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Jake

Idle Thumbs 143: This One's Fr4e

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Nintendo isn't going to just "put Mario on the iPhone", because that would be a terrible experience for consumers and devalue their brand.

 

For me, this is really it. Watching the conversation around Nintendo that's happening in other forums has been incredibly frustrating, So common is the mindset that all Nintendo needs to do in order to rake in the profits is lower the cost of their games from $30 to $1, eschewing all of their standards so that they can be a part of a bloated club full of developers who have figured out everything about the platform except how to make any money. Short-minded investors and analysts shout at Nintendo to think of all the billions of dollars they could make by taking a steaming shit all over the IP they've spent years developing, as if an entertainment company that has been an industry leader since the inception of the industry itself has anything to learn from a guy in Seattle that left his job at Boeing so that he could rake in $20,000/year making free-to-play games for iOS.

 

If there was any good news coming out of Nintendo's financial report, it was their announcement of intent to start buying back their stock.

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You guys should do all your livestreams with the Jake painting looking directly behind you, including videos of yourselves opening any future reader gifts.

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For me, this is really it. Watching the conversation around Nintendo that's happening in other forums has been incredibly frustrating, So common is the mindset that all Nintendo needs to do in order to rake in the profits is lower the cost of their games from $30 to $1, eschewing all of their standards so that they can be a part of a bloated club full of developers who have figured out everything about the platform except how to make any money. Short-minded investors and analysts shout at Nintendo to think of all the billions of dollars they could make by taking a steaming shit all over the IP they've spent years developing, as if an entertainment company that has been an industry leader since the inception of the industry itself has anything to learn from a guy in Seattle that left his job at Boeing so that he could rake in $20,000/year making free-to-play games for iOS.

 

If there was any good news coming out of Nintendo's financial report, it was their announcement of intent to start buying back their stock.

 

I seriously don't think price point is that important to quality.  For one, I think it's a drastic assumption that they'd have to make something shitty and cheap.  And also, I don't think high price points have stopped them from dumping shovelware on previous console or handhelds.

 

In my opinion I think Nintendo would make better software if they weren't focused on hardware.  Honestly I don't think they've had a really good hardware idea since the rumble pack on NS4.  The Wii sold well, but it was a total gimmick, and a bunch of first party Wii games had weird tacked on motion waggles that seemed out of place.  Super Mario Galaxy's waggle spin felt like a complete afterthought, as if there was some company standard that it had to be included.

 

All the theoretical cultural disturbance that would come from Nintendo closing down hardware operations aside.  I think if you took the software teams they had right now, and had them pick the platforms they wanted to work on, they'd make better games.  If they took the resources they spend on hardware, and spent them on making or publishing games, I think we'd have more high quality Nintendo games.

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You guys should do all your livestreams with the Jake painting looking directly behind you, including videos of yourselves opening any future reader gifts.

 

I second this motion! That would be great.

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I generally like lore in video games. Good or bad I tend to enjoy it because it makes makes me feel like there is more to the world I am in than what I see based on my interactions.

 

Some people don't like lore and that's fine too.

So I haven't played Banner Saga yet, but I checked out some clips of the early game on Youtube and I think I might understand what they were talking about. In the clip the game seemed to kind of shovel lore at you. A character would say something like "Thanks for killing that ruffian, he's part of a splinter faction that has rivaled mine for years. There was once a tenuous peace between our peoples until Ulfgar the Bedazzeled made off with our youngest prince's betrothed..." etc etc. It doesn't really flow naturally from the characters and feels like reading a wiki article. In a dialogue tree heavy game this seems like the sorts of things you'd let the character inquire about but instead they just front load it. Now this is a completely unfair opinion since it's based on like one conversation I saw, but if that's indicative of the whole game I can see it becoming tiring, and I generally enjoy lore heavy media.

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You guys should do all your livestreams with the Jake painting looking directly behind you, including videos of yourselves opening any future reader gifts.

 

The next gift will be a replica Rodkin piece except with an Australian meat pie for a head.

 

The meat pie is cured and ready to eat.

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I finished listening to the Nintendo convo, so a couple of thoughts:

 

My big problem with people saying that Nintendo should get out of the hardware business, or should release their products on iOS is that they're being very backward looking: they're looking at what's been successful over the past few years and chasing it. But that's almost never the right answer. Nintendo's current core assumption that graphics are "good enough" and the hardware arms race is no longer profitable is a _forward looking_ argument. I think they may have hit it a bit early (the Wii's graphics might have been good-enough for SD, but the HD era surprised them). I think that the relatively lukewarm reception of the PS4 and XBone just proves out Nintendo's assertion that there is a point that there is a point of diminishing returns on hardware spec competition.

 

I'm not saying that Nintendo should double-down on their current strategy. But I think that their predictions are just starting to be borne out, and I think that a reactionary about-face is the absolute worst thing they could do, because they'll have failed in both eras. It's like the old wall street saying: Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.

 

 

re: the Far Cry 2 discussion, I think there's an unspoken barrier here in that people that by and large, the audience that consumes AAA games are unequipped (or unwilling) to explore any potential meaning beyond the surface level of interactivity and entertainment. That is, it wouldn't even occur to them that the game was trying to say something different with it's failure-mechanics, so they assumed the game was just terrible. This was even more true when FC2 was released. This isn't unique to games (most movie-goers aren't equipped or willing to engage with "difficult" film), but it's a worse problem in games because the proportion of the audience that is able to engage games in a critical manner is smaller than that for film.

 

In order to understand what Far Cry 2 was trying to do, you have to be willing and able to step back and say "What is the experience I am having? What are the design decisions that caused me to have that experience? Were those decisions intentional or is it simply a failure of execution?" If you can't answer all of those questions, there's no way that you can see what the game is trying to do, because you aren't aware that a game can _try_ to do anything.

 

I think this is getting somewhat better as the industry and the audiences matures. But, even so, (as an example) it's disheartening how many people look at Dark Souls and their takeaway is "that game is super hard" rather than understanding how it is hard, and the fucking astonishing design work that supports that. "Hard but Fair" isn't an accident, it's the result of meticulous attention to detail. (For instance, people who complain about the multiplayer implementation without understanding that the implementation is part and parcel of the world and mood the game creates.)

 

As you guys mentioned, a sound work that fails to find an audience can be a failure _as an endeavor_, without being a failure are a work in and of itself.

 

Also, Milo is great. make it extra strong, then pour it over ice.

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I do remember a normal person inviting me round specifically with a view of converting me to Far Cry 2, as its efforts to create an authentic environment were endlessly fascinating to him, enhanced by his own experiences as a visitor to the African continent.

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I can hang with lore when it's built by doing, as in the Fallout stuff, because its tangled web is largely constructed by things you've done. It adds up nicely in New Vegas, including references to the original, cancelled F3, but in a way that isn't essential to know.  

 

I think Mass Effect does it pretty well too, though it also has a bit more regular fake history, that i don't really dig into. 

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I do remember a normal person inviting me round specifically with a view of converting me to Far Cry 2, as its efforts to create an authentic environment were endlessly fascinating to him, enhanced by his own experiences as a visitor to the African continent.

I would consider this a "success".

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the discussion of A Link Between World's item renting system made me think of the Dark Souls.

DaS also has an intended path but allows you to poke pretty deeply into later content, typically putting several cash or meat barriers in front of you long before you encounter a locked door. It's also quite punitive when your sequence breaking goes wrong.

I'm certainly not the first to make the Zelda / Dark Souls connection but this makes me wonder if someone has at Nintendo.

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It's the part of the game that resonated and felt substantial to me. In XCOM, the stuff in between battles still feels vital and vibrant. In The Banner Saga, it doesn't so much for me. It feels extraneous. For me it's a matter of execution, not principle.

Sounds like The Banner Saga needs better lore management.

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the discussion of A Link Between World's item renting system made me think of the Dark Souls.

DaS also has an intended path but allows you to poke pretty deeply into later content, typically putting several cash or meat barriers in front of you long before you encounter a locked door. It's also quite punitive when your sequence breaking goes wrong.

I'm certainly not the first to make the Zelda / Dark Souls connection but this makes me wonder if someone has at Nintendo.

 

There's really only one cash barrier but that can be circumvented by being a boss at the game

 

I feel like DS opens later stuff to you if you can grab it, while LBW lets you poke at later stuff if you grind for it. Like in DS it's actually pretty simple to get a great scythe deep in the catacombs at level 1 within 20 minutes or less, you just need to be insanely perceptive.

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Sounds like The Banner Saga needs better lore management.

A Lore Management game.... that's the genre for Crusader Kings right?

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I'm definitely starting to question whether it makes sense for Nintendo to continue making hardware at this point or if they should just focus on making games. The main argument against the notion that they should stop bothering with hardware seems to be that they tailor their games to take advantage of the unique things their hardware has to offer. The argument seems to imply that their hardware is just as important to their games as their games are to their hardware. I'm starting to question whether this is actually true.

 

Before the Wii came out, I would argue that outside of putting a joystick on a controller and introducing the rumble pack, most of their innovations were on the software side of things. It seems to me that the video games they created have always been the primary thing that drew people to Nintendo and their hardware didn't really do anything that much differently than their competitors. Then, around the time the DS and Wii came out, the focus seemed to shift more to implementing various gimmicks and peripheral devices to change the way games were played while the games themselves started to stagnate (with a few exceptions obviously). Since they couldn't really compete graphically I think that made sense at the time but I feel like we've reached a point now where the mentality of "let's change the way we play games" has subsided and people generally just want to use a controller to play a game on a screen like we've been doing for decades. I imagine what people want most is to see a game do something new, not do something new to play a game. The motion controls and second screens are nice but I think it is clear that none of those extraneous things really amounted to anything significant.

 

So I don't really see any compelling reason why they can't offer the same experience or better on a competitor's hardware. I can't think of any Nintendo games that I've played in recent memory that would somehow be lacking if they were made for Xbox or Playstation. Shaking a remote in Mario Galaxy doesn't make it any funner than pressing a button, swinging a remote in Zelda doesn't make it any funner than pressing a button, and having information on a second screen can still be done on competitor's consoles.

 

I'm sure there is a good argument for why it is important that Nintendo keeps making hardware but I don't think I've seen one compelling enough to convince me that they can really only accomplish the things they want on their own hardware. 

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I think that the games industry in general is a better place for having Nintendo in it. Neither Sony nor MS have cultures that really promote the kind of weird thinking that brings us Wiis, or balance boards, etc. They may not always be successful, but we need somebody pushing those boundaries. While 3rd parties like Novint may always exist on the sidelines, you need somebody with enough clout that they can affect the way that the industry in general approaches games. (RedOctane / Harmonix managed to do it from the sidelines, but that was a pretty long shot).

 

I've seen this theory in many places, but Nintendo's emphasis on simple interfaces and same-room multiplayer have the potential to be a video-game version of Hasbro / Parker Bros. board games: family fun, designed not for adults or for kids, but for the entire family unit to enjoy together. Nobody else is really even trying to do that.

 

 

Another little thing that slipped my mind: Chris mentioned that it seemed like Nintendo designed the Wii to eliminate user interface complexity, but then sort of went off on a tangent with things like the balance board. IIRC, when the balance board came out there was an Iwata asks where they talk about the development of the balance board, and how it was originally supposed to just plug into a Wiimote, like a Wii Rock Band guitar controller. That was their vision: one hot-swappable device that does all the have lifting, and everything else just used that as an interface. The problem was that they under-engineered the controller, and to get the balance board to work they actually needed wghat amounted to 2 controllers worth of bandwidth, so they had to scrap the original design, and it became a weird custom interface. In a sense, it can be seen as a scam to sell more plastic (Mario Kart wheel, Wii Sports golf clubs), but it also could have provided a familiar platform for everything to work through. Nintendo really under-engineered the WiiMote badly, they didn't really have enough faith in it and cut costs in a lot of places (the lack of the second accelerometer until the Wii Motion+ being the most obvious example)..

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I started writing this up as an email, but it got too long :(. Jake seemed curious as to the value of the item renting mechanic, so I thought I might chime in as someone who loved it. The mechanic adds a lot of value:

 
First, it introduces a level of tension to the near-death experience. It encourages a planning aspect to the adventure - bring the right items, and try and have something to heal yourself. My favourite part of the game was exploring a hard part of death mountain very early and being terrified of losing my hookshot (I died twice and had to rebuy the hookshot each time). If you die and cannot afford to re-buy your items, you can explore a different area (more on that later).
 
Second, it allows for omnipresent alternate solutions to puzzles. For example, in the dark dungeon, you can use the ice rod to circumvent the primary path to a switch. There is huge value in puzzle solving in feeling you have options instead of unseen directives.
 
Third, once you get to the dark world, it obfuscates puzzle solutions by removing the clear item-to-dungeon link, encouraging you to experiment. I was certain I needed the Pegasus boots for turtle rock (but I didn't).
 
Fourth, it increases your agency over exploration. Unlike in other Zeldas, you can encounter an item gate and immediately go and get that item (or you may have it with you). It simulates the place to place feel of most Zelda games but gives you more ownership over that journey. In fact, it simulates it so well that I think some people underestimate their influence over the path in the back half of the game. As a consequence, like Broken Age, it allows you to make progress in many orthogonal directions, switching between regions and dungeons as progress is impeded due to puzzle difficulty or rupee woes (I left three dungeons in progress at various points). I think most Thumbs readership understands the link between systematization and narrative, and ALBW has a narrative unique among Zeldas because of this slight systematization.
 
I don't think that the mechanic is a clear win for every player. But I loved it, and that's why. I do think that it would have been helped if the purchase option was made available earlier on, but that purchases were also more expensive. It would be nice if you finished the game having only ever had the rupees to purchase half the items. Alternatively, if you earned "tokens" from dungeons that could be exchanged for permanent items, again with a hard cap encompassing less than all items.

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"I just like stuff that's super hard and doesn't care about me" - Sean

 

Boy has Dark Souls got you covered!

 

:D

 

edit: oh it was brought up

 

So, did you guys ever play it more after that livestream?

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So, did you guys ever play it more after that livestream?

That livestream made me so sad. Playing Dark Souls with a person beside you to tell you exactly where to go seems a shame. Of course, to each their own.

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That livestream made me so sad. Playing Dark Souls with a person beside you to tell you exactly where to go seems a shame. Of course, to each their own.

Ugh, I once watched a stream where the player was being guided by someone who told him about the entire Lautrec event. It made me want to throttle him.

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...people generally just want to use a controller to play a game on a screen like we've been doing for decades. I imagine what people want most is to see a game do something new, not do something new to play a game. 

Which is precisely why Nintendo still has a very good reason to keep making hardware-- handheld hardware.  

 

Again, I really do think we ought to at least consider treating Nintendo like a handheld video-games company, in a discussion prompted by a handheld Nintendo video-game.  Maybe we all need to get off the couch and go sit in the back seat of a car for a few hours, before we start wondering if Nintendo should stop making their own hardware and instead just write games that run on Android and iOS.

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Nobody wants Nintendo to make games for mobile! Everyone wants Nintendo to join forces with Sony. Or wait that's just me. I often confuse everyone else with myself. My bad.

 

Okay but for real, though, that'd be my console gaming dream come true. U: I know it won't ever happen, but I will continue to dream about it anyway.

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 I think if you took the software teams they had right now, and had them pick the platforms they wanted to work on, they'd make better games.  If they took the resources they spend on hardware, and spent them on making or publishing games, I think we'd have more high quality Nintendo games.

 

I disagree - Nintendo have never struck me as a company that benefits from a larger budget. They're engineers, not artists, and those resources would be surplus to the requirements of making the next game in a series that sells their hardware. They have a huge warchest - if they wanted to, they could take all their teams and get to work on a AAA game or two.

 

It is much healthier, in the long run, to not have expectations of Nintendo.

 

Before the Wii came out, I would argue that outside of putting a joystick on a controller and introducing the rumble pack, most of their innovations were on the software side of things. It seems to me that the video games they created have always been the primary thing that drew people to Nintendo and their hardware didn't really do anything that much differently than their competitors.

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa, no. Nintendo's engineers were and are geniuses at taking components that didn't seem particularly useful, or seemed close to the end of their life, and breathing new life into them. People tried and failed to copy the Game Boy for years, but no-one managed to make anything that was as cheap, durable, or as conservative with power. The NES and SNES hardware was incredibly clever, making good use of its relatively low-power hardware. And since then, they've had a reputation for reliability that neither Microsoft nor Sony can even touch.

 

From what I can tell, Nintendo's biggest weakness is software - specifically, tools and firmware. It's easy to see this on the consumer side - Nintendo's dashboards aren't great compared to Microsoft or Sony, and apparently making games for Nintendo consoles is still a pain in the ass (they didn't have any kind of API for third-party developers to use Miis on the Wii, for instance.) They're still trying to integrate Nintendo Network into their storefront, like a year after launch?

 

Re: Link Between Worlds: I am surprised Jake's not digging it because I think it's the best Zelda for a while chiefly because it ditches the Zelda formula. Both Zelda and Metroid (and Metroidvanias) run on exploration, and that usually runs on backtracking. What makes backtracking exciting is when you've got an idea in your head of the scope of an area, and you find this little hole that you didn't even realise you could do something with before, and it opens up so much more new stuff that your idea of the scope of the area shifts. Zelda games haven't really done that for a while - part of it is that they've settled on what Hyrule looks like, and part of it is that, over the course of the games, they've settled on what items you get and what obstacles they're best used for. I remember how fatiguing it was to see, just outside the Eastern Palace, somewhere to use the hookshot, the bombs, and the hammer, and knowing I'd have to come back three times to get everything. The game couldn't reveal any hidden areas because I could tell exactly where they were.

 

The Dark World dungeons are particularly interesting because they mostly have their own unique mechanics. Because they don't have to fit themselves around the dungeon item, they have unique puzzles and layouts. I think the traditional Zelda formula can work - go into dungeon, explore until you find the dungeon item that opens everything up - but players shouldn't be able to predict until they're some way into the dungeon what it is they're about to get.

 

The Metroid series mostly gets away scot free because Samus' iconic arsenal is missiles and the morph ball, and if you don't start off with them, you'll get them as upgrades 1 and 2. The rest of her arsenal tends to shift between games, and usually operates very differently between games. The environment is usually different enough that having things work the same everywhere tends to cheapen the fiction, so artists usually come up with unique ways to indicate what weapons work on what, obfuscating your capabilities and allowing the game to surprise the player.

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Nobody wants Nintendo to make games for mobile!

This is just laughably untrue.  If by "mobile" we mean "you carry it around in your pocket," then many, many millions of people do very much want Nintendo to keep making games for mobile, on Nintendo's own hardware platform.  

 

Nobody at all is clamoring for Nintendo to abandon their own mobile platform and instead make games for that platform's two major competitors, Android and iOS, but weirdly this rather significant observation is ignored or instantly forgotten when you share it with the sort of people who keep insisting that Nintendo ought to quit making hardware and just make software for their competitors' platforms instead.

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