61 Responses to “Sirlin’s 2006 Game Awards”

1. Kikimaru Says:
   December 24th, 2006 at 7:23 am

   Oh how I wish I didn’t need a Japanese PS2 to play the the latest GG - seeing how the Xbox port was great and all!
   Would you consider one of the Virtua Fighter games as #3 best fighter of the last 10yrs though?

   I also understand what you’re getting at with the dreadful save-point implementation in modern games; if anything, I’d have hoped developers had learned from the emulator community that manual save-states, which can be invoked any time, one time only, are a boon to tired & time-pressed gamers. I really must get the word out.

   Anyway, here’s to a merry Christmas/Holidays/etc, and looking forward to your new card game (and CCC Vol2 to come out in Europe, dammit)!

2. ST Says:
   December 24th, 2006 at 9:44 am

   I greatly enjoy how far off the beaten path you go with your awards, even when I mildly disagree with your appraisal of SotC. Have a great holiday!

3. rashreflection Says:
   December 24th, 2006 at 2:23 pm

   Excellent post, Sirlin! Just wanted to give a few thoughts on your fighting-game comments:

   - The reason Tekken is still popular is that it’s the Marvel of the 3-D world; that is, there is all kinds of drama and big money matches that you don’t see elsewhere. That’s really the ONLY reason, I think; even many of the better Tekken players themselves admit the game is a broken POS compared to VF.

   - As much as I love the concept of Soul Calibur and agree that it has far more potential than Tekken, there are legitimate reasons it doesn’t have a bigger scene: 2 and 3 are ruined by glitches (3 much more so, 2 is still not a bad game but not really a great one either), and the original is old and only available on DC. I’d still rather play SC2 than any Tekken but could understand why others would not, as step-G makes it much more boring than it should’ve been.

   - VF does have one major flaw that keeps myself (and likely others) away from it: The characters seem less diverse than Soul Calibur’s or even Tekken’s. Most of the cast, at high level, goes something like…jab, jab, poke, jab, poke, throw, jab, launch, poke, jab, jab, etc. El Blaze, for instance, is a mass of wasted potential; Mexican pro wrestling involves great speed and all kinds of wonderfully athletic moves and counters (even 2nd- and 3rd-layer counters oftentimes), yet this character uses almost none of that. In essence, the character matchups seem much more generic than in most other games.

   - And to go to the inverse of that, the character diversity of 3s is probably what keeps most people interested in it. There really is a lot of it…from Twelve’s air-based hit-and-run tactics, to Oro’s extreme mobility and great supers (which change his whole playstyle), to Yang’s mantis slash games and two good supers (which, again, change the way he plays), and so on. I would enjoy this game IF any of that diversity mattered at high level, but sadly it doesn’t. And also, I disagree that parrying outright kills positional games; it just adds an extra guessing game, though characters without good low pokes are essentially screwed (i.e. Oro).

   Just curious…if you are so convinced this game is so awful, then why do you think it continues to be the biggest SF in Japan? This is not rhetorical at all, but an honest question. I have my own theories but wish to see what you come up with. =)

   - Fully agreed on Guilty Gear. Accent Core is looking doubly awesome BTW, especially for someone with your opinions on game design - almost everyone seems crazier than in Slash!

   - I think what really defines Super Turbo is that even though it is often a defensive game, it is still a game where both players are always DOING something (unless Honda’s involved). For people used to the turtling/meter-building of 3s and CvS2, this may well be a breath of fresh air.

   Thanks,
   Josh.

4. David Boudreau Says:
   December 24th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

   I think you’re way off on 3s. Even though ST is my favorite of all, I can see 3s being a game to graduate to, from ST, if there ever was one. I find it highly incongruent for a person to rate ST so highly and in the same breath/post dis 3s. Plenty, plenty of worse fighting games that have gotten far too much attention and play.

   Re: save systems, recently I borrowed my friend’s XBox and played through Sands of Time. The water was indeed a good system, despite a few points of frustration near the end- like when you have to jump off the walls (Strider-style) to go up the inside of a thin tower. That and the grating British accents are my only complaints. and, that they could have saved the rotating circular platform with the moons and the guy shouting at you from above thing until later, or, introduce an easier version first, then revist the overall challenge towards the end- that was the best part.

   More to the central issue, though, what exactly is the tradeoff designers must make? Is it only the hardcore gamers that desire a game to be challenging? It seems that games require active participation and a minimal degree of paying attention from any player… achieving the sense of accomplishment is required to appreciate the game for what it is, regardless of what the particular accomplishment is (whether advancing the storyline or demonstrating good manual dexterity). This challenge seems core to the very experience of the game itself. As a player, you weren’t just told “the prince went here and ran up these walls, and solved these puzzles with a dagger that can rewind time”. You weren’t shown a video of that happening either, you actually had to do something, specific things in specific locations and specific times, and if you don’t do those things there and then, then the story doesn’t get told. Getting the story through a game involves more of you. So I wonder, how does saving play into that dynamic- why do you feel the ability to save more granularly will improve it, necessarily?

   I also played through the original Castlevania (NES) which spaces out continuing points fairly well. I was reminded how well designed the final boss stage is. When you get to him, it lets you continue from that point, unlike all other stages which make you fight through the last half of the level again.

   btw, while the tutorials you made for CCC2 were a great thing to include, I think the focus from now on should be on training mode innovations, things like a “rewind time” feature, slow-motion controls, onscreen display of your joystick inputs (so you can see what you actually input compared to what the combo requires)… some more stats, some challenges in training mode to keep you interested… and, most importantly, a mode you can turn on so you can see the hit boxes as you play! (dark stalkers for a sega platform had this feature, I think).

5. dawolffman1 Says:
   December 25th, 2006 at 1:32 am

   I’d agree with most of your awards (those that I know anything about) with the exception of your, in my opinion, unfair characterization of Gears of War. You say that the basis of the game, aiming a crosshair at a target, is an inherently boring mechanic, and therefore no one should bother listing it as a top game of 2006. But, as you are sometimes prone to doing, you have made a gross oversimplification of an extremely entertaining game. Yes, GoW appears at first glance to be a superficial game, similar to all shooters in the basic regards. But, then again, there are many fightin games which appear no less simple; according to your Street Fighter tutorial videos posted on this site, the game is no more complicated than controlling the space with your rectangles. Like Street Fighter, Gears of War is much deeper, relying on smart tactics, planning ahead, good reflexes, and all the other skills that one requires to be a successful SF player.

6. Ess2s2 Says:
   December 25th, 2006 at 1:42 am

   On the subject of saves: Right now I am playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the XBox 360. In addition to being a beautiful, engaging and wholly addictive game, Oblivion has one huge thing going for it: A solid foundation.

   As Sirlin pointed out, Dead Rising was an excellent game that was unfortunately marred by a less than exemplary save system. When I think of game design, I like to think of how one would build a building. The first thing you would do is make sure the foundation isn’t going anywhere, that it will support the rest of the building without fail. In a game, the foundation would be all the “behind the scenes” stuff such as base play mechanics, scoring, hit detection, difficulty progression, and save system, among other things.

   Once you have a solid foundation, then you can go about the business of putting up walls (level design), windows and doors (how the game progresses from one segment to another) lights and paint (graphics engine and frontend), and furniture (storyline, tweaks, finishing touches).

   What does that extended analogy mean in less than three paragraphs? If a fundamental aspect of your game is crippled or broken, it’s going to damage the rest of the game.

   In Oblivion, the save system is made so you really can save anywhere, so long as you aren’t dead or in a cut scene. Upon resuming the game, you are placed right back where you were. You are allowed–nay–encouraged to use multiple saves by the dev team because they know having to redo 3 hours worth of game isn’t any fun, for any reason.

   To me, the fact that New Super Mario Bros. has such an inaccessable save system is surprising since all their GBA re-releases of old SMB games such as Super Mario World had excellent and highly improved save systems, optimized for handheld gaming.

   By the way, I haven’t yet had an opportunity to play the CCC series, how do the Street Fighter games hold up to their arcade counterparts? Arcade perfect?

7. Sirlin Says:
   December 25th, 2006 at 2:53 am

   rashreflection: Why is 3s popular in Japan? I guess I’d respond with “why was SF Alpha 3 (terrible) more popular than SF Alpha 2 (pretty good)? Why isn’t MvC2 (pretty good) popular there? There’s a few other cases of Japanese playing worse games, probably for reasons other than whether the games themsevles are good or bad. Who knows what freak of history caused them to play 3s, but it’s kinda of ridiculous for them to spend money on a 2d fighting game that isn’t GGXX, given how well designed it is, and the frequent updates. That’s who they should be rewarding, shrug.

   David B: Not sure I catch what you mean by “why would a more granular save system be better?” or your implication that only hardcores want any challenge at all. To say it another way, here is Sirlin’s first rule of game design:
   “The player should be able to save the game at almost any time. It is negotiable what this “save” actually does.”

   My proposal for NSMB is to allow save anytime, but only the levels you’ve completed and special coins you collected are saved. So if you’re 1/4th into a level, saving won’t create a point you can keep jumping back to. (There is still challenge.) Saving also won’t help you find any secret coins, which is the entire point of the game. Running out of lives was never a concern because you have like 90 lives in that game. This system is no less challenging, yet it follows the rule “always allow saves.”

   Dawolfman, my characterization of Gears of War is intentionally biased. I even said in the opening paragraphs that my awards were biased and not thoughful, lol. I appreciate your points (really), but first-person shooters have enough people going on about them the other way, that they could use a few people talking trash about them on occasion to balance it out. And as you can tell, I’m really tired of aiming a crosshair on a 2d plane (and no, I don’t think that’s similar to controlling space in a figthing game).

   Ess2s2: The version of ST on CCC2 is an arcade emulation. It has a couple sound glitches, but no known gameplay differences from arcade. We hacked in a versus and training mode that the arcade didn’t have.

   Thanks for the civil comments everyone.
   –Sirlin

8. Kicks Says:
   December 25th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

   Man… I agree with the A3

9. Kicks Says:
   December 25th, 2006 at 4:35 pm

   What the hella happened to my post?
   Sorry for the double post, but I had some sweet questions.
   1st-I agree that GG is tops, but I think 3s is 2nd and would like to hear a detailed or at least top 5 or so reasons as to why 3s fails.
   2nd-I wanted to buy Cooking Mama, but passed. What makes it so great exactly?
   3rd-I agree with the SC compared to Tekken comment. Tekken introduced Just Frames that allowed for crazier better versions of moves based on how well you input it. While this is a neat idea, it totally blows and I hate it. My philosophy is that inputs should be easy no matter what the move (especially if someone can do it and others cant like standing 360–if it’s possible, make it easy). I equate it to this little analogy. Let’s say you’re playing Chess and you want to move your bishop 3 spaces. What if you had to sorta lightly toss the piece on to the space you wanted? You may get the right spot, but any other spot would be disasterous and you’d seal your loss. I equate this to difficult or strict inputs. This is why I don’t like the cvs, alpha, and sf2 series and another reason why GG is great.
   4th-At the risk of sounding like a total n00b lamer, Seanbaby needs to uppercut Tommy Tallarico.

10. x1372 Says:
    December 25th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

    Nice list, definitely agree with many parts of it. Makes me think that I might have been better off purchasing a DS instead of a wii, but my gamecube recently broke so it seemed that grabbing a wii when the opportunity presented itself was the best option.

    I have to wonder though, if there’s a reason why Super Smash Brothers: Melee wasn’t included in your list in any way about fighting games. The game celebrated its fifth birthday this month, and has what is probably the biggest american following of any individual fighting game currently. Granted, many (most) of the players are not as “hardcore” as the SF crowd, but to have held up to tourney play for this long has to say something good about it. While I think the competitive scene for the game is slowly going downhill (though that’s a whole ‘nother argument) it seems unfair to completely ignore it in the best of the last 10 years. Frankly, it’s the only fighting game I can really get into - every other competitive fighter has a barrier of entry hundreds of hours high between picking it up and having any coherent idea of what’s effective, why, and how.

11. Robyrt Says:
    December 25th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

    On Shadow of the Colossus: That game was poetry in motion like all the reviews say, when my roommate was playing it. When I was playing it, I wanted to throw the controller at the wall. I think the two can combine to make something that doesn’t really deserve the scorn. :-P

    On overplayed fighting games: SF3 and Tekken are a lot of fun to watch. There’s an excitement that comes when you’re rooting for your buddies to hit that crucial parry or overcome that silly character matchup that is much harder to achieve in a game like VF with less balance variation in characters and less potential for random upsets. (Think when VF was at Evolution - practically every game went to 5 rounds and the players with the most total wins ended up on top.) I will also say that it’s pretty easy to get into SF3 or Tekken without being an accomplished joystick jockey, whereas Marvel or VF requires you to have a high degree of dexterity just to do basic things like unfly, wavedash, multiple throw escape, etc.

    On underplayed fighting games: Guilty Gear is fun to watch, but it has the same fundamental flaw as Magic. You excoriate Magic for being a ripoff in terms of money - i.e. before you can have the real fun, you have to invest many hours of your time doing non-fun work and then pay for a deck. GG works the same way: before you can have the real fun, you have to invest many hours of your time learning the system and the long difficult branching combos. This barrier to entry, plus the tendency for fighters to have very delayed console ports, is what really hurts the game.

12. Yenian Says:
    December 26th, 2006 at 5:44 am

    Agree with Robyrt on Guilty Gear. I started playing fighters only 3 years ago with GGXX on PS2, and despite switching up to joystick from pad in the spring, my execution is simply not good enough to let me compete in that game against anyone that’s somewhat serious about it. (Maybe I need to switch characters…)

    I started playing 3s 2 months ago, and I’m already starting to catch up to the local good players. I’m still new to the game, and it feels like 3s retains a significant amount of depth but is simple enough I can actually play it properly.

13. Dave H. Says:
    December 26th, 2006 at 11:52 pm

    Great job with the awards.

    As a person who last year returned to playing magic after a near ten year absence I was very surprised and impressed by the changes the game had undergone. Rules-wise the “stack” is one of the most well conceived concepts i’ve come across in gaming; it completely fixed the timing problems that were rampant when i first picked up the game. It helps that it is basically a computer programming concept, except without a computer.

    Wizards’ support of the community is also top notch. They encourage events with special promotional cards. A recent change also rewards the winner of pro tour qualifiers with Air-fare to the location of the tournament. I’m not sure if there are similar rewards with qualifiers for big SF or GG tournaments.

    I do agree that it is quite an investment to play. I can’t in good conscience spend the money to play more than one TCG, or even Magic and WoW (the MMO).

    Wizards’ could do a lot to lessen this cost; by including more uncommon and rare cards per pack for instance. It’s interesting that the “timeshifted” cards you mention are effectively just that, an additional rare per pack. This has done a lot to make Limited formats (where you open packs to build a deck) much less luck based and more varied and interesting at the same time.

    I think it’s telling that the structure of a pack of cards (quantity of each rarity of card) can have drastic implications on how certain formats of the game are played.

    Keep up the great work on the site!

14. Missle Launch Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 12:13 am

    I believe that Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4 is at least worth an honorable mention. The mechanics of the game are essentially similar to GG, lacking only a chip-resistant block. The effectiveness of side-stepping rewards accurate predicitions for both players, in that an improperly strafed attack may still be en route to the opponent’s defensive collision-boxes. The implementation of stun-cancelling is superior to GG’s, in my opinion, because the main super-meter is used, instead of a gradually refilling meter that cannot be so directly manipulated. Offensively, GNT4 is very simple. Each attack-button launches a unique type of move: normal (often a punch), special (usually just a shuriken), throw, and super. The set combos are simple patterns of the normal- and special-button. (Juggles and setups are still applicable, allowing for more advanced character-specific tactics, for those so desirous.) Being less technical than other modern fighters means that the basic yomi established for the fighting-genre is more easily conveyed. The ability to alter one’s position before round begins even further accentuates deliberation. Beyond a special block (that, perhaps, ought to more quickly drain the guard-meter), I don’t see how GNT4 fails in any regard. Even so far as marketability, the excellent graphics, and association with the popular Naruto-brand make the game even more approachable to a casual (and potentially serious) contender: or is that causing the GNT-series to be stigmatized by the hardcore?

15. Missle Launch Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 12:15 am

    I apologize for not breaking my comment into paragraphs.

16. Tyler Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 2:07 am

    I always like reading the articles on this site. Sirlin I was wondering if you were/are a fan of the Metal Gear Series. Personally the series is one of my favorites of all time. I wish Microsoft would steal MGS4 so I wouldn’t have to consider buying a PS3 (please don’t make me!).

17. mbmonk Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 4:33 am

    If you haven’t tried Elite Beat Agents you really should. I got it for my girlfriend to play, but now we fight over who’s turn it is. I think EBA does a really good job of gradually racheting up the difficulty level. The will introduce a new game play mechanic buy showing it once or twice in a song and then later on another song will uses that mechanic frequently. If you like music you will like this game. I can’t recommend this game enough. Next to RE4 it was the best game I played this year.

    Great articles and site. please don’t ever close this site :).

18. mbmonk Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 4:35 am

    I am sorry for all the above spelling and grammar mistakes. :(

19. Dilpil Says:
    December 27th, 2006 at 1:17 pm

    THANK YOU for acknowledging how ridiculous console save systems are. Seriously, computer devs never pull this sh*t. Why do console devs still do this to us?

    Rpgs are by far the worst with save point issues. Why was one of the “features” of Enchanted Arms the lack of forced save points? Are we really to beleive that save points are a neccecary coding shortcut when way back in final fantasy 7, the player could, using GAMESHARK CODES save anywhere? Does this make games more fun?

    No. In fact, I have failed to complete 2 games that i greatly enjoyed because of save point nonsense (MK Shaolim monks and Digital Devil Saga).

    This is really part of a bigger problem with console games. Many of them forget that they are meant to be fun. XP loss on death for instance. This is… standard? NO! GUYS, NO!

    And yeah MTG is a great game ruined by greed. I suggest the free online variants. (Apprentice, not magic online).

20. David Boudreau Says:
    December 28th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

    …I guess I’m just lucky that I haven’t played any of the games you mentioned with bad save systems to really know. I just think that a lot of what Ess2s2 mentioned in his “foundation” can be more important than the save system- those other basics will define the game more and make it less tedious to have to replay through parts.

    The final boss in the original Castlevania has great design, but NO saving at all. It has the perfect blend of tactics and strategy requirements. The strategy required to win is disguised and delayed for such a long time- it transcends many continues (”Groundhog Day runs”?)- and even transcends many game sittings. Although the player may get frustrated and discouraged during that time, he gains proficiency in the tactics. A tragedy may occur where the player invests the time to gain the tactics, but doesn’t notice or even consider the winning strategy, and gives up altogether, thinking it was only a matter of tactics and was simply too hard. At some point, the player must consider a better strategy, and think outside the box. There’s a critical transition from “I have the strongest possible arsenal the game has going in, and it _still_ isn’t enough!” to “…did I try everything possible?”. Suddenly, the thing the player values and clings to the most becomes useless. It’s kind of like the scene in Star Wars when Ben is heard saying “Let go, Luke!” but in Castlevania, the player has to tell himself that. The longer and harder the player tried the first tactic, the more he can appreciate the new solution.

    Maybe there just aren’t any more games like Castlevania anymore, which lack saving altogether and require completion all in one sitting. Granted, consoles today don’t have the space restrictions of the NES, but more is not necessarily better; good design is still required and I’m not yet totally convinced how saving plays into that.

    “Groundhog Day runs” is an interesting criticism of second runnings through a part- because any replay value a game has also involves repetitiveness as well. But games should not define the player as insane by having him try the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result each time.

    re: 3s and ST congruency- it seems I’m in the minority about that. Among the ST group I meet with occasionally, last night there were 7 or 8 of us, and I asked each one individually, but only 3 of us liked 3rd Strike. I am surprised, but I wonder if I asked 3rd Strike players if they like ST, how many would. Something tells me that if you can play 3s, that you should be pretty good at ST too. But then again, _competency_ doesn’t necessarily mean you respect the game for having good/fair/unbroken design. I like what Joel Frank said; you should be able to understand why you lost and the reason should be clear enough. I might not be very good at 3s, but I usually can understand why I lost.

    I like Alpha3 a lot, but I have to admit it may have to do with how naturally I picked it up compared to any other I ever tried. When Capcom tried to fix it’s brokenness with Upper, players rejected it- and actually chose to stick with the original broken one. (So are we players just full of shit, or what?) Yet despite all that, I still think A3’s enormously better than A2/A1! …Ok, Mr. Sirlin, please post your rankings of fighting games for us, in terms of best design- I think we all want to know. For just SF, My list is probably:

    ST
    HF,AE
    3s
    A3
    CE,EX,Super
    WW
    SF1
    A2/A1
    Vs. games

    But what do I know. :) It should be noted I only have competency in WW and above on that list.

21. Carlos Alexandre Says:
    December 28th, 2006 at 11:20 pm

    David Sirlin, if you indeed make a ripoff-free TCG, you will be my hero for life.

22. James M Says:
    December 29th, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    You serious about working on a card game Sirlin? Ask me to playtest. (In 2 years when you get somewhere…) I’ve been working on a sort of tactics Magic:TG meets Fire Emblem game, although I barely have time to work on it…

    I’ll have to look up the rules to the WOW card game, I know nothing about it at all.

    —

    A brief explanation of why people don’t like 3s: space control, or lack thereof. Take a look at the vids Sirlin made for CCC2. In 3S there is basically no space control. I used to joke that in Mortal Kombat and Tekken when two opponent were on opposite sides of the screen the only strategy was to run towards each other. The same is true in 3S as well. The entire game is fought at the 1-2 inch range.

    In addition, ST is very much a game of initiative and momentum, where consequences are far-reaching. As Ryu against Honda if you knock him down as the round starts you have a huge leg-up for a long time. As Honda if you jump over the first fireball and hit Ryu you now have a huge leg up. That first interaction can largely define the next 30 seconds of play.

    In 3S, the game is much more back-and-forth. There are a lot of resets, situation reversals, etc. What you did 30 seconds ago, or even 5 seconds ago, doesn’t typically matter very much.

23. James M Says:
    December 29th, 2006 at 1:51 pm

    Ok so I skimmed the WOW rules, let me try to explain and you tell me how I’m wrong.

    You can put down any card face-down as a resource. In addition Quest cards put down face-up not only provide a resource but a one-time use side-benefit as well. I’ve never played this game but let me compare it a bit to M:TG resource use.

    1. You can’t get mana screwed or flooded. You have exact control over how much “mana” you have available at all times.

    2. Instead of a land vs. spell tradeoff, I imagine the tradeoff here is how many Quest to put in your deck. Quests are never dead cards but the ideal is to use quests for resources and other spells as playables. You don’t want to put down a bunch of guys as resources then draw a bunch of quests. On the other hand you certainly want to have quests in your deck. (I assume they are useful)

    3. What you can cast is really determined at deck-building time rather than at run-time given that there is only one type of resource and restrictions come from your hero. I’m not sure I like this as Magic has a very organic power vs. consistency that varies from block to block based on fixers. In Magic you certainly *can* play a 5-color deck, in WOW you really can’t.

    —

    I’m not sure if this is better or worse, but it is certainly different.abilities.

    Really what the WOW system appears to do is turn every guy into a potential plain old land, and every plain old land into a land with special abilities. That certainly adds a lot more consistency, but I think I would miss how the different colors come into play in Magic. One thing I like a lot about Magic (I’ve spent a ton of time thinking about the resource system for my game) is how organic the resource system is. There are almost no restrictions imposed on what kind of deck you can build, it is just a question of whether that deck can be effective. If you want Priests next to Vampires you can do that.

24. Xhad Says:
    December 29th, 2006 at 2:31 pm

    “David Sirlin, if you indeed make a ripoff-free TCG, you will be my hero for life.”

    Seconded.

25. Auston Says:
    December 30th, 2006 at 6:53 am

    Oh, you’re still on about that haughty NSMB save system. It wasn’t *that* bad, Sirlin. Every world had six or so save points, as long as you strategically used your star coins to open bridges. Yes, they could have given the player the abillity to save anywhere to begin with, and it would have been better. But it’s not that big of a deal; you’re making a tiny problem with the game into a much larger one.

    On another note, I’ve been playing MTG since I was in gradeschool, but I’ve been out of it for a couple years. The new set Time Spiral has really got me back into it, and reminded me how much I love the game… and loath the amount of money I waste on randomized card packets.

    To play Type 2 (standard) in MTG, you have to spend a few hundred bucks about every three months. Then in a year, all those cards you bought are no longer legal. To play Type 1 (Vintage), you have to have Power Nine, which will run you up a couple thousand dollars. Legacy and Extended don’t cost as much as those do, but they are the least played formats.

    All in all, to play the greatest game every made for an extended time, you have to pay thousands of dollars for thin pieces of cardboard. I want to say it’s a vicious cycle, but I know that’s not the right idiom. At any rate, if you think you know a way to make a card game as genius as MTG but without the ridiculous cost, best of luck to you.

26. mattdavis.biz » Blog Archive » Sirlin’s 2006 Game Awards Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 4:22 am

    […] The always excellent Sirlin released his 2006 game awards recently. The top two games were Magic the Gathering, and the WOW Card Game. […]

27. elvis Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 5:59 am

    You mention games being hi-def riddled with DHCP. I think you mean HDCP:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHCP
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP

    Regardless of the typo, I am in 110% agreeance with everything written in this article. My two favourite points:

    1) The Nintendo Wii is a brilliant idea. “developers can take risks rather than just making more cookie-cutter games”. Absolutely. We live in a gaming world poisoned by EA Sports rehashes and lame done-to-death first/third person shooters that are spewed out of the games industry at a ridiculous rate of knots. Finally a breath of fresh air. Obviously it made Sony sit up and listen with their too-little-too-late SixAxis controller. It’s nice when the big players are forced to rethink their strategies thanks to real innovation.

    2) HDCP and DRM is rubbish. In a desperate bid to stop a few “pirates” (and what a stupid word that is to describe people who break copyright law), the rest of the gaming universe suffers at the hand of corporate stupidity. Honestly, when is it going to stop. Just give me a goddamn DVI-out so I can plug my “next-gen” console into anything I want, and stop being so paranoid! Ahh screw it… I’ll go buy a Wii instead.

    “Innovation is successful disobedience”.

28. Anonymous Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 9:12 am

    Pardon my French, but you’re goddamn crazy. Shadow of the Colossus is superior to Resident Evil 4 in every way. Resident Evil 4 is overrated as hell, whereas Shadow of the Colossus deserves the acclaim it receives.

29. James M Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 10:07 am

    Wii sports is the game of the year anyway.

30. David Boudreau Says:
    December 31st, 2006 at 5:00 pm

    James- Yes, there’s a lot more going on close-range in 3S than ST, but 3S is every bit as much a game of intitiative and momentum as ST is (if not only more complex than ST), especially considering what you mentioned about 3S’ situation reversals/resets. To me, both ST and 3S are fast-paced (good) and made the Alphas look like VF 2’s underwater match with dural (sluggish; unnecessarily prolonged). The throw system actually improved in 3S- even on top of the improved ability to tech throws in ST (to split hairs, why should P1 get an unfair advantage?). 3S also advanced overheads. While that’s inside close-range, 3S also introduced innovative projectiles (key to controlling space, parry-able or not) and ways to get in close from far off. Your ST example with Ryu/Honda is good, and Blanka is also prone to this dynamic, requiring lots of patience and persistence. Zangief has to get in to close-range somehow too, just as many 3S characters must. These kind of characters and their dynamics abound in 3s too though. I think 3S improved on the bain of Zangief where if he’s behind and time’s running out, he can’t do much to come back. That doesn’t really happen as much in 3S (?). But maybe you’re right, the Blanka/Honda player’s patience must be earned and rewarded over the entire course of the round (I don’t know 3S as well so can’t think of examples right now). I accept that 3S allows for short attention spans (i.e. last 5 seconds don’t matter) but the big comebacks are still there- ST forces the Hondas into situations of high risk/high reward… in 3S you still have lots of “Terror” to contend with, plus you have more options.

    I think I understood “controlling space”, of all, since that’s how I originally came to understand higher level SF strategy and why I focused on playing Dhalsim… center squares on the chessboard. To me, Dhalsim/Guile is an entire game unto itself I’ve been studying for years. (I have a “solved” theory there’s a prescribed set of moves to completely beat Guile no matter what he tries…still working on it :) ). Though there are different dynamics in 3S, I don’t see how 3S lacks controlling space, even beyond close-range. 3S still has a strong fb game and corner traps are there. And the differences between ST and 3S are so miniscule it hardly matters to me compared to the differences with ST and any other post-ST game. There could just as much be videos of vying for space and controlling it in 3S as CCC2’s.

    Kicks- Up until a while back, I used to agree with you that inputs for moves in SF should be easy- instant dragon punch or whatever. Now, however, I don’t see it that way and feel that it’s much, much more about Execution and not simply volition; manual dexterity and motor skills are still important in performance (unlike chess). Consider all of the split-second decision making that goes on during a round, deciding whether or not to start the motion for a fb as you recover from a move or landing… you might want to delay a decision to actually _press_ a punch button until you decide you want to. This commits you to tie up the joystick in a limited number of positions for so many frames- you start going through some motions at the opportunity cost of not going through others. During all that, what if the opponent attempts a jump in or does a confusing cross-up– now you have to abandon plans and block high. Those small decisions in gameplay are a big part of SF. Experts still land on fb’s, mess up critical dp’s/other reversals etc. (not to mention big combos). Also, consider how meaningless the great tournament moments would become if Execution were that easy, like Daigo’s famous parry (in 3S not even ST :) ), or other moments like that over the years. It’s one thing to decide what you want to do, but actually Executing it is crossing an entire canyon of mettle.

31. webrunner Says:
    January 1st, 2007 at 1:38 am

    Can I just say something about the horse in Shadow? No? I’ll say it anyway:

    The horse controls fine if you don’t try to control it too much. If you force the horse it’ll go all over the place, but if you just go forward he’ll even negotiate curved ledges and such on his own.

    The important thing is that you’re not controlling the horse. You’re controlling Wanderer, and he gives the horse commands.

32. rashreflection Says:
    January 3rd, 2007 at 10:38 am

    As always, good thread here!

    I think a key element of 3s’s popularity, which nobody has brought up yet, has to do with parries.

    Specifically, parries give low tier a way to win that wasn’t present in other SF’s. In Japan’s single-match, single-elim tournaments, you will sometimes see characters like Hugo or Q or Necro sneak into the semifinals; if you actually watch their matches to find out why, you will generally see that they guessed a few parries right at key times.

    In the long run, this doesn’t help their chances must; just look at Evo, or even the KSK ranbats (which use 2/3 matches for top 4). But Japanese tournaments emphasize the short run, and thus make this game seem far more balanced than it actually is. I think FMJ got it right when he called 3s “SF poker”, and just as poker is more popular than chess, 3s will be more popular than ST.

33. Gig4ls Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 1:09 am

    Sorry if I missed it, but you didn’t mention balance or pacing in your (Sirlin’s) ranking, which I though from your previous editorials was one of your main concerns in games today.

34. James O Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 6:52 am

    I’m not sure I understand why RE4 does not fall into the category of “crosshair-aiming-game” like Gears of War et al? RE4 is, at its heart, a third-person shooter, and the majority of the game is spent doing the old aim/shoot routine with zombies. RE4 does have some secondary traits that further flesh it out, like exploration of the castle for treasure, and RPG-esque leveling up for the guns, but these other mechanics are all built to serve the game’s primary conceit - that of aiming and shooting. This isn’t to say RE4 is a bad game (it is, of course, excellent, and the fact it did not win GOTY reflects more on its excellent competition than on any intrinsic faults) - just that it does not seem to fundamentally differ from Gears of War at its mechanical roots.

35. Sirlin Says:
    January 4th, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    James O: After further research and reflection, I agree with you. Gears of War has a lot in common with Resident Evil 4. Gears of War is much better than I was giving it credit for.

    David B: Rank the SF games? sure:
    Top tier: ST, A2, HF
    2nd tier: CvS2, AE, A1 (kinda broken)
    3rd tier: everything else
    bottom tier: A3, 3s (nice production values but gameplay failures)

    Carlos and Xhad: Yes, I really am working on a non-ripoff ccg (in addition to the simpler ’street fighter’ card game I’ve mentioned before). Too bad for me that even if it is the greatest card game ever created, I have no way to materialize an infrastructure for organized play so it has tournaments, prizes, judges, and so forth. Oh well, I will continue working on it anyway, as there really needs to be an alternative to the way the ccg industry is doing things.

    –Sirlin

36. jchensor Says:
    January 5th, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    Sorry, Dave, for the blantant plugging of my own blog, but i need to say that I completely agree with your sentiments on saving in games… in fact, I had written up a three part article on the very subject matter when I first started my blog. Here are links to the three parts:

    http://jchensor.blogspot.com/2006/05/saving-in-games-part-1-who-needs-sleep.html
    http://jchensor.blogspot.com/2006/05/saving-in-games-part-2-not-worth.html
    http://jchensor.blogspot.com/2006/05/saving-in-games-part-3-save-points.html

    I think the concept of saving in games is one of the areas that needs the MOST examination in new games. It’s archaic and poorly implemented. Saving in games was practically a workaround when first conceived. There’s no reason the trend for it should continue.

    - James

37. jchensor Says:
    January 5th, 2007 at 4:37 pm

    Whoops. Forgot that the 3rd part wasn’t originally planned, making the article 4 parts. *^_^*

    http://jchensor.blogspot.com/2006/06/saving-in-games-part-4-temporary.html

    - James

38. Forty Says:
    January 5th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

    Even though RE4 was a great game, I found the control to be rather frustrating. I know it was supposed to control more like a behind-the-back Resident Evil game than your average first/third-person shooter, but that just bugged me because I couldn’t make Leon move how I wanted him to. It’s not that it was “sluggish,” but I just didn’t really like it.

39. James M Says:
    January 6th, 2007 at 3:39 pm

    Romance of the Three Kingdoms rules.

    Sirlin what is your economic model for a card game? Selling singles? Or something more?

40. David Boudreau Says:
    January 7th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    James (Chen), those are good articles. Points A to B passed pleasantly, but if failing B to C means you have to redo A to B, makes it unpleasant…. I’m actually playing the original Resident Evil now, and what Patrick Coyne said is interesting, that it can fit into the theme. But even in games that aren’t “horror” themed can still have this kind of limited/restricted saving system, for another good reason: it feeds directly into the addiction factor. If save points are restricted but well-placed, designers should probably place them just when there’s more content introduced to explore- another door or two to go through, another clue, or item revealed that’ll probably work someplace the player’s come across already, etc. and the player really wants to see it. I don’t think it’s just the challenge factor requiring the traditional save system; the player isn’t challenged so much as he just wants to see what’s next. Doesn’t the designer want the player to tell his girlfriend “five more minutes” too many times- and thereby destroy the player’s intergrity of such a statement, because the game is just that addicting? How can you really know the value of a saved game until you are faced with the prospect of losing it?

    Also, save systems affect the random elements in a game’s design structure as well. You want to challenge the player, but in certain ways over others. Randomness will crop up somewhere in a game’s design, and saving shouldn’t let the player overcome randomness, at least not too often. Then it may really become a chore. Then again, maybe some types of games fit that mold to make it work. For any “rule” of game design, there is probably a game that breaks it and still plays well, depending on how it’s done.

    I’d like to ask what you guys think about GTA: San Andreas’ saving system. Does this get close to your ideal of saving at any time? I’m playing this now on Xbox, and I think I’ve done all the (core?) missions, and not exactly sure what to do to get the storyline going again except take over other regions of the map to increase territory. It’s still kind of frustrating because I don’t feel like I’m getting very far- especially when a gang war fails and I gotta go through the whole re-up process all over again. Technically, you can save at any time, but you have to make it all the way back to your house to do it.

41. jchensor Says:
    January 8th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    David says: “Doesn’t the designer want the player to tell his girlfriend “five more minutes” too many times- and thereby destroy the player’s intergrity of such a statement, because the game is just that addicting? How can you really know the value of a saved game until you are faced with the prospect of losing it?”

    Yeah, I can completely understand the ponits you bring up. A designer should be proud when he manages to force a player to continually play past the intended point of stopping because the game is addicting.

    But I think the main point is that an addicting game is ABOVE save points. GTA is a good example. I’m sure many people who play the game (I don’t) will keep playing despite the fact that you can save at any point. The addiction does cause one to not stop ever.

    The cry against save points comes more from a lifestyle that needs to be acknowledged. Gamers are growing older, and the only way to make games legitimate forms of entertainment is to make them acceptible to adults and accepted by adults. Forcing adults to play over an hour before they can save isn’t how you’re gonna get it done. And if it fills like high school kids and college students are the only ones who can play these games with sparse save points (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy XII), games will never be seen as anything other than a medium for the more adolescent audiences. I mean, TiVo and general DVRs have gained HUGE popularity simply for their ability to pause and easily, at a press of a button, record TV, so even TV shows no longer cause you that kind of grief. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost an hour’s worth of progress simply because I have to leave my home and can’t find a save point. And I really do refuse to leave my machine paused for hours at a time. I just don’t ever wanna do that anymore.

    I just fully believe that a game can be super addictive, super fun, super challenging, and super profitable without needing to rely on Save Points, if the designers try hard enough. And then everyone can enjoy the fun.

42. jchensor Says:
    January 9th, 2007 at 4:14 am

    Oh, and I should definitely proof-read my post for grammar and spelling errors next time.

43. David Boudreau Says:
    January 10th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    That’s true, adults do have less time. We also have degenerating reaction timing and hand-eye coordination skills, making the “challenge” aspect of games all the more difficult to include adults. I’m certainly behind efforts to get adults to be more accepting of games, and the creative placement of limited save points restricted to cliff-hangers certainly isn’t the only way to make a game addicting. At least, with all the hard work that goes into making a game, players will notice it a lot more; maybe designers don’t notice (or care, by some point) that they’re turning a good experience into a negative one. Maybe they just want to make sure some content definitely gets noticed, and appreciated. Our non-gaming humans certainly don’t tend to appreciate it much.

    We’re more sensitive to a game save than a bookmark in a book, for example. However, there is one common imperfection about how both a literal bookmark and the traditional game save point function in actual practice: upon returning to a book/game, repeating over a little content is necessary to keep your place without missing anything. When you stop reading a book, it’s rarely exactly at the point of the end of the entire page. For most people (well, me), it’s probably at the end of some paragraph, but I’m unlikely to remember which one it was. Picking up where I left off usually involves re-reading some of it, however small. That’s ok, because the re-reading I do also helps me get back into it- re-establish my sense of disbelief, or coordinate myself to the context of the book, or its order of events. Sometimes, I even skip back a page or two. In a book, you have to supply the memory of previous content, while a game save can help you remember. But there’s nothing stopping you from skimming over a book without absorbing all of it properly… you can say you read it, but full comprehension is not necessarily achieved. Unlike with a game, where competence must be demonstrated, because there’s a quiz at the end of the chapter. Reading (and re-reading) books is just as anti-social/addicting an activity as playing a video game, yet it still has a stigma; you’re “just” playing, wasting time. The adult way to waste time is to read, I guess… maybe allowing granular saves is the way to go for games to be more accepted. If some games are requiring you to go back the equivalent of an entire chapter… well, it better be worth playing (there are many books not worth reading).

    I still have yet to see TiVo, but the medium of TV will probably change if no one watches the ads. I hear all the TV commercials in the US these days are for drugs.

    There’s no denying Metal Gear Solid’s greatness and the save system only helped it. That game, like many others, still required you to progess through a linear storyline, more or less (one step before another). The same thing in RE1. I just finished RE1 yesterday, but it wasn’t the save system that got to me at all. The genre is horror, and the graphics/load time reinforced the theme very well– but in terms of gameplay, that theme only made me horde stuff- not just ink ribbons, but everything. In terms of actual fear playing a game, I probably felt more during Tomb Raider. I didn’t really worry about _lack_ of ink ribbons to save, but rather, “what is the next step?” and how to progress the storyline to make it worth saving at all. Far more important complaints I have would be not being allowed to skip FMVs (especially at the end), and although the game is really good at giving just the right amount of clues for the puzzles, utilizing the red/blue books part required me to look it up online.

44. whaha Says:
    January 11th, 2007 at 2:33 am

    I have nothing much to add, but there are games that let you see what you did a little while before you saved. You can skip this, by pressing B, and you can accelerate it by pressing B.

    Pokémon Fire Red & Leaf Green (and I guess Pokémon Emerald as well?) have this function.
    Besides the fact that you save almost anytime you want, just don’t be in a conversation or battle, it still has the danger of ‘dead’ saves like on the PC with RTS and platform (Starcraft, Commander Keen).
    You can’t ‘just’ save if all of your Pokémon are almost fainted and you have no way of recovery. If you black out you only lose half your money and your pokémon dislike you a bit more, but that’s besides the point.
    Saving after fainting legendaries is a bad thing too of course.
    You still have only one savegame, don’t forget that.

    Usually it shows you which items you have used and to where you’d travelled.
    It doesn’t ‘replay’ that much as to say.

    Most RTS keep their difficulty no matter how much you save your game.
    I think I forgot a good argument somewhere.
    I’ll probably remember after posting.

45. Kang Do Says:
    January 18th, 2007 at 8:22 pm

    I personally agree that it’s a shame how we’re not playing GG or VF and would much rather play games like Tekken, 3S and CVS2. Here are my personal opinions on why that’s the case and a lot of it I think has to do with how many casual gamers regard the games and how they’ve been told to think about the games either by magazine reviewers or their peers. I should note though that my opinions are based off those I’ve spoken with or have only tried to become “competitive” in the last couple of years:

    3S being more popular than CVS2 I believe does have a lot to do with Daigo vs Justin Wong at EVO2K4. Many people, those who don’t even like fighting games, watched the video and it was love at first sight. I don’t know how that video became more popular than other videos but nevertheless, it happened. It was then that many felt that 3S was the game to play. Because it was the game they saw the pros playing. Seeing Daigo parry several times in a row seemed like some sort of ridiculous feat that they measured as “the ultimate skill.”

    Parrying/reversing/countering in fighting games in general seems to be regarded by casual gamers as “the ultimate fighting game move of skill.” I’m constantely amazed by the amount of casual gamers who defend Soul Calibur or Dead or Alive talk about the GI/Counter system being a deep, strategic feat of skill that the true experts have to utilize and what automatically makes them good games (although in no way am I saying that they’re bad games). That and it’s very flashy. To react to an opponent’s move and stop it in it’s tracks.

    Speaking of flashiness, 3S to the casual gamer’s eye appears more flashy than some of the competition (clearly not that of MVC2 but that will come later). Up until just recently, people thought that Yun was a huge skill character because of his flashy GJ combos. Same went for characters like Makoto. And everybody obviously likes Ken. The matches appeared more fast paced than CVS2 or ST. The ironic thing is that to somebody who doesn’t know anything about tournaments and whatnot, finds 3S to be one of the least flashiest fighters with it’s obscure characters, music, animation and art style. You’ll never see that game played at anime conventions.

    Overall, compared to other Capcom fighters, 3S is “flashier” than CVS2, is newer than ST and is more “balanced” than MVC2 (simply because 3 top tiers out of 19 compared to 4 top tiers out of 56 is somehow more “balanced”). That and it’s probably now one of the easiest games to get videos for along with the large Japanese fanbase backing the game up. Why they play it, I don’t know. Thankfully though, Guilty Gear seems to be getting more play out of the two.

    A3 over A2 is easy. A3’s flashier, newer, has more characters and appears more well designed than A2. Plus, casual gamers think A3 is more skill-based simply because the custom combos are more difficult to perform. Just like why Killer Instinct became popular, casual gamers think that fighting games begin and end with mastering combos. Nothing else is important (or at least is cheap. Spacing and Zoning is not even considered because the strategies used to implement it were taken out long ago because they were deemed too cheap).

    Guilty Gear in North America was doomed from the start. Most people just don’t know that it’s actually a good game. It was trampled on by the magazine reviewers who didn’t know anything about it, dismissing it as another one of those obscure Japanese games that wasn’t worth their time, leaving it placed in a dark corner in the video game stores with no one talking about it at all. The people that tried it were either thrown off by the obscure character design or looked at the list of gameplay mechanics and thought it was too much. There was no familiarity and by the time it came out, unless you had familiarity in a 2D fighter, you had nothing in the American market. Instead, they went back to the Capcom and Namco games which had established legacies and people telling them that they were the games to play.

    Tekken sort of established itself among the community with Tekken 3 and became the Street Fighter of 3D fighters. VF didn’t get the chance for many reasons. When VF1 came out, reviewers bashed it for having “fake 3D” and preferred Toshinden for being flashier (PSX doing better than the Saturn didn’t help either). It never seemed to recover from that. With a lack of a legacy backing it up, the later games had to deal with the fact that the matches appeared less flashy and anticlimatic to some and the character designs were a lot more generic, plain. It just had a lot of really plain art (which I sort of think was done on purpose so people can focus on the actual gameplay and players themselves). That left it with nothing against the casual gamers and fanboys which prevents it from receiving any sort of legacy whatsoever. Those who are actually aware of the game’s deep engine, seem to think that it’s a lot deeper than it really is, thinking that it’s a thousand times more deep than Tekken, impossible for them to achieve and for some reason, they’re also lead to believe that the game can’t be enjoyed in casual play, that it’s ONLY for those who want to become competitive at the most extreme levels. One reason I think they feel that way is just because of how many players use it’s deeper engine to defend it as being a better game and the Evo training mode seemed to intimidate them. If T5 had a similar training mode, it wouldn’t surprise me if they either felt the same way about Tekken or changed their view on VF.

    Then of course, you have the flashiness, the character designs, presentation and art style that everyone loves. Good luck finding someone who plays Tekken and thinks all those things are terrible.

    Also, like rashreflection said, it’s the MVC2 of 3D fighters with all the drama and money matches. If it wasn’t for that, the game would most likely be scrapped. Many of the high level players in T5 seem to constantely bash the game or at least prefer TTT miles over.

    Concerning Soul Calibur, it’s regarded by the Tekken community seemingly as a “sister” game. SC3 in particular is broken apart with all of it’s glitches. It reached a point that the SC community seems to hate the game more than anyone else. The game also becomes less flashy in high level play. It has all the flashy and presentation aspects that draw in casual players but the community is in such a state that it has no legacy amongst itself. People who don’t already play the game don’t know why they should bother.

    That turned out to be a LOT longer than I hoped it to be. Overall, I wish we’d be playing VF4/VF5 and GGXX Slash/AC right now more than anything else but unfortunately, we’re left with the games that the majority like more for reasons beyond actual gameplay. Truth be told, it seems like what’s left of the community outside from a small percentage only continue to play because they “like” the games more than anything or because of the legacy behind them. Actual gameplay is not an issue.

    PS: I was curious. How would you actually rank Virtua Fighter in comparision to Guilty Gear and Super Turbo?

46. Xhad Says:
    January 19th, 2007 at 3:29 am

    “Too bad for me that even if it is the greatest card game ever created, I have no way to materialize an infrastructure for organized play so it has tournaments, prizes, judges, and so forth.”

    I’m sure if it’s good enough, and people know about it, that will take care of itself. I guess the problem would be getting people to find out without just releasing an Apprentice patch or something (although depending on your exact business model even that may work).

47. Sirlin Says:
    January 24th, 2007 at 1:52 am

    Kang Do: Nice analysis. You asked how I would rate VF. I think it’s a solid strategy game and deserves to be played, but it has a few things against it. One, the character variety is very small relative to most 2d games. I know VF fans will argue that and say there is a lot of character variety, but I’m saying *relative* to having one guy based on pool balls, one guy who controls a 2nd character simultaneously, someone with infinite/free alpha counters, and so on. Next, it’s so damn difficult to play. Even simple moves like “f+k” or whatever often require me to use this input instead “f+k, d+pg, f+pg” because of throw escapes. There’s a lot of dexterity required to even play on a level playing field.

    But I don’t want to seem too down on VF. It just has a lower fun factor for me than, say, GG or ST because of the high dexterity requirements (which I don’t have) and the lower character variety. I’ve always been rooting for the series to succeed since VF2 though.

    –Sirlin

48. BWprowl Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 11:47 pm

    Um….you can totally save whenever you want in NSMB. Just hit “start” while standing on a castle you’ve already beaten. Easy.

49. BWprowl Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

    *facepalm* just noticed that you noted that that’s only something you unlock after beating the game. I’ll go hang myself now, sorry.

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51. HummingbirdTG Says:
    March 14th, 2007 at 11:37 pm

    Mr Sirlin, doesn’t your comment about not recommend players to play TCGs because of the ‘rip-off scheme’ of selling boosters not take into account programs where you can play Magic on the internet at no cost(albeit without the card images and rule enforcement), such as Apprentice?

52. Sirlin Says:
    March 15th, 2007 at 12:01 am

    Apprentice is a very poor experience. It’s so clunky and unpolished and doesn’t even know or enforce the rules of the game. It’s just too far below the quality bar that I find acceptable. Magine Online, on the other hand, is great. I played it for maybe 1.5 years straight, and most of that was during the alpha/beta tests where the game was free and the opponents were mostly pro tour players. What an experience! Compare that to the current state of buying one deck for $300.

    I just bought God of War 2 $50. World of Warcraft costs $15/month. $300 per deck is a ludicrous value proposition to the player. It perpetuates because a) some players are crazy enough to pay it, b) some players are ok with scrounging decks together, spending time bargaining and trading in order to reduce their costs, c) some players play sealed deck and draft so they are able to get more value out of a random pack of cards than a construced-only player, and d) some players are ok playing the game even if they can’t afford the deck they want; they instead play a cheaper or substandard version of the deck and still have fun.

    The day I can pay $15/month to play MTGO with any cards I want is the day WotC gets any more of my money.

    –Sirlin

53. Zerite Says:
    March 18th, 2007 at 3:27 am

    Most professional competition decks in standard these days are only around $150-$200. Most players don’t play to win tournaments however… They just play for fun building decks that cost a fraction of that amount to play against their friends with. For the decks at the price level your talking about, you get decks that can win you thousands of dollars… Tens of thousands in the pro-tour and worlds events.
    Comparing a professional competition level deck with a leisure game like WoW or GoW 2 is an unfair comparison to make.

54. Sirlin Says:
    March 18th, 2007 at 5:25 am

    Zerite, I completely disagree. Different people have different ideas about what “the real game” is in magic the gathering. To me, “the real game” is when all players have equal access to all cards and try to use the best decks possible to win. If you are playing something short of that, it’s a complete waste of time, to me. And I’m not even talking about entering tournaments. You can still try to build a good deck and compete outside of a tournament and you’d still be playing “the real game,” as I did for a over a year during mtgo’s alpha test.

    Anyway, saying that it *only* costs 150 - $200 is not much of a defense of the game, even if it were true. It’s absolutely absurd. MTG is one of the best games in the world, but you shouldn’t play it at those prices. Or at least I hope you wouldn’t, so that the game might someday be available at a price more in line with…every other type of game ever.

    –Sirlin

55. Zerite Says:
    March 18th, 2007 at 9:56 am

    It’s plenty of defense. God of War does not play itself. You need a PS2 and a TV for it. I can’t imagine the game+system+Tv costing less than $150-$200. And there is no chance of making a return off of that investment. You probably already had the PS2 and the Tv though. They were sunk costs. You can’t play wow without a computer either. A moderately high end system sans monitor would be around a 1000. Of course, computers have alot of uses, but you could have satisfied the requirements for those by shelling out far less. That premium you payed was for games.

    I’m not saying that the prices for magic are reasonable. Some are some aren’t. I hate that the dual-type shock lands run from 10-25 apiece. Most people I know wouldn’t buy them unless they wanted to compete. They would proxy them instead. Regardless people will pay a premium to play the games they like. I’ll get hundreds of hours of enjoyment in the building and testing of decks and will spend dozens playing in tournaments. That quality of entertainment, that involvement with the game is worth all the money I’ve spent on it. I wish I had more success to show for it, but lacking that I still love Magic.

    And while we’re on the topic of how much it costs to play a game, I have to mention guilty gear. The newest installation of the game is coming and again it’s only for the PS2 a system I don’t have. I’d like to play in tournaments for the game and sometimes I drive to austin to practice. I’ve been thinking recently of buying a japanese system, and stick built for me by desktop arcade. Along with a copy of slash and Accent core, thats at least $300 not including shipping. It doesn’t even cover the second arcade stick I’d have to buy so that my friends could play on a level ground with me. Not to mention the travel costs of playing in tournaments. Sad to say, but it’s cheaper for me to play magic.

56. Paul Christiano Says:
    March 18th, 2007 at 11:02 am

    I agree that Magic is not quite as bad a value proposition as Sirlin makes it out to be; you really do get a large amount of play time out of a deck, and you are probably going to get some percentage (for some people consistently >= 100) of that money back if you have the energy to aggressively trade/sell. I think the complaint is not really that you are paying several thousand dollars over the course of your life to play the game (although that is, of course, a reasonable complaint), but that your ability to experiment with decks is limited for financial reasons–you are not in fact playing the unrestricted game, but a severely reduced version determined by how much you are willing to pay Wizards. This is much worse if you don’t have the patience or desire to spend time trading. When I played on Apprentice I would pretty much use every card in standard between rotations, which I simply can’t do in real life. Unfortunately, Apprentice suffers from a wide range of problems, which are delineated in detail elsewhere. Given that I already have a computer, I have now been sucked back into playing guild wars instead. That game also has a large number of problems, but it is certainly cheaper.

    Here’s hoping that something better shall come along. I doubt that wizards will change their policy radically, since barring some unexpected competition many people will probably still be willing to pay and some casual players spend absurd amounts.

57. Fatal KO Says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    Game Developer’s Choice Awards 2007…

    I just got back from GDC, had a great time there and saw a lot of good panels. However, one thing that really baffled me was the award show on Wednesday. In fact, I was entirely flabbergasted at a lot…

58. NorrYtt Says:
    August 13th, 2007 at 3:38 am

    For Magic: The Gathering, you seem narrowly-focused on high-level Constructed tournaments. You seem to be pure Spike, so that’s what you enjoy, but it shouldn’t be too difficult within a friend group of Magic players to simply borrow the right cards for the actual tournament you’re preparing for. Most pros practice with fake cards (proxies). I’m pretty sure most high level Magic pros don’t own every card they play with; casual players are the ones with the huge collections.

    It seems like you don’t know or even care about Sealed or Draft formats (what we call Limited). An 8-man draft may cost you $13 as a drafter for 3 or more rounds and a chance at prize - winner gets first pick of the rares, for example. That’s a good 4 hours of entertainment among friends IRL, it should be competitive enough for you, and you might get some nice Constructed-worthy rares or pretty foils. You can get a 36 booster box for ~90$, which is an extra 12 boosters for prize, order some pizzas, which could be $15 times 8 ways for a whole evening’s worth of entertainment. Also, you can play with your casual/constructed decks afterwards for infinite hours or switch it up after the draft with Guilty Gear.

    I also believe you foolishly underestimate the psychology and success of a randomized product model (aka ‘ripoff’ model). Yes, when you bust a booster of Magic cards, on average, those 15 cards are worth less than the retail value of the booster by economic principle. Hopefully, the entertainment of playing with those cards more than makes up the difference. But once in a while, you do indeed open a $20 foil dual land. Because there is a possibility of this, every booster is its own little adrenaline rush.

    It’s why slot machines work; it’s why lotteries work. If this isn’t appealing to you, you can try trading or purchasing singles or playsets. Magic’s secondary market has its own lucrative opportunities. Acquiring the Magic cards you want and avoiding purchasing the cards you don’t want is its own little game.

    I used to be like you (the ‘all cards should be free and the playing field level, not haves vs have nots’ mentality, not the competitive Spike, as human vs human competition usually decreases fun for me because I am too compassionate). Now that I’m a mature Magic player, I understand that while on the surface I ‘hate’ having to acquire hundreds of dollars of new cards, at a visceral level, I love this challenge, partly because it resonates far louder with casual players than with Spike players. It encourages me to find other Magic players because not only can we play, we can trade for cards we need! Everyone is w1nn3r!

    Yes, if all you care about is high-level Constructed Magic tournament play, there is a relatively high plateau of investment required to ‘play whatever you want whenever you want’, probably more than $1000 a year for Standard. But why stop there, if you want to compete in ANY Magic tournament, you need ALL the best cards, right? For Vintage, you need power, and my Mox playset alone cost me $1600.

    Let’s say I have the potential to be the world’s best Dance Dance Revolution player. A gripe I have is that practicing on my home soft pad impairs me from performing as well on the hard pad of an arcade machine because the physics are different. Am I supposed to plop endless quarters into an arcade machine? Get a job at an arcade and Free Play at night on the machine? Purchase my own machine or build one myself? It’s an investment plateau like in Magic. Hell, even my soft pad requires me to purchase a PS2, a game, a pad, a TV (I actually use a TV Tuner card), and electricity.

    Anyway, in conclusion, you should at least try drafting Magic regularly as an experiment, preferably online, gauge its level of competitiveness, fairness, economy, and fun, then revisit your over-the-top criticisms of our randomized product model.

59. Sirlin Says:
    August 13th, 2007 at 6:51 am

    NorrYtt, of course I’m aware of all that. I personally don’t like limited formats at all (sealed deck, draft). I have no problem with you liking them and I don’t claim there is any lack of skill involved or anything like that. I just personally do not find them even slightly fun. I want to be able to build extreme decks that maximize some crazy particular thing and tune them exactly how I want, so that means only constructed interests me personally.

    I also don’t dispute the psychological power of randomized packs with artificial scarcity of cards. I know all about the psychology behind that and why it’s successful. Or to put it another way, I’m well aware of why the rip-off is not more widely protested.

    As I think I said before, I don’t personally have much interest in actually entering MTG tournaments. But I did have plenty of interest in playing with my friends the same game as the one played in tournaments–a game where you build your deck out of any cards you like that are legal in the format and play against others who do the same.

    You could (and should) use proxies to play like this, but it’s a bit of a slippery slope. Why not use 100% proxies and never buy anything? I slipped further and further toward this until I decided it was just too much hassle and shady to play this game where I bootleg all the pieces from it. I was interested in playing “the real game” (to me, constructed where everyone has all the cards) without spending thousands of dollars. The makers of MTG have lots of reasons that they don’t want me to do that, or to define “the real game” as something different than I do. They are of course free to do that, but the only real reaction I could give was quitting.

    Dear mtg online: allow me to spend $15/month and play any cards I want and you’ll be getting the same amount of money as a World of Warcraft subscription even though keeping mtg going costs only a tiny fraction of the development cost of World of Warcraft. Or, stay on your current course and get $0 from me. I understand that getting $0 from me could very well be a good business decision because there are so many people willing to be ripped off and/or people who are fine with playing without access to all the pieces. Thanks.
    –Sirlin

60. Kurt W. Horsting Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am

    I think you need to apologize to the sf3 community. you put 3rd tier as better then Alpha 3 and SF3. I don’t need to mention the abominations of the street fighter series that make SF3 look like pure gold!

    FINE, I have no choice!!!! STREET FIGHTER THE MOVIE THE GAME!!!

    P.S. It actually hurt for me to type that… so I’ll wait for the apology.

61. Man Says:
    November 23rd, 2007 at 7:12 am

    One quality Tekken has above its nearest competitors is its visceral appeal. Unlike Virtua Fighter, where characters gently float to the ground after a knockdown, Tekken’s impacts have impact. The sound system delivers varied thuds, grunts of pain, and kiais as sparks fly from damaged characters. Overlay these noises atop an excellent soundtrack, and you have instant immersion for players and spectators alike. People who’ve never played Tekken will wince when, in the middle of a match, one character sends another flying across the stage. Though this doesn’t have any direct impact in terms of game mechanics, you can imagine what it does for the community - this flashiness is probably what’s transformed it into the Marvel of 3D fighters.

    Also, I’m sure being a Tekken player adds a bias to my opinion, but I think Tekken doesn’t deserve to be relegated to the bottom of the barrel the way it was in your comparison. You stated that your opinions were going to be biased, but come on, are people really going to remember that brief disclaimer when they’re reading this assessment?

    Virtua Fighter: Deeper
    Soul Calibur: Better, easier controls
    Tekken: WEIRD MIDDLE GROUND WITH PRESUMABLY NO REDEEMING VALUES

    That aside, I’m highly pleased and impressed with the site. Keep up the great work!

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