Tag Archives | Gaming

Back in the day, video games had God Mode. You’d enter a cheat code, and suddenly your video game avatar was impervious to damage. Suddenly, the most difficult challenges were a walk in the park.

The upcoming button masher Bayonetta is bringing back this cheat in a more sophisticated way. The game’s “Automatic” mode, available to people playing on “Easy” or “Very Easy,” turns most of the controls over to the computer. Players need only tap the punch button to successfully navigate a level, while the computer targets enemies and times the protagonist’s jumps.

I wouldn’t call auto-play a trend yet, but Nintendo confirmed a similar feature in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, due out in November. By selecting “Demo Mode,” players can watch the computer coast to victory when facing a tough spot. Nintendo reportedly plans to use this feature in future games as well.

But Nintendo’s feature is intended, at least partially, for young players. Bayonetta, on the other hand, is rated M for Mature, so the “Automatic” mode is essentially a cop-out for grown-ups who are really, really bad at video games.

My problem with this — as with the God Modes of yesteryear — isn’t simply that it’s tantamount to cheating, but that it robs people of a fundamental gaming experience. No matter your skill level, everyone has moments of frustration in video games, but when the challenge is legitimate, it’s beautiful. Through repeated failure, you begin to see opportunities. Then, it’s a matter of perseverance, correcting your mistakes until you’ve mastered the challenge in its entirety.

The satisfaction that results is not the same as cruising through the game’s easier segments and leaving the tricky stuff up to an auto-pilot.

A survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that gamers were more prone to depression and obesity than non-gamers. Gamers were also older than they are customarily assumed to be.

The survey was taken in the Seattle-Tacoma area, and the sample was 500 adults between the ages of 10 and 90. Forty-five percent of respondents identified themselves as gamers. It found that female gamers were more likely to be depressed than non-gamers, and male gamers had higher incidents of obesity.

That may not defy stereotype, but surprisingly, the survey also found that the average gamer was 35 years old. The BBC cited a 2002 study in its coverage that mirrored that finding.

The CDC chose the Seattle-Tacoma area, because it has the highest Internet usage in the United States. Interestingly, Seattle was ranked as the seventh most physically fit city in 2008 by Men’s Fitness magazine.

“Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video-game players from non-gamers,” CDC’s Dr. James B Weaver said in a prepared statement. “Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status.”

I would like to see more studies taken as a follow up to this research to determine whether there is an actual correlation between gaming and negative health consequences. That said, more games that require physical involvement couldn’t come soon enough.

DigitalTrends’ Scott Steinberg is trying his best to be provocative today, releasing the first part of a video documentary entitled “Video Games Are Dead.”

Of course, they’re not. The online video is a clip reel of talking heads — analysts Michael Pachter and Jesse Divnich, Epic President Mike Capps, Wired GameLife editor Chris Kohler, among others — jockeying for the best sound bite on why video games could be, but mostly aren’t, headed for disaster.

It’s familiar ground to industry watchers. There’s too much risk and not enough innovation, the interviewees say; publishers got too ambitious, but they’re still making money; developers aren’t getting paid properly, but that’s changing; the dedicated gaming console will be replaced by cloud gaming, or gaming through cable, or it won’t be replaced at all.

What the documentary leaves us with is a lot of ideas, but no big picture. I have a feeling Steinberg and his crew will try to tie it all together as the documentary continues, but I’ll take a stab at it now:

Video games will stick around even if the industry crumbles. By sheer coincidence, I got a press release today from Nielsen Games stating that console gaming increased by 21 percent in June, compared to June 2008, even as sales figures took a historic dive. For this entire year, it seems gaming is bigger than ever.

But we are starting to see a shift. The time is quickly approaching when development costs escalate beyond viability. This was foretold by veterans like Greg Costikyan, whose four year-old essay “Death to the Games Industry, Long Live Games” inspired my headline. That’s why every console maker is shooting for the 10-year cycle, backed by new peripherals with games that are cheap to make and fun to play. In this economy, there’s not too much room for blockbusters to thrive.

This isn’t a gloomy scenario, though. It’s actually a good thing, because we’re seeing a resurgence of smaller-scale downloadable games that are just as enjoyable as their big, boxed counterparts, with less overhead. Shadow Complex, a downloadable Xbox 360 game due out next week, is being marketed as such.

The future of the games industry is too sprawling a topic to cover with sound bites (or with a short-form blog post, for that matter), but am I worried that my favorite pastime will die? No.