Working Title 07.08.10: Working Mini-Rants - Death of $60 Games, Leave Achievements Alone, and PC Gaming

Posted by Jordan Williams on 07.08.2010

You know when you REALLY want cereal...but you don't have enough of one type for a full bowl so you just mix them altogether? This week is kind of like that...but just with non-edible things. Should 60 Dollar Games die? Should Sony and Microsoft put less of an emphasis on in-game trophies? And just how will PC Gaming keep up in a possible 3D and Motion Control dominated world?

Welcome to the #1 Column to FINALLY beat Alan Wake, WORKING TITLE. Man, that game started to hit a point where it was almost like a chore for me to finish. I really wanted to finish out the story and see where it was all going...but the gameplay was so...I don't know...boring?

To clarify I did beat the game on Hard, so maybe I wasn't getting the brunt of the gameplay since the majority of it was me running for my life, which did make the game fun...but I just never felt like I was playing a game rather than I was just running from cutscene to cutscene. Oh well, now the next game on the list I need to hurry up and beat is Red Dead Redemption. I loved the hell out of the game...until Act 2 when Mexico completely sucked the fun out of it. Now that I am back in Blackwater maybe I can get back into the story and not so much the errand boy bullshit that was the second act.

So what is this week's column about? Fuck if I know. E3 is over and although we've been getting a ton of news it is all pretty much just expanding on the things we've heard at E3. There haven't been any REAL pieces of game changing news to come out...which sort of leaves a lot of us ranters out there with a lack of fodder for ranting.

But all you have to do is pretty much give us a topic (or three) and we can go on for days about them.

Let's see...


You know what? I think games should be priced depending on quality and perceived value. I also think that In-Game Achievements, as useless as they are still a great gameplay mechanic, and I think that if 3D and Motion Control really catch on as much as Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft hope (and with the continuing war with Piracy) then PC Gaming is going to be in real trouble.


What's that? Three topics? Three things I can rant on for a short column? Gee, that looks like a...

Working Title: Mini-Rants Vol. 4


You know, I used to call this Rant Omnibus until I realized that applying the word 'omnibus' to this made POSTIVIELY NO SENSE.

But it still stands that this column is pretty much going to be a series of short rants on some topics I've been meaning to talk about. So go ahead and pop open a PBR (you dirty hipster, you) and have a nice read.



Death to 60 Dollar Games


Yes, I think it's time for the 60 dollar (or whatever the standard pricing is for your country/area) price tags for games needs to die. Of course I don't think it ever WILL die but there are just too many games nowadays that somehow get away with being a full priced 60 dollar game but do not offer that much in terms of entertainment.

No, this is not one of those rants where you see people bitching about a game being 6-7 hours, therefore it should be 20 dollars based on the amount of time I spend playing it. There are elements of that argument in here but not as cut and dry. There are some games, namely multi-player focused games that are just so open ended and open to interpretation that there is just no way to somehow put a price tag on the amount one can get out of it. But I do think there IS a price tag on the amount of entertainment the AVERAGE player.

Man that sounds confusing.

Let's just put it this way, it's the easiest way I can say it and it comes across as douchey and elitist, but what the fuck ever.

Some games are simply NOT worth 60 dollars. There are some games that it would benefit not only the consumer, but also the developer and publisher if the game was at a discounted price new. Take a game like...saaaaay...Left 4 Dead 2. I love Left 4 Dead 2; I even did a column defending it last year after the giant boycott during E3 2009. But do I think that Left 4 Dead 2 is a 60 dollar game? No.

There is a different between a 'sequel' and things that are just building upon the template already placed. Although I am not a fan of the games, I will acknowledge that games like God of War 2 and 3 are sequels. Do they use the same template as the previous one? Yes. But they build upon it, not only in mechanics but also in story. The game goes through phases and actually changes. But then there are games that it just seems like the second iteration of the game is simply just an expansion pack of the first one. Left 4 Dead 2, even with all of its charms, is like that. You want a more recent example? Crackdown 2. The game has been out for exactly three days (at the time of this writing) and it's already evident that this is 'more Crackdown'. This is fine if you were REALLY a fan of Crackdown but after four years and countless other Open World games (especially ones that improved upon the same stuff Crackdown did) to see that the sequel is pretty much an expansion that repeats some of the same problems is sort of disheartening.

So what is the main theme here? There are games that are worth 60 dollars, but then there are some games that, while still great, just shouldn't be full priced games. More people will buy them new (as opposed to renting or buying them used) and it wouldn't be such a stress on the publisher to try to make back the budget on it if it was a cheap game. Hopefully with supposedly all of the Kinect/Move games being pointed at 40 dollars and 'expansions' like Super Street Fighter IV being 40 bucks we will be able to make this future a reality.

Maybe.



Nerd Cred is Great

Achievements. Trophies. Braggin' Rights. It's all just different forms of Nerd Cred that people use to keep the e-penis growing. There has been a recent push on the internets to have Microsoft and Sony eliminate the Trophy/Achievement system in video games. Why the fuck would they do a silly thing like that? We know that people abuse the fuck out of the Achievement points system by hex editing for Windows Live Games and playing bullshit like Avatar, but for games that actually make trophies and achievements creative and worth it? I think it's a great addition to a game.

Let's just face it; there are some things we are always going to do in games. Odds are if it's a story-based game you are always going to try to beat the game. The vast majority of achievements actually are for simple shit like beating the game and beating a level. But then there are the ones that are creative as all hell. Let's take a game like Dead Rising, where pretty much EVERY achievement is some off-the-wall thing that you would never have tried if you there wasn't some point value added to it. Do you really think you would've killed the entire population for Willamette if there wasn't an achievement for it? Super Puzzle Fighter? Who in the hell would put themselves through the TORTURE of being that game with Dan on a normal basis?

If you beat this game on the hardest difficulty. You deserve the gamerscore points.

I personally hate collection based cheevos but I still like the philosophy behind them. You are getting a virtual representation of something that most gamers (and collection-freaks) were already doing. It's bragging rights; it's something that when you hop on XBL and see that your friend somehow shot the head off of a Cloaker in Transformers: WFC and all of the sudden you are driven like hell to do it to show them up. Some of the most stuffy gamers out there say all these things do is provide false replay value to a game that might not have it...but all I see it is as a way to make even games that aren't not directly competitive have a sense of competition.

Well, that is as long as you aren't playing a Sports game before 2009 or pretty much any THQ Movie Tie-In Game.


How can PC Gaming Keep Up?

PC Gaming is not dead.

Yeah, in 2010, even with all of the idiotic DRM scandals and piracy PC gaming is not dead. There are still some games that are just better played on PC and some games that take advantage of the PC better. You will always have the detractors that say that PC gaming is too expensive and not worth it (because it seems to age at the rate of a month) and not as accessible, but the fact of the matter is that PC gaming is still just as viable as it was 10 years ago.

BUT.

If by some miracle The Big 3 really do make 3D and Motion control catch on...then the PC might be in trouble. Look at all of the things you already have to implement on a console to get this stuff to work. 3D on a PC is completely possible, but the industry has already said they want to move onto glassesless 3D like the Nintendo DS, but does that suddenly mean that every PC gamer who wants to jump in needs to get a super expensive 3D Monitor to keep up with he joneses? I don't know...it just seems sort of...much. Especially seeing as PC always prides itself with being ahead of the curve.

Then there is motion control, I personally don't see motion control EVER becoming a factor in PC gaming, but if by some weird twist of fate it did...what the hell would they do then? This is more just a topic of "what if" more than anything as I don't think PC gaming won't be in any real trouble unless the next batch of consoles suddenly dwarfs them.

The current problem PC gaming faces right now are the DRM/Piracy issues. Consoles have a problem with piracy, too. But it's still NOWHERE near as bad as it is on PC. With a console there's all sorts of soft mods and things you have to deal with. For handhelds there is stuff you have to buy and what not. On a PC you can guarantee that unless there is some DRM ala Ubisoft's Cockblock that there will be a NO CD Crack of the game out BEFORE the game even gets released on retail and it takes all but 30 seconds on a search engine to find it.

I had to post it. I regret nothing.

But how do they stop it? I don't know. Ubisoft's DRM is extreme as all hell, but the thing is (barring foul play by DDoS attacks) it WORKS. So the death knell of PC gaming won't be 3D or Motion Controls, it won't be the consoles being superior or even the games they put out. It will be the lack of support for the PC if Publishers have to constantly jump through hoops in order to make sure the games aren't being outright stolen from under their nose. At some point they are going to say "Fuck it" and either pulls an Activision/Ubisoft and start locking stuff down server side, or not put out a PC version at all.

Well, I suppose they could put all of the eggs in one basket and loop everything through Steam...but there are STILL publishers who don't want to play ball with Steam...and that is just downright CONFUSING. Do they hate having money?

---

There you go, three little mini rants (well, two and a half because the thought I originally had for the PC started to make less and less sense as time went on) for you to chew on. If you managed to make it all the way to this point I'll buy you a copy for Joe Danger for PSN.

No, really. I have a code and you can have it. All you have to do is ask.


Working Question

Time for one that is a callback to Rant #1. Do you think that games should be priced on a standard, or on a Full Game vs. Expansion Basis? If the latter, who should it be left up to decide what would qualify as a 'Full Game'? The Publisher? Some sort of outside body like the ESRB? Let me know because this one really does interest me.


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and the credit sequence for Transformers: WFC so far has taken the crowd away from 'Splosion Man for best credits. Nostalgiagasm.