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1 vs 100: Mob Rule After The Death of the Quiz Show

By Chris Lewis | Published: June 10, 2009
The avatars in 1 vs 100 are good and expressive

The avatars in 1 vs 100 are nicely expressive

All last week, Microsoft has been trialling 1 vs 100, an Xbox Live version of the popular game show. For those uninitiated, the real 1 vs 100 pits a contestant, dubbed The One, against 100 other people, called The Mob. All players answer each question. If a member of the Mob gets it wrong, they’re out of the game. The more The One can knock out of the game by successfully answering questions, the more money she can win if she walks away. If The One gets it wrong, it’s game over.

The Xbox Live version extends this by adding The Crowd, where other people can participate, allowing the room size to grow over 101 players. This is a necessity, as the game has been pulling tens of thousands of players in Beta. To get a sense of inclusion, these players can also win prizes by being in the top 3 of The Crowd for that round, as well as being the pool from which the next One and Mob are picked from.

So far, so obvious? Not really. This is one of the most important products Microsoft has ever launched on the 360, so read on to find out why.

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Dear Friends 2005, the “Melodies of Life”

By Sherol Chen | Published: June 10, 2009

dearfriends

Let me tell you about how far game music has come since I was a young child…

When I was a young girl, I loved Final Fantasy.  All my school assignments, given that I had a choice, was related to Final Fantasy.  I’m such the evangelist, that I took a tape recorder (the one my mom used to learn English) and held it up to the TV to record the songs in order to play Final Fantasy music for people.

I remember at the end of the school day, Mr. Martin, my band director, was at his normal post of the hallway dismissing students, and I stopped to play him some selections from my tape recorder.   My plan was to get him into the music so that we could play it in my 4th grade band class.  I even remember holding the recorder up to his ear, playing the theme for the Big Whale, and trying to explain to him that the Big Whale was not only an airship, but a ship that flies to the moon.   I thought that perhaps Mr. Martin would like the music so much that he would automatically find a way for us to perform it.  That didn’t happen.  I did, however, take matters into my own hands, and sitting on my bed in 5th grade with my flute, I struggled to play the song from the Torian Castle by ear, writing down the notes that sounded right– my first musical transcription.  It wasn’t until middle school that I discovered NoteWorthy shareware and learned how to view the musical notation in MIDI files (I’d eventually have  a huge collection of FF MIDIs).

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You Must Be This Old To Play

By Chris Lewis | Published: June 5, 2009
Jeff Cannata wonders about seeing "Up" by himself

Jeff Cannata wonders about seeing "Up" by himself

I’ve been playing Free Realms a lot; it’s a fantastic game. It’s hard not to shake the feeling that I’m the creepy guy of video games. You know, the one that plays Animal Crossing? Reading the Free Realms chat channel, there’s a lot of “asl?”, just like when I was a young’un in IRC.

That said, it’s important that we have family-friendly spaces for gamers of all ages, not just those who think raiding is key. How we police those spaces is an interesting problem. Watching the various attempts at circumventing the swearing filters can be amusing to older players, but it’s something that has to be policed fairly strongly.

Our playgrounds are constantly watched over by teachers and assistants, and age-inclusive online spaces require a human element to ensure a safe place for all. However, we can’t on companies to provide CSRs as schoolyard teachers, the cost is simply too high. Some form of reward system for players might incentivize people using the /report function. It could even be framed as a job, although perhaps a policeman suit might be a little too authoritarian!

For now, I’ll be the creepy guy wielding the Pick of /Report, mining those gems.

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The quest for meaning

By Anne Sullivan | Published: June 4, 2009

question

Quests are a commonly-used device in RPGs, MMO or otherwise. They are used to guide the player through the story and world in small, discrete steps. After playing just a few RPGs it is noticeable that there are a limited number of quest types.  Depending on how the lines are drawn, quests can easily be broken up into 3-7 categories. Looking specifically at the quests in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, I was able to easily categorize the quests into 7 distinct types.

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Reflect: What is an Artwork’s True Success?

By Sherol Chen | Published: June 3, 2009

About a year ago, I was at a digital art and new media exhibit in San Jose.  Of the many interesting installations was  Mike Treanor’s game, “Reflect .”  In Mike’s installation, I found myself taking on the movements of a variety of animals after observing and properly mimicking the actions observed.  With each animal, I gained another degree of mobility from scooting to flight.   At the end of the experience, I fly into an office window and find a human sitting in front of a computer in a cubicle.  Appropriately, (in real life) I am sitting in a cubicle at the exhibit hall in front of a computer playing this “game.”

I suppose, people often find themselves making hasty arrivals at a wrong or incomplete understanding of an artwork’s motivation.  I found myself “getting it” by my own terms, perhaps to alleviate any worry that I am not deep enough to “get it.”  If I recall correctly, Mike, himself, said that games are typically about action and motion, rarely do they ever emphasize the act of observation.  He wanted to create a experience that rewards observation.  I’m totally down wih the whole observing is becoming theme in the game and found novel that after learning all these motions, the final observation is of a person inanimately staring at a screen– which would be what the experiencer would be doing in real life.  Surely, a deep thinker like me would understand… and that is all there is to it.

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Virtually MMOs: On the term “Virtual Worlds”

By Chris Lewis | Published: June 3, 2009
Star Trekking in Second Life, courtesy of Something Awful

Star Trekking in Second Life, courtesy of Something Awful

Last weekend, I attended the first day of the Metaverse U conference hosted by Stanford University. I’d hazard around 50 people had made the trip, there to hear about “virtual worlds.” This year’s theme was most definitely the technical platforms on which virtual worlds could be run. While an interesting topic, I was there, waiting in baited breath, for some mention of MMOGs. I felt the discussion was focused on the Second Life-style freeform “social space” virtual world, although others felt differently.

This led me to thinking about the different virtual worlds we have, whether we have different research communities, and how we can define them. Read more after the jump.

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