All Aboard the Bloat Boat

Years ago, there was a time when my friends and I would have conversations about hard drives and say stuff like, "It's a whole gigabyte? What would someone do with all that space?!?" Now, a good 20 years later it's all about the terabytes. Huge, hulking drives with what seems like enough space to keep any sensible person happy for years. However, when one looks at the steadily bulging sizes of a lot of major game releases that come out each year, it's hard not to wonder if even these new technical marvels' days are already numbered.

It's only been over the last year that I've really begun to take notice of this trend, starting with the PC release of Final Fantasy XIII. When I perused the specs for the game on its Steam page, I noticed that it requires a 60GB download. Even with all of the fancy cut scenes and dual Japanese / English voice acting, that's a pretty bitter pill to swallow, and required some creative uninstalling to make space for it. Sure, we get slightly less annoying dialogue from Vanille, Hope, and Snow, but it comes at a very high cost.

Final Fantasy is by no means alone, though. There are plenty of other games that are sporting some rather hefty downloads. Titles like Wolfenstein: The New Order (50GB), Elder Scrolls Online (85GB), Grand Theft Auto V (65GB), and Batman: Arkham Knight (55GB) are but a few examples of the bloat we're beginning to see in terms of how much hard drive space games are beginning to gobble up.

Granted, all of the games that I've mentioned are of the AAA variety. Those that have little to no interest in that sort of thing aren't really affected. Nonetheless, there's still a substantial number of people who do like them, and are being impacted by this.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a 50GB goliath.

To an extent, growing game sizes makes sense. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, it's something that has been happening for years. With each leap forward in technology, we've seen games' graphics get better, but it comes at the cost of bigger files. Now, as this process has continued for 30 years or so we're at this point where the files in question are gargantuan.

That being said, when I look at some of the other recent titles to come out that have had some very high fidelity visuals, they haven't suffered from quite the same bloat as the traditional AAA games have. One just needs to look at something like The Witcher III or Elite: Dangerous. Both have been released only in the last year, have stunning visuals, and yet they've managed to avoid the 50GB+ club. This in mind, it does begin to bring into question what some of these other studios are doing when making their games. Is there a certain level of sloppiness in the coding that is contributing to this bloat?

Elite: Dangerous looks gorgeous, yet manages to clock in
at only 7GB.

At least on the PC gaming side of things we can readily address the issue simply by installing a bigger hard drive. This will at least make sure there is enough space to accommodate these games. However, unless you go with one that is solid state, there will still be hurdles, that being the thing's writing speed. HDDs are quite slow when it comes to this, and installing one of these mammoth-sized games on such hardware takes some time. When I was installing Final Fantasy XIII, I pretty much couldn't do anything else with that computer once the process got into full swing. Adding insult to injury was having to wait over two hours for everything to complete. It's a bit of a drag having to deal with something like that. Obviously, over time SSD will come down in price, the process has already started, but as it stands, the technology is still more of a luxury than anything else for a number of people. Even when it does become affordable to the masses and we don't have to deal with sluggish write times anymore, it won't change the fact that these games are massive storage hogs that only seem to be getting bigger.

This doesn't even take into account the console side of things. Those have some pretty small hard drives that can fill up fast. It is possible to replace them, though much easier on the PS4 than the Xbox One by most accounts. The question is how many people out there will actually do this. I'm sure the majority of those reading this article have the technical wherewithall to do such a swap in their sleep. However, when it comes to the general public, I'm not so sure. How many people in that group will upgrade their console HDDs? I can't imagine them doing so en masse.

Grand Theft Auto 5 gobbles up 65GB
on PC.

Whether one has the means and knowledge to upgrade their hard drive, be it on a PC or console, there's one area where they will likely have far less control: their ISP. With games shifting so heavily to digital distribution they're going to have to get downloaded from somewhere, and that means bandwidth consumption. In my neck of the woods, this is a serious concern. Plans top off around 400-500GB transfer per month, and it comes at a fairly hefty price tag. More common plans average about half of that. So, if someone wants to download even a couple of these massive games, they could well have eaten up half or more of their allotted bandwidth for the month. If someone streams a lot of movies, downloads various other things, and generally makes thorough use of their internet connection on a regular basis, they could suddenly find themselves hitting their bandwidth cap and being throttled or paying additional fees after.

All of this being said, I have to wonder if the growing install size of modern games will be a problem that is corrected on its own. It's hard to imagine this not impacting purchasing decisions. I know I'm thinking twice before buying a game now, taking the time to look at its specs and make sure of just how much hard drive space the thing is going to take. If it's over 25GB I stop and give the game some very serious thought before proceeding. In many cases, I actually don't buy it, or at least put it off for quite some time. Sure, I'm missing out on an experience, but I also don't have to rearrange a small army of other games in order to make space for that big one. Moreover, it alleviates having to worry about going over my bandwidth limit for the month.

Elders Scrolls Online takes a whopping 85GB of storage space.

It wouldn't surprise me if others are doing likewise, and this may well help to force developers to examine how they're making their games. Should sales begin to take a hit because games are getting to darn big, they'll have to sit down and take a look at what they're doing and find a way to address the issue. The sad thing is that I don't see this happening any time soon. For now, we're just going to have to suffer through these massive installs, and get creative with managing hard drive space and our monthly bandwidth.

The Frustrating Case of Koei Tecmo PC Ports

Toukiden: Kiwami is the latest example of Koei Tecmo's inability to make
decent PC ports.

From a fairly young age, I developed an interest in series like Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was probably some time in the late 80s when I picked up the former on a whim at the video rental place near my house.  Something about it just looked interesting, managing a small pocket of Japan and trying to expand, hopefully conquering the entire country. Over the following years, I made a point of familiarizing myself with Koei, trying out subsequent games in these series, and other offerings they brought to the West over the years like Gemfire.

So, when discussion came about a few years back that Koei Tecmo were thinking of making an effort to bring their games to PC on these shores, I was pretty excited. Their strategy games have been released on the platform in Asian markets for years, and the company was even looking at bringing their action games from Tecmo over this way as well.  It was something that I'd always hoped for, but was a bit skeptical that it would ever happen.

The mighty legions of the Dynasty Warrior cult will ensure
the series is a moderate success on PC at least.

Then the games started to make landfall here...and their quality was consistently poor to mediocre with a cringe-worthy price tag slapped on them for good measure. It's flabbergasting that this company has done such a poor job of porting these games and made all the more galling since these are often games that should otherwise be pretty fun, have a decent fan base, and could do quite well for themselves on PC if only they ran better on the platform.

By now, publishers and developers should know full well that a sizable number of PC gamers have certain technical expectations of games, and 60 FPS is one of them. Just look at the amount of backlash a game will get if its locked at 30 when it comes out on something like Steam. The game gets inundated with thumbs down ratings and angry comments which can sometimes damage a game's reputation for the long term even if the developers turn around and patch it to support the higher frame rate. Even then, we're lucky to get that as it often comes down to fans making patches of their own in order to deal with it. If the game's speed is fixed to its frame rate, well, good luck with that!

On top of this, it's not fair to assume that everyone with a PC is going to run out and get a gamepad, let alone an Xbox 360-styled one. There are a lot of people out there who are quite content to stick with their keyboard and mouse setup, yet we see countless ports come along with incredibly half-assed support for these.  It may say that the game can be played via kb/m, but it often turns into an unintuitive, and sometimes unresponsive mess. In particularly frustrating cases, the on-screen key prompts for actions and menu options will actually show the 360 controller buttons instead of their keyboard and mouse equivalents. It's like the game is saying to players, "We didn't actually think you guys would really use a keyboard..."

It may surprise you to learn that
fighting game fans like playing online.

Sadly, Koei Tecmo has been guilty of both of these issues and more. Dead or Alive 5 had no online multiplayer at launch, which is pretty darn important for a fighting game in this day and age. The company is apparently working to fix this, but in all likelihood, the game's player-base is gone and it's not coming back. Even more shocking is that the company has been releasing some of the recent Nobunaga games on Steam's North American store without even bothering to translate them into English. It's just insulting to see something like that. Why even release it here if you can't be bothered to localize it.

Still more outrageous is that the company thinks we're willing to pay top dollar for these games, as they regularly debut on Steam at around $60US, maybe with a 10 percent pre-order discount. Who do these people think they are? There are very few games that justify that price point as it is, and mediocre ports aren't among them.

Admittedly, there have been a decent number of cases where Japanese publishers have stumbled while making their way onto the PC platform, and I think the majority of PC gamers have been pretty understanding about the whole thing. It's something that these companies haven't really done before, and in a lot of cases they've been learning as they go. In the case of some companies we've seen steady, albeit gradual, improvement as they release more and more games on the platform.

Not even bothering to translate a game getting a Western release into
English has to be a new low.

Not so with Koei Tecmo. The consistently substandard quality of their PC ports has been truly disappointing to such an extent that I think they may irreparably poison their brand in PC gaming circles if they don't sit down and seriously look at improving quality when bringing games to the platform. There comes a point when goodwill runs out, and that time may be coming soon for this company. They've been fortunate to have a small, dedicated group of die hard fans shouting that we're lucky to be seeing these games come to PC at all, but who wants to listen to a bunch of people suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

I genuinely feel bad for the people who have to promote the company's games in the West. They must surely know that these ports just aren't very good, and the price Koei Tecmo is asking for them is way too high. Nonetheless, they still have to crack a smile and tell people these games are good buys. Sadly, they are not. PC gamers have certain expectations and they aren't being met. In this day and age, publishers should be well aware that they'll be crucified if they don't at least get the frame rate up to 60, and have decent keyboard and mouse controls. It would also be nice if games released in North America were actually in English. I mean come on. Koei Tecmo can't seem to do any of this. It's unacceptable, and, even worse, very frustrating because they actually are capable of making some very good games, and I think a lot of people would have quite a bit of fun with them if only the ports were handled with a bit more respect.

The Tired, Bastardized Practice of Exclusivity

Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity has ruffled
some feathers.

Last week, Microsoft and Square-Enix made some waves when it was announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be a timed exclusive for the Xbox One. Many a gamer cried fowl, and it's been a parade of interviews ever since by various executives and developers to paint a narrative that this is somehow a good thing.

Traditionally, when I think about exclusivity, it's more to do with a developer or publisher deciding to put a game on a specific platform because they see something special in the system whereby it makes more sense to either make it the only one it shows up on, or at least the lead platform. Be it market dominance, player-base idiosyncrasies, or specifics to the hardware, in these circumstance at least the people making the game are looking at a set of variables and choosing on their own to make a game for that system based on its merits. What we're seeing here with the whole Rise of the Tomb Raider kerfuffle reeks far more of a return to the bad old days of money hatting.

When Stories Happen on Their Own

Everquest had its own stories, but the
best were those created while
playing with friends.

For the last 30 years, stories have played a big part in video games. It all started as the industry transitioned out of high score focused content a la Pac Man, Frogger, et al, and into saving princess / the world / the universe. Sometimes they could be pretty simple like in Super Mario Bros. where players helped Mario rescue Princess Peach from Bowser, other times things could be a lot more sophisticated with RPGs and adventure games leading the charge.

This has continued to the current day, but all of these have been pre-written stories laden with scripted events, dialog trees, and the like. There's a fairly fixed path laid out before the player with only so many options available to them as to how they can progress, which is a natural outcome of having a game that goes for a passive form of storytelling in the same vein as film or literature. It's been the staple of how narratives unfold in games for decades now, but things have slowly started to change as online multiplayer has cemented itself in the medium. New types of stories are starting to unfold in games, often events that developers never expected for their creations. It's happening as players make their own stories organically by naturally making their way through a game. While still in its infancy, the trend is picking up steam, and making for some very interesting experiences.

The Weekly Checkpoint 9

It's time for our weekly round up of gaming news.  This week was pretty slow as we are in the No Big News portion of the run up to E3, but we did talk a bit more about current goings on with Diablo III, as well as the the unfortunate demise of 38 Studios.  Also, you can all laugh at how badly I'm playing Disciples II in the gameplay footage that accompanies this podcast-y thingamajig!