Richard Garriott

Video: Second Skin Creators Interview Richard Garriott

By Earnest Cavalli February 23, 2009 | 2:15:58 PMCategories: Culture  

Vice Magazine's online video division hired the creators of last year's surprisingly thoughtful MMO documentary Second Skin to tour Richard Garriott's house and talk to the game-designer-turned-astronaut about his long career.

The three-part interview (parts 2 and 3 can be found below) covers everything from Garriott's first game -- a computer release he designed and initially self-published as a high school student -- to his recent trip into space.

Most interesting to me was the tour of Garriott's home. It's obvious that the man is a true geek (in the kindest sense of the word), and his home is essentially a vast collection of the awesome toys the rest of us dream about, but will never feasibly be able to afford.

I don't even own a single crossbow, let alone a wall covered in them.

Worldwide video gaming contest

Behind the scenes of the Championship Gaming Series with chief executive Andy Reif and the gamers.

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E-Sports pro league gets underway

FIFA 09 is one of the tournament games on offer by UKeSA A new professional gaming league opens its doors to new gamers on Friday. The United Kingdom eSports association (UKeSA) has set up four professional and 22 amateur leagues. Players can compete using a PC, Xbox 360, Wii, or PS3 on up to 14 different titles, including Counter-Strike: Source, FIFA 09, and Call of Duty 4. Organisers hope they can avoid the fate of the Championship Gaming Series which folded at the end of 2008 when its principal media backers pulled out. The UKeSA's chairman, Ray Mia, told BBC News he had big plans for e-sport in the UK. "We've been planning this for several weeks and have put three levels in place: an open level where people play for fun, a semi-pro level that we hope will encourage people from all sectors, and then there is a pro-gaming part which launches today." The UKeSA has set itself up to be the Football Association of gaming. The launch on Thursday is the start of a process to make the UK the "most prominent and profitable sports market in the world," he added. There have been numerous other attempts to set up professional gaming leagues. The Championship Gaming Series which collapsed at the end of 2008 was the most recent casualty, but there were many others before it. Been here before Tim Pointing, who helped set up one of the first British gaming leagues, The UK PC Games Championships, back in 1998 said the UKeSA leagues showed promise. "They [UKeSA] are trying to pull together a diverse association to get e-sports off the ground and recognised. On the face of it, it all looks very good. "However, history makes me very cautious. One of the problems is that people see e-sports as a money making opportunity and, ultimately, own the sponsorship gateway. Johnathan Wendel has said he wants to sponsor pro-gamers this year. "I really want someone to pull together a federation that can act as a sporting body with the best interests of the sport in mind, rather than trying to milk it for cash. I wish UKeSA luck," he said. While some gamers - such as Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel and Sujoy Roy - have gone on to make a significant amount of money from pro-gaming it is still a long way off South Korea, where players such as Lim Yo-Hwan are not only rich, but also household names. Michael O'Dell, who runs professional team Dignitas, told BBC News it was a good time to launch a new league, despite the difficult economic climate. "The UKeSA is bringing structure to the sport and an organisation to leagues we have not seen before. "In the current climate it's hard to get sponsors, but people will buy games. We're going to see a lot more people staying in and playing games. I don't think gaming will have a recession."

http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/02/readers-picks-o.html

Your reactions to our recent list of 10 awesome iPhone games said pretty much one thing: We're crazy for not including your favorite game.

The bulk of the U.S. industry's $9.5 billion a year in sales.

Videogames get a bad rap. Parents' groups condemn them as a raucous cocktail of guns, murder, sex and prostitution—reminiscent of the drubbing comic books received in the 1940s. Sen. Hillary Clinton, now soon to be U.S. secretary of state, once listed them as part of a SARS-like "silent epidemic" infecting an entire generation of impressionable youngsters. "We are conducting an experiment," Clinton said in 2005, "and we have no idea what the outcomes are going to be." Now that the market is awash in violent videogames, the industry may be belatedly getting a social conscience. For the past several years a small coterie of passionate game developers have been incorporating social issues, politics and moral choices into gameplay. Lately, big-name game developers have picked up these themes and begun to incorporate them into the blockbusters that make up the bulk of the U.S. industry's $9.5 billion a year in sales.

Ubisoft—better known for shoot-'em-up games such as Blazing Angels and a series of Tom Clancy–based thrillers—recently launched a new version of its bestselling Far Cry series of first-person shooters that takes the game in a more altruistic direction. It follows on the heels of Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which in 2007 recast the long-running series from the relatively safe environs of World War II—where right and wrong are always fairly straightforward—to the middle of two hypothetical wars in the Middle East and Russia (a not-implausible future). And BlackSite: Area 51, partly set in Iraq (but with aliens), took on an almost "Daily Show"–style cynicism, with references to Abu Ghraib and the abuse of prisoners, and game levels with names like Last Throes, borrowed directly from the Bush administration.

The big commercial game developers have long steered clear of politics, and a vocal contingent of the online gaming community is sure to let them know whenever they stray. Since the late 1980s, videogames have been about better and better graphics, not realistic human behavior and emotions. As Ian Bogost of the Georgia Institute of Technology notes, even many of the blockbusters with the most advanced 3-D graphics still essentially employ the concepts established by Atari in the 1970s—"move stuff around on the screen and run into other stuff." And where videogames have touched on moral choices, they've been more likely to show up in fantasy worlds than in the setting of real international conflicts. As gamers get older and more numerous, Ubisoft and others are now betting that more of them are ready for some human complexity.

Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 strips out the science-fiction aspect of the first game (mutants inhabiting a tropical island) and instead takes a more realistic approach that includes issues not typically part of a videogame. It is set in a fictionalized central African country devastated by two warring factions. Typically, the character in a game like this would be nearly invincible, with a complete arsenal at his disposal to take out the bad guys. But just as soon as the game begins, the protagonist contracts malaria. The player must then choose whether to work with one faction or the other, or with the local church, to get the medication he needs. Conditions in the country continue to deteriorate over the course of the game. The sniper rifle is still the most fun part of playing, and the moral questions of right and wrong are not exactly central, but they're there.

Far Cry 2 sold 1 million copies worldwide within a month of its release. With this kind of success, introducing moral values as an added layer of depth could quickly become a standard. "If you look at Far Cry 2, it's 80 hours long," says James O'Reilly of Ubisoft. "You can't just run around blowing things up that whole time." As gamers have come to expect amazing, lifelike graphics, developers are now having to consider other ways to hold their attention.

They have plenty of material to draw on. Impact Games, a startup cofounded by former Israeli intelligence officer Asi Burak, took a courageous leap into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Peace Maker, a game produced by designers from both sides of the dispute. Players assume the role of either the Israeli or Palestinian head of state, and the objective is to balance public opinion on either end. Despite a tiny budget, the game received a boost in distribution when the Perez Center in Tel Aviv circulated 80,000 copies in Haaretz and Al Quds, newspapers from both sides of the conflict, on the same day that the peace summit opened in Annapolis, Maryland, in late 2007.

Palestinian and Israeli newspapers are the entree to Global Conflicts: Palestine, in which gamers role-play as freelance journalists, chasing leads through Jerusalem, conducting interviews and writing on assignment. The developer, Serious Games Interactive, has just released the second installment, set in Latin America, where gamers report on human-rights abuses and the effects of globalization on local communities from Mexico to Bolivia. Its next game—you play the part of an investigator with the International Criminal Court on the conscription of child soldiers in Uganda—is a work in progress.

With luck, perhaps these games will get people thinking about solving problems of the real world. We're going to need the help.

Video games: a red button for parents

Consumers - 11-02-2009 - 21:05

 

Parents should have a "red button" to disable a game they feel is inappropriate for their child, says the EP Internal Market Committee. The aim is not to demonise games, which have a broadly beneficial effect on the mental development of children, but to help parents choose suitable content for their offspring.

Video games do not only have a recreational value.  They can also be used for educational and medical purposes, stresses a report by Toine Manders (ALDE, NL) adopted by the Internal Market Committee on Wednesday.  However, not all games are suited to all age groups and the possibility of harmful effects on the minds of children cannot be ruled out. To help parents choose, MEPs would like to see more public awareness of the content of video games, parental control options and instruments such as the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system.
 
Different approaches to strengthening control of video games should be explored, argues the committee, but it does not propose specific EU legislation. MEPs believe Member States should ensure their national rating systems do not lead to market fragmentation. Harmonisation of labelling rules would be of help. Member States should also agree on a common system based solely on PEGI.
 
Stricter controls on games
 
Members of the committee are particularly worried about on-line games, which are easy to download onto a PC or a mobile phone, making parental control harder. Until PEGI on-line is up and running, the report proposes fitting consoles, computers or other game devices with a "red button" to give parents the chance to disable a game or control access at certain times.  
 
Video games and violence
 
The presence of violence in video games does not automatically lead to violent behaviour, according to the report, which draws on recent studies.  However, prolonged exposure to scenes of violence can have an adverse effect on the player and even potentially lead to violent behaviour. An amendment tabled by the Civil Liberties Committee calls on the Member States to frame specific civil and criminal legislation on the retailing of violent TV, video and computer games and argues that special attention should be devoted to on-line games.
 
Internet cafés singled out
 
Controls on video games need to be tightened up so that children do not have access to inappropriate games. For this reason, and also to prevent the potentially harmful effects of games, especially the danger of addiction or violent behaviour, retailers and parents should take appropriate steps. MEPs back the idea of a code of conduct for retailers and producers of video games. But above all, internet café owners are singled out and reminded of their responsibilities.  A Eurobarometer survey shows that 3.2% of children aged 6-17 access the internet without adult supervision in internet cafes.

Where Game collide with Politics

EU backs video games for children

Not all games are suitable for all children, said the report. Video games should have a "red button" parents can press to disable inappropriate games, says a report. Drafted by a European parliament committee, the report backs games for children but says parents need help policing how and when they are played. The committee said games have a "broadly beneficial effect" on the mental development of children. The report comes as research shows that more than half of European children are unsupervised when using computers. Skill set The call for the "red button" was made by members of the European Parliament committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection as it adopted a wide-ranging study of younger game players. "Videogames are in most cases not dangerous and can even contribute to the development of important skills," Toine Manders, the Dutch MEP who drafted the report, told Reuters. Games can help instill facts in children and encourage the use of important skills such as creativity, cooperation and strategic reflection, found the study. Despite the positive conclusions, the committee said "not all games are suited to all age groups and the possibility of harmful effects on the minds of children cannot be ruled out". Because of this, it said, parents needed more help to police which games their children play and for how long. The report backed the European Pan European Game Information system (PEGI) and called for it to be strengthened and win more support from member nations. PEGI is a voluntary system backed by many video game makers which bestows age ratings on titles. The committee proposed that, while work was going on to improve PEGI and extend its oversight to online games, consoles and computers and games could be outfitted with a "red button" to turn off a machine or disable a game. Research released by Microsoft on 10 February found that 51% of the 20,000 Europeans aged 14-19 it questioned browsed the web without parental supervision.

5 Actresses Who Could Replace Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft

Photos (left to right): Mila Kunis, Malin Akerman, Evangeline Lilly, Sienna Miller and Summer Glau. Photos courtesy Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, ABC, Universal Pictures.

Video Game Interviews Exclusive interviews with the industry's top people

Interview: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot

We talk exclusively with the CEO of Ubisoft to discuss a potential future where his company publishes Grand Theft Auto, plus chat about casual games, innovating in the NEXT generation and more.

By Adam Doree

Everyone goes on about how much they like Yves Guillemot. In fact, as Ubisoft Shanghai's Julian Gerighty put it to us recently: "He's such a good guy - honestly, I wish our boss was NOT such a good guy; it would give us more reason to justify our bitching! But he is such a nice man."

Yes, everyone likes Yves and everyone likes Ubisoft. You never hear gamers bitching about Ubisoft. And it's largely down to the company's dedication to making high quality games, and its ability to honour and reinvigorate its existing IP, while at the same time innovating with new and ambitious IP.

But Ubisoft, currently the world's number three publisher, is not stopping there. It has a clear vision and big plans for further growth. We spoke exclusively to Yves at the recent Ubidays 2008 showcase, at the Louvre Museum in Paris, to get some insight.

Kikizo: Thanks for talking with me Yves. We're interested in the rapidly growing casual market. I've spoken with the head of EA Casual too and everyone wants a piece of this huge market. What is your competitive advantage going in against the likes of EA who are obviously very serious about casual as well?

Yves: Being first is a very important element, because you get into the business and you understand it, and then the products you create are responding to what your consumers want. So being first is a big advantage, and the second element is we have the teams and they are building the engines now to do lots of very high quality games. And it's true there will be lots of competition coming, but you know, there is a big market as well, so normally there is space for everybody.

Kikizo: Ubisoft is keen to keep a lot of its engines in-house where others look to outsource aspects of development, what is the advantage of continuing to do that?

Yves: I think for all the creations in games, you have to make sure you concentrate on what is the most important, and when something will make a difference and somebody cannot do it as well as you would do it, you go for in-house.

Kikizo: On that topic, there has been a recent rumour that Ubisoft might acquire Take 2, again similarly to EA. I see one of Take 2's most valuable assets right now as the engine that runs GTA from a technology standpoint, which obviously Take 2 owns. If I were Take 2 I would be licensing that engine out tomorrow. It could be as popular as Unreal.

Yves: It could be, it could be. But they would then be giving away the competitive advantage that they have, so it's better to keep it.

Kikizo: I would love to see a European company own what we currently know as Take 2, as opposed to EA buying it and getting even larger. Wouldn't you like to see a European company take ownership of it?

Stardock Opening Second Studio

By Earnest Cavalli February 04, 2009 | 4:03:06 PMCategories: Business Matters  

It's not all doom and gloom in the world of gaming employment: Publisher Stardock is expanding its operations by opening a second studio in Michigan.

The new studio, and the 50 developers the firm is hiring to staff it, are scheduled to work on "an as-of-yet unannounced RPG title developed and published by independent developer Stardock Entertainment."

Though the economic climate is decidedly poor and Michigan isn't known as a hotbed of games development, Stardock was offered numerous tax perks and access to a powerful communications infrastructure as incentive to build there.

"We’re very pleased with the support we’ve received from Wayne County and the state of Michigan," said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. "We think Michigan is well placed to become a hub for technology companies thanks to new programs from the state to make Michigan more competitive to do business in.  We look forward to continuing our strong growth with additional development projects over the next couple of years."