Gaming and Culture

People who prefer playing a home video game to going out to the movies are in good company, according to a recent survey.

Almost 64 percent of Americans have played a video game in the past six months versus only 53 percent who have gone out to see a movie, according to a report from market research firm NPD Group.

The March report, part of NPD's "Entertainment Trends in America" study, also noted that consumers now splurge one-third of their entertainment dollar on video games. The average gamer spent a bit more than $38 per month, with 31 percent of all those surveyed having bought a game over the past 12 months.

One factor for the surge in gaming is the number of new outlets, such as social networks and online gaming sites, said the report. Around 10 percent of people surveyed have played video games on a social network, while five percent have paid to download games online.

"Video games account for one third of the average monthly consumer spending in the U.S. for core entertainment content, including music, video, games," said Anita Frazier, video games industry analyst for NPD. "While a portion of that share stems from the premium price of console games, we're also seeing an overall increase in the number of people participating in gaming year-over-year."

The results of the NPD study were based on an online survey that received responses from more than 11,000 U.S. consumers. Despite gaming's popularity, another NPD study found that video game sales have slumped this year in comparison to 2008, a year in which game sales soared.

Just a plain old NES. I'm no good at Photoshop, so this is all you get.

(Credit: Nintendo)

Well, other than the fact that both Mega Man and Jay-Z were pop-culture icons of their respective eras (yes, people, Jay-Z is that popular), they now each have 8-bit, NES-style music associated with them.

Video game music from the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) era had a very distinct style. Even music on other 8-bit consoles like the Sega Master System could not match it.

Anyone who at least played an NES back in those days (pretty much every kid, at least in the U.S.) will immediately recognize the style of that sound after just a few bars.

It's not surprising, then, that some very talented individuals have begun experimenting with that distinct sound and applying it to contemporary popular music. In this case, specifically, hip-hop--or at least rap (the difference between the two as I see it should probably be saved for another blog).

Anyway, hip-hop--8-bit NES-style--is here, and according to the story at Shot Then, all the remixes were created by one Jesse Tugboat.

Check them out below. And if that doesn't remind you how much the memory of those old gaming days clings, take a look at the video below. It's a game intro for "The Dark Knight" produced as if it had been done on the NES. I especially liked the "by Sunsoft" touch.

Updated on March 18 at 8:00 p.m. PST with additional information throughout.

Nvidia on Tuesday said it has signed a license agreement with Sony to provide PhysX technology for the PlayStation 3, whereby Nvidia becomes the official tools and middleware provider for Sony PS3.

Nvidia's PhysX technology--based on the laws of physics--enables game objects to respond in a realistic way to physical events. More conventional technology uses a canned response, in which the same response is repeated over and over.

For example, a window breaks, or a person falls the same way every time. In a PhysX-enabled football sports game, however, the angle and velocity of the impact is calculated by the graphics processor to generate a real-time response that is different practically every time.

The agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment covers tools and middleware for the PlayStation 3. Nvidia is now an official Tools and Middleware provider for Sony PS3, according to Bryan Del Rizzo, an Nvidia spokesman. "This new relationship means a couple of changes in how the PhysX SDK for PS3 is managed. As a Sony Computer Entertainment Tools and Middleware provider, Nvidia will now be exclusively responsible for maintaining and enhancing the PS3 PhysX SDK," he said.

Rizzo continued: "Additionally, while Sony has a license to distribute and support users of the binary version of the PhysX PS3 SDK, Nvidia will now be responsible for licensing the source code PhysX SDK for PS3 as well providing direct support to all source code-licensed PhysX PS3 developers," he said. "This newly announced tools and middleware relationship with Sony closely mirrors the licensing and support model that has existed for years with Microsoft and its Xbox 360 platform and complements our plans to support future console platforms."

Nvidia described the SDK as "a full-featured (application programming interface) and robust physics engine, designed to give developers, animators, level designers, and artists unprecedented creative control over character and object physical interactions by allowing them to author and preview physics effects in real time."

In December, Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software adopted Nvidia's PhysX technology.

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.

Parents trying to figure out what video games are appropriate for their kids have a new tool at their disposal.

Already, they've been able to look at games' ratings--"E" for everyone, "T" for teen, "M" for ages 17 and up, and "AO" for adults only. But now, the agency that decides which games are right for which age groups, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, will be offering what it calls "summaries" of each game's rating.

The idea, the ESRB said in a release Wednesday morning, is to allow parents to see some of the thought process behind the agency's decision.

"The new rating summaries explain in objective terms," the release stated, "the context and relevant content that factored into a game's ESRB rating assignment."

Beginning Wednesday, parents and others will be able to view these summaries for all new games, as well as those the ESRB has rated going back to July 1, 2008. The information will be available on the agency's main Web site, on a mobile site (m.esrb.org) or through a special "rating search widget."

To be sure, many games are bought on impulse, so this service will go unnoticed and unused much of the time. But by making the information available via a mobile site, the ESRB is ensuring that parents aware of the program will be able to check the summaries while at retail outlets. Many others will be able to look into the games that their children are asking for, allowing them to make the decision about whether to buy the titles based on more information than just the rating itself.

All in all, this is probably a good move by the ESRB, which has taken heat in the past for its ratings--and which is clearly striving to be seen as more transparent, and therefore more relevant.

The ESRB is an arm of the video game industry's organizational body, the Entertainment Software Association and all major (and most smaller) publishers agree to subject their titles to the ESRBs ratings.

Machinima.com announced Thursday it raised $3.85 million in funding from MK Capital and other investors, which will be applied toward its business expansion. This is the first round of venture funding the company has raised.

The company also noted it recently named five new board members: Yair Landau, former Sony Pictures Digital chief; Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons; Matt Coffin, LowerMyBills.com founder; Mark Terbeek, MK Capital partner; and Allen DeBevoise, CEO of Machinima.com.

The company provides tools to allow users to incorporate images from video games and apply them to movies, as well as generates revenue from charging game publishers that want to run trailers or video snippets of their games on its site.

Amazon.com has acquired Reflexive Entertainment, adding to its PC, Mac, and online casual game offerings.

Reflexive, which announced the acquisition earlier this week in a blog post by Chief Executive Lars Brubaker, said the deal will provide a larger distribution channel than it previously had.

Reflexive also noted that game developers can still submit their work to the site and will continue to have access to its GameCenterSolution.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

NEW YORK--This may be the last year that video game giant Electronic Arts releases a title that doesn't log on to the Internet, CEO John Riccitiello said in a keynote address at the Media & Money Conference here Tuesday.

That's a testament to how quickly the game industry is evolving, Riccitiello explained. "If you go back three, five, seven years ago, a video game was entirely captured on a disc that we sold. We were in the packaged goods business." Things have changed: "Today what we do, more typically, is we build an online game which often has as much code on a server as it does on a disk and the CPU in your household."

"We chose a particularly aggressive form of DRM," says EA's John Riccitiello. That earned the company some very vocal complaints.

It's also a time when the gaming industry is continuing to grow beyond its central demographic of young males and its well-stocked library of first-person shooters and race car rallies. That's evidenced by Riccitiello's return to EA; he left the company in 2004 to make a career detour into private equity, but returned last year when, he implied, the company needed his leadership.

"Relative to where we'd been historically, our game growth was down, our sales were down, and our profits were down," Riccitiello said. Plus, there was stagnation. "The game industry had gotten a little overhooked on sequels, and EA is not immune to that. We just released our 18th Madden."

EA then restructured its business into four different "labels," with new emphasis on casual games and atypical releases like its smash hit Spore, which Riccitiello described as "a spectacularly original and interesting game."

"There are more species in Spore today than there are species on the planet Earth," Riccitiello said of the game, in which players raise a creature from a one-cell being into an advanced society. "It's a staggering degree of diversity."

But in an ironic twist, Spore, as ground-breaking as it is in the entertainment world, has been plagued by complaints about the alleged backwardness of its digital rights management system (DRM). Riccitiello said that he personally isn't a fan of DRM, but that the technology isn't there yet to make a game piracy-proof without it. "We chose a particularly aggressive form of DRM, which 99.8 percent of consumers would never notice, but that two-tenths of one percent got incredibly focused and formed an online PR cabal," he claimed. "We can eliminate piracy by essentially blocking the online service from the pirate. That's the future of DRM. The present of DRM isn't quite there yet."

DRM or no DRM, Riccitiello said that Spore is the start of a revolution. "I ultimately believe that a consumer is going to want to be involved with a game that they help build rather than one that they just watch or experience," he said. "Spore is probably the industry's first big step in that direction, and I would encourage you to look out for The Sims 3, which comes out this spring and which is another big step in that direction."

In-game advertising is in
EA is also experimenting on the in-game advertising front, which Riccitiello said is still not a mature business but is slowly getting there. "Presently, Barack Obama is advertising in one of our games today," he said. "We think it's very forward-thinking on the part of a presidential candidate."

When asked whether he would consider using Google's nascent AdSense for games, Riccitiello replied, "The quick answer is, of course we would partner with them and anybody else who would write us a check." Though he admitted to being "more bearish than bullish" on in-game advertising in the short term due to both psychological and technological hurdles, he says there's big potential for it down the road.

Innovation's nice, but a bigger question right now is whether the game industry will take a big hit amid economic downturn. Riccitiello said he doesn't think it will, but remained cautious. "I think it's going to be a strong holiday season...the video game industry so far this year has been stunningly strong," he said. Typically, innovation like what the industry is seeing now is "enough to overcome underlying recessionary trends."

But he admitted to the obvious: "We don't have a game industry index that goes back to 1929, so I don't have any data from what happens to the game industry in a market meltdown."

EA did lose a battle earlier this year when it tried to acquire smaller rival Take-Two Interactive in a bid that ultimately fizzled because the two companies couldn't see eye-to-eye on a price. After months of back-and-forth negotiation, Riccitiello said that the deal's potential relevance had passed.

"We wanted it to influence the holiday sales of their big franchise, Grand Theft Auto," he said. When it drew too close to the holiday season, that's when things really fell apart (though they'd been pretty messy all along).

The journalist interviewing Riccitiello onstage, Wall Street Journal editor Kevin Delaney, suggested that perhaps the EA chief could relate to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a veteran of a high-profile failed takeover bid himself.

Riccitiello laughed and replied, "Steve Ballmer's got his own challenges."