Gaming and Culture

You might think that starting a brand-new, high-quality, full-glossy magazine in one of the worst publishing environments in years would be a suicidal business idea. After all, take a look at just about any magazine you can think of, and, thanks to the veritable collapse of advertising, odds are it's about as thin as can be.

But to the folks at Future--a leading games media publisher--the time couldn't be better to launch World of Warcraft: The Magazine, a new quarterly title that is expected to be unveiled at this weekend's BlizzCon event--the world's biggest World of Warcraft fanfest--in Anaheim, Calif. The magazine will be the "official" WoW magazine, and is both endorsed by and produced with the editorial cooperation of WoW publisher Activision Blizzard.

And, indeed, the timing for the forthcoming magazine is clever: The first issue is planned for sometime this fall, just as WoW celebrates its fifth anniversary. And with an astounding 11.5 million players of the game now spread out around the world, Future is hoping that by promising potential readers stunning artwork, behind-the-scenes looks at ongoing development, deep dives into the game's lore, and perhaps even occasional scoops about new features or other WoW elements, it will offer fans an invaluable experience. In fact, Future sees this magazine as something along the lines of a collectible coffee table book.

Still, Future has chosen a difficult business model for the new publication. Each issue is expected to be 148 pages long, with precisely zero ads, which means that the title is shut off from traditional magazine revenues, and therefore will rely entirely on subscription fees. On the other hand, that same dynamic also means that it should be shielded from the vagaries of the advertising market, something that is currently taking down one magazine after another.

According to Future, World of Warcraft: The magazine will be offered for subscription only--no single copy sales--with U.S. readers paying $40 annually, those in continental Europe 35 euros and the British 30 pounds. The magazine will be published in English, French, German, and Spanish.

"The magazine market is suffering a rough time," said John Gower, the international director of FuturePlus, the title's publisher, "but only those magazines that are based on advertising models. We've seen our magazines increasing across the board, especially the hobbyist" titles.

That may be true, but in order to support what the publishers say will be a costly blend of commissioned art, in-depth articles written by veteran journalists and behind-the-scenes access, Future will have to convince a great deal of its players that it's worth their while to pony up $40 on top of their $15 monthly game subscription fees, even as those same players can find an enormous amount of WoW-related information online.

And that proposition is clearly not for everyone, even some of the most passionate WoW players.

SAN FRANCISCO--It will likely come as no surprise to anyone familiar with virtual worlds and online games that they can be hacked. But what might come as a shock is the sheer breadth of types of exploits that are possible.

That was the broad message of a Thursday panel called, appropriately, "Exploiting Online Games" at the RSA 2009 security conference here.

Moderated by Gary McGraw, CTO of software security consulting firm Cigital and an author of several books, the panel took the audience on a deep dive into the diverse ways that hackers and others have figured out to either skim real money or to gain game play advantages not available to normal players.

McGraw opened the panel with a brief explanation of the fact that there are real, functioning economies in virtual worlds and online games, and that players cash in their virtual goods for real money, to the tune of more than $1 billion a year. This, of course, is old news to those in game playing circles, but for many of the security experts in the room, it may well have been eye-opening.

And, McGraw said, it's the very fact that real money is at stake that often gets otherwise uninterested game players to pay attention to the security risks they face every day.

"There's a whole bunch of normals (those not steeped in knowledge about computers) using games, and they don't care about security," McGraw said. "But they like their stuff, (and) when their stuff gets taken, that really hurts the hell out of them. That's a way to start a conversation about computer security with normals, because almost everybody knows somebody who plays online games."

The first panelist to present was Greg Hoglund, the founder of Rootkit.com and the CEO of the consulting firm, HBGary. He explained that online games are regularly under attack by two discrete types of cheats: exploits--actual bugs in games that clever hackers have figured out how to mine in various ways, and bots, which are essentially automated macros that can be used to perform mundane tasks again and again and again, and very profitably.

The bugs, Hoglund said, often exist "at the borders of systems," and are used for things such as duplicating gold, or leveraging poor synchronization between back-end databases to extract money out of a game economy or even to gain teleportation powers that otherwise don't exist.

Hoglund also recalled a security expert who figured out a hack that allowed him not only to filch Second Life users' virtual currency--which is directly convertible to US dollars--but also to get ahold of users' credit card information and then use it to buy more of the currency to trade in. That exploit, Hoglund explained, was done only to prove that it could be done, but it underlined some of the significant risks facing players of online games and virtual worlds with functioning economies, as well as the publishers of those titles.

He also talked about bots, and explained that they, too, are often employed to gain an advantage most players don't have. They are almost universally prohibited, but Hoglund said creating them and using them is remarkably easy for those who know what they're doing. And he talked about one he had written to use in World of Warcraft that allowed his character to stay safe from attack from the rear, while also luring in loot-bearing enemies to kill. Once killed, the enemies would be regenerated by the bot, allowing Hoglund's character to kill them and pick off all their loot over and over again, a process that netted him significant profit, he hinted.

Similarly, he explained that games like World of Warcraft have vulnerabilities that allow savvy hackers to tap into the games' code, allowing for all kinds of new abilities, like being able to perform 15 charms at once, not available to the public at large.

Hoglund said companies like WoW publisher Blizzard are always actively trying to stop players from employing bots and ban those they catch, but added that for those who know what they're doing, detection is not something to worry about. And that, of course, is one of the explanations behind the so-called gold "farmers," often teams working in third-world countries whose job it is to run multiple accounts simultaneously, usually employing bots to perform gold-earning tasks and essentially just making sure that their in-game characters don't get "lodged in a tree."

Courts weigh in
Next up was Sean Kane, a partner with the New York law firm of Drakeford & Kane, and a leading voice on issues surrounding the law and virtual worlds.

Kane talked about two specific cases, one that is several years old and one that is much more recent.

The older case, Bragg v. Linden Research, focused on whether Linden, the publisher of the virtual world Second Life, was right to shut down the account of a user who had discovered an exploit allowing him to buy virtual land at below-market prices. Mark Bragg, the plaintiff, demanded $8,000 in restitution and eventually won a settlement from Linden in which his account was reinstated. But that only happened, Kane pointed out, after a federal judge ruled that the arbitration clause in the Second Life terms of service was onerous and one-sided.

At the time, the entire virtual world community had been watching the case closely, as many thought it would be the case that for the first time established the real-world value of virtual goods (and despite the fact that Bragg, himself a lawyer, had filed his suit in state court with a hand-written form), However, the settlement, not long after the federal judge's ruling, side-stepped that outcome.

But what many found interesting at the time was that Bragg had argued his hack was fair game, since all he did was exploit a feature hidden in the Second Life code. In effect, Bragg argued, code is law, and anything that players can do with the tools at their disposal is legitimate. Linden obviously disagreed, but ended up settling anyway.

Kane also focused on another case, MDY Industries v. Blizzard, in which MDY had created a bot, called Glider, that allowed players to level-up their characters without even having to be playing.

Blizzard sued for copyright infringement, arguing that bots like Glider were prohibited under its end-user license agreement (EULA) and that only that license actually allowed players to run WoW. In essence, the argument said that by running WoW under circumstances that violated the EULA, Glider was supporting copyright infringement.

Ultimately, though many argued that Blizzard's argument was beyond specious, the courts ruled in favor of the publisher, awarding it $6 million. But, not surprisingly, the outcome is on appeal.

Hacking Disney
Aaron Portnoy, a researcher with Tippingpoint security research, took the microphone next and talked briefly about his experiences hacking the Python code of the Disney online game, Pirates of the Caribbean. He explained that because Python is a dynamic language, he and a colleague had needed just a couple of days to reverse-engineer all of the game's code, and were able to use their exploit to get their in-game characters to do things that were otherwise impossible.

During a panel on exploiting online games, Tippingpoint's Aaron Portnoy talked about how he and a colleague discovered that Disney's online game Pirates of the Caribbean was written in Python, a language that allowed them to reverse-engineer the game's code in just two days. The result was that Portnoy's character was able to fly high in the sky, whereas everyone else in the game was limited to jumps of just four feet high.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

For example, Portnoy said, he was able to easily get his character to jump high in the air, while the standard maximum jump was just about four feet. Or, to jump out of a pirate ship, walk on water at a speed faster than sailing ships in the game could travel, and attack at will.

"Everybody could see my guy jumping over buildings for miles," Portnoy said.

And, given how easy he and his colleague found it to reverse-engineer the code, Portnoy said, "It's almost like (Disney) didn't even consider security."

Gaming the games
Last up was Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins. He talked, also relatively briefly, about how easy it is for some cheaters to exploit the game of online poker.

Essentially, Rubin argued, a hack called a Sybil attack--which employs fake people participating in games--makes it possible for online poker players to gain a big advantage over their opponents. That works, he said, by making it possible for a single player to control multiple hands in a game, allowing that person to see more cards than they would otherwise, and get a better handle on the odds of their own hand.

For example, he said, in a game of Texas Hold'em, a player employing a Sybil attack on an online poker game could control multiple hands and see things like whether the fives or eights they need to complete a full house and beat an opposing player's flush had already been played.

Rubin's point, then, was that game operators need to work harder at identity management, in order to keep players from employing such exploits. He didn't, however, offer any solutions as to how to do that.

All told, the panelists made it clear that just about any kind of online game or virtual world--especially those where money is on the line--is subject to some kind of hack or exploit, and that for those with the skills to launch such attacks, the barriers stopping them are easily surmountable.

The lesson, then, is that publishers of such games need to think harder about how to manage their players' actions and expectations. Otherwise, players may find themselves in games that are so compromised that the economies collapse and the fun disappears.

The WoW Pod can be seen at the the MIT Museum from March through September.

(Credit: MIT)

As if World of Warcrafters needed another way to isolate themselves from the world, the WoW Pod, as described by its creators at MIT, is "an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WoW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs." Translation: it's an individual bungalow simulating the look and feel of an authentic hut within the Azeroth universe, and if you think the outside is scary, wait until you open the door.

Once inside the tiny space, you'll notice that it's entirely self-contained, and that's to discourage the player from ever leaving. Almost all basic human needs are provided, including a throne that doubles as a toilet (gross), a cookpot, stovetop, and, of course, a computer and monitor for WoWing.

All you need in one pod.

(Credit: MIT)

Most importantly, the hut solves one of WoW's biggest pitfalls: breaks. See, a quick pause of the game to take a break can be catastrophic to a player's avatar. Even a bathroom run or a simple snack can result in death, or worse, banishment from one's guild, so anything a player can do to restrict distraction is good. And here's where it gets scary.

When a player gets hungry playing inside the hut, he or she just selects one of the prepackaged food packs on the wall (labeled "Soothing Turtle Bisque" and Beer Basted Ribs" to further the fantasy), holds the printed semacode under a scanner, and places it on the hot plate. From here, the hardware takes over and physically adjusts the hotplate to cook the food for the right amount of time while the player's corresponding avatar pauses the game and loudly announces the progress to others in the realm: "Vorcon's meal is about to be done!" "Better eat the ribs while they're hot!"

InstantAction is a new service launching Tuesday that offers publishers and game developers a new model for getting their work in front of players, all without having to go through retail outlets. The service is starting with nine games, but it can support nearly any game.

(Credit: InstantAction.com)

Game developers looking for a new way to get their work in front of large audiences may soon have a new tool that could allow them to bypass the restrictive and risk-averse world of retailers.

A new service, known as InstantAction, is set to officially launch Tuesday. It aims to free developers, both inside and outside big publishers, from the traditional distribution constraints of selling PC- or console-based games.

The idea behind InstantAction is to provide developers with an end-to-end process for putting their games online, making them browser-based and making it possible for players to easily join their friends' games at any time, without the need for a proprietary service like Microsoft's Xbox Live.

And unlike the growing number of casual games, 2D virtual worlds, and Flash-based virtual-world platforms, InstantAction promises to support complete versions of just about any full-scale, or AAA, game a publisher wants to make available online. Brett Sayler, vice president of technology for InstantAction, said the service offers the first high-quality 3D games on the Web.

While the service's technology could, in theory, support a game like "World of Warcraft" or any number of titles from a publisher like Electronic Arts, it's more likely that, in the early going, at least, the service would be utilized by less-established publishers.

"The people this would likely appeal to are major publishers and game developers who," said Sayler, "are unsatisfied with the gaming-(distribution) options available right now."

Good match for Atari?
As a hypothetical example, Sayler pointed to Atari, which, in its current iteration--wholly owned by Infogrames, it is not the high-flying company it once was--has struggled to find substantial traction with retailers and consumers.

"Atari is a well-known brand with good (titles)," Sayler said, "fighting a losing battle at retail."

Working with InstantAction, Sayler said, still speaking hypothetically, Atari could make some or all of its games available to consumers via the Web in a matter of months, bypassing big-box retailers and game-centric franchises in the process and, therefore, being able to concentrate more on building its games.

Another advantage that InstantAction offers its partners, Sayler said, is browser-based. Because the games are played--and authenticated--through a Web browser, they are intended to be much harder, if not impossible, to pirate, meaning that publishers can stop worrying about digital rights management. That, said Sayler, is something that has bedeviled PC game makers.

While you may think that the economic news is totally bleak, the video game industry seems like it may well be one very bright exception to the worldwide gloom.

Bolstering the theory that the industry may be recession-proof, or at least better positioned to weather the storm than most, the video game business posted a startlingly strong November, according to figures released Thursday by the analyst firm, NPD Group.

NPD reported that overall, the industry posted sales of $2.91 billion, up 10 percent from $2.64 billion in November 2007. And for the year, sales stand at $16.04 billion, up 22 percent from $13.14 billion through November a year ago.

This is good news, clearly, for those in video games, but also a rare ray of sunshine on an otherwise destitute economy, particularly, NPD pointed out, because the November sales numbers included seven less post-Thanksgiving days than last year.

Once again, the biggest winner was Nintendo, which sold an astounding 2.04 million Wiis, as well as 1.57 million Nintendo DS handhelds. By contrast, Microsoft moved what it said was a company November record of 836,000 Xbox 360s and Sony sold just 378,000 PlayStation 3s and 421,000 PlayStation Portables.

November, therefore, was a major vindication for Nintendo, whose Wii far outsold the Xbox 360, despite Microsoft's having dropped the price of its lowest cost console to $199, lower even than the Wii's sticker price of $249.

However, Microsoft can smile about the fact that the two top-selling console games SKUs in November were for the Xbox, Gears of War 2, with 1.56 million units sold, and Call of Duty: World at War, with 1.41 million moved. The PS3 version of Call of Duty sold just 597,000 copies.

Activision Blizzard also has bragging rights, however, as its World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King sold a record 2.8 million copies on its launch day, November 13, alone. Figures aren't available for the full month.

So, it's clear that video games are doing well right now. The question that faces the industry--now more so than other sectors, though--is whether it can sustain its success in the face of a global recession the likes of which haven't been seen since the Great Depression. It's one thing to sell well before the holidays. It's quite another to do well once the gifts have all been opened and people are realizing they have no jobs and their houses are worth less than their mortgages.

Still, it's nice to see a sign that consumers are still willing to spend their hard-earned and dwindling dollars. Let's hope that continues to be true.

Stay tuned.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to the mega-popular online game, sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours last week, setting what its publisher said is an all-time record for PC games.

According to Blizzard Entertainment, Wrath of the Lich King, broke the one-day PC game sales record of 2.4 million copies, which was set 22 months earlier by The Burning Crusade, the first WoW expansion.

'Wrath of the Lich King,' the second 'World of Warcraft' expansion, sold 2.8 million copies in its first day, netting Blizzard Entertainment a one-day PC game sales record.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

The new expansion was launched simultaneously in North America, Europe, Chile, Argentina, and Russia.

And at $40 a copy, the game would have brought in $112 million on its first day, though Blizzard would get somewhat less than that given that retailers pay the publisher less than full sticker price.

There are currently more than 11 million WoW players worldwide, and some analysts had predicted that as many as half might upgrade to Lich King. Given that, to play Lich King, players would have had to also upgrade from the original WoW to Burning Crusade, and that they pay a $15-a-month subscription fee, many have estimated that WoW is at least a $1 billion-a-year franchise.

And since the economy is heading into a serious worldwide recession, it is notable that the new WoW expansion has done so well out of the gate. Many are worried that retail sales will be down across the board. Some argue however that video games will do better than other products because people tend to want to spend money on entertainment when times are tough.

The inside of the 'Wrath of the Lich King' retail box teases players with a challenge. The expansion to the hugely popular 'World of Warcraft' goes on sale tonight at midnight.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

For World of Warcraft players who over the years have grown accustomed to seeing busy in-world auction houses, the last few weeks may have seemed odd.

Normally bustling with players eager to buy or sell weapons, clothing, armor, or other goods, business at the auction houses has recently slowed to a crawl. But it's not because of the global economic crisis.

Rather, say WoW aficionados, players have been hoarding their gold in anticipation of the release Thursday of the game's latest expansion, , and holding off on buying items that would soon be obsolete.

This is just one example of players of the hugely popular massively multiplayer online game behaving differently as Lich King's release approaches.

The game will go on sale nationwide after midnight (12 a.m.) Thursday, and retail stores expect lines across the country.

With more powerful Nvidia graphics processors, the new MacBook Pro could finally be a machine hard-core gamers can use.

(Credit: Apple Inc.)

While Macs have long been the preferred computer of the creative class, gamers have generally looked at the machines and said, essentially, thanks but no thanks.

That tech truism could be on the verge of disappearing forever in the wake of Apple's announcement Tuesday that the newest high-end MacBook Pro model will have the graphics processing firepower--thanks to the inclusion of the Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT chip--to finally give hard-core video game players what they want.

"It's more of a gaming machine than the old MacBook Pro," said Mike Schramm, a blogger who writes for both the video game site Joystiq and The Unofficial Apple Weblog. "The weak point in Apple's hardware has always been the integrated graphics chip. The computers have always been blazing fast, but the 3D graphics have been chugging away on an old Intel chip. And the new Nvidia chips will fix that problem."

Schramm himself said that he plans to eventually buy one of the new MacBook Pros to indulge his passion for World of Warcraft, and he said he expects that many games that have traditionally run only on PCs will now be Mac friendly.

In its announcement Tuesday, Apple said that the new MacBook Pros will come with both the Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor and the more powerful GeForce 9600M GT. The new machines are designed, Apple said, to offer "up to five times" the 3D graphics power of the previous generation of MacBook Pros.

The upshot, then, seems to be that for the first time, Macs will be able to hold their own as gaming machines, even if they are not quite at the elite level.

"I think that outside of the guys like Alienware...you'll get a pretty good gaming experience out of this," said Patrick Wang, a senior research analyst at Wedbush Morgan. "For guys who want to have gaming, but don't want to spend all that much, those guys will be more than happy with the MacBook Pro."

Wang added that the 9600M GT is not Nvidia's highest-end processor and that going much beyond that level would likely have proved to be too expensive for Apple.

But he said that with most games, MacBook Pro users would not notice the difference. In some cases, as with the most graphics-intensive games, Wang predicted that the frame rates of the new Macs would be slightly lower than on the best gaming machines.

"I don't think it's going to be enough for the highest-end gamer," Wang said. "For bleeding edge graphics, those guys will probably stick with Falcon Northwest or Alienware" computers.

But because the new MacBook Pros will feature DirectX 10.1, an important gaming software standard, the computers should be able to run most PC games and should allow developers to reach out to the Mac market, said Wang.

For Joe Stanziano, a longtime Mac user and a technology support specialist from Harleysville, Pa., the promise of new MacBook Pros with advanced video cards is nothing short of exciting.

"I've always been a Mac fan," said Stanziano. "I currently have one of the older-generation MacBook Pros...(and) coming out with those new video cards and the new display, I think it'll be great for gaming."

Stanziano added that he thinks the MacBook Pros have suffered as a result of the "crappy" integrated video cards they've had, but with the addition of the two new Nvidia cards, the computers should now be on par with many high-end PC gaming machines.

For Schramm, the coming week should reveal just how suitable the new Macs are for gamers.

That's because Far Cry 2, the new first-person shooter from Ubisoft, comes out this week.

"If that can run in Boot Camp on these (new) machines," Schramm said, "anything can."

Schramm also pointed out that, in his opinion, Apple has been indicating for a while that it wants to be seen as a maker of gamer-friendly computers.

"I think Apple is dipping their toe in finally," Schramm said. "They're not going to own the market, but they're realizing that people who buy computers buy games. They're still not aiming at the folks who play Far Cry 2, but they are aiming at the folks who play World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero.