Don't fear the Amazing Spider-Mouse.

Why the Disney-Marvel deal may not be the creative disaster fans believe it is.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in The Financial Express

This strangely prophetic image is apparently from 'Amazing Spider-Man' No.5.

The announcement that The Walt Disney company has acquired Marvel Entertainment for a reported 4 billion dollars is perhaps the biggest shake-up the entertainment industry has seen in a long time. This gives Disney access to Marvel's rich library of characters, including huge franchises like Spider-Man, The Hulk and the X-Men, for exploitation across multiple platforms.

Marvel’s chairman and principal stockholder, Ike Perlmutter, keeps his job, and Disney CEO Bob Iger stressed that the current Marvel management team has been doing a great job and would be allowed to continue doing it. Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash, plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. Marvel's stock immediately went up 25%, or $9.72, closing at $48.37.


Marvel fanboys reacted with predictable outrage and fear that they would see their beloved bad-boy characters softened up to become 'family-friendly'. Jokes about Wolverine and Minnie Mouse, mashup art featuring characters like Spider-Mouse and Duck America, and raging discussions on the creative implications spread like wildfire on the Internet. You'd think this was the worst thing to happen to comics fans since that awful Joel Schumacher Batman movie.

But there are several reasons to believe that the panic is premature, and perhaps even unwarranted.

Firstly, it's unlikely that Disney will even bother messing about with Marvel's comics line, which is the feeding ground for IP that can be then translated into megabucks-generating film, TV and toy franchises. The comics business is hardly significant in Disney's scheme of things, and there's good reason to believe that they will see sense in keeping the nerdcore fans happy. Time-Warner owns publishing rival DC comics, and doesn't interfere in the editorial content at all.

Satyajit Chetri, comics critic for Rolling Stone India and ardent comic art collector, believes that there's no reason for fans to fret. “Things cannot get any worse than they are right now, at Marvel comics. The best that could happen is some real innovation thanks to involvement of fresh blood, if the Disney stable decides to get hands-on with the Marvel characters. The worst? More editorially mandated crossovers.”, says Chetri.

Secondly, as far as the film franchises (which are Disney's primary area of interest in Marvel) go, they're already pretty much family-friendly summer blockbusters anyway. Even edgier ones such as Daredevil and Punisher were extremely tame when compared to the content of the comics, and Spider-Man, Iron man and Hulk will require almost no major modifications to fit within Disney's creative parameters. Additionally, Disney is honouring all existing contracts that Marvel has, such as the one with rivals SONY pictures for the Spider-Man films, with Activision, Sega and THQ for videogames, and with Universal for theme parks. This puts them in the interesting position, for a few years at least, of generating revenues from their rivals' successes.

In contrast to fans, the response from industry insiders has by and large been positive.

Stan Lee, the original man behind Marvel comics, who remains as chairman emeritus at the company, felt that both entities would benefit immensely from the deal. “I think it's a terrific deal which will be extremely beneficial to both companies. The synergy between them is perfect. Nobody can produce and market franchises better than Disney, and nobody has the extensive library of characters that would make great franchises that Marvel has,” Lee said on comics web site newsarama.com.

Understandably, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada was quick to reassure fans that all was well and that they had nothing to worry about. “"It feels like Christmas morning, I haven't seen this much excitement in the Marvel halls since... well, ever!” Quesada said on Twitter the morning after the deal was announced. He also had this to say to fans : “"Everybody take a deep breath, all your favorite comics remain unchanged and [Marvel Senior Editor] Tom Brevoort remains grouchy ... this is incredible news and all is well in the Marvel U." Quesada pointed to the relationship between Disney and animation superstar studio Pixar, saying that Marvel would benefit in a similar way.

Many analysts also believe that Disney's financial muscle would create better deals for the work-for-hire creators who work at Marvel, and attract more high-quality talent to the publisher. The deal undoubtedly opens up exciting possibilities in terms of toys and merchandise – an area where Disney surely brings a lot of strengths to the table that Marvel did not have before.

Either way, interesting times are ahead for fans of the Marvel universe. Well-known comics writer Kurt Buseik summed it up when he said “ I do recall, back in the '80s, people at Marvel used to say they wanted to be Disney for older audiences. Well, I guess now they are. What that means, though, remains to be seen."

Will Project Natal kill the conventional controller?

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in India Today's Gadgets and Gizmos magazine.

When Microsoft demonstrated Project Natal, their 'controller-free gaming' experience, at E3 earlier this year, they managed to drop the jaws of everyone present. Stunned onlookers gaped with awe at what they saw – games where the avatar on-screen perfectly mimicked the physical movements of the gamers themselves. A fighting game where the player actually kicked, blocked and punched to deal with his virtual opponent. A skateboarding game which allowed you to scan your own skateboard design, and import it into a game. And the high point for many was when game design legend Peter Molyneux demonstrated a virtual character named Milo, which could use Natal's technology to actually recognize and interact with a real person. 'Milo' was not only able to recognize and respond to the faces and speech of human individuals, he could even detect and identify emotions – through facial and voice recognition. It was all very sci-fi and exciting.

Of course, every self-respecting gamer knows that you can't really take anything Peter Molyneux says too seriously.

Shortly thereafter, the industry, the press and fanboys went into another one of their periodic tizzies. Will this change the face of gaming? Is this the beginning of the end for the conventional controller? Fanboys hailed it as the arrival of the promised land. Naysayers scoffed, saying it was all very well to 'demo' something like this, but it would never work in practice.

As always, the truth lies somewhere in between.

To arrive at it, we only need to travel back to the last time we heard similar rumblings in the gaming industry. This, as it happens, wasn't all that long ago – a mere three years back when Nintendo rocked the world by introducing their blockbuster console, the Wii. The Wii's now-iconic motion controller, the Wii-mote, created an almost eerily similar impact when it first arrived. Gaming would never be the same, they said. The old controllers would become obsolete, they said.

The Wiimote hasn't exactly caused the demise of traditional control systems, not even on it's own console.

Now that the hype has died down, we know the effects that the Wii had on gaming. It broke open the market, bringing millions of new gamers into the fold – first-time console owners who were thrilled by the prospects of the racquet-swinging, jabbing and punching, and golf-club-swinging gameplay seen in the Wii Sports title that was bundled with the console.

It's interesting to see what happened next. While the casual trinity of Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit remain at the top of the sales charts, games like Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid Prime 3 : Corruption, Resident Evil 4, Super Smash Bros, and Mario Kart have sold in the millions, garnering critical and commercial success. And not one of these is a purely motion-controlled game. Many of them feature some degree of Wii-mote control, but would have worked perfectly well without it – surely a case of retrofitting motion control features into gameplay that didn't really require it. Most of these games, in fact, featured conventional control scheme options for gamers who didn't want to bother with the more 'innovative' controller implementations and just wanted to get on with their gaming. Markedly, the game with perhaps the best use of the Wii-mote to date, Steven Spielberg's excellent Boom Blox, failed to set the sales charts on fire.

So, while the Wii-mote managed to appeal to a completely new market with it's more accessible controller, it didn't quite kill off conventional controllers the way people expected it to, not even on its own console. Hardcore games continued to sell millions of units, and even Nintendo's own blockbuster franchises largely continued to use traditional control schemes.

It's likely that Project Natal will see a similar product adoption curve. Sure, there will be a couple of breakout titles that will make intelligent use of the technology to create completely new gaming experiences that will sell millions of units. Many existing game genres will add features to their gameplay that use the motion-sensing, facial and voice recognition capabilities of Natal. It's possible that, once again, millions of new gamers, attracted by the innovation and novelty factor, will buy enough XBOX units to fill a small country.

But our old friend the game controller is unlikely to go anywhere for many more years. Because there's a very good reason why it's so popular.

Imagine trying to actually pull off a move like this using Project Natal. Ouch.

You see, games appeal to us because they let us do things that we simply couldn't in real life. In a videogame, I can run for my life from a pursuing T-Rex, leap across a gorge, acrobatically turn in mid-air and take down the beast with a well-placed crossbow-bolt to the eye. I can roundhouse-kick like Chuck Norris, knock down my opponent, and then follow-up with a flying dragonball headbutt to his chest. I can perform death defying stunts on a dirt-bike or a skateboard or a monster truck. I can do all these things because my controller lets me do them. Press X to jump. Press Y to roundhouse kick. It's easy, and I can do these things sitting comfortably on my bean-bag, without the risk of broken bones or twisted ankles.

If I had to do this stuff by actually replicating movements in real life, I think I, and millions of gamers like me, would pass. Imagine what a session of Street Fighter would be like if you had to turn somersaults, perform cartwheels, and acrobatically kick higher than your head to get Ryu to perform these moves in the game. I rest my case.

Some games are simply played better using abstract control schemes where a button-press simulates a more complex action in-game. And games featuring over-the-top action and thrills are always going to be popular – saving the world, kicking bad-guy butt and attempting crazy stunts are essential and basic elements of adventure and action gaming, which are staples for the industry. They're not going to be replaced by puzzle, painting and casual sports games overnight.

The role of less-abstract input systems like Natal, at least initially, will be to make games more accessible, not more realistic. This will mean whole new kinds of games, as well as more accessible and interesting features in existing games. This will undoubtedly help the industry reach wider markets, and deliver a broader range of gaming experiences.

But it will be a long time before we see the end of gaming as we know it. Don't throw out your gamepads and joysticks just yet.