(This is the eighth of eight posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

When other people, be they industry professionals, other journalists, or fans, talk to me about the demise of Brash, I often hear something like this: "Of course Brash failed. Videogames based on movies are always terrible. That's the worst idea for a business I ever heard."

By releasing just three games, all of which indeed were terrible, and going out of business quickly, Brash did a lot to reinforce this argument. But in fact I think it's not true. If I were going to invest start-up money in a videogame publisher, I think I'd like Brash's business plan.

I probably wouldn't want the leadership Brash had. Or the first few licenses they bought. But consider this: As a start-up publisher, you don't have any established franchises. Investing in new IP is very risky, as the vast majority don't succeed. When you start a new company focused entirely on original games, you're likely to have a string of failures and end up like Gamecock. The core of the business model of all successful videogame publishers like EA and Activision Blizzard are franchises. It's those regular sequels to brands like "Madden NFL," "Guitar Hero," " Call of Duty," etc. that provide the steady cash flow to support risks on fresh properties like "Mirror's Edge" or "Dead Space" (OK, Activision hasn't taken any risks on fresh IP recently, but that's a separate issue).

What's the next best provider of reliable revenue after franchise sequels? Movie licenses. Sure, the profit margins are slimmer, since you have to pay royalties to the licensor, but they tend to sell well if they're based on successful films. Even objectively terrible games like "Transformers" or, hell, Brash's "Alvin and the Chipmunks" can move units.

Brash's plan was to eventually start moving into original properties. Some said it should have happened sooner, but it was supposed to eventually get there. Theoretically, the steady revenue from licenses would be a great way to ease into that, rather than dive in and hope for some early hits to avoid bleeding cash.

Furthermore, there's a lot of room for improvement in movie-based games. They have a bad reputation that's largely deserved. There are some structural problems, mainly having to do with the relatively short amount of time to produce a AAA title if you can't start until the movie's greenlit and have to release it along with the film. But as games like "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay" and a decent number of kid-focused properties have shown, it can be done.

Brash execs thought they'd be the one to prove that it could be done. Obviously they were wrong, since the titles they released displayed all the worst pathologies of movie-based videogame (low quality due to extremely short production schedules).

But if they had done things just a little differently, and if other factors -- some directly in their control, some having to do with the market -- hadn't worked against them, Brash might have proven movie-based games could be a little better and had a reliable stable of successful, if not hugely profitable, franchises with which to build the first successful private equity-funded videogame publisher. Makes plenty of sense to me.

(This is the seventh of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

Beside Mickey Mouse, the most common crazy/weird story former Brash employees would bring up to me was "the Wall Street game." Never have I heard a project so bad mouthed by the people who worked on it.

I haven't seen the game myself, so I can't ultimately say how good it is. And obviously it's not done, so nobody knows what the final project will be like. But literally every former Brash employee or partner I spoke to, from the highest level executive to the lowest level staffer, had bad things to say about the "Wall Street" MMO.

Beyond the numerous people who spoke about it, I can also confirm the game is real because Brash filed a trademark (thanks to the reader who provided that link!). That's the logo from the trademark above on the left. (A bull and a bear in the same symbol. Kinda clever.)

What was it? An MMO in which players place virtual bets on stocks, bonds, and other financial products. Basically, you get to be a Wall Street "player." And there would be various real world prizes for the people who bet the most successfully each month. People who worked on it or saw it said it would be funded via subscription and it was more a 2-D interface than a full 3-D virtual world (so it wasn't nearly as expensive as something like "Warhammer Online").

So why did it continue if nobody supported it? CEO Mitch Davis felt passionately about it. He kept the project going despite all the opposition. Some noted his abiding interest in Wall Street given his business background. Others noted that Brash's "Wall Street" game would be a natural partner with Davis's other company, LiveGamer, where he served as chairman. According to its website, LiveGamer "enables a complete marketplace solution for the player-to-player trading of virtual items." So the synergies are obvious.

Two separate people were hired to work on it early this summer: a producer and a marketing manager. Both had experience in the MMO space. Both worked there about a month before quitting/being asked to leave out of total frustration with the project.

What did people dislike about it so much? Sources mentioned that it wasn't a real MMO, but a virtual world with betting mechanisms; that anyone interested enough in finance to pay a subscription fee to play the game would probably be making real world investments; and that with the financial market collapsing, the Wall Street doesn't feel that much like a fun game.

But despite the lack of support within the company, Davis persevered. The game remained in development until the end. And it's still alive. I recently heard from several sources that some of Brash's investors, led by Davis himself, have decided to continue financing the game. I'm not sure exactly how the financial details work (are they buying it from Brash? funding it within what's left of Brash?) But it appears to be the only Brash game that's not being sold or returned to a licensor. Which means we may get to see it for ourselves whether Mitch Davis knows something that most of Brash's employees don't.

(This is the sixth of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

What does it take for a well funded company to go out of business in under two years? As I detailed before, bad choices, bad luck, bad products... But fundamentally, all that comes down to bad leadership. Well run companies don't typically make bad deals, put out three bad products in a row, or get caught totally unprepared when credit markets dry up.

It's hard to find people with good things to say about Brash's management. Mid- and low-level employees, developers, and others who worked with the company almost universally describe the leadership as arrogant, stubborn, and out-of touch. Not all the time, of course, and some individuals more than others.

As for the executives themselves? Well, they don't seem to have gotten along too well, to put it mildly. There was a lot of in-fighting, and a lot of departments working non-cooperatively, if not at cross-purposes. To give an example, I asked one former executives what s/he thought of another, and his/her reaction was, "Don't even mention that name to me." Me-ow! Suffice it to say that there was a generally high level of tension and some people really didn't like others. As is typical at entertainment companies, there was plenty of conflict between the creative folks and those in sales/marketing, though here it was even higher than usual.

Conflict, along with frustration with CEO Mitch Davis (more on him in a moment) and the direction in which the company was headed, ultimately led to defections. The first to go was Patrick Sweeney, senior VP of business affairs and general counsel, who left around March. By May, president Nicholas Longano left. Soon after, senior executive producer Jonathan Eubanks, chief creative officer Larry Shapiro, and co-founder Thomas Tull were gone as well. (Were they fired? Did they quit? In most cases, it seems to have been a bit of both)

So who remained? CEO Mitch Davis, of course, along with chief financial officer Bill Chardavoyne and EVP publishing Yasmin Naboa (who originally joined as exec VP sales & marketing), all of whom stayed until the end. Though Davis was in charge, it was Chardavoyne and Naboa who were largely running things day to day, acting, as one person put it, as Davis's "voice."

Why? Because Davis was often not around. Los Angeles-based Brash's CEO lived in New York City and spent most of his time there. In addition to running Brash from afar, he was also spending time on another company, LiveGamer, where he serves as chairman (more on that in the next post). A few people said it wasn't a big deal, that he was still easily reachable by phone. But more often I heard that he was at least somewhat out of touch, with Longano or, after he left, Naboa and Chardavoyne running things day-to-day.

Everyone agrees Davis is very intelligent and ambitious. Several people said he was focused on selling the company within a few years. Which would be difficult, given not only Brash's track record, but given that it had few assets since all of its games were based on licenses. (Though he and Longano did manage to sell Massive to Microsoft only a few years after starting it)

Others said that during Brash's problems this summer, Davis seemed unaware of how serious they were and was telling employees they would be a top ten, maybe even the number six, publisher in 2009. A positive attitude is a good thing, obviously, but many employees apparently took it as naive, out-of-touch optimism and said it only further sunk morale.

Perhaps the most troubling story is that in the last week of Brash's existence, when an all-hands meeting was called and the remaining employees were told that the company was being shut down and they would be laid off, Davis wasn't present. He left it to Chardavoyne and Naboa to deliver the news. (Davis didn't respond to several requests for comment.)

(This is the fifth of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

Since I'm about halfway through my series of Brash post-mortem posts, I figured it's a good time to post the "light" one...

In all my interviews with former Brash employees, there was one name that came up almost as much as Mitch Davis: Mickey Mouse. "Did you hear the Mickey Mouse story?" people would ask me, their voice dipping almost to a whisper like they wanted to talk about our alcoholic sister-in-law but didn't want to be the one to tell me she's an alcoholic, in case I didn't know.

Did Brash actually manage to get the rights to make a game with Mickey Mouse? Isn't Disney a bit more protective with its IP than that? What were these people talking about?

Finally I found out from someone who was there. It actually involves the oddest story of a corporate retreat I've ever had. And I've been on a few funny corporate retreats myself.

I want to issue a big disclaimer before I go into the details: This is just a funny story. I don't think this actually reflects badly, or well, on Brash management. The worst you could say is someone hired a weird consultant. In the grand scheme of things that happened at Brash, it's not even a blip. So I'm not posting this as an actual reason Brash went down in flames, or even to be emblematic of any problems. It's just an amusing tangent.

So here's the deal: Brash had a few off-site meetings for staff over the summer. The first was in June with almost everyone, at Shutters in Santa Monica. The topic was essentially "What have we done wrong and how can we improve things moving forward?" There was a "team building consultant" who served as a moderator for discussions and took notes. She had a funny quirk of wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts. A bit weird, but, you know, it's L.A. and her title is "team building consultant," so it's just barely noteworthy.

Then apparently there was a second off-site just for the sales and marketing staff the next month. The consultant was there again. As any reasonable person would, she noticed employee morale was quite low and stress was high. At one point, during a break, she was talking to a few employees and had this piece of advice (as related to me second-hand):

When you need to center yourself and find a place of happiness, take a Mickey Mouse doll and stick it between your legs. Because Mickey Mouse is what happiness all about. When you're looking for happiness and you need to center, that’s what Mickey Mouse is for.

Don't give me that look. I just report the news, folks. I couldn't make it up if I tried.

More actually serious insights about Brash coming over the weekend as I get breaks and feel like writing more. And again, please don't take this to mean anything more than exactly what it is. It's just, well, if you were a journalist and you heard this story and you had a blog, could you resist posting it?

(This is the fourth of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

One of Brash's well, brashest (I had to say it at some point) moves came over the summer, after an unheralded break up with Warner Bros.

When it launched last year, Brash's partnership with Warner Bros. was one of its big selling points. The movie studio, which already had its own videogame unit, would handle worldwide distribution (for a fee, of course) through its home entertainment division. That freed the start-up publisher from the expense of building a distribution infrastructure and establishing relationships with major retailers. It was also part of a bigger partnership with Warner Bros. built in large part of the connections of Thomas Tull, Brash's co-founder, who's chairman of Legendary Pictures, the co-financier of a number of WB's biggest tentpoles.

By late spring or early summer, Brash ended its deal with WB. Some insiders told me it was because relationships between the two had totally soured. Others said it was purely a business decision, as Brash executives concluded they could build and maintain their own distribution network for less money than the fees they were paying Warner Bros. Some also pointed out that by building its own distribution network, Brash would actually have a valuable asset should it ever try to find a buyer (since a bunch of licenses and a brand name aren't exactly worth that much).

The move was kept pretty quiet, known only to some in the industry and none of us in the press. Brash apparently got things together enough to self-distribute "Space Chimps" in July (albeit only to sales of 59,000 in the US, though that may have been due mostly to the low quality and weak theatrical performance of the film). Apparently Brash was doing a decent job setting up distribution in the U.S. -- where there are really only a few key retailers anyway -- but had a tougher time in Europe (not even sure if they were distributing in Asia).

It's tough to say how successful Brash was, since at this point, it's moot. Some say building up internal distribution in a relatively short amount of time was one of the company's notable achievements. Others say it was a waste of resources and an enormous distraction at a time when the company was falling apart.

(It should be noted that Brash isn't the only partner to stop having Warner Bros. distribute its games in North America. Codemasters ended its deal after a year and Empire Interactive worked with WB a bit then stopped. Eidos, in  which Warner Bros. owns a stake of more than 16%, is the only publisher that still does so. )

(This is the third of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

Brash managed to release three games in its short existence. They all objectively sucked, to put it bluntly. I'll say that flat out because even the people who worked at Brash agreed. It's one of the reasons there was such low employee morale.

"The thesis of the company was that no game would have less than 15 months of development time," says Jonathan Eubanks, Brash's senior executive producer who departed over the summer and has since started his own company, Invicta, told me. "Senior executives had every intention of making that happen, but there were a host of problems. In the end, our games were not quality offerings and everyone in the company knew that to be the case before they went out."

"Alvin and the Chipmunks" actually sold a decent 360,000 units domestically, according to NPD, though it still lost money. "Jumper" and "Space Chimps" sold a miserable 60,000 and 59,000, respectively, and most certainly lost money.

Besides the fact that their first three games sucked, there's one other thing about which everyone who worked at or with Brash agreed: the titles in development for this holiday season, next year, and 2010 were better. Maybe not all pure genius, but probably destined to restore Brash's reputation as a company that doesn't just make sh*tty games.

Here's a list of them all (or all the ones I found out about anyway) in rough order of when they would have been released (though I'm pretty vague on all the ones after Saw), along with the developer in the cases where I know who that was. Links are to the movies/TV shows on which they were based, when appropriate:

-Six Flags Fun Park (7 Studios)

-The Tale of Despereaux (Sensory Sweep; Fizz Factor)

-Prison Break (Zootfly)

-A Night at the Museum 2

-Where the Wild Things Are

-Saw (Zombie Studios)

-9 (7 Studios)

-Clash of the Titans (GameRepublic)

-Superman (Factor 5)

-300 (GameRepublic)

-The Flash (BottleRocket -- thanks for the tips, readers!)

-Cowboys and Aliens

-Wall Street (an original MMO; more on that soon)

So what happens to them all? I hear that Six Flags Fun Park, for which the DS version was (barely) released by Brash but the Wii version wasn't, is being sold to another publisher and will come out soon.

As for the rest, they're largely back in the hands of their licensors. The studios could the sell in-development game to another publisher to complete and release. In some cases I hear the studios are considering funding development and publishing themselves. In others, especially the further out games that are early in production, they might just be killed.

Warner Bros., it should be noted, has the biggest load to carry, with six properties it owns or co-owns now back in its hands. Though it at least has an established in-house publisher (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) to help sort things out.

On the one hand, its a major pain for these studios. On the other, they probably get to keep the multi-million dollar advances they were paid for the licenses since Brash breached its contracts. So they did get something for, essentially, nothing.

All in all, though, I'm thinking that the studios that were cautious about Brash and never worked with it, like Paramount, Sony Pictures and Disney, are feeling pretty good rightt now.

(This is the second of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

When Brash officially launched in June of last year, it announced that it had $400 million worth of financing. (The press release is still online. Check it out here.) Investors included big private equity funds like Abry Partners and New York Life Capital Partners, co-founders Thomas Tull (Chairman of Legendary Pictures) and Bert Ellis (an Atlanta businessman), CEO Mitch Davis and president Nicholas Longano (all of whom, incidentally, should have some nice tax write-offs this year). On Nov. 14, it went out of business. How is that possible?

Even the worst run videogame publisher would have a hard time spending $400 million in under two years. And in fact, sources told me that Brash actually burned through cash somewhere in the $100 million - $150 million range. That's still a sizable amount, but given that the company built up a full scale publishing operation, released three games, was in production on nearly a dozen more (more on those later), paid multi-million advances to studio licensors for all its games, and was in the process of building a physical distribution infrastructure (more on that later too), 9 figures isn't that shocking.

So what happened to the rest of the $400 million? It wasn't quite the "investment" about which that press release bragged. One high level exec, in fact, told me that when he say the $400 million announcement, he laughed. "I had no idea where that figure came from," he snorted.

That's perhaps a little unfair. The truth is that a relatively small portion of it was actual equity investment. The rest was debt to which Brash had access. Problem is, that debt dried up. In part because some investors were upset about the low quality of the three games Brash released this year and its overall performance and strategic direction. But more important was the recent collapse of the credit markets. Even the former insiders with the worst things to say about the company's leadership agree that if we weren't in the midst of an historical financial meltdown, Brash probably could have accessed more cash and stayed in business.

(This is the first of eight or so posts going up throughout the holiday weekend tied to an article I have in the forthcoming weekly Variety that looks at the promise of Brash Entertainment, the first Hollywood videogame publisher, and the reasons it went from $400 million to out-of-business in a year and a half. The article and posts are all based on extensive interviews with nearly a dozen former employees, executives and developers who worked at or with Brash, most of whom understandably spoke only on background. The posts here on the Cut Scene will summarize and expand some of the key points from the Variety article and also provide some interesting details and anecdotes that didn't make print.

You can read the entire article here.

You can see all of my related posts, and get all the important background, on the Cut Scene's Brash category page.)

So why exactly did Brash go out of business? There were a lot of reasons, many of which I explored in my piece. But I also summarized them into a handy list, which I'm providing here. I wanted to make sure I didn't get led astray by an individual with an axe to grind, so these are all reasons mentioned by several different people:

• A lack of experience among company leaders. CEO Mitch Davis had never worked for a videogame publisher and prexy Nicholas Longano had never held a role that senior. No other members of the board of directors had significant videogame industry experience.
• Frequent conflict and lack of communication among the senior execs who served just below Davis and Longano. While most were experienced, many didn't get along and rarely worked cooperatively.
• A leadership vacuum. Davis spent most of his time in New York, leaving others to run things day to day. Between March and August, Brash's senior VP of biz affairs, president, chief creative officer, senior executive producer and co-founder all ankled due to differences over the company's direction. In the last few months, only Davis, CFO Bill Chardavoyne and sales/marketing chief Yasmin Naboa were left to run things.
• An ill-considered deal with Fox. In order to get its hands on desirable properties like "A Night at the Museum 2," Brash agreed to produce videogames based on "Alvin and the Chipmunks,  " "Jumper" and "Space Chimps" in less than a year. The latter two were major bombs and all three were low quality, harming Brash's reputation with partners, the press and consumers -- as well as employee morale.
• Conflicts with Warner Bros., which originally distributed Brash's videogames. By summer, Brash had canceled its deal with the studio and started building its own distribution operation. Some say the move saved money, but others say it was a waste of resources at a critical time, particularly as the industry is moving toward digital downloads.
• A lack of understanding of the film biz. In one example repeated by several sources, Brash was projecting sales of its "Space Chimps" game on the assumption that the film would gross $150 million, similar to past Fox toons like "Ice Age" and "Horton Hears a Who." Execs were apparently unaware that the film wasn't made by Fox Animation and the studio was only distributing it. "Space Chimps" ended up grossing $30 million. (It sounds crazy, right? But two separate high-level sources told me this story unprompted, and a third verified it when prompted.)
• The collapse of the credit market. Despite all of Brash's problems, most insiders say the company probably could have raised more funds and continued had it not hit a moment of need just as the financial markets froze.

One thing I most certainly don't have right now is the time to invest in a MMO. So opening my brand spanking new shrink wrapped editions of "World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich king Collector's Edition" and "Lord of the Rings Online Collector's Edition" would be a total waste. Especially when there are Cut Scene readers who would probably go crazy for this stuff.

So, it's my Thanksgiving giveaway. First, for those who don't know, here's exactly what you get in each:

-Wrath of the Lich King collector's edition: the game for PC or Mac; behind-the-scenes DVD (developer intervieews; cinematic with commentary, etc.); 208 page "Art of Wrath of the Lich King" book; "World of Warcraft" trading card game starter pack and exclusive cards; Northrend mouse pad; exclusive in-game pet: Frosty, the undead dragon.

-Lord of the Rings Online collector's edition: Original "Shadows of Angmar" game and the "Mines of Moria" expansion pack; 30 days free play; 3 in-game item tokens; "Mines of Moria" cloth map; gold plated replica of "the one ring"; "LOTRO" art and music compilation; starter guide; "and more!" (hey, I'm just reading the back of the box)

Want to win? Leave a comment with the following:

-Which game you want (you can't ask for both, or just "either one")

-Tell me why you want it. Are you a "Warcraft" lover who can't afford "Lich King" right now? Is there a "Lord of the Rings" fanatic in your life who needs an awesome gift? Be sure to make a compelling case for why you deserve it

-Tell me, briefly, why you read the Cut Scene and what your favorite post, or type of posts, have been. There's no wrong answer. "I enjoy laughing at your pathetically bad writing" is even OK. It's just my way of trying to make sure the winners are people who regularly read this blog, not folks who just dropped in for the contest.

I'll pick the winners on Monday based on who followed the rules and made the most compelling case for they they deserve the game.

Just a reminder, you can't win if I know you or if you've won a Cut Scene giveaway before.

When I wrote reported last week that Sony Pictures movies aren't possible to stream from Netflix on the Xbox 360, I said there would be a simple way to see whether the studio was being honest when it stated it was a mere licensing snafu: "I guess we'll find out when we see if other studios' content also disappears from Netflix on Xbox 360, or if Sony content becomes available soon."

Well, the latter has already happened. According to numerous sources (I don't have Netflix set up on my 360 yet, so I can't check myself), like this one, some Sony Pictures films are now available to stream from Netflix on the Xbox 360. To all those who doubted Sony's sincerity, including, to a certain extent, me, we've been proven wrong.

What impressed me most about "Left 4 Dead," which I reviewed in today's Daily Variety, isn't necessarily what it did so well, but what it didn't do. Too many games try to do everything. Thus we've got the mawkish, cliche-ridden, and utterly unnecessary story in "Gears of War 2." Or the tediously long campaign in "Halo 3" when most of us just want to get to the multi-player. Or the uninspired, tacked-on multi-player in "Fracture," a game without enough originality to even support 1/10 of its campaign.

In "Left 4 Dead," it's obvious that most of the work went into the co-op multiplayer. The result is brilliant, compelling, and virtually flawless, the biggest leap forward in multi-player since "Doom" or "Quake." From the menus to the interface to the enemy A.I. to the level design, the entire game makes strategic cooperation both simple and necessary and punishes selfishiness. I particularly love that you can see what fellow players are carrying, either in the HUD or on their persons. No hiding that first aid pack when I'm low on health, jerkface. (For a bit more on why the co-op works so great, check out my earlier post about why four people is the perfect number)

But what about the story? Doesn't "Left 4 Dead" need a single-player mode to set everything up? Hell no. That's not to say the game doesn't have a framework. Players don't just want to be dropped into a generic world with generic enemies to shoot.

"Left 4 Dead's" solution is to find a familiar genre that perfectly fits the co-op gameplay and embraces it. So it's a zombie movie, full of stock characters, settings, and visual/musical details. We all immediately get it. We know these characters, we know where they are, and we know what they want. As a result, "Left 4 Dead" doesn't waste its resources attempting to build an original plot or single-player experience that matches the quality of the co-op. It just drops us into the cliches and gets going with what it does best.

The formula is simple: Successfully innovate in a few key areas and simplify everything else in ways that compliment those features. Too many games try to do too much and the result is that while I'm imprssed by the attempt, the failures stand out and the overall game is hurt by the dissonance. It's no mistake that "Left 4 Dead" and "Boom Blox," two games with little in common, are my favorites of 2008 so far. They're not perfect in every way imaginable. Not even close. But the know what they do right, they know what's not important, and as overall works, they're both perfectly harmonious.

Full review: Left 4 Dead

I said in my earlier post about innovation and "Mirror's Edge" and that I wanted to see more critics engaging each others ideas and that's exactly what I got, albeit at a much more meta-level than I anticipated.

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal wrote a rejoinder to recent posts by yours truly (here and here), Leigh Alexander and the Guardian's Keith Stuart in which he gives a big fat "red light" to our arguments about videogame critics not valuing innovation enough, or in the right ways. And hey, just being the subject of a post by a veteran writer like Croal, let alone his triumphant return to blogging after several months away, is pretty cool.

But I think he gets something wrong. Or perhaps I didn't express myself well and he nailed me on it. Either way, I think my disagreement can be easily targeted at this snippet from his response:

Stuart and Alexander would have us believe that the fault lies with reviewers and gamers who have disparaged any of the game's mechanics--movement, shooting or hand-to-hand combat--while being insufficiently laudatory of the breathtaking way Mirror's Edge simulates the experience of le parkour. They're wrong and, if we can turn back a phrase from Fritz, they're wrong in a way that misses the big picture. Because while the locomotion in Mirror's Edge is praiseworthy and innovative, the game it's wrapped it not only fails to amplify and focus said innovation, the game by and large works against it.

What do we mean by this? Mirror's Edge, far more so than traditional platformers, is at its most exhilarating whenever you achieve an unbroken chain of continuous motion. But because it uses a first-person camera, it drastically reduces your situational awareness as compared to a third-person camera system. That fact, combined with the need to create varied, challenging gameplay scenarios, results in a good deal of trial-and-error--which is precisely the opposite of Mirror's Edge at its most exciting. Why? Because it breaks the flow and grinds the action to a halt.

First of all, I agree with Croal. His critique very closely mirrors my largely negative review of the game. But I think it's a point in favor or my bigger picture argument, as well as the ones made by Leigh and Keith (Leigh and I are co-workers and friends, so I'll use her first name; in the case of Keith, I'm just being presumptious). Why? Because the first person POV, by and large, is the innovation. That's exactly how "Mirror's Edge" "simulated the experience of le parkour." The's the "movement," which Croal (I only know him very casually, and I'm kind of arguing with him, so I'll be more respectful) lists under "mechanics" along with shooting and combat. He appears to think that by criticizing the way the first person POV makes the game difficult to control, he's showing how a mechanic ruins the innovation. But in fact he's engaging with the big idea of the game, just as I argued critics should.

My point, which I'm sure I could have made more clearly and I gather, based on the response on her blog, Leigh agrees with, is that you have to prioritize your mechanics and other elements. A review of "Mirror's Edge" in which the shooting or story is weighed equally with the ways the game handles running and jumping at high speed through an environment is highly problematic. Sure, you can note that combat weak or that the story's generic (I did the latter in my review and didn't even bother with the combat). But trust me, if I found the parkour engaging and exhilirating, my review would have been much more positive, even if those other weaknesses remained. Too many reviews, I'm saying, don't focus enough on the big, new important elements of games. Instead they focus on the same list of attributes they always have.

To move the argument beyond "Mirror's Edge," I've been surprised to see how some (overall positive) reviews critized "Left 4 Dead" because the story is non-existent and a playthrough of the campaigns doesn't take too long. These are important elements in scripted single player games for sure. In a game that explicitly uses Hollywood cliches to immerse players in a world where dynamic enemy A.I. and co-op or competitive gameplay make for nearly endless opportunities for repeat gameplay, they hardly even seems worth mentioning. (For my take on "Left 4 Dead," you can read my new review here)

Of course, critics can argue about priorities. Maybe somebody strongly believes the brevity of the campaign really does matter in "Left 4 Dead." But you've got to make a case. When a game is innovating, you've got to really engage with the fresh mechanics/elements, or else try to demonstrate why they actually don't matter much. In the IGN review of "Mirror's Edge" that Stuart criticized, we've got the following, in order: an introduction, two paragraphs about the story, two paragraphs about the visual design, two paragraphs about parkour movement, one paragraph about combat, one paragraph about "runner vision," one  about the time trials, one about the graphics, one about the sound, and a conclusion. It's basically a checklist, in other words. That's the kidn of thing I find annoying, particularly for an innovative game that doesn't neatly fit the standard criteria.

I didn't really notice it until I was doing some reading while playing through "Left 4 Dead"in the past week (link to my review coming soon), but am I the only one who's a bit surprised that Valve was publicly bragging about the size of its marketing campaign and pre-sales? The company announced it was spending $10 million to promote the game (at Edge, first, it seems) and then regularly noted by how much pre-sales were exceeding last year's hit "The Orange Box" (60% in the Edge interview, 65% a week later, 95% two weeks after that). There was even a multi-page feature about Valve in EGM that included sales figures for every Valve game and projections for "Left 4 Dead" (can't find it at the moment, alas).

It's highly unusual for any company, especially a private one, to be so specific about what it's spending and how sales are looking before a game hits the market. While it does generate attention, it can also give the impression the the company is focused on dollars because it doesn't want to talk about the quality of the content, and can set up a big disappointment if ultimate performance doesn't match the hype. That's why most publishers never talk marketing spend and only boast about sales after a game comes out, if ever. This kind of pre-release hype is actually the kind of thing I'd expect from a TV network or movie studio.

It's particularly odd from Valve since it, of course is a developer known for top notch quality. And "Left 4 Dead" is definitely a game that can stand on its own. So why use it as an opportunity to brag about Valve's business prowess and why do it so early? It's unusual, and most certainly not necessary, for the sake of pumping sales. A big marketing campaign without a dollar figure and the universally positive reviews could have accomplished that. I tend to think there's some other reason Valve's getting so specific with financials at this moment. Though I admit I have no idea why.

Seems Disney has an unfortunate trend with videogames based on its animated features this year: Adaptations that completely miss the spirit and tone of their source material.

First came THQ's "Wall-E," which as I wrote back in June, was basically a short collection of videogame cliches that didn't remotely resemble the quirky and romantic film. Now comes "Bolt," Disney Interactive's adaptation of its sibling studio's pic. Variety critic Tom Chick found it similarly wanting, noting that a movie about a super-powered dog who discovers he's not so super and has to discover the value of his normal self has become a game in which the titular pooch is always super-powered and questions nothing:

Rather than taking on the admittedly difficult challenge of addressing the movie's story of a dog who discovers his life as a superhero is just a show, the game embraces that show, sending Bolt on a globe-hopping adventure in which he can shoot laser beams from his eyes, rip through steel with his jaws, and blast bad guys with a supersonic bark. It's like making a "Superman" videogame in which Kal-El never leaves Krypton.

Game is also missing some of the best characters from the movie who kids will likely expect to see. The overeager hamster in a ball only makes a cameo, while the wisecracking trio of pigeons aren't around at all. Because he's on a TV show in which he's merely a pet for owner Penny (the game's other playable character), Bolt doesn't even talk. That seems sure to disappoint tykes. And really, how hard would it have been the give the hamster in a ball a playable level? Sounds to me like it's begging for some "Katamari"-style rolling.

Full review: Bolt

My final word on the "controversy" (which consisted entirely of a few posts by me and several comments on this blog) over figuring out the fatalities and heroic brutalities in "Mortal Kombat vs DC"...

A friendly user on a Marvel message board has created incredibly useful printable guides to all the brutalities and fatalities in "MK vs DC" for both PS3 and 360, complete with separate pages depending whether you're on the left or right of your opponent. It's completely awesome and I'm going to fold it up and put it in my box along with the instruction book. In fact, I'll put it on top of the largely worthless instruction book.

Which begs the question: Why didn't Midway just include this not only handy, but necessary, guide along with its game? Or at least make all the information unlockable and easy to access in-game? They had to know we're all going to look it up on the Web and not spend hours trying every possible combination to unlock every fatality and "heroic brutality" and then memorize them. What possible purpose is served by forcing me to scour the Web for this information and then print it out myself?

It's no longer the arcade days where's it's cool to have a friend clue you in on how to pull off a fatality, or watch that awesome geek who plays the game for two hours on a single quarter do moves you never dreamed possible. The only consequence of hiding this information is to make me annoyed at Midway over what's otherwise a highly enjoyable game.

I highly recommend reading this Guardian post about how videogame reviewers need to value originality a bit more and not focus so much on a checklist of familiar and more quantifiable criteria. I also recommend Leigh's SexyVideogameLand post that pointed me to it. I'm sure one of the reasons I like it is that it somewhat mirrors a recent argument I made here on this blog, though less succinctly and probably less persuasively.

That being said, I think the Guardian's Keith Stuart is dead wrong to use "Mirror's Edge" as his example. There's a game that has one innovative idea (first-person parkour), but it's a fundamentally bad idea that, no matter how well its implemented, just doesn't work very well. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account the many areas in which "Mirror's Edge" not only doesn't innovate, but takes steps backwards, like the generic story and repetitive, under-detailed visual design. But I've made this argument in my review of the game and besides, it doesn't invalidate Stuart's argument.

The bigger point is that I would welcome and love passionate debates about a game like "Mirror's Edge." It's new and exciting and has critics moving in wildly divergent directions and that's an awesome thing. So I think it's bad innovation and Stuart think it's great. Let's make our claims on our reviews, hash it out on our blogs, and invite readers to further the discussion in the comments or on their blogs. That's exactly what I said I wanted in my post from last month and get the feeling it's the kind of thing Stuart would welcome to.

What I think we both dislike is the cowardly critic, the one who focuses on the details and refuses to engage with the big picture ideas of the game. That can lead this kind of idiotic statement from IGN's review of the game, which Stuart highlighted:

The ideas are there for a very cool experience, and I truly hope that a sequel is spawned, but this first attempt falls just a bit short.

On the one hand, it's kind of a dismal acceptance of reality -- we all know there probably will be a sequel and EA/Dice probably will address specific issues. But that's hardly the most interesting thing about "Mirror's Edge," love it or hate it. This game made some very high level choices and those are what reviewers should be engaging.

Contrary to some of the hostile e-mails I got about my review of "LittleBigPlanet" (jeez, imagine if I had given that game an actually bad review), I think disagreement about innovative games is an awesome thing. I can't really recommend that people buy "Mirror's Edge," but based on the fact that some very smart people disagree with me about it, I'd definitely recommend reading more and thinking about it. And if you've played it and have an opinion, joining the discussion. There's probably a lot more to say about it than, ohhh, "Call of Duty: World at War" or "Rock Band 2."

Side note: Leigh also has an awesome piece on Kotaku today about the vast middle ground of people who play games, but dont engage with videogame "culture," such as it is. Perhaps they're Richard Nixon's "silent majority" in the videogame world. I don't actually have anything insightful to add to Leigh's comments (at least for now). I just advise that you read it.

Want a solidly crafted "Tomb Raider" game that does most things right, gets a few annoying things wrong, and doesn't really push any boundaries? According to Variety critic Leigh Alexander, "Underworld" is the game for you.

In other words, it captures most of the qualities that have made for good "Tomb Raider" games in the past, and has been missing in the many not-so-good ones:

As Lara investigates diverse settings including caves, jungles and ruins, the world around her acts as a subtle puzzle. The player must navigate her across dizzying heights, precarious ledges, and just-made-it leaps. Although it’s old hat for cucumber-cool Lara, awesome visuals married to tight design make it appropriately thrilling for the couch jockey.

There's only one new feature that really caught Leigh's attention: the ability to tweak everything from Lara Croft's health relative to her enemies to how much ammo she has to how easily she can avoid being grabbed. That level of precise adjustment is unusual, and a nice touch to open the game up to all sorts of players.

But there's also the problems so many "Tomb Raider" games have had that this one can't solve: lame combat; an opaque and pointless story; a camera that, as Leigh writes, "keeps getting wedged between the wall and [Lara's] butt."

My favorite part of the review, though, is Leigh's brief exploration of a larger issue in the world of "Tomb Raider" games that really does bear further exploration:

Even veteran players may find themselves faced with a vexing question as this ninth series entry hits the market: “What does Lara Croft do, exactly?” Contrary to the title, she doesn’t seem to spend much time in tombs. Whatever her work entails, it’s brought her an enormous mansion, a fancy boat, and no shortage of Bond-like gadgets, all of which she uses to launch her latest escapade into ancient ruins, undersea caverns, deserted temples and the like.

Full review: Tomb Raider: Underworld

Despite the hype and the millions invested so far, nobody has really figured out how to make money with professional online video. To the extent there's any success, though, videogame-related content appears to be a hot topic. Perhaps that's why today brought news of three separate deals in that category in a time when most media companies are being extremely cautious with digital content spending:

-Microsoft has made an exclusive pact with Felicia Day to distribute "The Guild" via its MSN online platform, Xbox 360's video marketplace, and to its Zune portable devices. "The Guild," a sitcom about "World of Warcraft" players, is one of the very few unqualified hits amongst scripted professional online Web series. And Day has managed to hold onto all rights to "The Guild" for other media. Details in The Hollywood Reporter.

-Amongst a small group of series it is renewing or picking up to air in the next few months, Sony Pictures' Crackle is producing four more videos of producers and former Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment chief Jason Hall's videogame talk show / comedy series "The Jace Hall Show."

-IGN has launched a video portal featuring videogame-related content from 10 partners, including Black20, CollegeHumor, Comedy.com, g-Net, Machinima.com, Mega64 and ScrewAttack, along with some of IGN's originals. (Full disclosure: I'm a producer on Comedy.com's contribution)

I'll admit that when I first heard about "Ultimate Band" earlier this year (writing about it here) and also when I tried it at E3, I thought it might be a smart idea. Disney most certainly doesn't have a chance of beating MTV and Activision at the peripheral game (a lesson Konami is learning the hard way with "Rock Revolution"), so why not use the Wii-mote for some air guitar/drums (thus keeping the price down dramatically) and target the visual design, soundtrack, etc. at the tween demo that the makers of "High School Musical" and "Hannah Montana" know so well?

Sounded good, but it turns out to be a major letdown, according to Variety critic "Chris Dahlen." It's "a convoluted, inconsistent and inauthentic experience," he writes, "that emulates a phony lip-synching boy band more than a real rock experience." Um, ouch. He then adds a little more detail:

The guitar and bass parts are plagued by distractions like hand claps, whammy motions and windmill strums that are barely tied to the music or even the actions onscreen... [T]he singer... doesn't even get a microphone. Retitled the "frontman," he or she is struck triggering poses and leading the crowd in a wave. Kids who want to sing along for fun don't even get the lyrics. The guitarist and bassist each have three completely different workarounds for the lack of a fretboard, but they often get convoluted, forcing players to use arbitrary button combinations to fret the notes, all while strumming the air.

Kids will inevitably end up fighting to play the drums, which are the only instrument to offer remotely believable gameplay. Downward and sideways motions to hit the pads have a reasonably close relationship to an actual performance, though even the drummer is still saddled with intrusive spins and claps.

Sounds like rather than serving as a low cost alternative for kids who can't get their hands on "Rock Band" or "Guitar Hero" yet, it'll just remind them how much they wish they could be playing those games instead.

Full review: Ultimate Band

We all know that PR people want to do everything within their power to secure good reviews for the games they represent. And we know that Metacritic scores have an unduly, almost ridiculously, important meaning for videogame publishers and developers. We also know that some fan pubications websites are, shall we say, easily influenced by videogame companies and their PR people who hold the keys to the screenshots, interviews, etc. they so desperately need.

Nonetheless, you can't blatantly admit what your goals are. That's rule no. 1 of PR flackery. Which is why it's amazing that someone at Eidos' British PR firm Barringon Harvey said the following to Videogaming247 after one journalist Twittered that they were being instructed not to post a review of "Tomb Raider: Underworld" with a score lower than 8 before Monday:

Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.

I've got to assume this "spokesperson" didn't realize they were speaking to a journalist on-the-record. But still, unless you're in some closed door meeting with marketing folks, this is the kind of thing you just don't want to discuss. Anyone who knows anything about the videogame press could have predicted what happened next: A Kotaku post with the somewhat inflammatory headline "Eidos trying to fix Tomb Raider: Underworld scores" and a sh*tstorm of comments all over the web. And there's a chance this could become the thing people remember about "Tomb Raider: Underworld," much like people still talk about the GameSpot debacle whenever the unfairly maligned "Kane and Lynch" comes up.

One of Barrington Harvey's director later issued a statement to VG247 stating that the embargo was Wednesday for everyone and they never would try to change a reviewer's score. But I suspect that's not going to be the headline people are finding in Google, or the topic thread for many message board conversations.

Playing co-op with random strangers on Xbox Live is not only uncomfortably intimate, but awkward and fraught with danger. In a game like "Gears of War" (1 or 2) or "Fable 2," I just don't want to be forced to communicate with a single person I don't know, let alone risk letting him screw with my game (presuming I'm a host).

But last night I played some four person co-op in "Left 4 Dead" and it was an absolute joy. Obviously it has a lot to do with how expertly the game is designed to encourage four people to support each other, rather than f*ck each other over (more on that in my forthcoming review). But four also strikes me as the sweet spot in terms of that weird sense of intimacy you can experience when playing co-op with someone online. Two people is uncomfortably intimate, forcing you to communicate with and even get to know some random person. But four is enough that you don't feel awkward, but can still easily communicate.

That being said, if I were playing expert and had to plan strategy really carefully, I'm sure I'd rather have people I know and trust on my team. But on "normal," playing with strangers is totally fun. "Left 4 Dead" is the first online game where I completely don't mind having random Xbox Live people on my team. I even played as the Black guy for a while last night and nobody called me the N-word.

Not exactly shocking given "Warcraft's" enormous 11 million subscriber base, but Activision Blizzard still has to be happy that it sold 300,000 more copies than "Burning Crusade" in January of 2007. Especially considering that "Guitar Hero: World Tour" sold less than half of what "Guitar Hero III" did in its first week.

On the other hand, when "Burning Crusade" came out, "Warcraft" had just over 8 million subscribers. Which means a significantly smaller percentage of players bought "Lich King" this year than "Crusade" last year. 25% vs 31%, to be exact.

Assuming it cost about the same amount of money to build "Lich King" as "Burning Crusade," though, that's not much of a problem for Blizzard.

Full story here.

Update: An astute Cut Scene reader points out that much of the game's subscription growth in the past year or two has come in China and Korea, where "Lich King" is not available and won't be offered as a retail box. Which means the lower day one attach rate may not be as meaningful as I indicated.

"Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe" is now officially my guilty pleasure. Not "guilty" because it's bad for you, but because I'm not really sue if it's how "good" of a game it is. It has its share or problems, as well as awesome features, but there's also something to be said when reviewing a game that it effectively provides short bursts of fun to anyone who think its cool to see Green Lantern conjuring a giant hammer to kick Jax's ass, or Superman and Sub-Zero battling to see who can freeze the other quicker.

But of course as a reviewer I have to recognize that not everyone gets a thrill out of seeing this kind of thing. Just like if I were a movie reviewer, I'd have to remember that Data's death in "Star Trek: Nemesis" won't have quite as much meaning for most people as it did for me (though I still maintain it's the most underrated "Trek" movie, but anyway...).

So, with all that in mind, I tried to convey in my review (which runs in tomorrow's Daily Variety) that "Mortal Kombat vs DC" is a solidly executed fighting game that's accessible to pretty much anyone. The kind of person who has been to Comic-Con, or wants to go, will get a much bigger kick out of all the awesome fighting moves they've never seen DC heroes pull before. People who don't think Wonder Woman lassoing Sonya Blade is all that exciting are more likely to be bothered by faults like underdetailed backgrounds, horrible voice acting, clunky menus, similar character designs (Why is Flash is just as jacked as Superman?), and the fact that new features like "Klose Kombat" rely more on luck than skill.

As I wrote in my review:

Forget depth, sophistication or anything remotely resembling logic: "Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe" takes gamers back to the days of cheesy arcade fighting with bravado, style and an unironic sense of fun. Pitting warriors from the "Mortal Kombat" franchise against DC Comics heroes and villains is a high-concept idea that some will find ridiculous and others brilliant. But thanks to solid execution and extremely accessible, if somewhat unpolished, gameplay, it could be the holiday hit struggling publisher Midway desperately needs.

But here's a simpler way to put it: If the the title of the game defines Midway's goal, it succeeded in achieving that goal, if not quite with flying colors. It's not exactly the most ambitious goal artistically, but as I've been proving to myself with all the time I've spent playing it since I finished my review, there's nothing wrong with that.

(As indicated in the review excerpt, I also think "MK vs DC" could become a very popular Christmas present, given the T rating, the easily understandable title, and the simple gameplay. Midway could sure use the it.)

Full review: Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe

As Keith Boesky notes on his blog today, there are a lot of misleading headlines, and even some misleading reports, floating around the net about my "Midway: What went wrong?" story and post. To be direct: my sources are not saying Unreal Engine, and Epic Games, are the cause of its problems. Rather it's the decision by Midway to use UE3 for all its games, and subsequent problems adapting the code, which caused game delays and then cash flow problems.

You may have already seen today's announcement that there's a "Terminator: Salvation" videogame coming this May along with the movie. Not exactly a surprise, especially since Halcyon Games, a division of "Terminator" rights holder Halcyon, said last year it was going to make that game.

But things have evolved since then. Today's announcement featured five separate companies involved in the game. I spoke to Warner Bros. and Halcyon today to sort it all out. Here's everyone involved:

-Halcyon Games. It owns the rights and is the licensor. Halcyon Games president Cos Lazouras (who used to run Vin Diesel's videogame procdution company Tigon) is overseeing the development at...

-Grin, the Swedish maker of "GRAW" and the upcoming "Bionic Commando" game.

-Equity Games Productions, a Swiss copany that's funding production of the game, along with...

-Evolved Games, a Brithsh/American firm that's apparently closely tied to Equity and helping fund it.

-Warner Bros, which is distributing the game, as well as handling PR and marketing, worldwide, through its Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment division. WB is also distributing the film domestically, while Sony Pictures is handling it internationally.

Got it? Good. Now what about the game? I don't know too much, except that it's an action game in which players control John Connor, who's played by Christian Bale in the film. Apparently movie director McG has been involved in the game production. No consoles have been announced, but since it's an action game based on a likely R-rated movie (which means a T- or M-rated game), Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are very safe bets, with possibly a PC version too.

I think "Terminator: Salvation" now replaces "Arkham Asylum" as the most convoluted videogame business deal fo the year.

I'd have to say so. Of course, I'm assuming it is marketing. Somehow I don't see a regular fan out there:
-Pulling this off
-Writing the full title of the recently "Guitar Hero: World Tour" in such big letters at the beginning
-Being inspired by "GH: WT," planning this, and producing it all in the span of three weeks

Nonetheless, I don't really care. It's truly awesome. And I'm probably encouraging Activision's marketing plan by posting the video here for free. They deserve it.

Update: According to Creativity Online (per GameCyte), it was indeed an ad agency, called Droga5, which made this vid. Shocker!

As several gaming blogs have been noticing, Sony Pictures movies aren't available to be streamed via Netflix on the Xbox 360, even though they can be streamed on PCs.

That's very surprising, since no other content is available to stream everywhere except the 360. And of course it's suspicious, since we all know Sony, maker of the Playstation, has an incentive not to make the Xbox 360 experience any better. That's why you can't download SPE movies from the Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

But Netflix's pr person told MTV Multiplayer that it was a temporary licensing issue. I spoke to a source at Sony today and that person vehemently denied that it was an attempt by Sony to keep their content off the 360. It's just a licensing issue, I was told; Netflix didn't have the rights.

I'm not sure what to think. I'm not exactly sure why everyone involved would lie, since they've never hidden the reasons why SPE content isn't available on Xbox Live Video Marketplace. On the other hand, what are the odds Sony would be the one studio with this particular licensing issue?

I guess we'll find out when we see if other studios' content also disappears from Netflix on Xbox 360, or if Sony content becomes available soon. The source I spoke to didn't indicate that the latter was going to happen really soon.

Update: Sony just provided me with the following statement:

This issue is not specific to Xbox or any other individual platform.  Sony Pictures is currently in discussions with the relevant parties to resolve certain licensing matters related to the distribution of its motion pictures.  Given the ongoing nature of these discussions, we don't think it is appropriate to comment further at this time.

There's an interesting little debate in the comments with my earlier post about whether it's a good or bad thing that's there's no indication in "MK vs DC" as to how to pull off a fatality or heroic brutality. After playing the game, trying everything I could think of to figure out what I was missing, and then just looking them up online, I have fallen down on the "mistake" side. Sure, back in the day it was kind of cool when someone in the arcade would tell you about the secret awesome fatality moves. But this is a game meant to be played at home. There's nobody to tell you and really no way to figure it out. Not only does the game not give you a hint, it doesn't even inform you that fatalaties and heroic brutalities exist. That's a real disservice to casual players who don't spend their time on blogs and message boards.

Those us is in the know can just find a list online (as I did here), of course. But that's the least satisfying way possible. I think in this day and age, "MK vs DC" should at the very least tell players that these moves exist and provide unlockable hints/info (I actually thought that if I finished an arcade ladder with a character, I would learn his or her fatality/brutality. That seems like a reasonable solution) I think this ties into the post I wrote two months ago about how hard it is to unlock all the songs in "Rock Band 2." I really think that when you pay $60, it shouldn't be unreasonably difficult to access most of the content in the game. It's annoying for everyone and particularly discouraging to casual players, who we're supposed to be inviting into gaming so the industry will grow.

A couple of other thoughts that occurred to me as I wrote my review, which will be posting soon:

-I understand it may be technologically prohibitive since "MK vs DC" was made with Unreal Engine 3, but it seems like a real shame that it's not available on Playstation 2. This is easily the most accessible, and broadly appealing, fighting game I've ever played. I feel like Midway could sell a lot of copies to casual players who don't own a next gen system yet.

-Poor Aquaman. He's the only major DC hero who's not in the game. Even Deathstroke is playable and honestly, how many people have heard of him? If the designers of Mortal Kombat, who managed to make a completely non-powered buffoon like the Joker an awesome character (in fact, he's my favorite), couldn't figure out what to do with Aquaman, then he really is lame. Although c'mon, am I the only who thinks it would be cool if you could summon a whale to fall on Jax's head?

Last year the World Series of Video Games went out of business halfway through its second season. Now the Championship Gaming Series, which had backing and guaranteed distribution from DirecTV and BSkyB, is also kaput, as Variety reporter Marc Graser reports here.

Looks like the World Cyber Games and Major League Gaming are the only companies left standing that think there's a business outside of Asia in videogames as a spectator sport. At least they don't have to worry about the competition much anymore.

So I'm basically done with everything I need for my review of "Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe." I finished the story mode (on the DC side, anyway, and checked out the MK side), did some arcade ladders, and overall had a ton of fun, way more than I expected.

Only thing left to do is try out some online kombat. So I do and as I inevitably lose match after match (reminding myself why I usually only play with friends on XBL), I realize people are pulling fatalities and "heroic brutalities" on me, but I have no idea how to do them. How could I miss that? So I peruse the game's "move list," everything in the "extras," the instruction book... nothing. How the hell are you supposed to know how to do these? Do you just try a million different combos until something works?

It's been a while since I played another "Mortal Kombat" game, and as I recall, back in the day (aka the '90s) people seemed to just know how to pull off fatalities and would tell each other. Which makes sense in an arcade, I suppose. But I'm at home, playing a T-rated game that's supposed to be accessible to the masses (and largely succeeds at being just that). And there's no indication of how I'm supposed to activate what should be one of the enjoyable details of the game. That strikes me as a problem. It seems like that's information that should be available, or at least unlockable.

Is it fair to knock the game in the review I"m planning to write tomorrow for this reason? Or am I just missing something and revealing that I'm ignorant, clueless, and possibly suffering from a low IQ?

(Yes, I could scour the Internet to find the combos, and I may do that now. But if the only way to learn finishing moves for "MK vs DC" is on message boards, something is screwy.)

With the latest round of layoffs, EA has killed its mysterious, always undercover Blueprint division.

A former employee who worked on Blueprint confirmed to Variety that all the corporate employees who worked on the project have either quit, been laid off, or moved onto other projects.

Talking to this ex-employee, I also got a much better sense of what exactly Blueprint was up to. Some people called it a project, some a division, others just a collection of games, but whatever it was, EA never officially announced it. In fact, when I contacted EA to comment, corporate communication VP Jeff Brown declined on the grounds that the company has never acknowledged Blueprint's existence. (Not quite true, since PR person Tammy Schachter discussed it in this interview, but anyway...)

As Neil Young, who started Blueprint mid-2007 and led it for around a year before leaving this spring to head an iPhone gaming company, told me at GDC, Blueprint was intended to be a new way to develop fresh properties across multiple media. In fact, it was originally called Transmedia internally before adopting the name Blueprint.

In addition to its charter to work on new stuff, Blueprint also got ownership of several existing projects at EA, most notably the three games being developed by Steven Spielberg, which makes sense since Neil Young spearheaded that deal. ("Spore" was also under the Blueprint aegis for a short while) It was part of the EA Games label, with Young reporting to label president Frank Gibeau.

It seems there were around a dozen people working on Blueprint and their mission was to change the development process so that individuals or small teams could work together from disparate locations without necessarily being employed at an EA studio. "Using distributed people and leveraging technology in a significant way would allow us to break the high-priced model of game development where everybody is on sight, hired as a full-time regular employee," the former Blueprint staffer told me.

One of the few projects EA Blueprint was able to get going in its short existence was a deal with Armature, an Austin studio formed by several former Retro Studios employees (lots of details in this Gamasutra piece). EA took a minority investment in Armature, signed a first look deal, and also built an off-site location where all game development assets could be stored, but the developers would have near instantaneous access via the Net. The idea is that this would let Armature work at its own offices, outside an EA studio, but still let the publisher own the assets for games they did together.

The Blueprint model is also being used on a previously undisclosed, but none-too-surprising, project: "Boom Blox 2." (not the official title) Apparently work is already underway on a sequel to the spring's innovative Wii puzzle game, which got very good reviews (especially from me) and and sold decently, last we heard. But whie development is being led out of EALA, where the first "Boom Blox" was made, people are working on it together from all over the world. "Everybody is integrated, regardless of whether they're in the same physical location," explained the ex-Blueprinter. "It's truly the spirit of what Blueprint was going to be."

Because it was a start-up unit, Blueprint required lots of investment from EA for the technology it needed to make distributed development work. Apparently it couldn't get alot of those resources, which is one of the reasons it didn't do a lot beyond the Armature deal and "Boom Blox 2" (now part of EA's merged casual/Sims label). After Young left this fall and Louis Castle took over Blueprint, I'm told, more staffers departed and the unit lost further momentum. With the most recent round of layoffs, the last employees working for Blueprint were let go and Castle segued to a new role at EALA. The division was never officially killed. Its games are still ongoing. But with nobody working for Blueprint anymore, it simply doesn't exist.

I'm starting to notice a pattern in recent Activision action game releases. First I reviewed "Quantum of Solace" and found it to be a decent action game, but almost directly ripped off of "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare," with basically just new set pieces and a few gameplay adjustments. Now Variety critic Tom Chick has reviewed "Call of Duty: World at War" and says it's pretty much the same thing.

It's obviously no coincidence both games were developed by Treyarch and both made using the "Call of Duty 4" engine. But lots of games use the same engine and don't look and play almost exactly the same. As Tom wrote to introduce his review:

The fifth entry in Activision's annual "Call of Duty" military franchise may return to its World War II roots and come from a different developer, but virtually everything that's good about it stems directly from last year's "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare." The impressive graphics, compelling multiplayer and even the basic gunplay in "World at War" are all iterations of "CoD 4," minus that game's character, urgency and relevance. The result is a forgettable, mostly middling shooter that will sell decently, but fall far short of "Modern Warfare's" boffo 10 million-plus units.

Usually as an editor I don't like a review of a new game to reference an older one so much, but in the case of "World at War" it seemed eminently justifable. The multi-player in particular, Tom notes, is almost a note-for-note rip-off from "CoD 4" with only cosmetic changes (packs of guard dogs instead of air strikes, etc.) Of course, multi-player in "Modern Warfare" was (and still is) so good that it's still the best part of "World at War." And as Tom notes, there are a few other cool touches, like a fantastic airplane sequence and the fire effects (though I'm with Tom in doubting that German soldiers really used flamethrowers to defend the Reichstag).

If you're going to copy, you should of course copy from the best, which is why both these games are still pretty good. But given that neither "Quantum of Solace" nor "World at War" have particularly innovative or compelling campaigns, and that the online multi-player community for "Modern Warfare" is still going strong, I think most gamers will have to ask, "Why bother?"

Full review: Call of Duty: World at War

The newest episode of Glitch in the System finds guest host Jason Zumwalt (best known as Roman in "Grand Theft Auto IV") visiting Blizzcon, where he finds the man with the most disturbing character name in the entire World of Warcraft, and also observes a native geek mating dance.

Also, host Jacob Sirof stops by the "Fallout 3" premiere and manages to make Lynda Carter (TV's "Wonder Woman") run away in under 30 seconds.

(Warning: Probably not appropriate for the easily offended)

(Produced, as always, by me.)

This was probably inevitable after Brash stopped paying developers about two months ago and then, last week, shut down.

7 Studios and Zootfly, two independent developers working on projects for Brash, have sued to try and win money they're owed. L.A.-based 7 Studios says Brash owes it $468,000 for its work on "9," an adaptation of an upcoming animated film from Focus Features produced by Tim Burton (one of the few games on Brash's slate I didn't previously know about) and $113,000 for "Six Flags Fun Park," (pictured left) a Wii and DS mini-game collection that's supposed to be coming out right about now (has anybody seen it on shelves?). Slovenian developer Zootfly, meanwhile, says Brash owes it $748,000 for work on the videogame version of the Fox TV show "Prison Break."

Brash had around a dozen projects in development and hasn't been paying developers for a while, so I would suspect more lawsuits are coming.

Mitch Davis, CEO of Brash, didn't respond to a request for comment.

However I did speak to 7 Studios CEO Lewis Peterson. While he understandably didn't want to comment on the suit, he did say that he thought "Fun Park," which is now complete, is a good game and he's hopeful Brash will either manage to get it onto shelves or else find another publisher to pick it up. "I honestly believe it would have been the best game Brash had produced," he stated (probably not with the intention of damning his studio with faint praise), describing it as "like a cross between 'Animal Crossing' and 'Carnival Games.'"

He also noted an interesting fact about the game: It was never intended to be tied into Six Flags. 7 Studios sold it as an original casual mini-game adventure to Brash last year, before 2K's "Carnival Games" (with which it has many obvious similarities) had even been released. Apparently Brash inserted the Six Flags license mainly as a cosmetic addition just a few months ago in hopes that would help boost sales (and also, I guess, maintain Brash's stated mission of only working with licenses).

Also noteworthy in Brash news today: Former president Nicholas Longano, who left in May, has re-surfaced, per Digital Media Wire, as the co-founder of Music Mogul, a soon-to-launch virtual world for aspiring musicians and fans.
 

As a reviewer, I really want to reward originality. But when it's as badly implemented as "Mirror's Edge," I just can't do it.

Let's cut to the chase: "Mirror's Edge" is fundamentally misconceived. As I wrote in my review in today's Daily Variety, a first-person Parkour game doesn't work, because when you're running and jumping at high speeds, you need perspective. Sure, there's a bit more visceral thrill from seeing the world as Faith would, but that's outweighed 100 times over by how hard it is to figure out the correct path to get to that next primary colored object that stands out against the oppressive white. Add in cops who shoot at you from every direction and getting through any area often requires dying over and over again until you've memorized the correct path. If I wasn't reviewing the game, I would have given up out of sheer annoyance within an hour.

"Mirror's Edge" is also a major bore visually. Which is a surprise, because at first glance, the almost blinding lighting effects are impressive. But cool effects don't make for good design. The fact is that whenever you get close to anything, or go inside, it's immediately apparent that "Mirror's Edge" is almost completely devoid of detail. Even the video screens allegedly showing the news just cycle through a handful of generic images. Assets like air conditioners, pipes, and vents that Faith crawls through or climbs are used over and over. I didn't expect something as vibrant as Liberty City, but I did think that the oppressive future in this game would have at least a little character.

The world of "Mirror's Edge" is also extremely constrained. It looks explorable, but the developers at Dice use everything from barbed wire fences to heigh differentials in buildings to stacks of boxes to make it impossible to diverge from the chosen path at all (save for a few minor detours). To a certain extent that makes sense, since "Mirror's Edge" is about speed and agility, not exploration. But as a dissident courier, you would always be looking for ways to avoid detection. It's just not believable that when Faith is being followed by a helicopter full of police with guns, her solution is to run faster to her final destination.

I have some other small concerns, like the generic story and bad voice acting, but I'd be willing to forgive those for a game that's clearly trying to do something different. And there still is some fun to be had: The time trials can become addictive, especially when you download some the "ghosts" of friends or the best players from around the world to compete against. It's then that you realize "Mirror's Edge" actually works best when it's boiled down to a simple racing game on foot.

Full review: Mirror's Edge

With GameCock getting acquired by Southpeak Interactive last month, it's no surprise that the formerly independent publisher's games aren't exactly getting a high profile release.

Nonetheless, myth-based shooter "Legendary" has come out and, according to Variety critic Chris Dahlen, it's a very mixed bag:

“Legendary” has the heart of a great monster mash-up: It throws together mythical beasts that span the globe, from the Greek griffon to Jewish golems to Slavic pixies, and marries them to a cornball story about the rediscovery of Pandora’s Box. Though it brings gusto, wit and a sharp eye for horror cliches, “Legendary” is still at its core a clunky, mediocre first-person shooter that’s likely to vanish under the mountain of topnotch actioners shipping this month.

Apparently the game is full of stuff like this: "No sooner does an innocent civilian or a gung-ho soldier greet Deckard than a giant tentacle sweeps them away — or a bus lands on their head." As Chris writes, it's "schlocky haunted house logic," but it's hard to deny that kind of thing has its gut level appeal when it makes you gasp.

Full review: Legendary

I've got a story i the most recent weekly Variety that sprang out of a conversation I had with an editor where he noted how it's been widely reported what a drain Midway, and its debts to National Amusements, have been on Sumner Redstone's financial structure. What isn't as clear, he said, is "Why?" When Sumner Redstone moved to take control of Midway four years ago, the company seemed to have promise.

"Midway is clearly a second-tier producer, but it has the potential to be in the first tier, and that's what attracted me to the company," the Viacom and CBS chairman said at the time.

Clearly that promise didn't pan out. Calling Midway a "second-tier producer" today would be generous. Its market value is a pathetic $37 million, it wasn't able to recruit an experienced CEO to take the job after David Zucker was fired last winter, and its mounting debts mean it would be more expensive to buy than competitors like THQ (meaning an acquisition is very unlikely unless/until it goes through bankruptcy).

"Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe" could sell well and the red ink could stem a bit, but Midway still has fundamental liquidity issues and no clear path to becoming a stable, profitable publisher. How did things go so very very wrong?

To find out, I spoke to several ex-employees. And while there were lots of little things, one issue popped up again and again: Midway's decision to license Unreal Engine and use it for ALL its games.

"The mistake we made was, instead of just taking the base Unreal 3 engine that 'Gears of War' was made on and building games off of that, we let our tech and product development guys try to really modify the engine to add all these diff things," one ex-employee told me. "It was a ton of new technology which they just weren’t capable of doing. It put all the games way behind schedule."

The videogame biz is definitely losing a bit of its mojo.

The best evidence? New NPD data shows that Guitar Hero: World Tour has sold 534,000 units in its first week. Pretty good. But consider that last year, "Guitar Hero III" sold 1.4 million units in the exact same period. That's a drop of 62%.

Overall, the industry grew by 18% in October. Again, that's impressive, especially compared to the rest of the media sector and the overall economy. But last October, it grew an astounding 73%. Perhaps most importantly, October's 18% grown was actually less than the 25% year-to-date growth, meaning the hugely important fall season is so far dragging down the industry, rather than accelerating it.

Nintendo, however, remains the ultimate exception. It sold 803,000 Wi''s in October, which is simply astounding. It's the biggest month since last November and December for Nintendo's console and is more than the 360 and PS3 combined. Sony's console, meanwhile, was the only next gen console to see sales drop from September, indicating that "LittleBigPlanet" was definitely not a console seller. That's definitely not a great sign for Sony, or for the movie studios hoping that more PS3's will lead to more Blu-ray sales.

The month's biggest game was "Fable II," good news for Microsoft and also, I'll admit, people like me who loved the game (though it's even more reason to not let everyone in the world annoy me by completely opening the co-op mode). On software too, though, the biggest story was Nintendo. "Wii Fit," "Mario Kart Wii" and "Wii Play" were the no. 2, 4 and 5 titles for the month. Considering that they came out in May, April, and last February, respectively, that's astounding (even discouting "Wii Play" since people buy that for the controller). "Wii Fit" has sold more than 2.8 million units in the U.S. so far, a pretty amazing figure.

On the other hand, "Wii Music" didn't make the top 10 in its launch date. Given how inaccessible and quite frankly annoying the game is (read the review) I'm not too surprised.

In other game debuts, "Fallout 3" did very well with just one week on sale, "Saints Row 2," "SOCOM," and "LittleBigPlant" did pretty well, and "Dead Space" wasn't as hot as I'm sure EA was hoping.

Here are all the month's stats:

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Oct.

Fable II                     360           Microsoft        790,000
Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo         487,000

Fallout 3                   360           Bethesda         375,000
Mario Kart                Wii           Nintendo          290,000
Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo          282,000
Saints Row 2            360            THQ                270,000
SOCOM                    PS3            Sony                231,000
LittleBigPlanet         PS3            Sony                215,000
NBA 2K9                  360            2K                   202,000
Dead Space             360            EA                   193,000

Console       Oct. unit sales       Lifetime-to-date
Wii              803,000                    13.5 million
DS               491,000                    23.0 million
360             371,000                    11.7 million
PSP             193,000                    12.8 million
PS3             190,000                    5.7 million

Category             Oct. revenue   Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry     $1.31 billion        18%       $13.13 billion             25%
Hardware           $495 million         5%        $4.72 billion               14%
Software            $697 million        35%       $6.76 billion               36%
Accessories        $120 million        -8%       $1.65 billion               18%

Several sources have confirmed for me that Brash Entertainment is ceasing operations as of tomorrow.

Not too surprising given its many problems, as I reported last week. In a nutshell, the few games it managed to put out sold poorly, it wasted money on some ill conceived ideas, and talented executives fled as they saw how things were going.

Since co-founder Thomas Tull left the board, I understand that the investors who had committed $400 million when Brash launched last year had pulled out. So Brash was simply out of cash.

Now the question is what happens to the many projects in development, from "Saw" to "Superman" to Night at the Mueseum 2" to "Tale of Desperaux," which was supposed to come out next month. I'll be following that for sure, as well as continuing to report on how things managed to go so very, very wrong.

It's looking unlikely, since AFTRA, one of the two major unions that represents TV and movie actors, has agreed to extend its contract with videogame publishers by one year, to the end of 2009, with just a modest 3% raise in minimum fees and .5% increase in health and pension benefits, as my colleage Dave McNary reports in tomorrow's Daily Variety.

However, as Hollywood watchers know, the other actors union, the Screen Actors Guild, tends to be more militant than AFTRA. Three years ago, it was SAG that led a charge to almost strike against the videogame industry (details here). SAG's current contract, which has the exact same terms as AFTRA's, also expires at the end of this year.

SAG's national director Doug Allen would only tell Daily Variety that the union will launch talks "in the near future."

One of the big problems for the unions when it comes to videogames is that they only cover a small portion of all the voiceover work done in the business, about 10-15% according to Dave. On the other hand, they cover some of the biggest franchises, like "Madden NFL" and "Halo." And a lot of videogame publishers still like getting movie and TV stars to do voices, particularly for licenses. If you want an actor with TV and/or movie credits working on your videogame, you probably need to do it under a SAG or AFTRA contract.

Full story: AFTRA extends gaming contract

This is probably old news to most videogame fans (and thus Cut Scene readers), but I've got an article in today's Daily Variety about the fact that while the videogame biz is still growing steadily and has plenty of hit this fall, there's no "Halo" or "GTA" size blockbusters.

Every summer seems to bring Hollywood something akin to "The Dark Knight" or "Pirates of the Caribbean," but the videogame can go through its hottest season without anything remotely close to breaking a record. Instead, we've got games "opening" with a few million units, like "Gears 2," "Fallout 3," "The Force Unleashed," etc.

And we still don't know how some of the season's potentially biggest hits, like "Guitar Hero: World Tour," are doing, though we'll at least get a hint in terms of U.S. sales tomorrow when NPD figures are released.

Of course, a bunch of doubles and triples can still make for a very healthy industry. But with the economy in freefall, I can't help but wonder whether the hit won't be quite as big as they used to be.

Full story: Vidgame biz awaits fall sales figures

Former Brash Chief Creative Office and CAA videogames agent Larry Shapiro has landed a new gig as president of Oddworld Inhabitants, Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna's development studio best known for (duh) the "Oddworld" games.

Larry used to be Oddworld's agent when he was at CAA (pre-Brash), so it's perhaps not surprising he's working with them again. It is more surprising that Oddworld, which hasn't had a new game in a while, is taking on a president, demonstrating that despite their relative silence, they must have some promising stuff up their sleeves.

Lanning himself had been president, but is stepping aside to let Shapiro take that role while he'll focus exclusively on creative. Sherry McKenna is still CEO.

"No one is more in stride with us than Larry. We both see the same future landscape," Lanning said. "It's a petty radical departure from the contemporary landscape. While we think there’s a number of barriers to break through, we think there are tremendous opportunities on the other side of the barrier."

Shapiro similarly hinted that he's hoping to push Oddworld into new frontiers, which probably means they won't just be trying to sell $20 million AAA disc-based games to publishers.

"I have a great opportunity to add value to a company and to work with people who I am inspired by and who look to where the industry is going and not where its been," he told me. "We intend to break the model of where games are today in a unique and entertaining way."

It'll be a while until we find out exactly what Oddworld's up to now. But I do know it won't be the "Citizen Siege" animated movie that it was previously working on with Vanguard Entertainment (details here). McKenna told me there were "creative differences" and the rights are reverting back to Oddworld.

Shapiro is the first former senior exec at Brash to land a new job that I've heard of. As I reported last week, the company is in pretty dire straits. Sources are telling me there's just a "skeleton crew" left trying to sell off properties to other publishers and/or make deals with studios with which they made licensing deals to return the rights.

Like several ex-Brash employees I have spoken to, he didn't want to go into much detail about what was apparently an unpleasant experience. But he did make this one rather pointed comment about what he wanted to do:

I wanted to make Brash the Miramax or HBO of videogames, but sales marketing and finance wanted it to be Majesco.

Ouch.

More on Brash coming soon.

So now Ubisoft has bought former Vivendi Games development studio Massive and its RTS property World in Conflict. Which means the only significant property from Sierra (Vivendi's main gaming label) not yet bought by somebody else is "Brutal Legend." Well, there's also "Leisure Suit Larry," but as I told the one fan who wrote and asked about that, I think it's unlikely any other publishers are interested.

It's kind of ironic, since "Brutal Legend" probably had the most outspoken and excited fan base of any of the former Sierra titles. But devoted fans do not a mass market hit make. So it still remains to be seen whether another publisher will take a chance on Double Fine's next project. The word has been quiet since MTV dropped out in August. Here's an updated list of the rest of the Sierra properties and their new publishers:

-Ghostbusters: Atari
-Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena: Atari
-50 Cent: Blood on the Sand: THQ
-World in Conflict: Ubisoft

There are also a few licenses formerly at Sierra that Activision Blizzard didn't pick up, most notably "Scarface" and the Robert Ludlum estate (primarily the Jason Bourne books) that have reverted back to their owners and are looking for new homes. Though I understand at least one of them may already have a deal done. I just don't know with who.

Our last two videogame reviews at Variety were both Activision-published movie adaptations and they  had one specific quality in common: they didn't remotely capture the film on which they're allegedly based.

One is a mini-game collection and the other's a virtual copy of a hugely popular title with a new skin. I bet you can already guess which is which. But here's some more details anyway:

-"There’s little sense of the source’s plot," in the videogame version of "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," according to Variety critic Leigh Alexander, " save for a short intro scene that summarily reintroduces the characters before plunking them down amid a series of disjointed minigames."

Particularly in the story mode, the mini-game progression is "ardous" and at times, surprisingly difficult, Leigh notes. Older players will find the lack of context and the repetition tedious, while the kids at which this game is aimed will find it flat out hard, not to mention lacking in fun. It's especially surprising that the "arcade" mode, where players can pick whatever mini-games they want, doesn't contain many of the best ones from the story mode.

That kind of relates back to my main complaint about "Rock Band 2": Why do developers make us unlock all the good stuff in casual games? We paid you money, just let us have our fun!

Full review: Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

-If James Bond were Rambo, then the videogame version of "Quantum of Solace" would be perfect, says I. Unfortunately for developer Treyarch, he's not, so dropping him into what's essentially a re-skinned version of "Call of Duty 4" in which he shoots dozens of bad guys until the level arbitrarily ends, then starting again in the next scene from the movie (or a flashback from "Casino Royale") just doesn't cut it.

James Bond is supposed to be a spy. So how about letting him do some spying? Or get into a cool car chase? Or re-live the poker showdown from "Casino Royale?" Those are all gameplay types that have been done before, so I'm mystified and annoyed that Treyarch didn't even try to include them.

Instead, it just used the "Call of Duty 4" engine to make a decent shooter. Which is fine for what it is, but a failure when it comes to actually makes a James Bond videogame. It is interesting that there's online multi-player, since that's so rare for movie-based videogame, but once you realize the multi-player is even more a rip-off of "CoD4" that the campaign, you won't be so impressed.

One thought that occurred to me as I finished this review is that, of course, the universally loved "Goldeneye" is more a shooter than a spy game. Which is true. But, to borrow a phrase, I know "Goldeneye," and "Quantum of Solace" is no "Goldeneye." If "Quantum of Solace" pushed the boundaries of action videogames as much as "Goldeneye" did, I'd be far more forgiving of how much it strays from the source material.

Full review: Quantum of Solace

On Tuesday I had a brief but interesting interview with Rockstar Games' co-founder and creative VP for an article I did about "Grand Theft Auto IV's" Japan release. Given that most major events in American pop culture, be they movies or videogames, get a simultaneous or near simultaneous worldwide release, I thought it was interesting that "GTA IV" was hitting the world's biggest videogame market six months after it came out in the U.S. and Europe (where it has already sold more than 10 million units).

One of the reasons is obvious: Compared to the rest of the world, "Grand Theft Auto" games barely sell in Japan. They do better than many Western titles, but as a percentage of worldwide sales, Japan is miniscule. Here are the stats from the last three:

Grand Theft Auto III
Worldwide: 12.1 million; Japan: 444,000; Japan as % of worldwide: 3.7%

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Worldwide: 15.3 million; Japan: 560,000; Japan as % of worldwide: 3.7%

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Worldwide: 22.2 million; Japan: 419,000; Japan as % of worldwide: 1.9%

(According to GamesIndustry, "GTA IV" topped the charts in Japan its first week, selling 133,000 titles on PS3. The Xbox 360 version came in no. 7)

I spoke to Dan about why that is, what the plans are for "GTA IV's" release in Japan, and a few other topics. You can read the resulting article in Variety here. But since the transcript of my last interview with Dan Houser was such a hit, I figured I'd provide the whole thing here, in only slightly edited form:

Me: It has been six months since "Grand Theft Auto IV" was released in North America and Europe. Why the long disparity. Is it commercial considerations or production?

Dan Houser: We weren't ready at the same time. We're not a Japanese company [by which he means Rockstar and parent Take-Two don't operate in Japan] and we needed a Japanese partner there. We have had difficulty in the past releasing games there due to content issues. But we weren't really ready to get it out before the downtime of summer and this is the next window that's available.

Me: You didn't want to release it in the summer?

DH: If it slips out past April or May, then June to August is very quiet. "GTA IV" disproved the traditional model of all big releases have to come out in October or November. We're moving past that from what we previously thought were six months in which you could release a game to nine months. But it's still a quiet time in the summer. This for us was the next big window.

Me: Did you dub the voices for Japan? Or are you doing subtitles?

DH: We have always released ["GTA"] with subtitles. With the facial animation we do, it would be enormously expensive to dub it... We also just think it works better with American voices.

It wouldn't be a problem because they are used to playing games spoken in English and they still have to read a lot of things on screen regardless.

American accents are part of the experience. We toyed back in the day with doing some radio stations in Japanese, but we were told by local experts that wouldn't help because people like to hear and feel that they are in America. From our perspective the goal is a very immersive experience and part of that immersion is to hear people speaking English in American accents.

Me: Is there much controversy about the games' content in Japan compared to what you have seen in the U.S.?

DH: We had a lot of trouble between the release of "Vice City" and "San Andreas" in Japan. There was a big content outcry and that was a battle that needed to be fought. All of those issues were resolved so we didn't face them this time.

"Vice City" came out and went well, but then they wouldn’t let us release "San Andreas" until the changed the ratings system. So "Vice City" came out with a similar delay as this, roughly six months. Then "San Andreas" came out in the U.S. in late 2004 and two years later in Japan. It was ratings and political hell there for a while.

Me: Capcom is distributing "GTA IV" in Japan? Is that because Take-Two doesn't have a presence?

DH: Yes, Capcom. They did all the "GTA's."

Take-Two doesn't have any distribution there. We felt when we were first going in it's a very alien market and we need local expertise at all points of the chain, be it relationships with retailers, ratings bodies, or different parts of Sony and Microsoft. We were already dealing with enough other issues in terms of the culture.

Capcom has been a great partner. They love releasing foreign games. They have a great record. We have done other games with other people there, though...

We just released "Bully" there with Bethesda, who have a Japanese arm. We look at it on a case by case basis. We basically offer it out to a bunch of them and see who’s got the most energy behind a particular product. [Imports are] not a huge department for Capcom so they are heavily focused on "GTA IV," which is why it wasn't the best home for "Bully." It's not always just about money, but how much energy they put behind anything.

Me: How do you handle the marketing there? I know Rockstar likes to produce all of its marketing materials in-house, but surely you need some help in Japan.

DH: We work together on that. They tell us what works, based on the art style or vocabulary of what worked over here. Then they localize it.

I was walking through [Tokyo's shopping and entertainment district] Shibuya last week and seeing all of the same posters we have here, but some were in Japanese.

They love the stuff we make. They work with us. It tends to be that they want it to feel very similar.

One of the mistakes we made early was a T-shirt for "Vice City" on which we translated 'Vice City' into Japanese. It turns out that doesn’t work culturally. We were told they want to see 'Vice City' spelled in English. So the logos on the posters were exactly same, but with a Japanese subtitle.

Me: It seems like "Grand Theft Auto" is such a uniquely American work that you can't disguise it.

DH: We make that part of the sales. How it's sold there is as this American experience. I did a couple of press interviews and both the guys I spoke to very much liked that it features a foreigner as the lead. They said that's where 'GTA IV' can really engage them. It feels like they're visiting American with him. That was really good to hear.

Me: Is that true for most players in Japan? It's the world's biggest videogame market, but it seems like a lot of people there are playing RPGs on their DS and the sort of thing that are very, very different from "GTA."

DH: It's true that of the three markets we're in, Japan is not that huge. In Japan, Nintendo is a massive market. We're on Xbox and PS3 and our goal is to do very well on those. We're taking a long-term goal with Japan of trying to grow the game and grow the interest. We're doing decent numbers over there. For a Western game, we're doing amazing numbers.

But we're very ambitious and we want the game to compete with the biggest Japanese titles. We're not there yet and don't think we're going to get there necessarily with 'IV." Our hope is just to step it up a level. The response we were getting from people is that they've never seen anything like this before. They saw it creatively as very advanced.

We're consistently sold more games over there. "San Andreas" was down a little from "Vice City," mostly due to softness in the PS2 market.

Me: Is there a small but rabid group of hard core "GTA" fans in Japan?

DH: Oh totally. Definitely. People we were speaking to were saying, "I don't play games, but this makes me want to start playing them again." It's a more open and engaging concept than a lot of Japanese-designed games have become. They tend to be more corridor-based and less open. That was half the people we spoke to. The other half have played every "GTA" since "III" and started asking incredibly detailed questions.

Me: That's interesting people were comparing it to recent Japanese games, since I've been reading a lot recently about how Japanese videogame development is in a creative rut and a lot of the energy is really now in the West.

DH: I have in the past had famous Japanese designers say that stuff to me off record. We grew up looking at Nintendo in particular and other big Japanese companies as a sphere that we could never get anywhere close to -- Up to and including the days of N64. Certainly in the early days of 3-D gaming  they were light years ahead of Western companies.

When we started Rockstar, the charts were dominated by sports games, mostly Western made, but apart from that all the other stuff was Japanese or Japanese rip-offs. That was the early PS1 time frame. Since PS2 really got going and into PS3 and Xbox 1 and 360, things have really moved, apart from Nintendo, to being dominated by Western-developed stuff completely. The Western charts now are split 50/50. There has definitely been a shift in which European and North American developers have found out how to make quality games.

Me: Given how popular the DS is in Japan, it seems like your upcoming DS version of "GTA" ["Chinatown Wars"] could have more potential there than anything else you've done.

DH: It's funny I was just talking to some people 10 minutes ago and saying we need to speak with potential partners about how to do the DS game in Japan and how we'll approach it there. I think that game has enormous potential everywhere. It's unlike anything else, but it still works well so if you like DS games, you'll like this game. Our feeling is it should work really well in Asia and Europe and in the U.S.

But we have got to find a partner and see what’s going down with our options there. We haven’t spoken to any yet because we wanted to get "GTA IV" out of the way first.

Me: On another topic, I have to ask you about the "GTA IV" downloadable content you're doing. Do you still expect that to come out this year?

DH: I'm not sure. It's going well. But we don’t know a date. We hope to be announcing that in the next few weeks. We're still figuring out a few things. We're more focused on quality than dates, always have been. But the development is going really good. It's shaping up to be something we're very proud of. That was our goal

Me: Do you think you'll talk at all about what the DLC will be and how it will fit into "GTA IV's" story?

DH: We want to give people a rough idea so their expectations are roughly in line. We don't want them to imagine it's this enormous thing that it can never be...

Doing a big digital launch is something we've never done before. It's virgin territory, but at the same time, we feel very exposed because there's no case history. No one ever came out with major DLC for a major game like this before.

It's new territory for everybody. We're making it up a little bit as we go along. That's always fun, but it makes you nervous.

Me: Like how do you price something like this?

DH: How to price it. Whether to release it day-and-date everywhere... Europe and the U.S. I'm sure will be day-and-date or within a few days, but I'm not sure about Japan. It's a small Xbox market...

You even have to ask what time to release it at. We have some experience of doing through releasing our trailers. It can slow down sections of the 'Net. What works as a great time on the east coast may be late for

Europe and too early for the west coast. Those are all things we wouldn’t normally think about.

[FYI, Houser's statements are all quotes, just edited slightly for clarity. I did re-arrange the order of a few questions for flow. I also cut here and there, indicated by ... when appropriate. I wasn't able to write down my own questions as I asked them, since I was busy keeping up with what Dan said, so my questions are approximations of what I remember asking. Also, the photo is borrowed, with gratitude, from Edge.]

It was right around the 10th time I screamed "I f*cking hate Franklin!" into my headset that I realized "Gears of War 2's" "submission" is my favorite online multi-player mode ever. It's capture-the-flag, except the flag is a guy, with a gun, powered by awesome artificial intelligence. Franklin was the name of our flag the first time I played "submission" and I got so goddamned mad every time I had an opening to grab him, but he shot me dead. But I kept coming back for more, and more. Franklin was my white wale.

As I wrote in my review in today's Daily Variety, "Submission" captures everything that's great about "Gears of War 2": The creativity, the emphasis on team-based strategy, and the brilliant A.I. Along with the addictive survival-horror mode "horde," "Gears 2" the best online multi-player I've ever seen (though I haven't played "Resistance 2" yet, so that "I've ever seen" is key). One caveat though, and it's an important one: This game is seriously violent. Here's a simple test: Does hearing the word "chainsodomy" disgust you, or intrigue you? If it's the former, "Halo 3" may be more up your alley.

Sounds like "Gears of War 2" is in the running for game of the year. But then there's the campaign. Level design wise, it's pretty good. It's much longer than in the first "Gears," with sharp (though still dismally grey) graphics and plenty of emphasis on using the game's key cover and active re-loading mechanisms. It's all a little better than the first one and there are some nice new tweaks, like indicators that show up as you make progress toward an achievement. But fundamentally it's more of the same. Which isn't bad thing, but also isn't inspiring.

Then there's the story. Dear God, the story. All the pre-release hype and commercials like this one promised that the plot would be more comprehensible and central than in the first and that's true. But they really shouldn't have bothered. Because, to be blunt, the writing is awful. It's cliched, mawkish, and bombastic to the point where I could never get through a cutscene without cringing in embarassment. A few highlights:

-The eager new member of Delta Squad who drops his gun when he first shows up and the other guys nickname "rook" (short for rookie). Want to take a bet on what happens to him? If you can't figure it out, you've never seen a movie before.

-The new guy named Dizzy who wears a cowboy hat, screams everything he says, and basically makes Yosemite Sam look like a subtle portrait of Texan culture. (Why are there Texans on Sera? Let's not even go there)

-Dominic staring wistfully at a crumpled picture of him and his wife, who has been captured by the Locust. See, "Gears of War 2" has emotion. Dominic cares about somebody. See? See???

-Every single word that comes out of Cole Train's jive talking mouth. I know he was in the first one, but I'm still not over it. Let's just say that if historians play videogames, this week won't be seen as quite the major step forward for African-Americans as many of us are thinking.

-The cut scene leading into the first major mission that gives a whole new meaning to the word "bombastic," particularly when the human government's chairman (is this a community government? anyway...) gives his speech. Here's a sample: "This is teh day we ensure the survival of our species. My fellow Gears, go forth and fight for the hope of humanity!"

-Someone dies and these are the last words out of his mouth: "Tell my brother... my ma... that I love 'em and... and..." And no, I didn't put in "ma" to make it seem more hokey. That's exactly what it said in the subtitles.

You get the idea. But it brings up an important point. If you're not going to put the energy, time and money into quality writing, why bother? As important as I think narrative is in videogames, it's better to keep it simple than do it badly. In all honesty, the 10 second introduction to "New Super Mario Bros." (Bowser kidnaps Peach; Mario goes after them) is far superior to the probably hour-plus of story we get in "Gears 2." And the thing is, I bet most players would be happier if this game just had a 10 second introduction that basically consisted of this: "The Locust are invading again. Stop them!"

For more on why "Gears of War 2" is a very good game, but not quite great thanks to the writing, check out my full review:

Variety Review: Gears of War 2

No, we don't have any sales figures yet, but I think a comparison of Activision's boasting about both games is quite instructive.

The week after launching "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" last year, Activision put out a press release with this lede:

Activision, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) announced today that consumer sell through for Guitar Hero(R) III: Legends of Rock(TM) exceeded $115 million within seven days of the game's North American release, making it the largest single product launch in the company's history.

It's more than a week since "Guitar Hero: World Tour" launched and there hasn't been any press release. Here's what Activision publishing president Michael Griffith said on yesterday's earnings call:

The band kit launch quantities are virtually sold out across the channel and even with our manufacturers at full capacity and a continuous flow of supply throughout the quarter, we are likely to not be able to keep up with demand for the band kits this holiday.

Additionally, our retail checks indicate that the Guitar Hero World Tour band kit is outselling its only competitor by a very wide margin. As expected, early consumers are disproportionately interested in the band kit as a result of the drum controller innovation and the addition of the microphone. Our retail and consumer programs focused on the guitar bundle and the standalone software are weighted to the Thanksgiving weekend and holiday gift-giving seasons. The mass market oriented price point for these SKUs and the fact that they can be enjoyed with both our latest guitar controller as well as previously released guitars should make them sought after gifts this holiday.

Translation: the full band kit is selling decently, better than "Rock Band 2" at least (though one would expect that the week it launches). The stand alone game and guitar combo? They're not starting off as hot.

If "World Tour" had beat "Guitar Hero III's" $115 million launch by any significant margin, which shouldn't have been too tough given that the full band kit costs nearly twice as much, it's reasonable to assume that Activision would put out a similarly exuberant press release, or at least boasted about the number somewhat in its earnings call. Since it didn't, I think we can assume this wasn't quite the boffo launch Activision was hoping for.

The fact that it may not be able to keep up with demand doesn't actually tell us how well the game is selling, since that depends entirely on the production capacity. Furthermore, every videogame store I've seen in the past week has had at least some copies of the full band kit in stock. "Virtually sold out" doesn't seem to mean the same thing for "Guitar Hero: World Tour" as it does for the Wii. I can't remember the last time I saw one of Nintendo's consoles sitting on a shelf.

Of course, Griffith is probably right that the more casual market that has loved "Guitar Hero" so much is  more likely to shop around the holidays and be drawn to the less expensive guitar or game-only versions. But with the economy worsening, will people spend $100 for a videogame, or even $60 for sequel mere months after they bought the last "Guitar Hero?" And will the more hardcore audience really buy into the full band kit when "Rock Band 2" is at least as good, if not better?

I doubt "World Tour" will be a flop, but it is certainly launching into a tough market for several reasons. Its fate will be a test of everything from the impact of the economy on videogame sales to mass market consumers' interest in Activision's annual (or even more frequent) sequel strategy to whether "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" can healthily co-exist as remarkably similar games.

So far, Activision doesn't seem to have too much to brag about.

More problems at Brash Entertainment. As I'm reporting in today's Daily Variety, the troubled movie-license focused videogame publisher has laid off 20 staffers, is working with studios to either return licenses or sell them to other videogame companies, and is searching for new cash or a buyer.

Brash acknowledged the layoffs in a statement. But I've already been hearing from numerous sources of the company's latest problems. Apparently it has stopped paying developers, at least temporarily. And it has been talking to the studios from which it has acquired licenses to either return some of those properties or sell them to new publishers. Basically, Brash doesn't have the cash to continue. It's trying to find more, or a buyer.

Seems weird, doesn't it? Just last year, Brash launched and announced it had raised $400 million. And even the worst run company couldn't burn that much cash in a year. As it turns out, only some of that money was immediately available. The rest, which was supposed to be available for future needs, has apparently dried up amidst the financial crisis. Though the recent resignation of co-founder Thomas Tull, who has the Wall Street connections and headed up the private equity funding, probably didn't give investors a lot of confidence.

Brash only confirmed that two games are still in the works: "Six Flags Fun Park" and "Saw." That leaves a long list of titles in limbo: "Tale of Desperaux," "Prison Break," "Night at the Museum 2," "Clash of the Titans," "300," and one other that it hasn't announced and hasn't yet been reported: "Superman." Remember when Brash announced it was working with "Rogue Squadron" and "Lair" developer Factor 5 on an unannounced game? Turns out it was "Superman."

Getting information from Brash was even harder than usual since among the many no longer working there is EA and Ubisoft vet Tiffany Spencer, who was VP of corporate communications. The question is: Who's left? I'm still waiting to find out how many employees remain at Brash. But based on what I've heard from sources, it's not many.

Full Story: Brash Entertainment short on cash

Also see: Thomas Tull leaves Brash

Given the show's premise, a "Heroes" videogame is kind of a no brainer.

But given the weak critical and, as far as I can tell, commercial performance of the "Lost" videogame, not to mention the falling ratings and critical problems of the show the past two seasons, giving up on the game right now also makes a lot of sense.

Which is why it's perhaps not shocking that, as MTV Multiplayer reported, Ubisoft has cancelled its "Heroes" game, a story we broke here in Variety last year, and returned the rights to NBC Universal.

It goes to show the problem with trying to turn a hot TV show into a videogame. By the time a game is even close to coming out, the series might no longer be popular.

Between those two titles and last year's crappy "Battlestar Galactica" and "Office" casual games, TV-based videogames aren't doing too well. Except of course for "The Simpsons Game." I guess if the show has been on more than 10 years, it might be safe bet for a game. Which also gives me hope for the "South Park" game coming to Xbox Live.

Variety critic Tom Chick is of two minds about "Resistance 2." The multi-player modes are "massive, deep and accessible," he writes in his review. But the solo campaign? "For those who play alone, 'Resistance 2' is simply a bad shooter."

Fundamentally, it seems Sony hasn't quite gotten the "Gears" or "Halo" size action franchise it wants. Tom calls the story "a confused amalgam of alien invasion, alternate history and zombie motifs" and the level design "relentlessly linear and contrived, stocked with cheap 'gotcha!' deaths to pad playing time." The visuals? "[L]argely disappointing and occasionally downright lazy, such as an alien base that seems to have been created out of leftover artwork from 'Halo.'"

But that 60 person multi-player? "The connections are smooth, the servers are always busy, and the gameplay is accessible for rookies." And Tom says online co-op is the best part: "On each map, a series of objectives is dynamically generated by the game to keep teams on task: Disarm a bomb, for instance, then clear a room of monsters, then press a switch. Or do the same tasks in reverse order. It's all simple and mostly mindless, but because it's shuffled up and randomly fitted together, it doesn't feel like the grind it actually is."

You can read Tom Chick's full review of "Resistance 2" right here.