Yesterday, me and my girlfriend saw "There Will Be Blood" - a movie we've been dying to see since we saw the trailer for it in "No Country for Old Men." I can't get this movie out of my head. It has to be one of the most powerful films I've seen in a long time - mainly due to Daniel Day-Lewis' jaw dropping performance.

Simply put, I love this movie. Go watch it. Now.

that looks kinda fun.

I am an Xbox fanboy. That is a title I'm not ashamed to have and it is one that I encourage and embrace. I think everyone has a bit of fanboy in them, whether they want to admit it or not. Every once in a while, I reflect as to how I became such a huge Xbox fanboy. I wonder why I constantly support Xbox hardware, software, peripherals, and services on a near daily basis on message boards and in other communication mediums. I chuckle at myself for perpetually bashing other hardware companies and for cheering every time something is negatively said about Microsoft's competition.

Hell, I think I'm the only one who goes off on a 5 minute rant to my girlfriend when I see bullshit "gameplay" commercials of Heavenly Sword.

The thing is, I'm not new to gaming. I've been gaming for the large majority of my life. But I've never been so actively engaged in the politics and all of the ancillary bullshit of gaming as I have been over the past 2 years. How did I get this way? How did I go from a Nintendo-only, Zelda-lovin' console owner to a strict, raging Xbox fanboy?

Well, I've had this picture above for about 2 months or so. It is from a blog that I visit frequently, written by two of the country's premier marketing gurus - Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. The blog is called "Church of the Customer." They are authors whose "specialty" is how to turn customers into marketers. Their newest title is called "Citizen Marketers." As you can now probably see, the relevance of the above image is pretty clear.

When I first saw this image, it immediately struck a chord with me. It was similar to the feeling when you finally solve a puzzle in Zelda and are then granted access to a temple, or something. It just clicked. This is why I am such a fanboy!

The first step: I was a regular person - unknowing, oblivious, but interested in video games.

The second step (Introduction): I will never forget playing an Xbox for the first time. Halo. In a Toys-R-Us. Instantly hooked. Got an Xbox with Halo as a birthday gift about 7 months after it launched.

The third step (Participation): In November 2006, there was a post on the Gamerscoreblog about how they were going to be having a fall showcase in San Francisco - about an hour from where I live. I got there 3 hours early. It was the night before Gears launched. Shane Kim was there. I met Tony Hynes and hung out with a ton of media. Everyone walked out with a wireless headset, a sweet t-shirt, 5 arcade games, and fresh copy of Gears. Tony Hynes was a badass.

The fourth step (Adpotion): Full blown fanboyism. This is the part when I start attacking message boards and my love for all things Xbox explodes. The feelings of being included with the San Francisco Fall Showcase makes me feel valued. Important. Significant. Things I had never felt from a company before.

The fifth step (Evangelism): This is when I start preaching the good word of Xbox to co-workers, friends, my girlfriend, her family, strangers, and stubborn Playstation faboys disguised as workers at Best Buy. (Stubborn bastard.)

The sixth step (Community): Gamerscoreblog. MajorNelson. Ozymandias. All of these things just reinforced my love and and desire to be involved with Xbox in any way I could. And did I mention I got to go to E3?

The seventh step (Ownership): This is where I currently am in my own personal fancycle. I've taken a personal, emotional ownership of the Xbox brand. I actively try to make others fanboys of Xbox, or at the very least, spread the word about Xbox products and services.

So this is my personal road to becoming the fanboy I am today. I think that everyone should embrace their own fanboyish characteristics rather than pretend they don't exist. I just don't really see what is the big deal about being a fanboy. If you're not passionate about doing anything, then you're passionate about doing nothing........right?

So lately I've been doing a lot of reading. I've been trying to immerse myself into the complex world of all things Marketing. During my quest to engorge my brain with Marketing and consumer psychology principles, I picked up The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. (Quick history: The Tipping Point was a #1 Bestseller and widely recognized as a revolutionary Business/Marketing book. Malcom Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has also written Blink, which also was a #1 Bestseller.)

The book explores many topics from psychology-based studies and experiments to various business case studies. The backbone of the book is the moment when an idea or social behavior crosses a certain threshold and spreads like a wildfire out of control. The Tipping Point shows the steps leading up to that moment and how Businesses can achieve this same "epidemic success" as well.

The reason I am writing this blog post, however, is because of one specific topic in The Tipping Point that was particularly interesting and significantly relevant to my passion for gaming. It has always been a confusing idea as to why the Xbox Live friends list holds a maximum of 100 friends. I've always thought "oh, it's just a nice, round, even number - a logical quantitative cap." And many others thought/speculated "oh, it must be bandwidth issues, or some technical reason." Well, dear reader, I think we have all been dead wrong about why our friends list stops at 100. The bandwidth people, the hardware people - all the people on the technical side of Xbox had nothing to do with limiting the friends list to 100. Nope. This is Marketing.

The Rule of 150

According to The Tipping Point "there is a concept in cognitive psychology called the channel capacity, which refers to the amount of space in our brain for certain kinds of information." This is why phone numbers are 7 digits. "Bell wanted a number to be as long as possible so they could have as large a capacity as possible, but not long enough that people couldn't remember it." After 7 digits, researchers found that humans were unable to correctly remember the digits as easily as they had with the 7 digit number.

Malcom continues: "As human beings, in other words, we can only handle so much information at once. Once we pass a certain boundary, we become overwhelmed. What I'm describing is intellectual capacity...but if you think about it, we clearly have a channel capacity for feelings as well." Gladwell continues into social channel capacity - the amount of individuals whom we can casually be friends with, without having close, personal ties. By looking at anthropological literature and studying the neocortex ratio researchers have found that even the earliest Homo Sapiens had groups no larger than 150 individuals. Why? Anthropologist Robin Dunbar explains: "The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes without knowing who they are and how they relate to us."  Looking through anthropological records and literature shows that the number 150 pops up again and again and again.

The significance of The Rule of 150 can be seen everywhere from military, early humans, religious colonies, to modern day corporations. At Gore-Tex (a multi-million dollar high tech firm) they use the Rule of 150 to separate and organize groups of employees because they found out the "hard way" that going over that threshold had serious repercussions. They found that "things get clumsy around 150." The now strictly assign no more than 150 employees per plant.

Xbox Live Friends List

So where does the Xbox Live friends list come into play? Microsoft has built Xbox around community. Xbox Live, Xbox.com, and the multitude of Microsoft-hosted blogs are tailored for the community. This has been their strongest focus this generation and it's very apparent to anyone plugged into Xbox. So why would our friends list be any different? I know the a logical question would be: "So if Microsoft is so heavily invested in community, why wouldn't they just allow you to have an infinite number of friends to allow for maximum community interaction?"

The Rule of 150. This psychological principle shows that humans are incapable of effectively and comfortably having a social channel capacity of greater than 150 individuals. When that threshold is crossed, our brains cannot fully process it, as has been shown through years and years of research - looking back at social group interactions at our earliest humans. The group becomes cluttered, clumsy, and unmanageable. Knowing this principle, Microsoft once again flexed it's community-centric muscles and decided that it would be best not to destroy what it has so successfully built. This is why our friends list ends at 100.

Edit: It looks like this guideline is industry-wide as the maximum number of "Mii's" you can have on a Wii account is 100 and the max number of friends on Playstation Network is 50.

**Edit: To reiterate my point, earlier this year, Chris Paladino from the Gamerscoreblog posted on "How to Manage the 100 person Friends List" showing that at the 100 person mark, a social group of people is still manageable. It's easy to see that at increasing numbers above 100, at 200, 300, etc., that a group of people simply becomes an unmanageable mess. It becomes a frustration and annoyance rather than an effective community tool. The title of CPaladino's post just says it all - "How to Manage the 100 person Friends List."

Today is Sunday, August 19th. Let me say it again - August 19th. This date in history means nothing more than that we are officially 2 days and less than 48 hours away from Bioshock. I am currently beyond hype and excitement - those feelings passed with the third perfect 10 that Ken Levine's creation garnered. I've moved on to a more comatose state as a preemptive measure to prevent the overload of AWESOMENESS that will occur on Tuesday.

I even re-organized my gaming setup to give my 360 more breathing room from it's previous placement. It's now sitting on top of the TV stand while my TV is being held up by a sweet arm wall mount.   My poor 360 is going to take a beating over the next few days months, so I figured it would in it's best interest to give it all the breathing room it needs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back into my cocoon I was nesting in until Tuesday, when I'll be seduced out by the amazing graphics and genre-changing gameplay of Bioshock. Can ya tell I'm just a tad excited??

 zzzzzzz........ You still awake?

Wii Fit parody: 

So, I've been back from my trip to Santa Monica for a few days now, leaving me with enough time to let the excitement and rush subside before I jot it all down. I'll just cut to the chase - it was awesome. To be around that crowd, with this sense of nervous excitement that was so thick you could literally feel it - was one of the best experiences I've had.

The experience was so surreal because of the gaming elite that I was surrounded with. I don't give a flying crap about "real" celebrities, but  these bloggers, website editors, and video game execs are my versions of celebrities. For example, I walked into the entrance of the high school, and I'm passed by Adam Sessler from G4 with a cigarrette in one hand with his cell phone, and a coffee in the other. I then proceeded to the "real" entrance where I see the Gamerscoreblog crew, Major Nelson, and a guy from Gametrailers.com. Then, while I'm chatting it up with the Gamerscore crew, I see the guys from Kotaku in a pre-conference huddle. Effing Kotaku.

It was so weird to see all of gaming's elite in one area at one time. All I could think was - I read your blogs every day. Every day. And you're standing here next to me? WTF is going on?! It was my dream version of a "red carpet" event. I was practically standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Crecente from Kotaku while casually chatting it up with Chris Paladino and Tony Hynes from Gamerscoreblog. Crazy.

The next day, I headed over to the Hyatt Regency hotel to hang out with the Gamerscore crew and watch Sony's presser. There were some funny times during their press conference where everyone in the room was laughing their asses off (mainly during the Tretton-Chewbacca exchange.) Me and my girlfriend (who they so nicely let attend) left a little after Sony's presser and we headed back home.

All in all, it was something that I definitely will never forget and has rekindled my love and desire to work in the gaming community. I can't even begin to explain how genuinely kind the Gamerscore crew is. They truly care about each and every fan. After each of the events, they asked each of us what our feelings were about the announcements, without the corporate BS spin or biased views. Just guys talking games.

I once again have to thank Chris Paladino and the entire GS crew for hooking it all up. It was one experience I'll never forget.

 Thanks guys

Almost forgot, here are the pics from Microsoft's Presser (battery ran out, sucks)

I will be going to E3 2007. Yes, I will be there to witness the glory of Microsoft's Press Conference on Tuesday, July 10th at 8:30p.m. Now how in the hell did I get into this invite only event? Well, I have to thank the great guys at the Gamerscoreblog, and namely Chris Paladino from the GSblog crew for hooking it up.

On last weeks podcast, I heard the guys briefly mention something about getting community members into the events. The hampsters that run the wheels inside my brain started going which made me immediately spring into action. I shot the guys an email and the rest was history. It actually worked out perfectly because I have an interview with an advertising agency in Anaheim at 2:00p.m on the same day. 

So, I booked the hotel today.....150 bucks. One night. Ouch. It will definitely be worth it. As Backscatter pointed out, Microsoft's been so tight-lipped about any announcements (besides Gears of War on the PC) it's just raising the tension and speculation to a fever pitch. It will be sweet to hear the announcements live, straight from Peter Moore's mouth.

Anyway, I'll be posting plenty of pics and quotes (Sony) and impressions from the show all next week. I'm acutally invited to all three days worth of E3, but I don't know if I'll stay all three (150 bucks/night!!!). If my girlfriend is able to get into the C3 @ E3 party, I'll consider it.                         

Santa Monica here I come.

Oh and btw, I wanted to bring some business cards with me to E3 (networking) and I came up with this. I've been doing a little "creative business card" research lately, and I really liked what I saw. Since I'm a Marketing guy, we're supposed to be creative. Opinions? Like? Dislike? 

Back when the 360 launched in November '05, I remember seeing a couple of screens of The Darkness in a few game publications and on many gaming sites. There were little to no details, and the entire premise of the game was hazy at best. Needless to say, the game hardly grabbed my interest.

Well, it's June 2007, and after enduring the final weeks until the final release of The Darkness, it was time to get my grubby paws all over the next-gen shooter just in time for what should be a memorable summer.

Let me just put it this way- if The Darkness is the pre-party to a gala of awesome summer titles, then I'm not sure I'm ready to leave the pre-party just yet. In short, I loved The Darkness. It is one of those titles that emotionally grabs you from start to finish; an emotional pull that I haven't experienced since Half-Llife 2. When playing this game, you just feel for Jackie. In some weird way, he feels so relatable, so tangible, so real. Starbreeze does an excellent job of connecting the player with Jackie by eliminating conventional loading screens, and instead replacing them with what feels like intimate conversations with Jackie.

The Darkness features some of the best cinematic game sequences that I have ever had the pleasure of playing. The Darkness also wins the award for the best opening sequence to a game that I've ever played. It also features some of the most gripping, jaw-dropping, emotional, OMG moments that I've ever played. There was a couple moments in the game where I caught myself sitting on the edge of my seat hanging onto every word that was being said. No joke. Any game that can make me do that is a winner in my book, and The Darkness is definitely that.

Now with all that goodness unfortunately comes the bad. Although the game was extremely fun (and longer than I expected) to play, there were some unfortunate flaws that should've been worked out or avoided. My first gripe would have to be the Darkling's AI. It's just plain horrible. I can't tell you how many times that damn Gunner darkling shot me in the back! Or how Lightkiller would knock out 2 lights and call it quits for the day. Or how you would direct the Darklings to move somewhere but they would refuse. SO frustrating!

Another one of my gripes with The Darkness would have to be the weapon selection. It's really bland, not to mention that the Darkness Guns are useless. Also, the 'Black Hole' power that you get 3/4 through the game is insanely too powerful. There are some definite balance issues that needed to be worked out there. And as for the online multiplayer - I'm not even going to mention it, because Starbreeze themselves admitted that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously and it was just an add-on. (And it definitely plays like an add-on.)

Overall, I loved the experience enough for me to downplay the obvious issues that The Darkness possesses. If a game is able to grab a morsel of emotional attachment from me, it's definitely doing something right in my book. Very, very rarely can a game get beneath the impenetrable layer of "it's just a video game story" and The Darkness achieved that accomplishment.  

Graphics - 9 - Great character models, and a very consistent theme throughout the entire game. Not to mention nice lip-synchronization.

Gameplay - 9 - You are a mafia hitman with two blood-thirsty serpents extending from your back! Need I say more? Beautiful story, amazing cinematic moments. But, slow walking/running speed break up the action with lengthy walking-in-dead-silence sequences.

Sound - 9 - Nice crisp gun sounds, and some of the best voice acting I've ever heard. Some of the background music during intense shootout moments sound pretty cheesy.

Lasting appeal - 8 - Once I finished the game, I couldn't wait to go back and play again. But, due to a lack of a solid multiplayer, the second time I play it might be the last time.

Overall (not an average): 9.0

Ok, am I the only one who thinks Peter Molyneux looks EXACTLY like Mr. Mackey from South Park? Am I??

I was watching the Lionhead Studios video documentary on Marketplace yesterday, and while I was watching Molyneux talk, the resemblance to Mr. Mackey just struck me in the brain. If you haven't seen the Lionhead Studios vidoc or Mr. Mackey, you should definitely watch both to understand what I'm saying. 

Today is Tuesday, June 19. We are officially ONE week away from one of the most anticipated titles of the summer, The Darkness. I have been looking foward to this game more and more with every new gameplay video I see. I'm a big FPS fan (I would say it's my genre of choice) so this game, with all of it's unique twists on the classic FPS genre - is right up my alley.

However, there is one thing that has been bothering me as June 25th comes closer and closer:

Where in the hell is the marketing for this game?

I'll admit, I've seen a few print ads for The Darkness in EGM, and I believe I saw a couple in OXM, but what does this seriously accomplish? First of all, gamers are flocking away from the often-outdated news of print magazines and have instead ran to the internet as their new primary source for gaming news. The circulation rate for game publications have been dwindling (i.e. Official Playstation Magazine, etc.) as people can get up-to-the minute news at their very own desktop. By running an ad campaign in solely in gaming magazines, you are limiting/hindering the scope of the campaign to a very select target audience.

I don't understand the overall marketing approach of 2k. Go to the 2k website. You will find NO traces of a fan forum, a blog, a comments section - NOTHING. Hell, even their own game news is terribly outdated. In this stage in the video game industry life-cycle, I find it flat out unnaceptable that there is no fan interaction on their part. Why do you think people have come to loathe EA as much as they do? It's because they feel that the EA approach to gamers resembles a dictatorship rather than a democracy. 2k had/has a genuine chance to differentiate themselves from EA by being more community-invovled and fan-oriented, and instead they've opted to mirror their stone-walled rivals.

Anyway, the basis of this post is to say that I'm really dissappointed in 2k's approach to marketing for this game and marketing in general. I think this game will be one of the best games that no one will play this year, and that the commercial failure of this game will rest solely on the shoulders of the 2k marketing folks. This game is definitely a "day 1" purchase for me, but sadly, I think I'm in the minority.