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by Kyle Ackerman
Sometimes I miss New York City. Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV isn't the real New York City – it's a condensed caricature. But the fidelity made possible by the latest generation of consoles and the detail added by the team at Rockstar North made Liberty City close enough to the Big Apple to make me listen for the rumble of the subway and the mixed smells of burnt pretzels, sour garbage and laundry vents. The landmarks are all there, from Lincoln Center and Grant's tomb to Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster and the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows. (Different names, but still.) But it's not the landmarks that make Liberty City so accurate. It's the little details: the architecture in the nameless buildings; the style of familiar stores; the street-level garages of particular hotels; the barriers in the middle of streets; the ever-present scaffolding; and even the signs reminding me that it's a two-point offense to "block the box." The South Street Seaport was so perfect that I started to think "Hey... there should be a heliport just past the Seaport that I don't see." Then, as I cruised further south, the heliport popped into view, and I discovered I could take helicopter tours. The city felt so real that I was transported back to the city I was both ecstatic and sad to leave a few years ago. Sometimes realism &ndash even virtual realism &ndash isn't as great as it's cracked up to be.
by Kyle Ackerman
When gamers think about open-ended games these days, the Grand Theft Auto series is often the first sandbox-style series that comes to mind. But my fondest memories of exploring a seemingly-endless world come from piles of floppy disks, back when the Electronic Arts logo was an inexplicable amalgam of cube, sphere and pyramid. In 1986, not long after my chance to search the new world for the Seven Cities of Gold, Binary Systems helped me crew my ship to save Arth (no... not Earth, Arth).
Electronic Arts has made a series of offers to purchase Take-Two Interactive that recently became hostile. Take-Two Interactive's Board of Directors has formally rejected the offer and (of course!) recommends that its shareholders don't cooperate with Electronic Arts' $26 per share cash offer.
Electronic Arts has commenced its hostile takeover bid for Take-Two Electronics.
Electronic Arts began by making a series of friendly acquisition offers to Take-Two Interactive that rose to a price as high as $26 per share in cash. Take-Two rejected the offer, claiming that the bid was too low and that Take-Two would prefer to wait until after the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, when the company felt it would be in a stronger position. EA issued press releases, appealing to investors (and provoking a class action lawsuit contending that Take-Two was violating its fiduciary duty).
by Kyle Ackerman
I had a chance to sit down with David Hoffman, executive producer of OGPlanet, to talk about OGPlanet's business and latest game Cabal Online. OGPlanet is one of the companies in North America pursuing games that are free to play. As Hoffman explains, OGPlanet is specifically looking for quality games with a successful track record that the company can bring to the North American audience.
by Kyle Ackerman
E3 2007 was a success. But only for the publishers who didn't need it.
In its new format as the E3 Media & Business Summit, it wasn't a success for most publishers, who either showed the same material they had released in previous weeks or who were shut out of the new event. It wasn't a success for financial analysts or press, who mostly saw repeat performances of games and missed meeting with those esoteric companies and tiny publishers. Buyers gave the event a miss entirely. It wasn't even a success for the public, who enjoyed the spectacle of the old Electronic Entertainment Expo vicariously through the same press and company websites that bemoaned the old event. It may have been a success for a few publishers and developers who had meetings they easily could have held elsewhere.
Sony's press event at the 2007 E3 Media and Business Summit was the most like past years of any event, yet the least like Sony. Once again, Sony held its conference on a Culver City sound stage (though the conference setup took less than half the space of previous years, and had fewer than half the attendees). What made this year so different was that Sony seemed almost... humble. Starting with Jack Tretton's (President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America) self-effacing manner, Sony's tone was less smug than in past years.
Nintendo's press event at the 2007 E3 Media and Business Summit was the most remarkable of the three platform holders' events, in that Nintendo actually had a few surprises to throw at the crowd. To be clear, most of the Nintendo event was self-congratulatory, celebrating the success of the Wii and the DS with an endless stream of YouTube videos and clips from various news shows. The Wii, and its success so far, is a remarkable achievement, and Nintendo should be proud. But no one goes to such an event simply to hear a company gloat. We want news... announcements... actual content. And Nintendo did have a little content to offer.
Most of the conference, however, focused on the new gamers Nintendo has brought, and hopes yet to bring, into the gaming fold. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime declared, "this E3 marks a conclusive turning point for the video game industry" and called the event, "a coming-out party for an entire industry." He wasn't speaking of the mess that is the new E3 Media and Business Summit. Instead, he meant that video games are actually reaching a broader audience, demonstrating that everyone is, on some level, a gamer.
Microsoft's press conference for the E3 Media & Business Summit began this year with a group of five teenagers from Illinois playing music on a high school stage. Admittedly, the band (named Corporeal) was comprised of five exceptional youths, led by an electric violin, and they were playing the theme to Halo with a massive image of the Horsehead Nebula serving as a backdrop for screenshots of the upcoming Halo 3. The stage, too, was a bit fancier than that first sentence lets on. The Santa Monica High School outdoor amphitheater was dressed to the nines, decked out with a high-tech backdrop, an enormous screen and enough flat-panel TVs to make an entire college frat house drool. But it was still a couple of teenagers on a school stage.
In the fall of 1997, I moved to New York City for my first year of undergraduate school at NYU. While settling in and looking for a new job in The City, a friend, aware of my video game fascination, circled an ad in the Village Voice looking for game testers at Acclaim Entertainment. I joked that this was the perfect job for me (as people often had), but decided it really was too good to be true when I found out they were located on Long Island. At the time, I was dating a guy who lived in Montauk (the LI spot furthest from NYC) – so my idea of Long Island was of this place an ungodly distance from the city, and no matter how great the opportunity, I looked into it no further.
Kyle Ackerman
As a creator of worlds, Richard Garriott has a kingly air – he is the sovereign of his fantasy worlds, just as Lord British reigns over the worlds in the Ultima series. By contrast, Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, comes across as the burgeoning Adam Smith of Second Life, a man more interested in shifting away from the monarchy of game design and creating an information and content-based economy.
Gamers have been waiting since 1997 for a true sequel to the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII. Despite the many Final Fantasy games released since then, none have resolved the events begun in that game. While the final release date is yet unannounced, the sequel is on its way. And it looks as staggeringly beautiful as Square Enix's CG sequences typically look. But it isn't interactive. As many of you have known since this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a film that will be released on DVD.
Recently, Eastman Kodak Company started publicly showing prototypes of its Stereoscopic Imaging Display system. It sounds complicated, but it is simply a device to display three-dimensional images without needing to rely on another set of filters (like polarized lenses) between your eyes and the screen. The current prototype looks a bit like the sensory apparatus on the set of a 1950's era space opera, but is surprisingly comfortable to use. You may have to plant your face in huge visor for the time being, but Kodak hopes that after additional research and several iterations of the technology, the Stereoscopic Imaging Display will become a device that can comfortably sit in the living room, and that multiple people will be able to use it to view three-dimensional images from a comfortable distance – like a couch.
Kyle AckermanNew York, New York
The tour's official site: www.nintendofusiontour.com
It's no wonder Nintendo is sponsoring a tour headlined by Evanescence. The band is certainly popular – enough to completely fill Webster Hall in New York City with a screaming crowd – but that alone doesn't explain Nintendo's interest in sharing the marquee. Amy Lee, vocalist and front woman for Evanescence, strode onto the stage in a dress like Alice's (of Wonderland), but in pink and white, with sneakers and a single striped stocking on her right leg. The white parts of the dress were defaced with magic marker words and phrases such as "psycho," "slut," "I Will Endure," "woman" and "Insane." She described her outfit to the crowd as innocence destroyed and defaced. To the crowd at Webster Hall, she was more than a music idol – she's part of Nintendo's bid for adulthood.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
Like swallows returning to San Capistrano or buzzards to Hinkley, Ohio, I have returned to my native land &ndash Texas. While FI headquarters remains in New York (at least until I persuade them of Texas' virtues), one of the majesties of modern telecommunications is that home base can be anywhere you are. I am a one-man mobile outpost. I assume it is only a matter of time before I turn into a Snow Crash gargoyle, collecting and disseminating information, spewing data back to central command with the hope that some of it proves useful. Or perhaps I'm getting carried away. Nevertheless, the idea of maintaining a Texas outpost strikes me as an amazing thing. That paperless office that technophiles promised the world is nowhere in sight, but, at least for folks in a business like ours, the mobile office is very much a reality. In any event, in celebration of my return to the mother country, permit me to blurt "y'all" loudly. Y'ALL!
Mobile entertainment is rapidly expanding. Developers have flocked to recent sessions on mobile gaming at conferences such as the Game Developers Conference, and consumers are increasingly discovering mobile gaming. Sure, gamers can play solitaire or bowl on their phones, but they can also play games based on major licenses, closer to the quality of a Game Boy Color game. Read on to learn more about Gameloft, an established company with access to Ubi Soft's licenses.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
Two disparate events were held last week in Las Vegas. The "D.I.C.E. summit" is a series of lectures and panel discussions held one at a time in an auditorium in the Hard Rock Hotel. The individual segments range from paeans (to Syd Mead, Shigeru Miyamoto and Yu Suzuki) to design lessons, and war stories (David Jones, Chris Taylor and others) to business issues (Seamus Blackley, BioWare and a panel on digital delivery). The summit is a welcome event in a number of ways. It builds camaraderie and a sense of community in a way that, say, E3 is incapable of doing. Here, industry types gather to give away their secrets and share their experiences rather than hawk their wares. (Well, mostly.) The summit also marks an important stage of industry development – the industry is old enough to have stories and best practices to share, as well as heroes about whom songs of praise may be sung. The limited number of talks, consecutively presented, also encourages you to listen in on a topic you might otherwise give a miss. Who'd have thunk it, but the panel discussion on digital delivery was one of the liveliest of the talks of the summit. It was lively in part because half the panel was pitching its business products. That made for some less than totally objective speechifying, but it also gave the other half of the panel something to argue against. We almost had a "When Good Nerds Go Bad" video on our hands. While the DICE summit doesn't even come close to garnering the appeal for the average gamer that E3 does, it can boast a wonderful sense of safety and community for those who think digital delivery really is something worth getting worked up about.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
On Tuesday, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed piece from a semi-regular contributor by the name of Verlyn Klinkenborg. Reading his past pieces, you get the sense he's an older fellow (I think he lives in the upstate New York countryside). This particular column is about his adventures with the Xbox and Blinx the Time Sweeper. The starting point for Klinkenborg's adventure was simple curiosity. He hadn't played a video game since Pong, but has been reading the news – he knows that video games are now big business. So, he ups and buys an Xbox, a handful of games, and settles in.
When Boris Karloff portrayed Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 film, Frankenstein, immortalizing the oblong-headed, neck-bolted beast from beyond the grave, an objectionable scene was removed. The monster comes across a young girl by a lake, and, surprisingly, she is not frightened of him. He approaches and plays with the girl, at one point throwing her into the lake with a wide, playful grin on his scarred visage. The girl laughs, and attempts to climb out. The monster, though, is enjoying his game, and keeps throwing her back in, until, inevitably, she drowns, leaving the pitiable creature saddened and wondering what has happened to his playmate. The scene demonstrated two things: first, that the monster was amoral, rather than evil, as it clearly showed his lack of understanding. Secondly, it showed the public what has long been considered the most objectionable of all images – violence directed towards children. It's removal from the final cut of the film resulted in a crucial absence of the monster's child-like innocence in his actions, while protecting the public from the powerful horror of the death of a small child. Clearly, though, the scene was crucial to the portrayal of that monster, and its removal transformed him from a confused creature who didn't know any better, to the vengeful beast that crept up on unsuspecting villagers. This raises the issue of whether violent video games can claim the same kind of intrinsic value in their violence.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
Two regulatory issues steal the lion's share of gaming industry focus these days: software piracy and video game violence. The piracy issue gets well-rounded treatment from a variety of interested parties. Game makers rightfully defend their work, and consumers rightfully resist draconian and overbroad intrusions into innocent fair use. Both sides are represented by dedicated advocacy groups. Treatment of the violence issue, by contrast, is actually much less developed than you might think. Here, too, gamers rightfully resist overbroad measures designed to "protect" children, but that resistance fights only the overbreadth, not the central premise of the argument. Where is the defense of violence itself?
Though many of us delve into computer games for a brief respite from the vagaries of reality, the world of business has a way of creeping into every facet of life. The business of putting games on store shelves is fraught with risk. New developers appear, and old developers vanish. For example, Kalisto, an independent French Developer responsible for titles such as Nightmare Creatures, filed for bankruptcy in February and was ordered to liquidate (close shop and sell off all their assets) by a French court. Maximum Charisma, developer of the ill-fated online game Fighting Legends, disappeared in a rumored bankruptcy. Development teams are often disbanded upon the completion of a project.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
Hell is other people, said French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Having endured the long-haul flights connecting Los Angeles and New York for the trip to E3, it's easy enough to agree, at least, that Hell is other people in airports. Why people insist on carrying 8 lbs of metal on their person, each ounce of which must be separately removed and inspected by airport security, is beyond my understanding. I have just one word for travelers: plastics. I have also (nearly) resolved to declare bedroom slippers as my travel footwear of choice in light of how frequently security requires me to remove my shoes.
Sartre's famous epigram popped into my head while listening to IDSA president Doug Lowenstein's opening comments to the media on Wednesday morning. Among many other subjects, Lowenstein discussed massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). In particular, Lowenstein hinted at the contrast between the sizeable push into online gaming of both PC and console game makers and the relatively small portion of the gaming community that participates in online gaming, persistent world gaming especially. The chief culprit for this low uptake is, to Lowenstein's way of thinking, the failure of internet service providers (ISPs) to deliver us to the promised land of a chicken in every pot and broadband connectivity in every computer room. And he's probably right about that. North American broadband penetration is embarrassingly low, and growth, while palpable, remains slow. Broadband connections are not required to play most online games, but they enhance the experience immeasurably. Still, thinking of Sartre, broadband penetration isn't the only problem online gaming, and persistent world gaming in particular, must resolve.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
As we at FI prepare to head off to E3, stunning in its excess, I am put in mind of a new front in the current war on computer and video games. It seems not a week goes by in which video games aren't blamed for some great evil in the world, particularly for inducing youth violence and assorted anti-social tendencies. History tells us these charges are preposterous. Books, theater, movies and music... even Elvis' hips have been blamed for destroying young minds. Thomas and Harriet Bowdler produced a work called Family Shakespeare in 1818 designed to make Shakespeare more suitable for impressionable young ears (their legacy gives us the modern English word "bowdlerization," meaning the process of prudishly censoring something). Even in the 19th Century, the cry of "We've got to protect the children" rang out. Rightfully, it seems silly now, and I hold out hope that in time this anti-video game crusade will seem silly as well. It really doesn't matter whether video games never approach Shakespeare's level of art; that wasn't the Bowdlers' concern. They were concerned about harming children. They were wrong, and the anti-video game crowd is wrong, as well.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
This week's Monday Morning pauses to respond to a couple of astute email questions and comments FI has received. The first concerns our write-up of a news item about women gamers and gender issues online. The second is a question following up on the last Monday Morning column regarding end-user license agreements. We appreciate your questions and comments, so, by all means, keep them coming.
by Robert de los Reyes, Esq.
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Monday Morning column. It is my intention to use this column to offer more depth in our news coverage as well as to discuss matters that may not rate as "news," but are nevertheless worth talking about. Sometimes, I suspect, this column may even be about nothing at all – they can't all be gems. Let me confess at the outset that I have no pretension that the Monday Morning column will appear every Monday morning. I do promise, however, that when this column appears, it will appear on a Monday morning (else why design such a smashing logo?).
In any event, today's column is a little heavier and a little longer than most will be, but the topic touches every gamer. Today I offer a (relatively) quick and dirty rundown of the U.S. law concerning those much-maligned End User License Agreements (EULAs). Don't worry, this isn't a law review article, and I'll keep the legalese to a bare minimum. Buckle up.
by Kyle Ackerman
Richard Garriott is a pioneer in the computer gaming industry, and creator of the Ultima series, a dynasty of games which has sold millions of copies over more than twenty years. The Ultima series began with Akalabeth and Ultima I, and has continued through Ultima IX and Ultima Online, which revolutionized multiplayer online gaming. Garriott is also the alter-ego of the legendary Lord British, ruler of Britannia, a kingdom located in the world of the Ultima games.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Richard Garriott at the D.I.C.E. summit (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) in Las Vegas on March 1st, a conference at which computer gaming professionals discussed their approach to creating games and pushing the boundaries of interactive entertainment. We discussed Mr. Garriott's beginnings, the evolution of the Ultima series; the concept of virtue; and its impact on villainy in online worlds. Richard "Lord British" Garriott talked about his alter-ego, his role in the game Lineage, and Lineage's expansion into North America. Finally, he revealed a bit about his life outside of gaming and his love for real-life adventure and exploration.
At least since the advent of fighting games like Mortal Kombat and first person shooter (FPS) games like Doom, both individuals and groups have expressed concern over the effects of video game violence on the mental and emotional development of the children who play them. For such individuals, the Columbine High School shootings confirmed what they already knew. As it spread through the media that the two teen Columbine killers had played FPS games (what other games they played went unreported), mere concern and uneasiness about violent video games hardened for these people into moral certitude. According to them, whatever other events may be contributing to violence in our society, these video games are certainly part of the problem.
It is not the purpose of this article to debate the merits of the proposition that violent video games breed violent children. For these purposes, the important points are that some people believe this proposition to be true, and, among them, those with legislative and judicial power have undertaken to act upon their belief. Two responses, one in the U.S. and one in Germany, to the "threat" of violent video games form the subject of this article. It is worth noting that while the actions in both countries were confined to the (attempted) regulation of arcade games only, there is no particular reason why the logic of these actions would not also apply to console and PC games.
