When a self-professed atheist/agnostic finds himself singing “Prepare yourself you know it’s a must/Gotta have a friend in Jesus” either he’s found religion or he’s trying to get past the worst song in Rock Band 2.
Hilariously the next song was Man in the Box (lyrics). My wife said “this song is about Jesus too”. Classic.
Someone the other day wrote a question on Hacker News asking why World of Warcraft is so successful. The question, as posed, is”
“Why is world of warcraft so successful? What about it made it that it became the largest and most profitable MMO game of all time? Is it the first MMO that tried to appeal to non-hardcore gamers? Or a lot more than that?”
I think there are really two questions there. The first is “Why are massively multiplayer online (MMO) games successful?” The second is “Why is World of Warcraft (WoW) the most successful MMORPG?” (the RPG being “role playing game”, for non-techies in the audience) .
I think people in the comments gave a lot of good answers to the second question, better than I could since I don’t play it or any other MMO games (unless you count poker). But my answer to the first got downmodded quite a bit. Nonetheless, I’m pretty certain that the answer to it is that MMO games are a solid form of escapism.
When you play WoW, you aren’t thinking about your bills, or how much of a dick your boss was to you at work yesterday. You’re just thinking about how you’re going to slay the Evil Orc with the Dagger of Despair in the Crystal Cave.
Damn near everyone in our modern world engages in some form of escapism. For some people it’s sports (or fantasy sports). For some people it’s gambling. For tens or maybe even hundreds of millions it’s television. And like any other form of escapism, there’s a healthy amount, and a lot of people who cross that line (largely out of depression, I’d guess) to where it becomes an obsession.
So I think if you want to replicate the success of something like WoW, step one is to create something so engaging that people forget about the other things in their life while they’re using your product. If someone is playing your game and thinking about how he has to take out the garbage, you’ve failed. If someone is taking out the garbage and thinking about how he is going to play your game as soon as he’s done, you’ve succeeded.
WoW also has a strong social aspect, and it’s largely (but not exclusively) engaged in by people who generally aren’t the most social guys around in the real world. I remember listening to Opie and Anthony a long time ago, and one of them played. He got kicked out of a guild, only to find out later that the leader was some dorky 14 year old from New Jersey.
In WoW, nobody knows you’re a nerdy teenager. You’re just a level 82 paladin. So it’s yet another level of escapism. You’re not only escaping from your environment and responsibilities, but also from your own genetics and a world that often judges you based upon them. It’s a more meritocratic universe than the one we actually inhabit, so it appeals largely to people whose strengths are mental rather than physical.
So there’s that element as well. Of course, all of that wouldn’t matter if the product wasn’t just plain fun. But I think for something to be as successful as WoW is, it takes a lot more than being fun. You have to appeal to unsatisfied primary urges, like the desire to forget your troubles and be judged not on how you look, but by how you perform.
I’ve never played the game, though I’ve watched others play, for two main reasons. One is that I don’t think I’d enjoy it. I’m not into the Dungeons and Dragons theme (which is odd, since many of my closest friends are) and I like games that are more about solo competition. I’m more of a Guitar Hero, Mario Kart Wii kinda guy. I like to be able to compete against others and myself, by going for a higher score or a shorter time.
And the other reason is that I would be screwed if I did enjoy it. I tend to be overly competitive, and often obsessive, so when I take on a new game, I usually go all-out. I simply don’t have the time for that these days. I have a wife and a startup, and if any time is left over I spend it playing games I know I won’t think about when I’m done.
As someone in the gaming industry, it’s impossible not to admire what they’ve done. Of course, it’s been about 10 times more successful than they had even dreamed it would, and it’s good to see Blizzard (who has been making great games since I was in high school) hit a grand slam after years of home runs. Most of all, I think it’s an interesting case study, because the game has supplanted 100% of a lot of people’s free time activities, and if you’re in the industry, it’s worth delving into why.
I love Wikipedia. Where else can you just make shit up, and then it’s in an encyclopedia? Just today I found this nugget:
Click the image to see the original. Note the second sentence. I bet you didn’t know that Bloomberg was the cofounder of one of the most successful Columbian drug cartels. I can’t wait for that question on Jeopardy.
Everyone is asking me what I think of the Wii. Long story short, best game system ever. It succeeds in doing exactly what Nintendo set out to do, which is make video games accessible to everyone. I’ve had many people playing it who probably haven’t seriously played video games since the NES, if ever, and all were able to compete almost instantly and seemed to enjoy the experience. It was a tremendous hit with the family on Thanksgiving. Almost everyone tried and liked it. People from the ages of 3 to the mid 50’s all were able to play and compete. To put it in perspective, right now the high score in Wii Bowling (215) at my house is held by my 7 year old cousin.
Wii sports is the first game I can remember in a long time to be included with a console. It’s simple but addictive. Tennis and bowling are fun. Golf is pretty frustrating when putting, boxing is fun but nearly unplayable if, like me, you mind the fact that half of the time you try to throw a punch nothing happens. And baseball is pretty boring, just like the real sport. It’s not the best game ever made, by any means. The graphics are laughable and there are a lot of times when you wonder if the Wiimote is broken because the game just doesn’t register your movement, but for an included game that was meant, more than anything, to be an introduction to the Wiimote, it serves its intended purpose.
(Brief side note, anyone who broke their TV playing with it is an idiot. We’ve bowled probably over 200 games total and not once has a Wiimote ever come out of anyone’s hands. And even if it had, that strap is pretty durable. I doubt there are many people who could break it if used properly, and even if they could it would slow the remote down to the point where it is highly unlikely it would break a television. It would likely be thrown in a different direction altogether. My guess is that every picture seen online of a Wiimote buried into the glass of a television is either the result of some moron who didn’t use the strap and, on top of that, was somehow less coordinated than an average 5 year old, or the attempt by someone with a previously broken television to get a complimentary replacement out of it from Nintendo.)
Nintendo did, I think, make a couple bad decisions. For one the Wii does not support hi-definition. Their logic there was that it made the system cheaper to make. They figured that since only 20% of households have HDTV right now anyway, it wouldn’t be missed by too many. I think what they overlooked there was that there is a tremendous overlap between households that have gaming systems and ones that have HDTVs. The vast majority of people with HDTVs have gaming systems, so if 20% of houses have HD and 40% have a gaming system, that means almost 50% of gamers are playing (or will want to be) in HD. I don’t know what the actual numbers are, I just threw that 40% out there, but my point is that HD would be desirable to a lot of their target audience.
I realize they’re also stretching out to new audiences too, but many of them will have HD sets as well. Plummeting prices have HDTV sales skyrocketing and many people expect the number of them sold to double in the next two years. At that point the lack of high-def might be a major liability. Maybe Nintendo is planning on pumping out a new system in three years, which, as long as it will support Wii games, might actually be a great idea, especially since they’re the only company selling consoles at a profit.
The Wii does support 480p (like a progressive scan DVD player) but for some reason you can only get that resolution by using the component video cables. That didn’t make sense to me at first, since 480p can be delivered over lower-bandwidth connections, until I found out that you have to order the component cables direct from Nintendo and that they cost $30. This is a part that could not possibly cost more than $3 to manufacture. Now I’m just pissed off. I don’t mind them choosing to not include features to save money and drive down the price of the system, but gouging us that badly for them is unconscionable.
Still though, there’s a noticeable difference in the graphics when playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, so you have to buy the component connector if you’re a gamer. So after my anus healed from that I popped Zelda in (to the Wii that is) and started playing. Long story short once again, best game ever. Seriously.
When it comes to Ocarina of Time, the first Zelda game on the N64, there are three types of people, ones who consider it their favorite game ever, ones who haven’t played it, and ones who are retarded. It is considered by almost all game critics and a large number of fans as the best game of all time, and it was, undoubtedly. Twilight Princess is to the Ocarina of Time as the current war in Iraq is to Desert Storm. It’s bigger, it’s badder, and it’s ten times longer.
It really is the perfect game. The graphics are like OoT but less polygonal and more life-like. The camera-work is the same and really it should be, it was perfect. Play any other 3D game and you find yourself getting frustrated wrestling with the camera angles andb trying to see where you’re going. It’s sometimes impossible and quite often unbearable. This is the fourth console Zelda in a row for which that occurs almost never. They’ve nearly mastered it. There are a couple corners of the universe where you might wish you had a bit more control, but they are so few and far between as to be virtually negligible.
The world in Twilight Princess is somehow even more interactive than in the past few Zeldas. For instance today I had to cross from one ledge to another that was very far away. In between was a chandelier that was a little too far from the ledge to jump to. I had to figure out, on my own, to hit the chandelier with a weapon of mine to make it swing so that I could jump on it when it got near me and off when it got near the other ledge.
There are so many puzzles like that. Everything is totally interactive. Boxes can be moved to make climbing easier. Fire can be used to melt ice. Water can be poured onto fire to put it out. Because everything is so well thought out and so complete puzzles might often have more than one solution. That’s what has always kept it light years ahead of all of the other RPGs and they’ve definitely widened the gap with this release. When you play any other 3D game you often think to yourself “this looks nice, but what if I could move this box over here, or break this barrel†or whatever. In Zelda you can. It’s far closer to total immersion than any game has ever come.
It’s also much larger than any previous Zelda. Allegedly it can take 45 minutes to cross from one side of the world to the other. Luckily you can find much faster ways to do that, so there isn’t a lot of tediousness, but I can definitely believe that it’s that large. And there is always a ton of stuff to do. Right now I’ve got about 40 hours into the game and I estimate I’m half way done. I’m going through it and doing everything I can (there are always a ton of side-games to play, mini-quests to complete, and items to find in any Zelda game) all without the help of any of the walkthroughs available on the internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could beat the game in 50 hours without doing the extracurricular stuff and by cheating a bit using gamefaqs.com, but really, why would you want to?
The Wiimote also makes playing the game so much more fun than with a standard controller. Need to shoot your bow and arrow? Just point at the object you want to hit and push the trigger. When fishing you use the Wiimote like a rod and the nunchuck like a reel. If you’re as hard core about Zelda as I am, buy the Wii just for the pleasure of using those controls. You’ll like it much more than you would on the GameCube.
So right now I have to wholeheartedly recommend the Wii for everyone and Zelda for the real gamers. The mechanics are not overly complex, but the puzzles can actually get to be very challenging, and they would be even harder if you aren’t familiar with the world of Hyrule. If you’re like me, however, and have been breaking flower pots looking for Rupees since you were a kid (I’m so familiar with the games that I can actually predict with at least 90% accuracy what is in each treasure chest before I open it) you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven. It’s the same series you’ve come to know and love, but with a few new weapons, puzzles that seem far harder than the ones in Wind Waker and maybe even a little harder than Ocarina, and even more things you can move, pickup, throw, or otherwise manipulate to achieve tasks. It’s the perfect game on the perfect system, and I already can’t wait for the sequel.
