Data Filter: The News You Need in Easy-to-Swallow Gelcap Form

Electronic Gaming Business, July 16, 2003

News-o-Matic
Whassup?: Andrew Huang's upcoming book Hacking the Xbox will be
published by No Starch Press ($24.99 at www.nostarch.com) in late July
after the troublesome manuscript was rejected during the last stages of
the publishing process at John Wiley because of legal concerns. In
recounting how to reverse some engineer systems, Huang may have
run afoul of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and revealed ways
of disabling Microsoft's copy protection scheme, Wiley feared.
This comes on the heels of the public release of a supposed hack of the
Xbox operating system that allows users to install Linux and perhaps
skirt game copy protection.
Say What?: Consider this just the opening shots in an ongoing war for
Microsoft and probably Sony as well. By connecting proprietary operating
systems and highly controlled networks with the Web, console manufacturers
are conflicting with a world of open architecture PCs and open source Web
culture. Against so many hackers and so much tradition, this is not a war
that Sony and Microsoft win by threatening to sue the butts off anyone
who even talks about cracking their protection. Some accommodation will
have to be made ultimately to making these and next-gen consoles more
malleable by users for general Web use and alternative operating systems.
Likewise, eventually the Digital Millennium Copyright Act itself is going to
get heavily revised or tossed out altogether by the courts because of
it invasiveness.

Whassup?: Both Taiwan and Afghanistan cracked down on demon gaming
this month. In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 300 "video game parlors"
were shut down by police after parents complained their kids were spending
too much time and money there and authorities alleged these were drinking
and gambling dens. Meanwhile, Taiwanese authorities imposed a nighttime
curfew on online gaming, blocking servers between 10 pm and 6 am. The
Taiwan government fears that young people are becoming addicted to
some high-profile MMOGs.
Say What?: Just in case the video game industry was feeling singled out,
Afghan authorities pulled the plug on cable TV in this vice sweep as well,
claiming its content violated Islamic code. We're guessing they
are talking about Baywatch re-runs, in which case we approve of the ban.
Taiwan is serious business, and much of the concern surrounds the
Korean online game Ragnarok, which has 600,000 members in
Thailand alone.

Whassup?: Game sales are driving revenues way up at some video stores.
Hollywood Entertainment reports that same stores sales were up 11% in
the second quarter in large part because of 483 Game Crazy game
sales departments in their 1,846 Hollywood Video stores nationwide.
In 2Q alone, the company added 122 Game Crazy areas to its stores.
Likewise for Blockbuster. According to its Q1 earnings, 20.9% ($62 million)
 of its merchandise sales revenues came from games, up from
5% in Q1 2002.
Say What?: Video stores are fast becoming an important sales channel, a
way for people to buy games very locally and without a trip to the mall.
Hollywood's same quarter merchandise sales climbed from $32
million to $59 million between 2002 and 2003, and the company seems
to admit readily that game sales were behind this inordinate jump.
Publishers should be exploring some innovative cross-merchandising to
take advantage of this opportunity: free video or game rental vouchers.

Whassup?: Despite tepid sales, EA's The Sims Online is starting to
generate interesting phenomena. According to some reports, the online
parallel suburbia is suffering from some criminal incidents, gamers extorting
and harassing their neighbors. More interesting is the artful use by other
players of Sims "albums," the feature that lets Sims take
and share snapshots of their lives. Players are using albums to
create a new Sims art form, visual narratives. Some are elaborately staged
soap operas. In a Wired News article on the trend, Sims designer Will Wright
says he is thinking of incorporating the idea into The Sims
2.
Say What?: This phenomenon is called "emergent play" by designers,
which simply means that audiences use the game in ways never intended by
the authors. We'll see more of this as MMOGs gain penetration, but
the fact that even Will Wright is surprised by it shows how far we have to
go before the game industry truly appreciates what interactivity has
wrought. Successful game design in the future may include post-release
monitoring of actual gameplay to understand how players make use of a
game's possibilities so that the designers can optimize the design
to accommodate new styles of play that come from the audience.
Interactivity is not a buzzword meaning players press buttons. It means
publishers and designers truly interacting with audiences on levels we
haven't even imagined yet.

Whassup?: In another bold, spectacular expression of the obvious from the
halls of academe, the American Physiological Society released research
showing that game playing can interfere with sleep. Tracking high speed
action on a backlit display can suppress the body's secretion of
melatonin, the researchers theorize, which helps trigger proper sleeping
cycles.
Say What?: More interesting than the findings were the methodologies
involved in the study. Saliva swabs were taken from the seven male
subjects in the study before the computer tasks involved, and rectal
temperatures (Whoa there!) were monitored at two-minute intervals
during the tasks. Okay, so these misguided lab geeks may not have
discovered anything stunning about computer use but they sure
did invent a new way of playing Warcraft.

Whassup?: Electronic Arts announces it will add a fee-based premium
service called Club Pogo to its casual game site Pogo.com for $4.99 a
month or $29.99 annually, members will get exclusive access to some
games, including titles with more elaborate graphics and audio, plus
first looks at new Pogo titles. EA will eliminate ads for members as
well and give access to better online community features.
Say What?: Claiming 3 million log-ons a day at Pogo.com, EA may be
making one last stab at salvaging the debacle of its online strategy. Like
every other Web site in existence, Pogo seems to be banking on the
hope of flipping just a small slice of its massive traffic to the
subscription model. And like every other Web site that dabbles with
this model it surely will find that offering a few extra games and no
ads is not exactly a reason for anyone to reach for a wallet. We expect
EA either to sell the thing off to a portal or get very aggressive very
quickly about limiting available free play at the site if it wants the
fee-based model to fly.

Whassup?: The long-promised, super hush-hush Phantom gaming console
from Infinium Labs finally will see the light of day at the upcoming
Ultimate Gamers Expo in Los Angeles (Aug. 15-17). Essentially a Windows
XP PC that connects to the Web and your TV, the Phantom will allow for
PC games distribution into the living room via broadband. According to
recent reports, the Phantom will come in at a $400 price point, less than
previous estimates, and the business plan is to work with broadband ISPs
to deliver access to the Infinium game library.
Say What?: Infinium promises high levels of copyright protection on games
it licenses into the library, since the Phantom connects directly to the
company servers and offers no removable media drives for offloading
games or passing them along to others via the network. Convincing
developers and publishers to buy into this scheme is a hill that Yahoo
is trying to climb with its online distribution system, and even the portal
admits that the going is rough.
Consider this model in serious test mode and most likely to attract B and C-
level titles at first.

U.K. Game Sales (Week Ending July 12)
This Week  Last Week  Game\Publisher
1          1          Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness\EIDOS
2          2          Eye Toy\Sony
3          4          Enter the Matrix\Atari
4          3          SOCOM: Navy Seals\Sony
5          8          Hulk\Universal
6          5          Sims Superstar\EA
7          6          GTA: Vice City\RockStar
8          7          Starsky & Hutch\Empire
9          12         The Sims\EA
10         15         007: Nightfire\EA

This Week  Last Week  % Sales By Platform
1          1          PS2 (88%), PC (12%)
2          2          PS2 (100%)
3          4          PS2 (72%), XB (14%), GC (7%), PC (7%)
4          3          PS2 (100%)
5          8          PS2 (71%), XB (16%), GC (9%), PC (4%)
6          5          PC (100%)
7          6          PS2 (65%), PC (35%)
8          7          PS2 (82%), XB (15%), PC (3%)
9          12         PS2 (36%), XB (8%), GC (5%), PC (51%)
10         15         PS2 (76%), XB (6%), GC (8%), GBA (5%)

Source: ELSPA