Another NYTimes article of note (registration required): add this one to the list of stories of how Massive is preparing to change videogame advertising forever. Having read about this for some time, can they just get it over with already? I’m looking forward to everyone’s reaction. My first reaction to Ubisoft’s inclusion of an Axe Deodorant ad in the above game (see image) is to question if Axe makes sex toys too. This could get pretty funny.
Although not definitive, this piece over on Reuters makes it sound increasingly as if Microsoft’s Xbox 2 “Marketplace” will be more like a corporate-run mall instead of an open-air flea market. That would be a shame imo. Having spent the last couple of days exploring Second Life where players actually create content within the virtual world and conduct both virtual and real monetary transactions directly, I’m having a hard time imagining how a closed virtual economy can be a good thing. If game developers interface to MS’s Marketplace – and there’s a strong likelihood they will – they’ll need Content to continue flowing long after the game ships to consumers. And unless they intend to diversify into what, in the real world, is essentially an after-market “parts” market, I expect that they’ll start outsourcing this secondary activity to “modders”. And of course, everyone loves middlemen and the power they have to control (aka raise) prices. Same as it ever was…
It appears Will Wright’s “Spore” videogame has stirred some interest (actually quite alot). I mentioned it earlier. But now, courtesy of The Ludologist (via Wonderland) I have a picture (a little time late though). The primordial ooze never looked so inviting.
Polycount pointed me to this article over on GamesIndustry.biz that puts a damper on my enthusiasm regarding Xbox’s proposed Marketplace and Micro-payment features. While admittedly speculative, the possibility exists that Xbox 2 will harbor a closed economy for “modders”. That’s not to say it can’t and won’t be circumvented, but I’d personally hoped MS would embrace the possibilities of a more open virtual [game] world in a manner not too different from how Valve has handled Half-Life conversions and now supports new community efforts via Steam. Given some other pieces to the Gates Empire puzzle that I’ve collected over the years, and the assumption people in Redmond aren’t entirely unaware of how the Soviet Union’s stifling economic policies effectively lost them the Cold War, there’s still a possibility something more ambitious will be announced. So until we hear specifics, let’s leave it at that.
Saying someone was living in their own world used to be a metaphor. More and more it’s coming to mean something else. For some reason there’s been a resurgence of online discussion about Augmented Reality and the MIT Technology Review site has a new article on it. I don’t know about AR graveyards though. I was really hoping for something more along the lines of “ARQuake” (maybe a multiplayer version with tasers….).
This all goes hand-in-hand with the big tech news for the past few days: Demo. Yahoo News has a short article (probably temporary too [Edit: it was, so I removed the link]) on a few of the hyped technologies at the Demo conference that maybe makes this augmented reality stuff more relevant: Intellifit body scanning, Novint Falcon haptics, MDA 3D modeling. This is all sounding very cyberspace-y. But instead of re-reading Snow Crash, go rent Videodrome. Confusion may be the order of the day but long live the new flesh, eh?