Do gamers fear Responsibility? The real problem behind Detroit: Become Human

On May 25, 2018, Sony Interactive Entertainment will release Detroit: Become Human for the PlayStation 4, a Sci-Fi adventure that has been drawing attention from the media long before its actual debut on the market. Latest brainchild of David Cage, one of the most divisive authors in the game development scene, Detroit places it's narrative foundations in real world issues such as segregation and discrimination. Everything is seen through the eyes of three different synthetic characters inhabiting the same society as humans, and serving as extremely advanced, yet obedient assistance tools. As it often happens in science fiction, some of these androids harbour an independent conscience at the start of the story, or end up developing one over its course, which puts their decision making into a different perspective.

The natural expectation coming out of these premises is that of a social and ethic clash that, as far as the genre goes, has nothing really earth-shattering about it. Detroit, though, embraces the challenge of depicting this clash at different scales: the wide context of society, and the isolated domestic spaces where interactions between humans and robots becomes more granular and nuanced. One of these latter instances marked the exact moment where Quantic Dream's adventure really started to make waves: on October 30, 2017, at the Paris Game Week, the team showed a gameplay trailer featuring Kara (one of the three aforementioned androids, and star of a memorable PS3 tech demo back in 2012), the little Alice and her abusive father Todd. Let's take a look at the scene known as Stormy Night, with a due mild spoiler warning from here on:

As you can see, the player's lack of action or proficiency can cause the death of Alice, which is something that didn't sit right with a portion of the media and the audience. During the following months, Quantic Dream received a slate of accusations such as gamifying domestic abuse, taking things too far in the name of spectacle, or even just dare tackling the issue at all. Part of the concern came from David Cage's debated reputation as a storyteller, something he implicitly acknowledged by seeking the help of professional screenwriters for Detroit, which has the vastest script ever handled by the studio. Some outlets (Le Monde, Mediapart) even tried to root the alleged lack of sensibility in bad corporate culture and toxic work environment reports, ending up sued by the developer as recently revealed by Kotaku's Jason Schreier.

Storytelling doesn't just exists
to expose challenges to its audience,
but to pose them challenges too.

Is Death Stranding's surreality just a smokescreen?

It's been two or three days since famed japanese game designer Hideo Kojima, from the PSX 2017 stage, treated the world with a new in-engine trailer for Death Stranding. As it's usual for Kojima's creations, Death Stranding has been at the core of many discussions about a fairly basic point: what is this game all about? Aside from a generic allocation in the third person open world action genre, people only have a handful of elements to make sense of the plot, the characters, the narrative universe, or even how it is going to be played.

Kojima Productions and Sony, which is supporting the game's development from several angles (base technology, development and marketing budget), have been working towards an advertising style based on drip-feeding the audience with information, but keeping the whole thing shrouded in mystery and surreality. Chances are you've seen something about Death Stranding already, but here's the third, puzzling outing from the game:

Now, judging from what can be read on forums, message boards and commenting platforms all around the Web, people kinda expected this new outlook to shine a little more light on the product - you know, actual details about its nature as a commercial thing. Sony itself seems aware of this, as lead PS4 architect Mark Cerny felt the urge to make clear how "it all makes sense 4 to 5 hours into the game", but it is safe to say that not everybody is comfortable with this marketing tactics. Not all players are into decoding clues or having to research their way into something that's supposed to entertain them in exchange for money; if there's a problem, though, it's two-way.

On one hand, we have a marketing approach that on the surface, does the exact opposite of what anyone would do in the intent of selling a product, especially a videogame. In theory, trailers and such should instruct the player about the game's setting, establish the hero, show his line of action and maybe hint at his motives a little bit. Once the interest of the viewer is picked, it is possible to expand the scope of the advertising narrative by gradually disclosing further details. We might call it an inductive process that works well in most cases, and for the vast majority of the potential customers. In the case of Death Stranding, the advertising narrative started way before it was first shown to the world.

Death Stranding is one of
those rare cases where
the history of the product
entwines tightly with its
author's real life experiences 

It's one of those rare cases in game development where the history of the product entwines tightly and publicly with its author's real life experiences: after the sad goodbye to Konami, Hideo Kojima had to reconnect with the world, the audience and to some extent, the industry. He became strongly involved in social networks, so that anyone could have insights on his personality, his lifestyle and gaming related ambitions . He went on a personal, yet very public "journey to the West" in search of the technology that would provide the backbone of his new project, something that involved strands - ties, relationships, cataclismic endings and new beginnings. It's hard not to see the real life themes that goes into the genesis of Death Stranding and the way it is presented.

Rebuilding a legacy: the Shenmue remasters

On January 5, 2017, registrations for the ShenmueHD.com and ShenmueRemasters.com domains by SEGA Europe have been found and made public by outlets TSSZ News and ShenmueDojo. Both domains, registered in September 2016, points to blank pages as of now, but SEGA expressed interest in remastering the first two Shenmue titles back in May 2016. So the stars may be aligning slowly but surely for the company's ill fated epic: the announcement of Shenmue 3 by Ys Net at Sony's momentous E3 2015 conference is mostly responsible for putting all the gears in motion, rekindling the hopes of a sizeable hardcore fanbase and tickling the interest of a much younger audience at the same time - people who have never played a Shenmue game before.

The followings are opinions and speculations based on the existence of two official web domains pointing out to remastered versions of the original Shenmue 1 and 2. Explicit confirmation from SEGA is yet to come.

Since the end of Shenmue 3's record setting Kickstarter campaign, updates from legendary game designer Yu Suzuki and his team has been pretty regular, and last December they reassured everyone about a smooth and steady development, prompting SEGA's aforementioned domain registrations. That's welcome news for sure, but the enthusiasm one can expect from people such as me (or the odd neighbour that kept playing his Dreamcast in 2001 while the PS2 was taking the world's markets by storm) can be put aside for one moment to ask why is SEGA caring about Shenmue at all, after relegating it to a limbo for about 15 years.

The Shenmue remasters sounds
more like chasing an opportunity rather
than a renewed act of faith towards
the series' groundbreaking legacy

For those who were interested in videogames back when SEGA had to quit the hardware business, it's easy to picture the company's struggle with Shenmue: on one hand, they had two of the most beautiful, complex and ambitious titles to ever grace an home console, while on the other, they represented a 70 million $ gamble that had a significant impact in their subsequent financial dramas.
What happened to SEGA in 2001 was a painful sign of where the gaming industry as a whole was heading, a place where the dream of a true open world with detailed visuals, highly granular interactions, a strong reliance on systemic features and artistic merit was just too big for the budgets of the time. From then on, in order to ensure (a) that the software quality reflected the capabilities of newer hardwares and in turn (b) financial sustainability, game making became a strictly collaborative effort.

Only recently SEGA has returned to an healty status thanks to smart investments on the PC market, but this alone doesn't justify a new investment on the Shenmue series: the kind of wound you've been reading about until now is extremely hard to recover from, and would rightfully make any businessman wary of the past and overly cautious about his future choices. There would be no need to reintroduce Shenmue to a new generation of gamers without future perspectives, which in this case comes from Ys Net, not even SEGA itself. That's why the Shenmue remasters sounds more like chasing an opportunity to me, rather than a renewed act of faith towards a series that tackled narrative open world design in a way most developers of today still strive for... or rather shy away from because, you know, games are just business.

There's a good part to Shenmue's legacy, SEGA. With so much water under the bridge, you really should know better.

Understanding PS4 Pro, an infographic

Aside from the questions it poses about the whole future of consoles marketing strategy, a quick stroll throught the Web reveals how controversial is the reasoning behind the PS4 Pro existence, its purpose and functions still not exactly clear for some customers. I made this quick infographic to clarify what the machine does when used with different TV sets, with a FAQ section addressing some of the most common doubts/complaints about the platform   

#RAPIDFIRE - 1: How do you do stop-gap consoles?

Hello everyone! Today, I'm going to start a little column on Videogames Beyonder titled #RAPIDFIRE: it is based on concise, straight to the point opinions that makes for very fast reads, but with more breathing space than Twitter's strict 140 bar less characters rule. Hopefully it'll enable more frequent updates to the blog too :) Text blocks on #RAPIDFIRE will be formatted differently from regular articles in order to make them identifiable at first sight; the format may change over time to further improve readability. Let's start with a topic that went on fire in the very last days:

EDIT 06/20: 40 chars per line, 15 lines/600 chars spaces included at best. Seems like an acceptable format.

The clash of identities at E3 2016

While the Internet is full of journalists, analysts and commentators predicating the progressive loss of relevance of gaming trade shows, common people still floods these events year after year, eager to dive into the restless stream of content that the industry churns out, both in the hardware and software departments. 3 years into a new console generation, fairs like E3 serves more as an indicator of what the market balances are, what the developers are able to do with machines they've properly gotten to grasp with, and how the manifacturers' commercial offering shapes up their identity. I'd like to elaborate on the latter point, and more specifically on what are the overarching reasons why people are more attracted to Sony or Microsoft at this point in time.

Redmond's giant played out its E3 2016 conference on an alternation of tones that gave it an enjoyable rhythm: it started with a Battlefield 1 demo focused on its expansive 64 players online battles, followed by a more light-hearted overview of Dead Rising 4's over the top undead carnage. The hot trail of action went on with a colossal boss fight demo of Final Fantasy XIV, a live multiplayer session for the paint-trade friendly Forza Horizon 3, and a blood drowned run through a campaign mission in Gears of War 4. Action seems to be the underlining theme at Xbox, along with a pronounced taste for big scales and online interactions that projects a very dynamic, "in your face" image to consumers. Sure, there's more subtlety to be found among the platform's independent offering, but it's not something that really transpires from the company's communication, and experiences like the aforementioned ones tends to get more time under the spotlights. As the wording of Project Scorpio's annoucement demonstrates ("The most powerful console ever", "Uncompromised 4K gaming"), the company adresses a crowd which is more sensible to impact messaging.  

Things gets pretty different on Sony's court. The japanese company has always strived to valorize more nuanced, alternative contents on its platforms, resorting to impressive presentation styles: at this year's E3, they brought a full orchestra and had it score the biggest demos live, on the fly. The trick added a further emotional layer to Kratos' return as a father in God of War, and more atmosphere to the gritty apocalyptic open world of Days Gone. Speaking of worlds, one thing that this generation of PlayStation titles is doing on a regular basis is opening up to exploration and experiencial narrative: whether it's full-on open worlds like Horizon: Zero Dawn's or wide sandboxes à la Uncharted 4 and God of War, space seems to play a key role on the visual expression of games this side of the barricade. The Last Guardian will have players constantly checking out their surroundings for ways to leverage the interaction between the hero and his animal companion, and the same goes for the criminally overlooked Gravity Rush 2 with its physics altering mechanics. Along with a strong, recurring attention to heroes' design and characterisation (Detroit: Become Human), these elements seems to resonate greatly with Sony's audience.

There's both a necessity and a struggle to mix things up while mantaining a certain degree of uniqueness - in other words, a reason for people to choose one product over the other

It is interesting to point out these differences in a time where the gaming offering, on both sides of the pond, is getting somehow more homogeneous in its pursuit of diversity. After all, there's an infinite landscape of tastes to cater to, and manifacturers are modulating their software lineups accordingly: Microsoft is more inclined to put light-hearted things like Sunset Overdrive and ReCore on the forefront, while Sony is cutting down on the racing and shooting departments to reinforce its focus on exclusive, atmospheric AAA titles. There's both a necessity and a struggle to mix things up while mantaining a certain degree of uniqueness (in other words, a reason for people to choose one product over the other). This leads to an evolving exchange in communication styles where Microsoft's "call to power" about Scorpio sounds like a more extreme take on what Sony did with the PS4.

As discussed in a previous article, the way new hardware is going to be introduced in the coming months will change the market's configuration in ways that we've never seen before, but let's not underestimate how the shape of both manifacturers' identities is going to evolve as a result.

Time to ditch the console generations paradigm?

There's a very interesting blog post over at Gamasutra (source) reflecting on how the advent of PS4K is going to change the way console cycles are handled from its release on. Author David Galindo speculates on how we might be in for a new, incremental update model that basically erases the concept of "new generation console" entirely, incorporating some tenets of the PC world: manifacturers have all shifted to x64 architectures, meaning that running the same games over multiple hardware iterations becomes much easier than it was before. However, are we really done with cycles and generations?

The so called seventh generation, marked by hugely popular consoles as the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, has lasted much longer than the previous six, a situation that had both negative and positive implications: people mantains that improvements on graphical fidelity and complexity of game mechanics have been held back, but at the same time we've seen Sony and Microsoft's online platforms grow bigger and stronger, hosting services and initiatives that shaped them into the viable, attractive environments of today. A completely new gaming market blossomed during the seventh generation by way of indie games, often put under the same spotlight as their AAA counterparts.

As technological advancements slow down their pace, consoles needs to stay around longer and provide the developers with opportunities to make their super expensive games last longer too

Where hardware stood still, the market responded with new opportunities. As technological advancements slow down their pace, consoles needs to stay around longer and provide the developers with opportunities to make their super expensive games last longer too: the era of "enhanced modes" is upon us, driven by (you name it) stop gap incremental updates to existing machines without having to re-release the software entirely. Word on the Web is that programmers are not very happy with what's happening in the console world right now, but their tune may change as soon as they start seeing more revenues coming from their games over time.

What about consumers, then? What will their perception of this new marketing model for consoles be? This is a trickier question, as the masses' idea of what they consider "new" or "progressive" is extremely brand driven: they are not likely to change their equipment until something that is branded as new and progressive comes across. This is what leads me to think that the concept of "generation" is not really going to go away, even with its meaning reduced to a simple marketing hook. But from now on, people will have to think very well through when buying a new console, as waiting for the cheaper model to show up is probably not going to happen anymore.

If you're looking for culprits (and I'm entering pure speculation territory here), VR is probably your best option as the new technology's sudden and unexpected uptake is what prompted Sony to come up with the PS4K idea in the first place, not the will to disrupt the current market setting. The japanese company had no reason to even think about a new console, having an almost 100% sales' lead over its main competitor, but they surely need a stronger base platform supporting their position as the cheapest VR solution provider around - bar Google Cardboard. For once, creating a "just in case" prototype like Project Morpheus turned out to be a very good stroke for them!

Better resolutions and framerates for games may have been the only cascade effects of PS4K, if the vision of a new marketing scenario didn't come along with it.

Paris Games Week 2015: What is GT Sport exactly? (Hint: not GT7)

Last night, in the context of the Paris Games Week, Sony made sure to drop a series of announcements to set the stage for PS4's 2016, and build up the hype: we finally had a pretty sharp release window for fans favourite No Man's Sky, a gorgeous announcement trailer for Quantic Dream's next epic Detroit, an unexpectedly solid lineup for PlayStation VR and much more. But I don't think many people expected Kazunori Yamauchi to step onstage with Jim Ryan, and reveal the next installment in the legendary Gran Turismo series: it is called GT Sport, and it comes with official backing from the FIA as a bonafide, officially recognized motorsport.

Remember that tagline, because it says a lot more about the game than Polyphony Digital and Sony actually revealed on stage: carefully avoiding any reference to Gran Turismo 7, the presentation focused on (1) the aforementioned endorsement, (2) a prominently competitive structure and (3) the presence of two online game modes that ties with real life rewards from FIA itself to the best players.

It was a very different introduction than any other Gran Turismo title so far: for the first time in the franchise history, no relevance was given to the number of vehicles, tracks and modes included in the game. The typical encyclopaedic approach of the series to the world of racing was nowhere to be found, strongly suggesting that we better not confuse GT Sport with a mainline GT entry: the scope, the objectives and in turn the contents seems much more specific.

So what does it means for fans of the franchise eagerly awaiting for a full fledged seventh installment? Well, that is a tricky question to answer, as the Gran Turismo crowd is particularly loyal to the brand and mostly willing to pick up anything that comes out of Polyphony Digital: at the same time, I wonder what their attitude is towards a product that feels especially gauged at the most competitive fans. Will the chance to root for particular manifacturers and nations be enough for the average players?  

One of the few certainties about GT Sport lies in it sharing the strict core values of the Gran Turismo experience, namely the aestethic and dynamic qualities. Vast improvements will be made to those elements thanks to the power of the PS4, Yamauchi said, included the unexpected support for PlayStation VR. However, we've got nothing on how the developer plans to create value for the less-than-Schumachers among us.

EDIT: Just in time for Jim Ryan confirming the obvious, GT Sport is neither GT7, nor its Prologue.