"Gaming has a content ceiling."

This quote is hands down the best thing I have read regarding the Manhunt 2 saga that has unfolded over the last week or so. It was written by one of the gaming editors at Ain't it Cool News and appeared in this weeks game wrap-up:

The AO rating is censorship in action. No one will sell it. No one will publish it. AO is ESRB for "Return To Sender". It’s a total sham. It has nothing to do with telling people what to expect and everything to do with controlling access.

But it's not just the ESRB's fault. They are certainly culpable, by way of having a 'rating' that functions as a ban - they are not ignorant of the consequences AO carries.

And the companies are guilty of saying, "Gaming has a content ceiling." It's a big flashing sign that definitively states Games Are NOT For Everyone, And MOSTLY For Kids. The industry is outpacing the rules for it. We need room for games to experiment with inappropriate content. Not entirely 'freely', but enough so that experiments like this can reach the adult market and consumers can decide for themselves.

Amen.

Good News. Bad News.

Throughout this blog I have expressed my displeasure of the Wii console. Therefore I pleasantly surprised by the news announced this week from Nintendo. Coming later this year to the Wii is WiiWare, a platform for new games to be delivered to the console in a similar fashion as virtual console games.

Yeah!

I have to say this is very exciting. I love the Xbox Live Arcade format and think the Wii could also harbor a great deal of fun and unique titles. I think the indie developers will rise to the challenge and create some awesome original content. Furthermore, the major developers will also have an outlet for some of the crazier ideas they come up with but the publishers aren't ready to take a gamble on. In any case, the real winners are the gamers. We'll get more games that aim to create new experiences utilizing the Wii Remote.

Now the bad.

With all the great new content coming and the re-release of classic content, those tiny, 512MB hard drives are filling up fast. Not only is there no easy way to currently deal with the problem (delete and download again or save to an SD card as the memory becomes tight), Nintendo has categorically squashed any notion that there will be a add-on hard drive for the Wii. This is just one more nail in the coffin for me. On a system who's main selling point is a wealth of back catalog of titles, it seems that they should have had a long term solution for storage. A 512MB hard drive always seemed small. I already have numerous devices (including my phone) that currently have more storage. This is just starting to look silly now. Without a user friendly method of dealing with the storage issue, it is as if they built in a shelf life. Maybe this is more indication that the Wii 2.0 is not so far fetched after all.

Why We Shouldn't Be Surprised Manhunt 2 Was Temporarily Suspended

On July 19th, Game Politics reports that Manhunt 2 receives an AO rating from the ESRB. A couple of days later, it's reported that the game has been "temporarily suspends" the game, implying that the game will not meet its street date of July 10th. Is this really that surprising? It is a mere three weeks out from its release date and the ESRB rating is released. It's all reminiscent of an election and the Fox News starts reporting on all the "good things" that happening in Iraq.

I'm going to go out on a limb and put on my Pachter-hat. Knowing that a game needs about a month for production, Rockstar and TakeTwo should have already submitted the game for approval. Do you want to take a guess at what is necessary for submission? That's right, an ESRB rating. Since my expertise is with Nintendo, Sony may be a bit different, but Nintendo won't pass a game that does not include the rating with the submission paperwork. Knowing this, I am led to believe that they already knew the rating, did a good job of keeping it off of the ESRB website, and then let loose the info to stir up some controversy, but most importantly, press.

Shocking, I know. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that they have already been diligently working on an edited version to lower their rating to Mature. Furthermore, it wouldn't surprise me if the game still meets its ship date, or at the very least, still ships in July. TakeTwo has been in some financial trouble and strong sales from this title will really help the bottom line.

Additionally, Rockstar, and by default, TakeTwo, have constantly pushed the boundries of where our industry can go. I think Doug Lowenstein's chastising of the developers and publishers in his final speech as head of the ESA allowed them to grow a pair and start to defend their work.

I Want This Guy's Job

He's every ones favorite analyst: Michael Pachter. I wonder if the actual job description at Wedbush-Morgan asked for someone who was willing to sit a desk with a crystal ball and make academic predictions that even the most vociferous posters on the forums could make with their hands tied behind their back. I have done my best to try and ignore the stories about him, but they seem to be appearing a lot more often. Let's look at his track record over the last couple of months:

• Fixing Manhunt 2 will cost Take Two millions. Duh.
• Halo3 to cause GTAIV delay. Oh really?
• Red Octane a better buy than Harmonix. Yes, $100 million is less than $275 million.
• Buy GameStop stock before the holiday rush. Please take all of my money and invest for me.

It seems like the writers that are continuing to give him the spotlight see the same pattern I do, but continue to post his thoughts. I guess they get some kind of enjoyment out it. It's definite that he does:

I don't solicit all this press coverage. The press finds me. I think that the press finds me because I'm colorful, I'm not shy, I have an opinion and I frankly really don't care if someone agrees or disagrees with it. I'm willing to share.

He's enjoying his fifteen minutes but I think it's time to cut him off. Now he starts making some really off the wall predictions, I may start to listen. He has done it once, and I have to admit, I think it's his best prediction yet: Wii 2.

Thoughts of a Casual Gamer

By casual, I mean a) my wife and b) she only likes Tetris and Mario Kart. The commercial for Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree has been playing quite a bit on TV. After seeing it, her revelation went as follows.

'That looked boring.'

The Nintendo marketing machine has been awesome over the last couple of years as proven by the success of the DS and now the Wii. They seemed to have become complacent since this spot inspired my wife's reaction, who I believe is in the Wii target demographic. There's a lot of standing around and stiff pointing despite the tag line of giving your family a 'degree in fun.' I'm just not seeing it. I think those who are writing the reviews are not getting it either.

Orson Scott Card interview

I came across this interview over the weekend and it seems that most of the major sites have jumped on it as well. Ender's Game is my favorite book of all time, fueling my love of science fiction when I read it in the sixth grade. When I thought about what to name my blog, this was the only source I wanted to go for inspiration. The writer touches on some great topics such as the role of story in games and the effect of violet games on kids. I was most attracted to the comments Card made on a series of games set in the Ender universe, ranging from what sounds like RTS's to first-person shooters to action-adventure games.

Don't look for one "Ender's Game" game. Look, instead, for games bearing the Ender's Game brand.

The Battle Room. I see several game modules here, using the same graphics base but with quite different game play. There's the game where you're an individual soldier; the game where you're a toon leader; the game where you command.

I have always wanted to interact with this world. The Battle Room, while possible strategy based, would be a very cool. I have always imagined while reading the book how this would play out as a game: teams maneuvering through zero-g and bouncing off the walls, blasting each other with lasers and rotating the room in three dimensions. It would be very cool. He also suggests a game based of my blog's namesake.

Then there's the "mind game" or Fantasy Game from the novel. This would be the hardest to design, since there are so many areas where free-association would need to be rewarded. But it would also be the most fun to explore!

The game in the book was open ended, giving the player the freedom to do anything he wanted. It was essentially one of the first sandbox games. The game would be impossibly difficult to actually create but as emergent AI improves and games continue to become exponentially more complex, it is feasible in the near future.

The Battle Room, and more specifically the simulator from the end of the book, is actually the inspiration for one of my first attempts at creating my own game. With design combined with a popular board game of my youth, I hope to start prototyping and developing in the near future.

This is NOT the image we are looking for.

As gaming goes more and more mainstream, it has struggled to find it's place in the world. The Championship Gaming Series is not the answer.

In an effort to appear legitimate, they held a draft to fill six teams based throughout the country. There are so many things that are wrong with this, that I don't even know where to start. Okay, I know, I'll start with the location: the Playboy Mansion. This could not be more inappropriate than hosting the Republican National Convention in San Francisco. While attempting to fulfill the wet dream of many gamers, they only succeeded in displaying how out of touch with our culture they are. This event, as suggested for award shows as well, should have been online. It needed to be accessible on a platform that gamers could converge on and possibly participate. One possibility could have been to host it in Second Life. In the age of MySpace and YouTube, this was a first step in the wrong direction.

The draft format was a ill attempt to emulate actual sports, like the NFL. Playing a video game is not a sport and marketers need to realize this. Our pastime is just that, it passes time. All be it one that can be a lot of fun and can become very competitive, there is no physical exertion let alone contact. It is a game. Games do succeed on television, like Poker, but they will never break into the big four: the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL. It is going to be even harder with the likes of NASCAR and MMA quickly dragging eyeballs away from the leaders. There are more kids in this country playing soccer than any of these other sports and yet the MLS is still struggling. The Championship Gaming Series will struggle to attain the same status as bowling and cheerleading on ESPN2.

The first pick in the draft was a bit dubious for me. I'm not sure I even understand the point of a rule that requires at least one woman on the team to play Dead or Alive. The first pick was Vanessa Arteaga. Upon first impressions, based on her image since that is all I have to go on, her selection implies a ploy to play up the fact that not only are women involved but at the forefront and equals to the boys. I also have a hard time believing that she is indicative of the typical female gamer, again pandering to the wet dreams of gamers across the country.

I can't help but think that the Championship Gaming Series would play better as a reality show. I still wouldn't watch it but at least it would not have to pretend to take it self so seriously. It would allow the 'competitors' to evolve some personality instead just playing the games for a paycheck. In ten years when gaming is as ubiquitous as watching television, we won't need an image because we'll all just need to look in the mirror to know what we're all about.

A Rigid Pricing Strcture

Since Pac-Man CE came out a week ago, there has been a bit of back lash based on the price. At 800 Microsoft Points, it's a little steep, in my opinion, but Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for Xbox 360, doesn't believe so.

Namco came to us with what they thought the content price should be and I do not disagree with it costing 800 points. There's actually a lot of work from a lot of people to bring it all together.

Totally understandable. However, while the demo was a lot of fun, I just couldn't bring myself to fork over the points to purchase the full version. In fact, the only 800 point games I've purchased were Street Fighter II and Worms. Many games, such as Cloning Clyde, Eets, Castlevania, Catan and, possibly, Prince of Persia, have suffered a similar fate. I enjoy the demo but it's tough to justify the $10 price tag. On the other hand, the 400 point price point seem to be easier swallow as I have purchased the full version of several of those games.

Are there many people who are following the same logic? Maybe, but Microsoft has been stubborn to change their stance on pricing. This implies that the plan is working for them but maybe there needs to be a third tier. What if there was a 600 point price point in addition to the 400 and 800 for Live Arcade titles. This translates into $7.50 in real money. That doesn't seem that unreasonable for games that don't fit nicely within the current pricing model. It seems to work for Nintendo who has three tiers on the Virtual Console. Additionally, as some comments pointed out, where are the price cuts on the older titles? Where are the Platinum Hits? Microsoft has been mum but to the average consumer, it would make sense. It works for disc based games. Speculation would say that it might work even better for digitally distributed games. All we can do, in the mean time, is make our voices heard with our wallets. They'll get the message when we stop buying things on the Marketplace willy-nilly.

Who is more the fool?

I hate the term fanboy. It applies to a small fraction of very vocal people. I have never been so supportive of any one hardware manufacturer that I ignore the rest. I have been a proud owner of Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft consoles. I never picked them up because I was in love with the hardware or in an way felt loyal to it; it has always been about the software. Games, in my opinion, are always the root of my decisions. I bought a 360 to play Oblivion and eventually Halo3. I was fortunate to be able to buy Twilight Princess and play it without buying the console, for which I'm glad because there has yet to be anything worth playing for me. Metroid 3 and Mario Galaxy have me intrigued but until they're out, I will remain Wii-less. There are zero games out or coming in the foreseeable future (which aren't coming out on the 360 as well) that are enticing me to drop $600 on the PS3.

Kotaku points us to an posting on the Motley Fool, an investment website, which warns against Microsoft's potential to maintain a positive investor relationship due to perceived hardware issues.

As an investor, I can't help but worry that my experience with Microsoft consumer products is not out of the ordinary. Not only are repairs an expensive waste of shareholder capital, but they risk alienating potential customers and crimping future growth. In effect, it doesn't matter if the rate of Xbotch failure is as low as Microsoft reportedly contends, because the perceived rate of failure is what matters to consumers. People trust what they hear. And if they hear enough from irate Xbotch or Zune customers, they aren't going to open up the wallet.

While agree that this image is hurting Microsoft and the Xbox brand, I can't help but see a flaw in the statement that the author himself is neglecting. Yes, he has had a problem with his 360. Unfortunately everyone seems to know someone who has fell victim to the ring-of-death. On the other hand, I know a lot of people that have a 360 and only one person has had similar issues described here. I once received the Error 74 message, but it occurred after transporting the system across the state and the hard drive was jostled loose. I once scratched a disc, but again, it was my fault.

If people report their console dies and then the message boards jump all over it causing the major blogs and websites to report it, yes it seems like every one's console is dying. There are nearly 11 million 360 sold and they are not coming back in the numbers that warrant the perceived rate of failure. I think it takes a bit of common sense to take a step back and try to give some rational thought to the subject. Who is more foolish: those that regurgitate what they hear or those that blindly follow them when they speak. If investors start jumping ship because fanboys have shaped Microsoft's hardware reputation, we have a much larger problem than a few rings-of-death.

Real Time Strategy is not for me

I have played soccer for more than two-thirds of my life. It has come to mostly define who I am. Several times throughout my playing career, I have been asked to take the helm and coach. I actually accepted once; I helped coach the women's team at my university after my eligibility was up. I hated nearly every minute of it. See, I have never been one to enjoy being on the sidelines. I enjoy roles of leadership, but on the field, as a captain. In other words, I prefer to do, not command.

This train of thought struck me as I was watching a coworker play an RTS at work the other day, all the while practically salivating at the announcement of Starcraft 2. I have never, ever enjoyed a Real Time Strategy game, not even any of the Sims titles. Finally, it occurred to me why: I don't enjoy the role the game places you into. I will alway prefer to play the hero or the main protagonist. I like like to take the reins of a character, if only to suspend my disbelief and become this character for a short while. Seeing my orders carried out never made me feel powerful or god-like. If anything it made me feel powerless as my units were obliterated and dismantled. Maybe the games are better now ( or I just sucked) but I gave up on them a while ago.

I would like to see a game give some control to the individuals within the ranks. I think that is way I am intrigued by the upcoming game, Overlord. It has Action RPG elements like Oblivion, but allows the player to control a small army of minions, like Pikmin. It sounds like the player could hack and slash their way through the game but would be better served by implementing his minions to do some of the dirty work.

This sort of mash-up of genres gets me kind of excited. As long as it doesn't start to play out like a Dynasty Warriors game, it should be fine.