The True Destiny of Video Games, Hype and More. What Does The Future Hold in Store?

Roughly a month ago I wrote my review for Destiny.  I was trying to defend it.  At the time I loved the game and everything about it.  I saw all of the reviews saying that it was lacking in many departments and I shook them off.  I heard the cry of how bland the story was and convinced myself that the others just didn't understand.  I was wrong.

I don't hate Destiny.  I don't even dislike Destiny.  It is a good game and I have gotten the dollar value I put into it and then some.  But it isn't great.  It has flaws, but so do a lot of games.  So why does Destiny have such a big outcry from its fans because of them?  Well there's a few reasons.

The first reason is who made the game.  Bungie.  The golden child of the Xbox and the people who I blame for a good deal of my longest lasting friendships.  Bungie is a well known name in the gaming industry, and they pretty much redefined online gaming with Halo 2 and continued to knock console online multiplayer out of the park with the rest of the Halo games.  They have a reputation and its a good one.  But with good reputations people tend to expect really good things.

The second reason was the media hype.  This isn't anything new, but anyone could do a quick google search for "destiny game" before September and find loads of articles on it.  The articles talked about the content Bungie planned on putting in the game.  A lot of people saw these planned features in the game as promises, however not all, and frankly most of, the things Bungie planned wound up being put into Destiny.  So to anyone who had been following Destiny for a while, the expectation versus the reality was far different.  As it tends to be, the reality was worse.

The third reason was the public beta.  A beta build for a game being released to the public really accomplishes a few things.  It lets game creators test out the server infrastructure to see if it can handle many gamers playing their game online at the same time.  It has gamers test for bugs in the code.  It also is a big marketing move.

While betas are not just playable demos of a game before they are launched, it has served that function for quite some time.  In Destiny's case, the beta showed only a very early part of the game and honestly the earliest first part of Destiny are some of its best parts.  The problem is that the beta almost showed half of Destiny's content, and people didn't realize this.

A very important thing to realize is that Destiny is the best selling start of a franchise on launch.  Most other games have to have a startup title to build popularity, but Destiny was able to make a profit on day one sales alone.  That means it was successful before anyone even played the game.  The Destiny beta was even used as an incentive for people to put down a preorder for Destiny, as a code for the beta was given to everyone who preordered the game.

The problem here is that a lot of people acted with speculation.  Before anyone truly had a chance to sit down with the full game it made millions.  That's where we are in the gaming industry.  It isn't anything new and it probably won't go away, but that's where we are.

I'll admit that I fell for it hook line and sinker here, and so did millions of others.  I feel like my expectations weren't even that high for Destiny and even I was disappointed. 

So where do we go now?  Its hard to say.  I wrote about my thoughts on gaming journalism a little while ago here when GamerGate was in full swing and they aren't really any different now.  There is corruption in gaming journalism and there are agendas that are set.  Like normal journalism your best bet is to read the same story written by many different sources and find out what the common truth is.


I just hope Bungie can learn from this for the next Destiny, otherwise I don't think there's ever going to be hope of removing the hype train from the brick wall it has smashed into.

Note: This post isn't pretty yet.  I'll make it look nicer later, I just really felt like sharing my view on this Destiny situation and some things it has made me think about.

The Guardians of the Galaxy

So there was this little game called called Destiny that came out about a week and a half ago, maybe you've heard of it.  Yes this is my attempt to review, or at least discuss, Destiny.  It is not a review for Guardians of the Galaxy, that movie doesn't need reviewed, you should just go see it immediately. 

Destiny is Bungie's latest blockbuster sci-fi shooter after a long line of blockbuster sci-fi shooters.  Most gamers and even quite a few non-gamers know the name Halo by now.  The series of games has made billions of dollars and was one of the major reasons why Microsoft's  Xbox was able to stay afloat when it was released.

Now we have something new.  Destiny marks the first non-Halo game Bungie has made since 2001 and a lot of people want to know if it's good, a clone of Halo or bad.  I can  only tell you my thoughts after playing it for a week, and its surprisingly hard to judge after just a week.

The world of Destiny takes place in the distance future.  At some point in the near future humanity is visited by a giant alien sphere known as The Traveler.  Luckily The Traveler was a nice alien and granted knowledge to humans that boosted humanity into a golden age.  During this golden age humanity created wondrous new technology and was able to colonize many of the planets in our solar system.

Since we can't have a sci-fi story without evil aliens The Traveler had an enemy called The Darkness that eventually followed him to our solar system (Thanks for the heads up, Traveler.)  The armies of The Darkness then proceeded to destroy the colonies of humanity and fight us all the way back to Earth where The Traveler sacrificed itself to protect one last pocket of humanity.

In its final moments The Traveler created Ghosts, little cool looking robot things that apparently come from the cast of Game of Thrones, that could seek out Guardians, warriors who could wield the Traveler's light as a weapon.  This is where you come in.

You are a Guardian.  Your Ghost, voiced by Peter Dinklage, has been searching for you for hundreds of years.  Oh yeah, you've been dead for a while too.  The game seems to glaze over it, but you're technically a zombie during this game.  Once restored by your Ghost you are quickly thrust into fighting the armies of The Darkness.

So that's a quick look at the plot, now let's look at the gameplay.  Destiny honestly has a lot of similar aspects to Halo, and that's not a bad thing.  It isn't a cookie cutter copy of Halo, but does take a lot of the tight mechanics that most people know and love and uses them.  Halo always had a combat trifecta of guns, melee and vehicles.  The vehicles don't make as much of an appearance, but the guns and melee are definitely core to the combat in this game.

So the game looks good, feels good and even tastes good... why exactly is it getting bad reviews then?  I like the thought I read in a review(ish thing) I read a couple days ago.  There were two games that released when Destiny did.  One was a very short campaign that ended once players hit the max level they could get with experience and one was a challenging MMOFPS that only starts once a player hits the max level they can get with experience.

A lot of people are comparing Destiny to a mix of Borderlands and Diablo, and I think those are the closest games you could compare it to.  The goal as of now once you hit the endgame is definitely to get better gear, but things like PvP add more depth to the game and then there's the raids.

I honestly can't talk about the raids because I've been told by multiple groups I've tried joining to take it on that I'm not ready.  The first group to beat it died 1,600 times.  I'm not ready.  You're not ready.  The whole game is a tutorial to get you ready.

That's right this whole game is a tutorial.  That's pretty much it.  That's why the story is so short and not very fleshed out.  That's why people are complaining there's not much content.  Which I would like to add, Bungie has already added free content and has promised more, as well as two expansion packs already planned, with the possibility for more.

As of right now I've loved Destiny.  Sure there are things I would really like added into the game, but I don't think there's anything that's absolutely ruined the experience for me.  If anything I'm just upset that there aren't more hours in the day so I can be a productive member of society and still have time to farm for purples.

Bungie can your next game please be a time machine?

Gaming Journalism is dead? Long live Journalism!

So I stumbled across a reddit post late last night, I know, we're off to a great start.  The title of the post simply stated "Gaming Journalism Is Over."

As a recently graduated student of journalism who has actually considered going into gaming journalism (this blog was kind of a test ground for that, although since I can freely state my opinion here I kind go overboard with it) this naturally got me interested.

So why is gaming journalism over?  Well just like good old fashion journalism, gaming journalism has seen a steady decline in quality and available jobs over the last few years.  Traditional journalism has seen a decline due mostly to the internet.  Success is now measured in clicks, something that can lead to a drop in quality or standards in order to attract someone to click on a link.  Those in the industry call that sensationalism, and no it isn't a good thing.

Lets look at the tragic life of the newspaper in the last 10 years.  Newspapers, now mostly viewed as the old school of journalism, used to have a pretty simple and effective pay model.  First you have your subscribers, who pay a monthly amount to get your paper every time it's printed, which were an easy measurement of how many people read the paper.  Second, newspapers would have advertisements, lots of advertisements and that would add a huge amount of money in which the newspaper company could use to pay it's reporters, editors, printers, etc.

Back in the day advertisers would look at how many subscriptions a paper had to see how badly they needed/wanted an ad in this newspaper and would pay more or less depending on that number.  With the advent of the internet many people stopped reading their newspapers and turned to online journalism, this is where mistakes were made.

When many newspapers jumped online they put stories up for free, mostly just copying over stories from the actual newspaper.  Soon readers dropped their subscriptions since they could obtain all of the news stories they wanted online.  This is why print journalism is on life support.  Lack of subscribers leads to lack of advertisers and it's a viscous cycle.

The same is true for magazines.  How many magazines have you seen disappear in the last few years?  One of the earliest forms of gaming journalism came from magazines.  It was the perfect format for it, and it was just what gamers were looking for.  You could pick up a magazine in October to see all the releases for Christmas and use that as a judge for what games you wanted.  Game journalists were experts, playing all sorts of games they could sort the good from the bad and make sure you didn't waste your $60.

But then along came the internet.  Yes people still looked to gaming journalists to read about what games they were looking forward to, hear new announcements and such, but why trust the word of someone you don't know when you could download a demo of a game you might want to buy and see for yourself?

It also doesn't help that gaming as a market has changed.  Reddit user staytaytay posted something from another thread on the subject hat says it much better than I can.  It reads:

Games are becoming a service business instead of a packaged good. DLC, Microtransactions, etc. When a business relationship is ongoing (rather than a single transaction) the power dynamics change. People at the endpoints gain power, and the middle men lose power (unless they add value along the way or have a unique offering).

So what you have right now is that gamers are gaining power (endpoint), and game developers are gaining power (endpoint). Publishers are losing power and so is the gaming media.
The media's function used to be to insulate you against the possibility of spending $60 on a shit game. Not needed anymore, when most of the money is spent on ongoing service and purchases, or the game is free to download. The time cost of reading a review is about equivalent to the time cost of downloading a game now.

The other thing you see is that devs & publishers care less about the media now because they used to focus on attraction activity. The basic formula is attract->retain->monetize. But.. in games it was different. Once you buy the $60 game, that's all the money they're ever getting from you, so they spent all their time and effort on attract. The media was critical in this process. Now that games are a service, the math is easy to prove that retain is more important. (attract is linear payoff, retain is exponential payoff). So publishers and devs are focusing efforts on retain instead. Remember, the media's function was to assist in the attraction efforts. But once you've played a game you don't need the media to tell you whether you want to continue playing - you already know.

All this adds up to an industry - games media - which used to be really useful and in demand, and is now kind of a dinosaur. They're clawing at relevance.

Just like normal journalism, gaming journalism is needed to its niche.  Gamers want to know what new games are coming out, what the plans are for them, etc.  But that doesn't mean it isn't suffering.  I honestly believe that, like normal journalism, gaming journalism has a broken model at the moment.  Change can be good and it is needed to advance as a society, but it isn't painless.

The actual post on reddit linked to an article titled "Gaming Journalists Declare That “Gamers Are Over,” But They Are the Ones Becoming Obsolete." The main focus is on a new GamerGate movement that quite honestly makes my brain hurt and my soul sink.  I don't care to talk about it because it seems like a lot of people getting upset and organized over video games.  Aren't they supposed to be entertainment? I've spent some time trying to get a feel for the argument from both sides, the gaming journalists and the readers, but honestly I'd rather go read more about what's happening overseas.  

Here's what I do think.  I think both sides of this are probably wrong.  To alienate your consumers and life source is extremely dumb, however there are plenty of gaming journalism sites that aren't doing this and readers still want to hop on the bandwagon instead of taking the time to find them.  You don't bite the hand that feeds you unless the other is pointing a gun at someone.  That's all.

While I have sat here and compared Journalism and Gaming Journalism quite a bit, I think there's one thing I should mention.  Unlike traditional Journalism, Gaming Journalists usually haven't studied actual Journalism.  Newspapers would tend to hire new reporters that have actually studied how to become a reporter and stick them at the bottom, working on smaller stories so they can build up and up and up.

Gaming journalism is a different animal and honestly you can tell a big difference in the style of writing between traditional news reporters and gaming journalists, and that difference is experience and time.  Most game journalists on websites are still young, still building the way they write and the readers are picking up on that.  They are similar but not the same, trust me I know that.

So what lies in our future?  I honestly don't know.  If I did I'd be taking this time to prepare myself and hop on the train as it passes.  I enjoy gaming journalism and I wouldn't want to see it go away, but things need to change.  Until they do you know you can always find a post about some game I'm really passionate about appearing on this blog.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any comments, think I'm dead wrong or just want to call me an idiot or worse (don't bother, I've played Call of Duty with the worst potty-mouthed 12 year olds alive) please go ahead and leave a comment.

Until next time.

Shovel Knight or: Why I really DIG this game

The short:
Shovel Knight is an 8-bit platformer by indie studio Yacht Club Games.  It is in essence a love letter to classic 8-bit games like Mega Man, Metroid and The Legend of Zelda (1 and 2).  While this isn't a game I've taken too seriously I've had a lot of fun with it and I can tell the folks at Yacht Club Games really poured their heart and sous into it, which is all I can ask.  I think it's definitely worth a buy if not now at least later at a discount.

You can read more about it on Yacht Club Game's website here

-or-

Check it out on Steam

The long:
Shovel Knight has a special place in my heart because it was the first game I've ever funded on Kickstarter that actually was released.  Technically it is the only game on Kickstarter I've ever funded, but seeing how some of the other games on there have gone this may be a good thing.

I'll leave the pondering of how effective the Kickstarter model really is for later, right now I just want to get down the the nitty gritty of Shovel Knight.  Ya dig?  (That's the last of the shovel puns, I promise.)

Shovel Knight is an action platformer created by indie studio Yacht Club Games for the Nintendo 3DS, Wii-U and Linux/Mac/PC on their website and through Steam.  As of now it is only available in North America.

The game handles well, like any classic 8-bit platformer.  The combat is tight and if you get hit by an enemy it feels like it's your fault.  Shovel Knight isn't just an easy breezy playtrhough either.  I'll compare it to the challenge of the early Mega Man games, especially if you didn't know what order of bosses to fight.  Speaking of bosses, Shovel Knight has a whole cast of colorful character filled bosses, all of which need taken down before you can get to the final area and they can be a little tough, however they are the type of boss fights that give immense satisfaction once you figure out what to do after getting your butt kicked over and over.

Just a tad similar, but in the best ways.

Oh yeah, there's a plot too!  The game follows the story of Shovel Knight, a blue-clad knight who once adventured and fought evil far and wide with his beloved, Shield Knight. After he lost the woman he loved to an evil enchantress and her tower he gave up adventuring.  However, now the tower is open again and Shovel Knight must reach the tower, defeat the enchantress and reunite with his long lost love, Shield Knight.

It's a neat story, but it definitely isn't a game you play for the thrilling plot, it's a game that's just meant to be plain fun and can be funny with a few well placed jokes thrown in.

Did I mention the music?  I don't want to call it perfect for fear you guys may think they paid me off to write this (haha I wish!) however the music fits quite well and I found myself humming along after a few minutes of playing.

So why do I like this game?  The reason is obvious, it's a very well executed love letter to the era of 8-bit gaming that was a major cornerstone for what gaming is today.  As someone who grew up with all those classics I can't help but love this game for bringing back such good memories while adding new ones.  But a game can't just sit on nostalgia alone.

Sure gamers are represented by quite a few age groups now, but the newer generations of gamers may not feel the same way that those of us who grew up with the 8-bit classics do.  In this regard I hope that Shovel Knight can get them interested in those old games if they already weren't.

A game doesn't have to have 1080p life-like graphics and 4,000 DLC packages with leaderboards and whatnot to be fun.  The game just has to have some heart and hard work put into it.  I'm not knocking modern games at all.  In fact I love where gaming is today, how gamers have become a community and how amazing modern games look and play.  I'm just saying that I remember a time when developers had less than a gigabyte to work with and still knocked it out of the park.

Shovel Knight reminds us where we came from and while it's important not to be stuck in the past, it's also important to know where we used to be to appreciate where we are now.

Either way I had a load of fun with Shovel Knight and whether it intended to or not, it made me think about the state of modern games and brought up fond memories of old games.

I can tell that Yacht Club Games really poured their hearts and souls into this and it shows.

I'll give this game about 9 muffled cuss words out of 10.
It's hard to game when you're staying at your parent's house.

An Astonishingly Biased Review of Bravely Default

The short:
Bravely Default is a Japanese Role Playing Game for the Nintendo 3DS that is heavily inspired by the Final Fantasy series.  And why wouldn't it be?  The powerhouse known as Square Enix published it!  Along with a pretty compelling narrative and adventure, the game brings a new twist on the usual turn based combat system.  I would recommend this game to any fans of traditional RPGs and I would especially recommend this to any gamers looking to break into the genre, the new features make it an easy access point to those unfamiliar to the genre.

The long:
So let me preface this review with a tiny bit of info about myself.  I have never played an actual Final Fantasy game.  Short of a week or two long spell on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which is a MMO (Massively Multilayer Online Game) and not the traditional RPG (Role Playing Game) style of most Final Fantasy games.  Call it a blemish on my record of being a pretty avid gamer if you will, or just own it up to the fact I never owned a PlayStation as a kid.  Either way, I've never played a true Final Fantasy game.  That being said:

Wow is Bravely Default like a Final Fantasy game.  You got your jobs, such as White Mage or Black Mage and your items like Pheonix Down to revive KO'd teammates and your turn based combat... your turn based...  Wait.  No, seriously wait.  This... this is something new.

Yep the combat in Bravely Default isn't your grandad's RPG combat.  Instead when you enter combat you aren't determined by time until you can attack or even just waiting your turn, instead you start out with Battle Points, or BP as it's refereed to in the game.   Each action you do, such as attacking, using magic or an item, uses one BP.  With this system you can use more BP than you have and go negative, meaning you have to wait until your BP is back to one.  In order to use more BP in one turn you can go Brave or, if you'd like to bank BP and not worry about going negative later you can Default and your character will enter a defensive stance and take significantly less damage while their in the Default state.

So there's the name of the game right there, Bravely Default.

Besides that the game has a really cool story that has completely immersed me thus far as well as a loooot of stuff to do outside of the main quest.

Still not sold?  Well how about this: In most traditional JRPG's whenever you travel outside cities you are likely to encounter random enemies and have to do battle with them, like the tall grass in Pokemon.  Bravely Default allows you to change the setting of how often you get these random encounters, and you can even turn them off completely. 

To anyone who's never been super interested in the JRPG genre of games this might be a neat little feature, but to the people who put hours upon hours into them, this is a godsend if you're just wanting to get through that one damn dungeon and wrap up a little bit of the story.

Like me.  I do that.

Bravely Default also includes some nifty features to share/receive to and from friends to use against your enemies and also allows you to share abilities to your characters that your friends have unlocked. This means you can coordinate with your friend what jobs (classes) you train your characters with to have more abilities from various jobs available.  It's a Single Player RPG, now with friendship!

If you've read this far in the review you're probably at least a little interested.  To any and all people who think they may want the game I urge you to go ahead and download the demo of it off the 3DS marketplace (or whatever it's called) and give it a try yourself.

I will say this, I've never been the biggest players of JRPGs but this game has really got me invested in it.

A Simply Biased Review of Attack on Titan

The short:
Is really good.  Humanity fighting for survival in anything other than a zombie apocalypse is a breath of fresh air, and this show is definitely worth giving a try.  You can watch the whole series right now for free on Crunchyroll.

 The long:
Attack on Titan, or as I like to call it, Attack on Your Freaking Hopes and Dreams

"But Aaron, real fans call it Shingeki no Kyojin!"

Yeah I know, I know.  But here's the thing.  You try telling your friend to go watch Shingeki no Kyojin and they're going to ask you not to sneeze on them again. 

Get it?  Because when you say Shingeki no Kyojin out loud it kinda sounds like a sneeze.

The best jokes have to be explained, as well as the best anime.  

A little while back I posted my biased review on Sword Art Online, and I still stick by it, it's a great show.  *cough* Here's the link to that review *cough*  In that review I successfully made someone start watching SAO... and then he didn't stop.  I'm doing gods work here people, whether you want me to or not.

So what the hell is Attack on Titan?

Hundreds of years ago the Titans appeared.  These giant humanoids that have no genitalia and the most disturbing of expressions on their face showed up and started to eat people.  Humanity was no match for the Titans as the Titans had size, numbers and the ability to heal any wound.  So basically they were OP as shit.

In a last desperate attempt humanity built three giant walls taller than any Titan and lived inside those walls in peace.  But everything changed when the fire nation attacked.

Okay, no fire nation, but there was a colossal titan that appeared and kicked a giant hole right in the first wall, allowing Titans to come into the town of our protagonist, Eren Jaeger.  The poor kid had to watch as the Titans destroyed his hometown and barely made it out alive.  Eren swears that he will kill all of the Titans after he and his friends are evacuated deeper into the walls and joins the army a few years later.

That's really the start of the show right there, heck you don't even have to watch the first episode (you should though, and you can find it here.)

Like most anime this show is an adaptation of a manga series that's still going on.  The anime makes it about halfway to where the manga is at in the story and stops there.

The show is a very good watch, but don't expect it to go easy on you.  If you know anything about Game of Thrones and its tendency to kill off people you like then go into watching Attack on Titan with that mindset.  It is truly a story of survival and hopefully you can survive the several smacks in the face it gives you.


That's pretty much it, like SAO you can find Attack on Titan streaming for free (with ads) on Crunchyroll.  You can also read the manga for free on Crunchyroll if you've decided that the anime didn't give you enough.


I leave you with the shows stellar opening that's been stuck in my head for the greater part of two weeks.