Global Game Industry News Blog

Whither Mario Factory?: The Downside to Academic Publishing

2010-03-23T09:01:00.002-04:00

I've been sitting on this material for a while. Many of my informants would recognize it as coming from back in 2006 when I was passing the PDFs around Vicarious Visions. Starting in 2008, the essay has been reviewed well and reviewed poorly and still not accepted. One interesting thing has been that despite good reviews it has even been rejected, told to go to something more "New Media" or "Game Studies." One of those notes came from a journal with "New Media" in its name, but I digress. So while I'll continue to push its publication through, the empirical material is simply too interesting to keep closed off from view as I await further feedback. Thus, some excerpts from an as-of-yet unpublished manuscript, "Whither Mario Factory?"

On Halloween of 1994 Nintendo filed for a series of patents that were later granted between the years 1997 and 2000. This essay refers to them more homogeneously as "Mario Factory" (Hibino and Yamato, 1994; Yamato et al., 1994a; Yamato et al., 1994b). This sequence of documents describe a videogame development, testing, and manufacturing system designed specifically for hobbyists and users to enjoy the creative possibilities of developing games for console videogame systems. Many of the systems and ideas described in the documents have not yet come to market for licensed Nintendo game developers and certainly not for the general player or hobbyist game developer.

Mario Factory, at its core, was about creating, not only the possibility of (co)creative content creation for console video games, but an entire set of tools by which users could begin (co)creating games. Figure 1 depicts a splash screen from this hypothetical device. While the patent seems to specifically target less technically inclined would-be videogame developers, it was also stated that these same tools would prove as productive prototyping and testing systems for more experienced videogame developers.

This invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for generating unique videographic computer programs. More particularly, the present invention relates to a video game fabricating system designed primarily for users who are unfamiliar with computer program[ing] or video game creating methodology. Such users may conveniently create a unique video game through and icon driven, interactive computing system that permits a video game to be executed, stopped, edited, and resumed from the point where the editing began with the editorial changes persisting through the remainder of game play.
...
In accordance with the present invention, unique video games may be simply created by users ranging from a relatively unsophisticated elementary school students to sophisticated game developers. A unique hardware and software platform enables users to create original games by selecting icons which access more detailed editor screens permitting the user to directly change a wide variety of game display characteristics concerning moving objects and game backgrounds. (Yamato et al., 1994a53)

As early as 1994, Nintendo was critically aware of the complexity associated with videogame development practices and the kinds of interdisciplinary creative collaborative practice that is necessary for success. While their patent hints at perhaps a declining collaboration between engineer, artist, and designer, it seems to be more about creating tools that foster effective collaborative practice between those groups.

Mario Factory was, in effect, a DevKit for the masses. This approach hints at a very different possibility than one that is currently experienced by game developers. DevKits were introduced so that game developers could create games for consoles where the hardware differed significantly from that of PC's. Nintendo developed technologies to bridge the gap between the PCs, where code was typically written, and the consoles, which ran the compiled code.

Hibino, T. & Yamato, S. (1994). U.S. Patent No. 5599231. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Assignee: Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Yamato, S. et al. (1994a) U.S. Patent No. 5680534. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Assignee: Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Yamato, S. et al. (1994b) U.S. Patent No. 6115036. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Assignee: Nintendo Co., Ltd.

The Consequences of Vilification: The Decline of CS and "Security"

2009-06-26T12:37:00.000-04:00

[Cross Posted from Shambling Rambling Babbling]

I wrote a post just about a year ago on how "Hackers and Hombrewers are NOT Pirates." Like most of what I post to the web, it serves little more than to remind me later of the evolution of my thoughts on particularly relevant research interests. Like beer. Recently however, there has been a resurgence of commentary/thought on the decline of computer science programs. Though I now consider myself primarily a "historically inclined cultural anthropologist who studies cooperative work, with game development and the game industry as my primary lens," I began my secondary education as a computer science and mathematics major with women's studies and sociology as the instruments that later led me to graduate school.

What follows is my analysis of recent reports on how, "Lack of Programming Skills Puts U.S. Security at Risk," and the "gender gap in perception of computer science," [the actual report] are a product of a continual assault on the "hacker," "the tinkerer," and "hobbyist" more generally in our culture. To which I first say, "serves us right, what you reap, you sow." Having gotten that off my chest, I'll attempt to be a bit more constructive with what follows...

The problem is really two fold. One, perhaps most directly is indexed by Douglas Rushkoff, that:

"In a computing marketplace where altering one's iPhone will 'brick' its functionality and where user improvement to programs is treated as an intellectual-property violation, it's no wonder we have adopted the attitude that our technology is finished and inviolable from the minute it has been purchased."

Is that we are both culturally and legally discouraged from tinkering or hacking our devices. I actually index some of these ideas as rooted in the history of the videogame industry, in an upcoming article in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. This should actually worry us more than simply the realm of computer science. These issues are crucial for other areas as well, and foundational to the videogame industry. When I write in my TWC Essay that, "The importance of, the desire for, or the drive to understand underlying systems and structures has become fundamental to creative collaborative practice." This fundamental drive is being subverted by things like the DMCA and our desire for smooth technologies that encourage us to not play. So, that is certainly part of it.

The second aspect I think speaks more clearly to the decline of CS and interest by students. It is the "boring" or "nerd" factor. Now, admittedly, I am a died in the wool nerd. I don't fight that. I continually geek out, but that is the product of interest and passion.

For example, boys tended to use words such as “design,” “games,” “video,” etc., with more frequency than girls. By contrast, the secondary words used by the girls tended to take on a more negative tone—with “boring,” “hard,” and “nerd” being used more frequently.

I'm just going to come out and call a spade a spade. Yes, Fibonacci is a useful tool for teaching recursion. Yes, palindromes are a useful way to teach the utility of stacks. Yes, string parsing and number crunching are the primary things one does in computer science, but these are means to an end. These things are f-ing boring to an incoming student. Most don't see the link between these concepts and their application. Remember, so many college students have not been taught to think in the US educational system. They've been taught to memorize and there is no way to memorize the solution to a complex problem or design. So much of CS is design and problem solving, it is thinking about elegance and functionality. It is in short, interesting. But instead most CS programs start with teaching the uninteresting parts instead of giving students a glimpse of the possibilities.

"[O]ne needs to look at other factors that are turning off these young people. Why isn’t a high school interest in computer science translating into enrollment in college computer science classes?"

I taught a class full of men and women in a non-programming class to use Löve to create interactive graphics and even a few games emerged. They all got into it. Into programming. When they wanted to do things beyond their skills I then started telling them about data structures, string parsing, and number crunching. Start with the fun. That is what drives students away and gets nerds like me labeled such.

All of those other disciplines that students pursue have geeks that live within them. The geeks and nerds are those that geek out, that find passion and interest burried within the often tragically boring ways in which concepts are taught.

However, time and again, especially in the context of technology, we are encouraged or legally forced to not ask questions and look for the underlying systems and structures that make things work. Could you imagine if a student in med school when asking about how a particular device functioned, lets say a dializer for example, if the teacher responded with, "well, that is covered by the DMCA, so I don't know and we cannot find out. Just assume that dirty blood goes in and clean comes out alright?"

Tragically, my favorite computer company seems to be one of the most guilty parties in this regard. Batteries sealed in laptops and non-user replacable hard drives in "pro" laptops. Tower macs are of course much more "openable," but the laptop is on the rise. Even my favorite cell phone is marred by the fact that it is so thoroughly closed. The software APIs are open but I cannot even interface with it without the use of its dock.

Thus an Experiment Begins: Programmer Art

2009-04-29T11:41:00.001-04:00

I've been prototyping quite a few different game designs recently and have been struggling with not having place-holder graphics that give enough sense of the overall aesthetic of a game concept. Boxes, lines, and colors are useful to an extent, but I've wanted something more before I start recruiting people to help me out with the art side. Plus, there are all sorts of technological issues associated with transitioning to real art created by talented artists that are already taxed for time that I would rather not put off.

Thus, began my new experiment. I started thinking about how much time I invest in the tools that make me a better programmer, designer, writer, etc. What I realized was that I had not put much time or energy into the tools and software that I was using to create art. I use Mellel for writing, TextWrangler for many text editing things, Versions for SVN management, Omnigraffle for diagrams, Bookends for bibliographic and research material, Evernote for research and archival, ScreenFlow for software demonstrations, and even a special program for using Gmail, Twitter, etc. Now, I will cut myself a bit of slack, because I long ago invested in Pixelmator for image editing, but I use only a fraction of its capabilities.

So, I have begun testing out graphics creation and editing tools. Some for bitmap graphics, some for vector graphics, etc. But I've also invested in a small "Bamboo" Wacom tablet. It only makes sense to invest in my tools, right? I ought to pay as much attention to how I'm going about creating graphics as I'm going about selecting a new graphics library. So, I'm going to document the process here. Now of course, I'm tweaking things a bit here. Obviously based on the above software selection, you can tell I don't immediately go for the Microsoft/Adobe solutions, but I try to support independent developers first. Often I find much "sharper" tools as I term them.

So, first on the docket are a selection of indy graphics tools before I launch into those "other" programs, unless I find the cat's meow first!

Java? Really?

2009-04-21T09:45:00.001-04:00

I recently came upon an FT.com article, "Java looked upon as the hottest prospect," to which I thought, "Java? Really?" In a world of AJAX, Ruby, Perl, Python, Lua, and numerous others, Java is still a topic? I know that Java is in wide use on the server side in many places and in many embedded devices like J2ME on cell phones. To quote the article:

Part of the reason, this person says, is that Oracle believes it can make far more from Java than Sun ever did. That is because Sun decided a decade ago virtually to give the software away to make sure it was widely adopted. Many of the Java licences - including one that Sun granted to Nokia - were for 10 years and come up for renewal next year, implying that, in future, Oracle will look to extract a higher price for the technology.

But, if the price is too high, many of these companies may go the way of Apple or Netbook makers and simply begin making devices closer to real computers. Then they can run Linux variants and full blown application development environments. Java was a magic platform bullet, that failed to really arrive, and even on J2ME devices platform variations plague development. What does Java really do that cannot be accomplished with the combination of other technologies? I don't think very much.

What really amazed me about the article was that the real punch line was left for the final paragraph of the article, a mistake that I beat out of my students early in their classes with me. Never, ever, hide the real punch line.

The final big software prize is MySQL, the open-source database program Sun bought last year for $1bn. Oracle's databases handle more massive workloads, but MySQL has been adopted rapidly by next-generation web companies looking to save on cost. With Oracle in charge of MySQL, it could reap revenue from related services contracts while ensuring that the programme does not develop into a more serious rival product.

Yes, MySQL is a much bigger prize than Java. Duh.

The Everyday Lives of Videogame Developers

2009-03-29T15:06:00.004-04:00

So, I know that my article over at Transformative Works and Cultures, "The everyday lives of video game developers: Experimentally understanding underlying systems/structures," has been live for a while now, but I have yet to blog it. It's a nervous tick I have about my work I guess. I like to see a little more reaction after the fact. It also doesn't help that I was in pre-GDC chaos, which I have now returned from. Anyway, the article is indeed live and can be reached at:

O'Donnell, Casey. 2009. "The Everyday Lives of Videogame Developers: Experimentally Understanding Underlying Systems/Structures." Transformative Works and Cultures 2

The editors and reviewers at TWC were excellent and I'd recommend that other scholars of new media look at it as a venue. I was quite impressed with their process. They have also really mastered OJS, the Open Journal System. Between reviewing for New Media and Society and working with TWC, I've gained a lot of insight into using it and am now trying to mobilize that for Cultural Anthropology. TWC is an Open Access journal, so for numerous reasons I really appreciate what they're doing.

There have been a few folks who have commented on it and I really appreciate the email feedback that I've gotten thus far. When you send these things out into the aether-web, you never know if anyone reads them or how they find them. A couple of other blog posts out there have mentioned the collection and my essay in different ways. Here are some of the spots that have noted the special issue thus far:

No Popcap Developer Framework Love for the Rest of Us

2009-03-17T11:48:00.001-04:00

I'm working on another post related to my efforts on finding useful frameworks and tools chains to use in my classes and independent game development here in Athens, GA. That is a longer post, but this seemed important enough to be its own post. I recently found the Popcap Developer Framework, which for independent 2D game development looks really exciting. It is my understanding that this framework was used in the development of games like World of Goo and of course many ofPopcap's games. What a boon to the community I thought! Then I clicked the download button, which sends me the following message:

Forbidden
You do not have access to this page.
You must be logged in to developer.popcap.com before downloading files

To which I dutifully clicked the "Register" link, which returns the following:

Sorry, registration has been disabled by the administrator.

I've sent several messages through the "contact us" link with no reply. I have found the alternative Tuxcap port of the library, but it is a little sad to see such a great community boon lost to the non-responsive industry ether that pervades in many cases. Of course I can't ask the question on thePopcap developer forum because registration is closed. Thus I cry my tears into the Internet ether.

New Media and Society Essay: Free/Open Game Development

2009-01-13T14:12:00.001-05:00

I decided over the weekend that it was high-time to move my old essay from Flow TV, "The Wii-volution will not be Televised" into the academic arena. In particular it was several recent (not so recent now) articles about Sony "opening" up the PS2 that seemed to push me over the edge. While I have not decided upon a particular venue for this essay yet, though my initial estimation is with New Media and Society.

In part this was due to watching several people at conferences in my relatively recent past talk about precisely what I had written, as if it hadn't ever been mentioned before. I have actually written about it twice now, once in Flow TV and once in my dissertation, but if my words fall in the forest and no one is listening, apparently it doesn't really make a sound or matter.

So, with that in mind, I've decided that given the significant amount of data that I have already gathered on this particular topic that I need to update and think a bit more about. Not to mention that I've seen a handful of recent articles about how Sony is "opening" up PS2 development. At this point I remain largely unconvinced. That isn't to say that a lot has changed in the last couple of years. However, most of the "open" consoles require either the same old licencing/NDA crap (Wii-Ware) or they largely lock you into proprietary languages and tool-chains (XNA Express on the Xbox 360 or the iPhone). I am continually bothered by the "same old stuff" being talked about as open or different, because it certainly isn't. I cannot go to a Sony web page and download an SDK for the PS2. I don't blame Sony for this, but I don't expect to be downright lied to.

Then there is probably the most insidious, which I have to wonder if it will ultimately rear its head in the upcoming Global Game Jam, is the use of proprietary NDA covered technologies that ultimately prevent education and industry wide learning andadvancement . Sony has "opened" the PSP or PS2 in such a fashion here in the US, but those agreements specifically go against any sort of pedagogical ideal that learning is connected with sharing and collaboration.

Still mulling, but pulling things together.

Digital Distribution and the Death(?) of Rentals and Sharing

2009-01-13T14:02:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking a great deal lately about what the rise of digital distribution means for the videogame industry. I have also been thinking about what it means, culturally, for videogamers. It is something I've been thinking about for a long time, because I've heard many game developers talk about how much videogame rentals and videogame resale hurts developers by depriving them of much more frequently needed funds.

I have also been thinking about my childhood, growing up as a moderate gamer who went on to be both part of the videogame industry, but also that academic industry that now generates people capable of thinking critically about and creating videogames. Seems like those aspects of the industry that encouraged me to pursue work in the videogame industry might have influenced others to do so as well.

One of those experiences was riding my bike to the video rental store where if I rented a game on Friday afternoon, I could keep it until Sunday morning. For a working class family without a lot of money, $4.00 for a weekend of fun was much more manageable than $40-50 for a game that I may or may not play for more than a weekend. My friends and I also took games over to one another's houses. It was a chance to see different games and play them for a short while. It was also an opportunity to perhaps demonstrate how far you had progressed in a game.

Now, here I am in 2009, thinking about all of those Wii-ware games and Xbox Live Arcade games that I have downloaded to my consoles. None of these games are sharable. I couldn't take an SD card over to a friends house and show them how great Lost Winds is. I could take my Wii over, which doesn't seem so daunting, but dragging a bulky Xbox 360 or PS3 seems another story. Not to mention that it just doesn't make that much sense. Of course I understand that with digital distribution comes the possibility of piracy, but what I'm talking about isn't that. It is a shared gaming experience of gaming with others.

Rentals become even more problematic. Presumably digital distribution means reduced costs and an opportunity for developers to sell games for less and sell more. I understand that many developers see videogame rentals as lost revenue, but that really isn't true. As a kid, I COULDN'T have bought any of those games. Perhaps instead my parents would have given me $4.00 per week to save for a new game. This would have meant that I could play 5-6 games per year instead of many. Playing all of those games gave me the background and vocabulary to be a game developer. Not having it would have meant my trajectory would have been very different.

So while I read articles saying that, "Digital content is the fastest-growing portion of the videogame industry," I have to wonder what the consequences of that will be ultimately.

A Blast from my Academic Past...

2009-01-04T13:34:00.000-05:00

My Google Alert for "Casey O'Donnell" or Google Ego Monitor notified me this morning of the re-emergence of my essay for the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. I wrote an essay entitled, "Making an Open Source Case for Offshoring." Because the essay was shorter, short on data beyond my own observations, and a bit risqué, it was labeled a "Commentary" piece, which I was not opposed to. It was a spin off an elaboration on an earlier essay that was somewhat schizophrenic, which was published in First Monday. That piece was titled, "A Case for Indian Insourcing: Open Source Interest in IT Job Expansion." That essay was published along with several other essays from a 4S Meeting in Paris, France. Because it was schizophrenic, I broke it into two separate essays. One of those was the IEEE Commentary and the second was published in the IGI Global edited book, "Handbook of Research on Open Source Software." That chapter was titled, "The Labor Politics of Scratching an Itch." In the end, breaking the essay apart and expanding upon each section made each piece work better and I'm happy with the way it turned out. It is just funny what a Sunday morning Ego Alert will cause you to go back and investigate.

Actual citations are posted below, if desired.

O'Donnell, Casey. 2007. "Commentary: Making an Open Source Case for Offshoring." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 50.2:85-87.
O'Donnell, Casey. 2004. "A Case for Indian Insourcing: Open Source Interest in IT Job Expansion." First Monday 9.11.
O'Donnell, Casey. 2007. "The Labor Politics of Scratching an Itch." pp. 460-467 in Handbook of Research on Open Source Software: Technological, Economic, and Social Perspectives, edited by Kirk St.Amant and Brian Still. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Has Atari Changed Phil Harrison or Phil Harrison Changed Atari?

2008-12-23T12:48:00.000-05:00

The unfortunate thing about my first semester teaching was that I felt as if I was never going to come up for air. The fortunate thing about that process is that it means I've been sitting on a pile of thoughts on a variety of videogame development and game industry issues that I've been following for quite a while now. Thus, the next several posts are ones which have remained, have persevered, as tabs in Firefox for nearly two months.

The first series of tabs are perhaps critically linked to the second post I'll be making, but fundamentally about different issues. In my dissertation, especially in the "MOD(ify)-ing Game Development Worlds" sections I talked about some of the critical issues facing the videogame industry. I also talk specifically about how those practices which are hurting the videogame industry are actually many of the practices which are being imported into other "industries," but most directly in other New Media industries. Those two particular chapters are titled:

"Game Development Practice: A Postmortem"
"The Game Industry Galaxy: A Postmortem"

Though I tease the Phil Harrison of 2007s Game Developers Conference and his "Game 3.0" slide from the Sony keynote, recent news reports have me wondering if he was really commited to the concept and his job at Atari has created an opportunity for him to pursue Game 3.0. The other possibility is that his experiences at Atari thus far have convinced him that Game 3.0 as the industry is currently structured will never be the lively world of Web 2.0 they wish it to be.

It was that question that got me to thinking about how perspective within the videogame industry has likely shifted how Phil Harrison thinks about what is good for the industry. Recently he's begun talking like me, which honestly is either a good sign or a really bad one for his career. Considering some of the nonconstructive criticism I've received from industry side people, I have to wonder if it was his transition to Atari that made him realize this, or if his departure from Sony had more to do with that.

At the same time, the nonconstructive words I have gotten are often not from "rank and file" developers. They tend to be people who deal regularly with industry executives and manufacturing companies. This is precisely the position that Phil Harrison is in, so I wonder greatly what has influenced this change in thinking and if suddenly it will become all the rage throughout the videogame industry? Or will this movement go just like the movement for improved QoL? What no one has really put together, or at least vocalized yet, is that the two are critically linked.

GamesIndustry.biz - Phil Harrison: It's Time for a Change in Games Development

Atari president Phil Harrison has revealed his belief that the process of game development needs to change, in order to make it a less risky experience overall, and one that will help to promote innovative and creative ideas.
...
"That's pretty much the definition of why projects fail - because you don't know what you're building, you don't know how you're going to build it, you don't know who you're building it for, but you've got 60 people working on it and they've all running in different directions - that's how most games fail.

Gamasutra - Atari's Harrison: Democratizing Development is an Industry Must

Harrison compared the low-cost game creation movement to the Net Yaroze development platform for the original PlayStation, which resulted in a number of "fantastic games", per Harrison, being developed by international teams during the 1990s.

He clearly thinks that bringing amateur and indie developers into the fold with tools such as Unity addresses a real need within the games industry at large. "The comments that I was making [during my keynote] were primarily from an industry perspective."

"Managing the funnel of recruitment, training, educating, and getting the skills shortage, skills gap closed, is kind of an industry-wide problem... "

Harrison concluded: "I was primarily making that comment from an industry perspective, but from an Atari perspective... I think we would want to work with creators of all types, and that's why I'm so interested in Unity, because it does democratize development."

Gamasutra - Atari Boss Harrison at Unite 08: 'Fail Early'

Harrison's keynote, in which he noted that he 'wanted to be here' due to his enthusiasm for the tool, rather than any commercial/strategy interest, evangelized Unity as a tool that could potentially change the game industry, referring to the first time that he saw Unity running in his web browser as "a transformational moment."

Atari lite-C

Facebook Girl Online!

2008-12-22T11:59:00.001-05:00

One of my other favorites from Gradyfest was this little gem, which one of my TELE 3310 students was a major part of:

I wasn't sure if any of these clips would be posted on Youtube, but I'm glad this one was. The song was written and recorded by the students as well as the production of the video itself. Very Impressive. The credits are listed below.

Created by
Benson Greene
Michael Patterson
Nick Scofield
Weston Ver Steeg

Director of Photography
Megan Mitchell

The Definition of Remix/Fan Culture and Co-Production

2008-12-21T13:51:00.001-05:00

Several folks from the Grady College at UGA pulled together a fantastic assortment of student work Thursday of this last week called "Gradyfest." I went in with very little in the way of expectations, but I was simply blown away. Not only was I blown away, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the evening. What perhaps impressed me the most was just how indicative many of the Grady creations were so indicative of Fan/Remix Culture in ways that are simply indescribable. One creation in particular caught my eye and ear. I cannot for the life of me remember the title of it, though the production "company" "Level 84" certainly sticks in my head considering something about 8 and 4 sticks out at me from writing my dissertation, or perhaps it was playing a game released in 1985 in the United States on a little grey box. Though there are not any video clips online at the moment, there are a few images which can be found online. Of course my particular love for the production process leads me to post this one:

The image links to the Flikr set of other production shots. I wont give away too much, as I know many of the students are hoping to get their creation aired in other places and it is simply delightful to discover the "underlying system and structure" of this creative collaborative creation. I guess just looking at the cast might do that, but I digress. Congratulations to everyone featured in the event, and to those groups in particular that simply made incredible creative contributions.

Level 84 Info:
Executive Producer: James Biddle
Directed and written by: Zack Goulet
Assistant Director: Rachel Kohl
Directors of Photography: Megan Mitchell, Rebekah Cheyne

Mark- Kiley Dorton
Louie- Bryan Redding
Amber- Elly Prothero
Big B- Brandon Wentz
Toad- Gary Holbrook
Hammer Bros- Jordan Thomas
Henry- Rob Kohl

The Dissertation is Live

2008-12-16T12:33:00.006-05:00

[Cross Posted from Shambling, Rambling, Babbling]

My dissertation is now officially online. I’d not posted the file directly, because I assume that RPI’s servers are doing some sort of tracking that I will likely be less inclined to do. It also makes sense to encourage people hoping to download the document should be getting it from a single source, rather than scattered about the various websites that I maintain.

O'Donnell, Casey. 2008. "The Work/Play of the Interactive New Economy: Video Game Development in the United States and India." Dissertation Thesis, Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic University, Troy, NY.

The other advantage to using this link is that it makes the point clear that the document has been released under the Creative Commons license.

Transitioning the Blog...

2008-09-14T15:00:00.004-04:00

I've slowly begun the process of moving my blogging efforts to a centralized location, and also one which I control a bit more. I recently developed a bit of a complex relating to my blogging and identity management activities, especially as it relates to sites like this, which are great for many reasons, but also complicated from a data-management standpoint.

I've been using this Blogger/Blogspot site for a long time, and have accumulated quite a bit of data, thoughts, comments, etc. I would like to retain it, but I haven't figured out how precisely to transition all of that information to the new site.

So, if you're a follower of this blog, you can expect to see posts from time to time, but I am planning to really migrate to my new site, at caseyodonnell.org. I decided this summer that it was time to bite the bullet and move to a hosting service that gave me greater control and more server-side capabilities than I had with my .Mac/.Me site. It wasn't that I didn't like the site, but that the capabilities of it didn't allow me to do things like using Wordpress or other content management systems to manage all of my activities. Thus I resorted to using things like Blogger/Blogspot rather than going whole-hog and doing the hosting thing.

Now I have. I hope anyone who liked what I wrote about (or at least found it interesting) will follow me on over to "Shambling, Rambling, Babbling." Though it may contain other more personal items, it will continue to house reflections on the global videogame industry.

C-out.

The Sinking of the ESA and the Future of the ESRB...

2008-05-19T09:42:00.003-04:00

[Cross Posted from IStC]

For those not in the know, the ESA, or Entertainment Software Association is a U.S. based lobbying and representative group with membership largely compromised of videogame companies. They have done quite a bit of research related to market demographics of gamers in the U.S. More recently they have turned to "educational" programs aimed at school children to teach them the dangers of copyright violation and piracy. Their educational programs contain no mention of "fair use," however.

The ESA is also the parent organization of the ESRB or Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The ESRB is the organization which all console manufacturers require licensees to acquire ratings through prior to distribution. Most computer game software goes through this process as well, primarily because most distributors (WalMart) will not distributed un-rated entertainment software.

Recently, numerous large organizations have begun pulling their ESA memberships. This means that they will not be paying their rather large membership dues which keep the ESA in operations.

Here is a sample of those who have officially dropped their support from the ESA:

LucasArts (Going to E3, but no longer ESA member)
Ativision/Blizzard
Vivendi

Other companies though not dropping out of the ESA entirely have said that they will not be attending E3, the ESA's major industry expo. These companies include those above and:

Id Software
NCSoft
D3Publisher
Her Interactive
Majesco
Bethesda

Perhaps more tellingly, Gamecock (a videogame publishing company) recently released the following video clip:

And EA, or Electronic Arts, has said that this massive set of departures shows a "lack of leadership" at the companies who are leaving, but I think that doesn't quite capture what's going on here.

What this seems to indicate is growing industry dissatisfaction with the ESA. Ultimately, I wonder what ramifications this will have on ratings, because the ESA and ESRB are closely related entities. Have these publishing companies made further decisions about the future of game ratings as well?

Casey O'Donnell

The NeXT Open Console? The iPhone SDK and Games

2008-03-07T16:30:00.002-05:00

[Cross Posted from IShotTheCyborg]

Oh dear. XNA (and the more closed DS and PSP) might actually have a run for its money, in the form of an "open" game platform on the iPhone. Admittedly there are all sorts of less than open issues associated with the iPhone, but for $99.00 you get registered and make games for the iPhone. The same price oddly enough for full XNA tool usage on the Xbox 360.

While the development environment forces you to use Objective-C, you can use OpenGL ES and OpenAL, which is also more open than DirectX 10 on XNA. So there are some interesting aspects to this device. I've also heard people making jokes about it being a Wii that you can make phone calls on.

Gamasutra - Apple Unveils iPhone SDK with Spore, Monkey Ball

Using the iPhone SDK, “third party developers will be able to build native applications for the iPhone with a rich set of APIs, including programming interfaces for Core OS, Core Services, Media and Cocoa Touch technologies,” leveraging iPhone aspects such as its Multi-Touch user interface, animation technology, storage, three-axis accelerometer and geographical location technology.

Also important is the new store aspect. It makes it easy to get applications onto your iPhone, something that most mobile carriers still seem completely unable to comprehend. I went looking for downloads for my Motorola RAZR the other day, and after 30 minutes gave up. I was not just a potential lost sale, but a LOST sale. I was ready to buy some stuff.

John Carmack on Slashdot

Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good -- a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds, and a 70% royalty deal for apps over iTunes is quite good.

The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer / customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly.

Also based on the early comments from developers, it appears to be a fairly powerful device, and the debugging and profiling tools that developers have access to will give them the ability to squeeze a lot out of the device.

TUAW.COM - Apple Shows of iPhone Gaming Chops

Finally, Ethan Einhorn from Sega showed off a build of Super Monkey Ball, naturally also using tilt controls. What's interesting there is they actually underestimated what the iPhone could do, and ended up having to bring in another artist to upscale the art from what they had anticipated. Again, the take home message: the iPhone is a real platform for game development.

But I really think there is potential for interesting new things with this device. Like the DS, there are just so many options available that developers can think about deploying in their games.

Gamasutra - Analyst Talks Apple's iPhone Games Strategy

With recognition of the upcoming announcement of the SDK, Williams added, "The most viable market opportunity for Apple is undoubtedly the mobile space with the iPhone and iPod touch. With hardware features such as multi-touch, tilt monitor, networking capabilities, a microphone and a camera, the iPhone has the potential to be a revolutionary mobile gaming device."

Finally, and perhaps most interesting was the introduction of a fund of $100 Million to encourage new development on the iPhone. This is something that even MS hasn't endevoured to do on XNA in any large scale fasion.

TUAW.COM - iFund: $100M for iPhone/iPod touch devs

This $100 million fund will invest in companies, large or small, that want to develop innovative apps for both the iPhone and the iPod touch.

The iFund will invest anywhere from $100,000 to $15 million in funds for iPhone development.

Coverage on Develop - Carmack Praises iPhone Development Plans

New Hope for Broader Collaborative Efforts in the Game Industry?

2008-02-26T12:06:00.002-05:00

[Cross Posted from IShotTheCyborg]

Yes, usually I am writing about how no one in the videogame industry is sharing much. This time, however, I am happy to be writing about a new collaborative effort amongst one game company. Fitingly, its the same company that back in 2003 wrote about how much they benefited from a similar sharing opportunity. The following is a quote from the original Gamedeveloper Magazine Postmortem for Ratchet and Clank:

Sharing technology with Naughty Dog. ... Naughty Dog didn't want anything from us other than a gentlemen's agreement to share with them any improvements we made to whatever we borrowed plus any of our own technology we felt like sharing. In an industry as competitive as ours, things like this just don't happen. (Price 2003, pp. 55-56)

So perhaps a little "gentleman's" head nod toward Naughty Dog in all of this as well. Personally, I'm ecstatic to see this kind of thing beginning to happen. Its about time really. In their own words:

Joystiq - GDC08: Insomniac opens up to dev community with Nocturnal

At a GDC press conference, Insomniac Games (responsible for Ratchet & Clank and Resistance: Fall of Man on PS3) has announced a ground breaking initiative to open up their technologies for the development community at large. Through the "Nocturnal Initiative," Insomniac Games is attempting to break the common development practice of keeping technological advances a close-guarded secret. As they noted, "developers spend resources solving problems that have already been solved."

PR Newswire - Highly-Acclaimed Independent Videogames Developer Insomniac Games Announces 'Nocturnal Initiative'

"The Nocturnal initiative is designed to encourage greater communication and information sharing among the development community because it will ultimately enable us all to create better games at a lower development cost," said Mike Acton, engine director, Insomniac Games. "And, in the end, it's all about making great games."
...
"We feel that the time has come to share what we have learned, and learn from others to improve our solutions to the common problems that present themselves when making a game," said Geoff Evans, an Insomniac senior tools programmer who helped develop and launch Nocturnal.

Insomniac is allowing developers to use elements of its proprietary third-generation PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(TM)) tools chain source code for any purpose, for free. Source code makes up the technological building blocks that drive software development. It is often closely guarded by companies as they create their technology. However, this has led to many functions and pieces of code being re-written time-and-time again, wasting resources across the industry and ultimately affecting consumers' gameplay experiences.

There is an important distinction to be made between unique problem solutions that really give you a competitive edge and just being intellectually stingy. Thus far the game industry by and large has been parsimonious. I do not really know if this kind of initiative will have enough momentum to change the game industry, but I certainly hope so.

I'd love to see an emergent set of standard APIs and protocols which could be supported on numerous platforms. It would make the lives of developers much more predictable. Console manufacturers in preparing their new devices for the market could ensure that these base level technologies were supported. Of course now I'm waxing hopeful rather than realistic.

Nocturnal Website
Insomniac R&D Pages
Gamasutra Coverage

Bibliography:
Price, Ted. 2003. "Postmortem: Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank." Game Developer Magazine 10.6:52-60.

Biological Determinism, Gender, and (Video) Games

2008-02-20T10:32:00.002-05:00

[Cross Posted from www.ishotthecyborg.com]

Well, I’m supposed to be revising my dissertation, but now that the New York Times has blindly picked this up, I can’t really help myself. I first stumbled upon this article a while back on Joystiq.

Joystiq - Science Says: Men’s Brains get More ‘Reward’ from Gaming

The study, which looked at 11 men and 11 women, asked participants to play a simple territorial point-and-click game while hooked up to an fMRI machine. The men in the study showed much great activity in the brain’s “mesocorticolimbic center,” which is associated with reward and addiction. … Yeah, yeah … tell it to the Frag Dolls.

Yeah, and tell it to the ladies I coach hockey for. “You just can’t enjoy it on the same level as us boys.” Not a good idea. I love the fact that the NY Times doesn’t even manage to pick up on a fatal flaw in this study, which even Joystiq commenters notice: sample size. I INTERVIEWED more people in my dissertation research and my research is qualitative. They managed to examine only 22 people, 11 boys, and 11 girls, all, “young adults.” Not to mention that fMRI research is one of the most unproven areas of brain research.

Which instantly begs the question: Isn’t the brain a complex feedback driven device? Wouldn’t age and training impact this? How do young children differ from young adults and adults from young adults? How do the brains of self described “gamer girls” differ from those of the other young adults? Perhaps to be addressed in a future project, but state those limitations NOW.

This study really becomes an excuse for letting women and girls slip through the cracks. “They just don’t get it. Add more bouncing boobs!” Think I’m reading into this to much? Check out the lead researchers comments:

Science Daily - Video Games Activate Reward Regions Of Brain In Men More Than Women

The findings indicate, the researchers said, that successfully acquiring territory in a computer game format is more rewarding for men than for women. And Reiss [the lead researcher], for one, isn’t surprised. “I think it’s fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial,” he said. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species-they’re the males.”
…
Reiss said this research also suggests that males have neural circuitry that makes them more liable than women to feel rewarded by a computer game with a territorial component and then more motivated to continue game-playing behavior. Based on this, he said, it makes sense that males are more prone to getting hooked on video games than females.

However, the brain is a social organ. It’s “neural circuitry” is both biological and social. It’s circuitry is developed over time through experiences with an outside world. Yet, this argument falls back on a biological deterministic argument. Boys are just better wired for this. Go cook and gather girls. Women were flayed if they acted like boys when all the conquering was going on big guy.

What about girls and women who are raised in environments where it is OK to be competitive? I suspect there is a reason that the majority of the women on the USA Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team grew up with brothers that played hockey and parents that encouraged them to pursue it. Just this weekend my ladies had referees telling them that, “If they weren’t careful they might hurt themselves,” because they were skating too fast and playing too hard.

But, “science” says they just don’t get it, their neural circuitry isn’t right.

*sigh*

NY Times - “Patterns: A Video Game, an M.R.I. and What Men’s Brains Do”

?!? 90% of US Nintendo DS Users are Pirates ?!?

2008-01-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

[Cross Posted from www.ishotthecyborg.com]

I'm not that big into the use of massive punctuation, but I really couldn't help myself in this case. Apparently, 90% of US Nintendo DS users are using devices like the R4 or the DSTT to pirate software for the Nintendo DS. That would mean that only one of my fellow friends with DSs should NOT have one of these. Except that as far as I know, I'm the ONLY person with one of these in the area, and I don't use mine for piracy.

PocketGamer.co.uk - 90 Percent of US Gamers are Playing Pirated Software

UK trade body ELSPA has claimed that an astonishing 90 per cent of of all DS users in North America are playing pirated games using devices such as the notorious R4 cartridge.

Not only does this reek of simply made up numbers, it should be noted that these devices have more than one use. You can use them to play video files, MP3s, or *gasp* develop your own DS games. And it seems that only the boys over at GayGamer.net have managed to hit the nail on the head.

GayGamer.net - You are All Pirates (According to the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association)

Kudos on that outlandish statistic, 90% of us use the R4 to pirate software. Working on a sample (IE: everyone I've ever met) the number of people I've seen with one of these is a big zero. The article reeks of fear mongering, essentially he's trying to get anti-piracy laws changed in Scotland by scaring the crap out of game retailers, which can in turn lobby the government to make third party bootable DS cartridges illegal. After all, if they outlaw these, it would increase their potential profits by 900%.

I guess this means that likely in the coming months Nintendo will continue to pursue legal action against these companies (you cannot find many R4s any more, though there are alternatives...). In the mean time I continue to import them one or two at a time in an effort to protect my right to speak on my DS (Yes, I'm stockpiling them out of principle). I wonder if they'll raid my apartment hoping to find gobs of pirated ROMs, and will rather find one highly peeved no-longer-Nintendo enthusiast.

C-out

Shameless Plug: DIY Console Game Development

2007-12-11T21:12:00.001-05:00

Well, it probably isn't as cool as Hector's self promotion, but I recently did an interview which has become a two-part podcast. The pages linked have both the actual podcast and associated transcripts. Wes Unruh of Alterati ran the interview. He's recently developed an interest in DIY (Do it Yourself) forms of media production. In this case he and I are talking about DIY game development, particularly on consoles.

Part 1 and Part 2.

Here are the introductions of each of them to give you a flavor of what we talked about.

Casey O'Donnell on DIY Gaming (Part 1):

I talking with Casey O’Donnell about his research into game development, both to get a better understanding of the tools available to the DIY gamer intent on creating their own games and modifying the platforms they own. We sat down with a list of topics from modding all of the popular platforms out there and the attitudes those various companies have toward the modding and homebrew community, as well as the various legal issues that crop up when you are taking apart the gaming platforms and software you own. There’s a lot of material ahead, I’ve broken the discussion into two parts so look for the second half of this interview very soon.

Casey O'Donnell on DIY Gaming (Part 2):

This part of the interview continues, with discussion about how the game manufacturers have alternately reached out and clamped down on hobbyists. DIY Gaming - is it viable, how does one go about it, and where’s the line between free expression and protected code? This is the second part of an interview with Casey O’Donnell.

At Least I've Got Carmack On My Side

2007-11-09T23:14:00.000-05:00

[Cross Posted from Over at IShotTheCyborg.Com]

IGN had an interview recently with Id's John Carmack on bringing Orcs & Elves to the Nintendo DS. I was particularly interested in a comment he made about homebrew development on the system.

IGN: Since this is your first Nintendo DS project, what was it like poking at the hardware?

Carmack: It was probably the most fun platform that I have personally worked on. The early consoles that I worked on (SNES, Genesis-32X, and Jaguar) had fun hardware and full documentation, but a lousy development tool chain. A lot of later consoles had much better development tools, but they started playing secretive with the exact hardware specs, at least around console introduction time.

While there are a few nooks on the DS that aren't documented, they weren't things I cared about, so to me it was almost perfect. It is a shame that homebrew development can't be officially sanctioned and supported, because it would be a wonderful platform for a modern generation of programmers to be able to get a real feel for low level design work, to be contrasted with the high level web and application work that so many entry level people start with.

Having just written about the interesting catch-22 which developers are put in (in the US at least) of being expected to know how to do things that they don't have access to. I've said for a long time that the N64 would be a great platform for developers to learn on, and it's not like it's making Nintendo any money on licensing any more. But opening up the DS to sanctioned homebrew development a la XNA Express sounds like an even better idea to me.

I got a chance to play with DS development while in India and it was a fun system to work with. I also think it's a great platform for designers, engineers, and artists to cut their teeth on, because it provides interesting design elements (two screens, one touch sensitive) with pretty capable hardware. I also imagine that Nintendo could make a lot of money on some sort of cart+memory system that allowed people to both do sanctioned homebrew, and could download games from some homebrew repository and upload them to the DS, or even a DS downloadable content "store".

My only hesitation really is that US publishers really haven't figured out the DS. So would the opening up of homebrew just be an excuse for them to continue offloading their R&D onto those with no budgets or experience? What's the logic to innovate if you can get it for free? I know I'm being a bit cynical, but I've been watching publishers kill innovative DS titles for four years now, so that cynicism is rooted in experience not just dogmatism.

Of course they're concerned about piracy now. They used to be worried about production, and they're probably worried about branding a bit still. They don't want porn games on the DS. But ultimately I think they've moved on to being concerned about piracy. But isn't that happening already? Is that fear worth the continued infancy of production methods in the industry? Didn't they just say that they use "natural selection"? It's kind of hard to have natural selection when you have legally backed up birth control flowing through the water system. Wouldn't this encourage greater species diversity?

On a related note... I've recently imported from Hong Kong one of these "unofficial homebrew solutions" for the DS. In part because I fear that Nintendo will attempt to wipe them off the face of the planet with recent efforts. Why? Because part of my dissertation is going to be interactive and on the DS. Homebrew needs to start pitching itself as speech, and if my dissertation is illegal, then so be it. It's also going to be Creative Commons and the source code is going to be in the appendix.

New Blogging Endeavor at IShotTheCyborg.Com

2007-10-23T15:10:00.000-04:00

Just introduced myself over at a new blog. Check it out.

Agreeing with EA?

2007-10-23T11:29:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I was just at AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) in Vancouver and ended up in a great conversation with Greg Lastowka who also blogs over at Terra Nova as Greg L. We chatted about the talk I gave, "The Wii-volution will not be Televised: The XNA-cution of a Business Model."

During this conversation, I mentioned one possible step towards a more sustainable game industry. A step which not moments later was being covered by the BBC, Gamasutra, and Spong.

BBC: EA Wants 'Open Gaming Platform'

"We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," said EA's head of international publishing.

He said the web and set-top boxes would grow in importance to the industry.

"We're platform agnostic and we definitely don't want to have one platform which is a walled garden," said Mr Florin.

EA currently produces games for more than 14 different gaming systems, including consoles, portable devices and PCs.

"I am not sure how long we will have dedicated consoles - but we could be talking up to 15 years," Mr Florin added.

In some ways this taps into the "death of the console" concept. I don't really buy the idea that a generic "set-top box" is going to be the answer. I also understand that in many ways this is just EA understanding that they spend a lot trying to be platform agnostic. They support PC/OSX/Wii/DS/PS2/PS3/PSP/Xbox360. It makese sense for them to have a common foudnation for those games.

But I think the real potention of this ideal is instead to have a common core foundation of game code. I'm not saying that we need one console to rule them all. Instead, what we need are more special consoles (like the Wii's Wii-mote) that we need not re-write massive chuncks of code for.

Much like Microsoft's XNA Express, it would be great if there was an open and freely available version of an "Open Gaming Platform." This would be the basic set of libraries/SDK's/API's which developers and open source work could use as a foundation. Game companies (indy/professional/educational/hobbyist/etc) could all use this as a starting point for making games. Why re-write all the time? Math libraries, physics libraries, file I/O, networking, data-formats, Max exporters. Many things could be designed to support this base level. From that point developers could spend more time actually making the games, rather than simply working their tails off to port from one system to another.

It makes sense. But I also don't hear in EA's request a call for openness or standards. Simply they want the ability to cheaply make their games for all consoles. I want more. I want the foundations for some stability in the worlds of game developers.

Rough Smooth Phidgets

2007-10-17T13:01:00.000-04:00

I don't blog frequently about what I'm actually up to, but in chatting with some folks last week in Montreal at 4S and the Playful Technocultures Unconference, I can't help myself. Bill, you started it, with all your edges and phidgets.

It got me to thinking about smoothness, roughness, edginess and un-edginess. What do I mean, really? It's about the ability or encouragement to pursue what lies beneath a technology. A welcoming to tinkering, I guess. But it is also about not alienating the desirability for "just working" which frequently accompanies smoothness (not always).

So, it got me to thinking, how can we encourage the development of edgy smoothness? What I mean by that is, technologies which "just work" or are aesthetically pleasing, but are also open to tinkering. Sometimes in learning however you'll find you have to go back and learn the edgy rough pieces too, but I think that is something discovered over time.

Am I being too abstract?

Take the Wii or iPod for example. Quite "smooth" devices in many senses of the word. These devices (mostly) just work. We use them and don't really desire to hack them or figure them out, unless you're just one of those people. But that desire to know more is also very important when it comes to learning and desiring to develop your own technological devices. Of course tinkering with these devices has largely become illegal based on the DMCA and other legislation, which unfortunately short circuits the very inquisitive functions which undergird the game industry's workforce. Set that asside for a moment.

What would an iPod that encourages tinkering look like, while also maintaining a smoothness which makes it such a compelling technology?

I just don't know. What's the relationship with Bill's phidgets? Phidgets are rough and edgy, for the most part. But there is actually something very smooth about them once you play with them. They inspire engagement in new and interesting ways. Ways which we need more of.

Patents and Copyright, Oh My - (Some of) The Rules of the Game Industry Game

2007-09-24T11:24:00.000-04:00

In my RSS reading early this morning I encountered something which piqued my interest. I wish I'd somehow managed to attend this event, because I've been very interested in patent and copyright law as it relates to the video game industry. Even more disturbing was the title of the talk given in London to a group of IGDA members. That title was, "Rules of the Game: Legal Issues in Game Development," which though purported to be about copyright, trademark, and patent law seems at least based on the notes to have been more about copyright and trademark.

Anyway, the following bit caught my eye:

Game Career Guide - IGDA Rules of the Game

How Similar is Too Similar is Too Similar?
"There has to be copying," says speaker Vincent Scheurer, a speaker at the IGDA meeting. "Accidental similarity is not an infringement." Scheurer expressed his disgust with the similarities -- or what he thinks is just plain copying -- between Webzen's art style (left) and Nintendo's in Wind Waker (right). He wonders why the Japanese game giant allows Webzen get away with it, as Nintendo has never filed suit.

Which lends yet even more evidence to a theory that has been developing in my head throughout my research. Namely, that Nintendo has a different vision of what patent, copyright, and trademark in the game industry is supposed to be doing. While Scheurer seems to look down on "plain copying," as he sees it, Nintendo seems to see something else.

This same sort of non-litigation has occurred in the space of patents by Nintendo as well. Nearly every 3rd Person game for the PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox360, Gamecube, and Wii actually infringe on several patents by Nintendo related to the use of analog sticks on controllers. Yet Nintendo does not litigate. So it is either (in the case of patents anyway) done out of only self protection, but I'm beginning to suspect that it is also done out of a desire to carve out new areas in the world of game development and to protect them.

So sure, "Webzen get[s] away with it," but maybe Nintendo is willing to carve new directions out for others to also pursue. Remember, frequently Nintendo seems simply happy to be somewhere first, they don't necessarily want to rule those places.

I Just Wish I'd Said It, "Copyright is always Government Intervention"

2007-09-20T17:02:00.000-04:00

A key aspect of my dissertation is talking about the mobilization of the state on the part of corporations to do things which they could not do otherwise. This little gem is great.

The Patry Copyright Blog - Copyright is always Government Intervention

If one has been around long enough, one has seen a great many such groups as well as efforts to equate "respect" for copyright with a high level of rights. The copyright to which one asked to respect is of a special kind, though. It is limited to strong enforcement of content owners' rights as well as agreement with content owners' expansive interpretations of those provisions. And, it includes a promise to "prevent diminishment" of rights, as the Copyright Alliance put it. Respect for copyright is thus narrowly regarded and unidirectional: ever expanding rights and greater penalties. (The use of the term "diminishment" is a classic conceptual metaphor in which less has negative associations, while, conversely, "expansive" has positive associations. George Lakoff has explored such uses in a number of books, see here).

Title 17, however, also includes the limitations on subject matter protection contained in Section 102(b), the lack of protection for U.S. government works in Section 105, fair use (107), library photocopying (108), first sale (109), performances for educational and other purposes (110), copying for the blind (121), and well as compulsory licenses, the safe harbors of Section 512, and the personal copying defense in Section 1008. Copyright further includes judge-created doctrines like permitting de minimis or non-substantial uses, independent creation, the idea-expression dichotomy, merger, scenes a faire, and defenses such as misuse and substantial non-infringing uses for secondary liability. As Justice O'Connor wrote the Supreme Court in rejecting another metaphor ("you shouldn't reap what you haven't sown" as applied to copying facts), "it is not unfair to permit the fruits of another's labor to be used by others without compensation: "this is not 'some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme.' … It is, rather, 'the essence of copyright,' and a constitutional requirement… This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art." If respect for copyright is going to be one's pass into society, then we should be far more rounded and inclusive about copyright is: copyright does not end with Section 106; not even chapter 1 of title ends with Section 106; there are 16 sections that follow, limiting copyright owners' rights dramatically.

One thing should be beyond dispute, and that is copyright is always an act of government intervention. Without Congress enacting title 17, there would be no (federal) law at all, as the Supreme Court held in its very first (1834) opinion in a copyright case, Wheaton v. Peters. Copyright in the U.S. is, therefore, in its very essence, an act by Congress interfering with an inherent lack of rights: every grant of rights represents government intervention. I support such intervention when it is responsible, as it has been for much of our countries' history, at least until 1998, when in my opinion things ran permanently off the rails with term extension and the sui generis DMCA provisions of chapter 12.

Making a Video Game from Start to Finish: A 100,000,000 Mile Up Perspective

2007-09-20T16:48:00.000-04:00

Ok, because I really have respect for the fact that this DigiPen student took the time to write an article which he thought would be useful to others. At the same time, I think rather than calling it a guide for beginners, it needs to be considered a view from outer-space of the game development process.

The trouble with beginners is that they're not really even ready for that view. If anything it abstracts away what is hard about all of it. That what makes you "grow to hate it" or "love it" by the end. All that hard stuff in between.

So, if you want to make a game you need to start by writing a design document? Probably not. What you need to do first is figure out where your skills lie. Are you a good artist? Can you program? Can you make up a fun board game with paper, pen, and scissors? If you cannot do any of these, or not willing to take the time to learn them, then you ought not even start making a document.

The Design Document ends up being a starting description of your game. Designers tend to be the drivers of this document. Those people need to understand how to create games, create relationships between user and the underlying game system. They need to describe those feedback loops, their behaviors, and all of that makes up how the game works. Do not confuse how it works with how it is coded.

The other thing is that typically at a pitch you'll need some sort of prototype of your game. This means that you're already too late to the game if you wait to think about your technical design document and engine until after the fact. Most pitches I've heard include prototype and information on feasibility.

The trouble is, in this beginners guide, a beginner is never actually given an instruction how to figure out which area they might be interested in. Art, design, engineering? Ok, maybe you want to do it all. What must you start to learn to make this possible.

This article actually encourages what I see as "I want to make a game, tell me what to do," email message that I so frequently see on game related email list serves.

Ummm... are you an engineer? Go learn programming languages, and techniques related to game development. Don't expect to find example code for everything you want. Learn how to read documentation and integrate that code. Check out open source engines and libraries.

Are you an artist? Make some concept art for a game, turn that into pixel are and low polygon models. Do some texturing of your models. Learn how to export them what that means for what you've created. Talk to an engineer about how to get those into an engine.

Designer? Make games. Try to tell people about them, explain how they work. Write descriptions of them. Make some levels for an existing game. Learn how to script. Talk to an engineer about what is hard to do. Talk to an artist and get them to make some things that would fit into your games.

Manageability is the key for beginners, not interstellar travel visions.

Game Career Guide - Making a Video Game from Start to Finish: An Overview for Beginners

Game development starts with an idea or inspiration. It's kind of like magic. You think, "Hey, what if there were a game like this, and like that, and with elements of this?"

But building a game is like any other formidable task, like building a cathedral or writing a novel or painting a picture. Building a video game takes passion. It takes dedication. Some might even say it takes obsession. It takes a great deal of your time, energy, and thought. It's never finished. Even when it's technically finished, you find things, new things, little things, that you could correct or change or fix.

It's a very demanding and highly stressful endeavor. If you don't love it completely, with all its misgivings, you'll quickly grow to hate it.
...
The Game Design Document
One of the first things you need is a game design document.
...
The Pitch
When you pitch your game to a publisher, you give the publisher a short presentation that describes your idea, target demographic (the people who will be most interested in the game), and why your idea is the one they should fund, instead of any hundreds of others. It's often helpful to have a demo, a rough and incomplete version of your game, so that you can effectively communicate what your game will be like. In other words, by the time you are ready to pitch an idea to a publisher, you should already have some kind of working game. It doesn't have to be a great big years-long finished product, but it does have to be playable. Publishers aren't interested in ideas alone. They want to see a prototype.
...
The Technical Design Document
One of the first and most basic requirements of any game that has just started production is a technical design document.
...
The Engine
Now that the game has been described inside and out, you can start assembling the pieces that were laid out in the technical design document to form the most critical part of your game, the engine.
...
Content and Art
In addition to the engine, a video game must have content and art. Ideally, the content of a game -- that is, the levels, characters, music, and art, which includes textures, 3D models, and animations -- will be separate from the game engine, allowing the developers to easily make modifications to them as the needs of the project change.
...
Focus Testing
At some point in production, the game theoretically begins to resemble the vision that the designers had for it. It's at this point that it becomes critically important to start focus testing.
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Launchpad
Now that the game is ready to ship, you're ready to begin your career as an internationally acclaimed rockstar game developer.

How to Make an Industry Researcher Laugh out Loud

2007-09-20T16:28:00.000-04:00

GameSetWatch - Game Developer's Top 20 Publishers - The Sassy Version!

"Activision - Solid - if unimaginative
Atari - First the good news. Bruno's gone. Now the bad news. Bruno's gone.
Codemasters - Plucky, intelligent senior management willing to take a risk.
Disney Interactive - Does what it says on the tin - and no more.
Eidos/SCi - Could yet grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
Electronic Arts - Currently in therapy.
Konami - Trying to be less Japanese. Currently failing.
LucasArts - Looking increasingly rudderless - the industry's biggest vanity publisher
Majesco - Two words - New. Jersey. 'Nuff said.
Microsoft - Succeeding in spite of itself. Will miss Peter Moore more than they know.
Midway - Sumner Redstone's folly. Spectacularly, almost entertainingly bad.
NCSoft - Playing the long game - and has the cash to do it.
Nintendo - It's their ball - and we can all play with it - on their terms.
Sega - One to watch - clever, nimble leadership who know how to succeed.
Sony Computer Entertainment - Sadly lacking leadership skills at the highest level - expect changes in 2008.
Take-Two - GTA 4 better be good.........
THQ - Looking a bit lost - despite some good work, does anyone know what is THQ for?
Ubisoft - The amazing Guillemots and their dedicated senior team run rings around slower, bigger competitors.
Vivendi Games - World class - in parts."

[Disclaimer: GameSetWatch doesn't necessarily think this arch wit is right. And fortunately, most responders to the survey were a little less flippant. We do think he's pretty amusing, though, whoever he is.]

What's Really AFTER World of Warcraft?

2007-09-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

Gamasutra - The Academics Speak: Is There Life After World Of Warcraft?

So, I feel a little bit bad, because I saw this headline on Gamasutra the other day, and my first thought was, "Yeah, what are researchers going to do once gamers have tired of World of Warcraft?" But, of course that's not what they were talking about.

Instead its an article about what the next big thing for gamers is going to be once they're done with WoW. The author talks to luminaries in the game studies world like Castronova and Jenkins, and it is interesting. But my original question I find more nagging. I'm all for asking about where they think gamers are going to go next, but I think there is a more fundamental question, other than following these gamers around to wherever they do go next, what is it precisely we're hoping to learn from online worlds and gamers?

Or more directly, other than watching virtual worlds and people in virtual worlds, what is it precisely we're hoping to achieve here?

It is also a bit troubling that four men and one woman was interviewed, a criticism of the article, not the interviewees. There are quite a few women researchers just as "luminary" as those who they did talk to, who have been studying MMO's (T.L. Taylor instantly springs to mind), but the best they could come up with was a Ph.D. Candidate (something you cannot pooh-pooh, nor would I, considering I am one as well). I was happy that she did manage to bring up gender, though that wasn't the word she used.

Punishing Wikipedia Violators?

2007-08-20T10:11:00.000-04:00

Based on this recent news, combined with the numerous others listed on Wired. I think a nice little collected volume (yes, a real print book) widely publicized and distributed about what these companies are doing and why would be a fitting punishment.

Personally I'd be happy to look closely at what EA was attempting to remove, and expand and go into greater depth about why they're making those changes, and precisely what historical events they're attempting to distance themselves from.

I'd like to see my advisor Kim Fortun do an entry for Dow Chemical and their removal of the Bhopal incident.

Let's make it worse for companies doing this kind of thing. Publicize the hell out of it. Make it a new negative experience. Burn your fingers once and learn a lesson. Burn them a second time on the very same coil, prove your stupidity.

C-out.

Dark Zero - EA Change Sections Of Their Own Wiki Page

Who is Trip Hawkins?

Thanks to a recent news item on Wired it has come to light that companies have made several changes to their own Wikipedia pages. However, the one that most interests us is the changes that EA have been made to thier own page late last year. Also, what interests us even more is that all those changes can be directly tracked back to their headquarters in Redwood City, California thanks to the ip address provided in the edit.

The changes to the article were numerous, but initially it seems one of the most notable was to remove the name of the company's Founder, Trip Hawkins from the article completely. In fact, his name was scrubbed from two separate sections, and all links to Trips new company, Digital Chocolate, were also no longer to be seen in the new edit. Following on from there the next big change was the removal of a whole section of text which was critical of the company which cited “The company has also been the subject of criticism, most notably for its business tactics and its employment policy.”

That's not all, even more changes were on show in the employment policy section, where it is highly noticeable that the whole paragraph was edited to paint the company in a better light. In fact, the phrase “Electronic Arts has from time to time been criticized for its employment policy of requiring employees to work extraordinarily long hours” was changed to the much better sounding “Electronic Arts has led the industry in reforming work/life balance issues that are endemic to the software industry.” Also in reference to the criticism brought upon the company by due to alleged unpaid overtime issues EA edited a brand new sentence into the section which read, “Since that time, many other game companies have been struck with similar lawsuits.”

You can check out all the changes yourself by heading over the difference between revisions page of the EA entry. That page shows the original entry on the left and the EA inspired revision on the right. The changes made are highlighted in a bold red font. Also, if you want to check the IP address you can copy and paste it into the Arin Whois Database Search and check it out for yourself. Interestingly, thanks to the moderating staff on Wikipeida it seems the changes made lasted only five minutes and were quickly changed back.

I Said it While I was in India...

2007-08-20T09:50:00.002-04:00

While in India working with game developers I spoke to several about the vast possibilities of using Hindu history as a resource for developing game titles for both at home and abroad. I used the interested in Greek and Roman mythology as a point of reference. Especially for American consumers who for the most part look abroad for historical narratives, or the ones we do have revolve around war, that there would be significant interest in these kinds of titles.

An MMO in 2010, that sounds... vague and far off. Interesting, surely, but vague and far off.

Joystiq - SOE announces Ramayan 3392 A.D. MMO

Sony Online Entertainment has announced a collaboration with Virgin Comics intended to transform the Ramayan 3392. A.D. comic book series into an MMO, "initially" bound for the PC. Based on the Indian Ramayana story and set in a post-apocalyptic humans vs. demons world (obviously), the Deepak Chopra-developed comic franchise would seem to lend itself well to the genre without resorting to Western swords and sorcery shenanigans.

The multi-year, worldwide licence agreement sees SOE developing and publishing the game with creative consultation provided by Virgin Comics. The company's chief creative officer, Gotham Chopra, noted the prominence of "duty, honor, sacrifice, and fraternity" in the story, as well as "uniquely Indian ideas like karma (how action and consequence are linked) and the malleability of time itself." Delving deeper, he concluded that working on the game with SOE is "just awesome."

With no release date announced, we likely have quite a wait ahead of us before learning about online duty, honor, sacrifice, fraternity and awesomeness.

GamesIndustry.BIZ - MMO to bridge culture divide

New project from SOE will tap local talent to "think like the consumers there."
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Sony Entertainment's head of business development, David Christensen, has pointed to some naiveté when it comes to the Western understanding of other cultures.

He was speaking following the unveiling of the publisher's new MMO, which takes inspiration from a holy Hindu poem, and aims to promote awareness of the religion to Western audiences.

"Unfortunately I think most people - not just those in the gaming industry - are a bit naïve when it comes to any culture but their own, which is precisely why SOE believes it is of the utmost importance to partner with local talent in every foreign market we enter," David Christensen told Eurogamer. "To be successful in a territory you have to think like the consumers there."

Virgin Comics will be joining SOE on the project, and will be using its Ramayan 3392 AD publication as the basis for the game. This retells the ancient story of the Ramayana in a futuristic science-fiction setting.

The game is being built predominantly for the Indian market, but Christensen believes it will find success around the world and might help teach us a thing or two in the process.

"The game is being developed in India for Indian gamers, but we expect it to be a success worldwide; to anyone that enjoys a rich and colourful storyline," continued Christensen.

"The comic Ramayan 3392 is meant to be entertaining, but at the same there are lessons in honour, duty and karma to be learned from it. I'm hopeful we can capture some of those lessons in our game."
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The MMO based on Ramayan 3392 AD is yet to enter development, and Christensen expects 2010 is a likely release date - although he insists it will be given as much time as it needs to ensure maximum quality.

Game Studies Love/Hate Relationship with Game Development

2007-08-20T09:50:00.001-04:00

You know you're behind with blog posts when you've had a tab open in Firefox for nearly a week and a half, with every intention of posting about it, but not having time. I blame my dissertation, which is currently at about 40% completion.

This is an interesting post over on Terranova, which is a site I look forward to reading in the RSS feed. I would say however, that typically they suffer from the regular game studies myopia of "in games" syndrome, where their concerns are focused on the play/use/experience/economics/social issues/etc "in games." I knew at some point that there would be a realization that production is an important aspect of all of that, and despite any arm flailing that I might do would not otherwise convince them. To put it in perspective I've submitted several chapter proposals to collected volumes on "social, economic, etc" approaches to games, and they were completely uninterested in anything to deal with production or industry inter-weavings.

So anyway, "authoring tools" came up, and I see some light. Perhaps it is simply a train barreling down, but I cannot help but think that game studies interest in authoring tools will lead to an interest in tools development, which will lead to an interest in game development more generally.

It's hard to say. You have to get past your Miyamoto/Wright worship for that to happen. Here's to hoping.

Terranova - A Hierarchy of Authoring Tools

In virtual worlds, we've seen some of the pitfalls with user-generated content (problems that have a parallel in Wikipedia). When users are given access to that layer of a virtual world, a few will attack the world as a whole, while others will look to ruin or damage the experience of other users. User-generated content as a whole is also often not quite as appealing or attractive as what authors with the full resources of a developer can create: open-source creativity sometimes generates broad but subtly unsatisfying experiences.
...
Doing something similar in the most "open" virtual world environments is a lot harder, or at least I find it to be so. Second Life gives me a lot of tools, but I feel like the learning curve and time demands involved in using them is very steep. Author-oriented non-persistent games like Neverwinter Nights have seemed more demanding to me.

The Escapist: Schizophrenic on Game Development

2007-08-07T14:35:00.000-04:00

I'm constantly wondering why The Escapist pretends to be more targeted at gamers and "not into the development side of things." Then they go and do something like this. My overall opinion at this point is that their recent web-redesign (which I was sad to see go, but understand why it did so) has also thrown them into a tumult to reach new audiences.

Regardless the recent piece is mostly about game development with an excellent piece about XNA, and Erin Hoffman weighs in on Scrum/Agile and another piece on using middleware... which I guess fits into an Agile model, but the title doesn't really help because you think you're going to read about Agile, but instead you're just reading about something else.

The Escapist - The DNA of XNA

In the world of science, DNA is a recent discovery. In the world of game development, XNA is even newer. Simply put, XNA is an easy-to-use software suite. It lets you make games for both the PC and Xbox 360. First announced as an initiative at the Game Developers Conference in 2004, the project was led by J Allard. By the end of 2005, the proof of concept was up and running. At the 2006 GDC, Microsoft released the completed XNA framework.

XNA makes game development more accessible. "It's really about providing the same tools, the same libraries, the same capabilities of both platforms," says Dave Mitchell, Director of XNA's marketing department. "So you can write your game once and have it run on both platforms. The real sweet spot is casual games."

It all started when Microsoft decided to build their technologies specifically with developers in mind. Mitchell says XNA came about when Microsoft realized the small-time developers, people new to development, were encountering "the 'country-club mentality.' You sort of have to know someone to break in [to console development]."

It's a big catch-22: Developers need at least one game under their belt to attract a publisher, but developing that first game without a publisher's substantial investment is usually impossible. "We just saw all of these complexities and challenges," Mitchell says, "among indies, hobbyists, students, university settings, in particular, of building a pipeline of creativity to come into the industry." After identifying that problem, Mitchell recalls looking across the rest of Microsoft for answers. "One of the things we take great pride in is really engaging with the hobbyist and enthusiast level with a lot of our technology and arming and equipping them." Visual Studio Express serves as one example.

"We really then set off to see what we could do to open up the Xbox 360 as a console," he says. "We were asked internally, can you make games on Windows? Sure, check. Can you do that on a console device? No, you really can't without getting thousands and thousands of dollars in equipment. And, of course, getting an agreement in order to get to that point."

So, in the beginning, the XNA team wanted to democratize game development. XNA represents the first time in the 31-year history of console gaming that retail units are also development boxes.
...
As for Microsoft's competitors, Mitchell can't speak for the other console manufactures' ability to support a technology like XNA, which might allow user-created games to run on a PS3 or a Wii. "For the overall health of the industry, I certainly hope that they look to enable some of that." Considering what XNA has the potential to do, we can only hope other shops lift their licensed curtains, as well.

The Escapist - Scrumming It

It's true: making games is hard.

When it comes to finding an effective management paradigm, the game industry is still young. That youth is a double-edged sword: Game companies appear (and disappear) so rapidly that new methodologies can be fully implemented and tested in a short time-frame, leading to faster innovation and open-minded approach, while simultaneously insisting rebelliously that no previously described method from predecessor industries in either entertainment or software science could fully apply to game development. They just don't understand us, man!

To some extent this is true. Game development, especially at the AAA level, mixes some of the most difficult elements of software design and development with the uncertainty and volatile creativity that drives every other entertainment business. It doesn't help that games did not gradually or gracefully develop, they exploded.

In the earliest days of game development, the average team was 2.5 people, and most of the early games for the Atari 2600 were one-man bands. Some of the earliest mid-'80s hits by familiar names such as Namco boasted development teams of four or five.

By 1988, teams expanded; Sierra's King's Quest IV had 17 names on its credits, many appearing more than once. A transition in a single decade from teams of five to teams of 20 doesn't seem like much, with single developers still covering multiple bases, but it was the first critical step in differentiating between old-style development - work designers like Howard Scott Warshaw called "authorship" - and modern development, where people management and communication became essential not just to the success of a game, but to its basic completion.
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Neither Scrum nor any new production methodology provides a complete recipe for a successful game; there is no such thing. Making games is hard. What these new methodologies do, and perhaps more importantly, what they indicate, is responsiveness to the development process, and working smart as well as working hard. Ultimately, what remains fascinating about Scrum is its simplicity and common-sense approach as a toolbox for managers, the same way compilers and libraries are tools for programmers. Scrum, in addition to being its own method, in recent years has become the gold standard for attentive process. That there is great interest in this new batch of tools, and great interest in advancing process in the way we advance technology, may be a sign we're growing up.

The Escapist - The Small And Agile Approach

For decades, every game was a unique snowflake. Teams started from scratch every time, reinventing the wheel with every game, as each one required a new engine, new art, new everything, and that all had to happen before the designers got to the part where they made a fun game. Times are changing, though, and the craft has advanced enough that third-party developers can specialize in art, physics or engine design, and enterprising game companies can focus entirely on the hard part: actually making a good game.
...
The rise of middleware means Remedy can stay small and agile, while making a game that might be better than one they could make in-house. "I think Havok is a perfect example," he says. "Today, it would be crazy ... to write your own physics module." While it was common several years ago to write your own physics, today it's unlikely you'll compete with the top packages, and you'll have to fund a much larger team to build out your own physics engine. He also called NaturalMotion's Euphoria system "very interesting," adding, "We are not using it at the moment, but that's something I can clearly see is the way of the future," partly because it's a good engine, and partly because something like Euphoria can replace a lot of animators. This seems to be a natural progression for the industry, he says, and while he wasn't authorized to tell me exactly what middleware Remedy was licensing, he was adept at discussing the various packages and how they fit into their overall development strategy.

The Rise and Continued Top Position of Consoles

2007-08-07T14:34:00.000-04:00

I'm currently in the thick of dissertation writing, so my blog posting has dropped considerably. It happens when you're already writing a significant amount of text into a word processing application. Even checking my RSS reader seems to give me anxiety.

I actually just went over a section of Chapter 1 of the dissertation looking at the rise of the console and why despite so many people saying it should/will/ought go the way of the dodo, it doesn't. Then these two nifty little blog posts happen. It's always nice to read stuff that goes right along with what I'm already writing.

Game Set Watch - Why Consoles Are Here To Stay, Yay

Now sure, Edery works for Microsoft, but these are his own personal views, and he hits the nail on the head when looking at some of the issues currently dogging the console: "In terms of user interface and functionality, the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 are all far more complicated than their predecessors. In many ways, that complexity is still better managed than it is on home computers... But we’re on the edge. My wife cannot navigate the 360 menu system nearly as easily as I can. Both the PS3 and Wii offer remarkably sloppy digital shopping experiences... We’re dramatically increasing the things you can do with a console, but advances in UI development and “assistant technology” are not keeping pace."

Of course, the interesting step is when/if the open Internet makes it properly to the living room, given the Flash game and browser-based MMO. But will it, and if so, on what devices? Seems like some of those might just be... consoles. But then people would be able to play games through the Internet, even subscription-based ones. So what - are we looking at a walling-off of browsers sophisticated enough to do that eventually? Or maybe I'm overthinking things here, you never know.

Game Tycoon - Console Demise? Don’t Hold Your Breath

Every so often, I hear someone say that the demise of the video game console is inevitable (and likely not far off). Their reasons vary: “closed platforms can’t survive”, “consoles are becoming too specialized”, etc. Having thought about it, I just can’t come to the same conclusion. Consoles aren’t going anywhere in the next ten+ years or so (beyond which I can’t claim to understand what the market will look like. There’s too much cultural and technological uncertainty.)

To be clear: I’m defining “console” as “a closed or semi-closed hardware platform dedicated primarily to interactive entertainment.” Does that necessarily mean “software and hardware designed, produced, and distributed by a single company?” No. There could be alliances on the software or hardware side of things, and those alliances could result in independent product variants that share a base level of compatibility. What matters is the presence of very stable standards that lead to a reliable, accessible, and affordable gaming experience. In other words, a guiding hand still matters.
...
Consoles, because they are closed, also offer a vastly superior environment in which to feature parental controls (for those consumers who care about filtering the content that their children consume.) And people still don’t have to worry if they have enough RAM or processing power to play the latest game; consoles remain the great equalizer, to the benefit of consumers and developers everywhere. Console-mandated certification processes also help produce games with fewer problems and inconsistencies (though certainly not bug-free games.) And last but not least, the ten foot experience has grown more important than ever; two signals of this are the advent of party games like Buzz and of space-consuming games like Dance Dance Revolution.

PopCap Signs with Indiagames

2007-07-25T21:06:00.000-04:00

It's a little odd. Sounds like a music deal. It's also the opposite direction most think about the world for the moment. Indiagames really has their fingers in a whole lotta pies (hence their recent purchase by a media conglomerate in India. This should be an interesting partnership.

GameDaily.Biz - PopCap Signs with IndiaGames

Indiagames announced today that it has concluded a partnership with PopCap Games. Under terms of this agreement, Indiagames will launch PopCap's catalog of casual games on their "Games on Demand" Service. This new partnership was announced at the CGA Casual Connect Seattle 2007 conference.

"With broadband connectivity growing exponentially in India, casual games are very important to the growth of online gaming as there are millions of Indian gamers who are experiencing gaming for the first time through our GoD service and they want to see a simple and fun experience," said Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indiagames, on this tie-up. "We believe PopCap's games like Zuma, Bejeweled and Bookworm will be a welcome addition to our GoD service and will be an instant hit with our users."

"We are very optimistic about the prospects of casual games in India and we're excited to work with Indiagames to bring our award-winning games to Indian consumers," said James Gwertzman, PopCap's Vice President for Asia/Pacific. "The online games market in India is just getting off the ground, and we're excited to be there at the beginning."

Update: Crunching at Insomniac...

2007-06-27T14:49:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Raoul over at Inner Bits for a recent blog post he made, which reminded me of a February Kotaku post that shows precisely what's missing from measures like those which indicated Insomniac is a "top" place to work:

Inner Bits.com - Overtime

As previously discussed in the Game Developer Manifesto, the systematic, generalized recourse, on the part of industry employers, to sustained unpaid overtime remains one of the most reprehensible practice affecting game developers. By sustained we mean more than a few days or a week at most. While some relative progress has been made since EA_spouse (and the subsequent legal action, this recent Insomniac Games article serves as a stark reminder that the practice remains entrenched.

Excessive, uncompensated overtime drains talent away from our industry, hundreds if not thousands of skilled workers giving up on their professional passion, yet it persists, on a large scale.

Kotaku - Feature: Industry Lifestyle Drives Insomniac Dev East, Far East

2005. Insomniac Studios. Ratchet Deadlock was having its final touches applied, and Resistance was nearing the end of pre-production. Chris Pfeiffer, Gameplay Director at Insomniac and Max Garber, System Lead, were all busted up. Exhausted. Pfeiffer remembers it, none too fondly, as an "endless sea of work". Deciding a break was in order, the two decided on a trip to China.
...
Finding himself trapped in a seemingly infinite cycle of long days and working nights, Pfeiffer began to question the sanity of an industry that relies on work conditions rarely seen elsewhere in the Western world.

"There's something fundamentally wrong with an industry when making games is so expensive that the pressure to push your staff to their individual breaking points is completely understandable, if regrettable", he says.

Pfeiffer believes the games industry, as a business, needs to grow up. "It isn't the days when Atari programmers were going catatonic at their desks, but people haven't been able to wrap their minds around the fact that individuals are internally self-throttled" he says.

"When people work 16 hour days weeks on end, you may get 12 hours of work done on the first day, 10 on the second...but eventually the effective work completed per day drops below a standard eight hour day".

To be fair to Insomniac it's an industry-wide concern (recent EA and Activision lawsuits only serving to highlight this), but when nearly every major studio is forced into these conditions by the external pressures of the business, what you gonna do?
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He soon learned that China has laws in place that make such work conditions as he was enduring at home illegal. Work days there can be no longer than 11 hours, and employees are only legally allowed to work 36 hours of overtime a month.

"There are places in the US games industry where the base work week is 50 hours and that doesn't even start to account for the extended periods of 'crunch time", he says. "In China, you couldn't legally run a shop that way. And heck, who wants to live their lives that way?"

Not Pfeiffer, and not his friend Max Garber either. So in 2006, with Resistance finished and the two fed up with the conditions they'd suffered getting it there, they decided to pack their bags, depart Insomniac and form their own studio.

Where? Where else? China.

Pfeiffer is at pains to stress that it's not Insomniac themselves that caused the move.

"Ted [Price] is an exceptional person and phenomenal CEO...we have learned a lot from working there"

But at the same time is insistent that "there's a better way to work, and live, than the way western studios currently operate".
...
"The industry is full of explorers, adventurers", he says. "We haven't had to 'sell' the idea of moving to China. People are drawn to it. It's been surprising how many industry veterans have offered to join us so far".

Strike Out? Nintendo and WiiWare

2007-06-27T10:14:00.000-04:00

Oh man. I wake up this morning, and for a moment I think to myself that I'm going to have to revise this paper I've just submitted, because Nintendo has managed to step up to the plate...

I was excited about the opportunity to proven wrong, that they might be able to lower their barriers to entry. Then Level Up had to go and dash my hopes against the rocks with the actual interview with Fils-Aime. "'First, the development tools and SDKs [software development kits] that enable developers to participate are already available,' he replied, referring to the standard tools that Nintendo sells to its licensees." Strike One.

DAMN IT. So the amusing thing is that to get in a position to buy these SDK's and development kits (later mentioned as "darn near free" - Strike Two) you are actually unlikely to get without a publishing company backing you. While it might be interesting and possible to hear that Nintendo will remove some of these restrictions, it doesn't sound like it. Basically it's an opportunity for established developers to bring games to Nintendo's electronic distribution stream. What the hell about that is "indy"? What they should have said is, "Established developers can create small teams with small budgets and big ideas to bring original games to the marketplace." That's not what they said though. They actually sounded magnanimous, much like Microsoft did with the release of XNA Express. Only Microsoft actually released it to the general public. Nintendo has not. Strike Three.

I honestly don't see how this is any different from what Sony has done already. This isn't big news, this is catch up. If Nintendo had opened up a little, that would be something. That would be big news. Now I get to hear about "user generated content" on the Wii for the next month. I just have to decide now if I argue or not.

*SIGH* That's what I get for having hopes this early in the morning.

Nintendo Press Room - NINTENDO'S WIIWARE PAVES THE WAY FOR FRESH GAMES, COOL CONSUMER EXPERIENCES

"Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit," says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "WiiWare brings new levels of creativity and value to the ever-growing population of Wii owners."

The possibilities for WiiWare are limited only by the imaginations of developers. WiiWare provides game creators a simple method by which they can get their games to the public. This approach, combined with the remarkable motion controls of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, will give birth to fresh takes on established genres, as well as original ideas that currently exist only in developers' minds. The reduced barriers to development provide developers the freedom to create and an inexpensive, clearly defined path to reach consumers who will ultimately determine which game will become the Next Big Thing.

Level Up: EXCLUSIVE: What is WiiWare? Level Up Gets the Scoop On Nintendo's Brand New Bag

A month or so before the March Game Developers Conference, Nintendo's PR agency approached us about a hush-hush new content initiative that the company had been cooking up, and wanted to know whether or not we'd be interested in being the first to get the lowdown. We were. But GDC came and went without any more information. From then on, we'd check in with Nintendo from time to time, but no new information was forthcoming, not even about when new information might be forthcoming. So we began to despair. But on Monday, the folks at Golin Harris PR reached out to us again to inform us that the time was now, that the offer was still on the table, and that Nintendo of America president Reginald Fils-Aime would be available to speak with us Tuesday afternoon. We spoke with him, and here's what we learned.

What's more interesting is that Nintendo isn't only seeking WiiWare from established publishers and developers like Ubisoft and Sega. At a Nintendo developer's conference earlier this week, the company informed attendees that it was seeking from indie developers as well. Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas; these are the buzzwords that you'll be hearing from Nintendo when its Wednesday announcement goes wide. Fils-Aime told us that while Nintendo, as the retailer, would itself determine the appropriate pricing for each game on a per-title bases, the games themselves would not be vetted by Nintendo. Instead, Nintendo would only check the games for bugs and compatibility, with developers and publishers responsible for securing an E for Everyone, E10+ for Everyone 10 or older, T for Teen or M for Mature rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board--Adults Only titles like Manhunt 2 aren't welcome. Look for the first WiiWare titles from Nintendo and third-parties to become available next year.

Level Up: EXCLUSIVE: Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime Tells Level Up About His Big Plans For a Little WiiWare

"A couple of GDCs [Game Developers Conferences] ago, Mr. Iwata hinted at downloadable content; that we wanted to help young, promising developers overcome the limitations of small budgets and team sizes to bring their games to the Wii."

Would this mean a price cut for development kits, we inquired? Or would there be a new set of tools and libraries--easier to use, but less fully-featured--aimed at the indie and hobbyist game developer? No. "First, the development tools and SDKs [software development kits] that enable developers to participate are already available," he replied, referring to the standard tools that Nintendo sells to its licensees. "We enable the marketplace where consumers can buy these games using Wii Points. Developers and publishers bring their ideas for games and marketing to entertain and entice consumers." As for a price cut, Fils-Aime insisted that Wii dev kits are already plenty cheap. "All our SDKs and dev tools are already--I don't want to call them inexpensive--they're darn near free to developers. This is unlike our competitors, where you have to spend a lot of money building high-res assets to be competitive. So in that sense, there's almost no cost to developers; the tools are already available at rock-bottom prices. We're providing the venue and light of day for games that might not have gotten attention otherwise."

Fils-Aime also stressed that all WiiWare content, unlike that on the Virtual Console, would be brand new games. "WiiWare content is new content. It can come from Reggie's Videogame Garage or from EA." (Don't get your hopes up, fanboys; Fils-Aime has no plans to personally make any WiiWare games.) As for pricing, he reiterated that while Nintendo would make the final decision on the pricing of individual games, it would do so in consultation with the developer and/or publisher, with no predetermined limit on the high-end of pricing. In short, having conquered the kids, the Alpha Moms and the non-gamers, the Wii is now going after the brand new downloadable game market currently occupied by Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. The resulting fireworks should be interesting to watch.

Gamesindustry.biz - Nintendo Set to Unveil new WiiWare Initiative

Nintendo is set to reveal details of its WiiWare downloadable games initiative later today, according to Newsweek games blog Level Up.

WiiWare titles will be available from the Wii Shop Channel in exchange for Wii Points, as Virtual Console games currently are. However, the WiiWare games will be original titles designed specifically for Wii

According to Newsweek Nintendo held a developers' conference earlier this week, where attendees were informed that games are sought from independent studios as well as established companies such as Ubisoft and SEGA.

Nintendo will decide how much each game should cost, but will not vet the games beyond checking for bugs and compatibility. It will be the responsibility of publishers to obtain age ratings for the games, and no Adults Only-rated titles will be allowed.

Joystiq - Nintendo takes wraps off of WiiWare

Nintendo is the latest on the indie console-development bandwagon with WiiWare, a "game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content" that the company announced this morning.

The company is making it clear that they're looking for little guys to make games for the console, though it's currently unclear exactly how that will be done. Interestingly, Reggie Fils-Amie told N'Gai Croal of Newsweek that the games would be checked for bugs but not vetted by Nintendo.

User Comment #2 - I'm not quite sure how you can call this jumping on the User Generated Content bandwagon. There's no mention of hobbyists or home development, or anything akin to XNA (which many would argue isn't a pure example of UGC either). They may be courting the casual games market or encouraging development from small indie developers, but this is still very much focussed on professional development not end-users from my reading.

Revisiting EA Spouse - 3 Years Later (and a bit of Field Work's Insight)

2007-06-26T10:35:00.000-04:00

Well, alright, it hasn't really been three years yet. That date isn't until November, but I guess sometimes you just can't wait to publish that anniversary article.

One thing that troubles me about this first article I link to is that (as much as I have love for SHRM) there is no mention of quality of life, reasonable work hours or anything of that sort in the ranking system. While I suspect that Insomniac has something figured out, having read some of their postmortems, I'd wonder a little bit if it is simply that their people are excited about what they're working on, and happy to put in massive numbers of hours. I wish we knew more about studios like this, but we don't.

But back to ea_spouse. I'm sure Erin Hoffman has gotten a little tired of that label, she works just down the street from me at 1st Playable, and also works as a designer/producer in the video game industry.

An excerpt from an upcoming article:

At the time the blog was published I was sitting with a group of developers working on a game based on an upcoming movie title for an unreleased handheld console. They too were in "crunch" mode, working to beat timelines which had arbitrarily been set to meet the demands of movie executives, game publishers, and console manufacturers. The game was later canceled, but those hours late at work fighting against pre-release hardware with pre-release software development kits (SDK's), new engine, in-development build system, and no proven "pipeline" for art assets or design data were not forgotten. Which is not to say that ea_spouse was wrong, but rather the situation is even more difficult and complex than we had previously envisioned.

And really, it hasn't changed all that much. Fast forward three years later and I hear more rumblings that things are amiss than I hear that they've improved. It's not a good sign, and from near as I can tell, the industry hasn't found a way to maintain some semblance of sustainability yet.

For the reason WHY that is, you'll have to wait until the dissertation is finished.

C-Out

GameDaily.Biz - Insomniac Honored with Top 10 'Best Companies to Work For'

Resistance: Fall of Man and Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games has been named to the list of best places to work for. The list recognizes companies with "smart people management strategies to develop successful organizations with highly productive and satisfied workforces."

[Update: Insomniac's exact ranking was not immediately available. We have discovered now that the company placed 8th.]
...
The announcement came during the Society for Human Resource Management's (SHRM) 59th Annual Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas. This is actually the third straight year that Insomniac has made the list. Last year the company ranked fourth. Insomniac (southern California's lone representative to the small business list) continues to be recognized as a best company to work for despite an increase in applicants of more than 20 percent since last year, and a combined 50 percent increase since 2005.

Moreover, it's worth noting that Insomniac is the first and only video game company named to this list, they're the only company in the history of the small business category to earn a Top 10 ranking for three years in a row, and they're the only company in the "TV, Film and Video" category to be recognized this year.
...
GPTW based the results mostly on a randomly distributed employee opinion survey that measured categories such as workplace environment, management's responsiveness to employee feedback, and adherence to company philosophy. Then, each company evaluated was given a score based on the questionnaire responses. Other factors included assessments of company programs, practices and workplace culture.

Kotaku - EA Spouse Revisited

The article is filled with quotes from Hoffman, illustrating how game companies have changed since the whole situation started. It's an interesting look at how one voice can change the way an entire industry works.

GameSetWatch - Game Developer Revisits EA_Spouse, Three Years On

"In 2004, a then-anonymous letter writer, 'EA_Spouse,' penned an angry and outraged treatise to the game community chiding Electronic Arts for forcing employees to work egregious amounts of overtime. In the months that followed, development studios, the IGDA, and other outspoken individuals stood up and voiced their opinion of what it means to be in this obsessively dedicated line of work, with most of them calling for industrywide change, too. Nearly three years later, has any of it stuck? Or has the call to action petered out?"

Of course, since then, EA_Spouse has 'come out' as Erin Hoffman, and she makes plenty of comments in the article about how game company cultures (and EA in particular) has changed: "From what I understand, the Los Angeles studio has made a really big turnaround, for example. I've heard mixed comments from Vancouver, and I consistently hear bad things about Tiburon." We've heard that too, judging by a brief letter received after the article debuted, and some of the feedback on the GameWatch.org forums, set up by Hoffman to help discuss the issues.

But is it fair to single out EA? Absolutely not - all major game companies have (or have had) some degree of problems with working long hours, an edgy extension of a job that can require a lot of creative dedication. But it's when working 60 or 80 or 100 hours per week becomes corporately mandated or 'tribe'-impelled and management does nothing to stop the burnout that we get into trouble.
...
[Have any (anonymous, if necessary!) GSW readers had experiences with quality of life issues being addressed thanks to EA_Spouse's publicity, or has it made little difference in your neck of the woods, I wonder?]

Gamasutra Publishes Adverarticle on Patents

2007-06-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

Well, typically I expect more from Gamasutra on this front. Rather than labeling it "Opinion:", they perhaps ought to have labeled it "Advert:".

The punch-line of the article: "The video game industry is at a point where patents and other intellectual property are becoming vital to determining who the future winners will be." Is dead on. That isn't to say that there perhaps should have been a counter opinion piece about the effect that this kind of patent arms proliferation could have to stifle the industry to the point of collapse.

If you read carefully the argument, I'm not left feeling, "Yeah, patents are a good idea to think about." Rather, I'm left feeling as if I'm envisioning an arms standoff much like that forming between Open Source Software and Commercial Software (like Microsoft). They are beginning a dance that may result in the criminalization of human inquisitiveness and innovation.

It's precisely this kind of environment that I suspect the creators of patents were hoping to not have emerge. It is this kind of article and environment that points to a call for massive overhaul of the U.S. Patent system.

Gamasutra - Opinion: Is Your Invention Worth Patenting?

Video games are big business. In 2005, the world wide market for video games was estimated at $28 billion, and is expected to grow to $46.5 billion by 2010. And the video game market is still growing fast; the latest estimates show an 11.4% compound annual growth rate.
...
Nonetheless, the pace of patent filings by video game developers is on the rise, and, more importantly, lawsuits involving video game patents are also on the rise. One need look no further than the recently settled “force feedback” suit, in which Immersion managed to extract over $110 million from Sony.
...
For purposes of this article, the costs of obtaining a patent in the United States can be estimated at $10,000 to $20,000, depending on the complexity of the underlying invention, and not accounting for the inventor’s time. Weighed against these costs are the benefits provided by patent protection. Estimating the benefits of patent protection is a more involved process, which is explored below.
...
In such a situation, maintaining such an invention as a trade secret is the most prudent course of action. A trade secret is any economically valuable information that is not publicly known, and for which steps have been taken to maintain secrecy. Unlike patents, no formalities, such as filing with a government agency, are required to maintain a trade secret.

Also unlike patents, trade secrets endure for as long as secrecy is maintained. If a trade secret is “stolen,” the holder of the trade secret may sue for misappropriation. For inventions that, if implemented by others, would be undiscoverable, the advantage of trade secret protection is readily apparent.

In fact, since an application for patent must include a clear description of the invention, applying for a patent directed to an invention that is not discoverable when incorporated within a product may do little but share the developer’s technology with the developer’s competitors.

Unfortunately, a trade secret will not prevent a competitor from reverse engineering the developer’s technology. Therefore, if an invention is valuable, and is capable of being detected in the product, patent protection is almost always more appropriate.
...
If a particular invention has sufficient financial value, but the video game developer has no intention of practicing it, the developer should look at the possibility of licensing the invention to others in exchange for licensing fees. To obtain licensing fees the developer does not need to practice the invention or have even built the invention. Practically, the amount of a reasonable royalty is tied to the additional profit enabled by the invention.

Patents also have defensive value, especially in hotly contested new markets. Often, a larger, established company can prevent a smaller video game developer from pursuing a business opportunity by threatening a patent suit.
...
The video game industry is at a point where patents and other intellectual property are becoming vital to determining who the future winners will be. Decision makers at video game companies need to be informed of the different types of protection that can be sought for inventions, as well as the advantages of each. Armed with proper information, video game developers can use intellectual property to establish competitive advantage over their rivals.

Konrad Sherinian is an attorney with Cook & Alex, with his offices in Chicago. His practice focuses on counseling small to mid-size companies, including video game developers, on the strategic use of intellectual property. In addition, Mr. Sherinian maintains a commercial litigation practice, and presently represents a number of patent holders on a contingent-fee basis seeking to obtain compensation for patent infringement. Prior to becoming an attorney, Konrad, who has an electrical engineering degree, worked for various high-tech companies and start-ups, and lead the development of many hardware and software technologies. Notably, from 1998-2000, Konrad worked at Bungie Software, and contributed to the development of Myth II and Halo, as well as Bungie’s game matching platform, bungie.net.

Sony, THIS is the Problem

2007-06-26T10:22:00.000-04:00

I always find it interesting when two Sony articles show up on the same day that actually show why Sony is having a difficult moment. I suspect that in the next year or so it might clear up, but they're going to have to get a bit less stupid in the mean time.

In the same day that a PSP firmware update actually enables the full CPU power of the PSP, Sony complains that developers aren't making full use of the platform. Hmmm, perhaps you're constantly throwing up artificial roadblocks which prevent them from actually playing with the hardware to learn its capabilities?

Oh, that would be stupid. Developers might get annoyed with you and not risk anything for a company that doesn't help them get work done...

Hmmm... Seems like someone wants to pee in the pool and play in it.

Joystiq - Sony Tells PSP Devs to get Creative, Attract Customers

"I think that rather than focusing on the gameplay side of it, we should be focusing on how to fully utilize what I think is quite a sophisticated piece of kit," he said. According to CVG, Buckley later cited MP3 playback, wireless and online functionality as ways developers could capitalize on the PSP's potential

Maybe it's a problem of perception. Games like Crush and Loco Roco show great creativity from a design perspective. The once-exclusive Lumines (now also a PS2 and Xbox Live Arcade title) was designed byTetsuya Mizuguchi with the portable specifically in mind. But we think Buckley is implying that the PSP lacks that killer app that could only be made on the PSP.

Joystiq - PSP firmware 3.50 enables full 333MHz clockspeed

It may not be the long-rumored PSP redesign, but if you've got a PSP, it underwent a secret upgrade last month when you installed firmware 3.50. Sure, Remote Play is nice, but what you'd really like is a PSP that's instantly 25% faster. We're not talking about fancy new UMD drives, or faster processors; it's the same old PSP but Sony's uncapped the existing processor from 266MHz to 333MHz.

Sony has confirmed to Shacknews that developers working on games currently in development (your existing games aren't going to run faster) now have access to the full CPU speed of the post-3.50 PSP. The clock speed was believed to have been limited previously to conserve battery power, leading to obvious speculation that this change would be made possible by a newly redesigned PSP, replete with increased battery life. If that's the case, what about these new 333MHz games running on our old battery-addicted PSPs?

Thinking Through the ESRB's AO Rating

2007-06-26T09:26:00.000-04:00

A couple of very interesting articles have emerged regarding the AO rating for Manhunt 2 on the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3. Besides the abnormal amount of attention being given to the rating decision, I was actually most interested in a little Joystiq article about Thrill Kill and the sexual content of most AO games.

It has also forefronted Sony and Nintendo's licencing limitations of AO content. I bet most people didn't know that. I'm also interested in what counts as AO in other markets, like Japan.

Joystiq - Remembering Thrill Kill, the 'other' violent AO-rated game

Searching the Entertainment Software Rating Board website by the Adults Only rating yields only two games without strong sexual content or mature sexual themes: Peak Entertainment Casinos for featuring "gambling" and Thrill Kill for Animated Blood and Gore, Animated Violence.

GameDaily - Official: No Manhunt 2 on Wii

Regarding the AO rating for the title, a Nintendo spokesperson told GameDaily BIZ, "Games made for Nintendo systems enjoy a broad variety of styles, genres and ratings. These are some of the reasons our Wii and Nintendo DS systems appeal to such a broad range of people. But as with books, television and movies, different content is meant for different audiences. That's why the ESRB provides ratings to help consumers understand the content of a game before they purchase it. As stated on Nintendo.com, Nintendo does not allow any AO-rated content on its systems."
...
[UPDATE] It would appear that Sony is taking very much the same stance as Nintendo when it comes to Manhunt 2. A spokesperson told GameSpot, "It's currently our policy not to allow the playback of AO-rated content on our systems."

GamePolitics.com - More Bad News for Manhunt 2

In Nintendo’s own Nintendo Buyer’s Guide the company clearly states, "Please note that Nintendo does not sell or license games that carry the ESRB rating 'AO' (Adults Only)."
...
Currently it’s SCE’s policy not to allow the playback of AO rated content on our systems.

This is PRECISELY why we need More Homebrew

2007-06-21T16:52:00.000-04:00

Not because we need MAME ported. Not so I can run my old Amiga games. This is why we need homebrew and why Nintendo ought to be opening up their platforms a bit more.

The thing of course to keep in mind here is that these guys are technically doing something illegal. It is illegal because of the DMCA. They have circumvented encrypted means of copy protection. It is an unfortunate state of affairs, but I certainly hope that what they've managed to do can be an argument for more development on consoles like the Nintendo DS.

I guess my only hope at this point is that they'll open source whatever tools and SDK's they've managed to create on the DS homebrew side. Not likely though. Game developers seem to not like sharing very much.

The other thing I find fascinating is that of course response to this kind of thing has been "phenomenal." Of course it is. We're finally seeing some game content that breaks out of the mold of the last 10 years. Of course gamers and even developers are excited about this.

Kotaku - Feature: In Plundr Size Matters

The team showed off a little of that magic recently at the Where 2.0 conference where they announced that they would be bringing pirate-themed game Plundr to the DS, hopefully within the next year. In the game you sail from island to island a ship, buying, selling and fighting for goods. But to sail around the uncharted seas you'll need to get up, get outside and travel. The game will use a special form of positioning software that will rely on the Wi-Fi built into the DS.

"We built a prototype for the DS, it's homebrew at the moment, we are beginning talks with publishers about how to bring the game to the market and develop other location based games for the DS. We are also interested in the PSP," said Area Code co-founder Frank Lantz. "The response we've received about this online has been absolutely phenomenal."
...
The idea is that people will come to establish their own trade groups, so they're not, as it were, just ships passing in the night. The routes between the locations in the real world often traveled to, like the office and the home, will become trade routes.
...
"The emerging network, that is the real world, that is the platform we are developing for," Slavin added. "There's a scenario in Plundr's development where some people are playing on their phone, on their DS, on their PSP but the world they play in will be persistent."

India, Consoles, and a Global Culture of Gamers

2007-06-21T16:40:00.000-04:00

The trouble with being a PhD student is that sometimes you see too many connections with stuff that is going on. But then again, perhaps that is what we're supposed to do. Take a whole lot of stuff and bring it together.

I'll start off with India. While I agree that India is ripe for the picking for console developers, I don't really think that the market is going to be very big for a while yet. There are several reasons. One of course is that the contender that actually has the best shot at growing the Indian console market (Nintendo) is at least thus far ignoring the market.

The 360 meets the need of hardcore gamers. The PS3 is astronomically expensive except for the uber wealthy, and no one in India is developing any games for that platform. The 360 on the other hand has XNA Express, which Indian developers are extremely excited about. If you need some indicator of this, I recommend the India IGDA forums.

What does a PS3 offer Indian gamers at this point? I'm just not certain.

The other aspect of this is that mobile gaming is huge in India, and yet again Nintendo has completely ignored India with the DS or even GBA.

So while "demand might be picking up," I read these reports and kind of squint my eyes and think skeptical thoughts. Not because I think they're wrong, but I think they're actually being used to encourage growth. They're putting the cart before the buggy if you will.

In the mean time, you have Indiagames who has largely ported games to the numerous mobile devices, and was recently bought up by a large multinational suddenly interested in games for other parts of the world? That's probably because they have more than handhelds there. The multinational is looking for more money, and they're NOT seeing it in India for the moment.

I think of course they're also trying to get their own developers exposed to making games, because for the most part they've been doing more porting of games than creating original IP. They know they must cut their teeth on some titles first.

Lastly, it is interesting that the Loco Roco developer talks about a Global Culture of Gamers, a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with. However, for the moment that Global Culture is more Japanese/American than it is global.

I would love to see more Global content. I've actually encouraged many an Indian developer to do just that. Bring Indian content to the US, it is possible, it just has to be done the right way.

I also think its important to think not must multi-culturally or uni-culturally. That we can be both multicultural and super-cultural.

CKO

Gamasutra - India's Gaming Market to Reach $125m By 2010

A new report from analyst group iSuppli has said that India's gaming market is showing a "steeper curve" than recent years, forecasting that by 2010 the industry could reach $125 million, up from $13 million in 2006.

Despite the "steep price tag," the company aims to sell 10,000 units by the end of the year, and has thus far sold 1,200, previous to the forthcoming launch of a country-wide promotional campaign.

However, says the group, the PlayStation 3 will face a tough fight from the Xbox 360, which launched earlier in the year, and Microsoft has already "extensively marketed the video game console in the country"

That includes a specially localized title with Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007 (pictured), showing what the group calls "its commitment to customizing its titles for Indian tastes."

The group notes that the Xbox 360 is available for the equivalent of $600, a "major price differential compared to its competitor," and notes that "gaming consoles attract high duties, which lead to higher prices. Duties comprise approximately 35 percent of the product price in India, limiting video-game-consoles’ legal sales and promoting the gray market."

Despite the challenges, iSuppli says "the gaming console market is an indicator that demand is picking up for several electronics product segments that now are small in size. It also shows the interest by global electronics companies in tapping into the opportunities available in India."

Said iSuppli associate analyst Ashish Thakre, “The console gaming segment is not very sizeable in India. However, future growth expectations and consumerism are prompting companies to establish themselves in India."

GamesIndustry.biz - India Set for Console Boom

GameDaily - Indiagames Launches International Division

Indiagames today announced the launch of its international mobile publishing and development division. Called IG Fun LLC, this arm of the company will focus on the European and American markets. Indiagames looks to be among the top 5 mobile publishers in its operational territories.

"At IG Fun we operate under the simple idea that the Customer is King and aim to provide fun and exciting games," said Sean Malatesta, VP - Business Development, Indiagames and new CEO of IG Fun LLC. "Our main goals are to provide high quality games, the widest handset coverage and to support our titles with clutter breaking marketing and merchandising."

GayGamer.Net - Loco Roco Developer Speaks

In the interview, he calls for a "Global culture of gamers". A culture that supports games from across the ocean, instead of the nations divided where gamers are not willing to try a game from foreign lands.

Microsoft Invests in Electronics Manufacturer

2007-06-20T11:15:00.000-04:00

I don't really have anything to say at this point, simply noting the event. It is a little odd that whatever Changhong Electric Company does, that $12 Million is one percent is telling. I don't know much about this company, and their corporate website is adequately vague.

What I can tell is that Changhong is not yet a "developer" and rather is an electronics company. It makes more sense now.

Taken from the corporate website of Changhong

CHANGHONG commits itself to product innovation in the electronics industry. CHANGHONG has a state-level technology center and a first-rate scientific research workstation for post-doctors who work together to develop cutting edge technologies. CHANGHONG has established many joint laboratories with, Toshiba, Sanyo, GE, Microsoft, TI, Samsung, LG, and Philips etc. CHANGHONG also has established R&D centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen in China, American Silicon Valley, and Japan. CHANGHONG’s goal is to actively participate in the development of a global digital industry.

Joystiq - Microsoft invests in Chinese developer

Microsoft has purchased 15 million shares in Sichuan, China-based Changhong Electric Co., valued at 94 million yuan (about US $12 million). That's just one percent off the company, according to the Taipei Times.

Hackers and Homebrewers ARE NOT Pirates

2007-06-15T13:52:00.000-04:00

So this is a common conflation in the video game industry. Anyone who wants to run something you don't want them to = PIRATE.

Sorry Dave, but you just totally stuffed your fist in your mouth.

This actually fuels my opinion that the focus on emulators by people in the homebrew world actually hurts prospects of having more open homebrew worlds for game consoles. Can we not worry about running NES ROMs (EVEN IF THEY ARE LEGAL) on our PSP's? Like just long enough to convince Sony and Nintendo that it is worthwhile to support hobbyists and homebrewers?

The conflation of homebrew and piracy is half the fault of those involved. Because in many cases piracy though perhaps not the end that was desired is an indirect consequence. We have to differentiate hacking our devices to supporting piracy.

Just because I want to run Linux on a device doesn't mean I'm going to then do dumps of UMD's to files so that I can transfer them around. Unfortunately that seems to frequently be the second thing that happens.

The world of homebrew needs more attention. Emulation and piracy needs less attention. I don't care if I can run old games on my DS. What I really want are some new cool games for my DS.

GamesIndustry.biz - Sony threatens to pursue legal action against PS3 hackers

"Unfortunately, hackers will try to exploit any hardware system software," SCEA spokesperson Dave Karraker told GamesIndustry.biz.
...
Booting games and playing them are two different things, however; so far, hackers have not been able to get any of the copied games to run, nor have they been able to run homebrew software.

Every hardware launch brings with it a race for hackers to defeat the system's protections, whether for the technological challenge, to run copied software, or to allow for homebrew games.

Despite Sony's attempts to prevent its emergence, the PSP has a strong homebrew community - and hackers are doubtless hoping to establish a similar base for PS3.

If legal consequences are not a deterrent, there are other risks involved. Like Microsoft, which has banned some modded Xbox 360 consoles from Xbox LIVE, Sony could easily stop PS3 units from accessing the PlayStation network. Hackers also risk bricking their consoles.

"Naturally, any use of an exploit on the system software does void the warranty on the PS3 system... Which could be a costly mistake to see if you can run an old SEGA CD game on it," said Karraker.

Or... Maybe The "Hollywood" Concept is Outmoded

2007-06-12T09:49:00.000-04:00

I love grand sweeping statements. Oh, wait, they usually just make people sound like idiots. Now, I know half the time they are purely the function of journalistic attention grabbing, but I'm tired of that excuse really.

I think Asia is going to replace Hollywood with its own internal forms of entertainment. They're likely going to see some revenue from the US and Western Europe. I think we're likely to see more and more local supplies of entertainment. We'll have a disruption of the Hollywood model, though you'll then likely have a re-acquisition phase as these companies are brought into the fold of US Entertainment Multinationals.

Suddenly it looks like Hollywood again. Doh.

Unless companies in these new locations make a specific effort to not be acquired, then this is how I would suspect it will go. Even if they do attempt to avoid being acquired, you have the difficulty of those same multinationals setting up shop in town and hiring away all of your freshly trained workers.

I'm not trying to make this sound worse than it is or vilify the corporation, just stating that at least up until now this is how it seems to be going.

Red Herring - Is Asia the Next Hollywood?

The explosive growth of Internet video gaming could transform Asia into the global entertainment industry’s next development hub, an audience at Silicon Valley’s Kincon innovation conference heard this week.

"I think Asia is the new Hollywood," said Susan Choe, founder and CEO of game publisher Outspark. “"t’s a big statement, but who thought L.A. was going to be the center of the [entertainment world]?"
...
So Outspark and many other companies are betting on Asia’s ability to deliver advanced forms of online entertainment to international markets. The San Francisco-based publisher of Asian games is still in stealth mode, but it is expected to begin testing a multiplayer online game called Fiesta this summer (see http://rh.blogtronix.net/Home/349).

Getting Sappy about Penny Arcade

2007-06-12T09:35:00.000-04:00

I can't really help myself. I get sappy when I think about Penny Arcade (PA). If I'm a "fan" of anyone in the video game industry (and it's really hard to think about them as "in it," because in many ways they're are both at the margins and in the center at the same time.), I'm a fan of these guys.

I guess it goes back to my undergrad years. These guys started PA when I was an undergrad sort of in the video game industry sort of not. I was coding a lot and playing a lot of games. I was still living in the dorms, the CS computer lab had just gotten a super sweet color laser printer. I managed to print too many of these comics, which I periodically pasted on the door to my room.

While I was at JPL they were a staple of my coding diet. When I was working for 3D Pipeline it was like water. When I was doing tools development it was like air. It just makes me happy to see that they've done so well for themselves, bootstrapping PA from what it was to what it is now. Time and again they continue to tell it like it is.

I was sad that their ire managed to fall recently on some developers which I'd spent nearly three years with, but I also understand what they were saying.

Anyway, the following interview on The Onion's AV club is fun. It is interesting to see them making the transition more to the development side. I'm sure it will totally change their perspective on games.

The Onion / AV Club - Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik

AVC: At the same time, do you ever think, "Maybe we should be a little clearer about this," or "Maybe we should make it easier to understand this reference?"

JH: It's rare that we ever do that. I mean, there are a lot of jokes we do where we'll look at each other and say, "Is this a little too obscure? I mean, are people really aware of this game, or this particular game issue, this news clip?" And it comes down to, if the joke is funny, if we laugh at it, we just roll with it, and sort of trust that our readers will do their homework to find out why it's funny. Or we [explain it] in a news post, or something like that. It might sound silly, but we really focus on making the joke first, and then we don't really worry about, "Well, how is this going to come across?" If we laugh, then—that's so hard to do. It's rare we ever turn down a comic, man. If we've got something that makes us laugh, we just have to go with it.

AVC: And it is nice to have the news post to refer back to.

JH: The news posts are good because game news, like the gamer consciousness, is constantly in flux. And the news is worthless even two or three days beyond its shelf date. We started doing the posts sort of on accident, like we had to fill some space on the site, but now, it's absolutely critical if you're going back through the archives.
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AVC: Would you like to do more things with the Web or the technology it offers?

MK: I think it goes back to what Jerry said. We're not really very ambitious.

JH: Which is true.

MK: We want to enjoy ourselves.

JH: Yeah. We're not trying to revolutionize or change anything. So we never really think about that.
...
AVC: What are your roles on the development team?

MK: Jerry is writing everything, the whole game. I designed all the characters, and the enemies, and the environments—pretty much everything you see, I drew at some point. And we know Penny Arcade better than anybody, so we're involved daily with the developers talking about the game and how it should play, and that sort of thing.

But we really are trying to leave the actual gameplay up to them. They're the experts in that field. We can make it look like Penny Arcade, and we're trusting them to make it fun to play.

AVC: As you work on this, are you finding it's harder than you expected?

MK: The amount of work and planning is really overwhelming. We're used to conceptualizing a project, completing the writing, and then finalizing the comic in the space of four or five hours, total. And we've been writing and drawing for this game for how long?

JH: Months! I mean, from the very first storyboards and stuff, probably a year. [Long sigh.] It's been a learning experience to actually see how a game like that comes together. I mean, it really is sort of like a trip through the sausage factory. We were not prepared, I don't think, for the process.

AVC: So are you more sympathetic to developers now?

MK: Absolutely.

JH: Well, I think… Well…

MK: I am.

AVC: The gaming community doesn't have many spokesmen, and since you're essentially writing an editorial cartoon—and getting into fights with Jack Thompson—you seem to be filling that job. Are you comfortable in that role?

JH: I'm comfortable speaking. The gaming community is too vast to have a spokesperson. I definitely think that the things I say represent a viewpoint that exists in the gaming community. But the gaming community isn't monolithic, in that way. I don't think it can have one spokesperson.

Emulators, the Virtual Console, and Opening up the Wii

2007-06-11T16:36:00.000-04:00

It is always to see how the pile of news I didn't read over the weekend piles up and then ends up overlapping in odd/interesting ways.

One in particular was an article in the NY Times about Nintendo courting developers more-so than they previously had in the past, and this other bit about a Wii/Gamecube homebrew competition.

First of all, I really hope that the developers that put their time and effort into making games for the Wii and Gamecube spend more time on actual games than on emulators. Sure you can perhaps have a game up and running faster (?) if you're porting an emulator to the Wii or Gamecube, but I'm beginning to believe more and more that emulators on consoles tends to hurt homebrew efforts rather than help them.

Of course when I saw the Wii News article linked from Slashdot (/.), the emulation aspect was for-fronted. If you think about it, emulators are the very thing that most companies fear when it comes to homebrew. Why? Because it dilutes their brand, and prevents them from being able to re-sell you old content.

Now, that isn't to say that old content is all bad (because sometimes they make it look better), but as far as Microsoft is concerned, running your old NES games on the Xbox 360 isn't going to help them. Nintendo doesn't want you running Sony PS1 titles on the Wii or Gamecube because it dilutes their brand.

What I see as the interesting overlap here is that Nintendo really is pushing developers to think about these new platforms in new and interesting ways. What they haven't done is engage with home brew-ers, hobbyists or open sourcers. The other thing is that they haven't provided a way to get around the uber-conservative publishing companies, especially here in the US.

It is also interesting that Nintendo, of all the current console manufacturers, has yet to release an original title for their Virtual Console. What a great new medium which would circumvent timid publishers. Heck, it might even push them in such a way that they would HAVE TO publish some new interesting titles. In the mean time Nintendo would likely reap higher margins on those titles.

But, you know, it's easier to keep things closed and snuggle up with your existing developers, than to take a chance on all those people just itching to get a chance to develop for your system. If only the number of people playing with their Wii-motes on their PC's gives you an idea of the number, it's a lot. Not to mention even at RPI's game symposium this spring, several games used the Wii-mote as a control mechanism.

NY Times - Technology - Putting the We Back in Wii

"The relationship is warmer and more active than before," said Jeff Brown, the spokesman for Electronic Arts, the giant game developer based in Redwood City, Calif. The push appears to be bringing results. Analysts say one reason for Wii’s popularity has been its larger number of available game titles. At present, there are 58 games on sale in the United States for Wii, versus 46 for PlayStation 3, according to the Sony and Nintendo Web sites. That is a huge contrast with the previous generation of game consoles: to date, PlayStation 2 has 1,467 titles, overwhelming GameCube’s 271 titles.
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The Wii’s simplicity is also the selling point for software makers. Mr. Wada said developers had been slower to write games for PlayStation 3 because of the greater complexity of the console’s main processor, the high-speed multi-core Cell Chip. He said PlayStation 3’s production delays had also made Sony slow to provide developers with the basic codes and software needed to write games for the new console.

At Namco Bandai, Mr. Unozawa said PlayStation 3 was so complex, with its faster speeds and more advanced graphics, that it might take 100 programmers a year to create a single game, at a cost of about $10 million. Creating a game for Wii costs only a third as much and requires only a third as many writers, he said.

Wii News - Coding Contest

DCEmu via its Wii-News and Gamecube Emulation Sites are proud to present the first Dual Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Gamecube Coding Competition. This Coding Competition will hopefully ignite a mass of interest for creating homebrew and emulators on the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Gamecube.
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Entries for the competition must work on either Nintendo Wii or Nintendo Gamecube or both via SD Load.

All entrys must work with SD Load or with an as yet Unreleased Exploit for Nintendo Wii. Modchip Versions of any releases must have a corresponding SD Load Version.

Entries can be Emulators, Homebrew Games, Demos or Applications that work directly on the Gamecube/Nintendo Wii.

GameDeveloper Magazine and Gamasutra 3 Months Behind

2007-06-01T11:06:00.000-04:00

At least I beat someone to the punch. Of course if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to listen, does it make a sound? Apparently not for Gamasutra or GameDeveloper Magazine.

At least it is someone respected in the industry saying these things, but for the most part his punchline is one in the same with my own, "So, Sony? Nintendo? The time has come for you to feel the winds of change. It's your game to lose, and your princess is going to be in another castle if you don't choose wisely. It's time to open things up a bit."

Gamasutra - Opinion: Why Indies Can't Thrive On Consoles

Imagine the following unlikely scenario: the movie theaters of America are divided into three groups, each of which requires a different aspect ratio and delivery format for any movie showing in it. Perhaps the three different formats don’t actually encourage easy conversion between them.

Just think what a chilling effect that would have on some filmmakers who wanted a shot at showing their independent movies nationwide.
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The ham-fisted point I’m trying to make is that the same chilling effect is currently happening with downloadable games for consoles. While Microsoft has a clear outreach channel for independent games with Xbox Live Arcade, the company hasn’t been working with Sony or Nintendo to create standards so that those games are available to PlayStation 3 and Wii owners.
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It seems that Sony’s PlayStation 3 E-Distribution Initiative is keenly focused on first-party or second-party exclusives, such as Super Rub-A-Dub, fl0w, and Blast Factor, which take advantage of the PlayStation 3 hardware in some way. These are all fine titles, but they’re emblematic of a Sony-centric portfolio.
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Why isn’t that happening? I can only presume it’s because Sony has not set up a good mechanism for more loosely tied indies to easily and swiftly convert their games. Things are even worse in Nintendo’s corner, where retro titles are spouting out by the gallon, but new downloadable games are completely absent as of press time.
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Oddly, both Nintendo’s and Sony’s reluctance to come out swinging in this area seems to be down to insularity or issues relating to corporate control. Why not relax a little and give the consumer a bit more choice and make indie development much more viable along the way?

The Wii-volution will not be Televised: The XNA-cution of a Business Model

But we can now. All we have to do is sell our souls to Microsoft's C#, Windows Vista, and Direct X 10 API for this opportunity. All Microsoft gets out of it is an ability to disrupt the business model that has until recently kept them at the middle of the pack and gain the efforts of the hordes of developers itching to try their game development skills on a piece of next generation console hardware. Does it mean that they've given up control of distribution? Heck no. But there is a contest if you're interested.

So, Sony? Nintendo? The time has come for you to feel the winds of change. It's your game to lose, and your princess is going to be in another castle if you don't choose wisely. It's time to open things up a bit.

Damn I Need to Publish More...

2007-05-29T12:14:00.000-04:00

So, I really hate not existing.

First thing this morning I saw Erin Hoffman's recent "The Escapist" article. Which had me feeling pretty good about myself. That this is a place where I have something to offer. Helping bridge the worlds of academia and the video game industry.

I felt useful and happy that someone who has worked in the industry is calling for a better approach. (More after the excerpt...)

The Escapist - Tighten Those Graphics

The commercial marked the vanguard of a disturbing trend in game education: advertised instructional programs so out of touch with actual game development they couldn't tell a sound effect from a polygon.
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The bugbear, ultimately, is in the instruction of game design. While game art and game programming are distinct specializations with their own manifold quirks and details, it is possible to be a phenomenal artist and never work on games; it is possible to be a genius caliber programmer and never code gameplay. It is not, however, possible to be a game designer without making games. The notion is patently absurd.

Yet this is exactly what many private college instructors - and even, in some cases, faculty at major universities - are claiming they can do.
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But that's not the gaming community. Gamers and developers alike were outraged at this commercial; almost curiously so. One YouTube user who posted the video, "randomgenius," was especially upset: "The hill to success is hard enough without money grubbing colleges who offer no true training, but so eagerly take your money." While the advertisement was clearly a marketing mistake rather than representative of what Westwood actually teaches, this sentiment is rife among those trying to get a job making games. That no one goes into games for the money is an accepted truth, and the corollary to that fact is that anyone truly serious about a game career must be intensely passionate about the biz.
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A number of questions remain to be answered. Can a college really claim to be teaching game development if their faculty has no game development experience? Where does theory end and practice begin? Is it more important to be a strong communicator and teach solid skills, or to have spent time in the trenches? On one issue the industry is unanimous: There is no replacement for live experience. But experience making games does not immediately correlate to skill in instructing and inspiring students.

Time will have the final say - which is unwelcome news for current hopefuls. But the bright side is game instruction

in academia gets better every year, and this can only mean good things for the industry as a whole. Increasing numbers of programs, small and large, are bringing in developers as adjunct instructors, and game analysis itself is a tremendous skill growing in academia apart from its production-based siblings.

But then I see the following up on the IGDA website. Despite all of my activity with the IGDA, and my great efforts to speak about my research, I haven't actually published much. I've got a couple of things in the pipe, but nothing written.

Not good.

Despite a CV full of me being an anthropologist studying the video game industry, I've somehow managed to remain invisible to the rest of the academics.

Getting worse.

So while I'm sitting here trying to get the dissertation written, I'm realizing that what I need to be doing is publishing more smaller articles and talking less, because obviously that isn't working to well.

Coming from a discipline (if I even want to call it that) that specializes in how networks form in disciplines I should have realized that speaking wasn't enough, that something written on the page was necessary.

So I only have myself to blame.

Better get that Games and Culture paper finished...

IGDA - The Professional Identity of Gameworkers

Writing in Escapist magazine (issue 61 of September 5th, 2006), John Szczepaniak laments: “Few know the real truth about who creates videogames [...] It must also be noted with bitter irony that for a medium which is forever debated as being "art," the people behind it seldom get the acknowledgement deserved.” Beyond numerous blogs maintained by game developers and the occasional interview or studio profile in a trade magazine, little indeed is known about the people behind the keyboards. The situation is even worse at the level of academic research: even though studying games is incredibly popular among scholars and students alike, few professors seem to be interested in the professionals (and amateurs) who make the games they play.(1)

As researchers at Indiana University's Department of Telecommunications – where part of the graduate program is designed to train people for jobs in the digital game industry – we took up the challenge. We wanted to know not only who game developers are, but also what they do, how they go about doing it, and what their work means to them. Thus we set out to review the available scholarly literature on the making of computer and video games, reports in trade magazines and journal articles (including IGDA white papers), posts on group and individual weblogs of game developers. Then we went to the GDC of 2006 and 2007 and talked with lots of developers, attended IGDA sessions on Quality of Life issues, e-mailed our contacts in the game industry as well as (the few) colleagues studying gamework at universities all over the world. Put together, this material tells a comprehensive story about the key issues informing and influencing the working lives and professional identity of gameworkers.(2)
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The ability for external organizations such as unions or industry associations such as the IGDA to influence, establish or enforce industry standards has thus far been marginal. The settlements by EA following the ea_spouse case of extreme workers' rights violations were followed by a movement of hundreds of workers from their Los Angeles based studio to studios in Florida and Canada. As many states (such as Texas and Washington) and countries (like Canada and the U.K.) provide tax incentives and other regulatory waivers to software companies, precedent has been set for game companies to cluster based on local or regional legal benefits and deregulatory frameworks regarding, for example, workers' rights. The South Korean government has even dropped the requirement of military service for those willing to work in the game industry, considering digital games key to the international export of Korean culture. Developer organizations, such as the IGDA, could be an adequate or helpful representation of developer interests but are largely powerless, and thus act more as advocacy groups. As organization structures shift towards outsourcing – an estimated 60% of game studios outsource today, primarily in the areas of localization, cinematics, sound design, game testing, middleware and artwork – and an almost exclusive reliance on contingent labor, the strong social networks needed to take collective action and participate in unions or advocacy groups effectively evaporate.
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Considering earlier comments on the blurring of work and play among those who play games, as well as the “work as play” ethos in most game development houses, a picture emerges of an environment where the organization of work cannot be seen separately from personal preferences and individual negotiations. Yet such a conclusion runs counter to the signaled managerial practice of a militarized systematic division of labor (at least on paper), that models industry productivity based on milestones. This among a professional context that can be characterized by increasing corporate pressures to bring in significant returns on investment. In this system, the identity of professional game developers must be seen as inseparable from the products of their work – making clear crediting standards vital and all too often vague.

Note to Politicians... Being stupid costs the taxpayers...

2007-05-29T10:43:00.000-04:00

Yet another example of the hoped utility of my research rears its head. It seems like the NY Bill for ESRB oversight is an interesting one, and if handled well might actually mean something.

On the other hand if they're stupid about it, it is just going to end up costing lots of regular people lots of money, just like in Illinois right now. I think they should take the money out of Governor Rod Blagojevich's personal finances.

Gamasutra - NY Senate Passes ESRB Oversight Bill

The bill, S.5888, sponsored by Republican state senator Andrew Lanza would if passed into law establish an 'Advisory Council on Interactive Media and Youth Violence' targeted with recommending steps above and beyond the ESRB's rating system to limit access to 'adult only' game material.

According to the senate press release, the bill also calls for fines and penalties for all New York retailers and internet sellers who do not clearly display ratings on the game cover or website.

Finally, it hopes to establish a "Parent-Teacher Anti-Violence Awareness Program," which it says will "empower parents and teachers to work with students and children on issues related to violence in video games," including the ratings system and parental supervision, funded by fees collected from retailers who break the above rule.

Said Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, "Everywhere we look, violence surrounds us and it is unfortunate that our children are exposed to this explicit material, whether found in video games, movies or on television. Our children our spending too much time watching television and playing video games without any adult supervision, and we cannot sit back and allow them to be exposed to this senseless violence anymore. I applaud Senator Lanza for his leadership and we will continue to push the Assembly to take action against these issues."

GameDaily.Biz - Defeated Illinois Game Law Costs Taxpayers $1 Million

Remember Gov. Rod Blagojevich's attempt to ban the sale or rental of mature video games in Illinois? His unconstitutional law was quickly shot down in court and the state was ordered to pay the Entertainment Software Association more than $500,000.

Now a new report from Quad-Cities Online has revealed that Gov. Blagojevich spent nearly $1 million in taxpayer money to appeal the 2005 federal court ruling that his state was unconstitutional. Apparently, a House committee discovered the amount that was spent to pay lawyers just this week.

As reporter Mitzie Stelte wrote, for all the concern about violence in video games, "Gov. Rod Blagojevich's efforts to ban certain video games has done significant violence to Illinois' budget." In fact, the report exposed that the governor took money out of the public health department, the state's welfare agency and even the economic development department just to pay for this unconstitutional law.

"We had a strong suspicion that the governor was using funds appropriated by the General Assembly as his own personal piggy bank," Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock, chairman of the State Government committee, said.

"It's unfortunate that the state of Illinois spent taxpayer money defending this statute. This is precisely what we told them would happen," added David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.

Yes, Joystiq, Politicians are Inconsistent

2007-05-15T10:47:00.001-04:00

This is of course one of the impetuses for my research, in that all of the crap shuffling that is currently getting done with relation to games and the game industry doesn't really mean anything.

How can you legislate something you have absolutely no clue about? No one knows where change can best be implemented. But boy do politicians want a chunk of the cash. Rather than fighting over scraps they might want to pay attention a bit more.

Joystiq: Boston mayor wants more developers, but backs Jack Thompson

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino really can't seem to craft a clear message on the video game industry. Despite numerous attacks against the industry, including his full support to pull GTA ads on the T for purely political reasons and supporting a Jack Thompson drafted bill, he wants to bring more gaming companies to the city.

The city of Boston currently has no notable game companies within its borders. The best up-and-coming companies (meaning they aren't Blizzard, EA, Activision or Ubisoft just yet) like Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online), Harmonix (Guitar Hero, Rock Band) and Blue Fang Games (Zoo Tycoon) are all located outside the city in Westwood, Cambridge and Waltham respectively. Meaning they bring neither tax revenue or help "creative industries flourish" within the city.

Nothing to say. Just interesting.

2007-05-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

GamesIndustry.biz: Next-gen business models are "embarrassing", says Brennan

The spiralling costs of next-gen games development are embarrassing, unworkable and an ego trip for publishers, according to Blast Entertainment CEO Sean Brennan.
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"What a joke. What embarrassment. There's no way on a USD 20 million development project that you can break even on a game – not now in the cycle," said Brennan.
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Brennan noted that US publishers are keeping development internal, so company's outside North America are unlikely to get a slice of the pie.

"With these big budgets, all these big American publishers are looking internally. Because when you're spending USD 15 or USD 20 million you don't want to trust an external developer with that sort of budget," stated Brennan.

"And they want the developer in America, first and foremost. A lot of the reason behind that is cultural. Since 9/11 American publishers have become a lot more insular. That's going to continue to be a key issue, it's a worrying factor."
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"What the American's do better is the production values, which they can afford to when they're spending USD 20 million on a game - the games look sumptuous but don't particularly play so well. UK developers need to play to their traditional strengths," he concluded.

Game News Blogger Turns News Reporter

2007-05-15T08:39:00.000-04:00

I first encountered GameJew in the flesh at this years GDC convention in San Francisco. Yes, this is the same guy who stalked Miyamoto (the creator of Zelda and Mario among many other things) and eventually tracked him down to sing him a song.

It is interesting to see his his experiences with the Mayday demonstrations in Los Angeles calling him in different directions. Sometimes life happens like that. I'm amazed by some of the footage that they were able to get at the event. I would not have wanted to be that close to guns with rubber bullets (rubber bullet kisses).

GameJew on Public Police Commission Hearing on the Events of Mayday

GameJew on Mayday Immigration Reform Demonstration

Despite Nintendo's Piracy Concerns...

2007-05-04T14:33:00.000-04:00

It looks like the Chinese market is doing pretty well for the moment. The gaming cafe experience is something that I saw a bit of in India, but not nearly the social force that it seems to be in China and other parts of South Asia. I think one of the key bits that spells a major difference is the rise in sales of offline PC games, which would be the easiest for piracy efforts.

It is interesting that despite Nintendo's threat, I don't believe that officially the DS or Wii is actually being marketed in China. I could be wrong, but the fact that most of it is on the Grey market doesn't surprise me. The same was largely true in India with the notable exception of Microsoft who was investing in marketing the Xbox 360 heavily.

In related news, it looks like they're issuing similar statements to those made to China to Korea. Shape up seems to be the gist of it. Korea is a market where the DS is being pushed by Nintendo, so I can see their interest in protecting their margins.

Chinese game market explodes // GamesIndustry.biz

The report found that revenue from the overall video game market jumped by 68% last year, with the online gaming sector generating USD 995 million in revenue, an increase of 74% from the previous year.

Unsurprisingly, the report singled out China's booming internet cafe culture as the main driver for this growth. The introduction of free-to-play massively multiplayer online games - in which players pay for virtual items - has, according to Niko's managing partner Lisa Cosmas Hanson, further stimulated this trend.

"Chinese gamers pour into the cafes every day to play online and LAN games with friends. They spend money in the games on virtual gifts for friends, services for their characters, and virtual items to help with leveling," said Hanson. "The intertwined nature of China's Internet cafes, social gaming culture, and few entertainment alternatives at a low price point, will continue to be the basis for strong growth through 2011."

But the Niko report goes on to paint a picture of overall good health for the Chinese market. Sales of offline PC games, mostly from Taiwan, rose 28.5 per cent to 904,000 units in 2006. And alongside the 20 million PCs in China's 225,000 internet cafes are an increasing number of consoles, although these are all grey imports, console hardware currently being prohibited in China.

Hanson added: "If a game company can get an impressive game or console to market in China, the gamers there will embrace it. That said, getting a product into the market is not easy. The complex regulatory environment in China is still the greatest barrier to entry for foreign game companies."

Gamasutra - Nintendo Threatens Korean Pirates

Officials from Nintendo Korea have threatened legal action against anyone that copies, sells or distributes illegal game software in South Korea, with the release of a sternly worded statement aimed at discouraging the activity.

As translated by The Korea Herald, the statement reads: "'Nintendo will take strict legal action against businesses that are earning unfair profits by selling illegal copy machineries and downloading pirated programs.'"

Nintendo Korea has also threatened web site providers who allow illegal software to be accessed, while also threatening anyone who downloads the files with a police investigation.

Software piracy has long been a particular problem in Southeast Asia, while Nintendo has earned a reputation for vigorously defending its products from piracy – both in terms of copy protection and legal action. The statement is a first from Nintendo Korea though, previously one of Nintendo’s more neglected worldwide markets.

According to the Korea Herald, the success of the Nintendo DS has been catalyst for increased activity from game pirates targeting Nintendo products, with illegal copies of games for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft formats apparently widely available in many electronics malls.

Maybe... Just Maybe We're Getting Smarter...

2007-05-02T14:10:00.000-04:00

So, moments after I fire my big mouth off, seems like we might be figuring out what's really on the lines here with regard to DRM. It's not quite DeCSS levels yet, but this is certainly promising.

It also seems telling that the uprising is on a 'Web 2.0' kind of site. Makes Sense.

User revolt forces Digg copyright retreat

The move by Digg.com, a 'Web 2.0' site that relies on users to act as editors by submitting and voting on news stories, came after the site's users staged an open rebellion by voting for stories featuring a 32-digit key that can be used to hack HD-DVD copy protection.

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The rebellion, which briefly caused the site to crash, came after Digg attempted to comply with demands by Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, a software that allows developers of optical media to protect content stored on HD-DVD devices, to remove the stories featuring the key.

On Tuesday, Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, reversed course and said the company would no longer delete articles featuring the encryption key, even though that might lead to the site being shut down by lawsuits.

"After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be," Mr Rose wrote on Digg's company weblog.

"If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

Rant: Taking DRM Even More Seriously for Games...

2007-05-01T09:59:00.000-04:00

I love it when something that I've been watching for a while shows up in the mainstream press. I've been saying for almost a year now that Nintendo invented DRM back in 1985 with the introduction of the NES and the 10NES lockout chip.

DRM opponents actually completely and utterly piss me off. They piss me off because they are actually only concerned about the iPod (and they frequently level blame at Apple rather than the record labels). Now let's talk for a second here.

Games have locked you into a single platform for a long time too. So has software in general. The introduction of encryption just upped the ante. It didn't change the game. Microsoft and Autodesk and innumerable other companies have been locking you into their platforms like Office and AutoCAD and 3D Studio Max for years and you haven't peeped. We farted away our rights a long time ago. For some reason we just happened to notice with MP3, ACC+iTunes, Windows Media, etc.

We bought our games for the PC and the Console, perhaps even several consoles. We haven't bothered to say that this wasn't precisely a model we liked. Only the Mac users wondered why they had to switch to PC to play all the cool kid games. Those same Windows users whining about being unable to use their random MP3 players to play stuff from the iTunes music stores told Mac users to quit whining and buy a PC. Yes, you same people sold your rights long ago.

Now we want them back. Thankfully we've managed that to an extent, but have we extended the argument anywhere else? Nope. People are happily trading their rights for the newest version of Windows, Word, Blu-Ray, etc.

IT'S ALL ABOUT CONTENT CONTROL AND DRM. You know what the encryption is really about? It's about the DMCA. Assert your rights, go to jail. Well, not precisely. You can assert your own rights, but don't help anyone else assert their rights.

If we really want to take combatting DRM and platform lock in seriously we need to assert our rights more often, not only once in a while like now.

Locked Away: Do the death throes of music DRM mean anything for games?

It's not exactly been the loudest revolution of all time - in fact, it's been so quiet that you might have missed it - but there has been a genuine revolution in the music industry in the last fortnight. The old order has been overthrown, and it isn't happy; a new, upstart approach, widely lauded by the public and the grass-roots, is taking its place. So far, it's been a bloodless coup, although it's hard to say how long that will last once the financial results start filtering through in the coming quarters.

Actually, it's not entirely true to say that this coup has been bloodless. There's one head rolling in the basket beneath the guillotine blade; it's ugly, unloved, and it's called DRM.

DRM, of course, is something most people in the videogames market will be familiar with at this stage. At its most basic level, DRM is just a concept - it's the idea of using encryption software to control what a user can do with a piece of media they've bought from you.
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A number of commentators - mostly out in the blogosphere - have opined that this decision must, logically, have a knock-on effect on games and movies. That's not necessarily true, because those mediums (and games especially) actually come with very different consumer expectations to music.

The average consumer is very used to the idea of being able to rip his music, listen to it on multiple devices, copy it between formats and even shuffle it around to create personal playlists. Those expectations, however, don't exist for games, and only exist for a very small (but growing) number of movie consumers.

Games, in particular, are seen as products which only work on one device, which cannot be copied and cannot be modified. Under those circumstances, DRM is far less of an issue than it is with music, and the same pressures which have forced the hands of EMI and Universal simply don't exist.

However, the revolution in music DRM still has important lessons for the videogames market. All too often, videogames companies have displayed a willingness to impose copy protection measures on their software which actually seriously disadvantage or inconvenience legitimate purchasers of the product.

Is this BAD or GOOD for the Industry?

2007-05-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

It's interesting that Todd Mitchell's analysis of Nintendo's success is labeled broadly as "bad or good" for the industry. I think the answer is probably more likely that it's good for the industry and bad for publishers. But really that "bad" for the publishers is good in the long run, because it's going to force them to think differently than they've been thinking for quite a while.

Of course the current generation of DS and Wii games coming out of Nintendo is going to sell well. It's some of the more innovative stuff showing up out there. Just like Little Big Planet is going to sell like hot-cakes or why Katamari or Shadow of the Colossus sold well. New and interesting.

Selling a derivative title on a system like the DS or Wii with all of it's available resources isn't going to entice consumers.

While this might "bode poorly for the publishers" right now, perhaps it will force them out of the current rut that they've fallen into lately. And of course Nintendo is going to have some lead time on everyone else. Isn't that why they keep it internal? It gives them some time to milk their product while everyone else catches up.

I'm not necessarily a fan of that model, but I understand why they're doing it. And long term, hopefully publishers internalize this new idea that thinking outside the box is good.

In the mean time Nintendo needs to do a better job of courting independents, getting them to bring new and innovative titles directly to them, because right now the big publishers just don't know how to handle this newfangled stuff.

Analyst: Are Wii And DS Good For The Market?

As reported, Nintendo's fiscal 2007 report showed 23.56 million DS units and 5.84 million Wiis sold, with 123.55 million units of DS software, and 23.84 million units of Wii software -- all far above original expectations from the company and analysts alike.

Much of that software success, however, came from Nintendo itself, with New Super Mario Bros. moving 9.5 million copies, Brain Age selling 8.1 million copies and Nintendogs pushing 7.0 million, with newcomers Pokemon Diamond and Pearl already selling 5.2 million in Japan alone. Wii software, too, was similarly first party dominated by The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and unbundled versions of Wii Sports.

All of this, says Mitchell, leads him to believe that "Nintendo's success with the DS and Wii bodes poorly for the publishers."

"Both [the Wii and DS] appear to be bringing new gamers into the market. However, this may not be a positive dynamic for the major video game publishers. Nintendo has not only increased the size of the market, but it has also re-segmented it in its own favor, in our view," he said.

"Nintendo is dominating software sales on its popular hardware platforms, leaving the publishers with a smaller slice of an only somewhat incrementally larger pie," added Mitchell, "Moreover, we feel that the likely shorter product cycles of Nintendo's platforms puts the publishers in a permanent catch-up mode."

Despite the ramp up of various third party publishers turning more development efforts to both the DS and Wii platforms, Mitchell concludes that Nintendo's domination of the software landscape isn't a trend due to end anytime soon, adding, "the upcoming releases of Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will highlight this phenomena this holiday season."

Of All the People to Call a Tool of the Industry...

2007-04-24T13:54:00.000-04:00

Jason Della Rocca is pretty low on my list. In my dealings with him, he's done more to earn enemies in the industry, but none the less has managed to be a spokesperson for developers around the world. Not really a person I'd expect to see being challenged as a talking head for the video game industry.

I think Jack's biggest problem is that he doesn't actually bother to read anything or actually pay attention to the world around him. Evidence is of no consequence, he's already reached his verdict before a case even begins. Take Jason for example.

Just look through the archives of RealityPanic, the IGDA, or at what he speaks about at events like GDC or the innumerable other events he attends. He talks about reading more / doing more (I heard what you meant...), it's about quality of life, it's about globalization, it's about real issues facing both developers and non-developers alike. To boil him down to "industry (scare quotes) 'spokesperson'" is just silly.

Jack really needs to just read a little bit more and flap his lips a lot less. Those brain scans he's talking about are unproven science. Most psych studies looking at violence and games are inconclusive at best. Most simply call for more studies because they didn't get good conclusive results.

Jason is right. This is a bigger issue than games. It's cultural. It's complicated. But obviously that doesn't please Jack, because he might have to actually read some of these studies then. What about other causes of violence, like religion? Don't see Jack on a crusade (no pun intended) there do we?

I wish we could just ignore him, but the truth is that media outlets like the attention they get from bringing extremists into full view. What it's really going to take is a concerted effort to review all of this material. Who's conducting the studies? Who's funding the studies? What kind of results do they have? Then at any moment he gets up to speak you simply bring these results to bear on his arguments.

Of Idiots, Jackasses and Red Herrings

Gotta say, being called an idiot (advisedly) and a jackass on national news by Jack Thompson feels like a special milestone for me. Not so much for the name calling, but just to see good old Jack get all flustered and frustrated.

Interestingly, despite his flat out attempt to ridicule, dismiss and discredit me (as a paid puppet mouthpiece for the game industry), he emailed me with a formal challenge to an on campus debate (see full text below). That, along with a half-dozen other emails with his thoughts and pointers to articles, etc.

IT Work Sucks Time? Game Work is Worse...

2007-04-23T13:58:00.000-04:00

So, thinking about diversity in the video game industry is important. Most people in the video game industry think it is important. While they might qualitatively have issues about encouraging women and minorities, what I think is interesting is that for the most part people haven't linked up the Quality of Life (QoL) discussion with this.

It's obvious, game companies by and large have very little in the way of HR or infrastructure, not to mention child care or many of the things that actively discourage women from getting into the field.

If more mature IT companies haven't managed to figure it out, I'd doubt that most game companies can figure it out.

The structural conditions of the game industry are something the I hope once I've finished with my dissertation, and hopefully made the conversion into a book that it becomes a new object of discussion.

Oddly all of this homebrew and access and ... frequently comes back to the fact that by and large the video game industry has actively disabled its own mechanisms for learning from their own mistakes. Combined with churn rates and nothing in the way of institutional memory, you're bound to repeat the mistakes of the past... over and over.

Gartner - Gartner Advises IT Leaders to Recognise Complementary Gender Strengths

"Psychologists tell us that women, on average, are better than men at building trust and collaboration that underlie relationships," said Mark Raskino, research vice president and Gartner fellow. "They excel at listening, in communications and social skills and in understanding other people's views. A battle of the sexes for the important emerging skills and roles in IT would be healthy, but it's typically such a male dominated function that there's not even an active debate."

Gartner said that chief information officers (CIOs) worldwide are increasingly focused on recruiting people who can build relationships across multiple stakeholders, cultures and orientations. However, it warned they risk failure in many global initiatives if they are not able to attract and retain talented women in their IT organisations. "CIOs currently don't seem to be aware that social networking systems, vendor and portfolio management, collaborative knowledge work and several other areas in IT would benefit from typically female capability traits," said Mr Raskino.

According to Kathy Harris, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, businesses have traditionally focused on resolving gender diversity issues with a series of tools intended to get more women in business and management positions. "Most traditional programmes have looked to change the way people feel, their organisational culture or they have simply waited for women to catch-up. But it is next to impossible to change the way people feel or think and it takes years to change organisational culture. Most organisations have made little or no progress and most women will give up long before they catch up."

Ms Harris highlighted that as we are on the brink of a true global environment, diversity is not an ‘HR initiative' but an inherent factor in every exchange, conversation or meeting. This demands traits and capabilities that span established stereotypes, psychology and behaviours.

"The solution is to change the game. Given the ambitious business drivers ahead of them, businesses and IT organisations specifically can't afford to miss their objectives because they fail to attract half the talent base. Diversity is not common sense or an issue of policy; it's business survival," Ms Harris added.

Gartner concluded that IT organisations need to redevelop their capabilities and this requires the gender mix to change.

Computerworld - IT Managers Fear Growing Technical Gender Gap

Weary of answering late-night alerts and troubleshooting calls, Bethany King finally had enough. Six months ago, she closed the book on a 12-year stretch as an IT storage administration professional to become an IT auditor.

"I had a 14-year-old daughter that I didn't want to leave alone at 3 a.m.," said King, who was allowed to shift to the more flexible IT job at The Empire District Electric Co., a Joplin, Mo.-based electricity supplier.

"That really was one of the reasons I got out. I could've made it work, but it's just a choice that I made not to," she added, noting that her husband is a firefighter who works various shifts.
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Some attendees noted that not only are women leaving such jobs, few are showing interest in joining the expanding profession.

The U.S. economy is expected to add 1.5 million IT jobs by 2012, according to Department of Labor statistics. At the same time, Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that by 2012, 40% of women now in the IT workforce will move away from technical career paths to pursue more flexible business, functional, and research and development careers.
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Dot Brunette, network and storage manager at Meijer Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer and a 30-year IT veteran, said that women are tending to migrate out of IT-related storage jobs because of their long hours and the demands that users of such technology can place upon them.

"IT is very much a culture and it consumes a lot of time," said Brunette. "I think women in that regard are at a real disadvantage." She noted that companies can fail to attract female workers, or see them leave key IT jobs because they fail "to provide day care at work, or work-at-home options for someone who leaves to have a child."

Sony, Homebrew, and the PSP/PS3 - A Dose of REALITY CALL

2007-04-23T13:39:00.000-04:00

Everyone seems to be picking up on some of Phil Harrison's comments on Slashdot the other day. Oddly he comments on precisely the issue that I pitched to "The Escapist Magazine" a few months back, which they declined...

Anyway, hopefully he doesn't regret the comment, which was relatively brief, but has spurred a firestorm of media reaction. Most of it has been positive, but picked up on the differentiation of "Homebrew is sometimes a misused term and so for the purposes of this answer I will exclude pirates and hackers with illegal intentions from the definition." This was exactly what I was getting at when I pitched to The Escapist that emulation and the frequent homebrew emphasis of getting emulators up and running on homebrew systems as a process that tends to hinder rather then enable the homebrew scene.

I think one important difference that should be made and seems to be getting conflated in the coverage of this is that Sony has yet to actually announce anything here. The comparison to Microsoft and XNA has been made, but XNA Express is actually available to developers right now. Today. Not some vague plan in the future. We hear rumblings like this all the time from Sony and Nintendo, but as of now we haven't seen a single indicator that something will be released even in the next six months. By that time XNA Express will have been available for nearly a year.

That being said, Nintendo and Sony could benefit from releasing tools that don't require developers to be locked into a proprietary language like C#, which Microsoft has done. It would also be nice if they were interested in supporting open standards like OpenGL, Cg, or any of the other various standards, in favor of Microsoft's DX10 thrust.

All in all it is nice to hear executives at Sony thinking about this.

I'll actually be giving a talk at MiT5 (Media in Transition) at MIT this weekend in Boston on this very topic.

Slashdot - Phil Harrison Answers Your Questions

4.) 'Homebrew Gaming' by Anonymous Coward, maynard, and flitty
If someone manages to get homebrew games running on the PS3, will there be firmware updates to stop this kind of development, to protect your software developers, or is homebrew something you are planning on and even encouraging? Is there a chance that the policy of restricting access to PS3 graphics hardware (via the hypervisor) could be revised to encourage us homebrew developers? How does this strategy differ from your strategy with PSP homebrew? Has Sony considered offering kernel patches and an RSX optimized OpenGL library for PS3/Linux?

Phil Harrison: Now, let me first say that Homebrew is sometimes a misused term and so for the purposes of this answer I will exclude pirates and hackers with illegal intentions from the definition.

I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone. We were one of the first companies to recognize this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry and links well to the subtext of my earlier answers. When I started making games on the Commodore 64 in the 1980's, the way I learned to make games was by re-writing games that appeared in magazines. Really the best bit about a C64 was when you turned it on it said "Ready?" with a flashing cursor - inviting you to experiment. You'd spend hours typing in the code, line-by-line, and then countless hours debugging it to make it work and then you'd realise the game was rubbish after all that effort! The next step was to re-write aspects of the game to change the graphics, the sound, the control system or the speed of the gameplay until you'd created something completely new. I might share this with a few friends but not for commercial gain at that time. But the process itself was invaluable in helping me learn to program, to design graphics, animations or sounds and was really the way I opened doors to get into the industry. Now, those industry doors are largely closed by the nature of the video game systems themselves being closed. So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent. Now having said all that, we still have to protect the investment and intellectual property rights of the industry so we will always seek the best ways to secure and protect our devices from piracy and unauthorized hacking that damages the business.

Gamasutra - Sony's Harrison Embraces Homebrew Development

Harrison prefaced his answer to the question of whether firmware updates would prevent the running of homebrew software by stating that he would “exclude pirates and hackers with illegal intentions” from the definition of homebrew.

Although the phrase homebrew has never commonly been understood to include such activities, Harrison’s implication that it might could explain Sony’s continual aggressive attempts to lock out unlicensed software from use on the PSP.

In regards to the PlayStation 3, Harrison appears more sympathetic, saying, "I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone. We were one of the first companies to recognize this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS one. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry."
...
"The process itself was invaluable in helping me learn to program, to design graphics, animations or sounds and was really the way I opened doors to get into the industry. Now, those industry doors are largely closed by the nature of the video game systems themselves being closed", he admitted.

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent", stated Harrison.

GameDaily.BIZ - Harrison: Homebrew Development Vital to Future Growth of Industry

Harrison also talked a bit about his own vision for the future of the industry. "I want to see the audience of people who play videogames, of any type, on any device, include practically anyone on the planet. Whether it be an immersive action game that appeals primarily to young adults, or a casual game that is enjoyed by the entire family, I hope that videogames and electronic forms of interactive entertainment continue to expand to new audiences, all the time. Linked to that, I want to see videogames given more credibility as a mainstream form of entertainment through appropriate cultural commentary and criticism," he said.

"What I hope is that 20 years from now... videogames as a pastime will be given the same cultural and social currency as a book, a film, a TV show or a piece of architecture," he added. "After all, the popular culture creators of 20 years from now will all, largely, have grown up playing, or at least being intimately aware of, videogames. The writers and commentators on those same popular culture creators will all have had the same experience playing videogames growing up - at which point the circle is complete. I don't think there is a culmination to this overall vision - it will be a constant process. Each successive platform brings new technology to the experience of games and helps expand the audience still further. I hope PS3 will be seen 20 years from now as a crucial influence in the growth of our industry."

GamesIndustry.BIZ - Harrison hints at PlayStation 3 homebrew plans

"I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone," Harrison said in an interview with Slashdot.

"We were one of the first companies to recognise this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry."
...
But he admits that these days the doors into the industry that might be opened by going through that process "are largely closed by the nature of the videogame systems themselves being closed".

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent," he added.

While Sony has encouraged legitimate independent development in some areas - notably with Net Yaroze with, in this generation, Beyond Playstation - it has been accused of adopting a heavy-handed strategy in its dealings with PSP developers, with legitimate or at least non-threatening projects often struck down by firmware updates designed to lock out pirates and the hackers who facilitate piracy.

Harrison's interest in allowing for homebrew development puts Sony on a similar path to Microsoft, which recently launched its XNA package of tools. XNA offers the ability to develop games on both PC and Xbox 360, with a complementary educational focus that will plug game development modules into a number of university courses.

User Generated "CONTENT" (?)

2007-04-19T08:31:00.000-04:00

So, there has been a whole lot going on recently about Game 3.0 (apparently Web 2.0 meets Video Games) (And it's really Game 1.0 = Games on Carts/CD's, Game 2.0 = Game 1.0 + Networking, Game 3.0 = Game 2.0 + User Content). As much as I am a fan of thinking about games as media, in particular because console video game systems dominate the game world so much, this isn't quite the same.

So, let's take YouTube for example. You have the ability (perhaps against other media corporations desires otherwise) to take their content and mash it your own way. Perhaps it's just a simple Anime + Music = AMV (Anime Music Video). Perhaps it's your own custom shot or computer generated material set to music. The point is that you have the ability to pull that content from somewhere else and put it at your disposal.

It's not quite the same for video games. It's especially not so much the same for video games. So, I'd like to remix that last Spidey level and redistribute on YouGame. ... ... Ummm... where do I start? Not quite the same.

Now, Little Big Planet "empowers" users by providing them with a world which they can do these things. But what if I want to change a basic mechanic to customize it a bit more? What if I want to make Little Big Nudie Planet? Not to sleight the guys making Little Big Planet, they're doing a phenomenal job, we just have to realize that it's not the same as YouTube.

This is also complicated by the fact that Web 2.0 is founded on a whole lot of things that Game 3.0 just hasn't done. Open API's, Open Protocols, things like XML, and a whole bunch of other things that really empowers users. In the case of console video games you have none of this foundational material.

In many ways I see XNA as having a greater YouTube potential, because though you end up having to do more work, as people develop tools and pieces, you'll see more (and more different) examples of this.

Nintendo and Sony (though Sony seems to be talking a lot) haven't really figured out that they're going to have to open up more than they have to really embrace this idea, and really, if they don't, MS is the one who is going to win.

What publishers are really worried about is:

Making the Social Connection: How Small Developers and Publishers Can Take On Game Industry Giants

But... Even these comments fail to really engage with the barriers of access to the technologies that really offer the most opportunity for companies to make money and build sustainable work environments.

Making the Social Connection: How Small Developers and Publishers Can Take On Game Industry Giants

According to the NPD Group, total computer and video game industry sales hit $13.5 billion in 2006, almost a 20 percent increase from the year before. The vast majority of those sales came from titles released by major publishers and distributors, not from smaller, independent developers. While we depend on the likes of EA and Ubisoft to deliver blockbusters like The Sims and Rainbow Six, we often don't recognize the importance of indie developers in fueling the creative engine of game design and production.
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Remaining independent means taking on all the costs of creating, producing, marketing and distributing a title. These costs are high, and a crowded marketplace makes it even more challenging for independent developers to make their presence known. In addition, many smaller firms are made up of just a few employees, whose skills skew toward programming or animation rather than sales or business development.
...
Not necessarily. Since the late 1990s, some small companies have gone the direct route, selling their games online or making their titles open source as a means by which to generate a player base. For example, Positech Games, based in the U.K., was recently highlighted on the popular developers' forum GameDeveloper.net, for its claims to have reached the $100,000 mark purely through online sales.
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Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have transformed the way that independent filmmakers and musicians reach new audiences and sell their work. The next wave of social networking, a trend Sony Computer Entertainment calls "Game 3.0," will change the way independent game creators take their games to market.
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But these sites lack a crucial element – game developer participation. FairShare, a new technology my company announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this year, is, amongst other things, designed to connect developers with players through game-related social networking. An engine that runs underneath gaming portals, FairShare lets players sample new games through a try-before-you-buy option. It offers incentives for players to share, recommend and give feedback on new games, and it gives developers a chance to sell games, gain visibility and build their reputations among the game aficionado community.

The Game 3.0 future for independent developers will be rooted in social networks, where developers can make their games available online, players can try, buy, share, and offer feedback on the games, and developers can respond, making changes or developing new titles based on that feedback.

Just as Facebook and Myspace make every participant an owner of his or her own content on the Web, a Game 3.0 style portal must provide a sense of ownership for both players and developers. For indies, the Game 3.0 trend opens new opportunities for connecting with gamers who want to buy their titles, as well as the chance to build communities with other developers and gamers.

Game publishers threatened by user-generated content

Got an idea for a video, a song, a podcast, a game? Make it, put it online, and people will find it. We all benefit from the mind-bogglingly wide variety of stuff to consume, and the competition increases quality for everyone. The dinosaurs who have become rich off outmoded means of production and distribution are quaking in terror. Some, like SCEA president Phil Harrison, are making attempts to adapt and thrive.

What Do Media Executives Fear?

User-generated content was named by 57 percent of respondents as one of the top three issues they face today. More that 70 percent believed that social media would continue to grow, while only 3 percent said they viewed social media as a fad.
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"Traditional, established content providers will have to adapt and develop new business and monetization models in order to keep revenue streams flowing. The key to success will be identifying new forms of content that can complement their traditional strengths."

GameDev.Net Picks up the IGDA Article

2007-04-18T09:50:00.001-04:00

GameDev.Net seemed to pick up the article I wrote, which prompted me to check my blog site. Seems that a few rogue links snuck into the article from the time I sent it off to the IGDA and when it hit the website. I'm following up on that.

IGDA published "Quality of Life in a Global Game Industry" on their web site

When the talk which this article is based on was given at GDC 2007, it was interesting that the majority of attendees were not rank and file developers, and were instead managers and producers concerned how to handle the complex issues of QoL and a quickly globalizing video game industry. In part this reflects a broader understanding of QoL issues as being a problem which the industry must face from a top-down perspective rather than from the bottom-up. Publishers, studio managers, producers, and leads must all face QoL concerns head on. It is also the perspective of this researcher that more needs to be done at the level of hardware manufacturers to provide resources for developers to better address the complex set of issues that ultimately lead to poor QoL.

BBC on the Game Industry

2007-04-18T09:25:00.001-04:00

There is an excellent article on the BBC website examining the video game industry. I hate to say it, but it actually exemplifies some of the differences in coverage that can be offered from blog sites to those on new sites which have attempted to get at the deeper story, willing to take a little extra time to dig more deeply.

VIDEO GAMES SALES
Consoles games
2006: $11.2bn
2007: $12.2bn
PC games
2006: $3.9bn
2007: $3.7bn
Source: Screen Digest

Games industry enters a new level

Hardware makers are losing hundreds of dollars on every console sold, and games publishers face an "increasingly difficult environment, as rising development costs and small user bases [mean] that return on investment in next generation games development is unlikely to be achieved before 2008," according to media analysts Screen Digest.

More importantly, though, the video games publishers are facing a revolution of their business model.
...
"Scale does matter" in this industry, says Mr Florin, because "the more complex games become" the more tools are needed "to keep costs under control".
...
The real money spinners are console games, but subject to the ups and downs of the hardware cycle as consoles launch or go out of fashion.

To ensure steady revenues, says Mr Florin, games publishers therefore have to build strong brands.
...
"Wonderful innovative titles are sometimes ignored [by consumers], while some repetitive titles with minor improvements in game play and graphics provide much better returns to the games publishers," he says.
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"You only learn what you can do with these platforms over time, and as a result using 100% of Playstation 2 [PS2] is nearly as good as today's starting point of PS3 games," says Mr Florin.
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Games publishers face a dilemma, though. To reduce cost, they would love to put their games on as many platforms as possible.

It used to be relatively easy to port a game from one console to the next. Nintendo's "Gamecube, the Xbox and PS2 were much more alike," says Mr Florin.

Next generation platforms are different, he says: "Now we have to have very distinctive games for each machine and can't port that much."

That plays into the hands of the console makers, who want exclusive games to lure gamers to their platform.

IGDA Article on QoL in a Global Game Industry Live

2007-04-12T09:48:00.000-04:00

My recent IGDA article on Quality of Life in a global game industry is now live on the IGDA website. We'll see if anyone notices. :) I try.

Quality of Life in a Global Game Industry

The rise of game development studios across the globe and the increased use of offshore and inshore outsourcing could have developers feeling like they are losing leverage in making arguments for good quality of life practices. But, does globalization and the ability to outsource work really abdicate the need for quality of life both at home or abroad?

Developing the next God of War?

2007-04-12T09:47:00.000-04:00

Isn't OUR Job Bigger Than This?

There is some good stuff in this article, but it really misses one of the key marks that I think differentiates the role of the academy from a strictly trade based educational institution. Teaching students to think. No where in the article is it stressed that we have to teach students to push the envelope, break new ground. Think more broadly about games. Think more broadly about interactivity. That's what really made games like Flow, Okami, or Guitar Hero interesting.

If we relegate ourselves to producing people who can only make blockbuster games, and not people that can actually push the industry further we're missing something. What about students that are willing to push new forms, styles, genres?

Our job as educators is bigger than making people that can make games. We first need to make people that can think.

Bridge Building: Making the People That Make the Games

Our task is most daunting, and very difficult to even pick a good starting point. As all of us are intimately familiar with, schools teaching students how to be game developers are now found in almost every state. With the promise of teaching the skills that will get little Billy into the games industry, comes a seemingly endless flow of over eager and unskilled, hungry for the quick education to get them on their path to developing the next God of War.

The Long Tailed Game Industry

2007-04-12T09:35:00.000-04:00

I think the biggest limitation that the game industry is going to face if it wants to take advantage of the "long tail" effect is that currently it is impossible to get games onto anything other than the PC in a distributed fashion. Most of the major digital distribution systems only support Windows PC's and likely this will soon require Trusted Computing systems to ensure that games are not being redistributed.

While some are predicting the "death" of consoles, I suspect that what you're really going to see more of is the console-ification of PC's. More and more they are going to be closed much like PC's. Perhaps the real convergence is the loss of consumer flexibility. Serves us right, we've been going along this path for a while without realizing it.

At the same time, the power of the long tail is that it tends to fight regulation. It prefers openness, but the dominant understanding of the PC and video game console are at the other end of the spectrum. At the same moment as more companies are moving toward open models, others are further closing themselves off.

The Long Tail for Games: Survival of the Fittest?

Pick up Deux Ex today and see what I mean. We've been next-gen spoiled. I love the game, but it can't help looking awkward and primitive next to current releases. This may be overcomable: black and white films may have looked "primitive" when the transition to color was happening; but now filmmakers use it for effect, and film buffs appreciate the black and white medium for its own merits, its own beauty. Music doesn't have this problem either - those recordings made forty years ago still sound good, and in fact modern bands are playing around with recreating that garage style, that recorded-with-a-mic-in-a-coffee-can sound. Will games go retro like this too?

There are some games that don't age: Wind Waker is a stunning example of this. Because of its cel-shaded art and stylized animation, it looks just a fresh as it did when it was released. This problem is a version of the uncanny valley - the more "realistic" a game tries to look, the less successful it becomes as a representation of reality as graphics technology overtakes itself.

I have other questions about the long tail as it applies to games, too. Do game companies care enough about it to release their back catalogues? In other words, are they being paid enough to do that? Services like GameTap are of course doing a superb job of collecting and releasing a wide collection of games. I don't know what sorts of deals they are doing - for the companies, if GameTap pays anything, it's pretty much free money, so that's wonderful.

Don't Step on my Long Tail

Digital distribution and eCommerce are at the heart of what I do for a living. And nowhere is the Long Tail more at home than at the junction point of digital distribution and eCommerce. Someday, when greater volumes of content are featured on XBLA, it should turn into a perfect Long Tail paradise, right?

Well, that’s what I’m hoping for. But there are a few potential issues that muddy the waters. Some of them are issues facing all community-centric online systems. Some of them are specific to video game services. I’ll give you a couple of examples, and hopefully you can give me some ideas in return!

Leasing my PS3's CPUs

2007-04-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

It's interesting that Sony has completely changed their tune with the release of the PS3 from the PS2 when it comes to alternative uses of video game consoles. I suppose that happens when you're desperately looking for people to make use of your system in new and interesting ways but you haven't really given game developers enough lead time to do that.

Instead they've had to resort to using scientific computation models like Folding@Home which has been built from the beginning in a cross-platform and highly distributed model, something that is able to make good use of the multiple cores on the PS3.

Game developers on the other hand have had relatively little time to scale their applications up to systems like this, and Sony certainly didn't go out fo their way to get emulators or other tools to developers early enough for them to get themselves and their tech up to the task of working with these technologies.

I like that they're looking elsewhere, but I'm not so crazy about leasing my PS3 out for "free" stuff from Sony. I'm sure there are some distributed computing projects that need donated cycles. AIDS research? Cancer? SPAM? Let's get a bit more imaginative than "lease it!"

Sony in talks on commercial use for PS3

Sony PlayStation 3 users may soon be asked to share the supercomputer power of their video game consoles with companies that lack their own technology to run complex research projects, the Financial Times was told.

Sony Computer Entertainment is in discussions with a number of companies about possible commercial applications for the PlayStation 3. This comes in the wake of its non-profit partnership with Stanford University in March that harnesses the spare computing capacity of registered PS3s for the analysis of protein cells.

However, because this would be a commercial proposition that would benefit profit-making organisations, Sony is studying whether it would need to offer incentives, such as free products, to persuade PS3 owners to participate.

Squeezing Blood from a Stone

2007-04-10T14:51:00.000-04:00

I'm not really sure what to make of this "turning over" that Nintendo has done for China, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico, and Paraquay. Brazil will likely thumb their nose at Nintendo, who isn't really marketing their stuff there anyway. If it's being pirated it's a market that Brazil has created on their own. They've also got some interesting ideas about IP law and what is fair protection. But anyway...

The fact that China cares is interesting, because it really indicates a desire on their part to play in the game.

Personally I think that if there was a little adjustment for how much games cost in these markets, so they weren't so out of whack for the average consumer you might see piracy drop. You can only really ask people to pay what they're able to.

Nintendo offers praise for US Government

Every year, the US Trade Representative solicits views from companies about piracy in foreign countries as part of the Special 301 process. This year Nintendo gave evidence about piracy in China, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay.

According to figures quoted by Nintendo, more than 7.7 million counterfeit videogame products have been seized from over 300 Chinese factories and retailers during the last ten years.
...
"Numerous factories, where tens of thousands of counterfeit Nintendo products were seized, escaped with only trivial fines or no penalty at all. And often these production sites continue to operate after products are seized," the statement continued.

"We're pleased the US government is pushing China to comply with its trade commitments in an effort to protect the lifeblood of the copyright and trademark industries."

China slams US piracy complaint

"By doing so, the US has ignored the Chinese government's immense efforts and great achievements in strengthening intellectual property rights protection and tightening enforcement of its copyright laws," the commissioner added.

On Monday, the US trade representative Susan Schwab said that piracy and counterfeiting levels in China remained unacceptably high.

The US said that despite China's promises to crackdown on fake software, DVDs, luxury goods, car parts and shoes, many of the goods were still widely available throughout the country.

China is one of the world's largest producers of counterfeit products, ranging from designer clothes, to pirated films and music, to luggage.

Many of the goods find their way into Europe and are knowingly bought as fakes by shoppers at markets and from street vendors. Firms claim that the poor quality copies dent their brand and divert profits and potenital clients.

Yes, Yes, XNA Express is Cool

2007-04-10T14:46:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting discussion from the Microsoft camp about the differences between Sony's Home and XNA Express. There is also some interesting discussion about the differences in how MS and Sony approaches their developers. I certainly think MS has an edge in that respect.

Either way it's an interesting read and insight into the worlds of developers and those that make tools for them.

Microsoft on Lowering the Barriers of Creativity

With XNA Game Studio Express, it is a different approach. It's not just about modding a game that somebody's made; it's about making your own game. I definitely take your point [because] you need some skill to do it. Now I do think we've made it much easier with XNA Game Studio Express than it's ever been before, but when you add our partner products on top—like what we've done with Garage Games—then you actually have systems like Torque GameBuilder (TGB), which is drag and drop game development. You literally drag pieces in and you drop them. And then we have starter kits, so if you just want to mod an experience you can do that... So imagine if you take TGB and load up a pack and there's all the cool animated things—you just drag and drop them in, say what behavior you want and can start playing a game. And we actually licensed that from Garage Games so if you're a member of the Creator's Club in XNA you get that in your subscription.
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And XNA is attracting a lot of professionals as well. A lot are doing this in their spare time because they're like, "I've got a great idea and I just want to make a real fun, simple game and I don't get to do that at work anymore." I think what you'll mostly see is lots of smaller games.
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The thing that we do at Microsoft is we're a software and services company. We build tools to build software and we build software; that's at our core. We're very passionate about enabling developers and we've been working on things like visual studio for the last ten years... So I am very confident that we provide the very best tools in the industry, and if you talk to developers they will back that up. And we have the best services that we put around it – our consulting services and developer support services. I mean, when I used to do PS2 development I still used Microsoft technologies like for debugging and for the IDE for the compiler because it was the best you could use. It's great for developers that Sony is bringing these new components out, but we've already got that in our SDK. PIX, our profiling tool, is probably one of the most favored tools in the developer industry. So I feel very good [about our tools]. That's why now 3 out of 4 are leading on our platforms because it's just the most productive environment.
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It's also questionable that in their keynote they spent about 30 seconds talking about their tools. It's like one slide; they're checking off a box.

The other thing is what we're doing with Game Studio and XNA Express is, no one else is doing in the industry – we are really, truly democratizing game development. 250,000 people have downloaded this, and there's only 20-25 thousand professional developers in the industry. So we're going well beyond that audience. And this is our commitment to the industry, with computer science enrollments being down, high-definition game development budgets rising, people needing more teams... that pipeline has to be filled. We want to make sure that the 15-year-old girls that are thinking about what they want to study, that they have programs where they can get involved in the sciences and gaming. It's an investment for us. The 'community arcade' ... We don't make any money off this. It's part of our responsibility to the industry.
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There's nothing free about a $600 console. Once you've spent $600 the online is free, but you still have to spend $600 to get out of the gate, before you have any games.

Publishers "Scrambling" to Understand the Wii

2007-04-10T14:40:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting article about publishers now figuring out that the Wii is a pretty good idea. Well, that's true, but I think they're going to have a lot harder time figuring out how to market and make games for the Wii. Much like US Publishers have had one hell of a time figuring out how to make games and market them for the DS, the Wii is going to prove just as difficult.

Sure all the basic games ought to make it out for the Wii (I'm holding out for hockey on the Wii), they're going to have to try some new stuff. Much like US publishers "don't get" the DS, they're going to take some time to figure out the Wii as well.

Hell, I consider Guitar Hero a prime example of how backward looking most publishers are. It took a new fringe publishing company to make GH happen. Of course they then get bought up by a company looking to extract maximum profit from the franchise, but it's sad that it takes these small forward looking companies to get gamers (and game developers) a chance to try new things.

Try new things. The Wii and DS are the cheapest platforms you can develop for. The risk has never been lower.

Bloomberg: Publishers 'Scrambling' to Get More Titles on Wii

With Nintendo's Wii having sold 3.56 million units in Japan and the U.S., the unique motion-sensing enabled system is already a bona fide success at this early stage in the console wars. While many anticipated the Wii to do well thanks to its positive E3 showing last year and all the hype generated up to its launch, Nintendo's new console has done probably even better than many expected.

According to Bloomberg.com, publishers were simply taken by surprise, with the exception of a few (like Ubisoft). "Those companies are backtracking," remarked Piper Jaffray analyst Anthony Gikas. "They're going to need to get their best-branded product on that platform. That will take a good nine to 12 months."
...
While supporting any new console is generally a risky proposition, Ubisoft has believed in the Wii from the very beginning. The French publisher released 7 titles for the Nintendo platform in December and has another 6 games in the pipeline to be released by this June. "It's not really a bet anymore," said Ubisoft's Tony Key, head of marketing in the U.S. "It's a viable system that's going to make us money."

Indeed, games on the Wii cost (on average) far less to develop than on Xbox 360 or PS3, potentially saving publishers millions. Furthermore, according to research firm IDC, publishers will continue to be pressured into supporting the Wii as its install base grows. IDC is predicting that Nintendo will ship 16.1 million Wiis this year, outpacing 9.87 Xbox 360s and 9.1 million PlayStation 3s.

Corporate Geomorphology Shout Out Located

2007-04-10T14:38:00.000-04:00

I don't get much attention in the game media, and I don't really wonder why, but I was recently told that I should check out Next Generation's "GDC: The Absolute Best Sessions" list. It's a small shout out, but a shout out none-the-less, and fun to see out there. No name or anything else linking me to it, but I know who I am! I guess a few other folks know too.

GDC: The Absolute Best Sessions

Mapping Your Corporate Geomorphology
1:00-2:00
Geology and geography as a metaphor for corporate structure? We’re hooked already.

MY Games Industry Map?

2007-04-01T16:02:00.000-04:00

This particular interview is interesting. I certainly think that yes community is going to play a major component in the future of the game industry. At the same time though there are going to be folks that want a good non-community experience from time to time.

There is also this thing with the release of GameIndustryMap.com in many respects just a flashier version of the long existing GameDevMap.com. I'm puzzled about his possessive use of "my" game industry map in the context of his discussion of community.

Overall he's got a lot of interesting things to say, and the connections that enable someone to actually get stuff done. I'll be curious what a year or two can bring.

David Perry: Publishers' Days Are Numbered

My game industry map has proved that to me; the programmer came to me and asked, "How would you like this done?" and I said the obvious, which is a storage database where you put the pins on the map with a search system, give me a category filtering system, country filtering system, and he goes, "Ok" and he coded it... that's actually a bad design, because in a world where you keep adding more and more pins and every pin has to go through Google and that's a very slow system. The more pins we put in the map, the slower it gets. Coming back from the show, they're going to really slow the site down. It's going to be horrific when people start whacking pins in there together, there's going to be thousands of them.
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I agree with him [Doug Lowenstein] completely. He said, "Anyone that's a member of the Video Game Voters network put your hand up." I'm a member. I promote the site and have written congress twice. So I completely support him and agree with him 100%. Our industry is really sucking when it comes to supporting such measures. You know when the industry is going to start noticing he's gone, when people don't fight that fight we will lose that battle and he took it to them, like he really was fighting very hard for our industry. It's very easy to bash him. People are bashing him now that he's gone and he can't answer for himself, but the fact is that guy took the most un-fun job in the world in politics and he fought and fought and fought to try to keep our freedom in making games, and I believe very strongly in not censoring games.
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No, we need better and better of what's good. We need a fricking killer driving game or a stunning first-person shooter. And if you think of a new genre, you should get a award for the year. You should be the guy standing up at the choice awards. Like, "You just made Guitar Hero and you've made a new genre for us. Thank you very much, that's a fantastic job and you should be applauded for it." It shouldn't be everybody needs to make Guitar Hero or they suck, which is just not cool. We'll end up with a bunch of random junk.

Publishers: DS Could be Best Selling Video Game Platform Ever... Without our help.

2007-03-22T14:12:00.000-04:00

So, this piece of news is really interesting. It's interesting to me because it seems so blatantly obvious that there is a goatload of money to be made off of the DS, yet publishers are actually not supporting the platform in any sort of gun-ho fashion. Instead they're being timid with a platform that for all ostensible purposes is one of the cheapest out there to develop for, perhaps save the web. But you know, risk has never been the name of the game for most publishers.

DS Could Be Best Selling Video Game Platform Ever

Naturally video game publishers are going to want a piece of the portable pie. The opportunities are many. "Historically, Nintendo has been able to dominate the portable game market by developing games specifically suited for the unique attributes of the portable platform. However, there is growing opportunity for third party publishers and developers of portable games," DFC said. "... publishers of not only casual games, but even developers of high-end PC games like role-playing (RPG), massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and turn-based strategy, could benefit from the rising use of portable platforms among adults. Meanwhile, existing console game publishers have found it is possible to make over $100 million in revenue from a single PSP title based on the right franchise."

Ouch... GBA Outsells PS3

2007-03-20T10:44:00.000-04:00

Numbers like these are always highly interpretable, but things definitely look good for Nintendo at the moment. My only hesitation really is that the only software titles in the top 10 for Nintendo systems are First Party titles, meaning that they're made by Nintendo.

If you look at the other platforms (360 for example, or the PS2) they're third party titles. Nintendo is going to have to not only work with developers to get more software onto their systems, but they're really going to have to encourage publishers to take some chances with new material.

Breaking: Nintendo Dominates February; Total Industry Sales Up 53%

Taking a closer look at the data, it's clear that Nintendo is dominating. On the hardware front the DS sold more than any other platform with 485K units, followed by the Wii with 335K units. The PS2 once again outsold the Xbox 360, 295K vs. 228K. Meanwhile, the PS3 sold a disappointing 127K, far below analysts' estimate of 200K. In fact, the old GBA even outsold the PS3, with 136K. Sony's PSP managed to sell 176K. Finally, trailing the pack (essentially on life support) was the GameCube with 24K.
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1. Crackdown (Xbox 360) – Microsoft – 427K
2. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – Nintendo – 371K
3. Diddy Kong Racing (DS) – Nintendo – 262K
4. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) – Nintendo – 130K
5. Guitar Hero 2 w/ guitar (PS2) – Activision – 130K
6. Gears of War (Xbox 360) – Microsoft – 119K
7. Major League Baseball 2K7 (Xbox 360) – Take-Two – 113K
8. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Xbox 360) – Capcom – 111K
9. WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii) – Nintendo – 109K
10. NBA Street Homecourt (Xbox 360) – Electronic Arts – 102K

Analyst: Next-Gen Underperforming; PS3 Price Cut 'Critical'

With PS3 sales not meeting expectations, at this point Patel said that a price cut on the hardware is "critical," but the analyst does not foresee that happening until at least the start of Sony's next fiscal year (April), and even that is a "long-shot," Patel stated.

To put the PS3's situation in context, Patel said, "PS3 consoles are available at retail but sales are lackluster. Its 130K units sold in February was less than Xbox 360 sales last year (160K) and even less than the original Xbox sales of 140K in Feb-2002."

Deutsche Bank was equally unimpressed with the Xbox 360, however. "Particularly disappointing is Xbox 360 HW sales of 230K in February, which puts its installed base at 5mn or in-line to the original Xbox which was an unproven console and faced substantial competition from the PS2," Patel noted.

Honest Publishers are Neat

2007-03-20T10:37:00.000-04:00

There's an interesting article (verging on a rant, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned) over on GameDaily.BIZ about getting a game signed.

I can't say much about it other than that it's a pretty honest publisher's view of the world of game development.

Getting Your Game Signed

Less talk, more action – that's what publishing partners really want to see. You can trot out the biggest, fattest, coolest sounding design document in the world, but if you want to be the beneficiary of a five-, six- or seven-figure check, hoo boy... Brother, you better be able to put a playable demo where your mouth is. (Especially since we're sure as snot not reading a 50-page essay on the spot, let alone while swamped back at the home office...)
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Don't arrive at the bargaining table unless you're willing to negotiate, and open to seeing things from the publisher's perspective. This doesn't necessarily mean accepting less money than anticipated, but it may mean adjusting royalty figures or expectations in terms of marketing and promotional commitments. Fun fact: Everyone's goal is always to maximize return while passing the most possible risk onto the other party. And so, if you want to have any hope of getting signed, let alone landing a deal whose terms are even close to favorable, you have to leave yourself room to maneuver. Deals are always a subtle process of give and take. Offended easily? Perhaps this isn't the right business to be in – you'd be amazed by the proposals various game-making and –manufacturing entities will attempt to float past one another.

Of Course We Don't GET IT... We Don't HAVE IT!

2007-03-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

I recently read the lower two articles about American developers having a difficult time developing for the DS, which I at first wrote off to conservatism of US based publishing companies. However, then I read the article about a student DS development camp where students created games for the DS.

OK. So let me get this straight. People in Japan that want to learn to make games get a chance to work on the DS? Um, why aren't they doing this in the US? Developers here can't get their hands on DS development kits, let alone students.

Of course we don't get the system. We're not really being given a chance. What about a US development camp where people can go play and learn the DS hardware for a couple of weeks with Nintendo developers on hand to help them learn the tricks of the trade. Hell, why stop with just the US and Japan. You're not going to get the most interesting and innovative games unless you start to let more people into the magic circle of licensed developers.

Nintendo Exploiting Student Labor!

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is making games developed by students at its Nintendo Seminar 2006 available for download via the DS Station. Starting late last week and appearing every two weeks after that, the games are totally free. Games include one that has players swing a steel ball to destroy obstacles and help mice captured by cats or another one that has players shout things at inappropriate times. These games, like so many good things, are Japan only.

How Western game developers fail to score with Nintendo DS

The DS is, of course, a famously innovative console. And it seems that Japanese developers, who lean far less on movie licences or formulaic sequels (think how Mario is reinvented from console generation to generation) have been most able to get to grips with it.
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This is where things get really interesting – when you realise that the highest-scoring non-Japanese DS game is Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, in 16th position with (a very respectable) 84 per cent. We then have another Activision title, Ultimate Spiderman, in 34th place, and then another Tony Hawk's title, Downhill Jam, in 40th.

Western Devs Don't Get the DS

Tony Hawk, the West's great hope in DS gaming.

Miyamoto Talks, People Listen, Sorta...

2007-03-19T15:24:00.000-04:00

So...

Miyamoto's talk at GDC was quite good. It ran long, only in part because it took nearly 45 minutes to get the gathered crowd into the building. It also just ran long, and folks started running out the keynote somewhere roughly 30 minutes into the talk. I must say that if I'd been doing a presentation after the keynote, I'd have been pissed. I guess my IDGDA talk was right before the keynote, which I understandably affected to some extent attendance... but I digress.

His talk was very interesting, but I wonder if some of the points were really driven home? Based off of what I've been hearing from informants in the last couple of weeks in their dealings with publishers, not much.

Miyamoto was really getting at several things, and I think they're both pretty darn important.

This whole public perception of games as violent/anti-social/etc. regardless of how right or wrong you think it is, is every game developers problem. This is the biggest one that I wonder if people really got it. In many ways he was talking about how in 1998 Nintendo was at the top of their game, and in 2004 they're a bit of an underdog. But it's also about the kind of games that are getting made and offered up to players. We're just not using enough imagination I think is what he's saying. We're going to need more genres and more different things rather than fewer to grow the industry.
Changing it or making it otherwise isn't going to be easy, or popular for that matter. This is where I wonder if developments like the formation of the Gamecock Media Group, Man!festo Games, or other alternative publishers are going to be necessary. For the most part the game industry has managed to cement itself into a model that creates the kinds of games he's talking about. This also makes for an interesting opportunity for Nintendo, though they're going to have to make good on new kinds of agreements, that I'm not entirely sure they're ready for. Look at Ian Bogost's comments on Water Cooler Games about independent developers (those probably most able and willing to take on Miyamoto's challenge) having difficulty getting development kits.
By choosing this other path, you actually have an opportunity to make games differently. Rather than pushing to but more and more and more content into a game, you can focus on getting the game itself right. This I think is at the core of precisely why Nintendo's refusal of NextGen is so interesting. In many respects they've said, make do with this for now, but be original with this new piece of the puzzle (the Wii-mote for those of you that are just tuning in).

All in all it was a nice talk, though I wish he had driven home a couple of these points a bit more directly, because as it stood, it felt like a nice fire-side chat rather than the throwing down of a gauntlet, which is really what it was.

GDC: Miyamoto Shares His Unique Vision

...He said that he observed an important shift. In 1998, the top five selling games were Goldeneye 007, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Gran Turismo, Banjo Kazooie and Super Mario 64. In 2004, however, the top games were GTA: San Andreas, Madden 2005, Halo 2, Halo 2 Limited Ed., and ESPN NFL 2K5. All of a sudden, people were worried about the effect of games on people, turning them into zombies, he said. The reputation of the games industry was at stake.
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The second core element of Nintendo's vision, devotion to entertainment, means that every employee is able to focus on providing entertainment. Miyamoto said that Nintendo has a very good balance of engineers and developers, and there's a chance for collaboration all day long, "even in the bathroom." And it's all about collaboration. Even though Miyamoto has worked on every controller Nintendo has made, he stressed that it's all been a group effort.
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The third element, risk, is at the core of Nintendo's philosophy for the Wii. Miyamoto said that the bigger the challenge is, the bigger the risk. Nintendo took on the challenge of asking what a video game is. He said that Nintendo has taken a number of risks over the years but that none was bigger than the Wii. He acted as an evangelist within Nintendo, telling others not to think about what they might lose by abandoning the traditional controller in favor of the remote, but to think of what they will gain.
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Next, Miyamoto talked about prioritization. He said that in this industry, game designers are always complaining about "not enough," whether it's budget, time, etc. He said designers feel obligated to put in more and more and make the best graphics, but they need to prioritize.
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Ultimately, Miyamoto told the developers in attendance that "your vision does not have to be my vision." He added that the future of the industry depends on how today's designers apply their vision. But, he's been "given a lot of faith about the future of the industry" after observing some of the games at the Independent Games Festival, he said. Miyamoto said that we cannot forget about the human touch. He concluded, "If we can convert my wife, I believe we can convert anyone."

Gamers Get Older Too - Birth of Nintendad and their Wii-ones

2007-03-19T15:13:00.000-04:00

You don't say. Those NES owners as they get older are still buying games and game consoles? Wow, I would have never expected that. I think they're still watching movies and listening to music too.

So, it's kind of interesting, but it's also pretty obvious. For a lot of us that grew up with the NES, SNES, and every system between, it had a major impact on our lives. It doesn't really surprise me that we're going to attempt to introduce our kids to the entertainment form.

What is interesting about it is that I have to wonder what effect this will have on the demographic of gamers. Hopefully it's a father & son/daughter thing, and not just a father & son kind of thing. Of course with the rise of the Nintendo DS and Wii, and more moms and daughters playing with these systems, there may be a major change in demographics.

Anyway, the article isn't that interesting, but points at the pervasiveness and spread of the console technology.

Video games grow up as adult ownership increases

Video games aren't just for the kids anymore. More than one in three U.S. adults who go online, or 37 percent, own a video game console and 16 percent own a portable gaming device, Nielsen//NetRatings said on Tuesday.

The majority of those console owners, 71 percent, are married, and 66 percent have at least one child in the household.

"As game consoles have become increasingly sophisticated, families have incorporated them into their centralized home media centers, which include the television, digital recording device, digital music player and the PC," said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings.
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Going into the current console war, analysts had predicted that adult gamers who grew up with the Japanese game maker's products -- dubbed "Nintendads" -- would want to introduce their children to Nintendo games and be a key market for its new machine.

The Power of the "Enthusiast Press"

2007-03-19T15:01:00.000-04:00

This story began to unfold about the time I was getting stuck in a snow storm in Iowa, from which I returned and immediately left again for San Francisco and the Game Developer's Conference (GDC).

It's actually fairly impressive that Kotaku was able to pull this move, and in many respects demonstrates how the enthusiast press surrounding the gaming industry is able to exert its force not in any direct kind of way, but based upon the networks they've managed to build amongst readers, other news organizations, and other enthusiast press outlets. Kotaku is of course one of only many of these sites, but it has an impressive readership, and has also managed to get themselves well inserted.

This particular controversy is interesting. While I'm not in the business of locating rumors which to speak on, I am in the business of having a whole lot of information about where companies are going. Thank goodness I'm covered by NDA's most of the time, and I have no real interest in publishing right now everything I think I know about what's going on, which might be wrong anyway.

It's impressive what many of these organizations are able to find out about the inner workings of companies, but even more interesting the amount of respect that they are able to garner from both gamers and game developers alike.

GDC was peculiar in many ways, because there were almost two "tracks" of people who were visiting. One was the developers, and the other the press. Two very different interests, and I suspect that with the demise of E3, you're going to see a widening of the press tracks at GDC. I can only wonder what this will do for the folks interested in making games.

Sony and Kotaku Make-Up

First, I have to say thank you to all of the websites, newspapers, magazines, people who were so quick to come to our defense and supported our decision to stand by our story.

Second, I want to thank Dave Karraker, head of SCEA PR, who was big enough to call me and talk the whole thing through after this exploded.

He told me his take on the story and his frustrations and I told him mine, in the end we agreed to disagree on some level, but also decided that our readers and gamers in general would be best served if Sony and Kotaku could still play nicely together.

Sony Blackballs Kotaku (UPDATED)

The Playstation Home, we reported, would be an intriguing blending of the Mii and achievements, allowing gamers to create a virtual world for customized avatars and then decorate that space with items unlocked through game play.
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Sony's decision is disappointing, not because of what it means to Kotaku, but because of what it means to the industry.

Game Development is Hard, and Made Harder by the Manufacturers

2007-03-13T16:12:00.000-04:00

I love it when developers get the chance to give glipses into their worlds, and Dave Perry does just that here. The truth of the matter is that in general Sony (and other console manufacturers too) need to get better about not working in secrecy for years and then introducing a console to developers a couple of months ahead of the release of the actual device.

It takes time to learn the way these systems work, and since (especially with Sony) your tools are never really that great to begin with you're fighting the machine. Sony actually released some new tools at GDC this year, which is pretty neat that they're giving tools to all licenced developers that they've kept previously for special developers, which really, is a problem. Don't do that! Of course if you're not giving out tools or hiding tools or changing tools or any of these things you're going to make it really hard for developers to make the most out of a system.

The other piece of this is that documentation and just general knowledge of how these systems work is not known or provided. Developers often have to figure out (and re-figure out) how to do things on each and every console, with each and every generation. This means that you wind up putting a ton of effort into developing systems for each console you've already developed, or hacked together on another system, because of some undocumented hardware/API issue you've encountered.

This is why it takes years to see something like God of War.

PS3's power will be untapped for years - Perry

Former Shiny Entertainment boss Dave Perry has praised Sony's PS3 hardware, describing it as "the best piece of hardware, without question" - but claims that it will be years before developers tap that power.
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"I haven't seen anything even close to what the machine's capable of doing," he claimed. "So that's the sad part for Sony - I feel really bad for them that somebody hasn't really stepped up to show us the hardware all singing, all dancing."

He attributed this under-utilisation of the machine to a common cycle in the console market, using God of War as an example of a game which finally tapped much of the power of a system which had been on the market for several years.

"The point is you're not going to get to see the PlayStation 3 for probably a couple of years, and then you're going to go, 'Wow, that's incredible.'"

Perry lays the blame for this problem squarely at the door of the hardware designers, who he believes have far too much control over the design of console systems. "This is how sad the industry is right now," he said. "If Sony thought of a way that their architecture designers could somehow add even more power for less money, but made programming a misery - actually made you just want to kill yourself - they would do it."

He believes that the way through this impasse is to allow top developers to have more input into the design of console systems, a move which he claims would help to "focus on what's important" rather than building in secondary features such as web browsers at the cost of both affordability and game functionality.

Nielsen Ratings and Console Markets

2007-03-13T15:49:00.000-04:00

While I tend to pay attention to consoles a bit more than the PC (and sometimes unduly, though I've been attempting to rectify that to some extent lately), in part that is because the console while becoming more widespread as these reports indicate, it also tends to be the cash cow of the video game industry, and as such is the platform that video game companies strive to work on.

More and more reports indicate that gamers are favoring consoles over PC's, and that in many cases PC's are being used to drive a fairly narrow set of games. However, at the same time I'm interested more and more in the PC because it is the only "open" game development system out there at the moment capable of running the kinds of games that consumers have come to expect.

The comment about game systems being multimedia hubs is interesting, because for me that makes it a bit complicated that Nintendo released the Wii in the United States unable to play DVD's, despite the systems capability of actually doing so. I'm curious if this is a licensing issue or some other piece of the industry puzzle.

Nielsen reports surge in US console ownership

"The video game console has become a major player in the battle for the living room," according to Nielsen's vice president of wireless and interactive services, Jeff Herrmann. "In households across the country, consoles are successfully competing for consumers' time and attention; not simply as gaming platforms, but as multimedia hubs that also can deliver high quality digital movies and IPTV."

Nielsen: 41.1% of TV Households Have Consoles

According to Nielsen Wireless and Interactive Services, the number of game consoles in U.S. households with a television has grown by 18.5%. In total, there were 45.7 million homes with video game consoles, representing 41.1% of all TV households, during the fourth quarter of 2006. This is an increase from 43 million households (39.1%) last year and 38.6 million (35.2%) in 2004.

Getting Hit with the "No Sh*t" Hammer...

2007-03-13T15:45:00.000-04:00

This is an exciting prospect for game developers. Much of my criticism of the game industry comes around inability for developers to honestly and openly communicate, and an inability to plan. Hardware road maps are a big part of this, and it was exciting to see (via GameDaily.Biz via Newsweek) that at the behest of Sony of America this might be changing. It's still got Nintendo by the neck, and in part I understand why, if they were all sharing, each new console would end up with all sorts of features of it's competitors. At the same time it tends to leave all but those developers on the extreme inside loops with these companies with their pants down come time for a change in hardware.

Apple ought to learn from this too.

Harrison: We Should Be Sharing Our Road Map

"There is a cultural thing about our approach in Japan that has to change. Our approach in Japan is, 'Once it's perfect, we'll share it with everybody else.' Whereas I think in order to engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect, but are ready to give you an indication of what's coming," Harrison explained. "So we could say, 'You know, we're not sure when it's coming, but we're going to have DVD upscaling on Playstation 3.' There you go. There's a scoop for you. In my view, we should have a slide on a Web site, or a blog. We should have [Playstation head of platform development Izumi] Kawanishi blog his road map for the Xross Media Bar for Playstation 3. I think he would probably have the biggest blog after yours in the world."

He continued, " ...we have to become more comfortable in sharing our road map. We have to get more liberal in the ways we experiment with some things. Because some things that we think are important may not be important to our consumer. Conversely, something which is lower down on our road map may be the most important thing to a consumer, unexpectedly so. And we need to be a little more open in that regard."

Ok, so it wasn't live...

2007-03-13T15:42:00.000-04:00

I guess I wasn't able to blog and follow GDC. I don't suppose that's any surprise. It was quite the zoo, and I'm just happy to have emerged with my liver and mind still intact. While that is of course arguable, I'm going to attempt to go through a bunch of my notes and back-logged
news items worthy of words that others haven't already written.

As I've already stated, by and large this site I assume is mostly an account of personal mulling, and I'd be surprised to find more than a handful (I'd be surprised at a handful too really) of folks that read it. But now I'm just navel gazing. Let's get to it.

Reflecting on game writing...

2007-03-08T15:34:00.000-05:00

This was a fun tutorial, and I'm curious what the other attendees thought of the whole thing. I enjoyed myself, though most of the material was stuff that I was familiar with, though the way he linked it up with film was very amusing. It was a bit difficult to see all of the links between game writing and what he was presenting, which was pretty well rooted in film. The games that we did look at were Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid 2. Otherwise it was very focused on film.

Near the end of the presentation he brought it to bear more on games, but that probably could have happened earlier.

My favorite activity was the re-writing of a movie plot from the perspective of the villain. I chose "Predator."

...we carry small thermonuclear suppositories, which I detonated to prevent my shame. It's kind of like what you call "Hari Kari", though you also sometimes take our your prey simultaneously. I hope I got him.

Live from GDC it's... me.

2007-03-06T12:03:00.000-05:00

Ok, I've decided that I'll leave some comments up here about what I'm up to at GDC.

Today I think I'm going to sit in on the "And Make it Snappier!" talk by Evan Skolnick. It's a presentation on writing in the context of games. I'm actually going to use it to help me think about the dissertation writing project however. I'll post more about that later.

Thus far I've only managed to make it to Moscone West, apparently Moscone North has some interesting stuff. However, I'm sure that is going to be the story for this entire event. There is going to really be too much to catch everything.

More coming.

PS3 to Win by 2010... With no Games

2007-02-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

I'm not really quite sure how this works. So Screen Digest finds that the PS3 will win the "console battle" but that most publishers are going to lose their shirts, "if they aren't careful." So either publishers are going to get careful in the next three years, or the PS3 is going to win with no games... Or SD is just wrong.

The thing that either they're not paying attention to or ignoring deliberately is that right now the production costs for the PS3 are the highest of the three consoles. The Wii is the lowest. So, if I'm a publisher the Wii and the 360 look good right now. I don't have to "be careful" because we've already pretty much figured out these consoles, we just need to get better at them. On the other hand we're more likely to lose our shirts on a console that is really expensive?

Seems a bit ... confused if you ask me. I suspect the correct answer to this conundrum would be that either publishers are going to get smarter and handle all three consoles better, or they're going to do the same ole and the PS3 is going to suffer the most because of the added cost for producing for the PS3. We've also seen numerous reports from Sony at the moment that price on the PS3 will not come down for two years or so, which means that apparently in 2009 to 2010 a whole boatload of cheap PS3's are going to get sold. Perhaps.

I think more likely Sony will realize their pricing mistake and lower the price. More will sell, however production costs aren't really going to change, so the real issue is publisher intelligence increasing dramatically within the next year or two.

Oddly enough this years IGDA sponsored GDC Developers Rant is actually stacked with publisher types. It will be interesting to see what they've got to say on this.

Report: Small Portion of Next-Gen Titles to be Profitable

If publishers aren't careful, they could be left with empty pockets on most next-gen game projects. A new report from Screen Digest has found that a tiny proportion of next-gen titles will achieve profitability. Also, Screen Digest believes Sony's PS3 will win the console battle by 2010.

Flow Special Video Games Issue Goes Live

2007-02-09T16:54:00.000-05:00

The new issue of the Flow Journal has gone live, and my article, "The Wii-volution will not be Televised: The XNA-cution of a Business Model" is included there. They made a snazzy little summary line for it in some of their promotional material:

"While Nintendo's Wii has been causing a stir among gamers and the general public alike, Microsoft is fundamentally changing the way video games are created."

Europe RETARDED

2007-02-08T00:54:00.000-05:00

I try to not respond to much outside of the game industry here, but I couldn't help with this one. In many respects the game industry isn't much different than Apple. I don't see many PSP or PS3 owners griping that they can't play their games on an Xbox. Yet, somehow, in some universe this makes sense to many folks. And I don't necessarily disagree. The point is, lay blame where due, not at the feet of someone else, this case being Apple.

Europe Cool to Apple’s Suggestions on Music

“He’s trying to move the responsibility away from Apple and turn this into a trans-Atlantic trade issue,” said Torgeir Waterhouse, senior adviser to the Norwegian Consumer Council."

No shit? He's trying to point blame where it's due! The copyright holders. Seriously, I'm tired of Apple getting a bad rap for FairPlay. It's the music industry stupid. If you can't put that together in your head, then Apple should cut you off from the iTunes music store, and you'll see how much music other than CD's you're getting. Blow.

The RIAA countered with a resounding, "Take option number two Mr. Jobs." Which of course is the option they've been encouraging, because it fufills their RETARDED ASS DREAMS which many in Eur0pe are feeding. Sweet. Nice job.

RIAA counters Jobs

"We have no doubt that a technology company as sophisticated and smart as Apple could work with the music community to make that happen," Bainwol said in a prepared statement.

Translation: "Apple, if you can't do it, no one can!!! WHhhaaaa!!!" Go cry me a river and come up with your own anti consumer paradigm. Blow.

Iwata Cautious About Early Wii Success

2007-02-02T14:42:00.000-05:00

It's amusing that Iwata despite the Wii selling like hotcakes, is aware that software sells hardware more than anything else. It's at the same moment you hear from Sony top people, "We've Got a Better Machine & We're Going to Win" but they sure don't have much software to go with it. Not to mention that Sony isn't doing much to make developers lives easier... And anyway, isn't the PSP's biggest problem not enough games?

"Any system will sell well following launch," Iwata remarked, "but there will definitely come a time where it will stop selling. Even the DS hit a rough spell after selling 1.5 million units a month after launch. The flame was really lit a year after launch, after Nintendogs and Brain Age became big hits. With the Wii, we have to make good software just as we did with the DS."

Q&A: Impatient Shoppers On 'Why Wii Want A Wii'

2007-02-02T14:31:00.000-05:00

Several things about the Wii continue to amaze me.

It continues to be hard to obtain. Given that every single component of the Wii is easier and cheaper to manufacture, and by all accounts yields should also be higher on all of it's components yet it cannot meet demand.
Either stores are actively lying to consumers about their knowledge about stock, or they're keeping the information in the hands of a select few, leaving other workers to deal with frustrated consumers. In this age with real time ordering and inventory systems, it is simply false that stores do not know when a shipment is coming in. Employees may not be made aware, but someone somewhere knows. Why not provide some info? Just because Target has a back door into their system is the only reason consumers have turned to them more than any other retailer. It's good for business for consumers to know that they can get what they want.
Wii Parties!

Frustration Factor... Rising?

One notable factor for those queuing was frustration, since Wii demand has way, way outpaced supply, leaving many shoppers steaming. “For about a month and a half now I've been trying to get one, and it's just impossible to find,” commented one shopper. “You have to come right when the UPS driver delivers it, and Best Buy refuses to tell you whenever they are getting in shipments. They lie and tell you that they have no idea when they are coming in, when they obviously do know when they are coming in.”

Another couple noted similar experiences: “We've been to at least fifty stores checking for at least three weeks, and we haven't found one yet.” The relative ease of finding games for the Wii is additionally frustrating many consumers, while the console itself and further Wii-motes have been more or less unattainable.

Dude, I so called this one (another XNA Post)...

2006-12-18T01:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I called this one way back when the XNA Game Studio Express was first announced, or at least said it would be the smartest thing ever if every year Microsoft sponsors a game development competition. Now MS is going to have just about every hobbiest game developer or industry hopeful aiming to for Xbox Live Arcade based on content created in XNA GSE. Surely they're not going to guarantee Xbox Live Arcade inclusion based on the contest, but you can bet that if the winners do live up to the kind of content quality standards they're hoping for, they'll be showing up.

I really think that this platform could be an interesting boon for the Indy Games world. While I don't think it's the only thing the game industry needs to be doing to foster innovation, it's a great idea, and its really based on the model movie studios have been using for a while. Let the hobbiest's and hopefuls play. It behooves you have more people involved in creating things rather than fewer (which current licensing regimes do).

XNA Game Studio Express: Dream-Build-Play Competition

"Create an original game using XNA Game Studio Express. You could win fantastic prizes and global envy! The contest doesn't start till January, but get a head start and download XNA Game Studio Express for free today.

UPDATE:

Ok, then someone has to go and make a stupid comment, as well as some smart ones...

So there is a lot here to comment on, but let me say a couple of things.

Not allowing people to use C++ and being forced to use C# is stupid. It's not about "productivity" in this case, it's about getting more people to use an MS run language.
I think YouTube is a bad example, there are a few more barriers to entry into this market other than a computer and a webcam or video camera.
We should also be asking professionals to make some contribution to pushing their work to be "edgier", which isn't to say it should be about "[s]hoot-em-ups with political characters," that's a pretty weak concept of edginess. As a matter of fact, that is edgily unedgy.
(last one) CS programs have bigger problems than games can solve. Part of it is their curriculum. The other thing that needs to be made clearer is that the "recruitment crisis" has to do with design, art, and management as well. For some reason code is the focus for the game industry.

Done.

XNA Express will start YouTube for games, says Microsoft's Satchell // Gamesindustry.biz

"Where our vision's really heading is taking that YouTube concept and bringing it into games. Think about a Community Arcade, being able to share your own games with the whole community on Xbox Live."
...
Satchell went on to claim that a vibrant amateur development community would help head off the recruitment crisis threatening the videogame industry, citing "disturbing" admissions figures for computer science courses in the US - which are falling by 30 per cent year on year.

"If you can give people a way to communicate, to talk about content, to rate it and express what's cool, then you start a virtuous cycle, because more people want to get involved, more people create content and more people comment on it," he said.

"I absolutely believe we will find new stars in this industry from that community. I know publishers will be watching for what's cool and who's doing it."

According to Satchell, users will be free to create edgy videogame content that professionals couldn't because it would be "too risky".
...
Commenting on the decision to use C#'s managed code, as opposed to the native code used by most professional developers, Satchell noted that with ballooning budgets and team sizes, priorities in game development were changing.

"We're all concerned about performance in gaming, but in the future, in five to ten years' time, productivity is going to be more important than performance," he observed.

I Take Many Pictures of Animals...

2006-12-14T01:06:00.000-05:00

I take a lot of pictures of animals it seems. I'm not sure precisely why I do this. I think in part because it has something to do with it being more socially acceptable, or personally acceptable for me to whip out my camera and take a photo of a random puppy, dog, frog, cat, cow, or other animal than to pull out the camera and start taking photos of people. Somehow one seems miraculously less awkward than the other.

I'm also happy to make the assertion that these animals are simply indexes of what I see a lot of here. However, for the most part I feel less like a creepy tourist or random sweaty white guy taking photos of these animals than if I were to take photos of other things. Some random academic part of me also believes that Donna Haraway needs to come here and check out these companion species for a bit. For those of you that haven't read any of her recent work on dogs and companion species, that wont make a lot sense, and that is alright. Just think of dogs and other animals as offering a kind of special insight into both the canine and human conditions.

So, this little pup was hanging out at the Fireflies secular ashram where FoU (Friends of Udhay) was held this year. He and his buddy were pretty freaked out by anyone they didn't recognize. Then I callously went and snapped his photo. Dogs have been particularly interesting for me here. Mostly because when I first arrived in Bangalore I saw a lot of them. I see quite a few of them, but as I've written about before, the ecology of cows and dogs was particularly interesting there. I've referred to them fondly as "road dogs" because you'll often see them walking along with people along the side of the road, or fast asleep almost in the road. Which brings me to my next two photos.

This guy has wisely chosen a non-road spot, though his compatriot cares significantly less about the logic of this idea.

Most of these dogs are stray it seems, though I don't think that means that they don't have friends or relationships with humans. Most of them have bumps, scrapes, missing chunks, gimps, post-litter tits, and numerous other aspects that make it clear that this is how things go. While on a trek across town last night I saw a puppy blindly crossing the street, if he made it safely, he's lucky. I'm sure you learn pretty quickly if you're not doing things the right way, the primary question is if you'll live to learn from the experience. I didn't look back to see if he made it. It was rush hour, and I was too scared that I already knew the answer to the question.

It can get really warm (especially in Chennai) during the day. I can't decide what keeps these dogs sunning themselves rather than opting for the shade. I suppose that's what the sweaty American dogs would be doing. They're surely used to the weather. They're also used to the spicy food too. I noticed a dog getting a munch of some leftovers, and I couldn't help but laugh thinking that surely I would be sweating, and an American dog would be rubbing its face in the dirt trying to figure out what the heck was going on with the inside of it's face.

While in Bangalore you could hear the dogs at night. One person even talked about how since the city pretty much shuts down at 11:30PM, the dogs own the city after that point. All restaurants and stores are closed, and for the most part the auto-rickshaws stop running. I suspect that the buses continue to run for those people working late at the call centers, but by and large things are very quiet once 11:30PM rolls around. It's at this point that the dogs come out to play, presumably expending all of that stored up photo-electric energy gathered during the day. Whether they're doing battle with the cars out late, or arguing with one another, they are much more vocal than during the day.

This little guy wandered into the parking lot of RedOctane the other morning. He was just so cute and tiny that I couldn't not take a photo of him. He walked into the courtyard looking like he'd thought he had found what he was looking for, but alas, I was not that. He then turned around and walked back through the grates of the gate.

The guard found it interesting that I'd take the time to whip out my trusty cell phone camera to take a shot of this little guy, but I guess it's just a habit of mine.

One of the workers at RedOctane was saying that recently they've begun a neutering program in this state, and perhaps it is country wide of neutering the male dogs. Veterinary volunteers go around giving the boy dogs a little snip-snip here and there. My first thought was that it must suck being a female dog in heat in a city of boys with no balls. This new policy apparently replaces a previous one where rounded up and disposed of.

And now for my recent favorite. When I was out wandering, I found this "road cow" hanging out with the bicycles and motorcycles. Apparently she had an itch which she couldn't quite reach, and was using this motorcycles handlebars to reach the spot. I stood and watched for a couple of minutes while she scratched and scratched.

The juxtaposition of all of these animals (I saw a chicken the other day, but did not have a camera, it was quite sad) with the rest of society is interesting. It has just prompted me to think about certain things, and I couldn't bring myself to not post these photos, even though I feel a bit silly in retrospect seeing just how many animal shots I have taken while being here.

Microsoft Releases XNA Express - Let the REAL Revolution Begin

2006-12-12T00:29:00.000-05:00

I really do wonder when Sony and Nintendo are going to notice what's going on here. I mean, if they don't have a plan to answer this, every game industry hopeful, hobbyist, and Open Sourcer interested in games is going to be developing code for the 360. You're going to have a wealth of available tools and code. Microsoft will still control the delivery pipeline (unless people start pressing their own CD's and distributing them, but who cares, that sounds like Indy music to me?!?) (Xbox Live Arcade) but they've opened up the production pipeline. This is still massively closed for Nintendo and Sony.

I see the consequences of this behavior in the game industry all the time. I've seen it in the last couple of days with folks here in India developing games these platforms. They feel like they're constantly reinventing the wheel, with no information as to how others have done it. And they're right! They are. This is part of the reason why crunch exists in the video game industry. You have an entire industry built up entirely around secrecy. Sharing is rare. It's rare even amongst studio owned by the same publisher.

I can seriously understand why you want to protect intellectual property. The importance of that is not lost on me. Nor is the importance of education, learning how to deal with these systems. I think what is ridiculous is to expect developers to do all of this work without any sort of community structure outside of their own organization. The IGDA certainly helps with this, but it's not like they can talk about how to get good read-rate performance out of _FILL IN BLANK HERE_ because it's covered by their NDA's.

Open up the production pipelines. It's good for the industry. It hasn't hurt the art world, music world, movie world. As a matter of fact it tends to invigorate things.

Microsoft Releases XNA Game Studio Express // GamesIndustry.biz

Microsoft has also announced plans to launch a new competition, titled Dream-Build-Play, which is open to Windows and Xbox 360 XNA Game Studio Express users. The winning game will be released through Xbox Live Arcade, and the contest will begin in January.

"Xbox Live Arcade has opened up a wealth of new publishing opportunities for established and independent developers alike, so it made perfect sense to also extend this privilege to hobbyists and amateur programmers," said Greg Canessa, group manager of Xbox Live Arcade.

"We have a tremendous opportunity to shine the spotlight on up-and-coming talent through the Dream-Build-Play contest, and we can�t wait to share their creativity with our gaming community around the world."

Posting Pictures

2006-12-05T05:41:00.000-05:00

It has come to my attention, that I'm boring. ;) Just kidding. I know I haven't posted nearly enough pictures of my trip, but I'm going to remedy that RIGHT NOW.

This was the place I stayed while in Bangalore. It was a cute little service apartment about 4 blocks from Dhruva Interactive, the company that I was working with there. The kid who worked/lived there was nice, putting up with me coming home late. That was probably the most interesting aspect of the service apartment was that the help actually lived and worked there. He was around at all hours if you needed something. Service apartments came about actually because hotel prices in Bangalore are astronomical, even by US standards. In many cases people will stay at a hotel during the week and fly somewhere else on the weekends to avoid paying the weekend rates at hotels. I was happy to have this spot though.

One evening I ordered Dominoes Pizza (I know, I'm a sissy American), but I was craving cheese. Anyway, I ended up sharing a couple of slices with the kid. He was really nice and always willing to help out. His English was ok, but he got the important things, "shaver" (razor), "coffee", "laundry", "beer". It worked out well.

This is the main office of Dhruva in Bangalore. They actually own the building next door, as well as another building a block over. It's a cute place. It's got a spot on the roof of the building where they serve lunches. Parking is limited, but most folks ride mopeds or motorcycles into work anyway. Only a couple of people drive in cars regularly. You can see the corner of an auto-rickshaw in this picture. I think they were dropping off lunch actually.

I managed to make it out to the country on one day, offering myself up to the mosquito gods. It actually was just fine. I think I'd managed to consume enough spicy food by that point, that I wasn't totally attractive to mosquitoes, certainly not as much as a McDonald's fed white-boy. This was at a secular ashram outside of town called Fireflies. I was was there to meet with some members of the SILK list, a mailing list started by a guy named Udhay, and also referenced by Chris Kelty's work on Geeks and social imaginaries. I met all sorts of interesting people at this event. It was actually really neat, while we were there, about dusk there were thousands of dragonflies buzzing around, I can only assume they were munching on mosquitoes, but I'd never seen so many in one concentrated area. It was quite beautiful.

So, from ashram to the Bangalore pubs. This is one thing that Bangalore is known for, it's pub scene. There are numerous urban professionals that frequent these pubs. Many play hard rock or heavy metal. This particular one "Le Rock" played Led Zeplin, Metallica, and numerous other "metal" bands, however they did so from DVD rather than from CD or MP3, so one wall contained a large TV showing the video that went with the music. Quite interesting. This is Vinay from Dhruva. No, he's not drinking it all by himself. Keyshav and myself were quite capable as well.

Oddly enough, if Bangalore has a pub scene, Hyderabad has a lounge scene. I'll try to get some pictures.

So, auto-rickshaws, my primary means of transportation in Bangalore. Now that I'm in Hyderabad, I'm fed up with rick's. The ones in Bangalore, as long as you knew the town name, and cross streets, you were fine. You would likely arrive with only minor detours along the way. Hyderabad has been another story completely. Between them not wanting to run the meters and negotiating rates up front and then changing the amount they want on arrival, pretending to not have change, attempting to drive you all over town, driving like speed demons, and my recent favorite was the knocking over of a pedestrian, I've been mostly walking here in Hyderabad. Though the infrastructure here in Hyderabad is far superior to Bangalore's, it is counteracted (at least for me) by an inability to explain to rickshaw drivers where I want to go. Naming a town and streets does little good, and even when I do manage to convince them where to go, I have to actually direct them most of the way, often being dropped off prior to where I had been expecting to be dropped off. Not so fun.

Here is the hotel I'm staying at in Hyderabad. It's quite nice. Tequa has even gotten the royal treatment here. No, I didn't place her there, the cleaning people did. She says it's not time to go yet. She likes the people working here.

(50.0)