articles

Catharsis Is Not Enough

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the October issue of Play Magazine.

A new study of gamer health, conducted by the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory and Andrews Universities and published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, observes a correlation between extensive videogame use, obesity, and depression.

The expectation going in was that gamers would tend to have a higher body mass index, and “a greater number of poor mental health days” than non-gamers; after studying 552 adults in and around Seattle, that assumption looks pretty much true.

Brütal Irony

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the September issue of Play Magazine.

Remember last year, when the newly-merged Activision Blizzard decided to shuck itself of properties unlikely to lead to a major franchise? Suddenly several high-profile one-off projects like Ghostbusters were left without a publisher. Though most quickly found a new host, Tim Schafer and Double Fine’s heavy metal adventure Brütal Legend was left grasping. In December the recently progressive Electronic Arts stepped up, and all seemed back on track.

Or maybe not.

Crowded Field, Modest Diversity Slowly Implodes Industry

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the August issue of Play Magazine, split into a few blurbs across a two-page spread. I thought it rather worked in that format.

While everyone is freaking out about the economy, some trends are older and more reliable. Over the last decade, as the game industry has become big business and budgets have skyrocketed, yet everyone has continued to produce more less the same material, more and more groups and individuals have had to compromise.

The Nuance of Uncharted Character Design

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Uncharted had about a three-year development cycle; a year of pre-production, followed by two years of active production. Early on they began to research all manner of pulp adventure fiction, from Tintin to Doc Savage, to seminal movies like Gunga Din and more recent stews like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Mummy.

Beyond the hair-raising, larger-than life quality of these stories, the team wanted, wherever possible and appropriate, to capture the “certain lightness of tone” in the source material, to contrast with the current standard for Western games, which Lemarchand described as “overwrought and all a bit emo.”

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

GDC: The Top Ten Peter Molyneux Quotes

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Although the concept got an enthusiastic approval, the officially published article was toned down a bit. Fair enough. But there’s no holding back Peter Molyneux. So here this is.

On Friday, the syrupy and gracious Mr. Molyneux held a session to show off his half-complete mega-opus, Fable 2. There are, however, a few problems in covering the session, in that a valiant effort in spin control has stifled what Molyneux can actually discuss. Most of what he was left to reveal, therefore, had already been revealed at an earlier keynote. The rest of the material was generally familiar from a much smaller press gathering a year ago, at which Molyneux personally served cookies to all interested parties. Which was… mostly this writer.

Nevertheless, in lieu of actual information, one can always rely on Molyneux himself as a topic of interest. Let us, then, revisit the session and stroke our chins to the form, if not the content, of Molyneux’s message. Since most of these quotes are more fun out-of-context, the explanations have all been spoiler-tagged. Highlight to reveal.

The Future of Animation is Games (No, Really!)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Bill Kroyer of Blockade Entertainment and Mark DeAngelis, VP of programming and development for Voom Networks HD, sat around on Thursday and talked about their vision for the future of machinima: namely, mainstream broadcast animation.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Nintendo Reveals Wii Pay-For-Online Play, WiiWare Compression

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

In a curiously confidential session, Nintendo Network Administration Group Group Manager Takashi Aoyama spoke at length on the thought process behind the Wii’s online offerings.

Amongst his anecdotes were a story of how WiiConnect24 came out of early dial-up concerns, during planning stages around 2000 for a GameCube network. (Maybe if users could download content overnight, that would alleviate some of the cost and delay — except, wait! This is dialup!)

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Emotiv Knows What You’re Thinking

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

The svelte Emotiv headset uses an array of sixteen EEG sensors to detect electrical impulses in the scalp. These signals are then interpreted by a suite of tools, each with its own range of applications.

The “Expressiv” application identifies and interprets facial expressions; one of Wixson’s associates demonstrated winking, blinking, and an unnerving grin, each of which was replicated on a rough facial model. Another application, called “Affectiv”, recognizes emotional states.

The most substantial and interesting application is the most active one, “Cognitiv”, which “classifies conscious active intent”. That is to say, it interprets what the wearer wants to do, allowing a player to execute specific commands and actions through thought alone.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Media Myth Of The Casual Gamer

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Gabe Zichermann of rmbr.com spoke with ebullience and verve of the chutzpah that has to some extent defined the casual game industry since Bejeweled sprung from the void in 2001. Zichermann implied that, on a level, the whole idea of a casual gamer is more of a “media meme” than anything real. He attributes the myth of casual game market to a mixture of somewhat mundane factors.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Filling the Void Between Casual And Mainstream Games

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Last Day of Work’s Arthur K Humphrey spoke extensively, if rapidly, of what he sees as the false and destructive conceptual divide between casual and mainstream games. Casual games are supposed to be accessible, and mainstream games are supposed to be deep. Games that are deep yet accessible are thrust into one or the other camp largely on the basis of their presentation.

Humphrey’s solution, in part: “in-between” games. His definition is “a game that takes the depth and qualities of a core game and brings it into a place where casual gamers can appreciate it.”

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Baer, Alcorn Talk ‘Brown Box’ Beginnings, Industry Birth

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Baer started off by leaping back to the late ‘30s, the time before “electronics” was a noun. Back then, it was all about radio. Radio enthusiasts were radio hobbyists, and radios were simpler to build than a model Gundam. They were also a cultural phenomenon. Baer showed off an advertisement that read “Big Money in Radio – become a Radio Serviceman!” “Hey,” the young Baer realized. “I think this could be me.” So he spent the next few years dangling off roofs, installing wires through people’s windows.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

GameLab’s Zimmerman Says Casual Games are Dead (Sort Of)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

You can’t make money making casual games, Zimmerman said. It’s a broken business model for developers, with low royalties, a ton of middlemen, a high turnover of software, a hugely saturated market, and ever-increasing production values, therefore production cost. Finally, now that the casual industry is no longer just a little club in a back room, the “big boys” like EA have shouldered their way in, driving independent developers ever more to the periphery.

On the creative end, “Casual games began with a promise.” They were meant to be a meritocracy, Zimmerman said; smaller in scope, and therefore more conducive to experimentation than big-budget mainstream games. Instead, the field has “almost become a parody of itself… The degree of shameless clones seems, to my eye, to be more prevalent than other sectors of the game industry… I’m not seeing that innovation is rewarded.”

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Changing Face of Casual Games

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

The prime message for the Casual Games Summit this year is that the casual game market is expanding so much, trickling over into so many demographics, that the old, rather lazy ways of thinking about the format and its audience have begun to stifle the potential of casual games, and turn them into a bit of a mockery of themselves.

The target audience, declared Microsoft Casual Games’ Chris Early, is no longer the stereotypical soccer mom. “Everyone’s playing casual games now, and they’re playing them in places we never thought they’d play them before.” Everyone who works with a computer is now either a customer or a customer in the making. So the big new question is, “who are you going to design your game for?”

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The News Game: Using Neverwinter Nights To Teach Journalism

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Back in 2001, Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota started to think about tossing together journalists with game designers and theorists to discuss ways in which the medium’s give-and-take trial-and-error self-motivated approach to learning could be academically applied to the process of news-gathering. The timing was unfortunate, however, coming just after the dot-com implosion.

A few years later she pulled together a more academic discussion group on the matter, yet quickly became frustrated with the substitution of chin-stroking for practical application of any of their ideas. Whenever she suggested developing an actual teaching tool, everyone backed away, afraid how it would reflect on his tenure to be actively involved with anything using the word “game”.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Video Games To Build And Retain A TV Audience

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

In describing his recent game based on Discovery Channel Canada’s Race to Mars TV serial, Virtual Heroes‘ Randy Brown admitted that people often question how his project was a “serious game”. As an audience member asked toward the end of the session, what makes a community-fostering game more serious than a traditional licensed game? The general answer is that whereas, say, EA’s Lord of the Rings games are just designed to entertain, the games in this session are meant to further understanding of and enthusiasm for the associated subject, through providing the audience a realistic or “synergistic” experience – a slower, quieter exploration of the concepts at hand than would be feasible in a dramatic context.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )