My inbox is pretty much a mess of weird press releases due to mailing lists I have been signed up to, but I do occasionally get a couple of gems trickle down into my consciousness, like that Tour De France videogame. This one comes from Roundhouse Interactive, and the e-mail starts with ‘As a leader in the video game industry I thought you would be interested in this latest development.’ which immediately gives it the air of authenticity previously only commanded to Nigerian royalty facing exile. The gist of it is that “The Game Cartel” ‘is is the world’s first democratically driven game development cooperative.’ What came next was something I somehow managed to skim read over: ‘Utilizing a web portal and a fee-based membership the Game Cartel empowers gamers … to develop next generation games for the retail market.’ Personally, I was thinking this was a bad idea before I found out they were charging $50US for membership, but I was ready to sign up and tell my friends to sign up, so that we could all say we were part of a historical disaster. Now I think it’s a bad idea for different reasons, and I’m going to sit at the sideline wishing them the best of luck. I might play their game when (if) it releases if it’s any good or if I get it foisted upon me to review. Topic for the podcast: If you democratically cobbled together generically popular game elements, what would you end up with?
