On Halo, WoW
Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Bungie's Halo are both tremendously popular games. However, despite their (extreme) commercial success, both have met with some resistance from the more traditional gaming community.
However, I see this as hypocritical. Halo has broadened the consumer base for video games, and should be appluaded for that. Further, the game is fun, playable, and has contributed to the future of gaming design. While we praise Nintendo's Wii for bringing new gamers, how can we simultaneously bemoan the growth created by Halo (and its sequel(s)). Just because Halo brought the annoying high school jocks to gaming, and not your best bud down at the comic shop and not your little 8-year-old cousin and not her middle-aged mother, doesn't mean it's a bad game. Can we just back up from the "it's not as good as its sales numbers suggest" track and admit that it's pretty damn good?
Pros: Innovative grenade combat, easy-to-use multiplayer, accessible controls and gameplay, fun.
Cons: You're forced to interact with the type of people whom your hatred of got you into gaming in the first place. [epic sentence maneuver]
WoW has a similar problem. Players love it, the press loves it, and record numbers of Earthians love it. However, traditional gamers look down on it. They say the game is addictive, perhaps purposefully, and turns normal people into the undead (whether or not they chose that in-game race). I say it's a damn good game that has defined the way every other future MMO will be designed.
Pros: Depth of content, near perfect group combat, variety of play styles, accessibility.
Cons: Too accessible, purposefully labryinth-like depth of content with Vegas-like incentives to keep playing.
I think if you distance yourself from the emotional reaction these two games elicit, it is difficult to argue that they are not very well-designed games, and should be lauded as such.
Or maybe I've just played a lot of both, and I'm just talking emotionally.
5 comments:
I don't think anyone can deny that either of these are well-made games, but I don't believe that the resistance is hypocritical.
Was Halo really that revolutionary? No. A couple of new features whose merits are debatable (grenades good, regenerating health bad in my opinion) that have been adopted wholesale by the genre due to its sales. When it was released for computers, did anyone really care? No. PC gamers had been playing better FPSes for many years.
Another thing that gets me is how amazingly generic it is. To me at least, it has no personality, no soul. It does not take many risks that would jeopardize the franchise; it is designed for maximum consumption.
Despite this, is it really that accessible? Hell no. I still can't grasp the control scheme. Every newcomer I have seen play ends up getting frustrated and hating it.
As for the people it brings out, one universal complaint you hear is the number of young children who insult you over Live. Many multiplayer games, but Halo specifically in my experience, bring out the worst in people, turning ordinary gamers into complete jerks. Can I blame the game for that? I'm not sure.
Besides, there is a difference between a market-expanding game and a market expanding console, as well as a difference between making frat boys or your grandparents into gamers. I don't really see how Halo expanded the market anyway, as everyone I know who plays, be them jock or nerd, was a gamer before it came along.
I know I am rag on it a lot but I truly do not understand the success. Halo is a good game with many fine qualities, but it is by no means the be all end all of FPSes its rabid fanbase makes it out to be.
As for WoW, I can't really comment having never played, but that has never stopped me. The MMO genre as a whole does not appeal to me. Maybe it is the inability to do anything by yourself, or the amount of time needed to devote to it, but I wouldn't play one unless it was super awesome. I understand that Blizzard's game has is one of the best out there, combining the greatest elements of all that came before into a relatively accessible, endlessly playable time sink. But there is a reason you stopped, right?
/Long, unfocused comment.
Also, as I mentioned before, I am willing to give Halo 3 a shot. This PA comic, along with some Beta videos, have me hoping third time is the charm.
"While we praise Nintendo's Wii for bringing new gamers, how can we simultaneously bemoan the growth created by Halo (and its sequel(s))."
How is this not a straw-man argument? I've never heard anyone complain about "the growth created by Halo" when they complain about Halo.
"You're forced to interact with the type of people whom your hatred of got you into gaming in the first place. [epic sentence maneuver]"
I don't even know where to begin. Gamers are forged by the hatred of others? Gamers are loath to interact with people simply because those people are different? This sounds like a Thompsonian view of gamers as disturbed sociopaths.
Also, can you really not play Halo without surrendering the power to select who you interact with? I know online play is a big part of it but "forced to interact" just sounds like an overstatement (I have only played Halo a couple of times and only in split-screen multiplayer form).
As for WoW, you ask (as you do with Halo, but I am less certain of what you are referring to in that case) that its critics not rely on their emotional reactions to the game when condemning it. The game does have an unpleasant aura, perhaps traceable to the lethargic demeaner of the players who seem to endlessly carry-out the same simple routines of gameplay for a steep monthly fee. Or maybe it comes from the bragging those players indulge in between grind sessions, gloatingly detailing the awesome power they have aquired as the inevitable result of play time. I think WoW's unpleasant aura comes from these things, which aren't accidents of the player base but obvious consequences of game design. You can't toss aside the unpleasant aura and say, "but why else don't you like it?" That's why we don't like it.
"I say it's a damn good game that has defined the way every other future MMO will be designed."
*cringe* *shudder* I very much hope you are wrong about that. I still think that the concept of massively multiplayer games has more to offer, possibly even something I could really enjoy.
Okay. Lots of action here. First, you guys coulda written a whole new post. The only other thing I'll respond to right now (time constraints) is the last thing that dbrodeur said: look at every MMO since WoW, and tell me the design isn't the exact same. Like dkaufman said of Halo, the game's financial success has led other companies to copy it. However, I believe that those copies are also evidence of the game's good design.
"look at every MMO since WoW, and tell me the design isn't the exact same."
This is evidence that WoW is the template for every new MMO that has been designed. It does not support your claim that, "[WoW] has defined the way every other future MMO will be designed." (emphasis mine).
Also, I didn't say your prediction was inaccurate. I just I said I hoped it was.
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