The Plan vs. The Reality
Posted: 2010-05-30 07:10pm
A little thread to shed some sheer bile against the hilarious and utter failures of gaming.
Headsets and Live Communications
The Plan - Developers believed that by forcing communication headsets with online enabled titles and systems, they would usher in a new age of online teamwork and co-operative play. Team games would be more organized than ever, with team mates verbally covering each other's backs, guarding objectives and carrying out precision attacks even in games as frantic as twitch shooters.
The Reality - Little more than an oral vitriol conveyor. The idea that live comms would magically lead to a world of casual yet organized team games is little more than a pipe dream. It turns out that a combination of poor UI design, lack of enthusiasm for team play, and simple inexperience damn communication headsets. Spending eternity in a level of video game hell reserved for trash talking, racist insults, and pre-pubescent 12 years olds vehemently projecting their pent-up teen angst.
Did anyone survive? - Headsets are great for talking to friends you already have. If you have them that is.
Game Journalism
The Plan - Like that of movie critics, gaming journalism would pledge its life to the goal of protecting consumers from artistically or technically ignorant, broken, or downright offensive titles. The journalists would shoulder the burden of playing before Joe Consumer, thus alerting him to a title that may be below standards. Immune to the effects of marketing, journalists would in fact combat the efforts of publishers to market bog standard or broken titles.
The Reality - Like that of movie critics, gaming journalists are frequently tools of the marketing. Journalists usually work for companies who either work closely with video game publishers, or are even owned by a publisher. Thus creating an enviornment where the journalist is essentially not allowed to trash talk any game except for those which are overwhelmingly poor. Or any game which the publisher has already pre-ordained failure/success for. When not accepting large sums of money to say laughably nice things, journalists are often fanboys themselves. It turns out the most helpful type of reviewer doesn't need a push at all, and will staunchly defend and propagate a genre or design of his favor. He will give a game 10/10 reviews basically for being just like a game he played when he was a kid.
Did Anyone Survive? - Reviewers tend to be useful to get the overall gist of a game's quality. Usually in the review you can occasionally find a useful sentence or two that actually describes the game. Unless the reviewer self-contradicts himself a lot. Which is more common than you would think.
Metal Gear Solid
The Plan - Hideo Kojima's magnum opus. A game with an enticing world of slick stealth action, against the backdrop of an epic storyline. Playing as Solid Snake, the player will work his way through enviornments populated by realistic, challenging enemies who are satisfying to evade as they are to defeat.
The Reality - Rarely amounts to much more than a glorified puzzle. 90% of game is basically understanding the patrol route of each guard and timing your movement around them. Controls are clunky, and performing simple actions usually leads to ridiculous cases of Snake walking right into a guard's back, or being unable to draw his pistol while he is doused in automatic fire. Storyline is totally borked, clearly didn't get beyond the first storyboard. Plot quickly loses coherency while making references to invisible points and characters that never really mean anything. Merely being a way for the plot to disguise its disorganization as some kind of master plan.
Did Anyone Survive? - It took all the way to the 4th game to finally make the series a little bit exciting. It also took all the way to the 4th game for journalists to realize that Kojima basically stopped writing the story years ago, and has been mailing post-it notes to the script writers on ideas he had while sitting on the shitter at the local bar.
Headsets and Live Communications
The Plan - Developers believed that by forcing communication headsets with online enabled titles and systems, they would usher in a new age of online teamwork and co-operative play. Team games would be more organized than ever, with team mates verbally covering each other's backs, guarding objectives and carrying out precision attacks even in games as frantic as twitch shooters.
The Reality - Little more than an oral vitriol conveyor. The idea that live comms would magically lead to a world of casual yet organized team games is little more than a pipe dream. It turns out that a combination of poor UI design, lack of enthusiasm for team play, and simple inexperience damn communication headsets. Spending eternity in a level of video game hell reserved for trash talking, racist insults, and pre-pubescent 12 years olds vehemently projecting their pent-up teen angst.
Did anyone survive? - Headsets are great for talking to friends you already have. If you have them that is.
Game Journalism
The Plan - Like that of movie critics, gaming journalism would pledge its life to the goal of protecting consumers from artistically or technically ignorant, broken, or downright offensive titles. The journalists would shoulder the burden of playing before Joe Consumer, thus alerting him to a title that may be below standards. Immune to the effects of marketing, journalists would in fact combat the efforts of publishers to market bog standard or broken titles.
The Reality - Like that of movie critics, gaming journalists are frequently tools of the marketing. Journalists usually work for companies who either work closely with video game publishers, or are even owned by a publisher. Thus creating an enviornment where the journalist is essentially not allowed to trash talk any game except for those which are overwhelmingly poor. Or any game which the publisher has already pre-ordained failure/success for. When not accepting large sums of money to say laughably nice things, journalists are often fanboys themselves. It turns out the most helpful type of reviewer doesn't need a push at all, and will staunchly defend and propagate a genre or design of his favor. He will give a game 10/10 reviews basically for being just like a game he played when he was a kid.
Did Anyone Survive? - Reviewers tend to be useful to get the overall gist of a game's quality. Usually in the review you can occasionally find a useful sentence or two that actually describes the game. Unless the reviewer self-contradicts himself a lot. Which is more common than you would think.
Metal Gear Solid
The Plan - Hideo Kojima's magnum opus. A game with an enticing world of slick stealth action, against the backdrop of an epic storyline. Playing as Solid Snake, the player will work his way through enviornments populated by realistic, challenging enemies who are satisfying to evade as they are to defeat.
The Reality - Rarely amounts to much more than a glorified puzzle. 90% of game is basically understanding the patrol route of each guard and timing your movement around them. Controls are clunky, and performing simple actions usually leads to ridiculous cases of Snake walking right into a guard's back, or being unable to draw his pistol while he is doused in automatic fire. Storyline is totally borked, clearly didn't get beyond the first storyboard. Plot quickly loses coherency while making references to invisible points and characters that never really mean anything. Merely being a way for the plot to disguise its disorganization as some kind of master plan.
Did Anyone Survive? - It took all the way to the 4th game to finally make the series a little bit exciting. It also took all the way to the 4th game for journalists to realize that Kojima basically stopped writing the story years ago, and has been mailing post-it notes to the script writers on ideas he had while sitting on the shitter at the local bar.
