The Gamer's Quarter - Issue #6 - TextFiles.com

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92 If you should choose to offer none to the brick-andmortar game stores and larger electronic retailers, I really don’t think they would put up too much of an argument, seeing as how they have traditionally made a very low profit per system sold. Furthermore, the actual cost of building a system might be paid off completely with some sales. No auction would go for less than $500 or $600 ever, especially if you allow for no preorders, even through your own website. Why offer a preorder to little Timmy Gamerstein for $600 when his parents might pay twice that? And so what if they don’t? There are millions of other parents standing behind them, hovering over their computers waiting for a chance to bid on their children’s happiness; millions of technophiles wanting a less-costly Blu-ray movie player; millions of PSP owners looking for the shiny new fix. The benefits, mentioned and unmentioned, would greatly outweigh the cost for creating such a site and informing the public. Such a bold and radical plan would fetch a few interviews in magazines both videogame related and unrelated. An online-only approach would be both revolutionary and very progressive. The Sony image would become faster, sleeker, and even more powerful. Newspaper ads, internet ads, and movie ads should already be in the budget, right? Use these to inform and educate how the public should plan on getting a PS3 this fall. Sadly, I cannot say I don’t see any objections to the whole matter. Not everyone has internet access or credit The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #6 cards. But they really aren’t the “target PS3 audience,” in my opinion – they aren’t the people who would pay $500 or $600 and have HD televisions. Some might say this would raise the price of the system out of anyone’s reach. But if that were true, then who’s winning the auctions? Also, there is a slight possibility of some parties winning PS3s at lower prices and selling them on eBay when the demand was greater, making the PS3 in to something like a videogame bond. However, if the website and sales are successful and go off without any problems, the dependable and trusted Sony will still get more per system auction instead of “Games4Less56” on eBay. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to strike while the iron is hot. Holidays, new Playstation system, Internet auctions – these come together to create the perfect storm of consumer frenzy. Wasting this opportunity on the hundreds of thousands of systems coming out could mean hundreds of millions of dollars lost. If 250 thousand systems were sold at $500 and 250 thousand systems sold at $600 (averaging $550 per system), the total would be $275 million. If 100 thousand systems were respectively sold at $650, $700, $800, $900 and $1000, the total would be $400 million. That’s a difference of $125 million US dollars, well worth the financial investment of the website. Finally, Sony, I’ll take this quick moment to openly admit that I’m only guessing these really low estimates and assuming 500 thousand systems for the launch. You have the real market analysts, databases and resources to prove me sort of right or completely wrong. ��
Article A Brief or Note on Pacing Section in Title Videogames The Soul of Wit By J. R. Freeman Maybe you’ve heard the argument before: “I spent fifty bucks on this? It didn’t even last more than ten hours!” We often see the popular argument that most discerning gamers expect a certain amount of game for their dollar—or bang for their buck, if you will. Oftentimes in these discussions, the issue of videogame length pops up. “How long is too long?” and “what is the ideal length for a game?” are frequent questions. However, discussing the length of a game ignores the greater issue. The issue being that it’s not how long a game is, but how well it’s paced. Any sort of entertainment, not just videogames, relies on good pacing. For books and movies, it’s how well the story is paced; for videogames (since they often don’t rely that heavily on the story element), it’s a bit more nebulous. Story-heavy games need to have enough interesting characters, plot twists, etc., to keep things from feeling too stale too soon. It’s why RPGs like Dragon Quest VIII don’t need to rely so much on the gameplay aspect; they’re showing us new things happening constantly on a regular basis. While Dragon Quest VIII itself might not have anything new at all to offer us in terms of gameplay, it is one of the most well-paced RPGs you’ll find simply because the story is told and revealed at a tight, steady clip without too much room left open for distraction. However, like I said, story isn’t everything with videogames. In the beginning, videogames didn’t even have stories. At best, they had a brief plot synopsis. Most of them were level-based too, divided up into short playable chunks, which made it easier to play to a certain point and then stop. Good gameplay pacing involves showing us new things constantly to keep our interest, either by slowly giving us access to better power-ups and abilities as in Metroid or by giving us a constant sense of progression via new environments with harder and harder enemy types, like we see most recently in God of War (a game that has excellent pacing, the sense that you’re always moving and seeing and doing new things). Now, there is often a divide between the story aspects of a game and the actual gameplay. This is the case for most games, but occasionally the two manage to team up for just the right combination. The Metal Gear Solid series, for instance, manages to have a story that is as fun to follow as the actual gameplay surrounding it. Ideally, all videogames would have the right amount of both (particularly without removing the player from gameplay via a cutscene, but that’s a discussion I’ll leave for another day), but this isn’t an ideal world, and we have to pick and choose our battles. It’s left up to the player to decide: Am I playing this game to see how the story plays out, or am I just trying to blow stuff up and have a good time? When the issue of “did I get my money’s worth with this game?” comes up, I see that the discussion is often dominated by game length, or options of how much content is available to the player (either through new levels, widgets to collect, minigames, powerups, etc.), which isn’t the same as pacing. Good pacing can happen in a long game as well as a short game. In fact, it’s the matter of pacing that decides how well we like a game, more often than not. Chrono Trigger isn’t the perfect length, it just has really good pacing. Those hours fly by when you’re having fun, don’t they? There is no perfect game length, only perfect game pacing. How often we see and do new things in the course of our playtime determines how well it is paced. Well-paced games give us a sense of constant discovery and progression; while badly paced games make us feel bored. A number of things contribute to good and bad pacing, but a prime example is the environment, the actual space we play in. So, pacing in the videogame sense means how often or not often we find ourselves seeing and doing new things in the game space, which ties into our sense of progression through the game as a whole. For example, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is a tightly designed action/ adventure game that takes an average player around seven or eight hours to beat. It doesn’t feel too short or too long because the sections of fighting are balanced enough with the sections of platforming that we don’t notice the length of the game until after it’s over and we look up at the clock on our dressers and computer desks. Halo 2, on the other hand, has poor pacing; at what feels like the halfway point of the game, it is over and the credits are rolling. Whether this was an intentional move on Bungie’s part or not is beside the point, because the ending came out of nowhere and was unexpected. And yet Halo 2 is slightly longer than Prince of Persia, despite it feeling much shorter to the average person playing. Pacing can make or break even the greatest games out there. (I’ve mentioned game length here a bit, but only to distinguish it from pacing. Length in a game is merely the amount of time it takes to beat it. As I 94 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #6 A Brief Note on Pacing in Videogames 95
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