No Choices
Equals No Fun
Tom McDonald has been covering games for countless magazines and
newspapers for years. He lives in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.C
hoice is at the very heart of Eidos’ first-person
RPG Deus Ex: Invisible War , and in many ways,
this is the game’s very undoing. In the interac-
tive medium, when the consequences of our choices
don’t have an impact, it’s hard to feel joy, pain, or
much of anything.
Much has been made about the lack of an overtly
good or evil side in Invisible War’s struggle. Gamers
who have gotten most excited about this ambiguity are
those who believe that moral relativism is a desirable
philosophy of life rather than the absence of one. The
story paints a struggle between predatory capitalism
and religious fanaticism in shades of gray that give
equal weight to both sides. I would argue that even
the most predatory capitalism produces jobs and
goods, whereas religious fanaticism produces only
corpses. Others would argue differently.
Whatever your feelings, this setup initially makes for
a paranoid and tension-filled atmosphere. Warren
Spector and the game’s cadre of designers should cer-
tainly be applauded for attempting to enrich the gaming
experience by introducing such narrative complexity,
even if the story’s tensions and branches become a mud-
dle of sometimes-confusing morals and motivations.
The holes in the story normally would be of little
concern. After all, what game doesn’t suffer from plot
holes? However, by over-simplifying the complex and
interesting gameplay elements featured in the first
Deus Ex , Ion Storm’s designers have unfortunately
shifted gamers’ focus away from tangibly rewarding
play mechanics and more towards narrative.
I’m not sure this was the right direction for the
series to take. The original Deus Ex had a remarkably
satisfying skill system and RPG vibe that complement-
ed and embellished what was a flawed but similarly
open-ended story. Invisible War foregoes this game-
play complexity with a greatly reduced and far less
appealing system of biomods. With only five biomod
slots (all of which can be filled within a few hours)
and a single type of ammunition, the RPG elements PC
gamers drooled over have been stripped bare.
What’s left is a game of decision-making: which
side to fight for, what path to take, what missions
to accept, and whether to use stealth or violence to
complete your objectives. If there is a system of conse-
quences and rewards for your decisions, however, I’m
missing it. Other than warm, fuzzy satisfaction, moving
past obstacles by stealth rather than murder seems to
bring no appreciable reward, and the factions all seem
willing to give you one more chance when you blow a
task. The only consequence, it would seem, is the one
your imagination manufactures, and that’s a shame.GAME THEORY BY THOMAS L. McDONALD
Quick Start
MAXIMUMPC MARCH 2004
W
hen Creative Labs qui-
etly purchased 3D audio
developer Sensaura from
London-based technology com-
pany Scipher in December 2003,
there were no big headlines or
Internet chatter. However,
on the Richter scale of PC
audio business strategies,
the acquisition feels
like an 8.0. Relatively
speaking, the acquisition
is nearly as significant as
ATI buying nVidia, or Intel buy-
ing AMD. Here’s why, and what it
means for you.Who the hell is Sensaura?
A small English company, Sensaura
develops and licenses several 3D audio
technologies. In the PC, the Sensaura
engine—an underlying proprietary algo-
rithm used to render 3D audio—powers
about 95 percent of the motherboards
and notebooks on the market, including
the vast majority of consumer sound-
cards not made by Creative Labs.Why did Creative Labs snatch
up Sensaura?
Steve Erickson, Creative Labs’ gen-
eral manager for desktop audio, told
Maximum PC that Creative shelled
out $5.6 million to buy Sensaura for
a number of reasons, including access
to a strong audio development tool
that works across game consoles and
the PC. Erickson also said Sensaura
has connections with many consumer
electronic devices as well as the mobile
market—two categories Creative would
like to enter. Creative, of course, also
doesn’t mind gaining the company’s
audio-oriented intellectual properties,
which include its two-speaker spatial-
izer technology and its realistic-sound-
ing headphone algorithms.
“We’re still in the process of figur-
ing out what the right business model
is,” Erickson said. Creative continues
to work with all the companies who
currently license Sensaura’s technol-
ogy and has no plans to pull the rug
out from under companies that are
direct competitors.What does it all mean for you?
In the short term, Creative says it plans
on changing nothing. You’ll still be
able to get a VIA-based or RealTek-
Media motherboard with the Sensaura
engine. The thorny question is, What
happens in the long run? Competing
hardware vendors we spoke with gave
mixed reviews of the deal. One vendor
said the deal can only lead to one
result: Creative’s competitors will lose
the ability to license Sensaura products.
These critics point to Creative Labs’
history of vaporizing its conquests,
including EMU, Ensoniq, and Aureal.
“Given the track record [of Creative],
the company will wait until everyone
forgets, and then next year, the ham-
mer will drop,” said the vendor, who
asked to remain anonymous.
With Creative now controlling the
intellectual property of both Sensaura
and Aureal, as well as its own large
portfolio, building a competitive engine
without infringing on Creative’s copy-
rights is going to be legally challenging,
the vendor said. “The difficulty is not
in making [the technology], the diffi-
culty is making it without getting
sued.” If Creative were to restrict access
to Sensaura’s technology, many compa-
nies, including Intel, might simply
decide to get out of the business rather
than develop their own.
If this happens, we’ll all be using
Creative’s products in the future. And
there won’t be a damn thing we can do
about it.Creative Labs Quietly Makes
Big Waves
The soundcard maker’s acquisition
of rival Sensaura puts it in a position
of dominance