Come See THE GAME OVERTHINKER at MAGFEST 2014!

Hey guys! Just a quick FYI: I will be at MAGFest from Jan 2nd to Jan 5th this year, and should you see me on the floor your invited to come up and say hello (unless, y'know, you can tell I'm in the middle of something like or phonecall or whatever.)

Officially, I'm scheduled (you can see the whole MAGFest Schedule Map HERE) to appear at four panels on what they call the "MAGES" circuit:

"THE POLITICS OF GAMING" (Friday 1pm-2pm)

"ARE AAA STUDIOS STILL CREATIVELY RELEVANT" (Saturday 11:30am-12:30pm)

"PROMOTING GOOD GAMING COMMUNITY" (Saturday 5:30pm-6:30pm)

"GAMES AS A NARRATIVE MEDIUM" (8:30pm-9:30pm)

I'm also planning to bring copies of SMB3: BRICK BY BRICK with me to sell (probably cash only, but we'll see how my Square Reader is working) and sign on request, for anyone whose interested.

Look forward to seeing folks there!

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YEAR END SPECIAL

Here's some lightheartedness for the end of the year, and a nice lil' announcement about the actual Episode 90: ASK IVAN is back, and anyone so inclined can start submitting questions in the Intense Debate comments below this post. I'll crosspost a YouTube version later in the week and comments under that will also be considered; but this is the primary spot. Happy Holidays!

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Everyone Is Better At Selling XBox One Than Microsoft

Microsoft and Sony are both basically running with the same theme for their Now-Gen console advertising: People in their mid-20s/early-30s being blinked into live-action versions of game scenarios. They're all pretty-much the same in one other regard, too - most of the "This could be you having this much fun!" audience-identification characters are overwhelmingly young white dudes.

Certainly nothing wrong with that, but at a point where console manufacturing and game development are both getting so expensive that it's likely a mathematical impossibility for anyone to continue growing in this business without actively seeking to grown their consumer base outside the traditional "archetypal gamer" paradigm it'd be nice to see Sony or Microsoft show (through ad-casting) that they're at least thinking about broader groups of people who might enjoy their games.

So I was really psyched to come home about an hour ago and catch the midpoint of this commercial, in which the "escape into gaming" involves a Dead Rising/Left 4 Dead type zombie scenario. It's exactly like all the others, except this time the central figure is... a black woman. Yeah. In a video-game ad. As "The Gamer," instead of as "the girlfriend" or "the person who'll use this more as a media-hub." How refreshing! How novel! How forward-looking! How very much unlike what you expect of XBox advertising...



...how bloody-perfect that it's NOT actually an XBox commercial, but rather a McDonald's commercial advertising a promo with XBox prizes.

Wanna know the secret - as in, the secret to why McDonald's is suddenly (and effortlessly!) "better" about gamer diversity than actual game companies are? Simple: Because McDonald's (whatever else you may think of them) thinks hard and thinks BIG. When McDonald's thinks "people we think we can make into customers," they're thinking of everybody on the damn planet.

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Only a Game

Will there be a new episode - or a new OVERBYTES - before the New Year? I dunno - anyone got any extra hours in the day to spare? (Working on it, though - seriously.) Until then, here's a gift for the Holidays.

This being "GOTY Season," a lot of people are angry at this or that swath of Games Journalism. Well, take heart, kiddies - whatever Games Journalism may or may not be... at least you're not dealing with Sports Journalism.

Happy Holidays.

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