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video games
How to really make GoW2 more “girlfriend-friendly”
May 20th
Cliff Bleszinski (a.k.a. Cliffy B.) of Epic Games spoke to Wired about Gears of War 2, and how they’re planning to make it more “girlfriend-friendly.” Here’s the full quote:
How do you make a game girlfriend-friendly?
You do jump-in, jump-out co-op. You have configurable difficulty settings for the other player. You have very cool and bad-ass main characters that have a very human side. And you make sure that the female characters in your game don’t have ginormous tits and aren’t bad stereotypes.
Yes, stereotypes are annoying, but I have a feeling that’s not what is keeping your girlfriends from playing GoW. Because frankly, I think we’re all a little desensitized to stereotypes in video games: play 10 minutes of (the absolutely stellar) GTA4 to see what I’m talking about.
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Vii Fit: Day 1
May 9th
As some of you may have seen on Engadget, Ryan is challenging himself to a month of suffering at the hands of the Wii Fit. And while he is nowhere near overweight, we do live a somewhat… sedentary lifestyle. A lot of sitting is involved. Therefore I’ve decide to come along on his fitness odyssey, not only as a supportive measure, but also to encourage myself to live a healthier lifestyle.
Yes, if it takes a video game to get me off my lazy ass, then so be it.
According to the little white board sitting on my living room floor, here are my stats so far:
Weight (I can’t believe I’m telling you these things): 117 lbs
Height: 5’7″
BMI: 18.5
Body Age: 35 (WTF?!)
Actual Age: 25
OK, so apparently I’m a little underweight (my burrito belly is begging to differ). I’m not sure how Wii Fit expects to solve this problem (“Please get off the Wii Fit and go eat a pizza while watching Battlestar Galactica”) but I guess I need to build more muscle mass. The Fit also told me that my balance sucks by asking me “Do you trip a lot when you walk?” You snarky bastard.
I’ll be reporting every couple of days to let you know how this thing is going. I know the Wii Fit isn’t exactly the same as training for a triathlon, but it’s more exercising than I ever do (except for climbing, which I hope to work more into this month as well). Wish me luck!
“Still Alive” with Jonathan Coulton, Leo and Merlin
Feb 24th
As you may have gathered from my tweets of late, I was given the amazing opportunity to play Jonathan Coulton’s song “Still Alive” on Rock Band with Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, and of course Jonathan! Horrifyingly, it was also on stage and in front of about 600 people at the Great American Music Hall here in San Francisco! I was on guitar (in the video, my part is on the right), Jonathan was on (duh) vocals, Leo on bass, and Merlin on drums.
We were soooo close to getting through the song! 99% isn’t bad, and if we had more time to practice (instead of having only played the song once!) I’m sure we would have made it. But it was a ton of fun, and I even saved the band a couple of times with my overdrive 
But I want to thank Jonathan for giving me one of the most memorable experiences I’ll ever have. I’m a huge fan of his music, and I got to live out my rock star dreams for real. Not much can beat that!
Jonathan Coulton performs “Still Alive” in Rock Band from Joy Stiq
Special thanks to Chris from Joystiq for recording the video! Go check out his post for more details.
Mahalo & Joystiq @ GDC
Feb 21st
The Mahalo video team is here at GDC (Game Developers Conference) covering the event with Joystiq! The Mahalo Games team is pumping out tons of pages about all the games we’re covering, and we’ve been shooting constantly for the last day and a half.
Today’s Mahalo Daily is a feature on the Independent Games Festival, happening here in the West Hall of Moscone.
