Automotive

posted 02/24/08 by Rick Webb

Oh man, we have done so much automotive work. Automotive and the Internet. What can we say? Benjamin often comments that an automobile is the single largest purchase that someone makes, besides their house, and it’s the one best suited to using the internet to research. It’s highly competitive – automotive websites are getting better all the time. There’s a logical component – configurators, comparisons, and an emotional component – wow, this car is cool. We try to cater to both.
Even before we founded the Barbarian Group, we were known as “The Car Guys” for the web. Nat was “The Mini Guy.” Ben was “The EuroVan guy.” Rick was the “Build those Complicated Satellite-based Dealer Extranet Guy” (no, really.) Robert was “The Turbonium Guy.” (he got a little tired of that, since he had already built over 10 automotive websites). Keith, that lucky dog, had two names – “The Hummer Guy” and “The Microbus Guy.”
And this was before we even really got started.
Since then, we’ve built even MORE car websites. For Saturn. For Audi. For Volkswagen. For automotive clients we can’t tell you about. For tire makers. We’ve built more car websites than you can shake a stick at.
It’s been a good run, and we’ve enjoyed it. We love cars.

Here are some recent posts from our employees about Automotive:

Big 3 looking for big money

Of course, the big 3 want to get in on the tax payer funded buyout plan. With their businesses in turmoil, I’m not so shocked that they’re asking for some help. To get a piece of the pie, they’re trying to prove worthy and prove they’ll be successful in years to come, strategically thinking of what’s to come for each brand.

Plug in Detroit

Auto industry sales figures are in and it’s a s**t storm. No surprise. Who the hell wants to buy a new car when the price of gas is $1000/gallon?
It’s time, finally, for Detroit to develop electric cars. Right?
I was watching The Early Show on CBS and there was a bit on the new Tesla all-electric car. I guess it’s really fast and can go over 200 miles before needing a plug-in, into any regular electric outlet, to re-charge. Beautiful. Imagine a world with no gas stations and a lot less smog and no reason to worry about OPEC. I feel better already.
So, Detroit…it’s called the tipping point.

Ms. Pac Man, Auto Repair, and Client Communications

This came my way last week, and kinda blew my mind. On his eponymous site, Don Hodges has looked into some of the most famous programming bugs in early gaming history – the Donkey Kong kill screen, Pac Man’s level 256 split screen, Dig Dug’s instant-death screen, and others. Although the solutions are very technical (we’re talking assembly code here), the level of detail and understanding of the algorithms is what really impressed me.

Four sites, two articles, two new peeps

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Oh. My. God. So much going on. Where to begin? First. Comcastic. We teamed up with Goodby, Number 9, our pal and sound designer Sean T Drinkwater and Erik Natzke to build out this site. TBG was responsible for the High Speed Internet section which entails 5 skills games that will eventually lead players to a tournament for their chance at getting into the Guinness Book of World Records. As a player, you will be able to challenge and chat with other logged in members to compete in the games head to head. Your score will be recorded, making you eligible to become the best mouse user EVERRRRR.

Next. The Passat B6 Minisite, created by our one and only Robert Hodgin, in conjunction with Arnold Worldwide, is live. There is going to be a total of 120 mini-videos that showcase the new features of the car. Right now, there’s about more than a third of them up, but the rest will be incorporated within the next couple of weeks. Check it out!

Third. The Milwaukee’s Best Light Poker Game. Made in conjunction with Mother New York. This is really awesome. Went up on Thursday on our Milbest site, alongside some other Poker-related content, all very fun. Test your poker skills against Poker champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson:

Fourth! God, we’ve been busy. You know how when you call and we say “oh yeah, it’s pretty busy.” See? We weren’t kidding. Finally, we offer you Boston.com’s tenth anniversary game, Lobstah Bash. Defend boston from a rabid candle and present hurling lobster. Don’t ask. Just play. And be warned. It’s HARD.

IN OTHER NEWS: Gametap, a project we’ve been working on with Mullen, got a nice writeup in The New York Times yesterday. I saw a decent article in AdWeek this week as well, but that one, ahem, didn’t mention your Barbarian friends. We josh. Anyway, if you’ve seen the enigmatic Get Goatz or What Is Adat spots on Adult Swim, you might begin to have some idea what we’re takling about here.

Speaking of Adweek, they did a really nice writeup of the insanely, completely addictive game we did for Saucony with Nail.

Finally, we’d like to welcome Jill as an interactive producer. She was last at Electronic Arts. And we’d like to welcome Cole as our latest rock star Flash designer. We found him on Flickr. No joke. Who says the Internet’s all hype?