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I’d like to remind everyone of PS3 Fanboy’s predictions for 2008. Here’s a look at the next three predictions on the list, now that we’re halfway through the year.

PS3 Prediction #2: A new color for PS3 will be introduced.
Expect some sexy new colors for PS3, many of which won’t appear in the US. Our European and Japanese friends will get special skinned systems for high profile games, like Metal Gear Solid. America may introduce a new premium bundle in White that includes an even larger hard drive and a hotly anticipated game.

PS3 Prediction #3: Video rental service will begin this year.
Sony will finally allow PS3 fans to download movies from the PS Store later this year. However, just like Xbox Live, the movies available will be rentals only and will require the PS3 to be signed into the PSN for playback. Sony won’t want to cannibalize its own Blu-ray sales with fully downloadable movies. At the very least, Remote Play will be enhanced so that you will be able to stream these movies to the PSP.

PS3 Prediction #4: Expect more price drops.
PS3 finally dropped to $399. Expect it go down even further later this year, so that it can remain competitive against the Xbox 360.

Silver PS3. PSN Video. New 80 gig at $399.

Wow. Hit it dead on the head. With a nail.

Of course, #4 is really a give or take, with the new 80 gig version not being the hardware everyone would like it to be. But damn. They’ve either got a mole in Sony or they just have good instinct.

One prediction left before the year’s over, guys.

PS3 Prediction #5: PS3 sales will get better, but won’t be able to beat Xbox 360 in 2008.
In spite of a much better library of games in 2008, the PS3 will trail behind Microsoft’s competing system. The PS3 will do stupendously in Europe and decently in Japan, but American gamers will remain hesitant about Sony’s system. Momentum will certainly help PS3, and critics and analysts alike will predict even better things for 2009.

Think this one’ll come true?

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Please listen.

I’m not one. I never was one. People, if I were a Sony fanboy, I wouldn’t carry my DS around everywhere. It’s in my backpack right now. I’m playing Animal Crossing. I have Jam Sessions. I loved Twilight Princess. I have a Triforce badge and I own original copies of SNES Chrono Trigger and Earthbound.

The thing is, Nintendo has let me down. Check this comic out, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Scott Ramsoomair knows it. I know it. We all know it.

And Microsoft has been doing things wrong from the start. Porting games to the PC because you want to sell more copies of your software is not good business for your console. You wouldn’t have to charge for online play if you just let exclusives sell your console. But Microsoft doesn’t care–they seem to just want to crush the competition. They deal out absurd amount of money to turn titles like Final Fantasy XIII and GTA4 multiplatform.

What happened to when we were all calling the Xbox 360 the “Xbox 180″? Why have people overlooked the hardware limitations and the RROD? Have we forgotten how cheap Microsoft has been with us? Are we all going to be hypocrites and pretend we like Halo 3 just because everyone else says they do?

Here’s Halo’s story for you: A race of English-speaking aliens whose ethnic groups don’t look anything alike despite supposedly being the same race put a jihad on humanity for no real reason and follow religious leaders blindly to a giant Ring Planet which is secretly a massive weapon (which, for some reason, is left floating in space, abandoned, and easy to access) designed to starve a race of evil crap that lives on it. A dude with no personality called Master Chief (why have people forgotten how stupid that name was from the original Halo?) blows up the ring planet. Then the aliens invade Planet America and afterwards teleport to another giant weapon, and then there’s seven giant weapons.

Then Master Chief just kicks everyone’s ass, practically alone. There’s also an alien called the Arbiter. He has no other name.

The only reason I’ve stuck with Sony–despite delays, broken promises, lost exclusives and titles that are not as impressive as advertised–is because they still release exclusive content and they still have the best policy and strongest hardware out there, trying to give people more power to play with when developing games, allowing them to do more and more. There’s a lot you can do with a pencil and paper, but Nintendo went for construction paper, and Microsoft turned into a printer. When are people going to realize what painting in three dimensional space can do?

PS3 is my only hope for this Next Generation. Come on, guys. Just try to break out of the box and look at the situation.

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Sorry I’ve been delaying my posts so much. Summer vacation’s barely been a vacation, and after lying around at home for several weeks and avoiding writing I came back to find work and no time for writing. Thankfully, I’m on top of things again, and in an environment that makes me want to write about games once more. Fancy that, eh? My immediate surroundings dictate my work ethic. I probably need to get a job immediately after graduating, else I fear my portfolio work and blogwriting might go down the drain. I need a gaming environment. Thank God, I’m back.

A while ago, months, I had been talking to my housemate and we started joking as I popped Uncharted into the Playstation 3, “What if PS3 games needed various disks? I mean, what would you fill up Blu-Ray disks with?” He mentioned textures having textures, and I laughed and replied that each molecule would be modeled in order to ensure the maximum possible true-to-life texture. At that, he mused, “It would be tight if developers could set up the code for molecules and how they behave inside a texture.”

As he said this, I suddenly remembered. They already have.

Read that article. Don’t just go past it and keep reading what I wrote. Just look at the pictures and videos if you want, but go to that site.

You did it? Good.

4D technology is essentially the use of algorithms to dictate the behavior of each pixel in a texture, affected by time and forces around the particle as if it were a regular bit of matter.

The amazing thing behind 4D technology which is slowly starting to appear in more and more PS3 games (mentioned in the article are Afrika and Killzone 2) is the way the algorithms programmed into the world allow for minimized use of textures, and yet manage visuals that far exceed most anything games have come up with so far.

That’s great when you’re doing things in High-Definition, where a low-res texture is going to look like utter crap. And if you want to fit thousands upon thousands of gorgeous upscale textures on a single Blu-Ray disc

The reason I’ve mostly used PS3 terminology is because 4D is simply not possible for the Xbox 360 and the Wii. They don’t have the power to parallel process all those behaviors. Without the core processor, there’s no way for a console to calculate the renders. So I once again wave my PS3 flag, and everyone continues to think I am a fanboy.

I really wish I could find positive things to say about other consoles for that very reason. But what do I do?

Anyway, we won’t see the use of 4D to its full potential just yet, but we will start to see games incorporating it rather soon. When this article came out, Killzone 2 was still heavy in development. Nowadays it’s scheduled for next year’s Q1 release (What? What happened to later this year? Our dear Delaystation 3) and who knows when Afrika will be released. Sometime next year.

Still, be on the lookout for this rising technology and its negative effects: soon, texture artists will not be as needed anymore, or their function will change. Get ready to no longer seek to make the greatest upscale texture possible but the most condensed, quality texture in the minimum amount of space. Be prepared to see this lose people jobs and create ones for new skillsets.

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This is in reply to Costikyan’s “I Have No Words & I Must Design”, in particular his assertion that “Stories are linear. Games are not.” I recently was asked to agree or disagree with this statement, and went haywire and wrote this next rail.

I hate hearing the words “Games don’t need story.” It bothers me. It worries me. I worry that people have lost sight of seeking a more exploratory world of games, a more experimental experience. But I can respect their opinion–they’ve chosen Form over Purpose, if you’ve read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. They want to find a refined way to create a game that will appeal to the viewer.
However, I’ve long since leapt that fence and raced to the heart of what I consider games: experiences. People developed games through evolution, Will Wright has said. It’s important for our growth and development. It’s a form of *experience*, in which our actions and the “management of our resources” affect our trajectory towards our goal. But our goal could be something far greater, far more profound than simply “Achieving victory”. “Owning all the property.” “Defeating the final boss.” By seeing games in this light, I almost feel like we’re trying to make games more shallow than they are or could be. More dry. More boring. See, if it’s just about capturing the flag, what’s the point? If all you need to do is get to the finish line before everyone else, why do it? There has to be more to designing a game, and I think by exploring the ways we tell stories through gameplay is the key. After all, people create their own stories when playing any game–they don’t just observe the rules of play, they observe the EVENTS of play–the rules simply become the reality, the medium for that story to take place.

Think of a game like the Indigo Prophecy (Farenheit in the UK). It had an amazing story which steadily became a Wachowski Brothers fest as the game continued, thanks to an unfortunate lack of funding for the tale that was supposed to be a sequel. In any case, the way the story was told was entirely through gameplay–through a set of rules that players began to learn and obeyed throughout the experience. The final goal of the game? To uncover the secret behind the murder your main protagonist appears to have committed. It’s a survival game, in a sense–the point is to survive to the end. But even if it’s such a simplistic formula, without that story the game would collapse onto itself. The gameplay is strong and interesting and experimental, but it’s simply not enough to convey the experience–it’s the story that drives that.

On the other hand, let’s take a look at a very story-absent game. Let’s take Pong. Any version–you can go from Pong to Top Spin 2 to Rockstar’s Table Tennis. The game has very little story to it. You rise to the top and all, but, really, the plot can be thrown aside and what would be left is the barebones game mechanic of bouncing a ball back and forth. But what is it that drives the player to invest in that? Is it the cheering fans, the hot asphalt? The original Pong didn’t have that level of realism. Is it the simplistic power of moving a rack and knocking a ball back across the net at the other player? Table Tennis was a great deal more complicated than that, and requires a good bit of hard work to master.
In essence? It’s the spirit of that competition that embodies the challenge and elicits the player’s emotion. We search for so-called “meaningful play” in design, but what many fail to realize is that every time a player is invested, they are alluding to yet another human story.

We shouldn’t be trying to create “meaningful play”. We should be trying to make play players can attach meaning to themselves.

The point I’m trying to make is, games create stories. People create stories–we’re a story-driven race; it’s why we spend such a great deal of time researching and conserving our hi-story. Our memory is comprised of stories and events, and those experiences dictate how and what we have learned over the course of our lives. Humans and stories are inseparable–and games are simply the setup of hypothetical, experimental universes for more stories to be created. Costikian said it himself, and I don’t know why he doesn’t recognize it: “Games provide a set of rules; but the players use them to create their own consequences.” Those consequences are being remembered and learned as stories.

I see ludology as a tool, not an ideal. Creating fun gameplay is essential to a game’s success, yes. But it’s finding a way to capture the spirit of play in the player that I find the true art. It’s why many MMOs fail where World of Warcraft reigns king. It’s why people keep buying Final Fantasy again and again and again. It’s why you keep asking your friends to play Monopoly with you–the universe created by the game is that breeding ground for all players to create their own stories. It doesn’t matter what the mechanics are, as long as they work for that specific event you want to recreate.

It’s why many people disliked Assassin’s Creed. Playing it, you’d want to recreate the story of an assassin. But the gameplay simply doesn’t lend for the creation of that experience. The game isn’t UN-FUN, per se. It just doesn’t lend for someone to believe they’re an assassin in most cases.

Give that some thought before you begin writing numbers down, ludologists.

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I don’t talk much about it. Probably because I know if I start saying things about the Wii, what comes out of my mouth will end up being negative.

It’s inevitable, however, for me to say something about that little white posh console, so let’s start out saying a few good things even though we all know where this is going.

1) It’s a great multiplayer console.

2) It has games for kids.

3) …

That’s about it for me. That’s all I can really say about it. You can scream and rant and rail all you want about the magic word innovation; the truth is, the point-and-click remote control idea has been something Nintendo has toyed with since the NES Glove Controller, and infra-red technology is about as twentieth century as it gets–not to mention that it’s recycled from the Game Boy Color’s failed attempts at infra-red ports sharing.

When you sit down and really analyze it, all this new garbage they come out with for the Wii that supposedly makes you feel “immersed” in gameplay because you’re mimicking the motions on the screen has simply resulted in extremely hackneyed and gratuitous calisthenics. I remember talking with a fellow designer about Harvest Moon for the Wii; he was all for it, expecting the addition of the Wiimote to be an amazing dynamic. I continued to try to point out my skepticism because the addition is simply so easy it can be perceived as tacked on. Anything that senses motion can immediately be exploited without a second thought–example: I can make a kayaking game where you swipe the Wiimote left and right to simulate paddling. There you go. I just implemented the Wiimote in a game that should sell bajillions because it has motion sensing technology and therefore should be fun.

What all these sad game designers need to start accepting is that motion sensing gets old. Special gear gets old. Transfer packs and GBA link cables and chainsaw controllers get old. When people start seeing games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 and Alone in the Dark and The Orange Box come out on everything but the Wii… well. This article describes it best, and I am in total agreement. Most people I know have stopped playing their Wii altogether. Even Super Smash Brothers Brawl just doesn’t make it anymore. Nintendo’s giving us Mario Kart, but I haven’t heard a word out of anybody’s mouth about it. The little white console is fading, and keeping quiet.

What can I say? Nintendo gave it a shot. The problem is Nintendo is the only company that’s good at what Nintendo does, and like I said months ago: It’s my theory Nintendo titles will continue to sell the Wii. No other company will ever really get their fair share of the profit.

I wonder if Miyamoto’s got anything up his sleeves now.

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Facebook recently initiated “Facebook Chat”, a messenger concept people have been dying for since Facebook exploded from a college thing into the next MySpace. It’s become apparent to me within the first twenty minutes of poking at it that the thing is pure evil, since my feed shows up live on everyone’s chat list if they happen to me talking at me (I don’t answer back being the Facebook dissenter I am, of course) so now if it even occurs to me to download some stupid application for the day, even if I hide it on the mini-feed, everyone who happens to be staring intently at me will be notified.

Of course, it’s also unlikely too many people will be interested in me. I am, after all, somewhat boring–particularly on Facebook. But I somewhat dread a game designer contacting me randomly after having seen me on someone else’s site and walking in on me taking a personality quiz for little girls. Not that I do that, or anything. I just might some day. You never know.

And no, I’m not giving out my Facebook on here. Why would I? There’s nothing of interest on there. If you really want to find me, go ahead and try to find me. You know who I am and where I study. It can’t possibly be that hard.

So now you’re thinking, “All right, Andres, how does this tie into games?” Yes, I know I’m a game designer and I should be focusing on things like Metal Gear Online and GTAIV, but instead I decided to talk about Facebook–because believe it or not, in-game communication with players isn’t all too far from what Facebook just integrated.

And since you’re all so picky about MGO and GTAIV, I will talk about them–in context with Facebook.

The thing about most games–and this is mostly when dealing with the online multiplayer aspect of any genre–is that communication is crucial for anything to work in an online setting. The reason Facebook is so successful is because it centers around the idea of communication and connection between human beings. Video games in an online setting have had a hard time hitting the right formula in order to thrive because they haven’t been able to find the appropriate balance of communication versus play. (Brenda Brathwaite would be so proud of me.)

In the instance of Rock Band, you have an absolutely gorgeous system for playing your favorite songs with friends, rocking it out and sharing the moments through an online setting–but the connectivity is so limited you might as well just get together at somebody’s house and play there. There’s no real connection to be made outside your little group of friends. When people go online, they want to be connected to the World Wide Web. In that instance, online play has been dramatically downplayed and remained a disappointment for those hoping for a richer, expanded experience.

To open a little on MGO before we get into the online communications versus play idea, I have to say I love this game. Metal Gear Online is a gold shooter–it feels natural to the touch and very different from so many FPSs I’ve played. While I love first person, I have to say that MGO’s beautiful third-person action so far trumps any Halo, Counter-Strike or Unreal you throw at me. The transitions between shooting and CQC and laying traps is so efficient and quick that someone with the absolute upper hand can be devastated by a few small mistakes, allowing the dark horse to burst out of nowhere with a smack to the face. Not to mention that they have something called “Sneaking Mission”, in which you get to be Snake. You get to be Snake. That’s enough said.

In case anyone ever wondered about why AI seems so stupid in MGS4 for not seeing Snake lying camouflaged on the ground, trust me–I can’t see him either. It has nothing to do with stupidity. He’s just hard to see.

In MGO you have different issues–on the connectivity side, the fact that at any given time there may be no more than 2000 people logged on to the MGO server and all of them are in different closed games makes matchmaking becomes incredibly difficult. You might find yourself trapped in a game with a range of skill levels between 0 and 7, ensuring that if you’re lower level, the game will be too hard and if you’re higher level, the game will be too easy. Communicationwise, MGO seems to have no issues–other than the fact that your email can only hold so many messages and that there’s no private chat, so talking to your friends while on the menu and deciding what you want to do is somewhat difficult. It has many ways of talking while within an actual match, including keyboard, microphone and predetermined communication commands. Of course, once you have a mic you’ll usually just be shouting into it whenever anything happens, since you’re on a private channel with your team. Interestingly enough, Kojima Productions made the interesting choice of disabling your communication when you are no longer capable of speaking–for example, when stunned, asleep or dead. It makes dying all the more frustrating because you can’t comment on it, but it stops a great deal of raging over the communication channels as an amazingly efficient fix. The communication versus play, however, is a tad unbalanced in this scenario, since while MGO plays beautifully like a completely non-standard shooter with different dynamics from any other FPS I’ve ever played online, it needs to have a lot tweaked in order to function correctly–mainly the issue with how easy it is to get a headshot, and how difficult and one sided it makes the game. Getting close to someone is now an art, and relies on a great deal of luck and patience–both of which are not exactly prime elements to focus on in any FPS. You want skill, timing and precision to be the elements to focus your gameplay on. We’ll see if Konami lowers the headshot ratios by when MGO comes out in June–I will most certainly be playing it because it is simply a true pleasure and just amazing fun when your team and you really coordinate.

GTAIV has its own version of gameplay–but I keep feeling after playing it that the entire thing seems somewhat tacked on, like an addition to gameplay merely created to compete with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Online.

First, however, the main game. The game itself is pure gold, and I’m enjoying it very much–though I’m a little disappointed with how the new features of the game don’t really switch up the gameplay. They make gameplay more interesting and efficient and dynamic, yes. But in terms of “new”, nothing fresh really comes to the table. To be expected–it’s another GTA game, and GTA is simply GTA. The story is lovely, however, and I’m enjoying it when I’m not busy working or on my last days of MGO.

Returning to the multiplayer, it seems to be very much the single player game with more players in it, shooting each other. It’s really not as glorious as I expected, and the fact that contacting your friends is practically nonexistent and gameplay modes are nothing short of a repeat of Unreal’s and Team Fortress’s match modes makes it rather disappointing. It’s still kind of fun, but some modes are somewhat pointed or biased and people playing them are downright stupid. I think there were several mistakes made in the GTA multiplayer, and that makes me wonder really if it was in the original plan of the fourth game or if it was put in to try to sell more and build more hype versus the looming colossus of Metal Gear Solid 4.

To close on GTAIV, the game is already starting to stale a little bit on me–and of course I’ll beat the whole thing and enjoy it, but I realize it’s just like playing another GTA, and because I know the gameplay so well I feel like I can’t get anything more out of it other than story–of course the story will be good, with Rockstar’s witty cynicism and newfound ability to narrate. But it’s a sad feeling I’m left with because I only just got the game and everyone’s giving it such high praise. But really, people… it’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s always going to be Grand Theft Auto.

So Facebook has got the formula for connectivity versus play–but do they? I still think even they haven’t refined the formula, because nothing on Facebook catches my attention anymore. I loathe it–I just can’t become interested in wasting time on it. So we still have a lot of experimentation to go… don’t count on the perfect MMO formula just yet, folks.

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To expand a little on what I wrote yesterday, I’d like to share a beautiful quote with you. Special thanks to John for telling me the story, and Mara for being there.

A man walks into Gamestop and begins returning his old games. One of the games he hands over the counter is Shadow of the Colossus. The person at the counter looks at the game, confused, and looks back up at the man.

“Do you mind if I ask… this is Shadow of the Colossus, why are you returning this game?”

His answer will forever make me smile.

“This game makes me think,” he says, furrowing his brow. “I don’t like to think.”

It’s moments like these that reveal which games have achieved the highest forms of art.

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I’m back from GDX, which was somewhat disappointing but yet very inspiring. It’s helped me decide on a lot of things about my future, and what I choose to pursue. But on to other interesting things, because I’m not as important.

The other day Shadow of the Colossus came up again. I love SotC. It’s a beautiful game. Most people agree with me. But then there’s some people who keep prying, nagging, demanding justification as to why it is good. So let’s recap here.

Music, great. Visuals, great. Gameplay –repetitive but refreshing, with the grip system and holding on to dear life from flailing stone beasts’ backs, driving a sword into their weak spots–so yeah, it’s great. Replay value,–I’m still playing it over and over because it’s so short and sweet–great. Story.

Here is where the controversy comes, and what most bothers me. Shadow of the Colossus is done by the absolutely incomparable Ico team, masters of weaving story and lore into gameplay. Every time I sit down to delve into SotC, I feel awed by the grandeur of the universe before me, and mesmerized by the stalking giants though which conquering I may be vindicated. In my eyes, Shadow of the Colossus has a tremendous amount of story. But people keep bringing up to me, what is the theme? What’s the premise? What’s the catch? Why is this story being told?

If you’d stop nattering, I’d tell you.

There’s plenty of themes in Shadow. I’ll get into them later, but they’re there. There’s a premise, too. Someone goes around and kills large stone giants. Simple, right? Themes don’t make a story, however.

The thing about a game is that, unlike a book or a movie or any other experience in which the director guides the viewer by the hand through their mystical, otherworldy vision, in games it’s usually the player taking rein and whipping the director to go faster, to turn, to stop. This makes it an entirely different kind of sensation, and by definition a true experience as opposed to a bystanding observation of the events taking place. In Shadow of the Colossus, Team Ico shed light on something amazing by setting the game up for the player to fill every hole. Nothing about the protagonist’s past is explained, and even the murky details that arise are guesswork at best. But the actions that the protagonist executes throughout the actual body of the game are as clear, concise and blaringly obvious–he goes from one rock titan to the next and brings each down. The scale of each of those actions puts the experience the player actually engages in (as opposed to backstory, which the player will only hear about in the game) on a massive pedestal, and highlights it as most important. So important, in fact, that it’s the premise of the entire game.

Basically, Team Ico wanted the player to make a story him or her self, in order to explain these phenomenally epic events. Whwther the player considers the protagonist a valiant knight, sacrificing him for his princess, or whether he thinks of the hero as a remorseful assassin, regretting his kill when it is too late and doing everything he can to receive pardon once more, or even as a dedicated, fierce lover, fighting to bring back his only with tooth and claw, the action is still the same. In other forms of storytelling, action is usually caused by the elements of the story. In Shadow of the Colossus, the story is sprouted from the action.

This is the magnificent thing about games. We try so very hard to make games that follow a set storyline like a movie, trying to lead the player from event to event and finally to the end, where we culminate the whole tale and explain our cleverness in setting things up the way they are. I, as a writer, am guilty of that, and so are most other game writers (do not lie). We love our story. It’s our baby. We want the player to discover it, and learn to appreciate it.

But what we forget is that, through play, we make our own stories. I remember countless of imaginary characters my friends and I would invent and adopt in roleplay, running around in empty soccer fields and calling out attacks, chasing each other, trying to escape the nonexistent hordes behind us with nothing but our fighting skill and nerve. That was what play was for me, story. Clearly, it’s resulted in me loving to write and read stories–but I have to remember the player wants that indulging ability to create their own universe, too. It’s the reason games like Morrowind, Oblivion, SPORE, World of Warcraft and Shadow of the Colossus appeal so much to me–they don’t force me into a story, they just give me a universe and invite me to go play. Granted, sometimes it’s not as free as one might think–you can’t avoid the Oblivion main quest forever, World of Warcraft is boring and absurdly slow if you’re not doing quests and there’s nothing to do in Shadow of the Colossus other than run around like a dolt in an empty environment and take down stone giants. But we’re getting there–someday we may make an entirely free universe, where anything is possible within the rules of the world, and people will be free to truly “roleplay”.

Then again, we tried that with Second Life in a way, and it didn’t work out all that well. Maybe we still need more time.

To conclude with Shadow of the Colossus, it’s a game that’s designed with the player’s story in mind, with themes supporting the player’s interpretation of his or her own actions. In the end, the real theme is Sacrifice. You, as a player, give up your six hours to crush these creatures for reasons of your choosing, losing bits of yourself along the way, becoming corrupted, tainted and yet pushing on, even to the point of losing your horse, Arrow–the only other living creature with any sort of unique identity to it in this forgotten world, and the only named character you know, leaving you completely and utterly alone to face the price of your Sacrifice. And in the end, you are cripplingly betrayed, and all seems to have been for nothing.

…But then your sacrifice gives birth to hope.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what you were fighting for. They were your reasons. It was your fight. The game was just a means to achieve it. And that’s what makes a game so much different, and so uniquely beautiful. The fact that the story was strong, well thought out, on purpose–down to dropping you in an abandoned, empty world with nothing but stone giants to remind you of how alone and unsupported you are in your great sacrifice–only a game can do something this amazing.

Only in playing do we truly experience. Watching is never enough. Don’t make a player watch.

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Peter Molyneux is like my “aww” developer. Sometimes he’s so silly he makes me laugh and sometimes he says something serious and I grow more fond of him. I think it may have something to do with how much I enjoy Fable.

Recently on Gamasutra, Peter (Molyneux) talked about how the game design industry has failed in being able to open up gaming for everyone. We’ve made huge leaps, he says, but we’ve gotten stuck here. He uses a controller as an example–how hard it is for the average person to wrap his or her head around the idea of a controller. While it’s true that a ridiculous amount–how many people? There’s statistics–of people play video games, games nowhere close to matching, for example, the number of televisions in the world. The number of computers. How many consoles have we sold? Millions. But how many televisions have been sold? The average American household is bound to have at least 2.73, and 2.55 people [source]. That’s over 300 million televisions. Molyneux refers back to a time when Clive Sinclair boasted people would play the Spectrum instead of watch television in every home in Britain.

We haven’t achieved that–I don’t think the Wii will achieve it either. It may be motion-sensing technology, but it’s still a controller. We’re still making high-technological-knowledge games for the Average Joe.

We need to make the things people know how to use–their hands, their fingers, their eyes–the controllers for the worlds they wish to interact with.  In that sense, I think the Wii a step–if only one step–in the right direction.

“But Andres,” I hear you say, “you’ve always expressed your distaste for the Nintendo Wii! Surely you’re not an utter hypocrite?” I am, in a way, because I think that the Wii’s innovative pointing system is a nice idea. However, I do think visual graphics play a huge part in the advancement of interactivity and mainstream acceptance. Not everyone can identify equally with creativity and imagination. I come from a town where the majority of boys play soccer when they’re kids–not with Legos and action figures. In a way they could certainly imagine themselves as soccer stars, but all this requires very vivid imagery as seen on television and in magazines. Unless those kids, now older, can get a good visual representation of what it is they’d like to be, they’ll have a very hard time suspending their disbelief and enjoying the game because it’s just not what they actually want to do. It’s not an experience. It’s still just a game. I think that gap needs to be bridged, just as much as the innovative controls need to be.

Going back to the Wii, if you’ll notice, I never say anything bad about the Nintendo DS. This is because I have one, and I think it’s an absolutely great console. I love its touchpad and dualscreen technology. But the thing that separates it from the Wii is that it has far more visual capacity than the Game Boy Advance. The Nintendo Wii isn’t capable of a lot more than the Gamecube is. I give a nod of approval any time I see something improving the capacity for visual quality–hence why I’m so enamoured with the PS3. Sure, the Wii can have nice graphics, and we all saw Mario Galaxy and how effectively good looking that was using Nintendo’s secret recipe that nobody else seems to have. But when you compare the difference between an Advance and a DS and you try to match that up from Gamecube to Wii you fall incredibly short. As for the Wii versus the PS3, the Wii doesn’t even come close, while the Nintendo DS comes rather close to the PSP. And while the PSP has nicer graphics, it’s more of a luxurious gadget, and I didn’t get a PSP until relatively recently because I knew Sony had had no experience making portable games. They’ve started getting some rather decent and exciting titles (instead of PS2 ports), however, and that’s certainly pushing their market out.

In the end, Peter is right. We haven’t reached enough people. There’s so much more we could do. If only we could get our technology far enough to where it’s not only stunning but incredibly simple to handle.

Then we’ll be in business.

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When you think of casual games, the first thing that comes to your mind is not Final Fantasy. In fact, usually you’re nowhere near the RPG genre when you’re thinking about casual play. You might consider a shooter or a puzzle game long before you even consider the remote possibility of a casual RPG, and then when you actually stop to contemplate it for a moment, you stop, laugh, and say “Nah, that won’t happen.”

But how little informed we all are!

As a matter of fact, there’s been a few attempts at casual role-playing games in the past. One of the most noteworthy is a PC game by WildTangent (makers of Lumines and Runescape) called Fate. They declare it an “Enthusiast”game (same category as Runescape, an MMO) on their website, but in truth it’s much more a casual game in spirit than a hardcore one. You can play Fate for ten minutes or ten hours, and the result is pretty much still the same experience. And it’s just as addictive as Peggle, so you might end up working it for hours on end and somehow get no sense of accomplishment but all the sense of enjoyment.

There’s been other experiments in the casual/hardcore mix market for RPGs recently in even AAA titles–at least, what I perceive to be triple A. Not only triple A, but the very game we’d never expect to be a casual game. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (which I have to say I enjoy immensely) is very much a traditional RPG in the sense that it has a long, spanning story mode that has cutscenes and choices and menus and running around collecting lumber to build flower wagons. But Square Enix and the Kingdom Hearts team therein that was responsible for this amalgam of a game decided to put casual elements into gameplay and allow short, playable bursts of fun for two to five minutes at a time like any good portable game should, and I applaud any PSP title for achieving this standard instead of being a ported PS2 title. This effect is achieved through Missions, a mysterious menu option never before seen in any Final Fantasy game.

It works beautifully–you choose a mission from the Missions menu, complete it, and usually you’ll get another mission to do until you run out of them and need to seek out more through the regular story mode. Missions consist of running around a map and seeking a particular enemy while fighting baddies of differing skill levels (depending on the mission) and picking up treasure chests along the way. You can only access Missions while at a save point, making the transition between missions and saving seamless, quick and effective. It takes about two minutes to run one, and they’re addictive, despite their repetitiveness. There’s just something about Crisis Core‘s seamless battlesystem that makes those two minutes gloriously fun. It might be the fact that in running them, you level up and acquire enhanced items and materia that beef your character and you can use through regular story mode, making yourself vastly more powerful and advantaged. Even so, the game is still challenging, and you have Hard Mode to run through after you complete it once.

Using these kinds of elements in gameplay, Square Enix has toed in on a very different market in a very different way. Remaking Final Fantasy IV for the DS is lovely, I’ll admit, but the truth is that Final Fantasy was never meant to be a portable game. It’s always been a sit-your-ass-down-and-play-that-thing-for-hours game. Seeing a Final Fantasy that has mixes of both gameplay styles makes me content, especially since I’ve noticed from watching the industry that developers think hardcore games are waning. Both elements in a big title like Final Fantasy show that there’s rooms for both styles in the industry, and there’s no reason developers should stop trusting that the epics will sell to the mainstream audience.

In that light, give both games a try. Fate is a fairly low-hardware-specs game and Crisis Core needs only a PSP to work. They’re good fun and I’ve enjoyed both in their own right. When casual games are disguised as RPGs, some interesting things are probably on the horizon. What will Final Fantasy XIII bring? We can only guess.

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