Level Orange

According to an announcement today by Great American Group, one of the firms liquidating the remaining Circuit City inventory, over $1 billion of product has been moved in the last month. After the announcement on January 17 that Circuit City would be closing its 567 stores, sales have apparently been brisk on discounted consumer electronics.

While that’s all well and good, deeper discounts and even lower prices are on the way, starting this Thursday, February 19th, and will continue for the next month or so until all inventory is gone. So, for those shoppers who didn’t bite at the “going out of business” prices, maybe now they’ll be able to find some real deals worth their time.

Tech news site Ars Technica ran an article yesterday about GameCyte, a relative newcomer to the gaming blog arena, charging it with not disclosing enough about its behind-the-scenes connections to TriplePoint, a PR firm that represents various game publishers.

While accusations of conflict of interest and unethical behavior can quickly escalate to distrust and defection amongst readers, the catalyst of Ars Technica’s piece–a positive review of a game published by Telltale Games, one of TriplePoint’s former clients–seems fairly innocuous on the surface. It’s a fair, adequately-written review of a highly-anticipated game that makes no bones about what there is to like and not like about the game itself. However, according to Ars Technica, the crucial missing element is that there is no statement about the thrice-removed connection between GameCyte and Telltale Games. If it were simply a matter of stating up front that GameCyte is a part of Pantheon Labs and let’s say Pantheon Labs was actually owned  by Telltale Games, then that wouldn’t be unheard of, but that’s not the case at all.

Yet, Ars Technica has drawn a hard line and demanded that any and all relationships between Pantheon Labs and TriplePoint must be disclosed at all times, which, along with being impractical, is simply unnecessary for the most part. From what I’ve seen, people who operate in the gaming press and industry have most likely come into contact with each other at some point or another and so painstakingly detailing and listing every single connection of everyone involved–as Ars Technica seems to suggest–is a task bordering on the ridiculous, especially with a PR firm. Is it really that surprising that these people that work or worked at a PR firm actually know other people in the gaming industry? Shock! Awe!

I’ve learned that you can only go so far to earn peoples’ trust before you’ve overextended yourself and/or possibly compromised your ability to actually produce quality content. While I think laying low is a reasonable reaction, given the speed and unchecked nature that news spreads across the net these days, I’d much rather see a statement or commentary from GameCyte directly to clear the air.

Now, for the sake of full disclosure, other than knowing a cool cat that works there, I don’t have any other affiliation (financial or otherwise) with GameCyte or Pantheon Labs, nor TriplePoint, Telltale Games nor your mom.

1. You don’t spend as much time developing quality ideas.
2. You don’t consider what might happen if you don’t have all the details.
3. You don’t stay late to get that extra little bit of work done.
4. You don’t bother to understand everything about the business you work in.
5. You don’t really care about the work you produce, despite your best intentions.
6. You don’t find anything in your company to get behind and throw your energy into.
7. You do take home an exceptional amount of money to not do all of the above.

Of course, these criteria aren’t exactly all-encompassing and don’t always apply to every situation, but if you’ve managed to hit all of these, then yes–YOU’VE SOLD OUT. It’s cool. We can dig it. Don’t be ashamed about it (not that you would be), and whenever you think about the choices you’ve made or the reasons why, you can kick back and just think about all the bank you’re making! Fantastic!

Sometime in the last week, the site for PiQ Magazine, piqmag.com, went missing. And not missing in the “we’ll be back soon” meaning, but missing in the way that so many sites go missing when there’s no one left to keep them alive—someone just decided to pull the plug.

I can’t say it saddens me a great deal because I had expected it to happen eventually. In fact, I’m more surprised that it happened so soon. Granted, it wasn’t a huge loss, but it was largely made up of content that didn’t make it’s way into the pages of the magazine itself, and since the magazine closed back in June, I’ve been watching the site in hopes that it would stick around and be a small, lasting tribute to what we tried to do with PiQ Magazine.

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With the company’s name in the news almost constantly for the last few months, you’d think things are going well, but some of the news I’ve been reading is giving me a bad feeling.

The lion’s share

Probably the biggest news in the last couple of weeks has been Sony’s acquisition of MGM to the amount of $3 billion. Sound like a good deal right? But Sony already has it’s own production studios, including Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics and Screen Gems. While MGM hasn’t exactly been on fire in quite a while now, they’ve got an enormous catalog of classic films. This is what Sony is expecting to take to the bank as it releases these thousands of titles on home video.

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