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.