Eat Sleep Geek

It can be lonely out here is cyberspace, the web is a cold cynical place when you provide news and thoughts on things that aren’t really that important. With E3 in our rear view windows now, and only the memories of the demos we saw and the dreams of the games we’ll be playing in the 4th quarter of this year to get us through the gaming drought that hits every summer, fanboys everywhere turn their frustration and rage to the internet. Seeking out anybody with an opinion contrary to theirs to flame and curse at, the summer time is a website’s worst nightmare. Actually that’s not true. I love fanboys, I love listening to them, I love arguing with them, I love how happy they get when you agree with them, I love hearing their crazy thoughts and conspiracy theories, and I love how much they believe their own bullshit. Now that E3 has come and gone it would be easy for me to go through all the major press conferences and announcements and give you my least and most favorite ones; but I’ve got a better idea.

The brilliant minds of the folks at Infegy have developed social radar, an analytical tool that actually measures and monitors chatter on the web. Now I’m not nearly smart enough to either understand it or explain how it works, and I don’t really know that it works, but I’m an eternally optimistic that there are people in the world bright enough to do the things I can only imagine. So since I’ve spent a lot of time imagining whether it would be possible to tap into the power that the folks a Infegy claim to have harnessed, I’m going to assume it is reasonably accurate.

Through buzzstudy.com the company’s blog they’ve released the details of what the web is saying about E3, and I must admit I’m a little shocked at the results. The following chart shows how much of the noise they monitor on the web relates to the E3 announcements, demos, rumors, and press conferences and ranks those items they found to be pertinent. Check it out for yourself:

Now Project Natal coming in at number one didn’t really surprise me, I thought the demo was very cool, it seems like it’s fairly polished and I suspect that there will be some  interesting things coming our way in the next couple of years. Now if you go by buzzstudy’s chart Project Natal is getting about double the attention Sony‘s motion controller is receiving, and over five times the love that the Nintendo Wii Motion Plus is being shown. There is no doubt in my mind that Project Natal will do things that Wii Motion Plus won’t even begin to touch, and given how much more polished and closer to completion it was to Sony’s showing I can see why it is the talk of the net. From where I was sitting though, the things that the Sony developers were doing seemed like they were more fun, so as Sony creeps closer to having a finished product it will be interesting to see if Microsoft can maintain the lead that it looks like they’ve jumped out to on the motion control front.

The PSP Go and Metal Gear Solid were neck and neck for 2nd and 3rd place on the list, which surprises me a bit. The redesigned PSP Go! was pretty much a non-event for me. You would have had to have been living under a rock to not know it was coming and I’m a bit frustrated that people are so excited about it. I think it’s going to be a huge bust, there’s nothing new about it other than the sliding screen. You can make the argument that it’s umd-less but I question how big a deal that really is. I know I’m not doing backflips about the fact that I can get the same games for the same price via download for the new console. Metal Gear Solid on the other hand is a sight for sore eyes as the number one game on the list. It’s great to see games that are so high caliber get the love they deserve. Everything we saw from Konami that had to do with the MGS franchise looked solid (no pun intended) and it’s great to see that the gamers are stoked to play them.

The next item on the list is a game is game too, and what a game it’s going to be. Final Fantasy XIII rounded out the top five on Infegy’s chatter list and that was a pleasant surprise for me. I love RPG’s and in this age of 3rd and 1st person shooter domination it’s nice to see that people are excited for a different type of console experience. Let’s just hope it’s people who were blown away by what they saw at the show, not a few die hard RPG folks talking a lot about what is sure to be a stellar experience for gamers.

There are a few other surprises of note as well:

1. Left 4 Dead 2 at 7 is really sweet, the first one barely had any hype until after it was released and it was such a great game it’s nice to see that everybody is looking forward to a sequel
2. Assassin’s Creed 2 at 8? I might be in the minority here but I think Assassin’s Creed was a boring,repetitive snoozefest;it just looked cool and there’s more to a game than looking cool. I’m also very skeptical that the next one will be any better. The story was a non issue and I think that Ubisoft should have scrapped the series, and used the engine to make a real game.
3. How the hell did Xbox Facebook and Xbox Twitter wind up ahead of Zelda, Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2, and Uncharted? It scares the hell out of me that stuff that has nothing to do with gaming could be so important. I don’t like this one bit.
4. Batman:Arkham Asylum and Little Big Planet 2 are more than half way down the list? That’s a little off in my books. But what do I know?
5. Finally, I was really glad to see that Beatles Rock Band has so much hype around it. It came in at 6th on the list and beat out iconic video game legends like Mario, God of War, Gran Tursimo, Metroid, and Zelda. That’s impressive especially when a pretty large chunk of gamers weren’t even alive when The Beatles were making music.

So that’s what the internet is saying about E3. Agree or disagree all you want but there’s one thing everybody is certain of, the gaming industry is changing at an unprecedented rate and the next year is going to be interesting.