ModNation Mindblowing

It's brilliant. Fantastic. Great.

That's all you need to know about Sony's latest Play Create Share title - the LittleBigPlanet of the racing world.

But in case you do want to know more, here you go: It's better. A bold statement - certainly - but it's true. In just a few hours, I've created a couple of genuinely fun-tracks, three karts (with 'Eat My Dust' on my rear bumper) and a bunch of celeb mods. The internet, too, has delivered. No sooner had I checked the servers was my hard drive teeming with pixel-perfect plumbers, bending units and villains (that's Mario, Bender and The Joker). I even found a Monaco F1 track (a free cookie for anyone who can recreate a Wipeout circuit, by the way) - and the game hasn't even hit US shores yet. I can only hope Sony doesn't start deleting the copyright-infringing content, because it would be a huge disservice to the extraordinary level of cartoony realism that can be crammed into every 'Mod'.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rip off Mickey Mouse, build a Bugatti Veyron and maybe, just maybe,  even race.

Sony to give away free games on a premium PSN model

That's right, E3 is coming up. Which also means that the rumour mill has gone into overdrive. Aside from a supposed quad-core, cell-based PSP2 powerhouse portable set for 2011, the other big 'leak' (take it with a grain of salt) is the arrival of a premium PSN at this year's E3.

The rumoured features include a spotify-like music streaming service, which will also play in the background of games and one free PSN game every month for subscribers to the new premium model - free for only £50 per year.

What suprises me here is that people across the internet are already being pulled in by the marketing spin. Ooh ooh! A free game every month! Well it isn't free, is it? You're paying for it in the subscription charge. The beauty of the model - from Sony's point of view - is that you PAY to get 'FREE' stuff. The other extras, like a music streaming service, will cost a little for Sony to set up, but then next to nothing to run in the long term. Similarly, bonuses which we might get (purely speculation here) like giving new features to premium users, or updating premium user's PSN store a day earlier, again would cost nothing to Sony. It's just a gimmick to ensure that Sony can pull you into spending a dedicated amount of money on PSN every year - i.e., to ensure they make money, while pretending that you're really getting stuff for free to pull you in, and your wallet out.

And do you really expect the 'free' games to be top of the line ones? No, they'll be games over a year old and under £5 each when bought normally, anyway.

Don't believe the spin, is all I'm saying, if Sony really do bust out this pay-for-PSN model at E3 alongside the current free service.

Having said that, if Wipeout HD sells a few more copies thanks to giveaways under such a model, I'll be signing up. If you can't beat 'em and all that.

(Thanks to VG247.com for bustin' out this rumour).

Guns don't kill people, violent games do

Have you ever wanted to stab a man? Maybe you’re not a blade sort of fella; perhaps gunning down a group of helpless pedestrians on your nearest pavement just because you can, just to see quite what this murder lark is all about, before you hurtle your Ferrari, new-car smell still lingering, into the nearest wall/river/yawning chasm, is more your thing.

Probably not, though. Most of us would be horrified at the thought of such monstrous, inhuman behaviour. It just wouldn’t be polite, frankly. But more importantly, because we know there are consequences. That man had a wife and kids. He had dreams, ambitions. He was scared of bees. Similarly, that Ferrari took a group of underpaid Italians weeks to watch the automated machines to make, cog by cog. Wrecking it would be like licking the Mona Lisa clean – tragic, inexplicable and pointless.

That’s real life, though. What about in games?

Games are not real. Regardless of what Jack Thompson (that guy who hates GTA), Barack Obama or the BBFC (those stiffs who slap 18 symbols on our games here in the UK, along with PEGI) might have told you, the guy you just ran over on Liberty City’s grimy ‘street’ isn’t real. He didn’t have thoughts, feelings or a family to go home to. In fact, he’s the same guy who was in the gun shop a minute ago – and I swear he just came back from the dead and is now walking around the park without a care. In short, he was a just a bunch of polygons, duplicated ad nauseam. It doesn’t matter that you just checked your tyre pressure on his legs.

But that’s not how the government, angry mothers and the media seem to see it. Games, to these groups, are sick, depraved filth causing our youth to turn into violent yobs, stabbing everyone they meet for kicks because they saw it in Call of Auto 6: Generic Subtitle.

It is, quite simply, ridiculous. As a society, we’ve gone – in just a few hundred years – from ‘children’ marrying at 10, being industrial slaves by 12 and fighting wars by 16, to a bunch of mollycoddled fatties who might be influenced by the ‘horrific’ scenes in the latest shooter – so terrible that they’ll obviously cause an entire generation to run into the streets and overthrow society one pistol round at a time. By that logic, the 1980s should have seen a sudden uprising of sickening turtle stampings, ghost persecution and Italian u-bend menders eyeing apes suspiciously.  Violent games don’t modify children’s behaviour any more than watching darts makes us all fat beer drinkers.

Games are an arena in which we can live out our wildest fantasies; driving obscene race cars, saving the hot girl and shooting the bad guy. But they are also – and this is something that some people will simply never grasp – consequence-free simulations in which we can let our darkest curiosities play out; stealing a cop car, causing a 10-car pile-up and yes, mowing down every Tom, Dick and Harry in the latest ‘sandbox’ city just because.

After all, better that than on a real street; with real people, with real families. We can’t hide away our healthy desires any easier than we can our slightly psychotic thoughts (“let’s see what happens when I minigun that helicopter”), but we can at least have a place that we can explore both sides of our psyche without causing problems.

After all, parents shouldn’t be letting their children play these games anyway. They’re sick, violent, and they’re all mine. The difference is – I’m over 18. I understand where gaming ends and reality begins. Parents need to understand that they have the responsibility to protect their kids until they are old enough to realise, too – whatever age that is in each case.

Now pass me the pad; I’ve got this sick idea.

Background patching for PS3: Rumour or reality?

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.

360 = Going Round in Circles

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.

Just to prove that I'm not biased towards big business...

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).

Why Sony was right to remove 'Other OS' from its PS3

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?

When The Music Stops

Plastic-axe shredders are a fickle bunch, it seems. No sooner than the Guitar Hero franchise exploded into multi-billion dollar sales, churning out titles quicker than Nintendo re-releases portables had the rhythm action genre suddenly died, like an exploding star that fell in on itself.

Harmonix this week announced that Viacom, one of their complex-legal-license-partners for Rock Band, had asked for a refund ofa bit of bonus money they’d handed them. $200 million, if you want the precise figure. The reason? Flat-lining music game sales that had seen RB’s revenues plummet.

This is obviously a problem, not least for the company being asked to repay almost a quarter of a billion dollars that were bonuses – not loans or agreed finance – but for the games industry as a whole. The games economy is too reactionary, throwing money at anything that looks popular then quickly cutting off the cash supply when players have lost interest.

Case in point: ‘casual’ Wii titles. There are literally hundreds of the things. Baby Shopper Party, Family Potato Farmer, Dress My Kitty and such drivel. Not even I'm sure if those are real or I just made them up. It's gotten that bad. So bad, in fact, that last month, Best Buy, a large American department store, announced they’d no longer stock ‘casual’ or ‘mini-game’ titles. The market, it’s clear, has become oversaturated.The games economy simply isn’t set up to take the kind of hits that result from these sudden changes of plans. Activision blew, it’s rumoured, over $100 million on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Luckily, the game shifted ten million copies a second, roughly, but imagine if it hadn’t. Imagine if the games-playing populace had already moved on to the ‘next big thing’? Only a couple of years ago, Halo was the shooter of choice. Stretching back a couple of decades, the likes of Doom and Quake were the top trigger-happy titles.

Times change fast, and every shift only hurts the industry when the big guns and the little guys bet on their game making big bucks and lose. Activision will undoubtedly give Modern Warfare 3 an even bigger budget, and it may well pay off, but if gamers have moved on by 2011, they’ll be in big trouble.

 It looks highly doubtful that Final Fantasy XIII, out next month, will recover the multi-multi-million dollar development costs from the four years it took to make, what with the slightly cold reception it's received from its initial reviews.

The games industry, then, needs to calm down and get better at predicting the tastes of tomorrow rather than aping the top titles of yesterday. Brain Training clones soon saw that market stagnate, and the landslide of shooters we’ll see over the next two years may see the same thing happen to the FPS genre – MAG, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, MW3, New Call of Duty Spinoff, Killzone 3, Spec-Ops: The Line.The list goes on and on. If racing, or action titles (like Uncharted 2 and Assasin’s Creed II) become more popular, for example, all those FPS developers will just be shooting themselves in the foot.

As with the fall in popularity that rhythm action games have suffered, no doubt due to the sheer volume of plastic-banding titles released recently (GH:Metallica, GH: Greatest Hits, GH: World Tour, GH:5,GH: Van Halen, Band Hero, Rock Band: The Beatles...), if the gunfire ceases, it sure won’t be pretty. Games developers need to learn the Guitar Hero lesson before it’s too late.