For our fans waiting to hear our attendance of the E3 2011 Trade expo this year, Unfortunately the team here at Life Inside the Box, and Powered On will not be attending.  In the following email we were advised that due to the great interest in the gaming industry the folks running E3 have decided to limit the number of Media attendees this year.

Hi Brian -

E3 2011 has placed caps on this year’s media badge assignments in consideration of the high number of requests for media badges and to offer multiple types and sizes of media outlets the opportunity to attend the trade-only E3 event.

As part of the credentialing process, the Media Team uses a variety of measurement/ranking tools to determine media badge approvals for online-based applicants including Compete.com, Quantcast.com, Xinureturns.com and Alexa.com. This ensures we get a good sense of web traffic and unique visitors in addition to reviewing each outlet for content, publisher recognition, news and industry involvement. We also do not count YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace pages as editorial.

While we do consider outlets on an individual basis, we generally look for sites to be fully launched, operational for six months, feature ongoing games industry coverage, and that the web site receives a minimum of 8,000 monthly unique impressions as a baseline for each media badge issued.

Based on the above, we will not be able to issue you a media badge at this time, but we encourage you to try again next year.

Thank you for your interest,
The E3 Media Team

While the editorial staff here at Powered On feel that denying smaller outlets the same access as the larger more established outlets to the event hinders our ability to grow to meet the baseline guidelines they are measuring registrants against, we understand that the E3 Media team have the right to set the guidelines they choose and we respect their decision in this matter.

All that having been said we will still be covering E3 to the best of the great abilities of the Powered On Team, and we hope you will tune in for our continued in depth coverage of the games industry as a whole!

By Brian Perry

Anyone who has listened to the Life Inside the Box podcast knows my reluctance for reliance in the cloud for gaming. Cloud Computing is the concept of converting our points of interaction, be it computers or consoles,from isolated units to terminal access locations. Over the last few years we have seen a steady move to this system. Some beneficial to users, like external backups of save files and game configurations ala SteamCloud. Some dubious, such as OnLive’s proposed gaming service. Lastly, some draconian like Ubisofts recent DRM scheme requiring gamers to be online and connected to authentication servers the ENTIRE time they are playing.

More and more we trust our data, our games, and our rights as consumers to third parties. Services such as Xbox live Arcade, PSN, Steam, and Impulse are all digital distributors of our games, they provide us with service to access the games we want without having to obtain and keep physical media. by doing so we are losing our rights as consumers to exercise our privilege to resell these games through the first sale doctrine as established by the American supreme court in the 1908 Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus case (apologies to our foreign readers as this may not apply to you.) We are trading security for convenience. The quick and easy access to the games we want without leaving the home, or not having to look for that CD/DVD case for hope that the service we use will remain to work in the future.

This is the side of digital distribution and cloud computing people seem to forget. These are services offered by corporations. Services that cost them money to maintain. in the between February and March of 2010, Electronic Arts will shut down 30 multi-player servers for online games purchased between 2007 and 2008. Why? Because, it is no longer profitable to maintain support for games that are not actively being played by a large audience. These closures by the way are steadily becoming an annual event with Electronic Arts.

Electronic Arts states the reason for these closings as prioritizing to the majority of their customers:

Despite some people’s perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99.7% of customers playing our more popular games.

As time goes on however we should ask ourselves do we really want our purchases to be at the mercy of someone who, by law through their fiduciary responsibilities, is not looking out for our best interest, but instead looking out for their shareholders pocketbooks?

Even Valve a development house known for it’s loyalty to customers and fans has not definitively stated how they would handle such as situation as evidenced in this quote credited to Gabe Newell:

“If you right click on a game in Steam, you’ll see that you can back up the files yourself. Unless there was some situation I don’t understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available.

We’ve tested disabling authentication and it works.”

But most recent events are even more troubling. Over the last weekend the Ubisoft Authentication Servers suffered a denial of service attack preventing users from authenticating their games. For over 7 hours people who purchased legitimate copies of an Ubisoft product, and adhered to the DRM scheme were denied access to the ability to enjoy their game because Ubisoft was unable to authenticate their product license.

Sometimes when you look up into a thundercloud you can see the lightning inside. This weekends outage is that self same thunderbolt. The Cloud Computing can have its benefits, but there is danger for consumers as well. Caveat Emptor.

Over the past week I went through my backlog of games and played through Batman: Arkham Asylum from start to finish, intro credits to end credits. Now while I say I completed it, that’s not really what the Arkham Asylum entry for my PS3 Trophy Profile says. According to the game I’m only about 3/4 from getting 100% and a Platinum Trophy to commemorate the occasion.

This is the double-edged sword of trophies/achievements for me at least. I’ve completed the campaign, found every collectable and solved every puzzle yet I haven’t mastered the last fourth of the game in it’s extra content of challenge modes. These are actually okay by me, the developer has a set of challenges and obstacles that push the player to get a mastery for the game after they beat the campaign and they reward that mastery with the corresponding trophy/achievements.

While I’m fine with that, there’s also the fact that most games offer trophy/achievements for completing a game on the higher/highest difficulty settings. Completing the game on normal earned me both the trophy for beating the game on normal mode and the trophy for beating it on easy mode, but the trophy concerning HARD mode will always be tempting me, the reason many will never get that coveted platinum trophy. Should gamers have to beat a game multiple times just to fill up a progress bar to 100% ?

At least in the case of good games like Arkham Asylum it’ll be a pleasure to go through the journey again someday in the future. And at least certain games like Half-Life 2 and it’s corresponding Episodes have a chapter selection option so I could go back and squish every Antlion Grub.

Achievements have come a long way since 2005 and the layout surrounding them has been settled mostly. I just wish that sometimes, the games didn’t always try to goad me into another playthrough right after the credits finish. But at least if I do make another journey through many of the current games with multiple difficulties, there will be a reward waiting for me at the end, making the journey’s worth a bit more sweet than it already is for a good/great game. – The Ben

Oh boy, this story. This news. Well let’s start off with a basic overview of it. Nintendo’s profits from the April to September 2009 quarter fell drastically from the astronomical heights of 2007 and 2008′s numbers to the slowdown we’ve been seeing over the past year.

Operating profit was 104.4 billion yen ($1.2 billion dollars) falling from last year’s 252.2 billion yen profit of H1 08.

The Wii has now outsold the SNES with lifetime sales of 56.14 million units while the DS is up to 113.48 million units. This is horrible as the SNES was a true gamer’s machine.

Last month’s price cut which took effect late in September, was still counted in the quarterly one report and eligible to be commented on by internet denizens as “Not good enough lol. Make some HARDCORE GAMES.”

So today all hardcore gaming journalists can rest easy knowing that they’re finally winning the battle between the plebeian casuals and their casual games. TRUE HARDCORE GAMERZ knew that the Wii’s success and failure hinged only on smoke and mirrors, and this news in no way, shape or form represents the Iwata-acknowledged fact that there was shit all to buy in the first quarter first-party-wise aside from Wii Sports Resort and Metroid Prime Trilogy.

Oh and I love how almost everyone reporting on this story includes a mention of Apple’s success with the iPod and iPhone. I mean yeah they’re successes but I don’t reeeeeaaaally think parents hold a game console (these articles are the same ones that rightfully mention sluggish Wii sales in their title as the reason for the drop in profit) in one hand and an iPhone in the other and it’s this big battle and OH MY GOD APPLE PLEASE MAKE A CONSOLE IN FACT I’M GONNA WRITE AN ARTICLE BASED ON CONJECTURE AND SPECULATION ABOUT THAT RIGHT NOW.

I mean, if they were talking about the iPhone being a competitor to the DS then yeah that’s a valid comparison they’re both portables. But just randomly inserting phrases like “Low Wii sales may also be related to the rise of the of the PSPGO and the iPhone” in these professional news stories (and these are professional online news outlets I’m seeing this at, not hobbyist gaming blogs) is…..GAH. -The Ben

Update: You think I was JOKING ABOUT THAT LAST PARAGRAPH? Goddamn FORBES just did it:

HONG KONG — Super Mario Brothers, Cooking Mama, Donkey Kong and all the other game characters Nintendo has conjured up weren’t powerful enough to fend off the challenges of a stronger yen and a new competitor called the iPhone.

Ha ha, I love a cheeky opening to a news story.

Demand for Wii, the bestselling videogame console produced by Nintendo, has been cooling down in the past few months as Apple’s iPhone has been growing in popularity as the platform of choice for handheld game players.

But…they’re two different…GAH.

Hot from Apple’s It’s only Rock and Roll Event, GDGT.com has live-blogged the entire event, and when it came to the success of the iPhone/iTouch as a gaming platform they had a few fighting words when comparing Apple’s service to the PSP and DS offerings.

On the subject of how many games are available and the buying experience via Phil Schiller:

“Games are expensive — $25-35 per title. Worse isn’t the price, it’s the buying experience, going to a store is just not a lot of fun. Built into every iPod touch is the App Store… you’ll see a big difference.” Chart time. PSP: 607 titles. DS: 3680. iPhone OS: 21,178 titles.

Okay, the buying experience isn’t exactly perfect, but that’s no reason to stop buying games that come on physical media. Having a store on your device is great and will eventually be the standard for all devices but again, that’s not going to put the brick and mortar stores or the physical media out of existence.

Phil again, on the iPod Touch in general:

“It’s a great portable game player as well. … when the PSP and DS came out, they seemed so cool. But once you play on the iPod touch, they don’t stack up anymore!”

I don’t know, they’re both still cool to me. I know most of what he’s saying is just standard press conference chest beating that every company does when they’re on stage, but while I’ve seen the Apple App store become successful, at the same time I haven’t seen the PSP and DS suffer as a result. I know there have been people who only play portable games exclusively on their iPod Touches and iPhones but I haven’t seen the other platforms drop in notoriety. Both are still coming out with games all year round and have both been successes in their own right. It’s been pretty balanced in terms of success for all the portable platforms this gen, each with their ups and downs and revivals again.

And regarding what Phil said about the tribulations and horrors of shopping for games at stores;about the stores, fuck it I’m just going to go ahead and say it I like shopping for used games (both portable and console) at places like Gamestop. It’s fun. It’s cheap and it’s fun. I like digging through the used games, seeing the crap and the gems that span almost an entire decade now. Stores might get smaller, hobbyist shops might get put on the chopping block, but just like how music and books have managed to survive for the last decade or so as physical media, so will video games as long as there’s a market that still wants to buy their products that way. – The Ben

Tomorrow will be the tenth anniversary of the Dreamcast’s North American Launch. It’s hard to believe that the last generation of gaming consoles that began with SEGA’s last console is reaching the ten year cycle. When we were at this point last gen it seemed reasonable that ten years had past between the bulky polygonal games of the Saturn, PSX and N64 era in comparison to the shiny, next-gen graphically enhanced games that all the magazines were going on about. We were comparing games where Solid Snake had no face, to a game where you could see a visible difference between his shaven and unshaven models.

The Dreamcast was an interesting connector of a console, bridging the first true 3D generation and the generation of maxing out those models with depth, complexity and emotion (according to the developers of the time at least). While most ten year anniversaries for games are generally met with an “Eh, it hasn’t aged that well” type of response, the games that the Dreamcast offered while not very impressive technically now a days, seem to remembered more for their value of fun in the memories of those retrospecting those days when SEGA was still in the hardware business.

While the Dreamcast’s time may have been short, that might work in it’s favor when you’re talking about retrospecting. Unlike other systems where you have pauses in between great releases and the universal lull of titles following a system’s release, most of the best memories surrounding the Dreamcast were at that time of release, all in one condensed package of launch title greatness. While it had it’s own dry period that ended up never recovering, the system’s life was so short that the lull doesn’t seem as bad compared to it’s elder brother the Saturn, which was still “Alive” up to the Dreamcast’s release, but nobody really thought of it as such in America. The Dreamcast came and went just as fast, and the industry’s memories of it seem to be all the more better for that reason. I think the industry may have soured on Sonic Adventure after it’s initial launch game hype wore off though. – The Ben

When you envision how awesome it would be to do something you love for a living, you also anticipate earning enough to at least live comfortably and not having to worry about monetary problems. While such things are nice to think about, the reality of the situation is that entry-level positions for almost any job are unsympathetic toward your need to pay the rent; however, as your proficiency grows with time, it is natural to expect more satisfactory emolument. With this in mind, why is it that even with years of experience, QA in particular suffers from being the lowest paid of the game development disciplines?

The most obvious answer to this very important question is that Quality Assurance is often seen as an austere entry-level position into the video game industry, thus making entry-level QA a binate entry-level position. It’s a double negative that does not resolve to a positive. Imagine you are in a D&D campaign and your character is trying to haggle with the leader of an adventurer guild on the price of services rendered, but you fumble your diplomacy check then critically fail when you roll to confirm. This is what being paid as a novice game tester is like.

Practically all entry-level positions on the market have basic prerequisites and Quality Assurance is no exception. Looking at the Blizzard Entertainment Employment Opportunities page, every qualification for their Night Shift Game Tester gig is simple and rudimentary. For example, some of the requirements listed include having a passion for games, willingness to work long and odd hours, and possessing good communication skills. Companies can get away with paying QA minor duckets for a thankless job because almost everyone who becomes a game tester has no prior experience with the profession or the industry. Starting salary is very low, with reports showing the average income sitting solidly in the range of 20k-30k for less than three years of experience in the industry.

Being underpaid isn’t just a stigma of the entry-level game tester either. No no, for even lead QA positions earn less than their counterparts from other game development disciplines. According to Game Developer magazine’s 7th annual salary survey (April 2008), the average income for QA Leads with 3-6 years of experience was barely under 42k while an equivalent position with comparable experience in Production made nearly 56k on average. That is quite an alarming difference in compensation for two similar occupations that are so closely connected to one another; especially considering how often QA will move into associate producer roles. This leads me to my final point…

It all boils down to the amount of time spent in Quality Assurance and the video game industry itself. It’s no secret that QA is frequently seen and used as a stepping stone to bigger and better positions. This proclivity to alternative advancement facilitates an existing “revolving door” syndrome: Fledgling QA join specifically to learn the ropes of the industry and then generally transfer out to other branches in game development. The same survey from Game Developer magazine also disclosed that only 38% of all QA total had between 3-6 years of experience in the industry. Sadly, this means there are not enough experienced game testers that stay in QA long enough to substantiate higher salaries.

Each of the game development disciplines is indispensable. While Quality Assurance is paid far less than their counterparts, this does not mean the job is any less important, relevant, or fun. It is awesome to do something you love for a living, even if the stipend is meager at best. Wade Tinney, CEO & Co-Founder of Large Animal Games, once said to me that, “Good QA are worth their weight in gold.” It’s just too bad that they aren’t traditionally paid their worth as well.

Since the invention of the electronic game, who hasn’t dreamed of playing them professionally? I can only assume that even those who have everything would still love to get paid real money to play video games all day long. It seems like the perfect job after all! You sit around all day, having lots of fun, exerting little to no physical or mental effort and rake in the dough, right? I don’t want to come out all bubbles burstin’ and say that everything just mentioned was wrong, because that would be false. It would also be just a tad on the cruel side but as the song goes, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.

I’ll be covering all of these points over the coming posts, but first, let’s take a quick look at the biggest myths behind being a fabled game tester.
(more…)

What a difference half a decade makes. As E3 overtook CES in terms of importance to gamers and the gaming media, so it seems that PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) has executed the same maneuver. Though both were founded for different reasons (E3 was to give the gaming industry it’s own “mainstream media attention grabbing exposition”, PAX about the celebration of gaming itself) both have seem to have taken the place of the former in terms of certain kinds of hype. While E3 is still where most of the gaming companies make 1/3 of their announcements (the other 2/3rds being TGS and whatever European trade show is king at the time), PAX just seems to be drawing most of that “feel good” sort of hype.

What I mean is that, well while E3 had returned to the larger, more big production sort of ordeal that it was known for back at the turn of the century this past June, most of the “fluff” that the gaming media loved the most about the show while reported on, just wasn’t that much interesting to the actual gamers reading their show reports and podcasts. I’m mostly talking about the fluff of the booth-babe variety. The giant set pieces that companies refer to as booths. Sure many sites had a “LOOK AT DEM BOOTH BABES!” feature and I’m sure those articles got a lot of hits, but gamers just didn’t seem to care anymore about the actual booth babes.

Most of the fluff that would be remembered from this past E3 would be those moments where the people advertising the game actually meant something. Would you rather have a booth babe, busty and voluptuous she may be stand at your side while you demo Shadow Complex or the next Epic Games….epic. Or would you rather be able to have the developers, the Cliffy B’s or the Will Wrights walk you through the game.

Even when celebrities hock games these days, more often than not they’re at least involved with games on a level beyond that of “Just gimme that paycheck”. Most journalists and gamers who read the articles about Spore during development probably remember Robin Williams actually having fun creating creatures for the audience rather than being paid to simply come up with jokes about gamers that fall flat on their face. He was paid to have fun, it was win-win for him!

PAX seems to be the kid of place that both the gamers and the presenters look forward to. Panels ranging from charities within the gaming industry to showcasing the newest and best independent games; there’s a multitude of different panels beyond developers simply showing off their latest games.

PAX has already sold out this year and stands to keep getting bigger every year. Not because it’ll have the latest and greatest new games to show off and demo (although it’s a good incentive to go), but because it’s a celebration of gaming as a whole, for anyone who has a love of gaming. – The Ben

With video game industry expositions always being about the latest and most hyped products of the upcoming years, the other kind of video game expo while not as famous as their razzle-dazzle kin can produce just as much excitement for the fans who feel more inclined to the eras of gaming’s past.

One such expo of the gone by generations is the Retro Gaming Expo in Portland, Oregon. While not the only retro gaming expo out there, it’s design and events are what you’d expect from this genre of convention, with each expo having it’s own unique events and twists that make them worth checking out.

The Retro Gaming Expo for instance may not have a tournament featuring the first person shooters you see at most game-related conventions, but instead offers a ten-man Saturn Bomberman tournament and a Nintendo World Championship competition as well. The competition may not have the same glitz as Video Game Armageddon had in The Wizard, but the same concept of competing through three different NES games for points against other gamers is still intact.

These expos are always interesting to see just how far gaming has come in the last half century, not just to see how technology has progressed, but how things can still keep their “fun value” years, even decades after release. The next modern gaming convention may have Gears of War 2 or the next Call of Duty competition going on. But there’s a chance that ten years from now the only game you’ll constantly see appearing in retro gaming tournaments won’t be titles such as those, but Saturn Bomberman getting the most attention from attendees when it’s a ten-man bomb-fest. – The Ben

…would have to be that finally, finally this year I won’t have to see another “Is this the BEST year in gaming EVER??!!” article at the end of December. These articles pop up like clock work at the end of every year on gaming sites, with each basically boiling down to “BOY A LOTTA NEW GAMES SURE CAME OUT THIS YEAR HUH?!”, which is something that doesn’t need to be expanded into a three page news piece.

The thing about “Best Year in Gaming EVER!” to me is that a lot of the time, I won’t get to play every game or even most of the games on these lists until the next year or even a few years later. One of the best things about the used games business is that while some titles may still be costly considering their age, they can end up being more satisfying than the latest sixty dollar big budget release the store has posters littering their doors and walls with have. As a lot of those new sixty dollar games age and are relegated to the same “Used Games” bins as the last generation games are, those last gen games will inevitably disappear from the mainstream game stores all together.

So this holiday, if you finished your backlog and the big name titles that do make it out this year, check out a bunch of Golden Oldies that made those “Best year in gaming ever?!” lists from years past. They may not have achievements, but they’ll most likely cost less than the newest version of Madden does.- The Ben

This is the kind of gaming generation we live in. Gamespot reports from a recent interview with Iwata during Nintendo’s Q1 Results report, that among some expected tidbits of information from him (no Wii price cut yet, next console ain’t coming for a long time) was his acceptance that last Holiday’s lineup for the Wii was, in their eyes at least a bit of a floundered opportunity. Notably the fact that Wii Music and Animal Crossing (the two games the company heralded the 2008 Holiday season with) while two and three million sellers respectively, just didn’t join the ranks of some their other games this generation in terms of sales. When you compare those two games to Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii which sold 21 million and 17 million units respectively, then yeah what used to be impressive numbers just don’t seem that great at a glance.

But this is something the whole industry is dealing with this generation, the phenomenon of gaming being at it’s peak for so many, that the games that do surprisingly well at retail seem worse now by comparison.

Lemme move away from Nintendo and focus on some third party examples on other consoles just to show that this isn’t unique to any specific area. Call of Duty: World at War sold eleven million copies by this past June. That’s eleven million copies of what some would call just a “yearly sequel” in the grand scheme of things, gamers bought the last iteration, they’ll buy the next iteration, just another entry for the books. Look back to just a a generation or two ago and see how different things were when it came to defining a title’s success through sales. A lot of the games we remember these days as classics everybody had to have played seem like mere “semi-successes” if you don’t take into account that the market was smaller back in the early 90′s.

But then even when the Playstation came to bring genres like RPGs to the masses it was a phenomenon when Final Fantasy VII sold as much as it did. FF7 just broke the 10 million mark in copies of the original game sold thanks to the PSN release and the constant 10th year anniversary marketing Square keeps up with. Just 10 million copies. It was finally able to reach a milestone that certain games these days, the ones that find themselves in the right place, at the right time, with all the right qualifications, can pass in just under a year.

So I guess where I’m getting with this is, in the end, what’s going to happen to those games currently in development that we’re all waiting for if they only sell two or three million copies? Psychonauts is remembered for being a slow cooker on the sales spectrum, never even getting to the one million mark. Here Tim Schafer says as of 2007 Psychonauts managed to sell 700,000 units. Even last generation you could make a good case for the title not being a total flop sales wise, 700,000 is a hella lotta people when you think about it.

But this gen, where games are expected to sell in the millions like parents expect their kids to at least get higher than a “C” on their report cards, what’s gonna happen to the games that can’t even cross that milestone, let alone being able to sit at the big kid’s table with Call of Duty 5, Guitar Hero 4, Mario Kart 5, and all the other big fish? – The Ben

By Brian Perry

Originating out of a discussion on neogaf about game graphics and rising prices Eat Sleep Play Founder Dave Jaffe took the discussion to his twitter feed and put words to a fear of publishers and gamers alike. Can the video game industry back down from the 59.99 price point?

[...]Be nice to be able to make our version of mid range movies now that we can make our indies. But at the moment, there is no room for games like THE PROPOSAL, THE HANGOVER, or TAKEN. That’s not 100% true (L4D) but if new game@39.99@retail was a real deal, that would rock! But most gamers see new game@$39.99 and question the quality and stay away

As it stands now the industry standard is for AAA games to be at the premium price point, and games that may be of questionable quality either start at a discount, or quickly fall there as retailers clear shelf space for newer titles. There is one example of a franchise dropping it’s price point to good effect, ESPN NFL Football. Unfortunately that attempt was preempted by EA sports acquisition of an exclusivity contract with the NFL, canceling the series.

On the other side of the argument should publishers lower the price point, or instead raise it; as Activision has done with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in the European market?

While many gamers would love to see their hobby become cheaper, and it’s possible that sales would increase, it is unlikely that we will see it happen this gaming generation.

One of the themes this month in gaming news seems to be the constant reminder to gamers by the press about how all the anticipated games they’re looking forward to this fall are now to be pushed back to 2010 for release. Just to name a scant few out of the many that have already been delayed include Bioshock 2, the next Splinter Cell, almost every big name title that isn’t a yearly sequel (Madden, Guitar Hero, Call of Duty) seems to be making the shuffle for quality/polish reasons.

The press seems more worried about this prospect than the gamers but why? Aren’t these the same gaming journalists that complain that the holiday season is too packed with games and there’s “Too much to play!” every Christmas? Weren’t they also the ones delighted that this past spring was chock full of meaty and polished hardcore titles like Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5 and a load of other titles with merit?

Why such a panic over this? Many gaming podcasts seem to have “Whatchu been playing?” segments in which the hosts go on about playing games in their backlog and going back to old favorites longer than they discuss the current new hot game of the month. So what’s the problem if not every year can be “BEST YEAR FOR GAMES EVER AAA” in your end of the year writeup? – The Ben

Today Namco-Bandai launched their Arcade Museum Home Space for the PS3 Home service, to coincide with the release of their Arcade Museum game available on the PSN to either demo for free or download.

Having been absent from HOME since, well since I first checked it out months ago, I went to check out Namco’s new digital hangout and see what it was like. I have to give it to them, it’s an arcade. A bit too pristine to recall the authentic arcades of decades past but it sets the mood right with dim lighting, game posters adorning the walls and….anime girl soda machines? Yes, in bringing the entire arcade space over to the states Namco even kept these bizarre Idol M@ster soda machines that let you play a chance mini-game to win various Idol M@aster related things to adorn your own personal Home space and/or avatar.

So I chose one of these soda machines to see what it was all about, why so many Helghast Helmet adorned persons were crowded about it, and played the little mini-game for kicks. My first try, I won a mask of a girl’s face from the game for my HOME Avatar. I’m talking creepy, unsettling mask of anime big-eyed horror.

Actually in the expressionless avatar world of HOME, it’s not as creepy as it would be in real life. In fact it fits right in with the Street Fighter IV costumed people running around the HOME Mall dancing in synchronicity. i’ll give the HOME service one thing, it’s definitely unique in that sense. – The Ben.

As one of the few (out of the entire gaming populace) who still keep up with Little Big Planet news these days, it’s getting a bit disconcerting over how the game has grown over the past nine months. Yeah there have been a lot of interesting levels designed by the players since launch, though most of the “Oh my God how did they do this?” were seemingly all made back during the beta/launch period with a news-making level only coming up every few months.

Media Molecule’s own support of LBP post launch can be looked at two ways. On one hand they have been creating new DLC month after month, but the problem lies with what the DLC actually consists of. Most of the time all the DLC is are costume parts for your Sackboy, various stickers relating to the theme of the DLC pack, and if you’re lucky actual objects or sounds to use when creating your own personal levels. The first DLC pack consisting of Metal Gear Solid-themed bits and bobbles may have seemed a bit lacking when it was first released, but only now do I realize how much was in that one pack compared to what MM has been cranking out recently. Not only did the pack come with stickers and the like, but they even put in an actual level pack with a little story for you and your friends to play through, along with an entirely new gun object (The Paintinator) that brought totally new level ideas into play for users to kick around with.

The worst part about this though, is how MM not only seems content with continuing their trend of anemic DLC, but that they hype these DLC announcements. That’s where the news section of this article comes into play. This morning the official Playstation Blog posted a little teaser for the next DLC pack for Little Big Planet, a Ghostbusters themed one by the looks of it. Now it’s well within their rights to keep producing these DLC packs, but hyping them up like they’re a substantial piece of DLC like the MGS pack was is kind of lame at this point. But, the game is still fun after nine months personally, just wish there was more to do in the Little Big Planet World. You can only play a roller-coaster level so many times. – The Ben.

This entire week has seemingly been a giant bedside vigil for the 1990′s, including the ever changing gaming-side as the 16-bit era was exploding and 3D-Polygons were comforting dreams for hotshot developers instead of them being reason many of them eventually drifted from gaming stardom into consulting obscurity.

It all started in a way looking forward to Sonic’s 18th Birthday. While the news was nothing more than fluff PR for SEGA, it was an interesting milestone none the less. Along with another entertainment icon I’ll get to in a bit, Sonic personified the 90′s in a big way. While the games started out with just being thrilled by the title the game’s biggest factor, eventually “Story” and “Features” became the selling points for future Sonic titles. Sonic seemingly never grew out of the 90′s, as the era changed and gamers began wanting things like FMV-sequences and free roaming environments. Sonic was caught between two different identities as we entered the 21st century and the next generations of gaming. He was best known for his 90′s attitude and devil may care game style. Now the later games were suddenly stress-inducers where one wrong move would send Sonic into an enemy that while prevalent in his early titles, gained notoriety as he got older. The bottomless pits.

The other icon of the early 90′s of course is Michael Jackson, who’s passing seems to have hit gamers harder than any other hobby aficionados. Sure there’s music sites posting remembrance articles by the hour, but that’s to be expected. What I hadn’t expected was the similar outlook of articles by gaming enthusiasts. At first glance Michael Jackson may not have seemed to have been a major player in the video game industry. Sure he had his own Genesis game Moonwalker and appeared in various titles over the years but at some point he seemed to have joined the cavalcade of entertainment industry icons who wanted to get involved with gaming just to boost their own image with a new generation.

What strikes me most about all these developer memory and rememberance articles is that while there was a part of his involvement that was for publicity purposes, Jackson was just as much a gamer as any of his fans at the time. It was because of his love for gaming that helped him become an icon of the 90′s. Moonwalker may have been a cash-in for some, but for Michael it was that and the ability to make his own fantasy into a game. Look how many entertainment personalities star in games but are really only there for monetary or obligatory reasons. The latest Ghostbusters title may be an awesome game but Murray didn’t have any real emotion attached to his contribution at that point.

Some of the only other personalities I can recall off the top of my head who wanted to get involved in gaming because they loved games were 50 Cent and Vin Diesel. And hell, both of their first attempts were either not well received critically (Fiddy) or commercially (Riddick) but they liked the concepts so much they had next-gen installments made. Just as you’d ask why 50 would be interested in a title where he goes to the Middle East to find a Crystal Skull you’d ask why Michael why his fantasy movie/game involves him turning into a giant robot. You don’t see ideas like that in the gorge of “Celebrity Pet Projects” come to fruition that often.

While Sonic may not be able to “Pass Away” anytime soon, the era of “Sonic Mania” is all but silent now, and it took Jackson’s untimely death to bring back one last “Michael Mania” explosion. The early 90′s didn’t leave us it seems, everyone left it, but interestingly enough it didn’t just automatically stop living, it keeps going for as long as it can, as long as there are still a few fans left to want it to stick around. – The Ben

One of the biggest complaints I see when people discuss Nintendo’s E3 offerings is that they’re relying too much on the same franchises and simply “Milking Mario till he’s dry”. And I agree that in recent years the number of bad Mario spin-offs (Mario Pinball, Mario Party #__ and so on) have grown in size compared to the bad Mario spin-offs of yesteryear….wait. No, no I don’t. Not really. I mean Mario Pinball was still bad yes and the Mario Party series became a walking corpse but there was plenty of head-shakingly bad Mario Spin-offs in the 90′s. Hotel Mario, those Early Years Edutainment titles with the creepy voices…

The point I’m making is that you could call this franchise fatigue, if the franchise was indeed suffering from fatigue. The two most recent Mario Kart games still make it onto the NPD charts while many high-profile games released this year have already fallen out of the Top 20, never to be seen again. NSMB DS was released three years ago, and Mario Kart DS almost four damn years ago.

Some people like to lump this milking into the same category of SEGA’s manhandling of Sonic, but the difference there is that with the exception of Europe where Sonic is still treated like Royalty, he’s not that popular in the rest of the world. What SEGA does with Sonic is in response to his falling stardom. Sales are down? Well then the answer is simple, the games need MORE INTENSE STORY LINES with love interests and death and loss. That didn’t work either? Well then we should try getting Sonic back to his roots….but still through in an unavoidable gimmick section that makes up almost more than half of the game play time as you keep dying and trudging through the Werehog sections.

Mario meanwhile just does whatever. He doesn’t appear in Role Playing Games because of some unfounded theory that it’ll make him more hip with the kids. They just make those Mario RPGs because they get to work with the Mario Universe. Like with my thoughts on the Zelda series, I believe that each Mario genre appeals to certain gamers. Mario Kart Wii may have turned off many hardcore gamers with it’s emphasis on randomized items and social gaming, but obviously more than enough people liked the title enough to make it one of the best selling games of this gen period. Some call it a way to squeeze some money out of Mario’s popularity after Mario Galaxy came out, but what do you call it when the spin-off becomes far more successful than the supposed “Epic 3D Adventure” title in the franchise did. When more new gamers will remember karting around with Mario years from now instead of going on some epic-story driven crusade?

And then there’s Mario Galaxy 2, which people are already pointing to as just a quick cash grab that while fun will only dilute the Mario brand further than it already has.

Well they’re right. I mean before Galaxy 2 no other Mario game had reused the same engine only a few years after release in order to have a shorter development time and implement new ideas that didn’t get used the first time aroundoh wait a minute. We’ve been squeezing a dead cow for twenty years.

The SHAME OF IT ALL! – The Ben

One of the complaints that’s been thrown around at every company at this year’s E3 is how mostly everything is a sequel. And they say this like it’s a bad thing. Yes there is something to be said about how creativity is dead in the industry, but look for a second at the previous “New, fresh ideas of E3 pasts” and you’ll see how almost every one of those ideas was based on something that came before it. For all the talk of Spore being such a BRAND NEW INNOVATE VENTURE, the strengths that it marketed itself with were that it took the best of already existing ideas and gave it it’s own unique spin. In the end, many of those original ideas in turn were better at their origin that how they ended up in Spore for many.

And look at Trico/ The Last Guardian. It has so much hype and potential because of the developer’s previous titles. So much so in fact that most of the gaming public already thinks they know how the game is going to end. It’s not going to be a surprise if the main draw of the game dies in the final act trying to save the young boy, or any combination of that sort. It would be a bigger twist to not kill off the main characters and let them live their lives in peace after the credits role. Hell, that was my favorite part of Metal Gear Solid 4 to be honest. Now that it’s been a year I think I can at least say that at the end of MGS4, Snake doesn’t die. Nope, he doesn’t die. He’s aging, he’s dying as much as he was at the start of MGS4, but he still ends the game with his ticker beating.

If you don’t wanna play sequels because you feel that you’ve already gotten the most out of that particular Universe, then fine. But the best thing games have going for them are how fast you can develop new entries into particular Universes and how much Lore can be added each generation, as opposed to movies and TV which are always on strict schedules, with each season potentially being the last look for us into these Universes. – The Ben

Here’s one of the things that bugs me with E3 time and Reviews of Nintendo related things in general. Whenever people give criticism (most of it warranted, some of it just sour grapes), sometimes they’ll include this almost sort of clause and say, “Well, I just expect so much from the “Big N” because they’re sooooo good and legendary. ” And I just wanna say, “No, stop that. Stop that because that’s the problem.”

You’re treating them like they’re some all mighty deity that you expect to do no wrong and act so shocked when they slip up or conduct business like a normal company. You’re so shocked that this company could be so bland and ruthless, not the Willy Wonka-esque dream factory you were expecting. If you just treated them like a normal developer and manufacturer you wouldn’t keep getting let down when you realize the company is less than god like.

Here’s one example of this phenom to prove that I’m not talking about some hypothetical person that doesn’t exist.

“I don’t know what it is. Is it my skewed view? Is it that we have loved Big N for so long that we expect nothing short of perfect from him?-”

Yes, that’s what it is. It’s that you’re loving a company who has the prime directive over all else to make money. Now that doesn’t mean they’re totally heartless. You can be a philanthropist of good feelings to your consumers and still make money. But stop treating them like they’re above Willy Wanka and Uncle Walt in perception. It’s that perception that makes it harder when you realize that they, nor any other company that has so much of a burden on them, aren’t your friends.

Now, some might point to Valve as the ultimate example of a company that always meets the needs of the fans. And you’re right, but Valve doesn’t have to carry so much weight in comparison to hardware manufacturers like Nintendo. They don’t have to support an entire production facility to make the hardware to play their games on. They can focus purely on the software they want to make.

And then of course you’ll get the inevitable, “Well, in that case…maybe Nintendo shouldn’t have been so successful with the Wii and gone Third Party.”

To that I say, “Well, there’s just no pleasing some people. Fuck all y’all I got the Koopa Kids.” – The Ben