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By Michael Lowell

August 30, 2010

Episode 8: The Grand Finale
Episode 7: The Gauntlet
Episode 6: Climbing the Walls
Episode 5: In the Crosshairs
Episode 4: Blind Sided
Episode 3: On Thin Ice
Episode 2: Making Waves
Episode 1: Coming Out Swinging

WCG Ultimate Gamer Season 2 Sing-Along Guide
Episode 1: “Coming Out Swinging”

1776. George Washington chops down the cherry tree. He attaches it to Ben Franklin’s kite. Lightning ensues. The Declaration of Independence is born. History follows. America wins the Civil War. America defeats Hitler. America defeats the Vietnamese. All so a video game organization can greenlight bad reality television. And I can make fun of it.

It’s season two of World Cyber Games: Ultimate Gamer™. Last season, nothing of interest happened. But this time, it’s on, mother fuckers. Why is this entry a week-and-a-half late? The World Cyber Games hacked my computer and killed my aging, clinging-to-life six-year-old hard drive. There’s no other explanation. Time for payback. Time to write mean things on the internet!

0:48 – “…and compete for the biggest title in gaming.” This is followed by in-game footage of Wii Sports Resort. This won’t end well.

1:27 – Samsung Ad Placement Detection Robot! Get in here! Your services are needed!
THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.

2:37 – Caesar
Gamertag: CDN The 3rd
Acumen: “Top 8 Finalist, Gears of War”. I presume this means a Top-Eight finish at the 2007 World Cyber Games, the only time Gears of War was a featured game at the competition. This will not be the first time the show is ambiguous in selling the talent of its contestants.
Quote: “I’m really doing this for my woman. If I can win this money, I would definitely propose. She’s my soulmate.” Focus testers wanted Jersey Shore. Here you go.

2:52 – Mike
Gamertag: michs09
Acumen: “3-Time WCG National Finalist, FIFA”. Three-time American champion of a soccer video game. In other words, when it came time to find a champ, only one other person showed up. And then he was deported.
Quote: “I do really well with women. But I’m not very good at relationships. Like I have a lot of things going on with work, school, and sports.” Oh. It’s the evolution of World of Warcraft. Where full-time raiders have room for straight-As and two forty-hour jobs. Only now? Fuck the girlfriend. Girls are ghey, dawg.

3:09 – Kat
Gamertag: ||| Mystik |||
Acumen: “National Champion, Dead or Alive 4; Top 12 Finalist, Halo”.
Quote: “In the past competitions I did, I actually had a problem with a lot with the girls, ’cause it’s hard to understand how to compete with them without getting on their bad side.” She is telling the whole truth and nothing but. She was all “I PLAY TO WIN” and they were all “NO THROWS U COCKNOOB”. Yup.

3:21 – Vanessa
Gamertag: Vanessa
Acumen: “WCG Pan-American Champion, Dead or Alive 4″
Quote: “But as I soon as I saw Kat, I knew she was gonna try to start up some problems with me.” Fabricated drama? In my reality television show? Get out.

3:36 – Yaz
Gamertag: clowN
Acumen: “World Champion, Counter-Strike: Source”. Haters gonna hate. Why? I’ll let you know when I find the source of your problems.
Quote: “WCG, the World Cyber Games, is kind of like the Olympics for gaming, you get gold medals, you get the jack, you represent your country.” It’s like the Olympics. Minus the free condoms in the Olympic Village. No need for condoms.

3:51 – Faye
Gamertag: Princess Aura
Acumen: “Regional Champion, Super Smash Brothers”.
Quote: “Video games…was kind of my babysitter.” The dreaded “gamer girl”. Epic. More on that later.

4:07 – Ryan
Gamertag: | RyBu |
Acumen: “Multiple Local Tournament Titles”. He fuckin’ clowned little Jimmy.
Quote: “I’m not a pro gamer, so they’re gonna look at me like I’m a random casual noob.” That’s nice. When you find all the buttons on the controller, get back to me. Until then? The grown-ups are trying to talk.

4:27 – Justin
Gamertag: JWong
Acumen: Yes. That Justin Wong.
Quote: “I am currently the U.S. champion of Street Fighter IV, became a household name.” Woah, hold on. The pro-gamer celebrity chain of command is as follows: “Name comes up first on a Google search”, “Mega-popular YouTube video”, “Wikipedia Article”, “60 Minutes Interview”. And Daigo Umehara let everyone know where you stand. Way to go, Justin!

4:32 – Hannah Simone and Joel Gourdin are back to host the second season. Returning to do this show. Yes, the economy’s that bad.

5:28 – Caesar: “Everything in [the loft] is awesome. The TVs are beast-o-matic.” Remind everyone who makes them!
5:31 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.
5:33 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.
5:36 – Vanessa: “They are almost paper-thin. I’m just thinking: I need to get one of these.”
5:38 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.

5:46 – A.J.
Gamertag: HatPerson
Acumen: “Up for Rock Band World Record”. What does that even mean? Rock Band has over 1,200 songs. It’s like claiming Starcraft baller status because nobody’s beaten you in Halo vs. Naruto Tower Defense.
Quote: “I haven’t had a full-time job in two years.” Speaking of jobs, mine is done here.

6:08 – Sebastian
Gamertag: Chosen1
Acumen: “National Finalist, Madden; Top 3 at over 50 Tournaments”.
Quote: “My mom left my family in high school. It changes you.” “I’m not cocky, I’m just confident. ‘Cause if I don’t believe, who’s gonna believe? My own mom obviously don’t.” Wait…”Chosen1″…replace “mom” with “Cleveland”…it’s LeBron in disguise! And he’s going to choke at video games, too!

6:28 – Rachel
Gamertag: Seltzer
Acumen: “Multiple 1st Place Finishes, Team Fortress 2″.
Quote: “I’ll do anything to win this competition.” Alright. The audience already made their joke. Carrying on.

6:46 – Jake
Gamertag: Thirstee
Acumen: “Multiple Local Tournament Titles in 3 Genres”. Anyone else get the feeling they just make this stuff up? How is a national organization going to verify whether somebody won that fifty-dollar cash prize at youth group?
Quote: “Finding out that I was up for the internet vote was nerve-racking.” Worried? A white male competing against two girls? In a vote on American soil? Was it ever in doubt?

6:55 – Interesting. There’s alcohol this time. Alcohol makes people do stupid things.

7:17 – Only cowards play Pac-Man without activating Turbo Mode.

7:29 – Kat to Vanessa: “So what’s been your problem for so many years?” What a diplomat.
7:42 – Kat: “What I understand is I took your boyfriend.” Coming soon from the world of failed passive-aggressive chit-chat: “Hey Vanessa, I feel for you. I really hope your mother gets medical assistance for that fungus in her vagina. Oh wait, that was you.”

8:08 – Kat: “Why am I by myself?” *groan* In professional wrestling, the bad guys have a habit of discussing their plans in “secret”. That is, in front of cameras and cameramen. Professional wrestling exists in a bubble where the good guys lack access to televisions, taped footage, and common sense. “Why am I by myself?” breaks the fourth wall. Ultimate Gamer™ purports to be reality television. That is, unscripted. Good going, editing team. You just made your star attraction look like a tool.

8:39 – Hannah: “This week’s game is Tekken 6.”
8:43 – “Tekken 6 is a 3-D arcade-style fighter with stunning interactive stages and an all-new rage system. Your rage aura kicks in when your health gets too low, giving your character more damage per hit so you can quickly defeat your enemies.” “All-new”? Rubber-banding has been the basis for every innovative fighting game mechanic of the last fifteen years. Oh, right. The show’s target audience is Call of Duty: Roster Update. This may seem fresh and original to them.

9:22 – Hannah: “Today, you will be flying high in a challenge inspired by the martial arts wire-work you’ve seen in Hollywood blockbusters.” Yup. When the Ultimate Fighting Championship came around, this is what they had in mind.

10:14 – Rachel: “When the first real-life challenge was explained to us, I feel like I was the only one in the group who was like ‘Hell yeah, I need to get in on that.’” Sounds like the launch of the PSPGo.

10:34 – Oh my God! It’s actor Kelly Hu! And she’s going to pick the Most Valuable Player of this real-life competition! Uh. Yay?

(Fast-forwarding…)

15:52 – Hu awards Yaz the Most Valuable Player award for this segment, spurring the question: “If one gets ‘Best of Show’ and nobody cares, does it make a sound?” Let’s talk about that decision. Let’s talk plus-minus. The purple team won 8-6. Thus, their plus/minus is +2. Simple stuff. Yaz yielded the lowest plus-minus of the purple team’s three rounds, fighting Mike to a dead heat. And as the show eagerly pointed out, the green team handed Yaz free points. Yaz should have finished -2. He wins the Most Valuable Player award. Yup. Ruins the show for me. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.

17:04 – Vanessa: “I wanted to beat the team, but beating Kat was awesome.” This is getting kind of kinky.

17:40-18:21 – Good. Last season, Robert “Prod1gy X” Paz was sold as the alpha gamer. Didn’t click for me. That’s a definite. The more time spent hammering home Justin’s credentials, the better. The casual audience will buy it. He’s Asian.

18:37-18:40 – Now playing: The unsexiest use of lens flare in the history of motion picture.

Real quick. Let’s talk gamer girls. Gamer girls are a video game subculture of women who play video games. Therefore, “TEH HOTZ!!!” Some gamer girls are happy to be prizes in a male-dominated, sexually-deficient gamer culture. Low supply, high demand. Others will abuse this privilege. Faye is a combination of gamer girl, the notorious 4Chan forum troll Boxxy, and the hyperactive female supporting character in most Japanese Role-Playing Games. And she may be a cat girl. If the charade turns sour? I’ll forgive it. The girl plays video games. That’s so fucking hot.

19:38 – Yaz: “We gotta somehow get out Kat, dude. She has way too high of a gamer score.” Bwahahahah. Achievements: Because bad gamers needed a way to feel good about themselves.

20:15 – Yaz: “The only way to guarantee Kat in is…throw your match.” God damnit, not again. This also happened on the show’s first season. Anyone remember Starcraft at World Cyber Games 2007? When Song Byung Goo (Stork) tried to throw his matches so the South Koreans could sweep the medals? Yup. The same organization thinks it’s okay if players tank games on their reality television show.

20:48 – Can anyone explain this to me? Kat is being played as the threat. As the villain. What has she done to deserve this? Other than having “way too high of a gamer score”?

…

…

Bwahahahaha. Gamer score. Oh, that kills me.

22:26 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.

22:43 – Why not glue the controller to the damn floor? It’d be higher off the ground.

24:07, 24:08, 24:09, 24:11 – Striking the fatal blow with the same move four opponents in a row. Welcome to the world of “playing fighting games versus the computer”.

25:09 – Mike is up for elimination. You mean sports game skills don’t carry to Tekken 6?

25:33 – Yaz finishes in first. We’re supposed to be shocked. “OH MY GODS HE BEAT JUSTINS?” That’s why the scoring system in Ultimate Gamer™ is ambiguous. The Isolation Challenge™ was Tekken 6′s Survival Mode. The goal is to defeat as many opponents as possible before you die. But as Justin alluded to at 24:27, he “didn’t die at all”. So the show set an unspoken limit on the number of opponents. See, the Isolation Chamber becomes a nightclub at eight. They can’t have Justin run the gauntlet until morning. So quite simply, Yaz didn’t die, either. And he won the real-life challenge. Therefore, first place. No accomplishment actually occurred. And the show doesn’t want you to know that. Because oh my Gods, he beat Justins.

25:53 – Joel: “This year, you will not be able to send yourself to Samsung Stadium.” Good call. It gives the winner too much control over who he sends to the elimination round. Thus giving more incentive for a good player to throw his match. I don’t think anybody thought this through.

26:37 – Yaz, on the Isolation Chamber: “And that’s [the move] I abused.” My point exactly.

29:47-30:18 – No, Kat. You’re crying. There’s no crying in e-sports.
31:52 – Yeah, Kat. That’s what you get for crying. You gone, woman. You gone.

32:26 – Vanessa: “We felt this was the best choice.” As in “we, the people in the loft”. Remind me why I am supposed to root against Kat?

33:40-34:16 – Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. That’s all you two women do.

35:13 – Rachel: “Kat’s a professional fighting game player.” I will be holding you to this statement.

36:35 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.
36:57 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.

40:07 – “High-priority move from Mike. A belly smash.” Methinks this will be a recurring theme.
40:11 – Legend has it the first fighting game players used a variety of moves. Supposedly, they played the game for fun. And then, somebody came along and used the same two moves. Over. And over. “Do X until the other player stops it” was born.

40:18 – Joel: “Kat needs to get in closer, hit faster.” Yes, because she’s throwing the punches. Not a piece of computer code that hits just as hard every single time.

40:56, 40:58 – OMGZ FUKKIN NOOB SPAM BELLY SMASHZ
42:04, 42:20 – Okay. Seriously. You’d think Kat would get it by now. It’s one thing for your opponent to use the same two moves. It’s another for him to telegraph those moves. And it’s another to let Mike do it for nine matches.

42:35 – Here’s a sports analogy: Kat was a heavily-favored football team that turned the ball over six times and still won by fourteen points. For every five “belly-smashes” that Kat couldn’t get around her head, there was a solid counter or juggle to illustrate that she was on another plane of talent. And that’s how a sports game buff was eliminated in the first episode for the second year in a row.

How are we holding up against Season One? What’s there to say? It’s the exact same show. Same pacing, same feigned drama, same crappy editing, same fear of exposing the talent, same disregard for the requirements of real competitive gaming. Whatever. It’s something on television to watch. So next week, on WCG Ultimate Gamer: Catfight!

Return to the main page.

Special Thanks To:

Photographic and television content, both created by the World Cyber Games.

Hulu, for having television on the internet.

To comment on this article as a guest or registered member, please visit the forums. Otherwise, return to the main page.

To comment on this article as a guest or registered member, please visit the forums.

By Michael Lowell

Most recently amended on October 26, 2010; originally published August 24, 2010

About These Reviews

I review games here. They come with ratings. Let’s talk about reviews and the ratings attached to them.

In the quest to hold hands and tolerate “playable but sloppy”, Mainstream Video Game Journlolism™ believes a seven-out-of-ten review score constitutes an “average video game”. After all, you can’t be mean to the guys who pay for advertising. Well, you can call their game crap as long as you give it a “good score”. In America, seven-out-of-ten is supposed to be a C-minus. For whatever reason, we also decided to rate games on tenths of a point. Most outlets haven’t figured out a 9.9 is no different than a 9.8., nor is an 83 any different from an 82. It’s really fucking stupid. Allow me to explain the purpose of these reviews and establish the criteria that I will use on this web site.

- “Why write game reviews? I prefer your commentary on the video game business.”

I would agree with you. Social and business commentary is my meal ticket. Game reviews don’t have quite the same legs unless you’re slandering Assassin’s Creed II* or giving Metroid Prime 3: Corruption a “mere” 8.5-out-of-10.* (Then again, Kevin VanOrd claimed that the control scheme made Corruption too easy, which would be like complaining that the mouse and keyboard make shooting people in the head too easy.) Internet rage is straight cash, homey. That is, if you’re writing the review when the game is still relevant. In the case of most modern video games, that cycle lasts about three to five days. By then, people have already moved on to the next game.

So, why write the damn things if I’m not using them as a traffic magnet? It’s simple: Writing video game reviews is fucking hard. In the long run, the hard writing makes the easy writing easier and makes the web site more enjoyable to read. Game reviews have to be informative. However, you can’t be too informative. You don’t want the review to read like an instruction manual. You have instruction manuals to read like instruction manuals. You have to be consistent, and that’s particularly difficult. In exposing yourself to new games, you’ll come to different conclusions on older games. At which point, you have to explain why you loved Final Fantasy VII when it was released back in 1997 but claim in your latest review that JRPGs are the slop smeared upon the underbelly of the medium. And, of course, you have to be entertaining. Unfortunately, some subjects are more entertaining to discuss than others, and nobody has ever sold out a stadium by promising to explain how video game computer code works. There are a thousand subjects with more comedy and entertainment value than double-jumping or bunny-hopping. Also, the complete apathy for video game reviews generated by the mainstream video game outlets (Kotaku, IGN, GameSpot) hasn’t done any favors for anybody who actually knows what they’re talking about. Most people skip to the score and move on with their lives. In other words, reviewing video games is a bit like women’s professional wrestling. On the off-chance that the girls put on a product that is genuinely entertaining for reasons other than “tits and ass”, half of the audience is getting drinks or taking a piss. The girls already lost, and most people are already scrolling through that “wall of text” to see what score I gave the game.

Thanks to the state of video game criticism, winning over an audience with video game reviews is one of the hardest things a gamer will ever do. I’m up for that challenge. Even if my web traffic suggests that I’m writing reviews for my own amusement, I’ll continue to do it.

- This web site uses a scoring scale from zero stars to “six stars”, a rating that will be represented by five gold stars.

“Gears of War is a 9.6 game for sure, I dunno what Gears you’ve been playing….”

- Discussion thread on nV News, one of many outlets for the outrage concerning the infamous 8.8-out-of-10 review score given to the Nintendo Wii version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess…outrage directed at a game that hadn’t been released.*

The rating scale on this web site originally graded games from one-star to five-stars. I quickly came to the conclusion that this didn’t separate a wonderful game like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves from a medium-defining experience like Deus Ex. I also hated Bullet Witch with that much fire and passion. So, here we are. This scale is designed to reflect a medium where “average” isn’t really worth your time. I’ve never understood why moviegoers limit themselves to what’s currently in the theatres and I can say the same thing about video games. There are too many good video games to be found in too many great genres across too much hardware and too much history. For that reason, the scale is designed to measure and embrace the games that we will still be talking about half-a-century from now. If that makes me a snobbish connoisseur of the video game industry, then I’ll accept that role. Here’s the scale:

Zero Stars
Zero-star video games are the bottom of the barrel. You know that magical area in the ten-point review scale from zero-to-five? It’s an area that measures a vast and worthless range of computer code. A zero-star rating is an all-purpose rating for measuring total ineptitude. Since its early days as a commercial business, the video game industry has been flooded with games that fit this description. With the advent of digital distribution and the rise of “anybody can make a commercial video game”, the number of awful games available to the public has consequently exploded. Despite this explosion of video games that are never worth your time, you should expect very few reviews on this web site to use a zero-star score. This site is designed to examine consequential and important video games. Consequently, very few important video games have earned that distinction. The zero-star score will most often be used to smear high-profile games that fell flat on their faces. The goal is to expose these games so that we don’t get fooled by them again.

One Star
One-star video games have serious problems. These games are not unplayable. However, they tend to have severe flaws that either inhibit the ability to play the game at a competitive level, suck the entertainment straight out of a game, or don’t have the complexity required to satisfy any skilled or experienced gamers. Or, as this rating tier will soon be known as, “The rating that Michael Lowell gives to ninety-five-percent of ‘indie games’.” (I expect to receive significant rage for that last statement.)

Two Stars
Two-star video games appeal to their target audience and nothing more. This score is a cut-off for those who are interested in the genre. Anything below this score is usually a warning to stay away. Very often, two-star video games can have the same razor-tight controls and interesting combat systems used by four- and even five-star games. And very often, these games suffer from a crippling lack of difficulty that never tests those strengths. With several tiers of more interesting and entertaining video games to be found, no two-star games should be in your absolute-must-play list. At least not until you’ve explored the highest points of the genre or the medium.

Three Stars
The rating tier for three-star video games is a domain of promising introductions. They’re also reserved for high-profile let-downs, and these let-downs may lead to the savage reviews normally reserved for one- and two-star games. This is often the cut-off for games that spearhead franchises and sell millions of copies in the process. Most casual fans will keep an eye on the series and see what direction it continues in. Fans of the game will probably pick this one up anyway.

Four Stars
In a slow twelve months, four-star video games are dark horses for “Game of the Year” accolades. The game mechanics in four-star video games usually share more in common with complex five-star video games than the simpler-or-flawed three-star video games. In many cases, these games may be one or two design decisions away from becoming excellent games and even classics.

Five Stars
Five-star video games are some of the best games released in any given year. These games are often entry points for unfamiliar genres, for seeing some of the best that a genre has to offer. They may also be the inevitable conclusion of a genre, a point where the genre reaches intense levels of complexity. In all cases, these games are a hell of a lot of fun to play. General disinterest in five-star video games is probably a wake-up call that video games are never going to please you.

Six Stars
Six-star video games are the best of the best. These games are, without exception, among the best games ever released. If you want to think of the games that earn this score as some sort of “Video Game Art List”, feel free to do so. Any decision to give a game this score will not be taken lightly. It will be used sparingly and only after significant collaborative discussion. In the case of competitive multiplayer video games, it may take years for these games to be played at a level where their mechanics can be explored and honored with such a high distinction. Ultimately, this score will be reserved for the best games and most deserving games to ever represent the medium.

- “What is up with your scores for Super Meat Boy and Angry Birds? They’re simple games that accomplish what they wanted to! How can you score them so poorly?”

Like many casual games, Angry Birds uses positive reinforcement to make players feel good when they succeed: After a player lays waste to all the pigs on a level of the game, a raucous wave of cheers goes up. Other than the gentle mocking of the pigs, [Rovio chief executive Mikael Hed] says, “our game doesn’t really punish players.”

- Nick Wingfield, writing in the Wall Street Journal; “Why We Can’t Stop Playing”; published November 30, 2010*

I can explain this very easily: Games with complicated rule sets almost always do more things correctly than games with simple rule sets, even if the simple games do fewer things incorrectly. That’s why so-called “timeless classics” such as Tetris and Pac-Man had to continually reinvent themselves in order to remain interesting. Eventually, these two franchises peaked with the creation of Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. If I have to choose between an “imperfect game with a deep rule set” or a “polished game with a simple rule set”, I am picking the former nearly every single time. Nobody is going to tell me that Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure was a less interesting game than Super Meat Boy because the level design in Henry Hatsworth wasn’t world class or its difficulty took an obscene jump at the halfway mark. Henry Hatsworth was two solid video games that became even more fascinating as they played in tandem. It was far more complex and more successful in its ambitions than anything Super Meat Boy tried to do.

When a video game earns considerable hype, game reviewers and consumers have this bizarre habit of judging games as though they’re perfect and then subtracting for any notable flaws. This is why franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed consistently get high marks when they don’t necessarily deserve them. I’m starting from the very bottom and working my way up. If you think it’s okay to penalize a game for the failures of individual mechanics and accomplishments, Deus Ex would like to say hello. Deus Ex features unremarkable graphics, hacking games closer to resource management simulations (where the important thing is how you manage your multitools and lockpicks rather than navigating their use through a minigame or a test of skill), and laughably simple artificial intelligence. On the contrary, it was a real fucking role-playing video game where the player’s decision-making makes every playthrough different, a game that can be completed as either a first-person shooter or a stealth-action game. But don’t tell that to the reviewers! It’s a secret! That’s why Deus Ex earned a MetaCritic average score of 90 rather than the average score of 177 that it deserves. Sloppy graphics? Boo fucking hoo. The best video games cover for their flaws with massive rule sets, and the best video games do it admirably.

- All genres are not created equal.

While comparisons between genres are nearly impossible (and there’s never going to be a shortage of people dumb enough to undertake these comparisons in “best games” lists), comparisons between similar game mechanics are not. From here, certain types of games can be judged against each other. Games based on Defense of the Ancients were popularized through custom game creation in the real-time strategy genre. Little surprise that Defense of the Ancients shares a lot in comparison with the RTS. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas or Action-RTS games (or whatever the hell you want to call them) can be compared to real-time strategy games. Tactical shooters can be compared to their less-realistic counterparts on the Doom and Quake side of the fence. For a more interesting comparison, examine the disconnect between the perception of beat ‘em ups and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. People have played World of Warcraft without interruption for nearly a decade. At the same time, the beat ‘em up has been derided as an aging genre with a dearth of content. Reviewers and consumers complain that the combat system in a gem like Bayonetta grows tiresome over the course of one individual playthrough. That is ridiculous and absurd. If I can demonstrate why beat ‘em ups have superior combat systems and apply that experience to a review of an MMORPG, then I’ll do it.

Am I technically judging and ranking genres when I do this? Yes, I am. However, I’m not making that call without explaining my position on these games and doing it in exhaustive detail. (The kind of exhaustive detail that is not taken into account when most people rank these games and genres.)

- I will not publish any review for a game until some sort of stable consensus has been formed. The formation of that stable consensus may take months after the release of a game. In the case of some video games, it may take years. If time passes and my viewpoint (or the viewpoint of another author on this site) cannot be defended, I am willing to change or modify my opinion on a game or review.

“Without question, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best game since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.”

- Hilary Goldstein of IGN, Grand Theft Auto IV Review, published April 25, 2008.* “[T]he best game since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” was ranked 10th in an IGN August 2011 rundown of “The Top 25 PlayStation 3 Games”.*

This is a recent update to my review policy. Originally, that whole “Gospel” thing started off as a rather firm conviction that I knew my shit about the video game industry. One of the crappy things about “learning” is that you discover two new questions every time you answer one of them. Well, I now know enough about the video game industry that my branding of The Ghetto as “Gospel” is less about conviction in my ideas and more about marketing the web site. For that reason, I will now wait for the original period of hype to subside and I will wait for a body of knowledge to develop around a game before I review it. This isn’t to say that I don’t have a good eye for how game mechanics or a game system works. It happens that when you’re putting out published material casting itself as an expert opinion, as firm and unchanging opinion, the expectation is that this opinion is strong and accurate one-hundred percent of the time. In the span of three weeks, I have now had second thoughts on two different video game reviews published on this web site. That’s not good enough. While “nobody will ever take your game reviews seriously again” hasn’t stopped GameSpot or IGN or Kotaku or any of the other scandal rags, placing myself in that position is not something I wish to do anymore, since it requires me to tread old ground, rewrite reviews, and defend my credibility. I have other things I would like to do.

To prevent these mishaps, I will only review a game when I believe there is a significant body of knowledge to affirm or reject my own findings. I will then use that body of knowledge as a litmus test for my own findings. I am not using this as an excuse to push someone else’s bottom line, and I am sure-as-hell not doing this to be a megaphone for the Video Game Journlolists™. Much like catalogs of replays and video footage can become a reference tool for competitive video games, the changing opinions of academics, critics, journalists, and even the public at-large can be used to more accurately review and score a video game. (Hell, even the Video Game Journlolists™ do this, where they hype video games through impressive review scores and then step back from their original verdict by savaging the game in “Most Overrated” lists. They’ll claim the original game wasn’t quite what they thought it was…just in time for the “SUPAR INKREDIBLE SEQUAL!!1″)

If I can find feedback that demonstrates I am on the wrong side of the issue, I will acquiesce. I consider my open mind to be one of my best strengths and I would be a fool to ignore using it. That’s what a good researcher and a good writer should be able to do. If you consider that a cop-out, that my reviews will not be a completely personal experience with a video game, go ahead. I don’t gain anything by rushing a review to publication and neither does the reader. History is a collaborative effort and I will be taking that into mind whenever I review games from this point onward.

- Whether a game is reviewed in a “full review” or covered in a shortened review will depend on the nature of the game and all relevant games.

The totally-unrealistic goal of the video game reviews section on this web site is to provide a synopsis and a score for every relevant game in the medium. Which games will receive a full review? Which games will receive hundreds of words of criticism and which will receive thousands? That’s my call to make. The simple answer: When it’s necessary. Ideally, new games in a series will receive a full review. Any sequel built on a new engine will receive a full review. However, this does not prohibit me from savaging the latest independent smash mobile video game in under five-hundred words. If I can destroy a game in that amount of prose, I’ll do it. If I can articulate why Doom II is superior to its predecessor in every way and I can do it in several hundred words, I’ll do that. It will be left up to my discretion.

- Games that have undergone a significant peer review process through a competitive gaming scene or “e-sports” scene will not receive a higher score because they have been “validated” by a skilled player base; “e-sports” can only be scored more accurately.

It’s little surprise that some of the best competitive multiplayer video games (StarCraft: Brood War, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Quake III Arena, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2004) are considered to be some of the best video games in the history of the medium. Likewise, some of the most prominent competitive video games of the last decade (Defense of the Ancients, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) have been average games and some have been even lousier arenas (World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock) for determining the best video game players. (Spare me your anger. Every one of these games will eventually be reviewed on this web site and everything I said in this paragraph will have a paper trail to go with it.

It’s an unusual situation. A lot of games will never see the kind of scrutiny required to build a metagame capable of turning a great game into a legendary video game. In 2001, StarCraft: Brood War was a year removed from the Terran revolution that would establish most of the game’s modern playstyle. Protoss and Zerg were considered to be the stronger races. Terran was considered to be the weakest race. Now, imagine if everybody had suddenly stopped playing the game in 2001. Everybody from top to bottom. When you remove the decade of professional StarCraft that would lead into the release of StarCraft II, you’re left with a game whose legacy would be awfully different. The legacy of StarCraft would be the legacy of three intensely unique factions going to war with each other and not a wunderkind compromise between poker and chess with “three perfectly-balanced races”. And while the quality of games are constantly re-evaluated and argued over in the years and decades following their creation, there’s no greater peer review process than sticking millions of people in the same competitive environment and telling them to try and one-up each other.

The more a player has to project on how a game is played at its highest level, the more difficult it becomes to write an accurate and meaningful review. This is why games should be reviewed by skilled and competent players who also understand the theory behind a game. (I do my best to stress the phrase “understand the theory”. Most great athletes do not become great coaches. Any deficiency in knowledge of their chosen sport was usually overcome with sheer athletic ability. The same can often apply to video games and the most skilled players in their communities.) In the case of battle-tested video games featuring hundreds-of-thousands and even millions of players all trying to be the best, not much projection is required. The replays exist, the broadcast footage exists, the body of knowledge exists. All a reviewer has to do is break down a game that a lot of people thought was entertaining to watch and determine whether that game was actually any good.

Interestingly enough, this also creates a window where it is exceptionally difficult to review a competitive video game. While I already feel comfortable about the final verdict that I would place upon StarCraft: Brood War, its story hasn’t ended yet. The StarCraft: Brood War professional scene is still relevant in South Korea and the strategies are continuing to evolve over a dozen years after its release. The popularity of this scene may be dwindling, but the best StarCraft players in the world are still under contract to play Brood War. When Lee Young Ho (Flash) and the rest of the Brood War players under contract move on to StarCraft II and its assorted expansion packs, we can then conclude that the game has reached its peak, since it’s unlikely the game will ever be subject to the same peer review ever again. At that point, I can review the game and feel comfortable that I won’t have to discuss it again. (Unless, of course, StarCraft: Brood War becomes hugely popular in the year 2050 for reasons that science nor religion can ever explain. Assuming the nano-augmented video game players of the future make Flash look like IdrA, a second review may be in order and my grand-kids will start writing that review if they want any Christmas presents.)

- Price is not a reflection on the quality of a game.

At a mere 99 cents, Jetpack Joyride is an insane value for what’s offered. Let’s put it this way: the in-game stats on my iPod tell me I’ve put six hours into the game; include my time playing on an iPad, and you’re adding another two or three. To put that into perspective, I probably didn’t have to play more than 30 minutes of this game to give it a proper review, the game is simply that straightforward.

- Nick Chester of Destructoid, Review of 2011′s Jetpack Joyride, giving a 9/10 score to a game that he only needed thirty minutes to conclusively review, presumably because the game cost a dollar.*

This has become a particularly laughable point of concern in the years since the digital distribution of video games took off, the idea that a video game should be held to a lower standard because it can be purchased on your mobile phone for a dollar. It would make sense to mention the price of a video game merely to supply historical context, so that future generations may gawk at the millions of people who gave in to the 180-dollar price tag for 2007′s Rock Band or the tens-of-thousands who gave in for the 200-dollar price tag of 2002′s mech mash Steel Battalion and its gawdy forty-button, dual-joystick controller. Consumer excess is one of the most entertaining catalogues of human history.

If a retailer marks a sixty-dollar video game down to ten dollars, does the computer code change? Do the game mechanics become more or less effective? Does the combat system become more effective? The answer is obviously “No.” 2004′s World of Warcraft is an average video game because it’s tied into all of the crutches that defined the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games of its day, not because it required a monthly subscription fee for most of its relevant shelf life. Subsequently, the first two Fallout games are not some of the defining computer role-playing games in the medium because they can now be purchased in digital outlets for a couple of dollars. Deus Ex is not one of the greatest games of all-time because it can now be purchased on the cheap.

But even assuming the incorrect assumption that the price of a video game was a reflection on the quality of a video game, defining games by the cost would be irrelevant because the price of all video games will eventually become irrelevant. Great games will eventually know no price because people will be playing them well after they are no longer commercially viable. Somehow, I don’t think that the release price of 1985′s Super Mario Brothers will have much bearing on the conclusions of academics writing their thesis in 2085, long after you and me and most everyone who played the game at the time of its release is dead. The only important question is whether the game is good or bad. Everybody has a different way of coming to that conclusion, but price should have nothing to do with it. Next time you boot up an old game in an emulator or download abandonware on the internet and you pay nothing to do it, you’ll understand.

- Originality is not a reflection on the quality of a game.

Let’s pretend that Activision publishes a Call of Duty game based on the exploits of Buzz Aldrin. Call of Duty: Buzz Aldrin’s Revenge receives a 90 on MetaCritic. Reviewers praise Buzz Aldrin for designing a killstreak system based on his own encounters with NASA personnel and the Third Reich. Everybody who plays the game enjoys it. Next year, Activision releases Call of Duty: Shakespeare’s Revenge. Reviewers are dismayed to find that Shakespeare and Buzz Aldrin have far more in common than anyone imagined. The two games are identical, save for the inconsequential change of historical period and some different artwork. What average score should the game receive? If both of the games play the exact same, then both games should receive a 90. For whatever reason, in a field of criticism where readers demand some bizarre and nearly-scientific ten-point scoring system for video games, we have decided that a video game should be punished if it is little different than its predecessors. That’s bullshit.

Another comparison. The Warcraft II expansion pack Beyond the Dark Portal features no new multiplayer units, one new terrain tile set (heavily modeled off a previous tile set), a new set of mostly-unplayable multiplayer maps, and a pair of single-player campaigns telling the storyline from a non-canon Orc perspective and a canon Human perspective. In terms of quality, Beyond the Dark Portal is a slightly better product than Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, because the single-player campaign is more challenging, difficult, and generally entertaining than that of its predecessor. However, the conventional wisdom in Mainstream Game Journalism™ is that Beyond of Dark Portal should receive a lower score than Tides of Darkness because the game lacks “originality” or “doesn’t do anything new”.

News flash: Your disinterest in a particular model for a genre or set of game mechanics does not mean that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rock Band 3, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, Portal 2, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, or Gears of War 3 are bad games. In many cases, these games are the best games in their respective franchises. If they’re bad games, then one should be able to demonstrate why they’re not only inferior to their predecessors, but commit mistakes employed by inferior games. They are not bad games because you are disinterested with the current flavor of the month in the video game industry. They are only bad games if you can demonstrate why, for instance, tactical shooters have taken a precipitous decline in quality over the period following the release of Call of Duty 4. Not because you are “bored with this kind of game”. You’re welcome to be less interested or entertained by a sense of familiarity, but when you go to give a score and a verdict, whether the game “does anything new” is not part of the equation.

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By Michael Lowell

August 16, 2010

Why Your E-Sport Will Fail

Gamer geek and Mountain Dew: Frat Rage.  Welcome to Western competitive gaming, where the motto’s been “Wait ‘Til Next Year” since 1981.  Talented gamers?  Sure.  Tell me when they’re mainstream.

Previously, developers thought competitive gaming was about sample size.  Guitar Hero III moved 15 million units.  Lots of players.  Therefore, spectator sport.  Hasn’t worked.  And the game industry is tired of waiting.

Look at Starcraft II.  It was unprecedented.  No LAN?  That battle’s blown over.  Catfights with competitive gaming bodies?  Really?  Blizzard Entertainment unleashed open antagonism at the people and computer code that turned Starcraft into a South Korean juggernaut.  Crazy, right?  Expect more of it.

If companies can’t sell you Halo: The Monthly Fee, they gotta make money somewhere.  Bobby Kotick needs a new yacht.  They’re gonna invent sports.  Design games for television.  The next baseball: Sixty dollars a box.  Then comes the television deal.  Straight cash, homey.  If it means centralizing the online service to thwart third parties, so be it.  The community and their contributions?  They aren’t on the payroll.  Fuck ‘em.  “It’s our game.  We’ll call the shots.”

Think I’m kidding about this “game companies want to run their tournament scene” thing?  Blizzard Entertainment wants to know about your tournament.  As in “Don’t host tournaments without our permission.”  The legal argument is solid shut.  Their graphics, their gameplay devices, their copyright.  Individual playthroughs don’t get their own copyright protection.  So bend over, citizens: Are you ready for some STARCRAFT?

Do what the Blizzard employee says on their message boards or they will cut you.

Developers claim they have the answers.  They can turn video games into a sport.  And if you know real sports and the video game business model, you know that e-sports does not work that way.

Starcraft is the one video game to get serious fame for its television accolades.  Why?  Let me hurt your feelings, fanboys:  Starcraft won out in South Korea because of dumb fucking luck.  It’s true.  Cultural nuances.  Unintended game design decisions.  There are so many variables that one company playing “My Game, My Rules” cannot recreate the success of Starcraft.  Blizzard’s gonna try.  Others will follow.  They will all fail.  Because they can’t recreate dumb fucking luck.

—

See, James Naismith didn’t unveil the original thirteen rules for “basket ball” with megastar supersport in mind.  It was a game.  For fun.  The game got popular.  Naismith wanted nothing to do with the business of basketball.  He left it to others.  He didn’t legalize dribbling.  He didn’t invent the shot-clock.  The three-point line.  That off-hand approach turned out well.

Blizzard got Starcraft right.  It wasn’t sport-ready out of the box.  The “original rules” (the April 1998 launch) had greivous flaws.  Zerg owned the house party.  Blizzard “amended” the rules seven months later.  Brood War wasn’t perfect, either.  Couple patches later, things were good enough.  Still had issues, but they left the rest to the audience.

Good real-time strategy games are polished through level design.  Map design, actually.  Blizzard let amateurs amend these “rules”.  What did they find?  Every starting location needed a chokepoint because Zerglings are assholes.  Every player needed an easy-to-defend expansion.  As players improved, mapmakers could make changes.  It’s a universe where the athletes themselves tweak the dimensions of the playing field to keep offenses honest.

And Battle.net was the catalyst.  Want a global game?  Global gaming service doesn’t hurt.  (Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and Total Annihilation didn’t get a Battle.net upon launch.  Starcraft’s the one standing.  Shocking.)  Want to break a game as quickly as possible?  Get the best players on one network and let them play each other.  It happened.  Took basketball eighty years to reward good shooters with a three-point line.  Starcraft was “balanced” by year four.  Globalization is fun.

So Starcraft was a fun game.  But fun doesn’t equal watchable.  You’d rather play Tetris than see someone else do it.  Why watch Starcraft?  You’ll hear this all the time: “Warcraft III failed as a spectator sport because it was for noobs.”  Skill cap’s not the reason.  Doesn’t hurt, but it’s not the reason.  Let’s ignore matchmaking, where the Korean e-Sports Association crafted exciting matchups on a monthly basis.  Warcraft III’s failings were accessibility and presentation.

Complexity is the number of game rules.  Depth is the number of things you can do with them.  A watchable video game needs to be simple.  And it can’t sacrifice psychology.  “X is changing his strategy!  What will Y do to stop it?” sells every major sport on the planet.  Starcraft and Warcraft III have psychology.  The difference?  Starcraft lets players work magic with simple game rules.  Warcraft III?  It’s the same reason Europeans can’t figure out our brand of football.  Warcraft III relies on a rule set with enough bloat to shame an Ayn Rand novel.  Good luck selling “Warcraft III: The Sport” to someone who hasn’t played the game.

“Tuck Rule”?  What the hell is the Tuck Rule?

You can watch competitive Starcraft without knowing the game.  Psionic Storm looks like lightning.  Lightning hurts.  Marines are dudes with guns.  Guns kill people.  Zerglings have claws.  Rawr.  The ebb and flow of combat is all you need to decide who’s on top.  Compare that with Warcraft III.  Heroes, creeps, experience, gold, wood, food, items: Meet blender.  Those numbers and gameplay mechanics must be memorized to understand their importance.  You cannot look at the graphics for Soul Burn, Howl of Terror, or Inner Fire and determine what they do.  And good luck explaining why the Human player is about to win when he’s pinned in his base but the Mountain King is about to hit level six.

Look at the Warcraft III hero experience system.  Did you know the amount of experience granted by a unit corresponds to its “level”, a number typically equal to the unit’s food cost?  Know that rule doesn’t apply to Gryphon Riders, Demolishers, Meat Wagons, Frost Wyrms, and Mountain Giants?  And you’d only know this if you opened the map editor?  How about diminishing returns on experience points granted through neutral unit kills?  The amount of bonus experience a lone hero gains as the player advances up the tech tree?

It’s fucking calculus.  It may provide for one hell of a role-playing strategy hybrid, but good luck selling it to the red states.  Consider this: ESPN’s primary dabble in competitive gaming is Madden Nation.  They didn’t pick Madden because it involves sports.  They picked it because their audience knows football.  Its audience knows the rules.  Video games don’t get that luxury.  Gamers are divided along hundreds of popular video games, all featuring diverse rule sets.

But it doesn’t end at “rule set” for Starcraft.  This is where it gets weird.  Starcraft’s early game sucks.  Yes, it sucks.  Despite your worst experience with Zerg rushes, modern maps eliminate early attacks.  The early-game is about mobilizing for mid-game map control.  It’s boring.  That weakness is perfect for television.

Using the game as a graphical backdrop (the panacea for ADD-addled viewers), this downtime allows commentators to talk players, tournament, matchup, what’s at stake, what to look out for.  The first five minutes are reference material.  Compare that with fighting games, where matches last a few minutes and have no downtime.  Have fun explaining the intricacies of Chun-Li vs. Guile in sixty seconds.  “Well, you should educate yourself before watching.”  Most people don’t care.  They want to watch the game.  And then they will complain they don’t understand it.

What the hell is going on here?

Blizzard didn’t build Starcraft for television.  They built it for fun.  And through dumb luck, it was built for television.  And South Korea embraced it.  The country built an organization to incentivize competitive gaming,  found a Lim Yo Hwan (SlayerS_Boxer) to figurehead it, a Seo Ji-Soo (ToSsGirL) to destigmatize it.  How’s that working in the West?  I heard on the internet I write this gaming blog in my mom’s basement.

In the United States, your most popular video games justify the stigma.  World of Warcraft.  FarmVille.  Mafia Wars.  Compulsive gaming defined.  No one wants to watch you complete menial tasks.  You want to do them yourself.  So the true tests of competitive gaming?  Your Unreal Tournaments?  Your fighting games?  “Why would I want to waste time watching that?”

Blame the media for supporting it.  The obsession with “Mom Locks Baby in Oven Over World of Warcraft Spat” is bad enough.  The two most recognizable video game characters in the American mainstream are Mario and Pac-Man.  One clowned ghosts.  Another curb-stomped animals.  They did it in the name of points.  And points are like track-and-field world records.  We gawk, accuse Usain Bolt of using steroids, life goes on.  And that has mainstream appeal.  Because everyone’s played Pac-Man.  The scoring system requires no context.  If I double your score, my dick is twice as large as yours.  So a million points on Donkey Kong is enough to sell the news article.

But when Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe fight for world records, you’re going to read about it.  You never ever want to watch it.  The games didn’t have the technical muscle to test the best gamers.  The best gamers broke the hardware.  Don’t believe me?  There’s a kill screen coming up.  A run at a Golden Age arcade record shaves hours off your life.  Unless you’re Asteroids.  That record fell in April of 2010.  John McAllister of Oregon scored 41,338,740.  In fifty-eight hours.

World record broken.  Two days to break it.  Guess what the mainstream thinks?  “Gamers aren’t good because they’re talented!  They just have no lives!  If I had no life, I’d break the record, too!”

That’s how the GameFAQs audience comes to conclusions like these:

That’s right: Twelve percent of your target audience (13,700 people in this particular poll) think they can make a living in a business that’s economically viable for a couple hundred.   Twenty-one percent think they can pay the bills if they “put just a little more effort into it”.  Forty-four percent thinks they could, but really, they play for fun.  Scientific poll or not: Until you fix that, you don’t have a product.

Look at Starcraft II.  “Fastest-selling strategy game ever.”  Big deal.  Know what happens next?  All the gamers who can’t hang?  They quit.  See, Starcraft II has a learning curve.  A very high one.  Losing will occur.  Embarrassment will occur.  Think those players will man up?  They won’t.  They’re the same people who think smurfs are the reason they lose games, any strategy that beats them is overpowered, and intuitive play is maphacking.  They will blame everyone but themselves.  They would totally dominate you, but they don’t play noobs.

Who will remain?  The ones that stuck it out.  The ones who create the brutal world of real-time strategy games.  That is, the combination of skill and effort that breeds the best in any product, sport, or business.  That is, the “people with no lives”.  It’s up to competitive gaming bodies to market that.

Western pro gaming is in the same stage as professional basketball in the 1950s.  Nope, the National Basketball Association didn’t sell itself.  It was a barnstorming league.  No one took it seriously.  College basketball was not only more popular, it was seen as superior.

There are still people who think eighteen-year-olds and the web of NCAA practice restrictions can breed basketball that tops the best of grown men.  Boston Celtics legendary coach Red Auerbach had a problem with this.  His Celtics hadn’t dominated the sixties yet.  The NBA had to be marketed.  So in the ultimate “damn, sports have changed” strategy, the Boston Celtics would play anyone who wanted to show up.

“My idea was we’d go in and play local teams—college teams, rec teams, whomever they could find to play us.  People really and truly thought they could beat us, in part because when pro teams in the past had played those games, they’d keep them close to keep the crowd interest and so as not to embarrass the local guys.

“I didn’t want to do that.  I thought we had to sell the game, market the game, make people understand just how good these guys were.  They really didn’t get it.  When we arranged to scrimmage up at Holy Cross, people were excited for two reasons: [Bob] Cousy was coming back and they thought Holy Cross would beat us.  So we went in there and beat ‘em by fifty.  Most nights, I’d tell the guys to win by thirty, no more than forty.  I wanted to beat Holy Cross by fifty.  People noticed.”*

Took Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain for people to realize “Oh crap, this game is no longer a place for the vertically challenged.”  More monsters followed.  The NBA is now a circus for larger-than-life behemoths.  And they are better than you at basketball.  It’s how competition works: Drama doesn’t hurt, but when you advertise yourself as the premier organization dedicated to a craft, you need “premier” to sell the gig.  When thirteen percent of your target audience thinks they can be the product, you’re not unique.  We call that a credibility problem.  Compare how the Koreans and Americans go to gamer war on television.

The Americans have World Cyber Games: Ultimate Gamer.  The credentials were there.  Geoff Frazier (iNcontroL) of Starcraft fame, Ciji Thornton (StarSlayer) of Guitar Hero, and so forth.  Was the show entertaining?  Absolutely.  Gamer drama sells.  Marketing device for the skill level?  Oops.

First flag?  Show’s an advertisement for the World Cyber Games, the premier international video game tournament.  Nothing harmful?  This tournament is dedicated to the exploits of computer games.  The main events are Counter-Strike 1.6, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and Starcraft: Brood War.  The show is dedicated to console gaming.  Already pissed off part of your potential audience.  Computer gamers don’t think highly of your thumbsticks.  You’re not getting their support.

Next?  The show took gamers from different genres and made them run the gauntlet.  Can a rhythm gamer beat a shooter whiz?  We love the unknown.  Was better in theory than practice.  This uh, looks bad on television.  “I want to be the best gamer in the world.”  Then the gamers are playing to weaknesses.  You just crashed your car into a wall.  It was no one’s fault but yours.  So the hardcore fanboys won’t believe you’re the best gamer in the world.  The king of their favorite genre is their chosen one.  The casuals?  “Girl just crashed her car into a wall!  Wow, she sucks!”  Both audiences think they can hang.  Beat you at your game.

Mobile phone gaming is so exciting!

And the show’s editors were terrified of that.  Reality television is there to create drama.  If that means editing the hell out of the show to villainize cast members, it’s goin’ down.  The problem?  Competitive video games don’t work that way.  They’re competition.  You can’t mix and cut what you don’t like.  When you butcher a match in the name of watchability, you are openly admitting “Playing these games in front of an audience doesn’t work.”  And if you don’t think it works, why should I?

How do the Koreans do it?  Think you can handle the best of South Korean Starcraft?  They made a show for you.  One popular enough that TeamLiquid copied it piece for piece.

Star Battle.net Attack: The open-challenge format where amateurs get demolished by the kings of Starcraft.  It’s simple: The show names a time, date, and server.  When it arrives, make a game.  Give it a funny title.  Mock Savior’s gambling ties.  Do what you need to.  Here’s your chance to play the best in the business.

What, you thought I wouldn’t bring video?  Lee Sung Eun (FireBatHero) did his part.  Fathering half of Korea’s children isn’t enough for him.  He wanted to show everyone that you gonna die, bruh.

(Transcript starting at 1:08)

FireBatHero: To all the Battle.net users, I want them to fear pro gamers.  I want them to KNOW it, and I will make them feel it.  That’s why I’m here.

Host: So you want to show your dominance and authority, huh?

FBH: There are many that think they, themselves, can be a pro gamer and win some games. I want those people NEVER to even THINK about those foolishness.

H: Right, to do so, did you prepare some kind of build order?  Perhaps a strategy?

FBH: Uhhh, I am going to send them to a far, far, distant place called Disneyland.  Safe and sound at their own convenience, at the fastest and the cheapest rate.

—

So you need a fun game.  But fun games aren’t watchable games.  You need passionate amteurs to break it.  The beta test after the best test.  To deem it worthy.  Sound good?  Convince the West it’s worth watching.  Alright?  Convince people these gamers are better than you.  Destroy the stigma.  That “no girlfriend” is not the secret ingredient.

This clusterfuck scenario that breeds a watchable competitive game?  One that makes money?  It takes several years to occur.  Who’s decided they’re gonna sell me e-sports?  The industry where a two-year-old game is yesterday’s news.  That industry.

You can’t even get me a proper sendoff to Deus Ex.  How are you going to walk this tightrope?  By the time a video game is worthy of the moniker “spectator sport”, your industry can’t make money off the software.  Your industry doesn’t want me playing games for years on end.  That industry.  The one where Activision enjoys when Call of Duty is the most anticipated video game release of the year, every year.

And how’s this mentality worked out so far?  You can judge one company by the audience that adores them: Starcraft II is failing in South Korea.  How can that be?  Blizzard got ad space on a plane!  They let World of Warcraft players have at it for free!

Three words: Local.  Area.  Network.  You thought LAN was about piracy?  You silly thing.  If South Korean law doesn’t agree with the American copyright approach, just program your game so the Korean e-Sports Association can’t hold a serious tournament.  Nothin’ beats that.

Well, South Korean gamer culture is built around the PC Bang.  The internet cafe.  You pay to play at the cafe.  Guess what?  The cafe owner isn’t footing the bill for Starcraft II.  You are.  It’s subscription-based in South Korea.  There’s a boxed version, sure.  But South Koreans don’t play games at home.  So why pay to play Starcraft II when you’re already paying for time on someone else’s machine?

Cafe playtime is tracked in South Korea.  As of this writing, Warcraft III is fourth.  Starcraft is fifth.  Starcraft II?  Not in the top ten.  “Oh, but once the game gets on television, Starcraft II will make it!  When Brood War players can get out of their contracts, they’ll forfeit their steady income and risk it on a less popular game!”  That’s what nobody realized: To the Koreans, Starcraft is not a game.  It’s a fucking institution.  Blizzard told KeSPA to fuck off.  Blizzard signed a contract with GOM.  Great.  GOMtv is not television.  It’s an internet video player.  So you turn on the television, and what do you see?  Enough Brood War to slap the marketing machine off a Starcraft II billboard.

So remember: The company that wants to sell me Starcraft: The Sport can’t even sell it to the Koreans.  And I heard those people like Starcraft.  Anyone else looking to turn their video game into football?  Amateur roots are the best weapon you’ve got.  Don’t think you can do it better than your user base.

James Naismith will kill you in your sleep if you try.

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Special Thanks To:

TeamLiquid’s community research on the topic of South Korean Starcraft II apathy, which can be read here and here.

The gentleman who took the time to bring English subtitles to Star Battle.net Attack.

To comment on this article as a guest or registered member, please visit the forums. Otherwise, return to the main page.

To comment on this article, please visit the forums.

By Michael Lowell

August 2, 2010

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
PC, Mac (Reviewed on PC)
Developed: Blizzard Entertainment
Published: Blizzard Entertainment
Released: July 27, 2010

Note A: This review looks at a product that will change long after the publication of this article, whether developers patch the game or players dissect the game rules.  Things change.  Bear that in mind.

Note B: This review contains mild spoilers.

Blizzard Entertainment owns real-time strategy.  Not really debatable.  The competition’s had moments (Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires II, Company of Heroes), but few dabble in the Blizzard model, something closer to Street Fighter than Supreme Commander.  That’s your hype train.  You get five or six games a year that play like Call of Duty.  It’s been seven years since something that plays like Starcraft.  Oh, right.  Warcraft III “sucked”.  Make that twelve years.

Critics will love Starcraft II.  No apparent flaws.  Fancy graphics.  Robust single-player.  Awesome promotional campaign.  No perfect score, though.  See, rushing is for noobs.  It’s still there.  Gotta dock the game a tenth of a point.  9.9 out of ten.  Game of the Year.  “PC gaming is back!”  Or something.

The reality?  Multiplayer is go.  It plays great.  Single-player?  A mixed bag.  Elsewise?  Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is a Hollywood movie coded by game designers on the accords of higher-ups, the runaway favorite for Half-Finished Game of the Year.

It’s amiss the moment you load the client.  Log in, create a name.  You get one shot?  What?  Really?  Yeah.  No going back, GokuSlayer.  But the game is fine, right?  Single-player pays the bills, right?

Jim Raynor’s account of the Terran condition borrows heavily from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and beats those mechanics with a paddle.  Most missions embrace one of two tropes: “Accomplish X before time runs out”, “Fight X waves of progressively-tougher units”.  There’s little difference between a competition for scrap minerals and running from a firestorm, you’re still fighting the clock.  But the approach to the tropes?  Memorable.

It’s a rejection of the Brood War mission model (the days of turning a small base and army into the travelling Carrier circus), and it’s damn fun.  But few missions require the same focus and intensity as the company’s previous strategy outing.  Warcraft III unit composition was about sustainability.  Starcraft II is still about maximizing damage output.  So with some exceptions, it’s still about hitting “critical mass” (where sheer numbers overcome the opposition) or loading your last save when you piss away that critical chokepoint.

What “critical mass” may look like.

In place of Warcraft III role-playing mechanics is a new take on role-playing.  Well, it’s not new at all.  The Japanese role-playing game perfected it: Decision-making without consequence.  Each mission unlocks new toys. Yay, Firebats!  Yay, Vultures!  The problem?  This Terran nostalgia trip bombards the player with so many options that none of them can be meaningful.  Wow, the choices!

It pervades the story arc.  On two occasions, you’ll “decide” the fate of supporting characters.  In both instances, the character is written out post-mission.  Doesn’t matter what you do.  That’s not decision-making.  It’s like claiming an NBA Playoff matchup will alter the course of basketball history when both teams are playing for the right to lose to the Los Angeles Lakers.  Wow, the choices!

In a medium hilted with bloated sidestory, Starcraft’s minimalism was its prized asset.  Why does Wings of Liberty focus on the Terrans?  Blizzard Entertainment said thirty missions split between three factions couldn’t get it done.  The Terrans need their own game.  So naturally, the extra breathing room is wasted on “optional” missions.  It exemplifies the Starcraft II single-player component.  It’s excessive, the result of a blank check and a company-wide hard-on for pretty pixels.  And it’s turned the world of Sarah Kerrigan and Jim Raynor into a powerful and disorganized brand of boring.

Tell me about it, Jim.

No knock on voice actors Robert Clotworthy (Jim Raynor) and Neil Kaplan (Tychus Findlay), who play a bad hand with all their conviction.  The writing doesn’t click and the mission structure shreds the pacing.  Picking fights with crew members after a sidequest?  Don’t expect a word from the bridge commander.  He’s only programmed to talk about the next mission.  Deus Ex this is not.  Let’s not forget Blizzard’s knack for punching the fragility of their game universes in the teeth, where the Illidan who threatened Azeroth in The Frozen Throne becomes “LOL HE WASN’T A BIG DEAL” in World of Warcraft.  It’s back!  It’s easy to earn the impression the story was written so World of Starcraft can soon rock your credit card.

“But multiplayer’s the legacy!  Koreans don’t play competitive single-player!”  And you’re right.  Multiplayer is wonderful.  It’s “Blizzard-quality”.  It’s a more entertaining out-of-the-box strategy game than anything the company has released.

Blizzard strategy games demand a skill set that twists hand-eye and mental dexterity into knots.  And those screaming about the elimination of interface crutches (crappy unit pathing, twelve-unit selection cap) don’t realize the weapons at hand are now a spectacular compromise between production, tactics, and unit control.

Despite their stranglehold on arcade-style real-time strategy, every Blizzard strategy game plays different.  Starcraft II embraces the cerebral side.  The game’s emphasis on hard counters is particularly notable.  Immortals wreck Siege Tanks.  Colossi incinerate Marines.  Well, Starcraft did the same.  But in that game, the design of the unit was the counter, where Dragoons laughed at Vultures until Spider Mines went into the ground.  Stalkers shred Reapers no matter which way you fight the fight.

The fear?  This brand of counter-unit will usher an era of “do this build order or die”.  It doesn’t.  Starcraft II is mind-fuck blitz chess, where players are rewarded for attacking four separate fronts with the proper unit composition.  Skill still trumps.  Starcraft II is merely giving the “I only lose because I get out-clicked!” audience a better chance to prove themselves.

But hey, it’s still Starcraft.  You’ll lose and you will feel inferior.  Tutorial and challenge modes are merely the beginner Jiu-Jitsu class before your date in the Octagon.  If you stick it out, you’ll earn time with one of the most rewarding challenges in video games.  And the pressing balance issues?  The “rush or die” team games?  The perception of a ladder dominated by Terran metal?  Historically, Blizzard strategy games have been balanced through map design.  Game balance is no concern here, gentlemen.

But the gaming service itself?  Battle.net 2.0?  Battle.net 2.0 is closer to the apocalypse than the Swarm, one of the most depressing “selling points” in the history of video games.  (Look at your box.  It’s there.)  Lead designer Greg Canessa has ported his Xbox Live acumen to the box.  It shows and it blows.

Online gaming services have four goals: Allow players to compete, rank players on those results, facilitate communication, facilitate game creation.  Battle.net 2.0 barely misses a whitewash.

It gets matchmaking right.  It’s damn good.  Starcraft is notorious for letting slight skill discrepancies reap large dividends, in the way American Presidents win landslide victories with slim voter margins.  Starcraft II rarely gets matching wrong.  The other three goals?  It’s pathetic.  You might as well call the ladder rankings “let’s hug and hold hands”, where players “compete” against one-hundred-man leagues.  It’s “Everybody Gets a Trophy Day”, where thousands across all levels of play can claim they’re number one.  Communication?  Forget it.  No chat channels, lots of region locking.  What’s that mean?  I can’t play Europeans, I can’t play Koreans, I can barely communicate with Americans.  And game creation?  When ladder becomes too hard for eight-year-old Jimmy?  The act of creating a custom game is bad enough.  Creating custom content?  Battle.net 2.0 uses a “popularity” system.  And since you’re not the man behind Defense of the Ancients, no one will ever play your map.  But I’m sure you knew all this.

I’m the top-ranked player in a random sample size, so I know what I’m talking about.

It’s one thing to witness the failings of a game service during the beta test.  It’s another to see them applied to retail launch.  Where previous Blizzard game launcher were “meet on server X in channel Y”, Battle.net 2.0 and Starcraft II are the opening of a George Romero flick, where we can only wonder if colleagues were consumed or simply hiding.  The company’s attempt to monopolize control of their competitive video game scene will prove damaging than any software piracy.  And it’s a sad indication of game development culture when the greatest obstacle to a product’s place in the Pantheon is the publisher’s own sword to the stomach.

It’s almost like someone with a gaming web site said the Battle.net forums would look like this in the post-release phase.

Does that sound harsh?  Probably.  After all, Blizzard’s worst day is more fun than a new Command and Conquer title.  And Starcraft II is a very good game.  But critics will crown it.  They’ll call it legendary.  And reviewers don’t understand why Starcraft and Warcraft III developed legacies: People stuck the game out.  The critical acclaim for those titles reflected a course of events where South Korea embraced Starcraft and China plays the hell out of Warcraft III.  Not the drunken week in ’99 where you totally owned your friends with a Zerg rush. Half-finished products don’t write the history of this industry.  Even when they’re some of the most fun you’ll have all year.

Quite frankly, if this is going to be the game people play at LAN parties ten years from now, then–oh, right.

4 out of 5

(Games rated four-out-of-five are very good.  In a slow twelve months, they’re dark horses for Game of the Year.  Even if you don’t care for the genre, you won’t feel like your money is going to waste.)

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