VideoGameInsider.net

I’ve moved this blog over to www.StuffWeLike.com. For all further updates please check this site out.

Promoting The Pipeline multimedia player has been much more difficult than what I originally thought it would have been. I explain to webmasters that they can get free video and audio content, but the majority turn their heads in the opposite direction. Why is that? We’ve changed the name from StuffWeLike.com Multimedia Player to first off something more easier to remember - The Pipeline, and secondly to something that didn’t advertise StuffWeLike.com in its name. 

Right now we have 3 video game websites that have the multimedia player on their websites. I’ve contacted tons of websites through both forums and using instant messanging programs. Neither way seems to really work that well.

My goal isn’t to have every website in the world using this player. I’m looking to gain a core group of websites that want video and audio content on their websites. Obviously video and audio content is the wave of the future so why is it that people don’t seem all the interested in this program?

Video games have been a part of my life for nearly my entire life. I was four years old when I received my first video game console. Subsequently my life has probably changed in ways that I cannot imagine. As a child I never played extremely violent games, but as I matured I have played notorious titles like Mortal Kombat, Doom, and Grand Theft Auto. These games all have one thing in common: gore and violence. At times I wonder if my personality has in some way been affected by playing such games. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure what effect long term exposure to violent games has had on me. But with the exponential growth of the video game industry, the subject of video game violence remains one of the hottest topics of the 21 st century. As the graphics in video games become more realistic, many have questioned whether the most damaging effects of exposure to video game violence are yet to come.

The first mainstream video game, Pong, was released in 1972. While this harmless game had players hitting a pixel from one end of the screen to the other, it did not take long for game designers to create experiences which lead some to question their morality. In 1979 an arcade racing title called Death Race had players drive around in a car running over gremlins. Controversy struck when the game was first released under the title Pedestrian. Even in the days of blocky black and white graphics one could easily pass judgment that the developer was teaching players to take pleasure in running over ordinary people, not monsters. The National Safety Council called the game “sick” and “morbid”. Violent and sexually themed video games continued to be released throughout the 1980s, but nothing came close to the commotion that a fighting game caused in 1992. In Mortal Kombat, players competed in a tournament to the death. This game featured realistic looking characters that each had a specific fatal move, such as ripping out the spinal cords of opponents, or causing opponents to fall to their deaths on a bed of spikes. Despite an uproar that included Congressional hearings, the violent games did not stop here. Wolfenstein 3D was the world’s first first-person shooter and its success paved the way for one of the most popular games of all time: Doom, where players get to play as a space marine who must shoot at any Hellish creature that crosses his path.

To address mounting concerns from Congress and parents, in 1994 the video game industry formed the Entertainment Software Regulation Board. The ESRB is a self-regulatory organization that rates games based on an age rating system. This system is meant to help consumers chose what games are right for them. Despite this, in many states a retailer can still sell M (Mature, 17+) games to minors. However, most retailers do not carry the highest rating, AO (Adults Only). If the ESRB had not been formed, Congress would have taken it upon themselves to regulate games, possibly forever changing this unique industry.

When Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a deadly shooting rampage in 1999, parents and school officials searched hard for reasons to explain the tragedy. One of the most popular theories involved the influence of first-person shooters on the teens. On behalf of the teacher killed in the attack, one group claimed that, “ absent the combination of extremely violent video games and these boys’ incredibly deep involvement…these murders and this massacre would not have occurred.” Both Eric and Dylan were enthusiastic fans of first-person shooter games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. FPS’s engross the player in a world of fantasy violence, where many gamers feels like they become the avatar. Ironically in 2005, a filmmaker named Danny Ledonne created a video game based on this tragedy titled Super Columbine Massacre RPG and set off a whole new wave of controversy.

Even though the video game industry has tried to solve its content issues on its own, the problem still persists. Most recently in 2005, the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has brought even more criticism of the practices of the ESRB. In what became known as the Hot Coffee mod, players unlocked hidden sex mini-games contained within the commercial title. This ignited the anti-video game activist movement. Lawyers like Jack Thompson slammed both the ESRB and GTA publisher Rockstar Games for allowing a game like this to get out into the public’s hands. “ How lovely that GTA weds sex and violence in the same game. We are training a generation of teens to combine sex with violence, just what America needs. ”As many parents became angered at the video game industry, politicians have jumped into the fray. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman have suggested government regulation of video games. The 10th Annual MediaWise Video and Computer Game Report Card, issued by the National Institute on Media and the Family, gave the video game industry a “D+” and said the ESRB was “beyond repair.” On the other side of the argument, pro-video game activists declare that any government regulation would be censorship and a violation of the First Amendment. Just this week, the Electronic Software Association sued the state of Minnesota to try to overturn recently passed legislation regulating the sale of video games to minors.

Many research studies have been conducted to determine whether or not violent video games effect one’s behavior. According to Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman “Violent media increases aggression by teaching observers how to aggress, by priming aggressive conditions, by increasing arousal, or by creating an aggressive affect state.” On the opposite side of the spectrum, according to Jeffrey Goldstein “Video games cannot ‘reinforce’ aggressive behavior since players do not engage in any aggressive behavior in the first place.” The bottom line is that the research is inconclusive; video games may or may not cause violent behavior. What is clear is that violence affects everyone differently.

What happens in the next few years will determine the future of the video game industry. With the business reaching higher revenues than the film industry, a total of $9.9 billion in 2004, video games have a major impact on the economy. Any new rules and regulations could have a chilling effect for the industry at large. In the meantime, new technological advances result in violent and graphic images that are becoming nearly lifelike. As the next-generation of consoles loom on the horizon, the line between freedom of speech and expression and the need to protect children and society from over exposure to violence will continue to be tested.

Bibliography

1. Death Race. 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Race

2. Video Game Censorship. 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_censorship

3. Real-life death makes sick choice for video game . Leonard Pitts JR. 2006. http://www.freep.com/

4. Video Game Rating Act of 1994 . The Library of Congress. 1994.

http://thomas.loc.gov/

5. GameSpeak: Jack Thompson. 2005. http://www.cbsnews.com/

6. Clinton Introducing Federal Game Regulation. Tor Thorsen. 2006. http://videogames.aol.com/

7. ESA sues Minnesota over new bill. Jesse Hiestand. 2006.http://msnbc.msn.com

8. Effects of Violent Video Games On Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior. Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman. http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/

9. Does Playing Violent Video Games Cause Aggressive Behavior? Jeffrey Goldstein. 2001. http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/

10. NPD GROUP REPORTS ANNUAL 2004 U.S. VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY RETAIL SALES. 2005. http://www.npdfunworld.com/

11. ESRB. 2006. http://www.esrb.org

12. Columbine High School Massacre. 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High

The most important aspect of your work life is keeping an up to date and easy to read resume. Yesturday I received a resume from a 3D Artist. The layout of the resume was fine: work history, education history, self-taught education history, summary of skills, and a little more information about him. The guy seems to have worked on some interesting stuff, but he forgets one thing - URLs! Even if you don’t have a portfolio provide some direct links to rendered pictures, hosted on ImageShack or some other provider!

An employeer won’t sit down and email over 5,000 applicants and ask where are your pictures. If you don’t want to put the direct links in your resume then at least include them in your email.

I’m still asking this question to myself. After the sense of purpose and meaning the week of Malathedra gave me, I now have to go on and figure out what I’m doing next. it’s amazing how the marketing business is like being in a traveling circus. It takes planning, it’s hela-fun when you finally perform, and then you’re depressed when it’s all over. Right now I’m at that stage of depression and boredom.

Well that’s why I have this blog. I can now show the constant cycle of one side to my life. Doesn’t that sound fun?

Anyway you’re all starving for my reaction to how exactly the week of Malathedra went, right? Comparing the visitor count data from the first week that the Announcement PR was sent out to the week of Malathedra PR, lets just say it didn’t work out as well as we had hoped or did it?

For those of you who don’t know, Raymond Jacobs (head of EDI Games) and I planned out a week of marketing for Malathedra. We discussed what would be released each day and then I would send out a press release about it on the day of its release.
I would say that we did accomplish what we originally set out to achieve, regain the interest in potential buyers. When you’ve read multiple comments saying “I want to pre-order this game” there is a warm feeling that comes to the heart.

The Week of Malathedra Website Statistics:
Day 1 - 86 visits - Screenshots
Day 2 - 118 visits - Music Clips
Day 3 - 199 visits - Gameplay Videos
Day 4 - 179 visits - Wallpaper and Avatars
Day 5 - 115 visits - Trailer

Day 1 - Can we say screw up? From what I can judge not all websites that I expected posted this first PR initially. Why I have no idea. But it was on the next couple of days that the screenshots finally appeared.

Day 2 - When users listened to these clips they understood that Malathedra is first a true adventure game. Having a track that sounds similar to Monkey Island, allows gamers to hear that we know what good adventure games are.

Day 3 - The gameplay videos allowed us to build off of the sense that the players got from hearing the music. Visually they saw the comedic elements that have been developed throughout Malathedra. Comedy next to story is the reason why anyone plays adventure games.

Day 4 - Well we had to stretch things out a little bit here. Obviously after getting gamers excited we had to give them something to take back with them. What better way is there than wallpapers and avatars?

Day 5 - For the last day we found it appropriate to save the best for last. A trailer would be the ultimate thing (mainly because it’s too early to release a public demo).

So why were the stats not as stellar as theywere with the first Announcement PR? There are a couple of reasons for this. For the majority of the updates, users did not have to go directly to Malathedra.com in order to view them. Most websites published the materials on their own websites. Only the gamers with an actual interest in the game visited the homepage. The only day where users had to visit the homepage to see the update was on day 5 with the trailer, but I believe that the image quality of the trailer hurt potential coverage from these exact game sites that covered Malathedra for all the previous days. Why would anyone recommend their users to view a pixalatted video?

Even with all of this in mind, I commend EDI Games for being one of the few indie game development companies to think and execute a marketing strategy from development day 1. EDI is several months from releasing any sort of demo and already thousands of people know about the game. With EDI’s first game Morning’s Wrath, marketing campaign didn’t actually start until after the game was released! I’m 100% sure that this impacted sales to some extent. The question that has yet to be answered is: will marketing Malathedra this early in development improve sales? It almost seems as if gamers might forget about Malathedra and EDI will have to spend extra time reminding gamers over and over again when the game is coming out. Is this wasted time that could be used for developing the game or is this actually creating buzz? We’ll just have to wait till 2007 when the game is finally released! Sorry, I don’t know the ending to this story.

Within the first 5 days of the Malathedra.com website launch it received 924 visitors. The high of those days was 312 visitors, reached on the 5th day. For that month, June 2006, it had a total of 3154 visitors. The total for September 2006 was 960 visitors.

That is a significant drop and shows that those once interested in the game might have actually forgotten about it. This week EDI is trying to improve these numbers by releasing new game materials for 5 days straight.

I’ll continue to cover the progress of the site as the days go on.

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Faster development cycles, cheaper budgets, creativity, innovation - that’s what the Wii brings. Does it make business sense not to support this console if you’re a commercial developer?

I predict that any developer who has games coming out on the launch for the Wii will make a serious amount of cash no matter the quality of their game. Gamers will be hungry from day one, they want the new experiences that all of these games bring. It doesn’t matter if the game is a port because graphics don’t matter. It’s the gameplay that makes the game.

Technically each of these games/franchises are starting off on a fresh start. It doesn’t matter if the series was bad on previous consoles because with the difference in gameplay, no one will be able judge, if the game is good or not, until the game is actually released.

Even if the game sucks, it still will be fun because you’ve never played a game like this before. It’s a fresh and exciting new experience. This experience will wane after sometime but for those that release a game within the first six months, their game will sell like gold.

The creativeness of each developer will truly show in the next couple of years. In the near future, sales charts will prove that creative and fun games will often sell more than games that follow previously designed gameplay mechanics for the Wii.

By the way, now is the time to invest in any game company stock, especially Wii developers. Sell come mid-January/early-Febrary.

Well at least more so than I thought.

Today I went to the Mountain Dew & Xbox 360 Game Live, a College Campus Tour, at my school and it felt like a minature-E3 - games were buggy, there was a DJ, hot girls asking player’s if they wanted to enter in a contest, etc.

I went around asking students what they thought about the games they were playing - Splinter Cell 4, Eragon, Madden 07, Need for Speed Carbon, FlatOut 2, DOA 4 - are the ones that I remember being there. Players actually weren’t impressed with buggy games. Buggy as in buildings were flickering from textured to non-textured. Crap like that won’t sell a game so why in the world would any developer show this to the public?

It’s different in the case of showing the media a buggy game. They’ll understand that the game might only need a few tweaks to fix the broken parts, but do consumers understand this? Somehow I doubt it. Seriously does any consumer, other than geeks, understand how games are developed?

What’s really sad is that consumers are forced to put up with mediocrity. Have you entered a game store recently? 1,000s of games on the shelves - how are they supposed to know which one is better than the other?

Do they know the hundreds of developers and publishers behind those games? Obviously not! They may know the top 8 names - Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, UbiSoft, EA, Activision, Midway, Atari - but after that…

There’s a reason why so many game companies fold and that’s because consumers are confused. No matter the company or the franchise consumers are not safe from buggy and low quality games. So I ask what will make them buy $60 games that have not been unrestlessly assured in quality?

With the recent announcement of not only a lower quantity of shipments and the delay of launch across Europe, is the PS3 Doomed?

Short term yes but we all new that to begin with.

Long term is almost impossible to predict.

There are so many variables with this machine that could change the outcome. Yes the PS3 will do fine, but who knows how well it will sell. Hardcore as well as mainstream gamers will eventually buy a PS3 once it reaches a price point of $300 (for the high-end package).

Mainstream gamers will not be buying the PS3 for at least the first year that it comes out. The costs of the hardware as well as the games will be too high when compared with the Xbox 360 and Wii. Plus the wider selection of games that these two consoles will have is another factor not in Sony’s favor.

People like brand names and the PS3 will be a hot item this holiday season but gamers will go elsewhere if they cannot find the consoles. This will hurt developers tremendously. Be prepared for major staff reductions. Come February/March 07 if the PS3 is still out of stock be prepared for PS3 development support to decrease and move onto other platforms.