In my younger days, I remember selling my entire collection of NES games to a local consignment shop so I could buy some new SNES game. Recently, I bought back that entire NES collection piece by piece in a powerful fit of nostalgia. The experience made me re-examine the way the used game market affects how we gamers personally value our used games.
For a gameplay movie to be flawless, it must be as fast as possible, it must not miss a shot, have no wasted efforts, and so on. Creating a such movie involves planning and carefulness.
The game is played at slow speed (the emulator slows the game down), doing small segments at time and optimizing then as well as possible, redoing until it goes well. The finished (and unfinished) product is reviewed many times, at full speed and at slow motion, to find things to improve and to invent new strategies and then played again.
The biggest problem last year was a lack of imagination and originality in the most popular genres. “The year of the sequel” is meaning less and less each year, but 2004 really raised the title to new heights. Just look at the top 10 best selling games of the year. Not a new franchise among them. And that list leaves out PC blockbusters like Half-life 2, The Sims 2 and Doom 3.
According to a recent announcement by the NPD Group, sales of "online-enabled console games" reached $1 billion dollars last year. On the surface, this statistic would seem to imply that a lot of people are playing games online, right?
Not necessarily. In fact, a rudimentary analysis of the numbers behind the numbers shows that at least a third of those online-enabled games probably aren’t being played online.
There are some problems with video game journalism.
Smart-ass reply: What video game journalism? *rim-shot*
It’s often subjective and biased.
World-weary reply: Why are we so obsessed with objectivity?
Magazines and web sites report on questionable rumors as if they’re true.
Editor’s reply: You’ve got to get the scoop, kid.
The major outlets cull whole stories directly from press releases and each other.
Confrontational reply: It’s easy to criticize. Let’s see you do better, huh?
Hello, doctor. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice. Work is going well. My girlfriend is good. Look, can we dispense with the pleasantries please? This session is costing me a lot, and I really need your help. Thank you.
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