Weather? It's In The Game!
Unlikely press releases are a staple of GameSetWatch, of course, and here's both an odd and cute one: "Yesterday was the highly anticipated release of NCAA Football ’08 by EA Sports--- and now the game play is more realistic than ever thanks to The Weather Channel Interactive."
Oh yeah? "As you consider a product review or update your coverage of this release, you should note that the latest version of this college football video game uses up to the minute information from The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCI) to reflect accurate, real-time weather conditions at NCAA stadiums."
"For instance, if a winter storm threatens the Northeast, the Eagles of Boston College will play through the snow. Hurricane threatens Florida? See how the Gators field goal kicker deals with 50 mph winds. Through a deal with EA Sports, the sporting division of Electronic Arts, The Weather Channel will provide real-time weather to the game via the Internet."
That's actually kinda fun. Here's more specifics: "TWCI provides a custom weather data feed to EA Sports for each stadium location. Every time a player with a live Internet connection loads a new game, they have the option to choose real-time weather from TWCI. The video game will then use the current conditions at the selected stadium to create the weather experience for that game." I think lots more games would benefit from real-time weather - suggestions?
Comments
Back during the hype storm for the first Black & White, Molyneux's team promises that the game would look up local conditions online and bring that weather into the game, presumably according to the theory that if one is inside playing video games because there's a torrential downpour outside, his in-game wards need to experience that weather off in virtual land as well.
Anyway, I think the feature didn't make it into the final game; I didn't notice anything like that happening during the 50% of Black & White I played before losing interest and turning back to Nethack.
Posted by: John H. | July 19, 2007 7:21 PM
Yes! Especially if in-game physics were affected by the weather. I don't ever play sports games, but the idea of seeing a tornado or lightning storm somewhere in the country on the morning news and then being able to turn on my game right then and put football players in it totally tickles me.
Posted by: Leigh | July 19, 2007 7:24 PM
... and by the time you've played 5 games in the drizzle in one night it'll really make you want to put away the controller for another (sunnier) day.
Great idea for the feed-me-now generation.
Even MMO's have tried to tap into this type of data, but unless your game really is linked to real-time you just have an expensive random number generator.
[Mad props to the B&W reference too; I believe the idea lost its way in beta when the majority of actual players played at night, therefore the game was always dark.]
Posted by: VRBones | July 19, 2007 9:43 PM
What the heck...
Please tell me I'm due some royalties for this idea, since I called for it 18 months ago:
http://www.spotanime.com/2006/01/06/why-didn%e2%80%99t-they-think-of-that-real-time-conditions/
At least a free copy of the game would be nice. And my name in the credits. And a trip to the Rose Bowl and EA's corporate suite. That's all...not much to ask for, right?
Posted by: SpotAnime | July 20, 2007 11:30 AM
Dare I point out that the last version of MS Flight Sim had the option to download the latest weather for the locations you were flying in?
Made things even more realistic than they were- but it was nice to also be able to change the times and weather if you felt like it.
Posted by: Zhaph | July 20, 2007 3:48 PM
I have an idea for A great new racing motorcycle game; that i know a lot of people would enjoy,Seriously. please contact me.
Posted by: ryan bell | August 13, 2007 10:49 PM