Spike VGA's: No Wonder Miyamoto Is Leaving...

As we all know, Miyamoto is set to "retire" soon.  EDIT: Okay, he's really not but whatever.  Although I don't suck up to Nintendo, I do give Miyamoto a LOT of credit for kick-starting Nintendo and the Japanese game market so kudos, man.

Anyway, a few days ago or whatever, the Spike Video Game Awards were on.  I had no idea about this until today.  And thank God I didn't watch it live otherwise I would've gone skydiving without a parachute.

So Miyamoto is in attendance at this Oscar's style award ceremony.  Wait a second, who died and made Spike the leading authority on video game awards?  Bunch of schmucks.  Although G4TV is probably worse, I dunno.  Anyway, the Black Keys (some lame-o alternative band I don't listen to) performed and here's Miyamoto head-bobbing, having a grand old time.  No really, he looked just weirded out throughout the whole thing.  Don't worry, Miyamoto, I'll mail you some Deep Purple/Cheap Trick CD's when this is over.

And then you have the STUPIDEST F***ING THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN.  Burnout winning game of the year?  No, not that bad but it's close.  So Charlie Sheen (oh God) goes up to announce the best FPS of the year.  He says Modern Warfare 3 and half the Internet becomes vehemently ill.  Up comes some producers from Infinity Ward to accept the award, followed by a cosplaying soldier who knocks one of them down and proceeds to teabag repeatedly.  Can't embed the video, fortunately.

Please bear in mind that SHIGERU MIYAMOTO was in attendance.  The Man, The Myth, The Legend.  Sitting there watching a guy get tea-bagged.  Have we gamers lost or minds or what???  Just to illustrate, I'll put both pics side by side.

What a joke.  Miyamoto the legend is subjected to this crap?  SHOW THE MAN SOME RESPECT.  This is like at a wedding before the bride says "I do," a fat naked guy goes streaking by.  Tons of advertising and crap celebrities like Jack Black, Hulk Hogan, Charlie Sheen, the Tosh.O guy, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Green, Eddie Griffin, Neil Patrick Harris, Ashton Kutcher, any pinhead celebrity who think it's "cool" to be down with video games???  Is this a show about VIDEO GAMES or is it about being a stupid ass???

No wonder Miyamoto is qutting.  He's probably thinking, "There's no hope for these kids."  I also know Hideo Kojima was there...sheesus, this stuff serves as fuel for his crazy MGS conspiracy crap.  All Kojima could do was babble on.

EDIT: S*** THIS GOT DELETED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, VIACOM BLOWS


I only pray that Yu Suzuki didn't have to sit through this.  Although I wish Toshihiro Nagoshi did to teach him of his idiotic ways.

Oh, and which games won awards?  Well, Skyrim, Batman, Portal 2, the same crap you'd come to expect.  Really love how the best Xbox 360 game was a non-exclusive (Batman).  Forza 4 won Best Racing Game although we clearly know Daytona USA should've won.  And thank God NFS: The Runs didn't win either. Also, I really can't help but enjoy the CoD vs. Battlefield war going on.  Did BF3 deserve to the win the award???  Sure they did.  But this just proves how idiotic the game industry has become.

I read an interesting article about the Spike VGAs from Giant Bomb.  TBQH, those guys over there are the only "big" gaming media that doesn't have their heads up their asses.

And one more thing.  The new Xbox Live Dashboard sucks.  Downloaded that bad boy and got hit in the face with a huge Terms of Use agreement.  Just scrolling down from start to finish, it took me 5 minutes to reach the end.  Brilliant, Microsoft, thanks for not releasing a TLDR version cause we gamers love to spend our time reading legal documents rather than blow other players' heads off.  Although I can't decide what's "worse" at this point.  Both make me wanna puke.

Also love seeing the Chuck Norris/World of Warcraft ads every slide.  We know you folks over at Blizzard are tossing and turning at night over your declining numbers in WoW.  And I keep seeing the Kinect in all these TV commercials.  Well, anyone who buys the Kinect is a toolbag, so there you go.  Yowza, I'm on fire tonight!  Suck it down.  Poor Miyamoto, here, from a Sega fan, let me give you a hug.

At least the Broncos won again so you have an uplifting story in Tim Tebow.  Better than reading about the game media, that's for sure.

Group Think In Video Games?

Hello everybody, I've been busy with school lately (as usual).  I've been tired but my Super Sprint game is coming along nicely and the only time I have to "think" about blogging is before I go to bed so here goes.

I've been thinking about this for a while.  It's about video games.  I notice that when it comes to gaming (particularly multiplayer), a few games get the most attention of all.  And I can think of a few....oh, Call of Duty?  Halo?  Battlefield?  World of Warcraft?  Starcraft?  Etc.

That's not to say these games are bad but let's think about this for a second.  People nowadays are madly social.   It's why we have Facebook, Xbox Live, and all these rave clubs where people get drunk and rub up on girls/guys they want to date.  So you're some cool dude and a couple of your friends are playing games.  A few are playing Call of Duty.  So which game are you going to play?  Something else and get thrown out of the loop?  No, you're going to play Call of Duty, even if you don't like it as much.  And this also applies to single-player experiences too....don't play Zelda or Skyrim?  Eh...there's no help for you.

What seems to be happening is that a lot of people want to play the same exact games.  Sure, there are some games that are actually good, but the idea that SO MANY PEOPLE love the hell out of the same games?  There's something going on here.  Like it's easier to hop into a game hugely supported by some community than one that doesn't.  So there's not much "trailblazing" going on, is there?

As they say, "the rich video games get richer."  OMG THE TOP 1% OF GAMES OWN 99% OF THE PLAYERS!!!  Well, I'm not going to turn this into an "Occupy Activision/Electronic Arts/Microsoft/Sony" tirade cause frankly, I'm sick and tired of this "meme" (it's the 'cool' thing to talk about, just admit it...sticking it to The Man) and I'm not going to let a few rich folks put me down from making video games, sorry.

And back on video games, I'm not a "social" guy.  Which is perhaps why I'm not into Facebook, MMO's, or anything really popular.  It's why I sit here on this stupid blog and post about games that few people are aware about.  And that's okay cause I'm doing what I love.

But about the popularity thing.  I remember about a year or two ago, Perfect Dark (the N64 version) came out for Xbox Live.  And at the time, it was a HUGE deal, kind of like Daytona USA today.  If you don't own the game already, then you're just an idiot...go buy it now.  For those of you who've already played it, you can freeze the crosshair in the middle of the screen thanks to a patch (the moving crosshair turned off a lot of people...I agree).  Got all the achievements and still love the game today.  Read my previous Perfect Dark experiences here.  Granted, the game isn't perfect and there's a few things I'd change, but there's one glaring problem...

After about a month or two of playing, I noticed that the number of XBL players began to dwindle.  It was to the point where I had to wait a minute or two in the lobby just to play a 1 vs. 1 against some randoms (not to brag but most of whom I handily beat).  On the other hand, you had Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2/Black Ops which had over 100,000 players.  If I liked both games equally, which one do you think I'd prefer?  CoD, because it's much easier to jump into games against randoms, friends, you name it.

I'm still disappointed by this.  Perfect Dark literally was manna from heaven but no one's buying.  Instead they asked for meat.  Well, they got meat...though we all don't know how long until they tire of it.  Yes, this is a story from the Bible, in case you didn't know already.

I just wonder how long until Daytona USA succumbs to the same fate.  Now we have Forza 4 out which IMO isn't bad though I haven't bought it yet (Christmas present, maybe?).  But that game has a much more robust community.  So what's one to do--ostracize one's self from society playing a crusty old game or to join the crowd?  Hell, I remember playing the very recent Sega & Sonic All-Stars Racing game (my comments here) but the number of players dropped to zero so...off to Forza 3 I went!!!

Speaking of which, I just checked out Major Nelson's XBL charts and in the week of Oct. 24, Daytona USA was the second most purchased XBLA game.  Within in a month, it's drofpped off the Top 25.  Although for some strange reason, Crazy Taxi, OutRun, and Sega Rally were back on radar for that week as well.  EDIT: Turns out Sega racers are on sale for a limited time (except Daytona, of course) so go buy them all now.  No signs of Perfect Dark or anything else I really like.  It's also disappointing that Daytona USA has a 3.8 of 5 rating on Xbox Live, I mean, what's up with the inconsistency here???

The way I see things, all things go through cycles.  What was cool yesterday really isn't cool today.  So if the goal in life is to enjoy popular things and then dispose of them, what's the point?  Why can you like something for being great?  I still draw strange looks from people who don't "get" my obsession with racing games and the Sega Racing posters I have up in my cubicle.  I don't know man.  I know the games I talk about aren't bad and yes, many people like them for that reason, but how many people like them for the fanbase???

All I have to say is this.  Don't abandon popular games altogether, but give some other games a shot if you haven't already.  Like give OutRun Online Arcade a try.  It's only 400 MSP and it goes off the marketplace at the end of the year.  Just worth it...who knows, you may become addicted to it as well.

Oh, and one more thing.  I was thinking about game design, as usual.  The question as a game designer is how much content should one put in one's game?  Think about this.  If you release a Call of Duty game with 50 guns and 30 MP maps, it would probably sell the same as a Call of Duty game with 25 guns and 15 maps.  So why go back and improve the game?  Improving the game requires time and money, two things game studios usually don't want to give up.  In the end, the cost outweighs the extra sales.  It's why they stopped releasing extra content for Black Ops...so people will buy MW3, then the next CoD, and then whatever's is in style at the time.

And it's not just an "evil Call of Duty" thing.  I mean, if I were part of the dev team working on Perfect Dark, I'd love to go back to the game and polish a few things in a month's time for little or no time.  It's not like this was some grandiose release game that needed a hype machine to get by--some sites like Gamasutra popped the news and then the game was release.  No "marketing campaigns" to work around.  But that didn't happen  Why?  Because it has no impact on game sales.

I wonder if this is something that's holding back Sega.  They say, "Well, we put out Daytona USA, OutRun, and Sega Rally ports, so no more racing games..."???  And how about other racing games like Forza or Need for Speed?  What's the point of trying to compete with those when those are the only two racers you really need?  Need for Speed, HA!  Like if you go to a restaurant and you wanted a Barq's Root Beer and all they had was Coke, you accept defeat and take the Coke.  Come on, go the extra distance.  Money is temporary, but glory is forever.  So go for the glory of great games, not great profits.  Make the great racing games.  Sega, make Shenmue 3 NOW.  That's just my two nickels' worth.

EDIT: This is me:

Wanna Sell A Video Game? Jump Through Marketing Hoops!!!

Bro, I've been staring at lines of Assembly code for hours recently.  So it's been an aggravating weekend thus far.

Now, to talk more about game design stuff that I learned at school.  This is where things get really convoluted.  Most everyone (including I) have had this romantic notion of video game design.  That is, you think of a game, hire the employees necessary to make it, and then copied are distributed worldwide and you all walk away $800 million richer.  No, it's much more complicated than that.

What's the number one thing that sells a game?  MARKETABILITY!!!!!

If you want a major publisher to market your game for you, it begins with the pitch.  The "best game idea" doesn't always get selected.  It's all about creating that illusion of "fun" for the previewers.  Get your hands on some great pitchmen & laser shows and sell that game to the guys.  Find ways to inspire the audience.  For instance, games like Super Mario Bros. or The Sims sound boring on paper (play a fat plumber/go to the bathroom 4 times a day) but you need to flex your creative muscles in order to sell a reasonable product.  In general, the best games are the ones that are the easiest to pitch and are most likely to produce sequels/spinoffs (easy to reproduce success).

Then again, I'll never know how the hell this game got past the producers.

Okay, so now we assume that the game has been green-lighted and production is under away.  Hire your 100+ employee team and start plugging away at this!  This is where marketing REALLY hits home.  Up until the official release date, publishers are finding ways to pique the public's interest in the game via screenshots, videos, interviews, demos, etc. released in timely intervals.  Interest is measured from numerous variables including stats from Game Journalists (GameSpot, IGN, GameSpy) and discussion topics on message boards (GameFAQs and NeoGAF).  Sometimes, devs will even post in these forums with the sole purpose of stirring game interest or garnering public opinion.

DO NOT DOUBT FOR A SECOND THAT GAME DEVS DON'T DO THIS.  THEY MAY BE EAVESDROPPING ON YOU OR ME AS WE SPEAK!!!!

With consumer interest at its max point by release date, the game will go on to sell the most possible copies.  Now this is something that I loathe but is apparently a big f'n deal in the industry: DO NOT DELAY OR PUT OFF THE RELEASE DATE!  The schedule that the publishers have in place "guarantees" max sales at a given release date.  To push it later would get rid of some that interest that you've worked to build up thus far.  This means less copies sold (as well as more money to pay employees).  So sadly that's how the big game devs work--release the game half-finished, patch it later, but sell lots of copies anyway.

This brings me to my next point.  Let's take a look at the most wanted games of the Christmas 2011 season.  Modern Warfare, Gears of War, Madden, Assassin's Creed, Batman, Zelda, etc.  Now, to tell you the truth, these games are going to sell lots and lots of copies.  Modern Warfare 3 will probably sell more than 7 million copies in the first 24 hours of release, a record set by Black Ops a year ago.

And certainly, upon the game's release, the bitching and whining will begin.  You can almost see it a mile away--people buy Modern Warfare 3, love it, then all the glitches, game exploits, and "lack of skill" come through and then everyone hates the game.

This is the public's opinion of the game in a span of three months.  So people don't like Modern Warfare 3...so what?  Does Activision really care?  You've already bought the game so what does it really matter?  And odds are you'll go on to buy that expensive DLC no matter how "lousy" it is.  Even worse, you may be charged more money upon the game's release...see Gears of War 3's Season Pass.

EDIT: I know it's late but here's three fun Reddit pics I found:

 DLC is fun.
You don't just get the game in one piece, you get it in a million pieces...

As a matter of fact, you can defy the whole game design process with a single good marketing scheme.  I know I'll touch a nerve here, but games like Homefront, Duke Nukem Forever, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), all mediocre games that sold a lot anyway because they had name recognition or were in the limelight.  So remember, marketing is a BIG DEAL these days.

...

Okay, I'm making it look like members of the mainstream gaming industry are greedy a-holes who take no pride in their work.  That's not true.  But this is part of the reason why we get unbalanced or flawed games--because there's little to no incentive to go back and correct things when they're already out on the marketplace.  Hey Treyarch, are you going to go back and patch up some of Black Ops' flaws just before Modern Warfare 3 is released?  No, because Black Ops means nothing now anymore--it's in the past, no one cares, it's vestigial...

Also, see the Cracked.com article on flaws in the game industry, particularly the part about creative bankruptcy.  Why get creative and bust their asses on something really convoluted when a straightforward FPS/shmup/platformer will sell just as much?  Taking chances doesn't pay off as much as it did in the past.

...

Now one more peculiar topic.  We're on the subject of MMORPG's--World of Warcraft the most glaring example.  Now MMO's are a different animal altogether since you have to keep the game good in the long-term in order to keep subscriber sales up.  So that's well and good, right?  But MMO servers are shut down all the time.  NOT FAIR, WHAT ABOUT ALL THE ITEMS I WORKED FOR OVER ALL THESE YEARS???  Read the Terms of Use under "No Ownership Rights in Account":

NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN ANY ACCOUNT STORED OR HOSTED ON A BLIZZARD SYSTEM, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF WARCRAFT ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO SUCH ACCOUNTS ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF BLIZZARD. 

In other words, all the stuff you "own" in the game you're just borrowing from Blizzard.  The day they close the servers, you can't sue them for anything because you never owned any of that stuff in the first place.  It's brutal, but it's right there in permanent ink.  Big servers cost a hell of a lot of money to run anyway so it's a given that they'll pull the plug on the game some day.  When the game ceases to be profitable, then Blizzard will move on with it...

...

Okay, enough of this discussion, it's depressing.  Hey, they are providing a service for many people so they deserve what they get paid.  I'm not begrudging anyone here.  Although I am turned off by many mainstream games nowadays because of their lack of ingenuity....kind of like a processed vegetable that is available for anyone to eat but has lost all of its nutritional value.

EDIT: Let me reiterate a bit.  Not every big-name title is bad.  Some are actually good and wholesome--everyone rallies around the game's icon (Nintendo games like Mario & Zelda come to mind).  But the trend nowadays is if you pump enough money into marketing & production values, that means the game is somehow "better."  I don't always agree with this.  They say that money can't buy happiness, therefore, money can't buy games that can buy happiness, mirite?  Or is this a logic FAIL?

Like I said before, it would be nice to flex your creative muscles and work on whatever games you want, but it's not that easy anymore.  As a matter of fact, in the never-ending debate in which games are or are not art, I say that games err toward NOT art.  Why?

Take a look at things that are labeled "art."  Paintings, sculpture, music, poetry, literature, plays, etc.  These are things that one or a handful of people have worked on.  They would create these things to express themselves, to feel good, not to "sell out" or become rich.

Now let's take a look at movies/film/cinema, etc.  Now that's a beautiful medium.  We've had great movies that you could call "art" such as Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, etc.  But would you say that ALL moves are art?  Like would you label films such as Epic Movie and White Chicks as art???  Like games, movies have cashed in for a long time...some good, some bad, but only a handful are truly memorable over the years.

Alright, now how about our beloved video games.  Well, stepping through the production process, the whole game is filtered through the minds of so many individuals...the producers, the artists, the programmers, the publishers, that it's no longer any one person's "baby"--it's just this massive abomination that many people have their fingerprints on (the more employees, the worse it gets).  Then it's sold to millions of people for $60 a pop.  Is that how art works?  I thought art was about observing in a museum or listening to in a theatre, not paying lots of money to run home and blow up all sorts of crap on your TV (and curse out little kids thousands of miles away).  And then when the game's run its course, you lose the CD or sell it to GameStop for $2.  Yeah, so much for "art appreciation."

This is not to say art has never been monetized or that all games are not art.  But with the way that games are so consumerized I tend to think it's arrogant that gamers are so quick to label every game as a piece of art.

Kind of sucks that you can't make a game just for "yourself."  Something you can say is your own "baby."  Things that I worked on alone such as Counter-Strike maps and Forza 3 cars...things I can say are "mine"--that I did to entertain myself and anyone else interested.  Or not even just yourself--maybe you and some good friends or a team you know very well.  That's what I thinking about.  But with the resurgence of the indie game market (miniscule game studios making games like Angry Birds, Minecraft, Super Meat Boy), I think aspiring game devs have a bit of freedom to defy the traditional rules of corporate game design.  Just don't expect to make any super-huge 3D games unless you have connections with a damn good producer/publisher.

...sooo, "JUST WIN, BABY!!!"  Al Davis, 82 years old.

What I Learned About Game Design In Three Days (And How It Pertains To Sega Racers)

First of all, I figured out how to get my super school laptop to run away from my cubicle dock.  So now I can play my Supermodel emulator at home!

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so good.  The fastest it went was 50% and that's in the sewer tunnel in Advanced course of Daytona 2.  I have yet to try Scud Race.  My parameters were "-fullscreen -res=1024,768 -ppc-frequency=50".  Changing the screen resolution has no apparent effect on performance.  BTW, my laptop's default resolution is 1900x1200.

So this sucks but maybe we'll be able to get this stuff running faster in the future...I mean, these computers are able to run stuff like Crysis on the highest settings but not a 13-year-old arcade game?  Gimme a break.  Pay tha' man (Bart) and he'll optimize that emulator in no time!

Oh yeah, I'm nearly done decorating my cubicle at college..I'll get back to you on that soon.

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So anyway, I managed to make it through three days of FIEA in one piece.  That's great.  I didn't just attend programming classes, I also attended production classes.  The production director, Rick Hall...he had some fascinating lectures right out the gate and I figure I should share them with you.

1. What's the most important element of game design?  Creativity!  What exactly is it?  It's not necessarily coming up with completely random ideas.  It's about taking things you know and combining them.  You see, the human brain applies associative thinking--it likes to compare things to another.  Like if you look at clouds or ink blots, you think "Oh, that's a giraffe, a lion, a scary face, etc."  Likewise, if someone quotes a game or movie, you think "Hey, I heard that before..."

Because of these connections, it really helps if you use game elements that make sense.  You kind of want the human brain to think "Oh, now I get why these two themes go together, that's cool."  One way to come up with brute force creativity is by using a mind map--come up with things that are similar, draw them in a diagram, and connect the dots.  Use your diagram to come up with a core concept.  If you increase your knowledge and experience of the real world, then you can apply these facts & ideas into your mind map and thus broaden your options.  So go read books or something and learn more about the world.  Spending time on frivolous things doesn't seem like such a waste anymore, does it?

My example: Take NASCAR for instance.  You want to make an interesting NASCAR game.  So using your little mind map, you write "Rednecks" then "Lawn Mower" then "Lack of Class."  And you get a game--hey, how about NASCAR-style game with rednecks driving lawn mowers and, uh, toilets?  There's already a game like that--Jimmie Johnson's Anything With An Engine.  You think, "Ok, that makes sense."  Better than something like "Making a sandwich out of lint," yeah sure it's original but in terms of creativity, it just makes no sense and probably wouldn't be fun.

Try to think about OutRun.  Let's take "racing" -> "fast car" -> "Ferrari" -> "stylish", "excitement" -> "drifting" -> "fun" -> "going for a cruise", -> "multiple routes" -> "colorful, varied environments", "girls", "pleasant music" -> OUTRUN.  Makes sense, right?

2. Another thing that a game needs is a "silhouette."  In other words, create a simple motif that people can see and think "Oh yeah, that's ____."  Like if you were to look at a blackened shape of Mario, Sonic, Link, or Darth Vader, you'd know who that is within a second.  You want to go for a unique look that separates it from others in its class.  There can be other things that count as a silhouette.  Like quotes ("I'll be back") or animation style (South Park).

When people see that icon, they'll always remember it and that's one of the main goals of game design.  And congrats--you got an intellectual property at work here.  So take Nintendo games like Mario or Zelda--it's repetitive, sure, but people crave what they see so that's easier to market than newer/more obscure IPs, such as Ice Climbers or Kid Icarus.  No icon = sucks and no one will remember it.

So how does this relate to Sega racers?  Well, let's look at OutRun.  You got Ferraris, the music, the flagman, the token beach level, the girl in the passenger seat, the multiple routes.  And Daytona USA and Sega Rally with their infamous "Rolling Start!" and "Game Over Yeah!" quotes respectively.  Sega racers may not be well-known in the community, but if you bring up any of these catchphrases or concepts, odds are a few people will come to the rescue and say, "Man I remember that game--it was tight," or something like that.  So long live Sega racers!!!

3. When coming up with a game, you're marketing it to a large audience.  Execution is important--all the good ideas in the world won't work if there's broken/non-existent gameplay.  You want to go for the emotional feel, not the intellectual one.  If you haven't caught the audience's attention within the first five minutes, they're likely to just quit altogether.  Realism just plain sucks--Star Wars isn't realistic, Magnum P.I. isn't realistic, etc.

This is otherwise known as immersion--the ability to invoke intense experiences.  So connect the dots (as said above) and figure out how to keep the player guessing.  For example: "What happens when I turn that corner?"  "How am I going to take down this guy?"  "How will I fare if I fly through this intersection at 150 mph?"  You get the idea.

A good example of this, from my point of view, is Forza 3.  At the time, I had just finished playing Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, which was quite a fun little racer.  Forza 3, on the other hand, started out so slow.  You're given this Toyota Yaris or whatever and told to putter around a go-kart track a few times.  It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I can see people opting out of this for, say, Burnout. *puke*

4. The best thing you can do with a game is keep it simple.  Think the game of chess--you can write the game's rules on one sheet of paper and it's lasted for nearly a millenia.  When in a game's pre-production, you want to come up with a "razor statement" which is basically a quick sentence that a person can repeat verbaitim on the first try.  For instance, with Starcraft you'd something like this--"You move individual units around to defeat enemies in a war sci-fi setting."  If your razor statement is too large, then shorten it--you're getting too ambitious.  Like if you try to combine an RTS like Starcraft with FPS and puzzles, then you're way over your head.

You also need to come up with a Visual Target.  For instance, if you were to make a game with cars, would you want it to be realistic?  Or do you want the cars to flip all around and look stupid?  These things matter.  If you were to go up to a development team and say, "Make me a FPS," they may make something completely unexpected since you weren't there to specify what you wanted (i.e. you expected Call of Duty but they made Rainbow Six).

There's many details on game development, such as "Come up with a demographic" and "Respect game IP's since people play, say, Star Wars games for lightsabers and lasers, not for miscellaneous crap."  One thing he did bring up was World of Warcraft.  The first month of gameplay is free.  However, to get you to go on for multiple month subscriptions, they pad the game with filler gameplay (grinding, walking around to get elsewhere).  EDIT: Think about it...you're in a video game therefore you should be able to teleport wherever you want, but you can't...they're making you play longer than usual.  Scheming...and now you know why I dislike WoW (or any other MMORPGs) for that matter.

Oh, and obviously, you want to research the competition.  What does your game do different from others in the genre?  If you can't get any separation, then your game will not succeed.  EDIT: When marketing the game, try to come up with five bullet points that your game does differently than everyone else (be more specific than, "this is fun" or "it's cool").

So...about Daytona USA 2--what does it do different?  Well, for one, it has a sublime driving engine that very few have emulated.  The way the car melts the tires and bobs back and forth isn't necessarily realistic (compare Daytona 2 to real-life stock cars) but it feels awesome, catering to the emotional element there.  It's challenging and offers much room for improvement, offering much gameplay and less fluff.  It's got wacky environments yet they make a bit of sense.  It catches your attention from the get-go (intense attract screen, rockin music, loud engine, etc.). 

See what I'm getting at here?  Sure, Daytona USA and Scud Race aren't original IPs by all means, but they're something different than what we have today.  If Sega would have the guts to make the game, they could really touch a nerve in the racing genre.  I believe this!!!

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That's all I have to say.  The rest of the details are technical stuff that I feel would muddy the waters even further.  Sorry about the lump of text with no pics but it's still good reading anyway.  Oh, and if I hear anyone say this, I'll whoop your ass:

 

What Do I Talk About Now??? Oh Yes, Game Design...

In a few days, I'm moving to Florida.  Thursday is Orientation Day--I'll get to meet my cohorts and receive my fancy laptop.  Then I have a few days to do nothing until class begins Monday.  But I'll discuss this at a later time.

Until then, I'm feeling a bit exhausted.  Well, I was having fun watching baseball on TV (what?) until that ended and playing Rock Band until my 360 broke down.

The logic behind this is that the 360 is a lot more complex and thus uses a lot more electricity and burns itself out faster (and is more fragile to boot) which is really sad...that's "state-of-the-art" technology for you.  But anyway...

Really, now gaming feels like a drag.  I'm starting to get annoyed by the hundreds of headlines that fly across Kotaku, Joystiq, Gamespot, GameFAQs, all those crap websites.  There's nothing "good" on the Sega horizon as of now.  Instead, the blogs are running a bunch of stupid junk like Rage, Star Wars, Dead Island, just STFU already.  I can't even read these social sites since I'm just baffled by the large amount of idiots that play the same games as I do...wtf???  Seriously, just take a stroll around GameFAQs, Kotaku comments, Something Awful, 4chan, Reddit, wherever and lose faith in humanity.  Though the ratio of idiots to non-idiots differs per site.

I've had ideas for future posts on my mind for a while, but I'm just gonna sit on them for now.  As a matter of fact, just about anything I do feels like a waste of time.  Ever feel that way about games?  I think my broken Xbox 360 is trying to tell me something.

Lol, I'm just chillin' like Archie Bunker so I found this funny picture to prove my point.  70's camera footage FTW!!  Just like Archie, I'm a bigot...against internet buffoons and bad racing games.  Come on, it's easy--just don't be an asshat and stop making Burnout/FnF clones.

One little story about how annoying gaming is.  I have a younger brother who is part of a "band."  He plays drums (like any good rebel does) while his friends play guitar and stuff.  At first, his whole group was into Call of Duty: Black Ops.  Then they reverted back to Modern Warfare 2.  Then one member of the band buys a silver Mitsubishi Eclipse with a black hood.  So what now?  Everyone starts playing Forza 3, talking like they know s*** about cars--"Dude, I just saw a 240SX down by the mall," or "I'm gonna buy a Civic and put a spoiler on it," or some crap like that.  What a piece of crap.  They also got into World of Warcraft  in similar fashion--how stupid is this...

But anyway, just like owning a fancy car make you into a car enthusiast, so does playing games make you a game designer.  We're all game designers now.



Man, I ain't into nuttin'...

For one thing, the the part of game design in which you play them is a load of ass--that's called beta testing.  It basically means sitting in your tiny cubicle, playing a buggy, incomplete prototype of a game, writing down every bug/flaw/suggestion that you come across.  Like driving an RC car through a minefield--yeah you get an RC car but not for long!

Really, though, I'm lucky that I got into this "legit" gaming university (FIEA) because I heard these nightmare stories about people who go to these mainstream/lightweight gaming colleges (Full Sail, lol) who can't find jobs.  I did plan on attending Full Sail at one point...whew, dodged a bullet back there!

The Next Generation Of Gamers

First, I would like to commend the Japanese women's soccer team (sucks that the US lost but at least it was classy) and Christian Lopez, the guy who gave back Derek Jeter's 3000th hit HR for free (even though he has college loans and taxes to pay).  Sports are an inspirational time...for some of us anyway.

But otherwise, this has been the most boring day ever.  There's a stunning lack of news on anything gaming-related.  I mean, I really am at a loss of words to speak about.  I watched part of Talladega Nights with Ricky Bobby and that's it.  It's a funny movie though (if you disagree, just shut it).

Yesterday's another story.  I went to the Northshore Square Mall again just to check out what's up.  Seeing as it's a Saturday, there's the usual crowd there.  There are plans to rework the mall but they won't begin until I'm way gone to Florida.  After I took a stroll and ate an Auntie Anne's pretzel, I sat on a bench by the fountain staring at the palm trees.

But I came up with something to talk about as I sat there and watched the kids throw spare change in the fountain.  And that is the things that I like are becoming more antiquated.

I'm 23 years old.  I think it's weird to think that the games I grew up with such as Goldeneye, Daytona USA, arcade games, regular old Gameboy, PC games that took multiple floppy disks, etc. are almost things that belong in a museum.  Games that made well with limited graphics and with split-screen multiplayer.  New franchises all throughout the 90's and the early 00's.  The hype for realistic graphics was greater than ever.

Now, I just don't know.  Kids play games like Call of Duty, Halo, Left 4 Dead, Burnout, Need for Speed, World of Warcraft and that's life to them (not saying these games are bad...well, most of them anyway).  The Facebook/Twitter/iPhone generation.  It's kind of strange, almost obnoxious, to see the kids grow up, never having played a Nintendo 64 (EDIT: Or a Dreamcast) or used a dial-up connection.  Like some of the magic was lost in transition.  Back then, you made it through with less.  Graphics weren't as good, but the devs made it happen anyway.  Like watching old action flicks without all the unimaginative CGI crap.  Nowadays, you just blow a big budget on some fancy hardware and 500+ man studio and half the damn planet buys it and everything is "good."

On the other hand, you can say you're older than I (preferrably over 30 years) and say you grew up with Atari, Game & Watch, text-based adventures, etc.  True, but more the reason to be annoyed by this current generation of games.

They say that the average age of a gamer, as of 2011, is 35 (which I admit is ridiculous).  If by gamers you mean the 70-year-old retirees who casually play Wii Bowling in their free time (which offset the angry 15-year-olds on Xbox Live), then I guess that flies with you talking heads.  Take a look at this GameFAQs poll on March 9, 2011.  Apparently, 14-30 year olds make up 90% of the GameFAQs voters.  That's your "hardcore" gaming base there--the ones most knowledgeable over decades of games.  Casuals don't "count" since they don't know as much as us diehards.

Speaking of which, how many kids know who Ralph Baer is?  You know, the "old guy" who essentially put video games on the map in the 70's?  Next time you meet a kid who thinks they know s*** about games, ask them that question.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for the next generation's sake, us "veterans" of video games have to salvage what was once magnificent or dignified of our generation so we can tell others who will tell others and so forth.  Then maybe we'll get more "young people" on our side.  Besides, one of the points of history is so that people know what worked and what didn't (like the Atari market "crash").  I'm not saying that we should just throw out all technology and revert back to the NES era.  But maybe we can salvage a future of M-rated grey-scale FPSes, "everybody wins" hold-your-hand story modes, and other crap gimmicks like jumping in front of a TV to accomplish menial tasks...the kind of stuff kids are used to these days.

See Cracked.com's Top 5 Crucial Lessons I Learned From Watching Kids Play Games...which is basically play games that let you automatically "win," skip story/cutscenes/grinding, and blow up everything.  Well, they're kids--wait until they grow up and crave interactive movies in the form of games.  Games that involve blowing stuff up no doubt.  So apparently: convoluted story + big explosions = orgasm.

Thankfully, by looking at the older GameFAQs age polls (like this one from 1999), you see that the ages were much younger (13-24 made up 80%) so many gamers from the 80's-90's are still hanging around, ready to educate the young kids.  And we're getting ports/remakes/emulators of old games so you can't say these kids DON'T have access to old games...

Then again, this whole idea of the next generation being worse than this one isn't new.  Just trying to infuse some retro goodness in this generation, that's all.  The good stuff that is, not the dreck like all those games the Angry Video Game Nerd makes a mockery of.  Hey, we can use this new technology to our advantage (like, uh...this).  But even with this technology, things that were great (like video games) can turn to crap--like the Ozymandias poem:

And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

And as long as nostalgic gamers are around, at least the game industry retains a shred of credibility.  Otherwise, we are doomed.

BELIEVE.....

Video Games (MMORPG's) Rigged To Blow (Games Are Art?)

EDITED plenty of times on 5/13-14

Okay, we're back online.  Blogspot was undergoing "maintenance" not for one hour but for two days so I was completely in the dark here.  And my blog's poll went from 18 to 31 votes in a matter of hours...what the hell's going on here.  I do appreciate more votes, that's for sure.

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But anyway, I see that the never-ending grind versus dumb mainstream games will never end.  I wanted to address Scud Race but let's take care of this first.

This is on Kotaku.  Now I wouldn't read this site anymore except for the fact that the other game blogs are not as comprehensive or run by complete idiots, such as G4TV which causes massive trauma, stomachaches, and erectile dysfunction.  The topic of today: Why play an MMO when you know it's going to end?  You pay for subscriptions, hence you are just "renting" the game.  And when the servers go down, that it--the game's gone for good.  Can't play it anymore so all progress made before is lost.

The typical Kotaku response: "why even bother living if your gonna die anyway???  its about the experience and social aspect more than anything!1!  you're little single player games last 10-20 hours anyway so whats the difference???"

Here's what I have to say.  My idea of a long-term activity should be something that leaves me with something positive and/or tangible at the "end."  According to the responses, after playing some MMO until you become burnt out or the server closes down, you get the memories, a few friends, and carpal tunnel.  To me, that doesn't seem worthwhile since MMORPG's long-term worthiness is stemmed in grinding levels by clicking on bad guys and talking with friends.  These things I feel that I can do elsewhere, particularly with games that don't become a paperweight in 5-10 years...games that I can play "forever."  Games that I can plug back in and say, "Hey, look at what I accomplished or learned to do," while going through the motions like before.  On the other hand, MMO's are just wiped out for good so you can't go anywhere near them.

And as for socialization--can't you just do that on Ventrilo, message boards, chat rooms, or, dare I say, face-to-face in real life?   Better yet, can't you spend some (or all) your time playing sports, making artwork, reading books, and spending time with family which can do wonders for your health and well-being?  Why is it that even in the face of these revelations, people still think MMORPG's are money & time well-spent?  Hey, I really don't mind if people cared so much about these MMO's but the fact they're so flippant to the idea that one of their "extra lives" will be flushed away in a couple of years is rather startling.

Or here's a theory--maybe people are hopping aboard these MMORPG's because they're like college parties with booze and strippers...get in while it lasts because it's not here for long (see the "social" aspect of these games).  Though I'd opt for something with a bit more substance and integrity so no thanks.

EDIT: It just dawned on me a day later...isn't it a bit perturbing that we're comparing a MMORPG to a person's life?  Just off the top of my head, you DON'T HAVE to play a MMORPG while you DO have to live your life.  Come on, people.

I don't know.  I've already talked about WoW before.  I actually think the idea behind a MMO is interesting--creating a character to interact with other players' characters, but not how WoW or any of these big shots do it...with the fat kids, the medieval/fantasy setting, the servers going down, etc.  Maybe I just don't get it but if you do then hey, who's stopping ya....  And this is my

It's too bad that many games (well, Xbox 360 and PS3 in general) nowadays are rigged to these servers.  Like Call of Duty.  Okay, I am somewhat guilty of this.  I'm Prestige 1 on CoD4 and CoD:WaW, Prestige 4 in MW2, and Prestige 10 in Black Ops.  I'm probably going to regret this later, but I'm playing these games cause I want to shoot people, not cause I want to run through the hamster wheel.  I guess it's just nice that more people are opening up to the reality that they may not be able to play certain games in the future (see OutRun Online Arcade).

Thankfully, if there's one good thing I see coming out of gaming technology these days, maybe it's that they can sustain these servers longer.  Send petitions and whine--maybe you can keep these games up or at least salvage something for the future (XBL achievement points???  I hope).

------------

But anyway, one of the fabled arguments in video game culture is whether or not games are art.  Well, it depends.  It's mostly on the developer's intent on whether to create a "unique" game or something cookie-cutter just to make mass profits. Check out this quote:

"The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do."

-Andy Warhol

And that's what's nice about games.  You just pop in the game and it's not going to change on you.  You go away to a (hopefully) magical world where you don't have to worry about germs, diseases, pain & suffering, global wars, paying bills, etc.  Like Sega Racers.  Daytona USA, OutRun, Crazy Taxi, just cool places to be.  And that's why I made Counter-Strike maps so I can create my own "worlds" to visit.

It's just terrible that up until this point, you no longer "own" a game forever; they just go away eventually which is completely contrary to the last 30+ years of game history where you could own the tangible game forever as long as you took care of it.  Now you know why I'm a bit saddened by these revelations.

Pssh, I'm done here, I've gone way overboard.  I hate video games.

Today's LoL's Of The Week (Bizarre, Kotaku, FPSes That Suck)

Because it's been a while since I've ripped something.

But let's start with the good news.  Sumo Digital picks up Bizarre Creations' ex-lead designer.  I've said this before and I said it now--MAKE IT HAPPEN, SEGA!  Sega/Sumo Digital should pick up Bizarre Creations.  Pick up these people cause they have some know-how when it comes to racing games.  Keep these people away from Criterion or Raw Thrills and go pwn the bastards, rofl.  Lol at Criterion and Raw Thrills, they just screwed themselves.

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Kotaku, the (annoying) game blog site, has decided to change to a new format where parts of the screen are static and others are not.  Anyway, I don't like it and neither do a lot of people.  According to UK Resistance, Kotaku's average daily hits have dropped from 2 mil to less than 0.5 mil, beginning January 11.  ROFLMAO!!!

I look at Kotaku feeds from my Blogspot, I don't actually go to the website itself so it's a win-win for our side.

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All these FPSes coming out.  Well, there's this one coming out called Rage.  It's made by Bethesda Softworks, same people who brought you Fallout 3.  I know about this game thanks to the front-page GameFAQs ad.  Now they show this picture of this disturbing mutant guy which I will not directly post here (click here to see tha homie).  Now wait--what's the appeal of this game again?  Another post-apocalyptic adventure/FPS game with macabre environments and enemies?  Wait, I want to play this?  No, I don't.

Same thing to all you other new FPSes out there.  Bulletstorm, Brink, Killzone, etc.  I almost feel that these over-the-top, "herrdcarrr" FPSes are just trying to melt my brain.  Will I buy it?  No, no, no, no, stop trying to one-up Black Ops cause you're all jealous that a normal, contemporary FPS is whooping your ass.  See Goldeneye and Counter-Strike, other FPS classes that don't resort to crazy-ass scenarios.  So LOL at you game developers, keep making FPSes, so original...

EDIT: Speaking of which, about a month ago, Bulletstorm made a parody game of Call of Duty called "Duty Calls."  It portrays CoD as piss-boring with a linear campaign and lame storyline.  Now I do agree that the single-player kind of sucks, but it's all in good fun.  I think it's rather funny cause it nails many FPS campaign cliches, but the whole "Sergeant Super Duper Extreme Person" titles are probably made up by some Red Bull-drinking WoW nerd who pulled an "epic" 30-man raid all last night.  Or something like that.  Bulletstorm also parodied Halo too, WTG guys.

I also have a lot more respect for Halo now since you can make a futuristic FPS without it being disgusting to look at so yeah.

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Billy Mitchell opens a little hole-in-the-wall arcade at the Orlando airport.  Rofl.  In case you didn't know, Billy Mitchell is this old gamer dude who set a bunch of world records on old arcade games like Pac-Man.  Well, his greatest claim to fame is getting the record for Donkey Kong, though that was up for debate from sources like these.

This arcade has a few murals of Donkey Kong and what other games does it have?  Fast & Furious: Super Bikes and Dead Heat.  Yeah, great arcade.  No old arcade games either, nothing with a "kill screen."  Wow, greatest arcade I've ever been to.  Lol, Billy Mitchell.

Stick to the hot sauce.

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EDIT: Oh, and one more Lol's.  So my brother owns House of the Dead 2 & 3 for Nintendo Wii with those Wii-gun controllers.  Because this is on the Wii, the aiming already sucks as it is but I have to cope with it anyway.  I start playing through 2 with the blood on red and oh man...lol's everywhere.  Wonderful voice acting, nightmare fuel, guys hitting you in the face with axes/chainsaws, doesn't get any better than this, Sega.  Lol at this entire game.

Stick to Time Crisis, at least you can dodge incoming projectiles.  Wait, this is the second time I said "stick," my bad.  EDIT: NVM, this game doesn't suck, we love you Sega.  Read about my HotD2 experience.

A Festivus For The Rest Of Us

If you know me, I'm a huge Seinfeld fan.  December 23 may be Christmas Eve's Eve, but no--it is indeed Festivus.  See here; too bad it's an abridged version:



"The Strike" Season 9 Ep. 10, first aired December 18, 1997.

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Now for my personal Airing of Grievances.  I'm exaggerating here BTW so don't cry about it:

Sega, you didn't make that new Daytona USA game and I'm pissed!  As a matter of fact, you've done little more than piss on our childhood dreams!  All you do is publish games and take credit for it--you don't develop them!  Stop making games about urinals!  Also, try to build upon your old Dreamcast games rather than release they hackneyed ports that disintegrate in the bowels of Xbox Live Marketplace!

Toshihiro Nagoshi, you bum, stop hitting up the bars and tanning booths and make some good old Sega games from the old days!  No more of this Yakuza or Binary Domain crap, give me something Daytona-related!

Sonic Team, thanks for stabbing the Sonic franchise with a rusty shank all this time!

Nintendo, you're overrated and no one has the guts to say it so I will!  The Wii is a shovelware receptacle hinging entirely on the likes of Zelda, Smash Bros., Mario Kart, and miscellaneous motion control games!  Also, I will never forgive you for making the bikes overpowered in Mario Kart Wii!

Microsoft, the Kinect is a piece of crap!  Also, your little Xbox Live Avatars are incredibly ugly and seeing them makes me want to puke!

GameFAQs, your site is a good source of user-submitted guides, cheat codes, and reviews, but the message boards stink!  Your moderators are crazy and so are your little user-contests!  The Best Game contests are also lousy cause I can't take this Final Fantasy or Zelda crap anymore!  I also don't like in that "Rate The Song" contest on the Rock Band 3 board you posters gave Werewolves of London, I Can See For Miles, Foolin', Good Vibrations, and Rock Lobster (yes) crap scores while you gave Beast and the Harlot a good score (click here)!

Kotaku, you're turning into the G4TV of gaming blogs!  Stop pissing me off with your mis-representation of racing games, the miscellaneous science stories, dumb random crap, and all those anime chick pinups!

G4TV and Spike, congratulations on making me feel embarrassed to be a gamer!  X-Play is trash, Attack of the Show is lame, and Code Monkeys is the kind of crap my obnoxious WoW-obsessed Mountain Dew-drinking "accomplice" would like!

Game Informer, I'll never forgive you for that old OutRun 2 review where you gave it a 6.5!  Your magazine sucks and I hope you fail!

Activision, you are an embarrassment to the gaming community!  The way you slash and burn game companies--you do not allow any room for creativity or innovation!  It's all about the money, isn't it?

Namco Arcade in the mall, I'll never forgive you for taking away that Daytona USA 2 cabinet, regardless of the logistics behind it!

Forza 3 and Turn 10, I'm pissed at how the PI ratings are so screwed up that I can't play it anymore!  Perfectly good game goes to waste and now I can't play it anymore!

World of Warcraft, you ruined gaming as we know it with its grinding gameplay, crap graphics in which all the characters look the same, and turning everyone I know into zombies who use nerdy lingo and don't shower!

Midway and Raw Thrills, you suck, end of story.

All you people who don't read my blog, you don't know what you're missing so shame on you!

...I lost my train of thought, that's the end for me, I'm through.

The Greatest Game(s) Ever Made?

EDIT: GameFAQs keeps churning out more lists as time goes on so I'll probably add them eventually...

I would like to know what's up with GameFAQs and their rabid-like obsession with figuring out what the greatest video game of all time is.  First, check out these Top 10 lists according to these GameFAQs people...:

Moderators
Current Events Board
Random Insanity Board
Contest Board
Poll Of The Day Board
Life, The Universe, And Everything
EVERYBODY PANIC
Nonstop Gaming Board
War on Terrorism Board???
The Forum (dear God make it stop)
Classic Gaming Board (not all these games are "old," makes sense right)
The Couch

At least to be fair, each list has some different games, but overall, you see the same twenty or thirty games pop up all the time.

And then this is all capped off by what must be the millionth GameFAQs "Best Game Ever" contest.  And the winner will always be Zelda or Final Fantasy.  MAYBE Smash Bros or MGS.  No questions asked.  They focused this contest on games from the 00's, but all this does it take away Zelda: OoT and FFVII so some other garbage can win.

Really, I hate to be a jackass, but do I really care what a select group of people think are the greatest games?  Like what are you trying to say--if I haven't sat down and played Shadows of the Collosus, Metroid Prime, Zelda: Majora's Mask, or Star Wars: KotR from start to finish that I'm a bad man?  I hate to say it, but I don't care about 80% of the games on these lists.  And you might say I'm missing out--well, too bad.  EDIT: Let me reiterate--I don't hate these games per-se, but I'm just not into them.

As a matter of fact, I'm willing to say I had more fun playing this than all your little RPG games:

And I do like my Sega racers, but I'm not about to "scientifically prove" why I like these games by taking polls and whatnot...I like them, they make me feel good, this stuff comes from the heart, you come see for yourself.  I'm not running around trying to piece together all these Top 10 lists that are set in concrete.  Fact is my Top 10 would be completely unique.  I mean, all these "official" Top 10's just seem to reinforce more groupthink.  Play these games and you'll be cool!  Don't play them and you're out of the loop.  Oh so what.  Peer pressure, my ass.

Some will say that I'm just pissed just cause I don't see games like Daytona USA up there.  Really?  That's not it--contrary to popular belief, I don't want Daytona USA to have a fanbase in the billions...I like it playing the underdog role.  Secretly hiding in the shadows like Batman.  Criterion, Electronic Arts, Turn10 tossing and turning all night cause Sega may release that new racing killer app that would sink their ship (thankfully, this is Sega we're talking about so they're not too worried...neither would I).

There's plenty of games with no face time out there that have cult followings (besides Sega racers) such as X-Com UFO Defense and Earthbound, so really, I find these lists annoying for completely different reasons altogether.

...

And another thing that's weird about GameFAQs...what's with these GameFAQs VIP Beta Key Giveaway things?  So SBAllen asks you some question about this new fantasy MMORPG game called Rift like "What area do you find item-X or whatever," you type the answer in the blank, and if you're right, you enter a raffle where you may win a prize that I have no idea what the hell it does.  Okay...a Beta Key, what does it do?  I have no friggin idea.  So I entered one or two and as odds would have it, I don't win.

In case you've never seen this contest, click here to check out SBAllen's post.

Now I have nothing against this Rift game, but I can't help but think he's trying to self-promote this game himself by having people look up info about it.  It is as if I were the admin and I had people scrambling to find answers for OutRun 2 or Scud Race questions to win "prizes."  I'm willing to bet A. that SBAllen loves this game and is self-promoting it himself or B. someone's paying him off.

EDIT: I think these beta keys were for the Rift game itself.  Wow, ambiguity FTW!!

And another thing, this is not saying that Rift will be a "bad" game quality-wise.  But I hear about one more G-D GAME WITH THE FOLLOWING WORDS--MAGE, CLERIC, WARLOCK, PALADIN, DRUID, ROGUE, HUNTER, OR WHAT HAVE YOU--I AM GOING TO SNAP.  Literally, I don't want to have anything to do World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, or whatever crap you got because I can't take it anymore.

And that's my post.  Very sloppy, probably pissed off a lot of people, but whatever.

Lol BlizzCon, Plus WoW Rant

Hmm, let's see, first you take this, which is a damn fine start I might add...:

Then throw in Tenacious D in concert...

Then add this "comedian" Jay Mohr who reads jokes off a freakin sheet of paper and there you go.  Blizzcon, the most annoying place in the world to be.  Stay cool, dudes.

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EDIT: Now, let me just throw this in here too about World of Warcraft.  Let me make this brief cause it needs to be said eventually.  Now I don't like it.  It's not a "bad" game per se, but there's something about it that really stinks.  I've come to the conclusion that there's two reasons why people play it:

1. As a means to socialize with friends and strangers with your own little avatar and interactive environments.

2. Because you have nothing better to do.

I'm serious about 2.  I know a couple of people who really have nothing going for them at the moment so they give the game a shot.  Some of them become addicts while to others, it just rubs off.  The concept of leveling up and becoming stronger just makes me feel like a hamster running on the wheel.  And no, I've never, ever played the game before, not even for a minute.

My brother played WoW in the past and I've asked "What makes this game particularly exciting?"  He talked about these big raids and clicking on stuff and how there's all this strategy involved.  I guess it works like Pokemon in that you need to use the right moves at the right time, but it still doesn't sound like my cup of tea.  I'd rather play games that take "active" skill to play, like FPS, racing--the kind of stuff that commandeers your attention and makes you lock on and actively work to improve at.  Seriously, criticize Microsoft Achievement Points all you want, but at least those require you to play vastly different games to get, plus they're not mandatory unlike the leveling up in WoW.

And another thing, whatever happened to Warcraft III?  Did people forget that ever existed?  At least that game requires strategy and dexterity, but in WoW, you're just clicking on little animals ad nauseum to reach that next level or obtain that next stupid thing.  You'd think the game was a more elaborate version of Farmville...

I'll tell you that I know plenty of people here at college who play it and I'll be frank--I don't know any normal people who play this game.  Well, maybe one or two, but the ones who are "normal" probably went cold turkey from the game a long time ago--I'm not actively following them.

And what's sad is that I had a friend in high school who I was cool with.  We played computer games, Advance Wars on the DS, just hung out with someone who didn't seem deterred by my presence.  Then we went to college and became roommates (in private bedrooms, not shared).  Needless to say, he started to get into WoW, smelled weird, I didn't know what the hell happened.  Eventually he just dropped out of college and I never saw him again.  And then you've got my brother and his friends, some who are already long gone (one friend went from brimming with enthusiasm to emo depressed in a matter of years) while my brother went cold turkey and now he's working out, playing some Halo, having fun.

So really, I don't know what the hell's up with WoW and I know some people reading this may like the game.  But come on people, step back and re-evaluate your lives if you're in dire straits...

Oh, and if any smart aleck says "Well I don't know any normal people who play Daytona USA," then let me direct you to the OutRun Online Arcade board where there are many normal people who play these games so kiss my ass.

Oh No, We Suck Again! (Japan/Nintendo)

Following my post on how Keiji Inafune said Japanese games suck, we get another wonderful followup along the lines of OHWAITYOUFORGOTABOUTTHISYOUDONTKNOWWHATYOURETALKINGABOUT, in other words, Nintendo.  I had a lot of time to mull this...:

http://kotaku.com/5643582/hey-nintendo-is-a-japanese-company-you-know

...BUT WAIT!  Inafune did address Nintendo briefly in this article and gave them some props, so it's not like he's a ignoramus:

http://tgs.gamespot.com/story/6276630/japanese-game-makers-five-years-behind-inafune

But I kind of see what he was saying about the Big N...so here goes:

DISCLAIMER: I'm about to get on Nintendo's case here.  I DO NOT HATE NINTENDO.  I AM NOT A FANBOY.  I'M JUST CALLING IT LIKE I SEE IT.

Nintendo doesn't appear at TGS.  They appear at E3, they go "big."  They're responsible for making games like Zelda, Mario, and Pokemon which are gaming icons.  That's great.

Nowadays, I think Nintendo has been underwhelming.  First of all, console sales.  Wii sold about 70 mil, DS sold 140 mil.  THAT'S A LOT.  But other than all those sales, what does Nintendo have?  Motion controls?  Sad to say it, but Xbox 360 is quickly usurping the Wii as the most robust console of this generation.  Xbox 360 costs more money, but it's very versatile--DVD player, Xbox Live Arcade, Hi-Def screen, etc.  Nintendo Wii has the overstayed motion controls and lame friend codes.  Ask anyone who's played SSB: Brawl online how those are working out.  Besides, who wants to play Brawl with ACTUAL motion controls anyway?  People pissed and moaned about playing Mario Kart Wii with the "Wii-Wheel" so they resorted to using the joypad.

And then Nintendo seems to sparsely release blockbuster games--yeah we just got Super Mario Galaxy 2, but we haven't gotten another console Zelda and it's all about random stuff like "Super Mario Vore Adventure Inside Bowser," or "Samus Wanders Around Another Planet Again," and you know.  And another thing, throw out Nintendo first/second party games and they really don't have much except for the motion control gimmick which MS and Sony are slowly catching up on.

Hmm, this is interesting!  As a matter of fact on this very day, a GameFAQs poll that asks "Which console has the best game library?" further proves my point...  Xbox 360 - 37%  ,  PS3 - 26%  ,  DS - 13%  ,  Wii - 5%  ...

And for that reason despite massive console unit sales, you see Wii's collecting dust and 360's running overtime, only to RRoD apparently (lol).  Seriously, if it weren't for the RRoD's, the 360 would be the runaway best console but that holds it back--lousy Microsoft with their 50% RRoD rate...  The PS3 is picking up steam late now that its price is going down and its game library increases.  Arguably the best graphics of this generation.  Seriously, forget about games, the PS3 has a Blu-ray player which is becoming increasingly popular...

In other words, the way I see it, Nintendo seems perfectly content putting the car on cruise control cause they are freakin' Nintendo, nothing bad will ever come of them and everyone will love them.  I also don't think being on their own console is helpful cause frankly, it leaves the 360 and the PS3 as cesspools where Japanese devs get little support from each other.  IN MY OPINION, GUYS.


EDIT: Guess what I'm trying to say is that Nintendo needs to drum up more third-party support...

REPEAT DISCLAIMER: I'm got on Nintendo's case here.  I DO NOT HATE NINTENDO.  I AM NOT A FANBOY.  I'M JUST CALLING IT LIKE I SEE IT.

And then like we said before, Sega and all the cohorts suck too.  Of course, the only thing I don't really get about what Inafune said is that Japan is "five years behind."  I think I touched on that before.  Basically, they're behind on graphics (the Wii) or clever ideas?  Clever ideas....?

This cuts into my next point.  This will probably tick off someone.  Look, I'm a patriotic American, I love my country, God Bless America.  But if it weren't for Japanese game developers, gaming would be a train wreck of catastrophic proportions.  You like Halo?  You like God of War?  You like freakin Burnout?  Well, congratulations, then every single game will be like that.  EVERY GOSH-DANG GAME WILL TAKE PLACE IN SPACE/THE FUTURE (or in the "classical past" like Assassin's Creed or Prince of Persia though they will inexplicably inject some sci-fi elements in there anyway).  Violence and crap movie adaptations galore.  People will worship at the altar of World of Warcraft and sacrifice their time in honor.  Burnout and Fast and the Furious-esque racing games up your ass (Oh Dear God)!  Oh, and you'd get business dudes like this calling the shots:

You know what, this is all theoretical.  It may not turn out that way if Japan bows out.  But don't say that it CAN'T happen.

So, what can be "done" about it?  Nothing really.  I mean, being "five years behind" doesn't really mean anything to me.  It's about selling games that are popular.  And maybe with the exception of a few sparse Japanese games, they're a rare breed in the game market.  You can't "force" someone to like something.  This whole game mentality we have today may not change.  We may be screwed already as far as we know.

And to make this come full circle, look at Sega.  Daytona USA.  We've got to break down the proverbial wall and freakin salvage whatever we can before the world blows up in our face.  Ok, so I'm a crazy lunatic.  I'm out of things to say.  I give Inafune some props for saying what he did.  I'm not exactly smiling on the future either.  Goodbye.