Today, out of habit, I once again time 'ga' into my address bar, and clicked on the YouTube channel for GameTrailers, which was the first option.
There I saw that the last video put up on the channel was a "fixed" Bloodborne review, which was uploaded a week ago.
There was no Final Bosman this week. No Huber Hype, no GT Time, no top ten or Mandatory Update.
I still don't really want to believe what I first read a week ago, leaving me mouth agape. It wasn't that I didn't expect it, I just didn't expect it to happen yet. In the back of my mind, and surely everyone else who followed GT as well, this was always going to come. But why now? Surely, they can't have done it yet.
But the GT Reviews channel is also empty of new videos. There hasn't been a Twitch stream for a week either. It really happened.
GameTrailers is no more.
Let's be clear: This is not a surprise. At the very least since it was bought by Defy Media, GT has basically been treading water. Looking back, the signs were there well before that buyout, but when that happened in mid-2014, with half of their staff being fired...that was the beginning of the end. By my (possibly faulty) count, GT was left with fourteen staff after the buyout. Later that year, they were left with eleven, and then ten, then back to eleven and finally ten. By the end of 2015, that had fallen again to nine.
No 'big' website can possibly be run by nine staff, no matter how talented. It is actually quite extraordinary that GT managed to do weekly shows and review so many games for as long as it did with such a skeleton staff. What's even more extraordinary is that they didn't just do these videos - they did the best videos. There was not one other website that I would go to to find out about a game before I went to GT. Not one. Nowhere could you find such a variety of tastes amongst a group of people who were clearly passionate and positive about video games.
No-one sums this up better than Kyle Bosman. He was (despite probably wanting to deny it) the face of this last era of GameTrailers. He had a weekly show that was, in essence, punditry, but unlike most video game punditry on the web, it was made purely out of love and joy, even when the subject matter was deserving of anything but. Somehow, he managed to create his own lore throughout the show that didn't really make sense or go anywhere, yet was somehow still thoroughly watchable, and usually funny. As moderator on GT Time, Bosman was all too happy to acquiesce to another panellists view to keep the tone of the show light, while not giving up on points worth sticking to.
But the one show that stuck out the most was the Twitch stream known as Dumb Game Monday. Unfortunately, most of it has been lost to history, even though the playthrough of Chicago Enforcer should be put in a museum. The show was all about celebrating the kind of games we got as kids, which weren't bad, just silly. We got to appreciate the details of games that no-one else paid any attention to, and, just for a time, learn to value games that aren't the 'best ever'. I loved watching these streams, and while I understand the logic in saying that not saving them leaves them as a moment in time, these were streams worth saving.
Bosman was hardly alone. The eleven staff that recent fans would know best created a community unmatched amongst gaming websites, celebrating the existence of video games, embracing them as a refuge from daily life that is meant to be enjoyed, rather than argued over as sport or followed as an industry.
It wasn't that they were always right. I just finished listening to an early GT Time podcast where everyone (except the far-thinking Michael Damiani) was totally, utterly wrong about how Nintendo's Digital Event would go at E3 2014. It's that they were always worth watching and listening to.
Where now will I get my hype, if not from Huber? Who can match Bloodworth's calm wisdom about games? Who can I listen to talk accurately with a balance of emotion and logic other than Ben? Who can I double down on without Don?
I don't need to speak about how Defy made a massive mistake in not investing in a brand that was building something strong, or how Viacom basically brought about their demise through a long series of bad decisions. I can't talk about the early days, because I wasn't there. All I want to remember is the group with too many Bs in their names that I know as GT.
Matt Blair
Daniel Bloodworth
Kyle Bosman
Don Casanova
Michael Damiani
Brad Ellis
Ian Hinck
Michael Huber
Brandon Jones
Ben Moore
Elyse Willems
You've done a lot for games and the gaming community, even if it may not look like it. Hopefully, we'll see you all again soon.
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Monday, 15 February 2016
Friday, 9 October 2015
Thoughts on the Star Wars Battlefront 'beta' (it's actually a demo)
EA, owners of the rights to every Star Wars video game for the foreseeable future, decided that with Episode VII coming out, it was time to reintroduce of the most loved games in the franchise after a decade long absence.
Star Wars: Battlefront had a 'beta' come out this week. This is one of those obvious misuses of the word 'beta', as the game is only a month away from being sold in stores, and the lack of bugs and other features typical of a real beta mean that this is actually what we once called a demo.
Naturally, there has been a wave of excitement for the return of what was an excellent shooter. But, with DICE (the makers of Battlefield) creating the game, with the Frostbite engine, there were also questions over whether this would be a re-skinned Battlefield, rather than a Battlefront game. The release of the demo has ended any doubts about this. Unfortunately, it has ended them by confirming that it feels nothing like a Battlefront game, instead presenting a Battlefield with some of the complexities stripped away. The end result is not impressive.
First, the modes. You would think, given this will be the first impression of the game for many of those who are most interested in buying it, that EA would make sure that the modes they select for playing are fun and satisfactory. Instead, they've picked three modes that feel like a fun-vacuum, sucking out any temporary enjoyment you feel through mindless, frustrating and repetitive gameplay.
There is one single-player mode included. It is called Survival, and it's a typical take on horde mode. The aim is to survive six waves of enemies, increasing in number and difficulty, on a Tatooine map. Unfortunately, it is not very well thought through. You will not be able to find the randomly spawning enemies before they find you, and they will all find you at once. The size and design of the map makes everything feel empty, so when all your enemies suddenly appear without any indication of being nearby (as they don't make a sound, aren't easy to spot and don't appear on the mini-map) you can quickly feel surrounded.
Fortunately, despite the AI's unerring accuracy, they aren't very strong. Four different soldiers could be shooting and hitting you, and yet you can just sprint away with health left, wait for it to magically restore, and then pick them off one by one. Two shots will finish most of them other than the 'shock troopers', who seem to have about fifteen times the health of the regular troops. This is repeated five times across the six waves, with the sole exception being the third wave, in which there is only one enemy: an AT-ST. Defeating a vehicle in this mode will take much, much longer than it takes to defeat the troops, as you are not naturally equipped with useful against it. The grenade launcher will generally land at its feet, and doesn't do much anyway, and the ion shots are limited and also don't do a great deal.
There is one way to defeat them quickly (an AT-ST also appears in wave six) - an orbital strike - but this only appears in random pick-ups, and you may not get it at all in either wave. Thus, most of the time you spend on the map will be running around, hiding from the vehicle in a spot where you can hit it, but it can't hit you. This is not fun.
The random pick-ups come from escape pods which crash in the AT-ST waves, that you must capture and defend from the enemy. This mechanic makes the basis of the next mode, a multiplayer mode called Drop Zone. Teams of eight fight over escape pods on the Sullust map, with the first team to five winning, or if ten minutes have elapsed, the team with the most pods. It is quite rare that the matches will take the full ten minutes to complete, as one side tends to dominate proceedings. This is due to the random nature of both spawn points and, more importantly, the pods themselves.
Unlike in Survival, you will die very quickly and a lot in this mode. The pods are captured very quickly (though not as quickly as it takes to die), and then take about a minute to be 'defended', after which a point is gained. But you don't need to be near the pod to defend it. In fact, if you know your way around the map it's easier to find a hiding spot and shoot at the enemy as they sprint towards the pod. Because the winning team will have more people alive, they will find it easier to get to the next pod (which will often spawn nearer to them anyway, from my experience), capture it quickly and repeat the cycle. There is actually very little incentive to be a team player. You only need one person to do the quick capture. This leaves the remaining seven to wander around the map as they please, pretending it's a deathmatch.
Having only sixteen players particularly changes the style of play. Often there is little in the way of firefights, which have always been the main appeal of Battlefront. Instead, the design of the map leads to long-range sniping attempts, regardless of the weapon used. Should two people get up close and personal, the accuracy of the shots seems to be random, and chances are the winner will be whoever remembers there is a melee button. And once you die (which, as mentioned, will happen quickly and often once the shooting starts), it will take a long time to get back to a position where you can have an impact, whereupon you will again die.
Player numbers are not an issue in Walker Assault, another multiplayer offering and clearly something EA is fairly proud of. This is the mode they have been showing off for a number of months, in which the Empire is attacking Hoth with their AT-ATs, and the Rebels have to stop them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem they've actually played the mode very much, because it is so imbalanced that it seems hard to believe they looked at it and thought that it would go smoothly. You would expect the Empire to have it slightly easier, given they have the walkers on their side, but the Rebels have absolutely nothing going for them. They have to do all the work, in capturing and defending satellites (in much the same way as escape pods), do this for long enough to get time to barrage the AT-ATs at the waypoint, and then do this twice more. They have to face not only the indestructible AT-ATs, but also the powerful AT-STs, TIE Fighters and TIE Interceptors, with no heavy weapons other than random-pick ups. They can control X-Wings and A-Wings, but they're really only to stop the Empire's TIEs, and the tow cables only appear in the last phase, which is nearly impossible to get right, and therefore basically can't be used in one of the most well-known parts of the series.
For the Rebels to win, it requires the entire team working together as one from the start, making sure they have as many turrets and pick-ups available at the right moment as possible, and making sure they aren't killed by Empire troops while doing all this. Basically, it's impossible. The Empire, on the other hand, can again just run around pretending it's a deathmatch. The soldiers only need to capture the satellites if the Rebels have already done it, which, as mentioned, is very quick and only takes one person. When the Empire recaptures them, they reset, which means one moment of madness can cost the Rebels minutes of satellite time, and therefore the match. The AT-ATs just plough on through, and for the most part the Rebels are helpless to stop them. The map design is also surprisingly awkward, with too many mountains creating long-distance chokepoints, and too much empty space that is presumably designed for flanking but ends up getting people lost. The Rebel base is far too easy to enter, and the random spawning is unhelpful in terms of showing the player precisely where they are positioned and where they have to go. The mass of players manages to feel like too many, because the spawns constantly cramp everyone into one third of the map based on where the walkers are, while also preventing firefights, due to the mountains and the speed of death.
There is a general lifelessness to this game that may be due to a number of different elements. The first problem is the maps. All three suffer from the same design choices. Horizontally, they are smaller than the old Battlefront maps, but they are more layered, with DICE aiming for realistic rocky mountains and hills, with small and large crevasses. What this actually does is prevent the mass firefights that Battlefront had, in which there were large sections of totally flat ground in which the two teams would have most of their players at the same time. The best strategy in this game, on the other hand, appears to be finding a good hiding spot and sniping from a distance with your weapon of choice. It doesn't really matter if you use one of the four blasters you're provided with or the unlockable rifles, as they all manage to hit from a distance regularly and with enough power to be worth it. The layered, distant maps (especially Sullust) make this a smart and easy choice.
The nature of sniping adds to the feeling that this game was designed for a first-person camera. When using third-person, which is my preference for Battlefront games and presumably the preference of most people, something feels off. Aiming seems wrong, and long distance shooting in particular becomes more random. In first-person, though, it's fairly simple. Third-person feels like an afterthought, which is galling given this is a series that was designed around a third-person view. EA promised a third-person camera, but in all their promotional material they've used a first-person view, and now we can see why. The game is designed for it, and the weapons seem to demonstrate this quite well. There are different stats for each blaster, but the differences are not readily apparent unless you really look for them. You would expect the colour and sound of the shots to be distinct for each weapon too, but there is no difference in colour (not even between teams!) and the sounds blend in with the background noise anyway.
The single most depressing part of this game, though, is a fundamental design choice which runs through every mode and every battle. It's the decision to focus on individual soldiers, rather than on the different teams. This is best exemplified by the choice to scrap classes, each of which had their own weapons and distinct design according to their roles, and replacing them with individual customisable soldiers. Imagine they had put a heavy class in the game. Suddenly, vehicles become easier to deal with for both sides. Or, if they had made a specific sniper class, that would free up the boot soldiers to have less sniper-esque weapons. But no, instead we get to choose between a number of samey weapons which function in more-or-less exactly the same way, across our many more-or-less similar soldiers with no specific role to play in the team.
This individual focus is evident in other choices too. Unlimited ammo (especially for grenades) means there is no need for planning. Just keep tossing grenades from the high ground! Insta-heal means there's no incentive to enter an unwinnable situation in order to hurt opponents so your team can finish them off later. Instead, your opponents can just hide until their health restores from 10 to 100. Your death is entirely in vain, and, again, there is less need for planning in that you don't need to know where the nearest health-droid is before you enter a tough fight. Listing only kills, deaths and points for everyone afterwards makes every match feel like a deathmatch, and mostly rewards those who think along such lines due to the way points are distributed. Helping the team earns far less points than helping yourself.
These things won't be changed in the final release, nor in any of the inevitable patches and expansions. These are clearly design choices that have been made for people who didn't play the original Battlefront games and people who aren't really into Star Wars. A weakened Battlefield with shiny skins and sounds will make EA a lot of money, but this game does not appear to be an actual Battlefront game. If they had decided to make a multiplayer Republic Commando, this game would make a lot more sense. As it is, it's ready to be profoundly disappointing.
Star Wars: Battlefront had a 'beta' come out this week. This is one of those obvious misuses of the word 'beta', as the game is only a month away from being sold in stores, and the lack of bugs and other features typical of a real beta mean that this is actually what we once called a demo.
Naturally, there has been a wave of excitement for the return of what was an excellent shooter. But, with DICE (the makers of Battlefield) creating the game, with the Frostbite engine, there were also questions over whether this would be a re-skinned Battlefield, rather than a Battlefront game. The release of the demo has ended any doubts about this. Unfortunately, it has ended them by confirming that it feels nothing like a Battlefront game, instead presenting a Battlefield with some of the complexities stripped away. The end result is not impressive.
First, the modes. You would think, given this will be the first impression of the game for many of those who are most interested in buying it, that EA would make sure that the modes they select for playing are fun and satisfactory. Instead, they've picked three modes that feel like a fun-vacuum, sucking out any temporary enjoyment you feel through mindless, frustrating and repetitive gameplay.
There is one single-player mode included. It is called Survival, and it's a typical take on horde mode. The aim is to survive six waves of enemies, increasing in number and difficulty, on a Tatooine map. Unfortunately, it is not very well thought through. You will not be able to find the randomly spawning enemies before they find you, and they will all find you at once. The size and design of the map makes everything feel empty, so when all your enemies suddenly appear without any indication of being nearby (as they don't make a sound, aren't easy to spot and don't appear on the mini-map) you can quickly feel surrounded.
Fortunately, despite the AI's unerring accuracy, they aren't very strong. Four different soldiers could be shooting and hitting you, and yet you can just sprint away with health left, wait for it to magically restore, and then pick them off one by one. Two shots will finish most of them other than the 'shock troopers', who seem to have about fifteen times the health of the regular troops. This is repeated five times across the six waves, with the sole exception being the third wave, in which there is only one enemy: an AT-ST. Defeating a vehicle in this mode will take much, much longer than it takes to defeat the troops, as you are not naturally equipped with useful against it. The grenade launcher will generally land at its feet, and doesn't do much anyway, and the ion shots are limited and also don't do a great deal.
There is one way to defeat them quickly (an AT-ST also appears in wave six) - an orbital strike - but this only appears in random pick-ups, and you may not get it at all in either wave. Thus, most of the time you spend on the map will be running around, hiding from the vehicle in a spot where you can hit it, but it can't hit you. This is not fun.
The random pick-ups come from escape pods which crash in the AT-ST waves, that you must capture and defend from the enemy. This mechanic makes the basis of the next mode, a multiplayer mode called Drop Zone. Teams of eight fight over escape pods on the Sullust map, with the first team to five winning, or if ten minutes have elapsed, the team with the most pods. It is quite rare that the matches will take the full ten minutes to complete, as one side tends to dominate proceedings. This is due to the random nature of both spawn points and, more importantly, the pods themselves.
Unlike in Survival, you will die very quickly and a lot in this mode. The pods are captured very quickly (though not as quickly as it takes to die), and then take about a minute to be 'defended', after which a point is gained. But you don't need to be near the pod to defend it. In fact, if you know your way around the map it's easier to find a hiding spot and shoot at the enemy as they sprint towards the pod. Because the winning team will have more people alive, they will find it easier to get to the next pod (which will often spawn nearer to them anyway, from my experience), capture it quickly and repeat the cycle. There is actually very little incentive to be a team player. You only need one person to do the quick capture. This leaves the remaining seven to wander around the map as they please, pretending it's a deathmatch.
Having only sixteen players particularly changes the style of play. Often there is little in the way of firefights, which have always been the main appeal of Battlefront. Instead, the design of the map leads to long-range sniping attempts, regardless of the weapon used. Should two people get up close and personal, the accuracy of the shots seems to be random, and chances are the winner will be whoever remembers there is a melee button. And once you die (which, as mentioned, will happen quickly and often once the shooting starts), it will take a long time to get back to a position where you can have an impact, whereupon you will again die.
Player numbers are not an issue in Walker Assault, another multiplayer offering and clearly something EA is fairly proud of. This is the mode they have been showing off for a number of months, in which the Empire is attacking Hoth with their AT-ATs, and the Rebels have to stop them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem they've actually played the mode very much, because it is so imbalanced that it seems hard to believe they looked at it and thought that it would go smoothly. You would expect the Empire to have it slightly easier, given they have the walkers on their side, but the Rebels have absolutely nothing going for them. They have to do all the work, in capturing and defending satellites (in much the same way as escape pods), do this for long enough to get time to barrage the AT-ATs at the waypoint, and then do this twice more. They have to face not only the indestructible AT-ATs, but also the powerful AT-STs, TIE Fighters and TIE Interceptors, with no heavy weapons other than random-pick ups. They can control X-Wings and A-Wings, but they're really only to stop the Empire's TIEs, and the tow cables only appear in the last phase, which is nearly impossible to get right, and therefore basically can't be used in one of the most well-known parts of the series.
For the Rebels to win, it requires the entire team working together as one from the start, making sure they have as many turrets and pick-ups available at the right moment as possible, and making sure they aren't killed by Empire troops while doing all this. Basically, it's impossible. The Empire, on the other hand, can again just run around pretending it's a deathmatch. The soldiers only need to capture the satellites if the Rebels have already done it, which, as mentioned, is very quick and only takes one person. When the Empire recaptures them, they reset, which means one moment of madness can cost the Rebels minutes of satellite time, and therefore the match. The AT-ATs just plough on through, and for the most part the Rebels are helpless to stop them. The map design is also surprisingly awkward, with too many mountains creating long-distance chokepoints, and too much empty space that is presumably designed for flanking but ends up getting people lost. The Rebel base is far too easy to enter, and the random spawning is unhelpful in terms of showing the player precisely where they are positioned and where they have to go. The mass of players manages to feel like too many, because the spawns constantly cramp everyone into one third of the map based on where the walkers are, while also preventing firefights, due to the mountains and the speed of death.
There is a general lifelessness to this game that may be due to a number of different elements. The first problem is the maps. All three suffer from the same design choices. Horizontally, they are smaller than the old Battlefront maps, but they are more layered, with DICE aiming for realistic rocky mountains and hills, with small and large crevasses. What this actually does is prevent the mass firefights that Battlefront had, in which there were large sections of totally flat ground in which the two teams would have most of their players at the same time. The best strategy in this game, on the other hand, appears to be finding a good hiding spot and sniping from a distance with your weapon of choice. It doesn't really matter if you use one of the four blasters you're provided with or the unlockable rifles, as they all manage to hit from a distance regularly and with enough power to be worth it. The layered, distant maps (especially Sullust) make this a smart and easy choice.
The nature of sniping adds to the feeling that this game was designed for a first-person camera. When using third-person, which is my preference for Battlefront games and presumably the preference of most people, something feels off. Aiming seems wrong, and long distance shooting in particular becomes more random. In first-person, though, it's fairly simple. Third-person feels like an afterthought, which is galling given this is a series that was designed around a third-person view. EA promised a third-person camera, but in all their promotional material they've used a first-person view, and now we can see why. The game is designed for it, and the weapons seem to demonstrate this quite well. There are different stats for each blaster, but the differences are not readily apparent unless you really look for them. You would expect the colour and sound of the shots to be distinct for each weapon too, but there is no difference in colour (not even between teams!) and the sounds blend in with the background noise anyway.
The single most depressing part of this game, though, is a fundamental design choice which runs through every mode and every battle. It's the decision to focus on individual soldiers, rather than on the different teams. This is best exemplified by the choice to scrap classes, each of which had their own weapons and distinct design according to their roles, and replacing them with individual customisable soldiers. Imagine they had put a heavy class in the game. Suddenly, vehicles become easier to deal with for both sides. Or, if they had made a specific sniper class, that would free up the boot soldiers to have less sniper-esque weapons. But no, instead we get to choose between a number of samey weapons which function in more-or-less exactly the same way, across our many more-or-less similar soldiers with no specific role to play in the team.
This individual focus is evident in other choices too. Unlimited ammo (especially for grenades) means there is no need for planning. Just keep tossing grenades from the high ground! Insta-heal means there's no incentive to enter an unwinnable situation in order to hurt opponents so your team can finish them off later. Instead, your opponents can just hide until their health restores from 10 to 100. Your death is entirely in vain, and, again, there is less need for planning in that you don't need to know where the nearest health-droid is before you enter a tough fight. Listing only kills, deaths and points for everyone afterwards makes every match feel like a deathmatch, and mostly rewards those who think along such lines due to the way points are distributed. Helping the team earns far less points than helping yourself.
These things won't be changed in the final release, nor in any of the inevitable patches and expansions. These are clearly design choices that have been made for people who didn't play the original Battlefront games and people who aren't really into Star Wars. A weakened Battlefield with shiny skins and sounds will make EA a lot of money, but this game does not appear to be an actual Battlefront game. If they had decided to make a multiplayer Republic Commando, this game would make a lot more sense. As it is, it's ready to be profoundly disappointing.
Tuesday, 14 July 2015
Satoru Iwata, the heart of gaming
How fleeting life can be.
We've known for some time that Satoru Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo, was dealing with a serious illness. Last year he'd reported that he had a bile duct tumour, but that he'd found it early and an operation had been successful. He then returned to work, albeit in a limited capacity, and everyone assumed he was on the way to recovery.
Today, we find out that the same tumour has caused his passing at the age of 55.
The unusual thing about 'public life' is that it can make total strangers feel as if they know someone they've never met. For those of us who have grown up on Nintendo games, this is undoubtedly true for Iwata. From the moment he became the head of the company, Iwata was out on stage (and later on video) with a smile, telling us what Nintendo was doing next. You could feel his attachment to what he was doing.
As a programmer alone, he appears to be one of gaming's early greats. He programmed Mother 2/EarthBound from scratch, saving it from the development bin. He developed the battle code for Pokemon Stadium within a week, despite having no documentation to go off of. He was responsible for Kanto existing in Pokemon Gold and Silver, as after he had compressed Johto, which was at previously point filling more space than its cartridge could fit, there was enough space left for a whole second region. And, after he became the head of the company, he managed to debug Super Smash Bros. Melee on his own in three weeks to get it out on time.
As a president he was responsible to the change in direction that brought us the Wii and DS. It is commonplace now to say that the expanded market that these consoles tapped into has now disappeared again, but what has really happened is that they have shifted towards mobile devices. They still exist, and they still play games. Both of Nintendo's rivals were so worried by the advent of motion controls with the Wii that they decided to implement their own (worse) motion systems too, while the nifty and versatile DS was able to out compete the more
'classic' PSP, paving the way for the the 3DS to eat up what remained and leaving the Vita for dead. The failure of the Wii U, too, seems to have led to what the NX appears to be. Nintendo wanted to grab the tablet market, but due to the console release cycle was already too late. If NX is what it threatens to be, they can rectify that with rapid releases of hardware.
While his programming ability is underappreciated, and his presidency has been criticised, it seems all are unanimous on Iwata the person. Whatever he did, he always seemed to care. He gave us Nintendo Direct and Iwata Asks, offering regular insights into a company that had previously been locked up tight. Iwata was always front and centre in these, and gave us plenty of (laughs) and total honesty. He was reluctant to ever fire anyone, believing that this would affect those that remained in the company, making them worry about their jobs instead of concentrating on making games. Every story that people share about Iwata suggests a man who loved people, and was eager to see them enjoying themselves. This is the ultimate legacy he leaves behind, and there can be no doubt that this is the form that Nintendo itself holds dear today.
Whoever next leads Nintendo, we can only hope that Nintendo will continue to understand the value of their relentless focus on games that are fun. It doesn't make them popular with shareholders, who care only about money, or with certain sections of the games media, who care only about looking mature, but it makes them far more valuable than any other company in games.
We've known for some time that Satoru Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo, was dealing with a serious illness. Last year he'd reported that he had a bile duct tumour, but that he'd found it early and an operation had been successful. He then returned to work, albeit in a limited capacity, and everyone assumed he was on the way to recovery.
Today, we find out that the same tumour has caused his passing at the age of 55.
The unusual thing about 'public life' is that it can make total strangers feel as if they know someone they've never met. For those of us who have grown up on Nintendo games, this is undoubtedly true for Iwata. From the moment he became the head of the company, Iwata was out on stage (and later on video) with a smile, telling us what Nintendo was doing next. You could feel his attachment to what he was doing.
As a programmer alone, he appears to be one of gaming's early greats. He programmed Mother 2/EarthBound from scratch, saving it from the development bin. He developed the battle code for Pokemon Stadium within a week, despite having no documentation to go off of. He was responsible for Kanto existing in Pokemon Gold and Silver, as after he had compressed Johto, which was at previously point filling more space than its cartridge could fit, there was enough space left for a whole second region. And, after he became the head of the company, he managed to debug Super Smash Bros. Melee on his own in three weeks to get it out on time.
As a president he was responsible to the change in direction that brought us the Wii and DS. It is commonplace now to say that the expanded market that these consoles tapped into has now disappeared again, but what has really happened is that they have shifted towards mobile devices. They still exist, and they still play games. Both of Nintendo's rivals were so worried by the advent of motion controls with the Wii that they decided to implement their own (worse) motion systems too, while the nifty and versatile DS was able to out compete the more
'classic' PSP, paving the way for the the 3DS to eat up what remained and leaving the Vita for dead. The failure of the Wii U, too, seems to have led to what the NX appears to be. Nintendo wanted to grab the tablet market, but due to the console release cycle was already too late. If NX is what it threatens to be, they can rectify that with rapid releases of hardware.
While his programming ability is underappreciated, and his presidency has been criticised, it seems all are unanimous on Iwata the person. Whatever he did, he always seemed to care. He gave us Nintendo Direct and Iwata Asks, offering regular insights into a company that had previously been locked up tight. Iwata was always front and centre in these, and gave us plenty of (laughs) and total honesty. He was reluctant to ever fire anyone, believing that this would affect those that remained in the company, making them worry about their jobs instead of concentrating on making games. Every story that people share about Iwata suggests a man who loved people, and was eager to see them enjoying themselves. This is the ultimate legacy he leaves behind, and there can be no doubt that this is the form that Nintendo itself holds dear today.
Whoever next leads Nintendo, we can only hope that Nintendo will continue to understand the value of their relentless focus on games that are fun. It doesn't make them popular with shareholders, who care only about money, or with certain sections of the games media, who care only about looking mature, but it makes them far more valuable than any other company in games.
Monday, 22 June 2015
Where will console gaming be in five years?
E3 2015 has come and gone, and in its wake it has left three announcements to send the internet into blazes of hype (The Last Guardian, Final Fantasy VII remake, and Shenmue III), a bunch of non-announcements to send the internet into blazes of fury (Nintendo), and many more announcements that get lost in the fires (Xbox backwards compatibility).
But in the rush to pronounce the winners and losers from a few days of showcasing games and systems that may or may not get to the consumer in the same form they were presented in, few takes the time to consider what this E3 may mean for gaming in the years to come.
Oh, sure, there's the occasional passing mention of virtual reality, but it seems to be more out of hope that such technologies are the future than it is expectation that what we are seeing now will be in living rooms the world over in a by the end of the decade.
In terms of what is ready and functioning right now, there are two groups: the hardware makers, and the hardware users. Trying to discuss what the latter will be doing years into the future is pointless, as third-party publishers are always reacting to hardware the exists at the time their games are being made.
No, what matters is the companies making the hardware. PCs, despite being absolutely, unquestionably superior to consoles in every imaginable way, do not actually have the same impact on the market. Their status as personal computer means that people will buy PCs whenever they want, for whatever purpose they want. There isn't one single company behind them, whose future depends on them. They simply are what they are.
Consoles, on the other hand, have been central to video games for the past thirty years. The direction consoles take necessarily affects the entire industry. All the biggest publishers focus on consoles first, so if there's a shift in popularity, or a change in the way consoles function, the publishers will follow.
So, with this in mind, what did E3 2015 tell us about the three console makers?
To these eyes, it actually suggested some very important things that aren't obvious on the surface. At face value, Sony had a great conference, Microsoft did fine, and Nintendo did poorly. The narrative from this being that the PlayStation 4 will continue to sell great guns, the Xbox One will need continued efforts to bring it to respectable sales, and the Wii U and 3DS are nearly at the end.
But this narrative says nothing about why these things are the case, and what they may say about how the companies themselves perceive their consoles.
Sony's big announcements were all for games that will be out in 2016. This suggests a great deal of confidence in the position of the PS4 this year, and why wouldn't they have such confidence? The PS4 is on track to be another 100+ million seller, leaving its immediate predecessor in the dust. The things that they got wrong with the PS3 they have rectified, and they have taken back their position as the console of choice. The greatest barometer of this is the fact that Call of Duty and Star Wars: Battlefront are both being advertised in association not with Xbox, as would seem traditional, but with PlayStation. If even mass appeal shooters are sticking with Sony, it must be doing something right.
As far as Sony's concerned, then, they just need to keep doing what they're doing. At E3 2020 we will, barring something catastrophic, be dealing with the new PS5 (and we'll get a release date for the FFVII remake, haw haw). Sony's formula, at this point, seems basically spot on.
Microsoft's big announcements were peculiar, in that they involved cross-system play. Many of the announced games were noted to be exclusive not merely to Xbox One, but to Windows 10 as well. This isn't merely a matter of the same game being available on two systems either. For example, someone playing Fable Legends on the One will be playing in the same world as another person playing on PC. Without being an expert on these things, this is surely thanks to two things: the internal workings of the Xbox One, which (like a PC) runs x86 architecture; and the operating system for the One, which just so happens to be be...Windows 10.
Yes, the One has the same architecture and operating system as a PC. In fact, this all seems rather similar to another notable gaming company. Valve Software, a company that no longer makes software but instead runs a digital games marketplace, has launched its own operating system and gaming machines that run this operating system. The idea behind them is to enable people to play their PC games from their living room, building on Steam's Big Picture Mode, which was designed for PCs plugged into televisions, using a controller.
The Xbox One appears to have the same purpose, with the added incentive of a few games - mostly the biggest guns like Halo - not appearing on PC. Yet. Outwardly, there is no indication of a shift in direction for Xbox, but it is absolutely clear that they have abandoned the concept of an all-in-one console, something that would have full control of the living room. It is also clear that Microsoft is not in any position to be taking Sony head on. Sony prides itself on its position at the forefront of hardware technology, willing to take a hit on hardware for the sake of market share, something they see as an investment with long term returns. Sales seem to suggest they have a point. Microsoft is not in the same position, having made its fortune on software.
The similarities between the positioning of the One and Steam's movement into operating systems and hardware suggest that in five years from now the main purpose of Xbox may well be as a competitor to Steam. Microsoft will presumably continue to make Xbox machines, but may also hand over production to a third party, as Valve has done. But in turning Xbox into a marketplace, Microsoft will gain flexibility. The biggest selling point of Xbox has always been convenience, which is why being more expensive than the PS4 was such a killer blow for the One. By turning Xbox into a digital brand, and by producing multiple Xbox machines for different markets, Microsoft will be able to create something sustainable.
They aren't the only console maker that may be shifting to a more flexible model. Every indication Nintendo has been giving about their otherwise secretive 'NX' project suggests that it will not be a traditional console. While some have taken this to mean that Nintendo will be, for example, turning their model into something like Vita TV, a more sensible conclusion can be made from two Q&A sessions between Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and investors.
Before 'announcing' NX, Iwata gave this answer to a question about the future:
From here, the pieces fall together quite nicely. NX will surely be the name given to the new platform on which multiple Nintendo devices run. Nintendo will be able to release their handheld and home machines as often as they feel necessary, to whichever markets will respond best, and down-res some games to work on less powerful devices. We've already seen two examples of Nintendo release more powerful versions of the same hardware - the DSi and New 3DS - so the concept shouldn't be too foreign. We know that Nintendo has been experimenting with getting the 3DS to run within the Wii U's framework, with some success. It wouldn't be too surprising if the Wii U is considered part of the NX generation either.
This would also mean no more of the difficulties with Virtual Console between generations, as games will be attached to an account, which can then download the game to every device that will come out in the future. The real question may be not with digital games, but physical games. I suspect Nintendo will do something along these lines: every disc has a unique code attached to it, so when you put it into your console, that unique code will be attached to your account. You can then download the game on other devices that are attached to your account (as long as they are capable of playing the game). If you want to sell the game or lend it to a friend, you can unattach the game, and every copy of the game on all your devices is locked out. Each copy can only be linked to one account at a time. This puts it on par with digital, and seems like the kind of approach Nintendo would use.
Looking at these two approaches from Microsoft and Nintendo, they actually seem rather similar. The only real difference is which devices are their focus, which is a result of the history of both companies. In both cases, everything seems to be pointing to a significant shift away from releasing one console every five or six years, towards emphasising the software platform on which multiple devices will run, released regularly.
This is, of course, no guarantee of being true. Check back in a few years from now.
But in the rush to pronounce the winners and losers from a few days of showcasing games and systems that may or may not get to the consumer in the same form they were presented in, few takes the time to consider what this E3 may mean for gaming in the years to come.
Oh, sure, there's the occasional passing mention of virtual reality, but it seems to be more out of hope that such technologies are the future than it is expectation that what we are seeing now will be in living rooms the world over in a by the end of the decade.
In terms of what is ready and functioning right now, there are two groups: the hardware makers, and the hardware users. Trying to discuss what the latter will be doing years into the future is pointless, as third-party publishers are always reacting to hardware the exists at the time their games are being made.
No, what matters is the companies making the hardware. PCs, despite being absolutely, unquestionably superior to consoles in every imaginable way, do not actually have the same impact on the market. Their status as personal computer means that people will buy PCs whenever they want, for whatever purpose they want. There isn't one single company behind them, whose future depends on them. They simply are what they are.
Consoles, on the other hand, have been central to video games for the past thirty years. The direction consoles take necessarily affects the entire industry. All the biggest publishers focus on consoles first, so if there's a shift in popularity, or a change in the way consoles function, the publishers will follow.
So, with this in mind, what did E3 2015 tell us about the three console makers?
To these eyes, it actually suggested some very important things that aren't obvious on the surface. At face value, Sony had a great conference, Microsoft did fine, and Nintendo did poorly. The narrative from this being that the PlayStation 4 will continue to sell great guns, the Xbox One will need continued efforts to bring it to respectable sales, and the Wii U and 3DS are nearly at the end.
But this narrative says nothing about why these things are the case, and what they may say about how the companies themselves perceive their consoles.
Sony's big announcements were all for games that will be out in 2016. This suggests a great deal of confidence in the position of the PS4 this year, and why wouldn't they have such confidence? The PS4 is on track to be another 100+ million seller, leaving its immediate predecessor in the dust. The things that they got wrong with the PS3 they have rectified, and they have taken back their position as the console of choice. The greatest barometer of this is the fact that Call of Duty and Star Wars: Battlefront are both being advertised in association not with Xbox, as would seem traditional, but with PlayStation. If even mass appeal shooters are sticking with Sony, it must be doing something right.
As far as Sony's concerned, then, they just need to keep doing what they're doing. At E3 2020 we will, barring something catastrophic, be dealing with the new PS5 (and we'll get a release date for the FFVII remake, haw haw). Sony's formula, at this point, seems basically spot on.
Microsoft's big announcements were peculiar, in that they involved cross-system play. Many of the announced games were noted to be exclusive not merely to Xbox One, but to Windows 10 as well. This isn't merely a matter of the same game being available on two systems either. For example, someone playing Fable Legends on the One will be playing in the same world as another person playing on PC. Without being an expert on these things, this is surely thanks to two things: the internal workings of the Xbox One, which (like a PC) runs x86 architecture; and the operating system for the One, which just so happens to be be...Windows 10.
Yes, the One has the same architecture and operating system as a PC. In fact, this all seems rather similar to another notable gaming company. Valve Software, a company that no longer makes software but instead runs a digital games marketplace, has launched its own operating system and gaming machines that run this operating system. The idea behind them is to enable people to play their PC games from their living room, building on Steam's Big Picture Mode, which was designed for PCs plugged into televisions, using a controller.
The Xbox One appears to have the same purpose, with the added incentive of a few games - mostly the biggest guns like Halo - not appearing on PC. Yet. Outwardly, there is no indication of a shift in direction for Xbox, but it is absolutely clear that they have abandoned the concept of an all-in-one console, something that would have full control of the living room. It is also clear that Microsoft is not in any position to be taking Sony head on. Sony prides itself on its position at the forefront of hardware technology, willing to take a hit on hardware for the sake of market share, something they see as an investment with long term returns. Sales seem to suggest they have a point. Microsoft is not in the same position, having made its fortune on software.
The similarities between the positioning of the One and Steam's movement into operating systems and hardware suggest that in five years from now the main purpose of Xbox may well be as a competitor to Steam. Microsoft will presumably continue to make Xbox machines, but may also hand over production to a third party, as Valve has done. But in turning Xbox into a marketplace, Microsoft will gain flexibility. The biggest selling point of Xbox has always been convenience, which is why being more expensive than the PS4 was such a killer blow for the One. By turning Xbox into a digital brand, and by producing multiple Xbox machines for different markets, Microsoft will be able to create something sustainable.
They aren't the only console maker that may be shifting to a more flexible model. Every indication Nintendo has been giving about their otherwise secretive 'NX' project suggests that it will not be a traditional console. While some have taken this to mean that Nintendo will be, for example, turning their model into something like Vita TV, a more sensible conclusion can be made from two Q&A sessions between Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and investors.
Before 'announcing' NX, Iwata gave this answer to a question about the future:
I am not sure if the form factor (the size and configuration of the hardware) will be integrated. In contrast, the number of form factors might increase. Currently, we can only provide two form factors because if we had three or four different architectures, we would face serious shortages of software on every platform. To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models.
The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples. Whether we will ultimately need just one device will be determined by what consumers demand in the future, and that is not something we know at the moment. However, we are hoping to change and correct the situation in which we develop games for different platforms individually and sometimes disappoint consumers with game shortages as we attempt to move from one platform to another, and we believe that we will be able to deliver tangible results in the future.Then, when answering a direct question about NX:
We will not announce any details about NX until 2016. I used the name "NX" during our joint press conference with DeNA on March 17 because we thought that our announcing the business alliance with DeNA to start a smart device business could result in such misunderstanding as "Nintendo is making a transfer to smart devices because it is pessimistic about the future for dedicated video game systems." I intentionally chose to announce the development of NX so early because I wanted to confirm the fact that we are developing a new dedicated video game platform, that we have never lost passion regarding the future for dedicated video game systems and that we have bright prospects for them. Though I cannot confirm when it will be launched or any other details of the system, since I have confirmed that it will be "a dedicated video game platform with a brand new concept," it should mean that we do not intend it to become a simple "replacement" for Nintendo 3DS or Wii U.From these answers, we can gather this much: NX will not simply be a handheld or home console; Nintendo wishes to have the flexibility to offer the right consoles for as many countries as possible; having two consoles to make games for has impeded Nintendo's ability to deliver games for both consoles quickly; Iwata favours a model like that of iOS or Android, where multiple devices run on the same platform.
Your question also included the "current notion of thinking about home consoles and handheld devices." When it comes to how dedicated game systems are being played, the situations have become rather different, especially between Japan and overseas. Since we are always thinking about how to create a new platform that will be accepted by as many people around the world as possible, we would like to offer to them "a dedicated video game platform with a brand new concept" by taking into consideration various factors, including the playing environments that differ by country. This is all that I can confirm today.
From here, the pieces fall together quite nicely. NX will surely be the name given to the new platform on which multiple Nintendo devices run. Nintendo will be able to release their handheld and home machines as often as they feel necessary, to whichever markets will respond best, and down-res some games to work on less powerful devices. We've already seen two examples of Nintendo release more powerful versions of the same hardware - the DSi and New 3DS - so the concept shouldn't be too foreign. We know that Nintendo has been experimenting with getting the 3DS to run within the Wii U's framework, with some success. It wouldn't be too surprising if the Wii U is considered part of the NX generation either.
This would also mean no more of the difficulties with Virtual Console between generations, as games will be attached to an account, which can then download the game to every device that will come out in the future. The real question may be not with digital games, but physical games. I suspect Nintendo will do something along these lines: every disc has a unique code attached to it, so when you put it into your console, that unique code will be attached to your account. You can then download the game on other devices that are attached to your account (as long as they are capable of playing the game). If you want to sell the game or lend it to a friend, you can unattach the game, and every copy of the game on all your devices is locked out. Each copy can only be linked to one account at a time. This puts it on par with digital, and seems like the kind of approach Nintendo would use.
Looking at these two approaches from Microsoft and Nintendo, they actually seem rather similar. The only real difference is which devices are their focus, which is a result of the history of both companies. In both cases, everything seems to be pointing to a significant shift away from releasing one console every five or six years, towards emphasising the software platform on which multiple devices will run, released regularly.
This is, of course, no guarantee of being true. Check back in a few years from now.
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