Girls, are you having problems finding a successful boyfriend who works in tech? Maybe you should be meaner. That's how graphic designer Chinh Nguyen plays it with her man, Nvidia VP Neil Trevett. Describing one picture of Trevett, she writes, "My English Piggy (yes, he's really pink!)" Before you take offense on his behalf, note how self-deprecating Chinh is.
One of our delightful sponsors, Rockstar Games, has painted murals around New York City to celebrate (promote) the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, a quiet, peaceful video game about making friends. Want a free copy? All you have to do is a take a photo of yourself in front of one of these murals, then post it here in a comment. The first 20 to do so win a free copy of the game and our undying respect. The locations are:
My favorite kind of game is role-playing games that turn repetitive real-life work into repetitive game work with fewer rewards. I'm not impressed by PMOG, the massively multiplayer RPG played by just surfing the web. It's cute, but it's too distracting for anyone doing Serious Business on the Internet. I want to intentionally waste a few hours. The real game to play is Forumwarz, which launched early this month. It's stupid, insulting, and really damn clever. [UPDATE: I've started playing and the game is requiring me to have cybersex with a predator. This game rocks.]
A job listing sent recently to an email list: "A vegetarian-owned and managed emerging sports games startup in San Francisco is looking to hire vegetarian software development interns for summer 2008." An odd qualification, but apparently legal. A recent court case in California found that employers can discriminate against vegetarians. That would imply that a startup could equally choose not to hire omnivorous sorts. One would think that the pool of candidates who simultaneously favor sports videogames and eschew meat products would be a bit shallow. The full job listing:
Curious: It's in Electronics Arts CEO John Riccitiello's best interest to get the company's board replaced, or the company sold. If only he were working at Yahoo, Microsoft would have a much easier time of things. EA has penned a "Key Employee Continuity Plan," a nice little safety net for its executives. If Riccitiello is fired without cause after a change in corporate control, he would receive $2.3 million. And 18 months of health coverage. God knows insurance can be expensive.
Rupert Murdoch has clearly issued a diktat: The Wall Street Journal must now cater to the Slashdot crowd. And Andy Jordan has simperingly scampered to obey. On the front of WSJ.com's Technology section: "Andy Jordan hangs out at a LAN party, where caffeine-fueled videogamers battle till the wee hours of the morning." Jordan follows the pasty gamers to the local deli, hears from the lone Mac user who unplugs a comrade's computer after getting killed in-game, and finds out who consumes seemingly 90 percent of all energy drinks. This is the kind of high-level reporting we expect from the paper with which Murdoch hopes to beat the New York Times. Here's the video:
I'm not saying gaming news should become as mature a genre of journalism as politics, business, and world news. It's still a new field and will always be as subjective as covering music or film, with the accompanying celebrity culture. But now that women outnumber men in online gaming, party games like Rock Band appeal to both sexes, and casual games (popular among women and adults) are the fastest-growing segment of the gaming industry, gaming journalism should be an all-inclusive genre. Why does it still pander to a core audience of straight young males with outdated misogynistic material, to the boredom and frustration of all of us who can get laid outside of World of Warcraft?
There are murmurs of surprise that videogame retailer GameStop has made its way onto the S&P 500 index. More than a decade ago, it was bankrupt. Now it's eaten not just its competitors' lunch, but its entire competition, consuming Babbage's, Software Etc, NeoStar and Electronics Boutique. It's one of those great adversity-toppling stories business writers love.
The Entertainment Software Association, a videogame lobbying group, was searching for a new PR agency earlier this year. After the ESA declined Hill & Knowlton's advances, the firm released a poll stating that 60 percent of respondents agree the government should regulate videogames — exactly the kind of thing the ESA fights. Hill & Knowlton says it's all just a coincidence. Just like in high school, when you coincidentally write nasty things in a slam book after some other girl steals your boyfriend.
From time to time, Defamer videographer Molly McAleer seeks out the temporary camaraderie of the friendly folks patrolling the red carpet of various Hollywood events, looking to make a connection with someone other than the abusive, controlling TiVo mascot with whom she's recently formed an unhealthy relationship. On Sunday night, Molly turned up at the ArcLight premiere of Postal, the latest addition to director Uwe Boll's video-game-derived cinematic canon, where she and the legendarily confrontational Boll seemed to hit it off.
Simon Nelson, the BBC's new-media guru, is delivering a keynote at next week's Edinburgh Interactive Games Festival. His speech, as described in the official literature, is why "the [BBC] had something to learn from games and how games will figure in the Beeb's new media folio in the future." The Internet interpreted this as a pending announcement of a BBC videogame strategy — the rumor strengthened by BBC's current portfolio of downloadable games based on its TV shows. And it's not like it would be that strange. Even the New York Times has started using newsgames to illustrate everything from the oil crisis to the E. coli outbreak. But the BBC is now denying everything. More's the pity.
CONFONZ — When it comes to making software, it's Q/A that really sucks. The job is totally thankless. As if this weren't bad enough, there is a distinctly finite amount of actual programmers in the games industry, and they all know each other. And, more importantly, they all know the ones that stink. Those stinky programmers still get jobs, though, and it looks like Activision managed to hand off the engine development duties for its Spider-Man 3 movie game to some numbskulls that didn't understand the RAM constraints of the various consoles. After the jump, the gory details, as told to the ConFonz over web-covered beverages.
George Lucas's entertainment company has filed opposition to social media site Digg's attempt to trademark its name. The dispute is based on Lucasart's 1995 video game, "The Dig." A helpful Digg commenter points out that potential consumer confusion could be alleviated by simply noting that one of these things is a 12-year-old game, and the other is a "website full of megalomaniacs."
Most of these fictional tie-in games for the Nintendo DS range from lame to silly — usually just a book cover or movie poster slapped in for the briefest of chuckles, if that. However, as usual, Jason Kottke takes/kicks it to/up the next level/notch, with his "The New Yorker Draw Your Own Cover Electronic Entertainment With Noncompulsory Co perative Mode." It's the diaeresis that seals it.
NICK DOUGLAS — As fantastic as the baton-controlled Nintendo Wii may be (I found it's most fun after White Russians and a tequila shot), it seems like the only game anyone plays is Wii Sports. So what other games would I like to see? Click the thumbs to see the gallery. Props for the "let's Photoshop the covers" idea to Mike Monteiro.
What's the fun of enjoying your second life in Second Life without a little ultraviolence? Click the above to enlarge. We're not as conversant with SL's moral conventions as your average nerd, but it surprises even our jaded souls that you can indulge in rape fantasies (options: "Rape victim," "Get raped," or "Hold victim") for a trifling 220 Linden dollar things. Nice that the purchase takes place in an evocative back alley, with the actual rape set in some kind of red cobblestone gimp-dungeon.
THR explores the path that brought Desperate Housewives: The Game from its humble beginnings as a brainstorm by a Buena Vista interactive exec who thumbed through the company's annual investors' report and asked, "Now which members of the Disney family would be fun to blow away in a first-person shooter?" to a fully realized, immersive reality set on Wisteria Lane. The title's biggest cheerleader is Scott Sanford Tobis, a sometimes writer for the TV series hired to script the game, and who was immediately struck by the project's liberating lack of constraints. (Read: There was no Marc Cherry hovering over his laptop, snapping, "But Gabrielle would never say that!" before insisting he replace the exchange with a hilarious nun-punching sequence.) What's more, Tobis sees games as a viable prospect for TV writers who, not unlike the trend of feature directors working in TV, may want to expand their employment opportunities by slumming diversifying in another medium:
