“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
Latest Feature: Impulse Buyer
Can Stardock break into the marketplace, and will it help reduce piracy?
COLUMNS
The best stuff written about video games from the week.
“Game|Life the Video 21: Shigeru Miyamoto” at Game|Life
This is worth watching whether or not you were disappointed with Nintendo’s presence at E3. As should be expected by now, Miyamoto doesn’t reveal anything new (I still say mentioning Pikmin 3 at that round table was not something Nintendo meant to do), but it’s interesting to see how Wii MotionPlus and Wii Music tie into his philosophy about games.
“Opinion: When Should Games Say Goodbye?” at GameSetWatch
This doesn’t just discuss when games end actually, but their pacing in general. Before reading this, I’d never really thought about how with movies and books and albums, the consumer knows when the end is coming, but with a game, unless they’d read about it beforehand, they have no idea. A game could be Halo-short or Final Fantasy-long. This is something I hadn’t realized, until now, that Portal makes a point of. As you’re playing, it constantly reminds you how many rooms are left, but the final area is about as long as the rest of the game combined.
“Head to Head: Can E3 Survive?” at G4
Tal Blevins of IGN blathers on like someone you’d overhear at GameStop, and Stephen Totilo of MTV quietly and respectfully kicks his ass. Yes.
“The Benefits of In-Game Ads” at Edge
Here, big-wigs from two of the biggest players in the ever-expanding video game advertising world let it all out. I was actually surprised by some of what they said. Not that they’re super-pumped about how much money they’re making and will continue to make, but Frank Sagnier of Double Fusion even talks about ads in regards to game design when he says they can add to realism if “served contextually and sympathetically.” I’m not sure I agree, but I like his attitude.
“The State of the Bomb? Uh… The Giant of the Union Address? Nah…” at Giant Bomb
Giant Bomb, run by former GameSpot editors Ryan Davis and Jeff Gerstmann, has finally launched (or “landed,” as they called it), and in this article Jeff discusses the site’s present and future. I still don’t think any of them are great writers, but I support their movement in getting away from GameSpot and CNET. And it looks like they’re going to be very successful.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.
Morrowind really helped pull itself head and shoulders above the crowd by developing a realistically complicated world in such an unfamiliar setting that its players can’t help but explore every nook and cranny, finding new reasons to love it every time they play.
“Gaming’s 20 Greatest Challenges” at Edge
Colin Campbell doing what he does best. I can’t imagine coming up with this list, not to mention writing as smartly and concisely about them all. The one problem here is that he doesn’t always offer a solution to these problems, but it’s still important either way.
“THE ACTION BUTTON DOT NET MANIFESTO: A LIST OF THE TWENTY-FIVE BEST GAMES OF ALL-TIME” at Action Button
They’ve been teasing it for months, but finally here it is. Twenty-five full reviews. It’s a lot, so they’re releasing them three at a time twice a week. The three up now are all good examples of why Tim Rogers is important to the topic of this column.