ContributorNetwork – COMMENTARY | They may not be the power company, but you won’t find too many threats to their dominance. All three are not only at the top of their game, they have few, if any, competitors. And the law helps keep newbies out of the market.

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Are Apple, Google and Facebook Natural Monopolies?
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Appolicious – Many people will be watching the Super Bowl Feb. 5 for the game on the field. Others for the cutting-edge advertising.

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Hotdogs, app-le pie and Chevrolet: Are you ready for the Chevy Super Bowl App?
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No personal information was accessed following the recent security breach of Square Enix member servers in Japan and North America. This is despite the publisher revealing last week that up to 1.8… MCV is the leading news site for the game industry. Check out our news, press releases and interviews.

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Square says user info was not compromised in web hack

This is a big week for Zynga, as the gaming giant readies for its debut on the public markets at the end of the week. The company’s offering is expected to price this week and will raise around $1 billion in the IPO. Interestingly, Zynga passed a pretty major milestone this week, according to Inside Network’s AppData. Currently, Zynga has the top five games on Facebook using daily active user numbers, with Words With Friends edging out EA’s Sims Social. CityVille took the top spot with 10.1 million DAU, followed by CastleVille (8.1 million DAU); FarmVille (7.2 million DAU); Texas HoldEm Poker (6.3 million DAU) and Words With Friends (5.7 million DAU). Of course, Words With Friends got a big push last week after actor Alec Baldwin was kicked off an American Airlines flight for playing the game. Baldwin Tweeted about the incident, mentioning Words With Friends, and even mocked the altercation on Saturday Night Live over the weekend. This extra publicity could have definitely given Words With Friends the boost it needed to move past EA’s Sims, which has been ahead of Zynga’s Scrabble-like game for some time now (Sims is still ahead of the game when it comes to monthly active users ). The company has seen some games flattening in growth, and others declining in traffic, so this slight surge in usage comes at an opportune time. Considering the importance of Facebook as a platform for Zynga’s games, having the top five games on the social network the week prior to the company’s much awaited IPO certainly helps the company put a nice growth spin on its dominance in the social gaming market. We’ll see if investors agree.

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Approaching IPO Day, Zynga Now Has The Top Five Games On Facebook

This morning I was feeling particularly dreary. The weather is gloomy today in the Big Apple, grey and rainy, and it’s chillier than it was yesterday. I found a little comfort in the fact that the holidays are on their way, but looking out the window it simply doesn’t feel like Christmastime. Disheartened, I opened up my trusty MacBook Pro and started in on my least favorite part of the hump day, checking email. But something special was waiting for me in my inbox this morning, something that makes me feel like the 12 Days of Christmas are already underway: an iPhone game called Snow Fight . Snow Fight isn’t flashy or anything like that. It’s actually a rather simple game of capture the flag, with a snow-ball fight thrown into the mix. You basically control a little man, or little men if you’ve advanced to later stages of the game, whose only mission in life is to capture the opposing team’s snowmen and flags. It isn’t super fast-paced, but it takes way more strategy than I expected. If you can’t figure a way to pelt the other team to death with snowballs before they do it to you, well, you lose. And no one likes a loser. Especially in snow ball fights. But you don’t just win for winning’s sake, either. You have to be the ultimate snow-ball warrior to get the gold-star, chocolate-chip-cookie, best-snow-thrower-ever award. Actually, I think they just call it a Gold badge, but you get what I’m saying. If all your players make it out alive, if you never get hit, or if you collect all the snowmen instead of just the flag, you get a better score. There are also bonuses to be found across the game map like replenish life, instant reload, and snowball increase (because you can only hold so many snowballs at once). I’ve been playing Snow Fight all day, and must admit that it has done quite a bit to brighten my day. I only wish it was snowing instead of raining so I could partake in my own snow-slinging, flag-capturing shenanigans. I guess the virtual world will have to do for now though. At least I’m not virtually cleaning . The app went live today in the App Store for free and is available on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. If interested, I’d suggest taking a look at that video below for some strategic game play ideas. It’s really not as easy as it looks.

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Snow Fight iOS Game Makes It Feel Like Christmas Every Day

Going to a fancy State Gala? Married to a Rovio executive? Angry Birds dresses are SO IN this season. If you’ve ever met Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka, you’ve probably learned two things: 1) Peter is good people, and 2) he really, really likes his Angry Birds sweatshirt. It’s rare to see him not wearing one. I’m convinced he travels with a suitcase full of them and burns each one after wearing as some sort of sacrifice to the App Store Gods. Vesterbacka was invited to an event at the Finish Presidential Palace, where, alas, the dress code called for something a bit less sweatshirt-y and a bit more tie-and-tailcoat. Fortunately, Peter’s wife Teija found a way to rep the bird: her entire dress. To anyone unfamiliar with the game, the dress’ pattern probably looked like nothing more than a strange arrangement of shapes. If you’ve spent even a minute or two flingin’ birds, though, the cameo is clear: that’s the Red Bird, glarin’ from somewhere you shouldn’t be starin’. Some folks (including some forumgoers over at Neogaf , who were seemingly the first english speakers to notice it) were quick to criticize her choice of attire; I think it’s genius. Peter Vesterbacka (pictured above, just in front of his wife) is something of a celebrity in Finland and Angry Birds is something they’re mighty proud of (hence the invite to the party) — this just celebrates that. Way to go, Teija. [Full Photo Credit goes to Matti Matikainen of Finland's Iltalehti ]

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Already On Everything Else, Angry Birds Ported To Rovio Exec’s Wife’s Dress

Today, the new multi-player gaming service Nextpeer is exiting its private beta period and is now available for all iOS developers to try. With the company’s software development kit (SDK), game developers can easily turn their single player games into social, real-time, multi-player tournaments where users compete against each other for top scores, achievements and virtual gold. For those unfamiliar with Nextpeer, the service provides a way  for mobile developers to upgrade their single player games to multi-player, just by dropping in the SDK . A Nextpeer-enabled game’s users can face off against in each other by competing for the best score during a timed tournament. During the tournament, gamers aren’t playing alongside each other in the sense that their characters are sharing screen time – they simply play the game as usual. Meanwhile, they’re also receiving updates as to their status versus the others in the tournament. (e.g. “Hurry up! You’re in 3rd place!” ) This gives what had previously been a standalone game a sense of real-time action and excitement, and that can make the game more engaging and addictive. Since its private beta launch in August, Nextpeer has signed up 250 developers and is now in the process of integrating its SDK into around 40 games. There are currently over half a dozen games available in the iTunes App Store featuring Nextpeer, including Chicken Rain , Word Flow , Slot Machine+ , Hurry Honey! , Hold It Up , Pingo , and Castor Man , to name a few. The company says it’s on track to continue launching around 1 to 2 games per week going forward. To date, Nextpeer users have played over 25,000 tournaments, says CEO Shai Magzimof. But what’s even better is the retention rate - 30% of the users go back to play again after 3 + days. And 10% of Nextpeer users take advantage of the in-game feature that allows them to discover and download additional games which offer Nextpeer tournaments. Users tend to average around 5 tournaments each, says Magzimof. For now, there is no cost to integrate the Nextpeer SDK into a game, but Nextpeer does participate in revenue-sharing with those who allow users to place “bets” on games using the virtual gold. This split can vary depending on the game, but is around 50/50. Buying more coins via in-app purchases is not yet available, but is arriving soon. For now, there are other ways to earn currency (beyond the initial amount all players get), like daily bonuses, and, of course, winning. Also on the way is support for push notifications, which will allow users to invite friends to play with them in real-time. The Facebook integration will improved, too, so gamers can invite their Facebook friends to join them. Below is a video showing the process of integrating Nextpeer into an app. From start to finish, it takes just 15 minutes: Those interested in integrating Nextpeer into their own apps can grab the SDK from here .

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Nextpeer’s Public Launch Brings Live Multi-Player Tournaments To Any Game

Editor’s note:  Contributor  Ashkan Karbasfrooshan  is the founder and CEO of  WatchMojo .  Follow him @ashkan . The world wide web prospered and is what it is today because its inventor Tim Berners-Lee didn’t give into temptation and greed and chose not to patent his invention.  But 20 years later, it’s evident that the only thing that most online leaders lead in is plain bad behavior and greed. Business as Usual Right off the bat, I’ll admit that this means that the web is no different than business in general, where corporations aren’t exactly boy scouts.  But given the openness of the web, rise of social media, and the expectation of the democratization of society and economy through the web, it’s surprising that we find ourselves in the situation that we do. The Web has Always Spawned Evil We’ve seen nasty operators before: WhenU and Gator Corp. (then GAIN, subsequently Claria Corporation) were the poster children for bad behavior.  Critics of these companies accused them of peddling adware and spyware , allegedly hijacking computers and serving ads to unsuspecting and unwilling viewers.  Worse even, oftentimes the adware would “take over” a publisher’s own ads and cover them with ads being served – and enriching – WhenU and Gator. I recall having one exchange with a WhenU executive when I ran sales for an online publisher and wondering how on earth their practice was allowed.  But the fact that the practice was allowed made it inevitable that someone would seek to profit from it. Meanwhile, despite their unpopular reputation, Claria Corporation actually received backing from major Venture Capital firms such as Greylock, Technology Crossover Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. Claria even filed for a $150 million IPO in April 2004 but withdrew the filing in August 2004.  It shut down in 2008 after exiting the adware business at the end of the second quarter of 2006.  Good riddance.  For what it’s worth, many of Claria’s executives have gone on to other companies including DemandMedia, Dotomi, eHarmony, LifeStreet, and Turn according to the company’s Wikipedia page. WhenU seems to be around to this day, with the totally disingenuous tagline: “Advertising You Want”.  Really? I’m actually not attacking either Claria or WhenU, though. As they say: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”, and the game is obvious: Build something fast and sell it to a greater fool, and then let them worry about cleaning up the mess once they realize the insane lengths the previous management went to boost revenues that were probably not all that sustainable. The Web’s downward spiral It’s easy to cast Claria and WhenU as vestiges of an era when online advertising was rising from the ashes of the dotcom meltdown and forced companies to push the limits for survival. Bull-effin-shit.  We are seeing more questionable practices today than ever before, but I would argue that users are largely desensitized or don’t care, apart from a vocal minority that makes a big deal out of everything. Most web companies today aren’t as evil as WhenU or Claria, but some of the same greed propels them. And the Award for poster child for bad behavior goes to… These days, the poster child for aggressive tactics is Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.  Yes, what he said in front of an audience regarding Zynga’s early sales practices is dubious , and his effort to get early employees to give up unvested stock is questionable (to put it mildly), the fact is, with an expected  valuation of $10 billion in the upcoming IPO, and backers including Fred Wilson, John Doerr and Bing Gordon, it’s kinda hard to knock Pincus.  In fact, while I certainly don’t want to make any excuses for him, even simply reading his LinkedIn profile (read his description of his experience at FreeLoader) suggests a certain naiveté and idealism that was crushed by earlier episodes at Tribe and lord-knows-where-else that pushed him to basically use the rules of “the game” to his advantage. At the end of the day, Zynga is a company that makes products that millions love and willingly pay (how many consumer web companies can say that ?) and no one is forced to actually work there. Facebook: All of Your Privacy Are Belong To Us In fact, everywhere you look it seems that it’s easier to “ask for forgiveness than permission”.  The master at that, is none other than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg . Facebook is being rewarded by investors, who have pushed the company’s private stock to roughly $70 billion.  With a rumored IPO set for April 2012 valuing the company at $100 billion, that would be a revenue-to-sales multiple far larger than what Google got in 2003.  Google was generating $6 billion in revenues and went public at approximately $25 billion; Facebook boasts the same $6 billion but is fetching $100 billion. Google’s Do No Evil (?) And speaking of Google, I will admit that the company does plenty of good.  Its products have made life simpler for billions, but cynics accuse Google of being the 21 st century equivalent of Standard Oil and Microsoft.  With 45% of the online advertising pie, that is not an unfair accusation considering that its strength in search, mobile and video will only amplify in years to come. Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained When someone like Max Levchin says that there are “too many incubators” and implies that investors are shunning risk and chasing me-too companies, I agree.  But the problem is: his previous company Slide exemplified what I consider to be half of the largest problem facing the community: smart and driven entrepreneurs who chase small trivial markets and products instead of tackling the large problems that previous generations did. Of course, the other half of the problem is that the bulk of today’s generation of VCs, by and large, lack the testicular fortitude and vision that the previous generation did.  With the new mindset of “failing fast” and focus on “the art of the pivot”, the reality is that many would-be promising companies are being sacrificed and prematurely killed in order to chase the latest fad that could be flipped to the next sucker. When it’s said and done, the web isn’t all that different from the rest of the business world, but I guess I expected more. Image: Shutterstock/ docent

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The Web Is Rewarding Greed and Bad Behavior (Business As Usual)

Short version: While Skyrim does almost nothing to address the weaknesses of its predecessors, it expands on the strengths to such an extent that even its most substantial flaws seem microscopic. You may not lose yourself in the unimaginative combat and story, but the world Bethesda has created is so huge and so beautifully realized that you won’t care. Pros: vast, vast world to explore dungeons and caves are wonderfully differentiated graphics and sound are for the most part incredible to behold Cons: Combat isn’t very visceral, and victories and losses feel unearned Menus and interface are terrible While the world is wide open, most quests and dungeons are very linear Bugs abound, especially with physics Full review: Let me just say right off the bat that I have not finished the main campaign. However, having put around 40 hours into the game so far, I felt I had enough to go on for a review. There will necessarily be some spoilers here, but I’ll try to refrain from specifics. Also: be sure to open screenshots in a new window or tab to see them in their original resolution. They are also slightly more dark and compressed than they looked in-game because of the original bitmap compression. Graphics & Sound Skyrim is, as I’m sure you know, a beautiful game. But like many of us playing it, it has good angles and bad angles. Fortunately, 90% of the game is good angles: the wide-open terrain of the overworld, the majestic towers and walls of the cities, and dank and decaying tombs and barrows, the wonderfully-modeled monsters and objects, all of these things are difficult to fault. The landscapes of the mountains can often be truly breathtaking, and many times I stopped for a moment to appreciate the view the way you might if you were hiking. And not simply because it looks good “for a game,” but because it was beautiful enough to warrant a moment of appreciation. Similarly, many of the tombs and dungeons you explore have excellent looks to them and great attention to detail. So what I have to criticize is certainly a small minority of the game, and while you’ll notice the same thing in your playthroughs, it rarely detracts from the game. Humans are probably Skyrim’s weakest link graphically; while people certainly look better than they did in the previous games, and look natural enough when they’re doing certain normal things, there was little attention given to many of their animations, and they walk with a strange combination of woodiness and gliding. It’s 2011, the world is rendered with astonishing richness, yet its denizens slide up steps like ghosts. It’s a little sad that the opening scene of the game is a demonstration of its least-appealing visual aspects. And the faces are still, alas, not so hot. Quest characters and many shopkeepers and such look all right (and to Bethesda’s credit, are extremely varied), but many simply don’t, and people all seem to be the same medium height and build. The Nords seem to have eliminated the short, the tall, and the overweight from their population entirely. Low-resolution textures and low-poly models are plenty, though they can usually be overlooked and at any rate are among dozens if not hundreds of other, more well-done items. Decals are particularly disappointing; while I appreciate that blood, scorching, and frost marks should be created, there has to be a better way to do it than the simple models and repeating textures we are given. The sound and music are excellent. Weapons and materials produce a variety of noises when struck, there are a number of different footstep sounds, and creatures all emit distinctive noises when you’re in their vicinity. The atmospheric noises are good, too, with deep rumbles accompanying visual effects in caves, satisfying swishes and thwocks from arrows, and lots of great-sounding nature noises, from wind and rain to wildlife. The soundtrack is, for once, not only worth keeping on (I usually mute game music) but worth listening to closely. The eerie pieces accompanying your spelunking and graverobbing expeditions is clearly meant to evoke the quieter moments of Indiana Jones, while different themes fade in and out naturally for various different settings, from windblown cliffs to forests to city markets. It’s all beautifully done but for the most part low-key. Bravo to the music team. The combat music could do with a little tweaking, though: it’s the same intense piece whether you’re fighting an ancient reanimated warlord and his zombie thralls or if your’e wandering in a marsh and accidentally alert a mudcrab. In the first case it raises the tension – in the second, it feels absurd. The weakest part of the sound is almost certainly the humans, both in scripting and delivery. Naturally putting together a game like Skyrim entails the use of many voice actors, and quality varies. But some of the lines are done so poorly that I wonder whether the designers listened to them at all. And the repetition of some lines is really disappointing. It’s a little shameful that every crypt and castle is unique, yet blacksmiths throughout the land all use the same stock phrases. The game runs well on my computer, which is fairly high-end, but a few tweaks to the config file are warranted, to eliminate mouse acceleration (deceleration, rather) and make a few things go a bit more smoothly. Watch the mod scene for improvements. Combat & AI Some changes have been made to the way you fight, and magic is much more practical than it was before. The left/right hand system is great in most situations, allowing you to, for example, have a shield ready while firing lightning at an enemy. Alternately, you could hack away at a mage while keeping a warding spell ready for when they try to magic you. It feels a little weird having your right hand be the left mouse button and vice versa. A handedness option would be appreciated by many, I’m sure, but that’s a minor detail compared to the larger issues with combat. The fact is that combat in games is all about a relationship between you and your antagonist, and your relationship with almost every single enemy in Skyrim is the same. Every wolf, skeleton, mage, fighter, and so on uses the same strategy: run directly at you by the shortest path possible and attack as soon as you’re within range. Then, once their health gets low, they run away to the next room or cower on the ground until you administer the coup de grace. A few trifling differences can be found in novelty mini-bosses and so on, but by and large every enemy acts the same. Fighting isn’t bad, exactly, but it’s exactly as floaty as it has been for years in the series and you have no sense of the weight or reach of your weapon. You can tell if you hit or were blocked, but it’s really not very physical. Bows and magic are more satisfying, though the “stream” style spells you get have very little feedback. Many will be disappointed to learn that the autoleveling system is still in place, though there are merciful exceptions. I’ve always though it rather stupid in Elder Scrolls games that you can pretty much enter any location at any level and have a good chance of beating it. Enemies level up with you, so that a bandit when you’re level five takes three arrows or five sword swipes, and a bandit when your’e level 30 takes the same. It really acts as a buzzkill when you level up, get a new perk, find a sweet new bow or axe, and feel like a badass — but the game just gives everyone slightly better armor and more hit points to compensate for your badassery. Setting the difficulty is no help, it just tweaks the variables. Bethesda really, really needs to adjust this system. There’s a feeling of awe in other open games when you enter an area and find yourself being killed in a single hit. “I’ve got to come back here when I’m more awesome,” you think. And when you go back to a previous area and can smush enemies with a single hit, you really feel that you’ve moved up in the world. That feeling is more or less absent in Skyrim. Naturally this system enables all the game’s locations to be accessible throughout the game, and you’re never going to skip something because the dudes are too easy and the loot is probably weak. But there has to be a better way. That’s not to say that I didn’t occasionally find myself in serious danger, but when I did, it often felt arbitrary. One time I found a bandit’s den with a few guys in it, nothing special, and then the head bandit rushed out and killed me in two hits. I had unwisely saved after alerting him so I needed to finish it, and it took me perhaps 30 tries, no exaggeration. I honestly don’t know how it was possible that he kept killing me; when I finally took him down, I found he had a fairly powerful magic axe, but nowhere near the level it would take to destroy me that way. And later, a mage killed me a number of times by casting spells way faster than he should have been able to. I rarely felt I won or lost in a fair fight. Except with this guy, who didn’t stand a chance: Magic weapons, by the way, are a bit unbalanced. A bow that does 20 fire damage, great. A bow that does 20 stamina damage? The guy will gain that back in like five seconds. Why even bother? There seemed to be a lack of unique enchantments, the kind of thing you’d find in Diablo games. Almost everything is just a regular item with extra damage of one type. I rarely found myself excited about finding one, since they were so generic. The few unique weapons I found (Red Eagle’s Bane, Dawnbreaker) were weaker than the gear I had when I found them. The local blacksmith carried better weapons. There are a number of other problems: sneaking and bows are overpowered, two handed weapons are underpowered, dragons are too easy, multiple opponents often interfere with each other awkwardly, and so on. But you get the idea. UI and interface Skyrim’s menu systems are terrible, all of them. But instead of going through the details, I’ll just point you to this article at Gamasutra and its excellent sequel , which describe the many shortcomings in illustrated detail. Suffice it to say that the menus are counter-intuitive, inefficient, buggy, and obviously geared towards controller navigation. I look forward to the user-created replacements. The World I’ve saved the best for last. The world of Skyrim is the whole reason for playing. The dungeons and caves in Oblivion were disappointingly samey, reusing assets and often entire rooms or buildings. Skyrim… well, first of all, let’s talk about the overworld. It’s huge . Huge in area, but many games tout square mileage greater than Skyrim’s. The difference is that nothing in Skyrim is wasted space or cut-and-paste scenery. Every meadow, every cliff, every log, every glacier, every mountain, every town, every ruin, every lake, every everything is hand-crafted, natural, beautiful, and purposeful. I can’t overstate how very real the land of Skyrim looks and feels. And yet it is enormously varied, as well. The swamps around Markath are a whole different territory from the woodsy hills near Riverdale, which are different from the snow-swept peaks of Winterhold. And you can go everywhere. Like, pretty much everywhere. Only the highest peaks and ornamental features are unable to be clambered up (buggily or otherwise). There are trails and roads to follow, but if you choose to beat your own path, nature is wide-open to you, if you’re game to take on a few bears (which, despite a tame early encounter, are probably more dangerous than dragons). And whether your’e on or off the path, the scene is lavishly sculpted just the same. The attention to detail and go-anywhere aspect make the world seem even bigger than is — not that it’s necessary to do so, because the world is already gigantic. Once you do a little traveling and get a sense of the scale, the map starts to make sense. Originally I thought “okay, there’s a big mountain in the middle, a few towns around it, and some wildlife around them. But not only did I underestimate the size, number, and richness of the landscape, but I neglected to account for the size and depth of the many barrows, holds, tombs, caves, and so on. I was complaining to a friend that generally (so far in the game at the time, and under the influence of my previous experience with Oblivion) the caves and dungeons were generally of a medium size, sometimes with a boss, and usually with treasure at the end, and you can get through them in 20 or 30 minutes. At the time that was what I had found in Skyrim, but I’m happy to say that those impressions have been almost totally reversed. Sure, there are the bandit cubbyholes and medium-sized mines that you can pop into and clear out in 15 minutes or half an hour. But literally the next place I entered after discussing the lack of depth with my friend was probably four times deeper than anything I had found since. It probably took me an hour and a half to clear. And it was really my first foray into the Indiana Jones-style delvings that really make you feel, more than any game I’ve ever played, that you’re truly in an ancient tomb, going places no one has been for centuries, and opening doors that probably should have stayed closed. The one complaint I have is that most of these dungeons are very linear and all you can really do is advance , not explore . They also use the slight cop-out of conveniently returning you to the entrance via a back stairway or passage. Really, no one thought to force this door open, which leads directly to the throne-room of the undead king, who laid sleeping behind ten locked doors and innumerable traps for a thousand years? This linearity was beginning to bother me (as much as it can, since the dungeons are all different and all very fun) when I found Blackreach. Oh, Blackreach. Spoiler warning. Do yourself a favor if you haven’t done this yet. Go to Winterhold and travel north until nearly the end of the map, where there will be a “cave” icon indicating a door in an iceberg. Inside is a guy who will send you on the most insanely huge side quest I’ve ever seen in a game. Picture this: At the top of a mountain, buried by snow, are the tops of some towers. Entering the towers, you must decent through a dungeon (in the generic sense) of machinery and ice. At the bottom of this dungeon is another dungeon, the actual ruins of the Dwemer buildings, which are better-maintained and more full of mechanical monsters. At the bottom of this dungeon, you will find the entrance (only accessible via the quest, as I found out) to Blackreach: Blackreach is one of the most astonishing pieces of world design I’ve ever seen. And within this massive and incredibly beautiful underground world larger than any of the game’s cities by far, there are further sub-dungeons, and dungeons within those! I remind you that to my knowledge this quest is not only optional, but hidden in an obscure location at the very edge of the map! (Update: Oops, it actually is a main story quest, though I came across it randomly. That’s what I get for not finishing the game first.) This review is already too long, so I’ll stop, but I wanted to highlight Blackreach as an example of everything this game does right. Conclusion Despite the serious faults in many of the game mechanics, Skyrim is a triumph because what it succeeds in outweighs those flaws (which may be fixed by patches and mods) by an enormous amount. The world is the richest and most lovingly created that I’ve ever seen in a game, and you are completely free to explore it at your own rate, in your own way, and for a long, long time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to playing. Despite 35 hours of exploration, and rather efficient exploration at that if I may say so, I have yet to even lay eyes on half of the world, much less explore their hidden depths. I expect to be occupied with Skyrim for days and weeks to come, and look back to revisiting it years from now. A genuine modern classic.

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Review: Skyrim