Friday, April 29, 2016

News::Double Play: How sports games reach deeper into gamers' pockets

Source: NBA 2K16
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Imagine buying a burrito, and getting charged extra for gua-... wait, that's a bad example. Imagine receiving a car for free, but it can only drive at 20 miles per hour. If you wanted to accelerate, you'd have to invite at least five friends to visit the dealership. Alternatively, you could pay ten dollars to accelerate to 30 mph, or pay twenty dollars to accelerate to 50 mph. Hitting the break costs $2.50. Don't laugh - with autonomous cars just on the horizon, we may not be too far from such a reality.

The digital realm is peppered with similar examples of "Freemium" payment models - offering a mediocre product for free that can be improved by emptying your wallet (making it "premium"). Though it originated with shareware in the 1980s, it has been adopted by a variety of modern industries, the most crucial of which is video games.

Video game companies have come a long way since stealing quarters from kids who wanted another whack at Space Invaders. Aside from a few sympathetic publishers, it has not been uncommon lately for incomplete games to be released at full price, expecting customers to pay additional costs for downloadable content (DLC). Certain mobile games have even gone so far as to be nearly indistinguishable from gambling, preying on those susceptible to addiction with digital credit card micropayments.

Full games released at full price are few and far between, often losing the profit battle to the Freemium or DLC models. But even full games are prying open gamers' pockets in a different way... and the main culprits are sports games.

This is not a denouncement of franchises getting away with basically re-releasing the same game year after year with little more than a roster update (though that is problematic). Rather, my gripe is with something that has gotten out of hand in every major EA or 2KSports release in the last several years: advertising.

Mobile games often give the option of paying a one-time fee to permanently remove ads from an otherwise free game. In console and PC sports games, players are paying full price (upwards of $70 at release) for a game that will bombard them with ads for Gatorade, Nike, Sprite, Adidas, Sprint, KIA, and countless others.

How can game companies justify this visual and mental molestation? Every graphic, statistic, replay, jersey, and surface of every stadium is covered with brand names and logos.

"The Sprint Halftime Report: Presented by Sprint"

-NBA 2K15 (Xbox 360)


Some might say that it's all part of nailing the realism of televised sports; which similarly barrage your eyes with seizure-inducing ads. That may be true, but how far are gamers willing to go for the sake of realism? ESPN has commercial breaks every five minutes; should those be included in the game? Should there be inadvertent whistles by referees? Should NBA 2K17 include a feature where Jack Nicholson spills a beer on the Staples Center court, and players have to press X to clean it up?

Realism is a way to improve one's gaming experience... any addition that actually makes the game worse should not be included.

But maybe it's not about realism. Perhaps game companies justify in-game ads by claiming that the added revenue source allows them to take more risks and produce better games. This could very well be true, but not for sports games.

First of all, sports game franchises have established, loyal followings. Fans of EA's NHL games or the Madden NFL series tend to know what they're getting when they purchase the latest installment. These are not startup companies risking budgets on untested products. Second, non-sports franchises have succeeded in producing high-quality, top-selling games with zero in-game ads.

Game publisher Rockstar, for example, took an immense risk with its recent game, Grand Theft Auto V. With the highest total production cost of a video game to date, GTAV was quickly regarded as a behemoth, with unprecedented attention to detail, gameplay, and writing. Despite not having any in-game ads (not real ones, at least), it made back its budget within 24 hours of its release. If such a feat is possible, why can't sports games accomplish the same thing?

Granted, maybe comparing other games to Grand Theft Auto V is like asking why your toddler can't win a race against Usain Bolt. But other games have managed to be successful without the use of in-game ads. Why should sports games get a pass (no pun intended) under the guise of realism?

At the very least: why not pass the savings on to the customers, and charge less for a game featuring aggressive marketing? That seems like a fair compromise. And while you're at it, add that Jack Nicholson thing (I'd actually find that kind of funny).



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News::The 'Mass Effect' theme park attraction opens in May

Mass Effect is traveling to a strange new world: California's Great America theme park. The Mass Effect attraction opens on May 18th at California's Great America in Santa Clara, featuring an interactive 3D presentation with 4D effects, all hosted by a live performer. Riders will travel to "a distant planet" to make a stand against "larger-than-life foes," though there's no word on which characters will make an appearance in the experience. The ride is made in conjunction with Mass Effect publisher EA, and developer BioWare announced it back in September.

Source: @CAGreatAmerica



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News::The 'Dark Souls' franchise is over... for now

At what could be the height of the Dark Souls franchise's popularity, developer From Software is ready to move on.

Source: IGN



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News::'Doom' creators pull 'Blackroom' Kickstarter after four days

That lasted long. John Romero and Adrian Carmack, founders of the Doom and Quake developer iD Software, have already pulled the plug on their new Kickstarter project. The Blackroom campaign had been running for four days when the pair decided to press "pause," citing the need to make a gameplay demo. That's most likely so that their new, rebooted campaign can adhere to Kickstarter's own rules, which require "explicit demos of working prototypes" for any proposed physical product. The pair say finishing an early slice of Blackroom will take longer than the current campaign, which is why they've decided to end it so prematurely.

Via: Rock Paper Shotgun

Source: Kickstarter



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News::The curious case of 'Quadrilateral Cowboy'

Game developer Brendon Chung is an easygoing guy when it comes to the creative process. He doesn't make elaborate plans regarding the scope of his projects; instead he goes wherever the flow takes him. It's been working out for him: His completed games -- namely, Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving -- are quirky experiences heralded for their punchy, emotive narratives, and they each took about six months to complete. Chung assumed his latest game, Quadrilateral Cowboy, would take roughly the same amount of time.

That was in 2012.

"This game has been six months away from completion for about three years now," Chung says.



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News::Gfinity's eSports broadcasts now offer multiple perspectives

While Gfinity is known for its eSports stadium in London, the company is also committed to building an audience online. In addition to streaming on Twitch, the company has now launched a new GTV player in open beta. With this, you can have multiple feeds open and change each window depending on what's important to you. During a Counter-Strike tournament, for instance, I could switch between the "main stream" shown on Twitch, dedicated feeds for each team, and a few player facecams. In addition, I could change the audio between full broadcast style commentary and strictly in-game music and sound effects.

Via: MCV

Source: Gfinity



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News::Atari founder Nolan Bushnell is making mobile games

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has teamed up with a small Amsterdam studio to develop and publish new mobile games. Bushnell created the iconic Atari brand in 1972, and oversaw the release of classic systems such as the Atari 2600. He was ousted from the company six years later and ran a bunch of other businesses before returning to Atari's board of directors in 2010. Spil Games, meanwhile, is a relatively unknown name that specializes in mobile and browser-based titles. Bushnell has signed on to develop three games with the studio, with the first scheduled for release in early 2017. We'll soon see if he still has some of that old Atari magic.

Source: Gamasutra



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News::'No Man's Sky' lore comes from classic sci-fi and comics

"We always said we shouldn't have a narrative, but we should have a lore," says No Man's Sky mastermind Sean Murray. And honestly, with a procedurally generated universe that's staggeringly gigantic, it'd be impossible to create a traditional video game story with things like cutscenes. But to make the world feel more alive and less like a giant empty sandbox, Murray says the team at Hello Games turned to artist Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame and scribe James Swallow who worked on the writing for Star Trek and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Source: PlayStation Blog (EU)



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