Chris Dahlen writing for Polygon:

Like most people who use an alarm clock, I have an unhealthy relationship with stress. It hits me in the chest, disrupts my digestion, and wakes me up at all hours of the night — but it’s also the reason I’m going to meet my deadline for this column. Life brings stress, but stress is also a self-inflicted wound, like we’re suffering a blow that may never come.

Not many people would call stress “fun,” and yet video games can be stressful. We sometimes willingly pay money to be more stressed. This year gave us a bumper crop of stressful games, and the other day as I was tossing and turning at 5:00 am., I decided to rank them on the inside wall of my cranium. Lucas Pope’s recent Papers, Please made it onto the list, and so did Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life. But I started with Nintendo’s Pikmin 3.

A great piece on the arc of human development and stress as depicted by three games:

Taylor Soper, GeekWire:

SoundCon found that the number of composing jobs remained flat until 2009, when growth in the space took off. As the graph above shows, SoundCon found that the dramatic increase was largely due to the arrival of Apple’s App Store and the Facebook Application Developer.

I can’t help but feel Austin Wintory’s Grammy nomination for the Journey OST will help inspire others as well. However, a paycheck is nice too…

Mizzou News:

http://vimeo.com/75227903

Additional excerpt from the Frontiers in Developmental Psychology abstract

A new measure of individual habits and preferences in video game use is developed in order to better study the risk factors of pathological game use (i.e., excessively frequent or prolonged use, sometimes called “game addiction”). This measure was distributed to internet message boards for game enthusiasts and to college undergraduates. An exploratory factor analysis identified 9 factors: Story, Violent Catharsis, Violent Reward, Social Interaction, Escapism, Loss-Sensitivity, Customization, Grinding, and Autonomy. These factors demonstrated excellent fit in a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis, and, importantly, were found to reliably discriminate between inter-individual game preferences (e.g., Super Mario Brothers as compared to Call of Duty). Moreover, three factors were significantly related to pathological game use: the use of games to escape daily life, the use of games as a social outlet, and positive attitudes toward the steady accumulation of in-game rewards. The current research identifies individual preferences and motives relevant to understanding video game players’ evaluations of different games and risk factors for pathological video game use.

Curious about male protagonist dominance in video games, I decided to do a little research…

The following post was originally published on my IGN blog on 6/15/13. It went on to be featured on the front page of IGN.com.

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After all of the announcements at E3, I was curious to find out the genre breakdown between the games announced at E3 as well as their protagonist genders. To delve into this information, I pulled the original Big Games at E3 2013 list (156 games), mapped the platform section into a quantifiable “TRUE”/“FALSE” list, gathered genre lists from both IGN and Wikipedia, and researched the gender of the protagonist of each game.

Elaborating on the gender categories:

“Multi” being either:

• multiple characters to select from (ie. Mario Kart 8 / Killer Instinct receive 1 count for “multi” although there are several characters to select from)
• customizable gender
• large customizable party

“n/a” being a:

• gender ambiguous character
• god-view game
• first-person with no direct gender association

Some key points:

• Sample size = 156 games
• 9 exclusively female protagonists (Bayonetta 2, LocoCycle, Transistor, Barbie Dreamhouse Party, Beyond Two Souls, Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014, Mirror’s Edge 2, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13, Time and Eternity)

The most interesting bits of data show PS3 receiving more releases than any other console, Sony in general receiving more releases than any other brand, and Nintendo catering to female and multiple choice protagonists more than any other brand.

The following charts represent IGN’s Big Games at E3 2012 list:

Some key points:

• Sample size = 55 games
• 1 exclusively female protagonist (Tomb Raider)

This is still very much a work in progress as there is plenty of unknown data. Seeing as these charts only map E3 2013, there is no current assessment of industry trends; however, I am currently adding previous E3’s to this research. I may be reaching out to the community for assistance in updating this data to slim down on the amount of unknown and update on previous E3s.

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UPDATE; 2013-06-15, 12:15p: Added platform spread for announced games.

UPDATE; 2013-06-17, 12:15p: Added Genre breakdown based on Wikipedia classifications, Protagonist Distribution per brand, and Protagonist Distribution per Wikipedia Genre classification.

UPDATE; 2013-06-20, 12:10p: Wikipedia video game genres have been simplified for broad classification. Wikipedia classifies “Shooter” as a sub-Action genre. For the purposes of this study, “Shooter” has been given its own classification.

UPDATE; 2013-06-21, 9:15a: Added charts for Genres Per Platform and Genres Per Brand. Thank you all for your feedback and comments! Loving the discussion!

UPDATE; 2013-06-22, 3:45p: Changed Genres Per Brand charts to pie chart form. I will be adding IGN genre comparison soon.

UPDATE; 2013-06-25, 7:00a: Added data from E3 2012, refined key points including sample sizes and exclusively female protagonist counts.

With the recent news that Microsoft will be breathing new life into a ‘historic’ Rare franchise, a light bulb fired in my head. Could this be Microsoft’s attempt to appeal to the playful/children’s market that Nintendo has been rooted in for so many years?

Microsoft nor Rare have offered any insight to which franchise will be making a return; however, most of Rare’s franchises have been well known within the gaming community since the N64 era. I would even argue that Rare’s cast of characters and franchises are more recognizable and lovable than the majority of Microsoft’s and Sony’s combined.

After the Xbox One reveal, my “one” big take away was that Microsoft’s focus is not specifically the gaming market, but all markets. It’s not to say that people don’t love the Halo, Fable, and Gear of War franchises, but why not capitalize on a children’s market?

After the seemingly disappointing failure of Sony’s Playstation All-Stars and Nintendo’s continually draw of fantastic IP, Microsoft surely recognizes the importance of having a recognizable cast of characters to market to all-players, children through adults. While Nintendo’s consoles may not appeal to many, their franchises surely do. Colorful legends like Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox appeal not only to the child within the adult gamer but also to children and the parents buying their games.

While Killer Instinct is the rumored refresh, it surely would not serve as the greatest marketing strategy; however, the select few of playful characters such as Banzo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Battletoads could easily garner notoriety. Tone down a character like Conker and you’ve got another to add to the mix. While Donkey Kong is out of the question, Rare could take a lesson from Nintendo and develop a few more fun loving characters for each genre (Star Fox = dogfighter, Metroid = FPS, Mario = platformer, Zelda = adventure).

With a revival of Rare’s IP, Microsoft could pull the franchise rug out from under Nintendo and make their gaming line-up more recognizable, vast, and nostalgic than Sony’s.

What are your thoughts on the Rare announcement? Do you miss Rare Ltd.? Sound off in the comments!

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Notable Rare franchises/games:

• Killer Instinct
• Goldeneye
• Banjo-Kazooie
• Jet Force Gemini
• Conker
• Perfect Dark
• Battletoads
• Donkey Kong 64

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Originally posted on IGN.com