Technological Convergence

The iPhone.
Ring and TXT your friends -- It's a phone! Listen to your music on the go -- It's an MP3 player! Stick it in your car -- It becomes a GPS! Download applications, each a fraction of the cost of a standalone device that would provide similar functionality -- and your iPhone does it all.
But the thing that concerns me is open standards. There's nothing open about the iPhone -- Apple crack down on awry app-makers. The block certain functionality that the iPhone could provide, if you weren't limited by local laws. The onboard music player only plays Apple-approved formats.
The myth of technological convergance is that these technologies provide an open forum, a way for every format, type of media, program, and so on -- free reign of the hardware.
The truth of the matter is that these devices are produced by corporations -- and corporations are only interested in a device that will continue to provide revenue to them.

Machinima and its Limits

Machinima.
The first machinima I watched was done in the Quake engine, one of the first truly 3D game engines on the PC (that didn't look like shit). One could record "demo's" -- basically, replays of games that could be watched through the video game interface. Soon, "mods" (modifications) of the game allowed people to insert voice acting, subtitles, use different camera angles, and so on. I remember checking these machinima videos in the late 90's.
Machinima has come a long way. Red and Blue, machinima done using the Halo engine, brought this art form into the spotlight and gave it credence. As games grow more complex, more and more of the nuances of real-life movie productions can be recreated "in-game".
And the machinima machine keeps on rolling as video games become more "real".

Selling Your Soul

Hello.
My name is Bob, age 25.

This is my game for Nintendo DS, a 20-hour-long retail-size,
retail-quality adventure title by a single human being-
the largest game ever made by one person.

"bob's game" is a simple 2D adventure game, with focus on
story, puzzles, item collection, and communication instead
of repetitive battles with palette-swapped enemies.

Many characters (over 200 completely unique characters!)
have deep personalities that evolve, and many things
depend on the in-game time, day and weather.

It's the game I wanted to play when I was younger,
a vision I've been following since then.

http://www.bobsgame.com/

So, you made yourself a game. Good.
Now, how are you gonna pitch it?
It depends on your market audience. A casual game, or a game with general all-ages appeal might sit well in a TV spot. However, something for the more hardcore gamers out there might best be sold online -- the proving grounds of the gamer elite.
You can set up your own website and pitch it that way, if you'd like (like Bob did). Advertising might consist of buying up web banners or Google advertisement space that point to your web site.
For Bob, it's really worked out:


2008-10-03:

The WiiDS Podcast is up!
I've done another short QA with gaming blog E2EntertainmentExplosion.
Talks are progressing rapidly- there's something big in the works. ;)
Along with normal carts, I might be one of the first downloadable titles on the DSi!

A bigger company needs only to send one of their PR guys to a gaming entertainment expo to espouse their new title. Or they might simply choose to fly a few gaming reporters in to their labs, and show them their newest product close-up.

I think my product would benefit from the "Bob" approach -- make something fantastic (a "tech demo" or proof of concept), whip up a series of short (>1 minute) flick that shows all the fantastic features and revolutionary ideas being poured into my game, upload to YouTube, and enjoy success! A lot of small "indie" developers are finding success with this method, and with my game concept being marketed to indie development studios, I think this is the logical conclusion for marketing our concept to either the public or game distributors and producers.

This sort of "underground" YouTube-based approach is often helped when grouped with other word-of-mouth processes -- talking it up in your favourite forums, buying online advertisment space, offering a shareware demo to rally interest (even when you've barely begun development of the full game!). In the book Masters of Doom, John Romero and John Carmack, the god-like heads of iD software and developers of Doom and Quake, are described subverted the early-nineties culture of submitting your assets and rights to a publishing house. They did this by releasing the shareware demo to Doom online through univeristy internet servers.

So the online approach is three-pronged: advertising, both through word-of-mouth and official services such as Google's AdWords, having a central website that houses development discussion and resources, and releasing free stuff to the public (everything from proof-of-concept tech demos, all the way up to full-blown playable shareware demos).