ESA is saying that two thirds of US households play video games.
And with the introduction of next generation gaming, you can definitely see this becoming an increasing number. I actually believe there are two things involved. The first is the fact that most of us gamers that grew up with the Atari 2600 and Intellivision have moved on through the generations of gaming consoles and PC gaming to arrive at our current stage. We’re also at the age where we are parents or some are even grandparents and we still enjoy the entertainment. On top of that, we’re also creating a younger generation of gamers to enjoy it with us.
Second, gaming corporations are chasing after a more general populace of gamers. Right now, they are looking to bring in people that previously were not entertained with gaming. That changed entirely when the Wii was introduced, and now Microsoft has Project Natal and Sony has the Playstation Motion controller. The entire move towards casual gamers has not only increased the spread of interactive entertainment but it’s also found its way into the lives of people that never thought about pixel-driven fun.
As people’s living rooms become their space for winding down instead of movie theaters and the like, I believe that this number will probably grow out to around an eighty percent mark in the next decade or so. What does this mean? Truthfully, we could really be playing video games with people we have never met that live quite literally down the street from us.
Right now I am organizing my 3 1/2 year old main account’s inventory on Second Life. It’s a big mess. I barely looked at much of the stuff I got. I have been very neat and tidy with my new alt accounts. Placing all the clothes in separate folders for each part of an outfit. I have so many landmarks that I need to check. I will list some of the ones from my previous posts which are still working and mention some that have disappeared.
DMC on the left and the new Zyngo game on the right.
I’m sorry to see that some of the bigger places I used to play tringo and slingo are gone. IceDragons Playpen for example. Slingo turned into DMC and is rarely searchable in the events. Zyngo which is similar to DMC but is created by another person is now the most playable game. They have Zyngo multi boards and solo machines all over second life.
Teazers where I learned some stuff in classes is now gone. I did find some other classes in other places which I will want to try. Couldn’t find any places which show Rocky Horror Picture Show anymore but MST3K theaters are still around. Dr. who has gotten a lot bigger with a great place to visit with a museum and fun stuff to do. Couldn’t find any podcasters around or adam curry’s avatar anymore. Surprisingly I can’t find too many places that have tringo anymore. There are some new RPG games which are being played worldwide with vampires. Need to check that out soon. Dark Life is still running in a new place with new scripts too.
Big brother in SL and fishing in SL.
Found Ice hockey with their leagues still being played. Seems like they are going strong. Snail races are still being done but in a different area I think. I missed this weekend’s race so not sure if it’s all the same yet. Fishing is still being played in the same places I found and updated to a new version.
Universal Motown Records Group, movietickets.com and Infinite mind is still there but geek squad, sundance channel and virtual nbc are gone. Found a pizza hut place you can order your RL pizza’s from which I haven’t tried yet.
It’s not much here, but I’m pushing off one of my coupons since I can’t use it. So if you happen to shop at Play-Asia a lot and want to save $5USD on on a purchase of $50USD or more, just put in the following coupon code:
Coupon code: DM-XLB-CJB
Is there a catch? You betcha. This is a one time use code for a single person. Like I said, it was for me, but I’m sharing since I wouldn’t be using it anyways before the expiration. Expires on August 13th, 2009.
So get cracking if you play a lot of imports and happen to be looking at buying a little something anyways. Who knows, you could be that lucky person that saves $5USD.
I’ve been spending a lot of my time recently in Second Life. Mostly attending special events, clubs and some games. I sometimes will find a good club with a live DJ and just dance while I actually work in RL. Other times I’ll find a nice place to camp but getting $2L for 20 minutes with a maximum of $20L per day just isn’t worth the trouble. There are some camping out there which gives out a lot more but usually I find the same amounts as I described. I have sat on some of the camping chairs to get a free product. Sat for some shoes for 4 hours.
I recently found a blog post which describes a nielsen rating for March 2009 of Top PC Game Titles. Second Life came in at #2 with WOW at the very top. There is a big discussion going on in that post which I’ll leave for interested users to read. What the chart really says is that users of Second Life play it a lot more hours then users of the other games. There was also a correction post describing that SL was the 8th game in popularity in the nielsen ratings. In my opinion, Second Life, has a small amount of users but those users are dedicated and find many reasons to play for hours a day. I find the nielsen chart to be very interesting from my own personal experiences. I find myself wanting to find new places to explore, create new stuff and make new friends. SL is more a social place for many people I talk to. There is a wide amount of different communities for everything. I also find a lot more international people doing business inside SL.
I still think SL has some promises but there are some major competition coming up this and next year. I think Second Life will still be the best virtual world for user created content. Some of the upcoming virtual worlds may get more advertisers from big companies, though. That could get more users to their worlds and leave SL behind.
Ahh yes. One of my favorite series has finally made its debut on Xbox 360. Aren’t you Microsofties lucky? If you’ve followed the story arc at all, you’ll know that MGS had a predominant character as Solid Snake and the entire series was surrounded by the storyline from his perspective. And all four MGS games built an established franchise of what it is today. Of course, during Guns of the Patriot, there was already some segue on the character Raiden and his “mysterious” look. I had figured that if there was any other spin-off, that it would be his story.
And go figure. Here it is. There is a huge hole in the storyline for Raiden between the second and fourth games where he actually becomes a cyborg and meets Big Mama. I assume that this either is during that time period, or it’s after MGS:GotP and would play the prior story later on in another game. After all, Kojima has done this before with the MGS timeline by skipping around.
Cool part? There’s more to the story and Hideo Kojima keeps building to this franchise. This will definitely be worth the wait if his past direction is any indication of this series’ success.
Here’s a classic example that there are people that love to go to extremes even though they haven’t really thought out their argument past a simplistic level. Outside of E3, there are those that are picketing because the cross was being used as a weapon and the fact that the game is a virtual representation of Hell.
Couple things that the protesters miss in their argument against Dante’s Inferno. First, if you argue in this fashion, then it means that obviously you give some credence to how Dante portrays Hell in the Divine Comedy. Why you would believe Italian poet is beyond me since it’s a imaginative portrayal. Yes, it follows the Catholic views, but not all Christians believe in Purgatory either. Unless there has been someone that’s gone and come back and can confirm that Dante was right on the money.
Second, the cross has been used as a weapon many games, movies, and what not since before the beginning of modern media. For example, any vampire story has developed the cross as a weapon. Most vampire-based story lines have crosses as both something to be thrown, magical, or even used to stab a vampire. Either way, I’ve never even heard about protests of say… Van Helsing, Underworld or even the Diablo series of which has had many levels of Hell that you run through.
All in all, I just find the entire thing hard to swallow and gives Christians a bad name since the entirety of it all was just thrown out there as… “OMG! HD games have finally thrown Hell into our laps, and we must do something to save everyone!” Seriously. Think about it before you run off throwing up picket signs.
It seems like everyone is taking a shot at Nintendo’s Wii. At this year’s E3 conference, Sony is also taking an approach to interactive gaming by introducing the Playstation Motion Controller. This is unlike Microsoft’s Project Natal and more like a Wii mainly because it is controller based. It uses the special dots on the controller to pinpoint the movements and translate them back in accordance to their relative position to the body. I would have to say that there’s probably a little bit less translation due to the points that you have in relationship to where they are on the screen.
In any case, the entire concept of interactive gaming apparently is really smacking around Microsoft and Sony for the past few years while the Wii reigned supreme. You can almost guarantee that the development of concepts probably began around the same time as Nintendo picking up market share with their play with the Wii. Now, this is going to make things a bit more difficult for Nintendo since their advantage is now being brought into the playground of HD graphics of which their system cannot perform in.
This Playstation Motion Controller definitely is just as interesting as Project Natal. The real key here is how each of these corporations play them out and what sort of game designs they’ll be releasing. Sony has in the past had troubles with releasing their greatest hits in a timely fashion while Microsoft has always been plagued by hardware design failures. And Nintendo probably has an ace up its sleeve somewhere but who knows. Either way, the few quarters when after these technologies are released will be the truthsayer on if their gambles have paid off.
Xbox team has some new development where there’s no strings attached. Basically, it’s your typical webcam game on steroids where the system determines where the user is and sets them “within” the game. Virtual reality, anyone? Very similar except you would be watching yourself on the screen doing certain things.
Now in this sense, Project Natal is taking on the Wii in the next evolution of gaming. But there are still many questions to be answered before this could go mainstream. Here’s some of the reasoning. First, to identification of a body in human form isn’t as bad anymore as it used to be, but does this new development take into account “bigger” individuals? Perhaps short, tall, those with big hands, little feet, or what not. The reason for a controller is mainly because the processing power isn’t taken up by translation of movements. With the Wii, there isn’t a need to identify where the body is because of the relationship with the controller to the Wii Bar. But here, the cam has to send the movements in relation to a 3D field and be translated on the fly by the 360.
I’m not saying that it’s not possible, since Playstation Eye has had similar games for a while. Project Natal just has more hype and a bit fancier gaming and taking the leap of faith that this is the next step beyond Wii’s enormous success with interactive gaming. But will it truly live up to Microsoft’s E3 hype? Can it actually take into account different individuals body types along with accents in voice recognition? I have been following speech recognition development for the past decade and IBM has been one of the leaders in this technology. Even at the present state, it’s still not entirely fabulous although it’s better than my college days.
Either way, I’m truly hoping that Microsoft can make good on their Natal versus their marketing team’s push for it. If not, then it’ll put a kink in the Xbox team’s armor and reinforce Nintendo’s claim-to-fame in interactive gaming.
I’ve written about dark rides in second life before and I just found another one. It’s not a Halloween dark ride like the others I have seen. This one is all about Alice in Wonderland. It’s a great design and the exterior is amazing.
Just click on the sign to request a gondola. Sit in it and then click on the pocketwatch. Keep the view in mouselook and set the day as midnight to get the best effect. There are sound effects too so be sure to turn up the volume. There are many other designs I have seen which are amazing and shows how much talent there still is in the world. I’m still having fun exploring the world. Maybe I’ll find a good way to make money or just continue having fun.
This year has been interesting with many changes in my life and online life. I played LOTRO for almost 2 years straight. Beginning of this year I stopped playing for many personal reasons. I went to Second Life to keep me entertained. I now have 4 avatars. All age verified. Each one for a different reason. Johnnyrs is my main and has the most money but stays clear of the adult stuff. The other 3 are free to have fun anywhere. All of my accounts are free and homeless at this time. This can change in the future if I can find something to make money from.
None of my accounts are there to lie or be very different from myself. All are aspects of my life that I like but don’t blend very well. That might not be clear but it feels comfortable to me. Each avatar has their own place and groups they like. One loves to dance at clubs with DJ’s. Johnnyrs plays zyngo and looks for games to make money. Another looks for fetish places to have fun. Then there’s the one who is usually found in an adult area.
Two of my accounts can make money every day. Zyngo can bring in some good money daily if I’m lucky. Some people are making thousands of lindens a day. I don’t make that much. I am starting to use the profile picks camping system to make some money as well. Regular sim camping makes money too but the money is so small that I’d rather do something else now. Dance clubs, tipping and special contests are other ways I’m making money too. In the future I want to describe some of the different ways of making easy money in a future post.
Lot of money trees and other camping systems now check to see if you have credit info before paying. I found a few that will check to see if you have used that credit info to buy something yet or if you are a paying account before paying. I didn’t find any problems with this stuff. Age verification was easy for me. Soon SL will restrict access to adult areas using the age verification which could cause some problems with others. Right now it’s the owners job to restrict access.
The one thing I find different from LOTRO and SL is the community. For me at this time I like a community with very little drama and changes. LOTRO provided too much drama and changes that drove friendships to fall apart. I found some small issues ended up to be bigger then it should be. It also got boring after doing the same raid over and over again. In SL I am finding very little change and less drama with the groups I am hanging out with. Lot of support from groups for many issues which I needed. Something different to do when I want a change. I will go back to LOTRO one of these days but only when I’m ready. I resubscribed to runescape this month also for another form of entertainment. Lot of changes in that game which I’ll be posting about.
ESA is saying that two thirds of US households play video games.
July 1st, 2009 • 
Darius Sartre • 
