Self-Indulgent and Overstated Nerdrage: Always-Online DRM

I was watching random videos, passing the time, when I came across one on one of my favorite gaming websites – Gametrailers.  Their reviews are some of the best I have seen, and I often agree with them.  However, I came across the latest episode of their show “Bonus Round.”  In it, we have Geoff Keighley, who has already proven himself to be nothing but a corporate shill.  The video of him in front of a thing of Doritos and Mountain Dew, with a totally blank stare, talking about the gaming media industry perfectly capsulized the view that people have of this guy, and always will.  For real, Keighley, you are never coming back from that.  You are a corporate shill, and always will be.

With him, he had a panel of three other people.  The first was David Jaffee.  He was the creator of the God of War series and is still a game designer.  Then there was Michael McWhertor, who is a gaming journalist for Polygon.com.  The final member was some guy named Jeff Cannata from a group called Newest Latest Best.

The first big panel question was – what’s the deal with the controversy behind always-online DRM?  And what I got to see what three guys who literally just did not get it and were quick to defend the corporations.  For real, only one guy got why people have a problem with this.  One panel member got pretty close to what people’s problem with this is.

The first major problem is that not everybody has internet.  I don’t know if Keighley and Jaffee (the two most outspoken critics of the critics) know this, but America is getting this HUGE divide between the lower and upper class.  There used to be this cozy place called the middle class, but that has now divided into the middle-upper and middle-lower classes, and the divide is growing every single day.  Money isn’t just raining out of the sky for us.  So there are a lot of gamers who have their systems never hooked up to the internet.  Myself among them.

The next big problem is that it isn’t just the internet connection itself.  Most internet plans in this country come with a data usage limit.  It’s one of the many reasons why America has the worst internet of the developed world.  We can thank the corporate overlords that this group of panelists are clearly shills for for that.  And guess what can just eat through a person’s data usage?  Online gaming.  If an internet connection is needed to play, then you bet your ass that there is a data transfers, which eats up data usage.  And the fees that one gets when one goes over their data limits are hardcore steep.

In the video, however, you hear these talking heads not only not getting why people may have a problem with this, but also mocking the complaints that gamers have with this issue.  Which, by the way, are very legitimate complaints.  Basically doing nothing but calling the people who buy these products whiny brats.  Yeah, that’s a great way to expand your customer base.

This sort of thing is yet-another reason why I am starting to think that the gaming companies don’t give a shit about their consumers.  And that is NOT a good way to play this.  For real, let’s look at the evidence.  The new SimCity releases, and when the always-online DRM leads to server problems, the game goes dark for the majority of players.  They can’t even play single player.  Previously, Blizzard has the exact same problem with Diablo III.  But whereas Blizzard quickly worked on patches for this problem, EA doubled-down.  They basically just told the consumers to shut up and go away.  This trend of always-online DRM has never once done any good.

More evidence of the lack of respect for their customers was with the handling of the Mass Effect 3 debacle.  EA held firm right until the point where consumer rage reached critical-mass.  Disney decided to close up Lucasarts after buying the Star Wars license.  When consumer backlash went critical mass, there was almost nothing heard from Disney.  Square Enix has shown nothing but contempt for their consumers, pandering to the fans of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts to keep the capital still flowing in.  And how well is that working out?  Then Capcom had the brilliant idea to decide to make a bad joke in the new Devil May Cry which was mocking the previous games.  I’m not insulting the new DmC.  I love that game.  Ninja Theory did a damn good job.  But giving the finger to the fan base when you make a new game is NOT how you keep consumer loyalty.

The gaming companies need to stop abusing the loyalty of their customers.  This kind of thing needs to stop.  In an age when consumer backlash is so easily amalgamated, gaming companies need to stop spitting in the face of their consumers.  You can only insult the people who are being asked to buy your products so much before it comes back to bite you right in the ass.  It’s happening already.

The crowds who want a new Final Fantasy games are becoming nil in the US.  In Japan, there is still a lot of loyalty, but that market alone won’t save them, and they know it.  I could go on all day about how Capcom has fucked up and how people don’t like seeing their name on new games.  EA has been labeled the worst company in the US (a designation that is hyperbole, by the way) because of their business practices.

But the reason that this issue is as controversial as it is is because of the fact that it shows just how detached the corporate side of gaming is with the consumers and how little they care.  When the consumers point out the mistakes, they simply brush us off or worse, insult us.  This is a major issue, and the fact that people like Jaffee or Keighley just want to brush us off and tell us to just shut up is beyond insulting.  This is how you lose customer loyalty.

And for the major gaming companies, I want you to think LONG and HARD about this.  Because the Indie market is growing every day.  New and better ways are being made to reach consumers.  What side of this do you REALLY want to be on?

Until next time, a quote,

“We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” -G.K. Chesterton

Peace out,

Maverick

Self-Indulgent and Overstated Nerdlove: Journey’s Ending

*Warning!  There are going to be metric ton of spoilers!  If you have not played this game, don’t read further!*

For those of you who don’t know, the Indie game Journey is my favorite game of all time.  The absolute brilliance with which it presents its atmosphere, the character development that occurs without a single word of spoken dialogue, the tapestries that paint their history, it is all brilliant.  The best part about the tapestries is that they are totally open to interpretation.  This game really was made to be seen through the player’s point of view.  That aspect alone makes it truly brilliant.  It’s something that not nearly enough game developers are doing these days.  It has a level of emotional intensity which makes its relatively short length feel like you really did go on a journey with the main character, who has no name, no identity and never speaks, yet you feel like you know this character and can bond with his struggle.

There has been a lot of debate about the final area of this game.  See, in the previous section, you have finally made it to the mountain that you are so desperate to climb.  Almost at the peak which is your destination.  The road has been long and hard.  This mountain is unbelievably brutal.  The cold is clearly chilling your character.  What makes it worse is that you seem to be at the mercy of the winds.  It is brutalizing him.  Finally, you get to the final ascent.  It is clear that no other has made it past this.  Gravestones mark so many that have fallen.  And there is a good reason why – the winds get even worse.  They throw you everywhere, brutalizing your entire body.  Your character is getting more and more frozen, desperate to make that final leg.  It is an incredibly intense moment when you see him barely able to move.  His body is freezing, and it is too much.  The final part of that segment, you see him crash to the ground, look up, as if to continue, but then flop down and die.  It is incredibly powerful.

But then, something happens.  A being who is implied to be a sagely creature, from a race that came before, appears.  It reaches down, breathing life back into you.  The character gets up, and takes off into the sky.  It is on a mission to overcome its own fears and to go to where it is called.  The moment you rise above the dark clouds, the monsters you were running from become companions, with you as you make your way to the top, the way home.

Here is where the debate is – did your character die and is his vision of reaching the top of the mountain merely their perception of going to the afterlife?  The reason that this has been debated is that this game doesn’t straight-up tell you anything.  That’s part of the reason that I love it.  It’s openness to interpretation makes it so that everybody’s perception is different.  That is something that the gaming industry DESPERATELY needs.  And I’m not talking the bullshit argument about how the ending to Mass Effect 3 was open to interpretation.  No, that was just people’s attempts to defend it.  Because this game plays on the fact that people don’t know the details, it is made to be given a lot of thought.  The emotional levels it reaches, through visuals and music is amazing.

So, you are probably wondering what my position is.  Did this character truly die and make his way to the afterlife, or is he reborn and makes it home?  Well, to be honest, I think people who are talking about this seriously are missing the point.  It isn’t about the fact that this character gets to the top of the mountain.  It is the journey that got them there, along with what they saw and experienced along the way.

That’s the other great thing about that final ascent – the music.  It builds and builds, as you get higher and higher.  All the pain, suffering and seeing loss, and you get to rise to where you were always trying to go.  The music truly is the best part of that final ascent.  Here, listen for yourself.

Journey does in two hours what most games can’t do with an entire series.  The Indie group thatgamecompany did an amazing job, with a small budget and a few dedicated people.  I will be watching closely for EVERY SINGLE game that they make from here on.  This is the single gaming studio that I watch with diligence, because they have yet to fail me.  They are taking risks, trying new things and trying to expand a medium with new ideas.  If you haven’t played Journey yet, you simply must.  It is an emotional experience.  It is a visual masterpiece.  It is a subtle telling of a beautiful and tragic story of growth, power, greed, decline and the hope for tomorrow.

And it is my favorite game, of all time.

Until next time, a quote,

“I Was Born For This”  -name of the track of the ending credits of Journey

Peace out,

Maverick

Self-Indulgent and Oversaturated Nerdlove: Bioshock Infinite – Ending

*Warning!! There are a metric ton of spoilers ahead! If you have not played the game and seen the ending, stop reading!*

Bioshock Infinite.  An amazing game.  The art style, the questioning of reality, the idea of the past and future being totally immaterial.  There are a ton of things to love about this game.  But one thing that is being discussed with a lot of genuine interest is the ending.  I will say again that if you haven’t played to the end of this game, stop reading.  You need to see it for yourself.  Most of my friends have a problem with the ending to Bioshock Infinite.  I do not.  The most problem I have with the ending is the last two minutes, where Booker is being drowned.  But every single thing that led up to that, after I took a minute and thought about it, made sense to me.  In fact, I was kind of digging where it was going.

Now, for those who want to call foul, given my absolute hatred of the ending to Mass Effect 3, let’s do something – let’s compare the two endings side-by-side.  Because the reality is that I love where this game was going with the ending (up until the last two minutes) for the EXACT same reason that I loathe the ending to Mass Effect 3.  The reason is – pseudo-science.

Let me explain.  The Bioshock series is famous for playing around with and bending the living shit out of the rules of science.  It has been part of the brand and how it is defined.  In the first game, they introduce the concept of “Adam.”  A substance that is able to totally redefine the rules of genetics.  As Doctor Steinman said, “it turns the body into clay.”  Through this substance, the scientists of the city of Rapture are able to make substances called “Plasmids.”  These substances, can do incredible things.  But while they are incredible, they also bend the living shit out of what is possible with science.  I mean, you have wasps coming out of your skin, fire being able to be created out of thin air and being able to make a phantom existence be able to scout out your position.  It’s incredibly off-the-wall science.  But in the context of the game’s universe, it makes sense.  What’s more, they talk about it, in detail.  They want you to understand what this universe’s rules are, and why they are the way they are.  It indulges in some scientific quirkiness, but it still falls under the same rules.

In Bioshock 2, they introduce the concept of a kind of shared memory that comes from the Adam that is harvested from the dead.  These memories and the Adam can be siphoned into a living body, but it has to be special.  The Little Sisters are able to contain it.  I won’t break down the extensive reasons why, but suffice it to say, there is a reason.  And when a normal scientist tries to duplicate the process in himself, it mutates him beyond reason.  Again, this is totally absurd science in a lot of respects, but the rules are never clearly defined because of the potential of Adam.  This substance can do incredible things.  So we, the players, are accepting of these leaps in what we see as possible because this substance changes the rules.  And since the rules are never clearly defined (because the people in the universe of the game don’t know what they truly are, either), it is acceptable.

In Bioshock Infinite, there is a new concept that is given to us – the existence of alternate universes and the ability to go between them.  Two scientists (who you later find out are the same person, but in different universes) make a device that can go between them, and this introduces new realities to the various powers they are affecting.  I won’t lie, the totality of this game’s implications and how they explain it is INCREDIBLY complicated.  This is because they have to address something that exists in all stories about alternate dimensions – paradoxes.  If all choices have been made in all dimensions, then how can one truly change the past?  Because no matter what you do, in one dimension, you did the thing you were trying to prevent.  Booker discovers this very problem himself, as it turns out the man that he was trying to destroy was in fact himself. But from another dimension.  When the man from that dimension found out that he couldn’t have a kid, he had his scientists go to another, where Booker was a down-and-out loser with extensive debts, and get him to sell his child to him.

So, with the knowledge that no matter what he does, Booker is faced with the reality that he is Comstock, he decides to do the one thing that he can do – let himself be killed to save the world from the dimensional rifts that are becoming a nightmare to the rest of reality, which are a result of his actions.  A lot of people didn’t truly get this, and I know why – it is complicated.  For real, this kind of story-telling is just about the most complicated kind that there is.  And it can be incredibly hard to follow.  Even in the context of the game, the ways that these things happened isn’t explained too especially well.  But we are forgiving of this, if we are me.  Why?  Because in the Bioshock universe, this sort of thing is something we see all the time.

Now, let’s take a look at the ending to Mass Effect 3.  The Mass Effect series also has a ton of science that is totally outside the bounds of what we think is possible now.  But here is the difference – this science has rules.  Extensive, elaborate and very well-explained rules.  The Codex pages talk about the various applications of the Mass Effect in great detail, so the player knows what it is capable of, as well as its limitations.  The reason for this is simple – it makes it feel more real to us.  Despite the science-fiction and totally outside of reality existence that the series inhabits, it feels like something that we could grasp if we existed within it.  The reason for this is the same as why the Star Trek universe is something that we feel like we could exist in.  This was done on purpose, and to great effect.  I love both universes.  The goal of the Mass Effect series was to make the player feel like this world was one that they existed in, and had control over.  For the most part, this worked like a charm.  Then came the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Into this world of clearly-defined rules that we knew what to expect, we are then given something new – a weapon with three options.  Each of these options are unimaginably powerful, and those who made this machine had no knowledge of how it would work.  What’s more – each of these options is almost impossible.  The one that stands out the most to me is the Synthesis ending.  In that ending, this machine uses technology that has never been shown and is never explained to somehow merge all organic and synthetic life.  What?!  That makes no fucking sense!  This machine can do things that previous parts of the game said were impossible, with a hand-wave explanation and the player was supposed to accept this?  No!  Wrong!  That isn’t how good story-telling works.

I love the ending to Bioshock Infinite.  This game is already a VERY strong contender for the best game of this year.  It is at the top of the list now, and it will take a lot of work for a game to topple it.  The reason is simple – I’m still thinking about it.  Even having gotten through the ending a few days ago, I am still thinking about this.  It’s interesting, profound and different.  I will admit, the killing of Booker seems a little odd to me.  I mean, couldn’t have have gone back and stopped himself from going through on the deal?  But I forgive that indiscretion because the story still flows well.  Unlike the ending to Mass Effect 3, which brings the entire game to a grinding halt in a millisecond.  I hope you love the end of this game as much as I do.

But if you have some thoughts, send it to the comments section.  Discussion, people!

Until next time, a quote,

“Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt;” that was the deal. The details elude me now, but the details wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.”  -Booker Dewitt  

Peace out,

Maverick

Lucien’s Review: Bioshock: Infinite

So…yeah, if you are wondering why I am only now posting my review, well, the reason isn’t all that interesting.  I had school work.  That’s it.  That’s the entire reason.  In fact, I have only recently been able to actually play.  And if you think that this review is late, there is a game that I am determined to wait until summer to play, because if I got into it now, my GPA would do a nose-dive off a cliff.  I’ll give you a hint, it involves Studio Ghibli.  Anyway, on to this game.

Up front – this game is fucking awesome!  I love every single minute of it.  It follows the well-trodden style of story-telling that this franchise is famous for, but at the same time gives the player a new place to learn about and explore.  A lot like the original, this game just throws you in to the setting and has you figure out where to go.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

First, the story.  Like I said, with little statement given to the back-story of the character, you are thrown in to a new setting, trying to survive.  The story goes that a man named Booker Dewitt has been given a deal – find a certain girl, and your debts go away.  It’s that easy.  Well, if only.  You arrive on an island with a lighthouse (in homage to the original, I assume), but instead of going down into the depths, as you did in the first game, this one has you ascend into the sky.  If you are like me and have a fear of heights, this will give you some really stomach-knot moments.  From there, you have to find the girl, stay alive and get her off the island.  But you very quickly find out that things in this new setting are not as they seem, and there are unlikely allies and enemies around every corner.  I won’t go much further than that, because I don’t want to spoil anything.  I will say that a big flaw of this game is that the story seems to end REALLY abruptly, and leaves you wanting more.  But that’s all I have to say about that.

So, the first thing I want to gush about is the visuals.  I got this game on console, and the visuals are breath-taking.  The city of Columbia comes alive in all of its majesty.  The streets have all the same detail and attention to the time period that its predecessor had.  It is like a step back in time, if they had a floating city back in the day.  One of the neatest things about it is how nice it looks.  This city looks like somewhere that one would almost want to live.  But once you peel the layers away, it is a place of madness and evil.  A lot like Rapture, in a sense, but this city hasn’t fallen into ruin.  Yet.  But trust me, it doesn’t have long.  A nice touch that is in this game is how Booker interacts with this world, often outside player control.  How he responds to other characters and to random people, outside of the player’s control, adds to the feeling of being trapped.  You, the player, are trapped in this madness with Booker, and trying just as hard to understand.

When it comes to the gameplay, the thing that can be said about this game is that it’s fast.  Everything happens quickly, which is something that will DEFINITELY keep you on your toes.  The enemies move fast, you are often having to make quick decisions and the pace is incredibly quick.  You never feel like you have a moment to truly breathe.  But that’s all the better, if you ask me.  The game does take time to develop characters and have intense moments, but there is a constant feeling of haste as your enemies are everywhere and you are never safe.  It makes all the moments of genuine safety in the game kind of off-putting, because it feels unnatural.  This game gets the feel of its namesake down-pat, and it is both scary and engaging.

That leads us to the voice-work.  Much like the previous Bioshock games, much of the back-story of the place is learned through audio logs that you find here and there.  I will say that there is very little introduction to these characters, and some of the voice-work for them isn’t especially compelling.  But it is engaging when it needs to be, and is fun to hear all the same.  Since the city hasn’t totally fallen apart, there are a lot more characters and NPCs to interact with.  The voice-work for them is top-notch.  While you never learn too especially much about Booker, they tell you enough to get to like the character.

The enemies are also pretty neat.  When you get the power that they never clearly define how it works, but they call it “Vigors,” there are certain enemies who you can’t use it against.  Fighting has a lot more strategy in this game.  And the various powers you get along the way are loads of fun.  My personal favorite was the Murder of Crows.  Something about watching people get ripped apart by crows took me back to the original, when I could watch swarms of bees terrorize Splicers.  Good times.

But the thing that truly captivates me about this game is that there is an underlying message that is both so cruel and so beautiful at the same time – there are no good people.  Without spoiling anything, I will say that there are a lot of times when you find characters in this game who appear to be the wholesome and decent types, but over time you find that they are no better than the people that they stand against.  It’s a cold-blooded look at humanity, in a lot of respects, and it never lets up.  This game and how brutal it is don’t stop for anything.  For the player, this makes it kind of harsh at points, but with purpose.  The mandate of this genre to have engaging plots with some heavy themes is there and it is done perfectly.

This is an awesome game.  The pace is great.  The story is engaging.  The characters are all interesting and likeable.  The plot has all the twists and turns of a Bioshock game.  While a new place and a new attitude, this game has the Bioshock mandate written all over it.  I couldn’t possibly recommend it more.

Final Verdict:
9 out of 10

Peace out,

Maverick

Self-Indulgent and Overstated Nerdrage: Square Enix (AGAIN!)

God am I getting tired of talking about you people!  For real, this is getting old!  Between the stupid shit that you and EA are doing these days, it is getting almost a little insane.  I mean, it is like your companies are simply unable to do smart things.

And that isn’t hyperbole on my part.  EA’s failures are mounting up so fast that it’s kind of getting sad.  Between the absolute disaster that was and still is the ending to Mass Effect 3 (which the Extended Cut made worse, for me.  If you want me to go on an insane tirade about all the plot-holes associated with that ending, from my perspective, let me know in the comments section), the cookie-cutter knock-offs of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, the disastrous launch of SimCity, along with the stupid-ass idea of having always-online DRM and worst of all – the god-awful sequels that have been coming out to great series lately (Dead Space 3, Army of Two: Devil’s Cartel, Crysis 2 and the list goes on), they can’t seem to get anything right.

The worst part about what is happening with EA is that they have this REALLY bad habit of writing off fan outcries are just bitching and moaning until it reaches critical-mass.  But then there is you, Square Enix.  Part of me is thinking that you just don’t care anymore.  I mean, what have you shown me that should make me think that you do?  Let’s take a look at recent history.

Square Enix recently laid off a bunch of people from their studio Eidos: Montreal.  The studio who brought us the amazing Tomb Raider reboot, something that was desperately needed for a character who was in danger of fading into the abyss of gamer unconcern.  They brought us Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  A new sequel to Thief is coming out, and it looks pretty damn cool.  They have been doing amazing things.  The kicker is that the stated reason that Square Enix did this is because Eidos: Montreal studios games haven’t reached the sales that they were hoping for.  REALLY?!  The sales for that game were the best of the entire series!  Not to mention that the first-weeks sales were some of the best the studio has ever had.  But that wasn’t enough?  What exactly were you expecting?  Were you expecting money to rain from the sky?  These people are trying new things and giving us new content.  And what exactly has their Japanese studio been doing lately?

Well, I’ll tell you.  Because this is why I am starting this new kind of post where I can vent my nerdrage to all of you.  This post is about to go off on some of the stupid shit that their Japanese side of gaming has done lately.

In a recent Twitter post, Tetsuya Nomura was trying to raise the hype for what is being promised at E3 this year – some answers to the questions that fans have about the games we have been waiting for the longest – Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Kingdom Hearts III.  These are two games that we should have heard about and (at least in the first one’s case) probably been able to play by now.  It has been far too long coming, but now it is going to happen.  Anyway, he posts on Twitter, saying that if we loved the previous stuff we have seen of Noctis, we are going to love “her” (his fucking words, people!) at E3 this year.  Her?!  Look, I’m not against a female protagonist.  For real, I’m not.  But here’s the thing – it doesn’t make any sense!  Here’s a link where you can see the Twitter post for yourself.  As soon as the fans started after him, Nomura deleted the post.  Thankfully, somebody screen-capped it and sent it out.

This character was called the last prince of his kingdom.  He has been in scenes where he is talking to a girl, and there is some genuine dialogue about their respective problems, which hints at relationship-building.  He is a little frail, but his features are still masculine.  Nothing about this character hints at him being a woman.  So why post that?  Better yet, why delete the Twitter post if it was a mistake?  Why not just hit us back with “Oops, my bad.  Typo.  Sorry, dudes and dudettes.  LOL”?  I wouldn’t care past that.  Instead, he pulled a Sarah Palin and tried to get rid of the evidence.

If you think I am just being a fanboy right now, don’t.  Square Enix has been incredibly tight-lipped about this game for far too long, and this has led me to a bunch of serious and very upsetting questions.  First, is this game going to be next-gen exclusive?  I hope not.  For real, we should have had this game by now.  It looked pretty damn well under way back when it was first announced.  Second, is Noctis now being seen as a woman by your company?  I ask because both me and the source of the link above have the same thought – that this is not a typo and is on the level, and was a redesign of the character for this installment.  Why would they do that?  The most logical conclusion seems to be that it is a response to how much people liked the character Lightning.  They want to recreate that with this game as well.  If that is the case, then I am going to be SO incredibly pissed off.

I won’t lie to you – the very moment I saw the trailer for Versus, I was hyped.  Though I was also hyped for XIII, when the trailers for it came out.  We all know what happened with that expectation.  Are we being a little too optimistic?  Maybe.  Maybe I am just getting all annoyed for something that is going to suck before it even hits the ground.  But dammit, it looks so cool!  A game that combines realism with the Final Fantasy style.  Giving us memorable characters and a world that is both familiar and foreign to us.  The possibilities are unbelievable.  So much potential.  Though the same could have been said of XIII.  And I am desperately hoping that it doesn’t all go to waste, because this franchise still, after all the stupid shit (like the cash-in sequel XIII-2, and another cash-in sequel slated for XIII) that Square Enix has done, I am thinking that this is going to be my last straw for this franchise, which may be running on its last legs.

With it having been CONFIRMED that Versus is going to be at E3 this year, you had better believe that it is do-or-die time at Square Enix.  Either they deliver us what we are looking for, or you had better believe that they will be doing PR damage control when a flood of hate-mail and nerdrage comes smashing against their door.  It is worth mentioning that Square Enix’s awful record has left most of us who are STILL dedicated to this franchise caring more about this game than anything they have confirmed for this year.  It’s do-or-die, Square Enix.  Choose wisely.

But what’s more, I am afraid for Kingdom Hearts as well.  This franchise was something I partially grew up with.  I remember my cousin who was a brother to me, and a cousin who I happen to love with all my heart playing the first game.  The combination of Final Fantasy and Disney.  Two amazing things that had so much to give us.  And then an awesome sequel to the game.  How could this go wrong?!  Well, having a bunch of cash-in sequels, doing their damndest to keep us from forgetting that this franchise still exists hasn’t helped.  And with Kingdom Hearts III an announcement away, I am hoping beyond all hope that this isn’t the end of a genre, and the breaking of my heart.

I didn’t have the same level of heart-break that most fans did for Star Wars: Episode I.  But if everything that I am thinking comes to pass, you better believe that I am going to have a lot of hurt feelings for Final Fantasy, and a desire to blow the fucking heads off of the heads of Square Enix.

And that’s my nerdrage for tonight.  If this is something you enjoy, let me know.  And if you do actually want me to go into nerdrage over what I saw, especially with the Extended Cut, as the King of the Plotholes (of which there are oh so very many) that is the ending of Mass Effect 3, let me know as well.

Until next time, a quote,

“Ah, the spiral of death.  Summoners challenge the bringer of death, Sin, and die doing so.  Guardians give their lives to protect their summoner.  The Fayth are the souls of the dead. Even the maesters of Yevon are unsent. Spira is full of death.  Only Sin is reborn, and then only to bring more death.  It is a cycle of death, spiraling endlessly.”  -Auron, Final Fantasy X

Peace out,

Maverick

Top 10 Video Game Trailers

I haven’t done a post like this in a LONG time, and I was feeling the urge to do so.  Now, if you’re wondering why I am not doing movie trailers, well, that’s because there aren’t all that many good ones.  There are some really cool ones, but not that many that have stuck with me.  Game trailers, on the other hand, some of these have been just awesome!  Now, before we get into this, let me say that the trailers on this list don’t necessarily correlate with the quality of the game.  A couple on this list are games that I cannot stand, or am totally bored by, but was totally hyped because of the trailer I saw.  Also, since I know that this list is going to be 100% my opinion, and some of you will vehemently disagree, tell me what your favorite trailers are.  Post links.  I want to know.  Anyway, enough house-keeping.  Let’s get to this.

10. Batman: Arkham City
Riddler Trailer
I don’t know how many of you I ever told this to, but one of my favorite villains are a kid was The Riddler.  I always loved how this guy was so smart, so cunning, so crafty.  If it weren’t for the fact that he has to give Batman clues, because of his own psychological pathology, this guy could have killed Batman 10 times over!  And this trailer was so good at making this character feel both intimidating and smart.  I love how you actually see very little.  It merely shows you brief bits of schematics, some neat Riddler question marks, and a couple shots of the hero.  And while you are seeing this, the voice of the Riddler talks about how inferior you are, and how certain your death is.  But not in that cartoon-y way, where you laugh at it.  It feels intimidating.  I love this trailer, and the only real pity is that the Riddler in the actual game wasn’t as cool as the trailer made him out to be.

9. Halo 3
Reveal Trailer
The reason that I like this trailer is because it doesn’t treat Master Chief like a total badass.  Something that most people don’t know is that I wasn’t all that much of a fan of the Halo series.  Not until Halo 4, that is.  That game did what I thought this trailer was showing – took some of the emotional armor off the Chief, making him more of a human being.  The whole “White Knight” aspect of most gaming heroes never really interested me all that much.  Sure, a guy can kill a lot of people or aliens, but I don’t just want to embrace the killing.  Let me get to know this character.  I want to understand their motivations.  What got them there?  Why do they fight as hard as they do?  These are great questions to ask.  And when I saw this trailer for Halo 3, that’s what I thought it was going to be.  You see the Chief as a boy, and he is like a normal kid.  Then, it abruptly cuts to him in the future.  He’s outnumbered, outgunned and looks to be in real trouble.  He uses a shield grenade to give himself cover, desperately trying to survive.  That is what I wanted to see from this game, and sadly, the actual package did NOT deliver.  It was a pretty mediocre game, if you ask me.  But yeah, I still do love this trailer, and always will.

8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Reveal Trailer
Man, talk about ANOTHER game whose trailer over-promised, and the actual game under-delivered.  This trailer hooked me from the moment I saw it.  When I saw this, I was thinking that this game would actually be looking at the idea of another World War.  That some of the missions would be incredibly long, and we would actually be a part of this, from all sorts of angles.  Meanwhile, the heroes from the last game would be putting the pieces together, trying to make it all stop.  Expectations for this game were high.  And, sadly, I couldn’t have been more disappointed.  Most people, when I saw this, hit me back with the fact that these games are made for the multiplayer.  And while that’s true, the reality is that there is NO excuse in this day and age why a game can’t have good single player AND multiplayer.  Halo 4 proved that this was possible, by leaps and bounds.  I won’t lie, the Call of Duty franchise has never interested me all that much.  But Modern Warfare 2 was an awesome game, mixing some incredibly cool characters, along with genuine tension.  This game, unfortunately, fails.  A pity, too, because it could have been great.

7. Mass Effect 3
“Take Earth Back” trailer
Man, when it comes to setting up a conflict and putting the stakes firmly in your mind, no game did this better than Mass Effect 3.  And save for the god-awful third act (the shitty ending, the lack of being able to see your war assets in play and the total loss of narrative coherence), this game delivered.  But the coolest thing about this trailer is that you see the human side of things.  And I’m not talking about it just showing people.  I’m not The Illusive Man here.  I mean the side of the the story that shows you who is being affected.  It’s not easy to make something feel global, and make it into a disaster film.  But with a story like Mass Effect, you have free reign to make it feel big, because the stories of these games have been big.  And this trailer makes you enjoy every moment of it.  From the little girl who is shown at the beginning, you see humanity and its totally overwhelming battle against an enemy who feels nothing and cares even less.  It’s totally gripping, and worth every minute.

6. Alice: Madness Returns
Teaser Trailer
If one is looking for a trailer to represent what the game is actually about, you can’t get much better than this.  This trailer is nuts.  This game is nuts.  Sanity really has no place in anything having to do with it.  I especially love the use of color in this trailer.  It begins so peaceful, with lots of soft and gentle colors.  It makes the world feel so much more inviting.  You actually want to be a part of it.  A credit to a well-done trailer.  Never has madness looked so cool.

5. Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Premier Trailer
Final Fantasy XIII burned us.  All of us.  We were horribly burned by what a complete mess it was.  The linear gameplay, the storyline that made your head hurt, so many things were wrong with it.  The only selling point it had was on the cool factor of some of its characters.  But they milked that well dry too.  Then, a few months later, we saw this trailer.  The moment that my friends and I saw this trailer, we all were captivated.  This game looked 110% different from the absolute joke that XIII was.  It was even in the title that this game was nothing like that!  It looked dark, realistic, but fantastical enough for us to get into it.  This game trailer was so cool that we were ready to give our money right then and there!  And yet, the wait continued.  And it continued.  And it continued.  And seven years later, we are STILL waiting.  Most of my friends who were so hyped have moved on.  I am going to be moving on soon.  It’s kind of like Kingdom Hearts III.  Both of these games should have been out by now.  But they’re not.  And so, we’re left sad and alone.  But there is still this trailer, and it looks amazing.  Such a pity that it didn’t come with more.

4. Metro: Last Light
E3 2012 “Enter the Metro” Trailer
There are some trailers in games that are so good that it almost transcends that boundaries of a trailer.  Trailers that dazzle your eyes and amaze your soul.  This is one of them.  This trailer is so good that it almost should have been its own movie.  Part of me almost wishes it was.  This is a live-action trailer, and it is so incredibly intense.  Without a single subtitle, you are just seeing the Russian panic as a nuclear war looms.  You don’t know what they’re saying.  You don’t have to.  The sheer terror on their faces and the desperation to go to the one safe-zone is enough.  This trailer is absolutely breath-taking.  It could have been a short film, because it really does work like one.  You have the people running for shelter, the guards having to eventually stop them from coming in, and it ends with a mother desperately trying to get her baby inside.  The guard takes the baby, shuts the door, and you see him disappear into the darkness, as she cries outside.  Then, you have what is believed to have been that baby, all grown-up, reappearing to see the destroyed city.  No sound, except for the song that his mother was humming to him.  This is an amazing trailer, and worth every minute of time you spend watching it.

3. Assassin’s Creed
Almost every trailer they have ever done
I know this is cheating, but I’m sorry, I simply could not pick.  This franchise has a knack for having some breath-taking and awesome trailers that you absolutely cannot stop thinking about.  What makes them even cooler is that these trailers are all made from excellent graphics, but the elements in them are taken right from the game.  What you see in awesome fidelity, you can often do.  It is so cool!  So, without absolutely gushing about all of them, I will simply have links to all the ones that stuck in my mind in parentheses, and you can see the awesomeness for yourself.  (Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Assassin’s Creed III, Assassin’s Creed IV)

2. Dead Island
Official Announcement Trailer
Talk about a bait-and-switch.  This trailer looked amazing.  It told a unique and profoundly sad story about a family who came to a tropical island, looking to get away from their problems.  Instead, they are caught in a hellish nightmare with the living dead, and from the looks of things, it kills them.  This trailer is painful, beautiful, tragic, memorable.  It put the players’ expectations so high for what this game was going to be.  We were anticipating a survival-horror experience, with a deep emotional connection.  And what did we get?  Well, we got a game with a boring story, god-awful and borderline-racist stereotypes and gameplay that was clumsy and awkward.  This game had SO much potential, and it wasted every single bit of it.  This was such a disappointment.  But still, this trailer is amazing.  It’s tragic, beautiful, touching and oddly comforting, despite what we are seeing.  A bummer that the final product couldn’t be the same.

And the best game trailer, to me, is…

1. Bioshock 2
“Sea of Dreams” trailer
If there is a trailer that is more cryptic but engaging, I have yet to see it.  This trailer told us just about nothing.  For real, you learn nothing about the game.  But who cares?!  The amazing design, the soft music that is both comforting and off-putting, along with image of a young woman who is holding one of the Big Daddy dolls, with her mind apparently making the sand move.  All of these elements make us just want to dive right back in to Rapture.  What is this girl’s story?  It’s a safe assumption that she’s a Little Sister all grown up.  Does she miss Rapture?  Why does she have psychic powers?  Again, we never learn anything, but not one person cared.  This trailer will probably stick with me until I am dead, but it is so cool all the same, and took me right back to the underwater nightmare.

So that’s my list.  Again, if you disagree, hit me back.  Have a link with it.  I want to know.  Because there are a lot more great trailers, and new perspective helps.

Until next time, a quote,

“When all this is over, an’ we’re divvyin’ up Rapture’s bounty, you an’ I will be holdin’ court on a private island, son. Think of it – each world power on bended knee, holding a bouquet made o’ money!”  -Augustus Sinclair, Bioshock 2

Peace out,

Maverick

What I’d Like to See from the Next-Gen Games

Replaying the Mass Effect series, there’s something that I noticed – your romantic partner doesn’t notice any changes that you get between games.  See, I started off with really short hair.  The idea was that it would get longer as the games went on.  That seemed like something that made sense to me.  But when I made it longer in Mass Effect 2, down to her shoulder, my love-interest didn’t notice.  Personally, I think it would have been kind of cool if she has remarked something to the effect of, “your hair’s grown.”  Then, knowing me, in the conversation options, I would have had a witty retort in hand.  Stuff like that would make the interactions seem a lot more natural.  Especially since this love interest hasn’t seen me for over 2 years.

Something that bugged me in Mass Effect 3 was that, after three games of cultivating this love interest, it still feels like you’re dating this person.  One of the things I liked in the Citadel DLC was that it finally treated this relationship like it had been building for a while.  And my favorite bit of character interaction in 2 was in the Lair of the Shadow Broker missions, where you are chasing a Spectre and arguing with Liara about your driving.  That was so fun because, let’s face it, we have all been there.  Either we have been with our romantic partners in real life having these discussions, or heard our parents doing it.  These sorts of interactions make the relationship feel more real.

Being able to make believable relationships with the characters is getting easier and easier.  But something that I am hoping the next console cycle will bring us are the smaller touches.  Things like noticing when your hair is longer.  Or catching sight of you and smiling.  The little details matter, because in a universe like Mass Effect, they help make it more believable.  And they wouldn’t have relationships in games if we weren’t looking for that.  They are playing to a market, here.  So naturally, it makes sense that they make these things more believable.

Among the other things I would like to see is characters in games being more aware of their surroundings.  NPCs making eye-contact with you when you show up would be once nice touch.  Also, when a guy notices a hot girl, having his eyes follow her.  And girls noticing a hot guy.  I like that idea too.  Little things like that, that make characters seem believable.

Also, don’t focus so much on all the details.  You don’t need to know what the title of the paper the guy is reading to make him seem like a real guy.  Instead, focus your efforts on making cities and environments feel lived in.  Probably the best example of this was in Batman: Arkham City.  Not only did that place have incredible detail, but it felt alive, mostly by hearing what people were saying and doing.  The next generation should look to expand on this.  There is a lot of potential for some truly massive gaming worlds, and instead of making me marvel at the visuals, make me feel like I am a part of it.  Take the ideas of Mass Effect, and make it bigger.  Make it feel like I am a part of a universe.

The last thing that I want to give you all to think about is making small moments with characters.  One of the things I like about The Darkness was how you could actually sit with your girlfriend and watch the entire film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”  You can take the time to get to know this character, and appreciate your relationship with her.  The reason I am pointing this out is that scenes like this is where attention to detail should be focused.  Scenes where you are enjoying a person’s company.  This is easily possible with the next generation.

A lot of people think that the next generation is going to be about awesome visuals and lots of shooting.  And they may be right.  That’s part of the reason that I’m not exactly jumping at the idea of a new console coming out.  Telling a good story is what draws me, and to be honest, nothing about a new console says that that aspect is going to get better.  In reality, all the latest tech demos have shown is slick visuals.  Good games are about more than that.

Now, with that said, I am not naive.  Series like Call of Duty and Battlefield wouldn’t be as popular as they are without an audience of people who like it.  These games are devoid of the same kind of rich narrative that I enjoy.  For those of you who think that I hate all FPS games, don’t.  Games like Bioshock have shown that even this medium can have a rich story and be engaging.  But we are being given a new medium here.  But maybe it is all for naught.  Games like the Call of Duty series and its brethren are showing that this medium sells.  And with the budget of future games needing to be massive, big companies will be selling games they know will return their investment.  So maybe my expectations are too high.  But I hope not.  I really do.

Until next time, a quote,

“A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist.”  -Ashley Williams, Mass Effect

Peace out,

Maverick

A Perfect View of The Video Game Medium

Here is a video by my favorite gaming video maker. This guy and I must share the same brain, because how he views things is almost always how I do, from his hatred of the Mass Effect 3 ending (even with the extended cut), to this neat idea – where he applies an author from a time ages before video games were anything at all to the world of gaming and how we experience it. And this guy’s videos don’t get nearly the love that they should. So yeah, watch it, and I hope you enjoy.

Peace out,

Maverick

Lucien’s Review: Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC

Well, this is it, people.  The final piece of the single-player DLC has been released.  A way to bring the saga finally to a close.  A way to end things in a way that’s memorable.  And, you know what, I think they did a bang-up job.  Since this a DLC review, I won’t talk about it as much.  Not as much to talk about.  But from my perspective, I think they made it feel very final and this was a good last piece of this series.  While the ending of ME3 still annoys the shit out of me, even with the extended cut, this was still something that I was hoping for.  A nice little way to make everything feel all wrapped up.

I will add a disclaimer, though – this DLC is most enjoyable if you are like me and most of the fun you had in this game came from shooting the shit with your people.  For real, that’s where almost all the fun in this comes from.  You can talk to people and the conversations are almost all hilarious.  They decided to not make this DLC’s story self-serious.  At all.  And bless them for it.  They cranked up the humor to 11, and it was just so much fun to laugh at all the face-palmingly awful puns that the characters play off each other.  Especially when you get to the combat sections.  Not to mention that, since they know they are playing to nostalgia of the entire series, they have a LOT of puns about actions in past games.  My personal favorite was Garrus remarking that he was the only one who talked to people in the elevator at the Citadel.  That was just awesome.

So, without spoiling the ridiculously funny twist, the plot goes that the Normandy is due for some maintenance.  About time.  You are also given Anderson’s apartment on the Citadel.  He has been on Earth so long that he doesn’t want to leave again, so he’s giving the place to you.  Sounds like a nice little vacation, right?  Well, as is typical with anything Shepard is involved in, it doesn’t last long.  Soon, you are being shot at by a new group who is VERY keen to have you dead.  And that’s all I’m going to say about the plot, because I don’t want to spoil how ridiculous it is.  That’s something you gotta see for yourself.  I will say that it is awesome.  Plus, if you have culminated a romantic partnership in the game, make sure to keep that person in your squad with you.  It leads to some great jokes at the villain’s expense.  And it all culminates in a surprisingly hard boss fight.  Without spoiling who it is, you are fighting a style that is exactly the same to your own, and hot damn if it isn’t hard!  But still fun.  And after all is said and done, you get to have a party where you can shoot the shit with every single person you have fought beside.  Seeing some of their drunk interactions is just great.  Think of Tali on the Normandy, but with everybody.  Yeah, it’s that good.

In addition to the story missions, which are fun, they also give you a new stomping ground to explore.  Do so, because it gives you new games, new weapon options, and you can trick out Anderson’s apartment as you see fit.  If that’s your thing, you’ll have fun doing it.  Also, it gives you a new arena where you can play as other characters and fight enemies or even your own squad.  Maybe even yourself.  That little touch is really cool, and it can give you some neat perspective.  When it comes to playing multiplayer, this is a nice little practice arena.

Not much more to say than that.  For real, it is the perfect ending to this series.  It’s a pity that the actual ending to this game didn’t have even 1/3 of the heart that this did.  When your character wakes up with their romantic lead and kisses them gently, greeting the dawn with them, that is perfect.  This was worth the $15, and I recommend it to all of you.

So, for future reference of final verdicts on DLC, I am going to make it the same 1-10 scale, but 1 in this instance means that it isn’t worth your time and 10 means that you are going to love it.  Since I know that this more of a personal tastes thing, since I know that some of you aren’t as into shooting the shit as I am, I will have it reflect.  But if you are that person, enjoy.

Final Verdict:
9 out of 10

Peace out,

Maverick

The Future of Big-A$$ Gaming Companies

Yeah, another post about video games.  Don’t hate on me.  To be honest, the reason that I am talking so much about this and not other things is because right now, there aren’t a lot of other things that are interesting me.  For real, that’s it.  Come summer, I will have film reviews, and I will actually be able to get back to the series I was doing on here.  I haven’t forgotten it.  I will get back to it.  And I will also be talking about stuff that comes up that gets my attention, most of it things that piss me off or confuse the hell out of me.  But right now, video games are the thing, and that’s because this year has a lot of talk about the future of this medium, with the release of the PS4 and the new Xbox console on the horizon.  And for those of you who think I should do book reviews, well, you can shove that right up your ass.  Because that would take a million years and involve a lot of pretentious discussion about the themes, character archetypes and all that.  I don’t want to do that.  With films and games, it is a lot easier.  So I will enjoy my books at my leisure.  Don’t like it?  Your problem, not mine.

The fall of THQ took the entire gaming community by storm.  We didn’t expect this.  We didn’t understand this.  We didn’t know what to think.  A lot of people talked about why they failed, and there was a lot to talk about.  The reality is that the reason that THQ failed (and I am going to be making a REALLY big hyperbole jump here), in my opinion, is the same reason that Zynga is dying on the vine and big companies like EA and Ubisoft have a bad habit of breaking even these days.  The reason is this – their formula is getting old.

The best way to show this is to look at two of the games that were not anywhere approaching AAA budgets, but sold unbelievably – The Walking Dead and Journey.  These two games are awesome.  They combined atmosphere, character development and my personal favorite – story-telling over action.  Both of these games were small Indie projects that were done by companies who want to expand the medium and challenge players instead of give them lots of things to shoot at.  But the formula of having lots of things to shoot at is almost ubiquitous to the medium these days.  That’s not to say that having lots to shoot at is a bad thing.  Far from it.  Games like Mass Effect, Dead Space (minus the boring third act), and any number of games that have action but don’t have guns, such as Assassin’s Creed or Final Fantasy and the series’ they inhabit have been fun to play and enjoyed by their respective fans.  But did you notice something in that list?  All these series’ are having their respective problems.  Some of them are done, like Mass Effect (hopefully).  But on its way out, Mass Effect felt less and less like an action RPG and more and more like just a regular old action game.  That’s not to say that it was bad.  Far from it.  I still did and still do love the series (minus that god-awful ending of the third and the god-awful way they tried to fix it).

Let’s do a tangent here and talk about big-ass gaming companies.  Big-ass gaming companies are big.  Hence my unofficial and totally dickish approach in talking about them.  But being big is not necessarily bad.  For real, there is nothing wrong with making money.  I may be a far-left whack-job liberal, but I am not against making money.  What I am against is making money and not respecting your customers, along with a bunch of other things like not exploiting workers, the laws of your respective nation and the people in general.  The problem with being big is that you become so big that you eventually try and think up ways to get even bigger.

Before the crash of 2008, the gaming companies were soaring high with profits that you can’t even begin to imagine.  After that, their stock prices plummeted.  But so did every major corporation’s at the time.  No big deal there.  However, the sudden turn of the economy, along with new hardware created a new trend that we are still seeing, even today – the rise of the Indie market.  See, the big gaming companies had a formula that was so repetitive that it was getting a lot of gamers bored.  More Call of Duty?  Yay…(see sarcasm)  We wanted something new.  Something different.  A return to games that tried new things, not knowing if they would work.  They wanted to make games instead of having companies make money.  The introduction of nickel-and-diming DLC didn’t help.  But there were new groups out there.  New companies with just a few people who were trying new things and making it work.  People were staying tuned.  People wanted to learn more.  The gamers wanted to see where this new growth of the medium would take us.

You may think that I’m rehashing my “The Future of AAA-Gaming” post, but I’m not.  See, the thing that needs to be kept in mind here is that we are talking about the corporate side of this.  EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix and Activision have all fallen into step into a predictable formula – get big hits out and get them out quick.  Big games like Call of Duty, Battlefield and almost the entire FPS market is full of this.  The reason they do this is simple – big money in the short term.  But this kind of short-sightedness is going to kill their companies.

For those of you who are going to come back at me and say something like, “But what about Michael Bay?  He makes the same kind of shitty movie over and over again and still makes a gajillion dollars!”  You’d be right, but here’s the difference – Michael Bay doesn’t have a bad economy to fight it out with.  The fall of 2008 hurt the regular Joe pretty damn bad.  The job market was torn to ribbons here in the US, and the incompetence of our government is showing that this problem isn’t going to be fixed any time soon.  Instead, we are having to do the best we can with what we can get.  And getting a game isn’t as cheap as sitting through Michael Bay’s crap.

Enter Steam

Steam was a game-changer.  Steam is the least talked about next-gen console there is.  It is giving gamers the games that they want.  It is giving new game companies with small budgets new platforms to have their games on.  Sure, it has hit a roadblock or two, but all things considered, it is still doing well.  What’s more, it affordable.  Very much so.

Then there’s Kickstarter

Kickstarter projects are changing the game in other ways.  Now, groups who were marginalized and consumed by bigger companies have splinter cells who want to go back to the way things once were, but still want to make good games.  So, they are making games that are pushing boundaries while also giving people a taste of the familiar.  You can have both world.s  It’s been done before, and well, too.  What’s more, it allows small game designers the chance to make the games people want without needing big studios to supplement their budgets.  They can get this money directly from the consumers who want their products.

Meanwhile, back at companies like EA and Square Enix, things aren’t looking too good for them.  The AAA market is getting more and more unsustainable.  The short answer to why is because of the crash of the economy and it’s stagnant growth.  The long answer is…well, forget that.  Parts of the long answer are because the budgets that these companies need to invest in these games is getting unbelievable, and they are not throwing a bone to new talent and taking chances, because the reality is that their bottom lines are breaking even.  They can’t afford to take too many chances.  They are stuck in their respective ruts and it will drive them into the ground.  Not today or tomorrow, mind you.  It will still be a while.  But once the ground has crashed out from under them, the fallout won’t be pretty.

We’re already seeing it start.  Following the Mass Effect 3 catastrophe back in 2012, EA and Bioware released statements that they would listen to the fans and fix what was widely perceived to be a mistake.  By the fans.  Not the gaming journalist machine as a whole, and especially not the PR behind them.  They promised us DLC that would address this problem and give us a solution.  What did we get?  We got a continuation of an ending that was already broken and didn’t make sense.  And nobody won.  The fan base who wanted a new and better ending didn’t win.  Bioware lost because they were now losing customer loyalty from the billions of holes that bad forum response gave them.  EA looked worse than they already did.  A trend they have been continuing, by the way, with their stupid-ass decision to have always-online DRM for SimCity.  The media just wanted this to be over so they didn’t have to talk about it anymore.  Nobody won.  Bioware has redeemed themselves a bit with the release of some fun DLC, like their latest, Citadel, which feels more like closure to the game than the actual game itself.  Still, this is the start.

However, for the consumer, all is not lost.  Games are going to be still be made.  New software makes creating very good-looking and smooth-playing games much cheaper than before.  A team of college students with only $100,000 made the game Cube, which looked amazing and wasn’t a massive project.  And there is an even stranger trend with games that are absolutely massive being released for free and free to play.  These things are awesome news.

For the big companies, they will still be making money, but the ground beneath them is starting to turn to sand.  Brace yourselves, people.  Years down the road, the same crying that got the Zynga CEO famous will be making other big companies famous, too.

Until next time, a quote,

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”  -Apple, Inc.

Peace out,

Maverick