Hello Malstrom.
I was reading the email about the reader who lost his F-Zero GX save due to being unable to back it up. It reminded me of the crap that not only Nintendo, but also Sony and specially Microsoft love to force on us gamers. This is 2 folded, on one hand we have those things about locked saves, why? because of crap like Xbox achievements/PS3 Trophies that I’m willing to bet the majority of people don’t give a crap about, and even if we did, IT DOESN’T MATTER, if I copy a saved game from my friend who already unlocked everything, I’m not spoiling someone else’s game or something of the sort, I don’t know why Sony/Microsoft are so adamant about it, it’s like a sin if you somehow hack-in an Xbox 360 save since they could very well ban you; and there goes the rest of your Xbox live gold time you already payed them for. As for Nintendo, they don’t really have an excuse as the emailer said, you could say that WiFi games get a pass, but no, they don’t, on the DS, games like Mario Kart would generate a different friend code if you wanted to if you happened to be using a different system, and your progress wasn’t deleted, so why can’t Wii games do that as well
Maybe they don’t want people going online with everything unlocked because it “wouldn’t be fair” right…….. now why was I locked out of many perks and weapons in Modern Warfare 1? It was ridiculous, I went online and couldn’t use the sniper rifle because I hadn’t “unlocked it”, so I go in and get killed BY A SNIPER! HOW IS THAT ‘FAIR’? Fair would be having access to the same stuff, having access to the same stuff is fair, copying a saved game from a friend to unlock this stuff IS fair, I’m not spoiling, breaking, or whatever someone else’s game, I’m actually catching up in some cases, and I can get banned for that? give me a break!
This brings me to the second point. All this crap is augmented by the fact that most industry games nowadays (including Nintendo) LOVE to lock everything to the player. Just in Smash Brothers, half the cast is locked from the start, why? because to unlock it you either have to play a lot (not much of an issue since the game WILL be played a lot) or complete their bad Kirby-esque adventure game. Since the second one is faster, we had no choice but to do it that way if we ever wanted to play with say Wolf or Jigglypuff (characters that require the most playtime) at least the cut-scenes were cool. Many other games make this, and it is when the players complain that it’s a ‘chore’, because it is, it is NOT FUN to make chores, what developers don’t get is that unlocking DOES NOT EQUAL progress. I wonder since when they got this obsession of disguising chores as progress. But I think I have a pretty good idea why they do it. You see, if they don’t, people can more rapidly see theirs is a bad game, they keep the player entertained long enough so they don’t realize it. It’s only when the game doesn’t have any more chores to entertain the player that they realize it, and they’ll most likely say: “well, at least I got X amount of time out of it” and since no one likes to feel like an idiot after buying something, they won’t say anything is wrong with the game they bought.
It is very, VERY easy to take down any kind of argument pro-locking stuff in games, take games of old that didn’t have them that are still being played today. Any game. For me it’s Street Fighter II, no unlocks, whatsoever, yet it got and still gets MANY MANY MANY plays.
So hear us out game industry, we don’t spoil anyone’s game by spoiling our own, so it’s FAIR to do it, nobody cares about “gamer points” or “trophies” only idiot hardcores do, and my god how wrong is that, that they’ve gone so low as to beef their ego with such trivial inexistent stuff.
You make me ask an interesting question: when did games start to ‘lock’ content?
In the very beginning, games only had one stage like Pac-Man. The game just got faster and faster until you died. When games had multiple stages, you got to the next stage by finishing the first. It felt like progression because it felt like an adventure. And some games, like Super Mario Brothers, added Warp Zones where you could go to any world. Nothing was really ‘locked’.
The first time I recall seeing locked content was in racing games. In Super Mario Kart, you could not have access to Special Cup until you got gold in Mushroom, Flower, and Star cups. That never really bothered me then since it was only one cup. Oh yeah, 150cc was unlocked after doing well in the 100cc races I think. But no characters were locked.
Street Fighter 2 is a great example of how the characters were not ‘locked’. Another great example would be the Mega Man series. Sure, Wily’s Castle was ‘locked’, but that made sense. Mega Man was so popular because it didn’t bother with ‘warp zones’ and just let the player choose what stage. Imagine if 2d Mario tried that. Could be interesting.
Does anyone have any quotes or information as to why video games are having their content ‘locked’ in these artificial ways? It feels like every video game is trying to become a grindy RPG.