Blood Sport: Final Nail In The Coffin?

I can’t resist the puns.

Last week I spoke about Blood Sport, the so-called “ultimate in immersive gaming”. This off-kilter initiative was aiming to make blood donation more fun and appealing by tying it to video gaming. When you would receive damage in any given game, the controller’s rumble feature would trigger the blood-collection system. If you would like to learn more about it, check out these two posts.

I said that I would be covering the story as it unfolds. At this point though, Blood Sport may have reached a dead end.

The project first started getting widespread recognition when it had its crowdfunding campaign suspended on Kickstarter. Ultimately this meant little since the project was simply not going to meet its funding requirements. It had only raised a couple thousand towards its lofty $250,000 goal and its January end date was fast approaching.

When I last left Blood Sport, I was waiting for further information on why the project was suspended, what prospects it had on overturning that suspension, and what was going to happen next in the very near future. Around the time of my last post, CNET reportedly reached out to the duo behind Blood Sport and asked about their situation. Frustratingly, Kickstarter has a sealed-lips policy when it comes to actually explaining why suspensions get handed out. The creators did share some theories on why Blood Sport got pulled, namely issues relating to safety and medical equipment.

A week later and news on Blood Sport has all but dried up. Some articles still get posted, but they’re just regurgitations of previous info. If the website Joystiq is any indication, the Blood Sport creators are just sending out the same canned responses to those who are contacting them. Even the Facebook page for creator Taran Chadha has gone back to posting unrelated content, although to be fair it’s not a particularly active or focused page.

So what’s going on now? The creators may still be consulting blood donation officials as they stated in the CNET article. Maybe the project’s been put on hold. Either way, Blood Sport would have a long ways ahead of it to gain the amount of support needed to be successful, of which it has previously demonstrated itself incapable. News about Blood Sport will either trickle in slowly or just cease. Maybe.

What did you think of Blood Sport’s concept? Its implementation? Do you think it has a future? Do you even think it’s real? Tell me in the comments below, and thanks for reading.

The Easiest Way To Play Smash 4 Is Currently The Hardest

Sorry for not posting for about a week. I decided to take a break from blogging due to other commitments. Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

Has anyone picked up Super Smash Bros. for Wii U? I’ve mentioned before how totally broke I am, so I haven’t gotten the chance to actually buy the thing. Hell, I’d at least need the console first. Luckily, I met a nice group of folks at the game’s midnight release and have gotten the chance to play it several times. Several local tournaments have also featured this new game and have attracted lively turnouts.

The game’s good. People seem to having a great time with it. However, its release has been held up by one important thing in particular: the controls.

Truth be told, Smash 4 offers a wealth of control options. You can use the Wii U tablet, Smash 3DS, the Pro Controller, and I believe he old Wii remote as well. For a lot of Smash Bros. fans though, there will only ever be one.

The Gamecube was hardly one of Nintendo’s biggest consoles. Although some fantastic games debuted on it (hello there Metroid Prime), the little lunchbox was hardly rocking the sales charts. Would you believe that its predecessor, the Nintendo 64, was also in the same boat? That console with such prolific hits as Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Goldeneye? Granted, these systems were hardly dismal failures but they did underperform relative to the Super Nintendo and the original NES before it.

The one-two-punch of the DS and the Wii soon put Nintendo back on top (for a time), though the Gamecube managed to still cling to life. The Wii was the only one of the main last-generation home consoles to have complete backwards compatibility. You could simply pop in both your own Gamecube discs and even its controllers. Dedicated Wii games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Brawl even incorporated the Gamecube controller as an available option. For the latter, this was a godsend.

The Gamecube controller has been typically associated with the Smash series since Melee, and has since been commonly regarded as the ideal control option across the series. Many fans have been playing the Smash series for over a decade on the same controller! It is uniquely ergonomic and almost seems like it was designed specifically for Smash Bros. Unfortunately for the new Wii U game, it was debuting on a console that wasn’t as directly accommodating towards that old Gamecube tech. The Wii U offers none of those ports that its predecessor featured, nor does it even accept physical Gamecube discs.

Not to worry, though! Nintendo created a little converter box just for Smash. Connect it to your Wii U and then plug in your trusty Gamecube controllers.

However, Nintendo seemingly didn’t make enough of these.

Website Nintendo Life has a great rundown of the situation. This tiny $20 box is largely sold-out at major retailers and is being offered at a considerable markup on sites like eBay and Amazon. $80 to use a Gamecube controller for just one game… the fact that some are willing to pay that price reflects how important the Gamecube controller is as an option for Smash players. Why weren’t more adapters produced? Did Nintendo underestimate its demand? Are more on the way?

For the Smash fans out there, how important is it to be able to play with your Gamecube controller? Can you stomach other options or is it all-or-nothing? Personally, I’m not all that affected by the situation since I spent several months hardwiring the controls of Smash 3DS into my head. When I go play the Wii U game I’m most comfortable just playing it with my 3DS. I do find the Gamecube controller to be preferable over all the other options, though.

Tell me your thoughts in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter or Facebook. The links are on the side of the page. Thanks!

Blood Sport Revisted: A Strange First Impression

Yesterday I posted about a wacky project called Blood Sport. Its creators were raising funds via Kickstarter for a two-player competitive gaming rig, of which would draw your own actual real-life blood when you take damage in a video game. You can read more about it here or go directly to its Kickstarter page. For whatever reason the project was suspended, and I’m still waiting for more news on that front. In the meantime though, I wanted to talk about something that I didn’t touch on in my last post: Blood Sport’s pitch video.

This clip will be what introduces most people to the project’s concept… or at least that’s probably what it’s intended to do. Blood Sport is getting most of its recognition from recent attention in the media. Although funding for the project began on one week ago, most sites have only picked up the story in light of Blood Sport’s aforementioned suspension.

I say that the video is intended as an introduction for two main reasons: it’s at the very top of the project description and is the centerpiece of Blood Sport’s official website. Some may disagree, but I don’t think that this video pitched the concept all that well.

It immediately starts with footage of a dude getting his neck sawed off while several players laugh in glee. Pleasant music plays throughout. Nah, I get it. Lots of games are super-gory and you’re not necessarily a psycho for enjoying some fictional carnage. I love those old Doom games. Too old of an example? Uhh… how about Turok 2? Okay, that’s still pretty old- it was a Nintendo 64 game. Regardless, that one had a weapon where you could fire a drill that would drain out liquefied brains from your enemies. It was cool at the time (and it still is, don’t judge). I’m not criticizing this intro for being insensitive or any of that, it just seemed jarring. The atmosphere was a little too happy for what was happening on the screen. It caught my attention at least.

From that point on, the video begins to sell Blood Sport in some ways that might seem disingenuous or off-putting. It “raises the stakes of competitive gaming”… so it’s dangerous? I get that the creators want to play up the whole “get hit, ACTUALLY lose blood” angle. It’s the most visible gimmick- the project is even subtitled “The Ultimate In Immersive Gaming”. However, framing Blood Sport in such a way implies some level of deterring risk.

Further into the video, one player actually appears fatigued and has to tell the on-hand machine operator (dressed in jeans and a casual t-shirt) that’s he done. The donation aspect of Blood Sport is not emphasized until the last 20 seconds of the the two-minute pitch, which seems strange considering how major of a component it is for the $250,000 project. Canada’s supposed need for blood donations is relegated to one hasty mention at the very end, followed by a cheeky comment alluding to dizziness from blood loss. Oh man, I just can’t wait to give blood!

Trust me. I’m a doctor.

Blood Sport’s ultimate goal is an admirable one- the creators want to make blood donation seem a bit more fun so as to encourage more Canadians to actually go out and donate. The problem is that their pitch video seems a little misguided in how it attempted to sell the thing. The video mainly emphasized Blood Sport’s uniqueness by going for an “immersion” angle that seems possibly arbitrary at best and nauseating at worst. I mentioned in my previous post how I’m unconvinced about how Blood Sport’s design will necessarily do much in immersing the player- it’s tied to a controller’s rumble feature, of which activates for a wide variety of in-game events.

The video even seems at odds with the project’s more thorough description on its Kickstarter page. Blood Sport is therein described as pretty damn safe, or at least appears so. Several regulations are in place to ensure that a player doesn’t get sucked dry for being especially crappy. Would you have guessed that the plainclothes, grinning machine operator was supposed to represent a “certified professional”? I would think that the video could afford to cover the safety aspect of something like blood-drawing in a bit more detail, rather than allude to the risks and consequences of blood loss in general. Get a professional medical associate on the camera or something.

On Youtube, the pitch is sitting at nearly 180,000 views. Although Blood Sport is getting its name out there, it appears to be drawing enough skepticism to garner a close majority of dislikes.

That about does it for this entry. Keep checking back for more impressions on controversial gaming topics. I’ll have more info to share about Blood Sport’s Kickstarter status and its future prospects when the news is available. If you liked this post go ahead and give me a follow, it really goes a long way!