Every once in a while I get an invitation to get early access to a game. Sometimes this means coming to an office in The Netherlands, but sometimes this also means traveling to some part of Europe. Much to my delight I was asked to come and see Rockstar’s new sandbox game Red Dead: Redemption. In London I got to see an extensive playthrough of three missions followed by the opportunity to ask any question I wanted. To be honest, I was somewhat skeptical about the game. Cowboys? How can an openworld game in the Wild West be interesting and provide some kind of meaningful play?

My first impression has been a good one. Similar to Grand Theft Auto 4 a year ago, Red Dead: Redemption has some serious potential. Even better, this is a game I would like to play, which, in my world, is the golden standard. Dagblad De Pers published the story yesterday: “Dwalen door de eindeloze leegte van het Wilde Westen” (.pdf see page 13). The story came out exactly the way I had it in mind. My main angle was to focus on the openness of the game and to give the reader a hint of the incredible scale of the project. With the help of my editor the story came out exactly the way I envisioned it. Up to, hopefully, the next exclusive!

Today Dagblad De Pers published my analysis of Facebook as a (new) game platform. I enjoyed researching this, as well as writing the piece, as Facebook is in many ways such a new platform (compared to hardware platforms as the Wii or Xbox) and at the same time a very familiar one, i.e. hosting short & simple casual games. The article is online here: “Facebook maakt je trots en gelukkig“, but do check out the .pdf of the newspaper (page 15) which contains some Facebook game reviews, and nice pictures. The article also contains bits and pieces of an interview I had with Sebastien de Halleux, chief operating officer of Playfish. Playsfish develops games for Facebook and is quite succesful at that.

For Bashers I wrote a (p)review of Battlefield Heroes, the f2p (free-to-play) shooter for the PC. The game is still in beta, but there’s much to discuss. How will the social networking features be implemented, how will the project evolve, when will it launch? There’s already some discussion going on here “De enorme potentie van Battlefield Heroes“. As the title of the (p)review suggests, I think the project has some serious potential. We’ll see.

And also on Bashers, a link to an interesting VPRO documentary “Trendspotting San Francisco“. The docu is available online, so in case you’ve missed it, watch it!

As shown here, last year I contributed to the book “Digital Material“. It will be officially presented to the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (@ Utrecht University) May 15. My chapter is entitled “Empower Yourself, Defend Freedom! – Playing games during times of war” and is on war & games. It is published by Amsterdam University Press (the irony) and has chapter by the best and brightest Utrecht University has to offer, cannot wait to get a copy of my own! The book launch coincides with a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Department of New Media and Digital Culture of Utrecht University (which is my alma mater). Here’s the program:

14.00-17.00 Book launch and presentations, StudioT
Moderator: Ann-Sophie Lehmann
14.00-14.30 Official opening and presentation of first copy to Wiljan van den Akker (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities)
14.30-15.15 Presentations by selected contributors to the book
15.15-15.30 Break
15.30-16.15 Presentations by Geert Lovink & Florian Cramer
16.15-17.00 Presentations by Walter Langenaar & Audrey Samson
17.00-18.00 Drinks

And for todays newspaper I wrote a short review of Ninja Blade (Xbox 360), see the .pdf (page 13).

Last months I dug into the world of podcasts. While I have had an iPod for ages and podcasts have existed for years, the concept never appealed to me. Such a shame, because there’s so much valuable stuff out there. From lectures to book launches, and from game podcasts to political discussions, it’s all there. So when Niels from Bashers.nl asked me to do a Bashers-podcasts I gladly took him up on the offer.

In the 80 minute talk (which is indeed a bit long) we discussed GDC topics, America’s Army 3.0, Modern Warfare 2, the new Nintendo DSi and a range of other topics. I had a great time and I love the format. I hope there will be more opportunities to do this.

The podcast can be downloaded as a MP3 here, M4A here, or launch iTunes. There’s more information and discussion (on the podcast) at bashers.nl.

On a related note, last Monday I helped on a story for Dagblad De Pers on OnLive and wrote a small review of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Ultimate Edition (PS3), the .pdf is downloadable here.

The title of this blogpost surely will lead to a) a significant increase in my readership and b) moreee spam! The title refers to two newspaper articles I did today for Dagblad De Pers. The first one is a feature article on MadWorld (the “ultra violent” Wii game) and the second a short review of Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad (Xbox 360).

“Sega verandert de rol van de Wii als familieconsole – Geweld in de overdrive of: een Japanse Tom & Jerry”
&
“Onfunctioneel bloot in Onechanbara”

I tried my best to provide a fair & balanced point of view on MadWorld. Personally Im somewhat ambivalent about MadWorld. As I a game I enjoy(ed) it, it’s very well designed, engaging and fun. On the other hand, you are (at least I am) very aware of what you’re doing (mutilating and torturing bodies that is). The style of the game is very Tom & Jerry (i.e. cartoonish) yet also very gratuitous. The biggest question for me is not so much is MadWorld a good game (it is), but whether it will get away being the way it is, considering the current climate of policy crafters trying to ban violent games. For politicians MadWorld just seems to be another stick to slap people like me (who enjoy this kind of “adult” entertainment) with: “Look what kind of perverse stuff there’s out there”. Again, Im very ambivalent about myself being ambivalent (you’re still there?), I wish I could just enjoy myself with gratuitous interactive violence without that constant voice in the back of my head whispering: what kind of moral panic will emerge because of this game?. We’ll see.

And about the sex thing? Well games & sex don’t mix. Period. Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad sucks (No pun intended. At. All. You perv.)

Last week I visited Brands & Games in Utrecht. David Edery, author of Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business, did an inspiring keynote. I did sort of a preview of his keynote for Dagblad De Pers (March 9): “Obama’s campagne was een omslagpunt’ – Op de Xbox voor een Whoppermenu.” In the article Edery talks about the Burger King advergames and about research on advergames. I loved reading Edery’s book and recommend it to all those interested in advegames, but also in games for training.

Yesterday I wrote a short review on Popcap’s casual game Peggle (for Xbox Live): “Peggle: een zwart gat voor de vrije tijd“. I liked it, recommend it, but the multiplayer did had some more potential.

On a personal note, did some talks the last couple of days, two on games and one on Obama (new media & politics that is). The coming weeks there are some more, one on citizen journalism and two on creative industries (media work issues and such).

Wrote two articles on the Grand Theft Auto franchise the last weeks.

The first one on the new downloadable content (i.e. Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned): “Nieuw hoofdstuk voor downloads“. The article deals with the change in perspective in the new material. You meet old and new characters and see Liberty City, which is very familiar by now, from a very different viewpoint. +1 kudos for Rockstar games, I truly appreciate this new approach to downloadable material and enjoy the set of new character(s) — MC (Motorclub) The Lost.

A week later I previewed the DS game GTA: Chinatown Wars. Again I was impressed by the technological skills of the Rockstar team and can’t wait to get my hands on the final version. I played some missions and within minutes I felt like I was playing the game for days (which is good). Check out the preview: “Rockstar lanceert oorlog in Chinatown“.

What’s not to like about Little Big Planet (LBP). Its offline multiplayer is fun and engrossing, the level editor is quite powerful and the downloadable user created levels are sometimes hilarious and every once in a while brilliant. What surprised me was the initial rush with LBP reviews during the game’s introduction, a month ago.

In the article for Dagblad De Pers: “Little Big Planet – Levels maken met sokkenpopje” (also on paper, see page 19), I wonder how one can review a game which so prominently feautures user created content on launch. I would argue that one has to wait at least several weeks before the true collective intelligence of creative gamers is (or might be) unlocked. So let’s wait, see and play!

Yeah, all rumors you heard today are true. It is actually my birthday today. And yes, I’m also back in Amsterdam. Am I happy about that? What do you think? Honestly…?

For today’s paper I did an interview with University of Amsterdam PhD-student René Glas on the latest World of Warcraft expansion pack. It was an insightful conversation we had on hardcore versus casual WoW-players and on the merits of expansion packs. I also spoke with HKU lecturer Zuraida Buter who played WoW since the beta (respect!) and was happy to carry on with adventuring. The piece is here: “’World of Warcraft’ blijft groeien – Een knieval voor de massa”.

In addition I wrote a small review on the new Xbox 360 dashboard, XNE, and those dreadful avatars; “Geen interface, maar een ervaring” (the title was actually a remark made by my, sort of former now, GAMBIT colleague Jesper made about the new dashboard experience.

On related news, last week I posted a semi-academic review of Fable 2 (as blogged here). The article was picked up by various game blogs, such as Kotaku, resulting in quite some (insightful) comments and feedback. All I can say is: W00000t!

Another email discussion between Niels ‘t Hooft and me at Bashers.nl.

See: November 17-21, 2008. ‘David en Niels in gesprek over reviews’.
Part 1 (Niels ‘t Hooft);
Part 2 (me);
Part 3 (Niels ‘t Hooft);
Part 4 (me);
Part 5 (Harry Hol).

The discussion started with Niels reviewing the Xbox 360 exclusive Too Human in his newspaper (nrc.next) and fellow game journalist Harry Hol calling him out for not playing the entire game (but only the demo). That discussion started our email discussion and generated a massive amount of comments at Bashers.nl (almost all of them are of extremely hight quality). I learned a lot from this discussion and I will definitely rethink my own reviewing practices and writing style. Thanks for all those who commented!