Tag Archives: News

News

Speaking Truth to Power – Fighting for a new skate park.

The Wilsonville Skate Park, courtasy of skateoregon.com

The Wilsonville Skate Park, courtasy of skateoregon.com

Just another little update… in my home town of Wilsonville, last week, there was a trio of letters written to our local paper fighting the construction of a new skate park in Wilsonville.  The arguments were rather old, worn out, and some of them had holes in them:

  • “Skateboarding is a fad” – It’s about 40 years old
  • “Our existing park is just fine” – It’s two quarter-pipes with a single rail and contains copious amounts of wood, which needs to be replaced every few years
  • “Skate parks attract gang members, drug dealers, and other riff-raff” – Our current skate park is in a somewhat secluded portion of Memorial Park at the bottom of a hill, so it doesn’t get patrolled by police very often, so drug dealers and gang members would feel more safe there. The new site is by city hall and the police station, which would make it very visible to police and the general public. Unless, by riff-raff, I mean teenagers, in which case I can’t help you.
  • “A swimming pool would be a better investment.”  – Well, we’ve got the Living Enrichment Center – no, they closed because the head of the center was embezzling money and defrauding her congregation. There’s Bally’s – you need a membership and I think it’s an outdoor pool anyway. Well, crap, you got me there.

So, with these arguements in mind, I wrote an letter for the Wilsonville Spokesman, and my mother, who was similarly annoyed by the letters in the Oregonian, wrote one of her own as well. Mom’s didn’t get published. Mine did.

Now, my letter won’t be visible next week Wednesday on the site, because they’ll have that week’s letters, so I’m putting the full text below the cut.

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News, Video games

The “Video” in Video Games Journalism

As you probably already figured out from my last blog post, I’ve been thinking about the end of 1up and EGM as we know it. With most of the GameVideos staff getting the chop, I’ve started to think about the role of video in Video Games Journalism and how to handle it.

Video Games are a visual medium. Duh.  Consequently, when you’re talking about video games, it really helps to see the game. Before high-speed Internet, the standard way of going about this was through putting screen shots on your web pages, or in the magazine articles about the game. Later, as Video Games became moderately mainstream, and we got Video Game related TV shows, like Gamespot TV (later Extended Play) and Electric Playground, we finally got to see the video games in motion before we bought them – and consequently we could get a good look at how good or bad the graphics were, and how good or bad the controls were. As an example, from seeing gameplay footage of Enter The Matrix on Extended Play before the game was released, I was somewhat able to tell, in advance, that the graphics weren’t very good, and that the control wasn’t very good. Surprise, surprise, when the reviews came out, the game was panned for, among other things, poor graphics and poor controls.

As broadband proliferated, using video to talk about games became more feasible, and higher quality video files became more feasible as well. This lead to the Video Review, where the reviewer got to stand in front of a camera, with footage of the game edited into the review (and possibly also playing behind him) and talk about the game. This turned game reviewers into recognizable personalities, the same way that television made Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert recognizable to people outside of Chicago.

Once you’ve got personalities, you’ve now got a way to support a TV show, first with just streaming programming on the web pages for sites like Gamespot.com, and later to (once Podcasts started catching on) video podcasts, from On The Spot on Gamespot.com, to the 1Up Show on 1up.com.

This brings us to now. Gamespot has On The Spot. They still have video reviews, but their reviewers don’t appear in the actual reviews (possibly as a way to, well, make it easier to get rid of reviewers if they need to – or if publishers want them too). GameTrailers makes it’s living out of video, but with the exception of Geoff Keigley (sp), Amanda McKay, and David Kayser, they don’t have any first party personalities. There are 3rd party personalities, like those through ScrewAttack (Stuttering Craig and the Angry Video Game Nerd), but that’s about it. The fate of video on the 1up network is in doubt. Giant Bomb is, really, the last bastion of the classic Gamespot video review, with the reviewer on camera.

So, what I want to know is this – how is the video in video games journalism going to pan out in the future. Will video reviews go through a voice-over person or through similar steps to make the people reviewing the games more faceless, or will the concept of the visible video game journalist move to smaller sites, as major sites like 1up and Gamespot.com become homes for the faceless, voiceless, disposable reviewer?

I’m putting an open call for comment by people in the games press, particularly those who used to work for 1up.com. Am I going in the right direction? Am I totally off base? Or is it a mixture of both?

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News, Video games

Why Media Providers Don’t Understand Game Reviewers

For those of you who don’t read Kotaku, here’s the link to the article. In short, Hearst Publications Group, which owns UGO, has bought the 1up Network from Ziff Davis. They then canceled EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly, their only and flagship gaming magazine) canceled just about all of their podcasts, and then fired most of the staff, including James Mielke (I can’t believe I spelled that right), Shane Bettenhausen, Skip Pfister, Ryan O’Donnell, among 30 other staffers and the GameVideos team, in a purge that I might call, and will call, Stalin-esque.

Aside from the tragedy of Vampire William Randolph Hearst draining the life blood out of the 1up network, leaving only a lifeless husk, hopefully there will be a lesson to be learned from this, but a costly one. You see, people in the business of reviewing film and reviewing video games like to talk about how different reviewing games and reviewing movies are, but they actually have a great deal in common, in certain respects.

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News

Wired story about Carder plays like crime drama

One of my favorite kind of books to read are on the history of computing (and science in general), in particular ones which tell the story about not only the technology that’s developed, but the people who developed it, and how their personalities interacted. That’s why while the PBS documentaries  “The Machine That Changed The World” and “The Shape of the World” are interesting, I like “Connections”, “Revolution OS”, and “Triumph of the Nerds” more, because in addition to playing off the technological aspects, the personal aspects come up as well, how personalities interact, how they play off each other, and how the meeting of two people can have as much impact on the invention of a piece of technology as a the invention of a previous piece of technology was.

I mention all that because I got tipped off to this article at Wired Magazine. Basically, it’s almost the cybercrime equivalent of GoodFellas. The difference being, Henry Hill realized that being the mob was more hazardous than it’s worth, particularly since there were no possiblities for advancement for him – being Irish on his dad’s side instead of Italian – so he told the law what he knew. On the other hand, this story is, a bit, the polar opposite – the guy the story’s about, Max Butler, basically becomes the man you have to go through (through his site) in order to buy-and-sell stolen card numbers, as well as the equipment needed to take advantage of those numbers – which I’d certainly count as advancement. Not to mention, unlike Hill, Butler didn’t talk to the Feds, tell them everything they needed to know and go in the Witness Protection Program – he was caught and sent to prison for life – the first Cracker (I’m not going to use the word Hacker for a crook like thim) to get that punishment.

Okay, yeah, so he can get 30 years instead of life if he takes a plea bargain, but anyway, the story is fantastic. It plays out like a crime novel (in this case a true crime novel). I doubt it would work for a movie, maybe a documentary – it would be extremely difficult to dramatize the hacking process – and a lot of the interactions here are between people who have never met each other face to face, only online. Still, it’s an amazing read.

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News

News Analysis – Nielsen Media Research’s DMCA Request to Wikipedia

If you read Slashdot.org, you may have caught this news story. In short, Nielsen Media Research sent a DMCA takedown order to Wikipedia, asking them to takedown a series of catagory boxes and templates for organizing radio and TV stations by city, stating that it infringed on their copyright on the practice of organizing television and radio stations by market. Consequently, the Wikipedia foundation was forced to delete all the relevant templates, leaving the userbase scrambling to find a way to organize media articles without getting sued.

To be frank, the actions of Neilsen Media Research are a crock of bullshit. The copyright in question is no better, and in fact is almost worse then some of the bogus submarine patents that you read about weekly, and the copyright in question essentially gives the Nielsen essentially a monopoly on the classification and organization of broadcast stations by geography.

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Uncategorized

Review on another site

Just doing a quick post to direct you all to a review I have up on Bureau42.com for Full Metal Panic. The review can be found here. I’m going to be having 2 more reviews going up for Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, and Full Metal Panic: the Second Raid. Hopefully, I’ll be able to turn this into a steady gig for them.

What does this mean for the blog? Well, I fully intend to keep updating the blog – Bureau42 is dedicated to science fiction and fantasy material, which means that a lot of the material I’ve been putting up right now (like wrestling recaps) would not fit there. Likewise, if I review any material that they’ve already reviewed, I’ll post those reviews here instead.

That said, Bureau42.com is a good site, and definitely worth your following, and I look forward to seeing comments from you there as well.

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News, Video games

Analysis – ESA rolls critical failure on “Diplomacy” Check, attacks ECA, GamePolitics

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Video Games Industry has found itself facing a lot of political pressure from Washington DC, as well as the politicians of various state legislatures. The Hot Coffee controversy started a wave of game legislation against the game industry, with many states passing legislature to impede the sale of video games that contained violent content (the levels of violence being legislated against varied from state-to-state).

Rising up against this sea of foes, was the Entertainment Software Association, then lead by Doug Lowenstein. Thanks to the dues paid by member corporations, the ESA was able to file suit in multiple state courts to block the aforementioned laws, and in many cases get them declared unconstitutional. Further, as an outgrowth of the ESA’s sibling organization, the Entertainment Merchant’s Association (or EMA came the Entertainment Consumer’s organization, or ECA, lead by Hal Halpin, which sought to bring a voice for those who play video games and other electronic media, so that someone is fighting for them. Among one of the ECA’s first actions was to join with GamePolitics.com, a blog that tracked attacks against gaming in the public sector, from politicians, and from the news media.

The reason I’m bring up this melodramatic alphabet soup is that there is dissension in the ranks – specifically between the ECA, and the ESA – and the ECA didn’t start it.

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News, Video games

Breaking News – Itagaki resigns from Tecmo

According to a news article at 1up.com, Tomonobu Itagaki is resigning from Tecmo and filing suit with his old company after the president of the company allegedly said he would not pay Itagaki a promised completion bonus for the game.

As someone who is a fan of the Dead or Alive games, as well as the Ninja Gaiden games, regret this turn of events a great deal. I hope that Itagaki’s lawsuit will result favorably for him. He is a talented game designer, and look forward to playing his future games. Also, I hope we don’t get a boycott in this case, at least not unless the lawsuit doesn’t go Itagaki’s way. If Itagaki wins, he’ll likely get paid his promised bonuses, as well as any promised royalties, and those will be decreased if there is a boycott. However, Itagaki loses, then would be the perfect time for gamers to vote with their wallets and take their money somewhere else.

Alternatively, rather then refusing to buy Tecmo games, this would be the perfect time, to show Tecmo just how much we enjoy Itagaki’s work. Rather then refusing to buy Tecmo games, instead, we only buy Itagaki’s games. All of them. And only the Tecmo games made by Itagaki. Have Itagaki make oodles of money for Tecmo showing two things.

  1. Itagaki is an asset that can make a lot of money for Tecmo, and thus they want him to work for them, and so they should reconcile.
  2. Itagaki is an asset that can make a lot of money for other companies, and so now that he’s on the market, they’ll want to hire him, so he gets a new job sooner.

Just my two bits.

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