Call of Duty: [Insert movie tribute here]

Like roughly 15 million other people this year, I got a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops. As I was hopping for the game is great. It is certainly the best Treyarch made Call of Duty game its developers deserve kudos for their efforts. Recently there has been a lot in the news about Activision, EA, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, mostly around Activision filing a large lawsuit against the former heads of IW and adding EA itself to the lawsuit earlier this month. But I'm not going to touch that.

Spoilers Ahead

Instead I'd rather point out a few small details I noticed from the single player campaign in Black Ops. But first let us just acknowledge that many games take inspiration from film. After all, film (and television) are much older entertainment mediums and I have yet to meet a game designer, programmer, artist or producer type who doesn't watch TV or go to the movies. Back in my design days I thought a lot about modern WWII media, mainly Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, and wondered what locations and settings from those works I might somehow include ina level I was designing that hadn't already been done in a previous WWII game. The beach scene in SPR, along with the entire film, was a huge inspiration in Medal of Honor: Frontline. The same movie's climactic battle in "Ramelle" was inspiration for several Day of Defeat levels including the Merderet map, named for the Merderet river that the bridge in the Ramelle scene crosses.

But the key point here is that for gaming moments to resonate with moments from film or television, the details need to be fairly close. Recently in a discussion with a marketing person at a games publisher, I learning about his idea for where their game concept should go, and how it would really resonate with a recent popular movie.

"So in what ways would it resonate?" I asked. The answer I got back was, "Well they both have strong military themes." And that was it. That's like saying The Sims resonates with the TV show Friends because they both feature male and female characters. When I pushed him to be more specific, he hadn't thought it through. No kidding. So for him all I could offer was some remedial advice, and I used Call of Duty: Black Ops as an example.

Call of Duty: Fight Club

FYI, this is a spoiler if you haven't played the Black Ops singleplayer campaign all the way through. Don't say I didn't warn you. Anyway, in the game you play as Mason (voiced by Sam Worthington...say what you will about his American accent in the game...)

where most of the game is played in his flashbacks during his intense interrogation. In

his flashbacks he speaks of Reznov, a Russian he met in...Russia (it's a long story) but the point is that Reznov appears throughout the game. Near the game's climax in one such flashback Mason and Reznov are infiltrating some secret base to find a holder Nazi from WWII plotting some awful scheme (in now the 1960s) involving bio-chemical warfare and Reznov is about to kill the Nazi, even though the Americans need him alive. Well, let's just say that it gets revealed that Mason had actually been brainwashed long before to dream up this Reznov guy in his head. Reznov didn't exis

t even though Mason totally thought

he did, and during the game the player had no real reason to believe he did not exist until that moment. When it was revealed in the game, my first thought was that it was pretty much a rip-off of the movie Fight Club. I wasn't too bothered by this obvious not to one of my favorite movies, but it didn't really feel that fresh even though I thought it was an interesting move for a video game story to have a twist of this level. As I said, the idea itself isn't that original and how it landed in Black Ops didn't have the same punch as in Fight Club, probably because it is a video game and it's not as easy to get emotionally invested in the characters. Overall, I commend Treyarch for it.

Call of Duty: The Abyss

Remember, there are spoilers so if you one of the 17 people on earth who didn't buy Black Ops, I am about to spoil a small part of the game.

Near the end of the single player campaign you and yo' crew get in fancy wet suits and dive under water to some secret underwater base that, get this, is under water. The picture to the right shows a screencap from the trailer of the underwater base. It even has a moonpool inside where you enter that is right out of the James Cameron underwat

er film The Abyss. I can't find a good image of the set from the movie, but it's in there. Instead please enjoy this picture of a pretty good LEGO mock up I found. When in doubt, express your idea in LEGO to get people to say "wow that is cool."

Borderlands now on my top 10 all time games list

Last October when Gearbox's Borderlands game came out I of coursed added it to my Q4 list games to play. I know some people in the studio (even worked with them indirectly in years past) and have had a lot of respect for Randy's operation ever since Half-Life: Opposing Force, which today I think is the best expansion pack ever. I really liked Borderlands but I had so many games on my list to play over the holidays it fell off my radar after I got to about level 17 or 18. The single player campaign is definitely much longer than most FPS, and since this was a true FPS/RPG hybrid in an MMO style looting/XP points setting, there was all most too much gameplay.

So for almost a year I kept telling myself to go back and finish it. When the GOTY edition came out, I grabbed it since it at all 4 DLC packs included.

Today I just finished the game over lunch. While I never once played it in the much lauded coop mode (online or splitscreen) it has pretty much earned a spot in my top 10 games of all time. This is up there with Half-Life, Quake, Star Wars Tie Fighter, Mercenaries (the first one on Xbox/PS2), World of Warcraft, the first Call of Duty and I'm not sure what else. I'm pretty biased for shooter games....and my full top 10 list is not exactly clear to me.

Still, Borderlands' pseudo-cell shaded art style is just so refreshing, and combined with the huge number of weapons, excellent sound design, combat ballistics...it really is something unique. And let's not forget the humorous slant on all the writing. The story isn't the deepest thing in the world and I actually like it that way. The experience just felt so right. Anyone into shooters at all must play this game.

UPDATE:

As for the humorous slant, lots of video games try to work in comedic elements. The old LucasArts adventure games like Full Throttle and Escape From Monkey Island were masters of it. The new LEGO games, though kid focused, have humorous bits in them all over. Mercenaries was another game that I thought got the humor just right. Borderlands gets the humor, but it's not just in comedic lines or jokes. Here's what I mean: In the game I found the

claptraps a bit off at first, as I felt they were Gearbox's attempt at forcing me to laugh. But then something funny happened

after a few levels into the game. I actually laughed at a claptrap. I think it was the first time in Fyrestone I noticed the claptrap dancing. By then I was into the gameplay and art design enough such that everything about the game was growing on me. So what clicked?

What clicked was that even though neither the story nor the characters were particularly deep, the characters had attitude. Lots of attitude. This includes the claptrap. They were exceptionally voiced (for a video game anyway) and their writing was totally ace. For example, a downed claptrap that could offer you a side quest to fetch it a repair kit for a reward would whimper and say things like "I'm leaking oil" in a way that was simultaneously pathetic and endearing. I found my self wanting a plush claptrap toy for my daughter like the way my friend at EA has a plush weighted companion cube from Portal.

I have more to say about Borderlands, but Mikey at Gearbox just outed me for not ever having tried co-op, so now I have to try that. More to come on this...

Sep 2010 NPD wrapup

Once again I've been busy, so my monthly wrapup of NPD is late again. And like last month NPD is no longer releasing unit sales of the top 10 games, instead only the rank of the top 10 but now cross platform. Here is what NPD publicly released about Sep 2010:

1) Total industry (hardware, video games software, accessories and PC software) came in at $1.22 Billion, an 8% decline over Sep 2009. Here's how that broke down vs. Sep 2009:
2) Hardware dropped 19% to $383 million
3) Software dropped 6% to $614 million
4) Accessories grew 13% to $180 million thanks to the launch of the PlayStation Move

A few thoughts...

First, for months I have been talking about the top 10 concentration, i.e., the % of monthly sales the top 10 games represents...each month. In short, this percentage been increasing, meaning the top games are taking up a larger share of an overall contracting retail software business. Said another way, the top games are getting a larger share of a smaller retail pie. Because NPD is no longer reporting the top 10 unit sales, we can't discuss that here anymore. But given that some publishers like to boast what their initial sales are for big titles, we can get good

directional indicators of the monthly concentration ratio that we can discuss. For for Sep 2010, Halo Reach helped up the top 10 concentration ratio...big time. We know from Microsoft that Halo Reach sold over $200 million worldwide at retail in the first week of release. That implies over 3 million worldwide week one units. From past analysis of the Halo franchise, sales skew heavily to the US and UK where the 360 is strongest and shooters do very well compared to other countries with good per capita console penetration rates. Also, Halo Reach released on Sep 14, 2010, so if it did over $300 million in the first week, it for sure did more through the rest of the month. However, Halo is one of those games that core franchise fans usually run out and buy in the first week, so I'm willing to bet worldwide sales the rest of Sep were maybe another $100 million. Continuing my gorilla math, let's peg worldwide Sep Halo Reach sales around $400 million, with roughly have coming from the US. I'm willing to bet it's more like 55%. In any event, that puts US sales around $200 to $225 million for Sep. Let's call it $225M. Recall NPD reported video game software was $614M for the month. That means over 1/3 of industry sales in Sep were from Halo Reach.

Roughly 1/3 of US video game software retail sales in Sep 2010 were from Halo Reach.

Wow...Halo Reach is the September gorilla.

As for the rest of the year, you might think Call of Duty Black Ops will be the next big gorilla and take 50% of all Nov 2010 sales. It might, but there are a lot of good games coming up this holiday and since 50% of retail sales occur in Q4 typically, it's possible we might see a nice holiday season since consumer are hungry for good content this far into a console cycle without any new hardware.

Before you scream "Kinect" and "Move" at me, those aren't new platforms. They are sub-platforms akin to the Wii Fit. While Wii Fit was a blockbuster product for Nintendo, 3rd party publishers hardly saw any return from it. It did not become a new standard for 3rd party software in sports, fitness and...um...weightlifting (?) categories as some had predicted it would. Instead it became a big cash machine for Nintendo and another piranha in the tank for 3rd party to compete against. I view the Move and Kinect in this light, particularly the Kinect.

The issue with the Kinect is that it has no real killer app, nor is it easy to find good uses for it in core traditional games. It will be good for casual Wii type content and fitness / dance. Beyond that it is going to struggle. At least the Move can actually be adapted for shooters, action and even sports games, similarly to how Wii controls have been adapted. But the Kinect is going to struggle to be relevant to shooter gamers who like holding controllers. For example, can the Kinect distinguish between a 30 and 45 yard pass in a football game? If all you needed to do was make a throwing motion, would the Kinect auto detect where you want to throw to? If you were to play a football game on Kinect, wouldn't you want to get that level of simulation in the throwing game? Could you ever play a real game of Madden with Kinect?

What this means to me is that Kinect is an energizing new subplatform to the Xbox 360 that will generate a lot of initial excitement due to Microsoft's massive $500 trillion launch budget. (It's trillions right?...oh...divide by 1 million.) But beyond holiday 2010, the real challenge for Microsoft is to keep consumers buying software and encouraging 3rd party to develop games people actually want to play that make sense with the non-controller controller.

In the long run, Sony has a more favorable subplatform to develop traditional content for with the Move, but it still has a challenge to convince consumers that motion gaming on its new subplatform worth it when they've already done a lot of that business on the Wii. Is Wii type content in HD worth it? Certainly Sony's Kevin Butler adds are trying to position it as "it only does everything" along with their overarching campaign for the PS3. I have to give both Microsoft and Sony credit for their marketing efforts, as it seems both subplatforms will sell very well this holiday.

Finally, I'm now more optimistic about Nintendo that I have been in previous months. Without looking into 2011 and the 3DS, here's why I feel that way:

1) Mario 25th anniversary bundle at $199 that includes Wii Motion Plus, Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bro Wii. This is a very compelling for consumers who have not yet bought a Wii who are thinking about it. The effective marginal cost the packaging on New Super Mario Bro Wii.

2) Donkey Kong Country Returns comes out in late November (US/EU...JP release is Dec or Jan). Personally I am more excited about this than Kirby's Epic Yarn simply because somehow I played a few of these DK games on my old GBA SP while I never once played a Kirby game. For the core Nintendo fan, DKCR is another great 1st party reason to play some Wii.

3) Next is Goldeneye 007 "reimagination" on Wii. I have the game. The graphics are crap compared to any PS3 or 360 game. The enemy AI is crap. The Wii-mote controls are fine I suppose, but still not as good as a standard PS3 or 360 game. But it has this retro appeal even though I never once played the original N64 Goldeneye game. I just wasn't into console games in the 90's. (Yes really.) But I get the appeal of the product. There are plenty of existing Wii gamers who also play shooters and other core games on their 360s/PS3s that should have room for some retro gaming in their budgets. Of course, Activision's big marketing efforts will help generate the necessary nostalgia for it. It's not going to outsell the best Wii 1st party games, but it should crush just about all other Wii 3rd party stuff, except perhaps #4 below.

4) Just Dance 2. Dance is hot. It's the new casual fad after fitness and of course guitar before that. The first Just Dance was a big seller with a big marketing campaign. Just Dance 2 could be bigger if Ubisoft markets it right.

So what am I getting at? First of all, for months I've been talking about the increasing monthly concentration ratio of the top 10 titles per month, underlined by Halo Reach in Sep 2010. This means the top titles are taking a bigger chunk of retail dollars and the smaller titles are getting squeezed out. In other words, consumers are going after the biggest / best / most well marketed / biggest brands they already now / etc. And they're flocking to those titles faster. Maybe consumers now have better information at their fingertips so they are more aware of what they'll like and what they won't. Or maybe the big dawgs simply know how to market better. What's clear is that you can still make money in the retail games business, but crapware simply won't cut it anymore. Yeah, we've known that for years, but do we need any more proof than now?