Violent Video Gaming Comes To the Wii 263
TuringTest writes "In an attempt to bring the Wii closer to the hardcore gamer's taste, Sega is preparing to release MadWorld, a violent 'hack and slash' game. This has brought attention from family-conscious lobbies: 'The decision to release a violent game on a console which has based its reputation on family fun has shocked anti-violence pressure groups. Mediawatch-UK, Britain's longest-running pressure group campaigning for decency in TV, films and games, said MadWorld will "spoil" the Wii.' The game features black & white cel-shaded graphics, except for the blood blobs which are in brilliant red. MadWorld is announced to be released in early 2009."
Hardcore gamer (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I am one of those dirty filthy casuals that plays games to *gasp *horror* *shock* enjoy them. I tend to like the games that have innovative and fun gameplay. Unique visual audio styles are a plus.
Perhaps I'm just too old for the current definition of hardcore games and hardcore gamers but what I don't really get is how the number of pixels pushed or the volume of blood makes a game for the hardcore gamer.
I'd expect the hardcore gamer to want intricate and complex yet responsive control schemes that reward having faster-than-framerate reactions. Requiring six liquid cooled video cards just to render the game on its lowest setting or requiring a TARDIS built into the circulatory system of every mook to handle the amount of blood they spray when killed doesn't mean its "hardcore" to me. It generally says its cheaper to hire graphic designers than it is people capable of putting together a solid game.
Daily mail PR grab (Score:3, Interesting)
Overall, a pretty lame publicity grab.
If anyone's making a publicity grab, it's the Daily Mail. The last we saw them on Slashdot, they had come up with a dubious iPhone Nano rumour. They're making a reach for online marketshare by coming up with nonsense and starting storms in teacups, basically taking their approach to newspaper sales but applying it their website. This is a publication which runs features demonising games at random intervals [rllmukforum.com] because it gives them something other than Jews, gays and foreigners [wikipedia.org] to attack. They are the ones who probably egged Mediawatch into it in the first place.
Publisher-mandated coverage of the game in the UK peaked a few months ago when it was an Edge cover story. If they are deliberately courting controversy, they've done a poor job of it.
They've Got It All Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not a big Wii fan and part of that is due to the fact its games don't interest me. However, I don't like that hardcore gaming is being equated with violence (and inevitably, sex). The Wii does come across as sort of a child-centric system to me but adding titles with blood won't necessarily make me think of it as more mature and won't make me think of it as 'hardcore'.
Personally, I don't think it gets more hardcore then Civilization. There's very little, if any, blood in the game but it's the complexity of the gameplay and the dedication one has have for it that makes it something of an elite gaming experience. If we 'hardcore' gamers don't demand complexity and innovation in games then all we're going to get is Halo/GTA clones.
Re:2 things (Score:2, Interesting)
Heck, Red Steel was featured in the launch ads for the Wii. It may not be the greatest game, but when the guy says "All right, get a gun" and the player starts shooting people, well, I think that's pretty violent.
Maybe that's just 'cause I think shooting people is violent.
And a #1 reason to buy a video game.
Re:Oooooh Sin City! (Score:4, Interesting)
but the wii NEEDS to have those games.
The sad truth is that the Wii doesn't need those games. It is selling like crazy, even now well over a year after its release and so far I haven't seen numbers that this trend is going to change, even things like the much more powerful Xbox360 selling for 50EUR less then the Wii in europe hasn't put a dent in the sales. The Wiis whole concept simply isn't build around classical games, instead it seems to be build around accessories, Wiimote, Balance Board, Zapper, Wii Wheel and so on. Accessories seem to give people something that they can instantly understand, which you can't have with classical game, which is also why you always see happy people jumping around in front of a TV in Wii commercials and never really much of the actual game.
When it comes to 'normal' games I have given up all hope for the Wii and never really had it much to begin with. Nintendo is doing something completly different with the Wii and simply doesn't care about the market segments of Xbox360 and PS3, when some third party still manages to sneak such a title on the Wii, fine, but there are always exceptions to the rule.
The interesting part is what will happen five years down the road? Will people still swing their controller as tennis rack and golf club or will they be tired of it and move on to the next trendy thing? I don't really know, but for the moment Nintendo seems to be doing more then fine with what they do.
Re:Oooooh Sin City! (Score:3, Interesting)
First, I do not see how the time spent playing games translates into profit. The only thing that translates to profit is number of games sold. Now, if a game is lame, then the next version is unlikely to bought, but lame does not translate into lack of opportunities to knock on the honest working women of the world. In fact sports related, where both the violence and competition is highly stylized, appear to be the most popular games.
Second, not every successful product has to market to the same people. We see this on free TV where every show is targeted to the 18-35 year old, as they are the ones that spend the most money, and we see that free TV is barely surviving, both as an advertising and creative median. OTOH, cable TV which targets to other niches, seems to be doing fine. The Wii is a highly succesful machine, targeted to a certain audience. To say that they are nannies preventing it from expanding into other markets is simplistic. They sell consoles, they have some of the top games, and if people want violent video games, there are other consoles available.
In the end, the entertainment industry has been decimated by the cult of teen age boys. In fact, society in general has been harmed by the idea that teen aged boys must be coddled to, even at the expense of the rest of society. In many ways life may have been better before that advent of adolescent, when the primary purpose of a teen age boy was to work the field, or in some other way help support the family that took care of him for all the years. Certainly making entertainment knowing that he act like a pussy and throw a tantrum until his parents buy it for him has lead to some pretty shitty product. In the end if the Wii concentrated on teen aged boys we see the same shit we see every where else, and what would be the point of that?
(BTW, I really like sin city, but it was not just the naked women and violence, as any pornographer can do that, as most of the major media outlets has shown, but because Robert Rodriguez is quite possible the only fim maker of this generation to fully utilize the technology to create a unique product.)