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A Modest Proposal for Gaming

by Sean Malstrom

For Preventing the Casualization of the Industry and Destruction of its Artistic Merits

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great industry, when they see the game shops crowded with members of the female sex, followed by children and grandparents, all wearing a color that is not black or sporting a rock band logo, purchasing a game. These mothers, instead of looking at the game shelves as a nuisance, a foreign element, or as a waste of time, are actually stopping and peering into the window as they look for games they want to enjoy. Their children, following behind, also stop and joyfully point. One girl cries out she wants a particular game. The mother shakes her head and, soothingly, says that she needs to pick a game the entire family can enjoy (of this, the mother includes herself). They pick out a title that fits this from many that are there, and then they leave as the children skip awaiting the anticipation and surprise from a new game.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of new gamers from the touch screens, or on the motion controls, or at the software of the DS, and frequently of the Wii, is in the present deplorable state of gaming is a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making all these new gamers, coined as casuals by this industry, sound, useful members for gaming, would deserve so well of the industry to have his statue set up for a preserver of the medium.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the casuals to create some value for the game industry; it is of much greater extent to separate and isolate the casuals, as one used to isolate homes centuries ago to prevent the spread of a plague, for the greater good of securing artistic integrity and games of the sublime.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.



On Saving Our Trade Show

The first step is to save E3. In 2006 and prior, E3 was being polluted by non-professional game journalists, e.g. bloggers who were only gumming up the works of professional game journalists, i.e. those who write for the industry instead of those who the bloggers appeal to (only customers). These mouth breathers, while filling up the growing by leaps and bounds E3, ended up delaying the game journalists from making his rounds and meetings. Worse, these mouth breathers ended up providing an outside view of the show and games that is not controlled by the professionals. In other words, if they saw a game that sucked, they could say it actually sucked. A professional game journalist would say the game is looking fantastic to keep the relationship with the publisher. Unprofessional game journalists, who actually buy their own games and do not rely on relationships, would be saying what is, actually is, and this would undoubtedly embarrass the real game journalists. Many of these smaller guys were stealing precious eyes away from the big sites toward their garage made sites. If a developer, on the floor, remarked a quip about the game, the professional game journalist would ignore it because the quip wasnt on the record. The unprofessional game journalist would, alas, report it, and place it on the Internet for all to see.

With the ever expanding E3, costs were going up and large publishers who were responsible for the bill, such as EA, were not seeing any benefit. The mouth breathers werent going gaga over the newest version of Madden (instead, they were going gaga over the dreadful Wii). Happily, E3 was restructured to keep costs down and to keep those unprofessional game journalists out. Now, people wildly exclaim that E3 has now been saved. Yet, this is not enough. The casual stink still threatens to plague all gaming unless these measures are made.

I have been assured by a very knowing historian of my acquaintance that undesirable people, as these casual gamers are said to be, are to be segregated into a confined world where they may only do things with the permission of the desirables. The games of the so-called casuals, as well as the casuals themselves, should be mocked, ridiculed, laughed at, and, in general, separated from regular and wholesome gaming.

Allow me to become more specific. At the next E3, all casual games should be banished, and pretty much everything to do with the DS and Wii since E3 should be only about good games and not this casual trash. While it would be more appropriate to kick out casual games altogether, so that they would have to have their own E3, the universe does not afford us perfect solutions. We must assume that we will have to accommodate these dreadful casual games and the casual audience at our E3.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the entire E3 show, the priority, in all things, should go to proper gaming among with the proper gamers. On the buses that go back and forth from E3, only the proper gamers should be able to sit at the front while the casual gamers should be confined to sitting in the back. Of the restrooms, the cleaner and closer ones to the activity should obviously be reserved for proper gamers, the dirtier, smaller, and ones away from the activities should be designed as casual restrooms for our inferior gamers. Water fountains, too, ought to be separated from real gamers and other water fountains made for casual gamers. Of among all proper games, the casual gamers should not be allowed to get anywhere near. They must not be permitted to play proper games for they would be taking time away from real gamers who need to play them. As for the casual games, only with those should the casual gamers be allowed to line up. However, if a proper gamer should appear and desire to play, he or she must promptly be moved ahead of the line in front of the casualized gamers. After all, the time for the proper gamer is short and should not be wasted being behind casual gamers in a line. The priority, in all things, should go to proper gaming.



On Saving Our Game Journalism

Miyamoto recently advised game journalists to update their formula of game reviews (of graphics, of sound, of gameplay, of replayability, and so on) to include measuring how easy it is for new players to get into the game. Since Miyamoto has become The Betrayer by embracing the Ways of the Casual, his advice should be followed but not in the way he expected.

The easier a game is to learn by new gamers, that indicates a high level of casual stink about it. Therefore, the game should be docked points. By how much? At least by 10%.

If the game appears on the Wii or DS, which we know are casual systems for the riff raff, the game should be docked by at least 20% of the review score. Better would be to ignore that the game exists in the first place! As we all know, there are no real games on the Wii or DS so it makes sense not to review the software that comes out.

Happily, many game journalists have already implemented the above suggestions. It would be in the best interest of the industry to implement more measures to protect game journalism from the casual disease. I shall make them below.

The casual games really arent games, are they? Therefore, why should we punish game journalists for having to play them? In fact, the DS and Wii are not really game machines either since they play such monstrous software. My bold suggestion is quite simple: Remove Wii and DS from gaming websites. This would greatly add to the segregation of the casuals. When a real and proper game does appear on the DS or Wii (which is very rare and occurs maybe once or twice every two years), only that game should be reviewed neglecting the rest of the library. At the end of the review should be a disclaimer that says: Keep in mind that this game is one of the kind and is not an example of the console library. We suggest the reader rent the console, or in Japan, buy a used one and sell the console upon immediately finishing the game. We must do all we can to isolate the casual plague so it is best we recommend measures that do not add to the install base of such wicked consoles.

When hiring new game journalists, ask only this question, So which game console guy are you, PlayStation or Xbox? (since, as we know, those are the only real game consoles). If they say something like, Wii, you can automatically assume they are lame, not a true gamer, probably suck at playing games, and should remove that person from any consideration. It is crucial that we protect the purity of gaming within our game journalists.



On Saving Our Industry

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the industry for tightening its belts, but we must ensure that developers do not become perverted by wandering out of the industry and into the expanded market zoo. Greater segregation will ensure we save true gaming.

Sales charts must be remade. Here is an example of the old sales charts of this is June 2009 NPD:

Sales of Game Consoles:

The new sales charts should be listed as follows:

Sales of Game Consoles:

• Xbox 360 - 240,600

• PS3 - 164,700

• PSP - 163,500

• PS2 - 152,700

As you can see, the Xbox 360 is the clear sales leader.

Sales of Non-Game Consoles:

• NDS - 766,500

• Wii - 361,700

In the Non-Games section, these consoles sit all alone. But they are not true game consoles as shown above.

Further, the software sales charts should be segmented from real games and non-games.

This is what the old software sales chart looks like:

Best Selling Game Software June NPD

1. Prototype (X360) / Activision Blizzard / 419,900

2. UFC 2009 Undisputed (X360) / THQ / 338,300

3. EA Sports Active (Wii) / EA / 289,100

4. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii) / EA / 272,400

5. Wii Fit w/ Balance Board (Wii) / Nintendo / 271,600

6. Fight Night Round 4 (360) / EA / 260,800

7. Fight Night Round 4 (PS3) / EA / 210,300

8. Mario Kart Wii with Wheel (Wii) / Nintendo / 202,100

9. Red Faction: Guerrilla (X360) / THQ / 199,400

10. Infamous (PS3) / SCEA / 192,700

11. Ghostbusters: The Video Game (X360) / Atari

12. UFC 2009: Undisputed (PS3) / THQ

13. Prototype (PS3) / Activision / 179,200

14. Pokemon Platinum (DS) / Nintendo

15. Punch-Out!! (Wii) / Nintendo

16. Wii Play with Remote (Wii) / Nintendo

17. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (X360) / EA

18. Mario Kart DS (DS) / Nintendo

19. The Legendary Starfy (DS) / Nintendo

20. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) / Nintendo

This is what the new game software sales chart should look like:

Best Selling Game Software June NPD

1. Prototype (X360) / Activision Blizzard / 419,900

2. UFC 2009 Undisputed (X360) / THQ / 338,300

3. Fight Night Round 4 (360) / EA / 260,800

4. Fight Night Round 4 (PS3) / EA / 210,300

5. Red Faction: Guerrilla (X360) / THQ / 199,400

6. Infamous (PS3) / SCEA / 192,700

7. Ghostbusters: The Video Game (X360) / Atari

8. UFC 2009: Undisputed (PS3) / THQ

9. Prototype (PS3) / Activision / 179,200

10. Pokemon Platinum (DS) / Nintendo

11. Punch-Out!! (Wii) / Nintendo

12. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (X360) / EA

Best Selling Non-Game Software June NPD

1. EA Sports Active (Wii) / EA / 289,100

2. Wii Play with Remote (Wii) / Nintendo

3. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii) / EA / 272,400

4. Wii Fit w/ Balance Board (Wii) / Nintendo / 271,600

5. Mario Kart Wii with Wheel (Wii) / Nintendo / 202,100

From the new list, we discover that the only games on the DS are just some Pokemon and the only real game on the Wii is just Punch-Out. As you can plainly see, Next Generation games dominate the real games sales chart.

On the non-game sales chart, we find the same titles like fitness games or games with games with waggle in them like Mario Kart Wii or Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 for Wii.

Further, we must acknowledge that sales of casual games are not equal to the sales of real games. Casual game sales should only be a portion of a real game sale. How much? Let us be generous and say a casual game should consist of 3/5 of a sale a real game obtains. Therefore, if we look at the sales numbers of June NPD of games like Infamous and Mario Kart Wii, the old numbers would be:

Infamous (PS3) / SCEA / 192,700
Mario Kart Wii with Wheel (Wii) / Nintendo / 202,100

You would think Mario Kart Wii is the better game as it has additional sales. But au contraire, once the New Generation games are filtered with the 3/5ths rule, the true reality of the sales situation appears:

• Infamous (PS3) / SCEA / 192,700
• Mario Kart Wii with Wheel (Wii) / Nintendo / 121,260

The true sales as shown above now raise the question as to why Mario Kart Wii with Wheel is so underperforming? The only correct answer is that Nintendo should have stuck with the hardcore games this generation.



A Walled Garden

As to our industry of gaming, walls need to be raised in order to protect the artistic merits of gaming; although I rather recommend that we create as many walls as possible to keep out new gamers who might contaminate our precious art. I would much prefer this than to buying all the non-games ourselves, slice them to pieces hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs, and fill them in a landfill next to E.T. game cartridges (for we all know this is their destiny anyway, let us get a head start). This, alas, does not present to be a possible option so we must go with the walls.

It will be said that creating walls to gaming to prevent new people from getting inside our walled garden is akin to a railroad deliberately breaking the tracks to create a negative railroad, i.e. a negative industry. These are just propagandists who slobber over business and do not care about our wonderful artistic concerns. The more walls there are to gaming, the better gaming shall become!

A very worthy person, a true lover of gaming, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said that many gentlemen of this industry, having of late destroyed their vision, he conceived that the want of art might well be supplied in a wall that philosophically rivals the Great Wall of China to be a Great Wall of Gaming that protects gaming from Mongol gamers who are hording outside the gates. Other industries would be in awe and envy of our Great Wall of Gaming and would desire to enact such walls for their own industries in order to preserve the artistic purity from corruption from outside filth.

The Great Wall of Gaming would consist on several parts; parts of which I am happy to report are already being implemented within the Game Industry. The first is to make the controller as intimidating as possible. More buttons and sticks should be added immediately. The use of headphones and a microphone, like a telephone operator, scares the heck out of new gamers who will never consider wearing headgear in order play a video game. Instead of free online gaming as is done with PC gaming, we shall enforce a subscription to make sure the wrong type of people dont go online. Then, we must have constant hateful, angry, and spewing voices on our online chat to make sure Grandma doesnt start playing online. The Great Wall of Gaming would further be reinforced by increasing prices across the board by twenty percent. To make sure only true players play the game, and the game doesnt get any viral people, all multiplayer games should be online only. Local multiplayer should never be implemented except in games full of violence and rage like Gears of War. And speaking of violence, games must be so violent as to make Mortal Kombat look like it was made for kindergarten. Long, bloated, tutorials and cutscenes should be added to every game to make sure new users don't crawl in. Tutorials test the patience of people and most new gamers will give up. Furthermore, game developers should be able to embrace their artistic vision regardless of the costs, and game companies should blow up the budget in order to keep these visionary games coming. After all, the Games Industry was designed for game developers to have fun, not customers.

The details for the Great Wall of Gaming continue: Gamers of young lads and maidens, not exceeding eighteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every market being now ready to do anything in their desire to make games will, of want of work and service, dedicate their free time willingly and with no price. This work should be harvested, not unlike a planter does his flowers, into generating content for our games for no charge at all. Some might say this is polluting the artistic integrity by having all this user generated content appear alongside our professional content. But if we harvest all these young people's energy, they will never learn to make smaller games on their own which would ultimately be disrupting to our grand projects in the future. Leveraging customers for our own interests, instead of them leveraging us, clearly is the right strategy. If new customers are going to threaten to destroy the art of gaming, we might as well leverage them to make content (and who knows what else) for us to line our pocketbooks.


On the PR of Gaming Segregation

But in order to justify segregating gaming from new users, to keep our artistic gaming pure and noble, I confess that we will face obstacles in our mission. People will wonder why we are attacking these new gamers who, admittedly, are doing nothing wrong just as animals, admittedly, also do nothing wrong. Therefore, we must present them as something other than normal, something subnormal.

This is what the Expanded Market looks like: >

What is wrong here? Why are they holding hands, on a beach, staring at a sunset? Wouldnt they rather be inside, alone, in the dark, playing games and drinking soda? The nerve of these people!

Here is another image of the Expanded Market:



Already, she is laughing and cackling at the true gamers. Note that glass of wine. She believes herself to be so superior to everyone! And what could she possibly be up to with that disruptive Asus laptop? I bet she is already plotting to overthrow our hardcore gaming on that little computer.

Instead of seeing the Expanded Market as they really are, as illustrated above, we should proclaim it just marketing and then talk among ourselves about how mysterious these new gamers are. Journalists will sit at round tables and shrug in bafflement about who these Expanded Market gamers are, what moves them, and why are they here (of course, the journalists could walk outside and ask them, but this would defeat the purpose).

So mysterious, yet powerful, are the Expanded Audience, instead of being portrayed in the above images, they should be portrayed as this:

or this:

 

The new gamers might as well be space aliens. By the way how we will talk about them, as mysterious beings who suddenly appear when no analyst expects them to, they are given the behavior of alien martians.

Separate But Equal

It is clear that in order to save the purity of gaming, we must segregate the casuals away from real gamers.

But in order to justify, the esteemed analyst, Rus McLaughlin, whose writing is so insightful that you must read *beyond* his articles, he confessed that an expedient was put into his head by the secret hardcore spirit, a native ghost that inhabits all gaming, who came from to us from the NES and beyond over twenty years ago, and in an article revealed that casuals do not buy many games and that Nintendo needs to get back to the hardcore. While the casual gamer is plump with money, the manner on which they spend on gaming is like a prime dainty. Therefore, the casual gamers should not be abandoned due to the plump profits they bring in. No, they should be served as well. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump wallets of casuals in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at a game store and E3 to get gaming fineries which they never will entirely play, the industry would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of casuals, who are aged, young, or female, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the industry of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are at every play waggling and touching by motion controls and touchscreen, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young casuals, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot work for they are children, and consequently pine away for want of yet even more games, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally seen to come into money, they have not strength or discipline to hold it; and thus the industry and gaming are happily delivered the money meticulously saved by the child to be given a crappy license game.

I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject that the only way to save the artistic purity of gaming is to segregate it. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance. As enlightened thinker Rus McLaughlin said, "Casual games for casual gamers. Serious games for serious gamers. It's our turn now." It worked in history over fifty years ago, and it will work today for casuals and hardcore: separate but equal.

"I like that Nintendo tries to straddle the line on occasion, but the Wii can support two separate-but-equal customer streams."

-Rus McLaughlin, "The Next Wii Revolution" , IGN

 

The future of gaming!