Last week, per popular vote, we played Blur on Xbox 360 and had a grand old time. This week I wanted to show the PS3 some love and realized…why reinvent the wheel? Blur was the PS3 game with the highest number of votes last week, so let’s go with that.

Why not? You're already revved up for it.

Don’t let the whole Friday the 13th thing scare you, but do show up between 6pm and 8pm Pacfic to get your race on. Facebook event reminder is here.

I’ve been enjoying a lot of Modern Warfare 3, but I feel like I’ve been neglecting other games for Playing With Swords sessions as a result. So let’s get one of those non-CoD titles in the rotation this week. I’ll let you choose the title and the platform, and whatever wins the poll is what we’ll play this Friday, January 6, from 6pm Pacific to 8pm Pacific. I’m going with recent titles as well as games that have had strong turnouts in earlier polls, successful events in the past, the one where we have a guild, and one game that has come to renewed light due to recent product announcements.

And please remember, this is not just a popularity contest. Vote for what you will actually show up to play. I got hosed by this last year when a fan community mobilized to vote for their title, then only three people actually showed up to play. Don’t do that.

Poll ends Friday at 3pm, so…vote!

Bring it.

Blur is now available as a direct download on Xbox Live via Games On Demand — and that’s as flimsy a reason as I need to call a Blur 360 Playing With Swords session! Join me online Friday, October 7 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and we will race in the 20-player Powered Up lobby. My gamertag is OneOfSwords and the details of how all this works are right here. Need a Facebook reminder? Here ya go.

I still love you

One more “new” game release this week, to join X-Men Destiny and Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2012 : My old favorite Blur is now available for direct download on Xbox Live as part of the Games on Demand program. It’s $40 and you can join the same multiplayer matches as everyone else. Thank you to the many people who brought this to my attention, yet I still forgot to mention it on this week’s podcast.

To celebrate, I am planning a Playing With Swords event for Blur on 360 in the near future. It came in toward the top of my last PWS poll, and that was before it was an easy download. So practice now — I’ll nail down the date soon.

The PC is host to every kind of game I can think of: strategy, action, shooter, driving, role-playing, you name it. Hey, I have no idea what you like. Maybe you’re the kind of person who likes playing as your favorite comic book and movie heroes:

Perhaps you fancy yourself a suave spy…or a bloodsucking freak:

Could be that you’re looking for the kind of games that your kids can enjoy as much (if not more) than you will:

Maybe you’re more the exact opposite, looking for an M-rated gorefest:

Well, I don’t care. And by “I don’t care,” I mean, whatever you are into, the odds are good that you will like something shown above, because all 12 of those games are going to one lucky winner next week. Just get your entry form in by the end of Monday, September 26, and I will pick the winner Tuesday the 27th. And then you just have to make some room on our hard drive! The usual info in the FAQ applies so give it a peek. Best of luck!

UPDATE 9/27: Congratulations to Bradley Brock of Gainesville Florida, who says he is a mutant superhero robot. Of course he is.

After the 360 session a few weeks ago, folks asked when I’d be running a PS3 Blur event. Friday August 5 at 6pm PT until 8pm PT is the answer! Let’s get our Blur on.

Sort of the opposite of Thursday's NASCAR event, really

Details on how this works, if you need them, are in the FAQ. Facebook reminder is here. See you then!

Folks outside of the Los Angeles area may be unaware of what the press is calling “Carmaggeddon” — the closing of the vital 405 freeway this weekend, which connects LA to Anahiem (home of Mickey Mouse) below and to the San Fernando Valley (home of the porn industry) above. Basically, the city is doing major repairs on the most heavily used highway in Southern California. The mayor of Los Angeles officially are predicted it will be “an absolute nightmare.” The county supervisor says “Stay the heck out of here.” Hell, it has its own Downfall meme video. Some are even saying this event’s power could rival that of Lord Voldemort – in a very real, financial way.

People are working from home on Friday because they simply won’t be able to get to their places of business. I will be in the office — I plan to ride my bike, like a good ex-SF Bay Area resident — but I can think of no better game for Friday’s Playing With Swords event (well, other than Carmaggeddon) than Blur.

This is the only way I'll see moving cars this weekend

We haven’t played Blur for a few months, so now, as all of the cars around me grind to a halt, I want nothing more than to drive at 200 mph on open roads. In other words, get out of my way, suckers.

See you on Xbox Live this Friday, July 15 from 6pm to 8pm Pacific. Facebook reminder is here. Check the FAQ if you have any questions.

There’s a huge summer sale going on at Steam, and that includes lots of Activision & Sierra PC games at reduced prices — some of which I’ve talked about before. The games on sale are at least 25% off, with most items up at 33%. Games on sale include:

33% off:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops
• Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike DLC
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation DLC
• Prototype
• Singularity
• Transformers: War for Cybertron
• Wolfenstein
• Blur
• James Bond 007: Blood Stone
• James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace
• Call of Duty
• Call of Duty: United Offensive
• Shrek: Forever After
• Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines
• Space Quest Collection
• King’s Quest Collection
• Aces of the Galaxy
• TimeShift
• GUN
• 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures
• Monster Jam
• Cabela’s Big Game Hunter: Trophy Bucks
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved

25% off:

• Call of Duty: World at War
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus DLC
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence DLC

Let me put this one up there again: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is $2.67. TWO BUCKS AND CHANGE. If nothing else, get that.

PlayStation Network is back online! Let’s get our Blur on Friday night to celebrate.

Ooh, pretty. But still ahead of you.

I’ll be on the PlayStation Network Friday May 20 at 6pm PST and I’ll play for about two hours. (Facebook reminder is here.) I’ll be in Powered-Up Racing, which accommodates 20 players at a time.

If you want to play, even if my friends list is full (which, despite my better efforts, it often is), just send me an invite — my PSN ID is OneOfSwords.

The dark times are over. PlayStation Network has returned after a long and painful absence. The clouds are parting, the sun is finally peeking through. All suffering on Earth is coming to an end.

Well, maybe that’s a bit much. But it sure is good to have PSN back online, even if it will take a little longer to get to full strength. If ever there was a time for a celebratory PlayStation-related giveaway, it’s now! I’ve got a stack of Activision PS3 games to give away to four lucky winners, and that stack looks uncannily like this:

Four people will win all five games: COD: Black Ops, Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Blur, Guitar Hero World Tour, and Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

There’s a little something for everyone in there, whether you like your games rated E, T, or M. The phrase “fun for the whole family” applies here. Info on how to win is right after the jump.

To enter, fill out the form below before the end of Monday, May 23rd at 11:59 Pacific time. I will pick the four winners at random on Tuesday the 24th. Full details about how this works, who is eligible, and all that stuff are in my Contest FAQ, so please give it a look. Good luck!

UPDATE 5/24: Winners this time around are Mark Picirilli of Norristown PA; Donal Williams of Essex Junction, VT; Steven Good of Stockton, CA; and Chris Jackson of Norman, OK. Enjoy your games — I threw a few extra goodies in the box because I had some room, so share and enjoy.

Ooh, this week, we’ve got a Friday the 13th — the infamous day of bad luck. Let’s test just how lucky you are in a round of Blur on Xbox 360.

Do you feel lucky, punk?

I have gotten a few notes from people in recent weeks saying they picked up Blur for cheap and they were looking forward to playing online — so yeah, that’s a good enough excuse for me! Jump on Xbox Live Friday, May 13th at 6pm PT and look for me in the Powered-Up Racing lobby. Since that accomodates 20 racers, we should be able to get a whole bunch of folks into the same race for maximum chaos.

If you want to play, even if my friends list is full (which, despite my better efforts, it often is), just send me an invite — my Gamertag is OneOfSwords.

Hey, 360 gamers — why so glum, chum? I know, I’ve been giving away a lot of PlayStation 3 loot lately, including that big-ass Time Capsule, not to mention all the PS3 DLC I’m giving out this weekend. (In case you’re wondering, I simply don’t have any 360 codes to give away — sorry.) But I haven’t forgotten about you. I would not have gotten to 10,000 followers on Twitter without the support of the 360 owners out there, and I am very grateful for that. So, this seems like a good time to give away something I have been saving for a special occasion. 10K followers on Twitter counts!

Last year I was able to get my hands on a bundle of Guitar Hero 5 signed by Alice Cooper. He did it in support of the DLC pack of his biggest hits. I never thought I would see more than the one that I was given for my contest, but…lo and behold, there is another.

No More Mr. Nice Guy...except this was nice of him to do, right?

In addition to the signed guitar, you’ll also get Guitar Hero 5 (it’s a guitar bundle), plus I’m adding in five more games just because I have them, and I can:

Superfast cars, superstar hits, and supernatural Nazis

Better still, I also have extra copies of those five bonus games to give out to five runner-up winners. So even if you don’t win the big autographed prize, you might win an instant 360 software library bump.

Again, I actually do feel bad when I can’t give something to everybody, or even every platform’s audience. But I also believe that what comes around goes around, and if one giveaway isn’t to your liking, another very well might be. Hopefully this giveaway is to your liking!

To enter, fill out the form below before the end of Monday, April 25th at 11:59 Pacific time. I will pick the six winners at random on Tuesday the 26th. Full details about how this works, who is eligible, and all that stuff are in my Contest FAQ, so please give it a look. Good luck!

UPDATE 4/26: “School’s Out” is the song Jose Contreras of Marysville, CA says most sums up his life. Now he’s got some extra games to enjoy over summer vacation, along with that lovely autographed guitar.

The five folks who get just the games are Anthony Cambria of Quincy, MA; Brian Villareal of San Diego, CA; Gray Ramirez of Las Vegas, NV; Marty Noblett of Wadsworth, OH; and Matt Langworthy of Pipestone, MN. Thanks for the support!

Bizarre Creations is gone but its games live on — and really, there’s no reason not to enjoy their work. So let’s do that this Friday night on PlayStation 3 with some powered-up Blur races.

I'm getting close to Legend status -- look out

I’ll be on the PlayStation Network Friday February 25 at 6pm PST and I’ll play for about two hours. (Facebook reminder is here.) I’ll be in Powered-Up Racing, which accommodates 20 players at a time.

If you want to play, even if my friends list is full (which, despite my better efforts, it often is), just send me an invite — my PSN ID is OneOfSwords.

Today Bizarre Creations officially closed its doors. I can’t offer them any better sendoff than their own video, which — rightfully — focuses on the games they have made. I am happy to hear that many employees were approached by potential employers, but I will miss their output as a team.

In the wake of the final news, several people have asked if Blur‘s servers will be going offline today as well. Thankfully the answer is no. It was the first practical question I asked when I found out that Activision was recommending the closure of the studio, and I was told the following, on the record, for podcast 053:

There will be no impact whatsoever to the overall game infrastructure and, as such, game sessions and all other network/multiplayer aspects of the game will remain intact and as is.

I will keep an eye on this, because nothing lasts forever, but I don’t believe there’s someone in a big room somewhere, waiting to pull a giant Frankenstein switch, asking “Now? Now?” Usually servers go offline once players stop playing in significant numbers, so as long as people are playing Blur, I don’t expect anything to change in the near future. If I hear otherwise, of course, I will let everyone know. Meanwhile, keep racing.

And Bizarre? Thank you.

I woke up today (this was originally posted November 15) to find several people asking why 200 people were let go from Bizarre Creations and why the studio was closed. And right away, I asked, “Did that actually happen?” I didn’t see an Activision statement about it, and when WeTheGamerz got Bizarre on the line, they said the rumors weren’t exactly true either — but didn’t go into detail. So I went digging internally.

Short answer (revised 1/19): The studio was not closed when the rumor first went around, but after 90 days, no buyer could be found, and Activision did reluctantly recommend the studio’s closure. Develop has the story.

More details below.

According to the official statement which was issued shortly after the November rumors hit — for which I’m citing Gamasutra because I felt it was pretty clear (and I called it “not hysterical” which was a poor choice of phrase — sorry about that) — the site says the studio has been given notice that the next 90 days will see Activision “exploring” its “options” for what to do. Those options are not clearly stated beyond “potential sale” being one of them, but Gamasutra points out it could be layoffs, restructuring or maybe even closure.

I find this news hard to take. I have championed Blur all year out of sheer love, not some corporate mandate. I am scared by this change, because I was secretly hoping someone would come up to me soon and say “hey, we know you’re a big Blur fan, so we wanted to show you what they’re working on next.” This was not the thing I wanted to hear.

I am bracing myself for the worst, because it’ll be easier to take if it happens — but I am still sending positive vibes out in hopes that things will work out. At the very least, maybe things just get scaled back, which is what happened at Neversoft earlier this year. The studio had to let people go, but made the tough cuts and carried on. My fingers are crossed.

UPDATE 11/16: Not 24 hours later, Develop is reporting that there are indeed parties interested in buying the studio. That would be, in my eyes, the best possible outcome for everyone involved. My fingers are still crossed!

UPDATE 1/17: Well, I kept the faith but braced myself for the worst, and it looks like the worst will be the outcome after all. Develop reports that Activision has officially recommended the closure of Bizarre Creation. Activision Worldwide Studios’ chief operating officer Coddy Johnson spoke to Develop about the situation, and here are some of the quotes, which I’ve rearranged for flow:

I want to be clear, our first choice was to try and keep this group together and find a buyer for the studio. But unfortunately, so far we’ve not been able to find any interested parties. [Activision] explored a lot of leads – pretty much anyone you can imagine in the industry. So we’ve made as a last resort, a recommendation to the team for closure. We of course care about this team. We’re offering the studio as many resources as possible, including counselling, external placement services and external career fairs.

I’m really disappointed that no buyer could be found but I’m glad they tried. As the studio members look for new employment, I suspect many UK dev studios will benefit from Bizarre’s talents, but the closure is still something I hoped would not happen. But this is the reality of the situation and I’m just trying to accept it.

On a personal level, I wish the team at Bizarre Creations nothing but the best as they make games for others in the future, and sincerely want to thank them for the great games they delivered. I’m not going to stop playing them.

We had a lot of fun last week playing Blur on Xbox 360 — but I also heard “When is the PS3 session?” The answer: Friday, January 14th from 6pm to 8pm. (That’s Pacific time.) It even says so on Facebook so it must be true!

Bang. Zoom.

If you are not on my friends list — and as soon as I bump a few people, a few people jump right on, so it’s tough even though I rotate — just drop me a line on PlayStation Network if you want to get in on the games. I will do my best to invite as many people as I can over the course of the two hours.

Last time I did a Playing With Swords event, I gave everybody the choice of what game they wanted to play. COD Black Ops won on all platforms, but the strongest showing for any other game was Blur on Xbox 360, with 37% of the vote. Okay, then — let’s race.

'Scuse me while I shunt this guy

Join in Friday January 7 from 5pm to 8pm Pacific time. Normally I do two hours, but it’s a light week, so let’s go for three. Here’s the Facebook event and there’s also the Playing With Swords FAQ for your infotainment.

In December, gamers compile their best-of lists. This is not one of them.

When I got here, I was surprised to learn how many games Activision actually publishes every year. Everybody knows big names like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero; Spider-Man and Transformers are a big deal for the company, too. But I learned just how popular the Cabela’s hunting and Rapala fishing games are, even though they are not traditionally aimed at the hardcore gamer. Same goes for iCarly and Zhu Zhu Pets and Bakugan. Hell, I heard Wipeout: The Game for Wii sold well, and I didn’t know that existed until it was out for a few weeks. Activision makes lots of different types of games for lots of different types of gamers.

But, with so many niche games, some of them are going to be underexposed and overlooked. So as we lurch into 2011, here’s a few that stand out to me as worth a reminder.

Blood Drive
Car combat
Developer: Sidhe Interactive

Ridiculous car combat, how I've missed you so.

Car combat is my jam. I also like killing zombies. Put them together and I’m going to be interested, so Blood Drive was a pleasant surprise for me this year. The game got mixed reviews and I can understand why — it’s intentionally difficult and, as OXM noted, the controls can be sluggish and the framerate sometimes sags — but this is one of those games where I want to forgive its flaws due to its ridiculous premise in a wildly underappreciated genre. Maybe it’s just like water in the desert for me, but there are enough good moments here to make me want to go back and play more. I think it helps if you go in knowing the flaws and accepting them for the sake of fun — assuming, of course, that you find car combat with zombies fun.

Singularity
First-person shooter
Developer: Raven Software

Humans with guns vs. monsters who puke. Advantage: Monsters

Singularity had an online video campaign (not to mention it appeared on the cover of Game Informer a year before it arrived), but people still said they didn’t know about the game until it came out. But the people who played it wound up giving it more love than I expected. It’s a mind-twisty shooter that wears its influences on its sleeve — if Doom 3 and BioShock had a baby in Russia, then gave it a glove that can manipulate objects in forward and backward in time, you’d be in the ballpark. It’s an old-school shooter with some novel and enjoyable twists.

Like an action movie, the single-player campaign unspools as a linear narrative, but the multiplayer is actually what surprised me the most. I’m a sucker for objective-based games, and Extermination’s attack/defend dynamic really appealed to me — as did the wide variety of customizable options each player has at their disposal. Yeah, you can choose to be a soldier or a medic, but you also choose your perks and weapons within that class, so two medics on the same team don’t have to be redundant. I spoke a bit about Extermination before and I really don’t think it got as much attention as it deserved.

Tony Hawk: Shred
Action sports
Developer: Robomodo

Could this be a case of "sins of the father"?

I tried Tony Hawk: Ride. I didn’t like it. I mean, I liked the idea of throwing away the past to reinvent the series, I liked the arcade-experience-in-your-living-room concept, the potential of what it could become — but when it came down to actually interacting with the game, I was as frustrated as the next person. For me, the risks they took in reinventing the franchise didn’t pay off in fun. However, early in 2010, I heard a follow-up game was already in the works, and that it would fix the control issues that so many gamers had reported. Okay, I thought, prove it. To my surprise, Robomodo did.

My biggest problem with Ride was that I moved one way on the board and the game often moved another; I just didn’t feel it was consistent or responsive, and I got frustrated (not to mention winded) just in the tutorial. Shred addresses that core problem, fixes it, and puts on a very different show. It’s got a light-hearted, kid-friendly theme and banks heavily on impossible tricks and crazy jumps, so it’s definitely not intended to be a sim, nor is it particuarly aimed at the now-adult players who made the TH franchise such a success. Also, as with Ride, it’s still built around short experiences on the board, so you don’t get fatigued. You might not like other stuff about the game — maybe the “go big” approach doesn’t appeal to you — but if the main complaint was “the controls suck,” that complaint isn’t valid this time around.

I hope more people check this out (it works with the Ride board, so you don’t need to buy a new controller if you already have last year’s game) because I think, in some ways, Shred is the game they wanted Ride to be. And I fear that the problems of Ride are keeping people from even trying Shred. I’ve seen a lot of people taking shots at Shred, but I haven’t seen a lot of people say they’ve played it. So I hope that changes.

Blur
Action Racing
Developer: Bizarre Creations

I simply crave it.

Okay, I lied — four games. But if you have been reading any part of my site this year, Blur is not something I can call an “overlooked” game — because I haven’t shut up about it since it shipped in May. Then again, why shut up now? I still highly recommend Blur, because it offers all the fun of a kart racer with power-up attacks, mixed with real-world sports cars that you dream about driving. Obviously, one of my favorites of 2010.

The nominees for the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards were announced today, and Activision racked up an impressive 20. Call of Duty: Black Ops leads the Activision stable with seven nominations (the overall leader for the awards: Mass Effect 2, with 10, and Red Dead Redemption just behind it with nine) but I’m obviously happy to see many other games from this year get recognition (yay Blur!). The full list is available at the official VGA site, but these are the Activision nominees:

Call of Duty: Black Ops

• Game of the Year
• Best Shooter
• Best Multi-Player
• Best Song in a Game (Won’t Back Down by Eminem)
• Best Performance by a Human Male (Gary Oldman as Sgt. Reznov)
• Best Performance by a Human Male (Sam Worthington as Alex Mason)
• Best Performance by a Human Female (Emmanuelle Chriqui as The Numbers Lady)

DJ Hero 2

• Best Music Game
• Best Soundtrack
• Best Song in a Game (Replay / Rude Boy Mashup by Iyaz & Rihanna)

Blur

• Best Driving Game
• Best Performance by a Human Female (Danica Patrick as Herself)

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock

• Best Soundtrack
• Best Song (Black Rain by Soundgarden)

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

• Best Adapted Video Game
• Best Performance by a Human Male (Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker / Amazing Spider-Man)

James Bond 007: Blood Stone

• Best Performance by a Human Male (Daniel Craig as James Bond)
• Best Performance by a Human Female (Dame Judi Dench as M)

Goldeneye 007

• Best Song in a Game (Goldeneye by Nicole Scherzinger)

Transformers: War for Cybertron

• Best Adapted Video Game

Additionally, Blizzard Entertainment was nominated for Studio of the Year for its work on StarCraft II. Justified!

The VGAs take place December 11, and if you visit the official site, you can vote for Most Anticipated Game yourself.

Major congratulations to all the teams — it really is an honor to be recognized for your work with a nomination.

After three hours of furious Blur racing…we tied. Seriously — we have witnesses and everything. We both won. Or lost, I suppose.

We played for three hours, using the rules set forth in this article — one point for coming in ahead of the other person, and three points if you came in first for the whole race. We both came in first at least once (Amber did twice), and we each had allies and enemies racing who did their best to help their chosen driver (sometimes just by wrecking the opponent). But when it came down to the last race before time was up, Amber was up by one point. If I won, it was a tie; if she won, it was decisive. Only by coming in first could I emerge victorious.

There was no such thing as an easy win in this matchup.

I didn’t come in first. So it was a tie. And you know…that felt right. We really are both good at the game and were evenly matched. I know some people will be disappointed that there isn’t one winner and one loser, but what can I say? We raced for three hours, and we were tied along the way more than once. This is the best ending because it’s the real ending. The universe was trying to tell us something.

You can still walk away with a shirt, though. The Team Swords and Team Amber memorial t-shirts will still be available until next weekend, and after that, I’m cutting a check to the Call of Duty Endowment, as all the profit from those shirts goes directly to them.

It was a lot of fun — thank you to everybody who played along with our silliness, whether that be sharing in the friendly trash-talk, racing alongside us, or simply spreading the word for the event and the cause. I hope everybody took advantage of the double XP weekend, whether you were able to join in on our session or not.

Rematch? Yes, I’m up for one. Let’s see what happens next.

Earlier this week, when announcing the upcoming Blur Double XP weekend, I called out Amber Green — one of the cheery little elves at Activision Customer Support (you may remember her from the podcast). You may be wondering why, so I have created this little video which should explain everything in a completely factual and not at all biased manner.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Naturally, this has also erupted into Twitter taking sides for #TeamAmber and #TeamSwords. I urge to to choose your side (read: my side) as the smacktalk escalates between now and October 29, when the battle takes place on Xbox Live.

Team Swords members should feel free to use any of the Katrin Auch-designed logos found here to show their support. Additionally, you can order the logo on a t-shirt and help support the Call of Duty Endowment. The shirts will only be available for two weeks, so don’t be like Amber and, you know, delay for months and months.

UPDATE: Not to be outdone, Team Amber has an official logo and limited-edition t-shirts available for sale as well, which also benefit the Call of Duty Endowment. So now you can support whichever team you like with spiffy shirts and Twitter icons and all that jazz as we inch ever closer to the big race.

She has also released this video rebuttal:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, it’s time for you to decide:

Every time I do a Playing With Swords event, folks panic about how it all works — but there’s no need to worry. I tried to put people’s concerns at ease with the Playing With Swords FAQ but I still get the same questions. This time, with all the aggression from Team Amber and valiant defense by Team Swords, people are especially eager to join in. And of course, the developers from Bizarre Creations and producers from Activision will be racing as well, AND there’s double XP for everyone on all platforms starting Friday. So I suppose going over some of the logistics is in order.

When are you playing on Xbox 360? When are you playing on PS3?
There’s a whole post detailing this stuff, but the short answer: Two small 360 sessions Friday, October 29 (due to it being a work day and accommodating gamers in US and UK). 7pm to 10pm in England/2pm to 5pm Eastern/11am to 2pm Pacific (full time conversion is here) and the second session is later that day, 8pm to 11pm Eastern/5pm to 8pm Pacific (full time conversion here).

On Saturday, October 30, there will be one big PS3 session, since it’s the weekend. That will take place 7pm to 10pm in England, which is 2pm to 5pm Easternand 11am to 2pm Pacific. (Full time conversion is here.)

What are the developers’ Gamertags/PSN IDs?
On Xbox 360, any of the tags from BlurDev1 thorugh BlurDev11 will be used by the folks from Bizarre and Activision. On PlayStation 3, I’m not sure — there’s some debate as to whether they will use their personal IDs or new ones for this event. Look for my session, and I should be able to direct you. I will have a headset in all sessions. My Gamertag and PSN ID are the same — OneOfSwords, all one word.

When will Team Swords defeat Team Amber?
In some ways, I think we already have, but the Team Amber/Team Swords showdown takes place during the second, “US” session on Xbox 360, Friday night. We will be playing Powered-Up Racing sessions, which can hold 20 drivers.

How will you determine your victory over Team Amber?
The only thing we are scoring for the showdown is which of the two of us crosses the finish line first. When I place ahead of her, it’s one point for me. If she manages to place ahead of me once, that’d be one point for her. If either of us finishes in first place in the room, that’s worth three points.

There’s no room on your friends list — how do we find each other?
This is the easy one that people seem to panic about. Just send me a message during the event saying you would like to play — a simple “inv plz” is fine. I will invite you into my sessions whenever there is room, and I will ask that people rotate so as many people as possible can get in on the fun. I won’t be able to get to everybody but I do try. Same goes for the BlurDev gamertags — just send them a note and ask if you can join them.

Also, all three events will be in three-hour blocks. If you don’t get me in the first 15 minutes, don’t panic — just race with some other folks until I can throw you an invite. But don’t bail and assume you will never get to play just because your first hook doesn’t catch a fish — sometimes I find myself without opponents and I’m only halfway through a session!

How about I just send you a private party invite?
No, please don’t — since it’s a public event and I am trying to play with as many people as possible, I always decline private “Join my Xbox LIVE Party” invites.

Anything else? Just ask below.

Okay, by now, you can tell that I want to defeat Team Amber in the increasingly more dramatic Blur Double XP weekend showdown on October 29. The trash talk is good, but with pride on the line and double XP in the offing, I think the actual racing will be better. But now…it’s getting intense. We both have official logo merchandise.

Amber said she was making t-shirts for Team Amber. I didn’t know if she’s serious or not, but hey — I married a designer, so rapid product development is technically my turf. “Kat, can you create a logo for Team Swords that looks awesome?” “Of course,” she said nonchalantly. “How awesome?” “Totally awesome,” I replied. And this is what she came up with:

Please add your own choir-of-angels sound effect when gazing up on it.

You can download a version for yourself here, suitable for use as Twitter icons, temporary tattoos, or a makeshift sticker campaign.

So, the next logical step? T-SHIRTS! And they are available right damn now, just by clicking on that link or the image below:

For a limited time, I’m hijacking my band’s merch site at Spreadshirt.com and offering men’s and women’s t-shirts, as well as a long-sleeve t-shirt with the Team Swords logo on them. They’re all shown on take-no-guff black, but you can choose another color if you prefer navy blue or hot-rod red, among others. I went with British racing green, myself. Now you can be a walking billboard for the inevitable defeat of Team Amber!

UPDATE: Amber was not bluffing — she also has a logo (which you can download):

It's okay I guess, if you like that sort of thing. I give it a 6.8 out of 10.

And she does indeed have t-shirts, which I am happy willing to offer through the same venue in the spirit of friendly competition:

Now, before we go any further…yes, this is obviously taking it to ridiculous extremes. As a competitive gamer, I want to win, but really, I wanted to take the joke all the way. However, I’ve come up with a way to make this bit of silly smack-talk do some good.

Hopefully, some readers of the site will recognize the Call of Duty Endowment — a charity Bobby Kotick set up to help aid veterans who face unemployment after returning to civilian life. Earlier in the year I got to take part in a massive donation to the Navy and actually shipped out on an aircraft carrier for a few days, which left me impressed, humbled, and incredibly seasick. While gamers have proven their generosity time and again with other charities, I think the this one could use some more exposure. So, for every Team Swords or Team Amber shirt that is sold this week, all the profit (a little over $5 each; everything else just covers costs) will go to the Call of Duty Endowment. I don’t expect to sell a ton of them, but hey — every one that does sell will support  a better cause than Amber and I teasing the hell out of each other. And…we still get to tease the hell out of each other.

That said, this changes nothing for the actual showdown on October 29th. I might be a softy when it comes to charity but my shirts look bad-ass and my foot is still made of solid lead. There will be no more mercy.

I’ve talked a lot about Blur. I’ve offered etiquette tips, I’ve shared some strategies, I’ve told you what to expect when we race together. I’ve even blatantly defended it when others said it was a sales failure (and I just checked some more recent sales figures, and it turns out I was right about the slow start). Simply put, Activision employee or not, Blur is clearly my type of game.

That’s why I am particularly proud to announce the first official Blur double XP weekend, which will take place October 29 through 31. Halloweekend is appropriate — after all, developer Bizarre Creations‘ logo is a jack-o’-lantern! As you battle online with up to 20 live players in one race (still the only console game that does that), you’ll earn twice the amount of fans to unlock new cars and mods twice as fast.

To celebrate the Halloween treat, we’re scheduling not one, not two, but three gameplay sessions:

It starts Friday, October 29 with two Xbox 360 sessions with the developers. Bizarre is located in Liverpool, so the first session is timed for UK gamers – 7pm to 10pm in England, which is 2pm to 5pm Eastern/11am to 2pm Pacific. (Full time conversion is here.) Look for the gamertags BlurDev1 through BlurDev11 – and of course I’ll be jumping in on both sessions as well under my usual 360 gamertag OneOfSwords. The Facebook event is here.

Since a lot of US gamers will be occupied during the day with work, school, or prison, we’re playing again in the evening for American 360 owners. Jump in between 8pm and 11pm Eastern/5pm to 8pm Pacific (full time conversion here) for a full-on, Microsoft-sanctioned Game With Developers event. Any night owls in the UK are certainly welcome to join in as well, but it is 1am and, by law, all Brits must check in with their local pubs by that time. Once again, look for the gamertags BlurDev1 through BlurDev11 and OneOfSwords. The US and UK teams will share/split those Gamertags up for the two sessions. The Facebook event reminder is here.

Then on Saturday, October 30, since everybody should be out of work and have no class, we’re holding one big PlayStation 3 session, same time as the day before — 7pm to 10pm in England, which is 2pm to 5pm Eastern and 11am to 2pm Pacific. (Full time conversion is here.) I’m not sure what the PSN IDs will be other than my own, OneOfSwords, so I’ll update when I know. Meanwhile, there’s a Facebook event for this session here.

I have friendly Blur rivalries on the Xbox 360 with Activision Customer Support’s  Amber Green (who actually helped in QA for this game) and PlayStation: the Official Magazine’s Roger Burchill (who did the review and claims his kids distracted him during our last match). I’m throwing down the gauntlet: You know the time, you know the place, and I’m ready to kick ass on your platform of choice. Let’s do this.

UPDATE: The Amber Green Situation has escalated, and Twitter has responded with mildly warring factions pledging loyalty to #TeamAmber or #TeamSwords.

A few folks have asked if I will be taking part in GamesRadar’s 24-Hour Gaming Marathon. This is the (apparently now) annual event wherein the editors, in an attempt to avoid creating new content for the website, have challenged themselves and their readers to stay up for 24 hours straight and play games. My name was brought up because multiple Activision games appear on the schedule.

So will I be there? Yes — not for the whole time, but I’m definitely good for two games at two different points of the shenanigans.

The event starts at 5pm Pacific on August 20th and — as the name suggests — goes through to the same time the next day. Modern Warfare 2 kicks off the whole event and returns again early Saturday morning. I’ve had several people ask when I’d be back online for an Modern Warfare 2 night, so let’s combine our forces and clog the servers. I’ll be online Friday August 20th from 5pm PT/8pm ET to 7pm PT/10pm ET in MW2. I will play on Xbox 360 because the last MW2 night I did was on PS3. Facebook event is here.

Blur is slated for hour 20. If only to see how the editors drive after 20 hours and no sleep, I can’t wait for this session. So look for me on Blur on Saturday August 21 at 1pm PT/4pm ET on PlayStation 3 because I just did a 360 Blur event last week, and hey, let’s be fair. Facebook event is here.

Hopefully this double-team-supreme will increase your chances of playing with someone…well, not famous, but vaguely recognizable. And you get to shoot us!

Hopefully you are planning to attend this week’s Xbox Live Community Playdate that I’m hosting for Blur — awesome! Kat, Hugh and I will all be in the same 20-person Powered-Up race, so we can play with the maximum amount of people at the same time. Here’s what you should know going in:

• We are not going to be able to play with everyone. All three of us got absolutely buried in friend requests this week, and even though we plan to play for two hours, we’re not going to be able to race everybody. Please don’t take it personally. In fact…

Click here to view the embedded video.

• If you are not on our friends lists (because they do top out at 100), just send me a text message during the Wednesday event. I will try to invite as many people into our session as possible.
• Remember, we are playing for two hours at the minimum. (Hugh has to go then, but I’m up for sticking around longer.) If you do not get into a race in the first five minutes, don’t give up. In past events, we’ve found ourselves with nobody to play with after an hour because people shrug their shoulders and take off. We can only play with you if you are, you know, playing!
• Try to avoid the swear words during the session. All kinds of people play Blur, so let’s make it welcoming to everyone. Here are some linguistic alternatives: “Mother father!” “Son of a brisket!” “Frigidaire!”
• I wrote up some gameplay tips and some etiquette tips shortly after the game came out. Some are products of their post-beta time, but most are still useful.
• I have found success by sticking with the same handful of cars race after race. Every time you complete a race in a car, regardless of your position at the end of the race, you build toward an upgrade in fans, health, or speed for that specific car. I didn’t really pay attention to it until after I hit Legend status and had to earn all my cars all over again, but now I’ve got a handful of upgraded rides that I know very well.
• There is one easter egg unlockable car in the game: you can access the upgraded chrome-finish BMW Concept 1 car by selecting the regular Concept 1 and pressing LT, RT, LT, RT at the garage menu. It’s all the way to the left of the cars.

Same trick works on PS3, too

Other than that…let’s have fun out there.

I am pleased to announce another official Community Playdate on Xbox Live. We had fun playing Guitar Hero 5 a few months ago, so it should come as no surprise that I want to give Blur a little more time in the spotlight this time around. Start your engines on Wednesday, August 11th at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific for some powered-up racing in Blur.

From left to right: Kat, Dan, Hugh

Kat, Hugh, and I will all be playing Blur and we will be in the 20-person Powered-Up Racing lobby. We want to race together, and we’re going to take advantage of the fact that Blur is the only racing game that lets 20 people into the same race at the same time.

If you want to join and you’re not on our friends list, just send one of us a text message on Live asking for an invite during the event time, and we’ll try to get everybody in that we can. And if you need a reminder, there’s an event on Facebook.

I often don’t feel gamers have realistic expectations about this hobby, and this weekend, I found another shining example. Stand by for personal opinion.

I mentioned Blur on Twitter this weekend, complaining about high-level players hanging out in low-level lobbies and creaming the newbies — surely a sense of fair play would stop people from beating up on the younglings, right? Take some personal responsibilty and don’t be, as I called it, a douchebag. That led someone to comment that I shouldn’t be mocking anybody in the game’s “small, diminishing” community online — the insulting, unfounded suggestion being, you know, be thankful anybody is still playing your rapidly dying game.

Full lobby = Happy gamers

Small? Diminishing? What? Every time I log on to either 360 or PS3, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people online, happily racing away. So I turned on my Xbox 360 right then and there, fired up Blur, and on Sunday afternoon, found 1,013 drivers in the multiplayer lobby.

For reference, the number of people do you need to play Blur online, technically, is just two. The number of  people can you race with at one time in Blur is 20 (a console first), and those races are hilarious chaos. How many people were actually on at the moment of that flawed assumption? Fifty times more than you need to have the definitive Blur multiplayer experience. In fact, that’s 994 more drivers than I can even compete with in a race. I am absolutely not disappointed in that.

So when I Tweeted that number and questioned the “small” comment, I got three responses — all of which were some variation on “well, compared to Modern Warfare 2 and Halo, it’s small.”

Okay…but why are you comparing it to MW2 and Halo, since those examples are completely irrelevant? Those communities are unrelated. Compared to the critical and financial success of Titanic, The King of Kong is small — but I did not expect it to rake in billions of dollars. I did think it was a great film, and one I’ve watched more often and enjoyed more than Titanic, to be honest. Different films come with different expectations. So do people, for that matter — there’s only one Michael Jordan, and the rest of us are not lousy simply because he’s awesome.

Gamers, you cannot judge everything on one sole pinnacle example. Halo and MW2 and Gears of War are blockbusters, and different rules apply; those games have different expectations, both from the audience that play them and the people who made them. So to suggest that a game like Blur — and it could just as easily be any other game, like Hydro Thunder Hurricane or Puzzle Quest or even Steel Battalion — has an online audience that is “diminishing” because a handful of blockbuster games are more popular in pure player count, well, that’s very flawed logic at best and downright irresponsible at worst. It’s also more than a little arrogant — what, a game can’t succeed unless you play it?

I demand more players! MORE!

I’m going to invoke a mantra that a lot of gamers like to bring up: quality over quantity. When I sign in for multiplayer on any game, I just want a good time. As long as there are enough people online in Blur for me to have a satisfying race — generally 10 or 20 people, for my tastes — I don’t really care how many other people are logged on, because I’m not racing them right now. It’s great when I can choose from several lobbies, but why do I care about the people I am not racing? It’s like suggesting that you can’t have fun in a four-player game of Monopoly unless there are five or six other games going on simultaneously in the same room — that’s just stupid. When I play Blur, I want a handful of drivers looking for competition, like me. From Sunday afternoon’s quick glimpse, finding those drivers was clearly not a problem.

Still, I was curious. Before I left for work this morning — 8:30am Pacific — I fired up both the 360 and the PS3 to see how many people were playing Blur. Player count in the Xbox 360 lobbies: 773. I was expecting a lot less — I mean, Monday morning, right? So I switched over to PS3 and found…1,097. That’s even more than I found on Sunday afternoon.

Diminishing my ass.

But that’s not the point. The point is that each game has its own community with its own multiplayer expectations, and you can’t mix them up because they are different beasts entirely. As long as the game you play has enough players to meet your expectations online, nothing else matters.

Still on the fence about Blur, the arcade racer that has clearly taken a piece of my soul? Well, good news — PlayStation 3 gamers now have a free demo to try the game for themselves. As I noted last week, PS3 gamers in particular have been spoiled for choice, with three action-racing games coming out right on top of each other. Nobody can buy and find the time to play every game that comes out — so if you went for one of the other titles, here’s a risk-free way to check out what you’re missing.

Yes, the demo includes the Ford Mustang GT 500...if you can handle it.

What you get in the demo is…a lot, actually. 12 cars, 8 power-ups, 7 mods, and two gameplay modes (the finish-line-oriented Powered-up Racing on four tracks, and the destruction-oriented Motor Mash on two of its own arenas). Plus the demo version supports Twitter and Facebook functionality, so you can brag to the world about your latest accomplishments and customize the message before you send it out. That means you can direct your trash talk to the parties that most need to hear it. As this fan video of me beating the pants off people in Blur on PS3 illustrates, that might be me.

The Blur PS3 demo will be available in the PlayStation Store later today as part of Sony’s weekly content update, and it should be available tomorrow in Europe. I’m planning to do a PS3 gameplay session for Blur in August, so this gives you time to test it out, practice up, grab the full version, and face me online next month!

UPDATE: I got to chatter about this over on Sony’s official PlayStation blog, too! And the Twitter and Facebook functionality are now live in the demo — I tested it and it works.

I’m once again expressing personal feelings about a topic that piques my interest. Warning, unauthorized opinions ahead.

Some noise has been made of Blur‘s low sales on the NPD reports for May — a mere 31,000 units in the US. I’ve seen sites call it a “failure,” and one even went on to list a whole bunch of reasons why it failed, citing everything from the game’s delay to the wrong platform to not giving gamers what they wanted. For the record, I don’t agree with any of that — the delay helped it immeasurably, the 360 and PS3 multiplayer audiences are loyal, and the game offers plenty for action racing fans like myself.

Critics certainly agreed with that last point. I opened OXM’s August 2010 issue to find a 9 out of 10 rating (“you’ll love every crazed minute”). I opened the August issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine to find 4.5 out of 5 stars (“there’s no way we’re giving the keys back”). Both praised the multiplayer frenzy and thrills as well as the balanced power-ups. Not every reviewer was quite so bullish, of course, but when I see GameRankings and Metacritic offering average scores of 82 from dozens of outlets, I bristle to hear the game called a failure. That’s an aspersion on its quality, despite the fact that the slow start might be more about circumstance.

With that in mind — and as an unabashed fan of this game who has yet to go online and find less than a few hundred people racing on either PS3 and 360 — I’d like to offer some counterpoints that make a hell of a lot more sense to me, and why I think it’s way, way too early to call Blur a failure by any measure. Let me explain.

There are logical reasons as to why Blur made a minor impact in May.

The audience was split three ways. Blur came out a week after Split/Second (May 18) and the same day as ModNation Racers. I’m not sure what your budget looks like, but I can rarely afford to buy three games in eight days — nor do I have the time to play all of them at once anyway. It’s inevitable that three games in the same genre at the same time are going to make people say “Well, I’ll get this one first, and look into the others when I can afford it.” A three-way race was a bad thing, because two of those three games were going to “lose.” And according to NPD, none of those titles hit 100,000 units sold in May, and all three games scored in the low 80s — Metacritic averages all three titles to the same exact 82. So it’s not about quality; it’s about too much choice.

June was dealtastic. Realizing that gamers were strapped for cash in that three-way grab for the racing dollar, Activision issued an official $20 coupon in June to encourage folks to check out Blur once their wallets had refilled. Best Buy and Kmart also put the game on sale in June, and some lucky people were able to stack those deals even though they probably weren’t supposed to. None of those people who came to Blur a few weeks late have been counted yet; that sales data released in July only covers May, and is very outdated. And that leads to my next point…

The NPD data only represents one week in May. Blur shipped May 25th in the US, May 28th in the UK. Since the June data is not yet available (and won’t be for a few more weeks), we are looking at one week of sales and no international data. More importantly, while big sales out of the gate are always preferred, a slow first week no longer means a death sentence. A perfect example: DJ Hero was dubbed a flop on its release too, but what it needed was time for its audience to find it, a price break, and positive word from both friends and reviews to circulate. October and November were soft, but after the holiday, DJ Hero had hit about 800,000 units; today it’s 1.2 million units and counting, all of which come with a turntable controller. That’s not a flop; that’s the long tail at work. So to suggest a game is a failure because it didn’t sell hundreds of thousands of units in its first 168 hours is pretty ridiculous. June’s data will be very interesting to see, and I don’t expect to hear much about any victories it might represent, since it’s a less sexy story than “Blur failed in week one.” Bad news travels fast. For instance…

There were some server burps. I experienced them when I played Blur in the first week or two, though not as frequently as other people — guess I was lucky. But I don’t freak out when I experience launch-window hiccups like that; Blur is not unique in experiencing server issues at the start. Being an online gamer for so many years, I have come to understand that it’s a living ecosystem that evolves and improves with feedback and time. But I saw people throw temper tantrums about the server issues; I saw others take them as a personal insult. Those overreactions probably scared some people away — no data to support that, just my personal hunch. But I also saw that the Bizarre Creations team was working on the problems and fixed them in short order; the game’s received a title update/patch and the issues I’ve seen since are on par with the occasional problems I’ve found in other popular games. Are those server issues embarrassing, particularly after a multiplayer beta? Sure. Inconvenient and frustrating to the player? Definitely. But are they fatal? No — it’s a solvable problem in this modern world, and all you have to do is not scream that the sky is falling because of them.

For what it’s worth, I played Blur a fair amount this weekend, both PS3 and 360, and it was smooth sailing for me. I have never logged on and found less than several hundred players in the lobby, eager to race. Hundreds to thousands of people playing online every day, stable servers, positive reviews…folks, this game is not a failure, and it’s an irresponsible disservice to use that word to describe Blur. All it’s really guilty of is coming in third in a three-way race. And that was just the first lap.

UPDATE: Props and thanks to ArsTechnica for doing a follow-up piece based on this article, noting that DJ Hero had a slow start but some respectable numbers over time.