It is rare that the average person is offered a chance to be guided through the architecture of a cutting-edge processor. This sort of information is held close to the chest prior to a processor’s release, and there are few willing to explain how a new processor is created. Even those who write about new hardware are usually left in the dark. Sure, we know about cache sized and die shrinks and other broad concepts, but when it comes to the guts of a processor, most of us haven’t got a clue.

That said, the lack of general, public knowledge about processor architecture is not surprising. After all, the engineers working on those projects spend many years in higher education programs constructed to give them the skills required to land a job in that business, and those same engineers require many more years of experience before they can hope to have a chance to design something new. It isn’t surprising that the few books which console and/or computer hardware are usually written with all the inspiration of a wet sock. Learning to write well takes many years, years that those creating the guts of new hardware can rarely spare.

This is why The Race For A New Game Machine, co-written by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, is a rare treat. It is written well. From the very beginning, the co-authors create an interesting and not entirely linear narrative about how the PowerPC processor which is at the heart of both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 game consoles came to be created. Although co-written by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, the story is mainly told from the perspective of David Shippy, who was the technical lead on the project for most of its duration. The writing holds no punches, and often comes across as egotistical as a result. David clearly thinks highly of his skills as an engineer, and also thinks highly of his skills as a team leader. Shippy’s lack of humility does not get in the way of the narrative, however, and in fact enhances it. Books covering the internal workings of any corporation are rarely this candid. Shippy tells the world exactly why he thinks his architecture his great and exactly who he thinks held back the project. It is an obviously biased work, but the bias makes it feel truthful - unlike some other books I’ve read on these subjects, it doesn’t feel as if the co-authors are protecting anyone.

While the book is often technical, it is not nearly so technical that as to become boring, and the co-authors do a good job of making difficult points easier to understand. Those with absolutely no knowledge about processor architecture should be for-warned that some of the ideas introduced are going to be difficult, but if you have a general idea of how a modern processor functions you should be able to piece together what the co-authors are talking about. Part of why The Race For A New Game Machine works, however, is because it isn’t just about the processor. Its about the creation of the processor, and therefor about the team of people who worked on it. While the book spends plenty of time talking about processor architecture, it spends just as much time talking about the culture of the team which worked on it.

It helps that the co-authors have interesting material to work with. The creation of what would become the Cell processor in the Playstation 3 and the Xenon processor in the Microsoft 360 is a tale full of moral quandaries. As is revealed extremely early in the book, the development of the common PowerPC core in both game consoles originally started as a joint project between Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The team working on the project, called the STI team (simply an acronym for Sony, Toshiba, and IBM) was aiming for a 2005 release of the Playstation 3. But the PowerPC architecture being created by the team was worked on under the agreement that IBM would be able to market it to a variety of customers. IBM was approached by Microsoft halfway through the project, as they also were looking for a processor that could power their new Xbox 360. You can guess what IBM offered them. The resulting corporate cluster-fuck would have been interesting even if told by an incompotent writer - we’re lucky that book’s co-authors of capable of mating the already intriguing story with some decent prose.

The Race For A New Game Machine isn’t perfect. Shippy gets in more than a few jabs at Intel, and it gets old. The idea that the processor is a “supercomputer-on-a-chip” is also drug out of the closet and beaten repeatedly, and it is extremely obvious that the co-authors have no idea who gamers are or what they want, as they constantly go on about how the amazing performance of the new PowerPC architecture will prove to enhance graphics, as if that was the only thing that mattered. The writing sometimes feels as if the co-authors have bought completely into their own hype, although given that they spent years of their life working on the project this is perhaps inescapable. The book also feels rushed towards the end, almost as if the co-authors are having difficulty re-telling the last, most stressful days of the project. But these are nit-picks, and don’t damage the book as a whole. The story that is told by The Race For The New Game Machine is both deeply personally and deeply technical - and as a result, it is a must-read.

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Today, Microsoft is a dominate force in the gaming industry. This obvious. What is less obvious is how it came to be one of gaming’s most important companies. When the first rumors about the Xbox began circulating in 1999, the gaming industry’s response was far from positive. After all, most people knew Microsoft as the evil empire which brought the computing world the popularly hated Windows operating system. It was hard to imagine that such a heavily bureaucratic software company could suddenly get into the business of making and selling hardware in a highly competitive market. But it happened, which in turn raises a question - how?

That is what Opening The Xbox, by Dean Taikahashi, aims to explain. Its method is not exactly creative, and falls somewhere between a linear history of the Xbox’s creation and shotgun spread of mini-biographies of various people involved with the Xbox’s creation. The early parts of the book focus heavily on game designer turned console visionary Seamus Blackley, but quickly expands to present multiple people who were involved in the creation of the Xbox, from its very first stages as a concept to the final into the product that hit store shelves.

The array of view-points gives a wealth of interesting background. Finding out how the Xbox did not become certain alternative products, like a home media center or a hybrid console which could also play video games, is just as interesting as finding out how the Xbox became what it is. But while numerous people involved in the project are given an attention, the majority of these individuals are (as you’d expect) people who work or worked at Microsoft. There isn’t any attempt to gain outside opinions or perspectives. While the book does lay bare the intentions of Microsoft, it doesn’t do a lot of detective work, and the perspectives are almost all internal. For example, one of the books largest claims is that the Xbox was successful because Microsoft reached out to game developers. There are some quotes included to support this, but I feel the overall focus should have been stronger. By focusing so heavily on internal viewpoints, Taikahashi doesn’t get to delve very deeply into the process of creating the Xbox.

Even the points based off the word of Microsoft employees about internal matters feel thin due to what feels like a lack of any serious probing. For example, the description of the conflict between the WebTV and Xbox teams over how to build the final game console comes across as a squabble. I doubt that the actual meetings were quite so simple. The points at which various Xbox team members leave also seem glossed over, as the reasons given are vague and feel specifically constructed to make sure no one gets their feelings hurt.

Another big issue with Opening The Xbox is that Taikahashi writes at an eight-grade level. The book is readable and intelligent, but not enjoyable. Journalism is apparently Taikahashi’s day job, and if this book is any indication, he doesn’t spend much time covering the “human” element of stories. Taikahashi is strangely insistant on providing brief biographes about a number of Xbox team members, but has no skill in writing them. They are introduced with all the subtely of an Xbox throw through a glass window and they too often meander, repeating the same points time and time again; Blackey’s paranoia resulting from the failure of Trespasser back in the ninties is brought up about a zillion times. While the writing style never gets in the way of explaining information, it is so weak and fluffy that it further hurts the book’s illusion of credability.

Despite its faults, Opening The Xbox remains an important read simply because there are few books which cover, from beginning to end, the creation of a game console. Taikahashi’s purely chronological, even-paced narrative may be simple, but it gets the point across. It isn’t high praise to say that Opening The Xbox is a must-read but default, but until more serious writers become interested in writing about the games industry we’ll have to make do with this.

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What? What’s that you say? The games industry isn’t immune to the pressure of a recession?

GOOD GOD, MAN.

Actually, the industry’s reaction will likely to be more akin to a wimper. Game companies and critics have so far taken the “Saying it loud enough, and it must be true” stance to the economic recession. Commentators across the globe in newpapers, press releases, and bathroom stalls about how the games industry will thrive in harsh economic times. Somehow, no one seemed to be paying attention to how game companies seemed to be going bust left and right.

But now the confirmation has finally come - sales in the games industry slid 17%. And this is me saying I told you so.

The only hardware that achieved a year-over-year increase in sales for March was the 360, likely thanks to the Microsoft boy’s slash-and-burn style of hardware pricing. Game sales were down 17%, and game accessories were down 15%. As usual, Nintendo did the best overall. Microsoft held steady in hardware sales, held the top software spot with the blockbuster Resident Evil 5, and and Microsoft also declared that DLC purchases were up 220%. Sony lost out (duh), with its version of Resident Evil 5 selling 350,000 less units than the 360 version and 112,000 less PS3s than 360s leaving store shelves. In fact, the only good thing that Sony could say for itself is that it is selling more PS2s because of its price drop of the now ancient console to $99. Ah, to re-live the good old days…

The report did not cover PC games, but it is doubtful that much strength occurred in that segment.

Of course, the report itself goes into immediate damage-control mode, saying:

“While it might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that the sky is starting to fall on the video games industry given this month’s results, it’s important to remember that two very big things are different this year than last,” she said. “First, Easter fell in March last year whereas it fell in April this year, and last March included the release of Super Smash Bros.: Brawl, which went on to become the fourth best-selling game in 2008.”

What the hell this has to do with anything is, of course, entirely unclear. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the decrease in sales of, uh, anything that isn’t a Wii isn’t much affected by Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and if they were, the result would be lower sales for other games last year. And both points don’t have much to do with hardware or accessory sales.

Basically, its a bust, and this kind of thing will probably continue for sevearl more months. Or longer. The longer part depends on if the widely rumored economic recovery due as the year progresses becomes truth, of it is simply a false hope. I don’t mind making predicts about the games industry, but I can’t begin to fathom where the global economy is heading.

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As usual, this year’s Game Developer’s Conference gave people plenty to talk about. As usual, too much of it was predictable. Miyamoto said things, and devs drooled. There were apparently some wild auto-biographical game ideas brainstormed about the first sexual encounters of various devs. An impossible and trendy technology that won’t live up to its promised was introduced - this year, it was OnLive, which promises to make game consoles irrelevant by December (mark your calenders!) These sorts of events are typical not just for GDC, but for any event where gaming or hardware related to gaming is involved. But there was something that shook a few cages - Heather Chaplin’s lecture about the (lack of) maturity in the industry.

To my knowledge, no full transcript of Heather Chaplin’s rant is available, and no video of it is available. In the age of YouTube, this is both strange and unfortunate. However, it is clear that Chaplin pulled no punches, and a paraphrase of her strongest points is available from nearly every gaming news site in existence. Her words were harsh. “You aren’t men” she told the game developers in her audience. “You are stunned adolescents.” Chaplin went on to argue that game development is plagued by immature power fantasies, and that the developers are largely responsible for this. In essence, she was saying that the gaming industry has turned into a cultural shit-hole, and that the people in her audience are responsible.

This has not set well with gaming developers. Some developers took Chaplin’s rant as a personal assault to their manhood, and have posted long diatribes about how gaming does not make them poor fathers (of course, these counter-rants aren’t clear about what the hell the parental capabilities of game developers has to do with the quality of the games they produce). Other, better counter-arguments have performed tip-toe counter-attacks about the obvious gender issues in Chaplin’s rant. More generally, developers and players have argued that Chaplin’s argument is not fair. Games have come far, and they will go farther - the status quo is heading in the direction we need to go.

I disagree. The video game industry - or at least the “hardcore” portion of it - is currently obsessed with power fantasies. Grand Theft Auto IV is a perfect example. Upon release, it was widely praised by game critics as the gaming equivalent of The Godfather. It’s story was lauded as being rich and complex, portraying a troubled main character who wished to do good but was forced to do evil because of his circumstances. In a way, they were right. Niko is a clearly conflicted character, and one of the more multi-faceted player characters to ever be introduced in a video game. Yet GTA IV is also no different from the first GTA game, made long before Rockstar had control of the franchise. Niko may hem and haw a great deal about his conflicted emotions, but the game-play itself reflects none of the consequences that Niko’s dialogue seem to imply. Just like the original Grand Theft Auto, which was released over ten years ago, Grand Theft Auto IV is about mowing down hoards of faceless, nameless bad-guys. Occasionally, Niko takes a break from this slaughter-fest to casually flatten civilians with a stolen dump truck. There are absolutely no consequences for these actions, unless you count the police, who will pursue you for two blocks before stopping off for donuts. Is Grand Theft Auto IV an immature power fantasy? You bet your ass it is. And the pattern repeats itself time and time against. Only the smartest games - games like Bioshock or Shadow Of The Colossus - ever attempt to challenge the power fantasy the gameplay creates.

This is not to say that such power fantasies should not exist. They can be fun, and they can also, if properly executed, offer critics of various cultural phenomena. But it would be foolish to pretend that there is any sense of balance in the gaming industry. For every game that tries to critic its own power fantasy, or which attempts to move towards different forms of gaming satisfaction entirely, there is a slew of games in which the player repeatedly kills and maims with absolutely no consequences. I do not believe that such gameplay increases violence, but I do believe the repeated reliance upon “Kill things, get bigger guns, kill bigger things” as the primary method of gameplay progression is foolhardy. It offers little room for exploration of new forms of gameplay, it does not allow for a proper exploration of consequences, and it ultimately becomes boring.

Unfortunately, Chaplin’s plea for smarter, more diverse, and more intelligent games is likely to fall on an industry deaf to such concerns. Sequelitus has been running strong for years now, and the infection is only becoming worse. Even companies like Valve, which have mastered important fields like facial expressions, animation, and character creation, seems inclined to make games about zombies and space aliens rather than real-world situations. The only signs of innovation are coming from lesser known indie games like World of Goo and Braid, which break the traditional power fantasy and provide players with tantalizing gameplay. But more games are going to have to take their lead and leave the comfortable walls of nerdom if games want to have any hope of becoming seen as more than entertainment for young men with too much expendable income.

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When it comes to new-born academic fields, you’ll find few fresher from the womb than the study of video games. Besides the long-standing mainstream belief that video games are meant for children, video games are also cursed by their straddling of multiple existing forms of academic thought. Those interested in the Liberal Arts may appreciate their story-telling qualities, but since most academics in the Liberal Arts would rather be stoned than be caught without a Macbook Air in their briefcase, the technical aspects of gaming tend to be misunderstood. Meanwhile, those coming from the hard sciences usually understand the technical aspects, but don’t know how to interpret less tangible qualities. And then there are those in the social sciences, who often forgo studying video games in favor of studying how people play video games (and games in general). The lack of compatibility between video games and any existing academic tradition means that interpreting video games requires a fresh perspective - a grass-roots academic theory, in other words.

Creating such a theory is exactly what Jasper Juul sets out to do in his book Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules And Fictional Worlds, although Juul unfortunately over-reaches from the start by stating that his book aims to create a general theory of video games. Considering that there are few agreements in the field of literary theory after hundreds of years, it seems a stretch for Juul to set his sights so high, and those chapters of the book where he strongly pushes a generalized theory of video games are also the least convincing. Juul attempts to obtain tackle his massive and wild goal early by setting down six ground rules for what is or is not a game. His format for these rules is un-inspired, consisting largely of graphs and lists which look definitive but ultimately answer very little, not least of all the question of why these ground rules even need to be placed. Despite spending a great deal of Chapter 2 outlining what are and are not games, it becomes clear in the later parts of the book that the “borderline cases” pointed out by Juul share all the traits which Juul seem to find importance in practice, and so Juul’s attempts at being definitive begin to look contradictory.

Fortunately, Juul’s book becomes more interesting as it continues. From Chapter 3 onwards, Juul begins to tackle major questions of video game theory one by one. He explains what rules are, why they matter, and how rules in video games are different from and similar to rules in more traditional forms of games. He also explores how minor changes in rules can result in large changes in gameplay; an example used concerning why Counter-Strike is considered a more team-oriented game than team deathmatch in Quake III is particularly good at illustrating how the rules of a game can nudge players into acting in certain ways. Juul continues to make mis-steps when he tries to be overly definitive on board topics, or attempts to add elements of mathematics that seem out of place - once such example is when he begins to speak about games as a form of “state machine.” The analogy makes sense, but isn’t particularly instructive and the concept is not seen in many other places of the book, leading me to think that Juul might have been distracted from writing his book by the opportunity to geek out for a bit.

At Chapter 4, the book begins to come into it’s own. Juul’s primary point, the one which the whole book is centered around, is that games are half-real in the sense that while they use fictional representations, they do demand real inputs from the player, and those inputs are guided by real rules. In other words, while one might interpret a scene in a video game in different ways, one cannot interpret the rules of the video game in different ways. They are definite and cannot be negotiated. However, as Juul points out, these non-negotiable rules can still be read based not only on the basis of the inputs they allow and the outputs they produce, but also on the basis of how they relate to real-world experiences. A great example used by Juul is how games will often substitute one complex task for another in order to modify the game’s message. Two pirates sword-fighting would seem a bloody battle, but in the game Puzzle Pirates the act of sword-fighting is replaced by a puzzle game, in turn affecting how the player deals with the idea of combat while playing the game.

Juul’s book makes quite a few mis-steps, particularly in its early chapters. Juul to often tries to make his arguments definitive without first asking why the arguments need to be definitive for the rest of his book to hold true. Half-Real would have been more interesting if the first two chapters had been condensed, and Juul’s goal of arguing for a generalized theory of video games (and even games as a whole) ultimately remains unfulfilled. Juul does, however, make some very astute and unique points concerning how rules and fiction relate to one another in video games. Half-Real is a short book, and it ultimately creates more questions than answers. However, at least some of those questions are worth investigation.

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I hate World Of Warcraft.

This is not a hatred I’ve come to quickly or lightly, because I don’t think that World of Warcraft is a bad game. A bad game is a game that fails to be fun or interesting and/or is a game that fundamentally fails to achieve its design goals. Supreme Commander is a good example of a truly bad game. Although that game is sometimes fun, it is usually disappointing, because the design of the game contradicts the game’s supposed strengths. It is supposed to be about big battles - its the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, for god’s sake! Yet the game is not well paced, and there is no incentive to actually engage in a long, drawn out game. Yes, the game gives you the tools to do so, but as any good Supreme Commander player will tell you, a ranked match of Supreme Commander will only last over thirty minutes if you did something wrong.

World Of Warcraft does not have this kind of fundamental flaw. Blizzard knew what was important to the game when they designed it, and they continue to remain focused on the essentials. People play World Of Warcraft to play powerful characters, to get phat loot, and to win battles with/against other player characters in social gameplay. The game is designed so that these activities are the focus, and it focuses them well. Throughout the game, these different elements constantly intermingle. You don’t have to stop leveling in order to interact with other players, nor do you have to stop looking for items in order to level. This makes World Of Warcraft an excellent game. Provided, of course, you care about leveling, items, and social gameplay. If you are only interested in one aspect, however, then you’re up a shit creek without a paddle (and a hole in your dingy, to boot).  Such is the case with me. I’ve always been interested in the social gameplay, and that more than anything else. Itemization does not excitement, nor does leveling. There are other things that interest me, like storylines or good, challenging combat mechanics. But World Of Warcraft’s story has all the depth of a 5-year-old’s crayon drawing and the combat is so simple that a trained gerbil could master it. And so, I hate the game.

Okay - I admit, I’m not exactly being fair. It would seem silly of me to bash The Sims because it doesn’t have enough action, or go after Half-Life 2 because the character development isn’t to par. But like any super-blockbuster (Half-Life, Halo, Starcraft, etc), World Of Warcraft is a watermark of it’s genre. It sums up where the genre has gone and where the genre has been going. Normally, such a watermark shows some sort of advancement, a standard that other games need to live up to. But that isn’t the case with World Of Warcraft. Blizzard is an evolutionary company, and World Of Warcraft is an evolutionary game. It radically refines the experience that has existed ever since Everquest, but it introduces little that was not already seen in other MMORPGs. Yet, because World Of Warcraft is considered the standard, virtually ever MMORPG attempts to emulate it. MMORPGs are the only genre where various games with vastly different fictional worlds all end up with extremely similar rules and virtually identical interfaces.

At this point, though, you’re probably wondering; who gives a damn? To anwser: every MMORPG company in existance. What I am saying is that I like social gameplay and I want to pay to play a game that has it, but the best alternative I can find are games that force me to slog through mindless fights time and time again. There are only so many groups to be had, and besides, you normally have to level up and seek out items to engage in social gameplay at all. So, I engage in whatever random stuff I can do, perhaps bugging people in town by dancing on their heads. And then I deactivate my account. I’m not the only one, either. There are many reasons that MMORPG forums to be full of angst, but if you pay attention, you’ll find that at least part of the reason is that many players are tired of having to spend hours doings things they don’t like to do in order to get to the parts they enjoy. I’ve had the most fun with those games that deviated from the norm - I played Shatter Galaxy for 6 months, the longest I ever played an MMORPG. But I despise what the genre has become, and thus I despise World Of Warcraft. Because of World Of Warcraft, the genre has not made any revolutionary leaps forward in over five years.

But there is something that can be learned from this disappoint over World Of Warcraft and the genre in general. Strangely, it comes from a source that has little to do with MMORPGs in general - console hardware. Like MMORPGs, console systems were extremely stagnant for most of the last decade and the first part of this one. Every console was fundamentally the same. You got a controller with some buttons on it, you put a game into the console, and you played by yourself or with a few friends. This stagnation seemed as if it was the only way that things could be. Consoles were more and more heavily focused towards existing gamers because it was assumed that those gamers, and they alone, were the market. And then the next-generation consoles came out. The Xbox 360 was itself a move away from the norm. It integrated online play, introduced Xbox Arcade, and positioned itself as a living room media center. It has been very successful. But the real success has come to the Wii, the one console that has dared to break free from all conventions. The Wii was not developed for a target market. The Wii was developed to make its own market, to satisfy people who have never been happy with or interested in a console before.

The MMORPG genre can learn a lot from the Wii’s example. 2008 saw the debut of two games that could have been great, but were ultimately lost opportunities; Warhammer Online and Age Of Conan. Both of these games made interesting strides of their own, but their fundamental mechanics remain the same as what can be found in World Of Warcraft. Many players logged into both games during their first months, but they’ve fled back to World Of Warcraft just as quickly as they came. And why shouldn’t they? Why participate in a new game, with its bugs, its balance issues, and its (relative) lack of content, when the fundamental mechanics are the same as the game you already have formed an attachment too?

The time is ripe for a revolution. What form that revolution could take is not something I can possibly predict. For one thing, I’m a game critic, not a game designer. Secondly, it is the nature of revolutionary things to be unpredictable. Most people viewed the Wii with skepticism when it was first announced, and remained skeptical even after its massively successful launch. Now the Wii is on track to be the best selling console of all time. Nintendo took a risk, launched a revolutionary product, and reaped the rewards. An MMORPG could do the same. The only thing lacking is a company with the bravery and knowledge necessary to forget everything we’ve assumed about the genre and create something truly new.

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Stop The Consolization Of PC Games!

A few weeks ago, I picked up Dawn Of War II. Overall, I like the game. I’m not sure if it has staying power, but it is enjoyable. Relic’s choice to completely drop the need to baby-sit a base while at the same time making fast-paced tactical decisions was a good move. It is the kind of game you can sit down, play two rounds, and then not play for a day or two. And that is just fine.

But there is one part of Dawn Of War II which isn’t just fine. In fact, it is the absolute opposite of “just fine”. Where the phrase “just fine” implies equal parts relaxation and contentment, the part of Dawn Of War II I’m currently thinking of causes equal parts frustration and rage. If you’ve guessed at this point that I’m talking about Games For Windows Live, then good for you! If you didn’t, then obviously you haven’t played Dawn Of War II - because anyone who has played the game would know instantly what I mean.

Games For Windows Live is the brainchild of Microsoft, a company that is nearly as good at marketing games and gaming products as it is at sucking the soul out of gaming itself. Yea, I know, hating Microsoft is a bit cliche at this point, but don’t think that I’m hating on Microsoft just ’cause they’re Microsoft. I respect the company as a whole, and I fucking love Vista. You heard me right. I absolutely adore Vista, and I think that anyone who still chooses to use XP is either a grandmother who thinks Windows is a type of Solitaire or a neck-beard who spends his nights listening for extraterrestrials on a short-wave radio. But Games For Windows Live? My god. What a stinker.

The problem with Games For Windows Live is that Microsoft had a good idea. They made Xbox Live. Xbox Live is pretty cool. You can keep in touch with online friends easily, you gain achievements that make your e-penis feel bigger, and you can call people all manner of homophobic and racial slurs without anyone batting an eye. It’s brilliant. Microsoft knows it’s brilliant. So they’ve decided to try and implement the same thing on the computer, apparently unaware that, uh, a computer is not a console. Considering that Microsoft makes the most popular PC operating system in the world, you would think they’d notice. But no - spend a little time with Xbox Live, and its clear that programming for GFWL is probably a task probably used to haze Xbox Live interns.

The match-making system in Dawn Of War II  is a horrid, disfigured lump of pixels and grease, begging to be put out of its misery. Click on “Find A Match” and you have two options; Head-to-Head or 3-v-3. That’s it. No picking maps. No picking games modes (not that it matters, since DOWII only has two). Just click and go. Such simplicity might work as a quick-match system, but there is nothing quick about the matchmaking. Instead of jumping right into a game, you get to sit back and wait five to fifteen minutes while the automatic match-making system tries to find a suitable game. This works great if you’re playing Halo 3, and there are about 4 bijillion people ready and waiting to play. But when you’re playing Dawn Of War II and you could fit all the people who want to play a multi-player match into a high-school gymnasium, well…things don’t work out so well. I mean, at all.

That alone is frustrating, but remember, I said that GFWL inspires both frustrations and rage. The rage comes from the so-called TrueSkill system, which is a fancy label for a bunch of completely ineffectual algorithms that are supposed to decide if you suck at the game. The problem with TrueSkill is that it doesn’t work. At all. As a newbie to the game, I sat down and played back-to-back matches against people who, like me, had a TrueSkill rating of 1, and also against experienced players who had a TrueSkill rating of 20. The most hilarious feature of this entire system is that the game doesn’t bother to give you any information about who you’re playing until the game is over, so you have no way of knowing if you’re getting your ass kicked because you’re playing a professional gamer or because you’re a total imbecile.

To make matters worse, the game insults you with a terrible public games list, which seems to have been purposely made poorly so that players might feel more inclined to use the automatic match-making system. Remember the days of games like Tribes, when PC games didn’t treat you like a child? Back in those days, it was possible to get accurate information about server/game names, pings, any mods being used, any special rules, etc - and best of all, you could list fifty servers/games on one page. Not so in DOW II. You get the game name, the ping, the map, and that’s basically it. And you get all of this surrounded by a massive bubble of space, so even on my 22″ screen I can’t see more than four games at a time.

My question is - why? Why does Microsoft seemed to be convinced that consolizing the PC gaming experience is the key to unlocking sales? Did anyone ask for this? Personally, I can’t recall a single time that a PC gamer asked for easy to use, informative server/game lists to be taken out of PC games. I can’t remember many people asking for automatic match-making systems, either. PC gamers never cried for this, and they never cried for this because they game on a PC. Given that the PC is, as a gaming platform, more expensive, less stable, and less social, it is a pretty sure bet that the people who do game on a PC do so for very specific reasons, and those reasons don’t have anything to do with the strengths of gaming consoles.

Get it through your thick skull, Microsoft. There is a reason why Games For Windows Live hasn’t taken off, and it has nothing to do with bad management or a down economy. It has to do with the fact that Games For Windows Live is not designed to try and make a standardized gaming community for PC gamers. It is designed to try and push a successful console gaming community onto PC gamers. And surprise, surprise - your average PC gaming lemming doesn’t have the same interests as the average Xbox lemming. Let Games For Windows Live die, and the next time you try and invigorate the PC gaming community, try to come up with something that was originally made for, you know, the PC.

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Woohoo! January sales are up 13%. The games industry continues to be recession proof.

Or not.

Combined revenues for game sales were at 1.33 billion in January 2009, compared to 1.18 billion in Janauray 2008. In today’s economy, any growth is good growth. Except when it isn’t. Because while most industrys would happily soil their morals and pride for this kind of growth (auto industry, I’m looking at you), a 13% growth rate continues to be abysmal for the video game industry. You need look no further than the contining bad news coming from game developers and publishers.

Well, except for one company. Nintendo.

Which begs the question - is Nintendo skewing game industry figures? Is there even any growth, or is the game industry merely a sinking ship which happens to have one passenger with a life vest grafted to his skin? According to Nintendo, Wii sales grew 148% compared to this time last year. No doubt, part of this is due to Nintendo finally being able to match demand with supply.

However, supply-side issues don’t dampen the fact that 20 of the third best selling games currently available are for the Wii. Once upon a time, I figured the Wii would have slow software sales because casual gamers buy games less often.

Boy, was I wrong - I’m just glad I didn’t promise to eat my hat.

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So, Penny Arcade ran a survey. Most surveys ran by gaming websites are slack-jawed ego-boosters for game journalists who fancy themselves sociologists, but Penny Arcade’s survey grabbed a 38,000 responses and answered some reasonable questions. Most of it is as surprising as cowshit on a farmyard. Most respondents were male. The average income was slightly higher than the general population. Cable/DSL was the most popular form of internet connection. But there were some surprising results, and one of them was the number of respondents who said the owned an iPhone or an iPod.

Nearly 30% of respondents said they owned such a device. Now, it should be noted that Penny Arcade’s survey had some flaws. The survey did not provide any listing for “MP3 player,” so you can bet some respondents said they had an iPod when they in fact have a Zune. The survey also did not ask what kind of iPhone or iPod the respondent has, so the survey effectively lumps together such wildly different devices such as the Shuffle and the iPhone 3G. Even so, sales figures from other sources show that around 4 million iPhones are now in service, and that a large number of iPod Touch devices have also been kicked out the door.

And all of these devices are capable of playing games. Sure, we’ve all played the crappy cell-phone games before, with their 2-bit graphics and sloppy control schemes. But the iPhone and iPod touch have large, high-color screens and good touch interfaces, along with enough processing power to allow for such games as Heroes of Sparta, a fighter with 3D graphics. In other words, the iPhone/iPod touch has the goods needed to make playing a game enjoyable. With an install base of millions and an application store which makes it easy for companies to hock low-cost casual games, it seems that the iPhone/iPod touch could be in a favorable position. Compare it, for example to the DS. I love the DS, but it is not nearly as compact, and it provides little functionality beyond playing games. The iPhone/iPod Touch, in contrast, is thin and light, and has numerous uses beyond playing games.

So, can the iPhone/iPod Touch become a serious mobile gaming device? Well…not so fast. The largest hurdle facing Apple’s device is the same thing that makes it such a wonderful PDA - the App Store. While the App Store makes it ridiculously easy to download new software for your iPhone/iPod Touch, the App Store also seem to promote a very low price point. Most of the Apps in the Store are selling for under $10 dollars. Some are selling for only a buck. Its hard to see any gaming company making a serious effort with prices that low. Much as the Xbox 360 and PS3’s un-written standard of $60 dollars seems to hurt games which are to short to justify laying down that much dough, the App Store’s unwritten standard of $10 dollars or less may ward of any developer seriously considering an iPhone/iPod Touch.

In other words, I don’t think that the iPhone/iPod Touch is there yet, even though the hardware provides a compelling argument against larger, more traditional mobile game systems. What Apple’s device will need is support from Apple itself. However, I don’t think that Apple is going to push for it. Apple has traditionally shunned gaming, and although taking a slice off every $30 dollar full-length game seems a profitable venture, Apple’s success has been due to a strong corporate culture which sticks to what it knows.

That said, things change. What must be watched is Apple’s growing market share in comparison to Windows. Should Apple feel it is in a position to grab a serious portion of the market away from Microsoft, gaming could be part of Apple’s strategy. But don’t get to excited, would-be Apple gamers. Such a future is possible, but it would be many years away.

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Who the fuck cares about previews?

Its a question that I’ve been pondering on and off the last few days, spurred by some fairly standard “Game Journalism Fucking Sucks!” style posts I’ve seen on various websites. None of those posts were particularly insightful, and generally I try to stay away from talking about game journalism because, well, its depressing. But then, right after reading about how much game journalism sucks, I ran across a preview for the next Final Fantasy game. And I thought to myself - what’s the point?

Try as I might, I can’t think of one. Game previews are easily one of the most pointless pieces of journalism to ever be spun, dwelling the the cess-pool occupied by the likes of Fox News editorials and CNN.com’s T-shirt store. With few exceptions, they heap praise after praise upon upcoming big-name titles without shame. They don’t dare let a critical sentence slip in among the fold upon fold of disgusting, sticky sentences which say absolutely nothing. And then there are the interview sections, often posed to top developers - interviews sections which always give the person being the interviewed the final word, and never argue with the answers given. Take, for example, the ghastly previews of Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC, none of which second-guessing Rockstar’s announcement that you’d need to play the game through both Games For Windows Live and Rockstar’s special service, nor did anyone seem to bat an eye at the fact that Rockstar would only show the game on a high-end quad-core with the beefiest graphics card available at the time.

Ideally, previews should be a way for critics to give an in-depth look at what is good and not so good about upcoming games. But in practice, they’re simply PR pieces. The only games which ever receive preview criticism are ones which no one cares about, which defeats the point.

At the moment, there isn’t much that can be done. Previews are at least a little problematic in nearly every industry, due to the obvious fact that the company making the product has the privilege of granting and denying previews to whoever they want.  I’ve tried to do interviews with the producers of upcoming games before, and it never goes well. Inevitably, I am first contacted by a PR person, and they make something very clear; the interviewee will answer the questions they want to. And that’s if you get to directly speak to the person you want to at all, as I’ve ran into companies that simply want the journalist to send their questions in an e-mail, cutting off the chance for follow up and guaranteeing that any hard-hitting questions will be screened.

But things could change. The Wii, as everyone knows, has thrown all manner of wrench into the machinery of the gaming industry. Basing itself off the idea that ease of use, interactivity, and affordability are more important than the traditional holy trinity of graphics, gore, and sex, the Wii has become a massive success and destroyed many assumptions about what the market for the games industry is. One of those assumptions, I think, is that everyone will always want to have the latest and greatest game, no matter what. In a market that assumes everyone is an enthusiast, getting the chance to preview an upcoming title is very important. But if the market diversifies itself and embraces the mainstream user, then having quality reviews and walk-throughs will become a focus. Take the PC hardware journalism industry, for example. There are many popular, un-biased sources for hardware reviews, including websites like The Tech Report and Anandtech. Hardware journalists are arguably even more dependent on the companies producing the products they test than game journalists, due to the extreme cost of hardware, but that doesn’t stop them from coming to negative conclusions about products.

In the meantime, I’ll do what I’ve always done: avoid previews like the plague.

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