Finding the Balance - Editorials - The Armchair Empire

DT Mathers offers thinks that rushed and crappy games on Nintendo's gaming machines is a good thing!

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Finding the Balance

There’s no denying that Nintendo has made a killing so far in this generation of consoles. While there are still a lot of die hard gamers who just aren’t going for their new ideas, and wonky control schemes, those they haven’t been able to convert they’ve more than made up for in the casual gamer market, which has become a force to be reckoned with on the newest Nintendo console.

phoenix wright

While Nintendo (arguably) lost a lot of steam in the previous generation they’re once again a humongous juggernaut of gaming power. Pretty impressive stuff when you consider that they have the lowest specs out of the current generation of consoles. So if people aren’t going to the system because they’ve built the better bump-map then why are they going? Well, a new-age control scheme aside, the bread and butter of any platform is in the titles that are sitting on the store shelves. If you can’t ante-up where it counts then the smoothest graphics with the shiniest reflective surfaces, detailed particle effects, and ultra-realistic nose hairs aren’t going to get you very far.

So there’s been a lot of dust kicked up lately about the amount of garbage titles that are hitting both the Wii, and the DS. There’s not much arguing that point as

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titles like Escape from Bug Island and AniMates wouldn’t let me look myself in the mirror everyday if I did. But since the deluge of less than AAA titles doesn’t seem to be slowing, what is it that’s causing the problem? And more importantly, is it really that big of an issue?

For those that weren’t keeping up, Sony and Microsoft both have

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quality assurance measures in place. Sony even has an entire product-evaluation group whose job it is to make sure they don’t let any of the real stinkers through. That’s right; someone out there is being paid by Sony to make sure that you have a good time with any title you pick up for their systems.

Okay, so sometimes they miss. Things squeak through under the radar. Someone takes a dump in a game box and ships it out to retailers while the product-evaluation team is off taking a coffee break, or playing Guitar Hero. It happens. At least they’ve got someone manning the posts, right? At least they’re showing some concern for your gaming experience, even if that person is human and makes mistakes, too.

Nintendo, on the other hand, doesn’t have these people (and if they do, they’re all playing Guitar Hero). One way of looking at this is that Nintendo is letting quality slip on third-party titles to make more dollars from each developer. After all, with sales percentages being heavily skewed in the publisher’s favour, if a third-party developer puts out four titles and only one does well then its going to be a lot easier for Nintendo to make a profit then for the developer to do so. And while this is a valid argument there are other angles to be considered.

Originality is one of these issues. How many times have you sat down with a ‘Halo Killer’ or a GTA clone and thought ‘haven’t I done this before’? As an industry, gaming thrives on new, original, fun content but we’re also bigger than we’ve ever been, and because of the money involved in each flagship title publishers become less and less willing to take chances on something that isn’t a sure-fire winner. Why invest millions in an off-beat rhythm game, or a quirky Japanese RPG-Puzzler that might sit on the shelves collecting dust when you can just wait a little while, and get yet another Lara Croft game? Financially, this plan makes good sense in the short term. But for gamers who love both their Master Chief’s and their Elite Beat Agents (which you’ll note is for the DS, a Nintendo system) it’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

Could you see something like Phoenix Wright or Cooking Mamma or Trauma Center making it past Sony’s product-evaluation team? Can you hear that product pitch in your head? “Yes, you heard me; you play as a manic Japanese lawyer who solves murder mysteries with the help of a spirit-channeling sidekick. Oh, and also? Zany situations are more important than obeying real laws, or common sense.” Yeah, I’m sure you can hear the next thing to be said in that room, too. It goes like this: “Thanks, but we’ll pass.”

quality diagram

If you can make a diagram of a concept, it can often make it more understandable. Not so much with game quality control.

Even when the industry does hit on a new, original idea, what happens? The industry milk the hell out of it, sucking every last ounce out from its dry husk of a corpse, and then a sequel is churned out. Then there are more sequels. And if it’s still got a little get-up-and-go to it, the industry makes sequels of those sequels, and so on. Don’t believe me? Katamari, anyone?

Now, I don’t want to sound too bitter here. And I’m not trying to say that we don’t get any original titles on the Microsoft and Sony consoles, but for every Alien Hominid there are a slew of mediocre games that want to steal Rockstar or Bungie’s thunder. So while the other big boys of the console world do get a quirky title or two, they can’t live up to the quantity of new, truly original titles that Nintendo sees. I can’t help but think that a lot of diamonds in the rough are getting tossed out as coal by the stricter evaluation process. After all, there’s no quantifiable hardware reason that these titles can’t make it to the Xbox 360, or PS3 so the problem must be somewhere else.

I hear the skeptic out there saying “Okay, fine, so the loose publishing requirements let in a few gems. Great, fantastic – but is it worth sorting through all the crap to find them?” How dare you! Shame on you, avid reader, shame! Why? Because in these wonderful times no one is left to their own devices to find out if a game is good or not. Reviewers often have advance copies of titles and articles both in print and online will give you the lowdown on what’s hot and what’s trash, often before the game is even released to the public.

Many hardcore gamers already look up reviews of games before they buy them, and this is a wise practice. And while business people, working Joes, moms and dads, and even grandmas and grandpas may not be as familiar with this process it is available to them, and it should be just as much a part of learning to play games as how to hold a controller. Does that suck? Yeah, a little. But they are growing pains. There is a learning process to any new hobby, and I feel that is part of ours. Nintendo has let through a lot of bad titles sure, but they’ve also expanded our number as gamers, and swelled the audience to new areas. There’s going to be a period of adjustment, and experimentation.

This isn’t to say I’m without sympathy for the person who hasn’t learned this “trick” of looking into a game beforehand, goes out and plunks down their hard-earned cash on a new title and finds out that it was a waste of dollars that could have been spent on something else. I’ve done it before myself, and I know it sucks hard. But if we do want the gems that come from other parts of the world market, and from smaller developers, and self-starting game creators, (and I think the sales records of said titles show we do) then having to sort through all the other stuff that comes with them is going to be part of it. The problem here is not that Nintendo has no publishing standards. The problem is that most publishers have an incredibly narrow view of what’s “acceptable” in the industry, and what falls into the category of reasonable risk. Until that fact changes I’m happy that we have at least one company who is willing to take some chances.

In the meantime? You can either use magazines and websites (like this one) to search through the trash in search of treasures, or you can await the 5072.67 Halo 3 “Killers” that are in development somewhere as you’re reading this. Personally, I have some zany court room antics to attend to on my DS.

- D.T. Mathers

(November 13, 2007)


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