Well the invites continue to roll in. Over the past few days I got an invite to Gamecock’s EIEIO. This is a sort of pseudo side show for E3 that promises a lot of innovative and independant games. I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of college humor and cock jokes as well. Hell, the email already promised to have Gamecock Suckers available. Whatever that is…sign me up!

Next up was an invite to meet with the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. I definitley think I’m going to jump on this one as it could be a great oppurtunity to pick someone’s brain that has a little perspective on the industry. In fact, these topics were listed as possible highlights to discuss:

* The 2008 D.I.C.E. Summit
* The Interactive Achievement Awards - why gamemakers’ opinions matter
* Into The Pixel - an art collection from some of the most popular video games developed by industry giants
* The state of next-generation consoles and games for those systems
* The evolving world of MMOs
* The changing dynamics of casual gaming
* The new face of game players

I’d really like to hear him sound off on the Wii and how a whole new dynamic of gamer has been brought into our industry.

Finally I bought some gear for the show. After pinging Tom Kim from The Gamasutra Podcast for Digital Recorder suggestions, and getting a response back that put the fear of god into me about being under prepared I decided to go for an Olympus DS-30. I’m gonna try to record just about every interview I do and get it up ASAP as a podcast and whatnot.

I also upgraded my laptop to Windows Vista and order 2Gig of RAM. This should help with video editing while on the road.

This beginning to be an expensive trip!!

The term gamer has become cool in the last couple of years. So much in fact that sites like MTV and NewsWeek have dedicated columns and writers used to bring gaming information to the general masses.

Stephen Totilo of MTV and N’Gai Croal of NewsWeek have decided to do an email exchange of sorts discussing the recent Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta. I’m not putting these guys down as gamers, they are both gamers in every sense of the word. But the entire transcription is somewhat of a bitch fest on how they aren’t exactly good at multiplayer games, and how they want Bungie, or whoever, to make them more easily accessible. A valid complaint I suppose. In fact, the tone of the articles really change with the final part of the series.

Of course the graphics issue comes up. N’Gai even references the Reuters Article I was quoted in. Yes…I’m gloating.

Anyway, before we go any further, do yourself a favor and read both articles. I’ll update this article when part 3 is finally released.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

OK…done? A bit long winded eh? That’s ok. There are a lot of good points there, and the articles themselves are a very fresh take on games journalism. So lets dissect shall we?

Read the rest of this entry »

Times are changing, trends are shifting, and fanboys are crying. For Microsoft, things are starting to take a turn for the worst. With recent announcements like the XBox 360 Elite with a larger hard drive, a product consumers have been begging for for quite some time, one would think all would be well in the land of Redmond. But Microsoft shot themselves in the proverbial corporate foot with this. Pricing the system at $479.99, much higher than anyone expected; especially considering the lack of HD-DVD or built in wireless, the internet simply let out a collective meh over the whole thing. On top of that, the hard drive itself costs an astounding $179.99. That’s well over the magic number of .50 per/GB for this 120GB drive. In fact, the backlash from this announcement alone was so bad, that Microsoft needed to defend its pricing of the peripheral.

And that was just the start of the trend for Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »

So I’ve started a new site that builds greatly on the screenshot work I did over at Evil Avatar. I’m officially launching it tonight.

www.thegamersgallery.com

 The press release is as follows…

Read the rest of this entry »

This is pretty cool. It’s a rainbow that forms in the upper atmosphere due to ice crystals alignment with the sun.

Photo in the News: Rare “Rainbow” Spotted Over Idaho

I’ve started the Gaming Media Alliance in an effort to help stop things like this.

I hope to have it off and running by the end of the month with many members from the mainstream press, Gaming press, developers, publishers and other community members.

I think I’ve permanently moved my “blog” over to www.bapenguin.com

I may come back here from time to time, and I’ll keep this up just for old times sake…

Lots of gaming news and such over at my new blog. I may just keep it updated more frequently. :)

Even though Evil Avatar the website is still down, the EvAv podcast will still be recording LIVE tonight from 9PM-12 AM Central.   Be sure to listen Live at http://www.kumm.org.

Also, be sure to join us in the chat room during the show!

It may be till saturday night till Ev Av is back online. I’ll be sure to keep you updated. Needless to say, our hosting company is a bunch of monkeys.

It’s been quite some time again. Some days I do get the urge to put some actual text into this so called blog. I wonder if anyone actually sees this thing. I guess I just don’t quite get the point of pouring out your thoughts onto some random site for the world to see.

It’s still fun to have. :)