Casual-ness

Whenever I see another Wii game, or any other casual game, trying to make more sales by featuring a picture of mom or grandma playing the game, I'm constantly reminded of how powerful the casual audience has become; there are just too many to ignore. And this is inevitably shaping today's game industry, and I don't like the way it's going.

To make more money off of this massive audience, more and more developers are trying to make more (and not necessarily better) casual games that can appeal to the normal, non-gamer audience. And by doing so, the quality of games is lowered. For a longest time, people relied on market's competitiveness to advance the market forward, resulting better and better games. But if there's just so many not-so-well-informed consumers eating up any trash games devs put out, who'd try hard to create a triple-A, high-quality title costing them a pile of gold in developing it?

Game has been nothing more than toy as long as humanity existed. Now that we've developed technology to finally thrust game forward and turn it into something more meaningful, we're suddenly struck with this very distracting second renaissance of casual games. I just hope the troubling situation of today's Japanese game development doesn't become a global trend.

Leave Those Long Lasting Games in the Past.

Here's a comment I left on an article on EA Games Europe senior VP Patrick Söderlund's response to EA's last year-end's underperformed quarterly result. This article, where he talks about his positive view of the result, wasn't what triggered my comment. It was another comment that basically blamed EA's new IPs' having short playtime for the disappointing result.

I am with a lot of people who backs Dead Space, and that length of a game does not define its quality.

While we would love never-ending stream of content with great gameplay to occupy our time, the audience of today's games is growing up. More and more are getting jobs and starting families. And thus, shorter games that packs tight and deep content are thriving over ridiculously (in my opinion) long games of the past.

For instance, I used to love playing RPG games like FF series that took above 40~50 hours to finish. But now, with a job, I just don't have time for games like that. It's taking me months to finish Lost Odyssey right now. And do I think that drawn-out-to-death playtime necessary? Absolutely not. They could've cut so many parts and end up with much much tighter and cohesive story, and ultimately, overall fun.

I think Dead Space got it right. It's pace, playtime, everything was right on the target, and I hope more games like that comes out.

PC Better Than Console?

With the release of highly-anticipated installment of overly-popular Halo franchise, Halo Wars, a heated discussion has been resumed: "Is PC's control of keyboard and mouse superior to that of the console systems', and are they necessary to enjoy games?" Well, I think that's an obnoxious hardheadedness to hold on to the way it is and has been in the past. Thinking everything is flowing and evolving, and that we should evolve with it, I've posted the following comment on Wired magazine's review of Halo Wars.

Of course, there is a sense of achievement for those who has time, energy and money to invest on a decent PC to enjoy games on it. But not everyone has that kind of free resources. No, MOST people don't. Shifting of games' preferred platform from PC to consoles is just another step of this industry's evolution. It does so to expand and flourish.

That said, I think RTS genre will also evolve to accomodate console systems' (somewhat limited) controls to provide as fun and rich experience as PC games with mouse and keyboard controls. I think EndWar shows it pretty well. I think it was a great first step towards this. No economy, more tactic.

And let's stop to kid ourselves. We call RTS games RTS just because we've been calling it that, not because they truly involve "strategy" in any meaningful way. Every game is tactic with mechanically glued-on microeconomy. So, don't start arguing EndWar-like RTS games without "real" economy system are not TRUE RTS games.

So, my point is, today's RTS games on console is just a start. If you want to hold onto your dear PC and your futile stubborness, brace yourself. You'll see a flood of games like that in future.

Say Yes to Console RTS!

Here is a comment I left on Giant Bomb's Quick Look video feature of Halo Wars. Below the video, numerous users has expressed their negative thoughts about RTS games being developed for console systems, and that they must stay on PC where the complex controls enable gamers to battle with precision and fast-response. Seeing this as a mere resistance to change, I expressed my thought against them.

Wow, anybody who bashes console's capability to house decent RTS games fail big time, in my view.

You seem to forget that historically, there were hardcore fans of specific portion of games that clung to the traditional style of gaming, trying to resist change. And what happened? Things kept changing and they had to move on. Adapt.

Today's no-RTS-on-console argument is just the same, I think. As hardcore games evolved to become (in hardcore gamer's point of view) easier to accomodate not-so-hardcore gamers to enjoy, RTS games will also do the same to survive. I think EndWar is a great example (not sure how well it's doing. Haven't pop that thing in 360 in a while). It enables gamers to show skill in managing troops, yet it perfectly utilizes consoles unique control scheme. And it is very enjoyable, too.

The notion that a RTS game has to be based on economy, base-building, and unit control is just about to become passe. Just as "having to retry 100 times or more to finish a game" became a thing of the past.