I had an article I was trying to get published a while back, but I guess it got lost in my busy busy life.
So rather than going through the bother of getting it submitted, I’ll just finish and post it in a few installments here.
So hit the break for Part 1:
I’m really slammed at the moment, so I though I’d post some excerpts from some analysis I did a while back on the exploration in Oblivion.
Note: I didn’t remove all spoilers or grammar errors, but I got a bunch of em.
Summary
One of the coolest things about Oblivion is how “free form” the game feels. As you wander through the world, attempting to do a quest that you have in your log, you are constantly running across other quests, ancient ruins, castles, cave systems, farms, camps, etc…. All of which are inevitably just slightly off your path, and which show up on your radar when you get close.
In studying how they accomplish this feat, I played through a few steps on the “critical path” quest line, as well as some of other the major quest lines in the game. My methods were as follows:
I sprained my thumb about three weeks ago on Friday the 13th (riding a mechanical bull… I know). I’ve been going through a bunch of bullshit with my HMO, and they basically have given me zero care. The one bit of care I got (an Xray and a brace) I had to pay for myself because they delayed it out to obscene amounts.
I was supposed to go in today for physical therapy and they informed me that I had cancelled my appointment, which certainly took me by surprise. I guess I’ve been cancelling appointments in my sleep again. Silly me.
The part that sucks the most is that it’s my left thumb. My left-analog-stick-thumb. I’ve been trying to play games, but I can’t do it. It either hurts or my thumb is too weak to perform the motions.
If my thumb is hurt permanently because these HMO assholes refuse to help me, this could be very bad. I NEED that thumb.
Fucking asshats, all of them.
UPDATE: Upon making my rescheduled appointment, they were all very nice and helpful — and there were no crazy insurance problems. Finally, after three weeks, four appointments, and many hours, it seems I have managed to get some health care.
Easy as pie.
UPDATE 2: No, I apparently paid for all that healthcare myself. My insurance company has still not paid one dollar (and probably will not ever pay one dollar). Good Samaritan IPA — you can go fuck yourselves.
I found this site called VG Chartz. It’s a nifty little site that lets you track (very approximate) meta-data about games and gaming hardware.
I was bumming around the site and found a bunch of interesting statistics pertaining to this next generation that kind of went against my normal perceptions of things. Here’s a bunch of stuff I found out:
PS3 is doing better than I thought
They have a neat little feature that lets you chart any three consoles while normalizing their start dates.
Here’s the three current-gen consoles sales normalized by start date. You can see the PS3 is selling stronger than the 360 was at this time last year (and has been doing well comparatively since the beginning). The question is going to be: Can it make up for the year gap. If it keeps going on the track it’s going, it could very well do it. And the Wii is kicking LARGE quantities of ass, as everyone knows.
Wii Software Sales Aren’t That Bad…
After 1 year and change. the Wii has 25 games that have sold over 1 million copies.
In the same amount of time, the PS3 has 15 games that have sold over 1 million.
After 2 years and change, the 360 has 41 games that have sold over 1 million.
The Wii’s on track to have as many 1 million sellers as the 360 by the same time next year
But…
The worrying thing is that the Wii has 10 million more units out than the 360. Also, 13 of those 25 titles are Nintendo first party titles. In the Top 10, there’s only 1 game (guitar hero) on the wii that isn’t published by Nintendo.
Now you can chalk that up to the fact that most 3rd party publishers were completely unprepared for how well the Wii did, but still… man…
Why people aren’t making PS3 exclusives
Seems like right now is a bad time to be making PS3 games as a 3rd party. Only 9 3rd party games have sold over 1 million units on the PS3. Most of those have multiple SKUs, though.
I guess that explains why so few 3rd parties make PS3 exclusives.
More Wii Miscellany
Of the Wii games that sold more than 1 million:
First party games averaged sales of 5.97 million units
Third party games averaged sales of 1.82 million units
All in all
I don’t think you can put too much stock in those numbers yet (still too early) but hopefully the Wii 3rd party numbers’ll keep getting better as more publishers stop shoveling bad games on and start making good IP specifically for the console.
Anyway, I found it all interesting. Play with the site for a while. It’s cool.
Though it’s rating score aggregates are really bad, so don’t trust those.
I can see two reasons this happens. Among some developers I’m sure their is a desire to pad a story and make the game longer. This gives many games, like GTA IV, what I’m going to call a false climax. You have a point in the story where you feel like it should be over, but instead you’re hit with more rising action and another, much less powerful climax and absolutely no resolution.
Other developers, I think want to leave the door open for a sequel and, like in Bioshock, feel like they need to walk readers down that path before the story ends, even though they’ve already accomplished everything they need to to deliver a powerful story. The end result, of course, just waters down the entire experience.
http://kotaku.com/5016409/why-game-endings-suck-i-think
There’s one other reason, as well. Most developers make their game in chronological order. That means they do the ending last. The last thing that gets done on a game is almost always the thing with the least amount of polish and most cut corners — you just run out of time.
Of course, just because you do something first usually doesn’t help either — because at that point you don’t know what kind of game you’re making.
That’s why so many games have great middles, average beginnings, and shitty endings — at least in my experience.
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