Videogames in the Mainstream Media

Re: Bigger's Not Better

While participating in the New Media class last semester I discovered along with this blog, pod casting. Not that I would be creating these pod casts mind you but I have started watching/listening to them.

I have discovered the G4 cast, which is nice because it was one of the few channels that I watched on tv back home. This now enables me to keep up with the gaming industry some what. Along with their main pod casts are a plethora of smaller ones. One of which is called Sessler's Soapbox. I'm writing this part assuming most of you haven't watched G4 being that its not on basic cable. Anyways Adam Sessler is one of the hosts on the show X-Play which is on G4. He has this podcast where he rants or praises various aspects or events that are going on in the gaming industry.

In his most recent cast, he discussed the original Banjo Kazooie for the Nintendo 64. He, I, and many other gamers thoroughly enjoyed this game. And though I never played it, Sessler was disappointed by the sequel. Though I have heard both good and bad things about it.

Anyways let me get to the point Sessler's qualm with the game was that the Dev team claimed that it was so much bigger than the original and that's what made it better, when in his opinion it did not. This same marketing tactic was used for the newest addition to the series Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Along with a larger world came the ability and focus on using and building vehicles. To Sessler this was again using a game gimmick to try and improve marketing and move away from the original game.

In my opinion this is a completely different game with a focus completely different from the original. I cannot count the hours I and many friends have spent watching this game and laughing our brains out at the sheer craziness of the thing. Creating and customizing various machines that look like rolling armored pyramids or death stars that are held up with balloons. Just because a game plays differently than the original, it doesn't mean its bad.

Look at the Legend of Zelda series, that in many ways has stayed faithful to the original game. People are getting bored of it. With the meager profits and media coverage of the second installment of Banjo Kazooie I don't see how a step back to the original game would have helped the developers at all.

Anyways I'm going to stop ranting now and write my papers that I need to hand in late.

Woa guys! Just hang on a second!

Do people go out and do studies on whether or not yo-yo's create social groups and cause people to be anti social? Wait let me look.

...........

Phew! After searching the first three pages of a google search on the social effects of yo-yo's I couldn't find anything. Thankfully there's one thing that has been unadulterated by sociologists.

This was a very long winded article. It should not be read right after waking up with a cold as it will give you a headache. It is about online games as third places (ie. comparing them to pubs or swimming pools I guess). Here's the link if you want to read it:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler.html

Ok so to start off we should have some things defined. When I refer to people as gamers, I do not refer to what a lot of people view as the current gaming demographic today. That is the x-box community. This is because Microsoft initially and still markets to a very narrow audience. This audience is the bear drinking frat boy crowd and the 13 year old male demographic. This can be clearly seen/heard by going into any of the console community chat rooms or in game chats. You can just feel the lack of intelligence.

What I view a gamer as is, basically everyone else. Either a relatively young age group or the 21-35 year old demographic that started playing games in the 80s. This latter group, mostly, knows a thing or two about about etiquette when it comes to all things done on the Internet.

Now what I am trying to do mostly is, explain the gamer. I thought this article was interesting but it's not something that roughly 95% of the gaming community would think of. And then the authors go and say something like,

"Like sports, MMOs appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness (Huizenga, 1949)."

They have just lumped thousands of people into a small small group. The gamer is a much simpler creature. The MMO player is some one who likes to explore a large in-game world, and work with a small or large group of people to improve their personal gaming experience.

Gamers don't play games to feel acceptance. They play games to kill things and get fat lootz.

The article does an exhaustive job of explaining why each and every social aspect of Asheron's Call and Lineage I & II cause gamers to feel like they are in a place where they can fit in.
But really if a player does not feel they can fit into a game world why would they play the game?

Greetings and Salutations

Welcome to my new little corner of the internet. For my first post on this very limited website, I'm going to share an article I discovered on the web comic Apple Geeks. The article is called, How I Learned to Love Game Pirates. It is written by a game Dev. who actually used his brain for once and asked, "Why do people pirate and share video games?"

Now that you have had a chance to read the article, I will explain why it excites and angers me. I'm glad that someone has finally taken their head out of the sand and realized that gamers are tired of wasting their money on poorly made games. Now why haven't other gaming companies realized this fact before? It seems that they value their profit margins and their "artistic license" more than their customers. What is the point of trying to protect your "art", when it is so poorly put together that people don't want to spend money on it in the first place? It's like Anne Rice expecting to make money off of her Sleeping Beauty trilogy. Just because you think you have a good marketable idea it doesn't mean your target audience will share that sentiment.

Though John Keats may say, "Don't be discouraged by a failure" I believe that the gaming industry needs to step back and take a look at what they are doing wrong. If they don't their Canadian gamers will be jailed for not being able to pay off their fines. Five hundred dollars a download will build up quickly for your average pirate.