Working Title 03.13.08: Working Both Sides Round 2

Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.13.2008

I just like arguign with myself too much it seems. Could a Disc-less Console become a reality? Will Videogame based movies EVER work? Are we too hard on the ESRB? Let's find out

Every once in awhile I get an epic feedback that I don't need to reply to, because the person says everything I want to say and then some. This is one of those moments. Just read it folks, this kid has the right idea.

Welcome back to the #1 Column to have a level 45 Bidoof that he refuses to evolve, WORKING TITLE. If you couldn't tell, the first HOLY SHIT THE WORLD IS GOING TO END game of the year has finally appeared in the form of Super Smash Brothers Brawl. It looks like it's everything it's been hyped up to be and I'm happy for that.

But this column ain't gonna be about Brawl.

Seriously, I'm sure you'll be able to turn around to every gaming website in the world right now and see something about Brawl, so I'm not even going to give it play here. We don't play that in the Workhouse.

We also use a lot of 'Work' related terms.

Anyway, since I actually had a pretty good time last week with this idea, I'm going to run with it again for four more questions. Score one for unoriginality, BOOYAH!

Last week I stated my views that Casual Gaming is just a fad, Having a One-Console Generation can go either way, Developers need to take more chances and that Gaming has finally grown up. Whose side am I on this week?


Working Both Sides Round 2

Videogame based movies will take a turn for the better now that video games are becoming more than just a niche market and are being looked upon in the same light as movies and television.

They try it a lot, and I mean A LOT. A certain director has made the brunt of his work reflect on it. The dreaded Videogame Movie. So far it has seen little critical success outside of a few niche reviews here and there. But now that Hollywood is affecting Gaming as much as Gaming is affecting Hollywood, could the Videogame based movie work for once?

Pros:
- We can actually see video games that have great stories brought to life on the big screen.
- Big named directors will actually want to be attached to videogame based movies instead of the usual flock we get now.
- People who normally do not play the videogame will be able to experience the story and the characters for themselves without having to play the game.


Cons:
- If a videogame already has a great story, it should attract it on its own merit rather than having to be made into a movie in order to attract an audience. Also whether we like to admit it or not, not many videogames have a strong enough stories on their own to be made into a movie thus why most of them get changed and reshaped.
- Big named directors won't tie themselves down to a videogame movie without making various changes in attempts to make the movie their own instead of the adaptation it should be.
- Saying people who normally do not play the videogame will be able to experience the story is like saying people who don't read the book will walk away from the movie with the same feeling. It's simply not true.


I say:
This one is going to pull up a CON for me simply because while I do think that the videogame based movie can work, it's just the simple fact that there isn't anyone out there not named Uwe Boll who wants to give it a real effort. If we had a GOOD director giving videogame based movies half the effort that Uwe Boll puts into them, we wouldn't see nearly half of the bad shit we see.

Videogames have some great stories, no doubt about it. But more often than not these stories don't necessarily stack up well against some of the best books and movies out there. The best video game story can't even hold a candle to the best movie or book. This is why Hollywood goes in and makes so many changes. They know that the framework of the story in its current form just won't support the movie and they have to make changes to flesh it out a little bit.

Big named directors are a joke when it games to a videogame based movie. One of these days we might see the Coen Brothers tackle a video game movie, but right now most of them are so deadset on the next Oscar season that the wouldn't DARE tie themselves down to the critical sinking ship that is a videogame movie. And if they did they would end up making SO many changes that it wouldn't even resemble the videogame in the end.

Let's just face the facts people, people who didn't play the videogame aren't even going to see the movie in the first place unless it looks balls awesome. The people who think the movie looks balls awesome probably already played the game or are giant fans of the genre already. I don't think someone is going to sit there and be like "Man, thank god they made Prince of Persia into a movie because it's something I always wanted to check out...and now I can...IN MOVIE FORM!". It's just too tough a pill to swallow.

I think the videogame movie can work, but now with the current approach. We need to find someone who isn't so damn lazy or bigheaded that can just let the videogame movie be a videogame movie. Paul W.S Anderson is on the right track on some of his films, and there may be others out there. But until people can find that right balance between the two there aren't going to be any GREAT movie games...just bad ones and 'okay' ones.



The ESRB is fine the way it is. All of its problems are small things that are being blown way out of proportion.

Is the ESRB really as bad as everyone is currently making it out to be? I mean sure there have been some hiccups with AO and M games in the last year or so, but just like any ratings board for the most part they are spot on, right? Is there a way to make the ESRB better if it isn't working?

Pros:
- For the most part the ESRB does its job on rating games. You never really have to look at a game and be surprised this got an M versus a T.
- The system works right now on their end. They can't control what parents do, but the ESRB does its job by appropriately labeling the games so the smart parents know what and what not to buy.
- The system of just watching a demonstration of the elements of a game works in rating it because playing every game in its entirety would just take too long.

Cons:
- The ESRB does its job on rating games, but that's because the rating scale is far too broad. There's only one standard T and one standard M. There's a lot of grey area between those that could be fleshed out and used better.
- I agree that the ESRB is doing what it can right now, but if parents aren't going to take the initiative, the ESRB needs to pick up the slack and do everything they can to cover their own ass. Make the label ratings bigger and more noticeable is a good start.
- As it's been proved before with games like Oblivion and San Andreas. What you see might not always be what you get, and then we get those oh-so-wonderful scandals.

I say:
I'm going to side with PRO, although can made a good point. But more on that later. The ESRB is doing the best it can right now with what its job is; to rate video games. What's E is E, what's T is T, and what's M is M. When is the last time you picked up a game and look at it thought that it needed to be a rating higher or lower than what it currently is?

But where con made a good point in that there's a lot of grey area between T and M that needs to be fleshed out. There have been a lot of talks about making a new rating that would be between T and M, such as T16 or something like that and I think that is the way to go. Right now we currently have a between E and T with E10 and I think we could benefit with something between T and M. That, however, might come back to bite them in the ass if the later T started to become the new rated M and the new rating M started to become to the new AO.

The ESRB does its job as far as labeling and letting people know is concerned, but still catches a lot of flak for it. But really, there's nothing else they can do once the game leaves their desk. It's not there job to police gaming and baby-sit the parents who want to buy games for their kids. They are simply there to impose a guideline. The MPAA doesn't have a police force that's out to stop any preteen from sneaking into a rated R movie, and they don't get held accountable nearly as much as the ESRB does for the same infractions.

Sure, shit like people sneaking in content or not showing the full content to the ESRB happens, but those have been rare occurrences and all have been fixed at some point. It's just that (and MANY people have said this) having the ESRB play through EVERY SINGLE GAME that comes through is going to clog up the pipes of production and we'll see delays out the ass. The MPAA can watch a test screening and be done with it and get a rating, the ESRB should be able to do the same or at the very least play a small beta version of the game(which is exactly what is done if they can't get a good feel for the game through the video) to do the same job.



DLC (Downloadable Content) is going to be a major force for the next generation, and the eventual disc-less console is going to become a reality.

Pros:
- Cheaper costs for video games now that the printing and packages process will be completely cut out. It also allows for consumers to get games right away
- DLC games will be stored on the HDD that will slow down loading times greatly, if not eliminate them completely.
- With the age of podcasts and other download services really kicking up, it just seems smart for gaming to embrace the bandwagon

Cons:
- Regardless of if they like it or not, not EVERYONE has a console connected to the internet and not EVERYONE is going to be willing to download every single game they want to play
- Having full games stored on the HDD is going to mean you will have to regularly delete games or that the consoles of the future are going to have mammoth sized HDDs.
- Download services for music and movies are picking up, yes, but with stores devoted to just selling that product there is no way in hell that they are going to shift an entire industry to download-only format.


I say:
CON. This is just a dumb idea to me. With stores like EB, GameSpot and what else is out there is just NO WAY IN HELL they are going to lose out on that entire bank and shift the industry over to download only. I don't even really need to break this one up into parts and discuss each one. It's just an idea that's not going to happen in any of our lifetimes. DLC in itself is a great idea, it extends the life of games and adds more stuff to them. But DLC in the form of games is still a very mixed bag with all of the ROMs and Emulators out there. They are on the right track now with offering us hard to find games and original content, but more or less DLC Arcade games are things you could get after about 20 minutes of searching on Google for free. Look at Movies and Music, there are services like iTunes and NetFlix that let you download and buy but then there's places like BitTorrent and LimeWire which let you do the same thing for free and right now more people are choosing those. We are more likely going to see the One Console Generation before we see a disc-less console.



Genres like RPG, FPS, and "Fighting" should be a thing of the past now that the line between video games and movies are blurring to the point where the style of the game doesn't matter so much rather than the story behind it.

It was recently said GDC that a developer would like these genres to die. At first everyone flipped out thinking this was some extreme form of bias, but in reality he was saying that he doesn't want games to be categorized like this now that the stories seem to have transcended the style of game. Was he onto something there?

Pros:
- Most of the genres tend to blur together nowadays anyway, it might be better off to start putting games under tags such as "Science Fiction" and "Horror" rather than "Science Fiction First Person Role-playing Game".
- The stories in videogames have really started to become the selling point versus what type of game it is. Everyone loves a good story.
- Games with stronger stories would now be easier to find rather than having to look for a diamond in a rough in over saturating genres such as FPS and RPG games.

Cons:
- The genres do blur, but it's still easy to tell what the heart of a game is. Mass Effect might've used guns but it's obvious that that game was an RPG and not a shooter. Super Paper Mario might've had text and some dialogue, but you knew that was a platforming game at heart.
- The stories in games matter, but people are putting way too much stock in the stories nowadays. Gameplay is the deciding factor in a game in most people's minds. The game could have one of the worst stories ever but if it's fun to play people are going to love it.
- I actually agree with this one. Damn.


I say:
This one is going to have to end up in a tie. On one hand I can see how game genres are blurring to the point where the genre rarely ever defines exactly what the game is, but on the other hand it hasn't gotten to the point where we need to rethink of how we classify games.

I do think that people are putting a bit too much stock in the story of a game, though. Look at the entire fighting game genre. Fighting games aren't know for their powerful stories, they are simply there to simulate you beating some else up. They don't get praised on the strength of their story but on the strength of their gameplay. Stories are important, I'll admit that. But they aren't what make a game fun, just what makes a game better than normal.

It would be a lot easier to find a diamond in a rough game based on it's content rather than it's genre, but that's just sort of a moot point...I just can't explain it more than that.


Working Feedback



Hey Jordan, I was going to post this in the comments section, but noticed it was becoming a bit long, so I decided to email it instead.

How does that work with you? Are reviews determining your purchase of a game and your enjoyment or is there something else at work there?

Yes and no...If I am unsure about a game, I might let the reviews tell me if it is worth getting. But I usually have my mind made up about buying a game, before there are any reviews written for it. If I am on the fence, like I was with say...Superman Returns the Game. The reviews for all intents and purposes stated the game as a step in the right direction but still lacking. Because of that I decided to rent Superman instead of buying it, and was glad I did. So to answer your question, if I haven't made up my mind, a review can influence whether or not I purchase or just rent a game.

This can work both ways, as I am not going to lose my enjoyment of The Matrix: Path of Neo, just because the reviews for it were less than stellar. But I am also not going to go buy Okami, just because everyone else loved it... the promotions for the game did not make me want to pick it up, so the reviewers that rave about the games greatness, will also not have an effect on me.

An example of being on the fence in the positive, is the recently released Devil May Cry 4. I was extremely interested in the game, but the last one I played was DMC2, and we all remember how that turned out... So I waited... read the reviews, and got opinions from a couple of friends before making sure I have the game.
I think it is unwise to let a reviewers take on something influence you to much, sure they may be a part of that industry, or they may have went to school to be a writer, or a critic or whatever, but ultimately the review boils down to one thing. The words you read are ultimately just his opinion on the game, or movie that he is writing about.
An interesting side note: I do tend to agree with game critics more so than movie reviews. I tend to use games and movies as an escape, and no offense meant, but movie critics seem to be more about talking about the obscure nuances go into making a film, like cinematography, and lighting, and things like that, as opposed to just what the film is intended to be, entertainment. When reading a game review you want to know about sound quality, fun factor, and all that goodness. But in movies, what it all comes down to is entertaining me.
Don't get me wrong, proper lighting and all that stuff can really add to a film, but if the plot sucks, there is nothing that can save a movie. To me that makes cinematography and lighting choices an afterthought that can add to the experience.
With a video game, a less than stellar story can be more than made up for with great graphics and gameplay mechanics, and addictive gameplay. Just look at Call of Duty 4. the story there is pedestrian at best, but because of the great gameplay and the incredible graphics, and sound the game offered, the game is destined to become a classic.
Look at it this way, Take Two could make a game based on the movie Gigli , and it could be saved by the graphics and one simple hook as far as gameplay go, that makes it highly addictive, whereas you could have Martin Scorcese directing the Hottie and the Nottie, and it still would not be saved from being one of the worst movies ever, unless Scorcese was able to change the script, or the direction of the story any.
I guess I kind of got off subject a bit there, but to answer your question in a short easily reposted feeback type of way:

How does that work with you? Are reviews determining your purchase of a game and your enjoyment or is there something else at work there?
Reviews are determining in whether or not a rent or don't rent a game I wasn't sure about, but will not influence whether or not I purhcase or don't purchase a game I had my mind made up about.

Thanks for listening.
Toddo

Working Question: ESRB vs. The World

Going along with one of the bigger topics of today, what is your whole stance on the ESRB(or your country's equivalent)? I know a lot of gamers hate them with a fiery passion, but some (like myself) stand by their decisions most of the time because they are correct. What do you think the ESRB could be doing differently to help the gaming industry, or do you think we as gamers (and parents of gamers) should be picking up some more slack and own up to a few things ourselves?


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I think I might be the only person in the world who really doesn't care about The Dark Knight. Does this mean I have to turn in my geek card?