Can You Name the Video Game Systems (Released in the U.S.)?

As someone who studies video game history, the test really kicked my ass. Under the cut (or huge spoiler line) are my analysis of my results, but a few tips. The auto-correction is very good and will take most acronyms as well as the official titles. So if it’s not firing off as correct, you are either wrong or need to be more specific. “Sega” alone doesn’t cut it. For reference, I got 25/68 and kicking my self for forgetting three of them.

OMGLOLBBQ SPOILERS BELOW!

I thought about putting this above the spoiler, but it would give away answers. The Game & Watch is a bit contradictory with the ’single game system’ rule. G&W were a series of single game systems; No cartridges replacing games. There’s also things missing like Leapfrog systems which fit the definition. Just because the target audience is different doesn’t make it not a console system.

The three I bonked myself in the head for forgetting: Dreamcast, PSP, and 3DO.

The rest of what I missed were either me forgetting the exact number for the Atari systems, forgetting the word ‘Odyssey’ for the Magnovox systems, me not realizing that the Sega Master Systems were indeed released in the US, N-Gage was marketed as a game system, and forgetting to list out things that are currently on the Virtual Console for the Wii. Some of the rest of the entries are systems I never read about or were obscure enough that I never even heard of!

Needless to say, it’s time for me to do some reading on a few of these systems. Like the Nomad for example or the Mega Duck, if only for the name!

“We are not here to compete with the games industry,” he says. “We are not here for people to come and make a game in a less-expensive manner utilizing equipment and software that has student licenses.”

“Just as importantly, we are not equipped to properly firewall our projects in the sense that we really don’t know legally speaking how many or which students created which games. We don’t know whether they received input from other students who have not been credited.”

This statement really rubbed me the wrong way on a few levels. The academic institution is skipping an extremely teachable moment by not incorporating IP rights and attribution of work. Will mistakes be made? Very much so. This is an educational institution and mistakes are part of the learning process. Avoiding the issue doesn’t make the issue go away, only defred for the student post-graduation. I can’t see how a student can be prepared to work in a field of intelectual property without understanding the basic law and practice of IP.

The counterpoint is the position is schools should teach the use and practice of tools and the IP should be left for law students. While I’m not claiming that each student should be prepared for entering a pre-law program, IP practice is the core integral part of being a professional artist. You don’t have to fully agree with the practices, but knowing the basics of how business is conducted seperates the professionals from the hobbyists. By denying students how to run the business, DigiPen seems limit student’s ability to become involved with being their own independent participants of this art form. The DigiPen curriculum seems to make worker bees for the game industry, rather than practicianers of interactive entertainment.

Wanting to work for a company is certainly a good choice to make in a career. Hell, that’s the choice I made for myself in my career. I was afforded that choice from my curriculum at Emerson College, rather than forced to that choice as DigiPen’s IP policy states. My education allowed me the choice to either start my own studio or incorporate myself into an existing studio. In either case, I was prepared to be an active and educated individual, rather than one who simply followed orders.

This was afforded to me though the shared distribution policy. While I own the IP rights to Antidote and can do pretty much what I want with the thesis (with some exceptions of commercial software I used), Emerson College has shared publication rights to showcase Antidote. I can do whatever I want with the game, so long as Emerson can show the piece. This way, any IP claims are rested on me, the student. Not the college. Emerson’s not the only insitution with this policy, but it’s also one of the reasons why I chouse to go to Emerson.

All said, the best policy that meets everyone’s needs is one that passes this test:

Can the student choose to distribute the IP under a Creative Commons license?

I think it’s very important for an academic institution to be able to showcase all work its students submit in their educational career. This is how an academic institution can illustrate the work done at the school for many purposes including enrollment and more importantly academic performance. What’s also important is respect for the students’ work. A policy that divorces the rights away from a student is simply insulting to the student.

Notice that I use the word ‘choose’ and not require. For DigiPen, not only are students not allowed to do a traditional copyright IP license, but they can not choose a copyleft IP license either. In fact, the DigiPen policy prevents one from using any copyleft as DigiPen owns everything. Any sharing is forbidden. There’s simply no choice in the matter. Having the choice of copyleft means that right or left versions can be imployed. Even if the school requires sharing of distribtuion rights, any IP license can be picked.

I do hope this topic gets more attention as it is a very serious aspect of an education in a creative field. Students should know these topics as it is apart of their careers. DigiPen and other schools seem to avoid these topics for the sake of avoiding teaching. This can not be tolerated by anyone.

While there are a small assortment of titles I can point to, the largest influence in my career as a game developer and artist is Myst. Now that I am employed as a developer at Telltale Games, I wish Cyan Worlds a happy 15th anniversary of their landmark title. Thank you for all of your quality work though the years and inspiring me as an artist.

Mini History Lesson

While 7th Guest was released prior to Myst, 7th Guest was highly restricted due to adult content. I remember purchasing a Packard Bell which included 7th Guest, but wrapped in paper marked “ADULTS ONLY” before revealing what was inside. Myst on the other hand was all ages in the sense that any age can enjoy the title, not dumbed down for children nor exclusive to adults.

Myst really was the killer app for optical disks for data. While there were certainly CD-ROMs prior, they were mostly storing large amounts of data and the occasional postage stamp of video and audio.¹ Or (as the case of 7th Guest) restrictive in target audience. Myst was the first widely distributed entertainment product that fully utilized the space to make an enriched experience not emulated on other media.

It was also a time where a new generation of computers as multimedia centers were available. However, being able to watch non-interactive video was not as attractive on the computer when you have a TV and VCR. Myst was a new experience entirely, so consumers wanting a new computer would want their standard word processing and spreadsheet work, but also a computer that ‘played that Myst game’. Thus CD-ROM drives were quickly became a standard issue on a computer. The rest trickled down from there.

While a case could be made that something else may have come along, Myst was the app that got optical disk drives standard in all computers, which lead to DVD as well.

¹ Yes, Myst’s video was also postage stamp size, but it was embedded into full screen of photo, not a small window in the Windows UI. Thus the framing of content was full-screen.

Before I continue, I want to make extremely clear that I do not wish anything bad to Shigeru San. As you’ll read, this is a platform for me to talk about a larger context with a theoretical concept using him as a test case.

In the dream, I was an upper management of a video game history museum (a concept I covered before) which was prepared in the sense of being able to act quickly when a high-profile designer passes away. First there was a press conference, having timing it for after Nintendo of America made their statement. I was presenting the main statement by quickly reviewing the many accomplishments Miyamoto had done in his life time. While he is one of Japan’s greatest sons, he really is one of humanities’ greatest assets. This was followed by the museum having a memorial service and special visitations. A monument at the museum, already erected in his honor with a prior event, would become the focus point for visitors to pay their respects. The museum itself would be open, but in order to provide the context of Miyamoto’s work the admission would be waived for two days. In addition, three days there will be someone standing watch over the monument and public visitation at any time.

The takeaway I have from this dream is what would happen now if one of the great pioneers of our industry were to pass away. For the amount of contribution certain individuals have made to the art form, I worry that their work doesn’t match the recognition they have made. Miyamoto has the benefit of representation from Nintendo, but what about Nolan Bushnell, Tim Schafer, and anyone with a Lifetime Achievement award?

What I’m trying to get at is the differences of when a high-profile artist of the entertainment field passes away and the differences between media. Movies, television, music and to a slightly lesser extent with books work within each other so that daily entertainment programs and news programs provide context to each other. Interactive entertainment is mostly avoided in a positive context as the impression video games are stealing audience away. Course, ignoring the situation doesn’t help matters. My aims are to make the art form I chose not loose it’s relevance to society. Specifically, equate the public perception of the work to the size of the audience. It’s not the death of the individual that we can make this case, but it’s the honoring of a person’s work that we can see where the art form has made an impact.

My background in the entertainment business is in performing art; Theatre. Creating art directly in front of a live audience give the instant feedback of an audience. With interactive entertainment, there are no opening nights. No red carpet screenings. A file is uploaded to a server, a variable switched, and eventually some people roll in with comments on forums. While I certainly welcome and value the feedback on any form and appreciate our world-wide release in an instant, I still long for the face to face interaction with the audience. These conventions are the few places where I can get that interaction.

Most of the setbacks about the conference are do to my lack of planning. This trip was very last moment for me and I will never do again. While I very much appreciated the hospitality I was given, I will only do PAX again while staying at a hotel within walking distance. I missed out on a lot of things as I carried my day’s worth of stuff and tied to the Seattle bus system. PAX runs till 2am, but the last bus is at 1am. Not to mention being able to drop stuff off at the hotel and change would have helped a lot. And while I had a few friends on site, they were not as available to enjoy the conference with. Rob from Orange Lounge Radio was working as a media contact, and Kate had her own things going most of the time. I did get to spend some time with them at the conference, and found others as the weekend progressed, but more would be more.

The big conference-only complaint I have was crowd management. I felt there were lines for something that shouldn’t be a line, and other high-profile events that should have been managed better. The biggest culprit was the line to get into the expo. Attendees are encouraged to wait in line for the 10am opening of the expo floor. Not an event such as a keynote or performance, just the expo floor. The reason? Armbands for the 8pm concert. Frankly, I can’t understand the logic of having people show up early to an all-day event. I’d rather they encourage people going for the expo floor to show up starting shortly before 10am. And the evening’s concert you want the armband? You can get in without them without problem, negating the need to line up for the expo. This is getting worked on, but it was a confusing decision in the first place.

I’ll be writing some specific things about the conference in the next few days. Right now I needed to get out the overview and acknowledge I attend and arrived home safely. You can also take a look at the photos I took while there. Here’s a sample:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_seg/

1) I moved!

I went from living in the North Bay where I was close to work but very far away from civilization, to living in the East Bay. Here the commute to work is longer by 10 minites, but it’s a trafic-less ride. My place is also much bigger and accomidating to guests, not to mention actually on public transportation.

2) Vacation!

Finally took a vacation after 15 months working. Traveled back to Boston and NYC to hang out with friends in both areas. While my lappy broke on vacation, I was still able to hit the reset button for myself and come back fresh.

3) My Lappy Broke

My PowerBook G4 Laptop bit the dust and is out of warrentee. While I still have my two desktops, I’m not able to remotely write on the thing. For the interested, I’m getting the ‘bad RAM’ post error where the laptop beeps three short beeps when attempting to turn on.

I have been in the market for a new laptop as I need to get on the x86 Mac bandwagon, but was waiting for the next revisions of laptops to come out. Luckially the rumor mills seem to point to a laptop update in 3-5 weeks from now. When they do come out, I’ll be deciding between the newest hottness or a referbished which will be much cheeper.

4) Releases!

On Monday, we will be releasing the first epsidoe of Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People for both Windows and WiiWare. It’s totally awesome and will be a great relief to finally start the season.

Still getting a bit settled in the new place. Once I do I’ll be posting much more. Got a few topics I’ve been simmering about for a while and want to share sometime soon.

I’m amazed at how good this is done. Nice to see some creative writing and simple-yet-effective Flash use. Not to mention how this sells the marketing firm’s services.

Before I continue, here’s a little review of recent weeks of highly publicized public gaming projects and research grants.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced the first round of recipients in their Health Games Research Project. Over $2 million to various institutions focusing on using video games for public health research. Some of these projects are research-only projects while others are focused on games for public consumption. For you NPR listeners, you may have heard their sponsorship announced for the past few months.

At Games for Change conference in NYC, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her collaboration with Arizona State University with a game called Our Courts. It’s a piece that addresses the lack of knowledge of the American judicial system.

It is clear that there are existing venues of funding for public works of games. I can’t see how any foundation would say no to a well proposed video game project that fits their goals. I wish developers would take more interest in pursuing these grants. However, there’s a common thread among all of these projects that I think a CPM would will the need: Publishing Services.

Publishing and distribution of a title is not as easy. Even with titles that are free to play for a consumer via the Internet, the marketing of your game and distribution is wildly crazy. And don’t get me started on console development! This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for a grant institution to make a successful marketing campaign for a project, but right now that kind of effort needs to be invested per project. There is no central body that focus attention on distribution of public interactive media. With an organization that specializes in publishing services, the publishing line items can be assigned to a different grant institution, rather than demanding more costs to pay a third party for publishing.

Enter the CPM. While I would hope for a grand-giving wing of the organization, the primary role would be publishing services. This would be the minimum involvement for a title included in the CPM portfolio and include:

• Infrastructure investments (bandwidth, hosting solutions, etc)
• Quality Assurance
• Marketing of titles
• Customer Support / Troubleshooting
• Console publisher relations & console port development.

The CPM would have a goal of building a reputation as a solid venue of interactive content, just as NPR and PBS do with their content. Instead of building a marketing campaign from the ground up per title, the network reduces the marketing development for any new title. Using Our Courts as an example, the development from Arizona State and et all are paid for. The CPM’s roll can range up the web server architecture, pays the bandwidth bills, etc. In addition, the marketing wing includes Our Courts as apart of the CPM network. First-tier support handled by CPM, which is a huge reduction of burden on the developer!

Then there’s taking the project further to other venues. It would be great to see Our Courts on consoles using the exiting digital distribution channels for each console. Sadly, there’s no way a publicly funded institution can effectively launch such a plan and effectively negotiate with any one or more console manufacture for a freely distributable title. CPM would help to create a relationship with the big three and help to bridge the development and distribution gaps between. But that’s another post for another time

I’m actually lucky to play though all of the WiiWare games today (except My Life as a King) today. Checking the competition, I realize that we don’t have competition. Not in the perspective of quality judgments, but for the fact that each of the titles released on WiiWare are very different from each other. There is something different for a lot of different people, which is about what one would hope from a service launch.

The Wired Game|Life Blog does a good job outlining all the launch titles, now with impressions of each title. But if you insist, here’s my quick review of the titles:

FFCC: My Life As a King
I abstain since this was the one title I did not play today.

Pop
I feel kinda torn with this title as I don’t hate it, but don’t think it’s worth $7. You pop bubbles, and it gets fun for a time being. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but with Defend Your Castle at $5, Pop just seems too much for little return.

Defend Your Castle
While I hate to admit cost as a factor, the value of this title is tied to it’s price. The group play and pure loony of the title makes this a rewarding game. When set to normal, it starts out VERY slow just to make sure you have the mechanics and you rank up on points to spend. But once it gets insane… it’s fun. Well worth the $5 and great for one-player and multiplayer. It’s also very easy to add on players while you’re playing; The difficulty will adjust as more players join/leave.

LostWinds
This is simply a must-buy in my book. It looks and sounds beautiful, plays great with the wind mechanic, and leaves you feeling fully rewarded when playing. Don’t be put off by people saying it’s too short; This is a quality game and worth the $10. Frontier Developments, great job!

V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack

It’s Blackjack and that’s about it. Of all the launch titles, this is the simplest title (yes, more so than Pop). You play blackjack and that’s about it. If you really love blackjack and like to play it on your Wii, then by all means. It’s not worth $7 to me, but others may see it differently. I hope this was just the first step in seeing more WiiWare titles from High Voltage Studios. Considering that their website doesn’t even mention it on their games list, I’m thinking this was just a first-run WiiWare title with more in the future. At least I hope.

TV Show King

I agree with Chris Kohler of Wired that the Wii is surprisingly devoid of trivia titles, so it’s great to see Gameloft make the first attempt. If you have friends that come over and play with you on your Wii, this is a good game to get. While the game mechanics of the Wheel could have been better, the rest of the game is great with groups. It is $10, but if you plan on having friends over, it’s worth the purchase.

As an aside to TV Show King: There are people asking the questions about expansion packs to questions beyond the initial 3,000. I have no idea or any inside information at all, but I will say that Nintendo requires titles selling DLC content to notify up-front, which this title doesn’t. Assume you get only what you paid for now.

PS: I hope Jellyvision realizes they need to partner with a studio to make You Don’t Know Jack on WiiWare. Unless they have already and it’s too early to talk about it.

Wired Blogs: Games | Gaming, Real Violence Trends Tracked, Charted

It’s easy to claim that gaming violence has no correlation with real world violence, but those arguments are a bit hollow if you can’t provide data to corroborate; or even better, a fancy line graph.

The graph makes no direct claims towards a relationship between real world and gaming violence, though it’s interesting to see an inversely proportional trend of violent gaming releases and incidents of real crime.

For those doubting the graph’s figures, have a look at the data on which it was based: a relatively recent survey of national violent crime rates published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

We have to be very careful with how we state this information.

While it’s easy to jump to the conclusion, these facts can not prove that violent video games cause a REDUCTION of violent crimes. There are simply way to many factors at play to make this claim. This would be a separate set of studies to determine what the real factors are and even then may never be truly ’solved’.

What this information does say is that claims of increases of violent crime over time are inherently false, regardless of what is being pointed to. We can safely state that violent video games have not increased violent crime at a national level for the reason that there isn’t an increase of violent crime to begin with.

Obviously there are more complexities in the situation to say that any one factor is the deciding factor. But isn’t that the problem? There are certain lawmakers point to violent video games as a reason seem to be interested in investing time and money on appearances that they are solving existing social problems. Obviously these resources would be better spent investing in long-term solutions, but these solutions are not easily communicated to a voter.

Here’s a title idea for anyone to take on. Interactive entertainment is a very strong and powerful media that can make the depth of a subject matter more accessible to an audience. As SimCity provides accessible depth of urban planning and zoning, perhaps a title exploring social and economics to better illustrate the complexities of violent crime and related social woes would help create a better informed society. If you do this, or even address a microcosm of this situation, people will want you to work for them and you can pretty much ask for any grants to do similar work. No need to wait for me to approve the idea, just go out, do it, and do it well!

Editor’s Note: Hosting the image locally as to not leach bandwidth.

Sam & Max on the Wii
On April 3rd, Telltale Games announced that Sam & Max Season One will be a disc based Wii game, set for release sometime in the Fall. I was even featured on the blog post holding a Wii Remote:

We spent quite of bit of time cleaning up that room, especially all of our retail consoles. We didn’t want people to think that just because we had a PS2 in our media room, that we would release for the PS2 (which we are not doing). As you can see from the photo though, we forgot the PS2 controller right next to the TV. :/

I mention this because it’s a interesting history between Sam & Max on the Wii and me. Back in Aug 2006, a few of the various staff at Telltale were mentioning how point & click games, including Sam & Max, would be great for the Wii. No plans to do so, just that the idea of going to the platform would be nifty. Obviously this lead people to think Telltale was actively developing for the Wii. This rumor propagated. Emily decided to make a post about it to curb the rumor and set facts straight and state while it’s a desire, they need Nintendo’s support to make it happen. A link to Nintendo’s contact page was made. When I saw this post, I wrote up a form letter for people to use. About 3 hours later, Emily updated the post saying Nintendo contacted Telltale and to stop sending e-mails.

Between that time and now, Telltale created a Wii game… for CSI: Hard Evidence. The development of the Wii port was the entry way to working with WiiWare (read on) and the Sam & Max port. Now we’re public about the development of the Wii port and I’m apart of the team making it happen. Funny how these things come full-circle. While I certainly aimed to be working in the industry (or attending grad school at USC) by now, I wouldn’t dream that I’d be working on that port. Well, I did dream of it, but actually I wouldn’t think I’d be actually working on it for reals. Let along being pictured in the press release announcing the Wii port.

Life is nifty.

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People (SBCG4AP)

Yup, working on the Strong Bad game! It will be for WiiWare and later Windows with five episodes. We had a big work push for two week running up to the announcement so we would have a strong showing and demo running for Nintendo’s media showing. Not a crunch time, but a lot of effort was put into making something showable for the press. Not much else I can add but for what’s already been said between the press releases and the website for the game. As thing progress on I’ll be sure to add my thoughts in.

Your Lappy Explode

The final, and most significant reason for not LJ posting is a very fundamental reason. My PowerBook G4 broke hard. Thu April 10th, just as the press was going apeshit about SBCG4AP, my lappy gave what I call a CLI Kernel Panic. “Normal” Kernel panics in OS X have a multi-language and clean message asking the user to restart the computer. The problems I were having were so bad, that it was showing up command line information, forgoing the ‘pretty’ message:

This photo was with my attempt to run Disk Utility on the lappy, which was my sign to give up a normal repair. Booked an appointment at my local Apple Store and spent the night attempting to back up my data since my last backup in late Jan. Lucky for me, my AppleCare is set to expire 2.5 months from now, so I see this as a final support pass for the computer.

Got the laptop back on Tuesday with a review of the damages and repairs (all for free). First, the hard drive was gone and replaced with a working one. Considering my laptop has been running almost non-stop for 2.8 years, I’m surprised the drive lasted this long. Second, they replaced the motherboard but didn’t state the problems why. Lastly, the tech said that my third-party RAM chip was broken and provided a new 512mb RAM stick. I did try the old stick again, and the resulting crash lead me to believe the tech told the truth. After ordering a new 1GB RAM from NewEgg, I was still getting a few problems. After doing a reinstall of the OS, things are back to normal. The whole situation caused me to loose a few iTunes songs, and all my saved RSS feeds. Otherwise I’m doing good with my laptop. Besides the shaky reinstall of Mac OS X, I’m very happy with the service from the AppleCare.

I actually plan on getting a new Apple laptop so I can ride the Intel Apple bandwagon. My plans are to give my current Powerbook to my father when I’m done with it, so it’s kinda a good thing that this computer went through an Apple support pass. It’s a good computer, but I want to work on iPhone apps and be able to do work stuff using Windows-only tools. Defiantly a MacBook Pro 15″ as I need a real graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT @ 512mb). Anyone willing to offer a good deal on a new one?

Closing Thoughts

I decided to try something a bit more personal with this post than sticking only to deep subjects. Not to diminish the topics, but an effort to put a bit more personality to this blog. Thoughts?

That particular day I visited the History Museum, a demonstration of the PDP-1 was being held twice that day. I admit that while I knew this was an important device, I was murky at the time as to it’s exact history. Going to the demonstration made me hurt myself for forgetting. The PDP-1 was the first ‘personal’ computer in the sense that one person could operate the machine rather than a team of computer engineers. This paved the way for the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club to make key software in computer history, including Spacewar!

What made this even more special was not just the presence of a working PDP-1, but that one could actually play Spacewar!, on the original hardware. While the control box was a modern fabrication (the original used telephone key switches), the controls were connected to the PDP-1 directly and used the PDP-1’s screen to play. That’s powerful for telling a historic narrative.

All of this leads me to an idea and/or wish I’ve had for some time:

I want to preserve this historical artifacts of this industry.
I want more than just a book to tell me these things (great book, want more).
I want to make sure every game on every platform can be played.
I want to make sure the story of developing these titles are told and not lost.

I want a computer and console game history museum.

Obviously this is the start of my thoughts on the subject, but expect more when I finally get around to making more posts…

Myst Online: Uru Live Season 2 Status

Hi Everybody,

I have some news that some of you have probably not been looking forward to. GameTap has decided to discontinue the operation of Myst Online: Uru Live.

< SNIP >

Ricardo Sanchez
VP of Content and Creative Director for GameTap

I’m upset that the eight year journey has come to a close, but I also think that it’s time for the experiment to come to a rest. Uru was a needed and welcomed experiment in a MMO based narrative, not on combat. The goal was not to level up or defeat the baddie with spells and swords, but to progress and the story line. From this, a very strong and tight-nit group believed intensely in the project and the community they built.

History of Uru

My journey with Uru started when the project was called MUDPIE. This was back in 1999 when the Myst fan site RivenGuild was still very much alive. The follow up to Myst and Riven, Cyan Worlds set out to anticipate the saturation of broadband internet services and release a MMO. The idea comes from people wanting to share the adventuring of worlds with others. Cyan wanted to capitalize this by providing a platform to explore with others together. In addition, the online distribution model would provide Cyan the means of distributing new content without the need of making a full boxed game.

In the fall of 2003, I was invited to participate in the beta test of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The title was being published by UbiSoft who obtained publishing rights of the Myst catalogue at the time. This would also be Ubi’s first venture into an MMO. As a huge Myst fan and working towards a career in this industry, it was an honer to be included. I tried to give as much feedback as I could, especially mixed with my college work. For years I have read about the places in the novels, and now I was experiencing them and contributing to one of the development companies I would give most anything to work for.

With out going into much of the details, the release wasn’t the best of releases. Ubisoft wasn’t sure about selling an online only game and forced Cyan to make the box an off-line version with the online component an add on. This would have been fine, but the process of getting to the online component, albeit free, was a complicated mess of invites, sign up procedures (yes, plural), and maybe then you’ll be able to play online. While the start was meant to give a free start of online capabilities and then later start charging, there weren’t enough people who bought the game that knew about the online capabilities, let alone pay for them. In February of 2004, the whole project was canceled and two expansion packs were released using already developed content.

But as the franchise states: The ending has not yet been written. In August of 2004, Cyan released the server code for free to anyone willing to host a server. While users had to pay a fee to obtain a user account, this kept the community going. I didn’t participate in this but I kept an eye on things. Suddenly in Feb 2006, Cyan revived the project by allowing others to join in on the public services thought an invite system. A new funder was there, sure, but who? The speculation was on GameTap. In May of that year GameTap announced they were going to restart Uru along with the news that Sam & Max would start as episodic. Basically, the single best press release ever.

The magnitude of this is great. A project, dead as a doornail, is revived due to fans keeping up the fight. I really can’t recall any other situation like this besides MUDs. Again, I was asked to beta test Uru and gladly did.

The GameTap release had a slow trickle of content drops that were kinda random. Eventually Cyan borrowed a page from us at Telltale and took an episodic route where a plot line would happen one week in a month and a content drop occurring at the end of that week to last the month. However, this reduced the gameplay to reading on various websites what was going on in the cavern than actually experiencing events in the cavern.

The Project Itself

The project was not without it’s faults. Narrative based MMOs create a huge design problem: Provide enough narrative fuel to feed the beast. With a traditional MMORPG, once you have the combat structure, the villains to defeat are more-or-less drop-in. Not to mention extremely reusable. For a narrative, a lot of work goes into building assets with an limited reusable value and at times a very small audience. When content came down the pipe for users, it was great stuff! Sadly it didn’t happen very often if at all during the GameTap run.

The other fault were on the implantation of the game itself. While the control of your character was pretty OK, the other outside functions were required a manual at best. All communication, picture taking, and other functions were placed on an ‘device’ called a KI. Some in the community have argued that figuring out the KI was a puzzle. That may be fine for a single-player game you buy at a store. For a business model that needs new users to approach and stay interested, that’s a failure. Incorporating other users to share in the exploration? The very reason for the project? A confusing mess. To their credit, the community was extremely helpful to new users. These were the nicest people on the whole Internet! It simply wasn’t enough.

Wrapping Up

At the end of the day, there were unfortunate design choices made back in the early days of development. These issues couldn’t be fixed for the GameTap release. With the fact that the Cyan studio development cycle as the slowest in the industry, there simply wasn’t a good way for these design changes to occur. This is why I’m not angry at GameTap’s decision. It’s simply time.

What I do hope for the coming months are few things. I hope Cyan will release the server code again, but let the community handle usership on their own. I hope we have a really comprehensive postmortem. One that covers every single thing. In all, there are a lot of lessons to learn in all the years. Lots of things went right, lots of things went wrong, all of which are valuable material to learn from.

On a personal note, Uru has always been with my own work in getting into this industry. Cyan was one of two companies I wanted to work for, and now I’m working at the other one. In a way it closes a chapter for me. My development period for this industry is past it’s first chapter.

So long Uru; Thanks for all the fish.

When television and radio started, different countries took different choices in how the airwaves would be regulated. In England, taxes are levied on all radios and television sets to fund programming. Some countries have all media run directly by the state. In the US, a free market economy was formulated to let market take charge of content generation; A commercial system. But with the commercial system, there was a call for providing content that wasn’t commercially sustainable but culturally important. Content of instructional, educational, and cultural significance that it’s commercially viable but very important. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 among others did this for television and radio in the United States. I want to have an additional organization for electronic entertainment media.

I’m going to use the title Corporation for Public Gaming’ (CPG) to put a title on the idea. Barack Obama calls this initiative “Public Gaming 2.0″ in his technology initiatives. I’m not sold on either of these names, but I’m going to go with CPG for the time being.

My vision for a CPG is a roll mostly as a publisher for interactive media projects. The CPG won’t create much as the organization itself, but fund though the use of grants and other funding venues to developers of whatever size. Then the CPG would enact venues of publishing content for free (or at cost) to the public.

Development Funding Model

As I mentioned, the development of titles will be based off of grands to developers. If the developers applying propose a project that fits the mission statement of the CPG, and the developer[s] demonstrate that they are competent enough to produce a finish title, they get funding for that project with situations attached as outlines in this document. Well, a bit more vetting would be involved, but that’s the idea.

The funding would be on the stipulation that the CPG can distribute the game in the public. No up-sells; No Demo only modes; The full title for the public. This means that while the funds can provide the complete cost of developing a title including salary of the work, there wouldn’t be royalties of any sort since it’s all non-profit. That’s the trade-off. However, this would be a super awesome way for smaller independent developers to get some titles under their belt. Yea jobs!

Distribution Model

The goal of the CPG is to provide titles for the public. Because most of new media titles can be transmitted over the Internet, this comes as a no-brainer for distribution for personal computers. Obviously the CPG would have a platform for distributing games on their own website. As long as this site can promote itself and it’s content well, the costs of maintaining this site would be mostly around bandwidth. My only concern is making sure that the children’s section is on it’s on from the more not-children content, but otherwise it’s all in the implementation.

Ultimately, I don’t see much distribution in a traditional retail sense for any platform. Selling physical objects is extremely expensive! With the Internet as a viable distribution model, there’s no real need for physical objects. That isn’t to say it is forbidden, just not likely and that’s OK. I could see a combo pack of a DVD of a collection of titles for anyone really wanting physical media. This is similar to how shows on PBS tag an offer for DVDs at the end of a program. Cost involved, but certainly not the only means of distribution.

What about the consoles?

The difficulty would be console development. I think it would be a sin to exclude console systems in this initiative. However, the console platforms aren’t exactly the most open and public-friendly things to deal with. About the only one that comes close would be Microsoft’s XNA where one can at least develop on their own, use any Windows PC, and develop a console game (albeit with restrictive licenses). The other players (Nintendo and Sony) don’t come close to this development availability but are trying to catch up.

The problems are when developers are applying for projects. A proposal that places a title for more than one platform would certainly give more points for being able to repurpose a title in more than one venue. For personal computing, this isn’t much a problem and I would even go so far as make PC/Mac/Linux requirement for personal computer platforms. But consoles aren’t very cross-platform in a number of ways. Not to mention that there are a host of NDAs, restrictions, and enormous costs involved in any development on a console. It may mean that console development will be more along the lines of porting the personal computer titles into console titles. This would mean the CPG would need to fund developers purely on porting efforts as only a select few would have the viability to develop. Though the most efficient would be targeting for the platform at the start.

As far as distribution, this would be much easier and actually attractive to the consoles. Each console in this generation has some form of Internet distribution of game titles. If the CPG can convince each console to distribute CPG games for free, then it’s win-win for everyone. The public who have these consoles can obtain CPG titles for free and each console can claim more titles on their service.

Industry Response

The only major reason I can see for a position against a CPG would be the idea CPG projects will take away from commercial development. The purpose of the CPG is not to make the same kinds of games the commercial market is already handling. While there’s a bit of a case with children’s games or companies like Leapfrog that may have some case, I don’t believe that the CPG would completely dominate that sector completely. Simply put: PBS didn’t kill commercial television programing. PBS provides content not provided by other commercial means. This is the roll that CPG plays: Providing content not commercially viable but worth funding.

Closing Thoughts

I realize that this idea focused on video games, but I wouldn’t want such an organization to limit only to making flash based games that migrate to consoles. This is but one of many sectors which a different approach of funding projects warrants a public venue of funding that isn’t fit by current mandates. Nor is this approach meant to ‘replace’ the existing Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Ultimately, this is just a starting point. I’d love to know what you think about this topic. There’s more nitty gritty details I can put up, but I still don’t have a solid mission statement. So please, share your thoughts!

* Yes, I’m quickly passing over the history of public broadcasting to a paragraph. There’s a lot more that went into public broadcasting!

I don’t care about Comcast’s video content. I don’t care about AT&T’s Blue Room or any other crap. I am paying you as a bridge to obtain other people’s content. That’s all I require from you. Why only the fat pipe? Because you suck at content generation. You’re spreading your resources to do something extra and it’s just not working very well.

Thing is, I never asked for you to make your own content. It’s really a non-issue with me. There are millions of other people that can do it so much better and that’s who I want to have access to. I’m paying you to give me unfettered access to other content providers. Is making your own content really helping you out? I would figure focusing on the speed and availability of the content of the Internet would be a bigger drive than your special little video program. I know that on the feature list, saying you have this unique content gives the impression of better value on a flyer.

You know what gets me to stick with your service without distain? Giving me access to all available content without bullshit. For example, if Comcast spent more dedication and time to improving their horrific customer support, the product would have more value than ‘Channel 1′. Or perhaps finding a better long-term plan to keep the bandwidth infrastructure on par or surpassing the rest of the modern world. Why spend time finding ways to inhibit use of BitTorrent when you can spend that time more productively by improving the network infrastructure.

Please, I don’t care about your content as it is unmatched to what the rest of the world at large can provide. Give me unfettered and uninhibited access to the world, then you have won me over!

As for the show in general, there is a void of reporting when it comes to interactive media under the realm of games. Taking a look at OTM’s mission statement:

On the Media explores how the media “sausage” is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad.

In my view, not covering video/computer games is a huge piece of sausage they are missing. So, it’s concerned audience member time:

Dear On The Media:As a long time listener to the podcast version of the show, I turn to your program as a way to keep abreast with media topics across all forms of media from journalism to entertainment of a wide wash of forms. But for the years I’ve listened to the program, I simply can not recall when electronic gaming was mentioned besides this weekend’s (Jan 11 2008) broadcast with a passing reference to the Playstation 3 as a Blu-ray player by one of your guests.

I simply don’t understand the silence over the video game industry of any facet.

OTM offers a unique perspective on the topics you cover. Sometimes they are stories I’m already informed of, but you always manage to provide a perspective that other outlets simply don’t provide. What I am asking is to provide OTM’s perspective on the video game industry, console or personal computer. Not so much for me, but to further enrich the audience of OTM.

I understand this comment is a bit aimless as far as piece suggestions. My point is to ask that the staff of OTM take a look at the electronic games industry as part of your media coverage. I am free to offer a dialogue of topics to cover, but to help you folks learn how to fish when covering this sector.

Some disclosure. I work for an independent game studio in the San Francisco area, Telltale Games, but I’m speaking only for myself.

As always, thanks for making a quality program every week. My grievance is to help expand coverage of the media “sausage” to the huge chuck you’ve managed to miss over the years.

As I was writing this letter, I asked a friend of mine if she listens to OTM and her thoughts on the subject. Then she pointed me to this piece from NPR’s All Things Considered (and not related to OTM at all):

“Best-Selling Book Shows ‘Halo’ Game’s Wide Appeal”

In short, the report Chana Joffe-Walt filed was enforcing a stereotype that video games consist of Halo players who don’t read unless it’s a book about a video game. It’s… a frustrating piece to listen to. Rather than cursing NPR and moving on, I wrote another concerned audience letter to All Things Considered (I added the links for your reference):

Dear ATC:

On Jan 8th 2008, Chana Joffe-Walt filed a report entitled “Best-Selling Book Shows ‘Halo’ Game’s Wide Appeal” which covered Joseph Staten’s novel based off the Halo series. What I am bringing issue to the piece was the passive and sometimes direct implication that a certain population of individuals who play one specific title implies all audiences who play games are illiterate. As a game developer, writer, and recipient of a Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media, this is a false stereotype.

As an NPR listener, I’ve listened to a few pieces from ATC that were solid reporting. Of particular note, Heather Chaplin’s report “Video Games Get Dash of Indie-Bred Maturity” is a prime example of reporting I come to expect from NPR and proves that NPR can report on the industry I work for in a fair and insightful way for the entire NPR audience.

At the end of the day, I would like for Channa and the editing staff to listen to Heather’s report. Particularly at the end where she notes the early impressions of Film were a technological toy and later found how to express the tool as a form of art. I an my fellow colleagues are working very hard to keep pushing this technology further into art. Chana’s report snuffed our efforts by emphasizing the stereotype that games are simply toys for children, even when attempting to cover a novel.

We’ll see how that goes. Maybe this will add one or two more radio mentions of me [the first one on PRI's The World: Video game rating systems worldwide (5:00)]. What I do hope is that this will help motivate both of these programs to learn how to fish for good stories in the game industry.

Case in discussion point: Top 10 Game Innovations 2007 by James Portnow on Next Generation. Right point 10, Mr. Portnow seems to describe his own short comings on the topic by not having the language to describe fl0w by thatgamecompany.

flOw starts off our countdown because I have no idea where to put it. I love the “game” but I’m not even sure if it’s fun.

Since I can’t decide if flOw is a genius revolution in gaming, the first of a totally new form of “interactive experience”, or just a near miss that fails to incorporate the experience it’s presenting into a game, I’ll let it round out the list at number ten. On a different day it would have been number one.

Innovation has nothing to do with fun. I know plenty of movies that aren’t under the category of entertaining but are great movies. I know great works of paintings that I wouldn’t find fitting to put up on my walls at home. Why must games, especially when the intended circumstances are to outline the murky concept of ‘innovation,’ meet a level of ‘fun’ for consideration?

Deeper to that, what is constituted as innovation? Is it a new piece of software or hardware? Is it a new concept that changes the entire perception of the media itself? This list and most discussions about innovation in interactive entertainment starts with this implication that innovation will future the industry and the experience of gaming; That we highlight these actions as a general way of doing things. But the discussions seem to be more about tricks rather than higher levels of the art form. Why can’t we talk more about games as how all the pieces work together? Talk about how a piece influenced the art as a whole, not the specific tricks to achieve a specific task. There’s more to be learned how all the pieces fit together than looking only at the parts.

At GDC last year, Jonathan Mak said that innovation is killing the industry. In my view, he’s correct. If our only effort in games is to just to accomplish this ‘innovation’ bar, then we’re doing nothing to further this industry. Only by understanding our work and knowing why aspects of a title worked (or did not) can we really start to further this art form more than one-up-ship can accomplish.

I think James Portnow needs to pick up a copy of The Language of New Media.

Required Reading

Academia for the video game industry is a topic rather close to me. It’s safe for me to say that I created a good chunk of Emerson’s program on game design and writing for I had to make it from scratch. I had a make-your-own major that happened to be degree on the books. Course, I was the first to actually go for a BFA in New Media and to create a curriculum based on design and writing of interactive storytelling. At the time, there wasn’t a convincing curriculum that attracted to me, so making my own program was the only way I could be satisfied.

As to why I’m taking education as my first major post on my Media Blog, it’s the way in which one creates media, in this case video games, that makes my connection. Yea justification!There are many issues college with the in interactive electronic entertainment. These problems are shared between the educational institutions, the commercial electronic games industry, the students, and academic/admission consolers. It takes years for academia to figure out good methods of teaching any subject matter. Only with a carful dance between the industry itself and the academic world can a solid curriculums be formed. Without some form of industry involvement, students will not be properly prepared for the industry. Too much industry involvement and the school produces one-trick ponies.

But what defines the difference? There are obvious bad programs (hint: they air TV ads), but how can we begin to calculate a quality school? No school will be perfect, but what model should students be looking for? The first thing that comes to mine is the scope of the program:

A Game Production Curriculum is not contained in one program.

Let’s say I walked outside and asked random people on the street the following question:

List as many different roles or jobs involved in creating a movie.

I would gather that the list would be a decent size; At least 10 or so. After that, I ask this question:

List as many different roles or jobs involved in creating a video game.

They may only be one position given: Programmer. Other positions, not so much. While this is a larger problem involving credit titles and general impression of the industry itself, the idea of programmer as the soul creator is obviously misguided. This was true in the 80’s where one (usually a) man developed the entire game besides box art. This is clearly not the case.

So when you see a curricula advertised as ‘The game degree’, that’s a red flag right there. Very broadly, there are many areas involved in producing one title:

• Producing, Directing, etc
• Writing / Design
• Art Production
• Sound Production
• Programming

While someone working in this industry must have a basic understanding of each area, there are ultimately a point where one must pick one or two focuses. No one program can contain expertise in more than one of these fields. Proficiency yes, but not expertise. This is the hard part in education; Picking a dedicated path. Once you get exposed to other things, students may find that while they wanted to be one thing when they started, they actually were geared towards another area completely. This is where the proficiency aspect comes in. Exposing a student to the other fields at a basic level not only helps the student understand the other aspects of the media, but proposes the opportunity of a different direction.

Art vs. Tech

The unique aspect about video games is the marriage between the artistic and technological. This media is not at the point where producing a text is easy. Currently, anyone can make a film. You only need to look at YouTube to see this. The technology of cameras, audio equipment, and editing tools are simple enough to use with the board understanding of storytelling using moving pictures. Interactive media? Not even close. The technology bar is very high in comparison to other media, so there’s a odd dance between the artistic and the technological.

Even for film, the ease of production wasn’t easy as it is now. Over the course of time, not only the tools but the understanding of the media have evolved. Video games are still in an infancy where development isn’t as easy, nor is the understanding of our media as widely established. Because of this, the amount of work involved in education requires separate areas of study.

My time at Emerson College was almost primarily on the art side. With exceptions of solid classes of 3D Animation by John Craig Freeman, my undergraduate work consisted of academic study of media crit and design/writing of interactive media, but completely divorced of rich technical background. I knew this entering in the program and it’s what I wanted. My technical background has been self-taught and worked very well. Not adequate enough for a career in programming, but programming has never been my intent of a career path.

Seg’s View of a quality educational environment for interactive media

At this point, I can not see a quality academic institution that does not carry both artistic based programs and technical based programs. While there are rare exceptions, not all techies are quality designers, not all designers are quality techies. Nor should they be. An institution needs to recognize this by providing a set of curriculum programs with the connectivity between the different areas.

Let’s take a larger university as my example which I’ll call ‘College University’. College U has an existing program in Computer Science, audio/radio production, fine art (3D animation included), TV and/or film programs, and creative writing. These parts can contribute to a whole without much tweaking in most cases. And in most cases, there are specialization that already exist. What if we were to add specialization on each of these areas towards interactive entertainment?

For the CS department, a focus along the lines of ‘Entertainment Programming’ focus on graphics, sound, and interface technology that are applicable to working on game engines. 3D animation focusing on low-poly and creating works that plug into a game engine rather than a cohesive movie. And so on. No need for a new department, no need to have a completely separate island just because ‘games are in’.

There’s one issue to draw here and that’s creating a cohesiveness between the departments. There still needs to be some centered home for being able to connect all the different parts together and stimulate cross-department development. Ideally, the students should be working together in their different fields but be able to work together as a whole. Obviously the starting point is with a practicum style class that charges students to make one unified project. The result of a gro