A couple days ago, I was mysteriously struck with the idea of posting a few of my old news pieces from Idle Thumbs (written between E3 2004 and E3 2006) in my blog, both so I could share some of my only game writing with whoever the hell’s reading this, and so I wouldn’t lose it when Thumbs one day sinks into the mud and vanishes for good.
This is the last one of these, though — only two parts in and I’m already sifting through the extreme dregs of my textual contribution to the Thumb. I may do a part three of a few of my favorite news pieces from the rest of the staff, and possibly just some headlines I liked as well. (I still laugh like a retard when I stumble across “Wake Up and Smell Even More Ashes,” for instance.)
For now, though, it’s all me.
Originally published December 21, 2004
If you’re a 17 year old girl on Spring break, you probably shouldn’t take your shirt off for some sleezy looking guy roaming the streets with a professional-grade video camera. He might, you know, actually be using it to record you topless. It might show up somewhere, like a trashy video game.
A teenager from Austin, Texas has discovered that she appears - sans shirt - in unlockable prize form, in Topheavy/The Gathering’s for-males-only trivia title The Guy Game, and is suing the pants off of them. Which is totally hot.
The girl, who wasn’t named, is requesting that all copies featuring her be pulled from stores, a judge has granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting people from selling any of the games that used the girl’s image, voice and name, and, somewhere in America, the mere existence of this news story has sold at least one additional copy of The Guy Game.
Originally published June 07, 2005
What if Master Chief burst into your office angrily waving some papers in your face, and demanded you give him ten million dollars, saying (icily, no doubt) “You have until 5 PM to comply”? You’d probably hand it over and get out of the way quick, before he sworded your face.
Pretty extreme, huh? But now, picture this:
How about if it was some underpaid bike messenger in a Master Chief costume, the papers he was waving around at you were a reportedly lackluster script for a Halo movie, and the ten million dollars was still the payment said costumed out of work actor was demanding in exchange for said weak bullshit script? Yeah you’d probably toss him out on his ass, and want nothing to do with him or his merry band.
Much to their disappointment, the latter situation (rather than the former) plagued Microsoft yesterday, as sizable chunks of Hollywood giggled and looked away in embarrassment at Redmond’s hype-filled ploy to artificially incite a one day bidding war for their Halo script. Penned for $1 million by screenwriter Alex Garland (writer of 28 Days Later and The Beach), Microsoft expected studios to fall over each other and then combust in a flamey pyre of cinematic haggling over their Halo 2 project, going so far as sending script-toting messengers dressed as Master Chief into most major studios, asking for $10 million right off the bat, and demanding an answer by 5 o’clock that night.
Speculating that all the costumed hype was done mostly to distract from, and keep people from reading the script (which is allegedly “not good”), film insider/gossip blog Defamer reported yesterday that things weren’t going as well as MS might have hoped, and this morning Gamespot has reported that while there is some interest (it is a Halo movie after all), New Line and DreamWorks have already passed on the project.
Not the smoothest start for something that is, by definition as a “video game movie,” already poised to flop before it even gets off the ground. In hopes of confirming people’s fears of yet another gold to garbage translation, Kotaku has dished out the rumor that Microsoft wants to rush the film version of their gaming division’s epic crown jewel into theaters as soon as possible, looking for production to be in full swing by September, with a theatrical release slated for next Summer! So, get ready for that.
Originally published July 27, 2004
While that isn’t quite the point they intended to drive home, GameSpy has written a report based on a paper Banc of America released about the games they predict will sink and swim this holiday season and beyond. The report (download a full PDF here) combines B of A analysts with gaming news editors’ opinions and comes off sounding at least vaguely competent. So, um, who’s in their lineup of surefire winnars? The obvious: DOOM 3, Gran Turismo 4, GTA: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, Halo 2, MGS3: Snake Eater and Metroid Prime 2.
Okay, we knew that, but let’s say you’re a publisher and not a single one of those games is yours. What do you do? According to the financial minds at Banc of America, you should do the completely fucking obvious thing that no publisher seems to understand, and avoid Christmas. Again, yes they don’t just come out and say that, but the final page of the report (page 36), the "Suggestions" page, is nothing but a laundry list of games they think need to be pushed beyond the Christmas season to survive.
A word from the oft-burned: If you’re not one of the big boys, just hold your horses. Wait for Little Timmy to get through Return of the King and go shopping for himself with his leftover Christmas cash haul. He just might be excited by things his mom is not. Last year fans of originality wept as Ubisoft’s Beyond Good and Evil and Planet Moon’s Armed & Dangerous were completely destroyed by Christmas, thanks to Moms doing most of the shopping, and clearly passing over the original and less-marketed, instead focusing on the "Holiday Must-Haves" whose ads filled the walls of the store, and whose names filled the (albeit small) game sections of Time and Entertainment Weekly.
Who knows how accurate these guys really are–nobody can truly predict the future, especially in the games industry–but hopefully somebody is paying attention. I’m sick of brilliantly excellent titles getting trampled because someone in Sales decided it would be a "sure thing" during the huge holiday season, only to see said "sure thing" falter at the hands of EA Franchise Game 2004, and subsequently watch that same boneheaded Sales person get themselves off the hook by blaming the failure not on themselves, but on the game they were paid for six months to promote and make a success, and cancel all plans for the sequel.
Originally published February 25, 2005
Forget “the street,” forget your misguided use of “rap/metal fusion,” forget your “stupid cool Hip Hop style with his little hat and his Doc Martens.” Yes forget it all, it’s old news. The VP’s and Producers of the games industry are rapidly discovering that their latest “urban” titles (Read: Games about black people… Omigosh what did I just say?!) just aren’t impressing their other VP and Producer friends like they used to.
What’s that? You got some up and coming b-grade rapper to voice your main character? Bzzt! Old shit, move along! That’s right, if you want to be anybody who’s anybody in the games world today, you’ve gotta have a Scorsese, Coppola, or Clint Eastwood property under your belt. Preferably two.
As we probably all know, in an attempt to compete with Take2/Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series, EA announced that they’d be producing a monstrous game based on Francis Ford Coppola’s classic Godfather films. Okay, a bit weird, but you can see where they’re coming from. The thing is, in this lemmings-meet-circle-jerk atmosphere we have going currently in the games industry, it seems everyone is now maniacally intent on jumping aboard what EA’s up to, and licensing the shit out of the 1970’s!
Not only is Warner Bros Interactive working with Clint Eastwood to develop a Dirty Harry game (or is that franchise?), but eager-to-follow Majesco is now rumored to be working on a game based around Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver! Hip-hop? Out. Turning character driven drama and intrigue/borderline art films into derivite Crazy Taxi ripoffs? Clearly the new shit. Who’s willing to take bets on how many more of these we see announced at E3?
Personally, I’m holding out for Michel Ancel’s The Conversation, possibly Apocalypse Now: Source, or Konami’s Saturday Night Fever Stayin’ Alive MAX 3rd Mix. You heard it here first folks, maybe.
Originally published June 24, 2005
13 year old Safura Abdool Karim was recently granted access to the vaulted halls of Science, when her study on the existence of “PlayStation Thumb” (the blistering and tingling of the thumb after excessive gaming) was published by the South Africa Medical Journal. Though she doesn’t own a PlayStation herself (they are a “waste of time” she says), 45 out of 120 friends and classmates she surveyed regularly play games, and presumably some of them got “PlayStation Thumb.”
The effects of Nintendo Thumb, believed to be an earlier strain of PlayStation Thumb, are well documented, but this may be the first research into thumb blistering on the current generation of game consoles — not to mention the current generation of gamers themselves.
In their time, Nintendo Thumb and its partner in crime, the unnamed Sega-related disease where the waterfalls and parallax scrolling in Sonic games “make your eyes go weird,” were two potent excuse-weapons frequently deployed by moms to get their children away from the TV and out into the sun.
The effectiveness of PlayStation Thumb as a fear-inducing threat to get the kids to go play outside remains undocumented.
Originally published October 21, 2004
Developers: Has your unreleased game been stolen yet? If not, you’re clearly not trying hard enough. A pre-release copy of GTA: San Andreas was stolen and put on the Internet in the last couple days, fueling the fires of what is quickly becoming an unintentional but crucial facet in the industry hype game: highly publicized game theft. With mega-hits Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Halo 2, and San Andreas all being the victims of high profile cyber-crime, other publishers are sure to follow suit. Or not.
“Downloading, possession and distribution of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, including making the game available on the internet, is theft,” said Rockstar Games in a statement. “Reading about (the theft of) our upcoming title on the business pages of your local paper, however, is more than welcome,” they continued in their heads.
Here at the Thumb we don’t advocate piracy of any sort, but we equally discourage brandishing it about for media attention. Rockstar is hoping the gaming community will pass on any information regarding the theft of their title to piracy@rockstargames.com, and in return for any helpful information will gladly charge you $55 for their PS2 exclusive title. “Buy the hype, buy the game, it will probably be good.”
(Bonus note: One day after I wrote this, I was proven correct!)
Or: What you kind of suspected all along, only worded well, and from the actual mouths of your favorite games industry folks.”
Originally published March 11, 2005
At the end of this year’s Game Developer Conference, a handful of well known guys and gals of the “Video Game Industry Professional” persuasion were asked to just completely rant like madmen about whatever really chapped their asses regarding the Games Industry. For the packed event, noted GDC celebs Warren Spector, Greg Costikyan, Jason Della Rocca, Brenda Laurel, and Chris Hecker threw their shit-filled, flaming hats into the ring, and the event was MC’d by everyone’s favorite Eric Zimmerman, Eric Zimmerman!
This is a panel I didn’t end up attending this week at GDC, and for that I am a tremendous fool. Fortunately the Internet exists, and offers many a transcript. Here is a very nice one.
Here are some random quotations, for the link-averse:
Greg Costikyan:
My friends, we are FUCKED [laughter]. We are well and truly fucked. The bar in terms of graphics and glitz has been raised and raised until we can’t afford to do anything at all. 80 hour weeks until our jobs are all outsourced to Asia. but it’s ok because the HD era is here right? I say, enough. The time has come for revolution! It may seem to you that what I describe is inevitable forces of history, but no, we have free will! EA could have chosen to focus on innovation, but they did not. Nintendo could make development kits cheaply available to small firms, but they prefer to rely on the creativity on one aging designer. You have choices too: work in a massive sweatshop publisher-run studio with thousands of others making the next racing game with the same gameplay as Pole Position. Or you can riot in the streets of redwood city! Choose another business model, development path, and you can choose to remember why you love games and make sure in a generation’s time there are still games to love. You can start today. [standing ovation]Warren Spector:
We’re the only medium that lacks an alternate distribution system. All we have is boxed games sold at retail. This is changing a little. But think about our competition for your entertainment dollar. First run, broadcast, reruns, DVDs.. you name it. hardback, paperback, e-book. Theatre release, pay-per-view, video, DVD. We put our thing on the shelf at Wal-Mart, it sells or it doesn’t, and OMG you just blew 10m dollars. The publishers not respecting developers, this is not the problem. We have a flawed distribution model. There are very few ways of getting a game done these days. Developers.. why should we get a huge return? We’re taking some of the risk, but the $10m, the marketing space, the retail space all belong to someone else. We have winner-take-all business that carries a lot of risk. So .. we have to find alternative sources of funding. Chris Crawford used to rant about how we need patrons.. I don’t care if it’s wealthy patrons, I don’t care what it IS, but it’s critical that we divorce funding from distribution.Jason Della Rocca:
We don’t’ care about anything outside of the game industry. There is so much knowledge, research, business models, management practices out there. We don’t pay attention to anything else outside, and that hurts us in many ways! Software development pros tells us we’re fools – there are tons of systems, processes and tools out there that you could use. This pro, he doesn’t make games.. and you all shake your head and say he doesn’t make games, what does he know, but you know – medical applications are pretty unique! If your machine crashes, someone might die. So yeah, we’re unique, but so are they – and there is decades of research and knowledge that proves that these processes have return, this management stuff is in my brain right now, it’s one of millions of examples of how we as an industry don’t pay attention to other stuff just because it’s not called games. This fear of formal processes. We’re creative cowboys - well it holds back the industry. We had several panels throughout the weeks, the academics, the brainiacs are willing to do this stuff for free. Give them a challenge! Give them a problem – some PhD students could research shipping practices or something.Journalists and the media side is also broken. I don’t want to point a finger, but they perpetuate a lot of myths about what gamers want, and want counts in the industry. So to sum – open up. Don’t be closed minded to all this stuff out there. Maybe we’re all working too hard to take notice, but I guess that’s an issue we’re working on too.
Brenda Laurel:
Games keep essential social myths in place. So we have tropes in our business. Criminals are cool. The commercial game business is a non-consensual relationship between middle aged men and young boys. It’s worse than the catholic church. These are guys who have really big tyres on their trucks … and we all know why! [laughter] So the fantasies of these guys position these boys as tiny little clones: so they force you to take your genius to create this .. this .. we can’t have that fellas. Oh by the way there was a crowd in the ladies bathroom today. w00t!GTA. I talked to 22 little boys in LA, all of them wanted to see that game. With only one exception, the thing that they wanted to see was to be able to drive by their house. They weren’t interested in stealing cars. Or the criminals. Or the back-story. They weren’t interested in that, they wanted the simulation of driving by the house.
Chris Hecker:
I’m going to rant about How Sony And Microsoft Are About To Screw Your Game Design. Look, how are we going to get where gameplay, graphics and physics are all evenly well balanced? At the moment we’re the 120lb weakling, except nowadays his right arm here, graphics, is enormous.So, as you know, graphics and physics grind on large homogenous floating point data structures in a very straight-line structured way. Then we have AI and gameplay code. Lots of exceptions, tunable parameters, indirections and often messy. We hate this code, it’s a mess, but this is the code that makes the game DIFFERENT. Here is the terrifying realization about the next generation consoles: I’m about to break a ton of NDAs here, oh well, haha, I never signed them anyway.
Gameplay code will get slower and harder to write on the next generation of consoles. Modern CPUs use out-of-order execution, which is there to make crappy code run fast. This was really good for the industry when it happened, although it annoyed many assembly language wizards in Sweden. Xenon and Cell are both in-order chips. What does this mean? It’s cheaper for them to do this. They can drop a lot of cores. One out-of-order core is about four times [did I catch that right?Alice] the size of an in-order core. What does this do to our code? It’s great for grinding on floating point, but for anything else it totally sucks. Rumours from people actually working on these chips – straight-line runs 1/3 to 1/10th the performance at the same clock speed. This sucks.
So yeah check that out. Since I didn’t go to the panel, I’m not sure how accurate/complete that transcription is, but what’s there is pretty interesting. If for some reason those are only half of their rants, or lost whole sentences or paragraphs or something, please drop a better link in the comments.
But for now, bask in that craziness for a bit, and then go cry into your pillow for a while. Also, preferably, if you’re a completionist, do it with a printout of any gaming site’s writeup on Spore wedged very firmly up your ass.
Tell me that Taxi Driver game never happened.
I don’t think it did. Majesco imploded before they could get that far, I think.
This made me go through all my old news posts and I found that I never wrote a good one. I did however write some good sentences. Hooray!
It also made me go through a huge chunk of the Thumb archives. I learned that my posts were never funny or as good as Jake’s.
It’s kind of fun reading some things in retrospect. Harmonix was among the first companies to pledge support for XBLA, but they never ended up making a game for it. Little things like that. Also bigger things, like some people thinking the then-secret Wii controller would feature extreme haptic feedback that could punch you in the balls.