Hey there, Dear Reader. You know what I love? Favorite things. I have so many favorite things, it’s almost exhausting keeping up with them all. But the benefit of it is that every now and then, I can regurgitate these carefully catalogued, constantly updating gems onto you! Whee! Today, the prognosis is grim: favorite…VIDEO GAMES.
Yes, some of you scoff. Some of you openly mock this brave new artistic medium. Those same people then proceed to a local movie theater and pay $15 to watch ten minutes of advertisements before two hours of mind-numbing disappointment. A mediocre video game will usually provide 20 hours of solid enjoyment, and at full retail price (which is more expensive than most games), you’re paying $6 for every two hours of actual fun…and there are no messages from the sponsors. Hypothetically speaking, a very good video game—especially one with a multiplayer focus—can easily push out 100 hours of genuine enjoyment, in which case the rate drops to less than $2.
In this strange land that some of you look down on, all of the following are generally true:
1. Sequels are better than originals. Certainly not an infallible rule (cough Devil May Cry 2 cough), but the average re-up in the gaming world is a significantly improved product. The technology improves, the game play tightens, the feedback gets absorbed. For some reason, Hollywood is obsessed with focus groups but utterly calloused towards the guy at the water cooler who could tell you what was wrong with your product in two seconds. The gaming industry actually listens, and holds itself accountable.
2. Reviews are correct. Even though gaming journalism gets in bed with the corporate machine like nobody’s business, the review structure has remained oddly intact. Games that get full-page ad space on IGN.com will still get ripped to shreds when the press copy hits their desk. More to the point, game designers and publishers really care about these ratings; some marketing firm working for the new “Tomb Raider” got caught deliberately trying to alter its score on Metacritic.com. There is some documented proof that your average ranking correlates to your sales, because everyone cares and everyone is watching.
And it’s not like game reviews use the vague crap that movie journalists resort to, everything is hard evidence: there’s too many glitches, the weapons aren’t balanced, the controls are uncomfortable. The subjectivity margin is way, way lower than what you’re used to on Ebert and Roeper. I don’t blame movie critics for their weatherman-like inability to predict your satisfaction, it’s just how the cookie crumbles, but there’s no denying that ratings are better suited to this world.
3. Innovation actually takes place. If you watch a movie from a decade ago, you’re dealing with stuff pretty similar to what you’ve got now. The cell phones are ridiculous-looking and a few haircuts have gone out of style, but a flick shot on 35mm in ’95 is still on par with (if not ahead of) everybody today.
A video game from 1995 is like a different planet. The acceleration of new ideas in this field is so rapid that it’s almost unhealthy. It took the cinema decades to start timidly playing with sound, but in that same space of time, our plumber friend Mario went from 256 colors in two-dimensions to high def, realtime generating 3-D environments, particle effects, motion control, facial and vocal recognition, and online play with people all over the world. Hollywood is patting itself on the back for beginning to hesitantly embrace streaming delivery methods, but Valve’s Steam, Penny Arcade’s Greenhouse, and Xbox Live have been doing it full-speed since before the technology was even good enough. They are desperate to innovate, movies seem desperate not to.
4. Problems get fixed. Yes, it’s true, Dear Reader, that a video game is not a static product in the way that a movie is. Not anymore. If a level is too difficult, or a character plays funny, it’s almost become a joke to shrug it off and say, “They’ll get it in the patch.” And they will. Video games embrace and use field testing, and not that BS kind that Hollywood does where a member of each ethnic group sits in a dark room with a scorecard. Actual field testing. The development cycle has fully embraced the fact that it has a phase after “release.” You don’t see this kind of dynamic, customer-oriented growth in motion pictures.
Whoops! I got off on a tangent there and didn’t actually give you my favorites. Next time, Dear Reader. Next time.
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