Expanding on the works of our fathers: Why do we struggle with sequels and remakes?

Posted on March 12, 2013 by

These days, you can’t go a week without hearing an announcement about a sequel or a remake whether it be a film or video game franchise. As avid fans of the series that we care about, the trailers for these, no matter the medium, fill us with hope and oftentimes take us back to the reason we loved these stories so much in the first place. A familiar sound or an enchanting song from a game we love gets our heart beating faster and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for us next when we finally slip that game into our consoles to settle in for another adventure.

The moment that intro song plays, all its fans get excited

We idealize the world of game development often, thinking that if a game franchise is popular, the team behind it will stay together forever and continue to weave these amazing tales for us as gamers to become immersed in once again. Sadly, game development is subject to all the laws of the real world, with teams breaking apart like “Team Silent” of the Silent Hill franchise leaving so they could pursue their own personal projects. Sometimes these teams break apart under much worse conditions, like when game studios must file for bankruptcy and the talents behind their biggest games are forced to go elsewhere. Oftentimes when this happens, our beloved properties go to other teams who try to recapture our imaginations with their own unique spins on the titles we love and more often than not, they create something that we are ultimately disappointed with.

Often when we hear about a game that is part of a series we care about, usually at one of the bigger gaming tradeshows, the team behind that game will come out on stage and say something along the lines of: “We know what made this franchise great and we are dedicated to bringing that same sense of action/horror/RPG elements together again to make an experience you will all enjoy”. When the release of that title finally happens we end up with another Silent Hill: Downpour (Metacritic score 68/100) or Final Fantasy XIII (IGN score 8.9/10) and while we hear that these games are good from critics, the backlash from the fan base is overwhelming: “You didn’t live up to your promise of this being the next X game.”

Will any Silent Hill sequel really live up to the expectations of the fanbase?

So the question to be asked is this: Are we able to actually create a game that lives up to the legacy of the previous titles when the main development team is gone or are we as gamers so obsessed with our own nostalgia for these titles that we can’t even begin to fathom a sequel or remake for a franchise we love being better than the games that came before it?
The argument could be made either way for these questions but at its core, we as gamers want both. We hope for a game franchise to continue on past its creator’s inception but oftentimes our nostalgia does cloud our perception of those games that came before. Take for instance the October 2010 reimagining of the franchise Castlevania. Up until this point, all 3D attempts at making a Castlevania title were met with both fan and critical disgust and the idea of creating another 3D Castlevania game was almost considered too taboo to even try again, and why should anyone want to? The 2D series had not only extremely high marks in every release but also had such tremendous commercial success that Konami could have, in theory, produced a title a year and done very well for themselves financially.

October 2010 came and went and Castlevania was released to mixed feelings from the masses. Many exclaimed that because it was a new story that deviated from the (already convoluted, let’s be honest here) main continuity or “canon”, because it was a retelling, they refused to play it on principal alone. Others who took the time to play it said that it was a refreshing way to introduce new people into the series while still being very self-referential to the titles that came before it. At the end of the day, lines in the sand were drawn and shouts across the internet were of: “This isn’t the Castlevania that I loved growing up!”

This game has 75% less wall chicken, we hates it!

This happens more often than not in the industry and as it does we become more tempered against the idea of remakes and re-imaginings. For every commercial success like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we hear cries from the masses of their hatred of every Silent Hill: Downpour we get.

Is it truly that difficult to make a sequel or a remake to a beloved franchise? I have never done so myself, but I have read over and over again and spoken with game developers that say that it can be a very daunting task. When a game has a strong fan base, you have many people that you are trying to make happy and at the end of the day and you simply cannot please everyone. When a game developer takes the stage, they are not lying to us when they say they are excited to work on a project that is part of a franchise they played growing up even if it does not meet our expectations.

With greatness, comes responsibility

I feel that we as gamers need to take that into consideration when we approach these remakes and sequels that other teams work on. I have never spoken to a game developer that said that they have started a project with the intention of their product coming out less than satisfactory. They will talk about time constraints, budget constraints, but never creative constraints. Sometimes you just don’t have the time to make the game as perfect as you would like but the best you can do is get it as close to perfection as you can.

From there it is up to us, as gamers, to open our minds as well. It is far too easy for us to say things like: “I can’t play the new Silent Hill because Akira Yamaoka isn’t composing for it so it just won’t be the same”. This dismissive attitude is very unbecoming of us as a gaming community. The fact is that the chance for the original Chromo Trigger team to get back together is pretty minuscule and if we are given the opportunity to explore that universe again, we should embrace it. I am not saying don’t be critical of the games you play, simply that we should keep an open mind about the titles we have not had the opportunity to play.

To all you developers out there, we know how insanely daunting creating a sequel or remake of a franchise that has a strong following can be. Be true to your vision and the games that came before and it will show through.

Until next time, Goodnight and Good Game

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Video Games and the Human Condition

Posted on September 8, 2012 by

We all play games for different reasons. For some of us it is an escape from the drudgery of mundane life, a chance to explore other worlds and become heroes in another world; one we can control. One we can feel like we made a difference in. For others it’s about relieving stress after the end of a long work day. Sometimes it’s just about being social and hopping online with our friends and catching up while we shoot at other people in a World War Two simulation.

No matter the reason we play, we all enjoy the same hobby and take whatever chance we have to play, even if it’s just for a few minutes on the morning commute using our cell phones. The one thing you rarely hear though is someone saying that they play a videogame to feel human, to feel vulnerable to the world and wanting to connect with a virtual environment the way they would reality.

Games like Silent Hill and Heavy Rain put players into situations where they feel like they are making “human” choices but these games are few and far in between. More often than not we play games like God of War to feel like the action heroes that we dreamt about as children and in doing so we sometimes lose sight of what a good story about the struggles of mankind could give us if we could get the gameplay mechanics right.

Few games have the "soul" that Silent Hill has.

This was something that came to mind recently while I was re-watching (for the millionth time) 28 Days Later. I got to thinking about what it IS that keeps us coming back time and time again to zombie movies, for better or worse, while other films about the supernatural come and go without much fanfare. I’ve read more books, short stories and watched more films about zombies than I have anything else and the one thing that keeps me coming back to these infected post-apocalyptic scenarios is that the core of the best of these works is that the primary element is not the creatures themselves but the human element involved. A good zombie movie makes you think, makes you wonder what you would do in that situation and what you would do to survive. In this way, a zombie outbreak is no different than the movies we watch about earthquakes or catastrophic tidal waves or a meteor hitting the earth.

The core of many of these stories is what some people would call: The Human Condition.

A lot of you out there in internet land are not familiar with “the human condition” as it exists in a philosophical sense. There are a ton of works out there that explain it in greater detail and I am going to try and break it down for you in the easiest way possible without you having to do a ton of research on Yalom just to understand the core of my argument. In many ways the idea behind “the human condition” are those things that make us who we are. Feelings of loneliness or a desire to better oneself against all odds are part of this theory.

Sometimes the most dystopian stories make us feel the most human

What’s important here in not delving into “the human condition” as you would in a philosophy class but what the concepts behind it mean to us as gamers. I stated earlier that the human condition is rarely explored in the medium of video games and by saying that I mean that we choose to play games that put us in a superhuman role, one that we feel affords us the opportunity to defeat forces we would normally have no control over. In God of War we are placed in the shoes of Kratos, who has the power to defeat the corrupt Gods of his world. In Devil May Cry we play the son of Sparta, a powerful demon, and can help save the world from the things that go bump in the night. In their own way these things are a metaphor for us having a lack of power in our own daily lives. We watch politicians make bad decisions that affect all our lives and at the end of the day we feel that our own choices mean nothing. In that sense video games are the perfect outlet for trying to control the things in the world that we normally could not.

For many individuals that is one of the great benefits of gaming: We can affect the world in way we normally could never do. In the original Bionic Commando we could fire a rocket into Hitler’s brain. In Legend of Zelda we could save the woman of our dreams and an entire world at the same time. In the Final Fantasy series we could take a planet on the verge of destruction and make it a better place. Why the hell wouldn’t we want to immerse ourselves in a landscape where we are all powerful? Here, in this world, all we can do is vote and hope that change happens in our favor.

Sometimes you just want to yell...at everything

Games that delve deep into the idea of the human condition are few and far between and I think that a lot of it has to do with our desire to escape our reality in one way or another. The big question I have for you as gamers is this: Do you feel more fulfilled when you have completed the average game where you save the world from a great evil when just jumping and blasting his way through the world is the solution or do you enjoy the story of the everyday man who has to confront his own weaknesses and fears to find normality in a world that in his view is abnormal?

I would not be surprised if many of you said that you prefer to be empowered in your games because it plays to that dream many of us have as children, to be the hero and to rise above all odds to make our surroundings a world we want to live in. There are very few games out there that put you in the role of the average, vulnerable human and while you may not appreciate titles that do that I think that there is a severe lack of games out there that make you evaluate yourself as a person and if we are insisting that video games are a form of art, I feel we need to try and explore that concept more.

Often times movies that intrigue us are those that not only entertain but also encourage us to reevaluate our own outlook on life. Films like Fight Club ask us to analyze who we are as people and we praise them for it. Why don’t we ask that of the games that we play? If we can follow James Sunderland through Silent Hill and question the decisions he made in the relationship with his wife, can we not tackle bigger issues? Can we not embrace the medium as a window to the soul more often where we can wonder who we are as a species and what lengths we would go through to protect the people we love?

I don’t want you to walk away from this article thinking I am just trying to spew some philosophical nonsense at you and that I hate the current state of gaming because that is not true at all. I love my Mario and Unreal games as much as I love Silent Hill titles. I simply feel that as the medium of video games evolves we are afforded this wonderful opportunity to use this form of entertainment as a window to our own minds and that is a risk very few developers are willing to take.

In the online arena the debate over video games as a form of art continues and for those of us who feel that it is, don’t we owe it to ourselves to embrace that philosophy and create games that make us think about things like our own mortality? A game where death can is final, or you have you feel a true sense of isolation. Could we make games that make you feel truly claustrophobic or have us try and find a meaning in our characters life? Only future generations really hold the answer to this but I hope that there are still a handful of game creators out there that make us question what it is to be human through the medium. I honestly think that we could all benefit from having a game ask us once in a while: What is it to be human?

Until next time: Good Night and Good Game.

The beauty of video games as art

http://goodnightandgoodgame.com

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My next article is right around the corner but until then…

Posted on August 16, 2012 by

I’d like to take this time to plug my podcast. We’ve been around for about two months now and we cover everything from video game to technology news. You can listen to us through our website or you can find us on iTunes and the Zune marketplace. Welcome one and all to: The Surly Nerd

http://www.thesurlynerd.com/
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http://twitter.com/thesurlynerd

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Life as an adult gamer

Posted on July 24, 2012 by

I want to start this article by saying that what I am about to talk about I wish wasn’t even an issue. I would hope by now that my hobby would be embraced by the general population, and that they did not think of me as kid for enjoying it. Unfortunately that’s not the case and that is why we are all gathered here today.

It’s hard being an adult gamer. I mean it’s not being repressed by the Third Reich bad, but going about my day-to-day life can be difficult in social situations. Now I know what you’re thinking, but it has nothing to do with the clichés that most people think of when they think of gamers. I exercise by hitting the gym several times a week and even took up archery this year (which seems to be the new hip thing). I am actually a social creature by nature and live several hundred miles from my mother’s basement. I love going out and meeting new people and my collection of real life friends is quite large. I am very blessed that I have many friends who share similar interests and are willing to discuss them over a drink or two with me.

Some of them even want to roll a few 20s

The problem comes in when I am dealing with new people and family. It’s not the easiest subject to bring up with any of them. In a perfect world, saying, “I was a highly ranked player in the Unreal Tournament circuit” or “I’m training for the EVO Street Fighter nationals,” would at least warrant a “that’s awesome” or even a “good for you!” response. Sadly, trying to explain my hobby to outsiders more often than not gives me the common response of, “Oh…” in the most dismissive way possible. It’s said as if what I do for a hobby is less important by leaps and bounds than what past times they engage in.

All things considered, I make a pretty respectable income, pay all my bills on time, and live a fairly comfortable life. What I do with my free time should mean absolutely nothing to you. The problem I have with any of this, is that the indifferent reaction of “oh” is so commonplace that it makes me furious.

Recently I’ve taken a technical position where my hobby is a little more widely accepted, but previous to this career change I was working in a job where I often dealt with very prestigious doctors and lawyers in not only a technical but also in a professional aspect. I did a lot of traveling, and had many meetings with various important people related to my field. Even though I was among my peers in age, when they asked me what I enjoyed for entertainment outside of work they looked at me as though I was a child for enjoying gaming or simply dismissed it as, “Well you are the tech guy for your company”.

Now, I don’t think that this will be an issue in later generations. Much like pastimes such as being a “film buff”, I fully expect that gaming will find its place in the “acceptable” American hobbies much the way that collecting firearms, model painting or collecting World War Two paraphernalia has become. With the rise of gaming in the mainstream through things like the Major Gaming League and the Pro Gamer League, we inch closer and closer to having our hobby be accepted into the modern culture.

Pictured: Socially acceptable gaming. Also, Wil Wheaton

Is it still going to take time for this hobby to become socially acceptable? Very much so, but my generation is one that was picked on in our youth for being “obsessive” about our hobby. We were those kids you see in movies getting beat up on for being nerds. We get the credit of people saying that the world is run by geeks, but that does not help us at the end of the day when we are trying to go about our day to day lives. We have only been blessed that “casual” games like Call of Duty and Rock Band have come out that the main stream sees as “acceptable” that we can discuss our hobby more freely without AS MUCH negative commentary from our peers, and while those games can be seen as enjoyable they should not be the basis for what other view our passion as. Frankly, dropping 100 hours into a rich RPG story should be praised the same way as someone that drops four hours in a war game.
Now, I hope that those of you reading this don’t care what other people think of your hobby. You should always embrace what you love no matter what others think. What I would like to do is to hurry down that future where when dad or mom (or ideally both of them) put the kids down for the night and decide to boot up their PS9 or Xbox 1000 they can enjoy gaming without fear of being made fun of at the water cooler at work the next day when they discuss how their evening went. While I might not enjoy the same recreational pastimes as other people, I never disparage them for their passions and I think that is something that everyone should try and embrace.

Pictured: Not our water cooler at work

In the end, despite what everyone else thinks, enjoy and love your hobby. If they don’t get it, well fuck them and hopefully, someday, the masses will turn around and appreciate that you are just as passionate about what you do in your free time as everyone else.

With that, good night and good game. Now go out there and save yourself a princess.

Pictured: Victory

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Podcasting: It’s a thing

Posted on June 24, 2012 by

If you are not listening to our new podcast: The Surly Nerd, you should be. Head over to http://www.thesurlynerd.com/ or look us up on the Itunes store and give us your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you!

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How the Addams Family convinced me to play DMC

Posted on June 22, 2012 by

In a time when games are constantly being “rebooted” and “re-imagined” few have sparked the rage of it’s fanbase the way the new Devil May Cry or “DMC” has. From the moment the first images of the re-imagined Dante hit the internet, fanboys and fangirls alike gathered under the banner of hatred toward the game that is being designed by Ninja Theory instead of Capcom Japan.

The redesigned Dante of "DMC"

Hardcore fans (or at least the vocal minority) of the series seem to feel that Ninja Theory is destroying the character of Dante by changing his outward appearance. No matter how much Ninja Theory tries to rationalize why Dante has this new look, the fanbase will just not hear it. They want their old Dante back and they want him back NOW! I happen understand their sentiment on the matter, as until recently I completely sided with them. I saw what they did to a character I was invested in and was upset by it, even going so far as to say that I was not going to purchase the new DMC.

I was “that guy”.

You’ll note here that the only complaint at this point being hurled by e-ballista towards Ninja theory is that Dante, the series protagonist, looks different. No comments are being tossed around about how the game play is compared to the rest of the Devil May Cry series because everyone seems to be more concerned with how Dante’s hair looks and less about how the it compares to the legacy DMC has built up to this point.

Recently, I was having a discussion with a friend about movies and television shows that were also remakes or re-imaginings of various series that we had grown up with. Specifically, we were talking about the new Dark Shadows movie versus The Addams Family film of the 90s. The shortened version of our drunken ramblings came down to this: The Addams Family movie was true to the essence of the source material while Dark Shadows was not, making The Addams Family the superior film.

How a remake or re-imagining should be handled

My taste in film aside, this got me thinking about the new Devil May Cry game. Every bit of commentary I have heard from people (game critics) that have had a chance to have a hands on with DMC or at least had some time to look over the game in video form have all said the same thing: This new game plays as well if not better than its predecessors. All the stylized action, platforming and special moves are there with even more demon-killing badassery. Not an exact quote, but it will have to do.

This is when my opinion of DMC changed. First and foremost I want a game, not a fashion show. I could care less what Dante looks like as long as the reason I started playing the series in the first place stays in tact, and that’s how fun the game is to play.

The vocal minority seems to come out of the woodwork every time something changes in a series that they are invested in. We as gamers are entitled to absolutely nothing when it comes to game development. In the past we’ve had developers willing to change entire portions of their creative vision so that they could please their fanbase. Some would say this is a positive, but it presents a bigger problem when gamers feel like they can get developers to do whatever they want just by blasting them all over the internet. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have an opinion on what game developers produce, I just feel that there are more productive ways of going about it. Instead of flaming a developer, why not try asking them why they made the design decisions the way they did. Be pro-active in the communities that you love and try and interact with the people making the games you play. I promise you that people are much more inclined to respect your opinion when you’re not calling them a “fucking retard” for the work they have created.

Judge a game by what it is: A GAME. Read reviews, play it yourself and make your own decision based on the content it provides you. Not by the haircut the main character has.

At least in the upcoming game he's wearing (most of) a shirt

Until next time: Good night and good game.
http://goodnightandgoodgame.com/

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40 hours promised versus 40 Hours Played

Posted on June 10, 2012 by

Part I: Why are we here?

Gamers nowadays are a very different breed than they were ten, or even five years ago. There was a time where we as gamers waited patiently for the next video game magazine to come out so we could pour over every page, over every badly taken picture of a new title and hung on every word about a new game. These days getting information about a new video game is as simple as opening your web browser. Because of this, many developers give away much more about a game than they used to, and often make even more promises about a game than they should.

Some people promise you the world over and over again...

A lot of this posturing is just the way that video game marketing has evolved over time. You oversell your product in the hopes that you will reach a much larger market audience come its release. Even if your product doesn’t live up to all the hype by launch time you will at least have a mass majority who will refuse to return their product because they are already so emotionally invested in their preorder through the proliferation of advertising and social networking.

The “larger” issue here is that many developers feel that because of reseller outlets such as GameStop, which buy used games and sell them for an increased markup, (with no profits going to the developer) they have to extend their gaming experiences for the end user. Often times to the detriment of the game’s story and general game play functionality.

It was fun for about five minutes

I can’t quote any developer going on record as to saying they have done so for that reason, but to many gamers when we hear of a “feature” such as multiplayer being added to a franchise that was previously a single-player experience we can’t help but think that this is just a way for developers to keep us interested in their product so that we won’t return it to our local game store for resale. This, in and of itself, isn’t a bad idea. However these afterthoughts are usually just poorly implemented. More often than not we hear about all these great new games that are coming out that are “over X number of hours of game play!”

I will play devil’s advocate here to my own argument and say that when I was a younger gamer, hearing that a game that I was saving up my hard earned money to buy was over X number of hours (X typically being a value over 10-20) I was excited, because I knew I was getting my money’s worth. I’d only get to buy one game every few months and the prospect of a game keeping me going for that long was well worth it. (I’m looking at you 99+ hour Final Fantasy 7 save file). Promises of that kind of game play are now becoming the norm instead of the exception and I see it becoming a trend that sacrifices story and all around fun of the game for the sake of longevity.

Part II: The Skyrim/GTA versus Bastion/Portal debate

What defines a “great” game? Many would say it is excellent game play mechanics mixed with a great story and an awesome soundtrack, as well as refreshing game play concepts. Rarely in discussion about the most groundbreaking games of all time does the concept of completion time enter the equation. As an adult gamer, more so than when I was younger, I have my feelers out when it comes to a new game release. I do my research; I listen to critics, not just the reviews they put out in print and online, but also via podcasts that I often listen to on my commute to work. I listen to them debate and discuss the newest games coming out and the one thing they never seem to touch on is the time it takes to finish a game, unless it is in jest.

I listen to developers talk about their games through websites and podcasts and I often hear about the length of campaigns in their titles versus how empowering it makes you feel to play their protagonist and that worries me. I hear about games like Grand Theft Auto 4, where less than 30% of the people who purchased it actually finished the game. I ask friends who were obsessed with Skyrim when it first launched what they think of it now and I hear things like “It eventually just became another Bethesda game I gave up on” or “It was awesome at first but then I just had so many quests I stopped caring about it.”

Sometimes too much IS too much

More recently I knew a handful of people that had heard about Kingdoms of Amalure: Reckoning and were ready to throw down their pre-sale cash when they heard that it was a 200+ hour game. That was, of course, to hit the 100% completion. Some might say that there is a lot of value to be had in a game that offers that much time to the player, but to gamers like me who don’t have that time to dedicate to a single title it can be difficult to justify purchasing a game that requires that much of an investment.

The converse of this is the titles that I so often see getting Game of the Year, or high praise from both game reviewers and players alike. These games only have a short initial game play time, but people end up playing them for well past that because the experience was so fulfilling.

Portal and Bastion are thought to be 4-10 and 10-15 hours, respectively. (These play times dramatically increase once you have cleared them once and have their levels memorized.) Both of these games earned high praise from well-known gaming websites as well as fans. Some might even think the phenomena of Portal could border on obsession with the community that surrounds it. Yet these experiences could potentially be taken on in a single session, depending on your available free time.

Both Portal and Bastion introduce you to a universe you are initially unfamiliar with and ease you into their mechanics without an excessive tutorial segment. By the time you feel you’ve gotten a grasp on the game play mechanics you are already close to finishing the game. No hand holding, no story mode that requires you to play for 40 hours or more and yet there are people who’ve played through the campaign Portal ten or more times, and people who have played through Bastion through multiple sessions just to get every ending and learn more about the universe. None of this was required by the publisher, it was just an option presented to the player if they wanted to extend their experience within the universe.

You thought I'd make a cake joke here didn't you? You monster.

Part III: What does this all mean?

It’s not my place to say who’s right and who is wrong when it comes to developing games; all I know is what I want as a gamer that is looking to spend his hard earned money on a new title. From my perspective, there are many games that are on the horizon that seem like they are artificially fluffed with “content” for the sake of extending the game experience well past its expiration date and only weakening the experience overall by doing so.

I think what developers need to realize is that if your game is good enough, if it is fun enough, if we have a hell of a great experience playing your game, the length doesn’t matter in the end. It is how much enjoyment we get out of it as players. In the end, that’s all that should matter.

Until next time: Good night, and good game.

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