Well it seems that the 9.9 Billion that videogames factured were not only from the videogames itself but it accounts also hardware like consoles.
"Total sales including hardware, software and accessories was over $9.9 billion"
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/gta4/news_6116499.html
janeiro 24, 2005
How Games are Reshaping Business & Learning
with James Paul Gee, Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuehler
http://www.wistechnology.com/article.php?id=1504
A really interesting conference on videogames learning. You can watch all the conference through webcast here,
Is really stimulating hearing Paul Gee talking about the new capacities of videogames about the future perspectives for using videogames in education. Is arguments and references to the military using of videogames is really convincing. Although I'm still sceptic about this revolution in 2 or 3 years like he says. I'm more convinced about a slow revolution in the next 10 years. Young people can change quickly because they are not tied to strong responsibilities, however society buildings and rules can't be changed at this velocity.
"Videogames are very long, very complex and very hard. Videogames are sized for learning in deep levels."
Here he compares videogames industry with school teachers.
"How do you get somebody to learn something that is hard, complex and long? and take hours to do it?"
"By necessity industry had to be very good at learning"
And here I can compare videogames industry with film industry in the beginnings when they had to transform film spectacle into film narrative. It was trial and error that helped film industry refine film language in order to attain people minds and caught people attention. More than others Hollywood have done it since the beginning their capitalist urge to reach widest as possible audience made of them the most efficient and universal film language in the world.
Gee main argument is that taking into account the deep level of learning involved in the process of playing videogames and thinking about the fact that in "Videogames you can be a "Thief", you can be a "hard ass" or you can be "soldier". We just need to translate that to our university learning environment and think that we want students to be playing as scientists, as doctors, as engineers, etc.
Constance talk about videogames economics is not that interesting mostly because we're already tired to hear about all these fabricated numbers in the interest of videogames industry. She shows a table where in 2003 Videogames Industry out profit Hollywood box office movies - 10 billions against 9.5 billions.
This is uninteresting doing this kind of comparisons, Hollywood profits changed long time ago. They are not selling a movie through movie theatres only anymore. The changes performed in society made people to prefer staying at home than going out to a movie theatre for lots of reasons. And videogames also profit from this sedentary society. If we want to compare Videogames against Movies in terms of economics we need to be serious, and not using these numbers just to make fun and just to impress. Once again videogames are imitating Hollywood. It was Hollywood who invented the Box Office numbers in order to raise people expectations and peoples need to see movies that are doing so well at the box office. With the spreading of these numbers, videogame industry is only trying to call for attention from people who are not playing yet, and saying to them "hey listen, we already out profited Hollywood and if you don't come with us you'll lose your connection with the real world". Constance is being naïf when she says that "videogames are secretly and silently out profiting" without anybody knowing.
If we want to talk about economic comparisons, let's think about movie industry as we think about game industry. A movie itself produced in Hollywood without any merchandise must be accounted for: movie theatre sales + video rentals sales + dvd sales + cable sales + televison sales, now compare this with the videogame that is only sold in the little disc. And we need to be careful about talking of gaming industry and putting in the same bag videogames offline plus online because it seems to me like putting in the same bag movie industry plus television industry.
However after all this numbers and bag of media I came to think about one thing that makes me once again hate these capitalist strategies for selling more and more. Because in the end and in the future we want to arrive at a convergence point where we'll have no possible distinctions between TV, cinema or videogames. We'll have a central audiovisual hub at home and everywhere we go that will permit us to enjoy any type of content all through the same convergent media.
Kurt Squire gives an interesting overview of the gains business can have using videogames and also about the new possibilities for elearning.
Give a look and enlarge your horizons about the "art/entertainment/work" form of the XXI century. This perspective of videogames is only confirming Mcluhan predictions on Automata. "The age of information will compel us to use all of our faculties simultaneously, and we will discover that we are in leisure the more intensely we agree to involve with them, as it was the case of artists of all time" (Understanding Media, 1964)
Info
James Paul Gee - Read his book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy", one of the most important works in the games/education field.
Constance Steinkuehler- https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/web/
Kurt Squire - http://website.education.wisc.edu/kdsquire/
with James Paul Gee, Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuehler
http://www.wistechnology.com/article.php?id=1504
A really interesting conference on videogames learning. You can watch all the conference through webcast here,
Is really stimulating hearing Paul Gee talking about the new capacities of videogames about the future perspectives for using videogames in education. Is arguments and references to the military using of videogames is really convincing. Although I'm still sceptic about this revolution in 2 or 3 years like he says. I'm more convinced about a slow revolution in the next 10 years. Young people can change quickly because they are not tied to strong responsibilities, however society buildings and rules can't be changed at this velocity.
"Videogames are very long, very complex and very hard. Videogames are sized for learning in deep levels."
Here he compares videogames industry with school teachers.
"How do you get somebody to learn something that is hard, complex and long? and take hours to do it?"
"By necessity industry had to be very good at learning"
And here I can compare videogames industry with film industry in the beginnings when they had to transform film spectacle into film narrative. It was trial and error that helped film industry refine film language in order to attain people minds and caught people attention. More than others Hollywood have done it since the beginning their capitalist urge to reach widest as possible audience made of them the most efficient and universal film language in the world.
Gee main argument is that taking into account the deep level of learning involved in the process of playing videogames and thinking about the fact that in "Videogames you can be a "Thief", you can be a "hard ass" or you can be "soldier". We just need to translate that to our university learning environment and think that we want students to be playing as scientists, as doctors, as engineers, etc.
Constance talk about videogames economics is not that interesting mostly because we're already tired to hear about all these fabricated numbers in the interest of videogames industry. She shows a table where in 2003 Videogames Industry out profit Hollywood box office movies - 10 billions against 9.5 billions.
This is uninteresting doing this kind of comparisons, Hollywood profits changed long time ago. They are not selling a movie through movie theatres only anymore. The changes performed in society made people to prefer staying at home than going out to a movie theatre for lots of reasons. And videogames also profit from this sedentary society. If we want to compare Videogames against Movies in terms of economics we need to be serious, and not using these numbers just to make fun and just to impress. Once again videogames are imitating Hollywood. It was Hollywood who invented the Box Office numbers in order to raise people expectations and peoples need to see movies that are doing so well at the box office. With the spreading of these numbers, videogame industry is only trying to call for attention from people who are not playing yet, and saying to them "hey listen, we already out profited Hollywood and if you don't come with us you'll lose your connection with the real world". Constance is being naïf when she says that "videogames are secretly and silently out profiting" without anybody knowing.
If we want to talk about economic comparisons, let's think about movie industry as we think about game industry. A movie itself produced in Hollywood without any merchandise must be accounted for: movie theatre sales + video rentals sales + dvd sales + cable sales + televison sales, now compare this with the videogame that is only sold in the little disc. And we need to be careful about talking of gaming industry and putting in the same bag videogames offline plus online because it seems to me like putting in the same bag movie industry plus television industry.
However after all this numbers and bag of media I came to think about one thing that makes me once again hate these capitalist strategies for selling more and more. Because in the end and in the future we want to arrive at a convergence point where we'll have no possible distinctions between TV, cinema or videogames. We'll have a central audiovisual hub at home and everywhere we go that will permit us to enjoy any type of content all through the same convergent media.
Kurt Squire gives an interesting overview of the gains business can have using videogames and also about the new possibilities for elearning.
Give a look and enlarge your horizons about the "art/entertainment/work" form of the XXI century. This perspective of videogames is only confirming Mcluhan predictions on Automata. "The age of information will compel us to use all of our faculties simultaneously, and we will discover that we are in leisure the more intensely we agree to involve with them, as it was the case of artists of all time" (Understanding Media, 1964)
Info
James Paul Gee - Read his book "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy", one of the most important works in the games/education field.
Constance Steinkuehler- https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/web/
Kurt Squire - http://website.education.wisc.edu/kdsquire/
outubro 23, 2004
ACM Multimedia 2004
Presentation at Columbia University of the paper "Story Reaction Structures to Emotion Detection" in the 1st Workshop "Story Representation, Mechanism, and Context", ACM MULTIMEDIA . You can take a look at the paper and presentation slides at my homepage.
The workshop was very good, not too much people which gave it a familiar touch :). A lot of discussions on story aesthetics and representation, Kevin purposed some funny and thoughtful story exercises. We've seen papers about story focusing on almost every area from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, computer science, film and theater.
setembro 30, 2004
Well, here I come again with my doubts and new definitions and new focus and new paths.
Something sort of new today, we'll sort of let down the buzzword virtual reality and substitute it only for videogames.
We were talking yesterday about the fact that the convergence is being approached through film entertainment area and not the art, alternative or independent field. So why do we want to look at Virtual Reality art installations? That makes no sense. In order to follow a scientific systematization we need to develop a multidisciplinary work but we also need to develop convergences between convergent fields, fields with some common inside. And that common inside is also the common goal of the overall work, and that is nothing more that the developing of tools that will be able to deliver an Entertainment Experience, emotionally and significantly richer.
Because of that our area is now more clearly defined and we can say it without shame that we?re really developing academic work in the area of games. We chose for now to call them VR Games instead of video or computer games. Because we'll not define aesthetics in Tetris or Pac-man but we'll work only with games that we'll be able to proportionate a virtual experience in the sense of the world depth being displayed tridimensionally. We are here also talking about a truly interactive story experience in spatial and temporal environment that awaits the user actions to reveal and not a multi-linear bag of cinematic sequences that asks players what story ending they want.
So we're trying to develop systematization or taxonomy of emotions in interactive storytelling through film and vr games, defining aesthetics convergences.
Something sort of new today, we'll sort of let down the buzzword virtual reality and substitute it only for videogames.
We were talking yesterday about the fact that the convergence is being approached through film entertainment area and not the art, alternative or independent field. So why do we want to look at Virtual Reality art installations? That makes no sense. In order to follow a scientific systematization we need to develop a multidisciplinary work but we also need to develop convergences between convergent fields, fields with some common inside. And that common inside is also the common goal of the overall work, and that is nothing more that the developing of tools that will be able to deliver an Entertainment Experience, emotionally and significantly richer.
Because of that our area is now more clearly defined and we can say it without shame that we?re really developing academic work in the area of games. We chose for now to call them VR Games instead of video or computer games. Because we'll not define aesthetics in Tetris or Pac-man but we'll work only with games that we'll be able to proportionate a virtual experience in the sense of the world depth being displayed tridimensionally. We are here also talking about a truly interactive story experience in spatial and temporal environment that awaits the user actions to reveal and not a multi-linear bag of cinematic sequences that asks players what story ending they want.
So we're trying to develop systematization or taxonomy of emotions in interactive storytelling through film and vr games, defining aesthetics convergences.
agosto 28, 2004
Love Robot
From Schopenhauer 'Metaphysics of Love' to Bjork/Cunningham 'All Is Full of Love'
Machines will never have real emotions because they don't need them.
Love doesn't make any sense in a machine because we only have this feeling to feed the passion and attraction necessary to provoke reproduction of our species (Schopenhauer).
So machines doesn't need to play sex to reproduce they will generate themselves in assemblage lines.
In this way what we need from robots is not a development of structures to generate emotions in robots we don't need them to be feeling robots.
They will need to be able to generate representations of human emotions - expressing emotions - and also able to recognize human emotions and having algorithms able to response to humans.
Robots will need this only in communication between robot-human not robot-robot.
From Schopenhauer 'Metaphysics of Love' to Bjork/Cunningham 'All Is Full of Love'
Machines will never have real emotions because they don't need them.
Love doesn't make any sense in a machine because we only have this feeling to feed the passion and attraction necessary to provoke reproduction of our species (Schopenhauer).
So machines doesn't need to play sex to reproduce they will generate themselves in assemblage lines.
In this way what we need from robots is not a development of structures to generate emotions in robots we don't need them to be feeling robots.
They will need to be able to generate representations of human emotions - expressing emotions - and also able to recognize human emotions and having algorithms able to response to humans.
Robots will need this only in communication between robot-human not robot-robot.
julho 23, 2004
What is ART?
Three theories or perspectives to look at art.
a) emotivist theory - artistic expression of emotion, artist-based emotional theory of art
b) sentimentalist theory - emotional responses of the viewer/listener, audience-based emotional theory of art
c) rationalist theory - rational communication + rational production
Using the three perspectives we can try to look at art as:
Something created intentionally, being able to communicate anything that will elicit a determined set of emotions in the receiver
Three theories or perspectives to look at art.
a) emotivist theory - artistic expression of emotion, artist-based emotional theory of art
b) sentimentalist theory - emotional responses of the viewer/listener, audience-based emotional theory of art
c) rationalist theory - rational communication + rational production
Using the three perspectives we can try to look at art as:
Something created intentionally, being able to communicate anything that will elicit a determined set of emotions in the receiver
julho 18, 2004
In the beginning I was looking for the convergence between film and virtual reality. I had a path to follow, to do a profound film study of 3-4 movies related to virtual reality, analysing the future consequences of VR in reality, in life, society, film - in the end a cultural analysis.
Then I turned my interests to storytelling - narratives, the art of storytelling, stereotypes of narrative - more versed in art theories.
Then I looked at emotions, the way to build emotions in a videogame through storytelling - psychology is over my head.
In some way i've returned back to my prior quests before the PhD - Why is interactive content communication (like virtual reality) not as emotional as film?
Don't know where I'll be in the next couple of months. I feel that I need to focus, and above all to find a strong link between these works already done. I'll need to bang my head in looking for answers. Where is the goal, what is my final target, what am I trying to prove that nobody else have already tried?
Just know that I want something that mixes emotions, film, VR and storytelling. I also know that there are some people out there working in the same area and that probably already found some solutions. Maybe that I need to focus a bit more in a sub-area of all this 4 mixed areas... at the same time I'm afraid to go deeper because every time I've to write something (papers) on the area, I've to justify and explain everything in the beginning because not everybody is aware of the state-of-the-art in the 4 areas.
So, that's where I'm now. I'm working in the building of a straight line for this multidisciplinary PhD. Hope to find some answers till the end of the summer, in the between I'll have to finish the chapter on film study.
Then I turned my interests to storytelling - narratives, the art of storytelling, stereotypes of narrative - more versed in art theories.
Then I looked at emotions, the way to build emotions in a videogame through storytelling - psychology is over my head.
In some way i've returned back to my prior quests before the PhD - Why is interactive content communication (like virtual reality) not as emotional as film?
Don't know where I'll be in the next couple of months. I feel that I need to focus, and above all to find a strong link between these works already done. I'll need to bang my head in looking for answers. Where is the goal, what is my final target, what am I trying to prove that nobody else have already tried?
Just know that I want something that mixes emotions, film, VR and storytelling. I also know that there are some people out there working in the same area and that probably already found some solutions. Maybe that I need to focus a bit more in a sub-area of all this 4 mixed areas... at the same time I'm afraid to go deeper because every time I've to write something (papers) on the area, I've to justify and explain everything in the beginning because not everybody is aware of the state-of-the-art in the 4 areas.
So, that's where I'm now. I'm working in the building of a straight line for this multidisciplinary PhD. Hope to find some answers till the end of the summer, in the between I'll have to finish the chapter on film study.
julho 16, 2004
I, Robot (2004)
I, Robot by Alex Proyas
«Asimov... making machines an example of how the world could be bettered through the mastery of technology. ..The robot was artificial intelligence in a man's shape, a foil for asking what it means to be human and what rules should govern us.
...
The idea that we can take our social interactions and code them with an Asimovian algorithm ("allow no harm, obey all orders, protect yourself") is at odds with the messy, unpredictable world.
...
This need for people to behave in a predictable, rational, measurable way recalls Mr. Spock's autistic inability to understand human emotion without counting dimples to discern happiness or frown lines to identify sorrow.»
in http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/machines_pr.html
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