News

As reported by NPR on Morning Edition this morning, a class action lawsuit has been filed by several employees of Electronic Arts against the company. At issue is the matter of unpaid overtime, the amount of which has led the plaintiffs of the case to charge that EA fosters a poor work environment. The story articulates the extensive work hours and health problems caused by the game industry's "dirty little secret" - exploitation of their developers. The class action suit articulates that other California creative employees are entitled to overtime when the employees in question do not have control over the "creative vision"; that is to say, the employees create only what they're told to create; the suit seeks that the developers be treated the same as orchestra musicians and workers in the cinema industry.

The counterpoint is that EA, and other game developers, do only what they have to in order to sell games and give gamers what they want. Budgets are tight to keep the games at certain price points in some cases; timelines are nearly always tight, as people expect their games to be available for the Christmas season, or at the beginning of the sports season for sports games.

The questions for gamers, really, are these: Are we willing to pay more for games so that the developers are compensated for overtime on months of 18 hour days, six days a week? Are we willing to accept that we might get the new Final Fantasy, or Tekken, or Madden, or any game developed in the US, a little bit later than what we hoped? Do the developers, as salaried employees, really deserve to be paid overtime; would the quality of the games be enhanced by adding this provision? It's clear what the developers think - we'll have to wait and see if the courts agree.

The story is 6:35 long, and can be streamed via Real Media or Windows Media Player 9. You can reach it at NPR's archive.

Japanese gamers who purchased Dragon Quest VII last week were treated with a special bonus DVD by Square Enix. This DVD was packed with trailers for the company's upcoming games. What particularly stands out on this DVD is a mysterious trailer for an even more mysterious previously unannounced gamed. This game is tentatively titled Code Age.

The only solid fact known about the game is that Yusuke Naora, previously of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and X, and The Bouncer fame, will be the game's director. Not even the console(s) that this title will appear on are known. It is listed under "New" for its platform which at least seems to point to the next gen consoles.

As stated already, the trailer is more than a little mysterious. Square Enix call the game a "New Concept Brand." Absolutely nothing is said concerning the gameplay.

Here is a transcript of the trailer's narration (thanks to GamesAreFun):
"Deep, deep into the sea where light cannot reach,

The environment is severe beyond imagination.

One fish evolved its eyes to seek for light.

Another fish evolved its mouth to seek food and to survive.

Mankind escaped from evolution by crawling out of the water and reshaping its environment.

Everyone was dreaming of a bright future,

But that was abandoned by a new world order.

This is a story about people that were once human.

This is a story about people that continued to be human.

Code Age.

[Our] heart was screaming,

Evolve if you want to survive. "

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It will be interesting to see what genre this game falls into, or if it attempts to create its own. If the game is anything like EVO: Search for Eden, then I'm very intrigued. I wish I had some free time to play EVO right now.

As the battle for the handheld market begins to shape up between Sony and Nintendo, the latter's latest entry in the market is selling like hotcakes --- and it has not even been released yet.

Many major video game retailers, including Gamestop, are ceasing from taking further preorders for the Nintendo DS as they have already sold out of their launch day allotment of the device. It is beginning to appear that it may be difficult (just as it has been with recent past hardware releases, the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 2 coming specifically to mind) to get the handheld on its November 21 launch date.

The titles (as of right now) that are expected to be in store by launch date are: Asphalt Urban GT (Ubisoft), Madden NFL 2005 (Electronic Arts), Urbz: Sims in the City (EA), Feel the Magic XY/XX (Sega), and Spider-Man 2 (Activision), and, of course, Super Mario 64 DS.

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Someone want to be my Rich Uncle Pennybags? With its backward compatibility with the GBA, I would love to have one of these things. I can neither afford nor justify spending 150 dollars on one at the moment, however.

As many are aware, Nintendo has ported a few of its classic NES games to the Gameboy Advance. Some of these include The Lengend of Zelda, Excitebike, Donkey Kong, Bomberman. Apparently, Nintendo does not plan to stop there. On Nintendo of America's official site the company had posted a survey asking gamers which other NES games they would like to see on the Gameboy Advance. Nintendo had a pre-compiled list of 40 games to chose from. Survey participitants may have also chosen up to three games that were not on the list of 40.

The NES Classics series retails at most stores for $20 US.

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I think this survey was a cool idea. I just wish Nintendo would have let people choose more than three games that are not on their list of 40. As for my three "wild card" choices, I selected Tecmo Super Bowl, Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers, and Bad News Baseball. I can't remember all of the titles that I chose from their list of 40, however. A few that stick out in my mind are Kid Icarus and Skate or Die.

I'd probably actually buy a few of these if they costed a bit less than twenty dollars or Nintendo packaged more than a single title on a cart.

Macrovision, a company which specializes in copy protection, has conducted a poll of PC gamers concerning software piracy. Of the 2,219 gamers who answered the polls, 52 percent admitted to having had used a crack (generally a file that is used to break copy protection) in order to pirate software. Furthermore, 33 percent confessed to having downloaded an ISO (a full copy of a CD image). 15 percent of those polled did not stop after pirating one or two games either. This group admits to have downloading/copying fifteen or more games in the past two years.

The Electronic Software Association estimates that piracy has cost the PC gaming industry over three billion worldwide. Marcovision believes that estimate to be even higher.

Macrovision believes the way to lessen is the financial impact of piracy is lengthen the time that it takes for a title's copy protection to be cracked. Every day counts. The company cites numbers from the poll in which two-thirds of the admitted pirates said that they would not have the patience to wait six weeks for a game to appear as warez. Instead, they would purchase it legitimately.

Source: Gamespot

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I'm not sure how much I trust a poll about software piracy that is conducted by a copy protection company, but I think the latter part of the article is pretty much common sense. The casual gamer is not going to want to wait long periods of time and go through complicated procedures in order to pirate a game. As it stands right now, there are numerous outlets where one can easily pirate a game.

The only problem I have with copy protection is when it breaks computers (for example, the copy protection the RIAA used on CDs that broke Macs) or when it renders the software unusable.

Officials at Nintendo have reinforced all of their previous statements concerning the company's future in the home console market. Nintendo will unveil the successor to the GameCube at E3 2005.

Yoshihiro Mori, Nintendo's Senior Managing Director, was quoted,"[We] plan to unveil the next-generation console [that will be] succeeding the GameCube at next year's E3 during the spring." Mori continued, "This won't be a continuation, but rather something entirely different."

The console will be worked on under the codename "Revolution."

Source: Games_Are_Fun

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It's good to see that Nintendo is not letting any doubt enter into the question of whether or not it will continue to stick it out in the home console market. Sadly, it appears from Mori's second quote that this "Revolution" will not be backwards compatible with the GameCube. That's just speculation though. Hopefully, it is wrong as backwards compatibility was one the PS2's strongest selling points for me.