Friday afternoon tidbits

Some thanks are in order. First, to everybody who suggested gaming blogs last week, thanks for some excellent suggestions, and some new reading material. And second, I'm really appreciative of the thread that developed on the Dragon Age post earlier in the week. I still can't say I like the game, but I understand it much better now, and can say that I have more respect for what it sets out to accomplish. (Undermining that statement in 3... 2... 1...)

-The best blog post I've read this year is Krystian Majewski's three-part dissection of the interface problems in Mass Effect. In exacting detail, and with illustrative screenshots, Krystian pores over the numerous bad decisions, both large and small, that make playing Mass Effect such a trial. Upon reading this series, I realized two things:

1. Dragon Age's interface is a marked improvement over Mass Effect's.
2. Dragon Age's interface is still terrible.

BioWare seems to value neat-looking menus, status indicators, and icons over useful ones. And the fact that you will eventually learn what all these things mean, and how to use them, does not mean that they are done right in the first place, or that you are not wasting lots of time getting to that point. The menus are a special kind of hell, though I have to think they'd be much easier to navigate with a mouse. Obviously, many people can get past this and enjoy the high-level stuff that BioWare does so well. But an increased emphasis on interface design could only result in more people getting into these games. That would be better for everybody.

-The crew at Gamers with Jobs are such sharp and perceptive writers that when they go wrong, you can almost hear the needle scratching off the record. Sean "Elysium" Sands writes in "A Dirge for the Sinking Ship" that gamers are inadvertently hastening the demise of high-quality, original games by making stupid demands and engaging in silly boycotts. Elysium himself admits to an "unfocussed rage," which is something of an understatement. I think I understand his sentiment, but his logic is baffling.

The linchpin of his argument is that people who complain about day-one DLC in Dragon Age are shortsighted and greedy. Certainly nobody would argue that the game, as it shipped, is lacking content. That's part of why people are upset, I think. You just spent $60 on a new game, thinking you'll settle in for 50 hours or so, and within about 5 hours of play an NPC is hitting you up for actual money. I am not outraged by this, but I think gamers are well within their rights not to buy it, and to let the company know why. That's how the market is supposed to work.

Elysium's larger, self-defeating argument is that if we want to avoid a future with crippled retail products and day-one DLC, then we are obligated to... buy day-one DLC. Well, I don't buy that. Publishers aren't stupid. The way to ensure more games like Dragon Age is to buy Dragon Age. The way to ensure more DLC is to buy DLC. And for the dubious efficacy of things like boycotts -- especially half-hearted ones -- it does work when gamers make their voices heard. The infamous horse armor from Oblivion is the go-to example of stupid, overpriced DLC, and what happened there? There was an outcry, Bethesda responded, and future add-ons were more fairly priced and offered a greater value.

Nearly all of the examples Elysium points to as games we'll be missing out on in the future -- remember, the future after we haven't bought Dragon Age DLC -- are strange ones. Mirror's Edge was a fine idea but a bad game. Ghostbusters was all right, nothing special, and hardly an example of what I'd call a risky game. Brutal Legend was inspired, but a mess. The Riddick remake was great, but it was a remake of a commercially successful title, which tells me that they've already sheared that sheep as much as they're going to.

And then -- Dead Space? Uncharted 2? Fallout 3? Borderlands? We're afraid there won't be more games like these? These are all huge hits. They're all packed with great content on the disc, full experiences in themselves, with some optional DLC if you're into that sort of thing. I guarantee you that we will be seeing more games like these. And if the concern is that we'll only be seeing games like these, which is to say sequels to these games, well, some of them are sequels already. Besides which, these are all games that have come out in the past year, not long-forgotten relics of a more creative era.

There is something to the argument that the à la carte model prohibits systemic support for smaller and riskier projects -- there are so many niche cable television channels today because subscribers have so little choice in which ones we get, so we end up pooling our money for all of them. But a simple look at the state of independent games, especially through digital distribution platforms like Steam, would seem to put the lie to that, too. Anyway, I'd really recommend you read the piece and the top-notch comments thread that follows. Many great points have been made on both sides.

-This is making the rounds. And it is very funny.



Happy weekend!

Reconciling the irreconcilable

The story I've been alluding to for over a week now has been posted at thephoenix.com: "Sex, violence and video games." In it, I look at the merits of a few recent controversies, including the ever-present Grand Theft Auto criticism, the Mass Effect "SeXbox" flap, and, of course, the Resident Evil 5 trailer. I also take the community to task for often acting as their own worst enemies. The crux of the argument is that gamers need to be repping themselves better in the discourse, making a real effort at empathy:

The less-helpful commenters accused [critics themselves] of racism, of creating a racial divide where previously there was none. They decried an assault on Capcom’s right to free speech. But the question wasn’t whether the game’s Japanese developers had intended any racism (cultural ignorance is a commonly invoked defense among gamers), or why nobody had complained before when Resident Evil zombies had been predominantly white. It was whether those claiming free speech in defense of divisive games were willing to extend the same rights to those whom the games offended.

I also made one more attempt at demolishing the "just a game" defense.

To spend the bulk of your time and money on a hobby that can be dismissed with a wave of the hand would require an act of cognitive dissonance. Some games do have the potential to be transformative experiences. Talk to Final Fantasy VII fans about the grief they felt when Sephiroth killed Aeris. Ask a few BioShock players whether they saved or harvested the Little Sisters, and why. Such indelible moments may be rare, but they give game developers something to strive for. And they give gamers hope that the next game we play will also engage us intellectually, emotionally, and morally. I can think of no more belittling way to discuss this medium than to ever call something "just" a game. So let’s scrap that argument.

Think it'll take? Me neither.

When I began this piece, I had intended to lay the hammer down. This was to be the last word on the subject, and the spark that ignited countless fanboy epiphanies around the world. But that's not how it ended up. It is, perhaps, a good place to start, presuming that angry mobs don't do their best to prove my point. I would love to know what people think.

P.S. It's the cover story in this week's print issue, which is exciting. Pick up a copy, if you're local.

P.P.S. Also check out the brief sidebar, "Not-so-great moments in video game controversy." Nothing new or particularly illuminating, but that stuff's always good for a laugh.

The infinite idiocy feedback loop

So, first I said Kevin McCullough was not worth responding to, and then today Tycho of Penny Arcade said much the same thing. But not before writing a comic about him.

The point is well-taken that page views are the fuel that drives this man's infernal idiocy engine, and that we only encourage this sort of behavior by giving him more of them. Not to mention that finding himself besieged by a horde of frothing gamers will only serve to further convince Kevin McCullough that game players really are a bunch of trogs driven wholly by their baser impulses. It hardly matters that on the subject at hand, hot alien sex in Mass Effect, he is empirically wrong and we are right.

Still: Should we simply let these insults pass? I would agree that there is probably a better way to reach Mr. McCullough than the way most people chose, but I guarantee you that he also received a fair number of thoughtful and considered responses from people who showed him the respect he never afforded them. I further guarantee that McCullough disregarded the substance of these emails, except for his admission that, okay, you can't really make your character's boobs whatever size you want.

I tend to think that a hard truth is more valuable than a beautiful lie, and so while it would have been easy to let this moronic column die as McCullough himself one day will, alone and unloved, the fact is that the record needed to be corrected. That so many felt it necessary to stoop to his level does not undercut their essential rightness.

File under: Not worth responding to

I know I'm always saying that people should take games a little more seriously, and not absolve them of responsibility for their ethical, moral, or political subtexts.

This is not what I had in mind.

It's not just the condescending, authoritarian tone that has been so in vogue among the country's right wing in recent years. Nor the homophobia, nor the misogyny. But this guy has obviously played Mass Effect even less than Dean Takahashi! He obviously should have disclosed how much time he spent playing the game before filing his review. Otherwise, he loses all credibility.

Dean Takahashi falls on his sword

Don't worry: as per our earlier agreement, this is not a Mass Effect post. Not really. It seems that San Jose Mercury News critic Dean Takahashi has retracted his negative Mass Effect review after comments from numerous readers led him to discover that he had missed a crucial component of the game. He wasn't assigning his characters the talent points they had earned, which left them woefully underpowered as he tried to progress. In fact, Takahashi's original review echoes my own thoughts about the game quite closely, even though I wasn't forgetting to assign my talent points. But, again, this isn't a Mass Effect post.

Instead, this episode spotlights a problem that's unique to video games in the world of arts criticism: many times, it's simply not possible to fully review a game in a timely manner. I get the impression this is something no reviewer wants to admit. We're positioned as experts, and I think many of us are content not to disabuse our readers of the notion that we see all and know all. But of course that's silly. Our opinions aren't any better or more valid than anybody else's -- we just have the ability, hopefully, to express those opinions in a way that's entertaining or enlightening.

Not everybody agrees with me on this, not least some outlets themselves. Gamespot's explanation of their ratings system actually says this:

"Wait, reviews are just opinions. Right?"
Actually, we don't think so. We make no excuses for our verdicts about games and believe our reviews stand for themselves. While our reviews, of course, do contain an element of subjectivity to them, we see the process of reviewing games as one that primarily involves the reporting of facts. To an extent, we naturally color these facts based on our own experiences of having spent much time playing other games in the past, but we make every effort to look at every game on its own merits, and we describe each game in the most factual terms possible.

Yet just above this, in response to the question of how long they spend playing a game prior to the review, Gamespot uses the weaselly phrase "we play games extensively before committing to our full reviews," and defines "extensively" as about 10 hours. This blows my mind, because that's about the average time I can put into a game before deadline, and I would never deign to call my reviews anything but "just an opinion."

Which brings us back to Dean Takahashi's problem with Mass Effect. He put in, by his own accounting, about eight hours, which is obviously far too short to explore the vast majority of what the game has to offer. By its nature, this is a game designed to be played over and over, in endlessly different ways. It's practically unreviewable, if completeness is your primary concern. I've said it before, but movie reviewers don't have this problem. Record reviewers don't have this problem. Book reviewers don't have this problem. They clock in for a couple of hours and they're done.

I've seen it suggested that game critics ought to disclose just how much time they spent with a game before writing their reviews, and while I don't think this is necessary in all cases, it might not be a bad idea to mention if you kept running into roadblocks early into the game, as Takahashi and I both did. But isn't that, too, a legitimate point of contention for a review? While playing Mass Effect, I said to more than one person, "All I do is play video games and I can't make the slightest sense of this game." While this is a minority opinion, I'm obviously not alone there. How long do you let a game suck in hopes that it'll get better? Why not just load up a game that's fun from the get-go?

All this is certainly not to duck the very real responsibility a game reviewer has to the readership. Our charge is to make a good-faith effort to play as much of the game as possible without bias or prejudice, and to communicate, as clearly as we can, what the experience is like. That doesn't mean everyone is going to agree with us, obviously, or that our take is somehow more correct than that of your average player. It just means taking the time to play both single-player and multi-player modes, and whatever else the developer has thrown in there. It means trying to identify the primary purpose of a game and judging whether the game fulfills that purpose.

As an example: I played the lame, tacked-on CTF component to The Darkness, and didn't mention it in the review because it was so clearly irrelevant to the mind-blowing single-player campaign. Similarly, in my review of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, I mentioned specifically that I retreated quickly from online play because I was getting smoked. Maybe it's not what everybody wants from a critic -- but, hey, at least I was honest. What matters is that the reader knows where you're coming from.

Dean Takahashi, to his eternal credit, has done just that. And in spite of this event -- in fact, because of it -- I'm a lot more likely to trust him in the future. Certainly much more than I trust Gamespot's opinions.

Oh, sorry, I meant Gamespot's edicts.

The Year in Review: The Worst Games of 2007

All this week, we'll be recapping the year that was. Today: the worst games of the year.

Although it was an historically good year for games, 2007 had its share of stinkers. Bad games aren't always bad for the same reasons good games are good -- a game can be technically competent and still be philosophically or spiritually repulsive. In fact, nothing is more disappointing than when genuine talent goes toward creating something ugly.

That's the case with the two worst games I played this year: Def Jam Icon* and Manhunt 2. We don't like being condescended to, you and I, and yet when I played these games my overarching impression was that of a publisher saying, "You'll fall for anything, won't you?"

In the case of Def Jam Icon, EA took the opportunity to charge sixty bucks for a game that was nothing but advertisements. Ads for albums, ads for clothing, ads for the rappers themselves. I'm not naive -- I understand that making games is expensive, and I'm not opposed to a little product placement if it's integrated in a way that makes sense. But there was literally nothing else to Def Jam Icon. The gameplay felt like it was happening underwater, and the interactive environments were repetitive and uninteresting. This was the most cynical game I've ever played.

Manhunt 2 was nearly as bad in that respect. It tried to be outrageous and in-your-face for no reason other than, well, to be outrageous and in-your-face. Roger Ebert likes to say that a movie isn't about what it's about; it's about how it's about it. Violence and sexual content are only as tasteless or offensive as how they're employed. Most of the best games of the year were extremely violent, but none were as exploitative and hollow as Manhunt 2. There was no real reason to go for the most gruesome kills except to see if you could do it. Your character was largely the aggressor, and didn't act in self-defense. These are not attractive qualities in a game. It became clear late in the game that the makers intended to make some kind of comment on the nature of sanity, and in that respect, at least, they succeeded: while playing Manhunt 2, I definitely questioned my sanity.

The most boring game I played was Battlestations Midway, a turgid World War II sim that combined featureless real-time strategy with rudderless action gameplay. This game was so unremarkable in every way, I'm no longer convinced it even existed.

And then there are two games that, objectively, probably aren't that bad. Two games whose off-the-charts hype and legions of devoted online footsoldiers probably did more to put me off than did the actual gameplay. I speak, of course, of Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Halo 3 is certainly a high quality product by any objective measure. But when you consider the still-boring single-player campaign and obnoxious Xbox Live community, some of the shine comes off. Why is this the game that everybody agreed on? I don't get it. I can think of at least four other 360 shooters this year that were better.

As for Mass Effect, I believe we agreed never to speak of it again.

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

*Postscript: In linking to my original Def Jam Icon post, I saw that I had written this in response to a comment: "Gamespot had all the same criticisms I did, and then gave it an 8.1. I'm not always convinced that review scores are busted in general, but that made me pause." In light of recent events, it seems I was too charitable.

Now let's never speak of it again

The Mass Effect review is up. One point of clarification: It does read a bit like I'm criticizing the game based on what the previews said it would be, which is neither terribly fair nor my intention. Rather, the point is that every game has to cut stuff out in order to ship, but it's not usually so obvious.