Video games make history in 2007

Video games make history in 2007

The last 12 months have been one of the best years in video game history, both critically and commercially.

Gamers have been able to revel in some of the most exhilarating interactive experiences ever designed.

Sales in the UK are at an all-time high, with more than £1.52bn taken in the last 12 months.

Some video games crossed over into blockbuster entertainment territory. Halo 3, for example, earned £84m in its first 24 hours on sale.

Many people will be joining the gaming revolution this Christmas - but what were the games which had people talking in the past year?

The stand out moments for many gamers include Master Chief delivering his "Wake me when you need me" line in Halo 3, to the nuclear bomb blast in Call of Duty 4, the arrival in Rapture in Bioshock, and the innovative gaming of Super Mario Galaxy.

But what did our expert judges pick out as their game of the year?

Online games battle for top spot

Online games battle for top spot

By Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

Lord of the Rings Online made its debut early in 2007

Challenges to the dominance of World of Warcraft over online games and gamers look set to emerge in 2008.

So say industry watchers looking back on a year in which the field as a whole matured and signs emerged which show how the industry sector is developing.

During the year Blizzard's flagship title consolidated its hold on gamers as its subscriber base kept growing.

But debuts by Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and many others may mean that hold begins to weaken.

Numbers game

"We expected, like all the analysts, to see a dip in subscriptions in 2007," said Paul Younger, an editor at the Inc Gamers network. "As it turns out we've seen the rise and rise of WoW."

At the start of 2007, the number of active subscribers playing World of Warcraft was eight million but by the end of summer the number had passed 9.3 million.

World of Warcraft dominates the online gaming world

According to statistics gathered by Nielsen the average WoW player racks up 17 hours of play per week - 12 hours more than its nearest competitor The Sims. As such it was the most played PC game between April and November 2007.

In online games such as World of Warcraft players create an avatar or character, give them a profession and venture out into the game world to battle monsters, find treasure and turn their novice into a powerful hero or heroine.

Mr Younger said online games such as Lord of the Rings Online, Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London were widely tipped to poach significant numbers of players from Blizzard but, he said, it was not clear that had happened.

"There seems to be an inability by other massively multi-player game makers to capture what Blizzard managed to capture," said Mr Younger.

Rob Fahey, industry veteran and columnist for Gameindustry.biz, said the new launches and continued success of WoW showed how strong the industry had become.

"There's plenty of choice out there for players now," he said "You can even play massively multiplayer dancing games, if killing monsters isn't your thing."

Another sign of the growing maturity of online gaming was the notable failure of titles such as Vanguard.

Although released in February it was error prone and has taken months to become reliable enough.

"It's clear that it's no longer acceptable to release buggy games, and players aren't prepared to pay a monthly fee to test an unfinished product," he said.

Fantasy figures

The importance of the final polish is also thought to be behind the delayed arrival of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Both were originally due in 2007 but now are expected before next summer.

Many see these as serious contenders to WoW because like that game they trade on a long history of earlier works.

Large-scale battles will be key in Age of Conan

Conan is familiar to many from Robert E Howard's original stories, the films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the many contemporary novels that explored the world of the iconic barbarian.

Warhammer is the creation of UK firm Games Workshop and has many fans who played the tabletop game, the role-playing system, the earlier games and has read the books set in its world.

Perhaps more importantly the titles are attempting to move online gaming on from the mechanics established by Blizzard.

In Warhammer many areas of the game are contested and factions will battle to regain control of these areas. Solo players as well as those who prefer pitched battles will contribute to this back and forth that will see a lot of the game world's territory change hands many times.

By contrast Age of Conan is explicitly aiming at a mature audience - in particular combat will be bloody and realistic. The game will also allow player teams, or guilds, to set up and run their own cities or lay siege to each other's strongholds.

But, said Philip Wride, boss of consultancy firm Elysium Gaming, it could be something entirely outside the field that has a big impact on online gamine in 2008.

In the UK the Byron Review is scrutinising video games with a view to drawing up new regulations and guidelines governing them.

"It's about educating parents more than anything and perhaps making changes in terms of rating systems," he said.

This was likely to mean best practice guidelines for parents but may eventually involve new legislation.

"That would alter how online games are both portrayed and played," said Mr Wride.

The golden age of videogames

The golden age of videogames

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website

Bioshock is one of the most celebrated games of the year

Edge magazine is notoriously parsimonious when it comes to handing out 10 out of 10 review scores for video games but in the past three issues there have been three of them.

Halo 3, The Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy have all been awarded one of the highest accolades in gaming - a perfect score from Edge. And plenty of other games have been given near perfect scores also - from Bioshock to Crysis, Drake's Fortune and Call of Duty 4.

The Edge scores are just one of a number of signs that reinforce a growing feeling that videogames are enjoying a golden age.

It is not just that the interactive experiences are getting ever more immersive, or the industry is being taken ever more seriously, but hardware and software sales are up significantly on last year - buoyed by a new generation of consoles and the work of developers who are beginning to exploit the tools they have at their disposal.

A lot of the games are sequels and I would like to see more innovation Margaret Robertson, games consultant

"You have to look at the maturity of platforms in part to answer why there are currently so many good games out there," said Tony Mott, editor of Edge magazine.

"It's difficult to say across the board that games are getting better. But we are seeing publishers being more careful about the quality of games that they release.

"And there are so many good games out now that some publishers are holding titles back to next year."

The industry also looks to have found a way to blend the loose attractions of casual and social gaming with the hardcore experiences beloved by the seasoned player.

GAMES OF THE YEAR? Super Mario Galaxy (pictured) - 97.3% The Orange Box - 96.1% Bioshock - 95.3% Call of Duty 4 - 95.1% Halo 3 - 93.2% God of War 2 - 93% Mass Effect - 93% Crysis - 91% Drake's Fortune - 89% Project Gotham Racing 4 - 87% Assassin's Creed - 84.5% Gamesrankings.com aggregates review scores

Margaret Robertson, a former editor of Edge and now a games consultant, said long-standing gamers were spending more money on games and a whole new audience had been introduced to gaming for the first time.

"There are now more ways than ever to spend money on video games - from consoles to handhelds, supplementary purchases online via Live Arcade, Virtual Console and the PlayStation Network to games on your iPod.

"The evidence of what Nintendo has done to attract people to games for the first time with the DS and the Wii is unmistakably clear."

This year will be remembered as the year the Wii took centre stage as the console of choice for families, the year PlayStation 3 finally showed its promise in real terms and the Xbox 360 hit its stride with the 5th anniversary of online service Xbox Live.

It is also the year of the handheld with Nintendo DS and PSP continuing to sell explosively, the year PC gaming began its renaissance and developers got to grips with tools that allowed them to tell stories in new, dynamic ways.

I have been publicly criticised for saying that we are yet to see a next generation game in terms of gameplay. And I stand by that David Braben, Frontier Games

Developer David Amor, creative director of Relentless games: "This is the second generation of titles on consoles and speaking as a developer, we are now benefiting from the tools that these machines offer.

David Braben, founder of Frontier games, agreed: "This new generation of machines is now bedding down with developers. A crop of quality titles emerging simultaneously is typical at this point in a console's lifecycle.

"I have been publicly criticised for saying that we are yet to see a next generation game in terms of gameplay. And I stand by that."

Mr Amor added: "I found myself queuing at the local video game store the other day and that hasn't happened for a long time. There is a batch of very good games out at the moment and I'm finding myself putting TV and movies to one side to play video games.

Titles like Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect have also helped raise the profile of games with big budget advertising campaigns, and an emphasis on storyline and production values. Both are expected to join the ranks of million-plus sellers this year.

Margaret Robertson said the market growth for games this year had been "explosive and phenomenal". Sales in the US are up 50% on last year and the Christmas figures are still to come.

First person shooters like Call of Duty 4 are ever more realistic

"On the strength of sales alone 2007 has been the greatest year in gaming - that much is certain," she said

But she said the industry was also showing signs of maturity.

"This year we have had the huge titles like Halo 3, The Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy, which have had huge success and deservedly so.

"But it's almost the next tier down - games like Project Gotham Racing 4, Call Of Duty 4, Ratchet and Clank and God of War 2 - where there has been such ambition and confidence that you can now almost take the quality for granted. It's very encouraging."

She added: "A lot of the games are sequels and I would like to see more innovation."

Mr Braben said it was ironic that the games getting all the praise are the least representative of the industry as a whole.

"Games like Bioshock and Halo 3 are made for the hardcore gamer while there is a widening family appeal of games and gaming that is less talked about.

"2007 will probably be remembered as the year of the Wii," he added.

A very real future for virtual worlds

A very real future for virtual worlds

By Mark Ward Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

Many people spend a long time getting their avatar right for Second Life

Second Life has long been seen as the bell-wether for the growing interest in virtual spaces. Here, founder Philip Rosedale talks to the BBC News website about the past and future of the parallel world he is helping to create.

These are interesting times for Second Life. In the four short years it has existed, it has seen media coverage go from hysterical to hectoring. It has been hailed as both a harbinger of the next big thing and a brake on the burgeoning development of virtual worlds.

Speculation about its future has intensified as news emerged that chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka, who helped design and build Second Life, has left the company.

But said Philip Rosedale, one of the founders of Linden Lab which oversees the running of Second Life, the departure will not dent the vision all the original engineers had for their creation.

"Cory is a fantastic guy, he's fantastically capable and we will miss him a lot," said Mr Rosedale.

Philip Rosedale and his Second Life avatar Philip Linden

"Our differences are more about how to run the company and how best we organise ourselves as a company going forward," he said. "We really do not have any differences in strategic direction."

"There's not a shift in direction in the company that I wanted to make or Cory wanted to make that was incompatible," he told the BBC News website.

"We are a core of technologists in our heart," he said. "The first 10 people that joined, there are only two that have left, they are all engineers."

For the near future, Linden Lab is looking at ways of making the technology behind Second Life much more open and easy to use.

Web worlds

"We are still in the early days so the things that are wrong are still wrong," he said, "It is still hard to figure out how to use Second Life and how to find things."

In many respects, he said, online virtual worlds are at the point now that the web reached in the early 1990s.

"We have often had fun in the office finding quotes from the early 90s that map exactly to what they say about Second Life now, " he said, "that it's disorganised, you cannot find anything and there is a lot of crap."

We are at the very early stages of something very big Philip Rosedale

Despite the scepticism from many quarters he is fervently convinced that virtual worlds are the future of online life.

"Virtual worlds are inherently comprehensible to us in a way that the web is not," said Mr Rosedale. "They look like the world we already know and take advantage of our ability to remember and organise."

"Information is presented there in a way that matches our memories and experiences," he said. "Your and my ability to remember the words we use and the information we talk about is much higher if it's presented as a room or space around us."

Equally important, he said, was the visibility or presence that being in a virtual world bestows on its users.

By contrast, he said, when visiting a website people are anonymous and invisible.

Shopping on Amazon might be much easier and enjoyable if you could turn to one of the other 10,000 or so people on the site at the same time as you and ask about what they were buying, get recommendations and swap good or bad experiences.

Many firms are using Second Life to collaborate

Many firms and educators were starting to use Second Life as an online collaboration space that helps them work together like they do in the real world but to which is added the malleability of a wholly digital space.

For virtual worlds to be able to extend this usefulness to the mass of people a lot of work has yet to be done, said Mr Rosedale.

What it might take, he said, was software that would let people browse virtual worlds like they do webpages. Built in to that software would be an identity management system that re-drew yourself to match those different spaces.

"I think it is going to happen, that kind of portability of identity is important but I could not hazard a guess right now about how quickly it will happen," he said.

"But," he said, "with a sufficiently open platform then people will move into it quite rapidly."

It might, he speculated, one day outstrip the web as a means for people to communicate and work together.

"Because virtual worlds like Second Life do not impose language barriers like the web does - that almost certainly means their ultimate utility range is larger," he said. "We are at the very early stages of something very big."

Current educational games vs. modern computer games

A large number of today’s educational games in contrast to current commercial computer games do not engage learners as they suffer from distractive and incoherent learning and gaming experience, low interactivity, linear learning paths, poor storytelling, poor graphics and weak adaptivity.

Modern computer games let their players enter the virtual worlds by offering a high degree of interactivity and realism. They turn the user into the active protagonist and hero, who can act by using more and more complex game features. The “gamer” is embedded in a fascinating universe with its own rules and residents to be discovered. By his own actions and the involvement of the player into the framework stories the game becomes important and meaningful to him.

Digital learning environments can benefit from the wide experience of modern computer games by providing holistic learning experience – since pure information does not become knowledge until it is imparted within a context and can therewith be experienced. However, the mystery of these games is closely related to learning: it is essential to meet a challenge and a task, to solve problems, to improve and of course to be awarded. One plays a game in order to win. This is precisely how the human brain can be motivated to learn: We want to understand ourselves, explore and understand the world around us and raise the challenge – if we succeed, we obtain comprehension and self-confidence. And we want to discover and know even more.

Entertaining computer games offer to the gamer a parallel universe and provide to him alternative views of the world. In addition, they have become more and more complex. At the same time computer simulations have become a crucial instrument for scientific research and the discovery of new research findings. However, ELEKTRA tries to narrow the remaining gap between entertaining games and the scientific use of computers in our knowledge society.

The biggest-ever video-game deal shows how the industry is changing

THE bride and groom, a guitar-wielding rock vixen and a muscle-rippling dragon-slayer, make an odd couple—so it is hardly surprising that nobody expected their marriage. But on December 2nd the video-game companies behind “Guitar Hero” and “World of Warcraft”, Activision and Vivendi Games respectively, announced plans for an elaborate merger. Vivendi, a French media group, will pool its games unit, plus $1.7 billion in cash, with Activision; the combined entity will then offer to buy back shares from Activision shareholders, raising Vivendi's stake in the resulting firm to as much as 68%.

Activision's boss, Bobby Kotick, will remain at the helm of the new company, to be known as Activision Blizzard in recognition of Vivendi's main gaming asset: its subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, the firm behind “World of Warcraft”, an online swords-and-sorcery game with 9.3m subscribers. The deal was unexpected, but makes excellent strategic sense, says Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consultancy. Activision has long coveted “World of Warcraft”, and Vivendi gets a bigger games division and Activision's talented management team to run it. As well as making sense for both parties, the $18.9 billion deal—the biggest ever in the video-games industry—says a lot about the trends now shaping the business.

The first is a push into new markets, especially online multiplayer games, which are particularly popular in Asia, and “casual” games that appeal to people who do not regard themselves as gamers. “World of Warcraft” is the world's most popular online subscription-based game and is hugely lucrative. Blizzard will have revenues of $1.1 billion this year and operating profits of $520m. “World of Warcraft” is really “a social network with many entertainment components,” says Mr Kotick.

Similarly, he argues, “Guitar Hero” and other games that use new kinds of controller, rather than the usual buttons and joysticks, are broadening the appeal of gaming by emphasising its social aspects, since they are easy to pick up and can be played with friends. Social gaming, says Mr Kotick, is “the most powerful trend” building new audiences for the industry. He is clearly excited at the prospect of using Blizzard's expertise to launch an online version of “Guitar Hero” for Asian markets. Online music games such as “Audition Online”, which started in South Korea, are “massive in Asia,” says Mr Harding-Rolls.

A second trend is media groups' increasing interest in gaming. Vivendi owns Universal Music, one of the “big four” record labels. As the record industry's sales decline, it makes sense to move into gaming, a younger, faster-growing medium with plenty of cross-marketing opportunities. (Activision might raid Universal's back catalogue for material for its music games, for example, which might in turn boost music sales.) Other media groups are going the same way. Last year Viacom, an American media giant, acquired Harmonix, the company that originally created “Guitar Hero”. It has been promoting its new game, “Rock Band”, using its MTV music channel. Viacom has also created online virtual worlds that tie in with several of its television programmes, such as “Laguna Beach” and “Pimp My Ride”. Disney bought Club Penguin, a virtual world for children, in August. And Time Warner is involved in gaming via its Warner Bros Home Entertainment division, which publishes its own titles and last month bought TT Games, the British firm behind the “Lego Star Wars” games.

Time to level up

The third trend is consolidation, to plug gaps, address new markets and achieve economies of scale. Electronic Arts, for example, until this week the largest independent games-publisher (Activision Blizzard will be bigger), recently bought two studios, BioWare and Pandemic, to strengthen its position in role-playing and action games. Greater scale can help to spread costs and risk as new games become costlier to develop. A new title for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console or Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3), both of which have high-definition graphics, can cost as much as $30m, says Mr Harding-Rolls. Bigger firms can afford to develop tools that make it easy to produce different versions of the same game for different platforms, says Robbie Bach, the head of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division. They can also make savings on distribution.

This week's deal shows how the software business is changing; and things are happening in hardware too. Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's Wii are fighting for supremacy. In September the Xbox 360, which was launched in late 2005, a year ahead of its two rivals, was overtaken by the Wii as the most popular of the present generation of consoles (see chart). Mr Bach says he is unfazed. “It's not even a statistic I track all that closely,” he says. The Wii's popularity stems from its low price and its innovative motion-sensitive controller, which can be pointed and waved to control the on-screen action and encourages novices to give gaming a try. But the Wii lacks the high-definition graphics of its two rivals, so it could soon start to look dated. The real battle is between the Xbox 360 and the PS3, Mr Bach suggests.

Sales of the PS3, which have been sluggish, seem to have taken off after Sony removed some features and dropped the price. In Japan the PS3 even outsold the Wii in November, according to Enterbrain, a market-research firm. As more games become available for the PS3 next year, sales are expected to rise even further, says Mr Harding-Rolls, so that by 2011 the PS3 will have caught up with the Wii. In short, each of the consoles will be in front at various points in the “console cycle”.

In the previous cycle, dominated by Sony, programmers could address most of the market simply by writing games for the PlayStation 2. But if all the consoles matter, games companies have to produce games that run on all of them. That strengthens the case for consolidation. In other words, expect more deals.

Games violence study is launched

Games violence study is launched

All games in the UK are regulated

The government is asking for evidence for a new study of the effect of violent computer games on children.

Psychologist Tanya Byron will head the study, which will also examine how to protect children from online material.

The review is due to be launched by Dr Byron - together with Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary James Purnell - at a school in east London.

The games industry's association Elspa said it would co-operate - but it was too often blamed for society's ills.

Paul Jackson, of Elspa (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers' Association), said the body had already met with Dr Byron and would work with the government on the review.

We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for Paul Jackson, Elspa

But he said the industry was "too often blamed for everything from obesity to youth violence".

He said: "It is just not true and it's not appropriate."

He added: "We feel quite positively about this review. It's clear the review is about making sure parents are properly informed about what their youngsters are playing and what they are accessing on the internet."

Dr Byron told BBC News 24: "The study will be about what industry is doing already to protect children and what more could be done to ensure they have a positive experience on the internet and with games."

Speaking at the launch of the review at a school in Barking, Essex, she said: "Video gaming and the internet themselves are a very positive and important part of children's and young children's growing up and learning and development. But it is also about saying where are the risks?"

The review is expected to last six months.

'Singled out'

Veteran developer David Braben, of Frontier games, asked why games were being singled out.

"A review might be useful but it should not just look at one media, especially when media are intersecting," he said.

He added: "Historically there has always been in government a Luddite sentiment - whatever the new industry is tends to take the blame of the latest ailment of society.

"We do tend to be the people who get the blame first at the moment. And that is a tragedy - because this industry is one of the most interesting media."

Philip Oliver, chief executive of Blitz games, said more education was needed for parents.

"They aren't paying attention to the certificates. That is partly because they don't understand them and have a distorted image of games - that either they are harmless or totally evil."

The review is launched a day after the British Board of Film Classification refused a certificate for Manhunt 2 for a second time.

Mr Oliver said the decision was proof "the system is working".

According to Elspa, only 2% of games released in the UK receive an 18 certificate and the average age of a gamer is 28.

'Higher standards'

Mr Jackson said: "We are a very important British industry. We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for."

Margaret Robertson, a video games consultant and former editor of Edge magazine, said the industry felt it was doing as much as it could.

"The games industry is holding itself to higher standards than the film industry. This is a solved problem.

"Allowing that, everyone is united in not wanting material for older gamers to get into the hands of children."

She added: "This report may start finding some wider ways to do that."