Yesterday I shared with you all a fine new addition to my daily reading. Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits is a simple blog. A blog about standing next to a videogame journalist and shouting really loudly that they suck. Well, now a games journalist is standing next to him and, well… yeah.

People Who Whine About Game Journalists Are Pricks is a blog seemingly about calling Ben Paddon, the guy behind GJAIF, a nob. It was set up a little while ago by somebody claiming to be Games “we post Pokemon porn so you don’t have to” Radar editor Tyler Wilde (though he very much denies this) who doesn’t seem to like the niche Paddon’s wallowing in.

One of my favourite posts so far, in what’s sure to be an entertaining exchange, was when PWWAGJAP posted “Ever heard of ‘œdon’t like it, don’t read it?’ Ben Paddon has not.” I enjoyed that post because, ironically, it appears the author has also not heard of this. Paddon has already replied to the matter, if you’re interested.

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After watching the great PAX East panel on “The Death of Print” (if you’re interested there’s a write up of the panel on Bit Mob) one of the ideas discussed stuck with me. Why do we, those who write on the internet, limit the way we share information?

The Promethium Marketing Group (composed of former staff writers of the Gamerscore Blog) are gearing up to release their first iPhone title. Tweet Defense is a confusing merger of both social networking behemoth Twitter and the handheld’s genre of choice, tower defence. However, rather than erecting mounted guns to fend off desperate stabs of social approval manifest in sandwich consumption live blogging, after linking your feed to your gaming profile, actively posting your own tweets buffs the stats of your weaponry, assisting in your leaderboard dominance.

Aside from Twitter functionality, it seems that the team’s first game offers little to the exhausted genre that market leaders Fieldrunners or Geodefense don’t already offer in well reviewed and established releases. While it’s perhaps innovative that small independent developers are looking for ways to better assimilate media convergence within a device like the iPhone, the inclusion of a gameplay system that actively rewards a player for increasing their own output of 140 character dross, seems both to introduce problems of high score balance and the encouragement of rampant, cloying self-promotion.

Titles automatically publishing updates as to gaming progress and prowess a la Unchartered 2 is one thing. Prowess tied and reliant on self-published updates is another.

Via: Joystiq

Tony Hawk, in an uncharacteristic whine, has hit out at the poor critical reception of Tony Hawk: Ride, claiming that “most snarky critics had their minds set before ever seeing/playing the game”. Placing blame on anything but the game’s developmental shift, Activision peripheral pressure or ailing stability of a series now a decade old, the skateboarding legend huffed with arms folded and metaphorical fingers plunged firmly in ears. “I’m proud of what we created; it’s innovative, responsive & fun” tweeted Hawk in justification of the 12th barrel scraping iteration of the franchise.

Personally, refusing to fork over £100 for a plastic board which appears to do little more than make standing upright more difficult, I am currently unqualified to make adequate rebuttal to Hawk’s claims. However, after reading several reviews from Metacritic’s fantastically negative cross section of gaming press, I feel as if primary experience would do little to change my mind that the shift from digital triggers to analogue sways was a disastrous direction for the once-grand franchise to pursue.

Gamers can look forward to similar reputation protecting tears from Shaun White and Kelly Slater some time in 2010.

Via: Eurogamer

Microsoft is claiming that around two million people have used their Facebook service within the first week. The service enables users to access Facebook through a special Xbox 360 themed interface. CNET is reporting that 10% of Xbox Live’s 20 millions members used the service, which is designed to bring social networking into the living room.

Never mind the fact that the interface is clunky and useless (and unless you have a keyboard, impossible to write on); who actually wants Facebook on their Xbox? I really can’t understand the attraction of having to sit in front of your TV to go on Facebook (although I don’t see the attraction of going on Facebook on any device).

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Speaking at the Future of Web Apps conference, Chris Abad,  CEO of Irata Labs (who brought you the incredibly annoying “Spymaster”) told developers that they should “incentivise the users to [market] for them”. If you’ve not heard of it, Spymaster was a pretty boring web based MMO which was linked to your Twitter account. Every time you did certain things in the game, it would tweet the action from your account. This gave the player more in game money, and made everyone unfollow you, because it was frankly really annoying.

This is of course a tactic that has been used before. Referral links are used by those sites offer you a free iPod if you to get 10 of your friends to sign up for a free trial of Netflix. They are also known for being a little more than dodgy and extremely irritating, a trend which continues here.

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As you all are no doubt well aware, the game Furry Lengends is in the late stages of development from Gamelion Studios. The studio is best known for bringing us such inspirational games as Funkyball Words, and Puff Me Up. What you may not know is that we at Negative Gamer have been blessed by being on the mailing list from the dev team for Furry Legends. Quite recently we received an email from them telling us we could get our name in a “visible place” in the game! This would be an honor beyond compare to anything you or I might possibly achieve in this life.

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Twitter really has changed E3 this year. Leaks spread in literally minuets around the world, news bursts out at a thousand tweets per second during a press conference, and even quicker than that; novelty accounts are started.

One of which, kindly pointed towards my direction by Gandy, is the Vitality Sensor’s new twitter. The sensor is tweeting some very insightfull stuff, such as; “IF MILO USED ME I ASSURE YOU HE WOULD KNOW MORE ABOUT YOUR VITALITY THAN YOU WAVING YOUR HANDS IN FRONT OF HIS DAMN FACE” and “PSST DON’T TELL ANYONE BUT REGGIE ACTUALLY STOLE ME FROM A HOSPITAL” (caps and all).

The levels of ridiculous in what I am trying to tell you border on the complex. If you’re reading this and it’s getting late, move on. Have a bath and go to bed. This article will still be here tomorrow.

Some actor dude called Ashton Kutcher (generic Bale clone) “challenged” CNN to get to 1,000,000 twitter followers in some weird PR shindig, piggybacking on Twitter’s huge success. Apparently this is something the cool kids are interested in.

Eager to jump on this new-media romp, EA tweeted that “1,000,000th follower will get a copy of every game EA makes in ’09 for their system and be featured in @TheSims3″. That’s right, they will actually put you in a game which has the main feature that you can put yourself in the game. That and you get a bunch of mediocre sequels.

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It was only 2 days old, but @AaronGreenberg is no more. Twitter renamed the account @notAGreenberg and accused the owner (who shall remain nameless, but who kindly forwarded on the email) of violating Twitter’s terms of use.

A few examples of the kind of thing @AaronGreenberg tweeted:

The next generation of space travel will be powered by Xbox Live.

Blu-ray doesn’t exist.

I don’t like getting out of bed in the morning. The Xbox is always so warm.

I can see where the confusion lay. Ignoring the fact the name field was given as “Not Aaron Greenberg”, these comments are clearly within the realm of something Mr. Greenberg would say. In the email Twitter sent to the account owner, the Twitter support worker had this to say;

We’ve received a complaint from a fellow Twitterer. It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:

http://twitter.com/aarongreenberg

is in violation of our basic Terms of Service, specifically article 4 which mentions impersonation:

4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.

In this case “impersonation” is the issue. Impersonation is against our terms of service unless it’s parody. The standard for defining parody is, “Would a reasonable person be aware that it’s a joke.”

Apparently the bar of intelligence needing to be met in order to be classed as “a reasonable person” has been lowered significantly since I last checked.

RSS is for old people, cool kids use Twitter. And so do we! If you twa… tweet, then follow us to get all the Negative Gamer posts delivered right to your work-avoidance.

Whilst you’re there, you might as well also add this, him and him (and him). Guaranteed to reduce your productivity by up to 7%!