Blog Herding: Editor And Reader Picks 3/04

Every Thursday we highlight both editor and reader blogs worth your undivided attention. Now's the time to get blogging! Check out our picks this week and then get writing. Maybe your posts will appear in a future herd.

On Heavy Rain And Believablity In Games
"Heavy Rain is a great game, as you can see for yourself in our review. In fact, the game’s overall reception has been fairly positive. However, in order to put some perspective on the title, I thought I’d talk a little bit about an area of the game I found lacking." Even though Ben enjoyed Heavy Rain's story overall, he found the narrative lacked in authenticity. Check out his argument.

Trash Talking In Games
"Trash talk is an integral part of any competition. Whether its a championship or just a friendly get together trash talk is involved. Video games have brought trash talk to a new level. Where multiplayer used to be in person and was limited to the number of controller slots on your system, it is now worldwide and connected to many players at once. The trash talk has increased as well as its severity. Many people think it is going too far, however no one really knows where the line is and what it takes to cross it." GIO community member, Forsberg, discusses the difference between playful trash talk and verbal abuse. How far is too far? Read on to find out.

Sarcasm 101
"In issue 203's Timeline section in Connect, Andrew Reiner and Joe Juba made a joke about the upcoming remake of 1981’s Clash of the Titans. In our Timeline, the diabolical duo proclaimed that the movie – and pretty much the entirety of Greek mythology – is a rip-off of Sony’s God of War. We didn’t think the joke was exactly subtle – on the same page, we stated John Cusack has 'a keen eye for compelling roles that win him Oscar nominations every year' in the description for Hot Tub Time Machine, for crying out loud. But that didn’t stop some readers from taking our claim seriously, and reporting to us how very, very wrong we were." How wrong were we? Check out Jeff M.'s post featuring the flood of angry mail we received for this joke gone wrong.

Are Games More Violent, Or Is Technology More Capable?
"The average critic would suggest that game developers keep pushing into increasingly violent subject matter, trying to appeal to a desensitized audience. What they fail to realize, however, is that the basic concepts behind video games have remained mostly the same; it is our improving technology that makes those ideas appear more graphic." GIO community member, SaoSauce, tackles the violence in video games topic, and argues technology may be part of the problem. Do you agree?

CosBlog #21: Cammy White By Illiara
This week's CosBlog sees one Street Fighter fan's take on Cammy White throughout her various costumes and iterations. It's safe to say that cosplayer Illiara has taken a notoriously hard character to pull off and succeeded in spades. Check out the awesome images.

Go West, Young Man...
GIO community member, Saint, creates a list of gaming's pioneers that pushed the bar in development, and helped spawn some of the most popular franchises in the world. "...what about those pioneers a little more interesting to us...pioneers in the field of video game development. While most of us recognize the amount of effort and energy expended on the production of a modern-day video game and realize it is a collaboration of efforts by a team of professionals possessing specialized skills, this certainly wasn't always standard practice."

My Take On The Infinity Ward Drama
"If I ran Activision, I would have done anything and everything I could to keep West and Zampella as the force behind the Call of Duty franchise, like Microsoft did with Bungie. But I don’t. Now the cat is out of the bag, the lawsuits have begun flying back and forth, and the relationship can never return to the way it was. Everyone loses in this scenario." Andy provides his heart-felt take on the events that occurred between Infinity Ward and Activision this week. For more of Andy's editorials, check out his Letters From The Editor post.

Have you produced a blog post on gameinformer.com that you think should be considered for upcoming installments of Blog Herding? Read a fellow community member's blog and think everyone should give it a read? Send over an e-mail with a link to annette@gameinformer.com. I also accept bribes.