Tag Archives | Gaming

"Fallujah" Video Game Dropped Over Controversy

Posted by Jared Newman on April 27, 2009 at 12:21 pm

fallujahFun shouldn’t have to be the be-all end-all of video games, so I approached Six Days in Fallujah, a game based on a bloody battle in Iraq, with cautious optimism. Maybe this would be the title that takes war for what it is — intense and violent, with deeper consequences than “win or lose” — rather than a shooting gallery in realistic skin.

I tweeted as much when the game’s developers at Atomic Games talked about how they would address that issue. A report that the game included the perspective of insurgents piqued my interest even further. Maybe this game would not simply be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with specific historical details.

It could be all for naught now that Konami has abandoned Six Days in Fallujah. A representative for the company told Asahi Shimbun that the decision came after “seeing the reaction to the videogame in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail.”

This doesn’t necessarily rule out the game. Another publisher could pick it up, but will any company want to? The outcry must have been pretty bad for Konami to back down from the controversy, because usually a strong negative response from concerned groups translates into free marketing. I guess it’s easier to justify the fictionalized, cartoonish violence of Grand Theft Auto than the portrayal of an ongoing war.

The other possibility is that Six Days in Fallujah isn’t as deep and meaningful as I had hoped, and Konami knows it. Even so, I’d still like to see this game come to market. The games industry might have learned a valuable lesson on what’s appropriate subject matter for video games and how to approach it. Instead, the stigma remains that games can’t take on a serious topic with anything but pure entertainment in mind.

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The New Flavor of MMOs: Shooters

Posted by Jared Newman on April 22, 2009 at 1:03 pm

crimecraft_01Traditionally, Massive Multiplayer Online games are not the avenue for testing one’s reflexes.

World of Warcraft, the quintessential MMO, follows the typical formula of managing health and attack skills through a system of statistics. EverQuest does the same. Even EVE Online, which abandons the typical fantasy setting in favor of Sci-Fi, is a game of resource management and overarching strategy.

As you’d expect, the Halo and Call of Duty crowd (e.g., me) are turned off. Massive multiplayer shooters exist, but only on the fringes of MMO culture, where your average shoot-em-up fan isn’t likely to find them.

MTV Multiplayer ran a nice round-up today on five games that are trying to change the status quo: APB, The Agency, Combat Arms, CrimeCraft and Earthrise. Reporter Tracey John asked one developer from each game to basically justify what they’re doing. I won’t summarize each of developers’ elevator pitches here; the important takeaway is that a wave of MMO shooters will hit over the next few years, aimed at the set that thinks World of Warcraft is for squares.

It’s funny, however, that none of the pitches sound much different from one another. They all claim the same predictable formula — take straightforward shooter, add community features and character building, stir — and I was surprised to hear very little about the games themselves. After all, once you strip away all the MMO features, you still need combat that’s good enough to draw people in. Leveling up only becomes addictive after the initial hook. Avoiding the stigma of MMOs with convoluted terms like “persistent world next-gen shooter” only goes so far.

I don’t want to pre-judge these games, but I’m worried that they’ll rely too heavily on community features instead of focusing on the actual act of play. To truly avoid lure shooter fans toward MMOs, it should be the other way around.

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The Game Boy Turns Twenty

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 21, 2009 at 8:41 am

Game Boy OdditiesIt was twenty years ago today that Nintendo released the Game Boy handheld in Japan. The recent rash of publicity for the anniversary has me feeling nostalgic for my Game Boy, which I bought at the going-out-of-business sale at a location of one-time Toys R Us rival Child World; I’m pretty sure I have it boxed up in storage somewhere.

We celebrated the Game Boy’s special day a bit early with Benj Edwards’ gallery of Game Boy Oddities–some of which are really odd–and if you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend taking a gander. Benj is marking the anniversary over at Ars Technica with a list of six reasons the Game Boy is #1, and he performed a commemorative Game Boy teardown at PC World a couple of weeks ago.

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What Does the PSP Want to Be?

Posted by Jared Newman on April 20, 2009 at 7:10 pm

pspslimAsk Sony for some thoughts on the state of the PSP, and it seems you’ll get a profoundly different answer than that of third-party interests.

In an article titled “Sony’s Forgotten Console,” Edge did a bit of quote gathering on what’s wrong and right with the handheld, and though the authors don’t explicitly point this out, it seems there’s an identity crisis going on. Sony continues to insist that the PSP provides deep, immersive video games, while at least one publisher believes it’s just too costly and risky to do that sort of thing anymore.

The key quote comes from Sebastien Rubens, a former SCEE employee who left to found Anozor, which makes download-only PSP games. “If you look at the market for PSP developers, it’s impossible to find a publisher that will put money into making games for PSP,” he said.

Rubens adds that the investment to make a full-featured PSP game is too high. Meanwhile, a game like Brain Age for the Nintendo DS performs wonderfully and is dirt-cheap to produce.

I’ve talked about the issue of “hardcore” gaming on the PSP before, but in a different light; this was back when Sony marketing executive Peter Dille called the iPhone “largely diversionary” and said PSP owners want a 20-hour game by comparison. Now it seems that even the game makers are turning against this idea. If Edge’s article is any indication, PSP developers want to make iPhone-like games — cheap to produce and easy to distribute, maybe even free from the old brick-and-mortar model.

Shelf space is competitive, after all, and when it comes to selling those big and fancy games, Sony’s first-party offerings — the ones created by its own studios — are finding the most success. Titles like God of War: Chains of Olympus and Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters perform well, but that’s no consolation to the third-party game makers.

To be fair, this is a crisis that all handheld game makers are facing. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS, widely regarded as a monumental stretch on the console’s resources, only sold 89,000 copies in its first month. While there are lots of potential explanations — poor marketing, piracy, GTA overload — there’s always the possibility that a lot of people aren’t interested in “hardcore” handheld gaming.

The difference is, Nintendo and Apple aren’t talking about 20-hour games as a major selling point, while Sony remains fixated on it. As the most powerful handheld with the most straightforward design, the PSP has no choice but to play to those strengths. Ironically, that muscle is dragging the PSP down.

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E74 and Red Ring of Death: Same But Different

Posted by Jared Newman on April 17, 2009 at 2:13 pm

redringofdeathThey go by different names, but sometimes it’s the same hardware failure that causes the Xbox 360’s “Red Ring of Death” and the newer “E74.”

In an interview with Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, an unnamed Microsoft representative discussed the latest console-killing error, which on Tuesday became covered under the same three-year warranty Microsoft issued to fix the Red Ring of Death.

Crecente was trying to figure out if the “three flashing red lights” and E74 are the same problem with different indicators. Microsoft denied that claim, but said that in some cases the error messages are referring to the same hardware failure. “However, it is not the same failure mode in all cases and there is no single root cause for these malfunctions,” the representative said.

Microsoft didn’t elaborate much further than that; as I said last time, the company has nothing to lose by playing this close to the vest. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Xbox personalities can claim that the worst has come to pass.

Here’s another interesting tidbit from the short interview: Microsoft said the Red Ring of Death is not out of the picture, even though hardware improvements have reduced the likelihood of the problem.

In that light, I wish Microsoft would reset the clock on its warranty coverage for customers whose consoles have bricked. A set time limit of three years is unsettling when customers can’t rest assured that their console won’t break again, even with the latest hardware.

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Boom! Madden Games Will Stick Around

Posted by Jared Newman on April 16, 2009 at 8:18 pm

john_madden_footballJohn Madden may have stunned the sports world today by announcing his retirement from broadcasting, but football video game fans shouldn’t be surprised that the Madden game franchise is staying put.

Speaking to Gamasutra, EA Sports spokesman David Tinson said the company has a “long-term contract” with Madden.

Tinson didn’t elaborate, but EA Sports President Peter Moore posted some thoughts to his blog: “We all obviously knew this day would one day come, when John would walk away from the booth, but he certainly leaves a lasting legacy that we’re proud to be able to carry on through our Madden NFL videogame franchise for years to come,” Moore said.

Madden took a backseat role in last year’s game, in which Tom Hammond and Cris Collinsworth handled broadcasting. It was the first time Madden didn’t provide color commentary.

I wonder for how long Madden will continue to be the face of EA Sports’ golden franchise. At first, I figured his name will eventually fade from popularity, and EA will want to move on, probably when the contract runs out.

On the other hand, we could see an interesting phenomenon in which the video game keeps the Madden name alive. A brand that sells 70 million copies in its lifetime doesn’t fade away so easily, and no other video game franchise has become so synonymous with its genre. (It helps that EA holds exclusive rights to use real-life players, stadiums and teams in its games, effectively locking out any competition, but that’s beside the point.)

This could certainly be the first time that a video game keeps a sports icon in the limelight, long after his retirement.

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iPhone Gamers Rejecting the Same-Old? Not Really.

Posted by Jared Newman on April 15, 2009 at 4:52 pm

iphone3The games industry has a reputation for being risk-averse, often tacking on numerals to existing franchises or spewing out endless iterations of solitaire and poker. While that strategy flies in the console and computer gaming world, one game company exec claims the landscape is different on the iPhone. I’m skeptical.

“We notice that brands don’t do that well on the iPhone, nor do generic games like poker or bowling,” Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins — who has long since moved on and now owns Digital Chocolate — said in an interview with VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi.

I want to believe this, but the data I’m finding doesn’t support what Hawkins says, especially in regards to “generic” games. Looking at comScore’s recent App download chart, iBowl and Touch Hockey: FS5 are the second and fourth-most downloaded games, respectively. Pac-Man came in third place. Slightly down the list, you find Hangman, So! Solitaire and Sudoku, which are about as generic as you can get. (First place, admittedly, belongs to Tap Tap Revenge, a wildly popular rhythm game.)

Additionally, you can look back to a game-specific chart from last July and find seven sudoku and five solitaire titles in the top 100.

Before poking around for these charts, I almost wrote a piece taking Hawkins’ remarks wholesale. It’s enticing to cheer on the iPhone as a pillar of creativity, especially when Hawkins talks about games that “make social connections.” The idea that original content has the best chance of going viral sounds good in theory.

And there are holes in my argument, too. Digital Chocolate has hit number one in the sales charts with four different games, always relying on new IP, so Hawkins isn’t totally off base. There’s also the issue of free vs. paid, which the above charts don’t take into account. Finally, we have seen a few really cool games, regardess of sales.

But at least in terms of mass popularity, you can’t argue with the tried-and-true.

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E74: Microsoft Recognizes the Xbox 360's Other Problem

Posted by Jared Newman on April 14, 2009 at 11:38 am

redringofdeath“Red Ring of Death” has worked its way so thoroughly into gamer lexicon that it’s comical to watch Microsoft work around the terminology. Perhaps the company’s talking heads will have an easier time with “E74,” a different system killing hardware issue whose moniker is so succinct it’ll probably stick. But I digress.

Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb acknowledged this new hardware issue today, announcing that the infamous three-year Xbox 360 warranty will extend its coverage to include E74 along with the “three flashing lights error,” as Hryb calls it. The warranty began in the summer of 2007 in response to Red Ring issues and is good for three years from the purchase of an Xbox 360 console. In addition to covering new E74 repairs, Microsoft will retroactively reimburse anyone who has paid the company to fix the problem. Checks will go out before July 1.

Joystiq has been covering the E74 issue since complaints emerged in greater numbers this year. They believe the problem stems from a faulty solder on the ANA/HANA scaling chip in HDMI models. Lines across the screen or snowy interference typically preceed the fatal error message, which is accompanied by one flashing red light (Quadrant of Death?). Microsoft has not described the nature of the problem except to call it a “general hardware failure.”

Chances are, the company won’t elaborate. Microsoft has claimed that the Red Ring of Death debacle hasn’t hurt the brand, and was reluctant to come clean on the problem for some time, so I imagine the company is tackling this issue with the same bravado. Maybe brand loyalty is okay for the Xbox 360, but Sony would be wise to store these issues in its memory banks for the next round of console wars.

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Game Boy Oddities

Posted by Benj Edwards on April 13, 2009 at 11:36 pm

Game Boy Oddities

When Nintendo released the original Game Boy twenty years ago next week, wheels of capitalism and creativity immediately started turning in noggins across the globe.  From artists mesmerized with the gaming gadget’s iconic status to inventors who saw it as a way to make the world a better place to folks who just wanted to cash in, the Game Boy has inspired weird accessories, variations, and tributes.  After seeing the items I rounded up for this extravaganza, you’ll probably agree that the public’s infatuation with this classic handheld has grown far beyond Nintendo’s wildest dreams.

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Downloadable Games, With the Inconvenience of the Store

Posted by Jared Newman on April 13, 2009 at 2:43 pm

pspslimA solution for the digital download squeamish: Go to your local video game store, buy a boxed version of a digital download voucher, go home and use the Internet to install the same product that’s being sold cheaper to those who don’t want to leave the house.

Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera has word from a “reliable” insider — with a proven track record of breaking stories — that this will happen for the upcoming PSP game Patapon 2. Kuchera suggests that Sony is testing this retail download model to gauge whether it will work for other games, maybe even setting the stage for a UMD-less PSP.

Why would Sony hang on to retail at all with this release? Because as much as video game publishers would love to kill the middleman, they need that shelf space. Digital distribution doesn’t share equal footing with hard copy sales. Besides, cutting out Gamestop and other retailers could potentially force them to drop the PSP in retribution. Despite the strained relationship between publisher and retailer, no one wants to rock the boat.

As a result, we might have this bizarre solution in which consumers can pay $20 plus a trip to the store for a $15 game that they can download at home. You pay more for the luxury of an empty box.

Whether the rumor is true or not, I can’t imagine retailers lovingly embracing the idea in the long run because they’d be digging their own graves. Once enough retail shoppers realize they’re getting duped at retail, they’ll abandon the store. GameStop also loves the used game market, and won’t give it up without a fight.

Retail downloads might work in the present simply because of shelf appeal, but Sony and other game publishers can’t have it both ways forever. Eventually, they’ll have to commit to a download-only future — brick-and-mortar be damned, consoles can be distributed other ways — or commit to physical media and all the retail baggage that comes with it.

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