• 13Mar 08

  When Rome is ablaze I shall play my fiddle

  I love EA games! A surprising thing, many may think upon discovery. Why would this guy, who is so hateful of Uncle Billy for being the gigantic bloated carcass that he is, why would this guy not hate the equally corpulent seemingly malicious giant, whose never ending appetite has caused him to swallow whole many smaller giants already. Why would anyone love such an abomination? Surely his very existence equals calamity and all who are no already caught in his light bending gravity should look at him with spiteful eyes, lest he devour them too.
  
  Nay, sirs and madams, I love EA games, simple and true. Though, my love for them is not the pure variety, you see, I do not look at them with rosy tinted eyes, full of angel wings and butterflies. Nay sirs and madams, I do not love them because of the wears they make, nor at all because of the quality of their craft. Nay, on contrary, my love for them grows the larger the more inferior and abysmal their produce.
  
  schadenfreude, what a thing, to give rise to my love for such a being. EA, you dumb brute, each Caesar you slay brings me closer to my sweet, sweet nihilist dreams. Carry on, my fair giant, rampage you juggernaut, trample and crush all in your way, in time you yourself shall fall, it is your clumsy nature, and all you have consumed shall fall with you.
  
  Schadenfreude, do you know of the concept? It is most maliciously delicious and excruciatingly exquisite. Schadenfreude, a love impure, a favour by mischief implored, fortune in misfortune borne. Ah, how I shall play my fiddle as Rome is burned.
  • Posted Mar 13, 2008 6:12 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 7Mar 08

  Konami chooses some unknown talentless spanish developer for their next project?

  Et tu Konami? Why would you waste money funding talentless western developers who cannot produce anything other than the same old crappy shooter type game set in a gritty, dark, bump mapped world as about a million other western games are going to?
  
  Take that money and invest it in your own talented Japanese developers that have chance to actually create something new, refreshing and different. And the less said about taking the amazing Silent Hill franchise out of the hands of your ultra capable Japanese developers and throwing it carelessly into the filthy lap of some western hack, the better.
  
  You are breaking my heart here Konami, do you so enjoy hurrying the death of the Japanese industry and watch with glee as the westerners smear faecal matter all over the industry that you helped build? No? so get a grip and understand that supporting Japanese developers is essential to your survival. Those western stray dogs will rip you apart and spit you out without even chewing and then proceed to feast on the rest of your nakama, and all you worked so hard to achieve.

  I am too god damned depressed by this to go on....

  • Posted Mar 7, 2008 2:22 am PT
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• 4Mar 08

  Come in Japan... where are you?

  Come in Japan... where are you? Come in, over and out.
  For the longest time now, I've been trying to sit down and pour onto paper what I feel about the current situation of the gaming industry, and the lack of weight from Japan it so desperately needs to balance the scales out. I've tried and tried to turn it around every which way in my head, but the simple fact is I cannot make sense of it, and I can't because there is no sense to make from it. Seriously, what the hell is going on? Where are all the Japanese games on the PS3? Where did all the developers go? Did they die, pursue some other line of work or were they involved in some kind alien mass abduction incident that was hushed up by the government?
  Where are you guys, where are all the people that made all those dozens upon dozens of amazing games for the PS2 and GameCube. I mean Jaysus Christ, what have you been up to since '06? My failing memory reports that as the final year you were spotted healthy and thriving in your habitat, putting finishing touches on all those amazing games that you always managed to make. Those games came out and then nothing, static, the signal disappeared. From what I can see the only ones still making any sound is Capcom, recently with Devil May Cry 4 which I have yet to try and Konami with what is promising to be the swan song of the Japanese game developing community, it is going to be one hell of a swan song but that just makes it that much sadder.
  Just off the top of my head I can mention a dozen or so of the most amazing games ever made that you guys made just in the two years spanning '05-06. What happened then? Well, about the only thing I can think of is that about that time nextgen happened. I know that development cost grow exponentially with each hardware revision but surely, it couldn't have been that bad, so bad that you all went extinct? The language barrier and lack of reliable information about the subject, likely because few care, about the inner working of the Japanese economy leaves me befuddled by this. I only understand so much, things have not been good since 98, and interest in gaming have also been dwindling in Japan since the turn of the century, non-games it seems is the new fad, not game-games.
  So, less money to be made coupled with more money needed to make it was, I guess, enough to break the back of the Japanese the camel. And what are we left with? Why just like a world cinema dominated by Hollywood productions who are the only ones with those mindnumbingly lofty budgets we are left with a world gaming scene of glitzy big budget western productions, only the results are much, much bleaker. At least Hollywood manages to squeeze out one gem for every 50-100 lemons, the ratio, is much lower in video games I am afraid. The reason for that is the new in flood of PC developers who are rapidly using the loathsome lifeline uncle Billy has thrown for them in his world dominating scheme, I've already discussed this, although metaphorically, in other rants. So, Uncle Billy, the hunchback of the Vally, the captain of the sinking Titanic that is the PC welds himself forcibly to the console industry via his abominable concoction, the nefarious sheitbox and wastes not a second in throwing the same culprits that sank the PC a lifeline so they can help sink the console as well.
  Unlike the PC, there is still money to be made in console development for people like them and just like animals on a deserted island never before set foot by humans do not have the instincts to fear their bipedal brethren the console gamers in the west, and the Americas specially were ripe for being hit hard on the head, with the glitzy, all flash no substance big budget and well promoted productions of a kind they had never before seen. So like the lemmings that they are they all start to rush and all this happens in perfect timing with the Japanese developers needing the extra confidence to start trying their hands with the bloated budgets of nextgen productions, confidence that gets crushed when they whiteness the mass migration of their core audience over to uncle Billy's boatorama of crap.
  It will be many years before these impressionable sheep realise they've bought the cat in the bag and by the time they begin looking to get back to the golden Japanese boat it will likely not be there, abandoned and sunken due to neglect. I just wish something could be done, something to weather the storm, to ride it out, because I am sure that once those talentless PC developers sink this boat as well and the sun breaks out from behind the dark clouds the survivors might smile when seeing the golden Japanese boat, glistening and still afloat bathed in the rays of the sun.
  I blame SONY too of course, they didn't see this sheitfest coming, they where too drunk on the delicious liquor of their own success, once the tap ran dry all that awaited them was one hell of a hangover, that and uncle Billy's surprise ambush.
  Kuturagi, crazy Ken, old pal, why did you have to be so damn ambitious when you designed the PS3, if you knew what we know today, would you not have produced something much more humble, something actually deliverable in '05? Then maybe things would have been different. No, no, you wouldn't have, you didn't have in you not to be ambitious, that is why we loved you crazy Ken, and still do, where ever you are, here is to you! I wish you hadn't had a hand in killing the Japanese game industry, you helped make it the success it was in its golden age so we forgive you, and salute you, old pal.
  The PS2, it seems was the perfect fit for the Japanese budgets and talent, it has some of the best games there will ever be made, and plenty of them. If only the PS2 had been enough and the last generation could have gone on in infinity, then maybe things would have worked out. But technology progresses and if someone raises the bar then others must struggle to meet it, so in that regard I blame the PC as well, with it's rapid out of control iterative improvements of hardware and with it cost of development.
  I don't know what the future might bring, but I knew, the day Uncle Billy announced he would make the sheitbox I knew it was bad news, OK, so I might not have known exactly what would happen, but I knew it was bad news. And I have a bad feeling, a very bad feeling at the pit of my stomach when I think about the future of the industry as a gamer. After Metal Gear Solid 4 what have I to look forward to from Japan? Not much it seems, unless they are all working on secret projects that nobody knows about yet.
  Everyday Nintendo seems to embrace their new non-game approach to game development more, and everyday it pans out for them much better than the traditional approach, which I fear, they will in time abandon entirely. Capcom seems to think that in order to survive in a western dominated game landscape it needs to imitate the westerners and put their own spin on it, the "give people what they want" approach if you will, it stinks to me and we'll see how it pans out for them, so far it has not done too well.
  Konami, well Konami, bless their heart, or at least bless Kojima's heart, is putting everything in their might behind one final blow, the big march from the trenches if you will, towards the enemies machine gun salves. If Metal Gear Solid 4 does not become the huge blockbuster run away hit everyone wants it to be then they will be in big trouble; big, big trouble. In my darkest days I feel that they will not be able to pull it off, not because the game won't be amazing, no, because if amazing games automatically resulted in sales then it would sell 10M copies easy, no what I fear is SONY's lacking marketing ability.
  Sometimes I wish SONY was in league with the same sleazebag "can sell a stink to a sheit" kind of people that Uncle Billy has working for him, the same people that took the turd that is the Gaylo series and made it into a phenomenon by marketing it to idiots who don't know any better, never knew what hit 'em, and never will, the fools. Yeah, if SONY had those guys then Metal Gear Solid would sell millions upon millions Konami would smile and utter "success!" just like Borat does, that way that he does, and all would be fine and dandy. But reality I fear will be something more akin to the abysmal sales, compared to quality, of Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank. Those games didn't sell because SONY did not have the ability to make them sell. In toady's gaming industry landscape the ability to sell something counts more than the ability to create it, this is one of the many gifts that Uncle Billy brought with him in his plague infested boat, the gift of greed.
  Hell, the Japanese don't even care for downloadable games, so I can't even vest some hope in some Japanese developers circumventing high production costs and survuive that way.
  So where does that leave us? Not much hope from the Nintendo, Capcom and Konami corner, that just leaves Square-Enix, the last corner forming the former holy trinity of Japanese developers. Square-Enix is doing OK comparatively and seems to have big plans for the future, too big, even, and also too far in the future. We won't be seeing anything from them until 2009, which is what? Year 3 of this generation? A smidgen too late to change anything, besides I fear Square-Enix is trapping themselves in a corner by focusing too much on the success of the Final Fantasy series. I miss the old days of Square-Enix, where they had the balls to try something different every once in a while which manifested such forgotten gems as Vagrant Story, a game very, very high up on my list of best games ever made, I still break it out and play it sometimes, imagine that, a PSOne game in today's gaming world, well, it is just that good.
  Of course the people who matter will never have the chance to read this because I can't write this crap in Japanese, and even if I could what advice do I have to offer? Please don't die? Is there even some magical solution that would bind everything up in a nice package with a neat bow around it? Sure, Nuke the US, that would solve a couple of other of the worlds problems too, but alas not very realistic solution. Maybe you could talk to Putin, I don't know, tell your officials to talk to that Russian minister, that Ivanov fella, I am sure he is a reasonable man, I am sure you can come to an understanding, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
  Jesting aside, there is little and yet much still left to say, but I cannot say it, so instead here is to you, my unsung heroes, I hope you make it somehow and continue to brighten my future with your amazing creations. Here is to you, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Shinji Mikami, Fumito Ueda, Akihiro Imamura, Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Atsushi Inaba.
  • Posted Mar 4, 2008 1:15 am PT
  • Category: Games
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