Statistics, Anthologies and Machinima

The other week I installed a statcounter for this blog. Mostly because I was a little bored and really felt like procrastinating. I'd guess. Or maybe it was because I have a secret, almost perverse, love for webstatistics, no matter how depressing they are. To my surprise I found out that I have a lot more visitors here than I ever expected. Each day I get somewhere between 20 and 50 unique visitors. I can't for the love of anything understand why however. The oddities of Internet. But since I obviously have an audience, I might as well make my best at entertaining them. Or bore them to death, whichever one applies the best. So I'll better try update it a little more often.

Something I should have mentioned quite a few days ago is that my synopsis for the mmorpg anthology was approved and that I was one of the few lucky authors that got accepted for the book. Except for a few select individuals I really have no clue as to who the other authors are, so it'll be exciting to look forward to what comes out of it all. It's a thrilling project indeed. I guess I'll have plenty of time during this summer to write my chapter for the book. Although, I'll make sure to leave some time for the boardgame development and Gameplayer of course.

Another thing I have for a long time wanted to get off my chest is a kind of irritation. An irritation aimed at game development philosophies and market strategies. Of course I have many aversions and irritations in this matter, but one in particular made itself obvious today as Olle Agebro published his review of the Movies expansion, Stunts and effects.

The other week we republished a short article, also written by Olle, on Gameplayer originally intended for and published on Spel2 (Yeah we do that since we have a larger audience now, so shoot us. Our stuff is good). In that very article he asks the developer how he thinks the expansion will help in improving the machinima culture that the game both supports and profit from. He didn't answer that very question and Olle, with all right, draws the conclusion that they can't answer the question, because they really don't care or know what they are talking about when it comes to that.

But the thing is, this was a fairly easy question still. We brainstormed quite a bunch of good indepth questions regarding machinima and machinima culture for that interview. Olle, of all those questions, only choose to ask this one, since the length of the interview didn't allow more. Personally I think it is insulting to us as journalists that they refuse to answer even the simplest of questions. Even a nobrainer answer like "We of course hope it will help in stimulating the creativity among the players", would have been enough. But we're treated with silence. It shows two things, and two things alone, as far as I am concerned:

1. The devs don't give a shit about the machinima culture, they just find it amusing. Meaning: they have no clue as to what they are doing, except making profit.
2. They have no respect for, nor any high thoughts about, game journalism, since they think just leaving questions blank will solve things. Make us ignore we asked it. To them we are just a means to an end.

Thumbs down for Lionhead (or whatever developer made that expansion), they have no spine. Thumbs up for Olle, he has.