Wired has an article about the rise and fall of the video game Duke Nukem Forever and its developer 3D Realms. This is one of the best magazine articles I read last year, and you do not have to be a video game fanatic to appreciate it. I was more fascinated by the description of the 3D Realms business psyche that helped lead to the collapse. Here is Wired’s “recipe for disaster” summary in case you cannot read the full article:
(Click to enlarge. Excuse me for the quality of the picture, as I was running the L4D2 demo from my college laptop.)
The background: Valve recently released the Left 4 Dead 2 demo. Although the only game play mode officially offered is the standard survival bout, it took only about a week for members of the online community to figure out how to modify the files to allow people to play as the infected (zombies). This semi-versus mode is not perfect, however, and as a result every time a player switches between human and infected the system creates an extra survivor clone. This process can be repeated over a dozen times. Since there are only four character models for the survivors, continuous switching ensures that there are multiple copies of the same character. Yes, it’s awesome. The only downside is that the game still caps the total number of human players at four, which means that most of the survivor characters will be AI.
The story behind the picture: Three other players and I decided to spawn the maximum number of survivors using the mod/glitch technique so that we could fight them as infected in expert difficulty. There is a point in the second level of the Parish campaign where all the survivors must enter a trailer, close the door, and open another door that leads to a tower with an alarm that must be switched off. Sometimes the AI was unresponsive and would just stay stuck inside the trailer (they would also not stop repeating the same lines). The only way to kill them was to enter the trailer. I took this picture late in the game when only a few survivors were still alive. It shows multiple dead “Ellis” models one after another, partly covered by one of the remaining “Nick” models. We won the game shortly after.
Do you buy BioShock for $29.99? Or BioShock and Elder Scrolls IV for $29.99?
Choices, choices.
Found at a Best Buy in Cambridge, MA. Right next to each other.
Tenorio is a level-80 dwarf priest in the game World of Warcraft, and he officially announced his plan to run for Lieutenant Governor of Guam to a video games website. He is also a senator from the territory, so it’s legit. [Game Politics]
All I want to know is how he finds time to manage a presumably important government position and a level-80 character (plus family, food, and sleep). I remember when I signed up for a WoW free trial account. Before I knew it the ten days had passed and all I had done was kill wild boars and ventured inside Ironforge to try to find a party. Currently your editors know people who spend most of their spare time playing another addicting MMORPG. If Tenorio can manage both responsibly, then more power to him.
The only thing that irks me is this part of his announcement:
Perhaps together, we can continue to let people, voters and those in positions of authority know that gamers are the same as those who do everything from clean public parks, fight and die for democracy, conduct intricate procedures in professional careers, and, Yes, even make policy…for our communities, everywhere around the globe. That simple fact is rarely said but is the basis for an even broader discussion on the depth and breadth of people who enjoy gaming and still carry out their responsibilities.
On the remote chance that Tenorio reads this post, a word of advice: do not repeat this during the campaign. Research shows there are misconceptions about people who play video games, but the way this is written almost makes the situation look like some kind of civil rights recognition struggle. Be the “Lieutenant Governor who happens to be a gamer,” not the “gamer Lieutenant Governor.”
EDIT: Make sure to read the funny comments attached to the Tenorio story on Game Politics. The Internet is serious business.
Someone in Newsweek blogs about video games.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/
If the Newsweek editors are genuinely serious about revamping the magazine’s image to sell more copies then they should write a cover story on what is undoubtedly the most important story of the last five years: Gerstmanngate.
Someone working at Telefutura really likes video games.
The channel was running in the background when out of the corner of my eye I saw a commercial that caught my attention. I had a camera ready the next time the commercial appeared. Check it out:
The design should look familiar to gamers. It is the same one used in BioShock, with Escape de la Atlántida (Escape from Atlantis) as the new title. The Escape graphic also has the same water dripping effect as the Bioshock screen.
The logo was at the end of a commercial advertising the movie; it’s being broadcast today if you want to watch it. The movie presumably has to do with an underwater city, so at least it has one thing in common with BioShock. There is no word on whether the movie will include Big Daddies, or Gran Papis as they would be called.
Barack has so much cash to burn that his campaign is spending it on video games (even though in the last debate Obama said that parents need to “put away the video games”). [CNN] Up until about November 3, the Obama campaign is making use of in-game advertising in some EA games to convince people to vote for the Democratic candidate. [MSNBC] I guess ACORN wasn’t working out after all.
Yet while Obama may be the first candidate to use in-game advertising, he isn’t the first politician to use video games to present his message. Last year former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich held a forum in the online video game Second Life, and it was a total success. Not really. [Game Politics] Earlier this year supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul spammed the online community virulently, eventually leading a rally in World of Warcraft. [YouTube] And weren’t the 1993 Congressional hearings on Mortal Kombat just a ploy to boost the image of Joe Lieberman? Ok, maybe that’s stretching it a bit.
Players tend to view in-game advertising as a double-edged sword. If one is cynical, then this is just another scheme to get more money into the pockets of greedy executives, at little to no benefit to the consumer. But the case can be made that as games become more expensive (and expansive–MMORPGs) gaming studios need to pull in more money regularly to make a decent profit and remain competitive. Even if the cynical viewpoint holds water, why does it necessarily matter? The only compelling argument I’ve heard is that ads in a game can take one out of the mood. I would agree with this if, say, I could hire the Sneak King in Fight Night as my cornerman–oh wait. [YES, HE IS IN FIGHT NIGHT] On the other hand, seeing an ad for Tropic Thunder in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was in a small way part of the experience, and if anything contributed to the mood. So the only time ads absolutely don’t work is when they are antithetical to the game one is playing. At least the Obama ads don’t fit into this category.
But what if they did?
1) Here is Kitsch/Posh’s Obama ad in Battlefield 2142:
2) And because we just had to do it, Counter-Strike:
Actually, never mind. The Sneak King was awesome.
P.S.: The MSNBC article has a factual error. Dynamic in-game advertising has existed longer than eighteen months. I remember seeing a billboard ad for The Longest Yard in the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory co-op mode and reading about in-game ads for years. [GameSpot] Static advertising has existed for decades since every gaming company basically promotes itself–as in those classic sports games where the EA logo would flash constantly. There have also been entire games based around third-party products. [Angry Video Game Nerd, NSFW]