LittleBigPlanet, Will It Last?
LittleBigPlanet, as you may know, is probably one of the best exclusive titles to the PS3 and easily deserving of GOTY. It is a brilliant concept and has been executed wonderfully. A fantastic game that, even without the user generated content, can provide hours of fun. But of course, the real focus and core of the game is with the user generated content and the level editor.
LBP has only been released for a few months, that may not be long enough for people to play through the main game and unlock all the content (you get more content to make levels with as you play through the main single-player game). Also, as the game has only been released for a short while, there may not be that many sales yet (though it has sold over 1 million units). So user-generated content is not fantastic, there are a few good levels and a few levels which brilliant ideas, such as a simple calculator (which is impressive considering the limited ways to make ‘logic’ circuits in the game).
However, will there be any more good maps and will the game last more than a few months? It only took me about a week of play to unlock 95% of the content and a little longer to get those final, well hidden, prize bubbles. The trophies are designed to take time to complete, especially the gold ones, Play, Create and Share. But the real key to the longevity of this game will be the user generated content, the additional releases and updates.
There most certainly will be a constant flow of user-generated content, which should in general get better and better as time goes by. What will usually happen is that a few key level designers will contribute content almost religiously and will approach a very high level of quality. Other people will just get the vital experience needed to make moderately good maps. As the game is purchased by more and more people as the price lowers, there will constantly be new to replace the old. That’s the idea anyway. What may happen is a new game will grab the attentions of the LBP players and they will slowly leave the game, until it reaches a critical point where suddenly nothing new is being provided and everyone else leaves the game.
To counter this, the developers, Media Molecule are releasing several updates, so there is a continual stream of new, developer made content. Which means that there should always be something new in the game. Of course these packs cost additional money but it’s a small price to pay. Character packs are a common sight, with several currently available and recently released is the Metal Gear Solid pack. Providing a whole wealth of new levels and characters, along side new trophies and content for user generated levels.
I do have one major problem. I hate the editor. It is unintuitive, it has complex controls and it takes a while to get used to. It is not very flexible and since the physics interacts with everything when you place it, this can cause more problems than it solves. However, some people must be getting the hang of it because of the good quality levels that are being produced. This poorly designed editor may become a real issue to new players and will certainly deter people from trying to make maps, but of course it could just be me not being able to get used to such a simple editor after years of experience with more advanced ones.
So perhaps LBP will stay the course, perhaps not. But that is the risk when you rely on user generated content is that the community could just suddenly up and leave, destroying the main reason why the game is so good. While the single-player is good enough on it’s own, it isn’t really worth full price, only with the community does it become worth it. Heck, LBP is nothing without the community around it, when that dissapears so will the game, but that shouldn’t be for a while anyway.
Linger In Shadows
A rather strange ‘game’ appeared on the PS3 store a while ago. Well actually, ‘game’ is probably the least accurate description of it. A demo, or better yet, a demoscene appeared and went by the name “Linger in Shadows.” From Wikipedia:
“The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer. The main goal of a demo is to show off programming, artistic, and musical skills”
The Problem With Game Sequels
So, as we should all know by know, the gaming industry is practically built on copying each other and whoever manages to copy the other, the best, wins! Every now and again, something new and fresh comes along, such as Mirror’s Edge, but this is a real risk. The cost of producing a game for consoles is now so high, a new company can’t take risks. Only the big and bloated can do so. Granted there are always the bedroom programmers.
However, it seems that now copying each other is no longer enough, even when they make small changes to them. There needs to be something brand new in that game to separate it from the pack of mediocrity. Seriously, how much difference is there between Halo and Resistance? Not much, you shoot aliens, fighting for your species survival with a range of weapons in a multitude of environments. Yet they continue to sell well.
The Achievement Culture
We gamers are living and gaming in an achievement culture. It is now all important and vital to try and achieve as many of these as possible not only to show our gaming prowess but to give a numerical justification to how great our gaming skill truly is. It is as simple as comparing one list of achievements against another, whoever is longer or has the more challenging one to obtain in their list is obviously the more superior gamer and I am sick of it.
The achievement culture really probably started well before the 360 made it much more mainstream, by providing a built in system that all games must have and which can be considered to easily authenticate any achievement a gamer has done. It isn’t until achievements we’re made mainstream did all the problems arise. The PS3 is moving towards achievements, trophies they are calling it which will come under a part of ‘Home’ (AKA Second Life) when the bloody thing actually gets released.
Even PC games are moving towards achievements, just look at Valve and the unequivocal Team Fortress 2. Recently they released a major update, which included the medic achievement pack. 36 new achievements to try and strive for, to prove the length of your gamer skill. This is just for ONE OF NINE classes in the game, so by the end of this, we can look forward to 324 additional achievements added on to the already existing ones!!!
Maps are being produced for TF2 with focus on actually getting the achievements, where you can basically cheat the system and get them all in a relatively short period of time. But wait, isn’t this missing the whole point of actually having achievements in games? Isn’t the idea of them to bring a new challenge to the game, to keep people playing them? A cheap trick used by developers to artificially increase the lifespan of a game? Jump into a server and you may get asked by some ‘cool guys’ to help them get the achievements, so they look like they have the ‘m4d sk1llz’ and can show off to all their ‘friends.’ What is even worse about the TF2 achievements is that you actually need to get them in order to have full access to all the different weapons. So by not actually trying to get these achievements, I am actually missing out on parts of the game?
Well, perhaps I am being a little harsh on achievements, I have to admit they are a lot of fun trying to get some of them and there are some good ideas out there that can really change how you need to play the game. (The Medic achievement pack has led to a sudden jump in the number of people playing as the medic class). The idea of having parts of a game locked until something has been achieved has always been used and is actually a good idea to get people playing the game.
Perhaps what is really getting to me is the sudden influx of people that MUST get all the achievements, they NEED to get them all and that they are willing to do anything to get them. Be it cheating or bribing other players (help me get my achievements, I’ll help you get yours), they will try hard to get them all. Why is it that we as a cultural unit have moved in this direction? What happened to the days where it was skill that dictated how good of a gamer you truly we’re, not an arbitrary number tacked on by your user name?
Casual Games are the Future
The casual gaming market has been rapidly expanding recently, the casual gaming market seems to be the segment of the market that everyone wants to be a part of now.
Gamers love casual games, firstly, they are usually very cheap thanks to the developers not spending millions on developing it. Next, they are usually highly addictive, a simple game-play mechanism can make the game really interesting to play whilst still giving a real challenge to the player. Re-playability is also a major factor of casual games, they have this tendancy to still be fun to play again and again. A casual game also has that jump in and go factor, there is a little bit of learning needed, but a lot less that what a major game would use.
Casual games also expand the potential gaming market, anyone can play a casual game, even your mum, because of how simple they are. Complex games have a real barrier blocking the non-gamer types because of how complicated they can be, compared to the casual games. Though casual games can be used as an introduction to those who never play games, which would lead to the market for complex games expanding. Gaming is going to be an even bigger thing in a few years, becoming one of the major media channels.
Casual games are a brilliant starting point for the bedroom programmer, or a fledgling studio to start at. Casual games only need a simple concept, which is then built on to produce a fully functioning game. There is no need to waste time and money trying to produce the best high-end 3D graphics, with as many features as you can possibly cram onto the DVD (or Blu-ray disk if you like). 2D graphics or simplistic 3D is now suddenly acceptable when looking at the casual gaming sector. There is also no real need for a story line in a casual game, all it needs to be is addictive and interesting enough to make the player feel they have justified paying that £2-10 on it.
Casual games are going to be the future and if you don’t believe me, then just give it a year, then come back to me and tell me I was wrong. You will probably find that very difficult to do.
The Slow Death of PC Gaming?
After a period of random browsing of the web, something slowly dawned upon me. The PC game is becoming an endangered species, with console games becoming rampant. I’m sure a lot of you will already know and will have already seen the impact that console gaming has had on the PC gaming market. There are many arguments for producing games for consoles over producing games for PC’s.
- Firstly, it is cheaper to produce for consoles, as a developer, you only need to worry about getting the game to work on one machine, instead of the huge variability home PC’s can take on. (Hardware is consistent)
- PC based game engines, such as Source actually come with the development tools to convert the game to a console version. With Source, it can turn your game into a XBox 360 format.
- Greater sales on consoles
- Crysis was supposed to be a PC exclusive, almost to show how that PC gaming is not dead, then why is there apparently a PS3 version of the game coming?
The customer benefits greatly from choosing the console over the PC for gaming
- Hardware is expensive, much much more expensive, whilst a console gamer will only be updating hardware once every 5 years or so, the PC gamer will need to do it almost every 18 months to keep playing new games to the full.
- A fuller choice of games for the consoles, PC games seem to be getting rarer and rarer.
- Console controls are more intuitive. Wii anyone?
- The PC games anyone would want are pretty much coming to consoles anyway, COD4 a spectacular game is pretty much the same on the PC as it is on the consoles.
So really, I ask you, will the console reign supreme?
No. No it won’t. There are quite a few reasons for me thinking this. There are going to be PC only games and more importantly, it is in the domain of PC do we see the majority of the modding community. It is much harder to mod a console game, actually it is neigh on high impossible considering that mods for PC games, especially modders favourites like the Source engine and the Unreal Engine, combined with all of the free game engines out there. Consoles are either becoming the centre of entertainment, such as the PS3 and 360 or are becoming more intuitive for new gamers, see the Wii. This means that the hardcore gamers will have to rely back onto the PC, keeping it alive.
FPS games are, well terrible when compared to PC FPS games. I played the Orange Box on both the 360 and PC and even though the console version was playable, compared to the PC. Some games are just designed to run better on PC’s than consoles. Look at Spore, that is going to be a PC exclusive, instead of trying to be multi-platform, there is going to be what I consider ‘watered-down’ versions of the game that will be found on the consoles and even phones. However, these will simply never be as good as the PC version of the game. PC games also seem to live longer than console ones, look at the online games especially, there are many many people still playing CS1.6, despite it’s age.
So what I say is this. If you are a hardcore PC fan, good, there are plenty more of out there and there will always be games and mods for it. Just be prepared to supplement your diet of PC gaming with an occasional spoonful of console gaming.
Why I Like The Wii (and Why It Isn’t Even In The Console Wars)
Well, the Nintendo Wii. What I would consider a brilliant move from Nintendo. It has easily outsold all the other consoles, but I don’t want to look at it as a console, at least not in the regular sense. With it’s motion sensitive control system and what some would consider brilliant games, it is easy to see why it has even won some ‘best gadget of the year’ awards.
The Wii is probably one of the smartest moves I have seen a console developer do. Instead of plunging loads of cash into the development of top of the range hardware, it used that money in a smarter way by focusing on creating an innovative control system. The Wii is essentially a Gamecube in a new case with a fancy control system, but it is this control system that separated it from the rest of the pack and helped to make it so popular. Just to even make a point how easy it is for parents and non-gamer types to play the Wii, both my mother and grandmother, both self-confessed non-gamer technophobes started playing Wii sports with ease.
By focusing on a much larger target market, which included a lot more than just gamers, has helped to make it sell so well. On the selling front, the Wii has sold almost 22 million units, which is just over double that of the PS3 and over 25% more than the XBox 360 in total. I also want to point out that Nintendo is actually making a small profit on each console sale, as opposed to the 360 and PS3 which are losing money with each sale. Though I don’t count this as the Wii isn’t really a console in a traditional sense.
Then again, how do you say what a game console is in the traditional sense, as they continue to evolve, they seem to become the centre of out media experience, offering DVD and Blu-ray playback, being able to stream data from media servers full of XviD’s. If anything, the Wii is actually more of a console than any of the others! However, the games and graphics are rather pitiful.
By going for innovative controls than good graphics, the Wii seems to have almost chased off all developers than those that run under it’s own name. You have 5 seconds to name me 3 good Nintendo Wii games that didn’t come from the studios of Nintendo or isn’t a washed down version of a game found on another console.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Times up
If you managed to get some, then congratulations, 5 points for each. If you didn’t manage to get one, that’s OK, no points to you and if you named one with the word “Mario” in it, deduct 1000 points. Developers avoid trying to make games for the Wii as they want to create the next triple-A blockbuster, to do so they have to develop it for the 360 or PS3 as they are the only consoles with the power to do so, you cannot do it with the casualness of the Wii. However, this is not to say that the Wii has no games, on the contrary it has quite a few decent games I enjoy to play.
So, to wrap all this up, I want to share my thought with you on what the future may hold, what the Wii2 will bring to the table. Seeing as Nintendo should logically keep with this intriguing control system and the PS3 will continue to remain as a powerhouse console. Nintendo should be able to create a console to handle current generation graphics whilst maintaining the Wii’s controls, imagine that, a Wii with the power of a PS3 and the third-party game support that the 360 has.
Excuse me, I need to change…
The Future of Gaming and Hardware
There seems to be a lot of chatter currently going around hardware forums that for the first time in history, computing power has outstripped the pace of computer games. Meaning that games are being able to be run on new computers much easier than they may have been in the past. This is a result of the number of cores of CPU’s increasing rapidly as recently the new 6-core Intel processor is set to be released later this year. So what do all these additional cores actually mean?
Well, by having extra cores, you can technically set one core to be used for physics, one to handle sound, one to handle general computations and one to handle the AI. So we can expect developers to start creating games that will take advantage of these additional cores fully, leading to better games more rapidly, as double the number of cores would logically lead to double the computing power available, right? Well, sort of, whilst an increase in cores does mean that there is more total processing power inside of a computer, unless it can be tapped into by developers, it is useless.
Let me give you an example, the release of the Orange Box from Valve was meant to bring in a new version of the Source game engine that would allow the engine to use multiple CPU cores. However, this is not fully implemented and took Valve a lot longer to perfect, in fact I am sure they are still trying to iron out all of the bugs. Whilst the games can use 2 core and 4 core processors, the benefits from using the additional cores have yet to be seen. Multiple cores are an exciting challenge for game developers and is in fact useful for the actual development of games. The build programs that the Source engine used (VBSP, VRAD and VVIS) can all operate on multiple cores, severely reducing the time it takes to compile a map, very useful for developers like myself. These benefits include better AI, superior particle physics and more realistic physics. These will not be seen until Episode 3, when the game is programmed with multi-cores in mind.
I am wondering if there will be a point that computers will never need to get any more powerful for the purpose of gaming, we are already entering the age of photo-realistic games, they look very close to real life. However, there is still some obvious, more technical issues that still tell us it is only a game. Firstly, getting accurate physics is still an issue and having a fully interactive environment (more so than Crysis) is still a long way off.
There is also the cost of trying to make games look and feel better and better. By trying to use up all of this additional power, by having incredible graphics, realistic physics, smart AI etc. It pushes development costs up and up, which will in turn either effect the companies profits, or more likely, increase the cost of the product for us, the gamers. It will also push away modders from working with the games engine, as it’s complexity increases, so does the knowledge needed to use it to it’s fullest does. Instead, game developers need to take incremental steps, as to prevent a sudden sky rocket in costs, at roughly the same rate as they always have. So don’t expect to see games get more rapidly better with the rapidly increasing technology, but instead expect to be able to play newer games to their fullest with a less than top-end computer.
