Power to the Payers
June 3, 2012
It’s release day! The day that you have been waiting for. The game that will change your life forever comes out today. I know that feeling, the same feeling you get as a kid when you see all of the presents under the Christmas tree. Today is your day and nothing can go wrong. The only thing that you want to do is get your game and go play!
You finally arrive at your local Game Stop, walk to the register and ask for your game. All of the signs are on the door promoting the new release, posters and all. The cashier says to you, “Hey what can I do for you?” and you respond, “Obviously I want the new game that just came out! Here is my $60, now give me the game!” The cashier responds back, “Did you reserve it?” and you reply “Heck yeah, of course I paid my $5 to reserve it, give me the game!” The cashier goes to get the game from the back, before he hands it to you he says, “Do you want to pre-order this new game coming out next month? or how about sign up for our reward system that you can get points and discounts? It will save you money on this purchase and future purchases. I really recommend it.” At this point you are furious, but the cashier still has your game in his hands and wont hand it over. You just want to go home and play! Giving in, you agree to sign up for the $15 reward program and pay $5 for a future reserve of a game that you will probably never buy. You then take your game, run out of the store and run home. Time to play right?
Finally you start-up the game and sign online. You get prompted that there is a new downloadable content pack with all of the new maps and new characters that you just have to get. This is another $20 that you just have to spend in order to get the full experience, so you just purchase the extra content. Finally, its time to play! About $100 spent on a trip to the game store.
Now I know how Sonic and Tails feel to lose all of their rings!
Between the price of the game and all of the add-ons, it is becoming a ripoff for the gamer. It is coming to a point where it is just about the money and not about the consumer. When a new game is released now, you can automatically count on their being a sequel and even a prequel. The video game company tries and to every possible penny out of a game that is released. There are rumors surfacing that there will no longer be used games for the release of the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4. That all but insures that game companies only care about money.
When you walk into a store like a Game Stop, they pressure you into buying every possible add-on for a game. This includes a strategy guide, a custom controller for them game, custom faceplate and so on. It is insane how people pressure you whenever you walk inside of a Game Stop. Just guess who plays most of their video games? If you said young teens and kids you would be correct! It is so easy to show a kid a new shiny extra to a game so they could run to their parents and beg them for them to buy it. Going to a game store is just like trying to buy a new car. They will keep on pressuring you to buy something until you finally say no and leave.
What ever happened to the good days of gaming? Going to the store and getting a game, knowing that it will be a complete game from start to finish is a thing of the past. There are no extra characters, or maps that you need, everything is right there in the brand new game that you have just purchased. I wish I could say one day it will get better, but as new systems and games are released this problem is going to continue. Realize how much money your going to spend on a game the next time you buy one. Your probably only buying about sixty percent of the game with the other forty percent to come at a later time by spending extra money. Its just getting to a point now where its not fair for the consumer, but as Game Stop likes to say Power to the Player.
Please Not Another Call of Duty Remake
May 18, 2012
So you just got the new Call of Duty game, pretty exciting stuff. Go to your local store, grab your game, put it in your system and your ready to roll. After playing for about ten minutes a question pops into your head, is this Call of Duty 4 or Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 because honestly all of them look and feel the same.
That is the problem and that is also the solution. Let me explain a little more, as a gamer that is the problem. As the company CEO that is the solution. It is the commonly used phrase of, if it is not broken then don’t fix it. If I was the CEO of the Call of Duty franchise I would continue to do exactly what they are doing. That is releasing a Call of Duty game every year and watching the millions of dollars come on in.
A game so easy and simple even Kobe Bryant can pick up and play. As seen in the Call of Duty Black Ops commercial.
Call of Duty is a fun game don’t get me wrong. If you want to play a quick game, just hop online, shoot some enemies and then on with the rest of your day. The game play when playing Call of Duty is so simple. You chose your gun, you find your enemy and you shoot him. There is no learning curve or move set that you need to learn compared to a game like Dark Souls or Street Fighter. It makes it easy for anyone, of any age group, to just jump in and play.
When Call of Duty first came out it was fun and exciting because it was something new. As the years went on, all that was added included, a new map here, some new guns there and some progression from the past year’s storyline. To some that is all that they wanted, they wanted to keep the same formula because they were use to it, but wanted a few changes here and there. To most it got really boring and repetitive, pretty much playing the same game, but in a different time period and environment.
As a gamer, when your pay $60 for a game you want something worth your money. The new Call of Duty 25 is pretty much going to be the same game as Call of Duty 3. As a the company owner, keep producing a Call of Duty every year, if the fans continue to buy it, then why not keep making it? If your tired of the same Call of Duty over and over again the only thing to do is not buy a game. If the sales decrease then there would not be a new game every year. For now, people will keep on buying and the Call of Duty franchise will keep on producing and I honestly can’t blame them at all.
Old School Gaming vs. New School Gaming
April 17, 2012
Many fear change while others embrace it.
When it comes to video games, gamers often want the new system with the high-tech flashy graphics. But that doesn’t always guarantee that it is going to be better than the system you already have.
The way gaming is now is totally different then the way that it use to be. Let’s face it, gaming now is cooler and has changed drastically from the way it use to be. Gamers can now take games on the go, interact with the games themselves and literally put themselves in the game, cool right?
As an old school gamer, I don’t think so. I think that it is getting away from the way games were meant to be played.
When you play a game you want to sit down with your controller and run through a bunch of levels and beat down the boss at the end, it was pretty easy. You don’t want to get up and move your arms around in order to interact with the game, it is too much work. It also never works either, you end up trying to position yourself perfectly and the game never even detects your movements. Sorry Microsoft Kinect, PlayStation Move and Wii, it’s the truth.
The original PlayStation and Super Nintendo got it right. Their games were simple, easy to understand and fun to play. There was no need for a strategy guide or any of that. You go from point A to point B and that is why those games were simple, but still so much fun to play. Mario, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Sonic, Pac-Man and Street Fighter all revolutionized the video game world. That is why these popular titles are still around today. They had the easy, fun concept that gamers loved.
Don’t get me wrong, some of my favorite games that I play today are on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. I think the graphics and the online game-play definitely make gaming so much better. It brings people together, you can play and talk with a friend from halfway across that world, that is amazing! All those feature are cool though, but that is not actual gaming, those are features.
Imagine if the original PlayStation and Nintendo had online play now. It would be awesome, playing the original Mario games on-line with a friend, that would be so much fun, not going to lie.
Think about the time era’s that these systems came out in. I am not surprised that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have the kind of graphics and game-play features that they have now. Imagine if those old school systems had the same kind of technology benefit that we have now, it would be crazy!
