Magdalene's Shrine

What's this? An article on a mainstream news site proclaiming that gaming will not turn our children into mini Charles Mansons? It's true!

According to a story published at MSNBC, the Pew Internet & American Life Project is discovering that online games are positively affecting our children's civic experiences. The research doesn't simply track how much time kids are spending in social games, but it's delving into what the children are doing with that time.

"Video games can provide hands-on learning opportunities for kids that can be much more meaningful than reading a textbook," this article states. It goes on to make an interesting analysis of social interaction in our favorite online games, "Helping a newbie get his sea legs in a game simulates the real-world experience of volunteering. And playing games online can expose kids to people with worldviews that differ from their own - in positive and negative ways."

source : www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26726230/

With the console market already a very crowded place with three different consoles serving the needs of three (mostly) different demographics, what would happen if a fourth company released another console? It seems like the answer simply would be that the market isn’t big enough for four consoles and it would be destined to fail. However, what if that company was already one of the biggest companies in gaming, and that already has a firm hold on a sizable percentage of the gaming industry? What if that company was Activision Blizzard?

Around since the late 1970s, and founded by defectors from Atari, Activision currently sits atop the list of third party publishers, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger everyday. Since the completion of their merger with Vivendi earlier this year, the moniker Activision now adorns multiple franchises at the top of their genres - “Guitar Hero,” “Call of Duty,” “Tony Hawk,” and the biggest of all “World of Warcraft,” just to name a few. Take a look at your game collection, and see how many of your games either have Activision, Blizzard, or Vivendi on them, and then think back to the Atari 2600, and how many quality games over the last 29 years have been released by this one publisher.

What would happen if this time next year, as the industry was getting poised and ready for the holiday deluge, the sequels to all the games mentioned above were only available for one console - Activision’s? Their catalog might not offer the depth and diversity as the PS3’s, or the Xbox 360, but it would be the only place to get your fix for “Guitar Hero 5,” “Tony Hawk 10,” and “Starcraft 2.” They’re all quality games and they would only be found on one exclusive platform. Sure, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would have a wealth of other games from other publishers to fall back on, but when the biggest piece of the pie is gone, is there going to be enough left for everyone to share?

In addition to their library of franchises they would, no doubt, also have the capacity to produce their own, new, franchises as well. After all, there are ten separate development studios under them, including such heavy hitters as, Infinity Ward, Neversoft, and Raven. These studios would be able to increase their capacity from their current one title per year (or every other year), to more than that, because they would only have to commit their time to developing for one platform, instead of three separate ones. It might even encourage additional creativity for studios to venture outside their comfort zones. Red Octane to develop something that isn’t a rhythm game. TreyArch could make an RPG. Infinity Ward could make a platformer.

What if this mystery console had a low price point, and could offer great graphics? What if this mystery console was appealing enough to encourage at least a limited amount of third party support? If it launched with a host of great, and established, first party titles as well as third party support, and you could actually have a viable contender. When the 3DO launched in 1994 it was able to get commitments from a host of third party developers - everyone from EA to Konami (granted that didn’t really pan out too well), if this console could pull in one EA or Ubisoft, it might be able to compete.

I fully realize that there is very little chance of this actually happening, for a whole assortment of different reasons, but it would be a huge shake-up of how the entire industry operates. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft would no longer be able to look to Activision titles to help move their consoles. It might be too late this console life cycle to happen, but, who knows what the future holds. All those analysts predicting a converging console future might need to start considering a wild card.

Some upcoming Activision Blizzard titles and ongoing franchises:
World of Warcraft
Guitar Hero
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Call of Duty
Spiderman
James Bond
Tony Hawk
Diablo 3
Starcraft 2
Geometry Wars
Project Gotham

Article from www.truegameheadz.com

My comment : Maybe in the next 10 years? Who knows. It's a well-known company anyway.

Former US Secretary of State and US Representative to the UN under President Clinton, Madeleine K. Albright, will be helping the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin launch the school's new Master of Global Policy Studies degree with a public discussion on 'the emerging global and transnational challenges of the 21st century and how the next generation of young leaders can contribute to developing innovative strategies to meet these challenges' at 4PM Wednesday, 10 September (US Pacific Time).

Those of you not able to attend the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas may, however, find it both convenient and particularly appropriate that you can view the event live via the 21st century transnational virtual environment, Second Life by visiting the amphitheatre at GSD&M's Idea City Island. Regardless of your political affiliations, the discussion should prove to be a lively and interesting one.

For those of you left wondering what the difference is between global and transnational, global is that which affects every nation, while transnational is that which affects multiple nations, but is not necessarily global.

Source

GOA, the European publisher and operator of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, has issued a public apology for the false start to its open beta test yesterday.

Although servers have opened, and closed beta testers have been able to enter the new phase without any problems, account registration and authentication for new players is not working.

"I rarely address players directly, but I wanted to write you as too few of you have been able to access the open beta today," said GOA's chief executive, Ghislaine Le Rhun, on the European WAR site.

"We have not yet solved the issue of saturated Open Beta key activations that we're currently experiencing," Le Rhun said. "I am sincerely sorry for this, and I understand all the frustration the situation has spawned.

"Today was a dark day," Le Rhun continued. "We expected a massive influx of players, but reality was even harsher. I personally commit that we will communicate to you as clearly as possible on the resolution of these current issues."

In a previous post, it was explained that "serious problems" with the authentication system, "combined with an exceptional amount of traffic and a fault which was not identified during the extensive tests," had limited access to only a handful of new open beta testers. However, the performances of the servers, patcher and downloader for WAR's open beta were all "satisfactory".

The authentication system is expected to be fixed "late Monday morning", with an update promised mid-morning.

Jagex Ltd. writes:

"RuneScape has entered the record books this week. The game has been recognised as the most popular free MMORPG in the world for the second year in a row, with a certificate awarded by Guinness World Records."

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Congratulations!

Massively: We'll keep this short and sweet. Anyone who was part of the Warhammer Online Preview Weekend can join in on "Preview Weekend+." Tomorrow. That's right. Friday, September 5th, for North American Preview Weekend attendees. Warhammer Online's Community Coordinator James Nichols made this announcement today:

"WAAAGH!!!

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Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King lead designer Tom Chilton said that increasing the level cap to 80 with the impending expansion will allow Blizzard to better align the game's hardcore and casual players.

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Two papers presented on August 5, 2008, at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) in Boston, MA (USA), demonstrated that some videogames can help improve the ability to solve problems and dexterity.

In a paper titled Children's Problem Solving During Video Game Play, Fordham University psychologist Fran C. Blumberg, PhD, and Sabrina S. Ismailer, MSED, presented the results of a study that examined the problem-solving skills of grade-school aged children while they played videogames.

The subjects (122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders) were asked to play a video game that they had never seen before. For 20 minutes during the game, the children had to think out loud so the researchers could gauge how they were thinking about and perceiving the situations in the game. It was found that younger children tended to focus better at in-game problems than the older children who played simply for enjoyment. The younger children also seemed more interested in setting short-term goals than the older children.

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