Star Wars MMO Pricing Plan May Have "Some Twists" [Money]

For about fifteen bucks a month, you can play World of Warcraft or most other massively multiplayer online games. That’s the genre standard. Could the next big MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic shake that up? More

Video Games Can Save The Planet, But Only If We Play More [Smart People]

Only video games can save the world, says Jane McGonigal, but only if we dedicate more time to playing them, some 21 billion hours of game time per week needed to survive the next century. More

PC Sales Charts, From The Land Of The Boxed Copies [Sales Charts]

While the NPD Group has ceased providing weekly sales charts for the boxed-copy PC market in the US, it still hands out its monthly – and often hilarious – lists. Let’s look at February’s. More

Don’t Expect World of Warcraft On Video Game Consoles, Ever [Blizzard]

World of Warcraft, the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is available on the PC and on the Mac. It is not available on home consoles like the PS3 and the Xbox 360. And it probably won’t be. “I think there’s a lot of reasons,” World of Warcraft lead producer J. Allen Brack told game site G4tv. “There’s not one thing. One is, it takes a long time to develop an MMO. The lifecycle of consoles being what they are, you have to really time when your console’s going to come out, what its projected lifecycle is going to be with when your game is going to be, which is challenging.” The life cycle for consoles can last up to ten years plus; however, it can also be much shorter. There are hard drive issues, too: all PS3s have hard drives installed in the consoles, but that is not true for the Xbox 360. “There’s those technical challenges,” he continued, “there’s patching challenges, there’s the quality controls that we have vs. the quality controls that say, a Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo has. All those things sort of raise the bar in terms of the challenges and then specifically in the case of WoW, WoW was designed to be a keyboard game and its control scheme and its camera controls and the number of abilities that you have and the spells and how things work are very keyboard-centric. The idea of translating that to a gamepad is a very, very challenging proposition.” Okay, fine, there are hurdles, but if MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XI have come to home consoles, then certainly World of Warcraft can do it, too. Right? Right?! “I think it’s unlikely that WoW comes to the consoles,” he added. “It is something that we talk about on a pretty regular basis, but someone is going to figure out how to make an MMO on a console and they’re going to be wildly successful. I have no doubt about that.” That game, it seems, will not be World of Warcraft. This is a stance that Blizzard has had for a couple of years now, and it doesn’t look like it will change. Sorry console gamers! Blizzard Thinks About A Console World Of Warcraft “All The Time,” Prospects Dim [G4]

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Don’t Expect World of Warcraft On Video Game Consoles, Ever [Blizzard]

Shameless Subliminal World Of Warcraft Advertising Discovered In Gnomeregan [Secret Messages]

The Matrix Punchograph in World of Warcraft’s Gnomeregan has been spitting out pro-WoW propaganda for years, right under our noses! Master of Warcraft translates the binary cards, revealing the advertisements, secret love affairs, and a strange fascination with Natalie Portman. Blizzard loves sneaking pop culture references into World of Warcraft, so it comes as no surprise that the binary punch cards players receive from the Data Rescue quest in the Gnomish homeland of Gnomeregan are rife with such references. The messages on the punch cards range from silly scrawlings like “Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” to advertisements such as “Tell your friends to play WoW,” and “Play more WoW,” likely a references to the “Drink More Ovaltine” gag from the classic film A Christmas Story. My favorite hidden message of the lot is the not-so-cryptic “Natalie Portman Rocks.” I tend to agree, and having it spelled out in binary makes the message so much more sincere. Check out Master of Warcraft for an exhaustive look at the secrets hidden deep within Gnomeregan’s punch card machines. Translating the gnomish binary and revealing the secrets! [Master of Warcraft]

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Shameless Subliminal World Of Warcraft Advertising Discovered In Gnomeregan [Secret Messages]

The Never-Ending Game: World of Warcraft’s Impact on Borderlands [Well Played]

It could become the never-ending game. Released nearly five months ago, sci-fi shooter Borderlands continues to dominate sales charts and, much more importantly, the attention of gamers. That’s because the people behind the game, Gearbox Software, keep rolling out new chapters for Borderlands, extending the mythology and fun of the game $10 at a time. “Our goal was to keep Borderlands on people’s minds, keep interest in the title and talk of the title high for as long as we could,” senior designer Paul Hellquist told Kotaku. So the team set out to create and release three sets of game-expanding packs that players can purchase and download online. Each added new characters, weapons, gameplay and life to the game. The result was surprising, even to Hellquist and the developers at Gearbox. Traditionally, Hellquist said, a game sells really well for the first two months and then those sales tail off, slimming down until it’s just a trickle. But Borderlands’ tail has been surprisingly thick. “We have been happy with the tail of the sales,” Hellquist said. “They are strong even though the game is four to five months old now.” That’s because every time Gearbox unveils and releases a new expansion for Borderlands, people go out and buy the game, sometimes rebuy it after completing and selling it back to a store. In Borderlands, players take on the role of one of four playable archetypical characters as they strive to survive the harsh planet of Pandora while increasing their skills and discovering new weapons. The game nicely blends the best of a first-person shooter with elements of role-playing games. To date, Gearbox has sold three $10 expansion packs for the $60 game. The expansion packs added a zombie island , new places to fight other players and, in the latest expansion , a new plot and missions that adds as much as ten hours to the game’s original 25 hour experience. And all of the expansions have done well, Hellquist said. “Borderlands’ downloadable content has been in the top selling paid downloads since the first one came out,” he said. “Every time another comes out the old ones come back on the list.” Hellquist said that when the latest expansion pack came out, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, all three packs made Xbox Live’s top ten list for game add-ons. The ever expanding nature of Borderlands and the way in which it has expanded are both experiments of sorts. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned was a tongue-in-cheek way to shoehorn zombies, the popular antagonist in an increasingly diverse cross-section of games, into Borderlands. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot , packed with new game modes and fighting styles, was the sort of add-on that one would expect in a first-person shooter. And The Secret Armory of General Knoxx expanded the game in the way that fans of role-playing games would expect, adding more story and more acreage to the game. Those expansions have also increasingly drawn inspiration from massively multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft , Hellquist said. For instance, like many of World of Warcraft’s endless stream of expansion packs, Borderlands’ latest increases the maximum level a character can become in the game. The increase was something players were calling for despite only about 12 percent of them having actually hit the level 50 cap, Hellquist said. The latest expansion pack also borrowed the idea of a “raid boss” from World of Warcraft, Hellquist said, an enemy you can only attempt when you hit the new level cap. “We’re not short on ideas regarding Borderlands,” Hellquist said. “We’ve created such an interesting and rich universe to play with. There are not too many ideas where we would say ‘That wouldn’t fit in Borderlands.’” That even includes the possibility of new character classes, or releasing less expensive packs of smaller content. Despite Gearbox’s successes with Borderlands’ expansion packs, the team still hasn’t decided how far to go with it. Could they, for instance, continue to expand Borderlands’ universe indefinitely, transforming a traditional console game into something more akin to an episodic title? Hellquist hesitates to say. “We always try to not count our chickens before they are hatched,” he said. “It’s up to the public to set the expectations for the future.” Even with the release of the first three expansion packs, Gearbox was careful not to announce the titles until shortly before they were available. And Hellquist declined to say if they were currently working on new expansions for Borderlands. Ben Feder, CEO of Borderlands’ publisher Take-Two, was not so reserved, though, in a recent call with analysts . “Borderlands continues to build on its success in the market,” Feder said during the company’s quarterly financial earnings call. The Secret Armory of General Knoxx was the “highest scoring in the series.” “We will continue to support the title with more add-on content.” Perhaps this will become the new face of episodic gaming on consoles. Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion. [ Pic ]

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The Never-Ending Game: World of Warcraft’s Impact on Borderlands [Well Played]

Guess Which Three Games Help Keep Activision Afloat [Industry]

Activision is a giant company with a small problem: Most of their revenue comes from three video games. Buried in Activision’s annual report for Fiscal Year 2009, the same one that had news of a major shake-up at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward , were some interesting numbers. “A significant portion of our revenues has historically been derived from products based on a relatively small number of popular franchises and these products are responsible for a disproportionately high percentage of our profits,” the report points out. For example, it points out that in fiscal 2009, which ended in December, that their top three franchises, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft, accounted for about 68 percent of their net revenues for the year. Further into the report, the company points out that World of Warcraft accounts for a staggering 98 percent of Blizzard’s revenue. Ninety-eight percent! That’s up from the previous two years when the hugely popular massively multiplayer online game accounted for a mere 97 percent. What does all of that mean to Activision? “Due to this dependence on a limited number of franchises, the failure to achieve anticipated results by one or more products based on these franchises may significantly harm our business and financial results,” according to the report. Or, in Brian terms, one bad Call of Duty, one under-performing Guitar Hero, or, don’t even think it, a sudden disinterest in World of Warcraft leveling and Activision will be in a world of hurt. No wonder things are so tense over at Infinity Ward right now.

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Guess Which Three Games Help Keep Activision Afloat [Industry]

The Next Big Thing In Video Games Might Be Fear Of Embarrassment [Fun]

It’s a terrible thought to ponder. But it could explain why other people play video games you are certain stink: Maybe fun isn’t the key ingredient that makes people love video games anymore. Let’s hear it for… shame? Every year in mid-Winter, top game designers and executives gather just outside of Las Vegas at a resort hosting the DICE Summit to discuss the Next Big Things in video games. Mix excitement with money and drink. Combine easy access to gambling with an ever-present whiff in the air that people don’t always acknowledge. The whiff smells like doubt, anxiety that maybe all these creative or powerful or creative and powerful people might be doing it all wrong. Some years, the idea floats that maybe everyone should be pulling a Wii and making games that families can wave their arms to. Other years, you best not take the stage to talk at DICE without signaling that you’re making a massively multiplayer game or at least open to the idea of it. If you can mix it in with a reality TV show, all the better. Never before has anyone snuck in the suggestion that maybe you should do something that gets gamers worried about being humiliated. This year, that idea came up: Fear of embarrassment as the thing to keep a player playing a game. A New Way Of Pulling Gamers’ Strings We all know our strings are being pulled when we play game, right? We are being manipulated, with rewards of points and Achievements dangled in front of us. We are wooed, I thought during the many years I’ve played games, by the promise of fun. The joy experienced in the games we think are best is as delightful a lure to us gamers than the smell of a chef’s fine cooking. For those of us who play games rather than make them, the idea of someone designing a video game so that it keeps us playing by exerting social pressures on us can’t go down easy. Wasn’t high school trauma enough? So it was at DICE that this style of video game crept not just into the conversation but was presented as the most important element to the most successful video game of last year. Oh yeah, therefore it was the one that maybe the rest of the video game industry should consider copying. At the summit this year, you needed to acknowledge that Facebook gaming is huge. Mafia Wars. Playfish. And, of course, FarmVille is the thing — the game. It has, speaker Jesse Schell said, more players than Twitter has users. (Beyond Facebook gaming, he added, is the future of winning points for brushing your teeth and showing up for work on time, but that’s another story .) Can 83 Million People Just Be Having Fun? As of today, that Facebook gaming darling FarmVille has 83 million monthly players. Something must be hooking them, probably the fact that the game is free and on Facebook. Probably other reasons too. The gaming power-brokers want those players and, fortunately, the chief game designer of FarmVille studio Zynga, Brian Reynolds, was at DICE to explain how to get them. Keep those 83 million gamers around by keeping them grinning? Follow that saccharine Nintendo talking point? Not exactly. Reynolds laid it out for potential developers of mega-hit Facebook games in language that might make a Mario gamer — and maybe a Mario maker — tremble: “You’ve got to forget everything you know about game mechanics being more important, [such as] ‘You have to get fun before you do anything else.’” Instead, first priority of the developer who wants to draw this kind of player crowd, you must intend for your game to be strongly social first, he said. Maybe make it a strongly encouraged in-game feature that gamers need to tell their friends that they are playing the game. Reward them for that. “You have to get social before you do anything else.” Figure out how gamers will communicate and virally promote your game. Make it so that the gang is all involved. And if you want to do the thing that helped make FarmVille huge: Make it so that they’ll fear being embarrassed in front of their friends. Social is good, fear of humiliation is better. It’s not what gamers ask for, but, Reynolds said, it’s effective. Witness the most successful gaming mechanic in FarmVille last year, as Reynolds hailed it: Harvesting. In FarmVille, you can farm. Simple enough. You spend fake gold to plant pumpkin seeds, spend time keeping the field clear for your pumpkins to grow. And, after a set time, you need to harvest those pumpkins lest they wither. Facebook friends can see that farm and see your crops. “If I don’t come back, not only do I lose my investment of my time and my gold, [but] I’m shamed,” Reynolds said. “I look bad in front of my friends when they come to visit my farm…We’re social animals and we don’t want to be shamed in front of our friends.” More Humiliating Than Halo? This sounded like a shift when I heard it. This sounded like modeling games off not just the aspects of grade school recess that involved swinging on swings or playing tag — the thing that made Mario and Halo fun — but on the survival strategies that made some kids popular or at least not stuffed in lockers. Even Halo, a game that has famously stressful multiplayer that leaves less skilled players prone victims of gamers with superior skills lets a shamed Halo player retire in somewhat graceful pseudo-anonymity. It sounds like FarmVille would only let you retire in that same sorry state I left my Animal Crossing town in on my GameCube half a decade ago, house full of weeds, roaches crawling, but with the added Facebook bonus of my friends being able to see that mess. Yes, I can see how I’d keep playing to avoid that shame. Video games that make us worry what other people think of us. Scary? Or is that just what the world is proving to want? At very believable moments in the recent past, video game designers have described the amorphous and elusive appeal of fun as the essential lubricant to making their games popular. These men and women, people who, like Reynolds, earn money making video games without wearing a suit, argued that joy is essential and paramount. Other elements of video game appeal have come up. Will Wright, the man who dreamed up Sim City and The Sims, has talked about how games are the only form of entertainment that can instill in its audience a sense of pride and accomplishment. Jonathan Blow, outspoken designer of time-bending game Braid, has identified and criticized developers of massively multiplayer games (think World of Warcraft) for “unethical” design that hooks players not with fun but the dangled carrot of offered rewards. Maybe Fun Wasn’t All That Fun, Anyway In the hot new realm of social games, the ones Reynolds’ company makes, “social” comes first. And maybe sometimes it’s good, and maybe sometimes it’s better than what passed for fun in the old days. Do you know how you beat a tough character, a “boss,” in most traditional video games? You study up like you’re preparing for a final exam and then look yourself in a virtual room and sweat out the challenge. Some people find that fun. How do you beat a boss in Zynga’s Mafia Wars Moscow expansion? Just invite a friend to help. It’s an instant win. It’s purely social. So making a game social isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, no more than making friends is a bad thing. Is a game designer figuring out the fun for us only after they figure how we’ll all link together brilliant or worrisome? We are at one of those intersections again, joy crossed with fear, amusement crossed with monetization, games crossed with games industry. Maybe, though, fun isn’t the best attraction a game can offer. Maybe fun isn’t what obsesses the gamers hooked on the biggest games in the world. Why do we lose our hours or days in a game, and why do our moms or sons vanish in them too? Last week, Kotaku columnist Leigh Alexander tested four theories about why anyone plays games : power, control, rule-breaking and narrative curiosity. Just outside of Las Vegas, however, one of the architects of one of the biggest gaming phenomena on Earth had proposed the hook we didn’t know we wanted, the fear that the pumpkins might wither and people we know would see the rot. I keep playing video games so that you won’t see me fail at them? Quite a concept. FarmVille PIC Halo 3 PIC Statue PIC

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The Next Big Thing In Video Games Might Be Fear Of Embarrassment [Fun]

China’s World of Warcraft Boss Steps Down [China]

The company licensed to operate World of Warcraft in China – home to 4 million of the MMO’s global installation base – still can’t find smooth sailing after being cleared to operate the game’s first expansion pack two weeks ago. NetEase’s project chief for World of Warcraft, Li Riqiang, resigned without explanation, the company announced. No replacement has been named. This latest disruption comes a couple weeks after NetEase had suspended all new registrations for the game, as it waited for government censors to approve the launch of The Burning Crusade. World of Warcraft China Boss Steps Down [GamesIndustry.biz]

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China’s World of Warcraft Boss Steps Down [China]

China’s World of Warcraft Boss Steps Down [China]

The company licensed to operate World of Warcraft in China – home to 4 million of the MMO’s global installation base – still can’t find smooth sailing after being cleared to operate the game’s first expansion pack two weeks ago. NetEase’s project chief for World of Warcraft, Li Riqiang, resigned without explanation, the company announced. No replacement has been named. This latest disruption comes a couple weeks after NetEase had suspended all new registrations for the game, as it waited for government censors to approve the launch of The Burning Crusade. World of Warcraft China Boss Steps Down [GamesIndustry.biz]

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China’s World of Warcraft Boss Steps Down [China]

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