Tag: Gaming

Gaming related thoughts.

To Iterate, Or Not To Iterate

.Reading time 14 minutes.

I was reading this blurb over on N4G and while it adds up to little more than speculation by a developer I had an instant revulsion to even the suggestion that Sony or Microsoft would entertain this idea. Naturally that revulsion eventually coalesced into an opinion that I thought belonged here.

“With Sony and Microsoft expanding the line with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, we might just see continual evolution in the line rather than completely new boxes and architecture. We can see both follow a similar formula that Apple has with cell phones.” – Colin Moore, Holospark

It’s not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind since Sony announced it was dipping its toe in with the PS4 Pro to see how console owners might react to a mid-generation upgrade. By all current metrics the experiment certainly hasn’t been a flop and may even end up being an overall success but I don’t think we can really know that for sure quite yet. Their competition over at Xbox certainly haven’t been idle, putting in the work to upgrade already released games to make them worth revisiting on the One X. I’ll be very interested to see how the cost of that extra work tallies up against the sales numbers for the system which thus far has beaten out the Pro in units shifted. The biggest knock against Xbox right now is a lack of platform exclusives to stack up against the rather impressive stable Sony has built up but ultimately if you’re asking people to spend another $400-500 mid-generation they’re going to go where the value is and eventually developers will follow. All that can come in a later post-mortem once we get a little closer to the next generational step, for right now we have other things to talk about.

What is it about the concept of iterative consoles that repulses me and in my opinion should do the same for you?

For starters let me go back to the argument that console fans generally make against their bigger siblings, the PC. Cost. One of the things that is generally laid at the feet of PC enthusiasts is that while they may be better they also pay an exorbitant premium for that status. Unfortunately for people who use that argument its easily disproven and I don’t say that to be flippant, it’s just the simple truth. Consoles these days are using the same hardware that we use in PCs only theirs are a handful of generations behind almost immediately after their release. We can build budget PCs that cost less than consoles and perform better on modern games, this comes with the caveat that we have to build our rigs instead of pulling them out of the box ready to use but thats a pretty small speedbump even for the most tech-illiterate. The added problem with this argument is that we can easily upgrade individual components instead of having to build or purchase entirely new systems when we want to see a boost in performance. Smart PC builders can to an extent “future proof” their builds by leaving themselves room to upgrade without having to replace other core components due to compatibility problems.

What this boils down to is that the all-or-nothing limitation of home consoles necessitates a wholesale replacement of your system with an iterative release schedule if you want to stay up to date. A modular approach to home consoles where you could purchase specific upgrades for your system is most likely a pipe dream as I can’t see how they could possibly make that fiscally profitable or easy for consumers. The most common counterpoint to this that I can see is the mitigating affect of trade-in programs like those available at Gamestop which is a good point. Trading in your Xbox One or PS4 will net you $140 or $170 respectively which isn’t bad when weighed against the cost of an upgrade, sort of.

Those values leave you with eating $229 for a PS4 Pro and a real gut punch of $359 for the Xbox One X which leaves it only $40 shy of the non-Kinect release version you just traded in. Both of these systems are a definite improvement in performance so I won’t call them a ripoff or even a poor value but for your average console consumer that is a nearly impossible reality to swallow. This reality gets even worse when you realize that the Pro released just three years after the standard console for a combined $628 in just that time if you want to upgrade. I remember people theorizing about a 6-10 year lifespan for these new systems and while an iterative timeline doesn’t mean they are dead it does leave you feeling like you’re not getting the best the platform has to offer which leads to people feeling like they misspent their money.

This also leads me back to the quote earlier from Colin Moore and in particular this portion, “We can see both follow a similar formula that Apple has with cell phones.” which is a sentiment that I think should have people who game on consoles screaming bloody murder. I wont get into a long discussion on the price of cellphones but anyone who looks at an iPhone X with its accompanying price tag and thinks, “Makes sense.” needs their head examined. Just some quick context for those who may have forgotten, the original iPhone retailed for $499-599 however within three months that price was dropped to $399. The 3G retailed for $199-299. Fast forward a mere eleven years and your new iPhone X will run you a staggering $1,149USD or otherwise known as a low-ish end mortgage payment. But no need to worry, a couple of months prior to that release the affordable iPhone 8 series released covering the $700-900 range if you don’t want their flagship product.

If you think that iterative console releases wont end up skyrocketing the cost of your “cutting edge systems” I’ve got some bad news for you. I make no bones about the fact that cutting edge or even high end PC gaming is not every-day-affordable and I really don’t want to see the same thing happen to consoles for the sake of being able to play the newest Call of Duty in 4k. Focus on hitting a steady 60fps at regular HD, it’s cheaper and you’ll be happier, trust me. Consoles will never be out in front of PC tech nor should they be as that isn’t their purpose, the extra cost burden of an iterative release schedule will do nothing to really improve the experience in a meaningful way. Whats more I don’t think that the majority of their consumer base will engage with that schedule outside of a handful of early adopters with enough money to make the expense negligible.

Suffice it to say the cost to everyone involved, including Sony and Microsoft, just isn’t worth whatever if any potential upside that they see from mid-generation upgrades or the simple abolition of the entire current release structure. Let the PC market bear that burden as we have from the beginning, don’t poison the console market by needlessly dragging them into that mess. If you really feel like you need to close the gap then look at a shorter life cycle for consoles, I always thought that ten years was too long when compared to the speed of technology. I think you could make a reasonable argument that end-of-life for a console could start at year five and be phased out completely by year eight without burning out your consumer base on “constant upgrades”. If we look at the PS4 and Xbox One right now around four years from their release date I think we’re just about seeing their peak performance with releases like Assassins Creed: Origins, Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War 4. I’m sure we’ll see some clever developers squeeze a little more out of them over the next year or two but I doubt much beyond that. That puts us at a couple years to enjoy the plateau or marginal improvements before we start looking towards the next major generation. That period will be the real test for the Pro and One X, will Sony and Microsoft position them to be the exclusive console versions to bridge this generation and the next while ending support for the base models? If they don’t will we ever see games that really push the Pro or One X to their limit as it becomes harder to keep parity between them and their predecessors? Questions I am eager to see answered as it will give us hints to their plans going forward, for now its hard to say. Sony is riding high on being the current undisputed king of this console cycle and Microsoft is still doing its utmost to win back their customers in any way they can after stumbling hard at the outset.

You’ll notice I have yet to mention Nintendo in all of this and if you’re curious why I’d invite you to read my write-up about the Switch. They have smartly avoided this path with their main home consoles and I think they’ll continue to do that for the forseeable future.

I’ll work on cutting myself off here as I don’t want this to be overly long winded and save my further comments for later because I’m sure this will come up again before long. What my argument comes down to is that I don’t think the value proposition for an iterative release schedule benefits the consumer in any way shape or form and realistically only serves to enrich console makers. I don’t begrudge them for seeking out new profit avenues as I’m sure I pointed out in my lootbox post  but I have an issue when there is little to no value for the people who are shelling out the dough. When it comes to technology we’ve become a little upgrade crazy and overall we’ve become comfortable enough that companies like Apple will nudge us towards upgrading with some pretty underhanded tactics. Aging technology is not useless technology and allowing consoles to spiral into the money vortex of constant upgrades, trade-ins and iteration hell I think is something that is best avoided at all costs for businesses and consumers alike. And this is coming from a card carrying member of the PC Elitists you all love so much.

Till next time, happy gaming!

  • Non-Washable

 

 

Controller to the Grindstone

.Reading time 10 minutes.

Have you ever had someone look over your shoulder while you were absentmindedly grinding away in some game and ask, “Hey, whatcha doing?” and immediately start questioning the way you spend your time?

Me neither!

This past Saturday a friend and I were sitting around after a couple bouts of X-Wing Miniatures just chatting about video games when we ran aground on our time with The Division and the upcoming sequel. We talked about what we liked, disliked and the things we hoped that the sequel would get right from the start. After playing Destiny 2 I’m personally hoping that Massive Studios took notice of the pitfalls they failed to avoid and takes steps to not do the same. The general mechanical, aesthetic and content concerns aside the conversation led us to the endgame or, ‘The Grind’ as gamers have come to know it.

Does it do anything for us anymore?

We come from a long, proud and, nacho dusted history of grinding games until our vision blurred and our chairs no longer felt like disparate objects from our numb backsides. Now that we’re in our thirties with more limited free time to invest I think we each individually have just naturally begun to gravitate away from those experiences. You may have noticed above that doesn’t mean we are completely divested from games that use a grind to extend playtime and incentivise investment in their game mechanics, which is true. I used to dive into the grind until I was physically burnt out to the point that I saw loot tables, drop percentages and boss strat maps when I closed my eyes at night. Naturally that was when the fun and ultimately my time with the game would come to an end. I struggled, like I think most people do, with the lingering sense of guilt that by leaving all of the time I invested in the game was ultimately wasted. Eventually I managed to reconcile that the free time you invest into your video games is the same as the time you might spend watching TV, going fishing or reading books. The important decision you have to make is how much of your available free time you dedicate to any one or variety of activities..

I want to take just a second here to make something absolutely clear: This is not a judgement on how people decide to invest their time. It is not a knock against people who play a single game or to this day are still dedicated to grinding away in years old titles for that perfect set of items or max level character. I was, and to a point still am, that gamer to this day, that will never change.

A few months ago there was a round of media attention for The Division’s latest patch which many considered had finally made the game a complete and worthwhile experience after all this time. I had owned the game since launch and had played it through till nearly the end of the main campaign when I finally became exhausted by the lack of polish. I enjoyed it and I had desperately wanted to love it because it filled the looter slot in my gaming that had gone empty for a while. I quit and let it collect dust in my uPlay account until my friend suggested that he might want to pick it up to which I said if he did I’d be more than happy to give it another try. So we did and it was absolutely fantastic, we played almost every night for weeks on end chewing our way through the story, min-maxing our gear and, tweaking cosmetics. Just generally enjoying the grind. It wasn’t too long before we finally hit the endgame which had purportedly ballooned with content since launch so we were excited to see what it had to offer. We played for another couple of weeks until we got to experience our first Global Event. To put it briefly these weeklong events allow players to grind as much as they want towards specific high end gear in nearly any fashion they prefer. Wanting to get the most out of it we did a little research on the fastest and most effective ways to grind the stuff we were aiming for and got started. That lasted for probably 3-4 days before my buddy had enough and needed a break, I followed pretty quickly a day or two later. I won’t lie, I actually felt disappointed in myself for not being able to continue with it. I thought back to the gamer I used to be who probably could have easily sat there and done it half awake for twice as long at a stretch.

We both loved the game, we both had stuff that we still wanted to acquire and content we still wanted to play so what was wrong?

What our conversation on Saturday crystalised for me was the answer I hadn’t managed to come up with when we finally quit The Division and moved on. I was happy with where I was at the endgame before we tried to dive head first into that weeklong grindfest. That didn’t stop us from trying to force ourselves to enjoy the grind as much as we did a decade and a half ago though much to our detriment. Had we not participated in that Global Event I’m fairly sure we would have continued playing and may even be still playing it now, although less frequently. We wouldn’t have progressed nearly as fast or probably ever ended up with the optimized top tier loadouts that we really wanted but as I realized on Saturday that was perfectly fine. Going that route would have meant that we would have more naturally moved on from the game instead of the rather abrupt derailment we suffered. I can’t help but look back and feel like we left on a sour note through no fault of the game or the developers. Just by not really accepting or knowing the gamers we’ve become.

So where does that leave me as a gamer and a person?

The introspection over the last few days I think is definitely a positive for me as I now better understand my relationship with endgame grind. I certainly do still enjoy it to an extent and I don’t begrudge any developer who use it nor the gamers who are truly devoted to it. I do think that personally this realization will help me stop shipwrecking myself on games that I really love but eventually leave feeling like I failed to get everything I could out of it. Unfairly tainting a great experience forever.

Tying my enjoyment of a game to my inner neurotic completionist or worse my overly competitive nature has made some of my experiences undeservedly awful. It’s long past time that I made a concerted effort to grow past that and understand when I am satisfied and ready to move on.

Right now my friend and I have picked Vermintide 2 back up and we are enjoying it immensely. I think this will be my first real test of knowing when my expectations have been fulfilled and I can shelve it where it belongs alongside some of my favorite gaming memories.

Till next time, happy conscientious gaming!

  • Non-Washable

Friday Updates and General Housekeeping

.Reading time 5 minutes.

First off, I hope everyone is having a good start to their Friday! Sadly around where I am it’s freezing because of the hurricane that is currently blowing through. Did I ever mention how much I love spring?

Anywho…

What’s going on with you today? Let me know!

For me just tidying up some small things I’ve been meaning to get to, lets get started!

The landing page for the podcast is here in case you’re bored or just miss us. We certainly miss you. Also starting next week we will begin uploading episodes every Thursday morning at ~7am CST. While we were recording yesterday I decided that we’d earned it as we have kept to our every Thursday recording schedule for the last month which is a not insignificant milestone for us. That small investment is worth it I think and we now have four episodes waiting to be posted which is enough of a pad to account for any unforeseen speed-bumps. SoapBubbles will be on vacation in Paris next week which means she’ll be on hiatus from her regular history updates, HOWEVER! It does mean the return of her daily location posts while she’s there. I highly recommend her last series of travel logs if you haven’t seen them already. Hopefully she has a great time and we’ll certainly talk about it on the podcast when she gets back. The following week I will be in Florida and while I wont be doing a travel log I will still hold to my update schedule here with three or four posts. We won’t be recording new podcasts those weeks but like I said we have a backlog so that will help us close the gap a bit, optimally I think we’re aiming to have a one week buffer going forward.

So look for new episodes on the 12th and 19th! When we get back we’re excited to talk some MCU in preparation for Infinity War as well as our normal chat to catch up.

We’ve also set up an email address for the show just in case, it never hurts to be proactive.

If you want to submit questions, comments or suggestions feel free to email us at TheOurcastPodcast@gmail.com. We can also be found on Twitter: SoapBubbles is @Sophycles and yours truly is @NonWashableGmer.

I also updated the podcast page with a bunch of relevant information as well as links to our individual blogs. I’m sure there are a lot of basic informational and customization options I’m missing but it’s a process and I’m learning as I go!

For this weekend I’ll be getting together with some friends to play some of the X-Wing Miniature game which should be a blast. The rest of Saturday will be writing and hopefully a little painting. Sunday I’ll be stopping by GorillaWithaBrush’s twitch stream to see what a good mini-painters work looks like. I recommend stopping by if you’re even remotely interested in the hobby, he’s a hell of a talent.

I think that’s about it, I want to say thank you again to anyone who has taken the time to peruse our content or listening to our podcast. It’s been a real joy for the both of us to just produce stuff that we’ve always talked about but for one excuse or another we’ve never gotten around to. At the end of the day for us it’s less about what it could possibly be and more about just enjoying what it is at the moment. I think a lot more fledgling creators could benefit from a slightly shorter view when they’re starting out. The totality of your ambitions can be quite daunting but working on a single idea for a post tomorrow is a much more reasonable goal.

Until next time folks I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

  • Non-Washable