It appears that not everyone was shocked, angered and totally screwed by Nintendo’s announcement that Wii Motion Plus, a more accurate add-on to the Wiimote is on the way. Alain Corre, Ubisoft’s executive director, is thrilled, especially with regard to the upcoming hack-and-shoot Red Steel 2:

It was a great announcement, what [Nintendo] showed [in its press conference], because it’s true that on Red Steel it’s the typical product that will appreciate the new device.

Red Steel 2 has been in development for many months now, and this new device will help us be even more precise in what we do with the product.

I understand that Corre is a suit, not a game developer, but if anything that’s just another facet that was missed in the earlier Game Informer article. Are developers now being ordered from on high to start their control schemes from scratch, in this case was it a decision by developers to incorporate the add-on?

And now I’m curious — did Corre and the Red Steel team know about this before?

UPDATE: I Googled around a bit and it seems that Stephen Totilo, a games journo whom I respect, also doesn’t have quite the same story as Game Informer. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told Totilo that developers got notice “slightly” ahead of the gaming public. A commenter also notes that Wii Sports Resort, the box-in title with Wii Motion Plus, won’t be out for until the spring, so there’s no reason a developer who talked to Game Informer should ominously warn that we won’t see third-party titles using the technology for 6 to 9 months. That’s just a matter of Nintendo showcasing it’s own product first — nothing new.

Wii, Media, Rants | No Comments »

I got a little excited during my compulsory Kotaku read this evening, thinking there was some quality enterprise journalism coming from some of the press at this year’s E3.

The story, from Game Informer, is about how developers were uninformed that Nintendo was creating an attachment to the Wiimote that increases precision and reduces lag time. Bet someone working on a game with, say, swordplay, would’ve liked to know that beforehand.

Great story idea, but disappointing in execution. No named sources, nothing on the record, not even a specific number of developers that make the factual basis for the story. (How many is “several?” Three? Three Hundred?) I also take issue with this paragraph, which wades out of factual territory and into unfounded speculation:

It looks as though Nintendo’s making what could already be a tough sell even tougher. One of the Wii’s strengths is that it streamlines the process of getting into games. Imagine the confusion that gaming neophytes will face when they’re told they’ll have to buy an additional gizmo to make the controller function the way it says it does on the Wii’s box. Couple that with a limited selection of games—with little third-party support at first—and the waters get even murkier.

I don’t entirely blame the reporter for this. Games journalism has a tendency — which I’ve mentioned before — to adhere to lower journalistic standards than reporters covering other topics. You can almost see the journalist in this case having a few casual conversations and spinning it into an article. Without individual voices, and with statements like “the general feeling was one of annoyance and betrayal,” readers are led to believe that any and all developers are pissed about Nintendo’s secrecy. I mentioned Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in my opening paragraph, but I can’t say with certainty that the developers of that game would’ve liked to include the new peripheral.

Could this be something developers don’t want to go on the record about? Maybe, but if so, that needs to be articulated in the article. Fear of retribution for bashing the Big N? Now that’s a piece of news.

Wii, Media | No Comments »

Hooray for Google Analytics, reminding me that 3 months without any posts begets no visitors. If you don’t know me, you probably don’t know I am moving to San Diego in a couple of weeks. I already quit my newspaper job and will be heading across the country after a brief respite.

So, the arts department at the paper never got to publishing that GTAIV article I mentioned earlier, because I never got to writing more articles to prove that I was a consistently capable writer. (I guess they saw the blog. Sigh.) So here we are:
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If I worked for a publication that exclusively covered video games, I’d probably be excited to review Grand Theft Auto IV. It’d be a chance to state an opinion that really matters, not just to gamers, but to all the concerned parents, casual players and culture junkies who might be reading.

So it’s not surprising that when reviews finally dropped for the latest installment in the series, which requires players to commit many felonies in the service of organized crime, out came the “games are art” argument and comparisons to Goodfellas and The Godfather. Perfect review scores abound on several gaming Web sites, and one critic for GameZone even called GTAIV “the masterpiece of this gaming generation.”

Look, I’m firmly in the “games aren’t second-class media” camp, but if you believe all the lavish praise, you’re missing half the equation.

Popping in the disc, I found the shimmer of the opening scene, the sweeping score, the dialogue, mesmerizing. When the plot advances, it seems GTA has matured, leaving behind the senseless violence and murder for which the series is known.

But when you’re left to wander the city on your own, it’s the old GTA. I needed to travel, so I stole a car. I’m not a great driver, so I hit a few lampposts — and people — along the way. Just to see what would happen, I shot a homeless person. The main character, Niko Bellic, who seems so likable in cutscenes, can also resemble the nameless, faceless, morally empty character that starred in Grand Theft Auto III.

I thought about criticizing Rockstar, the series’ developer, for giving us two completely different games in the same package before I realized it had to be this way. Without the version where you can blow up cars, shoot innocent people and jump off buildings, you could never sell the one where the characters talk about their feelings and develop relationships.

You wouldn’t have the media hype either. I know this, because my non-gamer friends know nothing of the games that really do have artistic merit. In a way, it works out; the mainstream media frets over the violence, sex and drugs and how your kids will probably do all those things because they played a video game, and the gaming press responds by pulling the “games as art” card.

If I were one of those critics, I’d probably do the same.

Xbox 360, Games as Art, Player Choice, Violence, Late to the Party | No Comments »