Well I spent most of the weekend playing The Movies and had a great time. It’s two things in one, really - a tycoon game and a movie-maker. The tycoon half it is pretty fun and I look forward to making some of my own movies soon after I unlock all the techs.

Here are some funny things that happened in my tycoon game:

- In 1983, I had a 68 year-old-actor show up at my movie studio and ask for a job. He was about 270 pounds, bald, and he showed up at my front gates in a tight Euro-bathing suit.
- In 1938 I released a Western movie with four big action scenes. I made the final scene inside a spaceship and the audience seemed confused.
- I did an alien movie that took place on an alien beach. I accidentally started a second Romance movie in production at the same time that used the same beach set, so the whole cast had to wait for the first movie to finish production. During that time, most of my big stars got addicted to drinking and/or eating and I had to put 3 of them in rehab. Both movies took over eight years to make and both bombed. It was a bad time for John Galt Films.

I found this interesting article about Japanese youth and their mobile-phone behavior prompting monkey-like behavior patterns. It is very interesting to notice how technology is changing social structures. I doubt this is an isolated event, as the technocentric Asian countries are usually good harbingers of things to come to the rest of the world.

Mobile phones making a monkey out of Japanese

Going bananas over mobile phones for so many years is turning Japanese into monkeys, according to Sapio (11/23).

Nobuo Masataka, a professor at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute and author of the monster best seller “Keitai wo Motta Saru (Monkeys With Mobile Phones),” argues that the proliferation of mobile phones has got young Japanese making monkeys of themselves, aping the behavior patterns of chimpanzees.

He says that young Japanese have lost the ability to discern between public and private space. He adds that they have formed what he calls the dearuki-zoku (out and about tribe).

“There’s been a dramatic increase in the dearuki-zoku. They don’t eat meals at home with family members and you can clearly see with your own eyes the large increase in young people who hang about on the streets together with the same old friends,” Masataka tells Sapio. “They make places like Shibuya their territory and rarely head even to places like (nearby entertainment and shopping districts) Shinjuku or Harajuku. They get tired going to new places or meeting new people. If they get hungry while they’re strolling around, they simply get food by going into a convenience store, buying something and sitting down outside on the curb to eat it. If not that, then they just hang around for hours in fast food joints.”

The primate specialist says the actions of the dearuki-zoku closely resemble behavior patterns in chimpanzees, which tend to travel in groups, walking around for a long time without going to any specific place, then eating and disposing of their wastes in the same place before bedding down on piles of grass whenever and wherever the inclination takes them.

“This ability to loiter on the streets exists only because of the proliferation of mobile phones. Parents let their kids go out because they think they’re only a phone call away. And even if the kid doesn’t come home, parents don’t call them because they believe the child’s mobile phone offers them an unbreakable link,” Masataka tells Sapio. “Behind this imagined ease of mind, though, lies a breakdown in communications among the family members. Mobile phones have made it possible to connect to family members or other parts of society 24 hours a day, drastically changing the nature of relationships that humans have created through their evolution.”

The problem is, Masataka notes, despite having this communication device, there’s little real communication going on with parents or children rarely calling each other.

Masataka adds that a tendency for the young to lash out in wild, unprovoked attacks also draws on primate instincts drawn out by over-use of mobile phones that have stopped people from speaking in favor of sending text messages and thus made them more emotional and unable to express their feelings in words.

“Apes will suddenly strike out at people for looking at them. Naturally, apes can’t talk and they’re expressing their emotions in the only way they can. People prone to rage are doing exactly the same thing,” the primatologist says.

Masataka claims that mobile phones have deprived people of brainpower because memory functions now eliminate the need to try and remember phone numbers and GPS functions mean people have no need to learn about their surroundings.

“Mobile phones are now performing tasks that minds once did, such as think and talk. If this continues, people will continue losing their ability to think. Information Technology may have liberated us from a whole series of daily burdens, but IT has also dragged us down. Incidentally, the only people so caught up with mobile phones and use them to send so much mail are the Japanese,” Masataka tells Sapio. “Some may criticize me for likening the behavior of humans with monkeys, but having studied primates for so long, I can clearly say that it’s a fact the proliferation of IT has made human behavior closely resemble that of apes.” (By Ryann Connell)

When Erik was in town, he brought me the new GoPets brochure that they use for marketing and licensing purposes. Here in the back is their world map, and there is our cool logo up in the corner. Sweet stuff. Thanks Gustaf… I owe you an espresso.

I forgot to take my camera into Erik’s GoPets talk at the Austin Games Conference (AGC), but it was really fantastic. He talked about the greatness of GoPets and how it has the business model of the future. All the chairs were full and people lined the wall in the back of the room.

What was interesting to me was that we were in the room next to the “MMO Rant” talk that would erupt through the walls with senseless caterwauling at occasional intervals. Every year at AGC, there is always a “rant” which attracts nihilist, bitter developers. They all get into a room and clap and cheer whenever anyone says anything sensational. There is some aspect of the games industry where developers just LOVE breeding and soaking up their fellow developer’s negativity. I just don’t get it… But meanwhile, Erik’s talk next door was thing they all SHOULD have been listening too.

Here is the abstract from the AGC program:

The End of Subscriptions already? The Item Model for Online Games

In Korea the Subscription model is al but dead with only World of Warcraft and Lineage II being the only significant games to be released in the last two years featuring a business model based on the monthly subscription. Here in the USA the games business is still dominated by the retail packaged good, and where the bullish internet advisers talk about the zero-cost of goods subscription model as the future for PC as well as mobile games. However, Korea the cauldron for new online business has chewed up and spit out the subscription model as being an inefficient one-size-does-not-quite-fit-all deal that has been smashed by the item business model. Nexon’s KartRider and Hanbitsoft’s Pangya’s Gold are two of the new breed of online casual or online action games that make best use of this new model. Mr. Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets, Ltd. based in Korea presents and overview of the Korean online market place from a business model perspective with a focus on why the item model has come to Korea and some implications for the future in other markets.

Here is a lame picture of Erik’s little badge taken in the backseat of my Prius. He felt happy driving around in Austin in an energy-efficient car.

And here is Erik way after the speech when I managed to finally find my camera. In this fetching shot, Erik is talking on the phone in an empty, boring parking lot.

I got back here to Austin in time for the big games conference. It was a good time and there is lots of stuff going on with GoPets and John Galt Games… very exciting stuff.

I had a little party at my home on Thursday night for about 20 or so friends. Here are a few pics. The first one is of me and Hilmar, the big cheese at CCP (the Icelanders that make Eve Online). He’s a really cool dude and he can drink beer like its water. Actually, all the CCP guys drank quite a bit. I think the Nathan is still upstairs in our bathroom, in fact.

Recently, GoPets jumped from 10,000 users to 100,000 users in just three months. Now, just a few weeks later, it is up to 150,000 users from around the world. Congrats to the team!

It’s looks like one of my old friends from the Eve days has pulled off the biggest scam in the history of online gaming. On one day, they had all their spies in every major corporation simultaneously rob corporate coffers, kill CEOs, and clean out hangars. Here is a snippit of the story.

This was published in September’s issue of PC Gamer UK, a popular video game article magazine. It is a detailed account of what has to be one of most beautifully executed in-game scams in a MMORPG ever pulled. It breaks all previous world records for ‘virtual crime’.

The game in question is Eve Online, an open ended sci-fi mmorpg with a heavy emphasis on roleplaying, where developers try to give their players as much freedom as possible, and where corporate espionage and political intrigue have become an integral part of the game.

The perpetrator of the heist was the Guiding Hand Social Club (GHSC) corporation (a corporation being similar to a clan in Eve); a freelance mercenary outfit that offers their services (which usually involves corp infiltration, theft and assassination) to the highest bidder. Over a year in planning, the GHSC infilitrated their target’s corp with their own members and gained their trust, as well as access to the corp hangers, with time. It all concluded in a perfectly timed climax, with a massive theft in multiple corp hangars synchronized with the in-game killing of the corporation’s CEO, the primary target of the contract.

What’s most interesting and impressive about this operation is that it was entirely ‘legal’ and within the game’s own rules, and the mastermind and his agents pulled it off together flawlessly, all the while staying in character. The estimated real-life value of the items stolen is, according to PC Gamer, $16,500 US. The in-game value of course is much, much higher as the things stolen would take years and years to aquire.

And now, the PC Gamer scans. I hope you’ll find it as entertaining a read as I have.

Just before we went to Tokyo from here in Korea, GoPets hit the 100K user mark! At the current growth rate, it looks to be at over 1 million users in January. This has been done with virtually no marketing spend - entirely viral (like Gustaf).

Here are some pictures of the new white PSP that are being advertised all over Japan. This one is from one of the subway cars where I seemed to spend half my trip.

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Hey I took first place in two of the games! Man these games are great… totally fun… just…a…few…more…tweaks…before…release!

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There is a sweet new GoPets patch out with all kinds of new stuff… My dog is gonna get a skateboard and be really cool like Poochie.

There is more piracy in Malaysia than anywhere else I have been. There are endless stores with copied DVDs and games. PC games are especially popular here to pirate and innovative pirate/salesmen have figured out ways to combine products, since more than one game can fit on a DVD. You see a lot of compilations of FPS games, RTS games, and the like. But here is one rather unusual combination: Singles VS Imperial Glory. It’s a match made in heaven.

Well I have been having fun in GoPets recently and meeting a bunch of interesting people. I’ve also met some scary people, but most of them are named GFailure. I think they have doubled their users just from viral networking over the last few weeks… It is certainly worth a try! I recently adopted my fourth virtual dog and I named her “Julie From Love Boat.” She always knows all the cool stuff that is happening on the Aloha deck.

Try it out… it’s free and fun!

I saw these quotes listed the other day and I had to laugh… For those of you that do not know, this is in reference to a game that is STILL not out, in July of 2005!

“We’re confident that DNF will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, game of 1998. And this confidence is not misplaced.” - Scott Miller, 1997

“Duke Nukem Forever is a 1999 game and we think that timeframe matches very well with what we have planned for the game.” - George Broussard, 1998

“Trust us, Duke Nukem Forever will rock when it comes out next year.” - Joe Siegler, 1999

“When it’s done in 2001.” - 2000 Christmas card

“DNF will come out before Unreal 2.” - George Broussard, 2001

“If DNF is not out in 2001, something’s very wrong.” - George Broussard, 2001

“DNF will come out before Doom 3.” - George Broussard, 2002

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So I logged into GoPets this morning to see if there was anything my virtual pet could not live without, so I decided to get the bear outfit for dog. I can’t think of anything a virtual dog needs more than a virtual bear suit that envelops the virtual dog. Well maybe if the virtual bear around the virtual dog could wear a virtual moose. Then it would be a dog inside a bear inside a moose. And then we could put all of that inside of a virtual elephant which is inside a virtual blue whale. That would no doubt be perhaps the coolest virtual animal of all time, the Blue Whale o’ Elephant o’ Moose o’ Bear o’ Dog.

I had an old friend from EVE Online send me some stuff from one of the threads “The Legends of EVE” or somesuch… anyway, I guess a handful of people mentioned me when I used to act as Ragnar Danneskjold, CEO of Taggart Transdimensional. Here is some of the stuff he sent:

“Ragnar Danneskjold Taggart Transdimensional

In my ‘past life’ in Eve Ragnar was the person who influenced me the most. When I first applied in early Beta I’d heard of TTI and seen their awesome website. I endured a long interview process and was eventually hired. I remember talking to Ragnar (who in RL is a very successful businessman) and sharing the belief in Ayn Rand and being a producer versus a taker. I rose in TTI to eventually be its VP which was a great honor as there were some fantastic people there. Even after leaving TTI and going on my own I enjoyed talking to him on the phone. When Ragnar went rouge and TTI kind of collapsed it was a sad day for me. While I was dealing with health issues and ended up taking a break from Eve I still missed what some of the Eve dev’s had called a ‘picture perfect vision of a corp’ and everything we’d built. Seeing TTI in the strategy guide is still a hoot. Perhaps if we’d had a stock market back then and people could’ve bought stock in other companies economic “power” would be as important today as military power. A great economic visionary and leader Ragnar gets my vote as ‘past legend’.” - Archbishop

“Ragnar Danneskjold: Leader of the then most publicly know corporation and possibly biggest economic powerhouse in the early life of Eve. Ragnar/TTI had a spectacular effect on the first months and should be remembered for it.” - Renox

“Ragnar Danneskjold - CEO of imho one of the coolest corps in EVE. tti was a real corporation, not just a fps clan kind of organization.” - Cirque Faui

“Ragnar, kindly created the conflict that gave me both my first solo BB kill and my first BB loss. Also infamous for possibly the most magic hat to date.” - Storeslem

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