video game

Dvorak is at least partly right about the gaming industry

Dave Farquhar Games , , , , , , , , ,

The big-time gamers are all up in arms over John C. Dvorak’s assertion that the game industry is dying. But he’s right an awful lot more than he’s wrong.

The games aren’t nearly as original as they used to be.Let’s track the evolution of the first-person shooter. Games where you run around in a maze and shoot everything that moves aren’t new. Castle Wolfenstein was a huge hit for Muse Software way back in 1981. The premise was simple: You’re trapped in a castle full of Nazis and your job is to shoot everything that moves and escape. Simple enough.

Was it the first game of its type? I don’t know. I don’t even know for certain that it was the first popular game of its type. But it at least proves the idea is is at least 24 years old as of the time of this writing.

Eleven years later, Wolfenstein 3D was published and released. It took the same premise and put it in a 3D setting. Its inspiration was obvious. And like its famous predecessor, it pushed the limits of the time: You needed a pretty advanced CPU to play it, and the better your graphics and sound cards were, the better gaming experience you got. In the early 1990s I remember people bragging about the slowest computer they managed to get to run Wolf3D.

A year or so later, Doom was released. It was considered revolutionary. The graphics and sound were better, and it required a better computer, but as far as a plot went, all one had to do was replace the Nazis with monsters and give the main character a larger assortment of weapons.

And that’s pretty much where we stand today. There is no revolution here. Each generation adds more eye candy and another layer of complexity, but the basic premise isn’t really changed since that 1981 game. Some people like that kind of thing and others don’t. Dvorak clearly doesn’t. I never really got into it much either. Once I got over the initial wow factor of seeing a computer-generated 3D world, I found I just didn’t enjoy it. I had a brief fling with a 3D FPS called Redneck Rampage. It used a recycled game engine, just replacing the original setting with a backwoods theme and replacing the characters with rednecks and aliens and playing off every stereotype in the book. I enjoyed the game mostly because I thought it was funny. Once the jokes wore off, I quit playing.

Whether this genre has been worked over to death depends on whether you like this sort of thing, I guess. And maybe that’s where Dvorak is wrong. Neither he nor I see the originality, but people enjoy the games and keep buying them. I don’t see the originality in country music either–to me, the songs pretty much sound alike, and the words are all about pretty much the same thing–but the country music industry is huge and it ain’t exactly shrinkin’, y’all.

Hrumph.

But maybe this is just a sign of a mature industry. One of my high school writing teachers was fond of pointing out that Shakespeare never wrote an original plot in his life. But the stories seemed new when he put new and compelling characters in new settings along with those tired old plots.

Some people will get bored with the FPS games and move on to another interest. Others will keep at it, no matter how bad or unoriginal the games get. The only question is whether the audience will grow or shrink as a whole over time, and if it shrinks, how profitable the genre will become.

I think part of the problem for both Dvorak and me is that we’re both old enough to remember the early 1980s, when new games would come out and the new games really did seem new. All told, a total of about 900 games were released for the Atari 2600, and of those, about 100 were really common. (Of the remainders, a very large percentage of them were knockoffs or sequels and some of them were so bad that they sold terribly, so nobody saw them.)

Most of us who lived through that time and were really into technology saw those 100 or so games and enjoyed them.

There’s another difference too. Those games were a lot simpler. That’s both good and bad. A really avid gameplayer will probably master the game too quickly and get bored with it. But a more casual gamer can pick it up and learn it and enjoy it.

A really good Civilization player will probably enjoy Civ3 more than the original because it’s more challenging. But I’ve come to prefer the first two, because I can still pick up the original and play it well. If I spent ten hours a week playing video games, it might be different.

The gaming industry hasn’t completely lost me. There are still a handful of games I enjoy: the Civilization series, the Railroad Tycoon series, and the Baseball Mogul series. I haven’t bought the new Pirates! yet, but I’m sure I will if and when the price comes down because I loved the original.

But I only pick up one or two of those games per year anymore, and I probably don’t play them for more than a few weeks when I do.

Since my fiancee enjoys racing games where the two of us can race, if I’m ever out somewhere and I see two copies of a cheap racing game that looks decent and offers network play, I’ll get it and a couple of USB steering wheels. I imagine she’ll want to play a lot at first, and then it’ll become something we do occasionally when we might otherwise go to the movies.

The gaming industry changed, and in doing so, it lost John Dvorak and it’s probably written people like me off too, because I only spend $50 every two or three years on games.

Dvorak seems to think the gaming industry needs people like him. And that’s the only point he makes that I’m not wholeheartedly ready to agree with. The gaming industry is very different now than it was when I was 15 and playing games a lot, but it’s also a lot bigger.

The almost-was Bill Gates

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The almost-was Bill Gates

Finally, a little bit more detail on the haziest (to me) story in my controversial Why I Dislike Microsoft has appeared: Gary Kildall’s side of the CP/M-QDOS-PC DOS 1.0 story.

The story corroborates what I said, but I wish the story answered more questions.

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Dave Farquhar\’s rules, Part 1

Dave Farquhar Personal ,

Unlike Colin Powell, I haven’t canonized my rules for living, but there is one of my rules that I think is worth wasting electrons to publish.

Don’t go to movies based on video games.What prompted this? I saw a link referring to a movie based on the game Doom. How you make a movie based on a game where you run around shooting monsters, I don’t know.

Probably the way you make a movie based on a game where a scantily clad woman with impossible proportions runs around in tombs gathering treasures and shooting baddies.

As I recall, Tomb Raider got about as much critical acclaim as Rambo. People went and saw it anyway, but I know it wasn’t for the plot. It was for the chance to see Angelina Jolie in tight clothes. But Doom won’t have that benefit.

But is either of them worse than making a movie based on two Italian plumbers who run around knocking down killer turtles and eating mushrooms? Discuss.

Fascination with old technology

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , , , , , , , , , ,

I found this New York Times story on retro technology today. I have my own take on retro gaming.

My girlfriend tells me the 1980s are terribly hip with her students. As she was grading papers last night, I noticed one student had doodled Pac-Man on a paper, the way I remember my classmates and I doing in 1982.

I dig it.

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Palladium and You

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of talk on the Web lately about Palladium. If you don’t have strong feelings about it, it’s probably because you’re not a bleeding-edge computing enthusiast. That’s OK. You’ll hear about it in time.
Basically, Palladium is Microsoft’s initiative to reinvent the PC and make it more secure. There’s a big uproar about it because it reeks of ulterior motives. Some fear Palladium means you will surrender all rights to your PC and cede them to Redmond.

I’m not totally convinced this is a bad thing. Read more

Testing a blown AC adapter

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

All too often, people plug the wrong AC adapter into an electronic device. People just plug in the first adapter that fits, and usually when they do this, if the equipment wasn’t blown before, it is now.
They’re known by many names, most of them not affectionate: power bricks, wall warts… But you miss them when they’re gone.
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Why is party living more socially acceptable than playing video games too much?

Dave Farquhar Society

Consider the following statements. For clarity, “FPS games” means “first-person shoot-’em-up games,” such as the Quake series, the Doom series, the Duke Nuke’em series, and the bajillion other such games on the market.
1. The time I spent playing FPS games significantly impacts the amount of time I spend with my significant other, especially on the weekends.
2. When I play FPS games, I tend to ignore my significant other.
3. Playing FPS games with me is not an activity I am interested in inviting my significant other to participate in.
4. When I’m with my significant other, a frequent topic of conversation is playing FPS games.
5. Sometimes I have difficulty paying my bills, but I always find a way to work the ongoing costs of playing FPS games into my budget.
6. My significant other and I have talked about the effects playing FPS games has on our relationship, but I’m not willing to change.

Any person who fits those six statements is a first-class loser, right? Am I wrong in thinking this is pathetic? That one could even go so far as to say that this person has no idea how to have fun?

Tell me then, why can one take those six statements, replace the phrase “playing FPS games” with “going to bars and nightclubs,” and turn it into something completely socially acceptable? And furthermore, suddenly it’s the person doing those six things who knows how to have fun, and the one who needs to lighten up and learn how to have fun is the one doing the complaining?

Someone please explain the difference. Please. Any time I start feeling proud of my intelligence, all I have to do to change that is to consider this question.

And, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about me, I can’t stand first-person shooters and the only video game I’ve played regularly over the past year or so is Railroad Tycoon II. I play a game about once every six weeks.

Pretentious Pontifications, Part III

Dave Farquhar Humor/Satire

David is engrossed in some video game. It is called Alter Ego, and it is more than 15 years old. I guess when you lack adequate equipment, you have to get your kicks in whatever way you can.
David, get into the 20th century and get a Pentium IV, please. You are embarrassing me. At least get a Pentium 4 1.5 GHz. Then you would be able to play games from 1990 without sitting around and drumming your fingers.

But I digress. It runs in the family. David is worse about it, of course. I have been getting lots of fan mail, and I do have to say I really appreciate it. The kind epistles have been the source of many frissons in recent days. I also appreciate the creative ways people send it. One message was attached to a brick, hurled through a window of my estate in Ladue. I also received a message in a bottle. It was written on a rag, then doused with pellucid–but not potable–alcohol, stuffed into the bottle and lit on fire to get my attention. I would have been almost lachrymose, but unfortunately, I was unable to put the fire out quickly enough, and by the time I did extinguish it, the alcohol had washed out the message.

I appreciate the gesture, but obviously the person who did it had too much nescience to realize the deleterious effect the alcohol would have on the message. But that is certainly curable. Bask in my apposite genius long enough, and it will start to rub off on you. I know, I really should write more often, so you might have more opportunity. Once I have built up an audience (maybe David’s addiction to old computer games is useful for something after all), I will have to branch out on my own and open up a pay site.

So, whoever you are, thank you, I adore you too, but if you want to show your adoration, try delivering the message in another way. Perhaps you should take after the gentleman who tied up my quondam manservant long enough to express his love with desuetuded soap on my dashing Rolls. The message was mostly maledictions, unctuous of course.

I do not recommend, however, that you attempt to give me a 21-gun salute all by yourself outside my front gate. Unfortunately, gunshots are strictly prohibited in Ladue, so my adoring fan was promptly arrested. It is very unfortunate that I was not at home at the time. I would have tried to exculpate him by explaining to the officer what he was doing.

But tomorrow is another day, and I am quite sure that the claques will continue.

04/16/2001

Dave Farquhar General

I’d forgotten about this resource. If you tend to burn through a lot of AA or AAA batteries in a digital camera, portable MP3 player, PalmPilot or PocketPC, video games, or CD player, look into NiMH rechargable batteries. Thomas Distributing ( www.thomas-distributing.com ) is one source. I went to see what the price difference would be between NiMHs and standard alkalines. There, you can pick up a GP Batteries charger with four low-end 1300 mAH batteries for $15. If you don’t feel like wasting your time with the low-end stuff, a pack of four GP 1700 mAH batteries runs $17 and a compatible charger manufactured by MAHA runs $8. For the sake of comparison, a four-pack of disposable Duracell Alkaline batteries runs $5.15 at Staples. A NiMH battery can be recharged 500-1,000 times, and its running life per charge is longer than that of an Alkaline battery.

And for environmentalists and cheapskates, you can even get a solar-powered battery charger for $18. Free energy. The only drawback is you need two or more days’ worth of sunlight to fully charge four AAs.

We go through AAs at work like nobody’s business, thanks to our pagers and PalmPilots, so I ought to mention this stuff to our administrative staff.

The advantages of NiMH over the NiCD batteries that have been available for about the past 15 years is basically longevity and memory. NiCDs develop memory over time, so their capacity drops. NiMHs have minimal memory effect, and their capacity drop-off is much less steep. And their life expectancy is longer. Newer laptop batteries use NiMH instead of NiCD, because now that people expect their laptops to be not just computers, but also personal stereos and portable DVD players, there’s no way you could get any kind of useful life expectancy out of NiCD cells. The disadvantage is cost; a NiMH pack for most laptops will cost a minimum of $100 and $200 isn’t unheard of.

With AA cells the cost isn’t as much of a factor. The individual battery costs $3.50, but since you’ll recharge it 500 times, it doesn’t hurt so much.

And by the way… I’m finished with that Computer Shopper UK article. Among other things, I advocate a hair dryer and nail polish as two useful tools for a PC tech. Hey, it’s an excuse to speak with the ladies, although I am debating in my mind what kind of an impression borrowing those two particular items might leave, particularly to work on computers… I’ll have to ask my sister.

Napster and the decline of copyright–part 2

Dave Farquhar Copyright, Music , , ,

“Am I remiss in wanting to protect the possibility of recouping my losses from all those years ago?  In the wake of Aimee [Mann]’s deserved recognition, why shouldn’t I be able to at the least make back my money selling a `protected’ product?” Breslau asked. “And then, besides, Aimee, Doug Vargas and Michael Evans (the other former Snakes) could start seeing a couple dollars too?”

Napster hurts big record labels a little. But it hurts little record labels like Ambiguous Records, whose big star’s records are still sitting in Breslau’s basement after 19 years, even more. But what about the musicians themselves?

I asked Breslau about the typical musician’s plight. I’d heard Courtney Love’s assertions that she made less money than I make, but at that point Breslau seemed much more real, possibly more candid and, frankly, more interesting.

“Many musicians are poor and struggle their whole lives to stay above water. Those who have regular gigs either in orchestras, as jingle players, teaching, or as sidemen aren’t making what your insurance broker is,” Breslau said. “A great many folks who are involved with music drift in and out of making a living and eventually their day gig becomes the gig. The few, the proud, the multimillionaires represent a tiny, tiny few.  Probably the same percentage that pro hoop players represent as figured against all those who played junior high ball.”

Breslau mentioned a musician he’s working with. He’s 60 years old and has been playing 150 shows a year for the past 10 years, has a worldwide following and critical acclaim. Yet he’s having difficulty finding an apartment and health insurance he can afford, and the rigors of touring are starting to catch up with him.

I asked Breslau what he thought legitimate uses of Napster might be, if there were any. His response surprised me.

He cited Napster as potentially a distribution method, and certainly a marketing and promotional tool. “For some an unspooling, open ended library like Napster can be an incredible tool, a repository of discovery and a font of fun,” Breslau said. “Those who use it the most are students and those who have work-at-home gigs.”

Napster may replace some of the more traditional methods of introduction to new music, but not for him, at least not completely.

“For someone like me who has a demanding job, family and still wants to take advantage of sunshine, the editorial screen and organization that a music store (chain or boutique) or radio provides is still very useful. It guides me to what I’m interested in and when I’m frustrated in that search and still thirst after who knows what, I now have a new tool to seek my heart’s desire through–that’s to the good.

“I do miss great radio though–WFMU here in New York is a last outpost of dedicated eclecticism,” Breslau said. “When I was growing up in suburban Maryland, WGTB, Georgetown U’s station and the old WHFS – a truly great free-form commercial station in the day–were keys to whole other worlds for me.  The role of the `trusted guide’ is perhaps diminishing and I think that’s not a good thing. Plus the art of the segue is now almost completely relegated to clubs. Great segues can illuminate whole new contexts and resonances betwixt and between different songs and musics that you have to hear to get hip to.”

I asked Breslau if he thought Napster, as some claim, was responsible for the decline in record sales cited by large labels. He didn’t seem to buy it.

“I’d say the lion’s share of the change in market share comes from the explosion of entertainment options,” Breslau said. “It’s inevitable in a world of computers, gaming, cable television and myriad other entertainment outlets that the recorded music industry should see its share of the entertainment pie diminish. Competition has totally diffused viewing habits in visual mediums–there’s no reason music should be any different.”

Breslau’s words brought to mind a quote from an interview with U2’s Bono and The Edge I read in 1994 in Details magazine. At that point, MP3 was very much in its infancy, gigabyte hard drives cost $400 and recordable CD drives cost $1,000, a 28.8 kpbs dialup connection was state of the art, and the Internet wasn’t yet a commercial success. It seemed a different world from today, but like today, record sales were down. And The Edge, U2’s lead guitarist, observed, “More people are buying video games today than records.”

And Breslau disagreed with the common idea that today’s music isn’t as good as the music of earlier, more commercially successful days.

“The broader industry is guilty of saturation marketing for fewer and fewer products while releasing all kinds of stuff they never have any intention of supporting. There is lots of good music out there,” Breslau said. “I think its arguable that today’s scene is actually broader and more vital than 5 years ago, but the predominance of mega-hit mentality with little attention spent on building artist’s careers tends to push the obvious and two-dimensional stuff out there to the fore. The idea of a company supporting an artist who comes to maturity in craft and commerce by their third recording is almost quaint at this point.”

Some examples of bands who needed three or four albums to reach maturity: U2, Rush, and Bruce Springsteen–none of whom any record executive would mind having on a label. Impatience is hurting the industry in the long term at least as much as Napster.

And Breslau said it’s too early to judge Napster’s true impact.

“Young people, particularly those in college, are now pouring some of their musical curiosity/energy into downloading and not to listening to radio or scouring live venues or music stores for new gems,” Breslau said. We’re seeing some of this impact today.

“What will be interesting to see is the long term implications of these new habits,” Breslau continued. “College age is when life long musical appreciation and consumption habits get formed.”

I liked the way Breslau concluded one of our conversations. As one who has been hurt by Napster–how many people download Bark Along With the Young Snakes instead of buying it from him?–he still sees a potential for it to be a good thing overall, so long as the law is respected.

“Napster can be many positive things: a way to give your art to the world, a way to build an audience for your art, a test of commercial viability, a great marketing tool–but all of those are affirmative voluntary acts,” Breslau said. “What troubles me is when the technology becomes compulsory, when an individual’s choice and right is overwhelmed by another individual’s desire without regard to the other’s circumstance, goals or intention. If technology is to be liberating and empowering, its radical implications must be grounded in respect for an individual’s right to privacy and liberty, and, yes, that includes the exercise of property rights.”

Part 1 in a series. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3