Worth Reading: 12/13/2013

Excusing Nintendo's lack of sales as the business being "cyclical" seems pretty weak to me. Nintendo is a company that sometimes comes up with something fresh early on, but inevitably rests on the same stuff every single time, and has to be dragged kicking and screaming into any modern changes the industry makes. Not having success now can't just be excused away as a down-cycle for their business. Nintendo got lucky with a short-lived gimmick with the Wii, and other than that hasn't been on top of the world since the early 90's.

The industry does not have to be cyclical. I do agree the business CAN be cyclical in that success can make a company lazy and stupid (witness the role reversal Sony and Microsoft have experienced since the 360 and PS3 came out), but if Nintendo has the mindset of "oh, we're a cyclical industry, we'll be back on top soon," they are fucked. I don't really see how they are going to get out from under the other two at this point anyway, as I don't have nearly the confidence that Patrick seems to have in them, based on Nintendo's attitiude since...well, ever. They'll probably do fine in handhelds, but I don't see them being long for the console world at this point.

I deeply appreciate the first article, not only because they used the correct and noble use of "accesibility" but also hooking an "order whatcha need" device that hooks into a USB port for PC use could be very lucrative and brilliant.

That and it reminded me of this one handed guy who was damn legit back in the day of my local arcades.

Those Nintendo articles are spot on, as is your take. Those borderline-fanboy wanks passing themselves off as advice "make iOS games bur bur bur" "Mario on PS4 bur bur bur" are neither helpful nor would help. It also comes from investors who shoulda pulled a Mark Cuban and GTFOed with their cashed in stock back in 2010 when the current leadership of N were sleeping, but that's another tale.

Now THIS is the real jewel of this article:

why I like heavy procedurality in games: kills gamers' obsession w/ lore and realism, ludonarrative dissonance is expected and celebrated

It's a problem with quantity over quality. Lore is...tricky. Many like the trappings of HUGE TRACTS OF LORE, but they skim a few visual and emotional touchstones off the top and leave the rest to the dead weight bloat that it often is. Most writers can't seem to or won't bother to care for better either, and we get Toriyamas hwarfing up self-serious Anime Logic bullshit, Metzen summoning the long-dead sophomoric bullshit of mid-90s superhero comics, or the Assassin Creed's unholy mixture of the two with way too much fan support than it deserves.

It's not that lore is bad, it's that bad lore is bad, and far too many in the writing driver's seat don't give a fuck about lore they should give a fuck about instead of giving a fuck about not giving a fuck about lore if they're not going to take that lore seriously.

Long story short: play Avellone games for lore, play Matsuno games for lore, don't play for lore in most else. Or just play Avellone and Matsuno games cuz they're good for you and good for the industry. :D

I disagree with the premise that Noble Team in Reach are more interesting than Master Chief, but I am coming from the perspective of being heavily invested in the non video game Halo fiction. If Reach had focused on MC it would have depicted him with his fellow Spartan 2 soldiers doing very Noble team like missions with lots of personal sacrifice and heroism involved. MC looses all of his team on Reach, the people he had grown up and fought with since he was a child, but unlike Noble 6 he does not get to go down in a heroic final stand, he is told to carry on. Chief is a child soldier, purposefully broken so he can barely feel anything, living a life defined by constant violence, tragedy and personal loss, but when the world is ending he walks into hell alone to rescue his AI friend and partner because the only thing he cares about anymore is getting his friends home. I fully expect Halo 5 to feature a moment where Chief cannot take it and breaks down, unable to go on any longer. Life has taken everyone and everything he ever cared about, all his friends are dead and decades of warfare have left him a broken husk. Loosing Cortana will be the last straw and I expect him to simply give up and welcome the embrace of death.

I have a feeling you didn't read the whole article because it seems like you missed the point by a mile.

That Ratchet & Clank commentary is fantastic. Those dudes are a blast to listen to.

@patrickklepek You forgot to put a link to the best game of the year (The Swapper) in the article!

The essay about gaming's apparently hidden, insidious undercurrent of racism just seemed like so much intellectual masturbation. (I can't think of one that didn't, come to think of it, but I certainly haven't read them all.)

At the core, they seem to want people to pretend that everyone is the same, to sternly encourage others to do the same, and if you notice a difference then for goodness sake don't acknowledge it because it means you're racist.

In short, it just seems like another kind of wrong.

The Elder Scrolls is part of the problem? If Bethesda puts a book in the next game called "Imperial Men Can't Jump," will it make it better?

Next, they'll be writing about Pokémon and the secretly sinister... oh, some other whip-smart outlet already broke that story.

Stood outside Best Buy to get my Xbox One on December 8th, in 17 - 21 degree weather. Take that, San Francisco! (It really sucked. When the guys popped out at 10A.M. to hand us our tickets, I nearly fell over walking to my car due to my feet being completely numb)

You're right that people are free to decide what is and isn't worth their money.

By "private money", I was clumsily and inaccurately referring to the separation between straightforward consumer transactions and investment transactions. Kickstarter sits in this weird grey area between the two -- it feels like a consumer product, but comes with none of the consumer protections we take for granted. Trust is much less of a factor if you go to the store and buy something, because you're making a very direct transaction, you can return it, and if it's a complete dud, there are (at least in theory) regulation in place to help you. We've been trained to expect that we'll get what we pay for.

I look at a lot of Kickstarter projects, and feel uneasy with the way they're wrapping an inherently risky proposition in feel-good marketing terms. You understand that game development is hard, a lot of games get cancelled or shoved out prematurely, and there's a difference between meaning well and delivering the goods. I worry that a lot more people don't understand that, and are getting swept up in the excitement of being part of something. When big publishers decide to invest in a project, they've got a lot of expertise guiding their hand, and have an enforceable contract protecting them if the developer isn't internal.

On the topic of whether a game could be funded traditionally, it's true that crowdfunding is open to any project, but I feel like it wasn't that long ago that the tacit goal of crowdfunding was to help people make games that wouldn't exist otherwise. At the very least, that's a really easily-understood raison d'être for a project. When I see an established developer (think Precursor Games) trying to make a pretty traditional game through crowdfunding, I can't help but think "why did the publishers pass on this?"

Yes, I can't stop people from doing what they want, but that same logic could be leveled against a lot of consumer protection laws. I don't disagree with what you're saying in raw logical terms, but I can't shake my uneasiness with so much of this stuff.

Big games site, @patrickklepek? Wasn't it Gamespot? I'm not calling for a conspiracy, but it's a bit disingenuous to not name the other big part of the story in the lede.

Yeah, last week GB people complained about 43 degrees and about working home. I don't understand anything.

Except that Doom fucking rules and always will.

Let me push back on this a little.

Kickstarter is private money. Crowd funding is not public funding. There isn't an Affordable Video Game Act that forces me to pay a compulsory tax that is then used to subsidize selected video game projects. The only people funding these projects are people who DECIDED to do so.

Yes an established publisher could fund these projects, but I don't see how that is a relevant point. These project owners have decided to seek funding through different means and it is their decision to make. Each backer also decides for themselves whether or not a given project is worth backing. Quite frankly, who am I or you or anyone else to decide otherwise for them?

I'm not even sure what "a net positive" is meant to mean in this context. It doesn't matter how you or I feel about what projects are funded or how they're funded when it isn't our money. The vast majority of Kickstarter game projects hold no appeal for me whatsoever, but that's absolutely fine. I didn't have to fund them, I decided not to, and I didn't.

Is every project going to deliver on its promises? No. Somebody is bound to take the money and run, or just simply fail in an honest, hardworking attempt to deliver. But here's the thing: Deciding that a project is trustworthy is PART of deciding whether to back it or not. And even the largest publishers roll the dice every time they start paying a developer's salary, hoping that the end product recoups the investment and more. Contracts or not, there are no guarantees.

Great recap of the week again Patrick, needed a break from this finals studying

Well of course it's cringey, it's a Microsoft E3 presentation, how could it be anything else? But trying to establish that the girl losing at KI was being taunted with rape is like going around saying that the girl in the Kinectimals demo from 2010 was being legitimately harassed by Skittles.

yeah i dunno that i would rly immediately interpret it as some kinda rape joke but going back and watching it again it is well cringey at the very least

You're right about Dark Matter -- my bad. I was referencing the Ouya Kickstarter matching business, but if you look at what the game the Ouya people were talking compared to what they actually delivered, I think it's also worth calling into question.

And yeah, of course there are a lot of crowdfunding success stories, but you've got to acknowledge that there's been some middling final releases and some outright debacles. It's been attracting some projects -- especially as of late, as it's been getting more buzz -- that feel exploitative and misleading. Norms and expectations about timeline extensions, backer input, and the scope within which a project can evolve without exploiting the backers, are still up in the air. While Broken Age will probably turn out great, how much would it change the entire Kickstarter landscape if doesn't meet its sky-high expectations?

Many of my issues with it are subjective and glass-half-empty, but there's unequivocally a dark (or at least potentially dark) side to crowdfunding, and I think it's fair for people to still show trepidation toward it. I think Patrick's approach to it is pretty fair and responsible.

As a disabled gamer myself, it's cool to see these projects, gamers and charities featured here. I'm super lucky in that my hands are perfectly fine and my CP isn't that bad but there are plenty of gamers who find it much hard to access games the right way.

@grantheaslip: Dark Matter was never actually funded through Kickstarter. The Ouya came out being pretty much what it was advertised as, people just expected it to be this messiah console because of the hype. And Shadowrun Returns got a 4/5 from Patrick himself.

I get that a lot of crowdfunded games are crappy, but I've paid $60 (more than I'd probably ever back a Kickstarter with) for publisher funded AAA games that were totally broken. There's risk in supporting something that doesn't exist, but there's also risk in supporting any bad games by buying them after the fact. And if you're uncomfortable with that, just let other people (willingly!) assume that risk, and reap the benefits when that game comes out and is hopefully great.

At this point, we've had so many actually come out and succeed with critical acclaim, that the initial risk seems more and more diminished. For me, the incredible FTL should have been the end of the trepidation, but also consider:

Knock-Knock

Volgarr the Viking

Cloudberry Kingdom

No Time to Explain

Kentucky Route Zero

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

Mercenary Kings

The Pinball Arcade

...just to name a few.

Seems like a pretty resounding net positive to me!

Simon Parkin is adamant that the Killer Instinct E3 "it'll all be over soon" is a rape joke. I assume because it was delivered by a man to a woman. Then again, I'm sure if it was delivered by a man to another man it would still be a sexist rape joke. Because reasons.

Someone in the comments over there made a point that I agree with, though I don't think for the reasons they would hope; "[It] is a line that, in a context outside of videogames, would not bring up connotations of rape." I absolutely agree with this. If anyone heard this line in any other context, they wouldn't even react. But if you hear it in the context of videogames, you're immediately scrutinizing it for the misogyny and rape that it must be full of, because we all know video games are misogynist you guys.

That's a great Doom painting.

Yep. Patrick was referring to the weather here in Illinois. It got to as low as 7 deg but with the wind chill on certain nights it felt like -10. While wearing gloves it felt like I was holding ice cubes and had to keep it inside the jacket even with gloves on.

why I like heavy procedurality in games: kills gamers' obsession w/ lore and realism, ludonarrative dissonance is expected and celebrated

I don't identify with this at all. When I think about the games that I love, almost all of them have a very strong sense of authorship. I want to play crafted games, and thus far, what I've seen of games like Minecraft, Terraria, Cloudberry Kingdom, Spelunky, etc. has felt pretty cold and soulless to me.

My reading of that tweet (and it's possible I'm wrong, because Twitter is a shitty way of communicating ideas with any sense of subtlety) is that he thinks lore is somehow holding games back. It's true that good games can have no lore, but how many great RPGs have no lore? A procedurally-generated JRPG would be super dull.

He's also assuming that ludonarrative dissonance -- a concern I still feel like is largely the domain of the games press echo chamber -- can't be a good thing, whereas the reality is that enforcing ludonarrative consonance would ruin entire genres of games. I'd much rather play a dissonant shooter than a shooter in which you make one wrong move and die. I'm pretty sure most gamers know ludonarrative dissonance is a thing, but thought about it for half a second and realized it's better than the alternative. Why is that term such a pejorative?

There's also been some high-profile crowdfunding failures, and a lot of the biggest projects have yet to come to fruition. I've been working my way through 8-4 Play's back catalogue, and they talked up Takedown: Red Sabre in a segment about the then-burgeoning Kickstarter games scene. We now know how that turned out. There was Dark Matter, that Ouya mess, some middling releases like Shadowrun Returns, etc. It's still possible that Broken Age won't be as good as it sounds.

I'm personally still really uncomfortable with the idea of people handing developers money for fairly vague descriptions of games they won't get to play for a year or two. Yes, there are games that could (presumably) only be funded that way, but in a lot of other cases, Kickstarter's being used to fund proof-of-concepts and projects with more ambition than expertise. Some of the projects seem to me like they could have been funded by a publisher or private money, but were put on Kickstarter because it's seen as a wellspring of free, no-strings-attached money. There's a lot of really cynical-feeling stuff on there.

Kickstarter's not going away, but I think the jury's still out on whether or not it's a net positive.

I like the idea of a blind fighting game savant a la:

@themaniacsgnome: Thanks duder.

@mnzy: I hadn't seen that interview in awhile. Yup, still inspiring.

Okay, I'ma talk a little more about Gridrunner++ now that I've watched the video.

The Sheepie Save is one of the most important mechanics in the game, especially on higher levels when shit gets intense. Usually you want to snag the first sheep to get the ability to shoot backwards, then keep your ship above the halfway point of the level and let the sheepies fall past, only skipping down to grab them when you're sure you won't die. There are 9 levels of powerup that give you a longer rainbow trail, more bullets, wider bullets, then finally the flying sheep head thing whose name I can't remember which you can shoot a bunch of bullets into to turn into a flying sheep head of death (that's the 'you can call me b-b-b-baddass' sound clip.) More sheep after that point just give you more points. If you collect sheep after the end of level you get... something. Extra points, I think? It's a score attack game when you boil it down. The first sheep of a level will also give you back everything you had at the end of a previous level, assuming you didn't die.

Every level has different enemy / bomb / zapper behavior. The zapper is the 3d cube bouncing around the background -- when it gets close to the playfield you get indicators for where it'll go off, then when it 'overlaps' and turns into a fuzzier cube for a second it goes off and shoots lighting in a cross shape originating from the overlap point. That touches you, you die. The bombs are the little things left over when you kill enemies -- they usually explode in cross shaped paths that will kill you. Some levels the explosion is huge and lasts a really long time, some levels they're tiny and you can ignore them. I think some later levels have enemies that lay bombs as they move, not just when you die. When you shoot the 'head' of an enemy you have a chance of either destroying the whole thing outright or making it explode all its component parts all over the level, which is a good way to get killed.

Minter games are almost always really good at voluntary risk: reward mechanics. You can grab the sheep as soon as they show up for points and more powerups, or do you forgo the instant powerup for a chance at resurrecting yourself? Do you shoot the head of an enemy to try to get rid of it fast, knowing that it might do the wrong thing and come flying right at you? Should I deliberately die here then get a sheepie save for better positioning? The psychedelia is a distraction that I think sometimes does his games a disservice because it makes them look like they're just a mess, but honestly they're usually tightly wound balls of neat mechanics when you dig in. This is especially the case with Space Giraffe.

Great article on accessible gaming. I studied at an NFB Center for the Blind once upon a time and knew a totally blind kid who was crazy good at SSF2. I'm still not entirely sure how he managed it, but he was remarkable.

Loathe as I am to look at anything trying to draw attention to PETA, the thing that really bothered me about that Atlantic article was it's assertion that the Pokemon universe is somehow vegetarian. It, uh, isn't? People eat meat. People eat Pokemon meat, even. Hell, Slowpoke tails are considered a delicacy.

I mean, yeah, the game has always been a cockfighting simulator. Noooobody is blind to that. But come on, I thought we'd covered this ground years ago? It's no more sinister than Halo or Street Fighter.

The alternate Nintendo perspective is a good one. To go even further with an opposite view of where Nintendo stands, it could be that Nintendo is the one company that has the modern gaming landscape figured out, while every other developer and manufacturer is scrambling and wondering if they'll survive.

Instead of blowing out budgets on systems and needing to sell tons in order to get an install base and recoup cost in other ways, it usually makes a profit on its systems long-term. Instead of going crazy on art and development costs in games, dumping tons of money and relying on a game being a mega-hit, it relies on good style and design, with the result being great games that don't need to sell tens of millions of copies to be successful and that don't have to augment themselves with ugly microtransactions.

That's not to say lower sales of hardware and software won't hurt them or reduce resources available for future development. And they still have catching up to do in digital and account features. But I'd put them in better shape than a developer that can call a game like Tomb Raider a "failure". A fair amount of people will eventually buy Nintendo systems and buy the first party games, and that's really all they need to be successful. Hell, I've been holding off on the Wii U, but I've got no doubt I'll get it at some point, along with SMB3D World and the rest of the first party games.

Heh, I remember seeing that Lore Kickstarter last year. Very entertaining updates and comments.

Wow, that Lore kickstarter.. That is indeed something completely else. If you have the time, skim through the comments-section. There are some really baffling and somewhat hilarious comments and updates from the creator (who seriously needs to work on his grammar, if he's ever to do another Kickstarter-project)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/12/17/meet-lore-the-most-entertaining-kickstarter-project-of-all-time/

Found this article from Forbes, which briefly goes through what happened too. Mildly entertaining stuff.

@patrickklepek When will it be time to change "Like it or Not, Crowdfunding Isn't Going Away" to something a bit more positive?

That phrase was funny when you first started doing Worth Reading, but with as many crowdfunding successes as we've had now, and as many great crowdfunded games get featured by you and the other editors, that "like it or not" sentiment is starting to seem a bit weird.

I heavily disagree with Robert Yang's tweets as procedural games have a greater opportunity for a realized world that functions based on rules then authored content can. All of the interviews for No Man's Sky indicate that they're depending on a realistic simulation, or at least a consistent one, to dictate the varying worlds.

While a procedural technique might kill an interest in lore it does the opposite to realism. In the latest military shooter it is highly unrealistic for your bullets to just pass through your allies but we are willing to accept this because we understand that it's authored content and that breaking from the linear line gives us a void. When I can't kill an npc in Skyrim on the other hand I find it less acceptable because Skyrim operates closer to a set of systems then the almost exclusive scripted shooter.

Dammit way too slow for steam codes! Also Worth Playing not working :(

All colors are just rougelikes.

Fuck yeah, Gridrunner++. I played the living crap out of that game back in the dark ages of.... what, like a decade ago? Good on Minter for making it free, and it's just as fun as it always was. The video doesn't seem to be up yet so I dunno what Patrick talks about but here are some things to note for any of ya'll, because Minter games always have some neat intricacies:

-The first sheepie is the most important, because it lets you shoot backwards.

-You're invincible for maybe a second after grabbing a sheep, so you can use that to steer through obstacles with a wrist flick.

-You can save yourself from dying by steering your blown up debris into a sheep. Combine this with the above and the fact that your debris maintains momentum to get out of sticky situations.

-You can see how far you are into the level with the number of glowing snakes in the background, and there are particle effects that shoot from your ship to the sides whenever an enemy enters the field.

-Buy Space Giraffe on Steam.