Despite Dreadful Filmmaking, The Twilight Saga: New Moon Breaks Records. Weep for the Future.

By the time you read this, New Moon, the latest film based on Stephenie Myer’s dreadfully morose Twilight saga, will have officially scratched and clawed its way to the third highest spot in the all-time weekend box-office debuts (early Sunday night estimates put New Moon’s take at $140 million, which places it right at the heels of Spider-Man 3’s $151.1 million and Dark Knight’s $158.4 million). On its way to almost breaking the three-day record, two others were decimated. The film’s opening at midnight earned an estimated $26.3 million, surpassing former reigning king Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’s $22.2 million, and Friday totals hit $72.7 million, once again besting the Dark Knight, which raked in $67 million over one year ago.

Non-summer releases aren’t supposed to make this much money, right? Late last year, Warner Bros. Pictures, fearful of not wringing every possible box office dollar from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, delayed the basically-finished film until summer of the following year. Regarding the decision, Warner Bros. President and Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn said “Our reasons for shifting ‘Half-Blood Prince’ to summer are twofold: we know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent pole release, as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film, which is the second-highest grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first installment.” Their “for the summer for the family” reasoning makes sense…until decades worth of box office data are also considered. With the exception of Titanic, the highest grossing films domestically all received late-spring to mid-summer releases. Okay. Sure. If you want to maximize domestic revenue, you release in that time frame. But the Harry Potter films don’t hold any kind of a presence in the all-time domestic top ten records. The film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s books make far more money worldwide, and, as of writing, even hold three of the top ten worldwide box office records (Sorcerer’s Stone at fifth with $974 million, Order of the Pheonix at seven with $938 million, and Half-Blood Prince at eight with $929.9 million). Also, four out of the ten highest-grossing films worldwide debuted during the fall, two of which are number one and two (Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King). Warner Bros. didn’t switch the release from fall to summer to make sure all families find the time to see the latest Potter entry, the company made the move to create another Dark Knight. Warner Bros. failed, but laughing at them here is like laughing at Bill Gates in the 90s for not quite having enough money to buy the moon.

Twilight’s record-breaking presence at the box office isn’t a fall fluke. And its seating amongst the highly-publicized commercially elite isn’t due to some forgotten demographic suddenly appearing out of the woodwork. Tween females, the consumer group most closely associated with the series, helped drive films like High School Musical (1, 2, and 3), Hannah Montana, and even Transformers 2 to massive financial success. Twenty and thirty-something women like Twighlight, so do moms, and, to my constant surprise, guys of all ages (in legions they gather on message boards. Some even have beards!). At a Saturday afternoon showing in Minneapolis’s Block E theater, all of the aforementioned made some kind of an appearance.

Before we arrived, I joked with my girlfriend that I should hang my head low, sulk, and drag my feet as if attending this movie will rid me of some unrecoverable manhood. I wasn’t attempting to hide some pre-existing shame with light commentary on the presumed behavior of males attending, I was making fun of them. And, in a way, I pitied them. I possessed enough creativity and positive energy to turn an unfortunate situation into one much more fruitful. Seeing this film meant I could comment on it afterwards! These poor saps had nothing. I fear if given the opportunity to instead get their nose hairs plucked out by a drunken Irish barber with bad breath they would’ve immediately switched.

We arrived early to the showing. With 30 minutes to spare until 10-20 minutes of trailers already available online flooded our senses, I relished observing attendees make their way to the shockingly comfortable burgundy-colored theater seats. We sat in the center of the front row of elevated seating (our favorite spot). To our left...

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Digg users express (justifiable?) concern over site’s front page ads.

Popular social news site Digg.com targeted its tech-savvy, mostly left-wing,sensationalism-devouring audience and repeatedly bombarded them with a Dragon Age: Origins-riddled front page. Almost no corner of the site remained untouched by the Bioware-developed and Eletronic Arts-published videogame. A site width-equivalent banner brightened the Digg sky, another rested in the upper-right quadrant (below relevant site articles featuring the title), and, sitting incognito among the up-and-coming new items on the left-center,  a sponsored item lie in wait, ready to pounce on an unsuspecting reader not privvy to new age marketing techniques. The ad looked like any other news story, and users could even promote it with a Digg, but the thin black line encasing the item, complete with squint-or-you’ll-miss-it “sponsored by…” text, indicated presence was not earned through the site’s typical user-submitted and user-endorsed foundations.

Users felt betrayed by their site; their internet communal home to which they contributed content and maintained through Digging the articles of others. “I helped build this and now a part of it is mine!” they might’ve thought, despite never paying a dime to upkeep the site and pay for an eventual expansion. The opportunity to comment and become an identifiable Digg “star” for submitting popular articles only ensured a pervasive deep-seated sense of ownership.

This “for us and exclusively by us” mentality held by the privileged and informed internet power user clique doesn’t pay Digg’s multi-million dollar bills. According to a December 18, 2008 report from BusinessWeek, the 2004 internet start-up from founder Kevin Rose lost $4 million on $6.4 million of revenue in the first three quarters of 2008. The business model needed to change, and Chief Executive Officer Jay Adelson knew it. On December 2 of the same year, a few weeks prior to the BusinessWeek article, Adelson announced the site was no longer for sale, and that it would shift its focus to “building an independent business that reaches profitability as quickly as possible.” As we all know, one way to boost revenue is by selling more adspace, and that’s what Digg’s doing.

But at what cost? Chas Edwards, Chief Revenue Officer at Digg updated his blog with a post called “EA’s Dragon Age: Content and Ads Working Well Together” and wrote: ” EA is promoting Dragon Age on Digg with Digg Ads units on the homepage. At the same time, reviews of Dragon Age (this one from Joystiq) are also making their way to Digg’s homepage organically, based on votes by Digg readers.” Below the aforementioned text he added this picture (below).

Finally, Chas commented ” I love it when this happens. You know you’re serving relevant ads to an audience when that audience votes up the brand or product on its own,” and disclosed his employment with Digg.

Chas may be right in his observance of the ad relevancy, but...

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Smell the Cheese? Brogamers Hail New Call of Dooooooooodie Modern Warfare 2 Trailer

“‘Sup brogamers! The new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 trailer aired last night during the Sunday night FOOOOOOTBALLLL(!!) match between the Steelers and the Chargers. It was AWESOME! There were explosions, and people running around in military stuff, and like Bible references, and OMG the music! It had power chords! ROCK ONNNN! Like, words that can accurately describe this monumental achievement in interactive entertainment don’t even exist. I’d make one or two up, but my mind’s still trying to process how AWESOME it was. Ya know what I mean, dawgs? Of course you do! You’ll be standing by bros like me outside of GameStops everywhere on November 10, waiting to slam down s 150 greenbacks for the totally mindblowing Prestige Edition! Recession? Psh. I need my CALL OF DOOOOOOOODIE!”

The paragraph above didn’t seep through the mouth or fingers of another oil-sucking American. I made it up, and snagged the pic from my favorite industry webcomic,VGCats. But modify a few words, swap out brogamers for some hip term tossed around by the white baseball cap-wearing collar-popped social “elite,” and it’s the same dribble splattered across dozens, if not hundreds, of message boards and forums. The beautifully awful gamer prose even rears its worn out mug in news items by game “journalists.” Check out the snippet below from Kombo.com:

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is big. Really big. So big that a new trailer for the game can’t just debut on the internet or on a videogame-oriented program like GameTrailers TV or XPlay. No, only one entity is big enough to hold the awesomeness of Modern Warfare 2 – the National Football League.”

Here’s another from Kotaku Australia:

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Old Idea: Super Street Fighter IV. Better Idea: League of Legends

Seven months after its console release, Street Fighter IV as we know it is already dead. At least, that’s what publisher/developer Capcom’s leading everyone to believe. Super Street Fighter IV is set to arrive next spring and will place the original’s teeth on the nearest curb and..well, you know what happens next. Unfortunate saps without the new version are left with the bloody and broken pieces of a title once brimming with bright and glittery Edward-Cullen-in-the-sunlight potential (so dreamy!). It’s the sad story of a title continually loved by many, but only briefly by its own creator.

A week after release, two million units of SFIV hit shelves worldwide. Since then, a console title price drop and pc digital download availability probably helped sell an additional million or two, so let’s add another couple of strikes to the tally. As a “thank you” to the millions of gamers who slapped down their recessionary dollars for the product,  the company severed communication and released only one major patch – adding in Championship mode, replays, and a few bug fixes. Compared to Bungie, who provide frequent patches to the Halo titles and run a weekly community-focused blog, Capcom’s continual lack of action tarnishes the legendary company’s name. “Dated” is now the best word to describe the house that spawned Mega Man and Resident Evil.

It didn’t have to be this way. If only they could just…change.

Brick-and-mortar distribution once dictated title modifications, additions, and subtractions be made through reissues at market. “Champion Edition,” “Turbo,” “Super Turbo” – read the subtitles of Street Fighter II’s many releases. There were more, too, and full price was demanded for each. And we paid it. Each and every time. But this isn’t 1993.

Capcom needs to let go. It’s holding on to a business model with a comparatively small and limited financial potential. Worse yet, the handling of said model does little to strengthen the confidence a consumer may have in this supplier. The company needs to evolve, and the best blueprint to follow lies in a free-to-play title available only on the PC.

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Cutting costs to make room for PC (not console) gaming.

This economy sucks. Retail sales are down, the stock market’s trying (and mostly failing) to recover from the previous crash, restaurants can no longer afford to remain full-staffed, and, worst of all, the invincible videogame industry is currently experiencing a year to year sales decline! I’d contend a lack of tolerable content impacted the last one more than a stagnant economy, but the belief’s not popular (developers can do no wrong!), and pointing a finger better serves this article.

Whether money’s not coming in like it used to, or interactive entertainment never found a comfortable place to sit in the living room of your monthly budget, rest easy. You can still game. Together we’ll lift your financial exile from the land of videogames.

But before I start, please slam your face directly onto last month’s bank statement. Stay there. The ledger may be riddled with nasty little unnecessary expenses. Find them.

If you need help, consumer empowerment blog The Consumerist can assist. Crushed by massive credit card debt? The editors suggest going without cable television and to stop eating out, among others, in the article “5 Expenses You Can’t Afford If You Have Credit Card Debt.” Spending too much at the local grocery store? Stop buying pre-chopped food, suggests writer Meg Marco in “7 Ways To Save on Groceries Without Using Coupons.” Do you think you’re so smart you don’t need to read these tips? The Consumerist has an article for you. “10 Stupid Ways That Smart People Waste Money” suggests even those privileged with a larger frontal lobe can sometimes forget to pay bills, suffer excessive overdraft and ATM fees, and let food spoil in the fridge.

You may or may not have a bit more room to work with. Either way, there’s only one gaming platform option (if you only have one choice): PC.

No other offers greater return on investment. And the investment itself can be as low as $200 or stratospherically high in the tens of thousands. For this article, we’ll keep our budget under $400. But first, let’s take a look at why the PC’s so effin’ neat.

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My Superficial homepage – a browser confessional.

Every time someone asks to use my computer I get a little nervous. I want to say no, but my Midwestern programming desires the opposite. The internal struggle for verbal superiority causes me to unwittingly initiate a silent pause in the dialog. It’s an awkward, and quiet, social situation. Panicking, I typically dance around the question. “I uh…umm…am defragmenting my hard drive right now and no one can use it for another hour or so.” If he or she didn’t take the bait I’m forced to oblige with an answer. Word poo seeps out. “Grrrrrmmmmmf,” I say, or something similarly embarrassing. Somehow, I eventually communicate “no.”

Please don’t think of me as an inconsiderate villain. I have my reasons for acting so charmingly selfish. Some reasonable, some not.

Daily virus and adware scans keep my machine (almost) squeaky clean. I’m a careful Windows power user who scans for viruses every morning and researches every process in the task manager. Believe it or not, I find this type of regular maintenance enjoyableand fun. But others aren’t so careful. Who knows to what end an unsuspecting guest could damage my custom-built Frankenstein and its whirring gizmos? “Do they even know what not to click when browsing? Do they know the pop-up disguised as a virus scan isn’t actually a virus scan? Do they even know how to use multiple tabs?!” Instead of discovering the results to these questions, I employ the Gregory House theory that states “people are idiots” and allow nary a soul on my PC. I make a living using this hardware and a solid internet connection. I’m not letting anyone mess that up, even if it means revealing my geek elitism.

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