A Tree Falling in the Forest

Hollywood and gaming's hot buzzword is "Transmedia." The Producers Guild of America recently defined a credit for Transmedia Producer , MIT has a program devoted to it and in a possible sign of jumping the shark, there is even a " bootcamp " for you to pay USD 1,000 to listen to the underlying theory. But while all these people are concerning themselves with theory, analysis and concern over credits - one of them even includes Prince of Persia in his bio - one guy is just doing it. Jordan Mechner created, designed, produced (and even programmed the first Prince of Persia) video game, received story credit on the film for writing the first draft of the movie script and wrote the completely sold out Prince of Persia graphic novel. This could be seen as another case of measuring success by finding work outside the game business, but Jordan is still working in games. His success lies in his ability not only to create franchise IP that can exist independent o...

A few days after the Googletv announcement and the press is still looking at this is a battle of Apple v. Google. It is certainly a lot of fun to watch the snipes go back and forth between the two companies but their battle is WWE - only entertainment. The real battle for the living room is between Microsoft and Google and Apple does not even have a horse in the race. Despite their clear market dominance on the set top, Microsoft continues to maintain a stealth position relative to mainstream press. I recently spoke with a senior executive at Microsoft - real Microsoft not the game guys - and he was talking about their competition. He said they accept losing out to Apple because Apple makes cool pieces of hardware and that is just not what Microsoft does. However, those Google guys are a different story. Google is a bunch of engineers with the same drive, the same intellect and the same strategic goal of world domination. They are scary. The guy was proven right today when Go...

You thought I was going to write about West and Zampella. If I did, I would probably say something positive, like “it is great the guys were recognized and like Activision's hire of the Visceral guys without a specific team or project in mind, EA is putting its money where its mouth is and truly recognizing talent.” If I were to say something negative I would say “this was EA's tat for Activision's tit in hiring the Visceral guys and we are all merely pawns in a giant pissing match between two over grown adolescent companies.” I could also reference Activision's complaint, and if true, wonder what kind of numb nuts representative would fly his client up to meet with a competitor while the client is still employed and in line to receive a very large bonus? But everyone else is talking about these things and its been analyzed and interpreted by more people in more directions and than an Allan Greenspan speech. While it is always fun to provide commentary on the wil...

The United States Supreme Court will hear a case to determine the constitutionality of a law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. Arguments surround a California law (I wrote about in depth here ) - which was signed into law and found to be unconstitutional before it went into effect. This will be the highest court to determine whether video games are afforded the free speech protections of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution - and it is very, very important to our industry. Free speech sounds like it addresses the things we say, but it protects everything from strippers to protest marches- just about anything to bring a tear to each American's eye. Thanks to the great work of The ESA, every time the question was raised in the past, the court's found the legislation to be unconstitutional, but the highest courts ruling on the issue were at the district court level. This means the decisions are not binding nationally and may be over turne...

Here is an excerpt from a Wired profile about Jordan Mechner - full disclosure, Jordan is a client - and he talks about when game making was fun and the results showed in the product. “I was right out of college, spending a summer at home,” Mechner says. “I had an Apple II, so I took my brother out into the parking lot of our old high school and made him run, jump and climb, and that video was the basis for the game.” The date was Oct. 20, 1985. We know this because the 21-year-old Mechner kept an astonishingly comprehensive journal, which he has since posted online. While he was still an undergraduate at Yale, Mechner was already earning royalties off a best-selling action game that he had created, called Karateka. He wanted his next game to have the same essential story elements — a youthful hero, a princess in danger, an evil lord — but on a grander scale, like a “Disney movie,” as he wrote at the time. Nearly four years later, the original Prince of Persia game was released for t...

Wanna play Crysis in all it's glory but don't have your Alienware machine with you? Otoy has it running - and just about anything else without building a ported version - on any device. Build once, play anywhere. No more neutered versions of games. No more porting or rebuilding expense. No more concern about the market value of the port to the additional device. This is great news, because before iPad, it was limited to your phone, and that is way to small to enjoy the game: There is also more older stuff here, but it does not involve an iPad, just stuff to make you scratch your head:

Some time last year Joseph Olin asked me to speak on a panel at SMU's Guild Hall Game Business Law Summit. I do not do a lot of speaking any more because it stopped being fun when things I said started to be parsed and posted out of context. I can cause enough damage to myself among the people in the room, so there is really no need to create a forum for the spread out of context hyperbole to a bunch of strangers. But the date for the conference was so far away and Guild Hall does good work and I probably could not have been accepted to SMU Law School had I applied, so I accepted. Much to my chagrin, as the date approached I saw the list of speakers and found I was not a speaker, but a moderator. This meant I could not just show up and speak, I had to prepare. Then I saw I was moderating Paul Raines and Christian Svensson. Two very smart guys who could each cause serious damage to my career if I pissed them off - not unlikely. It was as if Joseph had suggested this comp...