The Knifefight Principle
So Figment has an idea for a social game with optional premium content. The basic concept is a multiplayer knifefight on the Facebook platform. Anyone can play free, but getting a knife costs extra. For a gold membership, he explains with an evil grin, you can actually bring a gun to a knifefight.
Posted in Los Angeles, New York City
Tagged casual games, Facebook, facebook games, Figment, IGM, Lexicon, Los Angeles, New York City, social games
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Booth Dudes
That’s it. When my studio goes big time, I’m hiring booth dudes for #E3.
—amandadadesky, via Twitter
Posted in Gaming Culture, Los Angeles
Tagged Amanda d'Adesky, e3, gaming, girls play that too?, Los Angeles, twitter
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Bouncy Castle
bouncy castle!, by Simpson’s Paradox
This bouncy castle at E3 was pretty awesome, but I wasn’t best pleased by the girls in short-shorts hired to bounce around.
Between New York and Los Angeles
I wrote this piece, Wanting, for TheSmartly a few months ago, but traveling between the two cities reawakens the same feelings.
LA and New York make me want. That’s not a transitive verb here, I don’t have something in particular in mind to want.
I just want everything. I look around, and I want better clothes, shinier hair, straighter teeth. I want a newer phone, with more apps, too, the paid ones that run smoothly and integrate perfectly, and the underground indie apps that I discover before anyone else.
Via TheSmartly (And I particularly like the article naming convention that titles this “Wanting Meg Stivison”)
Linguistic Circuits
I sent my parents my travel plans for conferences and conventions I’m covering this summer, and my dad wrote back:
Well done, Meg! Now add these phrases to your vocabulary:
(1) “Stop the presses!”*
(2) “But the people have a right to know!”
(3) “I have it on deep background that…”
(4) “Our readers want to know…”
You may now delete these phrases from your vocabulary:
(1) “Anybody need more coffee?”
(2) “It comes with French fries.”
*No one actually says “Stop the presses!” anymore but I don’t think “Login to the admin panel, and open a text editor for a recent post!” really has the same effect. Call it old-media prejudice.
Posted in New York City
Tagged being a real journalist, coffee, my dad, my family is crazy, New York City, travel
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Why I Should Never Talk Business
Potential Investor: So, the target market for this game would be guys with a high-end gaming rig and experience with MMOs.
Meg: Or would be GIRLS.
Red Bull Augmented Racing
When the demo for Red Bull augmented racing began at NYGaming‘s local games demo, I was just getting warmed up for a rant on how much I hate branded games. Corporate sponsorship almost always means a mediocre casual game, minus some gameplay elements and plus some extra annoying popups.
Still, I was attracted to the cyberpunk awesome of arranging Red Bull empties into a racetrack, scanning and filming them with a smartphone (iOS only, which seems more like a branding choice for Red Bull than a technical requirement), choosing a background, and letting the app creating a playable, unique racetrack.
The social element comes in when players upload and share their tracks, with the ability to race the ghostcars of friends and strangers. Of course, there’s the ubiquitous social leaderboard (guess there are some elements of a typical branded reskin), and the ability to like and share on Facebook.
In conclusion, I still don’t really like Red Bull. I don’t really like racing games. But the juxtaposition of empty cans of chemical energy, and the augmented reality pocket tech is way too cyberpunk to ignore.
Twitter meta-game Zeitheist also demoed at the NYGaming at AOL Ventures the same night.
Posted in Game Reviews, Gaming Culture, New York City
Tagged augmented reality, Game Reviews, games, New York City, nygaming, Red Bull
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Factually Accurate
“If we don’t get this content release out, I’m going to be like John the Baptist!” Harold pauses here, unsure if I’m following him. “Do you know who that is?”
“Yes. I do. You know what my dad does for a living, right?” I said, “And the answer is that he’s a pastor, not that he chops people’s heads off for me.”
Hockey Stick Growth
One of the speakers at TechCrunch Disrupt was David Karp from Tumblr, who was talking about “hockey stick growth”, massive increases in the users and site traffic.
I thought it would be hilariously meta to take a picture from the Tumblr talk and post it to my Tumblr. So I did.
But the client failed because there was too much traffic.
Posted in New York City
Tagged #tcdisrupt, blogging about blogging, meta, New York City, TechCrunch Disrupt, Tumblr
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