Are social games the waves of the future?  Richard Garriott thinks so  …

“So, I believe the casual gamer and the social gaming platform represent the largest ever yet seen emergence or change within the gaming industry. And all of us in the development community have a choice to either participate and lead in this journey or get left behind.” – Richard Garriott  

 

Brad McQuaid thinks so…

“I am pleased to announce that I am a co-founder of a new company based here in the San Diego area.  We’re starting small and growing as needed.  Our focus is going to be on bringing some sophistication to casual/social gaming.” – Brad McQuaid

Steve Jobs seems to disagree.  Between the IPAD and the Iphone, Apple has thrown it’s had in the mobile applications ring:

“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” – Steve Jobs

 

By some accounts the social gaming ship has already sailed.  However, Playdom  is still busy buying up facebook game developers  to the tune of millions of dollars.  On the one hand saying social gaming is losing millions of players when the number of players could already fill a largish country doesn’t amount to much – but nothing says all those customers are paying customers.

As for the No Prisoners, No Mercy team we tend to believe that the man behind the apple, Stephen Jobs is the most likely to have things sussed. Still the FCC and broadband providers are still busy providing the fly for Mr. Jobs ointment.   While the people who busy themselves about the business of trying to afford broad band at least one politician, republican representative John Shimkus, is busy pointing the finger in the opposite direction.

Here is an excerpt from this morning’s Tech report by way of Politico.com:

Over the weekend, Republican Rep. John Shimkus slammed Google as the culprit behind the FCC’s new, forceful push for explicit authority over broadband providers. “This is a political debate by major interests on the West Coast that have helped support the Democratic Party, so that’s why they’ve supported this agenda,” Shimkus told C-SPAN’s “The Communicators.” When pressed then to reveal who those “interests” were, he said: “You know who they are. Our friends at Google are one of the major focuses; they have their interests. … They have supporters and allies, and that’s what this is about.”

 

Our first thought is to give Google a thunderous round of applause and a virtual standing ovation.  The wee problem is that, as well all know, give a politician an inch and he will take a parsec.   The opposite end of that particular pendulum is the Internet kill switch that messers Lieberman-Collins-Carper want to place in the hands of the Feds – that same bill that has just cleared the Senate Committee on Homeland Insecurity and Government Affairs.

If mobile applications are the future, the President Obama is busy doing his part –

This morning the president signed a memorandum that would mandate Federal agencies find ways to free up 500 megahertz of airwaves for consumer mobile broadband services over the next 10 years. President Obama said in a statement that “few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America’s economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet.” (source).

In a speech Larry Summers (Director of the White House’s  National Economic Council) likens the move to the opening of the land grant colleges and the transcontinental railways (source )

The big question on our minds is, after the FCC is done with wheeling and dealing with broadband providers will we all get railroaded.

Just Imagine.

 

Imagination is a wonderful gift; and make no mistake, it is a gift.

 

Imagine

 

A cardboard tube becomes a telescope, a folded sheet of newspaper becomes a tri-cornered hat, four chairs and blanket become the quarter deck of a three mast schooner sailing the Caribbean.  It is just as easy to imagine that the gift that allows such a miraculous transformation is increasingly rare, being a casualty of Marshall McLuhan’s global village  made reality. Yet even before the advent of the age of Internet, Playstation and Nintendo, whatever ephemeral process that allows creativity to flow often gets lost somewhere between Saturday morning cartoons and the Monday morning rush hour of adult life.

God rest ye merry gentlemen

 

Somewhere between the cartoons and rush hours some fortunate few of us where able to take a marvelous detour provided by Gary by Gygax and Dave Arneson. For me, the roadmap to that particular detour took the form of three booklets packaged together in a box with the words Dungeons and Dragons on it. When I was younger I spent many hours co-authoring a world that was a collective effort existing simultaneously in the minds of a room full of people. Yet those days, like the world they created, fade to the dim recesses of our minds as the world of the Monday morning rush hour looms ever larger.

 

ars gratia pecuniae

 

As much as we here at NPNM love MMOs (after all we wouldn’t spend so much time writing and podcasting about them if we didn’t) they often exacerbate the issue by acting as a catalyst that confounds creativity. As much fun as they can be, MMOs only provide a product of someone else’s imagining in which to play. Even when the virtual world is cast by the imagination of someone else, there is still room for creating your own stories and sharing them with others – the chief among these being role-playing. Even this process is a lot like the weather…everyone talks about it, but few ever seem to do anything about it.

Singled Out

 

If MMOs at least provide a medium which caters to a degree of creativity, many single player games are closer to an aspect of gaming that digs a hole and throws creativity in the grave. As much as I enjoyed games like Half Life and Portal that leapt out of The Orange Box and on to my computer screen, such games are little more than a ride on rails. As witness to this I relate the fact that I got stuck in a water filled basement in Half Life 2 with no apparent way out – bringing an abrupt end to my participation in the half life series, and turning the game into an expensive door stop.

Playing in the Sandbox – Sandbox games provide many an enjoyable hour of entertainment, letting lose the bonds of scripted game play. Yet taken by themselves,  a sandbox game is still only an MMO with only one person in the world.

 

Light at the end of the Tunnel

 

There are times when the light at the end of the tunnel could very well belong to an oncoming train – this is not one of those times.  One of the brightest, though sometimes poorly travelled, paths to creativity are those provided by game developers with enough foresight to put the tools of the trade in the hands of the community. Such is the case with Bethesda’s GECK that allows the community to breathe new life into the game. Fortunately few are the developers that look on modding tools as a crutch, enabling a somewhat diminished understanding of the phrase “finished product”, leaving the community to finish the job (at the moment only one recent case comes to mind).

Re-imagined

 

It is said that the only constant in the Universe is change.  Sometimes that change brings us a new set of tools – cardboard tubes, chairs, blankets and folded paper hats get replace with a graphic user interface. For those fortunate few who are able to step back from the office cubical, the tools may change, but now they allow us to build a world of the imagination that persists beyond the moment.

And that can be magic.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

No Pandering to Pando

 

If you have been having mysterious problems with your internet slowing to a snail’s pace, the place you need to read is Syp’s post here. The culprit in Syp’s case is a program called Pando Media Booster (pmb.exe). A quick check of both Windows Explorer and an “oh yes” moment later as I remembered wondering what the program was, found the same program lurking on one of our hard drives.  As Syp points out, the intent of said program is to help with downloading large files. I search the net and a short while later found  this over on the website belonging to the producer of said software:

How, why, and when was Pando Media Booster installed on my computer in the first place?

Pando Media Booster was installed on your system when you chose to download, install or stream a large media file from one of the many publishers who use Pando to enhance your speed and experience. 

The company quickly goes on to point out that Pando Media Booster is not “Spyware, Malware, Adware, Virus or SPAM.” My point of view is much more practical – anything that takes up residence on one of our hard drives without our permission ismalware, no matter what the intent of the programmer.

Taking a dip

As our regular readers already know, Brad McQuaid recently announced the start up of a new company. Scott Jennings over at Broken Toys feels that the company will produce Facebook games. If so, Richard Garriott seems to agree.  As we discussed on an earlier show, even if that particular ship hasn’t sunk it just may have already sailed – at least Game Politics.com  seems to think so. But don’t tell that to Playdom who is still busy buying up Facebook game developers for some big bucks.

And while we are on the subject of Facebook one of the blogs that we regularly read, Q Blog, belonging to Dr. Richard Bartle, had an interesting entry this week on the subject called Early Re-adopters. (Yes I will admit sometimes I just like to take a peek over the virtual back fence and see what’s going on).

(posted by The Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

I have been gearing up this week – more on that later.

But I am not the only one, gearing up. Washington has been gearing up, while Internet providers are attempting to tighten their fist around the lines that hold together the global village.

Tightening the fist

 

This morning’s news feed included an item from Politico.com that Congress is busy tightening their fist around the internet . Regular readers will know about what is now called the “Lieberman-Collins-Carper cyber security bill”.  The Senate Homeland Security committee is, apparently concerned over the mistaken impression it feels that the public has that the bill gives the President of the United States a kill switch.  Politico.com is reporting that “the three lawmakers will offer a manager’s substitute that would require the president to obtain Congress’s permission in order to declare a cyber security emergency and take control of crucial IT systems for more than 120 days.”  I am sure that we don’t need to belabor the point (but I guess we will) that this of course means that the bill would give the President of the United States permission to simply shut down the internet…

Oh pardon us, “take control of crucial IT systems” for FOUR MONTHS without anyone’s permission at all.

And who, I wonder, gets to decide exactly what constitutes a “crucial IT system” – and we are still wondering about what is no doubt the myriad “hold harmless” clauses in the bill.   It sounds like the bill gives Carte Blanche   to a handful of power hungry politicians..  

Opening Closed Doors

 

Remember those “public” hearings held early this month by the FCC to decide on what action should be taken to regulate internet providers intent on bring scaling rates to their customers (read charge what they please, and shut down who they will).  It seems that it only took an advertisement in the Washington Post by a group called Free Press to bring the meeting out in the open. Here is an excerpt from an article you can read here:

“FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s top deputies are meeting behind closed doors with industry lobbyists to cut a deal that would effectively hand over control of the Internet to Verizon, Comcast and AT&T,” the Free Press statement said. “President Obama, you promised to take a ‘back seat to no one’ in protecting Net Neutrality and free speech online. Don’t let our Internet go the way of Wall Street and the Gulf of Mexico.” – Game Politics.com

 What do you call a football stadium full of lawyers?

Sounds like the start of a joke doesn’t it?  The answer in this case would be attorneys for the defense.  An article that recently crossed our news desk () has us wondering if court would be held in a football stadium as the judge uttered what would be history making words:

“Will the defendants in rows A through F please rise?”

 

It seems that a group of Virginia lawyers calling themselves The US Copyright Group, has told a Federal Judge that “they ‘see no problem’ with suing 5,000 Bittorrent users as John Does.” Here is an excerpt from the article:

“The firm also said that it is doing all these John Does a ‘favor’ by giving them the ability to defend the case in one jurisdiction, combine or join other Doe Defendants’ filings and the ability to receive ‘uniform decisions by the Court.’ Lawyers doing people “favors” seems as alien as clowns doing roadwork.” – Game Poltics.com

Gearing up subscriber rates

 

Move over Blizzard…Gamasutra reports  that Wizard 101 has reached 10 million registered users in 20 months. The catch, is that this does not equate to 10 million paying customers.  There is no denying, however, that Wizard 101 is a tremendously popular game (one member on staff here played it for one day…but we will never tell who) – and as long as the bottom line stays in the black, the game is gold.

Getting My Ass in Gear

 

Welcome to the family…welcome words as long as it is not being said by someone with connections to a certain criminal organization which I am certain does not really exist.   But when those words are accompanied by a big hug, and spoken by someone who is not referring to a recent marriage, they are especially comforting – especially if you have ever reached the point in your life when you had no family (I have).  One of the best qualities, about what is sadly the most least appreciated aspect of life, is that family is what, and who, you make it.

So what you might ask, has any of this got to do with mules with gear shifts?

Quite simply this…recently the words above gave me pause to consider other definitions of “family” no matter how nebulous or even, perhaps, dubious.   A guild (at least those few rare shining examples) can be like a family – even if only in some tenuous way (and if you don’t think those particular ties that bind are tenuous, tell a guildie you live near him and ask him to help you move).  You might also extend this thinly stretched definition down to a roster of characters (especially in those of us who have very prominent cases of “alt-it is”).  

Think of it this way: the first character in your roster to the level cap is like the patriarch or matriarch of your virtual family, doling out the virtual dough as the character supports the alts coming up through the ranks.  But what happens when someone who normally abhorred the horde suddenly discovers the friendly faction  that has all the action?  When Blizzard creates faction transfers, those matriarchs that supported the alts suddenly “bleed away” leaving the lower ranking characters in the lurch.  Now this may not be a problem for many a month, if ever. But there is always the possibility (as I discovered) that one day you will be waxing poetic about the reminiscences of places like Ironforge and Stormwind – places which would now hand you your ass, but not until wearing it around as a hat for awhile.

Such are the circumstances in which I found myself upon my recent return to World of Warcraft (WoW).  Our regular listeners to the No Prisoners, No Mercy Podcast know that my cursor has hovered perilously over both the delete character and close account keys on many occasions.  However it was not badgering, beleaguering, or bemoaning  by my co-host that brought me back. Rather it was show 64, recently recorded with Saylah from Mystic Worlds about why people continue to hear the siren song of WoW and return again and again. And so I found my level 45 “super, mega, ultra lightening gnome” warrior suddenly cast into the cold harsh world of the Alliance side, forced to fend for herself.

Ah but it is the challenge of getting my gnomish butt in gear (and good gear at that) which serves as the impetus for many an enjoyable hour of gaming – that, and the fact that my co-host, who is my own dear sister, sister, mother superior, spends many an hour gaming with me.

In the end, family is who you make  it, especially if it is a level 38 night elf druid played by your own sister.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)

UPDATE:

Here is the latest from Politico.com regarding the fiasco going on with what is now called the “Cybersecurity” Bill (I call it the “Big Brother” Bill):

MCCAIN’S MOVE ON CYBERSECURITY – The Lieberman-Collins-Carper cybersecurity bill may have cleared the HSGAC unanimously on Thursday, but that didn’t stop one of the committee’s members from signaling his concerns with the bill. John McCain said he ‘had to be convinced’ that cybersecurity reform requires an expansion of government.

The senator took aim at two items in particular: the bill’s creation of a White House-level cybersecurity position and its hiring and training provisions. McCain then filed amendments that would scrap the first position while requiring DHS to deliver a report on its hiring needs. Curiously, the senator did not officially pitch either amendment for a vote; an aide to McCain said Thursday he planned to ‘wait until the floor to try to amend the bill.’

Rematch

Muhammad Ali v Leon Spinks, Evander Holyfield v Mike Tyson, Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs…some of the most famous rematches in history* 

Now you can add one more match to that illustrious list…

 

Ravious from Kill Ten Rats  vs. Saylah(Lauren) from Mystic Worlds and Tipa “da’ knife” from West Karana .

 

It seems we rubbed more than one of our listeners the wrong way with show number 61  the return of Good Nun/Bad Nun .  One of the more outspoken members of the community who emailed us was none other than Ravious from Kill Ten Rats, who tells us he is a regular listener to our show.  So it was our pleasure to give Ravious some air time to have his say in a rematch…

O.K. – a round table discussion (but that doesn’t sound very dramatic does it?)

As is our usual policy, we bring you early release via our Podbean site here and on Itunes. The show will be released on Virginworlds tommorow.

Please note that archival versions of past shows are only available on Virginworlds and Itunes.

*Yes, I know that the Billy Jean King only technically counts as a rematch.

for you baby I would, swim the sea
nothin’ I’d do for you that’s too tough for me
I’d put out a burnin’ building with a, shovel and dirt
and not even worry about, getting hurt
ain’t that tuff enough?
 

 -From Tough Enough by Johnny Clegg

Welcome to the “Tough Enough” edition.

 

Tough Women

 

Let’s start with five tough women (pictured above). The first is, of course, Signourney Weaver (top left)  as Ellen Ripley from Aliens in one of our  favorite moments from the movie – where Ripley confronts the Alien Queen in a mechanical loader and screams the famous line “Get away from her you bitch.”  The second woman is Jenette Goldstein (top row, 2^nd from the right) in another of our favorite roles, from the same movie as well, portraying Pvt. Vasquez.  Private Vasquez is the tougher than nails marine that seems to be the first in a type of role that gets repeated in later movies. Top right is actress Linda Hamilton from the Terminator movies as Sarah Connor.  She is depicted in the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day where the character first becomes the sort of character you want on your side in a fire fight in the middle of a jungle…an urban jungle.  The next (bottom left) is from the recent James Cameron movie Avatar.  While Signourney Weaver’s cigarette toking Dr. Grace Augustine is fairly tough, as often happens it is the character actors that shine the brightest in their roles. (More on that later).  The character in this case is, of course, Pilot Trudy Chacon as portrayed by Michelle Rodriguez. And yes, we noticed the similarities between the Trudy Chacon and the Pvt. Vasquez characters, but since both Aliens and Avatar are James Cameron films it seems reasonable that the movie maker borrow from himself, eh? Still, we would have liked to see actress Jenette Goldstein in the role of Trudy Chacon, but Ms. Rodriguez did a marvelous job as well.  You might want to also add actress Jessica Biel in the list above as Charisa Sosa (not pictured) from the newly released “A-Team” movie (but more on that later)

The toughest woman above is not an actress at all…and anybody who us knows that we will naturally include her in any list of tough women.  In fact I am told Julie and Fran quote her each night before they go to bed.  This woman may not look tough but she is – tough as titanium. We can list her meager possessions here:

3 dresses

1 sweater

1 pair of sandals

Underwear made from flour sacks.

1 plate

1 spoon

1 book

1 crucifix

1 rosary

And of course one canvas bag to put it in.

That’s it. That’s all this woman owned, period. 

Actress Signourney Weaver tells a story of the time she attended the academy awards and she heard a young actress from one side say, “ look at her that must have taken a lot of surgery”. To which Ms. Weaver replied “I worked for this body.”  As much as each actress worked out to get the well chiseled look, few people are tough enough to live in such poverty by choice as the woman on the bottom right, and do so while spending a large part of her life caring for the sick in a leper colony.  And THAT my friends is ONE TOUGH mama Jama. This is the same woman to whom President Ronald Regan once presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, of which he said that she was the only recipient likely to melt the medal down, sell it, and use it to feed others.  She is, of course, the toughest of the tough. She is Mother Teresa.

 

The Tough Team

by Julie Whitefeather

 As I see it, in every article for this website, somewhere there has to be a tie in with the video game industry – so here it is.  The tough team in this case is the A-Team.  Anyone who has ever played World of Warcraft (WoW) has seen the Mr.-T commercial he did for WoW (remember the phrase “night elf Mohawk”?). If not you can see it here. For those of you too young to remember, Mr. T was in the original televised series of the same name.  In the recently released movie version the role of B.A. Baracus was portrayed by Quinton “Rampage” Jackson (WWF Raw). There may even be some of you who rarely see movies yet still recognize the voice of the leader of the A-Team, Liam Neeson as Colonel John “Hanibal” Smith (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Batman Begins).  Those of you who say to yourselves “That voice sounds familiar” will remember the same voice actor portraying your father in Fallout 3.

So there’s the videogame tie-in.

Members of the 2010 A-team are also portrayed by Bradley Cooper (“Alias” –Will Tippin) as Lt. Templeton “Face” Peck and Sharlto Copley (District 9, Wikus Van De Merwe) as Murdock.  Another familiar face (and especially voice) is Gerald McRaney (Major Dad, Simon and Simon) as General Morrison. And of course the runner up to the “tough women” list above Jessica Biel (Abigail Whistler, Blade: Trinity) as Cpt. Charisa Sosa.

In a recent review that proves the point of one of my fine arts professors (oft discussed before in these pages and on our show) Roger Ebert proves the prof’s point that the arts (yes even movies) where done for the common person and not the reviewer. His lead in paragraph is as follows:

“‘The A-Team’” is an incomprehensible mess with the 1980s TV show embedded inside. The characters have the same names, they play the same types, they have the same traits, and they’re easily as shallow. That was OK for a TV sitcom, which is what the show really was, but at over two hours of Queasy-Cam anarchy, it’s punishment.” – Roger Ebert,

 

The obvious question is to wonder if Roger’s delineation of the movie as “an incomprehensible mess” is more due to a lack of powers of comprehension on the reviewer’s part than the movie’s script.  In a manner that I am sure must be totally uncharacteristic, and belying what must certainly be his astounding powers of observation, he points out to us that the characters all have the same names. Amazing that isn’t it?  By the end of the first paragraph we find ourselves forced to resort to utter shock by Mr. Ebert’s further powers of analysis by revealing the fact that, yes, the characters were shallow.

As amazing as Mr. Ebert’s powers of analysis are, might I respectfully (ok perhaps not too respectfully) suggest that if he wants good drama and in depth characters that he go rent an Ingmar Berman film, and perhaps go back to typing reviews on a manual type writer.

Amazing as it is, some films are done simply for the fun of it as, spell it with me Roger…E-N-T-E-R-T-A-I-N-M-E-N-T.

Part of what Ebert has a hard time with is the lack of fluidity where the film inter-cuts between scenes – this is more along the lines of “you be the judge”; I had no problem with it, nor did my companion nor anyone else in the theater. I think Roger is the lone wolf on this one.  Effective or not, it is simply a technique used to tie together parts of the script. Roger goes on to complain about the physics in the movie, ‘Bored out of my mind during this spectacle, I found my attention wandering to the subject of physics’, bad guys who monologue too long and hero’s who always seem to know what the bad guy is going to do.

In the end it’s a good thing that Hollywood directors don’t follow Roger’s movie making advice, otherwise I would never have been able to enjoy horrible movies like the “Die Hard” series and any of the James Bond films.

Toward the end of the review Ebert pens the words “I don’t want to be tiresome, but…” to which I can only reply.

Too late, Roger – Much too late.

At this point I will risk adding the advice, next time grab some popcorn and at least try and enjoy the movie.

Tough Enough to Try Again

 

Another question that rises to mind was triggered by the news that Brad McQuaid is going to try and build another company.  Those of you who are not new to gaming will remember the names Sigil Games and Vanguard – both classic examples of how not to develop a game, not to mention never have the chutzpa to call your game a “WoW killer.” If not you can go back to articles of yester year and read  Brad McQuaid and  Chutzpa and Sigil: The Flipside . The new company he will be starting will be concentrating on “sophisticated casual and social games”, with no further explanation on exactly what that entails. You can read the advert on his blog site here.  The question remains, however, (aside from exactly what he means by “casual and social”) is whether or not he will still garner the trust of the industry.  After all, as the old adage goes, we learn from our mistakes, and  Mr. McQuaid has said repeatedly in his blog that he has learned from his.  Certainly the shadow of his former employees, who were told to gather everything they needed for the rest of the day and meet in the company parking lot, and then summarily dismissed, will still loom large.  Does he deserve a second chance? We think so and even if he isn’t good at business he is good at making games.

Tough enough for a tough market

 

Onlive-The first question anyone should ask who is considering going into any sort of business is what they can bring to the table that someone else hasn’t already.  One of those who has brought something new to the table is Onlive.   They hope to be the answer to those developers/publishers who come out with a game that few computers will run, then simply shrug their shoulders and say “well it’s a high end game.”  The solution, of course, is a streaming game, like a remote terminal.  It sounds like a great idea, dependant on whether or not the ping rate to their servers will move faster than an arthritic pigeon.  Even if that is the case, and it could well be, the question then becomes one of pricing.  Would you pay $14.95 per month to play single player games?  Our news feed tells us they will offer games “including Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed II, Borderlands, Dragon Age Origins, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Metro 2033.” You can read more here .

Connect with Kinect- How much would you pay to play a game without a controller? Certainly it is an amazing concept, as our regular guest Saylah says it is “full of win”.  The idea of playing an MMO with Kinect certainly excite the imagination, but the real issue is pricing – or so say a couple of the articles that recently crossed our news desk.  The first tells us that, “Microsoft’s Kinect motion camera is that the platform holder is still struggling with some aspects of its launch strategy for the device.”. The second source tells us that it is a done deal:

“Well, none of this will come as a big surprise here, but it’s always nice to hear it straight from an official source. Microsoft has confirmed that a $199 version of new Xbox 360 will be coming in the fall to replace the now-$149 Arcade, which is no longer in production. In addition, the company’s also spilled a few more beans — Kinect will be available as a bundle with the new Xbox 360, and though there isn’t any official pricing information on that one just yet, we’ve seen some telltale evidence on that front which would lead us to believe it’ll run somewhere in the neighborhood of $399 for an Elite and $299 for the Arcade. So now you know.” – Kotaku.com

 

Warner Brothers –  At any time in the last week or so, if you were playing word association and I gave you the name “Turbine” odds are that you would follow up with “Warner Brothers”  (Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment), the company that bought the developer of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online not that long ago. The subsidiary of media giant Time/Warner now owns Monolith, TT Games, NetherRealm Studios, Turbine Inc. and is reported to have an interest in RockSteady (developer of Batman: Arkham Asylum). Recently Samantha Ryan, senior VP of production and development told Gamasutra    the following:

“But after the rapid expansion it’s time to focus on internal depth and growth, not more acquisitions. We’re actually I think going to go through kind of a settling period for a little while,” she said, “where we’re going to focus on getting all the stuff that we’ve just acquired well-integrated, and really focus on the games.” – Samantha Ryan, senior VP of production, Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment

 

That sound you hear in the background is the No Prisoners, No Mercy team applauding.  Good news for Turbine, and sound advice that Starbucks should have taken.

Tough Enough to Survive

 

There are many things the No Prisoners, No Mercy team have in common and one of them is an Alma Mater – University of Illinois.  The University is taking the time to preserve video games that go back over the last four decades including “a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT’s Spacewar! circa 1962.”  When Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois spoke to Arstechnica to answer the  obvious question “Why” he responded as follows:

The really simple, one-sentence answer is because games are important. In the United States we’re looking at about 80,000 people who are directly employed by the gaming industry and maybe another 240,000 people involved in related, tangential industries that rely on gaming companies for their existence….In the United States, we have two thirds of American households as active gamers….You also can’t understand some other parts of our cultural world unless you preserve some of the game world.” – Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois

You can read the entire interview here.

Last and least

 

Last and certainly least has got to be one of the dumbest ideas to come across our news desk in a long time. It seems that the California Legislature is considering license plates that turn into small electronic bill boards when the car to which they are attached stops for more than four seconds.  Here is a quote:

“The bill’s author, Democratic Sen. Curren Price of Los Angeles, said California would be the first state to implement such technology if the state Department of Motor Vehicles ultimately recommends the widespread use of the plates. He said other states are exploring something similar.” -  source

Now granted the news does come to us via Slashdot, still it makes us pause to wonder if the good Senator mentioned above has a keeper somewhere that isn’t watching him carefully. Living in Illinois we do, of course, understand when states have difficulties. After all, we live in a state where our governors seem to end up in prison.

Wish you were here – bring ammo.

 

Perhaps it is a matter of being less willing to be drawn in by what is promised by MMOs (both in development and in play) at some point in the near or distant future.  After all, as Paul Barnett pointed out when he was a guest on the show, if you tell a player something “is in development” they will take it to me that it is promised for “next Thursday”, when in fact it might not ever be delivered at all.  Part of it, I am sure, is more of a willingness to “clean house” as some of our guests have done (especially in face of Internet providers that seem to feel they have both us and the FCC over a barrel.  Perhaps it is even that I too find myself saying “one more turn” as I play Civilization Four.   Whatever the reason, I find myself turning more toward some of the stand alone games that are soon to hit the shelves…

Fallout: New Vegas is, of course, one of them.

It isn’t the fact that members of Obsidian (Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone) worked on Fallout and Fallout 2 that I find promising (in fact that might give me pause more than anything else).   This time around Bethesda Softworks is the publisher rather than the developer.   What is promising, and even thrilling, is that these are the same devs that brought us Neverwinter Nights 2, which “gave great story.”   Yes I will admit to being a Fallout 3 fan girl.  Once Bethesda released the “GECK” tool  for modding the game, I have been modding it and playing it ever since.

But it isn’t the sandbox nature of the game that is so interesting, although that is certainly a large part of it.  While I do appreciate getting away from swords and sorcery now and then it isn’t the big guns that I find to be a drawing card – more than anything else it is the great story.  Fallout 3 has character that I enjoyed interacting with and even (at least on some level) cared about what happened to them in the game (like Moira).  My best hope for Obsidian’s version of the next addition to the Fallout series, Fallout: New Vegas, is that it will have great story and characters that are just as engrossing as I found in Fallout 3.

Recently a couple of question and answer sessions came across our news feed via Bethesda. Here is an excerpt. You can find the complete sessions here. 

Will each faction have a radio station?

Josh Sawyer: Not every faction has a radio station, but I hope people are happy with the radio stations, DJs, and music selection we have.

Will the PC retail game be able to be activated via Steam?

 

Jason Bergman, Senior Producer at Bethesda Softworks: Yes. Fallout:

New Vegas will fully utilize the Steamworks SDK. This means that

retail PC copies will activate via Steam. We are also using Steam for

achievements and other features (but not multiplayer, of course. FNV

remains a single player only game).

Will the Fallout: New Vegas Version of the GECK ship with the game, or

be downloadable on release?

 

JS: Yes. In addition to the normal GECK functionality F3 modders have

come to expect, the F:NV GECK will allow modification of ammo lists,

ammo subtypes, the hardcore “basic needs” rates, and a lot of the

other new bits of data we have added. It will also contain the F:NV

dialogue editor, which can be used with or without the standard F3

dialogue editor.

Will there be any sort of party involved? A few companions to tag along?

JS: Yes. The player may have one humanoid and one non-humanoid

companion at any given time.

 

These answers alone are reason to cheer – with the biggest reason is that those modding skills I have learned in GECK will be put to good use in Fallout New Vegas. I foresee many, many hours of modding New Vegas in my future, starting with an undead Frank Sinatra.  And no disk in the drive or always on DRM? More good news.  Companions in the game?  A positive answer to that one is important; I hate to travel alone.  And I have got to tell you that I just love the radio stations in Fallout 3 and I am glad they have returned to this game.   So until October 19, 2010 (the current release date) I will have to satisfy myself with Fallout 3, a postcard from New Vegas and the trailer below.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Update

One of our favorite subjects to discuss around here lately (as I am sure you have noticed) is net neutrality. Well it seems that in other countries the net is very, very far from neutral.

Onlive:  By now most of you have heard of the service meant to make hardware restrictions a thing of the past by streaming your favorite games – today the service went live. We will see who well it fares.  For those of you who haven’t heard of it there is E3 coverage here.

 (posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)

E3 Trailer

Pulling the Plug

Those of you who have seen re-runs of Popeye the Sailor (thankfully I am not old enough to have seen the originals) will remember a phrase Popeye would exclaim just before he went into action, kicking ass and taking names…

“I can stands all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!”

At our abode, when the cable companies raised their rates through the roof we told them to take the cable out.  When the telephone company raised their rates so high they began to endanger the air traffic overhead we had them disconnect the telephones.  That was nearly two years ago and we haven’t missed television since. And the trend may just continue.

Back on show 56 we discussed free to play games (amongst other things) with Saylah (Lauren) from Mystic Worlds and Tipa from West Karana.  When it was pointed out that micro-transactions weren’t something you considered acceptable without being considered a half-crazed pariah – Tipa pointed out that the concept of subscribing to a game was once just as crazy.  Allods (one of the topics of discussion on that show) at one point had a cash shop that was so expensive it cost more to play the end game for one day that other subscription games cost for one month.  Granted that may or may not still be the case.   But as we discussed yesterday, public trust is hard to win, easy to lose, and nearly impossible to get back – as a result I doubt I will be going back to Allods any time this century.

Gentleman start your game engines

 

Now going “free 2 play” (or free with subscriptions as well) is the fad of the moment.   The second the founder of Zynga appeared in Time Magazine, developers and publishers all over the country began circling Facebook like sharks. And now developers/publishers are beginning to find themselves a “day late and dollar short” as Grandmother used to say.   There was a time that Darren over at Common Sense Gamer railed at the thought of paying Ten U.S. Dollars for a virtual horse  and many gamers railed right along with him.  Yet now we live in the world of $25.00 starry little ponies (Blizzard’s Celestial Steed) and the Sony Tiger version. 

Now, reasons that you can read on their web sites, at least two of our guests have pulled the plug on all their MMO subscriptions – Saylah (Lauren) from Mystic Worlds  and R.W. Harper .

A real “stand up” broad

 

Now I am certainly not a stand-up “guy” –  I am more of a stand up broad. And believe me, if nothing else I may not be “dainty as a sparrow” but I am certainly broad where a broad should be broad.  But while I may be a stand up broad, there are some things that I will not stand for – one of them is metered broadband.   Mind you I certainly understand that everyone has to make a living.  There reaches a point however, where the due a company is due for what they do isn’t as much as they think it is.  There reaches a point where the many attempts by companies to wheedle their way into our wallets will quickly place them on the point of their demand curve where they will teeter into the toilet.

Playing in the Sandbox

It is at this point where companies like Bethesda begin to shine.  That’s where those developers who make games like Fallout will bring us worlds that are so enthralling that unplugging the MMO beings to look inviting.

See you online

Julie Whitefeather

(Posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)

What would you say

 

Who is the king?

Who is the Duke?  Hint: He never made a western.

Who is the Count? Hint: He DID make a western (that rules out the Count of Monte Cristo).

Now here is a hard one. Who is the most hated man in America? As you can see in the picture above, at least for the moment there are three possible answers.  First is Jesse James (no not the western outlaw but he claims to be one of his relatives). I am, of course, speaking about the man who cheated on Sandra Bullock, who described himself as the most hated man in America. The second (and in my book most likely) candidate is the CEO of BP Oil – the company that brought you the massive oil slick killing off the wildlife and economy along the Gulf of Mexico.  Yes the man whereof I speak is none other than Tony Hayward.

The last man is the subject of an interview that Kotaku.com sent out in their newsletter.  The article was entitled, “A Delightful Chat with the most with the most hated man video games.” Now for those of you who think that Messer Kotick should be at the top of our “most hated” list it seems to me that he can’t hold a candle to the CEO of BP Oil and our own personal favorite, Senator Joe Lieberman – the man intent on putting a kill switch on the internet .

So is Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, really misunderstood?  He thinks so at least. Here is a quote from the article (this was emailed to us so we do not have an online source for you):

The negative image, the hate for Kotick among some gamers is driven by several things, Kotick tells me. Being the top person at the top third-party game developer brings with it a certain level of attention and animosity. And it doesn’t help that Kotick can be quite colorful in the way he talks to analysts. “There are four to five things that I’ve said that can totally be taken out of context,” he said. “Like ‘Taking the fun out of making video games.’ I’ve used that line for a really long time with the investment community to explain that ‘Hey, we’re mindful of our responsibility to provide a return to our investors.’”

“It was kind of like a joke!”

Kotick’s inflammatory comments, like that he would charge more for a game if he could, come often because he forgets the size of his audience when he’s talking during a panel or investor call. He doesn’t seem to grasp just how closely people follow him these days.

“The world has changed,” he tells me, defending his word choice. “I never really think to edit what I’m saying because it’s going to be taken out of context because somebody’s going to hear it in a different way. But you don’t build a successful business by overcharging your customers. And you certainly don’t build a successful business that requires a tremendous amount of creativity and inspiration and innovation by figuring out how to take the fun and joy out of what people do. It’s like an obvious thing to me to think if you hear something like that; you’re going to think it’s funny, it’s not meant to be serious.”

I’m not totally sold on what Kotick is selling and I tell him so. You can’t use a word like exploit and expect people not to be riled up by it, I point out.

Do you, I ask Kotick, sometimes say these things because you want a reaction? Maybe you’re poking the Internet to see what happens.

“No, I’m not like that,” Kotick says. “I love to poke people to get a reaction but monetization, exploit, those are the words the investment community uses.

“You know what, I look at that and say, exploit is a bad choice of words. I don’t mean that to be that way, I was not thinking about it in a way, or using it in a way that it was misconstrued. I actually think there’s a better choice of words that more accurately describes what I was thinking at the time. It’s not a big deal.”

The hate mail, the negative articles in blogs and the pictures quickly hit home when Kotick started seeing them.

“Oh yeah, I think [gamers' perspective of me] is totally inaccurate,” he says.

So is Messer Kotick simply misunderstood? He is, perhaps, a victim of a public image that, consciously or not, he has woven himself.  More than once we here on the NPNM team have met someone whose public persona was entirely different from the private person (and not necessarily better). For better or worse, whether the public image Mr. Kotick portrays is earned or not (and we will likely never really know) the fact remains that public trust is an elusive quality.  It is something that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and once lost nearly impossible to get back.

 Side Notes

One of our favorite web sites, Terra Nova (it always makes us think) has an entry from Dr. Richard Bartle. It is basically a youtube video of a young man who’s girlfriend deleted all his WoW characters because she was “sick of it”. We have to agree, as Dr. Bartle and others indicate, that the video looks like a put on. However, the question Dr. Bartle asks is an interesting one:

“So, if he sued her, what would the legal arguments involve?” – Dr. Bartle

If it isn’t painfully obvious by now, no one on staff here is a lawyer (although I understand our own Sister Julie has studied Tort Law) so no one here can answer the question.  What the video does put us all in mind of is a television “chat show” we saw some time ago that featured a girlfriend who was tired of her boyfriends WoW habit.  On the show the boyfriend shreaded the wow disks to the happy applause of the audience – all the while the gamers watching the tube just snickered, realizing this wouldn’t stop the boyfriend from playing WoW at all.

Free Find

We just found this over at our favorite website that makes us think (yes we occassionally just sit down and talk to each other believe it or not). It is an article we found over at Terra Nova about Cory Doctorow’s “For the Win”. The best news is that for those of us on a limited budget you can download the book for free and read it.  It free, its a book with a “vision of the near-future MMO landscape” and it sounds like a must read to us. Hells bells we would probably read it just to tick off Garrison Keillor.

No Prisoners, Gnomercy

It seems that Sister Julie has finally given in an gone back to World of Warcraft.   She has asked me to pass along that the good sisters have been running on the Alliance side of late, rediscovering the old world. If you want to join them at some point, send us a message.

Do You think that the headline above couldn’t ever happen? If Senator Joe Lieberman has his way you could very well wake up one morning to find your Internet dead and a paper on your driveway with that very headline.

 

AS IF it weren’t bad enough that a handful of bureaucrats over at the FCC  are beset by the howling wolves (howling for our cash) that are Internet providers across America, Senator Joe Lieberman (independent senator – Connecticut) wants to give the president, by way of “Homeland Security” a kill switch…

TO SHUT OFF THE ENTIRE INTERNET ACROSS AMERICA

 

 

Yes read those words a few times and then read this .

As the article says, “because there are few limits on the president’s emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.”  What we are talking about friend is giving a handful of bureaucrats the power to make information in American go dark, with the possibility of giving it absolute control.  Here is a terrifying quote from the same article.

“TechAmerica, probably the largest U.S. technology lobby group, said it was concerned about ‘unintended consequences that would result from the legislation’s regulatory approach’ and ‘the potential for absolute power.’ And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman bill’s emergency powers ‘include authority to shutdown or limit Internet traffic on private systems.’”

 

From bad to worse

And if it weren’t bad enough Joe Lieberman wants to make the novel 1984 a reality:

Lieberman’s proposal would form a powerful and extensive new Homeland Security bureaucracy around the NCCC, including “no less” than two deputy directors, and liaison officers to the Defense Department, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and the Director of National Intelligence. (How much the NCCC director’s duties would overlap with those of the existing assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is not clear.

The NCCC also would be granted the power to monitor the “security status” of private sector Web sites, broadband providers, and other Internet components. Lieberman’s legislation requires the NCCC to provide “situational awareness of the security status” of the portions  of the Internet that are inside the United States — and also those portions in other countries that, if disrupted, could cause significant harm.

 

Are you scared yet? Quite frankly we here at NPNM are terrified by the propensity for absolute power this would give one man, who is already the Commander in Chief and can effectively declare war on another country without actually declaring war. Think about that for a moment. Placing the power to declare war on anyone in the world and then shut down the internet at the same time in the hands of one man.

 It’s not our fault

Best of all, Senator Lieberman has included a clause that would exempt both the Federal Governement and Internet providers from any liability whatsoever:

To sweeten the deal for industry groups, Lieberman has included a tantalizing offer absent from earlier drafts: immunity from civil lawsuits. If a software company’s programming error costs customers billions, or a broadband provider intentionally cuts off its customers in response to a federal command, neither would be liable.

And yes, it had also occurred to us that this comes just on time to constitute a double barreled shotgun aimed squarely at the FCC and its proposed regulation of Internet providers.

Among my favorite quotes the first is the one above. The second is from the same source; cuddle up to your cash register, it’s a little lumpy but it rings. (One “no prize” if you can guess where the two quotes are from)

Play it again Sam…maybe

 

It is a constant source of amazement that constantly has me scratching my head in wonder.  A typical example of “it” can be found right in the lobby of the building where I have been a project manager for some years.  Off to one side on the upper level there is a coffee shop right as you enter the food court. Normally you would think this would be a wonderful location for such a business – normally.  It appears, however, that this is not the case.  Over the years there has been three business’ located in that location, all of them coffee shops…and all of them have gone out of business.  What I find so interesting is that no one ever seems to give thought to what they are going to do that is different than the last person in the same place that had a dismal time attempting the same thing.

 

At least one person at Interplay, former president Brian Fargo, at least pondered something similar:

“The reason at the time, because I would have loved to have made a Fallout MMO, was that I believed that Interplay was just not in a situation where they had the resources to do it. When you go off to do an MMO it’s going to cost $100 million before you get it on the shelf; you’ve gotta buy servers and you’ve gotta have service people, and you have to have Game Masters. It’s an undertaking, and on top of that, it means that you do have to do all that stuff so what else are you going to focus on? What other games are you going to be able to make?”  – Brian Fargo, former president of Interplay 

This was, of course, before a game called Fallen Earth was launched by a company named Icarus Studios. As those who stay up with the news know, it was not that long ago that Icarus Studios had layoffs.  Now as those who listen to our show know, we are big fans of independent game developers and especially this particular one . We will be the first to point out that Fallen Earth Online is not Fallout Online (in fact we did).  However it IS a post apocalyptic mmo, and at some point you would think that Interplay might want to ask themselves if this particular ship has sailed already before they launch another post apocalyptic mmo.

Know your Fallout History

 

In April 2007, Bethesda Softworks, the developer of Fallout 3, purchased full rights to the Fallout IP for $5.75 million USD. While Bethesda now owned the rights to the Fallout MMO IP as well, clauses

in the purchase agreement state allowed Interplay to license the rights to the development of the MMO. Specific requirements were stated in the agreement that if not met, Interplay would immediately

lose and forfeit its license rights for Fallout. Development must have begun within 24 months of the date of the agreement (April 4, 2007), and Interplay must have secured $30 million within that time frame or forfeit its rights to license. Interplay would furthermore need to launch the MMOG within 4 years of the beginning of development, and pay Bethesda 12 percent of sales and subscription fees for the use of the IP.

On April 15, 2009, it was announced that Bethesda Softworks moved to rescind the Fallout MMORPG license. Interplay received notice from Bethesda that it intends to terminate the trademark license agreement, claiming that Interplay is in breach of the agreement for failure to commence full scale development by April 4, 2009 and to secure certain funding for the game. Interplay disputes these claims.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over

 

There are numerous sources around the Internet that claim the lawsuit between Interplay and Bethesda Softworks LLC has ended (I noted that the trademark acknowledgement on the Fallout Online website). Many of the articles I read that announced the lawsuit as over cited the ruling on December 10, 2009 by Maryland District court denying a request for a preliminary injunction by Bethesda Softworks. However, Bethesda themselves say this isn’t the case.

“A Bethesda spokesperson told Joystiq, ‘It’s an ongoing legal matter. I don’t know where whoever reported that got their information, but it is ongoing and we are going to see how it plays out in court.’ So there you have it – Interplay and Bethesda haven’t made nice just yet.” 

 

Most sources around the internet give the release date as some time in 2012. At least one web site claims before April 2011.  Either way, as much as I want to see a Fallout Online game I am not going to hold my breath, even if I do wait with bated breath .  Yes, I do love the post apocolyptic genre, and the news coming out of E3 about Fallout New Vegas (more about this later today) looks exciting. Still, lets hope that interplay is spreading around cash to make things grow and not just heaping manure about it’s offices.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted for Julie Whitefeather by the Webmaster)