People love disclosure.  Ziggurat‘s lead designer helped me buy a cellphone when I first moved to Japan.  He also let me sleep on his couch for a month the second time I moved to Japan.  He eventually gave me that couch.  I’ve also slept on the couch of Ziggurat’s composer.

Reviewing cellphone games has the problem that modern day music reviews have for me.  The investment is so low why bother?  If the game doesn’t have a demo, it has to be less than 4.99.  Everyone’s made terrible decisions that cost more than 4.99.  If you are recommended a cellphone game that ends up being terrible you can at least blame the loss of a future coffee on that jerk.  I sure am mildly intrigued by Square’s efforts into the platform, but I’m also never going to buy them.  I have a 99 cent RPG on my iTouch, but I haven’t touched it.  It scares me.
I also bought that because someone recommended it to me.

In a waiting room yesterday I played my 88th game of Ziggurat.  I’ve had it for the six months I’ve had an iTouch, which isn’t even a cellphone but is certainly a better purchase than a Vita or a 3DS at this point.  It’s an iPhone minus the phone and a different shape because they had to separate the case market.  Ziggurat is still the the game I play when nothing is going to happen for the next five minutes.

You never move from the top.

In this 88th game of Ziggurat the sun was beginning to set, I suddenly thought about X-Men 2 for the Genesis.  That game features a pretty wonderfully weird explosion sound effect whenever an enemy dies.  The enemies in ZGGRT feature a pretty similar explosion sound effect if you manage to hit them in their expanding-contracting eye.  If you manage to hit them in the leg they don’t explode and tumble down the mountain.

To shoot them you hold your finger on the screen and move it horizontally.  There is no vertical (everyone I make try it doesn’t hear this part.)   Continue to touch the screen and your shot charges, however your maximum power shot comes from holding for about three seconds.  Past that and it goes to about 70% of potential size.  You’re never just holding the button down because that’s the thing to do (like say, Mega Man.)

If a bullet or an alien-robot touches you, you die.  That’s the only way the game ends.  It then and only then tells you how many of the alien-freaks you killed that killed everyone else.  It’s like running a mile, or doing anything with someone else holding a stop watch.  You are breathless, tired, and look at the other person, “How’d I do?”  A death scream is the only way the game ever ends.  Reading things about the game, and examining the ????  on the stat screen tells me that the game keeps introducing new elements to try and stop your last stand.

Thought went into every aspect of this (tiny) game.   The arch of the bullets, how  difficulty ramps up, everything had someone thinking, “How do I want this.”  Ziggurat is thoughtful.  It is a razor sharp realization of a game idea.  It’s 99 cents.  Buying it at worst lets you justifiably call me a jerk for not enjoying an experience that I have enjoyed for six months and continue to.

The video is told from the viewer’s point of view, which becomes very personal if you connect to your Facebook profile first. When homophobic bullying targets “Jen,” your real high school’s name will appear on a sign in the video’s opening, and supportive messages on Facebook will be attributed to you and your friends. If you have an Irish mobile phone number to input in the form shown in the image, you will receive two text messages asking for a donation. The rest of the world has the option to give at the conclusion of the video.

The equation is really clear: making a donation to BeLonG To is just like standing up for a classmate against bullies. Every viewer has the opportunity to personally change Jen’s life. The text messages give BeLong To a direct route into a potential donor’s pocket, where the cell phone and the wallet both live.

It’s hard to imagine watching Jen’s story without getting excited about the possibilities for fundraising video. It’s a glimpse of the future and it challenges us because we make fundraising video, and you because it’s your route to relevance. We believe that interactivity will only grow.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

• Google is YouTube’s corporate big daddy, and Google seems to give YouTube preference in search rankings – especially in video searches.
• YouTube gets a lot of traffic and if you tag your videos appropriately and truly use YouTube as the social media platform it is, you’ll get some of that traffic.
• For nonprofits, there’s a special YouTube Nonprofit Program just for you that’s completely free and has a variety of benefits.

Our client Shizumi Kodomo Dance Troupe is part of the nonprofit program:

 

Especially check out the “donate to this organization” Google Checkout module in the prime upper-right area of the front page (with the blue button). With this feature, potential donors can donate to you without exiting YouTube! Another feature we like is that you can create a clickable overlay button that shows while a video plays, not unlike the type of customized button MiniMatters can provide to include on our video players.  You also get extra options for customizing your page. All in all, it’s worth applying for.

It can take a while to get approved, but that’s all the more reason to start applying today.  And if you want to get started on developing your YouTube channel(s), MiniMatters can help.

At MiniMatters we provide a customizable button right on the video screen to create a seamless connection between outstanding video and fundraising results. This video has a great example of an action button that appears at the end:

When viewers click on the “Add Your Voice” button–a button we were able to customize to suit the content of the video and the organization’s branding–they have the chance to add their voice by making a cash donation on the National Network to End Domestic Violence. We’ve also found this customizable button is powerful in inspiring viewers of video to take other action, like registering for a conference.

If MiniMatters can help you use this tip or serve your other video needs, we’d love to talk with you at 301-339-0339 or via email at videos@minimatters.com.

The controls are about as good as can be expected with an on-screen D-pad and action button. Sonic CD smartly stays away from trying to use the accelerometer for any control scheme, but there’s really no perfect solution to porting a console platformer to the iPhone.

Read full news here.

I bought it. Blizzard, creators of such minor blips as “World of Warcraft” and “Diablo II,” are juggernaut enough to have basically made their game releases a reflexive purchase for those of us keyed into this particular niche of pop culture. For me, and I suspect many others, the process was no more complicated than, “Hey, the new Starcraft came out a couple of days ago. My paycheck just came in. I can buy this online and have it directly download to my computer. I will do that.” Kotaku, Gawker Media’s gaming blog and the most significant practitioner of legitimate video game journalism on the web, just reported that Starcraft II sold over a million and a half copies in its first two days, which is an awful lot, especially considering it costs $60. Blizzard’s most recent core release in the same genre of game, “Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos,” took a month to achieve these same sales figures.

To give you a broader idea of why Blizzard is kind of a big fucking deal, the first Starcraft game (which came out over a decade ago) has sold over 11 million units worldwide. The gigantic “World of Warcraft” had over 11 million subscribers at the end of 2008; these subscribers pay a monthly fee of $14.99 (stateside; Europeans fork over €12.99, or about $17) for the privilege of playing the game. Though Blizzard releases these games slowly – excruciatingly so for some – each one enjoys a practically slavish following. Some still champion the simplicity of “Warcraft II,” over its sequel, for instance. It came out in 1995 for MS-DOS.

So, basically, this explains why I bought “Starcraft II,” because I sure don’t spend much time gaming anymore. Which raises a couple of questions, actually!

The days – and nights – of my pudgy adolescence are long behind me. No more Entenmann’s donuts washed down with Full Throttle, one of those battery acid-colored energy drinks. No more 12-hour streaks spent on “Final Fantasy VII.” I work full time as a reporter now (meaning… weird hours) or have packed semesters at NYU. I have a lovely girlfriend who could not be less interested in games outside of Galaga, and I have a fairly active social life. Plus, comic books. There is very little time in my life for video games. Frankly, there isn’t a ton of interest either.

I’m definitely not at a place where I have a strong drive to invest hundreds of hours in a virtual world. I keep track of games peripherally, generally through Kotaku and the absolutely wonderful, intelligent reviews on Action Button, but actual playtime is pretty minimal. The recent “Batman: Arkham Asylum” ultimately took me about six months to complete, and some complained that it was too short. And certainly, if I was someone whose primary interest is video games, Arkham’s dozen-or-so hours worth of story would probably seem a little sparse, yes.

But I’m not that someone. That’s probably why I think “Canabalt,” a flash game that’s also available for the iPod Touch and iPhone, numbers high among some hypothetical bull shit list of the 21st century’s greatest achievements in gaming. It is simple, artistically sound, fun and fast. Maybe I don’t need my games to be artistically sound, all things considered, but I sure as hell need them to fulfill those other criteria. That’s probably why “Final Fantasy XIII” was an almost unthinkable challenge for me. Universally criticized for taking 20-30 hours to become Something That Is Fun™, FFXIII represents all that I no longer have time for. When it game out, I wanted to say, “hurgh, Final Fantasy twelve was so amazing and now they shovel us this garbage,” but frankly, there is no way I would play through FFXII now, either. In a sense, it’s kind of too bad, as I’ve long been a spirited fan of the series. I sold some old titles to get FFXIII when it came out with kind of a half-mast excitement and got so bogged down in the early stuff that I fled back to my 360 mainstays Street Fighter II HD Remix and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 — fighting games that can be picked up for a few minutes at a time. (To think I’ve played through Final Fantasy Tactics five times!)

This would all seem like some bittersweet epitaph for my youth if I wasn’t a happy, functional person now that believes games can be awesome without requiring literal days of your life. I suppose this viewpoint makes me a “casual gamer,” if that, in the eyes of the globules posting on, like, Smash Boards and IGN. Generally, casual gamers are disdained, because they drive sales up for Wii Sports Resort, which certain people creatures blame for the failure of whatever number-crunch starring a little boy with tits Atlus is publishing this year.

And that, really, is a bunch of garbage, because I still want a deep and crunchy experience with my games, I just don’t want to spend a zillion hours of my life on getting the game to become fun. I want a bloody fucking filet mignon, not some eight course slog that culminates in pheasant gizzard on greens or whatever. Christ.

I think this is what Tim Rogers wants, too, and he plays games better than you do, and is, like, a luminary or something, and more of us should value his opinion, because I probably would never have written all of this without devouring his work. (Blowjobs cease here.)

So, here’s the point. I bought “Starcraft II” because I think, based on my experience with Blizzard, which has made a few of these games that everyone buys, it can deliver a very fulfilling experience that will keep it relevant for the next 12 years. I will play it a total of two times this week, after work and when I am not with my girlfriend or at a bar, and then, maybe, a lot between August 10th and the 24th when I am visiting my family in Chicago with very little to do, provided the internet and my Grant Morrison library do not prove more interesting.

If Blizzard cannot deliver fun with these constraints, it is their fault, not mine. I guess I’ve lost $60 either way, though!

Picture by: Ellzo (via Halolz.com)

Second class that I take on wed nights I had to student teach, its was great everything went very well. I did alot of cooperative learning activities since that’s what the class is all about. But I wish that we learned this powerpoint stuff first in this class, since its one of the things that I think most people are familiar with coming into this class. Then we could break out into the other learning activities that might take longer to learn since we are just getting to know some of the programs. Like Podcast – - I think we are getting really close to the end of the quarter and people have alot more going on with it being spring and for most people that’s when all the big projects are due. I think this is also another program that most of the people don’t know much about so I think we should spend longer time on it. Just some feedback about what I have thought about the class. I guess I am just going on about my thoughts! Things to think about!

As many of you have already seen in a blog before this I joined Twitter, I have used it about 3 times since I have had it. And like Dr. Ransom said on my comment it is more to follow other people that you might not know or follow things that you are interested in. I think its a great thing for that, like we all saw in the voice thread, how you can tell someone about something and you can get responses from people all over. I also think its a great way to spread the word about something you might be doing or something that you are interested in. My friend from Fl is started to write books and I am going to get her on Twitter to spread the great news and get her books out there. If anyone is interested its little kids books.

There’s a lot of content there, and there’s a lot of content to both attack and agree with.  I figured Action Button’s review of America’s Army (written by a fellow named Brandon Parker, but keeping with Tim’s rambling style), is as good a place to start as any.

But first it’s important to understand the site.

Action Button is unique in that its reviews are entirely subjective, yet the scores tend to be objective.  If a game is fun but has some major faults, it gets a low score — but let’s be honest: most of the reviews on the site are the review equivalent of a judo chop to the neck.  It’s a site where a AAA game can get a 1/4 and a game you’ve never heard of can be perfect.  A review can go on forever and even devote multiple paragraphs to a single mechanic.  In a world where people are afraid to voice their opinions (because why should opinion matter, they think), Action Button is nothing but.

And as such, this means the review is open to ‘attack’, as any non-lukewarm review should be.  But I’m not going to attack it, per se (in fact, don’t be surprised if I don’t even mention it again), but rather I’d like to try and see why our opinions are so different.  Hopefully this will expose a certain je ne sais qua, a subjective tidbit that can make or break a game for someone.  And more importantly, if it can be found then the game can be approached with a new perspective — basically, I hope people who don’t like America’s Army will play it from my point of view and see if that does it for them.

So, let’s dig in.  The reviewer makes it clear that he’s not the militant type.  I, on the other hand, grew up playing shooters, reading Tom Clancy novels, and playing paintball (in between not liking and quitting other sports like baseball, basketball, and football).  He says if someone were to break into his house with a gun and shoot at him, he wouldn’t know what to do, and even if he had the chance to fight back, he probably wouldn’t.  I know enough about ‘military things’ to be intrigued by them, but I still wouldn’t know when to pull a cocking handle or how to load a magazine — and I’d have to agree that taking a life wouldn’t sit well with me either.  But put a gun in my hand and send a guy charging through a door at me with an AK-47, and I think I’d feel justified in pulling the trigger.  I’d probably miss, hit the door frame and get riddled full of 7.62 rounds, but I think I’d try to defend myself.

So going in you have two different personalities.  One is skeptical of ‘the man’ while one can’t wait to take special forces training (in the game, of course).  I know my M16 is not an M4, and I know I’m firing virtual 5.56 rounds.  Something inside of me gets all tingly when firing down a virtual iron sight.  I’d never want to be in the army, but I understand the myriad reasons other people do, and I find it extremely interesting to get into a similar frame of mind and jump out of planes with guns from the comfort of my computer chair.  I can’t go into detail about the reviewer, but it seems he does not find these things interesting.  It’s perhaps akin to my going to a car show with a car fanatic.  I don’t drive and I only know of cars that I’ve driven in racing games.  The car fanatic would be going nuts over a supercharger while I’d be ready to leave.

As a game that can’t get more army, being called America’s Army and actually being funded by the American Army, I think being a gun nut, an FPS nut, or a member of some armed force yourself is necessary for any enjoyment to be had.  Any.  At all.

Because I find it ‘fun’ to grab a sniper rifle, hunker down on a hill, and wait ten minutes to shoot at a tiny silhouette.  The tense, muscle-tightening rush you experience when clearing rooms with other people is amazing.  Knowing at what time and in which direction to parachute from a moving plane with several squads of players and then meeting up in the dark and moving in to attack a fixed position is like a drug to me.  Why?  Because this is the sort of thing millions of other humans have done and will continue to do for thousands of years, and I will never, ever, actually do it.  And I don’t think I’d want to.  But if a game lets me sit down and pretend that my squad is pinned down by automatic fire and we need to meet up with another squad in two minutes if we’re going to complete the objective, then by god, I don’t care if the game is a recruitment tool for Scientology, I’m going to play it.

There are lots of idiots in the game, lots of little glitches, lots of dominant strategies and ways to throw grenades into spawn points.  From a technical standpoint the game is unimpressive, and from an ideological standpoint the game is volatile — I have friends who won’t touch the game on principle.

But the sense of importance the game grants manages to create, under the right circumstances, a surprisingly smart and heart-pounding ‘simulation’.  I really am scared when I can’t see who’s responsible for the bullets pinging the dirt all around me, or in those several slowmotion seconds as an RPG-7 is readied and fired in my direction.  My breathing gets shallow when I throw a flashbang into a room and jump in, half expecting to shoot someone and half expecting to be shot by someone.  I really do feel sorry when we’ve all landed safely, but someone in squad 2 has landed right in front of the enemy and is shot dead.  When a grenade sloshes into the dirt next to me, my eyes widen as I command my in-game presence to scramble to safety.

To a degree, that makes me one of those ‘hardcore’ people.  They’re easy to find — browse through the server list in any online shooter and you’ll find servers where respawning is turned off, friendly fire is on, headsets are required, and the HUD is disabled.  Maybe it’s even labelled as a ‘hardcore’ server, and is run by some online gaming clan with a faux military name like ‘the 76th Bad Boy Brigade’ or something.  Call of Duty 4 for the PC is now almost entirely composed of these hardcore servers, and you’ll find even more intimidating people playing ‘mil-sim’ games like Flashpoint.

This is one of those rare instances where that lame phrase ‘if you liked ___ then you’ll love ___’, is actually true.  If you’re one of those people who points out why it’s stupid a certain character is carrying a certain fake weapon in a movie, and everyone turns and furrows their brow at you, then you will probably love America’s Army.  If you’re one of the people furrowing you brow, it’s not for you.  But if you’re willing to unfurl that brow for just one map, I guarantee you there is fun to be had.

I have a hell of a sore throat today and I am pretty much in first gear here. Hell, I am barely idolling. I don’t feel much like working today so I will be spending the afternoon sitting at my computer trying not to fall asleep. The following sites are what I will be entrusting my attention to. I think you should check them out as well.

The Final Fantasy Retrospective - http://www.gametrailers.com/game/4831.html – Compiled by GameTrailers.com, this huge 13 part look at every Final Fantasy game is truly a feat. With over 5.2 million views and a 9.6 average viewer rating, you know that there has to be something to this. If you consider yourself a Final Fantasy fan than this series is a must watch. The production value is high, the information complete and well organized, and you can obviously tell this was compiled by people with a true passion for the series. I am just hoping for a DVD release in the future…

Giant Bomb – giantbomb.com – The beautiful fallout from GameSpot’s firing of Jeff Gerstmann. This Beta version of giantbomb.com is presented in standard blog format, but is expected to launch as a full site this summer. Along with fellow ex-GameStop writer Ryan Davis, Jeff Gerstmann posts some of the best writing about video games you can find out there. The site also features a podcast called the Bombcast, and a series of videos entitled “How to Make a Bomb” which chronicles the development of the upcoming Giant Bomb full site and the set up of the Giant Bomb offices.

Retroware TV - www.retrowaretv.com – One of the best sources of retro gaming on the internet, Retroware TV has so much original content featured on it now that there is a new video nearly every single day. One of the newest editions, and among my personal favorites, is Norman Caruso’s Game Quikie and The Gaming Historian. They also have a relatively recent feature called Retro News Today that gives regularly updated news on retro gaming. Highly recommended!

Action Button - http://www.actionbutton.net – Not your typical review site. Featuring reviews of newer games, the reviews, mainly those by Tim Rogers, are more often than not long winded rants that tangent into a hundred seemingly unrelated directions that all meet at the end with a score. Clever writing and brilliant anecdotes abound.

Cracked.com - www.cracked.com/humor-tech.html – One of the funniest comedy sites around, Cracked.com frequently has funny articles about video games and video game culture in their Tech category. Stand-outs include The 10 Most Terrifying Video Game Enemies of All Time, The 10 Most Irritatingly Impossible Old-School Video Games, and The 6 Most Disappointing Video Game End Bosses.