What Would Matt Do

I know, it’s a simple concept. When you develop games, you like it when people buy those games, because then you get money. Maybe you’ll use that money to fund your crazy sex addiction or to move to some mystical far away land like New Zealand or heck maybe you’ll even use it to make more games. What ever you do with it, you’d like some of it.

Up until this point though, Crytek, the makers of that decidely average but beautiful Crysis game, have finally decided to make console games too. What are their reasons…?

“We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin. I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming: PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive any more.”

Ah yes, the ever present pirates and their dastardly ways. It probably has nothing to do with the game being dependant on the hardcore PC game market, a market that is very much pro stealing. It probably has nothing to do with them requiring PCs that only the special ops guys have to run it with the effects full on. It definitely has nothing to do with the afore mentioned hardcore PC game market being a pretty damn small market. Damn pirates.

But they are coming around on the market size issue. It’s daft for a company to release a FPS as a PC exclusive these days. Utterly daft. I’m glad Crytek finally realized it, but they must be smacking themselves on the forehead could of had a v8 style.

What Would Matt Do: Were I Crytek, I’d quit blaming pirates and starting putting the blame square on my shoulders, right where it belongs. Then I’d quit playing the blame game and make a damn fine console FPS. Maybe.

Yeah, that’s right, City of Heroes/Villians is working on this potentially awesome new feature so I’ll come back…me specifically. Well, maybe for one other guy too. The idea is just too cool for it to be for one guy:

"Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialogue and any clues needed for the missions.

"When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon," added Miller.

Yeah, they just said that. And yeah, it has serious potential. But now I have to ask, what are they really saying. Developers claim all kinds of features all the time and often they either don’t deliver or at best exaggerate the features.

Here’s what I worry they are saying. You can pick a zone, pick a baddie type, and pick a baddie boss and add some dialog. And that’s it.

Here’s what I want them to be saying. You can pick a zone, pick a place in that zone, pick a time of day (if you want), pick what gang, how many, how many are strong and weak, how the quest starts, what zone it starts in (see, not just tied to one zone), full dialog options, what kind of quest it is (gather, kill x of x, kill boss, rescue, etc), what levels can do it, can the quests be linked (i.e. - you have to complete task x before you can try task y), can good rewards be picked, etc.

I want real quest creating capabilities. I want a world I can create content in and share it with others and have that be fun and easy. Whether that’s what they are talking about or not, I’ll give them this, it’s a good step. A right step.

I just hope they pull it off enough so that other MMO developers feel the need to put in their system.

Why, you ask? Because wouldn’t it be fucking wicked if you didn’t run out of good quests and you never had farm again? Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to do the oft lame quests the MMO came with, but could instead search a database of quests, all rated by millions of other users, so the cream of the crop would pop to the top.

Wouldn’t it be great if MMOs had fun quests.

One last thing…I’m not saying MMO developers can’t create good quests. They obviously can. I’ve seen it. But they get so wrapped up in other things I don’t care about (pvp in a pve game, battlegrounds type shit, etc), it would be great if players take up the slack.

What Would Matt Do: If the quest creating system is even half decent in CoX, I’ll resub.

Yeah, it probably shouldn’t be news when when one large conglomerate calls another empty and says:

"It’s almost the opposite of Electronic Arts, which has commoditized development. It did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired."

It’d be liking Wendy’s saying, at least we don’t treat our employees like McDonald’s does. Which kind of ignores the real point, they both treat their employees like shit.

Yeah, EA is notorious for literally stealing the soul of the development houses they buy, but I don’t remember saying Activision was particularly good at preserving the autonomous of the guys they buy either. As a matter of fact, the only guys I’ve heard are good at that is Microsoft and then only with Bungie (i.e. - REALLY successful dev houses).

Except…EA is so bad at it they actually admit it themselves:

Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA’s most spectacular failures. "We at EA blew it," said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, "To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it."

To be fair to them, they claimed that in the context of we’re trying to fix things, but still.

You know what I’d love to see? Development houses that didn’t have to be bought up to exist. Development houses that could find good publishers that weren’t always looking to buy them out instead of work them. Baring that though, I’d love to see publisher slash developer houses (EA, Activision, Ubi, etc) that care about the development teams they have working under them and give them a bit of freedom.

Not to over use the statement or anything, but I’d also like a moon pony.

What Would Matt Do: Were I made of money, I’d start a publishing house and run it the right way. Of course, I’d first have to go to business school and learn what the right way was beyond respecting your employees. Though respecting my employees would put me a huge leg up on competition.

This is amazing stuff. Maybe it won’t be as wicked awesome (this is for you, sweets) as it appears on the videos, but damn me if I’m not excited. I don’t remember the last time I was as interested in a remake of a childhood game as I am for this one.

And even if you haven’t played Bionic Commando in the past (and if you haven’t, you probably shouldn’t call yourself a gamer), this game bring multiple multiplayer modes (there was no multiplayer in the original) to the table along with what looks like a particulary tight single player game. I’m in lust without ever having touched the controller’s colorful buttons to use my mechanical arm of doom.

What Would Matt Do: I’d utter something like, "Daddy likes!"

Far be it from me to judge the Jedi Church or their Force loving ways. As a matter of fact, I’d invite them in for a good long chat and maybe some lunch if they’d door to door like the JW folks. I bet they wouldn’t even call me the devil.

But, I still can’t help laughing at the symbolism of someone dressing up as Darth Vader and attacking Jedi Church members. To them, that must be like someone dressing up as a Nazi and attacking a jewish get together. Or the anti-christ attacking a tent revival. And while the first of those might not be funny, the second would be hilarious and almost as funny as being a Jedi Church member and getting your ass kicked by Vader.

What Would Matt Do: I’d try to keep a straight face if a Jedi Church member told me this…and most likely fail.