When Modern Warfare was 3.5" tall

I came across some pictures that took me back.

I grew up in the early 80’s forging a friendship and stimulating an industry. The friendship and industry is video games. I didn’t just sit in front of the TV with some version of a controller in my hand. At that same time there was something else big for a young boy to play with. Good old GI Joe. I had to look and see all that I had.

I have to thank my parents for what I had as a child growing up. I had quite a few figures and vehicles. The VAMP (the green jeep), the Skystriker (the F14 Tomcat), the Skimobile with Snowjob, the Chameleon with Zartan (he had a face to disguise his own), the Killer WHALE (the hovercraft), the Skyhawk (a cross between a helicopter and a plane), the Farret (an ATV), the Snow Cat (a half track), the Conquest X-30 (the jet with the forward swept wings), the Develfish (a small single manned orange boat), the Tomahawk (a dual prop transport helicopter), the Sea Ray (a Cobra single manned submersible). I’m not going to name the figures, there were way too many.

With all of this stuff I spent a lot of time planning out battles either in my room or outside. Oh, and I did have my own designated area in the backyard for my battlefield.

Thinking about my childhood, I had a revelation. Infinity Ward has provided me with the chance to play out all of my GI Joe imagination battles. Modern Warfare has tied in two of the most beloved things for a boys’ childhood from the 80’s. If you think about it you could draw similarities to the cast of characters in the GI Joe cartoon to Soap, Ghost, Capitan Price, and General Shepherd. Even Makarov and Zakhaev would fit in well with Cobra.

I ended up shooting some of my GI Joes with my BB gun pretending that they were being taken out by enemy artillery. Ahh, the good ol days!

So, thank you much Infinity Ward for bringing back my childhood.

8-Bit Fused Bead Art - a set on Flickr

This passed through the Flickr roll this evening. The owner has a store on Etsy where there is a ton of Perler pixilated video game art. Some are even sold as earrings and coasters. Just about everything is under $10.

Link: 8-Bit Fused Bead Art - a set on Flickr

Store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/pixelatedcreations

National Gaming Day @ Your Library

I was not aware that there was a National Gaming Day @ Your Library until I saw some pictures from this site's Flickr feed at the top of the page that were posted by Cape May County Library. Apparently kids all over the country, from Kotzebue, AK to St. Thomas, VI, go to their public and school libraries and play video games, board games and even card games like Magic: The Gathering. The libraries even get to compete with one another in Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band and Super Smash Bros. Brawl competitions.

Special note: The closest library to me was in Goshen, VA. No Harrisonburg, Charlottesville or Staunton.

The goal of the program is to raise awareness about the uses of games in libraries and expose people to games they haven't played before. It looks like libraries are taken akin to these activities and including them with traditional media.

The website, ILoveLibraries.Org, details everything about it. To get your library involved, go to http://ngd.ala.org/.

Gamercribs.com - Retro Gamer (ME!)

New website, Gamercribs.com, found some of my pictures on Flickr a few weeks ago and sent me a little interview questionnaire. I enjoyed answering the questions and digging a little deeper in to my gaming subconscious.

Link: Gamercribs - Home - Gaming setup - retro gamer

Underground Gaming Tournament League

While I posted my finishing blog for Fallout 3 I noticed some pictures in the Flickr feed at the top of the site  of people playing games and painting. Turns out it was a recent tournament from the UGTL in L.A. having a Street Fighter IV tourney along with live artists painting SFIV characters. It's a really neat set of pictures and they even had this video.

These guys are doing competitions up right. And I imaging that some form of this and the competition from Penny-Arcade (The Omegathon) are going to be the future of tournaments. A super collision of cultures. It's awesome.

Most Important Feature of a Game

A story running over on i09 reports that gamers value social interaction and pricing over graphics and story. I feel like that's true to an extent. The proof in our circle is that all of us have an Xbox 360 in our living rooms (part 1) and we all have a Wii but we rarely ever play it (part 2). Is that not true between the three of us?

But based on a game alone, what do you value more between some of the most important game feature? Here's my run down:

• Graphics
• Sound
• Story
• Frame rate
• Load Times
• Replay Value
• Longevity
• Downloadable content
• Realism
• Voice acting

I'm sure I'm probably leaving some things out, but really, when you take away multiplayer/online support, that's about what your left with. A couple of things might strike you as odd; frame rate and load times are huge to me. Consoles today shouldn't have to suffer games that run under 60 frames per second and have load times (at all) with hard drives/storage in every console (and that's for levels, not starting the game up).

The odd thing about this study is that the researchers read game reviews to get their data. And looking at the top selling Xbox 360 games (Halo 3, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto IV), it seems that their research didn't included these story heavy games at all. All those games do have multiplayer, yes, but they also have the best stories. Coincidence? Maybe.

New Site Feature: Flickr Feed

I thought it would be a good idea to add some pictures to the site. Of course, we don't take any pictures of video game culture or events or press briefings or anything like that, but the world does.

So at the top of the site I posted a Flickr RSS feed that searches for the latest pictures on Flickr posted with the tag "video games". That's it. Simple.

I hope to see some interesting photos show up there and pray that nothing not work safe doesn't stay up there too long.

Pixel Equity: Community Gaming Initiative

Pixelequity.org is a new site dedicated to donating games to those who can't afford them. An honorable charity. But what spoke to me were the reasons that Pixel Equity came up with for the reasons everyone should be able to play games.

• Exposure to different cultures
• Learn to think scientifically
• Follow directions and read critically
• Develop social and communication skills

I whole heartedly agree with those points and look forward to look at their request list and possibly being able to donate games to them. Between this and Child's Play, I think these are two really nice charities for children created by gamers for gamers. I hope they add some more items to their list, especially older generation consoles and games, where a huge library of culture and gaming history resides. You can donate anything you want, but it would be nice to filter through some games that really meant something to the four points they state on their website instead of just buying NFLMBAdden 2kXX.

Real F1 Racing Gets Updates, Turbo!

I'm a fan of all things moto. Cars, trucks, bikes. I don't follow much professional racing, but when an article in Wired talked had a video about the updates to the rules of Formula 1 racing, I was happy to watch. And surprised.

Among all the body sculpting, weight changes, engine rules updates was an interesting addition to the cars: a regenerative braking system that can be used as on-demand boost! I was immediately reminded of F-Zero and Mario Kart. Each car gets a total of 6 seconds per lap of boost, and more than 80 horsepower, to be used at the drivers descretion.

Straight out of the video game handbook!

Gamer Ties

If I was a teacher and was forced to wear ties everyday, I would buy all of these and a few others.


(via Unpluggd)

Xbox 360 / Suzuki Concept Car

I've seen lots of tv shows showing how concept cars are made for audio companies, but I've never seen one based off of a video game console.

I'm impressed with the dual Xboxen, the monitor mounted in the engine bay for the front driver and passenger and the rear projection system mounted in the ceiling to project out to the rear trunk screen.

Video Game Music: Fan Renditions

Believe it or not, some video game music is just plain awesome. Most Japanese game music composers are pretty well known and loved. Koji Kondo of Mario/Zelda fame. Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame. Even Martin O'Donnell composed the Flintstones theme and then composed all the music for the Halo series. There are lots of composers. And lots of fans.

Of course there is a lot of usage of commercial usage of already produced music in games, like the game I'm playing now from EA, Burnout Paradise. There are about 20 tracks of licensed music in the game.

But what were talking about is music specifically composed for a game with as much of a thought process, if not more so, than in most movies.

Game music has become a subculture world-wide. Bands have been formed. People record themselves and post on YouTube. Most play the piano. A few guitar too. But recently there is a trend to recreate all the parts of a song by yourself and mix them together like this dude. Color me impressed.

Today's Gaming Trends

Here's a really interesting slide show about how gaming has changed up to today. There's a lot of neat information about how gamers are now contributors instead of just consumers, how online is changing the way we interact with games, and how games are influencing traditional business models (Burger King Xbox 360 games anyone?).

Video Gaming Trends

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing advertising)

2008 Video Game of My Year

Last year I declared Crackdown my game of the year.  This year, I'm naming Call of Duty 4 as my most enjoyed game of 2008.

I spent so many hours with that game that it would be hard to figure how many hours I put into it the single player and online modes. Sadly, the game does that for me. I believe I was 6-8 days range in the online alone. It was an almost nightly ritual for months on end and I was obsessed with the gameplay.

The Video Game Awards gave Grand Theft Auto 4 the game of the year. Call of Duty officially came out in late 2007, about the same time this year that Call of Duty: World at War released. I don't think it's fair to keep games out of awards based on their release date but by tracking users playing it (because every game system supports that now), but it's standard practice where industries award themselves.

Gamers, of course, didn't get to vote. Like always. It's a shame. The Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii all support that type of user feedback. We vote for things, enter contests and create content to share on consoles on almost a regular occurrence now. Why not let the people vote?

Game companies should do it right though. Nintendo should serve up a Game of the Year channel on the Wii so you can drop your Mii on any game that you've played in your library, not just the 5 nominees that Nintendo chooses. Microsoft should replace one of those stupid advertising tiles on their dashboard with the same thing. And Sony should put up some voting booths in that barren wasteland of Home.

I hate this generation!

(inserted by Justin, to lighten the mood in here!)

I remember being a kid in the early 80’s when the NES was at its peak. There was hundreds of game that came out every year. If you liked sports games you would buy Bases Loaded, Tecmo Bowl, Double Dribble, Ice Hockey, etc. If it was racing, action, role-play games you had plenty to choose from. You would talk you parents into buying it for you or renting it. So you would open the box on the way home and salivate over the instruction book. Most games gave you a instruction book with a storyline that would set up the action that you would face for the rest of that afternoon, and into the night till you went to sleep.

Fifteen percent of the games made you feel like it was well spent time when you were done with it. The majority left you thinking, “Well it wasn’t great, but I was having fun playing a video game. And that makes it worthwhile”. Then you’re left with roughly ten percent that were just dreadful. You would rather be stuck at home sick watching your moms’ soaps than play that junk. (And let’s face it we have all played hooky to stay home and play games. Hell, I still do it now!)

You didn’t critique these games. You either liked them and they went to the front of your game drawer, or you didn’t and they collected dust in they back. At least until trading games became popular. Then Nintendo Power came out and it would let you know what was slated to come out soon. They didn’t do reviews, (of course because it was an in house project) you would get tips and codes.

I hate people the think their professional video game reviewers.

Now everywhere you turn around everyone has written a review. Everyone nit picks a game and forgets why we play games to start with. Is it fun? No, people worry if the lighting was a little too dark, the shadows are bad, the AI was lazy, and god forbid, the game was short.

Let me give you some examples of where the fun factor is more imortant the HD'ability. Madden looks better than it ever has, plays great but, it is the NFL (No Fun League). There is no real sense of impact with tackles. No subtle celebrations. Where did the injuries go? Ace Combat 4 is a beautiful presentation. We don’t need the storyline. We need a fun dog fighting experience, not monotonous bombing runs and drawn out, looping dog fights. Far Cry might have the best environment in a FPS. But there are only so many times you can enjoy the same mission they give you. GTA4 is a great idea, but there is the repetitive thing again. The Forza series looks and feels great. How many laps do you want to take on that same track, woo hoo! Assasins Creed, great story but the game could have been half as long and it would have been a better experience. All of them looked pretty, but missed the fun factor throughout the game.

On the other hand CoD4 has a short single player story but the online multiplayer is great. They got it right with the audio/visual to make you feel the experience. GOW 1&2 has an awesome single player game, but the online is glitchy. Crackdown may not be the most beautiful game but the entire game is on point. Mercenaries 2 is fun, glitchy and a little ugly but fun.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Now that you have that in your skull here is my other issue.

I was playing a nice quiet game of Hardcore Team Deathmatch on CoD4 when I was rudely interrupted.

My phone rings and it’s one of my best friends. “Hey man, can you do me a favor? If your not to deep in a game. Can you pop in Mercenaries 2?” Now I stopped what I was doing for what I was doing, and for what? He wanted the viral achievement that I had so he could have 50 gamer points.

I hate Microsoft, I hate Sony. I hate Achievement Points and Multiplayer Challenges. It has made them money, because the dumb monkeys have been sucked in to this gimmick.

People play games just to get those achievements and do not return to enjoy the fun in it. For example my friends and I played Horde on GOW 2. We completed the 50th wave and had a blast doing so. But now I can’t anyone to do it again. Now that the achievement was accomplished they are done with that game.

You know where I think Cod4 got it right. The Achievements where all single player, and the Challenges for multiplayer are not attached to the achievements at all. The Multiplayer Challenges that open items in multiplayer are related to kills and headshots, not some outrageous happenstance situation. The happenstance situation were just extras for fun to see if you could it it. (they don't give you anything)

Other than trying to find the orbs in Crackdown I have never tried to complete any Achievements just for the sake of getting them all done. I just have fun, play the game, and get my Achievements along the way.

I’m not an Achievement Whore, just a Gamer!

TED: David Perry on Video Games

A TED presentation was sent to me today from 2006, where game design David Perry touches on the history of gaming and what lies ahead.

In particular, it contains a students documentary on how video games affected him.

It's worth the 20 minutes to watch it.

His closing thought: Games, on the surface, seem like simple entertainment, but to those who look a little deeper, the new paradigm of video games could open entirely new frontiers to creative minds that like to think big.

Gamer Gone Missing

So while I'm in the hospital, I just learned about this missing gamer.

The story is that the father of Ontario teenager Brandon Crisp's Xbox and game Call of Duty 4 because he was too involved in it and in return, Brandon fled his home. Among the suspected reasons were that he ran away with someone he met or possibly even a sexual predator and even the father's parenting has become suspect, the last two theories his mom sticks to.

Yesterday Microsoft donated $25,000 to the reward fund, bringing the total to $50,000. Microsoft is now even loosening privacy details of Brandon's XBLA account and Xbox 360 harddrive to help with the search, hoping to uncover messages or logs about who he had contact with before he disappeared.

Today, Canadian "reality" tv show star Terry Grant of Manhunter has also joined the search. Manhunt is a race-based chase show airing on an outdoor canadian channel where Terry gives the contestants a headstart with their map and compass and releases them out to the  and Terry hunts them down on horseback.

Currently, that is where the search stands.

With such little information, it's hard to place blame or pose a solution for this kind of awful ordeal. I never would have thought of running away, at least past our 14 acre property, when I was a kid. It's easy to place the blame on an outside source, knowing how people can easily band together online with no possible reprocussion from their advice, not even knowing the person on the other end.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, what happens to him when he's found (and sadly, if he's found) and what kind of effects this will have on gamers, local media, and more importantly, politics. Having such a rough time now being blamed for every youth incident you see on the news, video games aren't getting a better rep because of this, no matter how it turns out.

To Wait or Not to Wait: Another Midnight Release

Pre-orders were invented so that you could purchase a game outright and not have to worry this kind of scenario. But now, apparently, it's not enough to secure a copy, but to touch it at the exact moment of it's release. To wait in line with other people that pre-ordered. It's a cultural phenomenon that only fans of the product can understand. Japan actually has a sub-race of people that only know how to do this. I kid, but it's true. The only other people in America that do this are either watching a new Star Wars/Lord of the Rings film or are waiting for an iPhone. And maybe a concert. But mostly Apple products.

I've waited for one or two movies before. Star Wars: Episode 1 was my first "line" and I've done a few more since then. But when I got the phone call from Gamestop to come and wait in line for Grand Theft Auto's midnight release at 6p.m., I almost immediately felt the need to go home and do laundry or dishes or clean the litter box. I mean, come one, six hours?

The Halo 3 line was pretty boring last year. We all stood around (some people brought chairs) and we were all pretty bored. Some JMU students brought books to study before they wasted their life away for days with the game. Some brought their DS/PSP to game on. Then there was that woman trying to sell that awful Halo 3 Mt. Dew for four times the actual price. The only positive thing that happened in line was when Cold Stone came out and hooked a small group of us up with free fat ice cream.

I know though that if I don't show up there at 6pm, I could be waiting well after midnight to get into the store and walk out with the game. And with expectations across the country for GTA4 to be a bigger release than the highly anticipated Halo 3, we're talking a couple hundred people in town tonight all ready to rape digital hookers and jack virtual rides (if that's what they choose to do).

But my thoughts are leaning against waiting and going home and doing some work in the basement. And of course some Mario Kart and Call of Duty.

A Sign of the Times (Parents Gaming)

I know my parent's have had my Wii for a couple of months now and that's pretty impressive. I think the Wii hearkens back to days of the Atari 2600, when gaming was one-button simple.

But Brian's mom (not the Brian on here) told him that she has played through two Splinter Cell games and has just bought Metal Gear Solid.

Whether she likes it or not, she's a gamer.

Someone Feel My Forehead

I just told my wife that "we don't need to spend our tax refund on a PS3."

Next thing you know I'll hate chocolate, beer, motorcycles and computers. OH MY GOD COMPUTERS!!!