Entries Tagged 'Humour' ↓

One of the most amusing features of this industry is the fanboys. On every forum they strut their stuff as the world experts on everything. Yet in reality they know very little, just what they glean secondhand from the internet. And they all want to grow up to be game designers, yet they have no idea just how few game designers there are in the world and how much dedication and sheer hard work it takes to get there. They don’t even know what a game designer actually does.

A feature of the fanboy is their irrational love for a brand of game console. An unconditional love that will suffer no criticism, no matter how fair and how slight. A blinding love that prevents them seeing any virtue in any other brand, no matter how much it is deserved. A part of this love comes from their emotional and financial investment in their console and the games for it. This represents the bulk of their income and the bulk of their leisure hours. Another part of this love comes from the fact that they haven’t discovered girls yet. When they do, and this can happen as late as their 20s or even 30s, they desert their console overnight for a new love that is even more demanding and even more expensive.

Another feature of fanboys is that they are keyboard warriors with unbounded aggression and disdain. This is all down to hormones and adolescence. Their bodies are telling them that they are men yet society tells them that they are still children. So they strut their stuff online, where they can’t be seen, like they are on some tribal rites of passage. Not realising how ridiculous they appear to those who are older and wiser.

There is much fun to be had from fanboy baiting. When the slightest insinuation will start a flame war imagine what a deliberate, well placed insult will do. They take the bait hook, line and sinker. In fact it is so much fun that I am sure that a good percentage of what appear to be fanboys aren’t fanboys at all. Just wind up merchants having some good sport.

But these fanboys serve an important function. They spend every penny they can on this industry. They are also the self appointed schoolyard experts who inspire many of their peers also to invest in gaming. And they are the people who create the online buzz that is so exciting and which helps to make this industry so dynamic. So don’t mock them too much.

It is inevitable really. The Wii gesture controller can involve far more athleticism in gameplay than the joypads of non gesture interface gaming platforms. Add to that the addictive quality of games that sometimes has people playing for longer than they ought. Then the competitive nature of gaming. Then older and less fit players not wanting to be shown up by younger generations. And you have a recipe for problems.

Of course people will learn as this becomes more of a part of popular culture. But in the meantime it is giving the popular press a field day for articles and has even led to the creation of websites  cataloguing people’s Wii stupidity. Imagine what is going to happen when there are a few million balance boards out there.

All this is good for the gaming industry. It has the real world talking about us. And the only negativity is people’s own stupidity. Which is a universal factor of life anyway.

Funny and incisive video.

The Church of England is a business that is in terminal decline. People prefer other brands of superstition and now the government has mass media it no longer needs the church to keep the populace under control.

So when Sony used the interior of Manchester Cathedral in their game Resistance: Fall of Man you would have thought that the Church of England would be happy. For once the inside of one of their buildings would be seen by a large audience. But no, they showed their complete detachment from the realities of society by having a big whinge.

And now they are at it again. The Very Rev. Rogers Govender, dean of the cathedral, is whingeing that the game has been nominated for a BAFTA (not that a gaming BAFTA has much credibility). He should be rejoicing. The decline of the Church of England is such that one day his cathedral will find a better use. As a car park, a shopping mall or maybe as a mosque. So the game will be an historic religious relic to remind of the days when such an important city centre site could be wasted on the irrelevant frippery of a Church of England cathedral.

He really should get out more.

So are you a fan of cucumber sandwiches and tea at the vicarage or do you follow the eminently sensible view that religion is the root of all evil (well, most of it)?

Sega have a great competition. You write an advert for Sega Rally on your vehicle and send them a picture of it. They pick the best photo and the winner gets a rally experience, a PS3 and a copy of the game. Done well this could get advertising slogans seen all over Britain. The problem is that they only have 5 submissions on their website. So either they forgot to tell the public or nobody wants the prize.

Maybe I should go and get my Caterham dirty and apply my marketing mind to a slogan. A rally experience could be fun.

So have you tried any zany marketing ideas? And did they work?

We are just approaching the time of year where we see that great annual British event in the video game business. I refer of course to the hijacking of a truck load of whatever is the hottest product this year. Will it be a truck load of Nintendo Wiis or maybe Halo 3s this year? We will see.

Whatever it is you can’t sell a 40 foot container of stock at a car boot sale. So it must re-enter the trade distribution channel somewhere. And that re entry will be completely organised well before the hijack.

Do you keep a pair of ladies tights in your drawers to pull over your head when you are out earning your Christmas bonus? Tell us about it and we will keep your IP address a secret. Honestly.

This picture is doing the rounds of the gaming industry. It depicts Ian McDiarmid playing the evil Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films. However it bears an uncanny resemblance to a long serving games industry person, hence the picture doing the rounds.

So who in the industry do you think this is a dead ringer for?