| Set On Stun |

Thanks to people like Shawn Deena, who contributes articles that range from some hard-core retro gaming flashbacks to articles that will piss you off, and Ali Miller, who occasionally gives us a peek into what life is like as a smart & sarcastic girl-gamer,

Set on Stun has just as many comments as we do posts!

This blog is less than a year old and is a labor of love.  With pretty much zero marketing budget, we completely rely on our friends, our social networks, links from other blog owners we’ve met and of course, the Googles to attract visitors to our site.

Right now, we average a couple hundred visitors per day, which spiked (and crashed) when both GamePolitics.com and Kotaku linked to us on the same day.

To everyone who’s commented, thank you.  We thrive on your opinions, we love seeing new ones appear and we hope you keep doing it.  I know that I learn just as much from some of the comments than I do in practical application.

Again, Thank You.

From Gizmodo’s liveblog.  I’ll take a look at the gaming aspects of the new Apple iPad.

So, there it is. The Apple iPad. "meh" so far unimpressed.... c'mon Jobs, bring on the games!

At this point, I’m watching the liveblog event on Gizmodo and within minutes, tweets and status updates are furiously scrolling past, “OMGZZORS will TEH Twitt3r Breakz?”  There are comparisons to Roman emperors and all sorts of fascinating geekery happening.  So far, nothing about the iPad and gaming.

Instant critique: It’s not widescreen formatted (lame)

Instant like: It supports HD even in YouTube.  (neat)

It looks good.. but no widescreen? WTF?

Some technical stats are in:

The iPad is 0.5 inches thin, weighs just 1.5 lbs, 9.7 inch IPS display.  It’s thinner and lighter than any netbook.  H.264 up to 720p @ 30 frames per second.  This part, I like.  However, it STILL seems like an amped up iPod touch.  Sound is done in glorious mono.. wait, what?  MONO?  I’m sure that stereo headphones fix that problem.

This is no surprise... but still good. Can it handle 2 handed multi-touch? How will that change gaming?

First look at the app store.  Calendars, Contacts and Maps.  No Games yet….

Urge to kill.... Rising... no games!

Alright, here are the games.  You can play in tiny mode or full screen with low rez.

I'm still in the "meh" territory.

Not bad. but not impressed.

GameLoft is on the stage and they’re showing the game Nova, which is already on the iPhone.  In this game, on the iPad, you can slide your fingers across to throw a grenade, you can slide the D-pad up and down the screen and potentially customize UI elements.

You can “interact with the game world in ways that weren’t possible before”.  Not sure what this means, but i’m sure its a more sensitive multi-touch.

Alright, I'm almost hooked. For this iPad specific game, it looks really nice and there are some interesting UI/ Touch capabilities.

EA is taking the stage:

EA is showing Need for Speed and it looks damn good (not as good as the Xbox or PC versions though)  but it’s better than the iPhone.  Basically, if you play an iPhone game really close to your face, then you get the idea.

Mingames and other aspects to MLB on the iPad.

Jobs said that the guys from EA only had a few weeks to put these together, “Imagine what they’re going to do in the next few months.”

I’m intrigued.  The iPhone did a lot to put gaming into a new, more casual and widely distributed audience, which significantly changed the game space forever.  With the larger capacity, more sensitive multitouch, the HD capabilities, the iPad should present an interesting challenge to game designers, developers and game enthusiasts.

@ferricide (from Gamasutra) tweeted:

“so hacky iPhone ports will be all over the app store at launch. devs: let’s think ahead instead.”

While it’s really cool, and there are some aspects of the iPad that I’m liking… it’s not a game changer.  It looks gimmicky (from a gaming perspective) the good thing: it’s bigger than a PSP or DS, it supports HD and will have massive gaming support.

The bad news is that it’s probably going to be prohibitively expensive and you’ll still have to deal with the draconians at the Apple App Store.  (just don’t say “fuck” in your app… as Trent Reznor learned).  Another thing is the excellent critique that the iPad is not a Mac, it’s a giant iPod touch and that it’s proprietary innovations stifle competition and boost up a business that’s become more closed than Microsoft.

Well, I think that the gaming section of the iPad is pretty much done.

Overall impressions: it’s an interesting and fairly useful piece of tech.  However, it seems to me to be the “segue” of computers.  It’s not a smart phone, it’s not a laptop, it’s in between.  It’s got some decent functionality, but I’m not sold.  I can easily predict that the games will be significantly more expensive and, at first, shittier due to the flood of ports.   I’m just not convinced that there’s a need or a vulnerability in the gaming world to accept this.

Lastly, it’s priced at $499.  Which is more expensive than any console… but considering, this isn’t just a console.  Overall, not a bad deal, most pundits were expecting closer to the $1,000 mark.

Doesn’t suck.  I kinda want one, but I don’t think this is going to revolutionize gaming or the industry in the same way that the iPhone did.  Not even close.  However, I still feel like a jerk-wad for saying “iPad” out loud.  I now remember how I felt saying “Wii” for the first few days.

Image Credits: Gizmodo

Update: They’re using AT&T.  Dammit.

Update 2: More detailed pricing structure from IndustryGamers.com

“The $499 model gives consumers 16 GB of storage, with WiFi built-in. Then for $599, the storage steps up to 32 GB, and $699 brings it up to 64 GB. A 3G model will cost an extra $130. So that means for $829 you can get a 64 GB model with 3G. “

Update 3: Gamasutra has a very good article on the gaming aspects of the iPad.

Bruce Everiss, a veteran of the video games industry, writer of the excellent blog Bruce on Games (and personally, someone I’d love to share a pint with) added his voice to the never-ending discussion about turning movies into video games.

Bruce’s blog is one that I visit on a very regular basis, I’ve learned a lot from his unique and historical views and experience about the business, marketing and analysis of video games.  However, in this case, I think he’s got it half right.

He compares the game Avatar, made by Ubisoft to Rare’s GoldenEye.  It seems to me that GoldenEye was the exception that proves his rule.

However, I’m of the opinion that games and movies are only going to increase in their cross pollination of ideas.  There will be more games that turn into movies and more movies will add video game production into their overall budget.  I see that as an inevitability.

Bruce is spot on in laying out the strong case as to why games should not be made out of movies.  Allow me to summarize his points.

1. Films and books are linear experiences for the consumer.  However, “the best games” allow the user immense flexibility and creativity in a sandbox (non-linear) format.  This disparity between the movie experience and the video game experience causes an inherent problem.
2. Movie studios see video games as a quaternary revenue stream (after box office receipts, DVD sales and, to quote Yogurt from Space Balls… merchandising) and treat them as such.
3. Movies are passive experiences and games are active experiences.
4. The perception of the movie industry as bigger, more important and a “legitimate” form of artistic and creative expression.  Video games are seen as a hobby at best, a poison at worst.
5. Differences in time-tables and development philosophy.  Movies are made with a short shooting schedule and long pre & post production schedules.  Games are generally  made without such efforts in the production schedules.

I hope I’ve at least carried over the core arguments correctly.

Because I think that the movie and video game relationship is going to grow over the years, rather than saying they should stop, I think it’s upon people who not only understand video games, who understand gamers and understand the trends of games should actively inform the movie industry about how to maximize this potentially lucrative revenue stream.

Like Bruce, the last movie to game project I loved was GoldenEye.  I cannot think of another movie based game that came out that’s impressed me to that level.

My response would be different.  Here are things that I would encourage the movie industry to do when they’re planning a video game based off of a movie.

1. Linearity vs. Non-Linearity:  The game should not just be a replaying of the movie.  I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to love a movie, relish the action and drama only to play the video game and have to wade through hordes of expendable bad guys just to accomplish what the hero did in 2 minutes.  It degrades the experience and memory of the movie and makes for a generic hack and slash game.  When making a video game based on the movie, allow the user to have a variety of experiences.  The Matrix games had the right idea to continue the story of the franchise, but failed in every aspect of the execution.  If there’s a part of the story that needs to be expanded, if there’s some freedom in the story, have users explore and discover key places in the game that were merely touched upon in the movie.  Take the best aspects of the games and put them in the setting of the movie.  Don’t try to recreate a linear experience in a game, create a free-flowing and vibrant setting where the conflict can be resolved with new and fresh experiences.
2. Video Games as Merely a Revenue Stream:   Yes, video games in support of a movie must pass the return on investment threshold.  However, the potential for story, experience and shared events can be used to greater profits than the movie studios realize. If they avoid the cheap, formulaic game and if they don’t rely on the movie marketing to push the game to consoles by association, then they can actually realize how powerful video games can be to their revenue stream and story experience that they’re trying to portray in the movie.
3. Passive vs. Active Experiences: I think this is not the strongest argument.  It’s like saying people wont want to watch movies because they can’t feel the pages of the book.  I agree that the experience is different, but that’s a strength, not a weakness.  The active experiences of a video game can enhance the story, it can enhance the connection the player feels with the movie, it can create shared experiences between lovers of the movie and the game.  I think what Bruce is trying to convey is that when a movie is essentially ported to a video game, the passive vs. active experience creates a conflict between the two media and in the gamers’ mind.  I’d agree with that, unless the game is made with the story, the gamer and the experience first in their minds.
4. Legitimacy of Video Games: In this, I wholly agree with Bruce.  Because games based on movies are so horrible most of the time, video games gain nothing from this relationship.  If it were a good game, then the game itself would begin to gain more acceptance as a legitimate form of expression and art.  I’d even venture out to say take risks.  Don’t just make games about shooting people and blowing things up.
5. Production Differences: Movie makers can be masters of story telling.  I think that the video game industry can learn a lot about pacing, story telling, dialog and characters from the movie industry.  It’s telling that one of the best games of ‘09 was Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.  This is a fantastic example of a blended movie/ video game experience.  It has active and passive elements and the story and characters were phenomenal.  This game could have easily been a movie first.  It took the best parts of movies and passive story telling and combined them with a relatively free-form game experience with believable and likable characters.  I’d love to chat with the creative directors and production managers there about how they blended those bits of action.

My intent was not to completely disagree with Bruce Everiss, but to take his rules a step further and elaborate on how I think the relationship and continued collaboration between movies and games could be improved.

All I can really say is thank you. I’m still surprised that people read my rants and actually want to contribute to the conversation. The blog isn’t that old and to already reach 100 comments is amazing to me.

Thank you.

One of the most common ways for marketers, and not just video game marketers, to promote their services is to connect with relevant and influential bloggers.  As a marketer, I’ve developed relationships with bloggers, offered to let them try out a product that I think their audience would enjoy, then wait for feedback from them, their audience and the community at large.  More often than not, I try to remove myself from the inherently biased system to make sure that my “marketing input” remains separate from the blogger.  In other words, I’m generally looking for honest input from that blogger.

As a blogger myself, I’ve been contacted by marketers to try a new product or service out and then review it.  There are even times where they’ve asked to review my blog post as a condition of accepting the product.

The FTC has just changed its policies on endorsements to include blogging and social media.  With popular bloggers and celebrities getting some sort of compensation for promotion, it’s clear that there will be some abuse of the public trust.  So, with the best of intentions of transparency and clarity, these new rules create a nearly unenforceable set of conditions for bloggers who review products, then put a fine of $11,000 upon conviction of the violation of those rules.

For me personally, I know that transparency is the key to maintain any kind of credibility.  If and when I receive things that could be considered promotional, I add either a disclaimer (as when I’ve posted things about my work with Tecmo) or I clearly state that I’ve not received any kind of compensation for my work.  I know that when a “marketer” promotes something, there’s a rightful skepticism for that endorsement.

At the heart of this is the concept of “material connections”.  This implies that something is given to the blogger in exchange for promotion.  It could be money or it could be barter.  There needs to be clear rules for violation.  If I attend E3, pick up some swag, then recount my experience and express my excitement for that particular game, does that swag become a “material connection”?  In the document, there doesn’t appear to be a clear definition of “endorsement” either.  Does my personal excitement translate to endorsement?  Does the inclusion of a critique make it more neutral?  Do I need to reveal the monetary value of the swag?

From the FTC document:

[The new rules] address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Overall, I think it’s a good way to maintain and attempt to reach a level of transparency, and I think it’s a good step.  However, I think there are a few exploitable holes in the rules and some of the key concepts remain unclear.

.