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Video Games/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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* I don't like the fact that the majority of [[First-Person Shooter|FPS]] players in online multiplayer [[Poor Communication Kills|don't use their headsets]]. This makes it pretty awkward for when you try to use teamwork, either in games where [[Call of Duty|it's largely irrelevant]] or even ones where [[Battlefield 3|it is actively encouraged]]. What the hell!? Are people just too lazy to fix or replace their mics, or are they so anti-social that they don't even want to interact with any other players? Don't you just hate it when the users of a product prevent you from using it as intended?
** When you speak with a headset and are told "shut up" because they find your voice is annoying, that generally tends to kill any desire to want to speak.
*** In Modern Warfare 2 I made an attempt to communicate with my team, and I was called a 'fat kid' for my effort. I'm not a kid by any stretch of the imagination, and I am relatively in-shape. That kinda killed my desire to communicate with the Xbox Live people.
** Anyone trying to conceal their age or gender would be revealed instantly if their voice was heard. And if you're a woman playing on Xbox Live, you DO want to conceal your gender.
** A lot of people find headsets incredibly uncomfortable, to the point of being a constant distraction.
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*** That's technically inaccurate too, since some early videogames (like ''Pong'' TV units) weren't true computers.
**** ''Pong'' (even the original) was certainly a computer; it just wasn't a general-purpose one. And it may not have been a digital one. But a non-programmable analog computer is still a computer.
** Why? Look above. Its to differentiate them from card games and board games. Considering that these games required the use of some form of video display, the name was pretty apt.
*** On top of that, some board games don't even have a board, the most notable ones being Twister, Yahtzee, Apples to Apples, and Puerto Rico. However, their gameplay and their rules follow normal board game conventions (minus the pieces, moving, and board) and are sold with other board games.
** Because English's status as a living language without any official or effective authority (outside of individual organizations) allows for the compounding of words based on individual preference, apparently prevalent enough to combine 'videogame' and (despite what you think) 'boardgame'. 'Playinggame', however, isn't aesthetically pleasing due in part to the clashing letters. Why do you say 'tomorrow' instead of 'to the morrow'? Why do you say "whatever" instead of "what ever"? English is not a language that lends itself to Grammarnazification.
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*** You're correct, of course, but there ARE achievement whores out there, so games with lots of easy achievements have a built-in market. There are some achievements that do have a real point, like the ones in Bioshock for completing the game without using save points; they give you ideas for how to challenge yourself and some kind of tangible proof when you've succeeded. The latter purpose could be better served by unlockables, but not every game studio has the time to come up with them ... and there really isn't much difference between a lame unlockable and an achievement.
** [[Executive Meddling]] - Microsoft ''requires'' achievements.
** Some achievements are done very well. For example, ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' offers one for each of the four endings, giving extra impetus for multiple playthroughs. ''[[Borderlands]]'' has the [[Bragging Rights Reward]] Achievement "Vincible," awarded for defeating a nigh-impossible [[Bonus Boss]]. ''[[
*** Achievements fulfill the psychology of reward. Not knowing when an achievement pops up rewards players for seemingly random action. Named achievements mark progress and encourage completion. This fits in with rewarding a child for straight A reports or teaching a rat to continue pressing a lever for food rather than reward for each press. This drives competition and encourages continued gameplay.
*** Not to mention that away before the invention of achievements and trophies came into the picture there were a lot of people trying to gain [[One Hundred Percent Completion]] on some of their games. It doesn't force you or even require you to do it unlike secret or alternate endings, it's just a [[Bragging Rights Reward]].
*** My theory about achievements is that they're a gamification of statistics collecting. That's why there's often one very early on and periodically during the main quest - they use these to track where players stopped playing and how much they've completed. If there's a section where a significant portion of the playerbase stopped playing, they can use that information to tweak gameplay either in a patch or in future games. Instead of hiding this information from you, they provide it upfront as a bragging rights reward. As well, a certain type of player is inspired by these to get more out of a game than he would have if achievements didn't set goals for him to work toward.
* I just got through playing the C64 [[Fahrenheit 451]]. Not only was it horribly frustrating, with [[Luck-Based Mission]] and [[Guess the Verb]] ''everywhere'', but the ending...You're playing as Montag, running through New York in order to break into the 42nd Street Library and find Clarisse (who faked her death apparently). The Firemen put the library's books to the torch, but put the contents on microcassettes. Clarisse has stolen the cassettes and has them on her person. OK, you climb up to the roof and are given two ways down. One leads to an escape route out of the city, one leads to a transmitter where you can upload the contents of the cassettes to the Underground. You're ''supposed'' to choose the transmitter room, where you're barricaded in, uploading documents with a shit-ton of Firemen and Hounds trying to break down the door. Once the documents are uploaded, the Firemen break through, and turn Montag and Clarisse into [[Doomed Moral Victor|Doomed Moral Victors]] and martyrs for the cause of book-lovers everywhere. Here's the problem - why not escape the city with the loot, hook up with another cell, and then have the Underground score a transmitter?
** That sounds like it might be [[Adaptation Decay]] if the game ended on a high note.
*** The ending of the game ''was'' [[Adaptation Decay]]. The book ended with Montag [[Riding Into the Sunset]] as the city burned to the ground behind him.
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** I don't know, seems too specific a gripe. Unless you're talking about the cliche of how a character can be suddenly seen as a monster by their closest friends for ''one'' misunderstanding. That plot device certainly does get old, but I doubt there's much that can be done about it.
* Developers (Especially newer developers) always thinking in grandiose concepts that more experienced developers have done, and better than "New Development Sudio X's First Game Where You Fight Big Armies". Even if you're working with a HD 3D game that shouldn't mean you over-extend your budget and end up crashing the studio! Why is it always big battles when a small adventure game can get you started with the tech for a fraction of the cost and therefore make easier returns? I understand some studios know this lesson ([[Little Big Planet]]'s Media Molecule for instance), but it should be common sense. Then again I'm not a developer. Thoughts?
** They are developers, but they are neither businesspeople nor economists. These guys assemble a studio because they have an artistic vision in mind. The problem here is that they have so much ambition, they can't wait to make their dream project. Said dream project is usually grand and will thus cost a lot of money, but they will underestimate development costs and time needed. This oversight results in an unfinished but promising game and a lot of broken dreams.
* Why<ref>Forgive me if this has already been mentioned -- this page is too huge to read every word.</ref> would game developers ''want'' their games to be played longer, to pad out their games, and the like? Wouldn't it be more lucrative for a customer to pay $60 for a 4-hour game with no replay value whatsoever, so they immediately go out and buy '''another''' $60 game, repeat ad nauseum? You'd think RPGs would be less profitable than FPSs, but these days you have all sorts of added stuff to them (Nazi Zombies from one of the Call of Duty games). Wouldn't developers rather remove all that and make players buy the next game?
** That's assuming they're willing to shell out $60 for a four hour game. Plus, like other forms of niche culture, they have to keep the players playing games habitually. If they play a four hour RPG, beat it, and have to wait a week or two for their next paycheck to get another $60 game, their console's already become a random knicknack below the TV.
** Because everyone will throw [[It's Short, So It Sucks]] on it.
** Real reason: GameStop. Buying a (console at least) video game anymore is more or less an extended rental. DLC and such can't be resold, since it's locked to a Steam or EA account, and "free" DLC or pre-order bonuses ensure that gamers buy spiffy new shrink-wrapped games instead of crummy old used ones (which, coincidentally, don't provide new royalty checks for the distributor).
** You can't even sell a ''twenty-hour'' JRPG for $60. A lot of [[JRP Gs]] have replay value, too, thanks to [[Alternate Ending|alternate endings]] and [[New Game+]] -- I feel cheated if I'm "done with" a $60 game after less than seventy hours total.
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** Actually it was justified in ''[[Space Channel 5]]'' - I mean, look at stage 3. ''that'' looks more like the Pokémon seizure event.
* What bugs me is the excessive use of the word 'ripoff'. As in, 'Game B is just a ripoff of Game A.' Years ago someone said to me, 'Silent Hill is just a ripoff of Resident Evil.' The only thing I can think of that they have in common is that they're both 3rd person survival horror games. So...we can only have one series per genre? Even more improbably, someone once called Beyond Good and Evil a ripoff of Zelda. Despite both games having completely different concepts, gameplay, plot, characters, and setting. Again, the only thing they have in common is that they're both 3rd person adventure games. Why is it when one game overlaps another even in the tiniest way, people call ripoff? Yeah, some games do rip off others, but lets not go off the deep end. If every game were required to be completely original with no traces of similarity to other games at all, there'd be like, 25 games out there.
** "Ripoff" is basically the number one sign that [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch|they haven't actually played it]]. The term has [[You Keep Using That Word|basically been flanderized]] to mean :anything with any similarities". And yes, it seems that we're only allowed one-entry per genre. Try making an adventure game about dungeon-crawling where you play as only one character. Now count how many people (and reviews) trash them as being a Zelda ripoff or a Zelda-clone at best. [[Dark Cloud|It's]] [[Alundra|happened]] [[World of Mana|quite]] [[Illusion of Gaia|often]]. And likewise, look at games like [[Terraria]] - if you have a [[Wide Open Sandbox]] that encourages building, it's instantly trashed and pegged as a ripoff of ''[[Minecraft]]''. How come Minecraft is the only [[Wide Open Sandbox]] game allowed out there? How come Zelda's the only action-adventure game allowed to exist? And how come we haven't cracked down on other genres of games? (I certainly don't see anyone insisting that ''[[Mario]]'' is the only platformer allowed, or that ''[[Street Fighter]]'' is the only fighter allowed to exist.) because [[Viewers are Morons|people are stupid]], that's why. Also, related, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTewf9XZtOA Jimquisition's rant on this phenomena], like how people throw "Ripoff" and "Plagirism" around so liberally.
** Because [[Hipster|certain people]] think it makes them sound smart and knowledgeable to throw around accusations of plagiarism on the flimsiest grounds. Oh, and I actually have heard people refer to fighting games as "''[[Street Fighter]]'' ripoffs." (Apparently they'd never heard of ''[[Urban Champion]]'', and it's probably an even older concept than that.)
* A common complaint I hear about any game (especially one in a franchise) is this: It's a good game, just not a good (insert series) game. Metroid, Castlevania, Zelda, and many other games have been subject to this. But it doesn't really tell people anything. I know there are distinct concepts that are usually associated with a certain series i.e. Metroid is usually associated with exploration. But if a franchise deviates from it, does it detract from the game?
** I think the argument here is that people come to a franchise game with certain expectations, including (but not limited to) gameplay mechanics, storytelling, art style, etc. If a game deviates from these expectations, some people will have a bad reaction because it's not what they were looking for - what if you bought the new Metroid game, expecting large monsters, solitary exploration, environmental puzzles, etc., and it turned out to be a Metroid-themed JRPG? You'd probably evaluate the game based on your unfulfilled expectations, rather than based on its merits as a JRPG. Even if it was a great JRPG, a lot of people would be unhappy with it. If a franchise game is different than its predecessors, or even if it's just not quite as good as them, the review becomes more about failed expectations than about the game's objective merits.
** There's also the issue of thinking that they're just taking advantage of the name to increase sells, if the new game is so different from theprevious ones, you think it would had been better that it came out as an origianl game instead of a market sequel. That's an issue with the upcoming game DMC and the Devil May Cry series, which is so different that they opted for calling it an alternate universe instead of a prequel when the uproar assaulted.
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** Is this about boycotting a specific game/company, or just in general? Also, gamers are nowhere near organized/unified enough to actually make an effective boycott most of the time.
*** I don't know whether or not the scope of the boycott is relevant, but you'd think more of them would understand that boycotting is more "showing opposition by refusing to buy or use the targeted group's products or doing anything else related to the group" and less "using their products but refusing to pay for them".
**** I saw a few tweets about this: "Do you think the Montgomery Bus Boycott would have worked if they instead used it as an excuse to hop on the buses without paying, saying 'we weren't going to use it anyways so you shouldn't bother about lost revenue at all' to justify this?"
* Am I the only one disturbed by the over-developed sense of entitlement most gamers have, and instead sees Nintendo's shift to the "casual" demographic as a "Well fuck you ''too''"? Developers devote their entire lives to making games and spend years working on games, yet all they get is [[Nothing but Hates]], yet the gamers are ''surprised'' that they shift to a demograph that pays, yet actually ''appreciates'' the hard work they put in? Come on, game developers do ''not'' deserve those kinds of customers...''nobody'' does.
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