Sunday, June 15, 2008

Librarian: I’m So NOT Wii Fit Girl

11:00AM Owen Good | Those naughty librarian eyeglasses might say say yes-yes, but a New York City woman says, no-no, they’re not hers. You see, there’s Lauren Bernat, aka Wii Fit Girl, who hulaed her way to 2 million YouTube views about three weeks ago, and then vowed it was not a viral marketing scheme. And then there’s Lauren Bernat, mild-mannered librarian, who’s been deluged with Facebook requests from cretinous pic collectors admirers who’d like to better know Wii Fit Girl. Non-Wii Fit Lauren wants everyone to know she’s trying to get a job, and the attention isn’t good for that. Librarian Lauren says she does resemble Wii Fit Girl Lauren, enough that an employer who Googles her might have second thoughts about her temperament for a serious job. “If someone has my business card, and doesn’t know what I look like, and they Google me, it looks like it’s me, and that’s my whole career down the tubes”, she said. More »

Halo Wars Addict Meets Supplier

10:00AM Owen Good | Halo Wars Addict got an interview with Graham Somers, Ensemble Studios’ community manager. Naturally, this outreach is in his job description, and a blog titled “Halo Wars Addict” will probably deliver a positive piece. But it’s still worth a look if you’re interested in the real-time strategy version of the Halo universe, due out sometime this year, hopefully, or early next year. Somers speaks at length about the pitfalls of RTS design, the responsibility the dev team feels in working with Bungie’s existing Halo universe, and other things that make up a great RTS game experience. But he doesn’t drop much in the way of confirmable news tidbits, just: • Halo Wars and Ensemble Studios will have a presence at E3 this year. (We’ll keep our eyes peeled). • The game will ship “when it’s ready”, so, nothing specific on the date. • No promises, but developers are aware of Machinima enthusiasm and may ship Halo Wars with tools to assist in its creation. Halo Wars Addict Exclusive Interview: Ensemble Studios More »

Retro Sabotage’s 20th Edition: Missile Command

8:00AM Owen Good | Our disturbed friends at Retro Sabotage are all suspender-popping about their 20th sabotage since the site launched shortly before New Year’s Eve. Remember, these are flash games that play normally (or close to it) before something goes horribly, comically wrong and beyond your control. The latest is the “Missile Command Docudrama” although its message is, surprisingly, kind of serious. Tof from Retro Sabotage explained to me in an e-mail: “We wanted an “anti-sabotage” to celebrate the 20th release, and it’s kind of a mirror to Mockumentary (though we got mails of people who somehow believed in that one)”. In the past I know we’ve linked to some of their other clever redos of classic arcade games. The Xevious Autopsy in particular is worth a look, and I think it’s new since RetroSabotage last got a mention here. Missile Command Docudrama [Retro Sabotage] More »

A History of Copy Protection

7:30AM Maggie Greene | There’s a nice look back on various forms of copy protection and games. If you make it, they will pirate it – and it’s an entertaining look back at some of the ways companies have tried to outsmart the piraters, sometimes somewhat successfully and sometimes not at all. But is there ever going to be an end in sight?: More »

Kojima on Kojima, in German

7:00AM Owen Good | Reader maxax caught an interview with Hideo Kojima in Spiegel Online, the website for German-language Der Speigel, one of Europe’s leading mainstream news magazines. Maxax translated it to English on his blog and so we offer up to you here, too. Kojima explains his brand of antiwar sentiment, which is more or less circumspect about the reasons and results of war rather than outright pacifism. He also pines for a future where smaller, art-house productions are comparatively viable, among a world of titles that are increasingly developed for blockbuster effect, like Grand Theft Auto IV and MGS4. More »

‘Under the Mask’: Gaming Culture, an Essay

6:30AM Maggie Greene | Well, it reads like an essay, but this piece by David Hayward is actually a transcript of a talk given at the “Under The Mask, Perspectives on the Gamer” event a few days ago (slides included!). It’s a brilliant and somewhat lengthy piece on culture-with-a-small-c, as it relates to gaming (as, in Hayward’s appraisal, just about everyone is a gamer these days by some definition or another). Games, despite coming off as a niche subculture at times, are worming their way into all aspects of society: More »

Your Picture Here — in Street Fighter IV

6:00AM Owen Good | If you have a hi-res shot of yourself and can think up a reason that amuses Capcom, you can get yourself in Street Fighter IV as a background spectator. You have to do it fast though. Capcom extended this offer on Friday and it runs through Wednesday. More »

XBLA’s Delisting Policy? Developers’ Perspective

5:30AM Maggie Greene | GamerBytes, the new blog in the Game Developer/Gamasutra/GameSetWatch line up, chatted with some developers to get their opinions on the XBLA delisting issue. The little three parter is a nice look at a couple of view points. Unsurprisingly, opinions are mixed — some are staunchly opposed, while some (like the cofounder of Merscom, Buku Sudoku developer) think it’s a fabulous idea: More »

Battery Packs Cause Wii Wheel Alignment Issues?

5:00AM Owen Good | Apparently, using anything other than disposable “crap-arsed gas station batteries” turns a Wii Wheel driving experience into that of a 1978 Datsun heading down to the shore. And no, that’s not a desirable mod. Not for Don at videolamer, anyway. He swears that using the battery packs from the React Recharge Dock for the Wiimote reduces the ‘Mote’s weight and makes it drive off centre when placed in the Wii Wheel. Quoth Don: Was the weight difference, a very noticeable one, messing with the ‘mote’s center-point? Yes, in fact. Replacing the rechargeable pack with a standard set of crap-assed gas station batteries made our karts dead centre again. Now I’ve got to figure out how to add weight to my charger packs. That or play Kart at an odd angle. So, fair warning, considering that the React dock runs about $AU 53.22, if you Kart like hell and are considering eco-friendly ways to keep your ‘Mote juiced. Does anyone else have the same kind of issue, or just this guy? Peripheral Disdain [Videolamer, thanks taidan] More »

25 Best Games for the Classroom

4:30AM Maggie Greene | One of the benefits of teaching on a collegiate level is that “fun” can frequently go out the window (as one of my professors routinely told a class full of students regarding the silent films the class watched, “I don’t care if you like the film, that’s not the point”.); still, most of us don’t want to bore the pants off students and try reasonably hard to make things interesting. It seems “fun” of the educational variety is even more important at the elementary and secondary levels, where I vaguely recall masses of activities designed to get us “engaged” and “interested”. More »