Lackadaisy

Lackadaisy (http://www.lackadaisycats.com/) is a comic about cats. Anthropomorphic, Prohibition-era, bootlegging cats. It’s an interesting little web comic that doesn’t update nearly as often as its fans would want it to, but every update is of a quality unusually high for web comic art. The skill of the artist and creator, Tracy J. Butler, is a big draw of the comic; her art is some of the highest quality work in any standing web comic. She really knows how to draw life and incredible detail into her characters. But of course, fans aren’t just gaping at the art; the characters have a lot of life to them and the subject matter of the comic is fairly interesting. Personally, I’m a sucker for Prohibition-era gangster stories. The characters are all very unique and very different from one another, and their personalities add a lot to the story. The comic’s website is set up very creatively and presents itself in a very unique way. I’d recommend giving this comic a look-over because it really is a work of art.

Final Fantasy XII

“Final Fantasy XII” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_fantasy_12) was a decent enough game, but it suffered from one very big problem: it’s combat system was atrocious. Combat in this game was a jumbled, complicated mess built around the premise that you could set it up so that it played itself. Is that really supposed to be a good thing? Letting your game take you out of the equation and play itself? I hate to say it, but I couldn’t finish this game because of the way its combat system worked; it was just too jumbled to enjoy for me. In fact, the combat was the main complaint almost universally raised against the game. Since its release, Square Enix seems to have recognized this, and from what I’ve read about the next game in the series they might be abandoning the combat game play they used in XII all-together and opting for a more action-based style. I’d like to see what they do in the next game, because my one complaint about the series over the years has been the boringness of its combat. If they manage to blend more action into their traditional turn-based system, or forego turn-based for a real-time system it might just fix the one major problem I’ve always had with the series.

Gamestop

Gamestop (http://www.gamestop.com/) is a business in a very odd place. On one hand, it’s a good thing for the consumers; the ability to buy-sell-trade is an interesting concept, and quite honestly it puts a lot of power into the consumer’s camp. On the other hand, it’s a bad thing for game makers; the ability of a store like Gamestop to sell a single product multiple times takes away from the developer’s profits. I, as a consumer, tend to like the advantages it gives a consumer, but I think the company’s business model is insane. They charge you $20 for some used game that they probably paid less than $5 for. They only accept games from the current console generation, they’ve all but phased PC games out of their stores, and the only time you get anywhere near your money’s worth for a game trade-in is when you’re putting it toward some new game recently released, and even then they rarely offer that deal and the games you need to trade in for it are still selling for around $40 +. Any other time, you’d get $15 or less for that game; with this deal, you get a whopping $20 (also, you can only do it when you trade in two games at once). Honestly, I believe that they need to seriously rework their trade-in system; make it substantially more worth the consumer’s effort. That way, people would buy into it more.

Kotaku

Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/) is a video game news blog; quite possibly the most popular one. It covers a wide array of news; the only real thing they have in common is a link to video games. They also do simple game reviews that list what the reviewer personally liked and disliked about the game. I think Kotaku is an excellent model for news distribution; it’s focus is online news distribution, it has a very casual air about it, and it simply posts EVERYTHING. Anything even remotely noteworthy that they see they talk about; there are even some articles on occasion linking to and commenting on other articles on other sites. It’s not just simply about video game news; it’s an entire presentation of gamer culture’s high and low points, and it fosters constant discussion amongst its readers about the subject matter. I love what the site is doing for the culture, and I can’t really come up with a way to improve what they do; they present a ton of articles, make them easily and freely browsable, they have a comment system for each article for the community to discuss them, and they take the time to breathe some humanity into the news they’re presenting.

Netflix

Netflix (http://www.netflix.com/Default?mqso=80010165) is really an ingenious business model. If you think about it, Netflix is simply the most recent in a long chain of increasingly easy access methods of cinematic experiences. Cinema started in the theaters, and eventually moved into the living room, allowing people to view their favorite movies easily and in the comfort of their home. The next step in this progression is video rental shops; now, not only could you view a movie in your living room, but you didn’t need to worry about it sitting on a shelf indefinitely once you lost interest in re-watching it. Furthermore, with the advent of video rental, many movies that would eventually come off store shelves were now still findable and could be picked up by newer audiences years after the movie’s original run. The most recent link in this chain is the advent of Netflix and related services. Now you can have all the advantages of rental without actually leaving the house to get your movie; now the movie comes to you. Furthermore, they also have an instant-view online service that features some 17,000 items that you can view instantly on a computer. If I had to guess I’d think the next logical step here is to simply do away with the dvd; make the entire movie library browsable online, instead of roughly 1/5 of it.

morgueFile

MorgueFile (http://www.morguefile.com/) is a website with a large archive of photos that anyone can use in anything. It’s a very useful website for a design specialist because of how much easier it makes it to find photos for projects. It’s very hard to find non-copyrighted photos to use in projects, but morgueFile offers a wide selection of photos absolutely free for the designer to use. Seeing as everything has a copyright, it’s nice to find a place where you can get material to work with that you won’t be breaking the law by using. Hopefully morgueFile inspires more websites like it to do this; hopefully this kind of file sharing in the public domain will rub off on bigger copyright holders and get them to share their works more freely for legal use.

Rapchop/Jamwow

I don’t quite know the story behind why this guy made these—probably just to do it—but I have seen these two remixes used as actual commercials for the products late at night on Comedy Central and Spike TV. Personally, I like them; it’s a very inventive way to reinvent the commercials, and I think it was a very good idea to play on these videos’ popularity to revitalize the related products. It’s interesting because, instead of shutting the videos down, they actually embraced the creative reworking and used it. I’d love to see more remixed ads like these used as actual commercials instead of just being shut down and removed from the internet. I think that embracing projects like this could one day possibly lead to a relaxation of copyright laws and substantial growth in artistic creativity. A lot of creativity seems to be stunted right now because of how hard it is to work around copyrights and make anything similar or related to an established copyright.

Gametrailers

Gametrailers (http://www.gametrailers.com/) is a website made exclusively for video coverage of video games. It’s been very successful because it’s proven to be a reliable source for video game media. The website got started in 2003 as a simple hub for video game media releases, but in 2005 the company was bought by MTV and really took off. Since that point MTV has turned it into a key player in the online distribution of video game news and trailers. Their video game coverage has expanded; they now do previews and reviews in video form, and have online shows dedicated to video game-related content. Today, Gametrailers could most easily be described as a video game news publication that is entirely online. They get interviews with developers and industry executives and are able to release videos of them; they have online news shows with industry interviews; they get a lot of exclusive trailer releases for games and are always extremely quick to host any trailer released to the public. Gametrailers is a model of what news distribution could one day be; in fact, it seems to be trailblazing that concept and proving the worth of online distribution. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more sites like Gametrailers pop up in different media spheres over time.

Borderlands

“Borderlands” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands_%28video_game%29) is a video game made by Gearbox studios that released October 20, 2009. The game is unique in its visual style and game play mechanics. The visuals are made from very detailed, very colorful cel-shading techniques combined with hand-drawn textures, which when all thrown together created a visual style unlike anything before. Part of the draw of the game was its visibly-cartoony art style combined with the unserious way the game presented itself throughout. Another part of the draw was the unique game play. “Borderlands” is an FPS (first person shooter) with RPG (role playing game) elements thrown on top. The game was marketed with the tagline “The FPS and RPG made a baby,” and quite honestly it’s true; the game blends the two genres very well. It uses traditional FPS game play, and augments it with the weapon stats and additional character abilities that are common in almost all RPGs. “Borderlands” is a trend-setter; the game saw a decent amount of success for an unestablished series, and you can be sure that future games will try to take advantage of the formula it came up with. The only question is if they’ll actually try to build on it and make it their own, or just imitate it.

PvP

Player vs Player (http://www.pvponline.com/) is a web comic made by Scott Kurtz. It launched in 1998, and receives well over 100,000 unique viewers per day. It releases strips daily (except on weekends). PvP is iconic for pioneering web comics professionally. Penny Arcade has made the most successful business of any web comic and defined the archetype, but PvP was one of the trendsetters. PvP’s creator, Scott Kurtz, has over the years proven to be very outspoken and controversial, but very popular and influential in the realm of web comics. Kurtz could also be commended for sticking to his design guns for so long; he almost always keeps his schedule of one strip per weekday, and has spent the last 10 years developing the strip’s still-ongoing story. The subject matter started off as video games, but has since evolved to include many forms of digital media and technology. Personally, I think PvP is iconic, and that new web comic artists should take example of the discipline people like Kurtz have displayed with their comics. I’m hoping that comics like PvP inspire future web comic artists both in how to make/write their comics, and how to schedule/structure them.

Zero Punctuation

Zero Punctuation (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation) is a weekly video series where Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw basically takes a video game that recently came out and rips it apart. He looks high and low for any miniscule flaw a game has and is not afraid to point them all out painfully. And I love him for it. Putting aside the fact that the series is hilarious (in my opinion), I think Yahtzee contributes something important to the gaming community: much-needed criticism of its products. Too often to game journalists and reviewers downplay a game’s faults and emphasize their advantages. Yahtzee goes out of his way to do the opposite, providing a much needed contrast that, if not taken too literally, can help the viewer make a much more informed decision about a game. My only complaint is that he only does one game a week, so a lot of them don’t get his treatment; if more games got bashed the way he does it, I think it would definitely help consumers looking to buy something; and who knows, it might even convince some game devs to actually work on those problems in their sequels.

I Made a Game With Zombies In It!

“I Made a Game With Zombies In It!” (http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585502a6/) is an indie game on Xbox Live that only costs a dollar (80 Microsoft Points). It’s a simple joystick-shooter; you use the left thumb stick to move and the right one to fire in the direction you point. The game is simple, it’s short, it has an awesome theme song, but most of all it’s fun. This is really a quality indie game that I’d recommend to anyone with XBL. A single session of the game lasts about 15 minutes, and the entire session is played to an awesome, long song made to be the game’s soundtrack. It’s the perfect way to kill a few minutes when you’re waiting for something. This is, in my opinion, what an Xbox Live indie game should strive to be: A simple yet enjoyable time-killer. The game has seen almost unending success since it released over XBL several months ago, so I would hope that indie game devs learn from what this game does. There are a lot of indie games on XBL with very little content, and hopefully this game sets a trend for XBL indie games.

Microsoft Points

Microsoft Points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Points) are what you use to buy downloadable content over Xbox Live. You buy the points either in a store (they come as a code on a card) or online (with a credit card), then you spend the points to buy online content such as movies, game addons, and arcade games. It’s a very roundabout method, especially when they could just charge a credit card directly. The biggest problem with it is you have to buy points in various allotments, and most of the time you need to buy many more points than you need to download the item you want because of the point allotment values. You may want to buy an 800 point item, but the two closest amounts you can buy are either 500 or 1000, which means that after you get the item you want you’ve still got 200 points that you had no real use for. Microsoft has done very little about this complaint; the most they’ve done is allow you to pay with a credit card directly to buy full games over the internet, but everything else still requires MS Points. It’s proven to be an issue for consumers, so really a sensible thing to do on Microsoft’s part would be to just do away with the system and bill a credit card directly; unfortunately, they don’t seem to be even hinting at doing as much.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Nintendo Wii game console (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii). I find the concept behind it interesting enough, but so far the uses developers have been finding for it are just…lacking. In order to do anything non-basic, you’re practically required to buy some random peripheral to plug into the motion controller. Beyond those situations, most games either use it to aim reticules or perform repetitive twisting/turning motions. The motion output is nowhere near perfect, so things like swordfights are never handled very well, and usually end up coming down to shaking the controller really fast. I’m of the opinion that the Wii is little more than a gimmick, and this obsession with motion control that it’s spawning needs to stop before it becomes more pronounced. Microsoft and Sony are experimenting with their own motion control gimmicks, and I just feel that all this is taking away from the quality of games and trying to make up for it with these motion control distractions. It’s a common belief in the video gaming community that the controls of the Wii are severely limiting the potential of its games because of the focus on the gimmick over the quality of the game. I personally just hope that sales figures eventually prove how disappointed the majority of gamers are with the quality of motion control gimmick games.

Metroid: Other M

“Metroid: Other M” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid:_Other_M) is a game in development by Nintendo and Team Ninja that fits…somewhere in the Metroid series. What’s seemingly unique about it is, judging from game play footage, it will feature a combination of 1st and 3rd person game play with high-action visual sequences. This could prove to be a very interesting game play mechanic. The significance here is in the way most Metroid games play normally. Most of them are 2D with heavy emphasis on exploration of the map area. A few Metroid games were made for consoles with full 3D graphics which played as first person shooters that had a higher emphasis on combat, but still had a lot devoted to exploration. This game looks like it can devote a lot more to combat mechanics while still retaining the series’ classic focus on exploration. This kind of innovative game play redesign is what the gaming industry needs to see more of. For the most part, games in a specific series play far too similarly to each other. “Metroid: Other M” is a new installment into an iconic series in the video game industry, and looks poised to set a precedent for progression of game play mechanics, which will lead to more innovative and unique games.

Shadow Complex

“Shadow Complex” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Complex) is a unique game recently released a few months ago on Xbox Live that features highly unique 2.5D game play. 2.5D can be defined as a 3D game in which game play happens on a 2D plain; that is, the graphics are 3D, but the game plays like a classic 2D game like “Mario” or “Metroid.” In fact, “Shadow Complex” plays very similar to the classic SNES game “Super Metroid,” but there are 2 key differences that set it apart: obviously, SC is in 3D graphics while SM was completely 2D; in addition, some actions in SC can take place on a 3D plain. In SC, sometimes there will be enemies off in the background that you can actually aim at and shoot; similarly, they can notice and shoot back at you. You can’t move in that extra dimension, but your gun will automatically aim back into it if you point it in the right direction. It’s an interesting control gimmick that could lead to further innovations that will breathe some much needed life back into 2-2.5D games. You don’t see a lot of them anymore, and this could be something that makes them more appealing.

Machinarium

“Machinarum” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinarium) is a video game made in Flash that came out October 16, 2009. It’s a very high quality Flash game that highlights just what a dedicated game maker can do with Flash. It’s a shame that you don’t see more stuff like this made with Flash. It’s an inventive take on a classic “point-and-click” adventure that has some pretty in-depth puzzles complicated by the fact that you need to control your little robot avatar and move him near anything in order to interact with it. The visuals are amazing; the still backgrounds are very well drawn and the characters, while silent, manage to portray some amount of character. Astonishingly, the game only cost $1,000 to make. It serves to prove that something really enjoyable, deep, and well-made can come up out of relatively little, and I’d hope to see more projects like it get to the market. Things like this prove that anyone can make something worthwhile if they put forth enough effort.

Penny Arcade Presents

Penny Arcade, a popular web comic I talked about in a previous blog, will occasionally do a mini-comic, available for free online, to advertise a specific game (http://www.penny-arcade.com/presents/). I think this is a very good way of advertising a product; a popular web-comic artist makes something relating to the content of a game’s story. This way, the company advertises much more successfully to one of the hardest groups to advertise to: net-surfers. There are infinite ads on the web, but they’re so densely packed in with every web page that people just tend to ignore them now. Doing projects like this draw attention from the artists’ fans, and allow the advertisers to actually hold people’s attention longer. The longer you hold someone’s attention with an ad, the more impact it’ll have on them. Personally, I’d like to see more ad campaigns done like this, because it adds interesting content to the product’s story and can lead to integration of many types of media into one overarching story.

It Only Does Everything

The PS3’s newest ad campaign focuses on the slogan “It only does EVERYTHING” sends a pretty clear message: they’ve made a video game console that’s extremely multi-functional. The thing can surf the web, play Blu-Rays, and of course play video games. The problem I have with this is that I think it’s getting too multi-functional. This is a device that sits in your house, connected to your TV, and lets you play video games. The way things are going, they’re trying to turn gaming consoles into computers, and I really must ask: If consoles just turn into mini, un-customizable home computers, then what’s the point of buying one? Why not get an actual computer instead? I’m not saying combining the video game console and the computer is a bad thing, but I think you have to approach that from the other end—a computer that can do everything a video game console does, instead of a console that can do some of the things a computer can do.

Colbert Nation

Colbert Nation (http://www.colbertnation.com/home) is the website of Comedy Central’s ongoing show “The Colbert Report.” I think it’s significant because it has clips from all episodes of the broadcast show online, free for anyone to view. Comedy Central seems to do this for a lot of its shows: “South Park,” “The Daily Show,” and several other key series for the network feature the ability to view show clips and even full episodes free online. Despite this, Comedy Central is an extremely profitable network. I think that this proves that eventually, Television could be done entirely through the internet and websites. There are a few other networks that do this; some even go so far as to make Alternate Reality Games on their websites based around the featured series. I know Adult Swim (Cartoon Network’s late-night section) have clips and new episodes for all their series available for free online; they even used to premiere new episodes online a couple days before the broadcast premiere. Looking at all these stations do this makes me really think that eventually, we could see TV played out entirely online.

Inglourious Basterd Commercials

I’m bringing up the ads for this movie because of the design principles behind them. The trailers clearly portray a movie packed from beginning to end with non-stop action. Anyone who’s watched the movie will tell you this isn’t the case. More than anything, the movie is considered to be a war drama (according to IMDB); there is a deep story involved. In fact, the trailers portray almost all of the action scenes in the movie, and the movie is over 2 ½ hours long. It’s a deep movie, but it’s still has its fair share of action sprinkled throughout. I think that the movie was advertised in the almost-misleading way that it was in order to draw a more action-oriented crowd that normally wouldn’t have bothered going to see some form of a drama. The movie was made to blend action and drama, and the advertising was made to draw the part a specific part of the target audience that may not have initially been interested in the concept. It’s a slippery slope between what these ads did and flat-out misdirection, but I still think they pulled it off well. However, I don’t think this should gain speed as a marketing strategy, because it would be far too easy for it to go off track.

Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_2) is a recently released video game and the second installment in a trilogy. I’m talking about it because I admire a very simple thing the creators did in its design, and that’s actively listen to the consumers. There were a lot of loud complaints that many people had about the first game in the series. People just didn’t like what they got. So, the developers actually listened to these complaints, and they addressed them. Too often this simply does not happen in the video game industry. But, the developers of AC2 actually listened to their fans and the end result is a truly great game. I think this is a good sign of where the industry could potentially go in the future. People know what they want, and I think it’s important to listen to those wants in order to design something profitable and of high quality. If the industry could learn to apply the wants of their consumers more in their designs, instead of just following the same tired formulas, I think we will eventually see a lot more high quality works being produced.

Dead Space

Dead Space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Space_%28video_game%29) is a video game that came out about a year ago. It’s classified as a survival-horror game. The game is about an engineer trying to fix a spaceship that has been taken over by aliens. I’m writing about it because I think the design principles behind the game are wonderful. In most modern horror-based works of fiction, the majority of fear comes from anticipation and jump-scares. Although there are a great many jump scares throughout the game, Dead Space tries to make horror through atmosphere. It packs you into tight corridors so you don’t feel like you can escape. It makes you feel like there are enemies around every corner and behind every door. It shows you just enough of what normal would have been like on this ship so you can contextualize just how horrid the place now is. The game was very successful when it released, and they are making a sequel to build on the atmospheric elements. If this series continues to have the success that it does now, I’m hoping that it will eventually lead to a reworking of the horror genre of media so that it experiments with things other than simple jump scares, and that the genre as a whole will put out higher quality media because of it

Penny Arcade

Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com/) is a webcomic that the creators have used to model a business around. I think the work Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik have done with their comic is an inspiration for what digital media makes possible. Penny Arcade is, today, a full-fledged company. Their core work is still the webcomic, which is based on video games and has an audience of over 4 million viewers a month. Beyond the free online comic, they sell print versions of the comic in volumes (currently there are 5 of them); they have a store with merchandise related to the comic; they sponsor a convention (Penny Arcade Expo) and a charity (Child’s Play) annually; and, they now have their own short internet show: PATV. They’re a perfect example of taking digital media and making something great and profitable around it. What started as a simple comic has blossomed into a full-fledged, internet-based company. They’ve shown how digital media can be a successful business all on its own.

Epic Mickey

“Epic Mickey” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Mickey) is a videogame being made that will focus on lesser-known/vintage Disney characters from the company’s earlier days. Though it hasn’t been released yet, the information given suggests a rather dark story compared to what Disney does now, and a return to Disney’s roots. Disney didn’t used to be as unbendingly innocent as it is today. The company’s mascot, Mickey Mouse, is today portrayed a generically heroic character, whereas in the beginning he was a curious, mischievous prankster. Disney intends to use the EM game as a way to reboot the character, and possibly the company as a whole. The implication here is that they want to get back to their roots of really making something of merit, rather than providing generic, friendly entertainment. I remember at one point reading that, in response to a letter from a concerned parent stating that Pinocchio was too scary for her child, Walt Disney himself said “I’ll have to congratulate my artists.” If this game sparks an eventual return to Disney making things that can evoke some varied emotions and teach something all at the same time, I’m personally all for it.

Game Informer

Game Informer (a videogame magazine) (http://gameinformer.com/default.aspx) recently went through a site re-design, and one of the biggest new features is digital media that adds onto the content of the print media. The first game they gave this treatment to was Disney’s “Epic Mikey” Project (http://gameinformer.com/games/disney_epic_mickey/b/wii/default.aspx). During the course of their interview with the game’s creators, they were given screenshots and video interviews that they released online over the course of the month following the release of the magazine’s “Epic Mikey” cover-story issue. I liked the idea because it gives more credence to the journalists’ reports of what they’re seeing, and gives me as a consumer a better picture of the product I may end up buying. Moreover, the introduction of digital media to their journalistic method makes me believe we’re getting closer to a culture where news is digitally based, and more freely accessible. Right now you have to sign up and pay subscription fees for even the most basic stories online that showed up at some point in the paper. I’m hoping that this free integration of digital media with the print story is a sign of where news distribution is headed.

Digital Candy

This blog is about an image I found while searching google for “Digital Candy.” The image is located here: http://media.photobucket.com/image/digital%20candy/joejenn06/scrapbook/elpreview.jpg. First of all, I have no idea what the context of this image is. The page that google linked me to before this photobucket link wasn’t found. That said, I think it’s a decently interesting image. There’s a lot going on, and at least for me I wasn’t drawn to any part in particular over another. The colors are interesting, bright, light-hearted, and it seems as though the central theme is watermelons. Looking at it makes me think about the word “candy”; that is to say, it sort of made me realize much more clearly than before that “candy” can refer to more than just sweets; it can be some fun, little bit of something. It can be something that has nothing really to do with anything, but is interesting all the same. The image is just a congregation of brightly-colored randomness, but it’s still interesting and mildly entertaining.