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Tomorrow's World

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It's over. But still to come...

  • Darren Waters
  • 10 Mar 07, 03:54 AM

My week in San Francisco and the Valley is at an end.

I've met Google, Mozilla, HP Labs, four different start-up firms - Meebo, Zooomr, Stumble Upon, Yelp - as well as had a tour of Industrial Light & Magic, sat in on a New Tech Meet Up and attended three days of the Game Developer's Conference.

But there is plenty more material to come from this trip.

I'll be writing in-depth about Industrial Light & Magic, doing a series looking at the bright, young things of the web 2.0 space, investigating why this area produces so much great technology, looking at the future of the browser and delving into a camera technology which may revolutionise surveillance.

I'll also be writing about the hottest games firm at the GDC - Media Molecule - and looking at the issue of PC gaming piracy.

We'll also be updating the Valley mash-up map.

Let us know your thoughts on the blog, the coverage and what's to come from the trip.

All civil comments are welcome and even the uncivil ones are read.

Impressive, most impressive

  • Darren Waters
  • 10 Mar 07, 03:23 AM

For any cinema-loving, technology geek of a certain age visiting the home of Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco is a little like coming home.

Outside the firm's office in the Presidio area of the city, master Yoda greets visitors sat atop a fountain.

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The offices are part-cutting edge studio, part-museum of film history.

Around each and every corner you will find a treasure of cinema - and not just LucasFilm history. A poster of a James Bond movie is next to a display cabinet with a model from Jurassic Park.

Models, creatures, spaceships, light sabres are on display along each and every corridor. Matte paintings, concept art and even a giant model of the dish of the Starship Enterprise are on show to inspire staff and impress visitors.

The original compositing machine for Star Wars - that layered finished effects onto film - is kept behind a glass cabinet.

The effects team working hard on the third Pirates of the Caribbean film have turned their offices into a living, breathing buccaneer's galley with flags of the jolly roger seen at every turn - although I was under strict instructions "not to look at anything".

I was visiting for a feature for the 大象传媒 News website on how IL&M has stayed at the cutting edge of visual effects - what technologies are they using to pioneer new cinema history in the making?

But of course, like any organisation, it is the people that make it a success and IL&M has the very best of engineers, artists, producers and so on.

As I walked down the corridors I passed someone who was later pointed out to me as the winner of eight Oscars.

The man who co-created Photoshop with his brother, John Knoll, still works at IL&M and recently brought home the Oscar for visual effects for Pirates 2. I also met the other recipient of that award, Hal Hickel, who seemed more than happy for the 大象传媒 to just swing by unannounced.

I also had the chance to meet the robot who cleans the floors of the IL&M server room. Can you guess who it is?

Confessions and discussions

  • Darren Waters
  • 9 Mar 07, 06:24 PM

Have you ever played that cultural confession game in which you admit to which classic books or films you haven't read or watched?

I'll begin - I've never read Ullyses (I started it....) and I have never watched The Hidden Fortress.

Have you ever played that game but referencing video games?

If the answer is yes, you are probably in a minority. If the answer is no, then you are probably not a gamer and safely in the majority.

So is there such a thing as genuine video game culture?

I'm not questioning the cultural value of games but asking if the consumption, playing, and creation of games generates a culture.

I ask because I just attended a session that was predicated entirely on a affirmative answer to that question.

The Meta Game session was a panel quiz in which gaming luminaries and games academics competed in two mixed teams in the Meta Game - establishing a series of assertions and counter assertions about two selected video games.

It worked like this - each team moved across a board made up of counters representing different video games. Each move between counters generates an assertion - such as "is more culturally sophisticated" or "has better than writing" - and the teams must try and produce a move which results in an assertion that favours their side.

But in order for the game to work it relied on having a panel and audience that has a high level of gaming cultural sophistication.

Does Everquest tell a better story than World of Warcraft? Is Asteroids more social than Lemmings?

In a room full of gaming developers and journalists, of course we had no problem debating these questions.

But the debate itself is the interesting thing - because, I believe, that increasing the sophistication of the discussion we have about video games, we increase the sophistication of gaming itself.

Video games have emerged as cultural form with little of the rules and tradition that art, books, music and even film, now take for granted.

The debate around cinema in the 1950s led to increasingly sophisticated cinema in the 1970s.

Developers need to understand where they are going wrong to understand where they are going right.

There are too few "thinkers" in the games industry but that is changing as the nature of the discussion around gaming grows more complex and satisfying.

So back to confession time... I have never played Final Fantasy VII or the Zork trilogy.

Your turn...


60 second soap box

  • Darren Waters
  • 9 Mar 07, 01:25 AM

One of the reasons that San Francisco flourishes as a hub of technology is because there is a great network of like-minded people.

I attended the last night where tech firms pitched their ideas to an audience made up of tech lovers, possible investors, journalists and bloggers.

Questions were thrown at the presenters - and no mercy is shown. These companies have to know their stuff.

It was akin to a live Dragon's Den - the 大象传媒 Two business ideas show. But this is something firms in San Francisco live day in and day out.

They are in the den every day of their working lives. For every great start-up idea there are 10 others just as good, and 100 others that are not too shabby.

I'll be writing about this aspect of SF tech life in a feature next week but I wanted to report on one element - the 60 Second Soap Box.

This was the chance of anyone in the audience to pitch an idea, ask a question, make a declaration.

And it was an eye-opener.

There were programmers looking for jobs, CEOs looking for programmers, companies looking for investment and even a philosopher who thought he could help firms grow.

"Think about want you need to make, not what you can make," he said.

Sound advice.

Gaming's wife-o-meter

  • Darren Waters
  • 8 Mar 07, 09:19 PM

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto confessed today that he used a "wife-o-meter" to test if gaming was being opened up to new audiences.

At a packed conference hall in San Francisco he said his wife had never shown any interest in gaming.

But by broadening the types of games that Nintendo produced he had seen his wife become a "hard core gamer".

"She has now accepted video games as part of her daily life - and begun to understand the new interactive experience in video gaming," he said.

Some female gamers will feel patronised by this, I'm sure. I know I was taken to task for a review I wrote of the Nintendo Wii when I extolled how it had brought my wife to a console for the first time.

The gaming industry remains largely male-dominated and gaming is primarily done by teenage boys.
I've read plenty of surveys which say women are playing lots of games, mainly casual games, but my own experience is very different.

I know of only a handful of women who play video games. I know I shouldn't generalise based on personal experience - but it's hard not to.

At the GDC men outnumber women by about 50 to 1.

So are women happy with the experiences they are being served up? What do you think of the wife-o-meter?

Is gaming something that still needs spousal approval?


Time for a story

  • Darren Waters
  • 8 Mar 07, 04:51 PM

Warren Spector is one of the games industry's most influential thinkers - he also makes fine video games such as Deus Ex.

So when he talks people listen - generally.

He was at GDC to talk about story telling and to follow up a lecture he gave three years ago.

Has the industry improved its story-telling? That was the key question.

And his answer - yes, but not enough to really count.

Games are powerful vehicles for stories but often they fail because of poor writing, poor dialogue, poor character creation, poor environments and often because they are trying to be film-like in their approach.

"I want the opportunity to play a game and not play the part of Vin Diesel," he said, bemoaning the types of lead characters in games.

"That is the only role we give people."

He said that game designers had to give gamers worlds to play in, not sets.

"If I can see a door I want to go through it," he said.

He said advances in graphics technology and processing power was actually damaging narration.

He argued that focusing on more detailed environments and worlds meant less time was being focused on characters and story-telling.

"We are going to have to take more chances. Good stories are what will attract new gamers in."

He pointed out that video games were the only medium to make use of music, sound, still images, moving images and interactive worlds.

"Let players explore the external world and their inner lives," he said.

And he quoted author Jonathan Rauch of Sex, Lies and Videogames, who said: "In a standard video game, it鈥檚 very easy to kill someone but virtually impossible to talk to them."

So what do you think of games' story-telling ability? How can they improve?


Follow my Silicon Valley trip

  • Darren Waters
  • 8 Mar 07, 11:01 AM

We're trying something new on the blog - a Google map, Flickr mash-up.

I'll be marking some of the points of interest of my visit to San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Click on the way points for more information - and to link to related content on the 大象传媒 News website and elsewhere on the blog.
If you zoom into street level - you'll see that the markers point to places I've visited.

Some of the markers in San Francisco are very close to each other - so make sure you zoom in to find the clusters of locations.

Let us know what you think. Don't judge us too harshly - it's an experiment, after all!

A whole new world?

  • Darren Waters
  • 7 Mar 07, 09:37 PM

The great things about video games is that it is perhaps the only creative art form that continues to push the boundaries that define it.

At the Sony press conference today the firm unveiled a title being developed by a new company called Media Molecule.

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Its first proper title LittleBigPlanet is perhaps one of the most dazzling demos I've seen in the last 10 years.

The concept is simple - build your own levels/worlds with a very simple tool set and with extremely cute characters and then play in that world and share it with others online.

It has been done before but never with such panache, never with such charisma and such ingenuity.

The game has a visceral feel - thanks to a great physics engine - and it also has an abundance of character.

Sony has a huge hit on its hands here although frustratingly it won't be available until the Autumn - and then only in demo form on the PlayStation network.

I'm guessing that Sony wanted to get something of the game into the hands of users as soon as possible.

The response to the game in the conference hall was ecstatic - this is an industry that has "seen it all before" but many left with the sense that LittleBigPlanet was something special.

The community aspect of the game is also interesting - users can comment, favourite and play other gamers' levels.

It taps into the vision Sony has of community experiences through gaming - a service they are calling Home.

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Essentially it is Second Life meets video games - but more importantly it differentiates Sony's online offering from Microsoft's.

It is three dimensional, interactive and incorporates social networking functionality.

After seeing a demo of Home, I have to say that Xbox Live now looks a little last generation.

Has Sony pulled a rabbit out of its hat?

Possibly. Now if only they could make the machine more affordable.


Has Sony lost its way?

  • Darren Waters
  • 7 Mar 07, 05:15 AM

Phil Harrison, Sony's head of worldwide studios, has just delivered a press conference ahead of his keynote session at the GDC on Wednesday.

I can't tell you what he said because everyone had to sign a non-disclosure agreement which holds until tomorrow.

Bonkers? Welcome to Sony's world.

Much of the talk here before the press conference was about a new PlayStation 3 feature Harrison was expected to reveal and whether or not it can lift what has been a pretty moribund launch period for Sony.

Sony's point of view of course is quite different - they would argue that the console was a launch smash hit, that it had a great reception from fans, and is the best piece of gaming hardware in history.

But most neutral observers would agree that the launch of PS3 has been somewhat flat and more worryingly believe that if Sony does not get its act together soon it could be in danger of losing its position as the console king.

So what are the problems?

The company's inability to deliver on its promises is well documented. The PS3 was over-hyped and talk of a global, simultaneous roll out and of the HD era "starting when we say so" made the company look a little arrogant.

But once the machine was out of the factory and in the shops many felt that the natural order of things would see Sony once again dominating the industry.

But the firm continues to stumble.

The launch line-up of games has been average, and key titles are still on the distant horizon.
Europes look to have been treated shabbily and the company has even been falling out with its own core audience.

Sony also faces competition from a rejuvenated Nintendo and a slick Microsoft. It is all so different from the 1990s when the market was in a fractured state and ripe for the taking.

Recently Sony Computer Entertainment America and enormously popular blog because the website printed a rumour that Sony didn't want published.

Sony threatened to black ball the site but quickly relented once they realised what fools they were looking and the negative press it was garnering.

The company also took a big hit when the pricing for Europe was announced. Everyone had been expecting a figure of 拢425 but once confirmed the figure seemed more real, and just, well, expensive.

Two weeks ago when Sony issued information about the of the PS3 in Europe the press release made it sound as though Europeans were being handed some hobbled piece of vapourware.

The release said: "Rather than concentrate on PS2 backwards compatibility, in the future, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3, truly taking advantage of this exciting technology."

Er...what?

Perhaps they ought to have pointed out that more than 1,000 PS2 titles will be able to be played on the PS3. Surely that's good news and not the management speak which seemed to be trying to hide really bad news?

The biggest issue Sony faces is a creeping apathy that is surrounding the firm. Even if things are not all that bad, there is a perception taking root that the company is in trouble.

And the sad thing is that the PlayStation 3 itself is a really great machine - or at least it will be once Sony stops rolling out updates that it should have incorporated into the machine at launch.

Can Sony stop the rot? Is it game over?

Hardly.

Christmas 2007 will be a bloody battleground. Microsoft can afford to cut the price of Xbox 360 further and while a price cut for PS3 is inevitable, Sony does not have the deep pockets of its competitor from Redmond.

Can Xbox 360 stay ahead of the pack? Can Nintendo's Wii prove to be more than just a party game? And will Sony recover its position?

I'll get back to you.


Start me up....

  • Darren Waters
  • 6 Mar 07, 03:59 PM

What is it about the culture and climate of Silicon Valley that produces so many start-up firms?

It's a question I'll be looking at for a feature on the 大象传媒 News website.

Is it the critical mass effect? Is it the proximity of Stanford and Berkeley?

What makes a bunch of 20-somethings want to risk their livelihoods on a whacky idea?

And is it unique to the Valley? Does Britain produce its fair share of new tech firms?

"No-one considers you a failure because you've had a failure," was how one head of a start-up explained it.

I'm talking this week to companies like Meebo, Zooomr, Yelp and Stumble Upon who all have one thing in common - their founders are young, bright and bold.

I'll be profiling these execs in a series starting next week on the website.

I'm keen to hear of any other examples and your reasons for this remarkable concentration of talent.

Welcome to Google World

  • Darren Waters
  • 6 Mar 07, 02:16 AM

A beach volleyball court, a dinosaur skeleton and gaudy parasols aplenty - it must be the Google campus.

On the way over in a cab the driver gave me a clear indication of how Google had grown.

"A few years ago there was just one building I took people to, now they own the whole town."

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That is something of an exaggeration but the Google real-estate empire does extend quite a way down the length of one of the main arteries in Mountain View.

I am visiting Building 43 - which also gives a sense of how much the Mountain View "start-up" has grown.

Ostensibly I am here to meet with Chris Dibona, the firm's head of open source - and I'll be writing a feature based on our interview - but it's also a good opportunity to gawp from inside of the perimeter of one of the world's most powerful firms.

Everything about Google screams transparency - the buildings are "guarded" by a single security officer outside each building, who sits beneath a Google-monikered parasol.

There is an abundance of open space, courtyards, quadrangles, forums, and the buildings themselves are uncluttered, mixing functionality and hi-tech feng shui. Staff whizz between buildings on electric mini-scooters.

White boards are dotted throughout and the famous "help yourself" juice counters are also in evidence.

Lunch is free for employees and there's more choice than one would find in a small town.

Everywhere there are examples of the legendary 20% scheme that Google operates - letting engineers spend a fifth of their time pursuing personal projects.

On one plasma screen a spinning globe shows search engine queries to Google made in real time - Google is global, the globe is Google's is the message. It was created by one of the engineers in his 20% time.

Visiting authors have signed a near-by white board, among them Stephen Levy and what looks like Neil Gaiman. Hanging from the ceiling is a replica of SpaceshipOne..... At least I think it is a replica....

The Google empire also extends to the airwaves of Mountain View - the wi-fi variety anyway.

Open a laptop in Mountain View anywhere and you are invited to join the free Google wi-fi network.

It's a municipal wi-fi service that brings the on-demand world to everyone, everywhere in the city environs.

It's a transformative technology and one being adopted across the US - San Francisco will soon have Google wi-fi - and other firms/local authorities are implementing similar schemes in the UK.

Check email, make a VOIP call and of course search - wi-fi is becoming a utility like power.

This is Google world and if you are technology lover it is hard not to be impressed by the culture, the scale and the reach.

Down in the Valley

  • Darren Waters
  • 5 Mar 07, 04:16 PM

"This is CalTrain 12 your baby bullet."

I'm down in Silicon Valley, riding the rails to meet some firms that are instrumental to how we live our digital lives now, and in the future.

The first stop is Mountain View, and at first glance it appears to be a sleepy town with a quaint railway station, clad with clapper boards and a main street of one-storey shops, restaurants and cafes.

But there's something different about this place; you can see it the age of the people descending from the trains. Most seem to be mid 20s, clutching Crumpler or Timbuktu laptop bags.
There is also a host of shuttle buses waiting to take people to offices, idling in the car park.

You can feel the difference too in the coffee shops, all of which seem to offer free wireless (Britain: take note).

Like many of the stops along the CalTrain route - Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Sunny Vale - Mountain View has a resonance with technology lovers.

This town is home to Google, Mozilla, Sun Microsystems, Adobe and a host of other tech firms, big and small.

It's the first two companies I'm interested in because I'm meeting with them today, meeting Google's open source lead Chris DiBona and Mozilla's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer and Chris Beard, the vp of products.

Silicon Valley has changed enormously in the 36 years since the term was first used to describe this corridor of towns south of San Francisco to San Jose.

The term was created by journalist Don Hoefler in 1971, who spotted the proliferation of chip firms in the area. Now of course the term refers to all hi-tech activity and not just microprocessor production.

More recently Silicon Valley has seen the rise and fall and rise again of web firms, of which Google is the greatest success story.

I'll also be visiting some of the smaller players such as Meebo, the web instant messaging firm, as part of a series looking at some of the bright young things in the web space.

But there are so many bright young things here in Mountain View I could probably pull up a chair next to anyone in any coffee house here in Mountain View and get deep into conversation about web standards, dotcom 2.0 and XML.

It's going to be an interesting day in the valley.

The name of the game

  • Darren Waters
  • 5 Mar 07, 06:22 AM

If I were to list the following names; Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese, Hitchcock, Ford, you would know I was talking about famous film directors.

But if I were to say Kojima, Miyamoto, Molyneux, Newell, Spector and Wright, would you know I was talking about leading game developers?

Perhaps if you were immersed in gaming, you would recognise the names. But even then, would you buy a game purely on the strength of the name of the developer?

Jamil Moledina, who runs the Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco, believes we are on the verge of the rise of the celebrity developer.

These figures are so well-known, he argues, that people will buy games purely on the strength of their names.

Certainly it is true, for example, that Will Wright's forthcoming title Spore will sell on the track record of Wright himself and I would expect publisher Electronic Arts to make great play of his name in any marketing.

But do we want celebrity game developers? Is it accurate to laud one individual above the scores of others involved in the creation of a game.

Film directors have not always been seen as the ultimate creative talent in film production; for decades the director was "just another" hired hand, no different from the cinematographer or director of photography.

The film critics of the 1950s changed all that - placing directors such as Hitchcock and Truffaut on pedestals, from which few directors have ever stood down.

Game development is no different, It is of course a team process, involving scores of people with different technical and creative talents.

Leading developer Dave Perry is trying a different approach entirely - he is trying to harness the creative talent of the masses to provide the fabric and texture of the next Massively Multiplayer role playing game he is developing. It's called "crowd sourcing"; the internet-enabled trend of using the weight of numbers to solve a problem that few could solve alone.

I'll be writing about Perry's vision later this week. What is clear that, at least for the marketeers, a name is something to "hang a peg on".

So whatever the truth, expect to see a much bigger marketing push around named developers in the coming 12 months.

Do you have favourite developers? Or are franchises more important?

Go west... and play games

  • Darren Waters
  • 1 Mar 07, 02:27 PM

Does the 大象传媒 "get" video gaming? I ask because I'm heading out to the next week - an event we have never staffed before.

I ask also because I'm a passionate gamer and I know there is no dedicated gaming portal on bbc.co.uk - although you will find one for arts, film, movies and books.

Nor is there a TV programme or radio show devoted to games.

So, the 大象传媒 doesn't care about gaming? Well, I don't think that's strictly true.

Collective, the 大象传媒's interactive culture magazine, has a regular section set aside for gaming and also reviews titles.

And like any large organisation, the 大象传媒 is full of gamers - although some are more nervous than others when it comes to revealing their pastime.

Within the technology team of the news website conversation often turns to recent gaming exploits - I was recently delighted to have broken 1,000 gamer score points on Xbox Live. (And yes, I know how pitiful a score that is to some people).

My colleague Mark creeps away to Azeroth, and the World of Warcraft, whenever he can elude family matters.

On the Technology section we used to do a weekly games review but recently decided to drop it.

More proof of a gaming apathy? The truth is we didn't have the resources to do games reviews often enough or well enough. There are so many other great websites doing reviews - my own favourites being Eurogamer and Gamespot - that we didn't want to offer something half-baked.

I asked myself if the best use of resources we have was to do the occasional review? And the answer was a simple "no".

But we haven't abandoned games coverage; in fact, the reverse is true. I'm determined we do MORE games coverage than ever, using the access that the 大象传媒 has to do better features, in more depth.

One of the team is on a dedicated games feature assignment - although that's only lasting a month to get the ball rolling. From that point on we'll be ensuring games journalism is as important as any other part of technology news.

And this is what takes me west - to the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco. It's a massive event that signals the way ahead for an enormously important industry.

I'll be reporting on all the key sessions, establishing contacts and hopefully producing some quality material.

If there are any sessions you have seen that you feel we should attend, let me know.

And also feel free to comment on how you think the 大象传媒 as a whole should be covering video games.

I doubt we are going to see a prime-time gaming slot on 大象传媒 One any time soon. So how can we reflect this dynamic industry?

I'm sure you've got some strong opinions...

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