Decisions, Decisions, Decisions...

I had played three different games recently who put heavy emphasis in the choices you make. InFamous  2, The Walking Dead and Mass Effect 3. InFamous 2 was a very bipolar experience. You either is evil or good. All black and white. The Walking Dead and Mass Effect where very gray in a lot of its decisions. While Mass Effect sure made my past decisions, some of them tracking back to the very first game, make its weight be felt in the later games, specially the third one, The Walking Dead is still to show me this weight ( I have played only two episodes).

I think it is nice to see games holding players responsible for their decisions, even when they were made a long time ago. And specially when they make it seem a good idea at the time. Like most things in the 80s. And I swear, the mullet hair style should be at least a felony. if you have one, don't delude yourself, you are not cool. No, you aren't.

I've Become What I Hate Most

Human beings have this weird tendency to root for the weaker. We don't want to see someone who is already successful being successful again, we want to believe that anyone can be, so it give us hope that we will be successful ourselves one day. But in the moment that the weak become the strong, we forget their humble beginnings and that we supported them because now they remember us that they succeeded and we don't. That is why it is so easy to find people who now state their hate for something they loved in the past. 

The really interesting part is that sometimes the only difference between this relation is the success itself, not that the subject of our rooting changed. Take Call of Duty as an example. People loved Modern Warfare, and now many hate it. The games changed almost nothing (one of the complaints, in fact, about the series) and now many can't withstand it anymore. And what changed was not the company behind it or the games, just the amount of success in it.

We want to see new things succeeding. Not because of any logic, but because we want to hope we can succeed someday.

Dragging

It like I feel with certain books, movies and games. They take so long to get to some interesting point that by the time you got there, you are already tired and the excitement is lost. Or you just give up all together. In games, many people demand the games to have a certain amount of play time, and the answer many times is to just drag certain sequences. Like Skyrim, where you spend a lot of time just walking to your destinations, not doing something cool. In books this is made with lots of exposition, and movies do it with long sequences of scenarios. So, I prefer something to be short and sweet than drag so long that you start to wonder when it will end.

Jack Of All Trades

It happens more often in open-world games like GTA and Red Dead Redemption, RPGs and any game that try to be very big in scope. You have to do something and to do this something you need an object or an information who is in possession of someone. Of course, this someone seem unable to just give you what you need, instead you have to go in a long and laborious task to get it. One who usually involves an object or an information who is in possession of someone. Of course, this someone seem unable to just give you what you need, instead you have to go in a long and laborious task to get it. You got the idea.

It was specially maddening in Red Dead Redemption, where you had to spent long times doing menial jobs to some of the most despicable people in the west. People you probably could just have shot in the face and get what you wanted. I can accept that in the event of the main character being someone who must abide to the laws and can be punished by breaking it he cannot just shot someone.

But most of the cases the main character is either a criminal already or someone whose law cannot do anything anyway. So, it all felt like lazy writing of the game creators in order to give the players things to do. I will always wonder why they need to use such cheap devices, instead of making a story where you have lots of things to do, not just one thing who takes more time than they should because someone need you to deliver a box for him.

I Hate This Word

I hate the word 'gaymer'. It is not even a real word. Not because I have something against gays. I just really wanted that them, as anyone, didn't feel the need to make their own convention because everyone else is a jerk about things that shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter your gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, place of birth or anything like that. you like games, I like games, we should get along. unless you are a jerk, but being a jerk have nothing to do with whom you like to fuck.

I can understand that in a world where calling someone gay is still considered a big offense (specially in gaming) they felt the need to make a convention where they feel they are more welcomed. And I hate that. I want them to go to the conventions already in existence and feel like they are part of that. Maybe one day they will not need to do that and just feel what they already are. Gamers.

I hate the word 'gaymer'. Because it is a made up word. One who represent the fact that us, people, are still able to be really stupid against each other, for reasons that shouldn't matter.

Why Games Should and Should Not Become Easier

One of the complaints of the old time gamers is about how easier games are today when compared to the legendary 'good old days'. Of course, it make sense. Arcades didn't wanted gamers to finish a game in a hour and going home, they wanted them to play for hours and put lots of quarters in their machines, so a hard to beat game would be more profitable than easy to beat. And many console games were ports of arcades, so they retained their difficulty.

Now, with arcades almost dead, people play mostly at home. And making a game who gamers will dedicate days in beating it is counter-productive. Developers want gamers to finish their games as soon as possible and buy a new one. That is way they have no interest in keeping games with high replay values or that will take multiple tries to beat it.

That is why games like this is rare today.

Of course, that as a business make sense. If the profit comes from selling more games, making games who keep players trying to beat it for a long time is bad business. With the exception of games who try to keep the players hooked to sell DLC (MMO and Multiplayer heavy games) there is no reason to make a game hard. Not only that, making a game hard to finish will make it less accessible to newer gamers and create an obstacle to sell more games to more people.

And let's face it, most gamers now hate games with far away checkpoints, no autosave feature and no regenerative health. It is frustrating to lost a lot of progress because you made a single mistake or because the game unfairly killed you with a surprise attack you had no way to see it coming. We got to expect those features and to factually like them. But many of us miss the challenge of certain games.

Games like the Soul series and Ninja Gaiden with their brutal difficulties become a heaven for gamers who play games to challenge their skills. Many even call them 'real' games. Of course, games were just games in the old days. Nobody played because they were curious about the sprite in the screen backstory and how the game would end. Well, things changed...

If you played this game because of the gameplay, you did it wrong.

Games now have story, some even good, interesting story. I am one who hate to not finish a great story because the gameplay is getting in my way. It does not mean that I am for getting away with the gameplay altogether. Neither that games should be so hard to beat that you need to get months to play it to the end.

Games need to either find a balance for its difficulty. But a fit-all solution is impossible. That is why I love games who still do difficulty settings. You can just set it yourself, making a game as challenging as you need it to be. Many games don't have this option, making it harder to many people to get into the game and making it hard to newcomers to get into it.

Games have to be easy if developers want to profit and to new gamers to start getting into games. But it does not mean that games cannot be challenging to veteran players. All it need to do is give the options to each player to find the way they like to play games. Unfortunately we live in a time were people seem to believe that one thing must die to other exist. It does not need to be like it.

We just need to have the option. You like a challenge? Set the games at the highest difficulty. You just want to breeze through it? Very Easy in the settings. Developers need to start stop thinking just about a part of the public when making their games. Gamers need to stop to think only about themselves. By making games more easier to customize to the different kind of players, everyone can find their own sweet spot.

It is not that harder to do.

The Gaming Gold Rushs

We are living interesting times in gaming. From time to time, someone will declare the death of something game related so a new, better thing will take its place. The current trend is people making social and mobile games declaring that traditional gaming, with consoles and $60 games will die. And today, news that Zynga, one of the most famous makers of Facebook games is in serious financial troubles. All of that remembers the famous gold rushs humanity suffered in its History.

Every time that someone strike a successful business, people rush to make similar enterprises in hope to be as successful as that very first guy. Success comes to two kind of people. The ones who do it first and the ones who do it better. But to both of them, this just means short term success.

Long term success comes only to those who perceives the changes in their business and adapt accordingly, by also being very effective in determining for how long they can stay the same way before the gold mine dry out. As it happens with the gold rush, the ones who kept rich was the ones who perceived that simple mining would end up soon, and used the money they got from gold to invest in other stuff, like stores, cattle and more traditional, less fast profitable but more sure fire than just gold mining.

The next to fall?

Being able to perceive when something is a short term success is hard, specially when you are gaining lots of money. You just perceive it when the money start disappearing. The bubbles happened more then once in History. The .com bubble in the late 90s/early 2000s, the videogame crash of the 80s. All of them created because of stories of fast success that attracted too many people with no knowledge about how to make their business a long term affair.

I doubt that Zynga failing will just kill the social gaming scene. It will work as an warning to other companies about what they can become if they don't be careful. They will need to change the way they make business, diversify and improve in order to avoid a similar destiny. After all, we still mine gold, make videogames and have .com companies. Look at Google as an example of a .com company being successful and how they are working to broad the scope of their business.

Ultimately, it is sad that Zynga may be no more, not because of its games, but because of all the people who worked there hoping for success. But it is a warning about gold rushes. Not everyone will succeed and even less will keep being a success in the long run. So, before just declaring something to be the next big thing and the death of the old big thing, it is better be careful. Because only time can prove which one is right and to what extent.

Because not all that glitters is gold.