Tuesday, March 27, 2007

MMO addiction fears overrated

Game Politics has a quick roundup of a new study that says fears about addictions to MMOs are overrated. Conducted by the University of Bolton (UK) School of Health, the doctors concluded that "incidences of addiction could be 10% lower than some currently accepted classification schemes suggest."

Which is not to say that addiction isn't real, or that it doesn't cause serious problems for some people (just as the lead researchers point out) - just that mass hysteria over MMOs taking over people's lives is probably just a wee bit uncalled for.

Study: MMO Addiction Fears Overrated [Game Politics]

Monday, March 26, 2007

Research on kids, video games, and aggression

A quick roundup of a new book out on video games, teenagers, and aggression is over at Game Politics - seems like they're not stating anything new (cartoonish violence or realistic bloody gore both 'increase aggressive tendencies', etc etc), but no one has yet managed to say whether or not people with more positive outlooks on violence are more likely to pick up violent video games.

I have to say that even though I love me some samurai hack n slashes, I've not yet had the urge to take a bushido approach to my life, nor have many many hours with RPGs that involve killing lots of things encouraged me to round up a pack of friends and go be hostile to animals and other people. I have little doubt that there is some sort of linkage between aggressive behavior & violent media of all sorts, but it's a chicken-or-egg question.

I mean, Katamari is listed for 'fantasy violence' & I have a hard time believing rolling up the world is going to cause a sudden increase in aggressive behavior.

New Book Cites Research on Video Games, Kids & Aggression [Game Politics]

Rethinking the MMO

Interesting article up over at Gamasutra by Neil Sorens on the subject of MMOs, specifically subscription-based games like WoW and the like, which he terms Persistent Entity Games, or PEGs. He outlines six problems he sees as plaguing the genre: boring gameplay, level grinding, "Advancement-holics Anonymous" (treating the ultimate goal of the game as character building & heading up the levels), making players feel ordinary, domineering design, and exorbitant time requirements. He also outlines some potential solutions to all these problems.

I'm not a MMO player myself, mostly because the concept doesn't appeal to me & I find some of the issues Sorens raises to be quite off putting, but I think the following goes for all facets of the game industry, not just MMOs/PEGs:

As long as developers and publishers do nothing but copy what is successful, they—and gamers—will continue to miss out on these games’ staggeringly awesome potential. And as long as PEGs are designed by and for stat geeks (whom I know and love and sometimes am) with little regard for traditional game design fundamentals, they will continue to waste that potential.


Rethinking the MMO [Gamasutra]

Edging into complex gaming territory via simplicity

Business Week has an article up on Nexon, the Korean company responsible for MapleStory & KartRider, and other companies edging into the territory of more 'hardcore' MMOs with a different game structure (less complex! more casual! no need to kill stuff!) and a different fee structure - instead of paying monthly to play, the companies bet that users will spring for virtual items and make their money via virtual merchandising.

Seems like it's working so far - certainly in Asia, home of these games, and now in America, where "in February ... players spent $1.6 million on 600,000 virtual products within MapleStory."

East Asia in general has a lock on the "OMFG CUTE" aspect that much as you try and resist, tends to seep into your being. Or maybe it's just living here, surrounding by way cute things? Regardless, first thing I think when I check out Nexon's Taiwanese homepage is "Oooooh, CUUUUUUTE!" Cute goes a long way to selling things, I just wonder how long it can last in America (or can these Asian companies start a 可愛 revolution? We'll find out).

The New Avatar in Town [Business Week]

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Overheating a 360 to bring it back to life

I don't know if I'd be brave enough to try what Robert Hansing (and a lot of other people) did & purposely overheat a game console to bring it back to life, but like the mythical phoenix, his 360 sprung back to life after the experiment (and no real fires, ashes, or fire extinguishers required).

I un-wrapped it and turned it off . . . the towels weren't all that hot . . . I was on the verge of becoming angry at my inability to properly over-heat my 360 and contemplating researching at what temperature plastic starts to melt and possibly throwing it in the oven . . . but then my hand touched the surface of the Xbox . . . the *plastic* surface. It was freaking hot! Like fry an egg hot! And it was emitting an un-pleasant odor from the vents . . . the un-good my 'electronics are unhappy' smell. I could barely hold it long enough to unwrap . . . but I gently removed the towels from underneath the 360 and I let it cool for approximately 1.5 - 2 hours. Around 1am it felt cool to the touch again . . . and I decided to summons the 360 using my Harmony remote one last time before bed. My receiver turned on as did the TV . . . but not the Xbox . . . a brief moment of panic ensued . . . had I perhaps gone too far this time? I tentatively reached for the power button and well . .


I'm great at breaking electronics without so much as lifting a finger, so I'd really be afraid the thing was going to melt on me. I guess a lot of people have fixed their 360s with three flashing lights of doom this way ... I'd still be afraid of having one melted 360 & one hell of a mess on my living room floor.

Personal Jesus ... [Robert Hensing's Blog]

The discomfort of 'playing for the other team'

Continuing with the posts on avatars, there's yet another interesting post over on getluky.net dealing with "militainment" and people not wanting to play for the bad guys.

I’d never considered before that players might be switching to the US side in a video game due to ethical problems with playing “the enemy.” I began to wonder if he was alone, or if these moral problems with playing as enemy avatars could explain why there was such a built-in preference for the home teams.


Also discussed is a related problem Counterstrike tried to address while being sensitive to the aftermath of September 11, namely in the way of renaming teams & actions to be less reminiscent of terrorists and counter-terrorists.

When is a video game just a video game & when is it not?

Playing from the Other Side: the Discomfort of Militainment Avatars [getluky.net]

Group Petitions Bono to Cancel Mercs 2 Over Venezuelan Missions

As reported by Game Politics, a group calling themselves the Venezuelan Solidarity Network is asking U2's Bono to stop the upcoming release of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames because:

The aim of the video game is full devastation, so any ‘person’ who moves should be ’shot,’ and all the buildings, such as the headquarters of PDVSA, the Venezuelan public oil company, can be ‘destroyed.’ Our concern is that this game will only deepen an already antagonistic relationship between the U.S. and Venezuelan governments. Millions of Venezuelans fear an invasion from the U.S.; knowing that a company that works for the US military has created a game in which their country is completely destroyed will increase those concerns.


I sometimes wish video games had this much meaning & power, but I tend to agree with a Pandemic executive who told Gamespot, "While we’re flattered that people think Mercenaries 2 is a commentary on the real world, it is just a video game ...." The idea that a video game is going to encourage antagonistic responses on a government level seems unlikely, to say the least.

I also love the overuse of random quote marks. If a 'person' is actually a bunch of 'pixels' does that still make it a 'person'? Or should we be saying 'pixels on a screen with the appearance of a 'humanoid''?

Group Petitions Bono to Cancel Mercs 2 Over Venezuelan Missions [Game Politics]

Chinese personality and online gaming

While poking around the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting website to see who's doing what & what's shaking in the world of, well, Asian studies, I came across an interesting panel entitled "Digitalized China: Internet Politics through Multidisciplinary Perspectives", which is way far afield from what I study, but interesting nonetheless. I was particularly interested in the abstract of someone at the Communication University of China:

The high prosperity of online gaming industries in Mainland China parallels its “reported” social problems occurring in the youth groups by the media. The potent organizations advocate the danger of online games and at the same time establish the cause-and-effect relations between teenagers addicted to the Internet and “electronic heroin”. Thus, the mainstream opinions on online games come to a negative extreme. However, from a dialectic view, when we emphasize too much on the negative sides of Chinese online gaming case, the unique Chinese personalities represented in this case is always neglected.

This project is based on my field observation in Beijing Youth Internet Addiction Treatment Center, which is dedicated to rectify those youngsters who are frenetic about online games by medicine, psychological and physical treatments. This paper aims to explore the unique Chinese personalities represented in online gaming activities and explain the cognitive conflicts between the digital natives (youngsters generally) and the non-natives (adults generally) by the methods of field observation, in-depth interviews and document analysis.


Lots of academic jargon, but after the recent spate of Chinese gamers in the news, I'd love to get my hands on this paper & see what an 'academic' study has yielding. I'm all for studying games & gaming in the Ivory Tower, and it's especially cool to see it from a perspective that I have a better grasp on than, say, the complicated psychology behind game design.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Wiimote Beats

Not exactly game related, but I think it's cool to see what people are doing with the Wiimote:

This weekend I finished the Wii Loop Machine software that I started a few weeks ago. It's a system for using the wireless Wii remote to sync, control, and manipulate loops in real time.


Video, application download, and some samples available at Wii Loop Machine [The Amazing Rolo via MAKE: blog]

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Designing & marketing games for female players

Over at Joystiq, they have a roundup of a panel held at SXSW on "getting girls into the game". Actually, it was a nice step away from a lot of typical talks on women & gaming. I admit that I've been roped into writing more than one piece on my thoughts - as a gamer with boobs - on "women and gaming" or attracting more women to gaming. Like a lot of people, men and women alike, writing on the same subject, I tend to yowl that just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I need games made for or marketed towards me & the fact that I don't like playing Halo has nothing to do with me being a girl, just that I don't like first person shooters. Etc. etc. It all seems horribly cliched at this point & I think it did when I was writing it, too. I think it's the nature of the subject matter: none of us are saying anything that hasn't been said before in a thousand different forms by at least a thousand other people.

Anyways, the panel (and Joystiq's commentary) had some good points:

The majority of game publishers and developers are male, and when they try to make games for female gamers, they use things like focus groups and research numbers. As a result, they usually miss the target and develop games for them that suck. Then the games don't sell, so the publishers say, "Well, women don't play games."


They conclude a lot of this is more a marketing problem than not having a market or product problem. I just wonder when the industry is going to finally hit the target between two extremes of "women don't play games" and "they need games designed for them." Shouldn't people just concentrate on developing good games in general that everyone would like to play? ... And there I go, falling into the cliched girl gamer commentary trap again.

SXSW: Getting Girls Into The Game: Designing and Marketing Games for Female Players [Joystiq]

"Is Console Gaming Over?"

There's an editorial piece over at Business Week by David Ferrigno explaining why he thinks console gaming is going to be swept away by PCs.

The right combination of cost, portability, performance and ease-of use will allow the PC to re-shape the gaming landscape. The technologies are out there to make the PC fun and easy to use for all forms of media and living room entertainment.


I hate these sorts of arguments. I don't want my PC (well, in my case, Mac) to be "living room entertainment," and besides, the fact I have a Mac cuts me off from a ton of software support - and I'm not going back to a PC just so I can take full advantage of products designed for "casual gaming." I use my PC for two main things: internet and word processing. I don't like playing games with other people, which means most of the MMO draws are a non-issue for me & while I have a handful of "casual games" like he refers to in this piece, I don't want to spend a couple of hours immersed in Diner Dash.

I've always liked my consoles because I plug them in, stick a disc in, and know that it's going to work, and there's a wide variety of games I like to spend a few hours with. While this piece argues that PCs are become ever easier to use (I guess ...), and there are a number of good points (easier dissemination of the game equivalent of indy movies), and more people have PCs, I bristle at the thought of my computer as a complete jack of all trades that can do everything well and/or being able to magically replace my consoles (or handhelds). I have games in my library that simply don't have PC equivalents & probably never will, because they're just not popular enough in America.

The casual gaming market isn't going to shell out for a spendy Xbox or PS3 package, but they're not going to replace the people who are also console gamers. If I felt like my computer could do everything, I wouldn't have bothered shoving my PS2 in a suitcase and dragging it half way across the world with me. I notice these articles never point out the people who spend incredible amounts of money on a machine 'appropriate' or set up for gaming, or on hardware upgrades and so on and so forth ....

Is Console Gaming Over? [GameDAILY via Business Week]

Jack Thompson claims Take Two at the center of vast RICO conspiracy!

Just when I thought the crazy couldn't get any crazier, Jack Thompson steps in to prove me wrong! Game Politics reports that Thompson is alleging Take Two is, among other things, a bunch of "thuggish pornographers" and in a vast conspiracy to deprive Thompson of his civil liberties:

Take-Two has, since July 2005, been at the center of an effort to violate Thompson’s civil and constitutional rights… In addition to… extortion (intimidation) of Thompson… Take-Two has committed other predicate RICO acts, including but not limited to fraud, distribution of obscene and/or sexual material harmful to minors…

Additionally… Take-Two, through its Blank Rome lawyers, sought in Alabama to tamper with a witness in a pending criminal case, according to that witness’ lawyer.


This man just makes my brain hurt. His crusade against the gaming industry has been bizarre enough, but alleging that Take Two and some third parties like Game Politics, Kotaku, Joystiq, et al. have“collaborated and conspired with third parties to commit these racketeering activities” is moving into a whole different territory: paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories.

In Countersuit, Thompson Claims Take Two at Center of Vast RICO Conspiracy [Game Politics]

Parallels in games & social networking

Over at getlucky.net, there's an interesting three parter on Understanding Avatars in Games and Social Media (plus parts two and three). Drawing from sources like Xbox Live, WoW, and MySpace, the author examines avatars & related elements, from the obvious like your onscreen persona in a MMO to what's in your signature line on a forum.

I found that if a system didn’t provide the ability to automatically describe or summarize pertinent achievements or possessions, users often care enough to list them on their own.


Lots of shiny examples & interesting (if involved) discussion, and goes to show that people like their achievements out there for all the world to see.

Shanda liscenes Korean MMO for the Chinese market

Gamasutra had a really interesting piece up a few days ago entitled The China Angle: All Sins Forgiven, in light of the news that Shanda Interactive Entertainment was licensing the third online game of Korean company Wemade for the Chinese market. It's the second for Shanda, and the continuing relationship is proof that the huge potential market of mainland China is too much for companies to resist.

Despite Legend of Mir 2's popularity, Actoz terminated Shanda's license for the game in January 2003. Shanda continued to operate the game without a license and without technical support. In February 2003, Wemade started an investigation of World of Legend, a new MMORPG Shanda was developing in-house that shared many similarities with Legend of Mir 2, including name, content, and playing style. A month later, Wemade licensed the next game in the Mir series to Guangdong based Optisp. Wemade's legal battle against Shanda dragged on for another two years.


"Intellectual property rights? What intellectual property rights?" is a point of view that runs pretty deeply in China (and to a slightly lesser extent, Taiwan), and has incurred the wrath of some very big companies. But considering the potential goldmine waiting to be tapped, and Shanda's position as the most prominent game operators on the Mainland, it's not surprising that Wemade would come back for a (hopefully more productive/less lawsuit heavy) third round with Shanda.

And proving just how seriously Chinese gamers take their gaming, the article has this nice little side note on an incident surrounding accounts on a popular MMO being suspended for cheating:

Two days after Moliyo's announcement, a group of gamers stormed into and vandalized Moliyo's Shanghai office. In the aftermath, it appeared as if a tornado swept through the office. Graffitied on the office walls were phrases like "reactivate accounts," "return money," and "deceived gamers." Three were led away by the police.


Oh, China. Never a dull moment.

The China Angle: All Sins Forgiven [Gamasutra]

Chinese company trying to wrest back market share from Korean online games

Beijing Perfect World launched the official website of their new game, 誅仙 Zhu Xian, which is styling itself as one of my favorite forms of modern-day Chinese entertainment: the historical drama. I have a serious soft spot in my heart for the Chinese and Taiwanese historical miniseries, soap operas, movies, and now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be worth it to throw my hat in the arena of computer gaming for this. Taking its inspiration from a best-selling novel of the same name, it's part of a whole resurgence of the 武俠 wu xia genre ("martial [arts] heroes"), which has been popular for over 2,000 years. Probably the best known story of this type (in the West) is The Water Margin, which the Suikoden series takes some cues from. (/Chinese history geek)

Mr. Zhu Qi, the Vice-President of Beijing Perfect World commented, '''Zhu Xian Online' will inherit the fantasy features of the original fiction, presenting players with the most beautiful and mystical sceneries of mainland China, while offering a breathtaking interactive journey of soul-searching and swordsmanship training. The game will present the ''Zhu
Xian'' world exactly the way it is according to the original fiction, attracting both book lovers and online game fans alike.''

While several foreign online games have been scheduled to launch in China in 2007, Beijing Perfect World chooses to debut ''Zhu Xian Online'', a self- developed online game of unique national character, having seen a market vacuum in online Chinese games.


I always like to see games that harken back to these sorts of roots, which is probably why I have a secret addiction to the samurai hack 'n slash genre, but more classical art forms are ripe fodder for games if done right & I wish there were more games taking advantage of the stuff that has been out there for centuries. It sure looks pretty from the screencaps on the website, and I'm curious to see if a Chinese company can go head-to-head with the wildly popular Korean and Western MMOs & come out on top.


Beijing Perfect World Launches Official Website for New Hit 'Zhu Xian Online'
[Xinhua via PR Newswire]

Technical difficulties

Due to the wonders of ADSL & modems that look like they were probably made in the early 90s, I've been having issues with my magical online for the past day and a half.

Trying to get caught up tonight, if the ADSL will start cooperating.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Korean company to produce the next Mario?

Furthering my belief that Korean companies desperately need some better Korean to English translators, South Korean company Nexon has released a confusing statement today, saying they want to promote two of their characters to world-wide stardom & follow in Nintendo's footsteps.

Young stars 'Bazzi' and 'Dao' are as popular as 'Super Mario' in Asia owing to the success of 'BnB' and 'Kart-Rider.' 'BnB,' the first game starring those characters, set a new record in 2001, one year after its launch, with 350 thousand users playing the game at the same time, and also set the best record in China in 2004 with 700 thousand players playing at the same time. The second game 'Kart-Rider' outperformed 'Starcraft' 6 months after its launch, and became a 'national game' with No.1 share in PC cafe. Those two games have been playing world-wide, mostly in Asian countries like China, Taiwan, and Thailand, and loved by world gamers recording the world cumulative user numbers of 150 million and 120 million users last year.


A friend of mine more familiar with Starcraft than I uttered disbelief at that statement, likening Starcraft to Korea's national past time. So Nexon must be doing something right (or inflating their numbers, or something).

Personally, I think the characters bring to mind the Bomberman franchise. They're cute, round, and I'm not sure how well they'll fly 'worldwide.' And to the Nexon CEO's statement that "regardless of Korea's leading position in online game industry, we haven't produced big online game characters," I'd offer up that some comprehensible English language press might help matters, too. Cute and bubbly characters can only get you so far.

Nexon, Promoting its Characters to be the World's Star [ET News]

EA acquiring stake in South Korean company

EA has just announced today that it's signing an agreement with South Korean company Neowiz & purchasing shares in the company worth $105 million. The two companies collaborated last year on the Korean launch of FIFA Online & have an agreement to develop four more online games for the Asian market. EA will become the second largest shareholder of the company.

Interesting that EA has gone to the trouble & expense of acquiring a stake in a Korean company, but not surprising giving the potential for profits here. Though Japan is the country most foreigners look to when thinking about Asia & gaming, the Korean market is hot hot hot. I'm not sure I'd be looking forward to having some of the overplayed EA franchises foisted on me, but judging by the box art of Korean games available at my local 7-11, South Korean companies at least have premises a titch more exciting than FIFA. Korean company gets capital, EA gets some sort of inspiration for their franchises, everyone wins.

Electronic Arts takes stake in S.Korea Neowiz [Reuters]

Take Two considering sale of company

In light of some very unhappy shareholders, Take Two has announced it's considering selling off the company. A sort of problem child of game companies, it's been a lightening rod for controversy (thanks, Jack Thompson!), and on top of that (and the current legal wrangling), the investors that hold 46% of Take Two's shares have threatened to oust the current CEO Paul Eibeler and "take over the board."

And who could be buying?

Game publishers UbiSoft and Activision have reportedly explored a possible bid in the past. Elevation Partners, the venture capital group whose members include U2 front man Bono, is a possibility as well. And Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has also been mentioned regularly as a possible suitor.

"The most important thing is the closure of the legal uncertainties," said Taylor. "With or without this activist shareholder group, if there were no legal cases, we'd be hearing a lot more about [a possible takeover] already."


Of course, none of this is a certainty, and it's possible Take Two may decide to sell off underperforming units (Rockstar not among them).

I'm not a business person & I have to admit my first thought on reading what's been going with Take Two for the past couple of weeks is "yeah yeah, pissed off shareholders, uh huh - christ, is Jack Thompson ever just going to GIVE IT UP." Sadly, I have the feeling the answer is a resounding "NO."

Bono, Murdoch could buy 'Grand Theft Auto' maker [CNN Money]

Wii causing the Taiwanese government anxiety

And no, not from bootleggers. In a post notable for it's positively atrocious English translation, a Taiwanese blogger noted the Taiwanese government cracking down on the sale of as-of-yet unauthorized Wiis. The issue isn't so much with the Wii itself (or its "grey market" status right now), but with its WiFi & Bluetooth capability.

Because the console has yet to be officially released in Taiwan, the government is pulling the "But our government agency hasn't certified it yet!" card & now limited how many Wiis can be brought in by travelers.

The Telecommunications Act states that people who produce, sell, import or publicly display uncertified wireless goods will receive penalties ranging from NT$100,000 to NT$500,000. [from $3,000 to $15,000 USD]

The NCC said it will inspect stores that sell uncertified Wii game consuls [sic], but will not break into individual houses and issue fines to the owners of the toy.


Although I haven't smuggled a Wii here, it's good to know that if I did, the police wouldn't be busting down my door at 3 AM to confiscate it and slap me with a fine. Still, they say after filling out the proper documentation, people coming back into the country with their Wiis will have no problems after getting their little sticker. Having seen the magic of the Taiwanese bureaucracy up close & personal, I'm not so sure about that.

Wii入關需貼功率標誌 2台內旅客免稅放行
Wii sellers to face stiff fines, NCC warns [Taiwan Headlines]

Christian video game coming to Asia?

In perhaps one of the most mind blowing little news snippets I've read recently, Left Behind Games Inc. has announced they plan to market their Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based on the popular Left Behind books, in Asia prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Their reasoning? The game will "help Asians better communicate with Westerners." The company has hired Dr. Gordon Chiu, a consultant with experience marketing Western products towards Asian countries, to help with the launch.

"I personally find the unique platform of nonviolence connects very strongly with ancient Asian philosophies,” explained Chiu in a statement. “With the upcoming Olympic Games in 2008, everyone is looking for intellectually stimulating products from the United States and Europe that can better prepare them for interaction with Westerners."


Chiu also says that many Chinese children are "encouraged" to play games such as World of Warcraft in an attempt to learn about Western thought & strategy; maybe we're reading different newspapers, but I've read a lot of Taiwanese and Chinese press that is incredibly anxious about kids spending too much time at internet cafes and playing MMOs. Western books, games, TV programs, movies, and all sorts of other media are readily available in countries like Taiwan or Japan, and I can't see the CCP joyfully allowing a game with even the merest whiff of Christian proselytization to sell on the Mainland freely.

This raises all sorts of questions that make me uneasy for a number of reasons. At the very least, it seems like a not-so-surreptitious attempt at proselytizing under the guise of "educating."

I'm not sure what Confucius would have to say about all of this, but I can guess what the Chinese government will have to say - and I don't think it would be an overly positive response.

Left Behind Games to Reach Out to Asia Ahead of Olympics [The Christian Post]

Wii is wonderful: even Sony's CEO thinks so!

Maybe it's just because I'm bitter about generally having champagne taste on a (broke student) budget, but I was tired of Sony's comments on the PS3 before it launched and I'm really tired of them now. Sony's Chairman CEO Sir Howard Stringer said in a recent interview that "Wii is a wonderful device, but has a different target audience. If we fail, it is because we positioned PS3 as the Mercedes of the video game field. PS3 is after a different audience and it can be whatever it wants - a home server, game device, even a computer."

What, does the P in PS3 stand for Proteus? I know that plenty of people have complained about the trend towards "jack of all trades, master of none" consoles, but it still makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

He's right, of course & it isn't comparing apples to apples when directly contrasting the Wii & the PS3, but that doesn't change the fact that the PS3 hasn't been doing terribly well and even non-gamers have gone gaga over the Wii. How will Sony's tune change if (when?) the PS3 surpasses the Wii's sales numbers?

Sony CEO: "Wii is wonderful!" [PS3 Fanboy]

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Google buys video game ad company

Google AdSense ads, out of all online ads, tick me off the least: I don't think I've ever seen an ad in Chinese asking if I want an American passport via AdSense ads, and if I have, it wasn't as tall as my screen & flashing multiple colors. So maybe they'll be able to carry that low-key (as far as these things go) advertising to in-game efforts? With their very recent acquisition of Adscape for a cool $23 million, looks like they're still itching to expand the Google empire.

Still, some insiders are saying that Google has no experience with in-game advertising, a beast of a different color.

“There is a whole world of difference between the form of advertising done by Google and Madison Avenue,” one source familiar with the in-game ad business said, comparing Google's familiar text-based ads to the rich media used in videogames. “While everyone appreciates the dollars Google can throw around, when it comes to [in-game ad] experience they just don’t have it.”


I don't really play any games that have in game advertising, but I'm all for subtlety in whatever form. I'll be interested to see the results of Google combining their plentiful advertising experience with in game ads.

Google Agrees to Buy Adscape [Red Herring]

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Video games as cultural artifacts

The list of the "10 most important video games" chosen by a Stanford archivist & his committee of 4 has already been covered as part of all the press surrounding GDC, but it's an interesting thought that may lead to video games getting the same recognition as movies when it comes to archiving and preserving them.

Film preservation is a huge deal these days, and lots of us in fairly unrelated disciplines reap the benefits of dedicated experts who preserve, restore, digitize, and release rare films for future generations. So it's nice to see that people are already thinking towards the future in regards to preserving games, and attempting to avoid some of the problems encountered by people trying to save old reels of film. Still, new challenges come with the medium:

Mr. Lowood said that preserving video games presented certain challenges. For example the hardware that games are played on changes so frequently that there are already thousands that can only be played through computer programs called emulators, which, while readily available on the Internet, technically violate copyright laws.

“We have to be really careful here because the technology is just going to make this harder for us,” Mr. Spector said. “The game canon is a way of saying, this is the stuff we have to protect first.”


I'll be very interested in what sort of archival plan crops up - and what sort of scholarship will be happening in a few decades. "History of science" is a field that's getting increasingly popular: maybe the next generation of fledgling graduate students will be writing their proposals on the cultural impact of Nintendo, not the development of medical tools in Heian Japan? Stanford already has a special collection of early games & hardware, "which documents the rise of computer games, with a focus on games for Atari, Commodore, Amiga, Sega, Nintendo, and Apple systems." Sounds like a fun way to spend a day in the archives.

Is That Just Some Game? No, It’s a Cultural Artifact [NYT]
Stanford University's Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing: Video Games archive
The Wii may not be out yet here in Taiwan, but in entirely unexpected news, people are already clamoring for mod chips and LG DVD rewritable drives! Prices for bootlegged discs are somewhere between $5 to $7 US, as opposed to the $35+ for the real deal.

Bootlegging isn’t quite as blatant here as I remember it being in Shanghai, at least not for the newer stuff. Still, it would be nice if Taiwan would get at least try and get off Nintendo’s shit list. I’m tired of having slim pickings in languages that I can actually understand while shopping for new games.

Taiwan market: Modified Wiis linked to booming sales of LG DVD-Rom drives [Digitimes]

Friday, March 16, 2007

More realism, coming soon to a console near you?

Games & the apparently never-ending quest to make things look more realistic may soon be getting a boost from technology that's been in use for a while with movies - ray-tracing. But studios like Pixar use giant farms of computers to speed the achingly slow process, making it an unlikely option for use in games. Scientists from a German university have shown how to use the technique with custom chips or high-end graphics cards - and don't require tons of computers to get beautiful results.

Professor Philipp Slusallek and co-workers from the University of Saarland have developed a series of ray-tracing algorithms that promise to make it much easier to use the technique.

Daniel Pohl, one of the researchers who has worked with Professor Slusallek, has used the algorithms to produce ray-traced versions of the Quake 3 and 4 video games.

"It gives much higher image quality in shadows and reflections," said Mr Pohl. "You can even do reflections on reflections on reflections."


Reflections on reflections on reflections? I think I have a headache - and that sounds like the hell of a three-sided mirror in a dressing room. Here's hoping use of a technique like this will end the trend of "Not quite real, not quite cartoonish, just looks kinda off" graphics of games like Final Fantasy.

Rays light up life-like graphics [BBC]
Lost Garden is a blog I don’t read often, as much of the discussion – while interesting – is usually functioning just a little over my head. But a post on a mockup of a potential ‘social engineering’ game caught my eye. The walk through on how a potential multiplayer game with the end goal of encouraging cooperation was interesting, but more interesting (to me) was the comment that spawned this entry: an organization called Search For Common Ground is trying to put together a game to help teach conflict resolution, with the primary target audience being former child soldiers.

Chinese gamers just can't catch a break

Mainland China’s internet culture has been getting a lot of press recently: a 330 lb man died over the lunar new year break after a “marathon gaming session", the government has said no new internet cafes can be opened for a year in an apparent attempt to drive down the numbers of young’ns captivated by the magical online, and for those poor souls who have already crossed the line and are labeled “addicts,” it’s off to military-run “boot camps” for some electroshock therapy and some re-education.

I find the internet café/bar culture on Mainland China to be particularly fascinating, and some high profile gaming cases in the past couple of years have really drawn attention not just to the “wang ba” (internet bars), but also to the MMOs that are wildly popular – teenagers tossing themselves off buildings, murders happening over alleged virtual property theft, attempted government controls on how long people can play online MMOs, and a list of people who have apparently dropped dead after “intense” gaming sessions.

On the one hand, I’m really curious what the next news coming out of the Mainland will be in regards to internet & gaming problems; on the other hand, I’m not sure I really want to know.

Online addict dies after ‘marathon’ session [MSNBC]
No new internet bars this year [China Daily]
In China, Stern Treatment For Young Internet 'Addicts' [Washington Post]

Really old school gaming on your DS

Over at DS Fanboy, they're talking about a batch of homebrew old school text adventures ported to the DS:

These aren't just barebones ports, either: you can save games, and you can choose to enter text via an onscreen keyboard or handwriting input! And the game engine contains shorthand functionality for common commands like cardinal directions and "get".


I vaguely recall playing Return to Zork a very, very long time ago & not so sure I’d trade out my Harvest Moon DS time in favor of playing it again.

Text adventures arrive on the DS via unofficial channels [DS Fanboy]

Korean basketball MMO coming to the US

Judging from the majority of MMOs one can purchase at any convenience store in Taipei, most of them would be a tough sell for the American or European market. That’s not stopping one Korean company, though, nor the American distributor from pitching … a basketball MMO?

"People have tried to bring other types of online games from the Asian marketplace," said Leo Olebe, the game's brand manager. "But not every game has that "it' factor like this."

Olebe says "Freestyle" will be the first sports MMO to tap the North American market when it is officially released in May ....

"If you have Windows XP, you can play it," said Olebe. "It'll play on just about any computer. They're playing this game in western China."


Guess those Mac users in Xinjiang are still out of luck.

Korean online game aims for Westerns [Reuters]

Zelda Wii Case mod

Someone said to me recently that “gamers aren’t generally known for their keen sense of interior décor.” After seeing this Zelda Wii case mod, I can understand how people could get that impression. Check out the original Ebay auction at your own risk: horrible Zelda midi file contained within.

Zelda Wii case mod [Makezine.com]

Thursday, March 15, 2007

我很聰明或是很笨呢?