Gaming Signal: April 2008 Archives

Tuesday April 22, 2008

EU to Game Industry: Clean Up!

Today the European Union's executive body elected not to impose new restrictions or penalties for offensive video games but instead decided to give the industry two years to clean itself up. There is an existing standard for rating games in Europe (similar to the ESRB rating used in the US) but it isn't widely followed and the EU wants to see that changed. The threat is that the EU might create some new laws instead of letting the industry police itself.

What was stated was that they wanted this despite there not being any evidence that violent video games impact children's behavior. An EU commissioner stated that parents were anxious because they don't know anything about the video games their children play.

Well, here's an idea - how about playing the game with them? Or watching the game being played? Or asking the kids about the game? Or asking somebody in the store before you buy it? Or looking for information on the internet? Oh no, that would take actual parenting work - instead we want a 'one size fits all' rating system and advisory board to fight with. Give me a single icon that explains it all without me having to think. Grrr!

An example used was the game Manhunt 2 where the violence was so great it couldn't get an M rating in the US without modifications and was banned in some European countries. Well shucks, I don't know about you but if my son wanted to play a game called Manhunt 2 I think I might just look into it a bit and see what it was all about before just letting him play. Heck, I even looked into Sega Superstars Tennis just to make sure it didn't feature naked tennis or folks going berserk and hacking peoples arms off with the rackets. It doesn't have either, I'm sad to say.

Saturday April 19, 2008

Top Games of the last 12 months

Next-Generation published a list of the top 100 selling games of the last 12 months. Of course, games that have been out longest are likely to be highest on the list, but I still found this interesting. Here are the top 10:

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Halo 3
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
FIFA Soccer 08
Madden NFL 08
Need for Speed: Pro Street
Pokemon: Diamdon/Pearl
Assassin's Creed
Super Mario Galaxy
Brain Age 2: More Brain Training

What I find most interesting about this list is that it contains mostly multi-platform titles (which makes sense) but also contains some single-platform only titles in Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), Halo 3 (X360), Brain Age 2 (DS), and Pokemon (DS).

Tuesday April 08, 2008

WAR and Beta Signup Numbers...

Last week, EA Mythic announced that they would most likely breach the 1 million mark for beta signups for their upcoming MMO, Warhammer Online. I have issues with this kind of a statement. I cannot believe they actually think this is a benchmark for potential sales. Preorders are a benchmark, but the number of folks who sign up for a free beta is not. I know one blog indicated that it might be something they use to taunt the folks who are developing Age of Conan. This all feels like an attempt to demonstrate how these guys will be the number 2 MMO since I sincerely doubt that any of these games will unseat the 8-kajillion pound gorilla that is World of Warcraft.

Now, I will admit I do have a fair amount of excitement for the title. I really enjoyed Dark Age of Camelot and probably should have stuck with that game versus playing Everquest for so long. I will also mention I signed up for the beta for Warhammer almost a year ago (and I am still waiting for my invite Mythic!!!), but they have to realize that most people will sign up for free early access to these games. I know some folks submit bugs and treat the game like a test, and I have done that sometimes. But anybody that tells you that they are there to simply test the game is deceiving themselves, and I feel quoting a number about beta signups is not a useful statistic.

Monday April 07, 2008

Zero Punctuation on Crysis

Oh man, Yahtzee is hilarious. What makes his videos work is NOT his snarky commentary or amazing graphics or his willingness to dump on pretty much every game. No, what makes his videos is that he is flat out funny - and funny is hard to do. For whatever reason, I was in tears watching his review of Crysis, so I'm sharing it with you. NSF!

Cutting out the Middleman : PR direct to you!

I recently came across this great article on Gamasutra written by some of the writers at Games for Windows magazine and 1up.com. While overall a great article, the part at the very end was most interesting. If you can't bother to read it, the idea was suggested that people might be willing to take their gaming news from the publishers rather than from an independent games journalist. The examples used are Major Nelson's Xbox site and how Bungie hired former journalist Luke Smith away from 1up to run its podcast and post on its blog.

So the question is - do you read Major Nelson's blog or listen to Bungie's podcast? Does the fact that its a 100% pro-company official corporate production have you treating it differently than you would a blog/podcast from Gamespot or IGN or 1up?

It certainly does for me - in fact, I just skip these productions because I assume I'm not getting anything but biased information from them. Will Major Nelson ever rip on a bad Xbox Live Arcade game? Unlikely. Will Luke go off on a poorly designed Halo 3 level? Doubtful. That is, as long as these folks want to keep working for the company that employs them they won't. In the world of big corporate entities, management takes a dim view of employees that 'call it like they see it' and disparage the company.