Cassaforte migliore che spiacente

Approssimativamente un anno e una metà fa, Nintendo si è seduto alla tabella della mazza con Microsoft e Sony. Quando, Microsoft già aveva indicato la relativa mano con i 360 e Sony esatto per essere tenuta su più assi che una piattaforma standard concederebbe. Così che cosa Nintendo ha fatto? Legga più

Discuta questo articolo nelle tribune - alberini (di 1)

La morte degli effetti speciali

Il miei figlio ed io sono andato vedere Il Hulk quando la nuova pellicola dell'studio di meraviglia si è aperta recentemente nella città di Oklahoma ed in noi entrambi sono stati impressionati con la natura senza giunte degli elementi del cgi nel film.  Mentre abbiamo guidato via dal teatro, abbiamo cominciato parlare di come la tecnologia di contaminazione si è evoluta, facenti le pellicole come Il Hulk e Uomo del ferro possibile. Legga più

C&C in Real Life

John Tyler Hammons, until recently a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, likes to play history-based games like Rome: Total War. “That’s the best video game ever,” the 19-year old told PTD recently while standing in the parking lot of City Hall in Muskogee, a community of just under 40,000 in eastern Oklahoma. Read more

Violence in play is nothing new

Several years ago, a senator in my home state introduced legislation that would ban the sales of video games deemed too violent - including an earlier version of Grand Theft Auto. As a parent, I have no problem with restricting underage players from games that might include graphic violence or sex, but as a citizen of a free country, I always think it’s a mistake when the government tries to legislate morality. Read more

What will happen when special effects aren’t special anymore? [Vertical]

My son and I went to see The Hulk when the new Marvel Studio film opened in Oklahoma City recently, and we were both impressed with the seamless nature of the CGI elements in the movie. As we drove away from the theater, we started talking about how filming technology has evolved, making films like The Hulk and Ironman possible. I told him about the ‘gee-whiz’ feeling I had when I saw Star Wars for the first time in a little movie theater in Sugarland, Texas back in the late 70s, and we started brainstorming about the future of film. Soon, popular stars will develop that are completely created - that is, their voices and features will be entirely generated by computers. With the inevitable improvements occurring in CGI, soon movie-goers won’t be able to tell the difference between live actors and computer-generated characters. And suddenly, we’ll have ‘actors’ who can look the same for literally hundreds of years. Imagine a storyline that spans a couple of centuries - or even a millennium - it could happen.

But what happens when the ‘gee-whiz’ wears off? My grandchildren will take CGI technology for granted, because they’ll grow up in a time when it’s the norm, instead of something that’s new and exciting. I’ll admit, I’ve gone to a few films where the only redeeming quality was the power of its special effects. But what will happen when special effects aren’t ’special’ anymore?

That’s easy - writing will become more important again. The story will become more critical to the success of a film than its visuals. Hollywood comes full circle.

Just think about the ‘website craze’ when the Internet was relatively new to public use. A million sites sprang up that had plenty of flash - but no real content. Predictably, those content-poor websites withered on the vine, and justly so. As the World Wide Web has become more mature, the emphasis has shifted away from sites with scrolling marquees to sites that are content-rich. Only the strong survive.

The same thing will happen in film. Great CGI effects won’t be enough to keep an audience’s attention. In fact today, the best movie is the one with both: great special effects and a great storyline. Marvel’s Spider-man franchise is a good example.

So, I’m excited about the future of film. As a person who would rather read a well-written book than see a poorly-written movie, I’ll welcome the soon-to-appear improvement in scripts and dialogue.

And besides, with all this new CGI wizardry, maybe someone will be brave enough to make a movie of the Foundation Trilogy. You could stretch that excellent storyline over a couple of centuries!

10 PRINT (”Hello World”); [Vertical]

Welcome to the first issue of Playedtodeath, Oklahoma’s premier video gaming news venue.

We’re glad you picked us up and we know you’ll look forward to fresh newsprint every month, as well as daily industry and cultural updates on our interactive website.  Each month we’ll talk about the things that are important to gamers:  reviews of new games and gaming systems, features that focus on your unique lifestyle - including the cooler places to hang when you’re not leveling up - and straight talk about the products that you find interesting (your phone does what?)

To make sure we provide the very best in computer gaming news, we’ve assembled an international staff of writers who bring years of computer gaming experience to the keyboard.  Our people know the movers and shakers in the industry personally, and we don’t cut corners when it comes to bringing you the latest stories:  when Kaz Hirai keynotes the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, we’ll be in the audience mentally translating yen to dollars and wondering how many people can legally share a sleeping tube.  When a new energy drink is introduced in OKC, we’ll be there to guzzle a freshly-minted can and crush the empty against our foreheads (or better, our friend’s forehead).  When Nintendo or Sony or NCsoft rolls out a new release, our reviewers will literally play it to death, to give you the best info to use in deciding how to spend your gaming dollars - that’s our promise to you.

And we want you to participate in this adventure, too - by giving us honest feedback on the reviews and articles you read on these pages.  If your thinking is concise and your analysis piercing, we might even print your emails in our Forum feature (spelling and sentence structure is important - we hope you didn’t stop paying attention in fifth grade).  Let us know about gaming-related events for our monthly activities calendar, like the LAN party you have planned in the basement of your sister’s cousin’s daughter’s house - who knows, we might show up and bring door prizes (generally expired pizza coupons and stuff like that).  Playedtodeath will occasionally even be news (as opposed to reporting it), when we sponsor the biggest LAN party in the state of Oklahoma later this year (keep your schedule clear during Fall Break).  And every month, you’ll have a chance to win cool stuff (with very little effort on your part).

In short, we’re going to make every effort to be that computer gaming newspaper that you always wished (at least since last Thursday) you could read while you were waiting for a Saturday night table in Bricktown.  

So, enjoy - and keep doing that thing you do with the PS3 controller!

Call of the Couch

I used to be a PC gamer.

I used to get into arguments on internet forums about how console games were necessarily inferior to PC games, how they were less sophisticated, were poorer, simpler, and so on.  I don’t get into those arguments anymore.  The war is over.  The PC lost.

This isn’t to say I don’t play PC games now.  I do; I play many.  It’s just that the argument that PC gaming is somehow a singular experience no longer holds water.  In the early 1980’s, many people argued that arcade games were singular and that home machines would never be able to recreate the immersive experience of, say, Star Fire.  That argument was proven wrong, too.

There are a few reasons for these changes.  First, and most importantly, as consoles have grown more powerful, nearly everyone has to come face to face with a simple fact:  it’s more fun to play a game on the couch than at a desk.

There are other reasons as well, though.  User interface design has improved and simplified to where the controls of most PC games can be mapped to a console controller.  Now that text adventures effectively don’t exist anymore (yes, I’m aware of the IFComp and other amateur efforts, I’m painting in broad strokes here) a game that actually requires a full keyboard to play is less likely to be “intricate and deep” and more likely to just have a poorly designed user interface.

What I’ve seen happening is not that PC games aren’t being made anymore but that the locus of innovation has shifted.  There will always be a market for PC games.  There will always be clever games made by small independent developers on on every platform, even the oft-maligned Macintosh, but now the truly interesting advances are coming from new user interfaces.  I’m talking about innovative custom controllers, as in Guitar Hero, and in entirely new console paradigms, as exemplified by the Wii.

A year ago people were speaking of Nintendo in funereal terms, an also-ran long passed by Sony and Microsoft.  Today, they’re leading the charge of the next wave, and they did it not by spending money on faster and hotter chips, but by innovating and developing a new user experience.

I don’t know where the next great innovation in games is going to come from.  But I do know one thing: it’s not going to happen at a desk.  It’s going to happen on a couch.

Red Ring of Death

On June 20, 2007, something terrible happened. Upon switching on my trusty Xbox 360 for another try at blasting away thousands of giant killer ants in Earth Defence Force 2017 – a game that you all must try unless you fancy a beating from a Yorkshireman – the console simply refused to turn on. Strange, I pondered as I tapped the button once more, only to be blown away by what happened next. Yep, it was the good old Ring of Red.

Now my original plan was to overly criticise Microsoft and their sheer reluctance to admit to the blatant design flaw. This fault is purely due to the heat created in the console and the loosening of one particularly ill placed chip inside. It’s causing thousands of consoles to be shipped out for repair every single day all around the world. Though I’m sure Microsoft Japan is fine, what with only 7 consoles sold to date.

Midway through this column, however, Microsoft announced that not only are they extending the warranty time for this particular fault to 3 years but they will also refund the obscene cost of repair that some of us have been charged. Which, yes, is indeed good of them, but while they spend all this cash to keep us swapping machines every couple of months, why aren’t they redesigning the inside of the 360 console itself in order to prevent this particular fault? Rumours state that with the new ‘Falcon’ chip to be used in future Xbox 360 consoles, the Ring of Red may very well be no more. Though with news that some Xbox 360 Elite consoles are already succumbing to the same fate, things still don’t look particularly healthy for Microsoft.

Thinking about it, I know of a good half dozen of my offline chums that have had to send back a 360 at least once. Add to that the dozens of online pals that have spent time offline thanks to their 360 heading for repair, and all this must be costing Microsoft a hell of a lot of cash.

At time of writing this closing – midday 19th July 2007 – there’s still no sign of my repaired 360 or my refund of my original repair costs. With delays of up to 8 weeks warned for us Europeans, it seems that the problem is worse than ever. If Microsoft doesn’t do something very soon, consumer confidence will disappear almost completely.

Gamer Girls

Ah, girl gamers. I can still vividly recall those acne-ridden teenage days of mine where the dream of a fellow gamer of the female form to accompany me on yet another play through of Sega’s exquisite Shining Force RPG’s was right up there with Maria Whittaker suddenly appearing in my bedroom. With time, however, came experience, and the dream of finding a partner who adores this branch of entertainment has sunk down to the deep depths of my brain, along with that hope of one day appearing in an FA Cup Final. Sadly, I’m about as adept at football as David Beckham is at neurosurgery. Read more

Vivez les Niches

Media analysts have recently noted that entertainment audiences are fragmenting. Network television competes with cable, movie theaters compete with Netflix, and everyone competes with the Internet. There is so much choice out there that you can customize your media consumption to suit your own tastes. You can have a steady diet of sports, horror, education or politics. You find your niche and settle in it. Read more

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