Media Pressure and Games vs. Movies
Susanna told me something the other day that made me think quite a lot of things about video games and the media and my brain created a lovely tangent that inspired something to blog about. The subject of our conversation, though not this blog, was the offensive webcomic drawn of Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond. The comic itself seems to be removed from all known hosts (surprise) but what I read about it (and Ubisoft’s reaction to, for some reason, the Something Awful forums) can be read here.
Pretty sure the reaction to this is kind of self-explanatory. It’s a horrible thing to do, of course, and I could probably blog/rant about it all day, so for now let me stick to what I really wanted to write about. I told Susanna that I haven’t been following Assassin’s Creed (or really a lot of games) over the holidays because of lack of consoles in my house (T_T), being broke, and playing World of Warcraft. So she told me that it was “kind of disappointing” which I was surprised and sad to hear, since I’d wanted to play it.
So anyway, while my brain stewed over this webcomic, I looked up the game on Wiki to see what had been the horrible flaw that would make someone so upset as to publicize their angry web art in such a way. This is what I found, summarized:
- The average (Metacritic) review for the game is 83/100
- EGM is the only listed review that was below 70% though there are a couple other mentioned that are around the 70% mark.
- Several reviews were for very high or perfect scores – X-Play, Game Informer, GameSpot, for example.
- Complaints listed seem to be about lack of fast-paced action, stupid AI, and repetitive combat (one-button combat)
I was pretty surprised after I read this. There was no “The game broke all the 360s that came out” or “The game was only 3 hours long” or “The game only had a small number of levels” or anything that usually killed a game. I guess what I was expecting to see was that the game failed miserably, but Ubisoft is quoted as selling more than 2.5 million copies, which is higher than they expected. To put this number in perspective, I started (further) digging on Wiki, looking at things like “Best Selling Video Game Franchise” and then, “List of best-selling video games.” As far as games go, this is no Halo 3 (over 8 million copies) but as far as OTHER 360 games go, it’s well within regular margin (the same estimate as Bioshock, Oblivion, and more than Dead Rising, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4). (I’m not making a similar PS3 comparison due to lack of data and the fact that the console has only sold 13.something million games so far, which is like a fraction compared to the 360.) To put Assassin’s Creed sales in the same perspective as other games – this is the same number of Guitar Hero 2 (PS2), Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 4 (PS2) and quite a hoard of other games. So the sales aren’t really a failure, in fact the sales are better than expected. I figured by this stage that Susanna was talking about what she heard by word 0f mouth and rather than fill this blog with a huge section on further research into that I think I will get on with what I wanted to say.
This game had a huge buildup. At least a year ago while I was still at Full Sail, people were talking about it excitedly. I remember seeing new videos released at E3 and huge discussions about them on G4. People were constantly talking about this game for one reason or another – the graphics look great, the gameplay is open, there’s a somewhat-almost-famous girl (Kristen Bell) starring in it, the story is historical… Everyone had something they liked about it. The hype was immense and the pressure put on the game to be incredible was palpable.
This is not unlike what happens to movies. Blockbusters are often given near-ridiculous amounts of media attention to try and entice people to come see the film. Let’s relate this to the current “mega hype” movie Cloverfield. (The upcoming info sourced from this article.) The movie was first given a strange teaser preview before Transformers, which was anticipated to be another huge blockbuster movie, guaranteeing lots of viewers to said teaser. For months it floated around the internet as “Untitled J.J.Abrams Project” and plenty of other names, which gave it a level of mystery unlike most hyped movies. And here we are at its debut weekend with all the pressure – and it’s broken the record for movie releases on this weekend, and has made (so far) over $44 million. This is phenomenal and I’m sure there are many parties happening in California because of it 
Of course, there are MANY equally-hyped movies that just do absolutely horribly and people try very hard to forget it ever happened and wish they could erase it from their resume. A lot of these movies are especially close to home for gamers (BloodRayne, anyone?) but the list would be immense if ever fully recorded… Batman & Robin springs to mind, but I remember quite a lot of wasted brain cells on trailers for movies like Catwoman, Premonition, and SO many “Christmas Movies” it’s not even worth mentioning. Movies fail all the time. I have heard (though now I’m not sure where…) that it was something like a 1/4 success rate and studios quite often expect the other 3 movies to fail. But they have to make them anyway in case they do well and just to make any money at all.
Major game publishers are probably in about the same position, but game developers (the poor saps writing the dialog, programming the AI, and bug testing the crap out of it) would be hard-pressed for such a situation. If they anticipated 3/4 of their products to fail it would be near impossible to even get funding for development, or media coverage, etc. Add in the fact that it takes most developers over two years now to create a “hit” game (state of the art graphics, gameplay, etc – note, this may still fail miserably) that would mean that in 8 years of your life you only managed moderate success one time. But an actor, a director, a screenplay writer could create how many products in 8 years? The 1/4 ratio would be easy then. Sure it would suck if your brainchild flopped, but barring EXTREME disaster it wouldn’t kill your resume forever. A development cycle that short for a video game would allow us some room for error, but of course it would also flood the market with crappy games – just like every time I go to the movies I stare at the other things that are playing and imagine all kinds of physical pain I would rather endure than watch said film.
Video games can’t succeed without the media, at least not yet. Psychonauts received immense critical praise but sold fewer than 100,000 copies causing a class-action lawsuit of Majesco shareholders against the company in retaliation. Common explanations for this sales flop usually involve bad marketing and a high ($50) price tag. Well, plenty of games are $50 (though now $60 is the high end price for 360/PS3) and they sell enough to keep the shareholders happy and the CEO from resigning, so I’m inclined to say the media is key. Without the media, no one will care about your game in the quantities required to keep you employed. Sad, but seemingly true.
But what can be done about it? Without the media, there’s only word of mouth, usually over the internet these days. While that helped put Psychonauts on the map (that, and Steam) it didn’t get the CEO his job back or the shareholders their money. It’s only one of many elements required for good game sales. The thing about Assassin’s Creed is that it had the hype and the media pressure, so it sold copies, and it sold them regardless of content. A lot of people complain now about the game not being what they expected. This isn’t any different from being upset at how a movie turned out compared to the previews, but here you’ve just shelled out $50+ and several hours (6+ usually) on a game to finish it, and you’re unhappy. A bad movie is usually less than $10 and less than 2.5 hours. The movie industry can get away with people being unhappy because you haven’t lost enough to be really upset about a movie being bad. It usually won’t bar you from going again. But when a studio only puts out a few games a year if they’re lucky, frequently just one every 1-2 years, your audience is unforgiving and has a good memory. Personally, my most recent total upset was SNK vs Capcom Card Fighter for the DS, which had a game-killing glitch that prevented you from finishing the game or even collecting all the cards. Sure, Capcom isn’t really to blame, but I guarantee everyone who bought SNK vs Capcom would be hesitant over buying another title from the same studio.
It’s almost as though the studios are expected to fail at a 3/4 ratio instead of the games. In school I was constantly told that the turnover rate of employees is frequently 2 years, just like the development cycle length, go figure. I was frequently told that you have to be careful working at a startup company because everything is riding on that first game, for them. All kinds of words of wisdom that have led me to believe that no one really expects studios to be around that long. They expect you to merge with others, get bought out by giant enterprises who will take and manipulate your IP, (Goodbye Sigil, hello Sony Online – Vanguard also upset me a lot last year)… pretty much go through hell and back on the way to finding enough money to either switch industries or retire.
I could go on, and someday I probably will. The harsh critical nature of the average gamer is something else that fascinates me – if X person tells me a game is good, I probably won’t believe them because I’m smarter than they are, but if they bitch about a game enough I’ll believe that it’s bad and not spend money – and it’s very relevant to this topic. But I think for now I’ve gotten my point across. Without the media, games have little to no chance, and it’s massively more important than the game content itself as far as successful initial sales, just like a movie at the box office. But the consequence of failure is harsh compared to Hollywood.
Addiction – design success or failure?
Let me preface this entry (and its very somber title) with a slightly more lighthearted reference. I was inspired to write about this idea based on a link my friend Andrew recently sent me – Starcraft Origami. Yes, that’s right. Take a moment and enjoy the pictures following the brief introduction. In case you’re unfamiliar with Starcraft, it’s a real-time strategy game originally released by Blizzard (now Activision-Blizzard) in 1998 for the PC. And if you haven’t ever heard of it, I have to assume you’ve definitely never been to Korea. While Starcraft was immensely popular worldwide following its release, it is still incredibly popular in South Korea. Entire television channels (yes, that’s plural) are devoted to showing nothing but professional Starcraft matches. Tournament winners are treated as celebrities. The game’s success was not, as some may have expected, overshadowed by the release of Blizzard’s next RTS, Warcraft III. No, Starcraft had carved a niche in the heart of too many gamers to be replaced so easily. In fact, when I recently signed onto Battle.net (Blizzard’s online gaming support) to play a game with my friends, I noticed an immense number of game rooms and players, even nearly ten years after the game’s release.
So what magical formula did Blizzard follow to create a game that remains popular nearly a decade later? They’re definitely not telling, and their current enterprise World of Warcraft seems to be echoing Starcraft’s success as much as it can (it is a different genre, after all, and Starcraft still has the epic fanbase it has ever had, apparently regardless of the rest of the gaming world). But what’s so special about these games? Is it the complex, well-written storyline present in both? Are Starcraft’s factions balanced more fairly against each other than later RTS games? Is the gameplay easier to understand quickly and therefore hooks the player into realizing its other great strengths? I could go on. The truth is that we’re never going to narrow it down to one specific trait, because despite the great number of other well-written, balanced, easy to get into games that have come out in 10 years, the fact remains that everyone still loves Starcraft. So maybe it’s something special.
This brings me to the real point of this article. As a game designer it is often your job to create a product that one never wants to put down. A game that sucks you in and never lets go. A game that isn’t too complicated for ‘newbies’ but one complex enough to interest industry veterans. In other words, the perfect game. (I find it interesting that, technically speaking, Starcraft is far from the perfect game. The artificial intelligence in free-play maps is so extremely predictable that one winning strategy can usually be duplicated on any map with equal success. And of course, its graphics are 10 years old as well. Is this a sort of ‘answer’ to the gameplay vs. tech question haunting the industry? Well, I can hope, since I do like to create those complex storylines…)
But what is the price of creating the perfect game? Though fanatical game playing has yet to really grip the average American family, it has definitely created quite a stir in the media throughout Asia. A child dying due to neglect from WoW-addicted parents. Another boy committing suicide due to an apparent addiction to Warcraft. These are just two examples of the problem using my Blizzard reference as a sample. Massively Multiplayer Online games are notorious for gaining near-cult followings, especially in Asia, which is probably some of Blizzard’s motivation for adding parental controls limiting the amount of time a child is allowed to stay logged into the game world. Chinese versions of WoW have such changes included as – no bare bones showing on an Undead player; no player corpses lying around, as they always turn immediately into graves – apparently China wants their internet to be seen as peaceful and harmonious. Though this could easily flow into a censorship debate, let me circle back around to my point, here. Chinese players are easily among the largest group of ‘addicted’ players in the world simply because of the sheer population size of the country. There are probably enough WoW players to create an army of considerable size in Asia alone (and they would probably storm Blizzard if Starcraft II was cancelled!). So the idea of ‘game addiction’ means quite a lot to these other countries, but as a game designer, what should it mean for us?
There is no reason we should stop trying to design The Perfect Game. I will continue trying to create The Perfect Story and suit it to The Perfect Genre and The Perfect Graphical Style, et cetera. But it is a topic that we cannot by any means avoid. It almost would seem to me that game addiction is a sign of total design success, because that means the product is so appealing as to seem better than real life or at bare minimum, better than all other forms of relaxation/fun. However, if your game is designed so perfectly that it causes the death of children in other countries, well, is that really worth it? Having never worked on such a game, I can’t really say. It’s definitely not the fault of the designer if the game is so addicting that people lose track of real life. By all means common sense should prevail in all these situations and people will log out in town once in a while to check on their children.
However I think it’s clear that common sense is not among the most reliable variables in human nature. So by no means should a game designer ignore the potential for disaster in their product. Luckily for me (and my peers) a game such as WoW has paved some of the way by implementing parental controls and generally suffering through controversy and outrage so that later games won’t have to. But what about the seemingly-ancient Starcraft? Maybe no one has killed themselves over it (or at least it’s never been broadcast anywhere I’ve seen) but the game has single-handedly altered the culture of an entire country. So if you wanted to be broad about the definition, yes, it has also created a nation of addicts.
What can we do? Spread real-life-over-virtual awareness? Sounds silly but I have to wonder if it’s going to become necessary as the new generation of gamers, raised on WoW and ready to play games 24/7 takes over the market.
Plight of the NPC
Let me preface this by saying that I began playing the MMO World of Warcraft a few months after it launched in 2005. I then took a break towards the end of that year, for college, and another one extending through part of 2007 until just a few weeks ago. Now that I have graduated college I found myself in a strange state of… dare I say it? Near relaxation at least, during the holiday season. I have started playing again, and I’ll admit, I’ve enjoyed it. (For anyone who wants to know: My main characters have always been Alliance, specifically a Druid, but lately I’ve deviated towards Blood Elves.)
Anyway, while rejoining the game after my lengthy hiatus I was struck by how many things had changed. Specifically, details relating to Non-Player Characters, NPCs, and more directly I mean those that are non-combatants. People who are there just to give ambiance to the scene, to provide a useful service, or who play a vital role in the progression of a quest. Throughout my time in Azeroth I have seen many an NPC, to be sure – the game world is very large and there are quite a few well-populated cities on both continents – but yet I could not tell you a single detail about any of them.
Let me step back a moment here and explain why I even noticed that the NPCs were extremely unnoticeable in the first place. Several years ago, before the 360, Wii, or PS3 graced us with their presence, I was very sick for several weeks and mostly confined to laying around the house, so of course I played video games. Lots and lots of them. Specifically I was sucked into and hopelessly addicted to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for the XBox. Morrowind is by no means simply an earlier version of the new Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but that is a debate in and of itself that I will not go into here. Suffice it to say the game suffers (from a modern eye) from dated graphics and occasionally buggy gameplay, but in terms of design, story, and specifically NPCs, it is a marvel to behold. I was drawn into the world so completely that I can still describe specific quests, level layouts, and even pieces of dialog when I have not really played this game in over 3 years.
I can tell you that in Balmora you have to help an old woman get rats out of her house, and she is obsessed with pillows. There are pillows all over her basement and I believe she even gives you one as a reward for killing the rats. I can tell you there is a man standing near the water in another smaller town whose quest involves getting his pants back from a particularly strange person who has stolen them. I could go on and on at length about this game’s more finite details, but again, that would be a topic in and of itself. So for now let me use these two quests in particular for my discussion.
