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.

 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.

Halo 3 cinematics storyboard

Microsoft, Bungie and Halo 3. As we all wait with baited breath to find out what will become of the once happy couple and their offspring--will the parents go the way of George and Martha, or are we talking Britney and K-Fed?--we've been wondering whether the Biggest Entertainment Day In History is enough to jumpstart progress on the stalled feature film adaptation of Halo. 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. Here's what he had to say about Halo's prospects as a movie.

Videogames are in the mainstream news again. Thankfully, this time the coverage is positive. Stories, ranging from the E Channel to the New York Times correctly identify the launch of Halo 3 as the largest, single day, financial event in entertainment history. This is absolutely true. But the articles fail to address how much larger. The retail vs. box office numbers show revenue for first day sales of Halo was about 13 percent higher than "Spider-Man 3," this year's biggest movie opening weekend. This is pretty cool. However, when you compare the bottom lines, it is beyond pretty cool. It is really f'ing cool and cannot even be touched by the movie business. When you consider the nearly 50 percent audience growth over Halo 2 despite a nearly 50 percent smaller installed console base, it is even more incredible. Even Steve Jobs has to be eyeing those margins.

Thanks to the evolution of entertainment industry reporting, we all know the size of weekend box office for every major film released. We know that "Spider-Man 3" had an opening weekend of $151,116,516 and a total gross of $336,530,303. Considering the average price of $6.58 for the film, roughly 23 million tickets were sold opening weekend, or, roughly 5 and a half times the number of Halo 3 purchasers. This would render Halo very uninteresting if the Halo consumer didn't spend a little more than 9 times as much on the product.

Despite all our knowledge, studio receipts are rarely, if ever reported. This is because receipts are not predetermined or set in stone. After each opening weekend, the studios negotiate their split of the revenue with the exhibitors. Usually, the studio gets a very large percentage of the opening weekend revenue, and the percentage declines over the life of the run. By the time the theaters' cut rivals the studios, the audience is small, and the studio replaces the film with a new one, once again securing the larger percentage.

We can assume Sony received 90 percent of the rental from the opening weekend for "Spider-Man 3." This would equate to return of $136,004,864. Relative to the gross national product of many countries that is a lot of money, but relative to the $270 million production cost (that's if we accept Sony's number; some say it is well over $300 million) and $100 million plus of marketing, they have a long way to go before the investment is recouped. It is even longer when you consider the first-dollar gross participants who get a piece of the revenue even before the studio recoups. Sure, this is the launch of a 20 + year equity, and sure there are trailing revenue streams, but those revenue streams are now factored in to support the production cost. These ancillary revenue streams are no longer a windfall.

Now take a look at Halo 3.

A character render of the "Bouncer" Big Daddy from BioShock

To our everlasting shame, the Level Up blog lacks working comments, an oversight that will be rectified with the impending relaunch of Newsweek.com. Nevertheless, we do occasionally get feedback from our readers. Nearly two weeks ago, we received an email from Adam Tierney, a director at the Valencia-based handheld developer WayForward, whose forthcoming games include the lavishly praised DS games Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck and Contra 4. He'd read our September 18th post "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See, Or, the Question of Whether Games Are Art, Revisited," in which we challenged certain assertions made about the art-ness of videogames made by our sister company's book columnist, Washington Post critic Michael Dirda, and wanted to share his own unique experience from having played the game. Upon reading Tierney's moving description of the relationship that he forged with one of the Big Daddy boss characters in BioShock, we promptly secured his permission to publish his email so that you could read it as well. Enjoy.

Like so much of the gaming world, I fell in love with Bioshock and haven't felt as emotionally pulled into a game since Tim Schafer's Grim Fandango on the PC. In regard to Michael Dirda's notion that games may approach art when they become able to depress their players, Bioshock depressed me deeply and in a way that I think many players might not have encountered.

As soon as I earned the Hypnotize Big Daddy Plasmid, I got into the habit of having a Big Daddy follow me around like a watchdog, in spite of the constant finger-numbing vibration. Each time the Big Daddy would lose the spell I placed on him, I'd re-Plasmid him and keep going. On one particular level, I had a Big Daddy who followed me endlessly, tearing through splicers and even other Big Daddies, always looking out for my character and defending me. I began to feel a real attachment to him. Over our adventures he became war-torn and began losing his health, especially after battling a Houdini splicer and getting charred from head to toe, but my Big Daddy still continued to truck on even after I thought he was as good as dead.

After 45-minutes of teamwork, we reached the level objective: the nitroglycerin behind the glass case. I looked over at my Big Daddy, smoking and leaking, looking like he only had about one hit point left in him, but still snapping to his ready stance every time I took a step. It broke my heart, so I lifted a shotgun to his head, deciding I'd rather take him out than have some cheap splicer do it. I realize this sounds silly and overly dramatic, as I did even then, but the pathos of the moment and what his character had become to me still pulled me into that emotional state.

I couldn't pull the trigger though. Instead, I just ran out of the room, preferring to leave my Big Daddy behind and fight the rest of the battle myself. I ended up in an area where a bunch of splicers began to attack me, and was on the verge of death, when I heard and felt a rumbling: it was my Big Daddy, charging into the scene and dispensing of the threat. I obviously know how games are made, so I realize the Big Daddy's delayed entrance was just a matter of him having more trouble navigating the level than I did, but in my mind and the context of the story (at least my game's story) he came to my rescue just when I needed him, in spite of being battered and nearly dead, and in spite of my having abandoned him. The developers couldn't have scripted a more heartfelt reunion.

My Big Daddy fought for me a short while longer, then died just before I reached Andrew Ryan. That Ryan’s final wave of attackers had killed my protector fueled my hatred for him, driving me to seek vengeance in a way that Atlus and his family’s plight never had.

In Part I of his two-part essay for Outsourced, Midway Home Entertainment chief marketing officer Steve Allison firmly disputed the notion that videogame marketing and PR needs to change. Instead, he pointed the finger squarely at the developers themselves, and listing ways in which a game's concept and timing could stand to be improved. In the second and final part of his essay, Allison explains why execution is just third on his list of the most important things a developer must focus on--and explains why more game creators should learn the art of the vertical slice--as he finishes up his answer to Level Up's question "How must videogame developers change in order to create bigger hits?"

3. Execution is Only The Third Most Important Factor In A Game's Success. Yes, Third.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to make great games. Nor does it mean that a great concept gives developers the license to make a crappy game. It simply means that execution alone is no guarantee of commercial success. The developers who understand this will thrive in the next generation home console business. The ones who don't will fall victim to the realities of the shifting marketplace.

The average reader of this piece, especially one working in the gaming business will say, "Wait a minute. A great game whose review scores average 90 or higher can ship when it's done and it'll still be a great game." Or they'll say, "Whatever the concept may be, a great title is all about the game mechanics." Unfortunately, this is not true.

A great game is one that is a commercial success. Period.

Consumers review games with their wallet, and you don't get to sell them a million units at full price unless a bunch of people love your work--especially at $59 a pop. Sure, your craftsmanship may be amazing. But if your concept is not a powerful and relevant male fantasy, executed in a timely fashion, at a level that delivers on the promise of your core idea, you've probably just delivered the videogame equivalent of an art house film.

An art house game certainly proves that your development team is really talented but it also demonstrates you're really not in tune with the audience.

On March 20^th, we kicked off our Outsourced series of guest essays with a post by Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack, who argued that the marketing and PR of videogames was in desperate need of radical change. Since then, Dyack has continued to press his point in interviews, message boards and other forums. But since Dyack was in effect telling marketers how they should do their jobs, we wondered, what advice would a marketer give developers to improve themselves?

To find out, we approached Steve Allison, senior vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer for Midway Home Entertainment. He's been at Midway since 2003, but we first met Allison when he was serving as Atari's vice president of marketing and business development, a position he held from December 2001 to December 2003 (he joined Atari in 1999, when it was still called Infogrames.) We've had a number of frank discussions with Allison about all things videogame, and we're pleased as punch that he's agreed to share his thoughts with us. Here, then, is his answer to Level Up's question "How must developers change in order to better create videogames that sell?"

In the past several weeks there has been some interesting banter about changing the way games are marketed as we enter the next generation, particularly when it comes to new IP [intellectual property.] But is this really the case? According to our numbers, the actual success rate of new IP over the past four years is just seven percent. In other words, 93 percent of new IP fails in the marketplace. So while the 90-plus review scores and armfuls of awards create the perception that titles like Psychonauts, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami and other great pieces of work were big successes, the truth is that they were big financial disappointments and money losers.

The call for a change in marketing has come primarily from a few developers who have seen their games passed over by the marketplace or by their competitors and decided to reboot their projects a couple of times. Yet I've never seen a highly anticipated game with a truly powerful concept hurt by a product delay. I've been through a few with the Unreal Tournament franchise and the launch of Neverwinter Nights. These were truly anticipated releases that were destined to be big whenever they shipped and have publicity all along the way however long it took. But let's face it: not all games are as highly anticipated as these. If a game loses its momentum because of delays it will be because the concept itself is weak, or because bad timing has made the product either less relevant or allowed a rival developer to get to market first with a similar idea.

So with a success rate of less than 10 percent for new IP, it is not the way we market and launch games that needs revisiting in the next generation. No, it is development that needs reflection, refinement and change.