TechImpact / it happens there first

BlizzCon isn't exactly our under our standard banner of operation, but a show that sells out 16,000 tickets in 10 minutes bears mentioning. This weekend, despite the utter failure of Wall Street, Anaheim California witnessed an influx of something no disaster, whether is be natural, economic or political, can conquer. It, and I as a proud participant, witnessed the spirit of gamers. Men, women and children who routinely defeat monsters and demons, saw no challenge in making their way to the marvelous ocean state, and leaving their mark as they endured the patient pleasure of the newest games from Blizzard Entertainment. Follow our photo reporting below to see the wanders of BlizzCon.

by Chris Gamble

During the off-time, we work on our casual gaming system (see http://www.virtuaguild.com). We haven't had a lot of time to invest yet, but have already come up with some extremely useful tools. My favorite of our tools is the Flash XML socket system used for real-time communications. A lot of design time was put into making the system pluggable and extensible, using tools such as desktop scripting, jndi, and XML to make a product that would work for any of our games.

Building this system required a lot of resources from the internet. Research, open source libraries, and the generous help from the community. Which is why I want to give it all back. In the next two weeks, we will provide the Dingo source code open source to anyone who feels it may help them in their own ventures. Stay tuned as we get the pieces setup, and if any of you have good suggestions where to host etc etc, leave a message at contact-AT-crgmedia-DOT-com.

** Update **

We now have a SourceForge Project Approved at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dingoflashxml/

by Chris Gamble

Since its launch in May the Wii Fit has been harder to find than a 1996 Christmas era "Tickle Me Elmo". With rumors of intentional shortages and an apparently world wide inability for retailers to keep stock on the shelves, many analysts have questioned if Nintendo is harming the Wii's long term success with constant shortages for its popular products, including the Wii itself.

Those analysts might want to try buying a Wii Fit and then see if their perspective changes. This previous Sunday I did just that.

My story begins with a mistake—I ASKED my girlfriend what she wanted for her birthday. A week of searching store after store left me no closer to the one thing she apparently "really really" wanted, the Wii Fit.

I did find one lead. Best Buys were apparently holding stocks of the Wii Fit in stores for release on Sunday to match their Sunday advertising. The pleasant sales clerk warned me "show up REALLY early".

But I had an ace up my sleeve. A Best Buy opened a few days ago in a newly developed part of Keller Texas, and I was confident that not too many people would know about it yet.

The fact that my search for video game that was released weeks prior sounds like a detective story might be giving you an idea of where I am heading.

The buy went down like this:

1- I arrived at 9:50 (the store opened at 11) only to witness an already daunting line of people.

2- At 10:20 three Best Buy employees began handing out "tickets" (Extended warranty registration cards with numbers written on them). If you got a ticket you got a Wii Fit.
3- I ended up with #20 out of about 25 or so Wii Fits for sale. There were a number of people that showed up just minutes after I did that went home empty handed.

The kicker in all of this was that Best Buy was handing out two different kinds of tickets—one for the Wii Fit and another for the Wii. Even well over a year after release there were still customers in line for the Wii, and many of the went home with out getting one. One grandmother I spoke to told me that she had taken it upon herself to buy Wiis for all of her children and grandchildren and that this was the 5th or 6th Wii she had purchased. Her story was more amazing for the fact that she wasn't waiting in line for a Wii for her children this time, she was waiting with HER mother because her mother wanted one.

Nintendo's position is typical economics. Why spend the money to increase capacity to meet what might be the peak of your demand curve when you are pretty sure your customers will wait until you can produce more with your current facilities? It is a gamble on Nintendo's part. As one IDC analyst wrote "When does the consumer get frustrated and move on?". If my anecdotal experience Sunday is reflective of the demand at large, we are far from reaching that point with the Wii.

by Jerry Gamble

From Wired: Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the keynote address Wednesday at the annual Games For Change conference in New York City. Her speech addressed the "Our Courts" project she is spearheading aimed at increasing education about civics for children.

One could mention how this is reflective of the ever increasing role gaming is playing in our culture or possibly address the failure of modern education to somehow capitalize on the numerous potential benefits of games to our education system... but we are mostly mentioning it because a former Supreme Court Justice becoming a game developer is just too good to pass up.

by Jerry Gamble

From Via Wired Online: Public Multiplayer Gaming is being brought to a street corner near you thanks to the efforts of mobile gaming company MegaPhone. Using public screens such as displays at concerts and stadiums and a specific number that users dial to participate, it is now possible to play games with others during your lengthy wait at the Target check out line.

This seems to be well suited for use in marketing events in locations such as mass transit and to enhance activities at performance venues, but since the application ties game play to a fixed location there are limits as to how deep the game play can actually be. There is also the 'cell phones on a plane' problem—It's great if you are the one playing, but you are irritating the heck out of everyone else that just came to see the show (even if you use non-vocal control schemes, I am not sure a lot of people want a video game flashing on the score board during the game). One might also question as to why you would go to a performance that was so boring to had to play games during it to keep yourself occupied, or why if we have such miracles of technology at our disposal they don't just figure out a way to make the wait in checkout lines shorter.

And I, for one, refuse to shout into my cell phone in public like some big dork.

Nonetheless, this is another example of an application that highlights the "always plugged in" nature of data services on cell phones, and in the worst case it gives you something to do next time your girlfriend drags you to a Sarah McLachlan concert.

by Jerry Gamble