Gabe from Penny Arcade about Ocean Marketing:

‎I have a real problem with bullies. I spent my childhood moving from school to school and I got made fun of everyplace I landed. I feel like Paul is a bully and maybe that’s why I have no sympathy here. [...] I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames.

Gabe just became one of my favourite people. More so. Seriously, don’t mess with Gabe, or any other Gabe for that matter.

I can’t wait to give this a play with my friends.

I don’t have all that much time for video games, but I do set aside from some time for gaming because it’s a fantastic outlet for me during really stressful times.

That said, check out my new Games I’m Playing page to take a look at what I am playing!

Lately, I have been playing a lot of FIFA 11. I’ve been playing the English Premier League as Arsenal and have been completely obliterating everyone in my way. The game itself is really fun, save for a few headache inducing moments, and I genuinely enjoy playing 2-3 matches during my commute.

However, the game causes me pain. Literally.

The game is controlled through a virtual joystick and buttons. This causes my hand to contort into a weird angle and gives me a lot of wrist pain, which is amplified by the fact that I am pretty sure I have carpal tunnel in these bad boys.

This post isn’t a complaint about my pain, rather a request: iOS game designers, or even touch screen game designers in general, please find more fitting ways to control your games on a touch screen device. A non-tactile joystick can become extremely aggravating, mentally and physically, with prolonged usage. It can be non-responsive, it can go the wrong direction, and I often find myself just letting go to let it re-orient itself. It’s difficult to make a sports game without a joystick, I know, but I am sure there is a way.

Touch screen gaming is different from handheld consoles, so let’s try to break convention here and build a more exciting control scheme, shall we?

(If someone wants to recommend sports games to me that use a great way to control the players, please do so in the comments!)

Game companies: please stop focusing on your best franchises and releasing them year over year with minor tweaks.

I understand, once you have an established franchise, it is significantly cheaper to continue to develop for that franchise and you will gain more and more sales as the franchise continues. It gives you the revenue to continue making awesome games, understood.

But it is an incredibly short-sighted way of approaching the business.

Let me explain. In the case of Ubisoft, they are pulling resources away from new properties that may or may not become a hit. For a business, it is a good business decision to cut the assets that are not making money or may not make as much money as other assets you may have. But for a gaming company, not continuously building a bigger and better pipeline of different titles is a good way of shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah, you can easily make a killing by continuing to develop your franchises and churning out mediocre game year after year.

But will we want it after its 6th iteration?

Please game companies, buck the trend and go back to developing awesome titles that do not already have established franchises. It might suck for your bottom line in the short term, but in the long term you’re going to enjoy the fact that your titles will be diverse and one failure does not determine the financial health of your company.

It’s rather ridiculous to think that Steam is doing anything close to “killing” the PC Gaming industry. If anything, they have revitalized it and shown everyone that if you offer games at a fair price and without draconian DRM, a large number of people will flock to your service and purchase games legally.

Want proof? I, someone who pirated ALL of my games prior to 2008, have almost a thousand dollars worth of games from Steam. Why?

It is far easier to get legit games from Steam: they update automatically and will always work on my system, they are on-demand regardless of what computer I am on, and games often go on sale which saves me a TON of money. Not to mention the community aspects that Steam integrates into games (Friend lists, clans, groups, etc.) It’s no real wonder why they’re dominating the market, they’re doing it way better than anyone else.

So retailers and competitors, is Steam really killing the PC Gaming industry, or are they just killing YOUR industry?

I can only guess, but I’m going to guess this is about that boy who ran away from home because his parents took away his Xbox. We’ve all heard the story, straight-A student becomes Xbox controller-wielding demon-child who runs away when his games are taken away from him.

Please.

Video games had nothing to do with it. I have played video games for over 15 years now and I have managed to simultaneously balance school, extracurricular activities, and a social life while getting my video gaming time in. Despite this being the case for many people, the media still seems to enjoy pointing fingers at everything other possible factor, but the responsibility clearly falls on the shoulders of the parents.

Take care of your kids, pay attention to what they are doing, and nudge them in the right direction if they stray. Is that really so hard?

Grow a back bone and stop pointing fingers, video games are harmless.

This is rather old, but it has to given its fair dues.

Beautiful. Enough said.