Reply 1

by Avateur , Sunday, March 03, 2013, 18:55 (4072 days ago) @ Kermit

I think I agree with Cliff.

After having read your whole post, I don't think I understand how. You just sort of state that you agree with him, but then you don't really talk about anything he does.

I was home sick one day this week. While lying in bed I watched Bungie's Brave New World vidoc again. I was struck by Marcus Lehto calling Reach the ultimate Halo. This week I played a few levels, and my gosh, I think he's right. In so many ways it is. It does so many things well.

It does many things well, and while I disagree about it being the ultimate Halo, I'd just like to point out that it doesn't need microtransactions to do the things it does well or to fail at the things it falls short on.

What are the financial conditions that allowed for that game to be made? You had to have the audience that was willing to buy a Halo game on day one. You had to have a studio with the experience necessary to make such a game. You had to have the hardware and systems to support such a game. If Halo games had not made the money that they did, Reach would not have been possible.

Microtransactions being wholly absent from said games is a fairly good indication that these games were fun to play and well made because Bungie as a studio went into them attempting to make great and gun games. The whole bit of them making games they want to play is the important part here. And why do people keep playing these games? Because they're great fun and very well made on their own.

I like when ambitious games also have commercial success. (Fingers crossed that Destiny fits that bill.) The landscape is always changing, though, and that affects what is made. It used to be that movies stayed in theaters for six months at a time, and triple-A games used to have a longer "tray-life." I fear that model is changing in a way where games like Reach can't afford to be made, yet, if film is any indication, regardless of what the new normal is financially, somebody sooner or later makes a truly excellent movie. On occasion that movie makes enough money to justify itself financially, and on rarer occasions it might be wildly popular. The landscape might have changed, but excellence finds a way.

With EA effectively stating that every game going forward will be required to have microtransactions, it doesn't matter if the studio can afford to make the hundred million dollar game or the two million dollar game. Is the focus going to be on creating a great gaming experience, or is it going to be on trying to get as much money as humanly possible to the detriment of the consumer and to the gameplay itself? Microtransactions already usually damage multiplayer (moreso competitive) depending upon how it's implemented.

Will the focus turn into trying to make games with the most polygons so that it looks great, but with the most tedious sections of gameplay or locked content to try and get the consumer to want to bypass it by purchasing what they already purchasd by purchasing the content that came on the disc that they purchased when they bought the game? Is the game purposely unbalanced to try to get players to spend more money to catch up with others who have more free time or who already purchased whatever let them unlock every single weapon or attachment or upgrade that gives them an extreme edge without putting in the skill or time necessary to obtain said items? Even if the game is amazing and fun, this can still have a negative impact on the industry, that particular game itself, and the players who are both playing the game right this second or who may buy the game for the first time a year from now.

People complaining about how this trend or that is ruining their gaming hobby remind me of people who complained that STAR WARS ruined filmmaking or serious science fiction or what have you. First of all, the world doesn't owe you a hobby. Second, despite STAR WARS turning Hollywood into a whizbang special effects showcase (or whatever the argument is), you still have films like BLADE RUNNER or more recently MOON. (The former probably would not have been made without the success of STAR WARS.)

Some of the best movies made this year didn't have anywhere near the budgets of movies like The Avengers or even the sales of movies like The Avengers, but were some of the best films in a while, some original screenplays and other works as adaptations, and they were absolutely masterful. I've never personally liked the video games vs. movies comparison, because it never seems to work. I was going somewhere with this, but I think it goes into a different topic entirely than one having to do with video games or microtransactions.