Blog

So, Borderlands. You’ve probably heard of it – the post-apocalyptic co-op first-person-shooter with RPG elements. Sounds good, I know. But the thing you’re most likely to have heard about it, is that it has an awful lot of guns in it. Here’s a sentence that makes its way into several press releases about the game:

“Gun Lust: Choose from an arsenal of hundreds of thousands of weapons, each with their unique manufacturers, specifications and advantages. A revolutionary new content generation system provides for near infinite tools of destruction”

And of course, it goes without saying that certain websites are happy to perpetuate this notion:

“[The game] can randomly generate weapons and then describe them, having crafted one gun during my time with it that the game described with the phrase, “Holy shit, it shoots rockets!”"

Now, am I the only one who’s just a little bit skeptical about this? From what I can gather from reading previews and stuff, it’s nothing that we haven’t seen a dozen times before, in titles like Phantasy Star Online or Too Human – and we know what everyone thought of the latter. There’ll be a handful of basic weapon types, and the game will randomly alter the numbers behind them and maybe add a few special abilities for good measure . This alone does not a good game make, and yet doing any research into the game reveals that it’s a feature the developers are seemingly really proud of. The fact that they’ve written up a bunch of different descriptions for each type of gun will throw a slightly thicker veil over the fact that you’re essentially using the same weapon over and over again, but I’m pretty sure we’re all clever enough to see past that after 30 minutes’ play. Never mind the fact that, even if the game did have several hundred thousand meaningfully-different weapons, that’s too many.

What’s made me suspicious enough to coil out these words, though,  is a recent CVG interview with Randy Pitchford, where he claims the game now has around 17,750,000 weapons – a factoid that’s now circulating news blogs as we speak. Then, when asked if he has a favourite, he responds with:

“Oh, that’s like asking a spider with a billion larvae who their favourite child is.”

And why might that be, Randy? Is it because a spider’s larvae are all completely bloody identical to one another?

This isn’t really a dig at the developers, of course. They’re doing their damnedest trying to put a brilliant game together, and their PR guys have presumably decided the whole ‘26 trillion guns’ thing is a good selling point, so the devs are being forced to trot it out whenever they get the chance, because it sounds impressive. Pure speculation on my part, of course, but it’s a sad state of affairs if I’m right.

Still, maybe I’m getting wound up over nothing. I hope I am, and I hope I’m completely and utterly wrong about the implementation of the random weapon generation, because Borderlands‘ concept sounds right up my street, and it’d be a shame if it turned out to be a complete turkey. But every time I see a website, press release, or one of the developers touting the seemingly absolutely meaningless non-issue that is the random weapon generation as a key feature, I get a bit worried that maybe they just don’t have anything else to brag about.

Of the traditional five senses, only sight and hearing are catered for in a major way by videogames. Recently rumble and motion control have brought a slight tactile element to gaming, but we’re far from experiencing the kind of virtual reality depicted in films or novels.

Although our sense of smell is relatively weak and underused compared to most other species, it can still be one of the most evocative and sensual, especially if you believe that everything the perfume industry says is true.

It can also be a powerful catalyst for nostalgia, as author Vladimir Nabokov once said, “Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.”

Whilst researching for this blog post I found a news story from just last month that had completely passed me by. According to the BBC, at Birmingham University, Professor Bob Stone and his team are working on ‘ScentPallete’, which is a device that generates synthetic smells by blowing high pressured air onto paraffin waxes.

Although the technology is currently being developed with military applications in mind, as a way of letting soldiers in training familiarise themselves with battlefield smells, a partnership with gaming hardware, and thus the advent of Smell-O-Gaming, certainly isn’t out of the question.

“We’re getting a lot of interest from games companies and games magazines around the world,” says Prof. Stone. “I think within the next five years we’ll see maybe smaller versions of this delivering specific smells for specific games.”

Cooking Mama was specifically mentioned as an example of a game where scents would benefit the player, allowing them to smell the ingredients and products of their cookery. In that spirit, let’s examine what scents you might associate with different games.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker – A fresh sea-breeze
Shadow of the Colossus – Dusty earth
Bioshock – Seaweed and saltwater
Ico – Damp stone
GTA: Vice City – Gasoline, sunbaked sand and cologne
Mirror’s Edge – Disinfectant
The Darkness – Urine and old newspapers
Portal – Electrical short circuit
LittleBigPlanet – Wool
GTA III – Cigar smoke
Fallout 3 – Toxic Waste
Jet Set Radio – Aerosols
Final Fantasy VII – Hair Gel
Silent Hill – Rusting metal
Mario Galaxy – Pick n’ Mix
Metroid Prime – Plastic and Carbon Dioxide
Mario Kart – Bananas and burning rubber
Nintendogs – Canine faeces
God of War – Fresh Medusa blood
Assassin’s Creed – Hay
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island – Cotton Wool
Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker – Tears of children
MotorStorm – Mud
Wii Fit – Sweat
WarioWare – Garlic
Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee – Raw meat
Flower – Flowers…

I’m sure that you can think of many more gaming experiences that could be enhanced with some nasal stimulation. So I’ll leave you with the thought: What does Half-Life smell like?

So recently there’s been more news about Treyarch already beginning production on “Call of Duty 7″, and it’s currently unclear as to whether they’re still sticking to the WW2 theme (though there have been rumours that they might be moving towards a Cold War period theme). However, Treyarch did make a statement last year that they wanted to “put a close to the war (WW2)”. And if it’s true, thank goodness for that. “Why?” I hear you ask? Why shouldn’t developers develop any more World War 2 (WW2) games? I’ll tell you why:

Beating a Dead Horse

Let’s put it this way: ever heard of the phrase “beating a dead horse”? Well, developing WW2 games in modern times is like a developer digging up the corpse of a horse from the 1940s, leaving it out in the sun to tan for awhile, then painting it in different colours to decorate it, after which they start collecting fees from us gamers to let us beat the dead horse, even though we’ve probably beat it a ton of times before. After awhile (when the game gets old), they wash the dead horse so that it’s back in its original state and they then bury it again. Why? So that the next developer can dig up the same damn horse, decorate it slightly differently, then collect a fee to let people beat that same horse. And so the cycle repeats itself.

What’s the point I’m trying to put across with this weird analogy? There’re a few things:

Same Damn Horse

Every single WW2 game is essentially the same at its core. Sure, different developers decorate it differently, some are better looking than others, but ultimately it’s still the same dead horse they’re reusing over and over again. It’s just utterly tiring. In some ways, it almost makes developers seem lazy, as if they’re just using WW2 as a backdrop so that they don’t have to come up with new stories or gameplay features like weapons and such.

Not only that, but these games completely lose that “element of surprise”. No matter what form of entertainment one is appreciating, that element of surprise always contributes to the consumer’s enjoyment. Be it whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game, it’s always much more enjoyable the first time round. The thing with WW2 games though is that players already know what to expect. The idea of WW2 games conjures up images of bolt action rifles, WW2 era uniforms, clanky weapons, war torn environments, enemies screaming German every other second, etc. Even if there’s a really grand atmosphere, there’s nothing “epic” about it, because you’ve probably already seen the same mechanics in many previous games already. There’s nothing “epic” about having artillery fire rain down on you all of a sudden because it’s happened to you so many times already, and you know you’re going to get out of it somehow anyway so there’s no need to panic. Instead, for example when you’re fighting a sentinel for the first time in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the first thought that comes to your mind is “Oh my God, how in the world am I supposed to do this…” and when you actually do accomplish such a mission, the sense of satisfaction is simply overwhelming. With WW2 games however, the fact that you can more or less know what to expect from the game even before you even load it in obviously sucks the fun out of it.

Worst of all, you ALWAYS know who’s going to win at the end…

We’ve seen everything

After that much recycling of the same horse, you’d expect there to be some wear and tear. And trust me, the WW2 genre is already showing its bare bones. There’s simply no meat left in these WW2 games, because there’s little space for creativity. There’re only that many weapons one can choose to put into a game, there are only that many scenarios to use, and hence there are only that many stories to be told. That doesn’t mean these stories aren’t great stories in and of themselves, I mean this is one of the largest wars in human history. However, hearing the same stories over and over again can get tiresome after awhile. There’s simply nothing much left that a developer can add to this genre to keep gamers interested in such games.

Old Age

Another obvious problem is that this dead horse is OLD. I mean the only thing interesting about WW2 from a historical stand point is the overarching story of one of the largest wars in human history. The action itself is actually pretty boring by today’s standards, yet a large part of playing a WW2 game is focused around the action itself. Firing weapons that deal so little damage but yet have to be reloaded like every 5 seconds because they have a ridiculously small ammo clip simply isn’t fun at all. I could go on about such examples, but I’d think most gamers get my point that running around with guns blazing in the 1940s simply isn’t as fun as doing so in “Modern Warfare” situations or even scenarios staged in the future.

Immortality

The weirdest thing to me though is how this “dead” horse appears to be somewhat immortal.  Some developers are simply reluctant to let go of this genre, while many WW2 franchises just refuse to die out.
(Stats below include expansion packs/limited editions/etc.)

• The Call of Duty series has had 10 games within 5 years.
• The Medal of Honor series has had 14 games within 8 years.
• The Brothers in Arms series has had 6 games within 3 years.
• The Company of Heroes series has had 3 games within 3 years.

In fact, according to the Wikipedia list of WW2 games, there’ve been easily a few hundred games released since 1984 when the classic top-down WW2 shooter “1942″ was released. Isn’t that more than enough already?!

Let The Dead Horse “Die”

There’s no doubt there’ve been great games released under the WW2 genre, but now more than 60 years after the war itself, it’s time we moved on. In fact, it’s odd how developers seem to prefer to keep reusing WW2 as a backdrop to their game even when they don’t need to. For example Company of Heroes was a really good and solid RTS game, but did that have anything at all to do with it being staged in the WW2 era? It could have been just as good, if not better, a game if they thought of and used an equally solid backdrop, and Infinity Ward has proved this point by bringing Call of Duty out of WW2 and into modern times with their own story to tell. If only more developers chose to emulate such games instead of doggedly hanging on to WW2, maybe we can finally let this dead horse “die”.

Forum-goers may know that I recently picked up a Dreamcast for the first time, and when thinking about finally getting to play Shenmue, I remembered back a decade ago when Sega boasted that at a development cost of $70 million it was the most expensive game of all time.

We all know how well that worked out for them.  Barely selling more than a million copies, Shenmue’s budget was almost certainly one of the contributing factors that led to Sega dropping out of the hardware race. Since then however, publishers and developers have been reluctant to reveal how much they’re spending on creating the titles that we love.

This is a strange contrast to the film industry, where the exact budget and worldwide gross of almost every film from indie to blockbuster is publicly known. It got me thinking about why there should be secrecy around these figures. Do the game companies think that if the public discovers that a game has been a financial failure that it will impact their opinions of that title?

Games are obviously primarily judged on their critical success to define what makes a title a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ one. But we also make judgements based on the sales that a game achieves, saying ‘that game didn’t do very well’ or ‘that game was a great success’. But how can we make these distinctions without knowing how much was spent on creating that said game?

Brain Training, which was developed by nine people in less than three months, wouldn’t have needed to sell anywhere near a million copies to make a profit, and yet if it had only sold a few hundred thousand it would no doubt have been perceived as a failure. Now that it’s sold over 17 million copies it will probably be considered a success by any standards…

Killzone 2 has now sold around 1.7 million copies, which for many games would be great result, but considering it’s the most expensive Dutch media project ever made, with a rumoured budget of at least $40 million, Sony are unlikely to be celebrating anytime soon.

That pales into insignificance when compared to Too Human however, which over the almost ten years of its development cost a rumoured $80 million. Although current total sales figures are unknown it sold only around 560,000 copies worldwide in 2008. Although it was originally announced as the first game of a trilogy, the prospects of a sequel emerging are uncertain to say the least.

Not all expensive games fail to recover their budgets of course, with the best example possibly being the most expensive game of all time, Grand Theft Auto IV. Although it reportedly cost over $100 million to make, it generated $500 million in revenue in the first week of its release, and has gone on to sell over 13 million copies.

In comparison, the average game development budget of the companies that attended this year’s Game Development Conference was $8.8 million, and according to an analysis by Ubisoft last year – “a DS title costs between $785,000-$1.57m, PS3/Xbox 360/PC titles average $18.8m-$28.2m to create for all 3 platforms, and a Wii game is expected to cost $7.8-$9m to develop.”

It has also been calculated that for every $60 game that a consumer buys at retail, only $16 of that will make its way back to the publisher. That makes you realise that the hefty charges levied by Apple and Microsoft on digitally distributed titles might not be that bad after all.

With these figures we can work out that the average game nowadays needs to sell around 550,000 copies to break even. The average DS game only needs 100,000 copies, and the average current-gen multi-platform title needs around 1.2 – 1.75 million copies.

If there’s a point I’m trying to make with these facts and figures it’s that a game shouldn’t be judged by how well it sells or how much it cost to make, and that even if a game doesn’t break that hallowed million mark, it shouldn’t be considered a failure.

Today’s game industry is a tough market. So much as a few bad scores can make years of development time a waste. Games almost always come packed with new features or promises of future downloadable content, and it’s becoming hard to find a game without multiplayer. Now, in no way am I saying that a multiplayer component is at all a bad thing. But every now and then a game strolls along that gives off a strong singleplayer vibe, not only overshadowing the multiplayer content, but ultimately makes you wonder why they bothered to implement it in the first place. BioShock is one of those games.

It goes without saying that BioShock was an absolute hit, and BioShock 2 is looking to be the next 2K juggernaut. With all the hype and mixed controversy already forming over this anticipated sequel, multiplayer hasn’t received the same press that was garnered from the shocking “you are a big daddy” announcement. People aren’t as interested in playing through Rapture with friends as much as they simply want to experience the continuation of BioShock’s epic narrative. The only thing that has actually caught my attention about the proposed multiplayer is that we’ll get to see Rapture before or during its downfall.

Digital Extremes is going to take the reins in the development of multiplayer. Certainly they’ve proven themselves worthy for such a task, despite their blunders with Dark Sector, their success with the Unreal series validates their ability. However, it worries me that 2K is pawning off the multiplayer to a different developer. It brings into question if they’ll really be able to capture the feel of Rapture, especially before the civil war. On the bright side, the fact that we’ll play human splicers during multiplay all but confirms the return of our most beloved weapons from the original. So we just might get another chance to spray a few machine gun rounds into our fellow plasmid test subjects.

The principal question to be asked here is “What gameplay can we expect from BioShock multiplayer?” This is a worrying inquiry and the best we can hope for is gameplay similar to that of the first game. Again, while this would be rather easy for BioShock veterans to adapt to, it would be more of the same, and we want something new and exciting. Also, with the rather recent announcement of a reward system being the focus it’ll take some clever thinking on their part to really differentiate it from the stock of generic unlocks from games like Call of Duty or Killzone 2.

The execution of BioShock 2’s multiplayer is the least of my concerns however. The real concern is how well it will fit in with the corresponding story. What’s even worse than a game without a respectable multiplayer component is one that’s more or less an afterthought, and from the looks of it, that seems to be all it is. It’s really just a commercial stunt, and makes the 2K developers look like they’re just following the crowd. The truth is, multiplayer just isn’t a good idea for BioShock, and it’s certainly not a good way of conveying the story of Rapture before it all went to hell.

With respect, I would like to address this to the fine developers of BioShock: don’t bother creating a multiplayer component, it’s simply not needed. Focus all your energy on the story and gameplay. This is why I fell in love with Rapture during my premiere journey through it. By all means, I admire your thoughts and ideas regarding a multiplayer element, but BioShock needs to stay exclusively singleplayer. We need that claustrophobic feel, the feeling of being alone, with nobody else to protect us from the deadly things that lurk in Rapture’s ruins. BioShock is meant for one person, so don’t risk shedding points off scores if the multiplayer doesn’t happen to be up to scratch.