Some body's gotta make it happen. Take the marines out of the equation, and make a solid, action-oriented, first-person tactical video game about these franchises finding each other, and doing murder. Marines? Nobody wants to be the marines. Marines are fodder. I know, it's a lot to ask for. So let me get you started.

First things first: get agroup ofprogrammerstogether that can make a game that's fun without any pretensiousnotions of saleable-oriented game design in their resume. First of all, that's not your job, second of all, it's Robocop VS Terminator VS Aliens VS Predator. It doesn't need a programmer to sell it.

Then you call up John Arcudi and ask him, politely, and with an air of intelligence, "Please John would please write our game. Please." Pay him fairly, and don't futz.

Get your designers together. These people should be weird. Maybe they don't wear odd clothes or talk like they're living in the future. I'm talking about brutal, scary, uncomfortable-to-be-around weird. H. R. Giger meets H. P. Lovecraft.

Set your dates, don't tell nobody, and try to direct the money hose at the people who need it, not the people who deserve it. Real artists need to suffer, and when you deprive them of money to achieve that end it's win-win for you.

So. What the hell are you waiting for? Make ROBOCOP VS TERMINATOR VS ALIENS VS PREDATOR, and make it so good, people will be like, "Batman? You're still talking about BATMAN?"

There are, it seems, no longer any rules in the entertainment world. There is no recourse.

I recently purchased Fallout: New Vegas from a local Gamestop the day it was released, October 19th, and installed it that night. It's been a month, and the game still does not work (PC with nVidia card). I've followed Fallout since the first in the series (Fallout: a Post-apocalyptic Role-playing Game, not Wasteland), and loved it deeply. I even got Fallout Tactics the day it came out, though I didn't bother with Brotherhood of Steel. When I heard Bethesda was going to take over the franchise, I was really excited, being a huge fan of Morrowind and Oblivion. All of this happened when downloading games wasn't so prevalent.

By the time Fallout 3 hit, it wasn't perfect, but it was good, and I didn't have any regrets about slapping 50 bucks on the table.

That feels like a million years ago. Paying $50 for something you really wanted. The waiting, getting excited, playing it for every pennies-worth. Now, not so much. Games, movies, music, it all comes out every week, and less than half of the people enjoying it are paying for it. And the PC game-makers are rightly upset by the state of things. It takes a lot of work to put those things together, and even more love to make one worth remembering.

Fallout: New Vegas was shipped incomplete. I'm not excited about playing it. I got the feeling just before the glitches hit. I was so ready to love it the way I was ready to love every other iteration. But I don't. It's not worth the frustration it gives me, or the time I put into it. The game is all about immersion, and that's not possible with this thing. Even after a month.

Now what? If I contact Bethesda are they going to give me my money back? No, of course not. Will Gamestop? No, they haven't accepted returns of PC titles since Warcraft 2. There's no consequences for either party. Nobody's got any laws to protect either party. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like the end of entertainment as we know it.

I've been a musician and an artist my whole life. I've toured the country with my band numerous times, released records and even with a record label, but I still don't earn a living on it. In fact, I lose money doing it. The label I'm on has been around for more than 20 years, and even with the money they make off of their larger releases, they're still tanking. I'm about to go into the studio and make a second full-length when I still haven't sold more than 200 of the first one since it's release in May. But that's not the worst of it. The worst is, I know groups who tour 10 months out of the year, sell out nearly every show, and have a record that's been in magazines and reviewed on Pitchfork, and they tell me they're only breaking even. No gain, just what it costs to drive themselves from one end of the country to the other.

It's like a dream, as if some genie asked a guy, "Would you rather have all the free music, movies and games in the world, or would you rather artists were paid for their work?" and the guy said, "Duh! I'll take the free stuff, I'm not an artist, what do I care?"

So what's next? Where's the money? Who will pay the artists? Who will uphold the law? Who will stop us from stealing? Probably nobody.

Here's my music, and a video I shot, edited and am promoting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmHTk5QquTo

No one's going to pay for it, but maybe some of you will watch it.

Thanks,

jj

Reading a recent interview on Gamespot with Richard Garriott, I found myself reminiscing about some of the highlights of his Ultima series that I had the chance to play as a kid. Specifically Underworld and Avatar. Thinking about the spells available, and the character progress as it coincided with the story and action, it suddenly occurred to me just how long those games were. And though maybe not as vast as the recent Elder Scrolls games, they still had quite a bit to explore and a good bit of breathing room. It also occurred to me that the limitations set by the game were far more dramatic in contrast with today's games. If I recall correctly, many of the more powerful and interesting spells were not usable, or even revealed by npc's and foes until you got quite well on. Get to the point, right? Alright here's my point: This modest pacing and literal LACK of expedient gameplay, which to some may seem like some sort of common flaw innate of older games was actually a great example of style, as it is envisioned by the maker(s), pulling the player along incrementally, instead of all at once. There are hints to stimulate the rising action, like a wizard raising the dead, and you've no choice but to flee, or be saved in some cinematic sequence, or that great moment when you discover that you'd guessed right, and can actually achieve that power for your own character. Instead of putting the pedal to the floor at the beginning of every game, like Jerry Bruckheimer would have it, why not give some gamers a little more credit as thinking people who can handle a subtitled film here and there without crying that it's too slow, or there's no color or something. Think about the pacing that Fallout had, and the sheer amount of written dialogue for that game . It's immense, and mostly relevant and hardly ever too dull to wade through. And, if it makes you feel any better, it's a huge bleeding franchise, millions of dollars for Bethsoft just to buy some of it off of a broke Blackisle. I just don't want the game makers to pander to the players anymore. It's seems like such a privilege to be able to make games nowadays. Don't waste time. Make the games you always wanted to see, not just the hot ticket crap everyone's 1000 percent sure will make enough money to employ everybody indefinitely. Worst comes to worst, losing your job won't mean starvation, and you'll have done something worth doing.