Home
sign up| features / column |
 content by: editor |
 webslinky: wii
This week, uncurbed enthusiasts. With such a variety of digital publishing tools now available at consumer level, trends in videogame culture can be identified and gleefully exploited with an astonishingly fast turnaround, meeting gamers’ unquenchable thirsts for new information. There's been no better time to be a videogame ‘enthusiast’, as the launch of Nintendo's Wii has demonstrated, inspiring more Wii-related content than you can shake your motion-sensitive controller at.In fact, be careful with the waving or you might end up like one of the subjects on Wii Have a Problem and Wii Damage, two blogs solely dedicated to documenting accidents that some over-excited users have with their systems. Three of the most successful blogs that cater for game culture enthusiasts - Joystiq, Destructoid and Kotaku - are written by teams of contributors who scour the web for attention-grabbing stories, or receive tips and even media sent by readers. Following the Japanese launch of the Wii, for example, Kotaku published scans of the console's unintentionally hilarious Japanese safety manual – which even sparked fan responses of its own, like these lovingly crafted ‘missing pages’ on Flickr. Such is the excitement surrounding the launch of a console that many fan creations are published before the machine has even been released. After Nintendo released information about its ‘Mii’ custom avatar creation functionality, a Joystiq reader created an impressively accurate simulation of the system in Flash simply by piecing together information from screenshots and videos. If fans are going to that sort of length before a console is released, the fervour once it's out won't come as a surprise. Just look at the fun Flickr users are having with their Wiis and Miis. In fact, with its own version of the Opera Browser the Wii has inspired a new type of fansite – websites optimized specifically for viewing on the console (e.g. on your TV at a low resolution). These include a number of Wii Portals, communities, and video resources like this specially created ‘channel’ for the fantastic DIY games show Consolevania. And then there's the huge subculture of hacking, which stretches from simple resources like these downloadable game save files (handy if you've lost yours, or just want to cheat), to techy types who put the system to creative uses way beyond Nintendo's intended scope. In conclusion, obsessive videogame fans also love using the internet. Who'd have thought it?
David Thair
 conversations
Read members' comments.
|
 |
related info
 useful linkswww.wiihaveaproblem.com www.wiidamage.com www.joystiq.com www.kotaku.com www.destructoid.com kotaku: safety manual flickr: missing pages joystiq: mii simulation flickr: wiis flickr: miis opera browser liquidicelabs: wii portal miiboard.com consolevania wiisave.com wiihacks.blogspot.com
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
 gamesnintendo wii  gamesnintendo wii preview previous web columns  webslinky #113coming to terms  webslinky #112netspeak  webslinky #111time  webslinky #110personality tests  webslinky #109big things  webslinky #108karaoke  webslinkyarchive books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
send to a friend