It always amazes me the difference between the hardcore gamer and the actual gamer.
The hardcore gamer wants new cutting edge shooters… the actual gamer wants a COD clone.
The hardcore gamer wants a giant open world sandbox MMO… the actual gamer wants a linear instanced theme park MMO.
The hardcore gamer is sick of Nintendo recycling the same games every 5 years… the actual gamer is waiting in line for the latest Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Mario Platformer, and Mario Party.
So when all of the hardcore gamers were complaining about XBox One’s Always On DRM and anti-sharing software… well I giggled a little inside.
I giggled because in the end, it won’t matter. It won’t matter because… actual gamers won’t care.
In reality the actual gamer is going to be more moved by who does the better marketing. Xbox 360 far out performed PS3 because they made their console appear cooler and Playstation had some early problems (like a full network hacking).
The actual “winner” of the console wars was one people didn’t even see as part of it. Nintendo Wii was far out selling the competition in every department.
This is because Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were the consoles that people said they want… that is a more powerful version of the same old thing.
The Nintendo Wii was what they wanted though. They wanted simple controllers with adjustable elements. They wanted motion controls that encouraged physical fitness (in a world in which child obesity is a problem). They wanted simple skill based Mario titles.
When you look at the massive games of the last five years many of them are indie titles like Bastion, LIMBO, and The Cave… not the AAA titles released by major publishers.
Xbox One is actually taking a page from Nintendo’s playbook. They’re ignoring the hardcore gaming crowd and going after a much larger market. Who wouldn’t want to watch TV through Xbox instead of having to deal with devilish networks who make you pay for 7 other channels for $25 when you only really wanted to get ESPN.
Basically what Playstation 4 has done (and why they’re being congratulated for it) is made the console that hardcore gamers wanted.. that is roughly the same one as before with minor improvements.
To me that sounds boring.
Somehow it being the exact same thing as before to everyone else is exciting.
Microsoft have done a few things that people ought to be getting excited about but they don’t.
Despite complaints that Kinect never works I’ve never actually had a problem with it on a friend’s Xbox and my own PC version of it. The fact that every Xbox One comes with a Kinect means that every single game that ever comes out for the Xbox can now be made assuming people will have voice commands and motion commands.
The Kinect 2.0 is an improvement on the Kinect 1.0 because you no longer have to be so far away for it to see you…. that is, it understands what half of a torso is.
But once again this is not something hardcores want. In fact hardcores really didn’t have patience for the Kinect. To them it was a gimmick but clearly Microsoft sees it as the future.
If I remember correctly Kinect did somewhere around 3M sales or 1/4 of all Xbox owners picked up this expensive optional attachment. This makes it one of the most successful attachments in gaming history.
Another example of Xbox ignoring hardcores was their announcement of Always On DRM.
It’s funny because market data always shows that people actually don’t care about this. The two most recent always on catastrophes were Diablo 3 and SimCity.
Diablo 3 on launch had a massive error that made the game unplayable and after a little under a week it was stable and completely playable.
SimCity was a little bit worse because it took a little over 2 months to fix this game on launch.
These were highlighted because they had Always On DRM. What people of course didn’t note was these problems exist in games that aren’t always on as well. As a god example Sword of the Stars 2 still does not work well to this day after almost two years of development.
Despite mass protest and complaint the sales of Diablo 3 and SimCity only continued to grow… yes as it turned out no one card that they had to play Always On.
People often do not note the high success and enjoyability of Always On DRM. The most famously enjoyable (and thus never mentioned) is World of Warcraft. Having been around for 10 years now the massively popular MMORPG is addictive, enjoyable, and solo-able despite having Always On DRM. But if you were to turn off the Internet and suddenly people would complain about how terrible the game was.
Always On DRM is a tool for developers to produce quality titles in which playing with people is enhanced.
Internet high quality is also readily available everywhere these days. You have to be in the most war torn part of Africa to not have access to cable. I was surprised upon coming home to my anti-technology province of Newfoundland and Labrador to find that they have Bell Fiber, one of the fastest Internets available in the world.
The irony at the end of this post is that I probably won’t purchase an Xbox One either.
The irony is that the Wii-U offers more to my household than either of the two “hardcore gamer” consoles.
200 years ago the Republican Party formed. At the time The Wigs were split between half pro-slavery and half-no slavery expansion beyond states that had slavery. The Democrats were a party pro-slavery and wanting expansion of slavery to other states.
So when Abraham Lincoln left The Wigs to join a new Republican Party based on the platform of no slavery it felt as if America had it’s first progressive party. Abraham Lincoln did in fact free the slaves and joined the British in stopping all slave traders worldwide.
Fast forward 200 years and the Democrats, once slave lovers, are now lead by a black man and are considered the more progressive of the two parties. Many people have tried to explain what happened, but more are focused on a strategy to win the 2016 election.
The GOP is in hard times. For the first time in a long time they are reaching out to the black community trying to steal black votes from the Democrats. The GOP are trying to design something that might appeal to black voters.
But really this might just be a waste of time. To win back black voters they have to be in office and do things to help the black community, they will never win the blacks over on promises alone.
However an untapped resource the Republicans may have never considered are video gamers.
Video gamers are overwhelmingly the most closet conservative people on the planet. You would never know because most video gamers are between 18–35 and are in the lowest participating voting age bracket.
But let’s throw out some fun facts as to why Republicans should start courting video gamers.
MMORPG Guilds are a Conservatives Dream
Having spent almost 2 decades playing MMORPGs I can tell you that there is no institution far more Conservative than the MMORPG guild.
At the end of the guild is the guild masters. Guild masters are either elitists with the initiative to be a guild leader or are people chosen from popular consent. Both of these ways of forming government are prime conservative fundamentals.
When going to a guild you choose from a group of guilds, you know… like capitalism. The more guilds you can choose from the better the MMORPG might be. No MMORPG player would ever accept the idea of there being one guild in the game, or no guilds. The idea that you can come together in a collective group and form a community is a key fundamental idea of MMORPGs and of conservatism.
The most prominent part of MMORPG players being so hyper conservative is how loot is decided.
A liberal (John Rawls) would ask loot to be decided in terms of who needs it most. This means that people who have the least output get the most gear.
Conservatives don’t think this way. Conservatives think that you should earn what you get. To this extent loot systems in MMORPG guilds often revolve around paying your dues and earning your loot through time commitment.
But of course there are exceptions. Conservatives are willing to bail out that airline industry that isn’t doing so well for the national interest. This is similar to how a guild might gear out a tank first because this is in the interest of the guild’s progression.
If an MMORPG players spent as much time handing out political pamphlets as they did farming Republicans could win 70% of the popular vote.
Gamers Are Passionate See SOPA
There is a lot of passion in gaming.
This passion erupted when the whole SOPA debate came around. The SOPA debate was a funny one and it was one in which I sided with legislatures.
However most gamers were adamant about not letting this pass. There was mass letters, funding for lobbying organizations, and en masse community blackouts.
Imagine if the Republican Party could channel that power into a political force?
The problem of course is that SOPA was a Republican bill.
It would mean (for Republicans) they would have to tone down anti-Internet stuff and start talking about expanding Internet and working with companies like Google to spread Gigabit Internet nation wide.
In terms of legislation Democrats tend to make more anti-video game legislation than Republicans. Republicans seem to just talk about it.
If they were to try and make bills and make progress that would bring video gamers on their side it might mean blaming bad parenting for violence instead of video games. The Republicans have said this in the past, so it’s not a big shift.
Gamers are also (and unfortunately) very susceptible to advertising campaigns. Many gamers like to self-glorify in what they feel might be an untested higher than average IQ, but the truth is gamers are easier to fool than anyone else.
Gamers fit into one of the small groups of people who will purchase something entirely based on a pitch. Gamers purchase products that don’t even exist all for the chance that when it does exist, it will be awesome.
Advertising campaigns from the Repubs would be very cutting and effective if they could only dig into the ‘cool’ factor that gamers enjoy.
The Democrats most definitely have the cool factor but unfortunately they do not have a platform and values that are in line with most gamers.
Instead of trying to convert Democrats, the Republicans should look at a new set of voters. Never before in the history of man has the 18-35 voting block had a reason to vote at all. Republicans could give them that if they only tried.
Republicans Need a Younger Face
One of the problems with the Republican Party is its perception, it appears as a party of elderly bigoted people.
The truth is there isn’t a big difference between the Republicans and the Democrats…. that we know. President Barack Obama as an example campaigned on a very progressive platform, but never lived up to any of his progressive promises.
But what got Barack Obama elected.
Simple.
He was cool.
The same was true of Bill Clinton.
The Democratic Party wins on branding. Much like how Xbox is the only cool part of Microsoft, presidents are really the only cool part of being a Democrat.
When Barack Obama is on the campaign trail he is tweeting. Sometimes you can see him looking down at a tablet. This president has been designed to really attract young voters.
When you look at the last few Republicans you get the opposite, a bunch of older people who appeal to people who remember that there were wars in the past.
Truthfully the Republican Party needs a younger base that can spread the word and revitalize the Republican Party, so why not target gamers?
On top of gamers being so common, they also happen to be the new cool thing as seemingly everyone is proudly calling themselves a nerd or a gamer.
Gamers Have Disposable Income
The video game industry is getting close to being a trillion dollar industry. It represents the largest chunk of the entertainment industry.
This is due in part to the unique consumer culture of the video game industry. It is one of the few industries in which people can and do pre-order items.
Yes here’s the thing. Gamers are very easily sold on ideals, promises, and are easy to forget controversies. We’re only a few months after the big SimCity launch fiasco and no one who paid for it cares. The same is true of Diablo 3.
This means you have a player base that is valuable in terms of assets and will be more forgiving of short term scandals and controversies.
For the second year in a row The Consumerist has rated Electronic Arts (via public voting) the worst company in America.
This of course was done via popular vote and Electronic Arts is the most popular worst company in America.
I think that if anything is what they actually are, the most popular bad company in America. Not the worst by any means. There are obviously some voting problems here. If polls were setup outside of Walmarts showing all of the various propaganda about the bad stuff Walmart does, Walmart might be the worst.
This article acts as a defense of Electronic Arts, not because they are great guys, but because there are far worse villains in the world than the guys who make video games for a living.
Why Electronic Arts?
If you ask the President of Electronic Arts why he feels EA got this award he would say it’s because they’re the top, or more oddly… that people targeted them because of their pr-LGBT stance.
This last point was very odd. Bioware (the RPG branch of EA) make games that feature characters who you can make into lesbians and homosexuals. Mass Effect 3 most notoriously features a gay black love affair that you can craft if you want it. SWTOR came under heavy fire when they said they would add in LGBT relationships and even more when they actually did it.
So I decided to go to the White Supremicist web site that has been around for a little over 20 years. I first found Stormfront when I became intellectually interested (as a child) on whether or not racists actually still exist… they most certainly do. Stormfront like any other white supremicist league has a fervent and powerful gaming community. So some quotes from their forum on Mass Effect 3:
“Im disappointed in the open faggotry in this game, in one scene a male negro talks about losing his husband back on earth…
So pointless and disgusting to have stuff like that in a game, shame on you Bioware.”
“The first 31 hours of gameplay… I really liked. Tense action, good sense, atmosphere, music, story (slightly less dialogue options than in ME2 though) but… What really, really bugged me was the ending/s. The Stargazer cut-scene was a nice reflection though, but the initial choices are a bit too similar in a depressing way, imo.”
“ME3 was a great game until the ending. I here most fans hated the ending so much that they’ve either subscribed to “Indoctrination theory”; in which Shepard is hallucinating the end scene, or are complaining to Bioware to write a new one in DLC form.”
“I agree. It’s pointless and annyoing to have political correct and multicultural marxist agenda in games. It’s everywhere.
I couldn’t believe it when that pilot Cortez started crying to my Shepard about the loss of his husband. And it gets worse, you can overhear conversation on the Citadel in which a woman is searching for her wife. Then there is the black guy Anderson romantically involved with Kahlee Sanders, one of the few remaining blond haired, blue eyed humans (apparently in Mass effect universe genuine blond hair and blue eyes are almost nonexistent ). And of course, except the Reapers, we have the other bad guys, Cerberus , “human supremacist” group. Etc. Yuck! I’m sorry now that I bought ME3. I finished it but it left a sour taste in my mouth.
It’s sad that gaming industry joined in pushing a certain agenda.”
Yes as it seems even the white supremicists are split on homosexuality in Mass Effect 3. From a simple sampling of 100 responses I found a little under 50% did not care about the gay relationships while another 50% were actively boycotting Electronic Arts.
Although it is possible that there were church groups and hate groups working against EA to try and make them the top, it might only represent a smaller portion of society.
So what is the real reason EA was voted the worst company in America?
There are two distinct reasons that are both true and when combined make for a surefire winner.
The first is that gamers are the most connected players in the world. They watch more Youtube videos than any other crowd, they spend more hours on Reddit than any other sub-reddit, and take in more news than the average person. Gamers in their heightened intellectual state are also prone to protest.
The mass protest of gamers in 2011 was enough to cause legislatures to consider the Stop Online Piracy Act.
A year later the protest of gamers was enough to stop any real legislation in regards to violent video games.
Video gamers are a giant and powerful untapped voting electorate that no politician has ever sought to capture. On top of this they are also one of the most international crowds. Electronic Arts ships its games off to over 300 countries world wide. There is no other company on the list that even matches this.
When I voted (as a Canadian) in this poll it never once asked me what country I was from. It just allowed me to vote. To this extent this massive international block could swing in and send a note to the gaming industry, hey, you guys suck!
But with that in mind had it been ANY games publishing company on that list, they would have been worst as well. Activision could have easily won this award simply for being the only games publishing company on the list.
If there were two on the list, neither might have won. One of the problems with this is you have four major retailers, four major banks, four cable networks, two postal delivery services, seven Internet providers, three airlines, four credit services, and a cruise line… that’s a lot of split voting.
In a political situation it would be like if half of the Democrats left the Democratic Party and created The New Liberal Party of America. This would split the Liberal vote in half and cause the Republicans to win every election. This is basically what is happening in this poll.
So that’s a long winded way of saying #1.
The second reason has to do with their business practices, although as I will show later, their’s are not nearly as bad as others. Electronic Arts releases SimCity and on the first day you can purchase three DLC packs. Each of these cost $10 and add a lot to the game in terms of functionality. That makes the actual price of the game to be $90 when games like Cities in Motion 2 are running around selling their game for $20.
This kind of business practice of splitting up games and nickle and diming consumers is enough to anger people. It gets worse with SWTOR’s free to play model making you purchase toolbars and character slots (and expansions).
When you have a company that sells 50 million games a year and in each one of those they try and nickle and dime people a little bit…. it’s going to have a lot more breadth than some of these other guys.
Actual Worst: The Banks – Bank of America, Chase, Capital One, and Wells Fargo
It’s funny that America’s economy can be entirely blamed on a collection of banks conspiring to cheat consumers and in term cheat the country… and yet people are so willing to jump on a video game publisher.
It’s like if Satan was marching his army across the world conquering as he went and a gypsy was stealing quarters at a market, people would be more willing to tell off the gypsy woman than Satan.
But that’s exactly how it is.
10 years ago the banks of America were caught using poor business practices, that they still use today.
The worst of these is giving people mortgages, that they know people would be unable to pay back. They allow people to take bets through differential investment insurance on whether these people will fail at paying their mortgage and when they can’t pay their mortgages these guys take their homes and in turn profits go to the guys betting against them.
This happened all across America and still happens. Bank of America is clearly the worst of the worst. With a four way split vote on banks it’s amazing that Bank of America was even able to get into the finals
But I ask this.
What is worse from a company.
A company that will liquidate the total assets and home of 1000 families functionally making them homeless and destitute. Or a guy who charges you an extra $5 for a character slot?
Because the effects of Bank of America are not as every day visual as EA’s it might be hard to see how bad this collection of banks are exactly.
Interesting fact about… interest. Interest was first established by Jewish bankers in the 11th century. The idea was Jews would store your money in a bank, they would take your money and invest it in something and you would collect interest. The interest rate would be competitive with other bankers and so bankers would be forced to give larger and larger cuts of their international profit.
Every day nickle and dime include the transaction fee which was first introduced by Bank of America. This practice became so big that banks started offering people to trade their interest gains for transaction fee removal. Yes the banks convinced us that they were doing us a favour… as opposed to us having done them a favour by letting them hold our money.
Unfortunately the victims of this bank are so destitute and broke they don’t have a voice to speak out against these guys.
#2 Worst: Walmart
I can understand there might be a little resentment towards Sears, JCPenny, and BestBuy. But honestly, none of that resentment is even remotely close to that of Walmart.
Walmart is such a clear second worst company in America. However instead of being rated second it gets to be tied with AT&T for third because of how the voting brackets worked out.
Walmart is everywhere. It is the largest distributor of goods in the world. They purchase and sell more stuff than anyone would have ever thought possible.
However simply being large is not a problem.
Walmart has two major problems that make them second worst.
The first, and most critical is they do not treat their employees well. Here in Canada Walmart has most recently been caught in a foreign workers fraud. Basically in Canada if you cannot hire from the local population you can hire foreign workers to temporarily work in the country and reduced rates. Walmart fired a large portion of their staff and replaced them with foreign workers. Other countries have this and I have no doubt Walmart does this world wide.
Another major labour problem involves unions.
Walmart hates unions.
In Quebec a Walmart staff voted to become unionized. They signed on with he Canadian Autoworkers Union (the CAW creates and supports small unions for such places similar to how the Teamsters work in America). Less than a week later the Walmart announced it was closing down. All staff was laid off and everyone lost their job. Walmart did not want the idea of a unionized Walmart to spread to other Walmarts.
A second major problem with Walmart involves their foreign workers. All those cheap goods we buy come at a cost. Walmart operates thousands of sweat shops in China using mostly prison labour but also some child labour. Under these conditions people make all of the goods we find at Walmart.
The goods are sent to your local Walmart where Walmart sells them so cheaply that local made non-sweat shop goods cannot survive. Other retailers are fighting to survive against the Walmart Juggernaut.
Third Worst: Carnival Cruise Lines
I’m sure there are tones of reasons to hate AT&T, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft… I really do. But I don’t think Google changing the layout of Youtube or Facebook adding Timeline really cut it against real hard hitting problems of some of these companies.
Most recently the US Senate indicated the Carnival Cruise Lines costs the US Navy $4.2M in rescues with over 90 serious incidents.
As a response Carnival Cruise Lines indicated that it is maritime tradition to help anyone who is in need and referenced that they sent one of their cruises to aid Florida.
And this is where it gets kind of weird. First it means that the people on that cruise were sent off to Florida instead of their normal regular destination. And second it means that Carnival Cruises have way more problems than you will often hear about. With over 90 serious incidents there is more going on in Carnival Cruise Lines than you might think.
I don’t even know why it is called an American company. Carnival Cruise Lines is based out of some small island in the Bahamas and simply using American services for their cruise. Yes, they don’t pay taxes.
Most cruise lines will cancel their cruise if the weather is too bad. As compensation they will often offer various packages around the same time on ships that are sailing that won’t encourage weather problems.
Not Carnival Cruise, this discount carrier will go no matter what. More often than not passengers will get dropped off on random countries that are not on the list. Some of these areas do not have access to an international airport meaning once you get on this cruise, you cannot get off no matter what.
And you really get the idea that it is discount.
People often report unclean conditions, shortages of food, bad smells everywhere, understaffing, theft, and nickle and diming.
I can’t see how Electronic Arts who charge you $10 for DLC can even be compared to these charltons who are seemingly so incompetent.
EA Isn’t the Worst
EA gets a lot of flak because they are the kings of an industry that is full of despicable business practices and games being pushed forward before they are done. Electronic Arts is a symbol of all of the problems almost every single gaming company out there has, not the exception.
I didn’t mention it until now, but it is worth mentioning. Recently Electronic Arts laid off a large portion of it’s staff at a Montreal based studio that worked on mobile apps.
This is not a shitty EA specific decision, this is something every single gaming company out there does all the time. The problem is that because Electronic Arts is so freaking huge
When I worked for Bioware (pre-EA) and Ubisoft prior I was hired on for a contract in which my contract expired on the release date. If they pushed back development I would get a contract extension. The work I did was not needed beyond the development of those games.
This is the uncertain world that video game developers live in. Everything they do is very specialized and because of this once a game is done, they’re not needed anymore. Looking at Bioware’s hiring I found this:
It’s very obvious from this job posting that one of these two positions is a temporary one.
This is how it is for people who make games everywhere. They want to get that position on the left, but they have to start off with a bunch of those positions on the right.
In a game development cycle it starts off with artists who are working out the conceptual stuff. Artists include both graphical and authors who are working out the story. After six months they might hire on some people to work very specifically with character models and another to work on just backgrounds. Staff shifts from one job to another and on launch day there is a giant set of lay offs. The only people kept on are usually those who have the skills to work on effective DLC who generally get contract extensions.
These people who are held on might get transferred to another project as the DLC runs out. They then hire on another wave of people to work on another project.
Every single company does this. The fact that EA might hire on a thousand people to make a game means that they’ll probably lay off a thousand people once the game is made.
If this still disgusts you remember every single game developer does it and the only way to stop it would be to boycott all games… which you will never do.
I remember thinking that Microsoft Instant Messenger would last forever.
It goes back even further than that I suppose. When IRC was out I just didn’t see how anything could compete with this mass chatroom format, then messenger wiped them out.
Microsoft’s Live Messenger became so dominant that it wiped out all of the messenger competition.
But as it ended up Facebook wiped out Live Messenger. It was a year ago I logged on and noticed no one was around. I deleted Messenger that day. The day after I received an email from Microsoft telling me that they merged my account with Skype and would discontinue their messenger service.
Facebook was successful in connecting the whole of the internet together and it was also successful in linking up all games, tablets, cell phones, and even televisions. It was a successful platform that dominated social media. Of course, Facebook could be wiped out eventually too.
Which got me to thinking, how long will it be before Steam stops being relevant?
Steam was the first digital distribution service for video games. It initially became popular for two main reasons.
The first is that Valve makes really great games and they forced you to install the Steam DRM in order to purchase Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Gary’s Mod and other of their DRM loaded super popular games.
The second reason is that because of Valve’s reputation for making outstanding games people have become very loyal to Valve and have stuck with Steam.
But signs that Steam is not alone have really shown their signs.
The first and most obvious is Electronic Arts’ Origin platform. A lot of people compare this to an indie developer and a big giant corporate evil developer.
But let’s think about it a different way.
Electronic Arts is a huge publisher that puts out tones of great titles every year. Last year we saw Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 launch as an Origin exclusive (on PC). Those are two massive games. To compete Valve produced… nothing.
This year Origin exclusives include Sim City and Crysis 3. Crysis is one of the best selling game series of all time. Sim City will be the highest selling game of 2013.
Whether you love or hate Electronic Arts the fact is they are putting out huge AAA titles that are actually good and that people actually play. They are games that require the Origin platform to play and as I’m writing this Origin hit its peak of traffic with over 1,000,000 users online.
Steam at its peak was 2,000,000 users. Origin clearly has a long way but they have taken a huge bite out of Steam and might continue to.
Valve simply put, does not make games. All Valve does these days is publish mods as stand alone games.
There last few titles include Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, DOTA2.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive as far as I can see is just a graphical update on the original game.
Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to Left 4 Dead, which was a popular mod of Half Life.
Portal 2 is the sequel to Portal. This is actually a game a Valve employee made in his spare time and was released as a 1 hour game. It is the only real game they’ve released in a long time.
DOTA 2 of course was “ripped off” from Warcraft 3 and it’s still in court the exact legal status of this game. Surely it will go live, but to say Valve made it and has exclusive rights to it is laughable. As we speak League of Legends is launching a mega campaign to crush this title.
Other than Portal, Valve has not released a meaningful title in years. On top of this the only publishers they are getting to sign up for Steam only DRM are very small publishers like Focus Home Interactive and Paradox Studios.
To be fair Bethesda does all their work through Valve. They are a major publisher and they do release a game once every 2-3 years that shatters records every time.
That’s being fair.
But the fact that all of the Bethesda’s of the world are doing without Steam is becoming kind of bothersome.
Steam, like Facebook, is trying new things to try and stay meaningful and stay ahead of the game. The goal of their current developments is to offer enough tools to publishers that they will accept the Steam only DRM and not go to other digital distributors.
The Steam Workshop is one of the big grabs for developers. By hooking their game up to Steam and only Steam they can rent the Steam Workshop and inspire a modding community relatively cheaply. For some games this makes a lot of sense and leads to sales. ARMA 2 and Skyrim are the biggest benefactors of this to date. But for other games, like Torchlight 2, largely get ignored.
There is also Steam Leaderboards which is relatively new. This feature allows for smaller games to create global ratings based on performance.
The Market, which is still in beta, will eventually allow players to buy and sell things on a virtual market and make money. Steam picks up a commission on every sale. In the future it will probably be possible that other developers will be able to put their games on there and pick up the commissions.
The Greenlight Project is another attempt at staying relevant. One of the big guiding forces that is stealing gamers away from traditional platforms is the massive Kickstarter indie market. Basically a developer throws his game up on Kickstarter and asks for X number of dollars. But he’s not really looking for X number of dollars, he’s actually looking for X number of players. In truth most of the really great games on there could be funded through a legitimate publisher.
But that’s not how this profit model works.
They want to have people contribute to the game and work with them developing the game. The game will spread through word of mouth and increase the total number of contributors. In the end these small team projects have great room for success and can operate completely separate of any platform. Most of these games are hosted on their own websites and allow you to download the game from their own servers.
By dipping their fingers into this pocket Valve is not actually looking to increase the quality of games that are available on Steam, but instead grab this unique user developer market that is emerging.
Greenlight if anything will keep Steam relevant in the future.
But for how long?
It has been 9 years since the release of Half Life 2. No doubt if or when a Half Life 3 (or Half Life Episode 3) was to release it would peak interest in gamers. But by comparison Electronic Arts is throwing out 2-3 AAA releases every single year as Origin exclusives and Ubisoft is creating 2-3 AAA releases every single year with UPlay.
It won’t be long before other people figure out they can do without Steam.
For those who think that the Steambox will save PC gaming and save Steam… think again. The Steambox is just a platform that supports any client, a person can load Origin and Steam on it. It is no different than how Facebook can appear on your cell phone…. however if Facebook were to venture into the hardware market it would be a nightmare.
The video game drought is over and now so many games are coming out that you will be stuck choosing between games as literally there will be 3-4 games launching per day.
So here we are at The Game Guru looking at the next few months seeing what we should be excited for.
April 2: Cities in Motion 2
Cities in Motion was a bit of a sleeper hit. The game did really good sales but never really kicked up a fuss.
To recap Cities in Motion was a great game. The downside was that on launch it was specifically unfinished. It was released for $15 and sold DLC at $2-$5.
At the end if you bought the original game and all the DLC as it was released the total game would cost about $40… or the price of a regular game.
This pricing model made fans of people. People really loved this sort of DLC.
The gameplay was also phenomenal. Colossal Order Ltd had found a niche that was unfulfilled in the gaming market… the city public transit planner.
It’s an element of city building that games just don’t get and it was one that they did very well. If you’ve never played the original definitely check it out.
Cities in Motion 2 promises to be another great game. I’m even willing to break my existing boycott of Paradox Interactive to try this game out.
Early May: Wargame AirLand Battle
Wargame: European Escalation was another one of these sleeper hits. It struck gold with the eastern European gaming market but only made a small bump in Western Europe and North America.
After hosting a 1700 person tournament with over $300,000 in prizes Eugen Systems made a lot of fans.
Their original game was arguable too niche with over 300 different units in it. However after offering four free DLCs people fell in love with this developer.
Wargame: AirLand Battle looks to offer 2 new countries (Canada and Sweden) with another giant group of units to be added to the game.
On top of this they are offering fixed wing aircraft (jet fighters). This is the first game to include supersonic fighters and the way it is done is absolutely brilliant.
My only regret is that I will be doing a cross Canada tour during the release.
June 25: Company of Heroes 2
What a scary game this ended up being.
With pre-order first being offered almost a full year ago it was presumed this game would be released some time in February. RTS developers across the world were scattering launches of their games in order to try and not encounter this juggernaut of a game.
When THQ went bankrupt they were liquidating their assets left and right. Relic stopped production on the Company of Heroes 2 game not knowing exactly who was going to get it. After all, what was the point in doing all the work if whoever would buy them might completely change the game.
There was a real fear that some giant like Electronic Arts or Activision might grab the title. Instead it ended up being giant SEGA. SEGA, unlike EA and Activision keep studios separate and have given them tones of room to work on their own.
In some situations (like Team Sonic) this has worked out for bad. Even when they outsource to major studios like Gearbox they have had bad results (Aliens Colonial Marines).
But with so many hits like Jet Set Radio, Hell Yeah!, Total War, and Football Simulator SEGA has what it takes.
SEGA didn’t just purchase the Company of Heroes 2 license, they bought the entire Relic Studios including Warhammer 40K license and have welcomed the staff into their homes… they’ve even started re-hiring in order to give the studio more life.
Company of Heroes 2 has an official launch date and people who pre-order will be getting guaranteed beta (AKA early access).
Three months and three games to be excited for. The Summer has more to come!
Then there is the black guy Anderson romantically involved with Kahlee Sanders, one of the few remaining blond haired, blue eyed humans (apparently in Mass effect universe genuine blond hair and blue eyes are almost nonexistent 
). And of course, except the Reapers, we have the other bad guys, Cerberus , “human supremacist” group. Etc. Yuck! I’m sorry now that I bought ME3. I finished it but it left a sour taste in my mouth.
Why We Won’t Care About Always on DRM
It always amazes me the difference between the hardcore gamer and the actual gamer.
The hardcore gamer wants new cutting edge shooters… the actual gamer wants a COD clone.
The hardcore gamer wants a giant open world sandbox MMO… the actual gamer wants a linear instanced theme park MMO.
The hardcore gamer is sick of Nintendo recycling the same games every 5 years… the actual gamer is waiting in line for the latest Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Mario Platformer, and Mario Party.
So when all of the hardcore gamers were complaining about XBox One’s Always On DRM and anti-sharing software… well I giggled a little inside.
I giggled because in the end, it won’t matter. It won’t matter because… actual gamers won’t care.
In reality the actual gamer is going to be more moved by who does the better marketing. Xbox 360 far out performed PS3 because they made their console appear cooler and Playstation had some early problems (like a full network hacking).
The actual “winner” of the console wars was one people didn’t even see as part of it. Nintendo Wii was far out selling the competition in every department.
This is because Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were the consoles that people said they want… that is a more powerful version of the same old thing.
The Nintendo Wii was what they wanted though. They wanted simple controllers with adjustable elements. They wanted motion controls that encouraged physical fitness (in a world in which child obesity is a problem). They wanted simple skill based Mario titles.
When you look at the massive games of the last five years many of them are indie titles like Bastion, LIMBO, and The Cave… not the AAA titles released by major publishers.
Xbox One is actually taking a page from Nintendo’s playbook. They’re ignoring the hardcore gaming crowd and going after a much larger market. Who wouldn’t want to watch TV through Xbox instead of having to deal with devilish networks who make you pay for 7 other channels for $25 when you only really wanted to get ESPN.
Basically what Playstation 4 has done (and why they’re being congratulated for it) is made the console that hardcore gamers wanted.. that is roughly the same one as before with minor improvements.
To me that sounds boring.
Somehow it being the exact same thing as before to everyone else is exciting.
Microsoft have done a few things that people ought to be getting excited about but they don’t.
Despite complaints that Kinect never works I’ve never actually had a problem with it on a friend’s Xbox and my own PC version of it. The fact that every Xbox One comes with a Kinect means that every single game that ever comes out for the Xbox can now be made assuming people will have voice commands and motion commands.
The Kinect 2.0 is an improvement on the Kinect 1.0 because you no longer have to be so far away for it to see you…. that is, it understands what half of a torso is.
But once again this is not something hardcores want. In fact hardcores really didn’t have patience for the Kinect. To them it was a gimmick but clearly Microsoft sees it as the future.
If I remember correctly Kinect did somewhere around 3M sales or 1/4 of all Xbox owners picked up this expensive optional attachment. This makes it one of the most successful attachments in gaming history.
Another example of Xbox ignoring hardcores was their announcement of Always On DRM.
It’s funny because market data always shows that people actually don’t care about this. The two most recent always on catastrophes were Diablo 3 and SimCity.
Diablo 3 on launch had a massive error that made the game unplayable and after a little under a week it was stable and completely playable.
SimCity was a little bit worse because it took a little over 2 months to fix this game on launch.
These were highlighted because they had Always On DRM. What people of course didn’t note was these problems exist in games that aren’t always on as well. As a god example Sword of the Stars 2 still does not work well to this day after almost two years of development.
Despite mass protest and complaint the sales of Diablo 3 and SimCity only continued to grow… yes as it turned out no one card that they had to play Always On.
People often do not note the high success and enjoyability of Always On DRM. The most famously enjoyable (and thus never mentioned) is World of Warcraft. Having been around for 10 years now the massively popular MMORPG is addictive, enjoyable, and solo-able despite having Always On DRM. But if you were to turn off the Internet and suddenly people would complain about how terrible the game was.
Always On DRM is a tool for developers to produce quality titles in which playing with people is enhanced.
Internet high quality is also readily available everywhere these days. You have to be in the most war torn part of Africa to not have access to cable. I was surprised upon coming home to my anti-technology province of Newfoundland and Labrador to find that they have Bell Fiber, one of the fastest Internets available in the world.
The irony at the end of this post is that I probably won’t purchase an Xbox One either.
The irony is that the Wii-U offers more to my household than either of the two “hardcore gamer” consoles.
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Tagged microsoft, nintendo, ps4, wii, wii-u, xbox, xbox one