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Video Blames: Why Atari Has Forsaken You

In one of the most famous scenes in The Godfather trilogy, Michael Corleone grasps his brother Fredo’s head in his hands after learning of his betrayal. From between gritted teeth and with an even, measured voice, he says to his younger brother one of the most memorable exchanged in modern cinema.

“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!”

Today, the role of Michael will be played by me. And the role of poor, soon-to-be-departed Fredo will once again be played to the hilt by Atari. Indeed, this should come as no surprise - Atari has been faithfully making the role of Fredo its own since the video game crash of 1983. For certain, Atari has had its share of missteps over the years, and there are a lot of market factors that played into the decline and fall of an electronics giant to a now substandard software developer. But today I’m only here to talk about one of those factors, and the decisions that Atari continues to make that alienate the very people that could save them. And I speak of none other than the game “Alone In The Dark.”

But first… let’s talk a little history. Atari Inc., the company founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972, was responsible for creating the foundation of videogaming as we know it today. Few would argue that without the mass-market success of the Atari 2600, the shape and landscape of modern gaming would look and feel very different. If you grew up playing an Atari… you realized how different it was. No longer were you handcuffed to the repetitive Pong or the supremely limited Odyssey systems. If you owned an Atari - and more kids did than any other gaming system - you knew, instinctively, that things had changed. With its expansive library of hundreds of titles, the Atari had it all over its competitors. Kids that owned Intellivisions begged their parents for an Atari. Even kids that owned Colecovisions, arguably a much better and much more graphically intense platform, still wanted to share in the Atari brand.

Atari still holds a very special place in my heart, as it was my first gaming machine. I realize that admission belies my age, but I was a tender 4 years old when my parents brought the Atari 2600 into the house, and presented it to me and my siblings. My brothers enjoyed the system for what it was… but I can say I truly loved it. And that love, which has now carried me through 5 additional generations of hardware and countless software purchases, all starts with Nolan Bushnell’s little upstart gaming system.

But Atari today isn’t the Atari of my youth. Atari Inc., as an entity, has not existed since 1984, and the Atari name has not truly been associated with any kind of quality entertainment since 1996. That was the year when Atari decided to engage in a series of failed relationships with other entities, most of whom weren’t fit to exist in the marketplace at all, much less do business with a company with such a long and storied history as Atari. Atari had become, as of 1996, a prostitute - nothing more than a holding company to be used as a bargaining chip. A sad, pathetic shell, and end of a once proud name.

Atari is now owned, 100% part and parcel, by a company called Infogrames Entertainment. Thanks to a series of buyouts and market moves, Infogrames is now the proprietor of such franchises as Unreal Tournament, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Test Drive… and the Alone In The Dark series. And that, my friends, is the crux of this diatribe.

I know it was you, Atari.

Now, to say that the newest edition of Alone In The Dark is egregiously, irredeemably awful is a matter of personal opinion. Game reviews are notoriously open for interpretation, and mine are no different. However, I do think it noteworthy to mention that the majority of the reviews on sites like Metacritic give the game a range typically between 3/10 and 4/10. Are people panning the game for its lack of ingenuity, or its hackneyed scenarios? By and large, no. Are they giving it poor ratings due to its innovative fire effects, or its non-compelling story? In most cases, no.

The majority of the criticism of Alone In The Dark is twofold. Number one, the game itself is very short and, in many cases, not very challenging. However, it’s the second criticism that is most pervasive in all the reviews of this game, which is thus:

Alone In The Dark, as it currently exists, is broken. B-R-O-K-E-N.

The controls are sloppy, to be sure. Fine, that can be overcome. The character models are a little jaggy and sharp. Okay, but so are the models in the original Grand Theft Auto titles, and that didn’t stop them from being some of the finest games ever made. The “make your own weapon” system is a little unwieldy. Sure, but that’s not a dealbreaker, right? But characters getting stuck in walls? Car-driving sequences that result in faulty collision detection and graphic breaks? A faulty engine that requires repetitive button-clicking just to keep the screen from blurring over tacked on as a “fun” minigame? An overwhelming sense that nobody actually performed any quality-control testing on the title?

That, my friends, is BROKEN. And yes, Atari, if you’re wondering…people have noticed. That’s why your sales on this title have been lackluster. Gamestop, never known for its restraint, has dropped the retail pricing on the game just 8 weeks following its release. Rumors of a deeper manufacturer-sanctioned retail cut to $29.99 - following its initial release at TWICE that amount - are flying about the internet as well. That’s not a discount structure designed to get people to try your game, Atari and Infogrames. That is a none-to-subtle white flag of surrender.

You broke my heart.

And yet, the biggest transgression wasn’t that you made a broken product and shipped it out for people to consume. No, your biggest flaw was how you dealt with the negative press surrounding the release of your title. I direct you to Wikipedia, where I found this particular snippet of information:

After several European websites had given the game average or low ratings, publisher Atari threatened the responsible websites with lawsuits, claiming the reviews could not have been based on the final version since it was not available by the time they were published; Atari themselves had not delivered review-versions to them. The publisher suspected the reviewers to have used illegally downloaded versions of the title. However, review website Gamer.nl claims that it was in fact sent a legitimate copy of the game prior to its release by Atari executives and, after the review was published, “They explicitly told [Gamer.nl] that they only let high scoring reviews break the post-release embargo date.” Gamer.nl still has the offending review posted on the website, despite Atari’s wishes. In addition Atari claimed that reviews were not done as demanded by the official product-review standards at all and should be deleted immediately. Most other websites have defended their reviews and refused to delete their articles. So far it is unclear whether or not Atari will decide to sue these websites.

Oh, Atari. Has it really come to this, you and I? Need I worry that calling your game out in exact, negative terms will result in you trying to silence me one day? The Atari I once knew, and you once knew, is dead. The avatar for the brand, once revered as a hallmark of fun and ingenuity, has become a suit-wearing corporate whore… selling its name and reputation in exchange for bandages of currency designed to temporarily prevent its inevitable bleedout. One day soon, Atari will be no more, and even its name will no longer exist except as hushed whispers of a time no longer remembered. Least of all for broken software and petulant lashes at game reviewers. And on that day I’ll raise a drink to the passing of an icon that helped forge my love of gaming. But I will not mourn you.

That will never, ever happen. You are, after all, already dead.

I know it was you, Atari.

You broke my heart. You broke my heart.

See for yourself at GYG for all of your online game rental needs. At least you can say you didn’t spend good money on it!

Posted on 31st August 2008
Under: Grant's Rants | No Comments »

Game addiction more embarrassing than porn addiction?

Hola gamers!
Recently, I was notified of a fascinating interview given to the Boston Globe by one Dr. Jerald Block, a licensed psychiatrist living in Portland.  Dr. Block’s area of expertise is the diagnosis and treatment of mental addictions… and he makes a pretty interesting inference during the interview.

INTERVIEWER: Describe the people who walk into your office. What does a computer compulsion look like?

BLOCK: Some people come in for trouble with Internet porn. But the computer gamers tend to be harder to treat. People feel a lot of shame around computer games. Whereas, it’s socially acceptable to have a porn problem.

INTERVIEWER: You can’t be serious. You mean your clients are more ashamed of …

BLOCK: …playing World of Warcraft than looking at porn. Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Why?

BLOCK: As a society we understand that porn is something people do, and you can see a psychiatrist and get treated for it. But gaming is hard to describe to anyone else. So these people can’t explain their situation to friends. In fact, it’s hard to give you an example of what my clients talk about, because gaming is enormously complicated.

So, of course, I did the most logical thing I could think of, which was immediately stop looking at internet pornography for a moment to collect my thoughts.

We live in an interesting landscape, as far as recreational gaming goes.  To say more people are playing games than even before somewhat downplays countries like Japan, where videogaming has long been a socially acceptable hobby by nearly the entire populace… but even for all its growth and abated social stigma, gaming is still viewed by many as the ultimate indulgent time-waster of modern society.  Yes, even more than watching Maury Povich reveal who is and isn’t a baby-daddy.  Think about that for a moment and feel free to weep your eyes out.

I believe there still remains a negative public perception of adults that engage in youthful pursuits like video games, but those attitudes may finally be shifting as gamers slowly become parents.  This isn’t to say those attitudes will change rapidly — there is still very much a “living in your mom’s basement” perception of arrested development that persists among hardcore gamers — but we’re seeing the stigma begin to evolve.  Socially-dependent gaming structures like World of Warcraft and Age of Conan are allowing working professionals to network outside the confines of the office water-cooler, and online resources like Facebook and MySpace are working hard to integrate official gaming platforms into their existing infrastructure.  What’s more, the advent of so-called “casual gaming” is bringing in gamers that wouldn’t otherwise be playing at all — and as I said in my previous rant, that kind of new blood is exactly what will help overturn some of those social stigmas.

This isn’t to say the stereotype of the dirty, unwashed gamer won’t persist — it will.  However, it will be harder and harder to feel its relevance once the “gamer” isn’t just a mid 30s balding nebbish typing away in a dank basement.  When your grandfather is playing Mario Kart, that’s when the social awkwardness of admitting your hobby will officially cease to mean anything.

My point in all this, gamers, is simple:

Own it.

Own your hobby.  Embrace what you are.  The fact is, nobody can make you feel inferior if they don’t have your permission.  In many ways, video game enthusiasts need to own what makes them unique in the same way the gay community has owned their uniqueness.  If they want to call you a nerd, screw ‘em — put it on your t-shirt.  If they want to call you anti-social geeks, screw ‘em — put it on your business cards.  Jerks and slapjags feed on your shame.  Cut off their food supply and they go someplace else to eat.

Society will change, but it’s a gradual change that takes awhile.  If you want to stop being ashamed of playing games… then stop being ashamed.  But own up to what you are and what you enjoy.  Nobody can take that away from you but you, and the sooner you embrace what you are, the happier you’ll be.

Play on, players!  I’ll see you next week.

Posted on 13th June 2008
Under: Grant's Rants | No Comments »

Isn’t All Gaming Casual?

Hola gamers!
This week I’d like to spend a little time talking “casual gaming.” You know the type — the Peggles and Bejeweleds of the world, the Carnival Games and the Word Whomps and practically every Wii game ever made.  Because honestly, when people talk about “casual gaming” as a pejorative term, that’s what they mean. They mean the Wii.
How you define “casual gaming” depends greatly on who’s doing the defining. If you’re in favor of smaller, more compact “mini-game” style gaming, then “casual gaming” is a videogame experience that need not envelope you in order to please you. For proponents of this style of game, the gaming experience is enjoyed in the immediacy of the event, and its appeal is somewhat fleeting. You needn’t stare directly at the sun for hours on end then return the next night to get the full experience of enjoying a setting sun.
Conversely, you also get people like Rockstar’s Dan Houser, who was quoted in the New York Times thusly:
“Yeah, f— all this stuff about casual gaming. I think people still want games that are groundbreaking.”
And if I’d just laid out nearly $150 million producing, promoting and selling Grand Theft Auto IV… you bet your sweet controller I’d be saying the same thing.
Dan isn’t alone. Gaming message boards and magazines frequently decry the rise of the casual game as a “non-gaming experience.” The argument is that a videogame should be an immersive experience, one that captures the imagination and takes you into a world unlike your own. Your ears should ring with the momentary PINGGGGG of a flash grenade. You should feel the vertigo of climbing and soaring to great heights. You should smell the city itself, breathe its air, and lose yourself in the role of a soldier. Gangster. Criminal. Adventurer.  This is the way of a REAL gamer.
But the problem with that line of thinking is simply this:
Dan Houser, and every one of those people raising this kind of argument, are wrong.
Videogaming as an art form is at the pinnacle of its influence in North American society. Games like GTA IV and Call of Duty can bring in revenue that stretches into the billions of dollars. Today, the Associated Press is reporting that Take Two Interactive has posted nearly $100 million in profits for their previous fiscal quarter, a result of selling over 11 million copies of their newest opus to retailers. A game that, incidentally, has only been available on the market for a little under 60 days.
Filmmakers no longer look at videogames as faulty source material, and instead collaborate with developers to produce properties that will extend themselves naturally upon the silver screen. As I speak, games currently being developed for the screen include Bio-Shock, Assassin’s Creed, Kane & Lynch, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, as well as the ubiquitous Halo franchise. This is to without even mentioning some of Uwe Boll’s “finer” work to bring gaming to the masses by subjecting them to terrible, terrible exercises in futility.
Gaming consoles are also no longer being shoved into spare bedrooms, hooked up to disused secondary televisions. They are front and center in the primary living room, working double-duty playing Blu-Ray movies or doubling as exercise machines. They are becoming as vital a television component as the cable box or home theater system.
And I’m here to say the Nintendo Wii is instrumental in that cultural shift. It is a pivotal piece of hardware that should and, in fact, MUST be encouraged in order to further gaming penetration into homes that might not otherwise experience them.
Dan Houser can decry casual gaming, but it has become an integral part of the industry he himself seeks to further. Rockstar can choose to not compete in this space — and, based upon their experience shoehorning arbitrary Wii functionality into Manhunt 2, I’d say that may not be a bad decision. But going on public record to bash a vital and necessary extension of your industry brand is simply bad business. Moreover, qualifying a game as “casual” or “serious” in a business that can’t even figure out how to rate its titles properly is what I’d call a slippery slope. And in doing so, you risk alienating future gamers that might not enjoy the Online Deathmatch style.
Let’s not forget that the gamers that once sat around the living room playing the Atari 2600 are the ones largely responsible for introducing videogames to their children. As those gamers get older, the amount of time they have to spend playing decreases. Casual gaming becomes one of the ways they can continue to play. The propensity to play won’t diminish entirely so long as games are introduced that cater to that demographic… which increases your market base. This is good for everybody, right?
When you get down to it… all gaming is “casual gaming.” And it’s these people — the ones that feel the need to create a rift where none exist — that most need to understand that.

Posted on 6th June 2008
Under: Grant's Rants | 1 Comment »