To make a “hardcore” game, clearly these days all you need to do rehash an old FPS engine, like say, the Unreal Tournament engine. Next, you rehash the story, like alien bugs invading Earth. Nobody’s thought of that one before. Now, add online and with some pretty bloom lighting and there you have the majority of today’s hardcore FPS games.
Unfortunately most of today’s “casual” games are just as bad.
And other then those two categories, we have shovelware… yeah.
So I’m really at a loss here. There are still some gems, but honestly every generation gets worse and worse. I thought Nintendo’s Wii would finally revive it and show developers that a great game takes time, dedication, and originality; not bloom lighting, an FPS genre, and online multiplayer. Well, unfortunately, when the green started flowing into Nintendo HQ, somewhere along the lines they forgot their original fanbase.
I’ve honestly considered lowering my standards these days due to the lack-luster performance of most games. World of Goo, Braid, LittleBigPlanet, and some others have been some truly great, original, and innovative additions to our collection. But every generation I see less and less of these gems. And even less actually become a franchise because nobody will give them chance.
What is wrong with gamers these days?
When Banjo Kazooie came out on Xbox Live Arcade, even with the enhanced graphics, people still said “Games looked that ugly back then?” Have they forgotten their history? Their roots? Has Microsoft’s blatant Nintendo-bashings [see: the very end of BK Nuts&Bolts trailer and Microsoft's statements regarding the Mii clones of NXE] turned everybody with a 360 or PS3 into a “HATE WII LOVE FPS; UH HOW I SHOOT? WHERE X BUTTON? WHAT IS STRATEGY YOU SPEAK OF??” stereotype that we vowed so hard not to become?
And has Nintendo’s lack of any real games since Brawl (Mario Kart was practically a remake) turned everybody with a Wii into a “I guess bad games can be good!” type of person who has spent so long begging under the table with no food that they have moved to the garbage can.
So either we are starving mutts or cavemen.
What do we do now? How can we change the course of a fledgling industry?
We as Nintendo fans know this is true. If you as a Nintendo fan or fanboy don’t, you are in denial. But the rest of the gamers have been too caught up in crap to know. When they finally start losing interest in FPS games they will start begging for something new, and it won’t be there. Then they will learn of what we know. Notice how all the hate Halo 3 got? And now Gears 2? It’s already starting. The people who have been hating on it are huge 360 fans! (Maybe not fanboys though). They hated on it because it was very repetitive, and after 15 years of the same games, it’s understandable why.
So as you can see it’s starting. The industry was briefly revived when Nintendo showed the Wii’s games for the first time. But now, they have abandoned the industry. And Microsoft is just a giant bag of hot air now, and Sony is just reconciling what they once had.
If only hardcore gamers weren’t so blinded by this blatant sight of shit in front of them! Abre los ojos
Last Friday, I was lurking around the NG Audio Portal and after listening to a few certain songs, of which I will not mention here, I decided I would write up this rant…even if getting my thoughts form my brain to the blog were a few days late, heh.
So I would first like to say that the Audio Portal is really just a miniaturized version of the entire music industry itself. I think this goes without needing any proof. Just look at it. It’s just a non-profit version of the industry where indie artists get to post their attempts at pleasing the masses. Unfortunately the masses are mostly comprised — not all, but mostly — of 13 year-old adolescents who enjoy hard rock, and any music that has heavy, pulsating, digitally constructed sine-waves.
There are quite a bit of things that tick me off when I go to the portal. The main thing…the only thing really, is just how some people spend five seconds on their “work”, find some high-quality synths or samples and then they’re finished and they upload it. All of the sudden they are getting “5/5! 10/10! ZOMG AWEOMEEEee!!!11″ on nearly every review. So now you’re thinking: “Isn’t that what YOU do, DmNt? You’re just a hypocrite for saying this.” I would like to tell you that was once me. But not any more. And because of that, I can tell you exactly how these people feel when they are doing this, and how they are doing this.
First of all, most people who buy music are ignorant. I won’t say stupid, because that generally refers to being a general idiot, whereas ignorant just refers to not being smart in a certain area. A typical consumer has no idea how an artist makes their music, and probably couldn’t figure out how to remake it themselves. They just buy what they enjoy. Thus, we get everybody’s favorite line: Ignorance is bliss. If they had known how some of these artists spend less than an hour working on their music, and that everything that made it good was just high-quality synths or samples taken from other songs, they wouldn’t be buying. And the artist isn’t going to say anything — he or she is making tons of cash off of the consumer’s lack of understanding. So naturally, this goes unnoticed. The consumers are happy, and the producers are happy. But not the lesser people like me, who do make music, and therefore have a firm knowledge in what is going on here.
The same can be said about other industries. Look at those rehashed Hollywood hits in the film industry, and the Halo games in the video game industry. If you don’t know it yet, you do now: I have a severe hatred of the Halo games. Severe.
On the Audio Portal, there is no money to be made. Everybody does it for no profit at all. So the question comes, why does this same thing happen on the portal? Simple — it’s arrogance. Humans are, of course, arrogant by nature. The win/lose ideology of arrogance is the subconscious way of getting to us to act superior, because in Natural Selection, the most superior live on and the weak die. So it’s only natural that it will happen all the time sometimes on the Portal and in the industry itself too.
Here’s how they make their “music:” You just downloaded the FL Studio demo. You have no idea how anything works of course, because you’ve never made music before. But you realized, that by taking already made compositions (ie, video game tunes), and adding your high-quality synths that you illegally downloaded over these midi-composed files, you have created what you think is a good “remastered” version of the song. Unfortunately, if mixed right, it IS good. But you don’t know how to mix, remember? So you upload it thinking hey “it can’t get THAT bad of a score, right?” and all of the sudden, you’re getting 4’s and 5’s out of 5. People love your 10 second work. Now, you aren’t going to tell everybody how you made it right? Of course not, because then you wouldn’t really have such a high score. In fact, people would hate it, right? Right.
And no, I didn’t “mysteriously forget” about what I had said about me earlier. “DmNt, you do this yourself, you’re a hypocrite for bashing these other people!” First off, I’m not bashing them. I don’t insult them, unless you count being called arrogant, but seeing as we are all arrogant, I don’t see that as an insult. Anyways. I WAS once that. I was the arrogant little music noob, ready to join the others and reap the benefits of no talent. But you see, as I was remastering video games midis, I learned that I enjoyed mixing a lot. And eventually, as I started making my own songs, I learned that I was actually getting to point of being arbitrarily defined as “good” at making music. (My source for that opinion is the general consensus of the Audio Portal, so I recommend you take me being ‘good’ with a grain of salt.) I soon began to listen to other songs and realize how they were able to make them, both professional artists and the indie artists of the portal. When this happened, I soon realized that there were tons of people out there who simply didn’t have much talent and were getting very high scores for using other peoples’ music, compositions, and covering their faulties with expensive synths.
Now, my goal is to avoid that. As you can see with my latest song, I will now focus on putting more effort into remastering these songs by also remixing them. And I have spent much more time making my own original songs, and not uploading as many remastered songs to the portal. I am no longer that arrogant little egotistical noob, but someone with a little more stature and talent. At least I think so. What do you think?
I know I said I would not link to any songs or show any examples, but I cannot help linking to This guy’s song. If you’ve never played Twilight Princess, then listen to it. Sounds awesome huh? But if I told you how he made it, you wouldn’t be so amazed. If you have played Twilight Princess, then there’s no need to listen to it. It’s virtually the same thing. Some “remastering” that was, huh? But look: I’m not gonna bash the guy. He probably doesn’t even realize he is doing exactly what is stated in this blog. And he’s probably a nice guy too. So it’s okay, I mean, it’s not like he’s going anywhere with that kind of music. And I’ll tell you why:
– Question: what makes this different from the original? Answer: the original song was better.
– That piano is horribly tuned. I know this is a sad song, but a murky piano is giving it no edge whatsoever. The piano is not fully equalized, it leans too far on the lowpass and lo-mid ranges. The lack of treble is going to give it a feeling of bass, and what it needs is rhythm. It’s a steady melody, and it should sound like it.
– Horrible compression. In digital music, the general rule of thumb is that if it’s over -3db, it’s in the “no safe zone” and you’ll start hearing sound artifacts. This is hard to describe, but the loudest possible an mp3 can get is 0 decibels. That’s mute. No sound at all. That’s because your speakers amplify it, not the mp3 itself. If you want to test this for yourself, put the song up way loud and listen. That piano just completely destroys your speakers on some of those parts, huh? Welcome to bad compression.
– But the strings and brass part make up for it right? Congratulations, you’ve discovered layered sampling. Layered sampling — I like to call it over-sampling — is when you take one melody and add more than 1 instrument for it. In this case, strings and a brass horn. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? Too bad it’s just some high quality Direct Wave samples. This is proven by how constant it sounds and its complete lack of human error and reverb (echoing off walls). He couldn’t even make them sound real. Adding a properly tuned flanger would’ve softened them up a little too.
Overall, what do you have there? Nothing. I’m sorry, but this is not even a remastered song. And if you are reading this author of that song, well, please consider what I have been saying and take it with serious consideration. I already told you I am at the same error, and I am trying to fix my errors, are you?
So there you go. You don’t need talent any more, just some expensive samples and synths. Now all of the sudden, people are paying millions for crap and true talent goes unnoticed. True talent, however, is out there, and I’ll show you:
That song is the brain child of the musical genius Ronald Jenkees. An incredible artist, is he not?
