Wednesday, November 26, 2008

‘Lord of the Rings Online’ Producer Not Worried About ‘World of Warcraft’

Last week the first retail expansion for “The Lord of the Rings Online” titled “Mines of Moria” was released.
But hot on the heels of the “World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) ” expansion “Wrath of the Lich King,” would “LotRO” still be “the one game to rule them all” for its playerbase?
Right before the game’s launch, I spoke with executive producer Jeffrey Steefel about competing with “WoW” and “Warhammer Online” and what Turbine’s future plans are for “LotRO.”
“Mines of Moria” is the first commercial expansion for “The Lord of the Rings Online: The Shadows of Angmar,” which was originally released in April 2007. It raises the level cap from 50 to 60 and adds three areas, two classes and leveling items.
I asked Steefel if he felt apprehensive at all about launching his game’s expansion so close to the “World of Warcraft” one, and if Turbine had considered changing the date to move further away from their competitor’s release. After all, “World of Warcraft” has 11 million subscribers and those who’ve left for other games have a tendency to return. (Note: I inquired about the number of “LotRO” subscribers, but I was told that Turbine is a privately-held company and does not release that information.)
“We announced our launch date because it was the best time to launch the product — and then other people announced their launch dates,” Steefel said. “We are driven by what we think is the right cycle for the product and our existing players, and then also to bring in new players. But we felt that it was okay [to launch near "Wrath of the Lich King"] because the market isn’t quite the same as it was in the past. It’s gotten more diverse, and there’s always going to be competition. Some of it is gargantuan compared to us, but everything’s relative… We’re competing against these giant media conglomerates, but we’re holding our own, so we’re pretty psyched about that.”
But the games from these “giant media conglomerates” also happen to have the same theme as “Lord of the Rings Online” — namely orcs and elves. Why should gamers play “LotRO” instead of “World of Warcraft” or “Warhammer Online”? I asked Steefel for his sales pitch.
“Imagine if you could get the fun online gameplay but doing that in Middle-earth, where you’ll basically be a part of the story that you saw in the movies or that you read about in the books,” he said. “There’s certainly several games out there that offer MMO players a lot of different choices and different kinds of play-styles. Somebody who’s really looking for that heavy [Player vs. Player] or [Realm vs. Realm] experience, they’re going to go play ‘Warhammer.’ But if they’re looking for the best [Player vs. Environment] game, it’s clearly ‘LotRO.’ Period. Plus, it’s ‘Lord of the Rings!’”
Steefel also claimed that “LotRO” wasn’t too affected by the release of new games like “Age of Conan” in May and “Warhammer Online” in September. And he didn’t seem worried about “Lich King”’s impact. “We actually saw less of a dent in our subscribership than we had expected,” he explained of when “Conan” and “Warhammer” were released. “People do want to go try the thing that’s new, but most of them have come back, and we have a lot of new players. At the end of the day, it’s about what your game is and what it’s providing and not worrying too much about what’s going to happen when another game comes along.”
I wondered why “LotRO” has succeeded and continues to thrive while others — like most recently “Tabula Rasa” — have failed. An industry veteran and a longtime MMO player, Steefel said that in the early years gamers were more forgiving, like when an online game was broken or had ugly graphics. But nowadays, gamers don’t cut online game developers any slack.
Consumers aren’t so forgiving anymore, and I think that’s why [MMOs] are starting to have difficulty,” he said. “It’s why ‘WoW, ‘Lord of the Rings’ and a couple of the other games that have come out have succeeded… [The game] has to be good, and it has to be good all the time. It has to continue to grow and evolve. It has to be stable, and it has to perform well. And you have to maintain all these things at the same time. It’s also hard for game companies to figure out how to be service organizations. That’s a whole other part of the business that game companies don’t normally have to do… We have people that we have to satisfy 24-seven, and it doesn’t stop when we put the box on the shelf.”
As for what’s next for “LotRO,” Steefel said to expect another retail expansion about a year from now. In the meantime, the development team is already at work on the next free content update — called “Books” — which they’ve been releasing every few weeks since the original game launched. Turbine recently opened a west coast office and is hiring approximately 50 positions, presumably to help work on the previously announced console MMO. Steefel declined to give any details other than that it was still in the early stages of development.
“The Lord of the Rings” expansion “Mines of Moria” is in stores now, and for a limited time, Turbine is offering a lifetime subscription for the game for $199.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:43:17 | Permalink | No Comments »

Moving to the Second Classroom

Teaching in virtual environments can be very productive, says Bill Thompson.
Although it’s common to hear technology entrepreneurs and investors express concern about the possibility that Google will move into their market niche and take away their business, the reality is that neither Google nor anyone else is guaranteed success in a new area.
Google’s social network, Orkut, has not challenged MySpace or Facebook, online calendar services like 30boxes are still doing well despite Google’s Calendar offering, and the recently-launched voice and video add-on to Gmail is unlikely to supersede Skype as a business tool.
Last week Google announced the closure of Lively, the web-based virtual environment it launched in July, in order to ‘prioritise our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business’, as the announcement puts it.
Lively was only ever available as a plug-in for Windows users, and looked more like a 3-D chatroom than a serious challenge to more established virtual worlds such as Second Life, so it is unlikely to be missed.
But its demise should comfort anyone who thinks that large, rich companies can simply move in on their businesses.
In online tech journal The Register, the closure of Lively was greeted as another example of the failure of virtual worlds, with Chris Williams asking, ‘Could it be there isn’t a pot of gold at the end of the Sadville rainbow?’. ‘Sadville’ is the dismissive name the site has used for Second Life in a series of articles describing its failures, defects and inadequacies.
Second Life may get much less press attention than it used to - Reuters has withdrawn its much-trumpeted Second Life correspondent - but it is still being used by many people as a space for socialising, experimentation and, of course, cartoon-like sexual encounters.
It is also the most popular virtual world for teachers and education researchers, perhaps because there are fewer orcs than you typically encounter in World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) or the more quest-oriented worlds.
Classified worlds
I met quite a few of them last week at ReLIVE08, a conference on the education and research uses of virtual worlds. I was an invited speaker on the second day, and the conference covered my expenses although didn’t pay me to attend.
I’m not sure what my ‘outsider’ perspective added to the proceedings, but I learned a great deal about the imaginative ways in which these new environments are being used in areas as disparate as language teaching and urban planning.
Perhaps the most useful paper given at the conference came from Sarah Robbins-Bell, a graduate student at
Ball State University in Indiana. Ms Robbins-Bell really knows her stuff, as co-author of the book Second Life for Dummies and editor of the Second Life Education Blog.
She looked at 75 different virtual ‘worlds’ and has drawn up a classification scheme that makes clear the similarities and differences between such diverse worlds as Everquest, Club Penguin, Second Life and World of Warcraft.
She identified characteristics such as the type of interaction between characters, whether the worlds were text- or image-based, whether interactions were competitive or collaborative and whether users could change the game world themselves.
Her classification system is a valuable research tool in its own right, as the 10 facets she identified can be used to describe new environments.
New terminology
They also help us understand the constraints on how worlds work. Ms Robbins-Bell noted that in games where the environment is hostile, such as World of Warcraft, each character can only belong to one group - or guild, in WoW speak.
She believes this is because a strong identification with the group sustains the character when the world is trying to attack them.
Perhaps most importantly, though, her research will help those who want to use virtual worlds for research or teaching to determine which is best suited to their needs, rather than assuming that everything has to be shoehorned into Second Life.
This may not be the best outcome for Linden Labs, the company that built Second Life and is trying to make money out of it. But it will certainly help the teachers who want to go beyond using websites, whiteboards and chat rooms when they venture online with their students.
One barrier that will need to be overcome is the terminology. It has been clear for a while that calling the sophisticated entertainments available on modern consoles “games” makes it easy to dismiss them as less important than books and films, and the phrase “virtual worlds” does something similar here.
Second Life and World of Warcraft are not really “worlds”, whatever their proponents might claim. They are sophisticated 3-D environments that allow for a much greater degree of engagement than other tools, and they offer tools for interaction and creative expression that browsers, chatrooms and e-mail do not. However, the grandiose terminology makes it too easy to dismiss their importance.
The organisers of ReLIVE08 seem to realise this. In her paper, Ms Robbins-Bell talked about virtual worlds, but the conference as a whole was concerned with ‘Researching Learning in Virtual Environments’, a broader and far less confrontational term.
We just need to persuade Linden Labs to rebrand ‘Second Life’ as ‘Additional forms of screen-based interaction’. I’m sure it will catch on.

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Posted by JImmy in 01:42:05 | Permalink | No Comments »

Barack Obama adviser is Warcraft gamer

Barack Obama has appointed a regular player of online fantasy game World of Warcraft as one of his transition advisers, it has emerged.

The man charged with providing the President-Elect with information about the
US media regulator spends his spare time fighting monsters and completing quests on the fictional planet of Azeroth.
Kevin Werbach, an academic, is a member of two guilds in the world’s most popular online game, playing under the name Supernovan Jenkins.
He has invested so many hours in the game that his “Tauren Shaman” character has reached Level 70, one of the higher ranks.
Mr Werbach, an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, is to co-author a review of the work of the Federal Communications Commission, to help Mr Obama plan his media policies when he assumes the presidency in January.
Bloggers and gamers have already begun speculating about what impact Mr Werbach’s Warcraft background might have on his professional outlook, with some suggesting that his appointment indicates that the new administration may be more open to virtual worlds.
In a blog post written in 2006 Mr Werbach praised massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) like Warcraft for fostering a sense of community.
“What [Warcraft] does is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production,” he wrote.
“Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.”
But he admitted that the game’s big lure was its entertainment value. “I’m not kidding myself. I play Warcraft because it’s fun,” he wrote.
The latest expansion pack for World of Warcraft ( Currency: wow gold ) , which has 11 million registered players across the world, was released earlier this month.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:37:56 | Permalink | No Comments »

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Believe it or not, it’s been four years since World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold ) opened its awaiting arms to would-be adventurers, and nearly two years since its first expansion, The Burning Crusade. Regardless of this slightly languid release schedule, WOW continues to be wildly popular, and thus Blizzard are willing to swing the punch of an expansion at the most competitive time in gaming.Expectations are high, otherwise respectable people are preparing to forget to use the toilet and eat, and over 11 million subscribers are desperate to hit the icy terrain of Northrend. Which is why it’s slightly awkward to deliver this review. Wrath of the Lich King, while a phenomenally tight, well-built expansion, lacks the killer instinct and wow-factor (acronym and adjective) that both WOW and The Burning Crusade had.
Depending on what character you’re using, WOTLK starts off with you either at odds with or working for the Lich King. And if you have a level 55 character, you’ll be able to create a Death Knight, WOW’s first hero class.Beginning at 55, the initial experience of being a Death Knight introduces you to the class through a few hours of heavily story-driven quests, beginning above the
Eastern Plaguelands in a necropolis known as Acherus: The Ebon Hold. This gigantic floating skull-palace houses your quests, your class-trainers, and the new rune forging (read: Death Knight-only buff application) system. Through these quests you level from 55 through to 59, and acquire as many talents as you would from level 10 onwards.These quests are well-written, fun, and reasonably dramatic, ending with a large-scale battle against the forces of the Light, who eventually free you from the thrall of the titular undead demigod, carefully explaining how you can join the goodie-two-shoes Alliance. You’ll even find yourself experiencing a little guilt as you do dirty work for Arthas (the titular Lich King) - killing innocents, stealing horses, and generally doing true, no-nonsense evil. This is refreshingly grim in comparison to some of WOW’s somewhat reserved content, and will no doubt create a fair amount of grumbling among the moralistic.Lich King is also an example of how well Blizzard does boxed-in, instance-based content. The instance that you (and other new Death Knights) work within constantly changes as you advance, with once-beautiful countryside becoming plagued and charred. You have a real connection to the world as you progress, gaining gear, levels, talents and a rather dapper steed, which causes dissonance when you reach the end, to be thrown back into the static, yet enjoyable, content of The Burning Crusade. Sadly, once you’re past the initial stages, you’ll have to move up to level 68 to enter Northrend. And, face it, in the last two years, we’ve already grinded ourselves enough alts to 70 to get tired of Outland.

Nevertheless, the Death Knight is an endearing, playable and endlessly resourceful class to both play with, as their ability to (when specialised in Blood Talents) solo makes Outland that bit more palatable. That, and those of you who need to catch up to 68 to hit the icy waters will have a slew of grumpy new friends to level up with. Entering Northrend is done by zeppelin or boat, depending on whether you’re Alliance or Horde, to either the Howling Fjord (accessed by Menethil Harbour or the Undercity) or Borean Tundra (accessed through Stormwind or Durotar). The Fjord’s Valgarde houses the Alliance dangerously close to the newly-awoken Viking giants, the vrykul, while the Horde end up doing more bitch work for the Forsaken at New Agamand. In the Tundra, the Horde’s Vengeance Landing is immediately accessible, as is the impressive Warsong Hold, while Valiance Keep is all that stands between the Alliance and a swift reaming by the ever-more-bold undead Scourge.In comparison to the demonic, explosion-filled war zone that The Dark Portal had waiting for you, your entrance to the North is actually rather relaxed. You’ll slip in somewhat unheralded and begin collecting quests and go to work trying to establish your side’s agenda. Wherever you choose to land, it seems that old habits die hard - The Forsaken are up to new and unusual ways to make members of the Alliance suffer, while the goodie-goodie humans are trying to get along with the locals and protect their supply routes.In fact, you’ll find a great many of the initial quests eerily similar to your experiences in The Burning Crusade, with kill X of Y quests, pick up X of Y quests, and bombing runs against large groups of otherwise unreachable opponents.

It’s not that these aren’t fun or well balanced, it’s more that they lack the furious extremes of Outland. While two years ago you were fighting hellboars on charred terrain while juddering devices of the Burning Legion fought overhead, a great many of your first hours in Northrend are spent killing the wildlife or scuffling with the locals. This is an expansion of exploration, and feels more like an expedition, not an adventure.The best example came from my personal experience jaunting around the Howling Fjord in my first few hours. Feeling the advantage of jumping off the beaten track, I sought out Winterhoof, a camp of both Tauren and Taunka (apparently their ancestral cousins), thinking that it would be ripe for the adventuring. On arrival, I received a quest that had me picking up hippogryph feathers around generic, icy/green terrain, amongst a few others involving the killing of elementals and wildlife. I threw up my hands - hadn’t I left this shit behind in the Hinterlands?This isn’t to say that Wrath of the Lich King is a litany of repetitive boredom - far from it. There are some wonderfully intricate, atmospheric and well-done quests within the Frozen Hell. Zul’Drak, the home of the ice trolls, is simply one of the coolest environments in fantasy lore. You’re sent into gigantic troll ruins at the request of gods (gigantic Totem animals), fighting vicious ice trolls protected by eerie dancing tiki masks with floating spears. Lightning crackles in the sky, and Blizzard do their best to build on the lore started rather briefly in WarCraft III expansion The Frozen Throne.In fact, the best parts of Wrath of the Lich King seem to be when Blizzard breaks away from making a successful MMO and focuses on pure, unfettered adventure. Be it the Death Knight quest line, the battles between the Skybreaker and Orgrim’s Hammer, insulting a vrykul’s mum, or fighting a Scourge Veteran and an army of skeletons alongside a Horde Hero, WOTLK shines when it doesn’t feel like it’s setting up the treadmill for generation after generation. Lake Wintergrasp is a great example of this. Only accessible past level 77 (when players are able to learn Cold-Weather Flight and mount their respective winged beasts), it’s high-level PvP chaos that rewards good teamwork. Either the Horde or the Alliance takes control of Wintergrasp Fortress, where they must destroy the enemy’s siege engines and workshops before they can blow the fortress to smithereens.

Unlike your average battleground, Wintergrasp rewards coordination and smaller groups protecting siege weapons, weakening walls, or baiting groups of players into the path of one of the long-range siege weapons’ guns. It’s important to realise that you can’t really win Wintergrasp reliably without playing as a team - have-a-go heroes on their lonesome find themselves torn to shreds, even at 80. No matter how many hours you’ve denied your spouse or your worklife, you’re not going to win in a fistfight with a Demolisher.This is a refreshing take on PvP, but disappointingly closed-off for the average player. Many will (reasonably) assume that this is a counterpoint to the PvP-centric Warhammer Online, only to find that out of the box they’re not going to be able to travel there - especially if they don’t even have a flying mount to begin with. What could have been a drop-in, drop-out PvP war zone is now a fun little club for the elite to hang out at - which is, now especially, not what it should be in the face of what Mythic has to offer.Wintergrasp isn’t the only bizarre geographical choice that Blizzard made with Northrend. Before release, it was stated many times that the continent wouldn’t be made up predominantly of icy caverns and different kinds of yeti. While this is certainly the case, much of the continent feels put together seemingly at random. Lush plains roll into barren wastelands, that in turn roll into Scourge-infested terrain, that then subsequently rolls back into icy expanses.

The Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord are the worst examples, and feel rather like eight or nine zones stuck together with varying degrees of success, but much of Northrend lacks coherent artistic direction. Once you leave the loving arms of the Tundra and the Fjord (which takes far too long, in comparison to the transition between Zangarmarsh and Hellfire in The Burning Crusade), progression becomes a little more interesting, but it lacks a vigorous, adventure-like buzz. It’s more of a stroll through a series of well thought-out ideas that aren’t held together as well as they should be.In all fairness, WOTLK does everything that WOW has always done very, very well. Zones in and of themselves are always dramatic, and at times stunning, particularly Icecrown and Zul’Drak. A great deal of effort has been made to make zones feel bigger than anything Blizzard has created before, as is evident from the vertigo you’ll get on flying towards the flying city of Dalaran (see ‘Swoop, magic, swoop’). Character models are still cartoony and lacking in detail compared to Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, but environments are still ahead of the competition.This makes scoring this expansion rather painful. There is so much love for the lands, the lore, and the characters in the Warcraft universe, and so many fantastic ideas that exist to go into the Northrend Saga. Somehow, Blizzard managed to take potentially the least interesting idea in history - an entire continent made of ice - and lace it with fascinating ideas, quests, and areas to explore. The problem is that these ideas aren’t held together very well, and players have to push through more ho-hum content than we’ve yet seen from a Blizzard product. I hasten to add that it isn’t bad content, but we’re now four long years into WOW. If you’re on that boat, and want to continue playing a game that is enjoyable and addictive yet, ultimately, doing the same bloody thing it did on its release, then be my guest. You will love Wrath of the Lich King, because it does exactly what many want it to - it elongates a successful game model in a pleasing, easy-to-consume package, much like each year’s new FIFA and Football Manager games. The instanced content is excellent, the Death Knight is a well-balanced war machine that looks good in black, and the storyline - once you hunt it down and wring it out of Northrend - is crafted well enough to sate even the most die-hard lore nut. But by any standard, this far into the development of an MMO, and with two years since your last expansion, the envelope should be pushed a little. Blizzard could’ve shaken up the genre here. Wrath of the Lich King has had two years to innovate, build and refresh WOW, but all it seems to have done is prolong the same experience that people have been waiting to continue for years. Whether or not that’s a bad thing is up to you.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:37:09 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Gamers lose for cheating

VIDEO game cheats and pirates got some comeuppance last week, as Microsoft and Blizzard together banned or suspended hundreds of thousands of gamers for various infractions.
Microsoft got things started by banning from Xbox Live an unspecified number of gamers who had modified their consoles to play back-up copies of games, which the company regarded as pirated.
There were no official numbers, but the forums where such gamers cruise were full of outrage. (“How dare they ban me for playing pirated games!”)
Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft, was more forthright, saying it had banned 350,000 online players from its older StarCraft and Diablo II titles for using software cheats and hacks during online games against other players.
Cheating is nothing new but what’s annoying is that video game companies are having to divert what seems to be a growing pool of resources to chasing and defeating these nincompoops.
That’s time, money and labour that doesn’t go to making a new game or improving existing titles.
THE recent Dallas Video Festival handed out an award to a documentary on video game violence called Moral Kombat. (Great title, by the way.) The movie is apparently an even-handed look at the explicit carnage found in many games.
I’m sure the issue will flare up again, but it does seem like game violence has ebbed in the last year or so as a hot cultural topic. That’s because games won the debate without ever really addressing the issue.
People made a fuss about Grand Theft Auto and its sequels, for example, but the developers simply kept cranking out the games without apology.
After a while, the critics seemed to give up, and GTA continued to sell millions of copies.
Just as a forest fire can reignite after it appears to be extinguished, though, this tussle may not be over.
A game called MadWorlds under development by Sega for the Nintendo Wii could be a flashpoint.
The developers say their game “revolves around the themes of brutality and exhilaration”.
That seems designed to get some people riled.
But maybe we’ve found other, even more politically sensitive topics to get hot and bothered over.
An upcoming downloadable game for PlayStation 3 called Fat Princess has feminists all twitchy because you have to rescue a rotund royal.
So perhaps fat is the new violent.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:47:30 | Permalink | No Comments »

GotGame lanserar Rogue, den första webbläsaren som

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21 - GotGame, the company that enables gamers to access the in-game content they desire, today launched Rogue, its highly anticipated web browser.
Gamers spend a quarter of their time in game waiting for teammates to log in or games to load. They want something to do during this downtime, but exiting or minimizing the game means missing critical action.
Rogue eliminates this waiting game, enabling PC gamers to surf the web via a fully functional web browser without ever leaving their favorite games. Players can navigate to Wowhead to obtain information about items in World of Warcraft （Buy wow gold ）, or pull up Hulu to watch movie clips between Counter-Strike rounds; these are just two of the countless options available.
In order to use Rogue, gamers simply visit rogue.gotgame.com and download the free application. By hitting a hotkey, users can overlay the application in their favorite games; the browser will appear as though it were a part of the game itself, without disrupting any in-game functionality.
You can see a video of Rogue in action on YouTube or GotGame Videos.
The application is optimized to impact the gaming experience as little as possible. Gamers can set the browser’s transparency setting so the entire game screen is still visible, even if the browser is open. This means that they can, for instance, watch online videos overlaying their game at 50% transparency, while at the same time “grinding” for experience in Age of Conan.
Rogue’s Notable Features:
Game overlay for Windows XP & Vista
Full CSS, Javascript, and Flash support
Hot key to open/hide browser when in game
Configurable transparency settings
Optimization toggle for faster/slower computers
About GotGame
GotGame enables gamers to access the content and community they crave through a variety of in-game applications and Internet content portals. Through the LIVE and Rogue downloadable applications, GotGame offers gamers advanced communication, browser, and content delivery tools they can use inside of the most popular PC games. GotGame also operates the GotGame Network, which includes one of the most exciting gaming video-sharing sites (videos.gotgame.com), a widely-read gaming news site (news.gotgame.com), and the largest syndicated radio show about gaming in the world (radio.gotgame.com).
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Posted by JImmy in 01:46:35 | Permalink | No Comments »

Age of Conan Dev Funcom Confirms Layoffs

Age of Conan developer Funcom today confirmed reports that it has laid off a number of its US employees.
“We did have some staffing cuts at Funcom this week as well as new positions opening in the organization as part of our ongoing cost based efficiency and performance initiatives that are vital to any business,” said a Funcom representative to TenTonHammer.
Though the company did not specify the scale of the layoffs, a rumor out of TenTonHammer claims that 70% of Funcom’s workforce has been cut, with its customer service and quality service divisions seeing the bulk of the firings.
Funcom reported in June that its MMO Age of Conan had captured a userbase of approximately 700,000 subscribers, but by August that figure had dropped to 415,000. World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has claimed that 68% of Warcraft players who cited Age of Conan as a reason for canceling a subscription have since returned to Blizzard’s game.
Age of Conan producer and game director Gaute Godager left the project in September, citing his dissatisfaction with the title. Since then, Funcom has focused on responding to subscriber feedback, releasing a large, free update to the game last week.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:45:33 | Permalink | No Comments »

It’s a Small World (of Warcraft) After All

Video games are evolving into more and more elaborate forms, but they’re still dominated by white or Asian protagonists. Writing for The Escapist, Chris LaVigne asks, with all apparent recognition of globalization in other industries, why aren’t other races and cultures being represented in video games?
The argument for more minorities in video games has been made before, notably in a 2003 article by Ernest Adams, but discourse usually concerns the portrayals of black and Hispanic people in games like Grant Theft Auto. What LaVigne advocates is a way for games to reflect today’s high level of globalization.
As an example of what not to do, LaVigne cites the popular game Tomb Raider, which takes place in Peru, yet the native Peruvians are relegated almost entirely to the background and never speak. And with the glut of World War II games like the Call of Duty series, LaVigne wonders why gamers can’t play as “the Filipino soldiers who fought alongside American forces at the Battle of Luzon to free their capitol city,
Manila? Why can’t we play as the Rhodesians (now Zimbabweans) who fought with the British military against Axis forces? It was a world war, after all. Why don’t developers see the value of telling these unique stories instead of giving us the same ‘good ol’ boy’ Yankees and ‘stiff upper lip’ Britons that were already clichés when they were first introduced?”
Games like Resident Evil 5 (with African characters and setting) and Prince of Persia are headed in the right direction, according to LaVigne. Hopefully, he writes, developers will stop “babying their audience” and open them up to a genuine representation of the world, digital or otherwise.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:44:07 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, November 24, 2008

GAMERS NETWORK FOR CIVIL WAR

Players convene both at the UO and Oregon State University to do battle in an inaugural 24-hour tournament

It’s probably the quietest Civil War party in history.
Computer game enthusiasts of all types congregated Saturday at the
University of Oregon’s Erb Memorial Union ballroom for the inaugural Civil War LAN — a 24-hour Local Area Network gaming party in which players from the UO competed against rival gamers from Oregon State University. The event, staged a week before the annual UO-OSU Civil War football game, is believed to be the first intercollegiate LAN tournament connecting computer gamers from two schools through one network.
There was no yelling, no cheering … only the clicking sounds of fingers hitting computer keyboards and pressing mice. Players were required to wear headphones, which effectively muffled the action sounds of the games.
Players at each school were scheduled to compete in four tournaments, with the top two teams from each school playing each other today.
Seventy-five seats had been pre-registered at the UO, and by early afternoon organizers said they already had 15 walk-up gamers. A lot of the participants registered by nickname, volunteer coordinator Patrick Chinn said.
“It’s part of the geekery involved,” he added.
Throughout the dimly lit ballroom, glowing computer cases and mice could be seen. Some gamers had “dressed up” their computer cases by adding blue LED lights or a window to show off the internal hardware. Chinn compared it to teens and their cars in the 1950s. They buy them, fix them up and make them neat and cool, he said. Most people he knows, he said, create their computers part by part, focusing on buying a high-end video card. However, someone who buys an entire completed system could easily spend $2,000 to $3,000, he said.

Nineteen-year-old Steven Winkler drove from Hermiston to Eugene on Friday to meet up with friends who are UO students. He brought his computer, keyboard, mouse and headphones, which cost him close to $1,000, he estimated. His computer case was yellow, his favorite color. He painted the inside black to “dress it up” and calls it the bumblebee case, he said.
Winkler has been computer gaming for five years, he said, and gaming in general for eight years.
His current favorite game is “Call of Duty 4,” categorized as a first-person shooter game. Winkler said he’s more into the first-person shooter style games than other games but, he added, he’ll try anything.
“I’ve basically played it all, or tried it,” he said.
UO senior Elise Smilek, 22, was one of a few females at the tournament. She came with her fiance and his brother, and said she’s been gaming “forever,” playing different games on and off. She was playing “World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold )” on Saturday and said she likes it because you can earn better equipment as you move up in levels. The rewards are really nice items, she said, adding that she can make her character prettier.
Smilek plays first-person shooter style games, too, but doesn’t like them as much, she said.
Smilek was planning to stay up all night, reasoning that she’d paid to be a part of the tournament and would have today to recuperate.
“I might as well (stay up),” she said.
As the coordinator, Chinn figured he’d be getting about two hours of sleep at some point during the night.
Chinn spent 7½ hours setting up Friday and arrived at the ballroom at 9 a.m. Saturday for a noon start. Most of his time is spent trouble­shooting and keeping things running smoothly. If Chinn gets to play for more than 20 minutes throughout the entire 24 hours he’ll be lucky, he said.
“It’s fun and low-key in its own way,” Chinn said.
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Posted by JImmy in 01:31:08 | Permalink | No Comments »

Black Friday deals

Published: Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 4:
21 a.m. Last Modified: Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 10:31 a.m.
Although I did stick my head into the Petaluma GameStop long enough to pick up “Rock Band” last year, I’ve never been much of a day-after-Thanksgiving shopper. But sometimes it’s hard to resist the draw of the deal. Judging from Black Friday retail flyers posted at blackfriday.info, there aren’t any slam-dunk gaming deals that’ll get you to wait in line before stores open, but if you’re already out shopping, there’s money to be saved.
On the software side of things, don’t expect to find many savings on big fall titles like “Gears of War II,” “Fallout 3,” “Resistance 2″ or “Animal Crossing: City Folk.” Sure, those games will be advertised in flyers, but they’ll just be selling at the usual $50-$60 price point. There are, however, some great deals to be had on older titles.
Both Circuit City and Sears are selling the “Guitar Hero III” bundle including the game and a guitar controller for $55. Circuit City has PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions on sale Friday and Saturday, while Sears has the 360, PS3 and Wii bundles as a doorbuster deal, meaning they could sell out quickly. Bear in mind that if you own either of the two “Rock Band” games on Xbox 360 or any version of “Guitar Hero: World Tour,” the controller from “Guitar Hero III” can be used in your other music titles. Another Sears doorbuster has the department store offering 20 percent off all value games, but given that it’ll save you, at most, $6 a title, it’s probably not worth a special trip unless you’re planning on buying a bunch. Ubisoft’s “Imagine: Master Chef” for the DS, normally $35, can be had for $10.

If you’re looking for newer games, Target will sell you the guitar bundle of “Guitar Hero: World Tour” for the Wii for $60, a savings of $40. You can pick up just a wireless guitar for the Wii for $40. They’ve also got this generation’s best-reviewed racing game, “Burnout Paradise” (Xbox 360 or PS3), for $20; “Dead Space” (Xbox 360 or PS3) for $30; Steven Spielberg-created puzzler “Boom Blox” (Wii) for $20; Xbox 360 exclusives “Halo 3″ and “Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise” for $30; and “Mercenaries 2″ (Xbox 360 or PS3) for $40.
Circuit City has some deep discounts on older, well-reviewed titles. You can nab “BioShock” or “The Orange Box” for Xbox 360 for $20, “Cooking Mama” for the DS for $10, “Resident Evil 4″ for PS2 for $10, “Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories” for the PlayStation Portable for $10 and “Dead Rising” for the Xbox 360 for $10, among others. On the PC, “World of Warcraft ( Buy wow gold )” is going for $10, not including the subscription fee.
Kmart has a buy-one, get-one-free offer on various educational games for the LeapFrog and V.Smile systems.
Hardware
You’re not going to find many sales on game consoles or handhelds themselves, but Dell.com is tossing in a free copy of “Rock Band 2″ if you buy the Xbox 360 Arcade bundle at regular price ($200). Bear in mind, though, that the Arcade bundle comes with a low-capacity memory unit rather than the 60 gigabyte hard drive that comes with the Pro bundle. You’ll definitely be missing some functionality if you go that route, but it’s the only way you’ll get a current-generation game console for $200 this holiday season.
Target is giving away a $60 gift card if you buy the $300 Pro version of the Xbox 360. If you buy an Xbox 360 at Sears, they’ll throw in a free wireless controller, a $50 value.
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