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Clearly, The Time Is Right For A Great Jurassic Park Game
Kirk Hamilton – Kotaku –
Over the last couple of weeks, Jurassic Park has been just about everywhere. On websites. On social media. Beneath the earth, frozen in amber. We’ve all got Jurassic fever, and it’s been wonderful.
I blame Far Cry 3 for my own Jurassic fixation. That game’s lush island setting is just begging for some dinosaurs. And surely news of Jurassic Park 4‘s 2014 release date (hopefully sans dino-human hybrid commandos) and the coming 3D re-release of the original film have both helped keep velociraptors in the zeitgeist.
Whatever it is, we’ve all got dinosaurs on the brain. Clearly, the time is right for a new Jurassic Park video game.
Let’s track all the Jurassic Park stuff that’s surfaced lately.
First, there’s this joking “ad” for Dinosaur downloadable add-on content for Far Cry 3, which, well, if they ever DO make dino-based DLC, let’s hope it’s this bananas.
In addition to all our Far Cry 3 talk, there’s this volunteer-made Jurassic Park game called Jurassic Life in the works, using the Half-Life engine. Impressive.
And there are a couple of other independent Jurassic Park game-attempts out there, this one via Reddit as collected by Craig Person at RockPaperShotgun. This one’s a stab at remaking the 1998 PC game Jurassic Park: Trespasser in the Unity engine by Colin Kay.
Who then went ahead and made the whole thing again in CryEngine 2. (No dinosaurs yet, unfortunately.)
Neither of those last two are perhaps as impressive-looking as Jurassic Life (that may change once there are dinosaurs), though it’s hard not to get excited about these allegedly in-game images from another Trespasser remake (also via RPS) that look about exactly how I’d expect a current-day Jurassic Park game to look. That amazing image up top is from this collection. Here’s another one:
It’s hard to say when any of these games will see the light of day. But one thing seems clear: We are starving for a good Jurassic Park game, and whoever is first to release a proper, Far Cry 3-like dinosaur adventure game will make a mint.
My own Jurassic Park gaming memories mostly consist of two games. The first is Jurassic Park for the Sega Game Gear, which I played the heck out of. It was cool enough, but hardly the amazing adventure that Jurassic Park fans really deserve. Here, you can see a Let’s Play by Arrow Quivershaft. Man, memories.
My other memory is of reading about (yes, reading about) the Sega CD take on the series, which looked so much cooler back then than it does now. Here’s NailStrafer playing it. Gah, that awful music.
I never did play the SNES Jurassic Park game, though there does seem to be plenty of love for it. So I’ll include a video of that, too. Here’s a Lets’ Play from Christopher The Knight.
Those games came out ages ago. But in the interim… what a dry spell it’s been. There was Telltale’s by-all-accounts lackluster Jurassic Park: The Game. There was also Primal Carnage, which was more of a quick Dinos vs. Humans deathmatch game. Past those two, not much, and certainly nothing like the open-world, first-person adventure game we’re all hoping for.
Come on, game-makers! Jurassic Park 4 is coming out! The license is hot! My one piece of advice: Don’t try to make Jurassic Park 4: The Game. Don’t tie this to a film’s release schedule. Use the dinosaurs, but make it its own thing. Follow the Arkham Asylum model. We’ve waited this long for a decent Jurassic Park game; we can wait a bit longer.
The world is ready. Here’s hoping the right people get together to make it happen.
Comic Con International San Diego Official App Navigation
So for those unlucky few who went to Comic Con and did not download this App I really feel sorry for you, but lucky for everybody else here is a link to the free Comic Con App giving a detailed program of panels and exhibits open through Sunday July 15th.
I will be posting info and pictures from Comic Con shorty.
Assimilate your thoughts, into ours. Post your message into the collective comment center below.
(comment section will only be available if you clicked on the article title link)
Come check out my blog in the {{STAND BY FOR ASSIMILATION}} section and talk video games!
Sons of Big Bucks: Metal Gear Solid 4 and the Video Game Economy
Despite its reputation for over-delivery, Metal Gear Solid 4 challenges the player precisely because of what it leaves unsaid. Previous MGS games provided contradictions in message and action that created an exciting tension. They vilified war while valorizing warriors, told the player to kill and then dispensed rewards for not killing, required sneaking only to force discovery through cutscenes.
MGS4 falls mostly silent on these fronts. It offers few, if any, opposites to reconcile. While we have no way to know whether or not these silences are deliberate, we find suggestions in MGS4’s reliance upon a “war economy” context that the omissions have a purpose. This purpose is hardly insular or navel-gazing but relates uncomfortably close to the conversations about ultraviolence stemming from this year’s E3 as well as the trend toward the “gamification” of non-game activities.
Let’s take a closer look.
Substance -> Subsistence -> Indifference
The Metal Gear series prides itself on its unique flavor of stealth gameplay, and its approach to Stealth Espionage Action has evolved over the past 25 years. Action games rarely teach us to handle enemies with subtlety, so each game has had to train its players to sneak rather than to fight.
Earlier Metal Gear games use punishment to enforce stealth. Get seen in the original Metal Gear, and Snake won’t be coming home. Remaining unseen here does not imply a pacifist’s touch. The first three games in the series don’t care too much if you kill… only if you kill too loudly. Metal Gear Solid comes closest to acknowledging a bloodless run in its end-game ranking system, as the highest rank in the game, Big Boss, only becomes available with minimal kills.
Metal Gear Solid 2 changes this formula by rewarding the player for non-lethal stealth rather than enforcing stealth through punishment. End-game goodies such as the stealth suit and infinite ammo items require holdups rather than simple game completion, and you can’t holdup a corpse. To this end, it gives the player the M9 Beretta tranquilizer gun which puts enemies to sleep temporarily rather than permanently.
Metal Gear Solid 3 adds to this reward-based enforcement of stealth by giving the player more non-lethal tools, most notably CQC. By joining MGS2 and incorporating non-lethal stealth into its game design, it effectively creates a double game. Both MGS2 and MGS3 require different strategies depending on how lethally you play, thereby creating the sense that lethal Snake and non-lethal Snake actually have distinct characteristic differences.
Narratively, thematically, and interactively, then, non-lethal gameplay has become a heavily consequential element of the Metal Gear Solid experience. The choice between different playstyles contributes to the sense of contradiction and tension noted before. The games are exciting because they are not merely pacifistic or hawkish but both at the same time.
MGS4 dispenses with this contradiction entirely. Throwing back to MGS1’s sole recognition of pacifism via end-game rank, MGS4 offers fewer clear rewards for playing non-lethally. Each player can acquire almost any end-game goodie through other means, whether through the password system or by merely purchasing them from Drebin. MGS4 is also the first game to supply players with a catalog of emblems unlocked for different playstyles, diverging from previous games by encouraging violent and non-violent playstyles equally.
More disturbingly, though, it offers no clear punishment for killing either. MGS4 communicates its ambivalence to the player almost from the start. After surviving a tutorial sequence that sees Old Snake equipped with a pilfered AK and a Stun Knife, the player encounters Otacon’s Metal Gear Mk2. MGS2 and MGS3 opened by equipping the player solely with non-lethal sidearms; MGS4 presents both options at once as Otacon gives Snake both a lethal Operator handgun and Mk22 tranquilizer. When fighting the Praying Mantis PMC soldiers during the following action sequence, Old Snake’s choice of firearm does not matter. The battle is just as easily won by killing at it is by knocking out enemies.
A third option exists, of course. Old Snake can forego the moral question and slip through combat unnoticed, but this creates extra difficulty when encountering resistance and militia fighters. If Old Snake doesn’t participate in combat, they won’t trust him, making his forward movement more difficult. Through these means, MGS4 doesn’t punish players for lethal combat, yet it does punish players for avoiding conflict entirely. It doesn’t matter what you do to the PMC soldiers, but you’d better do something.
MGS4 renders Snake’s handling of the BB Unit bosses moot as well. Players can receive the Solar Gun, an easter egg from Kojima Productions’ Boktai/Lunar Knights series, after non-lethally defeating the BB Unit’s Beast forms. However, the individual soldiers still die whether Snake finishes their human forms lethally or not.
As if MGS4’s moral silence on killing weren’t troubling enough, the game also makes the gains from helping resistance fighters dubious at best. Helping rebels in the Middle East and South America does little more than convince them not to shoot Snake. This is more to Snake’s benefit than theirs since most players, when entering the resistance fighters’ ranks, take the opportunity to help themselves to the militia’s ammo and healing items.
MGS4 makes Old Snake’s alliance with the militias further one-sided when PMC platoons repeatedly destroy the groups whom Snake helps. In Act I, Snake helps the resistance fighters gain ground slowly, the sounds of flak and shrapnel ribboned with group cheers of “We did it!” Ultimately, however, they are decisively murdered by the BB Unit, after which a nursery-like corporate chime announces that the proxy battle has been settled.
In Act II, Snake contributes more dramatically to the militia’s cause as he rescues POWs, infiltrates enemy bases, and sabotages communications equipment crucial to the PMC’s operation. Snake and the resistance fighters part ways during the militia’s assault on the PMC’s main base. The outcome of that fight becomes clear during Snake’s escape atop Drebin’s APC. As our heroes gun through the areas previously traversed, we see not a single resistance fighter — only PMCs remaining in their roost.
MGS4 complements its narrative tones of futility with Drebin’s role as representative of the “war economy.” Drebin himself is a morally indifferent figure, in his words “neither enemy nor friend.” He sells arms to PMCs and resistance fighters alike, and he acts anonymously, not even owning his name. Hundreds of near identical “Drebins” across the world share his occupation and identity. His only distinguishing feature is his license number, 893. He is a “green collar,” one who profits off war without having a stake in the outcome, and he rightly identifies Old Snake as a green collar in turn.
Drebin and Old Snake cement their relationship in a Faustian deal. Drebin will outfit Snake with ever more powerful weapons in exchange for Snake’s footwork in retrieving guns from the battlefield. Snake scavenges; Drebin profits; Snake gets paid in materiel.
Through Drebin Points, MGS4 further enforces its indifference toward player choices between life and death. It doesn’t matter whether a PMC soldier falls dead or chemically dosed; what matters is that he drops his gun for Snake to collect. Likewise, though Snake must aid the militia for his safe passage through their territories, Drebin Points decrease the value of an individual soldier’s life. Even though Snake needs the militia itself for his mission, individual militia troops are worth more to him dead than alive because he can harvest their hardware. MGS4 communicates this element most powerfully after the BB Unit erases the militia near the end of Act I. Snake and the player are not invited to mourn their late comrades’ passing; rather, they are invited to trundle over the corpses and gather guns.
The sum of these parts gives MGS4 a moral texture very different from previous games in the series. It doesn’t matter whether or not Snake kills, but he should fight PMCs for his own advantage. The causes that he aids while fighting the PMCs are ultimately lost causes, while Snake has even less attachment to the humanity of individual soldiers since their deaths are literally his profit.
It is an uphill struggle that ends not at a summit but a drop-off cliff. There’s no way out of the fight, and there’s no way to preserve the illusion offered in earlier games that Old Snake — or the player — is a killer with a heart of gold. MGS4 reduces us beyond soldiers to something worse, something we cannot truly respect: mercenary graverobbers.
Drebin and the Video Game Economy
Many players note (with displeasure) the changed pacing that occurs during Act III. The adrenaline combat highs of Acts I and II disappear in favor of the softer visual tones of humid Eastern European nights, after which the human power struggles disappear completely. PMCs and resistance fighters alike fade away, leaving behind inhuman Dwarf Gekko and less-than-human Haven troopers. This design decision becomes more intelligible when considered in the context of MGS4’s theme of indifference and the “video game economy.”
Little is more characteristic of a Metal Gear Solid title than turning game content into a commentary on video games themselves. In this regard, at least, MGS4 is no different from its forebears. Its design choices become more consequential when they feed into MGS4’s meta-commentary on video games. MGS4 uses Drebin Points to establish a “video game economy” in order to manifest, through game design, the narrative’s “war economy.”
We recognize this “video game economy” intuitively. We receive points as rewards for specific actions, and we exchange these points for further access to the video game. It’s the same system of exchange that underlies games as diverse as Final Fantasy 12 (with its License Grid) and Resident Evil 4 (with its weapon upgrades).
MGS4 uses cues typical of the video game medium to signal when we have performed rewarded actions. Prior to meeting Drebin, the player sees a tally of acquired ammunition on-screen whenever Old Snake picks up a weapon; as well, the player hears the traditional item pick-up sound effect. However, this interface changes after meeting Drebin. We see notifications not only of the type of ammo collected but of how many points that pickup earns. The item-pickup sound effect is augmented with extra chimes, as well, as MGS4 happily chirps every time we complete an action that earns points. We even get a special extended chime when we acquire an especially valuable weapon.
These elements reinforce the correlation between the video game and war economies. While we immediately recognize the point ticker and sound effects as video game communications, we also recognize the point ticker as a Receipt of Good Exchanged. We hear, in the reward chime, a cash register’s jingle.
MGS4 truly begins its meta-commentary on video games after Act III when Liquid Ocelot takes the Sons of the Patriots nanomachine system offline. When he does so, state soldiers, militia troopers, and PMC employees literally cannot fire their guns. Without the SOP system, there is no war. Without war, there is no war economy. Yet the video game economy remains. Drebin’s narrative role as a weapons supplier should logically disappear since no one can buy weapons. His only customer is Old Snake — the player — whose line of credit comes not from the narrative but from the “video game economy” itself.
MGS titles prior to MGS4 use video games as a mediator between the player and their narrative universe. Sometimes, as in MGS2, the distinction between the video game and the narrative — the window and what we see through the window — collapses. We see such a collapse midway through MGS4.
MGS4 makes this transition with a clever sleight of hand. Act IV is an extended meditation on the fact that the MGS series is, at base, a video game. We open with an emulated return to MGS1’s Shadow Moses Island. By identifying this emulation as Old Snake’s dream, MGS4 suggests the onset of self-awareness through subconscious means.
Through flashback sequences back in the main game, MGS4 begins rewarding Drebin Points for actions that are more clearly interactions with the video game rather than with the fictional world. When Old Snake picks up weapons from the battlefield and sells them to Drebin using the Metal Gear Mk2 as courier, MGS4 dispenses Drebin Points for interacting with the virtual reality. Logically, Old Snake should receive no payment for remembering experiences from MGS1 during his return to the Shadow Moses heliport, yet MGS4 rewards the player Drebin Points simply for enjoying a reminiscence about an older video game within the current video game. The rationale of currency exchange through a “war economy” more overtly becomes the exchange rate of a “video game economy.”
Act IV’s combat also detaches from the established war economy. Dwarf Gekko replace human PMCs as Snake’s primary enemies. These targets are decidedly more video game-like than the PMC or militia troops. Dwarf Gekko are ciphers without personality, little vectors of movement that the player needs to gun down. They are stripped down video game fodder reminiscent of the crystal targets from MGS1’s and MGS2’s VR Missions. Haven Troopers likewise predominate as video game-like enemies. Before Act IV, they appeared previously as targets to take down indiscriminately during Act I’s ambush in the hotel, Act II’s stalking sequence, and Act III’s bike-and-gun chase. Each sequence forces the player to confront them as targets that must be taken down without the same kind of equivocation as is possible toward PMC and militia troopers. They serve the same role during the fight against Crying Wolf in Act IV and during the entire Outer Haven sequence.
As cyborgs, their nanomachines force an immediate disintegration of their bodies and armor upon death. While this design choice fits their narrative role, it also emphasizes their identity as video game rather than narrative targets. Traditionally, video games do not waste memory space by preserving the on-screen representations of destroyed targets. While the bodies of dead human characters during previous acts ultimately disappeared, they did so subtly in order not to break the illusion of corpses heaped upon a battlefield. Haven Troopers disappear with more flamboyance. They flare blue, catching our eye’s attention, and making us more aware of them as video game targets that disappear after defeat as is traditional.
MGS4 continues this trajectory until its climax fistfight atop Outer Haven. Following the Screaming Mantis fight, a ghostly projection of Psycho Mantis calls attention to the player’s physical hardware. He observes the lack of a memory card and even comments on whether or not the player uses a DualShock3 or Sixaxis controller. Old Snake becomes overwhelmed with Dwarf Gekko, cipher enemies, right before Otacon destroys the architecture for the video game economy itself.
Coda
Taken as a whole, MGS4 uses its remarkable departures from traditional series themes to achieve ends that are entirely characteristic of the Metal Gear Solid series. It denies players the usual tension underlying the decision to kill or not to kill, and it couples this omission thematically with the “war economy.” It uses game design to express the “war economy” through the “video game economy” by giving both the same form: Drebin Points. Finally, it strips away the war economy altogether, leaving the player only the “video game economy” of scored points until the shell that houses the video game economy — the AI system — dissolves.
MGS4 does not merely advance an indifference to the value of human life. It calls attention to the means by which we become indifferent to human life.
Parting Shots
We come, then, to the hardest question: so what? How do these observations, however close or distanced from creative intention, apply beyond the virtual world of their birth?
The way that MGS4 encourages gun-lust echoes a dominant face of contemporary game design: “gamification.” Gamification refers to the decision to reinforce people’s actions with piecemeal rewards that produce a feeling of artificial accomplishment. It is a Pavlovian trap — one that we love to fall into.
Gamification appears well outside video games. Organizations assign point systems on everything from commission-based sales to improving an individual’s health to buying soft drinks. Walk into any gas station convenience store, and you’ll likely encounter dozens of instances of gamification from purchase reward points that you’ll register online to social gaming perks that accompany snack sales. This is gamification. It gets people to participate in activities that they otherwise wouldn’t. The rewarders generally don’t care about your hoard of points, however, and they’re more interested in what your participation in the “game” creates — revenue.
It is easiest to observe what others do, though, without seeing how we rhyme the same actions. Video games themselves become gamified when we add secondary prizes on top of whatever metric the game uses within its own code. Achievements and player Trophies act as incentives to get players to complete games they otherwise wouldn’t touch twice. It works, too! Don’t think that I earned a Platinum trophy for Shadows of the Damned because I was having a good time. Several of my friends will buy video games specifically to plump their Gamerscore, will play ultimately forgettable games like Burger King’s Sneak King simply for the Achievement points alone.
Gamification gets people to buy games that they otherwise probably wouldn’t buy. Drebin points get MGS4’s players to kill and betray NPCs that they otherwise wouldn’t notice. Both, in parallel ways, fuel a “video game economy.”
During this year’s E3, Warren Spector gave increased legitimacy to concerns that video games have become not overly violent, but overly cruel. Violence in video games does not necessarily correlate with violent actions, but something seems off when video games offer scenes of sadism and cruelty as a reward for playing well. These concerns only focus on what these video games feature. The conversation does not yet consider that the gamification of games — the gamification of virtual cruelty — will be how we, as gamers, agree to participate and make those goals our own. Hunting Trophies and Achievements, we can look away from both the experience and the representations of violence that video games provide, much as Old Snake and MGS4’s players set aside prior concerns of the morality of killing in the search for Drebin Points.
To wrap up: Sigmund Freud, looking at the rich hoarders who created wealth disparity in Victorian Europe, famously identified the hoarding instinct as “anal retentive.” The desire to grab and keep money, in other words, was the adult version of an infant’s refusal to poop. This suggests more than the idea that the discontent of the 99% could be assuaged by providing the 1% with laxatives. It openly calls the stuff we hoard waste, filth, merde.
In gaming and consumer cultures increasingly defined by Gamerscores and Trophies — invented incentives to keep us chugging through MMOs and mediocre games — we might do well to ask ourselves what Old Snake does not: why are we hoarding and to what consequence?
James Clinton Howell
James Clinton Howell is an insurance customer support specialist with a variety of passions. He has an MA in Poetry from the University of Southern Mississippi, owns and runs the Japanese-English translation company DELTAHEAD Translation Group LLC, and serves as editor for the online literary journal Town Creek Poetry. His poems have appeared in the Journal of Truth and Consequences as well as The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol II. He has written extensively on the Metal Gear Solid series for PlayStation: the Official Magazine and provided localization support for MGS4 and MGS2: Digital Graphic Novel. He translates German, Old English, and Old Norse, and he is a Cisco certified network engineer.
His current video game projects include an annotated video walkthrough for earning the FOXHOUND Rank in Metal Gear Solid 3 as well as a farewell vidcast to Metal Gear Online. He publishes on YouTube under the username ShockleyHaynes. He lives in Chattanooga, TN.
Xbox 720 Price, Features Revealed in Allegedly Leaked Document
By Mitch Dyer
Update: The document in question has since been removed from its original source at the request of Covington & Burling, a law firm that advises Microsoft. No word on if it was removed for being a forgery or not, so we’ve inquired with the firm as to why.
Microsoft responded to IGN stating “We do not comment on rumors or speculation.”
Original Story: An unconfirmed document allegedly leaking out of Microsoft reveals the company’s five-year plan, price, and features for the Xbox 720. The 56 page document looks at the possibilities for Xbox 360 in 2011 leading up to the launch of the next generation in 2013, which includes a new Kinect sensor at launch in a $299 bundle. Notable changes include a blu-ray disc drive, as well as a focus on and tablet integration. IGN is already confident that the next-generation will begin in 2013, and the plan for tablets to talk to consoles recently rang true.
Notable goals and features for the Xbox 720 include an improved Kinect sensor with four-player games, accessing your media library anywhere via cloud streaming, and not needing to upgrade hardware ever again. Most notable is the rumored plans to create glasses that give players a heads-up display/virtual reality interface dubbed Fortaleza.
Fun fact: Fortaleza is a state capital in Brazil, as was Natal.
Remember, none of this is information is confirmed, so take it with a grain of salt if you suspect it’s an elaborate hoax. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment on its validity.
What do you make out of this alleged leak? Is it totally fake, or is it the beacon of our future?
Source: Scribd via Reddit.
[UPDATE]
Reports around the Internet are surfacing that show an alleged leaked Microsoft press release about an Xbox-branded tablet.
Supposedly named Xbox Surface, the document details a tablet with 7-inch screen and impressive technical specifications that I’m not going to attempt to decode (you can see the full details below). It apparently also supports “up to 4 wireless game controllers”, if it is in fact real.
Opinion: The many reasons Street Fighter X Tekken sold less than expected
By Christian Nut
Capcom’s most recent fighting game, Street Fighter X Tekken, didn’t sell as much as the publisher expected it to.
“Sales of ‘Street Fighter X Tekken‘ have fallen short of our plan. We believe one of causes is cannibalism because of the large number of other games in this genre that were launched within a short time,” the company said in a brief Q&A on its website last week.
The company blamed competition — and, of course, if you’ve followed Capcom over the years, you smacked your forehead. There’s competition, and then there’s self-competition. Capcom has always saturated the market to the point of pain, and that is, in fact, the most obvious criticism of this news.
In reality, that’s just a small part of the problem with Street Fighter X Tekken. If Capcom wants to blame the competition, publicly — that’s fine. But if the company wants to understand just what went wrong, there are some hard truths it has to face. And if you’re thinking about launching your own game — particularly launching in a segment with an ardent community — there are plenty of lessons here for you, too.
Let’s consider what Capcom did to set up stumbling blocks for itself:
Special: This game was made by Dimps, the same development team that handled Street Fighter IV — and that should mean quality.
Counter: This is the first and arguably the most important point, and it’s strange that Capcom hasn’t publicly admitted it, at least in its results. This game is a mess. Capcom did a good initial job with PR — building interest in the community by exposing the game early and often — but quality issues destroyed those gains immediately upon release.
The game is one of the sloppiest games Capcom has ever put out. Yes, most fighters have infinite combos — particularly console-based ones that didn’t enjoy prior arcade releases and have their bugs beta tested out by hardcore fans. But infinite combos should not be this trivially easy.
Even more confusingly, the game’s latest patch, which presumably was designed to take care of this sort of thing, added a brand new crash bug.
It’s not clear why this game is so sloppy. Was it rushed? Was it low-budget? Was a B-team put on it? Even incredibly funny YouTube videos, like this one of bugs with Mega Man make it incredibly easy to dismiss. In fact, videos like these make the game look way worse than it actually would play for an average player, too, who’d likely rarely if ever encounter them. Hardcore fans are the ones uncovering these bugs, but the damage applies to all audiences.
I would have said Capcom could have addressed this with a patch and some good PR, but the patch was obviously a failure; and the PR is deep in the hole for other reasons you’re about to read about.
Special: The competition is to blame — Street Fighter X Tekken didn’t have a chance.
Counter: Capcom, perhaps more any other publisher in the industry, is notorious for milking its games with add-ons, ports, remakes, and new versions.
Sometimes that backfires. Hell, it has backfired in this very market. Before the company released Street Fighter IV and brought 2D fighting games back into the mainstream, it took the genre through its first boom and bust, back in the 1990s. Excess inventory of Super Street Fighter II cartridges for SNES and Genesis reportedly badly hurt the company as it transitioned to the PlayStation and Saturn.
You’d think Capcom would learn.
Still and all, Street Fighter X Tekken came out less than four months after Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and less than three after Capcom launched UMVC3’s Heroes and Heralds mode — a major content update designed to keep players focused on that title post-launch.
Let’s not forget that all of the fighters the company released this generation feature Street Fighter characters. This was far from true of the Capcom’s output during its most prolific period. How many Ryus do you really need? This is the company’s fifth Street Fighter-based retail SKU since 2009.
It’s true that Namco released Tekken Hybrid late last year. But the truth is, nobody really cared about Tekken Hybrid (it’s an obscure fan-oriented title) and it didn’t even ship on Xbox 360. The decks were effectively clear. Sure, when it comes to casual fans, Tekken is not the draw Marvel is — an IP that thrives even outside games. But it’s still one of the best-respected and most popular series in fighters.
Then there are the real competitors. Yes, other companies released games around the same time, such as Skullgirls and Soulcalibur V, neither of which sold nearly as well as Street Fighter X Tekken. More relevantly, any student of capitalism tells you you weather competition by having a superior product; whether or not you like Street Fighter X Tekken — and many seem to — it’s clear that the game got the least attention of Capcom’s recent fighters. This is thanks to the way the company primed people to actively not want to buy the game — as we’ll see.
The open question is whether Capcom saw Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom catering to different audiences. If so, it might have lost perspective on its own products.
Special: Sure, Capcom released a lot of fighting games in rapid succession — but that’s normal for this hardcore genre.
Counter: Yes, this is a genre that’s struggled with oversaturation from the moment it became popular — and Capcom, which propelled it into the limelight, has always pushed things to the very edge of sustainability.
But it’s worse than that, these days. Capcom drew ire from fans by releasing Super Street Fighter IV to retail rather than updating the original release of Street Fighter IV with DLC — but players accepted it, because it was 2009/2010. Things were different then, and Capcom seemed to figure things out, eventually, by offering the final upgrade, SFIV: Arcade Edition, as a moderately-priced DLC pack as well as a retail disc.
Even so, Capcom didn’t run with this strategy. Prior to the reveal of the full-priced, disc-based Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the company had planned to keep updating the original MVC3 with content — but after one batch of DLC characters, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was announced.
Guess what happened? UMVC3 sold worse than Super Street Fighter IV, Capcom’s Christian Svensson admitted.
Here’s an obvious cautionary tale: don’t change your plans. If you’re promising (or even implying) one thing and then delivering something else, you’re going to hurt your reputation.
But there are times when you might just have to change your plans, of course. Producer Ryota Niitsuma cited the 2011 earthquake as throwing a wrench into Capcom’s MVC3 strategy, which of course arouses sympathy. Would an aggressive, timely DLC plan be thrown off more significantly by losing a week or two of development than a retail release would be? It seems plausible.
But a week (or perhaps two) is likely all that would have been lost. Tokyo, where the game was developed (by Eighting) was not drastically affected by the quake, though it’s quite possible developers’ families lived in hard-hit regions, causing more significant disruptions to the schedule. However, if Capcom had said “the DLC’s delayed by two weeks due to the quake,” fans would have been sympathetic.
Obviously, I can’t say what the true scope of this tragedy was on the game’s development plans. It seems any plans could have survived this trauma if they were solid, though, and in this interview, Niitsuma suggests that there were always fundamental weaknesses in the DLC plan.
More importantly, the company had a real opportunity to start treating its fighting games as living, breathing services at this point, and squandered it. Earthquake or no, no doubt it would have required more effort for Capcom to get people to buy into Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as a service rather than to kick out another disc-based update, but it would have been a great chance to try and build a real interlocked community and DLC effort for the title. Rhe company still hasn’t gone down that road, and the poor design of and reception to SFXT’s DLC plans means it still won’t, as we’ll see.
The takeaway here: build goodwill through transparency and honesty in advance, not after you’ve already made an unpopular decision. If you have to make a major change thanks to circumstances beyond your control, let people know. And think ahead; don’t be forced to react when you hit a bump in the road. You will definitely hit one. The good thing is, your fans care.
Special: How can you blame Capcom for not jumping into the digital age properly? The game’s gem system is custom-tailored to today’s marketplace, and brings new strategic depth to the series.
Counter: It’s true that Street Fighter X Tekken has an interesting new system. But it’s interesting for the wrong reasons: it was a PR disaster well before the game arrived on shelves, and it throws player anxieties about pay-to-win items in sharp relief.
For those who don’t religiously follow the genre, the company planned a new gameplay system for Street Fighter X Tekken in which players could equip their characters with ability-enhancing gems. When the game’s producer, Yoshinori Ono, first dropped some vague info about the topic, all hell broke loose.
The fan community, dismayed by the idea of microtransactions, pay-to-win, and unfair advantages destroying the game’s balance, was horrified, and some tournament players quickly argued that the game might not be able to be used for competitive purposes.
It’s still debatable whether or not the gems system itself is critically flawed. The basic idea: adding collectible card game-like strategy to a fighter, allowing players to build a customized team, is in fact sound, and even clever. But the messaging and (crucially) the execution were the real problem points here.
Seth Killian, the company’s lead community manager and tournament player, argued that he loved the initial idea long before it was revealed to fans, when he was asked by Gamasutra.
Note that I say “when he was asked.” The company didn’t get ahead of this entirely predictable controversy. Killian is a tournament veteran and longtime fighting game fan. That’s why he got his job in the first place; he knows his community. Whether he struggles against the strictures of dealing with corporate overhead, whether he just didn’t think ahead, or whether he got taken by surprise by the mouthiness of the game’s producer Yoshinori Ono, I just don’t know. But there was seemingly no plan in place for dealing with the fallout.
In the end, Street Fighter X Tekken was selected for EVO 2012, the most important North American fighting game tournament. But how much say does the tournament have about whether or not it chooses to run with this year’s big game from the biggest name in the genre? We don’t know, but we do know gems are excluded from tournament play.
That, however, hasn’t killed the controversy, because it affects the game’s balance (it was designed for gems) and because expert players have continued to harp on exactly how the gem system is exploitable in the worst possible ways — which deflates Capcom’s defenses. Is this another example of sloppy development or was the lure of DLC profits that got to Capcom? It’s impossible to say, but the PR disaster is unmistakable.
Special: On-disc DLC is fair — because there are solid technical reasons to include this data on the disc.
Counter: And then there was the on-disc DLC. People hate on-disc DLC, of course, but even if you accept the company’s rationale — the fact that players who don’t buy the characters should still be able to fight against players who use them online without wasting hard drive space — what was hilarious is that (A) they weren’t available from launch and (B) they’re included, for free, in the upcoming Vita version. The full roster of characters costs $20 for the unlock on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
People have long hated on-disc DLC. Even with a credible pro argument, the con argument of “people hate it, and they have always hated it” is well worth noting, particularly in such a community-driven genre. The pro argument isn’t that credible, either: Namco’s Soulcalibur V offers an free DLC pack which allows players to experience, but not use, DLC they don’t own while playing online; Arc System Works’ BlazBlue allows users to easily step down to an older version of the game to play with players who haven’t upgraded.
Worse yet, the characters were all available in early builds of the game distributed to the press; it’s unclear what the original plan was, whether it changed, and if the characters were even done in time for launch. But either way, it was a major PR mistake.
Further insult came when it was revealed that the Vita version of the game comes with all of the characters for free, as noted above. Yes, it doesn’t come out till October, but it’s not as if the player base isn’t aware that it costs $10 less and has $20 of free DLC characters included, for a total of a $30 difference. And the Vita version is cross-compatible for online play with the game on PS3. Would you buy a game knowing that — even if you don’t have a Vita or plan to buy one — it’s a ripoff? It’s simple.
I’ve also heard it suggested that the fact that all characters being on the disc drove piracy — fans felt like they were being ripped off and so felt justified in ripping Capcom off. I’m not defending that position, but even if it’s neither true nor significant, it’s still not very smart to put the data on the disc — simply because pirates will crack the game and get early access to content your paying players can’t touch, frustrating them tremendously. Like aggressive DRM, this is a recipe for punishing, primarily, those who legitimately purchase your content.
Would players be complaining now if the company had gifted one DLC character immediately and accelerated the release of the rest? Probably not. Even without that, this was another predictable PR disaster.
Special: Console-exclusive characters? Cool!
Counter: It’s not uncommon for multiplatform fighting games with large rosters to have platform-specific characters on one system or another. It works well, too… when you do it right, as Namco has done with the Soulcalibur series in the past. Who can forget Zelda’s Link in the Gamecube version of Soulcalibur II?
Here’s how to do it wrong. Street Fighter X Tekken has five characters that appear only on the PlayStation 3: Mega Man, Pac-Man, Cole (from Sony’s Infamous series), Kuro, and Toro (from Sony’s Japan-only Dokodemo Issho series.) Yes, three of those characters hail from Sony IP, but two don’t. More importantly, there’s nothing on the 360 side to even up the odds, which is how Namco keeps the peace. Once the game got hacked, rumors began to fly that some or all of these characters were also on the 360 disc; whether or not it was true, it just was one more way the on-disc DLC story metastasized into something even worse, and turned an insult (for 360 owners) into an injury.
K.O.
As you can see, an overly simplistic explanation of what went wrong with this game ignores a majority of major flaws with this game, its release, and especially Capcom’s messaging around it. There is a top-to-bottom lack of planning and community engagement around this game, and that, I would argue, is what lead to the poor sales Capcom is now bemoaning in its earnings statement.
The story here is, no matter how good your community outreach and PR is leading up to a game’s release — and aside from the onset of the gems controversy, Capcom’s was good for this title — it will all unravel at lightning speed unless you can really address these concerns in a proactive, fan-friendly way.
Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono has become a celebrity to hardcore gamers; his name is widely recognized as the man who brought Street Fighter back into the limelight. But given the amount of confusing and contradictory information the company spreads about its fighting games and their release strategies for them, “Ono’s lies” has become a meme. That’s not great for your PR strategy, is it? Ono isn’t entirely to blame, but as the face of Capcom’s fighters, he’s become a divisive figure largely due to company-wide PR gaffes that could have been avoided with more careful planning.
Now, I’m not saying the company is fatally flawed. Capcom gets a lot of things right — just nothing to do with this game, pretty much. The bright side of its financial results was that the critically-maligned Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City sold well beyond expectations. Why? Because it correctly taps into both the zeitgeist (it’s a Western-developed shooter) and nostalgia (it’s set during the events of the fan-beloved Resident Evil 2). It doesn’t matter if it kind of sucks. It even offered free DLC to fans who held onto their discs after beating the campaign: a clever touch, and literally the opposite of what happened with Street Fighter X Tekken.
Don’t exploit, insult, and fail to engage with your audience. Nurture and respect them. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Street Fighter X Tekken is a completely cynical or needless game — the core concept, of pitting two rival franchises together, is reasonable, even exciting — it came out too close to the company’s other titles, with too many slip-ups in every possible regard. By the time it released, the well was poisoned, and things only got worse from there. Is it any wonder people didn’t feel like buying it?
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Zelda New Animated Series Update
Here is a small teaser for the upcoming Zelda animated series, Developed By James Miller, Dylan Bailey and Carrie Ann. I am currently writing an episode as a featured writer so check it out, or I will never forgive you. The project is starting to really pick up steam with the team coming together and I can’t wait to see whats in store for Zelda in 2013. Animators are needed so now is the time to jump on board Zelda fans!
Here is a link to the video
(There are still positions available to join the team, so use the link for more info if your interested)
(Also here is a link to the .pdf booklet with detailed info on the project)
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Blog 9 {{STAND BY FOR ASSIMILATION)) Jedionston Rolls with IGN
This blog was submitted to IGN Community Blogger E3 2012 Contest MyIGN Blog CaptainDirk
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XBOX 360 deal: $99 with 2-year Xbox Live Gold Subscription
By Erik Kain
Microsoft has confirmed rumors that it will be releasing a $99 Xbox 360. The console will come with a Kinect and a 4Gb hard-drive, as well as a two-year subscription to Xbox Live. Just like mobile phone contracts, anyone who sings up for the plan will pay a monthly fee ($15) and face a cancellation fee of $250 if they cancel their subscription before the contract is up.
As PCWorld points out, once you’ve figured in your subscription fees the entire package will cost you $459. You could save a pretty big chunk of money just buying everything upfront. If Microsoft releases its next-gen console in 2013, you might also get stuck with an out-of-date console subscription.
But I think this misses a couple of things. First of all, so what if the Xbox 720 comes out in 2013? Not everyone is an early adopter. Anyone buying an Xbox 360 in 2012 is by definition not an early adopter. If you’re buying an Xbox 360 now, you’re probably not the target audience for the next-gen consoles anyways. For these consumers, a 2013 launch date is hardly a problem.
Second, it may be more expensive over time to purchase the $99 Xbox 360, but you can spread those costs out over two years. For many people, $15 a month after the initial $99 is simply way more affordable than buying the system upfront, even if the eventual cost is higher. For many gamers with limited resources, the additional cost is offset by the convenience of spreading the payments out over time.
It’s actually quite brilliant if you think about it, and may be the future of console gaming. Microsoft and Sony both want their consoles to be more than simply gaming machines. They want to put full-featured home entertainment systems into your home, where you’ll listen to music, watch movies, and play games all from your Xbox or PlayStation. Right now, a big barrier to accomplishing that goal is the price-tag.
But wait – the price of an Xbox 360 or PS3 has come way down over the years. Why is this a problem?
Actually, it’s probably not anymore. Current-gen consoles are actually very affordable now. But when Sony launched the PS3 in 2006, the 20-gig model cost $499. That’s a hefty chunk of change for many people. With even more powerful and expensive hardware baked into next-gen consoles, one imagines that pricing is going to be a huge issue for console manufacturers. Finding the right price-point isn’t easy.
Subscription-based models solve several problems at once. They lower the financial barrier to owning a console for many gamers, but they also allow console manufacturers to launch next-gen consoles at a lower, but still profitable, price point. This isn’t such a big deal with current-gen hardware, but in a year or two it may be the answer.
I’m willing to bet that this $99 Xbox deal is as much a way to keep selling the soon-antiquated system as it is a test-ground for the next-gen Xbox. I’m also willing to bet that if it works, Sony will come up with its own similar deal. Which means that it’s quite possible subscription-based consoles are the way of the future. This could, theoretically, lead to other innovations.
For instance, right now consoles only upgrade their aesthetic design – the way they look, their size, etc. – and their harddrive capacity. This puts them at a natural disadvantage to mobile devices which upgrade constantly. With a subscription model, it’s possible that next-gen consoles could upgrade other features more regularly. People could upgrade to the upgraded version and get a discount by extending their subscription.
This might complicate game design. From a game development perspective, it’s nice to have a console with static specs. PCs vary widely in power and speed, but all Xbox 360s are essentially the same. Still, it’s possible that a new standard could emerge.
What do you think?
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Z! True Long Island Story Episode # 65
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Elder Scrolls Online MMO Bethesda
Bethesda Softworks will bring its popular Elder Scrolls series of single-player RPGs online next year.
The Elder Scrolls Online, developed by Zenimax Online, will be the first multiplayer version for the critically-acclaimed and commercially successful franchise since its debut 18 years ago.
The series’ last release, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, was one of the biggest releases in 2011, and had shipped more than 10 million copies around the world before the end of the year. Previous Elder Scrolls games were developed by Bethesda Softworks, a subsidiary of Zenimax Online’s parent company Zenimax.
Set up in 2007 in Hunt Valley, Maryland as an MMO-focused studio, Zenimax Online is headed by Matt Firor, co-founder of Dark Age of Camelot developer Mythic Entertainment (now BioWare Mythic). This will be Zenimax Online’s first release.
The game explores a new period in Elder Scrolls’ history, and is set a millennium before the events of Skyrim, according to a report from Game Informer.
Bethesda Softworks will publish The Elder Scrolls Online in North America, Europe, and Japan next year for Windows and Macintosh-based PCs.
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JEDIONSTON 
