James Galvin

Kotaku highlights this Wall Street Journal article which examines Nintendo’s success so far in 2007. Having never paid much attention to the portable market, the extent of the Nintendo DS’ dominance is surprising to me. What is not surprising, however, is the performance of the Wii relative to its expensive competitors.

Despite initial doubts based on the name of the product, it became clear early on that 2007 would be the year of the Wii. Following its release a few months ago, YouTube bulged with homemade videos of hillbillies swinging motion-sensing controllers in a bout of Wii boxing; a new era had dawned for console gaming.

This old video summed up the appeal of the Wii over the PS3:

For me, the pricetag is the critical factor - a quick comparison from Smyths Toystore in Ireland just for the base console with no games:

Playstation 3	€629.99
Xbox 360	€409.99
Nintendo Wii	€269.99

Even now in mid April it is difficult to get a hold of the Nintendo Wii, as retailers are constantly sold out. Hopefully this trend will influence an evolution towards smaller, cheaper gaming consoles, as opposed to bloated all-in-one entertainment centres which cost more than a ‘98 Ford Fiesta.

I mentioned in my last post that very few people these days take the time to give their views on how things are shaping up in the world of online gaming. In the days of Geocities and Gibworld, the internet was hopping in time with its myriad of animated ‘mail me’ gifs. Dozens of clan sites and tinet homepages in Ireland were poised to strike at the slightest bit of news in the gaming scene. When the boat rocked, ripples would spread giddily through the network of fluorescent static HTML pages, lovingly tended by faithful enthusiasts.

Last week, the boat rocked. When I say it rocked, I mean it crashed into an iceberg and flipped over three times before landing upside-down in the Bermuda triangle. The thundering mother of all cheating scandals emerged in a haze of furious drama. eSReality has an account of the saga involving a English gamer called Fusen and netCoders.be - a group who make aimbots, wallhacks, etc., for games such as Quake 3, Enemy Territory, CoD 2, and SOF, and sell them for up to $200. This is story of the hacker who hacked the hackers and gained access to their database via a vBulletin exploit, exposing the details of all of their customers to the public. The wild-west response, where netCoders offer a $1,000 reward for information on their attacker. The irony of the moral high ground held by the victims and their alleged legal follow-up. The hackers’ threats to hack the hacker who hacked the hackers.

The plot thickened and boiled and simmered as professional players were busted, and respected Clanbase admins ruined. But it didn’t interest me until I noticed that several members of team Ireland were caught with aimbots and wallhacks.

I have followed Ireland in the Enemy Territory nations cups a few times, and despite our small playerbase, Ireland has always had a very strong squad which was able to compete at the highest level. More recently, a new generation of players has risen to eradicate the respect that Irish national teams have accumulated over the years. If this had happened 5 years ago, there would be riots.

Just noticed that Darren’s blog is up and running, with archives going back to November. Views on technology, the internet, online gaming, and whatever else, from the heart of Wicklow. Anyone who is acquainted with Dardoz will know him as one of the most authoritative voices around when it comes to eSports - a topic which lends itself well to blogging but is rarely covered, least of all in Ireland. Some very interesting posts already - well worth a subscription I would say.

Have you pre-ordered? If not, sounds like some places will be opening specially at midnight tonight:

Dublin, 7th December – GameStop, Ireland’s largest Games Specialist Retailer, will open their Henry St. store, at Midnight tonight, for the launch of the long awaited Wii Console from Nintendo.

Must resist…

At last I have escaped from the chaos of Dublin’s south inner city. No more will I be lulled to sleep by the constant sound of rockets being fired at some guy’s head. I knew the place was a zoo from day one, but, with Halloween approaching, the area really lives up to its local nickname: “Beirut”.

I will miss my Cork Street pals - the insane security guard, the heroin dealer on the corner, and most of all - the toothless old man. The toothless old man walks into the Centra of Death with his bicycle. The insane security guard stops him and says no bicycles are allowed in the shop. The toothless guy replies: “But I have no teeth!”

I have to say though, there are plenty of characters this side of the canal. So far I have encountered an Elvisman, complete with 99 Micra plastered with stickers and slogans of the King. On the same road, I came across a middle-aged man driving along in traffic eating a kinder egg. Next thing he finished the chocolate, and started assembling the toy while booting along at 30mph.

At the moment I’m savouring the tranquility and enjoying my free wireless broadband, Irish Broadband 1meg it seems. Given their reputation, my expectations were very low, but I am pleased to see that not only is this connection working, it is working well. Certainly head and shoulders above Clearwire, who do things the American way - patriotically blocking your bittorrent. I’m not a downloader - I have neither the patience nor the inclination to download movies or anything but the odd mp3, but I have come to rely on bittorrent for legitimate uses; for example - the World of Warcraft updater, installers for programs like cygwin, and access to the occasional legal file which is only distributed via bittorrent.

This isn’t a major issue for me though, and having seen in the past how bittorrent can kill a network, I wouldn’t complain… assuming they made up for it in the other areas. Not the case - you get low bandwidth (1024/256 in theory, much less in practice), Clearwire is expensive (€40 per month), a long minimum contract of 12 months, and a low download cap (10gb). It is handy that it is not dependent on line of sight, but this just leads to high latency and packet loss making the product unsuitable for gaming or VOIP, even with a full signal. I have seen other Clearwire users in different areas with reasonably low and stable ping, but in my own experience, I could only barely manage World of Warcraft, which is playable even on 56k modem or with 800ms lag. I realise that it’s unfair to compare UnClearwire with fixed wireless… the only similar product in Ireland would be Irish Broadband’s disastrous RipoffWave, which I have had the displeasure of using in the past.

This Irish Broadband connection, on the other hand, is cheap and fast with low latency:
PING games1.iol.ie (193.120.123.136) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from games1.iol.ie (193.120.123.136): icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=6.85 ms
64 bytes from games1.iol.ie (193.120.123.136): icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=96.9 ms
64 bytes from games1.iol.ie (193.120.123.136): icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from games1.iol.ie (193.120.123.136): icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=10.2 ms
64 bytes from games1.iol.ie (193.120.123.136): icmp_seq=5 ttl=56 time=70.1 ms

A bit of jitter there, but you’ll get that on most wireless connections. I realise that when things go wrong with IBB, they go very wrong, and I have dealt with their lack of support in the past… but for now I’m not complaining. Despite the apparently solid performance, FPS games are still unplayable, so I have ordered a phoneline to get DSL in too. With a bit (lot) of luck, I won’t have to battle with Eircom every inch of the way, and I might even be connected in time for the Quake 3 TDM Nations Cup, where Ireland has been drawn in a group with:

	Poland
	Czech Republic
	Italy
	United Kingdom
	Hungary

I was at the WCG Ireland LAN yesterday attending the BYOC area, mainly to play a bit of Quake 3. After suffering so long on ISDN and unplayable Clearwire broadband, I was delighted to hear of a free LAN just five minutes from my house. It was refreshing to see all friendly faces running the thing - BioHazard/MindPhuck/Legion/PPC, etc., are all oldschool LAN organisers who know the Irish gaming scene very well. No power cuts, no problems with IP addresses, no ping issues… to say the LAN ran smoothly would be a huge understatement.

When I arrived at the Digital Hub I was given a bag of free stuff and a nice smoothie, ushered to my seat by a guy who carried my PC. I was then directed to SECURE parking out the back (incidentally, three more cars broken into underneath my apartment block the day after my own stereo was stolen). There was a tuck shop, a rest area with comfortable couches and bean bags, top of the range console corners with great chairs and TVs, computer doctors on site, and loads of help from staff. You’d think you were in a different country. Myself and Spaceman each bought a can of coke at the shop, and were informed that we had just won free spot prizes… I was given an xbox 360 game. This was most definitely a Carlsberg LAN.

There were a handful of reporters wandering about, I posted the Sunday Tribune’s article here, and no doubt there will be some more reviews popping up in the other papers. One thing that struck me as a bit odd were these two women from Millenium People recruitment who were going around with leaflets offering gamers their “dream job” as an MMORPG games master or team leader, etc. CV farmers perhaps?

Theres a review of the WCG qualifiers from a Counter Strike perspective over on cs-ireland.com. Even though its years since I’ve touched that game, it is nice to see a bit of life breathed back into the once-vibrant clan scene. Eight teams turned up for the qualifiers, although there were really only two possible contenders from the start… Wink and suiGeneris, who fought it out in the final with sG coming from the lower bracket to win twice for the trophy. I didn’t follow any of the other competitions, although I kept an eye on Starcraft where Bunny lost out in the final to some guy I never heard of.

I don’t know how strong Ireland’s representation at the World Cyber Games in Monza, Italy, this year will be, but the most important thing is that we are there. For too long we have had no representation while the likes of Mongolia and Qatar were present. Here is the group draw:

	Estonia
	Hungary
	Japan
	Finland
	Ireland
	Moldova
	Switzerland

This will make no sense to any of you who don’t know what a “shock rifle” is. The staff behind Ireland’s UT2K4 gaming community has let the stress get to them. A new system has been introduced, claiming to “a benevolent dictatorship similar to the very effective situation at Boards.ie”.

For some people, mainly those who tend to speak their mind a bit too often, the Boards.ie model is not one to admire. However, on a site which has seen over 1500 users online at one time, it is effective. The balance is always delicate between the “cynical power-tripping mod” and the “opressed minority”, but they’ve managed to pull it off (thanks to the general good sense of DeVore et al) to become one of the top 5(?) busiest websites in Ireland. On the other hand, in a smaller tight-knit community where passions boil and bubble and grudges slowly fester, a more diplomatic approach is advisable… particularly when the forum in question is an informal hub for a bunch of gamers. It is not difficult to moderate a board and still treat the users with a basic degree of respect.

It is unfortunate for Irish FPS gaming that our last remaining community has laid down the flagstone for their new culture with an unfriendly, inflammatory and disrespectful declaration by the admins. As a (respectfully) argumentative person (i.e., can’t keep mouth shut), I cannot subscribe to the idealogy expressed in the tactless missive which, incidentally, is not open to debate. The only option for me is to sign out for good, goaded by the message that “any individual who disagrees, or feels they cannot live, with the above restrictions may vote with their feet”.

For years Ireland has had no representation in the WCG (one of the largest international e-Sports competitions), but this year Mindphuck has announced that qualifiers will be held at The Digital Hub in Dublin. WCG 2006 finals will be held in Monza, Italy, where approx 70 countries will participate. I don’t see any details of the prize money, but it is likely to be very substantial. Unfortunately there are no deathmatch games this season, the list of games are as follows:

• Fifa Soccer 06 (pc)
• Half Life - Counter Strike 1.6 (pc)
• Need for Speed : most wanted (pc)
• Starcraft : Brood War (pc)
• Warcraft III : Frozen Throne (pc)
• Dawn of War : Winter Assault (pc)
• Dead or Alive 4 (xbox 360)
• Project Gotham Racing 3 (xbox 360)

See World Cyber Games Ireland for details. WGC 2006 site is here - worth visiting if only for the amazingly cheesy background music.

Via esreality:

Major League Gaming (MLG), today announced that it has signed the nation’s leading four-man Halo 2 team, Final Boss, to a $1 million dollar contract, and Tsquared, one of the top individual pros in the world, to a $250,000 deal. These are by far the largest signings ever for professional video gamers, and the multi-year deals provide for these players to commit exclusively to MLG.

Halo is a joke - but people who have never played anything but the Xbox they got for Christmas a few years ago love it. Everyone else knows that it sucks, and people who play it suck even more. A few years ago, Microsoft ran some big Halo PC World Cup tournament and one of Ireland’s top gamers, Melachi, was lured by the hefty prize money and said he’d give it a bash. He wasn’t a Halo player, but based mainly on his aim and experience in Quake, he waltzed through the Irish qualifiers. He got flown out to California where he finished eighth in the world despite not playing well, and was amazed to see that most of these guys were console gamers (what we in the industry like to call “n00bs”) and had he made a proper go of it, he would easily have finished in the top 3.

A couple of years on, the n00bs are running the asylum, and now the Halo 2 team “Final Boss” - kings in the land of blind midgets - are getting $1 million to sit on the couch shooting aliens on their TV screen. Additionally, this other guy gets $250,000:

“Like any professional athlete I want to be the best at what I do, and getting this contract shows the dedication I’ve put forth,” said Tom “Tsquared” Taylor.

I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not Tsquared and his 10-year-old pal Killer_Donkey666 really are athletes.

According to Kotaku, Nintendo have decided to change the name of the Wii. The article does not sound reliable to me, and there is no official source, so I won’t believe it just yet. I think it might be too late for Nintendo to go back on it now anyway, after all the hype and publicity given to the Wii brand already.

We have received over 200,000 e-mails with complaints about the Wii, and the console name has been commonly associated with urine. We have been the target of many jokes, and we strongly believe that it’s a bad thing for the company’s reputation.