The Internet Ruined Gaming

Yup, I've said it, I'd say it again if I had to, and I firmly believe it. The internet has taken our glorious pasttime and turned it into a quagmire of disgruntled fanboys and vulgar competition (like my last topic). See if you can follow me...

What was the first big fanboy debate that you can think of? The first time consoles took on other consoles? For me, it was Super Nintendo vs. Sega Genesis. I have to believe that for a lot of people, this was the first one, and the big one. It seemed that everyone had to pick a side. The boys on my block all had one of the systems, but they never had the other. My best friend, Steve, who lived across the street had a SNES, as did Mike who lived around the corner. David and myself, we had a Genesis.

Now, it wasn't because I didn't like the SNES that I bought a Genesis. It was because, frankly, I was about 12 years old and had to rely on Christmas and my birthday for any video gaming to come into the house. And seeing as how my birthday is almost a month to the day after Xmas, I had a LOT of time during the year for waiting. It would have been extremely greedy of me to ask my parents to buy not only one gaming console and games for it, but to follow up the next year with ANOTHER game system. I mean, they were already worried enough that video games were keeping me from playing outside enough. They weren't going to double those odds.

So it wasn't out of spite that I didn't own an SNES. It was out of circumstance. I had no problems going over to Steve's house almost everyday after school and playing SNES games. But goddamn, did I love my Genesis. I mean, I was adamant (and still am) that while I would play the EA Sports games on Steve's SNES, the Genesis versions I owned were far superior. I grew to love the feeling of speed with Sonic, the irreverent joy of Earthworm Jim, the odd shooting fun of Vectorman, and the great feeling of Aladdin on the Genesis being the superior version. I wasn't an anti-Nintendo fan. Far from it. I loved my NES and there were plenty of SNES games I liked (Turtles in Time, Super Mario World), but the main reason I wasn't as big on the SNES was that a lot of the time, I would be watching Steve play RPGs like Breath of Fire and Chrono Trigger.

Anyway, outside of my own world, Sega and Nintendo were going at it, but it seemed at the time to be less cutthroat. I wondered why recently, because I'm sure that if Nintendo could have done to Sega what Sony did with the PS2, they probably would have done it, and vice versa for Sega. And I came to this conclusion: it was because you had to talk to people to argue with them.

Think about talking about politics/religion/video games/etc. To someone in real life. You probably will be more deliberate in what you say, think before you speak, try to monitor your language, and be more persuasive because there is such a great feeling from getting someone to agree with or at least understand your point of view. Humans are social creatures, and I know I get a much more palpable feel of excitement when I can discuss something I find of interest with REAL PEOPLE. Best example is when I go to MAGFest in Virginia. Being able to talk to people who are seriously interested in video games and have strong opinions about certain topics is such a great feeling. It's like you're suddenly transported out of the regular world and into a world of understanding. Even something simple as talking football with someone is a great feeling, because you get so many different points of view, reinforce some of your own thoughts, and walk away (hopefully) knowing more and having more to think about.

All of this has changed thanks to the internet. When I post on a message board to people I've never seen and never will, I could care less about monitoring my vulgarity (as seen in my last topic) or persuading someone. It becomes (much like this blog) a sermon of sorts, and less of a negotiation or compromise between two points of view. Also, unlike in the past where you were essentially discussing gaming with your own age group, the variance in ages for discussion have increased immensely due to the internet. Sure, a 20 year old brother can talk about gaming with his 15 year old brother, but for the most part, when you talk about games with your friends, and that variance in ages doesn't really differ all that greatly. On internet message boards, you can run the gamut from 30 year old gamers to 12 year old gamers, and when that happens, the level of discussion changes greatly. I mean, in real life, when you talk your grandparents (if you have any soul whatsoever), you give them the time of day, try to show them some proper respect, and give them a sense of importance in what they are saying. If you did not know your grandparents and they tried to tell you something on a message board, would you even give a damn?

There are always exceptions to the rule. Certain message boards I go to have a great amount of extremely nice and courteous people, who enjoy their passions and want to make everyone feel welcome, as long as they aren't giant assholes. There are even certain message boards that, while mainly populated with insensitive morons who can't avoid flame posts, have a percentage of people who post intelligent, well reasoned lines of thought. These are the people that I enjoy reading, because it's like finding a great pair of pants at Goodwill. Something special about that...

But what I really yearn for is a return to the days of gaming before the internet. When games didn't have to constantly be released. When discussions were relegated to real life debates instead of message board flaming. When video game magazines were thick as Vanity Fair upon the release of a new game console. When the game itself spoke volumes instead of the spectacle of marketing shows.

It certainly doesn't give me hope that the one console company I chose to love has gone the way of the dodo when it comes to creating consoles. It's like how my favorite new show of the season, "Just Legal", was recently cancelled....Only times 100. It's like being flicked by a little kid to your left, and when you go to tell him to stop, some guy comes and punches you in the stomach on your right. It's like something you started to enjoy was ended, and you can't really do much about it because the market decides what survives. The market has brought so much growth and prosperity, but it can, at times, also damage the soul and what the soul desires...

So while I can hope for a return to the past, the truth is the future is all that lies ahead, and I weep for the future.

The Pereira Fiasco (By Robert Ludlum)

I must admit two things to put the following rant into context:

1. I hate G4, but there are a few people on the network that I watch and appreciate, and one of those people is Kevin Pereira. I'm about to lay into him moderately, and people are going to say I just wrote this so that I didn't sound biased or some bullshit like that . Which is why I wrote #2, because I can admit I'm biased. In fact, I'm damn close to writing a topic about that very fact, but I should focus on this, so remind me of that later.

2a. Given today's current gaming consoles, I'm an Xbox fanboy. Well, kind of. It's more of a situation where I dislike the Nintendo controller and I hate Sony with a fiery, white hot passion. Why I hate Sony is going to go into that bias topic, so don't bother. I'm an Xbox fanboy more out of the fact that there are some really good Xbox games and the system doesn't have any quirks that piss me off. Games like KOTOR, Deathrow, and various multi-platforms that are better than the other versions make me like the Xbox best out of the current generation. And I need to add some qualifiers that have pissed me off with certain outlets.

I. I don't have to own a PS2 because I'm not an RPG whore like half of the goddamned market seems to have become since FFVII. Don't get me wrong, I love FFVII. I consider it one of the best games ever. But what the fuck people? RPGs were never the driving force of video gaming until sometime in 2000, when people decided that storyline was so goddamn important that it trumps everything. RPGs are probably the start of my hating certain aspects of video gaming. When every damned game has to have 3 hours of backstory involved, no matter WHAT type of game it is, something is wrong with gaming, and I blame the success of FFVII.

II. I don't own the GameCube, but it is NOT because of the "kiddy" image of Nintendo. I'm seriously fucking sick and tired of people bitching and moaning about games with fun gameplay being called "kiddy." Kameo, Zelda:WW, and various other games, especially in Nintendo's camp, are all being taken down a peg because they are easily accessible to younger generations. Well fuck you, you old, unimaginative, greedy fucks who start these cries. I'm mostly thinking about EGM. Everyone watching the videos seems to think that Kameo has a shit ton of fun gameplay and great graphics to boot. But what does EGM focus on towards the end of their preview/issue? "Oh, I don't want to play as a fairy." Oh really? But you'll fucking drop down to your knees and suck off the little "Prince of the Universe" while he pushes a fucking ball into things. Why don't you shut the fuck up and let gameplay fun, not being a fairy or not, drive your reporting?

2b. That being said (the Xbox fan part, not the paragraphs of rants), I'm not entirely thrilled about the Xbox 360. No, I'm not one of those bastards who keeps bitching and moaning about there not being one SKU or all versions having a hard drive. I could really give a shit less. It's more about the fact that it seems like the little cuts just keep adding up. Perfect Dark Zero alone has given me ups and downs like a roller coaster, and I fucking hate roller coasters. The graphics are bad, the graphics are good, the cut scenes are off, the gameplay vids look amazing, the voice acting is acceptable, the voice acting is crap, the voice acting is pretty damn cool.

LET ME OFF RARE. I WANNA GET OFF. This honestly could be the second big game I've wanted where the gameplay graphics and presentation are miles better than the cut scene graphics and presentation (the other being Halo 2). And that's the ironic paper cut of them all. The games that I love so much continue to have problems with presentation while RPGs that I hate so much, which tend to use FMV to advertise and sell games, don't have these issues.

But being a fan of the Xbox does not necessarily make me a die hard fan of the 360. It's like how everyone assumes that because I have a conservative political outlook that I'm gonna be some sort of die-hard Bush fan. Fuck that, I'm pissed off at Bush for a lot of things. But it's not like I'm going to start voting Democrat or anything...hell, I probably won't even vote Libertarian. Problems with something doesn't mean you run directly to the opposite spectrum. I mean, it's not like if one Japanese person had made fun of me in Japan that I would turn from a interested gaijin into some sort of white supremacist who wants to overthrow Japan.

Point Starting....NOW

Which brings me to my focus of this thread: Kevin P.'s trashing of Microsoft at X05.

Seen here: http://media.putfile.com/G4_AOTS36

Followed Up Here: http://media.putfile.com/G4_ATOSmonday

Now, my problem with most people attacking Kevin is that they simply go for personal attacks, which is not only a very weak way to take someone's point down but it's entirely too easy to slam a person who puts himself out in front of a national audience. My problem with Kevin's rant is that I thought I had known Kevin, and then it turns out what I knew was only half the story. Kevin appeared to me to be a pretty equal opportunity mocker, but no real tendencies one way or the other when it comes to consoles. What I saw was more akin to a Sony fanboy's message board rants (not much better than what I'm doing here, but each good rant deserves a retort).

First up, Kevin's starting remarks:

A lot of what Kevin retorts the Xbox 360 marketing guys with is EXACTLY what people said about the PS2 when it came out compared to the Dreamcast. Case in point, Kevin retorting that Sony holding off for another year gives them a chance to put some "real next gen" technology into the PS3. Ah, yes, the classic "A year later will make it better" argument. The fallacy with this argument being that companies should never release a gaming system a year before it's competitors because if it held off for a year, the system could be more powerful. The PS2 was released a year after the Dreamcast, and look what happened there! So it obviously follows that a year later equals a year greater. EXCEPT that the PS2 was released a year BEFORE the GameCube and the Xbox, and with that lead, gained a firm grip on the ENTIRE generation. Oh, and ya know what? Blu-Ray technology is next gen, but hardly matters to gaming. You can bullshit me all you want about more storage, but that only matters to RPGs in my book. Dreamcast GD-ROMs had 1/4 less storage than DVDs, yet they had no trouble making games that looked better than the PS2 games. In fact, Soul Calibur still looks better than any Tekken game put out for the PS2.

Another big problem with this argument is the fact that by giving developers a year to fuck around with the technology, you will have second generation games coming out at the same time as the other guy's first generation games. Anyone with an unbiased eye would see that Dreamcast games looked BETTER at the PS2 launch than PS2 games did. NFL2K1 on the Dreamcast was a more visually impressive game than Madden 2001 on the PS2. Hands down. Hands fucking down.

He then goes on to claim that Crackdown is the most visually impressive Xbox 360 game simply so that he can use the old "Killzone PS3" argument: that Crackdown isn't what the game will really be, but what they "envision" it to be when it launches. First off, he's right. Crackdown probably wasn't real time. But he's flat out wrong when he calls it the most impressive 360 game visually. Flat out bullshit. Kameo, PGR3, and Gears of War all look better. It's the rope-a-dope about trying to find justification to make a point, and he made up the justification.

Finally, he rips on PDZ, saying that if you think that PDZ has next gen graphics, you should crawl back to the natural history museum you came from, or something along those lines. First off, I agree. PDZ's cutscenes look like shit from time to time, but the gameplay graphics look awesome to me. But when compared from the graphical jump of N64 to Dreamcast, or SNES/Genesis to Playstation/Saturn...no, the graphical leap really isn't as great. But ya know what? That's probably less about the system itself, and more about two things: the developers and the approach of near reality gaming. Developers are blatantly not taking advantage of the graphical abilities of the 360. I can tell, because there are moments in SINGLE GAMES that range from "Fuck Me!" to "Fuck That!" But also, graphical leaps are going to be diminished as graphics become more real to life. There will be games that prove me wrong on this, but in the video game world, where costs are constantly rising to create games that look more real to life, there will be a cut off where it becomes uneconomical to keep pushing the graphics.

Think about it. Think about the jump from the N64 to the Dreamcast. Going from Mario 64 to Soul Calibur. Now imagine the jump from Dreamcast to the Xbox. The jump is nowhere near as defined or large. Gaming nowadays seems to me have become more about pushing the scope of the game rather than just the graphical abilities. The biggest games of the last generation? GTA. Graphical powerhouse? I think not. But the scope of having an entire city to interact with made it's gameplay unique and powerful. Even the Halo series, runners up to GTA, were all about really large levels. The gameplay wasn't necessarily too interested in the scope. Halo is about fighting alien enemies, but the gameplay happens in typically small areas and in short spurts that repeat over and over. Same with GTA. In fact, from San Andreas, the worst parts of that game are when you have to drive all the way back to save your game after completing a long ass mission. The shorter missions where you can blow shit up and then finish are the strongest ones.

So when Kevin complains about how Xbox 360 is going so far, I have to ask: How excited does it get you about the PS3? Knowing that people are having this much trouble getting "next gen graphics" out of the supposedly easy to develop for 360, what does it lead you to believe about the supposedly more challenging to develop for PS3? And, what I really want to see, will Kevin be as hard on the PS3 guys come CES as he was on the MS guys at X05? I still like Kevin as a host, I think he is still one of the funnier people on G4. But now I know a different side...