Geek Gestalt

SAN FRANCISCO--The first couple of weeks of September are going to be a banner time for music video games. On September 9 (09/09/09), the much-anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band will hit store shelves, just eight days after Guitar Hero 5 gets its chance to rock living rooms everywhere.

With the Beatles game, it's easy to imagine long lines and huge sales figures. After all, this will be the first time that any of the recent slew of music-oriented video games will feature any Beatles songs, let alone dozens of them.

But with Guitar Hero 5 (see video below)--has so much time gone by already that there could even be five Guitar Hero releases?--one has to work just a little bit harder to envision the big bucks that its publisher, Activision Blizzard, surely is hoping to bring in.

Still, the guys at Neversoft, the game's developer, have proven time and again that they know what they're doing. The Guitar Hero franchise has produced hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and created a dynamic in which people everywhere are now comfortable picking up and jamming away on a guitar, albeit a plastic one with buttons instead of strings.

And with that in mind, one has to give the Neversoft team the benefit of the doubt for their new game, which will be released for all the major video game platforms.

On Thursday, I stopped in at a Guitar Hero press event here and had the chance to speak with two of the executives most responsible for the new game: Brian Bright, the project director at Neversoft for Guitar Hero 5, and Tim Riley, who oversees the Guitar Hero franchise's music licensing.

One of the things I was most interested in was the rationale for a new Guitar Hero game. To be sure, game companies like Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two have a mandate to generate massive revenues, and so franchises like Guitar Hero are tried and true in that regard. But in spite of that, each new edition of a franchise game has to have something significant to offer to entice enough customers to earn its keep.

To hear Bright tell it, the best rationale for Guitar Hero--besides its 85 new songs by 83 artists--is its "Party Play" mode in which players can jump in or out of songs any time they please, all with the click of a single button.

What that means, Bright added, is that Guitar Hero 5 will offer a potentially broad new audience an entirely new level of "accessibility," in particular because in the previous versions, many people playing for the first time would have found themselves needing a little hand-holding to get started. Now, he said, that's no longer the case, and players new and old will be able to easily and quickly go right into rocking out.

Another important Guitar Hero 5 innovation, Bright said, is an "any instrument" selection that will, for the first time, allow more than two people to play guitar at the same time rather than someone in a foursome having to play drums and someone having to sing. And even if there isn't a mad rush to grab a guitar, this features means that any combination of instruments is, for the first time, possible, whether a group is playing cooperatively or competitively.

Downloadable content
Given that many players of the game's previous iteration--Guitar Hero: World Tour--likely paid to download songs, Activision is making it possible to port most of those songs to Guitar Hero 5. The company said 152 of the 158 downloadable songs from the earlier game will be compatible with the new one, though users will have to pay a "nominal re-licensing fee," the amount of which the company hasn't publicly spelled out yet.

And that means that with the 85 songs Guitar Hero 5 comes with, plus new downloadable songs, the new game's players can have set lists of potentially hundreds of songs, Bright said.

I wanted to know a little bit more about how Activision persuades musicians to allow their songs to be included in Guitar Hero, especially after learning how the Beatles were won over for the forthcoming Rock Band game.

Riley, the publisher's music licensing specialist, said that as the Guitar Hero franchise becomes better-known, he and his team have an easier time of it. In part, that's because "the larger the game gets, the more known it gets within the (music) industry (and) with the artists themselves."

And that means that Riley and his team have now had the chance to get musicians like Arctic Monkeys and Elliott Smith--whom they've never worked with before--to contribute songs to the game. Indeed, he said Guitar Hero 5 features songs from nearly 20 artists who have never allowed their music to be in a video game before.

Of course, it doesn't happen overnight. In the case of Arctic Monkeys, Riley explained, it took multiple visits with the band to show them demos and explain what the Guitar Hero franchise is all about to get permission.

One big factor, Riley added, was being able to assure artists that their music is "safe" in Guitar Hero, meaning that users won't be able to easily pirate the songs from the game.

At the same time, he explained that for a lot of musicians, games like this are now seen as an attractive way to get their music in front of large audiences, particularly because the record industry is becoming more and more notorious for doing a poor job of helping distribute new music.

"Just by having a song in the game," Riley said, "kids become familiar with the song, or the artist, and will go out and buy (it) or go out and purchase more music from that artist."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Since its launch in the fall of 2004, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft has shattered expectations at every turn.

Prior to its release, no American massively multiplayer online game (MMO) had ever reached what was then seen as the magical million subscribers level--even major hits like EverQuest and Ultima Online. Yet almost before anyone could blink, WoW, as it's known, had surpassed 4 million paying users and now has more than 10 million worldwide, and at $15 a month for most users, it may well be bringing in more than $1 billion a year.

Then, prior to the January 2007 release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, no one had ever heard of the kind of nationwide midnight madness lines associated with iPhone and Xbox launches for a game expansion. Sure enough, however, people lined up at game stores everywhere for hours for the right to be among the very first to buy Burning Crusade, and the update went on to sell millions of copies.

And now, with the second major WoW expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, in beta testing, Blizzard is getting ready to prove yet again that when it comes to American MMOs, it is the undisputed gold standard.

"It's just beautiful," said longtime WoW player and Lich King beta player Katrina Glerum. "The game really feels epic in a way that The Burning Crusade didn't....Burning Crusade felt like an extension of the (original) game. This really feels epic, and that you're part of something grand."

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We've long known that publishers of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft don't like it when players mess with the purity of their games.

That's why they routinely issue stern warnings that anyone caught gold farming or buying accounts or using bots that automate various processes will be punished in some way, including being banned from the game.

But now, it seems, WoW publisher Blizzard Entertainment is taking its enmity toward this kind of behavior to the courts.

As reported by the BBC, Blizzard has sued the creator of a program, or "bot," known as MMO Glider. According to the MMO Glider site, the "tool...plays your World of Warcraft character for you, the way you want it. It grinds, it loots, it skins, it heals, it even farms soul shards...without you."

That is anathema to Blizzard, and the company is trying to get the courts to stop Glider's creator, Michael Donnelly, from selling it.

Blizzard's court filing asserts that "Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time," according to the BBC.

Blizzard also argues that Glide infringes its copyright, the BBC writes, "because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software."

But the legal drama doesn't end there. In his legal response, Donnelly retorts that Glide doesn't infringe Blizzard's copyright because the program doesn't create any copies of WoW code.

For now, the two sides are lining up their lawyers and awaiting the next step in what is sure to be a long, drawn-out legal wrangling. One does wonder, however, how an individual like Donnelly will be able to hold out against the formidable resources of an outfit like Blizzard, which is owned by conglomerate Vivendi.

To me, this is an interesting situation. There's no doubt that MMO publishers want to keep players from using cheats like Glider, and there's equally no doubt that people will always be coming up with ways to subvert the system and search out little edges like those to automate tasks that result in performance awards.

Yet this case may not help resolve the age-old game play issues that have engaged many a scholar and player. That's because it may instead revolve around hard-core technical issues surrounding what exactly happens when players use Glider.

This, in some ways, is too bad because I think a lot of people are looking for some actual legal resolution of game-play issues. But if the court ends up making a decision that doesn't touch on such dilemmas, we'll just keep waiting for the next situation that will bring these issues before the bar.

If you tamper with your Xbox Live Gamerscore, you might lose it and everything in it forever, administrators of Microsoft's online game service want you to know.

In a terse post Tuesday, administrator Major Nelson wrote, "Today we took action on some of the accounts we have identified as the most serious offenders who have violated the Xbox Live Terms of Use by tampering with their Gamerscore and achievements."

Specifically, Nelson was following up on an October post in which he warned that, "I strongly urge you not to tamper with your Gamerscore and achievements. If you do decide to employ some nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game, bad things will happen."

Well, it appears that the Xbox Live team has begun to implement whatever bad things they had in mind for those who cheat when it comes to the oh-so-socially-important Gamerscore and achievements that show what players have done on the service.

On Tuesday, Nelson wrote that the team had taken steps against those caught cheating. Among the lashings administered were: resetting Gamerscores to zero; canceling all registered achievements, even if some were fairly earned; and labeling the account "as a cheater for the community to view" on both Xbox.com and in the Xbox Live dashboard.

For those curious exactly what the Xbox Live team is looking for, Nelson helpfully provided an FAQ detailing the specifics.

This reminds me a lot of massively multiplayer online game companies like World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment or EverQuest publisher Sony Online Entertainment telling their communities that players will be banned for all kinds of illegitimate activity, including buying or selling gold or weapons on the secondary market or for sharing account access.

The thing is, the Xbox Live team, much as has always been the case with the Blizzards and SOEs of the world, make these kinds of stern statements, but don't provide much in the way of details of how many accounts have been affected, and how many players punished.

Still, reading through several pages of comments on Nelson's Tuesday post, it appears that the Xbox Live community is pretty happy about the news, much as WoW players always say they're happy about corrective action taken to purify the playing field in that game. But one does wonder just how effective the publishers are at catching the cheaters and whether these kinds of moves are little more than Band-Aids.

Electronic Arts is not alone in its interest in buying Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required to read entire article).

SEC filings show that Take-Two says it has received other offers, but has spurned those as well as the original $2 billion offer EA made last Friday and announced last Sunday, the Journal reports.

EA issued a public statement on Sunday saying it had made an earlier offer to Take-Two that was rejected and that it was boosting the per-share price it was willing to pay to make the deal worth $2 billion. But Take-Two quickly issued its own announcement, saying it thought EA's offer was too small and that it would prefer to wait to have any negotiations with anyone until after the April 29 release of Grand Theft Auto IV, which is expected to be a hit.

For its part, EA has said it wanted to get a deal done before the game's release. It is also evident that EA's interest in Take-Two is at least partly in response to the recent acquisition of Activision by Vivendi, a marriage that could potentially turn the resulting video game giant, to be known as Activision Blizzard, into the industry's largest company.

Imagine the game industry dominated by two giants.

That's what could happen if Electronic Arts succeeds in its $2 billion attempt to grab Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive and Activision's planned merger with Blizzard goes through.

As in so many other industries, an EA/Take-Two merger would indicate massive consolidation, especially in the wake of the December announcement that media giant Vivendi was buying Activision to become Activision Blizzard. But gamers probably shouldn't worry that an industry pyramid dominated by EA and Activision will mean less innovation.

After all, even with a wide gap between the No. 1 and No. 2 companies and everyone else, it's important to remember that there would still be plenty of important and respected publishers: Disney, Ubisoft, THQ, Midway, and Infogrames, to name a few, not to mention Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

Still, a successful EA takeover of Take-Two would have far-reaching effects.

"I think we're seeing further consolidation of companies capable of publishing and marketing AAA, expensive-to-develop games, which is to say, those that can cost $20 million or more to create, and as much again to market," said Simon Carless, publisher of both Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com. "However, there's still plenty of opportunity for diversity for smaller companies."

One reason Carless thinks small developers can maintain a valuable presence in the industry is EA itself. He points to EA Partners, Electronic Arts' internal development partnership division, as a publishing resource for small developers that have good games in the pipeline.

Additionally, he said, "They can even distribute digitally, which may not require using a publisher at all....So I think this shows that the next-gen retail publishing giants are still consolidating, but I don't believe it is bad for the future of gaming, because there are so many ways to distribute and play games. And digital distribution is starting to create somewhat of a more level playing field."

At the time the Vivendi-Activision merger was announced, it seemed the company could become the world's largest video game publisher, possibly eclipsing EA, which had held that No. 1 position for many years. It also was clear EA would have to do something big if it wanted to keep the undisputed top spot.

Whether the proposed Take-Two acquisition is a direct result of that dynamic--EA said in a conference call Monday morning that it had been talking to Take-Two's management for nearly a year, though it hadn't made any formal moves until at least December--if it goes through, the industry will be a bit top-heavy.

Still, there's no doubt that EA reclaiming its top-dog position does pose some danger to the industry, at least in the minds of those who have watched the company's performance and behavior over the last few years.

"The biggest concern gamers probably have on their mind is that EA has this image of...taking a (title) or franchise and running it into the ground," said Brian Crescente, editor of the popular video game blog, Kotaku.com. "For a number of years, any property EA got its hand on would eventually be burnt out."

But Crescente added that he thinks EA's 2007 reorganization, in which the company split into four distinct labels--EA Sports, EA Games, The Sims, and EA Casual Games--has begun to erode that dynamic.

"I think the whole movement toward the labels initiative that they announced is turning things around for them," Crescente said. "It's probably too early to tell if it's anything more than them paying lip service."

From the standpoint of the overall video game marketplace, Crescente did allow that the current environment--especially if either EA or some other major player, like Microsoft, buys Take-Two--is scary for small developers worrying if they can compete with such behemoths.

"This is a concern, and it's the continuation of a trend that's been happening for at least a year, if not longer," he said. "When you saw companies like Bioware and Pandemic getting bought up, it's pretty frightening if you're a developer."

And even if neither EA nor anyone else buys Take-Two, Crescente said the big companies are still going to be pushing a consolidation agenda. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

"I think it's inevitable that these smaller companies are going to get bought out," he said. "What makes me feel better about it is that companies like EA and Microsoft are going out of their way to try and get people to do independent game development. At least we're seeing that they understand the importance of not just being one big faceless company."

More EA takeovers ahead?
And to be sure, EA is trying to lay the groundwork for its own continued gobbling up of small competitors, as well as by other big names.

"There's a long history of companies in position 4, 5, 6, 7," EA CEO John Riccitiello said during his conference call Monday morning. "This includes Infogrames, Midway, Acclaim, Giant Interactive....Companies that have strong cash flow positive experience every couple of years and lean times in between have had a very hard time surviving in this business and making the investment in infrastructure that EA's been able to make. They'll be acquired by somebody."

And there's no reason to doubt that he's right, given that there continue to be bigger and bigger deals in the industry and that consolidation seems to be the way of just about every kind of business.

Indeed, The New York Times suggested Monday morning that another big deal to expect in the weeks ahead might be a Disney purchase of THQ Interactive--publisher of such games as the WWE: SmackDown vs. Raw! wrestling games.

In fact, THQ's stock was up 9.53 percent Monday on news of EA's Take-Two takeover bid.

Another company whose stock was way up Monday was Take-Two. Its stock actually rose above EA's $26 a share, closing at $26.89, up 54.9 percent on the day.

"I think (that) shows two things," Crescente said. "One, shareholders, think (the EA bid) is great news. And it also shows that they think it's going to happen."