The Sandbox

Though I agree with Dave K. that it's an exciting time for Nintendo right now, I must say I am a little disappointed with the Wiimote(?) so far. I haven't found its implementations all that accurate or interesting. Although beating a man with a wiimote driven tire iron can be quite satisfying, (The Godfather), I still don't feel more immersed in or connected to the environments I've played in (wii sports, Godfather, Zelda: TP).

Back in the late 80's I remember reading some inspirational literature from Jaron Lanier touting "Home Reality Units for every household!" or somesuch. Well, the reality (no pun intended) has proven a bit less than that spectacular. I suppose I was hoping the Wii interface would take us a step in that direction. And perhaps it still can. But I haven't seen it yet.

Perhaps a kind reader or colleague could point me in the direction of a game that really explores the kinesthetic possibilities of the device.

In the last 15 years or so, there has been a boom in the home audio industry brought about by the reduced pricing in high quality recording equipment and affordable computer hardware and software. Every middle class kid and their brother can write, record and market their songs, interviews, monologues, etc.

This has been true of the PC gaming industry as well. There are plenty of powerful open source or cheap tools available for the creation of digital game content. This has resulted in a vibrant freeware and shareware game culture on the web. Modding tools are also prevalent and have served as springboards for many a fledgling artist, programmer, level designer into the universe of Triple-A game production.

This has not been the case for consoles so much, however. The major players have kept a lid on console development through proprietary "development kits" that cost a bundle and have steep learning curves. Is Nintendo bucking this trend with its recently announced WiiWare?

So, I rented Resident Evil 4 (RE4) for the Wii. Almost universally hailed as the best game of its genre (Survival Horror) when it was released for the GameCube back in 2005, RE4 also has its share of “best game EVAR” proponents. It was with great relish, thus, that I grabbed it for the PlayStation 2 shortly after it made its transition over to said platform.

Sadly, not having played many of the previous incarnations, or really much survival horror in general, I found the control system very frustrating to get used to. But this might have all changed with its new marriage to the Wii.

So, yeah, you know all about wireless motion-sensitive remote control for the Nintendo Wii. But how much have you non-Wii players heard about the Mii (pronounced Me, like Wii/We)? These are the little avatars that you create on the Wii and use in various games and configurations. They look sort of like Manga versions of Peanuts characters, and using a toolbox of features, provide a broad range of variation. I know some people who are maniacs - Miiniacs - about this stuff.

Now Nintendo is serving up a new online channel, starting Monday, called Check Mii Out, which lets the Mii Generation browse and vote on each other's creations. There will also be contests to see how can make, say, the best Miilary Clinton or Miidonna. To me, what's really interesting is how this represents the latest baby-step move into a dynamic, console-based, virtual world. Here's the official bit from Nintendo:

I bow before our new End of Year Best-of list overlords. Here's my short list of my favorites of 2007:

1. Lord of the Rings Online. Because I worked on it for four and a half years to ship it, and have worked on it since then, and it's clearly the best MMO of 2007. No personal prejudice here, no sir. But I'm playing it, which says a lot about a game that I've worked on (which I seldom play post-launch).

2. Rock Band. My childhood dreams of drumming, stifled by my parents who desired peace and quiet in their house, are now finding outlet, and obliterating my wife's goodwill towards me.

3. Portal. Great little game. Suffers from the "giant thick client to play a teeny-tiny game" problem, but who cares when it's this fun? You want thin client, play Flash Portal.

4. Super Mario Galaxy. I used to disdain Nintendo, early in my gaming career, as nothing but Cute. Jeebus, was I an idiot.

5. God of War 2 / Heavenly Sword. They're the same game, with different avatars of destruction. But they're both onslaughts of epic annihilation that appeals to the little kid in me that still writhes with excitement when I see shiny things.

6. Bioshock. Great art direction. Gameplay and story were sort of meh, but they tried.

7. Team Fortress 2. TF is back, and it's still fun. I miss EMPs, though.

8. Phase. Addictive little iPod game. Five bucks well spent.

Not on the list, but still decent: Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect. They're really good, but I was not inspired to finish any of them, so I can't feel good about giving them a final score.

Didn't play: Call of Duty 4, Crysis, lots of other things. I only have so much time.

It was a good year for games. 2008 will have some work cut out for it: Metal Gear Solid 4 doesn't look so "ZOMG" these days, now that we've seen other games that look just as good.

Okay so now it seems like everybody - and every kid - wants a Wii. But will they want a Wii Fit - the trippy balance board that senses and responds to your shifting weight? I tried out this gadget at last year's E3, and it was pretty weird. You stand on a sort of flat scale and then go through a variety of postures and poses. It wasn't so much a game as a physical version of the brain-building hit, Big Brain Academy. Instead of just watching a yoga tape on TV, for example, you perform the move and get judged/corrected along the way.

Gamers in Japan are the first to get their hands - and feet - on this peripheral, and they're digging it. According to a report on GameDaily, sales have topped 1 million since the Fit's debut on December 1st. Could this be the killer app to lure grown-ups (and moms) into the Wii's burgeoning universe? Personally, I'm more interested in gaming applications of the device - snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding. And of course a Wii Fit Rock Band hookup would be killer for those of us practicing our Pete Townshend scissor kicks.

Rock Band is coming to the Wii. EA confirmed the impending arrival of the hit music game, but gave no details on price or configuration.

Since Wii skews for kids, it'd be great if the Wii version of the game included kiddie music: High School Musical, Hannah Montana, etc. Of course I'm all for tots playing the Ramones. But if Rock Band is going to break out for the wider demographic, it's a no-brainer to put in tunes the under-10 crowd knows as well as their parents know Blitzkreig Bop.

I had the chance to interview Nintendo's CEO Satoru Iwata before, and he's quite an interesting guy. Though he doesn't discuss it much, his roots are in game development - so when he speaks about innovation, it's coming from the mind of gamer, not just a chief executive.

Check out Gamespot's interview with Iwata, and note his thoughts on digital distribution via the Virtual Console: "When making games, though, you come up with a lot of fun ideas that could sell for ¥500 (about $4.70). Well, if there were a forum for releasing that ¥500 single idea into the market now, maybe the idea would grow into something that could be used as a full packaged game in the future. That's off in the future."

More categories for this article than I thought possible... it's about everything.

Leigh Alexander is very much worth reading, when you're in search of thoughts on the game industry. Two recent articles are the case For and the case Against this new world of entertainment media convergence. Is this intertwining of games, web, movies, television, cell phones, GPS, fresh baked bread, and the fat pipe connecting your checking account to media producers' coffers, is this good for games?

Leigh gives the definitive maybe. I mostly agree.

According to an article in Gamespot, Nintendo is deep in the throes of a war with software pirates. The company claims to have lost $975 million in pirated wares last year alone. Nintendo made a statement saying "While China remains the primary source of manufacturing pirated Nintendo DS and Wii games, Korea has emerged as the leader in distributing illegal game files via the Internet."

I'm always surprised that videogame piracy doesn't get more attention - especially given the amount of ink generated by losses in the music and movie industries. I've heard anecdotal reports from insiders who put the total tab for piracy at more than $3 billion a year. Considering vidgames brought in around $12 billion in the U.S. last year, that's a big deal. What to do? Check out Valve Software, a game company which has developed a brilliant and brilliantly effective means of digital distribution called Steam. That's the future.

This week in San Francisco, California, game developers are convening for the annual Game Developers Conference. This is a good time to check the pulse of the industry, and get a hint of the big stories to come.

I'm particularly interested in the news coming out of Nintendo about WiiWare, a digital distribution channel coming to the popular Wii system. While gamers can already download titles via the Wii's Virtual Console, WiiWare is releasing development tools aimed at expanding the market for small and indie experiences. This sort of stuff is already happening on Xbox Live and the PS3, of course. But Nintendo has been behind the most interesting "small" games of the last few years: Brain Age, Nintendogs, Electroplankton, and Cooking Mama.

How sweet is this?

Nintendo just announced that games for the pioneering Commodore 64 system will be available for play and download via the Wii's Virtual Console service. The Virtual Console has already been serving up retro Sega and Nintendo games for players, but the C64 titles marks the first serving of classic computer titles.

I blogged the other day about Nintendo's plan to digitally distribute smaller indie games through its WiiWare plan. Now all they need to do to up their geek cred even more is give us some Apple II games to play.

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.

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.

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?

I spent this weekend playing around with Wii Fit: the balance board peripheral for the Nintendo Wii. This is what I call a game-changing-game (GCG) - like Guitar Hero or Doom, something that comes along and completely redefines what this medium can deliver. While the Sony EyeToy and Dance Dance Revolution have aimed to make players sweat, Wii Fit is the sweatiest yet - as you exercise, do yoga, jog, and jump your way to a high score (and, ostensibly, better body).

But, on a sidenote, it's also continuing another trend of DDR, Rock Band, and the like: the Living Room Takeover. I mean, seriously - my TV room is cluttered with vidgame stuff, and not more than a normal gamer these days. Is this a problem? How are parents dealing with this? The new must-have McMansion accessory will be the gamer nook - a spacious gear closet near the media room. I suspect that when gaming ultimately goes hands/feet free and 1000% virtual this will seem as clunky as a 2600 joystick.

Retro game fans in Europe and Australia have five reasons to boot up the Virtual Console on Nintendo's Wii today.

Nintendo is releasing downloadable (and cheap) copies of serioiusly vintage titles: The Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance and Nebulus (Commodore 64), Ninja Combat and Fatal Fury 2 (Neo Geo), and Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Sega Master System).

Gamespot has a piece about the saucy new "Wiibrator" cooked up by some intrepid geeks. Yeah, it's funny and wrong - but also a portal into the burgeoning underworld of homebrewed Wii stuff. Nitendo has long been one of the more proprietary consoles around, and it's interesting to see the kind of grassroots innovation inspired by its ubiquitous new hardware.

So my hand is sort of cramped up from playing Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS, and it just got me thinking about the world of input devices, and how this is really a new golden age of interesting ways of interacting with games.