‘I’ve Had Enough…‘ is a regular feature by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, picking apart the games industry’s more irritating practices. This time: does an iPhone version of a popular fighting game even make sense?

How many formats ended up with a version of Street Fighter II? I lose count. From Mega Drive to Game Boy, from Amiga to Commodore 64, they all had a chance to host Ryu and pals kicking seven shades of pixelated blood out of each other.

If we don’t mind including downloads in the total, even each of the current generation of consoles can claim versions. With something in the region of 20 consoles being homes to titles of its ilk, there can be little doubt that Street Fighter II is one of the most ported titles in the world.

Excellent though it is, did Street Fighter II really deserve its place on every single one of the machines it was released on? My vote is ‘probably not’. It was, however, a different entry in the same franchise that had the topic of videogame ports bouncing around in my head this week.

This should not be taken as an affront to all examples of multiplatform games. Let’s get real – in today’s climate, with the way the games industry has exploded and development costs have increased to the point where they’re not just sky-high but have started to form small satellites, ports are an essential part of the strategy at many developers with the resources to accommodate them. To do well enough to recoup sufficient money from a high definition game it’s almost a necessity to release it on more than one system, unless the effort in question is a first-party title or a third-party game with a nice big wedge of money from a console manufacturer behind it.

While there is, of course, usually a lead platform for multiformat titles from which other versions derive, I don’t tend to have these in mind when thinking of ports. Instead I imagine the occasions when a game turns up on another console months later – an obvious separate development, I suppose.

FIGHTING FIT
Back to that game that set this ball rolling, though: Street Fighter VI. Great game on its own merits, but it was recently announced that it’s now coming to iPhone. I would be a fool to disregard the growing power of Apple’s platform, but can this honestly be considered the most sensical lightbulb that has ever lit above somebody’s head?

Let us consider the facts: Street Fighter IV is of the fighting genre, which is synonymous with reliance on tight controls, fast reactions and hardcore gamers. Let’s now throw all of that out of the window and release a game of this type on an entirely touch screen-controlled handheld, so that you have to press the screen – the one you’re looking at to keep track of the speedy gameplay – to control it. I can’t be the only one looking utterly bemused at this point, can I?

Credit where it’s due in that it looks, visually at least, fantastic for a handheld, but can this be a port that was chosen because of the iPhone’s merits, or is it just that they couldn’t resist the sound of coins? The controls look to be just about usable but it doesn’t seem like the optimal way to play the game – the main reason for its existence appears to be so they can take advantage of the large audience rather than make any actual improvement.

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‘I’ve Had Enough‘ is a weekly column by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, picking apart the more annoying industry practices. This week: announcements, and how they’re emptier than ever…

I don’t like hype too much.  But then you’d know that if you’d read my previous column on the subject.  I would like to think I’m a relatively reasonable guy, though, and so I accept that the hype train has to be driven a certain distance before it derails.  There has to be some hype in place to help new releases feast upon the general public’s collective wallet and slurp up some of those tasty, nourishing sales.  I’ve been alarmed by a growing trend, though: the increased reliance on announcements.

I don’t mean any old announcements, of course.  I wouldn’t suggest that publishers start taking their hard-developing wares and just start dumping them on shop shelves without breathing a word about their existence – though it does feel that happens with some games.  The announcements I’m talking about are those hideous aberrations that seem to be more prevalent by the day: announcements of announcements.

If you’re fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with this phenomenon, it is basically how it sounds.  One of the most common methods used to supposedly build hype these days is putting out an announcement that, one day, in the not so distant future, there’s going to be an announcement made.  That’s it.  Well, thanks for grabbing my attention for that helpful nugget.  Perhaps instead that original opportunity you had to grasp my attention could have been used to fill me in.  Or, maybe, shock tactics could have been employed and a completely out of the blue announcement could have appeared from nowhere one day in a similar manner, taking everybody aback and astonishing them at how well the upcoming product has been kept secret.  But no.  We are whipped into a frenzy, thinking we’re about to learn something new, only to end up staring at a countdown clock that kindly informs us we will actually be learning that something new a week from now.  Two if we’re really lucky.

These announcements come in two flavours.  The first is the one where you have no idea what is about to be announced: no title, no series, nothing mentioned.  You’re in the dark.  I suppose that’s supposed to build excitement about an entire company, is it? The second is… well, I can’t actually decide if it’s more, less or equally infuriating, but it’s the situation where you have been told a title or a series, but you’ve also been told that you’ll have to wait for a specific date to find out such crucial facts as what format the game is even being released on.

How about we get that stuff upfront in the first place? Publishers do realise how much of a pain it is to give credible coverage to something that has no released information of any use, don’t they? Isn’t this practice, in that way, just winding people up, making them not want to cover your product until there’s something to actually talk about, and doing the reverse of what is intended?

Inevitably, it all leads to speculation.  Of course it does.  You can stick a lump of cheese to the top of a Dreamcast and broadcast it via a webcam stream from your shed these days and people will pull out conspiracy theories about a secret new Chu Chu Rocket game being in development.  So when a large, official source mentions something is coming, people are obviously going to talk and come to conclusions both sensible and zany.  Mainly the latter.

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‘I’ve Had Enough…’ is a regular column by Cubed3’s Mike Mason. This time: the Christmas period has made him angry…

There’s such a thing as too much choice. This doesn’t seem to be a lesson that has been learnt particularly well throughout the gaming industry even as it has grown into the industry behemoth that it is now.  Year upon year, dozens of titles are all sent out at once in the mad rush to grab sales in the most important quarters of the year.  We’ve just escaped the most traditionally crazy release period of the year: the good old Christmas rush.

Yet it was actually much quieter than usual this time around.  SimplyGames director Neil Muspratt commented that the release schedules were the “most sensibly divided up” ones he had seen in all his time in the retail side of the games industry such in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.  Indeed, it felt, for one sparkling moment when announcements of delays began to come in, that the world of gaming had wised up, stopped jostling for sales in the tiniest of spaces with pugil sticks and had instead decided to give themselves a little more room.  Then it became apparent that nobody was really trying to do anything of the sort – they’d simply put all their releases back a few weeks so that they could all still battle it out, only without a Christmas period at the end of it.  Oh.

A big bunch of games cleared out of the Christmas running when it was realised that they would be taking on the Call of Duty machine with the release of Modern Warfare 2.  That decision is fair enough, considering how big the franchise has become; it, along with the likes of the ‘Wii’ line of games and New Super Mario Bros. Wii, were undoubtedly the big winners the season, and it’s quite unlikely that this could have been altered.  Yet any problem with release schedules hasn’t been solved at all – it’s all just been delayed by a few weeks to a period when many people are paying off their post-Christmas debt rather than thinking about buying new games.  It just doesn’t make sense to think that there are somewhere in the region of nine or ten biggish games either just released or soon to be released on the Xbox 360 alone – Bayonetta, BioShock 2, Dante’s Inferno and Mass Effect 2, to name a few.

What is your natural reaction when placed in front of a few desirable titles and told to pick just one? You’ll poke and prod a bit, “um” and “ah” and, eventually, hopefully, pick one in a reasonable amount of time.  Now picture the same scenario with not just a few titles but a tableful.  Can you, as a seasoned, knowledgeable gamer pick just one and be fully satisfied that you’ve made the right move in the face of so many options? I wager that very few could claim as such.  Apply this to your non-gaming consumer who’s out to satisfy their youngsters.  Good luck to them, I say.  Uninformed about quality or value, they do the only thing that makes sense in the situation – they go for brand names or things that they recognise, cross their fingers and hope for the best.  Thus, the licenced titles and the few big series get the sales and the rest get left behind.  If you like animal metaphors, you might liken it to a bunch of mice all charging for one hole through which they’ve spied a piece of cheese at exactly the same second, only the majority of them get wedged together in the hole while a couple of the leaner, speedier rodents manage to get in, start battling over the tasty snack and just a few of the crumbs spilt in the fight tumble back for the others to pick at.  Replace those mice with games and the cheese with sales and you have your typical release schedule rush.

I understand that all publishers want to be able to show their shareholders big shiny numbers on their quarterly reports, but why put all your eggs in one basket? As it is, the majority of games get released either at the beginning or end of the year.  Then there’s a big blank spot where hardly anything comes out.  Y’know, that little season called ’summer’.  Would it be so wrong to, say, spread out the releases a little more and not just send them out to die on the same weeks as direct competition? It’s not an admission of defeat to put your title a few weeks later than your rival’s, it’s common sense.  Those weeks don’t have to go wasted; they can be used to build up hype and promotion to further cement the investment, or if it’s known well in advance that that’s the plan they could even be put to good use messing about with those tiny bits of polish that the timetable just didn’t originally allow for in development.

That’s just not how it is, though, and it’s the reason that we’ve seen the number of bargains and cut price games rise; there’s just too much on the market for them all to possibly succeed.  It’s an uncommon – and lucky – person who can afford to buy all the season’s big releases, but it’s doubtful that they’d then have the time to even play them all unless they literally did nothing else with their life.  Which leads me to a slightly more personal plea: seriously, with so many games out at the same time, how are they all supposed to be covered, and covered well, to the standard you would expect of a critic, by the gaming press, working on limited time? The way release schedules are heavily weighted to certain periods right now does a disservice to the consumers by throwing far too much at them and lessening the chances of fair opinions on the releases being distributed to them.  Of course, the cynic might suggest that this is exactly the plan for some games of lesser quality, allowing them to slip through the net and pull in some sales before the damage is done by the media getting the chance to shine their opinionated light on them.

I know this probably sounds more like a futile rant than anything else.  The only way the release schedules are going to get sorted out in the future is if publishers begin to actively work out the best times to put things on shop shelves and realise that they’re holding themselves back.  As opposed to the current strategy of shoving them out blindly whenever they feel like it and then having a line for the press waiting on standby that blames market conditions and – hey! – the number of competing games that came out.  With the size of the industry, faith in your product is not enough any longer. There are 52 weeks in a year, so use them.

“I’ve Had Enough…” is a regular feature by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, dissecting some of the games industry’s more irritating practices.  This time: the surge of downloadable content – but could we really game without it?

I like the feeling that I have the world at my fingertips. I like the idea that I can grab whatever I’m after in a reasonably instantaneous fashion within minutes of deciding I want something.  It’s a reason I love digital distribution of music, even though I still prefer having things on shiny discs with colourful books.  The same applies to gaming.  I’m addicted to downloading things, to the jolt of pleasure given by an off-the-cuff purchase that gratifies immediately.  The first thing I did when I bought a PlayStation 3 a few months ago was not to pop in a disc, but to connect to the Internet and see what I’d been missing out on in the PlayStation Store.

Despite my love affair with the medium, however, it isn’t all flowers and sunshine.  I have as many concerns about this method of content delivery as I do joys.  I can’t imagine that I’m the only one.  I will say that I have consoles in mind as I write this; I’m not about to start a battle against Steam, both because it seems delightfully bargainous and also due to my inexperience with PC gaming at large thanks to a long ancestory of dodgy, generally ungameworthy laptops and desktops.

Today’s been a good day on the whole, so let’s start with a sprinkle of positivity.  I’ve already mentioned the speed of delivery when downloading, but it bears repeating in my eyes.  Downloadable content allows fast, easy and convenient access to new things, and I’m typically quite happy with new things.  Let’s say I wake up on a Saturday morning – which I do occasionally manage – and plonk myself in front of my 360 for a sneaky play about before I have to do something semi-useful with myself.  I scour my games but discover that I’m not really feeling like shooting things, driving cars or rolling the contents of the world up into a big ball.  In times past I would either slump off to do something else or grumpily vow to pad down to the shops to see if anything takes my fancy.  Not any more! Now I log into Xbox Live, go to the games marketplace and fill my boots with… something, even if it is just a demo.  Superb.

Yet that convenience can become somewhat of an inconvenience in itself.  Let’s now say that I’m in an unpredictable, impulsive mood.  I’ve just been paid.  And in my hand sits a control pad with the suspicious ability to empty my bank account to big uncle Microsoft with the greatest of ease.  When in states of lessened self-control, it can be all too easy to let a few pounds mount up, since you’re never seeing the money.  Tip: buy the points cards instead to be safe.

That’s another issue.  Points.  Sony dodge the bullet on this one with their upfront use of real money, but both Microsoft and Nintendo opt to fuel their downloadable games portals with crafty custom currencies.  It’s always told – at the time of points purchase – exactly how much these points cost, but never at the time of buying content (outside of full games) is the real cost mentioned.  Which of course undoubtedly makes it easier to justify purchases.  It’s not a crime on the console manufacturers’ parts at all, but it is a bit of a cheeky trick to grease the wheels of purchase.  Especially in the way that there’s often a sum left on your balance that isn’t quite the amount necessary for something else.  A worrying tendency, particularly on Xbox Live, has been a gradual creeping up of the average game price tag, the standard now seemingly closer to the 1,200 mark than the previous benchmark of 800 Microsoft Points.

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I’ve Had Enough… is a regular feature by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, discussing some of the more irritating practices of the games industry.  This time: shouldn’t Achievements arrive naturally when we’ve actually achieved something?

How big is your Gamerscore?

Mine’s pretty tiny.  Not quite imperceptible.  Maybe above average.  It’s not the size that matters, but how we get there, right? A public badge of honour to show just what games have been worthy of our time and persuaded us to part with those precious hours we have to ourselves.  Then why, pray tell, is my list full of achievements like ‘complete X missions’, ‘collect Y bottles of something or other’ or ‘hit stuff Z number of times’? Is it that these feats extraordinaire have compelled me to continue, or is it just the greedy part of my brain that likes to see numbers rise, preferably in increments of multiples of five? More than likely, outside of the mission-based ones gained through finishing a game normally, it’s the latter.  Which is exactly why achievements need to liven up a bit.

Before we go any further, let me say that I am not anti-achievement, trophy, whatever.  In a console generation full of Exciting New Things – widespread online, augmented reality and a little control method called motion – achievements are right near the top of the list of quality improvements in my book.  Sad as it may be, whenever I go to Wii games after an extended bout on that which gobbles most of my gaming time, the 360, the whole thing feels a little empty without the occasional ‘plink’ and addition of pointless numbers to a meter on a card adorned with my name.  What I don’t understand fully are those who go after every single point in a game whether they’re having fun or not.  But I digress.  Those adorable achievement addicts are not what I have on my mind here.

Inherently, achievements are surely a great thing.  Rather than just tearing through games and moving on to the next, achievement systems offer people an obvious avenue to spend more time with the games they purchase.  They add an extra layer of things to do; no longer can you say with full conviction that you’ve done everything you can in a game until you have received the full amount of points/trophies/stamps for it.  Going by this definition of ‘complete’, I’ve finished roughly one game in the last two years.  That’s quite pathetic, but if you look at my play history you will spy others close to that fabled point, games that may otherwise never have been enjoyed so much outside of the initial playthrough.  I recently ‘finished’ Brütal Legend, completing its story.  Yet I didn’t immediately toss it aside; I booted it back up and began to clear it of its side missions for those tantalising numbers.  The buttons of the achievement whore nagging inside of many gamers are pushed by things like this – and that can only be good for titles’ longevity.

The carrot-on-a-stick trick of rewarding those who play more is a fantastic idea that only enhances a good game.  How lovely does it feel to finish off a particularly tough section, one that you’ve toiled over for hours? Rather lovely.  Now, what about if you’re given a virtual pat on the back afterwards? Feels even better, right? The only way it could be improved is if Stephen Fry popped up, made a witty comment and gave you a hearty “well done!”.  You never know, it might happen – he does like to put his voice in games.  In the mean time, Microsoft have taken things a bit further than the points systems by giving you presents when you accomplish certain things in games such as Splosion Man via their Awards system.  Okay, it’s useless junk to clothe your avatar rather than anything beneficial like Microsoft Points, but it’s a step in the right direction for those who like prizes.

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I’ve Had Enough… is a regular feature by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, discussing some of the more irritating practices of the games industry.  This time: are sneaky, money-grabbing retail techniques becoming more prevelant?

“What’re ya buyin’?”

The question of Resident Evil 4’s merchant has been resonating recently, only more than anything else it’s been making me think about how games are being sold to us.  Some of the approaches taken by publishers to appease retailers are, to my eyes, getting gradually worse.

Special editions are a relatively recent occurrence, only coming into gaming full throttle, as I recall, this generation, sparked along by the likes of Halo 3 and its bulky Spartan helmet.  Then, around the same time, came the collectors tins.  The art books.  All sorts of fancy gubbins to entice people into paying out a little extra for their anticipated game.  In theory, and I suppose in practice for huge fans of particular series, it’s a fantastic idea – you get your game and a small pile of cool, somewhat exclusive swag alongside it to gaze upon fondly.  The cynic inside me creeps out, however…

How much is this stuff actually worth? When is it going to be of any real use whatsoever? By bundling in something like, say, a pair of night vision goggles in the case of the game you’re most likely spamming grenades on right now, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, does that give the publisher reason to throw an extra £80 or so onto the price? Well, if they’re actually of decent quality – I’ve yet to see either way – maybe that is alright.  Okay, how about an additional £20 for an art book or a disc of interviews and developer footage that will end up on the Internet sooner or later? Going back to Modern Warfare 2, an indication that special editions have maybe gone a little far: even the game guide has a special edition for this one, just in case you’re unable to use your eyes to navigate through Google to discover how to unlock some tasty achievement points.

My stance on special editions is that they’re simply a way of gaining more shelf space by spreading out a few different versions of the same game.  A happy side effect is that more money can be charged, which everybody can rub their hands in glee at.  On top of this we’ve now got Game Of The Year editions out on some titles that have done well for themselves.  To be fair, these can be great value for money, in one way by including downloadable content packages on disc – Fallout 3’s is just £30 and includes all five extra DLC scenarios – but ultimately are probably just there to eke out a bit more coin from their successes while blocking competitors’ products from shelf space.  These multiple editions prove that it’s not only within games themselves that the videogame industry has aspirations towards the film industry; it’s an approach that’s been taken with DVD releases for years, constant special editions.  When the media combine, though, it makes for some of the better, more sensical and worthy offers on the table – for example, pairing Stranglehold with Hard Boiled on Blu Ray or Ghostbusters with the original film’s Blu Ray release.

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I’ve Had Enough… is a fortnightly column by Cubed3’s Mike Mason, picking apart the problems of the games industry.  This time, he’s had enough so-called ‘maturity’ in videogames…

If gaming’s definition of maturity was applied to the entire planet, we’d be pretty screwed.

Forget reason or intelligence; guns, gore, sex and swears are the quadrants that make up the circle of mature content in the video game world.  If you were to count up the number of these instances on fingers, you’d probably have to go to a Take That concert to get hold of the amount of hands you’d need.  Used correctly, they’re fantastic – you only need to see House of the Dead: Overkill to realise that – but with the current generation in full fling it’s only too apparent how common these elements are.  And that’s fine – but I’ve had enough of the games using these elements in abundance being pegged as examples of ‘maturity’.

If you think about what the word ‘mature’ entails – that it’s something fully grown, adult – then yes, in terms of pure content games including substantial amounts of these things should be considered mature.  These are things that only those of appropriate age should be exposed to with frequency.  That’s from a content perspective, though.  My problem is that a lot of the games considered adult are only so on the surface.  If a game is supposed to be mature, should it not be reflected in a deeper manner in the content? In a truly adult game, it should be possible to exclude elements such as these and retain that grown-up feeling.

While it’s certainly not a game that could fit into my described ideal of maturity, Brütal Legend goes about things in an interesting way in allowing you to switch off gore and profanity without affecting the gameplay.  It’s a feature I’d like to see more of – not because I’m a prude or would even necessarily use the function all the time, but because it might force some developers to abandon these things as crutches of appeal for their games.  So often it’s obvious that blood is being tipped everywhere just for the sake of it. These are not aimed at adults; they’re collections of adult elements bundled together in ways that make teenagers feel older than they are.  That works, as sales figures prove, but somebody looking for a fulfilling, grown-up experience will have to search around that bit harder.

For me, it’s the games that are less explicit, the ones that don’t make it obvious whether they’re aiming for an older audience or not, that come across as those most deserving of the ‘mature’ banner.  Shadow of the Colossus is one of those games.  There is a level of violence, as you might expect from a title revolving around stabbing giant monsters to death, but it never feels like that’s the focus, thanks to the way you must think, study and discover the beasts’ Achilles heels before being able to assault them effectively.  It feels like a journey rather than a game about destroying enemies.  It evoked emotion in me like nothing I’ve played since; sadness when taking down a creature that was meandering about in its own life before it encountered me, anger at a particularly fierce beast and a mix of jubilation and bitterness after finally taking down what was ultimately a blameless obstacle in my path.  There are no words that explicitly tell you, but I couldn’t help but feel guilt at the scenario once I stopped to think about it – you’re destroying largely innocent beings selfishly, for nought but a single human life.  It’s by making you feel these things that Shadow of the Colossus is more worthy of maturity proclamations than the majority of 18-branded games.

It’s the lack of emotional connection that makes me look right through most ‘mature’ games. How many times have you felt genuinely affected by a game? Not many? Yet gaming appears to have all the elements it needs to get reaction at its fingertips; potentially all the benefits of books, films, music, plus interactivity.  I don’t mean people should be weeping into their control pads all the time – that’d probably lead to a lot of trouble given the fragility of systems nowadays – but why is it so rare that we might feel true discomfort, regret, disappointment in experiencing a game – and not because the game’s quality has fallen short, but because it’s what was intended?

There’s also a lack of consequence to so many titles.  You’re given a gun, a lead pipe, some gardening shears, whatever, and proceed to tear the crap out of hundreds of opponents for the entirety of the playthrough.  The worrying thing is that it’s completely unshocking and there are no comeuppances for it.  Would it not be refreshing to see more games that challenge you to dig deeper and work out alternatives to bloodshed, encourage players to make some responsible choices or, at the very least, show some kind of negative fall out for certain actions?

I’d love to see a mature game where, for the duration, you are given a gun with a single round of ammunition, say six bullets.  You can use them whenever you want, but it’s really in your best interests to consider carefully before doing so.  A game that instils a sense of morality into you, so that if you do take a life unworthy of retribution you would feel something and not just laugh it off.  The problem is in working out how this could be accomplished convincingly, which I suspect is a reason that nothing like this is out there.  That’s not mentioning budget restrictions – an idea like this would probably be from an independent developer, as it doesn’t exactly scream ‘mainstream success’ like the other gorefests on the market.

All this isn’t to suggest that there aren’t worthy examples of a more mature approach to games.  Quantic Dream look set to repeat the feat of Fahrenheit with their Playstation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain, with one critic claiming they felt discomfort while playing a scene in which one of the main characters is forced into a striptease.  Mass Effect deals with genocide, racism and political unrest in addition to gunplay and the infamous sex scenes.  But such examples are few and far between, and the excuse of gaming’s relative infancy is only becoming more strained by the day.  The games that promote themselves on the back of myriad guts, explosions and bare arse cheeks have their place in the industry, but it sure would be nice to see the idea of actual maturity spread to a few more developers.

‘I’ve Had Enough…’ is a fortnightly column in which Cubed3’s Mike Mason dissects some of the more frustrating practices of the games industry. This time, he’s had enough bad kids’ games…

Just because you can pull the wool over somebody’s eyes, doesn’t mean that you should.

That’s been my attitude with respect to games marketed at children for a long while.  Time and time again you see poor – or, at best, mediocre – games being released that are targeted solely at the younger end of the market.  Often, I would wager it’s the case that these games are pushed out rapidly, with little regard for the final outcome and purely for the money.  Fair enough – there’s a reason that we’re in the games industry, and it’s easy to forget sometimes that companies are there to turn a profit; if they make you happy along the way, that’s a nice bonus.  I just wish that more kids’ games could have care lavished upon them and not be viewed as simple money spinners.

Arguably, making a good game for children should require just as much effort as one aimed at older crowds, but it’s obvious that this mindset is not instilled in everybody.  After all, why should the extra time be dedicated when you could just take advantage of common traits of the youngsters instead? They find comfort through repetition – I’m sure as a child you had favourite films or TV programmes that you watched again and again, oblivious to the mental torture and boredom you were putting your parents through.  They can have questionable quality standards; back on the Mega Drive I used to recall fond memories of a game called Last Battle, which I revisited in my teenage years only to discover that it was terrible.  They’re easy to entertain, so long as elements of the game are ‘cool’.  Why not just shove a brightly-coloured cat with lasers for eyes into a repetitive platformer where you punch mice and avoid deadly water ad infinitum? It’s easier than trying, and it doesn’t matter too much. Right?

A key thing to remember is how much games, as well as other forms of entertainment, have the potential to influence youth.  The sensationalist press enjoys keeping the negative sides of this prominent in coverage of gaming, but the more pleasant findings are glossed over.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found evidence that playing certain types of games makes children kinder to others.  Almost 2,000 Japanese children between the ages of 10 to 16 were surveyed about the games that they played and how helpful they were to others.  A few months later, after being exposed to prosocial videogames, there was an upward spiral in helpful behaviour in participants.  Games also accommodate the learning of vital skills: hand-to-eye co-ordination is the most vaunted, but the varying tasks presented in games also aid with the development of a multi-tasking mind, while ABC News reported that fluid intelligence (problem-solving skills) is increased by playing games.  If games have potential to fulfil such an important role in a child’s growth, why is more thought not put into what is presented to children?

Not all games are going to set out to be wholly beneficial to development, and they shouldn’t necessarily aim to.  There are some definite no-nos to keep in mind: no foul language, no realistic or excessive violence, no scaring the living daylights out of kids.  I can’t think of a child’s game that strays too far from these parameters, but I can think of many that fall short of the standards that any game should reach.  They should not patronise, frustrate or misguide, but these factors are rife.  George of the Jungle on the DS is a fine example of a poorly executed children’s game: a repetitive platformer which is far too eager to punish players with cheap deaths and frequently shunts you back to the beginning of levels.  Its cartoon world allows licence for things like anthropomorphic enemies, but it deliberately tells players mistruths for the sake of nonsensical challenge – water kills instantly, while spikes only damage partially; honey-smeared platforms are slippery instead of sticky.  Obstacles such as these are commonplace and accepted, but it wouldn’t have been so difficult to implement ones where the outcomes had some root in reality – reversing the roles of liquid/thorns and ice respectively, for example.

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‘I’ve Had Enough…’ is a fortnightly column in which Cubed3’s Mike Mason dissects some of the more frustrating practices of the games industry. This time, he’s had enough media hype…

“A lot of promise.”  “This epic really deserves to be played.” Can you guess what game these quotes are about?

The answer: the comments are from hands-on previews of Factor 5’s Lair, a game that ended up with poor and middling grades when it came to the final reviews on the sites in question.  It’s the perfect example of a flawed title being unreasonably hyped up to astronomical levels pre-release by the media.

The entertainment industry is one that breeds off hype, and games are no exception.  Every big game can no longer be expected to sell itself, no matter what its level of quality; it must be surrounded by a myriad of hype wafting around it like a dust storm, blinding consumers people with particles of hyperbole that threaten to overshadow what the game actually is.

The largest advantage of hype, and the point of the practice, is contained within the definition of the word: the build of publicity.  Without it, nobody would be any the wiser about forthcoming games – if brand saturation is bad enough already, it could be even worse without anything there to promote what original titles do exist.  A well-hyped game is often guaranteed some level of sales before the game is even completed, with more to come should it fulfil its potential and receive positive reviews upon release.

Therein lies a problem, however; if a game has a sufficient amount of positivity surrounding it early on, it will frequently sell well regardless of its final state, leading to sales that do not necessarily correlate with its quality.  The launch of Wii saw the advent of Ubisoft’s Red Steel.  It was met with a whirlwind of hype in the media thanks to the canny combination of being the system’s first announced game, its earliest first-person-shooter, the focus on motion-based remote-slashing swordplay and some carefully placed target renders for screenshots that seemed to indicate that Wii would be able to stand relatively close to the capabilities of Xbox 360.  When the game actually rolled out, though, things were clearly not as they initially seemed – while not a bad game, it was more above-average than exemplary, displayed varying levels of visual quality throughout and limited blade combat.  Yet despite this, it has sold in surplus of one million copies worldwide, thanks in part to the boost given by hype (though admittedly the slim pickings of the Wii launch also helped it out).

Red Steel serves to highlight a negative consequence of hype – that of backlash.  When a game fails to reach the (often ridiculous) heights initially promoted, the general reaction is for gaming communities to lambaste the title and those associated with it.  The point at which backlash occurs is critical – if after the game is released, sales are less likely to be damaged, though it may take its toll on the reputation of a company or franchise.  As a result of the game coming short of the hype, Red Steel has unfairly become one of Wii’s most maligned games, constantly brought up on message boards as an example of failure. Will this affect Red Steel 2’s chances, or will that game’s own ever-increasing hype pull it through? Time will tell.

More serious is if a backlash is felt prior to release.  The chances are reasonable that this will lead to a commercial failure; amongst the deadliest of curses a developer could be afflicted by in the middle of a recession, especially when working to a high-definition game’s development budget.  Two PlayStation 3 titles spring to mind as harmful to their developers as a result of scores lower than expectation: Haze forced Free Radical into administration before they were acquired by Crytek; Factor 5 took a significant hit from the aforementioned game Lair.

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By Mike Mason

‘I’ve Had Enough…’ is a new, fortnightly column in which Cubed3’s Mike Mason dissects some of the more frustrating practices of the games industry. This time: brand saturation, and how it might ultimately be disastrous for the major publishers.

These days, I’m just as likely to duck into a games shop to get out of the rain as to actually buy something – such is the convenience and bargainous nature of online shopping.

When I do make one of my rare appearances, it’s difficult not to notice the sea of familiar games – many of which share near identical names with at least one other product.  Yes, with gaming well and truly in the mainstream and the medium selling by the bucket load, it’s not surprising to see publishers capitalise by eking out their brand names, filling their bank accounts like a greedy child does a bag of pick ‘n’ mix.

The most prominent examples come from two of the largest publishers: Ubisoft and Activision.  In the former’s case it’s the Imagine and Petz franchises that have conquered a corner of the casual market, particularly on Nintendo DS.  They now stretch out in a number of out-there directions, allowing players to care for Tigerz or fulfil their dreams by looking after babies – though they could quite easily expand into Camel Spiderz and scrubbing toilets without anybody noticing anything untoward, given the amount of titles to appear under the labels. Combining those released and due for release, there will have been more Imagine games than calendar months in 2009.

For Activision, the most obvious example would be in the expansion of the Guitar Hero series, which once housed yearly entries but now spawns upwards of four editions per annum.  The company’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, has infamously been quoted on his adversity to support games that “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential.”

More choice is not a bad thing in any respect, and by diversifying the subject matter of further games, it means that companies can adhere to more people’s tastes.  However, things should be taken in moderation. There is a distinction between catering to specialist markets by offering variety, and outright emptying bin bags of new releases into the laps of overwhelmed consumers.  Take The Sims: few, aside the devoted followers of the series, are able to keep up with its stream of expansion packs.  This is great for those in the know, who can then tailor their experience to their needs by choosing whether or not to buy the pack that enables their Sims to go coal mining or eat lobster thermidor, but those looking from the outside inwards are no doubt confused by the number of similar boxes on shelves, and thus accessibility is lost.

Guitar Hero suffers the same issue in the spread of titles under one name. This year has seen the release of Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits, Guitar Hero: Metallica and the DS’ On Tour: Modern Hits – the third game of the series released on the portable in 12 months – and now Guitar Hero 5.  A Van Halen edition is due later in the year, and expanding to encompass the ‘Hero’ franchise as a whole adds DJ Hero – distinguishing itself with hip-hop and turntable-based gameplay – and Band Hero, a pop version of Guitar Hero, for all intents and purposes.  It’s difficult to keep track for those with a keen eye for gaming news, so spare a thought for the more mainstream market to which much of this is targeted.

A benefit of constant copyright reliance is the increase of brand awareness with each subsequent release.  By tying everything together through similar names more powerful franchises are created, leading to more money-making potential – money that can, in theory, be invested in more original efforts.  Ubisoft is currently making the most of this strategy: relying upon their widespread mass-market titles, they are able to divert money into projects such as Red Steel 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction and I Am Alive.  However, while profit associated with the brand as a whole might increase, further deviations are sure to have a knock-on effect on the sales potential of each title taken individually, which in turn leads to a smaller cut of profits for developers not owned by publishers.

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