This weekend, Rockstar is offering you the chance to earn not just double XP for playing Red Dead Redemption/Undead Nightmare, but TRIPLE the experience.
According to a post on their official Twitter account, Rockstar is set to offer three times the XP received when playing online in their popular open world Western. The offer begins on Friday, August 12 and ends the following Sunday, August 14.
Are you ready to get the posse back together for another rampant weekend through the wild west?
Publishers still don’t get it. On Aug. 2, Warner Bros. announced the release date for Lord of the Rings: War in the North: Nov. 1. You know, the same day that Uncharted 3 and Sonic Generations release, and the same month that promises huge titles like Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Saints Row The Third, Halo CE Anniversary Edition, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and a little indie game titled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. What the hell was Warner Bros. thinking when they decided to make Nov. 1 the release date? Come to think of it, why are all those games releasing in the same month for to begin with?
Normally, I like to write thoughtful editorials and reviews and save my ranting for YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, but I feel these words must be committed to something more substantial. Again. My very first blog post—ever—argued that publishers should do a better job of spreading out releases of big titles throughout the entire year. After all, gamers play games all year, and they have grown up, so they don’t have to rely on Santa for all their games. Plus, it’s just common sense. I understand that time of year yields the most sales, so everyone wants a piece of that pie, but logic says the more slices of pie, the smaller the slices get. Maybe a small slice of November pie is still bigger than half of a July pie, but for smaller games, the November pie can ensure certain failure. You’re better off getting a bigger slice of a smaller pie. Small games drown in the sea of blockbuster titles like Call of Duty. It seems so obvious—to everybody—that we shouldn’t have to still be talking about game releases being concentrated in the fall. But here we are, with Warner Bros. deciding it’s a good idea to sentence War in the North to certain death.
To be fair, publishers have shown some progress on this issue since I first wrote about it in 2008, and since gamers in general have been lamenting the lack of a year-round release schedule since the dawn of the medium. There is now a healthy amount of big, quality titles released between January and the end of May. This year, gamers got to enjoy LittleBigPlanet 2, Dead Space 2, Killzone 3, Bulletstorm, Portal 2, L.A. Noire, and more during those months. Mass Effect has found its niche in this period; Mass Effect 2 released in Jan. 2010, and the third entry in the series will release next March. Rockstar, in particular, has planted a flag in spring and exploited it to its advantage, releasing titles like Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, and L.A. Noire to huge success. All of these titles are Game of the Year contenders in any month of their respective release years, but despite the proven track record of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Rockstar was smart enough not to pit it against the likes of Call of Duty. The quality of Rockstar’s games can’t be denied, but their brand of daring, narrative-driven, mature period pieces has slightly more limited appeal than a brainless shooter. So they release their titles during spring, in which they make a big splash and continue to sell throughout the year. And their titles are still on shelves in November, and they still get a piece of that pie, long after they’re already certified successes.
But there is still that dead spot—that drought—that starts in early June and completely dries up in July. EA’s NCAA Football remains the largest oasis in that desert. A few small titles fill the drought and—surprise, surprise—find success beyond their publishers’ wildest dreams. Niche title Catherine released only a week or two ago, and it’s already Atlus’ biggest success ever. Gamers are thirsty for a game in July, and they’ll take a chance on anything. Kids are out of school, and trust me, they’re not all playing baseball and swimming and riding their bikes. They have more free time than ever, and they want to play games. So they trade in games and buy COD map packs or used copies of big games that released earlier in the year. And when they buy those used copies of older titles, you know how much of the pie publishers get? That’s right, nothing. Summer is still a huge, gaping opportunity for publishers, and they’ve yet to fill that big, hungry hole.
Which brings me back to Lord of the Rings: War in the North. As far as I know, the release date was never officially announced, but major retailers had it listed for Aug. 23, a much better time frame than November. It didn’t look too hot, but I was excited for the game, not because I’m a Lord of the Rings fan, but because it’s being developed by Snowblind Studios (Champions of Norrath), and it looked like a fun mix of dungeon crawler and the hack-n-slash LOTR games from last generation. My love of dungeon crawlers is well-documented, and while it’s not a pure dungeon crawler because it doesn’t have that top-down perspective, it seems to have retained the basics of the genre—loot, leveling, and co-op. I had it preordered and paid off; I was just counting the days until Aug. 23. Now, I’m not so sure.
You see, while I love the genre, there are simply way too many sexier games releasing in November, not to mention October. I just won’t have the time and money for it, not when I’m investing hundreds of hours and dollars in games like Saints Row and Skyrim. Yes, I already have it paid off, but I can put that money toward Sonic Generations, and still have some left over to help pay off Skyrim. Others will do the same, because smart consumers know War in the North will fail hard in November. It was only going to appeal to a niche audience to begin with, people who like Lord of the Rings and dungeon crawlers, and those people will probably still prefer Skyrim (or something) in November more than either of those enticing factors. Even if not, they know their money is better spent on the big titles, because War in the North will fail, and it will be selling for $40 or less by the time New Years rolls around. And hey, at the point, there will be used copies floating around. At that point, the publishers can suck it, instead of asking me to munch on their pie.
For the longest time I’ve been convinced that video games haven’t achieved great storytelling like other mediums such as film or books, but now I’m not so sure. I know lots of people who love stories in games, but honestly, I often find video game narratives hard to follow or not worth the effort. I’ve always blamed the creators for not investing enough in story. At the same time, I never thought it mattered, so I didn’t invest much either. I play games primarily for gameplay. When I want to experience a great story, I still turn to books and movies, and I’m starting to think it’s not the developers’ fault. Maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe video game aren’t meant to tell great stories.
There are numerous flaws with my old argument, the largest of which is I think video game developers do invest in story. They seem to genuinely care about their characters and the worlds they build around them, as do many of their fans. Furthermore, the industry has grown up and clearly wants interactive entertainment to be the dominant medium of all entertainment. Games now have Hollywood-sized budgets complete with complex, story-driven scripts, sometimes penned by famous screenwriters. In fact, just recently I’ve actually complained that story often seems to take relevance over gameplay these days, sometimes negatively impacting the core “game” experience.
The other major problem with my old argument is there are games out there that have come very close to achieving great storytelling, if not always great stories. I just finished Alan Wake, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so engrossed in a video game’s story. It’s clearly inspired by many horror greats spanning all mediums (especially Stephen King, whom it references multiple times), and it has a strong sense of character and setting. The storytelling is also compelling and makes it easy to stay engaged; its episodic narrative borrows from television and recaps what has happened in previous levels, catching the player up if they’ve taken a break. I cared about what was happening, and I continued to play to find out what would happen next. And with the episode recaps, it was easier to stay focused.
Other recent examples include Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto IV, Fallout New Vegas, and Mass Effect 2, to name a few; all of these games have stories that are entertaining, although just short of the quality in other mediums. None of them have captured my imagination quite like Alan Wake, which is probably the closest I’ve come to caring about a video game story as much as I would in a film. None (including Alan Wake) are quite there yet, but they’re close enough to be taken seriously.
However, I don’t think video games have quite figured out how to strike a balance between story and gameplay; that is the hurdle the industry must overcome if it ever wants me to look forward to stories in games as much as I do in other mediums. Games with the best storytelling often feature gameplay that is secondary to the experience. As much as I loved Alan Wake, the actual gameplay amounts to wandering around, shooting stuff, and solving the simplest of puzzles. It’s survival horror lite, and if the story wasn’t so compelling, I don’t know if I would have kept going. The gameplay actually gets a bit tedious and repetitive, and it feels like it gets in the way of the story a bit near the end. The ultimate illustration of this dilemma is Heavy Rain, which can barely qualifies as a game. It’s an interactive story more than anything else, with walking and quick-time events being the closest it ever comes to gameplay.
Speaking of Heavy Rain, it’s an interesting example that both shatters my old argument and simultaneously supports it. The storytelling is great (except for the terrible voiceover work), and on par with a movie, but the story itself has holes the size of the Grand Canyon. And if it were made into a movie, I’m not sure how much I would enjoy it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum you have games with great stories that get lost in the gameplay. Stories largely depend on pacing, and in video games the story’s pacing will always be interrupted by gameplay. For the past decade, Rockstar’s studios have been at the forefront of video game narrative with games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, but their titles are still large, expansive games first and foremost. It’s hard to sustain a narrative throughout 25-35 hours of gameplay.
I always start off extremely interested in the story of Rockstar’s games, but I find it hard to stay focused after dozens of similar missions, subplots, and tangential missions that have nothing to do with the main story. I get lost. Maybe if their games were shorter they would strike the perfect balance between story and gameplay. Rockstar shaved roughly 10 hours off their typical game length with Red Dead Redemption—with positive results—but there was still fat, and I still got lost and eventually bored. Maybe Rockstar will find the magic formula with L.A. Noire, but I suspect storytelling will outweigh the game’s mechanics and fun factor. (It’s still one of my most anticipated games of the year.)
I have the same problem with RPGs, which is kind of funny, considering RPGs are largely about story. They are so long and filled with so many characters and side missions that I’m often lost in their narratives. I have a confession to make: I love the Mass Effect games, but I don’t really know what’s going on in the overarching story. I connect much more with individual missions, especially the loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2, and they rarely intersect with the main story (from what I can tell). Same goes for shooter series like Halo and Gears of War, although that’s mostly because I don’t care about the stories in those games. Strangely, I follow the plots in the Fallout games, but I’m not sure what they’re doing differently, if anything. Now that I think about it, I also love the gameplay in Fallout, so maybe that series has found the perfect balance between story and gameplay.
And maybe it’s just my problem. Like I’ve noted, many people love stories in video games and seem to have no problem with them. Still, I’m convinced the video game medium doesn’t naturally lend itself to narrative. The core experience of video games is about action and interactivity, neither of which comprises the core of story. As the industry tries to deliver cinematic, story-driven experiences in our games, it often feels like they are trying to shove a foot into a shoe that doesn’t fit. Story and gameplay feel like two opposing forces to me, and one or the other always seems to win in the end. Then again, there is a growing list of games that nearly strike the perfect balance. Maybe it’s just a matter of artists developing a medium that is still very young instead of artists trying to transform a medium into something it’s not.
All I know is if stories are going to be part of games, they ought to be good, which brings me back to my original argument. Stories in games need to equal those in books and movies, and they need to be matched with equally compelling gameplay if interactive entertainment is going to thrive as a narrative medium. What do you think?
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