Disney, Star Wars, and future games.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/10/31/what-star-wars-game-do-you-want-to-see-next.aspx



Post #20
The fate of Star Wars now rests in the white gloves of Disney. Obviously they have big plans to reboot the film franchise, but what about the gaming market? For years, Lucasfilms has cranked out all kinds of Star Wars games to satisfy their never dwindling fan base, but with Disney now at the helm, will they ease back or move forward. This article hints that they may look into the mobile, social market and potentially away from console games, but is this realistically the case? Regardless, there does seem to be a window of possibility here, and I'd be surprised if Disney didn't capitalize on all phases of this monopoly. So the question is, what would you want from another Star Wars video game? Would Disney be able to deliver? Or would they let LucasFilms handle it like they always have?

Drinking Video Games?

http://www.askmen.com/top_10/videogame/top-10-drinking-video-games_10.html



Post #19
As most all of us know, college kids have a knack for turning anything into a drinking game. It's only natural then that they would alter the rules of classic video games to encourage competitive drinking. My main experience with this is with Mario Kart 64, which we dubbed Beerio Kart for obvious reasons. Objective: Must chug an entire beer before the race is over, whoever finishes in first with an empty can wins. Pretty simple, only rule is you can drink while driving, in fact you cant even be touching your controller while you drink. This adds a fun element to the game as most people inevitably end up drinking while their kart recovers from whatever deadly element thrown their way. Now my experience has always been nothing but fun, but you have to imagine some people have taken games like this too far. The competition in video games is already fierce, add alcohol to the mix and you got a game nobody wants to lose. Good or bad for video games?

Match made in Heaven

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/1/3439972/halo-4-partners-with-mountain-dew-and-doritos-for-snack-fueled-double



Post #18
Now this just seemed inevitable. How do we feed our fans and give them energy to keep playing our game without actually having them set down the controller? BING BING BING. Doritos and Mountain Dew. This is a brilliant marketing strategy that couldn't target a more specific demographic. Kids are all over this! All I have to do is drink Mountain Dew and eat Doritos and I can receive special privileges in Halo 4! Sold!

Not too many products out there suit their audience better than these do, except perhaps late night male enhancement commercials on SportsCenter, they could pump the brakes a bit.

What's with games adapted from movies?

http://kotaku.com/5928269/the-great-terrible-dark-knight-rises-game



Post #17
This article is interesting because it addresses something I feel is an ongoing travesty to video games. How can a game be so bad when it's based on such an awesome movie? Especially one with as much potential for action as The Dark Knight Rises  has? Okay, maybe ET was a bad idea to begin with, but Christopher Nolan's Batman? It sounds like a no brainer!  The easy answer to why this is not a great game is the limited amount of cash they chose to invest in it, and the platform which they designed it for. Of course maybe they simply knew this game couldn't compete with the likes of Batman Arkam City, and would automatically be written off as a ill designed game considering the reputation movie adapted video games have gained over the years. But I think that might be giving them the benefit of the doubt.

In reality, I doubt the producers cared a great deal how the game play turned out. They were banking on the franchises popularity to cast a wide enough net to reel in die-hard fans, and looks like they were right. Timing of the game's release was more important than getting it right, as they had to serve it while its hot.

Its a bit of shame that movies seldom take their product seriously in the gaming market. They are routinely rushed, flawed, and made just to satisfy the fans. My question is, do you think this will ever change?

A Game That "Kills With Kindness"

So as I am reading Jane McGonigal's book, my opinions of her research are slowly changing. At first, I hated her argument that playing games more can actually help individuals become better people and thus solve the world's problems. While she has good points, I am still extremely skeptical about this. She mentions a game she created with notorious gamer/writer Ian Bogost called "Cruel 2 B Kind". The idea of the game is based on Assassins, where instead of an item or action, the assassin uses a kind phrase or random act of kindness to kill their unsuspecting opponent. The weapons consist of the following:

A hearty welcome
A thank-you
Compliment, smile, wink

The idea is to find something nice to say to the other person and kill them with kindness. I think this is a cool idea but I think I fall into her category of skeptics who don't see much possibility in the continued practice of positive gaming. This sort of game would become old in my mind but that assumes that everyone is coming from the general feeling of cynicism that is so prevalent in our society. I goes I won't know until I experience it but so far I'm impressed at the research and impact she's making with her games. 

My Halo 3 Montage, and why I'll never make another

So I'm going to set up a comparison; I attached my Halo 3 Montage and the one that a lot of big-name players contributed to (I even managed to find one with the same song).  That montage kicks the living shit out of mine.  Now, if you were appalled by the time invested in Machinima, the amount of investment in Halo Montages is far more, at least in terms of density.  It is fueled by an entire community of people on youtube, and these editors will spend months on this stuff.  I'm sure a lot of the SAC majors know  how difficult that is, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  The montage that is not mine, Carnage & Chaos, actually had funding.  Real funding.  All for a measly 21,000 views on the most popular Halo youtube channel.  And there are thousands of these montages.  The account that uploaded theirs puts up new montages on a daily basis, and mine barely made the cut for his secondary youtube account; I dropped a good 24 hours into making me and my house-mates montage.

I wish I would have gotten a chance to write an essay about this kind of stuff.  There are so many subcultures even within an individual video game.  I've had friends who were members of clans in the original Call of Duty up until just recently, as well as one that still participates in a NASCAR 2002 online community.  The internet allows so many lasting connections even when a game is outdated, and I love that.  The love of a video game is something that people can bond over.

Side note: If you don't understand Halo, just watch the first minute or so of each video and look at the difference in editing.  I lose by a lot.

http://youtu.be/GMBuuTzBN7c
http://youtu.be/KRvfiwZsYMU

18+ Content Get a Scheduled Buy Time in Europe

As recent as last week it was announced in Europe that gamers in European countries wanting to buy 18+ rated games for their Wii U’s will be restricted to doing so after a certain hour in the night. The factors pertaining to this is that even though the various countries across Europe have different age restrictions to the purchasing of video games, because the homebase for Nintendo Europe is in Germany the eShop is complying with the German standard of regulations of youth protection. German law prohibits the sale of 18+ rated games before 10:00pm and after 4:00am.