Some content for ya’ll.

Early December I wrote a background article for GMR. Essentially it’s a book review in disguise. Consalvo’s terrific Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames served as inspiration for a piece on… well cheaters.

Last Friday I did a newspaper article on the RROD, or the Red Ring of Death. The Xbox 360 has severe hardware problems, but how big, nobody knows. Just to be sure, me neither… Check it out here: “Game Over voor de Xbox?”

That same day (Friday Feb 22) I did an interview which appeared in DAG, it’s about brain computer interface technology: “Neurokoptelefoon voor nieuwe game-ervaring‘. It’s also on page 9 of the paper version.

And, last but certainly not least, I had an interview yesterday with Management Team on recruiting gamers (as employees): “Online gamen is een goede teambuilding“.

Last Friday I wrote a small piece on gadgets for the Wii. There are quite some out there. Check it out here at Dagblad De Pers. In addition I did a small review on Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. That game sucked so much I had a hard time playing on my Xbox 360 for a week.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

“Now, if I fight on, in my campaign, all the way to the convention … I want you to know, I’ve given this a lot of thought – I’d forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I’d make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror” (Mitt Romney’s withdrawal speech).

Is this a glimpse of the upcoming Republican narrative (voting for a Democrat = aiding Osama) for the race to the Whitehouse or is every human being outside Utah happy that Mitt “today’s media are a cesspool of doom and dismay” Romney dropped out?

The race gets more & more interesting with two candidates vying for Popular Culture’s attention. There’s Huckabee’s Conan O’brien/Colbert/Stewart appearance (funny stuff if you ask me) and there’s this groovy clip for the Obama campaign (below). The only reason I would want to be a US citizen is to vote, only one time, in December. If there’s a US non-voter out there, I want to change citizenship for one week in exchange for one week of universal health care. Good deal right?

Wrote a story for last Friday’s De Pers together with editor Arjan Terpstra on EA/Criterion’s new free roaming race game Burnout Paradise. Check this out: ‘Race van Angsten en Verlangens’. I played the PS3 version mostly and it worked like a charm. I had a blast playing through it. My personal problem with racers is that I get sucked into them, play them all day long and than all of a sudden I lose interest and never ever touch them again. I don’t think this will happen with Burnout Paradise though, they did a great job on keeping the game simple (pick-up-and-play simple). Now I’m just looking for gamers I know with a PS3, as of yet I don’t know that many.