Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Please Reattach the Controller

Published
on January 30, 2009
in News
. 1 Comment

Down the Wall is now officially on hiatus. I leave tomorrow with my backpack and boots for a whirlwind adventure through Europe, the Middle-East, and Asia and won’t come around the world again for a year. I’ll chronicle my trip at a new blog called Where is Jon?, and Down the Wall will have to wait until I return.

This blog has been a great experience for me and a lot of fun. I think I’ve found a good niche for myself amidst all the gaming blogs. Preparations and partings have kept me from regularly updating this site for the last month and a half, but I fully intend to continue writing here whenever I get back.

So salud, adios, goodbye, farewell, and all that jazz. Thanks for reading.

Reflecting On ‘Star Wars Galaxies’

Published
on January 30, 2009
in Review
. 11 Comments

As much as some would like to forget, BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is not the first massively multiplayer online game to tread the waters of the galaxy far far away. Sony Online Entertainment’s Star Wars Galaxies was the first MMO I ever played, and the oddball experience has colored my approach to every MMO after.

My love for the franchise compelled me to start playing SWG in the final stages of the beta, where everything was still broken as hell. Characters who sat in a certain chair in a campground would teleport to the exact middle of the world, where a set of women’s underwear hung in the air and graphic glitches played off the plains like thunder. It was charming as hell.

The game encompassed ten planets, all rendered as wide-open 15 km by 15 km squares of terrain. You could go anywhere, walk up any surface, swim across any body of water. Each planet featured a few movie landmarks — Jabba the Hutt’s palace and the droid’s escape pod on Tatooine, the lakes of Naboo, the Massassi temples on Yavin IV, and the Ewok village on Endor, to name a few.

They were fun to explore, but more like theme parks than anything else. The game had a few World of Warcraft style quests, but most players turned to the mission assignments for money and experience. Computer terminals randomly assigned a mob lair to destroy, which could be Womp Rats on Tatooine, smugglers on Corellia, or Rancors on Dathomir.

I loved the beta and all its flaws so much that I picked up SWG when it was released on June 26, 2003, and started playing the next day (the log-in servers were tellingly broken on the first day). I joined the Damorian Corporation, which constructed the first guild hall on the Chilastra server and later spawned Nova Enterprises.

Continue reading ‘Reflecting On ‘Star Wars Galaxies’’

A New President, A New Age of Game Regulation

Published
on January 20, 2009
in Analysis
. 0 Comments

Today confirmed everything I love about this country. It also brought a new perspective on video game regulation to the White House, as Gamasutra reports in today’s article on the history and future of US regulation.

“We need to make sure that all of our children have access to these technologies and we must teach our children how to harness the huge potential of this technology. I want to make sure my children are protected from the dangers of the new media world, but I also want to make sure they reap the benefits of it,” said newly-inaugurated President Barack Obama in late 2007.

The US government has a lot to clear off its plate before gaming legislation floats back to the top, but this presidential perspective marks a definite turning point in games as a new medium.

Researcher Neils Clark opens his examination of the industry and regulation with a quote from Republican Senator Mitt Romney: “I want to restore values so children are protected from a societal cesspool of filth, pornography, violence, sex and perversion.”

Clark covers the history of video game legislation, the need to guard from indecency always balanced with the need for free speech, and points to the lack of understanding of the medium among most politicians as the primary problem. He looks to the cynosure of South Korea, which has a government agency devoted to video games.

Game regulation remains a tertiary issue in the greater scheme of things: “Some of the strongest critics to the industry won reelection to the House and Senate handily. Issues like abortion, the war in Iraq and gay marriage still trump the gaming hobby. Go figure.”

Likewise, Obama’s administration will face the issues of the economy, two wars, and a failing national image, crisis which take precedence over gaming regulation. Clark concludes his essay by urging gamers to remain informed and vigilant for harmful legislation and for the even more dangerous threat of self-censorship by gaming companies.

“Government pressures on rating boards, and their subsequent pressure on ‘appropriate’ or ‘marketable’ imagery, may already affect a number of gaming companies internationally,” says Clark.

Ziff Davis Sells 1UP, Shuts Down ‘EGM’

Published
on January 8, 2009
in Analysis
. 0 Comments

After twenty years Electronic Gaming Monthly is closing its doors, and the January 2009 issue will be its last.

In the long rumored buyout, Ziff Davis Media sold its 1UP Digital Network to UGO Entertainment and shut down EGM, its last remaining print publication after Games For Windows magazine, the rebirth of Computer Gaming World, ended last April.

At least 30 Ziff Davis staff members were laid off, and everyone else now works exclusively for the online network, which includes 1UP.com, MyCheats.com, GameVideos.com and GameTab.com. The 1UP video podcast is terminated, and the state of the other podcasts is unknown.

That’s the news story, and here’s what it means: the games industry just lost one of the last refuges of intelligent, professional writers and editors.

Of course, this was a long time coming. Gaming journalism, especially print journalism, had a lot of problems. One was the generally greater degree of tech saavy among gamers, or at least gamers who care enough about the industry to read news. Those took to the Internet, where content came immediately and was easy to find, rather than to the magazine rack.

Another problem was with the magazines themselves. Game journalists had buddied up with gaming companies to ensure they got exclusive news, which meant that previews were sycophantic and unreliable, and journalists often bailed for jobs at game developers and publishers.

Game magazines bled to death, losing readers to the Web and writers to game companies and online publications, which are now the only option for news.

Web content versus print publication is a big issue among journalists. Web writers usually spend less time per story, since immediacy and volume are more important than detail. They have less time than their print counterparts to nitpick details, do serious investigative reporting, and write articles that matter and have a point and a literary voice.

All that matters online is getting an article up on the feed and moving to the next one. If its a rewrite of the press release without any additional information, so be it. Timeliness is all that matters for most blurbs, not care or message.

I first read EGM in 2000 not long after they hit the 100 issue mark. It had Unreal Tournament on the cover, and inside a Majora’s Mask review, funny letters, cosplay pictures, and a feature on games that were canceled en development. I loved it, and I’ve taken the thumb to every issue since.

I’ll miss the magazine’s professional insights, its wit and candor, its humor. I’ll miss reading news that has a distinct voice, and reviews that I can trust since they come from people who have been in the industry for ages and who I have agreed with in the past. Some of that is available online, but most is lost in the dash to the finish of online journalism.