Nintendo Unifies Hardware Divisions

According to a report published on Nikkei.com, Japanese video game giant Nintendo plans to combine the development divisions for its home video game consoles and handheld systems. If true, the move would see employees from both divisions merge and relocate to a new development building now under construction near Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto, Japan.

Here is a partial translation of the original report:

“Game system development projects are becoming larger and taking longer to complete as the machines become more advanced. Nintendo apparently has its sights set on speeding up these projects by sharing development processes for consoles and handheld devices where possible and by reassigning personnel depending on the situation. It sees interactions between engineers as a potential hotbed of new ideas.” 

This is exciting news. Perhaps the move is designed simply to cut costs and boost Wii U and 3DS connectivity. But maybe this is the first step in a process meant to produce Nintendo's first handheld-console hybrid, a brand new portable system that "docks" with a television.

Scribblenauts Review

Game: Scribblenauts
System: Nintendo DS
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: 5th Cell
Release date: September 15, 2009 (NA)


Pros: Diverse puzzles, lots of replay value, brilliant premise

Cons: Imprecise stylus controls, frustrating at times

The idea of Scribblenauts is best summed up by its catchphrase: "Write Anything, Solve Everything." The purpose of the game is to solve a variety of puzzles using objects generated by the player. Scribblenauts provides the setting, the clues, and the questions; and it asks players to dream up the answers. So the game allows almost limitless options for each player, a simultaneously liberating and daunting scenario. It's one of the more creative and open games of the past ten years, and it delivers something that was previously thought impossible: the player is allowed to summon almost anything his mind can imagine. Yet Scribblenauts is not without flaws.

Scribblenauts is built around an engine called "Objectnaut," which assigns several properties to the tens of thousands of nouns available in the game. If the player writes "bicycle" into the word entry screen, a bicycle will appear onscreen. And thanks to Objectnaut -- which provides physical characteristics and artificial intelligence for each object -- the bicycle will look and act like a real bicycle. Maxwell can ride it; he can push it down a hill; he can dump it in a lake and it will sink. A huge part of development time was spent on Objectnaut, researching nouns and their properties, and adding them to the database. As a result, players can solve the game's many puzzles with any number of objects, and any combination of objects. To fetch a cat from a tall tree, a player might create a ladder for Maxwell to climb. Alternatively, he might create a mouse to lure the cat down on its own.

How Scribblenauts works, at a glance.

There are over 200 levels in Scribblenauts, organized into two categories: puzzle levels and action levels. Puzzle levels provide a riddle for the player to solve; action levels are, naturally, more action oriented with platform elements, traps, and switches. At the completion of each level, players earn "ollars," the in-game currency that can be used to purchase new worlds and avatars, and "merits," awarded based on the creativity of the player's solution. Because puzzles can be solved again and again, always with different objects, Scribblenauts has huge replay value. Yet not all puzzles are created equally. Some are fun and challenging to play through; others are frustratingly oblique and counter-intuitive. Prepare to experience some quiet rage during Scribblenauts, especially if you plan to finish every last puzzle.

Maxwell flies a helicopter.

Another Scribblenauts frustration is its control scheme. The game uses the touchscreen to control Maxwell AND to manipulate objects, meaning that an imprecise touch on the screen might interrupt a carefully staged object combination, or simply send Maxwell off the nearest cliff. Trust me: this happens more often that you think. The physics in Scribblenauts are another problem. Objects will bounce and fall in strange, unpredictable ways, and often fail to connect to each other on the first attempt.

Still, a few quirks are expected from a game that allows so much freedom and so many open-ended possibilities. Despite some control issues and finicky physics, Scribblenauts mostly delivers on its promise of a game where the player's imagination is the only obstacle, his capacity to invent the only roadblock.

VP Biden Meets with Game Execs

Biden meets with video game executives.

Yesterday, Vice President of the United States Joe Biden met with video game industry executives to talk about gun violence in the U.S. Executives from Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Epic Games and ZeniMax Media were present. Also in attendance were Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder, and researchers from Texas A&M and the University of Wisconsin. The meeting was part of a larger presidential initiative to determine the causes of and solutions to gun violence after the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT.

Christopher Ferguson, one of the researchers who attended the meeting, told The Wall Street Journal that he was "cautiously optimistic" about the meeting's outcome. Said Ferguson:

“I couldn’t say that the vice president had his arms around the industry and was saying how wonderful it was on the one hand. But on the other hand, I didn’t detect that instantaneous rush to judgment and say the most negative thing either. I think he’s in a sort of neutral or agnostic position, which is probably quite reasonable with where they’re at right now.” 

So far, the Obama administration has focused on gun laws, but it's also scrutinizing a media culture of violence, and mental health laws.

Although many outraged Americans have been quick to blame violent video games, the scientific record is undecided. Some research claims that violent video games trigger increased aggression, but other research finds no linkage between violent games and delinquency. In any event, video game executives are making a defiant stand in Washington, D.C., calling on Congressional allies, and amassing research and legal opinions to support their industry. Executives have been quick to cite research carried out by the Federal Trade Commission in 2009 that credited game makers for going further than any other media group to keep inappropriate material from children. Also benefiting the games industry is the 2011 Supreme Court ruling that found restrictions on the sale of video games to be unconstitutional.

Nintendo Force

The premiere cover.

No, it's not a new superhero squad made of Nintendo mascots.

It's a brand new magazine meant to fill the vacuum left by the closure of Nintendo Power. And it's on sale as of today.

Nintendo Force is the brainchild of IGN editor Lucas Thomas, who assembled, a la The Avengers, a "dream team" of industry veterans to produce a spiritual follow-up to Nintendo Power, which ended its 24-year run in December. The Nintendo Force staff includes individuals from Destructoid, GoNintendo, 1UP, Nintendojo, and several other sites and publications.

On the Nintendo Force Facebook page, founder Lucas Thomas said this:

"This [first issue] represents the culmination of several months of work for all of us who came together to create this debut issue of the all-new Nintendo Force Magazine, and it’s been especially gratifying to see all the positive comments and pledges of support from all of you in the past three weeks since we went public with our existence"

Now, where to purchase Nintendo Force #1?. It will be available at HP MagCloud. There, consumers can buy either a physical or digital copy of the magazine -- the physical copy is more expensive, but comes with a free digital copy.You can buy a digital copy of the magazine. You can buy a physical copy of the magazine – and get a free digital version thrown in too. The one glaring negative of this partnership between MagCloud and Nintendo Force is that MagCloud does not offer subscriptions.

However, Thomas has promised fans that Nintendo Force will provide a subscription plan before issue #2 debuts. If you are at all interested in subscribing, send an email to subscriptions@nintendoforcemagazine.com with the subject line “I want to subscribe!”.

A digital copy of Nintendo Force is priced at $4.99, and a print copy is priced at $17.99. The price is extreme considering other magazine prices, but all proceeds go to charity. "We’re honoring NP’s legacy here and doing this as a labor of love," wrote Thomas, "so when you buy Nintendo Force, you’re supporting kids that could use a helping hand."

Issue #1 will include a 26-page "Year in Preview" that highlights the biggest games of 2013, including Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, Pikmin 3 and Rayman Legends.

Inside Nintendo Force.

Nintendo Force can be purchased here in print and digital forms.

Changes to Rating System on DBtC

Dear readers, thank you for your patronage. This blog has experienced its fair share of ups and downs, but loyal readers like you keep it running (and keep its editors happy.)

I have a brief announcement for you, and it involves the rating guide for video game reviews on this blog. Since I started Don't Blame the Controller early last year, I and other reviewers have used a ten-point scale with half point intervals to score games. The system has worked well so far, but for a number of reasons I've decided to change it.

I've become increasingly disillusioned by video game reviewers on websites and in dedicated gaming publications. There seems to be some serious score inflation going on. Who knows what the cause of the problem is. Maybe there are too many games and too few journalists, and reviews suffer because any given reviewer can't spend an appropriate amount of time with a given game. Maybe corporate leadership or advertising departments put pressure on reviewers to give high-profile games inflated scores. Or maybe the corps of professional video game critics is simply not very good at what they do. It's a prickly, difficult question with no easy answer. But I feel confident about one thing: the 100-point scale and the 10-point scale (which this blog formerly used) doesn't help.

With a scale that runs from 1 to 100, or 1 to 10, there is a tendency -- whether conscious or subconscious -- to use only part of the scale. Let me explain. It's very easy to fall into a trap where a ten-point scale works in the same way as an academic grade scale, i.e., A, B, C, D, or F. In this trap, 90-100 are A's; 80-90 are B's; 70-80 are C's; 60-70 are Ds; and <60 is F. In effect, the 10-point scale -- which runs from 0.0 to 10 -- is reduced to 59-100. Thus only a fraction of the scale is used, and scores are inflated. Does every reviewer who uses a ten or 100-point scale fall into this trap? Not at all. But I worry that many do.

My solution is to start grading games in the same way I grade movies. On a four-star scale. I find the four-star scale to be less inelegant and awkward than the ten-point scale, and less open to manipulation -- intentionally or otherwise.

According to the new scale,

**** = Masterful
*** 1/2 = Excellent
*** = Good
** 1/2 = Fair
** = Poor
* 1/2 = Bad
* = Awful
1/2 * = Dreadful
ZERO = Unplayable

I will NOT be changing the old scores, and will keep the old scoring guide at the top of the home page for reference. All future games will be scored according to the four-star system.

I hope this new system works well for the blog and for you, the reader. And I hope it inspires other critics to adopt such a scale.

Sincerely,
Evan
Editor-in-Chief

Pokemon X, Y Coming this October

Nintendo announced two major Pokémon games for the 3DS yesterday morning: Pokémon X and Pokémon Y. Both will arrive for the 3DS in October in all territories. In a Direct broadcast that chronicled the series, Nintendo CEO Saturo Iwata introduced the new 3D games via the trailer below.

Keep an eye out for the three new starter Pokémon: Chespin, Fennekin, and Froakie.

Sony Patents Technology to Block Used Games

Video game company Sony has patented new technology that could be used to block used video games. The "Electronic Content Processing System" sounds innocuous enough, but it associates individual game discs with matched user accounts. According to the patent:

"A game playing system includes a use permission tag provided for use in a game disk for a user of a game, a disk drive, and a reproduction device for reproducing the game. The disk drive reads out a disk ID from the game disk. When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disk ID and a player ID to the use permission tag. The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disk ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfills the terms of use or not." 

In the patent filing, Sony argued it was "vital" to redistribute a portion of proceeds to developers, who make no money whatsoever from secondhand sales. This technology, which may in fact never be used by Sony,  would also be applicable to other forms of electronic content, including images and music.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Do you think Sony will use such technology with its upcoming Playstation 4? Will Microsoft follow suit? How will this tech affect the secondhand games industry? Let us know in the comments section.