I picked up the game for the 360 the other day so my girlfriend and I could play through "Angels of the Silences" from Counting Crows, but there were several other tracks that caught my attention. For instance, I secretly enjoy Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Goin Down," despite the fact that everyone else I know despises it. Fair enough. I start playing - alone - only to discover that some of the more colorful lyrics have been cut. For example:

Original Lyric: "I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a line in a song"
Band Hero Lyric: "I'm just a notch...but you're just a line in a song"

No bed post reference. Got it. Later on in the song I encountered this:

Original Lyric: "Oh don't mind me I'm watching you two from the closet, wishing to be the friction in your jeans"
Band Hero Lyric: "Oh don't mind me I'm watching you two from the closet, wishing to be the friction"

Jeans are also bad.

It isn't just that song. I encountered several more edits, including this one my girlfriend pointed out from OK Go' s "A Million Ways."

Original Lyric: "one last eighty proof, slouchin' in the corner booth"
Band Hero Lyric: "slouchin' in the corner booth"

That song also removes a line about "another couple klonapin," which given the previous edits is understandable. Perhaps this is why the game wasn't called Band Heroine.

The point here is, when Activision says the game is family-friendly, they mean family-friendly. This is the price you pay for putting popular contemporary bands in a game and then aim for an E for Everyone rating. The silliest thing of all, is these are songs that everyone has heard on the radio in their original form, so the edits are simply a disappointment for fans of all ages.

Performing the songs is still enjoyable, mind you. Especially when you imagine singing the missing lyrics loudly in the face of the game producer who thought editing our favorite tunes was a good idea.

But the outgoing head of the International Game Developer's Association, Jason Della Rocca, has some tough love for the folks he represented.

Della Rocca, who helped plan this conference's rant session and others before it, said he wasn't feeling "particularly vengeful" when he assembled this screed. So he reworked it into a passive-aggressive, backhand apology to the ingrates he'd tried to lead.

Here are some excerpts from the rant which he posted on his blog this week.

Sorry for not having the leadership skills to beat the barriers of participation inequality. Less than 1% of the IGDA membership are truly active in driving the org forward. Sorry for not doing a better job building up a strong pipeline of community leaders and volunteers. Sorry for not overcoming your general apathy and laziness.

Sorry for not doing a better job of roping in all the snipers from the sidelines. Turns out you are all pretty damn good at bitching and complaining and being critical. But then you don't actually do anything about it and you don't get involved. Sorry for not bringing critics under the tent and getting them to work at improving things.

Sorry for not getting you to be more serious about the profession of game development. You are no longer a bunch of hacks. This is a real art and science. We need to be way more deliberate and control the path the profession takes as it evolves into the future.

He wraps it up with: "Oh well, f* you, it's not my job anymore!"

Anyone who's tried to lead a professional group while carrying on one's own career in it that profession knows how difficult and thankless the gig can be. But the shape-it-up tone seems appropriate. Don't descend to others' low expectations of what you do, in other words. And if he raises his voice to you, International Game Developer's Association, it's only because he wants you to be the very best International Game Developer's Association you can be.

An Apology [Jason Della Rocca's Reality Panic, via GamePolitics]

Consumerist talked about this in the past week. GameStop, as well as many retailers in the same market, offer direct deposit and these "Maestro" cards, which are inconvenient to use and which deduct fees if you use it more than once in a month.

According to a GameStop employee who contacted Consumerist, the drawbacks are legion. Checking one's balance can only be done over the phone. Literature that comes with the card encourages using it for everyday purchases, but is vague on what kind of transaction fee that incurs (from 25 cents to a dollar). ATMs universally consider the card out of network and pile on their own fees. You can't get cash back on top of a purchase like you can with a debit card. And the only way to get money out of the card and into your account, without doing an ATM withdrawal (remember, ATMs don't dispense coins or usually anything less than a $20 bill) is to do so at the bank level, which often incurs its own set of fees.

GameStop's justification for this is that many of its employees are teenagers and do not have bank accounts. That's a cop-out. Legal age to work in most states is 15, and while I don't have stats in front of me, I can scarcely imagine that the majority of kids so responsible as to be working a part-time job wouldn't open bank accounts to deposit their funds.

There is some dispute as to whether managers at the store level encourage employees to take the cards over direct deposit; the company line seems to clearly encourage direct deposit.

But either way, it's total bullshit that a business of GameStop's size doesn't lay out the cash necessary to run a proper payroll operation to pay employees with a paper check if it's needed, not some ripoff card that charges fees for doing absolutely nothing. I'm sure some white paper or business study out there applauded the beancounter who thought up this anti-worker "best practice," which seems to have been adopted by many large-scale retailers because of what it shaves off the overhead.

This is just another way business in America reminds its workers that they don't create or provide anything of value. They just cost money. Fuck this team spirit, team member garbage you hear in your interview or new hire orientation. And forget larger causes like health care or retirement savings, when business will chisel and cut corners on even the basic dignities of employment - like how you are paid. Until that costs too much. Then you're fired. That's the country we've built.

GameStop Pays Its Employees In Hidden Fee "Cash Cards" [Consumerist]

But if you’re a serious gamer? Christmas is AWFUL. There are too many quality games on offer over too short a timeframe, meaning titles that may otherwise have been given a serious look are lost amidst the Gears of Wars and the World At Wars of the world.

At least, that’s the current state of affairs. But as an economic crisis looms once the holiday spending season draws to a close, could it be coming to an end?

Consider the holiday “failures” for 2008. And by “failure”, I mean a game released by a major publisher, and that enjoyed the backing of a major publisher’s marketing campaign, that failed to live up to critical and/or commercial expectations. Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour undersold. Nearly everything EA put out – but especially Dead Space, Need for Speed and Mirror’s Edge – tanked. Sony’s big holiday titles, LittleBigPlanet and Resistance 2, have also been disappointing, albeit for different reasons (nobody is buying LBP, while Resistance 2 was just plain old disappointing).

Those aren’t the normal, run-of-the-mill, 7/10 games that are normally swept away by the Christmas tide. That’s the combined holiday lineup of Electronic Arts and Sony Computer Entertainment.

You can bet alarm bells are ringing at SCE, just like they’re ringing at EA. Thing is, at a time where people are tightening their belts, what did they expect?

When people are concerned about money, they’re not going to buy 4-6 games over a three-month period. They’re going to buy 1-2. And faced with a situation like that, why buy Resistance 2 when you can buy a Call of Duty game? Why buy Rock Band 2 when Rock Band 1 was doing just fine?

It boils down to priorities. A finite amount of money over a finite period of time.

As you read this, EA executives are looking at the Mirror’s Edge sales figures right now and wondering whether launching a bold new first-person IP the week after Gears of War 2 was such a good idea.

Now consider this: when did Grand Theft Auto IV, the biggest game of the year, launch? It launched in April. Practically had the month to itself. When did Metal Gear Solid 4, the PS3’s most important game for the year hit stores? June. Again, it had the month to itself.

It’s a simple idea. You launch a hyped game into an empty release schedule and you’re guaranteed bonus sales, because you’re not just attracting the FANS, you’re attracting those who are simply mildly interested, and just have nothing else to play that month.

Rockstar and Konami knew this. And Capcom – who are about to launch two of the biggest games in years in Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5 – know it too. Both of those games are to be released in February/March 2009. February! March! February isn’t Christmas, it’s just February. But you can bet that both games will fly off the shelf, because aside from looking mighty promising, who the fuck else is releasing AAA titles in February?

Exactly. Nobody.

In these times of layoffs and downwardly-revised profit forecasts, publishers can’t afford to take risks. A bombed big-budget game can mean more than the death of a franchise; it can mean the death of a publisher.

So what’s the easiest way to eliminate said risk? It’s not in cutting back on innovation. Poor sales of Need for Speed and Pro Evolution Soccer this year have shown even the most bankable of franchises will test the punters’ patience if you keep on releasing the same crap every year.

No, the easiest way to eliminate risk, and increase sales, and decrease our holiday gamer’s fatigue, is to stop crowding the final third of the year with your games, and start planning for a more even-handed release schedule.

Speaking to CVG, a Nintendo UK spokesperson has said the news is "two years late", citing the use of white, black and grey logos on Nintendo products and publications in recent years.

Well, no shit! We're not blind. We know there have been grey logos on Nintendo stuff for a few years now. Bit hard to miss them. The point was that Nintendo were now specifically telling people not to use the "old" red logo.

In other words, we were interested in the death of the red logo, not the inception of the others. And, on a purely symbolic, reading-too-much-into-it level, everything that entailed.

For years, no, decades, Nintendo were red. Sega were blue. Seems simple, seems shallow, seems stupid, but that's the way it was. Kids grew up divided along those lines, that growing up made an impression, and people ended up identifying large international companies with a colour scheme.

Heck, it's the same today. The Xbox brand is green.

In the grand scheme of things, changing that colour isn't important. It's not going to affect game sales, it's not going to affect hardware sales, it's not going to result in angry fan petitions being dropped in a bag of flaming dog crap at Cammie Dunaway's house.

But it's still enough to make people a little misty-eyed for a part of their video game upbringing, small as it may be, that is now no more.

So rather than blithely dismissing this as "oh, old news", Nintendo, know we couldn't give a shit about your new colour scheme. Or how long you've had it. Just give us a minute to mourn the old one.

When we created the Wii, we identified areas that would appeal to everyone in the household... One was sports, another was fitness, and one was music.

Wii Music has been an answer to my long life as a struggling musician... The one problem I've never been able to resolve is that while I wish I was good enough to perform for people, no matter how much I practiced I never felt my performance was good enough.

Kids are learning more about the fundamentals of music then they realize... When it comes time to learn to read music and play a real instrument, Wii Music might make them more interested in taking on the challenge and sticking with it long-term.

That's interesting, but we think we read that interview at E3 and 1,034 times after that. (Hey, he's a walking press release!) It's not that these answers are simply stock answers, but rather, softball answers from softball questions. Granted, the average Wii Music consumer probably does not read every Miyamoto interview. The average Wii Music consumer may not even know who Shigeru Miyamoto is — so these innocuous blank replies from Miyamoto might be Wii Music marketing strategy. (Note: The game failed to crack the US top ten in its first 11 days on sale.)

Too few have challenged him on his claim that Wii Music is teaching the fundamentals of music or addressing confidence issues. If kids want to learn music, they should start with a kazoo or rhythm sticks or, hell, a piano. People want to perform, but can't play an instrument. So the answer is swinging a Wii Remote? Being in one's living room swinging a consumer electronics product does not overcome the inability to play music. Being in one's living room, practicing a musical instrument does. Learning musical instruments is hard. Consumers, and Miyamoto, it seems prefer shortcuts and instant gratification. Good thing Wii Music offers just that.

This could all just be us missing something entirely. (Yes, blame us.) Then again, it very well could be the symptom of something larger. Remember when Miyamoto said that Wii Music's development was relatively easy and didn't challenge him?

Videogame guru tunes into interactive music [Reuters] [Pic]

I think the biggest proof point in the death of consoles in my thesis is the Wii. The most successful, most difficult to acquire console in this generation is at least a generation old in hardware. The advances are in software and peripherals. Why do you need a box for that? If the real expansion is occurring because of what Nintendo has done, why do we even need a console? The technology could be adapted to run on your average set top box, at least in the next generation of set top boxes.

Welch does concede that console are more streamlined and easier to use than, say, PCs. His crystal ball gazing is more along the lines of Google-type cloud that doesn't even use hardware at all. Agree? Disagree?

Q&A with PlayFirst’s John Welch [VentureBeat via EDGE] [Pic]

Take the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Those 29 giant firework footprints that made their way to the Bird's Nest National Stadium from Tiananmen Square were actually computer graphics. Apparently, the Beijing Organizing Committee was worried it wouldn't be possible to capture the fireworks over Beijing. According to The Oregonian reporter Jon Canzano:

I was in Tienanmen Square on Friday evening, reporting and writing a column on the tens of thousands of jubilant Chinese citizens who gravitated there to celebrate. Those people saw two tiny flarelike blasts pop in the sky, followed by a lot of nothing, and they were probably baffled by the widespread reports of the lit-up sky, exploding footprints and brilliant fireworks. And today, I'm thinking those people are relieved to learn they're not losing their marbles.

...You don't mislead the public. You don't Photoshop the goods, or use a computer generation, in an attempt to create events that aren't there, especially when you're presenting an event to the public as if it's a true happening.

It took something like a year to create that CG fireworks sequence. The ceremony's visual effect team head, Gao Xiaolong, said: "Most of the audience thought it was filmed live — so that was mission accomplished."

This isn't the first instance of a government doing this. Heck, Iran recently PhotoShopped missile test pics to make them look more impressive. And no doubt, these two countries aren't the only two using CG and Photoshop to make their countries look good. This is something gamers have been dealing with for a while now, but here, the stakes are higher than a US$70 game, much higher. Frighteningly, so.

Joe Q. Public, look at everything with a raised eyebrow and discernment, because nothing that looks that nice looks that nice. Not even Olympic fireworks in the Beijing night sky.

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is [The Oregonian]
Giant footprint fireworks in Beijing Olympics opening ceremony 'faked' [Mail Online]

Putting aside the fact Yahoo are a few weeks late on the last time this story did the rounds, and seem to be running the story solely to take delight in linking a gaming console with human rights abuses, the fact the original Toward Freedom article repeatedly points the finger at Sony - and in particular the PlayStation 2 - is more than a little, well, strange.

To give you some background, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Central Africa, is sitting on a reserve of a metallic ore known as coltan. From coltan, we are able to extract tantalum, which is used in all kinds of modern consumer electronics products, from PCs to mobile phones to DVD players to, yes, games consoles. Specifically, it's used to make resistors and capacitors. The DRC's coltan supplies constitute around 1% of the world's total, with the bulk coming from Brazil, Canada and Australia.

During the late 90s and early 00s, as war engulfed most of Central Africa, people also fought over the DRC's coltan supply. Just as they fought over diamonds, over people, over ideals, over religion and over land. It was during this fighting that, aside from the theft of coltan by the DRC's neighbouring states, some terrible atrocities took place in the DRC, including the enslavement of local children, who were sent into dangerous mines to extract coltan, which was then sold to overseas buyers to help further fuel the conflict.

These human rights violations took place. There's no doubt about this, nor is there any doubt that it was Western and Asian demand for consumer electronics that helped sustain the battles over the DRC's coltan. This isn't some political think-piece, however. We're just curious as to why someone would call this a "PlayStation War", when really, PlayStations had very little to do with it.

See, it's believed that the war was at its worst when the price of tantalum spiked between 1998 and 2001, due to "increased demand". Yes, that timeline coincides with the roll-out of the PS2. But come on. Tantalum is used to make personal computers and mobile phones and DVD players, the sales of which dwarf those of games consoles. 1998-2001 happens to be the time when DVD players first hit the market, when mobile phones first became common place and the internet hit the big time, bringing increased PC usage with it. It was those market conditions that increased demand, not the building of a few million PlayStation consoles.

Yet no PC manufacturers are named by Toward Freedom. Or by Yahoo, or by any other mainstream media outlet which reported this story. No mobile phone companies. Or any other consumer electronics manufacturers. They're not called the "Nokia Wars", or the "Samsung DVD Player Wars". They're called the "PlayStation Wars", regardless of how minuscule a contribution the PS2 actually made, because that's sexier, and will help get your story picked up by a game-fearing mainstream media.

Nintendo – We did have a bunch of individual Nintendo-related things in here. We don’t want to see Mother’s Day cards. We don’t care about broken wrists. We don’t ever, ever want to see anyone playing Wii Music on a stage ever again. But the list just kept going, and going, and going, so we’re just going to lump them all into one category: Nintendo. Anything and everything you did at E3 this year, Nintendo, don’t ever do it again.

Talky-Talky – You may have missed it if you caught it in bullet-point-form, but Sony’s E3 press conference ran for an hour and a half. And what did they manage in that hour and a half? The video marketplace announcement, a God of War III trailer and MAG. The other 87 minutes was stuff we either already knew or didn’t care to know. An E3 address is the time for sizzle, Sony, not slumber. We’re gamers, not investors. Next time, get to the point, even if getting there only takes you 15 minutes.

Duffy – Who the hell is Duffy? We had no idea. The Googlepedia mastermind tells us she’s a Welsh singer, and that she’s got the biggest-selling album in the UK this year. Good for her. Pity the Microsoft press conference wasn’t Top of the Pops. Don’t ever do that again, Microsoft.

Tell Us, Damnit– “Oh, I’d like to ask you that”, said an interviewee on more than one occasion. No. We’d like to ask you that. That’s why we’re here. We’re the ones asking the questions, thank you very much, and we ask them to get answers.

Navel-Gazing – We get it, E3 is dead. But does the world need any more people reminding us of the fact? Talk is cheap, and worse, most of the E3 talk thus far has been cheap and selfish, based almost entirely around what a games writer thought of the event from a games writer’s perspective. What about the publishers point of view? The developers? The PR teams? The mass media? Or, you know, the public’s? It may well be dead, but for once, it’d be nice to first check with everyone else concerned, see what they think.

Killzone 2 – Looked good in 2005. And 2006. And 2007. And...look, we don’t ever want to see it at E3 again.

Over-Excitement – Gamers are no different to any other type of consumer. They can smell bullshit marketing a mile away. So when senior company executives get up on stage like they just drank crack-laced Kool Aid, it’s only going to end badly. Nintendo and Microsoft were equally guilty of this. You’re grown men/women, and that’s how we see you, and expect you to act. Anything otherwise will only generate suspicion. Unless you’re The Cliffster. Then you get a pass.

Posts About Stuff We Never want to see at E3 again – They’re kinda boring and self-serving, aren’t they? You always start them with the best of intentions and they always come off looking all whiny. We never want to see, or write one, ever again.

And I ask: Does no one else realize that all this rubbish is pushing out of the charts legitimate games, which could use the extra exposure? And if we allow dictionaries and restaurant guides on our game charts, why not allow other generic software applications? MS Office, for example. Or Photoshop or Oracle or even Windows Vista. I mean if we open the floodgates there won't be any space left on our charts for anything other than a Final Fantasy or a Grand Theft Auto — and at the end of the day Windows Vista is far more of a game (with its included Minesweeper, FreeCell and Solitaire), it's far more fun to fuck around with, than any shitty Japanese "fashion guides" or "language learning" apps. So let's just park Vista at the top of our charts then for the next five or so years and call it a fucking day.

EA made the initial decision to charge for guns so they could make some money off you. That's what they do, they're a business. No harm in that. The way they went about it, though, well, it wasn't ideal. You can nickel-and-dime the kids for soundtracks CDs and tin boxes and action figures and gamerpics all you want, but when you open up a game's mechanics to the free market, giving those paying for content an advantage over those who don't, well, you're paddling right across the Rubicon.

Yet cross the river EA did, and an outcry followed. Petitions were begun. Boycotts threatened. "Don't you fuck with this game, you heartless corporate bastards" was the gist of mutterings by thousands across their dimly-lit keyboards. And for once, for a single week, the various warring tribes of internet fanboys set aside their differences and united against EA under a single banner. Tear-jerking stuff.

So a few days pass, the unrest grows louder, the petioning and emails continue, then...and then the darndest thing happens. EA announce the guns are coming for free (something I'm sure they were going to announce down the line anyways). Your complaining and crying and petitions worked. They'd seen how angry you, the consumer, had become, and rather than shout "let them eat cake", have instead said "here, cake's on us, sorry for the trouble". In other words, VICTORY.

Except...it isn't. And anyone who thinks it is are kidding themselves. Remember, EA made this decision so they could make some money. No doubt somewhere at Electronic Arts HQ is a ledger, and next to Battlefield Bad Company on that ledger is a projection saying $XX is estimated to be made by selling guns in the game. Now that they're not selling those guns, do you think they're just going to write $XX off the books? Not a chance.

No, they'll replace that "lost" money with the advertising dollars they rake in via the "marketing programs" anyone wanting the game's better guns will need to sit through. Or with other DLC offered later down the line (premium grenades, perhaps?), when this has all died down. They're not giving the money away, then, just shuffling it around a bit so you won't notice it so much. This isn't the end of stuff like this. The next EA game will have silly DLC, and the next one, and the next one.

Which means the boycotts (for a game you weren't going to buy anyways), the anger, the petitions, they're all pointless. This is a hollow victory. Why am I bringing this up, even though it will rain on more than a few people's parades?

Because while your hearts were in the right place, you all went after the wrong guy.

Online petitions aren't worth the bandwidth they're slung along. It's like trying to break down the walls of Helm's Deep by pissing on them. EA, who are a massive global corporation, sell their games to millions of people, and millions of those people don't ever read a messageboard or comment on a blog or sign online petitions. So your opinion doesn't mean as much as you think it does. You should know this. We're years on from stuff horse armour and "key codes" and paying-for-cheats and EA are still lacing their games with extortionate DLC, so it's obvious there are people are out there who are not only buying this content, but buying it in sufficient quantities for EA to keep on doing it.

They're the ones you need to be going after. Not EA. This is a free market. If something sells, EA will keep selling it. If something doesn't sell, they won't. Simple stuff. Clearly, DLC is selling. And you can hate and vent and write and bitch and moan all you like, EA won't stop selling it just because it makes you angry. You weren't buying it anyway. But if the people who are buying it stop buying it, well, that'll get you some results.

And I know, convincing them will be hard. These are your family we're talking about. Your friends, your co-workers, that kid you talk to at the bus stop. It's a lot harder having to explain this to them, and maybe even listen to their counter-points, especially since they're a real person and not some faceless corporation at the other end of an anonymous messageboard post. But hey, you want a real victory, and not a hollow one, you have to expect the fight to be longer and tougher than a few day's worth of words on the internet and some mouse-clicks.

His targets? Piracy on the PC platform and dealing with hardware vendors, two factors which make developing for the platform "an uphill slog", are at least partially to blame.

Fitch says that Titan Quest actually did okay. But that's about as positive as his venting gets.

"We didn't lose money on it," he says. "But if even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today."

Fitch goes on to lament, "Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren't so rampant on the PC. That's a fact." He also points to distressing data that "pegs the piracy rate at between 70-85% on PC in the US, 90%+ in Europe, off the charts in Asia."

The whole thing is at parts depressing and enraging, but also worth the read if you didn't catch the link to it in our comments section earlier.

Venting my frustrations with PC game-dev [Quarter To Three Forums]

The reality is this: publishers generally hold the enthusiast press in utter contempt, and they have for a long time. This disdain began as scorn for the enthusiast media's roots in videogame fandom, rather than traditional journalism from "respectable" publications, but it has since metastasized into a veiled but nonetheless seething anger over the advent of the Internet and with it the rise of fan sites, forums and blogs over which publishers can exert little pressure, let alone control. The contempt emanating from the publishing community, by the way, is not limited to the enthusiast press. In our view, it extends to publicists, whom certain executives believe can and should be able to dictate the nature of their coverage and secure review scores of a certain magnitude. It even extends to their own developers, for whom Metacritic and Game Rankings scores can dangle as precipitously as the sword of Damocles, as if these executives were incapable of determining for themselves the quality of their games and taking action accordingly.

The only solution to this problem is for the editorial divisions of these enthusiast outlets who are being strong-armed by publishers and/or their own business operations to shine a light on these practices, much as Kotaku did with Sony earlier this year. Of course, it's easy for us to call for this sort of resolute bravery when Newsweek isn't dependent on videogame advertising and our livelihoods are not at stake. We recognize that some companies literally can't afford to alienate their advertisers, so far be it from us to knock another publication's hustle.

Introduced in 2004, the Nintendo DS (for Dual Screen or Devil Screen), this game machine has sold some 700 million or so units. That's an epidemic. It's undeniable that it has been a "success" for its Japanese manufacturer, Nintendo (makers of Donkey Kong aka Monkey Donkey, a game in which a monkey kidnaps a young girl to satisfy his bestial desires). It's also been a tremendous success for pedophiles everywhere.

In retrospect, I would have bought my DS even sooner had it actually stood for Devil Screen, and I was in line the day before the first model came out. The writer seems to have a lot of repressed sexual feelings stirring in their loins, as evidenced by the 'satisfy his bestial desires' bit.

The article then goes on to present a completely made up story as a matter of fact.

I have been notified by one parent whose child was solicited to "come to the mall and we can go shopping and do other fun stuff. Don't tell your mom because she might spoil our fun. Parents are such a drag. LOL." Fortunately her parent was watching Susie (a pseudonym) that day, as all parents should, and reacted the way any good, loving, responsible parent would. She deftly ripped the offending device out of her hands, sent the reply "stay away from my baby, you psycho" and triumphantly snapped the unit in half. Nintendo TP (two pieces). It's garbage now.

Perhaps the writer is trying to create a fictional role model for parents to look up to. After all, Betty Crocker wasn't real but she is the champion of baked goods that come in boxes and tubs of frosting, so I suppose Susie could be the champion of symbolically tearing child molesters in half to keep them away from her baby, you psycho.

To round out the article, the writer dredges up the old PlayStation Pornable video from ages past, in which the mainstream media warns us that there are dirty pictures on the internet, no matter how small the screen is. As icing on the cake, they throw in a video of JT talking about Grand Theft Auto.

With supporters like these it is no wonder than Sam Brownback is pulling out of the running for Republican presidential candidate. Either there are too many sensible people who would never support him in a million years just to avoid association with these idiots, or the man realized that being a presidential candidate representing people like this would only encourage them.

Early Christmas Alert: Nintendo DS [Blogs 4 Brownback via Game Politics]

Even with the generous warranty, this still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The inevitable is around the corner — as are big games like Mass Effect, Halo 3 and BioShock. Games that are likely to be monster hits and kill a shit ton of Xbox 360s. Not looking forward to sending off my console in the middle of playing those titles. Not looking forward to that at all. Better than paying to have the 360 fixed or buying a new one, I guess...

Microsoft, let's try to get the quality right with the next Xbox hardware iteration, 'kay? This one is crap.

For a generation of marketers raised on TV and print, the internet is a gray nebulous. What works in traditional media? Getting as many eyes on a new product as possible — that creates buzz. But since the internet doesn't have "Prime Time" per se and is powered by a series of sites (not channels or publishers), focusing those eyes all at one time and one place poses a challenge online.

Hence countdowns.

We've touched on this before. Yesterday, even. We hate countdowns. Lemme reiterate that, we HATE countdowns. They're lazy, unimaginative marketing. The hope is with these countdowns that everyone will be looking at something at the same time — like with TV and print to a lesser extent. It's a way for people in business suits to measure publicity. Thing is, with the internet, more eyes doesn't always mean good publicity. This of course is not unique to the internet, but the key different is that we interact with the internet more so than traditional media. Of late, we've seen the following:

• Super Smash Bros.
• Island of Rhodes? ISLAND OF CRAP
• Bethesda Counts Down To "Please Stand By"

There are of course more. Are the game developers to blame? To extent yes and to an extent no. Developers develop games. That's what they do. The success of these online campaigns should not reflect on the actual game because they don't. Yet, the front office people hire marketers and approve plans. In that regard, they are at fault. What about us? Why do we cover them? That's what we do, we cover gaming trends, news and other stuff. Are we to blame? Yes and no. If we report on them, gazillions of people find out about them. If we don't and actual information is released, then we are not doing our job. But, just for second if companies had a month or a week countdown for a press release. That would annoy every press outlet to no end! But companies have no problem doing this via a game's site, and we have a big problem covering this lackluster marketing.

What works online? From what I can see, snowballing. Take a look at internet memes. They start small and get bigger and bigger. Sometimes they are unintentional, sometimes intentional. But they all start with something being posted. And because that original post is interesting, it gains ground. Companies tried this with viral marketing, but that style is often insulting. So now, these countdowns build up to that original posting. Why don't companies just release that info without announcing that they plan to do so X number of days later? Because it's scary, risky. What if nobody looks at their site? What if nobody notices? How horrible! Having faith in whatever information they are releasing means not hyping up that information. If it's really important, people will find out about it. Put it up on your site, don't lie to us and if it's good, we'll click away and crash your site with traffic. That's how the internet works, and that's how it works beautifully. Wise up, companies. The rules have changed. Brian Ashcraft

Thirty-four days ago, Bethesda began a countdown for its upcoming RPG Fallout 3. And what did this huge build up count down to? A screen that says "Stand By." Why? Probably a gazillion people clicking "refresh" in unison.

Thirty-four days. Think about it. Building up to a technical snafu. This Fallout 3 countdown Bethesda clusterfuck shows exactly why countdowns suck. They're unnecessary. What would be so wrong if Bethesda threw up a Fallout 3 trailer with out hyping a count down for over a month? People would be greeted with a pleasant surprise! It'd be top news of the day. What's more, minus the annoyances, false promises and people staying up all night for no reason.

Seriously, enough with the countdowns. If something's really worth showing, this sort of build-up is not necessary. At all. Brian Ashcraft

Fallout 3 [Official Site]