Amer Ajami Senior Editor	Now Playing: America's Army, Eternal Darkness, NFL 2K3, Rallisport Challenge Recent Favorites: Halo, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Ace Combat 04, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec All-time Favorites: Duke Nukem 3D, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Half-Life

So Good, It's Bad?

I spent the better part of last weekend cleaning up my messy living room, where I do most of my console gaming. There were Xbox games, PlayStation 2 games, and GameCube games strewn about the floor, some in small stacks, some with the wrong disks in each box, and others with missing manuals. There were some Game Boy Advance games lodged in between the pillows of my couch like loose change, and in the cleaning process, I even found my original glacier Game Boy Advance that I bought in Japan last March. After all was said done, about 60 games in total were all properly organized by platform first, then by genre, and finally alphabetically, across nearly three whole cabinet rows. My roommate commended me on a job well done and then made an interesting comment: "For a guy who can make such a mess out of his game library, you sure don't play a lot of games."

He's kind of right. The only two games that I've been putting some serious hours behind lately are Eternal Darkness for the GameCube and Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies for the PS2. That statement might not seem particularly interesting to most gamers. After all, both of those games are very good and deserve one's time and attention. The thing is, I've been playing Ace Combat 04 on a regular basis for well over a year now. In fact, I played and finished the Japanese version before the localized version ever came out here, and I still went out and bought the US release and have been playing it regularly every week since. Every facet, every component of Ace Combat 04 simply drips with quality, and that alone makes me want to play it over and over again to experience as much of the game as possible. That one game keeps my gaming hunger satisfied more than half of the other games sitting on my shelf.

That got me thinking about an argument that surfaced on the Internet a few years ago. This argument stemmed from the success of Counter-Strike, and it basically went that this particular shooter was so popular and so successful that it was going to hurt the games industry rather than help it. The reasoning was that with such an outstanding game available, what would be the need for anyone to ever buy another online squad-based first-person shooter after Counter-Strike ever again? In fact, why would Counter-Strike players ever buy another computer game at all? The argument cited two key factors contributing to a legitimate problem: One, that Counter-Strike was free, and two, that it was as good as, if not better than, most retail products that ask you to shell out upward of $50.

I'll buy that. Counter-Strike is a damn fine game. It's fun, it's fast paced, and when it came out, there was nothing like it at the time. It's also as addictive as any online role-playing game out there. Just ask our very own Ryan MacDonald how his Counter-Strike habit is coming along. Or better yet, ask his wife.

But do good games like Counter-Strike really hurt the industry? The argument that good games stunt the growth of sales can't be true, right? I tried to think if that argument rings true for me, and sure enough, during my own three-year affair with Counter-Strike, I didn't actually buy any other modern squad-based first-person shooter, because none of them surpassed Counter-Strike in my eyes. Then there's Ace Combat 04. Since playing the Japanese version of the game, the only other modern-day arcade-style combat flight simulator I've bought is the US version of Ace Combat 04. So it's true! Good games really are detrimental to the health of the industry.

Are games like Counter-Strike hurting the industry?

In fact, games like Counter-Strike are like medicine to our industry, for two main reasons. First, and obviously, if it's so damn good, people will buy it, and when they see that it's so damn good, they'll tell some friends, and they'll buy it. See a pattern? Good games spread like wildfire, and that's been the case since the 8-bit days. Chances are, a recommendation from your best friend is worth 10 times more to you than a glowing review from a game publication. Secondly, games like Counter-Strike cause developers to create better products. After the flood of me-toos has passed, a true successor always emerges to take the place of a game once held near and dear by the masses. Just look at the succession of Westwood and Blizzard real-time strategy games, or the id and Epic first-person shooters, or the EA and Papyrus driving games. A new Counter-Strike that's truly better than its predecessor in many respects, and not just an obvious attempt to ride its coattails, always emerges. And then people will flock to that game, tell their friends about it, and so on.

In a perfect world, every game that hit store shelves would have a similar effect on the industry as Counter-Strike had. Don't get me wrong, variety is the spice of life, but so too is quality better than quantity. I'd rather spend more time with a smaller number of really good games than less time with a bunch of average games. If every single game could satisfy me for three years, then I'd be a happy man indeed. And if that game's success means that some uninformed buyer is saved from spending his or her hard-earned money on some mediocre game, then so be it.

As for me, I'm planning on spending my dough on Battlefield 1942. I've played enough of it to be sure that it'll keep me occupied for weeks and maybe even months at a time, and it'll be a fine alternative to Counter-Strike. In the meantime, I'm playing this one game called Ace Combat 04. Heard of it?