A New Start

FT: Dressing-room consultations keep Dutch team happy

Dressing-room consultations keep Dutch team happy

By Simon Kuper

Published: June 21 2008 03:00 | Last updated: June 21 2008 03:00

Edward, my best friend from primary school, came to Bern to see Holland play Romania. I'm not Dutch but I grew up in a small Dutch town, and 30 years ago Edward and I used to phone each other at half-time during Holland's games for breathless analysis. On Tuesday we sat on the pavement in the Swiss sun, had a beer and swapped news about our mothers. Then Edward said: "Simon, all this is unprecedented."

It's true. These 30 years the Netherlands has generally been the best small football country on earth, but we've never had a fortnight like this. So far at Euro 2008 we have beaten the world champions Italy 3-0 and the runners-up France 4-1, while our reserves have tossed aside Romania 2-0. Whatever happens in tonight's quarter-final against Russia, this feels miraculous.

To try to understand, I've been reading what foreign journalists say about Holland. There is one recurring story: the Dutch always destroy themselves through infighting, but this time they haven't yet. This shoddy half-truth misses the point about Dutch football. Holland are good precisely because our players quarrel about football. And that is particularly true now, because the genesis of the current side was an argument in a hotel room.

The Dutch have quarrelled about the game since about 1970, when Johan Cruyff emerged as the father of Dutch football. He said: "Football is a game you play with your head." Every Dutchman who ever placed a pass - and the country usually has the world's highest density of registered footballers - grew up in this tradition. When I was 12 and playing in a kids' team, half of us would go to the snack bar after matches and debate what had gone wrong over frites .

The English don't have that tradition. Mark Burke had played for various English clubs when in 1995 he joined the Dutch side Fortuna Sittard. "In England if the manager said it, you just did it," Burke told me. "When I went to Fortuna I noticed how much the players talked." During games, team-mates would call to him: "One metre, one metre left!" Training sessions would be interrupted by 15-minute seminars on the relative positioning of the centre-backs. Burke says: "I really started to understand the shape of the field, horizontally and vertically. In England the only time I had training sessions like that was when I went on coaching courses."

Of course the Dutch debates have downsides. Cruyff, who favoured what he called the " conflictmodel " of working relations, quarrelled with the great goalkeeper Jan van Beveren before the 1974 World Cup. Van Beveren didn't go to that World Cup, or the one in 1978. Holland lost both in the final, partly due to goalkeeping errors. The conflictmodel also destroyed Holland at the 1990 World Cup and at Euro 96. This summer, the midfielders Mark van Bommel and Clarence Seedorf have stayed home rather than work with Holland's manager Marco van Basten.

And yet the quarrels over football are now helping Holland. In recent years it had become clear that the traditional Dutch formation with two wingers no longer worked. Last autumn Van Basten asked his captain, Edwin van der Sar, to consult the other players about what to do. Van der Sar called a "group of seven" senior players to his hotel room. They proposed playing with just one forward and five midfielders. Van Basten acquiesced.

It was exactly the sort of consultation that management books would recommend. It was done without conflict, because Dutch football, after passing from an amateur era through the pop-star 1970s, is now as corporate as football everywhere else. And the employees liked being consulted. Before Euro 2008, two friends of mine organised a football quiz for the Dutch squad. Wesley Sneijder won, with cheating. But what struck my friends was how happy a camp it was. When Van der Sar raised his hand to protest that a question was wrong, the entire squad in unison began chanting, "Losers!" (in English) at the quizmasters.

Here in Switzerland the Dutch are even happier. The new formation has worked beautifully. With two defensive midfielders behind them, the creative midfielders are free to create. Nobody is glued to the touchline anymore like a parody of a 1970s winger. Instead of stringing together endless passes, the Dutch now wait until the opposition lose the ball and then break instantly à la Arsenal.

The Dutch could absorb a new system only because they think. Each player is a playmaker, making autonomous decisions on the field. When leading 2-0 against the world champions, left-back Giovanni van Bronckhorst decided to gallop 80 metres forward and score with a header. Meanwhile, another player instantly took over his position, because everyone is thinking, and consulting on the field. When it goes quiet during games here, you hear the Dutch players calling out instructions.

Dutch football is a fragile plant, and we could easily go home tonight. But if Edward and I are lucky enough to have another beer on some foreign pavement at the World Cup 30 years from now, we might conclude that this week was the peak.

Simonkuper-ft@hotmail.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Sari nights and henna parties

Sari nights and henna parties

By Amy Yee

Published: May 17 2008 03:00 | Last updated: May 17 2008 03:00

On a recent spring afternoon the sound of hammers and saws drifted from my neighbour's house. This was not another example of the feverish construction that is changing the landscape of Delhi. Rather, it was part of a seasonal ritual that transforms homes all over India for the precious cool months of the year. The neighbours were preparing for a wedding.

Over the course of the day, carpenters built the frame for a tent and created a temporary foyer of white and red fabric. Trucks loaded with rolled carpets, bolts of cloth, bundles of flowers and assorted equipment pulled up and emptied their wares. In the evening guests were greeted by the bride's sisters dressed in colourful saris and throughout the night the sound of music and singing filled the air.

This is a common scene during India's wedding season, which lasts roughly from October to the end of May, before searing heat and monsoon rains set in. In recent months at houses on my street, and indeed all over India, tell-tale signs of weddings sprouted like spring flowers. An otherwise anonymous gate to one property on my street was strung with garlands of bright orange marigolds and dark green paan leaves. Another home was festooned with diaphanous fabric from its rooftops so it resembled a grand ship about to set sail.

Across cultures, marriage is one of life's most important rites of passage but in India it is a milestone for which middle-class families assiduously save for years, then go all out to host a marathon of parties and rituals leading up to the wedding.

As Indians become wealthier they are spending more to stage elaborate multi-day events leading up to the ceremony. India's $31bn wedding industry is growing at 25 per cent a year, according to a report in the Indian magazine The Week.

Today, a reception might be held at a hotel in order to accommodate hundreds of guests and the largest million-dollar weddings are held at venues such as country clubs that can accommodate thousands. But for many Indians, some part of the wedding festivities is still held at home.

"Home is where your memories are. You belong in that space," says Chiara Nath, who was married at her parents' home in New Delhi this spring. "The significance of every moment you spent at home before you leave becomes really poignant."

The mehndi , a party where the bride and female guests have their hands decorated with henna, is usually held at the home of the bride or her relatives. The sangeet , a party of singing and dancing that precedes the wedding, might also be held at home.

"One big reason to have the mehndi at home is to integrate the whole household into the wedding festivities. Relatives and friends gather to celebrate in a more intimate way," says Mohini Bhatia, whose sister Radhika got married in Delhi in March.

Yet even in family spaces the look and feel of Indian weddings is undergoing dramatic changes. For Hindu weddings, red and gold hues used to dominate the decor. The flower of choice was the marigold, an auspicious bloom typically used for religious offerings, strung into long garlands on the house.

But conventions are shifting. Rising incomes and greater awareness fostered by more travel have made many Indians more demanding and discerning. There are also more cross-regional marriages that might combine elements drawn from the different cultural traditions of the bride and groom.

In the past, weddings were organised by the bride's family. Now brides and bridegrooms can have more influence. Pastel shades and light fabrics might replace red and gold hues and heavy cloth. Themed celebrations might draw on different cultures and aesthetics. The ubiquitous marigold might be jettisoned for roses, orchids, lilies and gerbera daisies.

Amrish Pershad, a wedding planner who designed the sets for Mira Nair's 2002 film Monsoon Wedding , estimates wealthy upper middle-class Indians spend up to Rs600,000 (£7,300) on design and decor for a single event and as much as Rs2.5m-Rs3m (£30,500-£36,500) for all the expenses of one event, which might include food, drinks, music and service. The costs of the weddings of the wealthiest Indians could amount to the equivalent of millions of dollars, wedding planners say.

Preeti Singh, whose daughter married in Delhi this February, hired Pershad to help plan and co-ordinate six events, including the marriage ceremony. Five of them were held at her home in Delhi and her sister's farm - a sprawling estate complete with swimming pool on the outskirts of Delhi.

For a cocktail party at Singh's home metres of lime green and yellow fabric were draped from a second-floor balcony over the front yard to transform the house into a pastel cocoon. Pershad, originally a florist, covered the front gate with delicate roses and used hanging ivy and creepers to hide parts of the house from view. Instead of setting the residence ablaze with white lights, as per convention, he subtly interspersed strands of lights amid the ivy.

The farmhouse was the venue for the sangeet , which was themed around Buddha. Statues of the deity, paintings and candles were set up at the party, attended by 700 people who danced to Hindi pop music played by a disc jockey.

It was just one in a series of events in the week leading up to the wedding that transformed the farmhouse day after day, like a theatre set. The mehndi had an Indian "village" theme, where 350 guests ate, drank and mingled beneath large umbrellas made from old saris, "like in Mughal times", says Singh. "Vendors" gave guests bangles, hand-crafted shoes and hair ties as though a village mela (or "gathering" in Hindi) had been transported to Delhi. About 600 people attended the outdoor wedding reception, which had an "English" theme characterised by pink tablecloths, rose bouquets and a canopy draped in pink fabric.

Traditionally, the home of the bride's family would be open to visiting family members for about a week before the wedding but in return for access to an open house of eating, singing and celebration, relatives would take charge of organising food, decorations, flowers and other tasks. But times have changed. "Now no wedding goes without a wedding planner," says Singh. "In the old days you just had a caterer and the tent- wallah [wallah denotes a vocation in Hindi] would do the needful." Families used to cook for themselves. Now caterers are de rigueur and more exotic menus are in demand. "Now you have to have sushi, Chinese and continental food," adds Ms Singh. Pradeep Bedi, another Delhi-based wedding planner, says the marriage industry has gone through enormous changes in the past five years. "People are coming up with their own ideas. They are concerned about minute details now."

He attributes the shift in attitude to increased spending power of middle-class Indians, not to mention "Indian movies showing glamorous things".

Arab, Hollywood, Bollywood and a "crystal ball" are themes he has recently worked to produce. As expectations increase, so does the pressure to stage ever more opulent events. Although Singh says an impressive wedding means you've "said goodbye to [your daughter] in the best manner you could ever do", she also laments that they are becoming too commercialised.

But in another take on the tailoring of the modern Indian marriage celebration prompted by increasing affluence, Chiara Nath had a simple, elegant event at her parents' farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi. Only 250 guests were at the sangeet and just 80 people attended the reception.

Nath said there was initially great resistance to the idea of such a small occasion from her parents. She was told she would offend a lot of people by restricting the guest list but Nath, a designer who lives in the coastal state of Goa, insisted on a pared-down event. "For me, none of that formality was necessary."

Her restrained aesthetics shocked Bedi, her wedding planner. She requested cream hues and gold accents for the reception tent, table cloths and chair covers. "Mr Bedi thought I was crazy," admitted Nath, explaining he thought the palette was too cold and drab, especially as white is the colour of funerals in India. "I said: 'It's OK. Less is more.' It was an exercise in patience," said Nath.

Ultimately, Bedi was converted to her vision. Weeks later he lauded the wedding as "subtle, simple and classy". And though the celebration was more restrained than most, the result was an intimate affair held at the bride's childhood home.

"I wanted it simple," said Nath. "I did what was most necessary to me."

Amy Yee is an FT correspondent in New Delhi

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Lego, Imagination

NY Times: Resistance Is Futile

Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/arts/television/25schi.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

Excerpt:

Through all his games, his designs are marked by an accumulation of care and detail.

Given that its roster of characters includes not only Mario and Donkey Kong but also Princess Peach, Zelda, Bowser and Link, it’s easy to imagine that Mr. Miyamoto designs his games around those characters.

The truth is exactly the opposite. According to Mr. Miyamoto, gameplay systems and mechanics have always come first, while the characters are created and deployed in the service of the overall design. That means a focus on the seemingly prosaic basic elements of game design: movement, setting, goals to accomplish and obstacles to overcome.

“I feel that people like Mario and people like Link and the other characters we’ve created not for the characters themselves, but because the games they appear in are fun,” he said. “And because people enjoy playing those games first, they come to love the characters as well.”

Mr. Miyamoto’s work is evolving from a reliance on invented characters and fanciful, outlandish settings like Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom or Zelda’s mythical Hyrule. With games like Nintendogs (inspired by his pet Shetland sheepdog), Wii Sports, Wii Fit and coming next, Wii Music, Mr. Miyamoto is gravitating toward everyday hobbies: pets, bowling, yoga, Hula-Hoop, music. It is as if an artist who had mastered the abstract had finally moved into realism.

“I would say that over the last five years or so, the types of games I create has changed somewhat,” he said. “Whereas before I could kind of use my own imagination to create these worlds or create these games, I would say that over the last five years I’ve had more of a tendency to take interests or topics in my life and try to draw the entertainment out of that.”

It has proved the perfect strategy as Nintendo reaches out to nongamers who may not care to understand why this frantic plumber keeps jumping on top of turtles, or why that gallant fellow in green has to keep rescuing the same princess over and over. At this moment, when consumers crave the ability to shape and become a part of their entertainment, whether through MySpace or “American Idol,” the latest star in Nintendo’s stable of characters is you — or rather Mii, the whimsical avatar Wii users create of themselves.

“I see the Miis as the most recent character creation from Nintendo,” Mr. Miyamoto said. “What’s interesting is that regardless of the user’s age, if they’re looking at a Mii, it’s their Mii. Before, when you’re playing as another character, it’s more typical of more passive entertainment, and by creating a Mii you’re becoming more a part of the entertainment experience.”

==

Video Games

Resistance Is Futile

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Shigeru Miyamoto illustrates the Wii Fit system, a new interactive physical fitness device from Nintendo.

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By SETH SCHIESEL

Published: May 25, 2008

IT’S O.K. to liken Shigeru Miyamoto to Walt Disney.

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Fitness for Every Body: O.K., Avatar, Work With Me (May 15, 2008)

Game Theory: New From Wii: Not Much to Get Worked Up About (May 22, 2008)

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An image from Wii Fit.

Mario Super Sluggers for Wii.

Characters and a scene from Donkey Kong.

When Disney died in 1966, Mr. Miyamoto was a 14-year-old schoolteacher’s son living near Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital. An aspiring cartoonist, he adored the classic Disney characters. When he wasn’t drawing, he made his own toys, carving wooden puppets with his grandfathers’ tools or devising a car race from a spare motor, string and tin cans.

Even as he has become the world’s most famous and influential video-game designer — the father of Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda and, most recently, the Wii — Mr. Miyamoto still approaches his work like a humble craftsman, not as the celebrity he is to gamers around the world.

Perched on the end of a chair in a hotel suite a few dozen stories above Midtown Manhattan, the preternaturally cherubic 55-year-old Mr. Miyamoto radiated the contentment of someone who has always wanted to make fun. And he has. As the creative mastermind at Nintendo for almost three decades, Mr. Miyamoto has unleashed mass entertainment with a global breadth, cultural endurance and financial success unsurpassed since Disney’s fabled career.

In the West, chances are that Mr. Miyamoto would have started his own company a long time ago. He could have made billions and established himself as a staple of entertainment celebrity. Instead, despite being royalty at Nintendo and a cult figure, he almost comes across as just another salaryman (though a particularly creative and happy one) with a wife and two school-age children at home near Kyoto. He is not tabloid fodder, and he seems to maintain a relatively nondescript lifestyle.

“What’s important is that the people that I work with are also recognized and that it’s the Nintendo brand that goes forward and continues to become strong and popular,” he said by way of comparing Walt Disney’s role in the larger brand with his. “And if people are going to consider the Nintendo brand as being on the same level as the Disney brand, that’s very flattering and makes me happy to hear,” he added, through an interpreter. (He understands spoken English well but does not speak it beyond a few phrases, a twist of considerable amusement to him given that his father taught English.)

Mario, the mustached Italian plumber he created almost 30 years ago, has become by some measures the planet’s most recognized fictional character, rivaled only by Mickey Mouse. As the creator of the Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda series (which have collectively sold more than 350 million copies) and the person who ultimately oversees every Nintendo game, Mr. Miyamoto may be personally responsible for the consumption of more billions of hours of human time than anyone around. In the Time 100 online poll conducted this spring, Mr. Miyamoto was voted the most influential person in the world.

But it isn’t just traditional gamers who are flocking to Mr. Miyamoto’s latest creation, the Wii. Eighteen months ago, just when video games were in danger of disappearing into the niche world of fetishists, Mr. Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s chief executive, practically reinvented the industry. (Mr. Miyamoto’s full title is senior managing director and general manager of Nintendo’s entertainment analysis and development division.) Their idea was revolutionary in its simplicity: rather than create a new generation of games that would titillate hard-core players, they developed the Wii as an easy-to-use, inexpensive diversion for families (with a particular appeal to women, an audience generally immune to the pull of traditional video games). So far the Wii has sold more than 25 million units, besting the competition from Sony and Microsoft.

In an effort to build on this success, last week Nintendo released its new Wii Fit system in North America, a device that hopes to make doing yoga in front of a television screen almost as much fun as driving, throwing, jumping or shooting in a traditional game. Though there were no hard sales figures available as of Tuesday, there were reports of stores across the country selling out of Wii Fit.

In a global media culture dominated by American faces, tastes and brands, video games are Japan’s most successful cultural export. And on the strength of the Wii and the DS hand-held game system, Nintendo has become one of the most valuable companies in Japan. With a net worth of around $8 billion, Nintendo’s former chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi, is now the richest man in Japan, according to Forbes magazine. (Nintendo does not disclose Mr. Miyamoto’s compensation, but it appears that he has not joined the ranks of the superrich.)

“Without Miyamoto, Nintendo would be back making playing cards,” said Andy McNamara, editor in chief of Game Informer, the No. 1 game magazine, referring to Nintendo’s original business in 1889. “He probably inspires 99 percent of the developers out there today. You can even say there wouldn’t be video games today if it wasn’t for Miyamoto and Nintendo. He’s the granddad of all game developers, but the funny thing is that for all of his legacy, for all of the mainstay iconic characters he’s designed and created, he is still pushing the limits with things like Wii Fit.”

Mr. Miyamoto graduated from the Kanazawa College of Art in 1975 and joined Nintendo two years later as a staff artist. The original Donkey Kong was a prime force in gaming’s early surge of popularity, along with arcade classics like Space Invaders, Asteroids and Pac-Man.

He rose quickly at the company, and his name has been synonymous with Nintendo since the 1980s, when the original Mario Bros. games helped save the industry after the collapse of Atari, maker of the first broadly popular home console. When Atari failed amid a slew of unpopular games, Nintendo rekindled faith in home gaming systems; the Nintendo Entertainment System, released in the West in 1985, became the best-selling console of its era.

Since then Mr. Miyamoto has been directly involved in the production of at least 70 games, including recent hits like Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Mr. Miyamoto supervises about 400 people, including contractors, almost entirely in Japan. The popular new installments in classic game franchises have maintained his credibility among core gamers even as he has reached out to new audiences with mass-market products like the Wii.

Through all his games, his designs are marked by an accumulation of care and detail. There is nothing objective about why a goofy guy in blue overalls like Mario should appeal to so many, just as there is nothing objective in how Disney could have built a company on talking animals. Rather, the reason I stood in line at a pizzeria more than 20 years ago to play Super Mario Bros., the reason Mr. Miyamoto is almost a living god in the game world, is that his games have some ineffable lure that inspires you to drop just one more quarter (or, these days, to stay on the couch just one more hour).

Just as a film is not measured by the quality of its special effects, a game is not measured merely by its graphics. This concept is lost on many designers, but not on Mr. Miyamoto. And just as a film buff might prefer to watch an old black-and-white movie instead of, say, “Iron Man,” even Mr. Miyamoto’s earliest games hold up as worthy diversions. (The story of two men battling for the world record in Donkey Kong was made into a film, “The King of Kong,” last year.)

“There are very few people in the video game industry who have managed to succeed time after time at a world-class level, and Miyamoto-san is one of them,” Graham Hopper, a Disney veteran and executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, said in a telephone interview. “The level of creative success that he has achieved over a sustained period is probably unparalleled.”

Given that its roster of characters includes not only Mario and Donkey Kong but also Princess Peach, Zelda, Bowser and Link, it’s easy to imagine that Mr. Miyamoto designs his games around those characters.

The truth is exactly the opposite. According to Mr. Miyamoto, gameplay systems and mechanics have always come first, while the characters are created and deployed in the service of the overall design. That means a focus on the seemingly prosaic basic elements of game design: movement, setting, goals to accomplish and obstacles to overcome.

“I feel that people like Mario and people like Link and the other characters we’ve created not for the characters themselves, but because the games they appear in are fun,” he said. “And because people enjoy playing those games first, they come to love the characters as well.”

Mr. Miyamoto’s work is evolving from a reliance on invented characters and fanciful, outlandish settings like Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom or Zelda’s mythical Hyrule. With games like Nintendogs (inspired by his pet Shetland sheepdog), Wii Sports, Wii Fit and coming next, Wii Music, Mr. Miyamoto is gravitating toward everyday hobbies: pets, bowling, yoga, Hula-Hoop, music. It is as if an artist who had mastered the abstract had finally moved into realism.

“I would say that over the last five years or so, the types of games I create has changed somewhat,” he said. “Whereas before I could kind of use my own imagination to create these worlds or create these games, I would say that over the last five years I’ve had more of a tendency to take interests or topics in my life and try to draw the entertainment out of that.”

It has proved the perfect strategy as Nintendo reaches out to nongamers who may not care to understand why this frantic plumber keeps jumping on top of turtles, or why that gallant fellow in green has to keep rescuing the same princess over and over. At this moment, when consumers crave the ability to shape and become a part of their entertainment, whether through MySpace or “American Idol,” the latest star in Nintendo’s stable of characters is you — or rather Mii, the whimsical avatar Wii users create of themselves.

“I see the Miis as the most recent character creation from Nintendo,” Mr. Miyamoto said. “What’s interesting is that regardless of the user’s age, if they’re looking at a Mii, it’s their Mii. Before, when you’re playing as another character, it’s more typical of more passive entertainment, and by creating a Mii you’re becoming more a part of the entertainment experience.”

Nintendo is expected to release more details about Wii Music this summer, but the basic concept is that while popular music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band allow players only to recreate canned tunes, Wii Music will try to enable users to capture the feelings of composition and improvisation.

Mr. Miyamoto grew up on Western music like the Beatles and the Lovin’ Spoonful. He plays piano and banjo and, as a bluegrass aficionado, immediately recognized the name of Ricky Skaggs when told over dinner in Manhattan that Mr. Skaggs was scheduled to perform in town in a few days. Mr. Miyamoto even joked about extending his stay to catch the show. (He didn’t.)

“We’re trying to create an experience where people are very simply able to get the feeling like maybe they’re creating music,” he said.

With a track record like his, it would be foolish to bet against him. When it comes to the Walt Disney of the digital generation, no one knows fun better.

FT: Gamemaster makes a play for his place in history

Gamemaster makes a play for his place in history

By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco

Published: April 14 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 14 2008 03:00

John Riccitiello has just come out of a meeting with film executives that has not gone according to the script.

"The buzz in Hollywood, which I heard from some Hollywood folks . . . is people are worried whether Iron Man the movie is going to get killed by Grand Theft Auto the game," says the chief executive of Electronic Arts, the world's biggest video game publisher.

"I don't think I've ever heard of that before."

The 48-year-old believes this reversal of fortunes represents a big change rather than a blip: "There is more interest today from Hollywood to make movies out of our games than there is interest in our industry to make games out of their movies. There's a big reset happening now."

It is this emerging primacy of video games that has tempted him to a take a top job at EA for a second time in 10 years.

He was president and chief operating officer from 1997 to 2004, then took a break with a private equity fund for three years, before rejoining the games company in April last year as chief executive.

One year on, he is convinced he made the right decision. Sitting in a conference room at EA's Silicon Valley headquarters, the Berkeley science graduate who was raised in California is casually dressed and relaxed. But on the subject of the industry he becomes passionate and animated.

"The rate of change in this industry is massive," he enthuses.

"The games industry 10 years ago was a toy business in the minds of most consumers. Toys 'R' Us at the time merchandised products alphabetically so Monsters toys were next to Madden [American football games], Barbies were next to boxing games."

Today, probably more than 2bn people worldwide are game players, he says. Electronic games have become as ubiquitous as television and bigger than the movies.

Their popularity is fuelled by a proliferation of devices that can play games - from mobile phones to iPods and handheld consoles - and advances in the performance of graphics and microprocessor chips that enhance realism and interaction.

"We've had to wait for Moore's Law to capitalise on itself for decades . . . so we're finally able to do this stuff," he says, referring to the steady doubling of transistors on chips every 18 months.

"It feels like what movie moguls might have seen in the 1920s and said: 'Hey, we've got talkies now, where is it going?' I feel like we've stepped through a time window where our games are so compelling and seem so real."

It will not be long, he believes, before games are ranked as an art form alongside cinema.

"Our industry is passing through a phase where I believe the greatest games will be viewed by almost everybody as being as important as Best Picture at the Academy Awards."

If so, he would nominate Grand Theft Auto IV as the most successful game of 2008 and possibly the current generation of consoles. The game, released by the publisher Take-Two and its studio Rockstar Games on April 29, is expected by analysts to sell about 10m units in the first few months.

GTA IV and its Rockstar creator are the primary reason for the audacious $2bn takeover bid for Take-Two that Mr Riccitiello launched in February. The EA chief believes his $26-a-share offer, giving a 60 per cent premium on Take-Two's share price, was generous. Take-Two has rejected it as opportunistic and undervaluing the company.

He envisages the fiercely independent Rockstar fitting into the semi-autonomous studio system he has established at EA over the past year. It is a system he describes as "city state-style independence". This studio structure stems from his experience with Elevation Partners, the private equity firm he moved to in Redwood Shores.

While at Elevation, he bought and ran the studios Pandemic and BioWare (he is an avid player of BioWare's successful role-playing game Mass Effect ). In fact, he liked the studios so much he bought them twice, paying about $860m last October to bring them into the EA fold.

"I spent three years outside EA managing independent developers, while EA ran a global monolithic studio organisation. I thought central command and control homogenisation had run its course."

Studios such as Criterion in the UK, which had been renamed EA UK, have now reverted back to their original names. "Allowing people to put their name on the front of a product allows them more of a sense of ownership and increases their passion," he explains.

The company had also become too big to manage, hence his division of EA last June into four "labels" for its sports titles, the Sims brand, emerging casual games and EA Games, which covers the rest of its titles.

Mr Riccitiello has given EA a much needed shake-up. Under the 16-year tenure of his predecessor, Larry Probst, the company had grown from sales of $102m in 1991 to $3bn in revenues last year, and achieved undisputed leadership among pure-play publishers.

But the company did not handle the transition to next-generation consoles well, being slow to see the potential of Nintendo's Wii. The quality of its games also slipped and it lost market share in 2007 as hits dried up.

Buying Take-Two would give EA the hit stables of Rockstar and another studio, 2K Games, but Mr Riccitiello says: "I don't think you ever want to buy to fix a problem.

"EA's product line-up in 2008 is the best it's ever been; it's a truly spectacular line-up and we're going to see strong share growth," he says, citing games such as Spore , the new title from Will Wright, creator of The Sims , and Boom Blox , the first game developed with the director Steven Spielberg.

A Take-Two acquisition would also be likely to confirm EA's number-one status, due to be challenged by Activision Blizzard, as the merger of rival US publisher Activision with the games division of Vivendi is completed.

Mr Riccitiello says being number one has never been his priority.

"Above all, I'm trying to bring great quality and innovation back . . . I'm also trying to drive us towards a variety of new business models, whether it be subscription or micro-transactions, or advertising-based," he says

However, he admits to wanting to cement the 26-year-old company's place in history. "I read a book on how every medium creates one great company: animation created Disney, CBS was created by radio, NBC by television.

"Interactive entertainment is going to determine one great company and I think it's this one. One of the reasons I've come back is to try to take it to the next step."

Personal passion smooths transition for consumer goods man

John Riccitiello believes his passion for video games and technology has been vital to his success in an industry where those with consumer goods backgrounds often struggle.

The 48-year-old has focused for the past 11 years on video games, but spent the previous 17 in consumer goods where he learnt marketing, sales and finance and how to manage teams. He joined EA from Sara Lee, where he was head of its worldwide bakery division. Before that, he was chief executive of Wilson Sporting Goods and held executive positions at Haagen-Dazs, PepsiCo and the Clorox Company.

"But throughout I had this personal passion . . . I bought the earliest Apple products, built lasers and holograms in high school. I played the original Doom and Mortal Kombat .

"So the reason I was twice able to be quoted that this was my dream job - once when I came back and once a decade earlier - is that it was one of those rare circumstances where I was able to unite something I had a personal passion for together with where I could make a difference. Passion really matters in the entertainment business."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

NY Times: Will Disney Keep Us Amused?

Will Disney Keep Us Amused?

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

The Walt Disney Company is building a robotic Mr. Potato Head to greet visitors at a theme park that is being digitally refitted to entice the video generation.

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By BROOKS BARNES

Published: February 10, 2008

 

ANAHEIM, Calif. — VISIT Disney’s California Adventure — a 55-acre theme park next door to the fabled progenitor of the modern amusement Mecca, Disneyland — and you will find a noisy reminder of what happens when a company loses its focus and cuts corners.

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Kevin Rafferty, left, a developer, and Roger Gould, standing, creative director at Pixar, worked with Don Rickles on the script for Mr. Potato Head.

 

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Creative developers at Disney test a 3-D ride that includes virtual-reality versions of classic carnival games.

   

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The Walt Disney Company built the park on the cheap in 2001, and many rides are copies of familiar carnival workhorses like the Ferris wheel. A lack of landscaping can leave guests sweltering. Outdoor shows were borrowed from other Disney properties. And the theme, built around tributes to California, is modest except for an occasionally unintentional ghost-town atmosphere: The park draws about 6 million visitors a year, a trickle compared with the 15 million who swarm Disneyland.

Now, Disney is embarking on a $1.1 billion, five-year effort to get California Adventure on track. The blueprints call for ripping out ho-hum rides and adding elaborate new ones, rebuilding the park’s entrance — a hodgepodge of turnstiles, a miniature Golden Gate Bridge and pastel tile murals — to shift the focus to Disney iconography.

In June, Disney will unveil a glimpse of the shoot-for-the-moon bet it is making on California Adventure’s makeover, with the introduction of a ride called Toy Story Mania. More than three years in the making, and estimated to cost about $80 million, the attraction essentially puts guests inside a video game.

Riders, wearing 3-D glasses, board vehicles that career through an old-fashioned carnival midway, operated by characters from the popular “Toy Story” film franchise. Vehicles stop at game booths — 56 giant screens programmed with 3-D animation from Pixar — and riders play virtual-reality versions of classic carnival games.

But much more is riding on the attraction than a complex turnaround of just one theme park. Toy Story Mania, which Disney is also installing in Florida, reflects the larger pressures and challenges facing the company’s $10.6 billion parks and resorts business. To stay relevant to younger, digitally savvy visitors while also delivering growth to investors, Disney, the company that invented the modern theme park, knows that it has to devise a new era of spectacular attractions rooted in technology.

One-upmanship increasingly drives this intensely competitive business, and Disney’s rivals are also trying harder to gain market share. Universal Studios, part of NBC Universal, has more than quadrupled its spending on new rides, introducing attractions in California and Florida that are based on “The Simpsons.” Universal is teaming up with Warner Brothers to bring a small Harry Potter-theme park to Florida in late 2009. Niche players like SeaWorld and Legoland are also muscling in on Disney’s territory.

At its core, however, Toy Story Mania represents an effort to solve a puzzle that poses a much larger threat to Disney and the broader amusement park business. The quickening pace of daily living, advances in personal technology and the rapidly changing media landscape are combining to reshape what consumers expect out of a theme park, Disney executives say.

Toy Story Mania, which carries a modest price tag compared with some other Disney efforts, demonstrates one way that the company is fighting back, said Jay Rasulo, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.

“Bigger and more expensive is not necessarily the answer,” Mr. Rasulo said. “You want people leaving thinking, ‘Wow, only Disney could do that.’ ”

Consumers’ fixation on instant gratification and personalization has been reshaping the entertainment industry for some time, but it has finally caught up to the theme park business in visible ways. For instance, Disney has spent much more effort — and money — developing ways to entertain people as they stand in line for Toy Story Mania.

An animatronic figure with an estimated $1 million price tag will sing songs and interact with guests as they wait. Employees dressed as “Toy Story” characters will stroll among the crowds.

“There’s an erosion of patience,” said Bruce Vaughn, the chief creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s development group. “People’s tolerance for lines is decreasing at a rapid rate.”

Mr. Rasulo said that younger visitors, in particular, expect customized entertainment. So Toy Story Mania’s computers will accommodate riders of various skill levels.

“Guests are pretty much no longer interested in being passive viewers,” Mr. Rasulo said.

To address shifting tastes, the broader amusement park industry will have to rewrite its operating rules, said Jerry Aldrich, the founder of Amusement Industry Consulting. “Disney is already there, but a lot of parks are just waking up to this,” he said.

The health of the parks and resorts unit is crucial to Disney’s overall performance. Its lucrative sports unit, ESPN, makes more money, and its movie studio basks in Hollywood glamour. But the parks, where people interact with Mickey and his pals, are the reason that the Disney brand is so powerful, analysts say. As the theme parks go, so goes Disney.

Lately, Wall Street has been sounding alarm bells about the unit — and not just about California Adventure. While Disneyland and the cluster of Florida parks that make up Disney World have been churning out record profits on strong increases in attendance, some investors worry that the troubled domestic economy will tear a hole in the business. In late January, a Citigroup analyst downgraded Disney’s stock to a sell, citing concern about lower demand for hotel rooms  at the resorts.

DISNEY strongly rejects the skepticism, and some other analysts agree. Disney’s chief financial officer, Thomas O. Staggs, said the company saw no indication that consumers were cutting back. “We are pleased with the current pace of business at our parks, particularly given the record attendance we achieved last year,” he told analysts on Tuesday during a conference call, held as the company released fiscal first-quarter earnings.

Vacationers from Europe and Asia, benefiting from a weak dollar, could pick up some of the slack in the event of an economic downturn, but that could lead to cannibalization — Disney needs those same visitors to patronize theme parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Although its performance has drastically improved from its early days, Disneyland Resort Paris is still struggling after 10 years of changes and heavy capital investment. The park in Japan is cruising right along, but attendance at nearby Hong Kong Disneyland, the company’s newest park, has fallen more than 25 percent since its 2005 opening. Disney told analysts on Tuesday that attendance in Hong Kong has recently “improved significantly” because of new promotions.

To make certain that Toy Story Mania is a hit — part of a strategic effort to keep mining revenue from the 13-year-old “Toy Story” franchise — Disney is pulling every lever in its vast arsenal.

Pixar, the Disney-owned studio working on “Toy Story 3” for a 2010 release, contributed animation and general creative advice. Disney VR Studios, the company’s video game unit, customized software, while the parks and resorts unit handled the heavy lifting of design and construction. The media networks division, which includes ABC, will help publicize the ride once it opens — along with hundreds of other promotional partners.

“We have an incredible number of engines at this company, and every one is firing around this franchise,” Mr. Rasulo said.

WORK on Toy Story Mania got under way on a stiflingly hot September day in 2005, when a team of Disney creative developers went to the Los Angeles County Fair. The goal was to research how carnival games operate.

Two developers, Kevin Rafferty and Robert Coltrin, had devised an idea for a new California Adventure ride that would juxtapose the old-fashioned romance of a carnival midway with high-tech video game elements. They had a hunch that “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2,” the Pixar films about toys coming to life, would provide a good theme. But they didn’t know much about carnival games.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Are the games we remember from our childhoods even relevant anymore?’ ”  Mr. Coltrin said.

At the fair, the two were thrilled as they walked through rows of game booths — wooden structures that carnival operators call “stick joints” — to find crowds enjoying classic games like the ring toss and water guns. “We were like, ‘Score!’ and gave each other a high-five,” Mr. Coltrin recalled.

Using digital cameras, members of the development team documented details, from the colors of the canvas covering each booth — red and yellow — to how far apart the games were spaced. They quickly ruled out some games as options for the ride. “Toss a coin in a cup didn’t really do it for us,” said Chrissie Allen, a senior show producer.

But other games, like one in which customers threw darts at balloons, piqued their interest. “We thought, ‘This just might work,’ ” Ms. Allen said.

Reassembling at Disney’s offices in Glendale, Calif., the team worked on the concept that would become Toy Story Mania. Because carnivals sell commotion, there would be lots of flashing lights, barkers trying to capture riders’ attention, buzzers and bells.

Mr. Rafferty and Mr. Coltrin dreamed up a fanciful story: The classic toys in “Toy Story” had come to life and staged a carnival under their owner’s bed while he was away at dinner. Little Bo Peep would operate the balloon darts; Ham, the talking piggy bank, would cheer riders as they tossed virtual eggs at barn animals. The culmination would be “Woody’s Rootin’ Tootin’ Gallery,” a twist on old-fashioned shooting galleries.

They would use full-scale 3-D animation, a first for a Disney ride. That, Mr. Vaughn said, would make riders feel as if they were inside a video game or a virtual world. “We look at it as gaming meets immersive storytelling,” he said.

While Mr. Vaughn and his colleagues were cogitating in the fall of 2005, Disney had its hands full. Robert A. Iger had just taken over the company after the exit of Michael D. Eisner  and  was working to extend Disney’s partnership with Pixar, an effort that would result in a $7.4 billion acquisition.

When Mr. Rasulo and his team presented Mr. Iger with plans for Toy Story Mania, Mr. Iger was interested but cautious. Would that dovetail with much larger efforts to overhaul the entire park? The ride could handle up to 1,500 riders an hour. Was that enough? An improved relationship with Pixar looked promising, but what if a deal couldn’t be reached? Would that hinder plans to build a lavish ride around Pixar’s core creative property?

But Mr. Iger liked a couple of the important parts of the proposal. Imagineers (Disney’s term for creative developers) suggested building versions of the ride at the same time in California and Florida — a Disney first — to leverage the development costs. Another component involved the ease with which the ride could be rethemed every season.

“The chance to take simple games that people have loved playing for generations and pairing them with cutting-edge technology just sounded exhilarating to everybody,” Ms. Allen said.

BUILDING elaborate models is among the first formal steps in creating a Disney attraction. Engineers, paying attention to scale and sight lines, want to find out how a planned addition would affect the existing park.

Models are built on large tables equipped with wheels. The company keeps room-size models of entire parks, and engineers will eventually wheel the new model into that area to see how it looks.

To give birth to Toy Story Mania, Mr. Rafferty and Mr. Coltrin went to work turning drawings of the ride into foam models, toiling in the same 1950s-era building in suburban Los Angeles where Walt Disney himself once tinkered.

Tweaks started to happen. The team added turrets to the top of the ride for a more dramatic flair. They shifted the direction of the facade by a few degrees to make it more visible from the park entrance. “And we knew at this stage that we wanted a little piece of magic out in front as a tease to people as they waited in line,” Mr. Coltrin said.

Upstairs, designers entered blueprints for the ride into a computer program. This would allow them to start building and refining the entire project, which is made up of 150 computers, with 90 of them moving around on the ride vehicles and communicating with one another via a secured wireless network. With a click of a mouse, developers could jump to any spot inside in the vehicles for a virtual dip into how the experience might look to someone on the ride.

“We don’t want anybody to be able to see multiple versions of Woody at the same time, and seconds make a difference,” said Mark Mine, the technical concept designer. “Every part of the ride has to be magical.

“It is much easier and less expensive to do this before the concrete has been poured,” he added. “As rides become more complicated, your ability to tweak in the field gets harder and much more expensive.”

Across the street, in a cold, unmarked garage, Ms. Allen helped to conduct “play tests” on rudimentary versions of the ride. More than 400 people of all ages — all had signed strict nondisclosure agreements — sat on a plywood vehicle set up in front of a projection screen and played various versions of the games. Disney workers studied their reactions and interviewed them afterward.

“We were looking to see if some effects were too scary,” Ms. Allen said, “or if there wasn’t enough laughing happening during certain sequences.”

Among the discoveries: People wanted to be able to compare scores after they were finished playing, while some children had a hard time reaching the cannonlike firing controller, christened by Disney as a “spring action shooter.” Engineers added a computer screen to vehicles to display scores and installed the controls on movable lap bars.

“We were trying to find out things we didn’t even know to ask about,” said Sue Bryan,  a senior show producer.

The ride’s psychological components started to take shape during this phase. Disney decided that riders were happier when they got a bigger visual payoff. (One of Little Bo Peep’s balloons now pops with greater force when hit with a virtual dart and a blast of air shoots into a rider’s face.) A game involving shooting at a paper target was dropped. (“It was hard to make paper interesting,” Ms. Bryan said.) And developers decided that the last game before the exit needed to be the easiest, so riders would feel that they were coming out as winners, even if they weren’t very good.

After Disney closed the Pixar deal, in January 2006, Toy Story Mania became more elaborate. Mr. Iger wanted Pixar — and particularly one of its co-founders, John Lasseter, who had worked as a skipper on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland after college — to contribute to creative advances in the parks. Disney had incorporated Pixar movies into its theme parks before, but Pixar’s involvement in those efforts was modest, Mr. Vaughn said.

“The minute Pixar became 100 percent part of the family, it could go whole hog and dive in,” he said.

One of Mr. Lasseter’s major concerns about Toy Story Mania centered on the animation, various developers said. Disney had hired an outside contractor to handle it, but Mr. Lasseter insisted that Pixar staff members who were involved in creating the films should also work on the ride.

The Disney team had also decided to leave out Buzz Lightyear, the modern spaceman toy in the films, because he was already showcased in an older ride called Astro Blasters. But Pixar felt that the character was essential to the “Toy Story” franchise. Buzz will now be a host of a game, and he shares top billing on the ride’s marquee.

Creating what Mr. Coltrin had called “a little piece of magic” was another area of special attention for Mr. Lasseter and his lieutenants. To entertain people as they waited in line, the developers decided to place one of Disney’s signature animatronic figures outside. It would draw attention like a carnival barker, but also be sophisticated enough to interact one on one with guests, adding another element of customization.

Only one “Toy Story” figure was considered for the role: Mr. Potato Head.

WORK on Mr. Potato Head started last year in a heavily guarded Disney research plant a few miles from the company’s headquarters in Burbank, Calif. Developers had to make a five-foot-tall plastic potato sing, dance and seemingly hold conversations with people at random. The robot also had to be able to remove his ear and put it back on.

“It’s all in the math,” said Jimmy A. Thomas,  the lead mechanical designer.

When Walt Disney introduced animatronics in the 1960s, coining the word in the process, his creations moved in simple ways through the use of pneumatic valves and hydraulic pumps. The children in the It’s a Small World attraction wowed patrons simply by blinking their eyes and bowing.

Modern visitors expect much more. Mr. Potato Head — with help from a dozen video cameras, several computers, an unseen ride operator and a $1 million budget — will be able to make his mouth form words, a first for Disney animatronics.

The comedian Don Rickles, whose gravelly voice brought the character to life in the films, was hired to record 750 words and four songs. The hidden ride operator, armed with a computer and cameras that scan the crowd, will then choose phrases based on the actions and appearance of people standing in front of it. (“Hey, you in the red baseball hat.”)

The goal was to make the character so perfect that it looked as if it had just stepped out of the movies. Pixar executives tightly monitored every detail and helped direct Mr. Rickles. At a recent taping, the Pixar team put him through his paces.

“Let’s put a little more chuckle in that line,” said Roger Gould, Pixar’s creative director, sitting in a recording studio as 10 other executives and engineers took notes and adjusted instruments.

Mr. Rickles complied, repeating a line that would play if the ride stopped unexpectedly. “Folks, we’re having a little delay here,” he said. “For your safety, please stay seated inside the game tram.”

Among Disneyphiles, at least, the wait for Toy Story Mania to open is unbearable. Blogs like Blue Sky Disney and Mice Age, which are not affiliated with the company, have been chronicling minute details of the construction. (“The first ride vehicles have just arrived in California from their production facility in Osaka, Japan!”)

Al Lutz, the publisher of Mice Age and a critic of what he calls California Adventure’s “cheap strip-mall stucco” aesthetic, says fans are keen to see the ride’s over-the-top details. Disney is, after all, a company that studied how the sun struck the earth differently in various locations to determine the color of paint to use on the fairy-tale castle at the center of each resort.

“Young people are going to be fighting to be first in line,” he said. 

FT: All to play for

All to play for

By Joshua Chaffin

Published: November 19 2007 18:34 | Last updated: November 19 2007 18:34

As vice-president of games at ESPN, Raphael Poplock not only manages the company’s fantasy sports websites, he is also a fantasy player – and a committed one.

During quiet moments on his wedding day three years ago, Mr Poplock found himself sneaking out and logging on to the internet to trade players for his fantasy football team. His honeymoon, it seems, was less a romantic getaway than an exercise in fantasy sports withdrawal. “We went to Greece, and I had an itch the whole time,” Mr Poplock confesses.

The object of his obsession is a game in which ordinary fans have the opportunity to indulge their desire to play manager. Each week, they choose a roster of real world players for their ideal, fantasy team – be it in football, baseball or basketball – and then compete against other fantasy teams based on the real-world statistical performance of those players.

With the help of the internet, fantasy sports has grown from a niche hobby to a widespread phenomenon in recent years, and its growing audience and addictive qualities have drawn the attention of big media and internet companies.

Along with ESPN, the sports division owned by Disney, Yahoo, CBS, Fox, NBC and the major US sports leagues are competing for business from the millions of men in their 20s and 30s who may have turned away from primetime television but happily spend hours each week on fantasy websites, organising their teams and gorging on sports content.

“Fantasy is a big business,” says Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, whose CBS Sportsline operates one of the most popular fantasy football leagues.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has estimated the industry’s value at $1bn (€683m, £490m), with roughly 20m players in the US and Canada. One research firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, claims that fantasy sports cost US companies as much as $435m a week in lost productivity.

A better measure of fantasy’s value, though, may be its ability to glue sports fans to particular websites for extended periods of time.

This September, for example, as the American football season kicked off, CBSSports.com at-tracted more than 100m visits – an all-time high. Each visitor spent an average of 96 minutes on the site for the month, which was nearly triple the industry average, and something that the company attributes almost entirely to fantasy. “What fantasy does is promote more time spent on the site,” Mr Smith says.

Mr Poplock has witnessed a similar phenomenon at ESPN, where fantasy customers devour more of the company’s content – from its televised sports coverage to its radio broadcasts, magazine articles, mobile phone updates and online features – than other consumers. “Our fantasy fans are the best community of fans we have,” he says.

People played fantasy sports, or a variety of them, long before the internet era. In 1980, Dan Okrent, a sportswriter and editor, created a fantasy baseball league with a group of friends in New York. They called it “Rotisserie Baseball”, naming it after the French restaurant where they gathered.

Rotisserie gained popularity after newspapers such as USA Today began to publish expanded sports statistics and sponsored fantasy leagues. But it truly took off – not unlike day-trading – in the late 1990s, when the internet did away with the paper trail and made it possible to crunch and sort enormous amounts of data in real time. “It just exploded,” says Jeffrey Thomas, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

The web also allowed players to talk to one another through e-mail and message boards, creating an early example of an internet community. It led Bill Simmons, the ESPN sports columnist, to declare recently: “The internet had a greater impact on fantasy sports than on porn over the past 11 years.”

As it turns out, fantasy may have common ground with another vice: gambling. Many fantasy players wager among themselves, creating pots that run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and several internet companies have sprung up to promote fantasy league gambling.

For big media companies, though, money is made by selling advertising to companies attracted by high traffic. The multi-platform Holy Grail for ESPN, CBS and other media giants is the fan who watches a broadcast of a game on TV while also tracking sports news and fantasy statistics on a laptop opened to their web page, and messaging friends and competitors via their mobile phone or instant-messaging services.

In pursuing these core fans, US media and internet companies have expanded fantasy from its baseball roots to just about any sport that includes data and a passionate fan base, including basketball, hockey and Nascar. They even tried fantasy bass fishing – although that proved short-lived.

They are also pushing into Europe, where the UK has a tradition of fantasy football leagues. The two largest Premiership fantasy leagues – Premiereleague.com and Fantasyleague.com – attracted nearly 2.3m unique users in August, according to ComScore, the internet research company.

“The proportion of time being spent on these sites during office hours is significant,” says Bob Ivins, executive vice-president at ComScore. “On the Friday before the start of the Premiership season alone, over 230,000 office hours were spent on the fantasy football sites.”

Meanwhile, Myfootballclub.co.uk, a website with 20,000 paying subscribers, last week bought Ebbsfleet, a lower division English team. In a fantasy-inspired move, subscribers will vote on transfers, team selection and other matters.

The fantasy king, though, remains American football, which is ideal for the medium because it is laden with player statistics. The biggest operator is Yahoo Sports, with more than 4.3m customers. The internet company built a large audience by offering its product free, although it now charges $124.99 for a premium version. Yahoo also sells sponsorships to companies and brands such as Toyota, Heineken and Viagra.

“It’s a very profitable business for us,” says James Pitaro, vice-president of Yahoo Sports. “These are fans who consume an incredible number of pages on our site. They also consume a lot of video.”

ESPN has been trying to catch up. After dropping the subscription fee for its fantasy football game three years ago, it saw a 10-fold increase in traffic, and has added numerous bells and whistles to draw more users. It hopes to steal a march on competitors by using its cable television network, radio station and other assets to promote its fantasy products. Each Sunday morning, for example, the network airs a one-hour fantasy pre-game show on ESPN News.

A pack of smaller competitors is likely to enter the fray after a US court ruled last month that sports leagues could no longer charge tens of millions of dollars in licensing fees for data about their players – removing a barrier to entry.

But for some media executives, fantasy’s future lies beyond football – or any other sport. At CBS, Mr Smith wants to take the medium and all its interactive possibilities and apply it to a range of subjects that inspire a passionate following. One idea he is considering is a weekly Hollywood-themed contest in which participants would draft celebrities and score points based on how they perform at the box office, whether they become pregnant, enter rehab, or are arrested for driving under the influence. The BBC’s website has run a similar game, Celebdaq, for years.

“What we’ve been asking internally for several months,” Mr Smith says, “is, what is the fantasy for other categories?”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

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FT: Sports - None too shabby in defeat

None too shabby in defeat

By Mike Steinberger

Published: August 3 2007 17:37 | Last updated: August 3 2007 17:37

Tiger Woods had barely signed his scorecard after the final round of the British Open two week ago when Golf magazine published, on its website, an obituary of sorts for the world’s finest player. It said 2007 was shaping up as one to forget for Woods and that the US PGA Championship would be his “last chance to save a lost season”.

The PGA begins on Thursday at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and if Woods fails to defend his title there, he will be 0-4 in major tournaments this year, at which point other media outlets will surely join Golf in declaring the year to have been a wasted one for him.

And who could blame them? The world number one has set such an outlandishly high standard – he has won 12 majors in 11 full seasons on the PGA Tour and 77 tournaments in total – that anything less than victory does, for him, look like abject failure. That certainly seems to be his view; he often describes finishing second in tournaments as being “the first loser”.

Given his record and mindset, it is hardly surprising that the press is treating his 2007 campaign – no majors and merely three tournament victories – as something of a washout.

But to judge Woods solely in terms of where he stands on the leader board is to miss part of what makes him so special. It is when Woods struggles that one can really appreciate just how brilliant a golfer he is.

Consider, for instance, this year’s British Open, at Carnoustie. Woods, the defending champion, opened well, shooting a two-under 69 in the first round. On the Friday, however, his swing went on holiday and he managed only five of 15 fairways.

Yet on a day when little went right for him he not only avoided catastrophe; he also stayed in contention, shooting a three-over 74. It was a performance worthy of Houdini. Woods repeatedly put himself in mortal danger, then escaped – saving par from one bunker, saving par from the lip of another, hitting out of some trees to avoid a bogey, and so on. Rarely has scrambling ever looked so sublime. In lesser hands – and hands controlled by lesser wills – the score could easily have been double that.

For Woods’ long-time rival Phil Mickelson, it was: he shot six-over par on the Friday and missed the cut. And therein is the difference not just between Woods and Mickelson but between Woods and the rest of humanity.

The next day’s accounts reported only that Woods had stumbled. There is an all-or-nothing attitude when it comes to his achievements, which is understandable but regrettable.

In preparing to write off 2007 as a complete failure for him, reporters are overlooking one of the more interesting, and telling, developments in his historic career. When he claimed his first fistful of majors, he tended to win by jaw-dropping margins (the 1997 Masters, the 2000 US Open, the 2000 British Open). And when he fell short, it was often by sizeable, if not quite so extravagant margins (the 1999 Masters, the 2001 British Open, the 2001 PGA).

But that has changed. Woods has won four of the last 11 grand-slam titles, dating back to his victory at the 2005 Masters. Of the majors he has not captured during this period, he missed the cut at one – last year’s US Open, which came just weeks after his father’s death – and finished 12th in another, this year’s British Open. But he finished tied for fourth at the 2005 PGA, tied for third at last year’s Masters, took second at the 2005 US Open and tied for second at both this year’s Masters and US Open.

Nowadays, even when he is not at his best – and Woods has been struggling this season with his driving and putting – it is still almost good enough to win.

True, he had some near-misses earlier in his career, tying for third at the 1999 US Open and finishing runner-up at the 2002 PGA. Back then, however, close calls were the exception with Woods – they are now becoming a habit.

In this way, too, he invites comparisons with the man he is chasing, Jack Nicklaus. In addition to the 18 majors that Nicklaus won, he finished second in grand-slam events an astonishing 19 times. He also finished third in nine majors and fourth in eight others.

Although one can never say never with the 31-year-old Woods, it is doubtful that he will ever match Nicklaus in this department. As surely Nicklaus would admit, the competition is a lot deeper now than it was during his era. But all those brushes with victory are another measure of Nicklaus’s greatness, and it is starting to look as if that will be the case for Woods too.

Meanwhile, Southern Hills was not especially kind to Woods when it last hosted a major, the 2001 US Open. He finished tied for 12th, seven strokes back. Given his admittedly limited history there and the sub-optimal shape of his game,it would not be a shockif he fails to defend hisPGA title.

However, if recent performance is anything to go by, the trophy will probably not elude him by much, and on a course known to make players grind, his grinding will surely have a beauty of its own.

Woods never looks better than in victory. But these days, he is not looking too shabby in defeat, either.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

NYT: Video Games Conquer Retirees

Video Games Conquer Retirees

Lee Celano for The New York Times

The first time she lost at Bookworm, Sister Jean-Marie Smith recalled, “I stood up and said, ‘Me and this computer are going to have a talk.’ ”

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