大象传媒

To the winner the spoils

• Darren Waters
• 28 Jan 08, 16:31 GMT

Is anyone surprised that was 2007鈥檚 most successful video game?

Perhaps 鈥� because it wasn鈥檛 among the most talked about tent-pole titles at the start of the year.

got the buzz, and the press attention, while and got the plaudits. But it was COD4 that got the cash tills ringing the loudest.

Of course, COD4 was a multi-platform title while the others were either platform exclusive or limited to a single console and PC but its success is reward for creating one of the most dynamic entertainment experiences of the year.

Halo 3 impressed people with its rich multiplayer offerings, but looking back on the core game, the single-player, I think it鈥檚 fair to say that the ambition in the story-telling was lacking.

One of the game鈥檚 developers said to me that going into the making of Halo 3 they were resolved to take the successful parts of Halo 1 and fix the problems obvious in Halo 2.

They certainly achieved that 鈥� but there was little original content in Halo 3. It was fun to play, polished and rewarding 鈥� but somehow I felt deflated by the experience.

Bioshock offered the most compelling story of 2007 鈥� even though its morality play was overhyped. But the actual game mechanics of Bioshock were mundane.

had the looks, certainly, and Super Mario Galaxy was incredibly inventive - and many hardened gaming hacks admitted the title helped them 鈥渇all in love鈥� with games all over again.

But Call of Duty 4鈥檚 commitment to excellence across almost every aspect of the game makes its success very much deserved.

It is a game that is unafraid to take chances - especially in its story-telling.

How many other titles feature a sequence as dramatic as the opening moments in Call of Duty 4? From the insertion onto a sinking tanker to the stunning journey through the streets of a Middle Eastern city as chaos and violence erupts all around - COD4 combined great story-telling with great action.

I thought 2007 was one of the strongest ever years for video games - and Call of Duty 4 has succeeded without the kind of marketing budget that certain other games enjoyed.

Can 2008 possibly be any better?

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Mobile video at Davos

• Darren Waters
• 28 Jan 08, 09:45 GMT

One of the talking points to emerge from Davos this year is the use of online video to report instantly on events, with little mediation through traditional channels.

Reuters have been trialling a, with reporters armed with adapted phones to attached microphones. Short, sharp interviews are posted quickly to a dedicated page on the Reuters website.

The news agency has also handed some of the phones to some blogging luminaries, including , who has championed what is called "networked journalism". I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what networked journalism is - and I'm not sure anyone is - but part of it is the use of reporting tools which can make use of the connected nature of the web, to build an inclusive form of journalism.

But it's not Reuters making waves in online video that was the talking point of Davos. It's people like and .

Scoble, who works for Fast Company and is a renowned blogger in his own right, has been trawling the corridors of power at Davos recording interviews on his Nokia N95 and sometimes going live, using a software tool called . Our online business editor Tim Weber was also roped into one of Scoble's interviews while at Davos.

LeMeur has been using Qik also - as well as his own tool , recording video conversations direct from Davos.

Online tools like Qik and connected devices like mobile phones are combining to give reporters and citizen journalists the ability to produce journalism without any of the usual filters or production layers.

Of course it's not quite as simple as it appears - both Scoble and LeMeur have a profile which transcends the tools they use. Scoble may "just be a blogger" but his status as an ex-Microsoft employee and LeMeur's connection to people like Sarkozy open doors.

But that's not the point I'm trying to make: These tools are tremendously exciting - whether you're a lone blogger, a mainstream news agency or even the world's largest news organisation like the 大象传媒.

We too are planning to engage with mobile video. Next month we'll be using mobile phones to product video, photos and text journalism, alongside our more traditional reporting methods.

It's not just an experiment - we'll be using the tools to talk about the future of mobile phones - at the , Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and engaging with people and companies who are helping transform the device across Silicon Valley.

We're planning to use tools like Qik, , Seesmic and to both reach new audiences and experiment with new tools.

But we're open to suggestions - are there other online tools that we should be using? Are you interested in the 大象传媒 trialling such things?

How are you using your mobile phone to "report" on your world?

Send me your recommendations and thoughts. I'd love to hear them.

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