How to turn something great into something average, just by talking about it

Mass Effect 2 is out in about a week, which is incredibly exciting for me and for a lot of other gamers around the world. But why are we excited about it? Well because the first installment of the game turned out to be fantastic, and the sequel can ride on the quality of the original. The Dark Knight was a fantastic film, and was completely sold out at every theatre I tried to watch it at on release night, again a good example of the strengths of the original selling the sequel. But sometimes the strength of an original work doesn't seem to be enough, sometimes because there isn't an original product to be followed, or maybe the previous entries weren't well received. Or maybe because there is the potential to make even more money that anyone could possibly imagine. In these situation the go to resource is hype, a word that is thrown around a lot, but not unjustly.

It's nigh on impossible to talk about hype wihout mentioning a game called Modern Warfare 2. No product has received so much hype from its publishers and yet in actuallity has required so little. Being the sequel to one of the most successful first person shooters of all time all that would be required would be a blank screen with the release date, actually that's not too far off what the original teaser was, however greed took hold and the over staturation of marketing began. Activision went promo crazy, there were teaser trailers, trailers announcing the release of full trailers, random celebrities were invited to play the game then tweet about it, every day some news about the game or it's development was leaked to videogame blogs. Taking a gamble activision initiated the big marketing push a good 3 months before the game was due for release, risking people being sick to death of hearing about MW2 by the time the game came out. A quick look around the net shows that that is exactly what happened, but it didn't stunt the sales of the game any.

It's not just games that become victims of their own hype, films are just as likely to fall victim. Final Fantasy (yes I know it's a game movie, clearly gaming has a lot to answer for) received a push like no other, television specials, dedicated magazines, reputable newspapers even got involved in pushing this film. The technology on display was revolutionary and by the time the film came out there wasn't a soul alive who wasn't aware of how important this film was going to be the industry. Then came the release day, and the film turned out to be so overwhelimgly bad that no amount of fancy pants teu could save it, Square was almost forced to close down as a result of the crippling losses, and technology in films was pushed back 8 years.

Good advertising is an important part of making sure your work reaches as many people as possible, and a little hype can work wonders. But taken too far it can damage the reputation of the product, and yourself, beyond repair.

Advertise responsibly kids!

MAG beta - first impressions

Image via Wikipedia

M.A.G finally got it's public beta this week after a lengthy privates beta. Not being important enough to be invited (or quick enough to get one of the giveaway codes) this has been our first chance to get some hands on one with the game. So what can we say? It's an extremely technically proficient game that's for sure, but should a game survive purely on the tech it uses?

Massive Action Game (an acronym that sounds like it had to fit around the name) is a game by the makers of the wildly popular Socom series, quite possibly some of the best online experiences available on the PS2. Expectations have therefore been very high, and the beta has been bustling with activity from the moment it was released to the general public. More people equals more full games, which works in the favour of MAG as it's main gimmick is that it supports up to 250 players. That's a whole lot of potential tea-bagging! 250 people is an impressive feat on it's own, but the behind the scenes work done by the servers is where this game really excels. In a recent interview the awesomely named producer Alan Van Slyke explained "Before we started working on the front-end client technology, we started working on the servers" an approach that seems rare with most modern online games, especially given that Modern Warfare 2 was recently shamed by not supporting dedicated servers on the PC. The time they dedicated to making sure everything behind the scenes was silky smooth has really paid off, resulting in a totally lag free environment for all players at all times. How lag free? Well we put their fancy pants new technology to the test.

To really make sure that we were playing with fire we connected to the M.A.G server with a 128k connection, please don't try this at home, it'll piss a lot of people you're playing with off. The menus took a while to load, as did the search for a game, but eventually we were dropped off into a full 256 player game. Not a second of lag, not even a slight stutter. No-one complained, no-one booted us from the game, everything ran silky smooth. Because it's only right to do a controlled test the only natural next step was to pop MW2 in for a quick go... Ahem, needless to say it fared less well.

So the background tech is a complete success, the graphics are very attractive considering everything that is happening in the game. There have been some minor complaints about the draw distance, but during our time with the game it never seemed to be as bad as people were making it out to be. But something just doesn't feel right, now this is my own personal opinion and not that of S&N here, but the actual gameplay in M.A.G doesn't do the amazing tech justice. At the end of the day it's another shooter, sure it has a lot of people playing, but that is where the differences seem to end. Trying to get people to actually make a tactical decision seems to be impossible, with such large numbers and very clear objectives to be met there isn't a lot of room for lone wolf antics, and yet the game tends to boil down to 200 people running off doing their own thing, while a select few try and hold it all together tactically. This does in many ways come down to the people you are playing with, and there were some genuinely great moments where plans game together exactly as we had expected them to, but these moments were out numbered by watching wave after wave of people running into the same snipers line of fire as they all ignored your cries to look out.

It's a good game, and an exclusive Sony should be somewhat proud to have on their side, especially because of the amazing propitiatory server tech Zipper Interactive have developed. But until the game has been out for a while and the community has gotten used to the sort of game it is it's really just a fancy tech demo.

My 2009

I'm being very careful about this!

For a start I'm doing this on my iPhone, so apologies for any typos! 2009. 2009! 2009? What can I say? Not a very eventful year for me. Let's see, January I acquired Fallout 3 for the 360. Brilliant game, with amazing DLC later on in the year. I somehow feel that thus game was a huge influence on the slightly disappointing Terminator: Salvation. Huge wastelands, small human colonies, feeling of lonliness, and of course, big robots trying to smash you up! Much like Transformers: ROTF (and that's not me rolling on the floor!)
Much the same as the first Michael Bay robot party, Transformers: ROTF was overly long and not much substance. But what's so bad about enjoying Megan Fox on screen and seeing giant robots beat the bolts out of each other? It's an 80's childs dream!
La Roux tried to capture the 80's Nintendo sound and give it some lyrics! The bonus of this is that it really worked. Great little pop tunes that do the job.
My main jobs this year were being a Modern Warfare soldier and an assassin, not to mention bring locked up in Arkam with The Joker trying to knock me out! For me, Batman: AA, COD: MW, and Assassins Creed II were by far the most enjoyable and addictive games. I haven't enjoyed games like this for a long time. Batman broke the mold of having rubbish comic book games, Ubisoft listened to us and face us a better creed with more variety in missions, and a deeper story, whilst Infinity Ward prove to us yet again, that they are the kings if COD and no one should mess with them! Maybe a few too many challenges, and story not brilliant, but still it came out on top.

To be honest, I really can't think of any decent films I've seen this year. In fact I really don't think there has been much to get meviff the sofa and to the cinema. Had I managed to fit in Avatar, I'm sure it would have come out on top!

And finally music. Two bands have peaked my interest. Muse made a brilliant album, and even proved with Undisclosed Desires that they have the capacity to go electro if they wanted. I even saw them at The O2, and even though I was seated, I still had a he'll of a time. Matt, Chris and Dom know how to make a show spectacular! (proper review if that show soon!)
The other band that have tickled the ear drums ate Them Crooked Vultures. An amazing supergroup who actually know the definition of rock! Dome people may just write it off as another QOTSA album, however, once you delve deep into it, you forget it's Josh Holme on guitar and vocals, and just have to air drum along with the Devil, Dave Grohl! John Paul Jones just follows the trend and joins in the fun really. But if you are going to have a bassist in your band, it may as well ve Led Zeps (also a proper review coming soon)

So that's my 2009! Not much to say other than hope you had a great Christmas and here's to a brilliant 2010!!

-Mike-