G4-shadowing

Are you ready to be surprised when G4 broadcasts its third annual G-Phoria awards ceremony on Tuesday, August 9?

Well, too bad. G4 has gone and spoiled the surprise by releasing a list of the winners that were revealed at a Los Angeles ceremony last night.

Readers of this blog will know I'm no fan of Spike TV's Video Game Awards, but at least they didn't totally ruin the tension and surprise of the show by announcing all the winners a week and a half before the broadcast.

Unfortunately, G4 does seems to be following Spike's lead in the all-important area of product placement -- The "Alt Sports Award Fueled by Mountain Dew," "EB Gamers Choice Award," and the "Legend Award Presented by Jeep" really add to the prestige and grandeur of the event (Kudos to GameSpot for taking out this crass marketing in their listing of the winners).

While we're on the subject of categories, why is it "Favorite Character" when nearly every other category is "Best [something]?" Are you afraid of offending all the lesser characters? And while we're at it, how can there be a "Gamer's Choice Award" when, according to the release, every category was decided by "fans who cast more than 1 million votes online and via text message." And "Best Boss"? What is this, Nintendo Power?

I didn't catch thefirst two G-Phoria broadcasts, but I'll probably try to watch this one out of morbid curiosity. And to see who wins, of course.

In other G4 news, the company is looking for "exceptional geeks" to answer an open casting call for a new Attack of the Show host. Requirements include being "fast, funny, engaging, pleasant-looking enough to not scare more sensitive viewers, and confident." Also, you have to be a guy ("sorry, girls!" the posting proclaims). Finalists will get an unpaid (Joy!) guest host gig for a week before one is picked as the full time host. Should be interesting to watch.

In even further G4 news, Icons is excellent. I've been watching a lot of it on my newly acquired Tivo, and I've been consistently impressed with how focused and interesting it manages to be. Almost redeems the whole network, it does.

Bloody Errors

The Associated Press has a great human interest story about a blind 17-year-old gamer who routinely beats opponents with his back turned away from the screen. The article has one quote, though, that makes it seems like the story's author wasn't watching the screen either.

In describing a Soul Calibur II (the article misspells it "Soul Caliber") match, the author writes:

"'That's what happens. It's why I don't play him,' O'Banion said after his blood-spattered character's corpse vanishes from the screen." [emphasis added]

"Blood-spattered" is an interesting adjective to use, considering Time magazine described the game as "mercifully blood-free." Many fan reviews also point out the game's lack of blood, and anyone who has played or watched the "corpses" are remarkably unblemished after a loss.

It's likely that this throwaway line was just a bit of colorful embellishment on the part of an overzealous writer or editor, trying to punch up the copy long after the match took place. And given the fact that characters in SC2 are routinely hacked with extremely sharp weapons, it's easy to imagine how the faulty image of a bloody corpse might form in the author's memory. In the grand scheme of things, this small error doesn't really detract from the quality of the rest of the article.

But it can be just as important get the little things right as the big ones. Adding errors to the small details of your text can distract readers from the larger focus of the article, and make them doubt the rest of the facts. Given the extremely sensitive nature of the video game violence debate, errors like these can also serve as the basis for some truly baseless claims.

One of my journalism teachers always told us "If your mom tells you her name, ask to see some ID." It's an extreme example, but the point is clear: check everything, assume nothing.

Now That's Sarcasm

Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You, has an excellent commentary piece in today's Los Angeles Times defending Grand Theft Auto. He makes great use of sarcasm, statistics, and specific anecdotal examples to make a thoroughly convincing argument. Johnson expressed a similar sentiment on NPR's Fresh Air last week.

That remind me, I really have to pick up his book.

Thompson: Gaming News Sites Are Useful for Something

"Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise ... contains, according to video game news sites [emphasis added], full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair."
-Attorney Jack Thompson, as quoted in a Gamespot article

Nice to know that Thompson is willing to use the games press to his advantage, even while he refuses to speak to them unless it suits his purpose.

Also... what news sites is Thompson reading that include such graphic descriptions? Is he counting Sims 2 modding forums in with "gaming news sites?" Would I be surprised if he was?

The answer to that last one, by the way, is "no."

The Paper of (Inaccurate) Record

The New York Times: "Over all, the Grand Theft Auto series has sold more than 21 million games, making it the best-selling game on record."

WikiPedia: Nope

Game Editors of the World...

...Unite agains the injustice of controversy.

(via Kotaku)

Scorching!

A brief lesson in beverage dynamics, courtesy of the media headline writers.

Question: What can you do to "hot coffee"?

You can:

• Spill it
• Cool it
• Let it get stale
• Brew it (and brew it again)
• Pour it
• Steam it (or get steamed over it)
• Heat it up
• Serve it
• Spit in it
• Stir it (and stir it again)
• Have a storm in a cup of it
• Choke on it

Remember, take care when drinking hot coffee so it doesn't scald or burn (or burn or burn) you.

Best Analogy Yet

"An artist makes a painting, then doesn't like the first version and paints over the canvas with a new painting, right? That's what happened here. Hackers on the Internet made a program that scratches the canvas to reveal an earlier draft of the game."
-Rodney Walker, a spokesman for Rockstar Games, as quoted in today's New York Times

Concise, understandable and accurate. Much better than Rockstar's previous statement which was long, vague and, um, essentially a lie.

The coverage is coming fast and furious in light of the recent ESRB decision. As of now, it seems like there is no other story in the video game world. Look for some summary judgement here sometime this weekend.

Absoultely Worst Pun of the Moment

"Grand Theft Auto, is not just in some Hot Coffee, but the game industry could be in some hot water should parents feel things are getting out of control."
-Steve Sabludowsky, Publisher of BayouBuzz.com, in an editorial.

More on the latest developments when I get a chance.

Why I Love the British Gaming Press

First comes this article from Computer and Video Games which cites "reports emanating from US retailers... that the demand for Microsoft's next-gen machine has been so great that a huge number of customers have pre-ordered their Xbox 360s - possibly resulting in empty store shelves when the console actually launches in November." The retailers cited are EB Games and Gamestop, although it's not clear what kind of reports these are and whether they come from the corporate or retail sides of the giants. Details, details.

CVG is careful to note their information "remain[s] speculation" and they use phrases like "suggest," "it seems," and "possibly" to qualify their remarks, but the message is clear: "OMG RESERVE YOUR XBOX 360 NOW THERE WILL BE LIKE NONE LEFT WHEN IT COMES OUT! THE GUY AT THE GAME STORE TOLD ME SO!"

CVG also makes the odd analysis that "the news will cause distress for Microsoft, which was hit by severe Xbox stock shortages in the run-up to last Christmas." I suppose not being able to satisfy demand isn't a great thing, but hype-intensified shortages aren't something to be distressed about, as they usually turn into media feeding frenzies that help drive more sales once production increases (see: Nintendo 64, Tickle Me Elmo, iPod Mini, just to name a few).

Anyway, the really interesting part of this comes via the always entertaining Spong, which rather skeptically points out that they think it's "unlikely that either of the mentioned retailers will be openly discussing its expected, stock-driven performance on any product line, let alone a new hardware platform and its bountiful software and peripheral attach rates." Translation: "YOU'RE A BIG LIAR THOSE GAME STORE GUYS DIDN'T TELL YOU ANYTHING!"

But they don't stop there. In sourcing their story, Spong points to "an ailing UK magazine cum gossip mongering website." Spong refuses to name the magazine, but references in the article make it pretty clear that CVG is the object of their scorn. This is pretty funny coming from Spong, which hasn't had a great track record of rumor-mongering in the past. But why miss out on a chance to bust on a competitor, right?

On a slightly related note, a little digging found this old gem from CVG where they cite "ever scoop-mungous UK trade mag MCV" as the source for a story on a deluge of Xbox 360s by Christmastime.

MCV certainly enjoys a number of well placed industry sources and they quote a senior, though unnamed source, at a major US publisher as saying that a million Xbox Xenons will hit Europe around November, rapidly rising to over 1.5 million units by March 2006.

You can almost hear the scornful envy in that first clause, can't you?

Let the back-biting continue.

Whose Xbox Is It Anyway?

You all probably read Kotaku, but I still feel the need to link to this. I'm at a loss.

Concise Gameplay Summary of the Moment

* Jack enters room and kills enemies by shooting them, performing one of several scripted close-combat disarming executions or siccing Shadow, his bloodthirsty dog on them.

* Every so often, Jack encounters a more powerful boss enemy who'll require a bit more time to kill than ordinary thugs.

* Game over.

-Matt Slagle, describing the sequence of events in Dead to Rights: Reckoning for the PSP in an AP Review

Jane's New News

GameGirlAdvance's Jane Pinckard was recently hired as a news editor at 1up, and she has some very interesting ideas about where their news section is headed.

In short, Jane wants for there to be "a personality that anchors the news section." This means writing that has "humor, style, and a point of view."

In short, she wants it to be a blog.

It certainly reads like one. Check out this tidbit from a story about a recent poll showing Japanese gamers aren't very excited about the Xbox360:

As much as we might complain about lack of innovative game titles in the West, Japan has it even worse. Some of the quirkiest, most fascinating games ever made come from Japanese game studios, but they wither under the unending domination of Dragon Quest. A new console launch is not going to change that trend any time soon. Too bad.

This mix of analysis and opinion isn't entirely new for 1up, which has always favored quick, punchy news stories over the kind of fact-filled, dry reporting found at places like Gamespot. Jane puts up a rather defensive, um, defense of her style by arguing that objectivity in journalism is dead or dying:

there is no such thing as writing without a point of view. okay? it's not possible. either you don't CARE, in which case, why are you writing? or you have a point of view. even if you're undecided. so why not just be straight-up about it? it's far more insidious, in my view, to pretend to be objective. i know this flies in the face of standard journalistic practice. but in my view, and with all due respect, that's why standard journalism is feeling so old and tired now. why shouldn't writers take stands? express opinions? is it going to confuse readers?

Jane is right, to a point. True objectivity is never possible in humans. Our experiences and opinions always have a way of coloring our actions and our writing, no matter how hard we try.

But I don't think that news writers shouldn't try. The point of a news section, to me, is to try to present as much information and as many sides of a story as possible and then let the reader decide what they agree or disagree with. This doesn't mean you have to be dry or that you can't provide informative analysis, but it does mean that you should leave your own personal views on the matter for the opinion page. Jamming a heavy-handed opinion into a fact-based news story might not confuse a reader, but it won't necessarily appeal to them either.

I've long maintained that there is a place for news and a place for opinions in mainstream gaming outlets. They should both be present, just not in the same article. Blogs (this one included) have had great success cherry-picking factual reporting from other sources and mixing it with their own opinion into a concoction that has become a media revolution. I can see why big-time news operations would want to emulate this, but I really hope they don't.

People rely on these news outlets to give them the basic information before they go to the bloggers and the satirists that make them look at it in new ways. If the base of hard news reporting goes away, all that's left is a hodge-podge of fact and opinion that doesn't do full justice to either.

Besides, if news sections get into the opinions business, what will be left for bloggers to be snarky about?

Rockstar (Double)Speaks on "Hot Coffee"

Rockstar speaks out on the brewing (pun most definitely intended) "hot coffee" controversy:

"So far we have learned that the 'hot coffee' modification is the work of a determined group of hackers who have gone to significant trouble to alter scenes in the official version of the game. In violation of the software user agreement, hackers created the 'hot coffee' modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game's source code. Since the 'hot coffee' scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse engineering of the game's source code, we are currently investigating ways that we can increase the security protection of the source code and prevent the game from being altered by the 'hot coffee' modification."

A pretty clear refutation, right? A recent news post over at Idle Thumbs thinks it's a little than and ironclad.

Rockstar claims that the mod "alter(s) scenes in the official version of the game," but the meaning of "altering scenes" is ambiguous, and can include simply making an otherwise dormant mini-game accessible. Likewise, altering the source code does not imply adding content, as source code would obviously govern the accessibility of the mini-game (assuming it was already there). Rockstar may not have had anything to do with the mod, but their relationship to the sex mini-game itself is still very much in question.

I agree that Rockstar's statement is more than a little ambiguous. I'm guessing the statement was carefully worded to allow Rockstar enough wiggle room to avoid possibly being caught in an outright lie once this whole thing shakes out. The press should be careful to parse their words accurately.

In a related note, I've seen a lot of news posts echoing the following sentiment from Mike over at GameGirlAdvance:

"No button combination would'’ve called up CJ and his hos making a night of it."

It's true that there is no known button-combination that will do this, but it's far from clear whether or not one exists. In fact, given the nature of proving a negative, such a statement is almost impossible to prove. I seem to remember button-press codes for Goldeneye coming out years after the game's release, so don't go saying that someone would have found it by now.

In their statement, Rockstar implies that there is no way to unlock the mini-game without significant modification to the code, but as noted above this is far from clearly worded. Outlets talking about this should say that there is no known button-combination that unlocks the game, or that Rockstar has hinted that no such code exists.

Speaking of which, is the double meaning of code throwing anyone else here? Sentence constructions like "You can't use a code to unlock the code" are technically correct and totally confusing.

Grand Theft Auto-Erotic

(Headline shamelessly stolen from a Plastic.com thread)

Are you ready for a scandal? How about a really complicated, technology-based one with moral, business and political implications?

If you're a games journalist, you had better be. The previously-discussed Grand Theft Auto modification now widely known as "hot coffee" has gotten new life in the press thanks to statements from the National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF) and California Assemblyman Leland Yee. Their outcry has led to an investigation by the ESRB and has turned what was once a minor story only on enthusiast sites has now spread to the mainstream with coverage from sources ranging from the Associated Press and Reuters to The New York Times and everything in between.

The press attention has merited additional comment from the mod's author, who says he merely unlocked the content, and from the usually reticent Rockstar Games, who says they can't be held responsible for the actions of the mod community. (GameSpot seems to have scored a bit of a coup by getting a Rockstar spokesperson to directly deny that "the 'Hot Coffee' code was included in game discs manufactured by Rockstar or its agents.")

Both enthusiast and mainstream outlets have had to be careful to differentiate "hot coffee" from both traditional mods (which add original content to the game) and from traditional Easter eggs (which unlock developer-created content through a special in-game method). For the most part, the stories I've seen so far have done an admirable job explaining these fine distinctions in an understandable way. The New York Times did a particularly good job explaining the situation.

This sort of media saturation is a sort of double-edged sword for groups like NIMF and people like Yee who are trying to condemn the mod. More coverage means more people know about their concerns, but it also means that more people, including children, seek out the very thing they're concerned about. It's a pattern that repeats itself over and over when moral crusaders cry foul on entertainment producers, and inevitably leads to greatly increased sales for the entertainment industry. There's not much the media can do to prevent such effects of their coverage. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there's little that news outlets can do to put it back in.

This story is only likely to grow in the coming days and weeks, and I for one will be watching with great interest the actions of the industry, the moral crusaders and, of course, the press.

Trivialities in Non-Trivial Times

In the grand scheme of things, is writing about something as trivial as video games worthwhile in light of the huge, sometimes crushing problems and issues of the real world?

I've been struggling with this question a little bit since the recent terror attacks in London. A post on Andrew Sullivan's blog has helped me realize that this is a rather silly thing to be worried about.

No one has suggested that we stop playing cricket because of events in London. No one has said, "Of course this game fades into insignificance compared to events in the real world." Nor has anyone offered up the inane idea that if we stop playing cricket the terrorists will have won. The idea of stopping the game appears not to have occurred to anyone, which I think is wonderful and yet another example of the British stoicism of which you write. It makes me realize how much I've missed London.

Bottom line: The real world will always be full of calamity. It's the brief escape provided by entertaining trivialities like video games that can make it seem a little less calamitous.

Will They "Work More Hours?"

Recently, I have seen a whole lot of reports echoing Ken Kutaragi's recent comment to Japanese publication Toyo Keizai that he hopes people will "work more hours" to buy a Playstation 3. This includes one report that goes so far as to claim in the headline that the hefty price is "unlikely to put off potential buyers." I have also seen many bloggers criticizing the statement and commenting on Kutagari's Kraziness.

What I have yet to see is anyone do yet is address the obvious question Kutaragi's comments raise: namely, will people work an extra job to pay for a PS3? Or, more simply put, how much money will people be willing to pay for the next generation of systems?

Sure, it's a hard question to get a complete, definitive answer for, but I haven't yet seen anyone even trying to get a partial, starting-point answer. Merrill Lynch recently predicted Playstation 3 units launching at $400, which many of the above linked articles noted. Will people pay this much for a system at launch? How much would they expect or be willing to pay for games (which are also expected to rise in price with the next generation of consoles)? Does history predict success or failure for this price point (Probably... the PS2 launched in the U.S. for $400)? Is the Playstation brand strong enough to demand such loyalty? Is anyone else interested in these answers?

Making fun of Ken and his slightly wacky statements is fine for a day one story. Where are all the day two stories that use the statement as a jumping off point for some real reporting? Did I miss them? Are they coming? Has the media moved on already? Let me know using the comments link below.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week -- lots of freelance assignments coming to and/or passing deadline. Look for plenty of backlog next week.

Game Design Addicts?!

The AP has an excellent article on online addiction in China and throughout the world, but one line in particular made me do a double-take.

Some can't stop playing games, while the older ones tend to be addicted to online chats with the opposite sex, Tao says. Others are fixated on designing violent games.

The first two examples I understand, but are there really people who are addicted to designing violent games. Is the allure of creating the next Grand Theft Auto so appealing that people forget to sleep and eat? Does poring through lines of C code provide an unmatched thrill to hordes of young designers? Is designing cute-and-cuddly games less addictive? Are we raising a generation of dead-eyed zombie game designers?

Seriously, is this just a typo, or have I been totally unaware of the growing problem of people using their creative and technical skills to design computer games in their spare time? My guess is the former, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Hit the comments link below.