Kugyince
05-04-2010, 04:28 PM
"Splinter Cell Conviction," the new stealth action title from Ubisoft, will be a hit. It's currently boasting a Metacritic score of 86 and, once the NPD Group's monthly video game sales charts hit in a few weeks, "Conviction"'s numbers should make it one of April's top-selling games.
Most critics agree that it's a good (verging on great) game. But the reason SCC will be greeted warmly on hundreds of thousands of consoles isn't only due to the game's new mechanics like Mark & Execute and Last Known Position. Sam Fisher, the black ops agent who's been the star of the Tom Clancy-created stealth series, is getting reinvented as he's getting older.
That balancing act is something the players buying Fisher's game are having to figure out, too. The average age of the first-wave hardcore gamer -- the ones who've made successive generations of video game hardware and software in a multi-billion dollar business -- falls somewhere in the early to mid-30s now. And their lives are changing. What "Splinter Cell" does in an uncanny subtextual fashion is mirror those changes in both plot and game design.
In the game's opening levels, Sam's motivation is to track down the men responsible for his daughter's death, a narrative that resonates because lots of the hardcore players are hitting the age when they're starting to plan families, if they don't already have kids. The loss of a child gets used as a story beat often in adventure fiction, but a big chunk of the game's audience is reaching the point in their own lives where that may hit home a little harder.
As Gamers Get Older, There's a New Need for an Easy Button - Games - News - IFC.com (http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/04/easy-button.php)
Most critics agree that it's a good (verging on great) game. But the reason SCC will be greeted warmly on hundreds of thousands of consoles isn't only due to the game's new mechanics like Mark & Execute and Last Known Position. Sam Fisher, the black ops agent who's been the star of the Tom Clancy-created stealth series, is getting reinvented as he's getting older.
That balancing act is something the players buying Fisher's game are having to figure out, too. The average age of the first-wave hardcore gamer -- the ones who've made successive generations of video game hardware and software in a multi-billion dollar business -- falls somewhere in the early to mid-30s now. And their lives are changing. What "Splinter Cell" does in an uncanny subtextual fashion is mirror those changes in both plot and game design.
In the game's opening levels, Sam's motivation is to track down the men responsible for his daughter's death, a narrative that resonates because lots of the hardcore players are hitting the age when they're starting to plan families, if they don't already have kids. The loss of a child gets used as a story beat often in adventure fiction, but a big chunk of the game's audience is reaching the point in their own lives where that may hit home a little harder.
As Gamers Get Older, There's a New Need for an Easy Button - Games - News - IFC.com (http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/04/easy-button.php)