advertising
Remember in the olden days when pro athletes and Olympians would grace our soft drink ads, urging us to guzzle the nutritionally barren sugar water in order to be a champion like them, cognitive dissonance be damned? Yea, if you listen to athletes now, you are old and laughable. The new (and far more appropriate!)
face of Dr. Pepper is a 21-year-old kid who makes a quarter of a million bucks playing
video games. Why I never! Lazy kids nowadays! There is simply no way not to sound like some parody of Dave Barry making "these kids!" jokes while writing about this development. But what you need to know is that if you have skills with a Wii controller, you better watch out for the geek paparazzi:
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advertising
When times were good and the economy was strong, you could sell companies any old kind of patently ridiculous ad. Did marketing savants really believe that
spending wildly to place their brands
inside "The Sims" was going to pay off in money that is made out of paper, and spendable here on Earth? It's doubtful. They just got caught up in the sheer newness of plastering their logo anywhere and everywhere, and then made up some bullshit about "branding" to explain the expense. Well that shit is over now, suckas!
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MTV Games
If you were planning on going to the awesome
MTV Games party tomorrow night to preview AC/DC Live video game, we have some bad news: the Viacom company's PR firm says it's been postponed "Due to other scheduled events in the area." Other scheduled events like...
rumored massive layoffs? Well that would certainly be
one theoretical possibility. Click through for the sad cancellation notice. [UPDATE: And a statement from MTV Games]:
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Sadvertising
Attention nerds: retailers are extremely interested in your imaginary nerd money. And they're coming into your nerd land to woo you! Specifically by purchasing all types of "
dynamic in-game ads" in the new version of
The Sims—a computer game featuring attractively rendered digital versions of nerds performing mundane tasks such as washing dishes and going to the grocery store, which are "fun" only in comparison to the sad isolation and anomie of the modern nerd's real life. Not only can you buy virtual Ikea furniture and H&M clothes in a pallid simulacrum of the American dream; now, you can play in a world free of the unrelenting pain of your everyday existence:
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espn
ESPN is the USA's sports leader, sanctioned by God, the American Way, and Brett Favre. Males of a certain age (11-75) who don't watch the network risk placing themselves under serious suspicion of being candy ass pansy boy homos,
NO HOMO. So you'd think that ESPN wouldn't have trouble drawing young viewers. But America's sports indoctrination machine is flagging because of the internet and the computers and the fatness! So ESPN has been forced to take drastic and, we daresay, un-American measures:
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grand theft auto
This is an absolute nightmare scenario for video game manufacturers, who must now be thanking their Pagan gods that it didn't happen in the US: a teenager in Bangkok
murdered a taxi cab driver in an attempt to reenact a scene from
Grand Theft Auto. As a result, the distributor has halted sales of the game throughout all of Thailand, which is a wise PR move despite being (objectively) an overreaction. The details of the crime seem to confirm the worst fears of all anti-video game crusaders: a good kid led astray, and willing to do anything to get his fix of violence:
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gaming
JV Games was all set to release
Beer Pong for the Nintendo Wii as part of its new Frat Party Games series (forthcoming titles include
It's Not Gay, It's Tradition and
Honor Council Testimony: Age of Consent Edition). Then the killjoy parents got involved, saying it's not right encouraging underage drinking, even in the virtual world. So now the thing's called
Pong Toss, which,
according to
Time, will feature "pixelated cups of water." Use your Xbox to draft a pixelated transfer application. As it turns out, however, water as an alternative chug resource has also caused problems on university campuses:
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grand theft auto
If you didn't have the 500 or so free hours necessary to explore the
virtual architecture of the
NYC doppelganger "
Liberty City" in the latest version of
Grand Theft Auto, here's the quickest way to do it: by helicopter. After the jump, a video of a virtual helicopter tour of the artfully rendered version of Manhattan—you can see the Chrysler's building spire from above. At the end, the chopper's passenger ends up in the river:
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progress
An intriguing little tidbit has just crossed our desk: news of a
Gossip Girl video game! Now it's
just a rumor at present but it sounds promising. I mean it makes perfect sense. New York-set teen soap
Gossip Girl's viewer base, gay men and the girls who quietly pine for them, perfectly syncs up with the typical video game demographic. (Uhm... because boys who play
video games are scared of gay men and girls?) What will one
do while playing the
GG video game? Well, other than lying on one's stomach in the den, kicking one's feet in the air, and absentmindedly twirling one's finger in the controller's cord, one will "explore the hippest social hot spots of New York City and attend the most fashionable parties." Oh my! That sounds just like the show. Read a full description of the
ruuuuumored video game after the jump.
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video games
Ever play
Railroad Tycoon or
SimCity? There was fun in building a toy and playing god, but the games also tapped into an experience that seemed more real and physical than the computer they were played on. But in
MMORPG Tycoon, you're building a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It's recursive! It's (ugh) meta! And it's a small part of the trend toward
video games going meta.
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