Wagner James Au has written a review of "Masters of Doom", the new book about id Software, for Salon.com (you'll have to click through an ad if you want to read all of it). He takes issue with how David Kushner, the author of the book, overstates the significance of id, ignoring the influence of Blue Sky's / Looking Glass's Ultima Underworld.

I kinda agree, but in my experience it's par for the course for books written by journalists about technology. You can't just write about the technology: you have to put it in the context of something as large and meaningful as possible if you want your book to be successful. What I like about Au's article is how he dismantles the illusion that first-person shooters were popular:

While many paid for the full registered version of the game, far more were happy just to enjoy the shareware version that was downloadable everywhere. "Ultima Underworld" and its 1993 sequel together sold almost half a million copies -- more, as it turns out, than "Wolfenstein 3-D" (150,000) and "Spear of Destiny" (135,000), the expanded retail version sold in stores. Despite this, the ubiquity of the shareware version helped foster the illusion that id's game was the real blockbuster.

This misperception was also true for "Doom": id sold just under 1.5 million copies of the registered version, but it's estimated that over 15 million copies of the shareware version were downloaded. In other words, id's games didn't seem so phenomenally popular because they were great -- rather, they seemed popular because they were pretty good games that were basically free.

But the game industry went ahead and gleaned the wrong lesson from it, dumping the market with derivative first-person shooters. From "Wolfenstein 3-D" in 1992 to now, an online game database counts over 500 FPS titles -- on average, a joyless churn rate of one per week, almost all of them irredeemably wack. Despite this deluge, total market share for the genre never exceeded 10 percent or so. (Wondering if they'd enjoyed an aggregate post-Doom surge in popularity, in the '90s, I double-checked with Douglas Lowenstein, president of the IDSA, the game industry's lead advocacy group. "Through the mid and late 1990s," he e-mails me, "first-person shooters were a small portion of the total PC game market and they remain a niche market today.") And even id's games were significantly outsold in the mid-90's by crossover titles "Myst" and "Microsoft Flight Simulator.

This is the damage done by the hard-core gamers (both in- and outside of the industry) - as first perceived by Chris Crawford in 1991. This is not to say that id Software is the root of all evil, but it's interesting to look back at the hype of the last ten years and the consequences it had.

The current reduced posting frequency is caused by the nice sunshine outside, and the nice Zelda: The Wind Waker inside.

German court rules against EA's FIFA 2002.

FIFA World Cup 2002 must be removed from sale. EA made 15M Euro on sales - now at least one featured player wants some of that money. This looks like a very interesting court case.

(I can't believe GamesIndustry.biz didn't use that wrath pun, especially since they misspelled Kahn's name.)

Interactive Software Federation of Europe

Behind the Pan European Games Information (PEGI) age rating system is a shadowy organization called the Interactive Software Federation of Europe or ISFE. I call it shadowy because I've only heard about it once until now and I couldn't find anything on the web. They have a website now. It looks like they're a lobbying group for the interactive entertainment industry, aimed at the European Union and the World Trade Organisation and the like.

I recently had lobbying in general and lobbying in Brussels in particular explained to me by a friend of mine who has done this for a living. It is apparently not as extremely money-oriented as lobbying in the US. I'm glad there appears to be someone representing the industry's interests in Brussels: the European industry can use all the help it can get.

It's not a new subject in academia, but Wired has an article by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on how children develop their minds through the playing of videogames. And he's not just talking about improving hand-eye coordination.

It took surprisingly long. Or maybe it didn't, I wouldn't know. Beats that torture stuff that got all the press a few years ago.

(From ErosBlog. And no, this is not another blatant attempt to attract visitors by mentioning pr0n.)

The Pan European Games Information (PEGI) age rating system was recently introduced into the interactive entertainment markets of sixteen European countries.

Germany is not among them. Perhaps this is because the shiny new law to protect the young from media is incompatible with PEGI. I don't know, I haven't looked into the new law yet. It's already cause a lot of controversy. In any case, it looks as if the USK, the German age rating system, will stay around.

On the Dutch part of the site one can read:

"Het is het eerste Pan-Europese classificatiesysteem voor computer- en videospelletjes."

This means: "It is the first pan-European classification system for little computer and video games." or in German: "Es ist das erste pan-Europaeische Klassifikationssystem fuer Computer- und Video-Spielchen."

The diminutive form, which is very easy to use in Dutch, is ALWAYS used when talking about video games in the Netherlands. It drives me nuts... it's as if some kind of childish activity, and not a $%^&-ing ten billion dollar industry.

I honestly think this phenomenon is linked to the status of interactive entertainment in The Netherlands. This is why I left my home country in 1991 in order to pursue my career.

Ninja Tune is one of the few music labels I actually know better than their musicians. I buy their compilations on sight. And now they've teamed up with Sega's Shinobi. Sadly, it looks like Sega and/or Sony are just sponsoring a tour, there's not much more going on.

The Shinobi site features cool graphics and gesture recognition, but makes my browser crash.

The technology behind the Matrix sequels and game

Wired has an article on the reality-sampling technology behind The Matrix sequels and the computer game.

Shock, horror. The findings are not entirely unexpected:

"Over 60% of players were older than 19. About 85% of players were male. Fifteen percent of people play for more than 50 hours a week. A "significant minority" (15%) adopt a character gender opposite to their own."

But it's good to see some research along these lines.