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Jukebox Heroes: Meridian 59's soundtrack
There's a lot of general distaste and dislike out there for video game music that comes in MIDI or chipset form. Many gamers have simply never really experienced eras when the sound for computers and consoles were limited in such ways, so to go back to listen to them seems downright painful. For MMO players, there are only a handful of games that came out during the MIDI era, and pretty much all of them have since updated to MP3 versions. Yet I have a fondness for older-style game music. I agree with what Ryan Shwayder once wrote when he said, "I think MIDI composers had to become masters of capturing the real core or heart of what made a song feel right. They had to take a minimalist approach to the song because they had a limited number of channels and potential sounds to work with. And it is my belief that some of the best creative works come out when an artist has to work within constraints." That said, most of Meridian 59's soundtrack out there is of the remastered variety, so that's what we'll be listening to today. By the way, the original soundtrack by Composer Gene M. Rozenberg is available on the official website for free!
Full EEDAR/SMU study on purchasing influence is now available
A couple weeks back, Joystiq received an advance copy of a study conducted by EEDAR and SMU's Guildhall, the purpose of which was to determine the purchase intent of individuals and how trusted review sources weighed into consumer decision-making. While our previous post offered all kinds of insights and neat breakouts from the study, you can now freely peruse the 31-page report for yourselves. In the spirit of figuring things out, we've decided to conduct our own little study, which you can participate in just past the break. It's not scientific or anything, but then again, we're not Sciencestiq now, are we?
EEDAR/SMU study: review scores affect perceived quality, purchase intent
A study conducted by EEDAR and SMU's Guildhall found trusted media outlets do affect consumers' perception of video games and their willingness to purchase. Joystiq received an advanced copy of the study (releasing publicly next week), that involved 165 qualified participants split into three groups, who were then exposed to high, low and no review scores for Plants vs. Zombies before playing the game. After the 20-minute session, the subjects were offered either a copy of the game or $10. A result of the study was that participants exposed to higher review scores were 100 percent more likely than those exposed to low scores to take a copy of Plants vs. Zombies over the $10 and "85 percent more likely to take the game than the control group." The study concludes that "because nearly twice as many participants in the high review group took the copy ... that the relationship between video game sales and professional review scores are not correlative but causal." Plants vs. Zombies was chosen because it's "regarded by the gaming community and by critics as a high quality title of broad appeal." The mock reviews used in the study were from five well-known media outlets and participants were told that the aggregate review score they were given was "comprised of 51 professional" outlets. All participants "played the same game, on the same type of computer, in the same environment, for the same amount of time."
SMU's Guildhall awards game design degrees
The Guildhall, Southern Methodist University's video game design graduate program, has awarded the world's first master's degrees in video game development. Twenty-four graduates received "Master of Interactive Technology degrees" in "Digital Game Development" on March 24. Commencement speaker Randy Pitchford of Gearbox said, "The granting of advanced degrees from accredited universities is crucial to the future of our industry... You never know how important someone will become in time. Bill Gates was nobody [30] years ago." Gates probably shoudn't be the poster boy for higher education, since he dropped out of school to start Microsoft, but whatevs, right?
Forum Post of the Day: Guild halls
Though many MMOs do have some type of guild housing available, World of Warcraft doesn't have any such option, nor are there (to my knowledge) any officially acknowledged plans to create them. However, there are players out there who would very much like to see some sort of guild housing in the game -- and some of them have hit up the suggestion forums with incredibly detailed proposals. Poster Kinn presents us with an in-depth (too in-depth to be succinctly summarized) look at what guild halls could be like, and the thread has garnered over 20 pages of mostly positive responses. So what do you think? Would such a system benefit the game? Would another type of system be better? Or is guild housing a silly idea in the first place?
