More than a year ago, I wrote this here in this very blog:
"A few friends and I built a site dedicated to games on the iPhone."
I was referring to a little iPhone gaming site we had built, called Slide To Play. There were four of us back then, with one guy doing the majority of the writing. Our pace was pretty leisurely, releasing a few reviews a week.
It's remained my side project, but over the past year, I've watched something amazing happen. The site started to get traffic. We then started to get some sponsors. Then we were able to get some freelancers, and were able to produce more content. And so on.
Well, the most gratifying event in our site's existence happened just yesterday, thanks to GameSpot. The announcement was made public that GameSpot is now covering mobile games, and editorial content, at least iPhone game reviews, is coming from none other than SlideToPlay!
I'll be honest. When I started building STP, and even after it launched, I didn't have an iPhone and didn't really plan on it. It didn't seem that important; I'm not an editor after all. But just a little exposure to some of the games on the system changed my mind. I got myself an iPhone and have been a believer in its gaming capabilities since! It can handle an intense combat flight sim in the form of FAST to flawless ports of old stand-bys like Myst and The Secret of Monkey Island or ports of great new games like Peggle or completely addictive simple pick-up-and-play games like Flight Control and Harbor Master and everything between.
I was a little skeptcal at first, but I gotta say, it's really hard to put down the iPhone: it doesn't hurt that it's always with me packaged into a phone I'd need all the time anyway.
Regardless, I'd just like to say thanks to GameSpot for giving us an opportunity to expose to a new audience all the cool things you can find on this platform! Keep an open mind and try it out!
Someone tell Collin that the TGS design looks fantastic, fun, funtastic, and fun.
We released an update to the GameSpot forum search today. The changes were made to provide more reliable search results and make the forums perform a bit better.
The searches are now running on the Sphinx search server. Sphinx is designed for full-text searches and is a perfect match for the forums. Because the searches are running on the Sphinx server they no longer cause general forum slowdowns when a large # of searches are done at once.
If you are interested, there are a few tips & tricks you can now do to get more specific search results.
The "|" character allows you to do an OR search. e.g., search for: mario | zelda
The "+" character allows you to require a word to be part of the search. e.g., search for: (mario | zelda) +time
If you surround your search term in quotes (") then it will search for that exact combined term. See the difference between: of legend and "of legend" You'll notice that The Legend of Zelda is not included in the second search.
Good luck & good searching!
Sorry about the huge gap in between emblem uploads. I got distracted by Comic-Con work but I just finished up a batch of E3 emblem assignments.
The franchise has been around for to long producing the same beat-em up genre game since 1997. The most recent Next-Gen version called Dynasty Warriors 6 was fun and had better graphics but didn't live to my expectations.
Then I get a hold of Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires for the 360 and I can say this is what I wanted from the franchise. Strategy, improved graphics, all the characters, create a character, and you choose the path of your character.
I know I'm weird for liking this game as much as I do but the game provides more to just beat'em up. Playing on Normal and Easy are very easy on all levels (the strategy, fighting and all around game play) but as you go into higher levels, they do get challenging as you keep playing.
The game is also has easy points for the 360 if anyone is willing to invest some time into it.
Would like to thanks Crimsonhead16 for showing me this game (he is on my friends list on XBL and I noticed that he was playing it). He and I do like the franchise alot.
Here is what a bunch of us former GameSpotters have been working on.
Sometimes, in my travels of the internet, I come across something that I must share with the world.
This is one of those times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UChQ5QPTYXo
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/oh-snap-cc-red-alert-3-hands-on/326/
An old-school GameSpot reunion. I love how Jeff pretends like he's meeting Greg for the first time.
Update your files accordingly.
...goodbye.
Boy, that would have been awfully obtuse, wouldn't it?
I'm going to do my best to avoid turning this into a massive weep session. I've already started and scrapped writing this message more times than I can count, so instead of putting endless thought into this, I'm just going to say what I feel and leave it at that.
The five years I've spent at GameSpot are arguably the most important years I've spent in my life. Prior to this gig, I'd never had much of a real job. When Jeff and Greg and the rest of the crew back in 03 gave me--some skinny, 21 year old punkass who'd never done anything but freelance for a few scattered sites--a legitimate chance, I'd never envisioned that this would turn to be the job that defined me, that gave me a place and a career. I had no idea that I'd actually make some semblance of a name for myself here. That anyone would actually give a crap about what I did or what I wrote. I still find the notion kind of unbelievable, actually. Reading all the messages people have been sending me since the word got out has been utterly mind-blowing. It's one thing to enjoy what you do, but it's quite another to know that others enjoy what you do. It's gratifying, and I'm thankful for it.
I could probably spend the next several hours giving individual thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way, but most of them know who they are and have been thanked in more personal fashion, so I'll skip the acceptance speech from hell. Instead, a general thank you to the staff (both former and present) for letting me be a part of the dream that is/was GameSpot. Also, thanks to you, the reader. I'd be nothing if you folks didn't come back time and time again to read the junk I put out, and I can't tell you how thankful I am that you did.
Leaving completely sucks, and believe me when I say I'm in no way joyful about my departure. Well, OK, that's not entirely true. There is a certain sense of...freedom that I'm feeling now as I envision an endless string of pantsless weekdays. Still, if I'd had my druthers, I'd have probably rather stayed precisely where I was, doing what I was doing. But circumstances don't always work out the way you'd prefer, and things change, often not for the better. My time here was finished. I was conflicted about that notion going into the holiday break, and that notion turned into fact with startling clarity as soon as I came back from break. It was a frightening and painful experience to let it go, but I had to. If you love something, set it free, and all that junk. I don't think this one's ever coming back, though.
Of course, I'm not going to disappear into obscurity--at least, not without a fight. You'll probably start seeing my name start appearing on bylines relatively soon. I'm not doing anything full time just yet, but we'll see where the wind takes me. In the meantime, if you need to get in contact with me for any reason, my new e-mail address is alexiconofscars@hotmail.com, and if you want to read my assorted ramblings about whatever, I am keeping a personal blog at The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. Stop by sometime if you want to read about what I think of practically everything except games. I'll give you a hint: I hate all of it.
And lastly, let me just make one thing as crystal clear as possible. I hold no ill will, issue no blame, take no umbrage with any of my former co-workers on the edit team. These guys are some of the hardest working, upstanding, straight up cool mother****ers I've ever met in my life, and as long as they're around doing their thing, GS will continue to live and breathe--there will still be a soul there, underneath whatever ridiculousness might be on the surface these days. There is no GS without those guys. The GS content crew is a family, and no one can change that.
Before I duck out, a few stats to chew on from my time here:
Number of reviews written: 733
Number of video reviews produced: Somewhere around 100
Number of video features appeared in: Dozens
Controllers broken: 7
Debug consoles broken: At least two that I can remember (sorry Ricardo!)
Number of console launches experienced: 5 (not including N-Gage and Gizmondo, which absolutely, positively don't count)
Number of weekend birthdays spent at the office: 2 (thanks PlayStation 3, Wii and Rock Band launches!)
Number of E3s covered: 5
Number of hours of sleep lost while covering said E3s: 280
Number of delicious sandwiches consumed during work hours: Too many to count
Pounds gained over the last five years: 45
Favorite review ever written: It's sort of like choosing your children, but I'd have to say that Super Mario Galaxy was probably the piece of writing I was most proud of just for clarity and overall quality. For pure comedy, while Big Rigs is obviously the fan favorite, I think my Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green review was my favorite, mostly for the opening paragraph, but there are some good chuckles elsewhere, too. My only regret with that one was that it was published before I'd learned the skill of brevity.
Favorite video piece: Regarding Robocop. Tim Tracy took my hours of ridiculous footage and turned that thing into something magical.
Worst review ever written: Read any of the first five to ten reviews I did for the site. They're as boring as they are barely informative. I was still learning the craft at that point. I think I've gotten a touch better.
Review that caught me the most flack: Probably Advent Rising. I will still never understand what anyone saw in that game. It was like retarded Star Wars with a broken frame rate. Now there's a box quote for ya!
Biggest editorial regret: Never giving Burning Questions proper closure. What can I say? I snapped.
Biggest non-editorial regret: Lack of travelling, specifically to Japan. Would have loved to have gotten one TGS trip in.
Thing I'll miss least about GS: Apart from the current unpleasantness, I'll say the commute. Nothing sucks more than driving an hour through traffic to work every day, especially when you're accustomed to carpooling and then suddenly end up having to do it all by your lonesome. *cough*
Thing I'll miss most about GS: The dozens and dozens of awesome people who have come and fled over the years that helped make GS a terrific place to work during their time. You know who you are.
And with that, I bid you all a fond adieu. It's been real.
--A
Hello there! For reasons that are probably obvious to most of you, I'm not going to continue posting to this blog. If you'd like to keep up with me, I can be found at the following address:
http://blog.jeffgerstmann.net/
If you are after things like "what Jeff thinks about games or music or movies or gas prices" or "points-related video," it will appear on this new personal site for now.
Like many people I've awoken from Blog hibernation -- it's all been said better elsewhere, but after listening to the HotSpot and watching On the Spot, I wanted to weigh in. I worked at GameSpot for almost 5 years, and I can say with complete certainty that the editors at GameSpot are incredibly hardworking and honest and would never allow outside pressure to color their judgement. That's not to say that outside pressure doesn't exist -- it certainly does, and as the industry grows that pressure becomes ever more intense. But I know that the remaining editors would all walk if they truly were pressured into altering the way that they have covered games for 11+ years.
ffwd.com "pronounced FastForward"
blog.ffwd.com
ffwd is not a social network! it's a brand new site where you can easily discover and share all the best videos from all over the web. try it out today...
here is the official press release:
ffwd launches private beta
Founder of revolutionary social music service (iLike) sets sights on video
November 13, 2007 -- NewTeeVee Live, San Francisco 7:30AM PST, November 14, 2007
Recently funded San Francisco startup, ffwd (pronounced "fast forward"), started accepting applications today from potential beta users. The beta program will begin on November 30th, 2007 with 2,500 users and last for at least 6 months. The announcement was made at NewTeeVee Live and the instructions for applicants were posted at www.ffwd.com.
All beta users will have access to a full-featured version of the service and will be invited to give feedback on the following components of the product roadmap:
* Online, cable and broadcast content syndication (millions of channels)
* Tracking favorite videos of friends across multiple social networks
* Pushing recommendations to your TV or mobile device
Select users will also be invited to preview features "in the labs" and participate in the product planning process.
Patrick Koppula, former co-founder/COO of iLike & GarageBand.com and now CEO of ffwd, will be available throughout the day at NewTeeVee Live to discuss the program. Please email press@ffwd.com or call 415.873.3881 to schedule an interview.
For more information:
http://www.ffwd.com
We are in the last days of June. The future looks bright for gamers. The only problem is how to enjoy all of the spoils of summer 07 without having to take out another bank loan. The PS3, X360, and Wii are now all here. Microsoft had a yearlong head start over the two. I own a Xbox 360 and a Wii. I am getting a job when i get back home from vacation and i have $200 right now. I am saving up for some x360 games and a playstation 3. The xbox has been good to me in terms of games. My xbox has been bad to me. It's broke twice and to my disdain it seems to have happened right after my warranty flopped on both occasions. There's another $100. So I have spent over $600 on my xbox and it doesn't even come with bluray. Aside from that, the games are good. Sony has suffered eminsely because of their lack of exclusives. Microsoft has a lot of exclusives coming. Mass Effect, Halo 3, Bioshock, Splintercell, etc. Now Sony isn't doing bad, they're just not doing as good.
The Wii has turned out to be very fallacious. The wi-fi is burdensom for one, but the main problem is that the controller just doesn't work that well with many games. Zelda worked well with it, but I didn't really like it. It was a good game, but I'm tired of being handed the same thing in a different box. The same thing goes with Pokemon which is one of their biggest franchises. Zelda TP and Pokemon D/P are great games, but I just don't care anymore. I bought both games and havn't finished them. I'm sick of fighting the same cliche group of bad guys after world dommination. Most of all I'm sick of GANNON! The third party games just don't work on the Wii. Now I am excited about Metroid Prime, SSB, and Mario G, but Nintendo either needs to drop most of the third party games or revamp the entire game and make the controls actually intuitive and unique, not just some mindless waggy motions.
The lazy and outdated graphics also get on my nerves. Some of the games are passable, but most of them are just plain ugly. A lot of the gamecube games look better then the Wii games. RE4 on wii looks better then most of the games and it basicly the same thing as on the gamecube. The only difference is that it WD compatible. Nintendo is doing great from a business perspective. That is really the only thing that matters to them (not calling them greedy thats just how business works), but I feel that in order to pull in non gamers they've let the gamers, who put them where they are today down.
Now I don't know about how much money Microsoft and Sony has raked in. I know neither of them are nearly as good as they hoped for. Nintendo is doing great. My conclusion is coming from the perspective of a non-fanboy video gamer. Nintendo has imo been as I said very fallacious. Sony has some great looking games coming out like, but I think Microsoft is winning the war right now because of Sony's lack of Exclusives. The war is nowhere near over, but I doubt Nintendo will have their "revolution".
On This Day in GameSpot History
Happy Holidays!
Wow - what a Q4! We're finallly live with the 4th and final pillar of the CNE group... FilmSpot! The most bad-ass-gangster-off-the-wall-freestyle site about movies, communities, and the american dream!
We got a call from Nintendo telling us that the Wii was only a block away from the office. Previews editor Brad Shoemaker and executive producer Ryan MacDonald ran downstairs to catch the Wii delivery on tape. We thought it would arrive in an armored truck, but then we heard the familar jingle of...
an ice cream truck!
And Brad takes delivery of the Wii!
Got any more Wii boxes in there?
Rich, Jeff, Alex, and Greg in the studio getting ready for the live On the Spot Wii marathon.
Brad heading to the studio with the Wii.
Rich reading a letter from Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime on air.
Let's get this box open and start playing! Check out GameSpot's "We Just Got A Wii Marathon" right now.
I personally am a hardcore airsofter, but do you even know what that is?
Here's a link to a very useful Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft
Many paintballers look down upon airsofters, there's two reasons for this. 1. A lack of understanding and 2. EVERY AIRSOFT GUN PERFORMS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, (for instance, someone who has only experience with a $20 spring gun or mini won't really think of airsoft as incredibly painful) unlike paintball guns that all hurt about the same , airsoft guns are all very different. The pain could be as insignificant as a small sting, or as bad as you having a bb sized open wound in your leg because your friend with the $600 gas powered sniper rifle thought it would be funny to shoot you just for the hell of it. Big difference there...
Spring guns and low powered electrics= CRAPSOFT (hurt very little)
Multi-hundred dollar Automatic Electric Guns, "REAL" springers (high end shotguns, snipers), Gas BlowBack pistols and such=AIRSOFT (make you cry and bleed)
MY POINT: "Real" airsoft is played with high end guns, not what you see at WAL-MART or the local sporting goods store
I strongly suggest that if you are reading this you go to this link (here it is again for your conveinience)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft
Airsoft is an intense, adrenaline-rich game that I am junkie of. Paintball used to be fun, but now it's all about this speedball arena crap that doesn't even make use of tactics or skill. Most people don't know that airsoft has been around for a hell of a lot longer, it just didn't become popular in the US until recently, before it was just an Asia and Europe thing. Airsoft is not played in a backyard (that's crapsoft) it's played in a indoor field, woods, recreated battlefield, or a cqb setting (S.W.A.T. kind of battle)
I even have an airsoft armory in my closet...
AIRSOFT COLLECTION
ICS M4A1 ($350 Full metal AEG)----My primary , HURTS LIKE NO OTHER!!! (18 shots per second @ 370 FPS w/ .2g (chronoed))
UTG AK-47 (My first AEG, $150)
UHC Super 9 V2 Sniper Rifle (not a true sniper but my first competitive gun, $80)
KWC SIGMA SW40F (CO2 pistol, semi-auto, $130)--Sidearm
Taurus PT92 Electric pistol ($30, prime example of useless WAL-MART crap, doesn't hurt more than a pinch from your sister)
UHC S&W M405 ($40 another useless crapsoft)---First gun
And all the broken cheap pistols and LPEG's, may they rest in peace...( value, $5 )
Hundreds of dollars of gear, Marine digital camo BDU, load bearing and tactical vests, holsters, more camo, military helmet replicas, camo covers for military helmet replicas, goggles, masks, gloves, combat boots, BDU hats, utility caps, boonies, scopes, red dot sights, night vision (eventually), the list goes on...
Thank god for my summer job to pay for it all...
As you can see, I'm crazy for airsoft
If you are, or would like to be airsoft crazy, let me know!
Why I put this on Gamespot I have no idea, hopefully there's someone out ther who'll benefit from it... I guess this is more for paintballers so that they can better understand Airsoft.
P.S. I wasn't trying to bash paintball in anyway, I was just stating a few thoughts of mine...
