If casual gamers on the DS are anything to go by (as I know a few of them but they don't have a Wii (yet)), they play stuff like Brain Training, New Super Mario Bros, even some Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk. And they listen to Dr Kawashima and return regularlyOriginally Posted by DeputyMoniker
Apart from that, they play any crap they like, even if it makes me tear my hair out...
Most systems are loaded with horrible games. Atleast with the Wii we get a warning by looking at the price.
A.) Does that girl on the cover of that game look like a 4 or 5 year old? (I didn't photoshop her in there, she was a part of the retail box art.)
B.) Young children generally "enjoy" whatever they're "exposed to", especially if it comes loudly, colorfully, and with repetition. Psychologically speaking, during the developmental stages, if you only expose them (girls AND boys) to stereotypical matriarchal tasks, they'll mimic it/make games of it on their own without a video game giving them a scoring system/rewarding them for it. This only perpetuates the problem. And the choice by Ubisoft and others to exploit these things by only placing young teen girls on the box art and/or in the game as playable characters in a market that already has severe problems with skewing the entire marketing heavily to one sex (teenage boys), I think, can be called "sexist".
In our modern society, while there are certainly more freedoms for young boys and gilrs to make choices regarding what they want to play with than there were, say 50 years ago (the age old dichotomy of girls play with dolls vs. boys play with toy guns comes to mind) it's instances like this that remind me that there are still people in very influential positions pulling the strings and "marketing" to a gender-specific audience in a sexist fashion.
Is this the end of the world? No, not really...if this sort of thing doesn't happen in the video game world, it still happens all over the world of "children's entertainment" (largely in the form of toys being highly gender-specific) ... I just don't like to see it spill over into the game world, where we have enough things to worry about.
Interestingly enough, take a look at a DS game like Cooking Mama. (Which originates in it's development in Japan - a country that has a whole different set of "problems" with sexism.) While it could have in it's translation/porting easily been a game that skewed to being marketed towards young girls, it wound up nicely gender neutral in it's marketing, and in turn wound up being a much bigger success than any of those titles will critically, and I assume financially. (Nice job Majesco! You did NJ proud.)
"And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"
I have to agree with Rob2600. A lot of people I know who are interested in the Wii for small children so see some budget crap with a polar bear on the cover and want the game. To you and I this game is probably as enjoyable as watching my small intestine work its magic, but to a 4-8 yr old it might be fun.
On the "cheap" side I have really enjoyed Mercury Meltdown Revolution ($15) and Red Steel ($8).
The Nintendo seal of Quality had nothing to do with the quality of the game, it just ensured that the chosen game works with the hardware. How many quality games are there on NES, out of a library of over 2000?
I agree...but there are people in even more influential positions than marketing executives: parents. Parents are the ones with all of the money. They can chose to not buy sexist products and instead, teach their children about gender-equality.
As long as parents continue to support sexist products, companies will continue to make them.
Last edited by Rob2600; 01-15-2008 at 02:39 PM.
True indeed.
"And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"
So does success bring crap games or do crap games bring success? I'm hearing both viewpoints here.
The name's Link
And I'm braver than brave
I got a wooden sword from and old man in a cave
Tough to really quantify either theory.
But there definitely seems to be a crap titles / successful console correlation.
"And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"
Although, it is interesting to note that Nintendo removed "of quality" from the seal starting near the end of the GC's run!
It has nothing to do with the shovelware; it has everything to do with the sales.
The DS is still selling games like mad. The attach rate on the Wii is abysmal. So much so that it looks like 3rd parties are starting to consider stopping support for Wii because there is no money to be made (source: latest Game Informer).
But no, I don't think the Wii has peaked yet. After No More Heroes and Smash Brothers, I can't see any games on the immediately horizon I'm very interested in, but good stuff is still going to come. I'll be looking into Crystal Chronicles of course, Project HAMMER looks pretty good, and Day of Disaster could be awesome.
I suspect the Wii will go exactly like the GameCube. Great quirky games every so often, a big time Nintendo release about twice or three times a year, and an occassional great release out of left field.
Yep. If it's for the Wii, and has a price, it sucks.
Project Hammer was axed a long time ago.
Any info on this?
Even looking past the outright shovel-ware the Wii has more than its fair share of crap.
A friend came over with a Wii tonight, and we played a bit. The ports from other systems were absolutely dire (Fifa 08, TNMT and Spiderman 3 in particular were hilariously bad) , some stuff reeked of a quick buck (Mario Party 8, which seemed little different from the previous 7 and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, which was just plain poor, really stood out), whilst other games simply weren't terribly interesting (Red Steel, we are looking at you.)
I realise that we were hardly playing the best the Wii has to offer, but still, these should at least be middle of the road games. Fifa 08 in particular was almost as bad as the notorious N64 version.
Has it reached a critical mass of shovel-ware though? Absolutely not. Presumably, this cheaply made crap sells. The thought of another stock Nintendo title on the horizon (Mario, Zelda, Wario, Metriod.. the usual) in one form or another seems to be keeping folks interested, and I can see 'casual' gamers picking up the less than stellar stuff simply because they know no better.
Last edited by Daltone; 01-15-2008 at 07:27 PM.
sweet! It'll probably stay in my sig until you do. Considering how often I'm here, probably well after also.
I think everyone has a valid point here. Nintendo Seal (nae, of quality) doesn't mean anything but that Tendy is bankrolling the developer/publisher.
and Wii shouldn't be singled out, except that right off the bat the ratio of poop to goodness was/is 10:1. It usually takes an entire console life to acquire that much junk.
"Nintendo is attracting casual gamers" my a$$. Tendy is going to scare away all those money spending "casual gamers" if they can't find anything worth playing. Then the industry is going to take a dump again.
maybe that is a good thing though
whats the point of publishing killer titles if nintendo cant catch up with hardware demand? wii sports is still the killer app and it will stay that way for at least another six months to a year. the shovelware is doing its job of holding shelf space for nintendo quite well.
Really? that sux.
I was looking forward to a new "adult centric" franchise that didn't involve Linkirbamusario or any other retro revivals. Don't get me wrong. I love the franchises, but I think they have milked it quite enough with chargers strikers kart SSB paper party etc etc etc ad nauseum.
Love the core games more than any others on any other platform, but I can't imagine buying another iteration of the spinoffs, e.g. Mario Party 9.
I know ppl moan and groan on how often the core games are released (I do too), but honestly, I couldn't accept less than what it took them the 5 years to develop.
I see absolutely zero reason to purchase a Wii. After a dalliance with these consoles and their paper-thin games, I'm thinking about switching back to PC-only. Truly deep stories - ones that not only have some supposedly "epic feel" (like all the console "rpgs" claim to have), but also touch on the core issues of humanity. Things like Deus Ex (the first one) are what I'm talking about.
They don't make 'em like they used to.
You are startled by a grim snarl. Before you, you see 1 Red dragon. Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?
Thank Christ
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