This is a bit old, but if you happen to be a gamer and an English major (or enjoyed the Cantebury Tales in high school) you’ll get a kick out of Chaucer’s blog entry on his experience with the ‘Exboxe CCCLX.’ (via kottke)
Video-Games
Magazine covers and EA Sports
If you’re a sports fan and you’ve perused the magazine rack at your local bookstore, you’ll notice most of the pre-season rags will have an athlete from your favorite team on the cover. “Cool,” you think, “everyone will see the great Troy Smith on the cover of Althon Sports pre-season magazine.” Well, not everyone. Some will see Troy and Brady Quinn. Others will see Brady and USC’s Dwayne Jarrett. It’s a simple and ultra-effective marketing technique — sell the fans what they want. I know I am immediately drawn to the covers adorned with the scarlet and gray. I might not always buy one, but I’ll at least pick it up and thumb through it.
Fans of EA Sports have been using photoshop for a long time to do the same thing. Every year, while speculating of who will be on the cover of the next NCAA or Madden, fans help out EA and design the cover with who they think deserves to be the next cover. Fanblogs.com has collected a ton of NCAA 2007 covers and posted them on Flickr.
It got me thinking about the marketing that sport magazines use and how EA does it. While it is an honor (and a curse) to be on the cover of an EA sports title, I wonder how many more they would sell if they “customized” the covers for different regions. It would be tricky for a couple reasons: you can’t have a current NCAA player on the cover (nixing my Ted Ginn Jr. dream) and there are only 32 teams in the NFL. Nevertheless, I still think it would work. Sure, this year Reggie Bush was honored with the cover (and rightfully so) but if I was a Texas fan, I’d much rather buy a copy of NCAA 2007 with Vince Young gracing the cover, not the chump your team beat in the Rose Bowl.
Me? I’d personally like to see A.J. Hawk on the cover of my copy.
Darwin’s Console
Over at the Thumb Gods, they’ve posted a huge list of consoles, dating back to 1972. They’ve got the works, including links to wikipedia for your knowledge edification. No handhelds, however. Perhaps that’s another post.
I count 46 consoles, of which I have owned 6 (I know, weak) and I mashed buttons on 20 of them.
Carnival of Gamers #14
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!
It gets worse
You think and hope, in your heart of hearts, that things can’t get any worse. But it appears they do (via Slashdot). From the Gamespot piece (is it just me or is Gamespot kicking the pants off IGN/Gamespy?):
It’s not just the adults that are liberated from their wardrobes. Sims kids can also be nudified, “much to the delight, one can be sure, of pedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse.”
I am so stunned by this guys audacity and stupidity that it makes my stomach hurt. How can this guy believe the drivel that comes out of his mouth? Is he hearing what he is saying? Can any rational human being come to the conclusions this guy comes to? It goes beyond boggling the mind.
I feel ill.
Strong all along
Like Adam over at render, I seriously considered picking up a new PSTwo so I could play Katamari Damacy. He took the plunge but I have resisted. With such a HUGE library, I know I am missing out on a lot of good games. But I don’t have an unlimited gaming budget, something has to give. So I doubt I’ll ever pick up a PS2, which means I probably won’t experience some of those great games. With respect to Katamari Damacy, though, I feel a little vindicated after I read this! It looks possible that we might get Katamari on the Gamecube. Excellent news.
It got me thinking about the life span of a video game console. The PS2 is going on five years old and the Gamecube and Xbox are both going on four years old. Safe to say they’re all in their prime. And the games (like Katamari Damacy) show it. In the past year we’ve had the fantastic Resident Evil 4 for the Gamecube, GTA and KD for the PS2, and Halo 2 and the game I’m currently playing, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for the Xbox. I still think there is a lot of life left in this generation of consoles.
Post-GDC Rant
Games * Design * Art * Culture – This is getting lots of linkage around the game-o-sphere but it’s worth repeating yet again.
How many of you were at the Microsoft keynote?
I don’t know about you, but it made MY FLESH CRAWL. The HD Era. Bigger. Louder. More photorealistic 3D. Teams of hundreds. And big bux to be made.
While it didn’t make MY FLESH CRAWL, when I read the Microsoft speech, I thought the same thing echoed here. I don’t want to have to buy a new TV just so I can enjoy the next generation of consoles. I still think there’s a lot of life left in the current generation of machines. The PS2 might be on its last leg but it’s still getting quality games this late in its life (see: Katamari Damacy). After playing Resident Evil 4, it is evident that there’s A LOT of muscle left in that little cube. But that’s not the point of Greg’s rant.
We really don’t need whiz-bang graphics and Dolby 92.3 sound. We need games that are fun and engaging. Game developers, under the current video game publishing conditions, aren’t free to develop such innovation. Instead we get rehash after rehash. As a Nintendophile, I can’t say Nintendo is exempt from this criticism. It remains to be seen if Mario 128 can bring new innovation. But the points made here valid and somewhat hard to swallow. Even though he backs off his inital Iwata spanking, it was still pretty harsh.
Go read the whole thing. While it does seem like a lot of talk and not as much in the way forward, it may be the catalyst that gets the ball rolling.