The Game Developers’ Conference has come and gone, but we here at TotalPlayStation are still talking about it – Infamous 2, Resistance 3, The Darkness II, and, of course, Shenmue III. But much more than the particulars of this year’s specific show, there are the holistic generalities: what is the role of the conference in the structure that is known as public relations? Just how should the average gamer – and journo – perceive and interact with the event? And should something major be done to GDC, such as stripping the public at large of its access and rendering it a cabalistic, ritualistic affair?

Andy Curtiss
Staff Writer
Our victim… er… topic of conversation? This year’s GDC. It’s come and gone in the blink of an eye. And I know, based on comments I’ve heard, that some of you were more disappointed than others. So let loose – how disappointed are you? Was there anything at all for PlayStation fans to enjoy? Or was it all developer mumbo-jumbo?

Discuss!

Sam Bishop
Editor-in-chief
I actually thought it was a really good show. Obviously, it’s never going to be E3 (or, at least, I hope that’s the case), but there were a few neat reveals that I’m churning through right now and there should be plenty for our readers to digest by the time they hear about our little conversation here. The reveal of The Darkness II took both JD and I by surprise; Digital Extremes is really embracing the comics side of things, and they’ve done a hell of a job with capturing a kind of semi-cartoony, exaggerated feel to the animation and cutscenes. It really does look like a comic brought to life, and any worries I had about Starbreeze not being on the project anymore were allayed by the short little demo they showed us.

Some of the other reveals, like Infamous 2’s Mission Creator, Resistance 3’s multiplayer stuff, just getting the chance to go hands-on with some of the single-player bits of both those games – plus final MotorStorm Apocalypse – seeing what Snowblind has been up to with their Lord of the Rings game, and seeing some indie stuff that we may or may not be actually getting on the PSN was really neat. Personally, I would have liked to have been able to jump into more sessions and just listen to devs talking about their stuff, but, overall, the show was surprisingly packed with updates and new information on a lot of games we knew were coming. E3’s the time for big reveals, but this was at least a nice way to catch up on a bunch of stuff.

Oh, and I need dat NGP action. It looks so very nice up-close.

Ryan Green
Managing Editor
I don’t know. As exciting as new details about Infamous 2 and other properties is, GDC doesn’t excite me. Ever. Ultimately, I care about the games, not what goes into them. I’m not a developer, so extensive talks about how to optimize lighting in a vacuum setting, featuring real-life numbers, means crap to me. Optimize all of the netcode you want; all I care about is the end result. And that is what a lot of people, from the shareholders to the eight-year-old getting his mom to buy him the Halos, care about.

That said, I totally give a crap about mention of Shenmue III. It was just a passing mention, but as a guy that enjoyed the original Shenmue (and narrowly escaped playing the sequel), the idea of bringing the franchise back is cool with me. Bring me HD ports (or even better, remakes) of the bat-crap crazy original entries, or just the conclusion, or something! Don’t just bring Ryo back for another Sonic cart racer – drop his name at GDC, and then produce nothing.

GDC is, at best, a place for developers to tease the on-looking internet trolls like us with the promise of something much greater to come. At worst, it is all about colleagues, friends, and students getting together and sharing great ideas with each other. But that is sort of backwards, isn’t it? “At best” should be the learning, and “at worst” should be the PR nonsense, teases, and everything else that is otherwise meaningless to the people that work on games. Of course, that is sort of a greater problem in today’s conference setting.

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
GDC bored me this year. This, however, is not a bad thing in the slightest, for, as Ryan mentioned, the conference should be focused upon game development and should ignore publisher-induced media frenzies as much as possible.

Given that, however, I’m continued to be impressed by the 3DS. Although not major revelations, the announcements of Netflix support, the inclusion of Game Gear and TurboGrafx-16 games for the system’s version of the Virtual Console, and, of course, a new Super Mario game make a very happy handheld gamer, indeed. And I only have a little while left to wait for all the new services…

And Shenmue, one of the biggest – but certainly not the last – disappointments unleashed by the walking accident that is Sega, can remain dead, thank you very much.

Nathan Tsui
Staff Writer
I honestly don’t have too much to say about this topic, because, for whatever combination of reasons this year, I didn’t end up following GDC too closely. It really felt like it was over before I’d even noticed it had started. And reflecting back on it now, I can’t remember a single thing that was announced during the conference specifically, but that just might be my terrible memory.

I actually got to try out the 3DS at the SXSW Interactive thing, and I wasn’t terribly impressed. I played SSF4 3D, but mainly I was testing out the technology. It’s more like looking into a box than having stuff pop out of the screen towards you. The effect is kind of interesting, but it’s somewhat blurry (at least, to me), and I could see it being a nuisance more than anything after an extended amount of play time. In fact, I was able to get my hands on the demo unit so easily because a kid with glasses handed it over to me, saying that it was giving him a headache. I played around with it by looking at it from all different angles and messing with the slider, and my ultimate conclusion was that $250 is way too much for this thing.

And Marc, I oughtta castrate you for those comments on Sega and Shenmue! Damn yoooouuuuuuu!

Ryan Green
Managing Editor
Marc is just upset that he searched for years in Japan and never found Ryo’s home. He wanted to ransack it for the mint condition Sega Saturn inside of it.

There are some really neat ideas that will come out of developers talking about and working on 3D technology. This year, the only thing I remember even close to that was Crytek’s passive 3D engine. Companies are either working on glasses-less 3D or wear-your-own-prescription glasses 3D, but I have yet to find one that didn’t make people sick. Crytek seems like they are on to something, but they still have some work to do there. The 3DS might prove, on a larger scale, that “3D works but who cares?” Like Nathan said, it made him a little sick, and that has been a consistent response from people when using 3D devices. If it, at all, has the potential to make people ill, it might not be worth investing in.

Perhaps GDC this year was a good test to see if developers, save for their publishers, care about the technology.

Aram Lecis
Señor Editor
To be honest, if I had my druthers, I’d probably go to GDC over any other “expo”-type event, simply because it is something a bit different. Sure, not a lot of info came out that was particularly titillating for the average gamer (save for the aforementioned Infamous 2 info), but the idea of developers getting together to share their ideas seems like it would have much better far-reaching effects for gamers in the long run. It’s also a much better opportunity for journalists to interact with the people who create the games we love, since they are not inundated with appointments and exhausted from the show floor.

That being said, I can’t deny the dearth of interesting info that came out of this year’s GDC. I think Sam put up a dozen previews here at the site, and while they were informative and interesting, I don’t think any of us got a lot of new info out of them. Even looking beyond the bounds of Sony, there still wasn’t a whole lot out there unless you were totally shocked that Nintendo is making more Zelda games or you
somehow hadn’t absorbed the barge full of information out there about the 3DS.

If there had been information about Shenmue III or even some sort of Shenmue MMO, that would have been pretty thrilling to me, despite
Marc’s stick-in-the-mud opinion.

Sure, GDC will never be the goldmine of new game announcements that E3 is, but, in the long run, I maintain that without GDC to plant the seeds of new innovations and ideas, E3 would never see those announcements, either.

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
I think Ryo’s house was washed away in the tsunami. Too soon?

Given the more-or-less consistent sentiment regarding GDC, does anyone think that the conference would be best served by having it be closed completely to the public? Wouldn’t the most conducive environment to collaboration and development be one completely devoid of self-consciousness?

And, just for the record, I do miss my Dreamcast. Samba de Amigo is some of the most fun my wife and I have had with gaming – it’s kinda odd to think that Sega had Harmonix beat by some six years – and Chu Chu Rocket should definitely be a 3DS launch game (space cats in 3D? Oh, yeah, baby).

But one does have to admit that Sega is kind of the leper of the videogame industry – everything it touches tends to implode or otherwise decompose into a stinking heap of flesh. Or something.

Aram Lecis
Señor Editor
Yakuza seems to be doing all right for them… it’s pretty much Shenmue for (slightly) less niche gamers.

I like GDC being semi-open. I think that giving a little transparency to the inner working of the industry is nice, and I shouldn’t have to be an “insider” to enjoy a talk form Will Wright about the Br0derbund days…

Parjanya Holtz
Senior Editor
Aren’t E3 and the likes more like GPC in that sense – the Game Publishers’ Conference?

Sam Bishop
Editor-in-chief
GDC is still very much about devs and people trying to break in. It’s “open” to the public in the sense that if someone has a couple hundred bucks, they can get into the sessions and the Career Pavilion, but it’s not like E3 where you have to be a part of the industry to get in. GDC as it is now is fantastic; the press stuff happens outside the conference itself in hotels and such around the area. So it’s actually a pretty decent trade-off right now. The industry can chat about making games with other people that make games, and the press folks can get updated impressions of stuff and maybe take away something from the odd keynote. Win-win.

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
Winning!

Long ago, when PC gaming was still king, the best games would often get expansions that cost a fraction of the full-game price and offered a brand-new campaign or set of levels. Truth be told, those things still exist, although the popularity and distribution methods of PC gaming have changed quite a bit over the years. Back then, though, console gamers were left out in the cold more often than not when it came to extra content; we simply didn’t have the technology to easily deliver that content, nor the integrated hard drives to allow for easy assimilation into existing games.

Times have changed pretty radically, however, and now most people have high-speed internet connections that make the 14.4 modems of the past absolutely archaic, and new consoles come packed with enough storage space to hold dozens of full games. But expansion packs still haven’t made their way to consoles with any sort of regularity, and with the new focus on high development costs and yearly iterations of franchises, I’d say we won’t likely ever see them again. Instead, the flavor of the day is the ubiquitous downloadable content (or DLC, as it has become colloquially known).

I’m not sure any innovation in gaming has distressed me as much as the advent of DLC. I fully understand the need to bump the standard price for a retail game from $50 to $60, given that after 15-plus years at the former price point, we were due for an increase, especially since development costs have risen exponentially (and haven’t been offset by the rise in sales and popularity for videogames). I don’t even mind the extra $10-$30 that gets tacked on for “special editions” as long as they offer something tangible, like a collectable lunch box or other knick-knacks. What kills me is the DLC that you are almost forced to buy to get the full game experience, which often ends up pushing the final cost of the game to $100 or more. It’s a very transparent cash grab by greedy publishers, and it is slowly pushing me away from console gaming.

In the interest of fairness, not all DLC is evil. There are a number of different types of downloadable content, and some developers/publishers use this new medium in the proper way. Let’s take a look at the various types:

1. DLC that adds sizable content that takes place outside the vanilla game, yet integrates well into the existing world. The prime example here is the Fallout series, which has received numerous, excellent add-ons that are purely optional but very well-crafted.

2. DLC that provides trinkets and items that are purely cosmetic additions and are not necessary for the full game experience. See the Ace Combat series for an over-the-top example of this type of content.

3. DLC that provides trinkets and items that drastically alter the balance of the game by providing overpowered weapons or armor to the user. In a single-player environment, these are optional and probably nice for those that struggle with completing the game, but in a multiplayer scenario, they can destroy the competitive balance. The Dead Space series is a good example of this. Often this type of content is offered as a pre-order bonus from various distributors.

4. Map packs in first-person shooters. Occasionally these are provided for free, but more often than not, they cost $15 to add four or five new maps into the rotation for online games, and they are pretty much a requirement for anyone that plans on playing the game regularly. Popular titles can see the release of three or four of these packs, pushing the price of the game into triple digits if you want to keep playing. Check out any Call of Duty or Halo installment to see this.

5. Increasingly popular is the “online pass” that comes with every new copy of the game, but requires a $10 fee to get online with a used copy. Electronics Arts has championed this particular type of DLC, with everything from Madden to the recent Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Blame GameStop for this one.

6. DLC that was once part of the final product but was then stripped out at the last minute (but left on the disc) so it could then be sold later at a premium price, often day-and-date with the release. Many times, the story will feel incomplete and have notable gaps if you haven’t bit the bullet and bought into the “extra” downloadable content. Mafia 2 and Dragon Age 2 are prime examples of this practice.

I certainly have no issue with the first type. Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2 were given additional life by the steady release of fully-fleshed-out and interesting content that came out over the course of a year after the release of the main titles. One could easily spend dozens of hours with just the stock game and never feel like he was missing out on a thing; the extra content was there for those who loved the universe and felt like they wanted to explore it more. I absolutely support any developer who wants to go this route.

I find I have varying levels of distaste for the rest of these scenarios, though. If someone wants to spend good money on horse armor or on having all the cars in Burnout: Paradise unlocked for her so she doesn’t have to play the actual game, well, I might not be into it, but I ‘m not going to get all up in arms over something that doesn’t affect me. Map packs are something that does bother me; oftentimes, these packs are just rehashes of maps from earlier entries in the series and, thus, don’t require much effort on the part of developers – and even the ones that are entirely new seem like they should be priced a tad bit more reasonably. They also serve to fracture the online community, since you can’t play with those that don’t have the new content, and once a game gets older and the online presence starts to die out, such a schism can essentially break the experience for folks who don’t want to invest another $45 in a title they already plopped down $60 for.

The “online pass” is something I understand the need for, but, at the same time, I can’t help but feel like I am being punished for the greed of GameStop (and, now, Best Buy). I fully understand developers’ frustration at used game sales sucking up all of their profits – they obviously don’t get a dime for GameStop’s second-hand wares – and I also understand why stores push so hard for consumers to purchase the used version, given that their profit margin is so much larger. But punishing the end user for this seems a little disingenuous. I pity the poor fool who is convinced he should get a game used at GameStop for $5 off the retail price, only to get home and find out he needs to pay another $10 to play the game online, something the employee likely didn’t mention during the sale. Poor Joe SixPack now has shelled out $5 more than a new game would have cost to get a dinged-up version (often in a generic case) through no real fault of his own, other than ignorance.

But the scourge of all gaming is the now-almost-standard practice of yanking content from a full game and forcing people to pay extra to get the remainder of the experience. I find this to be shady, insulting, and even a bit unethical. This is almost always a publisher choice; I am willing to bet most developers don’t want their games hacked up, especially knowing that many players, since they will never purchase the DLC, will be left with an incomplete experience and vaguely resentful feelings. The latest Prince of Persia offering was sold without a real ending, which was there when the game was developed but which was pulled after someone decided that they could get another $10-$15 out of innocent consumers by selling it a month later. The truth of the matter, sadly, is that most people finished the game, got disgusted with the lack of resolution, and never picked up the DLC – and, thus, were turned off of the series. Any time DLC is included on the disc itself, it’s an extra slap in the face. There is no reason other than pure greed to lock out that content, especially when it is already in the player’s hand. I personally will never pay one red cent for any of that content, and I refuse to support any publisher who wants to go that route. Unfortunately, with the major companies, this approach seems to be turning into the standard rather than the exception, and I honestly feel it is ruining gaming.

I don’t expect any of you to join me in my boycott, but just remember – if you support the wrong sort of DLC, it will only become more prevalent, so much so that, one day, our $60 will just buy us a game engine. If you actually want something to do in that world, be prepared to turn over your bank account details to EA and Activision.

There’s an old saying about pleasing some of the people some of the time…

The highly anticipated – and highly advertised – sequel to Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, was released on March 8th, 2011…much to the dismay of some of its “fans.” Apparently, a sect of the more vocal constituents of the preceding game have cried out to the Maker in agony, struck by despair at their sense of betrayal for receiving a game so horrible, it cannot be played. At least, if Metacritic.com’s own user-created reviews are to be regarded as a fair and balanced response to the sequel. Yes, the internet is always an excellent source for objective criticism.

But what’s strange is the vast difference in response from the critics’ reviews and the user reviews on Metacritic. Surely, the occasional fan will take umbrage at a game in a way that differs from the popular critical response, or even the majority view of other users, but Dragon Age 2 plays an unusual role here. The critical Metascore for the game is an 80/82/83 (360/PS3/PC), while the user scores are 4.3/3.8/4.3; it would be enough if only a handful of people reviewed the game, but there are a total of over 5,000 user reviews for this title alone! This kind of response for videogames is actually more common on Metacritic than you might think – for example, Call of Duty: Black Ops has an equivalent critic-to-user difference of an average of 30 points (using Metacritic’s critic-based scoring). But for a title like DA2 to receive this kind of blog-flogging from its prior supporters seems strange considering developer BioWare’s commitment to producing games with its fans in mind.

So, why all the hate? Is this game so terrible? Apparently, in this case, it does depend on who you ask. The venom that has been spewed forth – especially on BioWare’s own messageboards – about feelings of the title being “garbage,” “a failure,” and even the “death of the series” are extreme, to say the least. But this seems to be more the case of those vocal few who view the internet as an outlet for extreme opinions, rather than those who have assessed the game on its own merit. Considering the majority of these opinions surfaced in short time after the launch of the game, one wonders just how much critical attention the outspoken “fans” truly devoted to this title.

Perhaps some (if not most) of this is due to the antagonistic relationship outspoken gamers have with sequels. Some resent publishers for producing sequels, claiming that they are produced simply to capitalize on the success of their predecessors. While this is true (after all, why make a game you intend to make no money on?), these same individuals fail to recognize that many games now have the capacity to tell an interactive story far beyond the scope of games of yore. And these same games – and their corresponding stories – develop and grow with time. Sequels (and DLC, to an extent) are the extension of that philosophy.

To be fair, the game is not without its share of shortcomings. I wonder who the architect of Kirkwall was, and his obsessive compulsion to design each cave, warehouse, or Hightown mansion in a uniform way, much less the interior decorators, who furnish each home with frighteningly similar paintings, chairs, et cetera. Or, perhaps, the unusual amount of dropped equipment that the player will likely never use, especially with regards to armor. And I still chuckle when I visit the Viscount’s manor and hear the canned background speech from one poor soul who apparently has been forced to wait to see the ruler of the city for over three years, if the game’s chronology is to be believed.

But for all its idiosyncrasies, the game is a triumph of episodic gameplay, in its own way. The massive collection of quests gives the player a variety of different residents of Kirkwall to interact with – and sometimes kill and loot. Moral choices and lasting consequences are still as ubiquitous in Dragon Age 2 as they are in many BioWare games, but now the end results of your actions are more clearly defined in many cases, giving the player the freedom to direct the story better than its predecessor did. The combat system is fast and dynamic, the tactics portion of combat is more accessible and meaningful (with the addition of cross-class combos), and attributes and abilities are more balanced and multi-functional than before. And not once did I have to backtrack to a shop before completing a quest to sell loot, simply because I was “too encumbered” (take that, Fallout 3!).

One of the best moments you can appreciate how much detail has gone into the “streamlined” art direction of the game comes when you compare the detail between the different races and characters in both games. Elves and dwarves especially look more distinct from their predecessors’ counterparts, giving them a visual personality. But no other race has undergone such drastic alteration as the Qunari. Now endowed with horns, and a stone-like fleshtone, they remind me of what design choices went into the Klingons of Star Trek after their first appearances on the television series. But to truly see the difference, you will have to encounter one of your former companions. After I met up with one from the first game (no spoilers), I was amazed how much more animation and detail went into his (okay, little spoiler) appearance this go around.

Where DA2 shines the most is in its intricate story. According to lead designer Mike Laidlaw in the foreword for the strategy guide (beautifully designed by Piggyback Interactive), the development team “jokingly used to pitch [Dragon Age 2] as ‘two archdemons stapled together to lead a super Blight!’ Perhaps you can see why [they] wanted something different.” While this is apparently lost on some so-called “fans” of Dragon Age: Origins, the story is the beginning of an exciting epic, much as the Assassin’s Creed series has bravely adopted.

This game explores a rare place in the fiction of any game, one where politics and intrigue play out around the Champion of Kirkwall’s heroics. Quests and interactions with the major players in Kirkwall are some of the most fascinating moments in any role-playing game. Between the ruling Viscount Dumar, the Fereldan refugees (of which Hawke, the protagonist, is a member), Knight-Commander Meredith, and the Arishok – a figure who leads his people through the harsh tenets of the Qun – DA2 is stuffed full with moments of tension and believable characters with identifiable motives. The underlying parallels between conflicts of religion, race, and government in the game are almost painfully recognizable in our own modern world, only previously hinted at in Origins, now explosively relevant in the context of its sequel. To see these comparisons made in the fantasy world of Thedas makes for some intelligent storytelling that requires its audience to draw their own conclusions.

In the end, Dragon Age 2 is, in many ways, much like the entertaining supporting characters that ally themselves with Hawke. Like the saucy pirate vixen Isabella, it is a tarnished beauty; already in its short life, it has endured wildly varied support and extreme – and unfair – condemnation. Like Fenris, former Tevinter Imperium slave and fugitive, it has fought against the trappings of its former life, and been attacked for daring to live in a way different than the unfair expectations posited upon it by its users. And, maybe like Anders (imagine Malcolm X as a mage), I, too, rally to defend this enjoyable title from unfair persecution, and enjoy DA2 for what it is – a fun game.

I have been playing my brand-new, eagerly purchased 3DS for the better part of the day. The system has, as expected, elicited a plethora of reactions that have run the entire gamut of gaming geekdom, from awed appreciation to tedious boredom to sheer excitement that the goddamn 3D really does work, after all, despite the bevy of hands-on previews hitherto offered by the journo world that have already confirmed (and re-confirmed) it.

And through it all, the most enjoyment I’ve managed to glean from my way-too-expensive little blue box has been the alternate reality games, tiny, little experiences that are barely-dressed-up pack-in tech demos. Take a picture of your wife’s face, have it morphed into a sphere, and shoot it as it flies around the room at you, in full 360 degrees. Slap a question block card on the table and watch as it morphs and distorts the piece of furniture into a shooting gallery. Cycle through the various poses of Mario, Link, and Captain Olimar’s Pikmin as they pop out of their own cards so that you might add their virtual likenesses to your three-dimensional photo album.

Cheesy? Sure. Laughable? Probably, although I’ve heard similar sentiments from plenty of others thus far. Gimmicky? Yes… and therein lies the crux of the matter. ARGs – at least, the 3DS’s photographic version – are most certainly a gimmick, along with Steel Diver’s periscope missions and a whole score of other applications seen in the launch library. Hell, the 3D itself, the very heart of Nintendo’s fourth-generation handheld, is nothing but a giant gimmick. But a quick survey of gaming’s finest moments yields surprising results: a goodly number of the most engaging, most enjoyable, and certainly the most unique experiences in videogames’ past come at the hands of some rather questionable methods. Clicking away on the myriad plastic peripherals that Guitar Hero has produced is some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming since I first played Super Mario Bros. in the arcade, with Star Fox 64’s force feedback or Pac-Man Versus’s interconnected GameCube-Game Boy Advance set-up not too far behind.

And then there’s the smaller stuff. Psycho Mantis bidding me to place my Dual Shock on the floor so that he might move it with the power of his mind strikes all three of the 3DS’s trifecta of lame chords – cheesy, laughable, and obviously gimmicky – but it’s also one of the single most clever beats I’ve ever encountered in a game. Playing as your Mii for the first time in Wii Sports never fails to bring a smile to one’s face, no matter how jaded he may be; rolling up everyday, household items in Katamari Damacy grows thin surprisingly quickly, but it never quite loses the hold that it (quite rightly) places on you. The versatility and the depth, the pervasiveness and resilience of the gimmick is nothing short of remarkable, really.

As it should be; for, at the end of the day, videogames are merely the latest extension – and, arguably, the fullest embodiment – of technology, and technology is nothing if not gimmicky. Text messages, GPSes, MP3 players, Blu-ray DVDs, karaoke machines… all are sizzle-in-the-pan deviations and recreations of a culture constantly attempting to titillate and capitalize. The gimmick is the special-edition, one-for-every state coin of the realm – which, just sometimes, can henceforth become the new, de facto standard, the one currency to rule them all forevermore (until, of course, the next new variation on the retired theme comes bouncing along). Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t. Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter; the fun is in the experiencing, after all.

All of which means that the 3DS’s launch day, whether the ARGs’ novelty fades quickly away or their uniqueness makes them a permanent mainstay, is pure and simple fun.

Carpe diem.