E3 Post-Mortem

With E3 Memories almost faded away, I wanted to drop a few of my thoughts. I’ll make it super-quick by putting all the things we saw into categories:

We all know it’s going to be awesome So thanks guys for showing us the game. You could have shown much less of it and we would be equally hyped. We played the prequel to death and we know it’s good. On the other hand, we knew you were working on it and it’s really no big surprise. Looks good though, please continue:

Modern Warfare 2
Last Guardian
Super Mario Galaxy 2

This looks cool! You win. I need to try your game. It might suck but even then, I want to find out for myself. You have cool ideas and bring something new to the Industry. I want to pay you money so you can continue your efforts.

Heavy Rain
Scribblenauts
Metroid: Other M (ok, this isn’t really innovative but still awesome)

Personally I don’t care. Um, great. People seem to be excited. I’m not, but I guess it’s not you, it’s me.

Everything Hideo Kojima does
God of War 3
Forza 3
Halo: ODST
Alan Wake
Splinter Cell: Conviction

You sucked before. I hope you got better. You haven’t shown anything that would make me think you suck less now. On the other hand, I might be mistaken. Will check your game out and hate you if you still suck.

Assassin’s Creed 2
Mass Effect 2

You will never catch up with Nintendo. It’s cool that you’re doing the Motion thing now but even though your solution might have advantages, you’ve shown no real product yet which means you are now where Nintendo was even before they announced the Wii for the first time. There are no games yet and I doubt 3rd Party developers will take the risk when developing for the Wii is so much cheaper and more lucrative. And the realy cool thing about Nintendo is that it is so cheap. Your solution doesn’t look cheap. Nice try, tough.

Project Natal
PS3’s glowing Ball Vibrator thingy

This is the most anybody will ever talk about your game. Congratulations, you’re mediocre. Your have shown a game that looks and plays like pretty much thousands games out there. You shown one feature that is trying to make look unique but that’s like make-up on a Zombie. You are going to fail, or at least I hope you will.

MAG
Uncharted 2

Gameplay or GTFO. You are even worse then anybody else. You’ve practically shown nothing. You are stupid. You waste my time. I hate you. Go away and come back when you have actual gameplay.

Wii Vitality Sensor
Halo Reach
Brink
Final Fantasy 14
Avatar (Sorry Cameron, you are an awesome guy but especially you should have learned that by now)

There were others as well but at this point, commenting on them would take up too much time. So here my main takeaways:

Microsoft: I really hate it how the Natal thing was hyped. Yes, there are some things about it that look cool and I would have liked a honest, objective presentation of the system’s capabilities. But getting Master Bullshitter Peter Molyneux onboard with that Pedo-Simulation muddled things up beyond repair. Because what he is claiming is that Project Natal will basically somewhat solve all problems we had with realistic game characters. I can clearly see he is lying and that his demo is totally staged.
Otherwise a solid presentation. I like the new Movie, Twitter and Facebook features. Good move from Microsoft.

Nintendo: Wins the “Bullshit of the Show”-prize for the Vitality Sensor. Otherwise solid presentation. Not quite as revolutionary but then again – they are the winning team and not really under pressure to show something mind-blowing.

Sony: You guys are fucked. PSP GO is mildly interesting but has the same problem as your other systems – it’s expensive and has no games! Besides, getting out a system so depended on on-line functionality would be only wise if you had a solid on-line experience. And yours suck!
I will buy your PS3 eventually for Last Guardian and Heavy Rain but I’m hardcore and even I have trouble justifying the expense. Also I can wait until you drop the price. Judging from how it goes now, I don’t see a PS4 coming out.

What do you think?

Krystian Majewski

Krystian Majewski was born in Warsaw and studied design at Köln International School of Design. Before, he was working on a mid-size console project for NEON Studios in Frankfurt. He helped establish a Master course in Game Design and Research at the Cologne Game Lab. Today he teaches Game Design at various institutions and develops independent games.

3 responses to “E3 Post-Mortem”

  1. Yu-Chung Chen

    Last Guardian. Completely missed the leak and the buzz, and I'm not moved by the trailer. The creature gives me the creeps. Let's see how the gameplay turns out, because the art(sy) style is wearing off after 2 games.

    Modern Warfare. I want this with the Metroid Prime 3 control.

    Scribblenauts. Yeah, wanna try. Is Paul Robertson involved? Would be awesome.

    Wii Vitality Sensor. No gameplay/application is poor, and the current appearance looks like crappy medical toy, but I'm interested when Iwata pointed out the passive/unconscious input. In principle, I think it can be useful when games can know not only what you do, but also how your body is responding to it. Obviously, the sensor would make sense for a future WiiFit.

    "Pedo-Simulation", haha!
    Super Mario Galaxy 2 still has UR MR GAY in it.

    Hey, where is the obligatory New Super Mario Bros Wii-bash? ;) Claims like "4D" and "the next step after 17 years of Mario" are ridiculous, but this might be an actually easily playable implementation of the co-op+competition concept, after all the cumbersomeness with multiple hardware. But it seems to lack online play, which is unfortunate (so 4P play will still pose an organisational problem), but without proper teamspeak (no, we won't buy WiiSpeak), the inevitable co-op failures, no matter technical or human caused, will certainly break the game.

  2. Krystian Majewski

    @Last Guardian – RLY? I think it's adorable! I though some of the scenes from the trailer were pretty cool, especially certain animations of the creature. It totally moves and behaves like a dog/cat. But these are cut-scenes. I agree we have to check out how it works. On the other hand, if somebody can pull it off – it's that team.

    @Modern Warfare – Maybe. It's the Counter-Strike of the consoles. It's hardcore so the controls are ok. But I agree – I'd like to have ANY kind of Mulitplayer Shooter on a Wii.

    New Super Mario Bros – yeah haven't commented on that. Because I don't know. What you've written sound pretty poor. On the other hand, I've heard podcasts from people, who tried it that it is pretty good. And the recent Listen UP even mentioned that this game will be the first one to implement the patented demoplay/hint system we were all speculating about. So my philosophy is a positive "Let's wait and see".

  3. Vilhelm S

    I'm not sure about "pedo-simulation": what it really reminds me of is David from "AI". Which is still pretty creepy — if mankind will ever go voluntarily extinct, I'm sure that games like this will be the reason. :)

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The Game Design Scrapbook is a second blog of group of three game designers from Germany. On our first blog, Game Design Reviews we describe some games we played and point out various interesting details. Unfortunately, we found out that we also need some place to collect quick and dirty ideas that pop into our minds. Hence, welcome to Game Design Scrapbook. You will encounter wild, random rantings. Many of then incoherent. Some of them maybe even in German. If you don't like it, you might enjoy Game Design Reviews more.

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