State of Play (part 2)

***Warning: This post contains content of public dorkeness and a strong disregard for social standing, read at your own risk.***

Much can be said about how the games we play have become more complicated to satiate the need for “realistic” game play. As I said in my previous post, the games we play should be first and foremost fun and enjoyable experiences and I think this is something that is being ingnored by the industry. These days the internet is full of fanboys irrationally screaming how their console of choice is superior, add to that the never ending sales pitches from the corporate executives about how their systems are the best, “just look at these distorted facts!” I didn't buy my consoles because of corporate marketing, I didn't want a home computer under my TV, I wanted a games machine and I bought one to play games. It's always been about the games and having fun playing them.

This week is E3, gaming's biggest, flashiest spectacle, which will set the tone of the industry for the next year. This year sees both Sony and Microsoft releasing a motion controller of some kind in imitation of the success of the Wii. Yet, I am unexcited about both platforms goals, which seem to be more about trumping the other companies offerings than providing the users who will buy their products games that are more than a passing fancy. Nintendo, makers of the Wii, have always marched to a slightly different beat, one that seems to be focused on the user experience. Yes they beat their stable of Mario and Zelda games to death but I don't think anyone can say that they are not fun. While Sony and Microsoft were busy blasting each other with an endless stream of “mine is bigger than yours” comparisons about pixel densities and polygon computations, Nintendo was busy trying to make gaming fun again. The introduction of the Wii-mote was their answer and while it may not be anywhere near perfect, it is fun to get up and smack a virtual tennis ball around with your friends. While Sony and Microsoft told us to get online to play with strangers, Nintendo told us to come on over and play with friends. I think that may be the biggest selling point for the Wii, it's fun with friends, a call back to older days when multiplayer consisted of two controllers and your best friend coming over for some fun.

It was Microsoft who changed the multiplayer game with the release of Xbox Live, an online gaming service which allowed gamers to play against others. Playing with your friends was now done over the internet, and should they not be around you could battle it out with complete strangers. It was a revolution, one that is still ongoing as developers take advantage of its potential. Every single console, whether it be under your TV or in your pocket, now has some form of internet enabled multiplayer option (even the iPhone). Yet this revolution has also introduced its own series of complications and frustrations to the game play experience.

Recently I played Red Dead Redemption's Free Roam which is their own flavor of online multilayer, here players interact within the game world and do as they please, activities range from playing cards to full on death matches. As my pose wandered the map we ran into countless idiots who basically were hunting down low level players and mercilessly killing them. So here I am hunting bandits or deer and Captinjerkoff342 comes up and kills me. Why? Because he can. This is incredibly frustrating to me because I am minding my own business, not bothering anyone and then, blam, I am dead. To make matters even worse is that I can't even retaliate effectively because I am new to the game. It takes the whole feeling of power and inverts it, making me feel helpless and unwilling to go into public areas.

I have only a few friends with XboxLive or PSN accounts, so most of my online gaming experience is done alone, surrounded by strangers. This produces a mixed bag, at times it can be really challenging and fun, Blazblue was a blast to play online and after my inevitable defeat I wouldn't have to put up with idiocy because I could just find another player to fight. However when that rare player came along that was enjoyable to both play against and talk to, we would fight for several rounds. Yet things change drastically when you throw a whole group of 32 strangers together and its not a change for the better. Online matches become filthy trash talking holes, fully of cussing, ball waggling and immaturity. I think the problem stems more from anonymity than rude, poorly raised, children, we are all under pseudonyms so no one knows who you are unless you tell them. It is the same in almost any forum or discussion board, people say things that they would never dare say in public in these places because they know that no one is watching. Unless you are rolling with a group of your friends the online environment is a filthy and harsh place to be. Some of my fondest gaming memories are of playing with my roommates, beating them to death in Blazeblue, shooting blue shells up their tailpipes in MarioKart or going head to head in Goldeneye. We were in the same room and it was fun, we could joke and have fun together, but somehow it feels very different when you are online, getting slaughtered by foul mouthed 12 year old brats.

Does all this mean that online multiplayer is bad, that it should be scrapped and done away with? Of course not. It is a technology that is not only integral to modern gaming but it also allows me to play with my friends even when we are separated by hundreds of miles and that is when it is fun. However this does bring me to another side effect of online multiplayer, the gaming equivalent of “keeping up with the Jone's.” To play together you must all own the same game on the same console, much of the growth of my game library can be attributed to the fact that my friends were playing a certain game and I wanted to play with them. Red Dead Redemption is a perfect and recent example of this. I knew of Red Dead and to be honest wasn't very interested in it, it's set in the old west and it's predecessor didn't fair to well. My interest was piqued when one of my friends told me he was getting it, he was interested in playing it online so I looked into it deeper and it looked like a good game. I bought it and we play regularly (for now), trying to avoid Captinjerkoff342. On a side note Rockstar got four extra copies of this game because of one guy in our group who was excited about it and it just traveled up the chain. However, our current online matches will be short lived as the online experience constantly shifts to the latest and greatest game. A new Call of Duty will be out in November and I know that if I want to play online with my friends (than with strangers) then I will be forced to either buy the newest game or sit it out. Of course rational people are capable of making this decision, I sat out Splinter Cells online mayhem because I didn't like the game but this whole ecosystem of online play is raking in thousands of dollars off of schleps with poor self control. Its not bad persee just a side effect of the way things are done.

Of course if I am to rail against the downfalls of online gaming then I need to mention a particularly excellent (and relatively new) aspect of it, co-op play. Playing co-op is a treat for me, a game like Borderlands is a fantastic experience to play with your friends and playing with others rather than against them is by far the most fun I have had online. .As long as developers are willing to experiment and create new ways to share and evolve the online experience then I will continue to play online.

Evolution is a key here, the game industry is one of the most flexible around. It can and will shape itself to whatever the newest fad happens to be. Shooters are the big thing now? Ok here's 150 titles. Ok music games are hot this year? Here's 20 peripherals and 150 titles. I think it is good for the industry, if it wasn't for these shifting priorities then we wouldn't have stuff like Guitar Hero, EA Sports Active, Heavy Rain or Disgaea Infinite; titles that broaden the appeal of gaming as a whole and even challenge what the term “game” even means. It is a fertile ground for creativity as long as a publisher is willing to take a risk on it. Services like the PSN and XBL Arcade, which offer smaller game offerings are even more true to this point, offering experimental gems such as Flower or Fat Princess. It is an industry that is in a state of constant flux one that almost requires us to evolve with it as new games and new ways to play emerge. Yet this is a double edged sword, the buzz word in gaming is innovation. Yet innovation for the sake of innovation is useless, systems that aren't broken do not need fixing. Innovation has to come from outside of the box, from ideas with some purpose to them.

Right now the industry seems to be focusing more on its technology, spending more and more money pumping as much eyeball melting visual detail as they can onto a disk. The industry is sayings “Look at our cars, we have 50 million polygons just on the light bulbs!” But when your cars drive like cardboard boxes with dinner plates for wheels I know I will stop playing immediately. Developers will often toss me into a vast and beautiful open world where I can do everything but effectively walk through a doorway. Visual fidelity is not innovation, just as hiding Final Fantasy XIIIs turn based combat behind flashy menus and attacks wasn't innovation. To bring the industry forward there have to innovations but they have to be within the realm of the users experience and they have to move the genre forward.

What does all this mean for me and for my journey as a gamer? It means little to be honest. I had tried to come up with a definition for "fun" but lets be realistic, fun is a conglomeration of separate systems working together to create an overall experience within a game enviroment. This experience has to be done right, if just one of the countless variables of story, gameplay, or control (and whatever else there is) happens to be off then so to are the rest of the elements and a good game can go down in tedious flames. A good example of this is the shooter genre; there are only so many ways to shoot someone in the face and you would have thought that by now, after the hundreds of games made for the genre, that developers would have making a good shooter game down to a science by now. But even in this seemingly monotonous genre there are things that work for certain games and things that don't. If you took the tank controls of Resident Evil and put them in Call of Duty, the game would have been dead on arrival. Yet every year there are only a few truly good shooters made. What went wrong with the others? Who knows but something was off, something was missing or just plain wrong and it ruined the gameplay experience. If developers have yet to perfect their most popular genre, then how can I define what is fun. It boils down to this, some games just work. Scientific I know.

I am a gamer, that much I know for sure. Hardcore I am not, casual is an insult, I am what I am, a plain old vanilla gamer. While I may have a difficult time online or with overly complex controls for the most part games have become better and more engaging these days. Thanks to games I have journeyed through space, braved Yetis in the Himalayas and traveled through countless made up worlds. As the industry evolves it will be up to me to change with it, for that is the only variable that stays constant in this every shifting medium. When the PS4 and Xbox 720 arrive I will be there (in spirit, not physically there there), when the next best thing comes out I will be excited and when E3 rolls through you can bet I will be checking up on all the latest news. I am looking forward to the future for if the industry can grow out of it's current phase and get back to making gaming fun there is no limit to the heights that can be reached.