<IT WORLD> Bang, bang, buck, buck
By Martin J Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - One of the most popular video games in recent years has
been the first-person shooter "Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare". Multiple combat
missions and scenarios can be played out across northern Africa, the Middle
East and Eastern Europe, with the player taking on the role of a United States
or British forces soldier. The title from Activision took the "war on terror"
into the living room and gamers loved it.
The sequel, released last week, has also caused a bit of a stir but for
entirely different reasons. The game runs on the same addictive and realistic
combat platform and involves a number of rogue states and plenty of gratuitous
violence. But it is not popular with the Russian government, which banned sales
of the game in the country and ordered a recall of the console version, over a
scene in which the players participate in a terrorist attack
at a Moscow airport.
The ban prompted designers at Infinity Ward, which created the game for
Activision, to release an official patch that removes the offending scene in
its entirety. The PC version of "Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 2" is now
available in Russia - minus the airport scene. Sales elsewhere have not been
adversely affected and, if anything, have been boosted by the censorship.
Jesse Stern, who helped to write the game's script, told gaming website GamePro
that the Moscow airport scene was a risk that the developers had to take -
"People have really strong reactions to the airport scene and it's been
fascinating because we all wanted to make it something that would be upsetting,
disturbing, but also something people relate to.
"As terrifying as it is, you want to know. And there's a part of you that wants
to know what it's like to be there because this is a human experience. Many of
the testers would get angry or sad or disgusted and wonder what was going on
when they first experienced the scene. After a few moments they would remember
that they were playing a video game and let go. It is these emotional reactions
that make certain titles so successful. The next level would be to take it to
full immersion or virtual reality, but at the moment this technology is only
available in the movies and sci-fi novels."
In its first 24 hours, the game sold a 4.7 million copies, and within five days
it had made US$550 million in sales. With these impressive figures the epic
shooter has already broken the record set by "Grand Theft Auto IV" last year
and is on its way to blasting itself into entertainment history.
Industry
Microsoft used its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week
to announce the next iteration of its web browser, Internet Explorer. Company
spokesman Steven Sinofsky took to the stage and touted a few of the new
features that are to be expected with IE9.
Microsoft appears to have finally realized that it has been trounced in the
browser speed department by rivals Mozilla, with Firefox, and Google's Chrome.
JavaScript rendering performance is one key area where IE9 will make up ground,
though competing browsers are likely to be streets ahead by the time it is
released.
Web standards and compliance is another area where earlier versions of Internet
Explorer failed miserably, if Microsoft finally adopts an open source standard
such as Webkit then web developers across the world can spend more time
building decent websites instead of struggling to get them to work in IE. A
rapidly diminishing market share could also accelerate this process and make it
inevitable for the software giant, the result being a better web experience for
all.
Other Microsoft announcements included the latest developments on Office 2010,
Visual Studio 2010 and its web server applications, Silverlight 4 and the
company's aspirations in the realm of cloud computing.
Security
Within a month of its release Microsoft have been busy producing patches and
security bulletins to protect its flagship product, Windows 7. A zero-day
exploit was announced last week - this attacks a flaw in the server message
block (SMB), a protocol that forms the backbone of Windows file sharing. The
result when triggered is a crashed Windows, something that most Windows users
are probably used to.
For the majority of consumers, the flaw is nothing to lose sleep over as it
cannot allow remote access and there have been very few reported attacks in the
wild. Microsoft is investigating the problem and will release a security update
with its next "patch Tuesday" in December. The company advises that TCP ports
139 and 445 should be blocked by firewalls on corporate networks as part of
standard security practice to protect them from the threat.
Internet
In another effort to put the rest of the world out of business, Google is
offering free tools to encourage citizen journalism via its video-sharing
website YouTube. This of course will give the site a great deal more free
content, give Google more advertising space, and antagonize all of those other
publications involved in such work for a living.
According to Google, the tools launched this week, dubbed YouTube Direct, are
targeted towards media interested in amateur video footage of disasters,
protests or other newsworthy events. The application will allow news
organizations to solicit and show videos on their own websites and even contact
YouTube users for more details if required.
A number of news companies such as CNN and the BBC already employ such systems,
but Google has a near monopoly with the world's largest video website, which
receives 20 hours of video per minute. The system will also encourage anyone
with a video camera or mobile phone to document events or seek out content for
publication. The result could well be more YouTube users, smaller newsrooms,
and larger profits for the search company.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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Industry
