The Video Game Industry is Starting to Remind Me of Early 2000's Pro Wrestling

 As I would like to have hopefully gotten across through the variety of postings I've made here, I am a nerd that enjoys a wide swath of things. I would say that comic books and video games have by far been the longest running hobby passions of mine that I've indulged in, each has occasionally tagged out to other pursuits, like Magic: the Gathering and, while I've got the wrestling reference just hanging there, yes, professional wrestling consumed me (and let's be honest, a great deal of the country) for most of the back half of the 1990's and early 2000's. 90's wrestling was the highest mark for the sport(s entertainment) for obvious and well-deserved reason. Some of the most energizing, charismatic stars of all time in the industry, such as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, "2024 Republican Presidential Nominee" Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels, and on and on and on rose to prominence in both the wrestling world and the pop culture world at large. It was a heyday for their brand of badassery and flamboyancy and also a glorious transition of the actual in-ring action as wrestlers from all corners of the world, from Japan to Mexico, were influencing up-and-comers such as Chris Jericho, Rob Van Dam, Chris Benoit (I know, I know, we don't say his name) or becoming the influencers like in the cases of Eddie Guerrero, Jushin "Thunder" Liger, and Rey Mysterio Jr. The in-ring performances were growing at leaps and bounds, the "promos" the stars were cutting every show were the stuff of meme legend to the point that they're still quoted today by 50 and 60-somethings that haven't moved on and probably yell at a grocery store clerk once a week because they had the "audacity" to tell them it was store policy to wear a mask right now, and there was just a huge amount of momentum behind the pro wrestling business spurred on by these performers and the vicious, "anything goes" competition driving most of the industry at the time between the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW). 

Everyone loved wrestling; a lot of us lived and breathed wrestling. And then the wrestling industry just kind of shat itself into oblivion with pretty much one man to blame. But it was great for a while there. When WCW came right out and challenged WWF to a programming battle on Monday nights during the "Monday Night War," every week it was just dizzying the amount of one-upmanship that was occurring, the levels that the stories were going to to outdo each other (though, admittedly, some of this material was pure "shock" value in its most abhorrent form), and the in-ring exhibitions the talent was putting each other through on TV and in Pay-Per-View to enthrall the masses. And then it just kind of stopped. WCW at a certain point both kind of just "out shocked" themselves and started putting out derivative storyline after derivative storyline recycling the same "who's the newest member/traitor" gimmick to their New World Order gimmick that really ramped up the fervor and excitement around pro wrestling at the time, but would also contribute heavily to its decline, especially once you had a generational millionaire-turned billionaire like WWF Owner/Inheritor Vince McMahon as the de facto leader of the business. 

Unfortunately, the fallout the unfolded in the falling of WCW led to exactly the expected: With no real competition to his company at the time, Vince McMahon leveraged his television presence and money to go out of his way to ensure he wouldn't have any real competition for decades. Any wrestling talent that had a modicum of buzz around them when WCW packed up production went into (now) WWE's coffers. Any wrestling talent building a name for themselves on the Independent circuit went into Vince McMahon's rolodex. Any talent on the international stage that wanted to make their bones in America basically reported to V-Dog or no one at all. Yes, there were the occasional nuisances, like ill-fated Total Nonstop Action (TNA) that was formed around mostly WWE castoffs as the bloated roster from WCW's additions to the ranks resulted in some fat trimming to be done, but for almost twenty years until just recently when the billionaire son of the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars decided to get him in the game with All Elite Wrestling (AEW) one industry ran through one man because he took his enormous wealth and took the creative talent that made pro wrestling tick and made it exclusively his.

So, when I see a multi-billion dollar video game and tech company throwing billions and billions of dollars to acquire as many software producing studios as they can possibly acquire in the span of just a couple years, excuse me if I don't happen to get a bit of the drizzling shits of "oh, not this BS again."

Obviously, I'm talking about the $7 billion mega purchase of ultra-AAA videogame development studio Bethesda by Microsoft about a week and a half ago. Needless to say, the ramifications of such an aggressive move by one of the three big video games publishers and console producers is just beginning to be felt, but the message was loud and clear up front: When the going gets tough, the tough buys up market share and intellectual properties. 

From the shrewdest of shrewd business move standpoints, this absolutely makes sense. Microsoft took an absolute drumming this past gaming generation, with numbers showing that the Playstation 4 outsold the X-Box One by almost two hundred and fifty percent.  And while there are many factors that could pertain to exactly why this generation turned out so lackluster to the newest X-console, hands down one of the most glaring ones is that, well, there wasn't much reason to buy one over the offerings of their rivals in Sony and, to a lesser extent, Nintendo. There was simply next to nothing you could buy on a X-Box that you couldn't get on any other console from a gaming software standpoint, as Microsoft had an exclusive showing that was highlighted essentially by your standard expected titles from the publisher - a new Halo, a new Gears of War, and some Forza racing games - and very not much else. Meanwhile, Sony leaned heavily into their own studios they own or have very close relationships with - the Naughty Dogs, Guerrilla Games, Insomniac Games, etc - as well as leveraging their relationships and sales leads to pull some clutch "timed" exclusives and really push the "must own" feel of the console. Nintendo, as always, was more than content to be the place you go to for Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, and other Nintendo mainstays and has done quite well for themselves, being the number two selling console of the generation despite entering it years after the PS4 and X-Box One launched. 

Adding Bethesda to the roll call of their studios now means Microsoft adds titles like the Elder Scrolls series who, for example, their last entry in that lineage, Skyrim, sold 30 million copies alone. And this acquisition isn't coming in "hot" per se, but it is a follow up by Microsoft for a purchasing spree they went on just a couple years ago with essentially the same message; We'll buy ourselves to a reputable lineup. Again, this makes complete business sense on Microsoft's part and I don't think anyone can fault them in that regard. They got buried on exclusives and they, as a company in general, not just the X-Box division, are putting a lot of weight on their Game Pass as a growing point. Microsoft first and foremost will always be a computer company and their Game Pass means infinitely more to the company than just being a console mover; it's a revenue stream that has literally over a billion potential customers worldwide through Windows users on PC and so on.

And that's where I, as a general video game consumer and fan and someone whose fandom of another entertainment medium who watched a industry tentpole with a big bankroll go hog wild locking up a dominance of the market, get a little wary. Also, yes, I am a dedicated Sony Playstation fan, those console have always served me right because of that big advantage of theirs; their dedication to having their own lineup of studios that create consistently fantastic exclusive titles. But that has nothing to do with this particular acquisition from my own personal standpoint. Bethesda was responsible for about two purchases a generation from me given my purchasing habits, while Sony always ropes me for a dozen and that's not changing. The current loss of one publisher means nothing to me personally and, again, it is a completely understandable and legitimate get for Microsoft going forward, all factors considered. But I've seen where this goes.

I remember going from a diehard pro wrestling fan that just LIVED the sport(s entertainment) for a solid decade from mid-90's to the mid-2000's to someone that just dropped the industry for dead as soon as Vince McMahon fully got his mitts on it. I lived for getting to school on Tuesday mornings to talk about the previous night's shenanigans and rallying like-minded friends to each chip in ten bucks and group up to get each Pay-Per-View. I mowed extra lawns to get mail order Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) VHS tapes sent to my old, old ass because that was where the really wild stuff happened. And then it was just gone as far as I was concerned because WWE not only succeeded in acquiring all the talent, they then succeeded in turning that talent into one of the most shallow pools of creativity I ever witnessed simply because they didn't have to try. They didn't have to worry about another company beating them because they bought most of the tools that could be used agains them, Vince McMahon just had to worry about beating himself and driving too much of the fanbase away in general that they couldn't make money squaring off again themselves. At least in my case, that was a losing proposition that went on for over a decade.

Again, I don't think that video game nerds worldwide are going to wake up tomorrow and find out that Microsoft has hovered up another thirty software developers and Sony and Nintendo will basically exist to make their own games... but isn't that what Microsoft will inch towards?  Seven billion dollars to acquire such a large studio is at the same time not chump change to be throwing around in the video game market, but it's also a proverbial drop in the bucket for a company like Microsoft on the whole if they really want to push that Game Pass long game. Like I said earlier, literally something like one-in-six people on the planet run their consoles or computers through a Microsoft operating system. What if Microsoft throws enough money around, acquires enough studios, and makes their Game Pass lineup so undeniable that, say, ten percent of those MS users sign up for the $120 it costs annually? That's twelve BILLION dollars in revenue annually. That's a Bethesda and a half just in one year, though that’s just talking gross sales and rough napkin math. But is that not worth it? If buying a Bethesda a year for the next five years means you're looking at a gross of nine digits a decade on the way to establishing gaming software dominance, how do you not pull that trigger? That's just basic business building; if you can spend the money and the revenues are there, you go spend that money and you grab that slice of the pie. 

Obviously there's hoops to jump through, supposedly. There will be anti-trust laws and merger acquisition procedures and blah blah blah. Let's be serious though and acknowledge that in this day and age of hyper capitalism none of that matters. Look at how stifled our Internet access is in this country, with basically a handful of companies running the broadband show nationwide, with large swaths of land covered by only one or two of them at a time with no real semblance of competition to be had, meaning the quality usually sucks, the customer service usually sucks, and the prices aren't much better. Because the arguments will be the same as they are for any oligopoly industry; there's just enough oddball small "local actors" enough other big tertiary companies touching that industry that there's enough "competition" happening to look the other way. Google is laying fiber now so that's a whole fourth company in the national mix on Internet, that's good enough. They even tried their hands at a video game streaming service once upon a time so, y'know, of course there's a "healthy" rivalry base. As long as something like a Steam still exists and you have college kids grinding away in their dorms to put their home brews to markets like it and, of course, the lobbying money is good, legislators who get paid to decide if big money is going too far will look away from a company like Microsoft sucking up developers like Spaceballs vacuuming up Planet Druidia's air. 

All of that above is just "end game" speak though, in a world where MS has spent their way to dominance. I'm being over reactive and somewhat spastic to focus on that considering the X-Box currently is the definitive loser this rapidly passing generation. We're not in the "Vince McMahon is swimming naked in his spoils" stage of the industry but in the Monday Night Wars stage, and the thing about that battle was the escalation, which was as thrilling as it was destructive. Talent was being pulled from all points on the globe to satiate WCW and WWF's need for freshness to fight their battle, and it was glorious while it lasted, but that furthered wrecked an Indy scene that really didn't have much way in the legs back then, hell, it straight up murdered ECW as WWF pulled from the talent so much to the point they just bought the company after the strain was too much. My point here is, what is to stop the same escalation of arms from occurring as Microsoft and Sony come to similar blows? My first reaction to this Bethesda purchase, aside from the undeniable moment of "oh shit, that's huge," was an immediate "well then, who does Sony buy in response?" If you're Sony and you just got handed the news that you're just not going to be able to promote two of the biggest gaming franchises in the business in the Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles, wouldn't the first reaction be as one of the money men in the company to call a meeting and debate the merits of a retort? For example, the company has been really close to Capcom the past few years to the point of basically funding Street Fighter V, what's the downside in this new normal to just throwing $2 billion at them and locking up having Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and freaking Monster Hunter in your ranks as a retaliation? Why not go full Japanophile and snag SquareEnix while at it, wrap up Final Fantasy check books are being opened? Hell, it’s not like they’ve been innocent this whole time, when buzz was hitting its peak for No Man’s Sky, they put their money and stamp on it to capitalize and made that launch a debacle in its own right  

It took nearly twenty years for pro wrestling to "recover" from the fallout of fallout of a two company war that featured pocketbooks as much as it did creativity. And I put those apostrophes around the r-word in that last sentence because the ratings for your average WWE program as the war was breaking wide open for the company was pushing someone like 8 million viewers. Now even the company that "won," through years of self-inflicted stagnations, gets more like 3 million viewers a show. And despite as much energy and enthusiasm their biggest "competition" in that time frame, AEW, has garnered in the past year, even they basically only get a little over a million to tune into their live show every Wednesday. Now, there is hope around that company because their ratings draw VERY well with a younger crowd which is where pro wrestling has been really hurting during this post-war wasteland - a significant amount of wrestling fans identify in a 50+ age range, meaning they hopped on during the "Monday Night Wars" and have mostly stuck around - but the damage of this was obvious and it's that pro wrestling went from being the talk of school hallways and water coolers every Tuesday morning twenty years ago and launching the careers of one of the biggest movie stars of all time, to a niche product that is BEGGING people to get their grandkids interested in to build some momentum into this next decade. 

Again, I know a ton of that comparison word soup above is not exactly "good faith" arguing and I'm not saying I'm pretending it is. For one, as big as pro wrestling was in its biggest years it WISHES it had anything resembling what an average year looks like for how many people and how much money interacts with the video game industry today. WWE's current net value isn't even what Microsoft paid for Bethesda, and that's after a couple deals with Fox for broadcasting rights of one of their shows and a Saudi prince who, y'know, had one of our journalists murdered because Vince McMahon hangs out with the best people, put a billion-plus dollars into their coffers. As of 2018, $43 billion was spent on video games in the US alone; the markets aren't even comparable. Except, you would think with that kind of money out there there would be more than just three company pushing consoles and then a couple more on top of that pushing streaming services like Microsoft's Game Pass, the Stadia experiment that Google is running, Steam, and whatever other software publishers are hosting their products online via a client of their own. And that's because video games are still an exorbitantly cost intensive market to get into and not many companies the combination of money, software expertise, or just the simple desire to get into a fistfight with such entrenched rivals, especially one with pockets as deep as a company like Microsoft. 

And that's why I feel like eerily like I did near two decades ago when a product I deeply loved was at its absolute best, before it dragged itself to absolute lows. Video games are arguably the best they've ever been between the power of the tech, big AAA developmental studios and folks in their basements alike pushing themselves to make something epic in their own rights, and the investment level of time you can put into a digital world you love and enjoy can be nearly limitless. But you can see the cracks forming a bit. Those worlds are costly to build and maintain, so when companies find one that enthralls the masses they will do ANYTHING to keep them on that high. Diminishing returns are at an all time high. Big pockets and mergers sucking up the talent are primary weapons of war. It's pretty much never been a better time to be a gamer, and that's why I'm getting a little anxious to see where we go from here, because I've been here before. 

The Console Conundrum

Literally within the day of my rebooting this piece of Internet paper (which was almost a month ago which, yes, I'm a lazy bastard who never keeps his promises) Sony had a rather lengthy presser that was essentially the "shot heard 'round the world' letting us know the next generation was coming (to any Wii U owners in the house getting ruffled over this line of thought all I have for you is a "that's cute").  For an industry that has had the longest running cycle in its history and a consumer base that seems to becoming more restless as they feel the current product lines becoming a little thin at the least, repetitive with untold sequels at the most, this was really what every one was waiting to happen.  Developers and publishers would now finally be able to start showing off their wares they've been working on ever since they felt the generation was coming to a close and those not already on with Sony would watch the company's pitch as to why they should hop on board. Fans, of course, would finally get to satiate their ravenous appetite for new hardware and finally get a gander at what the next generation would look like (y'know, if they haven't glanced at a PC game in the past 18 months). Basically, it would be a learning experience of advancement in graphical prowess, if Sony was going to go deeper into the gimmick side of things (i.e. "motion" or some other schmancy control scheme), and basically what their open arms approach would be on the business and consumer relations side of things as the industry starts heating up over the next year. Personally, I learned arguably the most valuable lesson about the industry after the conference was over, and that was the video game "fanboys" are now the world's most pathetic group of humans and are a blight on society at large.


Holy shit, I do not think I've actively seen so much forced whining out of a group of humans as I did post-conference for the PS4. The floodgates opened almost immediately, with the "worry worts" worried that Sony was coming for their old game libraries via the exclusion of backwards compatibility and the claims that Sony developed tech to nullify previously owned games (in fairness, they were correct about former and Sony has developed the latter though some analysts believe they will not bother using it). Then came the PC-only gaming crowd to brag about how the graphics on their rigs with $2000 in the latest video cards and cooling systems can already do what was being shown and to also prove once and for all the PCers are the hipsters of the gaming industry and should be stoned with full cans of PBR. Then came the standard affair, Sony fanboys being way too excited about what was there (which, I'll say now that I thought it was a really good conference that had both its pluses and minuses that I'll get to later), the XBots where there to rain vitriol on everything shown and talk about how "their" next console is going to reign supreme again, and the Nintendo guys were still waiting around waiting for Pikmin 3 to FUCKING FINALLY come out. It was all a cavalcade of individuals showing that they do not understand the meaning of the word "objectivity" and that in fact it may have been systematically removed from all their dictionaries.


This is the main conundrum I alluded to in the title in that console makers are now going to have to deal with some of the most entitled, aggravating consumers out there these days. I legitimately feel bad for console developers moving forward because their market is a beast that constantly wants fed and wants their meals catered exactly to each of them, despite their enormous numbers. Part of this is the console maker's fault of course; this past generation more than ever, as the market has exploded, the makers have tried to make their machines all things to all their buyers and done whatever they could to get consumers to latch onto their brand in an era where people use such devices as their status symbols. These buyers need to be tied into everything now via these devices, entertainment apps that let them use their favorite TV/movie watching programs, they need to be tied into their social networks, have the marketplace for the newest games for downloads, have online integration and on and on. And that's fine because that's the way things are; that's where the marketplace is and that's the price of doing business. They also want their backwards compatibility, because that's a thing they had on three consoles ever and it's a travesty of justice that all the stuff gamers bought for a generation are now obsolete; as it has been with almost every single piece of tech down the ages, from 8 track to cassette, VHS to DVD, Laser disc to the trash bin and so on. Never mind that in order to make this happen with the PS4 the architecture would have to be built with two systems of chips in place and would immediately cost upwards of $600/700 to buy, because that's also a no go since the world will end if this system comes out higher than $500, if the outrage of the $599 launch PS3 was any indication.


Alas, because Sony also realizes this is another piece of steak the beast feels it is being withheld from them, they are probably working on a way to bring all those old games to these new systems via the Gaikai streaming program they purchased last year.  But this is where we're at; console makers have been promising their users the world for a generation now (like a bunch of idiots) and now gamers expect the world (because the term "realistic expectations" does not exist in society any more). And this is why I simultaneously would not want to be in anyone's shoes at these gaming companies and why I do not feel any pity for them at the end of the day as the next generation rises on us. I simultaneously feel some old school remorse for Nintendo as their new system flounders after creating what I feel to be a pretty nifty new controller device but have to shake my head at them not learning after the past three years of the Wii's irrelevance that gamers buy consoles to PLAY FUCKING GAMES on them, games being the thing that Nintendo did not bother to bring to the table in five months of Wii U's being on shelves now. I don't pity the decision Microsoft will have to make with its next console as well, as it has the tough decision of how much it will want to push its Kinect tech in the next cycle, the Kinect being either the key to that system's differentiating itself in the market besides whatever online tweaks they make since they're the still the top of the heap in that regard. Really, I don't pity any device maker as the tech industry - mainly since the prevalence of smartphones and tablets has hit - has willingly (stupidly) become makers of items that now have to be all things to all people and those people are definitely out to hold them to that standard.


Oh, yeah, I guess I should actually cover what all Sony said during that two hours as well. Heh. In all honestly, I guess I found it somewhat tedious in its amalgamation of trying to be both kind of an info dump on what the system will do and a business presser in trying to give developers and investors and idea of what they plan in the market and hope to achieve with pushes in social media and whatnot and then also balance pulling in interest from gamers for the event by, y'know, showing some goddamn games. Like the wall these systems may hit in the future, the press conference suffered from trying to be everything to everyone. But, all that said, I did like what I saw even if it was sometimes (understandably) boring. But, hell, I've basically written presentations like this during my MBA classes, I'm shocked it was as packed with interesting stuff as it was on top of all the time spent trying to convince me I care about the "Share" button.  I liked the specs they gave us and appreciate that last minute jump to 8GB of RAM and think that's a good sign Sony plans on being in this next gen for a long while. And I like what we saw on the games front. Yeah, I wasn't exactly excited by some of the properties I saw - never really have any intentions to play another Killzone again and I really wasn't much of a Halo guy so I could care less about the new Bungie product - but what else are they supposed to do when launching a new system? Familiar properties - especially ones like those two projects that are very graphically intense - are pretty key when rolling over into a new generation and I think they balanced things out quite well by announcing some new IPs and delivering on continuing game lines I already love like inFamous.


I will admit though, in full disclosure, is that if I do have any "fanboy allegiance" it lays with Sony right now, so I was not a particularly hard sell on their new unit, as long as they totally didn't cock up this presentation. Yeah, they fucked up royally with the hacking incident almost two years back (the way they held their data AND the bullshit slow way they kindly let us know about it) and the system was pricey, but those have really been the only hiccups in my experience with Sony product since they entered the market back in 1995. I've owned many a Nintendo product and honestly have to admit they just haven't really catered to my interests in gaming experiences for a while (which is fine, they get by just fine with what they do, it's just not usually my swag) and I personally just am not a fan of Microsoft's business model (I'll be damned if I ever find myself ponying up $60 a year for the "right" to play my games on an Internet connection I already pay $60 a month for) and the failure rate this generation was very off putting, even though they made right on the warranty front. Really though, what it comes down to me and console loyalty is games, pure and simple, and I just happen to believe Sony has the best assemblage of In-House studios in the industry right now and that extra hit of three or four system exclusive properties a year makes a big difference for me on top of all the Third-Party ware that hits alongside them. And, to round this out, nothing I saw at this debut for the Playstation 4 led me to believe this not be the case going forward. Now, if Sony comes forward with an announcement they want the same $60 a year Microsoft is getting, I will officially lose hope for gaming at large. I guess we'll see by November. Cheers...

Immersion

The above is a term that I have heard brandied about pretty regularly the past few months amongst the video game podcasts I listen to about those digital distractions, to the point where I found myself dissecting it in my head whenever I had spare moments for thought. It's also a term that seems somewhat "contentious" to me because there is a lot of personal interpretation in the word. Not a strict definition of what the word means, mind you, but how it is implemented , which in and of itself seems like a big bit of clusterfuckery saying it like that. Basically, everyone has their own idea of how you get immersed in a video game, or what a game does that is immersive to them, without any dispute that being immersed means to more or less be enthralled by what you are playing. That defining of immersion is kind of what I wanted to discuss with this.


The common discussion about immersion has been coming up a lot recently because of really one title, and that's Skyrim. Given trends on that word coming up though, it seems the idea of open-world games in general is the big culprit in garnering the label, which I believe is immediately unfair. "A lot of shit" going on does not necessarily an engrossing experience make. If filling a world with lots and lots of "shit going down" was all it took to create a riveting piece of media, Michael Bay would be THE filmmaking genius of our time, walking stereotype Autobots and all. I personally feel that Skyrim is immersive because of its breadth and, more importantly, the quality of storytelling within its massive confines (and the contradiction of those two words should show how special that particular game is).


The world of Skyrim can be overwhelming, sure, but I think that is more a case of the game giving you a ton of freedom to let it become overwhelming if you let it. You don't have to take all those quests, but they are there for the taking and exploration is such a big, wonderful, sometimes powerful experience (try and tell me you don't get a little twinge of epic swelling whenever you come up a mountain crest to the sound of the Nordic bellowing and a Dragon swooping over all the gorgeous landscapes you see before you) that it's very easy to do nothing but explore and stockpile missions like a crazy cat lady does feline companions. And in that world there are some great big storylines to partake in, there's tiny errands you can do that make the town feel more alive, besides the activities the NPCs are always one and lines they are spouting and so on. One of the best examples of how that game drags you in is a little cabin I found about twenty hours before I hung up the game until DLC time. All it is is the fire-gutted shell of a one-room place in which you find a charred corpse and a scroll about an immolation spell. It's one little microfraction of an aspect about the game and it tells you a little story in a world full of them waiting for you to discover.


But there is caveats to all of what I just typed, as there are definitely chinks in the armor of a game that I personally find immersive but has elements that can take you out of the experience. The combat is not exactly though most in depth of mechanics and does not engage you in combat terribly well. While there is a mega crapton of things to do in the world of Skyrim, the main story is not particularly the most momentous one to show up in a video game (though it does have its moments), to the point where I logged in 130 hours on the game and did not even finish the main quest. Some of the level mechanics as well, particularly the Smithing and Enchanting chains, are basically a grind as well, and ones that can "break" the game by making your character too powerful too early. Speaking of breaking, I really doubt it goes without typing more than a line here to acknowledge the bug issues the game had on launch, which could literally break the game for you. A black screen is not exactly the most immersive of experiences, as The Sopranos has taught us.


All those items could be perceived as an assemblage of arguments as to why even such an immense, content littered world could not be immersive to some. I personally think the sum is greater than the parts and have not had any hands on experiences with bugs that ruined my experience. But this all bleeds into my point that more content does not exactly mean more outlets to immerse the player with. I have played plenty of open world games and have been felt completely underwhelmed with all presented before me. Truthfully, one of the biggest release of this current generation - Grand Theft Auto IV - left me pretty cold. While that particular version of Liberty City was also massive, I thought there was also some pretty massive gaps between what was interesting and worth doing and not. The mission designs were pretty top notch, as Rockstar has been the trendsetter for open-world story missions since the PS2 era, but pretty much everything else in the city I found lackluster. The NPCs were about as empty as a trip through the Jersey Shore, the "Friendster" stuff that took up the brunt of your side mission time was twice as annoying as it ever was entertaining, and... okay. I'll leave it at that because I feel like I'm piling on at this point. My point, essentially, is that the game was a big ol' bag of shit to do, and not much of it, I felt was worth doing.


Taking all of that big pile of letters above and let's start to move into mechanics, which is where I really think this discussion is make or break. Mechanics alone can make an immersive game, in my opinion, but that never lasts. I've spent hours upon hours of my youth with the Tetris, in several incarnations, and as those little tiles are falling faster and faster and you're just begging for a straight piece to finish off four lines. First thing I did when I received my Kindle Fire for Christmas (thanks wifey!) was download Angry Birds (and yes, I see the irony in welcoming in a spanking new piece of tech with a "welcome to 2009" event) and waste a handful of hours hurling some poultry at some pork. But these experiences are always finite; eventually a great mechanic is going to wear thin, most likely sooner than later without something else to bring them together. A riveting story mayhaps? Or a big old open world with a multitude of things to do so that you can connect average mechanics without having to rely on one or two highly polished ones? That's the ticket.


If you take everything negative I said about GTA4 a paragraph ago, replace it with hunting, poker, horse wrangling and a (again, in my opinion) the early 1900's Western Frontier, you now how what I believe to be one of the best and most immersive games of this generation: Red Dead Redemption. Instead of NPC's that are just walking streets saying occasional bland lines, you have cobblers, saloon regulars, people on the trail who are trying to ambush you. Instead of "friendster" phone calls, you are hunting grizzlies and cougars, lassoing and breaking stallions, hunting treasure, etc. None of those mechanics as I experienced them were the greatest thing ever, but they all had their couple hours of fun before jumping to a different one or going back to story missions, made the world much more real, and really helped with the breadth and tone of the story, which was also excellent. Mechanics are just as important as setting and story, it's just a sliding scale how much you want to lean on them as far as making highly polished ones that are the highlight of a shorter, more focused game, or lots of little ones that help realize the much larger world of a much grander game.


That is going to bring me to the last point that I think is highly important in that immersion factor and that's execution, execution, execution. It's not just finding that swath of mechanics to use, it's motivating the player to use them and avoiding repetition to the point of over saturation. It's integrating them into your story and, obviously, pulling off that story with quality characters, plot threads, pacing, etc. Atmosphere is a plus too. Bioshock, I personally believe, is one of the best and most immersive games ever, and you can boil down the mechanics to being a somewhat mediocre shooter, minimal character customization via the tonics, and a pretty decent hacking mini-game. But Rapture is probably the most realized and unique environment I have ever played in, the story is... well, we all know how amazing that is (despite overstaying its welcome by probably an hour). If you can completely sell the highlights while keeping your less enthralling mechanics and gaming points to the bare essentials they need to be in the game, you can easily have that immersive experience.


Alright, time to shut up about this (I always love how long winded I let myself get on these things, when I know no one's really going to read it, but I like to type away sometimes). The last idea I wanted to put forth about the subject is that I think it is safe to say you don't have have an immersive experience to be a great game, but all great games are immersive experiences. I've played a lot of games (a fucking lot, with a lot more to go so says the stack of gaming boxes as tall as my cat here) and the ones that I consider truly great pull me in completely while I've noticed that the "almost greats" always seem to be just lacking somewhere. Maybe the story did not hit as high a notes as the others, maybe I was not as whimsically lost in the setting as I were those others, maybe it was a bunch of mechanics that worked well but did not feel made the game stand out, and so on down the line. Like a great movie, a great, immersive video game I absolutely lose track in, lost all sense of time with until it's over or a realize, fuck me, that's the sun coming up. But like a "pretty good" movie, a game that is doing lots of things well but not completely selling me, I'm checking the time, I'm waiting for this bit to end so I can hit the pisser, I'm actively watching the time because I have other stuff I could be doing, but I'm overall having my moments with the experience. That's why I think this is a concept worth discussing and breaking down to see if there is a method to it all, or if it is just one of those things that you have to place on the true creative geniuses of a medium being just that. You cannot replicate it but you can study it and learn from it as you try and bring out your own masterpiece.

Shadows of the Damned

As part of my "No, really, there's nothing to play until August?" attempt to find, well, stuff to play until August, I got this for some trade-in credit at The Exchange. The Giant Bomb "Quick Look" sold me (amazing how watching someone play a game for a bit will give you the insight you want into it) and I decided it was worth, well, no real money. The game, if you have not caught wind of it yet (easy enough to do considering no marketing behind it whatsoever) comes down to - and am taking this cue too from Giant Bomb - a world of John Constantine meets El Mariachi set in a Rodriguez Grindhouse film. It's a third person shooter from the guys who brought us stuff like "No More Heroes" and "Killer 7" in which our protagonist - Garcia Fucking Hotspur (yes, always with the fucking in there) see's his lover, Paula, murdered and her soul stolen by agents of the Underworld. Combined with his sidekick Johnson - a floating skull who's an escapee from the Underworld - Garcia kicks ass through the Underworld making loads of sexual references and Boner jokes, posturing and taunting through a thick and somewhat cheesy Mexican accent, and in general dealing with fucked up shit.

And I loved it. Well, okay, I really really liked it, as I'll breakdown here. The thing about this game, as it goes with most these Suda 51 joints, is more or less the random crazy that comes with it. The main demon, Fleming, has three skulls stacked on top of each other for a head? Alright. Locked doors are accessible once you give the crying baby demon that is attached to it a strawberry or eyeball to eat? Sure. There's a "light and dark" mechanic whereas the darkness continues to suck the life out of you until you use your "light shot" on a goat's head on the wall to keep it at bay? Fuck it, I'm in. Your gun's name is the Boner anyway since it's formed by your buddy Johnson for god's sakes, if you're on board with that from the get-go, might as well give the rest a try. That remainder includes some fucking gruesome imagery, as well a bit of psychological horror, and a very apparent self-awar attitude. One level involves running from the flesh-hungry form of your Paula chasing you into a cabin in the woods where there's something terrible in the basement. This game knows its influences and its sense of "HA! Bad pun!" humor and revels in them, and it makes the essence of the game very endearing in its craziness and referential manner.

The problem with this game though, is that all the fun stuff is wrapped up in a pretty mediocre third-person shooter. The targeting is twitchy, sometimes the camera gets too up in your face - especially since some of these enemies are pretty damn fast - and it becomes difficult to see freaking anything. The variations of gun Johnson takes up - large barreled pistol, shotgun, and machine gun - have some cool alt-fire stuff going on, but in of themselves are pretty standard. There are some genuinely enjoyable puzzle designs in here, particularly using the light and dark mechanics, but then, and most of the boss fights, boil down to "find and shoot the shiny button" and running around a lot trying to duck things out to rip your head off. There's some really off-the-wall gameplay deviations in the Act 4 section that are nice, but even then they go to well with that stuff probably too soon or too often and lose their novelty quick. For all the greatness I think the environment, characters, and atmosphere reach, I think the actual gameplay is not necessarily "generic" but rough and kind of brings the experience down.

If there's a rub to this game at all, I think that it really is one of those titles that calls in the "what is a game worth?" question. I really liked this game, despite its frustrations. I'll take an okay shooter with great atmosphere like this over a shooter first experience with almost no personality (like a Gears) any time. But the lackluster mechanics have left me unwilling to deal with them again for a replay, especially when you tab on that this game is pretty Platinum Trophy/Gamer Score unfriendly (They don't give you credit for lower difficulty level trophies/achievements when you beat it on a higher one. You want full credit, you're playing this three times through buddy). If I had paid actual money and full $60 of it at that for it, I'd be kind of let down. As is, I think this kind of game is the perfect "wait six months for it to hit half price" item, the addition rub being that with next to no notable releases until late August, impatience may set in on some gaming thumbs.

I'll say this, the day if/when a sequel comes out, I'll be overjoyed that it did and highly anticipate playing it. The whiff I catch on how much the gameplay is "fixed" though, will be the deciding factor on when I get it. For some though, what I've said here and review sites have posted, that might be fully worth the whole sixty clams, and that's great, but some may have mixed feelings like I did about the gameplay and feel a little anxious about that price. I have a feeling this could be this year's "Darksiders" though, a game with great atmosphere and okay enough gameplay that gets it enough "cult" praise to get enough people on board for another. Of course, Darksiders sold well out the gate, so I guess we'll see how this does when NPD's hit.