Console Wars

Why the "Console Wars" Are Actually Kind of a Good Thing

Which console to choose has been a heated debate since Sega v. Nintendo, and we know who won that battle... The "wars" we see today are Xbox v. PlayStation v. Nintendo v. PC, and from what I see, there is no clear winner. Each has their ups and downs, their goods and bads, but no company (PC isn't a company, so I guess go with Steam) is under duress to sell more consoles or make better games, they're all thriving in the current industry, despite all having their "fanboys/girls" and radicals who say one is superior to the other. But the console wars go far beyond "Well this console has X game" or "X console has better graphics than Y console".

The console wars we know, (Nintendo vs. Sega) started in the early 80's, after the "video game market crash" - there were too many terrible consoles coming out, so the market was crowded and inflation set in. That crash, from what I know, is the only downside to the console wars, and that will never happen again, as Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have the market dominated to the point where no new consoles can enter the industry effectively, look at the Oouya and how disappointing that was (well, they got Towerfall first, and that game is fantastic, so I guess there's that).

The hottest debate nowadays is the Xbox One vs. PS4, each, as I stated earlier, have their ups and downs, but it seems the PS4 is outperforming the Xbox this generation, at least sales-wise. That isn't all people look at when it comes to buying a console, though, other things, like friends, console exclusives, and personal preference are all things to take into account. The biggest effect on the industry as a whole, though, are the console exclusives. These exclusives are seemingly bad, at least for a fan base, take Tomb Raider, for example; a long time PlayStation-centric game was made into an Xbox exclusive. Though only for a year, people are still displeased, I, for one, am not, though. I think this is a good thing, as it is a product of competition. Sony has their Uncharted, Xbox needs their Tomb Raider. Each Uncharted has built on one another, and Xbox never had an equivalent, so they took what was good about Uncharted and made it into their own thing, a Tomb Raider reboot. There is a competition between these two series, and competition breeds excellence. Though a game being exclusive can suck, overall it is better for the gaming industry.

Historically, the console wars have helped the gaming industry in a big way, it has helped evolve the consoles, whether it be how we have seen - in the short amount of time the gaming industry has been around - graphics in games move from polygonal characters and "muddy" textures to what we see now, almost lifelike games or how the consoles have sold better and better over the year, the PS4 and Xbox One are on track to be the two best-selling consoles of all time (currently held by PS2 and Nintendo DS respectively). Over the years, gaming has evolved in a big way and gained popularity, largely to gamers having a choice, whether it be Nintendo, PlayStation, or Xbox. This growth can (probably) be at least partly attributed to the competition of the consoles, each generation iterating on the last and making the newer console bigger and better. This competition has truly bred excellence, as with this generation we got the most powerful consoles we've had yet.

Dev Does Not Necessarily Gaming

Extended Title: Dev Does Not Necessarily Gaming: Why Supporting Your Favorite Creators Is Important in Today's Gaming Industry. 

I've written about Kickstarter before, in the early days of this blog. Since then, my experience with Kickstarter and other crowd-funding sites has expanded to the point where I feel like writing about why it is one of the best ways for indie game devs, independent content creators, and even small companies to get into an industry.

Recently, I have backed a few Kickstarter projects -- Allison Road, Friday the 13th: The Game, and Labyrinth, Collectible Card RPG -- two of which have been a success, Allison Road got picked up by a developer, and Friday the 13th got fully funded. Labyrinth, though not fully funded, is looking like it will hit its goal before the end of the campaign. I also back a few people on Patreon -- The Comedy Button, Jim Sterling, and Kinda Funny Games -- all of those people/channels I watch on a daily basis, so why not help them out?

Kickstarter, Patreon, and other crowd-funding websites are some of the biggest ways you can support your favorite creators or take a chance and put your faith (read: Money) into a developer with a cool idea. Without Kickstarter, we wouldn't have got Pillars of Eternity or Prison Architect, some of the popular Kickstarter games to come out this year.

My point here is not to boast about who I've given money to, but to show the importance of supporting your favorite creators. You like what someone does and have a dollar a month? Give it to them, it helps them keep creating the content you like! Your backing can lead to big things. If you like something, you should support it whether it be music, video games or movies (pirating is bad!).



P.S I might add more to this as time goes on, we'll see how it goes.

The Importance of Sound

     Sound design is something a lot of people take no notice of. Whether it be the soundtrack accompanying your epic journey through space, or the sound that is made when chipping away at a stone block. The eerie sound of disembodied footsteps following you down a narrow hallway, or a sinister voice, sounds can make or break a game.

     Video game sound is more important than you may think when it comes to ambiance. Setting a mood is a big part of devs portraying what they want. Playing a horror game without sound is completely different. No haunting groans, no creaky doors, or no squeaky floorboards would take a lot of the panic out of the game. PT is a good example of a game that utilizes sound in a good way, the baby crying, the footsteps, the slightly-staticky radio playing, the creaking doors. The sounds come together in a way that helps set a tone, it develops a creepy atmosphere. The music in a game can also have a huge effect on the player, a great musical accompaniment to an epic boss battle, again, can help set a mood. It can be associative too, just hearing the music of Zelda: Ocarina of Time brings back memories, whether it be working my way through the Lost Woods, or grabbing the Master Sword for the first time. Narration and voice acting also falls under sound design. Bad voice acting can ruin the immersion of a game (unless, of course, the voice acting is so laughably bad that it is just something to make fun of, in which case bad voice acting is good) while good voice acting can pull you into a story and help the experience. Take Bastion, for example, the narration of that game is genuinely cool, it helps set a mood that couldn't be reached with text-based dialog.

     Sound design helps a lot of games set a mood and establish an atmosphere, whether it be via music, ambient noises, or voice acting, sound can contribute a lot to a video game.

Day One Patches

     Almost every game of this generation has had a day-one patch, The Witcher 3, MGSV, and even Halo 5: Guardians will have one. You'd think game devs would want to put out a finished product, but a game coming with a day one patch means it wasn't a finished product upon going "Gold". Day one patches have been upwards of 16gb (Sniper Elite 3 on Xbox One) and as small as a few hundred megabytes, regardless the download size of these patches, they are still bad, yet they're becoming normal.

     The normality is unsettling, these started as something harmless in earlier games like Skyrim (not necessarily the first to include one) and it has obviously grown into something more. Patches have grown larger and have started including more than just bug fixes, like THPS5 having entire game modes "patched in"(guess what, that's not a patch, that is a game, Activision) is there something more to day-one patches that we have yet to see? It is obvious that a large majority of games releasing this fall will include a patch that will release with the game, Halo, (probably not) Fallout 4, Star Wars Battlefront, and Tomb Raider being the biggest examples, (Note, the only game that is confirmed having a day-one patch is Halo).

     We as gamers should hold devs and publishers accountable for putting out a finished game and not a game that is kinda finished, but still needs a huge day-one patch. Not everyone has access to an internet connection, and if devs aren't putting out games that are complete, some people won't be able to experience a finished product. I would rather have a game be delayed by a month or two and get a complete experience, rather than being sold an incomplete game and being expected to wait longer to download a patch.

Destiny Offering Microtransactions

 

     On Oct. 13 Bungie will add "The Eververse" a new storefront including 18 emotes, all being completely optional. The currency you will buy these emotes with will be called "Silver" which will be able for purchase through your consoles associated store. Bungie will give you some free Silver to buy a few new emotes, and other than that they plan to "bolster the service our live team is offering
for another full year". AKA Microtransactions, though they are optional, it still sucks to see another game fall into this trend.


Addition: The fact that some of us have paid $140 for this game and they expect to charge us more for content is obscene. This seems like a gateway for something much, much worse. Like exclusives guns, armor, game modes, etc.

Metal Gear: The Phantom Pachinko

   
     Just when I thought Konami couldn't do much worse, they, of course, did. They removed Bomberman from iOS/Android respective app stores, which, at first glance, doesn't really seem like a big deal, but they have done something similar in the past with P.T. (SPECULATION) I call shenanigans! Bomberman probably wasn't making them money, so they pulled it to make room for a, you guessed it, pachinko machine.

     According to Kotaku, Konami has filed a "Big Boss" trademark, covering video games, board games, mobile games, and, of course, pachinko machines. Fantastic, another relic IP of video gaming lost to Konami's ignorance. Metalgearchinko 1 (AKA Greedy Snake) may not be the end of the true (I use that term loosely because the lack of Kojima) Meal Gear series, but it truly is a sign that Konami holds none of their games sacred, and I expect Castlevania is next.

SOMA: Horror Done Right

Minor story spoilers ahead, be wary, traveler.

     Frictional Games - the creators of the Amnesia and Penumbra series - released their newest horror game SOMA this week, and it is damn good. Though it doesn't follow the market by filling their game with jump scares and gore or terrifying pursuers to try and scare you, SOMA uses psychological horror and the game tackles some hard-to-portray topics very well. From a traditional "scary" sense, this game is good, but from a truly unsettling and frightening point-of-view, SOMA stands out above the others in this genre, though the game does have a few cliché horror tropes.

     Conveying a truly unsettling feeling is something a lot of horror games do wrong, but SOMA does so, so right; the setting in this game is really great. Going under a brain scan helmet in a present day "doctor's" office and waking up in a broken down, submerged lab sometime in the future is only the beginning of the creepiness. You soon learn that you wake up 100 years in the future, where humanity is all but wiped out and whatever people had remained after the disaster had their consciousness transferred into robots. What remains of this facility, though, are decrepit hallways, sinister AIs, and delusional robots - in one case, you meet a robot that actually thinks it is still human. As you go from sector to sector with your AI friend Catherine, avoiding the creatures that are out to get you, you learn more and more about what happened, why everything went haywire, and your fate as one of the last parts of humanity.

     The story of this game isn't something to be taken lightly, it some big issues that can be hard to portray, self-identity and humanity being the ones that stand out. The game has multiple situations in which you have to make big decisions that, at least in my case, you will question whether or not you did the right thing. Without spoilers, I made a choice that I seriously felt bad about, but couldn't take it back or reverse it. You often question "Is being a sentient robot that was a human actual humanity?" "Am I human?" The setting helps convey a story as well as the dialog and random notes/pictures you can inspect. Broken, rusted hallways, decrepit rooms that have been deserted for who knows how long, broken down, and moss covered AI just wondering the depths of the ocean show that, at one point, there was a thriving research community in this once great facility.

     SOMA is at it's best when you are not being actively pursued by some grotesque monster or a shambling robot though the scary parts are truly unnerving, exploring the dilapidated lab is where SOMA shines. Finding out more and more about the story and the fate of humanity and what will become of you. Some of the tropes take away from the experience to me. Oh, you're gonna get on this elevator? Well, I hope you know something will go wrong. Just completed an objective despite being tailed by an enemy? What a great time for a power outage. Those are minor complaints, though.

     Overall, SOMA is by far my favorite horror game, reasonable scares, a great story, and an amazing atmosphere make this game stand out. It stands out not when you aren't being pursued by a crazy robot, but when you are just exploring the history of the facility and what went wrong.