Another email discussion between Niels ‘t Hooft and me at Bashers.nl. This month’s topic is the press release. PR agencies and game publishers seem to have this weird habbit of sending them of for every single not-so-relevant bit of “news”, of with loads of errors and semi-translated English. The coming week the four days installments of our discussion will be published. (Note: the post will come online 8:30am every morning).

See: Januari 26-29, 2008. ‘David en Niels in gesprek over persberichten’.

26-1: Part 1 (Niels ‘t Hooft);
27-1: Part 2 (me);
28-1: Part 3 (Niels ‘t Hooft);
29-1: Part 4 (me);

A couple of days ago I went to a primary school to talk about games with 26 kids. It was hilarious and it was a real eye-opener. All the clichés are true. All 9/10 year olds play games, all own either a Nintendo DS or a Wii. Boys like soccer games, girls like animal games. I wrote about my adventures for Dagblad De Pers. There only seems to be a .pdf version of my story (see page 14): “Een tien plus voor ‘Mario’”. In addition I did a small review of EA’s Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Not a game I would recommend.

And, before I forget, Happy Birthday Dagblad De Pers!! For two years now the only quality and very free Dutch daily newspaper is letting me write about games. What more could one wish for? I am still extremely excited everytime I file story for De Pers and I honestly hope our strong relationship will continue for many, many years.

How Dutch right? Talking about game prices being too high. Well, that’s not exactly what I wrote for last monday’s newspaper. The story started with a simple question: “Are games too expensive?”. I interviewed Xbox’s Paul Naber and Codemasters’ Jurrie Hobers. They both think prices are rather low considering the significant risk developers (and publishers) take developing next-gen console games. If their numbers are correct, and I have no reason to think otherwise, then they’re right. There’s only one winner in today’s game industry. We call her Nintendo.

The story is online: “Waarom betaal je eigenlijk zoveel voor een nieuw spel? – Goedkoper dan naar de film“, but please do download the .pdf (see page 14) which has fancier graphics. I learned a lot from writing this one, I hope you do as well.

Much to my own suprise my Wii still worked. Following up on some tips I tried the puzzlegame World of Goo (on WiiWare), great game. I wrote a piece about it for today’s newspaper: “WiiWare biedt onontdekt vermaak – Online pareltje van snottebellen“. In the article I discuss why WiiWare is important for Nintendo and what Nintendo’s overall goals are with the Wii. From the piece:

World of Goo is de ideale gamesnack. Niet te moeilijk, niet te simpel. Het houdt de aandacht vast en biedt genoeg uitdagingen om de aanschafprijs van 15 euro meer dan te rechtvaardigen. Maar belangrijker nog: het toont hoe interessant het online-aanbod begint te worden ten opzichte van retailverkoop.

By the way, did you know that BO has a Wii? From the NYT:

“Mr. Obama said he’d have his hands full attempting to rescue the American economy. But he has gotten in a little practice in bowling lately on the Nintendo Wii his daughters received for Christmas. Mr. Obama, who famously struggled in bowling during last year’s Democratic primaries, said he performs better in the video game.”

You might have heard, last month ‘my’ game magazine GMR ceased to exist (as well as the GMR-online website). There is some news about it at Bashers.nl. GMR’s sudden death is quite a blow. Not so much for me as well for Dutch game journalism, the GMR staff and its freelancers. At the same time one of GMR’s competitors (GamesTM) also quit. One can discuss how and why this happened, but the end of the line is that another quality print magazine about games is no more. And that’s just sad.

For the last issues of GMR I wrote three pieces, listed below. I wrote them during my stay in Boston (mostly November 2008). The first article is a profile on my MIT colleague Jesper Juul, on his new book and his thoughts on the field of game studies. The second piece is about the trip I made to Funspot, the American Classic Arcade Museum, a.k.a. Gamer Heaven. The third is a studio profile on Lord of the Rings Online developer/operator Turbine Inc., located in Westwood (MA). I had a great time during that particular visit.

- ‘Game-onderzoeker Jesper Juul – Ik speel, dus ik besta‘. In: GMR. 4.1, 2009, page 26-27.
- ‘Funspot – Een roadtrip naar het American Classic Arcade Museum‘. In: GMR. 4.1, 2009, page 20-21.
- ‘Ontwikkelaarsprofiel Turbine Inc‘. In: GMR. 4.1, 2009, page 34-35.

Because GMR folded I decided to upload the remaining set of articles and some older pieces. Check’em out:

- ‘Nieuwe Businessmodellen – Hoe vaak wil je betalen voor games die je al hebt?‘. In: GMR. 3.6, 2008, page 14-17.
- ‘Een interview with Kai Huang‘. In: GMR. 3.5, 2008, page 14-15.
- ‘Leipzig Games Convention 2008 – Gemütlich Gamespektakel‘. In: GMR. 3.5, 2008, page 26-27.
- ‘Ontwikkelaarsprofiel: Gearbox Software‘. In: GMR. 3.5, 2008, page 32-33.

For the first time in years I took a proper Xmas vacation which involved lots of gaming. Before doing so I wrote an article for Dagblad De Pers (published Monday December 29, 2008) on how to talk with gamers during all those new years receptions. I talk about the lack of Wii hardcore titles and of Activision-vs-EA discussions. Best of all, the frontpage of De Pers had quite a wicked introduction to my piece:

I do think that’s funny. The article is here: Tips voor tussen de oliebollen – ‘Ik heb lak aan de economische crisis’. In addition, I also did a (very) small review of my favorite shooters for 2008: “Schietend het nieuwjaar in“. To keep it short: Left4Dead > Gears of War 2 > Resistance 2 > Call of Duty 5.