Twitter is for winners

A lot of people get down on Twitter, because they “don’t care what people ate for lunch,” or “already have a Facebook,” or any other number of excuses. Everybody who knows what’s up, though, knows that Twitter is a great tool for making contacts, following trends in your industry, and finding out about breaking news before all the non-tweeters.

Advertise yourself on Twitter to get hits on your blog or website, and link it to your Facebook so they share updates to save you time

If there’s a popular news site or blog you love to read but don’t always have the time, chances are they have a Twitter that you can follow to receive all the best updates in micro form. I follow GamePro, Joystiq, Destructoid, Kotaku, GamePolitics, and X-Play for my gaming news.

Take that a step further and you can follow your favorite journalists and editors, like Blake Patterson of touchArcade, Brian Crecente and Stephen Totilo of Kotaku, Thierry Nguyen of 1Up, Rey Gutierrez of Destructoid, and Ryan O’Donnell of Area 5.

Developers are tweeting too, and making Twitters for specific games, like Lionhead Studios, Casey Malone from Harmonix, and EA Redwood Shores’s Dead Space 2.

Twitter is a great place to find out about deals and sales, too. Cheap Ass Gamer, GamerHotLine, and GamerDeals.net all tweet daily about the latest and best gaming steals.

Of course, Twitter is also good for pure humor or entertainment. Overheard Newsroom and Fake AP Stylebook will tickle any journalists. Author Arjun Basu, inventor of the “Twister”, a 140-character short story, tweets several new ones a day. They’re often funny, touching or sad, and best of all, they’re short.

Finally, members of Team Coco had better be following the Golden Giant’s Twitter. Despite creating his account less than a month ago, Conan has almost 700,000 followers. True fans (like myself) can also follow his beard, squirrel, monkey, Ford Taurus, sharpie, liquor filled beach, and his one and only “Twitter pal“.

Now follow me!

Gamepolitics.com and the politics of games

Gamepolitics.com is the closest thing to a political blog that I will ever regularly read. There is a surprising amount of legislation all over the world, and especially in the US, that affects the game industry and, more importantly, gamers themselves.

where politics and video games collide

Take Australia, for example. In Australia, there is no video game rating higher than MA15+. Many games that earn a Mature rating in the US, the equivalent of an R movie, are denied classification in Australia, and are therefore banned from being sold by retailers. South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson has been preventing a new rating from being established for years. Using the topic tracking drop-down menu near the top of Gamepolitics, I can read all posts pertaining to Australia, Michael Atkinson or games ratings in general.

Another neat tool is the Legislation Tracker, which displays a map of the US and Canada and highlights which states and provinces currently have video game legislation, either in the works, established or already defeated. This is a quick way to check if you should be writing any letters or even if there’s an upcoming vote in your state that might affect your gaming freedoms.

When the blog was acquired in 2006 by the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), a non-profit that represents entertainment consumers, the content stayed the same, and the man behind it- journalist Dennis McCauley- is a super nice guy (I interviewed him in 2008 about the Little Big Planet recall for my Journalism 2 final). In a world where video games are more often than not given the short end of the stick by society at large, Gamepolitics often helps bring things into perspective.