Though a number of quality software titles were shown off at last week’s Nintendo Media Summit (stay tuned to GameCyte for daily previews!), the biggest news of the two-day event was revealed within the first ten minutes of the event: the Nintendo DSi hardware.

Spirited away by NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime just as quickly as it came, the sleek portable nontheless hung like a spectre over the proceedings. Unanswered questions lingered: When would it arrive? What software might we see? What exactly makes the unit’s wireless connection faster? Will it include measures to combat piracy? — and on, and on, and on.

Between some sleuthing at Siliconera and timely questions from Eurogamer, we have the first two answers.

Though Siliconera notes that the new Nintendo points are either Wii Points or DS Points, not both — a minor annoyance for those who would like to diversify their investment portfolios beyond Virtual Console and WiiWare — they have also discovered that Nintendo has trademarked the phrase “Nintendo Zone“ in the United States.

Back at E3, Nintendo’s Cammie Dunaway mentioned that the company was currently testing newfound DS functionality for airports and baseball games, among other things.  This would seem to be confirmation that their US tests have been successful.

But not all is quite so rosy. You may already know that the DSi will no longer be able to play GBA software. Eurogamer has learned that it will not be able to play import DSi software either. While regular DS cartridges will continue to be region-free, all DSi-exclusives will be region locked to their country of origin.

Why?

Nintendo told Eurogamer this afternoon that DSi is region-locked “because DSi embeds net communication functionality within itself and we are intending to provide net services specifically tailored for each region”.

“Also because we are including parental control functionality for Nintendo DSi and each region has its unique age limit made by different independent bodies.”

While I will personally mourn the lost ability to import awesome new titles from Japan regardless of where I buy my hardware (like Dunaway herself, I rock an JDM Ice Blue DS Lite) if this new “net functionality” and “parental control” add up to a decent alternative to friend codes, I’m all for it.

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The AdSense for Games website goes into some detail about how the new ads will work. Google has promised marketers that their ads can be included “before, within, between, or after game play.” We’ve already seen ideas like this at work; roughly one out of every three flash games you can play these days will feature an ad while it’s loading. AdSense, however, sounds like it offers far more opportunity for ad appearances. Furthermore, according to the VentureBeat report, it sounds like the ads will be very easy for developers to integrate, allowing for good game design to dictate the proper moments for ads to show up. VentureBeat writes, in a conversation with a Google representative, that “developers of games can use Flash software development kits to designate the points in a game that make an ‘ad request.’”

This sounds very familiar. Kongregate offers something similar in its downloadable API, to allow developers to designate in-game moments that are suitable for achievements or high scores. The site encourages game designers to send out data points, signalling that a player has completed the game or defeated a certain number of enemies, at which point the host site knows to update the player’s profile and trigger the “achievement” event. It would be a fairly simple matter to change or add such data points to things like “Insert Pre-Game ad,” or “Insert Interstitial Ad” at an appropriate moment, say, after a level has been cleared, or between game rounds.

If I were a programmer, I’d probably be a jerk about it, and make you watch a video for health care every time an enemy hit you. The enticing part is, though, that such ideas can be made possible with a developer-controlled system like AdSense. Google promises that publishers can pick and choose their advertisers to ensure the ads stay relevant, and with the ability to place them at appropriate times, hopefully we’ll soon see games from crafty creators who know how not to annoy their players.

Google already has quite a few developers on board, including big names like Konami, who have announced that they will be using AdSense in upcoming flash versions of Track and Field, Dance Dance Revolution, and Frogger. It certainly lends some weight to the program, but I’m honestly more curious about the inclusion of Armor Games in Google’s participant roster. Armor Games is an extremely prolific producer of Flash game content, and there’s an extremely good chance you’ve played one or more of their titles. If you’ve ever ground achievements on Kongregate, you know what this might mean to the number of ads you see.

YouTube, on the other hand, has not yet decided how they will be implementing ads into their content. According to the Reuters report, YouTube will be partnering with Amazon and iTunes; a viewer who watches a music video, for example, will be provided with a link where they can buy the song via either retailer. Users who subsequently buy the song will see some of their money shared with YouTube, which may lead to a significant boost in revenue for the video site — which was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

As part and parcel of the deal, YouTube will also be sending viewers to Amazon to buy video games. The Reuters report calls out Spore as a specific example, but doesn’t say more than that. We assume viewers would be given a chance to buy Spore during related content, of course — video of users’ Spore creations, space travel, evangelical sermons about creationism, that sort of thing. Finally, a way to make all that Sporn into a vital part of our economy.

YouTube hasn’t decided yet, however, just how the ads will be shown. According to Reuters, YouTube is experimenting with ads that run on top of the video — scrolling text, for example, that would appear at the bottom of your video as it played. I hope you weren’t watching a video about text at the bottom of your screen. YouTube is also considering pre-video ads, like the kind already featured on sites like GameTrailers and GameVideos, but they’re hesitant — nobody wants to sit through a 15-second ad to watch a 3-second clip, after all.

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Graphics are great. I rarely game without them… and in all seriousness, when I’m treated to a particularly compelling graphical experience, like those available in Crysis or Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, I tend to revel in the little details. But as a gamer who can still go back today to the likes of Bushido Blade, Commander Keen and even Planetfall, I believe that in the grand scheme of things graphics mean little.

Therefore, you might think that I’d be rather disappointed with The Conduit, a first-person shooter that has been recognized primarily for its attempt to set a new graphical bar for Wii titles. Well, I was — until I stood up and played the game for myself.

At the 2008 Nintendo Media Summit, High Voltage Software designer Micah Skaritka showed off The Conduit’s third level: a Cold War bunker in Washington, D.C. into which our hero had been pursuing a terrorist hell-bent on unleashing alien spores into the D.C. water supply. (Apparently your human foes aren’t exactly alien supporters by choice.) Plowing through a stream of infected soldiers in search of the alien entity force-feeding them that particular kool-aid, Skaritka had us observe a variety of new graphical improvements to the game.

The Conduit now has depth of field when you reload:

Specularity for that shiny new enemy feeling:

And tone mapping, a technique that apparently keeps textures from looking blurry up close. These in combination with the team’s dizzying array of other graphical improvements add up to what is surely the best-looking realistic game on Wii.

But it’s no Call of Duty 4. You’re simply not going to mistake it for an Xbox 360 title. Every utterance of the phrase “it looks great” must still be qualified by the words “for a Wii game.”

So what, exactly, impressed me so much that I called The Conduit “a title with the potential to revolutionize console shooters“?

Immersion — primarily thanks to the game’s incredible controls.

For many years now, I have been a fervent believer that the only proper way to play a first-person game is with mouse and keyboard. Despite what my misguided and incredibly lucky colleague Jesse would have you believe, nothing else had the precision and smooth action necessary to realistically simulate turning your head while simultaneously interacting with the environment.

I had held out hope for Wii titles to offer light gun controls as an alternative to mouselook, but once developers separated the movement of the character’s gun from the movement of their head, few were able to offer a control scheme that didn’t require players to forcefully adapt themselves to obtain any level of proficiency.

The Conduit is different, because you create its control scheme yourself, adjusting most every variable. You can map every button on the controller. You can tweak the sensitivity. You can change the characters’ run speed. You can set the exact dead zone visually on the screen in front of you  using the D-pad (setting up, in effect, your light gun shooting gallery), and then decide how fast you want your character to turn after you stray past that dead zone’s edges.

You can choose one of three modes for the camera, decide whether you want to turn with the Wiimote pointer or Nunchuk analog stick, and lock your pointer look to the dead zone if you so prefer.

Even better, you can tweak all these on the fly, and try out your new sensitivity adjustment by actually aiming at an incoming alien. Within five minutes of hopping on the demo station, I had adjusted my controls and camera settings to the point that I could hit what I aimed at and turn to face threats as easily as on any console shooter I’ve ever played — but with the added satisfaction and immeasurable boost to immersion of being able to engage enemies just by pointing at them.

I was told that this incredible control customization was a direct result of fan feedback; and that the team now intends to do the same with the game’s HUD, allowing players to drag, drop, turn on and off HUD elements as they wish. Hello, added immersion!

The third thing that High Voltage has done to insure immersion is implement some fairly impressive AI that actually reacts to your input. When I ran into the bunker control room guns blazing, soldiers took cover and fired back. If I walked in instead, they ran up and attempted to beat me into submission with their rifles. When I speedily dispatched foes with a quick burst of fire, the last man standing turned tail and ran… but meeting up with a few of his friends down the hall, rejoined the fight at their side. They flank if there are multiple paths, camp if there are good hiding spots, and peek out from doorways to send a few choice rounds your direction. We’re looking forward to seeing if the game’s other 14 enemy types have similar intelligence.

Though High Voltage had only two demo stations and no multiplayer available at the event — and thereby no chance to check out what could potentially be some very exciting, confirmed 16-player deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag using these Wii controls — the single-player game was great fun, and the only thing that pulled me away was an announcement that Nintendo was (politely) kicking everyone out.

The final game, which will reportedly take players to the Library of Congress, the Jefferson Memorial, the Pentagon and even the Oval Office, is slated for a Q1 2009 release exclusively on the Nintendo Wii.

Making a hardcore title for the Nintendo Wii might be a huge risk — but High Voltage CCO Eric Nofsinger says a sequel is already planned. Check out our full in-depth interview here.

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In an interview only last week, AC/DC’s Angus Young spoke at length to Britain’s Telegraph about the band’s refusal to sell their music through iTunes. Black Ice, AC/DC’s forthcoming album, is going on sale in a few weeks (at the same time as the Rock Band Track Pack), but is exclusively available in Wal-Mart — it will not be sold through Apple’s digital distribution behemoth. The Telegraph predicts Black Ice to be this year’s best-selling album, and while their article focuses on the possible ramifications for iTunes and digital music distribution, a few of the comments from Young point to possibile reasons behind the Track Pack decisions.

AC/DC’s main reason for keeping their music off of iTunes, claims the band, is that there is no way to sell an entire album on the online store without also allowing for the purchase of individual tracks. For AC/DC, it’s got to be all or nothing:

“Our real reason [for not selling singles] is that we honestly believe the songs on any of our albums belong together.

“If we were on iTunes, we know a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album - and we don’t think that represents us musically.”

It’s not a difficult leap to make, then, to assume that the decision to similarly bundle the entire AC/DC set for the Rock Band tracks was a dealbreaker. If Harmonix/MTV wanted to get AC/DC in their game (and, let’s face it, who wouldn’t?), it’s starting to look like they didn’t have a choice. A bit of similar language in the Telegraph article and today’s Variety piece on the Rock Band Track Pack further lends credence to this theory. From the Telegraph, last week:

The Australian no-nonsense rockers refuse to allow their work to be sold on iTunes because they argue that their albums are complete pieces of work that represent them at a certain time and place in their musical career and are not just a bunch of individual downloads to be cherry-picked by fans.

And, today, from Variety:

DeGooyer says that AC/DC members chose to put the “Live at Donington” songs in the game and that MTV enthusiastically agreed. “To us it hung together more than cherry picking master recordings,” he said. “It really is an experience. You put the disc in and you play through a live set.”

It’s completely possible that the phrase “cherry-picking” came up independently in each instance; it’s a common expression. Still, the sentiments are nearly identical — AC/DC seems rigidly set against allowing their songs to be sold on an individual basis. One begins to wonder how we wound up with “Let There Be Rock” in Rock Band 2, at all.

There’s a good chance we will never know the inner workings of Harmonix/MTV’s licensing agreement with AC/DC; such is the world of business. And, if AC/DC’s decision is never to divide up their albums, that’s their prerogative as artists. On the other hand, there’s a reason that “a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album.” Whether or not that’s a fair represenation of the band’s work, it’s ultimately up to the fan to decide what they want to listen to. Can AC/DC force owners of the album not to use the “next track” button? Will they be able to ensure that players of the Track Pack only play all 18 songs, back-to-back, every time they play?

It seems a little rude to force someone to order off the prix fixe menu if they don’t want a salad or dessert. Of course, we don’t have to eat there if we don’t like it — just how badly do we want the best steak in town?

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• AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack Details
• Six New Rock Band Albums Announced
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• Rock Band Export Method and List Confirmed, Goes Live Today

Here are some of the factors we guessed at yesterday, now confirmed by MTV:

• There are no custom avatars or venues for the Track Pack, unlike the band-specific Guitar Hero spinoffs. You will not be playing as Rock Band-ized (Rock Bandaged?) versions of AC/DC.
• The Track Pack is a truncated version of Rock Band, so there’s no character creator. You therefore can’t make your own AC/DC avatars, either.
• The Track Pack will allow you to “tour” through the 18 songs, though it will not force you to unlock any; you can play any of your favorites immediately. There’s tug-of-war and score duel, but no online play whatsoever. You shan’t be battling your friends’ bands unless you export the tracks into the main RB2 game.
• As we assumed, you’ll be able to export the AC/DC tracks once, and only once, through a single-use redemption code included on the game manual. This was really a no-brainer from a business standpoint, but if you want to play the songs in RB2, that means a rental or a pre-owned purchase is out of the question. That’ll be $40; please drive through.

And, as we mentioned before, if you do intend to play the AC/DC tracks in RB2, that means you already own RB2, are getting no value from the standalone game included with the Track Pack, etc. You’ll buy the disc long enough to export the tracks, maybe get the achievements, and then never look at it again. AC/DC, I love your music, but you’re making it very hard to want your game.

To top it off, you’re making me go to Wal-Mart to get it. I don’t intend to go into an anti-Wal-Mart diatribe here; my opinion of the megastore chain doesn’t really add much to the conversation. My problem is one of personal inconvenience — I can’t walk down the street around here without tripping over a game store, yet my nearest Wal-Mart is an hour away by car. If you’re going to make me shop online to get your game in the first place, why not just let me download the freaking tracks? Why would you tempt me with one of the greatest bands in the world and then place so many barriers in my way?

I’m just sayin’.

Related posts

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• Rock Band Export Method and List Confirmed, Goes Live Today
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Spotted on multiple sources this morning, Harmonix and MTV Games have officially announced the impending release of AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack on November 2, and November 16th for the Wii. Working similarly to previous Track Packs that Rock Band has seen, the title will function as a standalone game with new tracks — in this case, 18 live recordings of some of AC/DC’s biggest hits, including Thunderstruck, You Shook Me All Night Long, Highway to Hell, and Back in Black (finally). Whereas prior Track Packs served as a way for the DLC-unable PS2 and Wii versions of Rock Band to get some of the newer songs, AC/DC LIVE is being released for all major platforms, including Wii, PS2, PS3, and 360. Pricing the 18-song game at $39.88, Harmonix and MTV Games appear to be going the Guitar Hero: Aerosmith/Metallica route, combining a collection of band-specific songs in one package. There is one exception to the similarity: Unlike GH: Aerosmith, gamers who purchase AC/DC LIVE will be able to export the songs from the disc and play them as part of their regular Rock Band DLC library.

I love most everything about Rock Band; I play it almost constantly. I have no problem paying for DLC; my 150-track library (not including on-disc songs) is testament to that. AC/DC is a fantastic band, and I would love to play Back in Black with my fellow faux rockers. All that being said, I don’t think I would buy AC/DC LIVE, and I’ll tell you why.

The price point is certainly a factor. Forty bucks for an 18-song album is the most Harmonix/MTV have ever asked for any add-on content, and the value is demonstrably less than that for anybody who already owns Rock Band. It’s easily justifiable from a retail standpoint — including a playable game on the disc along with the songs makes it a product that can stand alone and be completely worth $40 — assuming the game you’re getting is a new one. There isn’t even any mention here of any special venues, custom models, or band-specific bonus content as promised by the Guitar Hero counterparts. It’s possible that such features are going to be announced later, but until we hear about them, we have to assume the game that comes with the new music is an identical or truncated version of the basic title, thus giving no new value to prior owners. There’s also the factor that one of the songs on the disc, Let There Be Rock, is already included in Rock Band 2’s library. The AC/DC LIVE track is probably an exciting new version, but it’s probably safe to assume you’ll inevitably come to prefer one version over the other — so, either way, you lose one song’s worth of value from your collection. In essence, if you already own Rock Band, you’re paying $40 for 17 songs, or $2.35/song.

That price is above and beyond anything Harmonix/MTV has ever charged for add-ons. Even if one ignores the fact that buying an entire album usually gets one a lower cost per song, the typical Rock Band DLC runs you $2/track. It doesn’t sound like much more — in truth, I’d still pay $2.35 per song in order to pick up a few favorites from the promised tracklist. I don’t have that option, however — the songs are sold as a package only. If I want to play my one favorite, I’m buying the other 17 songs whether I want them or not. And I wouldn’t hold my breath for these songs to appear individually on the Rock Band Music Store; given Harmonix/MTV’s firm stance on the Rock Band 1 songs, I think it’s safe to say they’re not going to undermine sales of the new Track Pack by offering a more attractive, customizable option.

Still, let’s assume that money is no object for you — perhaps you’d pay well over $100 to enjoy more AC/DC on Rock Band; a fair point. Still, I hope for your sake that means you’ve got an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, because otherwise, this is still going to be a pain for you. PS2 owners know they have no other option, since their system can’t support any meaningful DLC solution, but Wii owners had just been given a reprieve: Only yesterday, Harmonix/MTV confirmed that the upcoming Wii release of Rock Band 2 would support DLC via SD card storage or the console’s (meager) memory. Finally, a new level of functionality for Wii players; no more disc swapping and starting up a new game to play new tracks, right? Sorry, nope — the song export functionality is only listed for PS3 and 360. There’ll be no dropping T.N.T. into your custom setlist, my friends. Enjoy!

Oh, and speaking to those of you for whom money is a concern: You may be hoping to utilize yesterday’s suggested solution for attaining the new tracks in the same way you can attain the RB1 library, namely, borrowing the disc from a friend long enough to export the songs and then never using it again. Not this time, folks; don’t count on it. The press release puts it thusly:

All tracks from the AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack will also be available for play in Rock Band and Rock Band 2 by entering a special export authentication code for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system versions.

If Harmonix/MTV know their business — and let’s face it, they probably do — that export code is going to be unique. You know that code you got with Rock Band 2 for the eventual download of 20 free songs? The one printed on the back of your manual, that’s unique to your copy of the game, and is going to become invalid after you use it? Yeah — we’re guessing you can expect something like that for AC/DC Live. So, no, there’s no way around it; it’s their way or the highway (to hell). Prepare to part with $40.

Rock Band, you were doing so well. Back when I wrote a similar diatribe concerning the Guitar Hero spinoffs, I lambasted Activision for undermining their own DLC promises with these forced retail packages. I didn’t like it then, and despite the song export option — which, let’s face it, you would be crucified for not including at this point — I don’t like it now. I’ll reserve judgement until I see what truly comes with the $40 purchase, but for now, I’m quite disappointed in you.

Related posts

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• Rock Band Export Method and List Confirmed, Goes Live Today
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1.) Own a PS3.

2.) Do not own an Xbox 360 and/or powerful gaming PC.

That’s it.

Activision has informed PSU that due to increased server and connectivity data — whatever that means — the multiplayer beta for Call of Duty: World at War will only take place on Xbox 360 and PC.

Since the Call of Duty series has a history of shafting PS3 owners, some will no doubt be outraged by this latest development… but as PSU points out, CoD4’s public multiplayer beta was an Xbox 360 exclusive as well, and the PS3 version of CoD4 turned out just fine, right?

Beta testing is a responsiblity, not a privilege, and if Activision chooses to levy that responsiblity only on 360 and PC owners, should PS3 fans really call foul?

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Spotted at Kotaku, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been trading jabs with Warner Music Group’s Edgar Bronfman, Jr., and in an interview yesterday with the Wall Street Journal, Kotick delivered this retort:

When you look at the impact [Guitar Hero] can have on an Aerosmith, Van Halen or Metallica, it’s really significant… so much so that you sort of question whether or not, in the case of those kinds of products, you should be paying any money at all and whether it should be the reverse.

The point is often made that appearing in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game can really drive music sales, especially for lesser-known artists, so Kotick’s point about the value his games are bringing to the artists is well-taken. Of course, then he goes one step too far:

The bulk of our consumers will tell you they’re not purchasing the products based on the songs that are included. They’re purchasing based on how fun the songs are to play when they’re playing them.

Yyyyyyeah, that’s not true. If that were the case, Bobby, we’d all be playing Guitar Freaks right now, which beat both Guitar Hero and Rock Band to the punch by years. The basic mechanical experience of Guitar Freaks (number of buttons and UI choices aside) is identical to its successors, but we all started playing Guitar Hero because it used familiar, classic, American music. Let’s set aside the hypothetical argument about whether a Guitar Hero game that contained only unknown, unlicensed music would sell well (pro tip: it wouldn’t). We can point, instead, to this simple fact: Every Guitar Hero or Rock Band title, in its on-disc library, contains at least one song that one particular gamer does not care for. The rest of the tracklist usually more than makes up for it, but you know it’s in there. How many times, after beating the song once in order to progress through the game, did you go back and play it? Zero? But wasn’t it fun to play? Oh, you didn’t have fun because you couldn’t get into the music?

It’s like this, Mr. Kotick: Songs in these games are fun to play, because we are playing along to music that we like. You can test this for yourself when World Tour comes out, and users are allowed to create and submit their own songs. The ones that people are going to bother to play will be the ones that sound good; you’re not going to get any comments to the effect of “Wow, this song sounds like an epileptic baboon is mashing notes at random, but man, the finger patterns are awesome.”

You need the labels’ artists just as badly as they crave the increased fame that appearing in your games will bring. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Be careful not to over-posture.

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• No More Guitar Heroes
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• The Replay Value of History

First of all, what can a gamer afford these days? According to the ESA’s “Industry Facts,” the average gamer is around 35 years old, and the average game purchaser is roughly 40. Obviously, we’re all beautiful and unique snowflakes with our own beautiful and terrifying financial situations, but let’s work with that average for the purposes of this comparison.

According to the US Census Bureau, the median household income in 2007 was $50,233, with individuals pulling down $26,412. When examining just the affluent 35-to-44 age bracket, though, those numbers become $62,124 and $24,061, respectively. (Apparently there’s some shacking up going on.)

Depending on who you ask, these “average” gamers are going to spend a fair chunk of that income on their virtual vices. A study published by GameStrata earlier this year suggested that over a 30-year lifetime of gaming, the average gamer would drop $30,500 on games and systems, working out to about $1,000 a year. This seems to match up with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which pegged our 2006 entertainment expenditures for the 35-44 bracket at just under $3,000 — with $1,052 going to “Audio and visual equipment and services.” This section includes “video game hardware and video game cartridges.” We’ll be charitable and assume that also includes games which come on the vastly inferior DVD and Blu-Ray formats. Maybe you’re spending that much on DS games, I don’t know.

To sum up, the average gamer is going to spend $1,000 on games in any given year. How much of that is left to cover the busy holiday season? Let’s take a look back at the major releases so far in 2008. Did you buy Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Grand Theft Auto IV? Burnout Paradise? Metal Gear Solid 4? Soulcalibur IV? Boom Blox? Mario Kart Wii? Rock Band 2? Devil May Cry 4? LEGO Indiana Jones? Star Wars: The Force Unleashed? Mercenaries 2? Rainbow 6: Vegas 2? Spore? Madden ‘09? These big-name titles were all released in 2008, and given the massive sales enjoyed by all of the above, there’s a good chance the “average” gamer picked up quite a few of them. Even if you only picked up half the titles on that list, you’re looking at a $400 price tag, and we haven’t even picked out any of the more popular niche titles. How much software did you purchase in the last 8 months?

There’s the distinct possibility you picked up some hardware this year, too. Wii Fit dropped in 2008, for starters — have you got a Balance Board? Was this the year you filled out your Rock Band instrument collection? Did you upgrade your PC, pick up an extra controller, or even buy a new console? I hope you were already fixed for hardware, because otherwise you probably spent another $200-400.

2008 was also a hell of a year for digital download purchases. Have you played the first episode of Penny Arcade Adventures? How about SBCG4AP? Did you buy the new PSN Ratchet & Clank? Castle Crashers? Geometry Wars? PixelJunk Eden? Braid? Lord help you if you bought Rock Band DLC on a regular basis — or if you happened to get a subscription to Age of Conan or Warhammer Online, which also both launched this year. How much do you really spend in a month on “budget” purchases? $20? $50? $100? Again, buying even half of those standalone titles means you spent another $50, and if you’re spending another $5-10 a month on game expansions or episodic content, and $15 a month on an MMO subscription, even just a few months’ worth is another $100.

It’s been an expensive year for gamers, I guess is what I’m saying. By these (highly unscientific) figures, if you buy an average amount as an average gamer, by now you’ve gone through some $700-800 in disposable income. Well, you’re in the home stretch now — let’s take a look at the prominent fall/holiday releases that have been announced just this week:

• Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway - Sep 23 - $60
• Wii Music - Oct 20 - $50
• LittleBigPlanet - Oct 21 - $60
• Mirror’s Edge - Nov 11 - $60
• Prince of Persia - Dec 2 - $60

And, again, those are just the games whose release dates we found out this week, costing $290 by themselves. Let’s not forget about the rest, including big titles such as:

• LEGO Batman - Sep 23 - $50
• Far Cry 2 - Oct 21 - $50 (assuming your PC can run it)
• Fable II - Oct 21 - $60
• Guitar Hero: World Tour - Oct 26 - $60 (assuming you already have instruments)
• Fallout 3 - Oct 28 - $60
• Resistance 2 - Nov 4 - $60
• Gears of War 2 - Nov 7 - $60
• Need for Speed: Undercover - Nov 18 - $60
• Left 4 Dead - Nov 18 - Price unannounced, probably $40-60 depending on PC or console

Combined with the above list of 5, that’s a whopping $790 in software. Once again, if you pick up just half of these major releases, you’re looking at another $400.

And that’s just the beginning — we don’t know your tastes; you may well want to pick up Banjo-Kazooie, or the DS re-release of Chrono Trigger, or Animal Crossing, all of which are also coming out this year.

Analysts always say the gaming industry is recession-proof, of course, so maybe we can afford these things. Perhaps we’ll do it by cutting back on our other entertainment costs — the BLS suggests we’re spending $839 annually on “fees and admissions,” and another $497 on “pets, toys, hobbies, and playground equipment.” Sorry, Fluffy, but you’re costing me a new Xbox 360 Elite and a year of LIVE.

We’d like to close this observation with a little poll. Do us a favor: Take a quick glance through your software library, and give us a tally of how many games you bought this year. If you can, try to remember any games you sold back as used, and peek through your DLC lists as well. What’s your total damage for 2008? Will you be making it in under the $1,000 mark?

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The idea of achieving something within a video game is nothing new, nor is the idea of publicizing that achievement. The high score has been around for as long as games have had points, and once games began to evolve into structured experiences with linear objectives, gamers have been able to boast about completing said tasks. It was not uncommon to hear a boast about completing Super Mario Bros. without using warp zones, or collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds in Sonic the Hedgehog. For as long as there have been obstacles to overcome, gamers have been crowing — privately and publicly — about their in-game exploits.

As gaming grew more popular and the playing field began to fill with more capable competitors, the bragging increased as well, both in form and function. When it became clear to competitive players that simply beating a game was no longer enough to differentiate themselves, the gamers themselves began to define new, harder objectives and qualifying criteria, leading to the advent of hyper-competitive pursuits like speedrunning, or completing epic-length games without continuing, and so on. As a result, as the boasts grew more and more impressive and outlandish, they were matched by rising skepticism from one’s fellow gamers. Anybody could claim they had beaten the second quest in Zelda, but such claims were soon rebuffed with demands for proof. Soon, gamers were taking photos of their TV screens to verify high scores or crucial in-game moments. Game creators and media began to come on board with this new trend of in-game excellence, offering prizes for especially notable achievements: Nintendo Power awarded readers with T-shirts and stickers for high score photos, while arcade titles like S.T.U.N. Runner promised a free t-shirt for players good enough to complete the final level.

The earliest example of creator-sponsored, standardized achievements, in fact, seems to predate all of these examples: As far back as the early 1980s, Activision undertook a marketing/community initiative for their library of Atari, Colecovision, and Intellivision titles. For every title Activision published at the time, the company invited players to mail in photographs when they completed certain pre-defined objectives, at which point they would receive a sew-on patch commemorating their achievement. Some objectives were score-based, while others involved playing a level to completion, but each achievement was linked to a distinct and unique patch design, and an enterprising and skilled gamer could theoretically collect the full set. These patches appear to be the first appearance of game achievements as we know them today: abstract, collectible representations of in-game merit, whose presence is separate from the gameplay yet intertwined with the experience as an extra motivator and/or novelty. What’s more, Activision had the prescience to enact this new form of meta-gaming — the collection and sharing of achievements — back during a time when home video gaming was still very much in its infancy, roughly 20 years before the appearance of Xbox LIVE.

Soon afterwards, the arrival of online leaderboards and profiles would allow gamers to confirm their expertise to a global community, so that their achievements could be known and respected by gamers who might be too far away to see their T-shirts. Today, achievements range from the nebulous Gamerscores of Xbox LIVE, to excited speculation about how to unlock Team Fortress 2 weapons, to bragging rights, beta-testing privileges, and even real-world prizes on Kongregate. Developers are coming up with new and exciting ways to implement achievements into their games every day, which in turn draws more and more players into the camp of achievement-obsessed “completionist” gamers.

We’ve all seen the effects at work. Achievements, to a gamer who enjoys, appreciates, or obsesses over them, can turn a good game experience into a great one — or even make a bad experience tolerable enough to warrant further play time. But why is this true? Pursuing a high score or seeing a linear game to completion are fun all by themselves; why is the experience enhanced when a little flag pops up to tell us we’ve unlocked an officially-recognized achievement? To delve deeper into this phenomenon, we spoke with Rene Weber and Patrick Shaw of Michigan State University.

Rene Weber, a current professor at MSU and UC Santa Barbara, is a frequently invited reviewer for academic papers on video games. A Ph.D. in psychology and an M.D. in cognitive neuroscience, Weber is currently researching the cognitive and emotional effects of new technology media. His recent work has involved a specific focus on video games, having co-written such papers as “Character Attachment in Role-playing Video Games,” as well as a highly-read article entitled “Does Playing Violent Video Games Induce Aggression? Empirical Evidence of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.” Weber co-authored a paper with Patrick Shaw, who holds a master’s in telecommunication from MSU, and is a lead designer at Reactor Zero, a game development studio currently working on projects for the PS3 and simulations for the U.S. Military. Together, Weber and Shaw composed a paper entitled “Player Types and Game Qualities: A Model to Predict Video Game Playing.”

The study utilizes Social Cognitive Theory to propose a predictive model of player types and their primary motivations for play. To better understand which motivations arose from game achievements, we asked Weber and Shaw about the “completionist” gamer — the archetypal player who relentlessly seeks out every last task and objective within a game. We all know these gamers, or in some cases, are these gamers. We asked how common the “completionist” gamer was, in relation to the gaming populace as a whole, to which Shaw replies:

The frequency of the “completionist” gamer is unknown, especially given the diversity of potential motivations. When working with archetypes, however, it’s important to remember that no one is exclusively one archetype or another. Rather, as individuals, we all fall into multiple archetypes to differing degrees.

The same explanation is offered by the Bartle Test, a questionnaire based on the works of Richard Bartle, who defined a quartet of player types as early as 1990. Weber and Shaw also refer to Bartle within their study, and it does not seem coincidental that one of the Bartle archetypes is the “achiever.” Still, for those who are primarily or secondarily an achiever or completionist, what is it that makes them so? Why do we crave these unlockable treats? Weber and Shaw suggest several scenarios, offering possible explanations for a wide range of gamers:

• Status with others: Completing the game to show off their skills and knowledge to their peers.

This would seem to be the most traditional game motivation in the book, mirroring the age-old quest for high scores and bragging rights. “For players driven by social motivations, achievements are a public display of their fame or infamy,” writes Shaw, reminding us that Bartle’s “Killer” archetype can also hunger for achievements if they reflect a measure of their game dominance.

• Status with oneself: Completing the game as a measure of personal skill.

Gamers have been striving for those 100% scores, after all, since before achievements were standardized or shared. For these gamers, writes Shaw, achievements provide “a sense of mastery over the game or a general feeling of completeness or closure.” Which, in turn, leads to…

• Closure: Some players want to complete the game for a sense of closure (i.e. there is nothing more for the game to offer).

For some gamers, this can be a value proposition: Reaching a game’s 100% completion point can allow them to truly know they have gotten their money’s worth. For others, including Shaw, it can speak to Bartle’s “Explorer” archetype. When asked about his own completionist tendencies, Shaw replied, “Depends on the game and my mood. I tend towards amassing goals and achievements when my life is more relaxed. I do so for a personal sense of accomplishment and a feeling that I’ve completely explored the game’s design space. However, when I am more busy, I tend to focus on only finishing the game and ignore my ‘completionist’ tendencies.”

What of open-ended games, which cannot be 100% completed? Weber and Shaw postulate that beyond any included pre-defined achievements, completionists are on their own for games like Geometry Wars or Tetris:

Based on personal experience, completionists need goals to achieve and do not enjoy open-ended game experiences. The only way that a completionist may enjoy such an experience is if they construct their own goals (i.e. maintain the top score on high score list).

It’s hardly surprising, then, to see game designers adding achievements to no-ending titles like Geometry Wars, or MMORPGs like WoW, or sandbox titles like Spore.

• Monetary: The collection of awards or game items mirrors one’s real world desires for material acquisition.

Apart from the general capitalist/consumer drive to “get more stuff,” this may also tie in to the aforementioned value proposition: in the absence of the ability to afford more games, a gamer may instead work to acquire more rewards from the games he already owns.

• Social: The process of completion may require social interaction.

Illustrating that even Bartle’s “Socializer” archetype may demonstrate completionist tendencies, Weber and Shaw remind us that when a difficult achievement is obtained, it can often make for a perfect anecdote with which to relate to our gaming peers. Shaw points out an enthusiastic discussion can begin with a simple “Hey, how did your Pikachu get so powerful?” In this way, social gamers can compare their achievements and the tales of valor involved in reaching them, relating to each other as only fellow gamers can.

• Escapist: Completing well-defined game goals compensates for stagnation and/or uncertainty in the real world.

One could say the same thing about gaming in general, of course, but Weber and Shaw’s point is well-taken. For a gamer who may be going through a rough patch, it can be of some comfort to feel that they have accomplished something impressive.

Ask a gamer who enjoys achievements why he enjoys them, and chances are good he will point to one or all of the above motivations for his obsession. What’s more, game developers are starting to make better and better use of these desires in their players, which has seen some truly novel design choices in recent efforts.

Of the examples that rush immediately to mind, the first involves the addition of achievements to Valve’s Team Fortress 2. When TF2 first saw release as part of The Orange Box, the inclusion of achievements could be seen as the simple result of the game’s release on the Xbox 360, which requires that every game in its library utilize achievements. Valve demonstrated exceptional enthusiasm for the process, however, going so far as to include an unprecedented 99 achievements across the collection, including several truly inventive entries which required gamers to play the game in unconventional ways in order to unlock them — going through certain levels using only the physics engine-friendly gravity gun, or carrying a useless and unwieldy garden gnome through an entire game. From there, however, Valve undertook further steps to enhance the game experience through achievements.

Over the course of the next year, Valve would provide a series of updates to TF2, adding game content which would include new weapons for a few of the in-game characters. In order to obtain these weapons, however, players would have to complete a series of new achievements, specific to the class whose weapon they wished to unlock. By placing the desirable new content behind achievements, and by keeping the achievements varied and creative, Valve accomplished a unique feat of game design: the ability to require players to mix up their styles of play. Players who might not have even glanced at the updated classes before now had reason to try them out, thanks to the promise of new content — while veteran and new players alike now had ample reason to play in different, experimental ways. By composing a list of achievements requiring the use of different weapons and centering on specific events, players would find themselves experimenting with the underused melee weapons, or using dispensers for support, or even attempting to execute some of the Medic’s offensive moves. Not everyone would enjoy these new styles of play, nor stick with them once the achievements were obtained, but at least everybody would be trying something new; if nothing else, the playerbase would come away from the experiment with a greater understanding of the game and a fuller experience.

In Shaw’s words, achievements represent “an extra layer of interest and value to the player,” giving players a reason unto themselves to replay games and extend the life of a title. What Valve accomplished, by contrast, was something new: They added content which, by itself, would extend the life of their game, but required experimental play in order to reach them, thus compounding the effective value addition.

Another example of achievements which serve an exciting new function can be witnessed on Kongregate, a game community site revolving around casual and experimental flash games. Kongregate’s features are many, but what’s truly noteworthy is its implementation of achievements across a series of games with diverse, independent developers, and placing said achievements in an unlikely — yet wonderfully supportive — space.

Weber and Shaw have given us several reasons why achievements can function as their own reward to the right kind of gamer. What Kongregate is doing, therefore, by adding them to small, independent games which appear on their site, is delivering an instant audience to developers who might not otherwise see their games enjoying much exposure. Simply by adding a few achievements to one or two games every week, Kongregate connects a large section of its userbase — the achievement-hungry completionists — with clever and new games in need of players. Kongregate has dabbled with material rewards in the past, as well, but the achievements mostly stand as their own reward. Kongregate dangles this carrot in front of new submissions on a regular basis, thus calling out a choice selection of attention-deserving games which, on today’s crowded internet, might otherwise never be noticed.

In this way, Kongregate’s use of achievements adds value to both sides: Players are effortlessly directed towards a regular selection of new game content, and developers receive the invaluable notoriety and feedback they need.

As rich a history as achievements have, and as fascinating a potential they may someday reach, Weber and Shaw caution that “achievements by themselves cannot make up for a poor game or service.” Likewise, even an enjoyable game can include some extremely poor achievements. Still, developers would be wise to continue to explore achievements as an integral part of game design for completionists and casual players alike; gamers are merely the latest in a long line of subcultures which prize the ability to share their exploits with the world. As Napoleon famously said with regards to the ceremonial medals his soldiers fought alarmingly hard to earn: “With a handful of ribbons I can conquer all of Europe.” With gaming having finally arrived as a globally popular industry, the developer who spreads his ribbons wisely may yet conquer the world.

And earn 100 Gamerscore for doing so.

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