54. facebook's latest advertising tools - their users

you can talk about technology and science all you want to, but sadly it's advertising that makes the world go 'round.  and every year market and ad folks come up with a new way to make a buck off of harassing us, the consumers, testing the waters to see how much abuse we can take on our monitors and televisions before we have a stroke from pure rage.  try to navigate to most websites without getting a pop-up (or pop-under) advertisement.  it's not commonly done.  and of course, with social networking taking up as much of our lives as it currently does, it can't be a platform that is immune to the generation of ad bucks.

now i use facebook as well as other social networking for a number of different things - keeping in touch with friends, sharing photos, and of course, shamelessly promoting myself and this stuff you're reading now.  but there's certain things i won't do.  i have no interest in geotagging pictures i take.  the concept of "checking in" with the world to where i am at all times isn't fun to me - it's downright frightening.  but i digress.  like all sites that want money, facebook relies on advertising as a fairly heavy revenue stream.  the method they use isn't direct advertising or pop-ups, it's more contextual advertising - basically using public user information to determine what ads to show you.  it works kind of like  amazon's "recommendations" section based on your user profile and purchasing history.  for example - i just logged into facebook and here's the ads that show up on my profile page:

1.  ad for certifications in project management and IT
2.  ad for duke university's engineering masters program
3.  ad for getting an online MBA in international business

image from zdnet

and all of these make total sense.  my public information states that i'm an engineer, a project manager and in the IT field, and also went to business school.  so this information gets rolled into facebook advertising to target me with what they see as relevant things.  and i really don't have any problem with that.  it's the result of information i made public, and that's how advertising works.  but given recent developments in facebook's ad strategy, it looks to me that things are taking a sharp turn for the worse.  instead of using just public information, they will use your actions - likes, check ins, and apps for what they now call "sponsored stories."    an example of this process, illustrated with starbucks, can be seen to the right.  companies taking part in this scheme hand in hand with facebook are companies like coca-cola and starbucks for obvious reasons.  but it's not completely commercial, as "for the social good" organizations like unicef, project (RED) and autism speaks have also signed up for this program.

so what's the purpose of this new method of advertising?  it gives sponsors' ads more relevance in your eyes by showing you that people you know personally recommend whatever service or good is in question.  at face value from an advertising perspective this seems fairly harmless, because in a sense it's making what you publicly do "more" public to people you're not hiding information from.  what i do have a problem with is that the advertisements directly include your name, your profile picture, and any people tagged in or associated with whatever activity you did.  and that's not all - because here comes the fun part:  there is no way to opt out of this program.  you're a part of the system regardless of how much you tweak your privacy settings.

actually, that's not completely true... if you and every person on your friends list set their privacy to hide 100% of actions from their own friends, then you should be safe.  but at that point, there's really not much of a point to having a facebook account to begin with.  part of me is waiting for this scheme to backfire - if 1000 people checked into a starbucks with the comment "this tastes like someone peed in it," is that the text that would show up in the sponsored story?  i'm sure companies saw it coming though, and have some mechanism to prevent that.  and i don't even know how this would affect users who are farmville crackheads or some sort of equivalent, who already plague me with 324876823 requests to find an animal or help them in some sort of mob war.

time will ultimately tell how annoying i will find this practice.  i'm sure my objections are really based more on principle - that there is no opt out policy for users.  given the site's history, this presents itself to me as a warning flag and a sign of times to come.

things like these makes facebook alternatives like diaspora look more and more attractive every time i look.

53. biotic gaming: gods, monsters and pac-man

biotic games, from switched

its impact on gaming in general and its firmly cemented place in video game history notwithstanding, pac-man was a fairly simple and straightforward game.  you could move in four directions - up, down, left and right, while escaping ghosts that are coming after you.  a powerpill lets you dispatch of your foes and send them back to the start point.  get all the dots, beat the level, move on. i remember seeing human pac-man re-creations in college at halloween time as well as a number of imitations and parodies.  but now, we have broken into new plane - a place where pac-man is a real game, with real biological creatures swimming through fluid as the round yellow man himself, controlled by us.

confused?  allow me to elaborate.

scientists at stanford have recreated a pac-man shaped playing field, where the creature playing the role of pac-man is actually a single-celled organism called a paramecium (come on kids, you remember your old science classes).  this has led to the title of this little game - "PAC-mecium."  illustrated in the lower-left in the picture above, the "player" directs the movement of the paramecium via joystick, same as he or she would on an arcade screen, and it moves accordingly.  this joystick is connected to a controller that shifts the polarity of an electric field that's put across the fluid, changing the direction the paramecium moves.  a video camera keeps score.  i hope you're all with me on this one in the fact that this is some serious craziness, despite the relatively basic science behind it.  other so-called "biotic games" include POND PONG, ciliaball, and biotic pinball (gizmodo).  so why do this at all?  what possible scientific gain can society garner from this sort of strange experimentation?  according to professor ingmar riedel-kruse, awareness.  all a strange ad campaign for science.  "we hope that by playing games involving biology of a scale too small to see with the naked eye, people will realize how amazing these processes are and they'll get curious and want to know more," said the good professor (the register).

and it may just work to get people paying attention to science, especially microbiology, as these experiments illustrate.  but that's not to say that all of the attention is good.  some of his testers had some ethical problems with what these "games," and because of this professor riedel-kruse thinks that it may also be a good starting point to stimulate discussion on issues of bioethics. "we are talking about microbiology with these games, very primitive life forms. we do not use any higher-level organisms," said the professor to the stanford university news.  for those of you that need to brush up on your biology, paramecia are single-celled organisms, lacking a brain and nervous system - meaning that they don't possess the capacity to feel pain.  the professor assures us that nothing with any sort of higher-level function was used for this project

this is just a sampling of what the scientific world has for research and biotic gaming. "we would argue that modern biotechnology will influence our life at an accelerating pace, most prominently in the personal biomedical choices that we will be faced with more and more often," riedel-kruse told stanford university news. "therefore everyone should have sufficient knowledge about the basics of biomedicine and biotechnology. biotic games could promote that."

i wouldn't look for a console release of anything like this for the 2011 holiday season, but it may be appearing in a lab near you.  as novel of an idea as this is, all one can really ask themselves is "what next?"

for more games that are scientifically relevant, check out fold-it and carnegie mellon university's eteRNA and help science help you.

52. are you a gaming jerk fond of the rage quit? your number's up, buddy.

original image from marvelvscapcom3.com

anyone who has spent any significant time gaming online, be it fighters on xbox live/PSN or any MMO has probably experienced a most infuriating behavior from strangers they play with.  executed in a most cowardly fashion by warcraft tanks that can't hold aggro and others that don't get the drops they want,  starcrafters whose build order is fail, and street fighters whose chun-li just can't take your deep ryu skills - the rage quit.

this practice is literally what it sounds like - a player gets so angry at game conditions and/or their inability to win that they just quit the match before it's over.  usually it's accompanied by an absolutely vile stream of profanity and/or racial slurs (man those are just my faaaaavorite) followed by the glowing phosphor on your screen spelling out that he or she has disconnected.  allow me to illustrate this experience through world of warcraft:

ass-hat: @#%# all my gear's all broken.
me: not good to hear when pulling a boss
ass-hat: &^#$% you you !%*$ing &*$%#.  say one more thing and you can find someone else.  go ahead, say it.  $%& dps and heals are $%@ing fail.
raid lead: dude, relax, let's just get this guy down
** ass-hat has left the raid group **

this was, of course, followed by 10 minutes of dumbass whispers that reminded me how useful the ability to silence players is.  and screw him anyway, we 9-manned that noise with dps to spare.

fighters online suffer a similar story.  i don't really play a lot of fighters online, mainly because my xbox is broken and i don't have any for the ps3 yet, but i have heard horror stories from friends of mine that frequently play soul calibur or street fighter online against other players.  they have identical rage quit experiences where a player will just drop connection in mid-match - literally pulling the plug - robbing them from a win in their stats and saving themselves from a loss.  not only is it an ass-hat move, if you experience it enough it can ruin the experience of online play.

but capcom has finally come up with a solution.  in their new fighter, marvel vs. capcom 3: fate of two worlds, if you gain a reputation as a rage quitter, you will pay consequences.  there will be a stat associated to your user that tracks how often and when you disconnect from the game.  once you earn a reputation as a rage quitter, whenever you queue up for matches you will be paired with other players with rage quit status,  while players who want to enjoy the game without you can play in peace.  effectively giving players that give others grief some of their own medicine and throwing them into their own sissy bracket is a novel idea, and i hope it catches on in other platforms

i know i've had my issues with capcom over the last couple of years, but this has given them a few points back in my book.

51. sony makes a play for the mobile market

picture from kotaku

these days when you hear anything about mobile gaming, "mobile" and "casual" seem to be used interchangeably.  some people may think of smart phones and tablets, like the iphone/ipad or any smartphone or device sporting the android OS.  makes sense - they're fresh on our minds.  granted they do have some games that are becoming increasingly popular with the casual gamer, like angry birds and infintiy blade.  but in this surge of ios and android powered mobile devices entering the market, some people somehow forget that mobile consoles still exist.  given all of the new "competition,"  the nintendo ds/dsi and sony psp/psp go pretty much have a joint stranglehold on the mobile console market.  and given recent developments, that's only going to increase.  nintendo was showing off their new 3ds unit at last year's e3, with a march release this year.  the console supports backwards compatibility with games for ds and dsi software, a number of augmented reality functions, and 3d movie playback - no goofy glasses required.

sony, of course, has no plans of simply letting their biggest mobile rival take over the market.  rumors of a playstation phone have been hovering around for a couple months, and just about a week ago the web was flooded with images of a prototype of sony xperia playstation phone.  in this flood engadget has a pre-emptive review, showing pictures of a 4" screen, 5MP camera, 512MB RAM and ROM, and running the "playstation pocket" app.  you can check them out for photos and action video.

but it gets better.  MCV is reporting that sony has an announcement tentatively scheduled for january 27th in japan, and that announcement is going to introduce the psp2.  now this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since "generations" in mobile consoles are pretty common, but what IS surprising is the language that's backing it up.  supposedly with sources that have "direct hands-on experience,"  the psp2 is going to have the same graphical capability as the playstation 3.  now that's saying a lot.  according to 1up, the hardware on the device will run at just over half of the playstation 3's processing power.  and since the graphics only have to be displayed on a small screen and not a big HDTV, it will be enough to equally display "earlier" ps3 titles.  also rumored as part of the device are a touchpad and a slider design complete with 2 analog sticks.  even though the device hasn't even been announced yet, sony is putting this out there to try to differentiate itself from current app-driven mobile devices that run on ios or android with sweet and delicious HD media, even though it may still be able to download apps from the playstation network. in theory making this information public should attract developers as well.  it supposedly also will support physical media, which was a feature many felt was lacking from the psp go.

even disturbed fictional doctors enjoy some psp between
vicodin pills (engadget)

if they pull it off right, gamers will definitely see a direct differentiation between HD psp2 games and other consoles.  sure, the 3ds will have a glasses-free 3d display, but to me on a screen that small it just doesn't seem like such a huge selling point to me.  3d tv's are becoming all the rage now, but still, i've yet to see a breakthrough that screams "3d is where you need to live."  in my opinion this gives the psp2 an edge if it excels at bringing 2D HD gaming to the handheld arena.  if it supports games that are already out on the ps3 that i can play on the go, then i'm on board.  now the argument can be made that richer, more intensive game content goes against the casual tone that mobile gaming has picked up, but i'm sure there's a lot of people out there like me that like casual games, but would rather have some heavier stuff on the go.

because in a waiting room scenario, or a long train / flight situation, i'd much rather play god of war than angry birds.

... just make sure to add some more save points.

50. EA finally de-claws tiger

tiger '12 ps3 cover, as displayed on amazon

post number 50!  took me a while to get here, slowly but surely, and i thank everyone who reads this.  i honestly didn't think this little experiment of mine would last for more than a couple of months, but i'll be hitting the 1 year mark next month.  so as long as you keep reading, i'll keep writing.  and to the 2,200+ individual visitors from 70 countries, thank you.

now on to business.

tiger.  ohhh tiger.  the EA-tiger relationship is a constant source for material for me since i enjoy playing their golf games.  even more so since i picked up a set of clubs a couple of years ago.  remember those posts i did on that very relationship after his off-course mishaps?  sure you do.  the first one was regarding tiger woods pga tour '11, and sharing the cover with rory mcilroy for the US vs. europe ryder cup feature.  next was thinly veiled threats from EA, who basically said that tiger would be done if he didn't start performing better on the course (of course i'm paraphrasing here, they only talked about the connection between the best golf game and the best golfer but come on we all know what's up).  now it can be argued that EA has taken it a step further with tiger woods pga tour '12.  instead of the ryder cup, this one focuses on the masters, which is kind of a big deal since this tournament has never been featured in a golf video game since the dawn of golf video games.  but tiger isn't front and center here.  but now look at the cover - the sole focus is on the yellow flags of augusta and the masters logo, with "tiger woods pga tour '12" almost serving as a subtitle.

so my predictions were kind of right.  but also a lot of wrong.  is tiger off the new cover?  ehh, mostly.  but i also thought that tiger '11 would still sell fairly well, seeing as the margin between '09 and '10 was fairly slim.  well, sales for tiger '11 were down by roughly 50% since tiger '09 (reuters).  and these sales figures could have directly related to tiger's performance.  according to jesse divnih, VP of electronic entertainment design and research, "the sales issues of the tiger woods video game are much broader and deeper than tiger's personal problems and has more to do with the entire golf sport struggling in 2010." he continues, "of course, one could argue the decline in the interest of golf has to do with tiger's extended absence and returned poor performance. but even if that was true, it says a lot about the PGA Tour and their over-reliance on one person to carry the whole league. PGA exposed itself to this risk and now is facing the consequences."  he's still going to be a featured player in the game, as well as a member of team USA in the ryder cup feature, along with other big shots like bubba watson and zach johnson.

screenshot of augusta, from kotaku

which is pretty much true.  so now i feel bad for the man - in addition to his off-course problems he unofficially has the sole responsibility of carrying the PGA on his back - which i'm sure gets kind of heavy, EA is still sending mixed signals.  after a couple months have passed since the "best golf game, best golfer" statement, EA sports' president peter moore now says "if the insinuation is it's a reflection of EA sports backing away from its relationship that goes back literally 13 years with tiger, that's not the case whatsoever."

which i would wholeheartedly believe - if the ONLY cover that featured tiger prominently wasn't the playstation 3's collector's edition.

that aside i'm still looking forward to the game.  HD screens of augusta look awesome from what i've seen, there's a new feature to play with a caddy advising you, the ability to play through past masters tournament moments, and the playstation move sensitivity in 3D space is touted to be better than it was in tiger '11. jim nantz and david feherty will be the voice behind the game on commentary this year, and according to a short development story on kotaku, this is meant to be the most tour-authentic experience provided to the players of the franchise.

of course "authentic" includes what i'm sure will be many slices from my move controller in my living room, as they would invariably occur with a 3 wood were i at augusta.

49. final fantasy's new year's resolution

naoki yoshida, from his new year's note

old squaresoft were my people.  my people.  the original final fantasy was the first game my parents ever bought me for my NES after the super mario bros./duck hunt double cartridge and we've been homies ever since.  they made a slew of other games for older systems that are fun enough to occasionally hook them up and play again.  chrono trigger and breath of fire are a couple of examples - but final fantasy topped them all.  after the first one came FF IV and VI for the SNES (II and III in the US) and those kept up that same level of quality and fun.  then came the playstation era, which added a higher graphical component and deeper gameplay.  not to mention it gave us the greatness that was final fantasy VII.  and then of course FF X for the PS2 - ambitious in depth, a "just out there enough" story, and featuring the power of the PS2.

then it died.

out of the first 10 final fantasy games, including the re-releases, i consider at least 5 of them to be "great" games. these games had good combat systems, deep and twisting storylines, and offered hours upon hours of gameplay.  and they all had one thing in common:  they had me hooked in the first 15 minutes of play.  but then square merged with enix, and somewhere around then the franchise went into decline.  i'm not saying that it happened BECAUSE of the merger, but the timing does seem relevant.  X-2, the first direct sequel to any FF game, was ok, but just didn't have that same level of depth.  the idea of final fantasy online didn't appeal to me so XI was out.  and i couldn't play XII for more than 30 minutes without getting irritated at pretty much everything.  and finally, the for first current-generation offering of final fantasy XIII, the graphics are incredible, the story's alright, the faster battle system is kind of fun (though a little dumbed down), but the game is almost completely linear.  it felt like it completely lost the open-world, visit towns, explore rooms, talk to NPC's tradition that was a big part of the franchise since its origin.  but it is visually gorgeous.  i will give it that for sure.  click the screenshot below and to the right for a full screenshot.

now square-enix makes another foray into the online realm with their latest installment, final fantasy XIV.  they released it just this past fall, to the near-universal panning from both game critics and fans alike.  convoluted gameplay.  terrible interface.  horrible economy system.  unbelievably boring grinds compared to other MMO's.  bad enough for the CEO to apologize to the fans in december and extend their trial period indefinitely, because they even feel bad taking money for this kind of horror.  and also bad enough that in october, a major square-enix stockholder (not like a majority holder, but 1%, which is a pretty sizable chunk) instructed his broker to sell every share he had.  "first thing in the morning tomorrow, i intend to instruct those who manage my precious square enix stock (however little it may be) to arrange to sell all of it," he said.  "to square, thank you for the enjoyment of your products up until now, with the exception of this last one. goodbye" [gamesradar].  pretty heavy.  heavy enough to ding square-enix's stock value by 4% by himself.

screenshot, from finalfantasyxiv.com

i understand that a final fantasy MMO is meant to stand on its own, and their goal is to make it unique to other games on the market.  but isn't anyone on the dev team play any other MMO's?  any guild wars fans?  any of them check out competitors like world of warcraft to see how user interfaces and other features are done properly?  blizzard's stranglehold on the MMO market won't soon be broken, and whether to appease fans or use us only as streams of steady revenue, they know what they're doing, and keep their players.  we're talking 12 million subscribers strong by the time final fantasy XIV was even released, so maybe some mild emulation might have been called for.

so after a major staff restructuring, new producer/director naoki yoshida has made it his new year's resolution to make this right with the fans - using four key words in his plan: "fun," "live," "reboot," and "rebuild." and he'll need all of these, in fast order, to bring back fans that they've miffed with this sub-square offering.  while most of this flak is coming from the poor, almost unfinished quality of the game, another part of it is coming from who's producing it.  it's beneath square, a studio that's shaped how RPG's go in the last quarter century.  in the note (check the provided link above) yoshida is extremely optimistic, saying that the "last few weeks of 2010 were tumultuous times for us all" but stressing that these are new times and they are moving in new directions.  which is promising in theory, because the only direction they have left is up.

just so you can get a better idea, here are a couple of links to some "professional" reviews of final fantasy xiv from 1up and gamesradar.
1up
gamesradar

48. decade of the anti-hero

kratos in god of war III (godofwar.com)

so 2010's drawing to a close, and of course most sites are publishing their obligatory "best of" lists.  so i thought we'd do something a little more year-end themed here.  well in this case, decade-end themed.  i know a bunch of you will probably either publicly or privately flame me for what the definition of the end of a decade is, which was actually the end of 2009.  but hey, if gameFAQs can do their "game of the decade" stuff at the end of 2010, then damn it, i can do something too.

we saw a lot of change in the last 10 years of gaming, first and foremost in technology.  in 2000 we were busting 900's in tony hawk's pro skater on the first playstation and reveling in the graphical delights of soul calibur on the dreamcast.  then came a wave of technology - a couple of years after this saw the death of the dreamcast and birth of the ps2, xbox, and gamecube, and ultimately the ps3, xbox 360, and wii.  but in the grand scheme of things, this wasn't really a big deal.  it's a damn decade.  it's expected that new technology is going to be released in a time frame that large.  it's what that technology brought and enabled that shows what has really changed since 2000.

and that change was full immersion into complex, interactive, graphically advanced worlds that required multiple saves and hours upon hours of gameplay.  it allowed the creation of games where players actually felt a connection or some kind of indentity to the characters they were playing, which is a far cry from what was available before in the 80's and 90's.  there wasn't really any backstory to characters or worlds back then, and with games that were easily finished the same day you brought it home from the store, why should there be?  those characters were disposable.  now there were of course exceptions.  i don't lump games like final fantasy or dragon warrior into this group, even though their character design was actually pretty generic.  they were literally still "save the princess" games.

now as i may or may not have asserted before, video games can act as interactive art, in the sense that it can imitate real life and vice versa.  it should come to be expected, as it's the next logical progression from books, movies, and television.  with this new tech the most direct analogy of this concept are war-themed shooters like US army produced america's army and the recent call of duty, in which the protagonists are up against modern day terrorism instead of some vaguely formed antagonistic threat.

dante in devil may cry 4 (devilmaycry.com)

but more than that, what this really has led to is cultivation of the anti-hero as the main character in modern gaming while the concept was being cultivated in society.  the term is thrown around a lot, so what exactly is an anti-hero?  not a villain, as its name suggests, but a hero that lacks some qualities of a traditional hero archetype, like a noble purpose in life, strong morals, courage, a sense of duty, etc.  in a nutshell, think guy gardener versus hal jordan.  jack harkness versus doctor who.  heroes that are willing to cross a line.  that aren't willing to become part of a system.  the same flawed humans as you and me.  so heroes became less and less like superman and establishment - a big blue boy scout representing the ideal, and more like iron man - human with problems, like reality.

anti-heroes have been around since the dawn of time and make up a lot of the television and movies we watch - we all love watching dr. greg house and his skewed sense of morality, clint eastwood's man with no name, and of course guts from the anime series berserk.  but this decade has seen that concept force a wedge into video games.  what kind of game heroes did we have to grow up with before 2000?  mario, megaman, samus aran, link, crono, etc.  these are all characters that carried a sense of nobility in what they do - they the right thing because it's the right thing to do, be it out of a sense of duty or loyalty.  the goals in a lot of these games was equally noble - rescuing the princess, a friend, or simply defending the world from destruction at the hands of evil.  all very "lawful good" for those who think of this in terms of D&D alignment.  sure crono had magus hanging around in an anti-hero role but he was still a side character in chrono trigger, not your main.  but it doesn't quite work that way anymore.  now that we have these complex characters in fully developed worlds that players will spend a significant amount of time with, players are more often looking for flaws in their heroes.  they want to watch and/or play as characters who they can see some of themselves in - someone a little bit more human.  someone a bit more anti-establishment.  someone struggling with themselves.  it's that relatable imperfection that leads to the player being able to identify with something in the character.  and this partially led to how the anti-hero played in gaming.

how did that affect the games of the 2000's?  my last gaming decade includes max payne, devil may cry's dante, god of war's kratos, altaïr from assassin's creed, and arthas menethil from warcraft III just to name a few for a super-condensed list.  there are dozens more that fit the bill.  these characters aren't driven by some moral code.  in this list they're mostly driven by revenge, and are willing to blur the lines of morality to achieve that end goal.  and that blur not only adds fun but sometimes flexibility in gameplay and interesting story progression.  shadow of the colossus and its main character wander were lauded for this kind of moral ambiguity, where it's ultimately revealed that wander's good intentions to save someone he loved had some very dark side effects.  so there it is, the first 10 years of the 2000's very well could have been the decade of the anti-heroes.  but if this is cyclic, as all things are, in a few years we can expect gaming to re-introduce a throng of classical heroes sometime in the future.  but until then, enjoy the rough-around-the edges heroes and heroines of today's games, because of what that says about us.

that the greatest anti-hero of this decade is on the other side of the controller.

47. guillermo del toro wants to make you cry

del toro in wired magazine

we're at the point in gaming (particularly console) now where i don't think tech is so much of an issue anymore.  the xbox 360 and ps3 can both generate excellent graphical experiences and the wii... well if the wii's your primary console you probably don't really care.  like motion?  you have your pick of the litter between the wii, the move and kinect.  but either way, giving a player ridiculous graphics is more or less commoditized now.  and since that (in my opinion) doesn't enter too much into user experience anymore, some game makers are trying their best to bring players something unique through the game itself.  the fable series was one of the few games where your character's choices had direct consequences, and you gradually had to choose whether or not your character would be good or evil through action (yes i know, you're thinking chrono trigger and maybe jedi academy, but i'm working from a current graphical platform here).  as RPG's have more and more cinematic elements than they used to, quantic dream tried to mix it up earlier this year with heavy rain - which was really an interactive movie more so than a game.

and now the lines between movies and games are becoming even more blurred.  THQ announced that they are entering into a multi-year deal with guillermo del toro, director of pan's labyrinth and screenplay writer of the upcoming the hobbit movies, for a series of horror games called inSane. he's going to be a creative director, and while THQ has rights to the game series, he has the rights to any and all associated "filmed entertainment."  which less than explicitly says that this is going to be a project with multiple media outlets, the bare minimum of which will be games and movies.  i'm sure there will be some sort of web element to tie the whole thing together, but that's just a guess.

so back to games challenging players with creative play styles.  how is inSane any different than other games of the horror survival genre?  well according to him, "with this new series of video games, i want to take players to a place they have never seen before, where every single action makes them question their own senses of morality and reality" (1up).  and coming from del toro, that's completely believable - he openly comments to the media and press on the topic of video games as art.  passionately.  when he was asked at a book signing in october, he described games as the comic books of our time, and is upset that the medium "gains no respect among the intellegentsia (gamerant).  he goes on to say, "they say, 'oh, video games...' and most people that complain about video games have never ****ing played them." (i know i know, this here's a family show, but that noise was on point)

so needless to say, i'm a fan.

logo from the teaser

and the teaser trailer that is out there right now supports that - which consists of 30 seconds or so of viewer discomfort, followed by 10 seconds of an image that may even make horror buffs twitch a little bit - see for yourself on the game's official website, www.insanegame.com.  according to del toro, we can also expect some sort of lovecraftian tentacled creature.  i'm still waiting for details to slowly drip out from the THQ camp, because there will be a lot more to come.  the first installment of inSane won't be out until 2013.

now i'm trying to treat this film-game union with a healthy bit of skepticism.  there have been a number of partnerships like this that never really panned out to much.  remember the movie hard boiled?  john woo tried to make a direct video game sequel in 2007 with stranglehold, but it never really took off.

but then again, no kind of movie/game crossover/sequel will EVER be the goonies II.

46. when game ratings make sense

back in 1994, there was a lot of concern in the united states about the amount of violence in video games.  granted, this was the age of the super nintendo and sega genesis, where everything still looked like pixelated cartoons ad the concept of what reflected "realism" was primitive and limited.  it was during the high time of mortal kombat and doom, both of which brought a new level of 16-bit gore to consoles and pc's across america.  it was this environment that gave rise to the entertainment software rating board, or ESRB for short.  their job was to look at software and give it an age appropriate rating based on the content of that software.  they came out a few different bands in the ratings spectrum, more or less mirroring the movie rating system that was already in effect: E (everyone, "G" or "PG"), T (teen, "PG-13"), M (mature, "R"), and AO (adults only, "NC-17").  There have been a few additions since then like EC and KA, but the first three are the ones that make up the ratings on most games in the united states.  i've only really seen AO-rated games on certain director's cuts or re-releases, like the PC uncut release of indigo prophecy (fahrenheit, for my outside-of-north-america readers).  and i agree with the system.  i think there's enough distinction between different types of games that it makes sense to parents.  i personally think there's a lot of M-rated games young kids shouldn't be playing.  but that of course is up to the parents' discretion.

take a trip down under and you'll find that in australia the rules are a little bit different.  they established their ratings system back in the 80's, with the most restrictive rating being MA15+, which seemed fairly logical.  back then they didn't really need anything higher, because no reasonable person would make a case that the mario brothers would drive children to violent killing sprees and still be taken seriously for every word that came out of their mouth.  except michael atkinson, south australian attorney general, who was the only australian AG holding out for the addition of a higher rating in their system.  every game that came out after that that were found too harsh for an MA15+ rating were refused a rating outright.  and a game refused a rating is a game banned for sale.  he led this charge for banning games instead of coming up with some sort of 18+ rating for them, and caught a lot of flak from many angles for doing so.  even their movie ratings have R18+ and X18+ ratings.  providing, lets say, questionable reasoning for banning certain games, he even at one point said  that "i feel that my family and i are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me and are running a candidate against me."  no joke.  gamepolitics has that story from just this past february.  granted, he claims a gamer slipped a threating note under his door at 2AM one morning, but other stuff he's said, like seeing fake people does make me file him on more of the paranoid side, so who really knows.

but now he's gone.  atkinson stepped down as attorney general in march of this year (he's still in parliament though), at which point gamers rejoiced, and looked forward to the day where they wouldn't be restricted to games the rest of the world is enjoying, and that their wishes would be fulfilled at todays meeting of the standing committee of attorneys-general.  but alas, no luck.  the AG for western australia said he needed to consult his cabinet, and another AG had just started his job and didn't think he was in a position to make a decision.  so they wait for a verdict until the next meeting, in 2011.

45. world of warcraft and fantasy football

there have been two notable time sinks in the past few weeks for me outside of work and actual living - the first is world of warcraft, trying to level a paladin because the guild needs another tank (and cataclysm drops today), and the second is the two fantasy football leagues i play in.  to the outside onlooker the two things have nothing in common - the classic "nerd" and "jock" social archetypes that you all experienced during your childhood still kind of stick with people through the years.  back in high school and college, most people's social choices were clearly made between nerdery (and associated gaming/science/tech) and popularity (and associated drinking/sports/people).  that is, until senior year, when no one really cared anymore and everyone just partied because school was coming to an end.  you know, the whole "no more teachers no more books" thing.  but with beer.  while my cohorts and i did try to somehow pull of both paths of society in college, we all sharply leaned towards the former.  friday and saturday nights for me in sophomore year, for example, either consisted of going to $5 to $10 shows put on by small local bands or playing diablo II with the other guys in my wing on the 4th floor of good ol' forbes hall (sometimes command and conquer: red alert 2 was used as a change of pace).  we didn't even know our own 4-digit on-campus extensions for our phone numbers, but we could sure as hell rattle off our IP addresses for you.

just the network, 3 engineers, a programmer and sometimes some chinese food.  and we owned, if that's at all relevant to anyone.

but there's way more similarity between these two things than one casual observer might think.  look at every major MMO or RPG that has been released in the past two decades.  the basic elements of hit points, mana, damage, defense, evasion, etc., etc., etc. are all modifications to different degrees to old school dungeons and dragons and tabletop RPG's.  these are the same base principles that flowed into other forms of nerd entertainment, like collectible card game magic: the gathering.  everything is driven by numbers.  in warcraft my hunter gains 1 attack power per agility i have, so my choices in weapons and armor will naturally be high in agility, to maximize the amount of damage i can deal.  characters whose role involves tanking, or damage mitigation, would optimize their gear for stamina, dodge or parry to enhance their defenses instead, because more defensive stats mean less damage will be inflicted on them by opponents.  every role has it's own numerical values, and a player will benefit from learning those patterns and trying to optimize those statistics with stat bonuses and augmentation.

so that's my quick nerd speech on basic stats in world of warcraft.  so how on earth is fantasy football, a game played traditionally by people into sports, and NOT gaming, related?  it goes back to the numbers-driven play that is present in a lot of gaming.  fantasy football has similar rules.  suppose i wanted to run a successful 10-man raid, let's say icecrown citadel.  i would want my team to be made up of 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 6 dps (damage dealer) players.  on the other hand, i also want a successful team in my fantasy league - so i would need (in our league setup anyway) a quarterback, 2 running backs, 3 wide receivers, a tight end, a kicker, and defense/special teams.  in both situations, a win is only obtained through good performance from a majority of your players, or if a few perform exceptionally well and carry the rest.  bad performance hurts your chances. your raid will be sunk if your tanks can't survive long enough.  and your fantasy head-to-head matchup and playoff dreams could be done for if your quarterback is throwing interceptions.  just as anyone who had mark sanchez this week.  poor jets.  poooooor jets.  that game was a massacre.  but anyway, again, everything is based on points.

so like i said, my warcraft hunter may get a point of attack power per agility, but my running backs get 1 fantasy point per 10 yards rushing (plus bonuses) and 6 for a touchdown.  quarterbacks get a point per 25 yards passing.  defense gets points for sacks and interceptions.  meaning while my hunter was delivering 10k damage points per second in azeroth this past weekend, maurice jones-drew was delivering 24 points for me in tennessee. and those points, even though they came from a great run game and not by stacking agility and level 264 gear,  could easily be considered damage - against my opponent for week 13.

see everyone?  fantasy football.  the nerd shall inherit the earth.  on schedule.  and at least make it to the playoffs.

44. EA squeezes some fresh truth juice for their boy tiger

and i'm back.  hope everyone's thanksgiving holiday went well.  mine was one of turkey bliss, including 2 varieties of mashed potatoes (regular and cheesy bacon) and made me feel happy in the belly.  anyway, down to business - we'll ease back in with a short one.  this one revisits the whole tiger woods scandal and EA en masse - you remember tiger, right?

now do you like sports games?  sure, who doesn't!  every gamer i know, whether they're spending 80 hours unlocking stuff on an rpg, years on a mmo, or tracking head shots in an fps, can enjoy playing a good sports game, even if the occurrence is no more than few and far between.  and chances are whatever their sport / game of choice is, it's produced by electronic arts.  in my opinion they make some serious stuff in their EA sports line, with team sports hits like madden NFL football and FIFA soccer, which try to deliver something new every year.  with their links to the NFL and FIFA, marketing these to the gaming public was fairly simple.  take madden NFL football for example - since they deal with the actual NFL and use real players and teams (of whose rights are owned by the league), marketing the game was advertising for the NFL, and the same sort of followed in vice versa.  picking a poster boy is easy, and everybody's happy.  it was a little more difficult for EA's electronic version of the PGA tour -  it just wasn't as popular as other sports in the US in the 90's, and on top of that they were being beaten by likes of microsoft golf and links, as well as jack nicklaus' brand of games.

tiger and his old fedex cup (pgatour.com)

enter tiger woods in the late 90's.  tiger was a great addition for golf for multiple reasons, and in my opinion is responsible for the resurgence of the popularity of the game from the late 90's to today.  EA hopped on the tiger train for their golf games after his explosive play and 1997 masters win, added his name to their game, and tiger woods pga tour is what we've gotten ever since.  his endorsement breathed new life into the series, and has grown in popularity as viewership for golf increased, continuing even today.  EA even held on to the tiger woods brand through his highly publicized off-course issues for tiger woods pga tour '11, because their concern is about endorsing "tiger woods the player."

"the player."  no pun intended.  i promise.

but according to reuters, recent statements by EA's head honcho john riccitiello may indicate that this partnership is on the rocks due to his performance post-crisis. "we have no plans to move away from him, but it's a business relationship on the basis of we make the best golf game and he's the best golfer." he went on to say "both of those things need to be true in the long run for the partnership to make sense."  later he seemed to backpedal a little, saying that this statement wasn't a threat to tiger.  but i don't see how it can be taken another way.  while EA is definitely giving a little breathing room to someone who's brought them so much success to bring his game back up instead of just immediately dropping him, there's still a message here:  start winning again, or EA will join the list of tiger's former sponsors.  and it makes complete sense.  if you want to sell these games, for any sport, you need to associate it with someone the fans are excited about.  madden 11 features drew brees - a super bowl champion and MVP.  heisman trophy winner tim tebow is on ncaa football 11.  do you think this year's madden game would sell as well if instead of drew brees, the cover art showed a triumphant tyler palko getting ready to bomb it deep?

the hyundai tournament of champions is in january.  tee it up strong woods, or we could be looking at a rory mcilroy solo cover for pga tour '12.  and while he's working on that, EA, work on those DRM methods.