Book Review: Reality is Broken

I've had the pleasure of speaking to Jane McGonigal a few times, and have great respect for what she's trying to do, and for the passion she brings to the task. Unfortunately, after having slogged through her book, Reality Is Broken I have to give it a fairly negative review. This is unfortunate because as I said, I think what she's trying to do is important.

McGonigal's book is centered around the concept of using games, and the collective effort people put into playing them, to impact the real world. This can run the span of everything from connecting real-world benefits into online games, to using game-like mechanics to encourage behavior in real-world activities.

I found the book suffered from three fundamental flaws:

1. No discussion of impact to the 'magic circle'. Those espousing the 'magic circle' idea will talk about how games have a fundamental property of taking place in a safe place that doesn't have real-world impact. It seems to me that the more you effect the real world, or the less trivial the effect, the less it's a game.
2. Flawed logic & poorly connected research. Jane makes many, um, enthusiastic leaps of logic, which are flawed. You can see many that I've highlighted in the Kindle app (I'll figure out how to put a link here).
3. Lack of an objective look at both sides. In looking at all the good that can be done by motivating people via games,  McGonigal really should have looked at the other side too. Can games be used to effect evil as well? As long as she's only looking at one side of the discussion, it seems flawed.

I really applaud McGonigal's goal and her passion, but I can't recommend the book.

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

Sigh. Games as Art (again)

So Roger Ebert has gone curmudgeon on games again, this time using Kelly Santiago's TED talk as fodder. She posts a good rebuttal here. Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft also chimes in with a good response.

If you were following, you might have missed this really good response from the esteemed Scott McCloud. The whole thing is worth reading but here's an excerpt:

If you’re asking if videogames are art, I think you’re asking the wrong question. I don’t think art is an either/or proposition. Any medium can accommodate it, and there can be at least a little art in nearly everything we do.

Once in a while, someone makes a work in their chosen medium so driven by aesthetic concerns and so removed from any other consideration that we trot out the A-word, but even then it’s a matter of degrees, and for most creative endeavors you can find a full spectrum from the sublime to the mundane.

The Numbers

I was in SFO last week and hooked up for a conversation with a developer friend after my meetings, etc.

Among the many topics discussed, he raised some concerns about our industry's lack of "sharing" numbers. (Further conversation defined 'sharing' as 'widely available numbers through sharing/leaking/research/analysts/etc'). The conversation was precipitated from a discussion of Valve's disclosure of some numbers last week, the coverage of which didn't discuss some of the titles/genres that haven't fared as well on Steam (some titles that have been released on PSN, WiiWare, etc, are rumored to have fared far better than on XBLA's 

I pointed to VG Chartz as one example of how people are making some numbers available (whether released or reverse-engineered in the case of XBLA titles).

As a comparison point, he pointed me to the AWESOME site, The Numbers, which covers the movie industry and has just about every data point you'd ever want to pull.

He cited this as an example of a different attitude to sharing numbers within Hollywood. I beleived it was a symptom of supply and demand. Bigger industry, more demand for the numbers, more people figuring out ways to make money off covering that scene. I think we'll get there over time, though a change in attitude could possibly accelerate it.

Now, as a cleansing sorbet: a couple tidbits off this site:

For those that continue to beleive this crazy notion that games are bigger than hollywood (less beleived these days), I offer the following:

GTA 4 was projected to do as much as $400M. Some claim WoW as the biggest with perhaps $1B in lifetime revenue.

Titanic did $600M[corrected from B] in box office receipts. Wall-E did $112M... in DVD sales... in two weeks.

Oh, and the top grossing *franchise* of all time? James Bond at almost $5B dollars WW gross to date. Narrowly beating out Harry Potter and Star Wars. I did my bit by going to see Quantum of Solace last night.

We are clearly still a spec on Hollywood's radar. For now...

Sightseeing in Liberty City

Awesome flickr set of side-by-sides of GTA4 screens and NYC pics.

How many repetitive stress injuries per minute?

OK, I just discovered TypeRacer.

Typershark meets Kung Fu Chess. Typing of the Damned meets Deathmatch.

Yes, it's multiplayer touchtyping deathmatch. If you wake up in the morning and notice the world's awesome is missing, well it's all collapsed into here. It is a singularity of awesome.

Full Throttle Intro

Still remains one of my all time fave game intros. Kotaku linked to it today.

Youtube is awesome, as are the Kotaku-ites. Remember when Lucasarts wasawesome?

First the BNL and Radiohead, then Nine Inch Nails, now Madonna. Oasis and Jamiroquai too.

Seems ditching the labels in favor of direct-to-consumer (or in Madonna's case, signing a very different kind of disty deal) is all the rage the days.

Big labels are getting exactly what the deserve for putting up artificial barriers for too long, and bilking the customer for some time now (phasing out singles, forcing DRM, etc, etc). Sure would suck to be in their shoes, but I have to say I'm enjoying watching their towers crumble from the sidelines.

Game Industry folk: Should we be watching and learning? How long before the torch-n-pitchfork mob finds their next target?

When life hands you lemons...

The past few years have seen much boohooing by the music industry as a whole. Meanwhile, a few brave souls are trying their own experiments in the brave new world.

A while back, Barenaked Ladies announced they were selling their latest album at concerts on a USB thumbdrive, with all the tracks unprotected, and asking users to mash them up at will.

This week, Radiohead announced that their latest album would be available for download at whatever price the customer saw fit to pay.

They are brave souls. Sure, the fact that they are already somewhat successful makes the experiments a little less painful should they fail, but it also makes the downside of failure that much larger. Anyhow, I tip my hat to them.

It's interesting that in many ways this is comparable to some early shareware/donationware models for software, including games.

So can we in the games business learn from their lessons, or have we already learned something they aren't aware of?

Game Trials, Rentals, Re-sales: Good or Bad?

The debate never ends. Some argue that all of these allow gamers to get 'free goods' without buying and thus negatively impact sales (the 'Why give away the cow?' crew). The proponents argue that these things ease people into purchases, attract more gamers to the fold, and let gamers spend more dollars because they feel their dollar go further (the "Spread the love" crew).

The argument comes up in discussion of rental or subscription to retail games as well as in discussion of free web-based casual games and other casual games distribution mechanisms.

I've blogged about this debate before, and how other industries might give us pointers.

On that note, two related pieces of research popped onto the radar today:

For the Nays: This piece of research on radio's effect on music sales, concluding that radio play does NOT boost sales of recorded music, and in fact may do the opposite. (As a side note, I am personally VERY skeptical of this peice of research. It seems to jump very quickly to support an argument for music licensors charging license fees to radio stations for airplay. I do wonder whether it has some bias behind it.)

And in the other corner: This post from Freakonomics on Libraries. While it doesn't argue that libraries are good for book sales, it does point out that books still sell despite them. It also asks out the provocative question "If libraries didn't exist, could you start one today?", concluding that the publishing industry would likely attempt to quash such an effort or at least shackle it with a license fee structure. I think most would agree that libraries are good for society and good for culture, and that they haven't yet killed the publishing industry. (Oh, and be sure to read the comment thread. There are some links to a number of cool things including some examples of people that ARE in fact starting libraries today, on the web)

Anyhow, there you have it. Arguments to back up whichever side of the debate you are on. Please ignore the other one.

Winds of change

Is it just me, or is this whole "when will games get credit for being an artform?" thing starting to get some traction as of late:

• An article on the subject here includes tidbits like the fact that South Korea drops mandatory military service for those that work in the games industry (because they are contributing to one of Korea's key cultural exports (IGDA site via Raph)
• CNN's got 'Presidential Pong' right there on the homepage. The games equivalent of the editorial cartoon.
• NYT beat them to the same thing a week or two earlier with Food Import Folly, a game about the pressure the FDA is under to try and protect the food supply with an ever growing percentage of imported food and no growth in the manpower to keep it safe.

Strangely, Jack Thompson is silent on the whole thing. And I think that's an accomplishment on it's own! :-)

Convergence Shmonvergence!

Clint has a his feathers ruffled over Hollywood directory Michael Bay's forray into games.

At first glance it's the standard "those hollywood guys wouldn't know a good game if it hit them!" rant, but it's worth reading, as he hits on some of the key issues in the hollywood and games convergence debate:

Do they think that 10 years from now I won't be sure whether I just watched a movie or played a game? Again, I have to make some assumptions about what they mean to have this kind of crap make any sense at all... I can only assume they mean 'the production methodologies and business models are increasingly similar and it is becoming more and more practical to look at doing feature film development and game development simultaneously as part of a multi-media production that increases efficiency'. In other words, they mean convergence in the purest business sense.

Anyhow, worth a read. I agree with him a hundred percent.

Hit (or miss) driven businesses

The Freakonomics blog points us to this article on the publishing business. Some choice snippets:

• [on picking hits] The answer is that no one really knows. “It’s an accidental profession, most of the time,” said William... “If you had the key, you’d be very wealthy. Nobody has the key.”
• [On enthusiasts for the medium making up the core of the employees in the segment] "The people who go into it don’t do it for the money, which might explain why it’s such a bad business"
• [on impressions of the business] ...whenever he discusses the industry with people in other industries, “they’re stunned because it’s so unpredictable, because the profit margins are so small, the cycles are so incredibly long, and because of the almost total lack of market research.”
• “The whole thing is educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. You just try to make sure your upside mistakes make up for your downside mistakes.”

The article, of course, is talking about the BOOK publishing business. However, if you were thinking games, it'd still be right on the money.

Nice to know we're not alone.

Will game schools let students actually *make* games?

In a conversation with some Digipen students at the IGF at GDC (their game was a finalist), I was *shocked* to learn that they didn't actually have the right to commercialize their game, but that the Digipen school owned the rights to any games created by their students.

I was shocked. I was also naive. I turns out many of today's educational systems are imposing unreasonable copyright terms on students in their media programs. To my knowledge this isn't happening with written works so much as with film, games, etc. I can't see why one would be treated differently than another.

In an interesting development, Boing Boing today posted something about students at USC's film school protesting the copyright policy, and petitioning to have the right to have their works licensed under Creative Commons.

I hope they are successful, and I hope places like Digipen follow suit (or are forced to).

Let there be Bible Fight

From the folks at Adult Swim, comes perhaps the most sacreligious game ever. Bible Fight

From a mail list I'm on:

Bible Fight is a free web game on adultswim.com and part of their new strategy of offering original games for the masses to play when they should be working. Originally conceived as Sunday School meets Street Fighter 2, Bible Fight blends two of America's favorite past times - religion and violence - to tell the tale of a long lost contest between some of the greatest names of the Bible to see who among them is most deserving to sit at the right hand of God.

Search your hearts, dear friends, and take special care to listen for that quiet knocking. That knocking is Bible Fight, here to fill that persistent nagging emptiness that worldly possessions and success just can't satisfy. Bible Fight will cure what ails you. It will lift you, seperate you; it will turn you into a nine-year-old Hindu boy.

Naughty game designer! You'll burn! :-)

On 300 and convergence...

Clint has a great post about the movie 300, and what it exemplifies (and doesn't) in terms of the 'convergence' between film and game media. Great read.

Great example of how games can teach

Perhaps a lesson more in how games can help you visualize:

We have often heard people talk about financial data or housing prices using a 'roller coaster' metaphor. Here's an example where SpeculativeBubble used Roller Coaster Tycoon to build a roller coaster using US housing prices (adjusted for inflation) to construct an actual roller coaster in-game.

I dunno about you, but that next hill is going to scare the heck out of me...

Long time no update

Sorry blogosphere, I've been busy. Work, kids, wife, getting ready for GDC, etc.

I also have to admit that I've sunk an ungodly amount of time into Saint's Row on the 360 lately. Just an hour or two a day but it adds up! Anyhow, here's an update on that and a number of other games I've had some time with.

Saints Row:

• Saint's Row is good, if you like the GTA-3 style sandbox games.
• I thought the missions/story/writing/etc was pretty good. No one's winning a pulitzer, but hey, it's as good as other high end game titles out there.
• I'm all for 'games for grownups', and with the language and content to suit it - where it helps the story. There were a few (not many) places where it was so over the top that it detracted from the story and felt more... adolescent. The escort missions (where you drive around a call girl and her client, trying to avoid the paparazzi while they get their freak on) were just over the top. Didn't add to it.
• A couple of the aside-from-story activities (eg. Hitman, Chop Shop) felt totally like a needle in a haystack. Even more true for the music cd's and tag locations all over the city. There was little in the way of a feedback mechanism to let the player know they were on the right track. For example, Hitman should have let you ask passers-by (by shaking them down, bribing them, etc) if they'd seen someone, letting you do the time-based equivalent of a sonar ping; "he was here 3 minutes ago".
• I finished the story long ago. The amount of work to mop up all the onesy-twosey 10 point acheivements is pretty high - so why won't I put it down?

Lost Planet:

• Played it through to end of first boss. Maybe that isn't enough to judge it but...
• ...I can't beleive people are rating this game as high as they are.
• Writing is attrocious. I know some of it is 'lost in translation', but even that's not the whole problem. THe story right out of the gate is full of holes, and then they plug those holes with cliches. Ugh. It's laughable.
• It's pretty. OK, that's good.
• The enemy AI is crap. Boss fights (well, the first one anyway) feel very 1990's.

Crackdown:

• Haven't played it yet, but I *have* it. Maybe tommorrow.

Pacman, Ms Pacman:

• I'm assuming you know these games. If you are an acheivment-chaser, these are pretty easy to bang through to get them all. I have 200/200 on Ms P, and 170/200 on Mr P. Getting all four ghosts with all four powerups on Mr P is pretty hard.

Root Beer Tapper:

• I haven't given this one much of a chance yet, but I'm curious how well I can get used to the controller. Tapper in the arcade was always a button-up/button-down dependant game, where the button was effectively replaced by a keg-tap-lever type of controller. The button might have been better mapped to one of the analog controllers?

OK. Back to GDC planning. I'm doing 3 sessions there. More on that in the next day or two...

Pontificating Pontiff Pariahs Play!

C'mon Pope, don't pick on my choice of entertainment and I won't come to your work and knock your pointy hat off!