While games have long been my time-waster of choice for the frequent international flights I take, it's usually video games I stock up on. Not so for my Sydney to San Francisco flight. This time around I was hunting for pocket chess, little wooden brain teasers and magnetic backgammon.

With the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound Christmas Day flight and the heightened security that surrounded it, rumor quickly spread that one of the new rules for international flights bound for the United States might ban the use of all electronics.

The very thought of not being able to access the library of books and video games stored on my iPhone, my DSi, my PSPgo put me in a near panic.

So on the eve of my flight, my wife, son and I headed to an oddity in the Blue Mountains' town of Hazlebrook west of Sydney. Selwood Science & Puzzles is housed in the Selwood House, an 1865 cottage wrapped in a garden of ferns and eucalyptus. The many rooms inside the old home are packed with the sorts of diversions and toys most familiar to children born before the rising popularity of video games and electronics.

One room is dedicated to puzzles of metal and wood, board games big and small and a cornucopia of games featuring bits of plastic, dice, and magnets. There were pocket versions of chess, checkers and backgammon; bent nails nested in devious designs; decks upon decks of cards for games I had grown up playing and some I had never heard of. And not one of the hundreds, thousands of these games required a battery or electrical outlet to play.

Other rooms were packed with science kits and experiments, books of brain teasers, IQ tests and short mysteries.

If electronics, long the opiate for the masses of nervous fliers, find themselves device non grata for the near future, could these non-digital diversions be their replacements? Will flights start to resemble coffee shops with passengers hunkered around chess boards, games of Hearts and Dominoes raging in the back rows?

Probably not, but it's a reminder of how dependent some of us have become on the products of the digital age.

Arriving at Sydney International Airport on Sunday I discovered little had changed in the wake of the latest attempted attack. I was assured, repeatedly, that electronics could be used during the upcoming flight.

Not quite believing the reassurances I ducked into a bookstore to load up on the printed word, in case the digital one wasn't available to me. The lines in the bookstore, the crowds milling through rows of paperbacks, made me think I wasn't the only one fearing a last-minute, in-air electronics ban.

For now I'll keep the paperback and pocket chess at hand, just in case.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

But despite the seemingly obvious educational bent of Slaczka's game, Scribblenauts' potential to teach through fun didn't dawn on the game makers until well into development.

Slaczka said the team at studio 5th Cell didn't discuss the educational possibilities of the mainstream Warner Bros.-published game until they realized the "impact it had on increasing vocabulary, helping with spelling, teaching words in a new language and also creative and critical thinking."

"The game sort of became education through an organic process all on its own."

In Scribblenauts players solve lateral thinking puzzles by writing or typing a word into the DS. If the word is part of the game's more than 22,800-word dictionary, it appears as an interactive objective, creature or person in the game.

If a player spells the word incorrectly, the game suggests possible proper spellings. But knowing what object to summon through typing to make a fireman happy, or break into a safe or distract a zombie is key to solving the puzzles.

A player's vocabulary and imagination deeply impact their experience, Slaczka says: "The more words you know the more crazy stuff you can do."

Game creator Slaczka isn't comfortable calling the game an educational title.

"It has inherent educational potential, but it was never designed with an educational slant in mind," he said. "It was a positive byproduct more than anything else. "

There are also good business reasons to not call Scribblenauts an outright educational game. Traditionally, educational games don't attract mainstream gamers and don't do big mainstream sales.

But Scribblenauts sold 194,000 copies in North America alone in September, the first month it was available and was well-received by reviewers.

While the game isn't marketed as educational, that hasn't stopped some parents and teachers from using the title to help educate.

Slaczka says he's heard anecdotally from parents and teachers who have been using the game to positive effect.

One mother emailed the developer to tell how she bought the game for her son who was having difficulty in school learning to read and write. The woman gave the child a game along with a cheat sheet of ten words for him to try out in the game.

"He learned how to spell those words," he said, "and now she said he's up to two full pages of words that he can spell and understand which I thought was a really awesome story. "

Junior high history teacher Kevin Roughton was most interested in the game's potential to increase a student's ability to think critically. Roughton writes that in the future he hopes to use the game to study different periods in history by limiting the objects they can summon to historically accurate ones.

Writing in his blog, Roughton described how he used the game in his classroom, having the students break into groups to come up with creative ways to solve the problems presented by the game.

"We do not do enough... encouragement of creativity and critical thinking in schools today," he writes. "This forces it!"

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Sure, nowadays billions of people from all walks of life enjoy the occasional video game. They play Farmville on their lunch break, Hearts while working on a term paper. Celebrities famously tweet about World of Warcraft or dish about gaming on talk shows.

But none of that matters to those devotees of gaming who embrace it not just as a hobby but as a culture. It's their clubhouse and you're not welcome.

They want games to be impenetrable; the plots circuitous, the challenges insurmountable.

What they don't want any part of, it seems, is Nintendo's recently unveiled Super Guide. And why would they? The guide acts as both an autopilot and tutor for gaming, playing through the tricky bits of a game when activated and teaching just about anyone how to master the game on their own.

That won't do, not at all. But Nintendo has high hopes that gamers of all types will be accepting of the guide, found in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and, inevitably, future games.

The idea of the Super Guide, says Bill Trinen, senior manager of product marketing at Nintendo of America, is to deliver the best of both worlds to gamers.

"Some players like to collect every single item in a game, while others are simply happy to make it to the finish line and move on," he said. "Both the Super Guide and Hint Videos can show you methods of playing a level that you might not otherwise have considered.

"Not every player has the time or patience to master every nuance and challenge. The Super Guide lets player see how they can overcome a particular level by watching Luigi run through it. It's like solving problems on a test. Instead of dwelling on one challenge, you can skip it for now and come back to it later."

The notion that the Super Guide's assistance could somehow devalue the experience for someone who doesn't use it seems perplexing to Trinen.

"I don't see why one person's actions should make you feel any better or worse about your accomplishments," he said. "If you finished the entire game on your own and have fun, great! If someone else skips a level or two but still has fun, great! You're not competing with the rest of the world to see who can have the most "authentic" experience. Everyone's experience is unique.

"Take for example, climbing Mount Everest. It's an amazing accomplishment, but it is now an accomplishment that dozens of people reach each year. Some of them use oxygen. Others are guided to the top by more experienced climbers. But the personal sense of accomplishment is hardly diminished either for those who had aid or for those who did I on their own."

And, Trinen points out, seeking a bit of help to get through a hard level in a game isn't a new concept. Gamers have for years sought out help from one another when they get stuck.

"We include the Super Guide as a way for players to see how to make their way through the levels in the game," he said. "On one hand, you'll have new players who are trying to figure out what to do because they've never encountered these situations before. On the other hand, you'll have veteran gamers. And I'm sure just about ever single one of them has, at one time or another, referenced a strategy guide or looked up tips from an online walkthrough. This is the same thing, only here the information is provided by the people who know the game the best – the developers themselves. And you don't have to stop your game to go look it up on the Internet."

While Nintendo could have just skipped the Super Guide and instead made the game easier, he says that no one would have wanted that.

"Everyone loves a challenge," he said. "But we can't assume that everyone who owns a Wii comes in with the same level of knowledge. Some people have been playing Mario games for decades. Others are trying it out for the first time. Difficult levels provide challenges to both groups. And for those who need a little extra help, Super Guide is there as a reference.

"Our goal is to provide a fun experience for all players and not to cater to any one group or level of experience. The Super Guide is there an an option for those who want to use it."

While Trinen declined to say if the guide will be showing up in future games, like the recently teased Legend of Zelda title, he did say it's something that Nintendo will consider.

"As with any new feature, we take each game individually when we decide what elements will be included," he said. "Different features are appropriate for different games, and Nintendo's developers are always looking for creative new ways to make the game play more fun and accessible."

Sounds like the secret's out.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Despite being a phone, the iPhone doesn't have a single cohesive online experience for playing games.

Where the DS, Playstation 3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360 each have a single online services for gaming, Apple has left the creation of iPhone gaming networks to the game publishers. The result is a handful of disconnected services vying to be number one.

Publishers Gameloft, Ngmoco and Aurora Feint operate the three most popular services for the iPhone, each giving gamers the ability to connect with one another, share their gaming experiences, and play online.

Gameloft Live allows players to chat, message one another, earn game trophies and play mulitplayer matches live. Currently nine of Gameloft's titles are supported by the service with most of the publisher's future games slated to include Live support.

While Gameloft Live is only for Gameloft's titles, both Ngmoco's Plus+ network and Aurora Feint's OpenFeint are used by other developers to add online support to their games.

OpenFeint is being used in more than 300 games with another 800 in development, said Peter Relan, chairman of Aurora Feint.

The service includes game lobbies, social discovery, the ability to see what friends are playing and challenge them to games. Mulitplayer support is currently being tested, Relan said, with turn based multiplayer expected this holiday.

Ngmoco's Plus+ network allows players to create a profile, challenge friends, compete on leaderboards and find other games supported by the network.

While some gamers may feel it's inconvenient to have to sign up for multiple services to play online, the lack of any single gaming service doesn't seem like a bad thing to the three companies.

"We see it as an opportunity," said Simon Jeffery, Ngmoco's chief publishing officer. "Apple has provided a strong foundation for the development and publishing community to nurture into a rich gaming and social ecosystem. The Plus+ network was born out of consumer need, and its evolution and growth are fueled by the market."

Julien Fournials, Gameloft's senior vice president of production, agrees:

"At this point, I don't think it's that big of an issue," Fournials said. "What's happening now is that publishers are testing out and playing around with different gaming networks and customizing it to fit the needs of their games. It's good for the industry as a whole to offer consumers different gaming options."

But eventually the multiple networks could lead to problems, says Aurora Feint's Relan.

"In the long term it's a problem if the game networks are fractured," he said. "In the short term it's OK to have multiple because it creates innovation."

Eventually, Ngmoco's Jeffery say, the market will sort itself out if Apple doesn't step in with it's own network.

"We believe that there is certainly room for a couple of networks within the iPhone gaming ecosystem, possibly serving different segments of the overall market, but ultimately probably not more than that," he said. "Casual users in particular will get frustrated with multiple accounts and multiple login requests. We firmly believe that the market will rationalize into a couple of strong leaders very quickly now."

It could be a mistake to look at the current status quo of console gaming when considering the future of Apple's iPhone. Gameloft's Fournials says it might be better to compare iPhone gaming to other social networks like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, rather than to gaming platforms.

"The whole DNA of the App Store is diversity, so to have multiple social networking sites fits in with that structure," he said.

In the future, Gameloft Live will include stronger integration of social networks like Facebook, something Ngmoco is already pushing.

Meanwhile, Aurora Feint's founder and CEO Jason Citron says that his service is working to provide a network similar to Xbox Live for their games with the introduction of OpenFeint 2.4.

"Players will know when their friends are online, what game they are playing, and be able to instant message or mail each other just like on Xbox Live," Citron said. "We've added in-game forums for players to share tips and tricks, level strategies, or whatever they want with each other. Developers will be able to have a direct conversation with their players from right inside their games too — in the forums, by sending in-app announcements, responding to player feedback, or via e-mail to players who opt-in."

While it may feel like a disservice to gamers now, the ability for publishers and developers to test the bounds of what works and doesn't work in terms of social play and online gaming could help the iPhone evolve its own online gaming personality.

Providing a consistent login for the basics of online gaming, like finding opponents and comparing scores, is a must, but pushing the envelope through social interactions and community building would in the long run help emphasize the iPhone's unique networking strengths.

The best solution would be for Apple to provide that core online experience and leave the experimentation and innovation to outside developers.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

On a night earlier this month, the people packing into the club didn't come to listen to the famous sing. They came instead to stand on a stage, face the crowds and play popular video game and karaoke replacement Rock Band.

The real draw, though, wasn't the chance at a moment in a spotlight once used by jazz men and musicians from the 20s to today, it was the chance to play video games and raise money for children.

Call it gaming for good or child's play for charity: At least once a year video game enthusiasts around the world find interesting and eclectic ways to raise cash for those in need.

Likely the largest gaming group raising money for charity is Washington State-based Child's Play which has, with the help of more than 100,000 gamers worldwide, managed to raise more than $5 million in donations of toys, games, books and cash for children's hospitals around the world.

"Child's Play is the grass-roots gamers' charity: created by gamers, for gamers," said Kristin Lindsay, Child's Play Project Manager. "I believe that we receive the support of the gaming community because we represent the charitable voice that gamers want to have. We are sharing our love of gaming with kids in need, and giving back through play. It really does make a big difference in our partner hospitals."

And it's not just video games and recreation equipment that Child's Play funds. Recently the group started a grant program through which they offer one-tome support to smaller facilities including pediatric hospices, crisis centers, school and group homes.

While many people donate directly to Child's Play, other groups create their own community fund-raisers to help raise money for the organization. The largest by far, Lindsay said, is the Desert Bus for Hope drive, which brought in more than $70,000 in donations last year.

Two years ago British Columbia sketch comedy group LoadingReadyRun decided to start raising money for Child's Play. One of their members came up with the Desert Bus concept.

While the fund-raiser is actually a sort of an Internet telethon, it gets it's name from a mini-game found on unreleased video game Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors.

The object of the game is to drive from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time in a bus that constantly pulls to the side of the road and won't go faster than 45 mph. Completely the mini-game takes 8 continuous hours of play. Desert Bus can't be paused and if you crash or drive off the road you get towed back to Tucson and have to start over.

While the LoadingReadyRun accepts challenges to do silly things for donations during their telethon, the mainstay of the fund-raiser is the group playing the game non-stop. This year the group played the game in shifts for five days and 16 hours non-stop, raising more than $132,000.

"We all love to play video games, and we love the idea that we play a game (even a bad one like Desert Bus) and make a child's quality of life so much better," said LoadingReadyRun member Kathleen De Vere. "Child's Play is a very inspiring charity that does absolutely amazing things all over the world, and we are honored to help them with
their work."

And fund-raising isn't limited to the United States.

David Abrams, editor and owner of Tokyo-based Cheapassgamer.com, has raised more than $75,000 for Child's Play over the past five years.

"I decided to start to help collect funds for Child's Play simply because I was very impressed with the initiative Penny Arcade's founders had taken in creating the charity," Abrams said. "Child's Play was started partly as a response to the negative portrayal in the media of gaming and gamers and I wanted to help be a part of that response. Of course helping children is reason enough on it's own."

While some events, like Desert Bus for Hope and Abrams' online drive, bring in staggering donations, more than half of the cash comes to Child's Play through individual donations or smaller community fund-raisers like the one held in Denver earlier this month.

The Kotaku.com-sponsored fund-raiser brought in about 400 people from as far away as Florida and raised more than $6,500, a bulk of which came from people showing up at the worn doors of the club, cash in hand.

Once inside, gamers and developers crowded onto the decades-old dance floor, donating cash and dancing under an over-sized disco ball.

As the event's hesitant emcee, I split my time overseeing the door prizes we handed and threw out to the crowds between songs and talking to the many folks on hand about why they were there.

Plenty came to party, to have fun, to game on stage, but many more came for the cause.

As the event wrapped up, a young man approached me to shake my hand.

"I wish they had something like this when I was a kid," he said.

"Why?"

"I'm a cancer survivor," he said, "You have no idea what difference a few games would have made to me when I was in the hospital."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

As president of Sports Authority, Campisi runs the largest sports goods retailer in the country. His wife, Beci Campisi, runs a garage gym based on the grueling fitness methodology of CrossFit which uses medicine balls, weights and nonstop exercise to mold "the quintessential athlete."

But when he first heard of Nintendo's part-game, part-exercise Wii Fit and Balance Board, he knew he had to get one. More importantly, he knew that he had to start selling it in his chain of stores, among the dumbbells, the rowing machines, the treadmills and the basketballs.

"When Nintendo first came out with Wii Fit I knew we could sell that product in our stores," Campisi told Kotaku. "I paid some guy on eBay $180 for a Wii Fit because you couldn't buy it in stores."

That was in 2008, last week, with the blessing of Nintendo, Campisi launched his campaign to sell Wii Fit and the Wii as exercise equipment in Sports Authority stores nationwide.

Sports Authority kicked off the movement to blend gaming and sports good with an event at their Torrance, Calif. store. Fitness guru Jillian Michaels was on hand to lead 100 people through exercise routines on balance board with the help of the Wii in what was believe to be the largest demonstration of Wii Fit in the world.

"Although individual retailers might do their own independent promotions from time to time, this is the first time Nintendo has officially partnered with a major sports retailer," said Marc Franklin, Nintendo of America's director of public relations. "Wii Fit has already sold more than 8 million units in the United States, making it one of the best-selling games of this generation, surpassing even some of the industry's most well-known franchises. Our partnership with The Sports Authority expands on the exergaming trend of Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus. Now we're reaching out to fitness fans in new ways, showing them that video games can be a part of their everyday fitness routines."

Instead of just dropping Wii consoles and games into their store, Campisi knew that his stores had to treat the game and its equipment the same as any other piece of exercise equipment.

So he had the stores carrying the equipment set up special Wii Fit areas and train some of their employees to explain and demonstrate the gaming equipment.

"They typically train people on weights and treadmills and now they're showing people how to use the Wii Fit," he said.

Mike Gabriela, manager of the Sports Authority in Littleton, Colorado, said news that the retailer would be carrying the video games was a "welcome surprise."

The equipment for the Wii Experience landed in their store on a Friday and they had it up and running that Saturday morning.

Gabriela says they trained employees using a Nintendo-provided video and tried out Wii Fit themselves.

"It's absolutely exercise," he said. "You do a couple of those programs and it is very difficult."

The customers who so far seem most intrigued by the console and its fitness games seem to be women who do Yoga and aerobics, he said.

"We sold our first (Wii) within 20 minutes of being open," Gabriela said.

While Sports Authority and Campisi seem to be putting a lot of support behind the Wii Fit, it doesn't mean that they believe it will replace more traditional forms of exercise.

"I don't believe that," Campisi said. "My wife would kill me if I believe that. I don't think this is a shift away from traditional exercise, it's just another way to get fit.

"There are a lot of people who don't want to get off their couch, but this is fun. Everyone is moving at 100 miles an hour, maybe this can get them to slow down."

The Wii Fit and the Wii's driving concept also seem to connect with Sports Authority on another level. Where Nintendo is using the Wii to expand its audience to more casual gamers, Sports Authority has long used backyard and youth sports to connect with children at a younger age.

The two coming together to expand each of its audiences seems like a good idea.

Nintendo's Franklin wasn't willing to yet say how important the Sports Authority deal would be in helping to expand Nintendo's reach.

"That remains to be seen," he said. "But we're always looking for ways to get video games into the hands – or under the feet – of people who have never played them before. Nintendo has the most diverse group of fans of any video game company, and it's important for us to reach out to where those fans are.

"We're always looking to bring the world of video games to new audiences. I'm sure there are plenty of people who visit The Sports Authority who don't have an interest in video games. Seeing Wii and Wii Fit Plus in the same context as some of their favorite fitness products will undoubtedly pique some people's interest and make them consider video games in a whole new light."

And for Sports Authority there's also a very practical reason to get into the Wii Fit business. Not everyone has the room for the larger exercise equipment the retailer sells.

"There are lots of people who can't afford a treadmill and we have stores in cities like New York where people can't fit that equipment in their lofts and apartments," Campisi said.

Though, it is still just one of many things the retailer carries, Campisi reminds.

"Fitness equipment and sports equipment is what we do," he said. "In our fitness department we carry a lot of equipment. There are many, many ways to get fit and exercise, this is just one additional opportunity. And for sporting goods its a huge opportunity, it's fun."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

But at least one other military video game has their sights set on the popular first-person shooter, getting a bit of added traction thanks to some controversial design decisions made in the Activision blockbuster.

For the uninitiated, Electronic Arts' upcoming first-person shooter Battlefield: Bad Company 2 may sound an awful lot like Modern Warfare 2.

Both military games are set in modern times and pride themselves on realistic settings, weapons and combat. But where Modern Warfare 2's single player story is a narrative that leads players through the action along a scripted plot, Bad Company 2's developers say their game is a more open-ended experience.

"Battlefield: Bad Company 2 delivers an all-out war experience unlike any other FPS with its wide, open sand box environments, tactical destruction and of course the full range of player controlled vehicles," said Karl Magnus Troedsson, the executive producer of the Battlefield Franchise at Digital Illusions CE. "The game stands on more legs than this but these are the key areas which elevate Battlefield: Bad Company 2 above the rest of the pack."

While Troedsson calls Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 direct competitors, he knew better than to launch EA's up-and-coming shooter at the same time as titan Modern Warfare 2. Instead, Bad Company 2 will be hitting the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 about four months later, in early March.

"These games are direct competitors while still being different games with different experiences," Troedsson said. "The gamers who like one will probably like the other, at least if they could get into the groove of the different second-to-second experiences.

"Obviously I wouldn't want to launch at the same time (as Modern Warfare 2). However, we've seen a huge uptake in interest for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 even during the height of their marketing campaign. And we're just getting started."

Much of that increased interest in Bad Company 2 has been driven by gamers unhappy with some of the decisions made in the development of Modern Warfare 2. Most contentious among gamers was developer Infinity Ward's decision to limit the control PC gamers have over how they play Modern Warfare 2 online.

Shortly after news broke that Modern Warfare 2 wouldn't support the ability for gamers to run their own online games on dedicated servers, Digital Illusions CE announced that Bad Company 2 would have dedicated servers.

It may sound like a small issue, but the Infinity Ward's decision spurred an online petition that currently has more than 210,000 signatures. It also created a movement among some gamers to shift their game purchase from Modern Warfare 2 to Bad Company 2.

One gamer mailed a check to Digital Illusions CE, telling them to use the money he had earmarked for Modern Warfare 2 to improve Bad Company 2.

Troedsson wouldn't say how big a factor dedicated servers will be for gamers come March.

"I can't answer since it's up to the audience," he said. "What I can say is that we've always considered this a key factor to deliver the best online experience available and anyone caring equally much about this will probably get more out of the multiplayer experience in Battlefield: Bad Company 2."

And he notes that while there are plenty of vocal gamers currently pledging support for Bad Company 2 at the cost of Modern Warfare 2, it's still a small percentage of the entire audience.

"So far we've gotten a lot of positive feedback based upon what we've announced regarding Battlefield: Bad Company 2," he said. "Some of it has come in the form of proper fan dedication from new as well as old diehard fans. We greatly appreciate this. These are the people that are at the core of our audience, the players we often listen to and who can help shape our games into something even better.

"However, comparing to the vast number of people that will buy the game it's still a small percentage of people that actually get in direct contact with us. As for the fan mail, what we've gotten recently I can only hope is a sign that we're doing something right."

And there's always a chance that a fan base so fickle, so easily swayed by design decisions, could decide that something about Bad Company 2 isn't a good fit either.

Troedsson realizes the risk of winning over such die hard fans, gamers who could be intolerant of change.

"We can't fulfill everyone's wishes but we always build games that we truly believe our players will love to play," he said.

With Bad Company 2 that means new game modes, new weapons and a much higher level of polish. Improvements that Troedsson believes makes Bad Company 2 the better of the two games.

"Well, obviously I believe Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is better, especially looking at how our game incorporates an all-out war experience with vehicles, destruction, etc," he said. "But not without a large amount of respect for our competitor, they have a great product with a huge fan base. Don't expect us to be intimidated by sheer volume of sales though."

In the first 24 hours alone, Modern Warfare 2 pulled in an estimated $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone, selling 4.7 million copies.

"No matter what market or what products I'm a strong believer that there's always space for competition," Troedsson said. "It helps keep people on their toes and it helps drive development."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

But in the eye of the contentious hurricane that swirls around the upcoming launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, developer Infinity Ward appears unfazed.

"It's very exciting," said Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, who's title changed from community manager to "creative strategist" as the buzz began to swell for Modern Warfare 2. "I'm fully expecting it to do very well. I'm expecting good things."

And he should be. Set in modern times, the first-person shooter has already broken the record for most pre-orders, according to national retailer GameStop.

And industry analyst Anita Frazier says there's a very good chance it will break Halo 3's record for 3.3 million copies sold at launch.

"The previous best-selling Call of Duty games (across all platforms) in its launch month is a tie between (Modern Warfare) and COD World at War with 2.3 million units including those generated by PC sales at retail," said Frazier, who tracks sales numbers for the NPD Group. "For the title to exceed Halo 3 first month sales, COD: MW2 would have to best its previous best launches by 43%.

"That's a big number to increase, but is it possible? Yes, with what is being reported about pre-sells and the general level of buzz that this game is generating, it's possible. There are also a number of high-interest special edition SKU's launching for this game as well."

But all of that buzz, and those millions of pre-orders, means a lot of people are paying very close attention to what developer Infinity Ward is doing this time around with the game.

Fans have been carefully tracking every bit of information dropped about the game, from the night vision goggles that will be included with some special editions of the title, to plot twists and the way the game will be handled on different platforms.

"We have come to a realization with this game that anything that can leak will leak," Bowling said. "When our night vision glasses went into production, the guys making them figured out what they were for and put them on and took pictures of them."

The leaks have reached such a fevered pitch that Bowling recently advised gamers to avoid the internet altogether if they wanted to have a pristine experience playing through the game.

Soon after, word and video hit of a level in the game that seems to involve player-controlled terrorism. Despite the game being weeks from release, Australian politicians were up in arms about the notion and eventually publisher Activision released a statement defending the game and saying players will have the option to skip it.

But that short lived controversy was nothing compared to the ire raised by the developer's approach to the PC version of the game. When news hit that PC gamers would have less control over the way they play online it ignited a firestorm of seething disappointment, online petitions and, in at least one case, a cash donation to a competing video game.

Bowling and the company defend the decisions made to make the PC game more accessible.

"We have protected what our veteran gamers love about the game, but are also catering to different play styles and rewarding those different play styles," Bowling said. "Accessibility was a major focus for Modern Warfare 2."

And Bowling denies that Infinity Ward and Activision are more focused on making the console versions of the game than a solid PC version.

"We make a fantastic PC game," he said. "Modern Warfare 2 is our most feature-rich PC game yet."

When asked if the next Modern Warfare would be on the PC, Bowling said he doesn't even know yet what Infinity Ward's next game will be.

Bowling believes that the outcry against Infinity Ward's design decisions by some PC gamers is a case of a loud minority, and not the sentiments of the majority.

"We have 14 million players on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare," he said. "The hardcore gamers make up a smaller core of that, and PC gamers are the smallest group of that core.

"It is a very vocal community and they are all online."

The outcry is perhaps also the offshoot of a game developer being so engaged with their community.

"Our community gets so invested in our games," Bowling said. "Therefore they feel, and rightfully so, that we should justify every design decision to them. I think that it's very important to understand that you should be very involved in your community and work with them, but not to be held prisoner to their demands.

"We know our game very well. Some of the stuff you have to put in there and have faith in your design. Some things don't sound good out of context. You don't see the beauty of them until you experience them for yourselves."

"It's a very fine line."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

The DSi XL has screens that are an inch bigger than the DSi, comes with a regular sized and extra large stylus and is closer to size of a netbook than it is to something you would want to squeeze into a pocket or purse.

But while Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says he envisioned the device, due to hit North America early next year for an undisclosed price, being used to expand the horizons of portable gaming from a single player experience to one enjoyed by a group, analysts and pundits don't seem to be biting.

Maybe that's because when Iwata unveiled the two-camera, two-screen DSi to the world earlier this year he said one of the prime reasons the company was rolling out the more customizable handheld was because they wanted to increase the number of their portables in a home.

The thinking went, if you put all of your music, all of your photos on your DSi and you customized it with special clocks and calculators you wouldn't want to share, you would want your own.

Now, almost exactly a year after announcing the DSi, Iwata unveiled the DSi XL, a device he says is designed specifically to do the opposite.

"Nintendo DSi LL is going to offer a new play style, where those who are surrounding the game player can also join in one way or the other to the gameplay," Iwata told analysts. "When you look at the home console video games you can understand that the fun of great games can be conveyed to and shared by those who are watching the player play."

While Iwata never really explained the seeming reversal of opinion, it is telling that unasked Iwata pointed out that the DSi XL wasn't designed just for seniors in mind. That, despite the fact that the DSi XL comes with an over-sized stylus and is pre-loaded with two Brain Training games and a Japanese dictionary.

Industry analyst Michael Pachter describes the XL as a "nice to have" but not "must have" item, one that won't drive sales.

"It appears to be geared toward people who want the latest model of every device, people who have difficulty reading, and people who can't hold a skinny stylus," he said.

But Pachter adds that he thinks that the DSi XL will eventually replace the DSi.

As for the notion of in-room collaborative gaming, Pachter doesn't see it being very successful. Instead, he says, Nintendo should concentrate on expanding their online gaming offerings, releasing more titles that allow DS and DSi owners to play online via Wifi.

Dan Ackerman, senior editor at Cnet.com, agrees.

"Communal gaming, and the very important social utility it drives, will likely come from people sharing the same experience, but on their own personal screens, like with FaceBooks games or local WiFi gaming," he said.

Nintendo was ahead of the curve in adding touchscreen technology to the DS, Ackerman points out, and he sees the increase in screen size on the DSi Xl as an acknowledgement that the iPhone and iPod Touch are becoming a juggernauts in the world of portable entertainment.

With rumors that the DSi will be getting its own video and audio chat program, another possibility for the DSi XL is that it could be used to try and tap into the same market as the increasingly popular, tiny and inexpensive netbook computers.

But Ackerman doesn't see that happening either.

"While the DS has definitely found a niche among older and other non-traditional gamers, I'm not sure it'll displace the growing popularity of Netbooks (or iPhones) as the default on-the-go entertainment/information platform," Ackerman said. "Especially as basic Netbooks fall below the $300 mark (or less with subsidized mobile broadband plans), and Netbook-friendly apps, such as Facebook games, skyrocket in popularity."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Models and hipsters wander the streets mingling with star-truck tourists and Hollywood starlets. Restaurants and boutiques vie for curb-space among million-dollar apartments and two-by-two patches of grass and trees.

But last Thursday night the biggest crowds weren't those forming to catch a glimpse of Lindsay Lohan's private shopping spree, but the nearly thousand-person line that wrapped around three sides of a trendy block of nondescript buildings.

The line of people stopped in the middle of a sidewalk a good 200 feet from the object of everyone's attention; A small shoe store.

The excited crowds, dressed in t-shirts and some toting laptops, cameras and joysticks, weren't here to mingle, snap pictures or shop, they were here to play.

Inside the packed shoe-store, temporarily decorated with posters and art of winged super heroes and martial artists, people gathered in tight clusters around flat screen panels to get a chance to play game developer Capcom's latest fighting video game.

"The idea of fight club came straight from the down-and-dirty arcade roots of Capcom's fighting games," Capcom community manager and legendary Street Fighter pro Seth "S-Kill" Killian tells Kotaku. "Chris Kramer and I were really excited to get our community hands-on and playing the games, and to recreate that gritty, fun atmosphere of getting together for in-your-face competition."

Last week's impromptu Capcom Fight Club took over a two-floor shoe store. The top floor was packed with video game consoles, televisions, pizza and players. But a second line greeted those trying to make it down the stairs to the darkened basement.

Crowded between the plain plaster walls of the basement, packed from concrete floor to pipe-lined drop-ceiling, gamers gently pushed their way to the end of the single narrow room where a 20-something DJ spun records on two turn tables, her face blank as she stared at a laptop screen.

The crowds undulated toward her, staring over and past her head at a darkened big screen television, two white, over-sized joysticks pushed sitting on either side of it on translucent pillars.

This is why more than 500, perhaps a thousand people traveled to the shoe store last week, ignoring the famous, the rich and the beautiful, standing in line, then snaking through a sweat-drenched crowd of gamers in a packed basement: The chance to catch a glimpse of Super Street Fighter IV.

Due out early next year, the latest iteration in the wildly popular fighting franchise draws crowds where ever it goes.

"We've done Fight Clubs in LA, New York City, Vegas, San Francisco, now New York City again," Killian said. "Basically fight clubs are there for us to help (gamers) get hands on the game before it's released..."

Thursday night Killian made his way to the end of the basement every hour from 8 p.m. to midnight, turning on the big screen to hoots and hollars and then booting up a copy of Super Street Fighter IV.

"We have many happy press here tonight who wish they could play, but they cannot, Killian says into a microphone, the game playing behind him on the screen. "This is for you the community, so enjoy."

Less than eight people from the thousand or so who showed were able to get their hands on the unreleased game playing on the big screen, but no one complained. Instead they rooted for the randomly selected gamers, cheering and jeering during the impromptu match-ups each hour.

Between presentations games returned to the two dozen or so smaller flat screens mounted on the walls in the basement and upstairs, playing the already released Street Fighter IV and the soon to be released Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, both fighting games.

But Fight Club isn't just about the virtual fights. Capcom makes sure that the irregular, underground events tap into the deeper elements of pop-culture and art that inspire many of their games and in turn inspire art.

"We hire local and notable artists for every event, and have worked with groups like IAM8BIT, Meatbun, Triumvir, and Jim Mahfood, just to name a few," Killian says. "Street Fighter in particular runs so deep in our culture that there's a great supply of amazing artists inspired by the games and characters.

"We cook up a 'you can only get it here' limited edition, unique t-shirt that we give away at every event, and in my opinion they're pretty rad."

The first Capcom Fight Club happened with almost no notice and no marketing.

"At the very first club we basically told nobody that wasn't in my phone, and we still had 300 Street Fighters showing up to a skid-row warehouse in downtown LA," Killian said. "The attendance has increased at pretty much every one since then, as word continues to spread."

Despite the almost exponential growth of the marketing parties, the Capcom Fight Clubs somehow manage to maintain their gritty, grassroots feel.

Graffiti of in-game characters decorated the walls of the shoe store in Soho, people quietly slipped in and out of the video game speakeasy with quiet affable patience and everyone waiting in that monstrous line got their chance on a game.

Arcades may have died in America, but the people who played in them still thrive, it's just that now they have to travel to find their community.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Now more than three years after promising, and some say failing, to deliver a PC gaming renaissance with the Vista operating system, Microsoft is set to roll out Windows 7.

But this time there are no apologies or promises. PC gaming, it seems, has taken a back seat.

When Windows 7 goes on sale on Oct. 22, PC gamers will have little reason to run out to buy it, says Matthew Murray, managing editor of ExtremeTech.

"I don't think there's a lot about (Windows 7) that's going to make it that much more compelling to gamers than Vista," Murray said. "It's a bit better using memory, and it's a bit faster in certain areas, but the performance overall isn't really that much different. If you have Vista and you're happy with it, you can probably keep it, at least for now."

To be fair, much of that promised renaissance in 2006 was tied to the Games for Windows initiative, which launched alongside the Windows Vista operating system.

While the two hit at the same time, they're not directly connected.

The biggest idea behind Games for Windows was to make it easier to play games on your PC. This was done by creating a set of criteria that computer games needed to meet to have the Games For Windows label on their box.

Those criteria included compatibility, easy installation and including parental controls. There were also a number of neat ideas tested out, but never fully realized. Most computer games require an installation before playing, but the Tray and Play option was meant to allow gamers to pop a game in their computer and start playing almost immediately, similar to what most console gamers experience now. Unfortunately, only one game, Halo 2 for the PC, currently uses this system.

The most noticeable way in which Vista and Games for Windows crossed over was the operating system's Game Advisor and Games Explorer.

The Game Advisor ranks a person's computer and available games making it easier to tell if a title would play on a PC.

The Games Explorer was meant to collect all the games installed on a computer and display them in one folder. It's here that Window 7 does bring a modicum of improvement for gamers.

One of the biggest issues with Games Explorer was that it often didn't detect games that were purchases through online retailers and providers like Steam.

While Windows 7 still doesn't seem to include Steam in the Game Explorer, it now has the ability to if the company wants to support the service. If a game provider does choose to be listed in the Game Explorer, computer owners will be able to view news from the service and information about the service's games, all inside the window.

Another update to Games Explorer allows you to be notified when a game you own has an update or patch and then install the update from the explorer without having to launch the game.

Finally, Games Explorer will track statistics for the games you play, showing you how many times you've played, how long and your win and loss ratio.

Currently only the included games seem to support this function, but I'm sure more will include it after the operating system officially launches.

Murray says the only improvement he can find in Windows 7 for gamers is in the Games Explorer, but even he doesn't find it that useful.

"Being able to check for updates for all your games in one interface is a nice feature, but since it doesn't install the updates automatically (the way Windows Update itself does), I don't know how useful that's going to be to a lot of people," he said. "And I've never gotten that into using the Games Explorer anyway—I tend to just add icons to the new taskbar, as with everything else. Aside from that, there aren't a ton of game-friendly changes I've come across."

The problem I have with Windows 7, though, isn't its failure to vastly improve the gaming experience, it's Microsoft's failure to take advantage of the attention brought by the launch of a new operating system to once more thrust PC gaming into the spotlight.

The biggest promise the Games for Windows initiative made when it initially was unveiled was that it would be backed by a huge marketing campaign, one similar to the push Microsoft gave the Xbox 360 when it hit.

But that was never fully realized and PC gaming was left to suffer as a second favorite system next to the Xbox 360 and Microsoft's continued marketing blitz for its gaming console.

In the vacuum left by Microsoft game developers, chip manufacturers and PC builders have come together to try and reinvigorate PC gaming though the PC Gaming Alliance. But even this effort seems oddly absent during Window's big week?

If Microsoft want its PC gaming platform to thrive they will need to do more than offer lip service in the future. But with the lasting success of the gaming console and PC gamers' ability to seemingly put up with anything, why should they?

Microsoft declined to comment for this article.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

But there was one thing that always brought us together: Difficult video games.

In the 70s and 80s, the heyday of gaming's explosive appearance in homes and arcades, playing a video game with your brother usually meant taking turns. Or, if you were the younger, less-skilled brother, it meant asking for help, learning from your older sibling.

It was, at least for us, one of the few ways we could bond openly.

Nintendo's latest innovation in gaming, the Super Guide, could throw all of that out the window by enabling the game console to take over the role of big brother, big sister, father, mother, role-model and play the game for you, virtually holding your hand when things get tough.

The Super Guide will make its first appearance in November when Nintendo releases New Super Mario Bros. Wii for their console. In the familiar game, players run and jump through the Mushroom Kingdom, avoiding pitfalls and cartoon enemies on their quest for the perpetually displaced Princess Peach.

One of the twists (the game also introduces the ability for four people to play the game at the same time) is that if you get stuck, failing at a level eight times, the game will offer to play through the level for you via the Super Guide.

If you accept the offer, the single-player-controlled Mario is replaced with a Wii-controlled Luigi who then plays through the level on his own. The play-through will actually be a recording of a developer's imperfect, survivable play-through of the game. At any time the player can take control back from the guide, but once they do they can't relinquish control again without starting over.

Ian Bogost, associate professor at Georgia Tech and author of several books on games, most recently Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System, likens the Super Guide to the video game equivalent of fast forwarding a movie or skimming a book.

"Games are long, too long perhaps," he said. "Designers have combatted this problem partly through shorter games, like casual games and minigames, particularly on the Wii. But such games also can't carry the sort of longform spatial or narrative experience that we're used to from games like Super Mario Bros."

The problem, though, is that it undercuts one of the things that makes video games unique as a medium: How interactive they are.

"It certainly makes a game more passive. It does violence to the experience. It strips out the challenge and accomplishment that characterizes some games," Bogost said.

This first implementation of the Super Guide seems stripped of some of the potential found in the original patent filed for the system back in January. The patent also talks about the ability for gamers to save and share their own play-throughs of the game, making the hand-holding a bit more communal. It also allowed a gamer to bring up on-screen hints and skip to specific scenes of a game to play.

Developer Kellee Santiago, co-founder and president of ThatGameCompany, calls the concept an interesting potential solution to a problem that continues to plague the industry: How do you make a game that satisfies the increasingly separate groups of hardcore and casual gamers?

"There have been some rumblings from the hard-core community that games have gotten a little too easy as they've attempted to gain a larger audience," Santiago said. "It makes me think of watching a horror film and closing your ears and eyes during the really scary parts. Personally, I don't know why people would do this - I watch horror films because I like getting scared. If I didn't like it, I'd probably just not go see horror films. But there are people that still want the experience of sharing the experience of watching a scary movie with friends, and so they 'cheat' by tuning out the really terrifying parts. It's possible there's a gaming audience who will also enjoy playing hard games, and just skipping over the actual interaction of the really tricky sections.

"My concern as a developer is that this could lead to some lazy game design. Instead of addressing what could be some serious design flaws, they could rely on this system to simply show the player what to do."

Bogost raises the same concerns. And, he says, the Super Guide could be considered the byproduct of what philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer termed the culture industry, essentially popular culture mass produced to pacify, not enlighten or intellectually stimulate, the masses.

"I do believe that dynamic difficulty adjustment in general undermines the art's ability to produce unfamiliar and disturbing experiences in favor of giving the player just what he wants when he wants it... It's a computationally automatic version of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the culture industry."

And would beating a game with something, not someone, playing for you, be as fun?

At least when I handed the controller over to my big brother I got something more then a false sense of accomplishment out of it. And I'm not sure how much I want to bond with my Wii.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

You can quibble about the when and the how of this happening, but the inevitability of games being sold online like music, free of their plastic prisons, is certain.

The first real sign of that step away from games sheathed in cardboard and plastic sold in a bricks and mortar store hit earlier this month in the form of the PSPgo.

Sony's latest Playstation Portable is a smaller, sleeker system that has no way of playing a physical game on it. There is no disc drive of any sort, instead there is internal memory, a wireless internet connection and a virtual store run by Sony.

"This is an interesting step to test the waters on a digital only product," Eric Lempel, director of Playstation Network Operations, told Kotaku. "We are thrilled and completely cognizant that this is the platform for a digital gamer.

"It's a really exciting time."

While gamers can visit the Playstation Store directly on their Playstation Portable or PSPgo, the PSP has to store its games on Memory Sticks, while the PSPgo has 16GBs of internal memory and still has the ability to store titles on Memory Sticks. Top-tier games can take up half a gig to one a half gigs of memory each.

The Playstation Store currently has about 100 PSP games available for download with hundreds more in the pipeline, Lempel said. To purchase a game, you just need to find it and download it directly to the device. The sale is automatically charged to a credit card or taken out of credit which can be purchased at retail stores.

Both the PSP and PSPgo can also display pictures and movies and play music. While the online store both rents and sells movies, it currently doesn't offer music. That's something that could change in the future, Lempel said.

"It is something we have considered and are looking at," he said. "It's a natural fit, but there is nothing to talk about right now."

Sony faced quite a few hurdles in launching their download-only gaming platform. Some retailers, which make a bulk of their money off of game not hardware sales, were reluctant to carry the device. And game publishers had to be convinced that the games, no longer on a physical disc, wouldn't be open to greater piracy.

Under Sony's system, games have to be "activated" after they have been installed on a PSPgo or Playstation Portable and can only be installed on a total of five different PSPs or PSPgos in their lifetime.

Those steps, Lempel says, helped convince third-party publishers that their device was a safe bet.

"We're seeing everyone on board with the PSPgo," he said.

While the $250 PSPgo is a download-only device, Sony isn't putting all of their eggs in one basket. Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida told Kotaku that the company intends to continue its support of the $170 Playstation Portable, which allows gamers to download and play those same games or use the device's built-in UMD drive to play games.

Moving forward, he said, new games will be released in both the UMD and digital formats. Sony was sure to make it as easy as possible to release a game in both formats, Lempel said.

"It's not that hard to do, but there is some work involved," he said.

The hope is that games will hit both the retail store and Sony's online Playstation Store at the same time and for the same price.

The decision to not drop the price for a game that doesn't have the added cost of packaging and distribution may not sit well with gamers, but Lempel says Sony is comfortable with the decision.

"Right now there is no price difference," he said. "We feel (the games) are competitively priced and that there is a ton of content across the spectrum.

He added that a price drop for digital games in the future is possible.

"We're always looking at our business model."

The online store does have lower-priced, simpler games available for purchase. These "minis" cost $10 or less, take up less than 100 megs of memory and can't have multiplayer or network functionality.

Publishers can also decide they want to place their bigger titles on sale, Lempel pointed out.

"We've done a good amount of sales on the Playstation Network in the past," he said.

One stumbling block for the new platform could prevent current Playstation Portable owners from upgrading to the new handheld.

There is currently no way for a Playstation Portable owner to transfer their library of UMD games to the download-only PSPgo. Yoshida told us that Sony "seriously looked into solutions" but that legal and technical issues prevented them from coming up with a system that would work.

Lempel says that the biggest issue was not just about the games, but rather the game's music and other royalty issues.

To try and make up for that, Playstation Portable owners in Europe who upgrade to the PSPgo will get three free download games. Currently, there are no such plans for potential upgraders in the U.S., Lempel said. He did add that new bundles for the PSPgo could be heading for the U.S. in the future.

While the PSPgo gives gamers the convenience of instantly purchasing games online without having to leave their homes and the ability to carry many of those titles with them without the need of extra discs, the device is a much bigger win for publishers and Sony.

If successful, the PSPgo and it's download-only service completely kills the ability for gamers to sell off their titles or buy used copies of games.

A quick check of the top ten rated games for the Playstation Portable found that half weren't yet available in the Playstation Store and of those that were, only one was cheaper than the various stores and services that sell games used.

The PSPgo is driven by an interesting concept, and has a better design than its predecessor, but to succeed Sony has to drop the price of the handheld console and digital copies of games and should actively court publishers to have regular sales on their titles. Sony should also launch digital rentals of games and push gamer loyalty programs that reward frequent shoppers.

And why wouldn't they?

Used games, next to perhaps piracy, is a publisher's biggest concern. Moving gamers away from a system that supports the resale of titles, with nothing going into the pockets of publishers, is likely one of the video game industry's top priorities.

But to do so with little to no reward for the consumer will alienate gamers and inevitably kill this first test of a download-only platform.

Four publishers and a retailer did not respond to requests for interviews for this story.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong introduced the concept of plot and character to something that started out as more diversion, more science in motion than art.

From these deep gaming roots sprung an entire subculture. And over the years Japan's otaku have metamorphosed from social outcasts to counting among its members: salary men, music and movie stars, housewives and even a prime minster.

For more than a dozen years the Tokyo Game Show has been the barometer of that culture and the country's blossoming game development community.

But this year the show, which wrapped up over the weekend, reveals an industry scrambling to stay relevant in an increasingly westernized gaming world.

At a screening of his latest game last week, Capcom's famed developer Keiji Inafune, the man behind such hits as Mega Man, Onimusha and Dead Rising, warned that Japanese game development has one foot in the grave.

"I have a question for you: What did you think TGS this year? Be honest" Inafune asked a crowd of gathered press. "Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor, I said "Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished."

But then Inafune said that his latest game is proof that Japan can stay relevant. The game, Dead Rising 2, is being made by Blue Castle Games, a Canadian game developer.

This year's Tokyo Game Show isn't a watershed moment for Japan, instead it's the latest evidence of an industry struggling to find its identity and place in a facet of pop culture that is becoming increasingly mainstream, and leaving its roots behind.

Earlier this year, Capcom developers talked about the importance of marrying Japanese and Western game design philosophies in a way that would help increase a game's popularity without losing its cultural identity. And they aren't the only ones dealing with the problem.

It doesn't help that the video gaming industry in Japan, like many industries, is struggling financially, something made more apparent by the annual public game show.

The mammoth Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, Japan, usually nearly filled with developer booths, closed off entire sections this year because of the lack of industry attendance. Public attendance was also down, plummeting to just above 2005 levels with 185,030 people

Filling in those gaps were more cultural, less video-game themed exhibits including one dedicated to the armor and helmets of Japan's most famous feudal warlords.

Western developers Microsoft and Ubisoft both had large booths at the show this year, though Electronic Arts wasn't in the show this time around. Other big booths included those for Sony Computer Entertainment, portable game developer Level 5 and Japanese developers Square Enix, Konami and Sega.

The most popular game on the floor still belonged to Japanese game developers, with Square Enix filling to capacity for the day in just hours,

It was easy to get sucked into a human riptide walking between the packed display areas for Square-Enix and Sega during the show. The press of people dangerously close to trampling one another as they shouldered their way through an area wide enough to drive trucks side-by-side when empty.

But Microsoft also boasted a number of long waits for their games, including a nearly three-hour wait for the latest Halo title. And Ubisoft's games, from James Cameron's Avatar to Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, were both big draws at the show.

While many of the industry in attendance saw the dipping numbers at this year's Tokyo Game Show as a warning that developers in Japan need to rethink the way they do things. That's the last thing I 'd want to see happen.

By chasing success in broader, more western channels, the same themes and backdrops that fuel summer blockbusters, Japanese game developers run the very real risk of losing sight of what made their influence different and in turn helped make gaming something unique.

We don't need another first-person shooter that takes place during World War II, something famed Ninja-themed game developer Tomonobu Itagaki recently said he was considering making. We don't need more space-themed strategy games, like the ones Square Enix will be publishing this year.

What we need more of are the distinctly Japanese games that push the medium forward. Games like Shadow of the Colossus, Final Fantasy and the visually stunning Okami.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

The three words electrifies the crowd. The children swarming in the front yard of the Denver suburban house run to the curb. They crane their necks, point, howl with excitement.

The one-ton truck eases its way through the last turn and straightens, a 42-foot trailer in tow.

As the truck rolls down the street past quiet homes and neat yards the excitement grows and the vehicle's detailed decorations begin to come into focus.

Carefully detailed creatures painted in neat rows line the entire hood of the truck. Swirls of color, a galaxy of stars spread from the hood down the sides of the truck and to its trailer.

The trailer, all 42 feet of it, is festooned with 8-foot-tall animated children, fasntastic creatures and images of steel multi-hued balls. But more important than the spectacle of a rolling cartoon, than the chug of the one-ton truck are the words written in fire and gold across the side of the truck: "Bakugan Brawlers"

Last year Bakugan was the it present for children 8 to 12. The holidays saw national sellouts of the toys, a combination of trading cards and marbles based on a Japanese cartoon. This year game developer Activision hopes to fuse the wild popularity of the toy with a video game and create a new franchise that could possibly one-day give Nintendo's Pokemon a run for its money.

"Pokmon have a head start on us, so it's not an apples to apples comparison," Activision spokesman Bill Linn said. "That said, the Bakugan toys have shown great strength in the marketplace in the States and continues to dominate in retail, so it's certainly on track to give Pokemon a run for its money."

"The two brands certainly share an audience amongst kids. What kid doesn't like monsters and battles?"

Pokemon, Nintendo's most popular game franchise after Mario, was initially created by Nintendo in the mid 90s as a video game and later spawned movies, cartoons and a collectible card game. Bakugan, though, started out as a cartoon and went on to spawn a card and toy game and finally a video game.

In Bakugan players place metal cards on a playing field and then take turns rolling the Bakugan balls toward them like marbles. When a ball rolls across a metal card, a magnet inside the plastic ball releases allowing the ball to spring open and reveal a creature.

"The game's popularity is really tied to its design," Linn said. "Bakugan blends the classic game of marbles, the collector card craze and a little bit of Transfomers into one activity. Any one of those would be fun, but when you combine all three, it adds a level of depth and interactivity that really appeals with kids."

Linn says the video game was created to appeal to fans of the card game and TV show.

"In story mode, kids to create their own character and play through a plot scripted by the writers of the animated show," he said. "It's like playing through a season of the cartoon, with you as the main character. In the battle arena, we've really brought the world to life through power ups and other special activities that make this much more than just rolling a ball."

It was important, Linn adds, for the video game to also capture the physicality of Bakugan.

The Wii version of the game, which is also coming to the DS, PS2, PS3 and Xbox 360, has players mimicking a throwing movement with the console's motion-detecting remote to toss a marble at the playfield. Once on the move, players can guide the Bakugan around the interactive field to pick up power-ups and then try to stop on the virtual cards. As in the physical game, when the ball hits the card it springs open.

"The play mechanic really gives the player a lot of control in battles," Linn said. "When throwing, they can have a standard, power or special throw that will affect how the ball enters the arena. Players can then control the ball by twisting the controller and tapping the B button. This gives the ball a nudge, but is not unlimited. And finally, when your opponent plays, you can shoot his ball and affect their trajectory.

"For the other platforms, we optimized the game to the controller. With Xbox 360, you can use both analog sticks. For the PS3, we use the Sixaxis control and the analog stick at the same time."

And Bakugan: Battle Brawlers, due out on Oct. 20, will be just the first video game built around the franchise.

To help promote the birth of this new video gaming franchise, Activision launched the Roll Across America Tour earlier this month.

The nationwide tour gives fans of the toy and show a chance to play the Wii and DS version of the game on flat screen panels mounted inside a 42-foot long trailer.

The Bakugan-decorated truck and trailer, which features four Wii connected to flatscreen televsions, two DS, a couch, track lighting and hardwood floors, will travel more than 4,500 miles this fall to promote the game.

During a stop in Colorado last week children and parents crowded inside the air-conditioned trailer taking turns playing the game for four hours. Many spent the entire four hours gaming.

Everyone, parents and children alike, seemed to enjoy the video game, staying around until the sun set and the stars in the sky almost equaled those painted on the truck.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Nowhere is this more evident than in music-themed video games. Titles like Guitar Hero 5, The Beatles: Rock Band and soon-to-be released DJ Hero all use real musicians, living and dead, to help create a stronger sense of realism.

But is that a good thing?

For the surviving members of The Beatles and their fans it seems to be.

The self-titled Rock Band game released to phenomenal reviews and delivered an experience that was solely devoted the band. The game, it seems, was an effort to not only give people a chance to play through their favorite Beatles hits, but to get a better sense of how The Beatles grew both as musicians and a band.

The same week that fans of the fab four were rejoicing in the singular experience of The Beatles: Rock Band, the widow, fans and band mates of late grunge icon Kurt Cobain were up in arms over his inclusion in Guitar Hero 5.

Prior to the game's release, publisher Activision told Rolling Stone magazine that Courtney Love wasn't just integral in bringing Cobain to life in the game, she was great to work with.

But in a frenzy of late-night Twitter updates a week after the game's release, Love denied that she was happily involved in the project, posting 214 Tweets over a six-hour period decrying the game, Cobain's inclusion in it and most hotly the ability to have the grunge singer perform other songs.

It's this single feature, which allows gamers to unlock Cobain and have him sing everything from Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire to Bon Jovi's You Give Love a Bad Name, that seems to be the most upsetting to friends, fans and family.

Some critics too, were unhappy with it. Kotaku's own review described the ability to reanimate the virtual corpses of Cobain and Johnny Cash and control them as marionettes in other people's songs, as tacky and crude.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, the two surviving members of Nirvana, released a joint statement asking Activision to alter the game to prevent the virtual Cobain from performing songs that are not his own.

"Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better."

Activision, which had initially agreed to participate in this story, declined to respond to questions about the decision to include real-world musicians in games and to say whether they would change Cobain's inclusion in Guitar Hero 5.

They did send along a prepared statement saying that the game had the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a "written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain's likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5,"

While Love didn't respond to our requests for an interview, her attorney did, saying that while there was an agreement in place, it didn't allow the sort of treatment Cobain is getting in the game.

"Ms. Cobain is extremely upset about Activision's use of Mr. Cobain's likeness to sing the songs of others in its Guitar Hero game," Keith A. Fink, Love's attorney, told Kotaku. "Activision was granted permission by Kurt's trust solely to use his name and likeness. Activision was not given an unbridled right to use Mr. Cobain's name and likeness. "

"The agreement Activision has with the trust doesn't allow them to use his likeness in ways that denigrate his image."

Love's response to Guitar Hero 5 is a far cry from the response The Beatles: Rock Band is getting from the family and surviving members of The Beatles.

Perhaps that's because in the Rock Band game players can only perform as The Beatles in songs by The Beatles. The game comes with 45 tracks, and more are on the way, but they're only going to be Beatles songs. And none of those Beatles songs work on Rock Band 2.

It's a clear distinction that could explain Love's emotional and slightly delayed reaction to Cobain's use in Guitar Hero 5.

Had she seen The Beatles: Rock Band I'm sure she couldn't help but ponder over what could have been: A video game that celebrates Kurt Cobain rather than using him. A title that expands Cobain's audience, reminds people of his importance in the world of music and gives fans and neophytes an equal opportunity to try and understand the godfather of grunge.

In the future, game developers attracted to the allure of reality should perhaps keep in mind that what makes reality so intriguing is that it's real, not that it's a jumping off point for a distasteful fiction.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Bumbershoot, Settle's annual international music and arts festival, has been drawing a crowd to the Seattle Center since 1971 when 125,000 visitors showed. This year attendance appears to be down, though final numbers aren't yet available. Last year it was down as well, from 150,000 to 142,000.

But downtown, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, the annual Penny Arcade Expo, a celebration of all things video games, is having another type of problem: They keep running out of room.

In just three years since moving to the trade center from Bellevue, the expo is already seemingly outgrowing it. While final attendance numbers are not yet available, passes for the show completely sold out days before it kicked off. It was a first in the show's history and that despite expanding this year to fill all 130,000 square feet of the convention center.

More remarkable is the show's growth since its inception in 2004, which brought 3,300 to Bellevue, Washington's convention center. Last year's attendance was nearly 60,000. This year is most certainly much more.

With the show quickly outgrowing its venue, the Penny Arcade Expo organizers announced last year that a second show, PAX East Coast, would be held in Boston in March, 2010. For the Seattle show next year, the organizers hope to take over the four-story annex located across the street from the center.

While Bumbershoot's crowds spent the weekend enjoying back-to-back bands and reveling in traditional culture, Penny Arcade Expo goers thrived on a different sort of culture, one driven by video games.

While on its surface PAX may seem to be a convention built on the popularity of the Penny Arcade web comic and its two creators, the engine that really drives the Penny Arcade Expo is a deep love of not just video games, but gaming pop-culture.

Video games are certainly a large part of the show, but there's also the concerts, the costumes, the board games and more than anything else, the people.

This year's show included performances by an eclectic mix of musicians. Perhaps not as well-known in mainstream circles, bands like Freezepop, Anamanaguchi, Metal Metroid and MC Frontalot have a strong following among gamers, and that's an expanding audience.

There were also more than 100 exhibitors on hand to show of their wares, both soft and hard, to the throngs of gamers and back-to-back panels on everything from the psychiatric effect of video games on children to a comparative survey of the history of sex in video games.

And the show's creators, comic writer Jerry Holkins and illustrator Mike Krahulik, were on hand to meet fans, create some of their comics and MC the event.

In may not be fair to draw larger conclusions from the drop in Bumbershoot's attendance and the unbounded growth of the Penny Arcade Expo. But perhaps the two venues and their popularity offer some insight into the changing Zeitgeist of today's generation.

As gaming grows in popularity and its reach extends, no longer just pulling from today's culture, but often driving it, the Bumbershoots, the Woodstocks, the Lallapaloozas may eventually give way to Germany's GamesCom, Japan's Tokyo Game Show and Seattle's Penny Arcade Expo.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

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In a much anticipated move, Sony announced a new $300 model for their Playstation 3 in Cologne, Germany during the Gamescom convention on Aug. 18. The PS3, nicknamed the Playstation 3 Slim, features a 120GB harddrive and is a third smaller and more than a third lighter than its predecessors.

Ten days later, Microsoft announced that their top-of-the-line Xbox 360 Elite, which also features a 120GB harddrive, was getting a $100 price drop to $300.

The new Xbox 360 price kicked in on Aug. 28, Sony's new lower-priced model started showing up in stores the same week.

The Xbox 360's director of product management, Aaron Greenberg, told Kotaku that the timing was coincidental, driven more by Microsoft's ability to save money on internal components than by Sony's news.

"I think it's a bit coincidental, but it's also somewhat logical with both (Sony and Microsoft) making price adjustments at this time of the year because we are turning the corner of the holiday season," he said.

But Greenberg acknowledged that, with both consoles coming in at the same price, people will be more likely to compare the two when shopping for a new gaming platform.

"We feel like we shape up pretty well to that comparison," he said, pointing out that Microsoft also sells a basic version of the Xbox 360 for $200.

"I really think that we are at a point now where it's less about the back of the box and more about the types of experiences," he added. "We have a larger line-up (of games) and this holiday, look at our exclusives: Halo 3: ODST, Forza 3, new Grand Theft Auto content.

"If you say (Microsoft and Sony) have two SKUs at the same price point, we are the hands down winner. That's why, I think, we are the only company growing this year, while Sony is seeing sharp declines."

On paper at least, Sony's Playstation 3 does seem to have some obvious advantages, most notably a built-in Blu-ray player, something the company will make sure consumers don't forget.

"PlayStation 3 has always had incredible value and now at an even more attractive $299 price point, paired with a new, and aggressive, advertising campaign, we expect to have an incredible holiday in both hardware and content sales," said Patrick Seybold, Senior Director, Corporate Communications for Sony Computer Entertainment of America. "PlayStation 3 is the most superior entertainment console on the market and while the price point and the size of the HDD may be at parity between the two consoles, the similarities stop there. With a BD drive, built in wi-fi, free access to PlayStation Network and the best gaming content available, there really is no comparison to PlayStation 3."

Seybold declined to speculate on the timing of Microsoft's price drop, but said Sony's not concerned about it.

"We're confident the value of PS3 at $299 surpasses anything else on the market, and our amazing line up of first and third party titles, matched with the incredible evolution of PlayStation Network make PlayStation the clear choice for those looking for the best in entertainment."

Dropping the price of both Sony and Microsoft's top-tier consoles to $300 also means that Nintendo could see a bit more direct competition with its $250 Wii.

Nintendo has come under increasing pressure to drop the price of their console, which still sells at the same price as the day it launched in 2006.

During an investors meeting, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told those present that a slowdown in sales wasn't due to the console's price, but the number of big hits coming to the Wii.

He added that there currently "aren't a lot of discussions going on about what exactly to do about hardware pricing."

But with Wii sales flattening and consumers looking for more bang for their buck this holiday, it would be a smart decision.

Denise Kaigler, Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs, said that Nintendo sales forecast remains unchanged despite the PS3 and Xbox 360's price drops.

"Our focus has always been on creating fun and engaging game-play experiences," Kaigler said. "Because of that focus, Wii has been the best-selling video game system in the United States for two years and counting. It offers the most fun and the best value for consumers. Wii can be played by every member of the family the moment it comes out of the box. It's the only console that offers the option of precision motion controls right now, with the Wii MotionPlus accessory. And Nintendo systems are the only place you can play new and classic Nintendo franchises. Wii games that will be on people's lists through the holidays include Wii Sports Resort, Metroid Prime: Trilogy, Wii Fit Plus and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

"Nintendo offers something for everyone."

Microsoft and Sony both told Kotaku that they plan to heavily market their new prices during the holidays pointing out to consumers all the things they get for their $300.

"This holiday," Greenberg said, "is all about value."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Nearly a quarter of a million people, almost half from other countries, crowded into the expansive Koelnmesse last week for Gamescom, a soon-to-be annual celebration of video games in Germany.

The 245,000 visitors to a city of about 1 million spent much of the event's five days checking out more than 150 video games and 458 companies from 31 countries.

"We are very proud of the premiere of gamescom," said Olaf Wolters, managing director of the organization running the event. "It fulfilled all our objectives right away and is the largest game trade fair in the world. Computer and video games are so attractive that our industry is breaking all records despite the economic crisis."

The show took over a massive 1.3 million square-feet of the convention center, dividing up the video game publishers over four indoor warehouse spaces. Inside these halls, publishers turned the areas for their video games into amusement-like attractions.

Sony decorated one of their areas with fake grass and lounge chairs, and another with fake snow and gaming chairs designed to look like snowmobiles. In another section an Audi TT was connected to hydraulics and a Playstation 3 so gamers could climb inside and play Gran Turismo 5 in a moving car. Every few hours a different section of the booth was overrun with traceurs, a half dozen men scrambling up, over and around the booth's two-story tall walls.

Activision set up a full half-pipe vert ramp in another hall and brought famous skateboard Tony Hawk in to perform tricks in front of a live audience to promote their upcoming Tony Hawk: Ride game.

Sega had gamers climb into a bigger than life snow globe to try out their upcoming Winter games title, while Capcom allowed gamers to suit up and ride a 180 KMH vertical airstream to promote their upcoming jetpack shooter, Dark Void.

And every booth seemed to have a stage of one sort or another, from EA's massive Beatles set up for The Beatles Rock Band to DJ Rapstar's, Guitar Hero and DJ Hero's mammoth performance stages.

And in the middle of it all were those quarter of a million fans, there not just to play games but to celebrate the culture of gaming. Some came dressed in ornate costumes as their favorite video game characters, other came as part of fan groups, like the Gran Turismo Driving Club.

It's this broader look at video gaming that helps to separate Gamescom, formerly an event held in Leipzig, Germany, from the U.S.'s Electronic Entertainment Expo and Japan's Tokyo Gaming Show.

At Gamescom, unlike those other shows, the video games don't take center stage, the people do. How else can one explain the free areas set up to entertain the public with everything but video games?

The Outdoor Event area took over a fairly large parking lot, transforming it into, among other things, a sand-filled beach complete with volleyball court and live DJ, an ATV area loaded with woodchips and dirt, a parcour obstacle course and an area where people could watch riders perform stunts on motorcycles.

The convention even hosted it's own camping area, about a ten minutes walk from the show, where people could set up tents by the Rhine River and hang-out during the nights of the show.

The days of Gamescom were filled with milling crowds of friendly gamers from young children, to grandparents. The nights with long talks of gaming, music and sports.

The show feels like the beginning of something bigger, a celebration of a growing culture, one that embraces video games but isn't necessarily defined by them.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

The darkness dances in an erratic sizzle of colors from thousands of computer monitors, the pulsing pixels illuminating an electronic shanty town of home-built computers, neon, pillows and people.

This room of humming computers, quietly clicking keyboards, and energized gamers is the throbbing heart of QuakeCon, id Software's annual fan gathering held last week in Grapevine, Texas.

While the free convention, held in a Dallas, Texas-area hotel each year, sheds light on new projects in the works by the famed developers behind Quake, Doom and Return to Wolfenstein, what makes this gathering unique is it's sense of camaraderie. Gamers from across the country, and sometimes around the world, bring their own computers to the event to hook them up in a massive network and game together.

It is, id Software says, three days of Peace, Love and Rockets.

This year the event drew more than 7,000 people to the Dallas-area and included a more than two-hour talk by id developer John Carmack. But QuakeCon hasn't always been so auspicious. The convention grew out of a gathering of gamers in the summer of 1996 that was more pilgrimage than celebration, said id Software president Todd Hollenshead.

"A bunch of guys made a pilgrimage to Dallas to see if they could get (John Carmack) to talk at their LAN party," he said.

The group all gathered at a hotel in Garland, Texas a few miles from id Software. They set up an impromptu tournament and then emailed Carmack asking if he could swing by.

On the last day, Carmack showed up and talked to the group in the hotel's parking lot for about half an hour.

The late night parking lot chat and the days leading up to it have, over the years, blossomed into a gaming party of sorts, with tournaments, music, gaming and Carmack's annual chat.

Although the event has always been held close to id Software's Texas offices, that doesn't stop a group of id developers from moving into the hotel for the show's four days so they can check in as often as they'd like on the 24-hour a day gaming.

"People who come to QuakeCon are genuinely enthused about PCs," Hollenshead said. "They lug their PCs to the hotel just to play for 72 hours."

QuakeCon provides the tables, the chairs, the power and the cabling to hook all of those thousands of computers together, the gamers provide everything else.

"I think this is the largest free event of its kind in North America and the largest bring-your-own-computer in the world," he said.

The lights in the massive gaming room go off Thursday and don't come back on again until Sunday, and some people try to take advantage of every minute of that potential game time.

"There are people who will literally go down there and play until they are done," he said. "We've had instances of people who pass out at their computers.

"People will bring pillows, lay them over the keyboard and go to sleep. We don't encourage that, because it's probably not the best thing."

The computers, many modified into outlandish shapes like small coffins or Transformer Optimus Prime, light up the otherwise darked space.

"It's a cool thing to see - the monitors and the neon," Hollenshead said

While QuakeCon is returning to its roots in some ways, it's also moving forward in others. Earlier this year id Software was purchased by the company that owns developer Bethesda Games.

Last week Bethesda Games attended their first ever QuakeCon, remaining quietly in the background of the show typically dedicated to id. But that is something that could change in the future.

"The potential is that we could have a bigger and more exciting QuakeCon" with Bethesda's help," Hollenshead said.

It makes sense for QuakeCon to try and expand from an id-centric experience to one more broadly dedicated to PC gaming in all of its forms.

The current stable of cutting-edge consoles have eroded the home computer's already failing gamer-base and groups like the PC Gaming Alliance are bringing groups together to try and draw that audience back.

Hollenshead believes that as this generation of consoles age, PC games are regaining their advantage.

"As consoles go into their fifth Christmas the technology advantage of the PC is going to become an important factor," He said. "It's likely over the next couple years that PC gaming will have a a bigger competitive advantage."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.