From IndieGames:
William David, a developer for Ubisoft, decided the best way for him to quit would be through the same medium, but in a rather different style. The combination of style, music and message make this an entertaining experience and by the time I had walked my way through it, I myself was willing William on to do great things. His plans are to continue work as an independent developer.
Talk about an effective way to market yourself, literally, from day one.
Today Was a Good Day and Los Angeles serve as the backdrop for one of the better viral videos we ve seen lately.
Skateboarding legend Paul Rodriguez (and son of the comic of the same name) mixes it up to the classic Ice Cube song, and the rapper even makes an appearance towards the end of the video. Also, you should notice a cameo by Kobe Bryant, allowing for a very synergistic trifecta of personalities to make this a summer viral hit.
Turn up the volume and relax to our video of the day.
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Skate 2, EA’s critically-acclaimed answer to Tony Hawk, has a nifty feature that allows users to direct and edit their skate reels. Our AFK moment of the day, courtesy the gamers of Skate 2. (Ouch at #7)
ReadWriteWeb {link no longer active} reports:
What are you doing? No what are you doing Apple, Skype, Flip, StubHub and Box.net. These popular companies just couldn’t resist paying off Twitter users to put advertisements into their Twitter streams using the new pay-per-tweet service Magpie.
Each of these companies have more than one campaign running and these are all just from the last six hours! Magpie is spewing Tweets through peoples’ accounts all day long. All of the links are obscured by URL shortening service is.gd (hope they are getting a cut!) and the clicker ends up on the advertiser site. Clearly disclosure isn’t mandatory; but even if it was this is just creepy, is it not?
Author Marshall Kirkpatrick takes a deeper look at these tweets and shows how silly they look when dozens of Twitter accounts say the same exact thing every six hours or so.
There s bound to be some creative monetization of Twitter feeds, and Magpie is certainly within their rights to do so, but we can t help but wonder how slippery is this slope for consumers before they just turn it off.
If you re going to use Twitter to connect with your audience, do it with the spirit of fostering communication and discussion, not as an opportunity to serve text ads to them. It’s not worth it.
Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. What’s it’s finally done there s surprise it’s not better.
That stellar quote is attributed to Googler Avinash Kaushik, and introduces the must-read powerpoint deck What The F**k Is Social Media
If you want a refresher course or know someone who needs one on why we should care about social media, we’ve embedded the presentation below.
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From AdFreak:
Back in the ’90s, it seemed like pro athletes were lining up for the chance to put out terrible rap albums. Now, Nike and Wieden + Kennedy revisit those days with four NBA stars who are just as bad on the mike but at least seem to realize it.
This Nike spot is a lot of fun, especially if you get some of the not-so-subtle nods to 90s hip-hop. The young male demo can be reached through nostaligia — it just has to be pretty recent history, and it helps if it has a good beat. Bad lyrics and rhymes. But a good beat nonetheless.
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From Variety: {link no longer active}
He s not only an award winning author and the writer of Ender’s Game, he s also a hardcore and old school gamer. So old school, in fact, that he regularly challenges his wife to competitions on the Millipede arcade game in his house.
I’m a game lover, he says. I’m a game addict. I progress from game to game to game like the progression of opium to heroin to morphine. When I am not playing Civilization, I have this nagging feeling that there are cities waiting for me — which is pathological, I realize.
As a child he was a regular fixture at his local 7-11, found in front of the Super Breakout machine. So it’s really not all that surprising that as an adult, he has worked regularly in the video game industry.
These days, he s collaborating with Chair Entertainment on Shadow Complex, a platform shooter that will be available exclusively on Xbox Live starting Aug. 19.
The rest of the interview with Orson Scott Card is interesting, and it shows how a downloadable game from a little known developer can start to call to even the hardest of geeks through a few key ways.
Among the great moves by the company:
– Engaged with author Orson Scott Card for the game’s story
– Collaborated with hot developer Epic Games (Gears of War 2)
– Stuck to an old school mainstay, the 2D shooter
Now, Chair Entertainment has the usually-grousing geek crowd salivating to play a game with a fever pitch that wasn’t at all seen with its previous XBLA effort, Undertow. What a difference a geek makes.
Adweek has a fascinating interview with the country s first ever Twintern, or Twitter intern. Pizza Hut hired Alexa Robinson to manage their Twitter feed and has helped increase their feed’s reach from 3000 followers to over 15,000 during her tenure.
From the Adweek interview: {link no longer active}
I think the most surprising thing has been how open the senior management is to the fact that my position exists and of moving further into the social media space in general. I know a lot of companies are hesitant about getting involved in the online space, or they’re not sure it’s a place for their brand. None of that hesitation is present at Pizza Hut. It definitely reflects on the company as an innovative leader. Brands want to be where their consumers are, and where those consumers are having a conversation. You definitely want to be a part of that so you can contribute more. If your consumers are all on Twitter, why wouldn’t you join in?
How well Pizza Hut monetizes those 15K followers is anyone’s guess, but the Twintern position shows how important marketing has gotten for corporations wanting a foothold on Twitter.
From Dread Central:
Here at Dread we’re absolute suckers for haunted mazes and attractions. Last year we saw more than our share of badass parks from Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights to Knott’s Scary Farm…but one of the stand-outs was Jeff Schiefelbein’s jaw-dropping “SAW: The Haunted Attraction” in Orange County, CA.
Universal has since snatched up the SAW universe for its annual Horror Nights, but Scheifelbein has done something even cooler: He’s partnered with Konami to create “Sinister Pointe” – a new haunted attraction featuring several new mazes including one based on (are you ready for this ) the Silent Hill universe!
We really love the idea of an actual real world representation of one of th emost immersive video game series, and while we didn t see the Saw attraction they re talking about, it will be fun to see how this one turns out.
Even if it seems a bit small, Konami is really getting to a core horror demographic with this one, and we love it.
We reported on this one last week, and if you were able to make your way to one of 11 locations around the world, you were able to pick up some cool swag to promote the 2010 release of Bioshock 2.
Beachgoers who followed directions given to them by 2K earlier in the month were treated to dozens of bottles in the sand stuffed with posters from the game. For those of you living under a rock, Bioshock takes place in a city called Rapture deep in the ocean, and its sequel is one of the most anticipated games of next year.
We appreciate the effort in getting gamers up (some as early as 5 a.m.), and we’re sure their fans appreciate the gesture, especially with some of these bottles going for almost $100 on eBay!
[Pics on Kotaku] {link no longer active}
