Nov 24, 2012

Studio Says Antipiracy Measures in Football Manager 12 Helped Make 13 Much Better

Steam Community Items

Studio Says Antipiracy Measures in Football Manager 12 Helped Make 13 Much Better Last year, Sports Interactive moved its management simulation/obsession Football Manager over to Steam, citing rampant piracy of the game. At the time, figures the developer cited said for every one person who bought Football Manager 09, four others acquired it illegally.

How as Football Manager's Steam strategy gone? Miles Jacobson, the studio's head, told MCV that Football Manager 12 wasn't pirated the first two weeks of its release. "The extra sales that we got in that time has helped us to get the new members of staff this year," he said. In concrete terms, that was "17 or 18" new people this year, bringing the staff up to 90.

So, there's another thing to consider in the neverending argument over the morality of piracy: Jobs. Sports Interactive says it plows profit from the sale of the game back into development, which means more hires.

"The new game does have a new system and, at the the time of talking, hasn't been cracked," Jacobson told MCV. "If we can hold another, three, four weeks, as long as we can really, it will benefit the retailers and ourselves and ultimately, the consumer as well. If we do much better this year, we'll be investing that back into the studio, take on more people to be able to do more features."

Football Manager vs the pirates [MCV]

Nov 24, 2012

"Hot Coffee" Scandal was an Attack on Video Games, says Grand Theft Auto Maker

Kotaku

"Hot Coffee" Scandal was an Attack on Video Games, says Grand Theft Auto Maker The "Hot Coffee" scandal—a sex minigame found by a modder inside the code of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas—still weighs on Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, which makes the series. In an interview with The Guardian, Houser said he views the seven-year-old incident as an attack on video gaming in general.

"We never felt that we were being attacked for the content, we were being attacked for the medium, which felt a little unfair," Houser said. "If all of this stuff had been put into a book or a movie, people wouldn't have blinked an eye."

The Guardian goes so far as to suggest "Hot Coffee" has shaped how Rockstar deals with the press today although Houser said he and brother Sam's reluctance to do many interviews comes from a Rockstar culture in place well before Hot Coffee.

I think Houser's right but it's also important to remember this took place in 2005, an eon ago in the relationship of video gaming to the mainstream press and culture. Since then, adversaries like Jack Thompson have vanished, screwups like Fox News had in covering Mass Effect, and Call of Duty making everyone comfortable with casual violence thanks to ads like these, have toned down the mainstream's knee-jerk reaction to video games. Thoughtful releases from Rockstar like L.A. Noire and Red Dead Redemption have also set an expectation that an M-rated game is no less meritorious a work than an R-rated film is.

Grand Theft Auto's name alone may still incite some stupid reactions but I'd be surprised if its next game is treated like anything other than a mainstream work of entertainment, with all the privileges given to it.

How Dan Houser helped turn Grand Theft Auto into a cultural phenomenon [Guardian]

Nov 24, 2012

GRID 2's Achievements Will Be Written by Achievement Hunters

Kotaku

Xbox360Achievements.org and PS3Trophies.org have been tapped to draw up the achievements and trophies in GRID 2, due for release by the end of March. Publisher Codemasters and the two sites made a joint announcement of the team-up yesterday.

"For years we've been criticizing lackluster achievement and trophy lists, and now, we finally get the chance to put our money where our mouth is," Dan Webb, the two sites' editor-in-chief, said in a statement.

Webb's publications will follow the creation of the lists with a series of features and videos, giving some insight into a process many know little about.

As I'm sure Webb knows, in addition to the incentives achievements place on playing and replaying a game, they're also a means through which designers invite you to try certain features of the game or notice some aspect of its design that you may not otherwise. So it will be interesting to see how a third party balances a studio's interests with those of the fans, and how people approach developing an achievement list for a game they haven't yet played.

X360A & PS3T to Design GRID 2 Achievement & Trophy List In World First [Xbox360Achievements.org. h/t Mopey]

Nov 24, 2012

This Week in the Business: 'Nintendo Has Set Up the Wii U for Failure.'

Kotaku

This Week in the Business: 'Nintendo Has Set Up the Wii U for Failure.' What's happened in the business of video games this past week ...

QUOTE | "Nintendo has set up the Wii U for failure."—Dan Hsu, editor in chief of GamesBeat, talking along with journalists and analysts about the mixed critical reception to the Nintendo's launch of the Wii U.

STAT | $500 million—Amount that Call of Duty: Black Ops II generated in its first 24 hours of release worldwide; Activision says it's the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row.

QUOTE | "The next generation of young gamers is definitely being raised on tablets."—Greg Harper, general manager, Supercell North America, talking along with other developers about the future of tablets as a mass market gaming platform.

QUOTE | "The THQ of today possesses little of value, either in IP, brand equity, or intrinsic core competency in its business."—Jon Kimmich, CEO of Software Illuminati, along with other industry insiders talking about what THQ could possibly do to revive its business.

QUOTE | "For next-generation [console games] the buzz is much more 'game as a service, continued content'."—Joe Minton, co-founder of Digital Development Management, talking about what kind of games are coming for next-gen consoles.

STAT | 50 million—Number of Steam users so far, according to Sega VP of digital distribution John Clark; some 5 million users are playing concurrently

QUOTE | "You'd be hard-pressed to find many funds looking at console gaming as an investment opportunity."—Bram Sugarman, venture capitalist, talking about why mobile and free-to-play games are drawing major investments now.

QUOTE | "It was draining and upsetting—a tough time in the company."—Rockstar VP Dan Houser talking about the studio's legal trouble over the Hot Coffee sexual minigame inside Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

STAT | 5 million—Number of Russians playing Crytek's free-to-play Warface FPS; the game attracted 1 million registered users in its first week.

QUOTE | "Perhaps the backlash starts with the perception of greed and panhandling."—Rob Fahey, former editor of GamesIndustry.biz, talking about the criticism of high-profile Kickstarters from industry vets David Braben and Peter Molyneux.

STAT | 10%—Percentage of Windows Phone gamers that spend more than $25 per month (called "whales"); this is far higher than the 4% a month common on both iOS and Android.

STAT | 6 million—Number of 3DS handhelds Nintendo has sold in the US so far; Nintendo has sold over 22 million worldwide.

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International

(Image from Shutterstock)

Nov 24, 2012

Fans Asked to Pick Sonic & All Stars Racing DLC; Will Sega Hear Them Out?

Kotaku

Four days before the game's release, Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed was already getting suggestions from its community for future downloadable content additions. Steve Lycett of Sumo Digital, the game's developer, popped into the thread, joked about how tough it was to please the fans, then set down a challenge: if they could come up with a way to pick three characters, he'd present the results to Sega.

Well, they've somewhat called Lycett's bluff. Three characters, in an online vote, have satisfied his demands of getting at least 1,000 votes by Dec. 1, in a campaign massing nearly 15,000 votes overall. So far Hatsune Miku, Segata Sanshiro (the Sega Saturn mascot), Ryo Hazuki of Shenmue each have more than 2,000 votes.

The next two closest characters are Vectorman at 939 and Bayonetta at 890, which could push them over the 1,000 vote tally but still well short of these top three. With no guarantees Sega will go for any of these choices, it may not hurt for Lycett to have some alternates.

The game is set up for downloadable content releases (you get Metal Sonic and two Outrun tracks, locked on the disc, with the game's "Bonus Edition") but Sega hasn't made any plans official yet. However, changing your system's date to Nov. 21, unlocks Alex Kidd as a racer, a kind of Christmas present for the community.

S0L's Challenge: The Campaign for SEGA characters to become DLC. [Sega forums; thanks Skyler O.]

Nov 23, 2012

The Best of Kotaku, This Week

Kotaku

The Best of Kotaku, This Week Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week's best content.

I just had to showcase the awesome Scribbelnauts mash-up art with all of you one more time as this week's best image.

Moving on to our Best Of content this week, we kick things off as usual with a comment from the community.

The Best Comment From The Community

Our favorite comment of this week comes to you from JonathanPonikvar on our Talk Amongst Yourselves forum:

Hi, I'm Jonathan, and I'm a recovering Achievements addict.

In 48 hours alone, the Wii U has completely shattered my addiction to achievements. For the past 6 years I've always preferred to buy multi-platform games on the 360 just so I could keep racking up those points, purely for my own completionist enjoyment. Yet after accumulating a 50K+ Gamerscore, the Wii U has managed to completely gut my desire for more, all thanks to Miiverse.

As it turns out, social networking is more enjoyable than an arbitrary point total.

I never figured social interaction would factor into my enjoyment of gaming. I always had more friends on my XBox Live list, simply because everyone I knew through college (and even within my own family) all owned 360's. Conversely, my PS3 friends list has about 8 people on it, most of which haven't logged in within the past 6 months. Actually meeting new people in random online matches and making friends on either system was a gamble of whether or not they would have a microphone to talk, or what kind of game you were playing, or any number of other factors. As such I rarely played online games with random people if I could help it.

Enter the Wii U with the Miiverse. An entire social community of gamers opens up. Dedicated message boards for individual games. In-game graffiti. You can leave sketches in public posts and instantly have responses. Suddenly everyone can talk, whether or not they own a microphone. A note arrives in your inbox or a comment is posted, the Home button on the tablet glows blue, and pressing it pauses the game to let you sketch up a reply on-the-fly.

And suddenly I care a whole lot less about achievements.

Day 1 of the Wii U: Everything You Need to Know

We collectively give you everything you need to know about the Wii U, from our hardware review by Stephen Totilo to game impressions to the nitty gritty details of what you can do online, how you add friends and what that day one firmware update is all about. More »