Category: Industry Musings (Page 5 of 7)

China Bans Championship Manager

December 13, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Last week, Kotaku reported that China banned a game for recognizing Taiwan as being a sovereign state. I mailed this news to a friend of mine, who is a nut for Championship Manager (which is, btw, probably the most popular game in the world that you’ve never heard of). His thoughts were good:

Interesting… This is indeed a strange one… Especially since Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet all have national teams and are affiliated with FIFA in real life. I don’t see China ever pulling out of the World Cup because of this… Continue reading

Doom Movie to Not Contain Doom-like Content

December 8, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Idle Thumbs has been in a tizzy for the last couple of days because the Doom Movie will not be based on Hell, Space Marines or anything else vaguely Doomish. To quote their source article:

Doom 2 was subtitled ‘Hell on Earth’, and the key plot point of Doom 3 is that the monsters in-game are Hellspawn, hence the multiple pentograms and such vile creations as dead-baby-cherub-wasp combinations. A ‘necessary’ change, or a neat way to avoid right-wing criticism? We wonder.

To quote Idle Thumbs:

Why bother?I

t may be worse than this. I’m not a zealot about brand protectionism the way that some people are. Hell, I even like the taste of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. I tried to put steampunk into Ultima (I plead duress). But I still firmly believe that brands have real value, more value than the people who create these brands seem to grok. If you’re Id, then the Doom brand is your bread and butter. It’s got a core fan base that loves what the brand stands for and is willing to evangelize it, so long as you don’t betray what the brand stands for.

Doom is, fundamentally, about being a space marine killing demons from hell on a space station with a shotgun. At its core, when I think of my fondest memory in any of the Dooms, that’s what comes to mind. It’s also shockingly original – except for perhaps Event Horizon, what other movies can you think of that bring theological themes of heaven and hell into sci fi?

The Doom movie, as currently slated, looks to strip out the demons from hell, strip out the space marines, and set it in common times. If we’re lucky, though, maybe they’ll remember to give someone a shotgun. The Id guys would be better served by having a crappy movie that exactly fit Doom’s themes and values than by having a mediocre to good movie that betrayed them. They risk enraging their core evangelists, and confusing more tertiary fans who thought they knew what Doom was about. They also end up looking like ‘me-too’ers with a warmed over Resident Evil ripoff, rather than the venerable market leader with a golden IP that they are.

In the long run, this could easily weaken the franchise, hurting it in the long haul. But try telling that to the money guys, who see a quick way to cash in.

EDIT: It seems that lately, Penny Arcade has been annoyed by exactly the same things I am.

The Uncanny Valley Revisited

December 3, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Suspiciously on the same day that an EA memo about allegedly crappy working conditions was released, Idle Thumbs has dug up some screenshots released by EA, showing how amazing EA titles will look in the future. Look up here! Look at the sock monkey!

Looking at the screenshots, two thoughts come to mind. 1) These look freakin’ amazing, and 2) We still can’t get skin to look right.

On the heels of our discussion here about the Uncanny Valley, it seems that Terranova has discovered that WoW looks amazing, even while its technology lags behind. A lot of that is because of the amazing consistency of their art, but again, don’t discount the fact that they chose stylized over realistic for their looks. Or put it another way: NFL Blitz 2005 will age a hell of a lot better than Madden 2005.

The Bugs The Players Don’t See

December 2, 2004 / Damion Schubert

The Sims have always had great bugs. From Slashdot Games:

Maxis has recently released an update for The Sims 2 (both CD and DVD versions)… Another nasty bug (fixed in this patch) that I’ve encountered is one where stranger Sims walk off the lot with a baby!

Check out Grand Text Auto for a longer list. There’s something about setting a game in a ‘real world’ with AIs walking around that just makes the bugs that much better. Which reminds me: I bought the Sims 2 DVD edition, which included “outtakes”. Does that just mean bugs? Continue reading

We’re Stupider than Hollywood

November 28, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Back in 1977, Star Wars made summertime the best time to release an action film, and Memorial Day has become money movie day in the states. If you can, you launch your big budget extravaganza on Memorial Day. That gives your movie the biggest chance to succeed. But that being said, the movie companies aren’t stupid about it. They know that even an avid movie fan rarely spends more than 2 hours in a movie theatre any given week.

In 1999, Star Wars Episode I decided it would release on Memorial Day. Rather than everyone try to dogpile on that day, every other movie decided to cede the coveted Memorial Day release to the big dog. The lone exception was Notting Hill, a chick flick marketed as a movie mom could watch while the kids were geeking out in the next studio over. Can you imagine geek movie history if The Matrix had decided to release the same weekend?

So what does this have to do with us? Well, we, in the games industry, are collectively stupid, that’s what.

WoW’s Impressive Trajectory

November 26, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Earlier this week, I pointed out how hard it is to get a congealed community to scatter. Blizzard has found a novel approach to the problem.

Link courtesy of N3rfed, who like many, is astonished by WoW’s announcement of having 200K accounts and 88 servers after two days. And I must admit, that’s a hell of a trajectory. I note that a lot of people that I didn’t think played MMOs are picking the title up. The game has the potential to be a true phenomenon.

Should we be surprised? How many RTS titles were there? And by how much did Starcraft crush them all?

Still, whether they’ll reach 1M will depend a lot on how sticky the game is, and how well they support the service. Given their team spent Thanksgiving putting up 46 new servers, it would seem they have clue.

Incredible Risk

November 24, 2004 / Damion Schubert

As long as we’re talking about the Incredibles, I thought I’d point out a nice Onion AV interview with Brad Bird, Writer and Director of what may well be the best movie of the year (nod to Looka for pointing it out). In it, he explains why there’s precious little innovation in your 25 million dollar budget games. Continue reading

The Uncanny Valley

November 22, 2004 / Damion Schubert

Intelligent Artifice points out that there’s an interesting discussion going on in the comics/CGI blogosphere. The question is – why has the Incredibles earned nearly 200 million dollars, whereas Polar Express has barely earned 2.5 million of its 265 million cost back on its opening day? Many blame the MoCap of Tom Hanks, which were able to capture all of his movements except for his eyes and lips, creating a uniquely eerie experience. Or, as ‘The Beat’ puts it:

[One] is a marvelous romp, the other, frankly, scares the shit out of us…the beds of American children are going to be soaked with anxiety pee after watching a creepy digital Tom Hanks shout “All aboard!!!”

The animation industry has a term for the point in which graphic animation looks so good, it’s creepy. They call it The Uncanny Valley, a theory first propogated by Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori. Continue reading