No matter what you think, IGN is right.

[tuoyo]

Gnizmo said:

tuoyo said:

Well you are wrong to assume that 1. shattering records means maximum effort has been put into something or that 2. adding something could not make something a better game or cause it to have increased sales.

1.  NSMBWii is an amazing game but a little more effort (to give other options besides two toads would have been much appreciated).  It would have required little additional effort but Nintendo took the view that adding more characters was too much of an effort and the game would sell well no matter what.  That is lazy anyway you look at it.  That is what IGN is complaining about.  I agree with them.  And if anyone other than Nintendo had done this (on PS3 or 360 - they would never put in the effort to make anything close to the quality of NSMBWii on Wii) then many who are defending Nintendo would be talking about lack of effort from third parties.

2.  Adding one feature in a game to satisfy a certain number of customers does not mean that the other bigger group of customers are not satisfied.  By that I mean let's assume most owners of MK Wii don't care about online (I think this is very wrong anyway and you are in the minority).  By taking these into account and making a quality local multiplayer game that does not mean they can't also put in the effort to make a quality online element for the smaller group that do care about online.  It is lazyness to be only able to meet the needs of one group.  If the developer is putting maximum effort then both elements of the game should be strong.  That is where the lazyness view comes in.  You feel as long as they satisfy your needs then they haven't been lazy.  I feel that the game should be absolutely complete in everyway for it not to be lazyness.  Complete depends on the nature of the game of course.  Metroid Prime is a single player exploration game so it is complete without multiplayer.  Wii Sports Resort is a multiplayer game and so for me it is not complete without online.  If it had online it may be that I would have never ever played it online.  But many would.  And so by not catering for that group that is lazyness.  That lazyness to me has come about from too much success and the decision that the increased sales online would bring does not justify the extra effort.  That is like me saying at work that I am not going to get an end of year bonus for putting maximum effort into a piece of work so I am just going to do the bare minimum required.  That is lazyness without a doubt.

 

You misinterpret me on both points. First off, if the game were half assed, and not absolutely amazing in the eyes of the consumers it would not sell so well. There is no room for debate in this. If people were just buying games at random we would see an even distribution pattern across all games as it is down to random chance. This does not happen though. As such, the game experience must have taken far far beyond no effort, or they got extremely lucky. Looking at how well crafted the NSMBWii levels, and mechanics are I would fall on the latter.

Your second point is idealistic non-sense. You have to release a game after a certain point. Blizzard, the king of delays, have canceled multiple games because the industry evolved to the point where the game could not be seen as good by the market as a whole.  This is not a matter of simply slapping on online. You cannot simply throw a few extra programmers onto a game and add new features. Software development simply does not work like that. They could have added online play, but then that would take time from something else. Development is not free, or magical. As such you prioritize what does, or does not fit the game and allocate resources from there. That means sometimes reducing the list of features to focus on the game play.

On the first point I never said the game was half assed.  I am not even sure IGN with their anti-Wii bullshit ever said such a thing.  I will use a completely unrelated thing to prove why I am saying they are lazy.  The world record holder in the 100m and 200m - Usain Bolt.  He does about 3 hrs of training a day whilst his contemporaries may do as much as 6 hrs.  No doubt he is lazy and I think he has acknowledged that himself.  But his natural ability means he doesn't need to put in the same effort as the others.  If he was not as gifted as others he would be putting much more effort.  But there is no need for that is the decision he has made (and who can disagree with that).  Likewise Nintendo know they do not need to polish and perfect every small detail of NSMBWii because as it is the game would sell gazilions as it is.  If it was a 3rd party making the game they would put in the extra effort to e.g add a story and add more characters because they would need to add as much as possible to generate more sales (and we know how much the Mario name adds to sales - which is why I wish my Super Smash Bros was called Mario Smash Bros - although that raises the question of whether it is acceptable to have Pikachu, Zelda, Link, etc and still give it the Mario name).   The point about the lazyness is cutting corners where possible and where you feel it won't add any sales.  It is not the whole game that IGN is saying is lazy and for me it is just the lack of characters.  A small issue but it still illustrates the lazyness argument.

As for your second point many developers of big HD games have not had problem developing games which have all elements complete and without one element being slapped on and Nintendo achieved the same with Mario Kart Wii and Brawl and Mario Strikers.  If they chose not to do it elsewhere it was because (a) either they decided the extra effort wasnt worth the extra sales or (b) it didn't fit the game eg Metroid Prime.  I don't see how online doesn't fit Wii Sports Resort so in that case it is (a) for me.  Same goes for a non=Nintendo developed game - Mario & Sonic at the Olympics which till today I still curse Sega for depriving me of the pleasure of what would be a wonderful experience of 8 player online 400m races.