June’s been a pretty good month for games…but instead of playing them we’ve been reading your e-mails. You know, the ones you send to letters@bitmob.com. Oh look, here’s a few of them right here…just under this perfectly fine looking picture:
Hey Bitmob,
I have been listening to your podcast weekly. I had an odd compulsion to sketch the Bitmob staff that I could not control, resulting in the above picture.
Forgive me for any poor representations of you, as I had trouble finding reference material to base my drawing off of. Anyway, I felt you should see what your podcast has done to me, and that I should warn you of the side effects of listening. You really ought to put that on the label.
Stefan Bautista
Bitmob: This is great on about 1,000 levels, and for that, we thank you. (And yes, you got us all right, so to speak.) Oh…one last innocent question. You’re not watching us right now, are you…? *not nervous laugh* Ha ha *not nervous laugh*… Cheers!
Hey [Bitmob community member Thomas Lin],
Extremely well-written article:
http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/Metacritics-8.3333-and-why-it-needs-to-change..html
I agree with you on most of your points, but I especially agree with you on the need for games publications to simply do away with the very vague and ambiguous A – F scale. I’ve been telling people for a while now that the truly interesting article would be an investigation as to exactly why a site like 1UP/EGM would go from the very elegant and precise 0 – 10 scale (centered around 5.0 being “average”) to the poor A – F scale. I had a conversation in early 2008 with [former 1UP Editorial Director and current Bitmob Co-Founder] Shoe about this, but that call was in confidence. I would think that would be a powerful piece — but it might also uncover some not-so-flattering aspects of our industry.
Anyway, just wanted to again extend my compliments for a solid piece.
Best,
Marc Doyle
Metacritic.com
Bitmob: Poor A-to-F scale? It’s not like every kid who goes to school in this country isn’t familiar with it and would know exactly what’s meant by a “B” grade. Oh wait, they are? Shoot, looks like this scale might actually have some merit.
Marc and Thomas bring up a good point, but it seems to favor number-crunchers and databases. As some of us at Bitmob were instrumental in the 1UP/EGM review-score changeover, we can say that all these factors and lots more were considered before we made the switch. But enough about us, what do you all think about letter grades when it comes to games?
Hey Bitmob,
It seems one of the main reasons why games launching this fall are a bunch of really polished sequels is the fact that developers do not have to waste money and time learning new hardware and can instead focus entirely on making kick-ass games. How do you think third-party developers feel that now if they want to go multiplatform they potentially have to design for three motion controls in their game? That just seems expensive. By introducing three new motion controllers, have The Big Three managed to fracture not only the user base but the developers as well, in which case we all lose?
-Thomas Lin
Bitmob: What are you talking about? That Peter Molyneux Milo-kid thing took, what, a couple hundred bucks max to produce, right?
Here’s the thing: We imagine most third parties will take a wait-and-see approach or do slapped-on motion support (see: every Wii/PS2/PSP port-o-rama). It will be the first-parties who will have to prove these devices to be more than novelties. And only then will we get more Milos.
I am curious as to if you guys are looking for or allow people that have podcasts related to gaming to be showcased on your site? I see that you have a couple of podcasts from other people from the industry and was wondering if there is room for a podcast from the community.
The podcast is Handheld Heroes at handheldheroes.net.
Andy Breeding
Bitmob: Gaming podcasts certainly aren’t in short supply, and we already have plenty of them in our queue. But don’t hesitate to post links to new episodes of your podcast in the Mobfeed to get additional eyes on it. And hey, you just got featured in the Bitmob Mailbag!
And that’s that. Another week, another bag closed. Keep ’em coming. Letters@bitmob.com: You know what to do.