Other : gaming

What Makes Gaming Social?

Zyuu — Sat, 24 May 2008 03:53:21 GMT

There's a great article over at GIgaom that cover 'What Makes Gaming Social?' Yeah, what does make it social exactly..? Well, I have many things to say about that, but, it's pretty obvious the main part of it is the other players in the game. For example, playing MMO's -- it's very social because you interact with other players on many levels.

I'll let the article say the rest.

In case we needed proof that social gaming is hot, look no further than the not one but two Silicon Valley conferences being held this month that are dedicated to the space. Yet with representatives at Interplay and the Social Gaming Summit from companies as far afield as Meebo, IMVU and Kongregate, it makes you wonder if there is anything linking these companies together at all. It’s time to define what we mean by social gaming, so that we can better focus on the actual value we are creating for the players themselves — and avoid the trap of slapping a sparkly new phrase on any gaming startup that wanders onto the scene.

Just as social networking is a tag applied to just about anything community-related on the web, it is temping to lump every game that has chat or a shared leaderboard under the social gaming umbrella. But to do so muddies the water of a category that just may be the natural progression from social networking. While social networking is focused on connecting people together, we should expect the best of social gaming to be about creating and building relationships with those friends. Not every multiplayer game is a social game, and by looking at it this way we can see that social gaming has a lot more in common with Wii Sports, Rock Band and Monopoly than it does with single-player casual games like Bejeweled or Bloons.

Texas Hold’em Poker is a great example of a synchronous social game. Playing a game of Texas Hold’em Poker with a friend tells me a host of things that last far longer than the game, including their level of aggression, willingness to bluff, and proclivity for risk. It’s also in the camp of games designed to rely on fast feedback in order to give a sense of being “there” with your fellow players. This real-time nature ties Texas Hold’em to synchronous communities that include Kart Rider, World of Warcraft and Club Penguin.

Synchronous social games feel like real-time card games at their lightest, and like Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games at their deepest. The unifier for synchronous startups such as I’minlikewithyou, Three Rings, and Habbo Hotel, is that in an increasingly “always on” world in which we are overwhelmed with choices, the high-value online communities of tomorrow will be the ones that get users past the “snacking phase” of browsing and asynchronous interactions to a place where they are engaged with each other.

Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy

Zyuu — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:21:21 GMT

Gamasutra have a quite in-depth article about Online Gaming Idiocy and how to fix it, psychological style.

[In this in-depth article, Fulton discusses why "the online behavior of our customers is dramatically reducing our sales", referencing his social design on Microsoft's Shadowrun to explain how we can dissuade anonymous Internet gamers.

Warning: This article uses language inappropriate for a professional website. Unfortunately, the language used is far less offensive than what is commonly encountered in online gaming.]

Some gamers are fuckwads

Of all the ways I spend my free time, playing games online is the only one I would describe as "frequently barbaric". Insults of all kinds, including racist and homophobic slurs, are commonplace.

The women I know who play online avoid anything that would identify them as female -- including voice communication -- in order to avoid the unwanted, and frequently negative, attention.

And that's just how players are intentionally insulting -- what some people do while playing online can also be aggravating.

Cheating, team-killing, entering a game but not playing, quitting before the game is over, and more, are all relatively common. Common enough that it was deemed worthy of a Penny Arcade comic, speculating about why normal people become fuckwads online.

Read the full article here -- four pages long!

Link between online gaming and violence killed off

Zyuu — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:33:10 GMT

People who play violent games online actually feel more relaxed and less angry after they have played.

This is the finding of Miss Jane Barnett and her colleagues at Middlesex University. Their results will be presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference in Dublin today, Wednesday 2 April 2008.

The psychologists recruited 292 male and female online gamers, playing the game World of Warcraft. The players, aged between 12 and 83 years, were asked to complete a questionnaire on anger, aggression and personality and then played the game for two hours. After this time they were they were asked to complete the test again.

The psychologists found overall the gamers were more likely to feel calm or tired after playing – but there were differences depending on sex, age and personality.

Miss Barnett said: “There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type.

“This will help us to develop a emotion and gaming questionnaire to help distinguish the type of gamer who is likely to transfer their online aggression into everyday life.”

For further information BEFORE the conference call: The British Psychological Society Media Centre – 0116 252 9500 or the PR Team mobiles – 07793 800 366 / 07793 800 373 / 07793 803 291 / 07793 800 613

DURING the conference (09.30hrs Wednesday 2 April – 16.00hrs Friday 4 April 2008) call: The Conference Press Office – 00 353 1 2407945 ext 645, or 00 353 1 2407946 ext 646 - or any of the above PR Team mobile numbers.

1UP Network Announces 2008 EGM Speaker Lineup

Zyuu — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:30:08 GMT

Dr. Oren Harari, Renowned Author of 'Break from the Pack' to Keynote

NEW YORK, March 25, 2008—1UP Network, the recognized leader in print and online videogame content, announced today that celebrated author, Dr. Oren Harari, will be headlining a stellar lineup of speakers at the 11th Annual Electronic Gaming Summit. The Electronic Gaming Summit, held May 19-21, 2008 in Napa, Calif., is the only event of its kind to provide a platform for leading videogame industry influencers and top-level executives to learn, network, and exchange ideas about the gaming culture and its future.

The 2008 Electronic Gaming Summit boasts presentations from an array of elite videogame industry and non-industry leaders, who through their vast knowledge, experiences and business visions, will share invaluable insight on hot-button gaming-related issues and trends. In addition to Dr. Harari, author of ‘Break from the Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy,’ Summit speakers include such key business players as Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Nintendo of America, Inc.; Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing, Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft Corp.; Peter Moore, president of EA Sports; Michael Pachter, managing director, research, Wedbush Morgan Securities; Jason Holtman, director of business development, Valve Software; Beth Simone-Noveck, professor of law, director, Institute for Information Law and Policy, Democracy Design Workshop; Tanya Giles, senior vice president, research and planning, MTV Networks Entertainment Group; and a panel of prominent journalists that cover the gaming industry including N’Gai Croal, Newsweek, Daniel Sieberg, CBS News, Geoff Keighley, Spike TV, and Brian Crecente, Kotaku.com.

“From the inception of the Electronic Gaming Summit, this event has been the gaming industry touchstone for uncovering key trends and generating forward thinking,” states Jason Young, CEO, Ziff Davis Media. “This year’s diverse lineup of speakers truly continues the prestigious reputation of this event. Through their varied backgrounds and specialties, their presentations will no doubt enlighten minds, open important dialogues within the industry, and cultivate new ideas. I can’t wait to hear what this great group of minds has to say!”

The theme of this year’s Electronic Gaming Summit is 1:1, exemplifying what the focus is of this unique event, as it is defined in many different ways- the meeting of individuals face to face, the opportunity to have direct, focused communication, and the current industry genesis as the birth of the next-generation consoles translates into continuous growth and opportunities.

Guildhall at SMU Joins PC Gaming Alliance

Zyuu — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:33:41 GMT

University to Serve as Independent Resource for Innovation Development

SMU, DALLAS, Texas - March 11, 2008 - The Guildhall at SMU, a leading graduate education program in video game development, has joined the PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit organization that unites hardware and software creators, game developers and publishers, and others committed to the PC gaming market with the common purpose of advancing the PC as a worldwide gaming platform.

“Having SMU join the PCGA is a big win for the organization,” says Rick Carini, from DELL, the PCGA Chairman of the Board. “The PCGA’s main goal is to improve the PC Gaming customer experience. SMU, as the first university to join the PCGA, will bring a unique perspective that will help balance the PCGA. This will only help in getting to the ultimate PC Gaming experience.”

Together, PCGA and its member companies will work to accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience for consumers and serve as a collective source of market information and expertise on PC gaming. Members of PCGA are Acer Inc./Gateway Inc., Activision Publishing Inc., AMD, Dell/Alienware, Epic Games, Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., NVIDIA Corp. and Razer USA Ltd.

“We hope that SMU and other universities will be able to serve as the independent testing and innovation centers for PCGA and its members,” Dr. Peter Raad, executive director of The Guildhall at SMU, explained. “In order to fulfill our mission of providing the future professionals and leaders of the video game industry, we need to be engaged in all aspects of the value chain. Universities can no longer sit on the sidelines. We need to do our part by joining in and becoming breeding grounds for future game play innovation and innovators.”

Raad believes the flexibility of the PC platform provides wide-open opportunities for continual experimentation and innovation in game play through novel user-machine interfaces.

“In a truly immersive experience, the technology should disappear or at least be innate to the consumer,” Raad added. “With uniform standards and new technology, the PC can continue to be a terrific worldwide platform for consumers.”

The PC gaming market is a multi-billion dollar industry with hundreds of millions of gamers worldwide. Leading research firm DFC Intelligence calls PC gaming “one of the fastest-growing segments of the interactive entertainment market” and projects that the PC game business will grow more than 80 percent over the next five years, with major increases in the number of PC gamers, revenue from digital distribution, and PC hardware sales.

PCGA is the first and only industry organization devoted to the PC gaming industry. It will focus on driving coordinated marketing and promotion of PC gaming, consistent and accurate reporting of PC gaming market sizing and research, and creating forums for member companies to cooperate on solutions to challenges facing the PC gaming industry, such as hardware requirements, anti-piracy, and more. PCGA will develop and promote guidelines and recommendations and foster information sharing between members to accelerate the PC gaming industry.

ABOUT THE GUILDHALL AT SMU: The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University is the premier graduate video game education program in the US. Many of the school’s founders are industry icons, and classes are taught by industry veterans. The program has a 95 percent placement rate with more than 180 graduates working at 70 of the leading video game studios around the world. The program offers both a Master’s degree and a graduate Professional Certificate of Interactive Technology in Digital Game Development, with specializations in art creation, level design, and software development. For more information visit guildhall.smu.edu.

Pc Gaming Alliance is going to save the pc games

Zyuu — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:49:33 GMT

It's no secret that the pc games have less and less influence in the gaming industry. Of course there's exceptions such as The Sims and World of Warcraft, but overall the consoles have taken over the biggest part of the cake - especially outside of Europe. However, now it seems as if the industry have had enough and takes steps to turn this around.

Companies such as Nvidia, Intel and AMD/ATI have decided to enter in a cooperation that they have named PC Gaming Alliance. It's suppose to combine the industry with the same message relayed to everyone. This doesn't mean that they are going to stop compete with each other though, they will keep pushing the development forward all the time.

One of our main major objectives is to provide one voice on PC gaming market. There's no one source that says 'hey this is where the PC market is going'. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are always calling their market share - we're going to call our market through this group.

Competitive Gaming comes to ESPN

Kody — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:18:32 GMT

In what's being billed as "A Historic Day For Major League Gaming" on MLG's website, Major League Gaming has teamed up with the leader in sports broadcasting, ESPN, with an exclusive content agreement that will see ESPN televise the entire 2008 Pro Circuit.

ESPN will also be providing coverage of the ciruit, with a team of reporters on hand at every event to provide analysis, interviews, and scores and stats.

“ESPN is committed to serving our fans, and we recognize the growing popularity of pro video gaming,” said John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager, ESPN digital media. “Adding MLG content to our already comprehensive offering will help us continue to deliver the best news, information and entertainment to our growing gaming audience.”

“Pro video gaming offers sports fans everything they love about sports—great teams, break-out personalities and stars, and exciting competition,” said Matthew Bromberg, President and CEO of Major League Gaming. “MLG’s digital properties now reach over four million fans a month, and millions more follow the League on TV, mobile devices, and X-Box Live. We’re excited to build upon that audience with ESPN.”

It looks like competitive gaming has finally hit the mainstream with this deal -- something that isn't really surprising, considering the current state of video gaming and its rapid growth beyond the hardcore gamer, introducing gaming to a new sector of would-be gamers, both pro and casual alike.

To read more about this announcement, head over to the MLG press release.

McDonald's UK: Kids are fat because of video gaming

Indelible — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:45:44 GMT

Steve Easterbrook, the CEO of McDonald's UK, has ironically claimed that video games are responcible for children becoming fat.

Easterbrook claims that gaming has reduced the amount of time kids spend outside, "burning energy," which is why childrens weight and health is becoming more and more concerning.

Then there's a lifestyle element: there's fewer green spaces and kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they'd have been burning off energy outside.

Despite the finger pointing at interactive entertainment, Easterbrook did realise that placing the entire blame on the entertainment sector would be a grave mistake, and admitted that fast food is partly to blame.

More than 88 million visits were made to McDonald's restaurants last month, up 10 million on the previous year.

Wikia, Inc. Announces the Wikia Gaming Network

Kody — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:34:07 GMT

Wikia's presence in the gaming industry got stronger yesterday, by announcing their new gaming network of wikis, created specifically for gamers and the games they love.

This is just another step for Wikia in making their content-rich wikis the premiere destination for gamers looking to contribute and read up on game information found through the wiki format.

In less than three years, over 800,000 articles on 3,000 topics have been created throughout the Wikia network. If you'd like to check out the new Gaming Network on Wikia, head over to http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Gaming

And of course, don't forget about a suite of Wikia content being offered here on Curse through our partnership, including the incredibly popular WoWWiki. You can check out all of our wikis, provided by Wikia, by clicking here.