Who needs to wait for 2K and EA?

[Leftos]

phpBB [video]

Getting released this week.

[formx]

phpBB [video]

Getting released this week.

Looks like a shitty game to me. Like what happens if you get the basketball and hit the TV?

[Andrew]

It'll be interesting to see how well this one does. It is kind of a cool concept, but I don't know how many folks are going to be willing or able to dribble a real ball in their living room or wherever else their console is set up. Too bad if you've got carpet floors, too.

[Leftos]

Yeah, and I can't imagine how pleased your downstairs neighbours will be.

[Andrew]

Reminds me of some of the NES accessories that the AVGN reviewed some years back.

phpBB [video]

Some were certainly interesting and creative ideas, but not necessarily practical or all that good when it came down to it. You could also place R.O.B. in that category.

phpBB [video]

[benji]

This is the best part of the story, they were buying twitter followers:

“There has never been anything like NBA Baller Beats, which is a true game-changer for the industry,” said Jesse Sutton, Chief Executive Officer, Majesco Entertainment in a press release. “The buzz for the game is growing each day and it already has 4 million video views and nearly 700,000 Twitter followers. We are really looking forward to all the fans playing the game when it is in stores tomorrow.” That quote is from a press release I received earlier today.

Alarm bells went off. To give you some sense of scale, the official Twitter account for Assassin’s Creed has around 130,000 followers. Call of Duty, arguably the biggest video game franchise in the world, has “only” 546,000 followers. It seemed unlikely to me that a smaller game from Majesco so handily beat the biggest names in gaming in terms of Twitter followers. My suspicions were confirmed when I started looking into the follower count for the game; most followers seemed to be either bots or shell accounts, many of them had never tweeted a single thing.

That’s what it looks like when a developer, or publisher, buys followers.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editoria ... s-of-nba-b



Majesco claims otherwise:

Actually Ben, I just sent you an email but we think your data is wrong.

TwitterCounter shows a constant daily change for the following date ranges

06/11 to 06/19 ( +4,014 )
06/27 to 08/04 ( +2,800 )
08/01 to 08/19 ( -4,847 ) *decrement
08/18 to 09/10 ( +21,320 )

We believe that this is because TwitterCounter samples account information using a
prioritized scheduler. In other words, it doesn't check every account every day.

We assume it checks popular accounts quite often, and new accounts and those who
don't subscribe to their service are sampled less frequently. Then they average the
difference between the two dates and fill in between with an average daily change.

You should also note that TwitterCounter showed an average daily decline of
-4,847 users between 8/1 and 8/19. We believe that we last purged the database of
fake accounts within these dates. In late August we announced a twitter-based
sweepstakes giving away copies of the game. The sweepstakes begins on launch-date
which as you know is tomorrow. We will be purging the database before our Twitter
contest begins. We have been promoting this contest every day since it was first
announced.

Currently, it looks like we have about 15% fake-followers. This is actually pretty good
for our industry. @EA and @AssassinsCreed both have 15% fake-followers. As you pointed out,
CallOfDuty has 17% fake. @BarackObama has 31% fake and @MittRomney has 14%.

You currently have 66% good followers.

We certainly wish that Twitter was spoof proof, but sadly it's not. But claiming that
we'd lied or orchestrated this is a stretch and we completely deny that this was the
case.

I included my contact information in the email I sent you. We're obviously quite
disappointed that this article ambushing our official launch was rushed based on
unsound analysis.

Ben fired back:

Just to be clear, your official claim is that you gained more followers than the Call of Duty series because your started a contest where people could win a $60 game where you bounced a ball in front of the television. That around 20,000 people a day wanted to bounce their ball SO HARD they created fake accounts just in hopes of winning?

You honestly think that Ubisoft and Activision never thought to give away a copy of their game? That a giveaway was the secret behind one of the most popular Twitter accounts in gaming history?

You may only have 15 percent of fake accounts, but you have a staggering 80 percent inactive accounts. You only have five percent "good" accounts. I have literally never seen anything like that in my entire career of covering games. And you bragged about it in a press release.

No one thought to wonder how you gained almost a tenth of the twitter followers of the ENTIRE NBA? How you crushed the Twitter accounts of games that sell millions in a matter of hours?

#RaiseYourGame

[Leftos]

I love Ben Kuchera. I've been following him since I got to know his work at Ars Technica.

And man this seems like a big fiasco for Majesco. If you're going to fake your Twitter follower numbers, at least do some research and make it something plausible. 700,000? Really?

[shadowgrin]

Have it include a bouncing plastic ball and Jao would be all over that game.

[Andrew]

Well, that's sure seemed to backfire on them.

[Andrew]

[SoF'nAwesome]

lmfao

[deihatein]

phpBB [video]

[Andrew]

Once again, a cool concept and it could be quite helpful in developing dribbling skills, but I still don't know that it'd be all that convenient for a lot of people to play. I don't know about the claim of being able to dribble the ball on most carpets; I guess they've thought about it and tested it out but I still think it's not going to be feasible for a lot of people.

I'd say to get the most out of the game, you'd need to have your console and TV set up somewhere where there's plenty of room, a surface you can dribble on properly and ideally move everything breakable out of harm's way in case the ball gets away from you. That's probably not feasible for everyone and a bit of a chore if you have to move a bunch of stuff every time you want to play, just to make sure you don't break it by accident. It seems like it could be a fun party game and maybe a good training tool, but not something everyone could pick up and enjoy very easily.

[Leftos]

Great convention game, don't see many situations at home that would make this feasible. As Andrew said, not enough space in a room, objects that break, and the noise that the ball would be making for people living with you and/or your neighbors make this a bad choice.

[benji]

QUICK LOOK: http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-nba ... s/17-6620/

[Andrew]

34 minutes is a quick look?

Pretty much what I expected.