Gaming and Culture

On July 8, 2007, Boeing officially unveiled its 787 Dreamliner, an event that was largely symbolic, since the date corresponded to the plane's name: 7-8-7. But on Thursday, Boeing said that the plane won't make its first flight until at least the second quarter of 2009.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but on Thursday Boeing announced revised first flight and first delivery dates for its long-awaited and much-anticipated, but also troubled 787 Dreamliner.

The aviation giant said it now expects the first 787 flight during the second quarter of 2009, and the delivery of the first Dreamliner in the first quarter of 2010.

Prior to Thursday's announcement, Boeing had said the first flight would be in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first delivery in the third quarter of 2009. But even those dates differed from what Boeing had predicted on July 8, 2007 (07/08/07) when it suggested at the roll-out event for the 787 that the first flight would be in August or September of 2007 and the first commercial passengers in May of 2008.

In its announcement, Boeing pinned the blame for the latest 787 delays on a machinists strike that shut the program down from early September to November of this year.

Now, the company says it is trying to figure out how the latest delays will affect its delivery plan, and what the financial impact will be.

But one thing is clear: Boeing needs to get the 787 program on its feet and up in the air, to mix metaphors. Yet, while the program has had its share of delays, there was recently a sign that at the very least, it is a fundamentally sound project: an intended-to-be-secret dossier recently put together by Boeing's archrival Airbus about the 787 Dreamliner seemed to indicate that the program was solid.

"(T)ake a look at the document," wrote aviation blogger Jon Ostrower on Flightblogger. Nowhere does it say that the program isn't going to work or that the plane isn't going to fly. At the end of the day, the report is a vindication of the program."

Now, Boeing just needs to follow through on that promise. The world is watching.

Electronic Arts on Tuesday warned its financial performance for fiscal 2009 will come up short from its earlier projections, due to slower sales in the U.S. and Europe.

The game maker had previously projected net revenue of $4.9 billion to $5.15 billion and earnings ranging from a net loss of 21 cents a share to net income of 7 cents a share for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009. EA did not provide an updated outlook, other than to note one would be provided when it reports its third-quarter results in February.

"While we saw significant improvement in the overall quality of our key products this year, we are disappointed that our holiday slate is not meeting our sales expectations," John Riccitiello, EA chief executive, said in a statement. "Given this performance and the uncertain economic environment, we are taking steps to reduce our cost structure and improve the profitability of our business."

EA plans to launch several cost-cutting measures, from layoffs to facility closures to reducing its product lines, the company said.

That said, however, EA plans to continue investing in the quality of its games, new properties, and its direct-to-consumer initiatives. The company will debut several new titles and online games in 2010.

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Not long ago, during an evening of hanging out with friends, five of us sat in my living room, staring at and holding tight to our iPhones or iPod Touches.

This wasn't the anti-social behavior you might think, though. Actually, we were having a great time, banging our fingers furiously on the touch screens of the five devices, trying to kill each other (and not be killed ourselves) in the utterly addictive multiplayer shooting game Maze Wars Revisited.

'Maze Wars Revisited,' by Dennis Hescox, is a new iPhone game. Hescox is hoping that the game--and other apps he hopes to create--will allow him to make a living without needing a full-time job.

(Credit: Dennis Hescox)

The game, which tasks multiple players on a single Wi-Fi network with hunting each other down in a dense maze, was newly available that week on Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is the brainchild of Dennis Hescox, one of the friends in the room, and this was the first time more than three people had used it at once. And much to Hescox's satisfaction, those of us who had never played before, after some initial skepticism, were now feverishly navigating the game's winding alleys, hunting our prey, shouting out suggestions for the next version, and screaming out obscenities when someone ambushed us for the kill.

For Hescox, this scene could well turn out to be the genesis of something big. Or, it could be a cautionary tale in undelivered potential and promise.

With the economic skies getting darker by the day, and the prospects for jobs in the games industry worsening with each new set of layoffs, Hescox finds himself in a place that is at once immensely exciting and fraught with danger. It's also very familiar.

Like many in technology, he's suffered through the professional consequences of a recession before. Unlike many, he's been through it twice.

Hescox isn't twentysomething or thirtysomething like many game designers. At 54, game design is, and has long been, in his DNA. After graduating from UCLA in 1981, his first jobs were some of the earliest the then-young industry had to offer.

After a stint at Mattel, he took a programming gig at Sega USA, where he worked on coin-op games like Shooting Gallery 2 and Duck Hunt 2.

"Unfortunately, the...machines I worked on never saw the light of day," Hescox remembers, "This was the Reagan recession (of the early 1980s and) Sega withdrew from the U.S."

Dennis Hescox created 'Maze Wars Revisited.' A veteran of companies like Sega USA and Apple, and institutions like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hescox is facing a tough time selling his iPhone game. This is the third major recession he's had to navigate as a professional.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Laid off, he returned home to Los Angeles, and began teaching Macintosh programming. Many of his students worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and after inquiring about teaching some classes there, he instead was invited to be JPL's Mac consultant.

That was the joke, Hescox said. "I moved (from Sega) to JPL, the ultimate video game."

In 1988, leveraging his Mac experience, Hescox got a job at Apple, in developer technical support. And after five years there, his stock was worth enough to leave for more personal pursuits. He bought a new Subaru with cash, and spent years mainly traveling, investigating America's back roads, its hot springs, and many of the things most never have time to see.

As happens without steady employment, however, his resources dwindled, and right around the end of the dot-com boom, Hescox began hunting for work.

He landed at an Internet company in San Francisco, but with awful timing: that downturn was kicking in and he was once again laid off.

Unable to find anything else and needing money to live, he settled at a ranch near Sacramento, Calif., working as an in-residence engineer/carpenter/handyman, hunkering down for several years, while still looking for a way back into technology.

He applied for job after job, but the responses were uniform: His skills were outdated. He was overqualified. He didn't know enough about Web technology, and so on.

Enter the iPhone
Then along came the iPhone. For Hescox, the veteran game designer and Apple alumnus, this seemed like a solution sent from above: he saw a way, finally, to use the skills he'd built over the years to make money, ideally without needing to get an actual job.

In 'Maze Wars Revisited,' a group of players on a single Wi-Fi network prowl a maze, trying to find and shoot each other. The game is addictive, but faces challenges on Apple's App Store.

(Credit: Dennis Hescox)

"It was really exciting to see this much power in a phone," he said. "Looking at the development tools was just a dream. So I spent the first six months of this year educating myself on the current technologies."

He pondered a number of different ideas, and settled finally on Maze Wars Revisited, an homage to a famous public domain game, Maze War.

But once again, the economic tides were turning. Even as he got going on programming Maze Wars Revisited, thinking that at last, he might have found his way to financial stability, the financial world around him was collapsing.

"As I started the project, it wasn't clear that we were going to be in a recession," Hescox said. "I'm a programmer, not an economist."

Since it came out, Hescox has struggled to find traction with Maze Wars Revisited. He launched the game at a price of $2.99, thinking that it was better than some of the games available for 99 cents or $1.99.

His goal was to find critical mass at universities or large companies, where large numbers of people might buy the game and play together. Evidence of the fun groups could have playing Maze Wars Revisited was right there in my living room.

Those were good ideas, we told him that night, but we urged him to drop the price to 99 cents, and fast. There were countless iPhone games that cost that much, or were free, and given the fact that the game only works when there's a group of players on one Wi-Fi network, $2.99 seemed too costly to attract individual buyers in advance of buzz about the game.

One measure of an application's sales is the number of reviews it has on the App Store. The more reviews, the more sales. For Maze Wars Revisited, there are just three, one of which I wrote that night at my house, full of enthusiasm. But another, clearly written by someone who tried to play by him or herself, gets right to the core of Hescox's challenge: "This game is not fun at all," Dandy3333 wrote.

Last Friday, however, Hescox dropped the price to 99 cents, and he says he will most likely put out a free version that will allow people to play for 5 or 10 minutes, hopefully to get them hooked, and get people playing it together.

I asked how important the game is to his path back to solvency.

"It's very important," Hescox said, adding, "but it has not generated the kind of income I had hoped right away."

A one in 10,000 chance?
Certainly, he hasn't put all his eggs in this one basket, and he's already beginning work on his next iPhone app project.

But the truth is that it's very hard to get noticed in the app ecosystem, what with more than 10,000 currently available, and the odds of success for apps that don't get featured by Apple are long.

Click for complete special report

So Hescox is aware that even if Maze Wars Revisited doesn't sell well, he can still point to it as a portfolio piece.

Having been around the tech world for more than a few years, he recognizes that while the early days of the iPhone app era may reward individuals and small teams, that might not remain the case.

"Whenever there's a new computer platform, there's lots of little" development, he said. "Then you start seeing the big innovation. (That) requires bigger teams and investments, and the recession could have a big effect on that."

And that's why for Hescox, the pressure is on to make a go of it right now. Because if the backup plan is to end up getting hired by someone putting together a team of highly-skilled developers, the economy may well not cooperate.

In truth, Hescox, having been through this twice before, is probably better suited to weathering an economic storm than most. At the same time, though, at 54, it's getting harder and harder for him to start over.

So for now, he's hoping for many more scenes like the one in my living room. But if not?

"I'm continuing to move forward with the next project and the next project after that," Hescox said. "Plan B is a continuation of Plan A."

Next in the series: A successful Web 2.0 entrepreneur counts his lucky stars

The Wii - catch it if you can.

(Credit: Walmart.com)

Discount retailer Wal-Mart on Monday announced that it has started to sell "tens of thousands" of Nintendo's Wii gaming console online. The 2-year-old gadget, consistently sold out and difficult to obtain, emerged as one of Black Friday's big hits amid a bleak economy.

On Friday night, the Wii was sold out on Wal-Mart's Web site as well as the Web sites of electronics retailers Best Buy and Circuit City, Reuters reported. On Monday morning, they were in stock.

Wal-Mart plans to sell the Wii consoles online for a price of $249.24 (Best Buy's listing price is about 50 cents more expensive, so it's not a deep discount) along with a $329 "value bundle" that contains extra controllers and some other add-ons.

The retailer is also offering discounts on Wii accessories and games.

It's been a busy year for San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum. Throwing a Major League-leading 265 strikeouts during 2008, his first full season in the league, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, was selected to play in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, and was recently named the 2008 National League Cy Young Award winner.

Now, he's set to appear on the cover of 2K Sports' video game Major League Baseball 2K9. Earlier this week, we visited 2K Sports' motion capture studios in Novato, Calif., about a half-hour north of Lincecum's home field, AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Inside, the motion capture technicians had Lincecum suit up in a different kind of uniform, a tight black body suit covered in reflectors, which will help them re-create Lincecum's unique movements in the virtual world. Take a look at one of Major League Baseball's youngest rising stars.

Read the full story here

NEW YORK--"Even in a down year that we're all facing, this industry's growing," said J.J. Richards, the newly appointed general manager of in-game advertising company Massive, at an advertiser event Wednesday.

"Versus other mediums," Richards said, "in-game advertising has unparalleled engagement."

Massive, which has been owned by Microsoft since 2006, took over a below-ground nightclub in Manhattan's West Village for its first "upfront" event, modeled off of the eponymous television ad pitch events for advertisers and media buyers. It also marked Richards' debut as head of Massive; he served as the head of Microsoft's Xbox Live division for several years and then Microsoft's advertising division.

The mantra of the afternoon: In-game advertising, despite still being an emerging medium, is an effective spot for ad dollars at a time when budgets are getting alarmingly tight. Or at least that's what the execs say--and game sales seem to agree for the time being. "As the demographics go, it hits this very elusive target audience around 18-to-34-year-old males, hard to find anywhere else," Richards said. "They spend more money on games than they do in music or movies."

There was little talk of the dire advertising climate, but an undercurrent of practicality ran through the event as speakers stressed in-game advertising's effectiveness. Massive executives boasted research statistics that suggest exposure to a brand via in-game advertising improves its perception by 31 percent, and that 60 percent of gamers remember ads that they see. Massive can reach 27 million gamers, they said.

The company simultaneously announced that it had forged a multi-year ad partnership with Activision, which just closed its merger with Vivendi to become Activision Blizzard. It'll be the exclusive ad provider for 18 Activision titles for the PC and Xbox 360, including Guitar Hero and Transformers.

A parade of advertising representatives from Massive partners like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, THQ, and Activision took the stage to explain how their titles are choice spots for advertisements, from product placement to mini-contests to streaming videos.

But the easiest form of in-game advertising, it appears, remains basic display ads, often in the form of virtual billboards and signs in settings like cityscapes and sports arenas. "Sometimes the developers decide (a game's) going to take place in a swamp, and then there's no advertising," joked Jeffrey Dickstein, digital ad sales director at Ubisoft, as he showed off the "realistic urban settings" in games like the impending I Am Alive, which takes place in Chicago.

Massive made headlines shortly before last month's presidential election, when Barack Obama's campaign team bought in-game ads in some Xbox 360 games--a first for a political campaign.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum throws a pitch during a motion capture session for the 2K Sports video game Major League Baseball 2K9. Lincecum is the cover athlete for the game and the 2008 National League Cy Young award winner. Click the image for a full gallery on the motion capture event.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

NOVATO, Calif.--Sports Illustrated magazine called Tim Lincecum "the freak," and for the motion capture specialists at 2K Sports, getting a good computer model of baseball star Tim Lincecum's unique, and violent, pitching motion presented a special challenge.

Last month, Lincecum, a diminutive 24-year-old whom you would never pick out of a lineup as a superstar ballplayer, won the National League Cy Young award, given to the league's best pitcher. The same day, the San Francisco Giant found out that he'd been chosen as the cover athlete for Major League Baseball 2K9, 2K's hit baseball video game.

Lincecum was on hand at 2K's motion capture facility, about 30 minutes north of San Francisco, for a day of performance: dozens of individual pitching and batting moves that the technicians would lead him through, one by methodical one, all to be used in the new game and all so that the Lincecum character would look and feel like the real deal.

For me, this was not entirely new territory. I came here last May to cover a very similar event, the motion-capturing of Rick Nash, the cover star of NHL 2K9, 2K's hockey game. In September, I also spent an afternoon at Industrial Light & Magic, watching the technicians there put my colleague Kara Tsuboi through the paces of the motion capture experience that Robert Downey Jr. went through while he was filming the blockbuster Iron Man.

So while the specifics of mo-capping a baseball pitcher like Lincecum differ in some ways from what's required for a hockey star like Nash or a movie character like Iron Man, much of what went on Tuesday was familiar ground.

As with the Nash and the Being Iron Man events, Tuesday's activities began with Lincecum donning a spandex suit and technicians placing a series of reflective markers all over his body. These, explained Johnathan Rivera, an associate producer for 2K Sports, are designed to capture and reflect the light from 56 mo-cap cameras spread throughout the facility so that the computers can record the minute movements of the actor--in this case, Lincecum--as he moves around. This is then translated into a 3D model of his skeletal structure that is used as the base for his in-game avatar.

At 2K Sports, everyone talks about the so-called "signature style" that they build for the real-life stars of their games. Essentially, said motion capture coordinator Steve Park, this means finding the stars' unique and specific motions and movements, ones that would be very familiar to their fans, and building them into the games so that when the fans play the Lincecum character, for example, they recognize his explosive pitching motion and can easily distinguish it from the more pedestrian motions practiced by dozens of other, less stellar, pitchers.

Park admitted that much of what he and his team were doing Tuesday was the same as what I'd seen them do for Nash. But he explained that mo-capping baseball plays does differ in some material ways.

For one, each of Lincecum's moves--and he would perform dozens of them--was a quick set piece that took just seconds and which covered a very small, specific piece of ground.

A computer model of Lincecum during the mo-cap session.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

To be sure, Nash's movements were also set pieces, and lasted just seconds, but they tended to be more free-form, one technician told me.

So the mo-cap team had set up a short pitching mound covered in markers that were meant to be used by Lincecum for specific foot placements for his myriad moves.

"The foot placement is actually pretty important for us," Park said, "for getting the right blend pose."

The blend pose, Park explained, is what happens when the technicians take different recorded motions and blend them together to create a single, smooth move for the game. Because much of what baseball players do looks very similar, even when differing in one way or another, it's crucial, Park suggested, to be able to create smooth blend poses.

It was important that Lincecum's many moves be spot-on, so that the end of one move would look similar enough to the beginning of another--say his wind-up blending into his follow-through--that they could be combined in the game without any jerky transition.

Hockey moves, said Park, are much more free-form and free-flow, and while building an NHL game also requires accurate blend poses, he added that it was much more important when shooting a baseball player that the player hit his foot placements precisely.

That's because, Park continued, baseball motions are very segmented and specific, whether someone is pitching, catching, or swinging a bat.

For Park and his team, having Lincecum be the cover star also was challenging for another reason: while they've done baseball games for years, Lincecum was the first pitcher they've featured. And that meant figuring out how to capture the pitching motion, something that is more important with a player like the Giants star, who, despite being stellar as a college player, scared off many of the pro scouts who watched him play.

"The quickness of Lincecum's small body is what scared off most scouts," wrote Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated last July, "that and what has become something of a trademark, a tilting of his head toward first base in the early phase of his delivery. The scouts equated his body speed with violence. That assessment, however, is akin to watching the Blue Angels air show team and not seeing the precision because of a fixation with the implicit danger. Lincecum generates outrageous rotational power (see video below)--the key element to velocity--only because his legs, hips, and torso work in such harmony."

Or, as the magazine reported, "The normal stride length for a pitcher is 77 percent to 87 percent of his height. Lincecum's stride is 129 percent, some 7.5 feet."

So for some of the mo-cap technicians, the best part of bringing in someone like Lincecum was the opportunity to be able to build a digital model of "The Freak" in motion, something that they see as a very cool piece of digital data.

All of which is to say that even if the mo-cap guys at 2K Sports had had experience with a pitcher, Lincecum would still have presented a singular experience for them.

That said, Park explained that, in fact, pitching is actually easier to mo-cap than hitting.

That's because batters have very distinctive stances that begin with "waggles," or nervous tics they express with their bats, as well as differing stances that can be wide or narrow, depending on the player.

And because Lincecum does take the occasional turn at bat, the mo-cap guys had to film him hitting as well.

I asked Park how many other major league players they bring in for the creation of their baseball game, and he said that, in fact, the number is very small.

"Part of the problem is that our development cycle is actually during the baseball season," Park said, adding that the players are contractually prohibited from doing the kind of extracurricular work that Lincecum was doing Tuesday during the season. "I don't know what our goal is...but it's always a challenge for every sport."

This means that while 2K Sports will bring in a Lincecum or a Nash as their cover athletes, in order to capture their signature styles, most of the players in the games are actually represented by actors, guys who have played their respective sports at probably a high amateur level, such as college, and who can be trusted to look like they know what they're doing.

Back at the 2K Sports mo-cap facility, Lincecum has taken the "mound," and is now warming up for his session.

Soon, he's ready, and after a brief introduction in which Park explains to the gathered crowd what, exactly, is going on, Lincecum begins his series of moves.

Right away, though, he's having a bit of a problem with some of the reflective markers they've put on his baseball glove, which keep flying off during his violent motion.

That's not a problem for the third shot, though, one in which Lincecum is supposed to stand idle on the mound.

He does that, standing totally still, until the director yells, "Cut."

Lincecum grins and asks if it was a good take.

As the crowd laughed, the director fired back, "More emotion."

But once Lincecum continues with actual pitching motions, he continues to have problems keeping the markers on his glove, meaning that after each shot, a couple of techs have to run out and put them back on.

Finally, he's done with his pitching moves, and now it's time for him to pick up his bat for the hitting shots (see video below).

The biggest laugh of all came when the director announced that Lincecum was going to hit a home run.

"He's going to hit a home run, which is the first time in his life he's ever done that, including Little League," said Johnathan Rivera, an associate producer for 2K Sports.

"Thanks," Lincecum said sarcastically.

After all the shooting was over, I asked Lincecum--who, by the way, is a big video game player and is currently spending his free time with Gears of War 2--what it was like to be featured in Major League Baseball 2K9.

"It's a one-of-a-kind experience for me," Lincecum said. "That's stuff that kids dream about all the time...You see yourself in the game, and you're like, 'That's me. That's me out there, except in video game form.'"

It looks like there's a bit of trouble over at Wikia Search this morning.

The search portal, run by Wikia, the for-profit wiki service co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, was returning "Service Unavailable" error messages about 10 percent of the time, during a test I ran on both Firefox and Safari.

This error message was coming up some of the time Wednesday morning after attempting to load the Wikia Search home page. The problem was found on both Firefox and Safari, but only about 10 percent of the time.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

The rest of the time, the service seemed to be working mainly as it should, though from time to time, the search page would only partially load.

The error message would return when loading the Wikia Search home page, and read, "Error 503 Service Unavailable." It continued, "Guru Meditation:" and then "XID:" and a nine-digit string that changed each time I found it.

The site Pingdom.com reported earlier Wednesday morning that Wikia Search's problems had been happening since Monday, and were occurring about a third of the time, but my tests revealed that it wasn't that severe.

Pingdom.com also had a chart suggesting that the search site's uptime was only about 65 percent.

When the site's home page did run, it then returned search results with no problem.

The rest of the time, the service worked as normal.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

In October, Valleywag reported that Wikia had laid off about a third of its 43-person workforce.

A call to Wikia for comment wasn't immediately returned.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum throws a pitch during a motion-capture session for the 2K Sports video game, 'Major League Baseball 2K9'. Lincecum is the cover athlete for the game and the 2008 National League Cy Young award winner.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

NOVATO, Calif.--We're about to see Tim Lincecum, the 2008 National League Cy Young award-winning pitcher, go deep.

"He's going to hit a home run, which is the first time in his life he's ever done that, including Little League," said Johnathan Rivera, an associate producer for 2K Sports, who was standing near the pitcher, explaining what he was about to do.

"Thanks," Lincecum said sarcastically.

The San Francisco Giants pitcher was here, at 2K Sports' motion-capture studio on Tuesday, because he's the cover athlete for the publisher's forthcoming Major League Baseball 2K9 game, which is slated to be released in the spring, just before next year's season begins.

And now, after about an hour of throwing all kinds of pitches for the mo-cap cameras, he's got a bat in his hands and, according to the script, it's time for the long ball.

Lincecum prepares for the mo-cap session. His suit is covered in reflective markers used to create a skeletal image of the subject's movement.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Of course, he's not swinging at real pitching, but he takes his swing, and it looks good. It's possible to imagine the ball soaring off Lincecum's bat and clearing the fences, even though he's a pitcher by profession.

For me, this was my second trip to 2K's mo-cap facility, after visiting in May for a similar session in which pro hockey star Rick Nash was filmed for NHL 2K9. But I'm actually a baseball fan and could pick out Lincecum from the crowd, whereas Nash had been an all-new face for me.

Lincecum, however, is tiny, at least as far as pro athletes go. If you didn't know which one he was, you would not have been able to tell he was at the top of his sport.

But once he was covered in reflective markers and began throwing pitches in front of the mo-cap cameras, there was little doubt. The kid--he's 24 years old--has a scary smooth pitching motion and throws heat (see the video below).

To be sure, much of what went on here today was familiar to me, having been at the Nash mo-cap session. But according to several of the people involved in putting this session together, shooting mo-cap of baseball presents specific challenges that other sports don't.

I'll explain all of that in a full story I'll post tomorrow, along with a photo gallery. So stay tuned for that.

Over the last several years, the so-called "serious games" movement has picked up a lot of steam.

Among the many things this encompasses is the use of games in education, health care, and the military.

But perhaps nowhere are serious games having a greater impact than in the business world, an arena always searching for new tools to improve efficiency and keep employees and customers engaged.

In Changing the Game, David Edery and Ethan Mollick argue that games can be one of the most effective tools for improving business.

(Credit: FT Press)

With this phenomenon having gained a critical velocity, the time has come for a book chronicling it, and David Edery and Ethan Mollick have answered the call.

With their new book, Changing the Game, Edery, the worldwide games portfolio manager for Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, and Mollick, a consultant at MIT's Sloan School of Management, have pulled together what is likely the most comprehensive examination of the use of games in business. I recently interviewed the pair by telephone; scroll down to hear the audio, and please excuse the occasional static.

The book's first few chapters are introductions, first to the various genres of video games, and then to the concepts of advertising in video games, and "advergames," games created for companies as a way to promote their brands and attract consumers to them.

Much of these introductory chapters go over ground well-covered in the media over the last few years, though they do build an important base for the rest of the book.

Where Changing the Game really earns its keep is when Edery and Mollick delve into the idea of how companies, large and small, can use games as a way to recruit, integrate, and maintain their employees.

An example that I like is Rise of the Shadow Specters, a game designed for use by new Sun Microsystems workers, especially those who mainly telecommute, as a way to learn the culture and business units of the mammoth technology company.

All told, Rise of the Shadow Specters cost Sun $150,000 to develop, but the payoff for the company has been huge, Edery and Mollick write.

Thousands of Sun employees played the game, and its lessons apparently took: the authors write that even months after playing it, they could still recall much of the information it imparted.

And while not every business will have the resources or the will to turn to a video game to educate their employees, the authors make a clear argument that the benefits are certainly there for those enterprises that do follow Sun's example.

There are many other areas, of course, where businesses can use games to improve their bottom line, and Edery and Mollick do examine many of them in detail.

They look, for example, at the idea of alternate-reality games, a type of multimedia experience that a growing number of companies have used to build excitement and mystique around new products. For example, Microsoft commissioned an ARG known as I Love Bees, which crafted a large narrative related to, but not directly about, the story line of its Halo 2.

But games can also be used, the authors argue, to motivate employees, user communities and just about anyone that a business would want to engage. All it takes is an understanding of what the purpose is, as well as the skills and know-how to design the kind of game that meets the needs of the question at hand.

It is about time that a book like this came along, and with their backgrounds, Edery and Mollick seem like the right team to have written it. As the economy sours and companies look for every edge they can find, they might just discover that games, in one form or another, give them a way to stay afloat while less enlightened competitors sink.

AUDIO

Game-changing business
Changing the Game authors David Edery and Ethan Mollick talk to CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman about why games can help companies develop more efficient employees and build stronger brands.
Download mp3 (8.19MB)