] My name is Robert Woodhead, and back in the early days
] of the PC era (1981), I was one of the creators of the
] Wizardry series of computer-roleplaying games. I also
] created the Macintosh anti-virus tool "Virex." When not
] pretending to work on this website, I allegedly run
] AnimEigo, one of the first Japanese Animation companies.
] Recently, there have been unconfirmed reports that I've
] been subtitling cool Samurai Films as well. I live in
] Wilmington, NC, with my beautiful and brilliant wife
] Natsumi, and my two children, James and Alexander, where
] we pursue such hobbies as Combat Robotics and World
] Domination ("A fun, family activity"). To the right, you
] can see how I react in a crisis, such as when someone
] emails me asking why the site doesn't work when used in
] Japanese on the Lithuanian version of Netscape.

Heh, just ran across this site run by Robert Woodhead, an associate of mine from a few years back. Gawd, I loved playing "Wizardry". Robert was also brought in as a guest designer in my game GemStone. Very talented guy!

Robert Woodhead: selfpromotion.com

] LOS ANGELES, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Video game publisher
] Electronic Arts Inc. will close down its Austin, Texas studio,
] home to the "Ultima Online" franchise, by the end of April, the
] company said on Wednesday.

Ouch.

Electronic Arts to close Origin Office

] There was a time when an arcade operator in America could
] buy a Ms. Pac-Man machine for less than $1,000, let it
] sit in an arcade, bar or storefront, and see that game
] make back over 30 times the initial investment. In 2004,
] that kind of profit margin is little more than a pipe
] dream.
]
] Since 2001, Midway completely shut down its arcade
] division, Konami closed its U.S. arcade operations, and
] Capcom did not even support its most recent title, Capcom
] vs, SNK 2, in the U.S., instead handing the game over to
] Sega for sales and marketing purposes.

State of the U.S. Arcade Industry 2004

] Today, sources at Electronic Arts confirmed what has been
] rumored for the past week: EA is folding Maxis into its
] central corporate offices. Currently, Maxis operates out
] of a now-cramped building in Walnut Creek, California.
] Their new digs will be in EA's Redwood Shores
] headquarters, some 30 miles to the east.
]
] "Maxis was running out of space at Walnut Creek," an EA
] spokesperson told GameSpot this morning. The current
] management team at Maxis, Luc Barthelet, Lucy Bradshaw,
] and Sinjin Bain, will relocate to Redwood Shores, as will
] most of Maxis' 300 staffers.

The official spin is, "They were running out of space." But the buzz I've been hearing is different. The Maxis office in Walnut Creek is basically being shut down by Electronic Arts. Hundreds of people are being relocated to the Redwood office, which means they'll now face a lengthy commute (well over an hour), or of course they can just choose to quit. Duplicated positions are being eliminated. The Walnut Creek office will continue with a small staff including Will Wright and a couple dozen people who are working on his next project.

EA Shuts Down Maxis Office in Walnut Creek

] A hornets' nest of fury over a video game that urges its players
] to "kill the Haitians" has prompted a South Florida city to
] approve -- at least initially -- a sweeping ordinance to regulate
] games sold or rented to minors. The law, proposed by North
] Miami's Joe Celestin, a Haitian-American, imposes a $250 fine on
] anyone who sells or rents to minors without their parents'
] consent games in which players kill or cause harm "to a human
] form."

Video Game Violence Leads to Florida Law

Yes, it's that time again . . .

As a member of the IGDA (International Game Developers Association), I have the privilege to nominate games for the annual awards. If there's any game in particular that you'd like to recommend to me this year, please let me know.

One thing about nominations: I'm not interested in suggestions such as "This game was really cool," or "Everyone I know plays this game." I'm more interested in things such as production values, best original game character, excellence in audio, level design, and so forth.

If you'd like to throw in your $0.02, please have comments to me, either by posting a reply here or sending an Email to elonka@aol.com, by January 20th, 2004.

Thanks!

Elonka :)

Nominations Open for 2003 Game Developers Choice Awards

] Last April, Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh
] ruled that computer and video games had "no conveyance of
] ideas, expression or anything else that could possibly
] amount to free speech" in a St. Louis County case that
] sought to limit children's access to mature video games.
]
] The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, saying a
] "particularized message" is not required when it comes to
] the First Amendment.

Good news! I was baffled when Judge Limbaugh (yes, I hear he's related to Rush) ruled that video games didn't qualify under the first amendment. I'm glad to see that the appeals court overturned his decision!

Appeals court rules: Video games do qualify as free speech

This page has links to the 15 or so Jupiter Research Analysts who are now maintaining weblogs. I heard about this through Michael Gartenberg, Jupiter Media's Research Director for Client Access and Technologies, who gave a very interesting "hard data" talk at E-3 about game industry demographics. I'm glad to see that along with "talking the talk", he's also "walking the walk" in the blogosphere!

Jupiter Research Analyst Weblogs

Pictures of E-3, taken by a friend of mine from St. Louis (Trevor) who also attended the show. He seems to have concentrated a great deal of attention on pics of the booth bimbos, but there are at least a few non-bimbo E-3 pictures on the page. ;)

He's also posted a "Day 2" set of pictures, which are viewable here:
 http://www.retroroots.com/e32003/e3_2003day2.htm

E3 2003 Day 1

Okay, here's my final meme-blog on E-3 2003, now that the show is over and my ears have stopped ringing (at least somewhat). And as usual, my caveat to my game industry colleagues: I am not official press -- this is just my own stream of thought rambling, so please take anything I say with a grain of salt. (Part 1 of my E-3 report, btw, is here: http://www.memestreams.net/users/elonka/blogid2927350 )

First, to get it out of the way, here's some more name-dropping about other colleagues that I ran across over the last couple days. The famous, not-so-famous, or just plain cool: Dave Perry (Shiny/Matrix), Richard Garfield (Magic), Johnny Wilson, John de Margheriti (MicroForte Australia), Marc Mencher, Alexander Macris (Themis), Rob Nicholls (Cybiko), Liz Wakefield (IGDA), Christopher Allen (Skotos), Bridget Goldstein, Daniel Greenberg, Patricia Pizer (Ubi Soft), Michael Gartenberg (Jupiter), and Tim Innes (S2 Games).

Now, getting back to the show floor . . . In terms of the major MMORPGs, many of the ones that were touted as being "in development" last year, are now in the process of being released, or are at a state where they can at least be demoed at these shows. I saw demos of Star Wars: Galaxies (Sony), Second Life (Linden Labs), Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Square Enix), Mu Online (claiming to be the largest MMORPG in the world, with over 350,000 simultaneous players at peak), Myst Online, and several others. There was quite a bit of discussion about the difficulty of porting the hit games from one continent to another. For example, the Korean market has the largest games in the world in terms of Peak Simultaneous Users, but none of those games has yet caught on in the U.S. or European markets. Ditto with the U.S. games into the Asian markets. But one American game, Dark Age of Camelot, did manage to make the crossover from the U.S. to Europe, and is a big hit there, even reportedly being the #1 MMORPG in Europe. They're currently claiming 220,000 total subscribers (worldwide) with 60,000 PSU (Peak Simultaneous Users).

Factoid: Sony's EverQuest is stating that 16% of their userbase is female. In terms of gaining new users (of both genders), EQ says that 70% of their new customers are there because of a peer recommendation. They also said that at the EverQuest "Fan Faires", 80% of the attendees are players of the game.

A representative from EA had an interesting comment on their marketing focus. They said that they're finding they need to target the "game expert" in each community's circle of friends. In other words, that most game players around the country base their game-buying decisions not on marketing or even on magazine reviews, but on the recommendation of some member of their circle of friends (EA calls this person "Sydney") who's the guy or girl who plays nearly every game out there, and then recommends games to their friends. So if EA can successfully convince the "Sydneys" out there th... [ Read More (1.3k in body) ]