So, it's Thanksgiving. I'm chillin out, grubbin, drinkin, watchin football on TV all day. I don't watch much TV, and I don't drink often either. So. We're talking about the NFL. On Thanksiving. On major network TV. And I keep seeing this fucking commercial for this fake ass mobile phone microtransaction game, Game of War. I mean, can you even get a more generic game title than that? Seriously, what the fuck. Anyways, this game. I have literally zero clue what it is. And that's the point. The ad features a super hot chick, decked out in some sexy fantasy-esque outfit, talking. seductively to the camera while tons of batshit crazy LotR type of battle wages all around, complete with massive CGI dragon enemies, etc. And then, at the end, they show the game in a tiny window and boom end of the ad. Again, I remind you that I'm drunk on a holiday so even focusing enough to type this up is enough of my patience, if you wanna see it for yourself there's this thing called the internet that you're currently using that might help you find this atrocious commercial. So after seeing it about ten times, I have zero interest towards it, but I got to thinking... that is whats wrong with games today. The ad shows, go count yourself, approximately 2% of its time dedicated to the actual game. The rest is complete and total bullshit. I mean, its actually sort of offensive. A game. Marketing. Based entirely on bullshit that is not even remotely related to content. A fucking PHONE GAME. On big TV ad time. Really? Older I get, more I, like generations before, find a disconnect in demographics, tastes, etc with those upcoming. How the fuck are true games supposed to evolve and survive when all that is presented to us and kids these days is CoD, Halo, and some fucking phone game called Game of War? What the fuck. Have a good holiday yall.
They do it because it sells. Blame the corporations sucking the fun out of gaming, leaving it merely a way to have money exchange hands. Blame those who fall for the empty consumerism.
I'm already prepping myself to sit on my porch with my cat and a cooler of PBR. I just need a Garand.
Ok, look. Here are the games I have played this month: Medieval 2: Total War (completed) Secret of Mana 3 (completed) SimCity 4 (built 3 finished cities) Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (completed) BF2142 (for the lulz) Icewind Dale (completed) Total dollars spent: ZERO Total dollars some random spedtard spent on Game of War this month: $30 That chick is hot. The game looks like a steamy turd some 14 year old kid in rural North Korea made. JUST LOOK AT THE AD... I rest my case. GET OFF MY LAWN
Well, using objectified women to sell video games unfortunately isn't new... doesn't make it less offensive though. But there is indeed something wrong with modern game trailers: they usually don't show much gameplay. This ad pushes it to another level, but it's true of most, if not all, game trailers, mostly showing cut-scenes (because the scenario is so intense!) and quotes from IGN finding it's the best game ever of the day. And there is probably something wrong with games themselves too: edit: and while I'm at it: edit again: because I can't stop now, another modern gaming parody mod:
The problem with games nowadays is the goal is one or both of the following: 1) Get you grouped up with as many people as possible over the course of your playing the game, or 2) Get you to pay for microtransactions. #2 is pretty obvious, but #1 is games where you are randomly grouped with people for only a very short amount of time. WoW with dungeon finder/raid finder, where nobody talks to each other. Call of Duty with deathmatch. MWO and other similar games (World of Tanks/Warplanes comes to mind) where you're only grouped for a round. The problem is when you're grouped up with someone for such a short amount of time and with little consequence, you don't make meaningful relationships in the game. I want to play games more like old-school CS and America's Army, or like WoW before they streamlined everything. Unfortunately, those games don't exist anymore because they don't seem big enough.
Guys, all I'm sayin is... just look at that ad objectively, and then try and tell me with a straight face that the actual game looked interesting and that it is marketed in a positive manner. I don't give a damn about objectifying women, I mean I do, but that's so fucking PC. I'm really talking about how the actual game itself has been superceded by the power of imagery and marketing. You ever pick up a fantasy novel, just based on the art alone? It's a really stupid decision; way worse than picking up an album based on cover art. Someone picking up this game based on that commercial is making a really stupid decision, regardless of whether or not they end up enjoying the game (which they won't if they are any sort of self-respecting gamer). At some point the threshold will be crossed enough that the pill will be easier to swallow, as a market segment as a whole.. And that doesn't sit well with me. I sit increasingly less comfortable with this stuff, and it's not just cuz I'm turning into Clint Eastwood. It's becoming obvious to me that gamers are pretty fucking stupid, in general. The "mainstream" casual person always ruins everything. Cinema. Music. Now games. What entertainment isn't ruined and watered down for worthless masses holding a buck? Bah. PS - Just drove past a Cabella's at 3:45 AM, 25 degrees out and snowing, and the entire parking lot was full, with people lined up down the sidewalk. What the fuck is wrong with the world? I'm gonna be a hermit. And play Game of War all day in a Cave. Fuck it.
Oddly enough, I only ever did this once...it led me to discover my favorite author I used to write for a company that reviewed video games (their website is now defunct, sadly), and I wrote a nice, long piece about this. The simple fact is that this is going to get worse before it gets better: companies have gotten very used to the fact that they can shovel out games year after year with minor changes, and people will gobble the games up. This is not a new phenomenon limited to Call of Duty either; 15 years ago, it was Medal of Honor that had the big game of the year, and it was THE series up until the original Call of Duty games came along to dethrone them. It was the introduction of a game that used real innovation and creativity to take something that was "the norm" and make it into something that felt completely new, even if it was built on the same framework. Now the tables have turned, as we have a few series that are falling into the same trap as MoH: Call of Duty and Assassins Creed are, by far, the worst offenders, but Battlefield is edging on the same thing if they are not careful. Every year, we can count on at least one CoD and at least one AC title. They are not guaranteed to be bad, but they suffer from a major problem: rushed periods. Your example this year is AC: Unity, which has had such a laughably bad unfinished release that Ubisoft lost an eighth of their share value in the stock market (12.8%) over the debacle. EA and DICE got hit the same way with the mess that was the BF4 launch, and those behind the Halo Master Chief collection are in the fire as well for the same reason. A friend of mine also wrote this, it is informative: http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-reasons-assassins-creed-least-playable-game-ever/ Now, why do I bring all this up? Because we, as the consumers, have the real power here, and it's something we never use. In a perfect world, when a company like EA or Ubisoft would put chokehold DRM in a game (that never stops pirates, and in fact only hurts the paying consumers more), people would simply boycott the product until it was removed. Or, you know, pirate it...since again, DRM has never stopped them from doing so. The same goes for the current trend of "online only", even for single player aspects of the game (Sim City 4, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, etc). If we, as a consumer base, could realize how bad this was for us, we could attempt to fight against it. The new "trend" in video games is that we are not even buying them any more...if you ever read those fancy EULA forms, you're "licensing" the games now. In other words, at any time, a company could theoretically revoke that license across the board, and remove anyone's ability to play. This sounds far-fetched, but with online-only titles, it's actually coming in the future. If you're a Diablo/SC2 fan, there will be a point where you can never play those games again, when the Blizzard-hosted servers stop running (barring changing of the game code, naturally). MWO falls into that category too, since there is no way to host player-run servers. Tribes: Ascend fell into the pit of despair a while back when Hi-Rez took their servers down, and made it nigh impossible for people to get onto player servers for a while, and their player base vanished. Assassins Creed: Unity may serve as a wake-up call for Ubisoft if we are lucky, but I honestly doubt that it will happen. Why? Because it still sold amazingly well. Look at the link above, and pay attention to the part where my fellow game reviewers were contractually prohibited from putting their reviews online until 12 hours after the game released. Talking with my many friends in that industry, there is a reason for it, a lot of people saw the major problems with the game, but they were kept from spreading the word thanks to a line in a contract. AAA titles are reaching a point where, in general, I rarely pick them up any more. I skipped Titanfall and Destiny because they failed to excite me, I haven't been in the CoD crowd for a few years now, and even the upcoming Battlefield has failed to get my attention because the idea of innovation instead of churning out the status quo has just fallen out of favor in recent years. There used to be a time when the only way to make a great game was to follow the simple motto: "Do it good and do it right." In the current age of "release it and patch it until it's playable", there is just no real need to be great any more, companies simply aim to make it look good enough to buy, then make it a game in a few patch cycles. If you want to know how to stop it, the answer is very simple: your wallet. Look at Medal of Honor: it's a shell of what it once was (and there was a time, around Allied Assault, that MoH was considered the greatest shooter franchise of all time). Why? People got sick of their shit, especially as it compared to greater games, and stopped spending their money to play it. The day that people start announcing, with their lack of spending money, that they have no intention of playing CoD unless it truly innovates again, well, you will see that series begin to fall through the cracks as well. The same goes for AC...their time is limited only by the foolishness of the customer base. At least AC can claim it made some attempts, as Black Flag was the first game in their series that was actually progressive with the introduction of all the ship-based activities. Independent studios, however, are making a lot of effort trying to release games that are worth your time and consideration. Team Meat, for example, has made incredible titles in Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac that are fantastic and fun to play, and for a mere fraction of the price of a AAA title. Spending your money there, instead of Activision, EA, and Ubisoft is a step in the right direction. Plus, you get some fun shit too.
Michael Bay's T4 Best Example. Such a piece of crap. Big epic Posters & Trailers, but Zero Content The best - read all the Amazon customer reviews if you want to laugh off your ass.
Yes Durandal, that's pretty much another way of saying it all. Btw, Battlefield died when it tried to go CoD ala Bad Company, in my opinion... way before 4... anyways that games series is a joke now, but the old ones are so legendary that I still play em on occasion, even if it's just offline.
The Trend of Nowadays Games Productions: Life-Service VS Full Retail Half Games for Full Money What that means? Companies try to deliver Games in faster Production Timecycles, so to keep Customers interested, they try to sell some few innovative features but leave the rest of the core elements unfinished but promise to deliver them subsequently. What you could get in old games completely integrated, nowadays will be patched in the future, promised. But you know, how Promises work - might come or not. The good thing is - if the company isn't too greedy, you get your Patch for free. Others would sell it as an Addon for additional Cash. If you are dumb, you fall for the "Addons" and slaughter your wallet. The sad side bout it - even if Games are not finished in post-production, it gets delivered and You as Customer pay Full Money for it, as how you did in the old days, with the difference that you get less content, and it will be lesser in the future. Core Elements are not existent in many present games. Look at Sims 4, Destiny, etc etc ... MWO... etc etc... And before the Full/Core Contents get delivered - you as Customer shockingly realized that you already spent hundreds and thousands of $$$, over the months/years via simple Online-Payment (It's only One Mouse Click away - not necessary to go outside to your dear game store and take out your wallet and counting your bills)- tremendous amounts that you never would have payed in the old days for even the best luxury games ever. Hands on your Hearts - How much did you already pay to feed PGI ? 20 Bucks? 50 ? ... 100 ? ...... 200+ ? ........ What? 500+ ?? ..........OMG!? 1000+ ???!!! Well, if you think that the fun experience is worth that much of money - no problem! It's all your Money, and no one has the right to judge you what you do with your stuff. But think about it twice - the difference of your behaviour in the old days and now (and in the very soon future) - how Trends can manipulate us. Game Companies all will follow the recent trend, because of high pressures of competitors/investors/shareholders. You can't deliver? You die! So better let the Customer suffer, but do it the way they don't realize (too soon). There are three possible scenarios for Tomorrow: 1. We keep on letting them manipulate us Players. Let even classic epic Single Player Games become piece of fragments of what they were. Wing Commander 4 delivered on 6 (!) CDs in 1996, sold for 50-60 $ Retail. What that was too expensive for you? ... Ok, how much do you pay for Star Citizen (or even did already before Release?). How much will you keep on paying for it (for what content? what is the effective price of each content element? Is there any measurement method for that? Or is it arbitrary -> new Flight Ship pay 20 Bucks for it, new Skin pay 5 Bucks for it, wow new Mission? -> another 20 Bucks gone. Ow WOW, a new Campaign?! No Problem, i'll get the 500+$ Elite Class Collector's Pack). Ok, it's gonna be absurd from here on. 2. We as Player train our patience, wait and signal them, that we don't want Half Games (packaged and marketized as promising Life-Service Feature) for Full Prices. Limited Collectors Day One Editions for 50+$ ? Go Home! 3. Such "Basic Contents Versions" don't cost us 50+$ like Full Retail Games from the old days, but cheap 20 - max 30. AND right from the beginning marketized as Basic Version, very clearly. I know, sounds shitty, but at least your Players don't feel betrayed afterwards and run away, spreading foul words about you and your piece of crap in the community. Ow, does someone feel addressed by the last sentence? Ooops. But it's the sad Truth about Today. Amen Bonus Feature for the dudes who don't know WC: (too sad only in german) aaand WCS:
