The Cost of Gaming

I was reading "The Video Game Industry Can't Go On Like This" at Kotaku, and had some thoughts. No solutions, unfortunately, but definitely thoughts as to where I fit in all of this.

The article starts off with the cost of making a AAA game these days and eventually dives into the ecological cost of going digital, unfair labor practices, and more. While the later issues are still noteworthy, I'm going to focus on the price point of a game, the literal cost of gaming, because believe it or not, the $60 price point for a brand new console game is still cheaper than some brand new Genesis games were back in the 16-bit era, and that's not even counting for inflation. I think some of the difference is the willingness to pay that much.

When I was a younger gamer, games were shorter and I routinely played and replayed many of them. There was a time when between my brother and I we owned every RPG that had ever been released on the Genesis, so if we finished one and enjoyed it, it was only natural to play it again. I think Phantasy Star II cost us $70 split in half, but I beat it five times. (And as the first RPG on Genesis, it's not like it had a lot of competition.)

Phantasy Star IV was an even more ridiculous $100, but again, two kids splitting their allowance money in half and saving up specifically for that game could manage. And really, Phantasy Star IV was the pinnacle of Genesis RPGs. I never regretted the purchase, and I played it the first day we got it.

But something happened in college and the years following.

Games weren't that uncommon a hobby anymore. Final Fantasy became a marquee name. There were tons of games coming out, and I suddenly had income because I was now a working adult.

My backlog really began during my first year post-college, though I naively thought at the time that I would still go through games just as fast as I had when I was kid. I've since gotten over the impulse to buy every single RPG in a series I "should" have played, but it took a little time to adjust to what became my current reality.

And the reality is that there are too many games.

Everyone wants to get noticed, so developers work their butts off to make the most compelling games they can, and then they load up the DLC to stretch the success of those games as long as possible before they have to start over and make yet another game, which may or may not be a hit.

Meanwhile, I'm still sitting here with my backlog of awesome or potentially awesome games that I haven't gotten around to, so I can't justify paying full price for the latest and greatest if it's just going to be in the bargain bin by the time I get around to playing it. There's so much competition for my gaming time now. It's not just what's currently on the market that a game has to compete against, but my backlog too.

(Interestingly, because I came late to Steam, I have a zero purchased game backlog on it. I am quite adamant that I am not allowed to buy a new game on Steam until I've finished the last one, and that's kept everything remarkably under control.)

The only thing that gets me to pay full price now is a game I know I'm going to play Day 1 (which is extremely rare, maybe once every year or two) or is a title that for one reason or another I want to support (maybe it's a niche game, or part of my favorite franchise). For example, I pre-ordered Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ for both of those reasons. It's my favorite otome series, I cracked it open the day it arrived, and it's in a niche genre. The Liar Princess and the Blind Princess that I covered last week was another full price game, which I didn't quite get to Day 1, but because it's a very indie-ish game I wanted to support it.

All other games wait for a substantial price drop, which I know does the developer no favors, but there are just too many games, and I really hate getting burned when an even better deal comes along after I've had a game in my backlog. Nothing makes it worse than when a publisher releases a deluxe edition with new content and all the DLC for cheaper than what I paid for the original.

When a game wants my money, that's pretty much what it's up against; my enthusiasm for a product I know I'll love, my sense of patronage for a niche that needs the support, and my skepticism on whether I'm getting a good deal. There are very few games that fall into the first category (maybe 1-2 a year), by its nature the majority of games cannot be in the second category, which means that most games, even though I enjoy them quite a bit, fall into the third category where I simply wait for a good price break and take my chances.

The Kotaku article mentions that the major publishers no longer publish nearly as many games in a year as they used to, and I think that's become a necessity as costs rise. If they want an AAA game, the bar is so high that it's no longer practical to develop several at once. It's better to get a good solid hit and then ride that gravy train through as much DLC as possible.

And fewer releases is probably a good thing. I'd like to think that studios will take additional time to make sure a game is "right" before releasing it (better not to make a bad situation worse by releasing a steaming pile of crap that could have been salvageable with a few more months of development).

For someone like me, fewer releases also means there's a higher chance I'll be able to pay attention when a new game comes out. I might never be convinced to buy a Call of Duty game, but I'd be more open to say a God of War if I had room in my backlog.

Right now the game industry is drowning in so much content that I can't keep up. I love gaming, that's why I blog about it when I have no writing-related announcements, and it sucks having to prioritize which games I'm going to get to. It was so much simpler when I was a kid and there weren't many choices, but most of those choices were solid regardless.

I'd like to think that the nature of the AAA beast will make it more likely that mass market games will be of good quality (or quickly patched up to that), and for those who are looking for more niche games, smaller publishers and indies exist. Granted, it's very hard for an indie publisher to get visibility, but if they work in a niche and show up where gamers of that niche are likely to be found, they still have a chance to be discovered.

That's how I ended up playing Valentines Otome last year, and that's not the only indie visual novel I've played or am currently following. For instance, I'm currently in the middle of When the Night Comes, which is an episodic romance visual novel with new installments coming out every few months. (Not sure how I'll ever do a VN Talk for it unless it's got an end point somewhere.)

I suppose indies could still flood the market leaving me with once again too much content to devour, but I think the nature of the beast tends to make indies shorter playthroughs, and since they're almost exclusively digital I don't feel the urge to buy them on a sale cycle. They'll be there when I'm finally free (or interested enough) to play them, or not.

Anyway, I want to thank everyone who participated in my poll for my next RPG/VN Talk. That survey is now closed, and the winner is Final Fantasy XV. I've already started playing and you can follow along on Twitter where I'm @writerrat.

Over the next six weeks I'll be running through my VN Talk series for Bad Apple Wars, and I figure that should give me enough time to finish going through Final Fantasy XV. If you'd like a heads up for when the next RPG/VN Talk Readers Pick is going to be, follow me on Ko-fi. You can do that without putting a tip in the figurative jar, though if you want to, please do!

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince

A look at the story for this year's The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince.

Platform: PS4 (also on Switch)
Release: 2019

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince falls outside of my usual gaming preferences in that it's a puzzle-platformer, and while I like puzzles, generally speaking I hate platformers (because my coordination sucks and jumping across moving platforms is the bane of my existence). But I really liked the premise and that despite its platforming genre it primarily focuses around its story, which is why it's one of the few non-RPGs, non-visual novels I'll be covering on my blog.

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is about a wolf who gives up her singing voice to transform into a human princess and help the prince she accidentally blinded. On their journey she slowly falls in love with the prince, and comes to realize that her true self could never be with him.

Fortunately, the platforming in Liar Princess is fairly easy for these types of games, so I gave it a shot and was able to play through the entire game (which means I struggled with the last level, but I was able to finish it).

Be warned, there are spoilers below.

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is a bit of a riff on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid." It opens with the wolf singing in the forest on top of a cliff, and unusually, one night she discovers she has an audience. The prince can't see her from down below, but applauds because he loves her music. Surprised by this, the wolf decides not to eat him.

This goes on for several nights, until one night, after a performance, the wolf doesn't hear him applaud. Instead, she discovers that he's been climbing up the cliff to get a look at her. Afraid that he would hate her if he saw that she was a monster, she tries to cover his eyes once he gets close. Unfortunately she miscalculates and claws out his eyes instead. Worse, the prince falls off the cliff from her unintended attack. When she grabs him with her claws, he panics, thinking a monster is trying to eat him, and forces her to let go.

He's then brought back home by one of his kingdom's soldiers and the wolf learns that he's been isolated by his parents who are ashamed to have a disfigured son. Feeling guilty, the wolf wants to take him to the witch of the forest who can cure the prince, but he would never let her lead him there as a wolf, because if he touched her, he would only feel the monster who had hurt him. She goes to the witch alone first and trades away her most precious possession, her singing voice, so that she can become human and lead the prince there so he can be healed. The wolf is also informed that whenever she steps into moonlight her true form will be revealed.

Now as the titular "liar princess," the wolf visits the prince and pretends to be a princess from a neighboring kingdom who has come to help him.

The art style is simple, but expressive, allowing the audience to easily understand what the two characters are going through. Throughout their journey, the princess leads the prince around obstacles and enemies, shapeshifting from princess to wolf and back again. And it's a nice touch in that the player often has to hold the prince's hand in order to lead him where to go. He always looks a little lost without her, and smiles when they touch. Notably, it is not possible to hold his hand while a wolf, and if the princess enters moonlight during gameplay (not as part of the story) she will let go of him.

Their story is presented with a fairy tale sensibility, so it never really does a deep dive into what is realistic and what ought to make sense. It helps that the prince is a little naive, so he doesn't particularly question which kingdom the princess is from or any of her strange habits, which is good since she doesn't hide the fact she eats raw meat, rejoices in finding dead bodies to eat, and seems to have an abject fear of fire.

To be honest, the prince isn't the brightest bulb in the first place, going to a forest full of monsters just because he heard some lovely singing, but his complete and utter trust in the fundamental goodness of the people (actually monsters) that the pair meet along the way has a softening effect on the princess.

Being a predator she's used to being on the top of the food chain, and would have happily killed a family of monstrous goats for dinner, but when the goats complain about starving, the prince convinces her to find them some food instead, and after the goats are fed she leaves without killing them. The father goat is curious about why she is keeping a human around though, and if she intends for him to be a source of emergency rations. This forces the wolf to evaluate just what the prince means to her.

As the story progresses, the wolf discovers how much she enjoys traveling with the prince, and the two of them have a grand adventure together. She shares with him that she was the one whose singing he enjoyed so much, but since she gave up her singing voice to become a princess, she can no longer sing to prove she is the performer he had been looking for, nor can she tell him what she truly is, because the truth would destroy whatever relationship they have.

It's easy to understand the wolf's ongoing deception. What might have started as a way to make amends becomes increasingly complicated the more she wants to have a future with the prince, and without her ability to sing she can't explain her original circumstances. The wolf as she is, simply looks like an opportunistic interloper and the prince makes it pretty clear that he is terrified of the monster that attacked him.

And it's not as though she doesn't try. She really would like the prince to be able to understand who and what she is. It's the very normal fear of rejection that holds her back.

The game is not kind to the wolf, forcing her to grapple with the fact that humans and monsters have never gotten along and that it might not be possible for her to protect the prince as much as she'd like if she can only touch him while she is a princess.

Eventually, no matter how hard the princess tries to hide who she is, she lets down her guard, and ends up holding the prince's hand when a brief shaft of moonlight lands on them. That's all that's needed to turn her arm back into a wolf's and the prince finds himself holding on to a monster.

In a scene mirroring the opening, she tries to save his life when he accidentally falls off a cliff to get away from her, but he chooses to fall rather than be dragged up by a monster (who he still assumes is out to eat him).

This last act is probably the weakest because the big reveal about the wolf's identity has already happened. It opens with the wolf trying to find and save the prince as the witch's forest burns down around them due to the fire started by the prince's lantern. He is surprised that the wolf comes to get him since she had to overcome her natural fear of fire to do, but decides to trust her again pretty quickly, even though she's not given the time to tell him the full story of what happened and what she went through (not even how she gave up her singing voice for him in the first place).

Instead the pair put her deception behind them so they can focus on finding the witch and apologizing to her (with the understanding that she can fix everything, even the fire, if she just calms down). The forest fire levels are honestly more puzzle platforming and less story, which is probably fine for the genre, but I would have liked a little more since the pair pretty much put everything about their relationship on hold until the witch becomes rational again.

And once she does, we're at the ending.

Though the prince tries to stop her, the wolf pays again to restore the prince's eyes as she has wanted to do the whole time, and this costs her both her memories of the prince and her ability to take human form.

Some indeterminate time later, the wolf resumes her nighttime habit of singing at the moon, though she doesn't know why since she's terrible at it. The prince, having learned absolutely nothing in the way of survival instincts, has not forgotten her though, and climbs up the very cliff where he got blinded in the first place and gives her a bouquet of flowers, saying that he has come to see her again. He calls her "Princess" just as he had when they were travelling together.

Thankfully the wolf reverses her midnight snack assessment of him, and they rekindle their friendship, but now she no longer has to hide from her audience. As the game says "...although the singing was not great, it was filled with warmth and honesty..."

It was a very sweet ending and I like that even though they reunited, the wolf doesn't get her memory back, which would undo the sacrifice she had made in the first place. And there's something touching about seeing the two of them sitting side by side as the little wobbly notes of her new voice grace the screen.

I hope you've enjoyed this look at The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince, and if you haven't already voted for what I'll cover in an upcoming RPG or VN Talk, there's still time to take the survey for the Reader's Choice game I'll play from my backlog while I'm recovering from surgery. It should be open for at least another day or two after this post goes live.

"Unfilial Child" is Featured Story at Curious Fictions

First, I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me in support over the past week. The well wishes and assistance are greatly appreciated that. I will be going into surgery this Wednesday, and hopefully all will be well with my recovery.

As mentioned last week, I am beefing up my Curious Fictions presence with three new stories. The free one, "Unfilial Child," is in fact the featured story for this week! So if you haven't already taken a look, please do.

"Living Rooms" and "The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang" are also readable for a token subscription cost.

The next subscriber story should be going live on the 21st (unless surgery leaves me too tired to hit the publish button), and that will be my space pirate novelette "Between Earth and Exile." Alexa escaped a conquered Earth as a teenager, living with other human exiles on the Bloodborne and surviving as a raider in a galaxy now hostile to humanity. But her family is still back on Earth, and she has a plan to rescue them.

I'm going to try lightening my blog load during my recovery, so next week's post is already queued up and should go up automatically next Monday without any input from me. I hope you'll enjoy my look at the story for the puzzle-platformer The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince.

I'll also be playing a new RPG or visual novel during my recovery period. If you'd like to vote for what I cover in a later RPG or VN Talk, please take the survey. The primary criteria for what games I placed on the list is that they have to be games I already have in my backlog and have not yet played.

Health Issues and Supporting My Writing

Hi everyone,

I've been keeping my blog mostly about my writing and my games, which is the way I like it, but I feel it's time to take a break here and talk about other things, which is part of why the blog has been a little bumpy this year.

Earlier this year I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and while we caught it early and it's treatable, it's put me in an uncomfortable position financially. I am extremely fortunate in that my writing earned enough this year to make a difference in being able to pay for my treatment, but just when I thought I was out of the woods, I found additional unexpected medical expenses.

I don't have the stamina to do any kind of centralized crowdfunding like GoFundMe, so what I'd like is a chance to earn your money. If ever you've enjoyed my work and/or wished there was something you could do for me, now is the time. I've arranged a few things so that if my fiction or blogging has entertained you, you have two ways to support me:

Curious Fictions (via tips and/or subscription)
Ko-Fi (one time tips in increments of $3)

If you've enjoyed my short fiction, you'll find that I've recently added three stories to my collection on Curious Fictions. "Unfilial Child" has been offline for months ever since Great Jones Street folded, but now it's online for free (though you can still tip me if you like it!). In addition to that, I've added my Writers of the Future grand prize winning story "Living Rooms" and "The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang," the latter of which has never appeared in any online venue. Both "Living Rooms" and "The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang" are paid $1 reads, or free to subscribers.

Subscribers get subscriber-only content for as little as $2/month. In addition to the two stories already up, for the next two months I'll add additional subscriber-only reprints at rate of one every two weeks, so there are at least four in the pipeline, and none are currently available for free. I'd like to make Curious Fictions close to a one-stop shop for my previously published fiction so dedicated readers can find my short fiction where they like without having to run around collecting random magazines and anthologies.

As an added bonus, I will also run an unpublished novelette of mine, "Jack of Spades," as a serial and this will be the only way to read it. This story is near and dear to college age me, but I'm afraid in a post-Hunger Games world it looks mostly derivative rather than something I wrote before Hunger Games was published, so this is the ideal place for it to see the light of day.

I'll consider writing new content specifically for Curious Fictions subscribers if this proves popular!

As for the other way to support me, particularly if you're a reader of my blog rather than my fiction (or you're really just out to make my day), you can tip me at Ko-fi. Ko-fi doesn't have recurring payments, but operates more like a tip jar where you can tip me the cost of a cup of coffee (or in multiples thereof). You can do it as little or as often as you like and everything you put in goes straight to me, save Paypal's cut. I set a target goal where if we hit it, I'll do a reader's choice RPG or Visual Novel Talk on my blog, but as a catch-all donation jar there's nothing fiction related attached to it.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope to provide more fiction and fun in the months to come.