Sunday, December 11, 2016

I'm now on Destructoid

Hey, just a quick update about a relatively minor change in plans for this blog. First things first, you can now also find my blog on Destructoid, located here. Due to my first post on Destructoid already receiving much more activity and feedback than I have ever received posting anywhere else, I intend to make Destructoid my new main focus going forward. This isn't to say that I am ending my blog here however. Rather, I'm shifting its role to being more of a miscellaneous blog that posts about anything that fancies my interests instead of just a gaming and anime blog. Of course, it's kind of been that type of blog already with my occasional shifts to political talk, but now I'm more or less making it official, because if you don't care about any of my opinions outside of video games and anime, you can now just head right on over to my Destructoid blog and follow me there, where I will only be posting about anime and video games. If you care to listen to anything else I have to say, you can find that here on Blogspot. I will still continue to post about games and anime at Blogspot as well; the difference is that basically this blog will include (nearly) everything I decide to talk about while Destructoid will be be exclusively focused on the topics relevant to that site.

So again, long story short, if you just want to listen to me talk about anime and video games while also generally having a more lively discussion in the comments, head on over to my Destructoid blog. If you want to hear me talk about anything that pops into my mind--gaming or non-gaming related--you can just keep checking back here.

That is all. Until next time.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Are multiplayer-only games inherently inferior?

[12/7/2016 UPDATE: Added a couple paragraphs to further clarify and expand my points.]

Creating a sock account so you can be matched with low-level plebs and squash them over and over again like the scrubs they are can be quite satisfying. I know I certainly feel a great sense of completeness in my soul after I've curb-stomped and tea-bagged my way to victory, but what about all those plebeians left reeling in butthurt and misery at the end of the day? They need to get their entertainment value out of the game too, and if not via the multiplayer, where else do they have to turn to? The 2016 Video Game Awards show was just recently held, and the multiplayer-only shooter Overwatch claimed the mantle of Game of the Year. This of course triggered little n00blets across the globe due to a multiplayer-only game being bestowed the highest title of the show, as if to suggest that this one fact alone is an automatic disqualifier for the title. To them I have but one response: Git. Gud.


Just kidding. Turns out I actually agree with them to an extent, but why is this the case? Isn't it a double standard that if someone develops a single player-only game it can be showered with praise and no one questions its lack of a multiplayer component, but if the reverse is true, suddenly everyone is demanding what happened to the campaign? Well no, I don't believe there is a double standard, because there's a key difference here: single player starts with an S while multiplayer starts with an M. See? They're not the same.

OK, I jest again of course. Going beyond just a matter of personal taste though, I do think there are some substantive differences between the two types of games that legitimizes criticisms against multiplayer-only titles. Namely that multiplayer-only games consistently lack in varied and significant content, often choosing to rely upon the dynamic and unpredictable nature of multiplayer interactions to alleviate the repetition, but this design choice only gets you so far. No matter how you slice it, a typical multiplayer-only shooter might release with only 12 playable maps and a handful of game modes. Each map itself is typically a fairly small arena; the entirety of which can be explored in under 5 minutes. Not to mention that you're unlikely to encounter any fancy scripted events that add some flare to the level, or fully-voice acted cutscenes that flesh out the characters and setting. You're generally limited to a singular objective that never fluctuates and all teams of players must compete for until the match is over. As a result, multiplayer-only games lend themselves to being played in shorter bursts, as the feeling of repetition starts to set in all too quickly and the average player will feel the urge to move on to something else. In contrast, a single player game can throw a multitude of objectives at you that give you a wide variety of goals to keep yourself occupied with for prolonged periods of time. In the classic N64 title Banjo-Kazooie for example, a single level of the game might have you collecting a number of items including 100 notes and 10 jigsaw pieces strewn across a vast map that is maybe 5 times the size of your average multiplayer level, all the while often requiring you to complete various other objectives along the way in order to collect these items, such as fighting bosses that test your reflexes and require memorization of their attack moves to defeat, or solving crafty puzzles that require careful examination to unravel. Each of these elements add variety to the gameplay that help keep it feeling fresh, and from a purely talent-based standpoint, they just require a lot more creativity and effort to produce. And this is just one level. Many single player games can have upwards of 20+ missions and 30+ hours of unique content to explore. EA themselves admitted that another multiplayer-only shooter released this year, Star Wars Battlefront, had a shorter development cycle than their standard AAA titles in order to meet the deadline of releasing the game while the hype was strong for The Force Awakens, and it shows. It too was another multiplayer title released with only 12 maps and a limited number of game modes. Within just a couple of hours, you can have experienced every map there is to play on it.

During the early days of the game industry, multiplayer was often treated as a tacked-on piece of content; almost considered to be "bonus material" if you will. In fact, famously during the development of Rare's seminal first-person shooter Goldeneye 007, multiplayer was only added in at the last minute. Unplanned, mind you. As in, it wasn't even done with the permission or knowledge of Nintendo and Rare's upper management. They only learned of it when a build was shown of the multiplayer already working. And yet despite the frequent treatment of multiplayer as a tacked-on component by the industry with only limited features and content, this approach to multiplayer development hasn't evolved much over the years even as we've begun to see the emergence of multiplayer-only AAA games, which is quite baffling. In theory, there's no reason Overwatch couldn't have released with double the number of maps and a multitude of different customizable game modes on launch. It's not as if Blizzard doesn't have the resources, and as a matter of fact, in all three of their other major franchises they offer a variety of ways to play. StarCraft II for example offers a robust single player campaign, co-op missions, versus matchmaking, and arcade mode where players can design their own custom maps and entirely new game modes. There's simply no excuse for the lack of content here. AAA publishers still want to follow the old model of tacked-on multiplayer for titles where the focus is supposed to be exclusively multiplayer, but at the same time they still want to charge you the full AAA price. I don't consider this practice to be acceptable.

Of course, one could argue that due to the spontaneous nature of multiplayer gameplay, it can create some lasting replay value that goes far beyond the amount of hours spent in many single player games. This is often true, and I'm sure I myself have probably spent more time in League of Legends than I have in some of my favorite single player games. However, I don't believe measuring the quality of games by the singular metric of replay value or time spent does them justice. After all, my top 10 list would probably look very different if I based it purely on this instead of my preferred metrics, and that's because something that should be considered when evaluating a game is also its peak entertainment value. Apologies in advance, but we're about to get into some ridiculous maths based on quantities that can't really be quantified. If I could visualize the entertainment value I get out of a game as a graph over time, it might look something like single player games generally starting out with very high peak values that steadily decrease as times goes on, while multiplayer games might start out at medium values, but decrease at a much slower rate thanks to the spontaneity of my opponents. As a result, I might find myself spending more time in a multiplayer game overall because it holds my attention longer, but at the same time it never really reaches the same heights of "awesomeness" I guess you could say I experience while playing other games; most often because of the lack of content and the inherent constraints that come with having to develop game objectives that all players can participate in meaningfully. In fact, amidst all of the supposed unpredictability of multiplayer interactions, there is a certain very predictable nature to these games. You know you're not going to be wowed by a sudden shocking plot revelation. There's no journey to go on with the characters where you get to see them grow and blossom in different ways. You're unlikely to encounter some epic event where you're dueling someone atop a moving train before it derails and explodes. Multiplayer levels need to stay mostly static so other players can navigate the map and participate too. You already know the vast majority of what to expect before you even put the disc in for the first time. Perhaps others feel differently, but this has generally been my experience with the medium.

So people can scoff at my immediate dismissal of multiplayer-only games, but at the end of the day, I do not do so without merit. None of this is to say that these types of games are bad of course, nor even that they can never be allowed to win Game of the Year, but when it comes to my personal choices, I do think they are at an inherent disadvantage and for good reason. There simply aren't a lot of multiplayer-only titles that offer comparable content and craftsmanship to their single player counterparts, and until they do, they don't get to sit at the big boys' table as far as I'm concerned. The fact that Overwatch received Game of the Year this year to me just reflects on how disappointing this year really has been. Then again, maybe I just need to git gud. Or perhaps I'm selling this achievement too short; it was the first year where a hentai game got GOTY after all. Progress, America.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Nintendo Switch revealed: Reaction and analysis

Nintendo has finally taken the curtain off the Nintendo NX and it's about god damn time. As many may know, Nintendo has for a long time been working on a new console under the codename NX, but have absolutely refused to reveal any details on it until now. Personally, I still question whether they're going to be able to market this system properly when it's only about 5 months away from launch. By skipping its reveal at E3, they no longer have any big conference to build the hype with, and the system will have already hit the market before next year's E3, so I hope they either plan to do a bunch of marketing on TV or some other mainstream outlet before this thing happens or it's going to be the Wii U all over again. But anyway, let's get into the console itself. So it's being called the Nintendo Switch, which again, why is it that Nintendo's codenames are always cooler than the actual name they decide on? The GameCube was originally called the Dolphin, the Wii was called the Revolution, and now the NX is the Switch? I mean, I guess it's a step up from Wii, which I think everyone was pretty sick of at this point, but really, maybe Nintendo should just go with their gut next time and pick the first name they use for it.


But dammit, I'm still going off on tangents here, and I'm just nitpicking at this point, so let's get back to the reveal. So the trailer starts off with a 20-something dude just chillin' on the couch gaming inconspicuously to the latest upcoming Zelda game. Now already the fact that Nintendo decided to start the trailer like this is a breath of fresh air. This is what many people have been saying for a long time; your audience has grown up Nintendo. Wake the hell up. They always kept branding their consoles as systems for kids and casuals. But they still make games that are just as fun as ever to play regardless of your age, and they offer plenty of hardcore experiences. You've got Metroid, you've got Bayonetta, you've got Zelda, and hell, even Super Mario 3D World will give hardcore gamers a run for their money in the final worlds and especially the bonus levels. There is some gruelingly difficult stuff there. Yet the average dedicated gamer doesn't really know this because Nintendo doesn't market to them. So I'm very glad to finally see as their first ad that this is clearly a system being made for the fans as well as the existing gaming market rather than trying to pull in people who were never fans of their products before and normally couldn't care less for gaming. Anyway, the ad continues, and we finally see what this system is all about. The 20-something dude stands up and then detaches his controller into two pieces before snapping it onto the console itself, and proceeds to leave the house and take his dog for a walk while continuing right where he left off with the game, now as a portable system. This is the key feature of the Switch which gives it its name, and I gotta say it looks excellent. We're finally getting a system that merges portable and big screen TV gaming all in one device, and it does so in a way that is effortless and slick. Next we have our 20-something dude-bro hopping on a plane and showing off how portable the system is, along with revealing that the system uses cartridge-based media, and so on and so forth. I'm not going to run through the whole commercial scene-by-scene, but long story short, it shows off a possible new Mario game, Skyrim, a basketball game, and what looks to be a version of Mario Kart 8 with expanded content.


It should be noted that the ad could be a little misleading here as none of the third party games featured in this video have been confirmed to be releasing on the Switch yet, so here we arrive at our first major concern. Like it or not, unfortunately consoles need third party developers on board for their long term survival anymore, and if Nintendo fails to hang onto third parties after the Switch's initial launch, it is likely another dead on arrival release. They should secure these titles as quickly as possible so people won't be left feeling misled. Now regarding cartridge media: I'm glad this is coming back as the landscape has changed since the days of the N64 where cartridges were more expensive and couldn't store as much space. Now you've got SD cards that can easily house 64 GB, and cartridges have much faster load times than discs, being that they are solid state storage.

Now let's do a full breakdown of the system:

Obviously since the hardware is housed in the tablet in order to make it portable, there's no reasonable way one could expect it to achieve performance on par with the upcoming Scorpio and PS4 Pro consoles. However, the value proposition here is based on the idea that you're essentially getting the most powerful handheld gaming experience to date, with the inclusion of proper buttons and joystick controls. With the PS Vita being all but dead to Sony at this point, and the 3DS beginning to greatly show its age in the face of modern smartphones, this presents itself as an attractive step up from all other handheld options because now there's finally a dedicated handheld gaming device again that is more powerful than your smartphone, and with proper buttons to boot.

The rumors (which have largely turned out to be true so far) stated that this would be a hybrid home/portable console with detachable controls, cartridge-based media, performance about on par with a standard Xbox One console, and a 900p tablet display for around the $300-400 price point. While bits and pieces of this have been confirmed, the official specs remain to be seen. Given that it has also been stated that this console will be based in the latest architecture from NVIDIA, this could mean that we're talking about the same architecture that powers NVIDIA's beastly GTX 1000 series cards, which if anything was capable of pushing Xbox One-level graphics in a handheld as tiny as that, it would certainly be possible with the GTX 1000's Pascal architecture. The NVIDIA Shield released just last year was capable of outputting performance on par with the Wii U/360/PS3 already, so considering this, we already know at a minimum that it is unlikely this won't be at least a marginal upgrade from the Wii U. The question is, will it only be a marginal upgrade, or substantial enough to reach the Xbox One? If it does the latter, then I think this does present itself as very attractive for the handheld experience, because no handheld platform currently boasts graphics at that level.

So sure, at the $300-400 price point, you're paying about the same as you are for a PS4 Pro despite not offering as good of performance, but on the other hand your typical latest smartphone sells for $500+ and doesn't offer anything for AAA experiences or proper buttons and joysticks, let alone graphics on par with current-gen consoles, so if you care about having a portable element to your console, then the value is easily justified. I think a lot of assertions about this console being underpowered aren't factoring in these considerations. If the rumor is true that it reaches the performance of an Xbox One, then this certainly is top of the line hardware for the mobile market.

There's still a lot of questions in the air as to how this will all pan out, but so far it seems as if Nintendo is making the right decisions and the Switch is being well-received. I'm cautiously excited for the platform and look forward to owning one in March if it has a solid launch lineup. Well-played, Nintendo.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Jill Stein haters: This is the best you can do?

I must apologize two-fold here; I haven't posted anything on this blog for a long time, and I'm coming out of my pseudo-retirement to do an entirely out-of-left-field political ramble, which isn't my normal shindig here, but I couldn't think of any better place to put this, and I need to vent for a brief moment, so please excuse me this time.

As we all know, there's been a lot of vitriol flung around this presidential election season, and events unfolding recently at the DNC have only deepened the rift between Hillary and Bernie supporters in many instances. With the revelation from WikiLeaks that the democratic party colluded with the Clinton campaign from the outset, and the failure to acknowledge many of the concerns of Hillary's dissenters throughout the convention while patronizing them to add salt to the wounds, some of the progressive wing of the democratic party have been seeking alternative third party options in the form of Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Unsurprisingly, this has brought some negative attention to Jill from her own set of critics in the form of this Slate article entitled Jill Stein's ideas are terrible. She is not the savior the left is looking for. Now it's one thing if you want to make the usual pragmatic argument that as a third party candidate, Jill has no chance of winning, so your vote for her really just counts as a vote for Trump, who in this case would be the perceived greater evil. However, it's another thing entirely to make such a ridiculously flamboyant statement that implies the totality of Jill's platform is idiotic based on some largely irrelevant issues as we're about to see here. In fact on nearly all the big issues that matter, Jill is pretty spot-on for progressives, from getting money out of politics and campaign finance reform, to universal healthcare and ending the student debt crisis. And for many of the issues where Jill is "wrong", she's only wrong in the sense that her goal is unrealistic, yet nonetheless still noble.


Case-in-point, so what do Jill's critics have to offer as a rebuttal? She wants to cut defense spending in half, close 700 foreign military bases, and reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. And...? Yep, that's it basically. Wait... These are the alleged bad policies? As many may know, the US currently spends more than several of its next-nearest competitors combined on military expenses. It's funny that in any other modern first world country, cutting such egregiously bloated military spending would seem like a no-brainer, but here in the US the military spending has gotten so massively out of control that it has become seen as unreasonable to be reasonable about it. Now on the other hand, a more compelling argument could certainly be made that it's wholly unrealistic to expect 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, even with strong cooperation from congress. However again, for progressives this would all still be taken with the acknowledgement that seeking renewable energy solutions is a positive goal regardless, and even if she fails to reach it, what's the worst-case scenario? We reach 30% renewable energy instead? Damn, I'm really reeling from this revelation. Clearly this would be disastrous. I mean, we could have tried less and only raised our renewable energy output to 20%; the clear superior alternative! Sarcasm aside, it should be noted that Bernie Sanders previously gave a succinct analogy on policy negotiation. If you start with a full loaf of bread, you will likely end up with half, but start with half a loaf of bread, and you will be left with crumbs. Some of Jill's policy goals may be unrealistic, but by going into the conversation strong from the onset, she is more likely to end up closer to the ideal goal regardless. Pointing out that her renewable energy goals are unrealistic is hardly reason alone to jump ship, let alone even necessarily count as a negative to begin with.

To be fair though, the Slate article by Jordan Weissmann does go on to make slightly more compelling points. Jordan continues with pointing out Jill's policy on GMOs and pesticides, elaborating on the fact that in spite of there being no scientific basis for claiming negative health impacts resulting from GMOs, Jill wants to require foods containing genetically modified material to be labeled with it. Never mind that Sanders shares the same policy anyway, but even if this is the case, while Jill's agricultural policies would add needless bureaucracy to the agriculture sector, and cause some loss in revenues by legitimizing fears of the science illiterate, in the end this is all negligible nitpicking and small-fry gripes compared to greater issues at stake. I mean are we seriously having a conversation about the supposed egregiousness of Jill Stein's GMO policy while both of the mainstream candidates will more than likely continue deregulation of banks and multi-national corporations, job-exporting free trade deals, tax cuts, loopholes, and subsidies for the wealthy, all contributing towards increasing the risk of another global economic collapse? What a joke. Hillary Clinton's VP pick Tim Kaine supported TPP, off-shore drilling, anti-union right-to-work measures, and was even advocating for deregulation of banks right up until his selection for vice president. And considering Clinton's flip-flopping on the TPP, shaky convictions on the Keystone pipeline, support of the fracking industry, taking large sums of money from the big banks, and refusing to release her speeches on them, it isn't an altogether unfair assumption that she shares the same views despite her claims to the contrary. Let's also not forget Hillary's history of supporting the disastrous Iraq war, her flip-flopping on universal healthcare, as well as her support for the PATRIOT Act which paved the way for warrantless spying on Americans. But shut up about all that, we've got some GMO labels to bitch about. Jill's anti-science policies may be disappointing, but they pale in comparison to some of the horrendous policies and lack of judgment of her opposition, and certainly aren't cause for pulling the parachute. We need not even address some of Trump's most inane policies.

Perhaps Jordan's most damning criticism of Jill Stein is his point regarding her misunderstanding of the bank bailouts and quantitative easing. But even then he nonchalantly admits his argument hinges on an inconclusive assumption via Occam's razor, and furthermore, it sidesteps the consideration that most presidential candidates likely don't know the finer ins and outs of the Fed either, and that's why they have cabinets with economic advisers and people with greater expertise to counsel them on these sorts of issues. What matters here is that Jill is still right on the substance of the issue, which is that we should similarly employ a large scale bailout package for college students currently being choked by crushing debt in the same way that the banks were given a bailout for blowing up the economy in 2008, except in this case the debt accrued by students was never deliberately caused by malicious intents unlike our other example here.


Finally, Jordan accuses Stein of ignoring history based on his own glazing over of key details on history. For example, he rebutted her line about Obama leading the charge for austerity by basically admitting that Obama did in fact try to work with John Boehner and the Republicans to push cutting social security and entitlements via the "grand bargain", but implies that it doesn't count since the legislation never technically passed, and he further notes that Obama only made some of the Bush tax cuts permanent, not all. This vague use of the term "some" neglects to mention that it was really most of the Bush tax cuts that were made permanent; 82% to be precise if you go by the CBPP's numbers, and he further ignores the context that in spite of Obama facing unprecedented opposition from Republicans on the fiscal cliff, there was really no reason he couldn't have minimally struck a deal that would merely extend the Bush tax cuts a few more years rather than make them permanent, especially considering that he held the veto power in this case and all he had to do was simply let the tax cuts expire if the Republicans didn't take his offer; a risk they more than likely would not gamble with if their donors' taxes are on the line and Obama is offering an easy way out.

To be clear, no candidate is ideal, and no candidate should be expected to fit one's views 100% to absurdly puritanical degrees. Jill Stein has some legitimate problems as the Slate article points out, but its dismissive conclusions that it draws from them ignore bigger-picture context and come off as exaggerating flaws without merit. Jill Stein is not the ideal candidate, but quite frankly neither was Sanders nor anyone else for that matter, and to pretend that they're miles apart from each other is a rather disingenuous and cheap attempt to push progressives back to Hillary's camp. Jill is still a no-brainer compared to her competition on the important issues that matter for progressives, and if you want to make a more compelling argument against her, you're better off playing the age-old lesser-of-two-evils card. Otherwise spare me this nonsense about Jill Stein being such a terrible candidate because our vegetables might go up a few cents at the grocery store. If you're going to inflate such pathetically inconsequential policies to such significant proportions, then surely you'll start foaming at the mouth over Hillary's Iraq war vote and hawkish foreign policy am I right?


Of course not. That's what I thought, fakers.