Okay, so there is a rift in the world economy and yes this is affecting us all at some level. It is true that there have been other sour economic times in recent years and from a pure historical standpoint those past economic crunches have had little to no affect on gaming.

So I ask you how does or will this current economic conditions affect your gaming habits? Do you plan to play more, less or about the same? Are there any concessions you intend to make to your gaming habits?

Personally I have made some changes to my lifestyle. I don’t drive as much as in the past and have changed to a vegetarian diet. But my gaming habits if anything have grown during these troubling times.

IMO MMO’s are the best entertainment value going. I can lose myself for hours in my fav fantasy land where the cost of food and transportation are only relative to the game economy and regulated by the amount of time I want to invest in grinding. If I spend more time in game I can help to lower the virtual economy by actually earning and grinding for goods and trade items.

In the real world my personal contributions have little to no affect on the “real” economy and I am a mere pawn in the game of life; in the world of my MMO I can become self-reliant and sustainable.

If I decide to see a movie, I have to spend time and money getting there, pay the inflated cost of tickets and concessions ($7 for popcorn!?) and then make the trip back home. I’m not even guaranteed a good movie or a decent experience either. At least with my fav MMO I know what I’m going to experience and I’m there in a relative minute without the cost and hassle of auto transportation.

By playing more games in the confines of my own home I am helping to relieve the pressures of fossil fuel dependency as I drive less than the average person. By not buying a book I am helping save a tree and possibly a forest and I am doing my part to protect the environment (get a Kindle dude and download your books). By not attending a movie I am sending a message to that industry to get their act together and make movies that relevant to me and a more like what I experience in game. Get all your music digitally online and listen on your Mako – it completely rocks!

So when the economy goes into the tank I will be spending even more time on my computer … playing games, getting all the news, communicating with friends, planning my calendar, searching for energy solutions, downloading entertainment I like and doing my part to stay off the roads, clog up restaurants, stores and theatres and generally escaping from the crap reality of the messed up political and investment banking system that has put us into this hellacious mess in the first place.

Game on dudes.

Few weeks back, Razer had our first ever booth at Penny Arcade Expo in “sunny” Seattle. Yep four days and no rain. Our best estimate had roughly 50,000 to 60,000 gamers of all sizes, shapes and genres attending this event each day.

To make this an even more relevant event the folks who run PAX sessions and panels running all days from Friday through Sunday. Some of the topics were The Beginning and Ending in Game Design, Violence in Gaming and the panel I was asked to contribute to, PC Hardware and Gaming Technology.

Panels are generally Q&A formats - Jeff Kalles from Penny Arcade moderated our session, along with Chris Mellissinos, Chief Gaming Officer from Sun Microsystems and yours truly … we spent an hour doing our best to field questions regarding the future of hardware and what kinds of technologies might trickle down into your next computer.

One of the highlights of PAX was the limited edition Razer DeathAdder PAX08 gaming mouse. There were 400 for sale at the PAX show booth and those were gone before noon on day two. At the Razer booth things were pretty active as we hosted a COD4 deathmatch on our 12 high end gaming stations over a 3 day period. There were 4v4 matches in team deathmatch. Teams were all assembled on the spot. 10 teams a day played over 3 days. Everyone that competed got a Razer hat or beanie, winning team got a Goliathus mini, and MVP got a PAX08 mouse. Event went for three days so we had a total of 30 teams.

Next there was a Razer PC Mod competition. Over the 3 days there were over 700 voters to determine which of the 3 finalists would come out on top – plus another 2,000 online spectators cast their votes.

At the PAX10 booth there were 10 Makos on display. Unfortunately the noise level of this event makes it impossible to truly appreciate the quality and powerful audio experience of this amazing product.

After returning from a week in Leipzig Germany at Games Convention there are some interesting cultural differences between GC and PAX. American gamers are more laid back whereas their East German counterparts are completely rabid. Either culture makes for good gaming but it was really interesting to notice how different they behave and approach their passions for gaming.

Be that as it may be the PAX event was well run and a lot of fun for all who attended. Razer is looking forward to PAX09 and attending this very cool event. Thanks PAX J

I recently found a very interesting report on how playing games can enhance our overall creativity. A study from Penn State University is reprinted below. If you have followed my blogging rants over the past few years you might recall my previous assertions attached to “gaming is good for the brain and how gamers make great middle managers, etc. Therefore I am always looking for information and articles like this that support my personal belief that gaming is an important and even vital cultural activity for people of all ages and cultures.

“Video games that energize players and induce a positive mood could also enhance creativity, according to media researchers. However, the study also finds that players, who were not highly energized and had a negative mood, registered the highest creativity. “You need defocused attention for being creative,” said S. Shyam Sundar, professor of film, video and media studies at Penn State. “When you have low arousal and are negative, you tend to focus on detail and become more analytical.”

Sundar and Elizabeth Hutton, a Penn State graduate student, are trying to understand the value of video games as a vehicle for sparking positive social traits, such as creativity. Fun and games aside, video games are viewed as a serious communication technology. Schools, corporations and even the government are increasingly employing it as a tool in enhancing learning and decision-making.

“Video games are not just for entertainment alone,” says Sundar. “We are trying to figure out how they can aid in education as well.”

In the study, conducted as part of Hutton’s graduate thesis, 98 undergraduate and graduate students were asked to play a popular video game, Dance Dance Revolution, at various levels of complexity. The students took a standard creativity test after playing. The researchers also took readings of the players’ skin conductance and asked players if they were feeling either positive or negative after the game.

“We looked at two emotional variables: arousal and valence,” said Hutton. “Arousal is the degree of physical excitation — as measured through skin conductance — and valence, which is the range of positive or negative feeling.”

When the researchers ran a statistical analysis of the two emotional variables and the students’ creativity scores, they found two totally different groups with high scores.

Players with a high degree of arousal and positive mood were most likely to have new ideas for problem solving. The statistical tests also revealed that creativity scores were highest for players with low arousal and a negative mood.

“When you are highly aroused, the energy itself acts as a catalyst, and the happy mood acts as an encouragement. It is like being in a zone where you cannot be thrown off your game,” explained Sundar. A negative mood, especially when there is low arousal, brings a different kind of energy that makes a person more analytical, which is crucial to creativity as well, he added.

Sundar and Hutton, the lead author on the paper, presented their findings today (May 23) at the 58th annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) in Montreal. Their work received a Top Paper award from the association’s Game Studies division.

Researchers say that findings from the study could offer a set of rules that could be applied to a video game to see if it can make a person creative or lead to creative outcomes as soon as the game is over.

“We are not looking just at creative games, but what emotional elements of games can serve as an engine to spark creative thought and new problem solving skills,” said Sundar, who is also a founder of the Penn State Media Effects Research Laboratory.

He envisions a scenario in which the emotional drivers that video games provide could be harnessed for creative outcomes, either in a classroom setting, or for corporate decision-making.

“The key is to generate emotion,” explained Sundar. “Ideally, a good teacher can energize the class and make them much more emotionally invested through presentations, guest lectures, and group discussions. Video games can help achieve that in an already simulated way.”

Last weekend one of our San Diego Razer employees spent a night at Howie’s Game Shack in Costa Mesa, California taking on all comers in a Quake4 shootout. Here is his account of that evening.

Hey guys, my name is Evan Bradshaw, aka Nomadic. I work for Razer and this past weekend I had the honor of representing Razer at Howie’s Gameshack in Mission Viejo for their Customer Appreciation Night. Coming Along with me was fellow gamer Elin ‘Trinelin’ Olsson who would be helping me throughout the evening. Razer sponsors Howie’s Gameshack and provides all of their locations with top of the line gaming mice. At this Event I was going to be putting my former professional Quake4 skills to the test against the gamers of Howie’s Gameshack, and their manager Greg. Additionally we had a lot of great prizes we would be giving away throughout the night and we had no shortage of gamers looking to upgrade their gaming hardware.

The event was set to kick off at around midnight on Saturday. Elin and I arrived around 11:30PM to start setting up for the Shootout and the Giveaway. We met up with Greg from Howie’s and he showed us around a bit. I was very impressed with the size of the venue. When you first walk in, there is a dead straight line of console setups, each featuring very large and comfortable chairs for gamers to sit in while they play Xbox 360’s. We saw some very skilled Guitar Hero3 players as well as some DDR pros; I was quite impressed when I was watching these guys blow through expert mode as if it was just a simple combination of steps.

When you’ve made your way past the console area in the front, you find yourself immersed in rows of PC’s (Over 200, all armed with Razer Diamondbacks), where everything from World of Warcraft, to Call of Duty4, to Dota was being played. I don’t think I saw a single free PC the entire night.

After we finished the tour of the venue and setting up the shootout, Greg challenged me to some Quake4 1v1, which I think made him realize that his game could use a little more practice…

Now it was nearing 12:30AM and it was time for the shootouts to begin, and time for me to begin the Rage. I would be doing three rounds of shootouts; one every hour for three hours and whichever challenger did the best against me in each round would be walking away with a brand new Razer DeathAdder.

Among the challengers was a young boy who did surprising well against me. For his good showing Elin awarded him with an eXactMat Bundle.

After the shootout we held the raffle which would be for the giveaway of a Razer Destructor Mouse Mat, one pair of Razer Piranha Gaming Communicator Headsets, and the all new Razer Boomslang Collector’s Edition. As the night came to a close (around 6AM) Elin and I hadn’t even realized what time it was. We had met so many awesome gamers and had such a good time holding the shootout that we were disappointed because the night seemed to have gone by so quickly. I want to thank Joe and Greg over at Howie’s for including Razer in their customer appreciation night. And special thanks to all the gamers who participated in the shootout.

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway … and on a recent springtime evening there was music in the air and to my way of thinking it never sounded better. Razer is proud to be the “presenting Sponsor for this year’s tour. The most recent tour stop was at the Beacon Theatre on Broadway. This landmark musical concert event was developed to help encourage and support the culture and art that video games have become … and boy did it ever!

Anyone who has followed my blog over time is aware of my point of view regarding gaming as a viable entertainment cultural event; right up there with movies, literature and theatre. Video Games Live (VGL) celebrates the music developed for our industry. It promotes pop-cultural credibility to video game composers over the last 20 years or so.

VGL synthesizes the influence & passion of a large symphony orchestra, a powerful vocal choir, blended with the enthusiasm and vigor of a rock concert and the technology and interactivity of a video game all completely synchronized to amazing cutting edge video screen visuals, state-of-the-art lighting and special on-stage interactive segments with the audience.

Razer was there to demonstrate in the lobby our latest and greatest audio products, led by the amazing Mako 2.1 desktop system. I was there to meet the masterminds behind the VGL, chat with the New York press (show off my new Razerguy shoes) and be entertained by the concert itself … and wow, was I ever entertained!

As I was quoted a few days after the event in the New Jersey Journal, “We’ve watched [gaming] grow up and this is just a part of the evolution,” Krakoff said. “People now are starting to recognize gaming isn’t just about blowing stuff up.”

To cover the specifics of this event I quote Troy Drier’s recitation …
“Doors opened an hour early as people flooded in for gaming displays and “Guitar Hero” and costume contests.

The concert itself started with a musical tribute to early arcade favorites, such as “Donkey Kong” and “Elevator Action.” Then the orchestra presented segments devoted to the music of The Legend of Zelda series, “Final Fantasy 7,” the Sonic the Hedgehog series, the Mario titles and even “Castlevania,” among others.

As the orchestra played, clips from the games were shown on a large screen overhead. A segment devoted to the movie “Tron” was a big hit.

Because the night wouldn’t have been complete without some actual gaming, the emcee brought audience members onstage for a live version of “Space Invaders” and a “Frogger” duel.

The next event is June 5th in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada and if you are near or passing through the area I do encourage you to witness this musical spectacle and pay homage to the heritage and culture of the gaming community.