Tag Archives: Gaming

Official GTA Liberty City Stories Web Site Launches

Grand-Theft-Auto-Liberty-City-Stories-20050909060005548

Oh my my. Rockstar Games has launched a website dedicated to what looks to be the PSP killer appGrand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. The site has an amusing backstory for the pending Playstation Portable title, including a link to a fake Ammunation.net site. The site features emails to a reporter at the Liberty City daily rag, the ‘Liberty Tree’, all rendered in yellow-on-blue CC:Mail glory and give us some insight as we not-so-patiently wait for the release of the game on October 24th.

Link: Rockstar Games: Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories Official Web Site

Link: IGN.com preview with plenty of detail, plus the trailer

Link: Classic 1998-era web design for Paulie’s Revue Bar

Ads in games, ads not in games

Gamefly-In-Game

Video game advertising company Massive recently signed a deal with Vivendi to integrate ‘live’ advertisements within their titles. The first title was the strategy-shooter SWAT4. As one might expect, gamers took about two seconds to find a way to block the origin of the ads. Details here. Nothing a dedicated anti-marketing gamer wouldn’t have already done to block ads on his favorite gaming sites – disallowing ads.* in your hots.etc file is an old trick to block web ads – but it’s probably not going to be long before a patch is going around to enable this with a simple Doubleclick of the mouse (pardon that ad-related pun, please) to allow the less-technical gamers to avoid these in the future.

Gamers love to hack these titles (see ‘Hot Coffee’); if in-game ad technology is going to take off, it’s going to need to be smarter about how these features are implemented. And I have to guess that there may not be too many sponsors who would be happy to see that hostage’s blood spattered on their ad if the player is too slow and the terrorists get to her first. Or maybe that’s just me.

Link: Details of how the hack was found are here.

(Via MarketingVox.com)

Coke downloads for Wipeout Pure

Coca-Cola is creating custom content for the PSP game Wipeout Pure, available only to users in Japan as of now. The content will include new ships, courses, menu graphics etc. This is, AFAIK, the first time a sponsor has developed this type of ‘add-on’ functionality for a portable title like this. Could this be where the much-discussed advertising dollars start being spent to reach the refugees from traditional media who spend their time blowing stuff up sted watching the boob tube?

Link: Cokestyle.net (in Japanese).

(Via PSPvault.com)

SOCOM PSP Hits November

Socompsp Screen002-Thumb

Gamespot’s cobbled together quite a collection of interesting details about SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo for the PSP. The handheld version of the shooter, set to hit stores on Nov. 8, will feature WiFi multiplayer mode, data syncing with SOCOM 3 on the PS2 and an instant action mode which will drop you into a firefight for five to 10 minute bursts.

The game will include 14 single player missions, each set in different international locations.

SOCOM Enlists PSPs Nov. 8 [Gamespot]