New York Times online article includes video game letting you destroy everything on page
If you notice something strangely arcade-like on this online New York Times article, you’re not going through video game withdrawal. A New York Times magazine article on gaming includes a simple video game you can play on the screen, allowing you to shoot any of the boxes and widgets surrounding the text.
Adapted by Jon Huang, a multimedia producer at The Times, the game is based on a two-year-old game called Kick Ass. It lets you to blow up websites, to put it simply, using only cursors and the spacebar.
“I wanted to share a joke with the reader,” Huang said about bringing the open-source code to the New York Times website.
The Times writes “even the ad sales department was O.K. with letting the ads on the page be blown up.”
The article in question looks at what the author calls “stupid games” to reflect each generation’s obsession with simple yet addictive video games, from Tetris to Angry Birds.
Despite being known as the “Grey Lady” and having a legacy as old-school mainstream media, The Times has experimented with its web page before, Mashable notes. A homepage ad in February for Met Life, for instance, let you play piano like Schroeder, the Peanuts character
Duke Nukem Forever’s PR firm fired for threatening tweet
The PR firm responsible for promoting the new video game Duke Nukem Forever has been dumped by the game’s developer 2K Games, Future of Media has learned.
The fiasco began with an angry tweet yesterday. California-based The Redner Group, in charge of publicity for the long-awaited Duke Nukem game for consoles, posted on its official Twitter account a rare tweet: a threat outlining that reviewers who negatively wrote about Duke Nukem Forever may not receive review copies of games in the future.
The tweet was deleted 40 minutes after it was posted, but Wired.com posted a screenshot and it read: “Too many went too far with their reviews…we r reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn’t based on today’s venom.”
Jim Redner, who runs The Redner Group, claimed responsibility for the tweet and in an interview he stressed the errant tweet came from him and did not represent the opinion of 2K Games or anyone related to Duke Nukem Forever.
The fallout has been devastating for Redner. Despite numerous apologies on the firm’s Twitter feed, 2K Games decided to dissolve their relationship with The Redner Group, effective today. Redner remarked, “When a post or something not approved by a client places them in a bad light, it behooves them to prevent that from happening again.”
Redner quickly ended the conversation, saying, “I’m really busy today, this has ruined my business, I have to go.”
In an interview with Wired.com, Redner elaborated on his mistake: “It is not my intention to bully anyone. I over reacted. I just voiced an opinion. I have poured my heart into this project and I just want it to succeed.”
It might be an uphill battle for 2K Games and the next Duke Nukem Forever PR firm to see positive reviews of the game. On MetaCritic, the game has a low score of 49, which means it has attracted “generally unfavourable reviews.” The game is 12 years in the making, and first debuted at the recent E3 Expo and was later released on June 14.
Photo courtesy of jameskm03