It stinks

I fell.

Steam got me. Steam is awesome (I don’t get that people are afraid of this platform while they use iTunes and don’t see the problem with it). With the release of Left 4 Dead 2, I ended up playing the games I bought and didn’t play like Half Life Episode One and Two. Pretty great. Of course I’ve downloaded L4D 2 Demo and of course now I want and I am waiting for the L4D/L4D2 pack at 39$.

About Episode 2: crazy how npc like Alyx are emotionally bringing something while I totally didn’t care about the story. It’s boring. Aliens. Portal. Rescuing whatever.

Also enough with these corridors, especially when they look like intestine. It’s boring, it’s not really scary it’s just gross. I don’t like having the feeling I’m running into a giant sphincter. you find it funny? Okay..

The part outside with the car and the Striders is great though. But the last part when you can’t run with the gravity gun and some bomb you have to throw while you have like, 7 weapons including a rocket launcher is just plain annoying. I know it’s for balancing the gameplay but it’s not logical at all. Against Striders you really want to run.

Nothing like a gameplay flaw to put you out of the immersiveness.

Alyx Vance, hacker, scientist daughter, chatterbox

On the other side L4D 2 is making sense. Not a lot of weapons, only two to carry and tough choices (long distance riffle with a fried pan or shotgun and unlimited gun?). The AI Director is great. I don’t know how many run I did but they were all feeling different and that’s pretty much the point of it. It works, even on a solo game offline, even if the level design is quite linear.

But still, it’s classic fps. Watching cutscenes in HL2 I could not help but think about some fps with HUMOR! Why do we have to get this seriousness in this type of games I don’t understand. I want to laugh and move my mouse to look at the sky before having some action, not listening to a discussion trying to be mildy amusing in a dark corridor, waiting for the next dark mission in an alien belly (or worse, a missile silo).

Modern Warfare 2 is out and it’s the biggest game launch of the year. I watched a lot of footage and the fact it’s connected to wars from now with this uber realistic aesthetic makes me feel I don’t like it. Not funny at all.  

And this is it, I feel fatigue: last week headlines were about Zynga –Farmville, Mafia Wars, YoVille!- using scam practices to get revenue.

Also this inner interview of Keita Takahashi at Gamasutra:

“There are two main reasons for it, I think. Firstly, I‘m just frustrated with the industry as a whole. I can’t seem to predict where it’s going, which makes me feel uncomfortable," he says. "Or maybe I just don’t like where I think it’s going. I’m not sure."
"That’s probably related to my second frustration. I just can’t perceive where the fun is in recent hit video games. I see nothing in them that resonates with me and, their success leaves me feeling confused. The things I find interesting and enjoyable just aren’t reflected in the popular games of today and, I feel like there’s not much room for my voice because of that.”

I sort of feel the same way, even if I’m enjoying a good fps. I feel I could be addicted as a user. I could be addicted to some Facebook scam games easily too.

But as a developer I don’t think it’s great. It’s complex but I feel what Keita means, especially with games like music games or something as bad looking as the last Tony Hawk game. On the indy side, I feel fed up with the retro 8bit aesthetic, or platform games.

So the game market either seems like it’s not fun or it seems like you have to dig the addictiveness, especially with leaderboards and online rankings. Like this report said free-to-play game developers are using the social weaknesses –like peer pressure- to gain audience and money.

It’s not that it’s shocking in itself. It’s more like we’re basically doing the same shit that casinos and pachinko machines are doing for decades.

This is not good. It’s a sign that we’re totally in the mainstream though. But fuck, I don’t want computer games to go this way. I mean, not THAT much. And when I see EA rushing for this business instead of doing costly AAA, it’s not a good sign (they said that they would invest on quality and innovation; no more the case I guess).

I hope you guys at Project Horseshoe found some hope. Please share it!