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Prospectus

So my first real draft of my prospectus was due last friday. I still haven’t turned it in. I’ve got something but I still don’t feel comfortable turning it in.

I think the biggest problem is that the only time we read a prospectus is when we are writing one. So I don’t really know what a prospectus actually looks like so I don’t really know if I’m doing it correctly.

grrrr….. I guess I’ll hack around on it a bit more and email it off Sunday before I leave town.

must resist urge to start playing new game…

I’m no Rock Band All-star but I am a little slow…

A week and a half or so ago there was a Rock Band contest held on campus. I had played Guitar Hero 2 a little but and I was in a band back in high school so even though I had never played Rock Band I figured I would go and check it out. Well, it turns out that I ended up on the drums and even though I had messed around on our drummers drum set playing drums in Rock Band ain’t the same as playing a real drum set (for one the drum pads that take the place of the cymbals are at the same level as the ones that are supposed to be drums which means that it makes it hard if not downright too hard to bother with to hit the “snare” with your left hand and the “high hat” with your right so you end up doing the snare with your right hand and the high hat with your left). Needless to say we did not win.

This week I had an interview for a teaching fellowship so I went to get a new suit. While I was at it I figured I would go to Radio Shack to pick up some stuff I needed. One of the things I was going to get at the shack was watch batteries. You see, I had got this little key chain sound maker thing out of a gumball-style vending machine and I pressed the button on it and it didn’t make any noise. So I’ve been meaning to get batteries for this thing since I came back from Tokyo so I go to Radio Shack and tell the salesperson I need batteries for it and she looks at it and pulls out this little plastic tab sticking out of the back and it works.

So I’ve had this noise maker thing for something like two and a half months and all I had to do was pull the tab out so the batteries would make contact…

Can you digg it?

This is mainly for anyone who reads this stuff through rss, but I thought it would be useful to give a heads up. Lately I’ve been making an effort to submit and digg any interesting stories I come across that are gaming related. If you go to the main page you can see them on the right but if you really care you can put my digg rss feed into your newsreader http://digg.com/rss/jccalhoun/index2.xml
I’m trying not to digg stories like “OMG teh trailer for GTA4 is out!!!!” but rather stories that are a bit deeper and have something more to them than simply posting the latest press release and when I run across what I think it a particularly good blog post I try to submit it to digg so it will show up in that fee as well. …and that feed is probably the only place anyone will see it since I think the most any of my stories has gotten is like 6 diggs or something…
So if you care, subscribe to the rss. If you don’t then subscribe anyway!

Interesting week for reviewers

So there’s quite the controversy over the firing of a reviewer at gamespot.com with allegations that he was fired for giving a bad review to a game that was an advertiser for the site. This comes a couple weeks after pne of the Penny Arcade guys says that game reviewing is essentially broken. Overall, I think I kind of agree. Think about it, game reviewers are almost always under pressure to be the first one to review something so they have to rush through the game. Movie reviewers don’t have to watch a movie on fast forward nor do music critics. But most movies are 90 minutes and most albums are even shorter than that. But even short games are 10 hours and the Half-life episodes are something like 4-6 hours. So it really isn’t fair to review a game in the same way you review a film.

Game reviews need to stop being so focused on getting out first, and certainly need to stop worrying about pissing off the advertisers. Moreoever, reviews need to change their content. Most reviews are the same format: gameplay, graphics, multiplayer. Sure those are interesting but isn’t there more to it than that?

On a somewhat related note is the fact that at the heart of this is the competition to be the first and the pressure is double for gaming magazines. They have lag time between writing in publication of months compared to a websites potential to have mere minutes between writing and publishing. They can’t compete with websites for exclusives forever. They need to stop trying. They need to offer things that more websites don’t do. There’s the saying quality over quantity but I think in this case the phrase should be quality over quickness. Do something different and maybe your reviews won’t stink and maybe you won’t have to rush through a game and maybe just maybe you won’t be so dependent on preview access to games so you won’t have to worry about pissing off gaming companies.

Monday night Starz shows Hollywood Goes Gaming

I don’t have Starz so hopefully someone will make this “available” online. Monday night Starz is going to show Hollywood Goes Gaming. However, based on the description I wouldn’t get my hopes up for a knowledgeable or accurate discussion:

Hollywood makes movies based on video games – “300”, Lara Croft – and hit video games are often created from movies (“The Godfather”, “Scarface”). Meet the stars and players from both industries in this Starz Originals production. 2007, TV14, USA

We all remember that great game that inspired the movie 300, right? It wasn’t as if 300 was based on a comic book and not a game or anything…

Still, I’m sure it will be worth a look for those that have Starz.

What’s in (the lack of) a name?

So I’m doing what most videogame studies people do, reading Edge Magazine and I notice something. This is something that most people have probably noticed years ago but I’m a little slow sometimes. So what did I notice?

The articles in Edge Magazine are apparently created from the hive mind of the magazine’s staff because they don’t list the writer’s name on any of the articles. When I bought this issue of Edge I also bought Games™ Magazine which slavishly follows Edge’s style and layout and they don’t give their writers credit either. Well that isn’t entirely true, because Edge does qive their columnists credit.

So columnists are more important than the person who writes the cover story? Is this common practice in the UK or in certain types of periodicals? I can only assume that they are attempting to give the magazine a uniform style and don’t want to single out anyone. But what does it say about game journalism that the most respected videogame magazine doesn’t tell you who is writing what?

What’s in (the formating of) a name?

I’ve been reading some stuff lately and I’ve begun to wonder about the formatting of titles. In at least MLA citations the titles of books are italicized, and short stories are in quotation marks. There are also conventions for musical albums and songs and poems. So what exactly is the rational for games. Should it be Half-Life? I would say so. However, when we get to non-digital games it gets a bit trickier at least in my mind. What about Monopoly? probably. What about Chutes and Ladders? It is in the public domain, isn’t it? Chess certainly doesn’t seem right. Nor does baseball. But what about Madden 2008? There seems to be some sort of rule or guideline but I’m not sure what it is.
Interestingly, at least whoever last edited the Wikipedia enty for Snakes and Ladders makes some sort of distinction when it states

The most widely known edition of Chutes and Ladders in the USA is Chutes and Ladders…

Of course it is wikipedia so it could just be some random formatting problem. If intentional, however, it seems to be making a distinction between a general version of the game and a maker’s specific version.
Is there a hard and fast rule or are we out there on our own?