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.