Last week I played a game called Proteus. In Proteus, the player finds themselves in the middle of an ocean and they can swim to an island to explore. The player is free to play and explore as they wish as the island goes from season to season. Then after 45 minutes or so, it ends. For me, Proteus gives me what I really want from a video game. The game shows me a world to explore, interpret, and at the end, I took something away that felt tangible.
When I looked at discussion about Proteus on the internet however, it seemed like everybody was too busy complaining that it wasn’t what they expected to have any sort of real discussion of the game itself. A discussion about what makes Proteus a game is a semantic one, but one that I think is worth having, but the discussion I read was more filled with vitriol and dismissal than any sort of thoughtful discourse. It is sad for me, because this sort of thing is happening not just with Proteus, but with many video games.
Maybe it is because video games don’t have a real stable foundation when it comes to intellectual discussion like other mediums do, or maybe it is just that video games haven’t warranted any sort of real critical thought, but I am getting tired of trying to answer the question of are video games a worthwhile creative medium. The assumption that always smacks me in the face is that art is this rational thing that if an person follows certain rules and regulations, it can be considered worth paying attention to. To quote Rodolfo Llinás, a neural scientist at New York University, “creativity is not born out of reasoning.” So a person trying to “reason out” any sort of emotions or feelings from video games just is pointless. At some point, if someone becomes happy, sad, angry, scared, or thoughtful when playing a video game, who is anyone to say these feelings aren’t as real and valuable than if someone were to experience them from a movie or book? And if a person created a video game to invoke those feelings, is that not worthwhile?
That is where I feel like video games are. They are in this weird uneasy state of some people believing that they are amazing, others thinking video games are worthless, and most people not really caring that much. It is easy to see this in the current zeitgeist of Kickstarter. Video games can’t get funding because no one will buy them, but a few will pay tens, hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars to see them get made. With video games how they are, what will E3, the premier video game press event in North America, show us about the future of video games?
It brings in a lot of uneasiness, drama, and potential. Watching the press conferences from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo were as eye opening as they were baffling. All three companies are getting ready to take the plunge into the future of video games, but all three are taking completely different routes to get there.
So, for your reading pleasure, is my analysis of the three conferences:
Microsoft:
I wonder if Microsoft should have advertised the Xbox One as more of the “social, Kinect, sports, TV box that can do everything!” than what they did. With the weight of digital rights management looming implicitly over every single piece of XB1 news, I would think the impetus should have been about proving how that DRM doesn’t matter because everything that is cool about the XB1 revolves around being online, but instead, Microsoft delivered many games that would honestly feel better on a souped up PC (with a Xbox 360 controller) than a XB1. I still think the XB1 has potential, especially if the Kinect is as good as they are saying (true high fidelity motion controls in games has the potential for something new and exciting), but their reluctance to release in Asia because supposedly they are making it so the Kinect camera works better there concerns me (how bummed out do you think Japanese developers exclusive to XB1 are that that their games won’t even be in their native language?). Is the new Kinect camera able to work better, or is it just another attempt from Microsoft to over-promise its functionality? Fool me once Microsoft…
Sony
The funny thing about the PS4 is that despite just doing a lot of the same things that the PS3 did, it seems to have garnered the favor of a vocal majority of people who pay attention to E3. Sure, it has a new Final Fantasy, and a new Kingdom Hearts, and a new Infamous, but it isn’t anything that the PS3 wasn’t doing. The only difference seems to be that at least they look prettier. I was impressed at the amount of support Sony seems to be giving independent games though. It is cool to see those smaller games get a big stage. I found myself liking the PS4 more because of the potential region free capability (though the Persona 4 Arena sucker punch of region restrictions left a bad enough taste that anything “free” is suspect) and Japanese support. I admit that is my personal bias, but I think the combination of Japanese and indie support is more exciting than Microsoft nailing down games like Titanfall (though Titanfall does look good, it is another “rather play it on my PC” game for me). Other than the new paywall for multiplayer, it seems like the PS4 is something to get excited about.
Nintendo:
Nintendo decided this year to not have a conference and instead send out a video. This would have made no difference to me if the video stream wasn’t so terrible (the lag made it unwatchable), but it does indicate a gear shift at Nintendo. They did something very similar in Japan years ago when they pulled out of the Tokyo Game Show, but while pulling out of TGS felt more like Nintendo was too big to care, Nintendo not doing a conference felt more like they were afraid they couldn’t compete. Though, maybe the real reason is that they weren't showing anything really surprising. Nintendo decided to bank on familiarity. This is the polar opposite approach to game companies trying to get hype for their game by showing CG trailers. I admire Nintendo for focusing on showing these games in real time instead of trying to fool people into buying into something they haven’t actually played yet, but they had a chance to really excite people about the WiiU and they flubbed it. The only thing that was close was the reveal of Super Smash Bros., which while expected, still was something that celebrated the Nintendo brand in a way that most companies fail to do. Nintendo still has a long mountain to climb before they can win over the hearts and minds of people enough to actually sell consoles, but until they do something that makes people pass that threshold and actually buy a system, Nintendo looks like they have a hard fight ahead of themselves.
3DS and Vita
As someone who owns a 3DS, a Vita, and a iPad (mostly due to people being gracious, and not because I necessarily have lots of money), portable video games have become the way I play most of the time. The iPad found its market long ago, and is doing exceptionally well, the 3DS has recently been able to find a good audience, and the Vita is still struggling. I enjoy the iPad, but I don’t usually use it for games (though the recently updated version of Final Fantasy Tactics I highly recommended). The 3DS would need to erase games before I would need any new ones. The Vita has become the “wild card.” In some ways, that makes it a risky proposition, but for me, it makes it much more interesting. It was disappointing that nothing “big” was revealed for the Vita, but I suspect that the Vita will be a system for people like me who like to dig in and find something interesting to play. To be honest, I don’t plan to buy any new consoles this year because I will be too busy with the portable games (not to mention the Wii, PS3, and 360 games) I already have.
GAMES OF SHOW
Metal Gear Solid V : Open world is exactly where the series needed to go, and I wonder if the game will touch on the previous entries (will “Saladin” meet Sniper Wolf? will we see a young Solid Snake?), but I am not sold on the Kiefer Sutherland voice yet.
Final Fantasy XV : In Nomura I trust…to be ridiculous.
Super Smash Bros. : I was expecting to not be excited by this at all, but the Animal Crossing Villager, the pitch-perfect Mega Man, and the amazing Wii Fit Trainer dragged me back in.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch: Just watch this trailer.
Super Mario 3D World : Reading a lot people being cynical about Cat Mario and a playable Princess Peach made me realize that I don’t care about what a lot of people think about video games.
No comments:
Post a Comment