Tag Archives: Games

I’ve become my parents when it comes to music

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Not in terms of enjoying the same music, but I realized today, that I’m exactly like them in terms of knowing what band is playing what. My wife is way better at knowing what band is what, who is playing what song. I’ve almost completely lost it. It’s not from lack of listening to music. I listen to music all the time. There’s a ton of songs that I truly love and listen to on a regular basis, but I hardly remember any of the bands names or the name of the songs.

I think some of it has to do with the fact, that unlike a lot of my friends, I never was particularly interested in the specifics of a band. For example, I only know the members of Metallica because I’ve liked them for so long (their old stuff) and had many friends that were all about the history of the band. However, I have no idea nor do I care, who makes up the group Black Mill, or even if it’s just a single person. Not interested. I love the music, willing to pay for it. But I don’t care so much who it is.

This is definitely something that’s evolved over time. I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of my friends, and I mean A LOT, growing up were super in to music. Back home I have a ton of musicians friends and even more than are audiophiles. People obsessed with the ins and out of bands and listening to music. As I’ve moved around over the course of the past 13 years since HS, I’ve met less people with that deep rooted passion. I think that because of that continual influence of music lovers in my life, I’ve just gradually become even less interested in knowing anything about the band that I’m listening to.

I’m kind of disappointed in this, but I think that this is reflective of a general lack of interest I have for a lot of things over time. For instance, I love playing video games. For about a month. Then I gradually become less and less interested in that and try to find something else that can consume my time. I basically quit cold turkey from a point where I essentially only thought about the game, played it day and night, and couldn’t wait to get more. Then a switch will hit and I’m suddenly not interested any more and just kind of move on.

I love music, but I don’t think I’ll ever know all the bands playing on the radio at a given time like I did when I was in High school. I’m glad that there are people out there like that, because they continually feed me new music to listen to. Which is really awesome, cause I’d almost never find new music on my own.

Video Games, not just for Kids

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So, today was one of those days where I had a few different topics that I wanted to write about. I had a request to write about video games. I’ve written one or two blogs about video games in the past. However, I think that there’s always more to be said about them.

I think it’s fair to say that video games are a bit of the red headed step child in the entertainment industry. They aren’t taken as seriously as movies and it’s not as culturally acceptable to geek out over video games as it is to geek out over movies (some movies) or television shows. However, I think that this is going to change and it’s not because of the video game designers and publishers.

I think that Twitch is going to drive to make video games more acceptable and shift video games location in culture. Through events like Intel’s championship series or DreamHack which is a collection of tournaments for games like DOTA 2, League of Legends, Star Craft, and many more, I believe that there is an opportunity for video games to reach an acceptance level akin to golf. For the most part these games are multiplayer and very team based. There are leagues, trading of players and everything else you would expect in a major league “sport.”

It’s not just these events, it’s the personalities that drive watching live streaming. As I’ve mentioned in the past I have a few friends that stream and there is a community that has sprung up around watching these guys play. It’s pretty awesome.

Through these streamers, I’ve been able to experience many more interesting games than I can actually play or even afford to play. This allows me to keep abreast of the video game landscape without having to really play (I play Civ V, Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy mostly). In the case where the streamers are playing single player games it’s similar to watching a movie with someone guiding the movie. It’s a lot of fun, especially since you’re able to have a conversation with the star and his fans all at the same time.

Furthermore, I think that video games have not been given enough credit for pushing the boundaries of technology. Game designers and players for PC together drive companies like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia to keep designing newer and more powerful products. Intel is able to make a massive profit on their platforms designed for gaming – they know it, they’ve changed their strategy a few times in regard to selling stand alone chips because of gamer’s demands. We should be praising the hardcore gamer because they are helping us continue to advance in one of the few bright spots in our economy.

Each video game community has it’s own quirks and idiosyncrasies, which can be seen in how new games are developed as well as in business practices for the developer. For example, Valve has several economists studying the naturally occurring economy around trading in games like TF2, I believe that through controlled economic settings like TF2 where there is no central control (Blizzard I’m looking at you!) unique economic conditions can emerge that will shape how the designers develop future releases in the game. This has been clearly shown in how Valve continually releases new hats (yes, hats).

Compared to Eve (a massive multiplayer online role playing space video game) TF2’s economic system is rudementary. In Eve you can buy, build, trade and develop true economic systems. Furthermore, it’s possible to see the effect of war and diplomatic missteps on the economy. Recently nearly $200k worth of money was wiped out because someone missed a monthly payment. It’s possible to see how various factions have recovered after a serious economic, material, and military shock hit the entire game.

Games are vital to our culture. We’ve always had both physical (sports) and mental (chess) games. I believe that video games are simply a new extension to both of those. Many games require you to think quickly and have quick moving fingers (Star Craft) while others are almost as passive as watching TV. Understanding the value of video games and the culture about them is important to understand how our culture can grow and develop in new ways.

Saving video games from publishers

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There’s big money in video games. No one can deny that, especially now that the definition of casual gaming has changed from Wii type games, to games on your phone that mimic some really old school type flash games (bejeweled for example). One of the largest game publisher is EA, they have been notorious for making both amazing games (BF4), amazingly bad games, amazing games with poor execution (SimCity), and amazing cash grabs (Dungeon Keeper iPhone). However, it’s not alone in trying to destroy gaming.

Zynga made a pretty big run at the title and likely helped shape the current state of our gaming industry. They were the original most successful company in facebook for gaming coming up with Mobwars and Farmville. They’ve been replaced with King.com (Candy Crush) now though and have nearly gone out of business. At one point they had a higher valuation than Facebook.

The point of these games is similar to a casino. Keep you coming back and keep you putting money into the machine. They design games to be addicting and put frustrating blockers in your way to entice you to pay money to overcome those obstacles. They technically are “Free-to-play” but they certainly aren’t “free-to-have-fun”. For example, about a year ago Real Racing 3 came out and to unlock everything with cash, it would cost $503!

The article that got me thinking about this topic highlights a 1997 game called Dungeon Keeper which has been released on mobile platforms. In the game you build a dungeon and try to kill heroes that come through and kill your monsters. One of the things you do is dig out spaces for your dungeon, this used to just take a minute or two in game time. Well, EA did it’s little cash grab option with it and now that same space will take roughly 30 hours to mine out unless you pay them money to speed that up! Here’s a video with a nice little summary of the topic.

Now, we know that this hasn’t been limited to mobile games for some time. It’d hit the hardcore gamers in the form of Downloadable content (DLC) and in many cases would be a $15 or so charge to make the game functional on top of the $50-$60 you already paid for the game. In some cases they’ll also charge you for other visual upgrades and stuff like that.

In some cases the companies are doing it because it’s a beloved franchise and they know people will fork over the money for it even if they’ve vowed to never buy from that company again (BF4 after SimCity debacle for instance). This is because they are able to charge monopoly prices being the only game in town.

In other cases, they are able to charge this behavior because of the addictiveness of the game and the pressure of your peers playing the same game. It’s a casino mixed with keeping up with the Joneses mentality. The worst of the worst and company are pulling in as much money as they can on it. In many cases those games are straight up copies from other companies – or at least the game mechanics are the same.

This has made some people discouraged over the future of the gaming business model. I believe that we have some of the most generous people in the world in gaming. You have the Extra-Life fund raising event, HumbleBundle, and a ton of other things like that. There are also really honest folks out there trying to break into the industry, just look at Steam Green Light, Kickstarter Games (check out KBMOD’s Crowdsourced corner), and just the sheer number of new games and apps that have a single price and are honest about their pricing (this link will take you to a list of games that are pay upfront or honest free to play).

Which makes me think that we have two different type of people running gaming companies. We clearly have psychopaths at the head of the company and normal regular people trying to do right by their customers. I think the hardest thing is, we have honest people working for those psychopaths, which is unfortunate.

What can we do as gamers and employees? Well, if you think your CEO is a psychopath leave; it’s going to be an unhealthy work environment in general. Secondly, if we want to see those business models die, educate your friends on how horrible this movement is for gaming in general and point them to cheaper alternatives that aren’t cash grabs. Help inform your friends that aren’t savvy about this. Send them links to games that are better, more fun, and less vile in their pricing schemes.

If you have any recommendations for honest, safe gaming, let me know in the comments!