Hello there. I hope that you're here to roam through the internet, to attempt to soak up as much gaming information and commentary as your brain will allow before you forget how to eat soup or wash.
But there may be another reason, in fact. If you're a PS3 gamer, you might well be here for one very simple reason: you can't actually play your PS3 right now. It's updating. Again.
Gamers new to this generation don't know they're born, with their shiny HD graphics, their particle effects and their universal online capabilities. In my day, we had a cartridge, a dark room and a high score to beat. But one way in which gaming has definitely gone backwards is in its laborious and time-consuming insistence on patching every damn time we turn our console on.
PS3 owners are certainly the most-blighted by this irritating new phenomenon. Barely a day goes by in which I'm not patching the thing or one of the games I want to play. The other day I felt like playing Burnout Paradise - big mistake, even bigger mandatory download. How on Earth Criterion felt they needed to add another 385MB to my hard drive, I'll never know. I backed out of the menu and have been avoiding one of my favourite racers ever since. It's gotten to the point where I have to insert a disc which I haven't played in a while just to check that I don't require an epic, internet-breaking download the next time I actually want to fire it up.
It shouldn't be this way. I should be able to game on my own terms, not be dictated to by a little (well, large) black box about when I install what. And, for the love of all that is holy, games developers need to learn how to release a polished, perfect game from day one, not rely on epically large, hard disk-stuffing updates in order to keep glitches at bay.
What about the (still significant) proportion of HD gamers without readily-available internet access on their console? It's not fair to release your latest run 'n' gun 'n' race 'n' pimp title full of glitches and game-breaking problems and expect the internetless-minority to just put up with it. Two to three years of development producing games which are immediately patched upon release just smacks of a poor attention to detail and a lazy development studio.
That's why I hope that the recent rumours of background patching on PS3 are true. It's about time. Time-poor gamers can't afford to lose even half an hour to install a bunch of 'updates' which, nine times out of ten, are simply security patches built to lock out the active minority trying to tap into the system. If I had all the time back that I'd been waiting for patches, well, I might have found the time to slog through Final Fantasy XIII.
I know, I know. That would have been an equally wasteful use of the time. But it would be on my terms - and that's what Sony needs to realise - a games console is built to provide entertainment for the gamer, on demand. That's why if background patching is no more than a rumour, I implore the Playstation people to make it a reality.
Well, that’s if you believe Mr. Roger Ebert, who argues this very point in a recent blog post;
“One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome... an immersive game without points or rules ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.”
Tosh. Ebert would not be the first to assume that he had the medium of games figured out. Think of some of the stereotypical images of ‘gaming’ which many see as typical of games – sweaty teens turning the air blue, red in the face, pulling the trigger until they black out from malnutrition. Unwashed football fans ripping one other’s personal pride to shreds in Fifa 10. Even happy families playing Wii Sports golf, rosier though the image is, are a far cry from achieving anything ‘artistic’ when they play.
Well, that’s all true. In the same way that much ‘art’ is unfettered nonsense (cross-sections of Sharks, or diamond-encrusted skulls are not art), or many films are less about serious cinematic issues (Harry Brown, Billy Elliot) and more about inane fart jokes and boobs (American Pie, Road Trip), many games are not about serious artistic direction, but simply exist for the purpose of having fun.
This is where Mr.Ebert, I think, is getting confused. Because in the games industry, for every Modern Warfare 2 there is a serious, art-driven title given much less media exposure.
Games can be art despite also serving a purpose. A painting on a canvas is pretty straightforward – some paint, an image and perhaps a subtle dig at society. A film, similarly, can go about creating whatever representations it wants, because all you need to do is watch. A game, as Mr. Ebert quite rightly points out, carries a goal, requires an input. It’s something you can win or lose.
But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be artistic, or that they can’t carry within them a sense of character, of commentary, of inherent beauty. Think about Okami, the criminally-overlooked Zelda-alike which hit PS2 late in its life, and was more recently (excellently...) ported to Wii. The game had a goal; to push through the story, beat enemies and kill bosses. But the execution of that goal, and of individual aims within that game, was nothing short of an artistic masterpiece. At the press of a button, you could call upon a ‘Celestial Brush’, turning the very environment around you into your canvas. Drawing a line across an enemy in ink would do damage, and encircling a dead tree would rejuvenate it, instantly, restoring rich watercolours to its immediate surroundings. Not only did this form a sense of creating art whilst conquering your goals, but the very presentation of each environment was artistic in itself. The graphics were lusciously poured onto a sort of ‘rice paper’ effect, every tree had a hand-drawn look, every enemy seemed to move as if a painting had come to life. Okamiis art.
Heavy Rain is another prime example of a different sort of art. Sony’s hard-hitting, gritty ‘interactive movie’ dealt with serious issues, placed the player in difficult moral dilemmas, and did so whilst maintaining an air of mature realism. Its story-telling was at times clunky, the controls could be chaotic, but as a stab at genuine art, serious narrative and exposition, it showed how far gaming has come.
These are perfect examples of games which can be artistic in spite of the need to ‘win’, or to achieve something. But there are a whole host of games which require no such thing. There are games which outright encourage artistic expression and individuality.
You may not have heard of Korg-10 DS. It’s a ‘game’ which allows the player to create music, a sort of virtual synthesiser inside a DS cartridge. Its bleak black and white presentation, low-fi feel and niche appeal didn’t translate into the hottest sales, but it’s a very versatile tool for music creation. This month, a trio of teens took to the stage in Germany to perform a gig using only their Korgs and DSes.
Similarly, Flipnote Studio, the free DSiWare application, is art. It is actually art. The whole ‘game’ involves drawing a series of slides by hand with the stylus and replaying them to create miniature, amateur movies to upload online. Aardman animations, the studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, have already created several superb Flipnote animations to help publicise the ‘game’.
Ever since Mario Paint on SNES, gamers have been encouraged to get creative. Even today, in the likes of Littlebigplanet, Drawn to Life or the upcoming Modnation Racers, games have allowed people to express themselves.
Whether that expression is by games developers, creating environments which carry the creativity and beauty of a modern masterpiece, creating narratives which ask the player serious questions, or it comes from gamers themselves, constructing their own artistic creations, the truth is that gaming has never been closer to art than it is today.
Failure. It’s not a concept that any company wants to have associated with their products. Just look at the furore surrounding Toyota’s recent accelerator-happy death traps on wheels. Turns out, people like it when their cars stop when they tell them to.
Similarly, people like it when their games consoles work. I was very unhappy, as a young ‘un, when I managed to spill strawberry milk into my Gameboy Colour, promptly and unceremoniously killing it. I was equally unhappy when my PS2 decided it preferred to produce disk read errors rather than operate on top of my booming soundsystem’s basslines.
But those were my fault. The Xbox 360, however, is another matter. The 360 is a better investment in the long term as a doorstop than it is a games console. They simply don’t stop breaking.
This is the part where I’d usually tell you about the mate of my mate’s who’s been through eight 360s in four years (true story). But there’s no need. Because as it turns out, the recent results of a survey of gamers by No Fuss Reviews.com has resulted in some shocking evidence.
Of the 500,000 surveyed, the number of Wii owners that needed a repair is an impressive ‘less than 1%”. For PS3 players, that number jumps to a worrying 8% (that’s 800 people in every 10,000 consoles – far too many). But the 360? A staggering 42%. That’s almost half of all 360 owners. For ‘3 repairs or more’, the number is still an unbelievable 39%.
39%!? So, over a third of Xbox 360 buyers will need to have their console repaired three times or more? It's not even five years old yet. Compare that to the PS3’s 2% or the Wii’s 0% and the figure seems inexcusable.
These kind of failure rates are simply unfathomably huge. When you consider that the 360 has sold nearly 40 million, it must be considered that a shade over 16 million of those will break. That’s a lot of unhappy customers.
Surely, then, the Xbox 360 is the Toyota of the games industry – except Microsoft haven’t reacted to try and rectify the situation, haven’t apologised and, er, haven’t even fixed it yet, as new 360s still seem to die as easily as the old models did. Great.
Obviously, I’m not having a go at anyone who did buy a 360 – and there are a lot of people out there, more than the PS3 – but you have to wonder whether those customers would have stumped up a bit more cash for Sony’s offering if they knew about the appalling failure rates of Microsoft’s console. It’s a great console because of its wealth of excellent exclusives – Halo, Forza and Gears of War, to name just a few – and its frankly brilliant online service and achievement system. But technically speaking, it’s not a great console. It’s a dreadful, rushed, noisy, ugly beige box prone to random death at any moment, made viable as a purchase only for the efforts of Microsoft and other developers in furnishing the console with a ton of games and features at an affordable price. If the fragile Xbox had to get by with PS3’s early range of games and online services, it would be long dead.
People should not have to put up with it, though. Sony’s system has caught up in most regards, and excels in some others (Hello, Uncharted 2). Microsoft should be made to pay the price for rushing an untested system to market knowing they’d just have to fix them all later.
I love gaming, and that’s why I can’t love Microsoft. Go and make a console that I can actually game on, consistently, and I'll buy it instantly. But I can't accept the inherent faults built into half of all Xboxes, and other gamers shouldn't have to, either.
Well, it looks like there's a lot more Warfare on the way. Activision today let slip that Modern Warfare 3 is in development (like they weren't going to make one after MW2 sold more than 15,000,000 copies in just a few months).
The bad news? It was let slip as part of official court filings by two ex-Infinity Ward employees (the Modern Warfare developers). Not only was the split between Activision and these key IW members very acrimonious, it seems unlikely that the top talent will return to the series any time soon.
So, let's get this straight: some of the top devs have left the series, they're making lots of spin-offs (hello, World at War and the upcoming COD: Spec Ops) and the series is going to continue because it's making lots of money. Get ready, because Call of Duty is about to go the way of Guitar Hero.
Below is Sony's official response, hot off the press, to the criticism of PS3's new-found Linuxlessness (see the blog post below). I have, though, amended it with a few, er, additions:
"We are sorry if users of Linux or other operating systems are disappointed by our decision to issue a firmware upgrade which when installed disables this operating system feature. [We're sorry that people can get money off us for disabling Linux, we didn't realise that was possible]. We have made the decision to protect the integrity of the console [our wallets] and whilst mindful of the impact on Linux or other operating system users [both of them] we nevertheless felt it would be in the best interests of the majority of users [our wallets] to pursue this course of action.
As you will be aware we have upgraded and enhanced functionality and features of the console by numerous firmware upgrades [*cough Home cough*] over time and this is a very rare instance where a feature will be disabled. Further enhancements are in the pipeline [Yes! Even more Sackboy outfits!].
Users do have the choice whether to install the firmware upgrade [as long as they don't mind not using PSN or playing online] and this is clearly explained to them at the time the firmware upgrade is made available for installation [it's buried deep within several pages of tiny text which no-one reads]. Furthermore our terms and conditions clearly state that we have the right to revise the PS3's settings and features in order to prevent access to unauthorised or pirated content [We're Sony, you're a common peasant: tough]."
If you didn't understand what this is all about, read the next post. Ultimately, though, this is a very big mess that's only going to end badly for all of us. Fun, though (unlike Linux, or indeed, Home).
Notice anything new about your PS3 the last time you updated it? Probably not. In all likeliness, you watched a long download process, followed by an install bar, when all you really wanted to do was play Modern Theft Hero 6.
Well, those of you who had Linux, the freeware operating system, running on your PS3 will have noticed that it, er, doesn’t work.
That’s old news now, though. Literally tens of people were outraged at this turn of events, obviously, the rampant popularity of PS3-Linux systems being what they are. Almost every Playstation owner has, at some point, thanked the gods of gaming that their console of choice can run an obscure OS with a large amount of effort and a lot of hassle.
Well, maybe not. But every PS3 owner certainly should be interested. After all, they might be entitled to a free refund.
The news surfaced this week that Amazon, the internet shopping giant, gave a European PS3-purchasing customer a 20% refund to make up for the lack of a Linux-install option on the console. Legally, they argued, the customer had a right to a refund or substitute (in this instance: cash) because Sony broke EU law, as the console no longer operated completely as advertised. They didn’t ask for the PS3 back, just gave them £84. And this was a 60GB PS3 owner – not exactly a fresh buyer.
This has massive repercussions for Sony, obviously. I severely doubt that Amazon are going to hand out cash reimbursements without asking the games company for a cheque in return, or that they would do so if it wasn’t completely legally necessary.
This is obviously a huge problem for Sony at a time when the PS3 is beginning to regain momentum. Personally, though, I think it’s ridiculous.
The Linux install option was a very, very underused feature. That isn’t the reason – if even one gamer enjoys a console’s feature, then removing it shouldn’t be done unless absolutely necessary. I love being able to move the PS logo from horizontal to vertical, for example – but even if I’m the only one, I don’t want to see it go.
The thing is though, the removal of the OS is actually necessary. The reason Sony removed Linux is because a cocky forum-dweller somewhere on the depths of the internet (read: in his bedroom) brazenly revealed that he had circumvented the PS3’s beefy piracy restrictions.
I’m not some fascist, fat-cat-loving money man (hello, New Labour), but sometimes, the actions of big business can be justified.
Piracy is massive because it’s so easy. I download things that in reality, I should probably pay for. You probably have. It’s everywhere. I don’t judge these people, nor the many many individuals whom I’ve met playing on DS R4 cards. If the option is there, it’s hard to resist. If I could download a Ferrari, despite the fact that it’s sort of hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars/Hungarian forints' worth of theft, I’d do it.
But this is different. Outrightly attempting to break a console’s security for the sake of free games is a bit wrong, and was only going to end up with one result: the loss of the feature forever.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, and really, both Sony and the pirate are at fault in some way, but the bottom line is that anyone who does want Linux on the PS3 can’t have it, Sony might have to destroy its profit margins to reimburse Amazon customers (and maybe more), and we still can’t play pirated games. If this situation really does get out of hand, we might not even get legal Playstation games any more. The losses for Sony – a company not exactly flush with revenue at the moment – could be devastating. Lose-lose-lose.
Maybe after the dust of this new scandal settles, the next bedroom console-cracker might think twice before attempting to break some console security. And in a roundabout way, that would benefit us all – the developers who make those games that pirates steal, the publishers who depend on them, and the hacks like myself who write about the industry.
For now, though, go claim your £84 refund if you’re an EU Amazon PS3 customer. After all, no-one can resist free stuff, can they?
That's why I hope that the recent rumours of background patching on PS3 are true. It's about time. Time-poor gamers can't afford to lose even half an hour to install a bunch of 'updates' which, nine times out of ten, are simply security patches built to lock out the active minority trying to tap into the system. If I had all the time back that I'd been waiting for patches, well, I might have found the time to slog through Final Fantasy XIII.
