to design complex behavior. The widgets themselves may have a varying amount of parameters that the designers can control. I think this is still a bad idea. For one thing, using a lot of widgets to essentially form a scripting language doesn’t work out too well either. Let’s say when the player slays the Fearless Three and a Half Headed Sea Dragon of Krandell you want to award him the Dongle of Incontinency Prevention if he/she hasn’t already bought it at the store. Otherwise, you want to award the Armulet of Ambivalence. Although it sounds easy, this can end up being very complicated. When the dragon sends itself the destroyed event, designers may send the player an event querying whether or not the player has the dongle. They could pass another widget as a parameter, so the player would send the false event to that widget. That widget can have a link to send the dongle a give to player event when it gets the false event. That same widget can have a link to send the armulet the give to player event when it gets the true event. Now, what happens if the player uses a temp save option and turns off the console? We’d want to store that the player has the dongle. Now what happens if the player turns the game on dies before hitting the checkpoint? The player will have to fight the dragon again, so they shouldn’t have the dongle. How would a designer express this with links and game widgets? A problem such as inventory would most likely be solved in code with an inventory system, but regardless of how many systems are in place, there are always situations where it is tricky for a designer to handle all the special cases that arise. Because of this, bugs can occur, and it is difficult for either a designer or a programmer to solve it. Designers don’t normally have the tools so they can see the logic that they have created in the game, and it’s difficult for programmers to follow a complicated web of links in order to track down where it’s actually going wrong.

Even though many game studios create widgets that designers can control, on short development titles, the widgets usually require quite a bit of tuning and tweaking. As a game widget evolves and improves over the development cycle, it will have new or modified parameters. If designers are setting this up, the parameters must be exposed to them, so some sort of documentation needs to pass the information along. Maintaining a wiki or some other documentation about how things work can be tricky if you don’t have a full time technical writer on staff. Programmers aren’t really known for their writing skills, so your descriptions in the wiki may not be clear. The worst thing that can happen is not when a designer doesn’t understand it, but rather when a designer thinks he/she understands it and builds off those false assumptions. This can turn out poorly because programmers will be spending their time documenting (and not be very happy about it), and designers may not even get the information that they are trying to communicate.

But Sony Santa Monica Did It!
Now some readers may have read gamasutra’s excellent coverage on Tim Moss’s talk about the development of God of War. It describes the very data driven approach that the engineers took on God of War. You may be thinking that God of War was a very successful game, and they used data driven design, so why shouldn’t we? What people may forget when they look at God of War was that it took 3 years to develop. Even though it had very few programmers, it had a very large development team for a PS2 game. I’ve heard rumors that there was a lot of turnover on the project because it was very difficult to work on. Maybe data driven design ends up being more efficient when you are developing a game for that amount of time, but few titles are afforded the luxury of a three or more year development cycle. In my experience, companies want to get a game out every year assuming they already have technology for the platform (which Sony of Santa Monica did since they released Kinetica, but they may have started from scratch). Obviously, the transition to new consoles (and new technology) is always difficult and time consuming, but God of War didn’t have to overcome that hurtle.

If Not Data Driven Design, then What?
If you have 3 years to make a game, then maybe data driven design is a good way to develop your title. If you don’t, the people who are going to be the best at coding your gameplay logic will be a programmer. Minigames, AI, player control, and any other things that change from game to game are best left in the capable hands of programmers. The people who are best at designing effects for real time rendering are also programmers. Unless you have a very technically savvy artist, a creative programmer will be able to create an effect that looks as good and gets better run-time performance, which is crucial to have a good looking game. Now, I’m not saying that artists can’t design particle effects, but usually the actual implementation should be left up to a programmer unless you have a technical artist. You also need to hire talented gameplay programmers that have a real feel for design. Ideally, the gameplay programmers are given a rough sketch of the design then free reign to create something great from it, and feedback after they are finished. Because the programmers themselves are able to tune and tweak either the effects or gameplay, it is much faster than the constant back and forth between the departments. Rarely will programmers be twiddling their thumbs waiting for someone to get out of a meeting before they know if something is the right direction or not. Gameplay programmers are empowered to pick the direction that they feel is right, and go down it. If it doesn’t work out, then the designer and programmer can work out a new direction to try. Gameplay is very difficult to specify. No designer is good enough to write a spec that is both detailed enough to include everything and is guaranteed to be fun. There are always a ton of unknowns in design – many decisions can only be made when the game is playable. In fact, that’s why it’s often bad to overspecify design at the beginning. At iterative approach is usually much more successful. Oftentimes, designers try to write a document with all the details upfront only to find out that there are some core aspects that need changing. It’s much better to start with a general idea, see what’s fun and then refine the design from there. If a company has talented gameplay programmers, they can help flesh out and improve the design with very little feedback from designers. This saves time for both the designers and gameplay programmers, which helps speed up the development cycle.

As team sizes increase, the more communication dependencies become a problem with development times. Fred Brooks’ seminal work on software development, The Mythical Man-Month, discusses the negative ramifications communication can have on a project’s development time. If the person in charge of implementing it (in this game the gameplay programmer) is the driving force behind making that feature fun, then iteration time is greatly reduced because there is little communication overhead. This is somewhat similar to the surgical team that Harlan Mills proposed for software development, except with even less overhead. The gameplay programmer is the surgeon – the driving force for implementing the feature. The designers are more like the hospital directors – they give feedback and direct the surgeon AFTER the surgeon completes the surgery. This means the gameplay programmer has free reign to make the feature fun, and only shows it to the design department for feedback after he/she is satisfied with the results. Too often when gameplay programmers take liberties with the design, designers can feel threatened. Game development should be collaborative and with talented gameplay programmers, they will know how to tune and tweak a game.

Although I talked at great length about the problems with data driven design, there are also problems with this development methodology. However, I think these problems are far outweighed by the benefit of having things programmer driven rather than data driven. Good gameplay programmers are hard to find especially now with team sizes increasing because of next gen. I agree, but I would argue that good designers are hard to find also. A studio that has less designers and more good gameplay programmers will have a higher productivity for the reasons I specified above. Another problem might be that programmers typically cost more than a designer with similar experience. That’s also true, but if it speeds up development, then it’s probably worth it. Slower development is expensive especially if you miss your release date like EA did with the Superman Returns game. Instead of coming out along side the movie, the game will be released at the same time as the DVD. I can’t guess exactly how much that cost EA, but I have a feeling they would have made a lot more money if the game were out alongside the movie - not to mention that the game would have been cheaper to make because it would have been in development for less time.

To sum it all up, designers should do just that: design. Let them design, and let the programmers implement. It takes programmers with a good gameplay sense, and yes, they may be hard to find, but the results are that you can develop a game faster and probably less expensively too. If you have a very long development cycle creating a lot of tools and making it data driven may pay off, but most games are on a one to two year development cycle, so I think in most cases, data driven design is a bad approach to game development.

You Want to Get into Games, but as What?2
Matt posted in The Industry, Getting into Games on August 24th, 2006

Many people want to get into games, but they have no idea what the different jobs that are available in the game industry. So, if you are uncertain, here’s an explanation of the roles and what they do. Keep in mind that every studio makes a games a bit differently, but I’ll try to explain all the common things that an employee might do in that role.

Art – This one is pretty straightforward. These are the people that create the in game assets, both 3D models and 2D textures. Currently, there are two main specializations: environment artists and character artists. Environment artists do all the level art. This includes set dressing, collision, and all the non-animated art assets that go into the level. Character artists do the characters in the game, which are usually animated. Sometimes the character artist has to rig the model, whereas sometimes the animators do that. Many believe it’s better for the character artist to rig the character because that way they know that they put enough polys in joint areas and to make the skinning look smooth. There is increasing specialization in art. Some places have people who only do 2D textures. Some people specialize in rigging or lighting. But, it’s a good idea to know how to do some of everything before you specialize since you probably won’t be able to do one task for your entire career. Artists need an impressive portfolio in order to get into games. An art degree is optional.

Animation – These are the people that take the characters (they could big rigged or not) and make animations, so the programmers can have the characters do things. They also do animation for in engine cutscenes and any videos that play. They work in Maya or whatever 3D animation package the particular studio is using. (Maya is the most common) Animators study motion and try to recreate it for  game characters be it a bush or a human. Most games use skeletal based animation in the game itself, so it’s important to be familiar with that. As people specialize, they’ll probably be people who only do FMVs using really high poly and high bone count models, and people who only do in game characters that are a bit more conservative as far as bone counts and polygons are concerned. Animators get a job based on their demo reel, so going to college isn’t necessary if you are very talented at animating.

Design – This is one of the most varied roles in the game industry. Sometimes they are just the planners who come up with the idea for the game and the levels. Other times they actually do the implementation. At some studios, there are just a few designers who mostly work in a word processor writing documents to describe their game ideas to the rest of the team. Sometimes they actually draw out level blueprints that they hand off to the environment artists. At other studios, it’s an iterative approach where they work closely with the artists to create something that is both aesthetically pleasing and fun to play through. Some studios have more designers, and they do the actual level creation. The level creation is done with whatever tools the engineers have set up. Some studios use plugins for the modeling package that the studio has chosen to allow game editing. Other studios have a stand alone editor. The level of technical skills required for a game designer also varies from company to company. Some designers actually use a scripting language to program the behavior of the game objects. Other designers only use the simple game editors that engineers create for them. Designers usually don’t have a college education and come from quality assurance.

Engineering – Engineers are the programmers who take the game ideas combine it with the art and make it work. Most companies split their programmers up into at least two categories: the engine team and the game team. The engine team actively maintains the studios technology that changes from project to project. The game team is working on features that are specific to the title currently in development. The engine team is usually responsible for the core technology behind the game including tools, rendering, collision, physics, networking and so on. Even if a company purchases middleware to handle some or all of those tasks, they usually still have a team that makes a layer on top of the core game engine to tailor it to suit the particular game’s needs. In reading about Tim Moss’s talk about development on God of War, it sounds like they took this idea to the extreme and only engine programmers (7 of them) create tools so that the rest of the team could do work that might fall on game programmers ordinarily. If the team isn’t structured like Sony Santa Monica, then they have programmers creating custom widgets that designers use or actually setting up the level logic. So for example, a programmer could make a generic door widget that opens under certain circumstances and enemies that can be placed by designers inside the game editing tools. At other companies, game programmers create the widgets they want to use and then set them up inside the game editing tools. In this case the designers give descriptions and advice, but all the implementation is left up to the programmers. Each method has its own merits. Programmers have technical experience and usually have a degree in computer science or engineering.

Production – The term producer means a lot of different things to different people. At some studios, the producer is equivalent to the game’s director. The producer is the visionary behind the title and has the final say on everything. At other studios, they are just in charge of the schedule and coordinating between the different teams. They are the point of contact for the publisher, they organize the QA teams and work with the localization company. Assistant and associate producers help out the producer with these tasks. Usually, producers have little or no college education and come from quality assurance.

Quality Assurance – These are the people who test the games. No, it’s not playing games for a living. It’s a thankless job that involves the mundane like doing the same action over and over to try to reproduce a bug. The best testers need to have a basic understanding of how games work, so they know how to break them. This is an entry level position, so no experience is required. You do have to have a lot of patience and a high tolerance for boredom because you’ll be playing the same game for hundreds – maybe even thousands – of hours, and I’m sure even your favorite game will seem dull after that much playtime.

Hopefully, that gives you an idea how the games industry is structured and what position you want to apply for. If you have any questions, post a response, and I’ll be happy to answer them.

How the Grinch ESA Stole Canceled Christmas E35
Matt posted in The Industry on August 2nd, 2006

The news leaked out this weekend. I anxiously awaited the ESA’s press release silently chanting “say it ain’t so, say it ain’t so”. I figured people were being alarmist! E3 cancelled? No way! How could they be so foolish? How could they ruin the biggest event in gaming? Then the official press release came out, and I felt like crying. More information soon followed that the next E3’s attendance will be cut to 5,000, a small fraction of its typical 70,000 attendance. I have a very strong feeling that the game development community is not going to be included in that 5,000. With a number that small, they can only accommodate the large press and the buyers for companies.

E3 is the most exciting time in the game development community! As soon as E3 was over this year, I anxiously started counting down the days until the next E3. Not only do I go to E3 all three days, but I read all the E3 coverage on all the websites for over a month afterwards. So, where will I go to play all the games in development? Where will I be able to show off the game I’m working on to all my friends? Where else will they show off vaporware consoles? Luckily, the ESA has an answer for that. I can just go to either the Games Convention in Leipzig, the Tokyo Game Show… and others around the world.” That’s great! So,  instead of going to a game convention in Los Angeles (where I live), I should go to some other country for their games convention. Thanks ESA for the valuable advice!

Sarcasm aside, the main problem appears to be money. Apparently, EA is leading the charge of publishers who don’t think they are getting all their bang for their buck. Yeah, maybe they are right. Maybe it wasn’t necessary for Vivendi Universal to recreate the famous stairway set from Scarface inside the LA Convention center. Maybe Activision didn’t need to build a large half pipe in their booth. Maybe everyone doesn’t need to invest in 10,000 Watt sound systems that prohibit conversations or even hearing the audio for the games you are playing. (Although, I don’t know what EA is complaining about because in the E3s I attended, their booths always seemed to be the most bare bones out of any of the major publishers.) So yes, I think cutting costs is a very reasonable idea. Maybe some people enjoyed watching people skate inside E3, but I went to play games. Sure, the photo ops on the Scarface stairway may be fun (I didn’t bother with it), but I’d agree that it’s not going to sell many more copies of the game. Unfortunately, they seem to be going WAY overboard with the cost cutting measures, and this is a REALLY bad idea.

E3 generates a lot of hype, which is very helpful. For example, I wasn’t really all that excited about Gears of War until I saw CliffyB demo it. Because of my excitement, I’ve written about it in my blog, told friends about it, discussed it on forums and mailing lists, and probably generated some hype for it. That’s just me. Multiply that by the thousands of people who saw CliffyB’s demo. There’s no other good way to do something like that. I don’t think you can make a video of someone demoing a game and create the same experience. There’s something to be said for actually being there, and also it’s interesting to see how the game is being played first hand, since a lot of smoke and mirrors can go on in demos.

It also generates a lot of hype because it’s such a big event, consumers get more excited about checking out game press. I’m sure there are many people who don’t really follow game press except around E3 time. Because of this, publishers gain a lot of interest in some of their titles. For example, if someone never read the game press, but started reading it around E3, they can find out about new titles that they wouldn’t ordinarily hear about. For example, I was at E3 all three days, and I didn’t even notice the Rule of the Rose trailer. There was some post E3 coverage of that game that I read, and now I’m really excited about it! So, if there isn’t a ton of information being released, or it’s all videos and very few people get to play it, then people aren’t going to be as interested in reading the press.

People claim that it allows game developers to focus more on developing the game. Well, I know regardless of whether 70,000 people get to see my game, or just 5,000, I’ll still have to work my butt off to make a great demo. Just because less people see it, doesn’t mean that we don’t have to do a demo. But, if I’m working triple digit hours a week, I’d prefer more people to see the game than just a few. Also, it’s nice to get feedback from other developers. I have friends who work at other companies who’s opinions I really respect. Outside of E3, there’s no way to get feedback from them about the game I’m working on. With non-disclosure agreements being what they are, it’s pretty much impossible to get an outside opinion on your game except through E3. I think this type of feedback helps improve the quality of games and is valuable to the industry. Does it help the bottom line? Better games certainly can, but it’s very difficult to establish a direct correlation, so the people in finance might not see it that way.

The other advantage of E3 is that it allows innovation to spread faster. If game developers can play other games, it can inspire them to improve their own title with ideas from others. I’m not trying to say that they should copy the games they play at E3. There are very few completely new and revolutionary ideas in the game industry. Even the Wii controller is an evolution of previously executed ideas. Microsoft as well as others had a motion sensitive controller long before the Wii was announced, and there’s been IR based light guns that allow aiming. I’m not trying to say that Nintendo completely ripped them off. Rather I’m saying that every idea needs inspiration and that inspiration usually comes from products in the same field. Also, by seeing what other people are doing and improving on it, or adding your own twist you can make a product that’s unlike or better than your inspiration. For example, the folks responsible for Shadow of the Colossus may have been inspired by the giant final boss fight in Serious Sam: The First Encounter. I don’t think anyone would accuse Shadow of the Colossus of being a rip off of any game (especially Serious Sam), but I imagine the idea came from another game either directly or indirectly. Now, Shadow of the Colossus may be a bad example because it was in development for a very long time, but it’s very possible for game developers to get the inspiration by playing another game and incorporate it into a title already in development. If game developers don’t have that opportunity to play the game that inspired them a while before it’s released, then their innovation will be delayed until the game is released.

It is very interesting that they mention the Games Convention and the Tokyo Game Show. You’d think that these are evidence that big game extravaganzas are popular and that having one in the United States would be worth their while. With E3 being nerfed, maybe there’s room for another convention to rise in its place. Comic Con has more and more video game companies demoing stuff, although it usually isn’t the latest and greatest games like E3. Nintendo only showed DS stuff, and Sony didn’t show any Playstation 3 games. Maybe the organizers of Comic Con will take the initiative and make a special game convention spin-off. The problem with that is if it’s open to people outside the industry, it’s going to be even more crowded than E3 or Comic Con, and both were really crowded. That would be even more difficult and expensive to try to accommodate all those people, but the Tokyo Game Show’s  attendance is 160,000 or more, so I guess it can be done. Also, TGS isn’t open to the public every day, so maybe that’s the format that this new game show could take.

All in all, I think the decision to effectively cancel E3 and replace it with something that is a faint shadow of its former glory is a bad one. I could be biased because I love E3, but I really think that it was good for the industry. Sure, it was overly extravagant, and they could easily cut costs without ruining the show, but reducing the size to 5,000 is a big mistake. Allowing developers to see what everyone else is working on increases the exchange of ideas, which is only a good thing. The hype surrounding it can renew people’s interest in the new games coming out and make them aware of new ones. If it’s only a few press outlets, then there won’t be as much information out there, which means less hype. I only hope that the ESA realizes the folly of their new strategy soon, or someone else takes the initiative and creates something even better than the old E3.

Are “Girl Gamers” hurting female gamers?9
Matt posted in The Industry on July 14th, 2006

[Update 11/15/06 - After some dialog with Vixen herself, which you can see in the comment section, I have changed my opinion. I don’t think Versus is trying to play the “girl gamer” card. I’m leaving my original post since I still feel that I had some good points although Vixen and Versus were probably a bad choice to single (double?) out.]
There’s been a few noteworthy articles this past week about the subject of women gamers. GameSetWatch describes a Frag Doll who is sick of “selling out”, so she joined with another girl gamer to start a… Well, I don’t know what it is. Website I guess? Are they competing together in tournaments? Are they going to start marketing a new line of crazy red wristband/glove thingies?

Well, whatever it is they are trying to start, they definitely put a lot of time into coming up with names, symbols, and costumes. As GameSetWatch pointed out, they awkwardly explained why they hired a photographer from Glamor Shots to take pictures of them in tight clothing and goofy wristband/glove thingies. Als