Geek vs Life

*Update* I just got hit with the dumbass stick…I’ll be making another post about this shortly, that I wrote for the Ebbtide. I’ll put that up on Friday, when the issue’s in print.

Go ahead…take this the wrong way. I get scared when things get too big. If I see an indie movie, and I dig it, there is a small chance that everyone and their dog will love it, think it’s a life-changing experience, talk about it incessantly, and suddenly the fact that you like it tears you away from your baret and black turtle neck wearing artsy hip friends because you became trendy.

Big companies have this same effect for me. The bigger they are, the more popular they become, the more mindless drooling information whores they have spouting all that is good and wholesome, and how earth-shatteringly important their wares are. I cling to my hipness, my funny hats, and the uncomfortable shirts I stole from Steve Jobs by being a fan of particulars designer rather than the companies they work for. Really, if genetics and temporal anomolies could be controlled, I would be having Wil Wright’s baby. Please see our videos for more regarding this…or don’t because it’s horribly embarassing. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Now that I have your attention again, let’s talk about what’s happening this afternoon (6:30pm Eastern). Take 2 Productions is having it’s investor’s meeting. As a total side note, Jack Thompson (a shareholder) is attempting to get some time on the floor. This should prove interesting. Anyway, the meeting should be a good indicator of whether or not Electronic Arts is going to be successful in it’s buyout offer of the company.

This started me thinking about 800lb gorillas. Uh-huh…I’ll keep waiting.

Thank you. Now that we have have our King Kong (Blizzard/Activision), I’m looking at this as if I were looking at the nuclear blast that is going to wake up Godzilla. This, at first, scared the bajiggers out of me.

That’s when the part of me that is not simply a gamer, but an otaku of interactive digtal entertainment, smacked the rest of me. “No, you fool!” it said, “We need these! We need the makers sequels of popular titles to continue to make them. There has to be the companies that satiate the twitchy, homicidal Xbox owners, the MLB (insert year here) beer guzzling neanderthalic fans, and other “casual” gamers at bay so that true creativity can continue thrive.

There are several gleaming examples of this, ie: Valve’s Portal, and 2D Boy’s World of Goo. The greatest thing about these titles, aside from amazing (if not unconventional and subtle) writing, is there distribution methods. Not only are they amazing examples of design, but they are available through non-traditional methods of downloading rather than having to drag one’s rear-end to an archaic brick and mortar store and buy a physical copy of the game.

Sony has said that 90% of games will be downloaded by 2018.

I think this date is far too conservative. I’ve heard the arguments against this, one of the best one being 90% of gamers don’t have credit cards. This seems shallow to me since 54% of gamers are housewives, though their games of choice are usually flash based. (Curse you, Word Womp! Give me my mother back!) This already gives downloaded games a significant market share. “But these aren’t the hard core gamers!” I hear you cry. Okay, so most of the “hard core” crowd plays games that are larger than that. Perhaps these players don’t have credit cards, but points can still be purchased through traditional means in a store. Let’s call that argument debunked.

The way I see it, the biggest problem is bandwidth. But as I pointed out in an earlier post regarding high definition formats for movies, that will not be a problem soon enough with Comcast’s new uberservice. It’s just too expensive right now.

And this leaves the doors wide open for things such as Steam and the new Greenhouse Games to provide downloadable games direct to your hard drive, and allows smaller development companies to grow and give us new and exciting games.

So I say, “Let King Kong and Godzilla, future Mothras and other mythical beast fight it out!” Dinosaurs were huge and controlled the earth for millions of years, but it was the smaller creatures that remained. And cycles will continue as things merge, die out, divide, evaporate, and emerge. I can only sit back and watch right now, but honestly, I’m really excited.