At this year’s E3, Efren Toscano (TechZulu CEO) and I covered a hell of a lot of games at E3. Here’s a glimpse at some of what’s we saw and what we thought:
“…forget the joystick. At E3 2010, it’s all about how you move your body, or at least that’s what the big three keep telling us. Like 2009 (and 2008), Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are pushing their motion-controlled products on an all-too-eager public. From The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, to Eye Pets and Dance Central, we tested out each company’s motion product and will give you our thoughts.”
Zelda needs no introduction. If you don’t know who Zelda is, do yourself a favor: buy (or borrow) a Nintendo 64 and play a game called the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As much as a shooter like Goldeneye or platformers like Super Mario 64, LZ:OT made the console worth owning.
I stand on the roof of a concrete structure, surrounded by glossy purple dropships. A message comes across my headset, “Reinforcements are on their way!”
In minutes, wave after wave of whiny grunts, long-haired jackals, and muscular elites jump out of the dropships. I hit Right Button on my controller, igniting my jetpack. This is going to be a good time.
Note: Recently, I met up with @HardlyNormal, aka Mark Horvath, founder of Invisiblepeople.tv, a man for whom I have developed a deep level of respect. Mark doesn’t just talk, he acts. When people hurt, he helps. When children starve, he feeds, he clothes. Now, Mark would be the first to tell you that this mission is not about him, but I felt that revealing his rough past under a bright light through a profile-piece would be the best way to, as Mark would say, open blind eyes to the epidemic of homelessness.
Thank you to Mark Horvath for his time, meeting me at the Hollywood and Highlands Center. Also, many thanks to Ann-Marie Welsh (@padschicago), William Marc Salsberry, and Pastor Matthew Barnett (@matthewbarnett) for lending their voices to this piece. May they be heard by all who read it.
For publications interested in running this article, please Contact Me. All photos were taken by Wm. Marc Salsberry.
With that, here is…
“The Untold Story of @HardlyNormal”
He stands on the matte black stage of the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, Calif., surrounded by fans and followers seated in padded, red seats, a guest and lauded speaker. It’s Oct. 27. The event: a Twitter conference called 140 Characters, is casual in nature and stands in sharp contrast to the Academy Awards. Dressed in blue jeans and a cream-colored collared shirt with black pin-stripes, this 6-foot, gray-haired, green-eyed man loaded with charisma stands straight and seems well-fitted to the building where celebrities like Jack Nicolson and Will Smith pass out gold-plated statues each year.
But this theater, next to famous landmarks like Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” is not that unfamiliar to the man on the stage. More than 14 years ago, Mark Horvath called the loud, dirty street of Hollywood Boulevard home.
Thinking about getting into voice-acting?
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting up with two of LA’s most talented voice actors, Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt. Each of their resumes is pretty extensive. Yuri’s played big characters like Superman while most gamers who’ve played Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe have probably heard Tara’s voice. She played Wonder Woman.
Now the two voice-masters (who are married by the way) have teamed up and written a book to teach the rest of us their ways.
After the break, check out the video with info on their book as well as a couple of tips for future voice actors.
‘Ten Sundays’ Still Stuck On Couch
“The entire ten-episode series takes place on the pair’s living room couch and kicks off when David falls for a bossy girl and Jesse forgets his reason for living after messing up a critical job interview”
‘Comics on Comics’, Geek Idols Served Over Funny
Geeks, hold your breath, because you are going to need that air to cheer on Comics on Comics, a pop-culture video podcast in its second season with a cape-load of comic-book guests and a colorful pool of knowledge.
No, I am not kidding, but while the name and some of the content may be too edgy for some, packed inside is well-written dialogue, great comedic timing, and an intriguing premise.
Here it is: take a bunch of women and pit them against each other as they compete for the position of top prostitute. Viewers get to watch that drama unfold while seeing the producers and crew struggle to make the series a success.
Whorified! was put online May 1st and comes from the minds of Ann Marie Lindbloom and Jeff Venables who are both known for the improve-web show, Two Peas in Your Pod. Both wrote, directed, and produced the Whorified.
I had the opportunity of interviewing Lindbloom before the premiere of the show.
Lindbloom said while some reality T.V. isn’t bad, Whorified! is meant to be a commentary on other reality shows like the closely named, America’s Next Top Model.
“Whorified! is an edgy send-up of reality T.V.,” said Lindbloom. “You call it train-wreck T.V. because you can’t look away. You get horrified and that is how we gave birth to this idea.”
There will be 10 episodes this seasons and each episode is around 5-minutes.
“We wanted to create a web series that was like no web series that had gone before … [and] create a show that we thought could be on broadcast television s well as the web,” said Lindbloom.
Lindbloom said while the target demographic of Whorified! was 18-35 year olds, women in their 50s have also expressed a lot of interest in the show. She said a lot of marketing buzz has been created using social media like Twitter.
The show was very affordable to produce and according to Lindbloom came in at under $10,000 including props, equipment, and payment to the cast and crew. The crew worked about two days a week and took around seven months to shoot the show.
“This whole show is sort of an example of what two people can do by tapping into the Internet and all the things it offers to filmmakers in terms of creating, marketing, and putting your product out there,” said Lindbloom.
Around 150 showed up to the premiere at the Cinespace in Los Angeles.
Recently, there has been a lot of buzz on twitter about the swineflu. No surprise there. When something big happens, word of mouth spreads on twitter so fast, most are somewhat informed before any network broadcasts the news.
I have observed a different kind of disease on twitter. That is, the very nature of twitter leaves itself open to misinformation. First, many twitterers (tweeters?) pass along a story both without retweeting and without including a link. This results in that telephone game we all remember back in school. Second, old tweets can be picked up and retweeted as current information. This happened recently with Mashable’s Pete Cashmore. Now, this isn’t anything new for the Internet. A search on Snopes reveals that many myths are the result of old information being propagated as new information.
To reiterate a few good twitter tips: include links if you are posting information, fact-check tweets to see if the information is relevant and recent, and, finally, try to add something to the conversation. Comment on the retweet.
Another thing I noticed about twitter is how reliant everyone is on big media organizations such as NewsCorp owned Fox News or CNN.
One thing I hope to see soon: new media take on traditional media in terms of comprehensive news reporting. Imagine a new-media news organization that regularly posts webcasts with context-specific links… all available on the iPhone, Blackberries, etc. The big media news organizations do this a little bit, but not to the extent they could.
To have a successful new-media news organization, a few things will need to happen first:
New media will have to find a way to make this type of reporting profitable.
Reporters and new media news organizations will need the funding to travel to the site of the story and provide nice visuals of their own (rather than use stock footage).
The news media organization will need the labor-force to pull it off.
Ironically, a good, profitable business model outside of advertising has yet to emerge and make this type of reporting feasible. Internet advertising has slowed along with the rest of the economy. Hopefully, with the next economic boom, another round of advertisers and investors will take the risk on a new media organization.
Lastly, that new-media news organization will need to continually update itself to remain relevant as big media broadcasters play catch up.
