Mike Flacy

I found Dan Hsu’s blog today.  It’s about his experiences as a gaming journalist at EGM.   Check out all three parts if you are interested in how advertising and pr folks influence coverage of the industry.

I was inspired to write a smidgen of a blog post about my limited experience with public relations influence over how games are reviewed.  VGT is a small fish compared to sites like IGN, Gamespot, and 1up, but our reviews warrant the same critical value on sites like Gamerankings and Metacritic.

In late April, I got an invite to a media event in San Diego for the Bourne Conspiracy game.  This entailed a $475 plane ticket, two night stay in the Hard Rock Hotel ($450), transportation to the event / airport and a party hosted by the development team with a open bar that dished out endless mojitos all night.

There were about twelve writers from other “small fish” sites that made the trip as well.  I wouldn’t be shocked if Sierra or High Moon Studios dished out $15,000 over the 3 days.  We got a brief tour of the studios and shuffled into the a couple rooms to get some hands on time with the game.

After the day trip, we were given some swag and shuffled back on the transport bus.  The group was told that we couldn’t report on anything that happened that day until after the game was released.  Our entire experience had essentially been embargoed until a point in time when a preview wouldn’t be newsworthy.  As I drifted off to sleep in my comfy Hard Rock Hotel king sized bed that night, I pondered what their actual intention was.

They wanted to dilute the overall review average by befriending the press that doesn’t get invited to these events.  I ended up giving the game 3.5 out of 5 stars, but the majority of the people at that event scored it 80% or higher.  I admit that I actually felt guilty about scoring the game on the lower end and pushed publication of the review for a couple weeks.

I certainly don’t regret going on this press junket.  It’s the type of event that the IGN’s of the world frequent constantly.  I met a couple cool writers and really appreciated the entertaining weekend trip, despite the plane ride.  It was also an enlightening look at how schmoozing can heavily influence the review process.  And somewhat disconcerting.

I was cleaning this weekend and came across one of my old high school yearbooks.  I’m not one to reminisce about high school on a regular basis, but it’s certainly handy for Facebook friend requests.  I can’t remember half the people that supposedly knew me back then.

While flipping through the pages, I came across a wilted, previously pink flower that I had kept.  I vaguely remember that a girl gave it to me, but I have no idea who it was.  I borrowed the idea from Gary Cooper’s character in Pride of the Yankees.  (Grew up on old black and white movies)  I find it utterly hilarious that I can remember the reasoning behind putting it in the yearbook, but can’t remember the person that gave it to me.

I’ve started to look at rentals in Santa Monica again.  Something close to the bus line when I need to go downtown.  Maybe Downtown too.  Craigslist is a myriad of options, but less actual solutions.  I’d really love to go somewhat car-less, but L.A. is such a car-centric town. Arrrgh!

I sat in a coffee shop today and browsed the music on a friend’s laptop. I browsed by albums for a while but eventually found Ben Folds new album by an artist search. I queued up the music and sat there listening to the tracks while sipping my Splenda-filled jolt of caffeine.

Of course all I had was my iPhone. The laptop in question was about 578 miles away.

I downloaded the Simplify Media iPhone app a couple days ago for free. (It’s free for the first 100K users and $3.99 afterward.) Install the SM app on your PC / Mac and it uses iTunes, Winamp or just directories to share music. Sync it up with your iPhone and you can listen to your entire music collection without having to transfer it to the iPhone. It streams the music through the net and the quality is superb. You can add up to 30 friends and share your entire music collection online.

It works great on the 3G network or Wi-fi. Don’t bother using it on Edge though. It also downloads album art, lyrics and artist info. One downside is that it takes a really long time to archive huge collections on the computer. If you have more than 5000 songs, go watch a movie while it indexes the music.  Simplify Media is also having some growing pains due to the massive popularity of the iTunes app as well.

I’m also starting to enjoy Stitcher.  It’s a neat app that organizes a ton of podcasts and broadcasts them in a radio format.  I don’t like the little ads at the bottom of the screen though.  It makes the app seem overly sluggish.  I’ll take a few more days with it before sending it to the App graveyard.

I loaded custom firmware on my PSP today, much to my own technical dismay. I tried using Gizmodo’s method, but it was complete crap.  I delved into the web and found other means. The PSP is easily the most useless of my portable devices.  Besides Skype, I really don’t use it for much else.  I’m going to try and download some interesting apps tomorrow.  Probably nothing as cool as the iPhone though.

I read an interesting article over at ReadWriteWeb yesterday about the release of Moveable Type 4.2.  Very cool information about combining social networks with the blogging platform.   The Action Streams are a self hosted version of Friendfeed or, to a lesser extent, Twitter.  BuddyPress also looks interesting but it’s still in development.

There is a lovely article about Twitter etiquette over at The Morning News.  I totally agree with the first rule.  I’ve been blocking Twitter spammers since the start.  Zero followers is better than 100 spammer followers.

I discovered TweetDeck yesterday.  The design is ridiculously productive, yet the web keyword feature can easily suck away hours of your life.  I watched the iPhone feed and started firing off helpful replies incessantly.  The outcome is another handful of Twitter followers.  It’s a fantastic tool to find Twitter users with similar interests.  It’s not bad for local connections, but Twinkle is still the king in that respect.

I also came across two moderately funny web items today. The first is Where is Bob? It’s supposedly the tale of a absentee IT manager.  It’s likely a viral marketing campaign of some sort as the writing is a bit too good and the stories are just slightly outlandish.  It’s still worth looking at for a laugh.

The second is a Hulu video of a short comedy called The Line. It’s about a group of crazy fanboys that sit in a line 11 days before some sci-fi movie opens.  There are a couple guys from SNL in the mix.  Jason Sudeikis is particularly funny as the movie theater operator.

I’ve been listening to Chopin all day for some reason.  Dead Polish piano players seem to increase my productivity on the writing front.

I took Chris Brogan’s advice today and beefed up my LinkedIn page a bit.  I added a bit of a summary and linked out to the RSS feed on this blog.  I also wrote a recommendation for a fellow writer.  I’ve really started to notice an increase in networking lately and I’m attributing it to LinkedIn, especially after adding so many contacts.

I’m happy with the blog design for now.  I keep tweaking it every day just a little bit, so expect to see small changes.  I’m also looking to add something new to the sidebar, but I’m trying to figure out what I should toss in there.  I’m really digging the minimalistic look right now, but I’m still missing something.

I also completed a quick video preview of Friend Book for the iPhone this afternoon.  It’s not out on the App Store on iTunes yet and it’s certainly worth checking out when it hits the digital streets.  Click the picture to the left or the Youtube link at the top of the page to watch the 3 minute preview.

Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to the makers of Braid.  The art direction is utterly amazing as you can see above.  A couple drawbacks are that it’s too short and costs too much ($15) on XBLA.  It would have been priced appropriately at $10.

I did the freak-out dance today in public when a bee landed on my arm outside a local coffee joint.  It’s not the manliest of movements.  It’s like the spider web freak-out dance but with more frantic running.  I stepped on a bee when I was about seven and I’ve been deathly afraid of them ever since.

I saw a man pushing a baby stroller with a toddler down the road today with his left hand and carrying a running weed trimmer in his right hand. He was either nuts or some sort of Nanny / Landscaper hybrid. Crazy or not, I drove away blissfully indifferent of the Cabbage Patch Kidnapper.

I tend to embrace my apathy. It’s especially fun to invoke during conversations. I’ve noticed that people automatically assume that you are of a differing opinion when clamming up; political and religious conversations in particular. For instance some liberal co-workers at my previous job thought I was a staunch conservative; all from adopting an apathetic stance. Truthfully I’m probably somewhere in the middle, but I don’t see the point in talking about something that I’d have to pretend I had the ability to change.

That’s the real beauty of apathy.  I don’t have to lie to myself about how much I should care about matters of supposed importance.  I get to focus on stuff that’s important to my little egocentric mind instead; work and play perhaps.  Everything else gets deleted from my brain after conversations end.  But on to more social topics…

I added a LinkedIn profile recently for networking purposes.  Seeing how my previous jobs weren’t exactly tech-related, I couldn’t beef up my contact list.  I strapped on my creativity hat and sent a mass-mailing to VGT contacts about adding me.  It will help me keep track of their job-hopping movements anyway.  I got about 60% to add me.  Not too shabby!

I also got in on the Ping.fm beta finally.  For those that don’t know, Ping.fm allows you to send the same status up to mutliple accounts.  For instance, I have it setup to send my status update to Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn.  It works with tons of other services as well (FriendFeed, Xanga, Livejournal, Blogger, WordPress, Pownce, etc…).  I have a beta code if anyone wants to sign up.

I’ve may have fallen into a Mobius Strip of writing endlessly until it’s time to sleep again.  I’m content to repeat that cycle over and over while my bank account gleefully greets the array of dead presidents being added every day.  The lucrative lifestyle makes me want to move again, perhaps up north for a few months.

I’ve been receiving an inordinate amount of Facebook friend requests lately; many from complete strangers.  No matter how many times I passively hit Ignore, they keep firing pleas at me.  Facebook desperately needs to add more options for my possible response.  Speaking of Facebook, the new look absolutely stinks.  It’s slow to load and I have to browse those stupid tabs to read someone’s page.

I’ve been playing around with the Flip Mino for a week now.  The video and sound quality is really excellent for the size of the camera.  It’s about the height of my iPhone, but skinnier in width.  I wish I had the camera when my sister and I filmed our Rock Band session a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately Mikey and Gerbil broke up after our three day World Tour in Rome, London and Paris.