A little while ago, a fellow made an interesting video, and declared the new PoP the most innovative game of 2008.  Slashdot then ran it under a story regarding the new PoP and Avoiding Wasted Time.  The whole thing smacks of a ludology seminar, which makes it exactly the kind of thing I like to wax philosophical about.

The articles centre around the concept of Penalty Free Learning; something the PoP franchise isn't a market leader in. Travellers Tales has had no-lose gameplay in the entire Lego series; Braid too.  Mr Young's point however is that PoP isn't cutesy.  It's both approachable and respectable as a game that non-gaming grownups can play.  It doesn't have a checkpoint system, so you never have to retrace your steps to progress. (Okay, let's ignore the game's whole mechanic of collecting orbs for this argument, eh?  I can't wade through that kind of irony... ;-)

My concern with this philosophy of game design, is that PC games have long had a god-mode as well, but I'd say that's universally regarded as cheating.  

Back in 1990 I wrote a letter to Nintendo Power, saying it would be great if all games had invincibility on the Easy difficulty, because a superhero like Batman never dies in the movies.  I'm so glad somebody finally listened! ;-)  Now I can trade-in my Game Genie.

Sorry, I can't see a line of distinction between the developer or the player "switching off" death.  I'm not convinced that it's "innovative" for the new PoP to become an extremely patient hand-eye-coordination trainer.  I'm pretty sure I'd learn faster playing Gradius.  Sands of Time and GRID have excellent limited-rewind features.  Part of your skill set becomes forecasting your severe mistakes to get the maximum chance for correction.  In Braid your mistakes become irrelevant, all results come from your success, and that made it the most satisfying puzzle game I played all year.

The notion of people wanting to "save time" in modern games is utterly foolish, as the current zeitgeist encourages completionist players.  Cases in point: WoW grinding; achievements; item collection metagames; multiple difficulties; time trials...  how many DAYS does it take to master completing an average 5-minute stage in less than 90 seconds?

Sure, sure, it's nice to hand the controller to my mother-in-law or grandfather or neice and watch them enjoy playing.  Yes, Rock Band 2 has a no-fail mode for a good reason.  But do you, a serious gamer, really want to keep paying $60 for a game that takes you 5 hours to finish in one sitting?  Wasn't Heavenly Sword ridiculed for that?  I'd say it was 5 hours of entertainment well spent, but it cost me $6 to rent.  I am very happy to value my entertainment time at $2 per hour.

With many console game developers trying to draw more casual players, and present a short cinematic experience, rather than a long narrative... I wonder is it possible that they're deliberately attempting to shift the industry to pay-per-play or digital rentals?  I don't want to play Boom Blox by myself, but I would absolutely pay $4 to activate it every time I set up the Wii with some friends.  The rumblings about disc-less consoles coming into the future generation would support this theory.  If casual gamers are where new profits are being found, that will inescapably result in making "hardcore" game properties more accessible to more players.

Grab a towel to wrap your console in, things are about to get watered down.

I've been listening to and collecting video game music seriously for about 15 years now, and have travelled to Japan twice to find some of it (...and do other stuff too...)  So this is a topic I feel pretty comfortable blogging about, and thought a good start would be plugging a new iTunes iMix I made, Where are all the Video Games?

In case you didn't realize, there is a ton of video game music available on iTunes, and I'm just looking at the Canadian store.  It's bloody hard to find it all, because most everything is classified as a Soundtrack, even though Game is a perfectly common MP3 genre.

Currently the iMix has 69 tracks, which is populated at 1 key track per album.  So yes you could go nuts and drop $700 on the iTunes store right now by grabbing each full album.  I really don't recommend that, because all the Medal of Honor and Harry Potter stuff would get a bit repetitive.  Yep, EA is doing a pretty good job cranking it out, but it's definitely high quality scores.  Can't fault the production values.

Here's my posted description:

What you will find here are OSTs by publishers, tracks by original composers, and skilled re-mixes both electronic and orchestral.  What you won't find here are alternative "tribute" songs.

An iMix of tribute songs would be almost as much again, but I wanted to highlight the composers foremost.  And really you can find Beck anywhere.
If you find more or new tracks, please post it in the comments and I'll update the mix!

Future blogging will give me the opportunity to revisit my amassed collection for colourful and winsome reviews, and to trawl the soundscape for things neither of us has run across before.  With a little grass-roots momentum, we might even get ourselves a Game genre search on iTunes. 
How beautiful is that?
>B

P.S.  Yes my username is also game music related.  First guesser of the game and location and composer wins a totally rad prize (srsly!)

Like many folks here I'm a GS reader expatriot, and have been watching the Bomb tick (Arrow Pointing) down since the first days the blog arrived.  Not being a forum thread guy, I'm thoroughly drawn to user-generated content, and when the writer or editor bug kicks in, I'm finding this to be a helluvalot more fun than futzing on Wikipedia.  Moderation in all things.

I like the idea of alignment in a site membership.  When I signed up to Comic Vine it was a simple choice of good or evil.  Cliche but OK.  Meanwhile the game industry is more like nationalism; it's not taking sides, it's taking prides.  With so many stalwarts and noobwarts making their allegiances known, why not just colour code our name to let the venom be visible in every written word! :)  Awesome.  The only way I could think to improve it is to have one letter coloured for every platform I own. 

For the record, my first console was an Atari 600XL, and my current collection has nearly every platform released in the timespan between the SNES and the Wii, and then some.  Feels like I'll be forever waiting for "another PS3 price drop".  But in my heart of hearts Nintendo has treated me, personally, very well as a customer and Nintendo Power subscriber back in the good ol' days.  Their customer service and community outreach has always always been exceptional, and loyalty naturally follows from that.  Much more grounded I think than simply defending my purchase, Nintendo has actively tried to keep and reward me as a customer, since childhood.

So take it easy out there and remember "the game's the thing" no matter where the disc goes.