Exposing my socks to the world

E3 is over, and all of the folks foolish enough to attend are heading back to the offices to pore over and disseminate the information they have amassed over the last couple of days. What this means is that for the next few days, most of the news you’ll find on the news sites will be some combination of a few things:

Title: Impressions/Preview of Game X
Content: I played Game X at E3, and it was good/coming along nicely, here’s some canned screenshots/movie and/or some ‘exclusive’ poor quality video of me doing poorly at the game.

Title: Interview with Game Industry Guy Y
Content: I sat down with Industry Guy Y and we talked about some questions that didn’t get answered at the press conferences. Industry Guy didn’t answer them either, but gave entertaining non-answers. Will overanalyze interview when we get back to the office.

Title: Analysis of Game Company Z’s press conference/E3 showing/marketing strategy
Content: Company Z did some things right, did some things wrong. Showed games that people wanted to see and didn’t show games that people wanted to see. Some games/announcements were surprising, some were disappointing. Overanalysis and possibly a minute-by-minute breakdown of ‘liveblogs’ will ensue.

No matter what site you go to, these three article constructs are going to be filled with the same things. Everyone who got to play the demo of Crysis is going to have a slightly differing perception of the exact same thing, but all feel compelled to publish it anyway. This unfortunately means that the things that differentiate the game news sites have virtually disappeared and the news scape is now a featureless grey mass of sameness.

But there’s always next week, I suppose.

If you see a Wii on the shelves, you’d better snap it up. The current ridiculous shortage could possibly last through Christmas.

“George Harrison, senior VP of marketing has told Reuters that the firm cannot guarantee it won’t see the same problems it had last year with supply unable to meet demand.

“There is no guarantee that we are not going to have ‘out-of-stocks’ this holiday season”

The more cynical crowd out there might suspect that Nintendo is manipulating the supply to artificially keep demand high. If that’s the case, then it’s working very well.

Link! (Gamesindustry.biz)

Typically, every time I see an article about Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, I blow right by it. It’s not that I don’t respect the fact that he’s made a living playing games competitively. Nor is it that I can’t appreciate that he’s put his name on some ridiculously overpriced signature gaming peripherals. It’s not even because he puts that silly ‘1’ into his name, though I usually like to pronounce it as a ‘1’ other than a ‘i’, “Fatal-one-ty”.

No, I typically don’t read articles about him because while so much press has been given to him letting me know that he’s the ‘most best game competitive game player ever’, I don’t remember hearing about any other professional gamers. This either means that they aren’t press-friendly or that they’re not consistently skilled enough to be in the upper echelon of game players. Reading about professional gamers is great and all, but from all the press I read, there’s Mr. Wendel, and dozens of his faceless opponents. Lame.

That being said, it seems that Mr. Wendel is going to presenting a keynote speech called “Competitive Gaming – From Basement to Big Time.” Though how he’s going to find time to write a keynote between pwning n00bs, cutting endorsement deals, and going on a national tour.

Link! (Kotaku)

I’ve gone through and made some changes to the stylesheets for this site. They should make things slightly easier to read. If you see something that looks very wrong and/or out of place, that’s probably just me futzing around with color, size and position.

According to Siliconera, Konami is apparently going to be bringing out its very own version of the e-Reader for some card battle game. Maybe the e-Reader sold better in Japan, but I only know of one person that bought one other than me. I can’t fathom why someone over there thinks this is a good idea.

Konami is prepping another trading card game for the Nintendo DS … Juushinden: Ultimate Beast Battlers is a newly developed series where players create and battle with a deck of forty cards. Instead of playing with a deck of virtual trading cards, … players scan tangible cards into the game. The magic reader plugs into the DS’s Game Boy Advance cartridge slot and it deciphers what card you scanned in.

The article doesn’t really make it clear if it’s coming out in the US or not, but if it does, I’ll probably get one when it hits the bargain bin or when I find one at a yard sale.

Link! (via GoNintendo).

Sparking a debate that is likely going to go on until either the end of time or a second video game industry collapse, Video Game addiction is likely not going to be classified as an actual disease by the American Medical Association.

“There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn’t get to have the word addiction attached to it,” said Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Although I’ve been a ‘user’ for more than 20 years, I’ve never experienced anything resembling classic addiction or obsession. So I’m going to have to side with this finding for now.

Link! (SPOnG)

It’s official Manhunt 2 is officially on hiatus. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone given the events up until now. Now I can finally stop posting about it.

“Take-Two Interactive Software has temporarily suspended plans to distribute Manhunt 2 for the Wii or PlayStation platforms while it reviews its options with regard to the recent decisions made by the BBFC and ESRB,” Take-Two reported in a written statement.

I fully expect this game to come out in some form down the line. Either in heavily altered form or on the PC. There’s just too much hype around it now to have it fade into obscurity.

Link! (Gamesindustry.biz)

Although I haven’t seen anything as awesome as the method I used to break into the industry, I like to see how other people managed to break in.

“[S]ometimes it can be helpful – or, at the very least, interesting and inspiring – to hear first hand from industry veterans about their own experiences starting their careers. We […] found that even if the exact opportunities have changed, a number of things, like the rewards for passion and determination, have not.”

Link! (via DevBump)

EDIT: It seems that IGN has an infrequently updated video feature about this very topic here.

The ongoing Manhunt 2 saga is beginning to get slightly bizarre. Here’s what’s happened thus far:

1. Rockstar makes controversial game
2. Controversial game gets banned in the UK
3. Organization in the US calls for the game to be rated Adults Only, not knowing that the game already has it from the ESRB
4. Nintendo and Sony issue statements reminding us that they do not allow AO games to be published on their systems
5. Head guy at Take 2 is taken aback, calls the game “a fine piece of art”

It’s like watching some kind of bizarre three-way fencing match. I want to look away, but just can’t.

Tadhg Kelly has an interesting post up exploring why so many original video game IPs ultimately fail.

“In most other disc-based retail media, 300,000 units sold of anything new is actually pretty damned good. Book authors would faint at the idea that they’ve gained that many sales of their first book. Indie movie makers would be very pleased indeed. Because, when you break that down into numbers, 300,000 sales could be anywhere from 7-15 million dollars worth of revenue at the till.

That’s an awesome number. Unless you work in games, and the reason for that is that games cost way too much money to make, and the margins for third parties are less than ideal.”

Link! (via DevBump)