Used Games Don't Hurt Anyone

It was popular belief, and still probably is in this still maturing video game industry, that used game sales hurt everyone except the entity selling the used games. The developer and publisher loose a potential game sale on a new game because of being undercut by players that sell games that they either don't like or finished. It's a winning situation for a gamer looking for cheap games, a collector or someone looking to get into something different.

The car industry and housing/construction industry has been surviving with used sales for quite a long time. No one complains about it now. Used car dealerships are a dime a dozen and flipping houses is the new Avon. They've enabled buyers who can't afford the prices set by the manufacturer to buy something that is older and more affordable because of depreciation over the years.

Most developers are probably complaining about lost sales, being undercut by Gamestop and eBay and whatnot. That might be true in some cases, but that should also tell them that there is something wrong with their price point. Another fact of the matter is that used games are opportunities to create brand loyalty and franchise loyalty. I'll occasionally buy a sports game used to figure out if the games have changed enough to my liking. Used games are how I found Forza Motorsports and jumped the Gran Turismo ship from Sony.

I think it's more up to the gamers themselves to realize that if they are positive that they want the next Call of Duty because they love the developer and the games they make, they need to buy the game brand new and make sure the developer gets their money. But it's also up to the developer to realize that they can loose respect and change peoples minds about their games and give them the ability to get some of their money back from other channels. Unless they want to start refunding money for video games (which no store will ever do because of people ripping games and stealing them) then developers need to  get over the used game sales and let buyers make their own choices.

The Search for the Perfect Race

Even after all of the simulation racing games since the very first Gran Turismo game on PS1, which I'm sure isn't the first ever, they still have one problem: dog awful computer A.I. and gamers that want to win all the time.

That sounds contradictory, but it isn't. When I play a racing game, I want to 1) win every race to complete the game and 2) get the cash reward. But I also don't want to race 4-9 laps of a track 2 laps ahead of the rest of the competition. See, winning isn't everything. I want to have a good time while doing it. I want to feel like I'm being challenged, but I don't want to lose 4 out of 5 races because I slip up.

This problem was first addressed early in video game racing with a term called "rubberbanding", where no matter how well you were doing, the competition was able to keep up with you. You would jockey for position the entire race, which may have looked like a more realistic race, but to the player felt like no matter what they did, they couldn't turn a real advantage, even when the A.I. wrecked completely off the track.

Online racing and leader boards are simulation racing's saving grace. Real people are the best competition. Racing against numbers like a time trial is competitive and indirect. Your free to practice as much as you want and post scores all day without being bothered by people hiding behind the veil of internet anononimity.

The Forza Motorsports series has tried to take strides in A.I. development from the opposite point of view: train your computer driver to drive for you. The technology is defunct now and was only in the first Forza game. The second Forza game replaced the Drivatar technology with a new model: pay to win. At any race you could hire a computer driver to drive for you. Depending on how much you paid for a driver afforded you that much experience and a probability of a win. Handing over 100% of your earnings from the race up front meant that you would most likely win the race. But as you watched the race go, you could see glaring driving mistakes and missed opportunities at every turn and corner.

Forza Motorsports 3 doesn't seem to tout any of this kind of fair-racing/assistance technology. Instead, they are continuing to push how many millions of polygons make up a car, how many cars are in the game (or different versions of the same cars, don't be fooled!) and what modes you can race in.

My question is when are we going to stop worrying about looks and options in a game that is supposed to be more about simulation than photo realism? Why advertise a racing game to be a simulation game if the only sense we're worried about duplicating in video games is sight? I want to hear that Turn 10 and Polyphony Digital hired outside artificial intelligence teams to program their games instead of hearing that now you can drag race and drift race the same stupid computer players. A change of scenery is nice, but if you're still surrounded by idiots...

Link: Forza Motorsports
Link: Gran Turismo

Turn 10's cat is out of the bag

Turn 10 has tweeted “We can’t wait to start blabbing about our next big thing.” There tweet along with the above photo (photo on let is out of Turn 10's house, and image on right is artists rendition of logo) has sparked the rumor that Forza Motorsports 3 is in the works.

I’m all for a new racing game. I just hope this series doesn’t turn out to be like the Madden series by tweeking the graphics and physics a little. Don’t give me a slightly updated version of the same game. But to think about it, what more can they give you that couldn’t just be in an update? You’re going to get more cars and tracks, all things that we wish for, but they could be updates.

I guess making you’re car more customizable would be great. I commend them for the label application techniques. But we all would like more visual add-ons to separate each car in a crowd. Maybe wide body kits, or the racing body mods like GT1 had for every car in there stable.

How about Turn 10 bringing us some rally. Everyone with FM2 was trying to create the perfect drift car. Give a reason to snap that rear end loose, for the race, not just for fun.

What is on your wish list?

Further thoughts on OnLive

While the idea of PC gaming's barriers to entry (expensive graphics cards mainly) going away with the invention of the OnLive service, as well as a host of other pretty ingenious features like being able to pick up where you left off from any computer with out moving save files around, it does beg to question how all this will end up in the real world.

One of the features that OnLive promises is hi-defintion gaming on any console through the use of the servers that have embedded graphics processing chips. While they not only process the game data, they also handle rendering the graphics, something your computer used to have to do client side. But it only works if you have around 5MBps download speeds from your ISP. I do subscribe to Comcast for internet and I can tell you that I rarely get 5MBps speeds for my 6MBps subscription service. Tonight I tried a few download tests and got a couple 4.7MBps, a 5.2MBps and a 3.5MBps all using DLSReports.com. I have a feeling that if your computer's connection doesn't maintain the required bandwidth, your session could be topped out at the lowly S-Video-level graphics, a 480p resolution.

Secondly, a lot of ISPs like Comcast have started capping bandwidth since the days of online video services like Netflix have started eating up a lot of precious wire capacity. A game on a DVD can be as big as 7GBs. Assuming that you access everything on the disk once, that's around 7-9 GBs worth of data. In the real world of games, you play levels over, race tracks over and over and over, play online matches even more. The amount of data that an Xbox reads and re-reads off of a disk over a gamer's interest in the game must be pretty substantial. Comcast's monthly cap is at a beefy 250GBs, so that's about 45 fully packed games. But you throw in normal internet usage (we're on our laptops quite a bit during the evenings and weekends), Netflix streaming, our Vonage internet based phone service and whatever else we use the interwebs for and I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few people out there get cut off and are unable to use the service (or their phone) for a couple days. 5MBps will eat up 250,000MB pretty fast when your talking about hours of gaming a day (347MB per day).

Right now, even Wikipedia's criticism section on OnLive is not making the company look very good. Extraordinary promises. Smoke and mirrors public presentation. Little information on their website. I want this product so bad and everything they claim to be so true. I'm still keeping my hopes up despite all the turbulence they are stirring up in the tech/gaming community.

OnLive: The Perfect Console? Anything!

I'm not sure what to make of this. An online service that will let you play even the most high end graphics games with the crappiest computer. Or you can play games on your TV with a inexpensive box.

 

 I'm still watching the presentation that happened at GDC.

Zelda: Link on a Train?

They've officially run out of ideas for Zelda games on the DS.

Link. On a train. LAME. Offically announced at GDC 2009:

Thanks MTV Multiplayer blog

2 Hour Review: Braid

I just played through the second (or 3rd World) of Braid, a new game on Xbox Live's arcade. I had heard of this platforming, time shifting game and even seen videos of it. But after 5 minutes playing the demo, I happily paid over 1200 Microsoft Points ($15) for the full version and downloaded it post-haste.

Braid is a beautifully drawn platforming game with a few intricate twists thrown in based off of time-shifting mechanics. Accidentally fall off of a platform and die? No problem. Hit the X button and you reverse time. Sounds simple. But later you get abilities to rewind time and not yourself or items in the world and you have a really good basis for a puzzle platform game. And some time shifting is controlled by your movement.

Pictures and video will do wonders to explain what's going on in this really awesome game. Here is an interview with Jonathan Blow about why he created a simple platforming game and his thoughts behind it.

Upcoming Games of Fall 2008

With E3 over, I thought it would be a good time to make a list of new, upcoming games coming out this Fall that I'm most interested in and why I want them. I like doing this once in awhile because it helps me realize that I do need some kind of money management system to be able to afford all this and have the time to play them all.

• Rock Band 2: September - Loads of new songs, band members can play together online. We'll probably still have Rock Band parties though.
• Fable II: October 21 - Everything that was supposed to make Fable I awesome is going to actually be in Fable II. The only role playing games I can handle are action titles. Fable is good for sword swinging, magic casting, quests and stat building.
• Gears of War 2: November 7 - More Gears of War story line, improved online gameplay. The reason I stopped playing the first Gears online is that the data/host setup was awful and laggy. I need precision in shooting games.
• Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People -- Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner: TBA 2008 - I love Homestar Runner. This should be a really fun point-and-click game for the Wii. And it will be my first episodic, downloadable game, with two other episodes to be release later.
  

But that look like it's about it. These are my must have games, at least. I'm sure I'll be playing other games as well as picking up used games at the stores. But that actually makes me feel a little better about having time to play my backlog of games. If there are too many Triple-A titles hitting shelves at once, I start to feel guilty about buying them or anxious about not having them. It looks like I've got some room to breathe.

And finish the basement before the baby comes.

Mario Kart: Midnight Launch

What a bust. Here's my Twitter for the evening (in reverse chron):

thrustinj: looking for Wii Mario Kart friends. Send me your friend codes! less than 5 seconds ago from web

thrustinj: on my way home. 38 minutes ago from txt

thrustinj: happy the employees finally got back to the store. I'm still the only one here. No one love Mario Kart? about 2 hours ago from txt

thrustinj: so bored. But I'm watching a father and son panic about why the store isn't open yet. about 2 hours ago from txt

thrustinj: still the only one here. At least in hiding in my car. about 2 hours ago from txt

thrustinj: feeling Mario Kart doesn't need a launch like this. And why didn't I bring my DS? about 2 hours ago from txt

thrustinj: watching two guys with a big box walk into Gamestop. Mii thinks it's Mario Kart for the midnight release. about 2 hours ago from txt

About 30 people ended up showing up during the last 15 minutes before midnight. The store guy had a few Mario Christmas ornaments to give out as prizes, but he couldn't think up 3 "Nintendo related" questions, so he randomly threw them out to the sparsely populated queue. Yeah, we're all going to jump around like a bunch of wedding idiots. Then he told us that he had a list of upcoming Wii releases and told us that he highly recommended the new Facebreaker boxing game. I know he's never played it. So why is he recommending it. Stupid.

When I finally got the game back home, I hooked up with a co-worker and we were pretty quickly online and playing. Then after one race, my Wii gave me an error message and said I needed to restart the console. We played a few more and it did it again. I'll have to check the web and see if others are getting this error. If it happens again, I'm taking it back for another disk.

Oh well. We'll give it the weekend to see how it goes.

Grand Theft Auto is Coming - Guard Your Kids!!!

It's going to be a busy week next week with two of the biggest games of the year coming out this week: Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto 4.

EB Games in the local shopping center is going to have midnight releases for both games, Mario Kart on Saturday and GTA4 on Tuesday. I plan on going to both of them for a couple of reasons. I want to see what kind of line forms for Mario Kart for the Wii, what I believe will be the only midnight release for the Wii ever here. I plan on taking some pictures and posting them up.

The only reason I want to go to the GTA4 release is because I want the game. Now. It will be interesting at that midnight release to see how many cars get jacked, hookers get beaten up, and pedestrians run over. The police presence should be huge, if Fox News had their way.

A recent quote I read said that M-rated games basically have the reputation of X-rated movies. It's sad how true that really is. I can't wait for the next thing to come along to get the focus off video games. Women voting, black people, comic books, rock music, and now video games. Come on people. Learn from history.

I wonder what would happen if women voted to let black people read comic books at a rock concert where they sold video games.

Mass Market Gaming Getting Stale

bcullers brought over DarkSector last night for the 360. As he started talking about it, he immediately brought up gameplay references like Gears of War and Army of TWO (which is a Gears of War wannabe in it's own right). We shared a sad laugh about yet another Gears clone and then we both said, "Well, if it works..."

It was something I hadn't thought about playing Army of TWO. Instead of the whole time playing the game with an angry cloud over my head because the gameplay in it wasn't original, should I have been more focused on what new things the game brought to the table instead of what it didn't? I'm not sure what other things like that exist in the world like this. When I buy a new game, unless it's a sequel, prequel or derivative IP, I want it to be genuine and different. Music is a possible comparison if you really like music and not a genre. Books too. But I think with games I always want the next game of that genre to fix the things that were broken in the last game.

I think, overall, I find it really hard to not reference other games when playing a new one. Unless it's a game like Katamari Damacy for the PS2 or Brain Training for the DS, your getting a game that is specifically set in a genre (football, driving, FPS) and there is little you can do to differentiate it from it's members.

But most of the games I own (and keep) I like very much. So getting a new game with elements of my old ones should be comforting. But I want new experiences from gaming constantly. I don't want another Gears of War game with a different set of characters, voices, and graphics. I don't want another Forza Motorsport that touts more cars and tracks. I want new experiences and games that make me think in a different perspective. Having sold on eBay Mass Effect (a mediocre space RPG) and Army of TWO (a clone of another game), I can tell my purchases are going to start getting far and few between and overly scrutinized.

A new hope in gaming recently is Penny-Arcade's The Greenhouse. This is a game related comic-drawing duo that has it's hands also in charity work, game expos, and now with Greenhouse, independent game developers. Not much has been said about Greenhouse other than right now it's a platform to release their new game (another hand) "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness". But I wouldn't mind starting to play games on a PC or Mac if meant getting really good content.

Midnight Release in Harrisonburg / Micro Review: Halo 3

I decided that with nothing better to do, I would go to the midnight release of Halo 3 last night at Gamestop in Harrisonburg Crossing.

I got there a half-hour before the store closed at 9pm when they were going to give out tickets. I was the 3rd person in line. I pulled up a chair from Cold Stone Creamery and pulled out the cellphone. Across the street, they were setting up a lasertag course in the parking lot. It was free for anyone who wanted to play while they waited. I was wearing motorcycle boots and declined. My tennis ankles are precious.

I just sat and listened to the different people talking about games, playing online, reading books. Which is strange when you consider "gamers" encapsulates hard core geeks to frat jocks. Everyone was very admirable and friendly. I think the only person that got made fun of was trying to ask about reserving a Legendary edition of the game 20 minutes before it went on sale. He was wearing a Halo 3 shirt, which normally would indicate that he pre-ordered it months ago. Dumbass!

When they opened the doors for to hand out receipts and numbers for midnight, there were probably 100 people in line, stretched down the sidewalk. Cold Stone had come out and offered a few small, small cups of ice cream and some woman was selling the disgusting Halo 3 Mountain Dew in cans for $2, saying that it wasn't available around here (accept for every 7-11 and/or Sheetz). I saw a bunch of empty cans on the sidewalk later that night. She probably made a killing.

Once we got our tickets people started playing lasertag and I left to get some food. When I came back the parking lot was littered with drooling gamers for Halo 3. Around 11:30 people started congregating back at the store, waiting for the line to be formed. A police car made a round or two. Luckily, as far I as knew being one of the first people in line and out the door, there weren't any problems.

I also didn't sign up for the local tournaments that were going to be held via email. It was an interesting proposition that I was glad to see get a push around here. As far as I know, there aren't any local gaming clubs or teams in Harrisonburg. JMU maybe, but those are just glorified dorm suites.

I played Halo 3 with a friend until about 2:30am. The graphics aren't top notch, but there's too much going on in the game to be pretty and powerful. The voice acting is fantastic and all the non-player computer characters are back chiming in with "You kicked his ass!" type quotes and other such funny nonsense.

The online coop works great and sets up just like an online deathmatch in a hosted room. And it's so much nicer not having to restart if one of your teammates dies. Switching to a scored coop instead of the old checkpoint system was a great move on Bungie's part.

The difficulty of the game is about right too. We're playing on Heroic, the second hardest mode. Even the pawn-like Grunts have tactics in their A.I., though now it just seems to be "IF Brute leader dies, run like hell. Flail arms wildly."

So with just a couple of hours in on the campaign story alone, so far so good. This game is going to make Fall go by so fast...

As The Fall Approaches

It's been about two weeks since I posted anything and let me tell you, I'm drained.

Work has been a mentally exhausting exercise. I haven't enjoyed walking in the door very much, but lately it's been getting back to normal and a normal pace is returning. I've also spent the last few spare hours resealing the asphalt driveway at home. It's not a very hard home maintenance item but if you've never done it before, be prepared to lose a pair of jeans and sneakers. And to clean black tar out of your fingernails. Multiple times.

I took a night off and went to a metal concert at Guzman's in Harrisonburg. It's a small Mexican restaurant on the edge of town that is part small restaurant, part huge concert hall. I don't know how people could have enjoyed a meal next door to August Burns Red, but I know I could have used a nice burrito during the concert. I don't know how they book an evil metal concert between nights of karaoke, but money is money in the hand of a venue I guess. And I got in free, so I'm not complaining about it one bit.

So where does this put me in video game terms? Way behind schedule.

I have about 9 days to finish Metroid Prime 3, which I'm really, really enjoying. Halo 3 is dropping and I'm not sure how the two will clash when they enter the arena of my gaming hands. Both are stellar titles (I hope). But I know if Halo 3 goes into the Xbox 360, the amounts of dust that will envelope the Wii will hopefully not break it's warranty. So I better play it safe and finish (not complete) Metroid. But who knows, peer pressure should never be underestimated.

A quick look at the gaming calendar shows me a busy, busy fall. But I also know we have the next two weekends out of town, a birthday here and there, and the ever-possible trip to Cairo in November. But motorcycling will be over soon as the weather chills (I love the cold and all, but seriously...) and Harrisonburg Tennis Patrons will move indoors soon after the first of October, at which time I will take my winter sabbatical.

I'll switch to mobile gaming during the long trips and time away from home. The Nintendo DSs we carry around will keep both Nicole and I entertained in the late evenings and car trips. I'll finish Hotel Dusk. Nicole will continue to balloon her high scores in Yoshi Touch and Go.

Gaming becomes a huge part of my life in winter and it's practically all I do. A cup of warm hot chocolate and a controller by my side, a cat in my lap bundled up in a blanket.

I can practically feel the memories before they even happen.

Info: Stuntman Ignition

I played the Stuntman: Ignition demo a few weeks ago on Xbox Live and I was pretty impressed.

Today on IGN they reviewed the game's Constructor function. A set of challenges that you must win by placing elements on the movie set to complete the scene. If your scene involves getting over a river, you must use the set props you have to achieve the scene. A ramp might be the best application.

Here's the best part: there are two modes. Stunt Director has you strategically placing a limited number of props to achieve a scene in a movie. It's a sort of logic puzzle that involves blowing things up and looking cool.

The second mode is a free-style, sandbox arena that lets you do whatever you want with an unlimited number of props. Set up the most insane course with the most insane stunts and then go at it. Put cameras anywhere you want to catch footage as the car comes by, then post your movie online for other people to see.

I have to admit, I was thinking about the game as a used purchase, but with this new level of interactivity, I might have to buy it right when it comes out.

Here is some footage of the Constructor level.

My Gaming Calendar

With E3 going on and all these new titles being thrown around, I thought I'd make a real wishlist of games to keep track of them all.

What's bad about this is that I realize that even as picky as I'm being, there is no way I can play all these games. The first game, Metroid Prime 3, I'm seriously doubting I'll beat in a month. And it's going to be hell to own Grand Theft Auto IV while owning Halo 3 only a few weeks prior.

It's going to be a long hard second half of the gaming year.