Life Sized Gears of War Lancer, Oh Gosh

August 11, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 4:51 pm

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Imagine that, the USD $139 Gears of War 2 bundle includes a life-sized plastic gun that goes “zoom zoom bang.” It comes with a removable handle clip and an adjustable side-handle but… in the end… it’s a plastic toy gun manufactured for adults.

Gears of War 2 is “Mature Audiences” only but apparently that doesn’t mean these adults aren’t ready and willing to go out and buy a bundle that comes with a collectible plastic weapon. It’s listed as an Amazon top-seller and plenty of mature audiences are going to be chasing each other around the house going “boom boom, I got you” this November.

Seriously, isn’t this just going over the top in terms of stupid toys? Somehow people seem to think this is “cool,” but how many would be straight-faced walking into a Starbucks and seeing a 40 year-old man sitting at the table sipping apple juice while playing with his GI Joe’s and He-Man action figures?

In my mind, this is a piece of junk that’s going to end up in a box under your staircase or packed in the attic within a month or collecting dust hiding from your grown up friends. But who am I to judge, Amazon #1 top-seller says it all.

Community Expands: Team Fortress 2 Has a BlogCommunity Expands: Team Fortress 2 Has a Blog

The Internet has given us a communication mechanism which allows developers to better understand their audience. You can use community sites to market your content and your brand but you can also use them to better understand your market and bring your strageties and progress to your fans.

Valve Software has taken their latest successful franchise title Team Fortress 2 and followed it up with a website or “blog” which can keep their fans “in the loop.” Teamfortress.com will, no doubt, be the launch pad for much hype, community offerings and up-to-date news about the TF2 game and any updates.

“Now that we’ve settled into regular releases of content, we’ve found ourselves wanting a better way to talk directly to the TF2 community about the state of the game and some of the reasoning behind the choices we’re making. Our hope is that this blog will accomplish that, and give everyone some better insight into our development process as well.” (teamfortress.com)

Now, there is a great chance Valve will use their new launch pad to talk about upcoming games and lead you to demo’s and downloads to the TF2 title; they already link to the valve store to purchase the game. But, blogs bring in users searching for fresh content about the game and give official word to kill any bad rumors.

Call it marketing, call it journalism or developers notes, there is nothing wrong with having one more resource which represents the voice of Valves TF2 development team. Congradulations guys!

Wii Friends Codes, Not PerfectWii Friends Codes, Not Perfect

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo has gone on record with his thoughts of the Wii friends code system. He’s a father, with a daughter, so he’s letting his own personal judgment get in the way of a good community built game system.

In talking about the open access of the Internet he said, “I as a father do not feel like allowing my daughter be engaged in that kind of world.” He’s more inclined to protect his children from the dangers of the Internet and random (often insulting) people by requiring a 1:1 paring with real friends.

For many gamers the Wii friends code system is far from perfect. It’s so far from perfect its a barrier to entry and any form of fun on the console platform. Nobody is against protecting their children, a parent will be the first to admit they’re desire to protect their kids over all else, but clearly someone isn’t thinking outside the box on this topic.

The only way to protect your children is to enforce a large numeric key which you must hand deliver (or e-mail) to your friends in order to play? We’ve got more creative enforcement in child safety on our TV sets using the VCHIP which allows parents to password protect certain television programming.

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