The No Football League is back!

THAT MAKES NO SENSE. Excuse a second posting from Agency Heat so soon, but this is one they threw together for EA Sports to promote the end of the NFL lockout. Except, no sympathy from me for either side trying to blame the other guy, as the players in this spot come off in a way that indirectly says “Hey fans, wasn’t our fault.” Except, it was both your “faults.” I lived through strike football once and was prepared for it again, but seriously, a big f*ck you to both for once again using fans as pawns in a game that both sides knew the outcome of. Except part II: It’s really players and owners on the same side vs. fans, innit.

Man boobs are the new...

“We need a twist on the paint yourself with your favorite team colors.”

“Man boobs!”

(Agency: Heat.)

Move over Wii.

Kevin Butler and PlayStation Move now playing in the Wii sandbox.

Beware the touchtronic device.

Aka, why iStuff was invented.

“It’s basically an album you can hang out in.”

"...an unlikely mix of Zelda and art house cinema. The game is equal parts Robert E. Howard, Shigeru Miyamoto, Tim Schaefer, with some David Lynch thrown in for good measure — but there is more to S&S than these inspirations."

I don’t know what the full game experience is going to be like yet, but based on quotes like that and the trailer, this looks awesome. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcer (S:S&S EP) bills this nearly completed iPhone/iPad game as a “21st century interpretation of the archetypical old school videogame adventure, designed exclusively for Apple’s touchtronic machinery.” Looks like someone into vector got tired of the MOH FPS aesthetic and decided to rewrite some rules by turning it on its head.

(Via.)

Your agency sucks.

“No one knows the product better than the folks who made it.”

That’s entertainment software brand Valve’s VP of marketing Doug Lombardi on the value of ad agencies. It wasn’t their recently completed in-house spot above that got my attention but that statement, because it’s completely wrong – and completely right. He goes on to say that

“We’ve had many creative kick-off meetings with agencies over the years, and you’d be shocked by the treatments that have come back. Copycat treatments. Cliché treatments. Treatments that reveal the agency wasn’t listening in the initial meeting.”

First Person Shooter – Mario edition

I’m waiting for a Tempest FPS. LOOK UP THE GAME. I’m not doing your job for you. But yeah, they need to make this game.

(Via.)

All you needed was Atari.

Atari own video games but then tried for a bigger piece of the computer market in this 1981 spot (with Jack Palance handling the voiceover).

Make flowers not war.

Nice anti-violent spin on the FPS genre for Atari’s The UnderGarden.

(Agency: Supercool Creative.)

Arm yourself with great deals at GameStop.

More like third arm yourself. It’s called the GameStop Holiday Power Saver Sale spot – you’ll call it one of the funniest video game spots this year. Okay, I will then. A nice spin on the multi-hands idea. Hopefully they have one with the dog?

Best Buy and Playstation 3 deliver great deals – and a baby.

Usually, the commercials with two brands cross-promoting something miss the mark because a little of each of their identities is lost. Except, the Playstation 3 spots with Kevin Butler are killing it so much that they could carry the whole thing by themselves. Luckily, Best Buy holds its own here, with a little help from the CHiPs’ theme and Butler the midwife.

PlayStation 3 adds more awesome.

Only category firing on all cylinders right now? Games, with bigger launches than movies. I know, like condom ads, hard to mess up, right? Find a title loved by its community and give them some ads that reinforce the goodness. Well, it’s also a hard category to do differently given all those titles. PlayStation’s in a groove as spokesman Kevin Butler returns, this time as VP of Add More Awesome for Gran Turismo 5. HE’S A PROFESSIONAL CLOSED-COURSE STUNT DRIVER TOO. “Mr. Butler is a professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt.” It’s good shit – what more do you need? HOW ABOUT A REAL FAKE TV FAMILY. (After the jump.)

Call of Duty: Black Ops — now seeking shelter for gamers.

“There Is A Soldier In All Of Us” is embodied here by gamers of all sorts living out their fantasies. What else do you need to connect the two worlds? The only other campaign I thought did this as well was the old Ratchet and Clank work. While I always thought Monkey Man was more dangerous musically, the Rolling Stones’ Gimmee Shelter works just as well here as the expected choice lyrically. Solid spot.

(Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day.)

Not your dad’s pong.

I saw this Quaser Touch on an iPad and thought as a simple game it’s elegantly designed. (An inverse of the classic asteroids where protecting the center counts most.) It’s also a nice touch-driven approach to playing even though yes, touch is inherent in the iPad’s design. In just five years, the gaming industry has undergone major changes in terms of how players interact. Joysticks ruled for decades and now wireless controllers and Wii are giving way to touchscreens. It’s a Minority Report future, now. GET YOU SOME.

Paper, what’s that.

I love the basic idea behind the DigiPen Summer Workshop here. It’s for students in grades 8-12 interested in game development, and meant to show that they need to think about the theory behind games in the real world first before sitting down to actually program. It’s a big problem with the creative generation coming into the business now. George Parker often says that the single biggest change to advertising was when the few large holding companies started to gobble up ad agencies and make them part of their network. My vote for biggest change has to do with the actual creative process. It’s this reliance on hitting Photoshop before picking up a pen and paper. We’ve pushed *digital* so much that paper and pen is somehow this taboo subject. While this is about game theory specifically, what instructor Deunan Berkeley says in the clip applies to any creative area: Work out the sequence of tactics for whatever it is you’re working on first, because they translate to the online space easily enough.

Super Mario 2.0.

If Super Mario was invented today, it would look like this. It’s a good point about how gaming’s limitations made your approach to learning different than how we approach things now. You figured it out without the how-to descriptions. Granted, I need those at times, but simple interfaces meant a more intuitive experience.

Medal of Honor gets real.

Depending on the industry, Hollywood movies and television have always looked to outside experts to get the look and feel right. Military, sports, medicine, etc. What’s striking about this Medal of Honor spot is the tone. By that I mean the basic understanding – or uneasy truce your psyche has had with reality – was that war titles were simply not, well, real. It’s easy to believe a world with Laura Croft because of the obvious fantasy-adventure themes, but Medal of Honor here destroys that line between what’s real and what’s not thanks to the endorsement of real soldiers. Yeah, they’ve used video games for years to train the military, and all kids grow up shooting at bad guys, real or imagined. This approach though seems to have eliminated the kid part for me in favor of a legit experience, and I’m not sure we don’t need that separation, no matter how authentic the recreation.

“Explosive gameplay.”

Sure, any PR is good PR, but shitty timing is another thing altogether. What do you do when the plot for your video game that’s about to release is based on an oil rig takeover—a month before one of the largest oil spills in history. Oops. You can wait to release (if you can afford to), or stay on schedule and hope people understand that you had the theme in mind long before any tragic event in the Gulf. (Yeah, cuz people are smart like that.) Check out the story here.

Geeks inheriting the mirth.

Part of me goes, why? Part of me goes, HA, very cool. Racer is part video slash cardboard, part Wipeout recreation. Gonna need a new name for this analog slash low-fi recreations of digital experiences that keep happening more and more though: Digilog? Analogic? There’s another trend going on here too highlighted by Jehmlich and Matthes Mikysec’s creation, where the better the available tech gets, the more retro things people want do with it, almost as if they reject the promise of the future by looking to the past. Oh the humanity duality! Maybe it’ll be more like flash mob moonlight bowling: People gathering to play analog versions of digital classics in some large space. The important question then becomes: How much is a ride in a cardboard box worth? .25¢ for two minutes? You BYOB?

(Via Gajitz.)

Introducing Sony’s iFinger.

What else would you call an attack on the iPhone above? Sony integrated the Kevin Butler character into a Denis Leary spin-off with your boy Marcus Rivers going right at iPhone and its apparent Seinfeld approach to gaming: apps about nothing. He energetically delivers a keep off the iPhone vibe with “Marcus don’t play that” (dated Homey The Clown stereotype notwithstanding).

Granted, it’s hard to compete on price when the iPhone has a lot of free titles, not to mention the other benefits of a cell, but, PSP does one thing well, and that’s what they’re focused on here. Will people pay more for a better handheld gaming experience and no other benefit? I suppose, but then, who has just one device anymore?

Maybe that’s the false proposition at work when it comes to electronics, in that we keep wanting the nirvana of the all-in-one device.



(Via.)

Fake guitars plus real volcano equals fun.

Power Gig—Rise of the SixString, rah! Volcanoes. Plastic guitars, and a dream. To promote Power Gig’s upcoming game with real 6-string guitar that will compete with the Guitar Heroes of the world, they dropped a load of plastic guitars into an active volcano on Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland. OR DID THEY. As usual, YouTube chimes in:

“Hilarious. Who cares if plastic was thrown in a volcano, its freaking plastic. Like molten rock cares.”

“Everyones a dumbass. This is obviously fake.”