Mr Howard's AS Media Studies Blog G322

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Download the video games industry revision booklet here

Just in case you do not have the printed copy of this extremely useful revision booklet: http://bit.ly/13r0y3Y You will need your log in for Media Edu from last week via Blogger http://bit.ly/10QoSa0

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Audiences & Institutions practice questions (games industry)

OCR AS Media Studies AS G322: Key Media Concepts Section B: Institutions and Audiences

  Games Industry Practice Questions

  Explain how the industry you have studied is exploiting new technology in the areas of production, marketing and exchange

  2.    Account for recent changes in consumption and production in the industry you have studied.

  To what extent are media audiences the agents, beneficiaries or victims of change?

  4.    Explain the significance cross media convergence and synergy, in production, distribution and marketing; the industry you have studied

  5.    How does your own experience of consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour the industry you have studied?

  6.    What impact does media ownership have on the industry you have studied?

  How are audiences effectively targeted in the industry you have chosen?

  How do institutions in your industry meet the needs and expectations of the audience?

  What are the issues raised when targeting audiences in your chosen industry?

  Discuss the issues raised by institutions’ need to target specific audiences within a media industry which you have studied.

  Discuss the issues raised by media ownership within a media industry which you have studied.

via Blogger http://bit.ly/109roMC

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Activision Blizzard (COD and Skylanders) beating the industry's slump #institutions

http://bit.ly/18pQiem Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) is expected to report earnings for the first quarter of 2013 Wednesday, May 8. [1] Successful franchises like Call of Duty and Skylanders helped the company beat the industry wide sales decline in the fourth quarter of 2012. Activision reported a 25% year-on-year increase in revenues for the three months ending December. In contrast, video game sales for the entire industry plunged 22% during the holiday period. [2] Results were buoyed by Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which was the highest selling game worldwide in 2012. [3] The Black Ops II phenomena has shown no signs of slowing down. The game remained on the charts for the first three months of 2013, both in the U.S. and worldwide. We expect the company to deliver another solid quarter, staying ahead of the industry slow down. via Blogger http://bit.ly/ZBti5y

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#crosspromotion Black Ops 2 unlocks linked to Call of Duty Ghosts? Pre-order incentives?

http://bit.ly/17I3ev4 via Blogger http://bit.ly/15rVJdR

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sexism in video games - audiences & institutions

http://bit.ly/15rVI9V via Blogger http://bit.ly/ZBoT2L

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Video games & The Male Gaze #audiences and #institutions

http://bit.ly/17I3g6b Stephen Beirne draws a line between the rejection by publishers of female protagonists with the feminist theory of the male gaze

via Blogger http://bit.ly/16NNRmD

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"Girlfriend mode" and games not letting you fail... #videogames

http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2012/08/problem-isnt-girlfriend-mode-its-making-games-easier-then-blaming-it-women via Blogger http://dhsemediamrhoward12.blogspot.com/2013/05/girlfriend-mode-and-games-not-letting.html

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A psycho-killer with puppy dog eyes: why the new Lara Croft doesn't work (New Statesman)

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/03/even-lara-crofts-grown-makeover-cant-hide-tomb-raiders-lack-ideas via Blogger http://dhsemediamrhoward12.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-psycho-killer-with-puppy-dog-eyes-why.html

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The end of the epic: why the success of Bioshock Infinite is bad for gaming

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/04/end-epic-why-success-bioshock-infinite-bad-gaming

The end of the epic: why the success of Bioshock Infinite is bad for gaming

Phil Hartup hated the critically acclaimed blockbuster. And he thinks you should too. By Phil Hartup [1] Published 21 April 2013 11:54

Phil Hartup hated the critically acclaimed blockbuster. And he thinks you should too.

Oops, too late.

There was a time when games tried harder than this. They’ve never spent more money in production, they’ve never had better hardware, but they tried harder. New game types, new control systems, new themes, new mechanics. They had to wow the audience, impress them and offer them something new. Those days are gone. Now games merely presume to have our attention and because of the hype, because of the money and because sometimes they just look so amazing, that attention is often given freely. Bioshock: Infinite is just such a game. It deserves a place in history as being the world’s most successfully polished turd. The acclaim piled on it is easy to understand. Groupthink amongst the gaming press has a habit of running riot and almost from day one of its announcement it was clear to see that Bioshock: Infinite was the anointed one. It contained very serious issues like racism and inequality, it had religious baddies in it, who weren’t Muslim for a change, it had a prominent female character who wasn’t simply there to be drooled over and of course it all looked so pretty in the videos. People were ready for a game that wasn’t as ideologically bankrupt as the Call of Duty series, but was still, for all intents and purposes, that sort of game. Bingo. Complaints with Bioshock: Infinite are limited to two key areas. First, and most obviously, it’s a first person shooter and it’s a conspicuously bad one. Everything takes place in a series of arena battles, with the plot occurring in the times between them. This is a really bad sign. It tells us that the story is written and the game, that bit that you’re paying for, the bit that really anything calling itself a game ought to be focused on, that’s just filler. That’s the stuff you do to pad the running time out. That the actual game part of the game has been relegated to the fringes of the experience is evidenced by just how below-par the combat actually is. The mechanics, the arbitrary limitations, the repetition of it all . . . on a mechanical level this is the sort of thing that was done better in Half Life back in 1998. Secondly in terms of story and themes, what are we really learning here? That racism is bad? That religious fanaticism is bad? A huge amount has been talked about the Bioshock: Infinite story but the elephant in the room is that if the story is written before you even install the game then it is a bad story. This brings us back to the idea of the game as a game. What makes games special is that you are not supposed to know the outcome. Take a football match for example. If you’re playing football and you don’t know how the match will turn out, but you know you can affect it, that’s fun. That’s really the joy of playing a game. But suppose you put your boots on, you step out onto the pitch, and the referee hands you a script. You play your part in the game, you have to kick the ball when it comes to you, you have to tackle players as they come to you, just like it says in the script, and if you do that right, you win. If you do it wrong the ref blows his whistle and you do it again until it is right and then you win. This is what a game as scripted as Bioshock: Infinite comes down to; an interactive movie where the totality of the player capacity for interaction is our old friend, violence. Now I am actually rather partial to videogame violence. It can be good clean fun. But when it is forced upon me for reasons that essentially amount to time sinking I find it a little objectionable. There’s no engaging with the people in the game world, and there is little interaction with objects other than to instantly munch them down to heal gunshot wounds. Now it could be argued that Bioshock: Infinite is being playful and ironic, that it is a self-aware look at games and violence and other things, playing against expectations and messing with ideas of parenthood and conscience and so on, and I’m sure that’s ever so clever. But here’s the thing with that. If you want to be a clever game, first you have to be a good game. You can tell that Bioshock: Infinite isn’t that because people are talking about themes and story, they are not asking about how to play it better. Besides, is a "good guy who is a killer with a mysterious past" such a revolutionary idea? Is rescuing some mysterious yet important girl from a prison really a new idea? Is a one-dimensional dickhead as a principle antagonist really as sophisticated as all that? For a game lauded for its story it is hard to pick anything in this game that wasn’t already clichéd years ago. But here’s the thing. All this said, Bioshock: Infinite has been wildly applauded by critics. This blood-spattered series of fetch quests, arena fights and pseudo intellectualism is being talked about as one of the best games in recent years. Mathematics departments around the world have been struggling for weeks to find a new whole number above ten but less than eleven just to use for reviewing this game. The team at the Oxford English Dictionary are in the process of removing the existing definition of the word airship from the dictionary to be replaced by the term ‘wonderful floating thing found in Bioshock: Infinite’. This game is, as far as most of the gaming press and public are concerned, the greatest thing ever. That should worry fans of video games because when something as completely wrongheaded and primitive as Bioshock: Infinite is lauded as a masterpiece, the fallout can only be toxic. What video games need now are new ideas, not the same old thing with a different set of backgrounds and a new story. This is what video games promised when they first appeared, when people were not just inventing games but inventing genres of game. Somewhere along the way this seems to have stopped happening, to the extent that the best game so far of 2013 is a game that, graphical fidelity notwithstanding, could have been made ten years ago. Board games are in many ways showing the direction that video games ought to be taking. Games such as Risk: Legacy  [2]offer changes to old formulae and new formats and game tropes appear all the time. Meanwhile, what mainstream video games are delivering is akin to the dizzying array of different Monopoly sets you can get. Maybe it’s set in space, or in Legoland, or Russia, or wherever, but it’s still ultimately the same game. While the 10/10 scores and the plaudits are piling up around titles that offer nothing more than a new story played out in the same old style, the games industry will see no reason to change. For people who thought that Bioshock: Infinite was new and exciting, congratulations. That’s what’s on the menu, at least from the big developers, for the foreseeable future. For those of us who had our fill of this slop back when it still tasted sort of new and the crunchy bits still had some crunch to them, it’s going to be a long few years.

via Blogger http://dhsemediamrhoward12.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-end-of-epic-why-success-of-bioshock.html

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Getting your money's worth from free to play games #f2p

http://bit.ly/ZBlelu

The Land of the Free: Getting your money's worth from free to play games

More and more games are setting their stall out for free right off the bat, and then finding ways of taking your money later on. Why does it work? By Phil Hartup [1] Published 30 April 2013 10:44

More and more games are setting their stall out for free right off the bat, and then finding ways of taking your money later on. Why does it work?

League of Legends, a free to play game that's become an enormous success.

There is a simple genius to the idea of the free to play game, but you have to wonder how many people were laughed out of the room for suggesting it a few years back. It is a revolutionary attitude and a brave one, because to offer up your game to the players without asking for money up front, you’re relying on your game to sell itself, not the marketing and not the review scores. You are expecting that not only will your players play the game, but that they will play it and want to support it and pay for further content. The success of the model flies in the face of those developers who would rather drop a digital deuce onto your hard drive [2] and hope you forget all about it before they release their follow up to Homeworld [3]. Free to play isn’t something particularly new, but it is something that is growing. A lot of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games have gone free to play as the subscription model is, outside of hardy perennial World of Warcraft, proving harder and harder to sustain beyond the first month. More and more games are setting their stall out for free right off the bat, usually player vs player games, but also plenty of MMO games that benefit from higher player numbers. Games that have gone free to play, as opposed to being built for it, sometimes feel as though the monetisation process is intrusive, exploitative and needlessly greedy. The most overt example of these flaws is Bioware’s $200m white space elephant Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is a game that feels the need to punish freeloading players by not allowing them to run fast. The Old Republic is an interesting example of a game that missed the point of how free to play is supposed to work. Ideally, the theory goes, you want your players to play the game, fall in love with it, and then spend money to get more out of it. It is hard to fall in love with a game when it’s eyeballing you like a snooty maître d'. For all the accusations of nickel and diming though it is hard to complain about being able to play one of the best presented MMOs ever made for free. The Old Republic never really measured up in terms of delivering a great game, but seeing the work that went into it you can imagine how painful the decision to just give it away must have been. This is perhaps ironic since the transition to a free to play model usually means more money for a struggling MMO, not less. The games that typically thrive in the free to play market are the games that offer something innovative that players perhaps have not tried before. We all like to pretend we like new ideas, but commercially it’s clear that the safe bets do best. Players might be reluctant to take a gamble on a game at full price but an intriguing free to play game will usually be given the chance to prove itself. If the game is good then a foot in the door might be all it needs. For League of Legends, existing in a hitherto obscure genre, the ability to hook new players en masse without the barrier of an initial buy-in allowed the game to become ridiculously popular. With over thirty million active players, League of Legends is easily bigger than World of Warcraft and if the claims of the developers are to be believed, it boasts around five million concurrent players. That’s almost twice as many as you’d find on the entire Xbox Live network after a new Call of Duty comes out, for a game that came out in 2009. League of Legends is the obvious go-to example of a free to play game that has become a huge success by doing something new, but it is not alone. World of Tanks has also carved respectable a niche for itself, out of some twenty million player accounts created it has built up a much larger and more robust player base than you would ever expect to see in a game of that type. Other games currently in open beta such as Mechwarrior: Online or War Thunder use a similar model, casting the net far and wide for potential players and hoping they stick around long enough to spend some money. Planetside 2 is another game that offers something new. In this case it achieves that by taking a fairly traditional approach to the first person shooter and scaling the number of players up by a few orders of magnitude. Seeing hundreds of players in the same area shooting each other is nothing short of epic at first, as though you’re in the middle of a gigantic cut scene happening in real time, which in some ways is pretty close to the truth. Like so many free to play games Planetside 2 does suffer somewhat from a painful learning curve, perhaps because the "tutorial" bears a striking resemblance to this scene from Futurama [4]. For all the good that free to play games have brought however there are some problems which have yet to be uniformly resolved. The first of these flaws is the cynical way in which in game items are sold. Nearly all online games for example will feature some kind of go-between currency. You buy the currency that the game or that particular developer uses with real money and then you buy the items in-game with that currency. This serves to obfuscate what you are actually spending and is such a transparent and shameless ploy that it feels a little insulting that so many companies actually do it. Even the newly coined term ‘micro-transaction’ feels a little optimistic when in most games you’re actually parting with quite noticeable amounts of money for whatever digital object you’ve just acquired. Team Fortress 2 is one game that sells items without hiding the prices behind a filter in this way and it has made plenty of money doing it, by treating the players with respect the developers benefit from greater respect from the players. The second flaw is the problem of "Pay to Win". Any free to play game benefits from a high population but when the paying players get a significant and direct advantage it can feel a lot like those players who are playing for free are simply the ducks in the shooting gallery. Refinements to the way that games are balanced have reduced this problem to an extent, but it still rears its ugly head from time to time. In Planetside 2 for instance any new weapon that arrives in the in-game store will generally start off overpowered and then be patched down to fairer levels once sales have dropped off. This problem is mitigated fairly successfully by games that offer access to items faster in return for money, rather offering a systemic bias to the paying player. If a player can choose to earn their in game items by playing for them or paying for them then balance is achieved between those who play the game obsessively and those who waste their time with families and careers. It can often seem like gaming is a struggling medium, with innovative but underfunded indie games on one side and steadfastly unambitious AAA titles on the other. Free to play however seems to offer a tempting middle ground, one where larger development funds are available but where bold creative choices and distinct design are necessary to survive. It may not be a perfect situation, but it’s one that merits close examination, particularly since it costs nothing to do so.

via Blogger http://bit.ly/15kLsAz

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Fab Gaming Trends PPT for Audiences & Institutions revision!

Video Gaming Trends from Playful Wingmen

via Blogger http://bit.ly/17HYVQp

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Localisation in video games

TV Tropes - Bowdlerise Bowdlerization means altering existing programs, plays, etc. so they are less rude and/or offensive. Used in a very negative sense, by those who think the alterations are often done with a ridiculously high fear of lawsuits and/or need for political correctness. http://bit.ly/18uxLuN TV Tropes - General localisation examples http://bit.ly/132sdYU Some great examples on there, some of them are serious and some you may think are a bit strange! But publishers will do what is necessary to cater for regional audiences. Remember the task I set you at the end: Find out the name of the Free to Play Xbox 360 game launched by Microsoft that is going to be funded entirely by additional DLC microtransactions? Find out what it is and a bit of information about it. This shows that Microsoft is very interested in getting in on the Free to Play (or F2P) market - you might find it strange but companies can potentially earn a LOT more by releasing a free game than a £40 title. It's the future! via Blogger http://bit.ly/132sdYW

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Trends of 2013 - the rise of the indie

By Martin Robinson Published 11/01/2013 2013, so we're told, is going to be the year of mass disruption in videogames. It's when the old ways are finally eroded by the new, and when new hardware's going to show up to a party that may already be long over. It's when PC gaming should cement itself at the top of the tree, when Microsoft and Sony are to unveil their own takes on the future and when the concept of a traditional console cycle is to be scattered to the winds, replaced with disparate hardware iterations and a million new ways to play games. In fact, given the current rate of hardware announcements Microsoft will have announced the new Xbox by the end of the week, and its successor will be unveiled some time next Tuesday. Come December things are clearly going to be very different. There will be casualties as double-A publishers find themselves squeezed out, and there will be success stories as double-A games find a new, more lucrative home on Steam or are magicked into life via the power of crowd funding. It's going to be twelve months that, no matter how you look at it, are going to be terribly interesting. But that's not the reason I'm excited about the next twelve months, and I don't think necessarily it's the reason you should be either. There's a strange dawn on the horizon, but more exciting is the golden dusk we're about to enter for what's likely the last traditional generation of consoles. The trend of 2013 that's most exciting isn't new business models, it's not new ways to play and I don't think it's even the prospect of new hardware. What's really tantalising is that the next twelve months should bring us the finest crop in what's already been a pretty impressive generation of games, and it should all add up to something of a vintage year. It's not a new trend, although its return is certainly very welcome. As the PlayStation 2 spent its last few months on the frontlines before it was packed off for a long and well-deserved twilight that blinked its last only just recently, it enjoyed a blissful Indian summer that resulted in some of the best games of the last decade. Sony's machine was sent off with a brace of impeccable JRPGs in Final Fantasy 12 and Dragon Quest 8 - two games that arguably were their respective series' peak in what would turn out to be a final dance in the limelight for the genre - as well as the savagely pretty God of War 2, a game whose beauty has been barely diminished by the passing years and ever-evolving technology. And then there's Okami, which with its faded blossoms and dry brown parchment paper already had the delicate touch of autumn about it before it became entwined with the PlayStation 2's bronze days. It put paid to the recently coined myth that new IPs can't flourish at the tail end of a generation - as did Black, Shadow of the Colossus and Bully. It's not a phenomenon exclusive to Sony's machine, either - the Xbox was sent off with Psychonauts and Jade Empire, the Gamecube's swansong given a full-blooded voice through the likes of Resident Evil 4 and Twilight Princess. Seven years on, and despite the dramatically different landscape, it looks as if the trick's about to be repeated once again. 12 months ago when the EG team sat down to compile a list of Actual New Games, a compendium of the games that would be offering new flavours of wonder and awe. It was, a little disconcertingly, tough to pick out a convincing bunch from the armies of clones and sequels. This year the tougher task was whittling the selection down, and the list we landed on stirs a little something inside me. Maverick indies such as Quadrilateral Cowboy and Super Time Force rub shoulders with curious follies brought to life by multi-million budgets such as Beyond and Watch Dogs. Gallery: View related image gallery There's a certain snugness to old hardware, the well-explored architecture of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 providing a comfortable home that's the perfect base for expeditions into more daring ideas and styles. Even the year's biggest sequels, GTA 5 and Bioshock Infinite, have an audacious edge, Rockstar's effort with its player-led cross-cutting narrative and Irrational's with its willingness to tackle uncomfortable politics. It helps, of course, that in the likelihood that there is new hardware from either Sony or Microsoft then it's likely to be accompanied by a lacklustre launch line-up. Tom's recent run-down of made up next-gen made up games may have been in jest, but there's a little kernel of truth there: console launches are, as a rule, accompanied by clumsy games that are still a little unsteady on their feet. No matter what new hardware offers up, and no matter how incremental the leap may be, I don't think that's about to change. Come December, the game that's going to be topping the best of lists is likely to be one that's being played on hardware that's sitting in our living rooms and offices right now. The consoles we own, and the PCs and mobiles we all play on, are capable of so many more surprises over the next twelve months, and it's here, for sure, that the most dazzling games will be. 2013, I think, all boils down to one very simple, very wonderful thing; more games, and more brilliant ones at that. via Blogger http://bit.ly/ZWSMKv

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Gaming in 2013

  Gaming in 2013: Five Industry Trends to Watch

January 4, 2013   |   by Jeff Dunn

2012 was a chaotic year for the gaming industry.

Two major new consoles, the Nintendo Wii U and Sony’s PlayStation Vita, hit the market with uncertain fates and varying degrees of success. Longtime developer THQ concluded a troubling descent to bankruptcy, while Kingdoms of Amalur maker 38 Studios shuttered in a very public, months-long debacle that may largely come at the expense of Rhode Island taxpayers. Mass Effect 3′s much-anticipated conclusion angered some series fans enough to start a petition to change the game’s ending, which developer BioWare — a company that saw its co-founders retire from gaming entirely in September — eventually did with later DLC. And all of a sudden, independent and downloadable games like The Walking Dead, Journey, and Fez seemed to become more critically acclaimed and widely beloved than their big-budget, AAA counterparts.

As all of this enters 2013, there is a deserved air of uncertainty surrounding games and game makers alike. Gamers can’t be sure where the next great adventure or disappointing dud will come from. Big name developers are too often falling victim to the skyrocketing costs of game creation, leaving their very livelihoods at risk. Publishers find themselves tinkering with price points, marketing ploys, and distribution methods with what feels like every release. Of course, the shadows of Microsoft’s and Sony’s next-gen consoles are lingering over everyone and everything in the industry, and nobody’s quite sure what those machines will bring either.

But in the midst of this chaos, there are a handful of trends that appear to be taking shape for the new year. While they can’t be guaranteed, here are five widespread happenings to expect for the gaming industry in 2013.

Free-to-Play Will Become Even More Prevalent

Free-to-play is here to stay. Once thought to be just for mobile games and low-rent browser titles, the free-to-play (F2P) pricing strategy has made its way into more and more so-called “core” titles over the last few years. Popular, high-quality games like Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, PlanetSide 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic have all jumped on the F2P bandwagon in some form or another recently, almost always seeing success because of it. And with promising titles like Dota 2, Hawken, and Warface getting full free releases next year, the trend doesn’t appear to be dying down anytime soon.

But while the majority of these titles still reside on PCs and mobile devices now, the F2P model will not be so confined going forward. Since traditional game development has turned into a bloated, costly behemoth, it seems inevitable that F2P will eventually become the standard for all games on all platforms soon enough. While the usual $50-60 price point for new games — a price which isn’t cutting it for many players and developers alike nowadays – will not be dead by the end of 2013, expect more notable steps towards a F2P future to be taken. Titles like Happy Wars and DC Universe Online have already toyed with F2P on consoles, but the model’s recent surge could mean even more free games for players on all kinds of devices.

The truth is, when done correctly, F2P games can rake in much more money than the traditional, static payment model. Take Team Fortress 2, for instance, which has brought in 12 times more revenue as a F2P game with optional micro transactions than it did as a regular retail title. Breaking down the barrier of entry to players taps into an expanded potential user base, which in turn increases the chances that those users will get hooked on the game in question, which in turn coaxes them into willingly paying for optional content to use and enjoy while playing. It’s a definite high-risk, high-reward situation whenever a developer gives away a high-quality product for next to nothing, but it’s worked in many cases thus far, especially when the actual F2P titles are, well, good.

Major developers like Crytek and Epic Games have voiced their support for the free-to-play model in the past, which further hints at the idea that video games will become more like “services” that are used over time than the usual “products” that users pay for, play, and then forget. So long as these hopeful companies avoid the dreaded “pay-to-win” situation — when players who pay for in-game products receive substantial advantages over those playing for free — their wishes just may become reality before they know it. This industry is desperate to find a happy medium between “do or die” AAA game development and wholly free, yet popular “casual” games. Free-to-play just might be it.

More Sequels, More Reboots, and More Familiar Faces Are On the Way

Many of gaming’s top figureheads and analysts have come to agree that today’s market is growing increasingly “hit-driven,” meaning that game sales are becoming more and more concentrated around the industry’s various blockbuster franchises. Series like Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, God of War, Battlefield, Uncharted and the like have that enviable mass appeal, and thus receive annual or biannual sequels like clockwork, selling well each and every time. Since these games are usually good, many gamers are just fine with this process, and the world keeps spinning.

But there’s a problem: there’s not nearly enough room for anything new. New IPs like last year’s Dishonored will make it through the cracks every now and again, but even that title’s success was in part tied to its serious marketing blitz and star-studded voice acting cast.

It is worth mentioning again that high-quality games often cost absurd amounts of money these days, which leads most publishers to take a risk-averse approach. From a business standpoint, that makes a great deal of sense. But one unfortunate side effect of this is that innovation becomes stagnated. When innovation becomes stagnated for too long, people get bored of the products they know, which means they stop buying them, which means that companies lose money. And nobody wants that.

So, logic would suggest that there is bound to be a new round of fresh IPs coming sometime down the road. Call of Duty and Halo did not exist for the Super Nintendo after all. But as far as AAA titles are concerned, 2013 will not be the year that happens.

Yes, The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, Fuse, Remember Me, and Watch Dogs all look superb, but new titles like that are still in the minority. A look at the biggest titles scheduled for this year reveals that, once again, most of the major releases are sequels, spin-offs, or reboots of already-popular franchises. Grand Theft Auto V, Gears of War: Judgment, God of War: Ascension, Dead Space 3, Dark Souls II, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Bioshock: Infinite, Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, DmC, Pikmin 3, and Dragon Age III: Inquisition are just some of the major games set for release this year that are rooted in existing products.

This is not to say that any of these titles will necessarily be bad. Actually, most of those games look fantastic. But there is only so much originality studios can have when they are working with a vision that is practically filled in halfway before the project is even started.

The Indies Will Inspire

Tangential to that last point, the lack of risks being taken by typical AAA titles these days has created a fantastic opportunity for the little guys of the game development world to do big things.

In 2012, various independent and small-scale devs took the gaming community proved up to the task, filling in the gaps of imagination and wonder too often left blank by their big-budget brothers.  Telltale’s The Walking Dead and thatgamecompany’s Journey swept many a Game of the Year list, while Dennaton’s Hotline Miami, Klei’s Mark of the Ninja, Polytron’s Fez, Derek Yu’s Spelunky, and Subset’s FTL were just a handful of the underground games that captured the hearts and minds of those who played them, catching many players off guard. Hell, even small-scale failures like Datura were at least attempting more interesting things than most gritty brown war shooters.

In 2013, expect to see something like this again. While the drought of original big-money titles should not be nearly as barren as it was last year, independent game development still seems to be the space where creators can subvert and experiment with long-held conventions of game design. This is not just to satisfy a creative itch either; without massive ad campaigns and budgets backing them up, indie games practically have to posit themselves as different in order to get the attention and positive word of mouth they often need to thrive.

So exactly which indie games will stand out this year? Well, part of what makes this scene so much fun is the fact that one can never know which title will take people by surprise, but games like Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Antichamber, Super T.I.M.E. Force, and Mew-Genics are all worth keeping an eye on for now.

Companies Will Take Definitive Steps to Kill Used Games

The notion of “used games” has been a fundamental part of gaming for decades. From the crowd surrounding a local Street Fighter arcade cabinet to the two buddies who swapped copies of their latest RPG conquests to the group of coworkers jumping on Xbox Live at the end of the day, gaming has long been a communal experience. In business terms, this notion of “sharing the wealth” has partly manifested itself in used game sales, a market that makes millions for companies like GameStop and GameFly, and gives players more games at lower prices.

To most developers and publishers, though, used games are not all fun and good times – they are a significant source of missed revenue. See, game companies do not make a cent — at least, directly — whenever their products are bought and sold used. Since a substantial amount of gamers purchase their titles second-hand, this means that there is a whole user base that is legally playing a given company’s game, but is not directly paying the company to do so.  With development costs only getting heftier, those potential customers could really come in handy. Thus, used games now find themselves in many game companies’ crosshairs, despite the fact that they are still very much popular with most consumers.

This is more a matter of “when,” not “if.” Measures have already been taken through things like online passes, but sooner or later, this is all going to come to a boiling point.

With multiple new consoles expected this year, 2013 will be the time that happens. There has already been a litany of rumors, which suggest that the next PlayStation and Xbox will both implement some sort of anti-used tech when they launch, likely for good reason. These have included whispers of Steam-like locks that will tie copies of games to the user ID that bought them, tech that will lock games to one console, and new classifications of “registered” and “un-registered” games, where the former will be akin to the “complete version” of a game bought new while the latter will be like a pre-owned copy with missing features that have to be paid for to be played. Exactly what steps publishers will take is not clear (the smart money is probably on an ID-lock system), but either way, steps will be taken.

Considering the Internet collectively loses its mind at the very mention of these rumors, the publishers involved here will have to put their best PR people to work to lessen consumers’ fears of a world without used games. But this is a business, and the reality is that the money being lost to stores like GameStop — which would be forced to do some quick thinking if it wanted to survive these measures — is just too much for companies to stomach. Things will change, even if it means forcing some consumers to alter their spending habits.

Consoles Won’t Die, They’ll Just Change

“Consoles are dead.”

Anyone who has been reading the gaming and tech press over the past couple of years should know this headline by now. The rise of mobile apps combined with a rejuvenated PC gaming scene has left the dedicated video game console in a weird middle ground — too expensive and bloated for less frequent gamers, too closed off and unnecessary for the PC faithful. Add to this an economy that struggling to get back on its feet and launching a new console in this day and age becomes even riskier. Or so they say.

The fact of the matter is that the “dedicated video game console” died years ago. The Super Nintendo, Atari 2600, and ColecoVision were dedicated video game consoles. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U are not. They are media centers and entertainment hubs that are best at playing games. They have things like Netflix or YouTube support, web browsers and TV subscriptions. They started doing this because of the smartphone revolution of the modern era. They’re still doing this now, and they’ll continue to do this in the future.

The point here is that consoles — like the cell phone, the television, or the car — will change with the times. They may still be in their learning stages when it comes to being malleable, but they react to the market and respond accordingly. There is a reason gamers are not still playing on cartridges without online access, after all.

Depending on who is asked, there could be up to five consoles released in 2013 alone. Microsoft’s next console is rumored to offer powerhouse specs for “core” gamers alongside revamped Kinect hardware that has already proven popular with the more “casual” crowd. Sony’s next PlayStation is said to still have an enviable lineup of exclusives while initially selling at a more affordable price point. Kickstarted consoles like the Ouya and Gamestick are taking mobile apps to a console interface, and Valve’s infinitely anticipated “Steam Box” will do the same with PC gaming. No two of these consoles are completely alike, and yet all are still aiming for control of the living room.

Why? Because there is still a market for consoles, and millions upon millions of people will still buy them. Yes, these machines may have peaked with the PlayStation 2. Yes, the current “$60 and go” pricing model is failing. Yes, mobile devices have cut a chunk out of consoles’ user base. And yes, development costs have gotten absurdly high. But none of this has killed consoles yet. And the various approaches these companies are taking with their consoles — not to mention Nintendo and its just-released Wii U — seem to indicate that they are listening, which is important.

It is still very true that the modern consoles are in danger. Various problems will have to be addressed in various ways. But the people behind these machines are not stupid (only sometimes), and nobody can really be sure of what innovations they will come up with next. If the past is any indication, though, something will be done — whether it is more free-to-play games, a mass cloud system, another revolutionary controller, whatever. The fun part is seeing just what that something will be.

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What Does 2013 Hold for a Gaming Industry in Flux? G322 Section B

http://on.mash.to/RvvlIT The last year was a turbulent and exciting one in gaming. After Double Fine's record-breaking Kickstarter, a gold rush began as indies funded their dreams with the masses. Facebook reported 235 million of its users play games each month. Nintendo launched a console that faced "second-screen" entertainment head on. A live-action series about Halo was watched millions of times on YouTube. These are but a handful of trends that forecast the future. Mashable spoke to 16 prominent figures across the games industry to discern what might be coming down the pike in 2013. Many of those quoted below talked about similar themes: freemium games, the rise of digital distribution, new console and tablet hardware, and crowdfunding for indie games. Read below to see their full predictions. http://on.mash.to/RvvlIT via Blogger http://bit.ly/ZmBDhR

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Convergence Culture: TV and Gaming (The Walking Dead and Defiance)

Defiance & Convergence Convergence of TV and MMO: The Making of Defiance World-First Convergence of TV & Gaming With 'Defiance,' Comcast's Syfy Bets $100M On Convergence Of TV And Videogames The Walking Dead & Convergence The Walking Dead: Convergence Unleashed Convergence Culture and The Walking Dead

Video games bible from raybloggs

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Animal welfare charity PETA blasts Ridiculous Fishing

Animal welfare charity PETA blasts Ridiculous Fishing In a rare case of life imitating art, outspoken animal charity People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has condemned Vlambeer's hit fishing-themed casual game Ridiculous Fishing for its enthusiastic depiction of aquatic animal slaughter. via Blogger http://bit.ly/Xplc2a