Daily News Spin — September 16, 2001 (Monday)

Another game site disappearing

Lum the Mad's site is going dark at the end of the month. The former site owner, Scott Jennings, asked them to change the name and get a new domain, and it looks like at least one of the people running the site now, Myschyf, is hanging up her keyboard. There's a possibility that other writers on the site will reopen under a new name, though.

LtM would have, at the very least, gone through a name/domain change. What will happen now is that on 9/30 we will take down the site. I know some of the other writers and people who work here are talking about creating a new site. They'll be posting more about that here in the next couple of weeks.

Game company stock prices tumble

The entire market's being hit pretty hard, but game companies are getting especially hammered, according to this Reuters story on MSN:

Shares in video game publishers fell sharply on Monday, as investors sold on fears of weaker sales in the holiday season and concern that the stocks were overvalued after a strong run-up earlier this year.

And:

Shares in Electronic Arts Inc.(ERTS) were down 8.3 percent at $49.77. Shares in THQ Inc.(THQI) were 6.6 percent at $43.19. Shares in Activision Inc.(ATVI) were off 4 percent at $31.33.

Much sharper losses were seen for Infogrames , down 14.8 percent at $4.60; Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.(TTWO), down 17.2 percent at $9.47; Acclaim Entertainment Inc(AKLM), down 15.6 percent at $3.20; Midway Games Inc (MWY), down 10.5 percent at $12.52, and 3DO Co (THDO), down 12.7 percent at $3.94.

Also off was video game peripheral manufacturer Mad Catz Interactive Inc.(MCZ), down 12.3 percent at $1.28, which makes after-market game controllers; and graphics chip manufacturer NVIDIA Corp.(NVDA), down 8.5 percent at $34.67. NVIDIA is providing the graphics chip for the XBox.

CNET's also at a 52-week low as its market valuation is flirting with dropping under a billion.

This just in: Bruce Geryk is a fag

"We can’t let Geryk get away with just saying whatever he wants, so we have a tradition of running a rebuttal to every Geryk Analysis. It's like the difference between an old guy yelling 'you goddamn kids get off my lawn' and all the little kids running away, and an old guy yelling 'you goddamn kids get off my lawn' and one of the little kids flipping him off before they all run away."

Read Tom Chick's rebuttal to Geryk's analysis of Reach for the Stars.

Hold the cheese

In his interminable quest to make multiplayer gaming palatable to us all, Brad Wardell offers a couple of new ideas for how to clean this business up. Multiplayer karma sounds good, but he also has this Metaverse idea. It sounds like some kind of freaky robot neural net player-tracking algorithm that could acquire sentience and annihilate humanity. But we're willing to give it a shot if it means we don't have to endure online assholes.

From that guy who hated Deus Ex

Over at Gamespot, Tom Chick has reviews up for Shattered Galaxy, a massively multiplayer online real time strategy game, and Squad Battles: Vietnam, a wargame set in -- you guessed it -- the American Civil War.

Creatures programmer building robots now

The guy who programmed Creatures now wants to build a robot with an imagination, according to this story in the Independent.

Grand is trying to build a robot with an imagination. He is hoping that Lucy will grow up and learn in a similar way that a young child does. So far his proclamations about Artificial Intelligence have blown traditional concepts out of the water. He believes he can create consciousness. But now it's up to Lucy to prove his theories. Lucy is made of scrap aluminium from B&Q, motors from a model aeroplane, a tiny TV camera for her one good eye, six computer systems and the main PC, which acts as her brain. She also has a removable orange furry suit made by Grand's wife, Ann.

And:

The development of imagination and consciousness is one of the biggest mysteries of all. "But ultimately, that's what it's all about � what else could you want to know about but that?" questions Grand. "It's the ultimate question � we know why we're here, thanks to the theory of evolution, but the big question now is why do we know we're here? I haven't a clue, but I need to find out."

WWII Online haiku

Not to be confused with WWIII Offline, which Osama bin Laden has planned. Don't worry, we'll foil him, because Osama rhymes with "Yo mama." The guy's beaten before he even starts!

No, this is stuff from a message board about the MMOG wargame from Cornered Rats. The frustrated players started writing haiku, perhaps in a desperate attempt to bring in a Japanese element. Anyway, they're amusing, so here's a couple of them.

Drive, drive my Panzer
Oh no! I fell through the ground
Panzer in free-fall

And:

Stuka drops a bomb
Ha! May as well be bird poop
Who forgot the fuse?

Here's the link to the thread. We spotted this at Lum's.

Official HOMM IV site opens

The official 3DO site for Heroes of Might and Magic IV is open for browsing. There's screenshots and stuff.

Raph Koster on games as art

Do you want some game with your art or some art in your game? We don't know what we meant by that, but Raph will explain it all to you in this article at Skotos.

All the arts are half science. When you go to learn to be a visual artist, a painter, say, don�t think you get handed a beret and a brush and told, "express yourself on this canvas." No, it�s more like you get handed some sheets of colored paper and some glue and told, "read these 40 pages on luminance, weight, and color theory, then create a visually balanced design using one big square and one little square." It means sitting and learning the difference between a major and a minor scale. And then between modal scales and the major and minor. And then about non-tempered scales. And then about Neapolitan sixths and false cadences. It means classifying clumps of words into trochees and iambs and knowing why it matters that a line ends in a spondee.

Now we're waiting for the follow-up where Raph explains his explanation.

Free will planned for computer game characters

Yeah, sounds a bit strange, but a professor who won an Academy Award for his work on Tron thinks we'll see this in five years, according to the NY Times.

The patent issued last week covers technology that "goes to the next level," Professor Perlin said, by creating a system in which characters can make decisions themselves. "Athomas and I decided that instead of acting as puppeteers, we could put these characters into worlds and let them fend for themselves."

The characters are guided by a sort of fuzzy logic. A game designer sets the parameters for a given character � her mood and energy level, for example. But once the parameters are set, the character is free to "act."

The professor also gets in a shot at George Lucas.

"We will see an enormous amount of progress in the next five years to the point where a large segment of the game-playing world will be radically different from what it is today," he said. "Most of us, unless we're George Lucas, move beyond the teenage phase of magic, and swords and dragons, and become more interested in ordinary life and emotions."

Yes, we're ready to move on to the adult phase of magic, swords, and dragons. Professor Perlin can go ahead and patent ordinary life and emotions. We'll take the Boris Vallejo-styled sorceress with the enormous ta-ta's barely concealed by the diaphanous robe who will ensorcle us and then command us to make hot monkey love to her. Afterwards, she'll use her eldritch powers to get us free cable TV and summon us a pizza. Does that make us immature? Ok, there's worse things than being immature.

NY Times on Empire of the Ants and Stretch Panic

We don't link to reviews that often, but the reviews in the NY Times are usually good reads.

I always thought that ants managed pretty well on their own, but Empire suggests otherwise. Apparently, ants can't survive a month without a greater power guiding them on where to get food and how to kill a beetle. In its own way, the game implies the existence of a God who takes an interest in even the smallest of creatures, a God who cares deeply about the welfare of the ant queen, and a God who likes ants better than all other insects. It's enough to make a termite turn atheist.

The reviewer also looked at Stretch Panic.

It's not hard to imagine a game designer learning of the complex world of ants and thinking it would make a good game, but it's almost impossible to imagine the thought process behind Stretch Panic, a game about a little girl with a possessed scarf who must battle monsters of vanity in a world made entirely of rubber. Did one of the game's designers have a weird dream? Did they pull random words like "rubber" and "scarf" out of a hat? No, it's simpler than that: they are Japanese.

For some reason, the Japanese make the oddest games in the world. There is nothing that makes me as curious about Japan as its video games, which suggest a country in the grip of some kind of divine madness.

It's true. The Japanese also have a coin-op game where the object is to stick your finger into a video someone's ass. Why would you want to jam your finger into someone's ass, even a virtual one? As Sir Edmund Hillary so eloquently put it as he looked at his sherpa who was bent over tying a snowshoe, "Because it's there."

Tough quarter for game publishers predicted

A Reuters story speculates that the attacks may depress sales of games in the fourth quarter.

"We believe the terrorist attacks on Tuesday will produce significant concern over retail spending patterns in the U.S. and that this will negatively impact shares of entertainment software publishers over the next several weeks," said analyst Miguel Iribarren.

The article also highlights those publishers that are seen to be most at risk.

Among those the note highlighted as being at particular risk are THQ Inc., with 55 per cent of its total revenues coming in the fourth quarter; Midway Games Inc., with two major titles launching in the next two weeks; and 3DO Co., which just launched a major title.

Another company Wedbush said was at risk is Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., whose New York operations have been disrupted by the World Trade Center attack. The company also has a number of titles planned for release in October, which is the end of its fiscal third quarter.

We spotted this story at Frictionless Insight.

Gamecube launch a bit soft

The long lines in Japan didn't materialize, perhaps due to the events of the last week which made it difficult to be in the mood to play games. Still, it's a bit surprising that there wasn't more of a commotion over the launch, although retailers are expecting to be sold out of the initial shipment of 500,000 by the end of the weekend. Nintendo insists that it will still manage to sell the 1.4 million units in Japan by the end of the year as it has predicted.

The game industry reacts

EA has suspended Majestic, with no announced date for the resumption of the game. EA is also reboxing Red Alert 2 to remove art that depicts U.S. monuments under attack.

MS Flight Simulator has come under fire after some clueless articles appeared saying that the terrorists might have been able to use it to train for their suicide missions. For the latest version of the game, Microsoft is removing the World Trade Center towers.

Duke Nukem Forever for the PC and Metal Gear Solid for the Xbox are being re-evaluated for content that may be inappropriate.

World War III: Black Gold from JoWood is being delayed. It's a game about a world war erupting in the Middle East as nations fight for control of oil.

Beam Breakers from Fishtank is getting retooled to remove the WTC towers. It's a futuristic car racing game set in New York.

On the positive side, Microsoft has donated $10 million to the relief funds and Shrapnel Games is donating 5% of their sales to the same funds.

3am

We don't have much to add to the sea of words that have been spoken, printed, and transmitted at light speed across the globe over the last week about the terrible events. Our sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims, and to our leaders as they try to sort out this mess and set the world aright, our best and most fervent hopes.

Click here to read news from September 6th