MMO's and Xbox live in a nutshell

Are Games Needlessly Long?

Just something I was washing around in my mouth I thought I'd spit out, all over you guys.

I was reading an IGN interview (read the full interview here) with Mike Capps, President of Epic Games (Gears of War, UT3). He was asked why, with all of the big names in gaming putting out sequals, a gamer would choose Gears 2 over all the others. His argument for Gears 2 revolved, oddly enough, around Valve's huge success with Portal. His claim was that shorter games with a solid core would provide an overall more pleasurable gaming experience.

It's an interesting concept. After beating Gears 1 in a single night of intense gaming, and nearly finishing it again on two other difficulty settings on that very same night, I think one of the first things me and Alex said to each other was "WOW THAT AWESOME...and short..." There was a huge awesome rush of badassery, only to be followed with a bit of disappointment at the lack of extra content. Going back through for the dog tags was fun, but I think we were both aching for some deeper story revelations. The characters were badass, but some of the developments felt hollow and certain avenues for more depth were left unexplored. Of course we were being picky, but thats how gamers should be.

Still, on the flip side I have Morrowin IV: Oblivion sitting on my computer, my mouse still unable to click the "uninstall" button. Why? Because I never finished it. Despite over a week of intense (albeit OCD) adventuring, I was still only scratching the surface of Oblivions content. Sure, that's the sell of the game. Do anything you want, go anywhere, be anything....but once the you begin to realize the benefits of your leveling do nothing since it's all scaled you're really left with a really long game that falls flat and boring 6-10 hours in. Is this an argument for shortening the game? Maybe not, but it certainly is an argument for editing content or perhaps reconsidering game mechanics that might make the game boring after a certain point. In other words, EARN your hours boys. Earn em' good.

At times, however, Capps feelings seem like a borderline defense of the casual gaming culture. I find it ironic that at one point he says the Wii's gaming experience falls flat after 2 months of ownership whereas you could make the same argument for any game that advocates Capps time constraints on games. "When do I have time?" he asks. It's a good question to ask, but ultimately it demonstrates a trend in video gaming that has already hit the movie market. In a world where thought takes too much time, it's safer business practice to make games like Gears than it is to make games like Stalker or Dwarf Fortress. The move away from steep learning curves, intense amounts of content, and longer complex story-telling is a win for console gaming, which supports this "pick up and play" mentality. Its the same reason table-top gaming has been on the decline...it's just too hard for the average person.

Without getting too off topic, I won't bash on casual gaming too hard because I appreciate "casual games" just as much as the next person. In fact, as a gamer, I relish the casual experience when I've been frustrated for the last damn time with something else and need a break. Still, knowing that despite an overwhelmed feeling I keep coming back to Oblivion, finishing a mission here and there (despite all its issues) tells me there IS a place for long games, but that as gamers we must assess whether each hour was worth its salt. At $60.00 dollars a pop, you deserve to be critical.

20 Reasons PC gaming isn't dead, and won't die

- Orange Box (I'll count it as one)
- CS:Source
- Call Of Duty 4
- Bioshock
- Civilization 4
- Rainbow Six: Vegas
- GTA: San Andreas
- Neverwinter Nights 2
- Assasin's Creed
- Sam and Max Series (Again, counting this only as one)
- Audiosurf
- Garry's Mod
- Defcon
- Devil May Cry 3
- Hitman games
- Guitar Hero 3/Rock Band
- Medieval II:Total War
- C&C:Tiberium Wars
- Total Commander
-Oblivion
-Crysis
-STALKER

rough draft of something i've been thinking about lately

I was thinking about the nature of artificial intelligence, and our current definition of it. Basically it is humanities attempt to emulate a free thinking and self reliant system. When you usethe phrase people tend to think about robots, sci-fi, movies with Jude Law, etc. As I considered it more and more, I moved towards robots, and their place in our society. About how robots have begun to "replace" humans in within certain fields. I put quotes around "replace" because I think, quite frankly, certain jobs have taken whole new levels of complexity since the flawed human mind has been nixxed. Data mining, for example, could never have been done solely by humans. We lack the processing power necessary to compute huge amounts of data in a small amount of time, and in the world of advertising (one industry that relies more and more on data mining) time is of the essence; what with the fickle minds of the consumer changing every 2 days. In this way computers have created new jobs, possibly as many as might've been lost? I don't really care to get into that, so I digress. Instead I want to talk about the stop sign.

After all, what simpler a form of artificial intelligence can you get? A sign that says stop is an easy solution to the problem "what happens when two roads meet?" Of course, you could put a traffic control officer at the intersection 24 hours a day, but that has it's downfalls. Economics, and the fragility of human health are just two of many issues. So instead we used the stop sign even before traffic lights to stimulate a sort of "social program" that follows all the basic rules of a programming language, an artificial intelligence, if you will. First person to stop goes first, yield to the guy on the right, come to a complete stop, show your turn signal, etc. When you take a step back and stop thinking about the individual drivers, you realize that the road way works in many ways like a single organism that has been programmed much like a computer.

For a large organism to exhibit free will it must be made up of smaller organisms whose survival relies on the survival of its host. Much like our society, with its countless free ranging little people that make up the whole, our own blood cells are merely parasites hundreds of thousands of years evolved until both the whole creature and each cell finds each other too necessary to separate. To use the roadway analogy, our road system has the characteristics of artificial intelligence but only because every part involved does indeed have free will. Boil the road way down, and its just a bunch of drivers in their cars. So can we emulate this with electronics? Its something i don't know much about beyond being a moderately well read person and a bit of a philosopher, so I can't say. I will say however that if society is in many ways a computer program, it can be treated as such. The rules (in the words of the matrix) can be bent, and sometimes broken. Perhaps I've always been fascinated by hackers not through their mastery of computers, but in their belief, one that was far ahead of its time, that rules are created not to obey, but to test...in computers or otherwise.

I, for one, have no problem being a life-hacker...or whatever the hell else you want to call "proud to understand the system"