Y U KILLIN MY MEN MAN

Once you start gaming online, you assume the risk of being killed by an ally. The gameplay in many genres renders this unpleasantry irrelevant, but you can’t press a key to respawn in a real-time strategy game. There’s not much that can be done to stop this. Remove the ability to attack allies and the Great Wall of Supply Depots will encircle your base. Rules for in-game bans will be exploited. And damned if you believe a company wants to outsource revenue into a dedicated anti-griefing team. Understand I write this from the perspective of a disenchanted Warcraft III player, but anyone who plays the genre on a team level knows they have it tough. I don’t condone teamkilling, but I can supply you three reasons to do it:

- You go beyond the typical reasons for backstabbing (“I hate my life”, “you’re a fucking moron”, etc.) and give your best performance of Shakespeare’s MacBeth.
- You are Warcraft III player Charbroiled. Trust me, he fucking deserves it.

Or, more interestingly...

- Killing your teammate gives you a better chance of winning the game.

My question is: is it ethical to kill a teammate if doing so gives you a better chance of winning? Based on real world feedback, “play to win” is the unanimous sentiment. Take it from a realist’s standpoint: a bad basketball player isn’t getting the ball thrown his way, and he’s not getting his name called when the next pickup game starts. But what company condones this? Casual players are the group most likely to face teamkilling, and they pay these companies’ bills. I wish I could delve further into this subject, but I’m actually quite curious to get some feedback on the issue.

Flash [Gaming] Before Your Eyes

Sandy Duncan, the former head-of-business for Microsoft Europe, has a bold statement: consoles have five to ten years before they’re an ancient business model. He pins most of the blame on evolving technology, but its implications are interesting:

“[Look] at how quickly Popcap or Oberon are growing, or look at what has happened to World of Warcraft in the last 3 to 4 years as so many more homes have easy access to decent broadband services. Maybe you’ll see YoYo Games competing with EA in 5 years… [and] why not ?”

Casual gaming’s behemoths given a chance to usurp console gaming’s Nazi Germany? May seem absurd, but Wikipedia’s article on the Game Crash of 1983 presents a similar, actually-did-happen secnario:

[Since console-makers were unable to restrict third-party production of games for their systems], [t]he release of so many new games in 1982 completely flooded the market and most stores did not have, or decided not to allocate, sufficient space to carry all the new games and consoles. Inside Mattel, one Intellivision sales executive explained the problem: “Two years of products have been pushed into the channel in one year, and there’s no way to re-balance the system.” As stores tried to return the surplus games to the new publishers, the publishers had neither new products nor cash to refund the retailers’ money. Many publishers, including Games by Apollo and US Games (the ill-fated Quaker Oats games unit), quickly folded.

Unable to return the unsold games to defunct publishers after Christmas 1982, toy stores marked down the titles and placed them in discount bins and sale tables. Whereas the typical game of 1982 cost US$34.95 — about US$75 in 2007 when adjusted for inflation — the discount bins quickly settled on the price of US$4.95 per game. By June 1983 the market for the more expensive games had shrunk dramatically and was replaced by a new market of rushed, low-budget games. Consumers’ trips to the store often began and ended at the discount bin, the uninformed customer seeing cheaper games as more appealing regardless of quality. After a while however, the consumers began to tire of the substandard quality of the cheaper games, and rather than pay the high prices for the dwindling number of high-budget, quality games, they quit gaming entirely.

Budget games have destroyed interest in the quality product once before. It’s happening again for PC gaming, where Epic’s Tim Sweeney argued the little guys got help from those at the top:

The industry, he says, has changed dramatically over the last decade, and that the constant advancements in technology have given game creators an excuse to cater specifically to the tiny portion of PC gamers who own high-end systems.

This shift leaves all those with lower specifications -- what Sweeney calls the "mainstream PC" -- out in the cold with computers much better suited for "Facebook, MySpace, pirating music or whatever," and as a result, that becomes those computers' sole function.

As of today, Civilization: Revolution isn’t slated for a PC release, but it will be on the Nintendo DS! I’m not trying to be the bearer of the gaming apocalypse, but budget games have already found a way to compete with the pay-to-play PC product. With console gaming the only ship above water, what happens if they can compete with the X-Box and Playstation 3?

Don’t say it can’t happen.

[Nonsensical title that has nothing to do with the entry’s content.]

So I woke up in a Birmingham dumpster on Wednesday, and realized I had a blog to update! Curse the Confederacy and its dumpsters! In exchange for your patience, I’ll just hope this conversation is a well-played troll:

I’ll have some talking points up later today.

Two Short Conversations About Guitar Hero DS

“It was bound to happen. How many times have you masturbated to this so far?”
“Zero?”
“What the fuck? You’re not a true Guitar hero fan.”
“Yeah, my bad, I prefer my rhythm games with a little less 'jumped the shark.'”

"The game's battle mode will feature similar gameplay as the mode created in Guitar Hero III, with power-ups created specifically for Guitar Hero: On Tour. For example, players can activate power-ups that'll send raving fans to the other screen, and the opponent will have to sign autographs on the touchscreen to get rid of them. Or out-of-control pyrotechnics will be set ablaze, and players will have to blow them out using the Nintendo DS microphone."

“What, raging fans?”
“As in a power to fight the other player in battle mode...yeah, it’s stupid.”

--

“Am I the only Guitar hero fan who is having a hard time giving a shit about this?”
“I’m curious what bands are gonna be on there, that’s a bout it. As for the idea itself? Fail. Four buttons = lose. Mobile piece-of-shit-looking thing = fail.”

“On Tour will contain a line-up of more than 20 licensed songs from bands as Nirvana, OK Go, and No Doubt; Activision will most certainly reveal the full list of bands and songs as we get closer to the game's summer release date.”

“Yeah, well...the graphics look fucking awful for a DS title.”
“At least they have the catchy ‘On Tour’ idea to compare it to being mobile...there’s a positive.”
“Guitar Hero is not a game made for mobile. Ever. God, what a horrible layout. Four buttons? Yeah, that’ll put asses in seats.”

More on this tomorrow.

Wednesday "Meh..."

- From the web site for the 2008 Blizzard World Wide Invitational: “In addition to other exclusive goodies and welcome presents, your goody bag will also contain an access code for the beta test of an upcoming Blizzard game. Enter the code on our website and sign up to be contacted when the beta test is ready for you to join. While beta tests give us a chance to fine-tune our work, they also allow participants to try out and give feedback on a Blizzard title before it becomes available to the general public.” Reminding ourselves this year’s WWI is being held in Paris, this is just what Starcraft II needs to be successful: a legion of Frenchmen being handed the keys to a game built around war. This can’t end well.

- Luke Plunkett of Kotaku relays an MTVGames video showing the power of the Wii Wheel in further convincing gamers the Wii-Mote may have been a mistake.

- Asshole of the Week: Cory Van Arsdale. Remember how X-Box Live subscriptions were theoretically designed so companies could fund stable servers and ad-free online gaming? Then Massive Inc. signs a multi-year deal to pump advertising into E.A. products, and then Van Arsdale, the company’s chief executive, says this is a “great deal for us and a great deal for the industry”? Really? Inundating an escape from reality ? The Canadian Press states he “defends the ads, saying gamers find the video games’ environments less realistic without them.” He’s right on this one: when I’m toying with the unrealistic, arcade-style physics of Need For Speed, a Tostitos ad will balance things out.

- 8^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shuts down a law that would prohibit the sale of Mature-rated games to minors, with Judge Roger Wollman stating that “[i]ndeed, a good deal of the Bible portrays scenes of violence, and one would be hard-pressed to hold up as a proper role model the regicidal Macbeth”. As a bonus, the article also reports that 13-year-old Jack feels Halo’s violence is “not that bad because it’s not with humans”. No word on whether Jack has ever actually played Halo.

- Scottish teachers begin to explore whether Brain Age is good for your math ability. Honestly, I don’t see how a game built entirely on the basis of mathematics and logic can help you with your schoolwork.

A True Underdog Story

From the September 1995 edition of Computer Gaming World:

It's always great to see a "little guy" go toe-to-toe with the Big Boys of the industry and hold its own, which is exactly what Blizzard accomplished with its first in-house design, WARCRAFT. The best real-time strategy game since DUNE II (Virgin), WARCRAFT won several awards, and was so commercially successful that Blizzard has released both shareware and Macintosh versions. Needless to say, WARCRAFT II: TIDES OF DARKNESS is one of the most anticipated titles of the year.

It’s 1995: Dune II is the class of the Real-Time Strategy Genre, and delivering your product to the shareware circuit means you’re made it big. How the times have changed. So tell me: how will this no-name upstart turn Warcraft II into 1996’s revolutionary strategy opus? Flavor? Charm? Exploding sheep? The satisfaction of knowing all of those got in the game?

The biggest difference between WARCRAFT II and its prequel will be smarter AI for the various Orc and Human troops. This time around, your soldiers should be much less likely to wander into trees when you aren't micro-managing them. Also, the computer opponent should be more adaptive, meaning that you can't get the AI to walk into obvious ambushes time and again.

In case you’re wondering, they’re referring to the artificial intelligence in this picture, showcasing the finer points of the enemy's last-mine-on-the-map-despite-a-wall-of-tower-based-death gold rush:

Computer Gaming World caps the article with a word on Blizzard's future:

...it is refreshing to see a small company continue to take chances, because this can only mean richer experiences for gamers in the long run.

This way, when they become a behemoth, they can sacrifice the depth and integrity of their games for a couple extra bucks. I miss the old, fragile, cared-about-its-customers Blizzard.

German History Makes For Gaming Trouble

When freedom-loving Allies converged with baby-punching Soviets in 1945 Berlin, eradicating the Nazi ideology became the essential goal in rebuilding the German social conscience. Denazification was designed to forge a nation “conscious of moral and political responsibility for German policy”. Germany now stands as a pacified European superpower, an example of reconstruction gone right. But for Germany’s gamers, that success pits them against a losing political battle. Today, this country stands as a gaming mecca, comprising a ninth of Europe’s population and accounting for a quarter of the game sales. But it now faces a video game Kulturkampf that makes Joe Liebermann’s Mortal Kombat witch hunt seem farcical.

From 1984 to 2003, 380 games were placed on Germany’s “restricted list”, virtually halting their sale within the country. Mortal Kombat, and Crackdown got this nod for their bloody depictions of below-average gameplay, while Command and Conquer: Generals received a restricted rating for (and you may want to laugh when reading this) portraying war as the only acceptable means of resolving conflict. The first game actually banned by the country was Wolfenstein 3-D; its depiction of Nazi ass-kicking was an easy ban under Section 86a of the Strafgesetzbuch, the portion of the German penal document which prohibits the “Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations”. In July of 2006, Dead Rising was refused classification by the German software-rating organization Unterhaltungssoftware (USK). While the company’s refusal to classify the game didn’t place it on the German restricted list, Microsoft pledged not to publish any game that was refused classification, effectively making it the first X-Box 360 game banned. Four months later, Gears of War would earn the same fate.

This censorship is not a new issue in Germany, but April 26, 2002 turned it national. 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser had been expelled months prior for forging doctor’s notes and missing classes. Probably pissed off at his asinine expulsion, he retaliated by moving room to room through the school and gunning down his former teachers. Fourteen of the school’s fifty-two teachers, two students, a policeman, and Steinhäuser were dead by the end of the day. Europeans were shocked that an American epidemic could hoist itself into a country prided on its gun control record. Four years later, another school shooting occurred in Emsdetten, a town of 35,000 near the Dutch border. Over thirty people were injured and the gunman, presumably irate with his inability to actually kill anyone, took his own life. What game drove these children to madness? The German media reported both kids had played Counterstrike, and the notoriety was on.

In January of 2007, a pair of German teens were charged with murder after a couple was stabbed to death in their home. The police reported the two used the names “Reno” and “Sepheroth” [sic] as their aliases, giving Final Fantasy VII cosplayers relief from their role as the fanbase’s biggest scum. Square had little reason to worry, given the game’s ESRB Teen rating and lack of graphic violence. I’m just kidding, the German people went ballistic and the game is now one of the country’s most notorious “killer games”.

The cumulative of these events left anti-censorship supporters reeling. After the Emsdetten incident, a survey found 72 percent of the respondents believes video games were attributable to the violence, and 59 percent were in favor of a ban. In December of 2006, legislators of Bavaria and Lower Saxony proposed a law that would punish gamers who committed acts of “cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters.” That’s right: politicians wanted jail time for the murderers of virtual humans. In February of 2007, Wired Magazine’s Bruce Gain warned of the precedent set by Germany’s censorship of the medium: “Politicians are pushing new legislation that would ban games deemed violent or that incite hatred. Not only that, this decidedly pacifist nation is lobbying the European Union to impose continent-wide censorship of especially inflammatory games.” As he put it, Germany’s past now comes to haunt a generation of gamers.

Note: This is adapted from a piece of research done during my junior year of college. If you want sources, e-mail me and I can help you out.

Can someone please explain this to me?

According to public perception, the Gamecube failed because Nintendo couldn’t grow up; the company rooted in a first-party development cycle that pandered to youngsters and lost out on an aging audience. So why is it that Super Smash Brothers Brawl will easily go down as the Wii’s most popular game? Few people doubt that the fighting engine is superb, but does anyone actually believe the franchise would have achieved the same popularity without a twenty-five year roster of Nintendo nostalgia?

Consider this: upon Super Smash Brothers’ original release for the Nintendo 64, the game received lukewarm reviews and has a Gamerankings average score of eighty percent. Does a game with original characters, a unique fighting system, and eight-out-of-ten average review score generate the same word of mouth? It certainly didn’t happen for Fighters Destiny, which bore a lackluster sequel and faded into obscurity.

Your Game Sucks: An Ebay Auction’s Take on Superman 64

There isn’t a great deal I can say about Titus’s take on the Man of Steel that hasn’t been espoused by game critics and worst game lists. When someone tells me how the Nintendo 64’s meager 225-game library emphasized quantity over quality, this game is Exhibit A in rebutting that bullshit. That didn’t stop one EBay auctioneer from including this curious title to shovel Superman 64 out from the warehouse:

“LOTS OF FUN”, huh? Perhaps next time, the seller shouldn’t copy-paste IGN’s posthumous Superman synopsis into his own auction description:

Based on the famous DC Comics character, this game became a legend itself when it released for the N64 in 1999. Superman 64 was often held up as an example of everything wrong with gaming at the time. Its underpowered graphics engine showed the downside of that era's rush towards 3D, with few on-screen enemies and severely limited draw distances. At the same time, the developers created the game around compromises (the game's pea-soup visuals were explained as being "Kryptonite fog"), rather than focus on the strengths of the Superman character.

Here, The Man of Steel is lured into a virtual version of Metropolis by the evil Lex Luthor to save Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Unjustifiably, much of the action in that rescue mission consists of Superman flying through floating rings in the city’s open air. The game did feature many of Superman's super moves in combat, and a four-player extra mode (with players inexplicably riding on flying vehicles), but the poor control and poor use of the license earn this game the title of "worst game ever" from many critics and fans.

LOTS OF FUN.

Exclusive Starcraft II Information Leaked!

Buzz abound in the Starcraft II community due to Blizzard’s March 10^th announcement at Seoul’s Grand Intercontinental Hotel. Unconfirmed sources have held conviction that a playable build of the Zerg will be introduced into the game, but the inside information I have obtained would like to digress. I'm disappointed the microfilm was damaged by Combat Walkers as it left Blizzard Headquarters, but I will still let you, the reader, decide what to make of the undamaged information.

A Sega CD Game Worth Your Attention

When me and my friends join up for a game of Risk, my status as “geopolitical knowledge bucket” predictably leads me to play with the demeanor of Earth’s unqestioned leader, George W. Bush. I’ll just say that spreading freedom is a tough task when random dice rolls dictate the game, even with God on your side. It may seem odd I’ll give the occasional game of Risk a go, given my way of gaming is all about sensory overload, but I’ve tabbed out a soft spot for the global war genre. I mentioned Extreme’s “The Third World War” in a prior entry as “criminally underrated”, and it’s a damn shame, because no developer since has successfully replicated it. It’s time to introduce you to what might be the Sega CD’s best game.

The Third World War features five diverse scenarios which require you to conquer the planet through military or economic means. The catch? Do it without sending the world into nuclear war. The difficulty level is dependant on the scenario and which of the game’s sixteen playable countries you choose to lead towards superpower status. Pushing the planet around with the States may be easy, but try walking into Europe with Libyan gun-mounted wheelbarrows...if China or Japan isn’t already wiping you out.

Blue: United States; Light Blue: Japan; Everyone else: Fucked.

The turn-based, month-by-month overworld screen offers you three decisions a turn (the number increasing as your global influence expands) and covers the gamut of international and domestic decision-making. Your advisors will routinely point you towards criticial affairs, which should help give newer players a handle on keeping things stable. All countries take the same approach, but each country plays a drastically different style that gives the game its beauty. As the United States, you can go postal with a military matched only by Russia’s. During my game as China, my commitment to economic expansion paid off with a handsome trade surplus. As Libya, my stomping out of Israel culiminated with my chemical weapons attack on Jerusalem. When my country's population was reduced to 100,000 people by the retaliatory nuclear strike , I took that as my cue to start a new save file.

Pictured: Israeli Dream Scenario

After every turn, you’re updated to a depressing list of world events that will make you second-guess whether world domination is worth it. The lack of diversity in world events will get repetitive, but good players will readily exploit what they mean to their own interests. It may not seem important that Tanzania won the Olympics or that Romania is planning to declare a new holiday; but when the government of Angola is overthrown four times in three years, you should consider that your cue to stop tossing your budget into the country.

All of the above is set to a spectacular musical score that will convince you to play a few more turns before shutting down the console. The lack of neutrality succeeds in capturing the grit of war. While your command console is placed alongside march-to-war music, world events are presented alongside the dark reality of military conflict.

Now, The Third World War is not perfect, particularly in the realm of combat, where the game’s problems can range from “borderline imbalanced” to “as boring as this blog”. Waging invasions across boundaries you don’t control (the seas included) requires at least one aircraft carrier, and culminates in failure against any very powerful computer player. If you manage to make it to the battlefield, the bare-bones combat will leave a bad taste in your mouth. Enjoy shipping 3,800 planes into a version of Tripoli that could be easily mistaken for an autumn day in Birmingham. No matter how many planes you send into battle, you only get the option of using them for one bombing run. You’ll also notice in a game that has put emphasis on WMD combat, the computer will only retaliate against your own wall of nukes. You would think marching your army towards Baghdad would result in some sort of nuclear--bad example, carrying on.

Just be aware that none of these shortcomings knock down the substantial quantities of awesomeness smelted into each copy of The Third World War. A couple companies have tried to recreate this model, with the little-known Superpower series being the best example of how difficult nailing down this genre is. In 1994, Micronet could have virtual Britain attack virtual Moscow with no real explanation, particularly with “a war like no other and a world in chaos” being the entire premise of their game. When Dreamcatcher pushed their follow up to the critically-panned Superpower, IGN’s review read something like this:

I played Iran in SuperPower 2, and predictably it's current government is viewed as a pariah regime by quite a few other nations. What I don't understand is why, at one point, after I'd increased the size of my military, Spain declared war on me. That's right: Spain, and nobody else. The Spanish actually invaded my territory, leading to the expected solidarity that led several other Middle Eastern nations, including Afghanistan, Jordan, and Syria, to back me up. The last time I played that unbelievable scenario of mine, the Spanish had taken over the northwestern quadrant of my nation, and my allies were swarming them from all sides.

...

In another game, as Brazil, war was declared on me by Taiwan and Saudi Arabia. Nobody else made a move, either against me or for me. No reasons were apparent why my relations with these two nations suddenly took a nose dive from the 50% range down to subterranean levels.

Game developers should take notice: if you want to do a global conquest simulator properly, pop The Third World War into any Sega CD and take notes. This is a game whose flavor needs to be brought to next-gen entertainment.