Earlier this month a game called Rocket League was released by Psyonix. The team from San Diego has been showering in praise ever since (which is probably a nice change for the thirsty Californians). Rocket League is one of those games that you know should be a thing as soon as you realize it isn't already.
This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the game, and it sums up what my expectations were as I started to play:
While I (thankfully) didn't quite find Rocket League synonymous with Car Rugby, I do think the ideas share the same cheeky, boyish appeal with an underlying love for Motorsport.
My review of the game comes in the form of a three-part video:
The long wait is over for some Fallout 4 news as an official trailer was released today. After teasing an announcement yesterday and amidst much speculation that news on the franchise would be coming along with this year's E3 Conference, the new trailer is a pleasing mix of old and new.
The trailer begins by establishing this juxtaposition, pulling back from a television screen to show a ruined home decaying in the harsh sunshine of Post-Apocalyptia while flashing back to the time before the bombs went off. The trailer's first actor, a german shepard dog, is juxtaposed with a support robot which looks like a "Mister Handy" series robot. In this instance, the dog represents the "new" while the robot represents the "old", which serves the ironical portrayal of "past versus present" always so apparent (and so apparently well loved) in the Fallout series.
The Ink Spots are again serenading the series with "It's All Over But The Crying", which plays throughout the trailer. Having already contributed "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" to Fallout 3, this is another beautiful serenade which captures the serenity of the Wasteland. Moreover, drawing Fallout 4 closer to Fallout 3 helps to make the series feel connected beyond merely visual aesthetics. In the past (and, so far, looking forward) the team at Bethesda has done an absolutely outstanding job of putting together a soundtrack that is at once contemporary with their theme as well as incredibly entertaining. I've played Fallout just for to the radio before, and now I'm hopeful that I may again.
As the trailer continues, the flashbacks start to include more than the familiar robots of the past. People appear, as families with children and as civilians rushing to the vaults, while an anonymous radio announcer from the time that the bombs went off mourns the ending of the world as he knows it. This is all a pretty depressing juxtaposition between the dead Wasteland and the living Republic of yesterday. Yet while the bigger issues tell a sad tale, the glimpse of Pre-Apocalyptia is enticing. It's easy enough to imagine Fallout's world is based on the idea of the Cold War getting hot and leave it at that, but the lore and history which the fastidious gamer encounters tells another story. The world of Fallout is actually far less like our own than one assumes. I hope that Fallout 4 will find a way to let the players explore this history.
The folks at Bethesda, and indeed the loyal gamers who play their games, may be tired of the oft quoted "War, war never changes" that accompanies every game in the franchise, but even that (cleverly) only serves to illustrate the truth of the quote. While I do hope for a fair bit of change in the next game, it's nice to see that some things will stay the same.
The player, it appears, will be from Vault 111 and the german shepard from the beginning of the trailer will be his companion. A set of Power Armor is also present and seems to belong to the Vault dweller. While I do not feel opposed to exploring the Wasteland as someone else, the reiteration of certain elements helps draw the series closer together. It's the opposite of what we're experiencing in the Assassin's Creed franchise and while that enables Ubisoft to explore a wider array of narratives and settings, Bethesda has never made me feel limited for places to explore or ways to handle enemies (although, I wouldn't say no to helming a pirate ship--or maybe a pirate airship!?)
All in all, the trailer doesn't provide much more than some pretty visuals and a definitive theme, nostalgia. The narrative and exact setting remain unclear but the developers focus on delivering the uniquely "Fallout" experience is not. I'm looking forward to this reiteration of the series and I can't wait to hear more details!
Civilization: Beyond Earth is the newest installment in the growing Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. This new game changes from the historical fiction inspired gameplay of its predecessors to a futuristic, science-fiction inspired game. As a franchise well-beloved in spite of consistent reiteration, this was a risky switch of genre for Firaxis Games and, while I appreciate the developers trying something new, Civilization: Beyond Earth ultimately leaves something to be desired.
My own experience with the Civilization franchise began many years ago with Civilization III. While not the first in the series of games, the first five iterations all kept to a single premise--reimagining world history. It was this aspect which drew me to take my first turn far more than the turn-based strategy style or the thrill of planning to crush my foes over LAN. I spent the most time with Civilization IV and still some 150 hours with Civilization V, which I liked less in general for its changes to the gameplay and specifically for the way diplomacy worked. My quibbles over Civilization V aside, Civilization: Beyond Earth has done something that no other Civ game has ever done--moved from history and to prophecy.
This past weekend, Civilization:Beyond Earth was available to Steam users for a "free weekend". Previously, I had played the demo of the game also available through the service, but had not felt enticed to purchase the game. Now, having completed an "epic" length game, I'm satisfied with that decision and would like to share my thoughts on why.
Gameplay:
The very first thing that struck me as I started up Beyond Earth (after getting past some curiously long loading times) was how similar it seemed to be to Civ5. In terms of appearance, user interface, and options much of the game felt familiar.
As I took to exploring the map I found that there were far more impediments than before. Mountain ranges stretched further and canyons scarred long stretches of terrain which I could never cross. Beyond simply limiting movement, these impediments also served to diminish the effectiveness of ranged units. I see this change as a positive one on the aggregate. It asks the player to balance his military units differently, invites new strategies to approaching points of interest, and most of all gives the map a bit of character.
Choosing how to advance my civilization meant choosing between three "affinities", calculating how I wanted to mete out my civilizations "virtues", and developing technology along new, more complex lines. Affinities decide what ideologies your civilization takes on as it advances deeper into the future. The choice between harmony, purity, and supremacy on a new planet is a matter of philosophy, but none restrict your playstyle. For example, in my playthrough I chose to pursue harmony in order to reach transcendence and commune with the intelligence of our new planet, yet in order to do so I killed most of the indigenous life and repelled the miasmic gas covering much of its surface.
Virtues can be likened to Social Policies from Civ5 with the only new mechanic being bonuses for pursuing a single branch or a single level (i.e. taking the starting virtues in each branch). In my game, I made every effort to expand my civ while making its health (like "happiness" in Civ5) my priority. The addition of new cities far outweighed the effect that buildings and virtues could have in increasing my overall health and I was left struggling to get a positive score for most of the game. While it was frustrating to experience, this left me feeling like the designers had paid some mind to balancing the new game against landgrabbing and in favor of civ development.
The technology trees were refreshing, however, as there was no longer a single path to a given tech but rather a web of paths. There is a steep downside, however, because most of the new technologies would have fallen under the category of "future tech" in previous iterations, the tech web becomes a mire of neologisms that isn't intriguing when considered from the historian's perspective. While this isn't purely a bad thing, it diminishes a part of the game which I, for one, deeply enjoyed. All in all, the depth provided by choices of affinity, virtue, and tech leaves the player with many ways of experiencing a single style of play; whether you like to play a diplomat, a warmonger, or a cultural phenom, you can do so in a variety of ways.
While the new virtue system led me to believe that city management would be emphasized, in actual fact it didn't seem all that important. Rather, the biggest new mechanic was the management of trade routes to and from individual cities. It was no longer a matter of a road connecting two civs, but instead of a worker-type unit carrying resources between individual cities both domestic and foreign. Due in part to my inexperience with the new game, building city improvements was largely a "build it and see" experience. I knew that I wanted buildings which increased my civ's health, but the difference between building an aqueduct and a cytonursery is a matter of fact versus fiction. This was one of many instances where the lack of concrete imagery and history diminished the experience I have come to enjoy and expect from a Civ game.
Overall, the gameplay in the new Civilization leaves me wanting something more. Turn processing takes too long, especially later in the game, and the game itself hasn't done much to invite new playstyles or refresh old ones. While things look a bit different at the end I'm left feeling like I haven't played a new game. All in all the changes and improvements don't amount to much more than I could have seen coming from robust DLC or an expansion.
Visual Effects/Art Style:
Even more than Civilization: Beyond Earth's gameplay reminded me of Civ5, the graphics felt exactly the same. I'm sure that side-by-side I could see some improvements, but there was nothing new in this game that made an impression graphically. With an entirely new planet to play with, that's a big disappointment. It's not that things aren't different, it's that they're the same. New units and new buildings have different skins, but operate and behave the same way. Combat looks a little smoother, but not in any ways that stand out. The maps themselves look and feel more dense than before, but the entire palette relies too heavily on green and blue leaving too little contrast and vibrancy for an exciting, alien world. This is even more true if the player chooses to follow the "harmony" affinity as I did, which makes units and some buildings take on this same overused color palette.
Sound Effects/Music:
With the singular exception of the occasional audio clipping during loads, the soundtrack in Civilization: Beyond Earth is terrific. As I played, the music brought me to reminisce on Mass Effect, Halo, and even Jurassic Park. It created a wonderful ambience such that at times I preferred to listen rather than play the game.
Yet that's not the whole story. While the soundtrack is great, it often felt disconnected from what was going on in game. It was immutable whether I expanded, developed, or waged war. In times of peaceful trade and bloody warfare it didn't meld itself into the background of the experience and instead just hummed along over the top of everything. So, while I would absolutely recommend listening to the soundtrack on its own, there is no greater level of appreciation to be had from taking it in alongside the game.
The soundtrack is quite possibly the best part of the new game.
Story and Narrative:
In a game traditionally defined by the player's choices, story and narrative can vary wildly or not at all from game to game. In my games I often find myself considered a "warmonger" by the other civilizations by the time the game is ended, and I've come to embrace that. It's the way I choose to play the game and in Civilization: Beyond Earth I am given a variety of ways I can go about playing in that way. The variety of possibilities in the game is something to be applauded. It's not as simple as "this player plays like this and that player plays like that" because there are many ways of going about things and many ways of coming to the same conclusions. Pursuing different tech or different affinities can make the same essential story feel different.
Now while this is satisfying in theory, what is lacked is a significance to it all. Whether one wins by diplomacy or warfare, the story that one has told still has no characters and no setting. The alien planet and the post-earth civilizations have no historical basis. While I appreciate a good piece of science fiction at least as much as the next guy, there was an important aspect of the old Civilization games which came from seeing history interact in new ways. It was a sort of enlightenment to see how the course of a civilization might be shaped by its leaders and ideologies and Civilization: Beyond Earth seems to assume that fans of the franchise were ready to move beyond that rather than deeper into it.
Entertainment Value:
So far I've spent about six hours with Civilization: Beyond Earth and I have invested $0 in it. Given what I have experienced I am satisfied to leave it at that.
While Civilization V changed gameplay elements and upset the way the game had been played for years, it was still the same experience at its core and that was the experience I was paying for when I bought a Civilization game. Civ5 wasn't my favorite iteration, but it was a true successor. Civilization: Beyond Earth feels like an entirely different game borrowing Civilization's gameplay (and, to a point, it's graphics as well). It's the odd cousin, the ugly duckling, the sore thumb, in a well beloved and long-running franchise. While it opens up the game to some very exciting ideas through the Steam Workshop and modding communities, the game alone is not worth the investment of time and money.
I hope that in a few months there will be another free weekend and that modders will have infringed on copyrights from games like Halo and Mass Effect, but I just don't have any desire to own the game by itself.
Conclusion:
When I reached the end of my playthrough (about 150 turns later than expected) I was welcomed with a single pop-up congratulating me. Feeling like I had accomplished all that I desired to in the current game (again, about 150 turns before the actual end...), I chose to exit the game expecting a few pages of statistics and time-lapses. When I saw that I was in fact just being returned to the main menu I was disappointed and a little mad. It wasn't a big deal in previous games. It wasn't like I spent hours mulling over where and when I could have and should have expanded or attacked, it was just something nice to see--a reminder of where I had come from and where I had ended up. The end of a game in Civilization: Beyond Earth is like a song which has already gone on for too long missing the last beat. It's a sour way to wrap things up and doesn't appreciate the time and energy the player has spent playing the game.
More than anything the game is missing "final touches" that would make it look and feel polished. The units behave the same as they always have, the cities are just as static as they have always been, and the environment doesn't feel alien with the single exception of miasmic gas hanging over some tiles. If they really wanted to sell players on their new environment and mode, then more attention should have been paid to entertaining and delighting them rather than giving them what they were already accustomed to seeing. Civ5 took some major steps away from its predecessor in terms of gameplay and maybe Firaxis didn't want that kind of heat from its fans again, but Civilization: Beyond Earth already upsets so much of what was done in previous iterations that leaving much of anything the same doesn't serve the interested players.
Personally, I hope that the franchise returns to the historical fiction inspired gameplay of its roots, perhaps taking some of this newest game's improvements along the way. As of today, however, a new announcement has been made for the franchise:
Sid Meier's Starships looks like an "all-in" from the franchise on its new mode. While not explicitly a turn-based strategy game, Starships looks like an announcement which prophesies the direction that the franchise plans to take. This leads them away from the fans who have supported them in the past and into a new genre already mired with half-finished kickstarters and well-beloved indie titles. It's not that leaving your fans behind to do something new is a travesty on any level, it's just that it's a big investment to make into a genre which already has it's darlings.
Developed by Bungie and published by Activision, Destiny is the newest FPS making headlines. Touted as "an online, persistent world, first-person shooter", the game was released earlier this month on current- and last-gen consoles. As the "next big thing" from Bungie since they started the Halo franchise, Destiny has endured a lot of hype over the last few months.
Having gotten my hands on the game first during the final beta test and now after the official launch, the game can be summed up as Borderlands in a Halo-esque universe. Unlike Borderlands, the laughs are few and the tone is serious. Unlike Halo, loot grinding and exploration are core gameplay components.
What do they mean by "The ultimate adventure that unfolds over the next 10 years"?
Let's hope they mean that the game will get better...
Gameplay: Destiny's gameplay is perhaps the greatest disappoint of the game if only because it was the biggest victim of the hype. The simplest way to describe Destiny is "Halo with loot". While that isn't an insult, it doesn't describe the sort of game that will define a console (much less a generation of gaming).
Destiny is not "the ultimate adventure" in many ways. Classes are limited to just three, and the difference between them amounts to a choice of super power. While the action is frenetic and fun, the levels and missions that the player is given are contrived and linear . While performing "impossible" tasks time and again, I actually suffered more deaths from falling off of cliffs than from actual gunfire.
Advancing and upgrading throughout the game is simply a matter of grinding experience points, which leaves a lot to be desired in the way of RPG elements. I figured that once Call of Duty eventually figured out that I should be able to allocate my progress where I want it to be the rest of the gaming world would be smart enough to follow suit, but Destiny is hardly so customizable. Traits are earned in a specific order and only after achieving certain levels. Not only does this vastly underserve lower level players who try to compete with higher level players in the PvP modes, it takes away the pleasure of connecting with your particular character if every Titan, every Hunter, and every Warlock level in exactly the same way. At the higher levels, when choices have been unlocked, there is a degree of choice in how you want to play, but tucking this away at higher levels is just unnecessary. Bungie said that 20 hours into Destiny you'll feel like you're playing a new game, and that's somewhat true, but the cost is keeping good parts out of the beginning of the game.
Loot is a major aspect of the game as well, but this, too, has its flaws. Finding chests and getting good drops are infrequent enough that when they do happen you get excited, but like any lottery you lose more often than you win. Most of what you find is more or less just a chance at getting a good item, and most of the time you come away a little disappointed. Unlike Borderlands, where loot was nearly constant if not always beneficial, Destiny gives you half the loot and a slim chance at any real reward.
Ultimately, Destiny is a mix of good and bad. Enemies don't overwhelm you and yet they still challenge you at points, which is good. The "sticky" targeting controls are friendly, but take away from the competitiveness some look for in an FPS. Maps and modes are well matched in PvP matches, but the player's levels make for such a disparity in ability that lower level characters just aren't welcome. Pick-up missions keep the leveling goal-oriented when the main story does not, but fail to impress the player and are solely used for grinding reputation points, money, and experience. In the end, Destiny's gameplay amounts to endless repetition and, as Nerdist says, it feels "spiritless".
Visual Effects / Art Style: Visually, Destiny is immediately reminiscent of Borderlands and I felt the influence of Bungie's last few Halo games as well. So, simply put, nothing you wouldn't expect artistically. While there isn't anything wrong with doing what works, there are a number of vistas in the game which are quite striking, but then turning back to face your mission becomes a bit of a bummer.
For the first ten levels or so there is little to differentiate new enemies from old enemies, and that underwhelming feeling bleeds into the later levels when the biggest difference is whether the critical point is the head or the belly. Every enemy race has fodder, bigger fodder, shieldies, and heavies all of which move, hide, fight and die alike. Moreover, set piece environments and retraversing old ground serve to shrink the environments and bring the player to boredom more quickly than they should. Seeing the same cave three times turns what should be a planet into a sandbox--and an unimaginative one at that. While this lightens the load for level designers on the production side, it costs the game its potential to immerse every player deeper into the game's universe.
And as long as I'm on the subject of aesthetics, my experience with piecing armor together has been far from satisfying. When granted to good fortune to upgrade a piece of armor, more often than not that upgrade is a different color or style from my various other pieces of armor. As a result, the players armor is seldom uniform and (at least in my case) the character ends up as mismatched as a birthday clown from Craigslist. With color being the primary aesthetic difference between pieces and dye items unavailable until later on, there is little in the way of satisfaction throughout the first fifteen to twenty hours of Destiny.
Sound Effects / Music: Happily, the sounds in Destiny are a brighter spot. Through some levels, ambient environment sounds feels out of place and become repetitive after just a short time, yet these tend not to be obtrusive or detrimental in any significant way. This can be said of the gunfire or the reloading sound effects as well, but less so as both of those come with the distraction of action. And, in any case, the upsides here outweigh the downsides.
The game's music is great. It's evocative and effective, though certainly not ground-breaking. The game's soundtrack is recognizable on the whole, and even though I would be hard-pressed to match certain music with certain game sequences, it does carry a uniqueness that allows the music to be identified immediately with the game. There are flashes of Halo's influence here as well, with chanting and bass drums, but they are too much mixed together for my taste. Gregorian chant has an eerie sense of isolation that was so fitting for playing as the Master Chief in Halo that I could see it fitting my Guardian as well (after all, the characters are virtually identical, but more on that later). As it is, the chanting comes with too much accompaniment and the accompaniment with too much chanting, but, all in all, I was very pleased with this aspect of the game.
The glaring issue with the games sounds is the complete absences of voices. There is no voice chat. Not in PvP. Not in the quest hub. Not in proximity to other players. Nothing. It's utterly, rampantly, infuriatingly, foolish. I don't care if they are pre-teens spouting inflammatory gibberish, at least they would make the world feel alive. As it is, the only way to communicate with other players is to do so through Xbox Live's party chat, and it's just unacceptable. This alone prevents Destiny from being a place to make friends. It restricts it to a game for you and the friends you already have, which is a major problem as it is also a game that is only worth sticking to if you have friends around you.
Story and Narrative: If you check out other reviews, they probably describe the story as "shit" or simply "not good". Let me try to do a better job of explaining the nature of the problems.
The story lacks substance in the same way that Halo once did, and that's a reason to be hopeful. At the moment, however, the game lacks a strong main character. In part, this is a hazard of the various options given to the player at the start, but on the other hand this is exactly the sort of issue that game designers should be solving. Mass Effect, for example, balanced providing the player choices while still telling a character driven story, so Destiny comes in well under that bar. Most characters are never even given real names. Everyone is known simply by a cryptic title: Guardian, Speaker, Stranger, Gunsmith, Cryptarch, etc. This leaves you feeling disengaged from a personal connection with anyone and makes everyone feel distant. Something as simple as a name is a first step toward knowing a character, but when even that is kept away the player is never invited to care for the characters in the game. Couple this with repetitive appeasement of seemingly menial tasks assigned by your "Ghost" (think, Na'Vi from Ocarina of Time) and there just isn't a story that engages you and draws you into the world.
This lack of story building elements extends into the PvP element. With no reward for a Guardian that performs well relative to one who does not, there is no sense of accomplishment. With only a thin explanation as to why these exercises are even being conducted, the PvP matches feel disconnected from the rest of the world. While this is advantageous as a way of stepping back from the story missions, it means that half of the game contributes nothing to the overall story.
Bungie promised an MMO-length game, but the gameplay and story don't comprise something worth that amount of commitment. The background narrative is passe, Light versus Dark, and the actions of the player are soon erased by short respawn timers. All in all, what story is made available is not made exigent, and so most gamers are left wondering why they should bother to listen to the story at all when they can just follow their objective indicator and clear the waves until they level up.
Entertainment Value: For a AAA title, Destiny falls short of providing the player with the experience that it should. The best chance that the game has for being worth its cost is the promise of future support, and since that means waiting for the game to get good you might as well wait for the game to get cheaper. There is just too much missing at this point, most importantly the lack of social mechanics. If you've got a few friends who want to play with you then the game is well worth the cost, but as a single player the story isn't strong enough and the game does nothing to help you make friends.
The PvP is the stronger part of the game overall, but what you'll encounter there is mostly the standard fair that you could get anywhere else. King of the Hill, Deathmatch, and Free-For-All are studded with the occasional, "special" Capture gametype, but there's nothing "special" about any of them. While PvP makes a distinct and refreshing break from the single player mode, the disconnection between them will leave some players only really wanting half of the game. Matchmaking does a poor job of matching players with similar levels, gear, or attitudes, leaving every match dominated by those who have unlocked more high-level skills.
But far and away the greatest detriment to entertainment in Destiny is the loading times.They are incessant, interminable, and before very long you know you will be loading again. Mass Effect gave you snippets of conversation, Skyrim let you fiddle with game objects, but Destiny makes you watch the same lame videos over and over again. There was little to no thought put into this aspect of the game, which comes as a huge disappointment considering how much time is spent with them. One can only hope that current-gen consoles have an easier time of it, but in any case it is a seemingly minor issue that makes the game a whole lot less fun to play and should be addressed sooner than later.
Conclusion: Destiny is not a game to play for a single player experience. It is a relatively long grind up to the top tiers of level and gear, and only from there can the PvP experience can be a satisfying one. Destiny is a game to play with your friends, and not a game to play to make friends. It is a game to enjoy for the thrill of the gameplay, and not a game to play for a compelling story. What the future holds for the game as DLC is rolled out I cannot say, but there are some glaring issues which Bungie and Activision would do well to repair before they try selling more of the same thing.
I've been very critical throughout this review, but in the end I still enjoy playing the game because it's the sort of game I like to play. Let me put this very simply: Destiny is Halo with loot. If you read that as criticism, this isn't a game for you to play. If you read that as interesting, though, and you think loot is just what Halo has been lacking all these years, Destiny is absolutely worth playing (just bring along a friend or two).
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?
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.
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.
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.
One of the first steps in understanding the gaming industry is knowing the players. I remember when I first began to recognize certain developers as sure signs of a game's quality, and, in part, it has been through the development of that knowledge that my understanding of the industry has grown.
Electronic Arts is one of the best known and most vilified publishers making games today. Within the gaming industry and the gaming community there is no company which is regarded with greater scorn and outrage. And yet, in spite of being named "Worst Company in America" by The Consumerist in 2012, Electronic Arts has not found itself being pushed out of the market by conscientious consumers. In fact, they have continued to grow into one of the industry's largest publishers.
I find myself to be one of those disgruntled by their business practices. Rather than elude to that displeasure with snarky gibes, I will directly rant about some of what I find unappealing.
When I say that customer service is not a focus of the company, I do not mean to point at anecdotal evidence posted anonymously to web forums. What I do mean is that the company is clearly more focused on pleasing their investors than their customers. I am a firm believer in good customer service. It is important that business be conducted between people and that those people feel a personal obligation to be good to one another. The best business decision is often not the best human decision, but gains in social well-being have a better kind of value than simple profit. EA's propensity to think with their wallet has, time and again, raised the ire of the gaming community.
Take their recent release, Titanfall, for example. The game was sold for top dollar and, meanwhile, EA tried to snag $20 dollars more of pure profit by offering a "Digital Deluxe Edition" which included a "Season Pass" to future and, as yet, unannounced downloadable content packages. This meant, essentially, paying EA more money in order to receive absolutely nothing of value in return. Anyone who has stayed awake in a basic accounting class has an understanding of the time-value of money, but let me explain it quickly here. The time-value of money is the basic principle to explain why $20 today is worth more than $20 dollars a year from now. In short, it's better to have money right now than it is to have money at some future time. By selling something they haven't made yet, EA can cash in on quick profits and then squeeze the most value-for-dollar out of the deal while the consumer is left without recourse. To make matters worse, the "digital" part of the "Digital Deluxe Edition" means that there is no physical hardware to produce or ship, they merely lend you the pleasure of downloading the software from their servers at the cost of just fractions of a penny.
Now, as an investor, if you see a company selling a product for top dollar plus a premium while only spending a few cents to take that product to market, you see a pretty savvy investment. The fact that EA has the wealth to run large-scale advertising campaigns means that, when paired with a great developer, they can bring a pretty good game to massive popularity. And when you've done your research and found out that that company sells millions and millions of copies of its product, well, let's just say you go shopping for a bigger wallet. As a consumer, on the other hand, you see yourself being treated like a child's piggy bank--heartlessly smashed and taken for every last cent you own.
But EA have found even more devious ways to hide fees and charges in their products. They take parts of the game and hide them behind paywalls and in pre-order exclusives. Look at Star Wars: The Old Republic, if you'd like an example. The myriad ways in which the game is locked down for those "free-to-players" to whom the game is advertised is frankly astonishing. I have found myself disgusted on multiple occasions by the nooks and crannies which the game gouges the player for (or, rather, the payer). On the one hand, if you are a subscriber to SWTOR, the game is brilliant. On the other hand, if you want to try the game before you buy into it, you'll leave with only a taste of what could have been. It has created a lose-lose scenario where there needn't be one; the player loses out on what truly could be an immersive, exciting experience, and the game makers lose out on a possible subscription. And if you're still not convinced, look at Mass Effect 3. An entire character is missing from the game for those not willing to cough up their cash early--and he's one of the most interesting characters you'll encounter across the three titles (currently) in the franchise.
EA is beholden to their shareholders before their customers. They make decisions on that line even when it means pushing a product into the market before it is ready and in spite of the desires of the artists crafting that product. They take the art away from their artists. They change the development goals to suit their marketing strategies. EA acquires intellectual property assets and makes drastic changes, betraying the desires of the fans. Regardless, it is these fans to whom the title will be marketed and EA reaps the benefit of their highly desirable word-of-mouth advertising. They restrict digital transactions through their PC game platform, Origin, which has been found to have dubious tracking software that surveys the user's online activity. And one more thing, they don't make single player games anymore--everything is online, everything is multiplayer, and nothing feels connected to the innovation and experimentation that has brought the gaming industry to where it is today.
And yet, in spite of all of this, I do not completely hate the company. In an industry which is growing as fast as the gaming industry has been, and within worlds of "good guys" and "bad guys", there will always be a villain. There will always be something, somewhere, cashing in on the growth for all that it's worth. EA, for all their indecent practices, is a legitimizing force in the gaming industry. Pushing sequel after sequel, unoriginal idea after unoriginal idea, puts games on the same plane as Hollywood movies. It means the market is not starving, is not shrinking, and is impossible to ignore. It puts controllers in the hands of the young and the old alike and, whatever their opinion, it makes them acknowledge the medium--and that means legitimacy, which is something mere dollars cannot buy.
So, the moral of the story is this. Let EA make games for everyone else. Let them sell Mom and Dad on the latest VR system. Let them rot the brains of the young with flashy images. Let them be the villain, and while they are busy raking in their money, keep your eyes open for the heroes. Focus the power of your own entertainment budget on the companies, games, and most of all on the people who deserve it. It isn't easy, finding games worth your time and money, but that's why I make these posts. That's what this blog is here for--to bring you the games you won't find on your own, that you won't see advertised on television or in ads of Facebook. I'm looking for the diamonds in the rough, and if you are, too, then I'm sure we can find something worth putting the power of our dollars behind.
It's been too long since my last post, so here's a gameplay video I made last night.
I didn't talk much during this game in spite of being in chat with a few friends. It all seemed to work out pretty well, though. My team was able to find my heals and I was assisted well enough to escape from many tough situations. Maybe that was a bit of luck, but I think the other team was having some communication problems as well.
My favorite part of this game was actually the music that played. It's always nice to have a playlist you've made seem to work, but in this match it seemed to match the frenetic pace of some parts and the quiet lulls in others.
I seem to have good games when I play Ra. His MP5 is strong enough that you don't need much more than a rank 1 mana heal and some cooldown reduction. He makes for a very fun god and a great choice for beginners--just remember, your #3 is a heal, not a damage move, so use it like one!
In other Smite-related news, Hi-Rez have announced the game for Xbox One. My hope is that the added publicity and (hopefully) marketing budgets can bring the game to a wider audience.
