Bullet Points @ timlongo.com

For a long time I was fairly behind on keeping up with the daily news and opinions of the gaming press. I don’t know if it was a lack of time, interest, or effort, but I just never took to making it a regular part of my week. Well, since being at Crystal I’ve tried to remedy that and have been able to get in the habit of doing just that and I have to say I was missing a lot. One might say that it is really part of our jobs to make sure we are up-to-date on the current state of our industry or that knowing the opinions of the members of our press is critical when making important decisions about our own games but in the end I’m just having a great time being on the same page as everyone else (and in some cases ahead of most others) on our weekly landscape. So much so that in a few cases I’ve even become a fan of certain journalists. One interesting advantage with being so tapped in though, is being able to keep tabs on the trends that these journalists create via their opinions on certain subjects as those industry subjects change over time. The one area that this post will focus on is the way they are covering the Wii and its progress so far, which is something close to my heart as a gamer and developer.

So as we all know, this particular industry is still small enough in most people’s eyes to consider our press as part of the “enthusiast” media. For those who aren’t familiar these are journalists who cover a very specific area with a very specific audience. Maybe Dog Fancy magazine would be another example. So the interesting circumstance here is that while the dog lover audience will probably always stay pretty much the same size, games will (and are) not. Case-in-point is the success of the Wii, obviously. However, for the enthusiast press this means that their very medium which used to be very niche is slowly becoming mainstream (for real this time). But where does that leave them? As I read and listen to them cover the Wii I have begun to worry about some aspects of the way they are reacting to the Wii and how it might affect the work we do with the machine itself. I admit that some of this is plain paranoia but some might be a prediction of some friction that won’t be alleviated anytime soon.

But first some bullets about the current state of the Wii:

• The system is hardly next-gen when it comes to power. It isn’t trying to be the 360 or PS3 visually.
• It doesn’t have a huge library of good games for the typical gaming audience. In fact, you might say it is even dismal.
• In a world where on-line gaming is becoming the norm for most products in some way, the Wii and its games are very far behind everything else out there.
• Nintendo is still trying to figure out how to support third party games and though they are doing better it is still fair to say that it sucks.

So with most of the knowns out of the way let’s get to my concerns. The enthusiast press are almost angry at the fact that it is doing well. Yes, I’m generalizing some seeing that obviously not all of them do. But every month that is continues to succeed over all other platforms (we won’t talk about the DS in this post) they seem to either be upset or confused or worried that the good old days of hard core next-gen gaming may be going away as a flood of Wii ports and uninspired content comes to the console with the most install-base (and no, we won’t talk about the PS2 yet either). Sometimes I even get the feeling that they are afraid of its success because so many soccer moms and grandmothers are buying it that they somehow think that the Ninja Gaidens of the world will all go away.

So at first I was kinda reactionary about this. We, as developers and publishers, want games to move into the “extended audience” as Nintendo calls them. We want families to be playing a video game with ALL represented generations holding a controller at the family reunions. We want every TV to have a console attached to it. We want the Super Bowl to be replaced by the interactive and virtual…er…Super Bowl. And the Wii is going to probably get the closest. So how can that be bad?! For example, the game Wii Play hasn’t been too well received by the gaming press. Every time they speak about it they seem to really consider it a failure from an enthusiast point-of-view but it remains to be one of the top sellers (yes, maybe because of the controller inside, I’ll admit). Like Wii Sports, which some reviewers don’t even consider to be a video game, Wii Play is meant for that extended audience alone. Of course, us Hard Core gamers won’t like it for more than 2 minutes but that is the point! It just seems like their blinders are too tightly fastened to their heads and they aren’t able to stop and take a look at the (yes I’ll say it) Bigger Picture of what is going on here and why it is so important and wonderful.

So, after calming down I took a step back and tried to look at some other preservatives. What if they are right about one thing? The good old hard-core games will become fewer and fewer as the years go on? What if this is sort of the beginning of the end of the Golden or Silver Age of video games. Is there a place in the Modern Age for Ninja Gaiden or will they become so expensive with not enough gain compared to what can be sold on the Wii that we won’t get enough of them per year to make us happy? Will Metal Gear Solid 5 or Halo 4 be looking to become Wii primary SKUs with a dumbed down interface for the “extended audience” and the opposite hard version will be the one farmed out to an external developer to be ported over to the PS3s or 4s? As someone who is still squarely in that next-gen space, I often wonder what my job will be like if the Wii wins beyond imagination. I have plenty of opinions and comparisons to the histories of other mediums, but if you are reading this and have your own opinion, feel free to comment.

Are the enthusiasts rightly worried or just being stubbornly myopic?

My first review is up on the Reviews page here!!

It is a theatre review from our trip to Ashland. As I will do for all reviews, the 3BR (or Three Bullet Review) can be found in this post for those not interested in reading the full review. There is much more at the link above though. Hope you enjoy.

If you do have comments on the review, use this post to share them.

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Libby Appel at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

3BR (Three Bullet Review)

• Great adaptation and focused direction for a “festival” audience.
• Classical technical designs felt authentic and appropriate for the play.
• Though at times a bit too Shakespearean, the performances carried the intentions of the text with ease, keeping in mind the first bullet above.

• WARNING: This post reveals the death of a certain character in the TV Show Deadwood. So make sure you either don’t care or have already seen the show if you want to read the entire entry. Or just skip it as I will mark it clearly before I give it away.

Why is death such an obsession with creative storytellers? Most seem to always use it as the main, if not the only, solution for creating interesting dramatic scenarios in any and all mediums. Kill a character off and it must make an impact on the audience, right? Is it just seen as an easy out when all other ideas fail to come to mind?

Ok, so lets get the obvious stuff out of the way. Yes, it is part of the human condition. Yeah, we all fear death so when a character we care about dies then we feel it that much more. Yes, it takes something away from us that the creators/writers know we really wanted and after that point can never have again, so we almost mourn it if the “life” of that character was well regarded. But without getting into the philosophical and psychological aspects of this topic, what about the creative decisions behind this line of thinking? Is it a cop-out to just “kill another character off” in order to boost ratings, shock the audience, or otherwise make your mark on the cannon in some way?

Being around creative decisions most every day of my week a decision like this is not an uncommon one have come up from time to time. When stories are being constructed, especially sequels say, a look at the past characters and which one might be able to be killed off is often one of the first devices brought to the table. It has always rubbed me the wrong way and I’ve never been able to put my finger on it. Sometimes it’s even me who brings it up! Hell, the last two games I shipped ended with cliffhangers where one key character was gone or possibly dead (ironically neither may ever see a conclusion to those cliffhangers).

• SPOILER BELOW

This really hit me hard when I was watching Deadwood. The show is quite good so far, and I look forward to continuing it, but one of the key characters, Wild Bill Hickok is killed in maybe the 3rd or 4th episode. They do a fairly good job, I think, of getting the audience to empathize with him via a few different story angles and the performance by Keith Carradine is a huge help as well, but then they kill him off. Now a bit of the irony here is that it is historically accurate to what actually happened to Wild Bill. The way they handle the scene is very well engineered for maximum impact and drama. But that is why it stands out to me as such a big hit for this topic. They knew that going in. This main character dies in the very beginning of a major TV series so it was obviously orchestrated from day one based on when they chose to start the time line for the town. I felt supremely manipulated. So it made me rethink my stance on this creative choice. Is there really anything better you can do to achieve the aforementioned goals? Shock, loss, longing, etc. I watch Deadwood now and I really want Wild Bill to be there. Are there no other devices that can stand up against the great cop-out that is “writing a character out?” There must be, right?

So, before I continue on I wanted to pose the question to the readers. What are our options? Can other devices make just as large an impact on the audience and get away with it or are we stuck with this one absolute question for our characters? Are some other devices even better in the long run? What would a show be like where no one dies? Plus, what are some of your experiences with this cop-out that have pissed you off before? There are sooo many good recent examples, but I won’t steal them all quite yet. Share your thoughts.

Yes, he has been grumpy lately. Yes, his GDC lecture was pretty damn jaded. Yes, he hasn’t shipped anything in recent years. But, he IS still Warren Spector and is responsible for some of my favorite games of all time. So I’m continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt…for now.

You have probably heard about Ninja Gold by now (announced Modern Day Ninja game of some kind) which he is doing with John Woo of all people, in tandem with a film it sounds like. But I mainly wanted to share the discovery of his Junction Point Studios blog, written by the man himself.

http://junctionpoint.wordpress.com/

Enjoy…or not.

Time to get some ranting going. I’m done with Mario. A few weeks ago it dawned on me that the little Italian plumber is getting away with murder! Ok, so my admission is that this all really started when I finished ICO and Shadow of the Colossus over about one month. I have posts for both coming someday soon, but count this as a preview because they both drastically changed how I feel about context in games forever (yes a bit melodramatic, I know).

If Mario came out today, despite his sometimes great gameplay, I don’t think anyone would latch on. He has basically been riding his own wave of success from the first few games for years and context be damned, they just throw it all out the window in service to any gameplay justification they want. Yes, the world is supposed to be an cute drug trip of some kind, so any and every character design, level setting or special power fits right in no matter what it is and in any circumstance. So obviously that is a tremendous advantage for any developer. No need to worry about context and fictionalization. But ICO and Shadow were able to deliver much more to me by maintaining a clear vision of all of these aspects throughout both games. Mechanics melded almost perfectly with the fiction and the context of the worlds and the characters and I didn’t need to make that extra leap to ensure I didn’t frown when I saw a plumber wearing a goddamn raccoon suit flying through the air by waggling his ring covered tail. If that shit was tried today with Jax and Daxter or another high profile platformer today we’d hold it against them.

Which brings me to Sly Cooper. I’m not saying that all I can take anymore is an experience like ICO that brings me into a clearly more mature and thought provoking world to get my fulfillment. I lean toward the Sly Coopers of the world now more than ever where the unified art direction and style of the game guides each and every decision being made about the pieces in play. It is still E for everyone, it still allows a Raccoon to do amazing feats of heroism, it still brings me into an obviously unrealistic cartoon world, but it doesn’t make me jump on the heads of walking mushrooms after I’ve dodged a flying turtle by jumping from a pipe that should relate somehow to me being a plumber but instead it is either a home for man eating plants or a secret passage to a room full of coins in the world with no economy.

I just don’t buy it anymore. You aren’t fooling me Mario and maybe it is time you stop fooling everyone else.

This is a bit old but I had been meaning to put it up here for those who didn’t hear about it on the 31st. CBS has done a deal with the WSVG to air this year’s tournament. It feels pretty significant to me. Though no time has been announced, the rumor is that it may be in the middle of the day on Sundays. Which is better than the usual 2am slots game tournaments get. If it is up there competing with golf and Tiger Woods, then we know we have hit the big time. Good luck players!

News hit here via 1UP: WSVG on CBS

So my wife says to me the other day…

Jen – “Hey, have you seen that game ad in my new issue of Real Simple Magazine?”

• Note: Real Simple is basically Martha Stuart Living for people who try to hide the fact that they are fans of Martha Stuart by buying a slightly different version. For all I know she owns both of them.

Tim – “Uh, what did you just say to me? Are you making fun of me somehow and I don’t get the joke?”

Jen – “No, I’m being totally serious, there is a Wii ad in this issue. It almost looks like an insurance ad for All State or some shit. I almost missed it then I saw they were playing Wii sports at some family reunion with like old people.”

Tim – “Give me that.”

Tim – “What the f@ck?! They have done it. They have finally done it and they have crossed over. It is like the Dixie Chicks or something. They have hit both sides of the fence. A NINTENDO ad in a freakin’ Real Simple magazine!”

Jen – “Which reminds me, when am I going to kick your ass at Wii bowling? I need to make you my biatch.”

• Note: Jen has not played a video game since the 2600 and she is now a “Pro” status bowler. I can’t beat her.

Tim – “I’m not playing you anymore bastard.”

Tim – “Can I take this ad out and hang it on my cube at work? It is like history or something.”

Jen – “Whatever geek.”

• And yes, the ad is up in my cube at work.

Finally, after 5 weeks of teaser images the actual teaser trailer for Fallout 3 is here! Needless to say I’m beside myself much more than I should be. Though the bad news is it won’t be out until Fall of 2008! Looks to be an in-engine movie probably using the Oblivion game engine as a base. Though the trailer is slim, I’m still very jazzed.

• Link to the official site with the trailer is here.
• To bring back some memories…The Fallout 1 opening movie.
• Here is a link to the Fallout 2 opening movie as well.

At least there is now hope of one day continuing the saga.