Martini Chat: These Companies Are Playing Games

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from the Martini Chat, a hour-long online radio show and chat featuring TheStreet.com columnist Chris Edmonds and staff reporter Eric Gillin. If you would like to participate, please sign on at TheStreet.com every Thursday just before 5 p.m. For the full transcript, click here.

Eric Gillin: With the vast improvement in video game technology in the last several years, you can do virtually anything in the privacy of your own home -- from playing golf to flying a plane.

And the technology is getting even better. What exactly does the video game generation mean for our society and culture?

Here to talk about the video game generation and the cultural implications is Mr. Steven Poole, the author of Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. In addition to the book, which looks at not only why we play the things we play but also where that's leading us, Poole has written for the Guardian, the Independent, and the Times Literary Supplement .

Our first international guest, Mr. Poole joins us from Great Britain. Mr. Poole, welcome to TheStreet.com's Martini Chat. I understand it's 9 o'clock at night there. What messages do you bring from the future?

.

Steven Poole: I can tell you it's very cold and rainy in London. Actually, it'll be 10 o'clock - British summertime 'n all. I've just seen the future, and it works. Last week I was in Tokyo speaking with executives from Sony and Sega, and wandering around Akihabara, Tokyo's "electric town," where futuristic gadgets are piled high. People have been talking about the Japanese economic depression and testing times for the videogame industry, but the Tokyo Game Show brought in 120,000 visitors over the previous weekend and there's a lot of exciting stuff out there. What I really want is a large-screen super-thin TV. They had tons of them in Akihabara and I don't know what the exact technology is. I don't read kanji, unfortunately. It's not LCD, and it's too bright to be plasma. The things are only six inches deep. Amazing.

Eric Gillin: See anything good?

Steven Poole: They have third generation mobile phones now. Broadband Internet connections. Widescreen TVs about 6 inches deep.

Eric Gillin: In your book, Trigger Happy, you debunk the notion of media convergence - that video games will eventually turn into movies and vice versa. Instead, you seem to embrace media divergence - that video games will not only remain separate from movies, but that at some point will surpass movies in terms of popularity. A year later, do you still hold that view?

Steven Poole: I never actually said that videogames will necessarily surpass films in terms of "popularity." Just that they already surpass them in terms of initial gross revenues, and are competitive in a creative as well as financial sense. I certainly agree that the forms are divergent, and that each does something else the other can't.

Eric Gillin: I'm sure you've been following the slate of videogame machines that are soon to hit the market. The PlayStation 2 has already been released by Sony, with Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox due to hit the shelves in the next few weeks. If video games will surpass movies in popularity, these systems will most likely be the ones to push that trend further along. What do you make of the three systems?

Steven Poole: Well, the PS2 has had a slow start, but there are some very exciting games coming out for it in the next few months. Particularly Rez -- a William Gibson-esque hypnotic shooter and Burnout - a racing game that requires you to drive at suicidal speed through dense civilian traffic. The Gamecube also has some very nice stuff. Rogue Leader, a hyper-smooth Star Wars shooter, and Shigeru Miyamoto's new game Pikmin spring to mind. It's also a very cute machine. Much smaller in the flesh, as it were, than you'd expect. And its controller is probably the best game controller ever engineered.

The Xbox? It's big. It's expensive. It has raw power, but at the moment it doesn't look like it has much refinement. There's nothing on it that I'm really excited about except for Jet Set Radio Future, which is a Sega game.

There's some games coming out. "Res" -- a shooting game. A racing game called "Burn Out" where you're racing around a city with civilians to avoid. GameCube - everyone knows Nintendo makes the best games. It also has some more mainstream games. Rogue Leader -- a Star Wars game.

There's a skating game that looks amazing. But that's Sega and will probably come to PS2 within 8-12 months.

Exclusivity won't last very long so the game developers will be hedging their bets.

Eric Gillin: You've got $300. Ooops. Sorry. You've got 210 Pounds. What video game do you buy?

Well, if I've only got 210 pounds, I won't be able to afford an Xbox, since that'll be 299 pounds over here. The Gamecube is very attractive, and has some wonderful games, and personally I'll definitely be getting one. But if I could only choose one system I couldn't help getting a PS2. In the United Kingdom, it's only 199 pounds and it's a pretty good DVD player as well. It has, and will continue to have, the widest selection of games. And since it's already been out a year, it's kind of become the de facto standard for next-gen gaming.

Eric Gillin:Gillin: People have been raising the argument that with gaming systems so powerful, the idea that something is "more advanced" than another system becomes a moot point. I suppose the argument is that the fundamental difference between the PS2 and Xbox is pretty negligible once the game is put in the system. Which is it? What's more important -- the system or the games?

Steve Poole: If I were a gamer and wanted the widest range of games AND a DVD, I'd go for PS2. I think there is a real danger. MS doesn't have a track record in making hardware. They haven't really made this themselves. They're getting an Intel chip and putting it in a plastic container. The others have the miniature experience.

There was a MS stand at the Tokyo show. Bill Gates was there himself. Saw some people playing the XBox. They said the game was pretty and nice, but they didn't have the room in their apartments. Japanese people don't have big apartments. The machine is big in every direction. Maybe 50% taller than the PS2 and deeper. It's just a big thing. There's no subtlety to the design.

Eric Gillin: Like a VCR from 1982.

Steve Poole: Completely. I think it's a problem.

Eric Gillin: Do you think that the utter dislike for Bill Gates and Microsoft within the world of hard-core gamers - the kids who send away to Japan for early release copies of games and fight over the black boxes needed to develop games of their own - will ultimately backfire? Do you think people will blacklist the Xbox simply because of its lineage?

Steve Poole: People have the idea that MS tends to get into markets late when they realize there's money to be made. There's something like a $500 million marketing budget for XBox.

Chris Edmonds: Mr. Poole, I'm interested in your analysis of video games on culture. I come from the ping-pong era so, I admit, I'm not terribly hip. Yet, it seems to me that video games are having a cultural impact on children. Is there a risk to the video game craze on socialization or should we simply dismiss it like the hysteria that followed the introduction of the television and, more recently, the personal computer?

Steve Poole: There's always hysteria. A slight fear about new technology. The stereotype of the alone adolescent playing video games is far from the truth now. People have 4 way games on consoles. There's online gaming now. People will make new opportunities to communicate with each other and meet new friends on the Internet.

Steve Poole: The Vatican talked about this last month -- particularly Pokemon. The Vatican bishops said that it taught the kids skills of negotiation and friendship that you win through negotiation and not violence.

Eric Gillin: Much of your book is spent examining why we play video games and what kinds of games we like most. If you look down the history of the video game, we've had every gimmick in the book - from light guns that you can zap targets with to steering wheels to electronic mats you can run on. What's next?

Steve Poole: People are beginning to do very interesting things with interface design. Last week in Tokyo, a Sony engineer was telling us about his new concept of "high-bandwidth human interface." A regular game controller lets you press buttons or move a stick, but you're not actually giving a lot of information to the game system.

In effect, the vocabulary of your "conversation" with the game is limited. But Sony is working on image-recognition systems, where you control a game with your whole body by placing yourself in front of a USB webcam.

It is also doing work on voice recognition. And at the Tokyo Game Show I saw a great game called Martial Beat, which is a kung-fu training game. You attach wrist and ankle sensors to your body and follow the punching and kicking routines on screen.

Videogame engineers are waking up to the fact that games will become more attractive to more people if they don't have to learn a strange mechanical interface, but can use their bodies and gestures more naturally. That's the future.

Eric Gillin: Wow. You can actually become the controller.

Eric Gillin: Mr. Poole, thanks for being with us. Our guest, Steven Poole. The book: is Trigger Happy: Video Games and the Entertainment Revolution. Steven joined us from London.

Steve Poole It's been a pleasure.