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In the public debate about the effects of negative content in video games (violence, stereotypes...) we seem to be stuck in the tired old habit of playing good guys versus bad guys. Over and over again the conversation is black and white, right and wrong. We pick sides and entrench ourselves, preparing to wage war against the enemy.
Anyone who's ever learned something about city planning from SimCity. Anyone who's had their views of war shaped by a military game. Anyone who's made a screenshot comic or a machinima movie of their favorite game. Anyone who's ever posted to a gaming forum.
Every gamer is a serious gamer and every game is a serious game.
Doug Lowenstein has the hardest job on the planet right now. First he had to announce that the trade group he represents, the ESA, was cancelling it's storied and widely-beloved E3 trade conference in favor of an event which would eliminate everything most people loved about it, in favor of the things his constituents (the major game publishers) preferred (i.e. smaller, more easily-controlled meetings and a guest list consisting of only pre-screened invitees).
Each week we ask a question of our staff and featured writers to learn a little bit about them and gain some insight into where they are coming from.
This week's question is:
Describe your evil lair.
There's a pic going around that was supposedly captured from the WoW forums. It's a screen cap of a forum post made by the brother of a WoW player, announcing to the rest of the forum that his brother has passed away. He says that he's making the post because his brother was always proud of how well-regarded he was in the WoW community, and that he thought his brother would want his fellow WoWers to know that he'd died.
As the casual game space continues to grow and draw more big players into the market, highly-specialized firms with a history of success in the genre can offer a lot of insight to those interested in cashing in on gaming's quietist multi-million-dollar sector.
I had the opportunity to speak with Jessica Rovello, Chairman and Co-Founder of Arkadium, Inc.. Arkadium's been around since 2001, focusing originally on "skill games," then expanding to the casual sector and adver-gaming. What follows is the conversation we had.
My father had a saying about hopes. My father had a saying about everything, but this one was particularly colorful. "Hope in one hand," he would say. "S*** in the other. See which one fills up first."
Semi-official also means semi-independent, semi-biased and semi-credible. Part editorial, part advertisement. Welcome to the adverblog.
EB/Gamestop's Olivera Denies Preorder Canceling, but Rumor Mill Keeps Spinning
Sony, eBay and EB/Gamestop are working together to stop customers from reselling their PS3 preorders. But why? Sony has more to risk from preorder flippers than you'd think.
E3 is dead, long live E3.
For the next 12 months I fully expect every promoter with even the smallest game convention to be trying their damnedest to convince consumers, developers and the press, that their convention is heir to the throne.
Each week we ask a question of our staff and featured writers to learn a little bit about them and gain some insight into where they are coming from.
This week's question is:
The boss is on vacation, and completely incommunicado, for a whole week. What do you do?
This weekend at the Valley Forge Convention Center in Valley Forge, PA, there's a video game convention (which is why I'm here), and anime convention, a Mind, Body, Spirit expo, a wedding, a costume contest (this is Halloween weekend, after all) and the usual hubub you'd expect to find at one of the largest shopping centers on the East Coast.
It is, quite frankly, a one-stop shop for the lunatic fringe.
This morning as I was dealing with the fallout from having been over an hour late arriving in Philadelphia, getting ripped off by a cab driver and discovering, upon my arrival at Valley Forge, that someone along the way had lost my room reservation (note: none of this is unusual), the last person I expected to meet was Bill Kunkel, one of the founding fathers of video game journalism.
The organizers of VGxPO know what's it all about: the games. And the very first thing you see when you walk through the door is a shrine to the pastime we all share. I can't honestly say if every arcade cabinet ever made is in attendance here, but it sure looks that way.
