History repeats itself?

December 29th 2008

Right, here we are, at the eve of the new year, and I have the feeling the world is going apeshit.

Credit crunch, recession, rise in unemployment, no faith in polititians and goverments - are we back in the 30s? And to put the icing on the cake, we have a conflict in Israel/Gaza, that has the potential to become a wildfire….

I wish you all good luck for the future, and I just want to post some lyrics, some pretty new, some pretty old, but still as relevant as today:

BLOODSPORTS
(Sullivan/Nelson/Dean/White/Gill) 2007

There are boxes packed with bullets, there are crates all stacked with boxes
There are uniforms and hardware, there are meals all wrapped in plastic
Through the night the ships are loading, every night these ships are loading
Beneath the glare of the burning floodlights and the dancing of the swarmed mosquitoes

And into the fire and the blood red sun the old and rich still send the young men
Into a world of twisted steel and the acrid smell of metal burning
And on the streets of hometown now, we watch each other as if we?re strangers
But say it loud, scream it loud: I am not at war

He says: this body I have been given shall be returned unto its maker
Beneath my clothes these secrets hidden, the sacrifice that I have to offer
By the checkpoint there are soldiers and the cypress branches waving
And the light is hard as glass and the sky is blue and cool and waiting

And into the fire and the blood red sun the old and rich still send the young men
Into a world of twisted steel and the acrid smell of metal burning
And on the streets of hometown now, we watch each other as if we?re strangers
But say it loud, scream it loud: I am not at war

These stupid empty words could all be written on the cold pale skin
Of the dead laid out in shallow graves along the road of bombed out palm trees

And in the corners of the bars and cafes, in every town, in every nation
There are these blood-sports on the TVs and the loaded toneless voices
There are cameras by the gravesides and in the executioners? chambers
There are cameras high above us to guide the missiles down from the heavens

And into the fire and the blood red sun the old and rich still send the young men
Into a world of twisted steel and the acrid smell of oil burning
And on the streets of hometown now, we watch each other just like strangers
But say it loud, scream it loud: I am not at war

HERE COMES THE WAR
(Sullivan/Heaton/Nelson) 1992

Today, as you listen to this song
Another 394,000 children were born into this world
They break like waves of hunger and desire upon these eroded shores
Carrying the curses of history and a history yet unwritten
The oil burns in thick black columns, the buzz saws echo through the forest floor
They shout give us our fair share, give us justice
Here comes the war

On a grey morning to the south of here
Two young men in makeshift uniforms peer into the misty light
And figures dart behind the trees
As a snap of rifle rounds echoes out across the fields
They hardly know their sacred mother tongue but they know their duty
To defend the flag hanging limp and bloody above the village church
While a thousand miles away, in a warehouse complex down by the river,
Young money men play paintball games
Here comes the war - put out the lights on the Age of Reason

So blow out the candle and tell us another of those great stories,
the ones about serial killers. Let dreams flow into savage times.
Do you hear the sirens scream across the city?
We’ve had three hot nights in succession - the riot season is here again
Dear Lord, lead us back into the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
Here comes the war. Did you think we were born in peaceful times?

Faster, faster, like a whirling dervish spinning round
Faster, faster, until the Centre cannot Hold
You screamed give us Liberty or give us Death
Now you’ve got both, what do you want next ?
Here comes the war - put out the lights on the Age of Reason.

Posted by Snowstorm under General Chatter & Uncategorized | No Comments »

Gamers speak one Language

July 23rd 2008

Or something like that….

Today just a quick update on our plans for the Games Convention in Leipzig, enjoy!

Posted by Snowstorm under General Chatter | No Comments »

Metal Monks, Jedis and a Wall of Flames

July 18th 2008

One of my colleagues just pointed me at a BBC report about a Capuchin monk who is the Lead singer of a Heavy Metal band</a>. I must say, he is pretty good, and the part when he is doing the “horns” made ma chuckle. Way to go Bro’!

There was also the announcement that yes, Bioware is indeed developing a KOTOR MMO - to quote Alec from Rock Paper Shotgun:” As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in rapture and were suddenly fanboys…”

It is indeed a good day for people who love the Star Wars IP (and I have to confess I am one of them), as Bioware’s reputation of making good games might give us a good Star Wars MMO again after the terrible thing called NGE that was done to SWG. I am just curious to see how many Jedis an MMO can handle ^^

In other news:

We are coming along nicely with our planning for the Games Convention in Leipzig – although it looks like regulations seriously interfere with Martin’s (ze Rabl, the other Martin) artistic vision ;)

With this I head into a well deserved weekend, thank you for stopping by.

Oh – and because I got asked – the shark is fine and well cared for.

Posted by Snowstorm under General Chatter | No Comments »

The end is nigh!

July 17th 2008

Ok, i must confess that this blog has been dead for way to long – I was doing a good job at proving the epic fail concept I guess….

Anyway…

I was watching many of the game trailers coming out of the E3 today, and I definitely think the end of the world is close. It might be due to my selection of trailers I watched, but I have the feeling that like 70% of the games shown either have a post apocalyptic or horror/zombie based setting – not that I mind, games like that are right down my alley ;)

I guess one of the biggest announcements so far was that Final Fantasy XIII will be available on Xbox 360 – that means that, after GTA, Sony now has lost its second big franchise. I am interested in seeing how this will turn out in the long run.

In other news:

I am pretty busy planning for the Games Convention in Leipzig at the moment; we will have a massive and very beautiful booth there, so we community people are working to breath life into it. Unfortunately, a shark tank is no longer an option…

I leave you with this – thank you if you stumbled across this and took your time to read.

Peace out,

Martin

Posted by Snowstorm under Community & Gaming & General Chatter | No Comments »

What is this community thing you talk about…

May 12th 2008

Ok, because this is something that i do for a living – let’s talk a little bit about gaming and community.

With an increasing number of people getting better and faster internet access, online gaming has become more and more popular. And I am not just talking MMOs here: console games like Call of Duty 4, Forza 2 or GTA 4 that have a strong multiplayer component also increase the number of people playing together/ competing against each other online.

In my opinion gaming has become another form of entertainment people do in their spare time, like going to the theatre, the pub or the movies. Just look at the latest phenomena, GTA 4: According to chart tracker, they sold 631.000 copies of the game on Day one – and these numbers are UK only.

More than 6 million copies were sold world wide during the first week – more than any movie or record launch ever did (according to Take Two at least). So I guess we are pretty safe to say that gaming is not an obscure thing done by overweight kids sitting in a basement somewhere (one of the many stereotypes encountered when talking about gamers), but rather is well along the way to establish itself as a mainstream entertainment activity.

I shared a little bit about what working in community is in a PCzone interview that was done with me and my colleagues, so I will try not to repeat myself here. Let’s just say: Working with and for an Online Community is very important for every company, and it is getting more important every day. Because the more mainstream gaming actually gets, the bigger the communities playing the different games will become. And it is a very rewarding and very frustrating job – sometimes both at the same time :)

Why is that? Because, actually THE community does not exist. It is a very diverse group of people who end up playing your game, sharing a passion – and each individual has different opinions and views on how your game should progress and where your priorities should be.( You might want to check out Alex Weekes’ blog where he discusses the same thing from a PvP angle). And because they love the game they are playing, they are very passionate about it, and they get very upset if they perceive something as harming “their” game. So very often as a Community Manager, you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, explaining why certain things are not possible, even if many players tell you “this is so easy to implement” – and the Devs tell you that it is not possible at all because the engine/code/database structure/ general framework is not supporting the requested changes. And don’t even get me started on balancing, if your game has a strong PvP part…

But the thing is – all this is what makes a vibrant, lively community, hundreds of thousands of individuals sharing a passion for your product, heated discussions about single aspects, insanely creative ideas (ok, and insanely bad ideas ^^) – so if you have a game and you have a community – look after them. I know that this is a rather superficial view on a subject this big, I intend to come back to it in a later post.

Until then – thank you for stopping by.

Posted by Snowstorm under Community & Gaming | 1 Comment »

Let there be light…

April 30th 2008

Following the shining example of most of my colleagues, I finally decided to open my own blog as well. Hopefully I will be able to fill it with stuff that some of you might find interesting. I will mostly blog about gaming- because that is what I do - but expect me writing about other things that I find interesting as well.

And because I feel extra-ambitious, I will try to write this blog bi-lingual in English and German - we will see if it actually works ^^

Anyway, thank you for stopping by, see you soon :)

Posted by Snowstorm under General Chatter | 2 Comments »