• 11Apr 09

  I was on the hotspot!

  My voice was webinated Actually, there was something that I should have mentioned but didn't. I was yacking on about How digital distribution was killing the historical record of video games. I completely forgot that we already have a few examples.

  A: Gameline for the Atari. This service didn't last long, but it allowed you to download games over the phone (It went on to become AOL after the game crash). There are some games which were only released over this service, and most of them are simply gone now. the most famous example is "Save the Whales," the proceeds of which were going to go to greenpeace. I think that we recently found a protype of it, but thats not the point. Still, it does give me some hope that things won't simply vanish off the map.

  B:the SNES satteliview. Only released in Japan, this satellite service would stream VOs and new levels for games like Link to the Past. It also had a few of its own games which could be downloaded to the systems internal memory at certain times of day. Of course, the VOs and video are now gone. Some of that stuff is now available illicitly online, but most of the games have also vanished into nothingness. shame.

  As a game lover I am sadened to know that media types have lost us valuable parts of our history.

  • Posted Apr 11, 2009 2:13 am GMT
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• 6Feb 09

  Burnout update

  Download it NOW! It is absolutely superb. I don't know how I got any burning routes done without reset. The new ligthing effects are gourgeous, the cars are organised better, crashed vehicls seem to have alot more weight... did I mention download it?

  And if you don't own Burnout Paradise, well its cheap on PSN or used at EB Games. Pick it up!

  • Posted Feb 6, 2009 1:21 pm GMT
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• 28Nov 08

  Articles for Jack

  Well, I just finished my end of term paper. Its a 4000 word (well, it was supposed to be 2000 maximum) epic comparingcoverage of JAck Thompson by Gamespot and the Miami Herald. I thought I would put my conclusion here:

  Gamespot was far more educated on the issues at hand than The Miami Herald, which is a pattern that can be seen in most of the mainstream press. Gamespot also DID give Thompson extreme prominence, having written a vastly larger number of stories about him, which often became subjects on the Hotspot for the week in which they broke.
  
  However, Gamespot didn't feature gaming representatives in equal time: in fact Thompson was given plenty of room to say what he wanted to. In the same vein, my expectation that Gamespot would be overtly biased against Thompson was not supported. Very little was done to combat Thompson's statements. He was allowed to speak for himself.
  
  However, I don't think that Gamespot needed to bias their stories. Gamespot is a specialist news outlet, for people who follow and like games. Even if Jack Thompson didn't make comically ludicrous statements, Gamers would still need very little coaxing to disagree with him. On the other hand, someone like Beatrice Garcia who clearly has an axe to grind with the game industry doesn't have that luxury. Because she writes for a "general" newspaper, she has a huge audience to reach. If she wants to get her point across, she has to make more bold claims, which make her bias more prominent to those in the know on a topic.
  
  As for Jack Thompson, I suppose we should feel sorry for him. The week he was disbarred, he was once again discussed on the Hotspot. In chess, it is customary for people to shake hands and say "good game" no matter how badly the other player did, and that seemed to be the approach that the Gamespot crew had. They pointed out that despite all his efforts he didn't do very much to directly harm the industry. True, he had a Bully tried in court and he also goes down in history as the first person to bring charges against someone for donating money to a charity in their name (the Penny Arcade story) but in the end his lawsuits never accomplished anything, and his allies had mostly left him. I would argue that he spread misinformation about the value of games, and their violent content, but that is an effect that will pass with time. The Hotspot commentators ended their discussion by saying that, whatever you think of him, Thompson has lost his livelihood. We may not miss Jack Thompson, but we must at least sympathize with him. After all, it's not like we wanted to kill him or anything.
  • Posted Nov 28, 2008 2:34 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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