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So imagine the surprise of our hypothetical game marketing guy when he reads yesterday's headline news. Guitar Hero developer (and their new masters, publisher MTV Games and "marketing partner" EA) have landed a few big name sponsors including guitar maker Fender, which, considering Gibson and others (hello, MTV) were key marketing partners for the Guitar Hero series, isn't very surprising. What is surprising is the reaction to the deal from gamers and the game press.
Digg had a change of heart, and shortly after resuming service, Digg founder Kevin Rose, in a surprise announcement, reversed this policy and stated that Digg would no longer be complying with the AACS LA's orders, against their attorneys' advice. The mob won, but don't think for a second it will end there.
Why are hand-held systems so remarkably successful even as these same corporations vigorously push their next-generation console systems? Setting aside the obvious answer of portability, what else drives customers to the Nintendo DS, the PSP and the Gameboy Advance?
Mister Giggles is a clown. He's also a skeleton. As such, his challenges as an entertainer of children are legion. In the pursuit of his craft he's overcome many hardships, suffered many defeats. Not the least of which was that one time, when trying a new act, juggling poodles, the hungry, little dogs set upon him, gnawing his bones and forcing him to flee his tent. It's been a hard-knock life for Mister Giggles, but having fled to the hills (away from the poodles) and had a moment to clear his head, hear the roar of the crowd from the distance, see the far-off glow of the footlights and smell the cotton candy, he's realized once again that the circus is his home. His heart (or what serves him for one) fills as he experiences a brief moment of contentment, and I, as the player of the game Gloom, earn several points. I am now losing.
The day will come when Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson blaming videogames will sound as ridiculous as blaming this event on the rock music he might have listened to does today.
However, as one unnamed games reviewer in the BBFC report mentions, violence in games is "the big elephant in the room for the games industry."
Imagine if a dozen Peacebombers showed up at a homeless shelter to pitch in during a tough snowstorm, or a large-scale project resulted in several dozens at a Habitat for Humanity build site.
What if they helped to find a missing child?
I was 10 years old when the town of Arlington, Texas outlawed Dungeons & Dragons. This was in the mid-80s. The furor over the game's demonic content and "dangerous" subtexts was at its height. Pamphlet's like Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons were circulating at PTA meetings and Sunday school classes, and news pundits and newspaper editorialists were denouncing the game as contributing to all manner of ills, from juvenile delinquency to gruesome murders and disappearances.
As the dust from the Guitar Hero II downloadable content pricing flap settles from nearly universal offense to a mildly simmering annoyance, the real source of the animosity seems to be that gamers, yet again, suffered under the illusion that Activision, Microsoft, Harmonix or whoever the hell chooses the price for this stuff, wouldn't naturally maximize the cost to the breaking point of what the market will bear.
When I brought home the Universal Gamer Remote, the first question asked of me was "Why?" Answering it, I felt like an infomercial host.
"It solves the problem of clutter in your living room," I blurted. I got a blank stare in response.
"Are you tired of always hunting for the right remote control? Imagine using your cable box, television, Xbox 360, PS2, DVD player and audio device all with one remote!" I entreated. Still nothing.
Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings has something to say about Sony Online Entertainment's new Vice President of Business Development & International Operations.
The return to the movie theatre of the Turtles, and other lapsed franchises like Transformers, Batman, and Superman, has some interesting lessons for gaming franchises. The question here is not why the Turtles are making a comeback - our generation, bankrupt of its own ideas, is easily swayed by nostalgia, even for things that weren't really that good in the first place - but if people bought into Turtles then and buy into Turtles now, why didn't they buy into them in the intervening 15 years
For a lot of modern games, though, there's a lot more to it than just the game mechanics. Games aren't just the rolling of ethereal dice or leaping over pits anymore. The best games today have characters you can care about. They have stories you can get excited about and new ways to explore familiar concepts. In some cases, truly great games have to be sequels.
In Lost Planet I was hoping to find something special and unique. Something worthy of the Xbox 360's technical prowess and Capcom's stature as a gaming powerhouse. I was looking for a blend of East meets West; a Japanese game for a Western audience (as the advertorials suggested); and a thrilling story into which I could lose myself over the course of a long weekend. I was, in other words, looking for my next "great game." I found it, but as usual with Capcom games, the good was mixed with a significant amount of bad.
In a family, it's an inevitability, like growing older, feuds over the Thanksgiving table or getting married. Someone, somewhere, is going to find religion, and since he's family, you're going to have to put up with him.
In the age of the internet, as worldwide communication confirms that misery loves planetary company, online customer surveys, review sites, blogs and forums have become a self-sustaining orgy of endless criticism, commentary and review. It seems if something can't be rated according to a linear scale, it doesn't even register on our cultural radars.
