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.

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.

Edit / Footnote [10/7/2024]: Although I stand by much of what I said in this blog and nothing pertaining strictly to the facts is technically inaccurate, I would like to point out that Jill Stein is nonetheless likely a grifter getting paid by Russians or other nefarious interests, which kind of undermines the sincerity of any supposed progressive policies that she claims to care about, so I no longer consider myself a supporter of hers, but I will keep this blog up just for posterity's sake, and to show how my perspective has shifted over time.

Of course the FF7 remake was too good to be true

As we all know, Square recently announced the remake to FF7 that we've all essentially been begging for since they trolled us with the Playstation 3 tech demo so many years ago. Director Tetsuya Nomura will be helming it and so far all we know about platforms is that it will be releasing on the Playstation 4. So far so good. But of course, Square wasted no time with destroying the hype, as immediately when asked about if the story will remain the same or feature new elements, Nomura responded, "We've announced an HD port version on the Playstation 4, and then we have the remake coming to PS4. You'll have this extremely, very, very pretty FFVII existing on the same plane. We feel that if that happens, it's like, why have the same exact game?" Yeah I dunno Nomura, it's almost like you're doing a remake and not an original game. And then when asked about if the gameplay would at least remain intact, Nomura again responds that there will be "dramatic changes" to the combat.

Oh for god sakes. YOU HAD ONE JOB SQUARE. ONE JOB. Just make a straight remake of FF7 with modern production values and that's it. Guaranteed dollar bills pouring in so fast that it would cave in through the rooftops. I mean it literally doesn't get any easier than that. But whatever, let's break this down for a moment. I love how he's treating this "HD" port as if it's already a sufficient alternative if you want to go back and relive the original game. No dude, the entire reason why fans were clamoring for a remake for so long was that we wanted to play the original game with better graphics, because the reality is, those chibi field models look like ass.

Seriously. What the hell am I looking at here?

It's not even that the game's graphics haven't aged well; the truth of the matter is those models always looked awful, even from day one. And that's the number one reason I hear that modern gamers tend to shy away from it. It just looks atrocious. That is to be more specific, the graphics are atrocious. The actual gameplay and story itself still holds up fantastically well. Many of the story's themes are still very relevant. There's no reason to change anything there. Has Square learned nothing from the success of Bravely Default? Square seems so scared that a traditional JRPG can't hold up in a modern market that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They try to make their JRPGs "streamlined" for the modern gamer so as to try and appeal to a broader audience, and then you get stuff like FFXIII that performs poorly with fans and critics, and then they turn around and conclude, "Clearly JRPGs can't survive in a modern market, we need to modernize it more." NO genius, it's precisely because you tried to deviate from the original formula too much and dumb the game down that it was poorly received. It's not because the traditional JRPG formula doesn't hold up. FFXIII didn't receive a lukewarm response because it was using an aging design formula that only appeals to a niche audience. It was panned because the story was flat, and there wasn't anything to do in the game except run in a straight line and fight; problems that don't exist in previous Final Fantasy games.

We already have examples of successful remakes from FF7's era. Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Star Fox 64 got some notable graphical overhauls on the 3DS while the gameplay remained almost identical with some slight tweaks. Pokemon X and Y have sold over 12 million copies, and their turn-based combat is more primitive than Final Fantasy's. So maybe it's about time Square takes a cue from Nintendo and have a little faith in their own products.

I'm not normally one to get worked up about changes to source material. I recognize that there are flaws in everything, and there's pretty much always room for improvement. But Final Fantasy VII already is a masterpiece, and it doesn't need much changing. The mini games were arguably the weakest part about the game, with many of them being too basic or gimmicky, and could certainly use some more polish. But Square has no business doing a complete overhaul of the combat, much less any other major aspect of the game.

I guess part of what irks me so much about this remake is that now the game will be introduced to a new generation of gamers, and much like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask before it, this remake could have served as a good introduction to some more classic games, which could motivate modern gamers to maybe explore some more classics that they might have missed out on. But now that there's going to be "dramatic changes", modern gamers aren't really getting a taste of gaming history. My worst fear ironically is that this new game might actually turn out great, but not a masterpiece. Because then the majority of gamers will flock to it and sacrifice quality gameplay in favor of shiny graphics because it's merely "good enough", while the original superior game is left in the dust, despite being the superior game, and newer generations will wonder why FF7 is viewed as such a classic.

Well, because you played the watered down botched version, not the iconic masterpiece that it's based on. At least we've still got those mods for the PC version to offer us what apparently Square cannot.

Square is really playing with fire here. They're messing with people's childhoods and taking a huge risk that they really don't have to. Let's not make the same mistake that Devil May Cry did where an unnecessary reinvention alienated its core fanbase and failed to pull in many newcomers either. Tweaks around the edges make sense, but this is supposed to be a remake; not a reboot, and certainly not a new original game either, so let's treat it like one. Hopefully some day Square will realize that if they just embraced their own culture, stopped trying to emulate the Call of Duties of the world, and made a game that is unapologetically a Japanese passion project that celebrates JRPGs, then they can reignite that old spark that once made FF7 so popular in the first place.

Does video game length matter?

Well the big discussion happening this week centers around Ready at Dawn's new Playstation-exclusive release, The Order 1886. It's been getting a lot of flack from critics for being dull and poorly-paced, while another debate is being had by players about the game's supposed short length. Some rumors have spread around that the game only clocks in at about 5 hours of content, and there is no multiplayer mode or additional content to keep you coming back. On the other hand, I've heard some counter-arguments that this is only true if you play through the game as fast as you can while skipping side quests and other additional content within the campaign, but regardless of the game's actual length, I think this is a good segue into a more general discussion about what should and shouldn't be an acceptable length for gameplay time.

I want to start off by saying though that overall I think too much emphasis is placed on game length nowadays; though it also doesn't help that there now exists exploitative DLC schemes that might have exacerbated this issue. In the old days, when a game was released, it was generally considered complete as-is. There was no Internet, no patches to fix bugs, and no DLC to expand the amount of content in the game, so developers couldn't just get away with cutting corners and fixing problems with their games months later down the road while charging you extra for it. Now it seems like everyone has to be on high alert about the amount of content they're getting because it is so easy for developers to just cut something out of the game that would have been in it at release if it weren't for the fact that they can now just cut it out instead and charge extra for it as DLC. As a quick aside, this is one of the reasons why I just hate the concept of DLC in general and I don't think it should exist as a content delivery method at all. If developers want to release more content for a game, it should come in the form of a worthwhile expansion pack that adds a significant amount of gameplay, like Blizzard Entertainment's expansion release paradigm.

But getting back to the topic at hand, when it comes right down to it, I would much rather pay $60 for a game that is a 5-hour blast to play as opposed to a 30-hour generally mediocre experience. Quality of content is far more important than quantity, but at the same time I would be lying if I said that quantity doesn't matter at all. At the end of the day, if a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy for example turned out to be only half an hour long and I went to the movie theater to watch it, I would come out of that theater feeling a bit cheated out of my money, as I'm sure many other people would. So length of content does matter, but I think there's a lot of factors we should consider before writing something off as too short. When it comes to video games in particular, one of the first things I consider is the genre. Video games unlike movies don't have a consistent standard where they almost all fall into a typical length of 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours regardless of genre. With video games the experience can range anywhere from 5 minutes to literally 200 hours of content. Simple puzzle-solving games meant to be played in short bursts like Tetris for example are only going to be 5 minutes on average, while an MMORPG like World of Warcraft can easily surpass 200 hours. It would be completely unreasonable to expect a game like Tetris to offer the same amount of content as World of Warcraft; the genre just doesn't lend itself to offering that much to the player.

But with that being said, this is also where pricing should come into play. Since Tetris is such a short game, it would also be unreasonable to charge the same $60 price tag as a full-fledged AAA title. So as long as developers are properly scaling their prices to the experience you're getting, it's OK to trim the length. As another example, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes was priced cheaper at launch than a typical AAA game despite offering AAA production values because the campaign only clocked in at around roughly 2 hours. This makes sense given that you're getting less content than normal for a game of that particular genre. But at some point there is a cutoff for me that usually falls at around 4-5 hours of gameplay, and at that point the amount of content in proportion to the price tag starts to matter far less than the quality of content. Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is a mecha action game that I'd say probably only clocks in around 4 hours, but in that 4 hours you will experience some of the most intense and satisfying mecha combat ever, along with an interesting story that has a large sweeping scope and climactic conclusion. By the time I got to the end of the game, even though I knew it was short, I didn't feel cheated out of my money in the slightest, even though the game was given a full AAA price tag at the time. When it comes right down to it, quality ultimately trumps quantity. So I think the issue is a bit more complicated than just boiling down to a simple price-per-hour formula.

However, I think experimenting with different price points is something that more developers should consider looking into, as there's technically no law that says your game must hit that $60 gold standard, and this could help alleviate problems with many modern games too. A common bad trend I've noticed with the industry is a formula where the game starts out very engaging and story-driven; the developers really try hard to suck you into it, but then after the first couple of hours or so, the gameplay quickly drops off a cliff and is padded out with tons of repetition; usually in the form of performing pointless mundane tasks or grinding out armies of baddies that you have to kill. Eventually the gameplay might start to pick up some steam again towards the end if you're lucky. But generally speaking, all this filler and padding adds up to greatly damaging the overall gameplay experience if it is overused enough, and in no franchise can I think of a better example of this than Assassin's Creed. This is particularly noticeable in the first game, where it starts off incredibly engaging and story-driven; full of mystery and intrigue, interesting characters, and well-paced gameplay, but then about a couple hours into the game the story just evaporates and it mostly leaves you to your own devices. All you can do is travel from city-to-city performing lots of mundane tasks for people around town until you acquire enough information to track your real assassination target. It's all very repetitious and predictable, and not particularly engaging. Because of this, the game really went from a day-one purchase to maybe a rental at best in terms of its value. And the franchise has never really been able to pull itself out of this rut. Even when the series was at its best in Assassin's Creed II, there was still a large segment throughout the middle of the game that eventually devolved into needless tedium. This was most likely done because there is an established precedent and expectation that these games must reach a certain amount of content length in order for the purchase to be "justified". But that's just it; how about instead of filling these games up with boring padding, just adjust the price tag according to the amount of worthwhile content in the game. Cut all the padding out of Assassin's Creed II and make it several hours shorter, but then charge $20-30 less for it. I think this would have been a much better alternative than what we got, and it would have been a stronger game for it. Adding content purely for the sake of having more content doesn't necessarily make a better game.

But jumping back to The Order 1886 for a moment, I think it's rather interesting that people are making a big deal out of this game's length in particular, as there's been plenty of single player games before it that offer similar amounts of content. I think perhaps what is going on is that people are mistaking lack of quality content for lack of quantity, because if the game were as consistently exciting as something like Zone of the Enders 2, I'm sure there would be a lot less complaint about the game's length. But who knows, I haven't actually had a chance to play the game yet myself.

So what do you think? Does game length matter? And if it does, how does it factor into your purchasing decisions? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Nintendo's new YouTube Creators Program: Still problematic

Nintendo just recently launched their new "Creators Program", which now allows YouTubers to share ad revenue with Nintendo. To quote directly from their website, "In the past, advertising proceeds that could be received for videos that included Nintendo-copyrighted content (such as gameplay videos) went to Nintendo, according to YouTube rules. Now, through this service, Nintendo will send you a share of these advertising proceeds for any YouTube videos or channels containing Nintendo-copyrighted content that you register."

Am I not merciful?

So first of all, you gotta love that sly wording in Nintendo's statement there. They make it sound as if it's because of YouTube's policies that they were just forced against their own will to take your money and pocket it for themselves. Poor Nintendo, we really feel for you. I know I just get filled with an overwhelming sense of sadness too whenever piles of money are funneled to my PayPal account for content that I didn't even create. Please Nintendo, you're not fooling anyone. We all know it was precisely because you went out of your way to demand that YouTube enforces strict copyright policies on your gameplay footage, which is why everyone keeps getting flagged for it. Your hands aren't tied; it's YouTube that is getting tied, and yet Nintendo is acting like they're offering this program out of the generosity of their hearts, as if no one else would be so considerate as to share ad revenue with content creators... except for Activision, Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft, Valve, SEGA; hell, even EA. And mind you, all of these companies don't just share revenue, they give all of it to content creators, because these companies understand that YouTube videos already serve as a form of free advertisement for all their games.

This is what drives me nuts about this whole situation with Nintendo. What they're doing here is only hurting them by denying free advertisement for their games, and at a time when they so desperately need it. Angry Joe is a video game critic on YouTube with nearly two million subscribers. He's garnered most of his audience through reviewing games like Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, DragonAge, Titanfall, and essentially a whole lot of games that are very different in tone and feel from Nintendo's, so this is a potential new market of gamers for Nintendo to reach, but Joe also just recently picked up a Wii U and has expressed a lot of positive things about it, and yet unfortunately he can't really review any games for it because it will get flagged for copyrighted content. So because of Nintendo's YouTube copyright policy, they're actually denying exposure to a potentially whole new audience of over a million people that might have otherwise ignored their games. And that's the most frustrating thing about this; if Nintendo would just let YouTube critics do their job, they don't need all this censorship and control. They would get great glowing reviews on their games anyway. It's not like they need to be hiding opinions about Mario Kart 8 or Super Smash Brothers; pretty much everyone who's played these games will tell you that they've had a blast with them, so it just doesn't make sense that they're discouraging content creators from critiquing them.

Then again, Mario does have a hobby of coin collection.

Even putting aside now that they're at least offering some revenue sharing instead of none, there's still a lot wrong with Nintendo's new policies. First, it's an opt-in program that you have to sign up for before the revenue can apply, and this comes with its own set of rules and caveats too, including stipulations like needing to wait for approval on each video even after you've already signed up for the program. For reviews, this can be especially crippling because many critics aim to have them out before game releases, which is when they can expect to get the most traffic on their viewership. Not to mention that this sets an incredibly bad precedent where Nintendo has free rein to disapprove whatever videos they personally don't like, which could easily result in abuses like denying approval of game reviews simply because they don't agree with the critic's score or opinion.

On top of this, the whole program has potential to get much more insidious, and this partially gets into why I've always had problems with Steam even in spite of all its love and success. I know I'm the bad guy for always hating on Steam, but this is the double-edged sword that is part of how capitalism works. When a company proves that a certain market is viable, you can bet other companies will follow suit, which is why we've now seen the rise of DRM clients like Origin, Uplay, and Battle.net. Valve proved that Steam could work, and now we have a slew of copy-cats each with their own annoying platform that you have to install and load up on your machine every time you want to play a different game. It's annoying, and we shouldn't have to tolerate it. But much like how DRM clients have taken over the PC gaming scene, you can bet that once these other companies see that what Nintendo is doing is actually successful, then they're going to want a slice of that money pie too, and you can expect that you'll find yourself having to sign up for and agree to all sorts of varying different terms and rules from a bunch of different companies every time you want to post gameplay footage of any game on YouTube. This would of course become a figurative paperwork nightmare for the Let's Play scene, so let's just hope this program doesn't succeed.

Now some defenders have argued that they can see why game companies might feel entitled to this money at least for certain games like perhaps RPGs that are heavily story-driven, or a game like Metal Gear Solid where there are long cutscenes and cinematics that make up a large part of the game. I am not in this camp however. As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo is not entitled to this ad revenue at all. It doesn't matter what kind of game we're talking about here. If your gameplay is so poor that someone would go out of their way to only watch videos of it on YouTube to the point that they no longer feel compelled to buy the game, then that's a fundamental problem with your game design, not YouTube content creators. Mass Effect is a story-driven game. I could have just gone on YouTube and watched someone else play it, but I didn't, because it turns out the game is actually fun to play too, and I would only be robbing myself of the full experience if I had skipped out on it. Furthermore, the idea that watching someone else play a video game constitutes as copyright infringement is as silly as suggesting that it should be copyright infringement to showcase your movie collection in spite of not actually showing the video content itself; only the physical DVDs. Watching a game just isn't the same as playing it, and they can't be equivocated. So I'm sorry, but I'm not giving Nintendo a break here. Content creators put a lot of work into their videos outside of just including gameplay footage, and for most YouTubers, the main focus of the video isn't even the gameplay but their commentary over it, which brings me to my next point.

Still some other defenders say who are we to complain; YouTubers should get a real job, which really just exposes how bitter some people are that they couldn't make it doing something they enjoy. It's not the content creator's fault that you chose the profession that you did, and it's not like they didn't put any effort into reaching the status that they have either. Do people really know how hard it is to pick up subscribers? It's not like you can just up and release your first video one day and instantly expect to hit a million views. This rarely happens, and more often than not it can take years of dedication and hard work for someone to build up a subscriber-base to the point that they can actually depend on it for their livelihood. Even for videos as simple as the commentaries I do, between writing the script for them, recording the gameplay footage, recording my voice commentary, designing the graphics for them, editing the footage together in Adobe Premiere, and rendering the video out in Adobe Media Encoder, you're easily looking at 5-10 hours of work for about 5-10 minutes of footage. It's not as simple as it looks, and why shouldn't people be allowed to work jobs that they also happen to enjoy? This is no different from people who make a living off of any other entertainment medium. YouTube has opened up a whole new marketplace of entertainment that has created lots of new jobs for people, many of whom previously had no other reasonable way of earning a living like boogie2988 for example, and I personally think that's fantastic, not something that should be frowned upon.

I want to go on record though and emphasize that while I do find this whole Creators Program petty and stupid on the part of Nintendo, I certainly don't hate them overall as a company, and this is one of the most irritating things about whenever I have to do commentaries like this, because Nintendo already gets such undeserved hate as it is, and the hecklers always take opportunities like this to try and spell doom and gloom for Nintendo, as if this is the last nail in the coffin for them; their glory days have long gone by and they're out of touch with the industry. Never mind that just last generation the Wii outsold both its competitors by over 20 million units, never mind that the 3DS is currently far outselling the PS Vita, never mind that they're now the only company of the Big Three that offers free online play, never mind that they just came out with several critically acclaimed titles that all worked on release; the Nintendo hate wagon prefers to ignore all of this and pretend like Nintendo is somehow going the way of SEGA. The reality is though, Nintendo isn't going anywhere soon, and they've otherwise done a good job with a lot of other things, so let's ground our criticisms with some proper perspective. There's no question that what Nintendo is doing here is bad, but I'm criticizing Nintendo right now because I want them to succeed as a company, not because I want them to fail. Make the right choice, Nintendo. YouTube videos can be free advertisement for your games, and letting content creators post gameplay unrestricted will make your fanbase happier too.

SOE releases free-to-play game for $20

Sony Online Entertainment just recently launched an early access version of their upcoming online zombie survival game, H1Z1. The game obviously takes inspiration from titles like DayZ and WarZ, attempting to create a persistent online world in a zombie apocalypse setting, which is something I'm personally totally OK with, as the original concept behind DayZ is great but has still never really been perfected yet, so I'm all for bringing more competition into this genre until somebody gets it right. Zombie settings in video games of course are hardly something new, but the way in which DayZ brought it to life was really unique because players would actually have to scavenge for food and supplies to survive, and when you die, there is a real sense of permanence to it because you lose all your gear, so getting into a shootout with other players or being chased down by zombies would create some incredibly tense and fun moments.

But of course, Sony only saw dollar signs and had to fuck everything up. Now how did they manage to do this you might ask? Well, H1Z1 is supposed to be a free-to-play game that would be supported through microtransactions. OK, fair enough. Lots of free-to-play games use this model. They gotta make money through it somehow, so as long as it's not pay-to-win, it's all fine, right? Well not really, because even though the game is supposedly "free-to-play", this early access version actually costs $20 upfront. $20 for an incomplete free-to-play game! You can't actually start playing the game until you pay $20. Since when did a free-to-play game cost money upfront?! Is this seriously what the industry has come to at this point? We've gone from developers cutting content out of the game and making us pay separately for day one DLC or disc-locked DLC, to releasing buggy incomplete games that serve as unofficial public beta tests until the developers can patch them up months later, to now just straight up openly telling players "Yeah, we know the game is incomplete, but we're going to release it anyway AND make you pay for it even though it's supposed to be free-to-play." Brilliant Sony! Just brilliant.

Brilliant!

So this just in guys, I guess World of Warcraft is "free-to-play" now! Let's all head on over to WoW, because it's only $15 a month, and after that for the next 30 days, the game is "free-to-play"! Isn't free-to-play just great guys? No, no. Just stop it. You don't just get to change the definition of free-to-play to whatever the hell you want so you can use it as a friendly buzzword to lure in more players. Your game isn't free-to-play if you have to pay $20 for it.

But OK, let's just backtrack a little bit and try to give SOE the benefit of the doubt here. This is after all supposed to be the early access version of the game, and when H1Z1 actually goes live with its full game release, they will probably make it be free-to-play then. But that still doesn't make any sense. Because typically the way the early access model is supposed to work--at least if you're following a good early access model like Minecraft--is that you pay less for supporting the game early into its development because you're technically getting an incomplete product, so it's a reward to dedicated fans who supported it early on that they get to have the game at a cheaper price, and as time goes on with the game's development, the pricing gets more expensive towards its release date. Here they have it completely backwards. You're paying $20 for a game that will eventually just be free-to-play anyway. You don't save any money, and you don't even get a complete game.

But then again, let's still try to give Sony the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're having trouble getting funding for the game, so this early access model that they're using is their answer to that, but that just raises more questions. Have we forgotten who is producing this title? Sony Online Entertainment. This is not some fresh upstart indie developer hurting for cash. This is a long-established tried-and-true big game publisher. What the hell do they need funding for? So their CEO can make a swimming pool out of dollar bills? They're not an indie developer. They're not struggling for money. Why is Sony even using the early access model in any form? Is this some hugely risky never-been-done-before project? "I don't know guys, the zombie apocalypse setting has never been done before. I've never seen zombies in video games; we're taking a pretty big risk here." Yeah, I'm sure that's what went down when Sony was contemplating development of this game. They have absolutely no reason to be doing this. You have the money, so fund your own damn game Sony, and release it when it's actually ready. Early access is a model that should be used for indie developers looking to seek extra funding to finish development, not big-name publishers that already have the means and resources available to fund their projects.

But OK again, I'm still trying to give Sony the benefit of the doubt here. It does say on their Steam page that they're trying to be as transparent with the game's development as possible, so part of achieving this level of transparency that they're seeking involves getting player feedback in the middle of development so that they can make improvements based on what the players want. OK, that's a noble goal. That's respectable. But then why do you still charge $20?! You don't need to charge $20 if you're just looking for player input with your game. In fact you'd probably get more player input if the game were actually free. It doesn't matter what angle you come at this from. Sony has no excuse for charging $20 for early access.

But it gets worse. So on top of the fact that you have to pay $20 for an incomplete game that is supposed to be free-to-play, from what I hear, it turns out that the microtransaction model is in fact pay-to-win after all, as players who fork over the extra cash get huge advantages over players that don't, and it's practically a necessity to get by in the game. So even after you pay your initial $20, you're still stuck needing to keep paying more in order to accomplish anything in the game. Bravo Sony, you've really set a new standard that even EA would be jealous of.

Yep, better skip this game.

This is really sad and stupid because if Sony would just put their due diligence into properly funding and developing the game, the concept behind it is actually really solid, and it would easily sell and make plenty of money for them without pissing off their customers. This isn't even a controversial or ground-breaking new concept that players might avoid because it's just too strange and unique. This is zombie survival; zombies are one of the most common overused video game tropes in the world. DayZ has already proven to be quite profitable even in its incomplete form. All Sony had to do was just polish it up and offer us a more complete game, and they would effortlessly beat even DayZ's sales figures. There's no need for all this early access and pay-to-win nonsense.

Is Nintendo handling Amiibos right?

What to do about Nintendo's Amiibos? For those who don't know, Amiibos are basically little figurines of Nintendo characters which you can buy and then use to interact with games on the Wii U. It's an obvious ripoff of Disney's Infinity franchise, though I don't necessarily care about that. Sony tried to copy off of Smash Bros too and quite frankly I'm all for having more fighting games in that unique style, so I didn't fault Sony for doing that either.

Nooooooooooooo!

To be honest though, I never really liked the idea of Amiibos. It comes off as gimmicky and is ripe for abuse as a glorified locked content method. From the perspective of physically enhancing the gameplay, you can't really do much with the Amiibos beyond just slapping them on your controller and watching them transfer data, and from the perspective of virtually enhancing the gameplay, it comes off as just a way to lock content behind an arbitrary pay wall. I just don't see how it makes things more fun in any way meaningfully. The only reason I would find Amiibos worth the investment is not really for anything related to gaming, but because it would be cool to have little statuettes to decorate my room with. I would be much more inclined to be on board with these figures if they were just marketed as collectables and room decorations.

In spite of all this though, I have to say that if Nintendo absolutely must follow through with these figurines, they are otherwise handling them reasonably. The in-game enhancements so far have been minimalistic and don't make you feel like you're losing out on a huge chunk of content. Some critics have expressed disappointment that the Amiibos don't offer enough in-game content, but the way I see it, this is actually a good thing, because the more content that is locked behind an Amiibo, the more it feels like Nintendo is bullying consumers into buying them. It's the equivalent of day one or disc-locked DLC basically.

So as long as you buy these figurines with a collectable mindset and aren't expecting much out of them, I think the purchase is justified. Nintendo has been treading a fine line between harmless gimmick and marketing abuse, but thankfully so far they have been remaining steady and fair with the Amiibos. That could easily change in the future though.