Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Stop making crap, you stupid game developer

I know I said that I’d post pictures of the “new love in my life”, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I’ll try and take some pictures tonight.

So today, I’m surfing online and I discover one video game that’s coming out that just made me say, “Oh man, who thought this was a good idea?”. The game is called…(wait for it)… Bikini Samurai Squad. I shit you not. Someone thought that this was a good idea. Women in bikinis, wielding swords, fighting “the forces of evil”. It’s shit like this that makes me embarrassed to be a gamer. Now I know that a lot of gamers are teenage males, who don’t leave their room, or have girlfriends, but really. Does a game company need to go this far? I’m sure these males can find Internet porn a lot quicker.

Personally, I like to meet the marketing people who wrote the copy for the ad for this game. I really like how they used the word “thrusting”, “desperate”, and “exposed”. I can just picture the teenage super geeks giggling so loud that their retainers fall out of their mouths. Now there have been several of these “baser instinct” titles released in the past and they always end up not selling. Gamers want good game play, not cheap shots at pixelized booty.

I remember playing video games in the past that have pushed the “sexy” aspect in the past, but they did have good game play. The Dead or Alive series is a very popular fighter, that is known for it’s game play as well the “quality” of the female characters. So much so, that they released 2 game on the females just interacting with each other (not that way), called Dead of Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball. The games are fairly popular with the Xbox owners (I own a PS3 and the game hasn’t come out for that system),

I remember a game on the original PlayStation called Fear Effect. There were two games actually, and the second game had a love interest for the main character in the game, who was female. The other character was also female so there was a lesbian relationship, but you never say anything. Once again, I’m sure there were the super geeks giggling, but I really liked the game for it’s story, and the environment. It was a Blade Runner / Shadowrun universe. I remember getting into a conversation with a gamergirl friend of mine, and while she did do the “eye roll” thing when I mentioned the game. I did manage to get her on my side as to why I liked it, and thus managed to not loose respect by having her thinking that I was one of those desperate nerd types.

Of course, if I’m going to blog about games with sexy females, I have to mention Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider series. Now everyone knows what Lara looks like and she is “top heavy”. What people don’t know is that the character was actually designed by a 17 year old, so I’m sure that his hormones had a role in her creation. The thing is, that most of the games are very well done (there was a really bad one, so bad that the dev team had the game taken away from them), and people bought them because the games were that good, not because Lara was “extremely blessed”

What I’m saying is that sex is not going to sell a videogame. Sure it will sell just about anything else, but if you just slap boobs and ass on a game and not design good game play, then you’re going to go broke. Many companies have learned this lesson the hard way. Needless to day, I plan to stay away from Bikini Samurai Squad.

My 2 Bytes

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