Archive for July, 2007

15
Jul

Pre-Console

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Consoles

When I started gaming it was PC all the way. The first real “gaming rig” I ever purchased was a 386/33 with a VGA card. I was looking for something that could play Wing Commander in all it’s 256 color glory,and it cost me $3K in actual 1989 dollars. Finding a joystick that wouldn’t break ended up being the hardest part, although I eventually got a hold of a CH Flightstick that managed to keep working for half a decade until it gave up the ghost during a particularly heated battle in Mechwarrior.

But somewhere around the turn of the century I lost interest in the PC as my primary platform. And it wasn’t just the fact that console games had gotten easier. When I finished Metal Gear Solid I had a new feeling: I could have just as much fun playing a game on my console, but with a lot less hassle.

So over the next few years I stopped trying to keep my machine “up to speed” and upgraded to my next gen-console when I could afford one. Meanwhile When I did have a RTS of RPG itch to scratch I just played older games.

But from the number of developers and players who have made the jump with me, I’m guessing I’m not alone dropping the cutting-edge PC as a gaming platform. Sure, I was paying a price in graphics for the first few years. But things have changed a lot since the PS1. The kinds of differences in display we’re talking about these days are vanishingly small; nothing an average consumer can recognize without having them pointed to them. And yet AAA PC titles still try to eek out that obscure bit of power that you can only get with the newest graphics card and a liquid cooled processor. I’m just not sure who they’re doing it for.

I’m guessing a big part of that is that the video card manufacturers still wish it was seven years ago, when they could engage in soft collusion with the developers to make sure that new games demanded a $500 card to “get the full experience”. Anything less and you would watch your virtual world chop by at 15 frames a second. But once you hop off that merry-go-round you can’t go back without facing a herd of obscurely named cards at different price points by different manufacturers. I wouldn’t know what to buy even if I wanted to.

But the explosion in casual gaming has proven that a PC game doesn’t have to be a slave to the hardware to find an audience. Exploiting the untapped power that’s in any machine five years or younger seems like the best path to success. Otherwise the message continues to be that PC gaming is about graphics and not gameplay. Ultimately that’s going to drive more and more hardcore gamers on a one way trip to console land. And with the budgets and technology that’s being thrown at these games it’s not a bad place to go.

11
Jul

The Future is Still Tomorrow, Actually

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Culture

Now that there’s actually a product to buy, and the hype has started to die down, it’s worth spending a moment unwinding what the real revolution is that’s occurred with the release of the Jesus Phone .

It only takes a moment with an iPhone in your hand to realize that something has changed: In a world of sealed digital experiences, and “cutting edge” interfaces that treat the customer like an intruder, Apple has managed to create something that is seamless rather than offensive, and useful rather than limiting. “This is your perfect experience” it tells you; simple, clean, and intuitive. As you run your hands over the almost seamless edges, and begin to tap your fingers on the screen, it becomes clear that we’ve entered an age where the blister packaging has become the product. And, like a toy collector who never pulls their action figures out of the box, Steve Jobs wants to charge you big bucks while only letting you look at the surface. The metaphorical action figure is never allowed out of the box, but somehow it still manages to be fun to play with.

It’s definitely a hands on experience. Once you start tapping on the glass it’s clear that this is really a tiny computer. The iPhone is a $600 micro-laptop with a beautiful screen, a phone attached, and a very nice interface. We finally have the world’s first true consumer touch screen device.

That, more than anything else, is going to be the legacy of this machine. The cell phone stuff is nice, but why pay $600 for a cheap, almost disposable devices, when there are so many other ways to get email. As for the “improved” management of your messages, it’s possible to effectively replicate their functionality using a standard IM client and a cheap pair of headphones.

Yes, it’s more than the sum of the parts, but deconstruct the iPhone, even a little bit, and it becomes obvious that it’s the tiny computer with the true touch-screen interface that’s the really cool part. And thinking about it that way, you have to wonder if perhaps the iPhone isn’t a bit too tiny. Bump it up a little bit, let’s say to the size of Moleskine notebook and you begin to appreciate that having a touch window with a magic display based keyboard would do a lot more to revolutionize the world of laptop computing than it does the phone.

Once you’ve broken the spell of perfection the next step would be to break the perfect seal around the edge of the product and add a few ports and you can slip in a high speed modem. With a real computer under your fingertips you can use any of the dozens of phone like applications anywhere and any way you want to.

The good news is that Apple hasn’t patented the touch screen, so we should start to see some more open and innovative products coming out over the next few years. It’s just as likely that most of them are going to suck, and that it will be Apple that ends up getting there first.

02
Jul

Murder Machine

By Drew 0 Comments
Categories: Video Games and Consoles

Ever since I first played the demo for Crackdown earlier this year I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on the game. It’s as fun as I remember it, mixing a “free” GTA style environment with over the top environmental gymnastics that make the player feel like a superhero.

There’s also no doubt the game is violent as hell, and as you’re driving around accidentally mowing down civilians the game is telling you “no no no”, but what it really means is “yes yes yes”. Even if you do go over the limit and kill enough civilians that the security forces get mad at you they don’t stay mad for long. After all who can stay mad at an armored killing machine who can leap tall buildings in a single bound?

Ultimately it’s hard not feel like a nihilist when you’re ignoring the copious amounts of killing that you’re responsible for while trying to “free the city from the criminal gangs”, which is this game’s particularly thin layer of metaphorical good that covers an almost infinite number of sins committed while trying to reach your goal.

But death itself is almost comical in the world of this game, and the instant the anima leaves the body, so too does the animator. Rag doll physics take over and the dead flops around ridiculously. In the end they looking like nothing so much as a puppet with its strings cut.

It definitely lightens up the proceedings, revealing that whole thing is just a joke, as does the semi flat-shaded art style. And you have to wonder if making the dead more realistic wouldn’t have made this game much harder to take. Either way it’s a good thing.

On thing it does show clearly is that with the current generation of software we have two competing dynamics: One is making characters more realistic and dynamic. They’re starting to respond in interesting and engaging ways. On the other hand is the ability to render these realistic characters by the dozen and mow them down with abandon. It’s a dichotomy that smart people are using well, and Dead Rising takes full advantage of it. After all, what’s the problem with killing zombies by the hundreds? In fact, they give you a meter and keep track of the body count.

Like the victims of far-away wars we can understand the death of the characters in these games in the abstract, but also recognize that the act has little or no bearing on our own lives. We can easily separate the entertainment from the consequences because their aren’t any.

One of the ironies of the recent dust-up around Manhunt 2 is that it’s the visceral nature of the Wii controller and not the sheen of the graphics, that have gotten it into trouble. People can argue all day long whether or not Nintendo’s success story is truly next gen, but it’s obvious that for some people the fact that you’re the one making the stabbing motion is a huge leap forward from execution by button press. One that may force us to begin to reconsider that wanton disregard for human life that has been a hallmark of games ever since Death Race touched off the first round of hand-wringing over thirty years ago.