12.11.07

debatable

Posted in games, work at 1:24 pm by Rob Fahey

A quick update; I’ve moved house somewhat successfully, and although the new place is only about a kilometre away from the old place, I’m enjoying it here a lot more. It’s a nicer house, on a much quieter street, and closer to transport links into town. It’s also got a kitten in it, which is a good thing except when I go to the toilet at night and she stands outside the door mewling loudly at me the whole time. That aspect is just weird.

No Internet yet, though. I’m connecting on a HSDPA wireless broadband modem in the interim. Sadly, “the interim” turns out to be longer than expected due to a complication with the phoneline; as a result I suspect I’m waaaay over my 3GB monthly limit, and my only hope for avoiding bankruptcy is that the rumours of Three’s inability to bill for over-allocation usage at present is true.

Work related stuff…

I was asked to moderate the Xfire Debate Club event last week, which was an online discussion between a number of journalists - topic, “Best In Gaming 2007″. It was more fun than I expected, actually; I was slightly dreading the 10pm GMT start (it’s a US-centric thing), but the chatter flowed quite nicely and it was interesting to see a broad sweep of opinion about the last year’s games. There’s a transcript (the “Main Floor” one - the other one is an open chat room transcript) and a mugshot of me that makes me look like a nightclub bouncer on the Xfire website.

(On a similar note, I’m rather looking forward to Eurogamer’s annual institution, the end-of-year top 50. Those are always a bucket of fun both to read and to participate in.)

A topic that arises a few times in the Xfire debate is the whole Jeff Gerstmann thing. In all honesty, I’ve never been a big fan of Gerstmann’s writing, and even less so his presenting style - but I still hate seeing stuff like this happen, because it erodes trust in the entire videogames media and makes life more difficult for everyone else working in it. I wrote a piece for GamesIndustry.biz on the topic, which sums up the events to date and why they’re such a big deal for a sector that’s already widely mistrusted by consumers.

A few EG reviews for your delectation as well, if you fancy them - selected highlights being a second look at MMOG title Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which now actually works thanks to nine months of patching (shame they didn’t think to spend an extra nine months in development rather than leaving it half-finished, eh?), a review of surprisingly bloody good Canadian-developed anime tie-in Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, and an absolute hatchet-job on the single worst game I’ve played this year, Fury.

By the way - I don’t know how long it hangs around in stores for, but the issue of Neo with my Gundam cover feature in it appeared a few weeks back. If anyone’s read it, I’d love to hear some feedback on the piece - good, bad or indifferent.
Heading off, before my bandwidth bill threatens to exceed the GDP of Chile…

Technorati Tags: anime, Eurogamer, games industry, Gerstmann, journalism, magazines, Neo Magazine, Xfire, videogames