How does this affect UKR?

It doesn’t. Hooray! There now follows a dull but factually correct account of the UKR/Shiny Media period, for those of you who like paying attention to the press releases. Don’t worry, this isn’t today’s proper update. You do not have to read it.

THE SHINY MEDIA STORY
By Gary J. Cutlack

In June of 2007, high on venture money, Shiny Media bought ukresistance.co.uk and IdiotToys.com off me for a large-ish, but not life-changing, sum of money. This made me go like this:

:)

Two-thirds of the cash was paid on completion of the deal – on the day I started working for them full time – with the final third payable after I’d been at the company for one year, just in case I went mad and run off as soon as they paid me.

Everything was good for a bit. I worked from home four days a week, went berserk on Xboxer to the delight of hardly anyone, and enjoyed pretending to know about gadgets on Tech Digest – while actually being paid to update Idiot Toys and UKR. Happy days were there.

After nearly a year, in April of 2008, it became clear that Shiny was having financial problems as it chopped freelance budgets for the second or third time since I’d started, closed sites and dumped many good people, so I offered them the olive branch of giving me UKR.co.uk back in return for me waiving the final third of the payment.

They agreed. Which again made me go like this:

:)

It was doubly great, as UKR was 48 hours away from being switched to the utterly horrendous Shiny Media template of terror with an “outsourced Romanian web developer” (YES, REALLY!) apparently in charge of putting the UKR content onto the Shiny content management system.

Thank Christ that never happened, eh?

And that was that. I got to work from home, called a cunt on YouTube 10,000 times, while Shiny got pretty much nothing and is now apparently dead in its current form.

The end.

Has anyone who is interested in this sort of thing got any questions?

Children. Rubbish. The only advantage they have on adults is the fact they’ll win at life, due to dying later. Plus telly is better these days. No ‘Ceefax’ mornings for them.

“I went to the Videogame Nation exhibition in Manchester, at the Urbis, yesterday. Not bad but I would have been pissed off if I had paid money to get into it. One interesting bit is the ‘Design your own game cover’ bit, where they have a stack of A4 paper and some felt tips. This is ‘Cooking Mama with Sonic’ by Libby, age 7.”

“‘R U as speedy as Sonic?’, by Rachel from Billingham”.

“‘Where is F-Zero?!’, by Anonymous”.

“‘Single Working mother 2’, by some pervert. Other highlights included an area marked ‘Over 18s only’ that I saw a kid, probably about 12 year old, corrupting his mind with GTA4, and LittleBigPlanet with a broken PS3 controller” – LewieP.

ARTISTIC REVIEW:

REVIEW: Clever awareness of brand extensions from Libby, who shows a great eye for the sales potential of mass-market tie-ups with this genre-defying creation. Her canny emphasis on Sonic would open up the ‘Mama’ brand to an entirely new audience of SEGA and Sonic fans, helping the series earn new followers – and could lead to special editions featuring the likenesses of other games characters. Libby has not just suggested a piece of boxart, she has broken down the staid boundaries and smashed through the limits of conventional thought that would contain and limit the entire industry.

REVIEW: Where indeed? The question posed by Anonymous here is one being asked by myriad Nintendo fans the world over, as they attempt to convince themselves they’re happy playing Wii Fit. Where’s F-Zero? Where next for Nintendo now it’s ditching – and seemingly embarrassed by – its traditional userbase? Where next, perhaps, for the viewer, who, feeling disenfranchised by Nintendo’s sudden change in direction, may be left questioning their personal place and relevance to the modern games industry?

REVIEW: The question bursts through the artwork and attacks the subconscious of the would-be gamer. Am I as fast as Sonic? Would this game tell me? Could this game educate AND entertain me? By focussing on the unarticulated insecurities of the viewer, Rachel both challenges and reassures the viewer that, yes, they may well not be as ‘fast’ as Sonic but the ability to reach one’s own potential personal ‘top speed’ lies within us all and simply requires an adequate catalyst to release it. Could this game be that catalyst? Could ‘R U as Speedy as Sonic?’ be the trigger that leads to a physical and emotional uplift for the player, ushering in a positive new era for their entire life outlook? An extremely powerful piece.

REVIEW: Would.

A simplistic scene that *may* have been slightly impressive on a home computer in 1988. May have been. We can’t remember longer ago than 1992 any more.

“I’m doing it! I’m playing a game!”

How DARE IT harm lovely clown-faced Christina!

We would quite like to injure Christina Aguilera with a Wii Remote. Not badly, just so it’d be a bit uncomfortable for her to sit down the next day.