We're coming to suck your blood give you video games

I've mentioned before that I work for PowerUp Games.

All the official announcements in official PR PowerUp language will be put on the Myspace page and Myspace blog. This blog is about me, not PowerUp Games. However, I work for Powerup Games, and in accordance with my culture I identify myself a lot by what I do for a living. Occasionally, you'll be hearing about PowerUp, like right now.

So, work. Brad (my boss) is on vacation, but I really, really need him to get back so we can change the copy on the website. I'd been adding friends on the PowerUp Games Myspace page and then I saw this beautiful bit of copy on PowerUp's homepage: "Get one of the most powerful game systems at least on this planet (like you didn\'t already know) and Blue Ray, a whole bunch of other amazingly powerful stuff and two teraflops of floating point performance. That means a whole lot of flipping fun. And other prizes and toys to make your friends jealous. Sign up and win today!"

So anyway, we're giving away a $599 gift card and all you have to do is sacrifice one of your emails to the spam gods or whatever and you're entered. I don't want too many people to see this copy (more particularly, without reading what I have to say about it), because as a gamer, and someone who is now writing to gamers, I am constantly reminded that you can count on gamers to not hesitate to blackball anyone or anything from the community. That is, if something is completely ridiculous, someone won't hesitate to laugh. Vehemently. I personally don't want PowerUp Games to be the kind of idea that started out well, then was obliterated by the criticism of the Internet's denizens, the kind so withering that high school students receiving the same type of criticism later go on to be regulars at the university counseling center. I mean, since PowerUp Games (technically) funds my ability to eat, sleep, and play video games all in the same place, I want it to succeed. Also, I think it's a damn good idea, one that will at least make a big impact on a corner of the gaming community. See, the people who play games and the people who make them don't interact very much. It's usually something like this lovely graph that I did not make using a free and basic Microsoft program:

In case it' s not clear: the rectangle represents the game publishers and developers, the oval represents the potential buyer. The rounded rectangles are the thought processes and decisions of the buyer.

The thing to notice here is that the gamer, or buyer, didn't say anything to the company before the game was made. Once it's made, it's made. But not if they interject before it's made. That's what we're hoping to do. Plus, many times a good, innovative game doesn't sell well, and if the word gets out that a game PowerUp Games is featuring is going to be phenomenal, you'll hear about games you may not have otherwise. This will make everyone in the equation happy.

That's what PowerUp is going to do, and that's what I think about it. We're coming very soon. As soon as we get the details worked out with some companies and we actually have the games, we will start getting our name out more, and things will get more interesting.

Until then, I'm going to try not to think about what "two teraflops of floating point performance" means.