The last couple of Wednesdays around here have been a little serious. So instead of getting angry about something this week, I’m going to keep things lighthearted and share my ten favourite gaming-related April Fool’s pranks from this year.
Some of them were heart-breaking, some of them were silly, some believable and some were just downright hilarious. These are my favourites, in loosely arranged order of awesomeness. Enjoy.
So I was scrolling through this very here site, and I came across the headline, EU Now Says Piracy Doesn’t Affect Music Sales, which caused me to sigh so heavily I thought I’d collapsed a lung. And yet, like an obese diabetic passing Sweets from Heaven, I was drawn to it, despite knowing it would bring great misery.
The thought drumming through my head like some kind of sadistic, sentient bongo was this: Has anyone actually not realised this yet? Are people still actually under the impression that the 4 million people who downloaded in Crysis 2 in 2011 would have bought it had the piracy option not been available to them?
But there was something there for me after all; a little gem of wisdom. Wesley Fick said something smart; he summed up the piracy “issue” beautifully – piracy is a service problem.
The games industry is an enormous business; every single year men and women with manicured hands and tailored suits are filling their company coffers with the money we pay for the next big AAA title, the next Call of Duty or Battlefield or whatever blockbuster Blizzard has been incubating for the last ten years.
We’re talking Hollywood money, we’re talking billions. Companies are built on the success of a single game (Minecraft) or ruined on a failure (Homefront).
It can be a risky business, which is why I don’t understand why companies keep doing the same damned stupid things, and why we, even more stupidly, keep giving them our money. Things like…
Last week I had a look at some of the most underrated games that I’ve had the pleasure of playing, hidden gems that didn’t get the press or appreciation they deserved.
This week, as promised, I’m flipping it around and having a look at the games that got tongues wagging and critics hot under the collar, but weren’t necessarily worthy of all the praise heaped upon them.
A lot of things go into a successful game. Most of the time, it has to be good (although not always), but that’s just the beginning. A game needs marketing, it needs exposure, it needs word of mouth, it needs the proper distribution and price point. The sale of games, and indeed anything, is complicated.
This means that there are a lot of real gems that just faded quietly into obscurity, without fanfare or acknowledgement from anyone; overshadowed by bigger marketing budgets or a more conventional premise.
In that spirit, I’m going to share some games that I think didn’t get the respect they deserved – be it by critics or consumers.
Less than 24 hours before Sony pulled the curtain back on the PlayStation 4, I was chatting to a friend about the mysterious announcement. My money was on something other than the PlayStation 4, but I was overjoyed to be proved wrong when 1am Thursday morning rolled around. The conversation we had did get me thinking though – if Sony were to announce a new console, what would it be, and what sort of features would it need to include to get me reaching for my wallet? Well, the cat is out the bag, and Sony has given us a full rundown of what the console will be capable of, and I am pretty damn excited.
As the years roll by (at a frankly alarming pace), everything pretty much gets better. Remember when TVs were huge and brown and required at least two adult men to shift position? Hell, you had to get up from the couch to change the channel (of which there were three).
Now we sit watching a Blu-ray on a 40-inch television thinner than a Romany Cream surrounded by wall-mounted speakers and looking ridiculous in our 3D glasses. Things are awesome now, things are better – it’s a hallmark of our constant innovation and development as a species.
And it’s the same for games, right? Remember when you had to blow the dust out of your cartridges to get them to work properly? You couldn’t save your games – you had to beat them in one sitting or try again later.
Games came spread over seven floppy disks, and were pretty damn difficult to get hold of in the first place. You couldn’t simply log onto Steam or walk into a CNA; it was a network of grubby disks passed between friends before we even knew piracy was something other than peg-legged hobos with swords.
Nowadays games have amazing graphics, enormous development teams and millions and millions of dollars sunk into them. They’re bigger, they’re bolder, they’re prettier and they’re better, right? Well, I’m not sure.
See, I have a niggle in the back of my mind that I just can’t shake – I had more fun playing games ten years ago.
Things have been a little serious the last two Wednesdays, so I’ve decided to lighten the mid-week mood here a little with a look at some of the most ridiculous things people have done in video games. Everyone knows it’s more fun to colour outside the lines, so check out these stories of people playing games in ways they were never intended to be played.
Do you remember when cellphones did one thing? Well, perhaps two. If you’re old enough you’ll remember when it was JUST a phone, and roughly the size of a backpack – but for a long time all our phones could really do was call and SMS. I’m talking about the glory days of the Nokia 3310, back when a game of Snake could actually hold our attention.
But of course, as electronics tend to do, they’ve evolved. My cellphone is kind of crappy, and yet it’s still an internet browser, e-mailer, camera, instant messager, handheld game device and social networker – oh, I do also occasionally speak to people on it.
The point is, things are becoming integrated to the point that single-function devices become obsolete – perhaps you see where I’m going with this.
It’s no secret that humanity, as a whole, is becoming a lot more sensitive. Everything that is intended for public consumption has to be heavily screened for political correctness – set one foot wrong, make one ambiguous statement and some affronted group of individuals is going to take offense.
This isn’t exactly new – it’s human nature to look for the negative; people like to have something to protest. The difference today is that society is accepting these complaints; we nurture them and lift them up and make them rational – they’re not.
At this point you may be wondering if you’ve clicked the wrong link, or if I took my medication (or indeed, too much of it) this morning. “Chris,” you may be asking your monitor like a deranged hermit, “what the hell does this have to do with gaming?” I’m getting there.
