I'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.
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.
With Electronic Arts' recent $400 million purchase of Playfish, social games are all the rage in today's tech industry. That's no surprise: lightweight games on social networks (which people usually play while they're goofing off at work) and social games have attracted huge player numbers with the biggest titles boasting 20 million to 60 million regular players.
City of Eternals.
(Credit: Ohai)But here's the worst kept secret about the genre: most social games aren't very, well, fun. They offer limited interactivity, game play challenge, and graphics. Consequently, players aren't invested enough to spend much money on them, especially compared to "hard-core" massively multiplayer-online (MMO) games. Even with the better social games, average revenue per users is less than a $1 per person.
By contrast, millions of World of Warcraft players willingly pay $15 a month in subscription fees alone. But, what MMOs like WoW have in revenue, they lack in growth due to the high technical hurdles and subject matter. WoW seems to have tapped out at around 12 million players, far less than the largest social games. And while the sustained revenue is great, attracting new players remains a challenge.
Enter City of Eternals, a Web-based MMO with a modern vampire theme from a new start-up called Ohai. After a long conversation with company CEO Susan Wu, a pioneer in the online gaming and virtual goods space, there are a number of reasons I think Ohai has the potential to succeed in the sweet spot between social games and hard-core gamer MMOs, and why the shift to social connection could become gaming's next big thing.
Ease of play
The biggest game platform isn't the Nintendo Wii or the iPhone, it's Flash, a browser plug-in installed on more than 99 percent of the world's PCs. An estimated 200 million people already play casual Flash-based games.
And while most MMOs require a huge client install, Ohai CTO and game industry veteran Don Neufeld (Everquest II, PlanetSide), and his development team (Free Realms, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Dungeons and Dragons Online) have re-engineered Flash into an MMO platform that pretty much anyone can play, without having to install additional software or hardware upgrades. As Wu put it, this means Ohai can build "Games for your aunt who plays FarmVille on Facebook and your cousin who can't play World of Warcraft on his school PC."
Deep social network integration
City of Eternals is fully integrated with Facebook and soon Twitter, but that doesn't mean the game is only playable within the social network. Players' Facebook profiles follow them into the vampire world, so whenever you're curious, you can click on a fellow vampire, and check their Facebook profile. This is the first time I've seen this feature in any MMO, and it brings in some new possibilities--making it much easier to socialize (and of course flirt) within the game. Wu told me City of Eternals' gender spread is 50-50 (extremely rare, compared with male-dominated MMOs), so I wouldn't be surprised if it became a major online hotspot for socializing. Especially since the game isn't about geeky elves and orcs, but far more popular vampires--see below.
Subject matter
The Twilight book series has sold more than 85 million copies worldwide; the Underworld movie franchise has brought in more than $300 million in theatrical sales; and TV's True Blood and Vampire Diaries both have huge cult followings. Vampires are obviously pervasive throughout popular culture, but there's yet to be a full-fledged vampire MMO.
Still in Alpha stage, Wu told me that players average 12 logins per day in the game, with an average session length of 5 to 6 minutes, fulfilling one of the company's goals of making a "bite-sized MMO."
City of Eternals is Ohai's first of many of what they call "MMOs for everyone." Of course, there's still a lot of unknown variables. The vampire craze may wane too soon, and as the Electronic Arts purchase suggests, the competition is huge. Maybe I'm crazy, but by next year, I think there's a good chance the most popular MMO on the market won't be World of Warcraft, but City of Eternals, or another game that crosses the boundaries between MMO and socialized gaming.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has some inspiration from Twitter.
(Credit: infinity Ward)Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 might have been designed by a capable team of Infinity Ward developers, but the company had some help: Twitter followers.
Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling told Develop Online in a recent interview that during the development of the highly-anticipated release, the developer called on Twitter users for help.
"During development, if we are sitting in a design meeting and we are arguing about something, no matter what it is, I can just turn to what is now 60,000 people and post the same question," Bowling told game developer news site Develop Online. "'Do we think players will like this?' well why don't we ask 60,000 of them and get a good representation of what we think they may like?"
But it was the next statement that might cause gamers participating in social networking to rejoice. Bowling told site that Twitter was "fantastic throughout development" and he "would recommend many, many more people adapted that into their design schedule."
Bowling also said that Infinity Ward didn't ignore any responses to its design questions. He said that developers "listened to all" of the suggestions, but filtered out those that didn't match the company's "design philosophy." Suggestions that asked for more gore, for example, ran against the company's design philosophy, Bowling said.
Regardless of whether or not Infinity Ward incorporated every idea into Modern Warfare 2, Bowling told the publication that now more than ever, gamers are getting closer to the development process.
"The average gamer is so much closer to the people who make the games than they ever were before," he told the publication. "And as a result of that they are so much more developer-aware. No longer is it an Activision game, but an Infinity Ward game, or a Treyarch game or a Bungie game. And gamers know where to go to offer their feedback."
Oh, how things have changed. When I was younger, I sent several snail-mail letters to developers asking for design tweaks in some of my favorite franchises. I never heard back. And it seemed that my plea had fallen on deaf ears.
Today, things are different. The developers of one of the most highly anticipated games to be released in 2009 were listening to gamer suggestions on a social network? Amazing. Let's hope for more of it.
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.
Social networking is on the rise, both on and off the job, leaving companies uncertain how to monitor their use by employees, reports new survey.
More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.
Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee's actions off the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures that could embarrass the company.
Some organizations, such as the U.S. Marines, have already banned their recruits from using Facebook and Twitter. But the survey found that many businesses aren't sure what to do to restrict or monitor such usage.
Of the companies questioned in the survey, 34 percent said they have a general employee policy that addresses all online activity, including the use of social networking, both on and off the job. Only 10 percent said they have a policy specifically geared toward social networks.
More than half of the individuals said their company has no active system to monitor employees using social-networking sites. Around 32 percent said their company acts only when an issue is discovered.
Of all those surveyed, 24 percent said an employee in their company had been disciplined for inappropriate behavior on a social network, while 37 percent did not know. The percentage was higher in the nonprofit sector, noted the survey, with 33 percent reporting an employee incident versus only 13 percent in the for-profit sector.
"Business clearly hasn't caught up with what its employees are doing online," said Roy Snell, CEO of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. "The risks are twofold. First there remains the business risk of employees doing things online that may reflect badly on the company. The second is that, as business develops policies and procedures in this area, there are going to be a lot of people finding that what they have long done is no longer acceptable at work. During the adjustment period there is likely to be a great deal of friction created."
To conduct the survey in late August, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance compiled responses from 798 people in both profit and nonprofit organizations, as well as government agencies.
I met a perfectly lovely young woman this weekend who told me that when she was a teenager she took Ecstasy, snorted coke, and inhaled pot as if it were dim sum on a Sunday morning.
So I found myself relieved beyond the effects of a hot stone massage to discover that research on teenage girls has shown that when they play Tetris it has a wonderfully positive effect on their brains.
The Mind Research Network, which appears to be a nonprofit organization that examines brain injury and mental illness, decided to spend three months of its life and donations on watching what happens when teenage girls play Tetris.
The network's scientists seem giddy about the results: consistent practice on the pleasantly mind-numbing little game seems to have given the girls a thicker cortex, as well as creating more brain efficiency in other parts of their tender gray areas.
Now, I'm not sure that every teenage girl on earth will be excited about having a thicker cortex, but the brain of Dr. Rex Jung, one of the boffins behind this experiment, is veritably bursting with joy.
"We did our Tetris study to see if mental practice increased cortical thickness, a sign of more gray matter," Dr. Jung said Monday in a press statement.
(Credit:
Cc TotalAldo/Flickr)
He continued: "If it did, it could be an explanation for why previous studies have shown that mental practice increases brain efficiency. More gray matter in an area could mean that the area would not need to work as hard during Tetris play."
Essentially, the excitement engendered by this little game playing seems to revolve around the notion that the brain's structure is not as fixed as scientists of old had assumed.
However, I feel I need now explore the frisson of doubt that overcomes me every time I read research. You see, this study does not help us discover the actual relationship between a thicker cortex and increased brain efficiency.
How might I know this? Why, because I read the smaller print, in which Dr. Richard Haier, a co-investigator of the Tetrisettes, said: "How a thicker cortex and increased brain efficiency are related remains a mystery."
You see, the functioning of teenage girls' brains is, as one has always thought, an utter befuddlement.
While the scientists claim that they used girls in the study because boys tend to have too much video game experience, I am now wondering just one thing: were these Tetrisettes drug-tested?
I know you might think this is far fetched. I know you may think I only meet lovely girls who are strange and tell outlandish tales of teenage drug use.
But, you see, there were only 26 girls in this study. And if I'm to believe that the actions of teenage girls will somehow inform our knowledge of the brain, I want them tested for coke, pot, E, and, definitely, crystal meth.
Interestingly, the study's notes say that none of the girls was taking a prescription medication. But neither were so many baseball players in the 1990s.
Perhaps my zeal for scientific purity, otherwise known as my skepticism, may be excessive here.
But perhaps it was made excessive by some small print in the study. I know your cortex will become thinner on receiving this information, but the study was funded by "Blue Planet Software (BPS), Inc., the company holding exclusive licensing rights to Tetris".
Comic browsing on your PSP.
(Credit: GameSpot)A new, slimmer PlayStation 3 wasn't the only news to come out of the Sony press conference at Gamescom in Germany Tuesday. There were also plenty of announcements about the PSP and PlayStation Network that weren't completely expected.
First, the PlayStation Network will get an overhaul beginning September 1. New features and a more logical navigation are among the updates. A "What's New" tab highlighting new PlayStation Store releases will also be accessible directly via the XMB (cross media bar).
There was also a lot of news regarding the PSP. Along with the PSP Go, October 1 will also bring the launch of PSP Minis, a new series of bite-size games. These titles will be more affordable, in addition to smaller in size (all games will be 100MB or less). PSP Minis will debut with 15 titles, totaling 50 by the end of 2009.
The PSP will also be getting a Digital Reader in December with various comic book publishers onboard to offer content. Marvel will be providing Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four comics to start, with Wolverine, Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk all to follow. Compatibility with other Sony readers and more digital comics publishers will be announced soon.
Sony also disclosed that the company will have more details on the PS3 motion-sensing controller at next month's Tokyo Game Show. In addition, customers who preorder Gran Turismo 5 for PlayStation 3 will get a free download of the portable version, Gran Turismo PSP.
If you're an independent musician looking for as many ways to sell and promote your music as possible, and you or a friend has some experience with software development, you'll want to check out the upcoming Rock Band Network, for which Harmonix and MTV Games plan to begin beta testing in late August.
It's more complicated than posting a song to iTunes, but you'll get placement on a more exclusive platform.
(Credit: MTV Games)To program songs for the game, you or your developer friend first needs a membership to Microsoft's XNA Creators' Club, which was launched a couple years ago to let independent developers create casual games to sell through the Xbox Live Marketplace; a membership costs $49.99 for four months or $99.99 for a year.
You'll then be able to get free tools and instructions from the Rock Band Creators Web site to convert your master recordings to the MIDI charts used by the game. Next, you'll have to submit your song for other creators to critique and finally to MTV Games for approval.
Once approved, the song will enter the Rock Band Network. All songs will debut exclusively for 30 days on the Xbox 360, and the Rock Band team will pick stand-out songs to make available to the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles.
Under the network terms, musicians can charge between 50 cents and $3 per song, and they will keep a 30 percent cut of all sales. That may seem small, compared with the 70 percent cut musicians get for selling their songs on iTunes, which requires much less work, but Rock Band is a much more exclusive platform--you're much more likely to stand out here than among the bazillion songs available through Apple's music store.
Follow Matt on Twitter
It might not be as hotly anticipated as the "Beatles: Rock Band" game, but Microsoft announced at its annual press briefing at the E3 Expo that Facebook and Twitter will be coming to the Xbox Live service.
The press event included short demonstrations of what are effectively Facebook and Twitter clients for the gaming console, aesthetically adapted to the Xbox Live interface.
With the Facebook app, which will be a download from Xbox Live, members will be able to engage in a limited number of features including photo browsing, status updates, and looking at friends' profile "streams."
But what's more important to game developers is the fact that the Facebook Connect standard--which was rolled out first to Web developers, and then to iPhone developers--is coming to the Xbox this fall. This means that players will be able to log in with their Facebook accounts and broadcast their gaming activities on their social-network profiles.
Xbox manufacturer Microsoft made a $240 million investment in Facebook in October 2007. The service now has well over 200 million active users around the world.
Both Facebook products are "penciled in for the fall," Facebook platform program manager Gareth Davis told CNET News. He said that while there currently aren't plans to bring Facebook's virtual currency plans to the Xbox, he implied that it's not out of the question. "We're constantly looking at ways of improving the user experience or the developer experience with Facebook credits," Davis said.
This post was updated at 2:26 p.m. PT with comment from Facebook.
(Credit:
PlayStation)
In a brief interview with MTV Multiplayer late last week, Sony's Director of Hardware Marketing John Koller says that Sony plans to expand its digital catalog to include non-PlayStation console titles as well as back-catalog games from the PlayStation One console.
"PSOne is included, but everything is on the table. We look for some of those big hits from all of the past games in their history and look for ways we can bring them over," John Koller says. "It's not always easy. There are obviously technical areas that need to be bridged. But when those are solved, consumers will see a wide variety of retro games and brand new games coming to the PlayStation Network.
In an effort to further improve the offering of digital games available to PSP users through the PlayStation Network, the company is preparing more portable versions of PS3 downloadable titles including Flow and the upcoming PixelJunk Monsters, in addition to producing more internally developed download-only titles and to eventually match the largely available titles to the Japanese market.
As multiconsole service appetites grow--such as with Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console and evidenced by already hacked PSPs out there--Sony is also reaching out to other publishers for their back catalogs, showing an interest to expand to non-PlayStation platforms.
Sony's drive to digital content is backed up by the sense that this is what consumers want. "We know that 50 percent of our base is interested in downloadable games for pay, not for free, from the network," Koller said. "That's something that needs to be acted on."
I'd opt for free, but I hang out with the wrong crowd. I'm grimy like that.
