Moving Forward without Moving
I wanted to write a small something in regards to video games and the future course of them.
No shock to anyone, but I love video games. I have lived them and breathed them from the moment my Zaidy got his first Nintendo Entertainment System and I ran from the room. Yes, that’s right, video games scared me at first. I actually had nightmares about Mario hopping through the screen and burning me alive with his fireballs. But this passed. Soon enough, I was playing games like Mario, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Gauntlet, Trog, and Mega Man. And soon enough, me and my brother moved up to Super Nintendo, with games like Donkey Kong Country and Mega Man X (still my favorite game to date). Genesis came next with Sonic and Vectorman. And then I started on the disc based route. All my friends owned Nintendo 64s. I wanted something different, so I got a PS1, and then moving onto PS2, and finally, I own a PS3.
What I wanted to write about was the advent of Motion Controls. With Wii being the market success it has been, it didn’t take long for Microsoft and Sony to jump on the bandwagon. And in a business, I don’t really blame them. But allow me to make my point about motion controls absolutely clear:
Motion controls can suck the semen off a donkey’s dick.
It really reminds me of 3D animation in general. Or even having all kids movies be in 3D with the glasses now. It’s a revolution because someone TELLS us it’s a revolution. But in fact, it is no revolution. It’s a gimmick. A shiny toy meant to catch our eyes and go “Hey, that’s neat.” In a lot of respects (attempting to get as nerdy as possible here), it reminds me of the early Mortal Kombat games, that used photo realism to give it a unique look from anything out on the market right now. Sure it caught everyone’s eye, but where did it lead us, technologically speaking. Nowhere. It was a dead end in graphics that couldn’t amount to anything more than getting people’s attention. Mortal Kombat isn’t what I’d call a good fighting game, but a spectacle. And that’s how I see Wii. A spectacle. A gimmick.
A while back, I actually wrote how I thought the Wii could revolutionize gaming by thinking outside the box and moving us forward in ways we didn’t think were possible. But it HASN’T. It hasn’t revolutionized gaming. It’s just different. And when you have 3 consoles to choose from, that’s fine. I like that one system is meant for online multi-player, one is meant for party games, and one is…well a Blu Ray player. But it also has a nice set of 1 Player games. And that’s how I like it.
To get off track for a second, the reason I like games is the meditative mindset of it. I like losing myself in a good game like a person likes losing themselves in a good story. I find video games exciting and intense in a way tv and movies just don’t do it for me. But nothing ruins that more than moving the fuck around.
I just don’t understand why every system needs to jump on this bandwagon. Are sales for PS3 and Xbox360 so bad that they need to copy the Wii. Whatever happened to variety being the spice of life?
I remember when the original X Box came out, and it had almost all the same games as PS2, but with better graphics. The shit is that? How is that fair? How is that even remotely interesting. That’s like 3 dunkin donuts opening up around a Krispy Kreme. It’s like we’re so devoted to crushing and outmatching the competition that we don’t work on trying to be our own unique selves anymore.
I really dug how no matter what console you picked before, it was attuned to why you play games. I play for the solo experience of gaming, but not everyone is like me, which I can dig. Some only play video games at parties, which makes things like wii sports or rock band such a good game for some people. But not all people. Why are we all doing the same thing. Why are Playstation Move and Project Natal coming out. WHY ARE WE FOCUSING ON THIS IDIOT DEMOGRAPHIC!?
The reason why is for profit, and at the end of the day, art is fueled by that, and not by the experience. It sucks, it sucks so much, but we don’t have majestic beauty being created for the sake of art anymore. We have it released based on profit and if it is market-wise viable.
And yes, I do consider game art. You can argue that anything and everything is art, but art creates a response that’s unique to the person viewing it, and I have played enough games to know what art is and what elicits a response from me. You can argue this point with me but you won’t convince me. Games have meant the world to me and have caused me bouts of anger, sadness, and pure joy that is hard to be countered by anything I have every experienced before. Moreso than most movies, shows, plays, paintings, books, or sculptures ever have. I won’t give the tired old “Look at games like Shadow of the Colossus/Flower/Braid and say that’s not art,” because any game that calls itself art might still be art, but it’s still every presumptuous that, just because I’m not shooting aliens, it’s art. A game is art if it’s an expression of ideas and eliciting a response. And in that sense, even a game like God of War can be considered art.
Another thing that pisses me off about gaming is the multiplayer thing. Games, for me, is mostly a solo gameplay experience. It’s just how I like it. And what bugs me is how online multiplayer is now almost a REQUIREMENT in all games. I don’t understand this. Why can’t this time be going to refine another aspect of the game, or just pocketing the cash for a future title? I just don’t understand the idea of making a game that’s entire existence is finite. I bought Warhawk for the PS3, because I wanted to try a game that was pure online multiplayer. I really tried to give the experience a try. But in honesty, all it ever feels like is work that doesn’t reward me for it’s gameplay experience. Every time I logged on, I was merely grinding the same experience, trying to accumulate points so my character will stand out, even remotely, between all the other similar looking drones. I don’t understand things like Halo, where your profile is such a holy artifact, where you actually lose points if you play badly. The original Xbox Network just shut down a bit back, and no one can ever play Halo 2 online again. It’s never coming back. It’s gone. How can I dedicate my time to this.
I understand everyone has their own point of view and I respect that my view of multiplayer is vastly different than others. And everyone should have a chance to play what they want. But that’s my point. Why am I being forced to wait longer for a game or a shorter story or single player experience because the current trend is multiplayer? Why am I being forced now into a generation that focuses more time than before on motion controls instead of giving each company variety? Why are more developers making these games, giving me less choice and options in regard to what I can and can’t play?
Am I over reacting? Yeah, possibly. But it worries me when something I hold so dear to my heart is being forced to radically change to the point hwere its more work for me to play it than not. I want to relax. I want to be engaged emotionally instead of physically. And goddammit, do you have ANY IDEA how long it took for me to get this good at hand eye coordination? I actually pride my abilities in gaming being so good. But that’s all being kicked in the head to make it ‘easier’ for people who didn’t play games to begin with. Why are gamers being kicked to the curb after years of dedication?
The answer is money. And I hate money. I hate what it does to people and products. How it transforms what the whole idea of the product was about to begin with. And that burns me deep. Like when I finally saw Star Wars for what it had become instead of what meant to me before. Or, to keep with theme, how Sephiroth and the rest of Final Fantasy 7 has become nothing more than a corporate whore, ruining those golden memories I have of the game. I hate it. I HATE IT!
Sigh. Alright. Before I go, I want to review a game I’m playing right now. In a way, this game proves my point: ODIN SPHERE!
I’m about 2/5ths through the game, but I don’t think I’m playing further. The entirety of the game is told through the perspective of 5 different people. I’m on the final boss of my second playthrough, with little urge to play the other 3. What’s interesting about the game is how the story syncs up in odd ways. You see how the different characters relate and impact the choices and progression of other characters. Here’s an example: In the first playthrough, you fight a baby dragon with a crown on its head. The baby dragon was only born minutes before, so there’s no reason for it to have that crown. So you just attribute it to a goofy design choice. But in the second playthrough, the evil king you’ve been chasing rests his crown on the egg and fills it with all his power, explaining how the crown got there and why the dragon is so powerful.
When the story syncs up like this, it’s real cool, but the thing is, you end up going to the SAME locations and fighting the SAME bosses each playthrough. There was only one difference in the bosses between the first and second playthrough. And when the engine of the game isn’t leveling up, but instead more about survival, it makes the action segments boring because it’s the SAME THING AGAIN AND AGAIN!
When you are forced to do the same activity, under the guise of different characters (or to support my previous point, different systems), the action gets stale fast. You have to play the same game 5 separate times. Why? If the game isn’t changing and it’s just a different narrative every time, the story would have to be really REALLY good to justify continued playtime.
For what it’s worth, the story is good. And I want to continue it. But the gameplay takes too long and takes too much work and when your character levels and items reset each playthrough and you have to retrieve the SAME items again per character, it have no reason to play. None.
And that’s my problem with 3D, with online gaming, with GODDAMN MOTION CONTROLS! Ir’s not a revolution. It’s the same thing again and again. When the only game I like for wii (Super Smash Brothers) prompts the response of me plugging in a control that’s NOT a motion control, you know your gimmick is a flawed premise. But hey, I’ve been supporting you guys for years. My money is old. You want new cash.
SO YOU CAN ALL FUCK YOURSELVES GAMES! I hate you for getting me to be your whore! And the worst part is that I’m getting a new game in a week. Not motion control, but yes, a game with a large emphasis on online gameplay. So I might as well learn to eat shit if I wanna keep dining at your restaurant.
Fuck you all.
-Josh
No shock to anyone, but I love video games. I have lived them and breathed them from the moment my Zaidy got his first Nintendo Entertainment System and I ran from the room. Yes, that’s right, video games scared me at first. I actually had nightmares about Mario hopping through the screen and burning me alive with his fireballs. But this passed. Soon enough, I was playing games like Mario, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Gauntlet, Trog, and Mega Man. And soon enough, me and my brother moved up to Super Nintendo, with games like Donkey Kong Country and Mega Man X (still my favorite game to date). Genesis came next with Sonic and Vectorman. And then I started on the disc based route. All my friends owned Nintendo 64s. I wanted something different, so I got a PS1, and then moving onto PS2, and finally, I own a PS3.
What I wanted to write about was the advent of Motion Controls. With Wii being the market success it has been, it didn’t take long for Microsoft and Sony to jump on the bandwagon. And in a business, I don’t really blame them. But allow me to make my point about motion controls absolutely clear:
Motion controls can suck the semen off a donkey’s dick.
It really reminds me of 3D animation in general. Or even having all kids movies be in 3D with the glasses now. It’s a revolution because someone TELLS us it’s a revolution. But in fact, it is no revolution. It’s a gimmick. A shiny toy meant to catch our eyes and go “Hey, that’s neat.” In a lot of respects (attempting to get as nerdy as possible here), it reminds me of the early Mortal Kombat games, that used photo realism to give it a unique look from anything out on the market right now. Sure it caught everyone’s eye, but where did it lead us, technologically speaking. Nowhere. It was a dead end in graphics that couldn’t amount to anything more than getting people’s attention. Mortal Kombat isn’t what I’d call a good fighting game, but a spectacle. And that’s how I see Wii. A spectacle. A gimmick.
A while back, I actually wrote how I thought the Wii could revolutionize gaming by thinking outside the box and moving us forward in ways we didn’t think were possible. But it HASN’T. It hasn’t revolutionized gaming. It’s just different. And when you have 3 consoles to choose from, that’s fine. I like that one system is meant for online multi-player, one is meant for party games, and one is…well a Blu Ray player. But it also has a nice set of 1 Player games. And that’s how I like it.
To get off track for a second, the reason I like games is the meditative mindset of it. I like losing myself in a good game like a person likes losing themselves in a good story. I find video games exciting and intense in a way tv and movies just don’t do it for me. But nothing ruins that more than moving the fuck around.
I just don’t understand why every system needs to jump on this bandwagon. Are sales for PS3 and Xbox360 so bad that they need to copy the Wii. Whatever happened to variety being the spice of life?
I remember when the original X Box came out, and it had almost all the same games as PS2, but with better graphics. The shit is that? How is that fair? How is that even remotely interesting. That’s like 3 dunkin donuts opening up around a Krispy Kreme. It’s like we’re so devoted to crushing and outmatching the competition that we don’t work on trying to be our own unique selves anymore.
I really dug how no matter what console you picked before, it was attuned to why you play games. I play for the solo experience of gaming, but not everyone is like me, which I can dig. Some only play video games at parties, which makes things like wii sports or rock band such a good game for some people. But not all people. Why are we all doing the same thing. Why are Playstation Move and Project Natal coming out. WHY ARE WE FOCUSING ON THIS IDIOT DEMOGRAPHIC!?
The reason why is for profit, and at the end of the day, art is fueled by that, and not by the experience. It sucks, it sucks so much, but we don’t have majestic beauty being created for the sake of art anymore. We have it released based on profit and if it is market-wise viable.
And yes, I do consider game art. You can argue that anything and everything is art, but art creates a response that’s unique to the person viewing it, and I have played enough games to know what art is and what elicits a response from me. You can argue this point with me but you won’t convince me. Games have meant the world to me and have caused me bouts of anger, sadness, and pure joy that is hard to be countered by anything I have every experienced before. Moreso than most movies, shows, plays, paintings, books, or sculptures ever have. I won’t give the tired old “Look at games like Shadow of the Colossus/Flower/Braid and say that’s not art,” because any game that calls itself art might still be art, but it’s still every presumptuous that, just because I’m not shooting aliens, it’s art. A game is art if it’s an expression of ideas and eliciting a response. And in that sense, even a game like God of War can be considered art.
Another thing that pisses me off about gaming is the multiplayer thing. Games, for me, is mostly a solo gameplay experience. It’s just how I like it. And what bugs me is how online multiplayer is now almost a REQUIREMENT in all games. I don’t understand this. Why can’t this time be going to refine another aspect of the game, or just pocketing the cash for a future title? I just don’t understand the idea of making a game that’s entire existence is finite. I bought Warhawk for the PS3, because I wanted to try a game that was pure online multiplayer. I really tried to give the experience a try. But in honesty, all it ever feels like is work that doesn’t reward me for it’s gameplay experience. Every time I logged on, I was merely grinding the same experience, trying to accumulate points so my character will stand out, even remotely, between all the other similar looking drones. I don’t understand things like Halo, where your profile is such a holy artifact, where you actually lose points if you play badly. The original Xbox Network just shut down a bit back, and no one can ever play Halo 2 online again. It’s never coming back. It’s gone. How can I dedicate my time to this.
I understand everyone has their own point of view and I respect that my view of multiplayer is vastly different than others. And everyone should have a chance to play what they want. But that’s my point. Why am I being forced to wait longer for a game or a shorter story or single player experience because the current trend is multiplayer? Why am I being forced now into a generation that focuses more time than before on motion controls instead of giving each company variety? Why are more developers making these games, giving me less choice and options in regard to what I can and can’t play?
Am I over reacting? Yeah, possibly. But it worries me when something I hold so dear to my heart is being forced to radically change to the point hwere its more work for me to play it than not. I want to relax. I want to be engaged emotionally instead of physically. And goddammit, do you have ANY IDEA how long it took for me to get this good at hand eye coordination? I actually pride my abilities in gaming being so good. But that’s all being kicked in the head to make it ‘easier’ for people who didn’t play games to begin with. Why are gamers being kicked to the curb after years of dedication?
The answer is money. And I hate money. I hate what it does to people and products. How it transforms what the whole idea of the product was about to begin with. And that burns me deep. Like when I finally saw Star Wars for what it had become instead of what meant to me before. Or, to keep with theme, how Sephiroth and the rest of Final Fantasy 7 has become nothing more than a corporate whore, ruining those golden memories I have of the game. I hate it. I HATE IT!
Sigh. Alright. Before I go, I want to review a game I’m playing right now. In a way, this game proves my point: ODIN SPHERE!
I’m about 2/5ths through the game, but I don’t think I’m playing further. The entirety of the game is told through the perspective of 5 different people. I’m on the final boss of my second playthrough, with little urge to play the other 3. What’s interesting about the game is how the story syncs up in odd ways. You see how the different characters relate and impact the choices and progression of other characters. Here’s an example: In the first playthrough, you fight a baby dragon with a crown on its head. The baby dragon was only born minutes before, so there’s no reason for it to have that crown. So you just attribute it to a goofy design choice. But in the second playthrough, the evil king you’ve been chasing rests his crown on the egg and fills it with all his power, explaining how the crown got there and why the dragon is so powerful.
When the story syncs up like this, it’s real cool, but the thing is, you end up going to the SAME locations and fighting the SAME bosses each playthrough. There was only one difference in the bosses between the first and second playthrough. And when the engine of the game isn’t leveling up, but instead more about survival, it makes the action segments boring because it’s the SAME THING AGAIN AND AGAIN!
When you are forced to do the same activity, under the guise of different characters (or to support my previous point, different systems), the action gets stale fast. You have to play the same game 5 separate times. Why? If the game isn’t changing and it’s just a different narrative every time, the story would have to be really REALLY good to justify continued playtime.
For what it’s worth, the story is good. And I want to continue it. But the gameplay takes too long and takes too much work and when your character levels and items reset each playthrough and you have to retrieve the SAME items again per character, it have no reason to play. None.
And that’s my problem with 3D, with online gaming, with GODDAMN MOTION CONTROLS! Ir’s not a revolution. It’s the same thing again and again. When the only game I like for wii (Super Smash Brothers) prompts the response of me plugging in a control that’s NOT a motion control, you know your gimmick is a flawed premise. But hey, I’ve been supporting you guys for years. My money is old. You want new cash.
SO YOU CAN ALL FUCK YOURSELVES GAMES! I hate you for getting me to be your whore! And the worst part is that I’m getting a new game in a week. Not motion control, but yes, a game with a large emphasis on online gameplay. So I might as well learn to eat shit if I wanna keep dining at your restaurant.
Fuck you all.
-Josh