Trending downward

I do not like the current trends in gaming. I remember a time when we paid for a game and that game was ours. We could do whatever we wanted with it, had access to all parts of it, and never had to worry about things being added, blocked off, or expanded upon.

I know this is making me sound a bit like an old fuddy-duddy, and I probably am, but as I sit here playing Tiny Village (one of the few examples of micro-transaction games that I feel does what it does in a more or less inoffensive way), it has struck me just how much games have changed. I'm not one of those people that demands nothing ever change, but I definitely am one of those people that is concerned that things are changing for the worse.

These days, it seems like every game is hiding half of its content behind a price tag. Between MMOs requiring a monthly fee (admittedly, this is a dying trend, which I can't say I'll miss), free-to-play games having micro-transactions, Facebook games requiring you to spend money on in-game currency, and the overabundance of DLC and expansion packs that have been coming out for every single game, I'm concerned that game developers are losing what it means to make a full, complete, stand-alone title that requires nothing out of the box...if it even /has/ a box.

Now, I'm not going to say there's no place for the Zyngas and Popcaps and MMOs of the world, but I am going to say this: there are far too many of them, and it's troubling. I know free to play games make serious, /serious/ bank, but--and maybe I'm starting to sound like a long-haired artsy hippy type--I feel like gaming needs to be something more. When Zynga hides 90% of its game behind micro-transactions, I feel like I'd almost rather pay $10 up front and have access to most of the game from there, and if developers hope, as I do, that gaming can really come into its own as an art form, eventually they are going to have to think about more than just making money. I mean, they can't continue to do what they do without making money, of course, but there has to be a line...

A good example of this is a game called Pixel Mall. This free Android app is a fun little clicky time-waster in which you drag your piggy mall owner from shop to shop, helping customers and checking them out (not like that, you pervert). The point is to get them in and out as quickly as possible in order to build up customer appreciation and level up your mall...and, of course, earn money. The money you earn in the game can be used to purchase more shops, level up your mall owner, and buy other upgrades that generally make your job a lot easier and allow you to keep up with the ever-increasing work load as customers stream in like mad. One thing that is available for purchase in this game is additional helpers, adorable little characters that apparently can perform the same tasks as your piggy mall owner. I say apparently because I cannot buy any of them...all but one are only available if you spend real money on it. The last one is available for in-game money, but he is quite expensive to purchase and getting enough money to purchase him is difficult without having additional help. And let me be clear: you need additional help in this game. You /will/ hit a wall that makes the game all but impossible without spending your real money on this virtual game and I find myself wishing I could just buy the game for $10-$15 and have everything unlocked from the start.

Now, I know that this is a good way for game designers, especially untested newcomers, to make money, but it seems like every new game that comes out is hiding most of itself behind these micro transactions to the point that I cannot even try and play any of these games because I simply do not have the money (I'm spending it on League of Legends, natch). And this, boys and girls, is where we're going to run into trouble...only the heavy hitters, the Zyngas, are going to make any money on this model...because people are going to keep sinking money into the games they already play. Eventually, no matter how good a micro-transaction game is, it's going to fall flat because people just don't have the money to spend on it.

Another example of this trend is the over-abundance of MMOs on the market today. I know I've hashed out this topic already in this blog, but I have to touch on it again because I just heard that the new Neverwinter Nights IS GOING TO BE A GODDAMNED MMO. This is /hugely/ disappointing to me because I'm starting to see 90% of the major RPG releases in any given year being MMOs...and then dying out slowly and painfully because they can't compete and they're just plain poorly designed. I know MMOs make tons of money, particularly the gammut of free to play ones that are being made or just converting over, but that's only if they actually become popular. Ask the makers of Warhammer Online, Aion, Rift, and Age of Conan how much they wish they'd just made a single-player RPG and sold it for $60 now...if you can find them in the wellfare line.

(as a note: yes, I know they probably turned a bit of a profit on half of these as they went free to play, but I can't imagine it's more than they would have made if they'd just made a simple single-player RPG). MMOs make a lot of money, but they're also HUGELY expensive to produce. Making a single-player RPG would likely be cheaper, so I have to believe the profit margin would be considerably higher if it was a good game.

And what of the fabled non-massively multiplayer RPGs (I really should come up with a phrase for this...minorly multiplayer RPGs maybe)? The games where you can connect with one or two friends and romp through a huge, Skyrimian world together completing quests and experiencing an epic plot? That's right, there aren't any. In fact, there are very few multiplayer games on the market these days that aren't massively multiplayer or some kind of deathmatch shooter. You can't tell me Skyrim wouldn't have even more appeal if you could join your friends, even if you were just following them around and enjoying their plot with them, even if your character was an utterly insignificant hanger-on.

I have a bit more of a love-hate relationship with DLC, downloadable content, and expansion packs. I love the concept, of course. I love the idea that game developers can continue to add more and more to a game. After all, eventually you have to call a game done and ship it off...and while, yes I like my stories to have endings, it's usually fun to add more to it, more stories to tell, more places to visit, more characters to interact with. However, I have begun to notice DLC acting more and more like a crutch than a tool. Take a look at Fable 2. This was a game that was billed to be a gigantic, immersive sandbox in which the sky was the limit and anything was possible. What we got was a bland, characterless experience that you could finish in a weekend of casual play. This was a clear example of a game that was not finished. A game that /needed/ DLC to be the full game it was intended to be. This is a problem. I don't want game developers to get into the mentality that DLC can allow them to ship out an incomplete game (with the caveat that this is fine if and when they start charging less for said incomplete games) because DLC costs money...yet another example of parts of games (that you have already spent money on) being hidden behind a price tag. This was even worse in Fable 2 when you realize that the DLC added /nothing/ to the game. It was all insipid and vapid foolishness that added /nothing/ to the plot except lame jokes and uninteresting (and, more importantly, unrelated) side stories. This was especially troubling when the game ended on such a massive cliffhanger that it made the whole thing feel like half of a story. This is the exact wrong way for DLC to be handled, but I get the feeling more and more than bad developers are relying on it to allow them to ship out incomplete games and bilk people out of more money...and when other developers see that this works, they're going to have a hard time not following suit.

I never thought I would be old enough to say this, but I miss the good old days. The days when games came in a box and not in the internet in overly expensive chunks. I want to go back to a day when it was considered the norm to just give us a complete game right from the start. Maybe money is the problem, maybe game developers are seeing how much money they can bilk from us and foaming at the mouth in anticipation. Maybe they're lazy, realizing just how much they can procrastinate on in the production of a game. Or maybe it's just the way the market's going. Whatever the case is, I see it as a troubling road to travel down.

The end justifies the means

Here is all I am prepared to say about the ending of Mass Effect 3: amazing in concept, legitimately disappointing in execution. The claims of false advertising made against Bioware can actually be considered entirely legitimate, but the community is unnecessary hypocritical in leveling such wrath against Bioware, one of the few good developers left, when we have had to suffer so many broken promises by lesser developers (and Peter "Here, have the sun...oh, is that a lightbulb?" Molyneaux) and have nowhere near the coordinated rage. Is it because Bioware is amazing that we are unable to cut them any slack? I find this to be an unfortunate state of affairs. When you are a teacher and one student routinely gets A's on every single test, but gets a C+ on their final, you do not hold them back a year. You assume they simply made a mistake, perhaps chide them for it, and move the fuck on. When a student, let's call him Little Petey for example, continuously gets C's on his assignments (while continuously making the same mistakes every single time and promising that he'll get an A+ on the next one), you do not let up in your criticism for him because it's a lost cause. You continue to work on him until he actually lives up to his goddamned promises.

I think we can cut Bioware some slack on this one. The ending is legitimately disappointing, but there is enough there, as well as an /amazing/ game preceding it, that I feel like they've earned it.

That's all I want to say on the matter. I love Bioware. I would hate to see their good name blacklisted because of one lackluster ending to an otherwise fantastic game.

On Flawed Characters

So I've been watching a lot of cartoons lately, Young Justice being one of them (obviously, if you read my last blog entry). Normally I just watch television shows on my computer, either on Youtube or by downloading them (shhh...don't tell). Well, I enjoyed Young Justice so much that I actually shelled out the money to buy it on DVD--that and Walmart had a great deal: 12 episodes for $15--and even got up one morning (afternoon) to watch the newest episode. As I did so, I caught an episode of the new Thundercats. It wasn't great, but it was interesting enough to entice me into watching more of it, so I downloaded the episodes in an attempt to catch up. I used to watch the original Thundercats a bit, and I was curious to see how they reimagined the series.

While I don't intend to write a review of the Thundercats series, it would be remiss of me to not at least say what I thought of it: a resounding meh. It's got some interesting themes and it has a bit of nostalgia value. Unfortunately, it suffers from some hit and miss writing and animation, falling prey to what I like to call the Disney syndrome--if you watch the Disney animated serieses like Gargoyles and Aladdin, you'll notice some episodes are amazingly animated and others are just garbage. Thundercats' variance in animation quality isn't quite so gaping as some of the Disney shows I used to watch when I was younger (I swear to God, some of those old Gargoyles episodes were animated by a seven year old). As for the writing...in general it's been somewhat vapid, but there have been some really significant moments that made me continue watching. Overall, you could do worse, but it's far from perfect...which leads me to the subject of this blog: flawed characters. Specifically, flawed heroes.

I love a good, flawed hero. Perfection is so overrated, after all. A "perfect" hero is one that we do not relate to, one that we do not necessarily care about. We don't care about them because they just don't seem real. They're not us, or our family, or our loved ones. They're not someone we could actually meet and have a drink with. They're just caricatures of a human being. A character with real flaws comes alive to us. After all, overcoming our own weaknesses to persevere and become greater than what we are is what it means to be human. It's interesting. If the character is already great, already someone who has overcome their weaknesses, there's no journey for them. This is particularly important in serial adventures, television shows that are expected to continue for a dozen episodes or more. We have to believe the character is going to progress somewhere, so common practice is to make the characters, particularly the heroes of the adventure, start out as green novices. Usually, this manifests as a character who is reckless and brash, jumping into danger without thought, though just as often they can be lazy or arrogant or heartless or any number of other flaws to overcome.

Thundercats is no exception. I don't remember the old series in any great detail, but I do remember Lion-o was a fairly unremarkable character. He was regal and brave and kind and gentle and all the good stuff we expect in our heroes...he didn't have any room to grow. Lion-o in the new 2011 series is the exact opposite. I don't mean to imply that he's not kind or good or brave or whatever, but he lacks the almost hyper-competence that his 80's counterpart had. He's somewhat foolish, often making silly mistakes and being goaded into dangerous situations, and more than a little reckless. Neither of these things are especially uncommon--I could have been describing any number of heroes from any number of series. The problem with Lion-o is that he doesn't always act foolishly--and, in fact, is quite often reasonably intelligent--but he is always made to look the fool. From the very beginning, he's painted out to be a bit...different. When his adopted brother, Tigra, is attending sword fighting lessons or tactical classes, Lion-o is off in the slums, bumming around with the locals and trying to get his hands on miraculous "technology" that everyone seems to think is a myth. Having an outsider be thrust into greatness is nothing new,and can be a powerful writing tool, but to continue having him remain the outsider is problematic unless you find a way to conform the rest of the cast to his way of thinking--the surprise twist that the outsider was right all along. The technology thing never really panned out because it turns out that it really /does/ exist and half the supporting cast ends up having more of an affinity for it than he does (in fact, Lion-o never really /uses/ technology after the first episode...Tigra has a gun and Panthro pilots the Thundertank, as well as making general repairs of it). They all seem to magically know how it works when it appears in their lives again...turns out the stuff is everywhere. There's even a race of robot bears hanging out not too far from Thundara. So they can't really fall back on that (turns out you really /were/ wasting your entire childhood, Lion-o, if your brother who hated technology is better with it than you are). Lion-o also has a soft spot for other species, wheras the rest of the cast seems to have a cat-centric sort of speciesism about them, believing the Thundercats are meant to rule Third Earth in some great empire. However, even this seems to blow up in Lion-o's face every time he exercises it...and this is where the character development starts to get a bit wearying: everything Lion-o /does/ ends up being wrong...even when he's being perfectly reasonable and intelligent.

A few examples:

In one episode, when faced with overwhelming lizard forces, Lion-o decides to turn tail and run instead of face them (entirely reasonable in my book!), hiding in a bramble forest where the enemy mechs can't follow. Tigra complains that this seems cowardly. At the end of the episode, Lion-o is bolstered by their experience in the forest and decides to charge back and fight the enemy head on after all. His decision is reinforced by the timely appearance of the long-lost Panthro and the Thundertank, which saves them.

In another episode that seems to be focused on Tigra's jealousy of his brother, who possesses but has failed to earn everything Tigra has ever wanted, Lion-o suggests that they enter a besieged city under the cover of night rather than risk a frontal assault. This is perfectly reasonable and everyone but Tigra agrees with him. After all, the lizards have far greater number...and hostages that they threaten to kill. Well, it turns out that the stealth approach was doomed to fail...but when Tigra brashly runs away to disobey Lion-o's orders and drive the Thundertank right through the front door, he saves the day. His brashness is rewarded with yet another victory and another chance to save Lion-o's tail (something he's constantly reminded of), while every time Lion-o attempts something so brash, he's punished for it.

After a major victory against Mum-ra, the enemy armies have begun to see an increased number of defectors. Lion-o has devised the tactic of ambushing enemy squads and releasing the soldiers, giving them the option to go home to their families or continue fighting a war that they have no stake in. Again, a sound tactic, but one that is met with criticism from his fellows...though only light criticism. The real trouble comes when Lion-o attempts to save a group of these defectors that have been captured. Both Tigra and Cheetara make the rather cold-hearted (and uncharacteristic in the case of Cheetara) comment that they shouldn't waste their time trying to save lizards that would probably just turn on them, but Lion-o argues that it's the right thing to do and charges in to save them. Well, it turns out this was a trap and once again (not that the prisoners turned on them, but they were being used as bait). Lion-o is punished for making what is obviously the "right" decision while the others get yet another "I told you so" moment.

In general, this is the feeling I get from the show. Lion-o makes constant mistakes while his supporting cast racks up a never-ending supply of "I told you sos." While there is nothing wrong with having a flawed character, having one that is /constantly/ proven wrong while his supporting cast is constantly proven right is trying. Having that same character constantly proven wrong while making perfectly reasonable, even well thought-out and logical decisions is especially troublesome. Of course, the show is still in its infancy. The equivalence of a single season has passed (maybe even less...Young Justice is up to episode 23 and it's still technically in season one, Thundercats only has 16 episodes to its name) and I'm sure, especially given the events of the last two episodes, Lion-o will continue to grow. There wouldn't be much to entice us if he was introduced at the apex of his character development...but for my part, I don't see him making a lot of "mistakes." I see the wrong actions being rewarded while the right ones being discouraged.

Maybe I'm not quite sure what I'm saying. I do feel like I'm rambling a bit, but I do know this: it's trying to see the main character always proven wrong, even when making the right decisions, while his supporting cast always seem to know what's best. Far from the writers making me grow more fond of the supporting cast, this just makes them feel like insufferable know-it-alls and Lion-o more like an unfortunate child who may never get a chance to grow.