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A Look Back at the Year in Games
The excellent Stephen Totilo runs down memorable moments from this year in games, from the perspective of MTV Multiplayer. (Flash site, make sure and stop the ad quickly to avoid brainburn.) From the article: "On a rain-soaked Wednesday afternoon we drove south from Austin to Buda and got a look at the Rooster Teeth digs. One of the guys, the heavily tattooed Geoff Fink, sat Sway down at a bank of Xbox 360s and recording equipment to explain how the 'Halo' machinima gets made. Sway got the details, but we couldn't wrap the interview without asking Fink about a detail we highlighted in our old Rooster Teeth story -- the foot thing. Sway noticed that Fink had nine Xbox 360 controllers at the recording station and enough systems to allow them to be used at the same time -- but Rooster Teeth doesn't have nine gamer/actors to wield them. They solve this problem by wielding multiple controllers at once, some with their hands and some with their feet. We needed a demonstration and got one, captured on film."
Multiplayer: Speed-Runs, A Referee, NES Collectors -- The Year In Gaming
Underground French McDonald's employees, 'Okami' also make list of Multiplayer's favorite stories of 2006.
Over the past year, I interviewed captains of the gaming industry and the creator of a Columbine video game. I tracked the rise, fall and possible resurrection of a Bob Ross video game, worked with a team of producers around the world to provide MTV viewers interviews with Chinese "World of Warcraft" gold farmers and did the obligatory E3, PS3 and Wii coverage.
Some of my favorite stories were those that were most under the radar. Here are 10 of the best from 2006:
In February, I found the grandson of a Ghanaian king and a 19-year-old game maker in Atlanta who both made bold claims about creating the world's first MMO set in Africa. They promised a sophisticated game, launching in December. And the teen designer Adam Ghetti scoffed at naysayers, "They say it's impossible. Maybe if we were doing it in the archaic way everyone else tries to do it." The game is still pending. "How Do You Teach People About Africa? Make A Video Game"
Later that month, I wrote and MTV aired the results of an evening with Brooklyn-based video-game referee Robert Mruczek, who pays people money to pull off amazing gaming feats and then verifies them by watching videotaped recordings. Mruczek explained to us where joy meets tedium: somewhere along the path to watching a 27-hour run of "Asteroids." Twice. "Gaming's Top Ref Pays Big Bucks For Record-Breaking Scores"
In April, I explored the controversial art of tool-assisted speed-runs, a practice of harnessing a computer to help a gamer run through a video game in the most freakishly perfect way. We posted a video portion of an amazing "Super Mario 64" run dashed through by an American gamer who would give me an interview, but not his name. He said his piece. And voicing the skeptic's perspective, "Zelda" speed-runner Mike Damiani told me, "It's like tasting a bit of the dark side. Can you really go back to making legit runs after you've had this much power over a game you thought you mastered?" "Gamers Divided Over Freakish Feats Achieved With Tool-Assisted Speed Runs"
In May, I attended a Manhattan loft party for "Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis." Throughout the year, I attended many PR-driven events and often struggled to get a good story out of them. This one is my favorite because of how a trash-talking, Diddy-smooth gamer calling himself Hollywood brightened the scene and mopped the floor with everyone else who tried the game that night. "I'm the Achilles of Ping-Pong," he boasted at the time. Others would recall this as the article that broke the news that the "Table Tennis" engine would power the next "Grand Theft Auto," but I remember it more as the piece that provoked Hollywood's aunt to track me down the next day to tell me the whole family was so proud of its son. "The First Rule Of Ping-Pong Club: Talk About Rockstar's Table Tennis Game"
Did you know there's a secret underground resistance of French McDonalds employees who try to sabotage their employer? I didn't either, but found these guys while trying to get to the bottom of a McDonalds-hoax video-game story that was making the rounds. The more I dug, the crazier the story got. "Video Game Chastising McDonald's Business Practices Too Good To Be True"
In June, we considered doing a list of the 10 most influential games of all time. But everyone does that. So we decided instead to make a list of the 10 most influential gamers of all time. No one had tried that. It was debatable if such a thing should even exist. Games may be interactive, but do gamers really have influence? "Playa Rater: The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time"
Also in June, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed. I am a video-game reporter, so as soon as I heard the news, I wondered what Kuma Reality Games would be doing abou
A link to an MTV site? That is geek cryptonite!
My eyes, my eyes! I feel so hip and cool. I no longer care about the difference between ed, vi, and emacs! Good God what have you done?
For the other two or three of us old-timers who have no idea what this post is about, I took the liberty to look up the terminology.
Buda: a town in central Texas
Rooster Teeth: a company who puts video-game-related cartoons on the net
Machinima: "We just write scripts and then use videogames to act them out. It's a new style of animation that some people call machinima. It allows to make weekly pieces of animation with a small group of people." --Rooster Teeth website
DISCLAIMER: Yes, I am bored and avoiding my inlaws on Christmas eve.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Link tells me to goto mtv.co.uk. Is it broken or what?
I like muppets.
I don't think anyone should be surprised that the new Xbox sales are lagging behind the first one's.
6 0&name2=XB&type=2
...
... Maybe not the most successful platform in the world, but it is profitable and reasonably popular ...
That used to be true, but since the XBox 360 has gotten it's supply problems taken care of it has been selling better and has amost recovered from the bumpy first several months.
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=X3
. Or that the two weeks before Christmas there are giant stacks of unsold Xbox 360s at their local Frys as of yesterday.
Show me a system which has been out for a year and doesn't keep their system in stock over the holiday season
The benefit of being an established system is that your supply problems have been worked out and you can ensure a supply of Millions of units for the christmas season; if the XBox 360 was sold out it would show remarkably bad management.
You would think the obscene flood of marketing money would get Microsoft something better.
Outside of Japan they seem to be doing pretty decently
""Show me a system which has been out for a year and doesn't keep their system in stock over the holiday season ...""
It's been pretty hard finding a DS anywhere the last couple weeks. Hard to search around quite a bit.
As someone stated, working as intended.
I work for Best Buy, we move tons of 360s, but we have probably 2-300 on hand. Every single day we get more in. I'm told Microsoft has guaranteed we'll be in stock throughout the holiday.
Works for me.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer