Headline RePLAY – 6.27.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The CEO of Sony is bowing out of the SCE board, South Korea’s controversial Shutdown Law is challenged and Square-Enix plans to outsource with large-scale development projects.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai is stepping down from his position as representative director and chairman on the Sony Computer Entertainment board.

Instead, Hirai is moving to a part-time role with the SCE board. Chairman Howard Stringer, however, is retiring from his part-time position with SCE.

Hiroshi Kawano, president of SCE Japan, joins a new team of executives appointed to the SCE board.

|Source: GamesIndustry International

South Korea’s controversial Shutdown Law, created to prevent players under the age of sixteen from gaming online between midnight and 6 a.m., may be found unconstitutional as two lawsuits makes their way through the country’s courts.

The law was passed last year, despite assertions by critics that it infringes upon the civil rights of children and that it’s excessively prohibitive.

A coalition of parents and teenagers filed one lawsuit, claiming that the law attacks parental rights to educate their own children. Another suit was filed by the Korean Game Industry, consisting of companies like NCsoft, Neowiz and Nexon, arguing that the law is unjust.

For their part, South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family maintains that the Shutdown Law is the “bare minimum” to protect teenagers.

|Source: Kotaku

It’s no secret that Square-Enix is fraught with very long development times for their flagship titles like the Final Fantasy series. The director of Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 agrees, and revealed that the company is planning to outsource development with large-scale projects from now on vs. completely developing internally.

“The development time was quite long,” Motomu Toriyama told Gamasutra at GDC Taipei, speaking on the development of XIII. “Within our company, developing on PlayStation for Final Fantasy XIII we required a huge amount of graphical data…At the peak, there were over 200 people working on it.” The team consisted of 180 artists, 30 programmers, and 36 game designers.

“We are also thinking that we will not do large-scale internal development any longer,” he revealed, citing time constraints and lessons learned from XIII. “We have a lot of great creators in Square-Enix, but for larger-scale development we will be doing more distributed and outsourced development to reach our targets on time.”

|Source: Gamasutra

Headline RePLAY – 4.6.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The creative director of Assassin’s Creed 3 calls the internet’s ideas “predictable,” major publishers removed registered sex offenders from their online services in New York and a South Korean representative uses Angry Birds for his campaign.  

Alex Hutchinson, the creative director of Assassin’s Creed 3, really didn’t like the ideas proposed by fans on where the next Assassin’s Creed game should go.

“People on the internet suggest the most boring settings,” Hutchinson told OXM. “The three most wanted are WWII, feudal Japan and Egypt. They’re kind of the three worst settings for an AC game.”

Hutchinson and Assassin’s Creed 3 writer Corey May rather do India. “[May] really wants to do India,” said Hutchinson. “I would too. I’d really to do the Raj.”

At PAX East, Hutchinson clarified his stance on potential Assassin’s Creed settings and the creative process: “It’s part of a bigger discussion. Obviously any setting is potentially awesome,” Hutchinson told Joystiq. “The point we were making was that some settings are more familiar in videogames than other settings. And the two particular ones [WWII and Feudal Japan] that were mentioned are very familiar videogame settings.”

“The exciting thing is that the game can go anywhere,” the creative director continued. “We’ve had versions of the assassin… people have thrown ideas around for probably literally any setting that people would think of. But when you get right down to it—when we’re doing the actual nitty gritty of spending the time on it, spending a couple years making something—we wanna go to a setting that other games haven’t gone to.

“We’re trying to find places that will surprise people.”

“If people think they have the worst ideas, I apologize for that,” he said. “But really, they’re very predictable. The internet is not the place for insight, unfortunately.”  

*Source: OXM, Joystiq

In an aptly titled initiative dubbed “Operation: Game Over,” major videogame publishers have purged 3,580 accounts of New York registered sex offenders from their online services in collaboration with the state.

The initiative used information from a database that collected sex offenders’ e-mail addresses, screen names and other online identifiers. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman then approached publishers to remove the sex offenders from their online platforms. The first-of-its-kind effort involved Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Warner Bros., Electronic Arts, Blizzard Entertainment and Disney Interactive Media Group.

“We must ensure online videogame systems do not become a digital playground for dangerous predators,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “That means doing everything possible to block sex offenders from using gaming networks as a vehicle to prey on underage victims.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union disagrees: “While the intent here is admirable, schemes like this one do very little to keep children safe and trample on the right to free speech and expression,” communications director Jennifer Carnig told Gamasutra.

“And the problem this initiative is trying to solve is almost non-existent,” Carnig explained. “Children are almost always abused by people they know—a friend or family member—not by people they interact with while playing videogames online.”  

Nevertheless, the Attorney General’s office plans to continue what the initiative started. “The process is still ongoing, so we’ve been in touch with [Nintendo] and other companies as well. These major companies are just the first to voluntarily agree,” said an Attorney General spokesman.

*Source: Gamasutra

Capitalizing on the Angry Birds craze, a South Korean representative has released a campaign video titled “Hong-ry Birds” where he, well, dresses up like an Angry Bird to discuss social issues.

In a rebranding effort to distance themselves from South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the incumbent Saenuri Party has decided the best approach was to dress Representative Jeong Hong with feathers, make bad puns and declare: “I’ve become a bird for the Sae[bird in Korean]nuri Party. I’m a completely different candidate, with completely different promises!”  

If it squawks like an Angry Bird, explodes like an Angry Bird… it’s still a South Korean politician in disguise.  

*Source: koreaBANG via Kotaku

Headline RePLAY – 1.13.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: South Korea finally rates Diablo III, Nvidia opposes SOPA and SEGA answers the “hard reset” controversy.

The South Korean drama to get a rating for Diablo III by the Game Rating Board ends today after much debate over the game’s Real Money Auction House (RMAH) feature, an addition that authorities associates with gambling.

DualShockers reports that the average waiting time for a game to receive a rating in an Asian country is usually 15 days, but Diablo III took about a month plus several delays due to concerns over the RMAH.

The RMAH was ultimately nixed for the Korean market, but Diablo III is now on its way to be released in South Korea and rest of the world in a global release.

*Source: DualShockers

It’s not just videogame publishers and developers that are voicing their opposition to SOPA; graphics card manufacturer Nvidia joins the opposition after releasing a statement denouncing the bill.

“NVIDIA wasn’t consulted by ESA in formulating their position on SOPA,” said Nvidia’s Bob Sherbin. “Our position is this: we oppose piracy, as it hurts our game-developer partners. However, we do not support SOPA. We don’t believe it is the right solution to the problem. We remain committed to working to address this problem in a constructive and fair manner.

Nvidia is a member of the ESA like Nintendo and Sony, but unlike them, clarified their position and noted that ESA’s support of the bill was done without their input. However, like Nintendo and Sony, by default they’re proxy supporters because of the ESA.

*Source: Nvidia

Yesterday, in response to a concerned gamer over SOPA, a SEGA customer support rep advised to perform a “hard reset on the device” or uninstall and reinstall the app.

Obviously, the reply was out of context and simply bizarre. After the e-mail made its rounds around the internet, SEGA answered with a light-hearted and apologetic video that can be seen below.

*Source: SegaAmerica