This week on Hit or Miss: Sony gets their PlayStation 3 Move on (that’s one of about 78 “Move” puns out of the way, at least); Ubisoft’s disastrous digital rights management failures unfortunately prove it’s not paranoia if your worst fears come true; Super Street Fighter 4 sets a new bar in creepily awesome insanity; and 2K Games tries to defend an indefensible DLC scam. Unsurprisingly, they fail.
First of all, the name sucks. Seriously, Move? I’m not saying Wii was a great moment in product branding, but at least it fit into sentences somewhat easily. But just look at how awkward this sentence sounds: “Using the Move, players can stroke their EyePet.”
And people thought Wii was perilously innuendo-laden?
But as for the, uh, you know…actually meaningful stuff — how it looks and the games that’ll be available for it and whatnot — yeah, the Move looks pretty cool I guess. I mean, doesn’t it? Right? That’s kind of the vibe I got from Sony’s GDC press conference:
Sony: “Check it out! It’s just like the Wii but better in a few ways!”[Gamers around the world look at each other, ponder, and then silently nod their heads in tacit but unenthusiastic approval.]
Truth is, I’m super-excited for the potential the Move has (ugh, is it possible to write a sentence using that name that doesn’t sound ridiculous?). But just about everything Sony demoed at GDC looks like Wii Plus Plus, and yeah, that is kind of a little bit embarrassing to watch. I mean, when even your promotional images are shameless copies of your competition, you really need to try a little harder not to immediately appear to be a shameless copy of your competition.
Now it’s time for critical thinking about causality. The scenario: Game Company creates a wildly unpopular system for protecting their games from Pirates by forcing Gamers to have a constant Internet connection while playing. Pirates then hack into the servers of Game Company to express their anger, keeping Gamers from playing their legal copies.
Now, who do Gamers blame? Is it Game Company’s fault for creating the unpopular system that compelled Pirates to lash out? Or is it Pirates for forcing Game Company to resort to such drastic measures to begin with?
The answer: I don’t give a crap. Ubisoft: If you’re going to make a ridiculously unreasonable digital rights management system, you better make sure as damn hell it always works and something like this never, ever happens. Pirates: If you’re pissed about DRM, stop being frickin’ pirates. Want to send a message? Boycott the game for real, which is to say don’t play it at all. Hacking the servers to keep paying customers out doesn’t send any kind of “message” to “the Man” about “stuff, and shit.” All it does is show you’re a giant group of tremendous dicks, and we kind of already knew that.
And that’s even by insane Street Fighter character standards. Let’s remember we’re talking about a series that has included this guy:
At least I think that’s a guy. But Hakan is in a different world. Hell, he’s in a different dimension. Every now and then — and it really doesn’t happen often — a game developer shows something that reminds me of the shear level of what-the-bloody-fuckness we gamers are willing to accept in our games, and it’s awesome.
Probably Muscle March was the last recorded instance of this mind-blowing tendency for me, and truth be told the weirdness of Hakan hits a lot of the same, um, let’s be delicate and call them buttons. Maybe it’s the fact that his fighting technique is grappling people while doused in body oil. Perhaps it’s that he appears to say “Here I come!” every time he performs his Ultra Combo involving laying on top of people smeared in body oil (thank goodness you don’t have to use the Move to do that move).
No doubt it’s because he’s a giant muscular dude drenched in body oil. And this is precisely what makes video games so great. I ask you: In what other art form could you possibly find insanity equaling this?
Ohhhhh yeah. I forgot anime exists. Nevermind.
After it was discovered that recently-released DLC for BioShock 2 really only unlocks content already on the disc, 2K Games tried to defend the practice by arguing it was the only way to keep the community together — otherwise those who bought the downloadable content would no longer be able to play with those who didn’t.
My counterpoint: When it’s already on the disc, it is, by definition, no longer downloadable content. You’re downloading a key to unlock already-purchased and on-disc content, but to call that “downloadable content” is something you can only do by lying.
This is a realm of bullshit that’s been going on since the beginning of the modern age of DLC, and it’s something I’ve yet to hear a compelling justification for. If releasing DLC for a game locks out people who don’t purchase it from playing with those who do, then either figure out another way around that besides faking the newness of your DLC, or just accept the split.
And faking it is exactly what this is. Think of it this way: You buy a new home, and the realtor tells you for an extra $1,000, they can do some extra work to add an additional walk-in closet. Then when you pay them the money, the realtor reveals an already-built walk-in closet hidden behind a false-wall, pockets your money, and drives away while shooting pistols into the sky and letting out screams of “whoo!” and “rubes!”
We pay for DLC because it should cost you more time and money to make it. If it doesn’t — if all you’re actually releasing is the key to the crap that’s been dormant on our disc since launch-day — then what the hell are we paying you for?