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Leland Yee @ GDC: a missed opportunity
We attended the GDC panel entitled "Murder, Sex and Censorship: Debating the Morals of Creative Freedom." The panel was notable for the presence of Leland Yee (pictured above), Democratic candidate for California State Senate, and notable anti-game crusader who passed a law that makes it a crime to sell to minors any game in which a player kills, maims, dismembers or sexually assaults an image of a human being. Yee's fellow panelists included Brenda Brathwaite, Jason Della Rocca, and James Paul Gee. For the most part, though, the audience had assembled to hear Yee defend his position on games. I'll cut through the niceties and get to the meat of it: this panel was a missed opportunity. Jason Della Rocca, who should have been able to ask Yee some good questions, behaved petulantly and unprofessionally (at one point, he loudly sighed into his microphone while Yee was making a particularly nutty point). I expected more of the Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Get him some media and debate training, stat!
What investors think of Take-Two today
A picture is worth a thousand words. A graph, about 555 words, because there aren't as many pretty colors. This graph (modified after being taken from the latest issue of the Video Game Journal research report published by Susquehanna Financial Group analysts Jason Kraft and Chris Kwak) shows Take-Two's stock (Nasdaq: TTWO) performance since May of last year, when the company's shares were flying high on the release and success of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The Hot Coffee scandal isn't the only thing that wiped out nearly a billion dollars in Take-Two share value. The launch of the Xbox 360 has reduced demand for the company's titles on older-generation consoles, resulting in a string of disappointing sales figures. Then there's the whole public spat with a member of the Take-Two board, lawsuits in California, and a Banc of America Securities report suggesting that the company was running low on cash. For context, we'll post the graphs for Electronic Arts, Activision, and THQ next.
Has Rockstar gone soft?
Those who waited with baited breath only to learn that the new 360-exclusive game from industry badboy Rockstar is based on Forrest Gump's favorite sport reacted with mixture of why and wtf? The basic gameplay action of table tennis (or Ping Pang Qiu as it's known in China) has a long and storied history in the video game world. Nevertheless, I get the feeling that gamers expected more grit from the creative minds that made running over hookers a national pastime. Rockstar has taken enormous heat the past few years, as evidenced by this recent petition signed by Wailing Mothers Against Playground Cruelty. One has to wonder if the accumulated bad press, not to mention the disaster brewed by a certain incident involving overly-warm Folgers, played a role in the company's sudden enthusiasm for competitive table tennis. Maybe Rockstar is eager to prove that they don't need mature content to capture our imagination. Or maybe they're just relieved that Hillary Clinton can't make Pong 360 an election year issue. Far too many of us have praised the joys of classic arcade gameplay (and complained about the idiocy of edgy-for-edgy's-sake fare like True Crime: NYC) to prematurely bitch about a game that could turn out to be the King of Ping. That said, I would hate to see Rockstar trade in its bloody chainsaw for a pong paddle just to appease a few grandstanding pols and clueless parents. Somebody has to carry the torch for embedded sex and violence. You can't help but think that Rockstar is a little less Billy Idol these days and a little more Drew Lachey.
