Hello! My name is Jason Venter and I am a gamer. As it happens, I'm also a writer. You can find my reviews, guides and other content all over the Internet and often referenced here at my home base. This site is both a blog and a professional portfolio, because I'm efficient like that.
See what I'm all about by reading my posts and checking out my work, or use the contact form and offer me an assignment!
Hello, stranger! It's high time I told you about Empire Avenue...
When I kept seeing references to Empire Avenue in my Twitter feed, I wisely ignored them. The references would pass in a day or two, I figured, and the people I followed would start talking about more important things like the next big video game. The people in my feed are primarily games PR folk, game critics, social media pundits and SEO fanatics. You know, because I’m a nerd.
What my fantasy games are really missing is people!
If there’s a threat to the world these days, we band together out of a common interest to save it. The loss of a country, a city, or even a seaside village is a tragedy on an unfathomable scale. How do you deal with the potential loss of all those lives?
An open letter to the people who set the video game MSRP
Should the upcoming generation of games see the standard price for a blockbuster increase from $60 to $70? Definitely not! $70 for a video game is too much money and, if I'm to be perfectly frank, so is $60. $50 is closer to the mark, but the real sweet point for price? That's $40.
Why should you write about games for free?
Recently, a large UK gaming site (NowGamer) posted an entry outlining the terms of a contest. One fortunate reader out of many will submit a 1000-word blog post to the site's editors and win the dubious honor of contributing a regular column to the site. The prize is not a paid position, but it's a chance for exposure at a large outlet and NowGamer is working from the assumption that this will be an offer too good to refuse.
If you get an Xbox 360, get the one with the 250GB hard drive and thank me later
Are you one of the few people in North America who still has not purchased an Xbox 360? I can't pretend to know your reasons for delaying a purchase. There are plenty of good possibilities. But if you are considering a purchase--finally--I can say with confidence that you should spring for the 250GB version.
Top 5 reasons not to buy games on launch day
Until recently, I was one of those guys. Every Tuesday, you'd find me at the store, checking for new game releases and probably buying a game or two every few weeks. I wouldn't even play them all. They'd go on my shelf, still in the shrink wrap or (worse) opened but never played. My shelves are still full of such titles, even after I recently tossed a bunch of them on eBay.
How bad will the Vita launch be, really?
I'm seeing a lot of complaints online from people who feel that the Vita launch is going to be a disgrace here in North America. It's funny to me because if I have a bias, it's a bias in favor of Nintendo, yet here I am defending the enemy. It comes down to one thing: I like to see any entertainment product at least get a fair shake. People are lining up to talk trash about the Vita and it just doesn't deserve that. Its launch isn't set to be perfect, but it's nowhere near as bad as so many people seem to claim.
The only objective list of the top 10 games in 2011
The other day, I was looking around online and I realized that there are a lot of lists claiming to rank the best 10 games of 2011. As I started reading, I was shocked to discover that many of these lists contain opinions from people I formerly admired. I'm not sure I can admire them now, though, when clearly they are putting together top 10 lists that contain enough subjectivity to choke a hamster. This has to stop.
Japanese franchises vs. Western franchises - Round 1, Fight!
We hear a lot about how much North American and European developers have recently been contributing to the game industry, and I have friends who for years have been saying that Japan doesn't matter anymore. Today, I thought it would be fun to put together lists (from memory) of the various publishers in the two regions and the games they have produced. My list is partial, obviously, and excludes some quality companies in both regions, but I still believe it's fairly representative.
What SOPA could mean for your favorite game site
Free speech isn't free speech if it's no longer economically feasible to say what's on your mind.
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© 2011 Jason Venter
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