The United States is the undisputed birthplace of the games industry. Built on brands like Magnavox and Atari, the seeds for interactive media were sewn in the west. And then... we cocked it up. After the great Video Game Crash of 1983, Nintendo had an opportunity to make its move, releasing the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. This gave Japanese developers their shot at the American and European markets. Throughout the late 80’s and 90’s, the Land of the Rising Sun cranked out a lot of creative titles. We saw many of the first games with narrative, the adventure and RPG genres, and countless other innovations

Nothing lasts forever; any institution which does not adapt will inevitably fail. By the sixth console generation, the Japanese games industry was beginning to show signs of stagnation. The fact that Microsoft was confident enough to push the first real American console in over 15 years was indicative of their belief in the decline of the East. It seems a lot of people are still fighting this transition and I honestly cannot, for the life of me grasp why.

I think gamers suffer from a malignant nostalgia. Japanese games were innovative in their time, but they have stubbornly refused to keep pace with their contemporaries. The country desperately clings to positively ancient design philosophy. Non-interactive cut scenes, flat character archetypes, the persistence of menu battles, and a host of other equally vexing traits are not at all conducive to telling good stories or even entertaining modern audiences. I dare you to find one significant aspect of Final Fantasy XIII that is strictly better than any of its predecessors (graphics don't count). The story is more unnecessarily convoluted, the absolute dependence on non-interactive story-telling makes the game cinematic (which I think is positively criminal in this day and age), the player has less control over characters than ever before, and the barrier to entry is so absurd that many never make it to the “good part”. I really do take offense when people claim that Japanese games always have better writing and better stories. I think, that if we are using any rational set of definitions that hasn't been true since Bill Clinton was in office.

In the West, especially with indie games, we have seen the exact opposite- modernization. Say what you will about Call of Duty, but the first Modern Warfare had some incredible moments. Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia both took fantastic gameplay concepts and fleshed them out over the course of several titles. BioWare and Bethesda have moved from being minor players in a niche market to titans in the industry. Bioshock revolutionized the way we think about weaving narrative elements into the environment. Valve has shown us just what a precise art game design really is, and Blizzard practically invented E-Sports. Even if you think each of these games suck, you cannot deny the impact they have had on the face of gaming. Our medium will never be the same. What has Japan done to move us forward in the past decade, even?

A Japanese-developed game has not won Game of the Year at the DICE summit since Ocarina of Time. These are the people that make games. It is the closest thing we have to an Academy, and it is far more open to foreign productions. What does this say about the state of games in Japan? Tomonobu Itagaki, Hideo Kojima, the New York Times, and even our own Bob Muir have all commented on this phenomenon. Japanese games haven’t been competitive in a long time. It’s really sad, but as Bob points out, the handful of brilliantly creative titles that do get the green light have to struggle, desperately, just to break even. While the West may not be perfect, the rise of indie gaming, and the general support for innovation in North America and Europe have given us a cultural watershed.

Japan had its day, and it may yet have another, but for now, it is over.

*Also thanks to ManWithNoName, because I totally stole his image.

So... I've decided to hold a NARP at my place in Minneapolis in a few months (exact date is TBD). In the meantime, I want to advertise a get together for people in Oklahoma and Northern Texas. I'm keeping it to just those, because it would be a day, maybe two at most. I'll be returning to my home in Oklahoma City this winter break.

Joanna Mueller, aka Zodiac Eclipse and M4trix (or however the hell you spell his handle) are both semi-confirmed. The target date is Friday Dec. 30th or Sat 31st. The current plan has us going down to Bricktown in Oklahoma City and getting some brews and steak. Anyone who wants to come is more than welcome and we can definitely find you a place to stay for the evening if need be. I can also provide rides within an hour or so radius of OKC (I'd be willing to go as far as Tulsa).

Who else is down?

I want to make some sort of pathetic attempt to keep this active, though it seems that is getting harder by the day. A growing problem for me has been the amount of time I am spending on non-gaming things. I haven't really sat-down and played anything outside of a LAN since LA Noire came out.

I've had the same two games out from Gamefly since the start of the summer, and Steam hasn't really helped my situation.

On the to-play list right now:
Saboteur
GTA4
The Darkness
Condemned 1 and 2
Ilo Milo
Bastion
Scrapland
Bit.Trip everything
Atom Zombie Smasher
Alpha Protocol
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Dear Esther
Europa Universalis 3
Far Cry 2
Machinarium
The longest Journey
Dreamfall the Longest Journey
Torchlight
Left 4 Dead 2
Infamous
the new need for speed game
Heavy Rain
Metal Gear Solid 4

Just a few months ago I had no backlog... now I'm wondering how I will finish these before the end of the year. I really need to stop buying so many games. :(

My name is Daniel Starkey. I’m one of about a dozen new Destructoid interns. We're pretty awesome. I was born in Texas, raised in Oklahoma, and I’m currently attending the University of Minnesota for some liberal arts bullsh!t. I’ve been around Destructoid since about a month after it was founded. I was heavy on the forums starting in December 2006 going by the handle –the_mole-. I know I’ve met a lot of you at PAX ’07 and again in PAX ’09 and I will be coming back for PAX Prime ’11. Maybe we can chill and have a beer or something.

So, as you probably guessed, I love games.Western RPG’s, RTS’s and old Xbox games have a special place in my heart. I believe that Majora’s Mask is probably the best game ever made and I will defend that opinion to the death. With fists. And stuff.

My favorite games tend to be those that are unique enough to keep me engaged for more than a few seconds, and those that encourage exploration. A few favorites: Butcher Bay, Paper Mario 2, Fallout (all of them), Killer 7, every Bioware or Bethesda game and Majora’s Mask.

As for experience, I have been writing about games in one capacity or another since about 2005. A few friends and I tried to start a nice gaming blog but it went belly-up sometime around ’08. Since then I’ve been writing for my own amusement, posting random things on the C-Blogs and working as an editor for some pretty cool dudes at the University of Minnesota.

I’m pretty big into GamePolitics and thinking about legitimizing gaming as a medium for an artistic expression, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing....

Anyway, feel free to add me on facebook, twitter and google+ (and if you need an invite, I got plenty).


I hope we can all get along and be really cool buddies. I just want you to know that I feel really good about you. I want this to happen. I want us to happen.

I am someone who has been steeped in gaming. I started playing when I was just a few months old, and over the past two decades I’ve developed a sense of arrogance when it comes to gaming. It is something that I have reflected upon time and time again, because I can never discern what the source of this attitude is. A main interest of mine in why people like one game or another, and whether or not there is any objective “good” or “bad” when it comes to assessing the quality of a game. In a grander sense, I would ultimately like to answer the question- Is fun enough? And are the people who don’t think so really just pretentious dicks (like me)?



We all know someone who is a little… well…snobbish. When these people start talking about chosen media they always look down on your favorites for some seemingly arbitrary reason. They’re usually giant douches about it. While I will openly admit I have most of these character traits, I’d like to think that I am a little different in that I don’t intentionally smack talk others. I used to, but I eventually realized that this is a really bad way to make friends. Still, I recognize that I dislike a lot of games that the majority of core gamers cherish. I hate most Mario platformers, and I really hate Halo, Gears of War, Resistance, damn-near every Final Fantasy game, all of the old Resident Evils, the Grand Theft Autos, and Ninja Gaiden just to name a few. In each case I have at least one major complaint that boils down to bland, uninteresting characters, bad level design, or a hackneyed plot. As much as I’d like to try and claim that my distaste for all of the above titles is not founded in a rejection of that which is popular, I really don’t think I can, because I feel so consumed by my bullcrap hipster attitude that I cannot tell to what degree my complaints are legitimate, or if they are merely excuses to hate an otherwise exceptional game.

I wonder if any game can ever be called objectively “good”. As an artistic relativist, I don’t personally believe so; however there are conventions to game design- Intuitive level composition, challenging gameplay that avoids frustrating the player, teaching players to utilize new concepts in subtle yet inspired ways, etc. Is a game that follows these tenants to the letter always good? What about those games that break with these rules? Is unintuitive level design ever tolerable?

Halo, for example, specializes in shitty, repetitive level design (though this is limited almost exclusively to the campaign). It is confusing, easy to get turned around. There are even arrows painted on the floor to tell you which way to go; presumably because the developers knew how badly they messed up. The characters are one-dimensional at best and the narrative is nothing if not clichéd. Half-Life 2, having many of the same core elements is redeemed through its flawless execution and smooth, flowing, and elegantly constructed form. This may be my traditional rant, but how much of that is simply my rejection of what is popular; if people have fun, then why should anyone care about such vacuous complaints?



God I hate Halo...

That said, when I play a game that openly goes for shallow fun (for example, Super Mario Galaxy) I can enjoy it up to a point. I loved Galaxy until about the time I became a bee. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with bees, but sometime around then I started asking myself a rather annoying question.

“Why?”


Anytime I engage with media it is an exercise is stavin]g off that one question. When it pops into my head, without exception, it wipes out any possible interest that existed. To me, it is the hallmark of poor quality. I reason, if it had an interesting plot or characters or if it was capable of keeping things new and engaging, then I would not have asked that question. Even things that I think are absolutely fantastic begin to get old after a while. Fallout 3, one of my favorite games ever could not hold my interest forever. As fun as watching someone’s head fly apart in a dozen different directions, it just isn’t enough. This is the main reason I cannot play multiplayer games for more than two weeks or so before moving on to something else. In the end, I always ask “why”, and once I start thinking about it, I can never go back.



Yahtzee, in his review of Psychonauts said that, “I would like to think that we aren’t all so jaded that we can let a few handling issues get in the way of enjoying a game that allows you to set squirrels on fire…”. That’s a great point, but it is one that I think he counters himself in his Brutal Legend review when he harped on a handful of harmless hindrances; quite the hypocrite.

I, on the other hand, enjoyed BL. It got me listening to metal again, I found it genuinely funny, and I had a good time with it. I didn’t mind the lackluster RTS elements because I was so consumed by the world that it didn’t matter. I know a lot of people disagree with me, and that’s just fine but at this point I’m really starting to wonder if there is anything objective about the design or reviewing of games. Croshaw, a reviewer that I usually respect, holds a “bizarre and fantastical setting” over gameplay in one instance then turns around and criticizes a game that has very similar problems. So I guess the take-home point, as per Croshaw, is that fun is sometimes enough; while at other, arbitrarily designated times, it is not.

I once thought that there were games that were good and/or bad independent of the observer, but the more I think about it the more I think I understand how utterly ludicrous that is. At the same time, there are some things that are generally not a good idea to put in games (e.g. escort missions) yet a game can be generally considered to be “good” with them (Ico and RE4). So it really makes one wonder just what makes a game “good”? If everything is subjective, then why try to legitimize what is not there by attaching a number to a review in an attempt to assess the title’s quality? Is it not better to simply describe the game as best you can?

Conversely, it seems like there are games that are bad, through and through. There are just some things that are so godawful that they don’t seem to have any redeeming qualities from any perspective grounded in reality. Games like Superman 64 and E.T. will no doubt crop up in your minds, but the thing for me is that I feel the exact same about Halo. With the notable exception of multiplayer, which I always think gets a free pass on the whole “fun” vs. “substance” debate because I seriously doubt anyone has ever expected reflections on the human condition from Smash Bros Brawl.



SSBB Discusses the oppression of women in Nazi Germany

Some people, like Jim Sterling claim that they find “art” in blowing people up. Some like Ben Croshaw think that the epitome of gaming is grounded solely in fun (this is a bit confusing though because he often accuses games of “having the depth of a spoon”). I think that, of those that actively participate in this debate and are in the public eye, Anthony Burch has the best defense of what games *can* be. Games, right now, are almost exclusively male power fantasies. Only a handful of titles in Gamerankings’ top 20 are more than that; typically starring males, almost always in power suits and requiring you to kill thousands of people. Is it fun? Hell yeah. Is it unique? Not at all. I’ve grown so completely bored with the standard space marine kill-a-thon.

With recharging health, grenades, vehicles, absurdly over-powered guns, rockets, etc. it is not uncommon, for a gaming protagonist to wantonly slaughter dozens or hundreds without a single brush with death. Recently, while playing Dragon Age 2, I realized that it was just as guilty of this. Bioware, being one of the few developers that actually understands the importance of good storytelling, still fall victim to this teenage boy wank-fest by allowing you to kill 25-30 people in a single bout in a gloriously gruesome fashion. This is forgivable in a game like God of War, but in DA2 I was trying to be “good”. I was trying to save lives, but I didn’t really have an option. You can’t skip fights, or even talk your way out of half of them. This unyielding insistence on violence creates this cognitive dissonance because you have a role-playing game from a company that prides itself on giving players choice, yet when I choose to kill as few people as possible, I’m still a mass-murderer at best and on par with an entire Blight at worst. This is the sort of thing that really pushes me away from a chunk of the games I mentioned earlier. It becomes a huge problem for me when a majority of the game is based is rooted in this type of gameplay.

So is fun enough? If all you ever want from games is the equivalent of Die Hard, Family Guy, Harlequin novels and a whoopee cushion, then yes ,fun is enough. If you want Shakespeare in Love, Dexter, Moby Dick then, I implore you; support those few people who strive to push the medium.

I would say that the only rational way assess a game is to look at what the developer tried to accomplish with it and decide for yourself if it worked for you. If they want you to have fun, and you do, then they did a good job. If they are looking for artistic relevance, then take it for what it is. I can understand the appeal of killing swarms of things, but sometimes I need more. Sometimes I start wondering why I can’t have anything else. I think we at least deserve some choices. What do you think?

I realized that I’ve pretty much only posted larger articles I’d like to post some smaller, more regular things dealing predominantly with my experiences with several on-campus video game clubs. I’m a President of one, vice of another, founder of another and an officer in yet another.

So one of the many things I spend my time on is a little group at the University of Minnesota called GG. We meet once a week to talk about a particular topic in gaming. Sometimes we discuss a franchise, sometimes a political or cultural issue in gaming. Sometimes people prepare a presentation to give to the rest of the group, but most of the time we just chat. It’s nice and cold.

I was determined to start the group when I started thinking about how all extant gaming clubs on campus were competitive- and that’s usually not something I am very interested in. I tend to be a social single-player. I like playing games and then talking about them or playing a game with someone else in the room watching. On the rare circumstance that I do play multiplayer games, I like them in the context of friendly competition as opposed to the all-out blood-sport it typically turns into.

All things considered I’d say that we’ve done quite well for ourselves. We get roughly 20 attendees per week, and we could probably pull more if we advertised, but after ~25 it gets hard to control. We currently have two discussion group leaders, Megan and I. With the two of us, we keep things running smoothly most of the time. Oh… also… I met my girlfriend through this club… so… maybe it’s a great way to get a lady friend.

I’ve thought about maybe putting up our weekly topics as a blog post and summarize our discussions, or perhaps making a podcast or something. If there’s enough demand I’ll probably start in on this.

If this is something you have ever thought about or wanted to do, I can definitely provide you with some pointers to make this work on your campus.