A couple weeks ago I wrote about the teaser site opened about a misterious "Mikami Shinji Project". Today the countdown reached zero.
The new site seems to be a recruitment page for the new Tango studio opened by Mikami. You can also play a small and rather gory flash game in which you can cut Mikami's head (after he performed Harakiri, that seems to be the theme of the page), and try to send it flying as far as possible. But here things become more interesting: the little game shows both Hideo Kojima and Suda 51 hidden around the field. Is this a hint to a collaborative project between the three acclaimed developers?
Mikami himself wrote on his personal twitter page that he's going to work on his new project with his "best friends".
Obviously three giants of the Japanese gaming industry joining forces in a project to take on the world would be something to look forward to. Unfortunately no further info is available at the moment.
During the minigame, by the way, you can read: "not in Japan? No problem!" Probably hinting at the fact that recruitment is also open to western developers.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Yakuza 3: visit the "real" Kamurocho
One of the most impressive aspects of Yakuza 3, and of the Yakuza series in general, is the extremely realistic and detailed depiction of Kamurocho, the fictional Tokyo district in which most of the series is set.
Its cheap glitz, made of overlapping neon lights and alluring signs and its sprawling crowd worthy of a city that never sleeps really give the sensation of wading through a similar district of the Japanese capital.
The reason for such realism is to be found in a very simple concept, the same that Rockstar applied while creating Liberty City.
While Kamurocho is indeed a fictional district, it recreates quite faithfully a real district of Shinjuku (one of the major commercial wards in Tokyo): Kabukicho.
Of course there are differences, given that recreating a district of a city perfectly, especially in a game with this kind of theme, would be a licensing nightmare. Still, It's almost impossible to miss the similarities, starting with the map: the similarity in the layout of the streets is almost impossible to miss.
Kabukicho is a very popular red-light district in Tokyo, completely rebuilt after it was destroyed during the bombing of the city in 1945. Despite what the name would led us to believe, there's no Kabuki theater there. The one that gave the district it's name was supposed to be built after the war, but the project was canceled due to financial problems.
After the war the district grew quickly, initially due to a strong influx of Chinese workers, that soon were replaced by the Yakuza, that established one of it's most important commercial strongholds in Kabukicho, controlling a large percentage of the business establishments until a few years ago, when the police started to control the area more sternly, even due to a renewal project named Kabukicho Renaissance.
Despite this, even now Kabukicho is filled to the brim with all kind of businesses and attractions, including the most "adult oriented" ones like love hotels, night clubs, strip clubs and the infamous hostess bars and massage parlors that Sega foolishly decided to cut from the western edition of the game.
The similarities between Kamurocho and Kabukicho are obviously not limited to the streets layout. If you happen to visit Tokyo, and take a stroll through Kabukicho, you'll easily notice that the looks and the feel are very much the same.
But since going to Tokyo isn't exactly cheap, let's take a virtual tour with the help of our friendly neighborhood Google maps (luckily enough, the pictures used for Google Maps were taken in 2009, which which is the same year as the Japanese release of Yakuza 3). You can find it after the cut (click on "Read More >>>" just below). Please give the Google maps windows time to load in order to see them correctly. They'll show the map for a little bit, then a black window, and finally the correct 3D view.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Male Gamer stereotype
Once upon a time (in a far, far away realm) female gamers were a rarity. Now they are a marketing tool for attention-whoring gaming sites. No day comes to pass without a more or less opinionated and more or less stereotyped article on "girl gamerz" is published somewhere on the net.
While it's great that the female audience is opening up to gaming (it's actually been doing that for years, bloggers just didn't sniff the business before) and that writers are striving to dispel the myths and stereotypes on gamers that happen to come from Venus instead of Mars, this trend often turns into delirious pseudo-feminist rants drooling hate and spite, as the authors heavily rely on the opposite stereotype: The overweight, sweaty/unwashed/unshaved, basement-dwelling, forever-single, sexually-deprived male gamer.
One of the latest examples of this trend is this chaotic rant on GamesRadar.com, that ends up being the perfect example on how using the male gamer stereotype in order to dispel the female gamer ones deprieves an article of any hint of credibility.
I'm perfectly aware that ladies gaming on Xbox Live (that happens to be home to a very juvenile average audience, not just male) often get harassed by other players that happen to more or less loosely fit the aforementioned stereotype. Does this means that all male gamers are like that? I dare say they are a minority. A vocal and visible minority, but still a minority.
Since the percentage on recognizable ladies on Xbox Live is still relatively small, it's pretty obvious that the equally small percentage of actual foul-mouthed basement dwellers will home on them like a Sidewinder missile, ending up being pretty much visible, compared to the vast majority of gamers that will treat a girl with the default courtesy. This without even mentioning that those insult-drooling rude gamers you see out there will be probably just as likely not to differentiate at all between male and female gamers, as they proudly display their stupidity to everyone they come across, regardless of gender.
But while no one will write a ranting article if a male gamer repeatedly teabags another man while brutally trash talking him, ten equally hateful pieces of "journalism" will spawn if the same event happens to a female.
Personally I find extremely funny how some writers apparently strive for gender-equality in gaming, and then complain when such an equality is actually applied. Mind you, I personally hate trash talking and goading during an online gameplay, but regardless of the gender of both the victim and the perpetrator.
That's why I would like to extend a word of encouragement to all the aspiring writers (male or female) that want to elaborate on the Venus-born side of the gaming environment: stop trying to fight a stereotype with another stereotype. The gaming environment is packed full with well groomed, socially acceptable, polite men that are perfectly able to track the route from the basement to the front door of their home. Only a vast minority of the Gamestop (or any other gaming store) employees will naturally point their female customers to the Nintendo area of the shop. The era of the "girl in the store!" alarm call in gaming-related retail environments is long, long gone.
Of course the bad apples will be more visible and will stand out (like all rotten apples in any environment), but the gaming scene isn't even nearly as hellish for gamer girls as some writers would like us to believe.
Sure, some miscreants will always be around to annoy legit gamers of both genders, but that's why the "Mute" and "avoid" functions have been implemented in most online gaming environments. I use them extensively, you can as well.
If you really want to write an article about female gamers, try to be constructive instead of caving into equally silly stereotypes and creating further boys vs girls divides that are barely justified in third grade. A good example is this article on GamingAngels.com.
See? It's constructive. It doesn't rely on blanket-bashing male gamers in order to push the "Girl gamers are uberz!" message.
It's not that difficult, really.
While it's great that the female audience is opening up to gaming (it's actually been doing that for years, bloggers just didn't sniff the business before) and that writers are striving to dispel the myths and stereotypes on gamers that happen to come from Venus instead of Mars, this trend often turns into delirious pseudo-feminist rants drooling hate and spite, as the authors heavily rely on the opposite stereotype: The overweight, sweaty/unwashed/unshaved, basement-dwelling, forever-single, sexually-deprived male gamer.
One of the latest examples of this trend is this chaotic rant on GamesRadar.com, that ends up being the perfect example on how using the male gamer stereotype in order to dispel the female gamer ones deprieves an article of any hint of credibility.
I'm perfectly aware that ladies gaming on Xbox Live (that happens to be home to a very juvenile average audience, not just male) often get harassed by other players that happen to more or less loosely fit the aforementioned stereotype. Does this means that all male gamers are like that? I dare say they are a minority. A vocal and visible minority, but still a minority.
Since the percentage on recognizable ladies on Xbox Live is still relatively small, it's pretty obvious that the equally small percentage of actual foul-mouthed basement dwellers will home on them like a Sidewinder missile, ending up being pretty much visible, compared to the vast majority of gamers that will treat a girl with the default courtesy. This without even mentioning that those insult-drooling rude gamers you see out there will be probably just as likely not to differentiate at all between male and female gamers, as they proudly display their stupidity to everyone they come across, regardless of gender.
But while no one will write a ranting article if a male gamer repeatedly teabags another man while brutally trash talking him, ten equally hateful pieces of "journalism" will spawn if the same event happens to a female.
Personally I find extremely funny how some writers apparently strive for gender-equality in gaming, and then complain when such an equality is actually applied. Mind you, I personally hate trash talking and goading during an online gameplay, but regardless of the gender of both the victim and the perpetrator.
That's why I would like to extend a word of encouragement to all the aspiring writers (male or female) that want to elaborate on the Venus-born side of the gaming environment: stop trying to fight a stereotype with another stereotype. The gaming environment is packed full with well groomed, socially acceptable, polite men that are perfectly able to track the route from the basement to the front door of their home. Only a vast minority of the Gamestop (or any other gaming store) employees will naturally point their female customers to the Nintendo area of the shop. The era of the "girl in the store!" alarm call in gaming-related retail environments is long, long gone.
Of course the bad apples will be more visible and will stand out (like all rotten apples in any environment), but the gaming scene isn't even nearly as hellish for gamer girls as some writers would like us to believe.
Sure, some miscreants will always be around to annoy legit gamers of both genders, but that's why the "Mute" and "avoid" functions have been implemented in most online gaming environments. I use them extensively, you can as well.
If you really want to write an article about female gamers, try to be constructive instead of caving into equally silly stereotypes and creating further boys vs girls divides that are barely justified in third grade. A good example is this article on GamingAngels.com.
See? It's constructive. It doesn't rely on blanket-bashing male gamers in order to push the "Girl gamers are uberz!" message.
It's not that difficult, really.
Friday, March 26, 2010
New trailer and info about Hexyz Force unveiled by Atlus
I already wrote about Hexyz Force when Atlus unveiled the game for the first time, and by then this PSP JRPG was already showing quite some promise. Now that the game is set to be released in the US on May the 25th, Atlus is trickling down quite a bit of information and media for our enjoyment.
Today they released a new gameplay trailer, that you can enjoy below, and a nice set of information about the itemization system.
Hidden basically everywhere in the world you can find several items named Forcefacts. The magical properties of the Forcefacts can be utilized in a fusion process through the powers of the pets of the two main characters, Ralu and Ulu. Through that process, you can obtain several different weapons named Spirifacts, and other pieces of equipment that will let you tailor your equipment according to the situation.
Personally, though, one of the things that I find most annoying in JRPGs (and RPGs in general) is the mindless hunt for chests. Luckily Hexyz Force will let us have an easier game with that, via the Force Scanner. During their adventure Levant and Cecilia (the two main characters) will find items that will allow them to scan the surrounding area, marking the chests on the map for easier finding.
At the moment the game looks certainly polished, with very nice 3D graphics and anime cutscenes, more or less similar to the level we saw on Level 5's Jeanne D'Arc. The ability to see the story from the two opposite point of views is also a quite interesting treat.
If you're interested you can already preorder Hexyz Force via Amazon.com
.
Today they released a new gameplay trailer, that you can enjoy below, and a nice set of information about the itemization system.
Hidden basically everywhere in the world you can find several items named Forcefacts. The magical properties of the Forcefacts can be utilized in a fusion process through the powers of the pets of the two main characters, Ralu and Ulu. Through that process, you can obtain several different weapons named Spirifacts, and other pieces of equipment that will let you tailor your equipment according to the situation.
Personally, though, one of the things that I find most annoying in JRPGs (and RPGs in general) is the mindless hunt for chests. Luckily Hexyz Force will let us have an easier game with that, via the Force Scanner. During their adventure Levant and Cecilia (the two main characters) will find items that will allow them to scan the surrounding area, marking the chests on the map for easier finding.
At the moment the game looks certainly polished, with very nice 3D graphics and anime cutscenes, more or less similar to the level we saw on Level 5's Jeanne D'Arc. The ability to see the story from the two opposite point of views is also a quite interesting treat.
If you're interested you can already preorder Hexyz Force via Amazon.com
.White Knight Chronicles 2: New Information and screenshots unveiled
Level 5 has kept a strict embargo on information about White Knight Chronicles 2, scheduled for release in Japan this summer. Today, at last, they released a whole slew of screenshots (that you can enjoy in high resolution in this flickr album) and several new pieces of information that we can add to the puzzle of what we already know.
In the sequel of White Knight Chronicles, the Magi have founded the empire of Ishrenia anew, and they have started a bloody civil war to unite the continent under their flag. Not only the kingdom of Balandor (setting of the first game) is involved, but also it's old enemy, the Duchy of Faria.
The Farians, a race very similar to classic fantasy elves with horns, appeared in multiple instance in White Knight chronicles, but none of them was playable or even played a major role during the game. This created one of the most prominent complaints between the fans, since in a world in which there evidently are several races, the only playable characters were all humans.
This is going to be changed in White Knight Chronicles 2. Part of the story will be set in the Dukedom of Faria itself, and at least two of the playable characters will be Farians, and not just any Farian.
Between the information released today, Level 5 has introduced the new Farian Characters: Princess Miu and General Skadain.
Princess Miu (voiced by Kugimiya Rie) is the fifteen year old granddaughter of the late Duke of Faria (the one that died at the beginning of the first game) and the hope of her country. She has a gentle heart, and doesn't like fighting, but she's dragged into the civil war by the events, forced to escape her own Dukedom to avoid being assassinated. This will cause her to meet with Leonard, given that, quite obviously, one princess wasn't enough for our young hero.
She lives with an inferiority complex towards her grandfather, as she's persuaded that she'll never manage to become as good as he was at governing.
General Skadain (voiced by Fujiwara Keiji) is a Farian veteran and Hero. As Miu was forced to escape, he followed her in order to protect the heir to the throne. He's cold and silent, and normally doesn't express his feelings, but he's extremely loyal to the princess.
Also more information has been given about Faria, that has remained pretty much marginal through the first game. It's described as a prosperous country located to the west of Balandor, mainly surrounded by forests. The Farians revere their trees and build their homes around them, having developed a lifestyle and an artistic style very similar to classic elves. The government is, at the moment, held by the four lords of Laureus, that were supposed to act as regents before the coming of age of princess Miu.
A three concept art drawings of the Dukedom of Faria have been released between the new pictures.
Quite extensive information on the evolution of the combat system has also been unveiled. One of the main complaints about the first game was that the combat system was slow, and Level 5 listened to feedback: in White Knight Chronicles 2 the attack gauge will fill much faster, and new actions like "charge" and "dash" have been added, creating a much active combat experience.
In White Knight Chronicles battles were mostly evenly split between attack and defense, but the addition of new weapon skills (peculiar to each weapon) and a heavier focus on timing, with the introduction of counterattacks and new defensive actions will make the character roles more defined and the fighting more dynamic and varied, but more tactical at the same time.
Many new monsters have been introduced, and the concept of resistance and weakness has been expanded, making having the right weapons and attacking with the right elements crucial. Even the change of weather and the seasons will influence the battles.
As a final little bonus, in one of the new screenshots, there's an unknown green knight clearly visible on the left. While no specific information has been released, my speculation is that what we're seeing is the first picture of the newly-implemented player knights, that the player's customized avatar will be able to transform in. While we still don't know if such knight will be customizable, I definitely hope so, since that possibility would allow a whole new level of awesomeness to the game.
In any case, if Level 5 will really manage to solve most of the problems that generated complaints between the fanbase, as today's information seems to reveal, given the quality and the scope of the first game, PS3 owners seem to be in for quite a treat. We can only hope that, this time, Sony will localize and publish the game in the west before this geological era ends. What about a nice Christmas gift for the western JRPG fans, Sony? :D
Source: 4Gamer.net
If you didn't try White Knight Chronicles yet, you can purchase it on Amazon.com
. You can also read my review here.
In the sequel of White Knight Chronicles, the Magi have founded the empire of Ishrenia anew, and they have started a bloody civil war to unite the continent under their flag. Not only the kingdom of Balandor (setting of the first game) is involved, but also it's old enemy, the Duchy of Faria.
The Farians, a race very similar to classic fantasy elves with horns, appeared in multiple instance in White Knight chronicles, but none of them was playable or even played a major role during the game. This created one of the most prominent complaints between the fans, since in a world in which there evidently are several races, the only playable characters were all humans.
This is going to be changed in White Knight Chronicles 2. Part of the story will be set in the Dukedom of Faria itself, and at least two of the playable characters will be Farians, and not just any Farian.
Between the information released today, Level 5 has introduced the new Farian Characters: Princess Miu and General Skadain.
Princess Miu (voiced by Kugimiya Rie) is the fifteen year old granddaughter of the late Duke of Faria (the one that died at the beginning of the first game) and the hope of her country. She has a gentle heart, and doesn't like fighting, but she's dragged into the civil war by the events, forced to escape her own Dukedom to avoid being assassinated. This will cause her to meet with Leonard, given that, quite obviously, one princess wasn't enough for our young hero.
She lives with an inferiority complex towards her grandfather, as she's persuaded that she'll never manage to become as good as he was at governing.
General Skadain (voiced by Fujiwara Keiji) is a Farian veteran and Hero. As Miu was forced to escape, he followed her in order to protect the heir to the throne. He's cold and silent, and normally doesn't express his feelings, but he's extremely loyal to the princess.
Also more information has been given about Faria, that has remained pretty much marginal through the first game. It's described as a prosperous country located to the west of Balandor, mainly surrounded by forests. The Farians revere their trees and build their homes around them, having developed a lifestyle and an artistic style very similar to classic elves. The government is, at the moment, held by the four lords of Laureus, that were supposed to act as regents before the coming of age of princess Miu.
A three concept art drawings of the Dukedom of Faria have been released between the new pictures.
Quite extensive information on the evolution of the combat system has also been unveiled. One of the main complaints about the first game was that the combat system was slow, and Level 5 listened to feedback: in White Knight Chronicles 2 the attack gauge will fill much faster, and new actions like "charge" and "dash" have been added, creating a much active combat experience.
In White Knight Chronicles battles were mostly evenly split between attack and defense, but the addition of new weapon skills (peculiar to each weapon) and a heavier focus on timing, with the introduction of counterattacks and new defensive actions will make the character roles more defined and the fighting more dynamic and varied, but more tactical at the same time.
Many new monsters have been introduced, and the concept of resistance and weakness has been expanded, making having the right weapons and attacking with the right elements crucial. Even the change of weather and the seasons will influence the battles.
As a final little bonus, in one of the new screenshots, there's an unknown green knight clearly visible on the left. While no specific information has been released, my speculation is that what we're seeing is the first picture of the newly-implemented player knights, that the player's customized avatar will be able to transform in. While we still don't know if such knight will be customizable, I definitely hope so, since that possibility would allow a whole new level of awesomeness to the game.
In any case, if Level 5 will really manage to solve most of the problems that generated complaints between the fanbase, as today's information seems to reveal, given the quality and the scope of the first game, PS3 owners seem to be in for quite a treat. We can only hope that, this time, Sony will localize and publish the game in the west before this geological era ends. What about a nice Christmas gift for the western JRPG fans, Sony? :D
Source: 4Gamer.net
If you didn't try White Knight Chronicles yet, you can purchase it on Amazon.com
. You can also read my review here.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Yakuza 4 ships 500,000 copies in a week. Series breaks 4 million
While in the west Sega has been busy maiming Yakuza 3, the series is breaking sales records in Japan. Sega just announced that during it's first week of sales more than 500,000 copies of Ryu ga Gotoku 4 (Yakuza 4) have been shipped. In just seven days the game outsold Yakuza 3 that, according to Weekly Famitsu sold a gand total of 499,436 copies before the end of December. Looks like the popularity of the series is on a solid climbing trend.
On top of this, the announcement mentions that the series (including all four games) has sold more than four million copies worldwide.
We still don't have rock solid sales data about Yakuza 3 in the west, but this should be enough proof, for Sega, that the series' potential is worth quite a lot more than the meager budget used for the launch of it's western editions. Given a proper promotion and a decent localization (without cuts), it's quite safe to assume that a solid title like Yakuza 4 could sell very well even in the west, finally awarding Kazuma Kiryu and his companions the wolrdwide popularity that they deserve.
Of course this means that Sega West should actually put an effort into it, instead of dooming themselves to failure with questionable marketing and non-existant promotion. Maybe they should give a good look to what their Japanese colleagues do, and start putting some of their marketing budget where true talent is, instead of wasting it all on promoting mediocre games like Alien vs Predator.
Source: Gpara.com
On top of this, the announcement mentions that the series (including all four games) has sold more than four million copies worldwide.
We still don't have rock solid sales data about Yakuza 3 in the west, but this should be enough proof, for Sega, that the series' potential is worth quite a lot more than the meager budget used for the launch of it's western editions. Given a proper promotion and a decent localization (without cuts), it's quite safe to assume that a solid title like Yakuza 4 could sell very well even in the west, finally awarding Kazuma Kiryu and his companions the wolrdwide popularity that they deserve.
Of course this means that Sega West should actually put an effort into it, instead of dooming themselves to failure with questionable marketing and non-existant promotion. Maybe they should give a good look to what their Japanese colleagues do, and start putting some of their marketing budget where true talent is, instead of wasting it all on promoting mediocre games like Alien vs Predator.
Source: Gpara.com
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The new Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker trailer is all kinds of awesome
Today Kojima Production released a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Peace walker, featuring Paz, a character that Hideo Kojima himself (in his personal twitter account) introduced as symbolizing Peace. Paz is shown singing her theme song "Love Deterrence"(sung by the popular singer and voice actress Nana Mizuki) in a surprising solo performance that one wouldn't expect from a Metal Gear game, but that ends up being beautifully fitting, and simply all kinds of awesome.
The game looks more and more like it will push the boundaries of the PSP platform to unprecedented levels, looking more like a full home console AAA title than a portable one.
We can just hope that Kojima Production won't follow the footstep of Square Enix, and that this beautiful song will remain in Japanese even in the west, instead of being replaced with a much duller english one.
You can already preorder Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker
on Amazon.com
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Sega and Yakuza 3: a marketing lecture
Today Nick Pantazis of VGcharts posted on the Gamefaqs boards the gist of his talk with the Sega executives during the GDC about Yakuza 3 and the cuts. You can follow the link and read the full thread, but basically what he's been said boils down to this:
One: Sega knows you're pissed, but this was the only way the bigwigs would let them localize it at all, was if they limited the budget costs of the localization. Yakuza 1 and 2 were bombs for them in the west. They will consider doing things differently in the future. They actually read message boards like this. No, seriously. They check the internet for reactions. That said, if you just forgo buying it entirely, you're not getting anything else again.
Two: Sega will not be localizing Yakuza 4 at all if Yakuza 3 doesn't see solid sales. It's expensive, and time-consuming, and they have many much more successful franchises they can devote time to. For them to devote any time at all to giving us these games at this point is pure fanservice. Getting it used isn't going to help either. If you actually care about the franchise, I suggest you buy it. Also, there is a misconception that the removal of the hostess club meant the removal of the hostesses themselves. This is not the case. They are still in the game, and date-able.
Aside from the fact that the above statement is partly untrue, since one of the hostesses is not date-able, this, if true, is just further proof that the ones that Mr. Pantazis calls "Sega Bigwigs" happened to sleep through their marketing classes back in school.
So, I will assume that what Pantazis says is true and that you Sega Bigwigs are actually reading. Pick up some chamomile tea, sit down with your nice executive laptop on a comfortable couch and then read the following few paragraphs very carefully.
Yakuza 1 and 2 bombed? Yes, they did.
Did they because the franchise didn't have an high turnout potential or didn't "resonate" with the western audience? Not one bit. They didn't sell because your company did an half-assed or, even worse, non-existent job with marketing and promotion.
When they were released they were basically just dropped on the shelves and you guys expected people just to see the catchy cover and decide to try it. Bad idea. That's not how the market works.
The gaming market works mainly on anticipation built by promotion.
Months of anticipation utterly crush the negligible on-the-fly impression made by a cover, no matter how catchy (and Sega never did that much of a good job with covers anyway) on the shelves of a Gamestop.
The average customer will buy the games he anticipated for months and he won't even care to spare a look for the fodder that make the rest of the shelf. Most probably any further purchase will be out of his spending budget for that period anyway.
If you want a more in depth analysis on why Yakuza 1 and 2 bombed, you can read it here.
It's an old article, but still valid unfortunately, given that Sega made basically the same mistakes (and more, given the cuts, that bring the localization policies back 10 years, and the fact that the game has been put on sale in an extremely overcrowded period and on the same day as one of the most anticipated Japanese games this generation) even with Yakuza 3.
I find it interesting that the above quote says that Sega has "many much more successful franchises they can devote time to" and that they're basically doing us a favor to publish the Yakuza series in the west.
First of all those franchises are "more successful" simply because they're properly advertised. A compelling series like the Yakuza one would be just as successful of even more than Sega's best sellers if it was promoted on the same level. After all they don't seem to have any qualms in blowing truckloads of money on absolutely mediocre trainwrecks like the Alien vs Predator franchise, whose latest outing has been ruthlessly and rightfully smashed to pieces by the press.
It all boils down to a basic principle of marketing, my dear "Sega bigwigs".
If you don't spend money, you won't make money.
In layman terms, in an extremely competitive market like the gaming one, what's not properly promoted will not sell.
So, basically, your little commercial "challenge" to the gamers and to the Yakuza franchise is flawed from the very start, because you put a game (like it's predecessors) with absolutely no promotional support in competition with games that had marketing with six or more zeros.
Your experiment lacks the marketing basics to bring a valid result.
In today's market NO game can sell to it's full potential without promotion, not even the most famous and popular franchises.
Do you think Halo, Modern Warfare, Gran Turismo, Gran Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, God of War and Uncharted sell by themselves as the publishers happen to randomly drop them on the shelves? Then why such publishers spend millions upon millions in extensive and booming marketing campaigns?
Are they crazy, throwing away all that money? No, they aren't. They simply know that if they don't, other games will overshadow theirs.
The cuts made the results of your test even more flawed. You tell us "Swallow the pill of the cuts, or no more Yakuza!". Sure, that third grade bully attitude will work with some, but it's doubtless that it will ultimately take it's toll on sales.
Very dedicated hardcore gamers (the only ones that will know of a game and potentially buy it regardless of promotion or the lack of thereof) are in average very educated and proactive customers. They don't like to have their leg pulled, and most definitely they don't like to be lied to.
The honestly silly move of cutting content in order to spare a few thousands of dollars (which are a negligible amount compared to the total expenses for the rest of the localization, printing and distribution of the game in the west), managed to alienate part of the only target that was sensitive to your game without promotion to begin with.
It's no doubt that many of those gamers decided to hold off on the purchase simply because they won't buy an incomplete product and won't support a publishers that lies to them.
You really think that the few thousand dollars you saved with the cuts outweigh the lost sales?
And you really think that third grade threats uttered under your breath like "buy the game or no more yakuza!" will make those lost sales magically come back? If any they'll convince many gamers not to support your brand and your underhanded, unprofessional policies and low budget/low quality localizations anymore in the future.
So to put it down simply, here's the results of what you did, to put it down simply.
1: You threw the franchise on the shelves without any promotion, in an overcrowded period that will make the lack of promotion even more of a serious issue. In other words you purposely limited the potential customer base of the game to the most hardcore and dedicated fans and to the targets of the word of mouth coming from that source.
2: You pissed that very same hardcore customerbase off, further limiting the pool of potential customers, and turning your only promotion vehicle, word of mouth, in a potentially negative one, reducing it's effectiveness. On top of that the negative press finally persuaded a sizable percentage of the potential customers that were only partially interested or undecided on the purchase, to completely avoid it. If someone is already weighing positive and negative factors in the purchase of a product, reading that such product is incomplete is the final big negative that will probably push the potential customers to move on to something else.
Controversy and bad press are often good for sales, that's true. Too bad that censorship and cuts are basically the only kind of controversy that's normally disastrous sales-wise.
In other words, in order not to give the title any real marketing budget and to save a few meager thousands of dollars (I'm ready to bet that you didn't save more than 5-10 thousand dollars with the cuts, considering the fact that actually removing content still requires man-hours of work), you managed to cook one of the worst marketing debacles in the last few years. Surely a job well done.
How can you make up for it? Unfortunately it's too late for a real marketing investment, short of a re-launch of the game that unfortunately isn't feasible. A release of the cut content in the form of free or very cheap (in order to avoid accusations of trying to grab a profit from cutting the game, which would be a further PR debacle) DLC would have two effects.
First of all, it would probably persuade the ones that didn't buy the game because it was cut to finally pull their wallets out and purchase Yakuza 3.
On top of that, and probably more importantly, it will genrate positive press for the game, quite a lot of it, probably tempting many more previously mildy interested or uninterested gamers to cave in and get the game, even just out of curiosity for the content that was previously cut.
It would be a a win/win situation. The only problem is that it would probably take swallowing some pride and admitting that you were wrong. But that's something mature businessmen should be able to do, isn't it?
That's more or less it. And don't worry, my friendly neighborhood Sega bigwigs, you don't even need to thank me for this marketing lecture. It was my pleasure. Free of charge.
One: Sega knows you're pissed, but this was the only way the bigwigs would let them localize it at all, was if they limited the budget costs of the localization. Yakuza 1 and 2 were bombs for them in the west. They will consider doing things differently in the future. They actually read message boards like this. No, seriously. They check the internet for reactions. That said, if you just forgo buying it entirely, you're not getting anything else again.
Two: Sega will not be localizing Yakuza 4 at all if Yakuza 3 doesn't see solid sales. It's expensive, and time-consuming, and they have many much more successful franchises they can devote time to. For them to devote any time at all to giving us these games at this point is pure fanservice. Getting it used isn't going to help either. If you actually care about the franchise, I suggest you buy it. Also, there is a misconception that the removal of the hostess club meant the removal of the hostesses themselves. This is not the case. They are still in the game, and date-able.
Aside from the fact that the above statement is partly untrue, since one of the hostesses is not date-able, this, if true, is just further proof that the ones that Mr. Pantazis calls "Sega Bigwigs" happened to sleep through their marketing classes back in school.
So, I will assume that what Pantazis says is true and that you Sega Bigwigs are actually reading. Pick up some chamomile tea, sit down with your nice executive laptop on a comfortable couch and then read the following few paragraphs very carefully.
Yakuza 1 and 2 bombed? Yes, they did.
Did they because the franchise didn't have an high turnout potential or didn't "resonate" with the western audience? Not one bit. They didn't sell because your company did an half-assed or, even worse, non-existent job with marketing and promotion.
When they were released they were basically just dropped on the shelves and you guys expected people just to see the catchy cover and decide to try it. Bad idea. That's not how the market works.
The gaming market works mainly on anticipation built by promotion.
Months of anticipation utterly crush the negligible on-the-fly impression made by a cover, no matter how catchy (and Sega never did that much of a good job with covers anyway) on the shelves of a Gamestop.
The average customer will buy the games he anticipated for months and he won't even care to spare a look for the fodder that make the rest of the shelf. Most probably any further purchase will be out of his spending budget for that period anyway.
If you want a more in depth analysis on why Yakuza 1 and 2 bombed, you can read it here.
It's an old article, but still valid unfortunately, given that Sega made basically the same mistakes (and more, given the cuts, that bring the localization policies back 10 years, and the fact that the game has been put on sale in an extremely overcrowded period and on the same day as one of the most anticipated Japanese games this generation) even with Yakuza 3.
I find it interesting that the above quote says that Sega has "many much more successful franchises they can devote time to" and that they're basically doing us a favor to publish the Yakuza series in the west.
First of all those franchises are "more successful" simply because they're properly advertised. A compelling series like the Yakuza one would be just as successful of even more than Sega's best sellers if it was promoted on the same level. After all they don't seem to have any qualms in blowing truckloads of money on absolutely mediocre trainwrecks like the Alien vs Predator franchise, whose latest outing has been ruthlessly and rightfully smashed to pieces by the press.
It all boils down to a basic principle of marketing, my dear "Sega bigwigs".
If you don't spend money, you won't make money.
In layman terms, in an extremely competitive market like the gaming one, what's not properly promoted will not sell.
So, basically, your little commercial "challenge" to the gamers and to the Yakuza franchise is flawed from the very start, because you put a game (like it's predecessors) with absolutely no promotional support in competition with games that had marketing with six or more zeros.
Your experiment lacks the marketing basics to bring a valid result.
In today's market NO game can sell to it's full potential without promotion, not even the most famous and popular franchises.
Do you think Halo, Modern Warfare, Gran Turismo, Gran Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, God of War and Uncharted sell by themselves as the publishers happen to randomly drop them on the shelves? Then why such publishers spend millions upon millions in extensive and booming marketing campaigns?
Are they crazy, throwing away all that money? No, they aren't. They simply know that if they don't, other games will overshadow theirs.
The cuts made the results of your test even more flawed. You tell us "Swallow the pill of the cuts, or no more Yakuza!". Sure, that third grade bully attitude will work with some, but it's doubtless that it will ultimately take it's toll on sales.
Very dedicated hardcore gamers (the only ones that will know of a game and potentially buy it regardless of promotion or the lack of thereof) are in average very educated and proactive customers. They don't like to have their leg pulled, and most definitely they don't like to be lied to.
The honestly silly move of cutting content in order to spare a few thousands of dollars (which are a negligible amount compared to the total expenses for the rest of the localization, printing and distribution of the game in the west), managed to alienate part of the only target that was sensitive to your game without promotion to begin with.
It's no doubt that many of those gamers decided to hold off on the purchase simply because they won't buy an incomplete product and won't support a publishers that lies to them.
You really think that the few thousand dollars you saved with the cuts outweigh the lost sales?
And you really think that third grade threats uttered under your breath like "buy the game or no more yakuza!" will make those lost sales magically come back? If any they'll convince many gamers not to support your brand and your underhanded, unprofessional policies and low budget/low quality localizations anymore in the future.
So to put it down simply, here's the results of what you did, to put it down simply.
1: You threw the franchise on the shelves without any promotion, in an overcrowded period that will make the lack of promotion even more of a serious issue. In other words you purposely limited the potential customer base of the game to the most hardcore and dedicated fans and to the targets of the word of mouth coming from that source.
2: You pissed that very same hardcore customerbase off, further limiting the pool of potential customers, and turning your only promotion vehicle, word of mouth, in a potentially negative one, reducing it's effectiveness. On top of that the negative press finally persuaded a sizable percentage of the potential customers that were only partially interested or undecided on the purchase, to completely avoid it. If someone is already weighing positive and negative factors in the purchase of a product, reading that such product is incomplete is the final big negative that will probably push the potential customers to move on to something else.
Controversy and bad press are often good for sales, that's true. Too bad that censorship and cuts are basically the only kind of controversy that's normally disastrous sales-wise.
In other words, in order not to give the title any real marketing budget and to save a few meager thousands of dollars (I'm ready to bet that you didn't save more than 5-10 thousand dollars with the cuts, considering the fact that actually removing content still requires man-hours of work), you managed to cook one of the worst marketing debacles in the last few years. Surely a job well done.
How can you make up for it? Unfortunately it's too late for a real marketing investment, short of a re-launch of the game that unfortunately isn't feasible. A release of the cut content in the form of free or very cheap (in order to avoid accusations of trying to grab a profit from cutting the game, which would be a further PR debacle) DLC would have two effects.
First of all, it would probably persuade the ones that didn't buy the game because it was cut to finally pull their wallets out and purchase Yakuza 3.
On top of that, and probably more importantly, it will genrate positive press for the game, quite a lot of it, probably tempting many more previously mildy interested or uninterested gamers to cave in and get the game, even just out of curiosity for the content that was previously cut.
It would be a a win/win situation. The only problem is that it would probably take swallowing some pride and admitting that you were wrong. But that's something mature businessmen should be able to do, isn't it?
That's more or less it. And don't worry, my friendly neighborhood Sega bigwigs, you don't even need to thank me for this marketing lecture. It was my pleasure. Free of charge.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Shinji Mikami teases with an international project
Today a new website for a still unnamed "Mikami Shinji Project" has been opened, with a countdown starting at 2 weeks. Nothing is known about what kind of game will be unveiled, but it's presumably the first brainchild of studio Tango, the new studio just founded by Shinji Mikami, creator of the Resident Evil series. The hot pink teaser page features the pictorial representation of the world, with the lettering "international" under it, probably meaning that the title in question will be designed with worldwide appeal in mind.
The only further detail that I managed to find is that the acclaimed composer Masafumi Takada will probably be part of the team, given that his personal twitter page lists the teaser site as his homepage. His profile also says that he's studio Tango's sound director, giving more credibility to the theory that the teased game is indeed Tango's first title.
Let the hype begin!
The only further detail that I managed to find is that the acclaimed composer Masafumi Takada will probably be part of the team, given that his personal twitter page lists the teaser site as his homepage. His profile also says that he's studio Tango's sound director, giving more credibility to the theory that the teased game is indeed Tango's first title.
Let the hype begin!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
White Knight Chronicles Review: Innovating the JRPG genre
With the release of Final Fantasy XIII, it's hard to find someone writing or discussing about any other JRPG, but last month saw the western release of another potentially interesting title: White Knight Chronicles.
While not as graphically alluring as the 500-pound gorilla by Square Enix, having been published in Japan more than one year ago, Shirokishi Monogatari is still a very peculiar product as it brings several innovations to the JRPG genre.
That level of innovation has been part of the cause of a fairly mild response in Japan, alongside a few shortcomings that have been integrated and patched in the following months and are included in the western release, that is a whole different beast compared to what was released in Japan two holiday seasons ago. Much more polished and complete.
Unfortunately (not really) despite it's innovations, White Knight Chronicles is still a JRPG developed in Japan, triggering the usual biased and overly-negative approach from the western press and ending in an absolutely undeserved Metacritic average of 64. When a game scoring so low has an user score of 83 it's fairly easy to notice that something is amiss.
The story is basically the only element that's not particularly innovative. Quite similar to the old glorious anime series Escaflowne, it portrays a mix between classic fantasy JRPG canon and giant robot anime.
The young winery errand boy Leonard finds himself trying to rescue a princess from a kidnapping attempt gaining control of a massively sized armor defined "Knight" that he will use to increase his fighting strength tenfold.
Unfortunately his rescue attempt fails and the princess does get kidnapped by an organization named "Magi", prompting Leonard to set off to a desperate rescue mission with the help of several companions, delving deeper in the legend of the Knights and his own heritage as his quests progresses.
While not being extremely innovative, the story is definitely enjoyable, even thanks to a few unexpected plot twists (and a few more predictable, but still interesting ones). It doesn't reach truly and massively epic proportions, but creates a very good staging ground for the franchise that's obviously set to continue.
The plot is more focused on the small scale, around the adventures of Leonard (and his personal growth) and his companions and the rescue of the princess, more than the overall war against the Magi. While I personally don't find that a bad thing, I can understand why some gamers, used to playing a "one shot" game that will begin and end on the same disk, found it disappointing.
Luckily for them, given the ending and what little we saw of White Knight Chronicles 2, the focus is going to broaden considerably in the sequel, bringing the franchise to those "epic proportions" that many seek.
The game's graphics indeed look a little dated if compared with titles of an AAA level, but they're still very adequate and better than most JRPGs published this generation (Final Fantasy XIII excluded of course). Level 5 actually took an approach fairly similar to what Bioware did with Dragon Age: Origins. The level of detail of characters and monster isn't exceptional, while the environments are much richer. It's in the portrayal of the vast landscapes that White Knight Chronicles shines, with beautiful sights and immersive environments that will make you feel truly dwarfed between massive chasms and titanic ruins, perfectly in line with the fact that the main character is able to "pilot" what essentially is a fantasy version of a giant robot.
And the design of the knights is, as well, definitely beautiful, after all the Japanese have no rivals in mecha design, and White Knight Chronicles is no exception.
The design of the UI is definitely more adequate than what we saw in this generation's RPG games, with some very elegant choices, that, while not reaching the utter glitz of Final Fantasy XIII, put White Knight Chronicles definitely above the average.
One of the most shiny elements of the game are CG cutscenes, that are definitely beautiful (even if unfortunately quite rare), that portray some of the most important story points with a stunningly rich level of detail.
The soundtrack is definitely adequate, while not exceptional, and nicely underlines all the situations of the story and the atmosphere of the varied environments. A mention of merit goes to the theme song "Travelers", sung by Kazco Hamano, that puts together a beautiful and energetic voice, J-pop overtones, classical guitar and flute in a perfectly appropriate mix that really suits the game. I definitely approve the choice to keep the original Japanese song in the international release instead of replacing it with a generic English one like Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XIII.
The world of Shirokishi Monogatori definitely isn't linear and brings the first level of innovation to this generation of JRPGs. While not being completely Oblivion-like seamless, and requiring the player to travel through the usual world map, each separate area is extremely expansive and complex, rewarding exploration and inviting the player to experience the beauty of the landscape instead of just traveling from point A to point B in the shortest possible time. Fans of linear gameplay will still be able to just aim for the next story marker in the map, of course, but fans of sandbox exploration won't be disappointed. Especially after the first playthrough several new chests will appear during the new game plus, rewarding exploration-oriented adventurers with some truly spiffy pieces of equipment.
The game takes full advantage of the Blu-Ray format, and once unlocked all the areas of the world remain available, allowing the player to go back and perform more quests, open previously missed chests or kill more monsters.
The monsters themselves are fully visible in their roaming and constantly respawn. Most of the times they can be avoided easily, even though I wouldn't advise to do that, in order to level up the characters smoothly. Monster design is more or less average overall, but truly shines with giant monsters, that will tower over human-sized characters, often much bigger than the screen, and sporting some truly inspired looks, like that of the ever-present trolls and giants, that while being fairly common, will never become boring simply because they look really good.
One of the most innovative elements of White Knight Chronicles is character creation. While the you won't be able to customize the look of the main character Leonard, you will be given an in-game "avatar" that will play the role of Leonard's silent sidekick (and will be your playable character online but I'll talk about that later). The customization process is actually one of the most advanced I ever seen in a videogame, putting even western RPGs, including Oblivion, to shame, allowing the player to fully design both the body and the face of his characters up to an unprecedented level of detail.
This feature that's normally peculiar of western RPGs, definitely breathes some fresh air into the genre, and I can definitely hope that other developers will follow Level 5's example.
The only flaw of this solution is that your "silent sidekick" is truly silent. While he's definitely useful in a fight and appears during the cutscenes performed with the game-engine (not the CG ones), he never talks or does much to get his presence noticed.
Despite that, the system is solid and has a lot of potential, potential that will be probably exploited fully in the sequel, as Level 5 already announced that the sidekick will gain a bigger role in the story and will even acquire his own knight. It's pretty much safe to assume, given the fact that it'll be usable online, that such knight will be customizable as well. Pure bliss!
Genre-innovating visual customization akin to western RPGs isn't limited to the sidekick character's personal looks: unlike every other JRPGs, in which the only piece of equipment that visually change is normally the weapon, every piece of armor you wear on any character (including Leonard and the other pre-made story characters) will actually be visually displayed, changing his or her appearance radically in a really beautiful and rewarding way.
The ones that normally have problems stomaching JRPG characters usually quite... peculiar sense of fashion will definitely be happy about this. Let's be honest here. There's very little more rewarding while progressing through the game than seeing your characters move on from their initial rags and start being geared in some shiny heavy armor. Visual customization goes as far as allowing characters to wear capes and cloaks (something that even most western RPGs don't include). The only sorely missing element in the bunch are helms and equivalent pieces of headgear, but now I'm really nitpicking, even because the presence of helms would probably take away from the complex facial customization feature.
That said, having the chance to chose if to wear headgear or not would be definitely appreciated, so I remain hopeful for the sequel.
Continuing the trend of innovative customization, White Knight Chronicles radically distinguishes itself from other JRPG even in character progression.
While the classic mechanism of experience and levels remains, and leveling up does automatically assign a few stat points, the game involves one of the most complex and interesting open-ended skill systems I've seen in an RPG (Western or Japanese). No character comes with a pre-defined class or role. Instead, for every level you gain, you will be able to assign four skill points to one of the eight available skill trees: Sword, Greatsword, Staff, Spear, Bow, Axe, Arcane Magic and Divine Magic.
Each tree includes about 50 options between attacks, abilities, spells, buffs and stat increases for a grand total of 398 available (about 300 for the pre-made characters, that don't have access to two skill trees each, in order to provide some characterization I guess). The system is so complex and deep that there's no real "cookie-cutter" build for characters, and it's pretty easy to build an effective character for any given role while catering to one's own visual tastes and style.
The stat increases included in each skill tree actually make them pretty interdependent, meaning that even if you want to specialize in a role, rising other trees as secondary will still help you become more effective in that role by raising stats associated with it, making variation and experimentation a true corner stone of this title.
For instance, if you want your character to be a tank (shield-user focused on defense and protection of his companions), you'll probably want to concentrate on the spear and sword trees, that are the most defensive, but then you might find yourself wanting to spend further points in Axe in order to raise your HP and and Strength, or maybe divine magic, that raises Vitality and gives you some useful self-healing abilities and buffs.
A respec system at the end of the single player story also allows to change roles and builds with a certain ease, encouraging experimentation. If you find yourself daunted by such an extensive system, you can find some pretty useful tips and data here and here.
Natural offspring of the skill system is the combat system. While some lamented the fact that the time-lapse between actions is pretty long (3-4 seconds in average), I found White Knight Chronicle's combat system absolutely lovely. The interval between attacks is actually fully justified by the abundance of buffs, skills and attacks at your disposal. With such a wealth of available actions, a slow approach rewards tactical and rational thinking instead of the usual bored button mashing you see in several games of this kind.
The crown jewel of this combat mechanic is definitely the combo system, that allows you to prepare long (or short) chains of attacks and spells to unleash on the helpless monsters you'll face for devastating damage, allowing players to truly create their unique fighting style and to adapt in a tactical way according to the enemy they're facing. Not only magical attacks have elements against which monsters can be weak or resilient, but even physical attacks can rely on thrusting, slashing and hitting, with varying damage according to each enemy's strengths and weaknesses. Creating a wide array of generic and specialized combos of varied length allows proficient players to maximize their damage output with a level of depth than even the most advanced MMORPGs often fail to reach. While generic combo are good for fighting enemies whose weaknesses you don't know, and to gauge them in the case you don't have a bow user in your party, specialized combo that concentrate on one damage type grant bonuses in damage, provided that the enemy is weak to that kind of attack.
A further level of complexity is provided by armor, that doesn't only vary in protection and looks, but also in weight. Fighting in heavy armor causes your attack bar (it's actually a circle) fill slower, while light armor will let it fill much faster and will allow you to attack much more often, making for an approach more appeasing to twitchy players.
Of course basic monsters don't really require that kind of deep approach, that's instead advisable while fighting giant-sized monsters. This is where the White Knight Chronicles' combat truly shines. You can either decide to fight them in your knight (just offline), or on foot.
The first option will allow for more spectacular giant-robot vs giant-monster fights, but will be pretty easy even for beginners. The second is maybe lesser in fireworks, but it's more challenging and it's still important to the single player story because the use of the knight is limited and you'll still find several giant monsters about even outside of boss fights.
This kind of combat is very fun, even thanks to how giant monsters behave and animate. Initially human-sized characters with melee weapons will be able to target only the monster legs while the enemy will tower over them and bash them around like puppets with devastating attacks.
As the damage builds up, the monster will finally stagger and fall on his knees, becoming temporarily incapacitated and allowing melee characters to target his more vulnerable chest and head.
Summing the whole system up, boss and giants fights in White Knight Chronicles make for some of the most interesting and visually appealing fights of JRPG history (and RPG in general), especially online, where some of the enemies prove to be really, really tough and party coordination and focus are a must.
Another partly innovative detail for a JRPG is the implementation of a full fledged physics engine (Havok). Very often turn-based JRPGs don't need one, causing the developers to completely overlook it's implementation or to include only limited physics. A full-fledged physics engine, though, allows for a deeper character and environmental interaction, with blows that can realistically bash enemies around or throw them into the air, collision detection and similar features that greatly enhance the game both visually and gameplay-wise.
Moving on to more marginal, but still interesting, touches, a very enjoyable detail is party banter: more or less akin to what implemented in Dragon Age: Origins, your characters will often talk to each other outside of cutscenes, just while walking around. While each line is usually shorter than the long winded dialogues in Bioware's masterpiece, they definitely happen more often. While in DA:O party banter was triggered by walking through specific points (usually bridges, for some mysterious reason), White Knight uses a solution that I personally deem simpler but more effective, having barter triggered by a timer. Another cute detail is that barter will see every member of the party taking part in it. So when someone will say or ask something everyone else will comment, instead of limiting the dialogue to two characters like in Dragon Age.
A note on the localization. It's pretty adequate, and the English voice acting is on an above-average level. I find it pretty unfortunate, though, that despite the storage space capabilities of the Blu-ray, Sony decided not to include the Japanese track like they included the original theme song. It would have been quite a prized added value to the most hardcore JRPG fans.
Let's finally get to the true big innovation brought by White Knight Chronicles to the JRPG genre. Online gameplay.
White Knight Chronicles features a full fledged suit of online features that increase it's longevity tenfold. It's something definitely new to the JRPG genre and that actually happens quite rarely even in the west.
Your first contact with such features will probably be the Georama. Near the beginning of the game you will be prompted to buy the deed to a full fledged personal village. Once purchased you will be able to use the money and materials you gather through the game to expand and beautify your little hamlet by adding more buildings and decorations.
In addition to that, several of the NPCs you will encounter during your travels in the single player world will become recruitable. Once recruited they will form the population of your village and will provide labor force to fuel your markets.
Each villager has his own stats, and clever administration will allow you to produce top tier materials and equipment that would be otherwise inaccessible.
Eventually you will be tempted to actually sign in into Geonet, the White Knight Chronicles dedicated online environment. There you will be able to create your own homepage centered around your Georama, that will also allow you to access to a message board, your friend list and a photo-sharing feature. I actually wish that every game of this genre had such an image capture utility. Unfortunately there's no way to download the pictures on a PC, and that's a truly sad limitation.
Another quite annoying limitation is that the friend list is specific to the game and it's not shared with your PSN friend list, hampering functionality by quite a little.
Anyway, once your homepage and your Georama are ready (it's actually not mandatory to customize them,), you can finally look for some action.
You can sit in your own Georama waiting for people to come, or you can use the built-in search engine to find Georamas of other players with a similar level. Once you found one you can visit it and meet with them and other guests, eventually forming a party of four and departing to face one of the many online quests offered by the game. Some of them can be even soloed, but of course it's much more fun to tackle them with friends. Full voice communication is supported by the game via bluetooth headset, so party coordination isn't a problem.
The way online gameplay is integrated with the offline story is probably the best element of this game, allowing you to seamlessly drop into an online session whenever you like, and then go back to the main story like nothing happened, using the same character.
The only missing feature would be a cooperative gameplay mode for the main campaign, but unfortunately Level 5 didn't think about it. May be food for thought for the sequel.
A very interesting fact is that Sony and Level 5 aren't content to just sell the game as a complete package, but are actually going to offer new free weekly quests until June 2010, adding a quite unprecedented level of free support to an already very content-rich game. This is a definitely praise-worthy initiative, that add quite a lot of value and longevity to the original game, and lets us have high hopes about the future of the franchise.
As a final marginal note, if you're an user of Playstation Home, White Knight Chronicles is an example of how the platform should actually be used paired with trophies. By achieving a certain trophy during gameplay you will be awarded a nice statue of the White Knight that you will be able to use to decorate your Home personal space. A nice step in the right direction.
In conclusion, if you are a JRPG fan and a little dated character graphics aren't your main concern, White Knight Chronicles is most definitely a worthy contender for a spot in your collection. If your tastes lean more towards western RPGs, you'll still find quite a few elements that aren't normally included in JRPGs and that should let you love this title. Also, if you enjoy online cooperative gameplay, you shouldn't miss Shirokishi Monogatari.
Is it a perfect game? No. It's not, but it's a very good step in establishing a great franchise with several features that truly innovate the JRPG genre towards a new direction. It's quite a pity that a sizable part of the press, while often improperly demanding innovation from JRPGs, didn't manage to actually spot it when they had it right in front of their eyes, preferring to nitpick on marginalities.
The score below belongs to a quite experimental scoring system that I will use from now on. Take it, of course, with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that the overall score isn't an average of the specific ones, and that it reflects my own point of view on the game. Your mileage may vary, but I still strongly advise you to try the game and decide your own score by yourself.
You can purchase White Knight Chronicles on Amazon.com.
While not as graphically alluring as the 500-pound gorilla by Square Enix, having been published in Japan more than one year ago, Shirokishi Monogatari is still a very peculiar product as it brings several innovations to the JRPG genre.
That level of innovation has been part of the cause of a fairly mild response in Japan, alongside a few shortcomings that have been integrated and patched in the following months and are included in the western release, that is a whole different beast compared to what was released in Japan two holiday seasons ago. Much more polished and complete.
Unfortunately (not really) despite it's innovations, White Knight Chronicles is still a JRPG developed in Japan, triggering the usual biased and overly-negative approach from the western press and ending in an absolutely undeserved Metacritic average of 64. When a game scoring so low has an user score of 83 it's fairly easy to notice that something is amiss.
The story is basically the only element that's not particularly innovative. Quite similar to the old glorious anime series Escaflowne, it portrays a mix between classic fantasy JRPG canon and giant robot anime.
The young winery errand boy Leonard finds himself trying to rescue a princess from a kidnapping attempt gaining control of a massively sized armor defined "Knight" that he will use to increase his fighting strength tenfold.
Unfortunately his rescue attempt fails and the princess does get kidnapped by an organization named "Magi", prompting Leonard to set off to a desperate rescue mission with the help of several companions, delving deeper in the legend of the Knights and his own heritage as his quests progresses.
While not being extremely innovative, the story is definitely enjoyable, even thanks to a few unexpected plot twists (and a few more predictable, but still interesting ones). It doesn't reach truly and massively epic proportions, but creates a very good staging ground for the franchise that's obviously set to continue.
The plot is more focused on the small scale, around the adventures of Leonard (and his personal growth) and his companions and the rescue of the princess, more than the overall war against the Magi. While I personally don't find that a bad thing, I can understand why some gamers, used to playing a "one shot" game that will begin and end on the same disk, found it disappointing.
Luckily for them, given the ending and what little we saw of White Knight Chronicles 2, the focus is going to broaden considerably in the sequel, bringing the franchise to those "epic proportions" that many seek.
The game's graphics indeed look a little dated if compared with titles of an AAA level, but they're still very adequate and better than most JRPGs published this generation (Final Fantasy XIII excluded of course). Level 5 actually took an approach fairly similar to what Bioware did with Dragon Age: Origins. The level of detail of characters and monster isn't exceptional, while the environments are much richer. It's in the portrayal of the vast landscapes that White Knight Chronicles shines, with beautiful sights and immersive environments that will make you feel truly dwarfed between massive chasms and titanic ruins, perfectly in line with the fact that the main character is able to "pilot" what essentially is a fantasy version of a giant robot.
And the design of the knights is, as well, definitely beautiful, after all the Japanese have no rivals in mecha design, and White Knight Chronicles is no exception.
The design of the UI is definitely more adequate than what we saw in this generation's RPG games, with some very elegant choices, that, while not reaching the utter glitz of Final Fantasy XIII, put White Knight Chronicles definitely above the average.
One of the most shiny elements of the game are CG cutscenes, that are definitely beautiful (even if unfortunately quite rare), that portray some of the most important story points with a stunningly rich level of detail.
The soundtrack is definitely adequate, while not exceptional, and nicely underlines all the situations of the story and the atmosphere of the varied environments. A mention of merit goes to the theme song "Travelers", sung by Kazco Hamano, that puts together a beautiful and energetic voice, J-pop overtones, classical guitar and flute in a perfectly appropriate mix that really suits the game. I definitely approve the choice to keep the original Japanese song in the international release instead of replacing it with a generic English one like Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XIII.
The world of Shirokishi Monogatori definitely isn't linear and brings the first level of innovation to this generation of JRPGs. While not being completely Oblivion-like seamless, and requiring the player to travel through the usual world map, each separate area is extremely expansive and complex, rewarding exploration and inviting the player to experience the beauty of the landscape instead of just traveling from point A to point B in the shortest possible time. Fans of linear gameplay will still be able to just aim for the next story marker in the map, of course, but fans of sandbox exploration won't be disappointed. Especially after the first playthrough several new chests will appear during the new game plus, rewarding exploration-oriented adventurers with some truly spiffy pieces of equipment.
The game takes full advantage of the Blu-Ray format, and once unlocked all the areas of the world remain available, allowing the player to go back and perform more quests, open previously missed chests or kill more monsters.
The monsters themselves are fully visible in their roaming and constantly respawn. Most of the times they can be avoided easily, even though I wouldn't advise to do that, in order to level up the characters smoothly. Monster design is more or less average overall, but truly shines with giant monsters, that will tower over human-sized characters, often much bigger than the screen, and sporting some truly inspired looks, like that of the ever-present trolls and giants, that while being fairly common, will never become boring simply because they look really good.
One of the most innovative elements of White Knight Chronicles is character creation. While the you won't be able to customize the look of the main character Leonard, you will be given an in-game "avatar" that will play the role of Leonard's silent sidekick (and will be your playable character online but I'll talk about that later). The customization process is actually one of the most advanced I ever seen in a videogame, putting even western RPGs, including Oblivion, to shame, allowing the player to fully design both the body and the face of his characters up to an unprecedented level of detail.
This feature that's normally peculiar of western RPGs, definitely breathes some fresh air into the genre, and I can definitely hope that other developers will follow Level 5's example.
The only flaw of this solution is that your "silent sidekick" is truly silent. While he's definitely useful in a fight and appears during the cutscenes performed with the game-engine (not the CG ones), he never talks or does much to get his presence noticed.
Despite that, the system is solid and has a lot of potential, potential that will be probably exploited fully in the sequel, as Level 5 already announced that the sidekick will gain a bigger role in the story and will even acquire his own knight. It's pretty much safe to assume, given the fact that it'll be usable online, that such knight will be customizable as well. Pure bliss!
Genre-innovating visual customization akin to western RPGs isn't limited to the sidekick character's personal looks: unlike every other JRPGs, in which the only piece of equipment that visually change is normally the weapon, every piece of armor you wear on any character (including Leonard and the other pre-made story characters) will actually be visually displayed, changing his or her appearance radically in a really beautiful and rewarding way.
The ones that normally have problems stomaching JRPG characters usually quite... peculiar sense of fashion will definitely be happy about this. Let's be honest here. There's very little more rewarding while progressing through the game than seeing your characters move on from their initial rags and start being geared in some shiny heavy armor. Visual customization goes as far as allowing characters to wear capes and cloaks (something that even most western RPGs don't include). The only sorely missing element in the bunch are helms and equivalent pieces of headgear, but now I'm really nitpicking, even because the presence of helms would probably take away from the complex facial customization feature.
That said, having the chance to chose if to wear headgear or not would be definitely appreciated, so I remain hopeful for the sequel.
Continuing the trend of innovative customization, White Knight Chronicles radically distinguishes itself from other JRPG even in character progression.
While the classic mechanism of experience and levels remains, and leveling up does automatically assign a few stat points, the game involves one of the most complex and interesting open-ended skill systems I've seen in an RPG (Western or Japanese). No character comes with a pre-defined class or role. Instead, for every level you gain, you will be able to assign four skill points to one of the eight available skill trees: Sword, Greatsword, Staff, Spear, Bow, Axe, Arcane Magic and Divine Magic.
Each tree includes about 50 options between attacks, abilities, spells, buffs and stat increases for a grand total of 398 available (about 300 for the pre-made characters, that don't have access to two skill trees each, in order to provide some characterization I guess). The system is so complex and deep that there's no real "cookie-cutter" build for characters, and it's pretty easy to build an effective character for any given role while catering to one's own visual tastes and style.
The stat increases included in each skill tree actually make them pretty interdependent, meaning that even if you want to specialize in a role, rising other trees as secondary will still help you become more effective in that role by raising stats associated with it, making variation and experimentation a true corner stone of this title.
For instance, if you want your character to be a tank (shield-user focused on defense and protection of his companions), you'll probably want to concentrate on the spear and sword trees, that are the most defensive, but then you might find yourself wanting to spend further points in Axe in order to raise your HP and and Strength, or maybe divine magic, that raises Vitality and gives you some useful self-healing abilities and buffs.
A respec system at the end of the single player story also allows to change roles and builds with a certain ease, encouraging experimentation. If you find yourself daunted by such an extensive system, you can find some pretty useful tips and data here and here.
Natural offspring of the skill system is the combat system. While some lamented the fact that the time-lapse between actions is pretty long (3-4 seconds in average), I found White Knight Chronicle's combat system absolutely lovely. The interval between attacks is actually fully justified by the abundance of buffs, skills and attacks at your disposal. With such a wealth of available actions, a slow approach rewards tactical and rational thinking instead of the usual bored button mashing you see in several games of this kind.
The crown jewel of this combat mechanic is definitely the combo system, that allows you to prepare long (or short) chains of attacks and spells to unleash on the helpless monsters you'll face for devastating damage, allowing players to truly create their unique fighting style and to adapt in a tactical way according to the enemy they're facing. Not only magical attacks have elements against which monsters can be weak or resilient, but even physical attacks can rely on thrusting, slashing and hitting, with varying damage according to each enemy's strengths and weaknesses. Creating a wide array of generic and specialized combos of varied length allows proficient players to maximize their damage output with a level of depth than even the most advanced MMORPGs often fail to reach. While generic combo are good for fighting enemies whose weaknesses you don't know, and to gauge them in the case you don't have a bow user in your party, specialized combo that concentrate on one damage type grant bonuses in damage, provided that the enemy is weak to that kind of attack.
A further level of complexity is provided by armor, that doesn't only vary in protection and looks, but also in weight. Fighting in heavy armor causes your attack bar (it's actually a circle) fill slower, while light armor will let it fill much faster and will allow you to attack much more often, making for an approach more appeasing to twitchy players.
Of course basic monsters don't really require that kind of deep approach, that's instead advisable while fighting giant-sized monsters. This is where the White Knight Chronicles' combat truly shines. You can either decide to fight them in your knight (just offline), or on foot.
The first option will allow for more spectacular giant-robot vs giant-monster fights, but will be pretty easy even for beginners. The second is maybe lesser in fireworks, but it's more challenging and it's still important to the single player story because the use of the knight is limited and you'll still find several giant monsters about even outside of boss fights.
This kind of combat is very fun, even thanks to how giant monsters behave and animate. Initially human-sized characters with melee weapons will be able to target only the monster legs while the enemy will tower over them and bash them around like puppets with devastating attacks.
As the damage builds up, the monster will finally stagger and fall on his knees, becoming temporarily incapacitated and allowing melee characters to target his more vulnerable chest and head.
Summing the whole system up, boss and giants fights in White Knight Chronicles make for some of the most interesting and visually appealing fights of JRPG history (and RPG in general), especially online, where some of the enemies prove to be really, really tough and party coordination and focus are a must.
Another partly innovative detail for a JRPG is the implementation of a full fledged physics engine (Havok). Very often turn-based JRPGs don't need one, causing the developers to completely overlook it's implementation or to include only limited physics. A full-fledged physics engine, though, allows for a deeper character and environmental interaction, with blows that can realistically bash enemies around or throw them into the air, collision detection and similar features that greatly enhance the game both visually and gameplay-wise.
Moving on to more marginal, but still interesting, touches, a very enjoyable detail is party banter: more or less akin to what implemented in Dragon Age: Origins, your characters will often talk to each other outside of cutscenes, just while walking around. While each line is usually shorter than the long winded dialogues in Bioware's masterpiece, they definitely happen more often. While in DA:O party banter was triggered by walking through specific points (usually bridges, for some mysterious reason), White Knight uses a solution that I personally deem simpler but more effective, having barter triggered by a timer. Another cute detail is that barter will see every member of the party taking part in it. So when someone will say or ask something everyone else will comment, instead of limiting the dialogue to two characters like in Dragon Age.
A note on the localization. It's pretty adequate, and the English voice acting is on an above-average level. I find it pretty unfortunate, though, that despite the storage space capabilities of the Blu-ray, Sony decided not to include the Japanese track like they included the original theme song. It would have been quite a prized added value to the most hardcore JRPG fans.
Let's finally get to the true big innovation brought by White Knight Chronicles to the JRPG genre. Online gameplay.
White Knight Chronicles features a full fledged suit of online features that increase it's longevity tenfold. It's something definitely new to the JRPG genre and that actually happens quite rarely even in the west.
Your first contact with such features will probably be the Georama. Near the beginning of the game you will be prompted to buy the deed to a full fledged personal village. Once purchased you will be able to use the money and materials you gather through the game to expand and beautify your little hamlet by adding more buildings and decorations.
In addition to that, several of the NPCs you will encounter during your travels in the single player world will become recruitable. Once recruited they will form the population of your village and will provide labor force to fuel your markets.
Each villager has his own stats, and clever administration will allow you to produce top tier materials and equipment that would be otherwise inaccessible.
Eventually you will be tempted to actually sign in into Geonet, the White Knight Chronicles dedicated online environment. There you will be able to create your own homepage centered around your Georama, that will also allow you to access to a message board, your friend list and a photo-sharing feature. I actually wish that every game of this genre had such an image capture utility. Unfortunately there's no way to download the pictures on a PC, and that's a truly sad limitation.
Another quite annoying limitation is that the friend list is specific to the game and it's not shared with your PSN friend list, hampering functionality by quite a little.
Anyway, once your homepage and your Georama are ready (it's actually not mandatory to customize them,), you can finally look for some action.
You can sit in your own Georama waiting for people to come, or you can use the built-in search engine to find Georamas of other players with a similar level. Once you found one you can visit it and meet with them and other guests, eventually forming a party of four and departing to face one of the many online quests offered by the game. Some of them can be even soloed, but of course it's much more fun to tackle them with friends. Full voice communication is supported by the game via bluetooth headset, so party coordination isn't a problem.
The way online gameplay is integrated with the offline story is probably the best element of this game, allowing you to seamlessly drop into an online session whenever you like, and then go back to the main story like nothing happened, using the same character.
The only missing feature would be a cooperative gameplay mode for the main campaign, but unfortunately Level 5 didn't think about it. May be food for thought for the sequel.
A very interesting fact is that Sony and Level 5 aren't content to just sell the game as a complete package, but are actually going to offer new free weekly quests until June 2010, adding a quite unprecedented level of free support to an already very content-rich game. This is a definitely praise-worthy initiative, that add quite a lot of value and longevity to the original game, and lets us have high hopes about the future of the franchise.
As a final marginal note, if you're an user of Playstation Home, White Knight Chronicles is an example of how the platform should actually be used paired with trophies. By achieving a certain trophy during gameplay you will be awarded a nice statue of the White Knight that you will be able to use to decorate your Home personal space. A nice step in the right direction.
In conclusion, if you are a JRPG fan and a little dated character graphics aren't your main concern, White Knight Chronicles is most definitely a worthy contender for a spot in your collection. If your tastes lean more towards western RPGs, you'll still find quite a few elements that aren't normally included in JRPGs and that should let you love this title. Also, if you enjoy online cooperative gameplay, you shouldn't miss Shirokishi Monogatari.
Is it a perfect game? No. It's not, but it's a very good step in establishing a great franchise with several features that truly innovate the JRPG genre towards a new direction. It's quite a pity that a sizable part of the press, while often improperly demanding innovation from JRPGs, didn't manage to actually spot it when they had it right in front of their eyes, preferring to nitpick on marginalities.
The score below belongs to a quite experimental scoring system that I will use from now on. Take it, of course, with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that the overall score isn't an average of the specific ones, and that it reflects my own point of view on the game. Your mileage may vary, but I still strongly advise you to try the game and decide your own score by yourself.
You can purchase White Knight Chronicles on Amazon.com
.Sega cuts 21 quests from Yakuza 3
When Sega announced that part of the content included in the Japanese version of Yakuza 3 would have been cut from the western editions, they reassured the fans, telling that the game was to be released "99% intact".
Many fans (me included) swallowed this extremely bitter pill and bought the game anyway, thinking that after all playing the 99% of a game was better than not playing it at all, despite our disappointment.
Unfortunately Sega's claims were destined to prove false and misleading once again.
As people progressed in the game the first hints of that started to emerge, with several sub-quests already missing from the first six chapters of the game, but again, things were destined to prove even worse by the end.
Today, as the first brave western gamers (the ones that swallowed the pill earlier) are starting to complete the game, the disgusting truth has been revealed...
This is the complete list of 21 sub-quests (from a total of 123) that have been cut from the western editions of the game:
Chapters 3-4
I Wanna Go to Tokyo pt. 1
The Brewer's Treasure
Make the No. 1 Cabaret Club Girl!
English Conversation Solicitor step 1
English Conversation Solicitor step 2
Love's Cupid
Love's Cupid Continues
Love's Cupid Continues Again
A Trip Before Marriage
Chapter 5
Manga Artist Debut
The Runaway Phone Chat Girl
I Wanna Go to Tokyo pt. 2
Great Genius Showdown
Is she talking about me...?
Chapter 6
A Satisfying Yakuza
Chapter 7
The Mars Fighter Invades Tokyo
Chapter 10
Love's Cupid - The Finale
I Wanna Go to Tokyo pt. 3
English Conversation Solicitor step 3
English Conversation Solicitor step 4
The Couple Who Wouldn't Learn
On top of that, the whole content relative to dating and interacting with one of the Cabaret Girls (Ayukawa Rina) has been cut, despite Sega's claim about such content being untouched.
Mind you, even just the "Make the No. 1 Cabaret Club Girl" mission by itself is a really big chunk of gameplay. So much for 99% intact, isn't it? let's not even mention the fact that cutting all those sub quests also removes a sizable source of experience points, shifting the game's balance by quite a bit.
Honestly I hoped this kind of cuts were a thing of the past, belonging to that anarchic period in which Shiritsu Justice Gakuen (Rival School), Moero Justice Gakuen (Project Justice) and Ace Combat 3 were disgustingly maimed in their western releases. Unfortunately Sega managed to prove me wrong.
In 2010 we live in a globalized world, but an absolutely unprofessional and shameless publisher still manages to completely maim a game because of "time constraints" (because they were in such an hurry to release on the same day as Final Fantasy XIII, of course) and because "the content wouldn't resonate with the western audience". But that's not all, they even went as far as officially minimizing such cuts, trying to show them as much smaller than they actually are.
I don't think I need say out loud that this kind of behavior is not only unacceptable by itself, but it also borders on false and misleading advertisement (oh wait, didn't I just say it out loud?).
Sega has no excuses, both for the cuts themselves and for misleading their fans. Will they even bother issuing an apology? Would it even matter?
At the moment I'm more and more firmly convinced that the only way for us to see Yakuza 4 in the west with a decent localization is for Sega not get involved at all, letting a more professional publisher like Atlus do the job, like was done for Demon's Souls.
The only acceptable course of action for Sega, at this point, would be to offer the cut content to the fans as free (or extremely cheap, and I mean extremely, or it'd be an even worse PR debacle) DLCs. Of course I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
Source.
Many fans (me included) swallowed this extremely bitter pill and bought the game anyway, thinking that after all playing the 99% of a game was better than not playing it at all, despite our disappointment.
Unfortunately Sega's claims were destined to prove false and misleading once again.
As people progressed in the game the first hints of that started to emerge, with several sub-quests already missing from the first six chapters of the game, but again, things were destined to prove even worse by the end.
Today, as the first brave western gamers (the ones that swallowed the pill earlier) are starting to complete the game, the disgusting truth has been revealed...
This is the complete list of 21 sub-quests (from a total of 123) that have been cut from the western editions of the game:
Chapters 3-4
I Wanna Go to Tokyo pt. 1
The Brewer's Treasure
Make the No. 1 Cabaret Club Girl!
English Conversation Solicitor step 1
English Conversation Solicitor step 2
Love's Cupid
Love's Cupid Continues
Love's Cupid Continues Again
A Trip Before Marriage
Chapter 5
Manga Artist Debut
The Runaway Phone Chat Girl
I Wanna Go to Tokyo pt. 2
Great Genius Showdown
Is she talking about me...?
Chapter 6
A Satisfying Yakuza
Chapter 7
The Mars Fighter Invades Tokyo
Chapter 10
Love's Cupid - The Finale
I Wanna Go to Tokyo pt. 3
English Conversation Solicitor step 3
English Conversation Solicitor step 4
The Couple Who Wouldn't Learn
On top of that, the whole content relative to dating and interacting with one of the Cabaret Girls (Ayukawa Rina) has been cut, despite Sega's claim about such content being untouched.
Mind you, even just the "Make the No. 1 Cabaret Club Girl" mission by itself is a really big chunk of gameplay. So much for 99% intact, isn't it? let's not even mention the fact that cutting all those sub quests also removes a sizable source of experience points, shifting the game's balance by quite a bit.
Honestly I hoped this kind of cuts were a thing of the past, belonging to that anarchic period in which Shiritsu Justice Gakuen (Rival School), Moero Justice Gakuen (Project Justice) and Ace Combat 3 were disgustingly maimed in their western releases. Unfortunately Sega managed to prove me wrong.
In 2010 we live in a globalized world, but an absolutely unprofessional and shameless publisher still manages to completely maim a game because of "time constraints" (because they were in such an hurry to release on the same day as Final Fantasy XIII, of course) and because "the content wouldn't resonate with the western audience". But that's not all, they even went as far as officially minimizing such cuts, trying to show them as much smaller than they actually are.
I don't think I need say out loud that this kind of behavior is not only unacceptable by itself, but it also borders on false and misleading advertisement (oh wait, didn't I just say it out loud?).
Sega has no excuses, both for the cuts themselves and for misleading their fans. Will they even bother issuing an apology? Would it even matter?
At the moment I'm more and more firmly convinced that the only way for us to see Yakuza 4 in the west with a decent localization is for Sega not get involved at all, letting a more professional publisher like Atlus do the job, like was done for Demon's Souls.
The only acceptable course of action for Sega, at this point, would be to offer the cut content to the fans as free (or extremely cheap, and I mean extremely, or it'd be an even worse PR debacle) DLCs. Of course I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
Source.
Monday, March 8, 2010
The western press loves to hate Japanese games
Once upon a time the Japanese gaming industry was globally dominant. Some feel a quite lingering nostalgia for those times in which we found a new JRPG on the shelves every month.
Personally I share that feeling only in part, as the evolution of the western gaming industry has brought us several gems that I definitely appreciated and appreciate. For sure I would like to see more Japanese games imported to the west, but I'm all for diversity and variety.
Unfortunately this standpoint isn't shared by the vast majority of the western gaming media.
Basically every time a new Japanese game gets released in the west, the "western games defense force" of gaming journalists scrambles to dissect it as ruthlessly as possible, criticizing it with a negativity bias that is very rare in reviews of western games, no matter how bad.
Now that the western industry seems to be having (at least according to most) the upper hand in game development, the media seems to be determined to give the Japanese industry the coup-de-grace. It's not such a difficult task, after all, because no matter how good or polished a game is, there's always a way for a seasoned writer to make it look bad, or at the very least quite a lot worse than it is.
When you start reading the review of a game developed in Japan you can easily predict with a frightening precision what the criticism will involve: it's linear, the story is cliche, it's not innovative... The usual list of made-up negative catchphrases without a clear meaning and that aren't necessarily factoring in a game's quality, and that normally aren't used to criticize western games that feature the same elements. Let us analyze them.
Waaah it's Linear!
And? Freedom in gaming comes in several layers. It can be freedom of exploration, freedom in moral choices, freedom in solving puzzles or freedom in choosing how to progress through fights. Not all games need to feature complete freedom, even because it often (if not always) it comes with the price of losing depth in the story and character development.
Even if a game places you in a linear hallway that goes from point A to point B without deviating, you're still free to enjoy the challenge of combat, and the freedom in choosing your actions when faced with that challenge. It's still most definitely interactive, despite the fact that often some journalists try to suggest it's not.
Not all games need to be free-roaming sandbox experiences. Variety is the key, and it's perfectly legitimate for a game to be linear and still be an high-quality production with a strong entertainment value, or more simply, a lot of fun to play. Gaming journalists seem to understand this concept, of course (it doesn't really take a degree), too bad that they apply it only to western games.
The God of War series, the Uncharted series, Modern Warfare, Gears of War and many others are extremely linear, but they still pick-up top scores aplenty. Today the embargo on reviews for God of War 3 has been lifted and top ranking articles are popping up like mushrooms after a rainy day. The game is extremely linear, does anyone criticize it for that? Of course not.
In the meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIII gets reviewed (I've played it for a few days now, having managed to snatch a copy before the street date, and it's a fantastic game), and "Waaaah it's Linear!". Reviews like the negativity-ridden aberration from Edge Online are a shameful disgrace to gaming journalism as a whole.
Mind you, I'm not saying that God of War 3 (or any of the games I named above) is bad because it's linear, but simply that linearity is much more common to the global gaming industry than what western journalists would like us to believe, and is a defining trait of many acclaimed games. Then, how comes it's a negative trait only for Japanese games?
Waaah it's Cliche!
When a Japanese game gets reviewed, how many times do you read the catchphrase "It's the usual cliche story of an emo teenager with spikey hair that saves the world"? Sometimes that's true, since that kind of character and story is quite appealing to the Japanese audience for several reasons (one of which it's it's resemblance to anime features, that happens to be definitely popular between the western public as well). That kind of definition has become so popular between western journalists that is often used even when it doesn't apply at all. I've seen it applied to Valkyria Chronicles, for instance.
But even when it does apply, where would the problem be? The gaming industry is now quite mature, and original stories are few and far between both in the Japanese and the western market. Even between stories that spawn from the same cliche there's still an enormous range of differing factors that let gamers enjoy the plot without the slightest sense of Déjà vu: character development, plot twists, mysteries withheld and then revealed...
Even here, of course, western journalists stress on this trait much more when writing about Japanese games than about games developed in the US or in Europe. How many western shooters follow the absolutely cliched story of a variably rash western soldier going solo or with few fellow heroes against the (invariably eastern European or Arabic) bad guy that wants to launch a nuclear warhead of similar weapon of mass destruction? Even Heavy Rain, acclaimed by the press for it's story, follows the overused cliche of the emo man investigating solo to save a relative from a mysterious serial killer with a very distinctive modus operandi and way to "sign" his murders. See what I did here? It's extremely easy to trivialize basically every story and to reduce it to an overused cliche. Easy-peasy journalistic trick.
Has Heavy Rain been criticized for being cliche? No. Because it happened not to be developed in Japan. How lucky.
Again, being cliche is not inherently a flaw, and there are so many ways to differentiate a story from the others stemming from the same cliche that, as criticism, it's entirely moot and negligible.
The funny part is that, in average, the stories of Japanese games are much deeper and more complex than the stories of Western games. Their character development goes above and beyond compared to the usual American or European production, but according to western Journalists, only the stories coming from across the pacific seem to be cliche. Convenient, isn't it?
Waaah it's not innovative!
Innovation is always welcome in a game. Welcome doesn't necessarily mean indispensable.
Innovation isn't automatically a factor in the quality of a game, given that there have been plenty examples of games that brought big innovations and then proved to be lacking in the most important factor: fun.
Even in this case the western gaming press is packed full of top scoring reviews of American and European games that don't include an ounce of innovation (just think about the usual shooter that's pretty much the same as every other shooter out there). For instance the innovation present in Dragon Age: Origins is basically zero, and both the developer and most reviewers see the game sticking to the tradition of western CRPGs like the Baldur's Gate series as a strongly positive factor. Personally, I wholeheartedly agree with that notion.
Then why the Japanese gaming industry isn't entitled to stick to their own RPG tradition, without the western press rioting and demanding for innovation? And of course their idea of innovation involves dumping the JRPG tradition and unique culture to conform to the canon of western RPGs.
Of course there are exceptions. A few select Japanese games find praise between the western press. A notable example are Nintendo games, that benefit from a mix of nostalgia and the notion that, in the end, they are in a market of their own and most of the times catering to a younger audience, competing only marginally with the hardcore AAA titles produced in the west.
New Super Mario Bros Wii isn't seen as competition to Modern Warfare 2, and as such there's no need to bash it to oblivion in order to further the idea that your usual western-designed shooter is better.
Another notable exception are games that indeed (partly or completely) do conform to the western canon (which, mind you, isn't necessarily a bad thing) of game development.
A prime example is Metal Gear Solid 4, that's one of the most westernized Japanese games of this generation, and it's been critically acclaimed for that, only to be bashed on what's left in it of the Japanese gaming culture: heavily cinematic storytelling.
No matter how fun a Japanese game is, no matter how good the story is, or how engrossing and involving the characters are. Most western reviews will stop to nothing in order to find something negative to say and to pursue their quite evident agenda of making the Japanese gaming industry look inferior to the western one.
You can see the most visible example of this trend on sites like Kotaku, where the extreme bias (despite the name) goes as far as belittling and bashing not only the Japanese gaming industry, but Japan and the Japanese culture as a whole. Their campaign to show Japanese gamers as complete and hopeless perverts has reached epic proportions. They went as far as publishing a completely off-topic and definitely bloated article that despite some weak and artificial connections had absolutely nothing to do with videogames, with the sole purpose of telling readers that "Japan sucks".
In the end, for all their cries for innovation, western journalists seem to be peculiarly hell-bent on flattening any kind of cultural variety in the gaming industry, purposely punishing any deviation from their beloved western-friendly standards. No matter if, in order to achieve that, they will have to harshly bash something that has really nothing to do with actual quality, and that they completely glossed over in the enthusiastic review of a western game just a few days before.
Despite what the western press would like us to believe, the Japanese gaming industry still has a lot to offer, and they can do that with their own unique flavor, without giving up their culture and traditions. We live in a globalized world in which there's plenty space for variety. From strongly-western games like Battlefield Bad Company 2, to great Japanese productions like Yakuza 3, passing by a whole rainbow of in-betweens that create one of the most culturally diversified branches of the entertainment market.
Gamers should uphold and protect such diversity as a cultural treasure, since the press seems to want to destroy it. What exactly fuels that agenda we don't know. It's probably a mix between monetary interests, national and cultural pride and plain old racism.
What I do know, is that most reviews of Japanese games published by the western media aren't exactly a reliable source to assess the quality of the productions examined.
From now on, I'm going to try and write my own reviews featuring games that I feel have been unfairly portrayed by the media. Of course, you're entirely free to think that the general media is right and my reviews are bogus, but at the very least you'll have a completely independent voice outside the choir to hear, and then you'll be able to take your own decisions as informed customers. After all, turning customers into informed customers is what the press should exist for. Unfortunately that's not always the case.
Edit: I'd like to thank Chad from Dualshockers.com for mentioning this article on their latest podcast. Listen to it, it's a both really amusing and informative one. Cheers! :D
Personally I share that feeling only in part, as the evolution of the western gaming industry has brought us several gems that I definitely appreciated and appreciate. For sure I would like to see more Japanese games imported to the west, but I'm all for diversity and variety.
Unfortunately this standpoint isn't shared by the vast majority of the western gaming media.
Basically every time a new Japanese game gets released in the west, the "western games defense force" of gaming journalists scrambles to dissect it as ruthlessly as possible, criticizing it with a negativity bias that is very rare in reviews of western games, no matter how bad.
Now that the western industry seems to be having (at least according to most) the upper hand in game development, the media seems to be determined to give the Japanese industry the coup-de-grace. It's not such a difficult task, after all, because no matter how good or polished a game is, there's always a way for a seasoned writer to make it look bad, or at the very least quite a lot worse than it is.
When you start reading the review of a game developed in Japan you can easily predict with a frightening precision what the criticism will involve: it's linear, the story is cliche, it's not innovative... The usual list of made-up negative catchphrases without a clear meaning and that aren't necessarily factoring in a game's quality, and that normally aren't used to criticize western games that feature the same elements. Let us analyze them.
Waaah it's Linear!
And? Freedom in gaming comes in several layers. It can be freedom of exploration, freedom in moral choices, freedom in solving puzzles or freedom in choosing how to progress through fights. Not all games need to feature complete freedom, even because it often (if not always) it comes with the price of losing depth in the story and character development.
Even if a game places you in a linear hallway that goes from point A to point B without deviating, you're still free to enjoy the challenge of combat, and the freedom in choosing your actions when faced with that challenge. It's still most definitely interactive, despite the fact that often some journalists try to suggest it's not.
Not all games need to be free-roaming sandbox experiences. Variety is the key, and it's perfectly legitimate for a game to be linear and still be an high-quality production with a strong entertainment value, or more simply, a lot of fun to play. Gaming journalists seem to understand this concept, of course (it doesn't really take a degree), too bad that they apply it only to western games.
The God of War series, the Uncharted series, Modern Warfare, Gears of War and many others are extremely linear, but they still pick-up top scores aplenty. Today the embargo on reviews for God of War 3 has been lifted and top ranking articles are popping up like mushrooms after a rainy day. The game is extremely linear, does anyone criticize it for that? Of course not.
In the meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIII gets reviewed (I've played it for a few days now, having managed to snatch a copy before the street date, and it's a fantastic game), and "Waaaah it's Linear!". Reviews like the negativity-ridden aberration from Edge Online are a shameful disgrace to gaming journalism as a whole.
Mind you, I'm not saying that God of War 3 (or any of the games I named above) is bad because it's linear, but simply that linearity is much more common to the global gaming industry than what western journalists would like us to believe, and is a defining trait of many acclaimed games. Then, how comes it's a negative trait only for Japanese games?
Waaah it's Cliche!
When a Japanese game gets reviewed, how many times do you read the catchphrase "It's the usual cliche story of an emo teenager with spikey hair that saves the world"? Sometimes that's true, since that kind of character and story is quite appealing to the Japanese audience for several reasons (one of which it's it's resemblance to anime features, that happens to be definitely popular between the western public as well). That kind of definition has become so popular between western journalists that is often used even when it doesn't apply at all. I've seen it applied to Valkyria Chronicles, for instance.
But even when it does apply, where would the problem be? The gaming industry is now quite mature, and original stories are few and far between both in the Japanese and the western market. Even between stories that spawn from the same cliche there's still an enormous range of differing factors that let gamers enjoy the plot without the slightest sense of Déjà vu: character development, plot twists, mysteries withheld and then revealed...
Even here, of course, western journalists stress on this trait much more when writing about Japanese games than about games developed in the US or in Europe. How many western shooters follow the absolutely cliched story of a variably rash western soldier going solo or with few fellow heroes against the (invariably eastern European or Arabic) bad guy that wants to launch a nuclear warhead of similar weapon of mass destruction? Even Heavy Rain, acclaimed by the press for it's story, follows the overused cliche of the emo man investigating solo to save a relative from a mysterious serial killer with a very distinctive modus operandi and way to "sign" his murders. See what I did here? It's extremely easy to trivialize basically every story and to reduce it to an overused cliche. Easy-peasy journalistic trick.
Has Heavy Rain been criticized for being cliche? No. Because it happened not to be developed in Japan. How lucky.
Again, being cliche is not inherently a flaw, and there are so many ways to differentiate a story from the others stemming from the same cliche that, as criticism, it's entirely moot and negligible.
The funny part is that, in average, the stories of Japanese games are much deeper and more complex than the stories of Western games. Their character development goes above and beyond compared to the usual American or European production, but according to western Journalists, only the stories coming from across the pacific seem to be cliche. Convenient, isn't it?
Waaah it's not innovative!
Innovation is always welcome in a game. Welcome doesn't necessarily mean indispensable.
Innovation isn't automatically a factor in the quality of a game, given that there have been plenty examples of games that brought big innovations and then proved to be lacking in the most important factor: fun.
Even in this case the western gaming press is packed full of top scoring reviews of American and European games that don't include an ounce of innovation (just think about the usual shooter that's pretty much the same as every other shooter out there). For instance the innovation present in Dragon Age: Origins is basically zero, and both the developer and most reviewers see the game sticking to the tradition of western CRPGs like the Baldur's Gate series as a strongly positive factor. Personally, I wholeheartedly agree with that notion.
Then why the Japanese gaming industry isn't entitled to stick to their own RPG tradition, without the western press rioting and demanding for innovation? And of course their idea of innovation involves dumping the JRPG tradition and unique culture to conform to the canon of western RPGs.
Of course there are exceptions. A few select Japanese games find praise between the western press. A notable example are Nintendo games, that benefit from a mix of nostalgia and the notion that, in the end, they are in a market of their own and most of the times catering to a younger audience, competing only marginally with the hardcore AAA titles produced in the west.
New Super Mario Bros Wii isn't seen as competition to Modern Warfare 2, and as such there's no need to bash it to oblivion in order to further the idea that your usual western-designed shooter is better.
Another notable exception are games that indeed (partly or completely) do conform to the western canon (which, mind you, isn't necessarily a bad thing) of game development.
A prime example is Metal Gear Solid 4, that's one of the most westernized Japanese games of this generation, and it's been critically acclaimed for that, only to be bashed on what's left in it of the Japanese gaming culture: heavily cinematic storytelling.
No matter how fun a Japanese game is, no matter how good the story is, or how engrossing and involving the characters are. Most western reviews will stop to nothing in order to find something negative to say and to pursue their quite evident agenda of making the Japanese gaming industry look inferior to the western one.
You can see the most visible example of this trend on sites like Kotaku, where the extreme bias (despite the name) goes as far as belittling and bashing not only the Japanese gaming industry, but Japan and the Japanese culture as a whole. Their campaign to show Japanese gamers as complete and hopeless perverts has reached epic proportions. They went as far as publishing a completely off-topic and definitely bloated article that despite some weak and artificial connections had absolutely nothing to do with videogames, with the sole purpose of telling readers that "Japan sucks".
In the end, for all their cries for innovation, western journalists seem to be peculiarly hell-bent on flattening any kind of cultural variety in the gaming industry, purposely punishing any deviation from their beloved western-friendly standards. No matter if, in order to achieve that, they will have to harshly bash something that has really nothing to do with actual quality, and that they completely glossed over in the enthusiastic review of a western game just a few days before.
Despite what the western press would like us to believe, the Japanese gaming industry still has a lot to offer, and they can do that with their own unique flavor, without giving up their culture and traditions. We live in a globalized world in which there's plenty space for variety. From strongly-western games like Battlefield Bad Company 2, to great Japanese productions like Yakuza 3, passing by a whole rainbow of in-betweens that create one of the most culturally diversified branches of the entertainment market.
Gamers should uphold and protect such diversity as a cultural treasure, since the press seems to want to destroy it. What exactly fuels that agenda we don't know. It's probably a mix between monetary interests, national and cultural pride and plain old racism.
What I do know, is that most reviews of Japanese games published by the western media aren't exactly a reliable source to assess the quality of the productions examined.
From now on, I'm going to try and write my own reviews featuring games that I feel have been unfairly portrayed by the media. Of course, you're entirely free to think that the general media is right and my reviews are bogus, but at the very least you'll have a completely independent voice outside the choir to hear, and then you'll be able to take your own decisions as informed customers. After all, turning customers into informed customers is what the press should exist for. Unfortunately that's not always the case.
Edit: I'd like to thank Chad from Dualshockers.com for mentioning this article on their latest podcast. Listen to it, it's a both really amusing and informative one. Cheers! :D
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Racing for a cause and for Turn 10's pockets
If you read this blog regularly you probably noticed that I'm not really satisfied with the current situation with Forza Motorsport 3. While I'm a fan of the franchise, I can't say I'm happy to see how turn 10 is handling it this time around.
Unfortunately it seems that the worst had yet to come. A couple days ago Turn 10 announced that they were going to let everyone interested purchase the DLC contents of the limited collector's edition (the VIP Membership Car pack), with part of the proceeds donated to Save the Children for the Haiti relief. Here's the announcement:
Today Microsoft and Turn 10 announced the widespread availability of four “Forza Motorsport 3” Game Add-ons, previously available only to those who purchased new standard and Limited Collector’s Edition copies of the game. Mobilizing millions of “Forza Motorsport 3” fans, Turn 10 is calling on all racers, tuners and artists to assist in the global relief effort for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. For every purchase of the “VIP Membership Car Pack” during the month of March, Turn 10 pledges to donate $10 to Save the Children up to $100,000. So now you can enjoy more of the “Forza Motorsport 3” content you’ve been asking for, while also donating to an important cause.
You can read a more complete version here.
Many of you are probably going to wonder why would that be bad. After all charity is a great thing, and the population in Haiti needs all the help they can get at the moment.
I agree with that, and I'm all for charity and supporting important causes, but analyzing the facts a bit more deeply, something definitely smells fishy.
The DLC contents that Turn 10 is now unlocking to everyone were clearly touted as exclusive to the Limited Collector's Edition (the word "exclusive" definitely is there on the back cover of the Italian edition of the LCE). When you sell something publicized as exclusive, it's obvious that you can't just decide to sell it to everyone, otherwise it would be false and misleading advertisement. Exclusivity has a nominal value, and buyers of the Limited Collector's Edition kept that value in mind when deciding on their purchase.
During the months in which Forza 3 has been out, a quite vocal part of the community complained about the unavailability of the Vip Membership Car pack to the ones that didn't purchase a Limited Collector's Edition.
It was obvious that breaking the advertised promises of exclusivity and selling the content to everyone would have allowed to Microsoft and Turn 10 to turn in quite a nice profit.
Of course false advertisement is not something to joke with, and what's better than charity to partly quell the outrage of the customers that bought the LCE with the promise of "exclusive" content and then found out that the content was not exclusive anymore?
Microsoft or Turn 10 have absolutely no expense in selling the Vip pack. They just need to flick a switch so that the content already on their servers becomes available to everyone for 800 points instead of needing to redeem a code from the LCE.
But here's the catch. They very smartly placed a maximum roof to the donation: a not very impressive 100,000 dollars. This means that only the revenue from 10,000 purchases will go to Save the Children. Anything beyond that will go add some beef to turn 10 and Microsoft's pockets. Now, with more than two millions copies of the game sold, even considering the extremely pessimistic case in which the 10% of the userbase would buy the package (200,000 DLCs sold), that would generate a nice revenue of two million dollars. Subtract the unimpressive donation of $100,000 and we're left with a net and completely effortless profit of $1,900,000 for Turn 10 and Microsoft.
The announcement itself is misleading and self-contradictory. They talk about "mobilizing millions", but only tens of thousands will really contribute to anything else than Microsoft's revenue.
So who gets the most benefit from Turn 10 breaking the (now false) promises of exclusivity of the Forza 3 Vip Pack? Save the Children or Turn 10 themselves?
The funniest part is that this kind of initiative is less effective than it would be, because of course gamers that already have the LCE can't contribute. They already have the content.
Now, if Turn 10 really was interested in fully benefiting the children in Haiti, why place a maximum roof to the donation? Selling the VIP package to everyone costs them nothing. So if the real reason is saving the children, why doing so with just a small part of the revenue?
Also, why didn't they simply donate the money from their existing revenue instead of using it to justify a very questionable backtracking on previous advertisement and to generate further revenue?
Why didn't they donate part of the revenue coming from one or more of the many DLC pack they're already releasing every month? That would have allowed everyone (including the existing owners of the Collectors Edition) to contribute.
Again, don't get me wrong. I'm all for supporting Save the Children and similar associations, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to contribute to their cause. Nonetheless, what really infuriates me is using charity as a smokescreen to generate revenue with no effort and to hide bad business practices like false advertisement and breaking promises.
I'm sure some of the ones that will read this article will consider me as the boogeyman that hates charity and the children. Feel free, but honestly I feel disgusted by this use of charity that reeks of marketing.
But we're still missing the icing on the cake. Obviously a large part of the fanbase reacted quite negatively on the official forums. I'm not the only one that doesn't like to see this kind of things, and no one likes to be on the receiving end of false advertisement. Unfortunately the Turn 10 moderators fully gave in the emotional chest-beating of the charity with this overly pathetic response by TRC Solo, including funny descriptions of bodily reactions, lots of overdramatic rethorics, insults and finally the usual ban threats that Forza 3 fans and racers are now well used to.
Don't worry, TRC Solo, we're all a bit sick in our stomachs. Just for different reasons.
Unfortunately it seems that the worst had yet to come. A couple days ago Turn 10 announced that they were going to let everyone interested purchase the DLC contents of the limited collector's edition (the VIP Membership Car pack), with part of the proceeds donated to Save the Children for the Haiti relief. Here's the announcement:
Today Microsoft and Turn 10 announced the widespread availability of four “Forza Motorsport 3” Game Add-ons, previously available only to those who purchased new standard and Limited Collector’s Edition copies of the game. Mobilizing millions of “Forza Motorsport 3” fans, Turn 10 is calling on all racers, tuners and artists to assist in the global relief effort for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. For every purchase of the “VIP Membership Car Pack” during the month of March, Turn 10 pledges to donate $10 to Save the Children up to $100,000. So now you can enjoy more of the “Forza Motorsport 3” content you’ve been asking for, while also donating to an important cause.
You can read a more complete version here.
Many of you are probably going to wonder why would that be bad. After all charity is a great thing, and the population in Haiti needs all the help they can get at the moment.
I agree with that, and I'm all for charity and supporting important causes, but analyzing the facts a bit more deeply, something definitely smells fishy.
The DLC contents that Turn 10 is now unlocking to everyone were clearly touted as exclusive to the Limited Collector's Edition (the word "exclusive" definitely is there on the back cover of the Italian edition of the LCE). When you sell something publicized as exclusive, it's obvious that you can't just decide to sell it to everyone, otherwise it would be false and misleading advertisement. Exclusivity has a nominal value, and buyers of the Limited Collector's Edition kept that value in mind when deciding on their purchase.
During the months in which Forza 3 has been out, a quite vocal part of the community complained about the unavailability of the Vip Membership Car pack to the ones that didn't purchase a Limited Collector's Edition.
It was obvious that breaking the advertised promises of exclusivity and selling the content to everyone would have allowed to Microsoft and Turn 10 to turn in quite a nice profit.
Of course false advertisement is not something to joke with, and what's better than charity to partly quell the outrage of the customers that bought the LCE with the promise of "exclusive" content and then found out that the content was not exclusive anymore?
Microsoft or Turn 10 have absolutely no expense in selling the Vip pack. They just need to flick a switch so that the content already on their servers becomes available to everyone for 800 points instead of needing to redeem a code from the LCE.
But here's the catch. They very smartly placed a maximum roof to the donation: a not very impressive 100,000 dollars. This means that only the revenue from 10,000 purchases will go to Save the Children. Anything beyond that will go add some beef to turn 10 and Microsoft's pockets. Now, with more than two millions copies of the game sold, even considering the extremely pessimistic case in which the 10% of the userbase would buy the package (200,000 DLCs sold), that would generate a nice revenue of two million dollars. Subtract the unimpressive donation of $100,000 and we're left with a net and completely effortless profit of $1,900,000 for Turn 10 and Microsoft.
The announcement itself is misleading and self-contradictory. They talk about "mobilizing millions", but only tens of thousands will really contribute to anything else than Microsoft's revenue.
So who gets the most benefit from Turn 10 breaking the (now false) promises of exclusivity of the Forza 3 Vip Pack? Save the Children or Turn 10 themselves?
The funniest part is that this kind of initiative is less effective than it would be, because of course gamers that already have the LCE can't contribute. They already have the content.
Now, if Turn 10 really was interested in fully benefiting the children in Haiti, why place a maximum roof to the donation? Selling the VIP package to everyone costs them nothing. So if the real reason is saving the children, why doing so with just a small part of the revenue?
Also, why didn't they simply donate the money from their existing revenue instead of using it to justify a very questionable backtracking on previous advertisement and to generate further revenue?
Why didn't they donate part of the revenue coming from one or more of the many DLC pack they're already releasing every month? That would have allowed everyone (including the existing owners of the Collectors Edition) to contribute.
Again, don't get me wrong. I'm all for supporting Save the Children and similar associations, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to contribute to their cause. Nonetheless, what really infuriates me is using charity as a smokescreen to generate revenue with no effort and to hide bad business practices like false advertisement and breaking promises.
I'm sure some of the ones that will read this article will consider me as the boogeyman that hates charity and the children. Feel free, but honestly I feel disgusted by this use of charity that reeks of marketing.
But we're still missing the icing on the cake. Obviously a large part of the fanbase reacted quite negatively on the official forums. I'm not the only one that doesn't like to see this kind of things, and no one likes to be on the receiving end of false advertisement. Unfortunately the Turn 10 moderators fully gave in the emotional chest-beating of the charity with this overly pathetic response by TRC Solo, including funny descriptions of bodily reactions, lots of overdramatic rethorics, insults and finally the usual ban threats that Forza 3 fans and racers are now well used to.
Don't worry, TRC Solo, we're all a bit sick in our stomachs. Just for different reasons.
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