Game Design: How Much Help Do You Need?

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is one of the best games for the Game Boy and one of the best of the Zelda series.  It has tricky puzzles, smart dungeons and cool enemies.  We're going to focus on one dungeon in particular.  In this dungeon, there are four pillars on one of the levels and a steel ball that you can pick up.  The game doesn't really tell you what to do, but it expects you to do the math.  You throw the steel ball at the pillars (which are rather difficult to get to), which collapses the top level of the dungeon down to your level and enables you to fight the boss.  There aren't a whole lot of hints, so you have to sort it out yourself.

Compare that to Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks.  Most of the time you'll have your assistant telling you what to do, whether it's Midna, Ciela, or Zelda.  If you walk into a level, Zelda might tell you, "Oh no!  Look at those guards!  You better avoid them!"  Midna might say something like "Take a look at the jewel on that guy's head!"  They'll pretty much walk you up to the solution or tell you where to go next.  So, the question is, was it better before?  Were games better when they didn't tell you what to do, or is the extra help a good idea?

First, it's important to ask why we got so little help on older games.  Was it because the designers expected us to figure things out?  They trusted us more?  Not really.  It's because they couldn't give us any more help due to system limitations.  The cartridge memory for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda was prohibitively small.  For instance, the clouds and the bushes in Super Mario Bros. are the exact same sprite, just palette-swapped.  Those were the kind of things they had to do by necessity in order to get the full game onto the cartridge.  So, the reason why they only said "Dodongo dislikes smoke" is because they couldn't say anything more.  They had no space for it.

Game designers always wanted to provide more pointers, and they tried to do so in instruction manuals and the like, but there weren't a whole lot of choices.  Was the game better off for it?  That's open to debate, but a lot of the games of those days were solved with hint books and heated debate on the playground ("I was able to do an infinite hair-pull kick!"  "Nuh-uh!").  Most gamers didn't go it alone, as much as they'd like you to believe they did.  Those playground conferences are gone for most of us, but in its place we have our group of friends that we game with, as well as the big playground:  The internet.  When we get stuck in a game or find an insurmountable obstacle, we're able to go to that bastion of groupthink and get the help we need.  For the most part, we're still not going it alone.

So, if you're a game designer, you know people are going to seek help and space is no longer an issue, what do you do?  You provide the help in-game so that frustration is reduced to a minimum.  If you're a designer, you don't want the gamer to step away from your game for a moment, especially in a moment of frustration.  Therefore, you provide those in-game tips to gently nudge (or shove) the gamer along so they can see the next location.  Another option is one provided by Demon's Souls, where the community provides tips and help and recreates that "playground" environment, where multiple gamers provide help on a solution.

However, where do you draw the line?  How much help is too much help?  It's an especially difficult problem now that more gamers are entering the fold.  For instance, you show me a small key in a Zelda dungeon and I know exactly what to do with it.  If you show my wife a small key, she'll need the full explanation.  She'll need you to tell her what the key is used for, what the doors look like, and how to open them up.  If you don't tell her these things, she'll get frustrated and throw controllers.  (Yes, she throws controllers.)  That makes giving tooltips and explanations a bit of a moving target:  Too many and you alienate more experienced gamers, too few and you alienate inexperienced gamers.  How do you accommodate all these different players?

The best solution that I've found is in one of the most sneakily revolutionary games of the last couple of years:  Professor Layton.  In Professor Layton, you're presented with a puzzle and given all the time you want to solve it.  You have the option of getting hints, and in order to use them you spend coins which are scattered throughout the world.  If you use the hints, great.  If you don't, no biggie.  You can do whatever you want with them.  It's a sliding scale of hints, and it works.

PC Games have had this sort of sliding scale for years, allowing tooltips and tutorials to be either used or skipped.  Granted, they won't help you outright with the game, but who's to say that's not a bad idea?  I mean, think of this:  You're playing Zelda.  When it starts up, it asks you how experienced of a player you are.  If you're a Beginner, tooltips will be all over.  They'll show you which doors have just been opened by your actions.  They'll point you in the direction of the solution.  If you're Intermediate, they may just show which doors have been opened by your actions and tell you what you've just picked up the first time you get it (i.e. "You got 20 rupees!").  If you're an Expert, you get no help whatsoever.  You picked up a small key?  Congrats.  You know what it does, so we're not going to tell you.  You have a boomerang?  Great.  You figure it out.  If you get a brand new, never-before-seen item, they'll explain what it is, but they won't belabor the point.  This sort of sliding scale works excellent in a game with a long reach like Zelda, but what about games like Modern Warfare 2 or God of War?  Honestly, those are OK the way they are.  They have varying difficulty levels, and most experienced gamers don't need to have their hand held throughout the game.  Most enjoy the thrill of the hunt and like figuring out where things go.

The underlying issue is that we're used to thinking of solutions in a 3-D space, or using video game logic to solve puzzles.  If we see a torch and a spiderweb, we know we can use the torch on the spiderweb.  If we see a block with strange markings on it and tracks by it, we know we can push that block.  Most new gamers, however, need a little push in the right direction.  They need to have someone basically point at the solution, and that's OK.  It's up to developers to sort out how much help is too much for everyone involved.

Run, Don't Walk To GOG.com

They're having a holiday sale right now.  I just got the Lords of the Realm Royal Edition (Lords of the Realm 1 & 2 and the expansion) and Beyond Good & Evil together for $11.  GO GO GO GO GO.

I Know Why The Caged Reviewer Whines

I've been trying to figure out why game reviewers hate Wii games so much.  Is it because they have some predisposed bias?  Is it because they represent some mysterious "hardcore" gaming cabal who is hell-bent on the destruction of the Wii at all costs?  Not really.  The answer is actually much simpler.

Consider this:  Many early Wii games got great reviews.  Metroid Prime 3 is holding at a score of 90 on Metacritic.  Zelda: Twilight Princess has a 95.  Super Mario Galaxy has a 97.  Those are arguably some of the most motion-intensive games around for the Wii. Reviewers liked those games and had no problems with the motion controls.  They might have thought of them as a slight inconvenience, but the reviews usually rated that games on their own merits and didn't throw in backhanded compliments like, "It's good for a Wii game."

So what changed?  Well, there's no denying that the Wii had some lean times through 2007 to 2008.  There were virtually no games that came out during that period.  We had Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.  That was it.  However, if you're a reviewer you still have to review something, right?  You can't just ignore a console for an entire year.  So, if there are no good games coming out but you have to review something anyway, you end up reviewing some incredibly crap games.

After a while of playing awful games, what happened to their perception of the system? Instead of seeing the Wii as the Next Big Thing, they started seeing it as a nightmare. Every time they put in a game, they expected that it was going to suck because that's what usually happened.  Since they had to wade neck-deep into the waters of crapware and stay there for a long time, they thought the Wii is bad.  That's totally understandable.  Nintendo's awful Wii Music-revealing 2008 E3 conference didn't help matters either.  Instead of seeing a future of better games, they saw a bleak future of awful minigames and worthless ports, leading to no hope in sight for Nintendo's white monster.

Gamers at large, however, don't have to buy a new game every week.  They don't have review schedules or deadlines.  They can sidestep crappy games if they so choose, and for the most part they do.  Therefore, the Wii keeps selling because their perception of the Wii is completely different than the people who've been forced to play awful games for a year.

The next step to this process comes when the game reviewers look around after all this time playing crappy games and they see that the Wii is STILL SELLING.  They reason, "The Wii sucks!  I've played more crappy games for the Wii than for any other system!  These people must be idiots!  It's my job to steer people away from it so they don't get burned."  They become anti-Wii advocates and end up turning more gamers away from the system.  However, the vast majority of consumers don't care about reviewers or reviews, and instead rely on first-hand accounts and recommendations from friends.  Their friends are buying the Wii and Wii games, so they keep buying them too.  This makes the reviewers even more upset, since they're being ignored by the gaming public at large.  That makes them even louder. Remember, as a reviewer, it's your responsibility to be an advocate for games that are good and a warning for games that aren't.  When people keep buying the Wii, the reviewers get desperate because they assume that the public is buying crappy games for a crappy system.

Add to this the fact that lots of people are being exposed to gaming for the first time through the Wii, and you can see why reviewers are even more upset.  If the Wii sucks, and people are getting their first exposure to gaming through it, then these people will assume that gaming sucks.  However, since the Wii doesn't really suck, these people aren't drawing that assumption, and more people keep buying Wiis despite the protests of reviewers, and the circle continues.

When we analyze it from this angle, we can understand why reviewers see the Wii like they do.  In many ways, it's Nintendo's own fault for not spacing their releases a little better and giving reviewers a reprieve or even throwing them a bone once in a while. However, now that there are better Wii games, it's also the responsibility of the reviewers to put aside their prejudices and review the games for what they are, not what they could have been.

Creating A Need

I'm studying marketing right now with a view to getting a degree in the field.  I'm learning some things that demonstrate why Nintendo is more successful now than in the past.

There's a hierarchy of marketing performance: Selling Products, Meeting Needs, Anticipating Needs, and Shaping Needs.  Typically, companies that merely sell a product are in the weakest position.  They're depending on other companies to create the need and then moving into that gap, so if the need goes away so does their business.  Companies that merely meet needs are in a slightly stronger position, but it's kind of a reactive field.  Someone else has found the need and probably filled that gap, so you're just competing with them in that field.

Those who anticipate needs are in much better shape.  They'll see, like Sony has, that high-definition video is becoming a big deal, so therefore there needs to be a new standard for it.  They saw that a need was coming up and they're anticipating the need.  However, Nintendo has shaped the need.  There was no need for motion controls in gaming until Nintendo made it a big deal.  Of course, Sony now talks about motion controls as being the "holy grail" of gaming, but it wasn't there until Nintendo created it.  Nintendo also created a need for touch-screen gaming and has benefited from it greatly.

I think the gaming public in general (Yahtzee excluded) is coming around to this idea.  The new market has been extremely beneficial to gaming.  Can you imagine what would have happened to gaming in this economy without the Wii?  As it was, the other consoles benefited from Nintendo's exposure and helped everyone out.  The problem is that you have to keep innovating and not rest on your laurels, but Nintendo might do just that.

This is the whole "Red Ocean/Blue Ocean" strategy that Nintendo talks about from time to time, but it's a lot simpler than that.  It's about creating a need and then filling it, which they did.

Digital Distribution And Dennis Dyack

Dennis Dyack loves digital distribution, but you'll notice something telling about his comments.  Before we get to them, remember how I said that digital distribution isn't good for the average gamer, and that they'll reject any system that isn't in their best interests?  Dennis Dyack thinks so too, so he's trying to make you think that it's good for you.  Take it away, Dennis:

"In some ways it's the absolute elimination of any hardware as far as the consumer is concerned, because the hardware is the cloud," offered Dyack, a long-time advocate of a single standard format for games. "It helps on so many levels because it resolves the piracy issue, which is a massive problem today, and the used games issue, because you buy something and it's yours forever – it resides on the cloud. These are wins for the consumers and wins for the game developers."

I love the quote at the end.  What exactly is the win for the consumer?  You notice that he doesn't really have any benefits.  Both of his supposed "problems" are only problems for the companies themselves.  For instance:

1. Piracy.  Piracy is the ultimate consumer-benefit system.  I mean, all the games you want and you don't have to pay?  SCORE!  Don't misunderstand me:  Piracy is not good for game companies, but "free" is the ideal system for a consumer.

2. The Used Games "Issue."  Oh, you mean the issue where you can buy a game for less than retail instead of being beholden to the company who makes the games?  Yeah, by all means, let's get rid of THAT.

Both of these issues are problems for the companies themselves and not necessarily the consumer.  Dennis knows this, so he's going to try and make it sound like these are issues for the consumer.  It's a hearts-and-minds battle, and one that they'll lose.  For instance:

People confuse a one console future as a monopoly and that's completely wrong.

His argument is that it would be easier for anyone to pick out games because it would be all the same console, which is understandable.  If your grandma wants to buy you a DVD, she doesn't have to find out if you use DVD-X or DVD-Y, if you're running version 6.2.4 of the DVD-X firmware, or if you're connected to DVDLive! so you can watch the bonus features.  However, the vast majority of consumers understand the multiple-console system.  It's not a rampant problem, so it's a gigantic solution for a tiny problem.

In a perfect world, a one-console future wouldn't be a monopoly.  In a perfect world, games would be just like DVDs or CDs, with one format that's easy to use for everyone.  However, Sony is already stepping all over the next high-def format.  When someone makes a Blu-Ray drive or disc, they pay money to Sony (which is why Nintendo will never put in a Blu-Ray drive in their systems).  Blu-Ray is now the only high-def format available, and Sony charges at least $5 to $15 more per disc than standard DVD.  They want to make money.

In what future can you see a company selflessly creating a console format that everyone can use and make games for and NOT gouge customers?  Nintendo won't.  They make copious amounts of money off of their consoles.  Microsoft won't.  They want a foothold in the living room.  Sony won't.  They just spent millions of dollars on Blu-Ray, so they're not going to make a new format anytime soon.  That leaves a mysterious fourth contender, a dark horse, to make this nebulous "one-world" open format that will work on all consoles.  It would need to be a company with the clout to tell three giants what to do.  Can you think of any company that fits that bill?  No.  All three companies are extremely rich and don't have to answer to anyone.

Dennis, it's understood that you want the cloud.  We get it.  It would be great for your company, but it's not going to happen no matter how much you want it.  It's not good for the consumer so they'll reject it.  The main console makers won't agree to it.  And a word of warning to developers:  If you put too much emphasis on it, you'll run into major problems down the line.

Are you psyched for Mega Man 10?

...because I can't say I am.  

This is weird for me.  I like Mega Man games, but for some reason Mega Man 9 turned me off of them due to the tremendous difficulty.  I played it for about 4 hours and only beat one boss.  Heck, I could barely get through half the stages.  I miss having the charge shot and the power slide.  I want to be able to duck.  

Sometimes, changes to the formula are there for a reason, Capcom.  You learned the wrong lessons from Mega Man 9.  I'll have to dive into it at some point.  Right now, I'm playing catchup on a lot of games (thanks Goozex!) and powering through Spirit Tracks, so I'm too busy for a whole lot of in-depth articles.  They'll be back shortly, though.

↓C Games of the Year: 2009

Most Game of the Year articles are going to look about the same:  Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Dragon Age, Demon's Souls.  That's not how we roll at ↓C.  Here's our Game of the Year picks in reverse order.

3. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

The last Professor Layton game was enjoyable for a lot of people, but I couldn't stand it.  Frustrating puzzles, worthless clues, a boring location, and people who stop you every second for another puzzle bogged down what could have been an intriguing title.  Diabolical Box improved on every aspect of the game, making the puzzles feel more natural, the locations more varied, and the story a much more gripping tale.  I read spoilers on the finale (as I am wont to do, unfortunately) and STILL got misty-eyed.  One of the best DS games, hands-down.

2. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Theoretically, brawlers should be fun.  The issue with most is that you never really feel any stronger than the people you're fighting.  Stealth games should also be fun in theory, but never end up being as fun you would hope.  Add to that the dearth of good licensed games, and you have a recipe for failure that Batman: Arkham Asylum could have easily fallen into.

However, Rocksteady did a fantastic job on several fronts.  First, combat is simplified greatly, with only three buttons controlling the majority of moves.  Second, when being stealthy, you have a lot of ways to get around and realistic behavior from enemies (but not too realistic) that makes the whole exercise ridiculously fun.  For instance, it's great seeing the Joker's minions getting more and more panicked as you take them out one by one, until they're randomly shooting their rifles in the air and screaming, "Show yourself!"  It's in those moments that you feel like the Caped Crusader himself, and it makes for a fantastic game.

You could have even stripped the Batman license out of the game and made a fantastic game, but this is one of the rare instances where the license adds layers of fun.  It's a blast hearing the Riddler get upset as you find more of his trophies, and it's awesome roaming the halls of Arkham.  It's also extremely welcome to hear Mark Hamill's Joker ripping it up again.  If you have any interest in Batman at all, you should play Arkham Asylum.  If you already have, then you know what I'm talking about.

1. Beatles: Rock Band

Much like Arkham Asylum took classic gameplay styles, prettied it up and added a layer of familiarity that made the game that much better, The Beatles: Rock Band did the same thing.  It took a now-standardized music game format and polished it to a sheen, which would have been great if the game was just a standard Rock Band/Guitar Hero game.  Instead, the Beatles wrapper made everything that much better, with tons more style, background and texture than the cardboard-cutout characters of a standard music game.  Add to that the solid locations, dreamscapes, and automatic online leaderboards and you have a definite winner.  Your enjoyment of the game definitely hinges on how much you like the Beatles, but if you have any appreciation of their music at all, this is the game you want to play.  There's really no reason for any other Guitar Hero/Rock Band games after this one.

Civilization MAKES ME SO MAD

It drives me insane.  OK, there's two nations right next to me, and then all of a sudden, they attack for NO REASON and start tromping all over my lands.  It's crap.  Every time I start playing Civ again, I wonder why I ever quit, and then it's crap like this that shows me why.

Interesting Graph Re: SD and HD Media Consumption

Here's a fascinating graph from the University of California San-Diego which shows how people consume data (click to embiggen).  Notice how many users there are of SD TV.

Totaling all SD sources, you reach the astounding sum of 169 million users of standard definition media.  Now, certainly there's some overlap of people who watch TV in HD, but some programs are in SD.  Just subtracting the number of HD users from SD users, you come to the number of 46.5 million users of ONLY standard definition services.  There are probably also a group of people who use nothing BUT HD media, but that's probably a small number.  If I'm interpreting this information correctly, that means that there are a lot of people who have no problem with SD so they mix it with HD and a large group of people who have no interest in HD services.

What does that mean, and why am I posting it here?  Well, for most of us tech-heads, we're adamant that HD is the way to go and that Nintendo MUST release an HD version of their system.  In reality, while that's a nice idea, it's not imperative.  There's a huge section of the population that neither has nor cares about HD media, as evidenced by cold, hard statistics.

Second, Sony and Microsoft are aiming at the small subset that does, and while they've carved a niche there they haven't run away with the console race.  Nintendo, however, has aimed at the squishy belly where there are 253 million users of DVD media.  They're successful.

This all means a lot, and maybe I'll dissect it later on.  Suffice to say, this teaches us an awful lot about how games are viewed by the public at large, and what drives success in the gaming world.

Music Thoughts

A few thoughts about music on a blustery Wisconsin day:

- Dirty Projectors' "Bitte Orca" is getting thrown around as an Album of the Year candidate, and I can see why.  First, it has two girls in the band, which turns it into indie catnip.  Second, if you "appreciate" Dirty Projectors, you now have intellectual cred and can sniff at people while explaining that they don't "get" it.  Look, Dirty Projectors has a lot of interesting ideas, but ideas do not a song make.  You need a lot more, like melodies and tunes that are pleasing to the ear.  If you don't have that, then you're just showing off what you know.

- It took me several years, but I finally get Beck's "The Information."  I'm one of the biggest Beck fans around, but I felt really let down by "The Information."  It felt too cold and clinical, just like a pure stream of information.  All the beats, absurdist lyrics and hooks were there, but they didn't add up right.  Usually, what happens is that one song brings me around to a band or an album.  For Animal Collective's "Merriwether Post Pavilion" it was "Lion In A Coma."  For Sleater-Kinney it was "One Song For You."  For "The Information," that song was a live version of "Nausea" that sounded fantastic.  The rest of the album fell into place shortly thereafter.  I still think you could cut out a few songs and make it a much tighter album, but I enjoy it now.

- Speaking of Animal Collective, couldn't they have picked a better song to open their album?  For someone unfamiliar with them, it sounds like a circus on meth and is really offputting.  Just a suggestion, guys.

- My favorite album of the 00's?  The Walkmen's "You and Me."

Pachter Is At It Again

Michael Pachter is now declaring that the XBox 360 will have another price drop next year.  Here's why that's so irresponsible:

1)  If Pachter starts it, other analysts will pick up on it and start repeating it.  That filters down, and eventually you have sales frozen because people are waiting for a price cut that Microsoft wasn't planning on, which leads to...

2)  A price cut happens out of necessity, making Pachter's declaration a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I know that analysis is what the guy does, so I can't fault him for it too badly.  Making a prediction based on numbers, trends and history is his job.  Still, it's a little irresponsible.

Will Digital Distribution Take Over Gaming?

A lot of companies are talking about digital distribution.  Activision wants it.  Sony wants it.  Microsoft wants it.  Nintendo has been dipping their toes in it.  Steam is taking off.  It seems that digital distribution is the way that things are going, right?  Within ten years, won't it be the norm to download your game or even stream it with a service like OnLive or Gaikai?

You might think so.  There's so much talk about it that you would assume that it's the next big step.  In fact, companies like Apple are showing that it can be done with iTunes on a huge scale and be wildly successful, so that should shut the book, right?  Let's dig in a little deeper and see if we can't figure out where the future of gaming lies.

Obviously, Apple has been amazingly successful with iTunes.  It's really one of the biggest success stories of the digital revolution, with millions of songs bought over the service.  However, most songs are 99 cents.  That's a cup of gas station coffee.  It's easy to drop a buck on a song if you like it, and if you don't like it, it was only a buck, so no huge loss.  It's a service that's set up to cater to the consumer's best interest, so it works.

Therein lies the key.  If a service is in the consumer's best interest, it will work.  Steam is a great example.  Steam not only provides a centralized hub a la XBox Live for your games, but it also provides protection against cheaters and the ability to install your games on any new computer.  It's not difficult to move your Steam account from computer to computer, and once you've purchased a game, it's always there.  Plus, Steam promotes the crap out of indie developers, sets fair prices when they can, and offers fantastic deals.  In the last few months, I've purchased World of Goo for $5 and Team Fortress 2 for $2.50.  Those are prices you would never find in any store under any circumstances.  On top of that, when people purchased the Orange Box, they were able to give away copies of Half-Life 2 and Episode One to other Steam users for free.  The whole system works in the customer's best interest.

Video game companies are trying to push digital distribution because it will help their bottom line.  Imagine, a world without piracy, with nothing but new games as far as the eye can see!  No packaging, manufacturing or shipping costs!  It's enough to make a publisher swoon.  However, here's the kicker: Most services will not be in the customer's best interest.

The PSPGo, for instance, is not in the consumer's best interest.  A system that doesn't work with my previous games or any of my accessories and costs more than other systems?  Where do I sign up?  Therefore, the PSPGo is failing.  Here's a money quote from Traveller's Tales founder Jon Burton: "I'm betting on Sony making PSP Go games much cheaper than the UMD versions, or the PSP Go will die."  It's telling that they haven't released any sales numbers for it but lump it in with their regular PSP numbers, unlike Nintendo who breaks down their numbers for the DS, DS Lite, DSi, and DSi LL.  It wouldn't surprise me if the PSPGo loses support from Sony and gets dropped sooner rather than later, since they tried something that was solely for their own benefit and not for the customers.

Another straight-line comparison is the Kindle, which has attempted to combine books and digital distribution.  The dream?  "All your books in one place!"  The reality?  "Some of your books in one place!  Oh, and you have to buy them from us.  And we can delete them at any time, but we won't do it anymore even though we could."  How is that in the consumer's best interest?  Kindles are selling in decent numbers, but e-books are not going to supplant regular old books anytime soon.  Why?

Well, because as bulky as books are, when you buy a book, it's yours.  No one can delete the book from your library without your knowledge.  You can read it as long as you have decent vision.  You don't need any special equipment to read books.  You pick it up and read it.  You can buy books for 50 cents at a garage sale.  Sure, it can be annoying having to get up from the couch and grab a different book, but no one complains about it.  That's because the majority of the time, it's in the consumer's best interest to own books rather than e-books.

Console makers have dipped heavily into digital distribution, with a plethora of games available for download at any time.  Is this proof that digital distribution is winning?  Not really.  Most of these games are $5 to $10.  In other words, they're cheap.  When Braid was priced at $15, there was a great hue and cry since that was more than consumers wanted to pay for a game.  They did, of course, but not without a lot of complaining.  It was weird to a lot of people, since we'll willingly pay upwards of $50 for a hard copy of a game.

Why the complaints over a simple $5 price hike?  With a game like Modern Warfare 2, if you don't like it you can trade it on Goozex, sell it on eBay or trade it to Gamestop.  You have options.  That $60 isn't lost forever.  If you buy Braid and you don't like it?  Tough.  It's yours now and forevermore.  For instance, I have games on my Wii that I bought and wish I wouldn't have, like StarTropics, Milon's Secret Castle, LostWinds and MegaMan 9.  These are games that received a lot of acclaim when they launched.  They're good games.  Reviews looked really, really good.  I played them and didn't really like them.  That's not a knock on the games themselves, it's just that they weren't to my liking, and now I'm stuck with them.  That's $34 frozen on my Wii that I'm never getting back.  That sort of disappointment is manageable when you're dealing with a $10 game.  Losing $10 isn't worth crying over.  However, losing $30, $40, or $50?  That's worth complaining about, and that's where digital distribution is headed.

Don't believe me?  Here's the cold, hard truth.  Nintendo has sold eight million copies of Super Mario Galaxy.  They've sold over eight million copies of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  They've sold 16 million copies of Mario Kart Wii.  How much are those games?  They're still $50 apiece new.  Every other company has launched a "Greatest Hits" line putting their best-sellers at $20 apiece, but Nintendo steadfastly refuses.  During the Gamecube years, they reduced the amount of copies that was necessary to label a game a "Greatest Hit" from a million to 250,000 because they were in third place and needed to push more software.  Now that they're in the lead, they have no such need, so they're acting in the company's best interest rather than the consumer's.

Say it with me:  When a company is successful, they feel less responsibility to the consumer.  Think of it this way:  If you have one miniature candy bar and someone asks for it, you'll be extremely hesitant to give it up.  If you have several, you'll be more willing to give one up.  If you're sitting on mountains of miniature candy bars, you'll gladly throw a pile to your friends.  The same thing happens with a business.  If you have a small group of clients, you'll fight tooth and nail for them.  If you have a huge group of clients, you won't panic if a few of them leave the nest.  You'll start shedding some of your problem clients and focusing on the most profitable ones.  For instance, when was the last time Nintendo offered a special on Virtual Console games?  Sony and Microsoft will sometimes offer little deals, but that's only because they're trying to encourage more people to buy.  If they were in first place, they would behave the same or worse as Nintendo has.

A company's sole aim is not to entertain or make the world a better place.  Their only purpose is to make money, pure and simple.  Whatever makes money is what they will do.  If they can get more money out a customer, they'll gladly do it because that's what they're there for.  Their stockholders don't give them any bonus points for being nice people.  Another prime example:  Modern Warfare 2 was $60 in retail and $60 via Steam.  That price wasn't decided by Valve, but rather Activision.  Even though Activision's cost for the digital option is far cheaper than the retail version, they sold the digital version for the same price.  Why?  Well, why not?  People are going to buy Modern Warfare 2 whether or not you charge $60 for it.  Why not get more money out of the customer?

What's the harm?  Well, if you buy a $50 game, you really hope that it's good.  If it isn't, you know you can switch it out for a different game.  If you purchase a game digitally, you really hope that it's good.  If it isn't, you're stuck with it now and forevermore.  This means you will be less willing to purchase a $50 game unless it's a sure thing.  Companies are hesitant to lower prices on their games unless they're not selling as well as they'd like, in which case they'll lower prices reluctantly.  Put it all together and you will purchase fewer games, and only "sure thing," big budget games will succeed in this environment.

There are exceptions to this rule.  Steam has showed that, with proper promotion, indie games can succeed and thrive in a digital environment.  Valve is showing that there's a right way to offer digital distribution, and it's working.  It's valuable to the customer.  They promote games like World of Goo, Zeno Clash, and others that would have had a quick death at retail.  They're working in the customer's interests and not the company's interests, and it's benefiting the company.

But can you trust most companies to behave this way?  Take OnLive, for instance.  They have support from EA, Activision, all the heavy hitters in the industry.  OnLive needs the big companies, not vice versa, and those big companies can exert an enormous pressure on a small startup like OnLive.  Are they going to willingly bow to a nobody indie game?  We can safely say, after all the money that's at stake, that they're probably not going to want smaller indie releases to be promoted.  This means that the indie boom that's gathering steam could be quickly quashed by greedy companies.

Let's bring it all together.  Companies really, really want consumers to adopt digital distribution since it's in the companies' best interest.  However, they refuse to lower prices on their games even though it's cheaper to provide digital distribution than retail distribution.  Consumers buy less games, further weeding out the amount of companies that can do business, paring it down to a lucky few who are able to survive the bloodbath.  These companies will exert even MORE control over the gaming public at large, thereby making prices go higher.

Obviously, this is a worst-case scenario, but it shows how unreliable the idea of pure digital distribution is.  Fortunately, it won't happen.  Consumers simply won't buy something unless it's in their interest to do so.  The marketplace has a way of weeding out good and bad ideas, and we've seen that historically.  For instance, in 1996, McDonalds attempted to launch a line of upscale sandwiches with a $100 million dollar advertising campaign.  Their flagship burger was the Arch Deluxe, which was basically a fancy-pants version of the Big Mac for more money.  It was a bad idea so no one bought it even though McDonalds pushed it incredibly hard.  It wasn't in the interests of the consumer, so it died.

DivX was also a notable failure that launched in 1998.  DivX was a movie rental system that was $4 per disc for two days.  If you wanted to keep watching the movie, you had to pay $2 additional for two more days of use.  It doesn't sound so bad until you realize that they were trying make it the standard instead of the Open DVD format we enjoy today.  Consumers rejected it soundly and it died a death a short time later.  It was a system that was in the interests of the companies promoting it, but not the interests of the consumer.

In the video game world, the PS3 launched to a massive ad campaign and had the best graphics of any next-gen system along with downwards compatibility.  However, the price was ridiculous for the vast majority of users.  It was in the company's best interests, but not the consumers.  It wasn't until the price expectations were closer to the norm that it gained widespread acceptance.

You may argue that consumers will buy any old crap that's thrown their way as long as it's promoted, and to a degree that's true.  A few years ago, Big Mouth Billy Bass was one of the most popular items around.  It wasn't long ago that we were all swept away by the Macarena.  Snuggies are the current "it" product.  However, in each of these cases, these items aren't a fundamental lifestyle change.  They're items that can be used and discarded with minimal loss of money.  They're all cheap.  They're not big deals.

However, charging a customer for what amounts to a glorified rental is a big deal.  DivX failed because people don't want to pay for something that's not theirs.  Even though we're moving to a more virtual economy, we're still the same old people we've always been.  We like trading money for goods and keeping those goods in our physical possession.  Companies don't like that idea, but that's too bad.  You're not going to get consumers to suddenly forget about their own personal property rights when there is virtually no upside.  See, by and large consumers aren't stupid.  They know when someone is just playing them for fools or when they're being presented with an item that's legitimately useful to them.  Digital distribution has no upside.  It's not in the consumer's best interests.  Unless every company adopts Valve's excellent pricing structures and flexibility (which is highly unlikely), expect physical distribution to be the norm for a long, long time.

300

This is post 300!  I can't believe I've made it with this many so far.  Thanks to all of those who keep on tuning in and checking out the site, and thanks to Blogger for keeping this site up and running.  Here's to 300 more!

Seriously, don't go to gladwell.com...

...unless you have hours of free time.  Malcolm Gladwell's writing is mesmerizing.

Delirious Cackle (PSPGo)

The UMD is set to return to the PSPGo thanks to a peripheral by Logitech!  Ah, delicious irony.

Neat Article From Malcolm Gladwell

Taken from gladwell.com:

Johnson develops the same argument about video games. Most of the people who denounce video games, he says, haven't actually played them—at least, not recently. Twenty years ago, games like Tetris or Pac-Man were simple exercises in motor coördination and pattern recognition. Today's games belong to another realm. Johnson points out that one of the "walk-throughs" for "Grand Theft Auto III"—that is, the informal guides that break down the games and help players navigate their complexities—is fifty-three thousand words long, about the length of his book. The contemporary video game involves a fully realized imaginary world, dense with detail and levels of complexity.

Indeed, video games are not games in the sense of those pastimes—like Monopoly or gin rummy or chess—which most of us grew up with. They don't have a set of unambiguous rules that have to be learned and then followed during the course of play. This is why many of us find modern video games baffling: we're not used to being in a situation where we have to figure out what to do. We think we only have to learn how to press the buttons faster. But these games withhold critical information from the player. Players have to explore and sort through hypotheses in order to make sense of the game's environment, which is why a modern video game can take forty hours to complete. Far from being engines of instant gratification, as they are often described, video games are actually, Johnson writes, "all about delayed gratification—sometimes so long delayed that you wonder if the gratification is ever going to show."

At the same time, players are required to manage a dizzying array of information and options. The game presents the player with a series of puzzles, and you can't succeed at the game simply by solving the puzzles one at a time. You have to craft a longer-term strategy, in order to juggle and coördinate competing interests. In denigrating the video game, Johnson argues, we have confused it with other phenomena in teen-age life, like multitasking—simultaneously e-mailing and listening to music and talking on the telephone and surfing the Internet. Playing a video game is, in fact, an exercise in "constructing the proper hierarchy of tasks and moving through the tasks in the correct sequence," he writes. "It's about finding order and meaning in the world, and making decisions that help create that order."