Last month, as we were working on our exclusive story about two of the three games being developed in collaboration by Steven Spielberg and Electronic Arts Los Angeles, we spoke with some other industry executives about the continuing dance between Hollywood and the videogame industry. A lot of our reporting was left on the cutting room floor; thankfully, the staff of Level Up has an outlet to bring you some of those deleted scenes. One of the execs we contacted with was Steve Allison, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer for Midway Home Entertainment, who previously contributed one of our blog's most buzzed-about guest essays about what developers must do to improve their games. We asked him about his company's creative partnerships with Hollywood talent; its licensing deals with movie studios; and Midway's own properties that are being adapted for the big screen. Here's what Allison told us via e-mail:

What is the difference--creatively, financially and otherwise--when working on a games like The Ant Bully and Happy Feet, which are presumably straightforward licensing deals, and games like John Woo's Stranglehold and The Wheelman with Vin Diesel, which are more along the lines of financial partnerships?

They both have what I would call traditional licensing terms. So financially, deals like Stranglehold, Wheelman or Happy Feet frankly aren't that different, they are in fact essentially the same. The difference between Wheelman, Stranglehold and our similar other projects is that these projects are true creative partnerships--we look to bring the talents of our partnerships to bear on our final product. The thesis is the talent we've chosen to align with brings something creatively relevant to the videogame space. For these particular franchises--Wheelman, Stranglehold and a couple of others we have yet to announce (and won't until 2008)--we look to bring their creative process and ours together so that the end product is something special, more so than it would have been if we'd just cooked it up ourselves. We also match the partner and the project so they make sense based on the partner's body of film or creative work. Net net, we're looking for perfect genre alignment.

These are not joint ventures or financial partnerships. At the development costs we have, we can't work outside of the traditional licensing framework for the game without making it an impossible project to cost justify. What we have done with these projects that is very unique is that we give certain rights outside the gaming space to our partners in perpetuity, like the film rights. These rights have real financial and emotional value to our partners and in fact are proving to be very motivational as a working mechanic. Our partners are passionate about building these properties for us, so it works as a game for us, and for them it could also work as a film.

1. EGO...trip: the Level Up staff on GDC Radio
   
2. DAD...Terry Pratchett's daughter writes games
3. PS1...on PS3: act still not together in U.S.
4. Wii...Toilet Training, as demoed by MTV
5. BLU...Ray gets lift in Japan from porn?
6. ART...and games: the debate rages on
7. EYE...of Judgment: sleeper or flop?
8. VH1...lists game nods in "The Simpsons" flick
9. REW...The history of Activision, chronicled 
10. RND...How energy efficiency could help the military

A good part of the day of the typical Level Up staffer consists of inbox management. It's a game in some ways, as we try to determine which emails are should be read immediately; which should be saved for a later date' and which should be promptly deleted. We know that the game industry has a hard time coming up with creative names for their products, but when we see a subject line like "World Announcement--THEY debuts at Games Convention 2007," it's an immediate candidate for the trash bin. We're not going to Leipzig (if our editors are reading this, we'd really, really like to attend) and 'THEY' is neither appealing enough nor sufficiently descriptive a title to make us want to devote any mental energy to opening and reading the attached message. Yet for some strange reason, we did.

Generally, the role of a press release is to inform. But having read the THEY press release, all we've taken away from it is hyperbole and buzzwords, assembled Mad Libs-style for maximum unintended hilarity.

What is THEY? Apparently, THEY is a "next generation mystery first person shooter for PC and next generation consoles."

Who are THEY, you ask? "'THEY' are huge--'THEY' are different--'THEY' are hostile!"

How good will THEY be? It's "so mysterious, so stunning and so amazing--that 'THEY' might become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year’s Games Convention!"

What is THEY's best feature? The "haunting single player mode," the "heroes to identify with" and the "diversified enemies--thrilling and intelligent" were all candidates. But in the end, the winner was its "unique weapon system that makes you 'love' your weapons." After all, one of the of the holy grails of videogames is to elicit emotions from players beyond excitement, frustration and fear. Therefore, we applaud the ambition of the creators of THEY--whoever they may be, since who they are is not part of the information contained in the THEY press release. Because if THEY can make us "love" our weapons, THEY might just become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year’s Games Convention. Even if we're not there to see it.

Click on the link to see the full release, along with a screenshot of one of THEY's love-ly weapons.

Director Russ Meyer and film critic Roger Ebert

Anyone who faces the blank page or screen on a regular basis knows that he or she always runs the risk of filling it with b.s.; we've certainly dropped our share on this blog since its inception ten months ago. Over at the Chicago Sun-Times, film critic Roger Ebert seems to have similarly relieved himself, in "Games vs. Art: Ebert vs. Barker," a fisking of writer-director-producer-game designer Clive Barker's recent statements criticizing Ebert's two-year-old assertion that games can't be art. It's rare enough that one of the nation's foremost critics of a well-established medium like film deigns to address a newer medium like videogames; more's the pity that Ebert couldn't be bothered to address Barker's critique with Barker's own searching seriousness, choosing instead to spend most of his 1100 words vamping for the entertainment of his presumably gaming-illiterate audience. But since we've got our own blank screen to fill, we thought we'd do so by fisking Ebert's column.

Ebert: A year or so ago, I rashly wrote that video games could not be art. That inspired a firestorm among gamers, who wrote me countless messages explaining why I was wrong, and urging me to play their favorite games. Of course, I was asking for it. Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it.

If Ebert had done a bit more research--well, any research--he could have bolstered his argument by citing some notable game designers--e.g. Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto and Keiji Inafune, each of whom has gone on record as saying that they don't believe that videogames are art--and engaged what game creators themselves have said. Or he could have elaborated on the distinction that he's drawn between high art and low art. No such luck. Instead, he'd rather dismiss videogames with the sarcastic magnanimousness of "Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup," as long as we vidigoths don't attempt to desecrate the Temple of High Art, where presumably the gods of Cinema stand comfortably next to those of Theater, Dance, Painting, Sculpture, Opera and Literature.
 

Ebert: How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in "Myst," and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.

Wow. Only two paragraphs into his column, Ebert proceeds to dismiss an entire medium in just five sentences--two rhetorical questions; a list; and an assertion--none of which display much familiarity with the subject. Ebert knows roughly how many games he's played; were the number high enough for him to speak authoritatively, he'd have said so. It's no accident that the one game he cites by name is Myst, because that 13-year-old title--whose reputation is somewhat tattered as befits its stature as one of this emerging medium's evolutionary dead ends--is probably the last game that he played for any meaningful length of time.

1. HMM...Sony's "Game 3.0" neologism is catching on
2. OLE...Before echochrome, there was OLE
3. POP...Prince of Persia's Jordan Mechner speaks
4. RND...No room for a dog? Why not rent?
5. RND...There she goes, Miss (Geek) America 

The winners of the 2007 Game Critics Awards will be announced this week, but for now, the nominees are all savoring their well-deserved recognition-that is, when they're not jamming to finish their games. We reached out to the makers of a couple of our pre-E3 candidates for Best of Show-Harmonix and Infinity Ward-to get their reactions to the nominations they received. Here's what they told us:

Grant Collier, president and studio head of Infinity Ward

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 

Four nominations: Best of Show, Best Console Game, Best PC Game, Best Action Game

Considering the hundreds of exciting, high-caliber titles at E3 this year, all of us here at Infinity Ward are extremely thrilled to receive so many E3 nominations for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. We've worked really hard to make this the best title we've ever created, and to be considered in four of the coveted Game Critics Awards categories speaks to the game's strength and showing on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. We have incredible respect and are good friends with the development teams who are also up for consideration, and it gives us great honor to be within such top-tier company.

Alex Rigopoulos, CEO, president and co-founder of Harmonix

Rock Band 

Five nominations: Best of Show, Best Console Game, Best Original Game, Best Hardware, Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game

The team at Harmonix has been pouring its sweat and blood into Rock Band for a very long time, so obviously we're all thrilled with this recognition. The reception that the game received at E3 speaks to rock music's universal appeal and its power to sway people's emotions. We can't wait to finish the game and release it to the world.

We also slipped in another question for Rigopoulos: how did he feel about Rock Band being nominated for Best Original Game after Activision, publisher of the Harmonix-developed Guitar Hero franchise, called its new rival Rock Band an imitator during a May conference call?

1. 1st...If this is your first night at Game Club, you have to play
2. GTA...IV: Buy 360 version for "complete experience," says rep 
3. MAN...ifesto: a veteran game creator speaks out
4. NEW...content for Xbox Live Arcade
5. MTV...grills Nintendo about game availability
6. BLU...Target joins Blockbuster in pushing Blu-Ray
7. XBX...cuts price of HD-DVD add-on
8. Wii...want these games for the Virtual Console
9. RND...Kanye West, gone crazy like Gnarls Barkley
10. RND..."Serious" pundits object to label. Seriously.

1. EGO...trip: New bet by Level Up, noticed, debated, discussed
   
2. HMM...Rockstar Games = "The Office"?
3. WTF...This is your ESA on drugs. Any questions? 
4. UE3...Epic Games exec responds to Koei's criticism 
5. NUM...bers on June gaming, from Nielsen 
6. REW...If you saw this, go here for more insight
7. VSM...Jack Thompson vs. GamePolitics.com: fight! 
8. PS3...adds wallpaper support; fans go wild
9. DEV...elop Award winners, named
10. RND...Beyonce, still a survivor 

Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in.

--Michael Corleone, "The Godfather: Part III"

What is it with Microsoft employees and their zeal for wagering with the staff of Level Up? After Sony's gang-who-couldn't-shoot-straight handling of its talking points surrounding the price cut for Playstation 3 in the North American market, and the introduction of a PS3 value pack in Europe, a friend--Xbox director of technical strategy and attack blogger Andre "Ozymandias" Vrignaud ("the Sean Hannity of the Xbox division's blog army," as we affectionately dubbed him last year)--tapped out this post and emailed us the link. In it, he wrote:

The old 60 GB SKU is being cleared out for $499 as quickly as possible - as you might recall, this was the supposed "price cut" that Sony announced. In reality, once supplies are gone in the next couple of months it'll be gone forever. However, that doesn't leave Sony in a good place. A single, $599 SKU would be untenable; if they don't move significant hardware this holiday they'll basically be dead for this generation.

My prediction is that you're going to see the creation of a new, low-end SKU this holiday. It'll likely remove integrated WiFi, memory card reader, and most controversially, all backward compatibility. (Remember, there's still some back-compat hardware in even the new "software only" back compat SKUs; removing the remaining CPU is a significant cost savings.) You'll see a new WiFi dongle made available. And finally, this low-end SKU will likely come with a smaller 40 GB hard drive. The low-end price will be set at $399, with the higher-end 80 GB SKU dropping to $499.

So there you go - nothing magic about the current value SKU. It's just a classic retail technique of clearing the channel for new SKUs. Now we just need to wait a few months for the announcement - it'll have to be before Thanksgiving, so I'd expect October. 

We pinged him back with our prediction for the remainder of 2007 after store shelves had been cleared of the 60 gigabyte PS3: one SKU, $499. Not long thereafter, Vrignaud placed a call to Level Up HQ, challenging us to a wager on the subject of Sony's pricing plans for this holiday.

1. WoW...At 9 million strong, even pols want in 
2. SAM...Cooke, channelled by Peter Moore
3. GAT...Leave the Wii Zapper, take the shotty
4. MMO...from the Cartoon Network
5. BRR... Manhunt 2 fallout's chilling effect
6. SHH...Library holding Halo 2 tournament
7. RND...Lindsay Lohan: hot mess edition

1. NPD...DS still prints money; PS3, not so much
2. MEM...ento: could an RE5 tattoo have helped?
3. SAD...or happy? Depends on our Real Lives
4. POL...GOP candidate Romney takes aim at retail
5. RED...More thoughts on the 360's flaws
6. CLI...ches in games: a necessary evil
7. $$$...Deus Ex Mickey-na: Spector on the Mouse
8. RIP...Remembering a children's game designer
9. NOT..his cup of tea: Jaffe on Miyamoto's latest
10. RND...A man's faith, destroyed

Rock Band, developed by Harmonix

The Game Critics Association, of which the Level Up staff is a member, has just announced its 2007 Game Critics Awards nominations for the best games shown at the recent E3 Media & Business Summit in Los Angeles. Leader of the pack? That would be the would-be Guitar Hero slayer known as Rock Band--developed by Harmonix and published by MTV and Electronic Arts--with five nominations. Lighters up, people.

Just behind Rock Band, with four nominations each, are Infinity Ward/Activision's military shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Irrational Games/2K Games' action-RPG BioShock. The three games were nominated for Best of Show, along with Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3 (three nominations) and BioWare/Microsoft Game Studios' Mass Effect (three nominations.) Our personal favorite, Media Molecule/Sony Computer Entertainment's LittleBigPlanet, received three nominations, including one for Best Original Game. The winners will be announced next week, but in the meantime, you can get a fuller breakdown of the awards by the numbers here.

For the full list of nominees, click on the link below.

Mr. Yellowhead, from the Craftworld prototype of Media Molecule's PS3 game LittleBigPlanet, courtesy Gamespot

Going into the E3 Media & Business Summit, our Best of Show shortlist consisted of two choices: Rock Band and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. And until the last day of the show, the two titles were still our front-runners. Then we attended a closed-door showing of Media Molecule and Sony's LittleBigPlanet, followed by our first hands-on experience with the game, and we were reminded once again why LBP stole the show at this year's Game Developers Conference. It's got the creativity possibilities of a child's toy box, the charm of a Pixar movie, and the joyfully simple controls that were promised in the now-legendary GDC stage demonstration, shown here. We have no idea what our fellow Game Critics Awards judges will nominate tomorrow, but for us, the choice is clear.

During the Q&A portion of LittleBigPlanet's E3 demonstration, we asked founders Mark Healey and Alex Evans about Craftworld, the different-but-equally charming 2-D prototype that had convinced Sony to sign the startup to a deal, which they'd shown during a smaller session at GDC. Specifically, we wanted to know whether Media Molecules had any plans to further develop and release it. The response--which involved shock, stammering, a near-admission and ultimately a demurral--is transcribed below.

Level Up: The 2-D prototype that you guys did was also very striking. Do you have any plans for that? PSP? Playstation Network? A hidden unlock? Something else?

Mark Healey: [Laughs.] There's--we're not allowed to talk about that, are we?

Playstation publicist: No.

Alex Evans: Sorry, we can't.

Healey: But that prototype you saw, the physics in that is exactly what's being used here. This is almost that prototype, just with remastered graphics really, and the added extra layers.

1. MJJ...The Music Video: Dyack Vs. Rein
   
2. NCL...A defense of Nintendo's casual focus
3. TEN...or so E3 videos worth watching
4. NEW...ish way of thinking about game design
5. RND...Gay flash mobs in L.A., explained

The HAL 9000 computer from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling, who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted here last month about his brief playtime with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, sandwiched between the obligations--and joy--of raising his new daughter. In today's entry, he reflects on how his affection for his Xbox 360 has been tested in recent weeks.

My first Xbox 360--that's right, my first Xbox 360--died just two weeks after I received it as a surprise for my wedding anniversary last summer (my wife still gets Hall of Fame status for that gift idea.) One minute it was humming along nicely as I parachuted into position on Bridge Too Far in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, the next it froze up and stared me down with its HAL 9000-esque eye burning three-quarters red--the dreaded "ring of death" came to visit. I somewhat sheepishly brought it back to my local Best Buy, secretly afraid--after a night of Googling message boards--that I'd suffocated it in our TV cabinet and melted its innards to mush. The salesperson at the returns desk barely looked up as I gingerly pushed the repackaged unit across the counter. "So have you been getting a lot of returns on these?" I ventured after the silence became uncomfortable. "Uh-huh," she said, eyebrows raised, "good luck with this one," pushing a new unit back across the counter. I left quickly.

Truth be told, the Xbox consoles are the first Microsoft products I've truly loved, and the only PC-based products I've spent money on--otherwise, my household is all Apple. It felt like Redmond had gotten it right with the first Xbox: solid-if-chunky industrial design; smooth and bug-free operating system; genre-defining games like Halo, and Xbox Live--the lifeblood of my nightly gaming. Miraculously, Microsoft had become the underdog I rooted for: they even wooed me away from my PlayStation 2 after only a year.

The Sony E3 Press Conference.

Why should I care?

PS3. PSP. PS2

Where did it take place?

Culver City Studios.

Opening act:

Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton appearing as a digital avatar in Home.

First game shown:

Since we refuse to count trailer montages, we'd say that Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron took the pole position.

High point:

The trailer for the Playstation Network's Escher-inspired Echo Chrome (we'd already seen the Killzone live demonstration the night before—and got the world exclusive first hands-on a few hours after the press conference.)

1. YOU...got served: Silicon Knights vs. Epic Games 
2. BYE...A recap of Peter Moore's Xbox tenure
3. PSP...slim's battery, explained
4. SH2...Inside the perversity of Silent Hill 2
5. RND...Virtua Cop, Romney-style?

1. VSM...bell801 vs. NeoGAF vs. 1UP: Fight!
2. UWE...Boll vs. the NY Post: no matter who wins, we lose
3. BUG...Testers vs. games: the industry's underbelly
4. RND...Sharpton vs. Imus: we can all get along

1. VSM...Rockstar Games vs. GI.biz, Round 1: Fight!
2. PS3...sees a slew of new games announced in Japan
3. 360...Shane Kim on Microsoft's Japanese prospects
4. MTV...The harsh life of a Game Critics E3 judge
5. RND...The incredible shrinking blockbuster

In what could best be described as a slow motion game of musical chairs, Microsoft yesterday announced that corporate vice president for entertainment and devices Peter Moore will leave the company in September to assume the job of label president of EA Sports for Electronic Arts. Replacing Moore at Microsoft is EA's former president of worldwide studios Don Mattrick, who is currently serving as an external adviser to the entertainment and devices group at Microsoft. (Got that? Good--there may be a quiz later.)

We were briefed by executives at both Microsoft and Electronic Arts; Moore himself, however, was not on either call. Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment and devices division--and Moore's boss--said that he was sorry to see Moore leave, but that Moore wanted to move his family back to the Bay Area. We inquired of Bach whether there was any connection between Moore's departure and the recent announcement of the Xbox 360's hardware flaws; he flatly denied it. When asked why he decided to step off the sidelines and back into the game, incoming Xbox chief Mattrick--whose title will be senior vice president--said that as far as he was concerned, the opportunity was too strong to pass up.

EA CEO John Riccitiello gave us Electronic Arts' side of the corporate do-si-do. He explained that he'd tried to recruit Moore to EA on a couple of occasions in the late '90s and early 2000s, praising Moore as the toughest competitor that EA Sports had ever faced, as well as for his work on both software and hardware at Microsoft. We're still trying to suss out what all of this means, but at first glance, Microsoft has brought in a respected industry veteran to fill Moore's shoes, while EA appears to have assembled the deepest bench of executive talent of any third party publisher. Caveat competitor.

Nintendo E3 2007 press conference in Santa Monica, California

What is it?

The Nintendo E3 Press Conference.

Why should I care?

Wii. DS. Game Boy Advance.

Where did it take place?

Santa Monica Civic Center.

Opening act:

Video montage of Wii phenomenon--complete with YouTube clips.

First add-on shown:

The Wii Zapper. $19.99. Light gun game creators rejoice.

High point:

New footage of Super Mario Galaxy.

More E3 At-a-Glance after the jump.

1. TOT...al recall: Xbox 360s, by EB, in Australia
2. 2nd...line: See Gamecock's funeral for E3
3. Sec...ond Life: See L.A. Times funeral for the MMO 
4. BAD...Is there such a thing as a B-game?
5. IND...ie game: Iranian students go gold
6. RND...Carney vs. Kristol: Fratricide at Brand X