Blogs: General

This may be a little behind the times we’re aware, but ploughing through the quite excellent original Mass Effect of late has highlighted various inevitabilities regarding the human condition. For the same reason that Tails the fox was often deliberately propelled to his spiky doom via the addition of a second controller, or Virtua Fighter characters were always forced into that additional ground slam (causing them to pratfall face fist out of the ring), it’s hard to resist playing the bad guy.

Microsoft’s announcement of its Games Room service recently got me thinking: what is it about old-school arcades that’s so appealing? Well, first of all the loud noises and flashy lights rocked your senses as soon as you set foot in the door. Another attractive aspect was the fact that it was often a rare treat to go there; it was normally while you were off on holiday, on a day trip to the beach, or at a ten-pin bowling birthday party.

Walk into any studio developing a game today and you’ll more than likely find two camps. You’ll find artists and you’ll find the technology gurus. The artists are employed to spend their time coming up with the most beautiful, outrageous, ambitious and down right unique ideas they can, all portrayed in stunning concept art that will more than likely span the walls of the office.

As of this writing, over 200,000 signatures (including mine) grace the petition of outrage (www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/ petition.html) directed at Modern Warfare 2’s too-big-to-fail developer Infinity Ward. The complaints centre around the omission of gameplay features that have been considered industry standard for years. Unlike all of its predecessors in the Call Of Duty series, MW2 doesn’t provide dedicated server support. And unlike its predecessors (and myriad games made on a bazillionth of the budget), it doesn’t offer enabled console commands, consistent latency, support for matches with more than 18 players, mod tools, efficient methods to kick hackers from ranked matches… in other words, all those frilly overrated pagan luxuries curiously featured in every one of the series’ previous instalments, and in every PC shooter ever (with the possible exception of Daikatana, which never had 18 players).

Choices in videogames can only go so far, regardless of how we might perceive the situation changing in the near future. In Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain, we have two games that have positioned choice as a primary gameplay mechanic, being flexible enough to generate varying scenarios for the player, but still tied to a central plot that results in everyone having comparable experiences.

My New Year’s day hangover was mercifully shorter than my fading fond memories of 2009, but looking back through that skid-tinted pane and with the aid of a little perspective from M2 Research, I’ve realised just how bloody awful 2009 was for many people in the games industry: 11,488 people laid-off since the late 2008 economic implosion with all major studios hit and the majority let go from the development studio level. Europe saw 13 percent of the lay-offs and the UK copped 81 percent of that, though a not insignificant portion of this total was made up of outsourced Quality Assurance staff.

Tis the season, as they say, when by long-standing social custom in Western countries’ real life tends to assume the worst characteristics of MMOs. Both rigidly enforce participating in communal activities and screaming kids; both entail careful advance planning and the occasional wipe; both expect you to travel outrageous distances to socialise with people whom you normally wouldn’t, all to trade trinkets and clothing in an effort to ‘level up’.

About two weeks ago, Rockstar released the last in its trilogy of GTA IV titles, The Ballad Of Gay Tony. For those that stuck with the open-world masterpiece until the very last, it was nothing but a rewarding journey. GTA IV was unprecedented in a range of ways. First of all, it represented the most accurate and relentless lampooning of American pop culture in the history of videogames. Incisive, funny and irreverent, the game’s attention to detail across the in-game TV, internet and radio stations remains staggering.

While 2009 has admittedly been a little lighter on releases than 2008, due to Modern Warfare 2 scaring even the most unlikely candidates out of the Q4 time frame (Bayonetta, really?), it hasn’t been the flaccid wonder that many observers assumed it would become. You’ve probably already picked up on this, whether that’s through the ridiculously high average of scores awarded on this site in the past few months, or the savage effect it’s had on your bank account.

“Something splendid is happening in the Ballroom,” the assembled crowd was told. And so they arrived, some 120 people packing into the cutely named Council House which looms over the coolly designed, water-featured Market Square in the heart of Nottingham. Over the years, you could imagine this building has been packed with dull chatter from the city's councillors, debating bin collections and whether or not there should be a confusing one-way system in the centre (lo and behold, there is). But from 27 October until Halloween, young people used the venue (which its pantheon-esque interior – worth checking out) to listen to a mixture of more pressing matters and to have a spot of fun.