Author Archive | Jared Newman

Just imagine the thought process when Electronic Arts told investors about its 2009 plans: Wii sold twice as many consoles as either of its competitors last year. Better make more games for the Wii. Got to tell investors that the Wii will be a “major focus” from here on.

And so it went during EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello’s conference call to investors, as reported by GameDaily. “We have a spectacular slate for FY:10, which will be supported by a Wii-focused advertising campaign,” he said. “We’re starting FY:10 strong … and it gets better each quarter.”

It better. EA hasn’t been ignoring the Wii, per se, but focusing on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 isn’t the best business plan when everyone and their mothers (literally) were out buying Nintendo’s console for Christmas. Despite being a critical darling last holiday season with new IP like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, the publisher posted a $641 million loss last quarter and decided to lay off 10 percent of its workforce. Today, the company said it would push that number to 11 percent, or 1,100 employees.

Riccitiello said the company will push its EA Sports line above all this year, with games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour, EA Sports Active and EA Sports Tennis. There’s also a sequel to Boom Blox in the pipeline, more takes on the My Sims and Harry Potter franchises and ports of existing franchises like Dead Space.

Sadly, there’s no mention of new IP in there aside from the two new sports ventures. True, now isn’t the time to take big risks, but I’d at least like the Wii Motion Plus to come into play in the form of a new action game, with the kind of buzz that EA usually reserves for its Xbox 360 and PS3 titles. The Wii could really use a few third-party blockbusters, and I don’t think the franchises and ports Riccitiello mentioned are going to cut it.

We’ve previously written about the artistic side of iPhone games, and now it seems they’re taking a turn for the political.

Startup game company Yanki revealed that it’s awaiting Apple approval for Pay2Play: Illinois Governor Edition. The clear rip on Rod Blagojevich is a Drug Wars-style hustle, where players pay off various unions while earning money through the sale of cushy jobs, government contracts and, of course, senate seats. There’s even a nod to Alcopop, the fruity drink whose depiction Illinois banned from kid-centric video games earlier this year. Hopefully Apple will give this one the nod.

The news comes a week after Persuasive Games unveiled Jetset: A Game For Airports, a satirical TSA simulator that requires constant adaptation to changing security rules. It’s actually a remake of the 2006 game Airport Security, designed by the same studio, but with some twists for the mobile device. In addition to the usual hunting for banned items, such as pressurized cheese and toothbrushes, players can unlock souvenirs by playing the game in specific airports. The prizes are then shareable through Facebook and downloadable into the iPhone’s Snowglobe app.

These offerings fall into the categorization of “Serious Games” — those which strive for some meaning or statement beyond just entertainment value — and I never pegged the iPhone as a host for the genre. There’s no guarantee that either of these titles will be “fun,” per se, but they at least get you thinking about current events within gaming’s problem solving framework.

From the “bad precedent that works in my favor” department comes word that Cox will try delaying peer-to-peer file sharing during heavy congestion periods.

And that’s not all. The delays will also affect bulk file transfers, like FTP and network storage, software updates and Usenet. Cox will start with a test run in Kansas and Arkansas, expanding later in the year if the Internet service provider so desires.

The upside? Any delays at P2P’s expense will aide “time-sensitive” traffic, such as online gaming, streaming movies, VOIP and plain old Web browsing. As a gamer, movie watcher and avid Web surfer, I’m okay with more bandwidth coming my way during the evening rush. And let’s face it, while P2P has its share of legitimate uses, like transferring Linux ISO files, the seedy side is big enough to justify slower downloads.

That’s not to say there are no red flags going up here. I generally support Net Neutrality, and Cox’s experiments seem to go against that. And if this trend of prioritizing by “time-sensitivity” continues, it could come back to haunt gamers in the long run in the form of slower downloads for new content, even if playing online is still unhindered. Perhaps the same could be true for video on demand.

In any case, Ars Technica doesn’t see this new policy flying with the FCC, considering how the commission has opposed Comcast’s throttling of peer-to-peer uses. Cox’s move is even more prone to criticism, Ars argues, because it singles out specific uses instead of monitoring overall bandwidth.

Interestingly enough, Cox wants to hear from customers on the matter. The company is taking e-mails at coxmessage@cox.com.

If you read PC World, the Wall Street Journal or any number of gaming and tech blogs, you may have heard that video games are linked to poor relationships with friends and family, plus drug and alcohol use, according to a study by Brigham Young University.

I got wind of this at Kotaku last week and brushed it off for reasons I’ll explain later. The study was based on a survey of 813 university students who reported how often they played video games, then answered questions on the time, trust, support and affection they give to friends and parents.

Though the correlation between gaming and poor relationships was “modest,” professor Laura Walker, who mentored the undergraduate student behind the study, said that “everything we found clustered around video game use is negative.”

My first reaction was dismay, as I looked for a reason to discredit this damaging argument against my favorite hobby. Enter Kotaku’s Brian Crecente with an analysis:

BYU is a private university owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which … mandates behavior in line with Mormon teachings. That means no extra-marital sex, or use of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, tea or coffee.

[This] doesn’t mean that the findings or interpretation of the survey results are skewed, but it is certainly something that should be kept in mind.

And so my fears were allayed. Jump to today, when Kotaku reports a bit of backpedaling by Walker. She apparently tells a reader that the study wasn’t biased, and mostly defends its findings, but admits that games are “just a piece of a much bigger puzzle,” and “not causal.” As Crecente points out, none of this was clear in the initial press release that led to so many news stories. He then points a finger at the mainstream press for getting the story wrong and blames BYU for not coming forth with these details sooner.

But what’s bothering me most is what happens in the interim. The fact that game journalists — myself included — were willing to disregard the story because it came from a religious institution is unsettling. Certainly, the university shares some blame for opening the door to this kind of speculation, but writing off the study without all the facts is just as slippery a slope as running with the story.