I spend at least a bit of time each day perusing sites such as Kotaku. Today on there I saw this post listing out the drinks EA came out for the EA Games Spring Break 08. Other than what I write on here (not much recently, I know), I spent a lot of time in the Scofflaw's Den, an online speakeasy that my friend Marshall and I started primarily to talk about cocktails.
(Just a word of warning: this one does kind of wander a bit as I ramble on in my caffeine-addled haze. That's why it's a blog post and not an editorial. But I am very interested in comments on this, and since it's so long, I'm going to put the "more" in early.)
No, I'm not asking if they're sapient - though some have given me cause for concern - but rather sometimes I wonder, when they're drawing/painting/whatever-ing something for publication, if they actually think about the ramifications of what they're drawing, or just saying, "hey, this looks cool."
If you remember, I had a less than satisfactory experience at a GameStop up here in the northern Virginia area back during the Halo 3 midnight release.
I complained about it here and put in a complaint via GameStop's website. On the last page of that complaint, it ended up redirecting me to a contest of some sort, and I had a feeling that no one ever saw my complaint.
That was true. However, their director of customer service saw my complaint when I went to unsubscribe from the GameStop newsletter, and he took the time to contact me.
Yep - they're broken thanks to numerical values in them!
If you read our site, you probably realize we agree with them. In fact, that's part of the background behind GamersInfo - a numerical review does not actually TELL you anything.
Ha! Took 'em long enough to realize it. Wonder if they've seen our site...
I've ranted about previews before. In short, one of the things that the discerning reader should remember about any preview is that, in most cases, a site or magazine only gets a preview on the whim of the developer and/or their PR company.
Thus, write a bad preview - giving the game bad press before it's even released to stink on its own - and you're not going to see more previews.
And also thus I was quite amused when reading Games For Windows magazine recently.
Lured over to Time magazine online by a story talking about mental health for Mets fans (I'm not a Mets fan, but I find the offer high-larry-ess) I saw another story entitled "A Surge in Cop Killings".
Another coincidence: While reading a gaming magazine this weekend, I read an interview with David Grossman, who has worked on games such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max. There was a line in there about how he has the same name as an anti-video game crusader known as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.
I hadn't heard of him (or, if I had, I'd forgotten about him, probably thanks to Jack Thompson overload). Then I read that article.
My eagerness for next week has me thinking back to a couple of weeks ago.
Next week is, of course, the release of Halo 3 on September 25. A couple of weeks ago was when I set out to buy myself a copy of Medal of Honor: Airborne on its release date.
Only...it wasn't really a release date.
And that, to me, is a perfect symbol of where the video game industry is lagging behind more established entertainment industries such as movies on DVD.
