SXSW Podcast: BioWare, Zynga on Making MMOs More Social

AUSTIN, Texas — Big players in the massively multiplayer online games space say they don’t need a World of Warcraft killer, as long as they can keep expanding the audience for MMOs.

On Monday at South By Southwest, a panel composed of top executives from Zynga, BioWare, Nexon and Funcom tackled several questions about the MMO genre, which now encompasses games from the free-to-play Facebook timewaster Mafia Wars all the way to BioWare’s lavish Star Wars: The Old Republic. Much of the discussion centered around incorporating the features of social games like FarmVille into the rest of the genre.

SXSW has posted high-quality audio of the panel.

“I don’t think the market necessarily requires someone to fail in order for another group to succeed,” said BioWare cofounder Ray Muzyka in response to Wired.com’s question toward the end. “When you bring in a new license, like we did with Star Wars… we know there’s millions and millions of potential players that we can bring into the fold just because of that,” he said.

“I don’t mean to be perhaps out of line, but I think I know what Ray’s team needs to do to be successful,” offered Zynga’s Eric Bethke. “I think mastering the viral channels and the social graphs… I think they need to get to the point that 250,000 or 500,000 people a day are downloading (Old Republic) on their own, just coming in from friends, and get there through science-based metrics… you have all the data in the world about why you are currently failing, and you can correct it in real-time.”

SXSW: The Great MMO Hope [direct .mp3 link, right-click and save]

Photo credit: Min Kim, Ray Muzyka, Nicolai Nickelsen and Eric Bethke share a joke during their SXSW panel (James Merithew/Wired.com)

Jamie Foxx to Star in Kane & Lynch Film

Jamie Foxx will star in the Kane & Lynch movie, says screenwriter Kyle Ward.

The news comes via a status update on Ward’s Twitter account, which has since been deleted. “Done deal… Jamie Foxx is in,” he wrote. The scribe then clarified that Foxx has been cast as Lynch, the mentally unstable bank robber from Eidos’ 2007 co-op shooter. Bruce Willis had already been tapped to take on the role of Kane in the movie for Lionsgate.

Kane & Lynch is best known among gamers not for being a great game, but for a controversy surrounding the ouster of GameSpot critic Jeff Gerstmann after he gave it a 6/10 score. Some said that Eidos, a GameSpot advertiser, used the leverage of its ad dollars to make things uncomfortable for the writers.

A sequel titled Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is due out later this year on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Photo: Urban World Film Festival/Flickr

See Also:

• Bruce Willis Negotiating Starring Role in Kane & Lynch Film …
• Fired GameSpot Editor Defends Kane & Lynch Review
• Video: GameSpot Editor’s Kane & Lynch Review
• UK Authorities Yank ‘Shocking’ Kane & Lynch Ads
• Filming of Kane & Lynch Movie Scheduled to Begin This Fall …

New DJ Hero Downloads, Four Months Later

Three new mash-up tracks from Jay-Z and Eminem are the first fresh bits of content for Activision’s DJ Hero since November.

The new music for the turntable-based game is available for the Xbox 360 version as of Thursday, but PlayStation and Wii mixmasters have to wait until March 25 to nab the downloads.

To call the paucity of DJ Hero downloads a “drought” would be an insult to regions suffering from insufficient rainfall. Activision released the game in October to solid reviews and genuine excitement among music gamers looking for something new. Activision answered this enthusiasm with a pair of overpriced, overlong mash-ups, followed up by techno-centric tracks from house producer David Guetta.

Four months later, Activision squirts out a handful of tunes from Jay-Z and Eminem — both artists already on the original DJ Hero disc. The Jay-Z vs. Eminem Mix Pack features mash-ups of “Shake That” and “Show Me What You Got”, “Without Me” and “Encore”, and “Can I Get A” and “Lose Yourself.”

They’re all fine songs, but nothing terribly thrilling for DJ Hero owners looking for a reason to dust off their plastic turntables. Consider this a ninth-inning bunt. Perhaps Activision is holding all its best material for DJ Hero 2 later this year?

Image courtesy Activision

See Also:

• Review: DJ Hero Celebrates Malleability of Music
• Daft Punk Contribute Music, Masks to DJ Hero
• DJ Hero Talent DJ AM Found Dead
• Jay-Z and Eminem Go Renegade For DJ Hero Premium Edition
• Hands On: Queen vs. 50 Cent in DJ Hero DLC

The Tester, Episode 4: LARPing Towards Gomorrah

Previously on The Tester:

Star: “I think we’re in deep space [bleep].”

This week on The Tester:

Luge: “I think we’re in deep space shit.”

What can we learn from this? Well, first of all, apparently the producers of the PlayStation Network reality show are no longer bleeping out the word “shit,” which is convenient because I think I’m about to add it to my own personal vocabulary as regards these weekly recaps.

Second, a little tip for anyone who wants to make a reality show: If you’re going to feed lines to the contestants while you’re interviewing them, it’s probably best not to show two separate people saying the same scripted line.

I’m a little late with this recap of The Tester, Sony’s reality show in which 11 contestants compete for the dubious prize of a yearlong contract gig bug-testing games. Sorry about that. Each week, one of the contestants is killed by the Death Panel after undergoing ritual humiliation. Today, they shall LARP for their lives.

As always, before we watch this week’s 22-minute ad for PlayStation, first we have to watch a brief ad for… PlayStation? I’ll tell you, these “Kevin Butler” ads are as funny and clever as this show is boring and ill-conceived. But this means it only took three episodes of The Tester before Sony ran out of companies that would actually pay to advertise their products in front of it.

Anyway. A couple episodes ago, we were supposed to believe that Cyrus and Amped were totally into each other. Now it’s all about the other half of the supersecret alliance, Doc and Luge, cuddled up together in the bunk beds.

Apparently it’s a little cold in PlayStation Paradise, which is Sony’s Orwellian doublespeak name for the garage that the remaining seven contestants live inside, because Luge and Amped are bundled up in blankets as they read this week’s challenge.

The seven are sent to a nearby park, where host Meredith Molinari and the Death Panel await them. But those aren’t all the new friends they’ll meet today. Four people who look pretty much like the cast of that fan-made Legend of Zelda YouTube movie run out from the forest and proceed to act out a scene that makes the Zelda YouTube movie look like Olivier’s Hamlet.

“What you’ve just witnessed,” says MM once it is mercifully over, “is called live action role-play, or LARP.” No, Mere, what we have just witnessed is a skit. Live-action role playing games are games, with rules and goals and stuff. This is college improv.

“To be a great game tester, you must possess a healthy imagination and the ability to thrive in any situation,” Molinari says. I usually joke about these water-thin excuses for each challenge, the specious reasoning as to why performing like a circus clown and debasing oneself is a valid job interview strategy. But MM got it right on the money with this one. When the “winner” of The Tester is deep into month five of trying to crash Move Party’s options menu, they’ll need a vibrant, colorful imagination to help them pretend they’re somewhere else.

But before they can start firing pretend lightning bolts, we meet this week’s panel of judges, which has now traded in God of War designer David Jaffe for PlayStation Home producer Katherine De León.

“Hitestersgreattobehere,” she says, with a look of visible anguish on her face that says it is not great to be there. She’ll have her chance to shine soon enough, as we already know.

Luge and Nauseous are randomly selected as team captains, and Luge gets to pick her first LARP partner. If you’ve been paying attention to this show (and Lord knows I have), you know that Luge, Amped, Cyrus and Doc are in a supersecret alliance and that Doc is the funniest, most entertaining person left in the garage since Barmy…

…oh, poor Barmy. You’d have thrived in this challenge. You’d have led your team to victory with your +10 Brain of Crazy. I’m so sorry.

Anyway, Doc is the obvious pick here, so obvious that even the show points it out, and so of course Luge goes with Star. You know, Star? The one girl who always sits in the back? With the hoodie pulled up over her face? With the piercings? Who never says anything? Boy, when I think “extrovert,” I think Star.

Nauseous, who is not trying to commit career suicide, immediately picks Doc, “without a doubt the craziest guy in here.” Luge picks Cyrus, and that puts Amped and Big D on the other team.

Big D says he’s in trouble this week and needs to step it up. The team starts planning their medieval fantasy skit. Meanwhile, on the other side, Luge and her dream team of quiet shy LARPers are all sitting around looking at each other hoping that one of the other two will say something. Slowly, a plan starts to come together: Mall Cops In Space.

I’ll spare you the details. Star walks around in her Space Hoodie, too over it to even bother putting on a costume, not saying much of anything. Everybody else runs around aimlessly, not quite sure what the plot of their skit is. This has happened to me. I tried out for college improv once, freshman year. It was pretty much this awkward, only Sony was nice enough to not film it.

“It was like watching Waiting For Space Guffman,” says Doc. Okay, that’s it. Doc, you win the whole show. Congratulations. I don’t even care if the producers fed you that line and they have footage of everybody else saying it, too. I needed nothing more at this moment than a Christopher Guest reference. If thinking about Christopher Guest can make filling out the census fun, it might even work for The Tester.

As Best In Space Show concludes, Katherine De León hangs her head. If she was any more over it, she’d be Star.

Hopefully Nauseous and his barbarians can impress the Panel. They don’t impress Star, who points out that the medieval LARP has liberally borrowed plot elements from the demonstration skit. Star does not think that Sony will be impressed by such blatant copying. Little does she know.

The barbarians LARP like champs. Luge curses. The panel sends them all back to PlayStation Paradise while they deliberate. Doc and Luge strategize before going in front of the judges, pointing out that “it’s our four to their three.” He doesn’t mean the teams in the challenge, the actual way that the contestants have been divided. He means the four members of the supersecret alliance versus the other three jokers who didn’t even have the sense to form an alliance in a show that has nothing to do with alliances.

The Death Panel puts on a good show in terms of pretending that they are actually having trouble deciding which team won the challenge. In some ways, it is the best LARP of the day.

Doc, Big D, Amped and Nauseous win, meaning that Luge, Cyrus and Star are up for elimination.

Okay, let’s get to the throat-ripping. We’ve been shown Katherine De León’s icy, clinical vivisection of some poor sap since before The Tester even got rolling, and now it’s time to watch the entire thing.

“Star, you were the worst performer of everyone today. By a mile. You failed because you couldn’t pull it together,” she says. Taste the delicious schadenfreude. It’s over all too soon. Her days are clearly numbered.

The panel then decides that Luge will go home. Wait, what?

Outside, Doc continues the tradition of one person crying at the end of every show by breaking down as he thinks about his lost hot friend.

NEXT WEEK: The would-be testers play a round of trivia, the closest thing to a videogame this show’s challenges have gotten so far. Nauseous wears a very nice sweater.

<< The Tester: Episode 3 | The Tester: Episode 4 | The Tester: Episode 5 >>

Report: Nexus One Launch Dismal, Though Droid’s Bests iPhone’s

Mobile analytics firm Flurry says Google’s Nexus One is a sales flop. Using estimates based on usage of its apps, Flurry believes that the new Android-driven smart phone debuted to dismal sales.

The same metrics show that Motorola’s Droid launched to better-than-expected numbers, selling over one million units faster than the iPhone did when it was released in 2007. Flurry does note the Droid had the benefit of coming after the iPhone, a device that changed users’ perceptions about the capacity and capabilities of mobile devices.

What does this mean for games, though? Apple’s iPhone is a true player in the space, home to many innovative and engaging games. Meanwhile, games for the Android platform are rare and not all that good.

Google lobbied hard at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week to encourage gamemakers to develop and port for the Android platform, going so far as to pass out free phones and service contracts like they were candy. Previously, the big mobile publishers were wary of investing in the platform: Last year, Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort told investors that his company had “significantly cut (its) investment” in Android games.

Google has a long way to go if it wants to catch up with Apple. Meanwhile, gamers with Android phones will have to continue coveting the fun stuff their iPhone-equipped friends get to play.

Image courtesy Flurry

Day 74 Sales: Apple iPhone vs Google Nexus One vs Motorola Droid [Flurry]

See Also:

• Android Army Pumped for All-Out Attack on iPhone
• Indie Coder Proves Android Apps Can Make Money, Too
• Android's Rapid Growth Has Some Developers Worried
• Google Debuts Android-Powered Nexus One 'Superphone'
• GDC: Google Courts Game Devs With Free Phones

With Splinter Cell Demo Inbound, Sam Fisher Joins Twitter

Sam Fisher, protagonist of Splinter Cell, has been updating his Twitter account with details of his flight from authorities.

The fictional special agent’s bio says it all: “I’m being set up. I need to find out who killed my daughter. Please help me.” Imagine the tweets posted by Real_SamFisher are being read by Michael Ironside, and they feel much more dramatic.

The viral promotion for Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, due April 13 for iPhone, PC and Xbox 360, is accompanied by a Facebook page maintained by the foreboding Third Eschelon of the National Security Association. Be sure to check out the phony government agency’s wall for trolls from Facebook users like this gem from Alex Lincon: “So, you mean to say that something like Third Echelon can’t track a dude on Twitter, who writes stuff down on notebook pages and scans it?”

Xbox 360 users can download the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction tomorrow, March 18. PC users, well, you know how much Ubisoft loves you guys.

Image courtesy Ubisoft

Study: Games May Stunt Boys’ Schoolwork

A recent study suggests that the introduction of a videogame console to a household can negatively effect early childhood academic achievement in boys.

The experiment was conducted by Robert Weis and Brittany C. Cerankosky, psychological scientists from Denton University. They surveyed families with boys between the ages of 6 and 9 who were considering buying videogame consoles for their kids. Half of the kids got machines, and the other half didn’t.

The study showed that videogames became an immediate distraction, with the gamers spending less time studying and more time playing games. The gamer kids scored significantly lower on reading and writing tests after only four months.

Of course, this is a lesson that any college student who has fallen under the spell of World of Warcraft could tell you in a heartbeat: Games are way more fun than homework. But Cerankosky and Weis find this problem particularly troublesome for young gamers. Children who have difficulty with language at a young age have a hard time picking up more difficult concepts later on, they say. And the distraction of videogames could exacerbate the problem.

Game on? Video-game ownership may interfere with young boys’ academic functioning [Physorg]

Image courtesy Nintendo

See Also:

• Bigger Brains Make Better Gamers, Study Says
• Study: Roomies With Videogames Lower College Students' GPAs
• 170 Million Americans Play Videogames, Study Finds
• Study: Games Boost Brainpower in Elderly
• Violent Video Games Under Attack

GDC: Civ Designer Says Gameplay Is All In Your Head

SAN FRANCISCO — Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, says gamers are a bunch of head cases.

“Player psychology has nothing to do with rational thought,” said the acclaimed game designer during his keynote address at the Game Developers Conference on Friday. Titled “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong),” the speech talked about what’s going on in a player’s brain as he plays a game, and how designers should anticipate and react to their irrational expectations.

As an example, Meier cited players’ perception of randomness. Most players, he said, don’t fully grasp that randomness is truly random — especially when a roll of the dice produces a negative, unlikely result twice in a row. That’s why he argues for sweeting the odds in the player’s favor after a setback.

In fact, Meier said, most lessons learned from the player can seem counter-intuitive to the left-brained game designer. But creators can find great success when they “go with the flow” — following where players lead, even if the path seems illogical.

He called the relationship between player and designer an “unholy alliance.” The designer’s job, he suggested, is to pretend that the player is good at his game, while the gamer’s job is to suspend his disbelief.

If either party fails in his task, the result is mutually exclusive destruction — the game is turned off and virtual world ceases to exist. Everyone loses.

Meier has been making hit strategy and simulation games since 1982, when he co-founded MicroProse. In 1996 he co-founded Firaxis Games, home to Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and latter entries in the Civilization strategy series. He is currently at work on Civilization V, due out this fall, and a social version of Civilization for Facebook.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• One and One: Firaxis' Sid Meier
• Sid Meier's Civilization Coming to Consoles
• Civilization Creator Lists Three Most Important Innovations
• Wired 7.04: Street Cred

GDC: Final Fantasy’s Future Is Interactive Cut Scenes, Downloadable Content

SAN FRANCISCO — For the future of Final Fantasy, director Motomu Toriyama is looking to Uncharted 2.

The interactive cinematic scenes in Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed action game seem to have inspired Toriyama to try the same thing in the Final Fantasy games, he said at his Game Developers Conference panel on Friday. “In Final Fantasy XIII, the interactivity was focused on the battle scenes,” he said. ” I think there will be more interactivity (in future Final Fantasy cut scenes) — if you have 1000 flying dragons, hopping from one dragon to the other would be great fun.”

“If you can achieve that compared with Uncharted 2, I think that Final Fantasy is going to replicate the masterpieces of film, and that is certainly one of our goals,” he said.

Toriyama also floated the possibility of adding in downloadable add-on content to future Final Fantasy games. “We avoided it for XIII, but we have to think that every user will be online, and so the story (could) be downloaded, and the battle scenes step by step… we have that in our perspective going forward,” he said.

More snippets from the session (and possible clues to the future of Final Fantasy) are below.

Toriyama (above) went on to make some comparisons between Western role-playing games and Japanese role-playing games. Of course, he played fast and loose with the definition of the genre, using Hitman and Tomb Raider as his examples of “Western RPGs.”

The difference, he said, is that Western RPGs like those ones starring Lara Croft have camera systems that zoom in tightly on the main character because the player wants to identify closely with that single character, whereas Japanese RPG cameras are more zoomed out, because the player wants to see the entire scene from a bird’s-eye view.

Toriyama spent some time providing justifications for Final Fantasy XIII’s linearity, saying that the game design was driven by the fact that the game had a tight linear story. The game’s lack of downtime or towns, he said, was because the characters are “l’Cie, an enemy of mankind escaping or fleeing. L’Cie couldn’t spend relaxed time in a town.”

But it’s also, he says, about “Japanese hospitality,” a “structure of map that’s easy on the novice.”

That said, Square Enix might not be sticking with the design: In a brief question-and-answer session at the end of the panel, Toriyama addressed one questioner’s complaints about the game’s linearity by saying, “Look forward to the next one, I will have answered your complaint about the linear version of the story.”

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

GDC: What Final Fantasy XIII Looked Like on PlayStation 2

SAN FRANCISCO — Final Fantasy XIII began its life as a PlayStation 2 game. Here’s what it looked like.

Speaking at Game Developers Conference on Friday, FFXIII director Motomu Toriyama talked a bit about the development history of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, showing the early screenshot pictured above. The battle system, Toriyama said, let players attack enemies so they slammed into a wall and collapsed — perhaps the precursor to the finished game’s “Stagger” mechanic.

“The battle system and combat hasn’t changed much from PlayStation2, and the plot and characters were completed for the PlayStation 2 version, so the PlayStation 3 inherited those,” he said. What the team worked on for the final game were the “emotions” of the characters, using motion capture and detailed facial expressions.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

February NPD: BioShock 2, Xbox 360 Top the Charts

The Xbox 360 version of BioShock 2 topped the sales charts in February, moving half a million copies in a month packed with big game releases, the NPD Group said Thursday.

Boosted by BioShock, Dante’s Inferno and continued sales of Modern Warfare 2, the Xbox 360 was the best-selling home game console in the U.S. last month. On the software side, Wii hits New Super Mario Bros. and Just Dance continued to sell boatloads, and Sony’s innovative Heavy Rain had a strong showing for such an experimental game. If you look at the charts, you’ll see it actually outsold the PS3 version of BioShock 2.

All in all, it was a $1.26 billion month for the business — down 15% from last year.

“Honestly, I had expected the industry to perform somewhat better this month. Nonetheless, strong new releases and Easter gift-buying bodes well for industry performance in March,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier in an emailed statement.

Hardware Sales, February 2010

1. Nintendo DS 613.2K
2. Xbox 360 422.0K
3. Wii 397.9K
4. PlayStation 3 360.1K
5. PSP 133.4K
6. PlayStation 2 101.9K

Top 10 Software Sales, February 2010

1. BIOSHOCK 2* 360 TAKE 2 INTERACTIVE Feb-10 562.9K
2. NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Nov-09 555.6K
3. CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* 360 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 314.3K
4. JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT Nov-09 275.4K
5. WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 272.5K
6. CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2* PS3 ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Nov-09 252.8K
7. MASS EFFECT 2 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Jan-10 246.5K
8. DANTE’S INFERNO: DIVINE EDITION PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Feb-10 242.5K
9. DANTE’S INFERNO 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Feb-10 224.7K
10. HEAVY RAIN PS3 SONY Feb-10 219.3K

Image courtesy 2K Games

Photo: Silent Hill Composer Rocks Out at GDC

SAN FRANCISCO — “Audio is my lover,” Akira Yamaoka said as he kicked off his presentation Thursday at Game Developers Conference. Pulling out his guitar, he played some music that he composed over the past day on his trip from Tokyo to San Francisco.

Yamaoka is best known for his years at game publisher Konami, creating the music and sound for the Silent Hill horror game series. He is now working with independent developer Grasshopper Manufacture, composing music and producing sounds for the horror game it is creating for Electronic Arts.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

GDC: Metroid Creator Inspired by Italian Horror Films

SAN FRANCISCO — Nintendo’s Metroid games take their creative cues from an unlikely source: Dario Argento, the Italian horror film director.

At his keynote speech during the Game Developers Conference on Thursday, Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto said that Argento’s films Susperia and Deep Red, which he discovered in his youth, awoke his creative sensibilities. The horror films were a big influence on the innovative, stylish space adventure Metroid games, he said.

“Deep Red has the greatest inspiration on my creative process,” he said. Sakamoto had always liked scary movies but always thought that there was “something missing” from other films. “I discovered that without a doubt, I wanted to create things in the same manner that Argento did.”

Sakamoto pointed to the director’s use of various tricks to control the “mood, timing, foreshadowing and contrast” to scare the audience, calling out Argento’s use of progressive rock music with its “almost indifferent echo of the stiff and robotic.” Much in the same way, the Metroid games use eerie, sparse music to great effect, heightening the player’s tension and fear.

Sakamoto said that his first “homage” to Argento was the Japan-only 8-bit game Famicom Detective Club II.

Argento’s influence might have touched Metroid in other ways. As I was coming back to the press room to write this, I ran into Game|Life writer and smart person Gus Mastrapa, and mentioned Sakamoto’s affection for Argento.

“Interesting,” he said. “I wonder if that’s why Metroid uses so many yellows and oranges and reds. Have you ever seen a Suspiria poster?” Sure enough, Argento’s visual style is echoed in main character Samus Aran’s suit, although that could just be a coincidence.

The balance of Sakamoto’s speech was a rundown of his creative process, how he used the techniques he gleaned from filmmakers like Argento to create games as diverse as Metroid: Other M, Wario Ware DIY and a Japanese game called Friend Collection, a quirky Nintendo DS game using Mii characters in comedic situations.

The audience loved Sakamoto’s demo of Friend Collection, which put little cartoon versions of Sakamoto, Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime and Samus Aran into a variety of scenarios. Sakamoto didn’t say whether Nintendo had any plans to bring this game outside of Japan. (Full of Japanese humor and digitized speech, it would be a localization nightmare, but since it’s about to pass the 3 million copies sold mark in Japan, it could be another Nintendogs-style moneymaker for the company if it pulls it off.)

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

White House: Ask What Game Developers Can Do For Your Country

SAN FRANCISCO — Kumar Garg, policy analyst for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wants the game industry to address America’s “national challenges.”

In a keynote entitled “Grand Challenges for Game Developers” delivered at the Game Developers Conference on Wednesday, Garg focused on videogames’ unique ability to engage, immerse and teach.

“We don’t allow kids to fail and iterate,” Kumar Garg said of our country’s current approach towards education. Garg believes that games have much to teach educators, and that gamemakers have many opportunities to contribute to the public interest.

In this spirit, he revealed a new initiative spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama to encourage game creators to make games that encourage kids to eat right and exercise. The new Apps For Healthy Kids programs offers cash rewards, in the style of the X-Prize, to encourage developers to participate.

Additionally, Garg suggested that game developers do what they can to make socially impactful games by providing sabbaticals to employees so they can donate their time towards the efforts to make games in the public interest.

Other ways that publishers and developers can contribute to the effort include forming relationships with universities, providing tools and media assets to serious games efforts, offering prizes, funding research and forming partnerships with government agencies, he said.

Photo: Gus Mastrapa/Wired.com

See Also:

• What Videogames Can Teach Teachers
• What is Michelle Obama Reading to Kids?
• U.S. Spies Use Custom Videogames to Learn How to Think
• Teaching Your Kids Where Your Food Comes From

GDC: Sony’s Motion Controller Underwhelms With Janky Games

SAN FRANCISCO — Sony’s motion controller is called PlayStation Move and will be released this fall, the gamemaker said Wednesday. Whether any killer app games will be released with it is still in question.

At a lavish press briefing taking place a few blocks away from the Game Developers Conference, Sony revealed the final name and specifications of Move, which it first showed off at last year’s E3 Expo.The controller itself is almost exactly like the Wii remote, although Sony says it is more precise: PlayStation Eye, Sony’s already-released camera peripheral, sits near your television and tracks a glowing plastic ball on top of the controller. This allows it to track the controller’s movements. Sony says that the primary advantage of the controller’s precision will be that hard-core gamers will embrace Move even if they don’t think Wii is accurate enough.

“We are bringing consumers what they have been asking for: A more precise, immersive and responsive real-world gaming experience,” said Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s worldwide game development studios, during the presentation. “The types of games we can make with it are amazingly diverse… it has the potential to breathe new life into many established game genres.”

Having said that, the games Sony showed off were largely cribbed from Wii’s playlist: table tennis, bowling, golf, archery, etc. Most of these are included in a single game tentatively called Champion Sports.

Also like Wii, the PlayStation Move will be expandable with a second piece held in the left hand that features an analog joystick and buttons. For example, in the shooter game SOCOM 4, the left hand controller moves the soldier around the screen and the Move is used to aim his gun with an on-screen reticle.

Sony's Champion Sports features Wii-style games like table tennis.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sony let us try a few of the games after its presentation. On the whole, they weren’t that much fun, feeling more like rough proof-of-concept tech demos than software that’s going to excite consumers. If the Move is more precise than the Wii remote, it didn’t much matter when PlayStation 3’s versions of tennis and bowling just felt jankier than Wii Sports. At this point, the software isn’t living up to the promises of the technology.

Another mini-game in Champion Sports was called “Gladiator Duel,” or as I like to call it, “Beat a Woman To Death With a Hammer: The Game.” This actually used two Moves to play: One controls your sword, the other your shield.

One unique thing that Move does that Wii can’t is augmented reality. The camera can show the player on the TV screen and overlay images onto the controller, making it look as if you’re holding a whip, a sword, even a hair trimmer. The game Move Party showed off these features, but it seemed more like a slick visual gimmick than an exciting new type of game.

An area where Move seems markedly inferior to Wii, based on what we played, is pointing at the screen. Two games used the controller as a gun — the aforementioned SOCOM and a cartoony shooting gallery called The Shoot — and the control felt laggy, as if the cursor was trailing after my movements instead of reacting right alongside them.

Sony VP Peter Dille extols the virtues of PlayStation Move at a press briefing in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Sony said that a bundle package containing the basic controller, the required PlayStation Eye camera, and a game would cost “under $100″ this fall. The company also said it would bundle the controller with some PlayStation 3 hardware this year, and also sell the controller on its own.

It did not say how much any of these other packages would cost. But it’s plain to see that a full suite of Move hardware is going to be an expensive proposition: You need two of the controllers to play “Gladiator Duel” and the completely separate Sub-Controller attachment to play hardcore games like SOCOM.

For that kind of outlay, Sony’s going to need some better games.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com