Busy Gamer Nation

Gamewatcher - On Kickstarters: Misconceptions, misgivings, and busy gamers

2012-08-03T04:18:01Z

I've been giving a lot of thought to Kickstarters lately. I have yet to support an actual Kickstarter (though I did help fund the upcoming Ben Folds Five album on PledgeMusic, which is similar), but I have come close a few times. Most recently, I almost gave in to Alpha Colony's update to the classic game M.U.L.E., but found the rewards confusing and never settled on exactly what level to fund. That Kickstarter didn't make it, but rumor has it that it'll be back.

In case you're new to them, Kickstarter projects entice you with various rewards based on the level of support you provide - typically starting around $10 and in some cases going into the thousands of dollars. You might get a small token of appreciation, a signed copy of the finished product, and maybe even a chance to meet the project's creators depending on how much you're willing to kick in. If a Kickstarter doesn't reach its goal, you keep your money and the owners of the idea either give up or start over, perhaps with a scaled back plan and budget goal.

One Kickstarter that is getting a lot of attention right now is Ouya, which has earned more than six times its $950,000 goal with about 5 days left to back it (if you're so inclined). Pronounced "OOO-yah," the device is an effort to transform Android OS - traditionally used for mobile phones and tablets - into an inexpensive gaming console for the living room. You'd hook it to your TV and, in theory, get access to an open gaming platform that will be populated with generally inexpensive titles that have been largely locked to touchscreen portables. Plus other uses, such as streaming TV and movies via services like Vevo (according to a recent report).

There seems to be a lot of confusion around Kickstarters, even among the seasoned games press. For instance, I noticed this tweet recently from Ben Kuchera of Penny Arcade Report:

Don't look at Ouya based on money raised, look at systems pre-sold. Right now? About 38,000. That's a Coldplay concert, not a revolution.
-- BenKuchera (@BenKuchera) July 19, 2012

Ben's not the only one to make this argument, but his comment is both snarky and succinct so he gets called out.

If you look at the definition of a Kickstarter, this is a very shallow argument. The goal of a Kickstarter is to fund the completion of a project, not create an economically sustainable installed base. Few if any could realistically do that, particularly at the console level. The main reason you should consider funding a Kickstarter is that you believe in a product and want to see it reach the marketplace. IF it is completed (and that is a big "IF"), you will be rewarded according to the level that you funded it and the reward that goes along with it. Plus, perhaps, the knowledge that you helped something creative come into the world that otherwise might have died.

But let's return to that big "IF." When a Kickstarter is funded, that means that the money is released to the project's developers. What happens after that is unregulated. If all goes according to plan and the intent of the Kickstarter program, the product will be completed and you get your reward more or less on schedule. The project may take longer than projected, it may fail to ever see the light of day and, in the worst possible scenario, you might be getting played by someone who has no intention to deliver the promised result. Scams are rare but not unheard of.

Just skimmed through the numbers, and over half of the Kickstarter projects I've backed are or were late by months. Be careful out there.
-- Dustin Deckard (@dustindeckard) August 1, 2012

So, if you're going to play the Kickstarters, it's a good idea to back projects from creators you believe in and, ideally, have a track record providing similar products.

If the Ouya ships and proves popular, people will clamor for it - even busy gamers. Its makers can charge whatever the market will accept that covers their real costs of manufacturing and doing business.

Ouya might still fail, but I think it has a decent chance to get to market thanks to the vast overfunding and seemingly reasonable amount of developer interest - assuming you can believe even some of the hype. So if Ouya ships and proves to be a good product that's worth its asking price, I will buy one. I simply choose not to back it before it's complete.

I imagine many people feel the same way. You barely have time fit in an hour or so of gaming here and there - where are you going to find the time to research and back worthy projects? As one busy gamer put it:

@gamewatcher they're gamers, not investors. If they all stop playing to care about the backend biz, the industry will have bigger problems.
-- Kate Lollar (@katelollar) August 2, 2012

Where do you stand on Kickstarters? Are you supporting the Ouya? Any others? Have any of your Kickstarter ponies come in and, if so, were they worth it?

How The Hunger Games could work as a multiplayer game, and still be game-changing art

2012-04-05T03:59:24Z

The Hunger Games as a shooter.

I've been thinking about The Hunger Games as a videogame, off and on, for about six months now. The idea came to me last October that such a game would need to be both multiplayer and not glamorize violence.

Impossible, you say? Yeah, that was my second thought. But the longer I've dwelled on it, the more I've come to embrace the concept.

Let's explore the idea a bit and see whether you think it could work.

First, you may have to rethink videogames from pure entertainment to art. Yeah, I don't really care what Roger Ebert says. He's been a movie guy far too long. I've been both a film buff and a game fanatic for most of my life. And games often (though not always) rise above commerce and conflict to enter the art space.

"The game should recap for all players the final moments of battle followed by a short video eulogy and the reaction from the home district. It needs to be poignant."

Art, in my mind, seeks to challenge, to influence. It may change someone's mind, or at least alter his or her outlook. It can cause a strong and sudden burst of emotion. It can awaken new ideas and even make you a better person.

The Hunger Games videogame would need to do this, and do it well. Otherwise, it would glamorize what the source material sought to vilify: a society that accepts violence against its children for political ends. The book was an allegory for war and the draft system that wrecked the author's father Haymitch-style (and many other families whose children did not make it out of the battle arena) to help the government control its constituents.

In my mind, the game would need to mostly do away with backstory. We would NOT have to pass through a training tutorial with Katniss hunting squirrels in the woods outside District 12. She would NOT return to the Hob and make trades using a complex speech challenge engine. There would be NOT be a dramatic moment in the town square where the names are drawn (except, perhaps, as an intro element for each arena battle or in touching flashback upon a tribute's demise - but more on that later).

If you played it out beat for beat, Suzanne Collins' remarkable novel would feel insanely cramped if it were crammed into the interactive gaming space. It would either become a cut scene-fest or a role-playing game that abruptly transitions from one storyline to another as we're whisked away to the Capitol and then forced up a claustrophobic tube into the Arena.

No, a Hunger Games game needs to be all about what happens in the arena, and what that represents in very real terms. It needs to support up to 24-player online gaming (with bots taking over for any tribute spots not filled by human players) and it needs to be poignant.

The Hunger Games would need to inspire strong reactions in its players.

When a tribute falls in the book (and, remarkably, in the film), we are made to feel loss. Even the "career" players that we come to fear and perhaps hate are someone's child, and we ultimately should mourn their loss even as we feel a sense of relief that our own tribute (and any that we might build an alliance with) is one step closer to closure. Unlike in the source material (where deaths are announced once a day with no detail on how it happened), the game should recap for all players the final moments of battle followed by a short video eulogy and the reaction from the home district. It should not look the same every time, so players who experience the same arena battles multiple times are not easily inured to the moment upon repeated viewing.

One of the amazing things about the movie is how neatly it has opened up. It went from being a very personal tale, where the fallout of Katniss' actions isn't fully realized until Book 2, to a shared experience with very powerful shockwaves and repercussions emanating from the action in the arena. We see the reactions of the commentators, the people in the districts, and even the resulting political fallout. The game could take it a step further, really communicating the range of reactions to each in-game slaying so that we feel empathy or at least mixed emotions.

"During an emotional scene about two-thirds of the way in to the movie, one guy said, 'Dude, are you crying?' His buddy replied without hesitation: 'No shame, bro.' If the game reaches even a few dudebros, it would be worth it."

When we saw The Hunger Games in the theater, there were a couple of guys sitting next to GrrlGotGame. During an emotional scene about two-thirds of the way in (you know the one, right?), one of the guys said, "Dude, are you crying?" His buddy replied without hesitation: "No shame, bro."

If it reaches even a few dudebros, it would be worth it.

To work, every battle would have to be winnable by all characters. There would have to be games where Katniss is picked off early, and Cato takes home the prize. What would this mean for the winning district? What are the consequences for the families, friends and homes of the losers? How does the injustice make you feel, as the player controlling Cato and those who fell before him.

The Hunger Games as a strategy game.

This raises an interesting quandary: What to do with the early fallen in a long match? Sure, they could watch as spectators. But why not put them randomly in the role of gamemakers and the district mentors, so they could take an active role in influencing the outcome by adding challenges in the arena and providing gifts. Their allegiance to their own fallen persona stripped away, they can take a hand with the power to either give or take away. This mechanic would need a lot of work to balance, but it could be the best part of the game. There could even be a mode where all players take on the roles of gamemakers and mentors, and then battle for control of the arena to achieve a specific outcome without actually playing as a tribute. It would be a real-time strategy game like no other (well, maybe shades of Peter Molyneux's Black & White).

In terms of scope, there could be up to 75 arenas, but that's awfully ambitious for a retail game. I would imagine there would be a respectable number including the 74th with Katniss and Peeta, Haymitch's year, and a few others that could be entirely fictionalized since they were never covered in the books. Additional years, including the intricate island arena from Catching Fire, could be added as DLC down the road if the game takes off and proves worthy of continued development. For battles without established Tributes, the player should be able to create their own - which would deepen their investment in their characters.

So, what do you think? Is a multiplayer Hunger Games something you would like to play? Do you think such an approach could alter how people think about games and, perhaps, the world in general?

GrrlGotGame - Sony's The Tester marketing reality show needed some actual QA

2010-04-14T16:53:06Z

And then there was one. After eight occasionally entertaining but usually bewildering episodes, Sony has crowned The Next PlayStation Tester™.

For those of you who haven't been playing along at home, Sony concocted a reality show competition/circus to lure 11 people into competing for what is arguably the worst job in videogame development: Quality Assurance Tester. In real life, testers deal with unrealistic expectations and schedules for sub-standard pay. Five minutes into the series, it was clear that most if not all of the contestants don't know this.

No, our game-loving, PS3-playing competitors just want to break into the industry, and what better way to do that than by winning a reality competition? And what a reality show it was – several, actually. It was like a producer pulled elements from every successful reality show and applied a PS3 skin.

Meet the inspirations:

The Real World: Pull together a cast heavy on personality, which is code for "likely to despise each other." Include at least one hot chick, one fat slob, and someone who is "different, but that's OK." Don't forget two or three ringers who can actually win this thing. Add in a few guys no one will remember in the second half of the season, and you're good to go.
Nearly every reality show ever made: Force them to live in a "luxurious" apartment. Your contestants will either be unemployed or have quit their jobs to do the show, so expectations will be low. Hire a maid service to clean up after everyone BUT the slob and give them enough PS3s that everyone can play at the same time. Also, stock the fridge with alcohol. If you're lucky, your slob will score you some comic gold ("Hello, Beerios!"). Interview contestants about key game moments and each other. And Beerios.
Survivor: Hire a challenge coordinator to build bizarre, physical challenges to torture the contestants. Don't worry, your crack Australian medical team will be on hand in case of emergency, no matter what continent you are on at the time. Challenge coordinators, this is also a competition for you. You must find a way to take your over-the-top challenges and tie them to something a tester needs. Blindfolds and bondage gear should come into play whenever possible. Remember, your target audience is pubescent males who play videogames.
American Idol: Gather a completely random group of people to watch the challenges and give feedback to the contestants, including one legitimate member of the industry. Your panel is responsible for critiquing contestants and making them cry whenever possible. When the contestants are veering toward suicide (career or otherwise), the loser will be asked to pack up his/her PS3 and go. Oh wait, you lost! No PS3 for you! Just cram all your stuff in a garbage bag and get the hell out of our luxurious apartment, loser.
Project Runway: Give them a mentor who will advise them throughout the journey, offering encouragement and advice to help them take their work to the next level. When they depart, he will hug the contestant and sincerely state, "We're going to miss you," followed by gentle directions to clean up your workspace. Oh wait, this show has nothing to do with skill or knowledge – so no need for the whole mentor/guidance thing. My bad. They did send Hal Sparks to the luxury apartment that one time, though... so we'll pretend they did.
The Apprentice (regular edition): Invite delusional people to apply for a job they aren't remotely qualified for by making it sound glamorous and cool. Praise them for beating out "thousands" of applicants for this opportunity. When ratings start to lag, create a "Celebrity" edition featuring people from Parade's "Where Are They Now" feature and the occasional Victoria's Secret model. Celebrities will not want to test; they can make more money charging for autographs. Instead, offer them airtime and a refurbished PS4 for their favorite charity.
When all else fails, be relevant. After many weeks of bizarre LARP, football and rape-y defense challenges, have your contestants do something related to your industry (e.g., play a game on camera). This is also your chance to recoup costs by charging the game developer a ton of cash to co-brand almost the entire episode. We at Busy Gamer News have not yet received our co-branding payment, and thus will not be naming the game. That's our reality, kids.

The producers had a chance to pull the curtain back and give viewers insight into what happens during a critical part of development. Instead, they put together a reality show that reminded me more of The Joe Schmo Show ("What is going on?!") than an actual competition. Hm, that's not bad. Maybe if there was one real contestent and a bunch of actors pretending they wanted the QA job, that would make sense - and be a lot more fun!

When your serious marketing experiment plays out like a parody of itself, something is wrong. What's worse, the winner seemed genuinely thrilled to have won, even though he has no idea what he's supposed to do. That's too bad, because there are many extremely talented testers who have spent the past month watching their jobs be reduced to a spot-the-difference card game.

A game tester friend of mine once told me his job isn't about trying to make things work. It's about trying to break them. In that case, maybe the The Tester did a great job after all. This show wasn't just broken. It was shattered.

Rant - Game ratings: How to help non-gamers if they won't help themselves

2010-03-24T21:55:11Z

Years ago, while shopping at Target, I walked into the following discussion. OK, so maybe I was eavesdropping. Here's how it started:

Mom: I'm looking for a racing game my 11-year-old wants... it's called GTA III or something like that...

If you heard those words come out of a clueless but loving parent's mouth at Christmas-time, would you say anything? I've encountered this situation a handful of times in the past 20 or so years, and usually leave it alone. But on that occasion, for some reason, I felt the need to (as the lady would soon put it) "butt in."

To be fair, the clerk was the first one to "butt in" on her business by asking, simply, "Do you know what 'GTA' stands for?"

The conversation continued thusly:

Mom: Yes. 'Good Times Ahead.' My son already told me to say 'GTA' and you'd know what he meant.

Clerk: No ma'am, it stands for 'Grand Theft Auto.' It's rated 'M' for Mature. You said your son was 10?"

Mom: He's 11. I told you he's 11.

Clerk: This really isn't a racing game...

Mom: My son wants it. And he says you can be a good person, a policeman or fireman.

The clerk then shrugged and headed off to get the game. The store was busy. She didn't want to hear it. And that's when I decide to "butt in."

THIS. REALLY. HAPPENED.

Me: Pardon me, I'm a gamer and...

Mom: You're a girl.

Me: Yes ma'am. I also play games and...

Mom: I can't wait to tell my son! He says none of the girls at school want to play videogames.

Me: About GTA. It's really a pretty grown-up game. Do you know what it's about?

Mom: It's a racing game.

Me: Well, there is racing, but there's also a lot of killing, robbing, stealing... it's pretty violent.

Mom: Are there any naked girls?

Me: I don't think so...

Mom: Do they have sex?

Me: You can hire a prostitute for health.

Now, let me note here that I expected the light to go on over her head. Oh! This is the game where you "have" to hire prostitutes and then kill them for money, like the nice lady on TV said. Instead, she said this:

Mom: Well do they (have sex) with the prostitute or what?

I swear I am not making this up.

In the end, she decided to buy the game for her son purely on the basis that he's played it at his friends' houses (and they might ridicule him for not having it) plus it's the only thing he wants for Christmas (shopping = done!). Oh, and next time, she informed me, I shouldn't butt into other people's business.

After she left, the clerk came over to get my game. I apologized for almost costing him a sale. The clerk wasn't upset, however. Instead, he told me that it happens all the time - and it's really frustrating. The clerk thought working in games, a personal passion, would be a boon. Instead, he was limited by corporate to showing customers the ESRB rating, correcting titles (e.g., "Grand Theft Auto," not "Good Times Ahead") and answering direct questions.

Could he have told the customer there was sex/violence in the game? Yes, if she asked. Otherwise, all he could do was point out it was rated M for Mature, which, frankly, doesn't appear to mean much to anyone.

At this point, you're probably expecting this to veer into a lecture/rant about responsible parenting, use the Internet/twitter/whatevs to research the damn game before you buy it, etc. And yes, I do feel that way. But I know that some people simply aren't going to do that. If you're reading this site, odds are you will. Both Gamewatcher and I have received queries via Twitter asking for info about a particular game. Other parents at Pikachu Fan's school will ask me about titles as well. There are responsible parents out there.

The question is how can we help those who won't help themselves? Or should we? To me, the answer is yes. Because I have no doubt that the first time that woman in the big box store walked in on her son getting serviced by a prostitute, or overheard him discussing the lesbians making out in the game, or anything else remotely sexual, she freaked. That's how we end up with the "Won't someone please think of the children!" nuts on TV ranting about getting games banned. Because they didn't think before they bought.

I'm not suggesting you hang around videogame areas looking for the obvious non-gamers sent on a mission by their children. The store managers will probably think you're a pedophile and call the police. But there are things you can do:

Take a few minutes to learn what the ESRB ratings mean. I know, they're lame. But they do offer guidance.
Let non-gamer parents know that you're a gamer and that you love to talk games! And if their kids want something they've never heard of, they can ask you for advice.
Don't be judgmental, no matter how inappropriate the game. Just offer an honest assessment of what's in it. Ultimately, they need to decide for their children, at least up until the point when the state revokes their custody.
Don't want to be the source of game advice for every parent you know? Keep Web sites in your back pocket. If all else fails, tell them to google "game name" +sex or "game name" +violence (etc.) They can pick whatever is offensive to them and quickly find a detailed list of what sorts of things their little one is likely to encounter in a given game.

And finally, remember that everyone has different ideas about what is appropriate or not. I'd let my 7 year-old son see the jiggle-fest that is Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball but not the Dead or Alive fighting games - because I don't want him to see people beating each other down.

And please, don't buy Grand Theft Auto games for your tweens and young children. There will be plenty of time for them to jack cars, hire hookers and rise up through the mob-du-jour later.

Society will thank you.

Gamewatcher - It's 2009, do you know where your save point is?

2009-07-21T16:52:32Z

Longtime followers of this site know that one of our sub-missions is to advocate for busy gamer "rights." My recent bout with summer games has revealed that the state of save points still isn't optimal.

It seems that game designers still don't understand the busy gamer lifestyle. They don't realize that not everyone has endless hours of disposable time to devote to gaming.

Many of us are trying to squeeze in a few minutes of stress-relieving game time during a child's nap or at the end of a very long day after the rest of the household has turned in. When we go off to greet a restless toddler or turn in later than planned after shaving precious time from our own sleep schedule, we want our progress intact.

Here are a few examples of recent games that fail at this to varying degrees:

Infamous: This PS3 title is a good busy gamer choice since you can meander aimlessly around a sandbox that resets with new challenges every time you launch the game or get defeated. Alas, some of the story missions aren't optimized for our kind. For example: When I went to unlock the second island, I completed the first stage of this, opening up a tunnel I then needed methodically clear of enemies. Checking the VCR clock, I realized it was 2:30 a.m. and, after a few failed attempts at the tunnel, I saved and quit. The next day, I loaded to find that the game had reset to the beginning of the mission instead of the last checkpoint. I understand the idea that this should be something of a continuous challenge, but when I was defeated in the tunnel it reset me to the opening of the tunnel. In this day and age, checkpoints and save points should match. It wasn't a ton of extra work to get back to where I was, but when I restart a game I don't always have a ton of time to make progress. Let me chip away at a game, if that's the way I play.
Prototype: I had a similar experience with this similar sandbox-style title. After completing the game's brief mass destruction intro and starting out on the main story, I defeated two helicopters and then found what I thought was the start of the next story thread. I saved and quit only to find myself on next load back at the beginning of the first story section. I'm sorry, but destroying two helicopters in any game should warrant a save point! And when my mission shifts from destroying to seeking, save there too. I shouldn't have to travel halfway across town to save my game.
Ghostbusters: The day I opened this, I only had about 20 minutes of playtime. I captured my first ghost and then found myself in the Ghostbusters garage ready to embark on the next mission. Rather than get in the car to start off on it, I saved and quit. Next time I played, you guessed it, I was back in the basement and the ghost I had previously caught was once again free. In a game like this, every capture should save your progress - and you shouldn't need to actually start the next mission to earn an autosave. I had planned to poke around the Ghostbusters HQ next time before starting the next leg, and I knew instinctively that getting in the car would take me away from there.

One game I'm playing this summer remains the gold standard for busy gamers: Fallout 3. Not only can you save anywhere at any moment, but they keep putting out great new expansions. I feel a little like a scolding parent when I bring this up to other game developers, but they need to hear it: "Why can't you be more like your sister, Bethesda Softworks?!"

Misery Loves Company - LittleBigPlanet crippled by server overload

2008-10-29T05:41:44Z

It seems like Sony should have known this was coming. LittleBigPlanet has been positioned as a potential system seller for the PS3 with its cute and compelling mix of mascotty Sackboy platforming goodness and community play, create, share dynamics. So what happened? The game was delayed a week, which should have been time spent finalizing forecasts for server demand and getting things ready for the masses. Instead, gamers who snagged an early copy last Saturday were greeted with stony silence - no access to servers or downloadable preorder goody codes (or even an in-game news flash that said why). And then it gets worse: The servers go online Monday only to be inundated as everyone logs in at once! And the laggy play and lack of access extended to the single-player game modes, as long as you were connected to the server. (Quick fix: Yank your network cable and play offline without the agonizing menu access delays.)

As someone who has worked in software and games, I believe Sony and Media Molecule should have performance tested the game against massive, off-the-chart server loads and at minimum identified the single-player crushing bug and fixed it before shipping the game. It's bad enough that you couldn't sample all of the user-generated levels or cache favorite community levels to play offline. But when switching to Story mode takes minutes when connected to online play, it's easy to see why their only recourse was to pull the plug while they work on a patch. If they had put the servers online over the weekend and staffed a reasonable IT, dev and test crew to watch and respond to growing demand for server utililization, this might have played out differently. If they had offered a completely open marketing/load-balancing beta and allowed anyone with an interest to help them smoke test the system and identify and fix the bugs in advance, they might have shipped a more acceptable launch experience. Plus, not everyone who tested would buy the game immediately, so if the servers could withstand the all-comers load they would have withstood launch without breaking a digital sweat.

Don't get me wrong: LittleBigPlanet is a great game and one that still has huge, untapped potential. But, despite its many charms, it leaves a lousy first impresssion. Let's hope they fix this before many of us finish Fallout 3, and that they don't alienate their more casual base. And, hey, at least they didn't wait to launch this way in late December...

Rant - Honestly, Xbox 360 DRM recovery still has a ways to go

2008-07-31T06:39:03Z

I'm disappointed to report that Microsoft's fix for the Xbox 360 DRM fiasco still seems to be broken, at least the process that accompanies console replacement. (I won't be using their new DRM tool until I can determine if I'm buying a new HDMI-capable 360 - otherwise, I'd have to wait up to a year to migrate all of my purchases again!)

Call me naive, but I honestly thought after nearly three years that Microsoft would have solved this by now.

The way it's supposed to work is that if you send in your console for service and it gets replaced instead of repaired (as mine was recently), they'll transfer all of your purchased content licenses from your old Console ID to your new one. Helpful tip: You need to boot your console to see your Console ID; it's not one of the numbers printed on the back of your 360.

Alas, there are still a few bugs in the system.

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You have to redownload everything again to restore the licenses for use offline and by other gamers on the same console. If you still have the content on your drive, this should only take about 5-10 seconds per item. But with some 800+ items, it took me about 2 hours the first time, and that was with skipping all promotional videos (more on that in a bit).

Sometimes Microsoft screws up and your console ID won't work. Before you spend 2+ hours (or even 20 minutes) redownloading your files, pick a few to test first. I don't know whether there was simply an unexpected lag before someone entered my new console ID into the database, or if there was a typo when they did it. (My guess? Transposed numbers!) All I know for sure is that I followed their directions and it didn't work. I immediately called 1-800-4MY-XBOX and they escalated it to the appropriate team, promising a fix in 5-10 days. It only took 5, but then it wasn't a perfect fix.

After all of that, some content may still not work. Once I tested and confirmed relicensing worked the second time around, I went through a did everything again. I had one Rock Band song out of about 60 fail ("Brass in Pocket," for the record). One video just won't play, even when I'm online with the gamertag that licensed it originally (it's the first episode of "Skyland"). And, after careful scouring, I have 50 themes, 277 gamer pics and 25 videos that still won't work offline or for other gamertags (and the one video that won't play at all). In addition, I'm a little concerned about several of my Oblivion add-ons, which don't seem to work offline (at least, I've been unable to confirm that they do.) To give Microsoft it's due, once they finally corrected the Console ID issue, all of my 35 Xbox Live Arcade games worked just fine offline. I even managed to recover the one game that my wife bought on my console (Doom), using her gametag to do the recovery. Here are some tips if you find yourself on the DRM relicensing express:

Do a quick test before you redownload all of your files. A purchased Xbox Live Arcade game or two will do the trick. Simply redownload it from your history as instructed and then either yank your Ethernet cable or sign in as another user (creating an offline only Guest account can you save you time if you'll need to go back and forth a lot!). If the test works, go ahead and move to game add-ons and any purchased content. Then get your free themes, gamer pics and other promotional crap.
If you have any Rock Band downloads, you'll know if the songs are working for an alternate or offline gamertag if you select them from the track selection list and get audio previews. No music on the menu and the song will hang when you try to load it.
To check themes, you will need to write down a list of all that are available for use when your primary gamertag is logged in. Then go back offline or login as Guest and circle any on your list that are missing after redownload. Gamer pics are even harder to verify since they take a long time to load and don't provide any descriptive data on the selection screen. The best I could do was to count how many rows were available online vs. off, multiplying the row count by 4 and then subtracting one for my active picture (which is repeated at the top) and any from the last row if it had fewer than 4. I then spot checked for some that I suspected were missing, but couldn't really create a definitive list. And why should I? It wasn't my fault my console died. Truth be told, I probably spent more time on this than I should have.
Skip any demos and trials; these should all be licensed for offline use and you can always get them again later if they prove necessary. Videos are another matter altogether. You'd think all game and movie trailers and other marketing videos would be license free, but many of these required redownload (even some that said they'd "never expire"!) and a few wouldn't work for me at all. I even found some videos (like the Ninja Gaiden II "Ask a Ninja" series) that didn't appear in my history though I know I only downloaded them just a few weeks ago.
Most content will download in a few seconds since redownloading verifies the content is on your hard drive and then restores your license. It's worth noting that ONLY the console you received as a replacement can get your licenses for offline/shared use. If something has been updated on the server since you downloaded it (for example, a few Rock Band songs received meta data updates, and the Penny Arcade CTS theme was updated shortly after launch to be faded lighter for improved readability of menus) then they will redownload. I personally prefer the darker CTS theme, so I backed it up to a memory card so I won't lose it - though now it will probably never be available again for offline use.
If you go fast, the menu may get stuck from time to time. Don't back out or you'll have to scroll all the way back down to where you were. Instead, move the thumbstick to the right and you'll jump to the Videos list. Then press it to the left and you'll be back on Games, right where you left off. (Reverse this if you're working on the Videos side.)
When testing games, be prepared for a lot of patching. Some games I hadn't played in a year or more, and a surprising number that had only sat inactive for a couple of months needed updates. In fact, out of some 20 games I put in one evening, only two didn't need patches.
If all else fails and the content you're grappling with is both free and still available, you may need to create a free Silver account to relicense it for your new console. When you're done, verify which version works if you can and then delete the broken one.

It's been three days of redownloading, verifying and logging, and I'm finally ready to call Microsoft Support back. I hope they have someplace I can e-mail the list, because reading all of the files I have questions about over the phone is going to be tedious for both of us.

For the record, when it works the Xbox 360 is my preferred console. I love the mostly consistent and intuitive interface and sense of accomplishment when I unlock a new achievement. Alas, when it fails it hurts so bad it makes me want to play Pain on my PS3. Which, at the moment at least, certainly hurts less than the pain with my Xbox 360.

-=Gamewatcher

NOTE: If you're interested, the full list of problem content is in comments.

Rant - Wii Fit's fatal flaws (or, my wife is not a blueberry!)

2008-05-28T01:24:22Z

Wii Fit adjusts your Mii according to one data point: the highly questionable BMI. As you can see, it isn't even close or flattering. Which is why my wife won't be playing it any more.

I picked up Wii Fit at launch this week, and while I think it's an admirable effort to make fitness fun, there are several reasons why it is doomed to fail - at least in the U.S. And why its fatal flaws could be incredibly dangerous to some highly impressionable people.

It's been well documented how our media-driven society already puts too much emphasis on unrealistic body image. Just watch a couple episodes of Carson Kressley's "How to Look Good Naked" to see how women routinely over prioritize and at the same time greatly misclassify their physical appearance. When Wii Fit "measures" you up, it takes your weight and calculates your Body Mass Index (BMI). That alone may drive the scale dodgers away - my wife's first reaction when I mentioned wanting to get Wii Fit was, "You want to have a scale in the living room?!"

And she has a point. Most decent doctors will tell you that BMI and even weight alone are not always accurate indicators of health. There are many other factors including muscle and body proportions to consider. While I am a little heavy, I've kept the same weight consistently for the past several years, and my doctor considers that healthier than rapidly ping-ponging up and down the weight scale. Should I lose a few pounds? Sure. But am I borderline obese?

According to Wii Fit, yes.

But I'm a guy, and not all that obsessed with body image. In fact, I immediately decided to ignore the BMI recommendation in favor of a reasonable goal of losing about 12 pounds over the next six weeks. My wife, on the other hand, may never touch the game again. Anyone who sees her knows that she's got a proportionate figure and that she could never safely lose enough weight to match the officially sanctioned target weight for her height - at least not without surgically removing several of her womanly attributes. She is buxom and muscular and has no desire to be a twiglike Kate Moss, but still struggles occasionally with body image.

So when the Wii called her obese and then had the gall inflate her Mii to look like a overly plump blueberry, she was deeply offended and nearly went running from the room. She looks nothing like that, and no casual observer would ever consider her obese (her coworkers were appalled!) - but now everytime she boots Wii Fit that is what she's faced with. Fortunately, the Mii distortion is limited to the main menu, so you don't appear that way in activities. But it's still off-putting enough that she's not making any real plans to play it again.

It's possible that this game did so well in Japan because people there aren't as hung up on body image. I imagine it's a great party game there and, the more out of whack it makes your Mii look, the funnier and more entertaining it is. Not so in the U.S. and, I'd wager, Europe. It's been established in several news reports that young, lithe teen girls are being labeled fat and this is just the kind of thing to make them believe it. Seeing it reflected up on the screen, no matter how ridiculous it might appear to be, will just reinforce it in their minds and lead to more destructive (and occasionally fatal) behavior such as anorexia and bulimia.

"Well, the game thinks I'm fat," they'll say. "So it must be true." It's a form of independent verification, and most people are not going to realize that it's just software and only as good as the designers and developers who programmed it. Having worked in software for many years, I know how many ill-conceived features and bugs ship in final code, so I trust this game as much as I believe my operating system when it says the printer isn't turned on. But, alas, if you already don't trust what you see in the mirror, having the Wii state what you secretly fear may clinch it for you.

My wife had lunch with her Pilates instructor (who also has worked with us in the software industry!), and her workout coach had a helpful suggestion: Simply inflate your height about 6-8 inches. This will adjust your BMI and target weight and slim down your Mii. This actually made her Mii much closer to her actual body shape, albeit without the ample chest. True, the game will no longer provide an accurate picture of BMI but, since it would be unhealthful to lose enough weight to get to its target goal, this really isn't a big deal. Setting small but achievable weight loss goals, and revising them occasionally once a goal has been met, is a much healthier strategy anyway.

In fact, a real doctor has come forward and stated that Wii Fit is very unrealistic. According to Dr. Judith Stern, professor of Nutrition and Internal Medicine at the University of California:

"It's not just BMI you want to look at, but how fat you are. When you are physically fit, you tend to replace fat with muscle, and your BMI probably won't change... I really think it's false and misleading.

So this is what I have to say to Nintendo's programmers, who really should have better tested their game internationally instead of assuming that, like with its Mario and Zelda titles, what does well in Japan will play fine worldwide:

BMI is only one factor, and not the most accurate or telling one in all cases.
The game should look at body measurements before inflating your Mii to dumpy proportions.
And let gamers turn off the body image visulaization if it doesn't motivate them,

As I mentioned earlier, since I'm a guy I was less put off by the body image thing and will probably just try to ignore BMI except as a very loose indicator of progress. I do need to shed a few pounds, though my doctor indicates I am quite healthy and simply could use a little more aerobic activity in my lifestyle. This may help.

For that, I like Wii Fit. But I think there are many things that could and should be changed about it to make it more useful, less offputting and, in some cases, even dangerous to some. After all, it's only a game.

-=Gamewatcher

Bad News for Good Gamers - Xbox 360 DRM still not transferrable

2008-02-12T22:28:17Z

If you've been following this site, you know that part of its mission is gamer advocacy. When you have limited time to enjoy games, you don't need problems like losing offline and shared access to your Xbox 360 purchased content. So I've been ranting about the Xbox 360 DRM since 2006. Recently, I repeated reports that the problem had seemingly been fixed - and I've had many Microsoft support and game store employees parrot this line to me. Alas, I did not get firsthand confirmation when both of my 360s went in for repairs last year since they were fixed, not replaced. Now we're hearing that this is clearly not the case from The Consumerist:

In October of 2007 my 360 experienced a hardware failure and the red ring of death. [...] [My] new replacement console has a different serial number and as a result all of my downloaded content only works now when the purchasing profile is signed into Xbox live. Additional profiles on the system can no longer access the content. I can no longer access the content when I'm not signed into Xbox Live. So any internet issues with my system or Xbox Live (which experienced serious problems for most of last month) means I can no longer use the items I have purchased. [...] I ask [Microsoft support] when I can expect it to be resolved and he says I quote: "hopefully sometime in 2008."

It's not clear from the post whether they are discussing a fix for all users with this problem, or if they are specifically talking about relicensing this one user's purchased content for his new console. I would hope the former, since manually fixing individual customer's content seems impractical though not particularly time consuming unless they are backlogged performing this task for thousands of customers. When this happened to me in 2005 right after launch, they gave my wife Microsoft points to repurchased the 4-5 items I had lost when my launch console was replaced - but this approach doesn't scale to the hundreds of items I have bought since then, and it's ripe for abuse. Sad news for anyone who purchases Xbox Live Marketplace content...

Rant - The emerging iPod compatibility nightmare

2008-01-17T20:04:40Z

The iPod Classic

You may recall that I "won" an iPod Classic at the Penny Arcade Child's Play Charity Auction. Actually, I overpaid a little for it, but it was for a good cause and it lit a fire for me to finally fix my broken iTunes library (long story).

I figured: 20 extra gigs of space and it will play Peggle. What's not to like?

Well, it turns out, a whole lot.

Charges
First of all, the system introduces a lot of backwards compatibility issues. You might not expect your original Xbox games to work on the Xbox 360 (and in many cases, you'd still be right). But you would expect an iPod game you bought a year ago, back when it was first introduced, to work on a brand new iPod - expecially if it had the audacity to be labeled a "classic." You'd also expect all of the music videos you bought from the iTunes Store to work.

In both cases, you may or may not be right.

I've been an iPod user since 2004, the year they started giving away free songs with Slurpees at 7-11. I picked up a couple of tracks, got hooked and started ripping my entire music library to iTunes. I continued to buy songs and the occasional music videos and games, plus I download virtually every freebie they offer. Among these, I bought Bejeweled, Zuma, Mini Golf, Mahjong, iQuiz and Vortex plus collections of music videos from Foo Fighters and Tori Amos (yeah, I have eclectic tastes).

Fast forward to last month when I went to load everything onto the iPod Classic. First of all, I was pleased to see that it came preloaded with iQuiz and Vortex - the full games, not cheesy demo versions. But that's where the good news stops. All of my other games were incompatible with this newer iPod. Turns out, there are are two classes of games in the iTunes Store:

Playable on iPod Classic, iPod nano video and 5th generation iPod video
Works on 5th generation iPod video only

This is a mess, as you can imagine, particularly for more casual players who may mistakenly purchase the games that don't work with their system.

In addition, I found that some old video podcasts and other content (even certain games, on occasion) cause the iPod Classic to spontaneously reboot. Also, the Foo Fighters videos work with the iPod Classic but the Tori Amos ones don't - they won't even copy to the device. Can I get a free upgrade to updated versions? Not as far as I can tell. Will I ever buy another video, movie or non-music product from the iTunes store? Probably not any time soon.

Remedy
I've complained for a long time that Microsoft should adopt Apple's model for DRM - which permits the user to authorize and revoke licenses from specific PCs - for the Xbox 360. Similarly, I think Apple should take a page from Microsoft's DRM playbook: If a customer purchases something from the Apple store, they should be entitled to redownload that exact same item and receive any free updates to it. In this way, if a music video or movie is re-encoded in a better format, or a game is updated to play on newer hardware, the customer should be allowed to get the update as long as they are using a PC with the same active DRM authorization.

Community service
On to the good news. I purchased Peggle and Phase, a rhythm game from Harmonix. Peggle is basically just Peggle. No new challenges or anything. You simply use the clickwheel to aim, which works great. If you ever wanted to play Peggle on the go, this is a great option for $5 (assuming you have a compatible iPod and no expectations that the game will work with future Apple hardware).

If you're a Guitar Hero fan, there still isn't a portable version with frets and a strum bar - but Phase is an interesting though simplistic alternative. It's more like Harmonix' earlier games, Frequency and Amplitude. You tap out the rhythm by pressing left, center and right on the clickwheel and occasionally collect streams of "notes" by sliding your finger along the wheel itself. It's a nice diversion.

The really cool part of this game is that you can play along to any audio file in your library. So if you want to play the Red vs. Blue theme or Bunny's "Box in a Box" or even a chapter from your favorite audiobook, knock yourself out. All you do is add the songs you want to a special Phase playlist and they'll be converted and sync'd to your iPod. Worth noting: The first time I tried this, it didn't work but I emptied the playlist, resync'd and then added the songs back and it finally converted them.

Verdict
If you're new to iPods, the Classic is a good choice - apart from the occasional spontaneous reboot. But if you are upgrading and have a lot of purchased videos and games, it may suck to be you. But at least you'll have that cool cover flow feature to entertain you when you find that some of the the stuff you paid for cannot.

-=Gamewatcher

Rant: What makes the Prius a great car for gamers

2007-09-10T20:22:11Z

If you watch my Twitter feed, you know that I recently picked up a Toyota Prius. Buying a hybrid is something we've been considering for about a year, and our research suggested the Prius was the best fit for us. It has very good gas mileage (averages around 40-50 mpg) and - thanks to several years of refinement - seems very polished and reliable. And despite its compact size, it has a reasonable amount of trunk space.

Little did we know what a great car it is for gamers. With the right mindset, driving a Prius is something of a sandbox game! Though if you think of it as a gaming system, it does make the PS3 and even some high-end PC rigs look quite reasonably priced. Probably not the right approach to take when trying to sell your non-gaming spouse on one.

The Xbox connection
Before we get into the gaming aspects of the Prius, it's worth noting that we bought the car at substantial savings using Xbox Live Diamond, a free discount card offered to paying Xbox Live Gold subscribers. While perusing the offers online (most of which require a printed coupon, grumble grumble), we found a local Toyota dealer that had a special cardholder price for hybrids.

We picked a Prius with a global positioning system (GPS) since the discount brought this model into our price range and narrowed the difference in cost to about $1000. And we're glad we did, since the GPS adds a real sense of gameplay to driving.

GPS = Great Prius Sandbox
One of our favorite activities is to select a destination and then drive off the proscribed route into a neighborhood to see how long it takes for the GPS to give up on the old route and chart a new one. On the highway, the car may chastise you to turn around for several exits before relenting and calculating a new path. In other cases, it may find a valid detour in just a few seconds. This is handy when you hit a patch of traffic and you're convinced that there must be a better way to go. You'll find out if you're right by how long it takes the GPS to re-route you!

You can also play the "where's the nearest park" game. Simply head out to a new neighborhood or far-flung destination and then ask the GPS to find the "Nearest Park" (or coffee house, restaurant, movie theater, or dozens of other categories of destinations to suit your mood). It's voice activated, so all you need to do is press a button and speak. You can also watch points of interest as they appear on your map while you're driving.

This brings up another amusing detail. Due to the increased risk of accident from watching the GPS screen instead of the road, when you start the car you must view and accept a warning screen. It's sort of like if you needed to agree to a Microsoft end user licensing agreement every single time you turned on your computer.

Touching is good
Even the Prius models without the GPS now have a touch screen, which makes tasks like tuning the radio or adjusting the air conditioning a bit like playing a DS game. The car also has lots of techno-cool features, such as:

Bluetooth phone integration with speaker, so you can dial, answer and talk on your phone from your steering wheel. People in the backseat won't be heard on the other end unless they really shout, but this doesn't stop our 4-year-old from trying.
Auto-sensing locks, so you don't even have to push the buttons on your keyless entry remote. Simply standing next to the car and gripping the door handle will unlock it, and the car starts with the push of a button. Just leave your keys in your pocket and you're good to go.
A rearview mirror that senses and adjusts to block glare, so you don't even need to flip it up or down to subdue the headlights from the hulking SUV behind you.
Trunk cam that shows you what's behind you on the dashboard monitor whenever you put the car in reverse.
A power outlet and mini-jack auxiliary audio input hidden in the hump between the seats. Though it lacks full iPod integration (i.e., remote control), it does make it easy to play audio and keep it charged and hidden. The power outlet shuts off automatically when you turn off the car, so you won't run down the car battery.

That driving game
All of these high tech touches are nice, but my favorite part of driving a Prius is actually the meta game: driving efficiently. The hybrid engine works by capturing energy when you brake to charge the car's electric drive system. Use too much gas and not enough brake, and the car will eventually need to burn even more gas just to keep the battery charged. Brake carefully (no hard stops) and often, and your car will charge up more quickly.

Here's the really cool part: Your battery status is actually represented on screen by a HEALTH BAR. Most of the time it's blue, but when it's nearly charged to the top it turns green. (If you really suck at this game, I suspect it turns red.) While driving, I find myself frequently flipping between the Map and Info screens using the steering wheel buttons to see how well I'm doing. The car shows you what your mileage rate is at that particular instant and your rolling average. There's even a screen with historical data to show how you're doing now vs. 5-30 minutes ago.

I don't know what happens when you completely max out the battery health meter, but I kinda expect it will prompt me for my initials. Now all we need are some online leaderboards.

Go ahead. Just try to beat my high score, dude.

-=Gamewatcher

A Modest Request - Don't Let the Spammers Win!

2007-08-02T16:17:05Z

If you read this site even semi-regularly, I have to make a small one request of you. No, I'm not going to start asking for donations. I just need some public comments and a little feedback to help breathe some life into the site (now entering its 4th year!). Right now, I delete about 20-30 spam comments a day. I figure you don't need the pr0n links, male enhancement ads and malware. But I only get a real reader comment every other week or so!

As you can imagine, this is somewhat demoralizing. Also, you miss the opportunity to highlight the topics you want to see more about, which in turn helps guide my editorial decisions. So post a quick comment now and again; we'll all be better for it. If you don't want to have to wait for comment approval, create a free Typekey login and I'll set your posts to auto-approve.

-=Gamewatcher

Rant - 10 Things to Hate About Wii (and 5 to Grow On)

2007-04-06T07:00:07Z

If Microsoft's Xbox 360 dashboard is arguably the Lamborghini of console interfaces with its sleek lines and shiny surfaces, the Nintendo Wii is a Volvo. "Boxy but good" to paraphrase the unflatteringly accurate ad campaign imagined for the popular car in the movie "Crazy People."

Only this vehicle looks like it's been invaded by a loony knick-knack collector. The front dash is cluttered with those kooky bobble heads and the rear has more bumper stickers than seems right. And the radio only picks up one station - yeah, you know - that one your mom listens to that's devoted to what sounds like old-school elevator muzak.

Before we go much further, let me just say that I really want to embrace the Wii (despite the inane name). I've had a love/tolerate relationship with Nintendo over the years, and their latest system is a gamble that I believe will actually pay off. In fact, I would not be surprised if by this time next year, the Wii has overtaken the Xbox 360 and becomes top dog for this generation of consoles!

But the user interface, damn. It's so… unpolished. Now I know I came down hard on the Xbox 360 dashboard soon after its launch. But, even though several of those criticisms remain major issues, they feel nitpicky compared to the Wii's clunky control panel.

There's just so much that's wrong here:

1. Clinical look and feel. The combination of a sterile, neutral background and 1960s waiting room music just doesn't communicate that this system is all about having fun. It says, "Try not to fall into a coma. But if you do, don't worry, because our top brain surgeons are standing by."

Eeek! Then again, it does make you want to launch a game quickly!

2. Channel flipping should be zippier. If you're going to use a channel metaphor, then switching between channel features should be nearly instantaneous. Quitting most channels takes 8-10 seconds while the Wii Menu reboots. This reduces the likelihood that you'll want to launch the Weather or News channels too often, since it may take nearly as long to load and then quit as it does to review the channel content you're looking for. In fact, I'd suggest displaying top headlines, weather, Wii system news and polls directly on the Wii Menu, with the option to quickly connect to these features for a closer look when desired.

3. Navigation is inconsistent. Channels don't always follow consistent or intuitive UI design, making it easy for less savvy users to get lost. I counted four different icons and text buttons used to navigate back out of a section, depending on where you are in the interface.

The biggest culprit is the Wii Shop online store, which alternately uses an up arrow and a curved arrow just to take you back up a step. Backing out of the Photo Channel gives you a confusing choice between two destinations ("Return to the Photo Channel Menu" vs. "Continue using the Photo Channel"). Uh, shouldn't the Photo Channel Menu be in the Photo Channel? Please, just integrate all of the Photo Channel features (including photos stored on memory cards) into one place and make it easy to switch between them. You shouldn't need trial and error to find your way around something as basic as a picture gallery.

Button layouts are inconsistent and, in some cases, poorly arranged for usability. Someone at Nintendo needs to test the various UI options with users, write an interface style guide and then make sure all Wii channel designers follow it. Also, some very cool features such as quick access to local news and browsing items in the global view are buried and should be much easier to access. You actually have to browse to find a news item that has a globe location attached to it (not all do), and then activate the Globe button that appears below it.

Oh, and the Wii Options menu shows numbered screens to show how many pages there are, while the Wii Menu doesn't say how many screens it has (four, but more on that in a second). Why not make the numbered screens standard for all multi-screen sections? Just make them clickable, since they look like they should be.

4. Pages of empty Wii channel slots. If a page is empty, why show it? Also, are four pages really necessary? By default, the main Wii Menu page is about half full - the only thing that will fill the remaining slots for now are the occasional new channel and Virtual Console games you purchase from Wii Shop. But giving each VC game its own slot doesn't scale very well, so why not make a single channel for all purchased/downloaded games? Call it the Virtual Console Channel. There, done.

Now kill the other pages until there are enough channels to justify them or, better yet, how about they simply display as needed? Oh, and by the way, if you ever did have enough channel items to fill 48 slots, you'll most likely have filled system memory many times over.

5. Lack of customization. Hey, did Nintendo miss the memo about the "me" meme? We want to make consoles (and pretty much everything else we buy) our own with favorite skins, background images, music, favorites, etc. Yeah, we can browse our pictures from a memory card and pick an MP3 for a slide show, but why can't we pick a background picture and soundtrack to use whenever we're on the Wii Menu? You can even sell us some custom backgrounds and get advertisers to provide some for free, like Microsoft does.

6. Settings are buried and in many cases absent. Navigating the Wii Options menu is bit unintuitive. WiiConnect24, what the heck is that? Is it contagious? Can you tell me what it does, or do I need to actually read the manual? And if it's dependent on an Internet connection, why isn't it under the Internet settings?

Why is there no game autoplay option? Sure, most will want to check the Wii Menu for messages, polls, news and weather first (if they can stand the load times), but some will want to just jump into the game that's already in the slot every time. There's also no easy way to register or manage additional Wii-motes without doing a lot of button pressing on the front of the console and under the Wii-mote battery cover. And how come we can't save downloads directly to an SD card and run them from there?

Also, why does the Sounds section offer no control over your Wii-mote speaker? Shouldn't we be able to turn it down or off if we like? That opening clang from Zelda is pretty loud by default, and we can't do a thing about it. Heck, this feature might even extend battery life. [UPDATE: I found the setting - it does exist! It's not in Wii Options. You have to press the Home button on your Wii-mote, ignore the large Wii Options button in the middle of your screen, and click on Wii Remote Settings. OK, so can we: a) select one term - are they Options or are they Settings, and b) can they all just live in the same place? I'd love to thank a reader for this, but I found it myself while trying to resync a Wii-mote.]

In general, you'll find yourself peeking into options over and over again looking for things (some of which may not even exist). Perhaps there should be a brief description at the top level on what resides in each settings section.

7. Wi-Fi set up needs work. This problem has been well-documented. Either you have an easy time with set up, or you don't. Make it work better for those who don't. Or else they won't use it. And speaking of which, game-specific Friends codes in addition to a separate Wii console code so that your Miis can interact? It just doesn't make sense. If I play my friend on Mario Kart, I'll probably want to catch up with her in Animal Crossing and trade Miis, too. Make it easy to connect or, once again, most of us won't bother. And then you'll have a real long haul building your online community.

8. Wii Shop. If you've downloaded the trial Web browser or any Virtual Console games, you'll recall seeing a silly animation where Mario runs across the screen and collects coins. In a fascinating interview that sheds a lot of light on the Wii's UI design failings, the developers note that "when Mario gets one coin during download, that download's one percent complete, and when he gets all one hundred, the download completes. [..] When he's collecting a lot of coins very fast, that means it's downloading a lot. But when he's only getting a little bit at a time, that either means the line's really slow, or there a quite a bit of data left to be downloaded."

So, let me get this straight: If Mario collects 100 coins, I win and get my download?!

Sure, it's funny and pimps out one of Nintendo's biggest franchises. But this approach fails on a few levels: It's out of place, and it doesn't really communicate download progress very well. There is a progression but it's subtle and inexact. It's OK to make the download meter Nintendo-cute, just don't sacrifice usability.

9. Virtual Console games need trial versions. A tiny screenshot and brief description isn't enough to sell me a game. How about some full-screen screenshots and time-limited trial versions? This is one place where Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade shines. You can try before you buy and unlock the full game from a single download, in some cases preserving your trial game progress. Nintendo has some ground to catch up here.

10. Wii Message Board is a poorly conceived. First of all, the New Message icon on the Wii Menu looks like it's telling you there's new mail, but often it's just your daily usage diary, and it doesn't always go away when you've opened the message. Maybe there's an ancient one I never read... but why are you notifying us about dialtone anyway? Messages should indicate something pressing, not a new diary entry that's created by simply booting your console.

The messages are also a poor substitute for an achievements system: "You played Twilight Princess for three hours and 20 minutes and Wii Play for 47 minutes today, way to go!" Its only real benefit is to help parents monitor how much their kids have played their Nintendo when they should have been doing their homework. But even that isn't fully realized because it doesn't show gameplay by player, since the Wii doesn't even track this.

And do we really want our kids to see what Santa was up to with their consoles in the weeks preceding the holidays? "Wow, I bet St. Nick pwns at Far Cry, Dad! He was playing it two hours every day the week before Christmas."

Wii will rock you!
OK, so I criticize because I care. But I know the fan boys can't help but get their thongs in a bunch over anything that's not a rave review, so let me be clear: The Nintendo Wii is still pretty freaking awesome. It just could be a heck of a lot better.

So let's just move on to the awesome, so we can be clear that I don't hate Nintendo just because I happen to like my Xbox 360. (And my PS2, DS, Dreamcast and PC, for that matter.)

Here are five things Nintendo got right this time:

1. Innovative controls that change gaming, perhaps forever. Yeah, we were skeptical of another motion-control system; our hearts have been broken so many times before by light guns and gyroscope-enabled gadgets that collect dust in the basement. But the Wii-mote and nunchuk combo really works. It works so well that our moms and granddads can pick it up too. And they have.

2. GameCube backward compatibility. This is simply the best backward compatibility for this generation. The PS3 is moving to software-only emulation to control costs, meaning thousands of games will get orphaned. And even their hardware solution (for those who've scored a PS3 with the PS2 chipset included) has its problems. Don't even get me started on the Xbox 360, whose problems in this area are well known (and have been highly criticized here). So score another one for Nintendo!

3. Weather, News and Polls. Adding basic household features and fun polls to the Wii Menu is a brilliant way to keep family members engaged and using the console on a daily basis. Twirling the globe to find weather data and news is just fun. More, please!

4. Miis. The concept of Miis is pretty great. We'd love to see this expanded, with more customization options and places to interact. (Has anyone figured out how to get their own Miis to the plaza? Or you only see other people's Miis there?) Word is that Nintendo has looked at the PS3 Home and is already planning its response. We can't wait!

5. Wii Sports. Packing in a game that's easy to pick up and really shows off the potential of the innovative new system was brilliant. Frankly, not that many people would have picked up Wii Sports at retail, but since we all have it now the only thing that could make it better would be if it had online play. It's been far too long since we've had a good console launch pack-in game that wasn't a retailer-forced bundle (e.g., some game we'd never buy otherwise, designed to jack up the cost of the console). Wii Sports ranks up there with Combat, Sonic and Mario. Good on you, Nintendo.

Now fix the Wii interface, and let the Revolution truly begin.

-=Gamewatcher

Rant Review - An Xbox 360 Report Card

2007-01-20T01:52:14Z

About a month after launch, I delivered a well-read and oft-debated rant about the Xbox 360 user interface, which - to me, at least - seemed a bit rough and unfinished despite the innovative and graphically compelling new dashboard. My exact words were that "the Xbox 360 doesn't quite rock - yet."

Well, it's been a year and Microsoft has released several dashboard updates. Has the 360 been substantially improved? How many of the criticisms have been addressed? Do some of them even matter now?

Keep in mind that these are my pet peeves, and yours may differ. Also, my original statement that the 360 had delivered "amazing experiences" still stands - if nothing, my appreciation for the console has grown with the arrival of games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Test Drive Unlimited and Gears of War. Even lesser trifles such as Tomb Raider: Legend and Gun were much more enjoyable thanks to the achievement system, which makes the Xbox 360 my platform of choice for most multi-platform games.

But let's take a look at how the console has evolved a little more than a year after launch. Here are the 10 things I flagged for improvement in December 2005, with a status report:

A Purgatory zone. My initial thinking was that griefers will always exist, so why not make the punishment fit the crime? If you get enough black marks playing online, you'd be dropped into a pit with other annoying assholes and you'd have serve your sentence, get a firsthand taste of what you've been giving and maybe even earn time off for good behavior by playing well with friends who are not themselves incarcerated.

Maybe it's me (since I can't seem to convince very many friends or relatives to join Xbox Live), but it doesn't seem like griefing has been as big a problem this generation. Sure, the day after a game comes out, people figure out how to exploit it. But a few weeks later (after more recreational gamers like me are done honing our skills in single-player and we're ready to go online!), the company has patched the game and removed cheaters' ammunition.

The February 2007 Official Xbox Magazine (aka OXM) has a feature article on how Microsoft polices the Live space, permanently closing down accounts where they observe infractions or when there's a critical mass of complaints. First offense is often a 24-hour communications ban (no talk or camera) or lockout, but keep going and it will stick. Sounds expensive, and I do have to wonder if a Purgatory zone might keep costs down in this area. But ultimately, hey, the end result is the same: cheaters, bigots and annoying jerks won't stick around for long, and you can always avoid (though not block!) any individuals who diminish your online gaming experience.

I still think a Purgatory zone might be an interesting social experiment - it might actually become a status symbol for some, though it also could be seen as condoning bad behavior. Anyway, it's clearly not necessary to the success of Xbox Live.
Xbox Live profiles that can be stored in multiple places. This one still causes me grief. Basically, you have to manually reclaim your gamertag every time you switch consoles or shell out for a $40 memory card to make your profile conveniently portable. So there's a viable - and, for Microsoft, profitable! - workaround.

But I really think the technology exists to make remote sign-in easier. Look at your Instant Messaging clients. You sign in at work, and it signs you out at home. When you return home, you can sign in again. Sure, you'd need to build in a certain amount of security so you don't accidentally leave your console identity (and any Microsoft points in your account) open over at a friend's house. But this should be the console generation where portability isn't a concern. If Microsoft can offer 1GB Hotmail accounts, they should be able to find a way for us to store our Xbox 360 settings online, too. It shouldn't cost us $40.
A better shopping experience. As I predicted, the original Xbox Live Marketplace wasn't designed to scale. So they've replaced it! And Active Downloads, which were quite obviously cut from the original release, have been perfected so you can now queue up to six files and let them download in the background. Bravo!

Overall, the store is somewhat easier to browse, though nowhere near ideal. Items that are marked as New aren't new since your last visit, they're just all of the past two weeks' releases. But it's still an improvement. Also, finding what you're looking for can require a bit too much guesswork, and favorite areas and games can't be pinned to the first screen.

The other big problem with shopping still isn't fixed: theme and gamer pic previews. Frankly, I can see this feature being shot down again and again by a savvy product manager since themes represent a small fraction of Marketplace revenue, yet an in-engine preview feature is a fair amount of work. However, I would expect that a year later, the folks who work at Xbox.com would be in lockstep with the Marketplace team and would sim-post the theme and gamer pictures to the Web site on the same day they are released. Heck, maybe even a day or two early - what's the harm?! Instead, we have to depend on dashboardthemes.com, a third-party site, for the best and sometimes more timely previews of themes.
Purchased content is licensed for all of your 360s. This is going to become a big deal in the next 1-2 years, and you can say you heard it here first! For some reason, no one wants to talk about it. In fact, OXM recently published some incorrect information about how Marketplace purchases work. The fact is that your purchases are licensed to both your gamertag and your console. If your console fails, you must be logged into Xbox Live for your gamertag to access your purchased content on a new or replacement 360.

Now, we hear, Microsoft is rumored to be working on a new version of the 360 offering HDMI output and a much bigger hard drive. If this is true, forget waiting for the inevitable red ring of death. You might actually find that you want to upgrade your console in the next year!

Unless Microsoft fixes this issue, upgrading or otherwise replacing your 360 orphans all of your purchases so that you must be logged into Xbox Live to use them. This can affect Arcade games, themes, gamer pictures, TV shows and even retail titles with downloadable content that affects your save game.

Not a big deal?! What happens if you lose your Internet service for a week? Go to a LAN party where you need a purchased multiplayer map, but there's no broadband? Want to play Oblivion with an expansion quest at your parents' house? None of the above will work on a secondary console.

Bottom line: Microsoft needs to fix this time bomb.
Better overall usability. Clearly, still a mixed bag. Microsoft really should get an Information Architect on this project. I mean, should Active Downloads be accessed from Personal Settings, or your gamercard? How are they a "personal setting" - because you're a person and you're downloading files? (Actually, you've delegated your console to download the files, so you're simply checking up on what your 360 is doing - a Status section would be a better place for this!) Now Account Management, that's pretty clearly a Personal Setting - so naturally you'll find it under your gamercard. And how is Shutdown a personal setting? It's an on/off decision point and should be on the main menu.

This is just a rough pass, but I would move Online Status to be a convenient toggle on the Guide menu, and provide an option to always autologin but be marked as offline. The only way to do this now is to set a password to block autologin to Live but allow your preferred gamertag to appear, then press the Guide button, go to Personal Settings, select Online Status and chose Appear Offline. Then you can login with your password. Ouch!

We could also use a better preview system for themes - not just before you buy them (as discussed above) but when you're applying them. You shouldn't have to click out of the theme browser to see what it looks like, then select your way back to the browser (four clicks!) if you don't like it or want to customize it further. But more on that in a minute.
An easier-to-use Music Player. Overall, the player is great. Some minor tweaks have improved usability from the Guide menu and your music continues playing in most cases even as you launch and play games and return to the dashboard (but not when you shutdown and restart). You can even remotely access compatible music files on your PC assuming it has Windows XP SP2 and Windows Media Player 11 (which incorporates the previously standalone Windows Media Connect software). It doesn't have to be a Media Center PC anymore.

However, adding music to playlists is still a pain. You need to first open an existing playlist, find the songs you want to add, then add them to the existing playlist and finally save over the old playlist, typing the exact same name without the help of autocomplete or an option to simply save over the currently selected list. It's both counterintuitive and a nuisance when all you want to do is add a few newly imported songs to some of your existing playlists. A great solution: After ripping songs from a new album, offer checkboxes for all existing playlists with the option to add all of the new tracks. And when you remove a song from a playlist, prompt to save the changed playlist over the existing list or to a newly named list.
Create and share our own Themes. To date, theme distribution has been entirely controlled by Microsoft via Marketplace, console kiosk or certified game disc. The closest thing that you, the gamer, can do is import a single JPEG to replace the backgrounds on all blades of your dashboard.

Why can't we simply import and assign images for all four blades and the Guide menu to create our own themes? And then share them via memory card or ship them to our friends via Xbox Live? Or even mix and match our favorite images from themes we've downloaded or purchased to make our own truly customized (though not shareable) themes? If the goal is to make the gamer truly connect with his or her console, then there's so much we can do with just a little more freedom.

Look at how customization in Forza Motorsport drove viral interest in the game thanks to an easy to use but powerful car decoration system. The same type of thing could work for the 360 - truly the most customizable of the consoles to date, but it could easily be so much more.
Achievement icons usable as Gamer Pictures. Frankly, we just don't have enough gamer pictures, and those that we do have generally aren't all that good. We want to remember and brag about our favorite achievements, and this would be a great way to do it.

On the usability side, the picture picker takes far to long to load with virtually no caching. We should also be able to create a page of favorites so we don't have to load the whole list to select one that we already know we like. This is another place where the dashboard just wasn't designed to scale well.

Thankfully, anything we can photograph with the Xbox Live Camera (within reason and community standards) can be made into a gamer picture that only our friends can see. But offering us the tools to make and/or import our own high-quality images would be better and could engage the interest of new designers who could deliver some awesome and worthwhile gamer pictures for sale on Marketplace.
Even better Gamer Card browsing. This is just a missed opportunity. Some games make it easy to browse your friends' accomplishments as well as those players who have the best standing on a track or level. Seeing who pwned the puzzle you just completed in Jewel Quest (and just how much you missed the mark!) never gets old.

But it seems like there should be a way to surf gamercards the way you can browse the Internet Movie Database and Amazon.com product listings. There should be a social browser for finding people you know and others who have similar gaming habits and preferences. Make it an opt-in setting, so you don't put yourself into the shark tank unless you want to. Mail is blocked from non-friends by default, so it's not like you'll get spammed. If not this generation (where there are already 5 million+ on Live), this will become imperative in the next one.
Original Xbox save support. There's good news and bad here. The good news is that a third-party has stepped up to create a gizmo - the Datel XSATA ($50) - that will let you transfer some of your original Xbox saves to the 360. The bad news is that it's a real pain-in-the-ass to use and will deter all but the most determined. Also, it doesn't transfer any saves that are locked (i.e., can't be copied from the original Xbox dashboard) such as Forza Motorsport and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, unless you've modded. So far Microsoft has completely ignored this issue, so there's little hope we'll be able to backup our hard-won progress from the first-generation of Xbox.

On the "plus" side, Microsoft backward compatibility has lagged significantly behind the promise that "most games" would be playable on the Xbox 360. So you don't need to worry about rescuing games, like Morrowind, that you'll probably never be able to play on the next-gen console anyway.

I still believe this is a huge oversight. Both the Wii and PlayStation 3 have ways to access or rescue save games from their past generation consoles. But it's not in Microsoft's best business interest to offer you a way to extend your existing library of games. So if you want this, you'll just have to bite the bullet and get an XSATA.

Overall, Microsoft should get a B+ for effort, and the fact that the Xbox 360 dashboard is miles above the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 interfaces (more on those in coming weeks!). In fact, it's a little surprising that neither competitor learned from Microsoft's mistakes this generation. There were certainly some opportunities to leapfrog ahead.

Instead, if Microsoft keeps the dashboard upgrades coming (packed with cool new features such as IPTV, which should be making Sony sweat very hard right about now) and continues to listen to its fan base (send your own feedback!), it might find a healthy niche this generation and, perhaps, will exert a big influence on future consoles to follow.

-=Gamewatcher

Rant - The Xbox 360's downloadable content time bomb

2006-12-18T23:04:13Z

Longtime readers may recall how my Xbox 360 died. Just a couple days after launch last November.

Overall, Microsoft handled it well. They sent me a prepaid mailer and turned around a replacement console in a matter of days. It should have been a flawless exchange.

Only someone wasn't minding the details when they created Xbox Live Marketplace. They crafted a system where the customer only half licenses any content he or she pays for. The other half is licensed to their console. If you lose your Xbox 360 through no fault of your own, your purchases are orphaned. And now that there are downloadable content modules that affect your game save file - such as Knights of the Nine for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - this has even deeper consequences.

Here's how it works. You buy an arcade game, theme or downloadable game content item using Microsoft points. That content is registered to your Gamertag, so you can re-download and access it remotely from any Xbox 360 that's connected to Xbox Live over the Internet. Nifty, right? But it's also registered to your "home" console - the one you bought it on - for offline use by anyone who plays on that console.

Which is all well and good, but what happens if:

You buy something on a friend's Xbox 360 with your gamertag?
Answer: They own the content on their console and can play it anytime they like, but you can only play it when you're online at home.

You have more than one Xbox 360 in your home?
Answer: Anyone can play it on the console you purchased it with, but you alone can play it on the other one, and only when you're online.

Your console dies and you get a replacement?
Answer: You can only play your content - and any games whose save files depend on that content's presence - online!

Think about it: If your Internet service goes down unexpectedly (say, due to a winter storm that takes out half the utilities in the Seattle area!)… or you have to cancel it to pay for Ramen noodles… or you visit a bandwidth-impaired family member... you simply can't play your downloaded arcade games. Or Oblivion (or any other game add-on that modifies your save game) if you've paid for downloadable content and then saved your game.

Here's what happened to me. My very first day with the 360, I bought Bejeweled 2, Geometry Wars and the Penny Arcade theme and gamer pictures on my living room console. A few days later, the console died and was replaced. When I got the new one, I had all of my content stored on the hard drive (which I had thoughtfully held back when I sent the defective machine in for repair), but I could only see my chosen theme when I logged in to Xbox Live. I also couldn't play those games unless I was logged in.

So I called 1-800-4MY-XBOX. I told the tech that I couldn't access my purchases unless I was online. "Oh, that's because it's registered to your console. You're probably trying to play it on another Xbox 360."

"Yeah," I said. "The one you sent me to replace the launch system that died. Didn't you transfer ownership of my purchased content to the new console before sending me a new one?"

"Let me give you to a supervisor," the tech said.

Half and hour, a hang up and three transfers later, we had worked out a solution. A technical support supervisor credited my account for the Xbox Live points needed to repurchase the content. There's only one problem with this approach: You can't buy the same content again since you already own it! When I went to repurchase those items on my new console, Xbox Live blocked me. "You already own this content, do you want to download it again?" it said. Only re-downloading the files didn't give me back my "first console ownership."

So I had to call back and get Xbox support to transfer the newly credited points to my wife's account so she could buy the items for me on my 360. Only then could I get the games, theme and pictures to load without being connected to Xbox Live.

It's a year later now, and I expected that Microsoft would have dealt with this. I was shocked recently when I saw people on several game forums complaining about the problem, particularly related to Oblivion.

Microsoft, if you're listening, here are a couple of consumer-friendly solutions that shouldn't hurt too much to implement on your end and might even save you on costly tech support:

Transfer content ownership when you replace a console. C'mon, this is basic customer service. How hard is it to create an internal tool that looks up any content that's been registered to a specific console sent in for repair and then perform a one-time transfer to the replacement console's ID before shipping it off to the customer? Even if this step added a day to the replacement time, it would be worth it to most customers. This process should be created and become a standard operating procedure.

Let us grant ownership of our purchases to our 360 console and then revoke it if we need to transfer it to another console. Apple does this with iTunes: You can license your music to play on five PCs of your choosing, and then revoke any of those licenses and transfer them to different PCs anytime you want. I know, I know: You want to protect yourself from piracy and maximize your revenue streams. So limit the number of active consoles to only one or two at a time. (I vote for two because we have two 360s in my house. But I can understand if you only made it one… You want to soak us for two copies of each game!) You could even further restrict that the credit card used on the console has to match. Seriously, how many people are going to give their credit card to a buddy so they can let him play Geometry Wars for free?! (True, having a credit card restriction would leave people who buy their points and subscription cards at retail out in the cold, but if it makes one bean counter at Microsoft sleep easier at night, well, it will have been worth it...)

The good news is that only some kinds of Marketplace content are problematic. Multiplayer maps, cheat codes and add-ons that don't affect your game saves shouldn't brick your single-player game if you're not able to get your console on the Internet now and again, though they could cause issues at LAN parties. Movie rentals probably only matter if your console fails during the rental period. But themes, gamer pictures, arcade games, and any game add-on that's not free and modifies the game world (and thus your save game) could be a problem. To test out a new download, you could try creating a new save game (don't overwrite anything!) and then load it on a friend's 360 with the network connection turned off. If you can load the save, the add-on shouldn't lock you out if you ever have to replace your console.

I've given Microsoft a year to resolve this issue. Frankly, they should have planned for it at launch, but they were understandably overwhelmed by other matters - like making and distributing enough consoles to meet demand. But by now someone nestled in the corporate spire has no doubt written a memo or urgent e-mail about how the customer's interest is completely been lost here. And so far it's been ignored.

Consoles die, some well before their time. Our purchases shouldn't be irrevocably locked to them. Maybe in 10 years when broadband Internet is like running water and dial tone, this won't be an issue. But for now, it's at least a great inconvenience and in some instances a travesty.

Me, I'm not buying any Oblivion downloadable content until this problem is corrected. And I'll weigh any other game downloadable content purchases against whether they're likely to disrupt my saves should the thinkable happen - my 360 goes paws up again.

I suggest you do the same.

-=Gamewatcher