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Syncopation in the Super Mario Bros. theme
Nothing like a good music theory blog post to get me going.
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Foursquare versus Gowalla, round two
A year ago, two exciting location-based social games launched at South By Southwest Interactive, the annual geek-fest that is something of a mecca for web nerds. After playing with both down in Austin, I wrote a blog post entitled A look at Foursquare and Gowalla. Although the post didn’t generate a ton of discussion, it is still consistently near the very top of my most-viewed-posts stats. A year ago, location-based social games were something of a novelty — now, they’re the hottest thing going.
So, I thought I’d post a follow-up, letting you know what’s changed, why these two games may not be as similar as you think, and which I personally prefer.
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http://iphun.tv/
iPhone game reviews with the awesome @seanbonner.
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A look at Foursquare and Gowalla
Two highly-anticipated, location-based, IRL-style “games” for iPhone were launched at South By Southwest Interactive this year, and I thought I’d take a few moments to report on my experiences with each one.
First up is Foursquare, a sequel of sorts to the popular Dodgeball mobile tool, which was purchased by Google a few years ago and then killed very recently. The second new iPhone game is Gowalla, and it comes from my good friends at Alamofire. The two have a lot in common, but as you might expect, it’s their differences that are interesting. Let’s get into it…
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Online Advertising without Douchebaggery
> Say you’re EA sports, makers of the Tiger Woods videogame franchise. And you see a video on YouTube, where some kid is mocking you for a bug in the game that lets Tiger walk on water. Here’s exactly what you do.
Pretty funny, and smart, stuff.
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Playing Columbine trailer
New documentary on video game controversies. Want to see.
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Touch Arcade
A nice looking blog about iPhone/iPod touch gaming.
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Retro Gaming on real backgrounds
Awesome.
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Blik now has Super Mario Bros. Wall Graphics
If I had some kind of game/rec room….
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Favre chosen for Madden ‘09 cover
Clearly, EA is trying to shed the Madden brand of the cover curse.
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Bungie to split from Microsoft, become independent company
Ahh, full circle feels good. After a few years of playing Marathon, I remember sitting in a little theater at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, watching on a projection screen as Bungie introduced their next amazing Mac game — called Halo — during Steve Jobs’ 1999 MacWorld keynote address. Jaws everywhere were hitting the floor in astonishment. Of course, it was only months later that Bungie got bought by Microsoft, who was developing a gaming platform called xBox, and the Halo series became the single biggest reason for its success. It took two years for Halo to finally hit the Mac (and Windows), and the sequels were XBox only. Here’s hoping this means we’ll see Bungie titles on non-Microsoft platforms in the future.
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Halo 3 preview on the IMAX tonight in Seattle Center — or, nerds invading my ‘hood
If you’re a complete nerd and you live in Seattle, you can catch a sneak preview of Halo 3 on the IMAX screen at Pacific Science Center tonight. I can pretty much spit on the Science Center from my apartment, and I won’t be there. That shows you how much I care about Halo. But, if you do, I’m sure it’ll be cool.
Now, if they were showing a Halo 3 edition of Red vs. Blue, I’d totally be there.
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EA officially backs off of Mac releases
It’s one thing to not release your games for Mac. It’s another thing entirely to stand on stage with Steve Jobs Himself™ and promise you’re going to release your games for Mac, and then not do it. How lame.
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Wii’s Guitar Hero III Les Paul unearthed
I want.
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MyFox Milwaukee: Nintendo Hand-Held Child Molester Target
Unbelievable. TV news can be so absurdly sensational, man. This station did an entire piece on how the Nintendo DS could be used by “child molesters” to communicate with your kids. They don’t mention a single instance of this actually happening, but they do have the police on hand to discuss the matter, anyway. They do blame Nintendo, because they don’t adequately warn parents about this risk, even though the DS’s manual instructs parents to talk to their kids about the possibility of strangers starting “Pictochat” conversations with them. It’s incredible this can even make it on air. How is this news? Is this really an “investigative report?” And even if it qualifies, was there any good reason to do said report? Ridiculous. Honestly, I hope someone hangs bird-flipping moonites on these guy’s building. Via Nathan.
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Guitar Hero Coming to the Wii
Hell yes.
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Hivelogic Radio Show: Stevie Case Interview
Dan Benjamin interviews my former highschool classmate Stevie Case, one of the first hardcore girl gamers and the first professional video game player ever. After becoming famous for her Quake skills, she became a level designer and co-founded a video game studio. She’s also well-known for TV and magazine appearances, including a spread for for Playboy. Today she works for Tira Wireless. Four years ago or so, Stevie just sort of dropped out of the public spotlight (by her own volition), and this is really the first she’s been heard from in a long time. It’s a great interview even if you haven’t followed her career like I have. She’s very articulate (she was an almost freakishly brainy girl in highschool, as well) and has a lot to say about the mobile industry, the iPhone, and what’s it’s like to be “internet famous.” There’s also a cool story about how she knows Dan Benjamin — and it’s related to a little website he co-created called Cork’d. Fun stuff.
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Kongregate: New Free Online Game from Happy Cog
Great looking site, featuring a bunch of free games from Dan Mall and the Happy Cog crew.
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Even adult children tug shopping heartstrings
“Unbelievably, I once again find myself among the legions of parent desperadoes unable to obtain the one thing their kid wants to find under the tree…my son is 25 YEARS OLD!” Funny column from Cathy. On a related note, I gots me a Wii. Booyah!
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Curse Gaming moves to Django
Curse is apparently a very popular gaming website (I’m not a gamer, so I didn’t know it) that pushes over 500k visits an hour — and they’ve just moved their entire site to Django. Congrats, guys!
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Firefly is back…as a MMORPG!
I’m not much of a gamer, but as far as I’m concerned, any extension of the Firefly ‘verse is a good thing.
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Video of me playing Wii Tennis aganist David Ryan (and winning)
Proof that the Wii will make you look like an idiot. Also see the video in story context.
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Review: Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) | lawrence.com
Dan’s verdict: “One of the greatest gaming experiences of all time.”
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Hardware Review: Nintendo Wii | lawrence.com
Dan’s review of the Wii that showed up in our office the other day (see my Flickr stream for photos). Verdict? It rocks.
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Jacob steers the ExciteTruck.
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Jacob steers the ExciteTruck.
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Even the corporate suits have come to our lair to play with the Wii.
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Wii review software
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Wii review software
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830! How a carpenter got the highest Scrabble score ever.
The world record board includes “quixotry” on triple-triple. Sick.
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Seahawks’ Alexander out indefinitely; Madden curse strikes again?
It’s uncanny. Happens every year.
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Nintendo Wii: November 19th, $250
Not quite as cheap as I was hoping they might be, but still way cheaper than the competition and still well within my budget for a game console.
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SPACE INVADERS: video / performance
People sitting in an auditorium acts as pixels in this stop-animation video of a Space Invaders game. Too funny, and yet totally amazing at the same time.
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Wii Price Confirmed at $250 or Less
Color me sold. I’ll be playing with my Wii in no time (pun totally intended).
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YUI Tetris
Dustin Diaz, everyone’s favorite crazy white mexican, built a game of Tetris using the Yahoo! UI libraries. Color me convinced. The Y! stuff rocks.
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Wikipedia: The Lost Experience
The grand daddy of wikis has a page for The LOST Experience, the alternate reality game around the popular TV show on ABC. Looks to have all of the known clues so far.
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The Lost Experience (blog)
Another nice blog tracking The LOST Experience, the new ABC interactive game related to the popular TV show.
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The Hanso Foundation
The most significant piece of ABC’s new LOST Experience online games, so far, the official Hanso Foundation website is chock-full of interesting bits for viewers of the show and players of the game.
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The Lost Experience Clues blog
A blog covering found clues in The LOST Experience, ABC’s new online interactive online game related to the popular TV series. The alternate-reality games looks like it’s going to be an incredible example of creative use of the Internet for marketing.
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Gratis Network pays off again! Free PSP!
Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.
I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.
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