Here's some of the stuff we've been sent. You might think this is the 'easy option' but in fact it's amazingly tiresome cutting and pasting the best bits out of emails. It's too much like our day job.

If any of the below stuff is from you, you are one of these:

THING ONE: SOME PHOTOS OF THE NEW ZEALAND XBOX 360 'LAUNCH BUS'

"New Zealand's Xbox 360 pre-launch idea. Instead of a big party we got a custom bus filled with the units they put in the shops. Twenty of them, with released games like PGR3, CoD2, DOA4, Kameo, Tiger Wood and a demo of the final build of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter."

"They also had giveaways (trucker hats, armbands, lanyards) and some chick dressed up as Joanna Dark (no photos of her)."








THING TWO: A LINK TO THE 'RUB RABBITS' FLASH GAME

http://www.the-rub-rabbits.com/minigame/en/index2.html


THING THREE: A HUGE PSP AD BANNER ON A BUILDING IN MANCHESTER

"I took it in Manchester. Feel free to do what you like with it."




THING FOUR: A REINTERPRETATION OF THE 'EMILY BOOTH' MAGAZINE COVER

"Hidden message in the Emily Booth cover."




THING FIVE: MAN IN JAPAN SPOTS SEGA iDOG AND iFISH

"I spotted the now infamous Sega product Homestar in a shop in Japan today. Lo and behold, what was next to it? The Sega Toys duo of iDog and iFish. I've got no idea what they do but it's nice to see Sega catering for the iPod generation, right? Plus they were in a sale too! That makes me sad."




THING SIX: THOSE OLD PHOTOS OF GIRLS AND GAMES CONSOLES

"Just wondered what you thought about these piccies..."

http://www.siliconera.com/2006/03/04/the-girls-of-gaming


THING SEVEN: EMILY BOOTH ON TV!

"Well i don't know if this is good or bad news but Miss Booth can still get some kind of televised work. She can now be found on some crappy Sky quiz channel called iplay, on channel 166 i think. Oh my surprise when her face popped up at 3 in the afternoon when i was flicking through the channels. Well its like the world has turned full circle with her back on unknown television but at least on LiveTV she nearly got her kit off!"

"No wonder she has been selling her fanny encrusted wares on Ebay, times are truly hard."

"I have enclosed some poor pics that i took with my Sony Ericsson, also it would appear that times are hard for Nipper the dog also, as he appears to have taken up a part time job outside of HMV with her."

"Hope you enjoy, sorry if it's nothing to wank over."










THING EIGHT: POPSTATION SPOTTED

"Exclusive PSP Redesign spotted!"

"This was probably not worth the soul rending effort it took to actually get the photo off of my fucking phone."




THING NINE: LARA CROFT, DESIGN LEGEND

"I received this email from the Tomb Raider mailing list. So far as I can tell, the first Tomb Raider game is a candidate for BBC Culture Show's Design Quest whatever. Not being Brit I have no idea what that is, but it may be worthy of your interest."

"Somewhat amusing:"

"'Equally important to its success was the skill with which the designers and animators at Core Design depicted its central character, Lara Croft, as a post-feminist heroine'."

"...Says the BBC site, refering to the original misshapen Lara of course."

"Also since when are videogames considered cultural?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/cultureshow/designquest/vote/


THING TEN: TWO SEPARATE EMAILS ABOUT GIZMONDO

On the way back from E3 last year I ended up sitting next to a Gizmondo PR. I pretended to be asleep or absorbed in my plethora of handheld consoles in order to avoid having to speak to them, but I did listen in when he was speaking to some European web journo sitting on his other side. During that conversation I found out that the PR's favourite game ever was the vertical shooter that was exclusive to Gizmondo because "all these new games are rubbish. I like them old school. Alpha Blaster (I just made up the name, I can't be bothered to remember it or look it up) is brilliant because it's old school." I also found out that his favourite game from the show was Okami. He said it was "the first game on the PS2 that I've seen that actually looks any good. I haven't liked anything else on PS2 till now."

Yours,
An anonymous industry person.

EMAIL 2:

Just a quick word to say I used to work at the Cheadle's office of Gizmondo and the story put forward so far is completely true.

The problem was never the people in the development studios (well apart from maybe the Swedish studios who didn't actually release or finish anything) all the ex-Warthog staff, and to be fair the studio managers as well were constantly fed reports that 'everything was fine' and that 'this is just a small mishap'. Of course if a company doesn't even talk to their employers, let alone about the state of business, then employees themselves have no way of knowing how desperately bad things are. After all the company had just signed a 14 year lease on the studio building and had invited designers around who were planning to remould the studio into the theme of a giant Gizmondo with curvy desks and floors. oohh..fancy!

I think one of the more laughable situations for me personally however was when a time came around where the company basically admitted that the people in head office had no idea what they were supposed to do ( I suppose when you fill the company with models, cars, race horses and what not it may get a tad confusing). As a result everyone in the company had to fill out a form detailing exactly what they're role was within the company and whom they were answerable too (I guess the horse was at a slight disadvantage). At this point we were assured that any staff cuts would be purely in the administrate roles at Head Office. Maybe the clever people in charge got confused, maybe they thought the Head Office was in fact in Cheadle, however the very next week the whole studio was given a months notice.

When the rumours of redundancies first surfaced the person in charge of Human Resources (I.e the person who is supposed to represent and look after the employees throughout the company...but maybe she forgot that as well) thought 'sod it' and went off on her holiday knowing full well the situation everyone was in. Not once did anyone from head office show any concern for the employees in the development studios, nor during the 'consultancy period' did they think to further 'consult' staff about what was going on (they were all too busy covering their secretary's in silly-string for Christmas cards).

All in all a interesting experience! Although I can understand how the company might have been able to convince investors at the time (being able to show them a product and a couple of games and saying 'look! we -are- making something really!') I dread to think that somehow the people responsible will move on to other projects in the future and secure even more investor money to continue their manipulative lifestyle (and maybe buy the remaining 398 Ferrari Enzos!),

Also you might be interested to know, not happy with playing the world once, rumour has it that Carl Freer is in the process of starting a new company! http://www.xeromobile.com/. (http://www.gizmondoforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5469&st=0) Not sure what they are about yet however they seem to be very keen to gather investors at present. Another Gizmondo like scam I hear you say? Most likely, I suppose $3.45m salary isn't enough and the guy does still have to keep with insurance payments on his $115,662 car.

I'd prefer to stay anonymous for now thanks.


THING ELEVEN: "VITAL INFORMATION CONCERNING MICHAEL JACKSON AND THE DESTRUCTION OF PLANET EARTH"

"Check this out. It's the fucking shit."

http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/

"Your servants, Phil and Muffin"


FINAL THING: A SONIC THE HEDGEHOG WINAMP SKIN

"You'll probably like this:"

http://www.winamp.com/skins/details.php?id=147154



"Yay!"

Yay for you. Nice work, scouts. See you in [time period until we can be bothered to do it all this tiresome cuttin' an' pastin' an' image resizin' again].

ONE FINAL CONCERN
We're worried we've spunked too much good stuff in one update, which will lead to the internet's "interesting reserves" being fully depleted by summer. So we might never do this again.

Labels: GONZO