The New York Times has an interesting piece this morning about how actor Michael Hollick earned about $100,000 for playing GTA IV protagonist Niko Bellic. Had the actor done the role for almost any other medium than video games, he would have received very generous residuals and royalties off the title, which made $500 million in its first week. The piece basically explores how all the actors in GTA IV would be rolling in dough had the work not been in video games.

Of course, if the actor gets residuals, does the artist who "made" Niko get a cut? Although the actors provided voices, and apparently motion-capture, what about all the other people that worked on the creation of these characters? People aren't buying these games because of the actors, they're getting it because of the title and its associated gameplay. In time, this issue will probably come to a head (especially as the industry grows), but for now it comes off like actors whining while everyone else is getting a similarly bum deal. Maybe it's time the video game writers, artists and developers started complaining too? Union, union, union!

In a recent article about Imagination is the Only Escape, an under-development edutainment title about the Holocaust, the New York Times' headline writer apparently didn't read the story before slapping at the top: No Game About Nazis for Nintendo.

Turns out the actual quote from Nintendo was something far more inert: "At this time, there are no plans for this game to be released for any Nintendo platforms in North America." Which in industry speak simply means "wait and see."

GI.biz's follow up with Imagination's publisher, Alten8, reveals the game is in its "early stages" and wasn't blocked by Nintendo. A spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League even said the group welcomed the use of new technology to educate. Although this isn't our favorite NYT error about gaming in recent memory, not channeling FOX News when writing headlines is always a good start.

[Via GamePolitics]

Read -- NY Times: No game about Nazis for Nintendo
Read -- Alten8 disputes reports of Nintendo blocking DS release

The strange relationship between the video game industry and politics just got more complicated. Mike Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, spoke with the New York Times today about his intentions to start a political action committee (PAC) for making campaign contributions. The PAC -- which represents major publishers like Disney, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony -- was approved by the board last fall and will reportedly be ready to go in March.

Gallagher estimated the PAC would donate $50,000 to $100,000 to national candidates this year, a number which he labels as small, but a good start. He also talked about combining contribution efforts with the ESA initiative Video Game Voters Network. "If I can walk into the office of a member of Congress and tell them we have 20,000 voters in their state who are already signed up to write letters and act based on game-related issues that concern them, that's powerful," he said. You know what also helps? Money; good thing that's covered too. We're interested in seeing how game rhetoric on Capitol Hill changes, if at all, following the PAC initiative.

[Via Game Politics]

A little lesbianism goes a long way as the New York Times names Mass Effect its game of the year for 2007. The NYT bestowed Mass Effect with the honor for its "focus on character development, personal growth and moral tension, all fueled by a graphics system created to evoke emotional empathy." Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction was honored for being the shining star on the PS3 and BioShock was named the "best newcomer." There's also digs at Halo 3 and Super Mario Galaxy for being "unambitious representations of the state of the art."

Speaking of unambitious, for the second time in less than a month the New York Times copyeditors took a nap (albeit a minor one) on a video game-related story, which is slowly becoming inappropriate in covering an $18 billion-plus industry. There's no telling when reporter Seth Schiesel submitted his copy for this piece, but E3 2008 was already confirmed for the Los Angeles Convention Center last Tuesday, so the article's suggestion that "the solution for [E3] next year can be summed up in one word (or is that two?): Las Vegas" is just about 1,000 New York minutes behind the times.

Talk about all the news that's fit to copyedit. The New York Times has a hat-trick of errors in a recent technology piece discussing video game options. They manage to make it through the Wii spot on -- but then the real fun comes.

First the Old Gray Lady says Gran Turismo 5 is "a hyper-realistic, high-speed journey, [and] is one of the best sellers for [the] Sony console." One little problem, the game isn't out yet. Next up they say the PlayStation 3 is $299, which would be awesome and perhaps the Times has some incredibly privileged info about Sony's holiday strategy, but we're pretty sure the system is going to be starting at $399 for a while. Oh, but they're not done yet. Did you realize the PS3 and Xbox 360 are both powered by the Cell processor? This is being reported by the venerable New York-freakin'-Times, so it must be true, right?

[Thanks, Murph]

See, mom? Video games do encourage reading. The novel Halo: Contact Harvest, which was released October 30, has this week landed on The New York Times' Best Sellers list for Paperback Trade Fiction, just behind Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera and Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants.

Contact Harvest was written by Bungie's Joseph Staten and tells of the human race's first encounter with the Covenant. Next week's bestseller list has already been tabulated it seems, as the Paperback Trade Fiction list for November 25 places Contact Harvest in the number four slot, swapping places with Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.

Need to explain to grandma why this whole Manhunt 2 kerfuffle is ridiculous? Then go pick up (or send her the link if she's all modern) to today's New York Times article which gives a simple version of the Manhunt 2 saga for mass consumption. If you've been keeping up with all the Manhunt 2 coverage then you pretty much already know everything the New York Times article has to say. Wait, you haven't been keeping up with the controversy ... seriously? OK, ok, we'll make an even simpler version of the NYT piece.

Here we go: Although violence in games is focused on more, movie and television violence is worse. Child sodomy is fine in movies, testicles being ripped off with pliers is bad for video games. Manhunt 2 still retains 99% of its AO content -- a pesky 1% change makes it M. The controversy showed the ESRB has teeth and also helped market a game that probably would not have gotten attention otherwise. NYT basically says the game "will probably prove as luridly, fleetingly diverting as any slasher flick." Fin.

As the Xbox 360 gets ready to fulfill the purpose of its existence as a Halo delivery device to the masses, the New York Times takes the two most prominent things about the Xbox 360 and mixes it into one brew: Halo 3 and the Red Ring of Death. The NYT essentially gets a bunch of fanboys to talk about how the system fails on them, but all will be fine if they just get Halo 3.

Speaking of fanboys, did we mention Richard Mitchell at sister-site Xbox 360 Fanboy (X3F) is chronicling his repair experience following his visit by the RROD? Like we said before, we're not going to tell you about every RROD we have within a degree of separation from us because we'd be writing one every couple weeks -- but anecodtally, the number has gone up quickly recently. Despite the wait in the turnaround, at least the repairs are free now.

The NYT piece basically gives a mainstream audience the condensed version of the last few months. They still couldn't get an answer from Microsoft to what's actually wrong with the system. One of the more interesting parts of the piece is they speak with Richard Doherty, an analyst for Envisionneering Group, a technology assessment and market research firm who says consumers (not fanboys) are getting frustrated with the system's reliability and their waning patience and stories is turning off potential Xbox 360 buyers. He also says the situation "is going to get worse before it gets better."

Today's New York Times examines the success of World of Warcraft from a global perspective, concluding that "World of Warcraft has become the first truly global video-game hit since Pac-Man in the early 1980's."

In addition to the new angle, this piece provides a nice benchmark for mainstream media coverage of MMOGs. Just a few years ago, media were wont to "report" on the gameplay habits of Everquest and Asheron's Call players with a sensational "watch these people ruin their lives playing games!" tone that just wasn't fair. Often, introversion, depression, and suicidal tendencies were ascribed to people who choose to play games for hours at a time. The Times's coverage is much more balanced, finally allowing an eloquent gamer (Jason Pinsky) the opportunity to defend his hobby:

"I play this game six nights a week from 8 p.m. to midnight.... most people watch TV at least that much, and television is a totally mindless experience."

Word.

[Update 1: fixed a clumsy headline and formatting in body of post.]

Vista promises to give PC gamers an experience that's more Xbox than XP but, as the New York Times' Seth Schiesel discovered, they've got a ways to go before delivering on that goal. His umbrage: widescreen gaming. Hardcore PC gamers -- a profligate breed whose annual technology budget amounts to more than the last 3 generations of consoles combined -- and their requisite widescreen gaming displays are an important audience for Microsoft's latest OS upgrade. So what's the trouble? Schiesel explains:

"Beta Vista simply does not run games properly on many of the big monitors that Microsoft and media companies are encouraging consumers to buy. I have no doubt that Microsoft will come up with a solution before Vista is released. But it is such a glaring problem, and one that goes so directly to the heart of the gaming experience, that if any halfway serious gamers asked me right now if they should install the beta Vista on their main PC's, I would say no."

Well, if we're only gonna be talking about beta software having bugs, then count us out. That's why it's not out yet! Granted, Vista probably should have been out now a couple times over, but this is another reason why it isn't. Schiesel focuses his criticism with, "But this video-display issue raises a question about how well the company really understands the hardcore players who will always be the tastemakers and most faithful customers in PC gaming."

Good question. I use my 24" Dell monitor to play my 360 in glorious, widescreen HD. PC games ... eh, notsomuch. Any gamer with a widescreen monitor has spent more than their fair share of time traversing widescreengamingforum.com fiddling with arcane settings in the attempt to duplicate the seamless experience we've grown to expect from consoles. Microsoft is going to need more than a fancy new operating system to make all games widescreen compliant, they're also going to need the full support of an increasingly diverse development community.

[Via VGM Watch]

New York Times reporter Virginia Heffernan writes about her experience in a Shinjuku "media immersion pod," where an unlimited, nine-hour supply of comics, television programming, porn, movies, and (of course) video games are available for just $10.

We were typing really fast, so we'll run that by you again, more slowly: ALL YOU CAN EAT MEDIA BUFFET: $10! Wow. And to think we paid $100 per night during our TGS visit for a hotel that had none of those amenities. (The pods actually look like office cubicles, not futuristic techno-wombs like the photo at right, just to be clear.)

Too bad an establishment like this would never survive in NYC. Within a week of opening, nutjobs, drug addicts, drunkards, and thieves would completely wreck the place. We're looking forward to experiencing some of this media bliss at this year's Tokyo Games Show, where readers can expect blog posts to be filed from such a pod, if they'll admit Gaijin.

[Image credit: www.technovelgy.com]

[Update 1: made it clear that the photograph that accompanies this post is not a picture of the pods the NYT writes about.]

MMO platform startup Multiverse recently announced that movie-makers James Cameron and Jon Landau have joined its board of directors, and this has some interesting implications for the future of MMOs and other entertainment media. While movie tie-in games are ten a penny, and franchised MMOs lurk around every corner, Cameron has a more ambitious project up his sleeve.

The plan? Before releasing an upcoming sci-fi flick, Cameron intends to create a tie-in MMO that will get players hooked on the film's setting--think advergame, franchise and viral promotion rolled into one. Similarly, Multiverse is in talks with a TV network to create a related MMO that will help viewers get closer to their favourite characters.

The numbers look appealing; Multiverse's low-cost approach means that franchises and developers who have been shying away from the MMO bandwagon can jump without sacrificing millions of dollars on an experiment. However, this could have its downsides--we may end up seeing an endless parade of cookie-cutter MMOs that equate IP with instant revenue without much thought for gameplay or originality.

Hopefully this won't happen; it's up to Multiverse, and Cameron's novel tie-in, to set the scene for the future. Their MMOs will be competing with standalone franchised products, and it will be a battle for player revenue well worth witnessing. However, the big question is: when will Uwe Boll get wind of this?