It’s getting harder to find good help. Well-know plumber Mario has been fired by Nintendo.
” A newly-uploaded profile … of everyone’s favorite Player One describes Mario as having worked as a plumber in the distant past, suggesting he’s a plumber no longer.”
“But to remove Mario from his plumbing origins is a disservice to the fans who fell in love with Nintendo’s hero long before his days of racing, playing tennis, or flying through space. Mario is a video game hero we can all relate to—one that gets his hands dirty under the occasional sink.”
— “Mario is no longer a plumber,” Jean-Luc Bouchard, Quartz
Electronic games now earn more money than recorded music or Hollywood films, about $21 Billion in 2013.
The Strong Museum collects and preserves video games and artifacts through its International Center for the History of Electronic Games. The collection includes more than 55,000 video games and artifacts, personal papers and corporate records that document the history of video games.
Top image (“Portrait of Johannes Neudörfer, His Son, and Their Rubik’s Cube, after Nicolas Neufchâtel”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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“Videogames are among the suspects that the National Rifle Association blames for gun violence in the United States. In his press conference after the Newtown massacre, for instance, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre called game makers ‘a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.’ So the rest of us are entitled to ask, aren’t we, why the NRA just released a free app for iOS that teaches how to shoot? Especially since, as Annie-Rose Strasser noticed, the first screen shot that pops up on the game’s page is of coffin-shaped targets, with helpful red marks at head and heart level.”
— “The NRA, Which Blames Shooting Games for Gun Violence, Has Just Released a Shooting Game,” David Berreby, Big Think
The deal for a huge casino 5 miles outside DC at Maryland’s National Harbor has gone sour. A state government working group advised against granting a license for the $800 million gambling joint on the banks of the Potomac in Prince Georges County. Five casinos have already been licensed by the state, and of them three are currently relieving customers of their cash.
National Harbor offers many advantages to a casino operation. It has water taxi service to Old Town Alexandria, a bunch of mediocre eateries and sufficient hotel rooms to accomodate high rollers and the hookers who love them. Casinos are 24/7 enterprises, and National Harbor’s Children Museum can provide daytime daycare for the kids of bored housewives busy gambling away the grocery money.
More:
“O’Malley slams delegates for backing out of casino deal,” Ben Giles, Washington Examiner
“The United States government offers tax incentives to companies pursuing medical breakthroughs, urban redevelopment and alternatives to fossil fuels.
It also provides tax breaks for a company whose hit video game this year was the gory Dead Space 2, which challenges players to advance through an apocalyptic battlefield by killing space zombies.”
— “Rich Tax Breaks Bolster Makers of Video Games,” David Kocieniewski, New York Times
Guitar Hero, the music-themed video game with the plastic guitar-shaped controller first introduced in 2005, was recently discontinued. Sales had been in the billions but fell to under $300 million last year. Now the Activision corporation says there might be a reprise:
“‘Guitar Hero’ Not Dead, Says Game Maker Activision,” Scott Steinberg, Rolling Stone
Image (“Portrait with Video Game, after Paul Bril”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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The mighty Guitar Hero electronic game franchise started in 2005, back in the Middle Ages of video games. It earned hundreds of millions of dollars, but as of today it is no more. Sic transit gloria mundi.
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