Musings on God Mode and Other Pay-to-Win Items

(Congrats to Mage for winning the 149th Kentucky Derby. Sometimes you can't make these names up, and as I teased my questing buddy, "Alas there isn't a horse named Druid." "I would totally name a horse Warlock though," was her reply.)

Although I'm sure that some of my fellow bloggers --you know who you are-- would disagree, the original Nintendo Entertainment System came too late to draw my (or my friends') interest. It released in the US the Winter of my junior year of high school, and I was far more interested in what video games were at the local arcade girls, music, and cars than a new game console imported from Japan.* Still, my brother --who is 2.5 years younger than me-- was more in the NES' orbit. He managed to scrounge enough money together while he was in college to purchase one (~1990), and amassed quite a few games. Alas, my brother had issues finishing some of the games he had, so he eventually bit the bullet and bought a Game Genie to assist him in finishing those games.

You know, this.
From Wikipedia.

He once described what to me was a hilarious encounter with Nintendo customer support about a game he was playing (using said Game Genie) and was experiencing a technical issue in the game. "We don't support those devices," he was rather frostily told and then the customer support person hung up.

"What the hell did you expect?" I told him.

"I thought it was worth a try."

"Come on, it's a device designed to cheat at the games by providing you with god mode; why would they want to support anything like that?"

"I SAID it was worth a try."

I dropped my next bit of needling, because I could see I was getting under his skin. I was the more physically active of the two of us, and while my dad rode me hard on improving at the sports I played, he rode my brother even more for most definitely NOT being any good at sports.** So I'm sure that insecurity fed into the purchase of a Game Genie, and the more athletically inclined older brother teasing him about it didn't help.

***

I've been thinking about the humble Game Genie lately because of all of the so-called Pay to Win systems inherent in a lot of video games these days. I'm not talking about difficulty settings, because those were designed with varying skill and coordination abilities in mind, but paid systems that give a player a boost over their competitors (in a multiplayer game) or the environment  (in a single player game). The Game Genie proved that people were willing to pay for an "unfair" advantage over many NES games in the same fashion as that cheat code you could input into Sim City 2000 to get a ton of free money.***

Or, even older than that, people who used juiced dice or marked decks of cards to cheat at so-called games of chance. The difference here is that you're paying someone --whether a third party or the game company itself-- to provide the advantage.

Yes, this is a video designed with magic and

in mind, but cards such as this have been

used in the past by swindlers working

a crowd of people for easy money.

No, this sort of behavior didn't magically appear with mobile games or MMOs, and I think it's good to remember that apparently it is part of human nature to attempt to find advantages like that. And if it's not a part of human nature, then why is it so prevalent? Because it's learned behavior and somehow okay to seek every advantage possible, whether or not it is considered an unfair advantage?

And really, if it's considered okay to seek every advantage, is there really such a thing as an unfair advantage in any competition at all?

From imgflip.

I do have my own spirit of what I consider to be fair play,**** so I'm not speaking for myself, but I am playing devil's advocate here. Is it really an unfair advantage if the game company itself sells the advantage? That lack of morality and/or ethics surrounding cash shop items that impact a video game --whether mobile, single player, or multiplayer/MMO-- is what gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. If you are poor and you can't afford to pay for the extra items in a cash shop but your richer opponent can, how is that not a form of class privilege? When your inability to pay extra leaves you at a disadvantage against wealthier opponents, that certainly does imply that your social class affects your ability to win. The game company obviously has no ethical issues selling the products, given that they run the cash shop, and given the way companies are currently run it certainly seems like anything is ethical if it makes the investors happy. 

Still, in the end it falls on the players as the ultimate arbiter as to whether something is ethical or not. Whales notwithstanding, if nobody plays your game and nobody buys anything, a game company can't remain afloat for long. 

*To be perfectly honest, I struck out on the girls part. And my car, well... A 1976 Plymouth Volaré is not the definition of a cool car. More like the opposite, in fact.

The 1976 version of the Plymouth
Volaré and Dodge Aspen twins.
The Volaré is on top, and ours was
silver that was so faded that it was
repainted. And that repaint was faded!
From this article by Curbside Classics.

**Yes, Shintar, you can insert the "Gee Red, your parents were kind of shitty" comment right here. I totally and completely agree with you on this. That being said, my brother was on the chess team at his high school and holy crap could he wipe the floor with me. I spent hours unsuccessfully trying to beat him (and my dad), and I was understandably jealous of that sheer skill that seemed to have skipped me entirely.

***Hold down the SHIFT key and type "FUND", and you'll get something like $100,000. Maybe more, as I can't recall the exact amount. Or, if you wanted to be naughty, holding down the SHIFT key and typing "PORN" will cause the game to play a voice saying "Makin' looove!!" My wife was not pleased when I discovered THAT little easter egg, although she has since mellowed out on that point.

****And yes, I realize I'm a bit more hardcore about what I consider to be fair play than most. I mean, I'm the guy who said I would have passed on receiving a legendary item when I was a raid lead because I felt the optics behind a raid lead getting a legendary item were quite poor. You already know about why I volunteered to switch to a Shaman in TBC Classic so I don't need to rehash that, but you probably don't know about the amount of pushback that I got from people (especially those in positions of authority) who told me point blank that they had no qualms about making other people in the raid level toons instead of them. The attitude I got was more akin to something you'd hear Leona "Taxes are for the little people" Helmsley say than anything else.

A Rarity in the Wild

The more I watch the mini-Reds play Breath of the Wild, the more I'm impressed by the work that went into the game's development.

The level of detail that went into placing the shrines and the Korok Seeds, for instance, took a lot of effort. And that was just a small part of the game itself. Sure, the game suffers from that bane of open world games, the giant impenetrable barrier at the edge of the game world*, as well as the grind that can wear people down, but every last detail that Nintendo's dev staff went into the latest Zelda offering is quite amazing.

Without bugs, no less.

Write that last part down and stare at it for a little while: no bugs.

In an age where bugs in software are pretty much standard fare, Nintendo released a (nearly) bug free game with a gigantic amount of detail into the wild. Compare and contrast with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Assassin's Creed: Unity**, which were so buggy on release they required major updates just to be playable.

What's the difference?

The biggest thing that jumps out at me was that Nintendo decided to delay release of Breath of the Wild until the Switch was announced and released, which had the effect of giving the devs an extra year to hammer everything out. Nintendo also channeled the Blizzard release process in that they released only when they felt the game was ready, which was no small deal given the amount of pressure Nintendo was under for the Switch's launch to be a success.***

Another item Nintendo focused on was the graphics and sound experience. Voice acting in Breath of the Wild was limited primarily to the cutscenes, so that kept some annoying problems related to integrating voice acting into the game**** from cropping up. The graphics were designed to exploit the Wii U first, and were never designed to be truly cutting edge 4K. The artistry that went into Breath of the Wild was more important than the realism and detail, which meant that graphical problems were largely avoided.

Finally, Nintendo knew what they wanted and they had a long time to develop it. Sure, the platform changed during development, but apparently the differences in those platforms were minimal enough that the Zelda team could focus on the actual development and not worry about performing cross system development such as that found with XBox and PS4 (and PC). Like Apple's own development environment, having complete control over the hardware means that you can limit bugs to an exceptional degree.

My hat's off to Nintendo for their exceptional work in Breath of the Wild. It's the sort of game that I'd love to play if the ability to lock the viewing direction into an MMO mode (such as that found in most Western MMOs, such as WoW, SWTOR, or LOTRO) were available. As it is, I'm happy to watch the mini-Reds play. (Well, until I get a headache from the viewing angle changes, that is.)





*But really, there hasn't been an open world RPG or MMO that has created an entire globe, so that's kind of a "meh" problem if you ask me.

**Or, back in the day, Darklands by Microprose.

***Mission accomplished, there. The Switch is, so far, a big success story for Nintendo given the amount of positive press it got as well as the excellent choice in games released for the platform.

****Such as the mouth and visual problems ME:A had on launch, or the problems ArcheAge has with NPCs speaking in Korean in the English version of the game.

Switching Things Around

Nintendo became the first of the big three console makers to drop a trailer for their next gen console, the Nintendo Switch.

Unlike Sony and Microsoft with their upcoming releases, the Switch is actually a replacement console for the Wii U, and it goes in the direction that Sony attempted to move with their Vita 2, but amped up to 11.

Here's the trailer that Nintendo dropped this morning:

Yes, you saw that right. They were playing Skyrim with the game.

With the presence of Splatoon on the Switch, it seems that the Wii U will still likely connect to the Nintendo network platform.

Additionally, given Nintendo's typical modus operandi of supporting the previous console's games on the current console, Wii U games will likely be playable on the Switch.

Nintendo also claims to have 50 developer houses on board for game creation for the Switch, but the real question is whether they will hang in there or bug out after a year or so like developers did with the Wii U.

One other item of note is that the system runs on a custom Nvidia Tegra processor, the same processor family found in Nvidia Shield tablet. Perhaps that is why the Switch looks like it can do so much given its mobile emphasis.

Still, it looks like Nintendo is blurring the lines between mobile and traditional console gaming in a way that wasn't possible before.


EtA: Added the links to some of the items.

Fire? You don't need fire to beat a troll...

...just a good legal team and a willingness to smack the patent troll around.

Word came out late yesterday that a patent troll company, RecogniCorp LLC, lost in it's attempt to sue Nintendo for how the data for their Mii's are stored.

The judge threw the patent itself out, saying that the patent the company tried to sue Nintendo over --a patent on how police sketch artist data is stored-- an attempt to monopolize mathematical operations.

Here's the link to the Business Wire article about the case.

And an article from Nintendo Life, providing a bit of context to the case.

"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!"

The other night, The Symphony of the Goddesses dropped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Yes, they were there to help promote the latest Zelda release for Nintendo's portable 3DS device, but they were also there to play:

Stephen, as a geek like the rest of us*, thoroughly enjoyed the performance, as did the audience.

The mini-Reds thought it awesome, too.

Yes, The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses is on tour. Whomever at Nintendo thought this promotion up is a genius.






*Although we aren't geeky and well connected enough to manage to get a cameo in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

EtA: The original video is now marked Private, so I redirected the link to another video.

Rest in Peace, Iwata-san

Word has come out that Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, has passed away due to a growth in his bile duct.

He was a programmer first, working on games such as Earthbound, and went up the ranks. He's seen the highs and lows at Nintendo, the Wii to the Gamecube.

He'll be missed. We don't have enough programmers who can shape industry like he did.

EtA:  Dorkly has provided a link to a large amount of art honoring Iwata-san.
Artists Across the Web Pay Tribute to Satoru Iwata