The Pensive Gamer

Posted 01/08/2009 @ 10:30:00 PM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Community Games , Games , Media , Xbox 360

Christmas was a bit crazier this year. Normally we travel to the Great White North (aka Canada), but this year we stayed in Palo Alto and had my wife’s family stay with us. This meant having a lot more people in the house than bedrooms. But I loved it. I love having people over and it was great to see the kids playing together.

I still find it amazing (and fantastic) how consoles are playing such a predominate role in entertaining a holiday crowd. Last year we played a ton of Guitar Hero. This year it was Scene It?: Best of Show. In fact, Scene It? was the nightly pre-bed ritual for four us.

The surprising Holiday habit, however, belonged to my sister-in-law’s husband. He isn’t a hard-core gamer but he does enjoy racing and sandbox games. So what was surprising? He was completely addicted to CarneyVale Showtime, the 400 MS Points Community Game. 

Rob doesn’t care about Indie developers or small versus large games. He cares about being entertained, and CarneyVale was something that very clearly kept him entertained. In fact, while we nearly finished the game during his visit he purchased it when he got home.

While most of the family left prior to the New Year, my father-in-law remained and has helped us with the move to the Seattle area. He isn’t a gamer (and no goading will change that) but the 360 did become a nightly video rental machine.

As for me, I didn’t have a lot of time to game over the Holidays but I did manage to play a few other Community Games and finish Gears of War 2. I also received a couple games as presents; first on my list to play is Fallout 3 … once I have at least 60 to 80 hours available.

So that’s how my consoles were used this past Holiday. I hope everyone had some restful time-off and have had a great start to the new year.

Posted 12/04/2008 @ 12:40:10 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Community Games , Games , Indie , Xbox 360 , XNA

In recent years I haven’t played much in the way of Indie games other than what is on Xbox Live Arcade. I’m essentially a console gamer yet a large portion of Indie games are Windows applications.

I’ve stayed away from running/installing games on a PC because I’ve had issues:

• Dealing with hardware/drivers that caused problems in games
• Trusting .EXE’s found on the ‘Net

So now that Xbox 360 Community Games are available to the public I’ve found myself once again revisiting the Indie scene.

I’ve mentioned my fondness for Blow, Bloc and Colosseum, but there are plenty of other great titles including Weapon of Choice, Biology Battle and Word Soup. Microsoft is also continually expanding the countries that are able to submit into the Community Games. As they do, many additional games, including those that were part of the Dream Build Play and Imagine Cup competitions, should be coming our way.

On top of that there are plenty of developers making games using XNA on Windows. I would love to see these on the 360. Have a look at the two examples below and then contact the developers and see if you can help me convince them to get the games onto Community Games.

Ultimately what I’m saying is that I’m super excited to see that Indie Game developers can tout their wares from a venue that is not only dedicated to their cause but also trustworthy for those wishing to play the games.

And if you can, support these developers with not only words of encouragement but the purchase of their games.

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Blueberry Garden

Game Details: http://eriksvedang.wordpress.com/blueberrygarden/
Developer: Erik Svedäng

 

Carrion Re-animating

Game Details: http://www.zombie-cow.com/?page_id=375
Developer: Zombie Cow Studios and Lemmy&Binky

Posted 12/01/2008 @ 04:00:00 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Community Games , Games , Xbox 360 , XNA

So the American Thanksgiving weekend has come and past. It was an enjoyable time where thirteen people consumed too much food, had too much merriment and are now well positioned, after some rest, to dive deep into the Holiday season.

Of course, for a group consisting of many video game enthusiasts, consoles played an active role entertaining the crowd. When the boys separated from the girls, gaming included Aegis Wing and the investigation of Community Games such as Blow, Bloc and Colosseum  (all of which I highly recommend). Unfortunately, Paulo’s motion sickness kept games like Gears of War 2 out of the equation. When the boys mixed with the girls gaming included Lips, Scene It! Box Office Smash, and a non-video game called Banagrams.

One of the weekend highlights was the mid-Friday visit to downtown Palo Alto’s audio-visual store. While the store was fairly busy, no one was playing the Rock Band setup. We fixed that. My pre-school daughter wailed on drums, Paulo tore through guitar and I screeched out vocals. We attracted a crowd, gained an additional participant and eventually even store employees swapped in to entertain the crowd.

Oh, and I finally understand why people want a browser on their consoles. There was a desire to social-browse, particularly through YouTube. Laptop screens and iPod Touchs are not ideal for group settings and sat in sharp contrast to the ease of watching The Guild through the 360.

I want to thank Dan, linda, Paulo, Gill, Pete, Todd and the Corbett crew for coming by. Without you it would have been just an ordinary, albeit turkey-saturated, long weekend.