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In honor of Sonic the Hedgehog’s 15th Anniversary, Sega of Japan has created a Papercraft version of the first zone in the original game, Green Hill Zone. Papercraft, or pepakura, is a popular hobby in Japan, where three-dimensional models are cut out from printed templates, and assembled.
Available on Sega of Japan’s Website, the PDF file, when printed, will allow gamers to recreate this nostalgic world in paper. A little knowledge of the Japanese language might help, but isn’t required. Some patience might be required, however. If the going gets tough, then less skilled gamers can be content with the smaller, simpler, Sonic icons in the package.
Read More 
| Sega of Japan
Gallery: Build Your Own Sonic Green Hill Zone
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The GameWorks arcade chain was originally a high-concept entertainment center, supported by some of the biggest names in the entertainment field at the time. The founding group included Dreamworks, Universal Studios, and Sega, all arguably at their peak. In the time since their first opening in 1996, the chain has fallen on hard times, and was recently acquired wholly by the new combined Sega-Sammy Group. Now, under this new leadership, the GameWorks concept is being re-worked. Gamasutra was able to talk with GameWorks vice president of sales and marketing Clint Manny. They discussed where the arcade chain had been, and where they are trying to go to in the future.
First, they discussed some of Sega’s arcade properties in Japan, such as Mushiking and Derby Owners Club, and how those are going to be brought to the United States. Mushiking has been somewhat of an arcade phenomenon in Japan, combining the addictive natures of arcade game play with the equally addicting collectible card game format. Clint reveals that the Mushiking series is being actively pursued in America, with a dedicated team working on its release. In addition, other titles like Love & Berry are being investigated for US release as well.
In addition, Sega hopes to revitalize the arcade format in America. There are success formulas in the United States; the Dave & Buster’s restaurant and arcade chain seems to be doing reasonably well. Some of Sega’s moves seem to be targeting moving towards that format with the Arena Sports Bar & Grill concept. Sega also hopes that by focusing on exclusive arcade experiences like big screens, interactive gaming, and platforms with custom hardware, that they can lure the customer back into the arcade.
Overall, their turnaround plan focuses on the Arena Sports Bar concept, pumping more money in arcade machines into the locations, and refining their location selection process. The article on Gamasutra goes heavily into detail for all of these plans, and is well worth the read for those gamers who remember the arcades of old and who wonder where arcade gaming is going in the future.
Read More | Gamasutra.com
Gallery: Can Sega Resurrect GameWorks?
EA’s Bing Gordon Opens Casuality Game Conference
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Internet, PC, Wii, Xbox 360,
Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Electronic Arts opened the 2006 Casuality game conference as keynote speaker. The three day game conference opened June 27, in Seattle, and focuses on the growing role that casual gaming is playing in more and more people’s lives. Gamasutra provided coverage of the keynote.
Gordon opened by underscoring the vast numbers of people playing casual games; members of EA’s Club Pogo gaming service logged over 225 million hours of game time in 2004. While casual gaming appears to be a growing category, playtime was still dwarfed by Blizzard’s MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The market also doesn’t monetize as well as larger media like TV, the former averages “6.6 hours watched a day at 21 cents an hour” while casual games pull “24 minutes played a day at 5 cents an hour.”
Gordon also emphasized the roles that scoring systems play in establishing the community, and encouraging further game play. Club Pogo’s two status symbols are game “badges” and points. The game badges are highly sought after within the Pogo community, and appear to be a pre-cursor to the “achievements” offered over Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Similarly, point counts “provide a sense of place and rank in a community.” Pogo users can trade their points for real-world items, but many don’t, preferring to keep their status levels.
On casual game development, in Gordon’s eyes, game playability and accessibility rules over the games “beauty.” The advantages of the casual game development cycle and the relative simplicity of the play mechanics makes it easier to experiment with game play balance through rapid prototyping. This allows developers to quickly iterate through play styles.
Gordon clearly seeks to emphasize the importance of community in the casual game sphere; when a game is easy to pick up and play, there are low barriers to entry for new offerings in the category. If a publisher can lock in users through community, this will help succeed in the casual gaming sphere.
With casual gaming garnering more attention, online, in places like the Xbox Live Arcade, and with Nintendo’s Touch Generations offerings, the competition for gamers will only become more intense.
Read More | Gamasutra.com
Gallery: EA’s Bing Gordon Opens Casuality Game Conference
Take-Two: Another Day, Another Lawsuit
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Culture, PC, PlayStation 2, Politics, Xbox,
It has been a bad couple of weeks for Take-Two Interactive Software, but probably good for their lawyers. Take-Two recently announced via news release that the District Attorney of the County of New York had served the company with grand jury subpoenas. The documents, according to the release, cover knowledge of the “hot coffee” content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as well as details of financial records relating to:
…termination of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and retention of Ernst & Young LLP; acquisitions by the Company in 2005; certain compensation and human resources documents with respect to the Company and certain of its current and former officers and directors; and documents concerning the activities of the Company’s Board of Directors and Committees thereof.
Take-Two also declares that neither individuals, nor the company are the target of the investigation. Given the controversy over the “hot coffee” mod, and the past problems Take-Two has had with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it seems that the District Attorney believes that there is something worth pursuing.
On top of this, more legal action has been brought against the company, this time due to content in Rockstar’s game, The Warriors. According to the New York Daily News, Roger Hill, the actor who played the gang leader Cyrus in the movie, has filed suit against both Rockstar and Take-Two. The suit seeks $250,000 in damages and an injunction against using his likeness in the game. Take-Two issued a statement to the Daily News that the company has a valid license for any actor’s likeness.
Read More 
| New York Daily News
Read More | Take Two Interactive
Gallery: Take-Two: Another Day, Another Lawsuit
American Apparel Opens Store In Second Life
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Accessories, Corporate News, Culture, Internet, MMORPG, PC,
Mark Wallace over at 3pointD is reporting on one of the first real-world brands to enter the fake-world domain. American Apparel, known mainly for producing sweatshop-free, made in the USA T-shirts and hiring a porn star or two for their marketing campaigns has opened up shop in the virtual world of Second Life. The clothes being sold in the virtual store, much like American Apparel’s real offerings, will include somewhat-revealing, colorful t-shirts and will similarly retail at “high-priced reasonable”. The brand has been receiving some help from the popular in-world brand *PREEN*, created by Aimee Weber.
The store itself has some very cool features. The design and layout is based on the hip, minimalist glass-box style of the American Apparel Tokyo store and features lighting that is scripted to change with the time of day. Inside the store, you’ll find familiar touches including rows of brightly-colored t-shirts displayed in the colors of the rainbow on industrial steel racks.
We’ll have to see whether brand recognition alone is enough to propel AA to the top of the Second Life economy. For a community that thrives on out-there clothing designs, AA’s minimalist duds would seem to be out-of-place. And it’s hard to hold the moral high-ground for sweatshop free clothing when you’re clothes don’t even have to be produced. Still, a lot of their success has come from creative advertising and clever marketing, and those skills may transfer well to the virtual world.
Read More | 3pointD.com
Gallery: American Apparel Opens Store In Second Life
Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated and several other big-name retailers have agreed to voluntary measures for handling the sales of video games. The measures are designed to keep explicit video game material intended for adult consumption out of the eager hands of those underage. As part of the new accord retailers will display explanatory signage defining the ratings, and have agreed not to sell “adult only” and “mature” games to minors. This will be audited in part by a “mystery shopper” program. Additionally, stores have agreed to refund money when games are inadvertently sold to minors in violation of their policies. The game industry agency, the Entertainment Software Rating Board or ESRB, announced details of the agreement.
Read More | Today's TVH
Gallery: Retailers Agree To Games Sales Rules
Canadian University To Offer Video Game Minor
Posted by Thea Davis Categories: Announcements, Culture,
UWO will offer a minor in video game design, becoming one of a few programs of this kind in Canada. As the video game industry is poised to expand exponentially in the next few years, this is a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor, as many game development companies look to hire those with official certification in the field. Game development is currently one of the top areas of computer science. In order to qualify for the minor, students need to be CS majors. The minor adds roughly eight specialized courses in addition to the regular CS core. Tell the parents not to worry; you really can make money from your video game habit.
Read More | London Free Press
Gallery: Canadian University To Offer Video Game Minor
Valve Software has published some of the statistics they have collected via Steam for the game play patterns of Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and there are some interesting facts that one can glean from the data. Between June 10, 2006 and June 23, 2006, 774,520 sessions of the game have been played. The completion time, as tracked by Valve, averages 4 hours, 57 minutes, which is very close to the advertised 5 hours of game play from the content. It would have been interesting to see the median completion time as well, so that one could get an idea of where the top half and bottom half of the completion times lie, but the data graph seems to bunch around the 4 hour mark, with a few stragglers hanging out at around 10 hours. Average total playtime is also interesting; at around 2 hours, this suggests that a number of people aren’t finishing the game, and may be leaving off or getting bored at around this time. It’s a little hard to make any real conclusions because there could be a number of recent purchasers of the game in the list.
Having statistics like the number of registered serial numbers versus time would be interesting, since Circuit City offered Episode 1 for $7.99 this week, one wonders if that generated a spike in users. Other numbers not included, possibly because they would be too proprietary or business model related, would be the general split between Steam downloaders and retail purchasers.
Still, the chart showing number of deaths per map is interesting, if only to show which levels seem to be the hardest for gamers to complete. There are definitely areas where the difficulty level doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference, but there are some where the spread between easy and hard is immense. The deaths per map also speaks somewhat to the pacing of the game; there is a definite arc to the challenge of the game, interspersed carefully with “breather” levels that allow a player to regroup. The data showing the highest level played also is interesting; nearly half of the players with the game have played to the final level, and there doesn’t seem to be any strong drop-offs that might indicate frustration with the game play, causing abandonment.
There’s a ton of data in the graphs presented, giving more insight into how people play games, and how game design can impact player experience.
Read More | Steampowered.com
Gallery: Half-Life 2: Episode 1 Statistics
Japanese site Game Watch has some UI shots of what looks like an extension to the Xbox Live interface, with something called “Xbox Friends.” From the screenshots, it looks like this is some kind of Macromedia Flash-based interface to finding and matching with friends online. Registration apparently opens on July 7th, in Japan, with users registering before July 10th getting entered in a drawing for Microsoft Points. The preview shots for the application seem to indicate that gamers will be able to search interactively for gamers with similar gamer profiles, with visual mapping indicating how close of a match they are, and then there is a “gamer score” view that allows you to compare your score with others. No word on whether similar functionality will be hitting other territories. Gamers interested in trying to decode more information should hit up their favorite online translation utility to try and find out more.
Read More | GameWatch Japan
Gallery: Xbox Friends in Japan?
Bungie Fanatic Builds Ultimate Halo Room
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360,
Bungie.net reports on very dedicated Halo fan Namloco’s “ultimate Halo room.” The room contains a ton of Halo memorabilia, a lot of it collected from eBay, but the thing that ties the room together is really the mural dominating the walls of the room. Proving his dedication to the temple of Bungie, he had the artwork for the cover of Edge Magazine transferred, larger than life, into his gaming den. The mural was copied from the original art by 4 artists, at a cost of approximately $2,000. Namloco isn’t finished yet, saying to Bungie, “No way am I done. I left a wall to the right of the Chief to expand. Maybe a life size gun rack in the pelican so visitors may have their weapon of choice on hand.”
Read More | Bungie.net
Gallery: Bungie Fanatic Builds Ultimate Halo Room
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