Games

posted 02/23/08 by Rick Webb

Game design. We love games. Games are everywhere. And you know what? They’re interactive. Like people do things with a controller, and then the game does something different. We love that. We love interactivity. We love the back and forth. And we love thinking about this in terms of brands. Like when someone’s interacting with your brand, that’s interesting, right? And isn’t it interesting how this interaction is so much more than people just watching pictures in order?
Then there’s the amount of time people play games. Man, they spend a lot of time playing games. A lot of time playing a game, interacting with and maybe even thinking about your brand. That’s pretty cool. You don’t really get that as much with a quick hit viral video.
Casual games, puzzle games, silly games, massively multiplayer online games. Any games. Games in flash. Games on your iPod. Games on the XBox Live Arcade. Games here. Games there. Games everywhere. We love them, you love them, we love building them, and they are effective. And fun.

Here are some recent posts from our employees about Games:

Relevant TV

CBS Outernet announced last week the launch of GameStopTV, an in-store digital video network using high-definition screens. I am usually pretty annoyed with in-store TV channels because they are so, well, annoying. In this case the content is absolutely relevant to the retail experience and as such is a natural extension of the shopping experience. Awesome.
I wish my local Shaws would learn something from CBS. God, standing in-line to buy ground beef tonight I had to endure three back-to-back television ads for tampons. Ugh.

Ms. Pac Man, Auto Repair, and Client Communications

This came my way last week, and kinda blew my mind. On his eponymous site, Don Hodges has looked into some of the most famous programming bugs in early gaming history – the Donkey Kong kill screen, Pac Man’s level 256 split screen, Dig Dug’s instant-death screen, and others. Although the solutions are very technical (we’re talking assembly code here), the level of detail and understanding of the algorithms is what really impressed me.

High Score!

We here at the Barbarian Group love video games. We try to play them as often as possible, which is why we have three Xbox 360s, two Wiis and a PS3 between our three offices (not to mention the wide array of legacy consoles Boston keeps around). For my part, I don’t do a lot of gaming at home, though I do play my share of split-screen Call of Duty 4 in the New York office, and I’ve been known to break out my DS Lite when I have a hankering to indulge in two of my all-time favorite games: Tetris and SimCity.
Playing Galaga
Anyway, I just want to share my excitement about getting to experience one of the rare pleasures in life over the weekend. As you can see in the picture above, I got to play Galaga on a tabletop arcade machine at Tea Lounge in Park Slope. It’s actually a hybrid Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga unit, but man oh man, do i love my Galaga (it ranks second below Tetris and above SimCity in my all-time favorite video game list).
Not only that, but in the one game I played, I scored third overall, as you can see in the picture below. Had I not been pressed for time, I can assure you that I would’ve tried for the gold, and I may yet try again in the near future.
High Score

Harmonix Phase

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Here’s a quick little site we did with our buddies down the road at Harmonix – makers of the upcoming smash hit Rock Band. This is a site for Phase, a new type of game for the iPod that is sorta like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but lets you play it with any song on your iPod. Seriously, how cool is that? Check it out at phasegame.com.

Escape the Paparazzi

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

We feel strongly that you should check out the new game we just made for VH1. And laugh a lot. And if you do not laugh a lot, there may be something wrong with you. Maybe. We’re just saying, s’all.

Four sites, two articles, two new peeps

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Oh. My. God. So much going on. Where to begin? First. Comcastic. We teamed up with Goodby, Number 9, our pal and sound designer Sean T Drinkwater and Erik Natzke to build out this site. TBG was responsible for the High Speed Internet section which entails 5 skills games that will eventually lead players to a tournament for their chance at getting into the Guinness Book of World Records. As a player, you will be able to challenge and chat with other logged in members to compete in the games head to head. Your score will be recorded, making you eligible to become the best mouse user EVERRRRR.

Next. The Passat B6 Minisite, created by our one and only Robert Hodgin, in conjunction with Arnold Worldwide, is live. There is going to be a total of 120 mini-videos that showcase the new features of the car. Right now, there’s about more than a third of them up, but the rest will be incorporated within the next couple of weeks. Check it out!

Third. The Milwaukee’s Best Light Poker Game. Made in conjunction with Mother New York. This is really awesome. Went up on Thursday on our Milbest site, alongside some other Poker-related content, all very fun. Test your poker skills against Poker champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson:

Fourth! God, we’ve been busy. You know how when you call and we say “oh yeah, it’s pretty busy.” See? We weren’t kidding. Finally, we offer you Boston.com’s tenth anniversary game, Lobstah Bash. Defend boston from a rabid candle and present hurling lobster. Don’t ask. Just play. And be warned. It’s HARD.

IN OTHER NEWS: Gametap, a project we’ve been working on with Mullen, got a nice writeup in The New York Times yesterday. I saw a decent article in AdWeek this week as well, but that one, ahem, didn’t mention your Barbarian friends. We josh. Anyway, if you’ve seen the enigmatic Get Goatz or What Is Adat spots on Adult Swim, you might begin to have some idea what we’re takling about here.

Speaking of Adweek, they did a really nice writeup of the insanely, completely addictive game we did for Saucony with Nail.

Finally, we’d like to welcome Jill as an interactive producer. She was last at Electronic Arts. And we’d like to welcome Cole as our latest rock star Flash designer. We found him on Flickr. No joke. Who says the Internet’s all hype?

New Sites, New People, New Jobs

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

IT IS TIME TO GET YER MEATINS ON. That’s right. Ironic use of the browser shake. You know you love it. We’re not gonna tell you much about this just yet, you have to go dig. But we WILL say we did it with Mullen and those guys are pretty cool

The Birtney Spears Fantasy site is now fully live, and doing a good amount of traffic, coincidentally. Props to Elizabeth Arden and Goodby for the change of pace.

Oh, also, I don’t think I ever showed you the Virgin Mobile Parental Enlightenment Kit. We made this with Mother New York. It’s really funny. You’ll like it.

We’d also like to let you know that we’ve refreshed our job postings, and give a big shout out welcome to Liz Whittaker, our new Senior Producer, who starts this Monday. Liz is an old friend of many of us from our Arnold days, and it’s been a dream of ours to make her a Barbarian for years. This was the third time we tried to hire her, and bless her heart, she finally said yes. Maybe this means she thinks we might actually stay in business now.