Category: Games and Sports

Well it’s not exactly Iron Chef on the DS yet, but it is definitely one more reason for me to get a DS of my own (my daughter bought one for herself recently) and another reason that I think Nintendo may just clean up with the Wii versus the PS3 and Xbox 360. Cooking Mama is a cooking game for the DS that as you might expect involves following recipes, etc. Here’s a review with more details. It sounds like another game with quirky, innovative, and fun gameplay elements that Nintendo has enabled with its outside the box thinking on game consoles. I think Microsoft might emulate this kind of thinking and risk taking eventually, but I’m not sure that Sony gets it just yet. But if Nintendo’s Wii does come out and trounce the PS3, I think Sony will get the religon of risk taking innovation real quick.

CNET News reports the denisons of the virtual world Second Life are getting together in real life at the second Second Life Community Conference. Even as it seems that people meeting online are getting together offline with increasing frequency, I’m always reminded of the line from Ghostbusters about not crossing the streams. In this case, the streams being your real life with the virtual one. In retrospect, I suppose these meetups are inevitable. A recent study done at the University of Illinois showed that playing some online games may increase the player’s sociability. Second Life is more of a virtual world than a game in the traditional sense, so the sociability enhancement factor would probably be greater relative to other MMOGs. I wonder if people will cosplay as their online avatars?

Custom avatars aside, I really don’t believe that a person’s online personality can differ too much from their offline one. The virtual world can allow unprecedented freedom of expression, which unfortunately some manifest in a negative way. But generally people act from their inner core personality. Maintaining a convincing alternate personality requires a lot of work, so observed over time the online personality is probably indicative of the offline one in most cases. I’ve crossed the streams a few times this year and the world hasn’t blown up just yet!

There’s been a lot of talk about the reasons for E3’s downsizing, not the least of it has been speculation that Electronic Arts (EA), the 500 pound gorilla of the video games industry, pushed for the new format. There are a lot of valid, and boring, business reasons for the change. But isn’t it just too convenient that as EA has pulled out their wallet over the last couple of years to get competition killing exclusive sports licenses (NFL, NCAA, NASCAR), the new E3 format will provide even less public exposure for smaller and perhaps more innovative competition? I mean really, after locking up the NFL exclusive license, they even did an exclusive with the Arena Football League to complete the competition lockout! So I wouldn’t be too surprised if taking away a big stage for competion from small fry wasn’t at least mentioned at the board table. The next step will be for EA to announce its own big, glitzy show aimed at the public. I wonder if they’ll partner with Sony or Microsoft on that one…

After an earlier story on Next Generation, that the big games expo E3 was being cancelled for next year, ars technica is reporting that the show is not being cancelled but downsized. Much of the reason for this was described as the show being too expensive for companies and not really being a place to get any serious business done. These are certainly valid points, but I think that they are missing the much larger value of the show for the electronic entertainment industry.

The games industry does not currently have any awards shows that compare in stature to the Oscars of the movie industry or the Grammys of the music industry. These award extravaganza’s are opportunities for these industries to promote their best and brightest to the public. Right now E3 in the marketing and hype-fest it has become, serves that very purpose. E3 is what puts the games industry on the map for the public. And at a time when games are striving to be on equal footing with other entertainment media, killing or downsizing E3 would be a mistake. It would also be a mistake for the big players to pull out muttering about costs. The publicity they can get is well worth the cost, as long as they bring their A-game. And while it is a long shot in the best of times, there’s always the chance that one of the little guys will break through and get noticed.

E3 needs to love and embrace the hype, not try to run from it. Open it up wide to the public and charge an admission price that can help bring down the exhibitor costs. Bring back the booth babes in all their glory and just enjoy the love fest that will launch a million consoles into the homes of the adoring public.

I’ve been having a pretty good gaming weekend. A few days ago I got some much needed help from a higher level player to get the magicked skull I needed in order to complete the subjob quest. I had obtained the other items such as the damsel fly worm and the crab apron on my own with other parties. Well actually, it would be more accurate to say that he got the skull for me while I waited near the entrance of the Gusgen Mines. Later he provided a much needed guide and escort on the way to Jueno where I completed the Chocobo license quest having farmed the gausebit grass I needed myself weeks earlier in Dangruf Wadi.

I really enjoyed the company and appreciated the help. But I wonder if he may have been a little swayed by the cute blonde avatar I use in the game. I guess you could say I’m one of those guys tarting up online world to paraphrase the recent CNet article concerning female impersonation in online games. The guy helping me out seemed to be one of those genuinely helpful people who likes helping other players. When he asked me if I was a real female or a manthra, he said it was cool if I didn’t want to answer that question. So I didn’t. Generally, my policy is to come clean when asked, but my experience has been that other players prefer to maintain the illusion. This is all part of the fun of playing a game in the first place. So I told him that for purposes of the game, I’m a girl. Also, since I wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the areas we were traveling through, I really didn’t want to be abandoned. Why do I play that way? Not to get free stuff. I play that way because I like the look of the female character models and a female persona suits my relatively nonaggressive playstyle. I make no attempts to play in any kind of stereotypical fashion beyond the occasional /blush where appropriate.

So this weekend has been a lot of fun! I got my chocobo license and rode back to Bastok (remember to change chocobos at Crag Dem). Once back I began leveling white mage (WHM) to eventually sub with warrior (WAR). WAR/WHM should be a good solo combo and attractive to parties when there aren’t any WHM around. Final Fantasy XI is a game that is pretty easy to solo at the first 10 levels, but after that you need to get help for every other major advancement. I’m not the most social person on Earth, so if a cute blonde avatar helps me out a little bit there, I guess I can’t complain.

As World of Warcraft has grown to over 7 million players worldwide, I’ve noticed something about the game that I don’t ever recall seeing in any other game. The price of the game from Amazon.com goes up and down. Usually when a game comes out, it will start at one of the canonical prices, say $39.99 USD. And if the game is successful, the price will generally drop $10 to $20 to spur further sales and compete better with new titles. After this price drop, there are generally no further price changes over the life of the title.

I’ve noticed that the Amazon price of World of Warcraft does not follow this pattern. I’ve seen it as low as $26.99 USD and recently as high as $36.99. The fluctuations remind me more of a stock than a game title. And like a stock, perhaps there is money to be made on these fluctuations. One possible explanation for the fluctuations are gold farmer account bans. Blizzard periodically bans accounts found to be involved in real money trade (RMT) wherein in-game items are farmed and traded for real money. RMT is a violation of the terms of service all players agree to when they sign up. RMT has grown to such an extent that Blizzard may ban thousands of accounts at any given time. But there is nothing that prevents a banned player from buying a new copy of the game and using a different account to pay the subscription cost to get back in.

This sort of thing happens with all of the big online games, but in a game with over 7 million players we may be seeing the effects of massive bans on the retail price of the game. Companies involved in RMT are not going to go out of business quietly because there is obviously a demand for their services. So buying new copies of the game and setting up new accounts is just part of the business. The sudden demand for new copies after a ban probably pushes up the retail price of the game. So if the enterprising trader can buy copies of the game when the price is low, there may be money to be made after massive bans. I may just start tracking this myself to see if there really is a correlation.

Last weekend I watched the World Cup finals live and when that ended I watched the NASCAR race at the Chicagoland Speedway. It was a great weekend of sports and a World Cup final that won’t be soon forgotten due to the now infamous Zidane head butt. As many suspected, it was a reaction to some serious momma insulting trash talk. It’s a shame that Zidane’s career had to end that way, but I must say it certainly added a lot of drama to the final. Which in my mind brings the question of how do we add that kind of drama to video game sports?

In my World Cup plus NASCAR weekend, perhaps there is already a sign in the right direction. In EA’s last couple of iterations of their NASCAR game, they’ve given the computer driver AI’s personalities that remember whether you bumped them and reacts to the player either positively or negatively based on that. In fact the whole career mode is full of off the track things like that. So why not bring trash talk to the next iteration of FIFA Soccer? EA is fond of reminding us that “if it’s in the game, it’s in the game.” So why not go all the way? The new consoles are powerful enough to enable some really awesome eye candy which can only add so much to gameplay. Why not take those cycles and beef up the AI? I’m not saying that trash talk is good or should be encouraged, but clearly it is a part of the game. And at least in the case of this year’s World Cup, it may well have tipped the balance to Italy. I mean really, I’m glad Italy won, but I think that ,on the whole, France played better most of the game.

That’s it! I’ve had it with this f*ckn PC for gaming! Now admitedly, I do a lot of other crap on my PC, some of it work related as in software development, so I’m not really surprised. But still my frustration with the constant Final Fantasy XI crashes I’ve been suffering the last few days is about to explode! So before I hurt this PC, I’m leaving PC gaming for the greener, calmer, more stable pastures of the console. Sigh…I really liked the higher resolution graphics that FFXI has on the PC, but getting killed due to crashes and the nagging uncertainty is just too much. I need my FFXI fix! And I need it now! So it’s back to the PS2 for now, but getting an Xbox 360 for this is looking better and better, plus the VGA adapter of course until I have an HDTV budget…sigh…

France just beat Portugal 1-0 to advance to the World Cup final where they’ll play Italy. I generally don’t like recording sports events, so I followed the game using Matchcast. This wasn’t too bad, the updates were useful and the fan chat mildly interesting. Since I’m at work, I have the sound off, so I don’t know what bells and whistles it had there. But since my main objective was to follow the game more or less in real time, it was more than good enough for that. My next problem is juggling the Sunday final with the Chicago NASCAR race! This year I’ll be cheering for Italy because one of the lovely ladies I work with’s husband is Italian, and he’s a big fan. Go Italy! Viva Italia!

Once again the greatest global sporting event goes on without much attention from me, or many in the U.S.. I’m not a huge futbol fan, but I do enjoy the game and watched a handful of matches during the last World Cup. I would like the United States to make a better showing, but even if your team doesn’t go too far, it’s still fun to watch. This year my bane has been money grubbing media companies that make it hard to easily find out who is airing the games on TV! I know now that ESPN is carrying the games in the U.S., but I would never have figured that out from Yahoo’s World Cup site, which is the official FIFA World Cup site, as nowhere can I find a link to this basic information! I suppose they wanted ESPN to pay big money for this, so nothing! There’s plenty of blame for both sides, but it just irks me when simple information for the fans is hidden or omitted for fundamentally stupid reasons. I know they want to make money, but without the fans, they’d be out of business.

It looks like my favorite sport of driving fast and turning left is a hit with other TiVo users as well. For the week ending 6/25/2006, NASCAR Racing is the 10th most recorded show on TiVo according to TiVo’s weekly rankings. At number 10, it’s the highest ranking sport in the top 25 followed by World Cup Soccer down at number 19. It makes me wonder if we’ll see the TiVo guy painted on the side of a Nextel Cup car in the near future!

On my lunch time walk I went to a nearby Coconuts hoping to find the Eureka 7 soundtrack that is supposed to be out today. Unfortunately I didn’t find that (though they do have a lot of the Geneon series soundtracks now), but I did see that they were starting to take Playstation 3 preorders for a $50 deposit. I’m on the fence with respect to the PS3 right now, so I definitely won’t be plucking down $50 towards a $600 console that will be in short supply and doesn’t have any games slated for it yet that I personally find compelling. Heck, I haven’t bought an Xbox 360 yet for similar reasons. Though, I do find some of the Xbox Live offerings very tempting. Right now I really want to concentrate on reformatting Flash games to look and play well on the PSP. But I have little doubt that Coconuts will fill up their preorder roster pretty quickly.