Tuesday, January 27, 2009

So... Conflicted...

This blog, if you scroll halfway down, has a comic. A comic about Jesus Christ, at the crucifixion. And I just can't decide whether the blasphemy is so serious as to offend me and stop me appreciating the sheer quantity of AWESOME that goes with it...

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Monday, January 19, 2009

World Domination Toys

Irunno, Dr. Steel looks an aaaaawful lot like a certain, number-named, angry ANGRY furry mascot (did I mention that he's angry?). Just look at any videos where he's shaved off his hair and you'll see the resemblance.

However, World Domination Toys looks like a winner - the vaguely Steampunk-ish feel, the concept - I dig it. If I had money, I would totally buy from there :)

Friday, January 16, 2009

Yahtzee in TV Pilot

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, famous for his searing reviews and wit in his "Zero Punctuation" videos for the Escapist e-magazine, has produced a pilot episode of a TV show with fellow Internet personalities Matt and Yug, named Game Damage.

I watched it (and consumed about a third of my allotted bandwidth quota) and thought that, while it appears to be entertaining and witty, it had two grand

flaws:

  1. It seemed very unpolished. A lot of um'ing and ah'ing, but it's forgivable for a sequel and something that looks like it was written a week before and skimmed over by the presenters, then done off-the-cuff on the day of filming.
  2. Yahtzee comes off as scaring and/or intimidating the other two. This immediately strips him of the geek fandom, most of whom got over bullies after the millionth time they were wedgied in high-school.

All in all, I liked it, and would watch it as a series.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

*My* Kinda Roshambo

This is the way Roshambo should be played, people:

Rock Paper Scissors made complicate

Image courtesy of my friend "Fluffy", original URL.

Of course, if that's gives you a headache, consider the simpler (though still sufficiently complicated to get most peoples' heads spinning) alternative: Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard. I came across it watching an episode of the amazing "The Big Bang Theory". Highly recommended.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Dawn of War II on DRM

From here:

Strategy Informer: Now this is a standard question that we always ask, but what do you have lined up in terms of expansion packs and DLC?

Jonny Ebbert: We have a lot of seriously exciting plans for DLC. We really want to give our players a top-notch online experience and we want to reward our players for playing our game. We want to give out steady doses of free downloadable content because we believe in rewarding people who buy the game and the reason we don’t like DRM solutions is because they punish the innocent and they have to jump through all these hoops. We don’t want to do that so we’re going with the approach that Valve pioneered to just reward the people who actually bought the game with cool stuff. Free downloadable, regularly accessible stuff that enhances the game and then that’s an incentive for the people who didn’t buy the game to buy it. So we’ve got a really bold, robust strategy for that and we’re going to be revealing more details in about a month, but I think players are going to like it. And everybody wins you know? The people who paid for the game don’t have to go through any fuss and they’re constantly getting new stuff, which keeps the game fresh.

<3

No, really.

I mean, I don't need a reason to love Relic more than the original Dawn of War. Dawn of War II has me frothing in places that people prefer me not to describe, and then they do this.

This is, in a nutshell, the opposite to what EA Games (the mega-game publisher who purchases up gaming companies like a fat kid sucks up chocolate). EA is a fan of "punish the universe at large because pirates exist" - and I'd recommend reading Shamus' blog on the topic.

Relic publishes their stuff with THQ - and boyohboy am I amped that they've Got It Right.

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Friday, January 9, 2009

Malstrom on Game Design, Casual vs. Hardcore and so on.

This is a link to any interested, I'll refrain from commentary at this stage:

link

Quick blurb: Malstrom analyses the trend of game developers focusing on the "casual gaming boom", and shows how Nintendo is Doing It Right by establishing and developing their user base rather than focusing on a specific level of gamer.