Have you wondered why there are so many crappy games out there? And forget about the crappy AAA Industry games, I am referring to the crappy mobile games, crappy social games, crappy download games you find on WiiWare or other download services.

I keep getting into arguments with this one young game developer. Here is where he is coming from…

He can make serious dough programming for some corporation somewhere. However, he feels unfulfilled by this and the stress does not cancel out the money he gets. So he wants to do something ‘creatively’. And he doesn’t feel like making some company out there rich. He wants to make HIMSELF rich. Or, at least, to make enough passive income so he can develop whatever he wants.

OK. Fine. Wonderful.

So his next step is to target the ‘new expanding market of the time’. It keeps changing every year. This year, it is ‘Mobile Games’. He thinks Mobile Games are going to be the big ticket to his success. Maybe so. Maybe not. He does not seem aware or concerned that every other game developer, professional and amateur, is targeting the same exact market he is.

But what I find distressing is his total dismissal of ‘craft’. Apparently, he automatically thinks that his small little game is going to sell. I tried telling him that most games do not sell. In order to sell, you need to develop your craft. Knowing how to program a game does not mean you know the craft of making a game.

Let me put it this way: what is more common, programmers or great game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto? The market clearly shows that Miyamoto is the rare bird. But Miyamoto is not an engineer. He is not a programmer as we know programmers. The value of Miyamoto is, of course, in his skills of craft.

The reason why Blizzard makes so much money is because their financial tower is founded on the rock of excellent game craft. Blizzard games do not sell because of slick marketing and packaging. When World of Warcraft came out, the MMORPG market was dominated by Everquest. But WoW succeeded at the end because it was very well crafted. It was clear much passion went into the game.

In any entertainment medium, you must excel at the craft. Just because someone knows how to play an instrument doesn’t mean they know how to write an entertaining song. Many people practice in garages or, more importantly, in taverns to “get good” at their craft before they try to sell it.

It is the question of talent. How do you know you have the talent to make entertaining games at all? And how do you know how to build this talent, and to build up your craft? In life, people have different talents.

I can assure you that writers do not sell the very first book they write. They spend agonizing years developing their craft before it is ’sell quality’. And these writers are painfully embarrassed of the first works they tried to sell. Musicians do not try to sell their very first songs. Artists do not try to sell their very first painting.

So why do game developers try to sell their very first game?

Of course, I know why they try to sell it. My point is why does the discussion of talent and craft never enter the equation? Programming skills are not game development skills. Game development skills are very different than art skills or programming skills. Just because you are programming something doesn’t mean you know anything about how to make a fun game.

Incredibly, these younger game developers are looking down on the craft of game development. They are very excited to discuss technology of the engine, various business models, and ‘analysis’ of the ‘expanding market’ (because the market they are targeting is ALWAYS expanding). But if you try to get them to discuss the craft of making games or what makes games fun, they just don’t care. It is incredible to observe this.

You could say there are only two types of games…

Games people buy no matter where they are- An example of this would be Nintendo’s games. People buy Nintendo systems for many of Nintendo’s games. People buy an Xbox 360 or PS3 for a game like Call of Duty or Halo. No matter where these games would appear, people would buy them no matter the platform. No matter what platform Blizzard’s games appeared on, people would follow.

Then there are games people buy just because of the platform. These are the typical fad games. Mobile gaming is the prime example of this. People are making mobile games not to make good games or interesting games, but to put it on a platform that people already have and hope people will buy it. This is why there are so many iPhone games coming from people trying to make fast money.

From the Nintendo perspective, I can say they look at it more in the sense of craft. You might experiment, you might dare to do something different, but you never ‘chase after a market’ or just plop down a game because it is a popular platform. Nintendo is responsible for putting out software that drives growth for its platforms.

To sum up: these games are crappy because they believe the growth of the platform equals growth of the market. And they couldn’t be more wrong.

Now I understand why we kept hearing this whining that “Third parties can’t sell on the Wii”. They thought putting out any software on the Wii would mean the Wii tidal wave would lift their crappy software. But consumers are far more savvy than that (and none of these game developers respect the savviness of the consumer).

The best way for sustainable success in gaming is to have people come to your game. By chasing these imaginary ‘expanding markets’, these companies and amateur developers are merely placing their game where the crowd is at the moment. There is some logic in doing this, but if your game is lacking in the craft and talent, you are dead meat.

Game development is a craft just like music composition or writing or directing. You might be a master programmer, but you are a rank amateur when it comes to the craft of game development. And game development is far more than just messing with stuff “until it is fun”.

The original game makers became so by first making games for their friends. They then tried selling their copies. And, over time, they got better. The point is that they were already learning the craft by making games for their friends. They knew they had a gift for entertaining people. They did not assume their programming skills equaled entertainment skills.

An analogy to video games would be board games. Do board games require a craft? Of course they do. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise. While there is nothing to ‘program’ in a board game since there are no computers, there clearly is a certain talent and skill set required to make a board game. And this craft takes some time to develop. It does not spring out of nowhere (at least, not usually).

So how in the world did video games get assumed that they require no ‘craft’ to be made? A game is not determined by how you manipulate the technology of the computer but in how you manipulate the psychology of the players. Video games are about people, not about machines. All games are fundamentally about people.

Why do you want to make a game in the first place? I ask them this, and they give the answer because “I like doing it” to “I need to make some money first.” If you want to make money, that is easy, just don’t quit your day job. If you just want to make money, don’t go into video games. It is far too risky.

So we end up with “I like doing it.” And what is it you like doing? Apparently, it is creating a program for themselves. But any game developer worth his salt will tell you that games are ultimately designed by the user behavior. If users are being frustrated by something and you are not, the correct answer is that you need to fix what is frustrating people. The consumer experience is what ultimately designs a good game, not some crank programmer with visions of creativity.

Before you go off creating a game, why don’t you develop your craft first? Try making a flash game or something small and see if anyone is willing to play it. If people will not play your stuff for free, why do you think they would bother PAYING for it?

Don’t get too excited over this latest Gamasutra story of an analysis saying PS3 is going to ‘outsell everything else’. It is beyond absurd.

It is tempting to laugh at them and say, “Stupid analysts!” But I want you to ignore that temptation. These people are shrewd indeed.

There are many analysts out there than the ones we hear about. However, we never hear about them. Why is that? Well, they are not speaking to the press. And why not? It is probably because gamers are not going to be buying their expensive analysis reports.

So why do the analysts that do speak to the press (and the game journalists who dutifully copy and paste what is sent in their email box) in the first place? It is highly likely that the objective is aimed at targeting public perception. Why else would you speak to the press? Investors don’t get their information through ‘game journalists’, so why in the world are analysts talking to the press?

No one is so stupid as to say the stuff that is in that latest ‘analyst report’. What is being said is being done so deliberately. If you mock them, that too is playing into their hands. The target is to change public perception.

Besides, analyst reports are SOLD because they have VALUE. They are not GIVEN AWAY FREE to the public unless the analysis has no value. The fact that this is being given free to the press already means that its value is nothing.

Why would an analyst give something away ‘free’ to the press? The answer to that question should be the context in how we look at these ‘analyst reports’ that corrupt our gaming news.

Instead of responding with “LOL stupid analysts”, we should consider there is a very tactical reason why they are giving away these “reports” to the press.

Dear Malstrom,

Today, I witnessed a phenomenon that I’ve only read about in your
blog. While I’ve always seen some trepidation towards the star-finder
Mario games, I’ve never seen a person outright reject the games
before.

To give some background on this situation, my brother recently moved
into my place after a fairly short divorce process. To help pass the
time, he’s been playing the Wii, and trying to find something he
likes. He is a true lapsed gamer – he stopped playing shortly after
Super Mario 64 hit market, and really never showed interest until
recently. He really enjoys Wii Sports Resort, and  polished off Mario
5 in a matter of days. Lately he’s been enjoying Muramasa: The Demon
Blade.

Anyway, that’s not important. Today, my brother was looking for
something new to play. He pulled Galaxy off of my shelf and asked how
it was. I gave my two cents on the title (“I didn’t enjoy it as much
as New Super Mario”), and off he went. I decided to watch his
reactions. He absolutely loved the sight of the Mushroom Kingdom, but
once the round surfaces came in, he seemed to lose interest quickly.
After about ten minutes, he just put the remote down, looked at me,
and said “That’s not a Mario game. I don’t know what the hell it is,
but it’s not a Mario game.” He gave me a strange look when I said the
sequel was due out in May. “Why would they make a second one,” he
asked. “Why couldn’t we get more games like the other Mario? That one
was awesome!” I simply didn’t have an answer for him.

Really, I’m afraid to see how he’ll react when he sees that the next
“Metroid” title isn’t really a Metroid game.

The biggest business mistake in the entire history of Nintendo is not the Virtual Boy, not pissing off Sony with the PlayStation, but the decision to stop making Mario games. They should have known something was off when Mario 64 didn’t sell as strongly as Super Mario World especially in territories like Japan. Now, the reason why Nintendo stopped making Super Mario Brothers games is no more complicated than Miyamoto saying “We’ve made these games. We don’t want to make them anymore.” Nintendo developers are obsessed over 3d Mario. They kept making 3d Mario instead of Super Mario Brothers because they confused themselves liking it with the market liking it. There is no reason to make Super Mario Galaxy 2 as Galaxy 1 didn’t make much of an impact. I’d even argue Mario 64 was grossly overrated in terms of its impact on video games.  “Well, Malstrom,” a sniveling voice will say, “what other game could have had more impact in 1996?” Oh, how about Quake? How about Command and Conquer? How about Warcraft 2? There was no reason for real gamers to stick around on consoles like the N64 when there were more exciting things occurring in other areas. The births of new genres like RTS and FPS along with network and Internet gameplay beat the pants off all the consoles. Even the Tomogotchi phenomenon at the time with its dot matrix graphics were more interesting than Mario 64. This doesn’t imply that Mario 64 didn’t have its charms with Peach’s castle, with jumping through paintings, and moving around in 3d for the first time. But consumers saw the game as a spin-off, not as a replacement for Super Mario Brothers.

If Nintendo made Super Mario Brothers 5 for the N64, I would have bought a N64. If Nintendo made Super Mario Brothers 5 for the Gamecube, I would have bought a Gamecube. But Nintendo did make Super Mario Brothers 5 for the Wii and look at the market reaction to that was. Reggie Fils-Aime was on TV prior to holidays of 2009 and was confident they were not going to run out of Wii as they had a huge pipeline. So the sales success surpassed Nintendo’s projections. Not like they are complaining, of course.

I know it is NOA’s job to sell whatever comes out of NCL, but I hope no one at NOA truly believes that people who bought Mario 5 are going to transition to Galaxy 2. Tell me they are not that naive!

The entire premise of why the DS and Wii exist in the first place is to combat disinterest to video games. So let us examine the ‘disinterest’ part. I’ve always tried to come up with a few questions in my head if I ever, one day, walk down the street and run into someone from Nintendo. Like prior to Mario 5, I would have asked Miyamoto this question: “Why do you hate us? Why do you hate people who like Super Mario Brothers?” After all, not making a Mario game for almost twenty years is a gigantic ’screw you!’ to these people. The only thing that would top it would be to put the Tanooki Suit in 3d Mario and deliberately leave it out of 2d Mario.

My question to someone high up at Nintendo would be:

“Why do you people keep associating disinterest with lack of accessibility? What you are seeing is not disinterest in video games but a BOYCOTT from consumers. It is not that gamers are becoming disinterested in gaming, it is that they are actively boycotting them and protesting the direction gaming is going by refusing to buy them.”

This will likely receive an interesting response. They will probably respond with, “How do you know it is a boycott?”

“Why do you think stigma against gaming was rising? Let us take a microcosm as an example. Look at World of Warcraft which debuted in 2004 to great success. Over time, a great stigma is growing about the WoW users. This stigma is coming not from people who do not understand the game but from former players. It is the former players who are generating the stigma, not the never-before-played gamers. The never-before-played-gamers probably still don’t know what WoW is. It is the former users who are mocking those who still play the game and joke what a colossal waste of time it is.”

They might say, “But how does disinterest equal a boycott?”

“3d Mario is the perfect example of it. There are millions of people who are not just disinterested in 3d Mario, they are actively boycotting it by refusing to buy it. And when Mario 5 comes out, all these millions of people mysteriously reappear into the market. When Galaxy 2 fails to sell to these people, the only logical conclusion is that these people are actively against 3d Mario. They are interested in video games, interested in Mario, but they do not want 3d Mario.”

Then I’d probably get the response from Nintendo: “Yeah? Well, all you are going to get is 3d Mario! More and more 3d Mario! 3d Mario for handhelds! 3d Mario for consoles! You won’t see another 2d Mario for twenty years! You see, Malstrom, we here at Nintendo do only what pleases Nintendo’s software developers. They want to make 3d Mario. Who cares what you want to buy?”

One thing is for sure is that game developers, be them in Nintendo or in the West, are no longer connected to the public. The reason why you would make a game that entertained you was because you were a member of the public. If it entertained you, then other people would be entertained. This rule no longer works for video game developers. And I suspect I know the reason why.

When gaming was younger, game developers were more normal. Gaming was considered ‘non-existent’ as an industry. ‘Game developer’ was not even considered a profession let alone a respectable one. These game developers, then, were more down to earth and connected to the real world.

Today, they are being swallowed by the machine in perfect Luhan fashion. They have spent so much of their adult lives with computers that they literally are losing touch with the public. If you think I am resorting to hyperbole with this, consider how ‘excited’ game developers became over the HD consoles that had better processor power or HD visuals. People whose lives are dominated by computers would, of course, think better computer technology was a big deal. And these people could not see the Wii rocket coming and even after it went off, they are still in denial.

So what happens when a video game developer makes a game that excites himself? Who else is getting excited? Only by those who have been swallowed by the machine, those who the computer dominates their entire lives. This would include message forum dwellers as well as anime freaks. But the vast public outside remains unconnected.

Some are realizing just how out of touch they are with the general public. They want video games to emulate board games in that they never strive to become mainstream. They want video games to be like board games as a niche hobby. They do not want to connect to the general public because that would force them to change their own thinking inside their head.

Video game developers making games that entertain them only works if you are not eccentric. The longer you make video games, the more eccentric you become so the games become more and more ‘off’ when connecting to the general public. So we get to a common scenario where a complete outsider makes a huge breakout hit while an industry veteran won’t know what the hell is going on.

In order to battle disinterest in video games, video game developers are going to have to make war against their own eccentricity. Most of the games that the ’swallowed by the machine’ crowd love are ones I just shake my head and wonder, “What reality are these people living in?”

There are people inside Nintendo who do not understand why people do not see 3d Mario as a Mario game. They will just say it is a matter of ‘accessibility’. But no, it is because people really do not want to play 3d Mario. No matter how many times Nintendo makes them, the market doesn’t respond in the same way.

In order for 3d Mario to become seen as a proper Mario game, many radical changes are going to have to be made. First off, the ’star finder’ element needs to be completely scrapped. Mario is an action game, not a scavenger hunt game. The goal should be getting to the flagpole, not getting some star. The goal is to keep moving in one direction and having many paths and choices to get past the obstacles. 3d Mario does not allow this.

The hub world needs to be scrapped for a proper map screen (I see this has been done in Galaxy 2). There can be no repeat of worlds. No one wants to play the same exact world again but with slightly minor differences. They want a new world each time like in a real Mario game.

Power-ups need to have offensive capabilities. The power-ups in 3d Mario tend to suck because there is no offensive abilities in them. The Bee Mario, for example, had no offensive capability. From fire flower to raccoon Mario to Hammer Brothers Suit to Yoshi, Mario’s power-ups were offensive (except for frog suit but it was supposed to suck outside of water).

If you went to Mars at the end of the 16-bit generation and arrived back in  a similar spaceship and looked at Nintendo’s output, you would come to the conclusion that Nintendo was a paralyzed company due to having no creativity. The problem is not the constant Mario and Zeldga games. The problem is that the latter 16-bit and N64 Era has placed in stone the way these series are run. If there is a 3d Mario, it is always molded in the same fashion as Mario 64. It does not occur to Nintendo to try something different. Zelda games are all modeled after Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time. With Metroid, there is some obscene obsession of Super Metroid which was a low point for the series coming after Metroid I and II (and reflected in Super Metroid’s sales which is probably why it was a decade until the next Metroid appeared. If Super Metroid sold better, you would have seen the game appear on the N64 no doubt).

Remember Starfox DS? All that game was were the stale ideas from the canned Starfox 2 project. Who cares about ideas for today’s games hatched during the 1990s? Nintendo developers seem stuck in a time warp of the late SNES and early N64 Era.

As for Metroid: Other M, you are right to be afraid of what his reaction will be. There is going to be intense hostility for Other M. It is beginning to look like the game will destroy the Metroid franchise. Samus Aran could become such a joke that in order for the Metroid franchise to survive, the games might have to exclude Samus Aran entirely.

I like these emails showing of personal antedotes of people, men or women, who are not happy with 3d Mario or with the N64 spirit of gameplay. The ones who are for Super Mario Brothers and against 3d Mario are not grumpy older gamers like myself but women. Games that sell well on the Wii do so because they can sell to women too. Look at the Wii’s top selling games, and you will find that women love all of them.

None of this should be surprising. Nolan Bushnell pointed out, prior to the Wii’s launch, that violence lost the female gamer. Female gamers were all over the place during the Atari and NES Eras. But during the 16-bit generation as gaming moved more into the Mortal Kombat direction, more and more games were not being made for girls.

Come to think of it, women play World of Warcraft (where I don’t recall them playing previous MMORPGs) which has to be a key reason for its immense success.

Gaming is depressing because no one is interested in making classics anymore. Industry men were never interested in making classics. It was always a new yearly incarnation. But what is depressing is that game developers no longer have the passion to make classics. They have passion, instead, for ‘new business models’ and ‘hot expanding markets’. When confronted with the success of a game, such as from Blizzard, they will respond, “Well, if we had the time to spend and polish on the game like they do, we too could make such a game.” Maybe so. But where does that time come from? “Companies like Blizzard are in the inevitable position where they don’t have to rush out their product.”

Blizzard was once a small company like any other company. How did Blizzard become Blizzard? How did they reach the stratosphere where they could spend as much time as they want on a game? “World of Warcraft,” some might say. But Blizzard was Blizzard before World of Warcraft. Blizzard was Blizzard before Warcraft 3, before Diablo 2. When was Blizzard’s turning point? When did Blizzard stop being typical game company to become ‘OMG’ company?

The turning point came with Starcraft.

You can’t say Warcraft and Warcraft 2 since Blizzard was considered an equal among various companies around that time. There are many companies that have a ‘hit game’. The pattern is that the company then descends into mediocrity either due to Industry men overmilking it to developers thinking they are artistic geniuses and ruining it. Success can be more fatal than failure in bringing down a company.

So Blizzard is riding high off of Warcraft 2. As I’ve told you, the company was so small that I, the amazing Malstrom, would test out Warcraft 2 patches on Kali with Blizzard people. They didn’t have the staff at the time. I could call Blizzard’s offices and the answering machine had an Orc as the voice. “Hellooooo…..”

Since Warcraft 2 was so successful, Blizzard wanted to stick to their strengths (RTS) but make something different (not Warcraft 3). So they made a sci-fi RTS which they called Starcraft.

Keep in mind reader, at this time, there was a huge rush to make RTS games after Warcraft 2 and Red Alert were shown to be huge successes. Everyone was making RTS games at the time. You might remember only a few from this era such as Age of Empires, Total Annihilation, or Dark Reign.

So when Starcraft was unveiled to the public, this is what we saw:

Yes, folks, the above images are Starcraft. Someone who might not have seen these images, especially a young person, is probably already spewing, “Lies, Malstrom! That is not Starcraft! That is just Warcraft in space!” And you are exactly right. That is just Warcraft in space.

And this is where part of the Turning Point for Blizzard came. The reaction from the public was ‘meh’ to Starcraft. If Blizzard was run by Industry men, they would have said, “We must meet our quarter deadline! Ship it!” If Blizzard was run rampant by out of control artists, they would have said, “These people just do not understand our genius. Ship it!” But Blizzard did not ship it. They went back and began doing a complete overhaul.

Those Alpha images are pretty interesting outside of how bad they are. The art, even back then, was pretty interesting and very colorful. The units are interesting to look at even if the Zerg look like ladybugs on steroids.

Starcraft was first showed off (in the images you see above) at E3 1996. Starcraft vanished afterward and reappeared in 1997 completely transformed.

Now Mr. Reader, do you recognize your Starcraft now? “Yeah. But… not everything looks right. There are different units and different art. The engine is the same but there are many differences still.” Oh reader, you don’t know how right you are! When presented to the public again, people got excited about Starcraft. At this point, Industry men would say, “Ship it!” At this point, some artists would be so satisfied that they got a good response so they would ’ship it’. But clearly from seeing the above images, the game was not shipped in that state.

Here are the races for Starcraft at this time. Can you see the huge differences?

Some of the units make you do a double take. For me, it was the science vessel. Who knew that the science vessel used to walk around? Good heavens, just look at it!

Was Blizzard trying to make the Colossus back then but couldn’t pull it off? Is that why the Science Vessel began to fly? And why would a science vessel, of all things, have giant legs anyway? What was Blizzard smoking?

Anyway, I think Blizzard had to have been humbled by the E3 1996 reaction to Starcraft. They were not satisfied when Starcraft was unveiled again. Check this out from the archives:

This guy hasn’t a clue what Starcraft is. Starcraft, when it was released, was not aimed at the elite RTS players (such as myself) at the time. It was aimed as broadly as possible. The mentioning of Smash Brothers and Counter-Strike is funny since those games, too, were sneered by the fans of the genre at the time. Smash Brothers was not considered a ‘real fighting game’ by fans of the genre at the time.

What happens is that these broad games bring in new players. And these new players play it and begin to play it competitively. The result is the growing of the genre. These new players do not understand that a game like Starcraft was intended for new RTS players. Since they have always played it, they think the game was just how it was.

Super Mario Brothers would, today, be considered a ‘casual game’ because in 1985 it was intended for new gamers. Gamers at the time had personal computers. The people who bought NES systems were children and their families. It was children, not regular gamers, who made Super Mario Brothers a success. These children do not realize that Super Mario Brothers was made in a specific way to entice new players. They just grew up and become grumpy fat game journalists and think every game should be ‘for them’ and not try to get new players. You know what we call a game series that does not try to get new players? We call it a ‘dying franchise’. And we don’t want Starcraft to die.

One day, Blizzard will make another MMORPG. If the historical pattern holds true, when WoW fans play this new MMORPG, they will complain that while it is good it is not as good as the masterful raid experiences of the top levels in WoW. They will complain that the new MMORPG is designed for ‘casual audiences’. What these fools do not grasp, as they certainly do not grasp it now, is that World of Warcraft is precisely a ‘casualized’ MMORPG and was designed so when it was released in 2004.

Another of this guy’s complaints is that Starcraft is ‘dumbed down’ because of something like being able to select more units than you could in Starcraft 1. Instead of requiring the “skill” to send many units that it took in SC 1, in SC 2 one can just highlight them all and send them in one mouse swoop. I thought this was a typo at first but he actually believes that. I suppose if we extend this logic to its natural conclusion, if you could only select two units at a time, then the game would be REALLY awesome in how much skill it would require.

What is a game? A game, including video games, is about the psychology of the players. It is not how fast you press a button. None of that is ’skill’.

Curiously, I see no mention of Warcraft 3 with many of these elite SC 1 people. Bizarre how they avoided Blizzard’s last RTS.

Anyway, Blizzard becoming Blizzard had several Turning Points but the exact moment had to have been scrapping completely the Alpha of Starcraft that used the Warcraft 2 engine. How many game companies will completely shelve titles? Warcraft Adventures was also completely canned. In any other company, even Nintendo, they would have shipped it somehow to not let what was done go to waste. It amazes me how they canned the entire thing.

And I cannot let this post end without putting up my favorite Starcraft video. Even to this day, my jaw is hanging open just watching it. I don’t know where to begin in how absurd this video is. Perhaps it is the dude wearing special glasses and a special coat to play Starcraft. Perhaps it is the fans gathered around to just watch a giant screen. Perhaps it is the spectators waving their thingies and dressing up the part. Or perhaps it was the SCV rush. “Sunken colony! Sunken colony!”

This is the most absurd and surreal game video I have ever seen and likely will ever see.