Mass Effect 2
(Credit: BioWare)In recent years, the U.S. role-playing game landscape has become decidedly dominated by Western-based games, like Mass Effect 2 and the recently released Dragon Age: Origins. But according to Greg Zeschuk, co-founder of role-playing game company BioWare, Japanese developers might have only themselves to blame.
Speaking in an interview with Destructoid, Zeschuk said "the fall of the Japanese RPG (JRPG) in large part is due to a lack of evolution, a lack of progression." Zeschuk added that developers "kept delivering the same thing over and over. They make the dressing better, they look prettier, but it's still the same experience."
But Zeschuk wasn't done. He said the same methods used years ago to advance a story are still being employed in today's Japanese RPGs.
"My favorite thing, it's funny when you still see it, but the joke of some of the dialogue systems where it asks, 'do you wanna do this or this,' and you say no. 'Do you wanna do this or this?' No. 'Do you wanna do this or this?' No. Lemme think--you want me to say 'yes.' And that, unfortunately, really characterized the JRPG."
As someone who absolutely loves role-playing games, that's a tough pill to swallow. I can still remember the good ol' days playing Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete to its completion in an almost nonstop gaming session.
At the same time, Zeschuk makes a point. RPGs are not what they used to be. They have evolved. And so far, the vast majority of Japanese-based RPGs that I've played recently reflect that same, old-school feeling. It's not always a bad thing, of course, but for the broader U.S. audience, if Zeschuk can be believed, it's starting to hurt sales.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
TweetDeck gets promotional with a Sherlock Holmes movie theme.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)In a sign that both the movie industry and the Twitter industry are adapting to the times, TweetDeck released a promotional version of its Twitter-user software that sports a look and function tied to Warner Bros.' Sherlock Holmes movie and related 221B video game.
The Sherlock Holmes promotional version is called TweetDeck Telegram Co. and sports black-and-white icons and a couple period touches that try, but don't really succeed, to make you think you're in the 19th century. It also adds a new column for 221B-related tweets that tie into the online video game.
"Alongside the development of our core products we've also been partnering up with a select group of bands, record labels, movie studios, and media companies to develop themed TweetDecks," said TweetDeck founder and Chief Executive Iain Dodsworth in a blog post Monday. "These special TweetDecks not only offer a potentially radical look and feel but also a dedicated channel straight to the artist or movie alongside the usual TweetDeck columns."
These special TweetDecks are a nice idea, especially for a start-up in search of new revenue sources. But here's what I don't like: you must install a new version of the software.
Happily, Adobe Systems' AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) foundation makes this reasonably easy. But I'd much rather have a TweetDeck skin that does the trick, especially because uninstalling this to go back to regular TweetDeck is another hoop to jump through.
TweetDeck, for those unfamiliar with the software, lets you get more out of Twitter by constantly publishing tweets from those you follow, categorizing those you follow, shortening Web addresses, and automating various administrative tasks. It also can act as a front end to Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.
Twitter is a free service and TweetDeck is free software to use it. Promotional deals are one way to make money off the ecosystem. Another, apparently, are Twitter's search deals with Google and Microsoft.
They may not realize it or admit to it, but women who play Everquest II log in more hours than men or teenagers, are less likely to quit, and report being not only healthier but happier than their male counterparts, according to new research out of the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism.
A new study unveils surprising details about the health, age, sexuality, honesty, and commitment level of the 20 percent of Everquest II players who are female.
(Credit: Sony Online Entertainment)The data reveals that while 80 percent of players in the study of 7,000 are male, and averaged 25 hours of play a week, the 20 percent who are female averaged 29 hours a week. And that's not all. Women underestimated their playing time more than men did.
"The women play more intensely than the guys do," says Dmitri Williams, assistant professor at the school for communications who led the study, "Looking for Gender" (PDF here). "They're less likely to quit, and they're happier playing...They [also] play more than they admit."
All you guys out there getting excited about these results need know that five times as many women who play Everquest II report being bisexual (15 percent) than women in the general population (3 percent). They also weigh less and exercise more than males and females in the general population. I know, I know, they're starting to sound perfect in that glistening, avatar kind of way.
But anyone up for some matchmaking should note that more than 60 percent of women who play do so with a "romantic partner," compared to only 25 percent of men. (The average age of all players in the study, by the way, was 31.)
I asked Williams, who reports that men are happier playing without their partners than women, whether it's possible that men simply have a harder time finding someone to play with than women. (Sounds rather like Life Beyond EQ2, too.) He replied by e-mail:
The happiness measures were questions about life in general, rather than happiness with game play or something more specific. They asked things such as, "How many days in the past week would you say that you were happy?" The men who answered that question reported more happy days when they were not playing with a partner, and fewer if they were. The women answered more happy days if they were playing with a partner, and fewer if they were not.With a correlation, you can't make a strong causal claim, but you can speculate with logic. I think this is a case where some speculation (and it's clearly labeled as speculation) is warranted since the opposite explanation isn't likely. Women do get into the game through a partner far more than men do. Men are often introducers/gatekeepers. In that sense, it may be that males end up regretting sharing this activity while females enjoy the togetherness.
Ouch. Conclusion: Be careful with whom you share EQ2.
In what is being hailed as a first for online game research, Sony Online Entertainment agreed to let Williams' team, including Nick Yee of the Palo Alto Research Center and Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware, access anonymous game data. This means they were able to compare a player's reported activity with actual activity; the resulting discrepancies call into question 30 years of game research that have been based on self-reported data.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 had a huge November, selling more than 6 million units for the month. But in a recent interview with G4TV, Microsoft Xbox 360 Product Manager Aaron Greenberg said that it would have been a much different month without Infinity Ward's blockbuster hit.
"November without Modern Warfare 2 would have looked very different," Greenberg told G4TV, responding to a question about what the month would have been like.
But just how different is up for debate. Modern Warfare 2 was a major hit. It was a title that doesn't come along very often and it likely helped the game industry buoy its sales figures for the month. Greenberg agrees.
"There's titles that appeal within the inner circle of the core, but this is that title everyone that owns a video game console buys," he said in the interview. "If they buy two games a year, this was one of those games."
Greenberg went on to say that without Modern Warfare 2, "software numbers would have looked dramatically different, I don't think that people would have spent that money on another game."
Microsoft's product manager went so far as to say that Modern Warfare 2 stopped people from buying other tech gadgets.
"I think people actually said 'I'm choosing to buy Modern Warfare 2 instead of buying an iPod or instead of going to a movie or instead of doing something else. This is going to deliver its entertainment value for me.'"
Consumers bought far more Xbox 360 versions of the game (4.2 million) than PlayStation 3 versions (1.8 million). Without that help, Greenberg asserted that Xbox 360 software sales would have slipped. But he also believed that the company would have sold less hardware.
"My guess is we would have probably sold less consoles, too, to be honest," he told G4TV. "I think it was that kind of blockbuster, just like a new blockbuster movie--it's an event, people knew about it."
Greenberg's points were interesting, to say the least. I've always said that software sells hardware. And so far, that has likely helped the Xbox 360 stay ahead of the PlayStation 3. But with few blockbuster titles on the horizon, how will that affect sales going forward?
For now, we don't know. But we can speculate about a November without Modern Warfare 2. Would it have been as huge? Let us know in the comments below.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Sex, porn, and Michael Jackson were among the most popular items kids searched for online in 2009, as tracked by Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton.
Symantec on Thursday revealed the top 100 favorite search terms among children 18 and under found by its free OnlineFamily.Norton service, which helps parents monitor their kids' online searches. Though innocuous terms like Sesame Street and "New Moon"--a popular movie in the Twilight vampire series--made the cut, sex showed up fourth on the list for boys and fifth for girls, following YouTube, Google, and Facebook as the three top terms.
For boys, the top 25 search terms focused on social-networking sites, shopping sites, and certain adult terms. Girls seemed to favor subjects related to music, TV shows and movies, and celebrities.
Speaking of celebrities, to no one's surprise, the late Michael Jackson was the most searched for celebrity, coming in at number 12, followed by pop singer Taylor Swift at No. 13. Other hot stars that made the list included Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Beyonce, the Black Eyed Peas, the Jonas Brothers, Eminem, Rihanna, and Chris Brown (who was in the news this year after admitting that he assaulted ex-girlfriend Rihanna).
Searching for celebrities online, however, may be hazardous to your PC's health. Symantec has found found that these searches sometimes draw people to dangerous Web sites, which spew out viruses, spam, and other malware.
Kids seven and under searched for items related to video games, while older kids were heavy into music, with 34 percent of teens and 27 percent of tweens searching for music-related topics. The Miley Cyrus song "Party in the USA" was the most-searched for tune among kids, while "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eye Peas took the No. 2 spot.
Tech terms that popped up on the list included MySpace at No. 8, MSN at No. 33, the iPod Touch at No. 98, and Bing last at No. 100.
To compile its top 100 list, Symantec tracked 14.6 million searches run by users of its OnlineFamily.Norton service and ranked the terms according to ones submitted most frequently to those submitted the least. The terms were collected anonymously, so none could be associated with any specific children or families.
This WebGL demo shows 3D Collada files--in this case a Spore video game creature.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)If you want to see the scale of browser makers' ambition to remake not just the Web but computing itself, look no farther than a new 3D technology called WebGL.
The WebGL vision is simple. You're running around in a video game universe, blasting radioactive aliens--but you got there by visiting a Web site, not by installing the game on your PC.
This sort of computationally demanding chore contrasts sharply to with today's Web, whose top-notch programmers strain to reproduce bare-bones versions of the rich capabilities open to applications running natively on a computer.
WebGL, while only a nascent attempt to catch up, is real. WebGL now is a draft standard for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web. It got its start with Firefox backer Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which oversees the OpenGL graphics interface, but now the programmers behind browsers from Apple, Google, and Opera Software are also involved.
Perhaps more significant than formal standards work, though, is WebGL support in three precursors of today's browsers--Minefield for Mozilla's Firefox, WebKit for Apple's Safari, and Chromium for Google's Chrome. Opera has started implementing WebGL, too, said Tim Johansson, Opera's lead graphics developer.
With a little tinkering--check the instructions and caveats below--you can give it a whirl, too. Overall, I was favorably impressed with the technology.
CNET News Poll
Its performance certainly isn't enough for a competitive first-person shooter, but it's approaching utility for casual gaming. And because of how WebGL elements can be integrated with the rest of a Web site's code, it's got some advantages.
What is WebGL?
WebGL is one of a handful of efforts under way to boost the processing power available to Web applications. It marries two existing technologies.
First is JavaScript, the programming language widely used to give Web pages intelligence and interactivity. Although JavaScript performance is improving relatively quickly these days in many browsers, programs written in the language are relatively pokey and limited compared with those that run natively on a computer.
... Read moreI'll be the first to admit that I'm a hardcore gamer. I play games as often as possible. But for the most part, I play those games on consoles. But over the past couple days, I've started playing some Twitter-based games on the Web. Many of them aren't very good, but I found three titles that I really enjoyed playing.
Because of that, I've decided to share those with you in this roundup. Each title is offered on its own site, but requires your Twitter credentials to work. Whenever you achieve things within a game, it notifies your Twitter followers. The experience is fantastic. Let's check them out.
Twitter-based gaming
140 Mafia: If you're a fan of "The Godfather," you might be attracted to 140 Mafia. Although it doesn't follow that movie closely, it does a great job of keeping you engaged in the title.
When you sign up for 140 Mafia, the game gives you the option of choosing what can be sent to your followers from the title and what cannot. I liked having that option. From there, you find out that you've been asked by "The Godfather" to start your own mafia crime family. You need to recruit other Twitter users into your family, while engaging in criminal activities to build your coffers and notoriety.
140 Mafia determines your effectiveness based on your attack ability, your energy, your ability to defend yourself, and a few other metrics. To build those up, you'll need to go on missions that involve illegal activities, like burglary or theft. The point of the game is to build a big, strong mafia family that you can control. It's no simple task and it will take a while. I should also note that the more followers you have, the greater the chances that you'll be able to succeed at this game, since a key component is to recruit other Twitter users.
Overall, 140 Mafia is a really fun game. It won't get your blood pumping like Grand Theft Auto, but it should help you pass the time.
140 Mafia allows you to create a mafia family and run it.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
For gamers, Christmas can, indeed, come early.
Because here is every gamer's dream wrapped up in a Christmas paper so beautiful that you might never play Guitar Hero in a living room ever again.
Please hail Ric Turner, who realized the holiday season was upon him and it was time not to keep up with the Joneses, but with the Brian Jones Massacre's. So, according to Make, he created this astonishing Guitar Hero Christmas lights extravaganza, which he calls Christmas Light Hero.
If you are not utterly entranced by the skill and wonderment of this technological exercise, then your fingers are pork sausages and your emotions are boiled semolina.
I know you are going to ask me how he did it. Thankfully, he explained to Make in some detail.
Here is just the first part of his explanation: "Christmas Light Hero is using 7 light controllers from Light-O-Rama built from kits to control 21,268 lights and LEDs. Each controller has 16 outputs and 2-3 TTL level control inputs that are used by the game system to fire different programmed light sequences depending on what happens in the game."
He continued: "It relies on the fact that the game sequence is very consistent. If the game and the lighting sequences start together, they will stay in very good sync through the length of the song."
For the full explanation--it goes on for some paragraphs--please enjoy the Make link.
Turner is so wonderfully talented (Oh, did I mention that he used to be a special effects guy at Disney Imagineering?) that he even thought about not disturbing the neighbors with renditions of Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover".
He said: "When you play, you watch only the Christmas lights, but the audio you hear is from the Wii, so your flubs are broadcast for all to hear (people in cars can tune 99.1 and crank it up as loud as they want.)"
If you happen to be passing Turner's house (a commenter on Daily What says it's somewhere near Disney in Burbank, Calif.), please know that it isn't so easy to get on the high score list.
He said on his YouTube posting: "Optional TV screen is available if you get in trouble, but if you use the screen, you don't get your name in the high score list."
I know some of you will be wondering how many bulbs are being put to such good use here. The Daily What reveals that it is 21,268.
May your neighbors be even one tenth as imaginative this holiday season.
The FTC seems to have discovered something the rest of us already knew. Kids are easily able to access adult content in virtual worlds.
A report released Thursday by the Federal Trade Commission found that minors are exposed to violent and sexually explicit content in online virtual worlds. The congressionally mandated report, "Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks," discovered that while most of the adult content appeared in virtual worlds geared toward teens and adults, some showed up on virtual sites designed for kids. Further, some of the virtual worlds for teens and adults allow or encourage kids to bypass their minimum age requirements.
"It is far too easy for children and young teens to access explicit content in some of these virtual worlds," said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "The time is ripe for these companies to grow up and implement better practices to protect kids."
As defined in the report, virtual worlds are sites that combine 3-D environments with social networking where people can play, work, and interact with others through their online avatars. For the study, the FTC examined such worlds as Second Life, Kaneva, Bots, Gaia Online, and Zwinktopia.
In total, the FTC focused on 27 online virtual worlds and checked out sites intended for kids, sites for teens, and sites only for adults. Among all 27 sites, 19 displayed at least one instance of violent or sexually explicit content. A heavy amount of explicit content was found in five sites, a moderate amount in four, and a low amount in 10.
Most of the explicit content was found in the sites geared for teens and adults, with 12 of the 13 virtual worlds in this category displaying violent or sexually explicit text and graphics. Among the 14 virtual worlds designed for children under the age of 13, seven had no explicit content, six contained a low amount, and one offered a moderate amount. Most of the content took the form of text posted in chat rooms or on discussion forums.
In its report, the FTC urges operators of virtual worlds to take more steps to keep explicit content away from kids and teens. The feds also encourage parents to learn more about the virtual worlds that their children frequent.
(Credit:
FTC)
Got a case of information overload? You're not alone.
A study released Wednesday from the University of California, San Diego, reports that the average American consumes a whopping 34GB of data and 100,000 words of information per day.
Over the course of 2008, Americans as a group gobbled up 3.6 zettabytes of data. (In case you missed the definition of "zettabyte" in your daily data binging, that's a million million gigabytes.) For all you visual learners out there, the researchers helpfully point out that 3.6 zettabytes is equal to the "information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska."
Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed by Americans increased 350 percent. The average annual growth rate was calculated at 5.4 percent.
Here's how TV and the Internet stack up in the "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers."
(Credit: University of California, San Diego)Dubbed the How Much Information? project, the study measured data consumption both at home and away from home. It includes several information sources, "including going to the movies, listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and reading the newspaper."
Besides bytes and words, the study also noted the number of hours spent consuming information.
In terms of time, traditional media still has a strong hold on the U.S. The study reported that "a large chunk of the average American's day is spent watching television." On average, 41 percent of an American's day is given over to watching television shows, viewing recorded TV, or watching DVDs.
Noncomputer sources, the study says, account for more than three-quarters of U.S. households' information time.
But if bytes are the standard by which American days are judged, it's the video game that takes the top prize. Researchers found that the average American consumes 18.5GB of gaming data per day, representing 67 percent of all bytes they consume daily.
"Games are almost universal, but most of the gaming bytes come from graphically intensive games on high-powered computers and consoles, which have the equivalent of special-purpose supercomputers from five years ago," report author Roger Bohn, director of the Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, said in a statement. "Games today generate their bytes inside the home, rather than having to transmit them over cables into the house, but gaming is increasingly moving online."
The study found that 16 percent of daily information consumption comes from the Internet. A staggering 79 percent of all American two-way communications is done through the Internet.
If you want to see what else UC San Diego found in its study, click here.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
