Best. Game. Ever.

Grand Theft Auto IV‘s (GTA IV) release was never in doubt to be a media sensation. The newest installment in the open-world-free-for-all-violent-shooter-with-hookers series has already been panned by lawyer Jack Thompson and others who think GTA will cause us to go pick up hookers and then kill them and spend their days shouting “think of the children”.

But there’s one thing that no one expected: Perfection.

I now know how film critics felt after screening “The Godfather.” It’s been days since Grand Theft Auto IV’s credits rolled, yet I can’t seem to construct a coherent thought without my mind wandering off into a daydream about the game. I just want to drop everything in my life so I can play it again. Experience it again. Live it again…Grand Theft Auto IV doesn’t just raise the bar for the storied franchise; it completely changes the landscape of gaming.

– Gameinformer

With over 20 reviews posted for today’s release. Grand Theft Auto IV has officially surpassed the classic N64 fantasy game Zelda: The Ocarina of Time as the Highest Rated Game Of All-Time. GTA IV isn’t just another controversial or violent video game. It’s a masterpiece.

Wii Sells Big, But No One Is Buying Games

The New York Times opens its technology headline article with:

Nintendo sits atop the home video-game market. Its Wii, though lesstechnologically advanced than Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation 3, continues to outsell those machines and is now in more than 20 million homes.

So why are retailers having so much trouble selling Wii games?

They go on to cite Super Smash Bros, which sold 1.4m copies it’s first week, and sales have plummeted 90% in the last 4 weeks to almost nothing. The answer is simple to expert video game analyst Michael Pachter:

The average Wii owner buys only 3.7 games a year, compared with 4.7 for Xbox 360 owners and 4.6 for PlayStation 3 owners, said a Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter. “It reflects the broadening of the demographic,” he said. “Nintendo’s market doesn’t feel the same sense of urgency to buy every game that’s coming out.”

So while Nintendo’s cheap console is making a splash in the casual gamer market, the result of this for Nintendo is a real lack of interest in the games thus far by the audience. They don’t want to pay full price for the games, nor are they eagerly anticipating their releases like hardcore gamers. The “attach rate” (the # of items such as games, controllers, memory cards, etc bought with a console) is so significantly low on a Wii it’s is scary. Thus, Nintendo’s own market is what’s causing their software such hardship.

Cubs Sweep Pirates, 37 Shot, 2 Stabbed, 7 Dead

See what I did there?

Ads for the popular and probably-to-be-best-selling-game-of-all-time Grand Theft Auto IV (GTAIV) were put on buses and trains in the city of Chicago, and a crime wave ensued. Because of the ads. Seems pretty reasonable right?

Well according to Fox’s local affiliate in Chicago, it’s exactly what happened:

Last weekend, Chicago saw quite a bit of violence. At the moment, CBS is reporting a total of “37 Shot, 2 Stabbed, 7 Dead,” while pointing out that 13 of the victims were Chicago Public School students. Fox News Chicago noticed—in a moment of divine correlation—that Grand Theft Auto advertisements appear on CTA buses and train stations.

Divine correlation? Absolutely, It involves some mysticism to make that correlation.

In other news the Chicago Cubs swept the Pittsburgh Pirates this weekend. The result? 37 Shot, 2 Stabbed, 7 Dead. We should probably shut them down too.

Nothing Is Perfect… So What About The “Perfect Score?”

Reviews of any form of media: television, film, music, books, video games, etc. are rarely a consensus. Look at Rotten Tomatoes’ best of 2007. Only 3 movies out of 100s received a 100% consensus that they were overall good movies, and even those 3 did not receive all “4-star,” “A+” or “10/10” reviews, but a smattering of 8/10, B+ and 3-stars to combine for an overall positive experience for all reviewers. They all came to a consensus that these movies were overall good, but not 100% perfect.

So why then, is there so much arguing, debating and complaining every time a reviewer gives a piece of media a perfect score? Destructiod.com takes on the masses in arguing that a perfect score does not necessarily mean that a movie or video game is perfect:

[No Country For Old Men, Blade Runner, and The Godfather.] They’re the best examples of cinematic achivement I’ve yet witnessed, but all of them have numerous and readily-identifiable flaws. Does that make them any less wonderful? Does that mean The Godfather doesn’t deserve a 10/10 score? Of course not.

Everything is flawed. Nothing is perfect. If The Godfather isn’t a 10/10, what is?

Blurred Public/Private Lines

Boston.com has an interesting article about the blurring public/private lines of facebook in the workplace:

Networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook introduce people to new friends and expand their cybercircle of pals. But they’re also introducing people to a sticky etiquette issue that is becoming more common: What if your boss wants to be your buddy?

That can be an awkward intersection for people who try to keep their personal space and their workplace separate. But as professional and personal worlds increasingly collide online, it’s becoming harder to escape the boss’s reach after hours.

Personally, I’ve friended nearly all of my bosses that use facebook, and I’ve never felt uncomfortable with friending or being friended by my bosses. I guess it’s partially because I don’t have anything embarrassing or illegal on my page, and I consider my facebook page to be more like a casual version of my resume. It has a long list of movies and TV shows that I enjoy, which I think it is important for most people in production, and my pictures are for the most part, me out on shoots and such, which is all work I am proud of.

I also can see how some employees might consider it to be overbearing of their boss to be able to contact them through facebook, but facebook is not instantaneous communication. If they can facebook message you, then they can also e-mail you, and most people check their e-mail far more often. The same is true of text messaging. Using facebook to contact an employee after-hours is probably the most inefficient form of corporate communication out there. For me, my communication with bosses has been purely casual on facebook, sometimes forwarding them articles or wishing them a happy birthday, but never using facebook for business purposes.

A Quick Response

My previous post regarding message board users and moderators, clearly struck a chord with a wide variety of readers (and apparently new readers) of my blog. I’ve recieved quite a bit of commentary both from various outside perspectives and the users of the site that I used as a case study. The former, for the most part, were extremely insightful and constructive, while the latter were, for lack of a better term, minimalist (“you’re wrong”).

First off, let me make it clear that a case study is simply an example. I do not think the problems cited are inherenet to any one message board, but everpresent in all message board/forums, but the example I gave was a concrete and current example of the response of a community based around the principles of moderation vs usership that I discussed. While I do moderate certain communities myself, my approach is generally minimalist, but I would be more than happy to hear from and post responses from administrators and moderators who disagree with the points I put forth, none of which have been the respondants thus far.

Secondly, I am pleased that the post generated such a buzz without any work from me. I posted the article Sundat night, and by 6 AM Monday morning my blog had recieved over double the number of page views it had in any given day:

I encourage those of who visited my blog during this time to continue to do so, and continue to provide criticism and question both my and my field’s assumptions, beliefs and practices. And hopefully we can make some progress in understanding the complex world around us. After all, isn’t that the point of this whole blogging thing?

The Dichotomy Of Internet Message Boards: Moderators vs. Users

Internet forums (or message boards) evolved out of newsgroups of the past on the internet, and mailing lists and zines of the pre-internet era. Message boards came as a response to the need for, and the ability of, immediate feedback from a variety of people on any given topic. In the past, I’ve discussed the ability of a forum to act as a group of collective intelligence in dealbusting, and authors like media scholar Henry Jenkins have examined similar concepts in spoiling television shows such as Survivor and Twin Peaks.

Perhaps more interestingly is the behavior and commentary on any given message board in response to any post. That is to say, forum users will respond to nearly any post with a plethora of sarcastic, witty, and snarky remarks, regardless of the seriousness of the topic. If you’re unfamiliar with message boards and these sorts of responses here’s an example of a post and it’s responses in regards to a parent who’s child was suspended from school for writing a horror story that was “too horrific” in class. Reading through the thread you can see occasional serious advice for what seems to be a real and serious concern of a parent, but most of the posts are jokes, sarcastic remarks, and the topic seems to move further and further away from the original topic (or in message board lingo, “OP” (the original post)).

But, when these overwhelmingly sarcastic, cynical, and confrontational remarks become socially acceptable on a forum, how does the cultural group, forum members decide when something “crosses the line?” Generally, a very small subset of users are promoted to the status of “moderator,” literally a user who moderates the conversations within the threads, determines if posts are inappropriate (or, in the case of non-forum readers, more inappropriate than most of these posts). Additionally, moderators watch for and remove posts that are spam or violate the terms of service of the site (generally prohibiting such discussions involving pornography, how to break the law, etc). The problem, however, is that these users are not decided democratically, by the users of the site and members of the community, rather they are all appointed by the administrators of a given site. Thus, in a forum system that seems to be near-anarchy, on an internet that is, for the most part free and independent, individual monarchic administrators rules supreme on message boards.

No Seriously, Everyone Is Doing It

This year’s NPD (a sales tracking group) report found that 72% of Americans are playing video games up from 64% in 2007. They don’t make any radical conclusions about WHY this is happening, but I have a feeling we can point to a few titles here: Rock Band/Guitar Hero and Wii Sports. Both of which have become mainstays of parties nowadays, even for non-gamers. Additionally, the games really appeal to female gamers as well. Obviously, these conclusions are pretty anecdotal, but I think we’ll see more research back this up in the coming months/years.

A few other interesting findings of the study were that:

Younger players make up a good percentage of online players, with 40 percent of online gamers between 2 and 17, with 18-24 year olds only making up 10 percent.As for online console players, 50 percent were Xbox 360 gamers, who spent the most time per week playing online compared to PC and PS3 owners.

Finally, NPD says only three percent of respondents said they owned two of the three next-gen consoles, and only 2 percent said they owned all three.

Again, these numbers seem to indicate a real rise in casual gamers. Most “hardcore gamers” own at least two of the three systems in any given generation (XBox 360, Playstation 3, Wii in this generation), and I think again, the sales of the Nintendo Wii (which is focused on party games and downloadable retro games) reflect a rise in the casual gamer market.