Gaming and Culture

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.

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!"

... Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--If you draw a straight line representing the evolution of video games from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Wii, one thing is clear: if you don't know your past, you can't know your future.

That was the central lesson of Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost's Friday talk at the Game Developers Conference here, "Learning from the Atari 2600." Essentially, Bogost argued, it's not always necessary to reinvent the wheel; sometimes, instead of being discarded as so much arcane, the discoveries of the past are best adapted for the future.

Bogost and MIT assistant professor Nick Monfort recently published Racing the Beam, a book about the iconic Atari VCS, popularly known as the 2600. So Bogost's talk Friday was clearly drawn from the research for that project. And while his fondness for the 1970s-era video game console was evident, the point he was really trying to make was that the seeds of successful games--especially those enjoyed by large groups of diverse people--have very little to do with the latest and greatest technology and much more to do with mechanics that make for enjoyable shared experiences.

For Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, a former carnival barker, the bloodlines that led to the 2600 were three things, Bogost argued: the fun-for-the-whole-family excitement of a midway, the shared competition of a game of darts played in a tavern, and the gather-around-the-TV sense of family time afforded by the den. At the same time, Bushnell wanted to repeat the success he'd had with coin-op arcade games like "Pong," but for the home.

What he was after was what Nintendo has also tried to build into its Wii: a feeling that people can have fun doing something together. That's why going to the movies is so much fun, or going out with friends to a bar: because it's something people can do together, in a social space, whether they're competing or not.

And it's about context, Bogost said. You can drink at home, but it's not as fun as doing it in a bar. Or you play pool in your house, but it's not the same thing as doing it with friends at the local tavern. And while no video game system can replicate being out in public, the right mix of game mechanics and tools can allow people to feel like they're in the middle of a social scene, even if they're in their living room.

"That's why Wii Bowling is the best game in the Wii Sports collection," Bogost said. "It really re-creates the experience and context" of real bowling.

"So what we see, I think in the (2600)," Bogost said, "is the adaptation of familiar subjects for familiar spaces."

He talked about the successes and failures of some of the games designed for the 2600, explaining that, for example, the original 2600 Pac-Man game didn't work because its designers didn't do a good job of adapting many of the atmospheric elements of the original arcade version. For example, it was missing the familiar music, as well as the animation of Pac-Man chomping and turning as he made his way around the maze.

... Read more

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.

Updated at 5:28 p.m. to include additional data and analyst perspective.

Though the retail economy suffered what appears to be one of the bleakest holiday seasons in recent memory, it looks as though the video games industry bucked that disastrous trend.

That's one conclusion that can be drawn from holiday Xbox 360 sales numbers released by Microsoft Monday, in which the company reported that its console business had the most successful holiday season in its history.

All told, Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360, said Microsoft boosted the Xbox's worldwide sales lead over Sony's PlayStation 3 to 8 million units, explaining that, based on internal data, the Xbox has now sold 28 million units globally, compared with the PS3's 20 million.

Microsoft said its holiday data came from internal sales numbers and weekly sales data available in some regions, like Europe, as well as past years in which December console sales are typically twice that of November, which in turn are typically twice that of October.

In November, Microsoft sold 836,000 Xboxes in the United States, suggesting that if Greenberg is right, the company moved about 1.67 million of the consoles in December.

No official North American video game sales numbers are available yet for December. They are expected to be released on January 15 by industry analyst the NPD Group.

To be sure, it can be confusing comparing North American sales numbers with global figures, especially when the numbers are simultaneously based on different kinds of sources.

But there does appear to be ample evidence that the video game industry is proving more resilient to the economic crisis, if not outright recession-proof, than other industries, and data provided by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo seem to be at the heart of it.

Nintendo, for example, sold 2.04 million Wiis in November, and while reports of shortages of the console seem less prevalent than in 2007, it is likely it did extremely well during the holidays. While nonscientific, of course, if Greenberg's formula is correct, Nintendo would have sold about 4 million Wiis in December.

For its part, Sony said recently that sales of the PlayStation 3 between January 1, 2008, and November 30, 2008, were up 60 percent from the same period a year earlier, though the company has not yet released any kind of figures for December.

"We've had a solid holiday season and have delivered consistent growth throughout this year. Two thousand eight was a pivotal year for PlayStation with the best software line up in the industry, a dramatic expansion of PlayStation Network including the launches of the video delivery service and the beta of the PlayStation Home," Ian Jackson, vice president of sales for Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in a statement. "Early internal data points to an increase of more than 130 percent of PS3 hardware sales for the holiday season--since Black Friday--and we're also seeing a growth of nearly 40 percent in total PS3 hardware sales for the calendar year. We remain confident this momentum will continue into the new year."

However, the PS3 was the only one of the three next-generation consoles to see its November 2008 sales drop from a year earlier. According to NPD, sales of the PS3 fell 18.8 percent, from 466,000 to 378,000. By comparison, Wii sales skyrocketed 108 percent, from 981,000 to 2.04 million and the Xbox grew 8.6 percent, from 770,000 to 836,000.

But Sony said that the November sales drop was an anomaly due to "an abnormally strong month due to a price cut (with) the introduction of the 40GB PS3."

"From a hardware perspective, I think the clear (holiday) winner is Nintendo," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, "and Microsoft has also benefited by cutting the (Xbox) price in September."

Sebastian added that Sony must address the challenges it faces this year, among them that the price of the PS3 is significantly higher than its competitors, as well as the fact that the console's internal Blu-ray drive has not driven the kind of sales Sony had hoped.

In the early days of the next-generation console wars, it was generally assumed that it would be a three-way race between the Xbox, the PS3 and the Wii. But because of the massive popularity of the Wii, Sony and Microsoft no longer compare their consoles' performances to that of Nintendo's.

The rationale seems to be that the Xbox and PS3 are completely different types of machines than the Wii, given the former's reliance on high-quality graphics and superior performance and the latter's focus on more casual games intended to appeal to a broad audience.

Whether that is semantics is a question neither Sony nor Microsoft seem eager to answer. In fact, both frequently make the point that Wii owners often also own either an Xbox or a PS3, if not both.

Of course, that is music to Nintendo's ears, and its growing confidence is borne out by the tremendous sales of the Wii since its launch in November 2006.

And to many, the most remarkable thing about the Wii's success is that it continues unabated.

According to Nintendo, the Wii has sold 15.4 million units since its launch, with 8.02 million of those consoles selling between January 1, 2008, and November 30, 2008. That means more than half of all Wiis bought in the U.S. were sold in 2008.

For the Xbox, the biggest strategic move to date has been the lowering of the console's entry-level offering to $199, making it the cheapest next-gen console, lower even than the $249 Wii. By comparison, the most inexpensive PS3 costs $399.

Interestingly, though, a recent study conducted by Nielsen Media Research, the clear winner among all consoles when measured by minutes played is neither the Wii, the Xbox 360 nor the PS3. In fact, the study concluded, the venerable PlayStation 2, still the most successful console of all time, continues to dominate players' time, even now.

All told, fully 30.2 percent of console minutes played were on the PS2, according to the study, more than twice the third-place Wii's 13.5 percent. The Xbox 360 came in second, with 18.3 percent, while, in fifth place, with 7.7 percent, the PS3 was embarrassed by the fourth-place finish of the original Xbox.

It's not surprising that the PS2 would come in first in such a study, given that there are more than 100 million of the consoles in players' hands.

But the runner-up finish by the Xbox was a victory of sorts for Microsoft, and a vindication of the efforts it has put into its Xbox Live service.

In fact, Greenberg said Monday that Xbox Live grew to 17 million members by the end of 2008, from 14 million at the end of October.

And the service--which offers members thousands of downloadable games, as well as movies and TV shows--also saw its revenue jump 84 percent, Greenberg said.

To Sebastian, the biggest advantages that Microsoft and Nintendo have over Sony is that the video gaming market has shown a clear preference for the more casual play that the Wii and Xbox Live offer.

"Sony has not been able to capture much of that market," Sebastian said.

Next week, NPD will release its December U.S. sales data, and it is certain that Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will all issue press releases touting the successes of their respective platforms.

But asked why it decided to release its global lifetime sales numbers Monday, rather than wait until next week, Greenberg said, "All this data is based on our own sales data. This is (information) we have available, so we'd rather share this data now, rather than sitting on (it)."

Discount retailer Wal-Mart on Monday announced that it has started to sell "tens of thousands" of Nintendo's Wii gaming console online. The 2-year-old gadget, consistently sold out and difficult to obtain, emerged as one of Black Friday's big hits amid a bleak economy.

On Friday night, the Wii was sold out on Wal-Mart's Web site as well as the Web sites of electronics retailers Best Buy and Circuit City, Reuters reported. On Monday morning, they were in stock.

Wal-Mart plans to sell the Wii consoles online for a price of $249.24 (Best Buy's listing price is about 50 cents more expensive, so it's not a deep discount) along with a $329 "value bundle" that contains extra controllers and some other add-ons.

The retailer is also offering discounts on Wii accessories and games.

Electronic Arts' much anticipated evolution game, Spore hits store shelves Sunday in North America, and for those that have been on the project since the beginning, it has been a long road from concept to completion.

The game's creator, Will Wright, who is famous for previous games like SimCity and The Sims said recently that the game has been seven years in the making, meaning the project was getting under way not long after The Sims launched and became the best-selling PC game of all time.

Wright has talked at length about how Spore's origins lie in the SETI project and other flights of his fancy.

"The original concept was sort of a toy galaxy you could fly around and explore," Wright told me last month. "As we thought about, it became apparent that evolution was a very important component. Some of the very first prototypes involved how you would move around and visualize the galaxy."

In the highly anticipated lead-up to the Spore's release from EA studio Maxis, in Emeryville, Calif., almost all the attention has been on the game itself or on its Creature Creator, which gives users an easy and sophisticated way to create complex beasts and which was made available in June as a free download.

But for many people, an equally exciting element has been the series of prototypes available for free download on the Spore Web site, each of which provides a look at the origins of a small piece of the larger game.

In fact, the prototypes were a crucial part of making Spore a reality. For example, since the procedural animation of the creatures in the game is one of its most-heralded elements, it's notable that before the system was ever built into the game, it started as a prototype.

"The earliest prototypes were making strange topology creatures and seeing if we could teach the computer to make them move plausibly, and later, show emotion and behavior," Wright said. "We had to find out whether the project was doable or not, or if some part of it wasn't doable, where we have to scale it back."

The first programmer on the Spore team was a Maxis veteran named Jason Shankel. Prior to joining Wright on his evolution project, he'd been working on a project known as SimMars, which was essentially a Mars terraforming game that was supported financially by NASA before the plug was finally pulled.

... Read more