GTA V, FF XIV, and Home Challenges
by NorseGamer, HSM Publisher
Confession: I largely tuned out of the console generation that is currently drawing to a close.
Part of it was due to real-world obligations; I got married right around the time the generation started, and coupled with work, there just wasn’t much time to play. Part of it, though, was because it was a console generation that just kinda fell flat for me.
Sacrilege, I know. How could anyone possibly not enjoy all of the amazing gaming experiences that were released over the last, what, seven or eight years? And, to be fair, they are amazing experiences. But they’re starting to feel a bit well-trodden.
If you look at my library of games from prior generations — I’ve still got games going all the way back to the Atari 2600 and Apple ][e — it’s certainly respectable. But it takes a nosedive when we get to the PS3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until I picked up two new titles that are supposed to be the rousing final act for this generation: Grand Theft Auto V and Final Fantasy XIV.
I genuinely enjoyed GTA3 and Vice City. Remember the giddy elation at beating a pedestrian to death for the first time in GTA3? The realization that you were in a game which would let you do that? It was a revelation at the time. And Vice City, which combined 80’s nostalgia with the formula, was an emotional masterpiece. I never really got into GTA4 or San Andreas because I couldn’t really relate to them; when the formula is already largely familiar, what’s left as a hook is the story, and neither story particularly interested me.
This latest GTA intrigued me because of its three-protagonist setup. It’s not the first game to use such a trick — if anyone remembers the brilliant (and criminally underappreciated) Eidos title, Fear Effect, then you remember its three-protagonist approach — but it’s a fascinating evolution of that formula. The problem I have with it, though, is that the characters — aside from feeling a bit like demographic pandering, if I’m honest — just aren’t very compelling to me. While the unfolding story is certainly interesting (if more than a little predictable), what struck me is just how nihilistic this game is.
Maybe it’s a reflection of where we are as a culture at large. Let’s face it: if you’re an American citizen, you live in a country that currently feels adrift, directionless, balkanized and moving towards an inevitable future that no one can seem to stop. The unspoken sense that the country is past its prime, entering a stagnation period in which everyone rushes to distract themselves because distraction is all that’s worth pursuing any more. And this creeping nihilism is spreading its way through our modern myth-making that we use to culturally inform ourselves with.
Granted, the GTA series is known for its biting satire. And Dan Houser can legitimately lay claim to being one of the best pop-culture satirists in the world today. You’d be hard-pressed to offer a counterpoint to that. Likewise, I doubt you’ll be able to find anyone who can legitimately criticize GTA V from an engineering and design perspective. This game is a technical masterpiece, offering damn near anything and everything you can think of to do.
Here’s the problem, though…it all feels pointless.
The novelty hadn’t worn off yet.
As I’m driving through an eerily accurate recreation of the same neighborhoods I live and work in, randomly executing people for no reason other than to alleviate boredom, it hits me: I’ve done all of this before. And, worse, I had more fun doing it when it was still novel, or when I could listen to fantastic 80’s music. As for the story? It’s the same old routine, simply garnished with some new bells and whistles. All the various side-tasks are amusing — for a while — and then simply become so much window dressing. The one new feature that’s genuinely engrossing are the planned heists, which add some much-needed structure and tension to the high-points of the plot, but that’s about it. And the overall story is so nihilistic that it makes the game feel more like a chore than a journey.
And GTA Online? No. For all the talk about how this was going to be a Home-killer, it still boils down to people running around and committing as much anarchy as they can. Which, hey, that’s fun and all, but it does bring me to one of the biggest problems I have with this console generation: too many specialized controls for too many features. As games become more and more complicated, and controllers stack on more and more buttons, it’s gotten to the point where you need to memorize half a dozen control schemes just to perform basic functions in a game. This. Drives. Me. Nuts.
So maybe I’m just not a GTA-type gamer any more. You wouldn’t buy Flower expecting it to be an action title, so why buy a GTA title if you’re expecting something other than more of the GTA formula? Fair enough. And that brings me to Final Fantasy XIV.
I’m a sucker for a good fantasy RPG. It’s probably the genre I’ve most enjoyed as a gamer throughout the decades. And considering how many of my friends have been raving about the new Final Fantasy MMO, I figured I’d give it a try. Sadly, it’s a disappointment, and for much the same reason as the latest GTA title: that horrible, flat-soda feeling of I’ve done all of this before.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Most MMO titles of this ilk class your character into one of three segments: damage absorption (tanking), damage dealing (DPS), or healing/stat buffs (support). The only major fantasy MMO experience that broke from that was the original one, Ultima Online. Which, by the way, is probably why I’m so excited for Richard Garriott’s upcoming Shroud of the Avatar, because he’s also complained at length about how utterly formulaic a lot of video game genres have gotten, and he’s actually taking some really interesting steps to move outside of that formula. Sadly, FF XIV is still very much within the boundaries of genre trope: the hero with humble beginnings, the initial meeting with the questgiver, the level-one monsters right outside…nothing inspiring me to continue.
And the vaunted character creation system? Yeah, it’s decent, but again it’s no Home-killer. I really have gotten spoiled by Home’s avatar customization system, which is one part of Home which is still dramatically ahead of its time. Neither of the two titles reviewed above have an avatar creation engine that comes close to threatening it. To be fair, Home as a social MMO needs to have a superior avatar customization system since that’s one of the core components of the experience, but it amazes me that a game running on architecture from more than half a decade ago is still providing a superior experience.
Valkyria Chronicles. Play it.
But maybe that’s not such a surprise. Classic gaming is a study in how to do more with less. I bought a Nintendo Wii years ago just to play classic 8-bit and 16-bit games again, and it was astonishing how much fun they were to re-immerse into. I bought an original XBox just to play the Knights of the Old Republic games, which to this day are some of the best games ever made. And aside from Dragon Age: Origins and Valkyria Chronicles, the most actual gaming my PS3 has seen over the years — outside of Home — has been classic PSOne and PS2 games.
Maybe I’m just an anomaly. A luddite, over-romanticizing the past, like Prospero on his island. But maybe I’m not. In the last few years, the industry has seen a dramatic shift towards low-priced casual and mobile gaming, targeted squarely at my demographic: people who have kinda played it all already, aren’t willing to shell out $60 (or more) for most titles no matter how many AAA’s go into their rating, and want something innovative that doesn’t feel like a second job to play. It’s why the console manufacturers are rushing to embrace indies right now: it’s not so much that gamers deliberately want to play a cheap game, so much as they want to play something that doesn’t feel hopelessly tired and done to death. But since there’s an inversely proportionate relationship between project budget and risk-taking, most of the innovation has to come from smaller, cheaper gaming experiences.
I’m completely on board with this. When games like The Stanley Parable, Plague Inc., Gone Home, Dear Esther or Journey can hold my attention and keep me replaying and reflecting upon them for days or weeks on end, it suggests to me that maybe, just maybe, some of those design innovations will find their way into titles with larger budgets because they won’t be viewed as risky investments. It gives me hope that this new console generation which is almost upon us may go in a direction I can get back on board with.
And Home? I’ve been so Home-centric since 2009 because it’s one of the few things to come out of this console generation that actually felt like it was experimental and bleeding-edge — because it was. And now Home has revealed a new feature which is probably overdue: challenges.
This publication has clamored, for years, that Home’s biggest design flaw is that it’s a social metaverse with no purpose. It’s not enough for Home to be a gaming platform: Home itself must be a game. It must have tasks to complete in order to drive user engagement. Or, as my ex-wife wrote in her farewell-to-Home piece last year:
“Here’s the aspect of Home that Sony doesn’t seem to have grasped: if you’ve created a world in which user-generated content is near-impossible to produce — allowing the users to entertain each other — then you need to fill that gap by creating a living, breathing world in which the user’s actions feel relevant in a larger context. Someone who uses Home for more than just a night or two is inherently a social user to some extent, looking for a game world to interact with. Without that feeling of connection, Home feels like a party in which the host couldn’t be bothered to show up.”
Although it can be argued that the arrival of this feature is about five years too late, and runs the risk of feeling like an addendum rather than part of the core design, its current timing is quite good: the PS4 is, at the time of this writing, less than a fortnight away, and Home’s user engagement and net revenue are key metrics to drive right now. Challenges are exactly the sort of new feature implementation that go a long way towards maintaining those all-important metrics.
I find myself very optimistic for this new console generation — an optimism that wasn’t there, at least for me, when the current generation dawned all those years ago. It feels like things are moving in a very interesting direction again. Let’s see what comes of it.
November 3rd, 2013 by NorseGamer | 20 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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What’s up Norse? Awesome piece, I must mention about GTA V that yes, it has the same concept as previous GTA titles but this game has its share of activities such as tennis, golf, racing, arm wrestling (online only), sky diving, etc while having a large map to play with (I for some reason like pushing people off the mountains). Also, I want to mention that I liked CJ Johnson from Sam Andreas. He was an origonal character who just got caught up in a twisted story. He was voted as the 22nd greatest character in video game histoty by the Guinnesd Book of World Records. Now, I have to agree 5000% that GTA Online’s customization doesn’t even touch Home’s with a 100 foot pole. Plus, my Home avatar has more swag (I really miss the NFL, NCAA & NBA jerseys though, wish I got an Alabama jersey)! I think the challenges feature will be awesome in Home! This will definitely help reel more people in! The only thing that sucks is that I’ll have to go back and forth with my PS3 & PS4 :/
There’s no question that CJ Johnson, just like Niko Bellic, are fascinating and fleshed-out characters (in particular, CJ’s resistance to simply killing everything in his path gave his character some much-needed contrast to the previous iteration’s Tommy Vercetti). I just didn’t click with either of them, or their stories. Each person’s mileage will vary.
I freely admit my tastes are outside the norm. People to this day genuflect upon Final Fantasy VII, whereas I think FFVIII is a far deeper and more interesting plot and character study. Go figure.
ciao volevo sapere se home ci sara su ps4?oppure verra eliminata insieme alla fine della generazione di ps3?
Se o non Home mai si presenta sulla PS4, è logico supporre che rimarrà appoggiato su PS3 per tutto il tempo che è fiscalmente giustificabile.
The way I see it, you’ve seen so many archetypal games come and go, that the unique ones stand out all the more. Me, I remember playing the Atari 5200 game based on Ghostbusters II -- my earliest gaming memory. I only recall driving the Ecto-1A around, though, so it’s not much of a recollection.
Since I haven’t played FFXIV, I can’t say anything about it; never did go in for MMOs. I preferred FFVI over FFVII because of how menacing Kefka was -- he was a man who you could really imagine as a threat to the world. Plus, the ragtag team of protagonists had their own niceties -- my favorite character was likely Celes.
That’s a pretty accurate assessment, yeah. It’s an interesting value proposition these days: having put in decades and thousands upon thousands of hours into various genres and UI/UX formats, I’m really at a point where I need to see something new or very engrossing to stay hooked. The Legend of Dragoon, for instance, has a great turn-based battle system that makes the (very) repetitive random monster encounters more bearable.
I just bought Assassin’s Creed IV today, as it looks like it has some interesting new wrinkles, so we’ll see if it’s any good…
I hold my hands in the air and I agree Norse, that the majority of GTA5/O’s playing mechanics are money for old rope but I think you might’ve missed a crucial area to the online component. Much like a stranger new to Home might wander around for a bit, after probably being verbally assaulted for being a noob, come to the conclusion that Home is a boring place full of idiots -- for “weirdos” or whatever. They miss out on that crucial ingredient that can make Home one of the most amazing/funny/interesting experiences ever: friends.
I’ve only ever been in public GTAO servers briefly, if I find myself accidentally in one I RUN to a private server as fast as I can! Back to my friends. The similarities of GTAO and Home are there; take a look at the conversations of property threads on GTAO forums -- it’s actually amusing to see so many gamers talk like Home users all while oblivious to the irony of the mickey-taking they’ve done to Home users in the past. Yet there they all are, sharing pics of views from their houses, all bouncing off each other trying to decide which house suits them best.
I think I just heard a penny drop!
R* have looked at Home (apparently) and have brought some of that Home feeling into GTAO. But in public servers where people run around like crazied nut-bags killing anything that moves you’d be hard-pressed to see it. My advice to you Norse is to make a date with some friends who also have access to GTAO, and do some stuff together, at your own pace. You may see another side to it you might like after all.
As for the FF games I’m still confused as to WHY we’re using turn-based battle systems in a world soaked in casual gaming machines with the power to handle real-time fights so easily! And the new Home challenges are exactly what Home’s been needing for a long, long time. Here’s hoping it’s just not “too little, too late” for it.
I’ve heard from a few people so far that the GTAO experience is vastly improved if you’re experiencing it with friends, and that makes sense. I may try this out.
I like the article Norse but I think you brushed FF 14 off too quickly. Now it is true I have never really played a game like this, meaning a MMO, unless you can include Red Dead, but the game is deep and huge and the storyline is fantastic. Going out and killing a few enemies then declaring that it is a boring experience is a bit like walking into Home, getting trolled, then never returning.
It is true that when you begin the game you have to get to a certain level before it opens up for you, but once you do the possibilities are endless.
And Krazy, this FF is far from turn based, you just jump in and play at your own pace in fights, no turns here. I am truly enjoying this game because it has a lot to offer and though the formula may be a bit cliche’ the story makes up for it. And by the way, it gets really hard.
To be fair, I spent a bit more time with FFXIV than what’s described in the article. But I agree with Richard Garriott when he says that from a design perspective, a game has to grab you immediately and earn the right to your next five minutes.
If you’re new to MMORPG gaming, then you’ll likely have a blast with FFXIV — and there’s certainly plenty to enjoy for veterans to the genre as well. I’m just personally at a point where I’m not willing to invest significant time or money into a game unless it’s somehow a bit different than the norm.
There’s always a risk that when you buy a game, you’re buying a title that’s like every other experience out there (right down to ‘save the world because home town’ hero trope) except almost literally for the franchise attached. Thus, it becomes like buying cereals: we pay more for the mascot than the Original Experience.
As such, Final Fantasy hasn’t exactly been known for pushing the envelope, especially in more recent years. Plus, with Square-Enix not known as a company with intense experience with MMOs (as compared to, say, Blizzard Entertainment), you find out that they may not take too many risks with a formula. My experience with MMOs is limited so my question is: is the story any more complex than Generic RPG: The Sequel? If you described it to anyone without revealing it as a Final Fantasy game, would anyone assume it even is a Final Fantasy game, as opposed to a copycat MMO? If the answer isn’t very positive, perhaps this would help explain why people have fonder memories of offline Final Fantasy titles over their online counterparts (and why FFXIV’s current form is its second go-around).
In fairness, to play devil’s advocate, partially against myself here: when we spent the past five years minimum on a program that has no exact equal, pioneering what it means to be a social MMO in a market that lacks peers, it’s hard to view everything else quite the same again. Home is a rarity, as far as consoles go, and the future for social console MMOs will be dictated by what the future will hold. What happens to the market will be dictated as much by the second attempt at it as, if not more than, the first time.
When we’re the adopters of something that is possibly a generation ahead of its time, how will that influence how we view what else the PS3 has to offer? How will it influence how we view Home’s spiritual successor (if one will exist)?
I honestly believe Home was a concept that was at least one full generation ahead of its time. It really needs always-on connectivity to flourish, and it *must* be the centerpiece of the entire console universe in order to not compete with other products and services.
What’s interesting is how consumer habits change when the industry doesn’t. I may not be willing to pay $60 for more-of-same RPG gaming, but would I pay $20-$30? And does time investment still correlate to price? Journey, for instance, is a very short game with a relatively high price for the length of its experience, and yet it’s an amazing, genre-bending game that’s unlike anything else ever made.
Homes track record with supporting stuff that makes them no money isnt great, so I dont expect the new challenges feature or the news screen to last or actually do any good for home. Both are nothing special. As for the games mentioned they will easily have more users than home and very quickly as well. That doesnt mean they are home killers because home has a user base that enjoys the simpler games like orb collecting etc. More functions and complex games wont help home. Getting the public social scene right now that will help.
Personal opinion on this: a social MMO like Home can flourish if it has an overarching database management system that tracks user activities and has specific goals/metrics for the user to achieve, coupled with an internal rewards currency to match. Basically, a really scaled-up version of the Sodium Hub.
Granted, that isn’t easy to pull off with how Home is structured. You’re talking about including a lot of new metadata on top of what every developer is creating independently of each other, and there are a lot of chefs in this particular kitchen. Which is why Home is more of a patchwork universe of disparate attractions. Hence why I’d love to see, in a perfect world, a clean-sheet redesign of Home with all of the lessons learnt from the first iteration — because this is core functionality that has to be planned and implemented from the very beginning.
I take this opinion as well. Adding only that the development houses would need to work together to accomplish much greater things.
Great article Norse.
If i had a nickle for every time I head that Home was dead I’d have several bucks! You can’t kill this thing and I think that’s what pisses off some people who don’t get it.
I feel this Challenges addition to Home is great and I am wondering why we didn’t think of this sooner.
I also wanted to say kudos for the bit when you were talking about GTA being a reflection of our culture at large. Nicely done!
GTA is some of the best satire of American culture currently available, but it’s also a (heightened and exaggerated) reflection of just how nihilistic our culture has become. We live in a country that’s turning into a banana republic, where the myth of the American Dream can no longer be reasonably used as a roadmap for the average citizen to live his life.
(I could go into a lengthy discussion of the parallels between modern America and the latter half of the Roman Empire, including my belief that Obama is a modern-day Diocletian, but that might be going a bit deep…)
Challenges are an overdue feature which gives Home itself a purpose. It’s a shame they weren’t deployed with Home’s original open beta release in ’08, but given the PS4 coming up, this is as good a time as any.
Challenges finally succeeded in getting me back into the daily Home habit. They do need to be branched out a bit more beyond Pottermore and the Bowling Alley, but what they’ve offered so far has been fun.
There have been a few things in 2013 that have really pushed the value of Home. Acorn Meadows Park stands out as a great concept that blends social and freemium in interesting ways, because you don’t constantly need to be in a game to interact with others. The same is true of Peakvox Labs, although the Monsters game is sorely needed at this point.
Granzella’s Kikkai event may be the best use of Home as a gaming platform since Xi. It demonstrated that games needn’t be limited to a single space, and that storytelling across levels is possible.
I’ve always felt that Home’s greatest strength lied in its ability to present games to a ready audience, that it should be the demo interface for the PlayStation Store, offering complete game experiences as well as previews of deeper games that have to be played from the HDD. I also expected much more from the Home Arcade, which started out well but has since languished.
That, ultimately, is what has always set Home apart from the online features of disc games. Grand Theft Auto V is in a box. It does what it does well, but it’s ultimately limited by its gameplay mechanics and the expectations of its audience. Home has no such limitations, but it hasn’t broadened its scope far enough beyond the “buy and decorate” mentality.
Paradise Springs Casino, Sodium 2, Acorn Park and Peakvox Labs all point toward what Home could and should be. Hopefully it gets a chance to expand on those promises.
You have this annoying habit of saying everything much better than I can, and since I agree with all of it, all I can do is nod my head.
*nods head*
Heh heh. You both do.