Most Recent: Etcetera

The following story is true. The names have not been changed to protect the guilty because it’s funnier that way.

To your left is The Avenger, a controller adapter created by N-Control that can bring more precise control to your PS3 and Xbox 360 controller. It also opens up the frantic world of first person shooters to players with disabilities that may otherwise prevent them from using an unmodded controller. Score one for the good guys, right?

Sadly, the people that N-Control hired to run the customer service end of their business are a bunch of bad guys.

That company is Ocean Marketing and, thanks to the boneheaded responses by Ocean PR rep Paul Christoforo, their days of working game-related PR/customer service likely just came to an end. Christoforo was contacted by Dave, an N-Control Avenger customer who wanted to check on the status of his order. After being given the run-around by Christoforo (and being insulted for good measure), Dave took his case to the game media.

As usual in a situation like this, Penny Arcade came to the rescue. They published Dave’s exchange with Christoforo and tried to make peace between the two parties. Christoforo then insulted PAX, insulted Mike “Gabe” Krahulik and, more or less, made an ass of himself.

In case you missed the link above, here it is again. Read the entire email exchange and watch as a man flushes his entire career down the toilet.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

UPDATE: N-Control has told Kotaku that Christoforo and Ocean Marketing no longer represent the Avenger Controller in any capacity. In other words, he’s been terminated!

Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn has released his annual “Wastebook,” a detailing of the 100 worst spending decisions by the US government.

Number nine on this document is a $113,277 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games. The grant will be applied to a preservation survey of the museum’s current collection. The goal is to eventually make their collection available to “visitors, researchers, and a broad public audience.”

Let me just say that as a gamer, a librarian, and a patron of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, I think Senator Coburn wasted a lot of taxpayer money compiling this list.

Jon-Paul C. Dyson, the Director of the ICHEG, also disagreed with the senator’s claim that the museum is wasteful and offered up his own response for why games are worth preserving on the CHEGheads Blog:

Game designers are also creating great art. Games charm, captivate, and amaze us, from the awe-inspiring wonder of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, to the whimsical fun of Angry Birds, to the subtlety of The Sims. Video games are influencing society just as much as novels did 200 years ago or movies did 100 years ago.

Or perhaps Seantor Coburn would like to see what the IMLS’s Mamie Bittner said when she awarded the grant:

Future innovation springs from the hard work and inspiration of the past. Technology changes quickly, and with changes, the work of entrepreneurs can be locked away and inaccessible. Can we imagine how researchers in the 22nd century will view the earliest groundbreaking interactive video? Without the work of institutions like The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games the vitality and imagination of early gaming would be lost to future generations.

Can’t really say it any better than that.