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Orange has announced that it hascome to an arrangement with Apple to sell the iPhone in the UK, whereit will be the only network other than O2 to sell the iPhone 3G and 3GSin the UK. Orange announced the deal in a short statement, although details on pricing tariffs and availability are yet to be revealed.
"OrangeUK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and 3GS toOrange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhonein 28 countries and territories," said the statement. "Orange,which has the largest 3G network covering more people in the UK thanany other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange direct channelsincluding Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orange telesaleschannels, as well as selected high street partners.
28th September 2009, 08.30am:Orange UK and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone 3G and3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offersiPhone in 28 countries and territories. Orange, which has the largest 3G network covering more people in theUK than any other operator, will sell iPhone in all Orange directchannels including Orange shops, the Orange webshop and Orangetelesales channels, as well as selected high street partners. Apre-registration site for customers to log their interest has alreadybeen launched at www.orange.co.uk/iPhone. More information on pricing, tariffs and availability dates will be released in due course.
O2 has responded to the news that Orange will be stocking the iPhone by confirming it will continue to stock the device. "We'reproud that we've been able to offer an exclusive iPhone deal to our 20million customers for the last two years. We always knew that iPhoneexclusivity was for a limited period of time, but our relationship withApple continues and will be an ongoing success," an O2 spokespersontold TechRadar. "We have over 1 million iPhone customers and they remain very important to us. "Weaim to offer our customers the best devices on the market, includingbecoming the home of Smartphones and we are really pleased to now addanother device in the Palm Pre. "We also offer award-winningcustomer service and benefits, which is why more people choose O2 thanany other network in the UK." Network blow O2 has recently been under fire for failures in its data provision,and this new announcement will be another blow to the network as it'sjoined by Orange in stocking both the iPhone 3G and the 3GS. Thespeculation regarding O2 losing exclusivity of its iPhone range hasbeen rife for months, although it was expected that only the iPhone 3Gwould be offered to other carriers, with O2 retaining its status as thesole stocker of the 3GS. O2 will still be the exclusive stockistof the new Palm Pre when it debuts in the UK next month, but given thisis over 10 months since the device was announced it's not going toattract interest in the same way the iPhone has over the years. We'restill awaiting news on whether Orange will drop the price of the iPhonecompared to O2, but we'll bring you news as and when we get it.
Orange recently revealed plans to merge its UK network with DeutscheTelekom's T-Mobile to create a business with 28.4 million customers. If given the go-ahead, it would be the UK's largest provider, overtaking Telefonica's O2, with about 37% of the mobile market. "Thatwould be good for Apple," said Mr McQueen. "Then, around three quartersof the UK market will then have access to the iPhone." O2 hasoffered the handset in the UK since its launch in 2007. In February, itsaid it had sold more than one million of the handsets. The launch of the latest iPhone 3GS in June significantly boosted sales, with many stores running out of stock. The phone has also allowed the firm to win subscribers from other networks, according to analysts. However,the rise of smartphones - which have the ability to surf the web andsend e-mail - has put a burden on the O2 network, according to MrMcQueen. "IPhone users to tend to use data quite extensively - perhaps more than anticipated," he said. "Orange has always a good data network and if the T-mobile deal goes through it would allow them to share the burden." O2 will continue to sell the handset in Britain, alongside iPhone rival the Palm Pre. The Palm phone, described by some as an "iPhone killer", will be available exclusively to O2 from 16 October. O2 said that it always knew that its exclusive deal was for "a limited period of time". Thenew agreement with Orange brings the UK into line with many othercountries around the world which have multiple operators that offer theiPhone. In countries where exclusive deals still persist, suchas the US, some customers choose to "unlock" their phones using thirdparty software so they work on an unlicensed network. However,Apple has warned that the practice can cause "irreparable" damage to ahandset and has engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse, releasing periodicsoftware updates which prevent unlocked phones from working correctly.
The past few weeks have come with two major reveals for the weirdoswho follow online social networks. The first was big news. Twitter’sinternal documents leaked and the identity-crisis of earth’s most popular start-up is now public. The second was more under the radar but just as important. In a memo that went out to staff, the CEO of MySpace admitted that their users are caught between three competing notions of what MySpace is or should be.
Twitter and Myspace are different companies in different markets butthere is a lot of evidence to suggest that they share, and will alwaysshare, the exact same problem. MySpace and Twitter are hugely popular for uses neither company anticipated.The mission of each company is so vague that their products arestretched and molded into a variety of different uses. Instead oftargeting and building their business around one of these users they take their sudden popularity as a sign they have a killer product. They don’t.
Scale is Everything
When an industry is in transition or an idea like ‘social networking’ is still being fleshed out, getting explosively popular without knowing the nuances of why is a curse.Twitter is young but in my opinion, it’s already too late. It has growntoo big, too fast, for too many different purposes. It will take 2 orthree years but Twitter will be lapped by a variety of similar services with focus and actual business models; how Facebook developed in response to MySpace sheds light on what kind.
How MySpace Scaled
Since its inception MySpace has gone after users as if they werePokemon’. MySpace managers ran competitions on sign ups and theemployes used a slew of methods to capture. The result was a sprawlingnetwork of users but by 2005, it seemed to be working. If you looked at the stats, MySpace was an utter phenomena. It destroyed Friendster and after it was purchased by Murdoch it was getting all types of press and valuations. What the raw stats didn’t tell you is that user habits on the site looked something like this:
The problem with this way of scaling is simple. When a new cultural practice, like ’social networking’, is in the grass roots stages of development you can’t assume that people are going to your site because they like it.Your competition doesn’t really exist yet. What they might like are certain aspects of your productor they might be using parts of it in ways you never designed. The onlyway to address this is to study your users obsessively, focus on aparticular experience, then update your product accordingly.
Because MySpace grew in so many different markets at a single timeand gave users so much space to use the service how they liked, they’ve never been in a position to either watch or effectively control this experience. How do you update a product without knowing its target? You don’t. MySpace at its height and the current MySpace look remarkably similar, it lost control to its users. It has gone from being hailed as one of the best acquisitions ever made to a drain on News Corps portfolio. The results look like this:
How Facebook Scaled
When it comes down to it the mechanisms of MySpace and Facebook are not that different.Thepieces and concept are nearly the same. Both are constructed of userprofiles, avatars, walls, interest spaces, groups, photo capabilities,and a friend confirmation/listing process.
Facebook distinguished itself philosophically and pragmatically. Zuckerberg’s biggest insight into designing the site was that you are online who you are in real life. Facebook was one of the first social networks to emphasize genuine identityinsofar asthey required full names, university email addresses, and deleted accounts that used aliases. The second was pragmatic. Facebook launched in a single target market. In this case, of course, it was Harvard.
What this enabled was a less abstract more manageable mission.Instead of having to define what an ‘online social networking space’was supposed to be for everyone, Zuckerburg just had to answer forHarvard. As Facebook became popular on campus, he was able to see directly into how his peers interacted with the site and was able to update the product to help them use it more efficiently. Becausethey were all college students, the feedback he was getting was focusedand nuanced. Having less users also meant they could redesign theirentire product without pissing off disparate subsections. The resultwas an incremental evolution. The Facbeook that started at Harvard looks radically different than the one we use today. It worked.
How Twitter Scaled
Twitter grew much like MySpace. It ran competition for signing upusers, aliases were allowed, and it grew in multiple markets at theexact same time. Twitter started as a group SMS texting service then became popular for something wholly different. By restricting the length of a message the site inadvertently addressed one of the oldest problems in group communication. How do you hear many voices at a single time? Twitter’s answer is dead simple. 140.
This little restriction has produced a fascinating, highly-addictive product. If you look at the stats, Twitter seems to be working. It’s one of the most popular websites in the world and now has an excess of 44 million members.For those who invested or employees that had stock options, it must bean incredible feeling. I have grown to love Twitter but in my opinion we are rapidly approaching its peak.Its parallels toMySpace in 2006 are explicit. Twitterhas been bootstrapped for a vast number of uses and while its exciting to watch, its service is not containable . Like MySpace, Twitter is getting pulled in a variety of directions:
Why Twitter Will Dissolve and Turn into Detroit
The ability to hear and communicate messages with a group is what brought Twitter its initial wave of users but the real allure of Twitter, the reason it has caught the imagination of the press and millions of users, is something much more abstract. On Twitter, you can hear a public. Of course, there isn’t just one public, there is an infinite number.Whether it’s your country, your college, your city, or a shared nicheinterest like nyc media,everyone belongs to many publics and most everyone has a natural curiosity about what’s happening inside of them.
Twitter offers a way to manage how you see these publics. The problem is that its 140 character restriction is a blunt instrument. The site does not reflect the potential or nuance in which a public can speak to itself online.
Twitter as a network is an ungodly mess. From the onset, the site has allowed users to register aliases on custom URLs and because of it, usernames are inconsistent and confusing. It’s hard to find people who you know and its often even difficult to deduct wether that person is who they claim to be. Twitter is mobbed by impersonators,some of them hilarious, others manipulating. Twitter addresses thisissue recently by creating a ‘Verified Account’ stamp, its sloppy butmore importantly, perpetually incomplete.
There are a host of other problems related to reputation and maintaing users but the biggest issue concerns its identity, which is also where the leaked documentsgot interesting. Twitter employees are so clearly uncertain about whattheir product is even doing. Shots at it swayed from, “Twitter is fordiscovering and sharing what is happening right now,” to, “Twitter makes you smarter, faster, more efficient and more powerful.”
Twitter became popular before it had a mission. What this means is that its employees and investors will forever be trapped in boardrooms having these inane cyclical discussions about its identity. Twitter will either perpetually be simple insofar as its millions of users will have to hack the service to reflect their own values or it will roll the dice on a focus, put the site through chronic redesigns, and risk a mass user exodus.Either way its top talent will likely get frustrated and leave thecompany. Its top users will drift to something else then jump.
How Twitter will Resolve
The first thing to realize is that thereprobably isn’t going to be just one product to replace Twitter, therewill be several and they will battle it out or find niches. I see theirdesign following two trends with a potential for a hybrid.
The first trend is a service with the most minimal centralization possible. Both Dave Winer and Anil Dash have discussed plans for such a product. Winer calls his the RSSCloud and Dash describes the project more generally as the Push Button web. The RSSCloud grew from discussions with Jay Rosen over frustrations with Twitter and how its users have been bootstrapping. The line of thought is that your data belongs to you, not Twitter, and you should be able to use your data how you like with as little brand interference as possible. The proposal is to build RSSCloud, a loosely coupled service that will push your data to any website in real time.
The second is a product that is centralized but has an elegant way of organizingits content and attracting users. This is a product that would look andscale much like Facebook. It would start in a single target market anddevelop as a place for users to hear and communicate to thatpublic. Ideally it would begin in a cloistered network like auniversity where establishing members is as easy as checking their .eduemail address.
Addressing what’s wrong with Twitter isn’t going to come from thin air. It’s going to take a lot of time, development, and platform competition.
Many will soon be working on this, myself included. What will fill the blank is likely to define modern news production.
Space trading game Eve Online has suffered a virtual version of the credit crunch. Oneof the game's biggest financial institutions lost a significant chunkof its deposits as a huge theft started a run on the bank.
One of the bank's controllers stole about 200bn kredits and swapped them for real world cash of £3,115.
As news of the theft spread, many of the bank's customers rushed to remove their virtual cash.
<!-- E SF -->
Space scandal Thetheft from EBank took place in early June but only now have detailsemerged about the amount of money stolen and why it was taken.
Thetheft was carried out by EBank's chief executive, a player known asRicdic, now known to be a 27-year-old Australian who works in thetechnology industry. His full identity has not been revealed save thathis first name is Richard.
The stolen kredits amounted to 8% of the 2.6tn that Ebank had in its virtual vaults.
"Basicallythis character was one of the people who had been running EBank for awhile. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and tradedit away for real money," Ned Coker, of Icelandic company CCP which runsEve, told the Reuters news agency.
Eve Online has about 300,000players all of whom inhabit the same online universe. The game revolvesaround trade, mining asteroids and the efforts of differentplayer-controlled corporations to take control of swathes of virtualspace.
It has now emerged that Ricdic used the cash to put down a deposit on a house and to pay medical bills.
"I'mnot proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it," Ricdic toldReuters. "But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would'vechosen the same path based on the same situation."
Ricdic has now been thrown out of the game as trading in-game cash for real money is against Eve Online's terms and conditions.
Therules governing play within Eve would not have sanctioned Ricdic if hehad simply stolen the cash and used it in the game, nor if he hadbought kredits with real dollars.
The scandal is not the firstto play out in Eve Online. In early 2009 one of the game's biggestcorporations, called Band of Brothers, was brought down by industrialespionage.
It’s fair to say that the founders of Metacritic never foresawit generating the attention it has attracted. Intended as a way ofseeing at a glance whether a game was worth buying, it’s now used asa measure of game quality by the largest publishers, developers andretailers.
John Riccitiello has used its scores todefine EA’s business strategy to analysts; Steam prominently displaysthem on its product pages; developer Frontier uses them for salesforecasting.
And this simple set of numbers is deemedresponsible for many industry ills, from over-examination of reviewscores to influencing developer royalties. “I’ve heard thatpublishers will try to put a step in royalty levels depending onMetacritic scores, or some sort of Metacritic-related compensationstructure to a deal,” says Andy Eades, development director atRelentless.
Metacritic is still edited by just one man,Marc Doyle. But his focus remains very much on the reason why it wasestablished in the first place. “I really see myself as a kind ofgatekeeper to tell people that these are the games you should be payingattention to,” he declares. His role is to gather scores andcomments for every game released in the US, choosing whichpublications are included and concocting the formula that combinesthem into a single number.
A night owl, he works into thesmall hours from his office in Los Angeles. And though it’s nowowned by CNET, Metacritic is still his baby, Doyle co-founding itafter studying at USC Law School. There he met Jason Dietz,who came up with the concept and name in 1999. They launched itin 2001 and sold it in 2005.
Metacritic isn’t the onlyinternet game review score aggregator. The other major site is GameRankings, also owned by CNET. Doyle and GR’s editor, Lee Alessi,“talk to each other,” but have different methodologies. GR’sscores are based on averages, while Metacritic weighs publications’scores differently, depending on Doyle’s opinion of their prestigeand quality. But he won’t reveal how.
Both work on the sameprinciple, however: consistently include enough reviews fromenough publications across enough games and the results will smoothout. “A big game – one of the GTAs – I know Edge is going toreview it, and I know an easy grader will too, and so the biggames will get the same treatment,” Doyle explains. “If I includeall your reviews and all theirs, it all works out.”
Certainly,viewed broadly, the games at the top of the scale are generally thebest games around, and the bottom ones certainly aren’t. Thechallenge for Doyle [pictured above] – and the main source ofcontroversy – is in his selection of publications. The originalbasis was: “Who is the most credible, who has the best reputation,the best analysis?”
But now, he says: “It’s essentiallyabout whether gamers are going to them because they’re reliable foradvice on what games they should buy. I really don’t have to do toomuch research because they just come to me. I check out their scoringmethodology, send out a questionnaire asking when they launched,how many reviews they cover a week, total reviews done, aboutstaff – all the things I’ve learned over the years that I have todo.”
Clearly, much credence is placed on metascores, buttheir use as a metric for business decisions also depends on whetherthere really is a causal relationship between scores and sales.“There’s anecdotal evidence both ways,” says Doyle. “I know thatcertain publishers have done very comprehensive studies and they’vebeen able to highlight certain types of games and certain types ofgenres for which predictability will be much higher – racing,sports and certain types of action games, certain types offranchises. Others you just don’t know, like why did the Ben 10game sell through the roof? I don’t know. It’s not sopredictable, it’s not scientific or perfect.”
Activisionhas made such studies. Executive VP of publishing Robin Kaminsky saidat the 2008 DICE conference that higher-quality games, based onscores from Game Rankings, on average sell more, and that for everyfive points above 80, on average, sales double. But she notedthat many games buck this trend, and that the largest publishershave found that the greatest sales growth tends to occur in gamesscoring in the region of 70 compared to those scoring 80 ormore.
She also presented 18 products achieving scores of90 or more in 2008 and 2007. Only two were projected to sellover seven million copies, while seven sold less than a million.Overall, 12 out of the 18 sold less than two million, afigure that marks a rough break-even point for a triple-A game. Inother words, there is a correlation but quality does not assuresuccess.
And yet Metacritic is still gaining in stature, apoint illustrated by the fact that Doyle is receiving increasingcorrespondence from publishers. “If I’m missing something,publishers contact me and ask whether there’s a bias or a systematicissue – ‘Why are you covering this publication and not another?’”
Indeed,many PRs are strongly affected by a greater use of metascores aswell. Certainly, we’ve spoken with a PR for a major publisher whoexpressed huge frustration with the stress their companies place ongetting the best they can. “PRs who haven’t been in the industry verylong will get angry when certain new publications that I know haven’tearned their reputation aren’t included, or some local daily paper,”says Doyle.
“I say, ‘Guys, they haven’t made it yet’ –I try to be as kind as I can because I know sometimes they haveclauses in their contracts that make them affected by metascores interms of bonuses or penalties.”
The practice could be subtlychanging the relationship between developers and publishers, too.“You really want a producer to focus on doing everything that’s rightfor the game, not to be focused unduly with the review score it’sgoing to achieve,” says Splash Damage’s Paul Wedgwood [above].
“Ifhis bonus is wound up at a score of 70 or 80, he might betempted to err on the side of caution rather than taking risks andpushing for an 85 or a 90. Look at projects like BioShock,for example – on paper that isn’t something any sane producer wouldtake on, but it’s obviously well justified by its review scores.”
Furtherto this, many developers of games for broader markets feel thatmetascores are unrepresentative of their work. “If you look at familygames and kids’ games, they consistently score as many as tenreview points lower for, dare I say, what’s similar quality,”says Frontier’s David Braben. “It’s actually really hard to make areally
good kids’ game.”
For Wedgwood, developers canbe more directly affected by a poor metascore. “The negative sideis if developers are penalised for achieving low scores despite nothaving control over the resources and schedule for the project.”
Doylethinks so too: “If they’re having to achieve a certain metascore withthe same budget, that’s disturbing.” But it depends on therelationship between developer and publisher as well, as Wedgwoodsays: “Obviously, if the developer is wholly or partially funding agame or has a strong relationship with the publisher and can determinewhen it’s going to be released and how much it’s going to cost tomake, it’s their responsibility. And I think in that situationit’s quite common for a publisher to have an expectation for quality.”
Indeed,Wedgwood is a proponent of the idea that publishers should offer abonus related to earning certain metascores: “I think that reallyshows confidence from the publisher, saying ‘irrespective ofwhether or not this is a commercial success we’re going to pay you abonus just for achieving a certain review score’ – that’s a realincentive.”
But Braben [above] argues that developers have hadincentives all along. “Think of sales as a great big glorifiedMetacritic,” says Braben. “There’s been a lot of earnest talk aboutusing Metacritic and Game Rankings to incentivise, but the one reallyobvious way of incentivising things is royalties. EA has giveninterviews in which it mentioned average Metacritic scores as being ametric of the quality of its games. The problem is, why is itquoting that and not sales success?”
Eades agrees,reminding us that game companies are businesses: “There’s no pointin getting nine out of ten, ten out of ten and then not sellingenough products to justify a sequel.”
Which brings us back to the fact that Metacritic was only ever meant to be a general
guideto what to play for a game-buying public. For as long as everyone inthe videogame industry remembers that at the heart of it are one man’sdecisions, it could have value as just one of many other ways ofmeasuring a game’s overall success.
And perhaps, among allthe fears that a new focus on quality by publishers has emerged, thisis a change for the better. Wedgwood certainly agrees: “Wouldn’teverybody rather be working for a publisher that’s more concerned aboutquality?
According to gamesindustry.biz The videogames industry has set a new record in the US for sales ofsoftware and hardware, with 2008's level topping USD 21 billion acrossthe year, with almost a quarter of that coming in the supposedlyeconomy-stricken month of December.According to NPD data software sales grew by almost 23 per centto USD 11.7 billion, with December alone accounting for USD 5.3 billion- more than the total figure generated throughout the entire calendaryear in 1997.
Console game sales totalled USD 8.9 billion, based on 189million units sold, while PC games accounted for USD 701 million from29.1 million units, while portable titles sold 79.5 million units,hitting USD 2.1 billion.
The total number of games sold was just under 298 millionunits, with more than half of those rated at Everyone 10+. Teen titlesaccounted for 26.7 per cent of the market, while Mature games were just15.9 per cent.
I think it's amazing that something great is staying strong in our economy. It seems like the gaming industry sometime's get a lot of blame for things but it cannot be blamed for getting weak in our economy. Buy games and keep it strong!!
Even I became a member of the Bejeweled family and I'm not big on computer games. It's good to see that the gaming industry isn't losing money in the crisis....
"PopCap Games has announced that retail sales of its PC titles nearlydoubled in the last calendar year, according to data released by NPD.
The Bejeweled and Peggle developer saw its retail revenues growby 85.3 per cent during the 12 month period, making PopCap one of thetop 20 highest earning videogame companies."
I'd say BRAVO for PopCap. They have been a long time in the game industry and they're making the most addicting puzzle games ever. Addicting and so much interesting, so no wonder why so much people are buying them. They're fresh, popular and easy to play and there are games for many different tastes.
A Scottish university is launching a course to teach students how to be computer hackers. But the degree at Abertay University in Dundee, beginning later this year, will teach "ethical" hacking.
Students will be taught how to crack sophisticatedsecurity systems so they can advise organisations how to protect theirnetworks.
The course, which is seeking government accreditation, comes as demand for traditional computer courses declines.<!-- E SF -->
Advisory role The prospectus for the new course makes reference to thewell-known saying, "it takes a thief to catch a thief", but theuniversity has insisted that it is not designed to turn students intohackers.
Applicants to the four-year BSc in Ethical Hacking andCountermeasures will also face a tough government vetting process toensure students do not enrol with the intention of using their skillsto break the law.
Abertay is hoping the course will gain accreditationfrom the Department of Trade and Industry's Institute of InformationSecurity Professionals.
Course leaders will also seek recognition from the British Computer Society, a chartered organisation.
November 10-13: DevConnections Returns to Las Vegas DevConnections rocks the industry as the largest and most exciting event focused on the technology you use. Over 250 in-depth sessions on ASP.NET, Visual Studio, SQL Server and SharePoint delivered by 150 Microsoft architects and industry experts. Each attendee receives SQL Server 2008 with 1 CAL. DevConnections sold out last fall with over 5,000 attendees, so be sure to register today!
Publish Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:10:00 GMT Read more...
Games and related industries professionals (games developers,publishers and industry experts/ISPs/content agglomerators/set top boxmanufacturers...):if you canspare a few minutes, your opinion on an EU-funded digital gamingplatform project would be very much appreciated. Our research team inthe Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, iscurrently working on an EU-funded digital gaming platform projectcalled Games@Large. As part of an industry consultation process we haveset up a short online survey. Any help in completing the survey and/or getting it out to other industry professionals would be great.
The survey (and links to project brochure) is at:
UK videogame industry leaders have demanded greater ties betweenbusiness and academia to ensure that Britain's games developers remainglobally competitive. But will any of them step forward to foster therelationship?
At games industry conference the Westminster Media Forum, held inLondon this week, Mary Matthews, Strategy and Business DevelopmentDirector at game developer Blitz, said that ineffective training isholding the industry back.
“We can’t do what we want to do because we can’t find the right people,” she said.
Yet, acording to Kate O’Connor, Executive Director of Policy andDevelopment at Skillset, an industry body for skills and training, UKuniversities already offer 80 videogame-related degree courses. Nonehave any industry recognition, however.
Paul Harris, Professor of Screen Media at the University of Abertay,Dundee, agreed that accreditation by game design firms is crucial. Hesaid it is the best way for universities to ensure that students’skills match firms’ requirements.
Matthews also called for a similar frequent refreshment of the curriculum.
Matthews has other ideas too, such as recruiting potential gamedesigners from the age of 14. In her view, this would help kidsestablish much earlier a link between enjoying games and developingthem, thus steering more designers into the industry.
However, no one appears willing to take responsibility for theproposals. Instead, both industry and academia are hoping thegovernment will do the job for them.
Margaret Hodge, Minister for Culture, Creative Industries andTourism, said at the conference: “The games industry must do more toencourage students to choose the right qualifications [for videogamedesign], such as maths and physics.”
The government, she said, also has plans in the pipeline to createof centres of excellence for videogame development where gaming brainscould unite to develop the next smash hit.
You. Your friends and family. Your classmates and coworkers. In thebrave new world of the internet, everybody has power. Information isinteractive, knowledge is collaborative and history is open source. Thenerdy kid next door has just as much influence as a high schoolteacher; the dorky dude at the comic book shop has just as much voiceas a college professor.
Problem is, the nerds and dorks tend to have a lot morefree time - and passion - than the teachers and professors. The endresult? A hilariously skewed, terrifyingly twisted view of the world inwhich all the wrong things are deemed "important" and worthy of seriousacademic discussion.
Here are 15 mind-boggling examples.
See what we mean? When the deadliest, costliest war in the history of mankind has been trumped by a videogame franchiseabout that war,you know something's off. One involved over 50 countries and took over70 million lives; the other involves button mashing and tea bagging.
On an encouraging note, we did have to add all the Call of Dutygames' individual pages together to reach the crazy number above. On adiscouraging note, we didn't have to add Call of Duty 4 and itsnon-WWII setting, which would have brought the total word count to aneven crazier 18,927.
Oh, and on a simply ridiculous note? Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare beats "modern warfare"... 5,858 to 2,873.
Alsoless important than Call of Duty! • American Revolutionary War = 8,078
• American Civil War = 11,729
• English Civil War = 8,030
• Napoleonic Wars = 7,951
• Hundred Years' War = 7,992
• War on Terrorism = 10,674
• War on Drugs = 7,628
• Cold War = 10,117
• "War" = 9,233 While the magic menagerie of super-powered, frilly-maned, sparkly-eyed, rosy-cheeked wonder beasts might make for slightly more exciting cards than a Three of Spades, the emphasis here is still extremely wonky.
Poker has been around for longer than anyone can remember... the Pokemon Trading Card Game was invented in 1996. Poker has created millionaires and forced bankruptcy... the Pokemon Trading Card Game might have resulted in some lost lunch money and a temper tantrum or two.
Alsoless important than Pokemon Trading Cards! • Baseball cards = 4,686
• Blackjack = 5,228
• Roulette = 5,492
• Checkers = 2,326
• Pool (Billiards) = 621
• Bowling = 407
• Wheel of Fortune = 4,521
• "Trade" = 3,038
• "Games" = 2,830 Before you get the wrong impression, no, the Master Chief does not win in a Wikipedia matchup against George W. Bush... though his approval ratings are undoubtedly higher.
The truly astounding thing, however, is that he does emerge victorious against not one, not two, but TENof this country's past commanders in chief. Yes, 23% of the men whohelped make the United States the strongest nation on Earth are easilydefeated by a fictional and faceless videogame character who barelyknows how to speak and takes orders from a naked hologram. Go America!
The orange word count above is an average taken from the USPresidents beaten by the Master Chief. Here's the full, patheticbreakdown:
Leaders of the Free Worldless important than Master Chief! • James Monroe = 2,820
(5th President)
• John Quincy Adams = 3,457
(6th President)
• John Tyler = 3,431
(10th President)
• Zachary Taylor = 2,235
(12th President)
• Millard Fillmore = 3,631
(13th President)
• Franklin Pierce = 4,203
(14th President)
• James Buchanan = 3,888
(15th President)
• Rutherford B. Hayes = 2,686
(19th President)
• James A. Garfield = 3,915
(20th President)
• Chester A. Arthur = 3,078
(21st President)
In the future, when Captain Kirk is battling tribbles and Data islearning how to love, this lopsided comparison will make completesense. Why wouldn't the entries for the glorious Starship Enterprise dwarf that for a dusty museum piece like the automobile? We expect the pages for hoverboards, robot maids, personal time machines and giant laser death rays to do the same.
For the present, though, why does a make-believe spaceship deserve more words than the planet's principal mode oftransportation? Also, why does that make-believe space ship deserve noless than nine separate pages, including unique entries for six different models of the NCC-1701? Seriously?!
You think Hideo Kojima's cut scenes are long? Try reading Leo Tolstoy's epic tome. War and Peace waspublished in four books over five years, covers nearly a decade ofhistory and includes more than 1,400 pages, more than 560,000 words andmore than 3 million characters. It's generally considered one of thelongest novels - hell, one of the longest things - of all time.
Somehow, though, the writers on Wikipedia managed to summarize thewhole plot in 1,922 words. Well done! Now we'd be really impressed ifyou guys could squeeze the plot of a single damn videogame - even therambling old man that is Metal Gear Solid 4 - into less than 2,548 words.
The top numbers (in orange) are for the entire entries.The numbers in the preceding paragraph, as well as the list below, arefor the subsections entitled "plot," "story," or "synopsis."
Alsoless important than Metal Gear Solid 4!
(by plot, story or synopsis)
We won't get jealous and play the competition card here. EGM isimportant, a veritable titan of the industry with a massive and devotedfollowing. Many of us here at GamesRadar include ourselves in that camp.
But come on... do the latest screenshots of Chun-Li'sthighs really carry more weight than the 2008 election? Do you reallyneed to know the review score for Turok more than you need to know thereasons for the recession? Is the dropping price of the PS3 morecritical than the rising price of gasoline?
Yes, Electronic Gaming Monthly - and any videogame publication - is totally worthy of 4,429 words. We just wish that Time and other vital news sources received the same attention.
We love, love, love the soundtracks to Final Fantasy... but someone put way, way, way too much effort into this Wikipedia page. The intro alone is nearly 700 words, lengthier than the entries for many singers, bands and genres. Rock and roll, the biggest genre of them all, doesn't stand a chance.
Of course, the vastness of the web was made to hold such exceedinglyniche minutiae, but even the fan who owns all of these compilationalbums probably agrees that they could have fit onto the page forgeneral Final Fantasy music. Unless that fan is the one who wrote this obsessive love letter to begin with...
Alsoless important than obscure Final Fantasy music!
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Jeffrey Dahmer was a cannibal, Charles Manson was a deranged cultleader and John Wayne Gacy, worst of all, dressed up like a friggin'clown. Yet the complete list of these horrible, horrible murderers -together with dozens of depraved others - is apparently about 3,000words less significant than the list of Maverick boss characters in the Mega Man X series.
And that's compared to the list of serial killers by country. Look up the list of serial killers by number of victims andthe difference grows to 6,000. Go ahead and add the two lists togetherif you want - at 8,000 words total, they still fall short of the sheerterror and infamy inspired by Cyber Peacock, Blizzard Buffalo,Overdrive Ostrich and Armored Armadillo. Ooh, we're getting chills justthinking about them!
Above: The true face of evil
Let's be honest. Who doesn't love Gardulla the Hut? Who didn't havea poster of Cole Fardreamer or Elan Sleazebaggano hanging on theirbedroom wall as a kid? Who wouldn't beg their parents to buy them thatKlaatu action figure for the holidays?
Qwi Xux, Plo Koon, 2-1B, Chief Chirpa, Yarna D'al Gargan, BaronSoontir Fel, Meewalh, Oola, Commander Cody, Baron Soontir Fel, TraskUlgo, Gartogg, Wam "Blam" Lufba and, of course, little Windy... all ofthem are forever entwined in our dreams and imaginations.
No surprises here. After all, Superman (10,641 words) has been known to survive a nuclear explosion... inside his own ass. And Batman (10,818 words) invented his own damn brand of shark repellent Bat spray!
Obviously, these guys are far superior to the rest of us. End of discussion.
Above: Holy sardine!
Both the fictional Umbrella Corporation and the real world National Human Genome Research Institute studythe mysteries of genetics. Both engage in the cutting edge field ofbiomedical engineering. Both are located in small towns. Both haveseemingly harmless, yet somehow creepy names. Both have seeminglyvague, yet somehow menacing logos.
Wait a second - are these two organizations actuallyone and the same?! Has Umbrella been a front all along, a clever ployto distract us from the true zombie overlords? We knew that tiny word count seemed suspicious...
Above: Oh shit.
According to Wikipedia, Kirby is "a small, pink, spherical creature with large red feet."
Exactly. Done. Enough said. Oh, if only that were the case...instead, that is merely the first sentence of a 1,512 word subsectionentitled Characteristics, which goes on to describe - in disturbinglydetailed sub-subsections - the Personality, Abilities and Species of Kirby. Yes, species.
The dog hasan overall longer page, sure, but the fact that Kirby's"characteristics" actually overcome those of man's best friend isabsolutely insane. They shouldn't even be close.
As expected, Jesus whoops Mario byquite a large margin in total Wikipedia word count. In a miraculousturn of events, however, Mario's Legacy section is actually longer thanJesus' Legacy. Yes, you heard right - a pixelated plumber is consideredto have had a bigger impact on the world than the central figure ofChristianity and, to some, the physical embodiment of God. Wow.
Then again... Jesus can walk on water and heal the sick,but Mario can shoot fireballs out of his hands and turn into a raccoon.Jesus has an awesome beard, but Mario's got a super sweet mustache.Jesus ushered in much of modern religion, but Mario ushered in much ofmodern gaming. Both can come back from the dead, though to be fair,Jesus only did that once.
At last, we reach the ultimate showdown. In this corner, we have God, who Wikipedia describes as:
"... the principal or sole deity in religion..."
"...the creator and overseer of the universe..."
"... omnipotent and eternal..."
"... the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable being existent..."
His opponent? Knuckles of Sonic the Hedgehog fame, who Wikipedia describes as:
"... a red, teenage, anthropomorphic echidna..."
"... the fourth most popular character in the series..."
"... shy around girls..."
And, uh, yeah. How did this guy beat God by more than 4,000 words again? Well, to reach Knuckles' number, we did have to add two pages together, one for his game character and one for his comic character. To level the playing field, we should probably give God the Bible or something, right? Of course, we'll also have to give Knuckles his comic books and two videogames (Knuckles Chaotix and Sonic & Knuckles) to keep things even...
Damn! Sorry God - you lose again. Looks like we have a new omnipotentoverseer in the universe... or at least in the strange, silly, scaryand seriously skewed universe that is Wikipedia.
In a market that’s oversaturated with incredibly talented artistsand writers, up-and-comers and semi-professionals alike face theoutrageously difficult task of gaining recognition in their chosenfield. One dilemma out of many is that many young artists are forced tocompete against traditional animators that didn’t get out of the mass layoffs and salary cuts plaguing Disney in the year 2001, the eventual closureof the animation giant’s 2D studios creating a flood of overqualifiedprofessionals entering into jobs that would normally be moreaccommodating towards talented students and other entry levelapplicants.
While this is hardly a bad thing– one would have a hard time arguingagainst widely-distributed mediums getting a boost in artistic quality–it leaves a lot of people scratching their heads, wondering how thehell they could possibly make it in the professional world, especiallywhen it comes to video games. You know how they say the right answer isoften the simplest? Well, here’s a simple answer to the headscratching:learn how to become a professional.
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Art in its many varied forms has, and always will be, a staple ofevery human culture that has ever walked the Earth. Over time, nearlyeveryone has debated what constitutes art that’s worthy of display, ofreflection; why a single image may evoke a great deal of emotions inone person while it leaves another cold and uninterested. This worksrather well for art contained within the many varied galleriesscattered across the globe, but that kind of ambiguity will rarely getyou honorable mention in mediums that rely heavily on– you got it–technical expertise.
The consumer market may be easy to fool with rudimentary attempts atfan art from your favorite game or anime, but knowing you have thetalent and expanding that talent are two extremely different things. Unfortunately, thanks to social networking sites like deviantArt and its numerous clones, many are under the delusion that the groping their ego receives in the form of comments or favorites make them impervious to conventional criticism. So here’s rule number one, in case you missed it:
You are never above criticism no matter how good you think you are. The only way an artist will be anywhere near capableof making ends meet in a market that’s incredibly competative is bystanding out, both in their list of skills and in the body of work theypresent in their portfolios.Fresh ideas are just as paramount to getting that dream job you’redrooling over, but having a solid understanding of drawingfundamentals– perspective, life drawing (prudes are advised to get over naked people) and proper use of negative space– is going to be one of your most treasured assets.
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a representative from Raven Software’s creative team over lunch, and later received a tour of their headquarters (which I, unfortunately, can’t tell you about, other than to say: holy crap that was cool). My tour guide had been a technical artist for Electronic Arts in the past, citing the impressive wealth of knowledge that landed him those jobs in the first place. Hestated in no uncertain terms that one of the ways an applicant canreally stand out is by showing proficiency in manipulating gameengines, saying that being able to produce mods for various games using the Unreal Engine would be an immediate edge over other prospective employees. Similarly, a solid understanding of 3D software such as Maya–including how to create detailed textures for the models you create– isincluded in the mix, even if your entire job revolves around sketchingconcepts with pen and paper. In short: wherever your strengths may lie,being able to showcase versatility in many different aspects of gamedesign is much more likely to land you a job in the industry.
Sounds difficult, doesn’t it? As if learning all the basics of drawing wasn’t hard enough, right? Well, it isdifficult; no matter how much encouragement you might receive from yourpeers and loved ones, nothing will erase that fact… but if you’reanything like me, you look forward to the learning process as much asyou look forward to landing that dream job.
The Nordic Game conference feels a little like a family gathering.Despite taking place in a giant corrugated box on an industrial estatein Malmö, Sweden, it’s a considerably more informal and intimate affairthan GDC, with a sense of easy familiarity between delegates – at thisyear’s event, there was even a bit of a singalong.
Ofcourse, this convivial atmosphere partly comes from a sense of sharedpurpose: the conference’s remit is to encourage a unified regionalstand on the international stage, and a good portion of this year’sschedule was given over to worrying about – and celebrating – the stateof Nordic gaming. You might not have known it from the keynotespeeches, however, which were dominated by names from beyond theregion.
UK developer Traveller’s Tales opened theproceedings with an entertaining retrospective on the Lego Star Warsseries. Lego may be a Scandinavian icon, but the story was largely aBritish one – and it was perhaps surprising that this should have led aconference dedicated to Nordic games.
The closing keynoteof the first day similarly strained its relationship with the Nordic,but seemed well received by the audience nonetheless. Zoë Mode’screative director Ste Curran was joined by friends to deliver a seriesof stories about gaming and the videogame industry – climaxing whenTraveller’s Tales’ Jonathan Smith led the audience in a song lamentingthe tedium of so many videogame plots.
Thistheme was more explicitly laid out in the following Q&A session:the best stories about games aren’t those that emerge from their plotsbut one that gamers construct – often with other players. Curran andSmith voiced frustration at gaming’s tendency to ape other linear mediawhen interaction should be the focus. Perhaps this argument was alittle diluted by the fact that so many of the stories related tomultiplayer games; much of their value was clearly a phenomenon ofsocialization, rather than being unarguably the result of interactivemedia itself.
The UK wasn’t the only non-Nordic countryto receive a fair amount of stage time. A rare appearance by FumitoUeda outlined the idiosyncratic production of Ico and Shadow Of TheColossus, while Keiichiro Toyama, creator of Silent Hill, showed Siren:New Translation, the latest game in the franchise.
Despitea greater global influence on the line-up, there remained a largeamount of Scandinavian material – an awards ceremony doled out gongs toThe Darkness and World In Conflict, while another event issued grantsto promising developers – sparking discussion over what the Nordicgovernments should be doing to ensure the region retains creatorsdespite rising costs. It was an issue raised in the conference’sclosing discussion, which brought together representatives from Nordicheavyweights CCP, Remedy and DICE. Even if the conference’s headlineacts strayed from the message of Nordic ascendancy, one thing wasclear: whatever the difficulties that lie ahead for Nordic developers,there’s a resolution to face them together – that’s what families arefor.
The video game market is changing incrediblyquickly right now, probably at the fastest rate since the big crash ofthe mid-1980s.
Not only is the market expanding to include women and casual gamersonce again, the definition of what constitutes a game is expanding. Iwouldn't say it’s expanding within the minds of game developers, but itis expanding in the context of the mass media and mass consumers, andthat’s who drives the market in the first place.
As sick to death as we all are of talking about microtransactions,free-to-play MMOs, and casual online spaces, the advent of these thingsis changing the game landscape for good, whether we like it or not.
Interactive Media - At Face Value The lines between an online community portal and an MMO are blurredto the point of being indistinguishable. Consider the numbers — Audition Online has tens of millions of users worldwide, and a dedicated TV show in Vietnam. Kart Rider has tens of millions of users. Ditto Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin.
Traditional games - like most people reading this are developingtoday - may never be able to reach that large of an audience. Our gamesare too focused, too hardcore, and bear too much of the stereotype of“gamer.”
Right now, Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, and World of Warcraftare considered our blockbuster titles, and flagships for the industryin popular culture. But when you think about it, it’s still justshooting aliens, playing gang banger, and swinging your sword in theforest.
Boiled down to their essentials those things appeal to a verylimited group of people, and the complexity of game controls preventseven blockbuster movie attendees, whom we should be attracting, fromplaying these things.
At least, that’s the common line. But is that really the case? Doaliens, wizards, and soldiers really make a piece of entertainmentinaccessible? Many millions of people went to see the Iron Man movieover the past two months, and a large percentage of them have probablynever picked up a comic book in their lives.
Why is it that people will go see The Lord of the Rings' movies, but many of them will not play the games?
The Real Mass Market It’s common knowledge that game controllers are intimidating, thatconsoles have a certain stigma to them, and that most mass marketconsumers consider games to be either a waste of time, or activelydetrimental.
These can all be debated until the end of time, but the perceptionexists, and either that has to change (Nintendo is doing good workthere), or we have to change. Otherwise we’ll end up with acomparatively small fraction of a growing market.
Will it be possible to make a game like Assassin’s Creed or BioShockin 2015? It’s already becoming difficult to justify large budgets forsingle-player experiences, and it stands to reason that it will getmore difficult as time goes on. What does that mean for developers ofthese games? What happens to the concept of a game auteur?
One possibility is for these hardcore games to essentially becomethe art-house cinema of the video game world, which would be odd, asthat’s a role currently filled by indie titles.
Interestingly, never has the film/game analogy worked less well than it does currently. In the PS2 era, you could correlate Grand Theft Auto III with a movie blockbuster, and Ico with an art-house film.
But now, in terms of scope, money, and global social impact, Kart Rider or Club Penguin would be that blockbuster, and Call of Duty 4 would be the art-house equivalent, though content- and budget-wise Call of Duty 4 is much more your traditional blockbuster material. Something seems awry there.
The fact is, these simple-to-play social experiences are here.They’re growing in popularity, they’re dwarfing our multi-milliondollar projects that sell through to 5 million people at max, and theycost a fraction of the price to make.
With the market expanding as it is, and the dollars going wherethey’re going, the $20 million budget bestselling console title oftoday is going to be the hardcore niche title of tomorrow, art-house ornot. Unless development costs get significantly lower, it seems we havean online future to look forward to.
New Things Are Stupid To wit: online games are taking over, and I, curmudgeon that I am, don’t really like it.
Certainly there will always be the hardcore players that will wantthat deeper experience. There’s no doubt about that. But the questionis: in an industry where we’re getting our asses kicked financially byweb developers, of all people, who will pay us to make it?
