Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Marketing To Germany

In our weekly Best of Member Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game community who maintain Member Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. Our favorite blog post of the week will earn its author a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. (All magazine recipients outside of the United States or Canada will receive lifetime electronic subscriptions.) We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs - The Videogame Marketing Dichotomy (Davneet Minhas) How are games sold? How should they be sold? These questions and more are addressed -- or at least raised -- by Davneet Minhas, who looks at the increasingly divergent way marketing departments pitch their products. For his effort, Davneet will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - Germany's Video Game Market - Notable Polls, Numbers Alex Covic In what seems to be an ongoing series on the German video game market, commentator (and authentic German) Alex Covic presents a variety of basic points and statistics about game ratings, public opinion, and the state of the industry. (Why should you care? Check out Covic's previous post on the matter.) - Terminator Salvation - A Game Design Analysis (Arcade Berg) In a surprisingly honest and enormously detailed post, GRIN level designer Arcade Berg delves deeply into what led to the unenthusiastic reviews for GRIN's own Terminator: Salvation, concluding, "The game is lacking focus and for all the parts to work in harmony for a greater result." - Not All Games Tell A Good Story (Tom Allins) The question of what makes a good video game story is frequently asked both in Gamasutra's blogs section and just about everywhere else on the video game-playing internet. Here, analyst Tom Allins offers a fairly clear-cut, bullet-point-structured take on the matter, putting a heavy emphasis on player/character synergy. In another post this week, Allins addresses video game violence in response to a post from Gamasutra contributor Benj Edwards. - Interactivity Mishmash (Fabio Daniel Fibeiro) There's no shortage of opinions on the ever-growing wave of new motion control offerings that can be seen cresting on the horizon, and here Fabio Daniel Fibeiro takes on a particularly focused comparison between the upcoming solutions from Microsoft and Sony, picking one he feels is the better angle.