This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
This post is a participant of Michael R. Rousseau's July "Bitmob Writing Assignment". I was tasked with responding to a few faux emails from fictitious readers of a false magazine.
With this year's E3 featuring so many games that rely on motion control and 3d graphics — which Internet videos can't really convey in the stricter sense — do you think that online coverage of E3 is less useful to gamers as a result? What can the gaming press due to better convey the feeling of playing these games to readers?
-Bill Paxter
As with all things, it will get easier with time. Once the wider populous gets a chance to try out some of these games, we can establish firm baselines. Right now we can say “it works like the bowling in Wii Sports” and effectively convey that motion or feel to most readers. Eventually we’ll have equivalents for Move and Kinect.
In the meantime, we’ve assigned some of our writing staff a few issues of magazines like Bicycling, Car and Driver, and even Home Cooking (No, seriously) as these magazines do a fantastic job of conveying how things feel (and taste) through printed word. This is a skill that we as the journalist side of the games industry need to work to master as games get less and less controller bound.
Regarding your Red Dead Redemption review last month: The fact that the reviewer had some troubles hunting bigger game with his knife should not have played so heavily into the final review score. Please correct the 8.5 to the grade such a great game deserves, and make sure that that reviewer is never allowed to touch a Rockstar game again.
-Rockstar4lyfe
While our reviewers are human and prone to mistakes, we firmly support their opinions once they reach our printer. Further, we believe you may have read that section of the review somewhat selectively. For your convenience, we have re-printed the sections describing the game’s faults below:
Red Dead Redemption is also full of challenges that can be accomplished at leisure. These challenges revolve around four primary activities: picking flowers, hunting animals, gun slinging and treasuring hunting. I found all of these enjoyable, with the exception of some of the later hunting challenges, where you are tasked with using the knife to kill the animals. This struck me as unnecessarily barbaric and the controls made it more difficult than it needed to be.
When you really want a change of pace, there’s a competent multiplayer. Here you’ll be able to team up with your friends or (more likely) total strangers and take on many of the same single player elements, but with a posse instead of alone. You’ll also find that the game’s biggest flaw—not having an actual main menu—is put in a spot light so large batman shows up. Rockstar was determined to extend the single player’s incredible level of immersion into the multiplayer experience, where it absolutely does not belong.
Instead of allowing party support to streamline playing with your friends, you’re forced to resort to invitations and luck-of-the-draw server joins. Once you are all together and teamed up, when your ‘posse’ leader changes servers, it’s a crapshoot if the rest of you will get drug along with them, left behind, or encounter one of the many “unable to join server” error messages. Fast forward to being teamed up again, and you’ll find that selecting what to do is terribly cumbersome as well. While you can select the broad category of game to play from a menu (Gang modes or FFA), beyond that you must walk over to different posts in the ground to vote on what style of play and on which maps, all while being hopelessly assaulted by the fisticuffs of the people you’re trying to play with.
…
Featuring fantastic music, solid game play, competent story lines, and one of the most intriguing endings you’ll see in recent titles, Red Dead’s single player aspect is absolutely incredible. For all its greatness, gamers who prefer to play with friends will find the multiplayer experience very hindered by pure design stubbornness.
I'm an aspiring game writer looking for advice. I want to start my own blog and talk about games. What advice do you have for somebody looking to break into the industry?
-Hopeful Writer
It’s a bit cliché but apt to say if you wish to write professionally, write recreationally. Start a blog, but don’t focus on just gaming. Even if your mom is your only loyal reader, like any other muscle, writing frequently will help refine your skills. Once you start to feel confident in your work, ask a blog that you enjoy reading if you can submit a few guest articles. Most of them are happy to work them in their release schedule, as long as they feel the article is a good fit. Even if they say no, they’ll usually give their reasons why, and as long as you receive it with open ears, that will also help you grow.
Additionally, many popular gaming websites are encouraging more and more user interaction. Yours truly got their start on bitmob.com, which is a great community of enthusiast writers that get the added bonus of professional-level editors.
Also: read. Don’t just open the closest book and let your eyes flow down the page. Find a book written by an author you like (or have heard a lot about) or even one that just sounds interesting. Pay attention to how the writer structures their sentences, how they describe scenes, and if they manipulate words in a way that you find interesting. Analyze what this writer does differently, as that is what sets them apart from everyone else. Next time you write, try to emulate their style. Just like anything else, you can learn a lot by watching someone else. You can read blogs online as well, but books tend to harbor a much more colorful array of language, and less cat photos.
Finally—and this is the least fun part—set your expectations appropriately. We’re not one to crush hopes, but writing professionally is hard, stressful, and typically does not bring much money in. While this line of work may be (and normally is) a great fit for someone fresh out of school, if you’re already supporting a family, you may find that you need to be ready to supplement income, travel frequently, or at the very least maintain a very organized and filled calendar. It’s not impossible, but you won’t be Dan Hsu or Jeff Gerstmann on day one. They worked hard to get where they are, and you’ll have to as well.
My May 2010 issue arrived in my mailbox without the special holographic cover that was promised to subscribers. What gives? What do you plan to do for those of us who didn't receive the special cover?
-Jacob Hobbins
We’re very sorry that many of you were unable receive last month’s issue with the holographic cover. We ran into a series of problems that was a combination of a surprise supply shortage and a former lead designer misunderstanding our request.
Please contact our customer service department at 1-800-555-7667 or customerservice@OurNumberTotallySpellsPoop.com, and provide the number at the bottom of the barcode found on the front cover, as well as your delivery address. Our customer service representatives have been authorized to provide either a reprint of the issue with the holographic cover, or an E3 2010 Booth Babe calendar.
Somewhat related, we are hiring a new lead designer. Applicants must have at least five years of print experience, and have a firm grasp of the difference between holographic and homophobic.
Paper or plastic?
-Wasted Days
Bags? Paper. Unless the store offers a credit for providing your own reusable ones, in which case we curse ourselves and make a hollow vow to bring them next time.
Payment? Plastic. Using a debit card all the time keeps the washer from bankrupting us one $5 bill at a time.
Cups? Big Gulps are plastic, right?
There seems to be a tendency for developers to tack multiplayer modes onto single player games, despite the fact that the production of these modes takes time and resources away from the main game. Why do so many game studios feel the need to add multiplayer to games that don't need it?
-Sam Jones
The short answer to your questions is ‘Money’. However, there’s nothing worse for a developer (or their publisher) than to spend years designing, creating, polishing, and marketing a game that doesn’t sell. Even a lengthy single player game can find its way back on to a ‘used games’ shelf in as little as little as 24 hours after its initial purchase (We advocate renting if you’re going to blow through a game that fast, but to each their own). Thanks to our exposé in our December issue about the used games market, our readers already know what kind of trouble it spells for even some larger developer to see their profits consumed by game stores selling used copies of games thanks to the tiniest discounts over new.
Adding a multiplayer component gives the game ‘legs’, and typically means it sticks around store shelves longer. None of us need to be told of the success of Call of Duty and Halo, who owe most of their sales success to their large multiplayer communities. While most developers are not aiming for a piece of the pie that big, many of them would be very satisfied with just a tiny slice.
Additionally, multiplayer modes serve well for such incentives as EA’s Project Ten Dollar*, to battle the used game market, provided of course the extra material is dubbed ‘worthy’ by consumers. Further, if the multiplayer of a certain game takes off even a little bit, that really opens the door for the developer to release download content in the form of map packs or even new game types.
So while the answer to your question is ‘Money’, the complete answer is not ‘Greed’. Many of these developers just want to keep making games, and remember that like review scores and console preference, multiplayer being necessary or not is subjective. It costs money to make these modes, and the developers wouldn’t waste their precious resources on it if it wasn’t something they were confident in.