Factor 1: Internet speed / availability

Don’t need to explain this one too much. The internet is simply not widespread or reliable enough yet. When a game or service is being created the creators still (for the most part) have to ask themselves ‘is this going to be usable by people without good internet?’ I personally have a tendency to forget there are people with sub-par internet. I get the majority of my games digitally. For me it’s fast and convenient, even if the games are pushing 10gb. Then I visit my parents on the other side of the state and there’s absolutely no chance of even downloading and applying a 20mb patch so my little brother can play Skyrim issue-free. The majority of people are of course somewhere in the middle.

Incredible innovations like cloud-processing, wherein the program is run from a remote machine and the video and sound streamed to your device, can not be commercially viable on a large scale until the infrastructure is there. No money means no innovating.

This is a problem, but it’s being improved.

Factor 2: Weird localisation

I’ve always been in favour of region-locking for games. It protects each country’s industry from unpredictable shifts in the economy and society of other countries. But just last year there were many localisation practices that, at least to me, are much less fathomable.

In one example, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland was originally slated for a near-simultaneous worldwide launch. I then had to watch in horror as the release date for Australia was pushed back first by a month, and then by two. When it finally made it to retail it had an entirely different name, Kirby’s Adventure Wii. Why?! Both the delay and the name change are baffling, given there are no other differences between the game as released in North America. Was there a bizarre copyright issue or some doubt as to whether Australians would buy Kirby? Who knows.

Of course you would think a large chunk of this would be solved through the solving of problem factor 1: widespread broadband means all games available digitally, which means the cost of localising between english-speaking countries is virtually zero. However there are clearly some other unknowable industry quirks further complicating things. Last December a wonderful game called Trine 2 was released for download on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. Recently I discovered that in Australia, the game was never released for XBLA, only PSN. Some googling eventually elucidated the fact that, when the game was launched, the developer was under the impression it would be launched worldwide and was as surprised as the fans to learn Microsoft stopped it’s Australian release at the last moment. It is still not available in Australia on XBLA, but it is available there on PSN, and it is available on both literally everywhere else in the world. Explain that if you can.

The main issue in both these cases is a lack of communication and transparency. If there’s a good reason we would know. This leads me to believe that the reasons are nonsensical or so convoluted as to be embarrassing.

This is a problem that I can’t believe we have in this day and age.

Factor 3: Criminality

So I could have titled it ‘piracy’, but I think more and more that term is losing it’s illicit connotations. Saying ‘piracy’ now is kind of like saying ‘smoking’. There’s a certain edge to it in some circumstances, but it’s largely banal.

The impact of criminal procurement of games on innovation is primarily that it limits the profitability of games, meaning only the biggest and most popular (or most difficult to pirate) games will be easily financed. Like all criminal behaviour, piracy is justified by it’s perpetrators in all manor of ways, but no justification can remedy the fact that the practice instils a huge amount of bad faith into the industry. If there is something in the way of you getting a game legally, that sucks and you’re entitled to think so. You are not entitled to have it anyway.

Again, in many cases you may think the solving of the above factor would help this one. After all, at least anecdotally, the most prevalent excuse (though by no means a justifiable one) for piracy across media seems to be “there’s no way for me to get it legally. I would if I could!” Last year Xenoblade Chronicles was not localized for release in North America. There was a huge outcry and subsequently by the end of the year the game had been stolen via download over 950,000 times. Nintendo eventually broke and the game will be released there on April 6. If they end up getting their deserved payment for a million units of the game, they may be a little less hesitant to take a gamble next time. Call me cynical but I highly doubt they will move a million units.

This is a problem. It has an easy fix.

Factor 4: Pandering / the user-input effect

There may already be an academic term for this, but I’m calling it the ‘user-input effect’. Basically I’m referring to the idea that if you give the user what they want they’ll enjoy your product less than if you created something on your own. Game developers are experts. On design, on writing, on narrative, on gameplay. The majority of game players are not experts. Yet the power the user holds over the designer is becoming scary. What’s more is that the more the designer’s pander to the users, the more the users seem to feel they have a right to have their input respected.

Recently Mass Effect 3, the finale to an amazingly realised trilogy, was released and a large number of gamers were unhappy with the ending(s). It happens. I understand it might be upsetting for some if a story they’ve invested in so heavily let them down at the end. What happens less often is the gamers getting together and petitioning BioWare to change the ending. And BioWare (at the behest of EA or other commercial interests I’d wager) is conceding! At the risk of departing from my usual candour let me finish this blog post by taking a minute to address directly anybody reading who thinks they have a right to expect a creative work be changed because of their own infantile desires:

Fuck you. The people involved in providing you this game are professional artists. Many of them have devoted the last SEVEN YEARS to crafting this universe. You have spent a maximum of a hundred or so hours being entertained by it. If your ridiculous sense of entitlement and lack of respect causes anybody to compromise their creativity and pander to you, you are by far a bigger threat to the future innovation and growth of gaming as a creative industry than anything else I’ve mentioned here. I sincerely hope none of you ever have cause to complain about the relative pish-poshing of the games industry compared to others, because you’re a massive part of the problem. Imagine if I petitioned HBO after the end of The Sopranos and told them to force the creators to make a more satisfying ending. Realistic? What if I wanted David Lynch to make Mulholland Drive a little more straightforward because it left me unsatisfied? Do you see where I’m going with this? Like all industry gaming has its commercial imperatives and its need to be marketable. But in no other creative industry would such a ridiculous violation of a creator’s right to their own vision be tolerated.

This is a problem. Sort it out.