“Gryphn Rider,” a 2004 print by Bill Petras. On view at Laguna Art Museum through Oct. 4. © Blizzard Entertainment.

Attention gamers and art fans: The Laguna Art Museum is hosting an artists’ forum at UC Irvine from 4-6 p.m. Oct. 1. The forum will take place at UCI’s Winifred Smith Hall.

The forum will include artists featured in the museum’s current exhibition, “WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon,” as well as Blizzard Entertainment’s cinematics project lead, Jeff Chamberlain. The forum will be moderated by the associate director of UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art and Technology, David Familian.

The artists participating will be Antoinette LaFarge, Robert Nideffer and Eddo Stern.

LaFarge is an associate professor of digital media at UC Irvine. She’s a faculty member for the arts computation engineering graduate program in the studio art department, and is the director of academic computing at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Her digital print “World of World: The Adventures of Malbec and Player” is on view at the Laguna Art Museum.

Nideffer also teaches at UCI and is the director of the arts computation engineering program. He’s also director of the Game Culture and Technology Lab. His triptych, “2007 B.C.,” is currently on view at the museum, as is his flash-based game, “WTF?!,” co-curated by Alex Szeto.

Los Angeles-based artist Eddo Stern teaches game design at UCLA. He has three pieces currently on view at Laguna Art Museum: plastic, paper and electronic sculptures “MELF” and “Man Woman, Dragon,” and the animated video “Best Flame War Ever.” Stern also curated a portion of the machinama videos as well as contributed an essay to the manual that accompanies the show.

Immediately following the forum, a reception for the Beall Center’s upcoming exhibit, “Media Alchemy: Nam June Paik” (curated by Familian) will take place from 6:30-9 p.m.

“WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon” runs at the museum through Oct. 4.

Related links:

• ‘World of Warcraft’ quest leads to Laguna
• Some images from the ‘WoW’ show at Laguna
• Arts writer takes on World of Warcraft
• Check out this ‘World of Warcraft’ slide show
• The Arts Blog

‘World of Warcraft’ artists forum at UC Irvine is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

If you missed any of our coverage, check out our new photo gallery archive, at gaming.freedomblogging.com/photos, where we have put together links to all previous photo slide shows and video taken by us and the professional photographers here at the OCRegister.

So far, there’s three years of BlizzCon footage and we’re trying to track down photos from year one. Plus, we’ve added a lot of other goodies from times past.

We’ll be adding to the collection from here on and when we find time, will continue to add older coverage. Are we missing something? Ping us!

Enjoy!

NEW: Blizzard Entertainment in pictures and video is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

The company cited World of Warcraft as one of a small handful of games credited for the second quarter’s “overperformance,” even as the company financials showed Blizzard’s successful World of Warcraft revenues were roughly flat though still a big chunk of Blizzardvision’s revenues.

“During a challenging economic climate, Activision Blizzard grew its quarterly North American and European market share,” Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, said in a statement.

But the big news is that Blizzard delayed the launch of StarCraft II to 2010. Kotick said that this is to coincicde with launch of new Battle.net online gaming service, which is expected to launch early next year. StarCraft, for non-Blizzard fans, is not a massively multiplayer game. But gamers will be able to play a handful of other players online via Battlenet, a service that first launched in 1996.

Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s CEO, elaborated further during Wednesday’s conference call with the game developer’s usual mantra: “We must get the games right before we release them,” he said, offering no apologies.

As many know, Blizzard has delayed games in the past, including the original Diablo in 1996. Diablo missed the Christmas shopping season and came out on the last day of that year. It’s gone on to sell millions and the company is now working on Diablo 3.    

Blizzard itself issued a press release on the StarCraft II delay about 30 minutes after the corporate earnings release came out:

Today we announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be ready for release by the end of 2009. Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.  

Our mission is to develop games that deliver an epic entertainment experience. As part of that commitment, we will always take as much time as needed to ensure that our games and services meet the expectations of our players and the standard for quality that we set for ourselves as developers. As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we’ll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series’ legacy in the first half of 2010.

We will share more details about the beta, Battle.net, and StarCraft II’s launch in the future. Keep an eye on the official website at www.starcraft2.com for updates, and as always, thank you for your continued enthusiasm and support for StarCraft II and all of Blizzard Entertainment’s games.

Because of the delay, Blizzardvision lowered its projected revenues for 2009. 

And for those wondering, the StarCraft II delay could bump into the release of a second big game next year, Diablo 3. But Morhaime wouldn’t confirm what other games, if any, will also launch in 2010. 

Overall, the company made $195 million on revenues of $1.038 billion during its second quarter, which ended June 30. Since Activision merged with Blizzard in July 2009, the year-ago financial results do not include Blizzard’s contribution. 

However, the company broke out its multiplayer game segment, which consists mainly of the lucrative World of Warcraft subscription fees. The MMOG segment made $324 million during the second quarter, which was 31 percent of all company game revenues. That’s only slightly up from the first quarter, when MMOGs brought in $314 million.

But the MMOG business as part of the company’s overall game revenues is shrinking. In 2008, Blizzardvision’s MMOG revenues were $1.15 billion or 38 percent of total game revenues. Last year’s figures include momentum from the company’s latest WoW update, the Wrath of the Lich King, which launched in October.

Morhaime also did not say how many World of Warcraft subscribers there are. Last quarter, he said there were 11.5 million. But during the quarter, the company lost a chunk of users as its WoW operations in China were disrupted. Because of this, WoW had no players in China at the end of the second quarter. Blizzard switched its Chinese distributor to NetEase.com and the two announced on July 16 that the game is ready to relaunch pending approvals from the Chinese government.

More stories about Blizzard:

Blizzard MMOG revenues flat, delays StarCraft II game is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

But spotted immediately in the press release: “As we prepare for next year, we have moved the expected release dates for two games, Activision Publishing’s Singularity and Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II, into 2010,” said Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard.

So much for a nice Christmas …

More on Blizzardvision’s earnings coming this afternoon …

Blizzard delays StarCraft II launch to 2010 is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

Our intern, Sandy Lee, will be bummed after she hears Blizzard Entertainment pulled out of this weekend’s video-game job fair. Not that she was hoping for a job with Irvine’s largest game company, but it was going to part of her first published story, titled “Blizzard, others looking to hire at video-game job fair.”  Alas, Blizzard is out, so we’ve had to update the story for her.

Blizzard Entertainment won’t be attending this weekend’s job fair in Anaheim as we previously thought. But the good news is that Westwood College’s “Gathering of Video Game Legends” will continue even without the legendary company.

Several local game developers will be there with job openings. The public is invited to apply. Beyond the mostly entry-level jobs and internship opportunities, the event will include tips from the pros plus lots of games to play.

Westwood College in Anaheim has hosted such guests before. The Anaheim campus, established in January 1999, has over 1,000 students with around 150 enrolled in its Game Art or Game Software Development programs. 

Several Orange County game companies will be there, including SayWeAll Games of Aliso Viejo, Irvine’s Armor Games and Irvine’s Obsidian Entertainment. Other companies with jobs include GrowIt and Room Candy Games.  

Blizzard has participated before but just couldn’t make it this year, said Shon Damron, a Blizzard media relations guy.

“Blizzard Entertainment was invited to participate but due to prior commitments, we are unable to attend,” Damron said.

 It would have been a nice opportunity to meet Blizzard folks face to face. The company is constantly hiring and lists dozens of job openings on its job site plus this minimum requirement:

::Details::

What: Westwood College job fair and 2D Game Development Competition on July 11th
Where: Westwood College  Anaheim, 1551 S. Douglass Road, Anaheim, California. Here’s a MAP.
When: Saturday, July 11, 2009

• 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. — Job Fair and published game viewing
• 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. — Game play
• 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. — Lecture sessions by industry leaders
• 1:30 p.m. — Development Competition Awards Ceremony

Admission: Free
More info: 714-704-2720, landing.westwood.edu/gaming-public

This post included research from Sandy Lee, our summer intern.

Earlier on the Blizzard Blog:

Blizzard pulls out of upcoming job fair but others still hope to hire is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

This was part of our recent visit to Blizzard’s Irvine headquarters, where the company opened its doors to press and select fan sites. We go to play the game, watch three battles between pro gamers David Lee and Matt Cooper, talk to the lead developer and producer and eat all the Blizzard sandwiches we wanted (actually, just ordinary meat and cheese … but there was plenty of veggie sammies).

So, check out today’s story in the Register with the no-duh headline, “After 11 years, ‘StarCraft’ sequel to emerge.” Here’s a sneak peek:

Back in March 1998, Blizzard Entertainmentreleased a completely new game, “StarCraft.”With its previous games selling more than a million copies in a year, the Irvine game developer had high hopes for its first science-fiction strategy game: It had 1 million games ready to sell on day one. “StarCraft” has since sold 11 million copies and remains one of the best-selling PC games today.

Now, multiply that by the massive resources Blizzard has today, from billions of dollars in game revenue to its 3,000 employees, which is 30 times what it had in 1998. Add in a decade of industry anticipation and fan excitement. Plus there’s the pressure to top every game Blizzard has released, including the latest update to “World of Warcraft,” which sold 2.8 million copies – in the first 24 hours.

“StarCraft II,” the long awaited sequel to 1998’s top PC game, is slated to launch by the end of the year. But it’s not just record sales the company envisions. Blizzard wants another classic.

Read up and continue watching this space for more tidbits gleaned from our visit to Blizzard. Meanwhile, here’s a video of our interviews with Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design, and Chris Sigaty, lead producer of StarCraft II:

 Earlier:

Interviews with StarCraft II lead developer, producer is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

In Blizzardvision’s quarterly earnings call today, Blizzard’s CEO Mike Morhaime said that “11.5 million continued to play Warcraft, which is a significant increase from the same time last year.” 

But 11.5 million is the same number of people who were playing the game in December, a month after the “Lich King” update launched.

Still, the game is adding new players all the time. “Lich King” was the top-selling PC game in the U.S. in the first three months of 2009, according to market researcher The NPD Group. Then again, it is Blizzard Entertainment. NPD also reported that six of the top 10 games in March were made by the Irvine game developer.

What Blizzard is really concentrating on now is StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3, two games building on original titles from eight and 11 years ago. Both games were still in the top 20 PC games sold in March (see chart on right), Morhaime said.

“We had a strong March quarter despite the weak economy. This highlights the strong longevity of the games.

StarCraft 2 will begin an external beta test this summer, which “will signal the final stretch of development,” Morhaime said.

Also, a revamped Battle.net will be tested, offering new tools to make it easier for players to communicate with one another between games and manage all their Blizzard games with one login. 

Blizzard’s contribution to Blizzardvision’s revenues (actually ActivisionBlizzard, but we know who’s more important) were mostly in the MMORPG category, which brought in $314 million during the quarter. Comparable results weren’t available since Activision and Blizzard didn’t merge until July 2008.

Overall, Blizzardvision’s financials grew from the prior year, thanks partly to a stronger U.S. dollar and other investments. The company, which also develops “Guitar Hero” and “Call of Duty,” reported net income of $189 million on $981 million in revenues. A year ago, it had income of $43 million on $325 million revenues. The year-ago numbers don’t include results of both companies. More numbers are listed HERE.

“We believe there continues to be growth in WoW in all regions but especially in China. Our first expansion launched eight months after it did here. We’re looking for a similar response when “Lich King” is launched there,” Morhaime said. 

Morhaime barely addressed the changes in China, announced last month. Blizzard awarded NetEase.com a three-year contract to manage WoW in China. Previously, The9 had been its China partner since WoW launched in that country in 2005.

Morhaime said that Blizzard is already working with NetEase on StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 so it made sense to consolidate the three games with one partner in China. 

“Consoliding all games with one operator will help us operate more efficiently and put us in a better position to capture the growth in the market,” he said. 

Morhaime, when asked, said Chinese players may experience some down time as Blizzard transitions to NetEase. More details for players in China is available at wow163.com.

“We’re eager to get that in the hands of people as soon as possible,” he said.

More original stories from The Blizzard Blog:

WoW stuck at 11.5 million subscribers; Blizz focused on StarCraft, Diablo is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

Sizable harvest for gold farmers is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

On golden, crispy wings is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

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image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment

All those hours — days, really — that UC Irvine anthropologist and informatics specialist Bonnie Nardi has spent exploring the different ways that Americans and the Chinese use and play the computer game “World of Warcraft” has provided fodder for an upcoming book.

Nardi, a hardcore WoW fan, says she’s writing a book titled, “My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological account of World of Warcraft.” The boo, “explores ideas about play, and how digital technology shapes play. It will be awhile before it’s out — I hae one more major round of revisions,” she says.

Last year, the National Science Foundation awarded Nardi $100,000 to study why Americans go to greater lengths than the Chinese to modify WoW, the multi-player game produced by Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine. (Read story). The story set off quite a debate about the cultural differences of game playing.

UCI anthropologist Bonnie Nardi

Nardi has spent a lot of time at Internet cafes and other spots in Beijing and other parts of China studying how the Chinese play WoW, which have more than 5 million players worldwide. She is a widely published author, having written or co-written such books as, “Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart.”

She’s also published research on WoW. In one study, says a campus release, (Nardi and co-author Justin Harris, a former graduate student in informatics, published a study called “Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in World of Warcraft” challenging the notion that the Internet leads to isolation. Through face-to-face interviews with players, they found the Internet breaks down barriers between strangers and encourages collaboration with those outside one’s usual economic and social realm.

Follow Sciencedude on Twitter at grobbins and add him as a friend on Facebook.

Did you miss …

UC Irvine to dissect ‘World of Warcraft’ in new book is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

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New Blizzard game in the works? is a post from: The Blizzard Blog

Blizzard Entertainment recently renewed its contract with AT&T to house hundreds of WoW servers at some of the telecom company’s 38 data centers around the world, including one in Irvine.

How important is WoW to AT&T? Very, says Chris Costello, Vice President of AT&T Hosting and Application Services (and pictured below). She spoke to us to tell us more about AT&T’s relationship with Blizzard, though she prefered to be more general about the importance of the game.

“MMOs represent the majority of AT&T’s gaming customers and are a very important and growing industry,” she said.

In fact, back in 2004, the same year WoW launched, AT&T’s hosting division created a unit dedicated to the gaming industry. The company’s Core Gaming Practice had already been working with some clients since 2002 (including hosting Blizzard’s Battle.net) and decided to pursue the fledgling market of online games.

Today, the unit employs 140 engineers and provides 24/7 white-glove support to several companies, including Turbine and Konami. Server down? AT&T already knows about it.

Data centers are one of the few areas within the tech industry that is still growing, according to Melanie Posey, research director of Web-hosting services for market researcher IDC. Growth isn’t as much as before — from a low double-digits to single digits — but as businesses seek to offload Web hosting to save money, companies like AT&T’s hosting division benefit.

“The more successful a gaming company, that’s good for AT&T because the company’s hosting requirements is going up and AT&T can charge for that,” Posey said.

While Posey didn’t have a breakdown as to how much room games are taking up at data centers worldwide, she said it’s definitely an area that won’t hurt too much during an economic downturn.

“Across the board, anything that is entertainment-oriented has a better chance of holding up in an economic downturn,” she said. “You still need to be entertained even if you’re unemployed.”

(Blizzard said the same thing. See the earlier story, “Blizzard gets bigger despite economic downturn.”)

Targeting gaming companies has been lucrative for AT&T. The amount of bandwidth gamers have gobbled up grew 200 percent last year, from the prior year, Costello said. And according to this podcast with Costello, AT&T is hosting “most of the largest online gamers in the world today.”

Of course, for the gamer, this probably doesn’t mean much. But beyond Tuesday’s weekly maintenance done by Blizzard, has there really been a lot of outages of in recent years?

While you can’t blame AT&T for every outage (there are planned ones for upgrades by Blizzard), AT&T is proactively managing the network 24/7.

“Whether a client is providing their own managed services or leveraging a service provider, customers must look at the criticality of the application, required service levels, engineering the design appropriately (e.g.. load balancing, server clustering, automatic failover) to ensure a high availability application,” Costello said.

Also, has AT&T invested significantly to make sure gamers can connect to servers as fast as possible – meaning less of a delay between thumping keyboard controls and action on the screen.

“Gamers come to AT&T because we offer some of the lowest latency levels in the world,” Costello said.

She wouldn’t be specific as to how low, but added, “A couple hundred milliseconds can make a big difference in the performance of a game.”

And when a significant event, like a major patch or a new game, comes along, AT&T offers the game company “AT&T’s Synaptic Hosting,” which is like a pit crew that steps in to help manage excess traffic. It’s an on-demand utility that gives companies twice as much bandwidth. They pay for it when they need it.

“AT&T continues to see major demand for gaming clients. We serve some of the largest MMOs in the world and continue to see large and small ‘players’ alike looking for AT&T to help power the IT infrastructure of the games platforms,” Costello said.

Read past popular stories from The Blizzard Blog: 

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Blizzard commissioned the 12-foot statue for its courtyard from the Weta Workshop, the same New Zealand film-effects company that worked on “The Lord of the Rings” movies. The giant bronzed orc riding a wolf is, obviously, inspired from Blizzard’s own Warcraft games.

And we’ve got a slide show of all the cool installation photos. Click the image on the right to get started.

I first heard about this when I stopped by Chief Operating Officer Paul Sams’ office last fall to write about his crazy, humongous collection of Blizzard toys, treasures and other artifacts (see “Man who collects all things Blizzard.”  He, in turn, mentioned that Blizzard is one of those cool companies to work for not just because you get to play games, but it piles heaps of love on its employees, including handing out a full-sized sword on an employee’s fifth anniversary. 

The smaller sculpture was a thank you to its crew, Sams said. 

Anyway, take a look yourself in the photos below: Sams holding up the model and the real thing. See more cool shots, courtesy of Blizzard… 

More installation photos (images courtesy of Blizzard). Click to enlarge:

Older posts you may be interested in:

• Australian AG says WoW, other MMOs, must be rated
• Australia’s ban may be somewhat overblown
• What’s it like to work for Blizzard?
• Photos: Man who collects all things Blizzard
• Line for Warcraft’s ‘Lich King’ grows to 1,000+ in Anaheim
• Scenes from Warcraft’s ‘Lich King’ launch in Anaheim
• A father’s tribute to Ezra, the World of Warcraft fan with brain cancer
• Fresh photos and first impressions at BlizzCon
• Early photos from BlizzCon 2008

Photos: Orc on wolf mount spotted at Blizzard’s headquarters! is a post from: The Blizzard Blog