Tag: Coffee Talk

Coffee Talk #267: Your Favorite Music of 2010

It’s time for more of your 2010 favorites! This time around it’s music…because you can’t stop the music.

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, following Scarlett Johansson to Jamaica to console her, dreaming about the MacBook Air, or Paul Pierce giving Nate Robinson a back body drop, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

It’s time for more of your 2010 favorites! This time around it’s music…because you can’t stop the music. This’ll actually be really good for me too since I shy away from modern music. All the indie-pop bands I loved in 2001 have broken up and the only new music I’ve listened to a lot this year is Infant Sorrow. Hopefully some of you will inspire me to buy some new tunes!

Now give it a go (please)! What was some of your favorite music in 2010?

Coffee Talk #266: Your Favorite Sports Moment of 2010

Let’s wrap up 2010 by discussing a few of our favorite things (raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens). We’ll talk about our favorite music, movies, and games of the year in the next few Coffee Talks. Today I want to hear about your favorite sports moment of 2010.

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Cafecito Organico’s El Salvador Rainforest Alliance, Scarlett Johansson breaking up with Van Wilder, or the Julian Assange defense fund, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Let’s wrap up 2010 by discussing a few of our favorite things (raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens). We’ll talk about our favorite music, movies, and games of the year in the next few Coffee Talks. Today I want to hear about your favorite sports moment of 2010. As for me, that’s easy!

LeBron James’ “The Decision” was the most fascinating sports event of the year to me. It transformed a generally loved athlete into a generally hated one. It showed that even super-rich athletes look like picnic tables when wearing red gingham-check shirts. It gave the world an all-purpose phrase — “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach” — which can be used for bailing out of drinking sessions, going to the toilet, playing with yourself, and more. “The Decision” offered drama, unintentional comedy, emotion, and more. I loved it!

Now it’s your turn. What was your favorite sports moment of 2010?

Coffee Talk #265: The Gaming Press Must Evolve or Die

I’m convinced that the videogame enthusiast press is at a critical junction. When I first started writing about games, a magazine cover from the likes of EGM, Game Informer, and Compuer Gaming World was a PR flak’s ultimate prize. That changed to website takeovers, with the big fish being IGN and GameSpot. These days…

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Cliff Lee going to the Phillies, Brett Favre’s streak ending, or Christina Aguilera’s naughty photo leak, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

I’m convinced that the videogame enthusiast press is at a critical junction. When I first started writing about games, a magazine cover from the likes of EGM, Game Informer, and Compuer Gaming World was a PR flak’s ultimate prize. That changed to website takeovers, with the big fish being IGN and GameSpot.  These days games are making big splashes on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in Entertainment Weekly, and during the Spike TV VGAs. Traditional videogame enthusiast outlets can’t compete with NBC, EW, or Spike TV.

Last night Uncharted 3 made an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra were on hand for the demo. Can you imagine Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yoshinori Kitase showing off Final Fantasy VII on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1997?!? Triple-A videogames debuting on mainstream television and in mainstream magazines is becoming the norm. Traditional videogame outlets have to change their approach or lose relevancy.

That’s what I think anyway. How about you? Do you think the Entertainment Weeklies and Jimmy Fallons of the world are making it harder for the IGNs and GameSpots? Will videogame outlets have to focus on follow-up articles on triple-A games instead of debuting them? Or are enthusiast magazines and websites fine the way they are?

Coffee Talk #264: Game Developers vs. Game Journalists

I have the utmost respect for game developers. I’m amazed by how hard many of them work and how much they put into their games. With that in mind, I hate when developers…

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the beauty of Buddha Bar, the Red Sox owning the MLB winter meetings, or why Winona Ryder isn’t bigger, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

I have the utmost respect for game developers. I’m amazed by how hard many of them work and how much they put into their games. With that in mind, I hate when developers accuse reviewers of “not getting it”? I understand that developers get attached to their products and it’s sometimes hard for them to take criticism, but it’s ridiculous when they think it’s some sort of disrespectful conspiracy.

Silicon Knights’ Dennis Dyack immediately comes to mind when thinking about this whole deal. More than any other developer, he has been extremely critical of game reviewers. (In some cases he’s absolutely right. In others, he sounds a little crazy.) When Too Human was met with mediocre to poor reviews, Dyack accused journalists of not getting it.

More recently, Warren Spector felt that game reviewers didn’t understand the camera in Epic Mickey. He told MTV:

This is a game that takes platforming elements and adventure game elements and role-playing elements and merges them. So we couldn’t tune the camera perfectly for platforming or for action adventure. It’s a very different camera style. What we did is try to find the best compromise in the moment and give the player as much manual control as we could. So we took the hardest problem in third-person gaming and made it harder by trying to accommodate two different playing styles.

And I will go to my grave, imperfect as it is, proud as hell of my camera team. If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they’re misunderstanding the game we made, it’s not for me to tell them that they’re wrong, absolutely not.

The thing is, I don’t think reviewers should give a damn that the camera tried to accommodate a variety of genres. They should give a damn that the camera takes away from the game’s fun and should convey that to their readers. At the end of the day, reviewers are gamers. They are responsible for telling their fellow gamers whether a game is enjoyable enough to purchase.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue. Should reviewers care about the developers’ technical goals when judging a game? Do developers have a point when they say that reviewers don’t get it? Lastly, can you please take away my nasty hangover?

Coffee Talk #263: Are Single Player Only Games Doomed?

In a recent interview with Develop EA Games president Frank Gibeau said, “Fire-and-forget, packaged goods only, single-player, 25-hours-and you’re out. I think that model is finished. Online is where the innovation, and the action, is at.”

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Carl Crawford on the Red Sox, congressional democrats turning on President Obama, or where the hell Eliza Dushku is, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

In a recent interview with Develop, EA Games president Frank Gibeau said, “Fire-and-forget, packaged goods only, single-player, 25-hours-and you’re out. I think that model is finished. Online is where the innovation, and the action, is at.” It certainly seems like most games have multiplayer or cooperative features — even games that don’t necessarily need them — but are pure single-player games doomed as Gibeau suggests?

While I don’t see pure single-player games being “finished”, I can see them becoming the minority. That would be kind of weird for me; I grew up playing loads of single-player games and my favorite genre, RPGs, is (mostly) a solitary experience. That said, there are a lot of younger gamers that grew up playing mostly multiplayer games. Perhaps the notion of a pure single-player game is dated.

What are you thoughts on the matter? Are single-player games finished? Will everything have a multiplayer or cooperative facet? Or will there be a robust single-player space in the future? Anyone else remember 2009 as being the year of games with unnecessary cooperative modes?

Coffee Talk #262: My Favorite Interview

RPadholic bsukenyan asked me, “Favorite person you interviewed?” That’s an easy answer! It was DICE 2005 in Las Vegas. I headed up to Activision’s private suite with my coworker Ryan. With each step I took, I got more and more…

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the Cliff Lee bonanza, Katy Perry changing her last name, or remembering Elizabeth Edwards, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

RPadholic bsukenyan asked me, “Favorite person you interviewed?” That’s an easy answer! It was DICE 2005 in Las Vegas. I headed up to Activision’s private suite with my coworker Ryan. With each step I took, I got more and more chills. Remember how excited you got when Hulk Hogan “Hulked Up”? That’s exactly what I felt like right before I interviewed Stan Lee.

This was the only time I’ve ever marked out during an interview. I’m cool with game developers, musicians, movie stars, television peeps, WWE Superstars, etc. Meeting a living legend like Stan Lee…wow. That’s something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. It was an amazing honor and I was so incredibly grateful that my career led me to a Stan Lee interview.

Out of curiosity, have you ever marked out when meeting someone famous? Who would make you absolutely lose it?

Coffee Talk #261: Has Apple Doomed the 3DS and PSP2?

In a recent episode of Pach Atttack starring Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter (I’ll give you a few moments to soak that all in), your favorite videogame analyst and mine (not really) said that Apple’s iOS is the future of mobile gaming.

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, if the NY Knicks have finally gotten past years or mediocrity, Verve Roasters’ Ethiopia Nigusie Lemma, or your holiday shopping, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

In a recent episode of Pach Atttack starring Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter (I’ll give you a few moments to soak that all in), your favorite videogame analyst and mine (not really) said that Apple’s iOS is the future of mobile gaming. In fact, he felt so strongly about the iPod Touch that he doesn’t see a bright future for Nintendo’s and Sony’s next portable systems. Check it out:

I think the ubiquity of the iPod Touch is cutting into the handheld market, I think the PSP was dead on arrival and I think the PSP2 is going to be dead on arrival. It looks to me like young kids are just as happy playing with an iPod Touch or a Nano. The Touch is cool, it plays games, plays music, they’re going to put a camera in it and you’re going to get all kinds of cool stuff.

The 3DS will prolong the handheld market for the game manufacturers, but ultimately, I think handhelds are in trouble. After the 3DS has had its little rush I think the handhelds will continue to decline.

What do you think of Pachter’s stance? Is he on the money? Or is he just talking out of his ass to get more attention? Will the multifunction wizardry of the iPod Touch beat out the sheer power of the PSP2 and the 3D wonder of the 3DS? Can’t we live in a world where all of them do reasonably well? Share your feelings like a Care Bear (please)!

Coffee Talk #258: Videogame PR Events and…Me

Back in Coffee Talk #250, RPadholic SlickyFats asked me, “Do you get invited to events or do you have to actively seek them out and invite yourself?” I wanted to answer that question in a Coffee Talk column to pull back the curtain on the videogame business and for self therapy.

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, your thoughts on the Grammy nominations, what Carl Froch’s wife was looking for, or Jayson Werth possibly signing with the Red Sox, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Back in Coffee Talk #250, RPadholic SlickyFats asked me, “Do you get invited to events or do you have to actively seek them out and invite yourself?” I wanted to answer that question in a Coffee Talk column to pull back the curtain on the videogame business and for self therapy. When I worked at Happy Puppy, GameSpy, Yahoo!, and G4tv, event invites were pretty much automatic. When I freelanced for high-profile outlets like FHM, GigaOm, Amazon, GamePro, etc., invites were pretty frequent. These days…not so much.

No matter what you’ve done in your career, PR people will forget about you once you stop serving a large audience. Their job is to promote their games to as many people as possible. Once you’re no longer useful to them, they stop calling, they stop returning your phone calls, they stop sending you games, and they stop sending you press releases. That’s just how it works.

Obviously this is a source of frustration for me. I’m trying to build and grow a web site. I need support from PR people. They control the information and coverage opportunities. On one hand, I completely understand where they’re coming from — I’m not as useful to them as I once was. On the other hand, I naively hope that people I’ve known for more than 10 years will help me grow my site. At the very least, I’d like to be invited to events that are miles away from my apartment. To be fair, I suck at self promotion and I hate groveling for stuff; I need to get over this in 2011 for the good of the site.

The good news is that I have several relationships with developers that many of you like. I will try to pull in favors for video interviews and stuff. Recently I was chatting with a pretty famous developer and he asked me what I thought about a recent press release. I told him, “I don’t know. Your flacks took me off the mailing lists. I don’t get your games or press releases anymore.” He was surprised and a little pissed off. He asked me if I wanted him to “fix” that situation. I declined. I’ll try to “fix” that myself next year.

So yeah, I get a fraction of the coverage opportunities I used to get and it kind of sucks. I’m going to try to change that in 2011. Also, I’m making a list and checking it thrice — I will never forget the PR people that still send me games, email me press releases, and invite me to events…nor will I forget the PR people that completely dropped me.

Thanks SlickyFats! This was therapeutic.

Coffee Talk #257: What Was Your “Rubber Soul” Game?

Although my dad played The Beatles’ Rubber Soul for me hundreds of times, it didn’t “click” with me until I got older. I’ve always loved music, but Rubber Soul changed my perception of what music could be. Is there a game you’ve played that did the same thing for you?

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Verve Roaster’s Guatemala La Maravilla, Taylor Swift dating the Prince of Persia, or Anne Hathaway acting topless, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

Although my dad played The Beatles’ Rubber Soul for me hundreds of times, it didn’t “click” with me until I got older. I’ve always loved music, but Rubber Soul changed my perception of what music could be. Is there a game you’ve played that did the same thing for you? Is there a game that changed your perception of what videogames could be?

As for me, there are two that come to mind…and they happen to be in the same series. Similar to music, I’ve always loved games. Final Fantasy VI (FFIII in America) changed my perception of what games could be. Until then, I didn’t realize that games could offer an interactive experience that combined an epic story, outstanding music, and deep gameplay — an experience that rivaled or surpassed what movies and television offered.

As much as I loved FFVI, I didn’t think RPGs could be as popular as action games or sports games. Final Fantasy VII changed all that. The videogame genre I loved the most hit the mainstream! Although I have my problems with FFVII, I appreciate and love what it did for the genre.

Now it’s your turn! What games transformed the way you perceived the medium?

Coffee Talk #256: Your First Videogames

It was cool watching you guys talk about your first videogame console in yesterday’s Coffee Talk. To follow that up, I’d like to know about your first console games.

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the NFL going light with player fines, President George W. Bush interviewed by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, or Christina Aguilera finding a new boyfriend (*sniff*), Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

It was cool watching you guys talk about your first videogame console in yesterday’s Coffee Talk. To follow that up, I’d like to know about your first console games. What was the first console game you ever played? What was the first console game you bought with your own money?

I honestly can’t remember the first game I purchased on my own. I do remember playing Videocart-1: Tic Tac Toe, Shooting Gallery, Doodle, Quadradoodle for the Fairchild Channel F. I was completely fascinated that I could play Tic Tac Toe with something other than a crayon or a pencil. In some ways it’s funny looking back at how enamored I was with digital Tic Tac Toe. In other ways it’s amazing how far videogames have come. Going from Tic Tac Toe to Heavy Rain is quite a leap. Ha!

Now it’s your turn! What was the first console game you ever played? What was the first console game you bought with your own money?