ANN is reporting that after teasing it in a press conference in September, Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi announced that Nintendo will be opening an anime studio by 2006, producing videogame tie-in animations.

In a statement earlier, Yamauchi was quoted as saying, "Videogames are very similar to films." Despite the fact that anyone who has done art for both digital film and the game industry would tell you that's a crock of monkey snot, I'm interested to see what Nintendo wants to make. Will they be taking over future Pokemon cartoons? Some sort of Super Mario Bros. series? Donkey Kong?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Metroid. Ghost In the Shell meets Aliens with music by Yoko Kanno. Oh yes.

I have a friend named Doox. Like a few of my other friends, he's got a copy of Half-Life 2. I asked him, what difficulty level are you playing on? "Easy," he said, "because I like to tour."

For the last few years, I've been playing my games mostly on hard. I used to want to tour, to explore the far corners of all the levels and characters. But recently I've wanted more of a challenge, where I have to struggle through the game and overcome foes. I feel it makes me a more skilled player and invests me more in the action.

Doox and I have two different approaches to enjoying the same games. This came up in a discussion in an Interactive Media class at USC Film School. Some students were asking each other whether specific games were fun. It got kinda useless - one person's fun is another persons headache. I brought up Marc LeBlanc's "Eight Kinds of Fun" - finding more specific language to describe what we enjoy in games. I read through his list of eight: sensation / fantasy / narrative / challenge / fellowship / discovery / expression / submission.

The teacher, Erik Loyer, listened to the list, and brought up a terrific point: games today offer difficulty levels for players. What if, Loyer proposed, game designers presented a few different modes for experiencing the game?

So next time you boot up that first-person adventure RPG shooter, instead of choosing between Easy, Medium or Hard, you could choose between Tour, Expression or Challenge. It would describe more of the emphasis in the gameplay - is the game going to slack off on enemies and ease up on some puzzles to let you wander through the landscapes and architectures (Tour, or Discovery as LeBlanc calls it)? Maybe the game is going to spend more polygons on character customization, allowing the player to leave a greater impact on the world (Expression). Or maybe the focus is on foes, waves of cunning enemies testing a players resolve and the discipline of ammunition conservation.

Writing this out, it seems a great solution - game designers could build more complex titles than the game hardware can support, and allow the players to emphasize the gameplay they crave. Then the game allocates processing power to AI, architecture, or physics. Modular play! Umm, that's not sounding so great any more. Too much complexity and overhead.

It's the same problem I have with most fantasy RPGs - when a game starts, how do I know whether I want to play a thief, a fighter, or a magic user? I haven't even tested their powers or seen what the landscape looks like. Same with tour, expression or challenge - I don't know the shape of the world; how I want to play depends on the game, not the menu beforehand. Moreover, my mood might shift and I might feel like a touring break one Sunday morning, or a crazy fight after a few beers. Choosing modes of gaming based on gameplay is less broken then choosing a difficulty level, but it still ain't optimal. It's enough to make me want to study Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment! Maybe there can be Dynamic Gameplay Adjustment? Building in the game's ability to accommodate touring, expressive, or challenging players, behind the scenes.

Right before I went to bed last night, I read this NYTimes.com article: "Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill." It describes some sneaky politics - limits on women's reproductive rights attached to a giant spending bill. An economic policy footnote with specific social consquences; hoping to promote a change in US abortion policy without debate.

I was somewhat cheered, glumly cheered, reading my state Senator's response:

The provision could affect millions of American women, according to Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who warned Friday that she would use procedural tactics to slow Senate business to a crawl if the language was not altered.

"I am willing to stand on my feet and slow this thing down," Ms. Boxer said. "Everyone wants to go home, I know that, and I know I will not win a popularity contest in the Senate. But they should not be doing this. On a huge spending bill they're writing law, and they're taking away rights from women."

If you look at the skewed gender balance of the US Senate (86% men) then it makes sense that women's health issues would not receieve due process. And it seems appropriate that one of the fourteen female Senators would feel charged to put herself between this proposal and the law.

I went to bed shortly after reading about this, and I had a dream: dozens of women climbing into the Warthogs from Halo 2, riding through the streets, weilding giant alien plasma cannons. It was a brief image, but it seemed like a suitable direct response to these politics.

Portable goodies website pocketnow.com has a review of "Hidden Cargo Pants" by a company called SCOTTeVEST.

The concept is simple enough. Geeks like to carry a lot of electronic gizmos around, and often need the extra carrying capacity afforded by cargo pants. However, cargo pants are almost always considered casual attire, which makes it difficult for a geek to be both dapper and properly equipped. SCOTTeVEST has designed cargo pants that appear to be regular khakis, but thanks to the 19th century miracle technology known as "Magnetism," secretly hide away significant storage space. They also are "Personal Area Network Ready." This means that there are holes in the pockets that you can run wires through. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

At about $100 bucks a pop, these cargoes are a bit on the expensive side, but, hey they're also coated with space-age Teflon, which means that they may well be the only pair of pants you'll ever need.

Or something.

The IGDA has written an open letter addressing the recent Quality of Life issues in the game industry. Of particular interest is the mention of plans for a full-day Quality of Life think tank at the coming Game Developer's Conference in March.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! News is carrying LA Times coverage of last week's ea_spouse blog post.

Baby steps.

I have a friend named Aaron. He bought the Sims 2 a few weeks ago. He was wrapped up in it - raising his sims, cultivating virtual life, planning to make movies using the game engine.

Then Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out. His Sims died as he played hours as a gangsta wearing a Groucho Marx mask, riding stolen dirt bikes around fake California. It's the best GTA game yet, he argued persuasively - the music is fantastic. The mini-games are awesome, the world is huge, riding bikes is rad.

Then I bought Halo 2. He came over to my house and played hours of it with me. That was great fun, but he doesn't have an Xbox. I was happy enough with that though. Multiplayer was fantastic - waging total mayhem.

Then tonight he got on chat with me.

Aaron: man half life 2 is incredible
Justin: ?
Justin: wtf
Justin: I'm sick of new games
Aaron: yea
Aaron: but half life 2 probably eclipses them all
Justin: WTF
Justin: you gotta be kidding me
Justin: why is that?
Aaron: its just amazing
Justin: what's so amazing?
Aaron: its the most immersive interactive game world i feel like i've ever seen
Justin: ?!?!
Aaron: and just the whole world of it is so well crafted
Justin: them's big words homie
Aaron: yeah. this is far more impressive than GTA SA
Aaron: you don't even get a weapon for like the first half hour or so
Aaron: you're just sort of experiencing this world and being led around by very subtle cues
Justin: how are you supposed to immerse without a weapon?
Aaron: well you can pick up various objects and throw them around
Aaron: stack them and stuff
Justin: um
Justin: like tetris?
Aaron: yea
Justin: but with more graphics?
Justin: um
Aaron: haha
Aaron: the way the narrative is told is great
Aaron: its basically a must play
Justin: you fuck
Justin: I'm broke and tired

So here I am wondering why there was no mention of this at the company meeting a few weeks ago. The New York Times is reporting (FRR) that Electronic Arts is partnering with Cherry Lane Music Publishing to form Next Level Music (get it? It's a clever pun based on the fact that it's music from videogames, but also implying that the music is better than the competition!). Apparently, the genesis of this idea came when Universal Pictures approached Electronic Arts to ask about using the orchestral theme from the Metal of Honor series in a trailer for Seabiscuit.

There are a couple of EA videogame soundtracks floating around out there, including some rather rare ones, like the vinyl promo singles from the NHL game that came out a few years ago. There's a copy of that one tacked to a wall near the sports bar downstairs from where I sit.

What this likely means is that, in the future, EA will probably try to secure exclusive tracks from artists it puts on a game soundtrack, and then release soundtrack albums on its own label. Like a movie studio, really. Nevertheless, I will quietly hold out for The Best of Archon b/w Theme from Pinball Construction Set.

Nearly all Massively Multiplayer Games have servers - versions of the game running in parallel. The entire population of the game is broken up into more manageable chunks; instead of 15,000 players in one zone, you have 1,500 players average in each of 10 zones. Each of those zones is a complete version of the game, self-contained worlds; there's no communication or exchange between the various versions.

This just sucks.

I went back to play more City of Heroes after hearing Eddo Stern speak of his CoH addiction and hijinks there. I had a character on his server Protector; I've been on a few times in the last week now (mostly playing on my PC desktop during times when my Mac laptop is compressing video). I'm hanging out online, seeing if Eddo logs on. But I have characters and friends on other servers! If the core dynamic of MMOGs is social play, then having to choose a neighborhood to hang out in is a perfectly flawed version of the bodyless cyberspace.

Email works between any internet-connected computer and any other. And yet I log into some state of the art MMOG and I can't send an in-game message to a friend on another server? Let alone join them on an adventure, unless we each chose the same game server when we were ripping open our software boxes and logging on to the game for the first time.

I understand this has to be about server load issues, about population management, about providing a good game experience to users. I'm sure there's an essay out there about how a single-server MMOG might (or might not) be possible - that's what I'm fishing for with this post - some signs of hope that I'll be able to play with everyone who is playing the same game I am online!

For those of you who haven’t seen, Marvel is suing NC Soft over City of Heroes.

According to Marvel, since players can feasibly (and to be fair from my experience with the game, often do) use the character creation tool to make close facsimiles to Marvel heroes it both violates Marvel’s copyright and hurts their ability to create a Marvel-based on-line game.

While I don’t think NC Soft can be blamed – they are rather strict with enforcing their terms of service, often forcing players to change copyrighted characters – it does raise an interesting point. What’s the line between player artistic freedom using character creation tools and copyright laws? Should NC Soft really be sued over something that they explicitly ask their players not to do?

I’m not sure how much I dig Marvel suing NC Soft over what really boils down to fans of Marvel pretending to be Marvel superheroes without Marvel’s permission. Especially considering nearly none of the characters in their relatively corny comic book or their advertising resemble Marvel heroes.

I am curious, however, to see how strict this causes NC Soft and other companies with intense character-creation tools to become.

Yesterday I heard a story on NPR Marketplace about a new book, Got Game, from Mitchell Wade and John C. Beck.(Note to future game-technology authors: please please please come up with new catch phrases for titles. Don't try to be cute. It's all been done.) In a brief interview, Wade talked about how video game training has influenced the next generation of business people and entrepreneurs. Some of his research sounds interesting and worthy of further investigation. For example, game-raised workers exhibit:

1. Willingness to take measured risks - gamers learn this innately long before they get to business school.

2. Different way of interacting with others. For example, less respect for hierarchy and seniority. In game world, anyone can be beaten by a 12-year-old. Gamers tend to respect ability, not seniority.

3. Seriousness about expertise, and being rewarded for that expertise. No matter how many times you fail in a game, if you REALLY want it, you CAN beat it. No doubt a helpful attitude in business.

One other thing Wade emphasized was that these characteristics were found in their research pool regardless of whether the subjects play games currently; the important thing for the data seems to be that they had played games.

So, as I've said many times before, I work as a game designer for Electronic Arts, where I recently helped put the finishing touches on The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, which was perhaps comperable to a lonely ocean voyage.

Aye, 'twas a long crunch in deed, a six-month r'more. Many a grizzled industry veteran remarked that it were likely the most brutal they'd ever witnessed. But if'n it were hard on us, we who were born with games' salt water in our veins, then it were the very rock of Sisyphus to our loved ones back home. So gather 'round, oh ye wild-eyed young'ins who rush to bed each night in a-hopes of dreams of game development. Gather 'round and ye shall learn the sad tale of one such spouse-o'-a-developer.

From the description of the crunch, I'd say that this was probably the spouse of somebody who worked on TTA. Also, be sure to read the comments. More fun stuff in there, too. The only correction I can make, if this truly is about the development of TTA, is that I believe most of us did actually get some down time afterwards: 2 weeks, plus any PTO you felt like spending. The rest is accurate in my understanding.

In reading this, I suddenly remembered an exchange from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

"Mr Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!"

"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs Cratchit, reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."

God bless us, every one.

UPDATE: Here's another one from a former Maxis employee. He posts under his real name, but, of course, is subject to the bitter-ex-employee argument.

MORE UPDATE: Another EA Spouse chimes in.

EVEN MORE UPDATE: Another former EA employee talks about management solutions.

news.com.au is reporting that a couple of bozos from Sydney reportedly dressed up as characters from Counterstrike snuck into a house and shot a man and his wife. The 21-year-old accused has plead not-guilty.

I wonder how it came about that they were described as dressing like characters from Counterstrike. Doesn't that really just mean ski masks and fatigues?