Holy shit, I’m not dead! And I have enough free time to write something longer than a tweet! Let’s get caught up.
People on the internet were mad about many things, for a while there it was fucking hot if you lived in the northern hemisphere (still is if you live where I do), Uncharted 4 was the most amazing game I never finished (giving me some insight into how DiCaprio must feel about Victoria’s Secret models), Donald Trump’s a fat old cunt, pool water in South America turned green, No Man’s Sky was so boring it put me into fucking cryo-sleep (most realistic space travel sim ever, 10/10), summer movies were mostly shit, and Doom was the best video game to game a video in quite some time. Oh, and I’ve been building a room-scale VR game in Unreal Engine 4 with no prior experience... To answer your inevitable question: Yes, it is liberating to go completely fucking insane...
People on the internet were mad about many things, for a while there it was fucking hot if you lived in the northern hemisphere (still is if you live where I do), Uncharted 4 was the most amazing game I never finished (giving me some insight into how DiCaprio must feel about Victoria’s Secret models), Donald Trump’s a fat old cunt, pool water in South America turned green, No Man’s Sky was so boring it put me into fucking cryo-sleep (most realistic space travel sim ever, 10/10), summer movies were mostly shit, and Doom was the best video game to game a video in quite some time. Oh, and I’ve been building a room-scale VR game in Unreal Engine 4 with no prior experience... To answer your inevitable question: Yes, it is liberating to go completely fucking insane...
Think that about covers it.
Speaking of a return to something long abandoned: I loaded up Street Fighter V for the first time since last spring. The reasons for this aren’t terribly important and could rabbit hole into their own posts, so I’ll ere on the side of brevity [fucking post's long enough already] and simply say it had something to do with Hardcore Mode in Mother Russia Bleeds, Tekken 7 being so far from release after so much waiting that I’m not entirely convinced it actually exists, and an inability on the part of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to keep my attention for more than 10 minutes.
So I had "nothing to play" in the same way there's "nothing to watch on Netflix," but was desperate to use this rare free time to actually play a video game for recreation. Rife with indecision, I made "The Fuck It Adjustment” and fired up Street Fighter V.
God. Dammit.
I’ve never had any truth, any heretofore nebulous concept so quickly solidify, and so ferociously kick me in the dick. Kinda like how you always academically know you're gonna die, then one day you're minding your own business and suddenly you fucking know you're going to die - like deep down, deep cuts KNOW it - and you either accept that fact and get back to whatever you were doing, or buy an embarrassing car and have a doctor yank your face up behind your ears and staple pubes to the top of your head... So, yeah. My SFV revisit was like that. I guess.
Street Fighter V's truth came with absolute clarity: It showed me, in short order, everything wrong with modern video games, and why those problems are, in fact, a big fucking deal. Not just high-pitched protests from a spoiled cavalcade of participation ribbon victims.
I’ve never had any truth, any heretofore nebulous concept so quickly solidify, and so ferociously kick me in the dick. Kinda like how you always academically know you're gonna die, then one day you're minding your own business and suddenly you fucking know you're going to die - like deep down, deep cuts KNOW it - and you either accept that fact and get back to whatever you were doing, or buy an embarrassing car and have a doctor yank your face up behind your ears and staple pubes to the top of your head... So, yeah. My SFV revisit was like that. I guess.
Street Fighter V's truth came with absolute clarity: It showed me, in short order, everything wrong with modern video games, and why those problems are, in fact, a big fucking deal. Not just high-pitched protests from a spoiled cavalcade of participation ribbon victims.
Before I go any further, let’s take a crawl through the shit-trench that constituted the half-hour of my life just before I sat down to write this. Game loads; internal SFV update. Thought being able to play a game the second you wanted to was why auto-update became a thing, but whatever. Never got around to SFV’s story mode, so I figured I'd check that out. Selection was greyed out. No indication as to why or where it is, but I found it on the PS Store. For free! 8 gigs. Fucknut. Knowing that whatever tightly organized platoon of badgers Sony employs to deliver data to my console wouldn’t finish such a massive undertaking until sometime after Trump nukes Sweden, I resigned myself to the content I already had. It was time for a little training mode to shake off the cobwebs.
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| Fuck you, little gold icons. [Sorry about the screencaps. All 9876 flash drives in my house fucked off and I couldn't be bothered to hunt them down.] |
New stages! Locked. Surely 6 weeks of daily, 5-8 hour multiplayer sessions last spring left me enough Fight Money to unlock a few. Nope. Not even enough for one. And there's an official Capcom Pro Tour stage that I couldn't even buy with Fight Money if I had it. It's ten real dollars. Ten actual fucking dollars... For a stage in a fighting game.
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| If I have to absorb any more Stupid I'm gonna stroke out. |
Patience was wearing thin, but I soldiered on, and loaded up an old map that I suddenly resented for its withered, plebeian inadequacy. New characters! Also locked. And they cost almost twice as much as the levels. New costumes! Each is four real dollars. Four fucking...ughrrrhhh... Could I at least set the characters I didn't have as my training dummy to learn their moves and possibly avoid having my shit completely rocked if I ran into them in multiplayer? No. Lovely.
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| Call 911 |
In the end, I just pounded on a practice dummy for fifteen minutes with all the enthusiasm of Kevin Spacey jerking off in the shower at the beginning of American Beauty (I was thinking about Tekken 7 the whole time, SFV... you need to know that), then I turned the damn thing off. There's very little chance I'll turn it back on again unless it's for couch co-op, but even that will be tainted by the sense that I don't own a full copy of Street Fighter V anymore.
For their part in the larger discussion about video games, I know these sorts of complaints are nothing new. They're a pervasive part of every nearly every AAA release, in fact. So this is hardly the first time I’ve encountered this money grubbing DLC bullshit. I'm sure you've run into it in whatever AAA title's in your rotation at the moment. This is, however, the first time I've had them fanned out in front of me all at once. All the content I don't have staring at me from little shopping carts over faded character portraits. And I'm sure it's no accident that all these "buy me!" icons look suspiciously like text message or facebook notifications.
And there are just so fucking many of them. Most of which can only be purchased with real money. All told, if I wanted every bit of content on offer, I'd be out an additional NINETY-THREE FUCKING DOLLARS, for a grand total A HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS for a complete copy of SFV. And that's just to unlock all the levels, characters, and costumes. Forget about colors, titles, or profile designs. And I don't wanna hear any shit about being able to buy it all with in-game currency, cuz I've done the math on that too.
If you wanted to earn the 600,000 in "Fight Money" needed to unlock all the available characters, you'd have to compete in a minimum of 12,000 online matches. I say "minimum," because it's only 12k if you win every match. All the costumes? Another 12,800 wins for the 640k in Fight Money needed for those. Let's think positive and round every fight down to roughly 2 minutes, and you'd have to play for 826 hours ... that's THIRTY-FOUR FUCKING DAYS STRAIGHT. And that's assuming you win every match in 2 minutes, and doesn't include load times, server maintenance, sleep, etc. Yeah, fuck off Capcom.
I'd never even use half of the shit, I'd just be satiating the portion of my brain cocooned in game theory from a lifetime of positive feedback queues and satisfyingly clean notification menus.
It’s hard to notice how much additional content you’ve blindly tacked on to your initial $60 video game purchases when you’re drip feeding it cash 5 or 10 bucks at a time. Your buddy says “Hey, I got that map pack and I’m playin again. Wanna come get your ass whupped?” Fuck it. Why not, right? Five bucks to remind this bitch who runs shit? Easy to rationalize.
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| "This incomplete character select screen bothering you, Ned? Is it? PAY UP, WAIF! |
And there are just so fucking many of them. Most of which can only be purchased with real money. All told, if I wanted every bit of content on offer, I'd be out an additional NINETY-THREE FUCKING DOLLARS, for a grand total A HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS for a complete copy of SFV. And that's just to unlock all the levels, characters, and costumes. Forget about colors, titles, or profile designs. And I don't wanna hear any shit about being able to buy it all with in-game currency, cuz I've done the math on that too.
If you wanted to earn the 600,000 in "Fight Money" needed to unlock all the available characters, you'd have to compete in a minimum of 12,000 online matches. I say "minimum," because it's only 12k if you win every match. All the costumes? Another 12,800 wins for the 640k in Fight Money needed for those. Let's think positive and round every fight down to roughly 2 minutes, and you'd have to play for 826 hours ... that's THIRTY-FOUR FUCKING DAYS STRAIGHT. And that's assuming you win every match in 2 minutes, and doesn't include load times, server maintenance, sleep, etc. Yeah, fuck off Capcom.
I'd never even use half of the shit, I'd just be satiating the portion of my brain cocooned in game theory from a lifetime of positive feedback queues and satisfyingly clean notification menus.
It’s hard to notice how much additional content you’ve blindly tacked on to your initial $60 video game purchases when you’re drip feeding it cash 5 or 10 bucks at a time. Your buddy says “Hey, I got that map pack and I’m playin again. Wanna come get your ass whupped?” Fuck it. Why not, right? Five bucks to remind this bitch who runs shit? Easy to rationalize.
But loading up Street Fighter V again felt like going home to visit my loving mother only to find that she’s adopted five new kids she loves more than me, and while dinner's still free, I have to pay a utensil fee. And she converted my bedroom into an abattoir. That’s on fire for some reason...
... I'm saying SFV didn't greet me as the game I remember from last spring. Which is a far more efficient way to put things than I just did with that abused metaphor, but I haven't finished my second cup of coffee yet and my brain's tearing along at top speed but the track's all rickety. Sort of a "Donkey Kong Country mine cart" thing... I seem to have wandered a bit.
I bought this game. I payed for it. I liked it. Defended it in the midst of an almost universally derided launch (against every instinct and rational thought to the contrary), and all my loyalty amounted to precisely dick. A bunch of menu screens so lousy with locked content they looked like they'd be more at home in a fucking free-to-play mobile game or a particularly well appointed demo. Does this make the core gameplay any less fun? No. Does it bother the everliving fuck out of me that my copy of SFV looks all... less than? Yes. Do a great number of games suffer the same fate? Also yes.
... I'm saying SFV didn't greet me as the game I remember from last spring. Which is a far more efficient way to put things than I just did with that abused metaphor, but I haven't finished my second cup of coffee yet and my brain's tearing along at top speed but the track's all rickety. Sort of a "Donkey Kong Country mine cart" thing... I seem to have wandered a bit.
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| This is your brain on Ned. |
Again, I know this is just the way it is these days, I know I’m beleaguering the consensus, using a Port-o-John on the last day of a music festival; just another dehydrated stream of rage-piss on a sun-baked pile of taco-truck shit. But I need to draw attention to the fact that, for some reason, the very people getting fucked by this nonsense have decided that mentioning it is boring. Played out. Unpleasant.
Fuck that.
Indignation over an industry pissing down your back and calling it rain isn't a fad. It isn't outmoded. It doesn't trend for 20 hours and vanish. It's not to be discussed then filed away. It's a tumor that needs to be excised. And it doesn't matter whether the offending company provides entertainment or clean drinking water; opportunistic cash grabs at the expense of your customers is absolute shit behavior that wouldn't be tolerated by a kindergarten teacher giving five-year-olds a lesson on how money works... This angle needs a minute. We'll loop back around to it.
This “locked character” bullshit will not stand.
Though I suppose “should not stand” would be more appropriate, because it will stand. There’s no fucking way I’m payin for this shit. To do so would sully fond childhood memories of unlocking every character in Tekken 2 for the thousandth time because I couldn’t afford a memory card, then reveling in my accomplishment as I watched all the cut scenes and pretended Tekken was a movie. I need those memories in pristine condition. They contain the pride my adulthood seems hellbent on hunting to extinction. Pride I'm trying to keep intact by not caving to the urge spend more money on SFV. A game I've already fucking paid for... Paid for part of, anyway.
Is it too much to ask that I load up a six-month-old game, say to myself “Golly! This is gonna be swell!” and not have that sentiment rendered as useless as the word “swell?” Apparently not. Apparently software update. Apparently new EULA I have to agree to and not read. Apparently “update downloaded, the game will now restart” Apparently cool content I can’t enjoy because apparently I OWE THIS GAME MONEY!
Am I the only one left who's completely enraged by this dog shit? Livid at the notion that I should "calm down bro, it's just video games?" It's not "just video games!" It's a symptom of a larger, shittier, more insidious problem. It's Comcast adding data usage caps to an unchanged internet service to grind money out of people that can't afford it. Managing to get away with their bullshit because they lobbied some floppy-faced old cunt who still thinks high-speed internet is somehow an option for a human living in 2016's America. It's paying $600 for a $60 EpiPen, or $500 for a plane ticket with a seat half the size it was 20 years ago. It's a bunch of fucking brainless, detached, millionaire musicians telling you how sorry you should feel for them because poor people downloading their music for free has damaged their art. It's the soulless, sociopathic, bottom line for a bunch of pricks so enamored with the expensive, vapid shape staring back at them through the mirror every morning, that they have no compunction about giving other human beings all the consideration a winemaker gives a barrel full of grapes as he stomps the juice out of them. Which isn't even harsh enough, because the grapes at least had quality health care right up until they were crushed under a Frenchman's foot.
It's this pricks face.
Martin Shkreli's greasy smirk. A man so obviously vile, so clearly without humanity or remorse, that if he was beaten to death by a bunch of terminal AIDS patients with nothing to lose, statues would be erected in their honor and a national holiday would be declared.
So when you feel that twinge of "Ahhgghh!! Ah! Fucking pricks!" next time a game company fucks you over, don't brush it off. Do you brush off the urge to punch 2016's Most Punchable Face Winner: Martin Shkreli? No. You don't actually do it cuz of a shitload of really good laws, but you let that feeling sit there cuz it feels right. Don't give game publishers a pass. No, they're not dooming AIDS patients to financial ruin or dumping toxic waste in the ocean, but they're complicit in a culture of greed and exploitation so pervasive and rotten as to be unsustainable if we plan on surviving as a species. Of that, they're no less guilty than Pomade Gollum over here.
It's this pricks face.
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| HOW CAN ONE HUMAN BEING BE SO PUNCHABLE! IT DEFIES ALL LOGIC! Oh my GOD. This is a visceral hate. |
Martin Shkreli's greasy smirk. A man so obviously vile, so clearly without humanity or remorse, that if he was beaten to death by a bunch of terminal AIDS patients with nothing to lose, statues would be erected in their honor and a national holiday would be declared.
So when you feel that twinge of "Ahhgghh!! Ah! Fucking pricks!" next time a game company fucks you over, don't brush it off. Do you brush off the urge to punch 2016's Most Punchable Face Winner: Martin Shkreli? No. You don't actually do it cuz of a shitload of really good laws, but you let that feeling sit there cuz it feels right. Don't give game publishers a pass. No, they're not dooming AIDS patients to financial ruin or dumping toxic waste in the ocean, but they're complicit in a culture of greed and exploitation so pervasive and rotten as to be unsustainable if we plan on surviving as a species. Of that, they're no less guilty than Pomade Gollum over here.
Clearly, my brain did that rabbit hole thing again. I've either made some solid points or lost my mind, but I can't know for sure until I know whether I'm gonna be arrested for having publicly stated that I want to punch Martin Shkreli in the face or see him bludgeoned by his victims. #FreeTheNed
Let's wander back to the SFV discussion from whence we came: Where’s the fun in all this? Where’s the fun in just forking over cash to unlock a new character? Or grinding out so many matches for in-game currency that you’re too burnt out to enjoy the fruits of your labor? Why should we all be forced to accept having that fun sucked from something for the sake of financial viability? It's not even long-term viability, because as opposed to creating a generation of kids that fall in love with a game and pay out for years to come, they're embracing the "burn all the bridges, strip the copper out of the walls" set of business tactics that are so popular these days. Increasingly fucking ballsy too. "Yup, we're fuckin ya. Nope, nobody's gonna do shit to help you. Enjoy that cardboard box! I gotta go talk to a guy about jewel encrusting my yachts."
And I know you're out there, Spreadsheet Guy. I can smell the new, cheap carpet and Hot Pockets from here. I can hear you pounding antacid and mumbling some gibberish about quarterly earnings. I have a crazy idea for you: Sell me a quality video game at a reasonable price. By all means, lock characters, costumes, stages, whatever, but do it as an incentive to dig deeper. Let me earn them by playing the game. Not grinding, mind you. I want to defeat bosses, solve puzzles, find absurdly oblique secrets, get to know the game, have fun with the game. Do this right and I'll be hopelessly addicted. Ask those developer guys what all this stuff means. They're the dudes and dudettes with that "creative vision" thing you're constantly wiping your ass with.
Get me addicted to this quality product that was worth my money, and my excitement will burst fourth as hashtags, increasing that "social media presence" some kid in a flannel shirt told you was so important. So besotted I'll be, that you can make your big move and fleece me for all I'm worth with merch like a fancy soundtrack on vinyl that I’ll buy even though I don’t have a record player because I’m fucking stupid. Stupid for your game.
But none of this can work if you gut the game of any progression that doesn't involve quarter turn forward + credit card. If I can't earn anything on my own, my actions begin to lose their meaning. Then I'm going through the motions. Then I get bored. Then I get gone.
Let's wander back to the SFV discussion from whence we came: Where’s the fun in all this? Where’s the fun in just forking over cash to unlock a new character? Or grinding out so many matches for in-game currency that you’re too burnt out to enjoy the fruits of your labor? Why should we all be forced to accept having that fun sucked from something for the sake of financial viability? It's not even long-term viability, because as opposed to creating a generation of kids that fall in love with a game and pay out for years to come, they're embracing the "burn all the bridges, strip the copper out of the walls" set of business tactics that are so popular these days. Increasingly fucking ballsy too. "Yup, we're fuckin ya. Nope, nobody's gonna do shit to help you. Enjoy that cardboard box! I gotta go talk to a guy about jewel encrusting my yachts."
And I know you're out there, Spreadsheet Guy. I can smell the new, cheap carpet and Hot Pockets from here. I can hear you pounding antacid and mumbling some gibberish about quarterly earnings. I have a crazy idea for you: Sell me a quality video game at a reasonable price. By all means, lock characters, costumes, stages, whatever, but do it as an incentive to dig deeper. Let me earn them by playing the game. Not grinding, mind you. I want to defeat bosses, solve puzzles, find absurdly oblique secrets, get to know the game, have fun with the game. Do this right and I'll be hopelessly addicted. Ask those developer guys what all this stuff means. They're the dudes and dudettes with that "creative vision" thing you're constantly wiping your ass with.
Get me addicted to this quality product that was worth my money, and my excitement will burst fourth as hashtags, increasing that "social media presence" some kid in a flannel shirt told you was so important. So besotted I'll be, that you can make your big move and fleece me for all I'm worth with merch like a fancy soundtrack on vinyl that I’ll buy even though I don’t have a record player because I’m fucking stupid. Stupid for your game.
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| I...uhhh.... I really like Furi. |
Fuck it. I'm shaking my fist at the sky. Spreadsheet Guy'll never listen. He doesn't care to understand that a sense of discovery and exploration is every video game's main support pillar. Not just RPGs or open world action. All games. I explore fighting games, you might explore a MOBA or an arena shooter. Exploration isn't moving your character toward the horizon, it's enveloping yourself in the game. Understanding it. Much of that comes from a sense of meaningful progression. It’s how and why we get to know them, develop a passion for them, and drive ourselves fucking batshit crazy trying to create them.
Tearing out that support pillar (in SFV's case, the thrill of finding and unlocking extra content) and selling it back to us might present a few problems. Principally that central pillars are, by and large, pretty fucking structurally significant!
But no, publishers, you still think that's the "old financial model." Pre-online console. Not financially viable. So, by all means, after you sell us the House of Games, be sure to wrap a tow chain around its most important structural component as you leave, then yank the load-bearing fucker right out of the foundation. Just don't feign surprise at our reaction.
Game Publisher: "Okie dokie! Here's your pillar! That'll be $39.99!"
Tearing out that support pillar (in SFV's case, the thrill of finding and unlocking extra content) and selling it back to us might present a few problems. Principally that central pillars are, by and large, pretty fucking structurally significant!
But no, publishers, you still think that's the "old financial model." Pre-online console. Not financially viable. So, by all means, after you sell us the House of Games, be sure to wrap a tow chain around its most important structural component as you leave, then yank the load-bearing fucker right out of the foundation. Just don't feign surprise at our reaction.
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| Ok, this reference might be too vague... Lethal Weapon 2's on Netflix. Avail yourself. |
Player 1: "You just tore my fucking house down!"
GP: "I'm sorry you feel that way, but this pillar just wasn't ready in time for you to move in! But it's ready now!"
P1: "I just watched you pull it out from under my house with that truck, and walk back over here."
GP: "We value your feedback! Like us on facebook for a $5 voucher toward the purchase of your pillar!"
P1: "What the fuck good is that going to do me at this point?!"
GP: "Well, without it you can't have the "complete house experience."
P1: "I can't possibly have the 'complete house experience!' Having all the parts for a house doesn't mean I have a fucking house!"
GP: "Tell ya what, we'll send somebody over to patch this up for ya!"
P1: "How do you intend to 'patch up' a pile of fucking rocks?!"
GP: "A little bit at a time, randomly, over the course of weeks, months, or years. Some patches may set fire to the rubble-err, 'house experience,' and we may stop patching if it gets too difficult."
P1: "Stop for how long, exactly?"
GP: "Ever!"
P1: " ... Fuck it, I'll do it myself."
GP: "A little bit at a time, randomly, over the course of weeks, months, or years. Some patches may set fire to the rubble-err, 'house experience,' and we may stop patching if it gets too difficult."
P1: "Stop for how long, exactly?"
GP: "Ever!"
P1: " ... Fuck it, I'll do it myself."
GP: "I'm sorry, but patching your own house violates your EULA."
P1: "This is fucking ridiculous ... Hey! What the fuck is this?! I thought this house had 60 bricks per wall? There are only 24!"
GP: "The human eye can only see 24 bricks per wa-"
P1: "AHHHHHH!!!" *MURDERMURDERMURDERSTABMURDER*
That's your business model, game publishers. But you forgot that you live in the god damn house with us.
Shit! Forgot to rip on Capcom: Way to ruin one of my favorite fighting games, you greedy dipshits. See if I let you get your slimey hands on any more of my god damn mon--
Shit! Forgot to rip on Capcom: Way to ruin one of my favorite fighting games, you greedy dipshits. See if I let you get your slimey hands on any more of my god damn mon--
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| Fuckbean. |
