December 3rd, 2008 — Games
A year ago this week, game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann lost his job. After 11 years of overseeing editorial content at GameSpot, after earning a reputation as one of the most honest and most entertaining reviewers in the video game industry, he was let go.
The gaming community thinks Jeff lost his job because he gave Kane & Lynch — a shallow, foul-mouthed travesty of a game, a 6.0 review, at a time when its publisher, Eidos, had just spent thousands on an elaborate wall-to-wall advertising campaign.
The story seems simple enough. Jeff embarrassed a major GameSpot advertiser and lost his job. But a year later, it’s still just a story. Eidos assures us that Jeff’s firing “was purely for internal reasons” and was not related to any publisher or advertiser.
Both parties have signed legal agreements that keep them from talking. Gerstmann and GameSpot have moved on, but gamer suspicions remain.
Eidos was widely regarded as a bullying, sleazy company, but there was no hard evidence to prove it.
With legal agreements in place, we’ll never really know if Eidos was involved in Gerstmann’s termination, but this time we’ve caught them red-handed.
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December 2nd, 2008 — Links
November 29th, 2008 — Links
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Not the NYT's finest hour
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The shoppers broke the doors off their hinges and surged in, toppling a 34-year-old temporary employee who had been waiting with other workers in the store’s entryway. People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid the man. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.
November 28th, 2008 — Links
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A lot of people dismiss the Austrians as "Libertarian Kooks," right before their predictions come true. Radical free market economics will never be popular, but these guys were predicting trouble when everybody else was celebrating. Maybe there's something in here worth listening to…
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Perhaps the greatest moment in the history of Internet memes. Rickrolling has been a fad on the Internet for a year or so. Get people geared up to see an exciting or salacious video, encourage them to click on it, and send them to a video of Rick Astley instead. This parade float did it during the Macy's parade, featuring the REAL Rick Astley. It doesn't get much better than this.
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Sothy Eng is one of our favorite contributors at Spotted. He specializes in surreal photo-enhanced treatments of Lubbock architecture. Good stuff.
November 23rd, 2008 — Links
November 21st, 2008 — Links
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Cooking Mama : Mama Kills Animals invites you to prepare a thanksgiving feast using just your mouse, plucking and stuffing the turkey and then wallowing in the resultant bloodbath. The aim of the endeavour, “Urge Majesco to make a vegetarian recipe version of Cooking Mama”.
November 21st, 2008 — Games
Geek hobbies take a lot of heat these days, but it’s hard to think of a hobby that has been maligned as thoroughly as Dungeons and Dragons.
The largest gaming convention in the world is GenCon, originally held in Lake Geneva, Wis. - the birthplace of D&D. Lake Geneva was home to the game’s creator, Gary Gygax. This year GenCon decided to honor Gary by collecting money for his favorite charity, specifically the Christian Children’s Fund.
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November 20th, 2008 — Links
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"For years, you people have been ripping us off…"
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There were hot girls at the Digg party! Is the economy really that bad?
November 19th, 2008 — Links
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Isn't this the kind of thing we have a Navy for? “Last month I wrote a paper giving warning of the possibility of an attack on an oil tanker and of the consequences if international shipping began to react, avoiding the route via the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal and instead going around the Cape of Good Hope.
The longer route would add up to three weeks to the delivery of goods from Asia and of oil and gas from the Middle East to European markets. Someone will have to pay for that extra time – very probably the consumer. For Europe and the eastern seaboard of America, this inflation is a real possibility.”
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"Nobody wants to eat a sea kitten."
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"Hello, recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist! We're Six Apart (you know us as the nice folks who make Movable Type or TypePad, which maybe you used for blogging at your old newspaper or magazine) and we want to help you."
November 15th, 2008 — Links
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Expect performance issues and server queues as old friends (and recovering addicts) return to Warcraft to try out the new toys. Expect to get left in the dust by your guild mates as alpha players rush to be the first to hit level 80. Expect to lose sleep and "repurpose" money from your Christmas kitty as you buy the game for friends and loved ones. And finally, expect bitter, jealous blog posts from Internet columnists who are too cheap to buy the expansion right away.
