In case you’re not familiar with the holy 50, you might want to start off with this book and work your way up to the rest. Scott Steinberg offers some great insights in the industry machine that even gamers know nothing about. Add up a collection of witty quotes from famous game industry folks, and you’re set! Knowing your industry is becoming an important thing, even for game researchers.

Did I mention the E-book is free?

Did I say contest? There’s no such thing! Unless you want to believe the button in the menu to the left of this post. But it seems many of you haven’t noticed it being there? So we just wanted to point that out to you.

Maybe now you feel compelled to participate in this glorious NLGD giveaway? You can win stuff.

This game really has a legacy. To prove it, watch this extraordinary clip of two extremely good finalists battling it out at a Street Fighter competition back in 2004. Pay close attention to the audience.

Now that’s game culture right here.

While interviewing several booth babes at the Gameplay, I just had to ask them what they thought about the ‘rise of the booth hunk’. Cause honestly, there is no such thing, or is there? Booth babes normally have no relationship to a brand of product, except for the the few square inches of cloth that covers their hot female bodies with a certain logo or name. Videogame characters completely embody their commercial origin, but also their own sexuality.

So now, the following question pops up in my mind: Aren’t Master Chief, Altair or Mario just ‘booth hunks’ with fancy costumes? I think the idea isn’t even that farfetched, after seeing a girl pose with Master Chief. Or when a booth babe told me she was hoping to see Altair from Assasin’s Creed in real life (see our Boothbabe special for that one).

After posing with so many hot booth babes myself, posing with Master Chief gave me a strange kind of feeling: intimidation. Even though it just lasted a short moment, even I considered Master Chief a sexual symbol of masculine power.

The art of booth design is a highly recognized craft in certain Asian countries. The Gameplay 2007 once again was one of many exhibits of this kind of game pr/marketing in action. We put on our analytical goggles and came up with the following conclusions. Reliable sources told us there’s also an official booth contest, so we’ll be sure to look up the results as soon as they’re in! Till then, here’s our two cents on the matter.

Demi, stop playing on your DS and show the people around! Thank you

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Buffed up Lada’s? Pimped out Dacia’s? Obviously this is one of the most brilliant virals I have ever set my eyes upon. ‘Nevoie de viteza’ basically stands for Need for Speed in Romanian you know (we see what you did there EA!). With this my motherland finally gets some other form of online representation than ‘Numa Numa‘ or the Cheeky girls. Once again the rest of the world can feast their eyes on our incredible creativity and hot women!

“Deş teaptă-te, române, din somnul cel de moarte, În care te-adânciră barbarii de tirani….”

We can all agree that booth babes are an intricate part of game events. Even if its only because the majority of attendants has a penis. Nevertheless, their aesthetic role doesn’t automatically indicate that these angels have the IQ of a peanut. On the contrary!

People keep claiming booth babes can only take poses with gamers and hand out fliers. Enough! VGVisionary took up the task to shed some light on these objectified and sexualized individuals during the Gameplay 2007 event in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

So here’s their story!

Is it just me, or did the brainy gamer ones just become exponentially more attractive? And yes, we know about the huge typo halfway through. Blame it on insomnia.

The lovely people from Ubisoft Holland were so kind to add some great Assasin’s Creed swag to our ongoing NLGD contest. We’re still awaiting some confirmations on extra stuff to the prize pack, but that shouldn’t prevent you from placing a quick comment to enter the contest! Chop, chop! The deadline for contest entries is only 6 days away!

In case you missed the contest button. It’s to your left<=

As we mentioned before, the launch was very promising. And yep, we taped some of it! Not only were most of the attendants enthusiastic about the NLGD’s plans for 2008, it just feels like the right time for the Netherlands to get their own big game conference and all.

So without further a due, here’s our impression of the NLGD Launch!

Finally some decent imagery to set aside our adventurous tales! On our right hand side is the artist better known as Pedro Elastico while he’s rocking for the Gameplay audience on his electric air guitar!

You still reading this? Get your hiney to the Gameplay Day #1 Flickr set!

Try to ignore the huge amount of pictures that show me with booth babes. I swear, it was for a good cause!

The ‘lesbian scene‘ is a great political statement and all, but this striptease gameplay just beats everything! I don’t know why, but these saucy tidbits keep reminding me of captain Kirk’s naughty nono adventures on the Starship Enterprise.

Stop haunting my damn brain William Shatner!

Couldn’t have portrayed it any better myself. In Flash.

*Click* 

Source: Newgrounds

Man, we were on fire today! Not only did we collect an extraordinary list of exciting and fresh items during the Gameplay, the VGVisionary crew just kept on trucking the entire day! We all have sore feet now, so we’re taking it easy right now. Nevertheless, walking around the Gameplay was phenomenal! Meeting new and familiar faces, chatting up on events, inventing interesting items on the spot and even getting some lovely compliments on our dress code. Like a fish in the sea I tells ya! A fish in the sea!

We still need have some unfinished footage from the NLGD Launch, but stay tuned for our first Gameplay adventures! With a bit of luck, the first batch will be up in less then 24 hours! Huzzah!

Eight weeks, dear reader. Sixty friggin days. That’s how long it took for my beloved Tokyo treasure to reach the Netherlands by boat. It felt like Christmas, coming home and finding two roughed up boxes full of booty from my trip to Tokyo.

Maybe it’s because I chose the cheapest shipment fee? Whatever, thank god my treasure didn’t have a sailor’s funeral.