BATTLEFIELD VS. CALL OF DUTY: BY THE NUMBERS

Battlefield and Call of Duty – the biggest, bloodiest shooters on the market – are constantly competing with each other over hardcore shooting fans’ love, dedication and money. But for two franchises that launched within a year apart back in the early 2000′s, their paths to current stardom differ wildly. As we prepare for Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 to go head to head this fall, let’s take a look at the hard stats that got both of these juggernauts to where they are today.

Modern Warfare Timeline

Battlefield Vs Call Of Duty Timeline

Something Completely Different…

From #SecondLife to Second Fiddle in 2012

 

Is it a surprise that @Rodvik wants to focus on making video games?

 

I’ve been quite busy lately with research and development on some projects, so quite noticeably people have asked if I’m still around. The short answer is “yes”, though some other things have been keeping my attention other than Second Life. I won’t go into details about what I’ve been focusing on, but I will say that the technologies are really cool.

 

More importantly, however, I’ve been keeping an eye on the recent events concerning Linden Lab and Second Life through the usual channels, such as New World Notes, and more specifically the following little gem of news from them made me laugh.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m in no way surprised that Rodvik has decided to focus on video games that are unrelated to Second Life and “expand” Linden Lab’s offerings past their flagship namesake. He’s a video game executive that was hired to run a Metaverse company, and I expected he wouldn’t do so well at this job.

 

Now, when I say he wouldn’t do so well, what I implied many months ago is the only thing this man apparently knows how to do is create video games, which is an entirely different market than managing and growing a metaverse. It’s a lot like the difference between a Bugatti Veyron and a Tricycle.

 

The Metaverse is the high performance, open ended, user created masterpiece of virtual environments. A tricycle entertains you for a few hours without actually adding any culture or wider appreciation.

 

Rodvik is a master of making tricycles.

 

That isn’t to say that there isn’t money to be made in making tricycles, or that Linden Lab couldn’t be profitable by making and selling those tricycles, but that isn’t what Linden Lab as a company is about. At least, that’s not what it should be about. Linden Lab was and is a metaverse company, with a flagship product and culture that is Second Life. When a CEO decides that the flagship product of the company is not worth the effort to give his or the staff’s full attention to, but instead decides that the future of Linden Lab is to pretend to be Zynga… there’s something seriously wrong.

 

Let’s face it, Rodvik has Farmville envy.

 

 

 

 

Rodvik’s assurance that there will be continued updates and functionality additions for Second Life is not comforting, because we already know what it’s like when the Lindens aren’t able to address the JIRA, fix bugs, or ultimately create a viewer that isn’t half assed and broken. There is no reason to believe that splitting the focus and resources of an already stressed team so they can make unrelated video games will have any effect other than to justify less support for Second Life going forward in favor of coddling whatever video games Rodvik wants to roll out for Facebook instead. This isn’t speculation, this is simply common sense management in knowing that splitting an already overworked team to focus on unrelated projects will mean:

 

1. The new products will be poorly executed.

2. The original product will suffer from poor execution.

3. Both areas of focus will suffer from mediocre execution at best.

 

Because his focus is on the new games, I’m likely to say that #2 is the most plausible outcome, which means that Second Life (as far as he’s concerned) is now Second Fiddle.

 

 

The decision he has made is the executive equivalent of changing the focus of the entire company to something unrelated in order to mask incompetence in the original venue he was hired for. If he cannot expand or properly manage the flagship product, but he knows how to make cheap little video games in spades, the latter will be his and the company’s new focus to make their projected growth going forward. Like I originally said when he was hired – when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We already went through this scenario with Mark Kingdon where he decided the focus was on enterprise servers, and if I remember correctly, through all of this divided focus, that didn’t bode well either.

 

Now, I could theoretically interpret Rodvik’s direction as a skillful manner by which to focus his and the company’s attention on rebuilding a better version of Second Life for the long run. Something from the ground up, or a total overhaul into a new system, which later he will encourage migration from Second Life to the new system as a result.

 

I could interpret it that way, but I choose not to do so simply out of common sense. If this were the focus, he wouldn’t have said “… unrelated to Second Life”.

 

Today marks the day that Linden Lab has begun its transformation into just another Zynga wannabe. Rodvik never really left his old position as a VP at Electronic Arts working on The Sims. He simply carried his old job into his new and unrelated job. In the process, instead of focusing on the job he was given, he’s decided that the focus of the entire company should instead cater to his whims and expertise.

 

In the process, he’s even practiced some great acts of cronyism by surrounding himself with video game executives and industry names to justify his reasoning why Linden Lab needs to pretend to be Zynga and pay less attention to it’s own flagship product and community.

 

From day one, all Rodvik saw as the CEO of Linden Lab was this:

 

 

 

Click the picture for a link to this item on Marketplace.

 

 

The real question in the end is two-fold:

 

Why did anyone not expect this to happen from day one?

 

And more importantly

 

What makes anyone think that this is actually good for Second Life?

How Big Is Call Of Duty?

Call of Duty Franchise [INFOGRAPHIC]

Thoughts on Battlefield 3 ( TBR 10 December 2011)

Battlefield has always been known for its multiplayer. Battlefield wants to change it. This year, Battlefield 3 will feature an equally good campaign mode. Battlefield 2 Campaign wasn't something unique, it was mostly just like any other FPS game.

However, Battlefield 3 will be much more than that. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 campaign, very easily prevailed over the Battlefield 2 campaign. In multiplayer too, CoD was doing good, until cheating became highly prevalent. Many adult gamers complain about the voices of underaged persons over the internet.

The BF2 campaign will be based on the Iran war. It still keeps many of the integral aspects of an amazing FPS game, but also adds on top of it. In the trailer, we can see that we will be able to control a fighter jet, probably the F22-Raptor. Even though I am not sure about the specific aircraft model, it sure does look very exciting !

Now comes the Modern Warfare 3 game, looking at the trailer, one is like any other trailer pretty fascinated, but comparing the fascinations imparted by the trailers of these two fascinating games, the fascination is much greater achieved from Battlefield, no doubt.

I am looking forward to the quarter four of this year.

Here is a 12 minute gameplay trailer from BF3.

Farmville Vs Real Farms

Adding Play Into Enterprise

Video Game Movies

Doing what Nintendon’t

I’m a huge fan of @Sega games, especially the Sonic the Hedgehog series. At least the old school, side scrolling games like Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, though I’m still unsure about Sonic the Hedgehog 3.  Of course we’ll just ignore the fact that there were a lot of piss-poor 3D versions of Sonic the Hedgehog that made the true fans cringe and scream in agony, while we move onto the latest foray into the franchise – Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

For what it’s worth, it’s a decent game. I’m sure plenty of people worked hard as part of Team Sonic to bring this game together in an attempt to get back to the roots of the franchise and bring back all the things that the fans loved from the glory days. Unfortunately for @Sega they managed to fubar quite a lot in their launch, namely in actually managing to do a better job with a multi-million dollar development budget and entire team of highly skilled and paid programmers than a single fan who managed to produce Sonic Fan Remix unfunded and in his spare time.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – while good, is nowhere as amazing as Sonic Fan Remix

What’s worse is that in the digital age of marketing, @Sega has managed to forget a few cardinal rules of the game, which I’ll be outlining here:

1. If a single fan of your franchise can do more justice with your franchise than an entire team of paid professionals and a multi-million dollar budget, you don’t send a flurry of DMCA notices to have the content removed.

2. This is the age of the Internet. Anything truly spectacular is like Bebe’s Kids, it doesn’t die, it multiplies.

3. Any truly intelligent executive should know that the first question shouldn’t have been “How fast can we have that content taken down?” but instead “Why isn’t he working for us?”

Allow me to elaborate.

You see, if you were to follow that link to the Sonic Fan Remix, you’d be greeted by a well polished website and a gorgeous gameplay video of the beta. You would also notice a giant button saying “Download” which leads to a file repository which has removed the game on “Copyright Violation” grounds – which is an ambiguous way of saying:

Sega decided they were having their asses handed to them by a single programmer/artist who was working in his spare time without a budget to create a Sonic the Hedgehog game that garnered more attention and praise than their own multi-million dollar production called Sonic 4, and instead of admitting they did a piss poor job and having earned the scorn of multitudes of diehard Sonic fans (to the point of calls for boycotting the game), they decided to get pissy and send their lawyers after Sonic Fan Remix, having it removed on ground of copyright violation.

Sonic Fan Remix | Actual HD Gameplay

In the history of the prosumer culture, this has never once actually worked to the advantage of any corporate entity. I can name the RIAA/MPAA versus Napster, Limewire, eDonkey, and others in a never ending battle which rages on today to the dismay (and wonton monetary losses in litigation for the RIAA/MPAA in the process). Anything truly revolutionary in the digital world doesn’t die, it multiplies or evolves into something greater, like a Phoenix.

To be honest, if I were working at @Sega and saw this game above prior to the launch of Sonic 4, I would have probably pissed myself. It is in nearly every possible way superior to Sonic 4, right down to the fact that it didn’t require a Hollywood style blockbuster budget to create, nor an entire high-paid professional team. Adding to that the meticulous detail the programmer put into actually studying and figuring out the game physics from the original games in order to replicate the experience in the new game precisely.

This one guy has managed to do what the entire current Sonic Team could not, with all of their resources and manpower.

However, in the spirit of corporate stupidity, @Sega decided that instead of seeing this work and making it their number one priority to make it an official @Sega game, giving it the resources and manpower it deserves, they instead decided to bawl about Copyright Violation, and make a piss-poor attempt at sweeping their shame under the collective rug in hopes nobody would ever talk about it again.

So true is the case of Sonic Fan Remix. While @Sega may have thought they have done due diligence and wiped Sonic Fan Remix from the face of the Earth, they have instead given the fans of the franchise even more reason to spread the game around the world, to multiple server mirrors, making the game available in not just a single location, but probably hundreds and propagating like wildfire, while gaining scorn for their own Sonic 4 series in the process.

Ignoring the Streisand Effect in the online world is a cardinal sin. Ignoring what your customers actually want is part of those seven deadly marketing sins as well. Not having enough common sense at the executive level to know the difference between filing DMCA or Making it a priority to hire the person is simply bad business in the prosumer culture.

Let me tell you what I see when I watch (and play) Sonic Fan Remix.

This is, hands down, the most brilliant example of a portfolio that could ever grace the desks of Sega Enterprises and they tossed it aside never understanding that they’ve literally been handed the Goose that lays Golden Eggs.

This isn’t to say that @Sega should cancel Sonic the Hedgehog 4, by any means. What I’m getting at is that Sonic Fan Remix is the single most opportune event that could have come to their attention. A literal gold mine for the rebirth of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

Here’s a plan of action for Sega:

1. Hire the guy behind Sonic Fan Remix.

2. Make Sonic Fan Remix an official Sega production.

3. Keep the name Sonic Fan Remix.

4. The premise of the title is that the fans submit levels with a level creator that Sega puts out in a contest, with the winners being included officially in the release.

5. The level creator remains in the game upon release.

6. Fan created levels are then facilitated to be uploaded to a central repository, with which other players can download such levels, rate the levels, and even attach gamer points and fan created achievements to their custom levels. (think Little Big Planet 2)

7. Sega can create official extended level packs in this Remix network (aside from fan created levels) as a Downloadable Content pack, as well as additional features, unlockables and characters for preset microtransaction payments.

8. Sega makes every Sonic fan deliriously happy, saves face, provides a Sonic game that successfully relaunches the franchise, acknowledges the ridiculous talent of the creator of Sonic Fan Remix, as well as every fan on Earth, while facilitating residual income from the process, and rebuilds/unites every Sonic the Hedgehog fan on the planet under a single banner called Sega.

Until such time as Sega comes to their senses, Sonic Fan Remix isn’t going anywhere, simply because the world is full of fans that want it. As such, Sega needs to quit trying to squash it and actually acquire it productively before it spreads further outside of their control.

I’ll leave my readers with a (currently) working link to download Sonic Fan Remix in the meantime.

Download Sonic Fan Remix | Working as of June 11th 2011

Of course, in the event that @Sega hasn’t learned a damned thing from this article, I may provide another link to a mirrored copy of this game. However, I will shake my head in awe of their corporate stupidity – as you should too.

Link doesn't work? Try clicking here: Google Search [Sonic Fan Remix]

Update: The June 9th link was taken down and replaced with the June 11th link. Apparently @Sega hasn't learned a thing from reading this, or maybe they haven't bothered to read it and comprehend what is being said here. No matter how many times they DMCA the mirrors, there exists hundreds or thousands of mirrors of this file across the world, and that number continues to grow the more they remove single mirrors of this file (after all, wouldn't you expect people to say "The link doesn't work, but here's three more mirrors I put up for you") - Even if @Sega keeps killing the links I'm providing here, anybody with 5 minutes and access to Google can find "Sonic Fan Remix Download". 

Any further link updates will be posted in the comments of this post in the future event that the link above stops working. Feel free to post your own DL links in the comments for Sonic Fan Remix as well.

Minecraft Beta 1.6 this week !

On YouTube, TeamMojang, the official YouTube channel of the developers of the game posted a video about the Beta 1.6 update. The main star of the show is the map. Wherever you go, the map fills up, somewhat similar to real life, to give the effect of the character making the map himself.

You can do it by surrounding the crafting area with paper, and putting a compass in the middle.

Recipe for making a map in Beta 1.6

The map can help the user in many ways, You could almost never get lost ! And also discover distant lands, and interesting caverns !

At the end of the video, the announcer says "Minecraft patch 1.6, coming this week ! Oh, I can't wait"

Thankyou Notch ! :D

MC : How To Get The Same Inventory On All Maps [Minecraft]

Yes, this might be considered cheating. However, sometimes, it all right for creative purposes ! Imagine you have 64 diamond in World 1, and created a new world. Wouldn't it be nice to get all that diamond on the new map ? This method is very simple to do and works both on Mac and Windows. It is like a uniform inventory across all worlds/maps you make.

To do this, you need to access the Minecraft folder.
On Macintosh, it generally is in Library -> Application Support (There will be a folder called 'minecraft')
On Windows,  Open My Computer and type '%appdata%' (There should be a folder called '.minecraft')

To speed things up, you can create shortcuts.

Minecraft folder in Application Support

The level.dat files in the saves folder

Key - World 1 : The world which has goodies in the inventory !
          World 2 : The world in which you want to goodies in.

Procedure :

1. Open the Minecraft folder
2. Go to the 'saves' folder
3. Choose your world (It will be a folder by the name of your world)
4. Backup 'level.dat' of the World 2.
5. Copy the level.dat from the World 1 to World 2.
6. Done !

It is done. You should have the inventory of World 1 now in World 2.

This works only with the inventory, if you do not have anything in the inventory of World 1, nothing will happen !

If you want the inventory of World 2 back, just delete the level.dat from World 1 and put the level.dat from the World 2 in the folder !

How it works : The level.dat file contains the inventory of the map. So, basically you are taking the inventory data from World 1 into World 2. 

If you have any problems, leave them in the comments below.

Thanks !

Play Angry Birds for free, online !

Google I/O event

Google, the search engine giant has released a free version of angry birds to the Google Chrome Web Store , from which you can download Angry Birds and play it for free.

You can install it now on the Google Chrome web browser and play it. It features the first level of the game 'Poached Eggs' and you can play some specially designed, Chrome levels. It runs very smoothly and is very fun to play. It also remains Cached for offline play.

The Google Chrome SVP said that this could not be done even a year ago. This was announced in the San Francisco Google I/O conference. It is said that the Angry Birds game is a testament to the rapid growth of the simple, yet loved Google Chrome web browser.

In my opinion, its pretty nice. I liked this thing a lot, playing games on your browser !

Please comment with your opinions and suggestions,
Thanks !

PSN Hacked, all user information compromised

Yesterday, 26th April 2011, Sony declared that PSN had been hacked and all the user information, from all countries, around the globe had been exposed to the hacker. All credit card information has been hacked. We strongly advice you to change your passwords if they were identical or similar to the one you used for the PlayStation Network. The credit card numbers of 70 million people have been exposed to an 'unauthorized person'.

The hacker has all vital information, from your name, birthday, to your bills and invoices for the PlayStation Store.

From Wired.com's post : "Sony said it has temporarily shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired an outside security firm “to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened,” but refused to offer details on the hack."

Sony says no retore date has been yet decided on. When you log on PSN this message will greet you, "PlayStation Network is currently undergoing maintenance."

Here's what Sony wrote on the first line of their blog post , "We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online"

Here is the link to Sony's rather short blog post : http://tinyurl.com/3ekumkt


Thanks,
TutorialConr

Nintendo Wii 2 !

Nintendo finally announced the Wii 2. Here are some things we know :

Many people say it all it will to is add "HD" graphics to the Nintendo Wii, something like "Wii HD". And on the other side of the argument, many people say there will be more.

No technical details have yet been released. The sales of the Wii have been gradually declining due to the competition faced by the PS3 and Xbox 360. Many hardcore gamers do not believe in Motion Gaming, and say that its rather kiddish, for kiddish games. Wii was the first console to offer motion gaming, and the technology was utterly brilliant at the time. But now, it's gotten old, compared to the Kinect, which is basically Wii without a controller and the PS Move, which is Wii's big brother.

And yes, there is probably going to be a design change. (Duh)

In the first three months of 2011, PS3 held a 36% share, compared with 32% for the Wii and 31% for XBox 360.


It's time to change that.

PSP Go discontinued - No Go! for the PSP [EPIC FAIL]

As we all know, PSP Go was just not a 'hit'. Actually, most people hated it, and only the people who had some money to waste even thought of it. With the NGP coming soon, there is just, 'no point'.

It was expensive for what it gave you, and it had no support for UMDs. Basically, all the money you spent on the games of your previous PSP were completely useless. The PSP 3000 will also be soon discontinued, but only just before the NGP, in my opinion. The Go looked like a test product, it had nothing concrete, and the PSP Go services did not seem to work in some countries, including mine, India ! A market of a billion people, and where the PSP was a blockbuster, something like the Inception of consoles.

By the way, PSP Go never came to India in the first place. And, India is not the only country where it is not available. Just to note : PlayStation store is available.

So Indeed, there is no "Go!" for the PSP Go.
That is why the PSP Go is a failure. 

Thanks for listening out to my opinions,
Tutorialconr