[Mediasplat] The Death of Classic Survival Horror

I went and wrote another thing for the guys over at Mediasplat!  Go check it out!

http://mediasplat.net/identity-gaming-the-death-of-classic-survival-horror/

This time I'm talking about how classic survival horror is dead and the whole genre is essentially full of bullshit now.

3 Great Arcade Games Hosted on Mediasplat

So there's this new website called Mediasplat being run by a friend of mine.  They talk about all sorts of things on there such as movies, games, table top stuff and more and I've been asked to write a few things for them.

So of course the first thing I decide to write about is a couple of Japan only arcade games that I'm currently enjoying and that you should totally book a holiday in order to come and play.  So go check out my post and then check out some of their other content too!  The site only went live a couple of days ago so there isn't much to see just yet but keep an eye on that space.

http://mediasplat.net/identity-gaming-3-awesome-arcade-games-you-should-visit-japan-for/

DLC Can Go Fuck Itself By Duwiol [Guest Post]

Why is it that so many game companies have decided to become complete and utter assholes? Whenever I think back to gaming in my childhood, I always think “it’s probably just the nostalgia, it probably wasn’t THAT great”. But there’s one thing that WAS GREAT, and that was paying for a game and getting the whole fucking game!

When I bought the Age of Empires, Final Fantasy (any of them!), or Star Wars MOTHER FUCKING Battlefront, I got a full game. Then some time down the line, the company that made the game might release an expansion for the game, e.g. Age of Empires 2 followed by Age of Empires 2: Age of the Conquerors.

The thing is though, these expansions were like games in themselves! They added MORE to the already existing game! Now, I buy a game from a lot of my hard earned money, get home, start playing, and… it’s about a third of the fucking game! To me, this is nothing short of daylight robbery! Then they have the fucking gall to then say to the angry and disappointed masses “oh you wanted this? Well don’t worry! Give us MORE money and you can have some of it. Then wait a little while, give us EVEN MORE money, and then MAYBE we’ll give you the rest… or we might just keep some of it back to charge you again later”.

Take the new Star Wars Battlefront for example. I LOVED the original two games. They were, in my opinion, some of the best shooting games of their time. You had capture the flag style gameplay, space battles, heroes vs villains, and a HUGE number of good and bad guys to choose from.

Now, let’s look at the new Star Wars Battlefront. The fans went nuts when they heard the news that there was going to be a new Battlefront game, myself included. Then as time passed and the game’s release got closer, more and more shit started surfacing. NO Clone Wars, NO Galactic Conquest, NO Story Mode/Campaign, Only 3 Heroes and 3 Villains to choose from, the list goes on and on. The fans are understandably angry, and what happens? They start HINTING that these things will appear over time as DLC. FUCK THEM! You cannot take a game that is already established, remake it, then only offer 20-30% of the original game’s content, and then tease and taunt us with the possibility of getting the rest.

What angers me, and many others, about this is that this kind of behaviour wouldn’t be tolerated in any other industry. You wouldn’t listen to a song then half way through it stops and they say you have to pay more to hear the rest of the song. You wouldn’t get two thirds of the way through a book then find the last pages missing and a note saying you have to pay to get the other pages. Just like you wouldn’t watch a movie where sections were blacked out and you had to pay more to reveal the rest of the screen.

I will say one thing, not all DLC is like this. There are some DLCs that are purely for cosmetics, are optional, and are little add-ons to the game itself (custom skins for example). But that doesn’t justify doing this to the game’s main content, and Its reasons like this that I am very selective with what games I buy, and what companies’ games I choose to play. I for one will not help fund this bullshit, I’d much rather support the companies that still hold true to giving the players what they want, a complete game and experience.

A KindaAwesome Post About Coin Op

The Game Centre is something I like to talk about a lot, it's easily one of my favourite things in the world. 

This time though, the post about me gushing over Japanese coin op isn't going to be hosted here, but instead you can find it within an article over with my good buddies at KindaAwesome!  All of the stuff I've said before applies here, read the post and help support these guys, they do good stuff. 

LINKS!

http://kindawesome.com/?p=2393

http://kindawesome.com/

The E-Sports Essay (By HKM) Part 1

These posts, regarding E-sports, are not by me.  These have been written by my buddy known as HKM, and are nice little guest posts for my blog.  So enjoy reading something I didn't write, here we go!

E-Sports

Before I get started I want to firstly do an introduction about myself; I am “HKM”, the one who
drew the really bad banner you see above. Secondly I am a 'nobody' in terms of the E-Sports scene
and what I am about to talk about is my personal feelings about E-sports in general and what it
should do to move forward as a whole, of course this will be all done in separate parts, as I am a
guest blogger here, so look out for them, as for my gaming history, I watch quite a bit of Starcraft 2,
play League of Legends, Guild Wars, Counter Strike, as well a load of other games I have history
with, so enjoy the read hopefully as much as I enjoyed writing this.

Part 1: What is E-Sports?
So some of you may be wondering what is 'E-sport'? While others have a vague idea or a good
knowledge of what e-sports is. I'm here to give my perception of what is e-sports as a whole.
What comes to mind when someone mentions e-sports, for the people who have heard of the
term before, is a large stage with two teams/players playing against each other for prize money.

What people think e-sports should mean.

 

While this perception may be true about the definition of e-sports, I would say that this form of esports is the top end of e-sports (think of it as the premier league for football or the major leagues
for baseball) and that it is only a small portion of e-sports as a whole, where gamers will strive
towards when they decide to 'go pro' in gaming, as most of the money lies here waiting to be won
in form of tournaments and others. This part of e-sports includes professional and semiprofessionals
as what they do in essence is they compete in tournaments and win prize money, the
difference is that professionals gain enough money, through sponsorship or others to make a living
while the semi-professionals gain money through sponsorship or others to help with the cost of
living, and may have a part-time job to supplement his income.

The question now is “If professionals are only a small portion of e-sports, then what is the other
portion?”, if some of you are sharp enough and understand my examples given then it should be
clear where the other portion of e-sports lies, but I will make clear where the other portion of esports
lies. The rest of e-sports lies in the amateur and 'non-competitive' side of e-sports. This is
fairly simple to break down, as the amateur side is basically those who are not making a living off
e-sports but are playing competitively at a decent level and are not making some form of money or
a small amount, while the 'non-competitive' are those who play for fun, or have no interest (or no
knowledge) in making money in e-sports.

The amateur side of gaming is a simpler side to e-sports, this is where a person/team competes
(semi-)regularly in tournaments (online or offline) where there is prize money on offer and is small
or no prize money altogether, the definition of small may vary from person to person but the idea
is that the money won and the frequency of the tournament(s) is not enough to make a
sustainable living even if they won it all the time. The player/team are not sponsored, and if they
are, and/or winning small tournament constantly they are in a grey area between an amateur and
a semi-pro.

To explain further the 'non-competitive' side, this includes the rest of the players playing the game
or are actively supporting the game. This is where, I believe, most of e-sports lies in terms of the
amount of players. I have noted two different 'non-competitive' sections here, each one is fairly
different from the other. For the section of players who play the game they are partaking in the
culture of e-sports as a whole, as long as this game is competitive and require two (or more)
players. E-sports at it's basic level all boils down to two players/team playing against each other in
a competitive game in order to see who is better, this means that two players playing against each
other in a game of Super Mario Kart in a bedroom somewhere in another part of the world, is
taking part in the culture of e-sports whether they know it or not.

Think of it as playing football (or soccer for the U.S.A readers) on the street while they are playing
amongst themselves and have no bearing on the football as a whole, they are still participating in
the culture of football, following its rules and scoring; This means that the next time you play a
game of Starcraft or Tekken that you are participating in the culture of e-sports whether you intend
to or not.
Now for the 'actively supporting' side of the game, this section is as important, if not more
important, than the professional side of e-sport. This section contains; watchers, sponsors, and
everyone else. The watchers are simply those who watch tournaments, streams, read blogs,
forums etc... that are related to e-sports, without these people e-sports would not exist as it does
today.

View from SC2 World Championship Series 2012 European Finals

As the more fans that actively watch/support e-sports the more sponsors there are, and the more
sponsors the more advertising/reach e-sports has, and the more reach means more fans, and so
forth. But it all begins with the fans. Sponsors are exactly what it says on the tin, they are the
companies who sponsors individual players or teams, by monetary or otherwise, this is simply a
mutually benefiting agreement as the player/team gains more money to go to tournaments paid
for by the sponsor and the sponsor gets advertising at the tournament. With everybody else this
means everyone who is actively supporting a person in e-sports or is a personality, be it family,
team manager, shoutcasters or a host, all of these people are part of e-sports.

This is my definition of e-sports as a whole, and what is inside of it. As you can see it contains
pretty much everything that is associated with a game, while some may be found in one level of a
game then another it is all still part of e-sports, it is very large, and hopefully its here to stay.

.....

So yeah, it's a bit long but it's a pretty good read and there is more to come, and you can follow this guy on twitter too!

https://twitter.com/wisH_HKM