Weekend Confirmed 118 - Spec Ops: The Line, Lollipop Chainsaw, Magic 2013

Are Games Too Big, Too Pretty, and Too Expensive?

WIth Michael Pachter recently calling Max Pyne 3 a "flop" and reports that Dead Space 3 needing to sell 5 million copies in order to be profitable, I am more finding myself worried about the future. The industry seems to find itself in a race to be the best looking, mass appeal game that there is simply not the market space to reach the top. To explain better, imagine if the top publishers (EA, Activision, Take-Two) are in a race to climb Mount Everest, the consumer's dollars is the amount of oxygen that they all have to share, and the higher they go, game prices increase (both production budget and shelf price). Eventually budgets will be so high that prices for the consumer will have to increase. This is simple economics. I worry that there will not be enough people who can afford to pay the higher prices that many hard working people will find themselves out of work.

I know that there are new models such as Kickstarter that have recently tried to ammend this problem, but the financial stability of the industry is pinned on the "AAA" boxed games that most people buy at Wal-Mart. That crowd doesn't know who Tim Schafer is or what Kickstarter is and nor do they care. To them, if it doesn't have a Super Bowl commercial, it doesn't exist.

So I guess my question is: Are large budget games doomed and what consequences do you see if that market of games "crashes"?

Sorry Radical. All you did was sell several hundred-thousand copies of your game and land in the top 10 sales 2 months running. Not good enough. Time to close down and accept your damnable fate of making CoD map packs for the rest of time.

Thank you Jeff Cannata for Finally standing up to Garnett this week!

The main reason this show has gone way downhill for me over the past year as well as a Huge reason I feel this show is not nearly as good as the old 1up Yours shows is the amazing lack of respect that Garnett shows his co-hosts (on top of Garnetts constant failed attempts at trying to be funny). I can appreciate that Garnett likes to consistently play devils advocate towards what everyone on the show is enjoying, but over the past year Garnett just comes across as your random internet troll trolling games he has barely and sometimes even Never played.

It is also not a discussion most of the time but just Garnett talking over his co-hosts, cutting them off, or not letting them get a word in, which is not good discussion, it is just Garnett being a verbal bully and it seems that people are afraid to stand up to him because it is Garnett's show. It was a breath of fresh air this week for Canatta to not just sit and take Garnett's crap and stand up to him. Still I would much rather Garnett treat his co-hosts with more respect and play devils advocate in a way where he doesn't come across as a random internet troll, but I feel that the Garnett from the 1up days has probably been lost to current Garnett's massive ego.

To add something to the conversation over violence in games, I actually think games like The Last of Us and Dishonored might make games LESS violent. The realism, brutality and shock in these games makes at least me want to try and NOT kill people, and try and sneak around instead. I haven't played The Last of Us, but right now it seems that I would put more effort into surviving in the game, rather than killing people. If I have to strangle someone or bash their head in with a brick, I would be doing it to out of need, and not out of enjoyment.

Garnett's brought up his point about Moore's Law a few times but it finally clicked with me this week.

It really flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that in order to see new ideas in games, we have to wait for next gen. In fact, it implies that in order to see new ideas in games, we CAN'T have a next gen, or that next gen needs to come in say, 5 or 10 years rather than next year.

Of course that would never happen, but it's a pretty interesting point to consider. Kudos Garnett!

That's right you wanted, you got it, and we cheered for it!!! What are the most despicable things we've cheered for as a audience. There's some pretty gross atrosities and we where more than happy with them. You got any here my favorites:)

Karate Kid- say what but no here me out. Hey a 35-40 year old man kicks the crap out of 3 teenage boys. That's right what would you say if you were walking down the street and saw that right now. Someone call the cops right. You wanted it though and you hooted with delight... I know I did:)

Dirty danceing- wait say what again. Oh you didn't know, classic story of boy meets girl, boys actually a man, and the girl is well... A girl, that's right 16 year old girl gets banged by 25+ year old dude... Classic love story that in real life you'd... You guessed it call the police;)

Fried green tomatoes- yeah he beat his wife, yeah he wasn't the greatest guy, heck he was even pretty racist, but you know what he wasn't a dead beat dad he just wanted HIS child back. So they killed him, and you know what we were all very happy with this outcome.

Now I know none of these are a shotgun to the face, but what is right lmao.

Like Jeff (Cannata) said, for me, tone is the issue when it comes to violence.

I think that Lollipop Chainsaw's approach to violence is more acceptable in my own mind because the game is presented as an over the top sensory overload with zombie heads and rainbows and stars shooting all over the screen with pop music blaring, and none of it being meant to be taken seriously.

The problem I had with the stage demo for The Last of Us is the shift that happens in the last few seconds of the demo. For the 5 minutes leading up to the shotgun blast, I am fighting these evil sons of bitches for survival. They want to kill me, and the only thing I can do to survive is to kill them first. I'm okay with that.

But the moment that last guy holds up his hand and pleads "Don't!", the tone shifts.

He is no longer an evil son of a bitch, he is a person, with motivations that likely mirror Joel's (survival). He is offering another way out of this conflict, and the moment the guy playing the demo pulled the trigger, HE became the evil son of a bitch in the situation.

At that moment, the guys walked off the stage and Jack Tretton joined the audience in a near-standing ovation. I get that much of that was for the game as a whole, but look at that from the perspective of somebody who doesn't play games and doesn't care about how impressive the demo was. Here is a Sony executive and countless journalists applauding in amazement not 10 seconds after a player flat-out murders a person in a game.

How could they NOT think we're crazy?

This might be a lost cause on this particular forum, but did anyone else here give Pokemon Conquest a try?

Maybe my expectations weren't that high, but people, I stand before you now to say that I am stunned... STUNNED by the quality of this Pokemon/Nobunaga's Ambition crossover game (anyone who calls it a crossover with Dynasty Warriors has not done their homework... literally and figuratively).

Just try to look past how hilariously stupid the premise is. There's a really fun game here waiting to be discovered.

Support my little brother in his fundraising ride for Children's Hospital of Colorado

In my Finishing Move this week I mentioned that my little brother is riding in the "Courage Classic" to help raise money for the Children's Hospital of Colorado.

Please consider donating. He pledged to raise $1000 on the ride and thus far has been unable to get any contributions to come. His pledge page:

http://www.couragetours.com/siteapps/personalpage/ShowPage.aspx?c=8gLLK3MHLhIYF&b=7741039&sid=ddJMJPMsFdIDLKPoGnE

Thanks

It was a little ironic for me that, right after listening to your segment on game difficulty I had a breakthrough with Dark Souls that was inspired by a moment I had in Dragon's Dogma. You see, I was playing Demon's and was getting hammered in the section of the world I was in. I would die, reload, then die again. I finally got frustrated and turned the game off.

I came back to it later and said, "screw it" and ran away from the area I was in like a beyotch. Then something magical happened; I found an area with enemies appropriate to my character level and ability.

It was then that I realized that I wasn't just getting hammered by the enemies- I was hammering myself because I'm so used to being able to plow through games now that my mind didn't see how I was the one repeating the same behavior.

That seems like a skill that is being lost. Adventuring has become simply walking down a set path in most games these days.

I applied that same thought process to Dark Souls and quickly discovered a path i hadnt taken before that I'm having a lot of fun playing Dark Souls now. Sure, there are still imperfections, but now that I'm in the right frame of mind, I'm enjoying it.

So...Mass Effect extended cut thingie tomorrow...err, today in about 2 hours.

Is anyone else excited?

I wasn't one of the insane whiners demanding a new ending, but I'm not going to complain. From the sound of how this DLC works (you play the last mission again, and get new endings based on not only your ME3 ending choice, but choices from prior games as well), this is the ending that "should" have been there all along, I think.

I get the sinking feeling that they'll go all out and appease the QQ'ing "we want total closure!" kids as well and give us spelled out endings for everyone. I hope not, but, eh, more Mass Effect, right?

I just can't wait to see how they resolve the "dead crewmen and down-on-Earth crewmen on my Normandy / telepathic Joker who abandons his home planet" plot hole. Also the ramifications of each choice. I mean, there was no point in that illusion of choice at the end since everything played out the same anyways.

Who knows? We'll see later today.

Picked up Spec Ops last night, making my way through the single-player campaign and really enjoying it.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of how some games like Spec Ops, Last of Us and Tomb Raider are handling violence a little differently. Most games stylize violence, make it look as cool or badass as possible to make the player feel empowered when they commit it.

Spec Ops, like Last of Us and Tomb Raider look to be doing, adds a ton of weight to the violence. That's not to say it's preachy or anything, simply that the act of violence ever really looks fun for the characters on-screen committing it. It looks desperate, vicious, and genuinely painful for everybody involved.

If that makes people uncomfortable, great. Violence shouldn't always be fun. Sometimes we should take a step back and realize that punching a dude in the face, or shooting somebody, fucking HURTS, and the effects of violence committed don't disappear immediately after the guitar riff signaling the end of an enemy wave.

DLC characters make fighting games unfair

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/doa5/news/dlc_characters_make_fighting_games_unfair_says_doa5_dev.html


"We feel like this is a kind of sport, and you don't change the rules for sports. Everybody plays by the same rules. You don't have a 14-player soccer game versus an 11-player soccer game. That's just not fair."

If only Capcom would read this....

So anyone else excited to get a 3DS XL. I'm probably just going toe trade my old one at GameStop cause it will never have more value. I don't really ever play it anymore because I'm in love with the vita, but whenever smash comes out I'll be happy to have it. Oh and paper Mario on the big screen so sweet:)

Garnet was taking about how he wanted diablo to be a game where you can progress through the game without having to utilize the AH, actually this is very much possible from Normal to the end of hell. So he's sorta off base.

well, i'm sold on Cory's vision and amition for Spec Ops: The Line. a very inspiring approach. i just made my amazon pre-order.

regarding Specter's comments on violence, i couldn't agree with him more. the level of violence and frivolous way it's protrayed was incredibly off-putting and came across as juvenile. people cheering for the God of War de-braining and Tomb Raider face stabbings for instance were in fact gore fetishizing. i feel it's this stuff that keeps video games as the percieved medium for adolescent boys. developers are way too caught up in thinking the more gory, the more impactful it is. that's cheap entertainment thrill. something game makers should learn from great filmmakers, is that many times it's what we don't see can be vastly more meaningful. video games seem to relish is explosions of blood and guts. maybe i'm just getting too old.

If it wasn't for inferno, I would agree with Jeff that the simplicity of Diablo 3 is better. Unfortunately, the design choices completely unravel on the inferno difficulty.

Act 2 and 3 Inferno are so difficult (still) that min/maxing is required to simply progress, leaving only a small handful of builds that are viable. Gear becomes even more important. However, it's very rare to get a drop that will be better than what you can afford from the AH. The difficulty combined with the lack of quality drops forces the player to go from being a treasure hunter to an investment banker..

When exposed to the fires of inferno, these design choices melt to a system that minimizes in-game player choice and instead emphasizes min/maxing with a healthy dose of random numbers.

So I've spent the better part of a week thinking about what happened to Dead or Alive 5 and why no one cares. Here's what I got.

What made DOA cool/great graphics, reversal, hard hitting slams, and this is the key part environments. Multi tiered stages sure it had the arenas, but nothing was like knocking someone through a wall or off a cliff, down some step. What happened was 2 made this huge jump and now 3, 4, and 5 haven't gone much further. The tricks lost its appeal, so DOA needs more environmental interaction. Example it should look more like a Jackie chan flick than a jet lee flick. Say a grocery store stage where you kick the cart into your opponent or knock the shelves onto them.

But my opinion is no one cares anymore because DOA was a one trick pony so to speak and the trick got old.

What's wrong with Japan and games... It's a very hard question to answer. As far as games they still made a lot of really, really great games... So what's wrong? I purpose "multiplayer"

Starting with DMC a great game 5th iteration and yet God of war a DMC clone is getting multiplayer and DMC can't even sniff it. Metal Gear vs Assassins creed not a natural multiplayer game ie FPS tag . Assassins creed has continued to be refined into a great almost stand alone game, and metal gear is fading away.

How many western games don't have VS. very few of those few which don't have co-op almost none. So you play a great single player game ie Zelda then what back to COD and Zelda is dead to you.

What Japan needs is VS multiplayer on everything Mario king of the hill game. Zelda capture the flag with load outs. Freaking final fantasy just straight up VS mode what the hell people.

Once a game is released it has a very short shelf life if it lacks multiplayer.

My biggest problem with games trying to become more cinematic is that in doing that, they're losing what makes them a game, or to be more specific, what makes them an interactive experience where the player has an influence over the outcome, short-term or long-term, in a gameplay mechanic system. That system may be as simple as "press X to not die" (see: Dragon's Lair), or "watch this character's performance and judge them based on your thoughts" (I haven't played LA Noire, but this is what it sounds like the gameplay mechanic is, with the "Truth / Lie / Doubt" mechanic).

The mechanic that I personally enjoy the most is real-time action, primarily in first-person, whether it's a shooter (the first time I saw Doom in 1993 was when gaming really took off for me) or a racing sim (I was playing so much GT5 Prologue at the BMW Welt in Munich in 2010, I finally decided to save $400 worth of expenses on my vacation, and get a PS3 and Prologue). I could take any car in GT5 or Forza 4 on a single car time trial, and have a blast playing around with vehicle dynamics; other people would feel imprisoned by that experience since there aren't any AI or multiplayer cars to try and beat, but I love focusing on the engine's simulation of each car's dynamics, which have a real-life analog. However, for shooters, they seem to be getting far more constricted, with ultra-agressive gating and setpieces shoving players down corridors, penalizing "lollygagging" with QTE deaths, not letting the player into larger arenas where the AI routines can have enough entropy to create an experience that varies between gameplay sessions. This is the main reason why I've soured away from the Call of Duty experience: because the single-player campaign is a $60 6-hour movie that you've memorized after playing through 3 times, and the multiplayer is the same stuff we've been seeing since Call of Duty 4 in holiday 2007.

Treyarch claim to be shaking things up in Black Ops 2, and are going ultra-aggressive with press events and interviews, since this is that part of their PR cycle. CVG released a puff piece with the title "SET TO CHANGE THE FACE OF SHOOTERS FOREVAR!!!" ( http://www.computerandvideogames.com/354958/previews/black-ops-2-set-to-change-the-face-of-shooters-forever/ ), but it looks like all the same mechanics, setpieces, and turret sequences we've been seeing for the past 5 years, only with a few "do this or do that" branches in some levels, which don't seem to be creating any "arenas" that would allow first-person gun combat to become dynamic. After reading that article, I still wasn't bought into the promise, since it sounds just like every previous post-E3 timeframe Call of Duty preview article that's been released before.

I only caught a quick sample of the Lollipop Chainsaw discussion. On first hearing about the game, I was interested, though slightly turned off by the American cheerleader trope. It just doesn't seem to push all the buttons that Bayonetta did (and trust me, Bayonetta pushed ALL the buttons: http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=28260699#item_28260699 ), though I'm still interested in a bit of the Suda51 jankiness that I got to see a bit of in Shadows of the Damned. Suda's not known for refined game mechanics, but he is legendary for crazy slot-machine or pachinko-esque mechanics. There was this promo video from the Japanese version: http://www.siliconera.com/2012/04/13/juliet-can-transform-her-chainsaw-into-a-gun-in-lollipop-chainsaw/

Maybe there's my answer: buy the Japanese PS3 version.

Re: Dying a lot.

As someone who indulges in bullet hell shooters from time to time, I feel that dying a lot in a game is really neither here nor there, so long as I walk away feeling like each death was my own fault. To this end, if you want to make your game hard and punishing, you'd better be damn sure that the mechanics are absolutely 100% spot-on, 100% of the time.

When I finally got around to playing Dark Souls, that's the part that actually disappointed me about it. Design-wise, the game is a masterpiece, but on the technical side, it's all kinds of sloppy. I can totally deal with re-running sections of the same dungeon, and having to corpse-run for my souls and all that, what I can't deal with is dying because my moves didn't queue up properly, or because I was grazed slightly by something that clipped through a wall causing me to stagger mid-slash (or catch fire, which happened to me several times)

I've confidence that Cliffy is in a position of being able to fine tune his game to the degree that is needed to make his game both tough and fair.

On a sillier side-note, whenever you guys talk about Ninja Gaiden, my brain immediately defaults to the NES trilogy, which makes the discussion weirdly disconnected in parts.

I'm in the mood for some fun.

Let's think of the worst idea for a movie to be turned into a video game.

I'll start with Erin Brokavich. That'd be the worst game ever.

Keep up the good work dudes.

Hi guys,

Great show !

And I'm really excited by Specs Ops. Since I saw the VGA reveal few years go, that game has always been on my radar. Day 1 for me.


On the japanese games issue. I can't agree more. They have to stop westerizing their games. Ninja Gaiden is one of my favourite game of all time. Ninja Gaiden 2 was still a great game. But with Ninja Gaiden 2, they completely ruin the franchise. Resident Evil 4 was the blueprint for this gen, it's the sad that japanese dev don't have that freshness and innovation anymore.


On the violence issue. I have to disagree with the 2 Jeff on the Last os Us. That game is more violent that ANY other game. We should rate violence by the level of blood spilled all over the place, but by the impact of violent scenes on the gamer.

Let me explain.

In Gears of War or Lollypop Chainsaw there is a natural disconnect with the violence, because it's unrealistic. You know you will never be in that situation. You don't project yourself in the main characters.

In the Last of Us, it's different, the main characters are very similar to us. We are projected in a more realistic environnement. We see ourselves in the position of the characters and it makes the experience more violent than any other game. That's a dangerous territory for videogames. We're going there with Tomb Raider. We've been there with the Airport scene in Modern Warfare 2.

Videogames are a medium where the gamerz are more involved than moviegoers with movies. So we should pay attention when we enter more realistic violence situation a la Last of Us.

I think we should all reflect on Warren Spector comments...

Thinking about games trying to offer deeper, more complex experiences...

I wonder if games are having a hard time crossing over into areas other than mindless fun because by there inherent nature. What I mean is that it is difficult to convey a wide range of emotions (the way a movie can make you uncomfortable or a book can make you angry) when there is this need to have the core mechanics be "fun".

Using military shooters as an example: Every single mechanical element in a game like COD is designed to make running, aiming, and shooting feel fun / rewarding / satisfying. It is built from the ground up to pull nothing but positive actions from the player. Suddenly throwing the player into a narrative scenario that clashes with the "fun" of the mechanical gameplay is a big problem for me.

It's a kind of disconnect that has made me put down the controller and stop playing games like Medal of Honor... not because the narrative hit me in a powerful way, but because I felt a little sick about the fact that I was supposed to be experiencing the horrors of war, but I was having a blast the entire time.

Since Jeff talked about Magic this week, I'll take that as license to talk a little Magic (but I'll tie it back to video games, I swear).

Garnett, to address your question about Magic design, the custodians of Magic do a couple of things very, very well to keep the game fresh:

1. They have what are called "core sets" every summer. These sets are specifically constructed to be simpler than the other sets so beginners can have a spot to jump in, but they also usually have more powerful cards to keep serious players invested.

2. They tell a new (and generally interesting) story every year through the card sets they release.

3. They are constantly generating new mechanics or recycling old mechanics year over year for each new collection release.

4. If there is a variation on the rules of Magic that you enjoy (there are a TON of them), the designers will have made or will make a card to support it.

5. If a card makes the game less fun or ends up removing the variety of the game, they ban it (or they can unban cards, which is less common).

Which leads me to my video game tie back: What game mechanic (not genre) would you ban to change the face of the industry? Or, does the industry have a "core set" kind of game that has wide appeal and gets newcomers hooked on video games?

The discussion of the potential of loot farming just to make money selling items so you don't have to pay for games was sickening.

There is a reason its called "farming": Its boring. End of discussion! Speaking of human psychology, one of the most iron laws of psychology is called habituation. That means people always find the 2nd exposure to a stimulus less interesting than the 1st. This applies to animals, babies, and gamers. Each time you farm a boss the interest level decreases. Back in DaoC I farmed items for money, I powerleveled characters for money. Does ANYONE think they will ever look back on that kind of experience as some of their FONDEST GAMING MEMORIES?? Hell no! Its a cool way to make money, its NOT anywhere close to the best games have to offer.

In my experience fond gaming memories only come from deeply moving and engaging stories/levels/puzzles/strategy, conquering challenges together with friends, or smashing other people in multiplayer. Loot farming is only a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Yes it can be the mcguffin that drives the experience, the excuse to keep playing a great game, sure, but it cannot be more than a small gameplay piece.

Hey fellas, just got done listening to the first segment, and it struck me a little funny. You started talking about Magic the Gathering, and then went to the auction house of Diablo. To me, that's the same thing as say Magic or even Pokemon. People would play those games non stop, but also buy a ton of packs to get those rare cards (couch Charizard cough) to make a quick buck from it. To me, we are just looking at the digitization of "collectible items" now.