Editorial: Lenovo? Game State?

This is an opinion piece based on what I found here: Lenovo Game State

Image Source: http://www.computechtechnologyservices.com/blog/latest-blog-posts/lenovo-game-state-is-an-experiment-in-crowdsourced-game-development-and-you-can-help-design-it/

I've only just heard about Lenovo Game State. As I explore their website the first thing that strikes me is that behind the red and black veneer there are a curious many ways to find yourself looking at a store page (and not a store page for the "game" in question) or a commercial. Purportedly, a development team called Dark Rift will be designing a game based on "upvoted" art and content. This is insipid. Have these people never been to the Internet--the whole Internet? When did "we can't do this on our own" become an acceptable answer from the company making the game? It won't be the "influencers" who see the profit from the game, so why should they be necessary for development? They invite the influence of whom, exactly? Anyone that can sign up? That doesn't make for any sort of "community" whether it be of artists or otherwise.

Oh, and, hang on. When did Lenovo stop making printers and junk like that? I'm meant to believe they're a company that gives a crap about gaming because they think customers will buy their newest line of basic, garrish accessories? Sure. Of course. When do the "Lenovo Gaming" t-shirts come out, too? They'll be trying to sell velvet basketballs next. Gaming gear isn't a community pool, you can't just hop in because you sell an entry-level gaming rig. There are companies entirely devoted to gaming products like Razer, who, for all of their faults, make an effort to support and nurture gaming communities as well as the industry at large. It's rude to stick a hand in just for a cash-grab from the gaming demographic, but it's downright despicable to also task them with designing a game that you to sell back to them (especially without sharing any of the profit).

All that aside, I am interested in the idea as a social experiment. There are basic game mechanics in place; the game will be a MOBA-style game similar to what is already popular in that style. The users first submissions come as part of completing the three "missions" comprising a walkthrough of their website and thus there are plenty of submissions to fill the endless stream of tiles that comprises the bulk of Lenovo Game State's website.

But a single, flashy website doesn't leave me believing in Lenovo's gaming spirit. No hype man, and certainly no mini-team of creatives, is going to convince me that the company wants to be doing any of this at all, but rather deigns to it for the sake of an easy dollar. Moreover, there is no guarantee that this experiment won't completely fail. Currently, user "LukeGarvey" holds the top spot for submissions, and it is not undeserved. His illustrations look like they belong in a game developer's art book.  However, the rest of the users on the so-called "leaderboard" are hardly inspiring. 

As of now, their focus should be on marketing because the project is doomed without more attention.

Amazon buys Twitch for $970 million, why?

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I'd like to look at a bit of news.

On Monday, August 25, Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, hoisted the hefty sum of $970 million onto Twitch, a live streaming video platform, figuratively burying it in bank notes.

It is both easy and fruitless to focus on anything before the facts in a case like this, so let us get the facts straight.

Amazon.com is an international electronic commerce company. Launched way back in 1995, today they purvey everything from books and DVDs to jewelry, home goods, and apparel. Moreover, Amazon.com produces and sells consumer electronics including but not limited to the Kindle, Fire tablets, and more recently the Fire Phone. Over the course of the last fiscal year Amazon.com has seen ubiquitous growth across the board. The site boasts an international resume with separate retail websites for the USA, UK, Germany, China, India, and eight others alongside the intention to add at least three more. Suffice it to say that the retailer is very, very big and their wares are very, very diversified.

Let us turn our attention to Twitch.tv. Spawned somewhere in the rather recent past known colloquially as the year 2011, Twitch was originally the gaming-focused off-shoot of Justin.tv. In 2014, after Twitch had eclipsed Justin.tv in popularity, the company re-branded itself as Twitch Interactive. With average viewers per month up around 45 million, Twitch.tv is one of the top five sources of internet traffic as of last spring.

But the story of Twitch's growth is a very short one. There are really just two bright spots: first, in February, a stream known as "Twitch Plays Pokemon" went viral as it attempted to complete Pokemon Red via a crowdsourcing control mechanic (I must admit that the idea was clever and rather fascinating), and second, in July, electronic music act Steve Aoki live-streamed a show using the service.

The fact that neither of these events would be very noteworthy in a company which boasts two decades of success serves to illustrate the adolescence of Twitch Interactive. It is a young company, a growing company, but is it already a billion dollar company? My feeling is no, so why should Amazon.com think that it is?

http://www.quickmeme.com/Stepbrothers-Activities/page/5/

For one thing, Amazon aren't the only ones who seem to have taken an interest in the live-streaming upstart. Recently, the rumor had been that Google, through YouTube, was looking to acquire Twitch for a cool billion. And not so long ago we saw Facebook drop nearly $2 billion to acquire Oculus VR, a virtual reality technology company developing the much-praised Oculus Rift, a head-mounted display for immersive virtual reality. Importantly, however, is that while Oculus VR is making hardware under the banner of a software company, Twitch is a service platform under a retail-based company. In essence, these two moves are being made in opposite directions. What is true in both cases is that the growth of the gaming industry is something that other industries want to get their hands on.

It's a bit like trying to fit everyone in the room under a blanket, and it's likely that whoever can pull the hardest will sleep most comfortably.

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What Amazon has to offer Twitch is obvious--international infrastructure and the notoriety to raise their platform. Amazon Instant Video is out to compete with Netflix, so why not pick up Twitch and raise some hell for YouTube as well? It certainly fits with Amazon's tendency for diversity and competition. But competing in an industry you don't already belong in is risky--just look at Amazon's Fire Phone, for which sales were recently predicted by The Guardian to be around just 35,000 units.

Amazon has shown an interest in gaming for the last few years. In 2012 they created their own in-house studio. The company's Fire TV has a spattering of games to choose from, and they have already tried their hand at putting up some Facebook and mobile game fodder. So they're not entirely new to the idea, but they are  far from being thought of as more than a place to get your games from. Becoming a place you take your games to is a steep hill to climb.

But now let us step away from the facts and into the foggy world of conjecture.

http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2011/10/26/the-ghost-eye-conjecture/

What we know is that a big guy is giving a little guy lots of money. What we do not know is "why?".

Twitch does not seem like a great choice if Amazon is looking to turn over a quick dollar. Most of what is available on the site is free--watching streams, creating streams, commenting, participating, and so on. The site can run advertisements and sell premium memberships, but that doesn't really set it apart from YouTube, where serious content-producers are more likely to gravitate as they are able to cut themselves in on a bit of the profit. What I have seen more than anything on Twitch are streams used as gateways onto YouTube. "Watch an hour of our live content here and you'll want to watch two hours of our archived content over on YouTube" seems to be the general idea behind most of the streamed content. So there isn't any ground being gained by Amazon against Google/YouTube on that front, and the fastest way of breaking into something new is by stealing things away from those who already have them.

What small gains there are in advertising are great, but they are not the source of Twitch's growth and, for Amazon, they must envision some other kind of growth to invest so heavily in such a young company. While Twitch would be happy to ride on Amazon's massive coattails up to the front page of Prime Instant Video, what is the boon to Amazon?

If Amazon were to expand the platform for its own uses, as in exclusive features for its members or strengthening it's customer service capabilities and infrastructure, a myriad of benefits would seem to appear for the giant. But can we really have forgotten so quickly about Justin.tv? What Twitch Interactive quickly proved was that the room for growth in live-streaming services is in the gaming industry. While there may be benefits outside of that industry, it seems that the surest return on Amazon's investment lies in the same direction Twitch has already taken.

A quick way to turn investment into profit would be to turn on the exclusivity. Amazon has plenty of proprietary offerings beyond which they can close doors and throttle users. This would, rather quickly, ruin the service for the majority of users and streamers. Twitch is the biggest, best platform dedicated to live-streaming games at the moment and Amazon would be foolish to tarnish that title.

To my mind, Twitch was just the streaming service out in front of the pack of imitators still readying themselves to follow. With Amazon's investment they've been offered a turbo-boost. The first orders of business really only need to be two-fold. First, make streaming easier. In my experience, streaming puts such a load on my bandwidth that I'm left at a significant disadvantage in connection quality (as well as FPS). Making the whole process lighter and simpler would encourage greater participation from those who already know about the platform. Second, their new capital must make a difference in expanding the salience of their site amidst the milieu. It would be irresponsible and  irrevocable to sit back and wait for another stream to go viral like Twitch Plays Pokemon did. If that happens, great, but it's not Twitch's job to sit back and wait for it to happen again, it is their job to make all of those users who visited to see what the hubbub was about want to come back again and see what's new.

I'm not much of a Steve Aoki fan myself, but I do think hosting live events like that is a good way forward for the company. I want to see the comic conventions, the gaming conventions, the press conferences and everything else that has grown up around gaming culture live and in high-definition. I want to see a thousand channels streaming live content that interest me in a thousand ways. On one screen I want to see a symphony orchestra playing music from classic games and on another I want to see the Starcraft II tournament finals.

Twitch is getting the better end of the deal. They now have capital to grow quickly and the partnership to keep them ahead of the imitators as they globalize. For Amazon, they have to know that their newest asset isn't ready for the big-time yet. They have to know that Twitch is a company barely out of its shell, but that with some tender nursing it will soon be ready to join the hunt.

Just like this little cutie-pie.

My Favorite Game Soundtracks

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of music from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. In addition to it being genuinely fun music, it also draws me back to the joy of exploring the wasteland.

I wrote in an earlier post that sound is both a vital part of the gaming experience and something too often overlooked. Some of the biggest offenders in this area, in my opinion, have been free-to-play MMOs whereas indie games by one or two developers can be among the best. In order for a game to become an experience, quality sounds are vital.

Moreover, great music in a game can also inspire great music made by fans. When a theme is evocative in the right way, it can be reinterpreted again and again. Some of the most enjoyable game music comes from fans of the originals who reinspire the songs with their own energy.

But, I digress. After hours of big bands and crooners I decided that I would like to put together a few playlists of my own favorites and so, without further ado, here it is:

Fallout Franchise: A Sense of the Past

In addition to being just about the only country music I can enjoy, the music from Fallout takes the player back in time and into a world where art has stagnated in the wake of an apocalyptic war and a lasting strife. It both develops the world and draws the player into it. Some of the music is only vaguely familiar the first time you hear it, but as it becomes your soundtrack to the wasteland the two become undeniably linked.

While the game's original soundtrack is good, it's the radio playlists that really make Post-Apocalyptia special.




Legend of Zelda Franchise: The Power of Themes

It's hard to know for sure what it is about The Legend of Zelda that makes it's impact last for so long. I loved The Ocarina of Time, but since then none of the games have grabbed me in the same way. Even Wind Waker. And yet, the music is something which I have always deeply enjoyed.

This playlist includes a variety of ways to listen to this music. Symphonies, ensembles and dubstep remixes all founded on the same several themes and, like a jarred fairy, all possessing some of the magic of Hyrule4.




The Elder Scrolls Franchise: A Sense of Setting

I am a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls, so it is no surprise to find it here. I remember hearing the Skyrim theme before the game was released and listening to it endlessly. Too, the themes from Morrowind and Oblivion call me back to vicarious hours spent in another world. More so than in other games, the soundtracks of the Elder Scrolls put you back in a mood and in a place. Close your eyes, and the grassy valleys stretch out before you. The distant, cloudy mountains rise up and cradle you. The wildlife dances its natural dance through the shaded woods and across the sun-soaked plains.




Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag: A Sense of Character

I admit that I'd enjoyed a few shanties before I ever played Assassin's Creed 4, but ever since I sailed out on the Jackdaw they've held a new place in my heart. AC4 is another fine example of sound being used to draw the player into a world. While repetitive cut-scenes are a shortcoming of the game in many ways, the consoling presence of the crew's shanties makes up for a great deal. The songs allow your crew to feel like people rather than resources and I, for one, love to sing along.

Here is a playlist of all the shanties your crew knows so that you can learn them, too.




Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: The Power of Community

When I was growing up, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was a franchise to rival Madden NFL for popularity. I had it, my friends had it, and we all thought we knew the best trick. Beyond simply being a fun game, I still find today that the songs from the first three game's soundtracks hold a special nostalgia for me. Moreover, at the time and as a gamer, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was introducing and inviting me into a community. In those days, "skaters" were a clique unto themselves and this was especially true in their music. Punky, indie rock was a staple of their genre, usually sounding off on an anti-establishment theme of one kind or another. While I never would have identified myself as a "skater kid", the franchise and the playlists introduced me to the community and helped me to understand it.

Today, many of these songs still hold a special place in my memory and altogether they make for a pretty great playlist.





Assorted Others: The Sense and Power of Nostalgia

Throughout this post I have discussed how certain games and franchises can make effective and consistent use of music to strengthen the experience of their game. In LoZ, we see that musical themes can tie worlds together and, in the same way, THPS demonstrates how ideological themes can bring a greater depth of experience. In Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Assassin's Creed 4, sound is used to give the player a greater breadth of feeling all throughout their vicarious explorations. While these examples are favorites of mine, there are a plethora of games and franchises which have done and continue to do this same thing. Because I can, here is another list of some assorted video game songs that I really love, but which are not included in the above playlists.

HD Remakes

A trend is growing in the gaming industry: outdated games are being re-released with graphical updates. Last December, GameInformer posted an article about their five favorite remakes and the folks at IGN have also posted their opinions. As for me, let me speak from my own experience.

Most recently, I purchased Age of Empires II HD. AoEII was a game from my childhood, one that I poured countless hours into. I still think that the scenario builder in that game is one of the most fun to play with, and that was a large part of why I wanted the remake. Since downloading the game, though, I've spent maybe an hour with it. I went back for the nostalgia once, but not again. That leads me to my critical feelings towards the gaming trend.

When AoEII HD was announced, I was interested. When the twenty dollar price point was set, I was disappointed. I waited until I could get the game on sale for five dollars before I would even consider it. And that seems to be the norm for re-releases lately. A number of Final Fantasy games from the Playstation era are popping up for sale on Steam, but they're just too expensive. I can't say I'm familiar with the degree of difficulty in re-texturing an entire game, and it's likely that there's more to getting an old game to run on modern systems than changing the image files, but I can't believe that I'm expected to pay as much for an old game as a new one. I feel that these re-releases will never sustain momentum in the market if they can't be marketed to more consumers, and I feel that many consumers are like me in feeling that the price points of these games holds them back. Would I like to go back and play through Final Fantasy VII again? Sure, maybe not all the way through, though, so I don't feel that I would be getting eighteen dollars of entertainment there.

In the particular case of AoEIIHD, new DLC was also released. I like this idea quite a bit. If I'm going to buy a game I already own (or used to own), it is a definite incentive for there to be something new to do in that game. At the same time, however, making an old game new somewhat defeats the purpose of branding it as a re-release. If I want to play the game again, I could buy a re-release, but if there is new content to be had why put it in an old box? I think this idea worked for Age of Empires, where adding a new campaign was facilitated by the form, but in other cases it would be awkward. Imagine adding side missions to Final Fantasy VIII--they would be necessarily impotent in the story and probably not considered canon by  those who played the original. Such treatment of narratives has been treated with derision before, and in the microcosmic narrative of a straight story-line it would be irritating to fans of the original (which is precisely what a re-release is meant NOT to do).

And speaking of not irritating fans of the original, Fable: Anniversary (the re-release of the original Fable) is set to be released at some point this year. Seeing the multitude of posts coming up on my Facebook feed is what originally got me thinking on this blog post. I was a fan of the game back on Xbox, and played through it's two sequels despite their diminishing entertainment value. Thus, it was on my list of favorite games and thus I get to see every post about the HD remake. I'm sure I don't want to play the game again myself, but the re-release has gotten me thinking that there are people I might like to introduce to the series if it's being brought up to a modern standard. I think that's the most valuable aspect of this trend: the opportunity to get an old favorite into new hands without having to excuse anything.

While I don't believe that HD remakes are a good time for fan service, I do believe they have real value in two ways. First, there is a feeling of nostalgia in going back to an old game. It wears off relatively quickly, but it's enough to sell some units. Second, there is the opportunity for that game to be shared again and for a second wave of gamers to get to enjoy it. This is the way that the trend needs to develop, and this is the way that HD remakes can solidify their momentum and become a real part of the growing game industry. There are a lot of gamers who, like me, might not want to buy the game again for oneself but would for a friend. If publishers can facilitate that kind of action, then old titles can become relevant again.

Gaming Playlists: Game On, Game Hard

I've been assembling and refining a few gaming playlists on YouTube over the last few weeks. Having dual monitors is great for this; I fullscreen the playlist on the smaller monitor and game on the larger one. I do the same thing with Netflix sometimes, but splitting my attention isn't always a good idea. Many of these songs are music videos, others are lyrics videos, but in either case you can stay focused on fragging. 

Don't forget to shuffle.

Here are the links:

This playlist is for fast-paced gaming. The songs tend to be louder and have a faster tempo. I use it when I play competitive game because they are the kinds of songs I'd set montages to.

Play it loud. Game Hard.




This playlist is for longer gaming sessions. The songs are generally longer and are better for playing in the background. I use this playlist for MMOs and casual games like SolForge.

 Play it long. Game On.




This playlist combines the previous two. As a result, the music is of a wider variety and there are about twice as many songs as the other two playlists. This playlist is best if you don't want to hear the same thing twice.




Finally, here is a link to a Pandora station I've used for a few years. If Pandora is more your thing, Castlevania Radio is a personal favorite.

Edit: Here's another Pandora link that a friend of mine suggested. It's based on Pretty Lights, but brings in rockier stuff as well. I like it for longer, chiller sessions.