Blair Herter is co-host of MTV’s popular gaming show, the G-Hole. We sat down and discuss all things gaming with Blair, including the fact that World of Warcraft can kill you.

CraveOnline.com: How’s the G-Hole coming along?

Blair Herter: It’s been really nice, man. I’ve been covering games for MTV for two years, but at the G-Hole we just celebrated our one year anniversary.

CO: How have things progressed with the show from the start until now?

BH: This year was maybe my 7th E3, and just seeing the industry progress in the past seven years has just been incredible. But I’ve been a fan of games for as long as I can remember… growing up as a fat kid, games were my escape. Within MTV though, I think it’s just become so much more mainstream. Two years ago we were literally the bastard stepchildren, the video game nerds. And now the majority of our resources at least with .com are going towards gaming content, which I think is phenomenal.

So I think us nerds are finally taking over, man. I really do. I think we’re finally taking over the world, which is nice.
But what about you? Favorite game of all time, what you got?

CO: I’d have to go with my first love, Burgertime for Intellivision. I haven’t played it in about twenty years though, so the awesomeness is probably scaled. As for more modern games, there’s this one on the PS2 called Shadow of Colossus that kicks some huge ass.

BH: Hell yeah, that game is awesome. For the one year anniversary thing on the G-Hole was did a cartoon about it, and it’s basically the guy from Shadow of Colossus riding a horse for like nine fuckin days to find this Colossus, and as soon as he gets there, it steps on him and kills him.

CO: Sounds smashing. Back to you -  favorite game?

BH: Diablo II. It only came out about six or seven years ago, but it was the first game where I just literally could not walk away from it. And it also introduced me to online gaming, because that’s what started the whole online gaming experience with Battle.net. Diablo II was the first time people could link up and play interactively with other people. It was the predecessor to games like World of Warcraft.

CO: It’s completely insane how well that game is doing.

BH: World of Warcraft generates a billion dollars a year on subscription services alone. Off a game that’s been around for fuckin three years.

CO: Damn. Speaking of online gaming, the Xbox has such a leg up on the next-gen competition having already established its Xbox live, and users can transfer their Xbox accounts to the Xbox360. How do you see the Wii and the PS3 measuring up to that?

BH: The Wii is kind of a more self-contained gaming system. They do have online capabilities and stuff like that, but I think it will be used more for downloadable content, player skins, that kind of thing. But I really don’t see Wii coming out with any game in the near future where it’s really fun to play with other people online. Red Steel is kind of their first-person shooter, and it was okay , but I just don’t see it translating well to online gaming.
With the PS2, I felt that Sony really dropped the ball on the online gaming bit. I mean, besides SoCom, it really just made absolutely no sense to try and play a game online from Sony. But they have a ton of fucking money, and the PS3’s hardware is just vastly superior. So if their online interface can even come close to matching their their hardware it’ll be great. But I think Xbox live will always be the frontrunner, just because Microsoft really knows how to create a great online experience.

CO: It really seems that, pound for pound, the Xbox360 is the console to beat. It’s been out for a year, the titles are there, there’s been time to fix any problems or glitches they have, and it beats PS3 hands-down on price. And if you don’t have an HDTV, the PS3’s not as clearly superior visually. So in your opinion, what’s the best console out?


BH: Right now, Xbox360 one hundred percent. All of the developers I talk to say the same thing: you’re not going to see anybody fully utilize the PS3 technology for a while. They don’t know how to make games for it yet. I mean shit, it took three, four years for you to really see a superior PS2 game where it’s like wow, graphically it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. So I think for your money right now, unless you’re some hardcore technophile where you’re gung-ho on having a blu-ray player as opposed to HD dvd, if you’re just going strictly on gaming, the 360’s the way to go.

CO: Do you think that could change down the line once the PS3 picks up the pace and they start developing more games for it?

BH: The problem with being able to differentiate is that you don’t really have that many console-exclusive games anymore. Back in the day you’d see a lot of titles with ‘Nintendo Only’ and so on. But now, shit like Grand Theft Auto’s being released on Microsoft. Back in the day you would’ve never thought that to be possible. There just aren’t as many exclusivity deals as there used to be cause everybody’s trying to sell ‘em to as many companies as they can, because games are fuckin expensive to make.

But I think that half of the people, all of the adults buying these next-gen consoles are looking to make it a part of their home-media center, and I think that, in doing so, one of the reasons they’re buying it is probably for the dvd player. And until we see whether Blu-Ray or HDTV wins out I don’t think that’s gonna matter too much. But just for gaming alone, I think the Xbox will always have a leg up. It’s going to take a while for the PS3 to catch up.

CO: Do the systems live up to the hype in general? I mean, people are getting beat down, people are shooting each other over systems now…

BH: I don’t think so man. I mean, come on. That’s just ridiculous. The sad thing is, the people who are doing this kind of shit are people our age that have been gamers their whole lives and have obviously completely lost touch with what gaming is all about. A sense of community and comradery. I remember when Nintendo had this call-in service back in the day. For like ninety-five cents you could call in and get hints and stuff like that, and they actually had phone chat rooms where you could connect and there’d be like thirty people in the Metroid chat room, and it was a community. Now it’s like, everybody wants to be the first kid on their block to have one because it’s the cool thing to do. And at MTV, we perpetuate that. We do big, grandiose launch specials that Wilmer Valderama hosts and…

CO: It gets people excited.

BH: Yeah, it gets people excited more about owning it than about the fact that it’s a kick-ass game system.

CO: It becomes an object of status and bragging rights. But this shit with people getting shot and everything is entirely preventable. I heard about a Best Buy in New York that handed out tickets for each of the 140 consoles they received, and told the people to come back when the store opened. The mayhem was avoided entirely.

BH: I think the stores that don’t do things like that are basically just trying to get some free advertisement for their store. ‘Look, we can get the local news station will come out ‘cause we have 700 people in line for ten Xboxes or PS3s’. Did you hear about that cat in Idaho who, I think it was Idaho, there were like five hundred people in line and the store manager comes out and goes ‘I’m gonna put out ten chairs, and whoever sits down in these ten chairs gets the PS3s.’ So they put out these ten chairs and said ‘go’ and you’ve got five hundred people all in… there were like broken ribs, clavicles, faces…how could you possibly think that was a good idea?

Musical chairs when we were seven was a dangerous f**** game. This is like, giant, three hundred fifty-plus pound gamers who don’t leave their homes…

CO: Elbows and knees swingin....

BH: Yeah, man. Yeah. So it’s kinda crazy. I mean on the one hand it’s good for the industry, where someone like myself can have a job in the gaming industry that we can actually pay our bills with as opposed to this kind of obscure on the peripheral of regular job type of thing, but on the other hand I think that people are really forgetting what gaming is all about. And I think that’s where Nintendo…. I mean, I like new games, I’m a huge comic book fan too and as much as I like a guy like Stan Lee and Dan Jurgens and stuff like that, I can’t read comic books from the fifties because it’s so boring to me. I mean, I respect where everything’s come from, but I’m also 26 and I live in 2006, so I need more excitement. And I love the next-gen systems for that, but I think Nintendo is the only one right now that’s doing it right. They’re just like, ‘you know what? We’re going to make it accessible for the entire family. We want families to sit down and play games together. We want to have games…we’re not gonna bundle it with Gears of War, we’re gonna bundle ours with Wii Sports. Because it’s so accessible to the entire family.’ And I think that they’re the ones that are bringing gaming back into the homes. As opposed to putting it out there into the public as like the cool thing to do.

CO: What’s the next leap for gaming? How do you make it more inclusive for the family?

BH: I think that the future of gaming is all online. I think that you and I being able to play together in different parts of the country is where it will end up, um.. I think Ninendo’s goal is to have the living room be the destination spot in the house. They don’t want people to put their Wiis in their bedrooms. They want people to put it in the living room where everybody is, and make it a family experience again.

CO: Graphically, the advancement leaps between systems aren’t on par with those of the first few consoles, where you went from Batman being a yellow block to, on the next system, identifiable characters with distinguishable features and so on. What would it take to create a new kind of graphic revolution? They’ve used live actors in the past for games like Pitfighter…it looked terrible.

BH: Yeah, the “Mortal Kombat Killer” they called it, but it sold like 32 copies. I think that we probably have the technology available, but I think that the next logical step will be full-motion video. But remember how the Final Fantasy movie was super hyped because it was one of the first entirely computer-generated movie and everybody was stoked on it because it looked so real? Well people didn’t watch it, because people don’t want to watch a movie that’s not a cartoon that doesn’t have real people in it. And I think that if you can play Gears of War on a computer or tv that’s running 1080p… I don’t know if people want anything better than that because you want to be able to escape reality when you’re playing a game. If you get to a point where you’re playing with real people, I don’t know if you necessarily have that sense of escapism, and what it’s boiled down to is that we’ve finally reached a point where, graphically, you can see blades of grass blowing in the wind, you know? Everybody’s pretty good with the graphics. And if you notice just with advertising campaigns and stuff now, with the PS2 and the Xbox there was a lot of the ‘this game is graphically superior, the best looking PS2 game to date’ or whatever… but I think now, it’s kind of moving back towards gameplay. Because we’ve reached a point where, okay, graphics are great. We know that. You can’t just sell me a game based on graphics anymore, because all the games look good. Even the shitty ones look good. I think we’ve just reached a pinnacle with graphics for the moment… I mean, they’ll get a little smoother and stuff like that but I think that for the most part what it’s coming back to is gameplay. And I think that’s great for gamers. Anybody can make a good-looking first-person shooter, but what makes that different? Everything’s dirivative. There haven’t been any huge innovations in the genre, but there have been huge innovations in the gameplay.

CO: As for gameplay, people are going nuts over Guitar Hero II. It’s just got so much more to offer than the first.

BH: Yeah the first one had like 25 songs, whereas the second one’s got like sixty or sixty-five. And you can play rhythm guitar and lead guitar. Again though, in keeping with what Nintendo’s trying to do, they’re making games accessible to everybody. They’re bringing gamers together again. Guitar Hero’s fun to play by yourself, but it’s not nearly as fun as trying to rock out and beat your boy. It’s a phenomenal game. Guitar Hero II, for someone who doesn’t have a next-gen system, because I think everybody in the world who plays games owns a PS2 at this point, I think it’ll be the Christmas game of the year this year. I think any parent who has a kid who likes games, it’s just a no-brainer, cause it’s something they can play with their friends.

CO: How would you compare the gaming culture in the U.S. and Japan?

BH: We did a piece on arcade culture in Tokyo about a month back, and I actually went out there for it. One, arcades are just as big if not bigger than they’ve ever been in Japan. They’re very much alive and well. And it’s weird, they’re such a buttoned-up society.. there’s a lot of pressure on them to get good grades and get good jobs and be productive human beings, as opposed to us, I mean, we’ve got a shitload of slackers here in America, myself included on occasion, and it’s interesting because in Japan, home consoles are still a big deal but arcade gaming is where it’s at. You walk into an arcade and first of all, the arcades are like eight and nine stories of different games. And you have two types of different people that play in the arcades. The Japanese teen suicide rate is, like, quadruple the next highest one in the world because there’s so much pressure on them to get good grades, so these kids literally go to school like ten hours, twelve hours a day,  and then they go to the arcade and play for another five. Like, they function on no sleep whatsoever. And it’s kind of their escape from the pressures of their lives, and it’s interesting because you’ll walk into an arcade and you’ll see a ten year old kid who’s trying to escape his life playing like a game like Dance Dance Revolution against a fifty year old man in the three-piece suit, because adults face the same pressures. They’re also working a tremendous amount and they need to be a proud representative of the Japanese work ethic and so games for them are much more of an escape than games are here. I think here it’s more of a cultural phenomenon where it’s about so-and-so game and being cool.
I’m a big comic book fan and you know, when Superman Returns came out, a lot was said about Brandon Routh and stuff like that but one of the things that people fixated on was that he was a World Of Warcraft player. And I think it’s sad to me that we’ve let pop culture make its way into gaming, where there in Japan, gaming is still just gaming. It’s just pure there. The arcades are open 24 hours a day. It’s just absolutely incredible. It really is. As a human being it was just an eye-opening experience for me just to see the cultural differences, but as a gamer it’s…I lack the words to tell you how big it is there. It’s huge. They have entire arcade districts.

CO: So any upcoming gaming events you’re looking forward to?

BH: Tokyo Gameshow next year will be fun, but I’m really looking forward to see what they’re going to do with the next E3 next year. Now that it’s more of an industry thing as opposed to what it had turned into where you have Paris Hilton running around playing games with 50 Cent and…

CO: Oh God…

BH: I know this all sounds really bad because I work for MTV, like it sounds like I’m really bitter about it all, but it’s what I do for work so… I’m only bitter on my gaming side.

CO: You can’t stand much of a chance once you add Paris Hilton to the mix..

BH: She’s absolutely nauseating.

CO: I remember hearing a clip of her at E3, I guess there was a game that she was supposed to promote, and she showed up, spent like 8 seconds onstage, used the wrong name for the game, and was once again proud of her unparalleled stupidity.

BH: Yeah dude, and it was her game. Like, Paris Hilton’s Diamondquest or some shit. And she was like, ‘I’m here to promote Paris Hilton’s fuzzy Unicorns,’ and they were like, ‘who are you? You know where you are right now, right? You’re at E3?' But what are you gonna do? If there’s gotta be some person that makes me feel better about my life, it might as well be her.

CO: What’s the craziest s*** you’ve ever seen or heard of in the gaming world?

BH: The craziest thing I’ve ever heard of would have to be a guy in Japan who played World of Warcraft for something like thirty seven hours straight and died. He didn’t feed himself or hydrate himself and he died of dehydration. Like, he got so into the game that he didn’t recognize his body telling him that he was dying. A guy died from overexposure to video gaming. I don’t know if you can get any crazier than that. I mean, the name of my show is the G-Hole, and it’s named the G-Hole one because it’s fun to say, and two because the G-Hole is the game hole, it’s that zone you get in where you’re playing a game and you just need to get to the next level, and when you finally get there you look at the clock and it’s like three hours later and it’s like where did my life go? And this guy, in essence, got into the G-Hole and he didn’t recognize that his own body was telling him that he was dying. The guy died of dehydration. How do you not know… I mean, that’s insane!

So I think that that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but the craziest thing that I think I’ve seen, personally, was about two years ago at E3 I interviewed Miyamoto. And this guy… we interviewed him at a Nintendo booth or whatever, and we walked from the booth to like some back room like 35-40 feet from the booth to the doorway and in between the two place s there were maybe two hundred fifty, three hundred Japanese gaming fans, right? And it’s like a God walking amongst mortals when this guy walks through a crowd, and I literally saw people weeping because he was there in real life, and a woman touched him and passed out. And that’s probably the craziest thing I’ve seen in person. Cause you know, the guy created home gaming, essentially. He made Nintendo what it is.  But he’s just this quiet little Japanese guy, so to see somebody touch him and pass out was pretty insane.