This week’s Thursday Top 5 has to do with communication. The names and titles we give to products and the way that companies and their customers communicate. As I have to say every week, try not to take this as an affront to your favorite game/developer. I use some specific examples of games, but those are simply several of many, and most of them are generated by whatever comes to memory first. There is no agenda.

5. Micro Vs Macro

New Rule: If there are single items that cost more than a full tank of gas in my car, you are no longer allowed to use the term “microtransaction.” Champions Online offers a freeform character slot for $50, or around the cost of something actually worth fifty dollars. An growing number of MMOs sell mounts in the area of twenty five to fifty bucks a pop, including Everquest 1/2, World of Warcraft, etc. Atlantica Online sells merc packs for $70. Games like Maplestory and Perfect World International sell “wedding sets” for fifty to seventy dollars. Even Valve’s items for Team Fortress 2 have wandered past the realm of reasonable pricing. And I won’t even go into the treasure trove of social games that charge enormous prices for cash shop items.

I don’t want to bemean the companies for trying to make a buck, or the sucker willing to spend seventy dollars to get married in a video game, but when did microtransaction begin to include anything that isn’t the game itself? Back in the old days, anything that would be considered enough content to almost stand on its own was considered an expansion pack. Small paid updates were downloadable content. And microtransactions actually made use of their prefix “micro.” Where I come from, we have a word that we use to describe paying for something that is ten or more dollars, it’s called a transaction.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that “microtransaction” has become yet another meaningless advertising buzzword, like MMOFPS or free to play. It doesn’t really mean what it says anymore, it doesn’t do a whole lot to draw in customers, but they all slap the title on anyway because the guy down the street is doing it and God forbid he have something you don’t.

4. Cross Off Cross-Compatibility

New Rule: Developers need to stop pretending that they are the messiah that will bring Sony and Microsoft together as one. Every year we see another developer come out and proclaim that their game will not only astound minds, shake foundations, and cure polio, they will break that immovable boundary that has been with this console generation for years, and somehow convince Microsoft and Sony to set aside their differences, come to the table, and allow some form of cross-platform between the Xbox and Playstation. Then we wait for the inevitable “sorry guys, it’s just not feasible.”

And yes, I am aware that cross-platform games exist. Sony has cross-platform play between its console and handheld, and the PC will go to bed with just about anyone. No, I am speaking of the unholy union of Xbox and Playstation. As consoles change from gaming platforms to essentially cheap PCs dedicated to gaming and media, you may see Microsoft and Sony change their stance on cross-platform play. Until then, the two developers are like rival children on a playground. You, the player, may play with them separately, but they’ll be damned if they show up to the same game of hopscotch (unless you bring enough scotch).

It will save us all time and headache by the developer simply not talking about cross-platform between the two consoles at all. It isn’t going to happen, at least not until Microsoft and Sony change their policies, those of us who pay attention to the industry already know this, and ultimately you only serve to harm your public relations when you inevitably have to put out that “sorry guys, they won’t let us do this” announcement.

3. Shot By The Messenger

New Rule: Any developer that insults the gaming community because it doesn’t line up to their niche market, doesn’t get any sympathy when they eventually fly the white flag of bankruptcy. Now I love the hardcore and simulator games as much as your average gamer, so much so that I play Minecraft only on hardcore difficulty and opt to eat my hard boiled eggs shell intact. That said, listening to certain members of the hardcore/simulator community is about as bearable as sitting in a retirement home and listening to people complain about how young folks have it too easy because we have vehicles that get more than one mile to the tank, air conditioning, food that isn’t shined with copper, and no longer have to have ten children so hopefully two of them will survive to adulthood and continue the family lineage.

Gaming, as with any subculture, has its brand loyalists and fanatics, and frankly I would be more concerned if the gaming community wasn’t so invested in what they enjoy. I do expect a higher level of professionalism and, shall we say, tact out of the developers however. Having a player tell me that the gaming community is being brought down by immature, greedy, impatient children and the developers that cater to them is one thing. When a developer of one of the more hardcore titles starts complaining that they would have more customers if only gamers and the developers that feed them weren’t so stupid, it’s a different story.

The claim that Call of Duty “ruined gamers,” interestingly enough, takes the exact same logic that gamers have been fighting against in the whole “video games cause violence” discussion. In the same way that the violence discussion says that video games take normally sane children and turn them into murderers, the interview suggests that games like Call of Duty took normally intelligent people and made them stupid/lazy. Call of Duty didn’t create its audience through mind control, it appealed to an audience that was already there and wasn’t being served. Developers like Tripwire also come off as rather pretentious as they put forward yet another argument of “your taste is different than mine, therefore you are wrong and your game has no right to exist.” It is not only anti-competition, it also doesn’t say much about the quality of your game when your main argument appears to be “more people would buy our game if they didn’t have any other choice.”

Red Orchestra and Call of Duty are very different games that likely have some overlap in their community who enjoy both styles. You are likely not going to convert a Call of Duty player to Red Orchestra for the direct opposite reasons a Red Orchestra player wouldn’t want to play Call of Duty. Both are very fun games that appeal to different tastes, and you can’t be surprised when people reject one as an alternative to the other, like when the waiter says “no, we don’t have root beer, but we have Dr. Pepper.” Does anyone really think that the two taste close enough to be considered an appropriate substitute? Can I get through an editorial without using a food analogy? I think we all know the answer to that.

2. Emerging Banhammer

New Rule: Developers must acknowledge that their favorite form of emergent gameplay is the kind that they fully control, or not emergent at all. The ski ability that made the Tribes series famous started out as a bug in the engine. Combo moves in fighting games originated as an unintended part of Street Fighter II. Strafe-jumping and rocket jumping evolved out of simple quirks in their physics engine. That isn’t to say that all emergent gameplay is beneficial to the game. Real money trading is an example of detrimental emergent gameplay, as would be any exploit allowing the user to cheat, facilitating either the massive gain of wealth/items or by making them invincible/overpowered.

Emergent gameplay is easy to define: An action that the developer did not anticipate. So to see a feature (not an exploit) removed or patched out because it was unintended, by a company who claims to love emergent play, is like saying “I love surprise birthday parties, except in cases where I don’t see them coming.” Playing hide and seek in an MMO is an example of emergent gameplay, or using cheap/mass produced junk items as a replacement for a standard currency when the latter is either unavailable or restricted. Players might set up a gambling ring using items that operate off of random outcomes, or manipulate the physics engine to create a game of soccer out of a car wheel.

Some developers like Jagex have a habit of assimilating elements of emergent gameplay as an official feature, which is a bit like scheduling your own surprise birthday parties or giving yourself a wedgie so at least you see it coming, and patching out the rest. If your reasoning is that the element’s existence is harmful to the game, either by exploiting some bug or putting someone at a severe advantage, then you won’t see a whole lot of complaints when you cover up the hole. On the other hand, if you patch something out simply on the grounds that you didn’t intend it to be used that way, that’s a bit like Lego coming to your house and revoking your Harry Potter set because you built an awesome tower instead of the Hagrid Hut that’s on the box.

1. Language Truly Is Important

New Rule: Whenever the crap hits the fan, developers are no longer allowed to simply shut up and hope everyone just moves on. We aren’t bears, and lying on the ground and playing dead won’t make us lose interest. I ranked this number one because it is an issue I see all of the time, regardless of how big the company is or how big the problem is. Whether the servers are down or there is a massive exploit going on in-game, or the website is offline or everyone’s character has been replaced with a talking banana, generally the explosion of complaints on the forum could be stemmed (although not stopped) with a simple post/tweet/in-game announcement: “we are aware of the issue and are working on it.”

It isn’t going to get rid of all of your complaints, but it will take some of the kindling off of the fire. People want assurance that you are working on the problem, even if it is just a simple “we are working on it.” Having some massive crack in the infrastructure is annoying enough, the uncertainty that anyone is actually fixing it is infuriating. Number one is short, and for a good reason. It is an incredibly simple concept: People hate it when developers don’t communicate with them, so the answer must be: communicate!