Hello Malstrom,
I know you get a lot of e-mails, but I thought you’d get a kick out of this. Turns out the people who don’t like the new game from Valve, Portal 2, are wrong.
http://www.destructoid.com/valve-fans-whine-and-cry-about-portal-2-like-idiots-199220.phtml
The audience isn’t wrong, but the game is. It’s funny because the length is the reason my brother and I are not buying it. I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older that there is no reason to buy games you’ll just end up not playing after the credits. I’ve been playing a lot of Starcraft 2 with friends because of this. The other thing I noticed is DLC. Gamers seem to hate DLC. Part of it is the all it does is end up with half asked games that aren’t finished or the company uses it as a way to get extra money out of you. What was funny was that gamers never had a problem with expansions. My theory was that DLC feels under valued. You see a small amount of content that you don’t want it because it’s so small. Even if it’s priced reasonably, people still don’t want it. But expansions always feel like just that. They are worth the 30 or so bucks because they have a good amount of content, so the gamer is willing to pay that much.
It’s interesting what you can learn about the business of video games when you think like a gamer. Maybe Nintendo should do this.
Take care! I always love reading your blog,
I’ve noticed when gamers purchase a game to not bother talking about it. The gamer will be in ‘hype’ mode. Also, when you purchase a product, you tend to automatically want to like it. Only an idiot would buy a bad product. And since no one wants to be idiots, it takes a while before people realize bad games are bad.
It’s curious people would complain about Portal 2 so soon. There is some reason why these people are unhappy. It may not be exactly what they say. But the unhappiness is there. People WANT to like the game and try to find ways to like it. But something is pissing these people off.
The DLC might have brought these gamers out of ‘hype mode’.
Why is it that game developers think ‘good business’ is acting like a crass salesman who would get thrown on his ass in real life? People do not buy games so they can buy ‘more parts to that game’. It would be like buying a hamburger and after taking the first bite, the burger flipper appears at my table and asks if I want cheese it will cost extra.
From the complaints I’ve been reading, the general theme is about content. It is the lack of content and DLC. Gaming is currently in a content crisis. Gamers see this. Game companies don’t.
Gaming cannot succeed if people keep thinking games revolve around ‘gameplay experimentation’ with ‘tweaks to the business model’. Gaming can only succeed from a content perspective.
Reggie: “You mean value, huh, Malstrom? Huh? Huh?”
No…. It is similar to the problem Hollywood is having today. The movies of today are absolute crap compared to the movies of the past. The actors are arguably better. The special effects, the sound effects, and all the other technical effects are way better. But the content… The content sucks.
Why is the content uninteresting? It is because the content creator is likely uninteresting.
One thing about game makers in the past compared to today is that they were interesting. When you think of someone like Miyamoto, he comes across as an interesting person. This is why his games were interesting. Why was he interesting? Because he was interested in all sorts of things around him.
Today’s game makers seem like the most uninteresting people ever. They are generic in real life which means their games can only become generic.
One of the severe prices to pay for a good writer is eccentricity. Good writers are not regular people. They are a little crazy. But this eccentricity is an effect of them being interesting.
Using a hypothetical, let us pretend that the making of a most interesting game (say Civilization) caused the game developers to research everything about Human civilization. In order to create such an interesting game, the game developers forced themselves to become eccentric (i.e. learning about Human civilization). Most people do not do this. But in order to make a game, it had to be done. And the effects of this was making these developers slightly more eccentric than they were before.
Name any ‘great’ game developer.
“Will Wright!” a voice says from the audience.
OK. Will Wright is a very eccentric guy. He is very interesting. It is an effect, not the cause, of making interesting games.
Since today’s young game developers are trying to be ‘rock stars’ first, they are unwilling to allow themselves to become eccentric. And I think this might be a big reason why their games are unable to become interesting.
Just as manual labor leaves marks on the body, such creative labor leaves permanent marks on the personality. Behind every dull video game, I discover dull game developers. I’m not sure if it is because these people think their game is already interesting (when it is not) or that they are scared of ‘taking the plunge’ into eccentricity.