Ever since Electronic Arts made public its intent to acquire Take-Two, newspapers, Web sites and blogs have been abuzz with reporting, rumor and speculation. Over the past couple of days, several business reporters have focused on the recently revised employment contract forTake-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick's ZelnickMedia, which is managing Take-Two. Even though Zelnick admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he originally hadn't planned to remain in the job more than six months, and even though there was significant interest in Take-Two by potential acquirers, ZelnickMedia now has an extra year tacked on to its management contract to go along with an increase in its annual mangement fee from $750,000 to $2.5 million. The Wall Street Journal described the agreement as follows:

Between those two offers [from EA to purhcase Take-Two], on Feb. 14, Take-Two's board of directors approved an amendment to an earlier agreement that more than tripled ZelnickMedia's cash compensation for providing financial and management consulting services to the company, boosting to $2.5 million a year from $750,000 the annual management fee it pays the firm. The board also boosted to $2.5 million from $750,000 the maximum annual bonus the firm is eligible to receive, according to a filing with securities regulators.

The board further granted ZelnickMedia 1.5 million Take-Two restricted shares, worth about $40 million at current prices, an award that still needs to be approved by shareholders at the company's annual meeting. Roughly half of that award will vest immediately if Take-Two is acquired in the near-term and various other conditions are met.

Having speculated on the ramifications of this news earlier in the week, we caught up with Electronic Arts vice president of corporate communications Jeff Brown to see if it had any way impacted EA's plans. Here's what he told us over email:

1. EGO...trip: the Apostrophe Defense Force comes to our rescue
2. RUM...ors of PC Gaming's death greatly exaggerated? Or Cliffyb held hostage?
3. VSM...on EA/Take-Two, cont'd: "I want big companies to innovate"
4. MMO...We can be heroes, for ever and ever...if we plan from the outset
5. OUR...milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, says Take-Two...
6. BUT...Activision's CEO says he's not one of the boys that are waiting
7. SUP...ertoys last all summer long, and other stories of future pets
8. SCi...and fourteen of its games go into a room. Only SCi comes out.
9. APB...Kotaku puts Phil Harrison on milk carton; videogaming247 finds him
10. CDC...may want to investigate the pandemic at this month's GDC
11. RND...Random Gawker post comments section taken over, turned into blog

1. DIE...I want you to shoot me as hard as you can
2. LOL...Nerd rage-fueled flame wars find an interactive home
3. VSM...Corporate games still suck: why Passage is better than Portal
4. VSM...EA and T2: "a very bad deal for us" or a move to "competent, stable management"
5. RND...Our sister company gets hip. Will Newsweek follow suit? We hope so.

UPDATE: A better link for item #3 can be found here at the blog Grand Text Auto.

1. EGO...trip: Hate It or Love It? Cool. But this is still How We Do (Fresh '99)
   
2. MTV...goes hog wild on EA's bid for Take-Two. Now, where's Sumner Redstone?
3. PS3...maintains its open philosophy when it comes to in-game advertising
4. RND...Forgive them, for the Daniel Day-Lewis haters know not what they do

 

Why haven't we yet written about the EA and Take-Two kerfuffle, which you can follow here and here in glorious epistolary form? It's not because we don't have anything to say (and say, and say, and say), but because we're working on something opine-y that's going to require a little more time in the lab. However, we came across a post by one of our favorite bloggers, Bill Harris of the blog Dubious Quality, with the title "Skullduggery." Upon reading it, we felt we had to bring to you, our Dear Readers. In Harris' post, he quoted a perceptive piece of analysis by MarketWatch columnist Herb Greenberg, who writes:

 

Sony Computer Entertainment International has just announced that its worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison is stepping down. Here's the release; we'll have more in the days to come.

*** 

TOKYO, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that Phil Harrison, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS), will resign from Sony Computer Entertainment Group as of February 29, 2008.  Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO of SCEI, will immediately assume responsibilities as president of SCE WWS, in addition to his current duties.

Prior to the launch of the original PlayStation, Phil Harrison joined Sony Electronics Publishing, Ltd. in 1992, which later evolved into Sony computer Entertainment Europe, and since then, he has made a tremendous contribution to the company playing a strategic role in the launch of four PlayStation platforms, as well as building strong relationships with game developers and publishers throughout the world.  Since his appointment to the position of president, SCE WWS, Harrison applied his considerable skill, knowledge and expertise to lead SCE Group's first party game development as well as aggressively pursuing the development of new online entertainment experiences.

"As one of the founding members of SCE, Phil played a key role in the development and growth of the PlayStation business and our industry," said Kazuo Hirai.  "It is sad to see him departing from SCE, but I wish to express my gratitude for his many invaluable contributions and also wish Phil the very best of luck in his future endeavors."

"The past 15 years at Sony Computer Entertainment has been the defining journey of my life so far," said Phil Harrison.  "I am grateful to all the PlayStation family for their incredible support, guidance and friendship.  It has been a privilege to serve as part of the team and be inspired by them on a daily basis.  I am so proud of everything PlayStation has achieved and will continue to support its future in every way I can."

###

1. ART...or simply bad game design? Holocaust-themed DS game debated, discussed
2. XNA...am cry? How SimsCarnival--ugh at that name--truly democratizes development
3. NHL...08 from EA Sports inspires near-rapturous praise from our favorite curmudgeon
4. FLA...me on! A look at Forumwarz, a satirical, browser-based adventure game
5. WHY...can't Far Cry 2 be about tears? Check out GDC's Game Designers Rant
6. RND...Linking about posting about talking about talking about Japan. For real.
   

1. NMP...Can the Wii60 alliance survive Nintendo zipping into the pole position
2. HMM...Phil-osophical differences between Europe and Japanese at Sony?
   
3. PSP...Sony, iPwned: Harmonix reveals that Phase was originally for PSP
4. NOT...quite YouTube--creators and gamers must pay to play--but still very cool
5. RND...Previously, on "24": the stuff of which conspiracy theories are made

 LostWinds, a WiiWare game developed and published by Frontier Developments

To get a sense of the thought process behind making a WiiWare game ahead of the service's May 12th debut, we spoke by phone with Frontier Developments founder David Braben. His company's first such title, LostWinds, aims to put "the power of the wind in the palm of your hand" (using the Wii remote) as you guide young Toku (using the nunchuk) on a series of adventures to lift an evil curse placed on the land of Mistralis. Also on the call: Nintendo of America director of project development, who began to chime in halfway through the interview with some explanations that clarified the differences between how Nintendo has chosen to approach original downloadable games as compared to Microsoft and Sony. Read on.

David, what is your WiiWare project?

David Braben: It's a game called LostWinds and it's about the idea of a wind spirit that has been hidden away by a nasty guy called Balasar. But essentially looking at it as a game, it really allows us to do new things on the Wii. We now have Wii in the marketplace for a year and as a developer it takes a while to come to grips with a new system like the Wii; the wonderful combination of the remote and the nunchuck. It's an opportunity for us to do great things with the game.

It's the first game to come out of a process that we have internally. One of the great things about working as a software developer is it's full of really enthusiastic people who really love games and so they're itching to try out new ideas. And so we created this--what originally started off as a Game of the Week project where people would propose games and as our managing director described it, it's a bit like dipping a piece of meat into a piranha tank and anything that's left has to be pretty tough. [Laughs.]

So in that sort of fantastic but critical atmosphere, we put out these game ideas, and people suggest ways of doing it better and ways to modify it and all that sort of thing. This is the first game that survived, if you like, that process, but also had grown from lots of people's suggestions about how it can be made to work really well. And the Wii is absolutely perfect platform for it.

Who's the main character? What's the goal and what's the game play?

Where did you first find out about Nintendo's WiiWare service for original downloadable games? Yep, right here on Level Up, where North American president Reggie Fils-Aime exclusively revealed the company's intention to create a way to allow developers of all sizes, from garage band programmers to corporate behemoths, to develop games for digital distribution. Well, here we go again, eight months later, with another scoop: the first Q&A with Nintendo that delves into specifics about the WiiWare service, which will debut in North America on May 12th. During a phone interview late last week with Frontier Developments founder David Braben about his WiiWare launch title LostWinds, Nintendo of America director of project development Tom Prata sat in on the call to answer any questions that went beyond Braben's purview. You can read that interview in its entirety here, but we'd like to include in this post a few of the things that Prata had to say about WiiWare. Excerpts:

On file size restrictions for WiiWare titles: We are encouraging developers to make a game that is more compact in nature, and not have to let's say compete on--as it relates to the very large volumes--filing up maybe lots of disk space like you would see in a conventional retail type of product. The reason for that is that we want the WiiWare development to be more cost effective and have low barriers to entry to allow the content creators to create with that type of risk.

On WiiWare's pricing structure: WiiWare, like Virtual Console will support a variety of different prices for the consumers in terms of Wii Points. So we'll have content that is--just like we do with Virtual Console--for let's say NES or Super Nintendo 64 at different price points.

On whether or not there will be downloadable WiiWare demos: The intention is that the creators will create the game and we'll make it available on WiiWare after it passes certification. But we really don't want to impose kind of too many restrictions on developers, or too many requirements. As an example, in many cases we don't want to say just because people can connect to the Internet that they have to make a multiplayer via the Internet version, or Wii Connect 24 modes, or take advantage of all the types of features that are available. The key for us is not to impose too many restrictions on the content creators and allow them to create the content that and the features that they think are more suitable to express their vision of the product. And creating demos or having demos as a requirement is a very costly type of endeavor, so it's not a requirement from Nintendo.

Note: Nintendo's PR agency, Golin Harris, followed up with the Level Up staff after the Q&A to add: "We do not intend to have a ‘try-before-you-buy’ model that requires developers to create expensive demos. Nintendo plans to provide information on games similar to what Nintendo in Japan is doing with the Everybody’s Nintendo Channel where creators can share information on their game directly to Wii consumers."

To read Nintendo's press release in its entirety, click on the link below.

1. EGO...trip: Our "fourth-string teams" Miyamoto quote continues to make the rounds
2. EGO...trip: Games, comics and cultural relevance posts keep flowing in
3. BRO...thers in Television, or, Gearbox's foray into linear entertainment
4. USA...American McGee unveils his latest partially eponymous title
5. NOM...enclature and interactivity: how do you name when you game?
6. D&D...designers of the 4th edition rulebook step into the digital hot seat
7. YOU...Tube, slowly declaring death to the venerable walkthrough?
8. F2P...The art, craft and business of free to play games, considered
9. BBB...How the Conan videogame failed to embrace the power of pulp
10. RND...Singing for her supper: the opera chanteuse on the Journal's board

 GDC's Jamil Moledina 

In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Game Developers Conference executive director Jamil Moledina, we discussed what makes GDC tick; whether the lines were blurring between core games and casual games; and whether both the short session games market on consoles and the indie game phenomenon on PCs are fixtures or fads. In today's second and final portion of our interview, Moledina talks about whether it's legitimate to compare the PC and console markets; why game industry scold Jack Thompson won't be speaking at this year's conference; and what lessons should be learned from the Fox News/Mass Effect debacle. Enjoy.

Speaking of pessimism, you know, towards the end of the year it seemed like there were a number of flagship shooters on the PC that were not performing as well as people had expected. Unreal Tournament III, in particular doesn't seem to be selling as strongly as it has in the past. I think Crysis seems to be underperforming. Orange Box, I think did solid to strong numbers. You have Call of Duty 4 which actually did pretty decently on PC but those numbers were significantly less than it did on PS3, which was in turn, insignificantly less than what it sold on the Xbox 360. And this was a franchise that began on the PC. Shooters were the Jerry Bruckheimer summer movies of the PC, but the energy around them seems to be increasingly moving over to the console. Are you seeing the effects of that in the development community? Where should we expect to see the PC going? Are we pretty much going to be seeing free ad supported games, MMOs and RTS games on the PC while the rest of the flagship stuff moves over to the console?

Well, one season is perhaps not necessarily the best gauge for the long term viability of a particular style of play. It's the same season--correct me if I'm wrong--that Halo 3 came out in, right?

Uh-huh.

So that was something that certainly did some numbers that brought up the first-person prospective shooter genre. The interesting thing though that you bring up is the difference between PC and console. And I think it's hard to compare the two largely because the PC is constantly in flux. Everyone has a different PC. There isn't standardization as there is with console. And more and more you're seeing people find pros and cons to that. The pro with the standard platform, of course, being that the game will always work. But at the same time it may require an initialization process. There's still perhaps some time that goes into it. Whereas on the PC side, you have a much lower threshold for initially creating the game. So there's a greater diversity. You may see more unique or interesting types of titles. And so they don't necessarily need to do the same numbers as you see on the console.

Once you start comparing number of PC sales to numbers of console sales, I'm not sure you'd get a reliable trend out of that. The thing that we're really excited about PC though is that it has this kind of capability like I was talking about with indie games to create really off the wall types of titles. People have the ability to express themselves in a wider variety of ways. So by doing that and by setting lower targets in terms of what they ultimately hope to sell or have available by download, people still are making a living and doing so quite successfully.

I'm not sure it's that easy, but I'm not sure that I have a way to help parse it. Although it's something that I think is worth having an ongoing conversation about. There are a couple of PC developers that I know that we talk generally with about this idea, but you should definitely meet them and figure out how they're able to stay very comfortable and very satisfied and very creative.

Are there any sessions that are going to speak to this need?

 1UP Network editorial director Dan Hsu

Two weeks ago, Ziff-Davis' 1UP Network, which publishes the magazines EGM, Games For Windows: The Official Magazine and 1UP.com announced that it had reorganized its editorial group around three silos--Videogames, PC Games and Video--spanning both print and online. Simultaneously, the company revealed that its review scale would shift from its familiar ten point scale to letter grades, a la Entertainment Weekly. To get a better understanding of the changes that were afoot, we pinged 1UP Network editorial director Dan "Shoe" Hsu with a few questions over email, which he graciously took time to answer--but only after he finished closing the next issue of EGM. Now that's dedication. Here's what Hsu had to say.

What were the main reasons behind the recently announced reorganization of the 1UP Network? When do they go into effect?

We integrated the print and online teams because we recognized this is the direction that media's going. It's no longer just about print or just about online; it's about both. This reorganization lets us tackle our editorial duties more efficiently, because all our editors are constantly working in both print and online. We really think our readers will notice and appreciate this move, too, because it will translate into better, more well-rounded coverage from us.

Presumably, Jeff Green, who was just named the 1UP Network's editor-in-chief for PC games, will remain the editor-in-chief of Games For Windows magazine. But the press release wasn't clear about whether Jeff's 1UP Network counterpart for videogames, James Mielke, will also be the editor-in-chief of the corresponding magazine, EGM. Is Mielke now in charge of EGM, or are you still the editor-in-chief?

Jeff Green is the editor-in-chief, PC games, so he's running Games For Windows: The Official Magazine as well as the PC coverage on our online properties. James Mielke is Jeff's videogame/console counterpart, so yup, he's the editor-in-chief of EGM (as well as the console side of our online sites). I'm now full-time editorial director for the 1UP Network.

Over the past few years, video has moved from the periphery to the center of Ziff-Davis videogame coverage. You've also got a number of popular and/or influential podcasts, like 1UP Yours and the Games For Windows podcast. What plans do you have going forward for video and audio under this new management structure?

1. THE...killer awoke before dawn, or, meet me at the back of the Blu bus
2. PHD...revoked: how can we in the MSM hate what we don't understand?
3. DOC...tor Evil wants more than $1 billion for the house that Gears built
   
4. GOD...of combat Eric Williams expounds on the use of cancels
5. RND...Desperately in need of some stranger's hand/in a desperate land?

 GDC's Jamil Moledina

In the run-up to last year's Game Developers Conference, we published a wide-ranging three-part exchange with GDC executive director Jamil Moledina, covering everything from our concerns about the approach of console manufacturers to the GDC keynotes to the controversy swirling around the Slamdance Film Festival over the game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Moledina graciously agreed to return to the Level Up hot seat ahead of this year's show--which kicks off today in San Francisco--for a Q&A that we'll be publishing in two parts. In today's Part I, we discuss the amount of time and planning that goes into GDC; whether product casualization or audience stratification best describes a recent trend in videogames; and the commercial prospects for short session game developers. Read on.

After a conference is finished, how soon do you start planning the next one? Do you get a little break, or do you roll right into sketching out the next conference the following Monday?

I roll right into it six months before. The GDC has about an 18-month product cycle. So at this point in time, we are deep into GDC '09. even though we're just three weeks away from GDC '08. And although I do take a few days off after GDC there's so much preparation that needs to go into this show. I mean, it's a multi-million dollar, 16,000 person live, five-day show. And there's a sense of responsibility that we all have to deliver the largest professional-only industry show that there is. So there's a lot riding on it--there's so many moving pieces involved that we need to have a lot of work done way, way, way in advance.

What are the key components to making something like GDC work?

There are several key disciplines involved. The core of it is the conference itself. So we put a lot of energy into developing an experience that fits the core values of the show: learning, inspiration, and networking. That's the central foundation, and everything that we put into the GDC has to reflect one or more of those components, so we build the show from there.

Now, there's a lot of nuts and bolts involved as well, given the scale of it. We have 400 sessions, 25 concurrent tracks--meaning 25 rooms running at the same time with different content all the way through the three days of the main GDC. The Monday and Tuesday content is very specialized, drilled down summits and tutorials.

The first thing we need to do is make sure that all of our content is locked in, accurate and feels right. That's a combination of having an open call for submissions from the industry; having an advisory board composed of industry veterans, as well as those with their sleeves rolled up digging through--and making--the best games of our time so that we have a sense of judgment that is accurate. Because internally we have an editorial perspective, but essentially the GDC is built as something by developers for developers, and has to be reflective of those interests and concerns and values.

As best as you can tell, what two or three things characterize the major concerns--the collective concerns--of developers in 2008?

 The 1UP Yours crew: (left to right) Bryan Intihar, Shane Bettenhausen, Andrew Pfister, Garnett Lee and Shawn Elliott

Last Thursday, the staff of Level Up made a guest appearance on the Ziff-Davis podcast 1UP Yours. Though the lineup has changed a number of times since hitting its stride--so long, Luke! Farewell, John! Happy trails, Mark!--it has nevertheless remained our videogame podcast of choice; its Friday afternoon availability confirming the onset of weekend freedom. On last week's show, topics included:

• --The cult hit No More Heroes (not all it's cracked up to be, according to Shawn Elliott)
• --Army of Two (noticeably improved, with a cool new multiplayer co-op mode, says Garnett Lee)
• --The Club (better than some of the reviews would indicate, swears Level Up)
• --The January NPD sales figures (we'll wait to see if PS3's victory over Xbox 360 represents a blip or a trend, says the entire panel)
• --Some interesting tidbits about Xbox boss Don Mattrick and his right hand man John Schappert, who's delivering a GDC keynote this week 

1. EGO...trip: Comics, videogames and the cultural ghetto prompt online chatter, debate
2. ALO...ne in the Dark: so promising, Atari should ditch the aging IP, give it a new name
3. CAN...you create an interactive game about teen dating violence?
   
4. NIP...slip: Bared breasts in Conan MMO--fidelity to the license, or just cheap thrills?
5. HOT...Flash game's unique gameplay mechanics demand that you play it right now
6. PHD...Why the mainstream media hates your favorite pastime--hey, wait a minute...
7. HOW...a videogame developer struggles with the question, "What do you do?"
   
8. VSM...The U.K. Guardian vs. the U.K. Guardian on the literary merits of games
9. CHE...aters never win: when is it permissible for reviewers to seek help?
   
10. RND...How an obscure junior college coach is revolutionizing modern basketball

 A cover for the comic book "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill

In Part I of our critique of level designer and blogger Steve Gaynor's assertion that "video games will never become a significant form of cultural discourse the way that novels and film have," we talked about how any medium requires a certain amount of learning in order for it to be approached and engaged. We also suggested that as more people grow up playing videogames, even conventional controllers like those of the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 become far less of a barrier to entry, to say nothing of newer interfaces such as the Wii. But Gaynor believes that there's something even more essential, even more fundamental about videogames that will forever wall the medium off from truly widespread participation:

[T]he very nature of interactive games bars them from ever truly gaining mass acceptance, and therefore mass cultural relevance. The strength of video games, what makes them unique, interesting, and affecting, is that they engage in a dialogue with each individual player. They ask you to invest yourself in the experience, to explore and understand the logic of their gameworld, and to activate the experience by doing. Video games require you to be involved, to take responsibility for your actions onscreen. They expect more out of you than film, television, the internet or a book does. You get from video games what you're willing to put in. The audience at large only wants to take.

The very thing Gaynor decries--a lack of willingness among the audience to work for their entertainment--isn't inherent in to this medium. It's almost intractable among mass audiences no matter what the medium. Popular fiction generally outsells literary fiction. Summer blockbusters generally out-gross arthouse films. Is this any different from, say, Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat out-NPD-ing BioShock last year, or Madden doing the same to Shadow of the Colossus in 2005? Does it truly matter that in aggregate television is more mass a mass medium than videogames, when on an individual level, its practitioners are faced with the same challenges that plague those who work in other media? The creator of "The Wire," David Simon, in explaining the advantages of working on TV shows for premium cable described the problem as follows:

 A cover of the acclaimed comic book "Planetary." Written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by John Cassaday

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says a whisper, arise, arise
Tomorrow belongs to me
--"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from the musical "Cabaret," music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb

A bet is a type of game, one with which we here at Level Up have become intimately familiar. So when we got wind of a brand new wager of sorts, between bloggers Borut Pfeifer (at The Plush Apocalypse) and Steve Gaynor (over at Fullbright), our antennae perked up immediately. And what was it that prompted this bout of gambling? It was level designer Gaynor's admittedly pessimistic assertion that "...I'll bet you that video games will never become a significant form of cultural discourse the way that novels and film have. I'll bet you that fifty years from now they'll be just as mature and well-respected as comic books are today." To which the more optimistic Pfeifer, who's working on one of Electronic Arts' Steven Spielberg games, replied, "I’ve certainly had days where I’d agree with most everything he says. I get where it’s coming from. Whether it was a frustrating day at work, or sometimes just going to a particularly rough GDC, I am not immune to that brand of despair. But, overall, I gotta say, games still have much more to achieve as a medium--if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be working on them."

One sees the glass as half-empty, the other sees the glass as half-full. But both are largely proceeding from the same set of assumptions when they subject videogames to a close examination--in terms of their accessibility; required level of engagement; maturity of subject matter; visual realism--and find them wanting. Take the issue of accessibility, of which Gaynor says:

Video games are hard for people to get into. The barrier for entry is higher than perhaps any other popular entertainment medium. To read a book, all you need to do is go to a library, pick one up, and start reading (which isn't usually an obstacle considering the high literacy rate in the modern world.) At the advent of popular film, you only needed to walk to a movie theatre and pay your nickel (or nowadays, ten bucks) to see the latest release. Processing the experience isn't an issue: sit, watch, and you've received an experience equal to anyone else in the audience....

Over time, the technical and systemic complexity of video games have increased, while the barriers to entry have largely remained undamaged. Taking inflation into account, the cost of a home console unit has stayed largely constant since the mid-80's (and the price of a competent gaming PC has similarly kept pace;) controllers have sprouted more buttons, gyroscopes, and analogue sticks than ever; and it's still extremely common for games of high quality to be too difficult for a non-gamer to play effectively.

1. $$$...Does Obama need to spend more time wooing the game industry?
2. WoW...Blizzard finds even more ways to make it rain on them gamers
3. GH3...Musician and open mic lover protests the ersatz replacing the real
4. RND...