I always feel more creative in California. I'm not sure if it's the weather, the entrepreneurial buzz, friendlier people or just the warm mythology I've internalized from decades of listening to the Beach Boys. But whenever I touch down in the Golden State, I really do consider more options, think about grander plans and attack challenges in an entirely fresh way. It happened again when I visited Los Angeles last weekend. While my California love originated in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, I felt the same glow as I sat in a hotel restaurant in West Hollywood.
But my calm and confident mood was somewhat at odds with California's current reality. The state is in full-blown economic crisis: unemployment over 10% in many cities, foreclosures skyrocketing, and, oh yeah, a $24 billion state budget deficit.
But instead of curling up in a ball, California is facing the brink with some of its boldest creativity yet. If a group of activists has its way, California may rewrite its constitution in 2011. The proposed constitutional convention--a potentially seismic political event if they pull it off--would play out online and in front of the cameras, addressing the fundamental questions of our society. Who gets to vote? How much should the rich pay in taxes and how does that get decided? What defines a first-class education and is it a requirement that the state offer it to every child? To make this convention a reality, a number of hurdles will have to be overcome. For starters, they'll need a couple of million signatures to get a pair of issues on the ballot: the convention itself, and a new rule that allows the convention to happen without legislative approval.
But if they succeed, it's hard for me to overstate the convention's potential impact as the world watches this bellwether state publicly debate what a 21st century democracy should look like. California could press the reset button not just on fundamental issues like health care, education, marriage, and taxes, but on even more basic questions about how to run a society--and an economy, in California's case the eighth largest in the world.
A constitutional convention is a big idea, to be sure. Change on that scale is never easy. But after spending just 48 hours with Californians and feeling that creative energy once again, I'm sure that if anyone call pull it off, they can.
WATCH Repair California makes its case for the constitutional convention
The Stimulist is journalist Carlos Watson's original take on the daily news: a tasty mix of rising stars, provocative ideas, and inspiring stories. Enjoy responsively:
Ideas: Provocative daily resolutions to be debated. Kind of a Big Deal: Tomorrow's stars from around the world. C-Note: Carlos Watson's daily take on politics, business, and life.
In his recent address at the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner, comedian and proud nerd John Hodgman mused that Barack Obama may be the first nerd president of the modern era. The conventional wisdom during the campaign, of course, was that Obama was more cool than geeky. But there's no debate over the group he's brought with him: the eggheads have returned to Washington. Does the rise of the Orszags and Geithners, teamed with the President's professorial mindset, signal that liberal intellectuals can finally come out of the closet? Will the Democratic Party at long last be able to shed the “elitist” label that doomed so many of its hopefuls, from Michael Dukakis to Al Gore? History suggests otherwise.
Since its founding, the U.S. has vacillated between its geek and jock inclinations. The independent provincial spirit of the frontier has vied with a bookish Eastern inquisitiveness, and, as a result, Americans have revered both strong, folksy leaders they could have a beer with (Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan, George W. Bush) and those whose intellect they admired (Jefferson, Lincoln, and Obama). The real question is which is in vogue at a particular time.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter chronicled the ebb and flow of anti-intellectual feeling in the U.S., including the rise and fall of the “eggheads” in American public life. The term “egghead” denoted one who was out of touch with the common man, a head-in-the-clouds brainiac who lacked common sense. The phrase reached its zenith in the 1950s--Richard Nixon used it particularly successfully against Democratic Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, turning the reserved statesman's intellectual demeanor into a political liability.
Writing in 1964, Hofstadter doubted that the Kennedy administration's “whiz kids” would fare much better than their predecessors: he noted how in prior periods in American history, the “common folk” naturally suspicious of urbanity and learning--local evangelical preachers and small town lawyers and businessmen--had always rebelled in response to such leaders. And, as another prize-winning book, David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, showed, they had good reason to be suspicious. Many of the Ivy League-educated leaders of academia and industry who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were directly responsible for the boneheaded policies that had such disastrous consequences in Vietnam.
If history is any guide, the Obama administration will not succeed at permanently removing anti-intellectualism from the national mindset. Sure, Obama's got a cool factor, and he's hired what has to be the best pickup hoops squad in White House history. But, ultimately, this group is a bunch of braniacs. The jocks will almost certainly rise again. Obama's whiz kids should focus their brain power on creating lasting reforms to health care, education, the economy, and energy, and do their best to emulate some of America's more distinguished eggheads. After all, as Hodgman noted in his address, the most famous nerds in American history were its own founding fathers.
WATCH John Hodgman's send-up at the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner
The Stimulist is journalist Carlos Watson's original take on the daily news: a tasty mix of rising stars, provocative ideas, and inspiring stories. Enjoy responsively:
Ideas: Provocative daily resolutions to be debated. Kind of a Big Deal: Tomorrow's stars from around the world. C-Note: Carlos Watson's daily take on politics, business, and life.
How do you measure the effectiveness of a game, beyond the monetary value alone?
We tend to look at things in 10-year increments when a lot of people tend to look at in five, and then they boil it down to three as the make-or-break time. And I think if you have that narrow of a view you take much less risk. We want the platform to be successful, we want to be profitable. But it is getting harder to measure that. And when you get down to a game like The Last Guardian, you can't just look at the number of units it sold versus it's development cost; it's what did you do to drive our message of diversity.
You have to look at things over a long-term period. It's extremely difficult to do in our industry, and even more difficult to do in this economy. In our industry it's all about now, "When are you going to drop you price? When's the new system coming out? What's the new game?" You have to take a step back and not get caught up in that. But it gets more and more difficult in this economy because people don't have the patience to say, "You're not profitable today, or that game didn't make money today, but it's kind of setting up for three or five years down the road." In this economy people go, "There may not be any tomorrow, so it's all about today." So I think that attitude is being tested now more than it ever has.
Out of E3 came criticism of the and disappointment that there was no PS3 price drop. What do you think about this fixation on price?
It's somewhat natural, especially in this economy. But people are always wanting you to lower your price on hardware. We could've come out with a PlayStation 2.5 for $299 or less, and in the first two or three years it would sell extremely well. But there would be a point where people would be going, "I am not really seeing the incremental leap." We feel that we're sacrificing the short term to pay dividends in the long term. People are having short-term thinking--the platform is not even three years old. It was $599; it's now $399. The focus on pricing is something we appreciate, but you have to have the conviction and the confidence that you are on the right path for the long term and ultimately you'll get all the consumers you want. You won't get them all day one, but we're looking to get them over a 10-year period. It's going to take different things to get different consumers.
You talked again about the 10-year cycle and the future, but recently you said we focus too much on tomorrow and not enough on today.
I said that in the context of, "We want a price drop; when's a new system coming out?" I am saying to enjoy the technology that you have, explore the technology that you have, maximize the technology that you have, instead of trying to hasten the demise. People are just coming up to speed with the technology. Today's platform and tomorrow's platform is the PlayStation 3. But there's somebody that wants to talk about when PlayStation 4 is coming out and what kind of technology is it going to have.
If you were one of the first consumers to get a PS3, I hope that you would say, "I might have paid $499 or $599 for it, but it does so much more today." There are a lot of technologies where people say, "I don't even bother pulling it out anymore. I was excited when I first got it, but I have kind of moved on." And that's sad. It costs a lot to invest in rolling out new technology, and if the consumer walks away before the lifecycle's over--you can talk about the install base of hardware, but how many of those machines are still active, how many people are still playing them?
The flipside of the 10-year cycle is that the economy tanks and you have to stick with the 10-year program. So how do you weather the storm when things outside of your control don't go your way?
Hopefully last year is as bad as it gets. I think all indicators are that 2009 is going better than 2008. In 2008, we had a 38% increase in sales and we hit our 10-million-units-worldwide goal for PS3 sales. We had $6.4 billion in revenue in U.S. alone on the PlayStation brand, and a 116% increase in software sales. At the worst possible time, if you're hitting numbers and delivering success... my hope is that as our production efficiencies improve and more great games come to market, the horizon has got to be better for 2009 and 2010.
It's like being out there in a storm--it does cause you to question your conviction, and tie yourself to the mast and weather the storm. We have hit a very challenging period of trying to sell future technology, a high-end device, but is on the high-end retail pricing spectrum, at a time when people's disposable income is limited. But I think the fact we were successful in that says people are getting the message, that you get tremendous value when you buy a PlayStation product. Yes there are cheaper machines out there, but not ones that deliver the degree of value for the money that ours does.
Another long-term strategy for you seems to be downloadable games. You had Siren, and now with PSP Go you are going to have all the PSP titles for download. Any there plans to extend that strategy to more PS3 games?
The PSP Go is the first digital-only gaming device to come to market. Digital has always been part of our strategy. If you go back to PS2, there was no fee for the online service; not only broadband connectivity, but dial-up connectivity. As we sit here in 2009, and it's like, "Who is interested in dial-up?" I think we brought in a lot of consumers with a free service and a dial-up connection.
You move to today, I feel like the PS3 is perfectly positioned. You like playing DVDs, but you're not ready for Blu-ray? Fine, our machine plays them. "I'm not even interested in movies; I'm interested in game content." Are you interested in disc-based content, or digital content? Because we can play both. And we can stream digital downloads of TV shows and movies in standard definition or high definition. So whatever the argument is, I feel like the PS3 is perfectly positioned to be the toll booth that everybody runs through.
We still have a significant portion of our business, and always will, in disc-based media, but we offered fully-downloadable games before anybody else did. When you bought SOCOM or you bought Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, that was available day and date in either digital format or disc format. Now we're moving towards, with PSP Go and PSN, where the consumer will always have a choice, to say, "I want to download it my living room, if I want it digitally," or "I'll buy it at the local retail store, if I want it disc-based." Nobody is cut out of this equation. The consumer has ultimate flexibility, brick-and-mortar retail is still embraced. But, I think the retailer understands that digital is here to stay and that they are not going to stem that tide.
True to this site's slogan, I've stayed optimistic on the economy over the last six months. Well, I've stayed mostly optimistic. But I am starting to worry.
My concern hasn't come from listening to the financial wise men--whether it's the guardedly positive comments of Bernanke and Romney or the more pessimistic cautions of Warren Buffet. There's something else sitting out there, something a little less easy to define, that has me thinking about what my new friend Fred Kleisner, head of the Morgan Hotels, called the "W Recession." No, not that W. I'm talking about the economy dropping precipitously, beginning to recover, then dropping again before ultimately climbing--down-up-down-up, like the shape of a "W."
Maybe it is the teachers that I know who are being let go. Maybe it is the failure to stem foreclosures and watching many of my own family members and friends struggle to make ends meet and stave off bankruptcy. Maybe it is all of the ambitious 20-somethings I know who are sitting home unemployed this summer. I'm not sure. But I am not as bullish as I was a few months ago--the stock market has not persuaded me.
This feeling has been brewing for a few weeks, but it came clear through right after I landed in Los Angeles last weekend for a quick trip. A woman at the Hertz car rental place at LAX said something interesting as we chatted. The business had been starting to pick up this spring, she said. Then swine flu hit, and people began pulling back. Perhaps that moderate pandemic made this fragile economy stumble--a hiccup that in bullish times would be easily missed, but is magnified when things are tough.
During my time in L.A. (I was supposed to attend the BET Awards, but did not--long story), I saw another side of our economy, the one that rewards creativity. On Saturday I got my haircut by a barber named Kelley. A former football player at UNLV, Kelley doesn't just cut hair--he also runs a chiropractor business with his family. An unusual combination, but unusual combinations are going to be part of our survival story. From individuals to families, companies to the government, we're going to need creative solutions in order to get through this.
And perhaps that's where this uneasy feeling about the "W Recession" stems from. In the upper echelons of American society--on Wall Street, where banks are eagerly paying back TARP so they can get back to paying out big bonuses, and in D.C., where the Fed is angling for even more control--you can feel a desire to return to where we were a few years ago. But if we waste this moment, when we have the necessary ingredients for meaningful reform, and instead simply play by the rules of the past, we're headed for another dip.
Of course, not everyone things we should turn back the clock, or that we're close to out of this thing yet. David Axelrod, the President's chief adviser, admitted this weekend that another major stimulus package may be needed. Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and The New York Times columnist has been warning that could happen for months--and that worse yet a weary and over leveraged public and Congress might reject it. Krugman wrote back in March that Obama's stimulus plan was not bold enough or targeted enough, and that its shortcomings could come back to haunt us all. I hope he is wrong.
Otherwise, the second half of the "W" could be quite drawn out.
The Stimulist is journalist Carlos Watson's original take on the daily news: a tasty mix of rising stars, provocative ideas, and inspiring stories. Enjoy responsively:
Ideas: Provocative daily resolutions to be debated. Kind of a Big Deal: Tomorrow's stars from around the world. C-Note: Carlos Watson's daily take on politics, business, and life.
1. Sam Houser, Cofounder, Rockstar Games
Critics may decry Sam Houser's "brutally violent" and "sexually explicit" world in Grand Theft Auto, but there's no denying his genius. Gamers can go anywhere and talk to anyone--all while punching and shooting and driving through windows. The most recent GTA sold a record 6 million copies in its first week.
2. Jenova Chen, Creative director, thatgamecompany
If video games can be art, the proof is likely to come from Jenova Chen. He explores the expressive possibilities of game design by tapping into emotions rather than relying on virtual violence. His latest PlayStation release, Flower, lets players experience what it's like to be--you got it--a flower petal.
3. Fumito Ueda, director, Team ICO
Ueda and his Team ICO became critical darlings with 2001's Ico, a PlayStation 2 game in which a boy protects and guides a young woman through a cursed castle. But it wasn't until Shadow of the Colossus, an immersive giant-hunting adventure set in a bleak landscape, that ICO found popular success. The Last Guardian, Ueda's next title was recently unveiled and the trailer displays Ueda's ability to pull heartstrings.
4. Jane McGonigal, Director of game R&D, Institute for the Future Jane McGonigal has become the high priestess of alternate realities. Last year, she unleashed Superstruct, a real-time massively multiplayer forecasting game that imagines the world of 2019, "23 years before human extinction." It asked members of the public to collaborate on devising ways around that grim, and potentially very real, future. "I'm interested in using games to figure out how can we intervene now," says McGonigal.
5. David Cage, Chief executive officer and director, Quantic Dream
David Cage and French developer Quantic Dream pushed the envelope in mature and cinematic storytelling with Fahrenheit--scenes featuring sex were removed from the American version, Indigo Prophecy. Cage's follow-up, Heavy Rain, continues his push toward serious gaming with a story about a serial killer, which asks the player: "How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?"
6. Kazunori Yamauchi, President, Polyphony Digital
The 42-year-old Japanese game designer is on the fast track: He has created eight Gran Turismo games, attracting a cult following among PlayStation users. Yamauchi's games are dazzling in their design and striking in their detail, with licensed reproductions of actual cars and a choice of tracks from around the globe.
7. Bart Decrem, Chief executive officer, Tapulous
Three days after its release last July, Tap Tap Revenge--an iPhone game that's basically Dance Dance Revolution except that you tap your fingers to a song rather than dance to it--shot to No. 1 among free game downloads on iTunes. Decrem has since partnered with labels (EMI) as well as individual acts (Christmas With Weezer, anyone?) to create band-branded apps.
8. Keita Takahashi, Game Designer, Namco Bandai Katamari Damacy features a tiny alien that rolls random junk up into balls of increasing size--from coins and candy to buildings and mountains--creating a unique experience that caught on and spawned several sequels. Creator Keita Takahashi followed that up with Noby Noby Boy, for the PlayStation Network, where you play a worm-like creature that stretches longer and longer.
9. NeilYoung, Chief executive officer, ngmoco
Neil Young left gaming giant Electronic Arts to create a small developer of iPhone games. Their squishy platformer Rolando, was one of the first titles to demonstrate the iPhone's gaming chops and quickly became a hit. Since then, addictive titles like WordFu (you may have seen scores posted to Twitter) has cemented ngmoco as one of the premier game companies on the iPhone.
10. Dylan Cuthbert, President, Q-Games
Since 2007's PixelJunk Racers, Dylan Cuthbert and his Q-Games have been releasing fun and beautiful games for the PlayStation Network. Whether it is the watercolor psychedelics of PixelJunk Eden, or the popular tower-defense title PixelJunk Monsters, the developer's games have fostered a cult following. The fourth game in the series, PixelJunk Shooter, will be released this fall.
Sony unveiled the PSP Go, a motion controller, and a slew of impressive titles--including a new one from Rockstar, creators of the Grand Theft Auto franchise--during today's E3 video game expo. While Nintendo, maker of the leading Wii console, failed to generate much enthusiasm at its press conference.
Nintendo had a tough act to follow, with lots of big news coming out of Microsoft's Xbox 360 event yesterday. Nintendo showed Wii Motion Plus, an update to the existing controller. Wii Fit Plus, also an update. And Wii Sports Resort, an update to their popular sports title that adds archery and three-point basketball to the mix. In other words, not much new--even if the games will sell a gajillion copies.
Nintendo did reveal that several new DS games will include user-generated content that can be shared wirelessly or downloaded from the DSi store (including Wario Ware DYI and animation creator FlipNotes Studio). And the DSi will soon being able to upload photos to Facebook, continuing E3's social media sharing trend.
The weirdest introduction was of a Wii Vitality Sensor: A plastic cap that goes over your finger to measure your pulse. But, unlike Microsoft's grander Project Natal announcement, there were no demos or videos of games shown. It remains to be seen how developers could use it to enhance games.
Thankfully Nintendo also introduced two new Mario titles: Super Mario Galaxy 2 and New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. And James Patterson's Women's Murder Club, which is a unique title catering to female gamers, looks promising. The real surprise was Metroid: Other M, a new title in the series that promises more story than any of the previous Metroid games. With Metroid, Nintendo closed with a bang, even if it was a staid showing overall.
Sony fared better at its presser. The diversity of games was impressive, featuring demos and new footage of anticipated titles including God of War 3, and the 256-player M.A.G., as well as surprise titles Final Fantasy XIV Online, Agent from Rockstar, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for PlayStation Portable. The montage of videos was almost overwhelming, a barrage of exclusive and non-exclusive titles.
PlayStation Portable Go was unveiled, to the surprise of no one. Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai called it, "The worst kept secret of E3." All the leaked details were proven true, with an October 1 launch at $249. Kazunori Yamauchi introduced long-delayed Gran Turismo PSP, which would be released the same day as the PSP Go. The PSP will also support direct downloads of videos, rather than only from the PS3 or a PC, including content from new partners like Showtime, E!, and UFC.
Then Sony trotted out its new Motion Controller. Two developers came on stage and held little wands with glowing balls on the end which glowed different colors. The PlayStation Eye camera tracked the balls in three dimensions, and mimicked the movement on screen. They swung weapons, picked up objects, painted graffiti, and fought skeletons in a series of demos. But the tech felt unpolished compared to Microsoft's Project Natal. The strange looking wands were referred to as, "Engineering Prototypes"--meaning we're not likely to see them in stores this year.
But Sony overcame the awkwardness of the Motion Controller and rounded out with a good showing--even if they failed to announce the hoped for slim model PlayStation or even a price cut for the existing PS3.
The rumors proved true: Microsoft is bringing motion a capture device to the Xbox 360. The company also announced that Xbox Live will support social networking via Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm.
Along with the usual flood of new game details--including Halo: Reach, Left 4 Dead 2, and Metal Gear Solid: Rising--Microsoft announced today during E3 that players will be able to send screenshots from Xbox Live directly to their Facebook accounts. Twitter messaging will be integrated within Live, bringing 140 character trash talk quotient to new levels. And players will also be able to listen to their Last.fm playlists from the Xbox Live dashboard as well as during game play. All of these features will become available in the fall.
Xbox Live will become even more social with a new feature called Live Party where users can watch streaming videos together over the online service, their avatars sitting in a sports-stadium-like venue and chatting as the video plays. Microsoft has also re-named the Xbox Live video service to Zune Video (even though there was no Zune player update announced). The videos are upgraded in resolution from 720p to 1080p, and from downloads to streaming.
Microsoft also revealed Project Natal, the codename for a future peripheral that brings 3-D motion control to Xbox 360--but there was no release date or pricing announced for the phantom peripheral. The device incorporates a camera and microphone that sits atop your television, similar to the Wii's motion bar, and registers a players' movements and voice commands. Unlike the PlayStation EyeToy, which can only read gestures in two planes, the Natal device will be able to sense motion along the traditional two dimensions as well as a third depth axis. This would allow voice and gesture control for both the Xbox Live interface and games--one demonstration showed a player deflecting a ball against a wall of blocks, with the player's avatar moving closer to the wall along with the player himself. A painting game showed similar interaction, as the player splashed paint on a wall, and had the camera take a picture of him (and another player) making the shape of an elephant to use as a stencil.
More impressive, was a game by Fable creator Peter Molyneux. In the demo, which was only shown on video, a player interacted with a young boy named Milo. The player talked to the artificial boy, who understood her words, and then reacted to them. They played together in a pond of fish, then he asked her to draw a fish. She drew a fish on a piece of paper, then held it up to the camera. Milo then reached off screen and held a digital copy of the paper. Molyneux said that this device will change gaming forever. Director Steven Spielberg, who is already working on a game using Natal, said: "The only way to bring interactive entertainment to everyone is to make the tech invisible."
The demonstrations were impressive, with a potential to change the industry. But with few concrete details, such as price, release date, or an actual product name, Project Natal remains science fiction for now.
Along with contributing the back page funnies in each month's issue of Fast Company magazine, a video from the Rooftop Comedy crew will be featured every Friday on fastcompany.com. RooftopComedy.com records live comedy every night of the year, with a global network of comedians satirizing everything from the boardroom to the bathroom.
You can see more of Rooftop Comedy's work by clicking here.
Think you're smarter than the average game show contestant? Microsoft's 1 vs 100 game is your chance to prove it to everyone. It's also Microsoft's chance to prove that Xbox Live can captivate a mainstream audience with a game that is far different from a Halo death match.
Based on the short-lived NBC game show of the same name, 1 vs 100 will have a 13-week season. The two-hour-long shows will take place on Friday and Saturday nights, and is hosted by comedian and voice actor Chris Cashman. Each installment features a player, the One, who is trying to outsmart 100 players in the Mob by rapidly answering trivia questions with multiple choice answers. The longer the player survives, the more Microsoft Points he earns when he walks away: staring at 200 Points ($2.50) and ramping up to 10000 ($125) by defeating all 100 players in the Mob. But if the Mob defeats the One, then everyone the player hasn't knocked out of the Mob earns an Xbox Live Arcade game. There are others players are in the Crowd, where the top 3 scorers in each game will earn the Arcade game. And each answer earns the Crowd an entry into a sweepstakes, for undisclosed huge-mega-prizes, that will be held in the middle and at the end of the season. As 1 vs 100's director Jo Clowes said, "It brings the best elements of TV and combines them with the best elements of games."
Part of the appeal of the game is the way a player becomes the One. Every aspiring player begins answering questions as one of the thousands in the Crowd. If they answer the trivia quickly and accurately, then they may move into the Mob, and can even be picked to be the One if they are good enough. Each game has a dozen or so rounds, which means a player could possibly move from the Crowd, to the Mob, to the One in a single evening. To improve each player's chances, there are 30-minute Extended Play episodes where the entire game takes place in the Crowd and the live game isn't taking place--think of these as qualifying rounds. The score from Extended Play is applied to the next live game, and earn a player entry into the sweepstakes as well. The way a player is judged to be picked for the live game will be reset each week, so players can come and ago without feeling penalized for not playing every single week.
1 vs 100 can be played by four players together, either locally or as a party online, and Microsoft's goal is for families and friends to play together. It is a cliché that housewives and grandmothers watch game shows, but with cute avatars and real prizes, 1 vs 100 could appeal to a segment of that market with game-savvy spouses or children.
The game felt like a live game show during my preview, the live host Chris Cashman was humorous and there was even the occasional commercial (Sprint and Honda) which increased the sense of realism. The game is free for Xbox Live subscribers, but the real goal is to make further headway into living rooms with casual games that appeal to the entire family. Take that Nintendo.
Along with contributing the back page funnies in each month's issue of Fast Company magazine, a video from the Rooftop Comedy crew will be featured every Friday on fastcompany.com. RooftopComedy.com records live comedy every night of the year, with a global network of comedians satirizing everything from the boardroom to the bathroom.
You can see more of Rooftop Comedy's work by clicking here.
In his recent address at the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner, comedian and proud nerd John Hodgman mused that Barack Obama may be the first nerd president of the modern era. The conventional wisdom during the campaign, of course, was that Obama was 
How do you measure the effectiveness of a game, beyond the monetary value alone?
You talked again about the 10-year cycle and the future, but recently you said we focus too much on tomorrow and not enough on today. 
Another long-term strategy for you seems to be downloadable games. You had 
Sony unveiled the PSP Go, a motion controller, and a slew of impressive titles--including a new one from Rockstar, creators of the Grand Theft Auto franchise--during today's E3 video game expo. While Nintendo, maker of the leading Wii console, failed to generate much enthusiasm at its press conference.
Nintendo did reveal that several new DS games will include user-generated content that can be shared wirelessly or downloaded from the DSi store (including Wario Ware DYI and animation creator FlipNotes Studio). And the DSi will soon being able to upload photos to Facebook, continuing E3's social media sharing trend.
Thankfully Nintendo also introduced two new Mario titles: Super Mario Galaxy 2 and New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. And James Patterson's Women's Murder Club, which is a unique title catering to female gamers, looks promising. The real surprise was Metroid: Other M, a new title in the series that promises more story than any of the previous Metroid games. With Metroid, Nintendo closed with a bang, even if it was a staid showing overall.
PlayStation Portable Go was unveiled, to the surprise of no one. Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai called it, "The worst kept secret of E3." All the 
Along with the usual flood of new game details--including Halo: Reach, Left 4 Dead 2, and Metal Gear Solid: Rising--Microsoft announced today during E3 that players will be able to send screenshots from Xbox Live directly to their Facebook accounts. Twitter messaging will be integrated within Live, bringing 140 character trash talk quotient to new levels. And players will also be able to listen to their Last.fm playlists from the Xbox Live dashboard as well as during game play. All of these features will become available in the fall.
Xbox Live will become even more social with a new feature called Live Party where users can watch streaming videos together over the online service, their avatars sitting in a sports-stadium-like venue and chatting as the video plays. Microsoft has also re-named the Xbox Live video service to Zune Video (even though there was no Zune player update announced). The videos are upgraded in resolution from 720p to 1080p, and from downloads to streaming.
Based on the short-lived NBC game show of the same name, 1 vs 100 will have a 13-week season. The two-hour-long shows will take place on Friday and Saturday nights, and is hosted by comedian and voice actor Chris Cashman. Each installment features a player, the One, who is trying to outsmart 100 players in the Mob by rapidly answering trivia questions with multiple choice answers. The longer the player survives, the more Microsoft Points he earns when he walks away: staring at 200 Points ($2.50) and ramping up to 10000 ($125) by defeating all 100 players in the Mob. But if the Mob defeats the One, then everyone the player hasn't knocked out of the Mob earns an Xbox Live Arcade game. There are others players are in the Crowd, where the top 3 scorers in each game will earn the Arcade game. And each answer earns the Crowd an entry into a sweepstakes, for undisclosed huge-mega-prizes, that will be held in the middle and at the end of the season. As 1 vs 100's director Jo Clowes said, "It brings the best elements of TV and combines them with the best elements of games."
Part of the appeal of the game is the way a player becomes the One. Every aspiring player begins answering questions as one of the thousands in the Crowd. If they answer the trivia quickly and accurately, then they may move into the Mob, and can even be picked to be the One if they are good enough. Each game has a dozen or so rounds, which means a player could possibly move from the Crowd, to the Mob, to the One in a single evening. To improve each player's chances, there are 30-minute Extended Play episodes where the entire game takes place in the Crowd and the live game isn't taking place--think of these as qualifying rounds. The score from Extended Play is applied to the next live game, and earn a player entry into the sweepstakes as well. The way a player is judged to be picked for the live game will be reset each week, so players can come and ago without feeling penalized for not playing every single week.
The game felt like a live game show during my preview, the live host Chris Cashman was humorous and there was even the occasional commercial (Sprint and Honda) which increased the sense of realism. The game is free for Xbox Live subscribers, but the real goal is to make further headway into living rooms with casual games that appeal to the entire family. Take that Nintendo.
