A Dubious Marketing Technique

I don’t know if this phenomenon applies to other countries, but retail pricing of games is a strange thing in the UK. Or, at least, it has been for the last couple of years. Amid a tough economy Nintendo pushed Donkey Kong Country Returns upon us, and it hit the markets at £45 in November of last year. I found, over a good few months, that this was the case in every game shop I visited: I decided to ask an employee why. Apparently it was much more popular than expected, and few copies were distributed. Flash forward to a year later and new copies are still extremely rare in public, with pre-owned boxes marked around £40. Online sellers seem to be maintaining a high price, too, with a £35 tag on Amazon.

The reason this whole situation re-kindled in my imagination (other than the fact that I was able to borrow DKCR from a friend a couple of weeks ago) is that Nintendo recently registered a loss in excess of £500m. I’m not going to draw a line from the Kong title to Nintendo’s apparent failure (not with the piece of fail that is the one-trick-3DS in the picture), but there is something deeply unsettling about this: such an obviously well-polished title being pushed so gently into the market. Competing games at the time (with similarly high praise from critics) were experiencing cuts at a shocking rate: Assassin’s Creed 2 and then, about a year later, Bioshock 2, dropped £10 from their respective tags within a fortnight. They can now each be bought new for less than £10. I think the thing to take away from this is that Nintendo has maintained a very… interesting business model, at least when viewed against their competitors’ approaches. They produce quality games, and then try to not sell them.

That quality can be assured, though. At least in the case of DKCR. The term ‘solid platformer’ isn’t solid enough to convey this thing’s solidity. It’s dense, even: the kind of re-play value that the older Country games could only dream of. It’s like it was finished, and then Retro decided to finish it again. And perhaps a third time. But that would be it. I do need to level one complaint, though, and considering the cavalcade of issues that can crop up when a platformer is just off, think of the lack of further grievances as proof of a robust product. That said this is a very fundamental issue. I’m not talking about how there are no longer those certain bonus stages where you collect swathes of bananas as a rhino, ostrich or swordfish (though I’m sure this is a disappointing fact for some.) The control scheme leaves a purposeful vacuum. There is no support for the classic pad; no way to re-map controls; and flat-out shoe-horned waggle-tech.

Okay, so that sounds bad. I can’t imagine that Retro made this decision by themselves, because it’s pretty stupid. But which is the dumber thing to perceive: when one of the best titles on a machine makes absolutely no use of that machine’s specific abilities, or if said title ignores a superior control-scheme to facilitate said abilities? In my head it’s a no-brainer. I’m biased by the fact that I had the latter option include the words ‘ignores’ and ‘superior’ in close proximity, though. What I don’t understand is how Nintendo thought this design choice was beneficial: how could limiting player control options possibly result in more sold units? Or is it about obfuscating the fact that this, some of the best gaming the Wii has to offer, could be done better on the competitors’ machines? Like I said before, though: this game is strong. I let a lot of these outward flaws push me away from getting it, but some very poor marketing decisions shouldn’t keep us from games that are awesome.

With particular regards to Starcraft 2.

So MLG happened and, by the end, I was happy with the result: an un-seeded player beat the odds and smashed the conventional ‘Koreans vs. Everyone Else’ story. Between this event’s popularity, Blizzard’s own well-attended convention and the numerous other successful organisations around competitive gaming, it's a bit much to take stock of. I end up with the paradoxical feeling that the blockades to further growth are either wildly exaggerated or just extremely difficult for insiders to actually perceive. But I’ve skipped ahead a little.

This scene didn’t exist as a living thing to me for years. To contextualise, I was simultaneously consuming its richness piecemeal. It was a place where I could see the best strategy, tactics and mechanics, and take stock of what made certain games sharp enough to sustain a strong player base. In short, I was interested in the gameplay. Everything that surrounded it—the thrum of small-time sponsors, the unique logos, the numerous gathering places—just patiently sat there, waiting for me to pick up on their legitimacy.

But something happened (or rather, didn’t happen) as my interest grew, and I browsed Replayers years ago. It also didn’t happen when I stopped to admire the Counter-Strike talent at London Expo. Then, a year later, it continued to not happen while I perused Team Liquid’s live streams and investigated YouTube commentaries. What I’m talking about is the voice of dissent: the people who just want to criticise things because others are enjoying them and, apparently, they’re not supposed to. Each community that forms around the games we find truly strong doesn’t care about this unless you are talking to them specifically about growth. And rightfully so: the internet affords the opportunity, not just to pay no attention to such people, but to be in a place that is definitively away from them. The problem is that this is almost wilful obscurity.

I feel like just the act of ignoring vapid sentiments, or understanding that there is a potential for them in a given environment, constitutes a decision that affects how we go about sharing the scene with others. Our discourse will always pre-suppose a certain level of interest and knowledge. This makes for deliciously organic communities: we can spark up a theory-craft conversation in just about any live-stream chat. We can enter any given channel dedicated to our games of choice and know that the people there share our fascination. As soon as we feel like broaching the topic to a newcomer, though, our lexicon suddenly sinks to comedic levels of uselessness and verbosity. Words like ‘Baneling’ become meaningless in the time between choosing what to say and identifying who you’re speaking to. Moments later something akin to ‘acid landmine bug’ can (and will!) fall from your mouth. There’s a strange kind of barrier there.

Competitive gaming has grown a dramatic amount in the past year. That is, if you consider a factor like ‘Sheer Numbers’ anything to go by. Commentary figures have pointed to the drawing power that simple, human stories will need to play in the future, with regards to further growth. In a sense, though, I feel like these stories will exist in perpetuity, so long as there are people that care about the game. Appreciation of complex mechanics—even simple mechanics—enhances understanding (and enjoyment) of every game and/or sport, but it has to be voluntary. For now, think of the simple joy many kids get from watching a sport like Football, with barely (if) any grasp of strategy or tactics. Remember that old trope? The one where a bunch of guys, hanging out in front of a TV, start bitching about a player’s decision, or a coach/manager’s choice? That cliché exists for a reason: some fans (or viewers) do not care about high level analysis, or the weighing of tactical risks. They’re not trying to see it through the eyes of professionals, or for every intricacy available. People, quite simply, want the game to entertain them: acid landmine bugs are entertaining.

De-Netting and Generational Issues with Blue Hedgehogs

Far be it for me to impose my mortal wants on the technology-spirits. Their swirling whim decided a couple of weeks ago that I should be severed from the inter-realms. And, well, losing the internet sucks. Okay, so I guess it's hard to get more concise than that last statement, so I'll just head in the opposite direction and elaborate. I don't know the exact point at which TV became obsolete. There wasn’t a polite pop-up message when Internet 2.0 came out, advising that users may find TV slightly underwhelming within X amount of days. Still, it wouldn’t hurt thinking about some form of courteous reminder, as nothing draws a more jagged line under a useful service than its sudden removal. For one thing, news channels are woefully under-equipped to cater for viewers who would like to hear news. Unintuitive, I know, but there's enough stupidity on display to fashion a kind of rudimentary stress-test for your sanity. The repetition of ‘The Top Story', in particular, gets old very fast, especially when you know other things are happening. I noticed this before losing the internet, but lack of immediate alternatives makes the situation roughly fifty times more painful.

In the spirit of fairness—and since plain truths are apparently on the agenda—the internet could be considered humanity’s most robust model yet for an actual ‘Time Vampire’. But I want to contest this as a simple, negative truth on a couple of grounds, mostly the mind-bending dichotomy of the internet. It’s the same tools that enable us to whittle away an hour on F7U12 that give us the ability to gather swaths of information and communicate with peers. The theories of the best texts of history are bundled up with the most juvenile humour imaginable in the internet; pornography on one page, feminist discourse on another. It’s a kind of a big place.

For every task I was freer to follow without the assistance of a series of tubes, I was prevented from pursuing another. It becomes commonplace to, say, want to write about or look into something, only to come across a research block which hadn’t previously existed. That being said—and I understand this rant has reached evolutionary-levels of obviousness by this point—it is fucking sweet to perceive that difference in technology. After finite media and the narrow lane of TV's out-put, well, it's like turning on a fountain of Everything.

In any case, rant-concluded. Video games. This video review feels like some kind of mirage. You'll know what I mean when you see. Did you see? Good, now I can explain myself. Sonic games have not been good in a long time. I don't think there's a more concise way to put it. Simple truths are fun. The ten-year-old Sonic aficionado in me is trying desperately to make me check myself: perhaps there's some way I could couch the slimy spin-offs and disappointing lack of refinement more favourably? Sadly no. I draw the line at Hedgehogs on Motorcycles. I don't mean to so sound premature as something to the effect of 'This changes everything!' But seriously, this changes everything. Or at the very least cashes in on it in a pleasing way. Coming up: MOBAs. Why people should probably try them or, y'know. Something.