This made my day

Maybe it’ll make yours too.

Valve Pays Homage to Apple’s “1984″ Commercial

I love Valve so much. Not enough to load L4D2 again, but quite a lot.

Gaming in Brazil

I’m back from a 21 day escapade in Brazil. One of my goals for the trip was to learn a bit about gaming culture outside the U.S. For some reason my wife-com-translator, Fe, was reluctant to talk about video games with random people in the tropics. Lacking actual sources, I decided to pretend I was a Brazilian interested in gaming.

My first step was to draft a budget. A friend of ours lives and works in Brazil. She has a bachelors degree and makes R$8 an hour. If she were extremely interested in playing video games she’d have maybe R$2,000 a year to spend. That sounds like a significant amount of money to spend on games, but as this image shows it may not go as far as you’d think. That Gamecube, the same one you or I would get in a box of Cheerios, costs R$900. R$1,000 for the PSP/Daxter bundle, that’d cost $200 if you could find some place that still sells it. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is R$50. Games be mad expensive in Brazil, yo.

So what’s a gamer to do? Cyber Cafe. These were all taken within walking distance of each other.

The day Left 4 Dead 2 launched I hiked over to World Game, hoping to find a computer capable of running Steam and some broadband. I took Fe along to help negotiate the transaction.

Me: “Do you have Left 4 Dead 2?”

Clerk: “No, not yet.”

M: “Do you have Steam here?”

C: “No, we don’t use Steam here.”

M: “Well, can I download it? I’ve already bought the game. I’d be glad to rent some PC time to try it out.”

C: “You can’t install Steam here.”

M: “Why not?”

C: “All of our software is pirated, your account will be banned.”

That’s right, all of the software at this business was pirated. I took a closer look at the Xbox/PlayStation/Gamecube games that were set out for people to rent. The discs had the name of their illicit product etched upon them with a black sharpie. The only apparently legitimate software in the store were the over priced retail copies collecting dust behind the counter. Oh, I see how you do, Brazil.

While walking around I became entranced by news stands. Much like New York City, Brazil is coated in street booths vending cigarettes, news papers, magazines and (now this is key) old PC software. Sure, there were your OXM or OPM equivalents with demo disks; but periodically you’d find full retail games in magazine sized packaging. I spent R$10 on Medieval Lords, a game I had never heard of before. For R$20 I could have picked up Hitman: Contracts. I may be cynical, but I don’t think this type of purchase is typical for the Brazilian gamer.

We’re Ba-ack

We’re on the other side of the server move. You’re probably wondering why I’ve jumped ship. There are several reasons; but I think this image should explain everything.

So, what’s changed? This site should now load correctly for both Internet Explorer users who visit. Some back end things have changed, but that should be transparent to you.

It’s also worth noting that I have a day job again. As such I can afford to play games a bit more. However I’ve decided the old format of daily news and weekly reviews is crap. The style of my reviews was crap. The game journalists I enjoy reading present their topics in a more conversational tone.

My new year’s resolution is to post three times a week. Obviously this week and next will be a ‘best effort’ arrangement, but after the hangover subsides be sure to tune in Mon-Wed-Fri.

LAN Party Eve

I’ve finally gathered enough real life PC gamers around me to have a LAN party. After nearly 15 years of computer games I can finally play in the same room as my team. To say I’m excited is an understatement. This last week of preparation has highlighted the parts of my past time I enjoy most.

We have seven to 20 people coming to a hotel conference room which is sure to have crap internet. We spent a good deal of time speculating on how we’ll get everyone interconnected and online. I researched wireless bridging for hours. Tomorrow, before anyone loads a game, I will have a sense of accomplishment. That feeling will come from a skill set I can apply directly to earning real world money. I have never gotten a paycheck for setting up an Xbox 360.

A few of us got together online to get our Modern Warfare 2 characters up to snuff. Three or four guys working together are a pretty formidable force in a twelve man game. Steam allowed our group to talk together and ignore the banter of the random people in close virtual proximity. I feel a bit closer to this group of people, even though we were just wasting time, scattered in our own homes across the city.

On the topic of growing friendships, a couple of people I’ve only known over the web will be attending. Over the years I’ve come to know a lot of people without actually seeing their faces. I’ve given and received gifts to lines of text that claim to physically exist in cities I’ve never been to. Tomorrow the wave forms called Gnarf and Sym will collapse into Dan and Scotty. It’s odd that there will be faces associated with the anonymous handles I’ve known for years.

Modern Warfare’s Intro Leak

I think this would be referred to as a “Hard M.” I really wouldn’t want to see kids playing this, but let’s define terms here. To me a kid is someone who can’t sit through Schindler’s List or Apocalypse Now. The 16 year old who goes, "Oh cool! Look at all the blood!" is a kid. The 16 year old who can understand the implications of the scene and the reasons it may be important for the mood of the piece probably is not.

This does cross an ugly line; but not the one I think most people will think of. I would say what happens in these 8 minutes speaks volumes about the human condition. It says more about real world tragedies more than a memorial wall ever could. You will witness every school shooting, every suicide bombing, and every sociological killer. You’re given a glimpse of how awful those scenarios are. Infinity Ward has dumped a lot of disturbing truth about the grotesque things people are capable of into the player’s lap. It’s not pretty, and it will take a mature mind to grapple with it.

If you think you are capable, click here.

 

EDIT: Screw it, I’m embedding it here.

2D Sonic Next Year

I know what you’re thinking…

But this time it’ll be different. I hope.

GFW Reunion Show

GameVideos posted the video of the GFW Reunion show from PAX. They’re kind enough to provide embeddable flash, so I’ll pass the awesomeness on to you.

No Hype Reviews Podcast #5!

We finally got around to making another podcast, audio only. Enjoy:

The music in this episode was made by Ed Harrison. You should buy his cd.

I also mentioned an article by Ludwig Kietzmann, which you can read here.

Learning About Freelancing

What does a freelancer do? How does someone become a freelancer? Those are the questions I should have asked when I started researching this post. Instead I assumed it was as easy as pitching an idea to some site and then waiting for the internet checks to roll in. After a few responses from major blogs came in I realized I had found a very deep topic to discuss.

The logical place to start is to ask “How does someone go from blogging on a site like Bitmob for free to getting paid actual liquor money?” Sam Kennedy of 1UP gave me the following advice:

There’s a fair amount of competition, but to be honest, most of the pitches come to us from people we know. A lot of writers have been “discovered” just from their blogs on 1UP. We do get a lot of submissions, so it’s best to stand out from the rest of the pack — and getting to know us via [1UP.com] is a good way to do so.

I also asked Robert Ashley how he broke into the field.

I spammed everyone at the Ziff Davis gaming group with my resume and samples. One person read them, said they’d give me a freelancing shot, [so] I started pitching stories. … Unfortunately, so many things have changed in the six years I’ve been doing this that I have no idea how people break into freelancing these days.

He has a point. There isn’t a lot of precedent for this reduced pulp world. In the days of yore an aspiring journalist might submit a story without speaking to anyone, and if the publication happened to have space that needed filling that aspiring journalist became a freelancer. Today space is no longer a commodity. Websites have as little or as much of it as they need to cover the popular topics of the day. Still, if you can say something in a way no one else can work is out there.

There doesn’t even seem to be a standard pricing model. The National Writers Union believes $.70 a word is about average for online articles. On the other hand, listeners of various gaming podcasts may have heard the notion that writers should be willing to work for free in order to build a reputation. That is exactly what’s happening on sites like Bitmob and 1up’s user blog section. There are also a plethora of smaller sites that will give you assignments, deadlines, and all of the responsibility of freelancing with none of the pay.

Budgets are tight at every publication in the videogame business right now, but we’re doing our best to pay our writers for their hard work. … We don’t pay by the word and are flexible in that respect. After all, some stories require a lot more research, so we want to make sure what we pay is appropriate to the amount of work. – Sam Kennedy

Times are hard, but don’t work for free. Any work you do for free should be on your own projects. – Robert Ashley

One of the largest hurdles to someone just getting into freelancing is finding outlets to work with. Thankfully coverage of video games is no longer a niche product. You see stories about video games everywhere including your local paper, international magazines, entertainment and tech websites, radio shows, and of course the game blogs. Every outlet in each of those categories needs writers. Some will work with freelancers, some won’t. If Joystiq isn’t commissioning work (and as of this writing they are not) maybe Entertainment Weekly will pay for your work. There are a lot of potential opportunities out there if you put the effort into finding them. Some will say the demise of print has left fewer openings, and freelance journalists are an endangered species. But we’ve been here before.

I am not sure that a young man beginning in journalism in 1938 would find opportunity in as great a mood of welcome as one who began about the turn of the century. About 1925 and after, advertising, which once fed the printed word alone, began to divide with the spoken word, the radio. The number of periodicals and newspapers began to contract. The little town of West Chester, when I started there in 1892, had three daily papers; by the 1920s it had but one. Philadelphia, when I spent a while on a paper there in 1900, had five important morning papers, four evening ones; by 1938 the numbers were two and two, respectively. In every city similar contraction took place. Mark Sullivan, 1938.

71 years later and people are still finding ways to profit from writing what they know.

So let’s say we’ve done our time in community blogs. We’re getting respectable traffic on our own steam. People respond to what we have to say. We’re on good terms with people we’ve located that are in a position to pay us for our pieces. How should we ask for work?

I’ve never written an entire story before pitching it. I’ve heard of editors asking for stories on spec, meaning that they want to see the completed thing before they offer to pay for it. Pitching is different things to different people. For editors that know me, a pitch can be a couple of sentences explaining the idea on a very basic level. They trust me. When I pitched a story to a mainstream magazine, I treated the pitch like a story unto itself, with little snippets of quote material, strong organization, etc. – Robert Ashley

We’re open to seeing completed articles, but for the most part everything we use gets pitched to us first. That way we have a hand in helping shape the story. – Sam Kennedy

[Pitches are a] process we handle in-house, with our existing staff writers (some of whom are freelance, and some of whom are full-time employees). And, in that respect, we are far more flexible. – Chris Grant, Joystiq

Since it seems like everyone has a different approach, it may be best to open with an idea for a story and a few samples of what you intend to write. If the company wants the story on spec, and that’s something you’re willing to do, you can write it up. Otherwise be open to criticism and suggestions.

Alright, so what type of work can we expect to do?

We have quite a few freelancers that contribute content to the site. We have a full team of news writers that contribute daily news content, we have a pool of writers that regularly write reviews, previews, features, and blogs, and we often seek freelance help for strategy guides and video content. – Sam Kennedy

Using experience, contacts and knowledge of the industry I helped to turn a bunch of programmers who knew how to create a game, but not how to form a development team, manage it and sell their concept; into a burgeoning dev house. If I thought of myself exclusively as a video game journalist then it is likely that I would never have had the discussion with the head of the company which lead to my joining their team as a consultant; a job from which I gained as much experience as I imparted. – Aaron McKenna

The general take away here is to consider writing as one aspect of your skill set. Keep your people skills polished, maybe learn how to work with Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere. You want to have as broad a focus as possible while still being able to work intelligently on specific tasks.

Is all this effort and multitasking really worth it?

It taught me how to work for myself, how to get things done without someone looming over me. I haven’t had a “real job” since 2003, and I don’t plan on getting one anytime soon. -Robert Ashley

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