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- 28 Sep 2002
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Although I love this industry to death, it seems like every year, someone, whether it's a single individual, publisher, or developer, stumbles. Hey, it happens to everyone. So, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I'm proud to present the Warshaw Awards for 2003.
Before I get to the awards themselves, a few words about the person these awards are named after. Howard Scott Warshaw was one of the great developers back in the Atari days. He was the author of two excellent titles: Raiders of the Lost Ark and the classic Yar's Revenge. Sadly, he's mostly remembered for his third game: E.T. for the Atari 2600. Yes, Scott Warshaw, is the author of the game that is considered by many to be the worst of all time. Some people even blame E.T. for single handedly causing the industry crash that followed its release (although that's a serious exaggeration as far as I'm concerned). Just like Howard, there were plenty of bad moves made this year. Here's a list (which is no doubt far from complete) of some of the worst missteps of the year.
One quick note: I asked for suggestions from Shack readers, and I got quite a few of them, many of which you'll see below. However, I skipped ones that weren't genuinely stupid acts. So you won't see anything about the Star Wars Galaxies launch (hey, all MMORPGs have problems at launch...even if some people think it was the worst launch ever, most did not) or even Steam, Valve's new content delivery service. And you certainly won't find Duke Nukem Forever mentioned here, because...well, let's face it. If Duke surfaced anywhere in 2003, it wasn't anywhere I was looking. And this is, after all, the 2003 Warshaw awards, not the 1997 awards.
Anyway, let's get to it.
The *groan* Not Again Award
Winner: Nintendo
Nintendo made a few cringe-worthy moves this past year, but nothing was more embarrassing than their two attempts at pushing the "Mario Party". First with a truly cornball press release announcing that Mario would be dropping out of the California gubernatorial recall election, and then with an embarrassing announcement that Mario would be running for president, with a platform of "All fun, no politics." Here's an excerpt:
REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 2003--Promising "pasta in every pot," and "Nintendo GameCube(TM) systems in every home," video game pioneer Mario(TM) announced his bid for the U.S. presidency today and encouraged his supporters to join the Mario Party.
Some scholars wondered whether Mario could overcome the constitutional hurdles facing his candidacy. For starters, they noted, Mario was not born in the United States, and is short of the constitutionally mandated 35 years. However, Mario, who routinely overcomes hurdles with a series of flip-flops worthy of any politician (as most recently evidenced in the new game for Nintendo GameCube, Mario Party(R) 5) remained undaunted by critics.
" With the many actors getting into politics recently, I thought, 'Hey, I'm more entertaining than many of them', not to mention, I'm a lot more animated," Mario says. "Anyone who gets involved with the Mario Party knows that it's all about nonstop action and fun."
Oy. Hopefully, with Mario Party 5 already on store shelves, we won't have to suffer through another one of these next year.
The "Way to go, dumbass" Award
Winner: The Half-Life 2 Hacker
Some enterprising hacker thought it would be a good idea to electronically worm his way into Valve's network and make off with the Half-Life 2 source code. The result? We didn't get Half-Life 2 this year. Now granted, we have no way of knowing if this is the only reason for the delay (despite what some very vocal fans and conspiracy theorists might claim). But one thing's for sure: it didn't help. And it may very well have pushed the game back by as much as six months. Bravo, good sir. Bravo.
The "Wha...? Where am I?" Award
Winner: David Duchovny
Actor David Duchovny is hardly what one would call a particularly...natural sounding actor to begin with, but even that doesn't explain his somnambulistic performance in XIII. I've played a lot of games in my day, and I've had to sit through some truly awful acting, but this is quite possibly the worst I've ever heard from a mainstream actor (and I'm including Kirk Cameron's performance in The Horde when I say that). How bad is it? Let me put it this way: Duchovny gets upstaged by Adam West. Adam. West. Yeah, it's that bad. There's so little dialogue in the game from the main character (voiced by Duchovny) that one has to wonder how it could have turned out this awful. When read start to finish, the script for that character couldn't have been more than 30 minutes long (if even half that), so the only rationale is that Duchovny woke up, drove to the studio, quickly ran through the lines and was never heard from again. Considering that Ubisoft is the same publisher that delivered a virtuoso performance in Splinter Cell from Michael Ironside, it seems insane that they would capitulate to such a thing. But whatever the reason, this game should be held as the hallmark for lazy voiceover work (in any medium) for years to come.
The De-Evolution Award
Winner: Namco
Going against all logic, Namco this year decided to spit in the face of Ridge Racer fans worldwide by producing R: Racing Evolution. While R isn't a bad game by any means, it eschews virtually everything that Ridge Racer fans had come to expect, and instead attempted to emulate Gran Turismo -- which it failed to do in every way possible. If this is the evolution of racing, I can only hope there's some divine intervention to keep it from heading in this direction.
The Lost in Translation Award
Winner: Rockstar Games
The PC and Xbox versions of Max Payne 2 are solid games, with fairly decent framerates. In the case of the PC version, that ran perfectly on my aging GeForce 4200, so clearly a good attempt was made to get it to work with older video cards. And Rockstar, with the Grand Theft Auto titles and now Manhunt, has clearly proven that they know how to make a decent PS2 game. So what the heck happened with the PS2 port of Max Payne 2? Unlike the other two versions, this one has a seriously erratic framerate, and obscenely long load times. The gameplay's intact, but you'll have to suffer through quite a bit of sloppiness in order to appreciate it.
The Head Buried in the Sand Award
Winner: Nintendo
Here's a funny statistic for you: Sega released more online-capable games for the Saturn than Nintendo has for the GameCube. Now you could certainly argue that this is as good a proof as any that online gaming isn't a sustainable business model, since the Saturn didn't exactly thrive thanks to sales of the NetLink adapter. But that was over six years ago, and Sega was willing to take a chance where Nintendo has steadfastly refused to, and it's not like Nintendo couldn't use the added prestige of having a great online service. Come to think of it, the NetLink offered a heck of a lot more than the GameCube, including web surfing (which, let's face it, wasn't very good, but it was there!), live chats, a handful of supported games (including Bomberman, Duke 3D and Virtual-On) and even the ability to trade save game files. That's not bad considering that it was a 28.8 modem and retailed for over $100 (if I remember correctly, it debuted at $200 and then dropped pretty quickly).
Nintendo's anti-online stance would be easier to accept if they weren't so blatantly experimenting with networked gaming. The fact that Mario Kart: Double Dash and Kirby's Air Ride both support LAN play is just a slap in the face for any would-be online gamers. Would it really kill Nintendo to throw together a peer-to-peer system for playing those games online? Thankfully the Warp Pipe project is facilitating online gaming via a shared broadband connection, but that shouldn't be necessary.
The Let's Start Off on the Wrong Foot Award
Winner: Square Enix
As I said above, all massively multiplayer RPGs have a rough start, but it's tough to ignore one of Square's problems: you can't pick your starting server. It gets chosen randomly, and the only way to switch is by purchasing a "World Pass" from your starting server. That means if you and a bunch of friends want to play together, you're either forced to randomly recreate your characters until you all wind up on the right server, or wait until one of you has enough money to purchase enough passes to move you over. Of course, in doing so, that character will inevitably become much more powerful than the rest of you. I'll admit to being ignorant of the intricacies of MMORPGs, but doesn't this seem a bit unnecessarily complicated?
The "Won't somebody please think of the children?" Award
Winner: Washington State Statute HB1009
Although it never went into effect, (District Judge Robert Lasnik blocked it before the July 27th start date due to questions regarding its constitutionality), Washington State did become the first in the union to pass a bill restricting video game sales to minors. While the necessity of such a bill is questionable, and everyone's entitled to their opinions, this particular bill deserves a mention because of how specific it was about the content of the games it applied to. Take a look at the exact definition of a violent game, according to statute HB1009:
A violent video or computer game is defined as a video or computer game which contains realistic or photographic-like depictions of aggressive conflict in which the player kills, injures, or otherwise causes physical harm to a human form which appears to be a law enforcement officer.
That's right, the only games it would have applied to games in which one commits acts of aggression against virtual police officers. While this would certainly have included Grand Theft Auto, it also would have applied to Enter the Matrix and plenty of other "T" rated games, while not covering much more violent titles. Regardless of your feelings on the general subject of limiting game sales to minors, this was a pretty stupid bill. Considering that any law limiting books or movies based on their treatment of police officers would have been laughed out of any court, it's something of a relief that this was blocked as quickly as it was.
The "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" Award
Winner: Mucky Foot, Computer Artworks, Lost Toys, Silicon Dreams, Attention to Detail, etc.
This was not a good year to work at a UK-based development studio. For various reasons, including the changing landscape of the industry and the rising costs of game development, a handful of major developers in the UK were forced to close their doors. It's certainly not due to any specific screwup on their part, so this award serves only to point out that some great developers are now on the unemployment lines. Good luck out there, gents.
The "Do you think they'll notice?" Award
Winner: Sony
With mere days to go before the release of the PSX, Sony announced that they were dropping several of the previously announced features from their ubersystem. Taking it down a peg or three were the significantly slower (and one might say more realistic) DVD burning speeds, but much more notable is the incompatibility with Sony's own PS2 BB network and the lack of support for MP3s. The result? Analysts proclaimed it the entire system a "publicity stunt" and it's become painfully obvious that it's much cheaper to just buy a standalone DVD player and TiVo. Nicely done.
The Much Too Easily Offended Award
Winner: Paul Gibson, Australian State Labor MP
Quick: what was the most offensive game of the year? Manhunt? Postal 2? GTA: Vice City? Would you believe, Project Gotham Racing 2? In an embarrassing move, Australian State Labor MP and head of the StaySafe committee Paul Gibson announced plans last month to put pressure on the Office of Film and Literature Classification to ban Microsoft's Project Gotham Racing 2. In his own words, "This game sends the wrong message to young people. It is actually glorifying speed and power...It is clearly an inappropriate depiction of speed behaviour. If I had my way I would ban it." I guess it's a good thing it's not up to you then, isn't it?
The Throw the Baby Out With the Bath Water Award
Winner: Ubisoft
Many fans of Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield were shocked to discover that after installing the latest patch, the game won't run at all if you have any kind of virtual drive software installed. That means if you use Daemon Tools, CloneCD or Alcohol 120%, regardless of whether or not you use them for legitimate reasons (of which there are many), you're out of luck. Naturally, fans of the series aren't taking this sitting down, but Ubisoft claims this is well within the EULA gamers agreed to when they installed the game. Still, one has to wonder if it's such a good idea to penalize gamers because they're running software that could theoretically be used to circumvent copy protection.
The Token N-Gage Award
Winner: Nokia
Nokia released the N-Gage this year. Go read my review for a detailed run-through of why this in and of itself deserves a mention among the worst missteps of the year. There's far too much to bother mentioning here, although a special nod goes out to the Nokia PR reps, who have done an admirable job of pretending they're immune to the overwhelmingly bad press they've gotten since its release.
Why exactly did Nokia want people to talk this way?
The Save Costs by Killing Off Your Best Asset Award
Winner: Interplay
Last week it was revealed that Interplay (who for reasons unknown to me is still alive and kicking), has canceled Fallout 3 and dismantled what remained of the once great Black Isle Studios. Instead, Fallout fans can look forward to Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a game that is nearly identically named to Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, but is in fact totally different, and will be released for PS2 and Xbox. Platforms, it should be pointed out, which the earlier Fallout titles have never been released on. Meanwhile PC gamers, who are the real market for the franchise, have nothing to look forward to. Good job, Interplay. Good luck pulling out of that financial nosedive.
The "WTF!?" Award
Winner: Electronic Arts
Like some kind of Bizzaro-world reversal of Nintendo, Electronic Arts shocked PC buyers of Need for Speed: Underground when they discovered, against all possible logic, that while the game does support online gameplay, it has no LAN support. Leading, as you might imagine, gamers to scratch their heads and yell "WTF!?" to the rafters. One really has to wonder what the heck happened here. I mean, there have been lots of games that support LAN play but not online, since on a LAN latency isn't an issue. But if there's already support for external networks, wouldn't playing locally be much easier to support? Just imagine the fans who show up to a LAN party, only to discover that the only way to play the game is to go through an external network connection just to join a server sitting right next to them. Oh, EA. You're so crazy.
The Two All-Beef Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese... Award
Winner: IGN McSpy
Here at Shacknews, we can certainly relate to the difficulties people run into with online advertising. That said, even we couldn't help laughing at IGN's obscene McDonald's advertising campaign. For a week, the entire site was overrun with ads for McDonald's new McGriddle breakfast sandwich. Everywhere you looked on the site, it was McDonald's this, McGriddle that. McGameCube. McPS2, McXbox. Mmmm...McGameCube. That's not to say we're so far above this sort of thing. Never forget: here at The Shack, we do chicken right.
Believe it or not, this is an undoctored photo (thanks Degenerate and menkey for the image).
The Cheaters Never Win Award
Winner: NVIDIA
Although NVIDIA would like to pretend none of this actually happened, NVIDIA got caught red handed earlier this year when Futuremark published a report pointing out that NVIDIA was using "detection mechanisms" to unfairly increase performance in 3DMark03. Here's a quote from Futuremark's report:
In our testing, all identified detection mechanisms stopped working when we altered the benchmark code just trivially and without changing any of the actual benchmark workload. With this altered benchmark, NVIDIAs certain products had a performance drop of as much as 24.1% while competitions products performance drop stayed within the margin of error of 3%. To our knowledge, all drivers with these detection mechanisms were published only after the launch of 3DMark03. According to industrys terminology, this type of driver design is defined as driver cheats.
That's kind of sleezy. But what followed wasn't any better. First NVIDIA started badmouthing Futuremark in retaliation, and reportedly threatened legal action unless the offending report was taken down (it wasn't). Then NVIDIA joined Futuremark's "beta program" (translation: gave them money) and the two made nice again. Of course, the saddest part? All of this proved how unreliable synthetic benchmarks are for serious, objective results. And more and more hardware sites are no longer using them at all in their reviews.
--
So there you have it, this year's Warshaw Awards. It was a good year for dumb things, but then again, isn't every year? I'm sure I missed a few, so if you've got something post it in the comments.
And we'll see you next year!
Quelle: Shacknews
Before I get to the awards themselves, a few words about the person these awards are named after. Howard Scott Warshaw was one of the great developers back in the Atari days. He was the author of two excellent titles: Raiders of the Lost Ark and the classic Yar's Revenge. Sadly, he's mostly remembered for his third game: E.T. for the Atari 2600. Yes, Scott Warshaw, is the author of the game that is considered by many to be the worst of all time. Some people even blame E.T. for single handedly causing the industry crash that followed its release (although that's a serious exaggeration as far as I'm concerned). Just like Howard, there were plenty of bad moves made this year. Here's a list (which is no doubt far from complete) of some of the worst missteps of the year.
One quick note: I asked for suggestions from Shack readers, and I got quite a few of them, many of which you'll see below. However, I skipped ones that weren't genuinely stupid acts. So you won't see anything about the Star Wars Galaxies launch (hey, all MMORPGs have problems at launch...even if some people think it was the worst launch ever, most did not) or even Steam, Valve's new content delivery service. And you certainly won't find Duke Nukem Forever mentioned here, because...well, let's face it. If Duke surfaced anywhere in 2003, it wasn't anywhere I was looking. And this is, after all, the 2003 Warshaw awards, not the 1997 awards.
Anyway, let's get to it.
The *groan* Not Again Award
Winner: Nintendo
Nintendo made a few cringe-worthy moves this past year, but nothing was more embarrassing than their two attempts at pushing the "Mario Party". First with a truly cornball press release announcing that Mario would be dropping out of the California gubernatorial recall election, and then with an embarrassing announcement that Mario would be running for president, with a platform of "All fun, no politics." Here's an excerpt:
REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 2003--Promising "pasta in every pot," and "Nintendo GameCube(TM) systems in every home," video game pioneer Mario(TM) announced his bid for the U.S. presidency today and encouraged his supporters to join the Mario Party.
Some scholars wondered whether Mario could overcome the constitutional hurdles facing his candidacy. For starters, they noted, Mario was not born in the United States, and is short of the constitutionally mandated 35 years. However, Mario, who routinely overcomes hurdles with a series of flip-flops worthy of any politician (as most recently evidenced in the new game for Nintendo GameCube, Mario Party(R) 5) remained undaunted by critics.
" With the many actors getting into politics recently, I thought, 'Hey, I'm more entertaining than many of them', not to mention, I'm a lot more animated," Mario says. "Anyone who gets involved with the Mario Party knows that it's all about nonstop action and fun."
Oy. Hopefully, with Mario Party 5 already on store shelves, we won't have to suffer through another one of these next year.
The "Way to go, dumbass" Award
Winner: The Half-Life 2 Hacker
Some enterprising hacker thought it would be a good idea to electronically worm his way into Valve's network and make off with the Half-Life 2 source code. The result? We didn't get Half-Life 2 this year. Now granted, we have no way of knowing if this is the only reason for the delay (despite what some very vocal fans and conspiracy theorists might claim). But one thing's for sure: it didn't help. And it may very well have pushed the game back by as much as six months. Bravo, good sir. Bravo.
The "Wha...? Where am I?" Award
Winner: David Duchovny
Actor David Duchovny is hardly what one would call a particularly...natural sounding actor to begin with, but even that doesn't explain his somnambulistic performance in XIII. I've played a lot of games in my day, and I've had to sit through some truly awful acting, but this is quite possibly the worst I've ever heard from a mainstream actor (and I'm including Kirk Cameron's performance in The Horde when I say that). How bad is it? Let me put it this way: Duchovny gets upstaged by Adam West. Adam. West. Yeah, it's that bad. There's so little dialogue in the game from the main character (voiced by Duchovny) that one has to wonder how it could have turned out this awful. When read start to finish, the script for that character couldn't have been more than 30 minutes long (if even half that), so the only rationale is that Duchovny woke up, drove to the studio, quickly ran through the lines and was never heard from again. Considering that Ubisoft is the same publisher that delivered a virtuoso performance in Splinter Cell from Michael Ironside, it seems insane that they would capitulate to such a thing. But whatever the reason, this game should be held as the hallmark for lazy voiceover work (in any medium) for years to come.
The De-Evolution Award
Winner: Namco
Going against all logic, Namco this year decided to spit in the face of Ridge Racer fans worldwide by producing R: Racing Evolution. While R isn't a bad game by any means, it eschews virtually everything that Ridge Racer fans had come to expect, and instead attempted to emulate Gran Turismo -- which it failed to do in every way possible. If this is the evolution of racing, I can only hope there's some divine intervention to keep it from heading in this direction.
The Lost in Translation Award
Winner: Rockstar Games
The PC and Xbox versions of Max Payne 2 are solid games, with fairly decent framerates. In the case of the PC version, that ran perfectly on my aging GeForce 4200, so clearly a good attempt was made to get it to work with older video cards. And Rockstar, with the Grand Theft Auto titles and now Manhunt, has clearly proven that they know how to make a decent PS2 game. So what the heck happened with the PS2 port of Max Payne 2? Unlike the other two versions, this one has a seriously erratic framerate, and obscenely long load times. The gameplay's intact, but you'll have to suffer through quite a bit of sloppiness in order to appreciate it.
The Head Buried in the Sand Award
Winner: Nintendo
Here's a funny statistic for you: Sega released more online-capable games for the Saturn than Nintendo has for the GameCube. Now you could certainly argue that this is as good a proof as any that online gaming isn't a sustainable business model, since the Saturn didn't exactly thrive thanks to sales of the NetLink adapter. But that was over six years ago, and Sega was willing to take a chance where Nintendo has steadfastly refused to, and it's not like Nintendo couldn't use the added prestige of having a great online service. Come to think of it, the NetLink offered a heck of a lot more than the GameCube, including web surfing (which, let's face it, wasn't very good, but it was there!), live chats, a handful of supported games (including Bomberman, Duke 3D and Virtual-On) and even the ability to trade save game files. That's not bad considering that it was a 28.8 modem and retailed for over $100 (if I remember correctly, it debuted at $200 and then dropped pretty quickly).
Nintendo's anti-online stance would be easier to accept if they weren't so blatantly experimenting with networked gaming. The fact that Mario Kart: Double Dash and Kirby's Air Ride both support LAN play is just a slap in the face for any would-be online gamers. Would it really kill Nintendo to throw together a peer-to-peer system for playing those games online? Thankfully the Warp Pipe project is facilitating online gaming via a shared broadband connection, but that shouldn't be necessary.
The Let's Start Off on the Wrong Foot Award
Winner: Square Enix
As I said above, all massively multiplayer RPGs have a rough start, but it's tough to ignore one of Square's problems: you can't pick your starting server. It gets chosen randomly, and the only way to switch is by purchasing a "World Pass" from your starting server. That means if you and a bunch of friends want to play together, you're either forced to randomly recreate your characters until you all wind up on the right server, or wait until one of you has enough money to purchase enough passes to move you over. Of course, in doing so, that character will inevitably become much more powerful than the rest of you. I'll admit to being ignorant of the intricacies of MMORPGs, but doesn't this seem a bit unnecessarily complicated?
The "Won't somebody please think of the children?" Award
Winner: Washington State Statute HB1009
Although it never went into effect, (District Judge Robert Lasnik blocked it before the July 27th start date due to questions regarding its constitutionality), Washington State did become the first in the union to pass a bill restricting video game sales to minors. While the necessity of such a bill is questionable, and everyone's entitled to their opinions, this particular bill deserves a mention because of how specific it was about the content of the games it applied to. Take a look at the exact definition of a violent game, according to statute HB1009:
A violent video or computer game is defined as a video or computer game which contains realistic or photographic-like depictions of aggressive conflict in which the player kills, injures, or otherwise causes physical harm to a human form which appears to be a law enforcement officer.
That's right, the only games it would have applied to games in which one commits acts of aggression against virtual police officers. While this would certainly have included Grand Theft Auto, it also would have applied to Enter the Matrix and plenty of other "T" rated games, while not covering much more violent titles. Regardless of your feelings on the general subject of limiting game sales to minors, this was a pretty stupid bill. Considering that any law limiting books or movies based on their treatment of police officers would have been laughed out of any court, it's something of a relief that this was blocked as quickly as it was.
The "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" Award
Winner: Mucky Foot, Computer Artworks, Lost Toys, Silicon Dreams, Attention to Detail, etc.
This was not a good year to work at a UK-based development studio. For various reasons, including the changing landscape of the industry and the rising costs of game development, a handful of major developers in the UK were forced to close their doors. It's certainly not due to any specific screwup on their part, so this award serves only to point out that some great developers are now on the unemployment lines. Good luck out there, gents.
The "Do you think they'll notice?" Award
Winner: Sony
With mere days to go before the release of the PSX, Sony announced that they were dropping several of the previously announced features from their ubersystem. Taking it down a peg or three were the significantly slower (and one might say more realistic) DVD burning speeds, but much more notable is the incompatibility with Sony's own PS2 BB network and the lack of support for MP3s. The result? Analysts proclaimed it the entire system a "publicity stunt" and it's become painfully obvious that it's much cheaper to just buy a standalone DVD player and TiVo. Nicely done.
The Much Too Easily Offended Award
Winner: Paul Gibson, Australian State Labor MP
Quick: what was the most offensive game of the year? Manhunt? Postal 2? GTA: Vice City? Would you believe, Project Gotham Racing 2? In an embarrassing move, Australian State Labor MP and head of the StaySafe committee Paul Gibson announced plans last month to put pressure on the Office of Film and Literature Classification to ban Microsoft's Project Gotham Racing 2. In his own words, "This game sends the wrong message to young people. It is actually glorifying speed and power...It is clearly an inappropriate depiction of speed behaviour. If I had my way I would ban it." I guess it's a good thing it's not up to you then, isn't it?
The Throw the Baby Out With the Bath Water Award
Winner: Ubisoft
Many fans of Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield were shocked to discover that after installing the latest patch, the game won't run at all if you have any kind of virtual drive software installed. That means if you use Daemon Tools, CloneCD or Alcohol 120%, regardless of whether or not you use them for legitimate reasons (of which there are many), you're out of luck. Naturally, fans of the series aren't taking this sitting down, but Ubisoft claims this is well within the EULA gamers agreed to when they installed the game. Still, one has to wonder if it's such a good idea to penalize gamers because they're running software that could theoretically be used to circumvent copy protection.
The Token N-Gage Award
Winner: Nokia
Nokia released the N-Gage this year. Go read my review for a detailed run-through of why this in and of itself deserves a mention among the worst missteps of the year. There's far too much to bother mentioning here, although a special nod goes out to the Nokia PR reps, who have done an admirable job of pretending they're immune to the overwhelmingly bad press they've gotten since its release.
Why exactly did Nokia want people to talk this way?
The Save Costs by Killing Off Your Best Asset Award
Winner: Interplay
Last week it was revealed that Interplay (who for reasons unknown to me is still alive and kicking), has canceled Fallout 3 and dismantled what remained of the once great Black Isle Studios. Instead, Fallout fans can look forward to Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a game that is nearly identically named to Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, but is in fact totally different, and will be released for PS2 and Xbox. Platforms, it should be pointed out, which the earlier Fallout titles have never been released on. Meanwhile PC gamers, who are the real market for the franchise, have nothing to look forward to. Good job, Interplay. Good luck pulling out of that financial nosedive.
The "WTF!?" Award
Winner: Electronic Arts
Like some kind of Bizzaro-world reversal of Nintendo, Electronic Arts shocked PC buyers of Need for Speed: Underground when they discovered, against all possible logic, that while the game does support online gameplay, it has no LAN support. Leading, as you might imagine, gamers to scratch their heads and yell "WTF!?" to the rafters. One really has to wonder what the heck happened here. I mean, there have been lots of games that support LAN play but not online, since on a LAN latency isn't an issue. But if there's already support for external networks, wouldn't playing locally be much easier to support? Just imagine the fans who show up to a LAN party, only to discover that the only way to play the game is to go through an external network connection just to join a server sitting right next to them. Oh, EA. You're so crazy.
The Two All-Beef Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese... Award
Winner: IGN McSpy
Here at Shacknews, we can certainly relate to the difficulties people run into with online advertising. That said, even we couldn't help laughing at IGN's obscene McDonald's advertising campaign. For a week, the entire site was overrun with ads for McDonald's new McGriddle breakfast sandwich. Everywhere you looked on the site, it was McDonald's this, McGriddle that. McGameCube. McPS2, McXbox. Mmmm...McGameCube. That's not to say we're so far above this sort of thing. Never forget: here at The Shack, we do chicken right.
Believe it or not, this is an undoctored photo (thanks Degenerate and menkey for the image).
The Cheaters Never Win Award
Winner: NVIDIA
Although NVIDIA would like to pretend none of this actually happened, NVIDIA got caught red handed earlier this year when Futuremark published a report pointing out that NVIDIA was using "detection mechanisms" to unfairly increase performance in 3DMark03. Here's a quote from Futuremark's report:
In our testing, all identified detection mechanisms stopped working when we altered the benchmark code just trivially and without changing any of the actual benchmark workload. With this altered benchmark, NVIDIAs certain products had a performance drop of as much as 24.1% while competitions products performance drop stayed within the margin of error of 3%. To our knowledge, all drivers with these detection mechanisms were published only after the launch of 3DMark03. According to industrys terminology, this type of driver design is defined as driver cheats.
That's kind of sleezy. But what followed wasn't any better. First NVIDIA started badmouthing Futuremark in retaliation, and reportedly threatened legal action unless the offending report was taken down (it wasn't). Then NVIDIA joined Futuremark's "beta program" (translation: gave them money) and the two made nice again. Of course, the saddest part? All of this proved how unreliable synthetic benchmarks are for serious, objective results. And more and more hardware sites are no longer using them at all in their reviews.
--
So there you have it, this year's Warshaw Awards. It was a good year for dumb things, but then again, isn't every year? I'm sure I missed a few, so if you've got something post it in the comments.
And we'll see you next year!
Quelle: Shacknews