I never thought I’d see the day that the VGVisionary logo would be placed right next to names as Xbox 360, EA, Atari and many other companies and institutes I once admired as a kid. Dream come true, right there! It is therefore my pleasure to announce that VGVisionary is an official partner and supporter of the Beeld en Geluid GameXperience, which is going to be held in Hilversum, The Nederlands, on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of May 2008.

So why is this so special? Simple. The Beeld en Geluid GameXperience is officially the first publicly open event in the Netherlands that is aimed to inform the public on the background and current state of the game industry. In other words: Dutch game history in the making!

VGVisionary representative Sebastiaan Mennen will be attending the Beeld en Geluid GameXperience to provide photo and video coverage of the event.

Update: Our official press release can be found here.

It’s imminent, dear reader. You, Richard Bartle and I know it. In a recent article for the Guardian, Bartle pulled a ‘Leonidas’ on the improper way politics and journalism deal with videogames:

“I’m talking to you, you self-righteous politicians and newspaper columnists, you relics who beat on computer games: you’ve already lost. Enjoy your carping while you can, because tomorrow you’re gone. [...] So we’ve won: accept it. Huff and puff if you must, but your audience grows smaller by the day. Your views are mortally wounded, and soon they will be dead.

Games are mainstream. Drown, or learn to swim.”

Spoken like a true videogame visionary.

Richard Bartle, we salute you!

Source: The Guardian (via Kotaku.com)

Ironic isn’t it? Having a game conference in the hart of Hollywood? Makes you want to take out your Mario costume and run a muck at Universal Studios, laughing and pointing while holding the latest Nielsen Games financial reports. Together with my trusted colleague and fellow game evangelist Scott Steinberg, author of ‘The definitive guide to Videogame Marketing & PR‘, I will be attending the LA Games & Mobile Forum on the 21st and 22nd of May. He’s a speaker, I’ll be doing some coverage/interviews on site.

Two days later, it’s the TV people’s turn to enter the Hollywood Roosevelt: “The Future of Television: What’s Next?”

I believe I know the answer, do you?

Picture courtesy of LAgamesconference.com

I leave Holland behind for just a few months and look what happens! Game festivals and events start popping out of nowhere! With the fall in activity within the general Dutch LAN party scene back in 2007, mainly caused by the demise and/or delay or several big players such as Netgamez, Drome and Regroup, I remember having a deep discussion with my good friend and colleague Viktor Wijnen (Dutch Game Garden) of what the consequences would be. Just within the first half of 2008, the Netherlands has already marked itself for a change of attitude towards gaming, big time. Here’s what we can expect in the next couple of months:

Beeld & Geluid GameXperience (yours truly put some effort into this one!)

NLGD Festival of Games (from merely an industry event to something the entire city of Utrecht is going to sink its teeth into)

Rotterdam’s Free Gaming 2008 (Wait, what?)

Went to the premiere screening with my good friend Chris Gordon, who worked on the film’s props and locations. Laughed my ass off, rekindled my love for indie films and met some of the actors. Highly recommend it!

Indie movies are so awesome!

To quote Peter Moore during the conference, “they’re the backbone of the industry.” This year’s edition of the MI6 conference brought a great collection of speakers and insights together. Each and every person that I met had something new and interesting to tell me. The atmosphere was filled with creativity and optimism for the future of the industry, which just made it a great event to attend. Now if only I had a collection of spacemonkeys to transcribe the hours and hours of interview dialogue…

A select collection of photo’s can be found on the VGV Flickr.

… is one of the most brilliant sentences from the Fallout 3 press demonstration that crossed my eyes at the Monaco Hotel in San Francisco last Tuesday. I met there with Pete Hines -vice president of public relations at Bethesda Softworks- to talk about his work and get a glimpse at the very promising demo. Bethesda’s work has always found a warm place in my heart and from what I’ve seen, most of those die hard fans that bash Bethesda for their unique approach on the Fallout universe seem to be overlooking the intricacies of releasing a next gen title in our contemporary market. Pete will be heading over to Europe next week to start warming people up for the game over there.

Writing about a game isn’t my specialty, but these guys do it all the time.

Image courtesy of Peter Hines’ Bethesda Blog