#68: Kingdoms of Amalur vs. Skyrim: The Intimidation Factor

Like many people out there in the gaming space, I like to try to play games to completion. Though I do that with fewer and fewer games as I grow older, those games that particularly interest me still fuel that urge to do everything I can before moving on. Because of this, I am all too familiar with some of the frustrations that come from such a playstyle. Open-world RPGs can be either great or horrible for people like myself. On one hand, we always have something to do, because those kinds of games will almost always have a quest or two hidden away for players to find. However, completions like me are never able to completely move on from them, because those kinds of games will almost always have a quest or two hidden away for players to find. Despite this problem, this genre can be implemented in ways that can either exacerbate this feeling or lessen it in people.

Two open-world RPGs in particular are the subjects of this weeks article: Kingdoms of Amalur, which I recently got finished playing, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one of the most successful games in the Elder Scrolls franchise. I want to talk about these two games in particular for a very special reason. Both games have tons of content. So much so that players could spend hundreds of hours playing either game and still never be able to complete it all. However, when I think of trying to do everything in Kingdoms of Amalur, I can't help but be intimidated by the thought. Not because any one piece of content is particularly overwhelming, but because I feel that it will take so much time, become so boring, and progress will be so slow that I just lose any desire to keep playing the game. At the same time, the thought of exploring the land of Skyrim, despite all the criticisms I have levied at that game over its lifespan, fills me with delight. Just writing about it now makes me want to go back, reload my save, and keep exploring the land to look for all the things I undoubtedly missed. At this realization, I sat down and thought for a bit as to why that might be.

The first explanation I came to for this is that Kingdoms of Amalur makes the sheer wealth of content available much more obvious than Skyrim does. When traveling through a given area in Kingdoms of Amalur, players will often come across bright yellow question marks on the map. Each of those symbols represents a quest which the players can stop to complete. This means that a player can gauge exactly how many quests are in given area by just filling out the map and counting how many yellow question marks show up. This is in fairly stark contrast to Skyrim. In the latest installment to the Elder Scrolls series, players are not explicitly told where or how to find quests. Players need to talk with people in towns or settlements in order to obtain quests. While sometimes NPCs in the game world will come up and petition the player character for assistance, the player themselves will generally be the one who has to begin interactions in order to discover new content.

Though these two systems lead to the same end, in which the player discovers quests and content to do, they accomplish different things in the mind of the player. In the case of Kingdoms of Amalur, all the content is made readily apparent to the player. In Skyrim, the exact amount of content is obfuscated. So when I go into an new area in Kingdoms of Amalur, I think to myself that this could be a potential 6-7 hours sitting right here just doing missions completely unrelated to anything else in the game. Entering a new town in Skryim, I can complete whatever errands I need to run and talk to a few villagers to find some quests I need to do. Without the constant reminder that there is a new thing to do in the city, it is easier for me to trick myself into thinking that I have “completed” all the quests in town, when in truth I have barely scratched the surface. Nonetheless, I walk away with a feeling like I accomplished much. In Kingdoms of Amalur, when I finish a quest, I feel like it is just a drop in bucket because I can see another 3-4 quests just in this one grassy plane. It is a subtle shift in the way it makes players think, but a key one that affects the perception of the whole game.

Another contributing factor to the difference in feeling of intimidation in one of these games, but not the other is that contrast in how combat works in each of them. In Kingdoms of Amalur, the combat is very visceral. There is a surprising amount of depth to it. Players need to stay aware of their surroundings in order to dodge enemy attacks, while trying to create an opening to stagger the enemy. If they are not careful, then they themselves will be knocked down and on the defensive. Each weapon type has its own combo chain, with strength and speed unique to that type of weapon. Though not difficult, timing and planning are quite important, and even enemies of equal level can wear down the unprepared (especially when there are mages in the enemy formation). On the flip side, Skyrim's combat is quite bare bones. It is quite trivial to button mash one's way through most encounters the game will throw at the player. Magic and stealth characters can use spells and backstab to change things up, but the mechanics are fairly simple and do not need much knowledge to fully grasp.

Let me preface my next statement by saying that I enjoy the combat in Kingdoms of Amalur. In fact, the combat was one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. However, that kind of combat against dozens and dozens of encounters has a way of gradually draining the player's mental stamina and enthusiasm for playing. As fun and fairly easy as it is, the sheer number of enemies the game throws at the player are not quite compatible with the type of combat. Also, the foes in Kingdoms of Amalur are quite durable, so taking them down can be fairly time consuming. While Skyrim also tends to have a lot of enemies come the player's way, the simpler mechanics lend themselves to that more readily. Enemies tend to fall fast and easy. It is not as mentally draining to play through waves of enemies in Skyrim than it in Kingdoms of Amalur, so playing through it is more bearable, despite its combat being worse overall. As a result, it is much easier to play hours and hours of Skyrim than in is to do the same in Kingdoms of Amalur. I can also play the latter for an hour or two before I feel the need to save and shut it off.

I find it interesting to compare and contrast similar games, because there is much to learn from such analysis. Both games are likely in many ways, but the way they implement their systems can leave completely different impressions of the audience. What is even more interesting is that I know there will be people who disagree for many different reasons. I am sad that Kingdoms of Amalur did not do so well, because I think they could do so much better if given a second chance. Hopefully, people will be able to learn from what went wrong with the game in time. Until then, there will be guys like me out there to over-analyze games like it in the vain hopes that others will listen.

#66: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Retrospective: The Two Thrones of Compromise

(Spoiler Alert for the entire Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy)

And so we have reached the end of this little series. The Two Thrones, released in 2005, had a major problem from the get go. While most fans of the franchise vastly preferred The Sands of Time, there was enough of a positive reception to some aspects of The Warrior Within that its fans also needed to be catered to. This new game needed to walk a fine line between calling back to what fans enjoyed about the first game while taking in the improvements and knowledge gained from work on The Warrior Within, a challenging prospect to be sure. The end result was a carefully balanced compromise that works surprisingly well, more than making up for its lackluster predecessor.

The Prince himself is one of the biggest symbols of this compromise that the Two Thrones embodies. Yuri Lowenthal reprised his role as the titular Prince, with a harder edge than in the Sands of Time. This is the Prince people knew from the Sands of Time, as he still uses his old regal speech pattern and rarely resorts to simply uttering curse words. He also has a fair degree of snark, self-awareness, and snide confidence. However, experience has made him a colder and harsher individual than he used to be. This is a man who is significantly less likely to go out of his way to assist others unless he has made some form of vow to them in the past. However, gradually as the story progresses, he learns the error of his ways and slowly, but surely, returns to who he used to be, going so far as to literally combat his darker self, appropriately referred to as the Dark Prince. It is as if the game is performing a sort of meta-commentary on how the Warrior Within's take on the character was so reviled compared to the Sand of Time's take, which I found to be truly fascinating.

The other thing that the story did right was bringing back the premise of being a retelling a story that has already played out. However, instead of the Prince himself telling the story to the player, who is revealed to be Farah, the sidekick from the same game (due to the Prince's complete rewind of time, she has no memory of the events that transpired). Rather, the story is told by Kaileena, the Empress of Time from The Warrior Within. Though this does give the game all the advantages that it gave the Sands of Time, it does not make as much sense. The Prince never dies in the series and is known to be a bit of a braggart, so it makes sense that he would be the one to tell the story even before the reveal that Farah is the audience. In The Two Thrones, Kaileena dies very early on in the game, so it is weird to have her tell anyone a story. Even though she is brought back to life by the end, she leaves to go to a different world so that the Sands of Time cannot be abused again, making it implausible that she is telling the tale to anyone. Though I appreciate the return to form, I wish that the conceit of a retelling of the story, like it was in the first game, was more plausible in the game's narrative context.

One last criticism that I would make towards the plot to the Two Thrones is that is it completely necessary to know the plot of the previous games in order to fully understand what is going on before playing. This is something that even The Warrior Within did better. One of the early cutscenes in the The Warrior Within took a few minutes at the most to explain why the Prince was on his quest and what happened not just in the Sands of Time, but in the time between the two games. The Two Thrones explains some of what happened purely through the implications of what characters say, but without any outside knowledge I am fairly sure it would be hard to follow. There is no attempt to summarize or explain what happened in the previous two games to catch new players up. I weep for the poor fools who went into the game with no prior experience with the trilogy.

The underlying compromise between the Sands of Time and the Warrior Within also extended to the gameplay in a number of ways, the biggest of which is the combat. Combat in the Two Thrones is taken wholesale from the Warrior Within, taking the systems of that game and refining them a bit more. However, the game included a very interesting addition not present in either of the other two games. In the Two Thrones, it was possible to sneak up to an enemy and silently dispatch them without them ever noticing you. Though it is technically a stealth system, in reality it is a method for allowing players to bypass combat sections by utilizing their platforming skills to keep out of sight of enemy groups, picking them off one by one. This accomplished several things. One, it forced enemy encounters to be in small groups of 3-4 enemies to avoid making any one section of the game last too long. Two, it gave fans who enjoyed platforming more than combat a way to either avoid the combat or make it a little bit easier by removing a few enemies from the equation.

The platforming also got an few notable additions. The most visceral of these was the springboard. While wall-running, the Prince will occasionally end up on a springboard, which he can use to leap off of in order to change direction and land in otherwise inaccessible places. The Prince is also now able to brace himself in narrow wall spaces, allowing to climb up and down them. Lastly, the prince is now capable of sticking his weapon into groves in the wall, keeping himself from falling. Like most of the returning platforming features, all of these additions also have stealth kills associated with them, allowing players to ambush enemies from many different positions. Including all of these new methods of transportation made the platforming feel much more interesting than it did before.

The game also ditched the open-world elements of the Warrior Within, opting to return to the linearity of the Sands of Time. This prevents the repetition that was present in the previous entry. Also, it allowed the developers to better focus and improve upon each area rather than worry about how a given area connects to the world at large. Linearity is not a bad thing, especially in the context of a platformer. Furthermore, since the Two Thrones had the same 6 sand tank limit that the Warrior Within had, there was still a lessened amount of wiggle room for players. However, the improved level layout and camera positioning made it so that the game was rarely impacted by it.

The big gimmick included in the Two Thrones is the Dark Prince. Due to the Vizier from the first game releasing the Sands of Time, the Prince became corrupted by the sands. Fortunately, he was able to grasp the Dagger of Time quickly enough that he did not completely succumb. Unfortunately, he was left partially corrupted, giving him a new, dark persona that manifests itself as both a voice in his head and a new, occasionally emerging corrupted form. Counter to what one would initially suspect, this is not some form that the Prince needs to gather rage to enter and gain a temporary boost to combat ability in. Rather, the Dark Prince will manifest itself at certain points in the story. Once the Dark Prince emerges, the Prince can only return to his normal form once he enters a body of water at the end of the segment.

While at first this seems like an odd choice for a super-powered dark side, it works in the context of the game. The Dark Prince has his own completely different move-set and gameplay style, separate from the Prince, and since the game has discreet sections of the story where he manifests, levels that include him are allowed to cater to his strengths. The biggest change that occurs in the Dark Prince's gameplay sections is that his health gradually drops as time goes on, which is lethal if left unchecked. However, he recovers full health if he defeats an enemy or acquires a portion of the Sands of Time. In that way, players have to work quickly in order to make sure that they get to their next fix of enemies or sand before they die. Although this could be a recipe for disaster, the Dark Prince levels space out enemies and sand just well enough so that getting to them can be a challenge, but hardly impossible.

The other thing that only the Dark Prince has is a chain attached to his left arm. Thanks to that chain, the Dark Prince does not have access to other secondary weapons like he normally would. However, the chain in and of itself more than makes up for it. Having a weapon with good range really changes combat by given players much more options on how to take down enemies. Furthermore, the chain is also useful when platforming. When making leaps across wide gaps, the Dark Prince can use the chain to latch onto hanging structure and gain enough extra distance to make it to the other side. This can also be done while wall-running to keep up momentum and stay on the wall for longer periods of time. It is only one small addition, but it does change the way players think about the area when going through platforming sections.

The Two Thrones had a lot to accomplish, bridging together its two radically different predecessor. Overall, it succeeded in that respect. I do not know if I would call it superior to the Sands of Time, but it is at least comparable in my opinion. Someone could make a case for it being the best in the franchise and I would be open to hearing it. There is a lot to like about the grand finale to the Sands of Time trilogy. It represents the combined lessons from the first and second games. If you guys out there were like I used to be, and avoided the trilogy for whatever reason, I would recommend that you play the Sands of Time, watch someone else play the Warrior Within, and then play the Two Thrones. If you enjoy platforms with light combat elements, you will enjoy this series.

#65: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Retrospective: The Blunder Within

Last week, I began a series of retrospectives on the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy. Starting with the original Sands of Time, I mostly praised the game for the many, many things it did correctly, including its gameplay, narrative, and setting. However, despite the great reception of the game, all good things must one day come to an end. Of course, I am referring to the direct sequel to the game, Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within. Released in 2004 as the second game in a soon to be trilogy, The Warrior Within had a lot to live up to. Sadly, it failed to do so it many, painful ways. For very good reason, this second entry in the trilogy has been labeled a black sheep by fans. Allow me to elaborate.

The very first thing that people noticed about The Warrior Within was that the Prince had undergone a severe personality shift somewhere between the two games. In the previous entry, our protagonist was a bit of a snark, but otherwise went out of his way to help those in need when he had the chance. His demeanor added a degree of levity to the preceding, helping to maintain the original game's fairly light tone. In its sequel, this was flatly not the case. Though he was technically the same Prince players knew from The Sands of Time, he acted in a completely different manner. As an example, one of the earliest lines in the game has our dear Prince calling a female lieutenant of an unknown enemy a “Bitch.” Now, to our modern AAA sensibilities, that is hardly a blip on the radar, since “Bitch” is such a common word that it feels tame. However, the Prince and a much more regal speech pattern in the Sands of Time, so this new personality was simply jarring, and the new personality permeates the entire game. Ubisoft even went so far as to get a new voice actor, Robin Atkin Downes to replace Yuri Lowenthal, who had voiced the Prince in the previous game, to sell fans on the new Prince.

If I am being honest, though. That was only a symptom of a greater problem. Overall, the Warrior Within tried to go in a much darker direction than the Sands of Time. The level design and graphics look noticeably bleaker than the much more vibrant locales of the original game. The original game's bright yellow sands, blue waters, and green grass have been replaced by dark caves, dark ruins, dark towers, and dark green gardens. Even the relative cartoon-like graphics of the original game were replaced with a more “gritty, realistic, mature” style (about 4-5 years too early, guys). This was so bad that the earliest female enemy was wearing nothing but a leather bikini with gauntlets and iron leggings in an obvious case of pandering. While Farah's outfit in Sands of Time was a little skimpy, it fit with the setting and her origins as a princess from India. This dominatrix leather outfit looked completely ridiculous, like the game was trying too hard to be mature.

Even the plot suffered from this new tone. To avoid spoiling the game for those who have not yet played it and for some reason still intend to, I will paint in broad strokes. With that said, after the time-bending antics of the Sands of Time, the prince is being chased by a Guardian of Time, called the “Dahaka”, because he was supposed to die in the “true” timeline. In order to save his own skin, the Prince embarks on a quest to the Island of Time with the purpose of going back in time to stop the creation on the Sands of Time. This will resolve the temporal paradox because he could never have fiddled with time had the Sands of Time never been created... or something. This element of the plot does not bother me too much because to some degree all time-travel plots have an element of “Just go with it”, being innately vulnerable to plot holes or logical inconsistencies. What bothered me was how the plot took all the light-hardheartedness and humor of the first game and replaced it with grim-dark upon grim-dark, since the Prince does little else but brood over his likely demise and complain to others about how unfair his circumstances are. I suppose that on some level, I can applaud the designers for daring to do something comparatively different. However, this was a bit of a slap in the face for series fans.

Not everything the Warrior Within changed was for the worse. Some of the things they tweaked were actually genuine improvements. The most notable of these improvements was with the game's combat system, fitting for a game called “The Warrior Within.” Now, the Prince has the ability to pick up secondary weapons for use in his off-hand. Though these weapons will break after enough use, the new combat system allowed players to very their attacks and perform different combos with them. In addition, secondary weapons can be thrown at enemies, permanently discarding them, but adding extra attack options to deal with ranged foes. Though I enjoyed the combat of the Sands of Time, even I must admit that this was an improvement. The combat has gone from a fairly hack and slash fest to a more visceral experience that skilled players can excel at.

Furthermore, even in the original game, ranged enemies could be difficult because melee combat was really the only option in a fight, meaning players had to either wait for enemies to come to them or find a way to close the distance. My biggest criticism of the Sands of Time was also answered, because enemies in The Warrior Within rarely exceeded 4-5 enemies, although there were points where they slipped into old habits. And yet again my praise is tempered with a handful of other issues. For example, while the game rarely threw large waves of enemies at the player, foes often had a large amount of health. I was no longer tired by the overabundance of weak enemies. Now, I was tired by the overabundance of health each individual enemy had and the sheer amount of damage they would soak up before they died. The series had gone from one extreme to the other, and neither one of them were exactly pleasant.

Other changes to the gameplay were made as well, aside from the combat. The most notable of these changes was the semi-open world of the game. In the previous game, the layout of the world was decidedly linear. Players would enter an area where they would then solve a puzzle, undergo a platforming segment, or fight a group of enemies. This would unlock a save point and the entrance to the next location and so on. The beginning of The Warrior Within follows this for a while. Then, the Island of Time opens up a little. Players are able to, with some restrictions, explore the island almost completely. Through sand portals, it is also possible to travel between the past and present versions of the island. This allowed the game to give players multiple objectives that they could tackle in any order in certain points in the story.

While this was an interesting little experiment with game design in a platformer, ultimately it had a number of problems associated with it. For one, it resulted in a major design oversight such that it a certain area of the game was not arranged in a specific fashion before it is revisited in the story, it would literally be impossible to finish the game. Another problem is that due to the similarities between past and present areas and the need to go back to previously explored areas, the Warrior Within feels like it is wasting the player's by literally forcing them to repeat already completed areas two, maybe even three or more times in the story in nearly the exactly same way.

Hardware limitations also stifled this pseudo open-world concept. As a special guest for nidoking042's Let's Play of the game, one of the developers stated that the original intent was to give players a series of shortcuts that unlocked once they completed an area in order to return to the central section of the Island of Time, similar to the way Skyrim always gave player's a secret exit at the end of a dungeon. However, the hardware of the PS2, Gamecube, and original Xbox were unable to load quickly enough to make this possible. As a result, when a player clears an area, they need to go back through it in order to make their way to the central hub which connects all the areas in the game. Speaking from experience, this added needless frustration to the game.

By comparison, other changes to gameplay are minor. For one, the amount of the Sands of Time players will be able to store is much more limiting than it was in the original. Though both games started the player off with three tanks of sand, the Warrior Within gives only an additional three through progression of the story, as opposed to the gradual upgrading via absorption of sand clouds in the original. Furthermore, the tanks are used to both fuel time rewind and the other sand powers obtained throughout the game. Unlike the previous game, where the tanks for rewinding time and for using powers were separate resources. While on the subject of sands, the Prince no longer has to absorb sand from enemies to finish them off, as he no longer possesses the Dagger of Time. Instead, sand is semi-randomly obtained through breaking objects and defeating sand creatures. These factors combined give the player a significantly smaller margin of error for making mistakes in the game. With less sand, players (myself included) would see the game over screen much more frequently.

In the end, this is easily the worst game in the Sands of Time trilogy. Fans of The Warrior Within do exist, but they are vastly outnumbered by the group who preferred the original game over it. As for myself, I ragequit the game when I realized how tired I was growing of constantly fighting enemies and dying while backtracking in platforming sections. I only know about what happens in the game thanks to nidoking042's Let's Play. This game was an experiment as to how to improve the Prince of Persia franchise, and for the most part a failed one. Even Ubisoft's developers realized that by the time development of the final game in the trilogy began. As loathe as I am to admit it, the Warrior Within is likely an important stepping stone to the grand finale of the Sands of Time trilogy as without it, Ubisoft would not have learned the lessons that they did. But we will talk about that in greater detail next time.

#61: The Xbox One: A Series of Fixes

I do not think I need to tell you guys all the things that have gone on regarding Microsoft and the Xbox One (X1). If you are reading this, then you are likely already aware of the controversies surrounding the X1 since the initial February launch, along with the ensuing backpedal only a few days ago as of the time of writing. There is no real point in reiterating all of that here. Having said all that, with all that has gone on recently, there has spawned what could be referred to as a reverse-backlash, where people were angry that Microsoft responded to both its critics and low pre-order numbers. This movement was born in response to Microsoft cutting some of the consoles more interesting features, citing that the online check was necessary to maintain them. While I find these claims dubious, for reasons cited by both Eurogamer and Gamasutra, that's again not the point of this article.

What I want to talk about is what the Xbox One could have done in the first design to make the new console more palatable to initial audiences. To be clear, I will not be focusing on the TV features nor any of the PR surrounding that. The scope of this article will be solely on the technology and policies with regards to the gaming side, because that's ultimately what matters. I feel that there are five major changes they could have made in the design they first revealed so that it would have been more successful. Two of them are changes that have already been made, two are commonly cited complaints that remain on the console, and the last one will probably be very controversial, as I am sure I will get a lot of flak for it. Though I am not an expert in the fields of business nor engineering, I have some knowledge of programming and operating systems. I do not have any reason to believe that what I propose would be particularly difficult. Final disclosure: I am an unashamed fan of the Playstation brand, so my stake in Microsoft's success is only in that I wish that the competition they provide forces Sony to continue improving. Having said all of that, my proposals to “fix” the original design of the X1 is as follows.

The first one I would throw out there would have been to remove the 24-hour phone-home scheme. A common criticism Microsoft received was that a constant check like this, while not terribly problematic for the vast majority of demographics, could still be an issue in quite a few circumstances. One of the most notable we have seen talked about are people serving abroad in the military. Those who serve are typically given incredibly scarce access to the internet, and solid access is prohibitively expensive as noted by Robert Rath in his Critical Intel column on the Escapist. I do not know if this is the case in many other countries, but in America the military is very well respected. When any major companies upset service members, that company really suffers in PR, which results in lowered sales. Whether or not that is a good thing is up for debate, but it does happen and often.

Also noted by Rath, such an internet check would stifle organizations like Child's Play, which provide games to hospitalized children. I know this does directly affect Microsoft's bottom dollar. However, Child's Play is one of the few things the industry as a whole can point to when major tragedies happen and games are blamed for them. While helping sick children is the goal, it has the added side effect of helping the industry stave off legislation that politicians are more than willing to impose on it. Aside from these two groups, the internet check does impact those who travel a lot and people who have weak connections and limited data caps, which European countries are very well known for. The infrastructure simply is not there yet. Perhaps it will be more feasible a few years down the line, when solid internet becomes completely ubiquitous, this kind of feature can be considered. As of now, it simply inconveniences too many people.

The other primary concern with this feature alone was Microsoft's ability to maintain servers in all regions constantly. Just the other day as of the time of writing, Xbox Live went down for some users for a few hours. While this is no longer a concern in light of recent events, in the theoretical where the X1 maintained its initial course, depending on when a given user last signed on with their console, this could have resulted in being unable to play games on the console for several hours. Having a need for the console to ping home to Microsoft's servers results in an unspoken contract forming between the company and its users. When mandating that users have to phone home once a day, Microsoft tacitly accepts the responsibility to maintain those servers at all times, keeping maintenance times as low as they can possibly be. This results in an increased cost of keeping those servers running, as many publishers of tacked-on multiplayer in games found out the hard way. Just this one feature, which was thankfully removed, would have caused a lot of problems in terms of consumer inconvenience and added costs to all parties.

The next thing I would have recommended, as they have again already done in the new design, is to remove the region lock on the system. Region locks have always been a sketchy part of the industry. The reason often cited for such practices is the difference in prices between different regions, meaning that it can sometimes be cheaper for a person to import a game from outside the country than it is to buy the version made available in that person's country, even when including tariffs and shipping charges on imported goods. As a result, with the exception of the PS3, people who wanted to buy imported games would need to either modify their existing console to support games from outside regions, which is easier said than done, or just buy a console from that region as well.

The problem comes that in combination with the aforementioned internet mandate, even imported consoles would not work for countries outside of Microsoft's list of supported countries, because the servers simply would not be there. This was evidenced when it was revealed that Poland, where The Witcher developer CD Projekt is based, would not receive the Xbox One on launch day. In other words, the developers of a game touted quite early on in the Microsoft press conference would be unable to use the new console to play the game that they developed. Game commentator John Bain, more commonly known as TotalBiscuit, also noted that out of the top 25 countries that view his videos, 8 of them would not have had access to the X1 at launch. While this issue was resolved, and thus is no longer a concern, it would have again shut Microsoft out of a number of potential audiences.

While both of the above issues have been rectified by Microsoft, the next two are still legitimate concerns that some cite when talking about the new Xbox. One of the biggest of these issues is the Kinect included with each and every X1. Let me be clear on this, I am absolutely not against having a Kinect packaged in. If we are all being totally honest, devices like the Kinect could never be successful as add-ons to a console sold separately simply because developers cannot be sure if a given customer would have it. We saw this with the 360's Kinect and the Playstation Move and Eye peripherals from this generation. Guaranteeing that a customer has Kinect gives developers more freedom to experiment with it. The problems stem from two different points.

The first and easiest to tackle is the fact that adding this accessory raised the price of the console by $100 compared to Sony's new console. While consumers will likely accept a Kinect bundled in with their Xbox One even if they did not desire it, raising the price of the console causes concerns because it forces those consumers who are not interested to spend more money despite that disinterest. For consumers looking into which next generation console is the best for them, this is a tough pill to swallow. I understand that the Kinect was expensive to develop and produce, but since new consoles are always sold at a loss anyway, it makes so sense to pass the entirety of the Kinect's cost onto the consumer. Obviously some of it does need to be passed on, but I would imagine a $449 system is easier to market than a $499 one.

The other issue here is a lot tougher to deal with. Because of the way the Xbox One's hardware was designed, the system literally cannot function unless the Kinect is turned on. According to Microsoft Support, which is honestly suspect given the schizophrenic nature of their post-E3 PR, the X1 will only activate when users say “Xbox On” to their Kinect. Given the recent PRISM scandal, which revealed the Microsoft along with many, many other companies were giving information regarding their customers activities to the NSA, trusting Microsoft with a sensor in their own home is no longer an easy sell. Others may even be concerned that the information will be used in a private capacity to sell to other companies, which Google and Facebook openly admit to doing themselves.

While I personally do not believe Microsoft has any ill intent with the Kinect and have been assured that it will have tons of privacy options on it by sources working on the device, mandating its use does leave them at a distinct disadvantage when the conversation has switched to government spying on a domestic level. Even without the recent scandals and even with privacy settings, getting consumer trust will be incredibly difficult. There are benefits to the inclusion with a Kinect and it does seem core to the design of the new console, but the way it was included can leave a lot to be desired.

While perhaps less critical, another commonly issued criticism of the new Xbox is that indie developers still cannot self-publish. To be fair, this is the status quo for Microsoft, as the 360 also imposed this rule. However, independent developers are becoming much more influential than they were only a few years ago. Considering that Sony and even Nintendo have made reaching out to these smaller studios a priority, lowing the price of admission and allowing for self-publishing, this seems like an odd policy to maintain on Microsoft's part. I can respect having a division of Microsoft Studios at the ready to publish indie games and help them onto Xbox Live if needed, but to force every developer to use that window seems like a mistake. It is a perfectly viable method for some and maybe even most, but not appropriate for all. Independent developers are very useful in their own right. With lower budgets, it becomes possible to experiment with new and interesting game design ideas, which the AAA developers can then adapt for their own use, pushing the medium forward. In the future, it will be necessary to make it as easy as possible to release games on a console. There will be a lot of bad games that we will see as a result, but we will also see tons of great gems that would otherwise get passed over. Not allowing them to self-publish will result in turning away quite a few great games that the competition will easily snatch up and take for their own.

My final recommendation is going to be a little controversial, but I do legitimately feel that it would have improved consumer reaction to the console. In order to better sell the vision of an all digital console, I feel that it might have been a smarter move to not even sell discs on the Xbox One. The way Microsoft was trying to sell this new console as, in a sense, a digital-only service with features that could have potetnially even given Steam a run for its money, a smart idea would be to just double down and only make games available as digital downloads. The way the system was originally sold, and I am simplifying to a degree, the disc would include a code that provided a user access to both the data on the disc and a digital version of the same game. Once the code is input, the disc essentially becomes a more efficient installer for games that are bound to the Xbox Live account. It has no real purpose beyond being an extra trip to the store to buy a game that could just as easily be bought online for less effort and the same rewards. Since the disc becomes a redundancy, removing it hurts very little and allows for benefits to both consumers and publishers.

Since all purchases would be tied to a given Xbox Live account, there is no longer a need to check for an internet connection every 24 hours, so games that would otherwise not need online connections can be played normally. This alone solves a number of problems, because being unable to have a connection for a week or even months would no longer be an issue. While a user would no longer be able to purchase games or install new ones without a connection, playing a game without internet in the event that said person is deployed, travels, is a sick child in a hospital, or something else entirely is still possible. It would be possible to load game onto the system when strong internet access is possible to make up for the times when it is not. For the consumers, this would lead to unlimited and unhindered access to games and the enabling of the used game marketplace/family sharing Microsoft had in mind. For the publishers, it guarantees that nearly 100% of all sales will be legitimate sales, with no threat of piracy until someone finds a way to hack Microsoft.

The other benefit this would have is that it eliminates the expectation that used copies of games can be resold or lent to others. When a physical product is being sold, the default expectation is that it can be resold. This is not true of purely digital goods. Digitally distributed software is almost never expected to have the ability to be sold to Gamestop or some other third party. When Microsoft allows discs on their system, they are bringing with them the expectation of unhindered used games sales. When said expectation is violated so thoroughly, because the X1 is primarily a digital service, the backlash was inevitable. It was a case of trying to, and I hate this phrase, “have your cake and eat it too”. There was no real way to avoid it. It was bound to happen, which is why I consider allowing the option to buy discs to be a mistake.

In the end, this is all incredibly easy for me to say. After all, I am not subject to any kind of bureaucracy nor I am beholden to shareholders. All I am is a guy who watches and comments on the industry. It is extremely easy from my position to make comments like this when I am not concerning myself with engineering problems or maintaining deals and agreements with outside parties. Microsoft rightly deserves much credit for changing in direct response to consumer feedback, which I whole-heartedly approve of. However, after the number of blunders and gaffes made only recently, getting back in the good graves of consumers may be more difficult than simply retracting policies and improving consumer friendliness. There is still a long way to go, but also plenty of time to keep improving the Xbox One until launch day, which I am sure the engineers at Microsoft at hard at work doing. Either way, this console war is now much less one-sided and much more-interesting.

#9: Difficulty in Games

There is one thing that my gamer friends complain about over and over again. Since I now have a bit of a lull in regards to things I want to talk about, I might as well address it this week. Are games too easy nowadays? The answer is not nearly as simple as you probably think. A game's difficulty is affected by several different, overlapping factors. Furthermore, easier games and harder games each have their own benefits and drawbacks that must be considered. I will attempt to touch on all of these topics, but this will not be comprehensive by any means.

First off, it is important to discuss the factors that affect how difficult a game is. One of the biggest of these factors is the experience level of the player. If you own a gaming console/PC and play it often, I want you to either look at your controller/keyboard for a moment or visualize it in your head. You know everything about that controller, do you not? That controller feels comfortable in your hands and you know the layout of it. What gamers often forget is that for those who either do not play games or do so very rarely, that controller is much more complex than we realize. Take a PS3 controller for example (because it is the one I use): There are four buttons on either side of the controller for various inputs. Another four button on the top, two on each side. There are 3 buttons in the middle for out-of-game inputs like pausing or turning off the system. Lastly, there are 2 analog sticks towards the bottom, with buttons built into them as well. This adds up to a grand total of 19 possible inputs. To the unfamiliar, that is both a staggering and intimidating number. We take this for granted because we grew up with them, but those who want to join in and play games have to not only learn the layout, but then learn what each button does and then re-learn them when they play another game. Again, we can do this because we have been conditioned to expect certain control schemes with certain genres/types of games. The shoot button is almost always R1. The Jump button is almost always X. New players are devoid of this conditioning and have to figure it out, giving them a harder time than gaming veterans.

This is where adjustable difficulty comes into play. One of the major reasons games include adjustable difficulty is because they cannot be sure of the level of experience the player will have. Inexperienced players or those who do not want much of a challenge are encouraged to play on easier difficulties in order to get the best experience for them. On the other hand, the experienced and the challenge-lovers within the target demographic are encouraged to play higher level difficulties. This feature is intended to insure that the player can get the most out of a game, no matter what level of experience. That being said, some games do not always get this right by either making varying levels too easy or too hard (which is more a QA issue, so I will not discuss it) or they do get the difficulty balance right but get the implementation of difficulty wrong. Something that I have seen a lot of games do is lock the difficulty choice in at the start of the game after the player chooses it. This is a stupid move and there is no reason for that. If a player initially chooses to play a game on Hard mode, and then realizes several hours in that he/she may have gone in way over his/her head, why should he/she be punished for this? Why should the player have to choose between sucking it up and trying to proceed, quitting the game, or starting a brand new playthrough on another difficulty, losing hours of progress? The answer is that there is no reason for that. If a game is going to have adjustable difficulty, then it better allow the player to change it at any time throughout the game.

One of the last factors of difficulty in games, and I believe one of the most noticeable ones, is the player reward versus player punishment ratio. What do I mean by that? Well, in old games, if the player died or otherwise lost, it would be customary to set them back a considerable distance and force them to redo a good several minutes or so of progression in the game. No other skill-based activity does this and this is a considerable barrier of entry. For example, if someone were to want practice swinging a baseball bat, they can swing over and over, with only a little time between each swing to give the ball back to the pitcher (or to reload the machine in a batting cage). If it were a video game, the batter would be teleported out of the area and be forced to walk all the way back, relocating the baseball bat before getting another shot at swinging. This would hinder the ability to practice and improve. It sounds ridiculous, but gamers do it all the time. For new players, it can be discouraging be forced to redo entire sections just to get another shot at trying to get past the part that gave them trouble. A lot of modern games have done away with this principle by throwing in more checkpoints and more mechanics that help the player get back into the action faster. This creates an illusion that games are easier than they were in the past, but it may actually be the case that we just notice difficulty less because it does not cost us as much time to go back and redo one part of a section as it does to redo an entire section.

Now that I have discussed the factors that contribute to difficulty, it is now important to consider the pros and cons of both games being easy and games being hard to discern why games might tone down the difficulty. There are significant benefits to games being easy. One of the most obvious benefits is that an easier game has a greater potential to appeal to a broader audience. Think about it: A game that 60% of the population is able to play through is obviously much more likely to sell than a game that only 20% of the population is able to play through. This also appeals to those guys who are playing games for the first time. This is NOT a bad thing. When game developers reign these people in with easier games, then we are able to transition them into playing more difficult games, help them learn the controls, and eventually bring them up so that they can play and enjoy games as much as average gamers do. “Gateway games” are important if we want the medium to grow, mature, and expand. Another benefit in having lower difficulty in games is narrative cohesion. Games are much more than the series of “beeps”, “boops”, and pixels that they were 20 years ago. In modern times, games have grown to be full-fledged narrative mediums like books and movies. Most games have some sort of story or campaign that they want the player to go through and serves as more than just a reason to go out and blow things up. If a game becomes too difficult, then the player will take several times to go through a section. This breaks narrative flow and the player may forget details in the story or even stop bothering with the story if a game becomes too tough. Books and movies do not have this barrier. It takes no effort to turn a page in a book or stay in place to watch a movie. It takes effort and active engagement on the audiences part in order for the story to play out. This is a good thing because the player will engage more the world and the characters and empathize with them, but bad because a high difficulty will immediately shut people out of enjoying the story. Difficulty can be played with to help immersion or to hit home the themes or morals of the game, but it can never be so hard that the consumers are turned off by it.

On the other hand, there are advantages to games being difficult. The prime advantage of a hard game is that there is appeal to seeing a challenge, facing it, and then overcoming it. There are tons of thrill-lovers out there that embrace challenge and derive pleasure from success after repeated failure. Appealing to this audience can be just as rewarding as appealing to the mass market. While these people do not outnumber the masses, they are far more loyal. They will often stick with a developer if they continue to produce quality products (or even if the do not. Am I right Sonic Team?). Furthermore, a difficult game brings a feeling of excitement and tension with it. Think about it. Would you not agree that a fight where you ended with low health, few bullets left, and you got by with the skin of your teeth much more exciting than one where you launched a mini-nuke at the enemy and killed 80% of them in one shot? Players love the feeling of overcoming obstacles and figuring out the best way of proceeding through meticulous planning and strategy. This is part of why gamers decry the notion of games being “dumbed down” for the broader audience.

Difficulty is the kind of thing that takes a lot of effort to fine tune property. And sadly, even if a developer does, people are not going to be happy about. It is also something that developers cannot turn to any precedent in order to figure out. Difficulty has to be analyzed and determined on a case by case basis: A never-ending juggling act that is constant in flux. The next time you play a game that you find too easy or hard, do not immediately accuse the developer. Instead, think about why you find it too easy/hard and try to figure out what the developers intentions were. The answer you arrive at might surprise or even impress you.