Costume GET!

Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, Wataru Maruyama's blog Costume GET!, which is focused entirely on costume design in videogames.

I'm not pointing you specifically at one post or another, but as a general comment, I love the fact that the internet supports this level of specialization. I can tell you that I'm passing this one around to some of my other game designer friends here at work. Hooray for the future!

Playing With Strangers

I want someone to play with.

Ryan, myself, and several of our friends went to see the seminal Batman Begins on opening day and to while away the time we, of course, brought our PSPs and our copies of Wipeout Pure. Being in San Francisco, we thought we'd conduct an experiment and play with our little bundles of joy unabashedly in the open and hope that either a.) someone would approach us and ask us what we're playing in the hopes of joining in, or b.) a random somebody would just happen to be looking for a Wipeout game while we're sitting in the multiplayer lobby waiting to begin. Realistically, of course, the second of these scenarios is very, very unlikely to occur, and while we saw a few others jacked in over their miniature 16:9 displays, there was no spontaneous multiplayer. Which makes me weep. Mostly on the inside. Mostly.

To be clear, Ryan and I are in San Francisco--the, supposedly, most wired city in the country and we were seeing the show at the Sony Metreon where you'd assume other PSPers may possibly feel comfortable playing their portable systems in public. Granted, we're kinda dorky-looking and I can't blame people for not wanting to walk up to adult men playing with "children's toys" and ask for a game, but we've decided to be determined when it comes to spontaneous, public gaming and will continue to pull out our PSPs while waiting for dinner, in line for the cinema and on the subway in an effort to promote a method of open multiplayer that has an aspect no other multiplayer experience has yet to match: that of actually meeting flesh-and-blood people face to face. Is this a misguided attempt to surrounded ourselves with the like-minded in order to validate our own existence or is there something to really be said for taking gaming "to the people," as it were, as a social tool beyond just 0wnx0ring some n00b?

GamePlan Contest

The BBC (bless their progressive little hearts) are sponsoring a game development contest for 13-19 year-olds. You don't have to actually MAKE the game, just submit a game idea, and they'll take the winner and create an online game. The contest is part of Blast, a site dedicated to fostering the creativity of young people. Lots of other neat stuff on there, too.

Old School Charm

Apparently Nintendo is hinting that they might enhance the Nintendo classics to be downloadable on the Revolution (link, thanks Kotaku). Of course, it's too early in the game to accurately guess what Nintendo has planned. This is a company that shrouds itself in an almost mystical secrecy over its projects. For all I know, Nintendo will implement some way in which your very thoughts will move Mario across a holographic landscape in which you distinguish between good and poison mushrooms through a smell simulator.

But most people are guessing that Nintendo’s going the more likely route of applying newer graphics to their older games. And while I wouldn't mind if Nintendo made two downloads of their games, an original and an enhanced, I'm not sure if that's how the Big N rolls, son.

Personally, I find there's some charm to the graphics of older games. Especially the early NES games; there's almost something minimalist in the sprites of games such as Super Mario Bros. and Kid Icarus. The simple graphics work well with the simple games. Not that I'd be against some sort of cool three-dimensional realization of those simple sprites, ala the World 1-1 stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

But as far as I'm concerned, I'd prefer to have my classic NES games in perfect emulation rather than a prettier version that plays the same. I think that the game industry should actively celebrate both the history of games and the amazing technological progression of the medium by retaining the look and feel of older, classic titles in retro-releases. Remakes are cool and certainly have their place, but I’m just the type of pretentious dork who would rather have Han Solo shoot first.

Grand Theft Auto "by City"

Nancy Grace recently used her no-nonsense attitude and sassy attitude to finally show them "video machines" who's boss (transcript, thanks Kotaku).

Besides the fact that the transcript, presented on a news network website, misspells “Eidos” as “Idos” and misidentifies “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” as “Grand Theft Auto: By City,” I’d have to say that this segment added nothing to the discussion of video game violence whatsoever. For either side.

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The Long Tail and Videogames

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, wrote an article called "The Long Tail" for the October 2004 issue which argues the commercial viability of non-hits. He's currently maintaining a blog on the topic while he works on a book-length version.

Anderson has some great examples, like how Netflix has allowed documentary films to undergo a commercial renaissance, and how more than 50% of Amazon's top sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. He makes a pretty convincing argument that an internet-based distributer can make good money on non-hits by offering a couple thousand different titles, priced fairly.

Of course, videogames are quite famously not music, books or movies. Can this distribution model work for them? I say why not? Again, don't think about how to shoehorn Halo into this distribution model. Halo is a hit, and the industry already knows how to sell hits. The long tail model requires a flood of content with limited appeal. Think Katamari Damacy clones, PopCap, curling simulators, Indie Game Jam entries. Think all the videogames with reviews that caution "unless you're a die-hard fan, pass this one over," because the die-hard fans, the niche markets, are the territory of the long tail.

The long tail isn't "the end of hits." Anderson is happy to point out that the long tail isn't a lot of things. The long tail could be a way to bring back the commercial garage game, and it might very well be the best way to save the point 'n' click adventure game. As long as I keep working at Electronic Arts, I'll probably never get anywhere near it, but I think almost every developer here would love to see this kind of market emerge, if only so we can play what comes out of it.

Kids Can Learn to Read and Shoot Cops

This Gamespot news story piqued my attention. Not because of the usual argument over video games and their impact on the minds of children. I’ve been hearing that argument since I was a kid. I remember Mortal Monday, when the first Mortal Kombat was released for consoles. I was in the fifth grade if I remember correctly. Everyone was abuzz with excitement. Since I didn't own a Super Nintendo or a Genesis at that point, I used some left-over birthday money to buy that sucker for the original Game Boy. Good times. And nary a dead body in sight.

Anyway.

The quote that really got my attention was Senator Charles E. Schumer saying, “Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops.”

Ignoring the fact that 25 to Life is obviously an adult-oriented game, and further ignoring the irony that Eidos executives must be jumping up and down in joy after the 6 o’clock news publicity Schumer has brought their game, I have to wonder at the wider assessment of video games that Schumer appears to be making. By comparing the actions in a video game against learning how to read, Schumer portrays video games as products devoid of any educational value. Which, to a guy who grew up with video games, is an even more troubling implication than the idea that crazy kids might copy what they see in games the same way crazy kids have copied everything for years.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize what video games did teach me.

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Ads We Don't Need

I suppose I'm only doing the makers of Juiced a service by writing this, since it was obviously designed with the intent of creating "buzz," be it good or bad, but I have to say that the new Juiced ad (the adult themed one, not the one currently running in the US regarding the guy losing his ride online) does nothing for me.

Well, as a guy, I guess it's a safe bet that it does something for me, but it doesn't make me want to play the game. Sure, I remember that it's Juiced, which is good, but I also make a mental note to never, ever, touch one of their products again, which is bad.

Is outright objectifation of women a good thing now? I tend to be out of the popular circles and trends, but I mean, I'm hearing comments that this commercial wasn't intended for American audiences. You hear that argument a lot here in America, that we're too immature or naive to handle the nuances and sensitivities of the European* mindset, but I have to say that the way women are portrayed in this thing is downright wrong. I'm down with nakedness. I'm not down with some form of virtual rape fetishes.

After the debasing of the female in the commercial, I'm still left with the problem that the commercial still fails at marketing the game.

On one hand, there's two kids frantically pushing buttons on two completely different controllers, both somehow modifying one car on the create-a-car screen. We should consider ourselves lucky there aren't the typical Pac-Man or Mario Bros. sound effects.

On the other hand, from what this commercial tells me, it's evidently a game where you get to modify a race car on a turntable in a garage. There is no racing in this game, apparently. Just swapping parts. And pretend raping women.

Doesn't even sound like a rental. I know what most guys will think about this commerical, but I'm interested to hear from the girls. Do you find this kind of marketing offensive? Or am I just being an old oversensitive prude?

*My apologies for whitewashing Europe with this one, but the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, and everyone's driving on the wrong side of the street.

What's Bad is Good
Too often we hear that games are a complete waste of time; all children do is zone out in front of the television, right? While that may be what one sees when spying upon a child wielding a controller, it's obvious enough to anybody who actually plays games that there's more to our hobby than a time kill. A recent episode of the Daily Show w/ J.Stew clued me into the new book by Steven Johnson titled Everything Bad Is Good For You. For more insight, you can check out the interview on this page.

Without going into too much detail, the book does make some very interesting points about the complexity of not only current video games, but also other forms of popular culture. The short story is that the construction of media has grown increasingly sophisticated over the past few decades; non-linear narratives are the norm. Techniques that were suitable for avant-garde audiences are now used in mainstream programming. In reference to videogaming specifically, players are thrust into unknown environments or situations, and are then required to figure out what the hell they're supposed to be doing. Which buttons should I be pressing? What does this switch do? How the heck am I supposed to get up there?

We're not zoning out. We're at constant attention, always making decisions. So we're benefitting from gameplay, yes? That much has been clear for ages. I mean, sit a non-gamer down in front of your Playstation 2 and hand them the controller. The first thing they'll ask you is what they're supposed to do. Johnson puts it perfectly. "You're supposed to figure out what you're supposed to do."

There are cognitive muscles being exercised by our favorite medium; and it's often easy for people to disregard that fact because of the content of what we play. Sure, I wish there were more mature games out there for us to enjoy -- libraries and espionage, not flesh and bullets -- but I am constantly impressed by the increased complexity of the software being released every day. You know there's more to GTA than guns, drive-bys, and hookers, right? Hopefully, one day, our mothers and fathers will understand this, as well. Anyway, if you're looking for something to read, pick up a copy of Everything Bad... When you're through, send it over to your parents and give them a better understanding of why you do what you do.

Semantics

Microsoft launched the official website for Perfect Dark Zero. It's bland and corporate.

But what concerns me is, since when do we call these screenshots?!?

Let's Go Tokyo: The Game

I really love to travel; but because it takes so long to get to and from international destinations, I like to try to be as efficient as possible so that my time at the target location is spent with as little hassle as possible. Maybe I'll write about my dream travel kit in some other forum sometime, but the times that I've spent the airtime orienting myself have resulted in the best trips.

We all email friends before we go somewhere new to ask for cool locations, tips on where to stay, and so on. We also probably buy guidebooks and check websites. Something I used to do obsessively was buy a city map and study it, getting to know the major arteries, the landmarks and their layouts. That's not just because I have a pretty crappy sense of direction; it's because the minute I land, I like to have a sense of the lie of the land and my place in it. Orientation, perhaps more than anything else, makes me feel the beginning of a connection with a new city.

I was talking with Chris Buffa the other day about traveling. He mentioned that he went to Tokyo for the first time last year, but it felt familiar because he had played Project Gotham Racing. It wasn't perfect, but he could recognize Shinjuku and get a feel for how the city was laid out.

What a fucking brilliant idea. A great tool to orient: the Tourist Game. It could be, say, co-produced by the Let's Go series. It wouldn't need to be ultra-detailed, just hit the main landmarks and transportation arteries. You could have special Scenic Road edition which would be long, leisurely cruises down the California coast or along the Norwegian fjords. I would totally buy that expansion pack.

Residuals vs. Royalties

Followed a link from the PA Crew over to Wil Wheaton's blog today, where he discusses the finer points of the SAG/Video Game Industry deal that went (largely) south this past week.

It's a long entry, and it really needs to be read in its entirety, so please, go check it out, and then come right back.

Okay then, let's continue. The money quote which describes the beef of the whole argument:

As I understood the video game negotiations, SAG wasn't asking for per-unit payments from video game producers. The proposal I read and supported asked for an additional session fee, after the game in question had sold a minimum of 50,000 copies and was profitable. Yeah, that sure seems unreasonable, doesn't it? Especially since actors account for something like 2% of the average game's budget.

I have to say that it does seem unreasonable, Wil.

I see no reason why the voice actors should get an "additional session fee," when nobody else on the entire game gets that. Assuming that "additional session fee" means your half day minimum pay, which according to your data (which I trust, as you're in SAG) is $759. Also according to you, it seems that 4 hours is about all it takes to get a voice recorded in a game. If I'm doing my math right here, that means you're getting a 100% bonus of your contracted pay for the game, the second it becomes profitable. How you consider this to not be profit-sharing (as it's obviously money taken from the profits) is a bit boggling, but I'm not even interested in arguing that point.

What I'm interested in, is that if this concept is to be considered "fair" or "reasonable," we need to apply it to everyone on the project. "Why not form a union," you say? Well, let's take this argument to its logical conclusion, and say we did form a union, and we all got this "reasonable" deal. We all got relatively a 100% bonus on our salary when a game ships. Hey! It DOES sound pretty great!

It sounds pretty great, until you stop to realize that with those kind of bonuses, suddenly the game is no longer profitable. We've just added at least 50% of the cost of the game back into the budget. A game that cost 10 million dollars to produce now suddenly costs 15 million. Obviously, the bonuses won't be paid out 'till the title reaches 15 million, so what was previously 5 million dollars in profit now must be earmarked and sat on (i.e. not reported as profit and spent or invested) untill such time as the profits surpassed 15 million. A royalty based payment structure would have allowed the fair percentage of that 5 million to be paid out quarterly as soon as the title became profitable (the first dollar over the 10 million dollar budget).

In short, the idea of residuals is actually worse than royalties. The residual system wouldn't even allow the industry to survive, and no industry means no games, and no games means no jobs. I'd rather you guys got your fair share of royalties for the game (no, honest, I think anyone who participated in the creation of the title is entitled to a share of the profits commensurate to their amount of work involved), which would probably amount to about $80 for $800 worth of work. The idea that you're owed any more than that for a half day's worth of work, quite frankly, is unfair. Both to you, me, and the industry at large.

I hate to say it, but the industry has numbers that prove that voice actors don't drive sales. They just don't. And these numbers are what they used to make their decision on this deal. Kids don't go buy Area51 because David Duchovny or Marilyn Manson are in it. To be perfectly fair and use a cross-industry example, there's data that proves that nobody buys a sports game because of the cover athlete, either. It's a game. People buy them for the gameplay. I buy movies for acting, story, and directing. I buy games for the game. Story and acting is second. Supplemental, influential, inspiring, hell, sometimes even as good as a feature film, but second. If there ever comes a day when the actors are more important than the game, we've failed as a community of game developers.

Workers of the World Unite, Maybe?

Many rumors abound when something like this happens. Did DICE shut down their New York studio at their own behest or is the always-infamous EA up to more of that it-would-be-shocking-if-it-were-anyone-but-EA flava? The truth is, no one knows. From the outside, this sequence of events--

1.) Battlefield: 1942 is released to much acclaim
2.) A very popular mod to Battlefield known as Desert Combat is released by a team calling themselves Trauma Studios.
3.) Trauma is purchased by DICE/EA and becomes DICE's New York office.
4.) Battlefield 2--an obvious sequel to Desert Combat rather than BF1942--is finished and soon to be shipped out to a ravenous fan base.
5.) The DICE New York office is shut down.

--looks very suspicious, to put it gently. EA owns all and is all and has been known in the past to perform similar machinations of evil-ness upon those it no longer finds useful. So, one can't help but wonder if while the head of Trauma studios declares the decision to be DICE's alone, there isn't something more sinister at work. True, the 12 Trauma folks were offered a job at the DICE offices in Sweden, but that's sort of like offering to pay for the abortion after knocking up your best friend's kid sister.

What this reminds me the most of is the early days of movie consolidation and the monopolization of animation studios. Much like the game developers of today, most of the day-to-day entertainment laborers of yesteryear had to put up with insidious business practices orchestrated by the trusts if they wanted to, you know, eat and stuff. This included the hiring and firing of entire teams centered around specific projects and controlling the methods of distribution, production, financing and marketing through megalithic corporate entities with whom you either played ball or got played. It took organizing into unions--often violently--in order to trade sweatshops for decent working hours and the fear of being laid-off with the confidence of social benefits.

Is it time to get serious about organized labour for software development? Is it even possible in a globalized marketplace where the work for anyone asking slightly more than minimum wage can be ported overseas faster than you can say "industry-wide-hegemony"?

A Historic Exhibition for the Living Room
While there's some question to the accuracy of its claim, this post on the Nintendo forums seems to indicate exactly which classic games will be available for download through the Revolution's online gaming network. While the company has not yet officially announced whether or not each download will be accompanied by a micropayment, some are still hoping that the revolutionary software will be available freely following the purchase of the upcoming console; seems pretty damn unlikely, doesn't it?

TREASURE'S SIN & PUNISHMENT

It would, of course, be wonderful to have access to so many innovative titles free of charge. Yet, the idea of paying a few dollars for each doesn't really turn me off either. While I still own cartridges that house many of my favorite games on that list, there are still several titles I'd like to experience; there's no telling whether or not the likes of Sin and Punishment (N64) or F-Zero 2 Grand Prix (Satteleview) will be available for download in the US, (the game list is Japanese in origin) I can imagine North American Nintendo fans would appreciate a first taste of these titles.

More interesting to me though, is that now a new younger generation of gamers will have access to these games. Sure there are a great number of ways to obtain these titles by illicit means, but now the mainstream audience will have a chance to experience earlier adventures starring the famous cast of Nintendo characters that still drives sales of the company's platforms. While navigating Mario through three-dimensional environments aided by analog sticks and more than seven buttons may be difficult for a toddler, stomping a Goomba in Super Mario Bros. is a far simpler task. I very much enjoy the fact that the Revolution will allow new gamers to follow a path through the bits of history that mimics the one many of us remember so fondly. Who knows what the system's new content will offer? At least it's back catalogue is now of unquestionable high-quality.

What We Learn From Video Games

This is an ongoing project of mine - figuring out how video games have affected us. There have been several humorous takes on this, and yesterday I wrote up my own, tongue-in-cheeky-like. But the point is real. I've discussed this many times with other gamers. The way we play has deeply affected the way we deal with RL space. Ryan says he's more aware of vertical dimensions now; I think I'm actually a better navigator sometimes. And othertimes, I think I have becomne a WORSE navigator, because of my over-reliance on the HUD map.

As I thought about combat games, I wondered, does the fact that I play so many tactical games actually translate to more tactical experience in the field? This may be especially true now that I'm playing Fire Emblem with a "no man left behind" policy, which makes the game that much harder, but is perhaps more like real combat, where if at all possible you don't want to lose any of your men, especially if you only have a fixed number of them.

Does being good at Final Fantasy Tactics make me a good field commander in the armed forces?

Spontaneous Games

Hi everyone, I'm doing some research on gaming in unconventional places, like using PSPs or DSs on airplanes, in parks, in lines at E3, and so on. Have you played games this way? I want to hear from you!

Have you played other games with other devices? Maybe mobile? Have you ever turned a bar into your own personal gaming theatre? I want to talk to you, too.

jane at gamegirladvance.com.

Pretty for your PSP

A stylish gamergirl forwarded this link to me...colorful leather PSP cases, for a very reasonable price! All the colors are tasty, and I am fond of the orange.

Thanks, Amber!