‘Bike Hero’ viral video not a dud, but not a hero either thanks to ad agency Droga5 on behalf of Activision. A coworker pointed me to an article on Game Cyte giving some background on the video below. Good job on the video, but who the hell names their company drug 5. Droga translates into drug! Unless they are looking at viral and drug as synonyms it’s an odd choice for a company.

Yesterday morning I tried signing up as ad publisher on Ad4Games.com. I own few gaming sites and want to show more targeted advertisements, so this ad network seemed as a decent choice. I saw them serving banners on few other websites. When I tried to register, the town I live in is comprised of two words, as a result their system told me that only the following characters can be used “A-Z and a-z” (as seen in the image on the right). Seriously now?! The first two two word city names that come in my mind are Los Angeles and New York.

I contacted their support staff and my conversation follow:

[11:39] yvebts: Hello
[11:40] ad4game: hi
[11:41] yvebts: I am trying to register on ad4game.com as a publisher, but your system will not accept my city, because the name has a space in it
[11:41] yvebts: I can’t use - or _ because they are not accepted characters
[11:42] ad4game: just use no space
[11:42] ad4game: or write
[11:42] ad4game: space
[11:42] ad4game: we will adjust it
[11:42] ad4game: what is your website please?
[11:42] yvebts: OK. thank you
[11:43] yvebts: hivemindsgaming.com and clanmp.us
[11:51] ad4game: allright
[11:51] ad4game: i see you havent finished registering yet
[11:53] yvebts: I will attempt to complete the registration at a latter time. Thank you for you assistance.

Even though I know that I can send a letter to any one address in the US just by writing down the ZIP code and 4 digit extension, I wouldn’t write “space” in the name, because it will irritate me when I see it printed on the envelop. I have observed and have experienced the results of doing something silly like that and from people making assumptions. To top that, I have seen some really odd town names, so if they actually have someone who manually enters the address, why would they think of changing the town name?

Lastly, I tried registering last night and right before I typed this post. They still have not fixed this. As a company that claims to have been in the game advertising business for over 5 years you would think that they are quick to respond and fix issues in their system. Ad4Games.com, if you ever read this, if you have really been in the business for over 5 years just think about the number of publishers you have lost on. Even worse, the amount of revenue from advertisers you have lost on, because your advertiser sign up form has the same issue. I am not going to register until this is fixed. Probably eventually I will forget about your site and will not register at all.

BTW, what does “… been in the gaming industry for more than 5 years.” mean? You have been designing, developing, selling, promoting …. games?!

UPDATE (2008-10-27): It appears that the type of character limitations in the sign up form has been fixed. When I was signing up I noticed that Ad4Game had made a positive step in password security by mandating that passwords be alphanumeric. Good job.

Wow, just wow! This is the best game ad I have seen in very, very long time. Once again the Command and Conquer community is in for a visual treat. It looks like the upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has a great cast of actors.

I really enjoy watching this video. I really love the fact that there are references of other games, movies, media and personal work of the actors. The fact that the content of this ad was not limited to just the game makes it a great video ad, which can appeal to all generations of gamers. A video to be watched over and over again.

Good job EA and long live Westwood.

Westwood Studios was the company behind the Command and Conquer games franchise. It was founded in 1985 as Westwood Associates by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle and was based in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1992 it was renamed to Westwood Studios and it was sold to Virgin Interactive. In August 1998 it was was bought by game publisher giant Electronic Arts. The company was liquidated in March of 2003 by EA. At the time its staff numbered over 100 employees. You can read more information on Westwood Studios here.

Valve being bought by Google! That is a horrible thought, but there are number of web sites which are reporting this. Here are a few links:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-to-acquire-valve/

I decided to send Valve a quick email, and I think that everyone that is agains this happenign should do as well.

Good morning,

TechCrunch and TheInquirer are reporting a potential acquisition of Valve by Google.

Please say it isn’t so. I’ve been a fan of you company and games since you guys first started. I have been following your company and enjoyed your products all these years. An acquisition by google might seem like a financially good choice but technology and product wise it is not.

Valve has managed to remain financially independent and overcome a variety of obstacles all this years. Please do NOT give into the google idea. Be yourselves. Visiting Valve headquarters and working for Valve is a dream for many people. Don’t destroy your fan base.

Sincerely,

Alexandar Tzanov

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-to-acquire-valve/

You can email Valve at contact@valvesoftware.com, or contact the company in the following ways

Telephone:
425-889-9642

FAX:
425-827-4843

Postal address:
PO BOX 1688
Bellevue, WA 98009

The community has already started a discoution on the Steam forums.

Uwe Boll does it again. The “let’s make it into a movie” game cinematographer, this time around, has brought us Far Cry.

After watching the movie trailer, it think that it looks more than decent. In many people’s eye Uwe has the reputation of being the man with the ability to take a great game and turn it into a total shit movie. I have seen number of his movies and I do like his work. I have also watched interviews with him and at first he can come across as an arrogant prick, but he is “cool” and gets the job done, when others can’t event get off the ground.

Good cast also.

Last night, in the quick chat, on Abandonia someone said “This site should be renamed “dedicated to adventure games”.”. My response to this was “That’s what games used to be back in the day. Now they are all about is this shiny enough? Yes! Can we make it cheep and sell it quick. Yes. Then f**k quality.”.

Yes, games used to be all adventure. I love playing the old quest games. Today’s games are all about “pushing” the limits of the hardware, but when it comes to console gaming, this concept is just a “concept”. Unlike PCs, consoles cannot be upgraded, unlike PCs, you can’t swap the hard drive, CPU or video cad for a bigger, better, faster model. With consoles you cannot use your favorite brand of hardware. You are STUCK with whatever is the cheapest and decent peace of hardware that the manufacturer can trow in the case. There are adventure games, and there are few that are great, and there are some, which are awesome - BioShock, Half-Life and Half-Life 2.

To conclude I will simply quote something I read long time ago, but I am not going to bother looking for who the heck said it or where it was published. It went something like this: “Console gaming is retarding games and staling the rapid advancements in hardware.” To paraphrase this, back in the day hardware like CPU and VGU were constantly in the development process, because PC gamers demanded more and more power. But in today’s gaming world, the console has the majority stake in gaming, it is used by people who could care less about more power, and because there are 5 to 7 years between releases of new generation consoles, hardware manufacturers are not “pushed” to develop new, better and faster components as fast. Game developers are forced to retard graphics and functionality of games just to make them compatible with today’s console variation.

I am sticking to PC gaming, when possible!!

This video is hilarious. Be ware that there is adult verbiage in it. So, if such language bothers you - don’t watch.

Personally I hate dealing with players like this, unless it is my own clan mates and we are on the server for the sole purpose of screwing around. It is one thing having to put up with people that you know. It is completely different having to put up with a guy or a few, who decided to be complete dicks to everyone on the server.

I did like the trivia portion if it.

I came accross this video, while on my daily lunch break gametrailers.com session.

Is this video supposed to represent what happens when no one else will join your server, except someone random during a moment of incredible boredom, or while waiting for open slots on their favorite server?

I have been on both sides of the coin. I can say, it feels pretty much the way the video shows it. I am sure that most gamers, who play online multiplayer shooter games or have plaid at one point , not MMOGs, have experienced the same.

Kind of long and repetitive, but that’s the whole point.

Good job Lit Fuse.