Entries Tagged 'Opinion' ↓

Goichi Suda (nickname Suda 51) the CEO of  Grashopper Manufacture, has done an interesting interview for Gamesindustry.biz. In it he says: “Well, there are a lot of core gamers, and a lot of lighter users playing on platforms such as the DS – but there’s nothing in-between. I think it’s going to be very important for games to be created for that middle audience, and that will help bring the market back on-track.” And he is right.

As an industry we either show too much respect for our heritage bringing out core games for core gamers. Or we flip to the opposite extreme bringing out often condescending casual fodder for any random person that happens along. We need to take a lesson from other IP entertainment such as films and books. They make much of their money by being firmly in the middle ground. By bringing quality narrative, content and production values to large audiences. By doing this they can often be challenging yet still be commercially successful with large audiences. Schindler’s List and Ghandi are two of just many examples of this.

Of course there are games which encapsulate core standards yet which have spilled over into mass markets to become cultural icons. Halo, Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty are prime examples of this. Which prove not only that we can do it but also that when we do it makes us lots of money.

Here is one to show all those politicians and journalists who don’t understand.

A lot more information here.

Germany has a federal government structure, with 16 states. And the interior ministers of all 16 have asked the central government for a total ban on the production and distribution of violent video games. This comes as an ignorant knee jerk reaction after the school shooting at Winnenden. They are wrong on so many levels:

• Tim Kretschmer, who committed the shootings, was a very keen table tennis player who wanted to turn professional. If you take a simple view of cause and effect, which the Germans obviously do, then there should be an immediate ban on table tennis.
• Video gaming is just another medium, like film, books , the opera or the theatre. Why ban violence in just one of these? It makes no sense whatsoever.
• The book Grand Theft Childhood, financed by a $1.5 million US government grant to pay for original and proper scientific research, comes to the exact opposite conclusions to what the stupid German legislators think: “Boys who don’t regularly play video games were more likely than even the boys who played M-rated (adult) games to get into fights, steal from a store, or have problems at school.” Every politician or journalist who wants to pass comment on video gaming should read this book first so as not to look like a complete idiot.
• The US Secret Service, after investigating many incidents, have reported that there is no correlation between video games and the sick nutters who commit these atrocities. This just shows how wrong those German politicians are.
• Video gaming is still at its very beginning. The technology it uses of interaction, connectivity and non linearity make all previous media instantly obsolete. Because of this it will become all pervading, not just in recreation but also in education, business, government and the military. It will become one of the biggest businesses on earth. And the Germans are cutting themselves off from it. The future economic harm they are doing themselves is immense.
• These school shootings are committed by people who are mentally ill, not by people who play video games. Also the shootings are done with guns. If the mentally ill people couldn’t get their hands on guns then there would be no school shootings. The politicians should be looking at mental illness and gun control before (metaphorically speaking) burning books.
• The German legislation on video games is already suppressive. So Germans buy their games by mail order from other countries. This happens on a massive scale and cannot be stopped, because of European Union free trade rules. Also game distribution is moving away from physical media to online, using the internet. So the German legislators will never prevent the purchase, distribution and playing of violent games within Germany. Their laws will have no effect.
• There is an excellent Pan-European age rating system for games called PEGI. If the German legislators are worried then perhaps they should ensure that this is properly implemented. And maybe introduce an age rating system for books, the opera and ballet.

The German legislators are acting out of ignorance and fear. They do not understand video games. The good news is that the younger generations do understand video games. And when these people become journalists and politicians we will see some sense brought to the subject.

Ed Vaizey is the Conservative Shadow Arts Minister, with responsibility for video games. He sends me his newsletter about what is going on with regards to gaming and UK politics. This week he has sent me this:

“A home affairs select committee report into Knife Crime, published this week, expressed concern that exposure to violent films and video games on ‘young people’s propensity to commit violence’ more HERE. We remain stout defenders of the video games industry.  While there are obviously inappropriate games that can be accessed, we would remind readers that only 3 per cent of video games are 18 rated.”

We need to remember that the chairman of the home affairs select committe is non other than our old friend Keith Vaz who has a long record of making unfounded attacks against the games industry. So everything in this report should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.

The fact is that there is no credible research linking video games to knife crime in society. Quite the opposite, violent youth crime has gone down in every country in which video games have become widespread. Professional researchers think that this is because video games act as a catharsis, the kids take it out on the game instead of on each other.

Also the kind of kid that is spending lots of time on the street getting involved in gang culture is not the kind of kid that is heavily into video games. There isn’t the time for both.

The reasons for violent youth crime lie far deeper in society than video games. The breakdown of the nuclear family, chidbirth as a way of earning money in dependency culture, desertion of old fashioned policing methods, lax criminal justice system, the destabilising effects of excessive immigration etc etc. Most of which have been brought upon us or have been made worse by this execrable labour government. I blame them, not video games.

Hopefully, with the current implosion of the government, they will soon be gone. Ed Vaizey has a far more sensible attitude towards us and will then be in power.

Several times here I have gone on about the importance of polishing games. It is the one simple process that can make a good game great and an average game good. It seems a no brainer that investing time in polish will be immensely cost effective in generating disproportionately more sales revenue. And we have the example of Wii first party games to see just how important and successful polish is a development process. Here are my rules for Wii game development that have been on here several times before:

1) Don’t do shovelware. You are just damaging your brand(s).
2) Write Wii specific titles. Don’t port. You have to respect the interface difference.
3) Understand that most Wiis live in the lounge. And most other consoles live in the bedroom.
4) Polish, lots. Then polish some more.
5) Realise that you have to provide entertainment for the population at large. FPS titles are not a good idea.
6) You need to market completely differently. PR in women’s magazines will work a lot better than adverts in game magazines.
7) Talk to your wife/girlfriend. They understand the Wii better than you do.

Yet still far too many games go out with rough edges, which is ridiculous. Why degrade a multi million dollar product for the sake of a relatively small amount of extra work? It really makes no sense.

Now Electric Arts have come out in agreement and are changing their working practices to bring more polish to their games. EA Games label boss Frank Gibeau has said the following in a Gamasutra interview:

“We’re trying to much more aggressively put in at least two to three months of polish time back into the schedule. So a game is actually functionally complete, content complete, then we go in and we put it through mass amounts of tests, massive amounts of replay-throughs, so that we can really get those five, 10, 15 points on Metacritic.”

“ Dead Space was one of those titles that had a lot of polish built into it, and a lot of the games that we’re doing right now like Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age and Need for Speed Shift also have built-in polish.”

This is new “Three or four years ago, products were coming in hot, hitting the market hot. … You know, last year’s Need for Speed finished tests, and that was it. There was no time in the schedule [for polish] because of the way the studios had been set up. We had to break the cycle and give very careful consideration to polish times. We have to have that polish time at the end of the project, or none of it matters.”

For inspiration on polishing entertainment products we only have to look at the film industry. They have over a hundred year experience (since The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906). And for them post production typically takes longer than actually shooting the film, although it obviously costs a huge amount less.

The problem we have is that game industry management have a very strong imperative to meet street date deadlines and to get the game out there making money. What they are missing is the bigger picture. For a three month delay and a relatively small additional investment they can have a game that will sell a whole lot more and make a huge amount of extra profit.

And of course we live in the age of Metacritic as Gibeau pointed out. For each dollar spent polish will improve your Metacritic more than just about anything else that you can do.

Finally we owe it to the customers. We should be doing our very best to give them quality for their hard earned money. And publishing a game all rough and unpolished is really being disrespectful of your customer, which is no way to run a business.

Sony are running third and last in this generation of home consoles, having made more mistakes than a Bush presidency. However here at E3 2009 they started showing signs of getting their act together. But is it too little too late?

There are 364 games coming to Playstation platforms over the next year, presumably they are missing out new years day. And there is a lot for the PS3 in there: Metal Gear Solid Peacewalker, Gran Turismo 5, Rock Band: Beatles, God of War, Agent, Final Fantasy XIV Online and Modern Warfare 2. Just for starters. Impressive stuff.

The Playstation 3 answer to the Wiimote and Natal was announced but is nearly a year away. It is an extension of Playstation Eye and consists of a stick with buttons on it and a glowing orb on the end. Quite frankly this already looks like old technology compared with Natal’s whole body interface, voice input and face recognition (presuming it all works as advertised).

But the PS3s biggest problem is that it is always trying to play catch up with the Xbox 360 and failing. Most critically because Sony persist in selling the PS3 at an expensive price point that is difficult to justify from the consumer perspective. And after what Microsoft presented at E3 this year one can only see the PS3 dropping behind further.

On the mobile gaming front I have already covered the PSP Go.

In the light of the tour de force that Microsoft presented at this year’s E3, it is very difficult for the other platform holders to compete. And Nintendo didn’t.

Nintendo are in a poor position. Their home console for this generation, the Wii, is the least capable, being just an upgrade of the previous generation GameCube. It has been incredibly successful because of it’s innovative gesture controller and a small number of high quality platform exclusive games. But it lacks the equivalent of an Xbox Live or even a Playstation Network. And its main party trick, the gesture controller, has now been trumped by the Microsoft Natal. The Wii also does not support HDTV and does not come with a hard drive.

Sales wise the Wii has peaked in most markets and in Japan it is very weak. It now looks very expensive compared to the Xbox 360, a competitor which has a lot more to offer.

So Nintendo announced Wii Fit Plus, a new 2D version of Super Mario Bros, presumably aimed at children, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Wii Vitality Sensor, a device to read your pulse. Hardly setting the world alight and showing all the signs of a platform nearing the end of its life.

One has to wonder firstly how long the Wii can sustain its premium price and secondly how close we are to seeing its successor, the SuperWii.

On the handheld front the DSi is getting good initial sales, presumably from existing DS owners upgrading. However it is now looking positively archaic compared to the more modern phone based devices like iPhone and Android. Nintendo need to act quickly not to be left behind in this market.