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As I blogged from last year's E3, I'm a big fan of the upcoming Playstation 3 title LittleBigPlanet. It's a quirky and addictive side-scrolling game but, more importantly, a killer example of the power - and fun - of user-generated content.
Today, Gamespot Australia has a quick Q&A with the developers.
Primarily because of this post, I think, a gold farming site has discovered this blog, and daily posts 30+ comments advertising their site. Or at least, they try to do so, but they get moderated out. I'm not going to link them or mention their name, for obvious reasons, but I do of course hope they die in a fire.
Gold farmers are a plague in all MMOs: they log in bots using free account keys, and stand in the middle of populated areas to spam the chat channels, advertising their services. They get banned quickly, but they have an army of new bots to come on the scene immediately, to replace their fallen bretheren. They're like roaches, and they make legitimate players really mad. Which hurts the game experience, which can cause people to quit, which reduces the demand for their services, so one wonders why they do what they do.
In any case, please, do, die unpleasantly, you spamming jerks.
Just got the official announcement of the release of WiiWare: the "indie" downloadable games for the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo is late to the game on this party. The Xbox Live community has been enjoying homebrewed games for ages now. Microsoft has also been seeding the indie-dev scene with do-it-yourself tools such as the XNA development suite. And Playstation 3 has been making waves, most recently with the long-awaited release of the trippy puzzle title Echochrome.
It'll be interesting to see what bubbles up from the WiiWare underground - or how underground it ends up being at all. Launch titles include a blackjack game called VIP Casino and a puzzle game called Pop. Could the next Nintendogs or BrainAge be coming from here?
So some bum named Mike asked in a comment to this post on art careers in gaming, "What do I need to do to stand out, with my reel?" The answer is almost tautological: don't show weak work. Be good.
But that's hardly actionable by Joe Q Random. Here's what I mean by that.
Most game movies are nothing to blog about, but the prospects of a Bioshock film are tantalizing - given the potential for atmospherics and City of Lost Children style underwater flair.
Just got the press release announcing Doom 4 - the next chapter in id Software's shoot 'em up franchise.
I ended my book Masters of Doom just as the company was beginning work on Doom 3. At that time, the decision to make another Doom game was controversial and momentous - seen by some as a long-awaited return to form and by others as an easy way out. For the next iteration, I'd love to see more than just an improvement on a theme, but some bold new risks and innovations. Here's the scoop:
Now this is what I'm talking about: a skiing game coming for the Wii Fit, the balance board peripheral coming this month from Nintendo. Look for a whole new genre of sports titles that will take advantage of this unique "controller." I'd love to see skateboarding, running, maybe an update on the old Track and Field arcade title - but instead of smacking buttons, you run and sweat. Question: how durable will the Wii Fit be to repeated pounding?
It's hard to read about any other game but GTA IV these days, but there's one coming tomorrow that deserves your thumb-time. It's called echochrome - and the lower case spelling hints at the poetic ambition. When this game was unveiled at E3, we in our seats let out a collective "wow cool." The game is elegantly simple - a MC Escher pencil drawn puzzle game that feels like a super-arty Tetris for the 21st Century.
The lo-fi beauty of the game is a perfect counterpoint to GTA IV - proving how vidgames don't have to be blockbuster violent immersive world epics to deserve attention, or define an entire industry. The timing of its release couldn't be better.
Yes, as Harry notes, this is the week of GTA IV. Yes, it has breakthrough design. Yes, it has controversial content. But here's the funny thing: this franchise that has become so synonymous with American culture is, in no small part, a product of Scotland.
While the publishers at Rockstar Games are located in New York City, the bulk of the front line development team is in Edinburgh. They're called Rockstar North. We don't hear much from them. Most of the press is handled by the NYC crew. But several years ago in 2002, just before the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, I was given the opportunity to actually interview a key developer in the North team. Here's what he had to say at the time (much of which, I think, holds true for today):
Well, today's the day. Grand Theft Auto 4 is here. I may be the only gamer out there that doesn't really like GTA, from all the hype and excitement I see. Surely there must be some other folks who can't bring themselves to play?
Rockstar clearly created this video with Jack Thompson in mind: "Here, Jack, chew on this. That's how much you scare us." But it has served at least another purpose: I am definitely not getting GTA4.
The game industry has its share of luminaries: Will Wright (Sims and Spore), Sid Meier (Civilization), Peter Molyneux (Fable). These are designers who not only make visionary and signature games, but ambassadors who can articulate the nuances of their culture and industry to the outside world.
This week, Nintendo's brightest bulb - Shigeru Miyamoto - opens up to the Times about the new Wii Fit, and the future hybrid of virtual and real exercise.
Word has it that next week's release of Grand Theft Auto IV will be not only the best-selling debut of a videogame, but possibly the highest-grossing entertainment product splash of all time.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case. GTA has been off the market long enough to build interest, and I think gamers are itching to get a new blockbuster in their paws. At this point, it'd be hard for Rockstar NOT to sell a gajillion copies.
This news.com article is calling 2008 the Year of Gaming. Usually I write these sorts of things off, but gaming has inched ever forward in consumer consciousness, and 2008 may be the year where it really explodes.
This week, fans of the rock band Motley Crue are rushing to hear the group's new single, "Saints of Los Angeles." But they won't find it on iTunes. The single is first available as a 99 cent download in the videogame Rock Band. It debuted yesterday for the Xbox 360 version, and will come out tomorrow for the Playstation 3. The Crue is not alone. On April 24, the band Def Leppard will be releasing their new single, "Nine Lives," via the game Guitar Hero III.
Remember when this sort of fanfare was reserved for MTV? Those days are gone. Now the YouTube generation gets the goods online or in-game, and franchises like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are competing venues. My bet is on Rock Band winning out in the end - it has all the power of Guitar Hero, and then some. The developers at Harmonix told me once that see themselves more as a music company than a game company, and this music delivery strategy is proof.
Ever wonder how much you might get to sit around all day making videogames? The latest salary survey from Game Developer magazine is sparking a lot of conversation in the blogosphere. Average pay: $73,600.
And of those gamers, who makes the most: coders. According to Game Daily, "In terms of game making talent, programmers were the best compensated with an average annual salary of $83,383. They were also found to be among the highest educated group (50 percent earned bachelor's degrees and about 26 percent completed some graduate work)."
I've been teaching an evening Maya class for the past few months, and it has made me realize that would-be 3D artists don't have much of a clue what the industry looks like. The industry has evolved enough, that it looks nothing like it did ten years ago, and will likely look much different ten years from now. How do you teach someone for that sort of situation?
NextGen has an interesting little feature online discussing the future games. The piece only scratches the surface of the phenomenal changes to come: digital distribution, microtransactions, interface innovation, user-generated content. The way I see it, the existing physicality of games - the consoles, the discs, the controllers - will continue to shrink and fade. I imagine the boundaries fading as well, so that we have a truly ubiquitous gaming experience integrated throughout our daily lives - the goal being, essentially, like a phone that you can take and use anywhere. To me, that should be the goal: a truly mobile, cross-platform, persistent game world that we can access and manipulate from wherever we are.
Game companies have a hard life, no matter their size. Games are a hit-driven business, and it's hard to exist on merely "good" sales. The makes companies buy each other, or merge. EA bought BioWare/Pandemic, Activision and Vivendi merged, Rockstar just bought Mad Doc, and on and on. Companies want security in this fickle, unpredictable business.
IGN reports that Gas Powered Games (GPG) plans to publish their "next big thing", Demigod, through Stardock. GPG is best known for its Action-RPG series, Dungeon Seige, and its large-scale, futuristic RTS, Supreme Commander, which is the spiritual successor to (GPG Founder and CEO) Chris Taylor's Total Annihilation. Stardock, which I wrote about earlier in this blog entry, is gaining fame for its game publishing ethos which involves a lack of copy protection and frequent patches, updates and free expansions to its games. Those who read my previous entry know how much I value the Stardock business model as well as its two major games, Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire.
This is new territory for Stardock. Indeed, GPG is a strictly AAA title producer. The fact that Taylor would choose Stardock to distribute his next major release means a couple of different things for the industry: 1) major developers are beginning to recognize the poverty of the current copy protection model, 2) Stardock is starting to get a reputation for a quality business model and, 3) perhaps the industry recognizes the marketability of putting out good, fun games over flashy, brief aural/visual experiences that make good sound/vid bytes but fleece their buyers. (I mean, seriously, $70 for a 5-hour experience; starting to lose the edge over movies.) I, for one, am ecstatic for Stardock. And I hope Demigod proves good enough to justify their faith and investment in it.
Rumor mill alert: according to a story on MTV News, Microsoft is developing a Wii-style remote controller for the Xbox360. The site includes a sketch drawn of the remote drawn by an unnamed source.
If true, this hardly comes as a surprise. The Wiimote did an outstanding job of redefining what a videogame can be, and of course Microsoft would love a piece of that action. But a Wii-mote does not a Wii make. Nintendo's success isn't just a matter of controls, it's the games that bring the remote to life, like Wii Sports. When we think MIcrosoft, we think of blockbuster shooters like Halo 3. And I'd still rather play Halo 4 (if there is one) using my thumbs. It'd be interesting if Microsoft could raise the game by creating new kinds of wireless experiences - ones that don't resemble Nintendo's products at all.
"Game Education" needs a little make-over. Not only are we talking about teaching students how to make games, we need to start talking a bit more seriously about how games can teach students about other subjects. For example, what makes games a fertile ground for learning? What are the drawbacks of game-based learning?
The answer to either question could and probably should be the subject of an entire book if not an academic sub-discipline, so it would be hubris to attempt solutions in a mere blog entry. Nevertheless, I would like to draw our readers' attention to some of the trends that are developing in this arena.
First off, Universities around the country (and now around the world) are beginning to invest in research and implementation of new technology in the classroom and general curriculum. Much as game development programs have exploded in number and attention since 2000, "educational technology" is becoming a new buzzword in academic circles. A crucial focus of such efforts has not necessarily been to look for ways in which new forms of technology can change and improve both the process of student learning as well as our attitudes about what learning is itself. Indeed, the idea of knowledge transmission still holds firm in the minds of most educators. And notions of how best to inject a centralized authority's "knowledge" into the tabula rasa minds of the students has been the primary focus of educational training since before we were born. Long before, indeed.
Knowledge transmission is not the forte of games. Sure, we can draw on the motivational aspects of games to support such a claim, but still, the transmission of fact/event from one mind to another is generally accomplished much more efficiently through memorization coupled with the negative motivation of studying for a test.
So what is the educational forte of games? Read my next installment to find out my humble beginnings of an opinion.
All eyes -and thumbs - this month will be on Grand Theft Auto IV, but some think a sleeper hit waits in the wings: Wii Fit. Another out-of-the-box game cooked up by Nintendo, Wii Fit is a balance board that you use to for a variety of standing/jumping/balancing games. I played it last year at E3, and it was one of the few game-changing games in town - something truly different that gets a whole new range of gamer muscles working.
Now after becoming a runaway hit in Japan, Wii Fit is anticipated as having a tidal impact on the U.S. when it arrives on May 19 (the game hits Europe this month and Australia next). One analyst predicts sales of three to four million units by year end.
Good news for all you C64 fans. Remember when I blogged about the Commodore 64 games coming to the Nintendo Wii? Well they're now officially up and running on the Wii's pay-to-play download service, the Virtual Console. The first two titles online are Uridium and International Karate.
At the same time, an industrious coder has released a homebrewed synth based on the C64. You can download it here.
A couple years ago at the E3 videogame convention in Los Angeles, Phil Harrison, then the president of worldwide studios at Sony Computer Entertainment, told me he'd be surprised if the Playstation 4 has a physical disc drive. Considering that Sony had just made such a huge bet on the Blu-ray drive in the PS3, it was a provocative bit of soothsaying. But Harrison was really just articulating the industry's forgone conclusion: that game systems as we know them are at the end of their life cycle.
Now, That Videogame Blog brings us an amen from Sandy Duncan, the former Microsoft executive who headed up the Xbox business in Europe. Duncan suggests that consoles will be gone in due time. "In 5 to 10 years I don’t think you’ll have any box at all under your TV," he says, "most of this stuff will be 'virtualized' as web services by your content provider."
February saw another very interesting article from the Daedalus Project on the motivations of people to play MMORPGs as a form of self-medication.
Nick Yee, the fire and mind behind the project, interviewed a number of players from a number of different games including, World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, and Vanguard among others, questioning them on why they seek the succor of the epic sword on a continuing (chronic?) basis. What he found and distilled in a series of narratives was that there is a "grey area between therapy and dependency":
"While the narratives below show that MMOs can be therapeutic, they also show that using MMOs as coping mechanisms can lead to destructive vicious cycles."
His transcribed stories go on to support this claim, recounting a range of player escape methodologies that serve, at least to me, as a mirror for my own views of when "enough is enough". How many glasses of wine do you drink when you get home from work? How many hours a day do you cede your autonomy to a movie or tv screen? We all have ways of coping, moving away from the activities and/or relationships that consume most of our waking hours.
The interesting thing about MMO's is the way they allow players to enter a different identity, not that they do. This article from Yee demonstrates that clearly to me.
David Kushner is very possibly an alien.
Rob Garfield is almost certainly an alien.
Harry Teasley is quite definitely an alien.
Automaton
The Risk Factor
Tech Talk
