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Carnival Update

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After discussing with CheapyD (this month’s Carnival host), we both decided that the Carnival will be delayed a couple weeks, until August 17th. We’re doing this for a couple reasons; the number of submissions is down this month and summer is usually slow for game bloggers anyway. Add to that this oppresive heat and relatively quiet news front (outside of the E3 news) it’s just slow going. So we’re going to combine the August and September Carnivals into one Carnival on the 17th. The rest of the hosts will be bumped up a month and we’ll resume the normal monthly schedule in October, when the days are cooler, the games are flowing and the nights are longer.

So you’ve still got a couple weeks now to work on your Carnival submissions and get them in to CheapyD. As always, you can hit up the Carnival HQ for any carnie questions you might have.

The Cheapest Carnival ever

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It’s not to early to think about getting your Carnival submissions ready, as the August Carnival is just around the corner! Carnival #17 is being held at CheapyD’s place. So get your submissions in for the Carnival and check out CAG for all your latest gaming deals. My library is full of games waiting to be played thanks to CheapyD’s smack-ton of good deals.

Another blogson is born

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He’s been blogging for a couple weeks now, but another one of my buddies has taken the blog-plunge on account of my encouragement (pressure? insistence?). He’s a fellow Buckeye fan, video gamer, and all-around good guy. He also has excellent photoshop skills and he’s crafted me a mighty fine looking banner that I plan to get on the site soon. He prefers to keep his identity private, only to be known as the “Monkey.” I present to you: MonkeyPi.net.

Stop on over and say hey.

Big Carnival Update

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First off, thanks to everyone that has offered to help out with the Carnival. I appreciate that. For the June Carnival, Kim Pallister will be hosting the Carnival at his blog “…on pampers, programming & pitching manure“. It’s the post-E3 Carnival, so make sure you get your submissions to the Grumpy Gamer (and creator of some great games), has offered to host the Carnival. He’ll be taking the July Carnival. Ron has been involved in some of the greatest adventure games of all-time (mmy personal favorite is Full Throttle) so I’m pretty excited about having the Carnival at his blog (which is also a great read).

Next, CheapyD, the proprietor of Cheap Ass Gamer has also offered to host a Carnival and he’ll be hosting the August Carnival. CheapyD’s site has single-handedly populated my gaming library with more games than I’ll ever have time to play and is a great resource for finding games on the cheap. While he’s not strictly a blogger, he does a regular podcast that is a good listen and his site has a wide audience of passionate gamers. Having CheapyD host the Carnival will be an opportunity for them to read your stuff. Make sure it’s good!

I received offers from both of these guys over the past month or so and I was surprised, to say the least, at the offers. What really struck me was that this really opened my eyes to who is reading the Carnival. I know that the audience of game blogs is relatively small, but maybe I’m under estimating that. It’s cool that many people are involved in one way or another and I hope it continues to grow.

We’ve also had offers from past hosts that have offered to host the Carnival, along with a couple other offers from other bloggers. That means we’re flush with hosts for the foreseeable future. Again, thanks to all that have be involved in one way or another with the Carnival. It’s looks like we’ll be going strong in our second year.

I’ll be updating the Carnival HQ page with all the new informaiton soon.

Carnival Happenings

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Things have gotten a little crazy recently with the Carnival for June. We had a host lined up, but I just realized they never followed up with me after the initial offer, so things are in limbo for the June host. I’m working on getting things straightened out, so bear with me and things will be clear as mud soon.

That being said, don’t hesitate to get your submission in for this month’s Carnival. I will forward them on the host and we shouldn’t have any delay in the Carnival. With the glut of E3 info, I’m sure there will be plenty of bloggable material.

Also, I’ve got some pretty exciting Carnival news, but I’ll hold off until things have settled down with the hosts. Besides, that’s what the news is about anyway, so it will be worth the wait.

Let me know if anyone has any questions.

Back from the dead

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I have returned from my long weekend of family visits and no internet. As I’m sure you’ve heard before, disconnecting for a while feels great. I didn’t completely disconnect, though. I took my Xbox to the in-laws since the brother-in-law loves NCAA Football and his wife loves Burnout 3. He also had never experienced the Halo/Halo 2 experience, so I took that along to show him there is life after football games. I also played a little Splinter Cell Chaos Theory to further my point that there are games that are fun to play that don’t involve Heisman Trophies and Maryland-I formations. He was impressed.

This gave me a chance to go back to games that I had neglected since I started my EVE binge. The long weekend (coupled with losing my partner in EVE-crime) hasn’t lessened my desire to play EVE, it will just be on the back burner for a while. I think I’ll be doing a little AFK mining while I play some of the games on “The Stack.” I think the first order of business will be finishing Splinter Cell. I forgot how enjoyable putting bad guys in the choke hold was.

On the buttonmashing.com side of things, I noticed the site was down today for most of the afternoon. I don’t know what caused the problem, but whatever it was seems to have already been straightened out, so yay for that.

Carnival of Gamers #14

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tilt a whirl.jpg

Welcome to the one year anniversary of the Carnival of Gamers! A little over a year ago, I tossed out the idea of holding a blog carnival for fellow gaming bloggers. The idea was well received and since then, we’ve had thirteen other carnivals. So now, here we are, one year later. Welcome to the first annivesary of the Carnival of Gamers. Step on up and wander around the Carnival of Gamers.

I wanted to do something different with this Carnival, but I just drew a blank. I initially tried to make witty comments about everyone’s submissions but realized I was out of my league. Something clever like Thomas’ old-school interface or Cosmic’s screenshot Carnival would have been nice, but I just couldn’t do it. So instead, I categorized, as best I could, the links and will present them with little commentary, letting the writers speak for themselves. Besides, they do a better job than I would. So without further ado…

Casual and Hardcore Gamers

Gianfranco Berardi at GBGames’ Blog asks if Can You Envision a Casual FPS?

Finster at Top of Cool proclaims We Still Matter. That’s “we” as in us hardcore gamers. Some people get “us”. Some obviously don’t.

Nintendo’s Wii – [You knew we couldn’t get through this carnival without at least a couple mentions of Nintendo’s newly named console! -ed]

Brinstar at the Gaming Chair would like to remind us that Wii isn’t alone in the naming weirdness.

Kehaar, projecting the Comic Store Guy, proclaims the Wii is the Worst.Product.Name.Ever. He goes on to say, “Wii will be the straw that breaks the back of the camel that has been carrying Nintendo in the horse race that is video gaming these days.” Time will tell…

Jason has thoughts on the name Wii. In particular, the marketing implications of choosing such an odd name. Is it genius on Nintendo’s part? Not likely, as he says, “it’s more like nakedly exposing how much they don’t understand the American gaming market.”

More thought on Wii from John Watzke at Pure Digital Thought, where he asks, “Do they really think that naming the console the Nintendo Wii that it will grab these new fans?”

Violence, Politics, Public Service and video games [Oh my! -ed]

Greg at Among the Dust points out “Media influences people, and it influences them strongly. This is true of all media, and it has been true for a very long time.”

Kim Pallister talks up Public Service Gaming. Public Service games? As Kim says, “A mini-meme seems to have caught regarding government funding and ‘public service games’.” Check out to see what he’s talking about.

Violence, immigration, and bad taste. Johnny Pi tackles them all in his post “Shock Value.”

Our MMO-World [Who am I kidding? It’s a WoW world and you know it. -ed]

The Curmudgeon Gamer thinks gamers can deal with gold farmers in a similar way some people have dealt with getting people to quit smoking in his post, Gold farming and the war on smoking.

Tobold at Tobold’s MMORPG Blog compares players that don’t interact with other players in WoW as the dark matter of this game.

The Prognosticator asks what makes us go Ding?

Bill Harris looks at what could be a rather startling precedent started in the virtual world of Project Entropia and being able to access in-game cash at real-world ATMs. This could be huge, both for good and for bad. As Bill says, “What matters is that the door is opened and it will never be closed again.”

Foton relates “Seven Things I Have Tried Unsuccessfully to Ban from My Guild,” where he tries, and fails, to improve his own guild experience in World of Warcraft.

Time to take some Tests (Tests? At the Carnival?)
Jeff asks Carnival readers grade a test for him. What kind of test? You’ll have to read on to see.

After you’ve graded Jeff’s test, you have to take the MMO Proficiency Test from Van Hemlock. I was stumped with question #3. “Nerf” means “b) To have one’s character victimised by God,” right? I sure hope I passed!

Everything Else
Jacob at the Gaming Chair asks Microsoft “Where is my co-op Gaming?”

In what could be a first, we have a video blog from Resident Gamer, their interview with Marc Ecko, talking about the urban gaming space. .

Corvus ruminates on the inadequacy of Evil. “Evil, I always felt, was simply inadequate for the task of giving people someone to be truly afraid of.”

Over at Tea Leaves, psu discusses the decline of a strong narrative in video games, comparing the recently released Oblivion and the venerable Planescape. Me, I simply can’t get that picture of that character from Oblivion. shudder

Josh at Cathode Tan is talking about “ESRB’s Line In The Sand.” He says, “The ESRB needs to focus on their actual job – reviewing and rating content intended for gameplay.”

That’s all, folks!

Well, this brings us to the close of the Carnival. A year older and a year wiser. It’s been a great trip and we’ll be pulling into another blog next month. The schedule over the next couple months is currently up in the air, but once I get that straightened out, the Carnival will be back before you know it!

Thanks for reading and enjoy all the great gaming bloggage this month. Read ’em all!

Carnival is on its way!

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Holy smokes, I just realized that the Carnival is one week away! It will be held here at Buttonmashing, in commemoration of the start of the second year of the Carnival. What a wild trip it’s been!

I’ll be sending out an email to past participants, inviting them to join the Carnival, but you can get the jump on that and submit something now! Head over to the Carnival HQ page for more info. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!