Saturday, September 13, 2008

Remember How Excited Team Play Got Me...?















It was very short lived.

Yet again, EA Sports (more specifically, EA Canada) dropped the ball on this one.

Check out the letter I posted on the EA Forums in an attempt to convey my feelings. They got me.

Dear Electronic Arts,

In your most recent blunder, you hurriedly pushed a product to retail and then queried your customers to be your own QA Testers. In my most recent job hunt, I became privy to the fact that you do, indeed, hire QA Testers at your Redwood City office, a mere 100 mile drive for me.

As a developer who is constantly dropping the ball on the proper testing and inspection of your product, I implore you, hire me. Obviously, you're looking for my help when it comes to the quality of your product. Why don't we just make this official and let's shovel some money in my direction, I figure if I have to let you know about every single mistake in your games, I might as well get paid for it.

Furthermore, on my gaming blog, I detailed a business model that would be perfect for you guys. I won't post a link, but if you're so curious as to what I'm thinking, then let me know.

Your Friend in Jesus,
Dave

Okay, you can continue
Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Evolution of Team Sports



















Let me paint a scenario for you, and then you tell me how this sounds. You and a few of your friends sit down to play some Madden on Xbox Live and you all join into a game and take control of an entire team. Forget computer players, 11-on-11 smash-mouth football, at it's finest.

Does this sound far-fetched to you? Well, EA Canada has got quite the surprise for you.


This year's iteration of the NHL series, NHL 09, is due to hit stores any minute now, and with it comes a feature that hasn't been seen in the sports video game genre yet: 6-on-6 team play.

This means that you and five of your friends can all connect from around the country, and take control of a player on the ice in a legitimate virtual sports experience. You'll go on the ice, come off the ice, sit in the penalty box if you made a no-no, you'll experience, almost verbatim, what an NHL player would during a game.

The possibilities are endless.

This could be applied to all sports games, allow for people to take control of an entire team and let the onus fall on the player. Let's face it, you can only recreate the way a person reacts so well, there's bound to be inconsistencies and mistakes in trying to emulate human behavior, there's no getting around that.

One of the more prevalent problems with sports games today is a glaring problem with AI in video games. Allowing the player to take the ridicule from other gamers would help relieve a lot of pressure from game companies.

With Madden, offensive lineman fail to block defensive lineman and people like me hate it. By allowing humans the ability to control the offensive line, my disdain for the game would decrease ten-fold.

Let me be pissed at my friend who's playing left tackle, as opposed to game code that's telling my left tackle to react a certain way. You can trust me, EA, I promise I'll only take it out on some guy who's gamertag has 12 x's and something in Klingon.

So how about it people? Sound good to you?

Okay, you can continue
Sunday, September 7, 2008

Because Who Doesn't Love Achievements?

Who doesn't love the XBox 360 Achievement sound? It's addictive!

That little bloo-doop goes off, and YES! How many points did I get?



Achievements really are a fascinating thing. The points are a bragging right of sorts. I know when I put the gamercards on the site, I felt kind of inferior.

Here I am sitting with a measly 10,000 points while my buddy Dave seems to rack up 2,000 a week.

But how badly should I really feel?

It's easy to argue in favor of achievement points. The aforementioned bragging rights are certainly a plus. It can create an extra competition between friends to see who can get the most points out of a game.

They also keep gamers on their toes for different ways to approach problem-solving in a game to unlock the points.

But that's not good enough for me.

Going achievement hunting is a nice way to breathe life back into a game. But what happens when that life is sped through? What's the benefit when gamers aren't appreciating what a game is trying to do, and they stop absorbing what's being presented?

Gamers need to be reminded that these things aren't designed to be a race, or a chore. Restarting checkpoints because you failed to unlock an achievement shouldn't be the focus.

If we continue to focus on how to get 1000/1000 on a new game, I fear we're going to make another entertainment medium as disposable as new music is today.

We have people running through games simply for the points. With services like GameFly, gamers are getting games one day, unlocking points, and shipping them back the next. And they're playing games that were widely accepted as bad!

I'm talking about games with terrible reviews across the board that are receiving playing time just to boost a gamerscore. Everyone knows movie-based games are awful, yet people play King Kong for the easy points.

Developers don't need to be told that it's okay to continue making bad games as long as there are achievement points available.

I prefer to enjoy my games. I played Rainbow Six: Vegas for months when I first got my 360 without fully understanding the achievement system. There was no rabid pursuit of points, and no sense of obligation.

My gaming experience was pure pleasure.

Aside from that, a lot of achievements are simply annoying. There should be no sense of accomplishment with the time that was clearly wasted looking for 100 flags throughout Jerusalem in Assassin's Creed.

But I must confess—I am guilty. I beat the game, and continued roaming the open world to throw knives at guards.

All it did for me was turn the game into a job, though. There may have been things I wanted to do, or friends I could have played another game with. Instead, I wanted to get my 25 points for ridding Acre of repetitive thugs harassing civilians.

I hate to take away from what is definitely an innovative system. But I believe the developers need to make more challenging achievements.

If 1000/1000 is the very best, then the difficulty it takes to achieve such a score should reflect that. It shouldn't be something that's easily attainable by simply playing through the game.

All for a bloo-doop.

Okay, you can continue