Its not just about SSFIV per say, but that seems to be one of his main arguments. I think some of you will agree and some will disagree about what he has to say about SF. Anyways, just thought I would share:
No mention of Madden? Call of Duty? Guitar Hero?
He’s a scrub.
Pretty sure those go without saying. Saying the obvious wouldn’t have helped the article much.
What he is saying is true, but that’s how good games are made. You keep improving the game for each sequel, while not completely changing the game from it’s core. Something Ed Boon should take notes on.
Casual players want cool new crazy ass features. They see something broken and drool at the mouth.
“How the corpses of Street Fighter, Zelda, and Mario are kept alive, and why we should let them die.”
Read this and immediately closed it.
It’s actually well written.
Too well for a gaming article.
What I believe is this. All sequels should have a 2 year waiting period MINIMUM. Only exceptions are sports games that basically HAVE to do it yearly or they lose all hype, or like any updates that are sold cheaper but on a disc to avoid having to do DLC.
But straight up sequels need to wait 2 years, because it gets really bad when you basically shove out the same crap out the door and don’t even try to do something fresh. I’m not saying change everything, and some things you can only improve so much, but I shouldn’t feel like I’m playing the same game again.
That’s something that the Mario franchise has done SO well and why people don’t criticize or insult Nintendo for always doing a new Mario game instead of something else. Because rarely do you feel like you’re playing the same game, of course, now Galaxy 2 is coming out and it will be the first direct sequel to a Mario game since…I think Super Mario World, but I’m not sure, so we’ll see.
But the written parts about SF bother me. He does realize that Capcom was content on not releasing another SF game again and it was the FANS that got them to do 4.
Just another writer openly wondering why games have to do with mechanics rather than just being pretentious trainwrecks they can breathily muse upon to make themselves feel like they’re thoughtful.
Why, oh why, can’t more games be like Flower, failing in every possible way as a game because it’s focused too hard on being some sort of nebulous “experience”? I don’t know, game writer. I don’t know. Because then we could do away with that whole “design” thing altogether and just play a collection of screenshots poignantly told to us after the fact by a field of self-absorbed hacks. Or better yet, we could string those screenshots together in such a manner that it looks like they’re moving, like a dream, with us passively watching!
“I was twenty when my parents sold the house i grew up in…”
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
i kinda agree with him but at the same time he’s so idealistic about it. if it were up to him you could never have a sequel in order to evolve the previous game into a better experience. these companies are on limited time and budgets so they can’t make the first game incredible and not have any kind of room for improvement for a sequel.
also, you can still have loads of creative expression in sequels but that creativity definitely depletes with every incarnation the game goes through. still, just because a game comes out that’s totally original doesn’t automatically make it a good game and it’s a huge gamble on the artists who made the game. if they want to continue being creative professionally then you better bet your ass they are going to stick with what sells with a little room for experimentation.
oh, and these are fucking video games for crying out loud. they are for the most part, pointless entertainment that doesn’t help anyone. you will rarely be enlightened (if ever) by a video game and it’s not going to make the world a better place. put idealistic thoughts to better use.
meh…
I take issue with his argument about sequels in comparison to movies. Games are a different media produced under a different business structure. They often require refinement in ways that movies do not due to the way the audience interacts directly with them. A game made under conditions of limited budget and short timeline does not have the same potential for quality that a movie under those conditions has. In gaming, if that low budget first shot turns out to be a quality core idea, a second run at it with more time/resources devoted to the product is an entirely positive thing. Which isn’t to say that cashgrab shovelware sequels in the games industry don’t exist, of course. It’s just an entirely different medium.
As for Street Fighter, that’s yet another category as it is a competitively played series. I would liken its iterations more to progressive tweaking of rulesets in a sport over a period of years. His comparison to a deck of cards is apt, although i disagree with his overt suggestion that this is a bad thing. ‘2D fighting’ has become a fairly coherently defined game type. Any significant changes to that game type result in the game transitioning over into a different genre.
The statement about Uncharted 2 just being the same game with prettier production values is ridiculous. There are several core refinements made in that sequel that meaningfully improve the overall gameplay.
The self absorbed schlock at the end about childhood haunts appearing differently to adult eyes undermines his argument pretty badly.
I read both links, well about 15% of the kierkegaard bullshit, and I can safely say…
I want those 15 minutes of my life back. Now. With Interest.
read this and didn’t even bother to click the link.
It’s well past the time this effective ‘fleecing’ of gamers by rehashing one-time great franchises was brought to light.
It’s all well and good continuing an old series for a new gamer generation as some games of yore are well deserved of resurrection and yearn to be realised with modern tech.
But when the result is such a departure from what makes these games great in the first place - especially when it’s in a ‘casual’ or dumbed down direction, just so as to move units (eg. SFIV, Mario Kart…) - it’s an affront to gamers’ intelligence and the memory of the games themselves. :tdown:
Mario Kart’s always been casual, bad example.
Mario Kart has a tournament scene and made EVO.
MK Wii is a dumbed down version of the game. It isn’t a bad example at all.
…are you joking…? I mean, I do agree that MK Wii is a dumbed down version, but a tourney scene?
I’m completely serious, I didn’t know either till I started paying attention to Get Your Tournament, Glenn talks about it from time to time.
I use to be as angry as you about everything, but one day I just said fuck it who cares. Peoples stupidity shouldn’t bother you since its something you have no control over.
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
-Einstein