Daily News Spin — May 23, 2001 (Wednesday)

Another quartet of E3

More prognostications based on what we saw at E3. Check the bar on the right for our daily quartet of E3 previews.

The future of flight sims?

This is some wild, real-world stuff. It's about an Air Force unmanned plane called the Predator in Airspace magazine.

Because the Predator is small, white, and almost invisible in the sky, people don't realize they're being watched. Its 80-horsepower four-stroke Rotax 912 engine is virtually silent at altitude but as annoying as a chainsaw on the ground. Early models powered snowmobiles and jet skis, but later versions are FAA-approved for aircraft. The aircraft can be picked up on radar, but most search radar systems filter out low-speed targets so that they don't pick out birds or objects that don't pose threats. The Predator can fly at around 70 mph, slow enough to hide from such radars.

All we ask is that Derek Smart not be put in charge of designing these things. Thanks Bruce!

Virtual porn on Xbox?

Ananova has a brief article about a virtual porn star that has been developed for the Xbox.

Bunny Luv has been developed as a virtual sex simulator for the Xbox video game system, which will be launched by Microsoft later this year.

Pixis Interactive Inc, which developed the character, said Microsoft were not pleased with their innovation. The game features what Pixis calls Touch Feel User Interface (TFUI).

It allows for full interactivity with a virtual actress from any angle and position from the first person point of view. It also features exclusive footage, a photo gallery and interactive movie clips.

Porn sells. This could be the Xbox's savior!

Gender benders in online RPGs

The LA Times has a column looking at males playing as females and females as males in online games.

As one of the thousands of online gamers who play characters of the opposite gender, Gold created Cardinal as a tactical move: Female characters generally get treated better in the male-dominated world of virtual adventuring. Yet he was unprepared for the shock of seeing the world through a woman's eyes.

"I can't even begin to tell you how funny it is to watch guys trip all over themselves and be dumb," Gold said. "It's very amusing to see them try to be really sophisticated and cool, when they're turning out to be just the opposite."

What? You mean when we told every Diablo rogue we met online that she looked good in leather we weren't being sophisticated?

Replayability in games

Gamasutra has an article about replayability by Ernest Adams, a former Bullfrog designer who's now working as a freelance designer. This is part one of a two-parter, and it discusses the impact of story on replayability.

With so many tales to choose from, we now assume that once we know the plot there's no longer any point in hearing the story again. This is true for most of our stories: is any given episode of Kojak or 21 Jump Street that worth seeing a second time? Probably not. But there are a few tales that we do see, or hear, or read over and over. We drag out A Christmas Carol year after year, and even if Tiny Tim is too saccharine for modern tastes, the story of a bitter old man's redemption is not.

The decline of gaming sites

Avault has an article about the financial decline of gaming sites. They might have subtitled it, "Bring out the dead and the dying."

As the months into 2001 have passed, we've witnessed the fall/cutbacks of many online gaming media websites, including: Daily Radar, C|Net Gamecenter and the Gamecenter Alliance, eFront, UGO Network, IGN, eUniverse, GameFan, GX-Network, GameLoft, Looneygames plus many others. Where have the outcries from readers been? Where has the upset that all Internet patrons show whenever something doesn't go their way been? Nowhere apparently.

Some of the figures bounced around in the article seem exaggerated, at least for smaller sites.

At this point you're now out $26,000 in up-front costs and another $20,000 per month in bandwidth charges ($55,000 a month if you went for the T-3).

Maybe Gamespot is paying that much in bandwidth, but we doubt any others are. The article also mentions that the current going rate for CPMs is about $0.30, which won't even allow most sites to meet bandwidth costs. The article closes without offering hope of any real solution to the financial problems that sites are facing. Bummer.

The New Yorker on Ultima Online

We spotted this at Lum the Mad's site. The New Yorker has a rambling but interesting look at Ultima Online, Origin, Richard Garriott, and more, including a bit on how the economy was subjected to hyperinflation when the virtual economy was flooded with counterfeit (duped) gold.

…in late 1997 bands of counterfeiters found a bug that allowed them to reproduce gold pieces more or less at will. The fantastic wealth they produced for themselves was, of course, entirely imaginary, and yet it led, in textbook fashion, to hyperinflation. At the worst point in the crisis, Britannia's monetary system virtually collapsed, and players all over the kingdom were reduced to bartering.

We were also fascinated by this bit of information about how UO is handling player vs. player conflicts - essentially, they've given up.

Finally, last year, U.O. gave up on the notion of self-policing. Britannia these days exists in two parallel versions, or "facets"-Felucca, where killing other players is O.K., and Trammel, where, except under very limited circumstances, it is not. Four-fifths of all players choose Trammel.

So much for PvP, at least in Ultima Online. Thanks Erik!

World War II Online, Steel Soldiers gold

Strategy First has announced that World War II Online has gone gold and will be available in June. With the purchase of the game, you receive a free month of play. Thereafter, the fee is $10 per month to continue to play.

Steel Soldiers, the sequel to the Bitmap Brother's Z, has gone gold and will be released on June 8th. It's being published by Eon Digital Entertainment.

Z was an odd game, one of the first post C&C/Warcraft 2 RTS's to be released. It was frustratingly difficult to play, though.

GeForce a winner for Nvidia

Nvidia reported first quarter net earnings that rose 41% over the same period last year. They're dominating the marketplace, according to this Yahoo story.

Nvidia -- whose technology and chips will be used in Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console, set for launch in November -- now has about an 83 percent share of the market for so-called graphics processing units, or GPUs and Huang said the goal is to push the GPU into all segments of the personal computer market.

Online games the future?

Yahoo has posted an AP story about the online game business. Not a lot new, but some interesting figures are tossed about.

Sony won't say how much it's profiting from ``Everquest,'' but does say the game is making a profit off of the $3.8 million it gets every month in subscriptions.

That goes for major rival ``Ultima Online,'' whose maker, Origin Systems, says it is profiting from its 240,000 subscribers.

Couple that with a new Datamonitor study indicating that the number of online game players is expected to go from 20 million this year to just under 120 million in 2005, and the potential for revenue as much as $4 billion isn't unlikely.

These studies are always a bit hard to make sense of. If there are 20 million online gamers this year, then it appears to us that the vast majority, probably over 19 million, play online games for free. The combined subscriber base for the big three MMORPGs is about 700,000, and no one knows how many individual gamers that number represents, since many hold multiple accounts. Trying to estimate how much revenue online gaming will represent by 2005 is tricky business, since it's hard to know if the MMORPG market is saturated or if it still has a lot of growth potential. We'll have a much better idea by this time next year after a wave of MMORPGs are released. The market will either grow to support these new games or a lot of games will limp along with small subscriber bases.

3am

EverQuest spills over into Major League Baseball as a hitter takes revenge on a pitcher who allowed his EQ character to die in this ESPN story.

"Not enough attention is paid to the off-the-field motivators that create nasty on-field grudges," Glanville revealed. "I believe video atrocities top the list. Curt Schilling assassinated my lovable Dwarf Paladin in EverQuest, happily smiling as his character stood in the safety of the town guards. That can create serious internal friction."

IGN has an interview with Danny Pelfrey, who has composed game music for games such as nclude Star Trek: Away Team, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Star Trek Armada and Dark Reign, among others.

Action Trip has a column suggesting that game sites should charge game companies to run previews.

Mark's latest GameSpin column is up at Gamespy. It takes a look at three games shown at E3.

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