Este video que verán es una síntesis de un mensaje.
This video is a summary of a message.
El hombre es capaz de grandes cosas, si es capaz de amar.
The man can do many things, if he loves.
Podemos cambiar el mundo.
We could change the world.

Labels: historias, leadership

Solo a Manhattan si possono contare alcune decine di isole. In tutta New York non vale nemmeno la pena di provarci. Sono un pirata, oggi. Nintendo DS alla mano, cammino sulla Fifth Avenue con gli occhi fissi allo schermo della console, in attesa di approdare al prossimo porto. Qui scambierò i tesori accumulati nelle mie ultime scorribande in mare, magari in cambio di un paio di cannoni nuovi o di un uncino ultimo grido. E se nei dintorni della Quinta Strada dovesse esserci un altro pirata DS, nemmeno a dirlo, non ci penserò due volte a sfidarlo a duello. Stop. Avanti veloce...

Il campo da golf nella zona nord di Chiba, prefettura di Tokyo, ha diciotto buche e una qualità del manto erboso che rasenta la follia. Sono un golfista, oggi. PlayStation Portable alla mano mi avvicino al tee della buca nove, con gli occhi fissi allo schermo, in attesa dei suggerimenti del mio caddie virtuale. Lui saprà dirmi la lunghezza della buca, la traiettoria da puntare e, naturalmente, quale bastone usare. Perché mi osserva dall’alto, e sa dove sono. Di nuovo stop. Indietro...

Oggi sono un pirata, o un golfista, o forse più probabilmente un geek (chi ha detto nerd?), ma poco importa. Plundr (Nintendo DS) ed Everybody’s Golf (PSP), il primo in fase di sviluppo, il secondo appena pubblicato in Giappone, sono i primi due videogiochi per console portatile ad utilizzare un sistema di rilevamento geografico per interfacciare il giocatore al mondo reale. Dal quale, assai spesso (e gioiosamente) si distacca. Se il primo sfrutterà la tecnologia WPS, determinando la posizione del Nintendo DS attraverso la triangolazione degli hot-spot Wi-Fi, il secondo utilizza un vero e proprio sistema GPS, per mezzo dell’add-on GPS per PSP recentemente commercializzato in Giappone. Come a dire: perché utilizzarlo solo come navigatore?

In entrambi i casi il risultato non cambia. La definizione è quella di Location Based Games, ovvero di videogiochi basati sul rilevamento di posizione, e il futuro potrebbe riservare una nicchia di mercato anche per loro. In passato altri avevano tentato, anche con discreto successo, la strada degli LBG. È celebre il Pac-Manhattan di area/code, gli stessi autori di Plundr, una versione di Pac-Man in realtà reale da giocare tra le strade di New York. Oppure il fenomeno del Geocaching, ovvero quello che succede quando la caccia al tesoro incontra il GPS (e diventa una sorta di sport). Ma oggi la situazione potrebbe essere destinata a una (piccola) svolta.

Se negli ultimi anni abbiamo assistito a esperimenti di singoli sviluppatori, sparsi in ogni angolo del mondo, con progetti per telefoni cellulari o computer laptop, ora il campo di battaglia sono diventate le console portatili. Una piattaforma unica (due, in effetti) e un unico produttore di riferimento (due, come sopra). In sostanza, una condizione perfetta per dettare una politica di sviluppo (due, d’accordo) e tentare una nuova strada (sì, stavolta una) sul mercato. I tempi, sostiene chi scrive, non sono ancora maturi. Ma due elementi giocano a netto favore degli LBG. Primo, nel settore dei videogiochi alcuni fenomeni si muovono a velocità molto superiori a molti altri mercati. Secondo, i videogiocatori sono una razza strana. A nessuno piace essere seguito, tracciato, riprodotto su schermo e memorizzato. Tranne ai videogiocatori. Orwell, se cambia il mondo.

Labels: videogames

He’s 9 Years Old and a Video-Game Circuit Star

HOLBROOK, N.Y., June 5 — Victor M. De Leon III has been playing video games on the professional circuit for five years now, racking up thousands of dollars in prizes and endorsements at tournaments around the country. He has a national corporate sponsor, a publicist and a Web site, with 531 photos chronicling his career. A documentary filmmaker has been following him for months.

Victor weighs 56 pounds and likes to watch SpongeBob SquarePants at his home here on Long Island. He celebrated his 9th birthday last month with a trip to a carnival and a vanilla cake. He gets above-average marks in the third grade, where he recently drew a dragon for art class.

The appropriately named Victor — better known to cyber rivals and fans as Lil’ Poison — is thought to be the world’s youngest professional gamer; Guinness has called about listing him in its book of World Records. Starting on Friday, he is set to be among 2,500 competitors in the three-day Major League Gaming Pro Circuit Event at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, battling for titles like the titan on the Xbox game Halo 2 and prizes up to $20,000.

Asked what he thinks about the fuss over his virtual exploits, Victor shrugged with shy indifference. Pressed, he mumbled: “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”

What was it like to be featured by “60 Minutes” as one of “the seven most amazing youngsters”? Victor’s only reaction was that he “looked small” on television because he had grown a bit during the lag between the taping and the broadcast.

Victor’s aptitude for video games surfaced at age 2, as he begin mimicking his father’s play. Mr. De Leon, 31, who markets and sells warehouse equipment, was an early adopter himself, having started at 8 with such quaint games as Pac-Man.

But Halo is a violent, shoot-’em-up game, the type that has stirred much debate about effects on youngsters since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, where the killers were frequent players of the computer game Doom.

Many researchers caution that excessive gaming displaces exercise, socializing and creative play, and that video games like Halo can promote aggressive feelings and actions. “It’s not enough,” said Joanne Cantor, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, for “a parent to just tell a child that the video violence is not real.”

Anna Akerman, a developmental psychologist at Adelphi University on Long Island who specializes in media and children, said that it was not that simple to disentangle cause and effect, and that some violent people might be drawn to gory games because they are already predisposed to violence.

To critics who suggest that he is ruining Victor’s childhood, Mr. De Leon shrugs like his son, and notes that when not training for a specific competition, his Xbox time averages about two hours a day. Away from the screen, he said, Victor is a typical third grader who likes to bike and swim and plays the violin.

“If they don’t live here, they don’t know what we do,” Mr. De Leon said at his home here. “I’m not overdoing it, and he’s not overdoing it.”

Although Mr. De Leon helps manage his son’s career and accompanies him to contests around the nation, he insisted he is not the digital version of the archetypal stage mother. Victor’s mother, Maribel De Leon, runs a day care center and shares custody with his father.

Before Victor enters a competition, his father said he always asks, “Do you want to do it?”

Mr. De Leon said he never pushed his son to play video games in the first place, but welcomed his interest. Mr. De Leon’s brother Gabriel, a Halo aficionado known online as Poison, also served as a mentor.

“He copied me, and he was real good,” the father recalled. “He liked to help me finish games and found glitches, which is pretty hard to do.”

Soon Victor bested his father. “He kind of passed me when he was 4,” Mr. De Leon said. “I just couldn’t keep up with him. I became sort of a coach, but every time I told him something, he’d say, ‘I know, Daddy.’”

That year, Victor joined a team with his father and two uncles at a New York Halo contest, winning fourth place. At age 5, he entered the Major League Games and ranked in its top 64 players internationally. By the time he was 7, Victor competed in Chicago against more than 550 contestants, placing second — behind Uncle Gabriel.

Besides prizes and product endorsements, Victor has a deal worth about $20,000 annually, plus expenses for trips to tournaments, from his sponsor, 1UP Network, a division of Ziff Davis Game Group, owners of gamer magazines and Web sites. Mr. De Leon declined to specify how much his son has accumulated, but said that it was almost enough to cover a private college education.

Matthew S. Bromberg, chief executive officer of Major League Gaming, one of several groups that sponsor competitions, said Victor had been a “phenomenon” for some time. But while Victor earns money for playing, he is not yet a full-fledged pro by the league’s strict definition, since he would have to rank higher — and be at least 15 years old.

Victor plays video games in the corner of the basement of his home. Dwarfed by a 60-inch video monitor, he settled into a big chair on Tuesday evening, barefoot and wearing a black jersey with Lil’ Poison emblazoned across the back. His gaze locked on the screen, his tiny thumbs jabbed away at the controller, causing virtual mayhem of gunfire, explosions, blood splatters and cyber corpses in the outer-space battle.

Mr. De Leon said he took care to use parental controls to block excessive gore and offensive language. “Our family, we’re very old fashioned,” he added, noting that they belong to the Baptist Church, “and there’s no cursing.”

The father said he also counseled Victor about what is real versus pretend. “You can’t jump off a building and come back to life, or reach out and stop a truck,” Mr. De Leon gave as examples.

Victor reaps some extras from his gaming career, like a side trip to Disneyland during a competition in Los Angeles, and a visit to a rodeo while in Texas — his favorite excursion.

Victor said he has no plans about what to do when he grows up. For now, he seems preoccupied with Star Wars toys, fried chicken, jujitsu, guitar music, basketball, his hamster and his dog, Rocky.

“I like to ride my bike every day,” he said. Asked if he ever gets bored with video games, he said, “Sometimes, yeah.”

NYTimes original article

Labels: videogames

Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play

Presleigh Montemayor often gets home after a long day and spends some time with her family. Then she logs onto the Internet, leaving the real world and joining a virtual one. But the digital utopia of Second Life is not for her. Presleigh, who is 9 years old, prefers a Web site called Cartoon Doll Emporium.

The site lets her chat with her friends and dress up virtual dolls, by placing blouses, hair styles and accessories on them. It beats playing with regular Barbies, said Presleigh, who lives near Dallas.

“With Barbie, if you want clothes, it costs money,” she said. “You can do it on the Internet for free.”

Presleigh is part of a booming phenomenon, the growth of a new wave of interactive play sites for a young generation of Internet users, in particular girls.

Millions of children and adolescents are spending hours on these sites, which offer virtual versions of traditional play activities and cute animated worlds that encourage self-expression and safe communication. They are, in effect, like Facebook or MySpace with training wheels, aimed at an audience that may be getting its first exposure to the Web.

While some of the sites charge subscription fees, others are supported by advertising. As is the case with children’s television, some critics wonder about the broader social cost of exposing children to marketing messages, and the amount of time spent on the sites makes some child advocates nervous.

Regardless, the sites are growing in number and popularity, and they are doing so thanks to the word of mouth of babes, said Josh Bernoff, a social media and marketing industry analyst with Forrester Research.

“They’re spreading rapidly among kids,” Mr. Bernoff said, noting that the enthusiasm has a viral analogy. “It’s like catching a runny nose that everyone in the classroom gets.”

Hitwise, a traffic measurement firm, says visits to a group of seven virtual-world sites aimed at children and teenagers grew 68 percent in the year ended April 28. Visits to the sites surge during summer vacation and other times when school is out. Gartner Research estimates that virtual-world sites have attracted 20 million users, with those aimed at younger people growing especially quickly.

Even as the children are having fun, the adults running the sites are engaged in a cutthroat competition to be the destination of choice for a generation of Americans who are growing up on computers from Day 1.

These sites, with names like Club Penguin, Cyworld, Habbo Hotel, Webkinz, WeeWorld and Stardoll, run the gamut from simple interactive games and chat to fantasy lands with mountains and caves.

When Evan Bailyn, chief executive of Cartoon Doll Emporium, said that when he created the site, “I thought it would be a fun, whimsical thing.” Now, he says, “it’s turned into such a competitive thing,” adding that “people think they are going to make a killing.”

Even Barbie herself is getting into the online act. Mattel is introducing BarbieGirls.com, another dress-up site with chat features.

In recent months, with the traffic for these sites growing into the tens of millions of visitors, the entrepreneurs behind them have started to refine their business models.

Cartoon Doll Emporium, which draws three million visitors a month, is free for many activities but now charges $8 a month for access to more dolls to dress up and other premium services. WeeWorld, a site aimed at letting 13- to-25-year-olds dress up and chat through animated characters, recently signed a deal to permit the online characters to carry bags of Skittles candy, and it is considering other advertisers.

On Stardoll, which has some advertising, users can augment the wardrobe they use to dress up their virtual dolls by buying credits over their cellphones. At Club Penguin, a virtual world with more than four million visitors a month, a $5.95-a-month subscription lets users adopt more pets for their penguin avatars (animated representations of users), which can roam, chat and play games like ice fishing and team hockey.

Lane Merrifield, chief executive of Club Penguin, which is based in Kelowna, British Columbia, said that he decided on a subscription fee because he believed advertising to young people was a dangerous proposition. Clicking on ads, he said, could bring children out into the broader Web, where they could run into offensive material.

Mr. Merrifield also bristles at any comparison to MySpace, which he said is a wide-open environment and one that poses all kinds of possible threats to young people.

To make Club Penguin safe for children, the site uses a powerful filter that limits the kinds of messages users can type to one another. It is not possible, Mr. Merrifield said, to slip in a phone number or geographic location, or to use phrases or words that would be explicit or suggestive. Other sites are also set up to minimize the threat of troublesome interactions or limit what users can say to one another.

“We’re the antithesis of MySpace,” Mr. Merrifield said. “MySpace is about sharing information. We’re all about not being able to share information.”

Other sites are more open, like WeeWorld, which permits people to create avatars, dress them up and then collect groups of friends who type short messages to one another. The characters tend to be cute and cartoonish, as do the home pages where they reside, but the chatter is typical teenager.

“There’s a lot of teasing and flirting,” said Lauren Bigelow, general manager of WeeWorld. She said that the site had around 900,000 users in April and is growing around 20 percent a month.

Ms. Bigelow said that 60 percent of WeeWorld users are girls and young women, a proportion that is higher on some other sites. Stardoll said that its users are 93 percent female, typically ages 7 to 17, while Cartoon Doll Emporium said that it is 96 percent female, ages 8 to 14.

Some of the companies are aiming even younger. The Ontario company Ganz has a hit with Webkinz, plush toys that are sold in regular stores and are aimed at children as young as 6. Buyers enter secret codes from their toy’s tag at webkinz.com and control a virtual replica of their animal in games. They also earn KinzCash that they can spend to design its home. The site draws more than 3.8 million visitors a month.

Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the social aspects of technology, said that the participants on these sites are slipping into virtual worlds more easily than their parents or older siblings.

“For young people, there is rather a kind of fluid boundary between the real and virtual world, and they can easily pass through it,” she said.

For some children, the allure of these sites is the chance to participate and guide the action on screen, something that is not possible with movies and television.

“The ability to express themselves is really appealing to the millennial generation,” said Michael Streefland, the manager of Cyworld, a virtual world that started in South Korea and now attracts a million users a month in the United States, according to comScore, a research firm. “This audience wants to be on stage. They want to have a say in the script.”

But Professor Turkle expressed concern about some of the sites. She said that their commercial efforts, particularly the advertising aimed at children, could be crass. And she said that she advocates an old-fashioned alternative to the sites.

“If you’re lucky enough to have a kid next door,” she said, “I’d have a play date instead of letting your kid sit at the computer.”

Labels: socialnetwork