Rewarding X and Wanting Y

Quite a lot has been made about a wierd confluence of events in the video game industry, much of it exemplified by the complete and utter failure of a fun little game called Psychonauts. Eventually, this has been blamed for the near collapse (at least as of this writing) of publisher Majesco, who brought this game into the market. Unfortunatley, only about two people bought it (I was one of them).

I was excited when I discovered that Psychonauts was going to ported over to the Playstation2. I was intrigued by the story, partly because I've always been fascinated by psychology, and Psychonauts was going to represent a journey into the minds of some unique characters.

What Psychonauts turned out to be was an average platforming game with an above average story, with a very unique sense of humor. Clearly, this was not a game for your average, casual video game enthusiast. Instead, it was intended for someone like me; someone who boldly looks for new experiences, and isn't afraid of going off the beaten trail.

However, it is not my intention to review this game in this space. For now, I'll leave this to Gamespot. Instead, my purpose here is to point out these events, offer perspective and say that I wish things could have gone differently.

Personally, I think Majesco banked too heavily on a game that was clearly not going to appeal to those whose video game experiences are limited to Madden Football, Halo, or your generic WWII First Person shooter of the month. Video game journalists and those who have been playing these games for a long time will tell you that they wish game companies would release more innovative products (that they want Y). However, these people do not make up the majority of the market for video games. The vast majority are those who game infrequently or are satisfied with Halo (who reward X, to put it another way).

I believe in my heart that if you asked most video game developers (and even some publishers), they would love the opportunity to do more innovation, to take video games into bold new directions. However, the realities of the business world being what they are, game companies must continue to publish sure hits with minimal cost and risk to stay afloat, which limits the amount of innovation that can be done. Will this paradox ever work itself it out? I think that there's always hope. Remember that at one time, even games like Madden football and Halo were unproven innovations as well. They just happened to have the right amount of familiarity and sameness to counteract the new things that they did so that the casual gamers could grasp them, and eventually grow to love them.

See the following articles from Joystiq.com:

The folly of rewarding A while wishing for B.

More on Majesco's Fall from Grace

A Year of New Possibilities

Reading about a book called the Year of Yes on MSNBC the other day sort of hit me on a gut level. You see, I'm actively trying to bring more "adventure" into my life, and this seemed like an interesting adventure.

While I won't rehash the entire article here, its about a gal who lives in New York City who was fed up with the state of her dating life, so she decides to spend a year accepting (nearly) every date who asked her out. This was to counteract her own pickiness, which was leading to her unhappiness. I won't spoil the outcome here, but you can find out from the Newsweek link.

This jumped out at me, once again, because of the sense of adventure that it represented. It's something that I feel is going downhill in this country. To many are more concerned about defending their own little garden, sometimes to the overall detriment of that garden. In my own case, I pictured myself feeling like I had missed out on something. Since I'm at an age where I can do something about that, I decided that I should. I won't change the world, but at least I'll have some stories to tell.

The Year of Yes on Newsweek/MSNBC

Rootgate Continues

If you're into digital music as I am, you watched with the Sony Rootkit (hiply referred to as Rootgate) fiasco with a sick sense of curiosity. I know I certainly did.

In case you haven't kept up with with saga, I'll summarize: For years now, the recorded music industry has been under seige from an aging business model, a falloff in radio listenership caused by bland music and stations that are more commercials than music, boy band after insipid boy-band, an increasing reluctance to take risks, changing consumer tastes towards DVD movies and videogames, and (during 2000 - 2003) a shaky national economy. To correct all of these problems, the recording industry decided to attack all of these problems at their source. Those pesky people who share music over the Internet. If only they can be stopped, all of these other problems will take care of themselves.

Enter a little software package called XCP, which Sony began to include on some CD releases from some of their most popular artists. At first, XCP appeared to fit the bill quite nicely. I know from my own personal experience that it prevented any music protected with it from being copied onto my PC. Of course, that is because I refuse to buy any CD that is copy protected, as that usually means that I won't be able to copy it onto my iPod. But that's Splitting Hairs.

For others who actually did buy the protected CDs, and allowed the rootkit to be installed, it opened a whole host of potential computer problems, mostly surrounding the possibility of receiving virus infections that utilized XCP's ability to hide itself, and be darn near impossible to remove. Even the United States Department of Homeland Security slapped Sony for that little move.

Skipping all of the boring class-action lawsuit nonsense that soon arose, which was soon settled, Sony indicated that all protected CDs would be replaced with non-protected ones. It was unclear if those unprotected CDs would eventually hit stores, or just be sent to those who had bought the album in its prior form. (In effect, making all of the protected albums "lost" albums).

Of course, I doubted my own stance and harsh refusal to buy any CD protected album, especially when the new Switchfoot album was one of the protected albums. However, I feel rewarded for the faith, as unprotected albums have begun to hit the market. I will continue to boycott protected albums, but now that unprotected albums are out, I want to reward Sony for doing the right thing (although they did have to dragged kicking and screaming into doing it).

I feel that a general boycott against Sony is a simplistic response to this that is doomed to send the wrong message. I witnessed many web sites and web forums that called for such a thing. The error is that Sony, like any other business entity, is driven by the botttom line. A general boycott is likely to send the wrong message, that is "All of your products are crap." A better message is instead "I don't like what you are doing with these copy-protected CDs, but I won't have any hesitation about buying an unprotected CD with your name on it." When the sales numbers are reviewed for those particular titles, someone's got to be astute enough to note what was behavior was rewarded and what behavior wasn't.

Is my own thinking naive? Possibly. I choose to view it instead as an expression of my power as a consumer who thinks for himself. As big a fan of Switchfoot or Our Lady Peace that I might be, noone's holding a gun to my head forcing me to buy their new albums, which have new onerous conditions that their previous albums did not. As a consumer, it is still my right to choose or not choose to buy these albums.

Rootgate Isn't over Yet...

Got Futurama?

It seems Futurama might end up coming back, just like Family Guy. It's a wonder how a little consistent scheduling and faith in your audience will pay you back.

Of course, all networks are guilty of this, but Fox seems to be especially guilty of pulling the trigger on the wrong shows at the wrong time. I'm amazed that with both how often it was moved in the schedule, or just plain pre-empted that it was able to find any audience at all. Of course, those who did often became dedicated fans, and made an attempt to follow it, but even our best efforts sometimes fell short.

When Family Guy finally came back to the air, it led off with a joke about all the "quality shows" that Fox just had to get on the schedule ahead of Family Guy. Of course, the joke was that all of the shows named had also been cancelled, some of them unfairly (e.g. the Tick, Greg the Bunny, and Wonderfalls) as well. I especially remember the reviews of Wonderfalls when it first came on the air. Many said "Watch it now, because Fox has a habit of canceling good shows like this."

Of course, I mention this to give Fox a lot of credit for recognizing their mistake, and having the courage to admit they were wrong. Perhaps UPN could go this route as well, and bring back Jake 2.0. Wishful thinking, maybe, but thanks to Family Guy and possibly Futurama, the precedent is forming.

Back to the Futurama?