This Nerd Heard…

I know this is a little bit late (Blizzcon was almost a month ago) but I finally got around to reading the Slashdot interview with Blizzard.  I didn’t even make it through the entire interview before I quit reading because I was deeply offended.  Why you ask? Well, the lead developer said that I’m “are crazy and weird and living in a closet.”  Don’t worry, I’m not using this quote out of context.  You can find his exact response here.

So what makes me “crazy and weird and living in a closet?”  I want to play Starcraft 2 on a LAN and I have high-speed internet access.  But why on earth would anyone want to do that, you ask?  Well I can think of several reasons.  The first being that I don’t want to play on Battle.net, ever! It doesn’t interest me.  I’ve never enjoyed playing RTS’s online with random individuals. I play them at home or a friend’s house, even in the library.  I play with friends, acquaintances, and family.  We bring our laptops and play until all hours of the morning. Sometimes we want to pause the game to get some pizza or because some really cute girls came over.  Sometimes I’m playing with an 8 year old nephew who should not have to be subjected to the kinds of language, attitudes, and griefing he would almost definitely encounter online.

So, Mr. Dustin Browder, lead developer of Starcraft 2, I salute you.  I salute you for strengthening my resolve to boycott your company.  You guys can go ahead and lockout LAN play of your game.  It will probably result in Starcraft 2 being pirated more than the record setting release of Spore.  You won’t stop the people from playing LAN games, you’ll only drive people away from paying for your software.  I may be crazy and weird Mr Browder, but at least I don’t treat people the way your corporation treats its own paying customers.

This must be advocate week, because I am about to suggest that people support another cause (besides sports & drug use).

Back in 2000 or so, I started playing the game Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64.  I had played Golden Eye and thought it was awesome, but it took me a while to get into the new features of Perfect Dark.  In the end, I thought it was an awesome game, and believe it has few rivals in the FPS arena.

In 2005, with the release of the Xbox 360, Perfect Dark Zero was released.  The games had a lot of similarities, and I rather enjoy that game also.  There was one major difference between the two games, however.  In Perfect Dark, you could enable/disable foul language.  In PD Zero, you cannot.  I did not understand why they would remove such a feature.  I find that the language does not add to the game at all, but only detracts.

So how much work is it for them to allow people to enable/disable such language? Well, if designed into the software from day one, the majority of the work is done by the actors/voice people.  They just have to record extra audio.  The software end is rather simple, they just choose one set of audio files over another.  They could have the exact same names between the censored and uncensored clips, so that they could easily play the right clip.

Why don’t video games support this? Is it because they think it adds realism to the game? Perhaps it does, but the language can be offensive to people who might otherwise play the game.  For instance, I have known parents who will let their child play Tony Hawk in free skate, but not in campaign mode because of language.  Or they can play multiplayer Halo (with friends, not on the net) but not single player.  So, it is not that the parents object to the theme of the game, but they object to the language.

So the question is, does the language increase sales or diminsh them? I suggest that it would tend to diminish them.  And does giving the end user the chance to choose how they experience the game diminish sales? No, I would expect that to increase sales.  It would be incredibly easy to accomplish.  In fact, the Xbox 360 allows parents to select what type of environment their children are exposed to.  This extends from movies ratings, to online matchmaking, to specific game ratings.  When I play Xbox 360 games on Xbox live, for instance, I am placed with people in the “family” match making list.  This is because I don’t like to hear screaming and cursing children when I am trying to enjoy a game.  Game developers could harness that potential and automatically censor language in their games.

So what can you do about it? If you feel the way I do, write your favorite cosole manufacturers, your favorite software companies, and maybe even your country’s version of the ESRB (electronic software rating board, I believe).  Maybe if enough people give their two cents, these people will take advantage of the capabilities they have.