I haven’t posted in a while — been busy. Some miscellaneous notes:
- I was given this Nintendo DS-shaped toy as a gift at — wait for it — a wedding! It’s one of those games where you have to drop plastic bits into a container while avoiding magnetic edges. Both the groom and the bride work in the game industry, so it was actually an appropriate present that didn’t weird anyone out. [whoops, image got borked, will reupload]
- Having tried to cover E3 in the past when I was a journalist (and before that, as a fansite owner pretending to be a journalist), I was delighted by last year’s announcement of E3’s death. Really, it was a good thing. While trying to cover E3 with my friends was kind of fun in an in-the-trenches bombs-exploding-everywhere sort of way, nearly everyone at the show agreed that it was wasteful, overcrowded and unworkable. (The show was hence also known as the “balls kneeing robot” over at Idle Thumbs.)
I’m not doing press stuff anymore, but I hear the situation is a lot better this year, with individual company press days spreading the news across a longer period of time, giving all the games a bigger chance to be in the spotlight. And we can still look forward to the press conferences by the Big Three at the new slimmed down version of E3 in July. - A while ago I wrote about the cinema as a potential gaming environment. Certain US theaters apparently now have a pre-movie break-out style advergame in which the entire audience, tracked by motion sensors, controls the paddle on the screen. Awesome! More here.
- Guitar Hero II’s domination of my gaming life continues. I recently dreamt about Free Bird’s epic five-minute solo and I was floating in space while the notes flew by. (Sigh.)
Nordic Game again attracted many high-profile international speakers, almost oddly disproportionate to the conference’s size and attendance. I particularly enjoyed the talks by Daniel James (Three Rings), Tsutomu Kouno (Loco Roco), Dan Paladin (The Behemoth), Sampo Karjalainen (Habbo Hotel) and Ryan Lesser & Dare Matheson (Harmonix) and there were many other great ones. I must give mad props to my friend Barbara Lippe, who is art lead at Avaloop as well as a program director for Nordic Game, and who worked tirelessly on bringing some of these speakers to Malmo.
There’s photos at Jason Dela Rocca’s blog.- Last but not least: it seems Jack Black is a Psychonauts fan! I knew Jack Black was a gamer but I didn’t know he had such taste. Jack and Tim Schafer need to team up and make a game. After all, they could easily be brothers.
but I hear the situation is a lot better this year, with individual company press days spreading the news across a longer period of time
Yeah, for the big guns. But where are all the freaky little niche titles supposed to go to get some attention now? RIP Kentia Hall
n0wak
May 26th, 2007
Yeah, I’ve heard that argument a couple of times but I have a hard time seeing it that way.
Few members of the press paid genuine attention to Kentia Hall as there was barely enough time to cover the games in South, West and Concourse Hall. When the media did cover Kentia, it got completely lost amidst all the coverage of the big titles. (Only the ‘lol check these crazy peripherals’ articles made it through sometimes.)
The niche titles have a bigger chance of getting noticed now — if instead of trying to compete for attention through an expensive E3 booth their developers organize small off-site press demos at other events, or participate in things like the IGF, or increase the effectiveness of their online marketing.
Marek
May 26th, 2007
Maybe.
All I know is that when all the E3 coverage-gasms were going on, the Kentia Hall write-ups — whether optimistic and overly cynical — were, really, the only parts I bothered reading. All those big titles are going to get their press anyway, I’d rather read about awkward dudes selling their odd ideas, the uncomfortable boothbabes, the (really) gimmicky controllers and all that C-Level stuff.
But then again, I am weird and hardly the prime audience for the “mainstream” enthusiast press.
n0wak
May 27th, 2007
Seeing that you have been to E3, Marek, I wanna ask you this: Do you think that if websites like Gamespot actually tried to give lower-budget games like, say, Sam and Max decent coverage they would succeed? What I mean is, don’t you ever notice how Gamespot always takes trivia like sound and graphics in their average of a game? They rate what’s popular highly (San Andreas gets a 9.6/10) but something without that much hype badly (Sam and Max: Culture Shock was 7.6!). Gamespot, being so influential (stastics prove they are the most popular site amongst gamers), should know better than “OMG TEH GRAPHICS!!!” and go for something like “Hey, Pyschonauts is a game you really wanna get - it’s as good as Halo! And it has a story!”
So my question is, is the press responsible for some games getting more attention than others in your opinion, or solely the event?
Kroms
May 30th, 2007