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The Game Boy: The Case of Infinity Ward Vs. The People

Nathan Grayson — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:36:07 -0600

Seeing Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” on its opening night was a surprisingly illuminating experience for me. For one, I learned that – in my case, at least – introspection and trying to not get trampled by an ocean-like mass of 200 some-odd frothing, cosplaying fans are activities that go hand-in-hand. But as I watched/avoided becoming a doormat for a bunch of Wonderland wannabes, I realized something else: these people didn’t brave the cold (and the dark corners of their parents’ closets) because of their undying love for the timeless tale of Alice and her oddball companions. They did it because Tim Burton’s name was attached to the film. It could have been Tim Burton’s “Barney the Dinosaur” and they’d all have donned purple dinosaur costumes in a heartbeat.

I highly doubt that Infinity Ward’s planned not-Modern Warfare 3 project would’ve been received with such open arms. And evidently, so does Activision.

After all, former Infinity Ward bosses Jason West and Vince Zampella felt so creatively confined as to allegedly defy their contract with Activision and start making eyes EA, so clearly someone wasn’t exactly gung-ho about the Call of Duty creator’s bold new direction. Knowing Infinity Ward, though, regardless of the form the new project took, it probably would’ve been a fantastic game. So what gives? Well, at this point, I can only speculate, but money talks, and it’s telling me that Infinity Ward’s mystery game simply wasn’t a guaranteed mega-hit like Modern Warfare 3’s destined to be. Activision, in case you’d forgotten, likes money quite a lot.

So, what’s our Hot Topic-friendly pal Tim Burton have to do with all of this? Well, like many other big-name directors, he’s a commodity all on his own. Fans flock to theaters to see his movies – regardless of whether or not they’re associated with a well-known brand. Generally speaking, the same cannot be said when it comes to gamers and triple-A development studios. Hell, I’d wager the majority of Modern Warfare fans don’t even know what an “Infinity Ward” is.

Which is a problem. A big problem, in fact. So long as gamers see Infinity Ward as “those guys who make Modern Warfare” and, say, Bungie as “those guys who make Halo,” publishers like Activision and Microsoft will be able to push them around. (Hell, Bungie was even forced to buy back its freedom from Microsoft in order to finally work its way off the never-ending Halo assembly line.) We can ramble on-and-on about how much we want innovative ideas and original IPs until we’re blue in the face, but money will always have more wind in its lungs.

And sadly, even execs who seem to stick their fingers in their ears and scream “lalalalala” can still hear what gamers’ money is saying: “More of Big-Name Franchise X! More, more, more!” Need evidence? Look no further than Call of Duty, whose development changes hands every other year, yet its sales never miss a beat. That development strategy works because we let it work. Or rather, because we add fuel to its fire.

Believe it or not, game developers are very creative people. Many of them are chomping at the bit to push boundaries and forge new paths, yet time and time again, they’re stuck working on the same franchise for five-to-ten years at a time. And while it’s easy to point the finger at corporate greed and save your conscience from a little heavy lifting, the reality remains that we’re in a position to do so much more than that. If we start paying more attention to who’s making the games we play and less to what those games claim to be, we’ll be much better for it. After all, the wolf claimed to be Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, but that didn’t stop him from swallowing her whole the first chance he got. It’s not the name that matters; it’s the person behind it.

By only judging our proverbial books by their covers and not reading further into who created them, we risk allowing quality to suffer as well. It’s simple logic, after all: if you can spend less time and money on a project but still reap just as large of a profit from it, why go the extra mile at all? For that reason alone, it simply doesn’t make sense for us to ignore people in favor of brands, yet for some reason, many gamers do it anyway.

So, what happens when gamers actually start valuing creative talent? That’s when we get developers like Valve, Blizzard, and BioWare. When these developers dive headlong into a “risky” new project, gamers’ fears of the unknown take a backseat to reassuring utterances of “Oh, it’s Valve” or “BioWare’s never let us down before.” And lo and behold: those developers are dishing out some of the most interesting, innovative games in the business, and we’re eating them up. Dragon Age and Left 4 Dead are two of the most successful new IPs in years. And believe it or not, at one point, World of Warcraft was a tremendous “risk” on Blizzard’s part. Just look how that turned out.

It’s a mutually beneficial system, you see. We get better games and developers get to move forward, unconstrained by demanding publishers and fearful investors. Of course, right now, Valve, Blizzard, and BioWare are exceptions to the rule. It remains to be seen, then, if this particular exception can become the rule. Oh hey, would you look at that? Is that a ball? Did it just bounce into your court? Well, that’s some excellent timing. I had this big concluding paragraph prepared, but the improbably convenient ball-court symbol’s so much more effective. So I think I’ll just leave it at that.

Lenovo Looks to Mobile Internet Devices for Future Sales

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:49:07 -0600

Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing said on Friday that he sees mobile internet devices making up the vast majority of the company’s profits, possibly as much as 70-80%, in as little as 5 years. Currently, most sales come from the Thinkpad and Ideapad line of notebooks. Lenovo plans to accomplish this changeover by expanding into emerging markets. Devices likely to make up these sales are tablets, smartphones, and smartbooks.

Lenovo is currently the world’s number four PC maker, having purchased IBM’s PC division in 2005. The China based company just released their first touchscreen smartphone, the Ophone O1, in China. Lenovo also plans to release another phone called the LePhone sometime in mid 2010. Most of Lenovo’s energies are being focused on the China market as part of their “protect and attack” strategy. After they feel more secure in China, Lenovo may more into underserved markets like Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Vodafone's Paid Navigation App Folds, Unable to Beat Free

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:02:28 -0600

In January 2009 Vodafone made what seemed like a good investment buying mapping software maker Wayfinder for about $30 million. A year later it’s looking like a pretty awful deal in the wake of free navigation solutions from both Google and Nokia. Facing the inevitable, Vodafone is closing Wayfinder saying, “We could not charge for something that others gave away for free.”

Vodafone has also invested several million additional dollars in Wayfinder, so it can’t be easy to walk away. It’s unlikely they’d do so without being sure they could not compete with Nokia’s Ovi Maps. This really isn’t much of a surprise, especially considering Nokia’s huge presence in Europe. Google Navigation isn’t even available yet in Europe, but clearly Vodafone wasn’t going to sit around and wait for two free solutions to start eating their lunch.

This may be the eventual fate of all the carrier branded navigation apps. Considering the poor quality of many of them, that might not be a bad thing. Would access to a free navigation app from Google or Nokia sway you in your next phone purchase?

Google to Drop Unique IDs from their Chrome Browser

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:02:24 -0600

Ever since its release, Google has tagged Chrome installs with a unique ID. The search giant is now reportedly abandoning that practice. Future versions of the browser will still install with a unique ID that will be used to check for the first automatic update. After that task is complete, the ID will be deleted.

It has always been Google’s position that the client ID was only used to determine when users update, and in the event of a crash (but only if crash reporting is turned on). Some privacy advocates have long held that the unique identifier could lessen browser privacy. However, no one has ever been able to show that to be the case.

As Chrome continues to gain market share, Google appears to be tweaking it to keep it palatable to users. There is a certain amount of Google fatigue out there, and if privacy concerns become too pervasive, Google could lose public trust. Even though there was no confirmed privacy breach caused by this feature, does its removal make you feel more comfortable using Chrome?

FCC Adds Check for Broadband Speed

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:36:12 -0600

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is getting plenty serious about the Internet. Besides striking a stance in favor of net neutrality, the FCC feels that the quasi-monopolies that dominate the industry should be more responsive to their customers. And to help you keep an eye on your ISP, the FCC has rolled out www.broadband.gov, which will let you check your broadband speeds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--this is nothing new. Many of the major ISPs offer something like this, as do a number of independents, like SpeedTest.net But the FCC’s effort is a bit different. The FCC would like you to anonymously provide your address (How can that be anonymous?), which the FCC will use to compile a “Broadband Dead Zone” report. If you feel uncomfortable about ratting out your ISP to the government, just keep in mind your ISP doesn’t share your guilt when it comes to ratting you out.

What’s fun, though, is Marguerite Reardon’s testing of her broadband connection, and her resulting conversation with her ISP, Time Warner Cable. Using both a Dell laptop and an Apple MacBook, she never got close to the 10Mbps download speed Time Warner promises. When asked about this, a Time Warner service rep said 10Mbps wasn’t guaranteed, that speeds “can go up to 10Mbps.” And you know what, he’s right, that’s exactly what Time Warner says on its web site.

Which of course means that Time Warner can just as easily promise speeds up to 100Mbps, while still delivering the sub-7Mbps Reardon was registering. Perhaps it might be a good idea to rat out our ISPs.

Image Credit: Time Warner Cable

Microsoft Stumbles with Office Updates

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:26:51 -0600

It hasn’t been a good week for Microsoft’s updates to Office. Today, Microsoft came clean on some problems with a recently released seven-patch update for Excel. Apparently, users are seeing Chinese where they’d normally expect to see English. This comes on top of an early faux pas in an update for Office 2007 that caused it to crash under certain circumstances.

Says Microsoft about the most recent snafu: “We have received reports from some of our Excel 2003 and Excel 2002 customers that after installing update KB978471 or KB978474, they are seeing non-English text in the 'Add or Remove Programs' tool (Win[dows] XP) or the 'Programs and Features' --> 'Installed Updates' view (Vista, Win[dows] 7).” Continuing on, Microsoft says if you really need English text uninstall Tuesday’s Excel update, then download and install a corrected version of the patch.

The earlier problem, acknowledged by Microsoft yesterday, involved a non-security hotfix that added support for .Net 4.0 to Office 2007. This caused versions of Office 2007 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 with Terminal Services to crash. Some users also claimed the update would cause Internet Explorer 8 to crash, when being used with SharePoint 2007. Microsoft has already replaced the offending update with a corrected version.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Netflix Bails on $1 Million Contest to Settle Lawsuit

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:48:56 -0600

You might remember this news from a while back. In order to improved the predictive ability of its movie recommendation system, Netflix cranked up a $1 million contest for research and business--build us a better mousetrap and the money is yours.

Besides the money Netflix offered up its subscriber data, which included their viewing recommendations and choices, but didn’t include names. Netflix believed it had protected the identities of its subscribers this way. With no names it would be impossible to identify any single person in a crowd the size of Netflix’s subscriber base.

That was the theory anyway. Two computer scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, rolled out a paper in early 2008 that showed you could in fact identify individual subscribers from Netflix’s data. With privacy compromised the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stepped in, and as Netflix refused to back down on its contest, the FTC sued to protect subscriber privacy.

Netflix blinked, and has announced that to settle the lawsuit it would withdraw its contest. Netflix says it will continue to refine how it handles recommendations, in cooperation with the research community, and will be more attentive to the privacy of its subscribers in the process.

There’s a bigger lesson to be learned here. We tend to be blasé about the data trail we leave while on the Internet. After all, our identities, we are told, are removed prior to any data sharing or mining. Turns out, no matter how big the crowd we are in, our individual identities aren’t necessarily protected. Something to think about.

Image Credit: Netflix

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta 1 Now Available for Download

Paul Lilly — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:41:02 -0600

Mozilla this week made available the first beta of Thunderbird 3 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Codenamed "Lanikai," the latest release introduces a few changes to the open-source email client, many of which take place under the hood.

Built on top of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform (the same engine powering Firefox 3.6), Mozilla says you can expect improvements in stability and memory, fixes to improve upgrading from Thunderbird 2, fixes for auto complete, tabs, and activity manager, and several design improvements and corrections to the interface.

As with any beta software, you should expect a few bugs, and there are a handful of known issues in Thunderbird 3. Kaspersky's Anti-Spam extension is disabled, for instance, and you may run into some SMTP issues.

If you still want to give it a try, you can download a copy right here.

Release Notes
Changelog