last year we made 10 predictions for the next 12 months It's time to evaluate our progress and make 10 more predictions for 2009-1010 . First, the results from last year. Not too shabby. Some of the more "out there" ones(Atari and Bushnell, Sierra and the Williams) actually proved to be closer than I thought, while some of the easier ones (Wii, 360) were just dead wrong.

10. Mac gaming will rise to new heights. Publishers will convert PC games to the Mac using next-generation Intel hardware conversion utilities. They will find that testing games for the relatively small number of Mac hardware variations makes their job much easier. IGN will re-launch mac.ign.com. Also, bucking the recent trends, a Mac- gaming-centric print magazine will launch...and the initial issues will sell very well.

OK, we were 1/2 right. Many games are being released as PC/Mac at the same time (Spore, Sims 3). However IGN and most other big sites have
ignored it. Also, game magazines in general in the toilet so there is not a new Mac magazine. Ooops.

9. FMAME (the Flash version of MAME) will be embraced by many unscrupulous game portals. Other Flash-based emulators will follow.
Small Flash game developers will have their games squeezed out of portals and will have to work much harder to make games that will get published. At the same time, an I.P. incident similar to the Facebook "Scrabulous" issue will rock the viral, Flash game world. It will force many domestic U.S./Europe portals to screen games more closely, and start licensing classic game ROMs for use on their sites, further squeezing indie game developers.

We were mostly right on this one...

Michael Thomsen @ wii.ign.com has written what I believe is one of the best gaming articles I have ever read.  His piece, The Magic of Wii Sports Resort is notable not just for it's structure and style, but also for its sentiment and passion. 

Thomson writes about about game narrative, or in Wii sports Resort, the lack of narrative.  However, his views on this are similar to mine: great games don't need to force a story on the player, especially if they are designed so the player can make their own story through the act of actually interacting with the game.

Here is an excerpt:
(after the jump)

i picked-up my reserved copy of Wii-Motion Plus/Wii Sports Resort yesterday at Target.  My first impression is this:

No Need To Reserve It.

There were many many copies, and not too many buyers.  I also noticed that Target was giving away a free game with every Wii sold.  Wow, what a difference a year makes.

Since we were preparing for my wife's birthday today, I did not get much of chance to play last night.  However, after everyone finally fell asleep at about 10:30 last night, I slipped downstairs and turned on the Wii for this first time in about a month.

Inside the box is an actual game-box for Wii sports Resort (Cool. Unlike Wii sports that had no box so we all had to download a fake one a create it ourselves..oops, I maybe only uber-nerds like me did that, but so what?), and new rubber "enclosure" for the Wiimote and Wii-motion-Plus combo.

My next impression was this:

both Microsoft and Sony announced camera-based game control solutions at E3 2009.  At the same time, Nintendo has said they rejected this kind of technology years ago in favor of the Wii-mote. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President said recently:

"Until they say when they're releasing it, how much it costs and what software it comes with, we won't know whether that is the route we should have taken. However... I think they couldn't choose to release exactly the same thing." (link)

I have to say, that while the demos for Project Natal were neat, I tend to think that Nintendo is on to something.

Here is a question for you:  Have you ever played a game that uses a camera as the control mechanism?   I have owned both the Eye-Toy for the PS2 and the camera for the XBox 360.  While I like them both, but they both have some major problems. While these are not exactly what Microsoft and Sony have announced (but in part, they are the same too), there are some fundamental problems with camera control that go beyond any kind of new tech:

Take a look at this Microsoft demo before we begin.

have you lost out on a game magazine subscription (or any other subscription) in the past couple years because the publication has ceased operations?

Well, if you bought the subscription through any kind of "magazine drive" (Girl Scouts, School promotion, door-to-door, etc.) you probably actually bought (unknown to you) it through QSP. (Quality School Plan). 

I have been having trouble with my subscription to PC Gamer, and finally after many emails, PC Gamer customer Service gave me the phone number of QSP. 

QSP took my zip-code and full name, and they were able to see nearly every subscription that I had ordered in the past few years.  Not only that, but two of them (a failed PC Gamer subscription from 2007, and a recent subscription to EGM that halted after they stopped publishing) qualified for a FULL CREDIT.

I ordered a couple different subscriptions (Rolling Stone, Nickelodeon), but the point is, had I *not* called QSP, I would have had no idea that I could get a credit/refund or other magazines from past failed subscriptions.  The publisher sure did not inform me of this when the magazines stopped coming. Anyway,  if you have had a recent  subscription cancelled/falied/ceased publication magazine that have not followed-up on, it might be wise to call them and ask about the status.

Here is the contact info:

QUALITY SCHOOL PLAN
PO BOX 10203

DES MOINES State: IA
50336
800-678-2673

By the way, this call to QSP has still not cleared-up my bizarre missing subscription to PC Gamer from 2008,but I feel a bit better now about other game mag subscriptions (especially EGM)that I have lost in recent time.

pC Gamer Subscription Chronicles 2: Into The Black Hole

In the first entry of this series, I relayed a mildly amusing story of how PC Gamer has inexplicably lost my new subscription, The event is seemingly suspect as it came directly after I published an article that was mildly critical of their magazine.

If you recall, when we left off, I had written this message to the PC Gamer subscription service:

---

To: PC Gamer
From: Steve Fulton
Subject: re: Missing Issue Question

Excuse me. but you are mistaken.

My subscription STARTED with the January 2009 issue.
I received just two issues. You still owe me 10 issues.

Please send me the two issues that I missed, plus the next 8 issues.

Thanks,

Steve Fulton

---

Here was the response:

some of you who have been paying close attention may have seen this story from back in December.  Back then I thought it would be fun to do a review of PC Gamer Magazine.  I had just started a new subscription through my daughter's Girl Scout magazine drive. Since it is the last domestic USA computer game magazine left in publication, I figured it might be enjoyable to take a close look at what computer game magazines have become in the 21st century.

Soon after this story was published, my issues of PC Gamer stopped arriving in my mail box.  Since I was only 2 issues into my 12 month subscription, I thought it was kind of odd.  I have still not received any new issues since January.

While I do not seriously think that PC Gamer would halt my subscription because of a silly blog (one that gave them a score of 81%), I have been having a lot of trouble getting PC Gamer to realize that my subscription was halted after only 2 issues.

Anyway, I have decided that it might be fun to document my correspondence with the PC Gamer subscription service, because so far it has been maddening.  I realize that this process could amount to nothing, or it could be pure comedy gold.  We'll have to wait and see which way it goes.

Below are the first 3 messages we have traded:

oK, this is kind of "time-out" from other content.  While I'm working on some Silverlight entries, new Flash games, etc, I thought I would go back a bit and name my Top-10 "Insanely Addictive" games of all time.  These are not necessarily the "best" games of all time, just the ones that stole a good chunk of my life!  Most of these games are also perfect for the so-called "Mid-Core" Gamer.

10. Tetris

Arguably the first great "casual" game, Tetris is still amazingly addictive.  Fitting those little 4-square shapes into one another has never grown old.  Better games have emerged since its release, but this one had to make the list.

9. Bejeweled

Who knew that swapping gems to get three in a row (or more) could be so compelling?  I never played this one until I had it on my AT&T phone about 6 years ago.  This was the game that proved to me that gaming would soon move away from traditional consoles and PCs and to other platforms.

everybody's doing it, so why not do it too...

Getting an Xbox 360 that is.

I have been on a "vacation" for the last 2 weeks from my day job. This "vacation" hasn't equated into much game programming time (although I have started work on a Mac game using TntBasic). While I have been spending much of that time running errands for Christmas and my son's birthday, etc, one other thing that has taken most of my time: TRAFFIC SCHOOL! I got a speeding ticket in November and to keep from having to pay too much extra on my insurance I am able to clear the "point" off my driving record by taking an online traffic school...

a few months ago I wrote a prediction that the Xbox 360 would soon die an untimely death. Since then the machine has systematically proved me wrong. It has outsold the PS3, and has done very well against the Wii. Microsoft has cut the price and added features that have made their magic box look more an more attractive. However, a few weeks back they announced one feature that made the Xbox a necessary product for me: Netflix streaming. I've been waiting for an easy way to chuck my DVD collection and access movies and TV programs from an online collection for years now. The on-demand portion of FIOS is just OK, but does not include enough content to really be interesting. iTunes charges far too much for old TV programs and movies, and even though you "own" them, you really don't. You can't transfer them, if you lose them you can't re-download them. It's all very user-unfriendly. However, Netflix streaming is quite different. You have a library of 12,000 or so movies and DVDs at your fingertips, all you have to do is select them and start viewing on your PC. However, viewing on a PC/Mac sucks. The holy grail is to be able to select from a huge library and watch them on my HD plasma TV and Bose speaker set-up.

The Xbox 360 now has this feature, and it is awesome.