DISPATCHES SEPTEMBER
Shock and aww
In light of Big Picture Mode last month ( E321), I’ve been agonising over how to organise my thoughts on videogame shock factor. In this influencer-led marketing landscape, it’s easy to use shock as social media clickbait. “Look at this genitalia cake!” is already the name of a few YouTube videos (probably). More than anything, it’s unsurprising. I’m pretty certain that ‘unsurprising’ is not the reaction those publishers were going for. Has it always been this way?
I’m reminded of No Russian, the infamous Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 level, and the mass-media spotlight surrounding it. Coming from a behemoth franchise, this level capitalised on a shock and awe marketing tactic. It wasn’t particularly notable for those who played the series – we were already accustomed to acts of virtual mass violence – but it was shocking to the audience it reached: those who did not play the game. (Before that, we had Postal 2, in which using a cat as a silencer on your shotgun was a share-worthy element. Was that transgressive at the time? I can’t remember.)
What stood out as truly shocking at this year’s E3 wasn’t an act of violence, but an act of affection instead. The Last of Us: Part II’s trailer sent ripples around the wrong side of Twitter, as certain unsavoury communities were up in arms that two ladies kissed. The SJWs were taking over, apparently, and videogames should stop with these ‘cheap tricks’. Maybe Naughty Dog should have baked a cake in celebration of Pride month instead? That would really shock them.
Videogames: where (virtual) violence and (virtual) hate can make us roll our eyes, whilst love and affection cause uproar. Conor Clarke And we’d just about forgotten that stupid cake. For those of you asking, no, we’re never naming the game it was promoting.
Serve and protect
For an E3 showcase, much of what was seen for the current consoles is interesting work. The generation has hit developer saturation where everyone is comfortable with the machines and is making strides with a lot of new ideas, releasing them at a steady clip. There has been, and will continue to be, a ‘too many games’ problem in the near future.
New console announcements and announcements for titles that are years away really didn’t move me. What was really clear this year, however, is how important service and the perception of service is. Sony showed us back-to-back impressive trailers in The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima, but everyone is only going to focus on the Fortnite controversy coming out of the show. Outside of Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, as it has been since last year, is the story of the show because of this. Every company with a service has to think about a business model that caters to a company vision like Epic’s while they’re king. So the biggest question will be whether PlayStation merely caters to Epic or adopts a long-term strategy that lets other developers and publishers adopt the same release model of cross-buy, cross-save, and cross-play. That’s the thing I got out of E3, which made for an interesting show to watch given the number of shared online spaces ( Anthem, Sea Of Thieves, The Division 2, Beyond Good & Evil 2, Skull & Bones, Fallout 76, Destiny 2, etc) now on display from every publisher. Martin Benn Cross-play is going to happen, and Sony knows it. With a new generation coming, it simply can’t afford to rest on its laurels.
“‘Look at this genitalia cake!’ is already the name of a few YouTube videos (probably)”
Show and tell
E3 2018 was surprising, while also being a let-down in some areas. Microsoft walked off the stage having essentially screamed – and more importantly, showed – “We’re still relevant!” Sure, we had the usual trio of Halo,
Forza and Gears Of War, which the Internet loves to give them flak for, but the rest of the show gave us what we were looking for and what they needed to show us: a commitment to making Xbox better.
But if E3 2018 has told us anything about the future of Xbox, it’s that Microsoft has recognised and accepted where its only shortcoming is (it’s done a fantastic job with hardware and services). The announcement of the creation of a new studio in Santa Monica, and the purchase of four developers showed us that Microsoft is serious about the future of Xbox.
On the PlayStation side, there was nothing too exciting that was specific to the platform holder. Yes, The Last Of Us Part II, Spider
Man, Ghost Of Tsushima and Death Stranding all look impressive, but we’ve seen these games before. For those of us in Europe, we stay up until 2am because we want to see new announcements. For things we’ve already seen, YouTube will suffice. The reveal lineup announcements was thin simply because Sony doesn’t have anything to announce at the moment. And that’s okay. I’d rather a company didn’t attend than disappoint me. That way, when they do show up, I’ll know they’ve got something good.
Nintendo also had a lukewarm E3, in my opinion. Super Smash Bros Ultimate is on my list of games to buy, but the next Smash game always would have been. I was really hoping to see older titles brought to the Nintendo Switch. I’d happily part with my money if I could play a Zelda anthology. We know that games such as Bayonetta 3, Animal Crossing,
Pikmin 4 and Metroid Prime 4 are all on their way to Nintendo Switch, but where were they? Even a minute-long trailer hinting at what’s in store would have been just about enough to satiate.
Ultimately, E3 2018 felt like a dud for new announcements, but the calibre of games on show was still monumental. It’s unfair of myself and many others to expect great announcements every year. Games take years and years to make, and you only get one chance to make a brilliant first impression. That’s why studios wait until the right time to reveal the product of their years-long labour. But I can’t help but look back on E3 2018, as a whole, disappointed. Jordan Rowe Weird, isn’t it. We came away feeling much the same; for all the 8s on show, an E3 needs a 10 or two if it’s to really go down in history.
Home and kitchen
I really think this E3 was a colossal cut-up. It’s called the electronics-expo-something for a reason – I want to see more than just videogames. Every time it comes around I hope to hear more about appliances, but these damn kids don’t get excited about side-loading toasters, or a more powerful puree function. The sad thing is that those are already old news in the kitchenware world, but you don’t get to hear about that now, do you?
If E3 started talking about all electronics – and I mean oven, and I mean stereo, and I mean electric fan – not only would it expand some player horizons, but it would also garner a larger turnout for what is essentially a defunct concept of a convention. Why bother spending $300 on a ticket when I can stay at home and watch what happens, at the same time that the nobodies who felt it was so important to be in front of the TV screen, inside of the TV screen? And again, would I see any appliances at E3? Do I even need to answer?
People would naturally be more excited about new features of home tech if they got to see it first hand. For instance, at a car show, you don’t even get to drive the cars. At E3, you barely get to play a game. Imagine being able to press the button yourself on an oven that won’t come out for another three years. You wouldn’t even have to turn it on, let’s face it – just the tactile grip of the buttons is enough to reinvigorate your ‘stamina’. They could save money on electricity this way, too. I don’t even want to imagine how much money it costs to charge a single pixel on those large PlayStation presentation screens. Put Beyond Good & Evil 2 in a corner, and let people rediscover kitchenware. Charles Purcell E3 stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo, which rather excludes ovens. It might be the football hangover, but is anyone else hungry?
Play and win
As a PlayStation 4 player, I have never been concerned about trophies. Since the PS3 era, I simply played for fun, knowing these trophies absolutely wouldn’t turn into any rewards, whether physical or digital. But yesterday, I realised that I had reached 1,886 trophies.
The amount is not important. It isn’t even big compared to a lot of other players, but I decided to make a joke on Twitter mentioning @PlayStation, saying that I thought this would be the perfect occasion for them to reward me with a digital copy of The Order: 1886. As I write these lines, they haven’t replied. But this situation makes me think about the lack of purpose of those trophies. You put in place a system that encourages players to level up – but to what end? It would make perfect sense to reward players every step of the way, through every trophy level, with some sort of digital gift.
I am sure that players all around the world would welcome avatars, themes, images, discounts, OSTs and – why not? – some indie games. Honestly, it looks as if the system was designed with that kind of reward path in mind, then put on hold and implemented as a simple trophy progress bar. I didn’t even want The
Order 1886 for free: that was a joke. What I would celebrate is someone within the company reading these lines and proposing a change. Pedro J Gallardo Trophies, like achievements, are designed for people for whom simply completing a task is reward enough. We feel your pain, though, so have a year’s PlayStation Plus sub on us.