Daily Archives: May 21, 2012

Breaking the Illusion: Not Playing by the Rules

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Breaking the Illusion: Not Playing by the Rules

I like to play games in what I imagine is an unusual manner, or at least I thought this to be the case until 1UP members revealed they share some of my habits. One of these things, my propensity for systematically exploring an area before moving on, has reared its head in particularly noticeable fashion as I make my way through Max Payne 3. Playing in this way was clearly something the game’s designers accounted for, as evidenced by the collectables scattered throughout, and yet it feels almost as if I’m being punished for deciding to be a completionist.

My process for approaching each area in Max Payne 3 follows the same pattern, only being altered if I’m low on health and out of painkillers (health packs in Max Payne‘s world). I kill everyone and then proceed to sweep over the entire room, seeking out any hidden spots or areas which do not appear to lead to the next area. As I make my way from one combat area to the next, I’m mindful of my surroundings and am sure to double back to check behind staircases and to see which doors can be opened. I do this all while searching for golden gun components, painkillers, and clues which can be examined. The latter can fill in the backstory but is hardly needed to get the gist of the narrative. I’m able to comfortably do this because there is no ticking clock, even if what Max is doing at any given time suggests there should be, and because enemies come in limited numbers and only in certain areas.

I was hyper aware of my habit of going back to run against the walls when I had some non-gamers watching me. Someone who plays games might be able to grasp what I was doing, yet every time I ran down a flight of stairs and had a very obvious path in front of me but decided to first run down a dead end, I was waiting for one of them to ask me what the hell I was doing.

Even before I had onlookers potentially judging my playing habits, the game made it painfully obvious to me I was doing something outside the confines of how the player would ideally be playing. It tries to encourage players to always push forward, both in and out of combat. In combat, enemies flank more effectively than your standard videogame bad guys, forcing you to engage them or at least to not be too complacent, which is all well and good. After you’ve killed everyone, you can explore the area to find the aforementioned stuff, but linger too long and you’ll be reminded you need to get going. Either Max himself (through one of his many monologues) or another character if he’s not alone at the time will remind the player they need to move on because someone’s life is at risk or before more bad guys might show up.

Breaking the Illusion: Not Playing by the Rules

Now, it’s jarring enough that this ex-cop who has just gunned down countless individuals is running around a room, rubbing up against every surface in the hopes of seeing the action button pop up to indicate I’ve found something that can be examined. As is when I’m exploring a cemetery, looking for inexplicably located painkillers (which make only a modicum of sense more than the coffee thermoses in Alan Wake) when there are supposed to be countless hitmen coming for Max. But at least when I’m left alone and doing these things I can imagine some justification for whatever it is I’m doing in the context of the situation. When you throw in these voices reminding me of what the designers want me to be doing, it makes it difficult to remain immersed.

The real problem is, despite the sense of urgency these verbal prods are meant to instill, there is no reason to rush along to the next area. Yes, the story at some point might be that this group of mean gentlemen want Max dead, but once I’ve killed the group of them in my current area, I’m free to sit there as long as I want without anyone else ever wandering along to investigate why radio contact was lost. When Max needs a place to hide, the safest place of all would be anywhere he has just killed a handful of people because that was the only allotment of henchmen the area will ever see. And the only time I, as a player, am going to feel the proper amount of suspense is when I waste as little time as possible and I play as though sticking around for too long is a guaranteed death sentence.

Max Payne 3 is hardly the only game to suffer from such a situation; it’s a common occurrence in linear games. As soon as you jump off the beaten path and stop forging your way ahead, it’s easy to see how everything works (or stops working, as the case may be). It’s almost as if moving forward in the intended direction is turning a wheel that powers the engine — as soon as you stop for a reason that was not intended, it all comes to a halt. When people are coming to Max’s apartment to kill him, waiting in his apartment indefinitely should be a recipe for trouble. Instead, killing the guys in the hallway means everything goes back to normal aside from Max telling himself to get moving. It’s a lost opportunity to create additional tension — it should be risky and exciting to wait around and search for extra ammo or evidence. Instead, it’s a guaranteed break from the action.

There is not any one solution to resolving these problems; it depends on the game and what sort of experience its developers want to create. I know I, for one, have a problem with games that break if they are not played exactly as the designers intended. It seems like providing a level of pseudo-freedom in these games hurts the experience as it exposes their scripted nature. Either the player needs to be forcefully shepherded along from one point to another without giving them the time to stand still and see that more enemies are not coming when the story suggests they should be, or the threat of more guys showing up if you stick around needs to actually exist, rather than just be talked about.

What If Video Games Never Came Home?

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

What if Video Games Never Came Home?

Cover Story: A chilling glimpse into a world where the arcade still rules supreme.

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UP’s cover story this week revolves around the question, “What if?” In keeping with that theme, we’d like to offer this glimpse into one of many alternate realities of video gaming: A world where video games never came home. A world where the arcade still dominates gaming. How would a site like 1UP be different in such a place? We talk to our mirror universe counterparts about the state of gaming and their thoughts on the medium.

What If Third-Party Development Didn’t Exist?

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et’s be honest, when we think about Activision-Blizzard as a company, at least a few of us get a mental image of a dark overlord with hooked fingers looming over a burning landscape. This image is usually accompanied by a deep-voiced demand for sacrificial virgins. Given Activision-Blizzard’s status as The Biggest Thing That Has Ever Existed in Gaming, it’s easy to forget that prehistoric Activision fought for the right to develop third-party games on the Atari 2600 — a battle that it eventually won in court.

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Activision’s victory essentially made it possible for third-party game designers to ply their trade on home game consoles.

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Activision’s drive for justice wasn’t exclusively about being paid its deserved royalties, either. During the 2600 era, Atari had a nasty habit of not crediting its game developers (or even letting developers bring attention to themselves, which convinced Adventure developer Warren Robinett to bury his name in the game, possibly creating the first digital Easter Egg). When Activision won the right to make its own games for the 2600 in 1982, credit was no longer a problem.

Activision’s victory essentially made it possible for third-party game designers to ply their trade on home game consoles. The court case marked such a momentous change in the industry that we can’t help asking, “Gosh, what if Activision hadn’t won that lawsuit?”

It’s a little like asking, “What if that meteor hadn’t slammed into the dinosaurs?” We can’t lay down any hard facts (except one: our species has been cheated out of being born with a mouthful of troodon fangs, and some deity should answer for it), but here’s something to consider. If Activision had lost that lawsuit, we’d probably still have a healthy games industry, albeit one that would boast even more of the smaller independent stuff that we’ve only recently seen surge in popularity thanks to the recent introduction of digital marketplaces.


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The Inevitable Crash and Burn

Most of us know a fact or two about the Video Game Crash of 1983. We also tend to regard the event as an utter video game apocalypse that was single-handedly averted by Nintendo, but that’s not completely true. Even back then, the industry wasn’t a single wire that simply burned hot and then popped. There were multiple ways to play electronic games, and the rise of affordable home computers, including the Commodore 64 and Apple II, was one of the reasons for the home console market’s decline. In other words, while the 2600 withered and died on store shelves in the United States, computer games thrived.

Unlike Atari, which slammed its hand over the 2600 and barked “NO” at prospective game developers, home computers provided a friendly environment for people to make their own programs and games. It’s a good bet that most of today’s developers have fond memories of making simple games with BASIC, and if said developers were competent enough to make something worth playing back then, they probably copied the game and distributed it to friends. The game market for home computers was huge at the time, but quite laid-back.

The market for the Atari 2600, however, was anything but laid back. When Activision won the right to put its own games on the system, some of the best entries in the 2600′s library followed. Unfortunately, so did a glut of indigestible titles, including the likes of Purina’s Chase the Chuck Wagon and Kool-Aid Man (dog food and Kool-Aid — yummy). These shoddy games combined with a handful of dumb decisions by Atari to turn the 2600 into a nuclear wasteland by ’84.


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American Famicom?

Here’s where the threads of fate begin to drift apart, and we start digging in our closet for our crystal ball. Even if third parties had been disallowed to make 2600 games, the console still would have wound up crushed at the bottom of a landfill: Atari had a bad habit of doing bone-headed things such as expecting big licenses and familiar names to sell half-baked titles like Pac-Man and (crosses self furiously) E.T.

But given that third parties weren’t on hand to ruin the 2600, Nintendo might not have seen a reason to control the distribution of software on the Famicom/NES as tightly as it did. Without Nintendo‘s somewhat draconian development laws (and licensing fees) to stymie them, independent game developers might have eventually started to tinker with the NES — If Nintendo had even released the Famicom outside of Japan at all.

Thus, small garage-based studios would work on console and computer games side-by-side. Would this brave new digital world have produced a lot of garbage? Absolutely. The Commodore 64′s software library had games without number, and a lot of them stunk. The difference is that some game developers truly went the distance, pushed the platform’s capabilities, and distributed the games freely or at a low cost, whereas the 2600′s third-party developers would copy a code, make a few aesthetic changes, and sell the mess for full price at retail.

Similarly, the NES might have been adopted by game developers that respected the system and wanted to push it to its limits, or maybe it would have been buried under a heap of slag. Either way, Nintendo’s stellar first-party titles would have been enough to carry the NES through a deluge of poor third-party software.


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There and Back Again

So let’s lean back and consider this brave new gaming world, this fantasy land where Activision never lay down any bricks for third party console developers. It’s a marketplace that’s brimming with independent developers (some good, some awful) that are bringing their visions to life on computers and consoles alike — though more frequently on computer, as development and distribution is cheaper. It’s rather untamed, but highly imaginative, and big-budget projects never gained much of a handhold because the availability of cheap, indie titles means the industry as big and profit-driven as what we’re used to.

In a way, this alternate industry resembles the transformation that gaming is currently undergoing in this universe: consoles sharing space with indie studios that are bringing cheap, innovative games to cost-effective downloadable platforms.

It seems like everything comes full circle, given a little time. The tail-eating ouroboros is a good visual representation for the games industry — and in some circumstances, it makes for a pretty kick-ass mid-stage boss as well.

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Nadia Oxford

1UP freelancer Nadia Oxford grew up under the Activision rainbow with Atari 2600 games like Enduro, Frostbite, and Dolphin.

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Once upon a time, Activision fought a mighty court battle for the right to publish games on the Atari 2600. It won, and third-party development began on the system with a mighty crash, in more ways than one. But is there an alternate universe next door where Activision lost the lawsuit, and third-party development never took hold on game consoles? What’s it like? Once you visit, you may find that it’s not as alien as you initially expected.

What If Square Never Left Nintendo?

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or RPG fans of the early 1990s, Square practically had their own branch on the Nintendo family tree. This held especially true on the Super NES, where Square came into its own with Final Fantasy IV and VI, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, and wealth of Japan-only releases that loomed just out of reach for Americans. By the end of 1995, the union seemed solid. Nintendo’s long-awaited Nintendo 64 system was on its way, and would be home to Square’s next Final Fantasy.

There seemed no reason to worry until the spring of 1996, when those same RPG fans opened game magazines and learned that Final Fantasy VII wouldn’t release in the form of a Nintendo 64 cartridge. It was now headed for the Sony PlayStation, as with every other game Square planned to make for the latest generation of consoles. By the end of the year, Square sewed up a publishing agreement with Sony, and their first PlayStation release, the fighter Tobal No. 1, sat on store shelves. It came as quite a surprise to players who’d effectively grown up with RPGs on Nintendo systems.

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Final Fantasy VII didn’t just amount to a critical PlayStation success; it was also instrumental in establishing the Japanese RPG in North America’s mainstream game industry.

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“It’s like Square cheated on Nintendo with Sony behind its back!” wrote one particularly shattered fan in the letters page of GameFan Magazine’s January 1997 issue.

Final Fantasy VII didn’t just amount to a critical PlayStation success; it was also instrumental in establishing the Japanese RPG in North America’s mainstream game industry. Sony advertised the game heavily, and it drew in PlayStation owners who perhaps didn’t even known what “Role Playing Game” really meant. Square and other game companies followed this up with a steady tide of RPGs on the PlayStation, and localized more and more of them for Western audiences. Final Fantasy VII remains Square’s biggest property to this day, and not a week goes by without someone clamoring for a glitzy modern remake of the game.

Had Square stuck with Nintendo, though, things would’ve been quite different. And not just for one game.

Final Fantasy VII

Rumors of corporate disputes arose after Square and Nintendo parted, but the real cause of their falling-out was the Nintendo 64 itself. While the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation adopted CDs as a storage medium, the Nintendo stood by the cartridge format, which offered less memory and demanded higher manufacturing costs. It clashed with Square’s vision for Final Fantasy VII, which employed extensive pre-rendered backgrounds and frequent video cutscenes. Both features drove the game’s memory well past the 64 megabytes that the largest Nintendo 64 cartridge would have afforded; even a proposed Nintendo 64 disk drive attachment fell short (and didn’t even arrive until 1999). The game needed a CD-based system, and Square opted for the PlayStation.


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Square was hardly the only developer to shun Nintendo’s new console and its storage capabilities. Capcom, Namco, and numerous other developers across the globe were unimpressed with the system’s cartridge commitment. In a September 1996 interview with GameFan Magazine, Naughty Dog’s Jason Rubin likened each of the leading consoles to rockets: “The Nintendo 64 has the biggest engine. It can do the most graphically?But the N64 has a small tank. Very small. A sixteen-meg cartridge is less than two-point-five percent the size of a CD. The 64DD is only ten percent the size of a CD. So we believe that Nintendo 64 software will burn the brightest, but burn very shortly.”

If Square had made Final Fantasy VII for the Nintendo 64, it would not have been the same game that the PlayStation saw. In place of the rendered backgrounds and video clips, there would be a graphics engine that required less memory?and that would mean a game made with extensive polygons or 2-D sprites. Neither would satisfy Square’s plans for the game. Sprites would appear dated, lacking the technological leap that players and the gaming press expected from Nintendo’s newest system. A Final Fantasy VII with entirely polygonal environments would fit the bill, though the Nintendo 64′s 3D visual prowess often came up short on detail. The simplistically designed characters themselves might not suffer so much, but Final Fantasy VII also calls for a diverse array of environments, from the dilapidated underground of the city of Midgar to a pseudo-Japanese village. Most of the finer backgrounds would be lost with the limited storage of the Nintendo 64.


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It’s hard to precisely recreate a Nintendo 64 version of Final Fantasy VII, as the only possible preview of it came from a tech demo that Square crafted for a SIGGRAPH conference in 1995. Often mistaken for a genuine Nintendo 64 project, the demo actually ran on a high-end Silicon Graphics computer, and it merely depicts three Final Fantasy VI characters in battle. While a Nintendo 64 game could never look quite as impressive, the demo is nonetheless a good example of where Square might have taken the game: to a land of big-headed characters, sparsely detailed environment, and cinematically staged polygons.

The approach had its advantages. Aside from eliminating loading times, an all-polygon Final Fantasy VII would dodge the PlayStation version’s incongruous character models. The Final Fantasy VII that we know today uses squat, super-deformed polygon people during general gameplay, while battles and cutscenes depict more realistically proportioned characters. A Nintendo 64 version would likely use the same engine for everything, resulting in a game that looked more coherent, albeit less impressive.

Final Fantasy VII might have changed beyond appearances as well. The game’s storyline spans 40 hours and three CDs of diverse locations, and it’s doubtful that a Nintendo 64 cartridge could hold all of that. That storyline also contains violence, profanity, and sexual innuendo well beyond any of Square’s Super NES efforts, and it all conflicts with the early Nintendo 64 library’s overall tone. By 1997, Nintendo’s stance on violence had softened enough to allow for bloodshed aplenty, but scenes like Final Fantasy VII’s suggestively all-male bathhouse club would be another matter entirely.


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Beyond One Game

Square didn’t ditch Nintendo for a single game, of course. Upon Final Fantasy VII’s first unveiling, series creator (and then Square USA President) Hironobu Sakaguchi stated that the company planned to release 20 PlayStation games by the end of 1997. Square didn’t quite meet that quota, but the company expanded its library past the RPGs that typified its Super NES lineup. Fighting games, racers, shooters, and action-adventure titles joined familiar Square properties like SaGa Frontier and Front Mission 2. Many of these games relied on rendered backgrounds, video cutscenes, lush soundtracks, and other things that didn’t favor Nintendo 64 cartridges.

Had Square confined its games to the Nintendo 64, there would’ve been fewer experiments. Nintendo’s cartridges were more expensive to license and produce than CDs, and the higher price kept them beyond the realm of impulse purchases (in Japan, Final Fantasy VII retailed for half of what the cartridge-based Final Fantasy VI cost). This would impede Square’s new Digicube distribution label, which put the company’s PlayStation games in convenience stores and vending machines. More importantly, a pricier game format made each project more of a risk. Square would shun unfamiliar genres: the Tobal series, Bushido Blade, Einhander, Ehrgeiz, Internal Section, Soukaigi, Cyber Org, Racing Lagoon, and any side project that wasn’t tied to Final Fantasy. Even ambitious RPGs like Xenogears and Vagrant Story might be in jeopardy.

On the Nintendo 64, Square’s catalog would likely fall in line with their Super NES offerings: RPGs, strategy-RPGs, action-RPGs, and the occasional venture outside that favored genre. Yet any games that Square made would at least benefit from the system’s four controller ports. Legend of Mana, an action-RPG limited to two players on the PlayStation, could’ve had a multiplayer experience better than its acclaimed Super NES predecessor, Secret of Mana. Chocobo Racing, a spin-off in the style of Mario Kart, would benefit similarly from letting four players on board.


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The Big Picture

The PlayStation boosted Square more than any Nintendo console had in North America. There, Final Fantasy VII’s initial success had as much to do with Sony’s backing as it did with any brand name. Sony’s TV spots hyped the game’s production values and pre-rendered cutscenes, rarely showing any actual gameplay. Nintendo could’ve pitched the game along the same lines, but a Nintendo 64 take on Final Fantasy VII would’ve lacked the visual punch necessary to entice new players to the fold. And the same would likely go for any other Square games on the Nintendo 64.

“An N64 exclusive Final Fantasy VII would have held Square back,” states Gaijinworks’ Victor Ireland, who localized many an RPG while running Working Designs in the 1990s and early 2000s. “The game itself would have been severely limited by the size of the media. It would have been a radically different experience and had less of a cultural impact than the PlayStation version did.”

Square still mattered more in Japan. Pretty as it was, Final Fantasy VII was merely another feather in the PlayStation’s cap when it came to North American audiences. Even without Square, the system still had Metal Gear Solid, Tekken, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Street Fighter, and other properties that the Nintendo 64 never would. In japan, Square’s allegiance to Nintendo would’ve been a much more drastic advantage, and Sony’s only valid counterattack would be to keep Enix’s Dragon Quest series loyal to the PlayStation.


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History often credits Square with sparking an explosion of RPGs on the PlayStation. After Final Fantasy VII’s success, publishers were more likely to translate RPGs from Japan, whether they were Tales titles or lesser-knowns like Guardian’s Crusade and Thousand Arms. Even THQ, a company rarely interested in RPGs, bought the North American rights to Sony and Shade’s The Granstream Saga.

Yet Square’s influence may be a touch overstated. The U.S. PlayStation hosted RPG successes before Final Fantasy VII arrived; Konami’s Suikoden topped EB Games’ sales charts upon release, and Sony did well with Wild Arms and the oft-derided Beyond the Beyond. The genre had slowly amassed a cult following throughout the Super NES area, and RPG localizations became more and more feasible with the PlayStation’s success.

“The swell of support for the PlayStation and CD media was growing during that time substantially,” Ireland recalls. “Final Fantasy VII missing would have slowed the swell somewhat, possibly cresting a little lower, but it would have grown with or without Square, because other studios and Sony themselves were ramping up their RPG output to meet player demand.”

The Nintendo 64 would have a decent RPG library with Square aboard, but it certainly wouldn’t be the clear winner in that category. With Suikoden, Lunar, Grandia, Star Ocean Second Story, Dragon Quest VII, Valkyrie Profile, and a round of B-list RPGs on the PlayStation, fans of the genre wouldn’t ignore the system?even if they already had a Nintendo 64.


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To The Present Day

Would a muted success on the Nintendo 64 benefit Square in the long run? Final Fantasy’s popularity on the PlayStation doubtless fueled the company’s foray into motion pictures with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Conceived and directed by Sakaguchi, the all-CGI film was an expensive blunder that shut down Square’s Honolulu-based animation studio and led to Sakaguchi resigning. Reeling from the financial blow, Square later agreed to a 2003 merger with Enix. On the other hand, working on the Nintendo 64 might’ve pushed Square to overcompensate even more when it came to pricey film ventures.

If Nintendo 64 owners were stung by Square’s defection, they had other diversions. Despite a lack of third-party support, the Nintendo 64 survived most efficiently on familiar Nintendo brands, and it enjoyed a long, profitable lifespan. Still, it never had any real answer to the PlayStation’s big-budget Square RPGs. Late-stage releases like Paper Mario and Ogre Battle 64 were enjoyable, but they weren’t quite the same as a Final Fantasy.

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Todd Ciolek

Contributor Todd Ciolek was sad that the Nintendo 64 went without Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, but at least it had Paladin’s Quest 64, Legend of the Ghost Lion 64, and Super Bubsy RPG.”

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If history were changed and Square stayed at Nintendo’s side, it might not matter so much here and now. After spending a generation apart from Nintendo, Square returned in 2003 with various Final Fantasy games for the GameCube and GameBoy Advance. Had they never left, perhaps there’d be less gushing over Final Fantasy VII today. Perhaps there’d be no Einhander or Vagrant Story for hardcore fans to champion. Yet in the grand workings of the game industry, Square and Nintendo?s split didn’t last for that long.

What If Steam Hadn’t Recovered From Its Shaky Launch?

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hen Steam first appeared in 2002, its success was far from a sure thing. Bugs and network problems outnumbered the available games on Valve’s digital distribution platform by a wide margin. Users who disliked having to launch an extra application before playing their games doubted the necessity of the program itself. It took years for Steam’s library to grow, for Valve to smooth over the rough spots, and for the public to embrace the concept of digital distribution. Today, Steam is synonymous with PC gaming, putting Valve in a unique position from which they can influence the industry in a number of ways.

What if the initial stumble had resulted in a full-on faceplant? How far would the ripples of that failure have spread? I don’t claim to know exactly how things would have played out differently, but a lifetime of regret and PC gaming — which occasionally go hand in hand — has sharpened my hindsight enough to make a few educated guesses.


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I’ll Buy That For A Dollar

Through regular experimentation with sales, Valve discovered that temporarily reducing game prices by 25%, 50%, and 75% reliably increased revenue at an exponential rate. The upshot: Dramatically chopping a game’s price benefits everyone.

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The entire landscape of digital distribution, from its adoption rate to its impact on the PC as a platform, would have been completely different.

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For creators, this not only leads to an influx of money in the short term, but it puts games in the hands of more people. That larger pool of players translates to word-of-mouth sales and more potential customers in the future. For gamers, it means getting far more value for every dollar spent. Lower prices also make it easier to take chances on more games, which leads to the discovery of new experiences.

While $60 has become the standard retail price for most console games, PC releases have generally managed to stay at or below $50. There are several factors at play, but it’s hard to imagine that Steam’s consistent deals haven’t had an impact on the cost of new games. After all, tacking $10 on to a digital release is difficult to get away with when your audience is accustomed to lower prices and savvy enough to wait for expensive games to go on sale.

Without Steam in its current position, there would be no driving force to bring about these benefits. Other digital distribution services are reluctant to offer similarly deep discounts anywhere near as often – and they’re actually in a position where they have to compete for customers. That’s right, Games For Windows Live, which wakes up every few years to mumble about really taking PC gaming seriously this time, guys, for real before going back to napping, is theoretically attempting to compete with Steam. Even legitimately great services like Good Old Games grumble about Valve’s continued push for lower game prices. It’s not likely that anyone else would have stepped in to implement meaningful sales in quite the same way as Steam. The entire landscape of digital distribution, from its adoption rate to its impact on the PC as a platform, would have been completely different. Perhaps just as importantly, the tastes of PC gamers would likely have been much narrower.


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The Indie Movement

Simply appearing on Steam ensures that a game will reach a ton of eyeballs. Even if a user doesn’t launch the program every day to play games or chat with their friends, they will probably pop in regularly to keep up with sales and check out upcoming releases. This continued level of exposure is great for quirky or forgotten games that might otherwise slide into oblivion, and it makes all the difference in the world for indie games that lack massive advertising budgets.

While there are all sorts of venues for independent games, the developers of The Binding Of Isaac, Jamestown, and Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale attribute much of their success to Steam. Without it, the goofball sandbox that is Garry’s Mod wouldn’t exist as a product. Braid creator Jonathan Blow has been vocal about his positive experiences with Valve, from the lack of restrictions to their genuine desire to accommodate small developers.

Of course, indie games have existed long before Steam. Without it, however, some of the biggest hits from recent years would have turned out be far more moderate. Games For Windows Live and Origin would likely have controlled the lion’s share of the market, after all, and they aren’t exactly known for their wide selection of indie content. In the absence of Steam’s ability to expose a wide audience to smaller games, the indie scene would have had a far steeper climb before attaining its current level of popularity.


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Valve Time

Valve’s eagerness to experiment and their lack of a rigid management structure have been the subject of countless articles and discussions, striking outsiders as something between Willy Wonka‘s chocolate factory and an eerily idyllic cult. The studio’s unique approach is made possible by the (approximately) ten gazillion dollars generated every day by Steam. Without that stability, their development process would almost certainly have changed, forcing them to work on fewer simultaneous projects with a smaller staff.

Who knows if a tighter, leaner Valve would have even been able to put out Portal or Left 4 Dead? Given the level of collaboration that goes on within the studio, if those games had been released they would have turned out very differently. Maybe not “no portals in Portal, and giraffes instead of zombies in Left 4 Dead” different, but different nonetheless.

Let’s assume that Team Fortress 2, which had been in the works since the late 90s, would have somehow been exactly the same at launch. Without Steam in place to serve as a backend and promotional tool, the TF2 hat phenomenon would never have caught on. Sure, buying and trading hats is a silly feature, but it extended the life of that game and made a tremendous impact on legitimizing the concept of free-to-play games.

For better or worse, the existence of Steam made it easier for the Half-Life series to branch off into an episodic format. The resulting games were snapshots of Valve’s progress as a developer, each installment refining existing ideas and introducing new concepts. Unfortunately, the wait between each release turned the idea of episodes into something of a joke, leading some people to wish that Valve had simply moved from Half-Life 2 directly to Half-Life 3. Without Steam, it’s possible that their wish might have come true.

While there’s no way to tell how that would have impacted the Half-Life story, one thing is certain: You would not have had the option to purchase a hat for Gordon until Half-Life 4 at the earliest.

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Dennis Farrell

Dennis Farrell buys $5 games because they are on sale, and rarely plays them. Using a small fraction of the money he has spent, Valve commissioned a golden statue of his gullible face to rest in their office’s Laughter Room.

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Steam was able to overcome its troubled beginnings by introducing new publishers, establishing regular sales, and attaching the service to games like Half-Life 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Today it is widely considered to be PC gaming’s go-to storefront, game library, and friend list. With over 40 million active accounts, Steam is nearly as large as Gabe Newell’s knife collection.

What If Star Wars Had Been a Flop in 1977?

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magine that Star Wars had been a flop at the box office. Maybe George Lucas was allowed to release his original edit, or maybe word just never got out. Regardless, while it’s not a disaster on par with Heaven’s Gate–which brought down a whole studio–it’s still pretty bad. It might survive as a cult film, and possibly even merit a reboot, but its influence is gone.

Now imagine the failure of Star Wars as one gigantic shock wave running through the video game industry. Genres, studios, even basics concepts vanish as it goes along. Now you see that, while the industry would (obviously) still exist without Star Wars, it would be very different indeed.

Immediate Consequences

As the shockwave commences, every Star Wars game that you’ve ever played disappears. True, that means no more Star Wars Kinect, but it also means that the excellent X-wing series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Jedi Knight are gone as well. You can also kiss the wonderful 1980s vector graphics arcade goodbye, along with all of its myriad ports (including the unlockable version in Rogue Squadron 3; which, now that you mention it, is gone as well).

Basically, we’ve been playing Star Wars games since the dawn of the medium. The franchise’s roots extend back at least as far as the Empire Strikes Back arcade game, which was released the same year as the movie, and continues through the Atari 2600, NES, and many more major consoles to follow. Even the 32X had Star Wars–one of the only good games available for the peripheral.


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In total, there are at least 80 Star Wars games, not counting their myriad expansion packs. That’s nowhere near the truly monstrous number of Gundam games on the market today–well more than 200 by last count–but it’s still a pretty imposing number. And while licensed Star Wars games have traditionally piggybacked on established genres (Dark Forces, Galactic Battlegrounds), some have had a marked impact. Think of LEGO Star Wars, which provided the impetus for an entire series of LEGO-based games. Or Knights of the Old Republic, which kicked off BioWare’s long march toward becoming a console developer.

There’s also the issue of LucasArts, which most definitely would not have existed without George Lucas and Lucasfilm. As most people know, LucasArts made a lot more than Star Wars game in its day; in fact, in some ways, they are more respected for their legacy with adventure games. Without LucasArts, there would be no Monkey Island, and no Grim Fandango either.

However, there would still be a Tim Schafer–he wouldn’t wink out of existence because Star Wars flopped or anything, and a man of his talents probably wouldn’t have any trouble finding work elsewhere (though Atari did famously turn him down). As with everything in this series, what he would ultimately come up with is subject to speculation, but it’s reasonable to assume that it would be in the adventure genre, and that it would be very, very good.


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The Broader Consequences

Star Wars had a huge impact on science fiction when it was released in 1977. The concept of the “space opera” had been around for many years before that, but Star Wars dwarfed them all. In terms of the sheer scale of the adventure, there had never been another science fiction film like it.

The success of Star Wars helped to kickstart two other major science fiction franchises. When plans for a fourth major network collapsed, it helped convince Paramount that a Star Trek film had to happen, whatever the cost. If Star Wars had failed, it’s possible that continued problems on the creative level would have killed The Motion Picture, thus throwing the rest of the franchise into flux. Star Trek games don’t have quite the same legacy as the games based on Star Wars, but at the very least, it may have canceled out shows like Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, taking the likes of Elite Force and Bridge Commander along with it.

Alien is another franchise that potentially owes its existence to George Lucas. The concept had already been sold to 20th Century Fox as “Jaws in Space” by the time Star Wars had come around, but scripting problems had left the studio feeling ambivalent. Dan O’Bannon recalled in The Beast Within: The Making of Alien: “They wanted to follow through on Star Wars, and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was Alien.”


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As it happens, Star Wars was also distributed by 20th Century Fox, meaning they would have felt the effects of a box office disaster more acutely than most. If Alien had ended up being buried, then Aliens would never have happened, and the concept of the “space marine” as we know it would be radically different. At the very least, fewer videogame characters would be yelling, “Game over, man! Game over!” Not that Aliens invented the space marine, but given the pop culture impact of Aliens (we can thank Robert Heinlein for that), but it’s debatable whether the concept would have ended up being as pervasive in gaming as it is today.

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As the shockwave fades away, it becomes obvious that the failure of Star Wars has impacted the very fabric of the industry’s culture.

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And what of space combat simulators? Both Elite and Star Raiders–two of the genre’s progenitors–draw inspiration directly from Star Wars. Elite designers David Braben and Ian Bell also cite Battlestar Galactica, which made it to television in part because Star Wars was so successful.

In general, the image of Luke Skywalker in his X-wing is so ingrained in pop culture that it’s hard not to take some inspiration from Star Wars. That goes for Wing Commander III and its trench run-like finale (complete with exhaust port), and of course, X-wing and TIE Fighter. Space combat simulators aren’t very popular anymore, but thanks to Star Raiders in particular, they certainly have their place in history. Without Star Wars, you can probably kiss an entire genre goodbye.

What it Would Mean for the Industry

As the shockwave fades away, it becomes obvious that the failure of Star Wars has impacted the very fabric of the industry’s culture. Without it, popular science fiction as we know it might have been killed for a generation, and had far less of an impact on gaming as know it today. Given the popularity of everything from Halo (another shooter with much in common with Alien, by the way) to Dead Space, that would be a change that would strike at the very root of the medium itself.


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That being said, Star Wars remains popular today because of the very basic appeal of its ideas. If George Lucas had failed, then surely someone else would have come up with the idea of a lightsaber, because the idea itself is just cool. It’s one of the greatest scandals of this console generation that LucasArts actually failed to make a halfway decent lightsaber game. The Force Unleashed was unpolished, and Lightsaber and Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels were just plain bad. But when LucasArts failed, Grasshopper was there to pick up the slack.

Ultimately, Star Wars didn’t fail. The prequels are a punchline and LucasArts is arguably on the downturn as a studio, but Star Wars games will continue to exercise their share of influence on the video game industry. Right now, legions of small children are consuming the Clone Wars, and will play anything and everything to do with Anakin and Obi-Wan. Some of them will even become game developers themselves, citing Star Wars as a driving influence, and continuing the legacy that now stretches across 35 years of gaming.

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Kat Bailey

Kat Bailey is a Bay Area freelancer. She was once known as one of the top X-wing pilots on Case’s Ladder. She also stalks George Lucas from time to time.

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Star Wars had a massive impact on my gaming habits growing up. Since 1994, I’ve played literally (literally!) thousands of hours of games like TIE Fighter, Jedi Knight, and Rebellion, and it’s hard not to see the connections from those games extending to the rest of the industry. It made me think that if Star Wars were removed from the equation, it would leave a greater hole in the medium than anyone could have guessed. So I set out to explore the ramifications of a Star Wars flop in 1977, and in the process, reconnect a bit with my own history as a gamer.

Mario Vs. King Kong Review: Universal Nintendo’s Downward Spiral Continues

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It wasn’t too long ago that
Sega gave us Sonic the
Hedgehog 4 Episode I, a new 2D
Sonic game that aped the original Genesis games. It wasn’t amazing, but
wasn’t exactly the grand betrayal many made it out to be, either.
Nevertheless, it was defecated on by the gaming public for many reasons
ranging from the valid to the insane. Sega apparently acknowledged the
vitriol and spent a couple of years producing Sonic the
Hedgehog 4 Episode II, redoing
the graphics, adding a couple of new features, and addressing the
myriad of quirks that only added to Sonic 4′s bad reception. The result
is a game that neutralizes virtually all of the bullshit that stood out
in its predecessor, though on the whole, it carries a tradition that
probably still won’t sit well with Sonic purists.

The set-up is about as pure as
can be, though: as usual, Dr. Eggman is up to no good, so Sonic, joined
this time by trusty pal Tails, dashes through a handful of different
worlds to defeat Eggman and Metal Sonic, the sub-antagonist from Sonic
CD. Sega’s earlier insistence that Episode II had anything to do with
Sonic CD was tenuous at best, as it basically begins and ends with the
presence of Metal Sonic, and Episode II’s stages are more a melange of
references to Sonic 2
and 3.
But that was
just marketing, and regardless, those stages look pretty good. Whereas
Episode I had a decidedly plastic pre-rendered look to it, Episode II’s
stages, like the lush Sylvania Castle or the rolling dunes of the Oil
Desert zone, don’t rely on 2D assets and look downright gorgeous at
times instead of looking cheap and pasted-in. In that sense, it’s a
different game for sure.

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Can Aliens: Colonial Marines Free Itself from Prometheus’ Shadow?

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With the runaway success of 2009′s Borderlands, Dallas-based developer Gearbox created a reputation for itself as more than just the studio behind a few Half-Life expansions or WW2 shooters, but one capable of offering its own serious creative output. With the long-in-development Aliens: Colonial Marines finally set for release early next year, Gearbox’s latest trailer is capitalizing on the film franchise’s return to theaters with next month’s prequel-in-all-but-name, Prometheus.

That being said, the Colonial Marines team has some big shoes to fill. Original Alien director Ridley Scott himself has returned to the franchise to helm Prometheus. Scott may well be able to rekindle the same intensity, focus, and vision that helped him launch the series back in 1979 — a vision that inspired later directors such as James “King of the World” Cameron and David Fincher. Furthermore, Gearbox will be competing with a legacy of Alien titles dating back to the early days of 3D shooters on PC — though to their credit, it looks like they’ve been taking notes. With the iconic xenomorphs’ ability to outmaneuver and outnumber their human foes, the creatures are a natural fit for today’s common shooters, particular the popular horde mode that have become de rigueur since Gears of War 2.

The Alien games have often been coupled with another property, particularly its relative, Predator. This has usually taken the form of a three-part split campaign allowing players to control human Marines, alien xenomorphs, and Predators. It’s possible that no single faction offers enough variety for one single species to encompass an entire playthrough, but with Gearbox’s extensive history of creating single-player content the studio may have a few surprises up its sleeve.

Based on this new clip, Gearbox seems to be hitting the mark. It’s asking a lot for a developer to try and match the tone and visual splendor of a Ridley Scott film, but this trailer comes close. It’s clear that they’re trying to communicate that — much as with Prometheus — they can create the same tension that film goers have come to expect on a smaller screen. The only concern that the trailer raises is that it may follow the Call of Duty campaign module a little too closely, with scripted scares and aliens popping out of closets bringing up memories of 2004′s Doom 3. Of course, one of the films most iconic props, the motion detector, is still an amazing tool to keep players on edge and one that will surely be employed in the title, but if it behaves similarly to the flashlight back in id’s 2004 shooter, fans may just end up getting annoyed with it. If no one can hear you scream in space, I’m sure Gearbox hopes that you’ll be screaming a lot come February of next year, the target window for the title’s release.