You may have seen the news headlines touting Zynga’s higher valuation than Electronic Arts. Obviously, having a higher valuation than EA means Zynga is also–theoretically–worth more than most companies within the gaming industry. For some reason, EA gets to prominently bask in Zynga’s shadow.

I believe this claim to be utterly ridiculous. I have no issues with Zynga. I don’t agree with Mark Pinkus’ business and creative(less) strategies but, I like how social games has widened the gaming audience and was even a FarmVille addict once upon a time. So, I have no predisposition to dislike Zynga or social games. In fact, the opposite is true: I like Zynga.

However, the recent reports that Zynga is worth more than EA is asinine at best. I may accept that Zynga is worth more than EA Play but, even then, is FarmVille bigger than The Sims?

Looking Under the Hood

Since Zynga is privately held, we can’t get any hard revenue numbers so the best we’ve got are educated guesses. If we accept that Zynga pulled in around $250 – $270 million dollars in 2009 and forecast that they’ll do just as well if not better in 2010, do those levels of revenue justify a $5.5 billion dollar valuation?

EA’s biggest title in 2010, Madden ’11, sold 1.8 million copies in August. The overwhelming majority of FarmVille players spend a grand total of $0 to a few dollars at most. I’ve spent nothing and know of no one who has–obviously my observations are not indicative of the market as a whole but, still worth mentioning. Every single one of those 1.8 million Madden ’11 owners spent $60. Obviously Madden cost a lot more to develop than FarmVille but, as YouTube will tell you: bandwidth ain’t free.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in the micro-transaction or freemium model, I think it is a viable system. I just don’t believe Zynga currently or in any near future will be able to take that model to the heights of Electronic Arts. EA has been in a bit of a slump in recent years but, they are fighting back.

And let’s not forget that FarmVille peaked earlier this year with its daily active users cut in half since. FarmVille is still Zynga’s most popular game by a huge margin–two times more popular than Zynga’s second most popular game: FrontierVille.

While all these numbers, trends, and charts are good and well, they can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The most telling point in all of this is that Zynga’s evaluation is based largely on how the employees of Zynga are trading their shares of the company. If I owned shares of Zynga, I’d be exaggerating it’s value too. I may have either drank the Kool-Aid or I just rationally want these shares to be worth a lot.

Bottom Line

There is no evidence to suggest that Zynga should be worth as much or more than Electronic Arts. EA has a family of big name franchises and a wider reach than Zynga. EA is in Zynga’s markets and markets that Zynga is not. This may or may not be an advantage but, Zynga is not some kind of innovative company that’ll be able to out maneuver EA. If anything, EA is the one with the innovative culture and development houses.

There is a lot of hype over the growth of the virtual goods market with some estimates showing revenues going to $3.6 billion in three years. Even if that came to pass, Zynga isn’t going to own 100% of that market. All evidence points to a $5.5 billion valuation of Zynga to be nothing more than a hyped bubble.

Of course, I could also be completely wrong and we may see a series of reports showing that Zynga is worth more than the $13 billion value of Activision next year. Maybe all gamers will stop playing Mass Effect, Resident Evil, Fallout, Dead Space, Madden, etc. and just buy different colored hats for their 2 inch tall 2D avatars that look strikingly similar to each other and plant virtual strawberries all day. That’s obviously more engaging than solving puzzles while lighting zombies ablaze on a spaceship in a post-apocalyptic football field. It could happen.

Hi friends! Halloween is a much loved holiday by at least 2/3′s of the SMASHWORX team.  This year Nik will be dressing as the fearsome pirate Black Beard and I will go as a Bike Accident.  Tommy represents the 1/3 of the office that doesn’t care for costumes and will be making appearances in DC and the NY Metro Area as himself.

In preparation for raucous hauntings and fun frights I wanted to mention some of the games that have scared me throughout my illustrious gaming life.  These games are listed in the order in which I remembered them.  Perhaps that says something about how much they seared their brand of scary into my brain. Perhaps not.

That'll teach 'em.

Bioshock’s cast of splicers, Adam addled school girls and all-round maniacs definitely stressed my spook quotient.  Man, those splicers can be quick and slashy, appearing when you least expect them.

I know a good doctor that could remove that growth from your face

There were points in my Dead Space career in which I would turn off the game because I was too jumpy to continue.  The cinematic isolation, horrific deaths and anxiety-inducing soundtrack all led to me only playing this game during the day. A sunny day. With lots of birds chirping.

MAAWWWW!!!

Resident Evil 4 maybe isn’t the scariest game I’ve encountered but the ambiance and propensity towards large masses of evil dudes crunching on Leon Kennedy’s face did garner more than a couple of expletives from my maw.

I really doubt that pistol is going to have much of an effect....

Silent Hill 2 marks the only game on this list that I didn’t finish and only saw later levels while watching others play.  A video game that can scare the people in the room not playing it is a scary video game indeed.

BBQ! I love a good burnt briskett.

The Thing! This is one of themore successful movie to game imports.  Although it didn’t exactly feel like John Carpenter’s vision, it had enough craziness to turn the notch up on my anxiety meter.

I was going to mention Castlevania Symphony of the Night but honestly, I don’t remember it as scary as more vampire sexy.  I want to also say that the N64 game HeXen also disturbed me a little.  I’m not exactly sure why…

Happy Halloween!

You might have read Jess’s post on Metroid: Other M, now you get my take on the game. I bought into the Metroid: Other M hype like everyone else did here at SMASHWORX HQ. I was pretty sick of the Prime titles. I had not enjoyed any of them past the first. So I was looking forward to a more traditional Metroid title with a Team Ninja spin.

The only Metroid titles that I’ve beaten are Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime. I am not a hardcore or long time fan of the series. I’ve played Super Metroid but it was too much for me at the time. I’m not sure how old I was but, it was a small number. I may have actually beaten it with the help of the Official Nintendo Strategy Guide but, I’m not sure so we won’t count that one. That’s cheating anyway.

Fast forward to 2010, I was excited by the flashy cinematics and action packed game play that Team Ninja would be bringing to the Metroid franchise. I had also not played a Wii game for months–that poor tiny console was sitting there collecting dust. The last Wii title I dabbled in was Mario Galaxy and I never finished it. Any game out of Nintendo that targeted the more mature audience would have had me drooling.

Like a drug addict who hasn’t had his fix for a while, I was dying to give Nintendo some hard earned cash.

I pre-ordered the game from Amazon a day before it’s release. I only did this because Amazon was running a deal for $20 Amazon credit towards a future video game purchase if you pre-ordered Other M. I was sure I was going to buy Other M anyway so why not get $20 out of it? The $20 has gone towards Halo Reach if anyone is curious.

The wonderful folks at Amazon got the game to me incredibly fast. It took me much longer to get through the roughly 10 – 12 hours of gameplay.

Likes, Dislikes, and Thoughts

Generally speaking, I was not a big fan of all the talking. Samus talked too much and the other characters talked too much. I don’t recall any other Metroid title having this much dialogue. While I don’t think it had an immensely negative impact on the game, it did make the game feel less Metroidy. Here’s to hoping that the next Metroid title goes back to being quiet and desolate.

I did like the linearity of the game. I often find myself lost and confused in Metroid games. Other M told you where to go. No guessing or head-scratching to figure out what to do next. I know that this goes against the Metroid tradition but, I am rarely in the mood to play a game where I spend hours with it only to make snail paced progress. Let’s get the show on the road!

I think I’m the only one at SMASHWORX who didn’t find the switching from third-person to first-person jarring. It also didn’t bother me that I couldn’t fire missiles in third-person view. It was like Metal Gear Solid; I’ve played them all and I love them. The pointing mechanism with the Wii remote didn’t make me feel more like Samus. I haven’t bought into the “greater immersion” theory with motion controls yet. I look at it as just another means of control and I was fine with how it was used in Other M.

If nothing else, I applaud Nintendo and Team Ninja for trying this hybrid control system and making it a pretty painless experience. This little experiment might give birth to a truly fantastic control scheme a few years down the road. Who knows?

What really shocked me the most was how graphically gorgeous the game was. I’m not even talking about the cut scenes. Those looked great but, they were all pre-rendered and it is 2010 so I expect that. Standard definition didn’t seem to deter Team Ninja from producing stunning visuals that could compete with some XBOX 360 and PS3 titles.

Bottom Line

Metroid: Other M isn’t going to get Game of the Year from any gaming publication. I’m not even sure if it will spawn a sequel. Team Ninja added their own flavor to the Metroid universe and that flavor might be too foreign for most fans. This was an enjoyable experiment and if there was a sequel, I’d probably get it–I have a “giving Nintendo cash” problem. But, this game won’t blow your mind and likely won’t become your favorite Metroid game of all time. At the very least I’d rent, borrow, or get it when it falls in price and there’s an unforeseen shortage of games.

I have to say I’ve been rather nonplussed about my recent game history.  Last week, I replayed God of War II and even though it was awesome, I missed the thrill of completely losing my mind over a game.  This week I have found my reprieve and it’s name is Dragon Age: Origins.  Now before you point out the fact that last week I was saving money by replaying a game and this week it is fine to purchase a new game, Dragon Age was a gift. Promise.

At first, I was hesitant to get started.  I’ve been wronged by fantasy rpg’s before and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.  But this was Bioware, maker of my beloved Mass Effect.  They wouldn’t let me down. Well, I can say this about that, Dragon Age is freakin’ awesome!  I have been playing non-stop at the peril of my eyesight and personal relationships. (Why exactly does Bioware make their text in migraine font?)  In fact, I now have dreams with multiple-choice dialogs.

While I completely love Mass Effect, I get the feeling that the Dragon Age universe is deeper and more involved then what I experienced with Shepherd at the helm.  I suppose with 6 story lines to follow and 120 hours of gameplay, Dragon Age: Origins would have to feel huge.  My first dose of universe magnitude came after I restarted the game about 5 hours in.  I don’t know about you but I am one of those players that constantly battles the urge to restart using the knowledge of some outcomes to make what might be “better” choices.  I then do some quick calculations of how OCD I am verses how much time I’ve already spent playing.

Sometimes I win this battle.  This time I lost.  I basically remade the same character I had been playing but changed some of the stats.  On the second time through, most of my options were the same but not all.  The guard I had previously been able to persuade to release his prisoner was less open this time around and I had to bribe him.  While not exactly the outcome I was hoping to gain by restarting, it did point to the fact that the amount of gameplay I could see was disproportionate to the gameplay I was not seeing.  It’s the ole tip of the iceberg trick.  In other words, there is potential for an awesome amount of  replay value in Dragon Age: Origins. Maybe this game will actually help me save money by distracting me for weeks instead of hours.  I am already looking forward to checking out the other races and classes.  I know I should not expect wildly different experiences but I still look forward to comparing story tracks.  I feel that if the story is written well enough, then there should be a desire to see that story from every angle.  As opposed to Mass Effect, I get the feeling that my character’s background actually will effect the NPC’s.  I did not get that impression with Shepherd.  It didn’t matter if she was an orphan or a military brat.  In Dragon Age: Origins the racism against elves is palpable and nobody really wants to be seen with a Grey Warden.  This piques my interest into how the other characters experience will compare to my current elf lady mage.

My theory is that Mass Effect could have been Dragon Age: Origins but Bioware was courting different audiences.  Mass Effect might be a somewhat lighter experience so those intimidated or uninterested in the complexities of a full-blown rpg can have a product that also offers a richness to the experience through great writing, heroic themes and highly customizable characters.  Dragon Age: Origins is definitely intended for the WoW players and middle-earthians.  At this point in my life, I am sometimes turned off by the medieval fantasy setting.  This is due to the amount of hokiness I’ve had to put up with as a fan of the genre.  I am a grown woman who wants mature (get your minds out of the gutter) story-lines.  There is a small amount of damsels-in-distress that I can actually get behind and unicorns should be cruel and violent not virgin transportation (why else have the crazy, stabby horn?).  I am not ashamed that I am all sorts of “Huzzah!” for this game.  And now that I mention it, I have missed the pleasures of spell casting and flaming broadswords.

Man. I can’t wait to get out of work so I can go play me some game!

After all my smack talk about the demystifying of Samus and Kratos it seems only fair that I discuss what I think works and doesn’t work in the use of silent protagonists in video games. I will discuss three types of silent protagonist: mute, secretive and reactive. On Giantbomb.com, these three types have been summed up thusly, “Mutes are characters who are recognized within the game world as people who are incapable of or unwilling to speak;…Secretive silent protagonists are a step up from mutes in complexity, in that they are essentially predefined, but are left with space for the player to insert his or her own thoughts and motivations, simply left unsaid and thus “secret”;…Reactive silent protagonists are protagonists whose actions are assumed by the game’s scripting, in spite of having no lines or dialog options.” (http://www.giantbomb.com/silent-protagonist/92-54/)

Famous mute protagonists include Jack Ryan from Bioshock and Isaac Clarke from Dead Space. The main difference between these unlucky gents is that there is or conceivably can be a reason why Jack is silent as opposed to Isaac, who is just a regular chap beset by very irregular circumstances. Jack’s head has been severely messed with by an egotistical/bug nuts crazy father figure and a shady (severe understatement) scientist. Although, Jack does give the initial voice over, he does not speak a word of audible language through out the game. In a somewhat ironic twist, Jack does not get a voice until he puts on the Big Daddy suit (and that voice is more of a moan than anything). Furthermore, when Jack dons the Big Daddy suit he must go through the voice modification process which, I believe, is a complete severing of the vocal chords. While odd that Jack can speak the game’s opening lines and nothing more, it is not out of the realm of possibilities in a submerged city, surreal alternate universe type of way. I am not bothered by Jack’s silence mainly because I have already been clued into the fact that this is a game that is not tethered to reality.  Jack is being controlled by so many different forces: Fontaine, Suchong, Ryan, Tenenbaum and the player, that is acceptable that he doesn’t have a voice or a choice.

Isaac Clarke’s silence is another matter.  Dead Space takes place in the year 2508 in this (yours and mine, reader friends) universe. Earth has chugged along to its assumed fate of 500 years in the future bereft of natural resources. Isaac’s universe is presented as the player’s universe and that is where his silence becomes a bit unrealistic and frustrating. If Isaac is just a regular human on a regular day, why doesn’t he ever tell Kendra to shut up and stop freaking out? I sure would have if I was in his gravity boots.  Why doesn’t he ever voice his opinion on Hammond’s knowledge of what was on the Ishimura? Are we saying that in 500 years humans will not feel the necessity to express themselves during periods of heightened periods of stress? How come Kendra and Hammond can yammer on but Isaac is committed to his monk-like vow of silence? In contradiction to Bioshock where the player can understand why Jack is not completely under player control, in Dead Space there is no reason why Isaac shouldn’t be thinking, speaking and reacting through player directives.

As it was Samus that started this discussion, I will use her silent ways to explore the secretive protagonist. Samus is a woman of action and, until recently, little words. The difference between Samus and the previously described mute protagonist is that her character is presented with choices inherent to the non-linear nature of the Metroid series. Samus gets a directive and either immediately follows it or goes off to explore another section in search of upgrades and newly accessible pathways.  Yes, Samus will eventually have to return to the directive but it’s not a “jump and how high” situation as in Dead Space and Bioshock. This is not to say that all Metroid players are not directed towards the same end goals but the paths may be different from player to player. In this manner, players can begin to connect to their own “Samus.” The player and Samus tangentially explore and discover the world together.  There isn’t the thought that there is someone in the universe that knows more about Samus then the player.

To that ends, it should be said that as opposed to Isaac and Jack, Samus seems to always be in control of her situation.  This sense of control, however, delineates between a survival game (everything is happening to you) from an adventure game (you are causing things to happen).  I wonder if there is a correlation there between the mute protagonist and horror/survival games.  Perhaps one day I will do some research but that’s another day and another huge blog post.

The last silent protagonist is the reactive type.  Link from the venerable Legend of Zelda series is the epitome of the silent, reactive protagonist.  In Windwaker, Tetra reacts to Link as if he makes statements but the little sound that does come out of our reticent hero adds up to a couple of grunts, sighs and yips. I have read in multiple places that Nintendo says it doesn’t want to make Link talk because it would “contradict players’ individual interpretations of the character,” but none of these quote users include citation so I don’t know how reliable the information is.  I do agree, however, with the sentiment.  Without hearing Link’s side conversations, the player is allowed to come to a spectrum of conclusions.

Players don’t have a chance to mentally change Link’s overall personality because the Zelda universe keeps him on track.  For example, it’s fairly hard to imagine Link dropping f-bombs and pushing drugs on them yeti guys.  He’s just not that guy and never will be.  Even in Twilight Princess where Hyrule gets a bit more dangerous and adult, Link still sticks to the script.  We know he is loyal, so he is not going to respond disingenuously.  We know he is heroic, so of course he is going to help the lonely lady find her rabbit-loving husband. In this manner, we can gleam the tone and type of response Link will give in almost every situation.

Others might argue that the main characters in Dragon Age are reactive, silent protagonists but I disagree.  It is true that the characters do not audibly speak, but the player chooses dialogue that translates through the secondary character reactions.  Where Dragon Age differs from other games is that the player gets to mold the personality type of their character, which seems related to the silent character in that the player imprints their own personality onto the game avatar.

Although I think the Bioshock silent protagonist is more enjoyable / understandable than the Dead Space version, I’d have to say that where both games fail is in the protagonist character development.  Both heroes take orders without missing a beat. Both heroes put themselves in immense danger for strangers and unknown loyalties. Why? As a player, I do not feel connected enough to imprint my own emotions or attitudes on the avatar. These two dumb jerks just do whatever there told and never discernibly question their directives or the outcomes of said directives. It does not surprise me that both sequels for these titles will let the protagonist speak.  I want to not that I enjoyed both games and the mute protagonist in both games seemed to lend to their cinematic quality.  In fact, I would go so far to say that both game’s sets where a bigger character than the protagonists themselves.  I look forward to both sequels.

It does not surprise me that the two other protagonists I chose to explore are Nintendo creations.  Their ability to create entire nuanced universes with minimalist tools would seem to support the use of a silent protagonist.  It does not surprise me that there are generations of gamers that identify with such tight-lipped heroes as Link, Samus and, even, Mario.  These characters “play” along with the gamer and are very effective in endearing themselves to the public.  Thus, the public responds poorly if some developers come along and mess with a player’s imagined bond with a character.

Silent protagonists can and are as effective as the speaking protagonist.  I do not have a preference between the two, as long as the protagonist type serves the experience and not the other way around.