Even though I was having luck earlier today with “Destiny” buying the gun No Land Beyond, by the time I got up enough glimmer to upgrade Gjallarjorn I lost my connection to PSN. It’s been suggested that Xur may stay at the tower and extra day from Cult of Phogoth member Jlinx. Let’s hope!

Since PSN has been spotty and I often talk about my love for beat-em-ups/hack ‘n slash  games I took a trip back to the original “God of War” in HD on my PS3. Looking back compared to modern games, It was rough, raw, didn’t have the best collision detection at times, it was difficult to strong combos together and Kratos was vulnerable to stun locking, but it still set the template for beat-em-ups by not requiring target lock. Before that “Devil May Cry” ruled this style of game, and both were influential.

With the attack from Lizard Squad’s DDoS attacks on the PlayStation Network my PS4 isn’t able to access the “Destiny” servers. It’s Friday, and for those familiar with “Destiny” Friday and Saturday are the two days when Xur - The Agent of Nine shows up to sell exotic weapons and upgrade existing exotic weapons.

I took a look at his list and I’m partly exited for the exotic weapon he’s selling this week since it came with “The Dark Below” DLC, the gun known as “No Land Beyond”, an old-school looking bolt-action sniper rifle with open sights that goes in the primary weapon slot. I can’t imagine I’ll get a whole lot of use out of the gun, but I’m a collector. The real excitement for many players comes with the upgrade for the rocket launcher “Gjallarhorn”, known as one of the best, most powerful weapons in “Destiny”. It’s a must have, especially in raids due to the amount of power put out by those tracking munitions when the rocket explodes, and it’s actually been serving people well without the power upgrade, but with power upgrade? It should make finishing the “Crota’s End” raid even easier!

Sadly since PSN is down many aren’t able to get on “Destiny”. Will PSN be running by Saturday? What if it’s not? Will Bungie do anything to help the players who were hit by the DDoS attack?

You can see Xur’s list here - http://www.gamepur.com/news/17456-destiny-xur-agent-nine-locationitems-week-16-dec-26-awesome-line-selling.html

The App Store Price Point

A common complaint from developers on iOS i that they feel they have to price their games at 99 cents since customers have gotten so used to the 99 cent price point that games worth more than 99 cents have a difficult time selling. I’ve often played many games for 99 cents and felt that they were worth more. The other option is free-to-play, and we know how often those games devolve into pay-to-win games. Once people get used to lower price points they don’t want to go back to older, higher price points. The same thing is happening to Steam, and all digital stores have to compete with each other to a significant extent.

Limited Supply Creates Value

Part of what allows digital games to drop in price so quickly is the fact that there’s no limitation on the supply. New digital copies don’t need to be paid for and shipped, and you’ll never run out of digital copies either. At first this sounds great! With no cost to making new copies of games and unlimited supply can be sold forever!

Product Decay Creates Value

Physical products wear down with time. This doesn’t just make worn down products worth less, it makes products in pristine condition, unopened and brand new have more value. The best time to buy many physical products is brand new.

Sales and Free Games!

It’s no secret that certain digital games drop in price quickly, and even older games can drop to extremely low prices. If you’re not picky or you’re just patient you can wait until that expensive games becomes cheap. Some promotions even offer free games! And yet people are getting angry about those great sales. Why? Because they bought the game brand new at full price only to watch them drop in price extremely quickly to extremely low prices. Entitled gamers are getting mad despite all the good games getting good sales. The solution is to become what the retail industry knows as a “grazer”, someone who specifically waits on products until they drop in price. With enough market saturation of games it only makes more sense to wait on buying instead of buying a new digital game.

Digital Sales Versus Physical Sales

When physical products go on sale at retail, often people have to go there physically and those sales aren’t promoted extremely hard - nor do they need to be promoted heavily. Retail outlets can’t rely solely on selling products only on sale to survive, those sales do however bring customers to a store where they might buy products not on sale. Digital sales however are often right in front of peoples faces, easy to get to and are made well-known on the internet.

Lack of Promotion can Kill Sales

With physical games customers see those games on shelves and can talk to staff about those games - their mere presence helps to keep shifting copies long after they get released, but the experience with digital games that don’t get on the front page of the iOS app store when they first get released is that they’re typically get ignored unless they’re lucky enough to have the press run articles on them, or there’s been some other kind of promotional plan in place. Indie games on Xbox Live and PSN get on the front page on the day of release as well, but after that they get buried in the store, and searching can be difficult. The next hope is for a sale. I’ve seen sales charts for mobile games and indie games where the only time they sold was on the initial release date, release dates for ports and sales, beyond that sales for digital copies of their game was dead.

No Community

Typical GameStop and EB Games employees are gamers who can talk to you about games and help introduce you to new ones. This is especially great for people who aren’t gamers. Beyond that you need to put much more effort forth by searching on the internet, or simply relying on word-of-mouth. If people don’t know about a game, they’re not willing to gamble on it and people in the community help to foster more sales.

A Lack of Physical Bundles

The great thing about selling physical products is that they’re easily bundled with other physical products. A game game be bundled in a box with a figurine, art books, t-shirts and the list continues to grow with merchandise that’s easily bundled. At this point I’ve only heard of downloadable content for physical games being bundled. The fact remains that digital stores allow people to bypass physical bundles easily, and as of yet haven’t caught up to packaging merchandise with digital content.

The end result leads to customers who don’t value digital video games as much as physical video games, and who would become less and less willing to pay higher prices as prices and sales continually drop prices. Eventually physical products will actually become more profitable than digital products. To many people this makes free-to-play the solution, which will be the topic of my next article.

The weapons and armour are available individually – that’s microtransactions in a paid game, the same kind of dirty tactics Electronic Arts uses. The downloadable weapons and armour are also overpowered – that’s pay-to-win tactics.

I’m ashamed of Sony and Santa Monica Studio for allowing such tactics which borders on being a scam. I thought be SCEA and Santa Monica Studio had more integrity than that. I passionately enjoyed “God of War: Ascension”, the multiplayer, I own “God of War III”, all the HD remakes and “God of War: Chains of Olympus” for my PSP. I also enjoyed “Kinetica” when I had a PS2. I’m heartbroken that Santa Monica Studio would do this.

It was just announced that the DLC weapons for the online portion of “God of War: Ascension” will be available free from today until Sunday. The ability to buy the DLC weapons individually could be compared to microtransactions and the horse armour from “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion”.

As much as I try to keep an open mind about microtransactions, DLC and the free-to-play (known by some as pay-to-win) there are some things that have happened in the video game world with those plans that make me suspicious…

For now I hope the extra DLC weapons are simply different and not overpowered.

You can view the link at the PlayStation Blog here - http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/07/03/god-of-war-ascension-11-multiplayer-dlc-weapons-unlocked-until-sunday/

The Buzzword

How many times does the word “narrative” (just a bigger word for “story”) get thrown around these days in the hardcore video game world? It’s the focus of so many conferences, discussions, industry events, online articles and video game reviews these days. Just think back to this years E3, where so many games are touted as having an “emotional narrative” along with “immersive cinematic experience”. Developers, publishers, journalists and gamers want more stories in games, and better quality stories. Or at least we think we do.

How Many People Really Care?

The focus on story has become the focal point of many hardcore games and gamers - or has it? The games that become big e-sports are competition driven. It’s been suggested by many that most people who buy “Call of Duty” head online and ignore the campaign. I go online often in many games only to encounter people who can only communicate with swearing, marijuana obsessed partiers with 420 in their user name to screaming children. I’m not saying that these people represent all gamers, but they do represent a significant chunk of the customer base. How much do those people care about story?

What about sports games? Or casual games? Was there a huge narrative in the “Guitar Hero” series? Or dancing games? Or most mobile games? Is there even a story in “Candy Crush Saga”? Probably, but you’d have to go digging to figure out what it is. There seems to be one in “Angry Birds”, but it’s simple and in the background. It seems that the focal point in many casual and e-sports games is actually a form of competition.

When hardcore gamers try and talk about what’s great about hardcore games, the word “narrative” comes up often and actually leaves casual gamers scratching their head, or even polarizing audiences who simply don’t care about the story.

How Many Resources Does Focusing on the Storyline Use?

With budgets of AAA games seemingly ballooning out of control I question how much of the budget is used up focusing on the story. How expensive are cutscenes? And voice acting? And hiring top-tier writers? How much time is spent working to force games to fit the story? How much of the game needs to be scrapped because it doesn’t fit with the story?

Art is Subjective

What many critics consider good writing is often misunderstood by audiences. Story criticisms are rampant from fans in YouTube videos, forums and even in every day conversations. I’ve heard it said so many times from casual audiences that someone didn’t like a movie or director or development studio because a character the audience connected with was killed. That’s traditionally a good sign in movies and games as it shows an emotional connection was made with the on-screen character and that death is a terrible thing that should be disliked. That’s just one example, but the point is well known - casual audiences gravitate towards simpler stories that recycle what they understand, and dislike cutting edge techniques.

Action Versus Story

It’s no secret that most AAA action games are focused on killing, and in some cases outright murdering a huge amount of people and/or fictional creatures. Stories on why this happens range from being forced to unrealistic to nonsensical to completely ignoring the massacre that’s occurring. I’m not buying into the “emotional narrative” of most of these massive slaughters.

Going back to how casual audience view video games, I’m sure many people who don’t play video games don’t even see how story could be important when it appears like the main focal point in hardcore games is to kill as much as possible.

Metacritic

Fully competent games which would’ve gotten ok reviews are now getting ripped to shreds because the story isn’t good enough. It’s to the point where games with great graphics and balanced well-executed gameplay are considered not worth playing or nearly worthless because there’s no good storyline. I’m partly on the fence about this because I watch most cutscenes the first time playing through a game, while in-game characters are constantly bantering and chattering to the point where I wish they’d shut up. Terrible stories are indeed getting in the way of games that while not great, are in fact often good enough and are still very entertaining.

There are Great Games With Less Focus on the Story

A couple of highly rated games which did have a story but kept things simple were “Dark  Souls” and “Journey”. The cutscenes and dialogue were kept to a minimum in “Dark Souls” with the story hinted at, leaving you guessing or even using your imagination to fill in the blanks if you chose to do so. In “Journey” there were no cutscenes or dialogue. The most it did was to zoom in on pictures. The story was told by your presence in the stage, and it left the player guessing what it all meant. I’m sure the arguments people had over their interpretation of what it all meant got more people playing the game and more people replaying the game. Imagination, the ultimate in player choice!

What I’d Like to See

I’m personally tired of watching and hearing my games instead of playing them. I’m tired of doing something I love then coming to a standstill to hear characters talk nonsense. I wishes characters around me would shut the hell up when I’m playing. I’d like more games to give me a balanced challenge instead of making the game easy or having cheap deaths near the end because the focus was on the story. In a time when AAA games are having an extremely difficult time making money maybe it’s time to try and keep things simple. I’ve enjoyed the story in a few games, but with this generation of games it’s become the main focal point.

That’s not to say that the story isn’t important - just look at the indie scene with adventure games making a comeback with variations on that theme giving way to new variations on the classic adventure game. I think visual novels could have a bigger audience, yet still remain in their niche as well. RPGs are often known for their stories, and there’s probably been an example of a game from every genre with a good story, but I don’t feel it should be the main focal point of so many games.

Video games are important to me, but often I feel like the hardcore gamers, along with AAA publishers, AAA developers, publishers, journalists and some hardcore gamers are trying to impress each other with stories when the rest of the world doesn’t care or doesn’t understand the stories, and more games are created that don’t bring in new audiences. I’d like to see the industry think differently, because as it stands we’re getting more of the same games with differing mostly by story. Many people aren’t fooled and would like to play a game that challenges them and that pushes other innovative boundaries.

Looking back at older posts here at “The Kill Streak” you can see that I’ve been covering “Fuse” and that I’ve stated it looks well-executed but generic. I also admit I’ve been going back and forth wondering if I should get the game anyway in order to play online, and because I’m a fan who grew up with Insomniac games. Yup, I’ve been there with Spyro on the PS1, Ratchet & Clank on the PS2 and PS3 and the “Resistance” series on the PS3. Eventually I decided I wouldn’t get it, as I’m highly suspicious that Electronic Arts interfered with the game to make it look more generic, and now my opinion has flipped again because “Fuse” will not have an online pass or microtransactions, as stated in a FAQ about the game at the official website. This made news on a few sites, but I really felt it deserved more coverage.

If I can (there are personal monetary concerns) I will pick up “Fuse” to show my support, although I’ll still do what I can to try and tell Insomniac to please be more creative in their games.

It’s being reported on many sites that “Dark Souls II” isn’t coming to next  generation consoles like the Xbox successor and the PlayStation 4. The most recent site I read about this was at “Segment Next” - http://segmentnext.com/2013/04/11/dark-souls-2-wont-be-released-on-next-gen-consoles/

It makes sense that From Software, the developers of “Dark Souls II” want to release the game as soon as possible meaning that if they skip over the porting process of a game to any other console it’ll save time. Perhaps it’s a “never say never” situation, since “Dark Souls” got a PC port after it had been released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. I think “Dark Souls II” could be a viable possibility on next generation consoles.

Since the PlayStation 4 is touted as being “developer friendly” (and probably the Xbox 360 successor as well), I suspect that a lot of publishers will want to port PC versions of older games over to the next generation consoles with onboard DLC for around $40 to $50.

I consider  “God of War: Ascension” is the most graphically  proficient game I’ve seen on the PlayStation 3, especially when you consider how little game information gets installed on the PS3 hard drive.

I am however facing visual overload with the amount of detail shown as well as the similar colour palette’s at points in the game. At times certain enemies, environments and the character I’m controlling, Kratos can get lost as they all blend together. I had a related problem in “Rage” with such stunning visually impressive environments had a staggering level of detail that made it difficult do something as simple as finding a door to exit the stage.

Considering the Metacritic scores of “GoW: Ascension” and “Rage” hung around the 80% range - “God of War Ascension” - http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/god-of-war-ascension “Rage” PC - http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/rage “Rage” PS3 - http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/rage “Rage” Xbox 360 - http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/rage it would seem that reviewers and possibly even gamers aren’t as impressed by great graphics these days as we used to be.

The first step to solving a personal issue is admitting one has a problem. When playing video games, talking about video games, thinking about video games and even making posts here on Tumblr, I often feel angry that video game developers and publishers aren’t making games I personally like and that they also take actions I personally dislike. Why should other people be bending to the will of one person? When did I get this feeling of entitlement? Why did I get this feeling of entitlement?

When I was a child playing NES and SNES games I savoured the moment I got one of the very few games I owned. I played the same games often until I knew many of their secrets. Now we’re presented with a huge amount of games to choose from on multiple platforms, some of which I didn’t buy with the intent of gaming, such as my iPhone and the Mac that I do work on, yet I end up playing games on them. As an adult I’m in more control of my money and I’m good at finding deals on games. I’ve amassed a large number of games numbering over a hundred. It’s become so easy for me to get games that I feel entitled to them.

So why should developers and publishers make a game just for me? They have to sell those games to millions of people and art is someone else’s expression, not mine.

I’ve been putting some significant thought forth about video games, something I’ve felt have been important to me throughout my life which is why I’ve been away from my Tumblr page for nearly a month and this was one subject that was bothering me. I find it helps to remind myself that I’ve got a stack of great games to pick from, with more on the way. Developers and publishers have made a lot of great games that I have, and they’ll continue to make more.

Parents having lawsuits because their children made several thousand dollars worth of microtransactions. Apple giving refunds. Apple settling a class-action lawsuit over microtransactions. The fall of revenue from Zynga. The failure of a few free-to-play iOS apps. Hardcore gamers getting angry about the microtransactions in “Dead Space”, and now “Call of Duty: Black Ops II”. The PC MMO market is flooded with free-to-play games. The mobile market is flooded with free-to-play games.

Just recently, iOS developer and publisher Kabaam, who is apparently the highest grossing iOS developer and publisher there is is planning to publish 15 free-to-play games from 3rd party studios, and aiming to have 50 released by the end of 2013. http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/13/4101156/kabam-publishing-launches-partnering-with-third-party-developers

Does anyone else see this as being similar to the video game crash of 1983, where the video game market was flooded with cheap, poor quality games? Emphasis on FLOOD, since the mobile markets allow games through easily, and the PC market has no gateway restrictions. The market with free-to-play games is getting split between poor games where developers try and trick people in paying, force people to wait unless they pay, force people to watch adds, or require people to pay-to-win. While it scares people off quickly, I’m sure the low quality F2P games make a quick buck. The good F2P games are known for allowing players to essentially play without having to pay for anything if they’re simply willing to grind their way up, which gives little incentive for people to pay. Then there’s microtransactions in games people have paid for up front, with people asking why they should have to pay more for something they already bought.

However it’s the flood that is the most bothersome. The sheer number of high-quality games with good promotion is likely to spread audiences thin, thinning out profits as well. I can only imagine how angry people will feel if they bought something in a competitive online free-to-play game only to have the audience for it quickly leave.

A crash by itself could hurt, but what could hurt even more is if microtransactions start hitting big news sources. If you thought it was bad that console and PC games get blamed for violence, we’ll all be paying the price if there’s a media frenzy about mobile games and microtransactions, and it’ll make all companies connected to video games look like corporate thieves.