Bobby Kotick's New Year's Resolutions Found?

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is without a doubt one of the most visible execs in the game industry, so it's not every day one has a find like this. 1UP memberrevocolot, known for his remixes on the1UP Oddcast, claims he has a friend who works as a janitor at Activision, and this guy happened upon some notes scribbled down and tossed away by Kotick upon his return to the office this week. We have no way of verifying the authenticity of this, but screw it, it's the start of the new year and we're in a funny mood, so we're passing it along.

Yeah, yeah, it's a slow day since CES hasn't officially kicked off yet.

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Microsoft Sold 8 Million Kinects Since Launch

Along with announcing Avatar Kinect and upcoming Kinect controls for Netflix and Hulu Plus, Microsoft also took a brief moment during their CES keynote for a little bragging. CEO Steve Balmer revealed that since its launch, the Kinect has sold 8 million units worldwide -- that's 8 million in about 60 days.

The number crushed Microsoft's target of 3 million Kinect sales by the end of 2010 that they set before its launch, and even went way beyond the 5 millionthey expectedto sell 10 days after it was on market. Then again, it's of course possible they were low-balling their sales targets to manage expectations a bit in the first place.

Still, 8 million in 60 days is a strong number, so at least so far, Kinect seems to be quite a hit.

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From CIA Director to Videogame Designer

On January 5, 1994 -- 17 years ago today -- game publisher Activision announced that it had hired 74-year-old former CIA director William Colby to consult on and direct a series of spy-themed computer games.

"{Colby's} first-hand experience makes him the key to successful one-of-a-kind, true-to-life espionage thrillers,"Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement released to the press that day, promising that the series would have"all the elements of a major motion picture."

According to interviews, Colby was at the time considering lending his expertise to films but, after being introduced to a copy of Activision's Return to Zork, decided to work with the publisher to bring a sense of realism to the videogame medium.

"Any fiction writer can come up with a spy story,"Colby told the long-defunct CD-ROM World magazine,"but I think my contribution is to be the reality check."

The result of this partnership -- which eventually included input from former KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin as well -- wasSpycraft: The Great Game, a full-motion video adventure that tasks the player with unraveling an international conspiracy and, at several points, choosing among several branching story paths that force the player to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Further titles in the series never materialized, as Colby was found dead two months after SpyCraft shipped, the victim of an apparent boating accident.

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Looking Back: When Nintendo Was Accused of Discrimination

On January 4, 1990 -- twenty years ago today -- Nintendo of America responded to ongoing racism accusations and protests by adopting its first affirmative action policy. The policy, according to the group leading the protests, was inadequate, leading to even harsher criticism in the future.

The trouble started the previous year, when a group of 25 African American Nintendo employees took discrimination complaints to the Seattle CORE Group, a political watchdog organization. According to their complaints, Nintendo's workforce had fewer than 35 black employees out of around 1,600 total. Only ten of these were full-time employees, and none of them were supervisors.

"I've never considered myself an 'activist.' But it got to a point where I couldn't live with myself and keep working there,"Carey Wiggins, a former Nintendo temporary warehouse worker with a marketing degree, told theSeattle Times."I was passed over so many times. It was like a slap in the face to see everyone hired in front of me."

The Group sent a complaint to the Washington Employment Security Department and staged a protest at the Rainier Job Service Center (where a temp agency was interviewing prospects for Nintendo) after receiving an unsatisfactory response from Nintendo's Howard Lincoln, which leader Oscar Eason called"a bunch of nothing"that failed to address their complaints. The protest worked: the Commission stopped referring temporary employees to Nintendo for nearly a week while the charges were investigated and a meeting between Nintendo and the Core Group was arranged.

Nintendo's internal investigation revealed that the actual number of black employees among its 767-person full-time workforce (it didn't track minorities among its 900+ temporary workers) was actually 24, or 3.1 percent -- three of them managers. By comparison, the overall percentage of black employees in the counties Nintendo employed from was, at the time, 3.6 percent. Overall minority employment at the company was found to be 14 percent, which was actually higher than the entire minority population of the area, which was 13 percent.

"If you have basically the same percentage in your work force as the general population, it means you're not discriminating,"said Nintendo's Phil Rogers to a Seattle Times reporter."There is no smell."

Part of these accusations could be related to America's xenophobic nature toward Japanese companies at the time. Other companies under similar fire included Honda, Toyota, and Nikko Securities. Still, even Nintendo admitted that its numbers could be improved.

"There certainly is an indication there were a few problems that needed correcting, so I think Mr. Eason was warranted in bringing this kind of information to us,"Nintendo senior vice presicent Howard Lincoln told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer."I just feel bad that we were not able to get on top of it immediately."

Nintendo announced its new affirmative action policy on January 4 of 1991, but according to the Group, it was inadequate.

"They've drafted a generic plan that is skewed towards training and awareness, but has less of any kind of solid content,"said Eason."We had hoped to work out an agreement where African Americans would be retailing their products."

Such a policy, called a"fair-share agreement,"was already employed by companies like Burger King and Coca-Cola. Unfortunately, this was impossible for Nintendo to agree to, as Nintendo did not operate its own retail shops; it sold its products to independent dealers.

"We can't agree that some percentage of our dealers will be minority firms,"said Lincoln."That's not the way it works."

Regardless, the CORE Group's spat with Nintendo continued. Nintendo placed job ads in minority media and held job fairs especially for African Americans, and CORE continued causing a stir in the press.

"They are not interested in improving their working environment,"Eason told a reporter."A sister went out there to work for them. While she was reading the affirmative action plan, some Japanese came out and threw something at her."

By December of 1991, according to Eason, Nintendo stopped returning the Group's calls."They said, you guys are talking to the press and we're not going to do anything,"said Eason."This is as much as we'll give you."

Eason protested the sale of the Seattle Mariners to Nintendo in 1992, but this appears to be the end of his public battle with the company's hiring practices. He went on to serve for a time as the president of the Seattle branch of the NAACP, and currently serves on theCommission on African American Affairsfor the state of Washington.

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Half-Minute Hero Sequel Launches Twitter Caption Campaign

The sequel to 2009'sHalf-Minute Herois coming to Japan next February and Marvelous Entertainment has launched a special Twitter campaign to get fans communicating about the high-speed PSP RPG.

Visitors toTwitter30.jpcan choose a screenshot from the upcoming game and write a caption of 100 characters or less. These are then posted on the user's Twitter feed and the Twitter30 website. Naturally, submissions must be written within 30 seconds.

The website is entirely in Japanese but there's nothing to stop users from submitting content in English. It might even make the people at Marvelous consider a Western release for Half-Minute Hero Second which has yet to be announced. For now , the game is scheduled to be released in Japan on February 10, 2011.

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Thirty Years Ago Today: The Very First Videogame Charity Marathon

Thirty years ago today, six young people stepped into the Gold Mine arcade in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, set a bucket next to an Asteroids machine, and took turns playing for the next five straight days, raising money for a family in need. This very well may be the first recorded videogame charity marathon in history.

The participants -- The Hill high school students Dan Arch, Jan Trunzo, and Rob Kovach, along with friends Andy Galamba and Bruce Walters -- played in four hour shifts, and accepted donations for the family of 18-year-old Leo Wampole, who died Christmas day of pneumonia complicated by cerebral palsy. Remarkably, none of them had ever even met Wampole.

"I didn't know him at all, but it's a very good cause,"Arch told a United Press reporter at the time.

Leo Wampole spent most of his 18 years confined inside of his low-income housing project due to the severity of his illness. When he passed away, a local funeral director gave Wampole a free burial, but his mother Carol was unable to pay for a grave marker.

At the end of the marathon, which lasted 132 hours, hundreds of dollars were raised for the Wampole family. The marathon might have gone on longer, but the three high school students had to return to school on Wednesday; their Winter vacations were over.

"My eyes started to smart after a while, but the hardest part was standing around for 3 1/2 hours,"Walters told a reporter.

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The Murder of Jonny Habib

On New Year's Day in 1984, 18-year-old New Yorker Jonny Habib was beaten to death with a baseball bat in an Upper East Side arcade, the victim of a possible mistaken identity and whatone reportcalled"a spasm of teenage machismo."The arcade was running without a license, and according to some reports, other patrons continued playing their games as the murder took place.

Habib -- described as a tall, lanky young man with a love of electronics, videogames and girls -- was the son of separated parents, and the grandson of a Turkish rabbi. He was a dancer, and had a particular fondness for disco rollerskating and hanging out at Studio 54. On the morning of the first, plans to hang out with his girlfriend fell through, so Habib headed down to the Games, Games, Games arcade to play Atari's Star Wars, one of his favorites.

Games, Games, Games was seen by most as an unlicensed arcade, and one that officials had been attempting to shut down for the past two years. Zoning regulations of the time prevented large game parlours from operating in the area, but the arcade's owners -- a company called March Toys -- maintained that Games, Games, Games was not an arcade. Rather, it was a showroom floor for the sale of arcade cabinets directly to consumers. The quarters spent on the games, they maintained, were"down payments"toward an eventual purchase.

At about 7:30 that night, 17-year-old Joseph Brennan and 21-year-old Richard Dinnery entered the arcade, the latter wielding a baseball bat, searching for a man named Brian. Allegedly Brian had been harrassing Brennan's girlfriend, who was also Dinnery's sister. It is unclear exactly what provoked the attack (Brennan later testified that Habib gave him"a funny look"), but witnesses said that Brennan started punching Habib while Dinnery came behind him and hit him over the head with his bat.

Witness reports say that Brennan threatened the other arcade-goers while the fatal beating commenced, telling them to continue playing their games. Dinnery's beating was savage, and at trial, it was revealed that even Brennan had trouble stopping him.

The beating doesn't appear to be a case of mistaken identity, at least not entirely, as the duo eventually found Brian that night, who managed to get away with a few bruises before police chased the attackers away.

Three days after the attack the owners of the arcade quietly trucked all of the games out and padlocked the doors, shutting down the entire operation. At trial Brennan was given the maximum sentence of 7 to 22 years for combined manslaughter and assault charges. Dinnery went to trial separately under a plead of insanity, but we were unable to locate records of that trial.

{Images:New York Magazine, via Google Books}

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