All Videogames Are Not Created Equal

And yet, it appears to be the current mindset that they are. Take, for example, this fixation on game length that has the industry by the balls. Despite what a lot of people seem to think, game length is not some arbitrary thing where longer equals better. You see people tossing around phrases like "more game for your dollar" and it's worthy of a facepalm. Cheaper is not always better. Americans are obsessed with cheap food and that obsession has garnered us an obesity epidemic. Likewise, many games are stuffed full of fat in order to pad the game length, because the public can't wrap their head around the concept that sometimes a game is short. The Halo series, for example, is infamous for its cut and paste level design. The Library level from the original game is probably the most extreme example (it was basically two corridors repeated over and over and over again, with enemies swarming at you the entire time) but even the third game had you complete a level, and then go straight back through that same level - backwards. I'm not against going through previously played areas again, of course, but there should be some significance to it. In Half-Life 2, one of the first areas you enter is a large plaza huge vidscreens broadcasting propaganda and metrocops pushing you and other blue-jumpsuited civilians around. Towards the end of the game, you go through this same plaza - except now you're leading a revolution and your insurgents are pulling down the vidscreens and fighting back against their former oppressors. In this instance, retreading old ground serves to show the player how far he's come and the effects his actions have had on the world. In Halo, it served no purpose other than being a cheap way to extend the "gaming dollar." Sure the Library made Halo an hour or two longer, but that extra hour was a tedious slog that left a bad taste in the player's mouth. Half-Life and Daikatana both cost the same when they came out, but I don't think you'll find anybody that says an hour of Daikatana is worth the same as an hour of Half-Life. Halo isn't the only series to engage in padding, of course. Lots of games do it, because if they don't, they're criticized for it. Take Portal, for instance. It was widely hailed for its innovative mechanics, humor, and polish. And yet, nearly every critic complained that it was too short, possible not worth $20. This is pretty much bullshit. The entire attraction of Portal is that its gameplay and antagonist were unique and different. If portal were much longer, then the gameplay would have started to become repetitive, and GlaDos would lose much of her charm through over-exposure. Instead, the players are left wanting more. I think 90% of complaints about games being too short come from the fact that the player is enjoying themselves and wants to continue playing. This is a good thing - it's much better to end on a high note than to drag an experience out until it becomes banal. Another thing that people do is break a game into components. A game is far more than the sum of its parts, and to try and analyse each bit on its own is misleading and unproductive. Take Call of Duty 4, for instance. It drew criticism for its short singleplayer campaign. Once again, just because it was short does not mean it was low quality. I don't like the Call of Duty series (I refer to it as "whack-a-nazi/terrorist," because that's what it is) and yet I still admire the campaign for its taut level design and some really surprisingly powerful moments. And really, its besides that point - because multiplayer is the real meat of the game. Probably the best example of this is when people criticized the Battlefield series for weak offline play. My favorite was when people would rag on the AI. First of all, why the hell are you playing a Battlefield game offline? Second, you're complaining that a development team working on a game designed around large numbers of humans coordinating didn't waste time and money trying to develop a bot that could mimic human behavior, ingenuity, and flexibilty? For that matter, would kind of bot would have sufficed? "Aha!" people say, "But Bobbicus, if the offline mode never had a chance of being high quality, why put it in at all?" The answer, you smug bastards, is that the offline mode is extremely high quality- for the purpose it plays. The offline mode exists for the sole reason of allowing players to explore maps and orient themselves to how weapons, vehicles, etc. behave in peace, so that they play better online. It's not supposed to be an alternative to online play. Another example of this kind of thinking is Mount and Blade. Mount and Blade is the single best medieval combat simulator ever released. Ever. This is not an exaggeration - there has not been a game released which captures mounted as well as Mount and Blade. And yet this title has a 72 rating at metacritic, with many reviewers bashing it to pieces. The most cited reason is the graphics (I shan't say anything more about this because I will rant about it at length. Suffice to say that the graphics in this game do their job, but won't be winning any awards.) The second is that the parts of the game that aren't combat are underdeveloped. Of course they are, you twats. Mount and Blade is not an RPG. Saying Mount and Blade has shallow RPG elements is like saying Microsoft Flight simulator has lackluster building detail - it's not the Goddamned point of the game! Yes, you have stats - because they affect how you perform in battle. Yes, you can raise a band of warriors - because you will command them in battle. Yes, you can accept quests, trade goods, and even take over a small fiefdom - because it affects how much money you have and thus, the number and quality of troops you can (say it with me now) take into battle. The game is about men (and women) bashing in the heads of other men (and women.) It's not about an epic story, or in depth role-playing. So yes, conversations are shallow and stilted - because the developers had better things to spend time and effort on (the combat.) And yes, these extraneous elements do their job marvelously, because as fun as it is to lead a band of mounted knights into combat, supported by Nordic footmen and elite bowmen, it's even more fun when you've fought with this men for several years, watching them grow from raw recruits into hardened warriors even as your character grows from a weakling who can barely ride a horse into Beowulf. It gives the combat backstory and makes it impactful. It's notable that not a single review, positive or negative, has criticized the game's combat. Finally, this perception can lead to misplaced expectations. Take the recent Left 4 Dead 2 fiasco, with whiny self-important bit...I mean loyal fans screaming in true Angry Internet Man fashion that Valve had reneged on its promise to support L4D post release. Most of these people based their arguments on the post-release content provided for another Valve game, Team Fortress 2. These people make the assumption that since both games are multiplayer-oriented online games created by Valve, they would receive the same kind of post-release support. This is very simple-minded and quickly falls apart with even the slightest bit of thinking, not that an Angry Internet Man cares for such a thing as rational thought. Team Fortress 2 is a symmetrical, deatmatch based game. The only difference between Red and Blue is player skill and class selection. If you give the Scout another gun, both sides will have access to that gun. The balancing act is not between teams, but between classes, essentially making sure that none become too powerful or too weak. Most importantly, TF2 is all about competitive play - there's no equivalent to L4D's campaign mode. Contrast this for L4D, which is an asymetrical game. The two teams are wildly different - the identical, durable survivors are nothing like the Special Infected, and the Horde is a third factor. If you give the survivor's a new gun that is actually different enough to warrant its inclusion, you have to give the Infected a new way to counter that, and vice-versa for giving new abilites (or new types) to the Infected. Second, L4D has a co-op mode which the survivors must be balanced for. A L4D map is a long, linear experience as opposed to an arena- style game, and needs to accomodate Tanks, Witches, Hunters, Smokers, Boomers, and the Hords. Third, what exactly would you add? Really the only thing that wouldn't be extraneous or throw balance completely off would be a new campaign. TF2 took about 7 months before its first 2 official maps (far simple than a L4D campaign, which contains 5 continuos complex maps,) and L4D has been out a little more than 6 months. The Survivor Mode update was a good example of the kind of content L4D can be expected to receive - two campaigns tweaked for versus play (more work than it sounds like, there are a lot of variables to be accounted for) a new mode with a new map designed for it, as well as existing maps tweaked for this gameplay mode (once again, people love to flaunt their ignorance by decrying this as "little more than tweaking a few scripts." Examing the maps side by side reveals quite a few substantial changes, all of which have been extensively tweaked and playtested.) So yeah, videogames are different. Big surprise, right? Just do me a favor, before you blast a game for being too short, or for not having multiplayer, or for having a certain aspect of gameplay be shallow, just think about why that may be, and if more would actually be better.