Wada could be very correct if he meant Core Gaming Consoles.

Handheld gaming is very popular in Japan and everywhere else. No one has explained to me how server based gaming is supposed to work on handhelds.

If Square and other third party companies did this, why would anyone buy a Playstation console?

The future of gaming is hardware. This is because the future of gaming has always been in hardware. Changing the interface and the hardware it is on alters the game substantially. I guess some people missed the giant clues such as the Wii phenomenon or the Wii Fit phenomenon or even the music games with their plastic instruments.

As is the rule, whenever someone mentions “Cloud Gaming”, I have to post “Up, Up, and Away” from Fifth Dimension to show how ridiculous the “Cloud Gaming as Future” is.

If you are in America, it is time for Thanksgiving.

I give thanks to Super Mario Brothers 5. It shows me that talent is not dead, it is only sleeping.

I think back when Super Mario Brothers 4 was released.

Those who were ten years old are now thirty.

Those who were twenty years old are now forty.

Those who were thirty years old are now fifty.

I know one Atari Era gamer who has cancer and never thought he’d see another Mario game again. The parents of the NES generation, who played Mario with their children, are in their sixties and seventies if they are still alive.

I ran into a younger-than-19-year-old gamer, and I pointed to Super Mario Brothers 5. “How can you connect to that game? You weren’t even born when Super Mario Brothers 4 was released.”

And the young gamer responded:

“But I did grow up with classic Mario. I played it on the Gameboy Advance.”

Ahh…

When it comes to classic Mario, perhaps the Old Generation and Young Generation are not so different after all!

More emails come in than I can possibly respond to (what is fun about my email is that there is such a diversity of subjects they talk about, I never get tons of emails on only one subject). After weeks of this, I am really backed up.

I will respond soon.

I actually had a very long and wondrous essay prepared for you. Unfortunately, it was devoured by outlook, so in my frustration I deliver unto you, the condensed version.

The superguide, will have no negative effect on Zelda’s game design, because Zelda has always had linear game design.

My remark that Zelda Wii will be linear centric due to Super Guide has hit a nerve with many of my email. Zelda Wii is, at least, two years away and nothing has been shown about it. I never understand why people want to live in feel-good-hype about a game that is years off. We won’t know much until it is shown. But the direction the Zelda team has been going has been lowering my confidence. The more is showed off about Spirit Tracks, the more I shake my head.

Anyway, this was a good and valiant attempt. And, for that, I applaud you.

But now it is my turn.

Of course Zelda is “linear” because it has an ending. All video games that have a defined ending is “linear”. Just because you have to get items in order to get somewhere else does not make the game “linear”. By such a definition, even the “non-linear” games would all end up “linear”.

Your error was applying your new standard to only Zelda. But when treated universally, all games become “linear” under your broad stroke.

Let us take the king of RPGs, Ultima. Let us take what many consider the king of that series: Ultima 7 (Part 1, of course. Part 2 is very linear).

No one ever describes Ultima 7 as “linear”. In fact, it is considered the epitome of the “non-linear” game. Yet, in Ultima 7 you start off in the game confined in a walled town (Trinsic). You are ordered to go around and “investigate” the murder. When you do all these things, you get the password to leave the city. This is Copy Protection of the 90s at its finest!

The main game of Ultima 7 involves you chasing Elizabeth and Abraham on a wild goose hunt throughout the world. Wherever you go, they have just suddenly left. And new scenarios emerge with new murders and other occurrences. You must do certain events within the game such as freeing the Time Lord or destroying the Moon Gates. You must get material from a comet to make special helmets. You are not allowed to go in certain areas or do certain things and, especially, say certain things until you have done previous things or obtained previous items. All the things you do lead you to the final event of destroying the Black Gate which ends the game.

Ultima 7, which is replayed over and over again, always ends with the destruction of the Black Gate (with the exception of those choosing to walk into the Black Gate at the end and return home, but this occurs only in the last minute of the game), yet despite the same destination, the journey differs each time when playing the game. How is this possible?

It is possible because you have freedom. It is natural for someone to choose to do something different than what they did before. You can go left before you go right. You can use a bow instead of using a sword, or a magical hoe for that matter. You can make money by stealing dragons’ gold. You can also make money by baking bread. You can make money by stealing the mint. There are many different ways to play the game. At the end of each play, the gamer will feel like he had gone through a slightly different plot than what he saw before.

The “non-linearity” of early Zelda games had nothing to do with it being ‘disguised’. It had everything to do with the lack of text, the lack of dialogue, and the lack of cinematics and story. In the earlier Zeldas, you could go into dungeons into different order. Sure, you had to get a special item sometimes, but you could do it. With the earlier Zeldas, the overworld allowed different experiences to be had each time you played the game. While Link to the Past clearly shows how the vicegrip of “story” and “cinematics” were increasing, once in the Dark World Link is fully free to go wherever he pleases and however he pleases. He has to get some items first, sure.

Modern Zeldas ram a story down your throat. You don’t have much part at all in defining this story. No. Your role is to do nothing more than to move to a certain location or to kill a certain monster to trigger the next cinematic while gives you the next goal. The game becomes predictable. There are no surprises because you, the player, have no control over the story of the game. The more detailed the story becomes, the less control the player has.

And the stories suck anyway. Video game developers are crappy story tellers. Being a good story teller is very difficult. People who get paid to write books or to make movies are very rare among the population. Developers have not spent the decades necessary to form such a craft.

When game companies get the person to make music for the game, they get someone who is a professional musician (someone who can sell music anywhere). The programmers do not suddenly declare themselves master musicians and start making the music. (They used to have to do this as was necessary when a few people made games.)

When game companies get the people to make art for the game, they get someone who is a professional artist. They, themselves, do not suddenly declare themselves “master artists” and start drawing. This might have been necessary in the early games, but everyone has recognized that people need to know the craft of music in order to make good music or that people need to know the craft of art in order to make good art.

So why is that nonprofessionals, who do not possess the ability to sell a story to a book publisher or somewhere else, are writing the stories in these games?

Why is it that nonprofessionals, who do not possess the craft of movie directing and would be laughed out of Hollywood, are directing the ‘cinematics’ and the ‘flow’ of these games?

The result is mixing garbage with good food. It spoils the entire dish.

This is why I say it is better to have no story than a bad story. Just because the nonprofessionalism is not immediately recognizable as bad art or bad music is does not mean the consumer does not feel the bad story and bad flow. The consumer very well does. It is a reason why the consumer doesn’t want to finish or replay the game.

Ultima 7 is very interesting in this regard. The writing was all done by a hired and established playwright. This is a big reason why the NPCs all feel three dimensional and why the game feels very “rich” and “warm”. Yet, despite all the talking and all the text, no one describes Ultima 7 as “linear”.

Modern Zeldas are heavy handed. The game whacks you on the head with a cinematic skillet with many dialogue boxes. You are not allowed to imagine anything else. You are not even allowed to do anything else.

I didn’t have ANY of that in the early Zeldas. The fun thing about these type of games is that I had no idea what my journey would be when I replayed the game. It always ended up being very different than the previous game. No playthroughs of Zelda I or Zelda II are the same. The combat varies so much as well as the players’ approaches to it. Zelda III had that more in areas than as a unified whole.

Hell, even Mario 5 is more non-linear than Zelda is today. When you replay Mario 5, you can (and likely will) go a different path through the game.

Non-linearity is about the control the player has over the player and what can be done in the game world. In a broad definition, all games are ‘linear’ because almost all games have endings and all game worlds have limits due to the finite content. Modern Zelda likes to take control away from the player.

To repeat what you say:

Your second point, the skeleton of Zelda is arcade gameplay, I also believe to be incorrect. For if it were ture, you would not be longing for this arcade gameplay outside of Wii sports, who’s skeleton IS arcade gameplay. You want content. You want an adventure.

This is nonsense. It is akin to saying that people like classic Mario because it focuses on adventures to new worlds and realms just like 3d Mario. No, people like classic Mario because of the arcade gameplay. This is why 3d Mario lost so many Mario fans from the 8-bit and 16-bit generations.

The earlier Zeldas were not played under a guise of “Ooohhh, I cannot wait to explore and hunt for that next cave”, or “Ooohh, I cannot wait to torch all the trees in Hyrule to find the entrance of the dungeon.” Instead, it was, “Screw this! Where is that Nintendo Power magazine that shows me where it is?” There was heavy use of maps then which negates any idea that players played Zelda for the “adventure” of the “game world”. What game world? That blocky mess?

Zelda used to be an action RPG. Things would attack you all the time. It was a very intense game. It was a thrill to upgrade your sword or armor. Do you ever upgrade your sword or armor in Modern Zelda? You do, but it isn’t for the purpose of combat (as it was in earlier Zelda). Your sword even used to shoot out across the screen. This was very useful. Where did that go?

The items in Modern Zelda are nothing but keys by another name. The boomerang is not used in combat (not often, at least). No, the boomerang is to be used to solve a puzzle at point 42X. Once solving the puzzle with the boomerang, the door (or barrier) opens. Modern Zelda is nothing more than moving from one room into another. They should rename the series to Legend of Lolo.

In earlier Zelda, something like the downward thrust or upward thrust totally changed the nature of the game and made the player feel more powerful. If Zelda II was remade today, the downward thrust would only be used once, maybe twice, and that is to get past a barrier so you could go into the next room. Zelda never used to be primarily about puzzle solving. It used to have action.

It was very easy to die in Zelda. This was not because the game was hard. It was because if you blinked or were slacking off, you could easily get enough hits which would ensure death. (Zelda used to be an intense experience.) Today, the only way to die in Zelda is to for the player to drop dead from boredom.

If the Adventures of Lolo was brought into 3d, you would not see any difference between it and the Modern Zelda game.

One big change is that Zelda used to have competition. There were many action RPGs that were Zelda-like. Some of these games were intentionally made like Neutopia. Crystalis was better than Zelda. Battle of Olympus was a damn good game. Some even call Guardian Legend similar to Zelda. However, the N64 didn’t have much in third party support which lopsided many of the Nintendo software there. What other RPG could you buy on the N64 that was not Zelda?

In addition, every franchise gets some bizarre *boost* in sales when it goes 3d. But that *boost* is just that, a boost. It is temporary and the franchise immediately begins deflating. Metroid Prime shows this. Final Fantasy shows this. The high sales for a game like Ocarina do not truly illustrate its popularity.

Most people who played Ocarina did not finish the game (myself included). Miyamoto assumed this was because the game was too difficult. Therefore, Zelda games have become easier. However, the sales for Zelda games are falling apart and this is striking with no competition.

Perhaps there is another reason why most people did not finish Ocarina. This reason has never been offered before because no one has the balls to offer it. In fact, every other reason is explored with every effort ignoring this reason. Do you want to know this possible reason? Here it is:

Maybe Ocarina of Time was not that good of a game in the first place. Maybe people stopped playing the game not because the game was hard but because they were bored and not having fun anymore.

A thoughtful email. Here it is in entirely below:

________________________________________________

Hi Malstrom!

The Gamasutra story where the analyst was “analysing” the survey was so interesting, i thought i should analyse the story.

Surveys itself are interesting, not because of what people answer, but because of what is asked. Surely, i don’t know what the “fall-holiday survey” asked, but i think we still can get something out of it.

Despite broadening audiences and casual platforms, core games remain the best investment for video game publishers, says Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz — who says “the Wii bubble could be deflating.”

This is just blowing hot air. Looking at where 3rd parties have had their biggest successes, then yes, core games remain their best investment. But we can also look where their biggest failures came from — surprise, they’re core games just as well. Also, the end of the world could be coming tomorrow.

Revealing the results of a broad fall-holiday survey, Creutz says Wii owners are buying fewer games now than they did a year ago — while Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 plan to buy more.
This most likely is “on average”. Biggest installbase still can sell the most software, even if games are bought less per user. There was also the keyword “plan”. Planning on buying something doesn’t automatically translate to purchase, just like “not planning on buying something” doesn’t translate to “will not buy”. 360 and PS3 owners on average likely follow the hype in the internet, as opposed to Wii owners who buy more games based on when they see it on a store shelf, so if the survey had been made after the COD release, we might have slightly different results.

This also is where background information would be very important. If you’re a teenager who doesn’t earn the money you spend, there’s little to none substance in your purchase plans and as we know, the HD consoles are the most popular among teenagers… After all, i’m planning to buy a Ferrari — if i ever get the money to spend into a Ferrari.

This is partially a function of the economic climate — core gamers are the group least likely to trim entertainment spending when budgets get tight. Consumers who own only a Wii, however, are least-likely among all current-generation platforms to increase their software purchases this holiday, he says.
When recession hits, where you spend the most money is going to be hit the most, while where you spend the least money, is going to be hit the least. This also happened during the 30’s. The most hardcore movie goers most likely cut their spending in movies, while the number of casual movie goers exploded and the existing casual movie goers didn’t have to cut down their spending to movies. And, obviously relating to the previous, the proof of substance is missing.

Over half of Wii owners also own an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, Creutz says — but of those who own more than one console, only 23 percent consider Wii their main platform, which means bigger holiday wish lists among core gamers are more likely to benefit core market games rather than Wii titles.

I would love to see the results for other platforms aswell. 77 percent left for the two HD consoles and PC (notice the different wording platform=/=console).

A big fail was to differentiate Wii games and core games, Wii does have lots of core games. This tries to indicate that Wii isn’t in the core market at all (despite it contradicting what was said about half of the Wii owners owning a second current gen console). Here would be interesting to see the percentages for the other consoles aswell. Wii has around 45% of the current gen installbase in NA (where the survey obviously was made), then this means that about half of the HD console owners owns a Wii. Console specific numbers would be very interesting.

“While core gamers who own a Wii own more Wii games on average than casual gamer Wii-owners, the average title ownership spread between the two categories of gamers is much lower than it is for owners of Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles,” says the analyst.

Without knowing the specific numbers for attach rate, this can only mean that either casual Wii gamers buy more software on average than casual HD-console gamers, or core gamer on Wii buy less software on Wii than they do on HD-consoles, or then it simply means both. Oh, and casual gamers aren’t antithesis to core gamers. A large number, most likely the majority, of current core gamers are casual gamers.

Creutz concludes that core gamers who own multiple consoles are primarily buying Wiis to play Nintendo titles, and not games by other publishers.

Yes, there aren’t that many 3rd party core games on Wii that come even close in quality to Nintendos core games. Core gamers buying Wiis for Nintendo titles is the result, not the reason. And this is where the guy points out that Nintendos core titles are strong enough to warrant a purchase.

“We believe that the optics of this hardware cycle have been significantly distorted by the explosive growth of the Wii console,” says Creutz.

Distorted from what?

The Impact On Publishers

Wii was the primary driver of industry growth in 2007 and 2008, and remains the top-selling console in America. But according to the analyst, “its success did not correlate with strong performances by the U.S. software publishers as a group.”

Hahaha, “strong performance as a group” is just a way of saying “most of the industry did like shit, but with a couple huge hits, it managed to pull its head above the surface”. Software publishers, in real life, don’t work as group. It’s not heartwarming to see your biggest competitor to prosper while your own company is facing bankrupcy. Just look how Modern Warfare 2 made EA to prosper.

And with Wii hardware and software sales declining, investors have become much more cautious about the games business — meaning further negative impact for U.S. publishers.
I love this… This is just saying how meaningful Wii is to games industry. If Wii falls, the industry falls due to lack of investment.
In other parts of the article, future is used to show how the HD consoles will be doing good, while this particular part is predicting the past — early this year. A smarter guy might notice that the competition didn’t do any better.

“While we believe the Wii is likely to be a drag on overall software sales through the holiday, the impact should be limited to those publishers which have invested significantly in Wii development, with the biggest negative impact likely to be felt by Electronic Arts, which (unwisely in our view) heavily invested in Wii development for [calendar 2009],” says Creutz.

With NSMB Wii, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort? Drag indeed. EA did right to invest in Wii, it’s just that their projects have mostly been the wrong type. But with all the money they make with the HD consoles, success on Wii is meaningless. Right?

Sony’s PS3 Strategy To Bear Fruit At Last?

On the other hand, Creutz says, the PlayStation 3 looks poised for a strong holiday — 21 percent of survey respondents who don’t currently own one plan to buy one this season.
Great for PS3. So many people wanting to buy PS3.

That’s slightly below the Wii’s 26 percent intent figure, but nearly double the Xbox 360’s 12 percent purchase intent, according to Cowen’s survey. And Sony’s long-held faith in brand loyalty may finally bear fruit: the data also shows that 32 percent of PlayStation 2 owners who haven’t yet bought a current generation plan to buy a PS3, versus 19 percent for the Wii and just 9 percent for the Xbox 360.

WTF? Even more people wanting to buy Wiis. Why wasn’t this mentioned above? What’s funny in this is, that the really meaningful figure, which is people who don’t own a specific console yet, is tried to be downplayed by with the figure of people wanting to upgrade. 21 percent is very good figure, but the data so far is showing that what really is doomed, is Xbox 360 (which is no wonder since PS3 is doing strongly). Expect new Xbox release soon.
Also, there’s 50% undecided left.

The uptick in intent is largely credited to the new $299 price point, says Creutz — and the Blu-ray player may finally be helping the console too, as consumers showed a willingness to pay slightly higher prices for a console with one versus without.
Indeed. PS3 eats away sales from 360.

“With the frontline Xbox 360 console (the Elite) also retailing for $299, we believe Sony now has, for the first time, a significant price advantage at retail, particularly in the minds of serious gamers who are more likely to be considering the PS3 vs. the Xbox 360 Elite rather than the $199 Xbox 360 Arcade version,” the analyst concludes.

What price advantage PS3 has? When two products sell for the same price, neither has price advantage. PS3 may have advantage with features, which previously have been nullified with higher price. The serious gamer (not core) is opposed to casual gamer. If PS3 is eating away the serious gamer and Wii owns the casual market, the 12 percent purchase intent is just going to go down.

Summa summarum: It’s interesting how the first half of the story is trying to show how Wii is doomed, but the latter half ends up showing that, in reality, 360 is doomed. Hahaha.

I’ve thought for a long time that Wii Music is a platformer in disguise – (see this post for example http://kotaku.com/comment/8784899/), which makes it interesting in different ways from other music/rhythm games.

Even more so now that NSMBWii is out. In particular, we get the same sort of fun from  multiplayer in the two games – that joyful mixture of helping or hindering each other through a familiar-feeling landscape.

It isn’t an exact match of course, especially as one is done in graphics and the other in sound. But the overall feel is very close indeed.

I can’t help but feel that the biggest problem with Wii Music was not so much the user-generated content aspect – as I don’t see that the content is any more user-generated than are the NSMBWii level designs – but the fact that Wii Music does not have a good and accessible single-player mode. Anything you try to do in single-player is either in the company of computer-generated dolts, or you have to painstakingly construct through several runs.

It is as if in Mario, you were obliged to play with computer toads/Luigi to complete any level. It just wouldn’t work.

That aside, they seem to me to be pretty much the same game – or at least very closely related.

Hello Malstrom,

PS: While I know Kid Icarus and EarthBound weren’t console pushers, the content is still fresh and unique. Better gameplay (Kid Icarus is short and EarthBound’s battle system is archaic) and advertising (as a kid, I saw EarthBound ads and thought it was a game about farts, ugh) would probably have made them better sellers.

The best way to make content is to STEAL it! And video games have many areas to steal content from. Content can be stolen from movies, from literature, from myths, all sorts of places.

Miyamoto’s advice to young game developers, I forget where or when he said it, but the advice for them was to do something other than just play video games. It was to learn more about the world, to learn things.

I wonder if it would be a good idea for a game developer to NOT play video games and focus more on other outside things such as literature or music or art or whatever else. Some top tier entertainers I’ve heard don’t even bother to listen or look at anyone else in their profession. They are in their own world. Also, not looking at those in their own profession cuts down on the risks for copying them.

Orson Scott Card’s advice to young writers was to avoid the “creative writing” courses at colleges and take up classes like history or science or anything else. The reason, he said, was that all those classes would act like a fuel to your craft. The “creative writing” class might even be detrimental to your craft. It would force you to write in the voice the teacher wants. And what in the world would you write about?

We have “video game classes” now in universities which, to me, appear as useless as the “creative writing” classes. I think the “budding game designer” is far better off taking classes in theater, music, history, science, or literature. After all, if the person teaching the “video game class” knew how to make sure fire hit games, he wouldn’t be teaching a class in the first place! (same way with the ‘creative writing’ teacher). I suppose such classes could have some use but nothing can replace solid learning of the humanities.

Even classes in marketing and business would be greatly helpful for the obvious reasons.

When I think of the great games, I think of the same thing. The game Civilization could not have been made unless the creators had a very large scope and sense of Human history. I mean, a young kid will learn much about history just from playing the game! And what is more amazing is that the game, Civilization, often leads the player to be more interested in history and to go look it up on his/her own.

A big element in the games business is licensed games. These games are often horrible. Yet, they sell. It is obvious to me why they sell. People buy the game to experience the imaginary world that game is licensed from (such as from a movie). They don’t seem to care that the game is horrible. But they do like the content of that game. This is a big reason why I suspect that content is what pushes a customer to a game as opposed to pure gameplay. Gameplay appears to be the bridge how the player interacts with the content. The bridge is very important, but the bridge has to lead somewhere cool.

There is so much discussion and exploration awaiting why the great games are great. Even discoveries can occur just through discussion. Unfortunately, the only discussion going around is “HorseRace” (which console is up? Which console is down?) or “Conjecture” (the games are slowing down due to poor marketing attempts of which…)

There is only discussion of “Industry”. There is no discussion about games. The only discussion of gaming is found among the gamers and that is usually limited to what they are currently playing. I don’t understand why “Industry” discussion is the only discussion.

I knew you were going to post about Miyamoto’s comments on Alice in Wonderland.  I just knew it.

Too funny.

Heh.

EA is pulling back from the Wii

Considering how much money they are losing, you’d think they’d want to be on the console with cheaper dev costs.

EA has had phenomenal success with their Wii fitness game (forget the name). They have had big success with Tiger Woods Golf as another example. Boom Blox was also made by EA, wasn’t it? I forget about that title.

And EA has lost tons of money on some HD games. Mirror’s Edge ended up being a disastrous loss of money as an example.

Let them hop onto the Core Market again. Watch them swirl down the drain.

There is no business logic or financial logic in abandoning the Wii at all. The “Game Industry” wants the Wii to go away. They keep citing “Wii HD” because that would mean Nintendo would be abandoning its disruptive ways.

Core Market is the ‘high end’ of games. EA might get some profit back. However, that will only be short term.

It looks like maybe the “Game Industry” finally realized what disruption is and hopes that it can starve the Wii to death. But the “Game Industry” didn’t create the Wii, the “Game Industry” therefore cannot destroy it. What is going to happen is that other game companies are going to find big success on the Wii, game companies not associated with the “Game Industry”. There are already too many success stories.

This could be good. Instead of the Wii propping up the “Game Industry”, as I feared, it could very well be the battering ram we need to bust up the industry castle once and for all.

Looks like the ‘third parties’ are not all taking the analysts’ bait that they must abandon the Wii. Look! Blue Fang is talking about customers! It is such a rare sight to witness a game company actually talk about customers that we must highlight it. It is a rare thing indeed.