Welcome to Hit or Miss, back in our usual format after a slight Sega-filled divergence.
This week: Nintendo becomes the latest platform holder to feel the wrath of bored store clerks with cell phone cameras; video games start Twittering, proving it takes approximately the intelligence and opposable digits of a video game to Twitter; Chair Entertainment punishes Shadow Complex cheaters by taking away their pretend accomplishment points; and World of Warcraft reveals the terrifying extent of its exponentially growing nature.
Seriously, you might want to look around, because in the time it took you to read this, Blizzard has probably built WoW servers right behind you.
Lots of Leaked Ads Fuel Lots of Wii Price Drop Fires
Jeez, don’t these retailers know wildfires are way too dangerous these days? Stop fueling fires!
But, yes, it is clearly evident after leaks from four different retailers — Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Target, and Best Buy — that a $50 Wii price drop is on the way. With the rate at which the sales of Wiis have slowed down recently, this is a more than expected move on Nintendo’s part, and a long time coming for consumers who are still looking to pick one up. But man, considering just how hard Nintendo’s trying to push Wiis this holiday season, they must be more concerned about slowing sales than anyone thought.
I mean, really look closely at that sales sheet posted above. Promotional offers are one thing, Nintendo, but this just looks desperate:
As you may have recently surmised, I’m not a big fan of Twitter — I far prefer the delightful feeling of smug superiority I get by not being on Twitter and making fun of people who are. This is, of course, merely my way of hiding how deeply I desire to communicate with people just so they can approve of me, and therefore avoiding having to reveal the sad extent of my neediness and emotional damage.
Ahem. But I have to say, it is pretty cool that Uncharted 2 will automatically Twitter your progress for you — this will at last solve the lingering problem for gamers the world over of even having to type any keys on Twitter at all! Seriously, though, I completely support this harmless and nifty idea with hopes that other games will adopt it, just so long as they provide clear and easy ways to turn it off if a player wants to. Otherwise, well… unfortunate secrets could potentially be spilled:
Shadow Complex Cheaters Could Have Entire Gamerscore Reset
“Miss?!” you remark, in outlandish befuddlement.”Surely this does not mean you side with cheaters!” Surely, it does not. But I can explain why this story is a miss for mankind with this simple scenario: Imagine if you could go back in time, and actually had to try to explain this to someone playing Space Invaders in their 1970s living room.
“Oh, dude, the future is awesome. You know how you get points in Space Invaders? Well in the future, every game gives you points all the time!”
“Whoa! Cool! How do you earn them?”
“It’s completely random and arbitrary from game to game, sometimes requiring skill, sometimes nothing more than enduring insane gauntlets of frustrating completionism.”
“Oh, well, that doesn’t sound fun at all. Why bother if it’s meaningless to compare one person’s score to another’s?”
“Um… I think I must not be explaining it right. See… there’s points, right? And you get them. And then you can be like, ‘Hey newb, my points are bigger!’ It effing rules!”
“…No, no that still sounds stupid. People must not care much about them, then, huh?”
“They’re so frickin’ addicted they cheat in games just to earn more.”
“Really? I mean… can you at least get things for having them? Special prizes and whatnot?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Well… then how do game developers discourage people from cheating?”
“Taking their points away.”
“But they’re meaningless! Make sense, man! How the hell is that any kind of deterrent?”
“People in the future really, really like their points.”
“Well, I want no part of this. Excuse me.”
[Scene ends with the Space Invaders player entering his basement, followed by a disconcerting gunshot]
World of Warcraft is Bigger than Jesus
No, literally. It is physically larger than Jesus. And The Beatles. And a Buick. And Macho Man Randy Savage. Put all those things in a room, and the sum of all the equipment, hardware, and people it takes to run WoW would dwarf it like a Gnome in the shadows of Blackrock Mountain.
In case you missed it and have no idea what I’m talking about, at the Austin Game Developers Conference earlier this week, WoW producers Frank Pearce and J. Allen Brack revealed for the first time just what it takes to make this game work, and it is enormous. Evidently to keep WoW going it takes 20,000 computer systems, 1.3 petabytes of storage, 75,000 CPU cores, over 4,600 people to run it, and, oddly, one adorable kitten, which Pearce and Brack ominously described as “pulling all the strings.” I’m pretty sure World of Warcraft encompasses within itself enough people, jobs, money, and territory to one day legitimately make a claim at seceding from the United States.
Does this not frighten anyone else? Is it really just me? Call it wild paranoia mixed with a tinge of schizophrenia if you want, but I’ve seen enough movies about global computer networks run amok to know not to trust anything that requires “1.3 petabytes” of anything. I have no frame of reference for what the hell that means, but it scares the shit out of me.
So go ahead, traitors — enjoy your fancy raids all you want. But know this! It starts with the simple enjoyment of leveling your Blood Elf mage. Then suddenly you realize you can’t find your baby, because WoW assimilated it.
