| KungKras said: I don't like people that try to force their moral onto others. But Malstrom's arguments about quality and ciggarettes really scares me. |
While I don't agree wholly with what he wrote, he only brought it up because the email did so.
A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.
Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs
Whether you agree with Malstrom or not (personally I agree), you have to admit, he succeeded at creating discussion and controversy, very impressive
Predictions:Sales of Wii Fit will surpass the combined sales of the Grand Theft Auto franchiseLifetime sales of Wii will surpass the combined sales of the entire Playstation family of consoles by 12/31/2015 Wii hardware sales will surpass the total hardware sales of the PS2 by 12/31/2010 Wii will have 50% marketshare or more by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!! It was a little over 48% only)Wii will surpass 45 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2008 (I was wrong!! Nintendo Financials showed it fell slightly short of 45 million shipped by end of 2008)Wii will surpass 80 Million in lifetime sales by the end of 2009 (I was wrong!! Wii didn't even get to 70 Million)
| UncleScrooge said: I don't think marketing is brainwashing in the sense you use the word brainwashing. Let me put it this way: Marketing can influence people's behaviour. What Malstrom said was that marketing doesn't change people's behaviour at all. He said its only effect is that it tells you the product exists. And it's pretty easy to prove that wrong. Funny enough - the german Wikipedia entry for "manipulation" proves my point. I just checked it  Cultural differences, anyone?Oh and this could very well fill a book. I was talking about (let me put it that way) media and its influence on people's behaviour. There actually are books about that topic  |
In how I use it? My definition has only been what the definition is. But here's the deal. We are actually going to learn what Brainwashing means because no one does.
The word Brain washing is only a few decades old unlike works like "pursuading." It is a dirrect translation from Chinese and it comes out of the Korean War. It was used to turn Capatalist and Feudal thinkers to the new way of thinking in China: Communism. They developed techniques to change people psychology and ideology, which included sleep deprivation, having them live in filth, sensory deprivation, harassment and group social pressure.
Now, let's look at some commericals.
Taco, please, not those. I can't stand tacos and truck insurance.
AHHH, the penguins. Make the tourture stop!
No, not Toyota. Not 50 YEARS!
See how none of those relate to Brainwashing. This is why this argument could not be a book. This is just everyone misunderstanding what all these terms mean as well as ignorance about Marketing.
I have proven long ago that Manipulation has a bad connotation and that Brainwashing is torture. Pursuading is what marketing does. None of those try to force you to think some way or to move you like a pawn. The Progressive commercial is saying "Hey, look at all we offer." The Coca-Cola commercial is saying "Hey look at the cute penguins and polar bears. Does this make you think "Coke"". NOTE:The point of commercials like that one is to get the brand in consumers heads. This way, they will remember the brand thanks to the cute little commercial. The Toyota commercial says "Hey, we are reliable, you can count on us." This is marketing, not what you guys have been going on about.
What malstrom said was right. Marketing, or, more so, advertising and marketing campains, as designed to get the word about the product out there. It is trying to bring aweness about the brand, but that only matters if you have a good product. If Progressive sucked, then people would not buy it. If Coca-cola sucked, then people would not buy it. If Toyota sucked, then people would not buy it. The product matters more. The two most influencial business books of the last century (Blue Ocean Startegy and Innovator's Dilemma) are focused namely on the product and the company's value, not their advertising.
What the German Wikipedia says is irrelivant becuase this is an English word and Malstrom speaks English and you are on an English message board. In English, it has a negative connotation. Even still, your interpitation of the word (and comparing it to persuading) may still be wrong. Regardless, it is not relevant to this discussion; it's more of a way to dodge my arguments and not have to admit your wrong. Cultural Differences is not an argument.
Smashchu I'm sorry if I worded my statement in a way you got it wrong but that was clearly the case. And you also didn't get my very first statement about brainwashing the way I intended (the sentence "that's like saying (...)" was meant as: "That sounds like he's trying to tell us..." I wasn't using the word influencing as brainwashing. But Malstroms blog post (especially the things about cigarettes, etc.) sounded like he was denying that marketing had any effect on human behaviour. Maybe that sounded different to you but going by this thread a lot of people took it that way.
Ok once more: I know marketing isn't brainwashing. I hope that was clear enough. I put the word in double quotes because of that. It was a scare quote.
In the whole thread I (and others for that matter) have been talking about how media can indeed influence human behaviour and influence our actions. The way Malstrom worded his blog post made it sound like this doesn't happen but it indeed does. Everyone else in this thread understands this which is why they more or less agree.
Nobody ever tried to prove that marketing is brainwashing people. You just misread it. In 3 posts already I tried to explain to you that I wasn't using the expression "brainwashing" as "forcing people to do something" but as a hyperbole and a scare quote.
I also know what the definition of brainwashing is and the German word for brainwashing is a word by word translation with the exact same meaning. When I wrote about the German speaking Wikipedia I was referring to another part of your post. This was in no way related to the word brainwashing.
Additionally the english wikipedia article for "psychological manipulation" starts with the words: "(...)is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behaviour of others through(...)". And then, after two sentences, goes on like this: "Social influence is not necessarily negative. For example doctors try to persuade (!) patients (...)". All I wanted to say is that marketing is not brainwashing but still a form of social influence. But you just keep on quoting my very first statement and I repeatedly tried to tell you that I was using brainwashing as a scare quote and a hyperbole. Nonetheless, you just go on saying "you think marketing is brainwashing!" No I don't. I was using it as a scare quote. I just thought that was obvious and therefore misread your post, too.
What I was getting angry about and why you got the impression that I was trying to "defend" myselfe and dodge your arguments was something else: Yes, I'm not a native englisch speaker. But that still doesn't justify you trying to lecture me like I was a 10 year old and unable to learn the most basic things even though in my very first post quoting you I wrote that I was referring to Singer, Noelle-Neumann, etc. which I wrote to show you that I agree with you! I was talking about a completely different topic which is the influence of media on people's behaviour. And when I said you can write books about that I was referring to this. Of course you can't write a book "what is brainwashing?" or "Is marketing trying to brainwash you?" I never said this.
With you just using a little bit of good will (like interpreting this sentence: "Look at these forums and tell me marketing can't brainwash people " as a pun to those people who are so into the whole fanboy war thing that they actually sound like somebody brainwashed them - or, to put it short, as a joke and not as "I think marketing = brainwashing") we could've used our time to do better things than having annoying arguments nobody wants to read. But instead you wrote a rather arrogant sounding post in which you lectured me like a 10 year old. What did you expect? That I would just say "yes" even though I never disagreed with you?
Sorry to bring up this old thread, but I just wonder why it has taken Malstrom so long to write anything.
Has he stopped blogging like he said he would?
I LOVE ICELAND!
| KungKras said: Sorry to bring up this old thread, but I just wonder why it has taken Malstrom so long to write anything. Has he stopped blogging like he said he would? |
I think he's preparing something on the 3DS...
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
It's intresting to note that at precisely this time last year, there were no malstrom-posts for about one and half month. If I remember correctly, he that time simply got tired of writing and wanted to take a break.
|
My absence is due to two things: 1) I am slowly removing myself as a ‘pundit’ of game news and events. Time is better spent somewhere else. 2) Game development soaks up all free time. There were times where I fell asleep at the keyboard during late night coding. The reason why I champion the entrepreneur is because he gets right up and does what he is passionate about without anyone’s permission. I didn’t have to go through any website or game journalists to be ‘Malstrom’. I just made my own site and did it on my own without anyone’s permission. The same thing with game making. I’ve made games before and not much has changed for the process over these decades. The tire that hits the road is still the user experience and Human Nature does not change (if it did, then future generations would find no value in Shakespeare, Mozart, or the rest of the classics). An opportunity has presented itself so I decided to pick it up. Normally, I wouldn’t do this because everyone and their pet goat wants to do game development. I do not like doing what other people do. And I think gaming has a problem because so many young people want to get into it (which keeps salaries lower and positions more vulnerable since young, eager beavers are willing to accept low pay and bad work conditions just to “make games”). But the more I interact with the programmers and artists and all, I am realizing that I follow a very different form of values than they do. What they think is important, I think is insane. What I think is important, they do not understand. Let me give you an example. User Generated Content is something everyone hails about. “Hail! Hail! Hail!” But I see it as trash and suicide for any company to pursue (and every instance of a game company going ‘user generated content’ has shown failure from LittleBigPlanet, to Blast Works, to Spore, to the biggest disaster which was Nintendo’s 2008-2009 shift resulting in the destroyed momentum of the Wii). A better example is that they seem to focus more on technical or mathematical entertaining things. These are things that do not make much sense to the consumer. Of course, they think it is ‘correct’ because it is perfectly mathematical to them, it is Spock-like. But entertainment follows a different set of rules. This is why a successful musician, while having great ‘mathematical’ and ‘technical’ skills and mechanics, needs passion and flair to actually be entertaining. A real day example of this would be Starcraft 2′s roaches and ‘hard counters’. This is all very mathematical, makes perfect sense to the developers, and is fun to them. But in consumers’ eyes, it is not that fun. The difference between a melee and missile unit makes sense. But roaches and hydralisks are both missile units and their differences are purely on the invisible side meaning their armor, their hard counters, and so on. This is what I mean by confusing mechanical systems with entertainment systems. What is fun is what interesting choices does it lead to the player? So constantly I am on a very different vibe from these developers. They will say something and I will say, “How does this help the consumer?” They answer that it is about something else. But I prefer to force everything into a consumer context. Engines and visions are not why you are here. Customers are the reason why you are here. |
|
While creativity in games has been in decline, creativity has soared through journalists and analysts. In school, if you ever took a creative writing class, you know that it means to write whatever you wish as ‘fiction’ has less rules than ‘non-fiction’. Analysts have given up analyzing in any meaningful way and have resorted to creative analysis. What is creative analysis? It is playing make-believe that the sales data is something else entirely and then analyzing that. Since the market has decided not to cooperate with analysts, the analysts have now decided to no longer cooperate with the market. They will now make up stuff. The market says that the Wii sold more units in December 2009 than any month in the history of NPD. And then, the market said that the Wii sold out early in 2010. This, however, does not fit into the template for our analysts. So they make-believe the sales data was something else instead. Not once has any analyst acknowledged or illustrated Nintendo altering its strategy toward ‘User Generated Content’ during 2008 to 2009 and, very creatively, say this strategy was the same one used in 2006-2007. Now, why do they do this? As a Wedbush Securities analyst keeps talking, he is saying, literally, that he intends to manipulate the players in the market, e.g. “Nintendo did not listen to me in wanting to make a Wii HD.” The analyst’s role is not to manipulate the market but to analyze it. This hints at scandalous behavior at Wedbush Securities suggesting the company is making business deals with players in the market and are fabricating ‘creative analysis’ in order to re-shape investment in the market to be more beneficial for these companies. What has become more prevalent lately is creative journalism. Objectiveness used to be defined as being tethered to facts. Today, objectiveness now means to be defined as being tethered to the cause. An example of creative journalism was to paint a picture that Nintendo was going to go out of business prior to releasing the DS and Wii. There were no financial facts about this. But this did not matter. Creativity is very important to journalists these days. Who are you, the impudent reader, to stand in their way? Check out this shining example of creative journalism. Since there is no ‘war’ between Apple and Nintendo, creative journalists are just creating it anyway. Nintendo is preparing to unleash the full force of its development and marketing artillery against Apple after profits tumbled at the Japanese giant for the first time in six years. Nintendo, following the concepts of Blue Ocean Strategy, does not see itself in a ‘war’ at all and the thinking of its executives, at the highest levels, does not talk about ‘marketing artillery’ or ‘unleash the full force’. Nintendo is not Genghis Khan. Now, there have been many statements made by the top executives of Nintendo. Quoting any of these would upset the ‘creative journalism’ and ruin the immersion. Therefore, implications of behavior are made up instead. The reversal of fortunes, though flagged in advance by the company, throws the spotlight on threats to what once seemed a bulletproof business. The reversal of fortunes occurred with the release of Super Mario Brothers 5 which caused the Wii to be sold out in the United States. However, the creative journalist has decided to make up another reversal of fortune entirely. Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo president, is understood to have told his senior executives recently to regard the battle with Sony as a victory already won and to treat Apple, and its iPhone and iPad devices, as the “enemy of the future” Look at that! Quotation marks for a statement that cannot be verified but is only ‘understood’. What does ‘understood’ mean? It is another way of saying ‘I think’. This offers countless paths towards creative journalism. I can do it too: Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo president, is understood to have told his senior executives that chocolate is yummy and that lollipops “are stupid and need to be wiped from the face of the earth.” That, say analysts, may be premature. Last Christmas, almost twice as many Wii consoles were sold in the US as the PlayStation3. But games developers increasingly see Sony’s machine as having a large enough base of users to justify not making titles for the Nintendo machine. Who are these game developers? It doesn’t say. And seeing how many game developers already do not make titles for ‘the Nintendo machine’ (why not just call it the Wii? I suppose ‘Nintendo machine’ sounds more ominous), not making games for the Wii would be status quo. But creative journalism means we can make things up. This would certainly be news to Nintendo. There is no sales data to back any of this stuff up. In order for Apple to compete against Nintendo, Apple would have to have first party game developers. This is not happening and will never happen. Apple’s devices are the equivalent of VCRs and Walkmans. Nintendo, however, not only makes their VCRs and Walkmans, they have the equivalent of movie studios to make movies specifically for their own VCR player and their own musicians to make music specifically for their own Walkman. And Nintendo entertainment cannot be played on any other media playing device. The desire for an Apple vs. Nintendo war in the handheld space is a product of de-arrangement from psychotic Apple fanboys who have been reeling since Microsoft bounced back with Windows 7. By their own logic, why isn’t the Macintosh in competition with the Wii? Or the NES for that matter? PC gaming is not seen as a competitor to console companies for a reason. The same applies for handheld gaming and handheld computers. Sources close to the Kyoto-based company describe a mood of concern as the hardware and software divisions race to restore the capacity to “surprise” — a traditional feature of Nintendo games that Mr Iwata holds dear. Creative journalism also has creative sources. This ‘concern for surprise’ has been the mainstay at Nintendo since before the DS came out as Nintendo believed the games market was shrinking due to disinterest. But creative journalism wants to write it about concern about Apple and Sony instead. The company’s recent strategy has centred on creating devices aimed not just at children and dedicated — generally male — gamers, but at the whole family. Two years ago, the company claimed to have permanently altered the demographics of video games by raising the average age and the gender mix of gamers. Unfortunately, the very people it claimed to have converted — high-school girls and men aged between 30 and 40 — reported that they would rather have an iPhone than a DS in their pockets or handbags. Claimed? Creative journalism ignores data it doesn’t like and reports as fact as data it does like. A report that people would rather have an iPhone than a DS in their pocket? Nice report. But apparently the report was wrong because the sales data shows that isn’t happening. Although the company ended the 2009 financial year squarely in the black, analysts described Nintendo’s profit slide as a “triple punch”. Who are these analysts? Why are they ‘unnamed’? Analysts love getting their name in stories so why isn’t this happening? I have a hunch that these ‘analysts’ post regularly on a message forum somewhere. Despite selling over 10 million copies of the latest Mario title for the Wii console, the pipeline of new games has stopped delivering the sort of blockbusters that drove console sales to record levels in the first two years after its launch. Nintendo has also suffered from the financial crisis. Households around the world spent most of last year in full belt-tightening mode, and remain cautious about buying games with a relatively short playing-life. This passage is a massive amount of fail. Deploying creative journalism, the writer decides to just ignore Super Mario Brothers 5 as if doesn’t exist. It is like saying, aside from Wii Sports, Wii Play, Mario Kart Wii, and all other Nintendo titles selling more than ten million, Nintendo has no blockbusters! Oh no! But what is fail is that the creative journalism wasn’t creative enough. He forgot about Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus that have sold over ten million which, even by pretending Super Mario Brothers 5 doesn’t exist, still shows Nintendo had recent blockbusters. But the most striking decline was in sales of the consoles. Although both the Wii and DS have outsold their Sony and Microsoft counterparts, the lower technology of the Nintendo machines is starting to show. With far less processing power than either the PlayStation3 or Xbox 360, the Wii is suffering. Its sales were 21 per cent down in the year to March 31. Net profits at Nintendo, meanwhile, fell to Y228.64 billion (£1.6 billion) from Y279.09 billion. Creative journalism loves correlation. Saying Wii sales declined because of the Wii’s lower processing power is like saying the Wii declined because it has a funny name. You could slap on any correlation an attach it. You could say Wii suffered because it had motion controls and PS3 and 360 did not. Anything could be inserted. The reason why there is creative journalism or creative analysis is not to report on Nintendo but to influence Nintendo. But this ‘influence’ isn’t for Nintendo’s benefit. It is for other companies. It is like when they influenced Nintendo to think it needed to be ‘more mature’ on the Gamecube and that didn’t help Nintendo at all. Or that Nintendo needed to make more ‘hardcore games’ and that definitely didn’t help. One creative analyst from Wedbush Securities is complaining that Nintendo refused to put out a new console because he told them to. Creative journalists from all other are complaining that Nintendo doesn’t make games based solely on their tastes. The only thing these journalists and analysts are truly creative about is their delusions. |
|
Check out this story. Nintendo Japan has finally shed some light on the bonus DVD that’s being bundled with Super Mario Galaxy 2. The details came from CEO Satoru Iwata during an investors briefing today. You can see a (Japanese) transcript of that briefing here. Titled “Hajimete no Super Mario Galaxy 2,” or “First Super Mario Galaxy 2,” the DVD is meant to be a beginners manual for playing a 3D Mario. The DVD is being included to address concerns fans of the 2D Mario games have with controlling a 3D Mario, a concern Iwata said is prevalent. Iwata explained that one of the themes for the first Mario Galaxy was to make a 3D world that would keep players from getting lost. This is why the stages were made into spheres. Despite this effort, said Iwata, player concerns over controlling a 3D Mario is an issue that has yet to be solved in the Japanese market. In other words, Super Mario Galaxy was a failure. I told you a while back that much of Galaxy’s design decisions was to make 3d Mario sell like 2d Mario. Despite over a decade of this not happening, Nintendo will keep trying because they hate making 2d Mario and only wish to make 3d Mario. Nintendo does not understand the mind of the 2d Mario gamer at all. They still, laughably, believe the reason why 2d Mario gamers do not buy 3d Mario is because of accessibility. The true reason is because 3d Mario is not a Super Mario Brothers game at all. 3d Mario is not 2d Mario in 3d form. This is why I refer to 3d Mario more as ‘Star Finder Mario’. Super Mario Brothers has its roots in arcade based gameplay made through Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong. 3d Mario has no arcade roots whatsoever. The gameplay is more puzzle based. Mario Kart transitioned to 3d because the gameplay stayed the same and the game kept to its arcade roots. Note that this problem is also occurring with Zelda. Zelda is a hybrid of arcade gameplay and RPG gameplay (as defined as PC RPG at the time). Zelda didn’t immediately fall in sales when it went to 3d because even though it was losing its arcade gameplay, the rich 3d world made up for the RPG gameplay side. But as Zelda has become more eccentric, more absurd, with trains and bad character designs, not only is the arcade gameplay gone but so is the RPG gameplay. In order for Zelda to restore itself, it must return to its arcade roots as well as its RPG roots. In other words, it has to be an action type game where you build up your character, not a puzzle based snore where you go through a horribly written story. Game developers mistake ‘RPG’ to mean ‘Bloated Story’ which is not what RPG means. 3d Mario needs a complete overhaul. They should start with the gameplay and design of 2d Mario and just make it 3d. This means a flagpole at the end, not a star. This means each stage is brand new, not revisiting the same old stages. This means that powerups have offensive capabilities, not powerups that just move you around differently. Mario Galaxy was also a step backward for that there is no mythos in the game. The theme of space is not allowing any mythos to form. The world of Mario Galaxy is nothing but shredded pieces. Nothing makes sense. In Super Mario 64, things made sense. Peach’s castle made sense. Jumping through paintings made sense. But flying through space makes no sense. And the ‘worlds’ in Mario Galaxy do not make any sense. In order for the customer to have an adventure, they need a sense of the land they have traveled through. This is why the ‘maps’ in Super Mario Brothers 3, 4, and 5 were so popular. This is why Zelda was so popular because it felt like you were traveling a landscape. Imagine Zelda Galaxy. Yeah. Anyway, the idea that Nintendo has put out a whole DVD as a tutorial to 3d Mario is hilarious. It really shows just how broken 3d Mario is that it requires an instructional DVD! It is clear that Nintendo doesn’t understand why the Wii was successful. They say it cut the wall between gamer and nongamer and offered greater accessibility. While this was, indeed, a problem, the bigger problem was poor content polluting the gaming market. Games were games in name only as they mimicked movies and resembled pieces of Hollywood cliche debris. Games like Wii Sports or Wii Play or Super Mario Brothers 5 is what games are supposed to be and how consumers like their games. There was no game developer self indulgence, no grand story, just the game to play with friends and family. These games were not simple but were incredibly rich with replayable content. This is something the Game Industry no longer knows how to make. People want good content. With the User Generated Content direction Nintendo took, it was clear why the market soundly rejected those titles. When Nintendo decided that it didn’t want to make top class content (and have the customers make content), customers began to look at Nintendo’s competitors. Super Mario 64 was novel in both its mechanics and the new content it presented. Super Mario Sunshine had some new mechanics but the content majorly sucked. People want Mario in the Mushroom Land. Super Mario Galaxy, again with new mechanics, had its content in pieces. Nothing made sense. There was nothing really added to the Mario mythos from Galaxy. And Galaxy 2 isn’t going to add anything either. When Super Mario Brothers first came out, its content was a big factor of its appeal. Never before had a video game united with the trippy wonderland that seemed to come from Alice in Wonderland. When the sequels to Super Mario Brothers came out, people rushed to get them not just because Mario was fun but to see how the mythos was carved out more. People love to explore the Mushroom Land. This is why Super Mario Brothers 3 made such an impact was because it fleshed out the worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom. Super Mario World explored Dinosaur Land and added Yoshi. Super Mario 64, at least, had Peach’s Castle. Galaxy does not match the content quality of any of those previous games. 3d Mario sells only in a vacuum. If you bought a N64, what other games are you going to get aside from Mario 64? Waverace? Pilotwings? The options were limited. The same occurred on the DS. Super Mario 64 DS was great value for a game. But as games of quality began to appear on the DS, less people bought Mario 64 DS. But they continued to buy NSMB DS. After having a taste of 2d Mario on console, the 2d Mario gamer will react with greater hostility to 3d Mario. They will throw the instruction DVD into the garbage. “Do they think we are stupid? That we don’t play Mario 3d because we are retarded? It is because we just don’t like the game.” Galaxy 2 will sell worse than Galaxy 1. It might chart for a while. But then it will sink and Mario 5 will continue its reign. |
|
I noticed in your last post you said “Imagine Zelda Galaxy”. I don’t have to. They already made Spirit Tracks. No overworld. Train tracks between any points of interest. No cohesion. Yeah, sounds about right.
____________________________
I didn’t buy Spirit Tracks (and apparently not many people did) so I’ll take your word on it.
Imagine you are watching M*A*S*H and when the doctors are performing surgery, all of a sudden Batman bursts into the room. The cohesion is broken. However, if you observe people’s faces when they see the above, they will still smile and be surprised. They will think, “That was crazy!” But when it is over, what they saw won’t resonate because it doesn’t make any sense. And would they wish to watch Batman burst onto the doctors again? No. Its an example of a bad form of entertainment surprise that isn’t detected if you just look at people’s immediate reactions. Now I will probably piss off many people by saying the following, but a good example of a show doing the ‘no cohesion’ and ‘surprises’ that ended up into nothing was the recent Battlestar Galactica. The ratings for the show were horrible especially after the first season. It got so bad that new episodes were being beaten by reruns of Enterprise. But the cylons had no ‘plan’ as the teaser teased, Ron Moore was just making it up all along. Strange things would happen like all of a sudden a character would end up being a cylon. Or a character would come back from the dead. Or there would be plot twists for no apparent reason. The further the show went on, the less and less it made sense. The finale was the strangest ending I had ever seen in a sci-fi show. I was laughing at how ridiculous the show had become. “Daniel!” In fiction writing, especially fantasy and sci-fi writing, much, much, much is done about building a world and having the characters and plot follow the set of rules the world set up. Tolkien doesn’t change Frodo into a strong warrior in the middle of the story, even though it would be convenient and would make some more action packed scenes, but he would be breaking the rules he established for the hobbits (hobbits aren’t warriors of strength). Breaking the rules of your fictional universe is cheating the reader/viewer. They will get frustrated and conclude you do not know how to tell a story. Of course, games are not stories. At least, not in the traditional sense. In a fictional game (Mario, Zelda) as opposed to a non-fictional game (Wii Fit, Wii Sports), the gamer expects things to operate according to the game’s universe. If Link pulled out a laser gun, this would not make sense. If Samus used a bow and arrow to kill a Metroid, this also would not make sense. Better entertainment comes when the rules of the universe are very strong. This is one reason why entertainment is very fun when it is about the real world and resonates so well. Entertainment about modern war will not have a space ship come from no where and fire laser beams. World War 2 games all followed the rules of the universe that was World War 2. If 3d Mario followed the rules of the universe that is the Mushroom Kingdom and was a further exploration of that universe, I might be interested in checking out 3d Mario. But it is clear, especially with the Galaxy games, there is no universe at all. It is as if the game universe went through a blender. Zelda is a good example of this as you said with the trains. In Twilight Princess, there was a scene where you were like in a western. Why is a Western in Hyrule? It is like in the middle of the Lord of the Rings, Frodo begins going at the orcs like a cowboy. I felt that the worst parts of Twilight Princess were those ‘odd’ moments but also moments we had all seen such as the early dungeons. Why is the first Zelda dungeon always the Forest Temple? Oh, and look. There is a lava dungeon. And a water dungeon. And a ‘maze’ to get the Master Sword. Yawn. I felt like the best moments of Twilight Princess was when the game explored its own universe in a surprising way such as the City of the Sky or the Temple of Time (a temple stuck inside time itself). When a game universe loses cohesion, it loses much of the fun. The immersion is broken. The game is nothing more than a series of mechanics. And that is what Galaxy feels like to me. I don’t think accessibility is a problem with 3d Mario, at least it is not the biggest problem. It is a completely different game than Super Mario Brothers. But the breakdown in cohesion of the game universe, something we are seeing in all Nintendo franchises (Mario, Metroid, Zelda) and game mechanics trumping content is a rot that makes those old oak trees look increasingly hollow. When you buy a sequel to a game, you are eager to see how they have carved out the game universe some more and how the game world has changed. For example, with Starcraft 2 people will be eagerly seeing how that universe is carved out more and what is now going on with the races. Many people confuse this with “story”. This is not “story”. Think from the perspective of a writer. A “story” is Frodo having to take the ring to the fire and dealing with the pain and chaos the ring attracts. But that is not the universe. The universe was established well before the “story” was written. It only takes a writer a few months to actually write a story. But the universe for that story can take years if not decades to slowly assemble. Let’s use Star Trek for an example. A big attraction to people watching Star Trek was to see how the new episodes would carve out the fun universe some more. This is a big reason why Enterprise was so disappointing because as it was set in the past, there wasn’t much to look forward to. And Voyager might as well be set in the void as there were no repercussions from any of its episodes. It is not like when Picard first encountered the Borg (which shocked people). Or when the Dominion blew up a Galaxy Class starship in its first appearance. The universe was expanding and new things were entering. The Star Trek universe, not its narratives or ‘stories’, was what was so incredibly valuable. In the Star Trek universe, of course you had the movies and TV shows, but you could have novels, you could have video games, you could have incredibly tons of things set in that universe. When the universe began to lose cohesion, when things began to not make sense, that really avalanched with Voyager and especially Enterprise, the massive franchise was finished. When the universe lost cohesion, everything lost cohesion. The universe is the platform in which a movie or a story or a novel or a TV show or a video game sits on. If the universe loses cohesion, it unravels everything. This is why there is a growing anger toward the Warcraft universe because World of Warcraft is ruining the cohesion of that universe. It doesn’t make sense anymore. Mario and Zelda were far more fun when the universes were intact. The constant timeline theories going about Zelda depends entirely on the customers’ faith of cohesion. Galaxy wasn’t the first time Mario lost cohesion. It was back during Yoshi’s Island that Mario plummeted in popularity and became ‘lame’. Mario was retconned to being a ‘citizen’ of Mushroom World instead of a plumber from Earth who was a stranger in a strange land. With Super Mario Brothers 2 aside as a ‘dream sequence’, there used to be a cohesion in the Mushroom Kingdom. Super Mario Brothers is the first encounter with Mushroom Land. Super Mario Brothers 3 is a further exploration of it with Bowser having Koopa Kids and doomships. Super Mario World got a little off track being in Dinosaur Land but the doomship was the ghost ship and the Koopa Kids were all there. It is as if they retreated to Dinosaur Land after their defeat in Super Mario Brothers 3. Super Mario 64 fully explored Peach’s Castle and added that to the growing Mushroom Land universe. All of this was part of the fun. People wanted to see what new things were added to Mushroom Land. Decades later, that same exact game universe is used for countless sports games, racing games, and RPG games. The Mario universe is very valuable. Galaxy isn’t adding to the Mario universe in any meaningful way. While Mario 5 is awesome, it relied on the older universe and added very little if nothing. Playing Nintendo games used to be going through the Looking Glass. I do not get that feeling anymore. And it is not because of age, I assure you. I still get that sense from some other games such as Blizzard’s games. but remember the first time you played Link to the Past? Or the first time you played Ocarina of Time? The game felt as if everything belonged. You didn’t have the immersion broken when you thought, “OK, they are doing game mechanic X here.” While it is important for game developers to think mechanics, the consumers never should. Instead of thinking, “If I raise shield at five seconds in and run in a circle to confuse its AI…” the consumer should think, “I cannot wait to try again to slay the dragon!” They don’t want to see mechanics. They just want to see the dragon. |
|
It basically seems like they’ve decided to remove the game itself and it’s now more of an editor instead which is kinda depressing since the first game was pretty fun even with flaws. It feels like Media Molecule just looked at the amount of levels created by users and assumed that because there is a large amount of content that this is the way to go without considering the QUALITY of those levels. Who cares if there are two million levels available if 99,999% of them are pure garbage? I’ve looked at the content and found maybe four or five levels that were actually interesting. Sure it felt like a nice bonus, but dumping the actual game in favor of this is crap is so goddamn disappointing. I thought that MAYBE we could have another quality 2D Platformer.Sorry for the emotional rant but it just feels so infuriating to have an entire industry with its head up its ass. After the success of NSMBW you could’ve thought that they would seriously reconsider just making a 60$ editor. (I apologise for any eventual errors in writing, I’m not a native English speaker.) It is Silicon Valley disease. Whether a company is in Silicon Valley or not, a certain mentality spreads everywhere because it is the ‘future of computers’. User Generated Content is something they all think is the ‘future’ because they are so focused about the technology aspects of it. “Look! Customers will create all this content for us!” One of the reasons why Nintendo is going to keep having problems in the future is because the top executives wish Nintendo to “get married” with Silicon Valley and to have children with it. This is a frightening idea. Already, they have relocated themselves to Silicon Valley where they believe the geographical proximity means that Nintendo will absorb “Silicon Valley Genius” like a sponge when placed in water. They say it is to be closer to third party companies but seeing how Nintendo did fine before and how in this era of Internet technology making geographical proximity less important, I don’t buy it. Anyone relocating a business to California at this time is just plain stupid. Nintendo might as well open up offices in Greece as California is about to financially explode like Greece did. Businesses are fleeing that state for a reason. The Wii has suffered such a sharp turn in momentum that defies the historical trend of momentum downturns. It simply wasn’t just some ‘uninteresting software’. Something poured water on the Wii flame. As dramatic of a shift it was, the effect is being overall hidden. It is that bad. Consider that the Wii had not just ‘good selling momentum’ but sheer ‘Revolution momentum’ something we have not seen in decades, a momentum that went beyond PS2′s best days. Also, consider that the 2d Mario successor, Mario 5, is the killer app of killer apps. It bounced the Wii back up more than any game could. Zelda couldn’t do that. Metroid couldn’t do that. Pikmin couldn’t do that. 3d Mario couldn’t do that. Only 2d Mario could have that impact. So sandwhiched between the best console momentum ever in the history of gaming with the successor to the strongest killer app in the history of gaming is the User Generated Content decline. As destructive as UGC is, its effects are still hidden due to being in between two very uncommon events. My theory about the rot that is plaguing video game land, including Nintendo, is that game developers and computer developers strive to separate from the masses. It is like being weird for weirdness’s sake. It is like driving into Austin where the ‘Keep Austin Weird’ is people being eccentric for the sake of being eccentric. How can any product hope to sell to the masses when the developers despise the masses? If a developer thinks he is some magical person and the masses are riff raff because they are not in magical Silicon Valley Land, why should we expect any software to be a hit with the masses? Much of Silicon Valley has become a bizarro world outside of the mainstream. Many of the people it attracts look down at the masses. This attitude correlates very well of the ‘Industry’ had of the Wii, that the ‘masses’ were “stupid”, were not “sophisticated”, that how dare they like that 2d Mario sidescroller, and that the Wii is a nightmare that must be destroyed. Sad to say, many of Nintendo’s game developers are cut from the same cloth. Want another 2d Mario? Try waiting twenty years because Nintendo developers don’t want to make it. But they would love to give you more 3d Mario. You cannot have too much 3d Mario! And Nintendo never followed through with the motion control software because it doesn’t “fit their vision”. Metroid Other M isn’t using it. Galaxy 1 and 2 didn’t do much that couldn’t have been done on a regular controller. Zelda may be using it but this isn’t saying much because Zelda has lost all cohesion that it can be a touch screen game with choo-choo trains. Being around more game developers, I can tell you they are not members of the mainstream. So no wonder when they get ‘creative’ with a ‘vision’ their game only ends up becoming wildly eccentric. It is like they live their lives in a digital world and have lost connection to the real world. They don’t realize how eccentric they are because they are surrounded by like minded people. I’m not talking eccentric in terms of behavior but in the form of values. What game developers value in a game is definitely not what the masses value in a game. User Generated Content is Silicon Valley group think. It is astonishing how, as if mind controlled, you see people like Will Wright proclaim how UGC is the be all and end all to all things when his game Spore, based on on UGC, was a massive disappointment. And aside from myself, do you ever hear anyone talk down User Generated Content? Do you ever hear anyone be even cynical about the so-called ‘UGC Revolution’? You don’t. Even though UGC has failed in massive amounts of fail, the failures of UGC are never brought up. Instead, we are told that “we need to try yet again” with UGC. Note how all the reports on Wii’s decline fail to mention Nintendo’s shift toward UGC. This is intentional. These people are not living in reality. A UGC game is like paying for access to garbage. Silicon Valley (and Hollywood) is *below* gaming. Companies like Apple were offshoots from gaming, Steve Jobs was a former Atari employee. Looking at Silicon Valley with awe and wonder is as destructive to gaming as game developers looking at Hollywood with awe and wonder. Gaming is different. And gaming obeys different values than Silicon Valley values. |
|
Wii Play is more interesting than this. Do we really want to play Roulette or Bingo on our Wiis? This appears to be more like a console version of Clubhouse Games. So why is Nintendo announcing it now? Whenever Nintendo has bad financial news, they always present… something. Such as when the DS XL was revealed. But with E3 so close, they probably didn’t have much to choose from without spoiling their show. |
|
A very interesting interview with Sid Meir back when he was much younger. He mentions some things you do not hear anywhere else today such as designing games to make the player ‘comfortable’ meaning surrounding the player with things he or she recognizes (like history themes). When asked about the bad graphics for Civilization, Sid Meir turns it around and calls it a feature. “It makes you use your imagination.” He also dismisses the ‘realistic’ design as harming imagination. No one says anything like this today. Games used to be designed to ignite people’s imaginations. Now, games are being designed to ignite the developers‘ imagination. Sid Meir hasn’t lost this theme of imagination as he repeats it even with his excellent GDC 2010 speech about the ‘dancing elephants’. The reason why Shakespeare is Shakespeare is because his craft is exciting the imagination. His craft of writing and craft of play writing was to target people’s imaginations. Interestingly, it was not his imagination he focused on. It is intentional that the plays get bawdy (because our imaginations work more with such themes) or that every line twists itself into a metaphor (metaphors use imagination). And this is why one can say that the old games are better. They were ‘better’ in that they more successfully zeroed in on the imagination. This explains why the old games live on (because they use our imagination) where new games with their ‘realistic graphics’ age like milk. |
He's back in form, i see. But i notice he's contradicting himself on one point. He declares that its a bad thing that everyone wants to make games, because that depresses job prices, but he once spoke with admiration about the early game makers, who got into the business purely for the passion of it, neither wanting nor needing fame and fortune.
And where does he get the idea that Nintendo wants to marry themselves to Silicon Valley? If that were the case the Wii would be vastly different, even with the same processing power, we would be seeing a vastly different feature-set.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
I agree with the coherency in universes.
I fucking hate when sequels lose the spirit of the original, and when stories spiral out of control and universes starting to break their own laws. It should be illegal.
I LOVE ICELAND!
About Us |
Terms of Use |
Privacy Policy |
Advertise |
Staff |
Contact
Display As Desktop
Display As Mobile
© 2006-2024 VGChartz Ltd. All rights reserved.
