OK, that’s a kick in the pants. Let’s see if it makes everyone pissed off about Mike Capps and Tim Langdell finally calm the hell down for a little bit.

I have not, as some people might well think, been slacking off.

It’s not just the clutch of internal excuses and traps that Jay Smooth calls the little hater. It’s not just that I have very little say to my dwindling local audience that I’ve largely turned my back on, most of whom are still friends of mine and who I can pester through other Internet media all I want.

Those are the obvious reasons. There are others not everyone knows about. Here’s one. Not promising I’ll make it to part 2.

Continue reading There is a reason…

Coming soon. Yeah, I want to see it, don’t you? Stephen Colbert’s in it! There’s also a Facebook page for it.

Board chair and all-around swell guy Bob Bates posted to one of the many hot-tempered threads on the IGDA forums that are either about the organization’s stance on employee labor standards or its lack of an executive director. There has also been a memo released on the subject, praising that the “Quality of Life Committee” has been made into a Special Interest Group, and in the thread, Bob outlines exactly what each member of the board is actually working on.

There has been much praise heaped on this very simple yet deft bit of communication, so I’m only too happy to give the same. Now if they can execute on the Web site revamp and boards that don’t suck, I’ll be amazed.

Edit: The board has a blog, too. Progress Happens.

Jan. 6: Troubled magazine publisher Ziff-Davis sells video game-news Web site 1up.com to Hearst Communications-owned UGO.com, in the process declaring venerable game (print) magazine EGM will cease publishing.

Jan. 9: Hearst declares the Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale. If they can’t sell it in 60 days, they might gut the print staff and go digital-only.

I’m just happy to have a job, over here.

GENTLEMEN.

BEHOLD.

It just keeps topping itself in terms of sheer fear and loathing.

Yeah. And you better not need any of that explained to you. Only on the IGDA forums, folks. FEAR AND LOATHING.

I’m really hoping that my friends at Escapist Magazine will see fit not to jump on this series for shamelessly ripping off Zero Punctuation’s style and look. It makes adequate deference to Yahtzee and while the production values are much poorer by comparison (and not just because ZP’s look and feel is 90 percent stick figures and 5 percent text, and these guys copied it all), the message is nut-crushingly clear, there is no good reason to shop at GameStop ever again.

So I’m sold. Go watch. If you can put up with the mumbling, you’ll learn something and be amused for the experience. (If you actually like watching them as much as I did, you can download the original .mpg files via links here.) And God willing I’ll never spend money at a GameStop again.

I wonder if Austin has a locally-owned store that would sell me a new Rock Band 2 kit when it comes out next month.

EDIT: WhistleBlowerZero’s Youtube account has been suspended! The videos are on GameTrailers, thankfully.

At about 10:30 in the latest Australian Gamer podcast, guest ranter Yahtzee makes this utterance to criticize games like Spore and LittleBigPlanet that rely on player-created content to work at all.

Which is pretty much what I’ve been telling people a whole lot lately, except one step further: “If people could entertain themselves, there would be no entertainment industry because no one would pay for anyone else’s creations.”

But yeah, that’s the thing now, making the digital equivalent of two rocks, a stick and some dirt, neglecting the historical truth that not everyone tried to make a real game out of those things, and those who tried rarely came up with anything good that anyone else wanted to play.

I suspect this will bear out over the next few years or so, and I will gloat. A lot.

Ghostfire has updated their site with all kinds of stuff about Helix, the game I tested last week in Austin. Simon Says-style dancing with a robot, DDR with your hands, Rez retooled, that’s all probably fair to say. It’s got a bunch of techno music from artists you’ve probably never heard of, too.