Click here to go to the archives main page.
Other popular tags: Sony, Xbox 360, PS3, Activision, Microsoft, EA, Nintendo, Wii, PC, fail, DLC, Xbox Live, Modern Warfare 2, Xbox, Girls, journalism, Review, video, Ubisoft, Xbox Live Indie Games, Valve, gaming, DRM, UK, Kotaku, DS, Left 4 Dead, PSP, Disregarded Demographics, XNA
In a memo leaked out today, IGN president Roy Bahat has allegedly announced that the media site has had to “reduce the size of the company” in an attempt to cut costs.
The memo, which you can read over at Joystiq, explains that while IGN has experienced a 40% growth in audience since last year and remains profitable, the company is “still feeling the effects of the economy” and that a focus on being “as efficient as possible in our core business” is needed.
There’s no word as to how many roles could be “eliminated” from the company, but IGN insists it will be “making every effort to be compassionate and fair” to people who will be let go. The memo does say to “please keep this absolutely confidential to IGN”, which if you’re a fired employee, isn’t going to mean much. We’ll update this story once we know more.
Comparisons between Sony’s newly announced Move motion-control system and Nintendo’s pre-existing Wiimote are bound to surface and even the head of the American division of Nintendo, Reggie Fils-Aime, noticed the similarities.
In an interview with IGN, Reggie said he was “flattered” by Move and poked a bit of fun at Sony in the process. “If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then I am blushing I’m so flattered,” Reggie commented.
“From [Nintendo's] standpoint, motion control is core to what we do. We believe that we’ve brought a range of different experiences that utilize the motion controller and we pride ourselves on being innovators in the space and we’re going to continue to innovate. I think the key question is, how will they respond when we continue to innovate if this is their best effort?”
In the same interview, Reggie said that Nintendo “don’t worry about their competitors” and questioned the pricing of Move. “Is the value equation in the consumer’s favor or not? I don’t think so.”
Neither do I, Reggie.
Just another quick video from CES. This one is from the “It Won’t Stay In Vegas” party I wrote about earlier this week.
One of the highlights of the convention this year was a company called Parrot, who have invented a fancy little flying contraption that they call the AR.Drone. It’s equipped with four propellers that keep the device afloat, and this version of it is encased in a command key-shaped foam shell (assumedly to prevent damage to it or its surroundings, should things go awry).
The really neat part about the AR.Drone is that it’s controlled from the pilot’s iPhone. I didn’t get a chance to see the interface up-close, but it looked like he was pressing buttons on the screen (as opposed to controlling it by tilting the phone, which would have been far more awesome).
Anyway, here’s a quick video to show you how the thing works. I’m pretty much set on buying one of these things whenever they happen to come out, if only to attack my roommate and neighbors with it.
Read more →
Despite the financial success of the cross-platform Grand Theft Auto IV, the exclusive episodes The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and The Damned have failed to sell as well as publisher Take-Two had hoped. Attributing the sales slump to a delayed launch pitched too far past the core title’s release, CEO Ben Feder told investors “both we and Microsoft believe there was a big market for GTA IV episodic content” before weeping uncontrollably into his hands at Take-Two’s burgeoning $138 million fiscal loss.
Feder explained “Episodes From Liberty City seems to have been most appealing to those who have finished GTA IV and wanted more story and gameplay”, presumably allowing the crowd to sit, mouths agape, at the shock revelation. However, Feder followed with the genuinely surprising statement that the market for such content was “smaller … than initially expected”.
As Stevie Wonder last night handed The Beatles: Rock Band Spike TV’s VGA award for music game of the year, he spoke briefly but passionately on his desire for better “disabled accessibility” in games. While praising the rhythm genre for opening both music and gaming to increasingly younger generations, he made a small plea in aside to developers over the lack of games suited to play by the visually impaired.
Current generation Rock Band and Guitar Hero (as well as Singstar and Lips) titles may appease those like Wonder by offering the chance to sing songs that they already know, but the absence of feedback interpretable by the unsighted reduces the all important gaming element. Indeed the media’s framing itself, “videogaming”, poses immediate problems in its inherent inclusion of sight in its inseparably visual prefix.
Speaking at the Future of Web Apps conference, Chris Abad, CEO of Irata Labs (who brought you the incredibly annoying “Spymaster”) told developers that they should “incentivise the users to [market] for them”. If you’ve not heard of it, Spymaster was a pretty boring web based MMO which was linked to your Twitter account. Every time you did certain things in the game, it would tweet the action from your account. This gave the player more in game money, and made everyone unfollow you, because it was frankly really annoying.
This is of course a tactic that has been used before. Referral links are used by those sites offer you a free iPod if you to get 10 of your friends to sign up for a free trial of Netflix. They are also known for being a little more than dodgy and extremely irritating, a trend which continues here.
You know it’s a good sign for a company when the employees get laid off upon release of the game. Did I say good? I meant terrible. Despite the game releasing to quite positive reviews, Wolfenstein co-developer Endrant Studios recently cut a portion (of an undisclosed size) of its multiplayer team.
In reference to the axing of its employees, the studio reported that it had “recently completed a development cycle and have regrettably been forced to make adjustments to staff and headcounts.” They also added “We hope that they land on their feet quickly.” These “adjustments” come a bit over a year after the studio was formed, with Wolfenstein being their first game.
According to Endrant’s website the company looks to “Have fun, make games” by removing those things that “get in the way of creativity, passion and still being able to live a normal life.” Certainly this an obvious demonstration of that very philosophy, as employment can often get in the way of creativity. While this is not an unheard-of practice (earlier this year, for example, the America’s Army team were sacked after release of the game), it still strikes me as a pretty crummy thing to do to someone who has worked diligently on your game. My sympathies go out to everyone that has lost their job.
Via: Games Industry
There isn’t much to do in the North of England apart from mining, being poor and having comedic accents. Which is probably why many of the major cities try desperately to cling onto some hope they aren’t sink holes of all that is bad in British culture and try to promote local rivalries. One such geographical competition is between Liverpool and the much better Manchester.
I only bring this up now as Liverpool are looking to build a new £5million “games academy” that will hopefully be on par with the planned video game “centre of excellence” being built on the outskirts of Manchester as part of MediaCity. Read more →
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, Ubisoft’s executive director Alain Corre said that Wii games that are simply “me too” titles would “drown before existing”. He talks about how “copy cat” titles cannot survive, yet there is still “room for innovation”. He then goes on to mention Ubisoft’s new fitness “game”, Your Shape. What was that about copy cat titles?
When you look at it, his comments make little sense: “Still room for innovation”? But they’re going to make yet another fitness game. “Me too [titles would]… drown before existing”? Clearly not, just look at the sheer amount of “shovelware” available for the Wii platform. I began this article hoping to highlight the amount of shovelware titles that plague the Wii, but when looking at the scale of the problem, something much more serious emerges.
Everyone loves money. Rich people who have lots of cash to invest in the game industry love money too. So why should we be surprised when investors say that they hope to make a profit off of investing in game publishers and developers?
Why, it’s the way they’re saying it.
Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures seems to have a lot of faith in the progression of the industry. I would like to categorize the following quote under “unrealistic optimism” if you will:
The traditional game company is dead. Five to 10 years from now, they will be where newspapers are today.
Um, what? Read more →
I know we here at Negative Gamer have discussed Dan “Shoe” Hsu and Crispin Boyer’s Sore Thumbs Blog before. However. it is mainly because it is very reaffirming of the dream that this site was founded on. The whole idea behind Negative Gamer is to take a highly critical look at the games industry and not just be another site that gives developers a digital pat on the back (whether they deserve it or not). Negative Gamer is a place to go when you’re tired of hearing nothing but praise and over inflated scores; a place to make sure that you’re not getting screwed over by a company who cares more about how many units are sold than the quality of the product. Plus, we are the only site where you can get previews of upcoming games in the traditional form of Japanese haiku.
The exposure of what happens in gaming journalism is a real eye opener, both to the average gamer and to a hopeful game blogger like myself. The idea that things can get a bit crooked isn’t terribly surprising to be honest–most American institutions are corrupted in some fashion. We live in a capitalist nation where people are constantly looking out for their own interests. Who’s to say any normal person put in the same situation wouldn’t accept the expensive favors of a company for the cheap price of lower moral standards? We’d all like to think we’d stick to our guns, but unlike the world inside of games there is no clear line between “good” and “evil.”
What is most important about the Sore Thumbs blog is that in some ways, it is encouraging the average gamer to be critical of what they read. No one publication is going to to give you an unbiased view of anything. There are plenty of places to get news on the internet, and a smart gamer will use these resources to find out the real story. By checking out multiple sources and then comparing them to your own, independently formed opinion, you can easily figure out which site offers the most honest views vs the attitude of “giving the people what they want.” In the age where the internet is a primary source for information, gamers no longer have an excuse for standing by while this corruption happens. On the contrary, they should be calling out dishonesty at every possible opportunity.
In some ways it was almost inspiring. I know as a woman writer, I’ll have a somewhat different experience, with different advantages and disadvantages. I take some comfort knowing that while you might need to make some concessions for the sake of business, for the most part you can skim over many of the shady parts of the job and still be successful. I fully intend on protecting my integrity as both a writer and a woman (despite the number of romantic “OMG pic plz” requests on Xbox Live) as I progress into my career. Reading this blog has reminded me that I will always need to be wary of what’s happening around me if I plan on continuing in this industry.
Even without being any sort of famous writer, I’ve had people call my integrity into question with the Guitar Hero: World Tour piece I did a while back. I got some wonderful responses, one in which someone told me I should kill myself. Call me strange but the widely varied feedback made me quite happy. If only people who agree with me comment, then I’m not really changing anything am I? People who understood the point of the site–again, taking a critical look at even the best games–understood what I was saying and responded to it in a generally intelligent way. It made me happy to see that I was causing people to think critically about an aspect of the product that other sites had glossed over and dismissed, even if it was only a minor detail of the game. Plus, I got to hear someone use the phrase “butt trumpet” for the first time.
I think it’s safe to assume and Shoe and Crispin are getting some sense of personal satisfaction out of their blog. They should feel good; they’re asking people to actively think and question the world around them. What they’re doing on their blog is real journalism: giving people facts with minimal bias so that the reader can make the final judgment. In a world where media is constantly trying to tell you what to think, I want to be part of a different breed of writers.
I want to be Benjamin Franklin.
WHAT A TWIST!
By M. Night Shyamalan
iTunes