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Evony is at it again. In their attempts to sue Bruce Everiss at Bruce On Games, they’re scrambling to disguise or delete any and all of the evidence he and the gaming community has collected.

The article he wrote about Evony being Malware caught the attention of Eric Lam, the guy who runs the gold-farming UMGE network of businesses and the guy who was sued by Microsoft for click-fraud schemes decided to sue Bruce Everiss. While the details of the case are expertly described on Mr. Everiss’ site, the new wrinkle in this attempt to silence criticism is that there are efforts to disassociate Evony with UMGE altogether to cover up the evidence.

They’ve edited their Evony wiki to remove references to UMGE and when one of the commenters on Bruce’s site pointed out that they missed a reference, shortly after, that reference was removed as well.

"See who's wanting you?" WTF?

The official UMGE.com site is down (and parked by GoDaddy) as well as 321Wan.com (the company that built the original Civony game, then cloned it to other browser games) is also down as well.

A student and reader of Bruce on Games went into the code of the game and found numerous references to UMGE and found that rather than malware designed to hurt the computer, it’s a massive data-mining engine.  Evony’s client, once installed, harvests tons of user information and sends it back to UMGE/ Evony.  While this is speculation, this would be a great way to scrape emails for spam, track sites you’re visiting and generally invade your privacy. Now, those references are gone.

It’s become clear that the core argument from Evony/ UMGE/ Eric Lam is primarily that Bruce Everiss (and the internet community at large) made fun of him, his business and his game and he wants litigation to cause them to shut up.  His case depends on removing the digital trails and deleting the connections so that the claims Bruce made can no longer be found.

All of this deception continues as Evony continues to throw stupid and misleading ads across the internet.  Again, while sex in advertising works, there’s very little in those ads that represent what the product actually is. It’s deceptive, pure and simple.

It’s bad marketing, it’s bad business and when called out, they litigate and try to remove evidence.

When you pay for products and services online, it’s critical that the company deserves a basic level of trust.  As more people join and play Evony, they’re giving their money to a company that doesn’t deserve that trust.

Donate to Bruce’s fight against the UMGE/ Eric Lam/ Evony litigation here at PayPal.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a few conversations with some game industry watchers about Project Natal and the reactions to it range from, “it’s a gimmick” to “it will revolutionize gaming”.  However, under the surface lurks the visage of Microsoft’s un-stated strategy.

Project Natal could become the means of content creation on the Xbox 360.

It’s very clear that Microsoft is turning the Xbox 360 into a primary device for consumers. We can update our Twitter & Facebook profiles from the console, we can stream Netflix’s digital library at will, we can listen to our playlists on Last.fm and we can enter a virtual world to play classic arcade games.

The underlying theme is that the Xbox Live platform is a strong social network for gamers to consume media that we want.  However, what’s lacked in the platform has been something that’s inherent in all web and mobile based social networks, content sharing.

One of the core things that changed the web into the social web is the ability for browsers to run native applications through the browser and allow the user to participate, modify and share those applications as they interact with it.  The social participatory network that social media sites have mastered have given us all a platform to share the things we love, hate and do to a wide variety of groups.  Twitter is, for the most part, public.  Facebook is experimenting with different ways of balancing personal privacy with our desire to distribute information.

The second aspect of social media collaboration as it’s evolved has been the advent of real-time updates.  Search giant Google has integrated Twitter streams into its search results page:

Click to embigulate

With the social web combined with the real-time web, there has to be a way to consume media in written, audio or video form, there needs to be a way to share that media with another person in your network and there needs to be a way to modify that media in some form.  Traditionally, the modification of media is comments, ratings or tagging. Lastly, there needs to be a way to create new media, let it reside on a social platform where your network can consume, share and modify it.

Natal fills that gap for Xbox Live. It is a way to modify existing media, it will be able to create new media.

Once that media is created, Microsoft’s Xbox Live has already been looking for ways to spread that media to your network, they’ve been collecting data on how Xbox Live users are actually using Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter and presumably, adding a method that’s more intuitive to share your created content via the Natal update.

Another thing to consider is that Apple has dominated the Zune in usability, user penetration and more importantly, the application distribution and development potential.

With Natal, Microsoft has a unique way for developers to create motion specific applications that can be downloaded from the store, played with and the result of that media consumption and creation will need to be shared with your networks.  If I were to create a really cool picture using “Natal Paint”, I should be able to send that picture to my email, to Twitter, to Facebook.  I should be able to make that creation my background image, the ways for Natal to inspire unique user generated creations is absolutely limitless.

That distribution capability is now being tested.  While some, including my partner Shawn has called Microsoft “drunk” or “stupid” when new features come out that only go half way, I think that this is just the foundation for Xbox Live, in combination with Natal, to explode in the ability to create content and then distribute it.

If I were to be able to link my YouTube account to Xbox Live, I could record my motions in video, apply some paint techniques to add some style, upload it to YouTube and Facebook, promote it with Twitter, then Microsoft would have been successful in creating a fully functional social network out of the browser, away from the computer and in front of all the media we belong to.

The integration of Xbox Live into the Zune is just one more way to spread that content. If I’m right, I think that all of the seemingly random and strange things Microsoft has been doing with Xbox Live lately has been a carefully coordinated test-bed to truly launch Natal as a content creation mechanism supported by a network that will share it with the browser based web.

bring on the bleak

So how do you get your fans the 411 on some hot new stuff that follows one of your most successful titles ever? Twitter.

Enter Bethesda Software and their intentions to promote the followup to Fallout 3 — Fallout New Vegas. @bethblog has posted this tweet on their page

“Keep your eyes peeled for new stuff on #FalloutNewVegas tomorrow!  — about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck”

The last time we heard about this game was last April.  This is not a direct sequel but features the city of Las Vegas in a fallout that predates the original Fallout (1997).  The notion of using Twitter to beef this new title that we’ll probably see sometime this year, is very smart.

1. Direct contact with your core audience

2. Immediate intel that can be updated in seconds.

3. Instant customer response to the posted information.

While many may scoff at the superficiality of Twitter in the proper application it becomes a powerful tool. For Bethesda with their three different  Twitter accounts it’s becomes a promotional hype steamroller that will get fans excited even if they weren’t excited yesterday.  From the looks of it, some might posit that could be the beginning of some sort of mega marketing blitz to follow in the success of their  Fallout 3 campaign and well, they may just be right. There is one thing for certain, the immediacy of Twitter makes promoting a new game release really easy.   Take notes publishers — Ride the wave of social media and use it to your advantage whenever you can.

Firstly, I want to say that I’m a platform agnostic.  I enjoy both the Xbox 360 and the PS3.  When the blue slot lights up on my Wii, I remind myself that I have yet to have a bad experience on that little bugger.

I have a badly damaged iPhone that still works and more because it’s a point of pride, I still use the damn thing.  It refuses to die.

However, since I’m out of contract, I’m seriously considering a new droid phone, yet not terribly happy about having to lose so many good games I’ve got loaded.

This is what happens when you let your 4 year old play games on your iPhone

So, with all that said, I’m not really a fanboy of a particular brand… but I love new technology that works, that makes my life simpler, more fun, more organized and more connected.  Mobile gaming touches me on two of those points.  The games I’ve put on my phone have given me countless hours of fun and connection with friends.  And most of the time, it works well.

So, when Flurry, a phenomenal mobile analytics service, released some information that the major focus and use testing were for video games, naturally, that set my heart fluttering just a bit more.

Flurry used their mobile analytics to identify categories of the application usage on the Apple tablet.

However, there’s been something that’s been pulling on my brain about the Apple Tablet, it’s failed to capture my attention in the way that the iPhone did.  The iPhone was called the Jesus Phone, it took the reality of living a digital life to a new and amazing level, for that, I’m loathe to ditch my iPhone.  Yet, I think this is the crux of my skepticism towards the Apple Tablet.

The iPhone felt new, unique and exciting.

The Apple Tablet doesn’t strike me yet as revolutionary.

Mobile games have become a huge business, capturing the core-gamer and casual mom-gamer demographics expertly and almost completely.  However, my trepidation rests in the feeling that the Apple Platform will raise that bar only in scale and not connectivity, functionality and immersion.   I understand that the tablet, as a reader, could be superior to the Kindle or the Nook, I understand that the Tablet wont just be a big iPhone… all of these things I know.

However, if the primary use of the table will be gaming, as Flurry’s data suggests, it has to revolutionize gaming.  It can’t be just bigger, prettier, higher rez and have better multi-touch features, it has to force game development companies to truly change the way that games are made again… in the way iPhone games added a new element to gaming, the iPhone forced gamers to perceive and experience games in a way that hadn’t really been done before.

So, as it’s released today, I’ll be interested to see how they’re planning to take gaming to the next level, to change the game again and how they’ve not been satisfied to just make a bigger gaming platform, but how they can connect it with people, reinvent the way we play games again, force developers to take risks in the new functionality and ultimately give gamers and consumers a new way to experience games.

This is a case where I hope my skepticism is unwarranted, I want innovation, I want to buy the tablet and I want game companies and gamers to be surprised with how good it can be.  As for now, I’m not really seeing anything game changing about it.  Of course, I could be wrong… and we should all know by the end of the day.

Check this out if you want.  It’s very slow, very boring and the exact same game as any Mafia War, FarmVille Facebook game you’ve ever played.

A friend of mine sent me an invite to play this game, and my first thought was, “you’ve gotta be shitting me, is this an app to promote the same Dante’s Inferno game from EA that got second place on my Worst Video Game Marketing Campaigns of 2009?”

Yes.  Yes it is.  Despite the slowness of the game, despite the fact that it’s a clone of other popular games on Facebook, the only thing that shocked me about this is that they actually made it.  I mean, if you’re gonna piss me off, do so in a way that doesn’t bore me to tears.  Even the UI, which seems to be created with the elegance of a crowbar is fitted to promote in the most visible way the upcoming game.  I guess subtlety is not in Visceral/ EA’s vocabulary.

Click to embiggefy

Before I sound like I’m picking on Dante’s Inferno, I want to say that they’re doing the right things, they’re creating a bit of controversy, they’re making marketing campaigns based upon the content of the game, they’re expertly using the language of the story and of the game to communicate to its potential customers.  All of those things, they’re spot on.

Unfortunately, the execution of these efforts are just wrong.  From the #EAFail grope a booth babe contest, to this Facebook application.  Yes, they should be on Facebook, yes they should be leveraging social media.  Unfortunately, this effort is so slipshod and devoid of any real thought that it almost pains me to say that I miss them pissing me off.

If you’re going to offend me, do so intelligently, not by copying what EVERY OTHER FACEBOOK GAME IS DOING.

Dante’s Inferno marketing, once controversial and offensive has entered into the bland and “meh” category.