knockknock.biz luggage tags. Photo courtesy of justinph.

I guess it's finally time for me to level up.

It was the summer of '99 when I convinced my then editor to send me on a tour of the U.S. videogame industry. When I finally returned three weeks later, my head was still spinning. I felt as though I'd seen the future of entertainment. It was then that I made it my mission to put NEWSWEEK's coverage of this growing medium on the map. I did that in print, with cover stories on the Japanese launch of the PlayStation 2 and the spread of online gaming. I did it online, with the debut of the blog N'Gai Croal's Level Up. I did it on television, with appearances on MSNBC and CNN. You all watched me push, prod, praise, scold, discuss and debate videogames across multiple media, both mainstream and enthusiast. That's because my editors were prescient enough to let me apply my talents and establish my reach beyond the magazine, from co-blogging with MTV News to writing a monthly column for Edge and more. For this, I say to them all, thank you.

Having achieved all of this, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I've accomplished what I set out to do ten years ago. And now it's time for me to take that decade’s worth of accumulated knowledge and do something else with it. After Friday March 6th, my passions will take me beyond the world of journalism. I’ll be wearing many hats on this new journey: videogame design consultant, media strategist, consumer technology reporter, columnist, blogger and, as always, provocateur. You’ll be able to keep track of my various adventures at ngaicroal.com, and feel free to reach out to me via email at ncroalbiz@gmail.com. It’s been a pleasure conversing with all of you, and I look forward to continuing our dialogue in the years to come.

Cheers,

 Media Molecule's Alex Evans demonstrating LittleBigPlanet during E3 2008 

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote a piece for the "Global Literacy 2008" special edition of Newsweek magazine. In it, we argued that the Internet is the new sweatshop, by looking at properties ranging from YouTube to Spore that are being built on top of use-generated content. Since we could only use brief snippets of these email interviews in the print edition of Newsweek, we thought you might appreciate reading the game-related Q&As in their entirety. We previously heard from Spore Creator Will Wright and Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter; we conclude our series with Media Molecule technical director Alex Evans, whose upcoming game LittleBigPlanet is expected to ship in October.

What convinced you that it might be possible to create a successful console game primarily around user-generated content?

Games that involve/include some form of creativity have a rich heritage, and there are some great examples if you look back over the history of video games. Going back to the 8-bit home computer era, Shoot-em up Construction Kit was a great piece of software, and in the 16-bit era we had a whole genre of ‘God Games’ that used creative tools as a key game mechanic (Populous, Sim City, Theme Park etc)--the main thing that was lacking from these titles at the time was an easy way to share your creations with other people--which is where we have really gone to town in LittleBigPlanet.

The best thing about it is that you don’t have to create a single pixel to enjoy the experience--in the same way that you can enjoy websites like YouTube as a consumer of content, as well as a creator--just load it up, explore, and maybe, just maybe, get inspired to add your own creation into the mix. The cycle of people creating, and others playing, was something we were sure could translate into a console experience.

Based on your research and experiences, what are some of the factors that motivate people to create content and share it freely with others?

As mentioned before--YouTube is the perfect example--there are a lot of people out there, and a lot of creativity, add to this the fact that many people like to show off, others just like to have an audience or find likeminded people in the world and then provide a super easy way to share things, you’ve got a pretty hot mixture brewing. Another factor of course, for some people, is money--shared free content has been commonly used in many walks of life as a way to hook people in, get them addicted, and then start charging. When people ask us to define UGC (user-generated content), or what the audience for LBP might be, I always answer that anyone who has ever drawn on their school bag, or worn a pin on their lapel, or written a blog entry--all of these people are ‘creating’ in some sense, even if their motivations may be slightly different. LBP gives a unique chance to add interactivity to those ways that people can be creative, but taps into the same basic desire to express something.

Electronic Arts announced that within just a few days, 500,000 creatures have already been created using the Spore Creature Creator? Does this surprise you? Have you shifted your estimates on initial LittleBigPlanet based on this response?

To read the rest of our Q&A with Alex Evans, click on the link below. 

 Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, posing in front of an Elvis impersonator

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote a piece for the "Global Literacy 2008" special edition of Newsweek magazine. In it, we argued that the Internet is the new sweatshop, by looking at properties ranging from YouTube to Spore that are being built on top of use-generated content. Since we could only use brief snippets of these email interviews in the print edition of Newsweek, we thought you might appreciate reading the game-related Q&As in their entirety. We heard first from Spore creator Will Wright; next up is Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter.

Electronic Arts announced that within just a few days, 500,000 creatures have already been created using the Spore Creature Creator. Then they said that they've hit a million Does this surprise you?

I'm not surprised at the number, it suggests around 100,000 users doing 10 apiece, which sounds about right. I heard from EA that [its CEO John] Riccitiello did 10, and he's clearly the target demographic ;-) Now, if we can find out how many Sam Houser created, that would be a story.

How do you factor user-generated content into your forecasts for games such as Spore, LittleBigPlanet, or even last year's Halo 3, with its built in photo mode and video uploader? What impact does this activity, nearly four months out from the launch, have on your forecasts for Spore. Have you shifted your initial estimates on LittleBigPlanet based on the response to Spore?

I think UGC (user-generated content) in this context is more like viral marketing, unlike UGC in World of Warcraft or even Halo, which comes after the fact. I expect around 3 million units of Spore to ship, so 100,000 users the first week of Creature Creator isn't really all that meaningful or unexpected. I saw ads on gaming websites, but this game has greater mass appeal (like the Sims), and mass market advertising will be more impactful than viral marketing.

Executives at Electronic Arts have suggested that they may exploit this user-generated content in a variety of ways, from toys to card-based games. Should users be somehow compensated if their "work" is used in this manner? Do publishers have any legal exposure if they don't compensate their users?

To read the rest of our Q&A with Michael Pachter, click on the link below.

 Spore, developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote a piece for the "Global Literacy 2008" special edition of Newsweek magazine. In it, we argued that the Internet is the new sweatshop, by looking at properties ranging from YouTube to Spore that are being built on top of use-generated content. Since we could only use brief snippets of these email interviews in the print edition of Newsweek, we thought you might appreciate reading the game-related Q&As in their entirety. First up is Will Wright, discussing his forthcoming game Spore.

Why was user-generated content so important for Spore?

We’ve seen over and over again that when players are creating the content for the games they play the empathy and emotional connection with the game is much higher. Film does this by getting using actors to emotionally connect us to the experience, games have other avenues available. You never really hear game players telling each other about the cool cut-scene they saw in the games they are playing but they’re always talking about the cool unique things they discovered to do on their own. By focusing on giving the players narrative freedom the game becomes more immersive and they show a much higher degree of ownership and authorship over the experience.

For Spore we wanted to give the players high diversity as well as a huge universe to explore. The only way we could possibly achieve this was to in essence "outsource" the majority of our content production to the players.

Based on your experiences with The Sims, what are some of the factors that motivate people to create content and share it freely with others?

Creating the content is just the first step in getting players to own the narrative of the experience. The really important stories in games aren’t the ones that are crafted by the game designers but by rather the unique experiences that players create as they play. When players create content or narrative, the entire activity switches over at some point from simple entertainment into a more complex form of self-expression.

We gave the Sims players the ability to make and share stories and movies from within the game. At first these stories were predictable super-hero fantasies and such, but over time they evolved into deeply introspective and meaningful dramas. One very memorable one for me was a woman using the Sims to describe how her sister was trapped in an abusive relationship but eventually managed to get out of it. It was clear that she was using the game as not only a form of psychological processing but also as tool to try and help others in similar situations.

How long did it take Spore to hit the 500,000 creatures created milestone? How much faster was this than you anticipated?

To read the rest of our Q&A with Will Wright, click on the link below. 

 The 1928 film "Un Chien Andalou," directed by Luis Bunuel and co-written with Salvador Dali. Image courtesy Film Reference. 

For the May installment of our Edge column, "Playing In the Dark," we tackled the sometimes thorny issue of game previews. What got us thinking about this was a flashback to our much-discussed post of last year, titled "Now Who's Being Naive, Kay? Or, Reflections on the Fundamental Contempt In Which the Enthusiast Press Is Held By Publishers--And Its Own Employers." Here's what we said about it in our Edge column:

In the wake of the GameSpot/Jeff Gerstmann scandal of last year, I examined the various elements that had led the enthusiast press to this point in a blog post. I wrote that one of the contributing factors was ‘the fundamentally broken nature of the preview-feature- review process, in which historically previews and features have almost invariably been positive--or optimistic, if we're being more charitable--before the truth, good or bad, was finally revealed in the text and scoring of the review'.

And while I stand by that point, it's not the entire truth--it's not as simple as saying that videogame previews have been too optimistic and should now become pessimistic instead. There's more to it.

What's the "more" that we're referring to? It is:

 Craftworld, the 2-D prototype for LittleBigPlanet 

Two months ago, we used our second "Playing in the Dark' column for the U.K. magazine Edge, which appeared under the title "Halo 3.0: From Bungie's Lips to Phil Harrison's Ears," as a jumping off point to examine how LittleBigPlanet could become the ultimate 2-D gameplay creation tool for amateur console developers. Today, we explore how Media Molecule could extend the power of their underlying concept to PlayStation Portable, Web browsers and even mobile phones.

In a previous post, we revealed the developers' coy response when we asked them whether they had any future plans for Craftworld, the equally charming flat 2-D prototype which evolved into the 2.5-D game that is LittleBigPlanet. We also reported their explanation that the same physics engine that powered Craftworld was also driving LittleBigPlanet. This got us thinking about whether Craftworld could have a life beyond that of a cute demo. Obviously, as the flat implementation of LBP--so described because the graphics in Craftworld are 2-D, while LBP's are 3-D--Media Molecule's prototype could find a home on a slew of less-powerful platforms: mobile phones, Web browsers and, of course, Sony's PSP. Even the just-shy-of-ubiquitous PS2 could be a candidate. But something was still missing. Why not go one step further and create a shared description language among LBP and various versions of a commercially released Craftworld?

Here's how it would work.

In our second "Playing in the Dark' column for the U.K. magazine Edge, which appeared under the title "Halo 3.0: From Bungie's Lips to Phil Harrison's Ears," we explored the parallels between the approaches to user-created content in Halo 3 and LittleBigPlanet. Of the latter, we wrote:

The slogan for LittleBigPlanet is 'Play, Create, Share', and it captures not only precisely the right elements of where games must go in the future, it lists them in the correct evolutionary order. Because if the act of creation itself isn’t playful, if it isn’t entertaining, then only the most motivated of people will bother to actually make anything....From Media Molecule, I’m hoping that the company will release expansions that offer two other perspectives--top-down and isometric--thereby turning LittleBigPlanet into the complete 2-D game creation tool.

From the first moment we laid eyes on LittleBigPlanet, we've been mildly obsessed about where Media Molecule could and should take its inspired game. So when the developers let journalists go hands on at the E3 Media Festival and we got to see how easy, intuitive and powerful their tools were--right down to its bolt-based system for adding simple physics to the various objects that users could build--it dawned on us that Media Molecule was in the process of building the ultimate side-scrolling construction kit, a belief that was furthered when rumors began to circulate that the creators were also developing a system for enemy behaviors that users could integrate into their level designs. So we said to ourselves, if LittleBigPlanet can do all of this for side-scrollers, how difficult would it be for Media Molecule's engine to support the two other 2-D game perspectives: top-down and isometric?

 

In mid-October, we announced that the Level Up staff had taken its talent across the pond to the respected U.K. gaming magazine Edge, in the form of a monthly column titled "Playing in the Dark." It had always been our intent to expand on the topics raised in those columns here on Level Up under the rubric The Edge of Reason, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men. Our other favorite cliché is "better late than never," so with that, today's installment will tackle our very first Edge column, which ran in the November 2007 edition of the magazine under the title "Why It Feels Good to Be Bad" (click here to read the column in its entirety). In it, we pointed out that while videogames have become fairly accomplished at making us feel good about what we're doing, there's a whole lot more they could explore by making us feel bad about our actions. Here's an excerpt of our additional thoughts on whether developers should consider incorporating the concept of social sanction into videogames:

Certain other bloggers have already begun to discuss the issues that our column raises. As we'd written previously in our Vs. Mode exchange on BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the very first presentation of the Little Sister Harvest-or-Rescue dilemma had us so conflicted that we actually called family and friends for guidance. Yet as our playthrough continued, each subsequent harvesting became much less emotionally fraught, making us wonder whether there wasn't more that 2K Boston/Australia could have done to keep us feeling just as tormented upon the sixth Harvesting as the first, if not more so.

Part of the reason most people don't kill or murder in real life is that there are real life consequences: social sanction, ostracism, retaliation, incarceration, capital punishment. In games, there are no real life consequences to in-game decisions made regarding AI characters. You won't be labeled, shunned, jailed or executed. Even the in-game consequences are minor; for all of our whining legitimate complaints about 2K Boston/Australia privileging Rescuers over Harvesters by exclusively bestowing upon them the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid, it wasn't what we'd consider a hefty punishment.

To read our post in its entirety, click on the link below.

 

As any print journalist can attest to, there's often a good deal of interesting reporting, analysis or opinion that gets cut, left out or simply doesn't fit. For those occasions, we offer you Expansion Pack, an occasional feature that will bring you some of those cutting floor nuggets from the stories that we write for print publications. In the first installment of our "American Geek" column in the issue of Newsweek dated November 5th, 2007, we looked at why so few people properly back up their data. For today's Expansion Pack, we use our column as a jumping off point to explore the ramifications of that same issue within the world of videogames--and to help you figure out exactly how much your save files are worth. An excerpt: 

Returning to the question that we posed earlier--which is more valuable to you: A $60 console game, or the save file associated with that title after you've made it halfway through the game?--we're guessing that most of you would immediately choose the game over the save file. After all, the game has a clearly defined value--if you lose it, you'll have to spend $60 to replace it--while the save file simply represents the amount of time you've sunk into playing the game and the frustration of replaying it in order to catch up to where you left off. But is that the best way to look at this? As the cliché saying goes: time is money. So let's try to figure out the real value of your saved file in order to prod all of us to start rethinking our cavalier attitudes towards backing up our save files.

As of July of this year, the minimum wage was set at $5.85 an hour. So if the $60 game in question is an action-adventure game with 10 hours of playtime and you've played five hours into it, that lost saved game file would be worth $29.25 to a minimum wage earner, making the game itself more valuable. If this were a Grand Theft Auto game or a Japanese RPG, with 20 hours of gameplay and you'd played 10 hours into it, the saved game's value jumps to $58.50--it's a push.

Most of us, however, earn more than minimum wage. So let's run this thought experiment with the median hourly salary for 2007, which is $14.70 an hour. The five hours you've played of the action adventure game is now worth $73.50, and the 10 hours you've put into the GTA/RPG comes in at $147.00. Clearly, the median American should wise up and back up his or her saved game files on a regular basis.

Still, we're not convinced that this is precisely the best way to look at this issue. After all, the median salary covers a wide range of wage earners, from teens to seniors, and different age groups have different amounts of free time. So let's crunch the numbers one more time; this time, using the median U.S. salary as provided by PayScale in a series of age brackets.

Intrigued? To read the rest of our Videogame Save File Value Analysis, click on the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In our second and final installment of VMG, Totilo's question about the reflection of Samus Aran's face in Metroid Prime 3 spawned a back-and-forth meditation on how developers handle expressing the hero or heroine's personality in first-person games.

Totilo: Snap judgment: do you like the permanent reflection of her face when you're in scan mode?

Croal: I don't have a strong reaction to it one way or another. If I had to think about it, I'd say that I liked the more infrequent reflection of her face in previous Metroid Primes.

Totilo: Would have been funny if you could see her rolling her eyes during boring briefings. Or winking at some of the soldiers or something

Croal: It would. But like 2K Bostralia, they seem intent on Samus being transparent rather than clearly defined, more avatar than character. They might get away with it once or twice, but the idea is they want us to feel like we are she. Your idea is better suited to Duke Nukem Forever--if it ever ships--or Serious Sam.

Totilo: My idea was a joke, too

Croal: It's an interesting idea, though, having characters who are that devoid of personality as expressed through voice or facial expressions. I was thinking about it on the train to work, and debating whether it was a good idea or not. Even Master Chief has a voice, if not a face, but BioShock and Metroid Prime 3 have opted for the Half-Life 2 route, in which all you are is what you do and how you're animated. I personally don't find that makes a game more immersive, but the flip side is developers being encouraged to create stronger characterizations through dialogue and facial expressions, something that many developers--particularly those making FPS games--haven't shown themselves to be good at doing.

To read the rest of our dialogue, click on the link below.

In the span of time during which Level Up and MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo conducted our Vs. Mode debate of BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (which is also being posted on Totilo's blog MTV News: Multiplayer), we occasionally instant messaged each other to discuss some of the finer points of both titles. Two of those IM exchanges were interesting enough that we decided to present them to our readers as sidebars to the main event--hence the title Vs. Mode Gaiden. In today's installment, the Level Up staff's slow progress through Metroid Prime 3: Corruption prompts a discussion of the challenge of navigating Metroid Prime 3's 3-D environments--and its 3-D map.

Totilo: Full disclosure: backtracking is back!!!!!!!!

Croal: But will I ever track my way to the backtracking?

Totilo: I doubt it. I'm skeptical that you're going to get very far. When you get a chance, let me know where you're stuck

Croal: I'm stuck on the morph ball path on that same planet. Time keeps expiring before I can get to the end.

Croal: http://www.destructoid.com/big-daddy-day-care-provides-nothing-but-tlc-for-your-little-girls-40745.phtml

Croal: I've been playing lots of Jeanne d'Arc!

Totilo: At least you have your priorities in order

Croal: 2-D design > 3-D design

Totilo: Survey says: wrong!

Totilo: Or are Ken Levine and Retro both just bad at designing levels?

To read the rest of our exchange, click on the link below.

Stranglehold Playstation 3 Special Edition box art

In emailing with Midway Home Entertainment senior vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer Steve Allison about the growing ties between Hollywood and the videogame industry, we were also curious about another Midway deal involving Stranglehold. The Playstation 3 Special Edition version of the game includes a copy of its inspiration, the 1992 John Woo film "Hard Boiled," stored on the same high-capacity Blu-Ray disc for $10 over the price of the regular version. How did this deal come about? Here is our exchange on the subject.

For years, companies like Disney and Sony have explained that the reason that they don't package the DVD of a movie with its videogame is that it's difficult to both get the fair market value for each and give consumers a bargain. How, then, did Midway put together the deal for the high-definition version of "Hard Boiled" that is being included as part of the PS3 special edition of John Woo's Stranglehold? Will the Stranglehold special edition be the only place consumers can get "Hard Boiled" on Blu-Ray, or will it be available elsewhere?

I think the days of this concern or rationale for not bringing our two forms of media together on special SKUs will be behind us now, especially with the storage capacity that new media like Blu-Ray allows. There's a tremendously powerful opportunity to bring content together that collectively makes for a much more powerful product when you do things like this. The argument you reference about "fair market value" kind of goes out the window especially on catalog movies that have been out on the market for a while. On newer DVD releases, I can see the issue when a home video division of a studio is dealing with a third party publisher. However, a strategic advantage held by studios like Disney or Warner Brothers who are taking on their own game publishing duties is to bring the newer film content together with the new game releases; it's up to them to figure out how to do the internal transactions between the divisions to make it all work. Having just done this deal with the Weinsteins for "Hard Boiled," I'm it certain it can be done; it's a matter of the studios deciding that it's important and doing it.

For us, it was a wild-haired idea at first: why not pair up a new videogame with a very good catalog film in the same genre if it holds some value to a consumer? Stranglehold continues the story of Inspector Tequila from "Hard Boiled," so tracking down the rights holder was super logical in the context of this "crazy idea," which is what everyone said when I first pitched it internally.

The Weinsteins and Genius Products, their home video partner, are very forward thinking on this issue, I have to say. We approached them not knowing their plans for their own re-release of "Hard Boiled" at the end of July. To protect them against worries of cannibalizing their release we did two things:

Last month, as we were working on our exclusive story about two of the three games being developed in collaboration by Steven Spielberg and Electronic Arts Los Angeles, we spoke with some other industry executives about the continuing dance between Hollywood and the videogame industry. A lot of our reporting was left on the cutting room floor; thankfully, the staff of Level Up has an outlet to bring you some of those deleted scenes. One of the execs we contacted with was Steve Allison, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer for Midway Home Entertainment, who previously contributed one of our blog's most buzzed-about guest essays about what developers must do to improve their games. We asked him about his company's creative partnerships with Hollywood talent; its licensing deals with movie studios; and Midway's own properties that are being adapted for the big screen. Here's what Allison told us via e-mail:

What is the difference--creatively, financially and otherwise--when working on a games like The Ant Bully and Happy Feet, which are presumably straightforward licensing deals, and games like John Woo's Stranglehold and The Wheelman with Vin Diesel, which are more along the lines of financial partnerships?

They both have what I would call traditional licensing terms. So financially, deals like Stranglehold, Wheelman or Happy Feet frankly aren't that different, they are in fact essentially the same. The difference between Wheelman, Stranglehold and our similar other projects is that these projects are true creative partnerships--we look to bring the talents of our partnerships to bear on our final product. The thesis is the talent we've chosen to align with brings something creatively relevant to the videogame space. For these particular franchises--Wheelman, Stranglehold and a couple of others we have yet to announce (and won't until 2008)--we look to bring their creative process and ours together so that the end product is something special, more so than it would have been if we'd just cooked it up ourselves. We also match the partner and the project so they make sense based on the partner's body of film or creative work. Net net, we're looking for perfect genre alignment.

These are not joint ventures or financial partnerships. At the development costs we have, we can't work outside of the traditional licensing framework for the game without making it an impossible project to cost justify. What we have done with these projects that is very unique is that we give certain rights outside the gaming space to our partners in perpetuity, like the film rights. These rights have real financial and emotional value to our partners and in fact are proving to be very motivational as a working mechanic. Our partners are passionate about building these properties for us, so it works as a game for us, and for them it could also work as a film.