wessman
September 13th, 2002, 06:50 PM
Chip implants--game plan for Sony?
By Vivienne Fisher
ZDNet Australia
September 13, 2002, 11:13 AM PT
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-957881.html
In the run up to the launch of PlayStation 2, Sony set out its ultimate vision for gaming technology. In a series of commercials run in the United States, the PlayStation 2 was hailed as a step in the evolution of the surgically implanted PlayStation 9 controller, tipped to hook up to the a transparent glassy globe which is the console through the retina.
With a launch date set for sometime around 2075, Sony has a good deal of time to iron out the technical and ethical issues surrounding such a proposition.
"The premise is that the PlayStation 2 is the beginning of a whole new evolution," Patrick Lagana, product manager for hardware and peripherals at Sony computer entertainment Australia explained. "There are all kinds of questions from an ethical point of view, and it is hard to see at this stage how they will release it, but the direction is clear."
In the meantime however, games console and peripherals vendors are focusing on providing ever more immersive technologies, enhancing the gaming experience through improved graphics, voice recognition, force feedback features, movement capturing technology, broadband connectivity and movement capture devices.
"Over the next couple of years we are going to see an even bigger jump in the quality of the graphics than we saw in the last generation of consoles," said Andrew Carter, vice president of development at games developer and publisher Infogrames Melbourne House. "Games graphic are not necessarily going to become more realistic, but they will certainly become more fantastic."
Although Carter is enthusiastic about the prospects of bio-interactive games, he believes it will take a lot of work between the console developers and medical scientists before any such device could get off the ground.
"The limitation there is more medical understanding at this stage," Carter said. "A lot of games could work fantastically well with that kind of interface."
====================
PlayStation 2 gamers claim foul play
By David Becker
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 13, 2002, 3:20 PM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957937.html
While Sony's online gaming experiment is only a few weeks old, PlayStation 2 gamers are already finding it helps to have a tolerance for foul play.
Players who exploit holes in games and generally annoy other players--variously known as "cheese players" or "griefers"--are demonstrating the multiple aspects of playing against human opponents rather than a game machine's processor. Live opponents make games more exciting and unpredictable, but they can also be a pain.
Take "pausers" and "quitters," a small but irritating phenomenon in the football games "NFL2K3" and "Madden NFL," among the first online titles for the PlayStation 2. Such players take advantage of features in the games that allow players to pause the action to attend to real-life distractions such as the bathroom or the fridge.
Unscrupulous players can use the feature put a game in limbo 10 seconds before they're about to lose. In many cases, the first player to disconnect is credited with the loss, an intolerable insult for honest players protective of their online ranking.
Andy Matheson, a "Madden" player from Denton, Texas, said there are numerous ways unscrupulous players can try to rob an opponent of a victory. "'Madden' has timers on the pause screen and 'play select' screen, so that people can't simply pause the game all night or not pick a play," he said. "But on kickoffs they can simply sit there and make you wait...or they can unplug their controllers, which has the same effect."
Matheson said such stunts force players to be more selective in who they play online.
"I wouldn't say it really spoils the appeal of online play," he said. "You just learn to deal with it. It doesn't really matter what game you log onto and what system it's from, there are cheese players and cheaters everywhere."
Fans of online PC games--where cheating can run rampant and ruin the game experience--are used to bad behavior.
Outright cheating is much tougher in console games, where the software resides on hack-proof disc. But there's still room for exploiting game glitches, abusing fellow players and general bad sportsmanship--behavior players getting their first taste of online play via the PlayStation 2 or Microsoft's upcoming Xbox Live are unlikely to be prepared for.
"It's an issue for anyone launching an online game," said Schelley Olhava, an analyst for research firm IDC. "How do you deal with human nature and maintain an environment that people feel is fun and fair?
"If I'm playing football against somebody, I don’t want them to use some trick and mess up my rankings," Olhava said. "It kind of comes down to sportsmanship. How do you encourage good manners?"
Sony is obviously aware of the issue and does what it can to encourage good sportsmanship. One of the first messages PlayStation 2 owners see when they connect their console to the Internet is an admonition to, "Be respectful of your fellow players."
Still, Sony is finding how difficult it can be to ensure everyone plays fair. Player of "SOCOM," Sony's new online shooting game, have complained about players with dial-up Internet connections sneaking into the game, which is supposed to be accessible only to those with high-speed broadband connections. The dial-up players (known as "laggers") can turn a good game into a mess by slowing down server traffic, said Jason, a "SOCOM" player who declined to give his full name
"Players will stand still, run in place, automatically get booted," he said. "Or, if you see the laggers on the opposite team, you can shoot at them all you want but they continue to run in place...People often fall down and die for no apparent reason. It just completely disrupts the flow of the game and makes it hard to play."
A Sony representative did not respond to requests for comment.
David Cole, president of research firm DFC Intelligence, said players are likely to sort out fair play issues themselves as the online gaming audience grows.
"I think it's something that can be worked out," he said. "People get frustrated with the troublemakers, but they eventually find someone they trust. In the short term, it's going to take a while for people to get comfortable playing online. But eventually you're going to see people fall into little groups of other players they know and trust."
Players looking for fair games are already starting to police themselves, creating online leagues with detailed anti-cheese policies.
And most agree that the benefits of online gaming outweigh the frustrations. "The computer's AI (artificial intelligence), although good, is nothing compared to having a human opponent that can do things the computer would never do," wrote one poster in an online "Madden" forum. "The competition online is fierce, and that's why I keep coming back for more."
Related News
Game industry eyes online experiment August 23, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-954972.html
Xbox Live applicants: No game for you August 22, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-954927.html
Online gaming's cheating heart June 7, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-933822.html
Get this story's "Big Picture"
http://news.com.com/2104-1040-957937.html
Copyright ©1995-2002 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
:sw
By Vivienne Fisher
ZDNet Australia
September 13, 2002, 11:13 AM PT
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-957881.html
In the run up to the launch of PlayStation 2, Sony set out its ultimate vision for gaming technology. In a series of commercials run in the United States, the PlayStation 2 was hailed as a step in the evolution of the surgically implanted PlayStation 9 controller, tipped to hook up to the a transparent glassy globe which is the console through the retina.
With a launch date set for sometime around 2075, Sony has a good deal of time to iron out the technical and ethical issues surrounding such a proposition.
"The premise is that the PlayStation 2 is the beginning of a whole new evolution," Patrick Lagana, product manager for hardware and peripherals at Sony computer entertainment Australia explained. "There are all kinds of questions from an ethical point of view, and it is hard to see at this stage how they will release it, but the direction is clear."
In the meantime however, games console and peripherals vendors are focusing on providing ever more immersive technologies, enhancing the gaming experience through improved graphics, voice recognition, force feedback features, movement capturing technology, broadband connectivity and movement capture devices.
"Over the next couple of years we are going to see an even bigger jump in the quality of the graphics than we saw in the last generation of consoles," said Andrew Carter, vice president of development at games developer and publisher Infogrames Melbourne House. "Games graphic are not necessarily going to become more realistic, but they will certainly become more fantastic."
Although Carter is enthusiastic about the prospects of bio-interactive games, he believes it will take a lot of work between the console developers and medical scientists before any such device could get off the ground.
"The limitation there is more medical understanding at this stage," Carter said. "A lot of games could work fantastically well with that kind of interface."
====================
PlayStation 2 gamers claim foul play
By David Becker
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 13, 2002, 3:20 PM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957937.html
While Sony's online gaming experiment is only a few weeks old, PlayStation 2 gamers are already finding it helps to have a tolerance for foul play.
Players who exploit holes in games and generally annoy other players--variously known as "cheese players" or "griefers"--are demonstrating the multiple aspects of playing against human opponents rather than a game machine's processor. Live opponents make games more exciting and unpredictable, but they can also be a pain.
Take "pausers" and "quitters," a small but irritating phenomenon in the football games "NFL2K3" and "Madden NFL," among the first online titles for the PlayStation 2. Such players take advantage of features in the games that allow players to pause the action to attend to real-life distractions such as the bathroom or the fridge.
Unscrupulous players can use the feature put a game in limbo 10 seconds before they're about to lose. In many cases, the first player to disconnect is credited with the loss, an intolerable insult for honest players protective of their online ranking.
Andy Matheson, a "Madden" player from Denton, Texas, said there are numerous ways unscrupulous players can try to rob an opponent of a victory. "'Madden' has timers on the pause screen and 'play select' screen, so that people can't simply pause the game all night or not pick a play," he said. "But on kickoffs they can simply sit there and make you wait...or they can unplug their controllers, which has the same effect."
Matheson said such stunts force players to be more selective in who they play online.
"I wouldn't say it really spoils the appeal of online play," he said. "You just learn to deal with it. It doesn't really matter what game you log onto and what system it's from, there are cheese players and cheaters everywhere."
Fans of online PC games--where cheating can run rampant and ruin the game experience--are used to bad behavior.
Outright cheating is much tougher in console games, where the software resides on hack-proof disc. But there's still room for exploiting game glitches, abusing fellow players and general bad sportsmanship--behavior players getting their first taste of online play via the PlayStation 2 or Microsoft's upcoming Xbox Live are unlikely to be prepared for.
"It's an issue for anyone launching an online game," said Schelley Olhava, an analyst for research firm IDC. "How do you deal with human nature and maintain an environment that people feel is fun and fair?
"If I'm playing football against somebody, I don’t want them to use some trick and mess up my rankings," Olhava said. "It kind of comes down to sportsmanship. How do you encourage good manners?"
Sony is obviously aware of the issue and does what it can to encourage good sportsmanship. One of the first messages PlayStation 2 owners see when they connect their console to the Internet is an admonition to, "Be respectful of your fellow players."
Still, Sony is finding how difficult it can be to ensure everyone plays fair. Player of "SOCOM," Sony's new online shooting game, have complained about players with dial-up Internet connections sneaking into the game, which is supposed to be accessible only to those with high-speed broadband connections. The dial-up players (known as "laggers") can turn a good game into a mess by slowing down server traffic, said Jason, a "SOCOM" player who declined to give his full name
"Players will stand still, run in place, automatically get booted," he said. "Or, if you see the laggers on the opposite team, you can shoot at them all you want but they continue to run in place...People often fall down and die for no apparent reason. It just completely disrupts the flow of the game and makes it hard to play."
A Sony representative did not respond to requests for comment.
David Cole, president of research firm DFC Intelligence, said players are likely to sort out fair play issues themselves as the online gaming audience grows.
"I think it's something that can be worked out," he said. "People get frustrated with the troublemakers, but they eventually find someone they trust. In the short term, it's going to take a while for people to get comfortable playing online. But eventually you're going to see people fall into little groups of other players they know and trust."
Players looking for fair games are already starting to police themselves, creating online leagues with detailed anti-cheese policies.
And most agree that the benefits of online gaming outweigh the frustrations. "The computer's AI (artificial intelligence), although good, is nothing compared to having a human opponent that can do things the computer would never do," wrote one poster in an online "Madden" forum. "The competition online is fierce, and that's why I keep coming back for more."
Related News
Game industry eyes online experiment August 23, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-954972.html
Xbox Live applicants: No game for you August 22, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-954927.html
Online gaming's cheating heart June 7, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-933822.html
Get this story's "Big Picture"
http://news.com.com/2104-1040-957937.html
Copyright ©1995-2002 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
:sw