UGAACCIDENTALS

So apparently the Modern Warfare 2 complaints regarding the announcement that it won’t include dedicated servers and people will be forced to use “IW Net” have got the attention of the developers. They responded and basically told everyone that this wasn’t done to combat piracy and it was because they wanted to make sure players had a more enjoyable experience. This excuse is laughable though and obviously transparent to most PC gamers. Lack of dedicated servers destroys community and choice and will not “improve the experience” for anyone at all. It’s really a shame that so many PC games are being dragged down by this console pandering trash. It also upsets me that “piracy” is such a major concern to developers. Most people who can afford to buy games already buy them. The pirates are children who can’t convince their parents to buy a game for them. They aren’t technically a “lost sale” like developers want to think. All they’re doing is upsetting everyone.

The president of Nintendo recently gave a talk about the upcoming Wii Super Mario Bros title and expanded a bit on the “help” feature. Apparently at any point in the game players will be able to get assistance with what they should try or how they can beat a specific puzzle that might be too difficult. This is being done to allow the game to appeal to a more hardcore gaming audience than it might otherwise. He said that this Mario game will definitely present a challenge and please old school Mario enthusiasts while this new help feature will allow more casual players to beat the game as well.

I think this is a great idea and it should be tried more often in video games. Lately the gaming market has becoming increasingly divided between hardcore and casual gamers but things like this merge the two again and allow both to be happy. I’ll definitely be picking this game up and I’m looking forward to trying to beat it without using any of the in game help.

The Nintendo Wii is seriously lacking games that will attract so called “hardcore gamers.” This is causing them to miss out on a huge share of the video game market. However, they’ve almost created an entirely new untapped market of casual gamers and fitness nuts. I can’t even remember how many older people I’ve heard tell me they’re getting a Wii for Wii Fit. It’s really surprising to me that so many people are willing to invest around $300 for something they could easily do without any electronics at all. In fact, you could probably get a better workout by NOT using the Wii Fit than you can with it.

Continuing from my previous post. I’m curious what genres girls specifically would be interested in. There is a lot of overlap with Rock Band, TF2, etc type games that are enjoyed by both genders. However, what is the Call of Duty for women? What genre would attract almost exclusively women but still be main stream? I think this is the question a lot of game developers will be asking themselves in the near future. There is truly a huge untapped market for games targeted towards women. I don’t mean Barbie’s Playhouse type games though. The type of game I mean hasn’t been created yet but whoever figures it out first is going to be rich indeed.

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot more girls playing video games. While this could simply be due to voice chat becoming more popular making it possible to know who is a girl I think it’s more than that. Games like World of Warcraft, TF2, Rock Band, etc are focusing more on topics that girls find fun or interesting. It’s becoming apparent to me that girls do not like war simulators that try to mimic reality. It might be that girls have never been into video games as much because the game genres or topics have always been male focused as that was the percieved “primary market.”

It looks like Valve has added hats and miscellaneous items to the game that you can equip your character with. Although these don’t have any stats yet I’m curious if they’ll try to make TF2 more like an MMORPG where you can progress or somehow earn items with stats to upgrade various classes.

This would be hard to pull off though considering the original marketing of the game which doesn’t appeal much to MMO fans. A small amount of it might be bearable though if the items were easy to unlock in terms of time commitment. I sure hope they don’t keep a random drop system though with stat items.