Study Time

[Lucandrake]

Dude, it's easy to keep up with gaming.

 

You only have to do a couple of things every day, visit sites like Kotaku/Destructoid, those 'blogs' are the best when it comes to whats hot but not yet sense. Destructoid has a lot of love for certain publishers (especially indie/small time ones) so if you read their stuff you will start memorizing both big names and small ones.

 

Visit Digg and Reddit for gaming topics as well, see what the internet is keeping up with.

 

For the mainstream stuff I would stay with websites like Gametrailers, they do some awesome videos but cover the stupid mainstream shit as well, that goes for the big name guys too like 1up or Joystick.

 

The first 4 sites I visit on nearly an hourly basis a long with this one. That's really all you have to do to "keep up" with the gaming news.

 

The last thing I would do is get a Gameinformer subscription, and possibly another 2-3 magazines. They're good to read while taking a shit and will delve deeper into the "avg consumer".

 

But really dude, it's Gamestop, the only real skill you need is, "Mam, if you purchase a subscription with our magazine it'll only cost you $x.xx with the purchase of your new console. Also you can pre-order the new Call Of Duty game coming out soon for only $5 (which will go into the purchase price of the game) so that you can get your son an early Christmas present." , as long as they say yes to those 2 questions you'll do fine.

[L.S.D]

Kotaku is all you need

[Krosigrim]

Well thanks for sites guys, names like Digg and Reddit dont pop off the top of my head so thanks. You should already know I have an Edge card, in which comes a subscription to Game Informer.

 

I just want to be able to know stuff. Plain and simple. As for the job itself, itll be a cinch, are you kidding?! I was in marketing, sales, retail and customer service (just listed the relevant job experience from 15 years here), I love Video Games and Im Will.

[Agozer]

GamesRadar and TheSixthAxis are the bestest sites evar

[Shibathedog]

Man it seems like anyone who is looking for something that specific, or knows enough about it to even be able to know what it is would already know the answer. Most people are probably gonna be like recommend me a good game from genre X or what is the newest game X out.

 

EDIT: But yeah as far as news, I set up an iGoogle page that shows me feeds for Joystiq, Kotaku (even though I hate those bastards), Engadget Games, 1UP, Anandtech, DailyTech, and Tom's Hardware (yeah fuck Tom's Hardware too but whatever) The last 3 are pretty much Tech News/PC Gaming only though. I have other stuff I read on there too and convenient search boxes. Then I set it as my homepage.

[Krosigrim]

Interesting... more sources for information.

 

No guys... your all missin' the whole damn point. *sigh*

 

I know that most of this job will not need any extra information I do not already possess nor need extensive knowledge. I just want to know for knowledge sake. I like being prepared. I realize without knowing firsthand, knowing the difference between a developer and a publisher will be hard. There is no obvious signs of the difference. Im still looking into it though. And keeping a good tab on gaming news isnt necessarily a chore, its an excuse to immerse myself in the field.

 

If I dont know oh well. But if I do know... Awesome!

 

I just want to know shit. Im doing this cause I want to, not because I think its necessary.

[Shibathedog]

Are you saying recognizing the difference between the publisher and developer will be hard for customers or for you?

 

If your worrying about you recognizing them don't worry about it. There aren't nearly as many as there used to be (out of business/buyouts), and you'll be seeing them pop up so often that you'll eventually have them all committed to memory. There are a few tricky ones that publish and develop, but most of the time it will be like GameCompany (Publisher) GameCompany L.A. (Developer) or something like that. Also you'll see that a lot of developers tend to go with the same publishers pretty often so that makes it easy too.

 

If you have been reading game news you'll hear about this stuff too. I think the most recent big one was ZeniMax the company who publishes Bethesda games (they are both really the same company though) will now also be publishing ID games because they merged in too. I'd start digging through Wikipedia or something if I was you.

 

Damn it is 3 in the fucking morning. I hope I didn't confuse you more heh.

[Krosigrim]

No no yer good.

 

I ment for me, as I made an error earlier saying Ogre Battle was made by Atlus, when all they did was publish it. Why I want to know... is if I havent played a game or know much about it, Id like to be able to gauge a game somewhat by who actually produced it. Of course if I am ignorant to a game I will not grease it up and try to shove it up someones ass like many other gamestores... Id just envision myself: " I havent played it so I cant say, but the guys who made (random good game) worked on this too. " Just to be able to help inform the customer of what they may be looking at. Or if they are big (whatever:game/company) fans I might be able to quickly come up with a few games that would suit their interests. There are alot of good games that dont get alot of recognition.

 

I am basically ignorant to most goings on in the industry... I never made the time to keep up. I read the Game Informer so all I generally know is the spoon fed popular stuff. Now I just want to feed my curiosity.

 

I was actually on Wiki earlier today cross referencing some stuff. Funny.

[Shibathedog]

Well pay no attention to the publisher at all in that case. All they do is exactly that, publish.

 

Whenever I play a good game I look up the developer to see what else they have made. Sometimes I do the same to see if a future game will be good. I do this with movies as well. It's pretty good for predicting crap.

 

Probably the most complicated stuff are all these breakoffs/combinations/people getting pissed at other people so they move somewhere else and such.

 

Simple example: The team that made Goldeneye for N64 broke off from RARE to form Free Radical (who is most known for TimeSplitters) who got bought by Crytek and is now Crytek UK. So now you have Crytek Frankfurt (the main office of Crytek, because there is also Crytek Ukraine, Budapest, South Korea, and Black Sea who used to be Black Sea Studios) Working on the Single Player of Crysis 2 while Crytek UK is working on the multiplayer of Crysis 2 and it's being published by Electronic Arts who had a previous "strategic agreement" with Crytek about publishing games even though Ubisoft published their first game FarCry which is basically the game that started all this. Although this is the same Crytek, just before it was Crytek Frankfurt because they hadn't actually moved the office to Frankfurt yet so all it says is Crytek on the box while on Crysis it says Crytek Frankfurt. (or at least in the credits) Crytek Budapest did Crysis Warhead and some upcoming game called kingdoms or some shit that I honestly know nothing about while the rest of these branches haven't really done shit with the exception of Black Sea who made Knights of Honor and Worldshift before being bought out which I don't really know shit about either but when I saw that they had a branch called Black Sea I had to see WTF that meant so I checked it out. Anyway, the creators of FarCry and Timesplitters are working on one game. Sounds badass to me.

 

It gets wayyyyy more complicated than that. Shit, there is a whole book about the creators of Doom and the shit they went through. A lot of them split up and some became successful forming their own companies while others went on to make shit like Daikatana and shitty cell phone ports of real games.

[Agozer]

Shit, there is a whole book about the creators of Doom and the shit they went through. A lot of them split up and some became successful forming their own companies while others went on to make shit like Daikatana and shitty cell phone ports of real games.

Masters of Doom, yes?

 

EDIT: The shit that revolved around Romero and Daikatana is pretty legendary by itself. http://www.johnromero.com/games_daikatana.htm

[Krosigrim]

Lol. Shiba you reminded me of that fat bald guy on MTV years back that would connect the dots from people to people through movies, music and whatever other connections. Ie my Mothers hairdressers dogs groomer went to Subway, where Sam worked and he was the cousin of Tim who runs the shop down in Church Street. Tims kid plays Little league Football with the son of the guy who makes Philly Ice for my Moms boss every tuesday.

 

To clarify, I dont care much for who published a game. I thought perhaps there was an easy way to tell if the name at the bottom of the box was merely the publishers, or the developers themselves. The fine example you made reminded me that it isnt as simple as a name anyway, as employees change hands, companies switch around, etc etc as was clearly described in your example. But a general gist of who touched the game is what Id like to have.

 

The main reason, other than just because I want to know, is I like ALOT of stuff. Its not like normal gamers whereas they usually stick to 1 or 2 particular genres. I like everything but sports and family games. Ill play those, but Id rather not. Ill ask other employees or see if they can help the customer... whatever the situation entails, but since I have such a broad range of interests, Id like to know what I can.