Brennan’s Blog

I read that a man in Chicago has started a class action suit over the new XBox 360. There is a discussion brewing on Slashdot about it. I think it is about time.

I remember the days of playing games on my Nintendo when I was a kid. It was a cheap console system with robust game cartridges. And then the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis came out and they were still fairly simple and the games were still fun with some new features. Wikipedia has a great page on Super Mario Brothers and you can see how the game progressively became more advanced. Mario starts out on a 2D screen, walking to the right (or running if you hold B down) and later a 3D version made the gameplay just a bit more interesting.

While I was in college Super Mario Kart was all the reason I needed to skip my 10am class on Statistics due to a very intense tournament I just has to finish. Koopa was a worthy opponent, but hardly a match for Luigi. Wahoo!

And then there is Tetris, a game so simple but worth hours and hours of entertainment. The qualities of such games seem to be lost in the modern consoles. Too often good gameplay is pushed aside for colorful graphics and 3D rendering. I have played games where I have spent more time mastering the complex sequence of buttons to pull off moves (ala Street Fighter) than actually playing the game. That is the beauty of games like Super Mario Kart and Tetris. In 30 seconds from powering up the console you are in a game and ready to go...

Back in 2001 I read Dogma 2001: A Challenge to Game Designers. It explains how a film maker once challenged film makers to give themselves artificial limits so they would produce great movies without relying on special effects to fill the seats. The premise was that special effects were selling tickets, but not making truly complete and worthwhile movies. This article went on to list some artificial limitations for game developers and designers, such as not allowing the use of 3D acceleration hardware or to hide medical kits in locations which make no sense. (Why would a med kit be in an oil container, or a rocket launcher be laying in the middle of Blood Gulch?)

With that in mind, you have to consider why games like Tetris and Mario Kart are so fun. If you made the blocks in Tetris more colorful, add more shapes or made the blocks 3D and had the screen rotate would it be more fun or just frustrating and too difficult to learn? And what if the graphics in Mario Kart were so realistic you could see the sweat sliding down Mario's forehead? Would it be any more fun? Some new "features" are just designed to sell games, not make the game more fun.

Despite the concern about too many frivolous features, there are many improvements which I would not want to live without. And chief among them is network gameplay which allows you to play with and against your friends. Halo on the PC has been the best at this so far. It packs in all of the 3D goodness and other no no's from the 2001 challenge. But Bungie had the right skill and dedication to pull it off. They did a great deal of work to perfect the game. Simply driving around in the Warthog is fun, especially when you run over a co-worker!

Yet now we have the new XBox 360. What is so wrong with it? My sense is that it has been pushed out the door too soon without proper testing and without games worth the hassle of an expensive and overheating console. I know it was all done to get it out in time to be wrapped and put under the tree. The King Kong movie is not even out yet and they are trying to sell the game! It all seems rushed and premature. It is obvious their primary objective is to make more money and not to produce the best gaming experience possible.

What can this law suit achieve? Hopefully it reminds the console industry that a console should be cheap and reliable. And give me back my PC games! I first played Halo on the PC on a network with others and I became accustomed to having the audio unique to my perspective. Now when I play Halo 2 with others and I hear footsteps I cannot tell if I am in trouble or someone else is. I also prefer sitting directly in front of my 17" LCD to sitting across the room on the couch looking at the bottom right portion of the TV. It is so distracting seeing 3 other players on the screen, despite the possible advantages. Besides, the only game I would want to play on an XBox would be Halo, but am I going to shell out almost $500 for that one game and the rest of the system? I think not.

I think Microsoft should have released Halo 2 for the PC in time for the holidays instead of the XBox 360 and left more time to work out the problems and also to finish up Halo 3. I have no interest in living vicariously through 50 Cent, some cowboy or driving endlessly around a track. There is nothing special about those games anyway. I can already beat up cops, wear a cowboy hat and race around in a Porsche I just stole in Grand Theft Auto which was released over 2 years ago!

Perhaps I will consider an XBox 360 when Halo 3 is released, but depending on how things pan out, I may boycott the XBox on principle and find PC alternatives like Counter Strike. And there is always EBay. A quick search showed me a $36 Super Nintendo and $14 copy of Mario Kart.

My guess is one of two things will happen: Microsoft will learn from their mistakes and start producing a better system or Sony will learn from Microsoft's missteps and show them how it is done. There is hope as long as there is still competition.