Gentleman’s Mode…a bit sexist, no?

While I hate that a difficulty level is named “Gentleman’s Mode”, the first round of completing Henry Hatsworth In the Puzzling Adventure on the Nintendo DS was an absolute delight!

In comparison with my anticipated favorite DS game of the year - Puzzle Quest Galactrix, which was a bit of a disappointment compared to the original – Henry Hatsworth really surprised me with its innovative gameplay and has won itself a spot at the top of my list. As an avid action adventure addict who spent most of her time in high school newspaper period playing Super Mario Bros on PC emulators rather than “researching articles” or “conducting interviews” – I mean who really had the time to be interviewed during the school day since you cannot just pull students out of the class room or borrow teachers for five minutes – Henry Hatsworth was already great. Combat options vary from shooting a normal projectile gun, arching bombs, and circling boomerangs or using your sword in close quarters.

But add on the puzzle dimension and I am 200% hooked!

The puzzle aspect itself is very simple – just align three boxes in a row /column and they disappear – but the way that it was integrated into the combat system was very compelling. For starters, the split screen normal world vs. “Puzzle Realm” keeps a player’s attention because you have to make sure that both screens are in-check. And when you kill an enemy in the normal world (top screen) it moves on to appear in the Puzzle Realm (bottom screen), adding a double-facetedness to every combat. Not to mention the amount of time that you can spend in the Puzzle Realm is limited. You can increase the meter from the normal world by physically attacking enemies and  from within the Puzzle Realm by matching the colored boxes and creating combos. Emptying the Puzzle Realm also increases your Super Meter, which dictates the projectile power meter – something that button mashers probably did not like, but a feature that really encourages players to consider ammo consumption.

And now back to the original point in writing this blog: why so much focus on the “gentleman” aspect of the game? Okay so I am a little bit late in finishing the game – after all I do have a job and kittens to look after – but that does not take away from the fact that on top of yet another male-protagonist game, Henry Hatworth went on to become even more male-centric with its “gentleman’s mode”! If Henry Hatsworth is targeting casual audiences – which it supposedly is! – then their strategy of placing such strong male predominance within the game might be limiting its success within the tween segment, as female tweens are much stronger spenders than male tweens.

Overall I just do not understand how such a great game could limit itself in marketing because of such a silly – but sexist! – flaw. I mean if we look at Gears of War, which is definitely encompassed within the stereotypically male genre of FPS , even its hardest difficulty setting is called “Insane Mode” not “Men’s Mode”.

Game Distribution Channels

While I had never really understood a player’s rationlization for pirating a game while hiding behind the excuse “I would have paid, but…(insert a variety of reasons),” I found myself in a rather sardonic situation the other day–though  to be completely honest, it was not so much my situation as that of my boyfriend.

Both my boyfriend and I work in the video game industry, BUT we also live in China. While a few companies choose to localize their games in China, most just avoid the territory as a whole since pirated versions of the English game are always available on the streets long before–think long enough to complete the entire game, along with three other titles–the localized version even makes it through the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) submision. But this is a topic for another time.

The main point is that legal copies of video games in English are relatively difficult to come by, even in Shanghai. So rather than trudging down to the local video game shop and sifting through the meager selection of DS / PSP / 360 / PC / Wii games available–though it is important to note that PS3 options are much more eclectic–we decided to test out Steam for the first time since moving here.

Now before we get to the heart of this rant, I would like to point out that digital distribution channels like Steam are moving in the right direction by cutting costs and generating greater accessibility to the product. Steam is a great distribution tool in the US and provides a product to people who would otherwise be unable to easily access a legal copy of a game–imagine kids under 16 who cannot drive or walk to a game shop–but it is sad to see such a limit in “global” payment methods.

As for what happened: my boyfriend saw a packaging and sales promotion for Company of Heroes and some other RTS game on Steam–clearly RTS is not my preferred genre, but to each his or her own. Naively he set out to purchase a legal copy of the game–which does suggest that we already had a less than legal copy to begin with–but found that the transaction was unable to be processed. At first he thought, “Well maybe I inputted some of my credit card information incorrectly”. And then Round 2 failed. So he though,”I guess maybe Steam does not accept Chinese credit cards? But that’s strange since they work on other sites. Oh well, I guess I’ll try using my French card.” But after Round 3 ended with no sucess, he began to get frustrated.

So we tried using my American card, but still to no avail–and this is where I really got dragged in. My boyfriend even went so far as to ask a colleague, who utilizes Steam on a rather regular basis, to purchase the game on his American card in exchange for cash. When all of these attempts failed, my boyfriend just gave up.

He had tried 4 credit cards and contacted support multiple times, but nothing worked–a lot of work put in for a game that we already own a copy of when you really sit down and think about it. According to a later message from Steam’s support team, only cards with US currency was being accepted–but we tried this TWICE. The next message a few days later went on to say that Steam was only operational through one of China’s few telecommunication providers China Telecom, or was it China Mobile? I forget really.

I guess at the end of the day explanation #2 makes the most sense–at the very least it accounts for why our American friend who uses Steam regularly was unable to make the purchase from his work office since there they use a different internet provider. But this does not make Steam any less accountable for a lack of accessibility OUTSIDE of the US, though I imagine that most people have never thought about international distribution channels.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that while it is NOT justifiable, when those of us who are lazy want to purchase a game through digital distribution channels and cannot find succes, we can become blinded by the Darkside of the Force and give in to piracy. So open up your international distribution channels for us expats!!!

Hello world!

Well, I guess that I’ve finally caved and “committed”–though that’s a word that I tend to shudder at–to developing a blog.

I love gaming. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that my tastes have changed from the earlier days of Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo 64–and yes, I realize that I am not that old!

So I’m interested in both hearing about and communicating current interests in the “relatively”–and I use this term loosely–casual gaming world.

Cheers!