360voice Dev Blog

GTA Weekend Wrap Up

Thanks to everyone who attended our community night and played with squidpunch, QforQ or myself, or stopped by the chat room.  We all had a lot of fun dodging cars and bullets, some more successfully then others.  Other then a few connections issues, I think it went pretty well, and it was good to meet some new people.  If you have any other feedback for the event, you can let us know here.

Now onto the winners.  First the T-shirt Drawings.  We randomly chose 4 gamers out of everyone that joined us for the community night festivities.  Each will be taking home a 360voice.com customized T-shirt.  And the winners are...

1. Vector Scalar
2. Jackson The Pro
3. SFU Doom 101
4. DrMuffinStuffer

And finally, our big winner is Feoen who was randomly chosen out of all registered members of the site that played GTA4 this weekend to win a game of his choosing.   If you are one of the winners, please contact us with your full mailing address and shirt size.

Thanks again for all those who participated, we look forward to doing more events like this.

360voice GTA Weekend - Inside Xbox Mention

Update: All the spots for the community night are filled!  You can still participate by playing GTA IV this weekend, just make sure you are registered on the site, and play the game anytime during the weekend,  for a chance to win, see official rules below.

Hey gamers, make sure you tune into Inside Xbox via your Xbox dashboard today for Trixie's Community Confidential. Not only do you get to see Trixie driving, but she also talks 360voice and our upcoming GTA Community Night. For those that don't know this Friday (May 16th from 9:00PM-11:00PM EST). You can join 360voice.com staff for some multiplayer GTA IV. If you are interested in playing, send us a friends request to the gamertag gamerdna. Attending this event will earn you the plays well with other badge and the chance to win some t-shirts.

If you can't join us Friday, you can still play GTA and have a chance at a prize. Any registered member of the site that plays GTA IV any time between Friday May 16th and Sunday May 18th, will be eligible for a chance to win an Xbox 360 game of their choosing (max value $64.99).

So special thanks to Trixie and the Xbox team for the fun video and the mention. We hope to see you all online!

Official Rules: To be eligible for the game drawing you must be a registered member of the site, must play GTA IV between 01:00AM 05/16/2008 EST and 11:00PM 05/18/2008 EST (while connected to Xbox Live and having all privacy settings disabled) either single or multiplayer. Full details on quantity and qualification for t-shirt drawings, will be giving out during the community game night on Friday May 16th.

Git your chat on

I know that everyone is off playing GTA IV... but we are having a chat night tonight... answering any questions about the 360voice/GamerDNA merger! We will be announcing a fun little distraction, and giving away a few GamerDNA T-shirts.

ENTER THE ROOM
 

Update 11:50pm ET

Thanks everyone who attended! That was some good fun. We gave away some GamerDNA T-shirts and answered all sorts of questions. Master Devwi was nice enough to type up a transcript of what he could capture. Check it out posted in his comments. It isn't word for word... but it will get you started. As always feel free to contact us for more questions or ask them in the comments of this blog post (by clicking the title of this entry)... or the forums!

360voice chat night tomorrow

Hey everyone out there in 360voice land. We are hosting a chat night tomorrow (April 29, 2008) in our super-duper-live-chat room. The goal of the chat is talk about the merger with GamerDNA.com... ask questions... speak your mind... so come and chat it up... oh and I suppose we can talk about GTA too! :)

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
9pm - 11pm ET
Enter the chat room now!

...of course we won't be in there until tomorrow... but that is the link you can use.

We will be giving away the Plays well with others badge to anyone who attends, and we will also be announcing a fun little site feature that is totally off the wall... it has almost nothing to do with Xbox blogging... but we had to try... it was a crazy idea that Steve and I thought up at the Carolina Games Summit.

The Carolina Games Summit

This weekend, Steve and I will be at the Carolina Games Summit... hanging out... visiting the sessions... and doing what people do at those sort of things. If you are going to be there yourself, please send us an email and maybe we can meet up.

There will be tournaments going on... keynotes... speakers... exhibitors... my personal plan is to talk with some people there about gaming communities and their evolution towards closer relationships with game publishers and developers.

So it should be a good time... it will be one of those rare instances where Steve and I will be meeting up and a code weekend will not be involved. I have to say, I am looking forward to doing something besides 48 hours of nonstop coding every time Steve and I are in the same town.

If our support response seems a little slow this weekend, just wanted to let you all know why.

Community Night = Awesomeness Had

A huge thanks to everyone who showed up for community night for either chat or gaming.  That's the most people we have ever had in either.  I apologize if network issues caused you not to get in, but we ended up getting almost everyone online in, and the games were great.  I have never played so many large CoD4 matches that came down to the last few seconds.  I also found out, our community is really good at CoD4.

I also have to give everyone props on the very productive chat, you guys always give us such great ideas, and I am working through the log to compile notes on everything.  What we learned so far is people REALLY like genre badges, want more genres, and want more games added to genres.  But on top of that we really got some good feedback on moving forward with some ideas to revamp them.  I'll post on the dev blog when we are ready to start rolling out changes or schedule the next chat.  Good job everyone for staying on topic as well!

Finally we said we would hand out some prizes, so here are the winners which we selected randomly from the CoD4 matches.  Soxfan13 wins a 360voice T-shirt (although I am thinking about not giving it to him since he completely dominated me one match).  Also admiringworm and GotEmRunnin both win 1000 Microsoft points each.

Thanks again folks, you have proved once again what a valuable and friendly community we have here! 

360voice community night! Old Spice launch!

December 5th at 00:00 midnight PST, the Old Spice Experience Challenge with Rewards launches at 360voice. To celebrate this launch and unveil the rewards calendar as well as unlock the sign up for challenges rewards, we will be hosting a community night in the 360voice live chat Tuesday, December 04, 2007 starting at 10:00pm  PST.

We will be giving away three (3) 360voice T-shirts with your gamertag on them to lucky winners as well as the "Plays well with others" community event badge for everyone who attends.You have to be present to win the T-shirts and get the badge! Instructions for doing both will be provided periodically in the chat room during the community event.

PLEASE NOTE: In order to be eligible for the T-shirt drawing, you must have a FULL membership and have your Xbox blog comments enabled!

The primary reason for the community event is to keep Steve and I awake until we launch the rewards... we are running on very little sleep over here and the thought of blankly staring at a screen until 3am ET is harsh... not to mention we have to ensure that the code we wrote actually functions under stress and are there to rapidly repair any hiccups.

So come join us! December 4th, 2007, 10pm PST.

Not standing in line for Halo 3? Sit in our chat room!

If you are not going to be out at a fabulous Halo 3 launch event, or standing in line until midnight, why not hang with us in our chat room? I will be camping out... watching the coverage on G4TV and Spike TV as well as watching news roll in off the wire from other community sites.

As an added bonus, if you come hang out, I will be giving away the Plays well with others badge to everyone who attends (if you don't have it)... ok... I know... shameless bribery. :)

I will be entering the chat on Monday, Sept 24, 2007, around 9pm CT and running it until sometime after midnight. Hopefully I will see you there!

(You going to be there? Click the title of this post to leave a comment and let me know!)

Gamerscore Blog in Chicago

The guys from the Microsoft GamerScore Blog were in Chicago yesterday. I was invited to hang out, talk shop, and play a few games. All in all it was a wonderful time.

While I did get a chance to play some pre-release games, the real highlight wase the great conversations that covered topics like Second Life, building community trust, future of the XCDP, the impact of Twitter, the significance of Dunbar's number, new and innovative achievement types, casual gaming, the future of XBLA, our gamer histories, and of course, their perspectives on the pros and cons of working in the game industry.

My favorite games were:

1. Shadowrun - I played the beta for a few minutes while I was at Fatty Chubs' house and didn't really enjoy it. This version was MUCH more polished and wow... I had a TON of fun... even though Chris Paladino had an easy time WORKING me over with the dwarf. This game is back on my radar.
2. Undertow - This is an underwater shooter for XBLA. The whole goal is to shoot as many people as possible, take control points and stay alive. It has a very frantic feel to it with a ticket counter like BF1942. I enjoyed it.
3. Track & Field - This was a big surprise. A classic/retro game that is just so fun and easy to play. This one brought back good memories. I even unlocked three achievements while playing it at the event.
4. Project Sylpheed - I was really excited for this given that I have a big soft spot for space shooters. After playing it, I have to say it was a little frantic... I am willing to give it another long try though since I didn't have a whole lot of time to really learn/understand what was going on in the mission.

While the turn out at the event was a bit lower than I think they expected, that had the added benefit of making it a much smaller an intimate event which enabled a lot more conversation. A special thanks to everyone at Gamerscore Blog. They are truly a bunch of great people passionate about gaming, marketing, and reaching out to the ever expanding Xbox community.

Photos of me at the event:

1. Chris watching me completely suck at Tenchu Z
2. Dreaming up crazy types of achievements for future games
3. Watching Megaman Solid (Luther) play Sylpheed
4. During the Track & Field tournament I was talking to John in the background

If anyone else who was there has any photos, let me know so I can link to them!

Special Community Day: Lost Planet

We are proud to announce the next community game day! On December 19th we will be celebrating the holiday in the snowy war torn levels of  the Lost Planet multiplayer demo.  What's so special about this community event?  We have special guests from Capcom, that will be joining in the games.  So here is your chance to rub elbows and exchange grenades with 360voice.com and folks from Capcom US, does it get any better?  Participants will also be eligible for prizes and the community event badge for your blog.

Date: Tuesday December 19th
Time: 4:00PM-6:00PM PST (7:00PM-9:00PM EST)

How to play:  We have very limited spots for this event, if you are interested in playing you will need to e-mail us at mail@360voice.com, in the subject line put 'Lost Planet' and you must include your gamertag in the body of the e-mail.  Please only sign up if you can for sure play at that time. If you can't make this event, keep an eye on our Dev Blog for more upcoming events.

UPDATE: All the spots are full, we went through and picked the remaining spots at random from the e-mails we received in first 24 hours.  If you didn't yet receive an e-mail from me, you were not chosen, sorry we couldn't fit everyone in to this one!   Keep an eye out for the next one.