February 3, 2013. We all know what day that is. It's the day that six-tenths of the American population will be sitting on their couch watching an amazing Super Bowl performance, while the other four-tenths of us will be on someone else's couch watching an amazing Super Bowl performance. Ha! Yeah right half the people watching the Super Bowl are just in it for the commercials (these are completely made up statistics mind you). The Super Bowl has made quite a reputation for having the greatest, and also funniest, commercials of the year. Advertisement companies know this of course and are now banking on it as they create new ways to get just a little more out of every video. Any video game players will know their new technique well and you'll be able to testify to its effectiveness: trailers and competition.
When a new movie or much-anticipated video game has been announced the people making the product don't rely on just the good name and reputation of their company to sell the product, they use trailers. The point of these trailers is to reveal just enough about the game or movie to make you hungry to know more, they make you think it's going to be interesting and amazing to raise your anticipation for the finished product. Unless your product is Call of Duty, your reputation doesn't sell merchandise, anticipation does. That's what the trailers are for, they raise are anticipation for the new game or movie to the point where we know that we absolutely must have it. It would seem that commercial industries have figured that out and are now releasing commercial trailers (or commercial previews). That's right, commercial trailers, it wasn't a typo. They're giving you a trailer...of a commercial. How does that work you ask? It's simple really, and extremely effective so far. Instead of just releasing the full commercial the night of the Super Bowl as in the past, they're using the worlds multitude of social networking systems to start competitions. Many companies such as Doritos and Coca-Cola are going to show fan made commercials along with their professionally made commercials at the Super Bowl. They're deciding which video to put on the air primarily through popularity, which commercial gets the most votes. This voting system is hilarious really, because it's free advertisement. The very fact that you vote for a video, means that you watched the video, and whether you know it or not watching it made you want whatever it was selling. For instance the "Goat 4 Sale" Doritos commercial. Who didn't want Doritos after watching that?
So now you know what all those YouTube and Facebook videos are all about. They're plots to control your mind and make you watch the Super Bowl commercials with just a little more vigor. I'm quite positive that it'll work too, even after you've read this. But please, I implore you to give your opinion on the matter, and maybe even say what the best commercial is so far.
Original article: http://m.nbcnews.com/business/super-bowl-ads-its-go-viral-or-go-home-1C8119016
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Gun Violence and Video Games?
Gun violence. Everyone agrees that it's horrible and is occurring far more frequently than in the recent past. This understandably has made gun control a popular topic of discussion and a prime concern for public officials. Many ideas and plans have been proposed to curb gun violence. Some are more practical than others, some are quite drastic, and then there are a few that simply don't make sense to me. One such proposal is that video games have made today's youth more violent and dangerous. It's an idea that's risen up before, and always ends up getting nowhere. Either way it's here again to make the parents of teenagers second guess getting their child that new video game which is of course rated M (for mature) like the vast majority of popular games are today.
Only this time, the proposal was made by the president, and the work and research is being done through Congress. Now as an owner of many violent video games you might think I'm worried that Congress is launching a formal investigation into the effects my favorite pastime may have on the youth of our nation. In reality it's completely the opposite. Congress leading this investigation means the investigation will be very thorough and that it will uncover anything and everything that there is to find on the subject. I believe that when they get to the bottom of the typical male American's true favorite past time they'll discover that it's just that, a past time and a way to have fun with friends and family. Then maybe the next time someone tries bringing this up, or banning video games even (which has been tried before) they'll see that there was already research done on the subject and come to the simple conclusion that if the United States government couldn't prove video games have a bad affect on human behavior, then their private investigator certainly won't be able to either.
These are simply my own thoughts though. Maybe it'll be discovered that playing violent video games changes something deep in the recesses of our complex brains and it actually is a contributing factor to all the violence we've been seeing lately. But I doubt it. Please though, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below.
http://m.usatoday.com/article/tech/gaming/1839879
Only this time, the proposal was made by the president, and the work and research is being done through Congress. Now as an owner of many violent video games you might think I'm worried that Congress is launching a formal investigation into the effects my favorite pastime may have on the youth of our nation. In reality it's completely the opposite. Congress leading this investigation means the investigation will be very thorough and that it will uncover anything and everything that there is to find on the subject. I believe that when they get to the bottom of the typical male American's true favorite past time they'll discover that it's just that, a past time and a way to have fun with friends and family. Then maybe the next time someone tries bringing this up, or banning video games even (which has been tried before) they'll see that there was already research done on the subject and come to the simple conclusion that if the United States government couldn't prove video games have a bad affect on human behavior, then their private investigator certainly won't be able to either.
These are simply my own thoughts though. Maybe it'll be discovered that playing violent video games changes something deep in the recesses of our complex brains and it actually is a contributing factor to all the violence we've been seeing lately. But I doubt it. Please though, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below.
http://m.usatoday.com/article/tech/gaming/1839879
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
My name is John Oscar Israel Ford III. I was born 4 months prematurely in March of 1996 which caused plenty of problems that I of course don't remember. I have three sisters and one brother, and although I love them dearly, they each annoy me immensely. I'm a sophomore in high school and my favorite classes are English and Spanish. In my free time I enjoy playing video games, reading books, listening to music, watching movies, and playing basketball.
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