04.21.08
The Bottom Line
You can dress up a video game review in as many ten-cent words as you want. You can get all hoity-toity with the analysis of game as art. You can even pull out the big guns and examine, with a fine-toothed comb no less, the social implications of the Friend code system and the quantitatively better or worse aspect of the various elements of play. You’re welcome to do all of that, and more power to you if you do so.
But this picture tells me far more about Mario Kart Wii than all of that other baloney. There’s something to be said for a universally-accessible game.
Ismail Saeed said,
04.21.08 at 6:35 pm
Games, like all art, can also be be niche and refined and not for everyone instead of accessible.
Not disagreeing with you that fun is important, but there it is.
For example, a while back Tycho mentioned something about an online game in which full simulation of air traffic control is done… and this is an online game that multiple people participate in and can end up interacting with each other… using headphones and microphone or a headset or whatever is key, and it’s basically super-detailed stuff that would not be “immediate fun” or of interest to everyone but that proves to be an enjoyable hobby diversion or simulation for its small, niche community.
It’s not unlike how RPGs looked to the action munchkins who couldn’t imagine why we enjoyed it, or people who honestly enjoy stamp collecting - it’s not huge, but it’s plenty valuable to the person who takes interest in it.
The problem with Friend Codes or certain other aesthetic things is that it puts a game outside of what a person wants and enjoys. It may still be good in some respect, but it may just not be for that person… just as a person won’t like every movie, even if it’s a classic, good movie, a person should be pushed to try things but eventually they’ll be experienced, know what they like and what they’ve been forcing themselves to like, and settle into their groove.
A system like friend codes has its purposes, but it completely breaks the progressive groove that previously familiar gamers have had developing over their gaming lives.
An aside, to give an example: Wind Waker is a game that some people could not get past the visuals of. For them, each Zelda game had been getting more real in appearance, and if you subscribe to the idea that Zelda was the same story retold in different ways instead of a continuity (I don’t, but that’s irrelevant here) then OoT was the darkest take on it compared to its predecessors… even if the game is good, Wind Waker so completely offskidded that progressive development in its look that it just wasn’t of interest to some people… and some people that did try it ended up questioning the game as “Is this the direction it’d been going instead of the one I’d perceived it as going?” - KQ7 suffered a similar fate before it… KQ1-6 had each been progressively getting the graphics a bit more realistic, and then 7 not only went cartoony (which, as it turns out, would’ve been the intention from the start by Roberta Williams) but also went practically on rails in terms of actually solving it as a puzzle game - it was just a matter of learning where to click on each screen instead of thinking of which action to do - the game would do the right one.
Now, the groove that gamers had settled in relative to friend codes was one in which they were given increasing flexibility and options that were almost becoming givens - flexibility and options that it’s not TOO defensible to not be featuring now. It’s not too hard to begin interacting in any number of ways with a person on the Internet once you have some interaction with them. For example, if I meet you on a messageboard somewhere (gee, sounds familiar) we can trade AIM names or e-mail addresses or whatever and pretty much go at it any way we wish. Online gaming has been practical for a long time - over BBSes at first, but by 1997 at least it was practical (which I distinguish from “possible”) over the ‘Net. Bandwidth increased enough that there would be enough spare bandwidth to not just talk while outside of games, but also inside them… to not have to hit T, but to just SAY something. It was a bit more of a specialized crowd than everyone, but you could have Counterstrike missions where the members of a team conferred together simply by conferring together with their mouths, and carried any interactions they wished onwards after a given game. It boasted of the flexibility of the Internet itself. Systems like XBox Live furthered that idea by letting it be known that a person may be interested in playing game A while you were playing game B, thanks to the unified interface all the games were written to which could take advantage of that flexibility in a way completely separate game development could not. A groove developed, and not one completely mistaken in wanting to exist. Just as having only three or four stages to a game is unacceptably short bang for your buck these days, or having no multiplayer mode in games that are completely suited to at LEAST 2 player mode (which, though it can happen, is roundly criticized)… these are groove-type expectations, and some of this flexibility being taken away puts the company ignoring it (like the company that made the too-short game or the company that didn’t put 2-player into a racing game or so on) into the position of either being complained at for the offskidding of desires and hopes and wants… OR ends up robbing a person of what they actually enjoyed so that they have no reason to want the game - for example if Brawl hadn’t included online when even Street Fighter 2 can be done online now, so that they’d find the game otherwise okay but none of THEIR instances of wanting to play that kind of game coincide with it… ex if they do all their multiplayer fighting online with friends, Brawl would be useless to them IF it didn’t have online.
I, for example, have no interest in Halo. Halo to me serves the purpose that I’d much rather have Doom or Unreal Tournament fill given the opportunity - and is the game we play if either of the former two are unavailable to us but otherwise gets no interest from me. It lacks things from those games I like, so I go elsewhere even if it doesn’t otherwise have faults.
Ismail Saeed said,
04.21.08 at 6:37 pm
To add: Whatever the picture may look like, he doesn’t seem that enthralled with the wheel if you actually hear from him.