I’ll spare the details but let’s say that, throughout the year 2010, the working atmosphere in the Gamocracy team hasn’t been so good. Nobody’s to blame really but many things have not gone the way we expected, starting with differring visions for the site among us.

It’s not only that of course, but from the moment working at an innovative project isn’t fun anymore, a lot of what made it appealing vanishes at once and there you are left with your crazyness and a lot of risks in your hands.

For the past three months we’ve been thinking and talking about how we could go on, one way or another. It turns out development on the Gamocracy platform is on ice and will stay like that at least for some time. As for myself, I will stay away from the site and community as I’ve done recently. I don’t see myself coming back to it anytime soon. That said, there are no plans to take the site down anytime soon either.

With Gamocracy going the way it is, I need to find ways to make ends meet. I’m not too worried about it, but I need to go for it full time or my rent will become an issue. I’ve started working at other endeavours that should help me do that. Above all, I wish to remain independent and not become an employee again.

Thank you everyone that took part in Gamocracy, one way or another. It was tough and the ending ain’t the happiest ever but I enjoyed walking down that path together with you.

Now let’s go eat that green mushroom!

Today I got more review codes from our man Sean, the same who sent the Doc Clock one. They’re for another indie PC game, called Shatter. It’s some kind of modern day Arkanoid.

I got three codes so here’s what we’re going to do:

• Two codes will go to  people who are willing to write a review after they got the code and played the game. This means you have to be a level 6 player on Gamocracy to apply.
• One code will go to someone who’s willing to write a rating after they got the code and played the game. This means anyone with a  Gamocracy account can apply.

To Apply, just say it in the comments and make it clear whether you’re applying for a rating or a review. You can’t apply for both. In case there are more applications than review codes, we might do a random drawing or share the codes between several people.

Going there I had this idea to do a video about the female Counter-Strike tournament entirely with my phone… I ran into a couple issues here and there but here it is now. The only part that’s not done with the phone is the intro.

If the video doesn’t display, try Vimeo.

I used an iPhone 4 and the iMovie app.

The intro was done on a Mac with pixel art software and After Effects. dotsMarc did the visual and my friend Koya animated it a bit.

Call the firemen and join us in the hot hot fun!

Gamocracy on Steam
Gamocracy on Xfire

This week will start with one big boom as twelve million World of Warcraft players enter the Cataclysm era on Tuesday. While Blizzard is planning for huge release parties and invading retailers all over the world with WoW boxes and schwag, people who, like me, don’t give a damn will still have other bits to chew on.

## December 7th 2010 ##

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (PC)
Genre: MMORPG
“Your definition of epic will be scattered”, they say.

Tron: Evolution (PC / X360 / PS3 / PSP / Wii)
Genre: Action Adventure
The game based off of the long-awaited sequel to the Tron movie.

Kung-Fu LIVE (PS3)
Genre: Beat’em up
Put your pad on the coffee table, stand up and fight against the game and your friends as the PlayStation Eye tracks your every move.

## December 9th 2010 ##

Castle of Heroes (PC)
Genre: Tactics & Wargame
Chinese hit strategy game hits western browsers for free.

OK well… There ARE more games coming out this week but I’m so damn lucky I think I just broke the database edit tool down by demanding too many useless stupid stunts of it. I’m sure Nomalz will fix that in no time when he finds out. So that’s it, the first release list is a short one…

And I want to let you know about a video I started last week at DreamHack and finished at home yesterday. It’s about the female Counter-Strike tournament at DreamHack and it’s entirely shot and edited with my phone. Hopefully I can put it online tomorrow!

To say it clearly: Nomalz has recently added Amazon support to Gamocracy. This means you can buy games at Amazon through Gamocracy. Here’s how it looks when a game is available at Amazon through us:

Did you notice? The price is in UK Pounds (£). That’s because we elected to plug on the Amazon UK store. We could have picked any other one but it’s the closest thing to a European version of the Amazon offering. German or French wouldn’t have worked for obvious reasons… Also, with the £ being so low, the UK is where you’ll get on average the best deals for games out there. Here’s a converter you could bookmark.

Just like for our other partner store DLGamer, if you buy a game at Amazon through Gamocracy, we’ll get a cut from them, helping us sustain Gamocracy.

EXAMPLE

Let’s say you’d like to buy Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare on the PlayStation 3 and you somewhat, somehow, kinda like Gamocracy. Here’s how you could help us:

1 – Make the (huge) decision you will buy the game through Gamocracy
2 – Go to Gamocracy’s Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare (X360) page
3 – Look at the top right corner: oh, only 17.99 £!
4 – Click the green “BUY” button
5 – This will take you to the matching Amazon.co.uk page where you complete the purchase
6 – We then get a cut from your buy: 8%. That’s the Amazon affiliate deal for beginners

Hopefully one day we can plug several Amazon sites at one time and geo-target the display according to your country of residence but… just not now.

Below is a list of games we added Amazon support for. It’s only very few, there litterally are thousands and thousands more.

XBOX 360

MindJack (X360)
Mar 25th 2011
33.18 £ (pre-order)

Test Drive Unlimited 2 (X360)
Feb 11th 2011
38.91 £ (pre-order)

nail’d (X360)
Feb 4th 2011
29.99 £ (pre-order)

Dead Space 2 (X360)
Jan 28th 2011
38.91 £ (pre-order)

Tron: Evolution (X360)
Dec 7th 2011
34.99 £ (pre-order)

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (X360)
Nov 16th 2010
36.99 £

Call of Duty: Black Ops (X360)
Nov 9th 2010
39.98 £

Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare (X360)
Oct 26th 2010
17.99 £

Dead Rising 2 (X360)
Sep 28th 2010
25.00 £

Super Street Fighter 4 (X360)
Apr 27, 2010
17.71 £

PLAYSTATION 3

MindJack (PS3)
Mar 25th 2011
33.18 £ (pre-order)

Test Drive Unlimited 2 (PS3)
Feb 11th 2011
38.91 £ (pre-order)

nail’d (PS3)
Feb 4th 2011
29.99 £ (pre-order)

Dead Space 2 (PS3)
Jan 28th 2011
29.99 £ (pre-order)

LittleBigPlanet 2 (PS3)
Jan 15th 2011
38.91 £ (pre-order)

Tron: Evolution (PS3)
Dec 7th 2010
37.60 £ (pre-order)

Gran Turismo 5 (PS3)
Nov 24th 2010
35.00 £

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (PS3)
Nov 16th 2010
34.00 £

Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare (PS3)
Oct 26th 2010
17.99 £

Super Street Fighter 4 (PS3)
Apr 27 2010
11.71 £

PC

Test Drive Unlimited 2 (PC)
Feb 11th 2011
24.99 £ (pre-order)

Dead Space 2 (PC)
Jan 28th 2011
24.99 £ (pre-order)

Two Worlds II (PC)
Jan 15th 2011
24.99 £ (pre-order)

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (PC)
Dec 7th 2010
24.99 £ (pre-order)

Call of Duty: Black Ops (PC)
Nov 9th 2010
29.97 £

Civilization V (PC)
Sep 21st 2010
21.99 £

Lego Universe (PC)
Oct 26th, 2010
13.99 £

Street Fighter IV (PC)
Feb 20 2009
11.02 £

I remember about ten years ago I was so excited I could hardly sleep before LAN Arena 5, the major French LAN party at the time. DreamHack is just the same, ten times bigger. And I’m not exaggerating one bit as they beat another world record for computers at a LAN party over the weekend: 12 734 exactly.

So, once again, I didn’t sleep much during a LAN party. As someone who’s travelled a lot for that kind of things, I can tell this one is very impressive. Both super well organized and messy. Filled with computers, guys and… a surprisingly big number of girls too.

It was amazing to meet all of you people. Let me give a special shoutout to Hans and Natalia for all the help, and also to my pal Jean-Pierre.

I’ve been uploading videos that I shot with my phone. Below are those I like the most. There are more on our Youtube channel. And even more will get uploaded later on as I find my way through the hundreds of clips I have.

Without further ado, let me show you the winning entry:

And the ones responsible for it: Elin, Marcus and Mattias (and that guy in black to the right is myself)

Their fantastic picture really captures the Gamocracy spirit: you’re the ones that’ll make it big! Or not.

The awesome prizes for first place are: 1 Zowie Gear EC1 mouse, 2 Zowie P-TF mousepads, 12 cans of Rockstar energy drinks, 2 Western Digital T-shirts and 1 MSI T-shirt. Congratulations!

If this wasn’t you, it’s definitely not over yet. We also have a second and third prize!

Second prize: Magic the Gathering Fire & Lightning Premium Deck Series (60 cards), MSI football and MSI thermos mug.
And the winner is: Malin S for the great picture with the really happy guy right below. Gamocracy is supposed to make people happy, so we’re all for that. Congratulations!

Here’s Malin and her girly prizes. And me again.

And the third prize: Zowie gear P-TF mousepad, a box of Western Digital swag with color led handheld fans and USB-memory cards.
Congratulations Team PCModding.se! Good creativity, too bad it’s a bit blurry…

And here’s Marcus (to the right) with my man Hans…

We really liked all the pictures and all the entries are available on our Facebook page.

Running this contest was really nice, it’s likely we’ll run more like this one in the future. Thanks to all of you for taking part. And a big thank you to the people who were so kind to give us the prizes for this.

DreamHack is almost over for us. I’ll write a wrap up post… maybe tomorrow, most likely on Monday. Let me just give a big shout out to Hans and Natalia for all the help already.

Party time now o_O

And as it happens, this all coincides with us getting our new (and in OliT’s opinion really fantastic looking) cards. That said, with us being on a very low budget, they’re very small.

We thought maybe you could help us make them big!

Here’s what’s going on: We’ll be walking around the DreamHack halls handing out these cards to people we meet. Let’s suppose it’s you we’re giving the card to…

You take the card (or make one of your own) and put it someplace where it looks as big as possible, like in the mouth of your sleeping friend, on the pizza you are having for lunch or on top of the highest stack of Coke cans in all of DreamHack. Then, snap a picture of this and upload it to us (instructions below)

The person who sends the picture that best shows the idea of “Make it big @ Dreamhack” to us by Saturday at 19.00 DreamHack time will win some nice prizes, including an EC1 mouse and a mousepad from our friends at Zowie Gear. Simple enough, right?

If you don’t meet us around the alleys, you can still go get a card yourself at the Esports Hall main desk. Ask for Nayya over there if you can’t find them!

If you’re wondering what’s big and what’s not, here’s an example:

Your imagination and point of view are the limit, just like they are on Gamocracy when it comes to sharing your opinion on games.

Instructions:
1) Take a picture or short video clip showing the Gamocracy card, or Gamocracy in writing.
2) Upload to the contest gallery on the Gamocracy Facebook page or send via email to incolas[at]gamocracy[dot]com. Remember to add some contact details to your picture, so that we can get in touch with you if you win.
3) Do it all over again, if you feel like it. There’s no limit on how many pictures/videos you are allowed to send.
4) At 19.00 DreamHack time Saturday the 27th of November 2010, the contest ends. During Saturday evening, we’ll announce the winner (or winners, who knows…).

Prizes: [updated Nov 27th at 15:42]

• EC1 mouse + mousepad from Zowie Gear
• Magic the Gathering Fire & Lightning Premium Deck Series (60 cards)
• MSI branded football + t-shirt + bottle
• 3 x Western Digital 1 Go USB card + 3 x colorful fan + 2 x t-shirt
• 12 x Rockstar Energy Drink can

We’re currently roaming the alleys of the DreamHack show to collect more prizes! The more contestants, the more chances we have to get nice prizes for you guys.

ENJOY

I got in Swedish Jönköping yesterday in the night, in the middle of a snow storm. Powder was whipping my face and for the first time ever, as they vanished into the white at each step, I hated my dearest Stan Smith.

Nayya welcomed me while DreamHack was still being prepared by 400 admins – 400 people, that’s the usual size for a whole LAN Party where I’m from – she introduced me to Jake, another Gamocracy player and an admin here too.

I then walked around the almost empty venue and got to meet my friend TazZmAjaZz, a long-time DreamHack employee and before that a regular at French LAN events, where I was seen more than a few times myself.

After he organized the coming of gamers from nineteen countries at DreamHack, he’s now taking care of them and giving a hand where a car is needed. He immediately took me on a little trip to help a painter bring some of his work to the event. It was one in the morning…

Since then I slept a bit and got joined by OliT, a former colleague at Xfire turned Gamocracy wingman for the weekend.

So that’s the crew here. We’ve been around a bit, watched the lights go off, picked gamers at the the station a couple times and stuff like that.

Tomorrow we should get new Gamocracy cards to distribute… If everything goes well. They’ve been at the DHL office 100 km from here for three days now but they didn’t manage to deliver yet. Can’t wait to show you dotsMarc’s work on them.

For now, OliT and I will be headed to the tournament area to check on Nayya, Jake and the StarCraft 2 competition.

OliT and I have been putting more pictures on Facebook
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