New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #11 Results of the 7th Annual Game Developer Salary Survey

Kotaku.com Article

Well, 73,600 is definitely higher than the national average income, so it's good to see that jobs in this industry are bearing fruit. Becoming a game designer has always been a dream of mine, so it's a nice bonus to see that this dream also has the potential to pay the bills. At any rate, there are some interesting facts mentioned on the survey as well:

"Art & Animation: artists - averaging a $66,594 salary - are also a well trained group, with 66% reporting at least a bachelor's degree. The percentage of artists with six or more years of experience increased to 40%, up 5% over last year, as industry workers matured. Game Design: Averaging $63,649, design positions sprouted an average $2,111 over last year, with writers new to the industry up by $6,000 to an average of $51,731."

Also, "18% of producers are women" which is fairly substantial.

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #10 Stephen King On Violent Video Games

Stephen King's Article: Video Game Lunacy

I could not agree more with what Stephen King has said in his article and I think he raises some very interesting points. Sure, violent video games do in fact offer a alternate reality experience where you can take the role of a character who can and most likely will kill another human being in the game world. But the fact of the matter is that certain people in this world are simply unstable individuals who probably shouldn't be playing violent video games in the first place because they for whatever reason cannot handle acknowledging that what you can get away with in a video game should be separate from real life. By that, it isn't the game's fault or the fact that the Virginia Tech shooter was able to possibly gain ideas about how he might kill his fellow students by playing the a game such as "Counter Strike", but rather that he was allowed to acquire a loaded gun. Whether or not he enjoyed violent video games is besides the point completely, because if it had not been a video game, it would would have been something else within our current culture of violence that would have set him off. As for for "Counter Strike", an online game where you play on teams designed around Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists, several of my friends played this game religiously and enjoyed it immensely without taking their violence to another level altogether.

It was awhile ago, but I remember a friend of mine telling me about a story, either a film or book, I'm not sure. It had something to do with a group of kids that enjoyed playing Dungeons and Dragons, or something to the effect of a role playing game. In the story, one of the characters enters a the classic scenario of the "Maze and the Minotaur", but the player is mentally unstable from the get-go and loses all sense of reality and starts believing that he is really inside that game's imaginative world. Ultimately the story ends with the mentally unstable player mortally wounding the Minotaur only to show as an aside to us that the Minotaur was not a beast, but simply one of his friends that is also playing the game. The story ends with the unstable kid not knowing what he has just done to this other boy. In other words, the kid simply couldn't handle the culture that was presented to him and if given a weapon, therein lies the true essence of danger, not the game itself.

So yeah, I think Stephen King's article makes an excellent point about how foolish it is to attack video game violence in this way. And the true thing about it is that even you were to do this and start banning games in this way, it will change nothing because of how culture is today. That's the simple truth. However, the only thing it will change is that the companies producing these games now have a smaller market in which to easily sell and distribute game to, which means less revenue and overhead on their time and money pumped into the game's development, which leads to games getting canceled or not given an opportunity for sequels.

Now, this is a bit different from my Jack Thompson entry, as I do agree with some of Thompson's statements about video game violence, including his attacks on franchises like Grand Theft Auto. The difference is, Thompson wants to enforce that the rating system of video games is held intact and that the availability of mature video games are more regulated so that only those 17+ can get a hold of them. Basically the same as how R rated films work in movie theaters. Unfortunately, the regulation of mature video games is not quite on the same scale as the theater industry, which still isn't saying much.

And just for the record, I'm not the greatest fan of the Grand Theft Auto series. So I support Thompson on that issue at hand. I'm probably one of the few hard core gamers out there that has anything decent to say about that man. lol

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #9 Nintendo Introduces "Wii Want More"

Wii Want More

I must say, I WAS really excited about the extra content being offered for previously released Wii games... until I realized that it was simply an April Fools Joke. Though it seemed like you would get quite a lot of content in the bundle pack for a reasonable price. I know that Xbox Live offers and has been offering a similar service for Xbox 360, but most of the downloadable content is for ala carte features that you pick individually and usually for around a minimum of $3 or $4 a pop. A bundle of extra content for a game is not a bad idea though for $10 and it seems very reasonable to me, especially if it is for a game that I enjoy. Too bad it's fake as I was excited to see that the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption were on the "supposed" scheduled list of future new content as I enjoyed these games immensely. Though... lol, it would mean that I'd likely need to re-purchase these two titles as I have already sold them upon completion in order to secure newer released titles.

However, regarding downloadable content or "DLC" in general, there is one thing that still kind of bothers me. Sure, new content for old games released is entirely one thing, but what about how new releases are developed with stuff like "Wii Want More" or "Xbox Live DLC" in mind? I'm referring to how some of Xbox 360's titles are treated where a great deal of unlockable content that you have the option of purchasing from the Xbox Live service, is and was already included in the original game disc that was purchased. In other words, the content was already there, it was simply not available until you pay extra money for it. When purchasing these "new" characters, stages, extras, you are often times purchasing a "code" that unlocks the content from the disc itself and not actually patching the game with newly developed content over the web. I find that this process actually kind of cheapens the feel of whether or not you are actually receiving fresh new content for a game. I guess to me, unless the extra content purchased feels really worth the money it almost feels like the game was sold at full price as an package of incomplete content that you must spend extra money just to make it complete so to speak. Now I'm sure that this process makes quite a bit of extra money for developers and publishers, but I'm hoping that this process of hiding already developed content from the customers who purchased the game does not become a trend.

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #8 Gibson's Lawsuits Over Copyright Infringements of Musical Rock'N Roll Games

Gibson Lawsuit against Harmonix

Now, perhaps I do not understand or follow all of the details behind Gibson's proposal/patent to design their own rock'n roll simulation game, but it seems to me that Gibson's idea or concept of plugging an actual guitar into a video game system or computer to play a musical video game is quite different from playing a plastic toy controller designed to mimic the process of playing a guitar. Seriously, when you think about it, the process of playing a game like Rock Band or Guitar Hero you hit a series of buttons and strum yet another button. This is quite different from holding actual strings against frets and strumming a series of various gauge wires. If all Gibson is claiming is that their idea of using a guitar to play a video game rock'n roll simulation is proprietary, they really should think again. Gibson doesn't own the rights to "Play a Guitar" so to speak, so why would they own the rights behind the idea of "Playing a Virtual Guitar"?

I don't know, perhaps I'm wrong, but to me this logic doesn't make any sense to me and for that reason if anything alone, I'll be cheering for Harmonix and hoping they come out on top.

I also thought I should add, not many Americans really know about the origins of guitar music video games, but unfortunately for all of the companies arguing over who came out with the process first, the real origins of guitar themed music video games stem from the Japanese based Konami music franchise known as Bemani, with their Guitar Freaks series which was sold exclusively in Japan as early as 1999 and similar Guitar themed game, Gitaroo Man, developed by Koei in 2001.

Both these game franchises arrived many years earlier than Guitar Hero, Rock Band or whatever Gibson is or was planning on cooking up. And just for the record, if the issue is regarding the idea or process behind having multiple, different video game musical instrument controllers playing in sync with each other to play a performance, Konami's Bemani group has them beat on that as well. As with Bemani's musical series Guitar Freaks, Dance Dance Revolution, Karaoke Revolution, Beatmania, Drummania, Keyboardmania and Pop'n Music, many of these game controllers can be hooked up together to play songs as a live performance with multiple players.

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #7 Unfair Taxing of Video Games and Electronic Entertainment

Tax TVs, video games, outdoor group says

This article made me rather upset when I first read it a few days ago. The "No Child Left Inside" fund? Are you kidding me? Seriously, when I first read this I was appalled that such a proposal exists. Yes, I can understand that there would be folks out there that would willingly participate in activist measure against video game culture and attempting to try and ween more children off of sitting indoors and playing video games. And there is nothing in the least wrong with that mentality as there is a growing rise of obesity and children who are inactive because all they do is stay inside. Looking back, I guess I could be considered as one of these types who would prefer to say inside, but it didn't quite go down like that because of one factor: My upbringing. a.k.a. How my parental guardians decided to raise me. This is the real issue that need so be addressed, not the extra taxation of video games which are already very expensive to purchase. These people feel that they know what is best to essentially steal money away from businesses trying to sell video games and electronic forms of entertainment and also hurt the customer who has worked hard to earn money to purchase a video game. Just because some children would rather stay inside and play video games, that's simply the culture and it's not the fault of the industry but rather the parents who don't make an effort to get their kids out of the house. And what of college students like myself who can't afford the luxury of time to try and get some outdoor time and seek relaxation through a pass time activity of playing a video game in the privacy of my own home. In other words, everyone get's quite screwed over by a proposal such as this, but especially the retailers who in tern have to raise their prices to make ends meet, which in tern make more customers decide to venture into online markets instead of local businesses simply on the basis that it is cheaper and not taxed unfairly.

And when all is said and done, let's say this fund actually gets the money they want, what then? What is their great plan for using this money? Are they simply going to rip out the old monkey bars and baseball fields and install new ones in their place? Also I don't see how taxing video games is going to actually make people WANT to play less then they do already and I surely don't see how this actually makes them WANT to go outside more. So if it doesn't guarantee results, it'd basically be yet another example of a waste of tax payer dollars.

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #6 Wii to Displace Xbox 360 by End of 2008 and Sony PSPhone!?

Wii to displace Xbox 360.

Well I knew that Wii was leading in terms of overall console sales as the numbers that were released right around the first year's release of the Nintendo Wii put it right up or in some polls, just over the sales of Xbox 360 units which had been already on the market for at least two years. But, I never expected to see numbers such as this above article is suggesting for 2008 sales. If the polls are true than this literally puts Nintendo back on top in the console market since it's reign in the 80's and 90's, and this is not to mention the Nintendo DS currently leading the way in the handheld market, in which Nintendo has always had a significant lead over competitors.

Now it's not that the Xbox 360 or PS2 are inferior systems to the Wii, not in the least, but one does have to recognize that the video game markets are changing quite radically. Instead of games always being about the best, high quality HDD graphics the Wii focuses more on getting regular gamers and an entire new demographic of casual gamers and even non-gamers interested in playing games on the system. And the fact that it is half the price as one of the other graphic powerhouse consoles. It's funny to go back to video game journal/magazine articles written during the period before the Wii and DS systems were launched and reading some of the criticism that they received early on. Most articles, especially the "Game Informer" reviewers which is a magazine that gets pushed on the majority of the video game magazine reading markets through the empire of GameStop, (which now owns it's only other major competitor EBGames) harped on the ideas of the Wii and DS being gimmicks and that the real future in video gaming lied in graphics and raw processing power. Think back to Darth Vader's dialogue in Empire as he stated, "IF YOU ONLY KNEW THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE!" This is what I think of every time the editors and reviewers spoke of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Truth is though, no one could truely anticipate that the Wii and DS would take off as much as it has, but now numbers have spoken and this gimmick, fad controller design and gameplay seems to be here to stay afterall. Now I like Nintendo, but I don't know if I'd consider myself to have a favorite console of the three that are out now as I also have a great deal of respect for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live's model with things like online gameplay for most games and a "GamerScore". But you have to admit, something about Shigeru Miyamoto's philosophy (Shigeru Miyamoto: Lead Video Game Designer for Nintendo, and the creator of Super Mario Bros. Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and many, many more series) that video games should first and foremost be "FUN". Word is, though Miyamoto is always smiling for the cameras, being a game designer working under Miyamoto is quite the trial because if Miyamoto test plays the game they are designing and deems it not to be fun, they have to go back to the drawing board. The entire model and concept behind the Wii remote system and the DS touchscreen system is centered around this very simple concept of "FUN", rather than graphics and making "HDD rendering impossibilities" possible.

It'll be interesting to see where things go from here on out in terms of these two different philosophies. But wow, 30.2 million Wii's sold by the end of 2008 with the system being out a little more than 2-3 years by that time is incredble.

But, I wouldn't count Sony out just yet either, especially with news of their Sony Ericsson model PSP phone rumor going around. Personally with the success of smart phone technologies such as Apple's iPhone I think Sonly could pull it off unlike Nokia's NGAGE.

PSP PHONE HOME

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #5: GT/Atlanta Boosts Video Game Industry

Georgia Tech Boosts Video Gaming Industry

This was an interesting read which I thought accurately sums up the current state of the video game industry as it is now and makes many references to some of the ongoing startup projects and companies geared towards starting Georgia's very own chapter of the video game industry. It's nice to see that Georgia Tech's Digital Media Master's program is involved in this effort so much as it is. I hope that perhaps the UGA Video Game Development Club and the UGA Digital Media program will also eventually get involved with getting students to be equipped with some of the skills that this type of industry is looking for in employees. The GT Digital Media program sure seems VERY different from the UGA one. Sometimes in the UGA Digital Media classes I can't see how the word "digital" fits in, which is a shame. Not that the Digital Media department at UGA is a bad one, but it surely differs greatly from what I expected to be... I guess I expected it to be more like how the GT one is set up. This is the reason for why I've chosen to do an Interdisciplinary Major with focus on not only Digital Media classes, but Dramatic Media/Animation/Film Studies and New Media classes as well. Basically what I'm designing for myself, is a GT structured Digital Media BFA through UGA, which is kind of odd since I was originally intending on being a UGA Digital Media major.

I'm also glad that this article mentions Clinton Lowe's effort in bringing about the Georgia Game Designer's Association. I'm a member of this group and I really wish I could be more active with this group, but unfortunately with my schedule as it is, I'm usually way too swamped with college projects to be able to make it to the meetings in Atlanta, especially when they are held in the evening and I'm not the best night driver. My first car accident ever took place near the entrance ramp to 400 N after just such a meeting at night time, so I've haven't been confident enough to try and drive to these meetings since then especially when I already do about 3 hours of driving to-and-from Athens on a Monday through Friday schedule. Funny that one of my Digital Media peers mentioned to me the other day after telling him about my traveling arrangement that "the environment hates you". This is most certainly true!

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #4: AGFEST - The Next Video Game Expo in Atlanta!

Atlanta Gaming Festival

I still remember being 17 years old when Georgia's last E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) was held downtown. For many years E3 had been held in Atlanta for developers and anyone who had connections to get in (wasn't completely public at the time) just so long as you were at least 18 years of age. A buddy of mine and I both went down there just to see if there was a way to get in anyway, but to no avail we could only see the expo from atop the second floor viewing glass of the center where it was being hosted. And of course, as luck would have it, the next year E3 moved over to California and stayed over there for the next several years until it finally dissolved over a year ago. Now new expos are growing in place of the old E3 model, one being the E4ALL and now AGFEST or "The Atlanta Gaming Festival" being promoted by the Georgia Game Developer's Association which has been pushing along with the help of the Governor and the Georgia Econonomic Growth Department to make Atlanta into the next big hub for commercial interest in software development and making Atlanta more attractive for big business migration.

July 19th-20th. I'll definitely be there. Hopefully the turnout will be high and perhaps also promote SIEGECON, a game developer's convention which was started and hosted in Atlanta last year.

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #3: ESPN to Cover MLG

http://www.mlgpro.com/?q=node/181255

I first heard about this over talk radio on the drive up to school one morning and my mind was completely blown. Sure I had heard before that there were such things as "Professional Gamers" who earn money and "fame" (if you want to call it that) by playing their hardest in various video game tournaments, such as Halo 2, Halo 3 and Gears of War. But never did I know that there was actually a Major League Gaming group out there that readily covers video game competitions in a similar fashion to a sports talk. The MLG apparently came out awhile back and has slowly been getting more recognition through the years and more recently ESPN has decided to cover MLG as well.

There's quite a bit of uproar between those parties who feel that video games deserve to be entered into society as a sport, and those who feel that video games should not be considered an athletic sport.

Personally, I'm just surprised that video gaming has come this far to be thought of in this sort of way. However, even if I really want games to be taken seriously, especially as an art form, I still consider gaming to be fun and recreational and not something "athletic" per se. Training your body to participate in a physical sport somehow seems quite a bit different than training your thumbs and practicing game levels and stages over and over again to the point of complete memorization in order to develop a winning strategy. Sure I'm all about game competitions... but I guess don't really get it that it should be in the same league as sports.

But, with that said, one article states that one of the top professional gamers out there, Tom Tayler, 19, owns his own gaming company, and a $250,000 contract through MLG. So people can debate this as long as they want, but the truth is around us that for many years now video games are truly beginning to take shape as their own entity and a profitable entity at that.

This would be why I'm still very much interested in becoming a part of this growing industry. Afterall it makes about 10 times as much profit as the film industry and the industry doubles in size ever five years.

"New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #2: Video Game Industry Buys Political Protection

Article

Well, I can't say that I disagree with what this organization is trying to do by pumping money into the coffers of the various political candidates running for office. By doing this, these companies are pulling together in order to try and get the political outlook on videogaming to be taken seriously and as a body that is willing to work together with the U.S. Government to provide solutions for the number of rising problems that many public officials and candidates are attributing towards video games. By providing a generous donation, it puts the video game companies into a position where perhaps their creative process and rights when designing games will be either protected in the years to come and perhaps hopefully unaffected. When you start targeting games over other forms of media that coincide together with them such as television, film and the internet, it simply doesn't make that much sense. You can't really select one branch of media to pick on like that.

Now, the questionable content in video games ranges from nudity, sex, sexual situations, drugs, realistic violence and gore and these themes are directly attributed to the actions of many younger teenagers who when investigated enjoyed playing said games that contained that kind of content. In other words, a great deal of correlation data has been gathered to try and lump social disorder, various types of crime and school killings with video games directly.

Now personally as a gamer who has always enjoyed video games ever since he was a child and wants to continue his career in the video game industry, naturally I have a great deal of love, or whatever you want to call it, for video games. I want video games to be viewed in a positive light because I feel that games should be seen for the art form that it is. But games that contain this kind of content and are directly linked to hostile actions with teenagers certainly do a great effort in bringing video games down. I do not enjoy games such as Grand Theft Auto for this reason, because I cannot get behind a game that publicly brings down the overall image of video games.

Now a lot of gamers are against a man named Jack Thompson, who is an American attorney and activist who is the most prominent figurehead for banning stylized violence in video games (Along with Hillary Clinton I might add). Initially I automatically didn't like this guy until I one day had the opportunity to hear him speak in person. Honestly after hearing what he had to say, he was mostly against games such a Grand Theft Auto and wasn't against all games having violence in them, but rather the video game industry and retailers should come up with a better system for keeping mature content away from minors. I can actually agree with him on many points even though this guy is attributed to being an enemy against the video game industry. I'm all about expressing creative freedom as we live in the United States which is supposed to be a country where creative freedom and freedom of speech exists, but there does have to be a line that shouldn't be crossed. Nowadays with political correctness becoming a gigantic blob that keeps engulfing more words, phrases and content that are now deemed inappropriate by a society of oversensitivity, I fear that when a video game company goes out to design a game with the sole purpose in crossing boundaries of realistic violence, sex, drugs, crime and disorder, eventually it will be these specific companies that will bring down the level of creative freedom that the industry will be allowed to have when designing games. And that would really suck if that were to happen.

I don't know, this has turned into more of a ramble at this point, but I can see why this group is donating money to political candidates in order to secure favor with them over a long period of time, but I just can't see it any differently than a parent having to bail out a child for doing something morally wrong. I see it as all the top video game companies have to literally pay the price for the bad publicity that certain games have wrought. Now I have a few friends that enjoy games like Grand Theft Auto and they aren't the types of people who are violent and go out to commit crimes and I'm not saying that I wholeheartedly agree with what is being attributed to games such as GTA, but I'm concerned for a few companies ruining the image of video gaming in general to the point were we constantly have big brother watching over the developer's shoulders.

New Media Technologies Blog - Entry #1: Wii Remote Headtracking

As I am taking more New Media Institute classes this year, I've been asked to keep a weekly blog about news relating to New Media Technologies and such. This is the first entry.

While I have been into videogaming for many years now with the prospect of one day becoming a game designer at some point in my lifetime, I'm always fascinated by the newest and latest technologies concerning next generation hardware and software development.

When I first saw the Nintendo Wii in action, I was blown away and I felt a sense of realization that the game industry standards were about to change forever and that games centered around interacting within a three dimensional space or virtual environment were finally coming to fruition. And who the better to pioneer this research than Nintendo since as I remember it, Nintendo that always revolutionized the game industry with innovative technology. Sure they've made some bad decisions as all companies have, but the ideas were always there even if the technologies of the times were not advanced enough to support them 100%. Looking back you can see devices such as the zapper gun and power glove, which didn't work all that well being the origins of what we now know as the Wiimote, the track'n'field mat being the origins of the WiiFit mat, and the Super Famicom's Satellaview system (featured only in Japan) being the very first online video game network similar to what we have as Xbox Live. The Wii has only been out for just over a year now and now it seems that a previously unforeseen technology can now be applied to carry-on the ideas behind true virtual reality in video games.

The following video was something I saw recently that I personally found amazing. Think of all the possibilities when making a single player interactive experience that developers can think about using this technology. I can think of several right of the bat such as the environment moving as you press up on the thumb stick giving a true run'n'gun style experience. I also think of how Panzer Dragoon (which is a 3-D panoramic rail shooter) might feel like using this type of technology and it definitely brings a smile to my face.