If you are in or around Shanghai and work in the gaming industry, take consideration into the upcoming event:

“China Game Licensing and Investment Forum 2009”, a B2B event, will be held in Shanghai, China in April 2009. The B2B event is a platform for Chinese online and casual game developers to present their products in front of China’s top publishers and investors to make licensing and investment deals.

Previous participants of the event include all major Chinese online game publishers such as Giant, Tencent, and Shanda. Online and casual game developers from around the world who have products they want to license to China are welcome to participate. For more info about the event, please contact Mr. Zhan Ye at zhanye [at] gamevisiongroup.com.

Wish I could check that out.

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An entrepreneur capitalizing on millions of World of Warcraft fans within and outside of China, is opening the first unofficial WoW themed restaurant in Beijing, China.

The restaurant plans to have all kinds of WoW paraphenilia and other goodies that should make any fan proud, least of all the themed dishes with a large variety of names recognizable to any basic WoW player.

CCTV International has some pictures and a video of the restaurant in Beijing with the main area called the “Hall of Snow Storms.”

Honestly enough, I am surprised it has taken this long for a thematic restaurant to open up, althoguh I am not surprised about it opening in China with a large population playing (some say “gold-mining”) the game through the many cyber cafes dotting China.

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I wanted to put in a prediction here and now before mind-gaming really takes off (and yes, before I actually have the product) that without knowing the fundamental code behind the devices (caveats) I wanted to make a prediction on the likelihood of mind-gaming tournaments. The prediction I have with mind-gaming tournaments is not in the area of CounterStrike to use your mind to play most of the game, but rather to use your mind against other players.

Think of it as the next-generation gaming that will take off as a more violent Wii game without the remotes. You have objects around the room that you can pick up and throw or use against many other players, with each player respectively trying to do the same to you. Heck, it could be called “Telekinesis Wars” where armies of telekenetic warriors run around and use their mind powers (through the mind-gaming device) to fight other players. So what would make this different than the use of a mouse? It would rely on how “strongly” your mind-gaming abilities are with the device (don’t ask me how, this is just a fun prediction) such that when two players tried to pick up the same object, there would be a battle of the minds for control of the object.

Would be like Peter vs Sylar in Heroes, no? Heck, that would even be the perfect game for the mind-gaming device regardless too.

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I’m an avid computer gamer and will often not be blogging due to that and currently this goes to playing Spore. I have enjoyed creating creatures and buildings such as the ones below:

Feel free to check out my micahfk Spore page and follow my micahfk Spore creation RSS feed through it as well.

I have also put the Spore widget on the bottom right side of the page as well of my creations too.

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As unique as you may think on a company creating a mind-gaming device, another company Emotiv Systems, based in SF, has one of their own devices (called EPOC) to come out in late 2008 (hopefully in time for the Hanukkah season). The New York Times even talked about them in June 2008:

A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought.

[...]

The system doesn’t just lift boulders. It can also detect some of a player’s facial expressions and emotional responses: smile, frown or wink, for instance, and an avatar on screen can do so, too. Grow bored during a battle, and the system can detect ennui and supply a few dragons, or change the music. The device tracks a total of about 30 responses.

This system looks far more advanced than the Neural Impulse Actuator and far easier to learn to use, I may have to change my mind on buying the other one and wait the extra few months and pay a little more (twice the price), but it comes with a game and a far simpler system to input with the computer.

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Hardcore gaming gets even more serious as Hot Hardware has the details on an awesome brain-to-computer interface:

OCZ Technology has laid claim to being the first company to bring a “brain-computer” interface to the retail market and they have aimed it squarely at the gamer. The device is called the NIA, which is an acronym that stands for Neural Impulse Actuator, and instead of buttons, sticks, gyroscopes or motion sensors, it reads the body’s natural biosignals and translates them into commands that can be used to control PC games.

[...]

The NIA is able to detect three types of biosignals generated by your brain, facial muscles and eye muscles via a special headband. The user can bind these signals to any keystroke using the driver and configuration software.

Before you beginning doubting the claims, Hot Hardware did a month study on the product and actually found it to improve gaming performance at a cost of $150… and for any real gamer, that’s chump change when they’re buying $7000+ gaming computer.

That means the next time you’re thinking they are hacking, he’s not — he’s mind gaming!

Taking it beyond gaming, this device could be used to implement odd strokes that are odd to type on the keywboard (caps key, shift key, alt + shift for typing in Chinese…).

That would be a fun device to add to my regiment at work as well… Borgtown here we come!

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Saw an article via Wired about PMOG, or passively multiplayer online gaming which by installing a Firefox plugin and by just browsing the web, you essentially are now playing a game ‘passively.’

PMOG is an infinite game built on individual network histories, transforming our web surfing into ongoing social play. With a game head-up display in Firefox, players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions. Ordinary web sites become caches for items and currency. PMOG fuses an MMO into our WWW.

I must say that the idea sounds enticing, but at the same time realize from an advertiser’s/marketer’s perspective how easily this could be abused by giving or selling the data gleamed from the plugin to other people by noting the sites they visit.

That said, I’d be interested in this a little more if it had a bit of a sci-fi edge to it rather than a more kiddish/Harry Potter feel.

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As a major fan of the expected release of Spore, it was interesting to see Google actually promote Spore by noting that games can now utilize Youtube by uploading a quick video:

Enter Spore, the much anticipated game from Electronic Arts and Maxis, which lets players create their own alien creatures, import their creations into the game world, and upload video of their creatures’ moves directly to YouTube from within the game. Additionally, all of the YouTube community can enjoy: Spore’s own YouTube Channel, which will showcase the most popular videos of creatures fans and gamers create.

I am certain this will help increase the visibility and popularity of the game, but I am surprised they didn’t expand on this and noting how this could be used for popular games like World of Warcraft where players commonly put up their own videos.

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Making some thematic changes that I feel fits better with the site and the topics I want to discuss. Unfortunately this theme was not properly set up for widgets, so the past day or two I have been fiddling with the theme code to get it to work (yeah, php). At this point I have the widgets working, just have to get the code to work properly at this point.

In the meantime, I go fiddle with my brand new gaming computer.

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EA, ahead of the pack of any other major game company, finally looks and sees how successful online gaming is over in Asia and decides to “experiment” with the concept of in-game transactions (a la QQ堂 or QQ itself) and in-game ads. Red Kemp notes:

The number of people playing video games online in China increased by 20% to 59 million[...]. Interestingly, a majority of these games are free-to-play.

I’m very surprised that these sites within Asia have still not tried to challenge the American market for online games to really dominate the US arena as most of the major players here are very far behind and afraid of trying different models.

Now, it may be said that the costs of creating the games and maintaining them there may be a lot cheaper than here in the US, but nonetheless if the games in China do not get on the ball in creating English versions, I can definitely see EA and later other major gaming companies establishing firm control in the US market for a long-time.

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