Bitmob.com

This should be the last front-page post on Bitmob.

I just emailed the Bitmob staff to tell them that we're shutting down activity over here and officially bringing it all over to GamesBeat -- we're finally live there with the new community tools that we've been working on all year.

It was a strange letter to write. I felt like I was saying goodbye in some small way, yet all we're doing is packing up and moving down the street. Most of the Bitmob staff are already actively writing over there. This was nearly a formality, announcing a change of scenery. So I didn't really say farewell to anyone -- more a "thanks for everything, now get back to work!"

I won't say goodbye to any Bitmob community members, either. My hope is that you'll follow us over to GamesBeat. We're doing the exact same thing there: mixing professionally produced articles with carefully curated and edited community content. Except on GamesBeat, you'll have a much, much, much larger audience to write for and many more seasoned writers to be published next to.

Are you in? Here's what you need to do:

Head over to GamesBeat and hit the "log in" button in the red bar up top. Then register a new account but use your current Bitmob username. This will ensure that, later, when we finish the full migration, we can merge your old Bitmob stories into your new GamesBeat profile. Until then (timing is TBD), the two accounts will be separate. 

So don't worry. Your current Bitmob stories are still live and around, and we'll eventually connect them to your new GamesBeat page, so they will all live in one place.

(NOTE: If you have any current, outstanding stories that are still in draft mode, you will have to re-create them on GamesBeat. We don't have any method to move them over. If you wrote a story to the Mobfeed within the last two weeks that hasn't been pushed to the front page of Bitmob, you're welcome to resubmit them as a new post on GamesBeat.)

The new GamesBeat is only in beta. It's been tough getting Bitmob to work over there, and we're not completely done yet. Over the next few weeks, we'll be fixing any problems that pop up, plus adding new features and working on that final and full migration. But all our testing shows the system works just fine -- and in several ways, it's even better than ever (we have much more control over spam stories, for example). We have much more planned, so we hope you'll stick with us.

If you have any general questions, feel free to comment here. I'll check back regularly and answer what I can. If you have any technical issues or bugs to report, please let us know at webmaster@venturebeat.com.

Thanks for all your support over the last three years. We'll see you on the other side.

P.S. Special thanks to co-founders Demian Linn and Rich McGrath. Bitmob wouldn't have happened without their hard work.

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Developer Double Fine's "Amnesia Fortnight" program is an interesting process, which stops work on existing projects and lets anybody in the company pitch a game, with the most liked ones being prototyped with the possibility of become Double Fine's next retail release.

Past Amnesia Fortnights have seen the birth and growth of many success stories, such as the quirky adventure role-playing game Costume Quest. It's a bold and wonderful concept in an industry beset by big budget brands and precious little new ideas, giving the time and resources to what are essentially passion projects.

One of the most intriguing things to come out of this year's Amnesia  Fortnight is last year's pitch, Brazen. After spending some time with the protoype, I contacted project lead Brad Muir. Below are some of my own thoughts on Brazen along with some insight from Muir himself.

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This article contains mild spoilers about Far Cry 3.

I used to own a Transformers-branded wallet made of synthetic material, complete with Velcro straps, for around three years. It had everything I needed: separate zipped sections for notes and coins, a respectable amount of card pouches, and a transparent sleeve for my photo ID. Oh, did I mention it had the Autobot logo on it? That was probably its greatest feature.

It served me well, until one day when the zipper on the note section jammed. After much searching, my in-laws ended my tireless quest when they gifted me with a genuine Italian-leather wallet.

The new wallet did all the things I needed it to do, but it lacked important features, including the Autobot logo. 

In Far Cry 3, you can't use money to buy pedestrian items like a new wallet to carry greater amounts of money. No. You have to skin a pig, a shark, and some cassowary birds to make one. Even if the game forced you to encounter a crocodile, you couldn't use its leathery hide to fashion a larger billfold. The player has to hunt a range of otherwise endangered animals to make the items required to carry more gear and loot. 

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This was another fantastic year for video games. The console cycle has been winding down, and developers (both indie and triple-A) are squeezing everything they can out of these machines before the new ones come along. Thanks to that, we saw games like Journey, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Far Cry 3, Asura’s Wrath, Fez, and so many others come along. However, something stuck out to me this year that I think is more important than any one single release: giving the player the ability to make choices.

In an entertainment medium that is all about being an active participant in the experience, it has only been a few years since developers took it upon themselves to give players agency in how a story unfolds. Games like Bioshock and Mass Effect were heralded as early paragons of storytelling in the modern generation, challenging players to make up their own minds at critical points throughout the narrative. They represented a push to elevate the industry as a whole by telling more mature and diverse stories.

Then, 2012 happened. Mass Effect 3, Spec Ops: The Line, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, The Walking Dead, and plenty other releases I haven’t had a chance to play yet have revolutionized player choice.

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As you may or may not have seen last Friday, the Spike TV Video Game Awards just celebrated its 10th anniversary. The show has endured more than its share of criticism, and by the time you read this, I guarantee that there will be more.

Some denounce it for being misogynistic or biased, and many critics object to the heavy advertising. All of these are valid claims, and anger has been an appropriate reaction to the show in past years, but I’ve begun to realize that everyone is fighting a battle that’s impossible to win.

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This article contains spoilers for Beyond Good & Evil.

Beyond Good & Evil is a game that no player should go without enjoying at some point. I think it is an absolute essential piece of gaming history, and it's one of my absolute favorite titles of all time. I do not say this lightly, but it's a goddamn masterpiece.

That being said, the ending is really rather a let down. This might have to do with the game originally being planned as part of trilogy, but the sales scrapped that hope. I feel, though, that this can not be the whole reason. The ending does the most foolish thing it possibly could. It goes against the very ideals of the rest of the game.

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The Community Spotlight features some of the best unedited articles that didn't quite make the front page. This week, we check out the demo of a long-awaited Japanese RPG, complain about hidden post-credits scenes, and specify games that do both single- and multiplayer modes right.

Ni No Kuni demo impressions
By Bryant "B" Chambers

The demo for Level-5 and Studio Ghibli's new role-playing game, coming next year, released last week. Here, Bryant gives us his thoughts: "If this demo is any indication of how the full game will play, I think we've definitely got a future winner to look forward to."

Stop hiding scenes in the credits
By Justin Davis

It's become more popular, in games as well as movies, to stick an Easter egg or two in or after the final credits. Justin says that blunts the effectiveness of these scenes: "Why can’t they just work these into the last few moments of the game and then roll the credits?  It feels much more unified that way."

Single-player games can have good multiplayer
By Michael Kyle

Michael describes the recent trend that dictates all single-player games need a multiplayer component to sell well. While that often leads to sloppy, incomplete modes, Michael says that often a good single-player campaign is an indication that multiplayer will be successful, too.

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December 7th means a lot to me. My brother's birthday is today, for one thing. It's just 10 days before my own, too. But mostly I remember December 7th because it's the day that an attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, drew the United States into World War II.

In 2001, my high school band traveled to Honolulu to represent both our state and our namesake vessel, the USS Utah, as part of the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. Some of those experiences -- visiting the Punchbowl National Cemetery, marching in a parade in downtown Honolulu, and especially playing a concert on the dock just feet away from the sunken wreckage of the Utah -- will stay fresh in my mind forever.

Days like today make me miss the bygone era of World War II shooters, especially Medal of Honor, the progenitor of the Call of Duty series. And one of the biggest things I miss is the music, largely provided by composer Michael Giacchino.

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The stereotype is "Only guys play video games," and the stereotype is wrong.

Women do play video games. They always have. We can't and shouldn't wave off a woman honing skills in a so-called “men’s territory," real or virtual, and it’s an awesome thing that gamers can now easily showcase their hobby as something familiar to both genders.

But then we go and stick them all under the label "gamer girl." Is that right?

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This article contains minor spoilers for Spec Ops: The Line.

Recently, a video game made me want to put down the controller and walk away. It wasn’t due to frustration or boredom either, but because I couldn’t handle its intensity.

Actually, this happened several times. I could only take about an hour or two of it in one sitting. The game was Spec Ops: The Line, and It wasn't because of the particular decisions that it forced upon me, but the overall weight of the narrative. Each battle wore me down, and eventually I would have to quit and go do something relaxing.

I enjoyed Spec Ops: The Line. The story was great and it is a refreshing title in an industry filled with cookie cutter military shooters, but the experience got me thinking about something: Is making the player walk away from the game a good thing?

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I actually finished a game last night, and it feels really weird. It was Borderlands 2 (and yes, I completed it with my good friend Breaky still equipped). I'm not really sure how to handle this.

See, I haven't seen credits roll on a game in a while; I'm always picking up something new or abandoning the stuff I'm playing for various reasons. I took a break from Assassin's Creed III to play through Borderlands 2, and I put down Darksiders II to play Assassin's Creed III. I've stopped playing Resident Evil 6 while I'm waiting for it to get better, and I hung up Demon's Souls because I was tired of editor Rob Savillo's constant requests for progress reports.

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Recently, I picked up one of the 10,000 special edition copies of Persona 4: Golden. It was a pre-order-only item, and apparently they sold out across the U.S. mere moments after I switched my GameStop credit over to it. Well, the game's been out for two weeks now, and one thing's for certain: I haven't bothered to take any of the special-edition goodies out of its massive box.

That's because, as enticing as limited or collector's edition games might be, the over-priced items inside are often better-left untouched to perserve their value. That's the problem I'm facing with the cool Vita case that came with my copy of Persona 4 Golden....

Internet comedian Stuart Ashen recently put together another video completely trashing all the overpriced things people clamor for when video games launch. While I will defend Atlus' pre-order exclusive goodies, I think Ashen has a point when it comes to mass-marketed games that come in massive boxes. 

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