I have to disagree really. This is my opinion on the primary genera distribution over consoles.
PS2: Fighting games, RPGs, rhythm games Xbox: FPSs, racing games Gamecube: party games and platformers, puzzle, kids games
Across the board: Sports games, stealth
From that I would say that the other two consoles were primarily targeting casual gamers and out of the consoles it would be the PS2 that targeted avid gamers the most.
And there is the parallel from DVD and blue ray. Although I don't think the world is really looking to upgrade yet I think that the parallel is there.
The only mistake that I see Sony making right now is with the pricetag.
Well let's take marketing and distribution out of the equation because we will assume that the costs are roughly the same.
- Time for writing songs / lyrics, as compared to time for writing out the documentation of a game. Game documentation of a game will take much longer and has many more hands in it
- Recording studio time (expensive!), as compared to Office building space rental. You are only in the recording studio during the time when you are actually recording, game companies have to rent the office for the entire time of the development minimum
- Money to hire sound engineers, recorders, someone to master the CD, people to make the album artwork as compared to a team of programmers, a team of artists, design staff, management staff, sound engineers, recorders, motion capture staff and quality assurance.
But there are additional costs for games as well. Licensing fees paid out to the consol that you want to develop for, licensing for all of the software that must be used in the process of making games, and initial purchase and upkeep on hardware required for making games to name a few
Making a professional album to release for commercial distribution may get expensive, but when comparing it to making a professional game to release for commercial distribution, it's cheap.
Games have the same budgeting problems as blockbuster films these days. This is one of the main problems that the article was talking about.
Honestly I was expecting way more from his because I have read some of his articles before and many times he seems on point. But here is a list of his credits for your perusal.
Published Games
RabbitJack's Casino for IBM PC (1989-91) Third Degree for CD-I Player (1992) John Madden Football for 3DO (1994) Bill Walsh College Football for Sega CD (1995) Madden NFL 97 for Sony Playstation, IBM PC, and Sega Saturn (1996) Madden NFL 98 for Sony Playstation and IBM PC (1997) Madden Football 64 for Nintendo 64 (1997) Madden NFL 99 for Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, and IBM PC (1998) Michelle Kwan Figure Skating for IBM PC (1999) Madden NFL 2000 for Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, and IBM PC (1999)
Unpublished Games
Takeover for IBM PC (1991) Dungeons & Dragons for the CD-I player (1991) Baseball '93 for IBM PC (1992) Wildfire! for IBM PC (1993) Baseball for Sega Genesis CD (1995) Psychic Warriors for IBM PC (1998) Genesis: The Hand of God for IBM PC (1999) Dungeon Keeper 3 for IBM PC (later retitled War for the Overworld) (2000) Theme "X" (2000)
To me personally this credit list doesn't seem very impressive from design aspects. Perhaps he made a name for himself in the industry with his consulting work.
Hmmm.... No I haven't heard about exclusive licensing for any of those products. Although EA does make a Rugby game every year... a very bad one, that uses the Rugby World Cup to the European Domestic League teams licenses. I just don't know if it is exclusive or not.
In general though, at least for the American market, I think you would get less sales making a game using those licenses then you would making a game based off of no license at all. (and that's a shame, I love rugby)
Because they didn't just get NFL, they got exclusive NFL, the players association, NCAA, and arena league licenses. Oh yeah, and Mutant league belongs to EA as well. EA really does have as close to a football monopoly as you can get.
But not all of the competitors jumped ship "The League" came out after the exclusive license shoe dropped.
So you are saying the first image is of "the white brute" and the second is of the black woman sending the message of "know your place"
It's whatever way you look at the images. Not their content. If you look at all 3 ads the power struggle ends up being equal.
And you know I have had little privileged white women clutching their purses looking at me like I might mug them as well. Ohh... but I don't have racism to fall back on, so I guess it must just be that they were afraid of a stranger that is bigger then they are and if so inclined (which I have never been) could actually be a threat.
I think the metric isn't that far off then. That's saying that in the course of playing a game for 20+ hours you get 2 hours worth of character development and plot.
That is one of the things that are different between writing for games and writing for movies. Movies only have to occupy your time and entertain you for 1 ½ - 3 hours, story based games should occupy your time for at least 10 - 30 hours.
Those games, although they contain a plot, are not plot orientated. The story in the games that you listed is there more as a secondary feature, not the primary. Those games are mainly about living out your own character, not telling a story
In KOTOR after the initial few sequences (about to the point you get out of the academy) the plot is put on hold until the last level. Sure there are sub plots to go through and a munch of mini missions along the way but the main plot doesn't continue anymore until the climax. If you were to write down the plot of KOTOR it would only end up being a few pages long, a short story or at most a novella.
What Ron Gilbert is talking about is the kind of story and plot progression that happened in game like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, or The Longest journey (had to give at least one he didn't work on). Games where the plot is more along the lines of a novel then a short story.
All games don't have to be that way or even should be that way. But it's nice to have the option and recently the option is becoming more and more rare.
Yes I think those are all fine examples for rights that have been taken way and replaced by privilege for the sake of the general public's sense of security.
If you have to get a license for it, it means that the government can stop you from doing it. If the government can stop you from doing it, it is no longer a right.
Having a license just makes it legal for you to drive.
If you think you can keep track of everything that has been added to and/or removed from code that is being worked on by a team of programmers for years. You obviously never worked on a big project like this. There is way to much going into these games and being pulled out of these games to keep track of everything on every build.
There are so many things that can happen to let things slip through that you didn't want in the game
- It could have been completely removed at one point and accidentally reintroduced later by someone going back to old assets to avoid a new issue - It would have been impossible to remove completely within the games schedule and they could only limit it's access because of how that code interacts with other code in the game - It could have been one disgruntled employee putting it into the game because he heard he was about to be let go. - It could have been partially implemented in millstone, cut, and removed from the documentation before the code was completely removed and therefore forgotten.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. There are plenty of other things that could have happened.
Putting this in the game just because they were trying to cheat the system is not the only possibility and seems unlikely to me. Rockstar never had a problem with having there game rated for mature audiences only before. Why start now?
"Brussels also ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with enough information to develop software that could run as smoothly as its own on servers running Microsoft's Windows operating system."
I believe the EU has asked for all the information necessary to emulate and reproduce windows networking code. so either Microsoft has to just give the source code of they have to write an all new document that explains every little thing that the networking code does and how it is executed (might as well be source code).
I think this shows the business world that the EU can't be trusted.
If the EU is just going to use this type of strong arm tactic every time they want something changed in Windows then there really isn't a point to doing business there. It reminds me of a mob movie, you either pay their protection money (opening up the source code and unbundling media player) or bad things will happen to you (2.5 mill a day in fines). It ends up being a choice between loosing control over your own business or loosing a market for that business.
I don't feel that pulling out of the EU is a good idea or even possible at the moment but if the EU continues to use this type of tactic, eventually it might be the right move.
Because with MMOs the game must be added on to and improved upon to keep people interested. People don't want to play a MMO for a month. MMOs are supposed to have more longevity.
EA has more of a, put the game out, get all the initial sales you can, then start over with a new game, mentality.
I'm sure that's not going to be a problem. It costs too much in money and manpower to convert a studio to the EA image. They probably just wanted the assets, networking code and Intellectual properties of mythic. The studio and employees will probably just be discarded.
To me it doesn't sound like QA opened a door for him at all. If he left to go back to school sounds more like he tried that path and either thought against it later or realized it wasn't going anywhere and went back to school. To me it sounds like his break was working for that group that won the game-design contest for MTV.
But I guess if it was the contacts he made at the company while working for QA that allowed him to get together with that group a little credit could be given to QA.
So you're saying that you don't like final fantasy sequels so everyone should play the 4th iteration of elder scrolls. Why is a sequel of one so much better then a sequel of another?
Both games are good they are just for different audiences. From my point of view I actually hate open ended game. To me when a developer says they are making an open ended game they mean they are making a game completely devoid of plot.
Why is it everyone should want to play a game where you get to do nothing of any importance, your character doesn't matter and the world stays completely stagnant no matter what. Why do you have the have a choice in everything that happens in a game? Why are your ideas only the good ones? Are the only good books "choose your own adventure" books? Or are those too rail based for you as well?
Wake up! You're not a little kid anymore. The world doesn't revolve around you. Other people ideas and stories to tell, listening to them may be entertaining and beneficial to you. Entertainment has been long dominated by non interactive story telling. Theater, movies, books, and music are all non interactive mediums with interactive counterparts but the non interactive part of it has always been more popular.
Bringing the final fantasy movie into this is completely irrelevant too. The final fantasy move was nothing like any of the game. It was its own work. I think the only reason they game it that name is because the marketing department said it would be a good idea. If they just called it "the spirit within" I don't think it would have had nearly as bad of a reputation.
I will say that RPG is the not the correct term to call a final fantasy game or any other the others like it. They are interactive stories. But for a long time now they have been called RPGs and RPG when talking about video games does not mean the same thing as RPG when referring to pen and paper games so I'll keep referring the them as such.
I don't think I missed the point at all then. If you have only played the game for a few hours you most assuredly did not play everything that was available to you before unlocking items. What is the "fun part" then? It's only fun when you race on the hidden track or play with an unlockable car? It's not fun playing with the original tracks? Is the game only fun seeing the hidden special scenes?
I have never played a game where I played it for a few hours and have either A) had something to do that I haven't finessed yet that didn't need to be unlocked or B) unlocked something new or C) realized it is not the game for me.
If career mode takes to much time for you then just play arcade more and pick up races. That way you don't have to spend the time to earn big fancy cars you are already given some.
If you don't want to play the original tracks because they don't cut it for you why do you think the hidden tracks will be any different? Games have a pace to them whatever it may be. If you get bored with the original tracks before you unlock new ones then even if you did have an unlockable track you would get bored of that one before you unlock the next one as well.
There are some games that I think the pacing is too slow. The Grand Turismo series is defiantly too slow for me. But I don't bitch at Polyphony for making the game too slow for me because I know I'm not their target audience. Their target audience are people who will play the game for years before they shelf it not just hours or months. They specifically design the game with it in mind that people will play it for a long long time and they try to make sure that the people don't get bored with it.
If game companies always catered to the people who want everything unlocked in a matter of hours, the people who wanted to play games for months are going to be pissed off.
I would much rather buy a game that is too long and not be able to finish it then buy a game that is too short and finish it way to fast.
Well honestly if you don't have the time to spend to unlock the car that you want or to even look up the code to allow you to unlock the car you want how much of a factor do you think your demographic will be when they design the game.
Hmmm should we spend thousands of dollars catering to the people who will only play our games in passing, or should we spend our money on the people who will be loyal customers?
Yes I agree that unlockables can be a bit annoying. But if you are only going to play the game for a few hours and then shelf it anyway, why should you care if you use the standard vehicle instead of the super uber hidden secret vehicle. Or if you can't play the game quick and dirty like you want to because there is no short mini mode for you why did you buy it in the first place?
Unlockables, long plot, special sequences and hidden levels are added to game specifically to keep people interested in the game after the point that they get bored with the original content. That stuff is not supposed to be there for the busy game player who only plays in passing it is there for the serious gamer so they have something to do when they finish the stuff you don't have time for.
From a quick glance it would seem to be the same game but there are plenty of differences.
Different control scheme, Hammer-ons, pull offs, more fret buttons, wammy bar, star power/rock out mode(the motion sensing game play element), Rock music that isn't Jrock(not that I have anything against Jrock), and awards from many many people (http://www.guitarherogame.com/rockalades.asp)
Many of the sales made at places like Wal-Mart are made there by people other the person who is going to actually play the game. Like parents grandparents or other people looking for a gift. The Wal-Mart market is primarily not made of gamers.
This market is not filled with informed buyers. These people are not reading review and watching preview to decide what they buy. They are not making a purchase based off of what they want they are making it off of what looks good. If your game is not there, they don't go to another store; they pick up someone else's game.
Granted this is not all of the purchases but I would bet that it is the main share. According to ACNielsen only 13% of Wal-Mart shoppers actually shop there because of what they carry. Primarily the rest are there because of convenient location and prices/deals.
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I have to disagree really. This is my opinion on the primary genera distribution over consoles.
PS2: Fighting games, RPGs, rhythm games
Xbox: FPSs, racing games
Gamecube: party games and platformers, puzzle, kids games
Across the board: Sports games, stealth
From that I would say that the other two consoles were primarily targeting casual gamers and out of the consoles it would be the PS2 that targeted avid gamers the most.
And there is the parallel from DVD and blue ray. Although I don't think the world is really looking to upgrade yet I think that the parallel is there.
The only mistake that I see Sony making right now is with the pricetag.
Well let's take marketing and distribution out of the equation because we will assume that the costs are roughly the same.
- Time for writing songs / lyrics, as compared to time for writing out the documentation of a game. Game documentation of a game will take much longer and has many more hands in it
- Recording studio time (expensive!), as compared to Office building space rental. You are only in the recording studio during the time when you are actually recording, game companies have to rent the office for the entire time of the development minimum
- Money to hire sound engineers, recorders, someone to master the CD, people to make the album artwork as compared to a team of programmers, a team of artists, design staff, management staff, sound engineers, recorders, motion capture staff and quality assurance.
But there are additional costs for games as well. Licensing fees paid out to the consol that you want to develop for, licensing for all of the software that must be used in the process of making games, and initial purchase and upkeep on hardware required for making games to name a few
Making a professional album to release for commercial distribution may get expensive, but when comparing it to making a professional game to release for commercial distribution, it's cheap.
Games have the same budgeting problems as blockbuster films these days. This is one of the main problems that the article was talking about.
Honestly I was expecting way more from his because I have read some of his articles before and many times he seems on point. But here is a list of his credits for your perusal.
Published Games
RabbitJack's Casino for IBM PC (1989-91)
Third Degree for CD-I Player (1992)
John Madden Football for 3DO (1994)
Bill Walsh College Football for Sega CD (1995)
Madden NFL 97 for Sony Playstation, IBM PC, and Sega Saturn (1996)
Madden NFL 98 for Sony Playstation and IBM PC (1997)
Madden Football 64 for Nintendo 64 (1997)
Madden NFL 99 for Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, and IBM PC (1998)
Michelle Kwan Figure Skating for IBM PC (1999)
Madden NFL 2000 for Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, and IBM PC (1999)
Unpublished Games
Takeover for IBM PC (1991)
Dungeons & Dragons for the CD-I player (1991)
Baseball '93 for IBM PC (1992)
Wildfire! for IBM PC (1993)
Baseball for Sega Genesis CD (1995)
Psychic Warriors for IBM PC (1998)
Genesis: The Hand of God for IBM PC (1999)
Dungeon Keeper 3 for IBM PC (later retitled War for the Overworld) (2000)
Theme "X" (2000)
To me personally this credit list doesn't seem very impressive from design aspects. Perhaps he made a name for himself in the industry with his consulting work.
Hence why I said FOOTBALL monopoly. Sure there are plenty of other sports. We were specifically talking about American football.
Hmmm.... No I haven't heard about exclusive licensing for any of those products. Although EA does make a Rugby game every year... a very bad one, that uses the Rugby World Cup to the European Domestic League teams licenses. I just don't know if it is exclusive or not.
In general though, at least for the American market, I think you would get less sales making a game using those licenses then you would making a game based off of no license at all. (and that's a shame, I love rugby)
Because they didn't just get NFL, they got exclusive NFL, the players association, NCAA, and arena league licenses. Oh yeah, and Mutant league belongs to EA as well. EA really does have as close to a football monopoly as you can get.
But not all of the competitors jumped ship "The League" came out after the exclusive license shoe dropped.
So you are saying the first image is of "the white brute" and the second is of the black woman sending the message of "know your place"
It's whatever way you look at the images. Not their content. If you look at all 3 ads the power struggle ends up being equal.
And you know I have had little privileged white women clutching their purses looking at me like I might mug them as well. Ohh... but I don't have racism to fall back on, so I guess it must just be that they were afraid of a stranger that is bigger then they are and if so inclined (which I have never been) could actually be a threat.
I think the metric isn't that far off then. That's saying that in the course of playing a game for 20+ hours you get 2 hours worth of character development and plot.
That is one of the things that are different between writing for games and writing for movies. Movies only have to occupy your time and entertain you for 1 ½ - 3 hours, story based games should occupy your time for at least 10 - 30 hours.
Those games, although they contain a plot, are not plot orientated. The story in the games that you listed is there more as a secondary feature, not the primary. Those games are mainly about living out your own character, not telling a story
In KOTOR after the initial few sequences (about to the point you get out of the academy) the plot is put on hold until the last level. Sure there are sub plots to go through and a munch of mini missions along the way but the main plot doesn't continue anymore until the climax. If you were to write down the plot of KOTOR it would only end up being a few pages long, a short story or at most a novella.
What Ron Gilbert is talking about is the kind of story and plot progression that happened in game like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, or The Longest journey (had to give at least one he didn't work on). Games where the plot is more along the lines of a novel then a short story.
All games don't have to be that way or even should be that way. But it's nice to have the option and recently the option is becoming more and more rare.
Yes I think those are all fine examples for rights that have been taken way and replaced by privilege for the sake of the general public's sense of security.
If you have to get a license for it, it means that the government can stop you from doing it. If the government can stop you from doing it, it is no longer a right.
Having a license just makes it legal for you to drive.
If you think you can keep track of everything that has been added to and/or removed from code that is being worked on by a team of programmers for years. You obviously never worked on a big project like this. There is way to much going into these games and being pulled out of these games to keep track of everything on every build.
There are so many things that can happen to let things slip through that you didn't want in the game
- It could have been completely removed at one point and accidentally reintroduced later by someone going back to old assets to avoid a new issue
- It would have been impossible to remove completely within the games schedule and they could only limit it's access because of how that code interacts with other code in the game
- It could have been one disgruntled employee putting it into the game because he heard he was about to be let go.
- It could have been partially implemented in millstone, cut, and removed from the documentation before the code was completely removed and therefore forgotten.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. There are plenty of other things that could have happened.
Putting this in the game just because they were trying to cheat the system is not the only possibility and seems unlikely to me. Rockstar never had a problem with having there game rated for mature audiences only before. Why start now?
From the article
"Brussels also ordered Microsoft to provide rivals with enough information to develop software that could run as smoothly as its own on servers running Microsoft's Windows operating system."
I believe the EU has asked for all the information necessary to emulate and reproduce windows networking code. so either Microsoft has to just give the source code of they have to write an all new document that explains every little thing that the networking code does and how it is executed (might as well be source code).
I think this shows the business world that the EU can't be trusted.
If the EU is just going to use this type of strong arm tactic every time they want something changed in Windows then there really isn't a point to doing business there. It reminds me of a mob movie, you either pay their protection money (opening up the source code and unbundling media player) or bad things will happen to you (2.5 mill a day in fines). It ends up being a choice between loosing control over your own business or loosing a market for that business.
I don't feel that pulling out of the EU is a good idea or even possible at the moment but if the EU continues to use this type of tactic, eventually it might be the right move.
Because with MMOs the game must be added on to and improved upon to keep people interested. People don't want to play a MMO for a month. MMOs are supposed to have more longevity.
EA has more of a, put the game out, get all the initial sales you can, then start over with a new game, mentality.
I'm sure that's not going to be a problem. It costs too much in money and manpower to convert a studio to the EA image. They probably just wanted the assets, networking code and Intellectual properties of mythic. The studio and employees will probably just be discarded.
That doesn't mean they won't end up destroying it anyway. EA doesn't have the right mentality to keep MMOs alive.
To me it doesn't sound like QA opened a door for him at all. If he left to go back to school sounds more like he tried that path and either thought against it later or realized it wasn't going anywhere and went back to school. To me it sounds like his break was working for that group that won the game-design contest for MTV.
But I guess if it was the contacts he made at the company while working for QA that allowed him to get together with that group a little credit could be given to QA.
Man when I read this I had images of Bruce Wayne and Wayne corp.
He just needs more time for his superhero alter ego.
So you're saying that you don't like final fantasy sequels so everyone should play the 4th iteration of elder scrolls. Why is a sequel of one so much better then a sequel of another?
Both games are good they are just for different audiences. From my point of view I actually hate open ended game. To me when a developer says they are making an open ended game they mean they are making a game completely devoid of plot.
Why is it everyone should want to play a game where you get to do nothing of any importance, your character doesn't matter and the world stays completely stagnant no matter what. Why do you have the have a choice in everything that happens in a game? Why are your ideas only the good ones? Are the only good books "choose your own adventure" books? Or are those too rail based for you as well?
Wake up! You're not a little kid anymore. The world doesn't revolve around you. Other people ideas and stories to tell, listening to them may be entertaining and beneficial to you. Entertainment has been long dominated by non interactive story telling. Theater, movies, books, and music are all non interactive mediums with interactive counterparts but the non interactive part of it has always been more popular.
Bringing the final fantasy movie into this is completely irrelevant too. The final fantasy move was nothing like any of the game. It was its own work. I think the only reason they game it that name is because the marketing department said it would be a good idea. If they just called it "the spirit within" I don't think it would have had nearly as bad of a reputation.
I will say that RPG is the not the correct term to call a final fantasy game or any other the others like it. They are interactive stories. But for a long time now they have been called RPGs and RPG when talking about video games does not mean the same thing as RPG when referring to pen and paper games so I'll keep referring the them as such.
I don't think I missed the point at all then. If you have only played the game for a few hours you most assuredly did not play everything that was available to you before unlocking items. What is the "fun part" then? It's only fun when you race on the hidden track or play with an unlockable car? It's not fun playing with the original tracks? Is the game only fun seeing the hidden special scenes?
I have never played a game where I played it for a few hours and have either A) had something to do that I haven't finessed yet that didn't need to be unlocked or B) unlocked something new or C) realized it is not the game for me.
If career mode takes to much time for you then just play arcade more and pick up races. That way you don't have to spend the time to earn big fancy cars you are already given some.
If you don't want to play the original tracks because they don't cut it for you why do you think the hidden tracks will be any different? Games have a pace to them whatever it may be. If you get bored with the original tracks before you unlock new ones then even if you did have an unlockable track you would get bored of that one before you unlock the next one as well.
There are some games that I think the pacing is too slow. The Grand Turismo series is defiantly too slow for me. But I don't bitch at Polyphony for making the game too slow for me because I know I'm not their target audience. Their target audience are people who will play the game for years before they shelf it not just hours or months. They specifically design the game with it in mind that people will play it for a long long time and they try to make sure that the people don't get bored with it.
If game companies always catered to the people who want everything unlocked in a matter of hours, the people who wanted to play games for months are going to be pissed off.
I would much rather buy a game that is too long and not be able to finish it then buy a game that is too short and finish it way to fast.
Yeah damn those public school for not teaching people how to use spelling and grammar correctly in the context of 18th century slag.
Next thing you know they won't teach our children about the correct way to use the term carpetbagger.
Well honestly if you don't have the time to spend to unlock the car that you want or to even look up the code to allow you to unlock the car you want how much of a factor do you think your demographic will be when they design the game. Hmmm should we spend thousands of dollars catering to the people who will only play our games in passing, or should we spend our money on the people who will be loyal customers? Yes I agree that unlockables can be a bit annoying. But if you are only going to play the game for a few hours and then shelf it anyway, why should you care if you use the standard vehicle instead of the super uber hidden secret vehicle. Or if you can't play the game quick and dirty like you want to because there is no short mini mode for you why did you buy it in the first place? Unlockables, long plot, special sequences and hidden levels are added to game specifically to keep people interested in the game after the point that they get bored with the original content. That stuff is not supposed to be there for the busy game player who only plays in passing it is there for the serious gamer so they have something to do when they finish the stuff you don't have time for.
From a quick glance it would seem to be the same game but there are plenty of differences.
Different control scheme, Hammer-ons, pull offs, more fret buttons, wammy bar, star power/rock out mode(the motion sensing game play element), Rock music that isn't Jrock(not that I have anything against Jrock), and awards from many many people (http://www.guitarherogame.com/rockalades.asp)
Actually it is.
. shtml
Many of the sales made at places like Wal-Mart are made there by people other the person who is going to actually play the game. Like parents grandparents or other people looking for a gift. The Wal-Mart market is primarily not made of gamers.
This market is not filled with informed buyers. These people are not reading review and watching preview to decide what they buy. They are not making a purchase based off of what they want they are making it off of what looks good. If your game is not there, they don't go to another store; they pick up someone else's game.
Granted this is not all of the purchases but I would bet that it is the main share. According to ACNielsen only 13% of Wal-Mart shoppers actually shop there because of what they carry. Primarily the rest are there because of convenient location and prices/deals.
Source:
http://www2.acnielsen.com/pubs/2004_q1_ci_walmart