CORRECTION AND AN APOLOGY TO FREESTYLE

Earlier today I made a post that was unclear about what had happened between Wieden, Freestyle, and EA. The post discussed Wieden's win, but did not specify that the win was for media. I was unclear that the win by W+K was for media, not creative. Freestyle continues to produce, and will continue to produce, creative for EA. I deeply regret the lack of clarity, and send a personal apology to the Freestyle team. My lack of clarity was inexcusable.

Move Over Warcraft. Here Comes EA's Warhammer Online

OK, so that headline is a little deceiving. Warcraft continues to break all records with both the number of people playing, how much they play, and how long they keep active in the community.

But EA's WarHammer Online is also breaking records. It's only been out for a week and EA is reporting over 500,000 players active on the site. Certainly among the most anticipated games of the year, WarHammer Online's week one sales are, it is believed the highest ever for an MMORPG. And the reviews is good. Looks like we're in for a steel cage bout in the world of massive multiplayer.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Spore: DRM Backfires as Hackers Make Spore The Most Pirated Game Ever!

Forbes has an interesting article about the piracy problem facing EA over Spore, their new virtual worlds title that generated unprecedented levels of hype. Part of their efforts to curb piracy in this title came through equipping the disks with DRM protections. As is always the case, however, hackers quickly overcame these safeguards, and appeared to have punished EA for using DRM by ensuring that thousands of illegal installs take place around the world.

Here's an excerpt form the article:

As of Thursday afternoon, "Spore" had been illegally downloaded on file-sharing networks using BitTorrent peer-to-peer transfer 171,402 times since Sept. 1, according to Big Champagne, a peer-to-peer research firm. That's hardly a record: a popular game often hits those kinds of six-figure piracy numbers, says Big Champagne Chief Executive Eric Garland.

But not usually so quickly. In just the 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday, illegal downloaders snagged more than 35,000 copies, and, as of Thursday evening, that rate of downloads was still accelerating. "The numbers are extraordinary," Garland says. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."

The EA protections, which tried to limit users to three installs, appear to have backfired, and hackers across the web are pointing to their hacks as a triumph for doing the right thing.

Electronic Arts calls those criticisms unfair. "EA has not changed our basic DRM copy protection system," says corporate communications manager Mariam Sughayer. "We simply changed the copy protection method from using the physical media, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to one which uses a one-time online authentication."

Electronic Arts compares its DRM solution to systems in place on services like iTunes that similarly limits the number of computers that can play a particular song. Sughayer also points out that less than 25% of EA users attempt to install the company's games on more than one computer, and less than 1% attempt to install it on more than three.

Piracy is becoming a massive problem in the game biz -- the cost of software is one factor, of course, but increasing software costs are a consequence of the constantly higher consumer demands for better action and graphical realism.

The difficulty, of course, is that DRM doesn't stop hackers...ever.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

What Off Earth is Spore?

What off Earth is Spore? There are a lot of people asking this question, especially given the unusual Outdoor campaign they are running in certain areas. Which is indeed how I learned of the game.

EA's Spore is a massive multiplayer online game that in some ways defies categorization. In my virtual travels to research the game I have heard it called a Sim, a God Game, a Strategy Game, and a Resource Management game. And my understanding is that it is all of those things.



Interestingly, EA seems to be encouraging this sort of categorization confusion. There's very little text on their site that goes to the crux of what it is. Rather, there are multiple avenues to follow to experience aspects of the game.There is a bit of description on the site, and it goes like this:

CREATE Your Universe from Microscopic to Macrocosmic - From tide pool amoebas to thriving civilizations to intergalactic starships, everything is in your hands.
EVOLVE Your Creature through Five Phases - It's survival of the funnest as your choices reverberate through generations and ultimately decide the fate of your civilization.
EXPLORE Other Players' Galaxies - Will your creature rule the universe, or will your beloved planet be blasted to smithereens by a superior alien race?
SHARE with the World - Everything you make is shared with other players and vice versa, providing tons of cool creatures to meet and cool places to visit.





EA has been the most successful gaming company at broadening the appeal of shrinkwrapped software from the core action and sports gamer population to the broader general audience. The Sims is the big Mama of that crossover market, with its many permutations and styles of gameplay available.

Clearly, Spore is borrowing a great deal from the success of the Sims, but there appears to be a serious focus on providing more story and additional things to do.

This has been an area of criticism for some of the more recent Sims products, most notably the latest Sim City product, which added incredible realism to the process of building a community, but sorta forgot to bring the fun.

Spore doesn't appear to have that problem at all. Fist, you get to create really amazing creatures -- and there are a variety of ways to show off your creations and win prizes for your trouble. Second, they appear to be trying to bridge the gap between single player and massive multiplayer through an approach that lets you share your creatures and creations with the world.

The system clearly unleashes the creative spirit. Head on over to their site to see some of the ecosystems and characters people have created. It's absolutely remarkable.

Another key aspect of this title is the aggressive cultivation of online community -- EA recently had a fan site day to bring evangelists and potential evangelists in to meet the designers and get an early play. The level of buzz for this title is really rather impressive.



Check it out. It's definitely out of this world. I will be interested to see how broad the appeal of this title will be. Such fanciful characters have traditionally occupied a specific segment of the category -- and not a terribly broad one. Such games tend to be VERY male, whereas Sims was majority female.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

US GameMakers Don't Want to Sue Customers. Sounds Like a Sound Decision To Me.

ARS Technica is reporting that US gaming companies are rather reluctant to follow the lead of UK gamemakers, who are suing P2P game sharers over copyright infringement.

Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, makes this poignant statement:

"If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," he told Eurogamer. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

Now clearly piracy is a problem for gaming companies, and will become even more so as bandwidths of broadband connections continue to grow. But US gamemakers are focusing on innovation rather than lawsuits to mitigate the problem. Says the same ARS Technica piece,

EA actually has some plans in that direction, including free, microtransaction-based games like Battlefield Heroes and of course MMOs like Warhammer Online, games that are functionally impervious to piracy.

Since MMOs are clearly the key growth area of the industry, these seem wise steps indeed.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.