Rugby World Cup In New Zealand

New Zealand marked 100 days to the start of the Rugby World Cup on Wednesday by rolling out a welcome mat on the steps of Parliament and promising fans the hospitality of "a stadium of four million people."
The slogan refers to New Zealand's population and advertises a country almost uniquely devoted to rugby. But it also, unconsciously, highlights the fact this may be the last Cup solely hosted by a nation as small as New Zealand.
The tournament is the fourth-largest sports event in the world in terms of global television audience after the FIFA football World Cup, the Summer Olympics and the Tour de France. Increasing staging costs have made it likely future tournaments will only be hosted by rugby's wealthiest participants.
England paid a $140 million fee to the International Rugby Board to host the 2015 tournament and Japan paid almost $190 million for the 2019 event. The 2015 Cup is expected to earn the IRB around 200 million pounds ($320 million) in broadcasting rights, sponsorship and merchandizing and to inject around 2.1 billion pounds ($3.3 billion) into the British economy.
Experts have found it more difficult to quantify the economic benefits to New Zealand from this year's tournament. The organizing committee expects to spend around NZ$300 million ($240 million) in staging the tournament and to receive around NZ$268 million (US$214 million) in ticket sales, its only source of revenue as host.
The tournament is expected to leave organizers with a deficit of around NZ$39 million ($31 million) which jointly will be met by taxpayers and the New Zealand Rugby Union.
The wider economic costs and benefits to New Zealand are more difficult to estimate. Organizers expect as many as 85,000 overseas visitors will flock to New Zealand during the tournament but the global economic downturn has made that figure less certain.
Some economists believe New Zealand will spend more than NZ$700 million ($570 million) on infrastructure projects including airport upgrades, roads and public transport directly associated with the Cup. In turn, some economists believe the return to the country from tourist spending and other sources may be as low as NZ$150 million ($123 million).
New Zealand is recovering from the setback of a deadly earthquake which rocked Christchurch in late February which killed more than 180 people and forced World Cup organizers to relocate seven matches because of damage to infrastructure, hotels and the rugby stadium in the south island hub city.
The mood of Prime Minister John Key, as he rolled out the welcome mat on Wednesday with IRB vice president Bill Beaumont, was decidedly upbeat. The welcome mat featured greetings in the languages of each of the tournament's 20 participating nations.
Beaumont said he was confident of New Zealand's state of readiness for the World Cup, with the first match between the All Blacks and Tonga 100 days away.
"Preparations are well on track," he said. "Tomorrow I will visit the ... Otago Stadium which will be handed over to tournament organizers in August as planned."
The Otago Stadium, in Dunedin, has been specially built for the World Cup and will not have held an international sports event before the tournament. While there have been some construction delays, Rugby New Zealand 2011 chief executive Martin Snedden said it would be handed over to its new owners on Aug. 1, as planned.

RPGs Hit The Mainstream

Once upon a time, the formula for making a hit console game was simple: Throw in an appealing central character, give him a task, toss some dangerous-looking things at him, make him jump a lot, hand him a gun, and you were well on your way to the big time. The thing you absolutely didn't do was make a geeky, nuts and bolts role-playing game filled with inventory screens, branching dialogue trees and drawn-out battles against But that was then. These days, role-playing games have broken out of the garage and are taking up residence right next to the lucrative shooters and action games that seem to nab twice as many headlines. Two new RPGS arrive this week in The Witcher 2 (sequel to a critically-acclaimed but relatively unknown PC outing from 2007) and a PC port of last year's Xbox 360 hit Fable III, and two of the most anticipated games of the next twelve months are massive, top-pedigree examples of the genre's best. Bioware's Mass Effect 3 and Bethesda's Elder Scrolls: Skyrim come on the heels of colossally successful predecessors: Mass Effect 2 sold over 2 million copies in just its first week, and 2006's Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was one of the Xbox 360's early smashes. Just a few months back, Bioware's swords and sorcery shtick Dragon Age 2 stormed shelves and, like the original, has sold exceedingly well. All of a sudden, the geeks are calling the shots. But it hasn't always been this way. While RPGs have been on the consoles for ages, they really came of age on the PC. In their 1990's heyday, most PC role-playing games were wedded, either explicitly or covertly, to the traditions established by pen-and-paper games like Dungeons and Dragons, relying on stats and random dice rolls rather than player skills. With a few exceptions, they were fantasy-themed, in the tried-and-true (or perhaps tired-and-true) Tolkien tradition. Fable 3 Microsoft As marriages go, it was happy and productive, birthing a slew of epics like Baldur's Gate II, a four-disc (five, if you count its expansion) epic which sold two million copies back in the days when that was considered nearly impossible. But it was doomed to eventual divorce as its consumers grew from teens and students into busy thirtysomethings without the time for a 200+ hour video game, nor the willingness to keep a gaming PC handy. Gamers demanded entertainment that challenged their skills rather than their die-rolling luck, the orcs-and-goblins bit got tedious, and for a decade or more turn-based video games have been uncool enough to scare off almost everyone. (Everyone except the Japanese, who retain an insatiable appetite for the style.) In short, the Western RPG had to change or die -- and it wasn't the only genre in that position. Take the first-person shooter, today by far the most enduringly popular of all action games, and reliably responsible for locking down several slots on the annual bestseller charts. Years ago, shooters were the domain of super-competitive PC gamers who played blisteringly fast games like Quake II, wielding mouse-and-keyboard to shocking effect. and the pros were so good as to be godlike. But one by one developers found they could make their shooters work just as well modern consoles, thanks to the twin-analog-stick controllers that became standard issue in the late 90s. And Halo -- originally a PC/Mac development, before anyone had heard of the Xbox -- was the first to really make it stick. Once PC shooters were all anyone wanted to play, but now they're an afterthought. So too went RPGs, but here the trailblazers were Bioware and Bethesda - the same pair of developers responsible for Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim. And they did it with two epic, best-selling Xbox games: Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, in 2002, and the following year's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, from Bioware. Although Morrowind actually came to the PC before the Xbox - and arguably was a better game on the PC, too - the Xbox version would end up being the most influential. Controlling much like Halo before it, Morrowind was an up-close-and-personal game that still carried much of the trappings of the earlier games in its series. Despite that, it was a huge success, to the surprise of some early critics who dismissed it as a niche game. Then came Knights of the Old Republic -- but like the D&D-based epics of Bioware's past, and unlike Morrowind, Knights was turn-based. Its underlying combat system was a distant offshoot of Dungeons and Dragons, too, but it did such a good job hiding its roots, some players probably never realized they were playing a role-playing game. Mix that with the minds behind some of gaming's very best stories -- and slap the biggest name in all of sci-fi on it -- and you have a recipe for a best-seller. Which is how it proved. In its day, Old Republic was the fastest-selling game on the original Xbox, giving a new generation of gamers an accessible gateway to the conventions of role-playing games. Its success didn't go unnoticed, and many traditionally PC-centric development houses began looking much more favorably on console platforms. So while D&D-branded computer games live on, notably in the massively-multiplayer D&D Online and the upcoming action-oriented download Daggerdale, they're a different breed than their story-driven, number-heavy ancestors - spin-offs, not attempts to recreate the pen-and-paper experience on your PC. Or console. Often the less a console role-playing game shares with the computer games that spawned the genre, the better it sells. You can see this reflected in the progress of the Mass Effect series, which was simplified significantly between its first and second installments in ways that riled some old-school gamers. Statements from Bioware indicate the third game will be cleaner still. And Morrowind followup Skyrim, too, has cannily trimmed its complex character stats system, going from eight core attributes to a trio of easily understandable scores. Will this simplification make them more successful than their predecessors? You'd have to be nuts to bet against them. Skyrim is easily one of the year's most anticipated games, and Mass Effect 3 was too, until delays pushed it into 2012. Once reserved for the most Coke-bottle-bespectacled of gamers, the role-playing game now ranks as one of the console world's most popular. They might not be your daddy's D&D, but chances are he'll wind up playing them anyway.

True Gaming Challenges

Achievements are weak. Players have been creating their own challenges like "Beat Skate Or Die without skating or dying" for years, but the official goals set by Xbox 360 achievements rarely stray from such nail-biting feats as "Beat level 1" or "Shoot in the general direction of 100 enemies with the shotgun". Similar achievement systems are in the works for Nintendo and Sony systems, but you can be sure that they will be equally sissy-fied. For the sake of the many brave souls who perished while trying to complete an entire season of NBA Live '95 without allowing an opposing team to score a single point, we present these True Gaming Challenges to the current generation of gamers. Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland - 15 True Gaming Challenge Points Walk into a store (one that deals in import titles if you live in the U.S.) and bring this game to the counter. Hold it before you in plain sight the entire time. Do not wear a disguise of any sort. Do not laugh. Hand the game to the cashier and tell him or her, "This is for me. I play games like this. I love it." Mass Effect - 10 True Gaming Challenge Points Create a custom character that absolutely, positively, is not a mulatto. Company Of Heroes - 35 True Gaming Challenge Points Join a multiplayer game that bills itself as "noob friendly" without encountering a guy that's using a secondary account because the 100+ wins on his main account won't let him match up with (and destroy) actual beginners like you. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots - 15 True Gaming Challenge Points Explain the game's plot in its entirety to a third party without going "uh.." or scratching your head. Then take about ten seconds to describe what's enjoyable about the gameplay. If they actually want to play the game after this challenge is completed, give yourself 50 additional True Gaming Challenge points. Spore - 10 True Gaming Challenge Points Resist the urge to give the game a "Best Of Expo" award without having played it, regardless of your actual affiliation with any expos. Wii Fit - 25 True Gaming Challenge Points Use the Wii Board regularly for its intended purpose, and not as a tray to keep your Cheetos bag and Mountain Dew steady while you watch Lazy Town. Madden NFL 2009 - 30 True Gaming Challenge Points After playing through one season and realizing you're pretty much done until Madden 2010, sell the game to your local Gamestop for more than $3. Portal - 15 True Gaming Challenge Points Rocketjump your way through the entire game.

Experts Cricket In Battling

India made an astonishing recovery to snatch a one-run victory over South Africa in the second one-day international at the Wanderers Stadium on Saturday to level the five-match series at one match each. Munaf Patel took two wickets in what proved to be the final over to finish with four for 29, with Yuvraj Singh taking a low catch at gully to end the match when Wayne Parnell cut powerfully in an attempt to score the winning runs. South Africa seemed in control when they made an aggressive start to their innings after Lonwabo Tsotsobe produced career-best bowling figures of four for 22 as India were bowled out for 190 on what is usually a high-scoring ground. Captain Graeme Smith and JP Duminy took South Africa to within 71 runs of victory with seven wickets in hand and less than half the overs used up. But Duminy played a rash shot against part-time off-spinner Rohit Sharma and was caught at long-on. It still looked comfortable for the hosts as Smith and David Miller added 32. But as with the Indian innings, the batting powerplay proved disastrous for the batting side. Smith was out to the first ball of the powerplay, bowled off an inside edge by man of the match Patel for 77 and Miller went in the next over when he top-edged an attempted pull against a slower bouncer by Zaheer Khan. South Africa lost their last six wickets for 37 runs in what was almost an action replay of the Indian innings. "We played some good cricket for 70 overs of the game," said Smith, who was captaining South Africa for a record 139th time. "Some of our decision making at the back end of the game wasn't good enough but Munaf bowled really well." Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whose side had lost their last six wickets for 21 runs, said: "It's a big win for us. We were 40 to 45 runs short in our innings but the bowlers bowled in the right areas and put a lot of pressure on the South African batsmen." Dhoni said the the bowling of off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, who took one for 32 in ten overs, had changed the game. "The South African batsmen had momentum when he came on and they lost momentum against him." Tsotsobe led a superb performance by the South African bowlers and fielders after India won the toss and batted. Yuvraj Singh made 53 and Dhoni scored 38 but neither batsman was able to dominate during a fourth wicket stand of 83 off 107 balls. Singh reached his half-century off 67 balls when he glanced Tsotsobe for his fourth boundary - but he was out next ball when he pushed a slower delivery from Tsotsobe to mid-off. Tsotsobe, bowled eight of his ten overs during powerplay overs as he followed up his man of the match performance in the first game in Durban, where he took four for 31 and helped South Africa to a 135-run win. Tsotsobe was entrusted with the first over of the batting powerplay and struck with his first ball when he had Suresh Raina palpably leg before wicket, struck on the back pad by a full delivery. He then bowled Dhoni off an inside edge as the powerplay proved disastrous for India, who lost four wickets for 14 runs, with Tsotsobe having a hand in another wicket when he took a sliding catch at third man to dismiss Zaheer Khan off Dale Steyn's bowling. Sachin Tendulkar equalled Sanath Jayasuriya's world record of 444 one-day international appearances but struggled to 24 off 44 balls as India made a slow start. Tendulkar did not field during the South African innings and there was no immediate explanation of the reason.