Of golf and golf games

I was googling around earlier trying to find some reviews of the TW 08 game. I recently bought the game for the PC picking it up in a supermarket 'bargain bucket' for 9 Euros. As you may know from reading my earlier blogs, my habit of starting in the middle of things and working back towards the start often causes me to buy a game and then go searching for reviews of it - backwards I know! Is there a cure?


More about the reviews in a moment, but first, initial impressions on loading up the game for the first time. I spent about an hour creating my character which is like a game in itself, and you know what? -it's not easy to make something that doesn't look like its just come out of the 'orc factory' in Lord of the Rings!
The shapes and sizes you can make of all your composite bodyparts has to been seen to be believed. Anyway, after a bit of fiddling, I finally had something vaguely humanoid to play with and headed out to the course.


I was disappointed.


This game seems to have got gradually worse since it first went '3d' back in 2002 . I haven't really played around with it enough to do it justice so in the interests of fair play, I will give it another go later and report back. I have however played various incarnations of EA's game, 2002, 2003, 2004,2006, and now 2008 so the TW games are not new to me. Anyway back to those reviews I found.
It's interesting that the one that caught my eye was referring to the TW series not as a golf simulator but as a simulation of watching the golf on TV.
This guy had hit the nail on the head right there, and that's why more than any other reason I think, the large majority of Links players never really moved on to the TW series. It's not a case of misplaced loyalty, it's simply that you really don't feel like you're playing golf in TW. Instead your controlling a TV telecast with yourself as the star.

I'm sure this approach was taken because this is the main target market, people who have seen Tiger Woods on TV and want to pretend to be him. It is NOT, however, a golf sim.
In the many comments posted below the review, a LOT of people bemoaned the fact that Links isn't made anymore and called it 'a true golf sim' It's missed by many although they may not know that Links is still being constantly upgraded by enthusiasts.



EA makes the TW golf games pretty much each and every year - they have obviously paid Tiger a small fortune(or perhaps a large one even!) to use his name and likeness. Their marketing budget is huge and they have a large stable of sports games to support and develop. One of their marketing slogans is "if it's in the game, it's in the game!" More accurately it should be "if it's on TV, it's in the game!" They have to sell massive quantities of the game and so cross platforming onto the xbox360, ps3, Wii, is essential for them. I think they have been using their marketing prowess and the huge draw of the Tiger Woods name as a crutch to continue to supply a mediocre product.


It's a very complicated and confusing economic climate we live in but one thing we know is that the games industry is huge, rivalling the big blockbuster Hollywood movies in budget and scope. Like all industry, it's driven by one thing - money.

Good, small development studios are often gobbled up by large publishers such as EA and Microsoft so that their latest creation can be marketed as the next big thing. I remember developer 'bungie' being bought by Microsoft and the planned initial PC release of their now famous game 'Halo' being sidelined as Microsoft wanted it to be one of their main Xbox launch titles. It was a big hit and indeed my son is a big fan of Halo3!

Microsoft have the resources to throw into projects to create fantastic products and I'm a great admirer of some of the things they have achieved over the years in the games simulation industry. I'm thinking of how they continued to develop the Links series after Access (the original Links creators) joined them and I've been a big fan of the Microsoft flight simulator series too.

Unfortunately they seem just as efficient at killing franchises as supporting them. Links was 'killed' back in 2004, not because it wasn't a great game or wasn't making money but rather Microsoft thought they could make more money by putting their resources elsewhere. They have recently done the same to MSflight simulator and although fs9 and fsx, the last two incarnations, have been massively impressive, they must simply not have be making enough money to keep the 'bean counters' happy. It's a crying shame.


Smaller studios which stay independent, have smaller budgets for sure, but sometimes they make up for that handicap with passion for what they are creating. Access survived for many years on their own and continually improved the Links series year upon year with more courses, better graphics, Arnold Palmer!


Every now and again someone comes into the market with a new golf game. I'd like to think I know a good golf game when I see it, having chosen this glorious game of golf and all it's facets as my lifelong pursuit. From time to time I've been approached by games companies who have sought me out as a consultant for their upcoming games. I obviously sign NDA's and cannot discuss any of their work in detail but I can say I've often been frustrated by what I feel is their lack of understanding and unwillingness to listen, in getting to the core of why people play golf, are interested in golf, and more importantly for them, why people would choose to play a golf game rather than some other type of game.


Real golf is one of the very few sports where you can have just as much fun playing by oneself than you can when playing with others. Of course it's fun to play a relaxing round with friends too but standing on a practice range, whacking a bucket full of balls into the wide blue yonder can be hugely entertaining too! It's a sport played by people from all walks of life and from widely varied social backgrounds. Everyone loves the feeling you get with golf, of being part of your environment and close to nature.

I'll tell you a story and this is completely true - the very first golf course I ever played on at 12 years old was one I designed myself! I'm telling you, a big triangular green field, a golf ball, and a golf club, that's all that was needed.
I dug makeshift holes on all 3 corners of the field with my 8 iron and played it from hole to hole, 6 times around to make all 18 holes in total.
It wasn't easy with out of bounds on the left on all the front 9 holes and then when I reversed the direction of play, there was out of bounds on the right coming back! A tough test indeed.
Maybe that's where I got my creative golf streak from.


I upgraded the course soon after by using old tin cans as hole liners. Although I'm sure they weren't 'regulation' size they did stop the sides of the holes crumbling. Golf is hard enough without having your hole cave in while you are chipping towards it! Many a Grand Slam was won and lost on that course and although I've played many hundreds of courses since, I still remember every 'nook and cranny' of that field.


Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that golf doesn't have to be 'flashy' to be fun. We don't need 50 different camera views, swirling around our head or to view the world from upside down and inside out. What is important I think, as much as any other aspect of the simulation, is that you can actually feel like you 'are there', standing on the bright green grass, feeling the cool breeze on your skin and squinting into the distance to see where your next challenge lies. That's the feeling I try to create on my virtual courses, with the graphics, sounds and overall realism.

That's what golf game developers need to be concentrating on as much as possible.

No amount of flashy gameplay 'features' will replace the feeling of playing real golf if you look like you're stuck in some sort of nightmare cartoon world!



Tiger Woods 2008..........