Vladd’s Gaming World

From The Times
April 27, 2009
Team GB use video games to produce medals
Ashling O’Connor, Olympics Correspondent

The surge fist, dragon punch and hurricane kick are not typical taekwondo moves, but the signature exploits of characters in Street Fighter IV may start creeping in as the Great Britain team take inspiration from the computer game. Athletes at the elite training facility in Manchester are playing the latest version to improve their mental agility.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article6175519.ece

By Ben Kuchera | Published: August 17, 2008

source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080817-microsoft.html

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that the sky is falling for Microsoft’s one and only gaming console, the 360, but it may be time to look at what the company is doing right… and where it’s going wrong. The Sony PlayStation 3 is beginning to chip away at the 360′s lead in both software and hardware sales in the US, and that system only seems to be picking up steam. In contrast, the 360 doesn’t seem to have much real momentum these days. 

While it’s hard to find ways for Microsoft to get its mojo back, we can easily identify a few problem areas that are becoming clear as the 360 ages. These are the weaknesses in Microsoft’s strategy that have to be addressed before the system can hope to get its groove back. Let’s take a look. 

You have to find your voice

When the PS3 launched, the 360 was the system with more, better games, and the better online strategy. Microsoft also did a wonderful job in poaching some of gaming’s largest franchises. Microsoft even brought this up at its press conference at E3: We have Grand Theft Auto, Devil May Cry, and now Final Fantasy! Look at how we’ve caught up to Sony!

The problem is, these games are still on the PlayStation 3, and Microsoft isn’t offering much in the way of improvements to these titles. In fact, given that Microsoft bet on the wrong optical format, we don’t know how many discs Final Fantasy XIII will take up when the title arrives on the 360. What else does Microsoft have in the way of exclusives? Halo is a system-seller, sure, but Metal Gear Solid IV is still a PS3 exclusive. Microsoft has many solid racing franchises, but nothing like the power that Gran Turismo brings to the system.

Xbox Live is a great service, but it’s not clear that all of its features are needed. While the hardcore complain about Nintendo’s friend codes, most mainstream gamers are more than willing to put up with them. And Microsoft’s competitors aren’t standing still; Home could be the silver bullet that finally gives Sony the edge in online play. The PS3 has one of the most anticipated casual games ever with LittleBigPlanet, and the branding of Sackboy is already amazingly strong.

Grabbing Final Fantasy was a coup, but the 360 needs more than parity

Add idiosyncratic games, such as Flower, that are coming to the PS3 and Nintendo’s absolute dominance of the casual market, and you have a gaming world where cherry-picking old franchises is no longer enough. Gears of War 2 looks great, but Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 look just as good in terms of scale, graphics, and online play.

Microsoft needs to step up efforts to keep its brand strong. The new Viva Pinata game looks good, but that was a game that didn’t set the world on fire with its first iteration. Lips looks okay, but with Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour coming up, a voice-only game might not find a home in the collection of most gamers.

Microsoft has spent so much time trying to match Sony’s past glory in terms of game selection that it finds itself somewhat at a loss now that Sony has managed to keep some games as exclusives, at the same time it’s developing all news ones. The new firmware update that will refresh the UI of the 360 looks strong, but the press gave it a scarily icy reception at E3; the full-scale plagiarism of the concept and design of the Nintendo Mii had many onlookers audibly laughing. It was not a comfortable moment.

Will Halo be enough in the future? With Bungie now independent, that’s a very large, very open question. It’s time for Microsoft to find its own voice and give itself a unique feel in the market. Its old tricks and the "first to launch" advantage isn’t enough anymore. 

Find a home in the world

We tend to focus on US sales, because we live in the US. But gaming is an international business, and Microsoft has seen almost all of its success in the US. Both Nintendo and Sony do very good business in Japan and Europe, while Microsoft has always struggled in those markets. Heck, in Japan, the big story is the sales of Sony’s PSP.  

Microsoft depends on US sales, and while the system sees spikes in other territories when there is a launch of specific, big-name titles, it tends to flounder otherwise. It’s hard to think of a way for Microsoft to make in-roads in Japan, but Europe has to be seen as a major battleground. Both Nintendo and Sony have multiple systems that are doing bang-up business across the globe. Microsoft has one system that does well in one market. It might be too late for Microsoft to grab a piece of the portable business, and the Zune is hardly an opportunity in that area, so Redmond is left with one option: the 360 simply has to step it up outside of the US.

Take the PS3′s advantages seriously

Whether or not Microsoft has fixed its Red Ring of Death problem, the fact remains that most gamers think the hardware is untrustworthy. You hear about it in the forums, in the game stores, from even casual gamers… everyone either has had systems go bad or they know someone who has. The PlayStation, on the other hand, is damn near rock-solid. Microsoft has to start getting the word out that it has fixed the reliability problems; pretending like this issue never happened is not the solution.

Microsoft also has to pay attention to the hard drive of the PS3. The drives are large, getting larger with the standard systems, and anyone can swap out their drive for a roomier one. Heck, Sony suggests it and gets the word out about DIY tutorials on the upgrade. Microsoft, on the other hand, is sticking with expensive, proprietary drives. It’s a situation made more frustrating by the fact that, without large, standard drives, Microsoft can’t begin to match Sony’s efforts at releasing full games through its online portal.

There is also the fact that Sony’s online offerings are free. Yes, Xbox Live is better. But how much better? There are large numbers of gamers out there who simply will not pay money for online play and are more than happy with Sony’s offerings. So what if you can’t send a voice message across games? Sony’s newly-launched in-game XMB adds a ton of functionality, and the Trophies it brings seem to be gaining popularity; I know many people personally who are revisiting old games to tackle the new challenges. Frank and I argued about making Xbox Live free, but it may not matter; the more powerful Sony gets with the PS3, the less Microsoft can count on Live as a profit base. 

There is also the fact that Sony has the Blu-ray drive, provides strong multimedia functions on its system in general, and its video rentals and sales work seamlessly with your PSP if you want to take your content on the road. The PSP-PS3 connection gives you so much cool functionality that it makes consumers want to own both for a great media experience. Microsoft has no competition for that at the moment.

We’re not offering solutions, just problems

How should Microsoft fix these issues? That’s a huge question, and it can be argued for days. Whatever your preferred answer, these problems are real, getting worse, and starting to show up in the sales numbers. Microsoft doesn’t have the wiggle-room it did in the market even a year ago, and it’s past time to step up to the competition.

Does the company have a viable plan to do that? We’ll see as we move into the holiday season. What’s clear is that the competition is now much stronger across the board, and that’s a good thing for gamers.  

04th August 2008

A teenager is facing death by lethal injection after stabbing a taxi driver to death with a knife bought from his local Tesco in a chilling ‘Grand Theft Auto’ copycat killing.

Now a Thai video game distributor has halted sales of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ today as backlash against the controversially violent game began.

The 18-year-old high school student, named in reports as Polwat Chino, is now in custody. He faces death by lethal injection if found guilty of robbing and killing the 54-year-old taxi driver over the weekend.

Copycat killing: Police watch as the suspect, second right, re-enacts the crime in Bangkok yesterday

Police said the youth, an obsessive player of ‘Grand Theft Auto’, showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime because of the game.

‘He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,’ chief police investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak said.

The youth, described by his parents as polite and diligent, was arrested late on Saturday after he was found trying to steer a cab backwards out of a Bangkok street with the severely wounded driver in the back seat, newspapers reported.

The suspect told police he did not mean to kill the driver, whom he had chosen as a possible victim because of his age, but that he stabbed him to death when he fought back, newspapers reported.

"We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games," Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era Interactive Media, said.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The controversial game has been pulled in Thailand after the attack

"We are also urging video game arcades to pull the games from service," Sakchai said.

"Grand Theft Auto", now available in its fourth edition, has been criticised for depicting violence including beatings, carjackings, drive-by shootings, drunk driving and prostitution.

A senior official at Thailand’s Culture Ministry said the murder was a wake-up call for authorities to tackle the issue of violent video games, and urged parents to pay closer attention to what their children played.

"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse," Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry’s Cultural Surveillance Centre, said.

"Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."

The ministry has been pushing for tougher regulation of video games such as Grand Theft Auto, including the imposition of a rating system on sales and restriction on hours that youngsters can play the games in public arcades.

A multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in the U.S. state of Alabama against the makers and marketers of Grand Theft Auto in 2005, claiming that months of playing the game led a teenager to kill two police officers and a 911 dispatcher.

The blockbuster Grand Theft Auto games are published by Nasdaq-listed Take-Two Interactive Software.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1041407/Grand-Theft-Auto-pulled-sale-Bangkok-teen-murders-taxi-driver-easy-game.html

BJ Blazkowicz returns to blast Nazis and the supernatural.

by Jason Ocampo

US, July 31, 2008 – Wolfenstein 3D is the granddaddy of all first-person shooters; a fitting description considering that since it debuted in 1992 it’s fair to say a sizeable percentage of today’s shooter audience was still in their diapers, and another large chunk wasn’t even born yet. This may be why Activision, id Software, and Raven Software wound up naming this entry in the franchise simply Wolfenstein. That’s because the companies view this as a new Wolfenstein game aimed at today’s gamers who may not know the franchise, but one that also includes all the elements that fans have come to know. We got our first look at Wolfenstein in action just prior to QuakeCon in Dallas, and here’s what it’s about.
This isn’t a remake of the original Wolfenstein, and this new game is set immediately after the events of 2001′s Return to Castle Wolfenstein. You once again take the role of Allied super soldier William Joseph “BJ” Blazkowicz as he takes down Nazis and demons during World War II. Yes, that’s right. The Wolfenstein games have always been a bit like Raiders of the Lost Ark in how they blend history with the supernatural, so in addition to mowing down legions of Hitler’s finest you also have to tackle the paranormal as well. This isn’t just another World War II shooter, though it’s clear that Raven has picked up some tips from recent games.

The story deals once again with the Nazi’s obsession with things arcane. Sure, BJ took out Germany’s occult division in the previous game, but this time the Nazi scientists have discovered a powerful new power source called Black Sun that they intend to tap. Black Sun, though, is found in a different dimension, and you know what happens when man tinkers with things that he does not fully understand.
The theme of the game, according to project lead Eric Biessman of Raven, is basically choice. This is a departure from the rigidly narrow and linear corridor shooters that Wolfenstein is known for. The tactical situations in this new Wolfenstein will feature multiple approaches to them. For instance, if you’re facing an entrenched German position during a street battle you can charge it headlong, or find a nearby staircase that takes you to the rooftops so you can shoot down, or you might find a sewer grate and try going beneath it. Another situation will require you to take out two machine gun nests. You can go up the middle, or try to work your way along either flank.

Energy weapons are especially deadly.

Choice will also extend in a number of other key ways, as well. You’ll have a choice in pursuing side missions that characters offer you, and these could lead to discovering more gold and treasure. This newfound wealth can then be used to purchase upgrades both conventional and paranormal, customizing your play style. Then there’s the most dramatic and supernatural ability at your command; the ability to enter “The Veil”, which is sort of an intermediary dimension between our reality and that of Black Sun.
By using a special ability, BJ can enter a greenish realm where opponents have a sort of aura to them, which lets you spot them easier. Moreover, BJ can use special abilities in the realm, such as Mire, which causes others to move slower than him. Other special abilities weren’t really identified at this point. However, you’ll also discover strange creatures inhabiting the realm, such as Geists, which are strange worker drones that move around the world to collect energy, only to return with it somewhere. Take out a Geist that’s fully charged and it’ll explode, sending lightning shooting outwards. Keep in mind, the Nazis have discovered The Veil first, so they’ve already made use of it. One sign of this are markers in the real world that indicate something special in The Veil. For instance, a solid brick wall blocking your way in reality might have a gaping hole in it in The Veil.

The game features conventional German forces, as well as friendly forces that assist you, which is a first of sorts for Wolfenstein. You won’t control these forces directly, but they can fight alongside you. In our demonstration, BJ found a safe house manned by one of these factions where he received a mission from a character. In a first for the franchise, BJ will also have a voice and a personality, so he’s no longer a strange cipher of a character.
Then there are the supernatural and unconventional foes, such as a Nazi heavy trooper armed with a particle cannon that works like a disintegration beam. Hit a German trooper with it and he vaporizes. The heavy trooper is protected by a shield that will deflect conventional arms in the real world, but shift to The Veil and you can target his weak spots.
Since Raven began work on the game several years ago, it based it on a modified version of the Quake IV engine. There are enhancements to add depth of field effects and other graphical features, to be sure. However, if you were expecting id Tech 5, id’s latest engine, you’ll have to wait for future games.

House party!

So where is Wolfenstein in terms of development? In classic id and Raven faction, it’ll be done “when it’s done,” and the build that we saw was described as still pre-alpha, which means it’s not feature complete. In addition, Raven barely talked about multiplayer, and that’s an important part of any Wolfenstein game, so who knows what state it is in now? So it sounds like there’s still a fair bit of work left to do. Based on looks, I’d guess that this is a 2009 game, and it’ll ship simultaneously on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
The bigger question is how much weight does the Wolfenstein name have with gamers today? It has been more than seven years since the last game, and 16 since the original. During that time, there have been no shortage of World War II shooters, and a number of them have also blended the historical with the fantastical as well. That’s what happens when you’re the granddaddy of an entire genre; everyone wonders if you have what it takes.

Source: uk.pc.ign.com

By Earnest Cavalli July 30, 2008 | 11:22:00 AMCategories: People

Ultima creator Richard Garriott is going to fly to the International Space Station, and he’s taking you with him.

With Garriott on his flight will be the "Immortality Drive," a repurposed commercial storage drive containing the avatars of every player to ever set foot in Garriott’s new MMO, Tabula Rasa. In an interview with Wired.com, the celebrated role-playing game designer said that he wanted to log into his virtual world from space, but the space station operators nixed the idea.

"I’ll have the Tabula Rasa code with me, but the ISS partners won’t let me boot it up," Garriott said. "As you might understand, they’re particularly worried about hackers reverse-sniffing their way back to the ISS."

It totally could have happened, though. "The ISS has a pretty good internet connection," he said. And Garriott believes that Tabula Rasa could tolerate the latency created by the craft’s distance from Earth.

But the universe’s first interstellar MMO session isn’t gonna happen. So Garriott’s trip to space, scheduled for this October, will be a bit less impressive as a publicity stunt. But it just might save humanity. As the game designer explains it, his game’s virtual version of Earth is going to be destroyed by the evil Bane race in the near future, so by transporting all this data to a refuge such as the ISS, Garriott is ensuring the future survival of the human race.

That’s as good a reason as any we can think of.

Garriott is calling the trip "Operation Immortality." It’s the end result, he says, of months of discussion between him and publisher NCsoft on how he could tie his trip into orbit into Tabula Rasa.

But Garriott points out that the trip isn’t just a big promotion: He’s also doing some crucial scientific work for private corporations.

"I have a pretty full schedule, but for example, I’ll be working on protein crystal growth," he said. "I’ll be taking a device two or three times the size of a lunch box Thermos filled with a thousand small plastic tubes that I will then crystallize up in space, and return them to Earth."

Thanks to the unique growing conditions introduced in space, Garriott’s crystals would be "twice as useful" to pharmaceutical firms as similar crystals grown in terrestrial labs, he said — a lucrative opportunity that is funding a large portion of Garriott’s flight.

From the excitement in Garriott’s voice, I began to wonder if he would adopt his own unique brand of entrepreneurial space travel as a full-time job, leaving game development behind. Garriott assured me otherwise.

"I’m a creator," he said. "Even at my home in Texas, I’m always ‘developing’ with my hammer and backhoe."

If that’s true, the current, solid status of Tabula Rasa must mean Garriott’s team at NCsoft is in the planning stages for its next project.

Garriott, laughing, said that though the plans are not "even close to being solidified," he has ideas for an open-world title that shares more in common with Ultima Online than today’s popular virtual worlds.

"I’ve got a really strong affinity for the type of game that is represented by Ultima Online," he explained. "No one has gone back and followed up on that. Most MMOs since then have become more combat-oriented, and less of a virtual world; a place where you live. There’s good odds you’ll see me encourage the team to go that route."

source: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/richard-garriot.html

Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Year: 1978

The Game: Space Invaders

What the Politicians Said: Space Invaders will kill your children! This dangerous "game" gives players three "lives." This will clearly make children think they can get another life after they die, thereby causing kids to start killing themselves in droves thinking that they can instantly come back to life! Video games will promote teen suicide! Vote for us and we’ll save your children from themselves!

The Year: 1993

The Game: Doom

What the Politicians Said: Okay, we were wrong about Space Invaders, Frogger, and Pac Man making kids jump off of buildings, but that sure as heck doesn’t mean that we aren’t RIGHT when we tell you that Doom will kill your children dead! This vile excuse for "entertainment" is different from the harmless games that came before it because it shows the violence happening from the point of view of the player. Since gamers are all stupid, we know for a fact that they will be unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Clearly Doom poses a danger that a real gun never could! Playing Doom will make your neighbor’s stupid kid murder your darling angel of a child! Vote for us or your children will surely die!!

The Year: 2001

The Game: Halo

What the Politicians Said: When you were kids, you played nice, safe, harmless games like Space Invaders. The aliens looked like little white boxes. But these new games that kids are playing today have deadly graphics! They are too lifelike — There’s no way for a kid to tell the difference between people in the real world and the alien monsters they kill on their Halo machines! Do we have to draw you a map? Don’t you see how this will lead to big heaping piles of dead kids?

The Year: 2007

The Game: Manhunt

What the Politicians Said: While we have to admit that we were wrong again about Halo, we still have to warn you that the Nintendo Wii was the deadliest video game system ever! In games like Manhunt, players enact killings by actually waving their arms around in a vague simulation of real life chainsaw swinging action! This unprecedented level of immersion would — absolutely, no doubt about it, we swear on a stack of bibles this time — make those mentally unbalanced gamers finally snap! The experience they gain by wiggling the remote control joystick device will surely teach them everything they need to know about buying a gun, loading the ammunition, turning the safety off, bracing for the kickback, aiming, and firing! We’re talking about kids killing kids here, people, so get scared and start voting for us!

The Year: 2008

The Game: Grand Theft Auto IV

What the Politicians Say: Studies now show that the average video game player is not a child at all and that their average age is actually 34. Considering this alarming data — along with our history of pandering for votes by portraying gamers as evil, psychopathic, nut jobs for more than a quarter of a century now — we have determined the obvious course of action: To protect our political careers, it is imperative that we raise the voting age to 35!

13-Jul-2008 Feature: Why are Flight Sims so popular?

Controversy. videogames. Two words that tend to snuggle up to each another. But it’s hard to believe that, for a spell, the most contentious game of all was not your run-of-the-mill murder/death/kill title, but a flight simulator.

When terrorists flew planes into the New York World Trade Centre’s towers in 2001, allegations abounded that they had practiced on Microsoft Flight Simulator. The horrified software giant promptly delayed the release of their 2002 version and deleted the destroyed towers from its New York scenery.
The ripples of 9/11 were also felt on our side of the Atlantic says John Davis, flight sim fan and owner of a 747 cockpit at his home in Coventry: "A few companies in England hire time, for the general public, on British Airways simulators.
"They were not allowed to do so for at least a year after 9/11. Now they check your background and your passport before you use them."
Flight simulators can’t be blamed for terrorist attacks, but this controversy illustrates just how realistic simulation software has become. While RPG fans croon over Oblivion’s shimmering fields and first-person shooter enthusiasts stare endlessly at light diffusing through Crysis’ lush foliage, the flight simulators’ relentless quest for realism is almost endearing. Like Haley Joel Osment in A.I., before he grew up and went a bit potty.
Virtually real
Bruce Williams, a real-world pilot who’s worked on six versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator – from Flight Simulator 95 through to Flight Simulator X – explains: "[In my role] I coordinated with partners in the aviation industry – aircraft manufacturers, data supplies, and organisations like the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
"I also guided the discussions about each new version, proposing features, aircraft and other details that the individual teams then decided on and implemented."
PC simulation, he says, has transformed dramatically in terms of graphics over the years. "But there’s so much more under the cowling: ATC (Air Traffic Control), real-world weather, thousands of airports and their supporting infrastructure."
On the surface, flight sims appear to have more in common with pigeon fancying, train spotting and other hobbies that middle-aged men get obsessive about. But ever since their inception, flight sims have been a core part of PC gaming.

In 1975 Bruce Artwick created Flight Simulator, the first flight sim of its kind, which was ultimately bought by Bill Gates and morphed into the Microsoft series.
Artwick’s Flight Simulator and its subsequent incarnations, laid the groundwork for gaming in the form of 3D graphics.
Flight sims were among the first games to have online play and modding. Today, their online community amounts to hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts, many of whom design virtual airlines, aircraft, scenery and entire simulations.
In 1997, Curt Olsen made a new sim called FlightGear (flightgear.org) "a community driven, open-source project based on open protocols, supporting libraries and communication, and distributed bug squashing".
FlightGear is now a collaborative effort involving hundreds of bedroom developers.
Realism is FlightGear’s ultimate goal, Olsen says.
"[We have] aircraft designers developing complex gear animations and retraction sequences, and building advanced fly-by-wire flight control systems, specific to a particular aircraft. We have designers building fully animated, fully interactive 3D cockpits, and modelling complex aircraft and cockpit systems…"
At one point, Olsen even decided to add real stars, sun, and moon graphics. "I discovered that if I put the moon and the sun in the correct place, relative to the Earth, and then illuminate the moon based on the relative direction of the sun.
"I suddenly had a moon with the proper phase for the current date." Now, FlightGear’s sky exactly matches the real-world sky for any particular location, time and date."
Virtual aviation fans are committed, and not necessarily in the way of the men in the white coats. John Davis built a flight deck in his home, replicating every switch and sound in a Boeing 747.
"I’ve spent £15,000 on the project since 1999," he says. "I started off with a 747 program, with flying visuals from Microsoft, to add to the experience.

"I networked extra computers, then built a mock panel. Gradually, I added more bits until I had a full-size cockpit. It’s not stuff you get in IKEA – a lot of work goes into putting it all together – but you can buy a lot of it off-the-shelf."
Support from pros
Davis, who can be found at the website 747simulator.co.uk, has forged a living out of his cockpit, taking people on virtual trips and teaching them the virtual ropes.
Every year, he and his pilot mates take part in World Flight, a charity event that involves a simulated circumnavigation of the globe, in real time. Do flight sim fanatics do this stuff for fun?
"They do," Davis says. "People want the experience to be as realistic as possible, so some will sit for up to 12 hours flying to Australia."
Twelve hours is nothing to your average bug-eyed, dysentery-ridden World of Warcraft player, but some might question the sheer monotony of realtime flight, for example.
VATSIM (Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network) attempts to simulate real-world aviation, with real schedules and even real delays.
"Online communication has moved to full voice communication," says Ruth McTighe, VATSIM’s vice-president of communications. "Our software has become increasingly realistic – we have both Squawkbox and FSinn to allow pilots to connect to the network, and three air traffic control programs which are amazingly close to the screens used in the real world."
Ever any chance of a crash? "Quite a few. We try not to, obviously, but given the varying levels of experience of the pilots and the complexity of some of the aeroplanes, planes crash sometimes.

It’s very rare to have a mid-air collision. From my own experience, I’d say bad landings are the commonest problem."
While a lot of real-world aviation professionals are baffled by this whole affair, many participate. McTighe says VATSIM’s members include real pilots, controllers and flying instructors.
Some pilots, in their early days of training, practice on Davis’ virtual jumbo jet in Coventry. Williams, meanwhile, has written a book on the subject: Microsoft Flight Simulator as a Training Aid.
For many gamers, flight sims might seem an inexplicable form of fun. Their influence, however, should not be underestimated.
"As the power of the desktop PC increases," says FlightGear’s Olsen, "so too does our ability to draw more complex and detailed models, increase scenery details, support multiple displays and add new graphics effects.
"We have developers with years of real-world pilot experience and years of aerospace industry experience." Can other developers say the same?

Pavel Barter

By Claire Bates
18th July 2008

Computer mice may be extinct in just three years, according to an analyst

The days of the computer mouse are numbered, according to a leading research analyst.

The device could be obsolete in as little as three years as touch screens and gesture recognition software are developed.

‘The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it’s over,’ computer industry analyst Steve Prentice said.

‘It’s all about using computer power to do things smarter,’ he told BBC News.

‘With the Nintendo Wii you point and shake and it vibrates back so you have a two-way relationship.

‘The new generation of smart phones like the iPhone all have tilting mechanisms with a multi-touch interface.

‘Panasonic software recognises your face and displays your own menu on your TV screen. You can move your hand to select what you want.’

The film Minority Report predicted we would be using interactive computer screens

In a case of life echoing science fiction these developments were predicted in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report in 2002. It was a film based in a near future where data could be manipulated around giant screens by the movement of the user’s hands.

The future: Wii users have a two-way relationship with the device

The latest technology seems light years away from the humble mouse, which was invented by Dr Douglas Engelbart 40 years ago while he was working for the Stanford Research Institute.

Bill English then invented the ‘ball mouse’ in 1972 while working for Xerox, which replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. This mouse was first used with PCs in 1981.

However, computer manufacturers disagree that the computer mouse is reaching the end of its life and say it has never been more important in the developing world.

‘The death of the mouse is greatly exaggerated,’ said Rory Dooley, from Logitech, the world’s biggest manufacturer of mice and keyboards.

‘The devices we use have been modified for our changing lifestyles but it doesn’t negate the value of the mouse,’ he concluded.

29-Jan-2008 The story of Eve Online’s most devastating assassins.

5AM, April the 18th, 2005. Mirial, CEO of the giant Ubiqua Seraph corporation, warped into the Haras solar system with her most trusted lieutenant. And at that moment, a single word was sent silently, secretly and simultaneously to operatives of the Guiding Hand Social Club across the galaxy. ‘Nicole’. Mirial wouldn’t leave alive.

Mirial, CEO, Ubiqua Seraph

She was piloting her prize ship, a Navy Apocalypse worth billions of ISK – Eve’s currency. Her lieutenant, Arenis Xemdal, flew an Imperial Apocalypse, of which only two were known to exist in the entire game universe.
‘Nicole’ was the go-code for a hit that took ten months of infiltration to set up. By 6am it was over. Every Ubiqua Seraph office in the galaxy was raided, the contents of every shared hangar – not to mention their corporate coffers – gone. Mirial’s prize ship was annihilated, her escape pod nuked and her vacuum-frozen corpse sucked into the cargo bay of a Guiding Hand Social Club vessel.
The simultaneous ambush and galaxy-wide hangar theft inflicted financial damage upwards of 30 billion ISK – $16,500 US dollars at IGE.com’s prices. The value of the stolen assets utterly dwarfed the original fee for the job. And yet the only item the Guiding Hand’s anonymous client requested for himself was the cold, dead body of the target. It’s safe to say this was personal.
"At the time of the contract’s signing, we requested one billion ISK," says Guiding Hand CEO Istvaan Shogaatsu, "which was quite a sum so many months ago. We could never have foreseen, however, the gains upon its execution… we found ourselves staring at Fort Knox with the key in our hands."
Not that there was any question of the spoils distracting Guiding Hand’s operatives from their objective. "The contract above all" is their philosophy. "The financial compensation becomes secondary to the recognition we garnered for our strike."
Et Tu, Arenis
By April 18th, the Guiding Hand had operatives in every level of Ubiqua Seraph’s organisation. Several were on the board of directors, and primary agent Arenis Xemdal "rose to a rank sufficient to challenge the CEO’s decisions."
"Multiple vector infiltration is a trademark of GHSC," Shogaatsu adds. "We feel one spy is rarely enough."
It took extraordinary effort, meticulous planning, and one moment of spectacularly orchestrated treachery. Xemdal had convinced Mirial – referred to as ‘the objective’ by Guiding Hand operatives – to fly her ridiculously valuable Navy Apocalypse alongside his even more ridiculously valuable Imperial Apocalypse "as a show of UQS (Ubiqua Seraph) might".
"The early-morning strike against Mirial’s battleship was fraught with concern." Shogaatsu recalls. "One tense moment occurred when a pilot belonging to an unaffiliated third party hostile to UQS entered the system where our operatives’ trap for Mirial lay. Another came soon after, when Guiding Hand operative Uuve Savisaalo – tasked with assisting the kill on Mirial – was spotted arriving in system by an Ubiqua Seraph pilot. These events spooked the objective, who made a short jump before being set upon by Uuve and – in a moment of ‘Et tu, Brute’ if ever there was one – Arenis Xemdal’s Imperial Apocalypse."

The Apocalypses clash

The ambush was an unprecedented clash of the titans. A Navy Apocalypse is one of the most powerful and valuable ships in the galaxy, but even so, an Imperial Apocalypse is overkill – a few cheap Battleships would suffice. To use an even more valuable ship was an act of absurd bravado, and one with enormous risks. It’s also typical of the Guiding Hand’s flair for theatrical excess.
But the hard part, according to Shogaatsu, was to then ‘pod’ Mirial. Podding is the usually spiteful, some say dishonourable act of destroying a victim’s escape pod when you’ve already destroyed their ship. The pod is no threat, and if it’s destroyed the victim has to revert to an earlier clone of themselves – sometimes losing skills that take weeks to learn, and in this case losing an incredibly valuable set of cybernetic implants. For this reason some players log out on ship-death in an attempt to avoid being podded – Mirial included, the Guiding Hand say. Successful podding was the only way to attain the physical body of the victim, however, and Arenis pulled it off.
Thievery Corporation
The moment the go-code was uttered, every Guiding Hand double-agent within Ubiqua Seraph unloaded the contents of their assigned Corp hangar – a communal storage area for trusted corporation members – into their own cargo holds and left. The assets were replaced by a note in each, stating simply that this was an act of the Guiding Hand Social Club.
That afternoon, Istvaan Shogaatsu posted on the Intergalactic Summit – a section of the official Eve forums in which posters are required to stay in character, and content is monitored by CONCORD, the in-game police.

Istvaan Shogaatsu, CEO, Guiding Hand Social Club

Posted 2005.04.18
Istvaan Shogaatsu
Greetings, everyone – it has been some time since I last stood behind a podium and made a public announcement, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m somewhat out of form. The reason I stand here before you is to announce that my mercenary outfit, the Guiding Hand Social Club, has completed its most ambitious contract to date.
Our target was assigned to us many months ago – Mirial of Ubiqua Seraph. Our task was to carry out that which the GHSC has now become known for – to utterly demolish Mirial and bring all who followed her to their knees in one fell swoop. For those many months, we toiled, secreting our operatives among her ranks, steering her organization through a number of insidiously engineered events meant to engender trust and divert their attention from where it should have been.
Early this morning, our hard work bore fruit. Executing a meticulously planned, thoroughly flawless concerto of simultaneous corp-hangar heists, attacks in open space and facility invasions, the Ubiqua Seraph came to know the wrath of the GHSC first-hand. The result shatters any previous records for sheer scale of such an endeavour:
Hostile assets acquired:
- Modulated Deep Core Miner II BPO
- Covert Ops Cloak II BPO
- Armageddon BPO
- Prophecy BPO
- Malediction BPO
- Arkonor Crystal II BPO
- Scordite Crystal II BPO
- Numerous lesser tech II BPOs
- A few billion ISK in minerals.
- 717 million taken from corporate wallet.
- Two billion taken under the guise of a loan from the executor.
Our net gain from this massive heist is roughly estimated at over 20 billion ISK.
Hostile assets destroyed:
- One Amarr Navy Apocalypse.
- One capsule, belonging to Mirial, known to possess a head full of +4s.
- One dream.
Total damages inflicted are estimated at close to 30 billion ISK.
Further information pending – stay tuned. Thank you all for your time.

Terms Of Endearment

Arenis Xemdal, Double Agent, Guiding Hand Social Club

The same forum thread contains a curious post from fellow Guiding Hand operative Zeraph Dregamon, saying simply "What have we here?" and linking a screenshot which is no longer online. According to Shogaatsu, the shot was of Mirial’s personal info page, and showed it to contain the sentence: "Friends of the Guiding Hand Social Club."
Gaining a corporation’s trust enough to rise to a the upper echelons of its hierarchy is hard enough, but this seemed to be evidence of Guiding Hand operatives actually altering the Ubiqua policy even in the eyes of its own CEO. The name Guiding Hand was starting to make sense. But how could a double-agent exert so much influence over a corporation’s political stance?
"Arenis Xemdal is what we call a Valentine Operative." Shogaatsu explains. "Essentially his job is to seduce and entice an objective into a state of trust and confidence. As such, we’d call Mirial’s relationship to him moments before the strike… ‘endeared’."
Of course, we only have the Guiding Hand’s word for this; at time of going to press, Mirial had not responded to our attempts to contact her for comment. It should be noted, too, that Ubiqua Seraph members role-play. While it’s certain that players belonging to Ubiqua Seraph genuinely trusted the Guided Hand double-agents, claims of a relationship beyond that are likely to be attributable to role-playing fun. Still, it’s a hell of a job title.
Proportional Response

Mirial, seconds from destruction.

Naturally the forum thread exploded with reactions. This was one of the single most devastating acts ever performed in Eve – in fact, it was at the time the largest monetary value of any in-game theft we’ve heard of. It was an act of such staggering audacity and duplicity that it calls into question the very distinction between gaming and reality. Is it really still just a game when you inflict this kind of damage? At what point does an in-game act become morally wrong in real life?
Opinion was divided between the impressed, the disgusted, and the impressed but disgusted. But a fair few commenters hint that Mirial herself has engaged in scams similar to those perpetrated against her – a few even express satisfaction at what they see as deserved revenge. For the Guiding Hand’s part, they’ve heard similar stories but aren’t concerned as to their veracity. "Allegedly, she is herself a corp thief, and escrow scammer. This is a large part of why we were hired, although I have not personally verified it – it is simply not my business to."
The personal nature of the contract – particularly the request for Mirial’s frozen corpse – would certainly be consistent with the client having fallen afoul of Mirial’s actions in some way.
"The client requested Pearl Harbor," says Shogaatsu. "Specifically a single, surprise strike designed to cause as much pain to a heavily fortified target in as little time as possible. The contract was the result of a vendetta between the primary target and our client, who, while certainly satisfied with the outcome, never expected the utter destruction we wrought."
"While Ubiqua Seraph was our way of getting at Mirial, and their reliance on shared assets meant that each member likely lost a fair share of hard earned possessions, we do not believe they sustained any irrecoverable damage – save for, perhaps, their sense of security."

Invite Only

For other corporation CEOs suddenly feeling vulnerable, Shogaatsu let us in on how his corporation avoids being penetrated itself.
"The Guiding Hand relies on distributed assets, rendering us impervious to theft. Since every module and warship belongs to someone, nothing is shared and thus nothing can be taken. As for infiltration with the intent to gather information, we are almost neurotic regarding the compartmentalization of any knowledge we have. The identity of clients is usually kept to the contractor who signed them, with the rest of GHSC never knowing who they’re working for. Regarding new members, we rarely recruit, doing so strictly on an invitational basis and preferring to rely on an old guard of players who know each other well."
"Beyond common sense," he adds, "I’m afraid sharing any other ‘tricks of the trade’ would be counter-productive for my corporation."
For our money, the Ubiqua Seraph infiltration was an act of despicable brilliance. An operation as cruel as it is astonishing, it serves as a simultaneous testament to both the virtues and the evils of a truly open-ended massively multiplayer game. Players crying for developers CCP to step in and redress the balance miss the point – this is exactly the kind of extraordinary player politics that you can’t find anywhere else. CCP been very vocal in the past about their intention to simply create a world – a galaxy, in fact – and let people do what they may within it. If you stop people from doing horrible things to each other in it, you lose the full scope of what a game can be.
Shogaatsu confirms that many of the Guided Hand Social Club’s operations have caused players to leave Eve Online for good. But there will be many more – ourselves included – who get an irrepressible urge to play it when they read about the dark machinations of this extraordinary universe. If there’s another game in which ‘Valentine Operative’ is a viable occupation, we’ve yet to play it.

The Intergalactic Summit Responds

Khaldorn Murino
(Freelance Unincorporated)
I am but a simple warrior, and the great galactic game of espionage and politics are but a closed book to me.
But even I have heard of the mercenaries that are the guiding hand social club. I have no doubt that Istvaan Shogaatsu’s ego will be boosted to an even greater size as a result of his actions.
I have no pity for the slavers, they deserve no mercy. But the guiding hands? I wonder if they are any better. For enough money I am sure they themselves would become slavers and attempt to destroy any opposition to it.
Be careful what you feed, for it is a dangerous person who will do anything for isk. Even the slavers have their moral code, as wrong as screwed as it is.

Ak Gara
I can’t help but wonder about what they did that asked for so much wrath.
I also can’t help but wonder if the person who hired the GH-SC is having regrets, not knowing just how much wrath he paid for.

RageChild
(Rona Paratwa)
I can attest that Mirial is well known for robbing hangers and using escrow scams. Karma.

bonesy19uk
(Stormriders)
Whoever the target maybe, whatever moral or political standing towards them may be, I have to say that no-one deserves that.

Viqer Fell
(The Peoples Front of Minmatar)
Quite quite pathetic. Podding someone is one thing robbing the entire corps assets thereby stealing from every pilot member is the act of losers. Contemptible.

Zhou Yu
(Yu Excavations Ltd)
People work very hard for months to save up to buy things like battleship BPO’s. A lot of personal time and effort is put into things like that.
By all means, lead a sustained empire war against them, hassle thier mining ops, gank them everywhere, but don’t be *****. To infiltrate a corp for months with the sole intent to steal its BPOs is the most disgusting act that could ever be commited.

Nanus Parkite
(BoB0 MONKIES INSURANCE VENDORS)
I see theres a number of people congratulating them on a such a good operation, why? Is it tought to earn someones trust over a matter of months? I don’t think so. Once you’ve gained someones trust in this game is it hard to get hangar access? Not normally. So so far I don’t see an awful lot to be proud of. Bob0′s fight wars all the time but we fight them within the bounds of the game mechanics. We don’t cheat people out of the effort they put in like this. You my friend are the kind of person I would happily face a court for beating 7 multi-coloured kinds of **** out of. To me the original post is on a par with gloating about having worked in a concentration camp, or how it was so funny when you stole an old ladies savings. I hope you rot in your own filth.

Zaridin
(V I R I I)
I can’t help but express my awe at the precision and completness for which this operation occured having read about it.

Eddie Gordo
Masuat’aa Matari
It seems you have achieved a near fatal blow to UQS and for that I applaud you. You have done the minmatar rebels a tremendous favour.

Ashley Sky
As a small-time thief and villain, this kind of thing could happen only in my evil dreams.
I kneel in awe at this incredible story of deception. I stand in the cool shadows of giants.

Welcome to the world of videogame law.

By Julian Murdoch

Lumbering colossi shake the earth with boulderlike footsteps. In their wake, smaller combatants lie shattered among the rubble of once-great cities. At their feet, minions run to and fro cleaning up the scraps, running errands and messages between the mighty foes.

Welcome to the world of videogame law.

Innovation vs. Perspiration

Jack Thompson may get all the headlines for his Florida courtroom shenanigans, decrying Grand Theft Auto and bearing witness to the descent of American culture into a Nietzschean abyss of parental neglect. But the real legal battles in videogames rarely reach the judge’s bench, instead playing out between giant companies on boardroom conference calls.

Whether it’s ensuring the success and competitive advantage of your better mousetrap or keeping your Great American Novel out of the hands of plagiarists, the mantra of "I’ll sue" is as American as apple pie.

When Atari’s Nolan Bushnell produced Pong, he was the subject of immediate legal attention from Magnavox, the creator of the Odyssey home console; their system included the Pong precursor Tennis. With a 1971 patent in pocket, Magnavox put pressure on everybody in the growing game industry — including Atari. This set the precedent that the basic concepts of videogames were patentable. Magnavox managed to settle and establish licenses with everyone but Mattel, who eventually lost in court. "Judges have recognized that these are the pioneering cases in the videogame field," explains Steve Chang, attorney at the intellectual-property law firm of Banner & Witcoff. "Right at the very beginning of the industry, there’s this seminal set of patents that are really key."

John Carmack, cofounder and technology director for id Software, disagrees. Vehemently. "This as a moral issue," he insists. "I don’t think it’s right." From Carmack’s perspective, the very idea of patenting ideas and software stifles innovation. "Edison was on point when he said that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," he says.

And Carmack certainly isn’t looking for a free ride. He’s a believer in working as hard as you can on something, selling it for all you can, and then moving on. And move on he has. Over the years, id’s released almost all of the source code to their games, just as they fall off the retail shelves. "I like making my money by continuing to move things forward rather than collecting residuals from work that was done a long time ago," he explains. "There’s a very good chance that next year, I’ll end up open-sourcing the whole Doom 3 code base."

This sense of intellectual fair play was tested in 2003, when id was forced into a licensing deal with Creative Labs over a mathematical technique for rendering shadows simultaneously. In a chance meeting of the minds, the technique was independently developed by Carmack and Creative. Creative filed for a patent. Carmack didn’t, and he missed the date for prior art.

Carmack saves his most aggressive hatred for patent shops — companies like Immersion and Intellectual Ventures that are in the business of licensing technology. "You wind up with these predatory leeches," he explains. "Someone takes that 99 percent perspiration, goes out and builds something of value and does something of value — they come in and mug them with the legal system as their backer. That’s what feels so vile and evil about the patent system."

Pretty Pictures and Fancy Words

But if we give Carmack his assertion that patents are fundamentally evil, the other pillar of videogame intellectual property is less black-and-white: copyright. A decade after Pong, Williams successfully championed the classic arcade game Defender against a knockoff from Artic International. Williams won not based on technology, but because the court found that the very ideas and expressions of the game — the graphics and the gameplay — were protectable works of art.

Steve Chang thinks this early recognition of copyright has been critical to the success of the industry. "If this case had gone the other way, it would be hard to imagine," he says. "That would’ve eviscerated a lot of the protection you have today on videogames; copyright is one of the pillars of intellectual-property protection you can get for videogames."

ome cases are even more clear-cut than a stand-up arcade clone: In June of this year, Majestic Studios released Limbo of the Lost, a game that so blatantly lifted most of its major art assets from well-known games that publisher Tri Synergy immediately pulled it off the market. But often it takes some detective work to tease out the offense. Carmack says this has happened with assets from the Quake and Doom series, but each time the publishers involved have been quick to apologize and reach an amicable settlement. "While it’s annoying, it’s not deeply harmful," he says. "It probably isn’t even corporately their fault," he suggests. "It’s some lazy artist that decides it’s easier to steal something than to create it on their own."

In other words, if patents are the tools of greed, copyright abuse is the domain of sloth.

The Mightier Sword

The idea of intellectual property gets even more complex when talking about persistent worlds. While it may be obvious who owns a particular texture, who designed a particular level, or who won the land rush to file a patent, who really owns your World of WarCraft character? "We’re just really beginning to think about virtual property as something distinct from intellectual property, which it certainly is," asserts Julian Dibbell, a tech journalist best known for his 2006 book Play Money, in which he documented a year spent as a gold farmer. While an engaging stunt, he proved a point: Virtual goods aren’t actually so virtual.

The problem right now is that who owns virtual goods is determined entirely by the end-user license agreement each player mindlessly clicks through in order to get to the game. Despite numerous lawsuits (including one case in which a judge determined a couple’s EverQuest account had to be split in a divorce decree), online assets aren’t generally treated as property — they’re treated as copyrighted works of art owned by the developer. The relationship between the gamer and his online loot is governed solely by that contract — difficult to read and nearly impossible to litigate.

Dibbell, who continues his exploration of virtual worlds in the pages of Wired magazine and as a founder of TerraNova.com, argues that this will eventually have to change. "At a certain point, it becomes more useful for society to say ‘No. We’re going to have property law govern this,’" he says. Such a shift in definition would make life easier for everyone concerned. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence was originally drafted to ensure "life, liberty and the pursuit of property." Property is simple. It makes sense. As Dibbell says, "everyone sort of knows how it works." Of course, whether simpler is better depends on how it’s implemented. "From the game developer’s perspective, this could be catastrophe," admits Dibbell. "But, in fact, there are all kinds of different ways of defining property that would make it possible for people to own their virtual property, but still let developers run their games."

Too Broken to Fix

The journey down the intellectual-property rabbit hole leaves us with one conclusion: While the status quo is working for the largest, entrenched players, it’s not keeping pace with the real world of the internet, MMOs, and videogames with millions of lines of code.

"Intellectual property has become totally broken," says Dibbell. "Where else in the world do you break an actual law by not playing by the rules of a game?" And if it’s difficult for players, it’s even worse for developers. "The truth is, everyone is infringing right now," says Carmack. "When you’re dealing with multimillion-dollar software products, it’s just inevitable that, completely without malice, people will develop solutions — when they’re just doing their job — that infringe on others’ patents."

And this is the problem with software. Even Chang, who’s in the business of intellectual property, understands the challenges and issues involved with protecting software. "The concept of sharing and reusing content in the software world is ingrained in the culture," he explains. "A lot of software developers fundamentally disagree with the concept of patenting their programs." But he’s also quick to point out that for a big business, with shareholders to satisfy, civil disobedience isn’t really an option. "Companies that ignore their intellectual-property rights do so at their own peril," he cautions. "Because their competitors are not going to be ignoring their intellectual-property rights."

But Carmack — clearly the paragon of the disobedient programmer — thinks that isn’t even an option: "If the government said I had the right to point a gun at every third person coming down the street and take their wallet, I still wouldn’t do it."