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Yes, I'm an asshole when I do it. "Let's talk about the crucial role of story-telling in games" "Ah, but If I examine every game that sold more then 10 million copies, I see almost no games that have story-telling...so how is it crucial then?" And then some debating happens that doesn't lead untill I demand you prove this crucial aspect in videogames by pointing at x number of games that sold more then 10 million copies on a single platform. And then the other side shuts up...to bring up the topic again in a few months and the dance continues.
What does this 10 million mark mean anyway? At it's core, the mark is off course idealized. Games do not achieve some magical status when they cross that mark. But it does serve as a good benchmark, but a benchmark to what. And does this benchmark always apply ? (spoiler: no, it doesn't).
The meaning of the benchmark. In my research for my thesis (I know it's still in dutch, and I know I keep refering to it, but because the thesis was so broadly conceived, I researched a buttload of things and aspects of videogaming) I found out that games (from 1995 onwards) that sold around 10 million copies always had a broader impact in popular culture, became a broader social phenomena. In se, expanding the acceptance of videogames in other social strata.
Semi-Chronological Example Time!
The Gran Turismo series: every iteration (except glorified demo's) has sold around 10 millions copies.
Broader impact? Gran Turismo was a fixture even within the car driving world. Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson plays it. New iterations where highly clamored withing the car driving community with the game being at car conventions and mentioned in car magazines.
Final Fantasy 7: the only FF-game that sold near (or over, could be over) 10 million copies.
Broader Impact? Well, it did start the actual JRPG craze in the west, also pulling in quite some females back into the gaming mold. The games afterwards have been in steady decline however. And when I say decline, I mean decline in broader social impact related to decline in sales.
Super Mario 64, one of the few 2D to 3D games that actually sold 10 million copies.
Broader Impact, while less then it's 2D counterparts. It did succesfully launch the N64 with great furore. To bad the follow trough of the N64 was disastrous. Again decline afterwards.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Sold more around 9 million so you can allready begin to question the validity of it being in the list. But it did left a shockwave, it's impact being recognized in mainstream media. After it, the series has gone in decline.
Metal Gear Solid, with sales of 7-8 million, an even bigger question mark of validity, but it did define the playstation as much as FF7 and GT. The newer iterations have seen a sharp decline.
Super Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye. now MK64 sold more then SM64 (around 11 million) while Goldeneye sold more in the region of 8.5-9 million. Both made 4-player multiplayer mayhem a broad social phenomena. Probably impacting four times the people then it sold. Okay, three times.
Moving on the the next generation.
GTA 3, with sales well beyond 10 million and nearing 15 million, the broader impact shouldn't even be described. And I don't even mean the negative one. the GTA3 series had a good deal of it with correlated sales numbers to boot. GTA4 doesn't have near the same impact.
Pokemon, Numbers are a bit sketchy but above 10 million is certain, Near 17.5 million seems to be the final verdict. Let's see, it became the first multi-billion dollar game franchise (possibly responsible for half to a third of Nintendo's 10 billion dollar + warchest) of the industry, it has movies, cartoon series, toys, launched the Game Boy back on the charts and became the first strike of Nintendo to re-capture the kids. While the series has seen decline, all iterations keeping a nice level at 12.5-15 million.
The Sims, Also over the ten million copies, got millions of women playing games on PC, beside Bejeweled then. Togheter with Pokemon, gatekeepers of the floodgates for the new generation of titles to dominate videogaming.
DS Power!!! Why has the DS been selling at a pace that puts the PS2 at shame? Why...look at the killer-apps for it and see how much they sold and why they stayed so high in the sales rankings.
Brain Training 1-2. Want your granny to play games? Voila! Both iterations have sold around 15 million copies and more
Nintendogs. The game that sold the DS in Europe. 22 million copies in total, half of them in Europe. Proving that Europeans are superior to everyone else because of our higher love of puppies. Especially in Europe, the game was in all kinds of mainstream magazines and got talked about the togheter with summarizations of the latest episode of Sex and the City and other tv-shows.
Super Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros DS. Both selling over 20 million copies, the games are still popping up in the top-20 rankings all over the world. The broad spectrum of people playing it blows the mind of each segmenting marketingdroid on the planet.
But this must be a fluke right? These aren't real games! this is a one-time thing...
Super Mario Kart Wii over 22 million copies, not only that, the "use Wii-mote as a steer" method is dominating the leaderboards!
WiiFit and Wii Sports, Do I need to explain? 22 mil for the first, 15 mil for the sequels of both. Invasion of the female gamer, correction, invasion of the female gamer of all ages. What game has done this before? Really, what game?
World of Warcraft this one gets close though, also needs no explanation.
Farmville, Mafiawars and their kin. yeah, a game that has had 80 mill people playing it at its peak.
Right, enough examples I geuss. Notice how all of these games did not only sell near or more then 10 million copies, but also were vital for selling their platforms and broadening the use of their platform by different demographics thus becoming social phenomena with a broad impact. End result? Videogaming becoming more accepted as a broad entertainment and art medium (since the broad audience decides what art is).
Now, as you can see, I tried placing the games a bit chronological and what also springs up: the number of millions these social phenomena games sell have been getting higher. The 10 million mark seems to be a to low benchmark even. In reverse, when using this benchmark on older generations, the 10 million mark is probably too high and unfair. Pong, Space Invaders and Pac-Man were huge social phenomena but sold only around 300 000 cabinets each. Off course, they were arcades and as such used a different method of reaching out to people. By creating coin-shortages for example...
On the other hand, the 2D Mario and Sonic games were also games that sold more then 10 million copies worldwide, leaving behind their marks to even this day.
The 10 million benchmark (not the number itself but its functional descriptive intention) does serve some purpose then, but needs to be adjusted to the time period and the dynamic attributes of how videogames reached their audience. On the other side, a second benchmark does seem to force itself upon us. The 10 million works for a quite large selection of games, but among those, there are games who perform in their own league. The WiiFits, Mario Karts and Farmvilles of these world are those games. In console/handheld land that seems to be a 20 million mark, while in Facebook land this is 50 + million users (where the 10 million console/handheld mark is actually 20-25 mill in facebook land).
In reverse, the 20 million mark for consoles and handhelds now was a 10 million mark in the late 80's and early 90's, maybe even early 80's (Atari expected the VCS version of Pac-man to sell 12 millions copies in the US, unprecedented then, also because Atari only sold 10 millions VCS's so far).
So the benchmark is a bit less arbitrary and more a result of dynamic scaling based on known sales and the relative impact, keeping in mind the time period and its specific dynamics.
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What's a geuss?
Slightly curious, so games like Starcraft and Half-life (both of which have sold over 10 million units) aren't good examples of strong narrative in games? They are pop-cultural derivatives borrowing from external mediums, reprocessing it and redistributing new perspectives on older ideas; pop culture to the core. I'd argue GTA3 fits the narrative bill as well because it's telling a fairly straight forward story through second person very successfully which is extremely hard to do. Even WoW has an extremely strong narrative lore as its draw card that draws users out of chat rooms into the entity itself for the new social experience. CoD4 has a very clever take on ye olde marine narrative, crafting an interactive Hollywood experience with a darker underside (MW2 is rubbish).
All of those games have a strong narrative base, have drawn from pop culture and in turn influenced it.
Speaking of incredibly popular, what about Modern Warfare 2? That game hit 10 million in week two from what I can tell. Yet I'm not sure it has as broad an impact as the Halo series, other than the infamous 'No Russian' level.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on those two.
@Hill, and you are right about those two games. I said I was showing examples, not the end-of-all things list (but i'll edit them in certainly). But be careful with the use of "narrative". Narrative is only a small part of the entire expercience, more specific, the story-part. Narrative also has the nasty after-taste that you have an author that evokes a specific story trough narrative stimuli e.g. forcing his vision on readers. As I have said in many another blog (and other's blogs), videogames don't need to have narratives, but they do need Universes. This Universe consists not only of events (the actual narrative) but also the laws of that Universe, answering the question why some events happen/are possible in the Universe.
Let me use some physics to explain as simple as possible. Put a ball on a flat surface, not push against this ball. The narrative here would be "a ball is on a surface, I pushed so it moved". Narratives don't encompass the laws, principles and others behind those events. Why the ball moved is because our universe works within the laws of physics. These laws are not events and such not included in narratives. Many things in WoW happen because WoW adheres to the laws it Universe encompasses, no narrative speaks of those. Tolkien worked years on constructing his LOTR-universe, but the actual narrative took him some months. The more powerfull the Universe, the more potential powerfull narratives can be spawned from it. With Videogames you have the added element that gamers can take charge of the narrative. Super Mario has "go save the princess" as implicit narrative, that's it. The Universe however is cartoon/ Alice in Wonderland based, making the surroundings, enemies and other the way they are. These are not events, not narratives. How the player converses the Universe then becomes the narrative for that player. This is the real power of videogames.
@David, Halo is a tricky one. Notice, the benchmark does not apply to the entire series but to seperate games within the series. Since there have been 4 Halo games, on average, none of the Halo games got close. But also that is unfair. Halo 2 got very close, stranding on 9 million I'm gambling. This is where the relative and fluid properties of the benchmark kick in. For some games, that 9 million would count as hitting the benchmark. For Halo 2, a bit less. Now I know, Halo is big...but it's a big fish inside a small pond. The Halo-series mainly managed to get PC-FPS fans to migrate to consoles, something Goldeneye did not achieve, which makes Goldeneye's sales more impactful because it had to draw those sales from non-FPS audiences. Goldeneye was also a big fish, but swam in bigger waters (I mean, it sold less then Zelda OoT, SM64 and SMK64, and that's just the same platform. Halo 2 sold the most on the Xbox and done).
Now, Modern Combat is another tricky one. Notice how all the examples (and their numbers) also sell on one platform and only one, Modern Combat (2) sells on three. Now, being European, we don't have as much Modern Combat fever as the (you?) yanks. So It's probable a reverse Nintendogs where it's a big thing on one continent but not as much on another.
Also, the benchmark is not a popularity contest but to create a relative, if somewhat still arbritrary, measuring stick to see when does a game gets to broad market acceptance by being a big social phenomena and thus also moving videogaming forward as a broadly accepted medium. In other words, these are the games that validate videogaming as a broadly accepted entertainment/art medium. Another indicator of this is if the game keeps selling over a longer period of time, meaning it's spreading trough word of mouth, which means it is reaching new people. Modern Combat 2, compared to the others in the list, doesn't really do this. Modern Combat 1 did however. Halo 1 also, but only got up to 5-6 million in total.
Summarizing, you got two conditions to determine if a game has a big and broad social impact.
1) it needs to sell around or above 10 million copies, this decides the size of the actual impact. The more copies, the bigger the impact.
2) the majority of sales (say 85%) are achieved over a relative long period of time, say 6-12 months minimal. This determines the broadness of the impact, how big the pond is. The longer this period is, the broader the impact.
Let's use a recent example to test these conditions. Let's use Just Dance! Now this game, not reaching 10 million copies certainly did not have that big of an impact. It didn't really boost Wii consolesales, so it isn't probably not bringing many new people in to videogaming. But Just Dance rise to the top of the sales rankings ans staying there for quite some months allready suggests that, yes the impact is not big, but it is reaching a relative broad audience nonetheless.
Maybe I should add these findings in a follow-up blog. If someone finds other examples that can confirm or just destroys these assumptions, do tell! the more info the better it can be refined.
Thx for the feed-back anyways.
Throwing a few more thoughts out there - have you considered that once again as the industry evolves it's just mirroring other entertainment industries like films and music (well yes you probably have...)? Basically as the industry expands outwards and more teams make more games dealing with increasingly fetishised pieces of pop culture across a mulitude of formats to cater to the 'on-demand' approach of everywhere saturation, that validation does not come through millions sold. Millions sold is ultimately a blockbuster rhetoric that deals with making things to a formula, not making stuff for arts sake.
Basically it's very difficult the more you look into the contemporary music industry to find something everyone likes because there are niches for everyone so people are increasingly individualised through their choice in media content. Same deal with the games industry, its diversifying outwards, making more product in smaller increments for every aspect of daily life. Contemporary film Avatar was such a runaway success because it spawned the whole 3D craze, it was the only one of its kind, and won't be repeated anytime soon as now that everyone is doing 3D audience pool is rapidly diluting outwards to cater to increasingly niche demand. And 3D is a pretty limited market as it is. Games aren't just 3 consoles, you're still competing with PC, with phones, with the iphone and all that other peripheral crap, free games, mmo's etc. etc. Walls of platforms, walls of choice for every budget, the way people think about games is rapidly shifting as the social construct becomes increasingly digital, increasingly mobile, increasingly short burst, high turn over.
Making something that everyone likes is indeed very very difficult if not impossible. That said...videogaming still has a long way to go to appealing to a broad audience, even if this audience is a series of niches put togheter. A way I use to show this is, let's take a movie and a videogame that made both 500 million dollars (or euro's...for the non-Americans :p). Now, in both industries, that's a lot of money a single product can make in their respective industries. But, a videogames costs 50 dollars/euro's, a movieticket 10 dollars/euro's.
I know, Wii and PC games sell at that price, DS-games are lower but HD-games are higher, certainly the collector's editions and also the average movie ticket is far less if not 3D. But first follow the logic, then apply the variance.
The movie will have attracted 50 million people, the game 10 million. For a HD-game this number drops even more, for a DS-game it goes up. For non-3D-movies, it goes up. In other words, yes, now we have games that reach out to 10 million, 15 million, even 20 + million people...but we're still not there yet when compared to movies. The DS, and Wii in lesser extent, are probably the first gaming platforms that are starting to expand in the manner which you speak of, but we're still not there yet. The benchmark I utilize, coupled with the conditions, is then a good indicator of what games are achieving this expansion and which aren't.
And it saddens me to say...your idealization of videogames being interactive movies...it isn't expanding videogames using this benchmark. Of course, if you mean games like Heavy Rain or Mass Effect by it (giving examples works marvels!). If you do, i'll explain why they don't. if you don't...then let me apologize now, but still read trough the explanation if you would, it could be interesting :p.
What are movies? At they're very basic level? They are a moving sequence of pictures (nowadays with sound). How this is performed has changed, but that very first basic level hasn't. As a moving sequence of pictures, movies become moving depictions of a certain Time in a certain Space, narratologic better known as events, the minimal building blocks of a story. From that very basic level you can see that movies need to have a intentional story, tell a story to have value. This is their core-dynamic, core-force. Without, they are not movies. Movies need a intentional narrative (better known as implicit narrativity, the narrative that is evoked by the author trough narrative stimuli)
Videogames are another matter. Again, the same excercise, what are videogames? Videogames are games that are electronically generated. How this will happen will change, but this basic level will not change. As electronically generated games, they have the advantage to take in account a series of very complicated parameters and calculations while also generating a very simplistic visual end-result of all those parameters and calculations. In short, Videogames are Games, Playfields, that can have very complicated parameters and calculations going on behind the screen. More so then humans can achieve without the electronic aid (try making a boardgame which incorporates all the parameters from a modern RTS videogame...One turn will be one hell of a math-session just to keep track of all your units).
Because of this basic core-dynamic, videogames don't need a intentional story to add value. Pong didn't had a story, Tetris didn't, WiiSports doesn't, WiiFit doesn't. Videogames can still be videogames without a story. If videogames are just interactive movies...you have a collision of core-dynamics with the one trying to take over of the other, highly risking to be left with neither.
But do not fret yet my narratologic-obsessed friends, I'm not done yet!
What are games? At they're very basic level, games are activities performed trough Time and Space. Videogames are then electronically generated games within electronically generated Time and Space (happening in actual Time and Space...for those still following :p). This means that videogames have a potential for story. They don't need it, but the potential is there, since activities can become events, can become stories. Videogames have heaps of potential stories, potential narrative (narrotologists will know this better as explicit narrativity, what the reader/spectator/recipient adds to the story).
The problem with narrativity is that narratologists will only recognize the intentional/implicit kind as the actual narrativity. Works with heaps of explicit/ potential narrativity are seen as lesser to even not narrative at all. The reason for this is that narratologist (and artists, writers, actors, the whole "creative" lot) are soaked in the values of Authorial Control. This is a dominant way of thinking in recent decades where the author is put central in artistic analysis and the intent of the author in his work is the primary message. This creates values whereby whole generations of artists, writers and so forth are thaught that they're personal vision is what makes their work worthwhile. What people think of it is put secondary, or in some cases ignored at all.
As a economic historian I call this thinking utter bollocks and higly subjective and even lazy. For a good taste why, I refer to my other blogpost http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TimTavernier/20100610/5339/A_Critique_to_A_Common
_Framework_For_Storytelling_in_Videogames.php. I will not go into all of that again. I am however in the works of making an alternative method of analysis using bottom-up methods from my historian teachings as the basis, mixed with some behaviorology and Antropology.
While movies do need a certain measure of intentional narrative because of their core-dynamic, having a lot of potential narrative doesn't hurt movies as well. Take Star Wars for example, what is the Force? Only very vaguely explained, allowing people to project their beliefs on this concept. In episode I, Lucas made the horrible mistake to explain it as a genetic based attribute. Quite a lot of fans of the series were appalled because of it. It kills potential narrativity, actually leading to a lesser degree of narrativity. Narratologists won't agree with this because it increased implicit/intentional narrativity and based on the Authorial Control values, increases the actual narrativity of the movie.
Videogames, because of their core-dynamic, have heaps on heaps of narrative potential. Adding a intentional narrative can kill of a lot of this, actually degrading the game as videogame. Because of the intrinsic attribute of having so much narrative potential, coupled with their core-dynamic, the gamer becomes the author of the story. Of course this goes against the values of Authorial Control which the vast majority of game-designers believe in. Giving the player Authorial Control? Are you mad? They're just there to expercience our genius visions!!!
Thank god people like Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Will Wright and others do not believe in that bollocks and just want to give people fun Playfields and interesting Universes so they can make their own stories in it.
Wauw...this is worth it own blogpost by now...very sorry :p.
A lot of these involved gameplay developments.
Which makes sense, seeing as they're games. While some of them feature stories, and Metal Gear Solid's acting definitely had an impact, these are games first.
I've played the first ten on your list and they're all solid games, some of them featuring gameplay innovations and others like Sims establishing new gameplay conventions. Mario 64 transferred a 2D _game_ into 3 dimensions on a system featuring a then-new analog stick on a pad.
GTA 3 was an excellent sandbox game and Pokemon had solid, fun battle mechanics that, while simple, required you to strategize and make decisions.
This pattern continues down the list.
Many of these items are something new.
If you consider that the "game" is the mechanics, rules, mode of interaction, etc., most new gaming products are not new games. Making yet another shooter is like making another chess set, but with WW2 themed pieces, or a few rule tweaks.
But many of these products feature genuinely new, or at least well designed games.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if you hit the ten million mark, its because you took your product seriously as a GAME.
Final Fantasy, I think, actually exemplifies this thinking. Final Fantasy is a GAME first. That's why the story is always thrown out each time. "Final Fantasy" is not a story. "Final Fantasy" is a game, one that (like any RPG session) features a story to facilitate the "adventuring".
I'm not exactly sure how Final Fantasy went sour, but I don't think they still respect their product as a game. They continually automate their battle system and take decisions away from the player as if its just some annoying thing in the way, while they release FF7 sequels - or superficially mimic it - like they're just reminiscing about how they used to be awesome.
I have one more observation. Of the games I played, the Sims (2), Mario, FF7, MGS, Pokemon and others had very memorable music, even on that little gameboy speaker, while only a few of these were graphically strong (and only on release).
I suspect this correlates with the fact that the console winners, for three generations straight, had the weakest graphics capability; PS1, PS2, Wii.
People sometimes treat the technologically inferior Wii's success as some sort of stunning revelation - or nightmare - but its an old pattern.
No offense taken, and I hope I don't give any if I say simply I don't buy your conclusions that narratives aren't a core part of quality games :D. I understand your argument, yes I think things like the original MGS, Mass Effect, Starcraft, FF8, COD:MW hit the nail on the head in terms of balance between a broad swath of elements. I'll try and keep it broad and short and poorly backed without adequate reference :D.
What is music but the poetic rendition of story? Even a song without lyrics ideally conjures emotions, images that force you on a primal level to create an emotional response, a story through sounds.
Film does a similar thing through incorporating visual elements, sure you can have a film without a story, just a visual cacophony of blood breasts and screaming and there is indeed a niche market for that sort of stuff but that is not what the word 'film' conjures to the mainstream mind. There are certain conventions, expectations that audiences have developed over time, a balancing act of stylistic elements.
I won't get into auteurial control and 'creative types' other than to say, you're quite probably very wrong in making such a monstrous claim about so very many people without fully understanding the process you are trying to critique. Have you actually been a part of making a film, studied film theory (or any creative theory)? Games really aren't so different.
Not every game needs a narrative to sell it, but a strong narrative enriches a gameplay experience tenfold because it challenges, stimulates and inspires a broad prospective audience to think. As with all things creative, the key is in the balancing of elements. You seem to want a broad sandbox game based on singular instanced mechanics, which is fine, but without that social element, the artificial drive, the motivation, the story, in my experience such games quickly grow stale and are cast aside to the bargain bin. That's fine, but I don't think it's a viable foundation to forge a creative industry on although it is kind of like making porn.
Gimics will only carry the visuals so far, yet like film, a handful of games continue to endure beyond the lifespan of their graphics, beyond their dated, limited battle mechanics because they resonate something larger than themselves. Does the Godfather film need CGI or 3D to compete for audience attentions?
@Nathan Hill
Thank you for your understanding and the effort. A bit more of this ping ponging back and forth and we get to some very good insights.
"What is music but the poetic rendition of story? Even a song without lyrics ideally conjures emotions, images that force you on a primal level to create an emotional response, a story through sounds."
There's a problem here, who ever decided that the emotions a musicplay evokes are a story? This is what I see often, I see a lot of arbitrary labeling these kind of vague things as "story".
I don't see a story here, I see content. Content is what movies, music, books and videogames evoke in the first place. They can evoke contingency chains (now I'm using behaviorology) that can lead to stories. But in the first place, they don't. If there are people who are not thaught/conditioned to have contingencies who ends with "a story" then they will not experience a story. They still can experience something else. You would still label that as a story (mostly because you don't what else to call it), even if it isn't. I label it Content.
Content is what people experience, evoked from a content medium, keeping in mind possible contingencyhistories (aka, what a person has been thaught). Story is a part of that, not the most of it. Why you would call it story is probably because of the linguistic part. We can only describe these evoked sensations as a series of events, making it seem a story. Content is looking at what people experience as a whole and from a basic level. Story is just a potential part of it. That's why I make the distinction between Universe and Story. A Universe is a set of laws, principles, processes and others that make the world being described/showed in a book/movie/videogame. You would call this the setting, theme or others, but those things don't do it justice.
Again, a lot of sci-fi and fantasy authors sometimes spend years constructing this Universe and then only spent a couple of months to write the actual story/narrative. This Universe, the content, will have impacted the reader more because he/she soaks up this Universe, moves himself in it. The story is an accespoint, very pretty windowdressing. The princess is kidnapped, go save her! Bam, you're in, story has fulfilled it's mission. Now here's a mushroom that makes you grow. Is the mushroom telling a story? No, it's a mechanic, it's one of the universes laws and principles. Here, mushrooms make you grow. Why? Nu-huh...you figure it out.
I have studied creative theory and that's why I found sticking "story" and "narrative" to everything so obnoxious. What "creative" people really do is create universes, trying to evoke powerfull experiences (mostly by mirroring, magnifying or other of Nature), content from people, and then have narratives/story happen in them. The problem is, you call the first part of the narrative as well because of certain ignorance of what the actual process is(this is not a bad thing! Scientists sometimes say that out loud that they don't know...yet). If you do this right, you've done a great feat.
So yes, an very solid Universe can enhance the gameplay experience tenfold, because it gives the player heaps of narrative potential to play out. But this is not the story. The told story becomes a potential end result of a very long chain of experiences and contingencyclusters, with little regard of the numerous processes and facets involved. Inside that Universe, a game-designer can put in a intentional story, or intentional story-bits. If done right, you get an additional more value for your game, as some games like Half-Life (2) and Starcraft have shown. But that intentional story should never ever be in the way of the players story-making process like:" you know that dude on level 5? I used the Bomb-arrows first, and then the axe! What? you used the tripping rope first and then trew daggers? Cool!".
Notice, this account would be seen as a story. But where they playing a story? No they were playing a game within a universe with bombarrows and tripping ropes, it afterwards got poured into a story for communicative purposes.
Now I get why everyone is so uppity about! Everyone equates Universe and Story as Story! And so, me dismissing story, people also think I dismiss the universe and all it's lovely characters. Let me say this now and for ever: Universes are the lifeblood of content mediums, so also videogames.
Right, not as perfect as I hoped (my explanation) but I'm running out of time and hygienic duties and sleeping duties await.
Tim, who has ever said those things? It sounds like you're creating strawmen so that you can argue with them. Of course not *all* games need stories just like not *all* songs need lyrics. But *some* songs are improved by their lyrics just like *some* games are improved by their stories.
SUPER COLUMBINE MASSACRE RPG - sales = 0 units. social impact = senatorial debate, soccer mom outrage, insane dood's obsession before committing mass murder, etc. etc. etc.
You're clearly a materialist - if material existence is more important than symbolic existence, then why the hell is anyone a religiously motivated suicide bomber? to state it in symbolic logic:
~(sales=social impact)
GTA III - 14.5 million
GTA: Vice City - 17.5 million
GTA: San Andreas - 21.5 million
GTA IV - 17 million
Contrary to your argument above, GTA IV has sold *better* than GTA III. So the series has hardly gone down in sales since they started focussing more on the story-telling. In fact, if anything the increased focus on story seems to have helped propel the series to even greater sales.
Yes, that's why I also used Facebook games who also didn't sell and (jokingly) said that Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 probably impacted more people then the number they sold. Maybe your reading should be far less arbitrary.
Also the impact of that games was short-term, more based on hype. Many of the mentioned games have a large long-term impact (the actual blog post doesn't say this, one of my responses does).
@Adam, I'm not cherry picking data. If I was, it wouldn't have added Goldeneye or Metal gear Solid or Final Fantasy 7 in it. Or even the GTA3-series (And I did wrote series). Also, again the long-term impact and hype-impact argument stays. GTA3-series had a long-term impact. GTA4 has a hype-induced impact. It only impacted sales for the 2 HD-consoles minimally. GTA3-series had a broad impact, GTA4 had a big impact within a far less broader pond (which were actually several small ponds connected to each other, My examples only sold this benchmark on ONE platform, just because of the broad-impact aspect).
It seems everyone is to focused on the introduction part and the actual meaning of the post has been lost. Time to try again I suppose :p.
I can misspell too!
Although... it is at least a bit flamebait-ish. It's the sort of tongue-in-cheek humour I appreciate, but the internet commonly distorts that for some people.
All of that said, though, there is a great deal of interesting information that was brought to light. There's certainly a lot of material concerning a followup article, though I'd be interested to see if someone can come up with an article that otherwise attempts to disprove the concept of an artificial number where a game goes from being more than just an entertainment software and enters the realm of cultural phenomenon.
Vorderkunz had an interesting point with SCMRPG, but I think I agree with you in that despite the uproar that was stirred, it really didn't seem to affect our medium much in the long run. An more interesting example may be Mortal Kombat, which caused similar controversy during it's day and most certainly had a lasting impact on our culture (namely, many ridiculous negative stereotypes, which even some of us gamers and game developers must continue to live with to an extent). That said, it's heyday was effectively before your 10 million mark really starts. Also, it was ported to an insane amount of different platforms, including arcade, so all of those combined would probably launch it towards an invisible barrier that is implied by the article. I can't for the life of me find any sales numbers for this title though, so I can't say for certain.
(PS: I suggest highlighting and copying a person's name when replying; with the amount of different people from all sorts of backgrounds that frequent this site is extremely expansive, and retyping is commonly fraught with errors.)