To get some more information on tomorrow's announcement of the Rubik's World title for Wii and DS, which will be published in the fall by The Game Factory, we conducted two separate interviews. We spoke first with the game's Dutch developers: Two Tribes managing director Martijn Reuvers, and the company's creative director Collin van Ginkel, who also serves as lead designer on Rubik's World. We also spoke with with David Hedley-Jones, senior vice president for the Rubik brand at Seven Towns, which owns the Rubik's Cube IP. Here's what they had to say:

Whose idea was it to make a Rubik's Cube game?

David Hedley-Jones, senior vice president for the Rubik brand at Seven Towns, credits The Game Factory with the original vision for this licensed videogame. "Game Factory approached us," he says. "They were obviously aware that there's a whole new craze going on about Rubik, which has been building over the last four or five years, reaching a critical mass last year in 2007 and carrying on this year as well. It's a great time to get involved with a brand and an iconic image that's appealing to a whole new young generation."

I want to know more about the game, but this Rubik's Cube revival is interesting. Did Seven Towns drive that, or did it happen more organically?

"It was fairly organic, to be honest," says Hedley-Jones, citing the slew of programs at the turn of the century that looked back at significant pop culture events, many of which devoted time to the Rubik's Cube. He also points to the independent World Cube Association, which bills itself as an organization which "governs competitions for all puzzles labeled as Rubik puzzles, and all other puzzles that are played by twisting the sides, so-called 'twisty puzzles'." He adds: "It's also been featured a lot in movies and advertising in particular over the last five or six years, which obviously creates a great brand awareness."

Advertising? You mean like that Playstation 3 launch commercial?

Absolutely. "They came to us and asked us if they could use the Cube in their advert," says Hedley-Jones. And in a wonderfully recursive example of life imitating art imitating life, Game Factory publicist Damien Sarrazin told us that when his company and developer Two Tribes went to pitch the Rubik's World concept to Seven Towns, one of the pieces of video they showed was that very same PS3 ad. "The commercial with the PS3, where you see actually the Cube being deconstructed, is the ancillary idea of our game concept," Sarrazin says.

I'd like to hear from the developers now, thank you very much. Are they Rubik's Cube experts?

To read today's installment of Just the FAQs in its entirety, click on the link below.

At Nintendo's media event in San Francisco a few weeks ago, we made the acquaintance of The Game Factory publicist Damien Sarrazin. He was there to show off the first of an intriguing series of relaxation games for Nintendo's DS handheld. But as we chatted, Sarrazin casually mentioned another title that had yet to be revealed, this one involving the Rubik's Cube license. The combination of a mainstream brand and an unannounced title was too intoxicating for the Level Up staff to resist, so like Activision and Aerosmith, we locked up this announcement exclusively. We've also scored an interview with the game's developer (Two Tribes) and the owners of the Rubik's Cube intellectual property (Seven Towns), which you can peruse by clicking here.

To read the Game Factory press release that will be crossing the wires tomorrow, click on the link below.

1. FOR...merly dapper Thompson looks haggard after copping GTA IV
2. ALL...things reconsidered: NPR takes a a trip to Liberty City
3. UBI...One day, every major city in the world will have a Ubisoft studio
4. YET...another developer appears to have missed the PCGA memo
5. RND...Don't believe the hype? For $10 million, we say: believe

 Poster for the 2001 film "Antitrust," courtesy impawards.com

Oft-quoted Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter isn't just ubiquitous, he's also multifarious. Did you know that in addition to being a financial wizard (Level 60, no doubt) with 15 years of mergers and acquisitions experience under his belt, he also has a law degree from Pepperdine and a master of laws in taxation? We bring this up because in today's installment of Verbatim, we've got a full-scale legal battle among three parties over the best way to interpret the antirust implications--or lack thereof--in Electronic Arts' proposed acquisition of Take-Two. The combatants are as follows:

• Michael Pachter (see above for his extensive credentials)
• Justin Blankenship, Level Up legal affairs columnist; former Federal Trade Commission lawyer (in the Mergers 2 division, which reviewed mergers in the chemical, technology, and entertainment fields)
• Mark Methenitis, editor-in-chief of the Law of the Game blog; and lawblogger for Joystiq; and a licensed attorney in Texas

We've even got a journalist caught in the crossfire: GamePolitics' Dennis McCauley.

The idea behind Verbatim is that we scour the Internet for what various people have said about a particular topic; isolate the most salient excerpts; and compile them in a single, convenient location for your reading pleasure. To see how these lawyers (and journalist) debated this particular issue, click on the link below.

It's a warm Tuesday night at the Olde Fort Pub in Ft. Thomas, Ky., just across the river from Cincinnati, and the regulars are rolling in with the early spring breeze. The Reds game is on the big screen, but no one is watching. Kid Rock wails from the jukebox, but no one is listening. The pool table is lit, but no one is playing. Instead, the crowd is cheering on Casey Niehues, 23, as she rips off a blazing guitar solo on Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle." But Niehues isn't really playing guitar; she's playing Guitar Hero, the wildly popular videogame.

As a virtual GNR plays on the flat screen behind the bar, the petite blonde supplants Slash by pounding colored buttons on the fretboard and strumming the plastic "string" on her ax, a game controller more akin to Fisher-Price than Les Paul. But don't try telling these revved-up rockers they're playing a game. "It's just totally different," insists Clem Fennell. Barmaid Rachel Wallingford hollers over the din: "It makes you feel like a rock star."

But as the band Boston (a Guitar Hero act) might say, it's more than a feeling. It's a cultural high-tech phenomenon that is changing the way we interact with music. Listening and watching aren't enough anymore. Now we want to play along. Millions of us are doing it, including gray-haired gaming newbies who still think Grand Theft Auto is a felony. Since Guitar Hero debuted in late 2005, nearly 15 million copies have rolled out retailers' doors, according to market researcher NPD Group. An additional 1.83 million copies of Rock Band, a new game involving guitar, bass, drums and vocals, have sold since it launched last Thanksgiving. In each game, you play along by pressing color-coded buttons on your instrument in time to colored dots coming at you on the screen. The more dots you hit, the better the song sounds and the more points you earn to get deeper into the 58-song set list. Together, the two multiplatinum hits represent a $2 billion market, analysts say.

Behind this rock-and-roll fantasy is Harmonix, a Cambridge, Mass., game developer staffed by rock-star wanna-bes and game geeks. The creator of Guitar Hero, and now Rock Band, was founded in 1995 by two quirky artists, who turned their musings as MIT Media Lab partners into a booming business. Today, these old college chums, Alex Rigopulos, 38, and Eran Egozy, 36, oversee a staff of more than 200 in the former offices of Harvard's Russian Studies department, where spike-haired and tattooed employees zip around on Razors among the detritus of musical instruments, both real and simulated. "It looks like we're having band practice," says online community manager Sean Baptiste as he strolls past a giant gong used to call staff meetings to order.

Harmonix's history is the classic "Behind the Music" story of the 10-year "overnight" sensation, complete with career setbacks and band breakups. In fact, Harmonix lost the Guitar Hero franchise when game giant Activision bought it, along with the game's plastic guitar maker, two years ago. So Guitar Hero III, the latest version, is now playing for a different company. But Rigopulos and Egozy hooked up with MTV, which acquired Harmonix in November 2006 for $175 million and bankrolled Rock Band. MTV, part of media giant Viacom, gave Rock Band the star treatment, with promotions at the Video Music Awards and even its own "Behind the Music" episode.

Having created a monster market in musical pantomime, the challenge for the gaming glimmer twins is topping themselves. But Rigopulos and Egozy don't seem daunted. Lounging on couches inside the "Star Chamber," a soundproof room where Rock Band plays on a continuous loop on a massive TV, CEO Rigopulos (a rock drummer) looks goth in his black hoodie, while chief technical officer Egozy (a classical clarinetist) looks preppy in his chinos and button-down shirt.

Read the Full Story Here

 Aerosmith singer Steve Tyler in concert

With the rising popularity of rhythm games like SingStar, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, is it only a matter of time before some acts start going exclusive in exchange for more loot. Ever since Harmonix and MTV Games revealed last year that they would be offering full-length albums for download in Rock Band, followed by Red Octane and Activision's announcement that they planned to build an entire Guitar Hero game around a single band like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, we've wondered whether the game makers were locking up exclusive rights to featured acts. It hasn't been easy finding out, because the relevant developers and publishers have been surprisingly reticent to discuss this matter.

Still, we persevered, and with an assist from NEWSWEEK business reporter Ashley Harris, we've learned that Aerosmith is indeed exclusive to Guitar Hero for an unspecified period of time. "It's an exclusive deal for this game," Aerosmith publicist Marcee Rondon told Harris. We confirmed this with Tim Riley, Activision's vice president of music affairs, who told us through Activision PR that "I can say that we do have the band exclusively, and their catalogue should be exclusive to us beyond the one or two tracks they had licensed out to Rock Band before we made our deal." (According to MTV's Rhythm Game Track Finder, it's one song: "Train Kept a Rollin'.")

 Line for the midnight release of GTA IV at the GameStop in Herald Square NYC 

It's on days like this that we treasure the advantages of our current form of employment. Grand Theft Aficionados took to the streets of Liberty City New York in the driving rain ahead of GTA IV's midnight launch, but we've already been playing the game for a few days now within the warm, dry confines of Level Up HQ. So while the tired, poor masses yearning to play freely huddled outside the GameStop in Herald Square, we enjoyed a savory meal at BLT Market with two PR reps for the specialty videogame retailer: Chris Olivera of GameStop and Judy Grossman of the company's outside publicity firm, Stanton Crenshaw Communications.

Over dinner, we conversed about new executive hires at GameStop; the company's expansion into Europe; its continuing plans to improve its stores' appeal to women and non-gamers; and a hush-hush new initative that we hope to bring you more details on in the future. Oh, and we also discussed our mutual surprise regarding Rockstar Games securing of co-marketing dollars from both Microsoft and Sony for its 800-pound gorilla, something that Olivera confirmed is highly unusual, because the vast majority of publishers who receive co-marketing support do so from a single platform holder. You might call it Grand Theft Advertising; we call it confirmation that in the battle for number two, the GTA series is a weapon of mass distraction that each side must portray as its very own.

After supper, the three of us made our way to GameStop's Herald Square location.

To read this installment of Page 110 in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: the third rail of gaming turns into the perfect storm
2. WHO...'s gonna save your soul now? Reflections on GTA IV
3. SUB...versiveness, and videogames: possible or not?
4. ARG...Who would want to play this kind of sick game?
5. RND...The man behind the muxtape revolution

 Electronic Arts' famed "Can A Computer Make You Cry?" print ad, which departing exec Bing Gordon helped create 

Once we got wind last week of William 'Bing' Gordon's impending departure from Electronic Arts, we quickly sought a pre-briefing, to which the PR teams at both Electronic Arts and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers graciously assented. We spoke by phone yesterday evening with Gordon, whose laconic California drawl belies one of the industry's most colorful and outspoken characters. Last night's chat, however, found him in a more contemplative mood, as he looked back at his tenure at EA--where he's credited with everything from creating the EA Sports brand to founding EA's studio system--and forward at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead as he enters the dizzying world of venture capital. To give you a sample of our conversation as quickly as possible, we've given Gordon the Just the FAQs treatment, but we plan to publish a more complete Q&A from our wide-ranging conversation in the days to come.

Why did Gordon decide to leave Electronic Arts for Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers?

Three reasons. First, he's comfortable with the partners at Kleiner Perkins. "I've known the leading partners at Kleiner since John Doerr and Brook Byers made a founding investment in Electronic Arts in '82," Gordon told us. "Then Brook went on the board, and Brook was kind of the cool guy on the board; deeply believes in entertainment and entrepreneurial possibilities. So he shaped my thinking about what a board member can be."

Over the last decade, Gordon has stopped by Kleiner Perkins from time to time to see what they've been up to. This, he says, resulted in him being invited to join the boards of such Kleiner Perkins investments as Amazon and Audible. "I kind of have 25 years with them. Like 'em; get my best reading list from them. So that's kind of the first thing: long experience and love for the Kleiner way of doing things."

What's the second reason?

With an empty nest looming as his daughters go off to college, he's been wondering about the second act in his American life. "I've got 15 more years to do something—might be cool to do something else" says Gordon of his thought process. "The first thing that popped into my head was Kleiner. Just unbidden, popped into my mind."

And the third?

To read the rest of today's installment of Just the FAQs, click on the link below.

 Bing Gordon (far right) pictured with Jeff Bezos, Will Wright and Robin Williams,  courtesy valleywag.com 

The renowned venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has just announced something that we learned late last week. Electronic Arts chief creative officer William 'Bing' Gordon will join Kleiner Perkins as a partner in June, serving alongside such luminaries as John Doerr, Bill Joy and Al Gore. According to Gordon, with whom we spoke by phone on Sunday evening, the first week of June will be his last at EA before starting at Kleiner Perkins on June 9th. "Being on campus with young people in videogame classes; seeing what they're interested in; seeing what's going on with the Internet turning into new kinds of platforms, from iPhone to Facebook and Amazon Web Services--I've gotten fired up about an all-new ride," Gordon told us when we asked why he was moving on from the company that he helped build into a global power.

That's not all the generally outspoken Gordon had to say. To read our Just the FAQs post with chunks of our conversation, click here. To read Kleiner Perkins' press release announcing his joining the firm, click on the link below.

NEWSWEEK's Sharon Begeley writes this week on videogames as therapy:

If proponents of video and computer games are right, the generation that grew up honing its hand-eye coordination by shooting aliens in Halo should be starting to nail real-life aircraft-carrier landings right about … now. But while studies show that the games can improve visual and spatial skills—and that playing violent ones makes it harder to control anger, especially when someone goads or disses you—only now are scientists studying the games' overall effects on players' hearts and minds. Next week, at the Games for Health Conference in Baltimore, Carmen Russoniello of East Carolina University will report that three nonviolent puzzle and word computer games affect heart rates and brain waves in a way that suggests they might be used therapeutically, such as for treating high blood pressure or depression.

Read the full story here

1. EGO...trip: Page 110's boldfaced names strategy is paying dividends 
2. GTA...IV reviews are in, and the reviewers are calling it a masterpiece...
3. BUT...one observer sees something amiss with IGN's exclusive
4. PS3...Sony's relentless drive towards profitability continues apace
5. RND...Why hasn't there been a "Manimal" or "Matt Houston" movie yet?

 

 Life is complicated. I killed people, smuggled people, sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different.
--Niko Bellic, Grand Theft Auto IV

When Rockstar Games showed the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV, people marvelled over the detailed environments, thrilled to the series' return to Liberty City and speculated about just how next-gen Rockstar North's Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 debut would be. For us, our sense of anticipation was built around something entirely different: the prospect of an immigrant story. When MTV's Tracey John interviewed us for the Multiplayer blog, we spoke of ourselves as being liminal people, in the following exchange:

Multiplayer: Do you feel there are any advantages [to being black and covering videogames]? Do you feel you stand out more because of your race?

Croal: Well, there are relatively few of us. So I guess in that sense I stand out. But I think also I stand out because of my dreads. [laughs] I stand out because I work for Newsweek. … [Working for Newsweek] opened a lot of doors. I know that’s not really what you’re asking, but in terms of race I don’t think I found a particular advantage or disadvantage. Professionally I think there is a perspective I have but I wouldn’t attribute it solely to race. I would say that I’m--and I hate to use a big word--but I’d say that I’m a liminal person; people who exist along boundaries or lines sort of in between spaces.

My parents are from Guyana, South America. I was born in Canada. I lived a little bit of my life--when I was two to when I was five--in Guyana. I studied French for 10 years. I grew up in Canada. I moved to the United States for college. I’ve lived in California, D.C., and now in New York. I work at a mainstream magazine covering a niche subject within that magazine. So there’s a way in which I have all of these different perspectives. I’m a black, Canadian immigrant living in the United States of Guyanese descent, right? So there are all of these things that I’ve seen and done and by virtue of how I came into covering this, starting out writing about arts and entertainment, mostly movies, some music, some technology, and bringing that to covering games and being very inspired by everyone from Pauline Kael and John Simon and Stanley Kauffmann, Roger Ebert--to people who were writing for the Village Voice like Greg Tate and Lisa Jones and really strong cultural reporters who brought multiple perspectives to things. I try to bring that to games.

Now, we don't want to oversell the cultural differences between the English-speaking parts of Canada and the U.S.--let's face it, you export your Hollywood movies and rock/hip-hop while importing our comedians and news anchors, so pop culturally speaking, there are a lot of similarities--but take our word for it that being a double-immigrant has given us a unique-ish perspective on matters large and small. And because of that, we responded strongly to Niko Bellic in a way that certain others may have not.

We say this in search of a way to write thoughtfully about a subject that Rockstar Games is not yet allowing us to write about in any detail: the opening credits to Grand Theft Auto IV.

 Rockstar promotional party for Grand Theft Auto IV at Cielo in New York City 

In the run-up to the Launch of Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar Games hosted a series of intimate parties at a variety of New York City hot spots. Dubbed "Rockstar Games Presents Music From Grand Theft Auto IV," the events were pitched to us via email by Rockstar PR director Darlan Monterisi as "a rare series of intimate events representing the eclectic musical soundtrack for the upcoming epic crime drama. Each event (listed below) provides an authentic, engaging experience for you to not only experience the sounds of GTA IV first-hand in their organic format, but also an opportunity for one-on-one face time with the artists themselves and select members of the Rockstar Games team." Following a hands-on session with the game's multiplayer back in March (lovingly described in an April post by Kotaku head honcho Brian Crecente), we were given a copy of this flyer...

To read the rest of this installment of Page 110, click on the link below. 

1. EGO...trip: Level Up, government name-checked in the Boston Phoenix
2. EGO...trip: Peasants, pitchforks, power--a look at the hive mind of online forums 
3. 360...adds a bright green light to an otherwise Red Ring-ish quarter for MSFT
4. INS...ide the sausage factory of videogame journalism, sexily
5. MMO...Level Up's cultural columnist calls GTA IV "the next evolution of the MMO"
6. HSG...The hardcasual pleasures of Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds, recounted 
7. RND...Armond goes off. The criterati? Scared to death, scared to look--they shook

 Bill Trinen and Shigeru Miyamoto show Wii Fit to journalists last week in NYC

Last Wednesday, the Level Up staff and one of its colleagues, health writer Anne Underwood, made the two-block trek to the Le Parker Meridien hotel for a private demonstration of Nintendo's upcoming exercise game, Wii Fit. Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America executive vice president of sales and marketing and self-proclaimed "Miyamoto groupie" (more on that in a future Page 110 report) was among our gracious hosts, which put us in a VIP kind of mood. But the star of the show was product marketing manager Bill Trinen, best known as He Who Translates Miyamoto Into English. But until Wii Fit is finally released in North America, he should be known as The Fittest Man In Videogames, for demonstrating how the "game" works at various events.

Asked if we had experienced Wii Fit at previous events, we responded affirmatively, leaving Trinen to demo it and Underwood to try it out, freeing ourselves up to sample the delicious oatmeal raisin cookies that were so incongruously being made available during our preview session of a fitness game. Strange, that. But oh, so tasty.

Despite our reluctance to get our sweat on in front of witnesses, we nevertheless managed to elicit one exclusive scooplet when we asked Trinen whether there were any features that had been added to the North American version of Wii Fit following its Japanese release last year.

To read the rest of this installment of Page 110, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Level Up columnist noted; ditto Page 110 
2. COU...ld this represent EA Sports' next opportunity?
3. HOW...to design videogames that highlight race
4. CON...demned: Criminal Minds, carefully considered
5. TWO...standing up to unthinking critics of GTA IV...
6. MOM...while teens and mothers discuss Rockstar's opus
7. Wii...want to play, but is this really, truly gaming?
8. FMV...Everything old is new again, like full motion video
9. RND...When Samuel Met Charlie, Or, Rose's Last Tape
10. RND...a spirited defense of deux filles, une tasse

 

Whether it's the Knicks and the Lakers, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the L.A. Dodgers or Biggie and Tupac, there's always been a rivalry between New York and California. But when it comes to videogames, NY might as well be bringing a knife to a gunfight. Sure, we've got Take-Two, or as we like to call it, The House That Rockstar Built. There's Vicarious Visions, those masters of handheld development. Kaos Studios, which worked on Battlefield for EA and just did Frontlines: Fuel of War for THQ, is also located in our fair state, as are smaller developers like Gamelab, which brought us Diner Dash.

But compared to Northern California (Electronic Arts, Lucasarts, Sega and Namco's U.S. HQs, etc.), which even stole 2K Games from us, and Southern California (Activision, THQ, Warner Bros Interactive, Disney Interactive, Brash Entertainment and more) and, well, it's clear where NYC's interactive inferiority complex comes from. So when we got wind that a brand new publisher was debuting not only in our adoptive state, but a mere subway ride away from Level Up's midtown HQ, we pulled out all the stops to bring you this news--and an exclusive interview with the company's CEO--first.

The publisher in question is GreenScreen Interactive. "It was initially founded by Ryan Brant, Mark Seremet and Susan Cummings," CEO Ron Chaimowitz told us yesterday during an exclusive interview at his SoHo offices. "Mark and Ryan were founders of take-Two Interactive, and Susan was at Take-Two and actually worked with Ryan to build the 2K label very successfully from zero to $400 million over four years." Chaimowitz is himself no slouch, having co-founded GT Interactive Software in 1993 and published such well-known titles as Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem and Unreal.

To read the rest of our post on GreenScreen Interactive as well as the full text of the company's press release, click on the link below.

 Poster for the 1978 adult film "Debbie Does Dallas," courtesy idave.com

Last October, when we were looking for someone to explain why a massive launch for Halo 3 wouldn't necessarily get the stalled movie back on track, we wrote: "To answer that question, we turned to former Eidos Interactive president Keith Boesky, an agent whose Boesky & Company client list--includes the Robert Ludlum estate, Clive Barker, Spark Unlimited, Liquid Entertainment and GDH--sits at the nexus of Hollywood and videogames. We met Boesky at the DICE conference earlier this year, and were impressed by his thoughtful fluency in a wide variety of media." Boesky's maiden appearance on this very blog not only won us the notice of the indefatigable Nikki Finke, but confirmed our belief that Boesky's wisdom was worth sharing with our readership.

Since then, Boesky has taken to posting his musings on his own blog, A Tree Falling In the Forest, which we've often linked to in our daily High Score feature since he began posting in January. After periodic email exchanges on various and sundry topics, we asked Boesky if he would write a monthly column for us on his observations about the intersection of mass culture and game culture. He agreed, and we're extremely pleased to present his monthly column, Reports From the Front. In his debut, he expands on an offhand comment he made to us following his Halo movie post: that videogames not only have less cultural currency than comic books, they arguably have less cultural currency than porn. Take it away, Keith.

I once told N'Gai that society at large perceives games much as it does porn. My reasoning is simple: everyone looks, but no one will admit it. You would be just as likely to pick up a woman in the bar and ask her to come home to see your porn collection as you would to invite her back to see your kick-ass gaming set up. The likelihood of either achieving the intended goal is very low, and one would get you slapped before she walked away in disgust.

Then again, after thinking it through, I may be wrong. You may be more likely to choose porn. Applying the nine out of ten rule, nine out of ten women will say no to either proposition, but would you really rather have the one who says yes to games come home with you?

While it is easy to see the comparison, it is much harder figure out why. So when he asked me to expand on the thought and write a piece, it took me a while to figure out what to say. All I can do is talk on a personal level about a life in a career my parents don't understand and living on the receiving ends of disapproving stares everywhere from cocktail parties to school open houses.

I don't really know how we got to this point. Maybe it's because games are still considered toys. Even though most households own a game console, the vast majority of people consider videogames to be for kids. But if this misconception were the genesis of the low regard, Mickey Mouse would be mentioned in the same breadth as Jenna Jameson. He is mostly for kids, but adults don't put him in a porn box, and they are also willing to sit down and watch it with their kids. Some women may not even be offended if you asked them back to your place to see your digitally remastered "Steamboat Willie." But when it comes to games, Fox News has no qualms about backing journalist Geoff Keighley into a corner over the "Debbie Does Dallas"-meets-"Star Wars" content--content which is not even contained in Mass Effect. There must be another reason.

To read the rest of Boesky's column, click on the link below.

 The Hospital Fees mini-game from Bright Light and EA's Monopoly

After we spent a good 20 minutes playing Electronic Arts' Hasbro, we were intrigued enough by it to set up an interview with the developers at EA's Bright Light studio in the U.K. On Friday, we spoke by phone with creative director Matt Birch and producer Darren Potter. We'll try to bring you the entire interview at a later date, but for now, here's a sample of what we discussed in another installment of Just the FAQs.

Monopoly has been around forever. What's different about this?

The highlight of EA's Monopoly is a mode that they're calling The Richest. "The idea with The Richest was to take advantage of the speed of computing to make a game that a modern family could sit down and play in 20 or 30 minutes," says Matt Birch, the game's creative director. Think of it as the speed chess version of the game you know and love.

Interesting, but vague. How does it work?

For The Richest, your goal is still to amass the most wealth, but here, you keep score with assets. The more properties you own, the richer you are. When you land on a property that no-one owns, it's yours. But when you land on a property that someone else owns, you have to give them one of your properties as rent--and vice-versa.

I get that. But what's with the speed chess analogy?

To read the rest of this installment of Just the FAQs, click on the link below.

 Monopoly, developed by Bright Light and published by EA Casual 

Last week at a media event in New York City, Electronic Arts unveiled its take on Hasbro's enduring Monopoly. It's currently in development for Wii, 360 and PlayStation 2, with the Wii serving as the lead platform. The game will be released this fall by the EA Casual division, at the same time as the relaunch of Hasbro's board game Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition, so named because Hasbro is retiring such famous spots as "Boardwalk" and "Park Place" with the names of cities from around, um, the world. We played it at the event, where EA's reps were focused on showing off The Richest, a new spin on Monopoly that blends mini-games with a sped-up version of the classic gameplay for a clever, highly entertaining version of Monopoly whose playtime is measured in minutes, not hours. See below for the press release, and be sure to check back for the newest installment of our Just the FAQs interview series, in which we speak with the title's U.K. developers.

To read EA's press release, click on the link below.

 

As we said in today's announcement, former guest poster Justin Blankenship has graciously agreed to join Level Up's select stable of monthly columnists. In his first post, he applied the insights he gained during his 2001-2004 tenure in the Federal Trade Commission's Mergers 2 division in Washington, D.C., to suss out the antitrust implications of Electronic Arts' intended purchase of Take-Two Interactive. Blankenship declared that the the FTC would likely take a hard look at the deal, and while some were skeptical of his analysis, he was proven right last week when his former employer issued a Second Request for more information on the proposed deal. In his debut monthly column, Blankenship returns to the EA/Take-Two imbroglio to answer some questions that others raised in response to his earlier post and shed some light on the thought process behind the FTC's recent decision. read on.

First of all, thank you to everyone who read my piece about EA's potential acquisition of Take Two, and especially to those of you who took the time to cover the piece or otherwise comment on it. Now that the FTC has issued a Second Request to EA and is clearly taking a hard look at the merger, this seems like a good time to recap where this deal is, and follow up on some interesting points that were raised.

1. "What is a 'Second Request' and what does this mean for EA/Take Two?"

A little background on how the merger review process works is helpful here. Under a law called the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (HSR), any merger or tender offer that exceeds a certain monetary threshold is required to file a Notification and Report Form with both the FTC and the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. The Form includes a description of the deal, the parties to the deal, and attaches certain documents relevant to the deal for government review.

Most importantly, the HSR filing starts a 30-day clock running for the government to review the deal during which it is illegal to consummate the merger. The vast majority of deals go through after this 30-day period, or even earlier if the parties have requested an "early termination" of the waiting period.

A much smaller percentage of deals, however, present some competitive concerns that require that the government investigation extend beyond the 30-day waiting period. Those deals receive what's called a "Second Request"--which is what EA got on April 17th.

To read Blankenship's column in its entirety, click on the link below.

 DVD cover for the 1995 film "The Usual Suspects," courtesy MGM

Over the Christmas break, we took some time to reflect on what changes or additions we could make to improve the blog. One of those concepts was Page 110, which debuted today. Another, which has also been some time in coming, was to add monthly columnists. We've always done our best to incorporate other voices into the mix here at Level Up, whether it's people who work in the videogame industry in some capacity in Outsourced, or interested outside observers in P2P. But in those cases where our blog opened up conversations among ourselves and a handful of gifted, thoughtful writers, we felt compelled to expose those voices to our modest but influential audience--you.

Our first official column, titled The Law and the Short of It, is penned by someone who should be no stranger to close readers of Level Up: Justin Blankenship, former Federal Trade Commission lawyer and current stay-at-home father. From Fall 2001 until early 2004, Blankenship worked in the FTC's Mergers 2 division in Washington, D.C., which reviewed mergers in the chemical, technology, and entertainment fields for potential violations of Section 7 of the Clayton Act, in search of potential anti-competitive concerns that would hurt consumers. So as part of his division's jurisdiction, he examined similar mergers while at the FTC. Blankenship sent us an email expressing his opinion that the FTC would take a hard look at the EA Sports/2K Sports part of this deal for antitrust reasons; we requested that he expand his thoughtful email into a full post, and based on his superlative work, we asked him to join our first wave of monthly columnists. Click here to read Blankenship's debut column, and be sure to check back later today for the premiere of our second opinionator.

1. EGO..trip: flattery will get you everywhere, Scholarly Gamer
2. EGO...trip: "It's only a game" meme lives despite MTV News' efforts
3. AND...all that could have been: David Jaffe on Heartland
4. THE...first step is not admitting that you have a problem
5. RND...When corporate magazines still suck, who you gonna call?

AOL's Robin Yang, Level Up's N'Gai Croal and Harmonix's John Drake play Rock Band

Our Twitter post of yesterday--"Playing Rock Band's Judas Priest album DLC at MTV's offices. Devil horns!"--pretty much said it all. MTV had originally planned to host journalists last Friday to play the first complete album available for download in its Rock Band videogame, Judas Priest's "Screaming For Vengeance," but it was cancelled at the last minute and moved to Monday. We arrived at 1633 Broadway shortly after 5:00 PM, at which point MTV publicist and skilled Rock Band guitarist Jeff Castaneda escorted us up to the room they call The Lab. Others in the room included MTV Games producer Marc Nesbitt and MTV flack Mariana Agathoklis, Harmonix PR guy John Drake and AOL GameDaily's Robin Yang, whose slender frame belied a zest for rock that would soon be unleashed. (MTV News' Stephen Totilo, displaying a stunning disinterest in corporate synergy, was nowhere to be found.)

Before we took the stage, we ribbed Castaneda for the absence of liquor and other stimulants. "Harmonix just went eight times platinum with the downloadable content--and we've seen the bonus schedule," we said. "So where's the Jim Beam? Where's the Cristal?" Castaneda laughed and volunteered to make a beer run. But we declined, because in truth, rock is the only sustenance we need. With Yang on lead guitar, Drake on vocals, ourselves on drums and a fourth, whose name escapes us, on bass, we kicked things of with "You've Got Another Thing Comin'." From there, we went into "Pain and Pleasure,"--a track whose deceptive simplicity concealed a drumbeat that initially caught us off guard before we recovered and settled into a stone cold groove--followed by the hand-wrecking challenge of "The Hellion" and "Electric Eye." Thankfully, our bandmates were there on two occasions to rescue us from the abyss.

To read the rest of Page 110's dispatch on rocking out at The Lab with MTV, click on the link below.

 The 1957 classic "The Sweet Smell of Success," courtesy of Film Forum 

For a while now, we've been meaning to find a proper home for some of the on-scene reportage that characterized Level Up's carefree infancy, when we would belly up to the VIP bar with Kaz Hirai and Sir Howard Stringer inside the Sony Style store on New York's Madison Avenue. Or firing a pump-action shotgun (the Serbu Super Shorty, if you must know) with Crytek founder Cevat Yerli at The Gun Store in Las Vegas. Or consuming steak and wine at the Morton's Steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles with Microsoft's own James "J" Allard, culminating in our infamous wager. Or playing Madden NFL 07 against Miss May 1998 Deanna Brooks--and losing--at the South Seas Hotel in Miami's South Beach during the runup to last year's Super Bowl. You know, the lighter side of being a videogame journalist.

So today, we're taking the wraps off of Page 110, our sometimes wry, sometimes breathless, but always observant occasional feature on the people, places and things we get to see as part of our job. The title has a double meaning; it's both an in-joke for the truly geeky and a reference to the pop cultural gap between the prominence of boldfaced names who appear on Page Six and those who can't get arrested there despite their stature in the world of videogames. The US Weeklys and the Gawkers of the world may not care about this stuff, but we do, and hopefully you will as well. Enjoy.

 Dilbert's Punchline mashups on the recently-relaunched Dilbert.com Web site

This morning, Scott Adams and United Media officially announced the upgrade relaunch of Dilbert.com., the companion Web site to Adams' long-running comic strip. With the relaunch of the original site via a soft launch last week, Dilbert has officially moved into the 21st century, with features ranging from Dilbert's Punchline (which lets you test your wit against Adams' by rewriting the punchline to that day's strip) to animated shorts. Adams was kind enough to spare some time for an email interview; here's what he had to say about Dilbert 2.0--and whether or not the nation's cubicle drone-in-chief has more of a future in videogames. Read on.

How long has Dilbert 2.0 been in the works?

The planning started a year ago. Obviously the technical work has been concentrated in the past several months.

What inspired it?

Dilbert is an early adopter, like most of my readers. I was the first syndicated cartoonist to include an email address in the strip and incorporate reader suggestions (1993), and the first syndicated comic to be offered on the Internet (1995). More recently we were the first to offer a widget for the strip. As the technology evolves, we look for ways to make Dilbert more participatory.

Many of the changes on the new site are a natural evolution, such as the color strips and the improved archive search. But the mashups are the exciting part. People like to talk more than they like to listen, and this makes Dilbert more of a conversation than a lecture. (More social, if I can use that buzzword.) You can see from the early volume of responses that the mashups are going to be huge.

How are the Cartoon Mashups going to work on your new site?

1. EGO...trip: Even though we can't hang ten, Surfer Girl showers us with praise
2. EGO...trip: MTV News' big dog (and Vs. Mode punching bag) weighs in on RE5
3. POD...Yesterday's "Big" thinker Chris Dahlen guests on a podcast
4. RND...What's a little psyops between the U.S. military and its citizenry?

We've never quite been able to appreciate the phenomenon that is Second Life. Nevertheless, even the metaverse-averse like ourselves can appreciate the wizardry involved in our exclusive video demonstration of Second Life on a mobile phone. That wizardry is made possible by a startup called Vollee, which is capable of serving up games whose graphics and CPU requirements are more demanding than a typical phone can handle to the Vollee client which users install on their handsets. The folks at Vollee remap the menus and controls for each game to optimize them for the smaller screen and the limited controls. During a recent demonstration at Level Up HQ, we saw a PS2 board sports game running reasonably well on a phone. We'll have more coverage of Vollee in the weeks to come, as well as our thoughts on the implications of this technology, but for now, enjoy the video.

Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: Do people who play a single game exclusively have the right, um, idea?

The Thinker: Chris Dahlen

The Source: GameSetWatch

The Quote: A $60 game purchase can either be the best value for your entertainment dollar, or the worst. On the one hand, we have games that are disposable entertainment - an experience that can be consumed in 8-10 hours and set aside.

While bonus achievements or a token multiplayer mode might extend the short lives of Dark Sector or Condemned 2: Bloodshot, you're really supposed to treat them like this week's Hollywood blockbuster: catch it on opening night, forget about it by the next morning. As a critic, I see plenty of these disposable games. Vampire Rain. Viking: Battle for Asgard. Bullet Witch. In the crit biz, we call these "rentals."

But let's look at the other extreme, where a new game isn't like a movie, but a sport. You can obsess over Rock Band or Warcraft the same way that a golfer keeps hitting the links. Yes, you're shelling out for the sequels, the expansions, the online fees and other add-ons, but at heart you could play the same game and stick with it for months - all while finding new partners and competitors to challenge and fuel your rise to dominance. Isn't that the mark of a great game?

And what if the industry focused more on one-game players? Instead of jumping on the next big thing and finding out it's Heavenly Sword, or worshipping the graphics of an E3 demo only to find out you've been drooling over Assassin's Creed, or wasting even an inch of copy on the latest movie tie-in game--what if the biggest factor in how we judge a game was its durability?

The Reaction: First, let's do the math. $60 for 8-10 hours of gameplay equals $6.00-7.50 per hour. That's more expensive on a per-hour basis than a two-hour movie (but cheaper than, say, a Broadway show). Even worse, if you've spent $60 for the game, gotten a couple of hours in and determined that it's not as good as you'd hoped, your choices are to a) put it away and waste the money you've spent; b) play on, grimly, in an effort to wring the full value out of your expenditure (though as we've said previously, your playtime also has value); or c) trade it in to GameStop for some fraction of what you paid for it and use that store credit for something else. If, however, a game provides you with 80-100 hours of entertainment, you're looking at 60 to 75 cents per hour. That's a great value by any medium's standards.

To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: our legal affairs correspondent could say "I told you so"
2. EGO...trip: the long tail of gaming's third rail continues to grow
3. EGO...trip: a precocious infant of a blog credits us with inspiration
4. SHH...do you have a secret that you would like to share, anon?
5. WRI...ters in videogames, defended, one more time
6. DAN...Houser of Rockstar Games fame opens up on GTA IV
7. HMM...if the Wii is "a virus," is it time to go see the doctor?
8. HUH...F/X house Digital Domain competes with EA? Really?
9. GFW...I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it...
10. RND...Is blood thicker than water? Not for CBS and Viacom

 

Senator? You can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.
--Michael Corleone in "The Godfather: Part II"

For a deal that's yet to be consummated, there's been a whole lot of activity surrounding Electronic Arts' proposed acquisition of Take-Two. First came the news that the Federal Trade Commission had requested further information and additional time to complete its review of the deal--the "hard look" at the deal that Level Up's own guest poster and former FTC lawyer Justin Blankenship had predicted. Next, at its shareholders meeting last night, Take-Two's board continued to urge its stock owners to reject EA's tender offer.

Finally, this morning, EA announced that it had extended the deadline for its tender offer to May 16th--while reducing the value of its offer from $26 per share to $25.74 to reflect the additional shares of restricted stock that have been granted to Take-Two management. To make sense of all of the head-spinning feints and counter-moves, we shot an email over to the omnipresent Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter. Here's what he had to say:

What should we make of Electronic Arts' decision to extend its tender offer to Take-Two shareholders to May 16th, 2008?

They extended because they fully intend to wage a proxy battle over the next month. That will essentially involve nominating a new board and soliciting the vote of 50.01 percent ofall shareholders (including those who could not vote yesterday because they bought after February 19). If they win the proxy battle, they will take control of Take-Two.

Is there anything significant about that date?

 The cover for the Pixies' 1989 album "Doolittle"

During our phone briefing yesterday with Harmonix CEO and co-founder Alex Rigopulos and Paul DeGooyer, senior vice president of Electronic Games & Music, we uncovered a slew of tidbits about their philosophy regarding future releases of albums, tracks and the overall Rock Band "platform," as term Rigopulos used on more than one occasion during our chat. We'll serve up the full text of this interview at a later date, but in the meantime, here are some of the highlights, in the form of an FAQ:

When is the next album coming out?

Next month.

What is it?

"The Cars," by, um, The Cars.

Anything after that?

In June, they plan to release "Doolittle," by the Pixies. "This is the beginning of what will be a regular flow of full albums," says Harmonix's Rigopulos.

"Who Are You"? More like "Where Are You"? Why wasn't The Who's "Who's Next" the first album release, as previously expected?

Because Harmonix does not yet have everything it needs to create all of the tracks. "We do require specialized audio mixes in the form of stems," says MTV's DeGooyer. "And to be perfectly candid, [Judas Priest's "Screaming For Vengeance'] is the first one that was ready."

Can I play "Screaming For Vengeance" as Rob Halford or Glenn Tipton?

To read the rest of our FAQ on Rock Band's full-length albums, click on the link below.

 The cover for Judas Priest's 1982 album "Screaming For Vengeance" 

Harmonix and MTV Games have just announced that the first complete album for their popular rhythm game Rock Band will be released next week. Even though last year Harmonix cited The Who's 1971 record "Who's Next" when it first revealed that entire albums would be made available through its online store, its inaugural full-length release will be Judas Priest's 1982 hit "Screaming For Vengeance," boasting such classic songs as "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" (already featured in Guitar Hero and SingStar Amped, according to MTV News' own Rhythm Track Finder) and "Electric Eye" (already featured in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s).

Each of the ten tracks on "Screaming For Vengeance" can be purchased individually for the standard price of $1.99 per track (160 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360), while the entire album can be bought for $14.99 (1200 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360).

For the full text of Harmonix and MTV Games' press release, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: our supporters continue to raise thought-provoking points...
   
2. EGO...trip: ...but as non-impartial observers, we'll let you judge our critics
   
3. EGO...trip: Discussion of MTV's race and games series? Things fall apart.
   
4. GET...a grip: what drum lessons have to teach the Rock Band aficionado
5. TOO...many MCs mechanics not enough mics game? BioShock, critiqued
   
6. SAM...& Max, under the microscope of a rampaging game designer 
7. RND...Sad songs say so much: the mournful ballad of Chris Matthews

1. EGO...trip: more bloggers, more eloquent defenses of the Level Up staff...
2. EGO...trip: ...while our take on black people in gaming comes under fire
3. NEE...d For Data: IGN's look at sales figures could use more numbers
4. RND...Is it better to burn out than fade away, or, where's The Pharcyde?

 A mock-up of the Kaplan SAT Prep DS, under development by Aspyr Media

Oh, Brain Age: what have you wrought?

Later today, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions (a division of Kaplan, which is in turn owned by Newsweek's own parent company, The Washington Post Company) will announce that it is partnering with Aspyr Media to develop an as-yet-untitled SAT test prep game for the Nintendo DS. Versions for Windows-based PCs and Macs are also in development. According to Aspyr co-founder Ted Staloch, Aspyr reached out to Kaplan Test Prep last summer to see if the two companies might be able to work together on a game that would hit the sweet spot of Brain Age fans and students studying for the SAT. "This is not a study break," Staloch told us last week during a phone interview. "This is a way to prepare for the test."

Staloch and Kaplan's director of pre-college programs Kristen Campbell were reticent to share many details, as the game is still early in development. Campbell did say that part of the appeal to Kaplan was the ability to reach young people through videogames, just as it has done via iTunes and manga. "The reality is that for a lot of students, the way they study has changed," says Campbell. "This is a great way to supplement our tutoring or classroom programs."

As the caption says, the image above is a mockup of what the game's menu will look like, as well as its main character. We asked Aspyr for more detail about the main character; here's what the publicist told us via email:

1. EGO...trip: As GTA IV's release draws near, What They Play gears up
   
2. EGO...trip: our reading of the Resident Evil trailer is still spawning debate...
3. EGO...trip: ...while allies stand beside us against the zombie hordes dissenters
   
4. MTV...the man behind the man behind the man behind the men behind Rock Band
5. HMM...the instigator of the "Are writers necessary?" debate returns for more
6. AMU...sement and other feelings: The Top Ten emotions evoked by games
7. S&M...Where will "masocore" fit in the new taxonomy of videogames?
8. GTA...Rockstar's No. 1 fan starting to sound "Misery"-like in his devotion
9. MAS...ter Chief's image crafted to not be a "reckless American cowboy"
   
10. RND...A very heartfelt appreciation of the man with the golden thumb
    

1. EGO...trip: In which we return to the embrace of MTV Multiplayer...
2. EGO...trip: ...and trigger the third rail of modern culture: r-a-c-e
3. EGO...trip: Ebony/and ivory/live together in perfect/harmony
4. RND...Two books worth reading in the wake of the "third rail" controversy
   

1. EGO...trip: MTV's black professionals in gaming series still drawing notice
2. HMM...An unscientific survey about parental attitudes to sex and violence
3. WHO...op that trick: former female pro boxer gets medieval on PS3 burglar's behind
   
4. RND...The path of the righteous lolcat is beset on all sides 

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: Who is this Adam Maxwell guy, and why the f--- is he saying that writers don't matter in videogames?

The Thinkers: Zach Schiff-Abrams

The Source: The Cut Scene

The Quote (from Zach Schiff-Abrams): As a film producer I have drawn and quartered many a writer so usually I leap at the chance to jump on any bandwagon that is founded on lynching the writing community. Unfortunately this retard doesn't know his ass from his elbow, so here's my 15 cents:

"When a writer sits down to build a story, they are usually building a plot." Here's what's inherently wrong with this moron's argument. Ask any self-respecting writer (and every f---ing last one of them motherf---ers are self-respecting) what they do when they sit down to build a story and they'll tell you the first thing (and the most important thing) they do is create characters. In fact, most good stories in any medium usually come from a landscape where the writer almost obsessively focuses on creating and developing characters in a vacuum that doesn't rely on any plot. There are no good f---ing plots, there are only interesting characters that inform a plot...

What I have been arguing for years upon years is that videogames desperately need more writing. And now we're finally at a level technologically speaking where we can actually integrate the creation of character into the very fabric of the gameplay experience. You still argue? You think GTA is a successful franchise?  Think how much more successful it would actually be if Alvin Sargent or Jonathan Lethem was taking seriously the creation of character in that world? Then you wouldn't have Fritzy writing about how videogames are challenging movies for the media dollar, then my nerdy friends, then there wouldn't be any more movies.

Instead you have this dweeb and unfortunately way too many of his kind running the videogame industry that think in way too small of a box.

The Reaction: We've been following Maxwell's blog since last year, which means we not only read his original post, but the two other posts he wrote on the subject here and here. The challenge with his series of posts on his topic is that the, ah, writing was not always as clear as it should have been.

To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click here. 

1. EGO...trip: Microsoft, Sony and the ESRB sit down with Level Up at Mi6
2. EGO...trip: Kotaku and the Level Up staff face off in Grand Theft Auto IV
3. HMM...from our lips to Media Molecule's ears? Only if the rumor is true
4. UMM...what does this news say about the PC Defence Force PCGA?
5. HOW...developers can improve videogame usability in five easy steps
6. UGH...What happens when Mario walks the squalid side of the street
7. RND...Ace versus Ice ends in misery for Level Up's beloved Cardinal

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: Gamers contain multitudes. Why doesn't our language reflect that?

The Thinker: Mitch Krpata

The Source: Insult Swordfighting

The Quote: The reason "hardcore" and "casual" fail as classifications for gamers is because each of those classifications contains contradictory meanings.

Essentially, when you call someone a hardcore gamer, you are saying nothing about what type of games they like to play, or the manner in which they like to play those games. You are simply saying that this guy seems to really like games. Is that helpful to anybody? If anything, it leads to the sorts of pissing matches that inevitably overwhelm online game discussion. That designation becomes a badge of honor to be defended instead of what it should be--a simple, objective term with no value judgments attached.

There's no reason a Tourist can't be "hardcore"--no reason he can't be the sort to simply rip through one game after another in search of unique experiences. No reason a Perfectionist can't be "casual," and simply try to master, say, Wii Carnival Games. A Wholesale Player may still want linear, narrative games like Okami, and a Premium Player might be getting his money's worth with quick sessions of the latest Tetris. Who in that group is the casual player? Who is the hardcore player?

So if there is no easy or quick way to combine these questions of taste and value, maybe that's a blessing in disguise. Maybe that means we can stop stereotyping ourselves and broaden the conversation. We gamers contain multitudes. It's time we realized it.

The Reaction: We thought we had made a genuine contribution to the never-ending discussion of videogames when we coined the term "hardcasual." But Krpata goes much, much further. In 11 brief, provocative posts collected under the heading "A New Taxonomy of Gamers," he eloquently argues that we should unpack the assumptions built into the overly broad terms "hardcore" and "casual." Instead, he says, we need to evaluate our tastes in videogames along multiple axes that are more precise, such as:

To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Notes of a non-native son, revisited and considered
2. EGO...trip: third on the list, but first in Next Generation's heart?
3. EGO..trip: In which we bask in the adoration of our hardcasual children
4. AND...another one gone, another one gone/Another one bites the dust
5. GLA...snost and perestroika, or, the reformation of Electronic Arts
6. RND...What would qualify as Stuff Level Up Likes, we wonder

At last year's Consumer Electronics Show, one of the more unusual gadgets that we saw was the Falcon game controller from Novint Technologies, which allows users to feel objects and interactions in a 3-D manner. We were intrigued by the device's potential--its unique approach to force feedback (explained here) let us experience the sensation of touching different surfaces and materials--but expressed a good deal of skepticism about it's chances in the marketplace. Why? Because while there had been a number of recent runaway successes in the alternative input category--SingStar's microphone, Buzz!'s buzzers, Guitar Hero's guitar and the Wii remote--the first three were built around what proved to be killer exclusive software, and the fourth additionally benefited from being included with each and every Wii sold. By contrast, the Falcon was essentially an after-market, would-be mouse replacement peripheral with no exclusive software; and as such, we had a difficult time imagining it breaking through.

Still, slow and steady wins the race. Last week, Novint and Electronic Arts exclusively revealed to us their agreement by which Novint will license several EA games, which Novint will then patch to support its Falcon peripheral.

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: It's time to destroy the "cult" of gamers--starting with the term "gamer"

The Thinker: Douglas Wilson, game developer

The Source: GameSetWatch

The Quote: The Church of Gamers is not only morally problematic; it also ends up working against innovation in the medium. Imagine, for example, how ridiculous it would be if all television watchers identified as their own "Tubers" subculture. It’s a humorous hypothetical precisely because a vast majority of first-world citizens watch television, from the romantics who tune in for soap operas and sports fans who catch game highlights over breakfast, to the sci-fi fans addicted to the latest Joss Whedon serial and insomniacs who watch old game show reruns.

To read the rest of this introductory installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Guilty as charged; dead to rights; caught red-handed; etc.
2. PUB...lishers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose--but your ecosystem.
3. ROM...Would you pay $500,000 for this old Atari 2600 cartridge?
4. SIN...ging the praises of SingStar: a look at the game's development pipeline
5. RND...We who are about to blog salute you, or, They shoot bloggers, don't they?

 Echochrome, developed by Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment

We're longstanding fans of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. We've gone hands-on with Grand Theft Auto IV--both single-player and multiplayer--and we desperately want to bring it home. And we can't wait to see how Cliffyb will put Unreal Engine 3's meat material simulator to use in Gears of War 2. But as of last E3, the 2008 game we've been looking forward to the most is Echochrome. Is it the austere art direction: black line art against a white backdrop that trails off into infinity? (Blame our clumsy resizing for the jaggies in the screenshot above; the game's image quality is pristine.) Is it the string-and-vocals melancholia of the game's classical music score? The hollow clip-clop sound of our marionette protagonist's footsteps? The deceptively simple puzzle-meets-platforming gameplay? Whatever it is, we were hooked instantly, and its appeal only increased after a limited hands-on session last fall.

We've had a near-final build in our possession since Friday and it's prompted some interesting observations, primarily around the following point: where will Echochrome fit into our videogame menu? Consider the following:

1. HOT...or Not, redux: gentlemen of color get their moment in the sun
2. HEH...this developer's critique of Rock Band sounds rather familiar
3. PHO...to finish? Amazon indicators show GTA IV 360 and PS3 neck and neck
4. RND...If you're looking to relocate, you may want to consult this map

 The Pixar film "Wall-E"... 

As reported on MTV Multiplayer (and confirmed by us), the North American release of the rumble-enabled Dualshock controller brings with it the (timely? untimely?) demise of the Sixaxis. "It'll no longer be offered after it's completely sold through at retail (likely by the summer time frame)," a Sony Computer Entertainment spokesperson told us via email. That seemed like a rather casual dismissal of a device once heralded as the "next generation" of input devices, so we've decided to honor the Sixaxis' passing...with one quote for each axis from its brief, troubled history. Sayonara, Sixaxis.

***

The Date: October 2006
The Man: Kaz Hirai, president, Sony Computer Entertainment
The Source: Kikizo
The Question: If the new Sony is less arrogant, where's our rumble?
The Quote: "The issue when we're talking about trying to have motion sensing as well as a vibration feature, is trying to isolate the vibration feature from the motion sensors. Is it technically feasible? Absolutely. But the other problem, or the balancing act that you need to do, is to be able to present the controller to the consumer at an affordable price. We have one controller in the box, but many consumers will want to go out and get an extra controller. And if we have to come up with technology - which you can technically do - to isolate the vibration from the sensing, if that means that the controllers are going to be so expensive, then we're doing the consumer a huge disservice by coming up with a controller that is not very affordable. So it's a balancing act that we need to do. And we felt that ultimately, the vibration feature, which is a feedback feature, as compared to the motion sensing which is an input functionality, when you compare the two, we decided that the input device or methodology is a lot more important that feedback, and that has been a strategic decision that we've made."

The Date: October 2006
The Man: Phil Harrison, former head of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios
The Source: ThreeSpeech via GI.biz
The Question: Any regrets? And why not have both gesture and rumble?
The Quote: "I think that the next generation interfaces that can be created built on Sixaxis motion sensitivity give tremendous gameplay benefits that far outweigh a reactive vibration function….[T]he decision that we've made to build in the Sixaxis functionality, and Bluetooth wireless, and great battery life, and all the other functionality that comes with it, far outweighs the chatter that we're getting on vibration. And, it's incredibly light! Just pick it up!"

To read the rest of our Verbatim selections, click on the link below.

 Craftworld, the 2-D prototype for LittleBigPlanet 

Two months ago, we used our second "Playing in the Dark' column for the U.K. magazine Edge, which appeared under the title "Halo 3.0: From Bungie's Lips to Phil Harrison's Ears," as a jumping off point to examine how LittleBigPlanet could become the ultimate 2-D gameplay creation tool for amateur console developers. Today, we explore how Media Molecule could extend the power of their underlying concept to PlayStation Portable, Web browsers and even mobile phones.

In a previous post, we revealed the developers' coy response when we asked them whether they had any future plans for Craftworld, the equally charming flat 2-D prototype which evolved into the 2.5-D game that is LittleBigPlanet. We also reported their explanation that the same physics engine that powered Craftworld was also driving LittleBigPlanet. This got us thinking about whether Craftworld could have a life beyond that of a cute demo. Obviously, as the flat implementation of LBP--so described because the graphics in Craftworld are 2-D, while LBP's are 3-D--Media Molecule's prototype could find a home on a slew of less-powerful platforms: mobile phones, Web browsers and, of course, Sony's PSP. Even the just-shy-of-ubiquitous PS2 could be a candidate. But something was still missing. Why not go one step further and create a shared description language among LBP and various versions of a commercially released Craftworld?

Here's how it would work.

 "300 patapon," by canecodesign on deviantART

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer) on Patapon, the Level Up staff struck first with our championing of the value of indirect control, feel and iconic design. Totilo largely sidestepped our talking points, preferring to focus on gamer guilt and control versus orchestration in games. For our second and final round, things get a bit more personal. We belligerently extol our superior taste in games; attack Patapon's leveling grind; and vociferously dispute Totilo's metaphoric interpretation of the PSP title's gameplay. Totilo, for his part, responds with a deceptively polite evisceration of our anti-grinding position--before charging that the last two Vs. Modes have been too chummy. Is he correct, or just dead wrong, as usual? Only you, Dear Reader, can make that call. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: Back to Patapon: is the grind an imperfection? I say yes. It seems like an easy way to pad out a game that otherwise, as designed, isn't very long. Now, it's true that I could go back to any open area to mine it for the resources I needed, but it was still grinding nonetheless. And I'm not as forgiving as you on this point because while the songs are pleasant and memorable, they weren't so good that I would let it slide....A much better solution would have been to let me "sell" my warriors back recover part or all of the ka-ching that I spent on them so that I could use spend it on  a better warrior. But in fairness to the designers--and to return to the suspension of disbelief point I just raised--they seem to want to make a point about the value of your individual troops. Each class of warrior can only contain so many troops; when you get the ingredients to make a better soldier, you first have to clear a slot in its respective class. And when you clear that slot, the Patapon warrior in it dies, in a manner suggesting that the air was removed from its body. (Not to mention that with the death of your warrior goes all the ka-ching and experience points you put into it.)

Stephen Totilo: When we curse a grind, we're cursing a game for forcing repetitive gameplay, to block advancement without this repetition. But aren't all games, by their very nature, rife with repetition? Isn't Super Mario Bros. just a lot of repeated hops. Isn't Halo just a few specific styles of engagement repeated and remixed for hours on end? Sure. The grind, however, earns scorn because it forces too much repetition. It crosses a line. It registers an excess. The repetition often becomes too much and turns into a grind once the game has forced the gamer to go backward, to perpetrate the game's initially un-offensively repetitive gameplay in levels they've already run through. Gameplay repetition is changed to gameplay grinding. And that's when it's time to get angry. Except: it's all subjective, isn't it? Where is that line between fun repetition and grinding? Why don't God of War games get accused of forcing a grind? Because they don't? Oh, surely, they do. They require collecting orbs to get powers, some of which you need to advance. Does God of War get off because they just don't do it forcefully enough that it's bothersome?

To read the Final Round of our exchange in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. HOT...or not? The 25 Hottest Men In Gaming, considered--and a pointed rebuttal
2. THR...owing down the gauntlet at "The Unethical Usage of Licenses" in games
3. WHO...will use this license ethically? Ubisoft? Activision? Electronic Arts?
   
4. WOW...The best April Fool's joke ever? If not, it's surely in the top ten percent
5. THE...circle of life: as one developer fades away, another studio is born
6. CIV...il war in the house of Take-Two: the various proxies differing opinions
7. HMM...A look at the bleak possible future of print reviewing for videogames
8. RND...I can has Cornershot? Or, a look at the cat that will not have you LOL-ing
   

1. EGO...trip: Like "Being John Malkovich," but infinitely more disturbing
2. EGO...trip: Our guest post on EA, T2 and the FTC makes some noise
3. F2P...DICE spreads the gospel of free-to-play gaming, heroically
4. THE...Hester Prynne of Xbox 360 Gamerscore faces the music television
   
5. RND...Rakim. KRS-ONE. The Notorious B.I.G. The SEO Rapper?