One of the more common requests from players has been to let them work the jobs. The new professions in Ambitions works much like the traveling did in World Adventures. You choose your job and then you are given little mini-missions based on your profession level.

For my first Sim I chose to be an architect as I thought that was a fairly interesting choice. EA pegged this profession as someone who could change the face of your town and I liked the idea of really changing the world I lived in. Quickly I find out that the profession isn’t with its importance. The job mostly consists of running around and putting in different furniture. You enter build mode in someone else’s house and get a check list of things that need to be bought. Doesn’t seem to matter what, where, or how. The only thing that matters is that you do it under budget and in a timely manner. I have yet to not get a standard bonus and have the person say it is ok. I have tried to match the sim’s style in the house but that doesn’t help with my pay, it’s just standard. Job to job doesn’t really change all that much. Basically the same thing every time except you do bedroom one time, study next, and gym the next. Same basic idea though.

Another issue is that you really don’t want to be using great ideas for house design on other people’s houses. So you really are just burning through the designs just to finish and move onto the next one. You certainly don’t want to spend an hour on this really terrific room only to never really see it again because it isn’t in your house.

From what I’ve heard in other professions, all the professions suffer from similar problems where the job is just overly repetitive and not worth doing most of the time. My roommate said she tried the Fireman career and found similar problems. She’d go from house to house clicking on random burning objects to put them out and done. She also was disappointed that when it came time to save someone’s life, she had little control over it and thus got little satisfaction. She had imagined it’d be similar to exploring dungeons in World Adventures but it really wasn’t.

I do still want to try out some of the other professions. I am particularly interested in the inventor and the ghost hunter which I think could be fairly interesting. However, I was very disappointed that they didn’t do the update with all the careers. I felt they missed a huge opportunity here. Instead of having work that you can do you basically have two different types of jobs to do. In fact, I thought it was rather awkward when you sit down with the paper and have to choose either “Find a career” or “Find a Profession” because they are so wildly different. Honestly I think I would have taken no new careers if it meant they just updated the ones they had to be more interactive.

Now I am left feeling they need an expansion to update old professions just to have some unity in the game. This is actually a fairly big problem with me. One of the issues I had in Sims 2 was the lack of expansions crossing. They would introduce a new concept in one and then never touch it again. I totally thought it’d be worth doing that they introduced a new vacation destination in future expansions that yes you could access without World Adventures but perhaps would be better if you had it. Sims 2 ended up with far too many panels because of this. I thought World Adventures did a great job of not introducing new functionality that wasn’t universal, but here it isn’t universal and I bet they never touch it again.

Of course, as with any expansion the professions aren’t the only new things in this expansion they have… ummm… well… maybe they didn’t really add much more than that. They did add laundry functionality so that you have to wash your clothes which is cute. It is optional, thank god, and only really seems to effect you if you buy a washer and dryer. But the last thing anyone really needs to do is another task such as laundry.

They also added some rather plain new items, nothing particularly special which I found amazing as World Adventures just had some astonishing items, but this one really did have rather lame basic things like a couch that looked like an every day couch. Nothing flashy, no sets or themes or anything, and really not even much. I’m still hoping that by going down the Architect line that I will somehow unlock some new stuff but I think I’m destined to be disappointed.

They also added a new town map which incorporates all the new places that they needed for Ambitions (like a junkyard for the inventor) and is generally a good map I must say. Though I have found that everyone in it is rich, and otherwise more of the same with some new styles and different layout. Isn’t exotic or anything. You aren’t going to feel much different here than the standard. But at least it was functionally usable unlike the one they offered for free on their website which didn’t have rocks or seeds to find throughout the map.

Lastly, and perhaps my favorite new feature of Sims 3: Ambitions is the addition of tattoos to character creator. It is pretty well fleshed out which i was impressed with. I loved it actually. You can choose where to put the tatoo in several positions (forearm, upper arm, shoulder, upper back, lower back, mid back, whole back, etc), change the size and color and rotation of the tattoo. Import your own design, or put a couple different ones on the same spot to get a new style. You could probably spend a ton of time on the tattoo alone. And I love tattoos so I love this new addition.

It is too bad that the tattoo is really the main reason to get this game. I kinda wish they added the functionality for $5 on their store. It certainly isn’t worth the full price of the expansion they usually do.

It was amazing how bad and incomplete this expansion was coming off of World Adventures. I get the feeling that WA didn’t sell nearly as well as they anticipated and EA slashed the budget of Ambitions and then rushed it out the door. Ambitions wasn’t even half the expansion that WA was and I think this is odd because a lot of the tech they used to allow players to do their professions was tech from World Adventures. Because they were re-using they really could have given players a ton of content here, but they didn’t. It was incomplete and buggy instead and just not worth the buy.

Yet kids seem to fully enjoy it even in the modern day and age. There is something carnally fun about the simplest of actions of riding around in circles on a fake horse that goes up and down while you do it. There is nothing to it, it is fun. And you know, even adults enjoy it from time to time, though usually not for long.

This actually gets me thinking of the game industry, weird isn’t it? I actually sat there watching the Merry-go-round thinking about how this thing in front of me reminding me of games even though it didn’t even remotely have anything to do with games. But here it is, the prime nature of video games in the carousel…. people are having fun.

Amusement Design

From the earliest moments of any game development cycle, one of the designers main jobs is to ask how the game is fun and how it can be more fun. And here in a fair on a small island in the middle of Madison we are seeing that dynamic take place. And then I look around and notice all these other fair rides and I realize that these are different designers taking this basic concept of the Carousel and turning it into a different type of fun.

The Ferris Wheel was certainly a take on it being turned on its side so that the rider goes into the air instead of in circles and playing on the primal fear of heights. The Scrambler adds in extreme spinning. Tilt-a-whirl takes the scrambler and re-introduces the up and down with player control over the spin. The zipper is a Ferris Wheel with the spinning of a Tilt-a-whirl and so and so forth. You can literally see the evolution of the design of these rides.

This is similar to the process we see with games. We get a basic way to play the game that we know is fun, and then we tweak it just a little bit in hopes of making it more fun. Pac-Man begot Donkey Kong which begot Mario Bros. which begot Super Mario Bros. which begot Zelda which begot Final Fantasy and so on and so forth. It evolves. If you want a more direct correlation you could look at the musical game genre and more specifically Harmonix. They start a music game called FreQuency and then they add a guitar to get Guitar Hero, add the band and you got Rock Band. It is a natural progression and every step you think “well duh” but you can see the same sort of things in the amusement industry.

Game Carnies

I think in that respect it is actually kind of amazing to think that the video game industry is probably closest related to the amusement industry. Everyone always tries to compare it to the movie industry, I think largely because both generate huge sums of money every year. But realistically it is the fairs and festivals around the country that hold the closest relationship to games. Largely because both are interested in the same basic emotion of “fun” that their costumers must have in order for success to be attained. The movie and television don’t care if the viewer has fun, that isn’t what they are going for at all. Well maybe the action genre is about fun but that really is a small segment of the movie industry. And this might be why there are so many games that look like an action movie, is because that is the only thing we can really relate to. Perhaps instead of looking at the movie industry to figure out what they do right and wrong, the game industry should be looking at the amusement industry to learn from. Maybe, the games would get better that way.

In the meantime, does it make you feel good to know that the game industry is run by an odd step child of a carnie?

Let us start with my sister who got me an ornament that could display pictures in it and a picture album with recipes from my family in it. The photo ornament was just odd, especially since before this year I never had a tree and she didn’t know I got a full-sized one. Even though I do have one, I would never put it on the tree as it is an ugly ornament and just tacky. Unfortunately I didn’t get a receipt with it either so I couldn’t even bring it back for something useful like a candy bar. I think she had the right idea for the recipes from old relatives, but it was unprofessional in presentation. Not that I expected it to be professional, I just wish it would have been nice.

My Brother continued on with his giving to charity in the name of other people, not horrible though I do think that it is a way for him to hide how much they spend on me. They likely give like $10 and no more. Not a bad gig really, no one will question it since it is charity. He also gave me some hot cocoa which I’m excited to try as it is mint.

My friend’s family got me a $20 gift card to Borders (which was odd because they know that I prefer Barnes & Noble) which I have since spent on The Annotated Elminister. This was another book that I had been eying for sometime but never thought it as a good thing to get. But since I had some extra cash I thought it would be a good buy. They also got me a Micheal Moore book which is a fairly good idea for them because he is up my ally. I definitely have enough to read for the next year now! (I still have things from before to read.)

My mother got me a $100 gift card to World Market which was what I asked for (well not price) because I have a set of dishes that I want to buy from there. I’ve had my eye on a set of square plates that are black that I think would be really nice (would like red bowls to go with it, but I may not get those now). She also got me a little book that goes into detail about my extended family and how they relate to me. It was a really nicely done booklet and is about the quality that I thought my sister’s gift should have been.

My best friend did the best job overall on my gifts. She got me a little booklet for I can has cheezburger which is one of our favorite websites. It was small, but a very fun gift none the less. She also got me Personal Trainer – Cooking for the Nintendo DS which is really a recipe game that helps you learn how to make various types of meals. I wasn’t expecting this gift at all and I thought it was great. I had looked at it and it looked cool, but had decided I wasn’t going to buy it for mysefl cause I thought that I just didn’t have the money for something like that. This really is the best type of present IMHO. She also got me a Wii Fit which I really wanted but hadn’t wanted to stand in line for. I have loved it thus far and have been using it fairly regularly (though I’ve not done it for a few days). And I’ve even started a blog to keep track of my progress in my weight loss goals.

I would remiss if I didn’t mention that my daughter came with gifts. They were regifts really, just things that she had already (and likely didn’t want) that she decided to put my name on and give to me. Still, it was really sweet that she sat down and thought of getting me something for Christmas.

By re-releasing GameCube games, Nintendo actually is doing a couple of really intelligent things. First, they are giving exposure to games that may not have received as fair a shot as they should have gotten largely because of the smaller marketshare they had. You can actually see this reflected in their first choices of games. The first two games appear to be Pikmin and Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat. I don’t think either one of these games really did as well as Nintendo had hoped, and so bringing them back in a new form will give them another time to shine, which in turn may allow Nintendo to invest further in these newer franchises.

The second thing this does is that it allows NIntendo to put out triple-A quality games inbetween their normal titles, and therefor diminishing some of the complaints about all the shovelware being put out. After all, it is true that while there is a ton of really bad titles, there are times that you can go months without any decent NEW title on the WII. Well ok so you aren’t exactly getting a new title here, but you are getting something decent to fill in.

I do think a major worry for Nintendo really is that you can just buy used versions of these games anyway. However, if NIntendo does this thing right, this won’t be an issue as much. First of all, they need to lower the pricepoing, I expect these games to be around $19.99 – 29.99 (think the new age of Player’s Choice titles). The other nice thing about these titles is that they will likely work with the Wiimote, and while I realize a lot of people prefer the GameCube controller, I don’t like the wires and don’t want to invest in wireless GameCube controllers after the GameCube is dead. Another thing they could do is add features, say an extra Pikmin level or something. I also would like to see them put Pikmin 1 & 2 on the same disc as I think a lot more people missed 2 than missed 1 and I think this would give much greater value to the re-release as a whole. Plus, the Wii should be able to handle two GameCube games on a single disc if done right.

I think that this GameCube masterpieces re-release on the Wii could really work. I’m interested and somewhat excited to see how Nintendo pulls it off. Hopefully, they don’t completely screw it up because it could work really nicely to do exactly what Nintendo hopes to do. And then we might actually see a Pikmin 3 which really should happen on the Wii anyway.

Capcom is a good example of this. They held a press event a month or two ago that announced their new games for the next year. Not unlike what happened at E3. They did hold back a couple, like the mysterious Flock, but overall they already played their cards.

The big 3 still seem to be secretive like the old days, though perhaps this is because they have always made a bigger stink than the rest of the developers. For instance, no one really knows what Nintendo has in store. They have said that they have a new game for hardcore gamers, as well as a new IP to show. We also know that they have Animal Crossing Wii that no one has seen yet. And everyone suspects a DS redesign. And who knows how much else is out there that they aren’t letting on to. I think I heard somewhere that New Super Mario 2 might be in the works, but it is all rumor at this point.

This really shows who might have been behind the demise of E3. At first I suspected it was the big 3 since really those three could have done their own shows and really didn’t need E3. But really, considering those 3 still use E3 in the same way I have to say it isn’t them. It is likely the smaller developers who didn’t like to be constantly overshadowed by the big 3 that probably just decided to end it. To them, they get more general interest if they separated from the event because they don’t have bigger guys there, and thus they can get the word on their games out better. I am sure that the continuing rise of cost of putting a booth up there didn’t help.

But I need to ask. Couldn’t they have done their own events like they now do and just also have a booth at E3? The event as it used to be was really good for the American gaming industry. But now, we have to look to other countries for this. Is this an indicator that perhaps the American gaming industry is dying? That we can’t even put on our own gaming show?

For those of you who might be looking to create creatures that are even remotely realistic, like myself, you are out of luck. The creatures you can create are way cartoony, which may not necessarily be a bad thing in and of itself, but I really wanted to be able to create more realistic stuff from a personal standpoint. For some reason I remember one of the devs, I think Wright himself actually, say something to the effect that you’d be able to make stuff as realistic that you want. Perhaps you can and this will be done with user mods, which kind of sucks, but at least it is something.

That being said, I do think the game still has an immense amount of process. The cartoony graphics do offer a lot of personality and fun to the game, even on just the Creature Creator. With this alone, I think Wright is really taking what people loved about City of Heroes and expanded upon it. I mean with that game, people would spend hours just sitting there and configuring the looks of their heroes… here too you can spend hours on just a single creature and enjoy every bit of it. And this is only the beginning of it. With the rest of the game we will also be able to design villages, buildings, weapons, spaceships, and worlds all to our liking.

Another complaint I had though was that of choice. The choices that are there are truly wonderful, there’s a ton of stuff to choose from to add to your creature to make what you want. Yet somehow it seems like the choices are missing some basic options. For instance, I for the life of me can’t figure out how to make a rhinoceros or a cow or similar creatures to that, yet there are 4 choices of pig mouths. The aardvark snout is great, and you can make some really unique animals with it, but when you lengthen it it still doesn’t quite give you the impression of an elephant because it still looks like an aardvark.

That isn’t to say these are major complaints. What has been done here is still a major accomplishmenet. The choices are astonishing, and while I would like the ability to do something more realistic, it isn’t necessary to have a good time playing around with it. Plus, the fact that the choices and realism aren’t complete just gives EA room for expansions, which to be honest was one of the things I wondered about how they’d do when this game was announced. Now we know, it is by holding back stuff. I could also see themes in the future… While you could do a dragon now, there is some mythical creatures that is a little more questionable that they could make easier in the future.

Overall, I do enjoy this game, even at just the creation level which bodes very well for the final product and my excitement for the final product remains fully in tact. September can’t come soon enough.

He still has his moments however. The New Super Mario Brothers game that came out last year on the DS was wildly successful. The idea of taking this classic series, and making a brand new game for it, but in the original style proved to be a very good idea. People loved it, and really why wouldn’t they? The gameplay of the original has been refined through decades, and it was great in the first place. This game provided people with new levels and new abilities to a game that people haven’t really seen for awhile. I mean sure there has been a number of sequals to the game over the years, but these haven’t really resonated with people like the old versions did.

While Mario 64 proved to be genius in its own right, I think platforming really hasn’t worked in 3D the way it did in 2D. You see countless old classics going from side-scrolling to full on 3D and while there is a sparkle from time to time, they have largely been gigantic failures to the series in question.

It is because of this that we shouldn’t be surprised by the new fad that Mario has started. That of the classic remake. We already saw Contra 4 which also turned out to be very successful (it still boggles my mind that they couldn’t come up with a Contra that worked in 3D given that it is a shooter after all). The lesser known Super Dodge Ball, also saw an update, which I am more than happy about. And recently we have seen remakes of Breakout and Space Invaders. Now there are rumors of another New Mario sequel, and even Mega Man 9. I think I’ve also heard of a new version of Asteroids.

With all these new classics, it makes me wonder what other classics we should get. There’s been rumor of a DS side-scrolling Metroid for ages which I think is no more, but this I think would be a very cool and relavant update. However, given how the latest Metroid sales have faired (despite being very good), I have a feeling Nintendo won’t be continuing this series much for awhile. I think Prince of Persia would be a good one, especially considering the new 3D ones have done fairly well. Sonic is a given, and it is a shame they don’t seem to be going this route as the series has suffered the longer it stays in 3D. Oddly, I could see Pac-Man doing this very well as well, though on the surface there is little they could do to the series, I think there are little tweaks and powerups they could add in to give it a breath of freshness. I have a feeling fighting games like Mortal Kombat would work as well. The more fantasy oriented ones never really translated as well IMHO, and I think would be really easy to update the graphics and new characters and powers in a side fashion.

Lastly, I’d like to see a true sequel to Super Mario World. While in many aspects it wasn’t the best of the marios (3 largely is considered the best), the theme of the world made it my favorite of the bunch. I would so love to see a return to this world with the koopa kids, ridable Yoshis, and a playable Luigi.

This makes me wonder, are we asking the right question? It seems easy enough to say that fun is the right question to ask about a game. After all, by its very definition it is a game which should be fun. There have been movements to try to rename the industry to such names like Interactive Entertainment. But these movements have largely not held very well because there really isn’t much that goes beyond games, and well the new names are usually a mouthful to say. But when is a game more than just a game? And in being all about fun and nothing else, could we be pigeon-holing ourselves into nothing more than just a new way to play Paper-Rock-Scissors (which ironically is the basis for a good number of games).

Perhaps we should redefine what question we ask when thinking about a new game that is being created. Instead of asking is this game fun, maybe the question should be is this game meaningful? And that is meaningful to the player, not necessarily meaningful to you. And to be meaningful certainly can include fun. I mean it is meaningful on some level to have a fun experience as a person. It generally doesn’t mean much to us as humans, but it does mean something. I mean I remember my times at Disney World, though not nearly as well as I remember the time I spent the night talking with my girlfriend on a couch, or when my grandparents died. They were all meaningful to me, and I do remember that time when I was at Disney World quite fondly, but I yearn for more in my life than to constantly go on Space Mountain. Be it painful or pleasurable, I enjoy those times of my life.

This might be one secret to the MMO genre as a whole. We often gain more meaning from this genre than just fun, largely because of the format. You interact with people, you grow as a character far more than other games, you earn what you get instead of having it given to you. This is actually one of the bigger critiques of the genre, people often say it is more work than it is fun. Yet, in that work is where the attachment and meaning often comes to the players who partake in it. It is the work, the feeling of accomplishment at getting to your goal that really makes the genre. That and the relationships you build I think is far more of what draws a player to an MMO than the fun. The sims also kind of captures this as well, forcing the player to work in order to get a better job, build relationships with friends and family and as such, you as a player get more attached to your sim.

In fact, there is no other medium that doesn’t look for meaning in it when creating its product. Every type of media has the fun type, but they also have far more meaningful experiences than “fun” can ever provide to a person. I know we don’t like to compare ourselves to other media, but the fact remains we are a form of entertainment. And thus, we are very much like the others in many ways no matter how much we wish to be different. And until we get over this “we are different” thing, we will always be Snakes on the Plane wondering why no one takes us seriously.

First, the months of May and June traditionally don’t see many big games released. Actually with WiiFit, WIiWare and GTA4 I think this year it turned out to be a much bigger year than normal, but even with that it is kind of shallow. I don’t know why this is true. If memory serves many in the industry tend to say that people don’t play games as much in the summer time and so they don’t like to release here. But honestly I think it comes down to the industry just wanting to launch all its games for Christmas. April through June tends to be where you see big games that would get overshadowed or games that got delayed but people want that later year X-mas rush and so pretty much any other time of year is nothing. After all, if the problem was that people don’t like to sit inside during the summer times to play games, then the movie industry wouldn’t put out its big guns for the summer (essentially sitting inside isn’t it?). I think this is mostly circular logic… people don’t play games because devs don’t release them because people don’t play them. Truth is, I think there would be a decent amount playing games in the summer as kids have a whole lot of time all of a sudden to play games without homework and school getting in the way. (Portable I would think in particular would be great as people may want to travel more and hence have a cool game to play.)

Another reason is the obvious E3 effect. Many companies button up in prep for the E3 event. Though this is diminishing each year as more and more companies realize that E3 is no longer relevant to gaming. Many companies still take the time to make their yearly game announcements between the time E3 used to be (I believe it used to be in May) and the time it is now (July). Hence, there really isn’t a ton of good info out there on anything new going on. Especially from console manufacturers who still adhere to E3 as the big show. The companies who show do show, such as Capcom’s recent game announcements, tend to be smaller in scale and less surprising. (Resident Evil 5 is big, but nothin people were caught off guard by, the biggest thing I think no one knew about was something like NeoPets Adventure Puzzle which who cares really).

Mostly my big problem is that I am just not gaming right now so how the heck am I supposed to talk about it? It is kind of sad to me because I really do enjoy gaming. Not that there is really much new out there to play, but that is beside the point.