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Nerve@SXSW 2006.
Blogging the Roman Orgy of Indie-music Festivals.
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The Daily Siege
An intimate and provocative look at Siege's life, work and loves.
Kate & Camilla
two best friends pursue business and pleasure in NYC.
Naughty James
The lustful, frantic diary of a young London photographer.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: kid_play
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Super_C
The Nerve Blog-a-log: ILoveYourMom
A bundle of sass who's trying to stop the same mistakes.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: The_Sentimental
Our newest Blog-a-logger.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Marking_Up
Gay man in the Big Apple, full of apt metaphors and dry wit.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: SJ1000
Naughty and philosophical dispatches from the life of a writer-comedian who loves bathtubs and hates wearing underpants.
The Nerve Video Blog
Deep, deep inside the world of online video.
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A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Prowl, with Ryan Pfluger
Nerve @ Cannes Film Festival
May 16 - May 25
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The Nerve Film Blog
Autumn
A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual girls down south.
The Modern Materialist
Almost everything you want.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: that_darn_cat
A sassy Canadian who will school you at Tetris.
Rose & Olive
Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: funkybrownchick
The name says it all.
merkley???
A former Mormon goes wild, and shoots nudes, in San Francisco.
chase
The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island
Nerve's TV blog.
Brandonland
A California boy capturing beach parties, sunsets and plenty of skin.
61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Charlotte_Web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: Zeitgeisty
A Manhattan pip in search of his pipette.

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  • Progress Quest: Playstation 3 Growing Up and The General Beauty of Firmware Updates



    The much discussed 2.40 firmware update for the Playstation 3 was officially announced today. It will be available for download this coming Wednesday, July 2nd. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you know what a firmware update is, but for anyone out there not familiar with the language, it’s no different than updating your computer, iPod, or Blackberry’s operating system. It cleans up any bugs, improves digital security, and adds new features to whatever device you happen to be updating. The PS3’s firmware update brings a host of new stuff to the system that users have been clamoring for since the system’s launch in November 2006. The improved feature list includes access to the cross-media bar, or XMB, while playing a game. The XMB is the system’s handy row-and-column interface, organized into multimedia (stored video or audio), game saves, and community stuff like a friends list, etc. The update also ups the number of friends you can have on the Playstation Network to one-hundred. The other new feature is Trophies, Sony’s answer to Xbox 360’s Achievements. These are preset goals in games that signify play milestones for a user’s profile (Score a million points? Get a trophy.) The 2.40 update is a big moment for the PS3, yet another olive branch from the once haughty corporation to a slowly growing user base; Sony’s saying they’re listening and delivering.

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  • Ain't No Party Like A Motion-Control Party

    There's a lot of buzz and all-but-confirmed rumors swirling about a motion control remote for the XBox 360 and a break-away motion controller for the PS3. While it is obvious that these are a shameless effort to gain favor with the casual audience that's made the Wii so wildly popular, I am excited for one reason: Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox.

    Read More...


  • In Defense of In-game Advertising

    In-game advertising is nothing new, but it appears that Sony plans to ramp up advertising in their PS3 games. CNET's Don Reisinger thinks this "ruins the experience of playing games".

    Let's talk about benefits. Pushing in-game advertising will most likely lead to lower game prices. I recently had the pleasure of playing through a new ad-supported downloadable version of Farcry for free. Farcry's a few years old, but putting up with a few interstitial ads during download screens was well worth it.

    Advertisers want to be as unobtrusive as possible with their advertising. What do I care if Solid Snake knocks over a can of Coke rather than a can of nondescript 'Cola'? He already smokes Luckies. Doesn't this hypothetical instance of advertising make for an even more immersive experience? Same goes for in-game billboard advertising in sports games. 

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  • Games Cost Money: Sony Cans The Getaway and Eight Days



    While the salad days of the Playstation 2 are at an end for Sony, things have been looking up for the entrenched corporate monster in 2008. Little Big Planet continues to wow, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue had a healthy release in April for a game that’s little more than a demo, and the buzz surrounding Metal Gear Solid 4’s impending release is loud enough to even drown out some of that Grand Theft Auto fervor that’s been going on. The stigma surrounding the Playstation 3 – that it’s an expensive, ugly machine without many games to play on it – is slowly starting to fade, and it has everything to do with some truly exciting exclusive software. So it’s disheartening to hear that two games being developed by Sony’s own London Studio have been cancelled. Eight Days, a Michael Bay-tinged action game that fused car chases with shootouts in the American southwest, and The Getaway, a sequel to London Studio’s successful PS2 Brit-crime drama series, have both been given the axe “due to the redistribution of resources and budget.”

    While I’m the first to exclaim my love for the big-budget blockbuster games coming out on the 360, PS3, and PC these days, the truth is that, for at least the short-term future, they may not be an economically feasible pursuit for most developers.

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  • Team Ico’s Fumito Ueda at the Nordic Game 2008 Conference



    As self-professed gaming aesthetes, we here at 61 Frames Per Second obviously have a deep and abiding love for the work of Sony Japan’s Team Ico and, more specifically, resident auteur Fumito Ueda. Ueda’s work on the Playstation 2, including the stylistic milestones Shadow of the Colossus and his team’s namesake Ico, are the go-to namedrops for anyone engaging in the persistent games-as-art discussion. His trademarks are characters that convey emotional depth through body language instead of dialogue and austere worlds that imply long histories and lost grandeur. It’s been three years since Shadow of the Colossus and the world’s been waiting with baited breath for any word regarding Ueda and Team Ico’s Playstation 3 debut. His recent talk alongside Siren designer Keiichiro Toyama on disruptive game design at the Nordic Game 2008 conference yielded no news on that project but provided some rich insight into his history in the industry and the early forms of his seminal works.

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  • NPD Wrap: The Times Are a Changin’



    April’s come to a close and now, under the cold, hard light of math, three things are becoming clear. First, people freaking love Nintendo games. Sure, we already knew that, but over a million people bought Mario Kart for Wii in less than a week. Second, people freaking love Grand Theft Auto. Nearly two million people bought that in even less time. Third, our access to new videogames is going to change dramatically in the very near future. While these numbers may just look like numbers to us, to the people who publish videogames, the people who control when we get to engage these creations, the math is saying that 2008 is different. Tradition dictates that high profile, big hype games are held in reserve for the holiday push from late September through December and the rest of the year is just a slow trickle of quality goods. The math of March and April 2008 says that people will buy many, many games throughout the year, not just around Christmas. What happens now? Going forward, we’re going to see more games, more often. At least, until digital distribution destroys physical media and the whole issue becomes moot.

    Come get some hard analysis and delicious numbers after the jump.

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  • about the blogger

    John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

    Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a Led Zeppelin/Talking Heads/Police/Replacements-covering power trio called Shovel, and will gladly rock your world if you so desire.

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