Tag Archives: #videogames

Pop Culture Consciousness

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BusinessWeek online has another excellent article. This time on the emerging popularity of videogame music. For old school Quake fans, this will come as no surprise – Nine Inch Nails was doing game music years ago. And although more popular bands like Front Line Assembly get more attention for their game efforts, within gaming circles musicians like Kevin Riepl and Bill Brown have the attention of their fans as well.

What’s more interesting to me is how this relates to other game and virtual world content. There are popular figures within the gaming community unknown to the general public – texture artists, skinners, modelers, aso – who may some day garner the same kind of attention we know reserve for traditional artisans.

(edit – turns out Wired is carrying a similar article today)

Selling the Experience

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I had this conversation again yesterday:

Friend: Can you imagine that? Someone paid like a $100 for this sword-thing and it’s not even real! It’s nothing. Make believe. It only exists in the game.
Me: You need to think about it differently.
Friend: But it doesn’t make any sense. They’re buying nothing!
Me: What do you buy when you get tickets to a baseball game? Or a concert?

The only thing I can figure is that the perception of reality blinds people to this obvious commonality: virtual products aren’t much different than most entertainment, whether it be going to the Indy 500 to watch people race cars in a circle or going to Disneyland to visit Space Mountain, none of it is stuff you can put in the car, take home, and place on your shelf.

People don’t play video games because they have to, they do it because it’s fun. It’s a luxury we enjoy in developed countries when our basic needs are met. It’s really just like going to a sporting event. And there is also a social element. Perhaps not as immersive as the real thing (having a beer spilled on you in the bleachers is pretty immersive), but which is more social: watching the television alone in your room or playing Counter-Strike online with your clan?

The point is that what we now think nothing of was unthinkable not so long ago (e.g. paying some guy millions of dollars to dribble a ball on a wooden floor); and what is unthinkable now will likely be common in the not too distant future. Let’s not forget, there was a time when being an Actor was an almost shameful profession (in some parts of the world, they still think paying people to act is laughable). Which leads me to this article over on Gizmag about a videogame tournament with a $1,000,000 prize. Maybe when you read the article, Mark Cuban’s comments on broadcasting these videogame tournaments at digitally-enabled movie theaters doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

Killzone 2 and PS3 Images

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I don’t know how long it’ll be on the front page, but the game trailer for Killzone 2 is well worth a look. If this is what one of the first titles for Sony’s PS3 looks like, it’s pretty impressive already. It’s a bit violent (go figure), but this is a good example of the future of online 3D. Watch it over on gametrailers.com (available as both a Windows Media Video and as a Quicktime).

Motor Storm screenshot

If you don’t want to watch the video, then check out these screenshots over on C|Net (the above image is from a Gamespot early review of Evolution Studios’ Motor Storm). Yes, Mom, that’s a videogame.

(edit – there’s some online discussion over which PS3 movies and screenshots are real time and which are pre-rendered or just cinematics. As of now, it appears the Killzone 2 trailer is a pre-rendered video clip intended to match the eventual real-time game rendering. I’m venturing the above image is also pre-rendered. However, the F1 racing car screenshot on the C|Net link is reportedly real time gameplay.)

When Is “Xtreme” Too Extreme

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I guess for game developer Tecmo, it got too extreme when a relatively common videogame practice – reskinning a model (e.g. changing a game player’s visual appearance by modifying the model’s texture or “skin”) – crossed onto their XBox turf. Apparently the villians had the nerve to take scantily-clad beach volleyball babes from the classy Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and reskin the models sans itsy-bitsy bikini’s. Making game models bare it all isn’t new, but I guess Tecmo had never seen this kind of thing before. Yeah, right. Read the bullsh… story over on Wired.

(and if companies think this is bad, just wait til browsers morph into 3D interfaces; yes Virginia, the net can get worse)

Parisi Speaks

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Nice couple pages over on C|Net about the (re-)emergence of web 3D in an interview with vr pioneer Tony Parisi. Good article. The only issue I have is this quote from Mr. Parisi:

The bulk of the interface design will come from (the) gaming community, with additional innovation through these proprietary 3D chat worlds. But in most of these chat rooms, there’s nothing to do! You see someone’s avatar, and they’re picking their nose. It’s a piece of glitz attached to text chat. In an application like “Everquest,” you have exactly the same environment design and you’re there to do something. There has to be a purpose.

There is no real “purpose” in Second Life either other than what people who sign on bring to it, yet they somehow either manage to find things to do or not – just like most people do in real life. The assumption that people want to do more doesn’t really jive with what I’m discovering. Not everyone wants to spend their evenings slaying dragons or mining virtual gold or, for that matter, creating virtual content or managing virtual property; alot of people just chat about real life issues. So in that way, these 3D interfaces are more like teleconferencing than gaming. Now that the technology is here, we might discover that most people would rather just talk than fire their BFG’s at each other.

I also wonder if Parisi is aware of the serious discussion going on about open-sourcing Second Life. I mean, how can Linden Labs not be aware of the open source solutions beginning to invade their space… one of the people behind Croquet is giving a virtual talk inside Second Life! Interesting times. Now excuse me while I load Maya and work on a nose-picking animation.