So this is not for everyone - but for those friends who have played Call of Duty 4, this video review is priceless. This guy is notorious for his brutal take on games - a guy who goes by the moniker ‘No Punctuation.’ If you play COD4 or any online shooter games (one of my weaknesses), do not wait - go watch this video. Note - adult language, drugs and other language not appropriate for the kiddies featured in this video. You’ve been warned.
In keeping with the gaming theme of recent posts, I must share the photo above. I used a gift certificate from my sisters-in-law they sent as a thank-you for helping them with their new jewelery business (their site will be unveiled soon) to buy the much-heralded Guitar Hero II. There is no doubt this is an amazing game - do not pass go, do not collect $200 - go out and get this game if you have an Xbox 360 or the Playstation. Sam, of course, loves it as well as you can see! Amy also manages to mostly kick my butt at this one - hmm, perhaps her years in the music conservatory finally paid off? Anyway, I’m just trying to figure out how to hold the darn guitar in a way that doesn’t result in the tips of my fingers on my left hand going numb and staying that way for going on 48 hours now. It seems to be getting better, but I’m so uncoordinated that I have to mash the buttons on the guitar neck far harder than necessary. I seem to keep playing Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend over and over again, but my scores are far behind all my Xbox Live buddies. I’m somewhere in the 350,000’s on the leaderboard, while my friend Juanita Winters is up around 25,000 worldwide. Scary, really. Can’t wait for the reported 2007 Summer release of their update with only 80s music, or the late-year Rock Band - where multiple players will be able to join together online on bass, drums, vocals and guitar.
Fudgehogs. Horstachios. Seedos. Doc Patchingo.
These are but a few of the characters Sam has grown to talk about pretty much incessantly since I bought and began to play the very addictive (and very kid friendly) Viva Pinata game for the Xbox 360, recipient of a ‘great’ 8.3 rating from Gamespot.com. I read a piece in Parents Magazine praising the games “”excellent production values, universal human values, appeal to children, and age appropriateness.” Well, I don’t know about all that, but it’s innocent, colorful, and has appealing gameplay for yours truly and entertains the heck out of Sammy. And it has it’s own TV show. Anyway, Sam sits beside me with a controller (sans batteries) and ‘plays’ along with Dad. If you have kiddies in the house, I highly recommend this one.
Tags: Gaming, kids, sam, viva-pinata, xbox360
Yesterday marked a major milestone for everyone’s favorite broadband gaming service. Launched back in 2005, Gametap was born out of the concept of doing what Turner Broadcasting has done for other businesses - acquiring rights to libraries of content, then programming that content in new and lucrative ways. Now, with yesterday’s launch, Gametap is adding to that subscription model by offering a rotating selection of free games to play from their web site, as well as simultaneous access to new releases (Lara Croft’s latest). There is now also a direct digital download service where you can download to own games. David Reid, Gametap’s VP of Marketing, sums it up this way:
It’s really hard to explain to someone what 900 of the greatest games of all time in one place means.
My team has been working with Gametap for several months now integrating advertising into both their new and improved web site as well as their new lite and existing deluxe player. It’s been an exciting project - it’s always fun to do work where it involves gaming! And did I mention that there will soon be a Mac client too - said to be by late Summer according to one of the Joystiq articles! Woohoo!
More coverage here:
Tags: advertising, gametap, Gaming, Mac, turner_broadcasting
So the news broke earlier this week that everyone’s favorite broadband gaming site, Turner’s very own GameTap is expanding their offering to include free-to-play games in an ad-supported environment. You can guess that my team has been actively working on this project for a while. It’s pretty exciting. Much like the varying levels of ‘membership’ on services like Xbox Live, GameTap will offer non-paying, non-registered users access to some games, playable from a light-weight version of their ‘grandaddy’ client. General Manager Stu Snyder (who was just promoted yesterday to a new role as executive vice president and chief operating officer of animation, young adults & kids media in addition to his GameTap role) said it this way in the Business Week story:
“With 2 to 3 million uniques per month, we realized we weren’t monetizing that many uniques to our website,” he says. “We kind of looked back and said, ‘gee, we should [offer an ad-supported version].’ Also, our demographic was looking for an easy way to play games without making a huge time commitment or financial commitment. So we figured why not have all options for all gamers?”
Other content becomes available with a free registration, and users can graduate to the full product and 800+ games with a full subscription. We have also been working to support an ad-supported version of the large range of video content previously only available in the full client known as Gametap TV. I think this ad-supported model has some real legs! Coverage of the project has been widespread, from Business Week, Ars Technica, Kotaku, and the San Jose Mercury News.
Tags: advertising, Gaming
Not since playing the original Wizardry, the seminal adventure game for the Apple II back in the early 80s have I found an adventure-type game to be so engrossing - The Elder Scrolls Oblivion on the Xbox 360. Seriously, this game has everything - amazing graphics, an intriguing script, and superb gameplay. It’s so open-ended, I’ve been playing for a total of some 60+ hours and haven’t gone beyond 20% game completion. Oh - and Sam loves to watch me riding the horse through the forests! I keep trying to convince Amy that watching the gameplay is at least as good as most of what’s on tv these days, but she’s not buying it, sadly.
I’m playing a sneaky-magic-thieving character, and it’s tons of fun to lurk about, trying to save the land - while making a nice income as well. Also fascinating about this game is the approach of offering downloadable ‘extras’ for the game. After a mistart with a lame piece of horse armor (yawn), I’ve been jazzed about their add-ons for mages (the Wizard’s Tower) and now, just released, the Thieves Den. Obviously for your sneaky types, this add-on offers a Captain Jack-style cave/ghost pirate ship hideaway, and allows you to hire a band of thieves, fences and other experts to support your Dark Brotherhood/Thieves Guild lifestyle.
It’s an interesting model where an already massive game with hundreds of individual missions can sell small add-ons like this for $2 a pop to extend the life and playability of a game just a few weeks after release. It’s likely the shape of things to come where big ‘point’ releases may come around, but the games themselves become more of a structure for future add-ons. It’s certainly all the rage in Korea where some cartoon-esque racing games have huge sales around car customizations, as well as for the burgeoning e-economy of Second Life. Micro-payments are in some areas already changing the nature of gaming. Let’s just hope companies don’t publish cripple-ware, hoping that users will be suckered into buying content that should have shipped with the title in the first place.
The game has gone so far as to spawn a fascinating podcast about the game, the Rough Guide to Cyrodill. Recorded by two amusing Brits, the ‘cast takes users through the nooks and crannies of the game. It was a helpful ‘fix’ last week when I was on a road trip and couldn’t get my daily dose. Sigh. The intervention for myself and poolagah can’t be far off….
Wow - I’ve been so busy the last few days I haven’t had time to dive into the gaming goodness of this year’s E3 event. Here are some of the more interesting tidbits:
“By opening the Xbox Live entertainment network to the entire universe of Windows and mobile gamers, we’re creating unparalleled gameplay opportunities that will drive incredible growth of the online community,” said Gates. “Our vision is to deliver consistent, compelling experiences that make it easy for consumers to jump in and play, from any device at any time. It’s a vision that only Microsoft can deliver.” - Bill Gates via Lost Remote.
Tags: Gaming, ps3 wii xbox360
A few weeks back we all heard that Microsoft had acquired Massive Inc., a company focused on the nacent in-game advertising market. Despite some rough starts, there’s clearly a great deal of promise to this area for marketers, reaching the valued 18-34 male demo as they find a new home away from broadcast television. The news from the weekend indicates that the first deployment of this tech for MSFT will be inside the XBox Live service.
“Advertisers are having a tough time connecting with the elusive 18- to 34-year-old male demographic because this group continues to spend less time watching TV and more time playing video games,” said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president of Global Sales and Marketing and chief media revenue officer at Microsoft. “Massive and Microsoft can help lead with our shared vision of delivering more targeted, measurable and effective opportunities for advertisers to reach today’s youth audience in a largely untapped market.” (From the press release)
Now, speaking as a consumer, I’m already paying something on the order of $50 a year for the priveledge of enabling the online features of all the $60 game titles I’ve purchased for the 360, and the thought that this experience is now going to be plastered with ads pimping that new soda I don’t give a %^#@ about is kind of annoying. Will we see a price drop in the sub fee? Will the Xbox community react positively to this ‘enhancement.’ I’m not holding my breath…but I do know that the makers of the new consoles on the horizon (Wii and the PS3) will watch closely.
Tags: advertising, Gaming
To complement our spiffy new HDTV, I managed to find an Xbox360 on eBay for not-too-high a premium. JoeBobATLThe Fedex guy came a day earlier than the tracking said it would (who knew that was even possible), and I was like a kid on the first night of Hannukkah as the delivery dude came up the front steps. In a word, the image this thing produces on the SXRD is stunning. I had picked up Project Gotham Racing, Madden 2006 and Kameo - and every one of them is just mind bogglingly beautiful. PGR is especially slick - driving the streets of NYC and seeing the skyline come hurtling toward you, driving past the casinos of Las Vegas by your headlights - all the while seeing true-to-life reflections and dirt on your windscreen. I’ve also partially hooked this up to our Dell PC running Media Center Edition 2005. I did have to update it to this year’s patch, but once I did, the two machines saw each other easily. Now I can get photos, video and music from my desktop on the Sony in the living room. Spiffy! Embedded here in this post is my XboxLive ‘GamerCard’ that shows my current reputation, score and ‘zone’, whatever that is. It will also show any games I’ve gone online with.
technorati tags: xbox360, hdtv, mce, gaming
Tags: Gaming
Woo doggy! While my local EBGames has no copies, and the one I ordered from Gamestop is backordered with no estimated delivery, I was seriously bumming earlier this week. Lo and behold, a friend here at work drops this copy into my hands - seems he didn’t need this copy for a while. The game is excellent - it took a bit of time to get used to driving with the tiny stick, and I do wish the screen were larger. But it’s like old home week revisiting good ol’ Liberty City and my favorite hangouts. Certainly is easier to play knowing the rough city layout like the back of my hand. The wife doesn’t appreciate the sound of mayhem coming from the PSP - but it’s gotta be better than in the living room! 2 thumbs up so far for this one…
Technorati Tags: psp, gaming, grand theft auto, liberty city stories
