I have searched the internet… and no one has called the Mario Kart Wheel the obvious name… I give you, the MARIO KARTWiiL!
I am sure that Nintendo could have sold 20% more at launch if they had come up with this brilliant name.
Archive for the 'videogames' Category
I went to the Game Developers Conference today and checked out the future of video games. I shot a quick video to try out Vimeo, and I am not impressed with my camera’s video capabilities. That being said, Sony had a big-ass video wall made of LEDs hanging in air. Pretty trick.
Entrance of the GDC 2008 from wingnut2600 on Vimeo.
I took some pictures, but none are really that exciting. I need to read my damned camera manual as I am taking worse pictures than ever:
A dome you can play video games in… (fucking Guitar Hero)
Motion capture suit that made a pretty reflection with my flash…
A Big Daddy in the Flesh
The aforementioned big-ass Sony video curtain of LEDs…
Motion captured!
2007 was a shit year. Nothing in particular happened that was all that bad (well… never mind, a few things have), but I am still glad to see the fucker go.
I just played (actually, played about half this evening and finished at 10:30 PM – last achievement of ’07) Portal, and it lived up to all of the hype and gave me a huge motherfucking grin for at least ten minutes. So a nice end to a shit year.
Here is hoping that 2008 is better, and is filled with cake 
Even Aperture Sciences wants to extinguish the year…
In the mail today, I received this lovely plastic feather-shaped stylus from Nintendo for purchasing a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It came in a minimalist box (inside of a bubble-wrapped mailer inside a cardboard mailer) with little branding (just gold coloring, a sprite and a compass rose).
Zelda Feather Stylus, originally uploaded by pressuretobear.
You can see detail out of the box (with my kinda gross-looking hands) next to a DS Lite for scale (yes, the DS Lite is tiny in my hands BTW):
Not a bad freebie item… it has good weight and is a bit longer than the standard stylus. Plus, it has style.
I recently received a search query for, “e4all best swag,” and I instantly realized that there was no swag given away at this event. Any post made about “E4All” containing the word “swag” would be seen in a search engine, because no one had received any…
This is probably the extent of swag given away at a consumer event:
Pet Rock, originally uploaded by chefranden.
There is no incentive for companies to give things away at a trade show open to the public, because these people are marketing dead ends.
An exhibitor at E3 knew that the people attending were likely either:
- Reporters (who are more likely to report on an upcoming game if they received something to remind them)
- People in purchasing positions (who are more likely to place orders if they have a physical reminder of the event and item)
If you get awesome swag into the right people’s hands, they will often reciprocate in a manner positive to the exhibitor/vendor. It is one of Robert Cialdini’s “Six Weapons of Influence:”
Reciprocation – People tend to return a favor. Thus, the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing. In his conferences, he often uses the example of Ethiopia providing thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Mexico just after the 1985 earthquake, despite Ethiopia suffering from a crippling famine and civil war at the time. Ethopia had been reciprocating for the diplomatic support Mexico provided when Italy invaded Ethopia in 1937.
Why give swag to a person when the best expected outcome is they alone purchase the product? They might recommend it to a couple friends or fanboy proselytize in a forum, but this is not an expected or likely outcome. The logical outcome of this expense is that they (alone) will buy your product.
BTW… a person I used to work for told me that SWAG stands for “stuff we all get…”
