WORK: Hyper – Harvest Moon Review

The issue of Hyper with the dude from Mafia II on the cover (you know, the one with the guy that looks a bit like Keanu Reeves with a thicker neck) is almost off-sale! Oh my, time sure does fly when you’re not paying attention because your university has gone “wah wah, submit your assignments, wah, wah”. Whatever. So here’s a review I wrote for the most beautifully-designed magazine in the country. I kid you not when I say that Hyper has the best designer in print. Go and buy it, have a look at it, and experience some magazine eye-gasms. Go on, DO IT.

Righto, now that we’re all a bit flustered, let’s get to the Harvest Moon review I wrote!

COMPETITION: We Are Gonna Make A Boomer

My friend Calli once told me that her uncle, who is a Christian hippy from up north, contracted these germs but wouldn't go to a doctor because God wouldn't let him (or something), so he ended up with boils. Then her brother touched her uncle (in a non-sexual way) and he also got boils. The moral of the story is to not go near anyone from Newcastle.

I think Jeremy Pencil and I were meant to announce the winner of our piñata competition yesterday, but we didn’t. You see, I approached him on Tuesday to ask who he thought should win, but he, being the crazy Englishman that he is, had overwhelmed himself with work and could speak of nothing but a film he had watched a long time ago about a woman who one day miraculously discovered that she wasn’t actually paralysed (despite spending 15 years thinking that she was), stood up, fell down some stairs, and died. Yeah, I don’t really get it either.

SO ANYWAY, we eventually arrived at a winner this morning after a long-winded conversation about interns who secretly sniff chairs (don’t ask). The winner of our LocoRoco piñata is…SHMERKER!

Mr. ShMerker suggested that we make a piñata based on a Boomer from Left 4 Dead, so that’s exactly what I’m going to try to do in the coming weeks. It will be a challenge, but I think my balls are massive enough to handle this job. Mr. Pencil, on the other hand, will try his hand at making a Chain Chomp, as suggested by TheClearWinner. Mr. TheClearWinner, you are our runner-up and we are going to mail you a pie in a box. Seriously.  We’ll be in touch soon about your prize, ShMerker. For the rest of you — TRY HARDER NEXT TIME.

WORK: Good Game – Girls In The Industry

When I was asked to work on a story about girls in the games industry, I’ll admit that I was hesitant. Of all the ideas I have ever pitched to Good Game — or any website or print publication for that matter — I have never wanted to focus on women because, a lot of the time, stories on women in gaming end up being really contrived and don’t contribute anything new to the discourse on gender.

For starters, many said stories have focused on the kinds of games that women supposedly like, as well as the the idea that developers should be making games specifically for women. Some will even go as far as to suggest that we need affirmative action so that we have an equal number of men and women working in the industry. I personally think this is bollocks. If a game is made well and plays well, then it will attract all kinds of people — regardless of their gender. Furthermore, I have always believed that people should be hired on their own merits and gender should not be a determining factor (unless, of course, we’re talking about jobs where a specific gender is needed, like…surrogate mothering — your balls might be big but they ain’t gonna hold no baby!).

In the end, I was happy with the story that the team and I produced for the show. The focus wasn’t so much on “HEY, IT ARE WOMANGZ AMIRIGHT!?”, but on how these women got into the games industry and what their thoughts are, because let’s face –  it can be harder for a woman to get into what is still a very male-dominated field, and if gender discrimination is still an issue then it’s something worth looking into.

It was great hearing from Siobhan Reddy — the executive producer of LittleBigPlanet — that gender wasn’t an issue in game development and that she found everyone incredibly supportive. On the other end of the spectrum, Vanessa Morgan — former editor of Official PlayStation Magazine in Australia — provided us with some shocking stories about how she was discriminated against in the games journalism industry because of her gender. I thought everything the women we interviewed said was worth considering.

I’ll let you watch the segment and be the judge.

COMPETITION: Three Days To Go!

Colombo's 'skeletal structure' (a.k.a this pink balloon) is as sturdy as they come!

There are three days to go until the totally radcore LocoRoco competition closes. Monsieur Pencil and I have seen 26 entries so far and, while they have all been good, we are puzzled by why so few people seem to be interested in winning a round, yellow god full of expensive sweets. Do people just not dig piñatas? Should we have painted Colombo a different colour? Are you all raging diabetics?

It’s not too late to enter, guys. Just head over to Jeremy Pencil’s blog and post a comment letting us know what gaming-themed piñata you’d like to see us make next. The winner gets sent Colombo — the piñata of my heart.

Speaking of piñatas, Jeremy Pencil donated his own LocoRoco piñata — Steve (although Pencil refers to him as ‘Horus’ for some bizarre reason) — to the Good Game set. So the next time you tune into the show, keep an eye out for a bouncing, yellow god.

Neeeeeew Banner!

Saying that I have a ‘new’ banner is actually slightly misleading because I never had an old banner to begin with. But that’s not important. What is important is that I now have one and it was made by the lovely Rebecca Clements — the genius behind Kinokofry.

This post also marks three months since I hit the “Make Zero Light Seeds Go Live And Spread Its Germs All Over The Interwebs” button, so that’s kind of neat. To celebrate, go win yourself a piñata, guys!

Win A LocoRoco Piñata!

The one on the left is named Colombo Magneus Julius Picardian III. The one on the right is Steve. That is my hand and nose.

Remember how Jeremy Pencil and I made LocoRoco piñatas a few weeks ago? Well, we made two yellow blobs of joy and neither got smashed to pieces because we both grew too attached to them. (I was referring to the LocoRoco, btw, not my fat cousins. Although they, too, are yellow blobs of joy.)

Realising that this is an unhealthy attachment, we have both decided to give my piñata — Colombo Magneus Julius Picardian III — away.  Mr. Pencil will be hanging onto his own piñata because he has major dependency issues, but I’d like to see little Colombo go to a nice home where he will be hung from a broomstick for a few hours before getting the shit smacked out of him by a bunch of rowdy,  festive folk.

Right, so onto the point of this post. Pencil and I are running a competition, and the best entry will win Colombo. It doesn’t matter where you live in the world — if you have a postal service in your area and your country isn’t run by communists (sorry, Vietnam), you are eligible to enter and, if you win, we will wrap Colombo up in bubblewrap, carefully place him in a box, and ship him to your humble abode.

Here’s the competition:

Comment on Mr. Pencil’s competition blog entry with your suggestion on what kind of gaming-related piñata we should make next.

The reason why I direct you over to Terminal Atrocity is because Mr. Pencil spends all his time sitting at his desk waiting for people to give him love via comments, which means he checks them more frequently than I do.

If you want to see what’s IN Colombo, read on.

I Am So Clever

Shit game, amazing package (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID, LOLZORZ!)

I had to share this because it was my proudest achievement today. Part of my job at the super badical kids’ magazine I work for involves me sending out prizes to children who win the competitions we run. In this case, we’d organised a Sonic Unleashed comp with Sega, and today was the time for me to do the mailing. The prize included:

- a Sonic hoodie

- a Sonic t-shirt

- Sonic/Werehog figurine

-a Sonic key ring

- Sonic Unleashed for the Wii

- a beach ball (naturally)

Rather than try and shove all this into an envelope, I used the hoodie as a packaging device and wrapped all the goods in the hoodie. And then I shoved it all in an envelope. So, kids, there’s some craptastic shit amazing prizes coming your way!

WORK: Hyper – Patapon 2 review

March, little eyeballs!

Continuing with my series of work-related posts, here is my review of Patapon 2, which also appeared in the totally badical issue of Hyper that has Kratos on the cover. I really should just start remembering issue numbers, but I’ve never been good with them. I am particularly terrible with sums. Yesterday, I was paying for my driving lesson and exam, the total of which was $45+$44. I said to my instructor: “Okay, so that’ll be…err…$99?”.

It wasn’t.

ANYWAY. Review time!

WORK: Hyper – Guitar Hero Decades Review

Normally, I’d have a picture of the latest cover of Hyper to accompany these work-related posts, but I can no longer find them online. Well, I can, but they’re teeny tiny and I cannot be bothered scanning my own magazine cover because WHY SHOULD I!? NextMedia should just get its shit together and post large versions of the cover images on its website like it used to.

Speaking of NextMedia, the company that bought us (Next Media – with a space) less than a year ago recently changed their name from Wolseley Media to NextMedia (without spaces). I can think of a few reasons behind this decision:

1) “Wolseley” sounds like the name of a company that publishes knitting magazines

2) Next Media is probably the more recognisable brand name because we’ve been around for longer

3) “Wolseley” just sounds stupid. Who the hell came up with that name to begin with? What a dag.

Right. I think I’ve digressed enough. Here is my review of Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades, which I wrote for the issue of Hyper that featured Kratos on the cover. Upon reading it, my editor on a different magazine told me I was a whiney sook, which I am, but that’s okay because most gamers are whiney sooks (“wah wah I don’t like rainbows wah!”). *boom-tish*

WORK: Good Game – Mandatory Internet Filter

This is my "I just had a stroke" face.

There’s been a heated debate surrounding the Australian government’s proposed mandatory internet filter, which, if implemented, would make Australia the first western democracy to restrict access to the internet in such a way.

I did a story on the issue for Good Game, which you can watch here. Being the ABC, we had to remain as impartial as possible, and I do hope that we managed to do that. We gave both sides a chance to voice their opinions and I can’t think of much else we could have done. Well, we could have gotten Senator Conroy himself in the interview chair, but the man hasn’t granted anyone an interview in more than six months and our attempts to get through to him were futile. We did try. Really.

For me, this was a really frustrating story to do. It was hard sitting opposite my interviwees and hearing their arguments without being able to jump in and point out how flawed their reasoning was.  I mean, think about it: an overwhelming amount of illegal material that is shared over the internet is done through P2P networks, not through websites. Yet, the proposed filter will only be restricting website access. On top of that, shouldn’t problems like the exchange of child pornography be a matter for the federal police to handle? Surely they can do better than an ISP-level filter that can be easily circumvented, right? If not, then that is a concern.