Category Archives: Op Ed

Others could learn a thing or two from CD Projekt’s first console release I’ve been eagerly waiting for The Witcher 2 to come out on Xbox since it’s PC release last year. Last night, I finally got my grubby little monster-killing hands on my copy. While I haven’t played the game long enough to make any intelligent comments on it, I do have to applaud it for one simple, but invaluable thing: presentation. The Witcher II‘s packaging is a love-letter to what retail release should be. Picking up the game, the box felt like it weighed 80 lbs. That’s because [...]

More developers are speaking out against the sale of used games. The practice has been blamed for studio closures, increased reliance on paid DLC, and even the decline in single-player gaming. Consumers argue that games cost too much as is, and that every other industry also contends with used sales. What makes video games special? Enough irrelevant or misleading statistics get thrown around to make even Al Gore blush. Each time a new used-game debate crops up, I can’t help but notice that there is something distinctly lacking from the discussion. We focus on the short-term monetary effect of used [...]

The glass just might be more than half-full, and ready to overflow. Things appear grim in the console gaming market. Every few weeks we read about another studio closure. Retailers who have become stressed by declining sales figures are closing up shop. Issues like online-pass and day-one DLC seem to be forging a growing rift between companies and the fans that support them. It’s easy to look at the current gaming climate and think that we are standing on the verge of an apocalypse — that console gaming might really be dead. But are things really as bad as they [...]

Injunction forces devs to amp-up production to quadruple-A titles Courtroom dramas reign as the kings of television’s hip sixty-something demographic for one simple reason – when lawyers get their hands on something, you know things are going to get interesting. This phenomenon often carries over into the real-world and is the catalyst behind some of the year’s juiciest stories and scandals. The game industry is no exception. While fans love to read about the next big thing or complain about the last big thing, often the best stories come from the industry’s behind-the-scenes legal disputes. Thanks to a surprise ruling [...]

Outrage, controversy following a Bioware release? We’re shocked. “Mommy, the mean men in suits lied to us! They’re so fucking mean!” Some fans of complaining about being fans of Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 have taken to the interwebz in protest. It had been “promised” that the game’s day-one DLC, From Ashes, was developed separately from the main game and not completed until after it went to minting. Yet files found from poking around the game’s disks suggest that a good chunk of the DLC assets – artwork, character models, audio files, etc – have been included. This should be impossible [...]

Gamer points? Achievements? End credits? These things do not interest me. For years I’ve harbored a dark secret. A character flaw which makes me a sinner among my gaming brethren. A personality trait brands me as a heretic in the church of video games. I am an incompletionist. For decades it was easy to hide from the truth. Now, services like Microsoft’s Xbox live and the recently renamed Sony Entertainment Network have pierced the veil. It’s become nearly impossible to deny my shame. In an era where friends boast about clearing achievements and experiencing multiple endings, I still approach games [...]

I get it. I’m at your mercy. So why do you still patronize me? As I sit here waiting for the latest Xbox Live dashboard update to download, install, reboot, and install some more, I can’t help but get pissed off. It’s not that these updates are annoying — although they certainly are — it’s the way that Microsoft has to patronize me with their update notifications. “A new version of the dashboard is available. You will not be able to sign on to Xbox Live until you download it. Do you want to download it now?” Excuse me? No, [...]

  If you regularly read any video game news site, you’ve no doubt heard about Jennifer Hepler at some point this week. But for those of you who haven’t, Hepler is a writer for Bioware who has worked on Dragon Age and Star Wars: The Old Republic, and recently got a chunk of the internet good and pissed at her, mostly regarding her feelings toward combat (and really, gameplay in general) in games. She isn’t really a fan, you see, and would actually prefer if more games gave you the option to skip that stuff so she could get to [...]

I’m a pretty big fan of the Devil May Cry series. In fact, the original game played a large part in making me the video game fan that I am today. It turned what was basically a casual hobby at that point into some horrible obsession that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. There was a whole lot that was childish about Devil May Cry, but the stylish action was something you always took kind of seriously. If you just killed enemies, you were doing something wrong. It wasn’t just about taking down hordes of demons. It was [...]

Game of the Year awards are actually some of my favorite things to work on, and that’s not just because they’re easy to write. I love to reflect on the experiences I’ve had throughout a year, and since joining nJoystic, it has only become more fun for me. Working with/against Steve to decide what was the best of the best was hardly a chore. It was nice to think about all the things I enjoyed from gaming this year and compare it to his 2011. But something else I wanted to do was give you my personal take on the [...]