GamerNode: Eddie Inzauto's Columns

The Games Industry Is Doomed? Not Really.

The chart pictured above has been making its way around the internet over the past few days, and seems to be causing a stir among videogame publications seeking to... cause a stir. The general message from most outlets is the cataclysmic claim that "teh gam3z r doooomed" in light of the current economic climate.

They obviously can't read and interpret charts very well.

When you look at this chart, the first thing you notice is obviously the foreboding downward slope of the data points from month to month, but the most important information here is what these points actually represent. These are not concrete sales figures, but, as listed at the top of the chart, "Y/Y % Change." This little term is a more abstract way of saying that each month's sales data is a comparison to the sales from th...

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Bridging the Gap with Adventure Games

Adventure games are arguably the least demanding of all videogame genres. Requiring minimal manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination, twitch response, and reflexes, they are likely the nearest thing in the videogame world to reading a book or watching a movie (save for MGS4, of course). I wonder then, if now, at the apex of the casual gaming boom, it is this [nearly] once-forgotten genre that will be the key to expanding the core videogame community as much as the fringe.

I feel that the current state of the videogame industry is perfect for a resurgence of the adventure genre, a type of game that hasn't been overly popular since the early days of gaming, and has only recently been anything more than a distant, infrequent blip on the radar. This genre is an important step in the graduation...

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The Significance of Sports Games

There are many types of games, and many types of gamers -- a fact of life that a fair share of the more "hardcore" veteran gaming audience may not be one-hundred percent willing to accept. Over the past few years, in what could be referred to as the Wii Expansion Era of the videogame industry, this simple truth has become more and more evident via a continuous influx of an increasing number of "casual" gaming hobbyists. But this isn't the first time the inhabitants of the gaming world have had to cope with mass immigration, so to speak. Sports gamers, too, were at one time the new kids on the block, but have since transitioned into a position of mainstream gaming acceptance. This maturation, then, begs the question, "what is the significance of sports games to the industry as a whole?"

W...

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Rumble on the Walk: GamerNode at the Street Fighte...

On Thursday, February 19th, hundreds of Street Fighter fans, gamers, and passers-by found their way to the packed courtyard in front of Universal City Walk's GameStop store in Los Angeles, CA to witness and take part in the company's inaugural "Rumble on the Walk" Street Fighter IV tournament, the first of thousands to be held at stores across the country.

In addition to a 64-competitior tournament played on eight Xbox 360 consoles, the final rounds being displayed on a two-story high big-screen display for all to see, the event also included a raffle for multiple prizes -- headbands, autographed copies of SFIV, and an Xbox 360 console -- a costume contest, a "Best Street Fighter Move" competition, and ...

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Top 5 Original Games of 2009

The "Top X Anticipated Games of 20XX" has become an annual requirement for just about everyone in videogame journalism nowadays; this article proves that I am apparently no different in that regard. To be at least somewhat unique, I've decided to split the typical top ten list into two parts this year: sequels and original titles. Moving on from the predictable list of sequels, here is my list of the most anticipated original IPs of the coming year:

Trine is a very interesting puzzle/platform game set in a beautiful 2.5D fantasy world. Players take control of three different characters to overcome obstacles and beat back an army of undead, often manifesting objects out of thin air to solve physics-...

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Top 5 Sequels of 2009

The "Top X Anticipated Games of 20XX" has become an annual requirement for just about everyone in videogame journalism nowadays; this article proves that I am apparently no different in that regard. To be at least somewhat unique, I've decided to split the typical top ten list into two parts this year: sequels and original titles. More predictable and less exciting than original IP, sequels come first in this two-part feature. Behold my most anticipated franchise incrementations of 2009:

This one takes me way back to my childhood, when I, like GN's OLD SKOOL columnist George Brandes, used to run the Street Fighter II machine at the Playland Arcade and hear things like, "OH! Shorty just whipped yo'...

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Getting Copies Right

Today, in what is a veritable legal monsoon season, a law exists regarding just about everything. People are quick to abuse the law of the land for their own purposes, suing over anything, staking claims to this and that, and doing whatever else they can to manipulate things for personal gain. In the videogame world, the focus is more on using laws to keep everyone else's hand off of intellectual property, allowing each and every scrap of content to be used in only the way its creators intended. It's mostly a "look, but don't touch" affair.

It was only a matter of time before the more, well, maybe less creative minds in the LittleBigPlanet community would dip into copyrighted material to re-create or re-imagine some of the finer experiences in gaming. They did just that, alarms rang out ...

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Taking Risks

As the videogame industry marches eternally into the realm of increasingly sophisticated technology, creating videogames that push the envelope and take full advantage of the resources available to developers becomes ever more costly -- a fact of life that developers and publishers never hesitate to point out.

Claims that a game needs to sell at least X-hundred-thousand copies in order to simply break even are common, and complaints about unoriginal game content are often rebutted with evidence that consumers more often than not tend to play it safe and go with what they are familiar with when it comes time to cash out at the register. Whether the average game consumer is indeed the same man, woman, boy, or girl whose passion for the pursuit of gaming excellence drives them to complain abou...

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Silent Hill Scribblings

I'm back with another round of pre-review scribbling, this time for the mildly horrifying Silent Hill: Homecoming. Being a fan of the series, I had a lot to think about while playing and reviewing this game and therefore took many notes during the gameplay process. Here's what I was thinking as I played:

good thing the first save point is called "nightmare" or else i actually would have felt suspense and surprise

ooh, a siren, and f***ed-up-ness. feels like good ol silent hill.

weak/strong/stronger melee attacks. i like choices. still a bit clunky, though. maybe it's just me

the stop-motion of these nurses is cool. lighting is good, too.

i can't tell if this camera is terrible or if it's just my fault for being unskilled with non-inverted vertical controls. in any case, there SHOULD be an opt...

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Too Human Scribblings

I recently played and reviewed Silicon Knights' long-in-development Too Human, and the review process ended up being one of the more laborious examinations in recent memory. A great deal of consideration went into my assessment of the title, and along with that came a fairly large text file of notes about the game.

A la Kyle Stallock (from whom I shamelessly stole this idea), I give you my pre-review scribblings about Too Human. Enjoy.

like a moovie. some of the best direction and cinematography i've seen in a while.

the graphics are not amazing in a technical sense, but the cinematography, artistic direction, and environment design make up for that

miss the whole backstory unless you let the title screen play out. maybe a bad choice

camera shows you what the devs want. crafted experience. wo...

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The Lessons of Braid

Gamers needn't read reviews for the new Xbox Live Arcade game, Braid. This masterpiece is a must-buy, and costs less than a third of the price of most games on the console. It's a no-brainer; start your downloads.

Braid is one example of exactly where videogames should be headed. Like the finest works of literature -- poetry, short stories, novels--the game allows the audience to extract meaning from the collection of artwork, words, and gameplay, interpreting the content in a variety of ways. Though there were certainly very specific topics that designer Jonathan Blow aimed to address with this phenomenal game, each player may come away from it with something slightly different from everyone else -- personalized lessons and meaning.

This game is one about life, love, relationships, identit...

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E3 '08 Day 2

So after a sound sleep of about 4 hours, I was up and at 'em, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Dave and I headed over to the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. Hollywood is a dump, by the way. Not as nice as I imagined it.

The Nintendo Press conference began with a brief check-in, after which hundreds of members of the press were rounded up like livestock in the foyer of the theatre. It was at this point that I was informed that there wasn't a lick of wifi signal in the place. The Live Blog that I had promised you guys was in jeopardy, but I had a plan.

They let us into the theatre, and I prepared my videogame-hardened thumbs for some T9 texting action -- I would live-blog via Twitter, with Kyle transcribing the text onto GamerNode.

As the Nintendo staff members jovially showed off Shaun White Snowboar...

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E3 '08 Day 1

Monday in Los Angeles turned out to be a rather uneventful day for me and the other GN staff here for this year's E3 Media and Business Summit.

Dave picked me up from Lake Forest around 10:40 in the morning to head up to LA, stopping to buy a printer so that we could hand over a hardcopy of our E3 registration confirmations once we got there. The GPS screwed up our directions to the hotel and sent us on a brief detour before directing us to the super-snazzy Comfort Inn City Center Hotel.

We went to grab Brendon from the airport, where good old Alaska Airlines had delivered him on time, with ipod and luggage in tow. I relinquished my front seat position at this point, partly because Brendon is bigger than me and partly because Dave's driving had me sh*tting kittens. I figured the back seat w...

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Second Chances

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that, at one point or another, everyone has wanted a second chance at something. It may have been simple, like a mulligan on the 18th hole of last weekend's golf outing, or it may have been something far more consequential, like another chance with your ex-girlfriend from years ago. In any case, it is usually something irreversible and lost to the past.

But what if we had that second chance? What if we had the power to go back and take another shot whenever we felt we could have done better? Speaking for myself, I know that I would certainly try many things a second, third, and even fourth time -- maybe more.

Now imagine retaining all of the knowledge gained with each subsequent trip through the Wayback machine. Imagine knowing all of the answers ...

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Fear and Hatred

I recently played Atlus's Summon Night: Twin Age for the Nintendo DS, and while it was neither breathtaking nor abysmal, it did manage to ignite a tiny flame inside the dark, cavernous recesses of my mind. It got me thinking about themes common to videogames, movies, literature, and the real world; specifically "tension between races, propagated by fear and manifested in hatred."

Even if we were all some freaky, multi-armed Spore creations, it'd be impossible to count the number of videogames that address this theme on some level. According to my calculations, nearly every RPG since the dawn of time has been an interracial affair, and if not, there have at least been multiple tribes, nations, or townships involved. Without even branching into other genres, instances of interracial tensions...

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Cannon Fodder

Sometimes I can't help but wonder whether or not the entirety of the videogame industry cares about the constant opposition that is presented by the mainstream media and the older, non-progressive population in general. Most of us in the editorial end of the industry find ourselves acting as advocates for those in the developing and publishing end -- we defend the games and the people who make them with our word-shields.

Now I'm not claiming that without the burly strength of myself or the hundreds of other videogame journalists out there that these folks would be utterly defenseless against the evil oppression of the man, because usually those who we are working to protect do a fairly good job of helping themselves, too. That's great.

Unfortunately, certain members of the industry sometimes...

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Game or Watch?

Gamers always have differences of opinion. What makes this industry fun (or maybe nightmarish?) is that the fans are incredibly outspoken and passionate enough to wage wars upon one another over their various points of view.

Although we can be broken down into dozens upon dozens of categories, today I would like to focus on two types of gamers who so often fail to see eye to eye. They are a) those who play primarily for the story that games tell, and b) those who seek refined gameplay and challenge. This is not to say that individuals can't represent certain degrees of both styles, but that many find one end of this spectrum to far outweigh the other.

I'm sure we all know someone (or maybe this is you) who cares for little other than jumping online and seeking out the most competitive ...

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The Sequel Curve

Videogame publishers thrive off of sequels, often relying on brand recognition and the 'household name' effect to drive sales further than they might see with wholly original intellectual properties. Consumers are more likely to purchase those games whose titles resonate in their memory than something that is, for all intents and purposes, foreign.

With all of the high-profile sequels we've seen in recent months/years, I can't help but have this subject on my mind, and today I'll be continuing my quasi-mini-series with an idea that I've been hypothesizing about for some time now -- something I call the sequel curve.

I have long wondered if there is some regular trend that displays itself across all videogame franchises relating to the quality of sequels over time. Is the first game alw...

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Enough Already

Today I will be continuing my spontaneous semi-mini-quasi-series on videogame sequels. Last week I listed a a handful of sequels that don't yet exist, but definitely should be on my consoles...now. I don't think my words will be as pleasant this week, because these are the franchises that have too many sequels, and should probably just call it quits already (or change significantly).

Without further ado:

World War 2 games

This isn't directed at any franchise in particular, but developers really need to think of something new to make games about. World War 2 games got old years ago, but somehow they're still released by the truckloads - and they're not interesting anymore. Even Call of Duty, the poster child for WW2 games, has departed from that stale and overused subject matter....

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Give Me More

I've been thinking a lot about sequels lately, and how so many original games these days will eventually have at least one sequel somewhere down the road. It really doesn't matter if the game is good, great, mediocre, or utter crap, either, because sequels are low-cost, high-profit products. It makes a gamer really appreciate games that actually deserve a second, third, or even fourth edition.

I'm planning to spend a few weeks (maybe not all in a row) talking about sequels: games that need sequels, franchises that need to call it quits, exemplary sequels/series', and more are all on the menu. Today I'll begin with a short list of games that I feel are so worthy of sequels that it saddens me not to see them made. I hope and wish and dream that follow-ups for these gems will one day exist...

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