2008 Kind of Sucked for Gamers

Neko qui­etly reflects.

So it’s New Year’s Eve, and right on cue my annual bout of gamer’s ret­ro­spec­tion is kick­ing in.  This is nor­mally the part where I look back on all the games that came out dur­ing the year and reflect on how awe­some the year in gam­ing has been.  But as 2008 comes to a close, I’m left feel­ing more dis­ap­pointed than affec­tion­ate over this past year’s offer­ings.  And I’ve come to a some­what alarm­ing real­iza­tion: 2008 kind of sucked for gamers.

2008 was sup­posed to be “the year for gamers” right?  But what did that really mean?  For the video game indus­try (well, except per­haps Sony) it meant huge sales fig­ures and over­hyped sold-out game launches, despite the fail­ing econ­omy.  (What recession?)

But for us gamers, 2008 was mostly a year of sequels and rehashes that we gladly lined up and shelled out big bucks for–again.  Block­buster titles like Grand Theft Auto IV, Fall­out 3, Fable 2, Gears of War 2… Notic­ing a pat­tern here?  Where was the orig­i­nal­ity and inno­va­tion in 2008?  And I’m not just talk­ing about killer graphics–that’s some­thing none of these games were short on.  I’m talk­ing about the game­play itself.  Riv­et­ing and unpre­dictable sto­ry­lines, amaz­ing char­ac­ters, truly immer­sive worlds you can spend hours get­ting lost in–where were these things?  The games of 2008 seemed to be all style over sub­stance, more hype and high-tech than mov­ing and mem­o­rable.  Brit­tany Vin­cent over at TGR sums up my feel­ing exactly.  Where is the heart?

What was this year’s big “it” game?  GTA IV, accord­ing to Spike TV who awarded it Game of the Year.  Seri­ously?  I won­der how dead the horse has to be before the game com­pa­nies stop beat­ing it.  I don’t think I could bear another Call of Final Grand Theft of War 5 release.  I don’t care how real­is­tic a game looks if that’s the only thing worth play­ing it for.  I don’t care if I can pick up and throw every object I see.

What I do care about is “that feel­ing” and I’m sure you know the one I mean–that euphoric feel­ing that can only come from play­ing a really amaz­ing video game.  And that’s some­thing 2008 hasn’t given me.

Awesome RPG Intros

It wasn’t so long ago that RPGs were sim­ple affairs involv­ing a few different-colored pix­els with a sword roam­ing over an end­lessly sim­i­lar land­scape fight­ing other different-colored pix­els to mind-numbingly repet­i­tive music (I’m look­ing at you, Dragon Warrior).

But over the years, as game con­soles have evolved, so too has the game­play and the immer­sive expe­ri­ence we’ve come to expect from RPGs.  With plots and char­ac­ters that com­pletely suck us in as we jour­ney along­side our hero, RPGs have been ele­vated to the level of sto­ry­telling art.  And one of the best ways RPGs plunge us into these vast worlds of might and magic is through the game’s open­ing sequence.

Here are a few of my favorites from sys­tems past and present:

Lunar Sil­ver Star Story Com­plete

Plat­form: Playsta­tion
Year: 1998

A re-make of the orig­i­nal Lunar (Sega CD), Sil­ver Star Story’s open­ing fea­tures a great orig­i­nal song that intro­duces our hero, Alex, and his love inter­est Luna, while giv­ing us a glimpse of all the party char­ac­ters we’ll meet along the way in our quest to become a Drag­on­mas­ter and defeat the evil Ghaleon.

Lunar 2: Eter­nal Blue

Plat­form: Sega CD
Year: 1995

Okay, so I may be a lit­tle biased putting both Lunar games on my list, but this open­ing for the orig­i­nal Lunar 2: Eter­nal Blue was pretty impres­sive for its time, con­sid­er­ing the depth of its sto­ry­telling and the Sega CD’s lim­i­ta­tions.  A lengthy intro­duc­tion that com­bines both story and cred­its, we see Lucia’s awak­en­ing on the Blue Star one thou­sand years after the first game’s events to her omi­nous pre­mo­ni­tion for the world of Lunar.  Beau­ti­ful music and atmos­pheric visu­als, Lunar 2 remains my favorite RPG of all time.

Wild Arms

Plat­form: Playsta­tion
Year: 1996

The Wild Arms open­ing intro­duces Rudy, Jack, and Cecelia, three unlikely heroes whose des­tinies inter­twine to take up ARMs and save the land of Fil­gaia.  A beau­ti­ful intro to an amaz­ing game.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Plat­form: PC, Xbox 360
Year: 1996

Emporer Uriel Sep­tim speaks his dying words with a lit­tle help from Patrick Stew­art.  Does it get much more epic than this? A fit­ting intro for one of the most epic RPGs ever made.

The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess

Plat­form: Wii
Year: 2006

An under­stated but effec­tive intro that sets the mood for the entire game, the open­ing for Twi­light Princess harkens back to The Oca­rina of Time with Link rid­ing his faith­ful Epona through the twilight-shrouded land­scape of Hyrule.

Sony PS3 Sales Slip, Not Surprisingly

Today CNN Money reports that sales of Sony’s PS3 have plum­meted 19% from last year’s fig­ures and the con­sole is lit­er­ally “dying on the shelves.”  Mean­while, Xbox 360’s 2008 sales have improved over 2007 and Nintendo’s Wii con­tin­ues to be a sell­out since its launch.

So why am I not surprised?

Huge Pric­etag

When it launched in Novem­ber 2006, the PS3 cost $500 for a 40G model, and $600 for a 60G model.  And that price only included one con­troller and no games.  Who could afford to spend that kind of money on a bare-bones video game con­sole?  Cer­tainly not me, and I’m a sin­gle adult in the 18–35 demo with a great job who loves video games–their tar­get mar­ket.  So I can’t even imag­ine how par­ents strug­gled to afford this price-bloated piece of plas­tic plus a $60 game game or two, try­ing to give their kid a merry Christmas.

But even though the console’s price has dropped sev­eral times and there’s now a wider range of mod­els to choose from, the still-pricey PS3 con­tin­ues to strug­gle.  If Sony’s con­sole sales hadn’t been dis­ap­point­ing since launch, I might chalk it up to the reces­sion, but that’s not easy to do when nearly every other game com­pany seems to be thriv­ing despite the economy’s cur­rent hard knocks.

Con­sole Competition

When it comes to video games, Sony is a rel­a­tive new­comer to the scene com­pared to Nin­tendo who has main­tained a huge fol­low­ing since the orig­i­nal NES ignited a love for video games in many of our hearts as kids in the 80s.  And over the years, Nin­tendo has always put out qual­ity sys­tems (I like to pre­tend Vir­tu­al­Boy never existed) with great libraries of games that have been fun and inno­v­a­tive.  The Wii, despite its silly name, was des­tined to be just as suc­cess­ful.  So why did Sony think it was a good idea to choose a launch date for PS3 so close to the Wii’s?  This is where I think they really under­es­ti­mated the competition.

The PS3 also launched at a time when the Xbox 360 had been out for a year already.  But Microsoft had been qui­etly bid­ing its time improv­ing the 360’s hard­ware, build­ing up a solid library of games, and win­ning play­ers over with its Xbox Live expe­ri­ence.  If Sony was expect­ing 360 own­ers to buy a PS3 as well, they cer­tainly didn’t have much of any­thing new to offer.  I’m will­ing to bet that most peo­ple who already owned 360s went out and bought Wiis instead.

Noth­ing New to Offer

Sure the PS3 has “amaz­ing graph­ics”, which has been its main sell­ing point.  But is that all that really mat­ters to gamers?  Sony’s sales have indi­cated oth­er­wise.  Other than improved graph­ics and offer­ing a Blu-Ray player at a time when most peo­ple didn’t even know what Blue-Ray was, what else did the PS3 offer?  Cer­tainly not an impres­sive library of games or inno­v­a­tive design over its pre­de­ces­sors.  Even the PS3’s con­troller design was more of the same.

Dis­ap­point­ing Game Library

The PS3 launched with a pretty under­whelm­ing selction of games that either nobody heard of, or titles that had already been out a long time on the 360.  Com­pare that to Nin­tendo Wii, whose launch titles included mega hits like The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Cor­rup­tion.  Sony should have off­set the console’s huge pric­etag by at least offer­ing more com­pelling titles, espe­cially at launch.  If a con­sole has great games, gamers tend to over­look the price, no mat­ter how ridicu­lous.  After all, what good is a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior video game sys­tem if it doesn’t have good games?   Like many, instead of buy­ing a PS3, I waited to see if any titles would launch later on that com­pelled me enough to pur­chase this sys­tem.  Two years later, I’m still wait­ing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see what Sony does to try to win over gamers and dig itself out of its hole.  CNN sug­gests deep price discounts–that would cer­tainly help.  I guess.  My advice to Sony: count your losses and just focus on Playsta­tion 4.

10 Gifts for Geeks for $10 or Less

With Christ­mas right around the cor­ner, I thought it would be fun (and hope­fully help­ful) to put together a list of inex­pen­sive gift ideas for geeks, all for under $10. (And I’m not going to cheat and men­tion $10 gift cards, either!)

Pocket LED Flashlight

“May it be a light to you in dark places…”

Every geek needs a good flash­light, and even bet­ter if it fits in our pocket!  Great for wran­gling with hard-to-see com­puter con­nec­tions or ven­tur­ing behind our A/V sys­tems to con­nect new gear, a bright LED flash­light is a must-have.  X-treme Geek sells a nice mini LED flash­light for just $9.99.

Bat­ter­ies

Geek Power-Ups

If there is one uni­ver­sal truth, it’s that geeks can ALWAYS use more bat­ter­ies.  Between our wire­less key­boards, wire­less mouses, dig­i­tal cam­eras, wire­less game con­trollers, A/V remotes, Nin­tendo DSs, PSPs, laser point­ers, giz­mos, gadgets–wait, what was I say­ing?  Oh right: MOAR BATTERIES!  You can’t go wrong giv­ing geeks a nice big pack of AA or AAA bat­ter­ies.  A tad imper­sonal, but extremely prac­ti­cal and def­i­nitely appreciated–particularly dur­ing those moments we real­ize our bat­tery sup­ply is crit­i­cally low and we dread thought of actu­ally get­ting up to change the channel.

Sharpies

For Your Sharpie Fetish

We love our Sharpies.  They’re great for every­thing from label­ing the lat­est disc of pirated legally down­load­able soft­ware you burned to Sharpie-ing per­verse things all over your friend’s face when he falls asleep drunk on your couch. (Don’t ask.)  From Ultra Fine Points to Sharpie Minis to good ‘ol Orig­i­nal, there’s a Sharpie prod­uct in a wide range of col­ors for every geek’s Sharpie fetish.

Bliz­zard Authenticator

I CAN HAZ SECURITY?

Over 11 mil­lion peo­ple play World of War­craft.  Odds are you know at least one of them, and have no idea what to get them for Christ­mas.  The Bliz­zard Authen­ti­ca­tor is a must-have acces­sory for any­one that plays WoW.  It pro­tects their account from key­log­gers, tro­jans, and other mali­cious attacks.  It’s a great gift and for just $6.50, it’s also super inexpensive.

Mole­sk­ine Pocket Journals

Low-tech pro­duc­tiv­ity app!

The “leg­endary note­book used for the past two cen­turies” (if you believe their mar­ket­ing bull), Mole­sk­ine brand note­books are a favorite low-tech vice of writ­ers, artists, and geeks to cer­e­mo­ni­ously com­mit our thoughts and sketches to paper.  Though the full-size note­books are a bit pricey, you can score a pack of 3 cashier pocket Mole­sk­ines for about $8, blank or lined.  These pocket-sized jour­nals are per­fect for keep­ing in your pocket (shocker) to make quick lists or reg­is­ter ran­dom ideas on the fly.

Dice Set

Roll to see if you have a life…

For the D&D nerds, Magic play­ers, and board game geeks on your list, a set of shiny new dice makes for a very thought­ful and use­ful gift.  What’s your geek’s favorite color?  Odds are you can find a cool-looking set of dice to match.  Board Game Cen­tral has a great selec­tion of 6-sided and d20 dice sets all for under $10.

Caf­feine

Energy in a can!

Whether it’s in the form of cof­fee, chai tea, energy drinks, or soda, most of us geeks require an end­less sup­ply of caf­feine to help us through our late night cod­ing projects, marathon gam­ing ses­sions, and the abysmal work day that fol­lows.  Though cases of the really good stuff like Bawls and Jolt are on the pricey side, for less than $10 you can still give your geek a smaller-serving caf­feinated shot in the arm.  How about gift­ing a sam­pler of 20 oz. energy drinks, or a trio of cof­fees or teas?   Also try Pacific Chai, Mon­ster Energy, and there’s always Red Bull.

Comic Books

Mmm…new comic smell!

Comic books have evolved so much over the years, it’s per­haps more appro­pri­ate to think of them as read­able works of art than the hum­ble col­or­ful dis­trac­tions they used to be.  As the qual­ity has gone up, so has the price, but you can still walk into any comic shop and pick up some great new issues with that glo­ri­ous new comic smell for less than $10.  And with so many dif­fer­ent titles to choose from, you’re sure to find some­thing for every­one.  Who knows, you might even get your geek hooked on an awe­some new series.  There’s also manga for the Japanophile on your list.

Thinker Toys

FACT: Play­ing with toys helps you get work done.

Between writ­ing, brain­storm­ing, trou­bleshoot­ing, or fig­ur­ing out why our damn pro­gram isn’t work­ing, geeks need some kind of imme­di­ate stress reliever/creativity spark by our side.  Give your geek some inex­pen­sive “thinker toys” for his or her desk.  Try some Silly Putty, Play Doh, Koosh balls, or per­haps a “thinky Slinky”?  Or go for the clas­sic Rubik’s Cube (though it may cause more stress than it alle­vi­ates).  Any­thing goes, as long as it’s small, mildly enter­tain­ing, and keeps our hands and minds momen­tar­ily busy.

Com­puter Clean­ing Products

Handy for remov­ing yesterday’s lunch from your keyboard.

Geeks love their com­put­ers and gad­gets but it can be a nev­erend­ing bat­tle to keep them clean.  Crumbs in the key­board, fin­ger­prints on the lap­top screen; these are our per­pet­ual annoy­ances.  Which is why any geek can appre­ci­ate a lit­tle help to keep our LCD mon­i­tors and iPhone touch­screens sparkly clean.  Sta­ples sells a nice lit­tle key­board brush for less than $5 and a mini screen cleaner for under $10.

Hope I’ve given you some good ideas for the geeks on your Christ­mas shop­ping list!

New Documentary for Disgruntled Star Wars Fanboys (and Fangirls)

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with George Lucas.  I sus­pect we all do.  On the love side he has given us mas­ter­pieces like the orig­i­nal Star Wars and Indi­ana Jones films, and on the hate side he’s shit out things like Jar Jar Binks and The King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull.

So nat­u­rally my inter­est was peaked when I heard about upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary film The Peo­ple vs. George Lucas, that “explores the unique, ambiva­lent, and some­times con­flicted rela­tion­ship that Star Wars fans, for the past thirty years, con­tinue to enjoy with the Star Wars fran­chise and its cre­ator, George Lucas.”

I don’t know if “enjoy” is the right word, but “con­flicted” is true enough.  Haven’t we all had those moments of quiet reflec­tion upon our 85th re-watch of The Empire Strikes Back where we think to our­selves how life was some­how bet­ter in the days before George “per­fected” his vision?  Anyone?

The doc­u­men­tary will voice opin­ions from fans on both sides of the Lucas love/hate dichotomy, and is cur­rently solic­it­ing contributions–in the form of self-interview video submissions–from Star Wars fans around the globe.  Some lucky fans may even end up star­ring in the film–how cool is that?  The film’s web­site has a link to a detailed sub­mis­sion guide­lines PDF (and of course a release form).

So if you’re an opin­ion­ated Star Wars fan, now’s your chance to grab a video cam­era and air your com­plaints and griev­ances and/or undy­ing love for George Lucas.

The Twilight Effect: A Followup

A few days ago I wrote about a curi­ous phe­nom­e­non I’m call­ing The Twi­light Effect, or in other words, how a movie and book series full of medi­oc­rity and unin­ten­tional hilar­ity aimed at 15-year-old girls has man­aged to com­pletely cap­ti­vate thou­sands of oth­er­wise sen­si­ble grown women with (usu­ally) good taste.

Exhibit A

Since my boyfriend would sooner light him­self on fire than be caught dead see­ing Twi­light, I dragged three of my girlfriends–who were com­plete Twi­light virgins–out to the the­ater on a cold, snowy Fri­day night.  On my left was Joanna, who I can always count on to embrace the cheesi­ness of any dorky phase I hap­pen to be going through.  She thor­oughly enjoyed the movie, and bless her, had no prob­lem admit­ting that.

Exhibit B

And on Joanna’s other side sat my much snarkier friends Julie and Stephanie, who spent most of the movie mak­ing fun of it (“OMFG GLITTER VAMPIRES!?”). Which is pre­cisely why I find these emails hilarious:

Finally, and most alarmingly–

Exhibit C

My 70-something year old Grand­mother asked to bor­row my books.  (And she loved them.)

5 Fantasy Movies in Production Limbo

The Power of the Dark Crystal

If you were a kid raised on The Mup­pet Show in the 1970s and early 80s, it was inevitable that you saw The Dark Crys­tal, Jim Hen­son and Brian Froud’s epic 1982 fan­tasy movie. Although many kids were admit­tedly ter­ri­fied by it, there were some, like me, who loved The Dark Crys­tal and to this day have a spe­cial place in our hearts for movies star­ring pup­pets. So when it was announced back in 2005 that there would be a sequel, Froudian fans every­where rejoiced, reliv­ing our fond­est Gelfling memories.

But going on four years later with very few offi­cial updates, we’re start­ing to get pretty appre­hen­sive. The lat­est offi­cial word from The Jim Hen­son Com­pany came in Jan­u­ary 2008, assur­ing us the movie was “deep in devel­op­ment” and that they’re “com­mit­ted to it as ever.” How­ever, there has since been major plot changes, a con­stant turnover of direc­tors, and lit­tle to no offi­cial pro­mo­tion. I and every other fan will be shocked if this movie makes it out by 2009.

Ender’s Game

Some­what of a joke amongst book nerds and sci­ence fic­tion fans, the Ender’s Game movie has become pretty much anal­o­gous to hell freez­ing over. Plagued by com­pli­ca­tions from the start, the film adap­ta­tion of Orson Scott Card’s awe-inspiring 1977 novel Ender’s Game has under­gone sev­eral major screen­play rewrites, direc­tor changes, and financ­ing issues. Indeed, screen­play rights have been aban­doned by Warner Bros. and with­held from Fox as well as sev­eral major direc­tors, whose visions Card did not agree with. Apart from the pre-production set­backs, the film must also con­tend with the inevitable (and expen­sive) prob­lems of fea­tur­ing a huge amount of spe­cial effects, sophis­ti­cated child actors, and of course, liv­ing up to all the fans’ extremely high expectations.

At the time of this writ­ing, no stu­dios have yet picked up the rights. But Card remains opti­mistic the film will find the right stu­dio and direc­tor, and refuses to com­pro­mise his vision. That’s both good and bad news for us fans of the Ender­verse, who will ulti­mately be rewarded with a much bet­ter qual­ity film, but must wait a long, long time for it.

Alice

A movie based on a com­puter game based on Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land? Sounds con­vo­luted, but there are plenty of fans and gamers anx­iously await­ing this film adap­ta­tion of pop­u­lar PC game Alice, the dark and some­what twisted re-invention of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land from cre­ative game designer Amer­i­can McGee.

Unfor­tu­nately for us fans, pro­duc­tion on this movie has come to a grind­ing halt. After changes at Uni­ver­sal, Mar­cus Nis­pel no longer direct­ing, and Sarah Michelle Gel­lar no longer play­ing Alice, pro­ducer Scott Faye is back to square one, and a new script is in the works. Gel­lar has chalked it up to being “the vic­tim of regime change in the stu­dio.”  But one has to won­der if this film project isn’t already over­shad­owed by the announce­ment that Tim Bur­ton will make an eerily sim­i­lar grown-up vision of Alice in Won­der­land him­self (nat­u­rally star­ring Johnny Depp is the Mad Hat­ter)? As a huge fan of Lewis Carroll’s orig­i­nal book, I’m of course excited by the prospect of either movie, but it doesn’t look as though Amer­i­can McGee’s ver­sion will hap­pen any­time soon.

Artemis Fowl

Poor Artemis Fowl fans.  They’ve been await­ing this movie for years now, after it was orig­i­nally announced way back in 2001.  Numer­ous rea­sons are spec­u­lated to have caused the seri­ous delay, par­tic­u­larly  a series of con­flicts between Dis­ney and Mira­max over rights own­er­ship.  How seri­ous has the delay been?  Seri­ous enough for IMDB to com­pletely remove Artemis Fowl from its list­ings (go ahead, try to find it).

But sup­pos­edly the dis­pute has since been resolved, and author Eoin Colfer is said to have fin­ished the movie’s script, which will be a com­bi­na­tion of the first two books in the series.  Yet offi­cial updates on the film’s sta­tus have been few and far between at best.  Will fans have to wait until 2010 (or beyond) to see Artemis Fowl on the big screen?

The Sub­tle Knife

This one absolutely breaks my heart, but I’m afraid The Sub­tle Knife, the sec­ond book of Philip Pullman’s amaz­ing His Dark Mate­ri­als tril­ogy, won’t be hit­ting the­aters any­time soon, if ever.

When the movie adap­ta­tion of Pullman’s first book, The Golden Com­pass, failed to meet U.S. box office expec­ta­tions despite its gen­er­ally pos­i­tive crit­i­cal recep­tion, stu­dio execs effec­tively pulled the plug on its sequel.  Per­haps The Golden Com­pass’ $180 mil­lion price tag (the most expen­sive New Line Cin­ema film ever) had more to do with its fail­ure than actual box office returns–worldwide, The Golden Com­pass took in over $380 mil­lion.  But New Line had already washed its hands of the U.S. com­mer­cial flop by the time its suc­cess was realized.

So where does that leave the fate of The Sub­tle Knife?  Despite pro­ducer Deb­o­rah Forte’s desire to con­tinue mak­ing these films, so much time has already passed, it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a sequel involv­ing the same cast (espe­cially child actress Dakota Blue Richards, who did an amaz­ing job as Lyra Belaqua).  Not to men­tion how hard it would be to keep the pro­duc­tion visu­ally con­sis­tent if taken on by another stu­dio.  That’s too bad for us fans of the books, as well as every­one who never read the book and were left feel­ing con­fused as hell by the first film’s ending.